James W. Wallace to Walt Whitman, 4 August 1891

 loc_vm.02558_large.jpg Anderton, near Chorley Lancashire, England1 4. August 1891 My dear Walt Whitman,

I can only write a line or two tonight—of loving remembrance & good wishes.—

I received a letter from Dr Johnston2 this morning, written 3 days ago. He intended to write to you by this mail so that you, will have fuller particulars than I can give you.

I wrote to Dr Bucke3 last  loc_vm.02559_large.jpg night.—Expect him here again about the 19th4

Weather here showery with occasional thunder. Days shortening rapidly.

I intended to write to Traubel5 tonight, but cannot now do so. Love to him & his wife.6

A P.C. from you arrived at Johnston's on Saturday,7 but it was sent on to him without my seeing it. I understand it reported same condition continued.

With a heart full of love to you always

Yours affectionately J.W. Wallace  loc_vm.02560_large.jpg  loc_vm.02561_large.jpg  loc_vm.02556_large.jpg see notes Aug 14 1891  loc_vm.02557_large.jpg

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Notes

• 1. The letter is addressed: Walt Whitman | 328, Mickle St | Camden | New Jersey | U.S. America. It is postmarked: BOLTON | 41 | AU5 | 91; NEW YORK | AUG | 14; A | 91; PAID | L | ALL; CAMDEN, N.J. | AUG 14 | 9AM | 1891 | REC'D. [back]
• 2. 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). [back]
• 3. Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany. Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 4. At this time, Bucke was traveling abroad in England, where he attempted to establish a foreign market for the gas and fluid meter he was building with his brother-in-law William Gurd. During this trip he also spent time with James W. Wallace and Dr. John Johnston, the co-founders of the Bolton College of Whitman admirers, and visited the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. [back]
• 5. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919) was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations, which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914). After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel, see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
• 6. Anne Montgomerie (1864–1954) married Horace Traubel in Whitman's Mickle Street house in Camden, New Jersey, in 1891. They had one daughter, Gertrude (1892–1983), and one son, Wallace (1893–1898). Anne was unimpressed with Whitman's work when she first read it, but later became enraptured by what she called its "pulsating, illumined life," and she joined Horace as associate editor of his Whitman-inspired periodical The Conservator. Anne edited a small collection of Whitman's writings, A Little Book of Nature Thoughts (Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher, 1896). After Horace's death, both Anne and Gertrude edited his manuscripts of his conversations with Whitman during the final four years of the poet's life, which eventually became the nine-volume With Walt Whitman in Camden. [back]
• 7. Whitman had written to Dr. John Johnston on July 17, 1891, and this may be the postal card to which Wallace is referring. [back]