Part 17 (2/2)

Louis, I wonder, when you were there? Love from us all.

Good-bye, Dearest Friend.

A. GILCHRIST.

Please give my love to John Burroughs when you write or see him.

LETTER LV

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

_Marley, Haslemere England Aug. 22, '80._

MY DEAREST FRIEND:

I have had all the welcome papers with accounts of your doings, and to-day a nice long letter from Mrs. Whitman, which I much enjoyed, giving me better account of your health again, & of your great enjoyment of the water travel through Canada. So I hope, spite of drawbacks, you will return to Camden for the winter quite set up in body, as well as full of delightful memories. If only we were at 22nd St. to welcome you back & talk it all over at tea! Ah, those evenings! My friends told me I looked ten years younger when I came back from America than when I went. And I am not yet quite re-acclimatized; & what with missing the suns.h.i.+ne & working a little too hard, was feeling quite knocked up: so Bee insisted on my coming down, or rather up, here to stay with some very kind & dear friends. The house stands all alone on a great heath-covered hill, and below & around are endless coppices, so that you step from the lawn into [a] winding wood-path, along which I wander by the hour: and from my window I look over much such a view as we had at Round Hill Hotel, Northampton, this time two years, only that with the soft haze that is so often spread over our landscape, the distant hill looks more ghostly in the moonlight. My friend is a n.o.ble, large-hearted, capable woman, who devotes all her life and energies to keeping alive an invalid husband; and he well deserves her care, for he has a beautiful nature, too, & their mutual affection is unbounded. He is just ordered by the doctors to leave the home they have made for themselves up here--which is as lovely as it can be--& to spend two years at least in Italy. So it is a sorrowful time with them--they have no children, but have adopted a little niece. Our new house is just ready & we are daily expecting our furniture from America.

Herby has been working as usual, making good progress & has just done a beautiful little drawing for the new edition of his father's book. Bee, you will be glad to hear, has decided to continue her medical studies & is going to be a.s.sistant to a lady doctor at Edinburgh, who is to pay her sufficient salary to cover all remaining expenses. Meanwhile we have got her at home for a few weeks to help us through with the move in, and a sad pinch it will be to part with her again. Giddy has been paying a delightful visit to some friends of Carpenter's near Leeds--a Quaker family--the daughter very lovable & admirable. We do not forget the Staffords[35] nor they us. Mont. often sends Herby a magazine or a token.

Love to them when you see them, & to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman & Hattie & Jessie & kindest remembrance to Dr. Bucke. Send me a line soon, dear Friend--I think of you continually & know that somewhere & somehow we are to meet again, & that there is a tie of love between us that time & change & death itself cannot touch.

With love,

A. GILCHRIST.

LETTER LVI

HERBERT H. GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

_Keats Corner, England 12 Well Road, Hampstead, London November 30th, 1880._

MY DEAR WALT:

Your postcard came to hand some little time ago. I was pleased to get it, to hear of your being well, & with your friends. I have been extremely busy seeing after the new edition of my father's book;[36] the work of seeing such a richly ill.u.s.trated ”edition de luxe” through the press was enormous, but it is done! The binders are now doing their work, & next Tuesday the reviewers will be doing theirs--I defy them to find any fault with the book. I dare say you think it ”tall” talk, but I think that it is the most perfectly gotten up book that I ever have seen. My mother has written an admirable memoir of my father at the end of the second vol.

POND MUSINGS (Pen sketch of a b.u.t.terfly) by WALT WHITMAN

I thought that this was to be the t.i.tle of your prose volume. I will undertake the ill.u.s.trations, choosing the paper (hand made), everything except the expense of reproducing, etc. I should say London is the place to have things executed in: if you wish to give photos they must be drawn by an artist and reproduced; no photo ever looked well in a book yet! they haven't decorative importance and don't blend with type. I should suggest that we should imitate the artistic size & style of your earliest edition of ”Leaves of G.,” a large, thin, flat volume, a fanciful, but as inexpensive as possible, cover written in gold on blue, a waterlily say: but I could think this over. I will design fanciful tailpieces to be woven in with the text; as a frontispiece the drawing that I gave you, retouched by me, and reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company, 23 Farringdon street, London, E. C. All these are only suggestions, which I am prepared to execute in right earnest thought. I read your letter to mother with interest. We like our new house so much, & I am sure that you would. You must come and stay with us & stroll on Hampstead Heath, & ride down into London upon an omnibus & sit to some good sculptor here in London (Boem say). And you yourself could make arrangements with the publishers. With remembrance to friends,

HERBERT H. GILCHRIST.

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