I think of you very often, & cannot but trust your illness is less gloomy than Herbert states it—I know I have myself felt convinced several times during the last twelve or thirteen years of serious conditions & finálés that endurance has tided over—& O I so hope that you will surmount all—& that we may yet meet each other face to face.
—I am middling well—the trouble in my eyesight (& very annoying it was to my anchor'd condition) seems to have pass'd over—We are having extremely cold weather here, & I do not get out of the house—but it is bright & sunny as I look out—I wrote a card to Herbert three days ago, which I suppose he has rec'd—God's peace & blessing to you, beloved friend—
Walt Whitman with best love upa.00057.002_large.jpg loc.02157.001_large.jpg loc.02157.002_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Anne Burrows Gilchrist
(1828–1885) was the author of one of the first significant pieces of
criticism on Leaves of Grass, titled "A Woman's Estimate
of Walt Whitman (From Late Letters by an English Lady to W. M. Rossetti)," The Radical 7 (May 1870), 345–59. Gilchrist's long
correspondence with Whitman indicates that she had fallen in love with the poet
after reading his work; when the pair met in 1876 when she moved to
Philadelphia, Whitman never fully returned her affection, although their
friendship deepened after that meeting. For more information on their
relationship, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828–1885)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).