Part 5 (2/2)

I wrote you a letter the 6th September & would fain know whether it has reached your hand. If it have not, I will write its contents again quickly to you--if it have, I will wait your time with courage with patience for an answer; but spare me the needless suffering of uncertainty on this point & let me have one line, one word, of a.s.surance that I am no longer hidden from you by a thick cloud--I from thee--not thou from me: for I that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us, yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around thee--love thee day & night:--last thoughts, first thoughts, my soul's pa.s.sionate yearning toward thy divine Soul, every hour, every deed and thought--my love for my children, my hopes, aspirations for them, all taking new shape, new height through this great love. My Soul has staked all upon it. In dull dark moods when I cannot, as it were, see thee, still, still always a dumb, blind yearning towards thee--still it comforts me to touch, to press to me the beloved books--like a child holding some hand in the dark--it knows not whose--but knows it is enough--knows it is a dear, strong, comforting hand. Do not say I am forward, or that I lack pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all that, this love is my pride my glory.

Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words.

Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love: I feel often as if thou wast pleading so pa.s.sionately for the love of the woman that can understand thee--that I know not how to bear the yearning answering tenderness that fills my breast. I know that a woman may without hurt to her pride--without stain or blame--tell her love to thee. I feel for a certainty that she may. Try me for this life, my darling--see if I cannot so live, so grow, so learn, so love, that when I die you will say, ”This woman has grown to be a very part of me. My soul must have her loving companions.h.i.+p everywhere & in all things. I alone & she alone are not complete ident.i.ties--it is I and she together in a new, divine, perfect union that form the one complete ident.i.ty.”

I am yet young enough to bear thee children, my darling, if G.o.d should so bless me. And would yield my life for this cause with serene joy if it were so appointed, if that were the price for thy having a ”perfect child”--knowing my darlings would all be safe & happy in thy loving care--planted down in America.

Let me have a few words directly, dear Friend. I shall get them by the middle of November. I shall have to go to London about then or a little later--to find a house for us--I only came to the old home here from which I have been absent most four years to wind up matters and prepare for a move, for there is nothing to be had in the way of educational advantages here--it has been a beautiful survey for the children, but it is not what they want now. But we leave with regret, for it is one of the sweetest, wildest spots in England, though only 40 miles from London.

Good-bye, dear friend, ANNE GILCHRIST.

LETTER IV[8]

WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST

_Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

November 3, 1871._

(TO A. G., EARL'S COLNE, HALSTED, ESs.e.x, ENG.)

I have been waiting quite a while for time and the right mood, to answer your letter in a spirit as serious as its own, and in the same unmitigated trust and affection. But more daily work than ever has fallen to me to do the present season, and though I am well and contented, my best moods seem to shun me. I wish to give to it a day, a sort of Sabbath, or holy day, apart to itself, under serene and propitious influences, confident that I could then write you a letter which would do you good, and me too. But I must at least show without further delay that I am not insensible to your love. I too send you my love. And do you feel no disappointment because I now write so briefly. My book is my best letter, my response, my truest explanation of all. In it I have put my body and spirit. You understand this better and fuller and clearer than any one else. And I too fully and clearly understand the loving letter it has evoked. Enough that there surely exists so beautiful and a delicate relation, accepted by both of us with joy.

LETTER V

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

_27 November '71._

DEAR FRIEND.

Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter[9] which I wrote you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter one[10] which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor, I wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into other hands. Can both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me.

I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book does indeed say all--book that is not a book, for the first time a man complete, G.o.dlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible, through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her whole nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this divine man's life--to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than any man can be--for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development & consummation of her nature--of her pa.s.sionate, high, immortal aspirations--her Soul to mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate--I know how hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be able to give me your great love yet--to take me to your breast with joy.

But I can wait. I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering, working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now nearly three years--it will be three in May since I first read the book, first knew what the word _love_ meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, my soul's high aspirations are of such tenacious, pa.s.sionate intensity, are so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more resolute & st.u.r.dy, in me. I know that ”greatness will not ripen for me like a pear.” But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit to be your mate--so that at the last you should say, ”This is the woman I have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal comrade, wife--the one I so much want.” Life has no other meaning for me than that--all things have led up to help prepare me for that. Death is more welcome to me than life if it means that--if thou, dear sailor, thou sailing upon thy endless cruise, takest me on board--me, daring, all with thee, steering for the deep waters, bound where mariner has not yet dared to go: hand in hand with thee, nestled close--one with thee. Ah, that word ”enough” was like a blow on the breast to me--breast that often & often is so full of yearning tenderness I know not how to draw my breath. The tie between us would not grow less but more beautiful, dear friend, if you knew me _better_: if I could stand as real & near to you as you do to me.

But I cannot, like you, clothe my nature in divine poems & so make it visible to you. Ah, foolish me! I thought you would catch a glimpse of it in those words I wrote--I thought you would say to yourself, ”Perhaps this is the voice of my mate,” and would seek me a little to make sure if it were so or not. O the sweet dreams I have fed on these three years nearly, pervading my waking moments, influencing every thought & action. I was so sure, so sure if I waited silently, patiently, you would send me some sign: so full of joyful hope I could not doubt nor fear. When I lay dying as it seemed, [I was] still full of the radiant certainty that you would seek me, would not lose [me], that we should as surely find one another there as here. And when the ebb ceased & life began to flow back into me, O never doubting but it was for you. Never doubting but that the sweetest, n.o.blest, closest, tenderest companions.h.i.+p ever yet tasted by man & woman was to begin for us here & now. Then came the long, long waiting, the hope deferred: each morning so sure the book would come & with it a word from you that should give me leave to speak: no longer to shut down in stern silence the love, the yearning, the thoughts that seemed to strain & crush my heart. I knew what that means--”if thou wast not gifted to sing thou wouldst surely die.” I felt as if my silence must kill me sometimes. Then when the Book came but with it no word for me alone, there was such a storm in [my] heart I could not for weeks read in it. I wrote that long letter out in the Autumn fields for dear life's sake. I knew I might, and must, speak then. Then I felt relieved, joyful, buoyant once more. Then again months of heart-wearying disappointment as I looked in vain for a letter-O the anguish at times, the scalding tears, the feeling within as if my heart were crushed & doubled up--but always afterwards saying to myself ”If this suffering is to make my love which was born & grew up & blossomed all in a moment strike deep root down in the dark & cold, penetrate with painful intensity every fibre of my being, make it a love such as he himself is capable of giving, then welcome this anguish, these bitter deferments: let its roots be watered as long as G.o.d pleases with my tears.”

ANNE GILCHRIST.

_50 Marquis Road London Camden Sqr. N. W._

LETTER VI

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