How fares it with you, tonight? Better I hope.2 My heart is with you and I send you its best and warmest love.
I was very sorry to hear from Mrs Traubel3 that you were going to lose your good, kind nurse Mrs Zeller4 & I hope that the new arrangement5 will suit loc.02548.002_large.jpg [cut away] I have just received a postal from your old friend, Rudolf Schmidt6—in acknowledgement of the facsimile7—in which he says that he has known you for twenty one years & signs himself
"In Whitmanly friendship Truly, yours, Rudolf Schmidt."—I read a long essay—an hour & 35 minutes long—upon you on the 11th to the "Bolton Literary Society" & J.W.W.,8 who has since read the M.S., pronounces it "an exceptionally good loc.02548.003_large.jpg paper." "Praise from Sir Hubert is praise indeed!" but I am not satisfied with it.
This has been quite a spring–like day here—after a long succession of dreary days—& I heard a lark sing today though it was caged, in a back street. Poor little songster! What longing it must have for its sweet liberty, the green fields, the pure air & the blue sky! What a heartful of cheer it must have had to sing there at all! My heart ached for it. loc.02548.004_large.jpg I hope you like your new bed & that you have better nights now than you used to have.
God bless you dearest & best of Earthly friends
My love to you now & always
Yours affectionately J. Johnston loc.02548.005_large.jpg loc.02548.006_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927)
of Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, was a physician, photographer, and avid
cyclist. Johnston was trained in Edinburgh and served as a hospital surgeon in
West Bromwich for two years before moving to Bolton, England, in 1876. Johnston
worked as a general practitioner in Bolton and as an instructor of ambulance
classes for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. He served at Whalley Military
Hospital during World War I and became Medical Superintendent of Townley's
Hospital in 1917 (John Anson, "Bolton's Illustrious Doctor Johnston—a man
of many talents," Bolton News [March 28, 2021]; Paul
Salveson, Moorlands, Memories, and Reflections: A Centenary
Celebration of Allen Clarke's Moorlands and Memories [Lancashire
Loominary, 2020]). Johnston, along with the architect James W. Wallace, founded
the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston and Wallace
corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members of the
Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet and
published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two Lancashire
Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more information on
Johnston, see Larry D. Griffin, "Johnston, Dr. John (1852–1927)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).