Part 6 (1/2)
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Road, Camden Sqre.
London, N. W., January 24, '72._
DEAR FRIEND:
I send you photographs of my oldest and youngest children, I wish I had some worth sending of the other two. That of myself done in 1850 is a copy of a daguerrotype. The recent one was taken just a week or so before I broke down in my long illness & when I was struggling against a terrible sense of inward prostration; so it has not my natural expression, but I think you will like to have [it] rather than none, & the weather here is too gloomy for there to be any chance of a good one if I were to try again. Your few words lifted a heavy weight off me. Very few they are, dear friend: but knowing that I may give to every word you speak its fullest, truest meaning, the more I brood over them the sweeter do they taste. Still I am not as happy & content as I thought I should be if I could only know my words reached you & were welcome to you,--but restless, anxious, impatient, looking so wistfully towards the letters each morning--above all, longing, longing so for you to come--to come & see if you feel happy beside me: no more this painful struggle to put myself into words, but to let what I am & all my life speak to you. Only so can you judge whether I am indeed the woman capable of rising to the full height of great destiny, of justifying & fulfilling your grand thoughts of women. And see my faults, flaws, shortcomings too, dear Friend. I feel an earnest wish you should do this too that there may be the broad unmovable foundation-rock of perfect truth and candour for our love. I do not fear.
I believe in a large all-accepting, because all-comprehending, love, a boundless faith in growth & development--in your judging ”not as the judge judges but as the suns.h.i.+ne falling around me.” To have you in the midst of us! we cl.u.s.tered round you, shone upon, vivified, strengthened by your presence, surrounding you with an atmosphere of love & cheerful life.
When I wrote to you in Nov. I was in lodgings in London, having just accomplished the difficult task of finding a house for us in London, where rents are so high. And I have succeeded better than I antic.i.p.ated, for we find this a comfortable, dear, little home--small, indeed, but not so small as to interfere with health or comfort, and at rent that I may safely undertake. My Husband was taken from us too young to be able to have made any provision for his children. I have a little of my own--about 80 a year; & for the rest depend upon my Mother, whose only surviving child I am. And she, by nature generous & self-denying as well as prudent, has never made anything but a pleasure of this & as long as she was able to see to her own affairs, was such a capital manager that she used to spare me about 150 out of an income of 350. But now though she retains her faculties in a wonderful degree for her years (just upon 86), she is no longer able to do this & has put the management of the whole into my hands. And I, feeling that she needs, and ought to have, now an easier scale of expenditure at Colne, have to manage a little more cleverly still to make a less sum serve for us. But I succeed capitally, dear friend--do not want a better home, never get behind hand & find it no hards.h.i.+p, but quite the contrary to have to spend a good deal of time & pains in domestic management. And then, just to help me through at the right moment, dear Percy[11] obtained in November a good opening in some large copper & iron mining & smelting works in South Wales at a salary upon which he can comfortably live; & he likes his work well--writes very cheerfully--lodges in a farmhouse in the midst of grand scenery, within a walk of the sea. So this enables me to give the girls a turn in education, for hitherto they have had hardly any teaching but mine. And I chose this part because there is a capital day school for them handy. And Herby[12]
walks in to the best drawing school in London & is very diligent and happy at his work. His bent is unmistakably strong. It was well I have had to be so busy this autumn & winter, dear Walt, for I suffered keenly, sometimes overwhelmingly, through the delay in my letters' reaching you. What caused it? And when did you get the Sept. & Oct. letters & did you get the two copies that I, baffled & almost despairing, sent off in Nov.? Good-bye, dear Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
LETTER VII[13]
WALT WHITMAN TO ANNE GILCHRIST
_(Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.) Feb. 8 '72._
I send by same mail with this my latest piece copied in a newspaper--and write you just a line. I suppose you only received my former letters (two)--I ought to have written something about your children (described to me in your letter of last summer--[July 23d] which I have just been reading again.) Dear boys and girls--how my heart goes out to them.
Did I tell you that I had received letters from Tennyson, and that he cordially invites me to visit him? Sometimes I dream of coming to Old England, on such visit.--& thus of seeing you & your children----But it is a dream only.
I am still living here in employment in a Government office. My health is good. Life is rather sluggish here--yet not without the suns.h.i.+ne. Your letters too were bright rays of it. I am going on to New York soon, to stay a few weeks, but my address will still be here. I wrote lately to Mr.
Rossetti quite a long letter. Dear friend, best love & remembrance to you & to the young folk.
LETTER VIII
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq. N. W.
April 12th, '72._
DEAR FRIEND:
I was to tell you about my acquaintances.h.i.+p with Tennyson, which was a pleasant episode in my life at Haslemere. Hearing of the extreme beauty of the scenery thereabouts & specially of its comparative wildness & seclusion, he thought he would like to find or build a house, to escape from the obtrusive curiosity of the mult.i.tudes who flock to the Isle of Wight at certain seasons of the year. He is even morbidly sensitive on this point & will not stir beyond his own grounds from week's end to week's end to avoid his admiring or inquisitive persecutors. So, knowing an old friend of mine, he called on me for particulars as to the resources of the neighbourhood. And I, a good walker & familiar with every least frequent spot of hill & dale for some miles round, took him long ambles in quest of a site. Very pleasant rambles they were; Tennyson, under the influence of the fresh, outdoor, quite unconstrained life in new scenery & with a cheerful aim, shaking off the languid ennuy air, as of a man to whom nothing has any longer a relish--bodily or mental--that too often hangs about him. And we found something quite to his mind--a coppice of 40 acres hanging on the south side two thirds of the way up a hill some 1000 ft. high so as to be sheltered from the cold & yet have the light, dry, elastic hill air--& with, of course, a glorious outlook over the wooded weald of Suss.e.x so richly green & fertile & looking almost as boundless as the great sweep of sky over it--the South Downs to Surrey Hills & near at hand the hill curving round a fir-covered promontory, standing out very black & grand between him & the sunset. Underfoot too a wilderness of beauty--fox gloves (I wonder if they grow in America) ferns, purple heath &c &c. I don't suppose I shall see much more of him now I have left Haslemere, though I have had very friendly invitations; for I am a home bird--don't like staying out--wanted at home and happiest there. And I should not enjoy being with them in the grand mansion half so much as I did pic-nicing in the road & watching the builders as we did. It is pleasant to see T--with children--little girls at least--he does not take to boys but one of my girls was mostly on his knee when they were in the room & he liked them very much. His two sons are now both 6 ft. high. I have received your letters of March 20 from Brooklyn: but the one you speak of as having acknowledged the photograph never came to hand--a sore disappointment to me, dear Friend. I can ill afford to lose the long & eagerly watched for pleasure of a letter. If it seems to you there must needs be something unreal, illusive, in a love that has grown up entirely without the basis of personal intercourse, dear Friend, then you do not yourself realize your own power nor understand the full meaning of your own words, ”whoso touches this, touches a man”--”I have put my Soul & Body into these Poems.” Real effects imply real causes. Do you suppose that an ideal figure conjured up by her own fancy could, in a perfectly sound, healthy woman of my age, so happy in her children, so busy & content, practical, earnest, produce such real & tremendous effect--saturating her whole life, colouring every waking moment--filling her with such joys, such pains that the strain of them has been well nigh too much even for a strong frame, coming as it does, after twenty years of hard work?
Therefore please, dear Friend, do not ”warn” me any more--it hurts so, as seeming to distrust my love. Time only can show how needlessly. My love, flowing ever fresh & fresh out of my heart, will go with you in all your wanderings, dear Friend, enfolding you day and night, soul & body, with tenderness that tries so vainly to utter itself in these poor, helpless words, that clings closer than any man's love can cling. O, I could not live if I did not believe that sooner or later you will not be able to help stretching out your arms towards me & saying ”Come, my Darling.” When you get this will you post me an American newspaper (any one you have done with) as a token it has reached you--& so on at intervals during your wanderings; it will serve as a token that you are well, & the postmark will tell me where you are. And thus you will feel free only to write when you have leisure & inclination--& I shall be spared [the] feeling I have when I fancy my letters have not reached you--as if I were so hopelessly, helplessly cut off from you, which is more than I can stand. We all read American news eagerly too. The children are so well & working on with all their might. The school turns out more what I desire for them than I had ventured to hope. Good-bye, dearest Friend.
ANN GILCHRIST.