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THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
[Illustration: Walt Whitman
Photograph taken about the year 1870]
THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
Edited
With an Introduction
BY THOMAS B. HARNED
One of Walt Whitman's Literary Executors
Illustrated
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
In Memoriam
AUGUSTA TRAUBEL HARNED
1856-1914
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE xix
INTRODUCTION xxi
A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN 3
A CONFESSION OF FAITH 23
LETTER
I. WALT WHITMAN TO WILLIAM MICHAEL
ROSSETTI AND ANNE GILCHRIST 56
II. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_September 3, 1871_ 58
III. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Shotter Mill, Haslemere, Surrey_
_October 23, 1871_ 65
IV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington, D. C._
_November 3, 1871_ 67
V. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_November 27, 1871_ 68
VI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_January 24, 1872_ 72
VII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Washington, D. C._
_February 8, 1872_ 75
VIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_April 12, 1872_ 76
IX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_June 3, 1872_ 79
X. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., N. W., London_
_July 14, 1872_ 82
XI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq._
_November 12, 1872_ 85
XII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
_January 31, 1873_ 86
XIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd., Camden Sq., London, N. W._
_May 20, 1873_ 88
XIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_August 12, 1873_ 91
XV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey_
_Undated. Summer of 1873_ 94
XVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_September 4, 1873_ 96
XVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_November 3, 1873_ 98
XVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 8, 1873_ 102
XIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_February 26, 1874_ 105
XX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_March 9, 1874_ 108
XXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_May 14, 1874_ 109
XXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_July, 4, 1874_ 112
XXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_September 3, 1874_ 115
XXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 9, 1874_ 119
XXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_December 30, 1874_ 121
XXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne, Halstead_
_February 21, 1875_ 123
XXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Square, London, N. W._
_May 18, 1875_ 126
XXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earl's Colne_
_August 28, 1875_ 129
XXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Square, London_
_November 16, 1875_ 133
XXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_December 4, 1875_ 137
XXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Blaenavon, Routzpool, Mon., England_
_January 18, 1876_ 139
XXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_February 25, 1876_ 141
XXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_March 11, 1876_ 143
XXXIV. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey._
_Undated, March, 1876_ 145
XXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_March 30, 1876_ 147
XXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_April 21, 1876_ 149
XXXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Torriano Gardens, Camden Road, London_
_May 18, 1876_ 152
XXXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts_
_September, 1877_ 154
XXXIX. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_New England Hospital, Codman Avenue, Boston Highlands_
_Undated_ 156
XL. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Chesterfield, Massachusetts_
_September 3, 1878_ 159
XLI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Concord, Massachusetts_
_October 25 (1878)_ 161
XLII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_39 Somerset Street, Boston_
_November 13, 1878_ 163
XLIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 5, 1879_ 166
XLIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 14, 1879_ 169
XLV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_January 27, 1879_ 171
XLVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_February, 2, 1879_ 173
XLVII. BEATRICE C. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_33 Warrenton Street, Boston_
_February 16, 1879_ 175
XLVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_March 18, 1879_ 177
XLIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_112 Madison Avenue, New York_
_March 26, 1879_ 179
L. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Glasgow, Scotland_
_June 20, 1879_ 181
LI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Lower Shincliffe, Durham_
_August 2, 1879_ 183
LII. WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_Camden, New Jersey_
_Undated, August, 1879_ 186
LIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_1 Elm Villas, Elm Row, Heath Street, Hampstead, London_
_December 5, 1879_ 187
LIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_5 Mount Vernon, Hampstead_
_January 25, 1880_ 190
LV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Marley, Haslemere, England_
_August 22, 1880_ 193
LVI. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_November 30, 1880_ 195
LVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 18, 1881_ 197
LVIII. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, North London_
_June 5, 1881_ 200
LIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_December 14, 1881_ 203
LX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_January 29 and February 6, 1882_ 205
LXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_May 8, 1882_ 207
LXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_November 24, 1882_ 209
LXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_January 27, 1883_ 211
LXIV. HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Well Road, Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 29, 1883_ 213
LXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_May 6, 1883_ 215
LXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_July 30, 1883_ 217
LXVII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_October 13, 1883_ 220
LXVIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_April 5, 1884_ 223
LXIX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_May 2, 1884_ 225
LXX. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, London_
_August 5, 1884_ 227
LXXI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Wolverhampton_
_October 26, 1884_ 228
LXXII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_December 17, 1884_ 230
LXXIII. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Keats Corner, Hampstead, London_
_February 27, 1885_ 233
LXXIV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_May 4, 1885_ 236
LXXV. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Hampstead, London_
_June 21, 1885_ 239
LXXVI. ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_12 Well Road, Hampstead, London_
_July 20, 1885_ 241
ILLUSTRATIONS
Walt Whitman _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Anne Gilchrist 54
Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter 94
Facsimile of one of Anne Gilchrist's letters
to Walt Whitman _in the text pages_ 131, 132
PREFACE
Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the
love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both
parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters
of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft,
of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar
Allan Poe, and--to mention only one more illustrious example--of the
Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical
material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.
As to the particular set of letters presented to the reader in this
volume, a word of explanation and history may be required. Most of these
letters are from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, a few are replies to her
letters, and a few are letters from her children to Whitman. Mrs.
Gilchrist died in 1885. When, two years later, her son, Herbert
Harlakenden Gilchrist, was collecting material for his interesting
biography of his mother, Whitman was asked for the letters that she had
written to him--or rather for extracts from them. In reply to this request
the poet said, "I do not know that I can furnish any good reason, but I
feel to keep these utterances exclusively to myself. But I cannot let your
book go to press without at least saying--and wishing it put on
record--that among the perfect women I have met (and it has been my
unspeakably good fortune to have had the very best, for mother, sisters,
and friends) I have known none more perfect in every relation, than my
dear, dear friend, Anne Gilchrist." But since Whitman carefully preserved
them for twenty years, refusing to destroy them as he had destroyed such
other written matter as he did not care to have preserved, it would appear
that he intended that so beautiful a tribute to the poetry that he had
written, no less than to the personality of the poet, should be included
in that complete biography which is being slowly written, by many hands,
of America's most unique man of genius. In any case, when these letters
came into my hands in the apportionment of Whitman's literary legacy under
the will which named me as one of his three literary executors, there were
but three things which I could honourably do with them--rather, on closer
analysis, there seemed to be but one. To leave them in _my_ will or to
place them in some public repository would have been to shift a
responsibility which was evidently mine to the shoulders of others who,
perhaps, would be in possession of fewer facts in the light of which to
discharge that responsibility. To destroy them would be to do what Whitman
should have done if it was to be done at all, and to erase forever one of
the finest tributes that either the man or the poet ever received, one of
the most touching self-revelations that a noble soul ever "poured out on
paper." The remaining alternative was to edit and publish them (after
keeping them a proper length of time), for the benefit, not only of the
general reader, but as an aid to the future biographer who from the
proper perspective will write the life of America's great poet and
prophet. In this determination my judgment has been confirmed by that of
the few sympathetic friends who, during the twenty-five years that the
letters have been in my possession, have been allowed to read them.
It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman's letters to Mrs.
Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in
fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers
after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert
Harlakenden Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist" or Horace Traubel's "With Walt
Whitman in Camden." Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each
instance. But though Whitman's letters printed in this correspondence will
not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist's in point of number, enough are presented
to suggest the tenor of them all.
As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt
Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called "An
Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman." For that reason this well-known
essay is reprinted in this volume; and "A Confession of Faith," in reality
an amplification of the "Estimate" written several years after the
publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow
the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read
at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters.
Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New
York, for valuable suggestions.
T. B. H.
INTRODUCTION
Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrist's "Estimate of Walt Whitman," published in the
(Boston) _Radical_ in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first,
public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so
considered it--"the proudest word that ever came to me from a woman--if
not the proudest word of all from any source." But a finer tribute was to
follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made
public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this
Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in
the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and
Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not
be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their
respective lives.
The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long
Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and
came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself
attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic
stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his
boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the
country. He early left the public school for the printing offices of
local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when
about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of
his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short
prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York
magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the
metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home
as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he
was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was,
it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and
issued his first volume, "Leaves of Grass," in 1855. The book had been
written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author
to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands,
for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many "doings and
undoings, leaving out the stock 'poetical' touches." Its publication was
the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American
letters--mostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation.
In 1862 Whitman's brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army,
was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at
once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brother's wound was not
serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became
engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer
hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time.
This continued until and for some years after the end of the war.
Whitman's own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his
earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney
General's Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and
majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in
nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about
Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel
to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his
life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America
presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer
sacrifice.
Meanwhile his muse was not neglected. His book had gone through four
editions, and, with the increment of the noble war poetry of "Drum Taps,"
had become a volume of size. At a very early period "Leaves of Grass" had
been hailed as an important literary contribution by a few of the best
thinkers in this country and in England but, generally speaking, nearly
all literary persons received it with much criticism and many
qualifications. In Washington devoted disciples like William Douglas
O'Connor and John Burroughs never varied in their uncompromising adherence
to the book and its author. This appreciation only by the few was likewise
encountered in England. The book had made a stir among the literary
classes, but its importance was not at all generally recognized. Men like
John Addington Symonds, Edward Dowden, and William Michael Rossetti were,
however, almost unrestricted in their praise.
It was William Rossetti who planned, in 1867, to bring out in England a
volume of selections from Whitman's poetry, in the belief that it was
better to leave out the poems that had provoked such adverse criticism, in
order to get Whitman a foothold among those who might prefer to have an
expurgated edition. Whitman's attitude toward the plan at the time is
given in a letter which he wrote to Rossetti on December 3, 1867: "I
cannot and will not consent of my own volition to countenance an
expurgated edition of my pieces. I have steadily refused to do so under
seductive offers, here in my own country, and must not do so in another
country." It appeared, however, that Rossetti had already advanced his
project, and Whitman graciously added: "If, before the arrival of this
letter, you have practically invested in, and accomplished, or partially
accomplished, any plan, even contrary to this letter, I do not expect you
to abandon it, at loss of outlay; but shall _bona fide_ consider you
blameless if you let it go on, and be carried out, as you may have
arranged. It is the question of the authorization of an expurgated edition
proceeding from me, that deepest engages me. The facts of the different
ways, one way or another way, in which the book may appear in England, out
of influences not under the shelter of my umbrage, are of much less
importance to me. After making the foregoing explanation, I shall, I
think, accept kindly whatever happens. For I feel, indeed know, that I am
in the hands of a friend, and that my pieces will receive that truest,
brightest of light and perception coming from love. In that, all other
and lesser requisites become pale...." The Rossetti "Selections" duly
appeared--with what momentous influence upon the two persons whose
friendship we are tracing will presently be shown.
On June 22, 1869, Anne Gilchrist, writing to Rossetti, said: "I was
calling on Madox Brown a fortnight ago, and he put into my hands your
edition of Walt Whitman's poems. I shall not cease to thank him for that.
Since I have had it, I can read no other book: it holds me entirely
spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and
wonder. How can one refrain from expressing gratitude to you for what you
have so admirably done?..." To this Rossetti promptly responded: "Your
letter has given me keen pleasure this morning. That glorious man Whitman
will one day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth, a few steps
below Shakespeare on the throne of immortality. What a tearing-away of the
obscuring veil of use and wont from the visage of man and of life! I am
doing myself the pleasure of at once ordering a copy of the "Selections"
for you, which you will be so kind as to accept. Genuine--i. e.,
_enthusiastic_--appreciators are not so common, and must be cultivated
when they appear.... Anybody who values Whitman as you do ought to read
the whole of him...." At a later date Rossetti gave Mrs. Gilchrist a copy
of the complete "Leaves of Grass," in acknowledging which she said, "The
gift of yours I have not any words to tell you how priceless it will be to
me...." This lengthy letter was later, at Rossetti's solicitation, worked
over for publication as the "Estimate of Walt Whitman" to which reference
has already been made.
Anne Gilchrist was primarily a woman of letters. Though her natural bent
was toward science and philosophy, her marriage threw her into association
with artists and writers of _belles lettres_. She was born in London on
February 25, 1828. She came of excellent ancestry, and received a good
education, particularly in music. She had a profoundly religious nature,
although it appears that she was never a believer in many of the orthodox
Christian doctrines. Very early in life she recognized the greatness of
such men as Emerson and Comte. In 1851, at the age of twenty-three, she
married Alexander Gilchrist, two months her junior. Though of limited
means, he possessed literary ability and was then preparing for the bar.
His early writings secured for him the friendship of Carlyle, who for
years lived next door to the Gilchrists in Cheyne Row. This friendship led
to others, and the Gilchrists were soon introduced into that supreme
literary circle which included Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, the
Rossettis, Tennyson, and many another great mind of that illustrious age.
Within ten years of their marriage the Gilchrists had four children, in
whom they were very happy. But in the year 1861, when Anne was
thirty-three years of age, her husband died. It was a terrible blow, but
she faced the future unflinchingly, and reared her children, giving to
each of them a profession. At the time of her husband's death his life of
William Blake was nearing completion. With the assistance of William and
Gabriel Rossetti Mrs. Gilchrist finished the work on this excellent
biography, and it was published by Macmillan. Whitman has paid a fitting
tribute to the pluck exhibited in this achievement: "Do you know much of
Blake?" said Whitman to Horace Traubel, who records the conversation in
his remarkable book "With Walt Whitman in Camden." "You know, this is Mrs.
Gilchrist's book--the book she completed. They had made up their minds to
do the work--her husband had it well under way: he caught a fever and was
carried off. Mrs. Gilchrist was left with four young children, alone: her
perplexities were great. Have you noticed that the time to look for the
best things in best people is the moment of their greatest need? Look at
Lincoln: he is our proudest example: he proved to be big as, bigger than,
any emergency--his grasp was a giant's grasp--made dark things light, made
hard things easy.... (Mrs. Gilchrist) belonged to the same noble breed:
seized the reins, was competent; her head was clear, her hand was firm."
The circumstances under which she first read Whitman's poetry have been
narrated. When in 1869 Whitman became aware of the Rossetti
correspondence, he felt greatly honoured, and through Rossetti he sent his
portrait to the as yet anonymous lady. In acknowledging this communication
his English friend has a grateful word from "the lady" to return: "I gave
your letter, and the second copy of your portrait, to the lady you refer
to, and need scarcely say how truly delighted she was. She has asked me to
say that you could not have devised for her a more welcome pleasure, and
that she feels grateful to me for having sent to America the extracts from
what she had written, since they have been a satisfaction to you...."
Early in 1870 the "Estimate" appeared in the _Radical_, still more than a
year before Mrs. Gilchrist addressed her first letter to Whitman. He
welcomed the essay, and its author as a new and peculiarly powerful
champion of "Leaves of Grass." To Rossetti he wrote: "I am deeply touched
by these sympathies and convictions, coming from a woman and from England,
and am sure that if the lady knew how much comfort it has been to me to
get them, she would not only pardon you for transmitting them but approve
that action. I realize indeed of this smiling and emphatic _well done_
from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one, too,
whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing
through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy
science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium
so magnificent." Concerning this experience Whitman said to Horace
Traubel, at a much later period: "You can imagine what such a thing as her
'Estimate' meant to me at that time. Almost everybody was against me--the
papers, the preachers, the literary gentlemen--nearly everybody with only
here and there a dissenting voice--when it looked on the surface as if my
enterprise was bound to fail ... then this wonderful woman. Such things
stagger a man ... I had got so used to being ignored or denounced that the
appearance of a friend was always accompanied with a sort of shock....
There are shocks that knock you up, shocks that knock you down. Mrs.
Gilchrist never wavered from her first decision. I have that sort of
feeling about her which cannot easily be spoken of--...: love (strong
personal love, too), reverence, respect--you see, it won't go into words:
all the words are weak and formal." Speaking again of her first criticism
of his work, he said: "I remember well how one of my noblest, best
friends--one of my wisest, cutest, profoundest, most candid critics--how
Mrs. Gilchrist, even to the last, insisted that "Leaves of Grass" was not
the mouthpiece of parlours, refinements--no--but the language of strength,
power, passion, intensity, absorption, sincerity...." He claimed a closer
relationship to her than he allowed to Rossetti: "Rossetti mentions Mrs.
Gilchrist. Well, he had a right to--almost as much right as I had: a sort
of brother's right: she was his friend, she was more than my friend. I
feel like Hamlet when he said forty thousand brothers could not feel what
he felt for Ophelia. After all ... we were a family--a happy family: the
few of us who got together, going with love the same way--we were a happy
family. The crowd was on the other side but we were on our side--we: a few
of us, just a few: and despite our paucity of numbers we made ourselves
tell for the good cause."
From these expressions it is quite clear that Whitman's attitude toward
Mrs. Gilchrist was at first that of the unpopular prophet who finds a
worthy and welcome disciple in an unexpected place. And that he should
have so felt was but natural, for she had been drawn to him, as she
confided to him in one of her letters, by what he had written rather than
and not by her knowledge of the man. There can be no doubt, however, that
on Mrs. Gilchrist's part something more than the friendship of her
new-found liberator was desired. When she read the "Leaves of Grass" she
was forty-one years of age, in the full vigour of womanhood. To her the
reading meant a new birth, causing her to pour out her soul to the prophet
and poet across the seas with a freedom and abandon that were phenomenal.
This was in the first letter printed in this volume, under date of
September 3, 1871, and about the time that Whitman had sent to his new
supporter a copy of his poems. Perhaps the strongest reason why Whitman
did not reply to passion with passion lies in the fact that his heart was,
so far as attachments of that sort were concerned, already bestowed
elsewhere. I am indebted to Professor Holloway for the information that
Whitman was, in 1864, the unfortunate lover of a certain lady whose
previous marriage to another, while it did not dim their mutual devotion,
did serve to keep them apart. To her Whitman wrote that heart-wrung lyric
of separation, "Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd." This suggests that
there was probably a double tragedy, so ironical is the fate of the
affections, Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman both passionately yearning for
personal love yet unable to quench the one desire in the other.
But if there could not be between them the love which leads to marriage,
there could be a noble and tender and life-long friendship. Over this
Whitman's loss of his magnificent health, to be followed by an invalidism
of twenty years, had no power. In 1873 Whitman was stricken with
paralysis, which rendered him so helpless that he had to give up his work
and finally his position, and to go to live for the rest of his life in
Camden, New Jersey. Mrs. Gilchrist's affection for him did not waver when
this trial was made of it. Indeed, his illness had the effect, as these
letters show, of quickening the desire which she had had for several years
(since 1869) of coming to live in America, that she might be near him to
lighten his burdens, and, if she could not hope to cherish him as a wife,
that she might at least care for him as a mother. Whitman, it will be
noted, strongly advised against this plan. Just why he wished to keep her
away from America is unclear, possibly because he dared not put so
idealistic a friendship and discipleship to the test of personal
acquaintance with a prematurely broken old man. Nevertheless, on August
30, 1876, Mrs. Gilchrist set sail, with three of her children, for
Philadelphia. They arrived in September. From that date until the spring
of 1878 the Gilchrists kept house at 1929 North Twenty-second street,
Philadelphia, where Whitman was a frequent and regular visitor.
It is interesting to note that Mrs. Gilchrist's appreciation of Whitman
did not lessen after she had met and known him in the intimacy of that
tea-table circle which at her house discussed the same great variety of
topics--literature, religion, science, politics--that had enlivened the
O'Connor breakfast table in Washington. She shall describe it and him
herself. In a letter to Rossetti, under date of December 22, 1876, she
writes: "But I need not tell you that our greatest pleasure is the society
of Mr. Whitman, who fully realizes the ideal I had formed from his poems,
and brings such an atmosphere of cordiality and geniality with him as is
indescribable. He is really making slow but, I trust, steady progress
toward recovery, having been much cheered (and no doubt that acted
favourably upon his health) by the sympathy manifested toward him in
England and the pleasure of finding so many buyers of his poems there. It
must be a deep satisfaction to you to have been the channel through which
this help and comfort flowed...." And a year later she writes to the same
correspondent: "We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often
do I wish you could make one in the circle around our tea table where sits
on my right hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great
progress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year
we have been here: nevertheless the lameness--the dragging instead of
lifting the left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and
beard give him a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has
not only the ruddy freshness but the full, rounded contours of youth,
nowhere drawn or wrinkled or sunk; it is a face as indicative of serenity
and goodness and of mental and bodily health as the brow is of
intellectual power. But I notice he occasionally speaks of himself as
having a 'wounded brain,' and of being still quite altered from his former
self."
Whitman, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon sunshine of such
friendly hospitality, for he considered Mrs. Gilchrist even more gifted as
a conversationalist than as a writer. For hints of the sort of talk that
flowed with Mrs. Gilchrist's tea I must refer the reader to her son's
realistic biography.
After two years of residence in Philadelphia, the Gilchrists went to dwell
in Boston and later in New York City, and met the leaders in the two
literary capitals. From these addresses the letters begin again, after the
natural interruption of two years. It is at this time that the first
letters from Herbert and Beatrice Gilchrist were written. These are given
in this volume to complete the chain and to show how completely they were
in sympathy with their mother in their love and appreciation of Whitman.
From New York they all sailed for their old home in England on June 7,
1879. Whitman came the day before to wish them good voyage. The chief
reason for the return to England seems to have been the desire to send
Beatrice to Berne to complete her medical education. After the return to
England, or rather while they are still en route at Glasgow, the letters
begin again.
Several years of literary work yet remained to Mrs. Gilchrist. The chief
writings of these years were a new edition of the Blake, a life of Mary
Lamb for the Eminent Women Series, an article on Blake for the Dictionary
of National Biography, several essays including "Three Glimpses of a New
England Village," and the "Confession of Faith." She was beginning a
careful study of the life and writings of Carlyle, with the intention of
writing a life of her old friend to reply to the aspersions of Freude.
This last work was, however, never completed, for early in 1882 some
malady which rendered her breathing difficult had already begun to cast
the shadow of death upon her. But her faith, long schooled in the optimism
of "Leaves of Grass," looked upon the steadily approaching end with
calmness. On November 29, 1885, she died.
When Whitman was informed of her death by Herbert Gilchrist, he could find
words for only the following brief reply:
_15th December 1885.
Camden, United States, America._
DEAR HERBERT:
I have received your letter. Nothing now remains but a sweet and rich
memory--none more beautiful all time, all life all the earth--I
cannot write anything of a letter to-day. I must sit alone and think.
WALT WHITMAN.
Later, in conversations with Horace Traubel which the latter has preserved
in his minute biography of Whitman, he was able to express his regard for
Mrs. Gilchrist more fully--"a supreme character of whom the world knows
too little for its own good ... If her sayings had been recorded--I do not
say she would pale, but I do say she would equal the best of the women of
our century--add something as great as any to the testimony on the side of
her sex." And at another time: "Oh! she was strangely different from the
average; entirely herself; as simple as nature; true, honest; beautiful as
a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full, free--_is_ a tree. Yet, free as she
was by nature, bound by no conventionalisms, she was the most courageous
of women; more than queenly; of high aspect in the best sense. She was not
cold; she had her passions; I have known her to warm up--to resent
something that was said; some impeachment of good things--great things; of
a person sometimes; she had the largest charity, the sweetest fondest
optimism.... She was a radical of radicals; enjoyed all sorts of high
enthusiasms: was exquisitely sensitized; belonged to the times yet to
come; her vision went on and on."
This searching interpretation of her character wants only her artist son's
description of her personal appearance to make the final picture complete:
"A little above the average height, she walked with an even, light step.
Brown hair concealed a full and finely chiselled brow, and her hazel eyes
bent upon you a bright and penetrating gaze. Whilst conversing her face
became radiant as with an experience of golden years; humour was present
in her conversation--flecks of sunshine, such as sometimes play about the
minds of deeply religious natures. Her animated manner seldom flagged, and
charmed the taciturn to talking in his or her best humour." Once, when
speaking to Walt Whitman of the beauty of the human speaking voice, he
replied: "The voice indicates the soul. Hers, with its varied modulations
and blended tones, was the tenderest, most musical voice ever to bless our
ears."
Her death was a long-lasting shock to Whitman. "She was a wonderful
woman--a sort of human miracle to me.... Her taking off ... was a great
shock to me: I have never quite got over it: she was near to me: she was
subtle: her grasp on my work was tremendous--so sure, so all around, so
adequate." If this sounds a trifle self-centred in its criticism, not so
was the poem which, in memory of her, he wrote as a fitting epitaph from
the poet she had loved.
"GOING SOMEWHERE"
My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend (Now buried in an English
grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake),
Ended our talk--"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
learning, intuitions deep,
Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution, Metaphysics
all,
Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,
Life, life an endless march, an endless army (no halt, but, it is duly
over),
The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,
All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere."
THE LETTERS OF ANNE GILCHRIST AND WALT WHITMAN
A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN[1]
[FROM LETTERS BY ANNE GILCHRIST TO W. M. ROSSETTI.]
_June 23, 1869._--I am very sure you are right in your estimate of Walt
Whitman. There is nothing in him that I shall ever let go my hold of. For
me the reading of his poems is truly a new birth of the soul.
I shall quite fearlessly accept your kind offer of the loan of a complete
edition, certain that great and divinely beautiful nature has not, could
not infuse any poison into the wine he has poured out for us. And as for
what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it--I will say, to
judge wisely of it--as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has
learned to accept all things with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all?
Perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten--or, through some theory in his head,
has overridden--the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of
nature, as well as our bodies; and that we have a strong instinct of
silence about some things.
_July 11._--I think it was very manly and kind of you to put the whole of
Walt Whitman's poems into my hands; and that I have no other friend who
would have judged them and me so wisely and generously.
I had not dreamed that words could cease to be words, and become electric
streams like these. I do assure you that, strong as I am, I feel sometimes
as if I had not bodily strength to read many of these poems. In the series
headed "Calamus," for instance, in some of the "Songs of Parting," the
"Voice out of the Sea," the poem beginning "Tears, Tears," &c., there is
such a weight of emotion, such a tension of the heart, that mine refuses
to beat under it,--stands quite still,--and I am obliged to lay the book
down for a while. Or again, in the piece called "Walt Whitman," and one or
two others of that type, I am as one hurried through stormy seas, over
high mountains, dazed with sunlight, stunned with a crowd and tumult of
faces and voices, till I am breathless, bewildered, half dead. Then come
parts and whole poems in which there is such calm wisdom and strength of
thought, such a cheerful breadth of sunshine, that the soul bathes in them
renewed and strengthened. Living impulses flow out of these that make me
exult in life, yet look longingly towards "the superb vistas of Death."
Those who admire this poem, and don't care for that, and talk of
formlessness, absence of metre, &c., are quite as far from any genuine
recognition of Walt Whitman as his bitter detractors. Not, of course, that
all the pieces are equal in power and beauty, but that all are vital; they
grew--they were not made. We criticise a palace or a cathedral; but what
is the good of criticising a forest? Are not the hitherto-accepted
masterpieces of literature akin rather to noble architecture; built up of
material rendered precious by elaboration; planned with subtile art that
makes beauty go hand in hand with rule and measure, and knows where the
last stone will come, before the first is laid; the result stately, fixed,
yet such as might, in every particular, have been different from what it
is (therefore inviting criticism), contrasting proudly with the careless
freedom of nature, opposing its own rigid adherence to symmetry to her
willful dallying with it? But not such is this book. Seeds brought by the
winds from north, south, east, and west, lying long in the earth, not
resting on it like the stately building, but hid in and assimilating it,
shooting upwards to be nourished by the air and the sunshine and the rain
which beat idly against that,--each bough and twig and leaf growing in
strength and beauty its own way, a law to itself, yet, with all this
freedom of spontaneous growth, the result inevitable, unalterable
(therefore setting criticism at naught), above all things, vital,--that
is, a source of ever-generating vitality: such are these poems.
"Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and from the
pondside,
Breast sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than
vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the sun
is risen,
Breezes of land and love, breezes set from living shores out to you on
the living sea,--to you, O sailors!
Frost-mellowed berries and Third-month twigs, offered fresh to young
persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
form, colour, perfume, to you:
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
tall branches and trees."
And the music takes good care of itself, too. As if it _could_ be
otherwise! As if those "large, melodious thoughts," those emotions, now so
stormy and wild, now of unfathomed tenderness and gentleness, could fail
to vibrate through the words in strong, sweeping, long-sustained chords,
with lovely melodies winding in and out fitfully amongst them! Listen, for
instance, to the penetrating sweetness, set in the midst of rugged
grandeur, of the passage beginning,--
"I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea half held by the night."
I see that no counting of syllables will reveal the mechanism of the
music; and that this rushing spontaneity could not stay to bind itself
with the fetters of metre. But I know that the music is there, and that I
would not for something change ears with those who cannot hear it. And I
know that poetry must do one of two things,--either own this man as equal
with her highest completest manifestors, or stand aside, and admit that
there is something come into the world nobler, diviner than herself, one
that is free of the universe, and can tell its secrets as none before.
I do not think or believe this; but see it with the same unmistakable
definiteness of perception and full consciousness that I see the sun at
this moment in the noonday sky, and feel his rays glowing down upon me as
I write in the open air. What more can you ask of the works of a man's
mouth than that they should "absorb into you as food and air, to appear
again in your strength, gait, face,"--that they should be "fibre and
filter to your blood," joy and gladness to your whole nature?
I am persuaded that one great source of this kindling, vitalizing power--I
suppose _the_ great source--is the grasp laid upon the present, the
fearless and comprehensive dealing with reality. Hitherto the leaders of
thought have (except in science) been men with their faces resolutely
turned backwards; men who have made of the past a tyrant that beggars and
scorns the present, hardly seeing any greatness but what is shrouded away
in the twilight, underground past; naming the present only for disparaging
comparisons, humiliating distrust that tends to create the very barrenness
it complains of; bidding me warm myself at fires that went out to mortal
eyes centuries ago; insisting, in religion above all, that I must either
"look through dead men's eyes," or shut my own in helpless darkness. Poets
fancying themselves so happy over the chill and faded beauty of the past,
but not making me happy at all,--rebellious always at being dragged down
out of the free air and sunshine of to-day.
But this poet, this "athlete, full of rich words, full of joy," takes you
by the hand, and turns you with your face straight forwards. The present
is great enough for him, because he is great enough for it. It flows
through him as a "vast oceanic tide," lifting up a mighty voice. Earth,
"the eloquent, dumb, great mother," is not old, has lost none of her fresh
charms, none of her divine meanings; still bears great sons and daughters,
if only they would possess themselves and accept their birthright,--a
richer, not a poorer, heritage than was ever provided before,--richer by
all the toil and suffering of the generations that have preceded, and by
the further unfolding of the eternal purposes. Here is one come at last
who can show them how; whose songs are the breath of a glad, strong,
beautiful life, nourished sufficingly, kindled to unsurpassed intensity
and greatness by the gifts of the present.
"Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy."
"O the joy of my soul leaning poised on itself,--receiving identity
through materials, and loving them,--observing characters, and
absorbing them!
O my soul vibrated back to me from them!
"O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist, fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.
"O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all--that there are no bounds;
To emerge, and be of the sky--of the sun and moon and the flying clouds,
as one with them.
"O the joy of suffering,--
To struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted,
To be entirely alone with them--to find how much one can stand!"
I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high
goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so
great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of "each moment and
whatever happens"; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the
angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and
glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which
come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.
See, again, in the pieces gathered together under the title "Calamus," and
elsewhere, what it means for a man to love his fellow-man. Did you dream
it before? These "evangel-poems of comrades and of love" speak, with the
abiding, penetrating power of prophecy, of a "new and superb friendship";
speak not as beautiful dreams, unrealizable aspirations to be laid aside
in sober moods, because they breathe out what now glows within the poet's
own breast, and flows out in action toward the men around him. Had ever
any land before her poet, not only to concentrate within himself her life,
and, when she kindled with anger against her children who were treacherous
to the cause her life is bound up with, to announce and justify her
terrible purpose in words of unsurpassable grandeur (as in the poem
beginning, "Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps"), but also to go
and with his own hands dress the wounds, with his powerful presence soothe
and sustain and nourish her suffering soldiers,--hundreds of them,
thousands, tens of thousands,--by day and by night, for weeks, months,
years?
"I sit by the restless all the dark night; some are so young,
Some suffer so much: I recall the experience sweet and sad.
Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have crossed and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips:--"