Part 10 (2/2)
The Conways are well. I feel more completely myself than I have done since my illness--so you see, dear friend, if it has taken me quite four years to recover the lost ground, one must not be discouraged if two do not accomplish it in your case. I hope your little nieces[24] at St. Louis are well--and the brothers you are with, and that you have many dear friends round you at Camden.
I think my thoughts fly to you on strongest and most joyous wings when I am out walking in the clear, cold, elastic air I enjoy so much.
Good-bye, my dearest Friend.
ANNIE GILCHRIST.
A cheerful Christmas, a New Year of which each day brings its share of restorative influence, be yours.
LETTER XXV
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_50 Marquis Rd.
Camden Sq.
Dec. 30, 1874._
I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes under the words I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see how the dark clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the paragraph--but fuller still of yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I believe, my dear love, that what you need to help on your recovery is a woman's tender, cheris.h.i.+ng love and care, and that in that warm, genial atmosphere the spring of life will be quickened once more and flow full and strong through all its channels as of old, gradually, not quickly, even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost intelligent care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen in the rooms you inhabit, of as much outdoor life as possible, of happy, cheerful companions.h.i.+p, & all the homely everyday domestic joys which are so helpful in their influences. America is doing what nations in all times have done towards that which is profoundly new & great, that which discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits & flowers from another world than that they have been content to dwell in all their lives. But for all that I do not believe the precious seed is lying dormant even now--everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured & yields a n.o.ble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished your soul and body, she is silently, unnoticed, producing men & women who will justify you, who will understand the meaning of all and respond with a love that will quicken & exalt humanity as Christ's influence once did.
Still it is inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now pa.s.sionately drawn toward the great heart that beats & glows in these Poems--that ”Drum Taps,” at any rate, are not as dear to her as the memory of her dead heroes, sons, brothers, husbands. It must be that they really do not reach the hands of the American people at large--that the professedly literary, cultivated cla.s.s asking for nothing better than the pretty sing-song sentimentalities which ”join them in their nonsense,” or else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the past (so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours), raise their voices so loud in newspapers & magazines as to prevent or everywhere check the circulation.
_Jan. 1._ The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly to the inner as well as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark fate of the emigrant s.h.i.+p & of the terrible railway accidents. Percy was not able to join us at Xmas (through business) but I am expecting him to-night. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully--& even continues to go out in her chair. Bee's letters are very bright & cheerful--she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold much, provided they have plenty of out-door exercise--above all skating, which they are now enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased misery it brings to our hundreds of thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed. I trust the family circle round you & your nieces at St. Louis & all near & dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp of many loving friends this wintry, cloudy time, my dearest--and that there may breathe out of these poor words a warm, bright glow of love and hope & unrestricted trust in the future.
A. GILCHRIST.
LETTER XXVI
ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN
_Earls Colne, Halstead Feb. 21, 1875._
MY DEAREST FRIEND:
I have run down to Colne for a glimpse of my dear Bee, whom I had not seen for five months, and of my Mother; & now I am alone with the latter, Beatrice taking my place at home with her brother & sister for a week or two. A wonderful evergreen my Mother continues; still able to face the keen winds & the frost daily in her Bath chair--well swathed, of course in eiderdown & flannels. Beatrice takes beautiful care of her & is happy & content with her life here, loving the country as dearly as I do & having time enough for study & reading, as well as for domestic activities, to keep her mind as busy as her body. How I do long for you to see my children, dearest Friend. I wonder if you are surrounded with any in your brother's home--young, growing, blossoming plants that gladden you. And I wonder if the winter, which I hear is so severe in America this year, tries you--whether you can yet move briskly enough to keep up the circulation--and whether you have as many dear friends round you as you had at Was.h.i.+ngton. In my walks I keep thinking of these things. Write me a little letter once more, it would do me such good. No one of all your friends so easy as I to write to because none to whom any & every little detail is so welcome, so precious--lifting a tiny corner of the great vast of s.p.a.ce between us, giving me for a moment to feel the friendly grasp of your hand--I that long for it so. Two years are over since your illness began, or seemed to begin, dearest friend--so slow & stealthy in its approaches, so slow & stealthy in its retreat--may the spring that is coming (the birds have already caught sight of it, cold & brown & bare as the landscape still is)--may it but come laden with healing, strengthening, refres.h.i.+ng influences--so that you begin to feel again the joyous freedom of health, warbling once more a song of joy for lilac time.
True, I know indeed, my dearest, that anyhow you are content, not grudging the price paid for your life work, but even some way or other the richer for paying it--garnering precious equivalents for pain & privation of health in your inmost soul. I cannot choose but believe this earnestly--the resplendent faith that there is not ”one cause nor result lamentable, at last, in the Universe” which glows throughout the Poems is for me an exhaustless source of strength & comfort.--I see every now & then & like the more each time the Conways. I am half afraid Mr. Conway works too incessantly--that is, does not like well enough the indispensable supplement of close mental work--plenty of air & exercise, &c.,--hates walking, & indeed it is not to be wondered at in great, smoky London (I shall be fond enough & proud enough of it too when I am over the Atlantic). Unless one has a real pa.s.sion for open air & the sense of sky overhead, like me. I hear Mr. Conway is coming to America for six months in October.
_Feb. 25_--I kept my letter till to-day that I might have the happiness of speaking to you on my birthday. See me this evening in the bright, cheerful parlour of our cottage, which stands just in the middle of the old village (it has been a village & jogged on through all change at its own sober, sleepy pace this 800 years)--my mother in her arm chair by the fire; I chatting with her & working or playing to her when she is awake; & with the Poems I love beside me, reading, musing, wondering while she dozes. Ah, shall I ever attain to the Ideal that burst upon me with such splendour of light & joy in those Poems in 1869--so filling, so possessing me, I seemed as if I had by one bound attained to that ideal--as if I were already a very twin of the soul from whom they emanated. But now I know that divine foretaste indicated what was possible for me, not what was accomplished--I know the slow growth--the standstill winters that follow the growing joyous springs & ripening summers. I believe it will take more lives than this one to reach that mountain on which I was transfigured again, never to descend more, but to start thence for new heights, fresh glories. Ah, dear friend, will you be able to have patience with me, for me?
Good-bye, my dearest.
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