Thank you for the copy of "Once a Week"1
you sent me & which I received on the 17th ult.—I noted especially the account of The
O'Gorman Mahon,2 & the pictures & leader relating
to the Indians. It reminded me of your "Indian Bureau Reminiscences,"3 which I re-read loc_vm.01074.jpg I hope that your artist friend "B.H."4 "regained his health" & has been successful in his studies
& work.
I send you herewith a copy of "The Magazine of Art"5 for January,—containing a photogravure & engravings of earlier portraits of Ruskin,6 which I think will interest you.
I have long been deeply interested in his books, & it used to be one of my main
desires to give loc_vm.01075.jpg them
complete & exhaustive study that I, too, might contribute a little to their
exposition & support.
And I still think that no English author—since his master Carlyle7—so emphatically deserves it, & deserves the
sympathetic & careful study of his race. And at no
period, probably, has a braver, purer spirit ever spent his passionate force in
literature for the sacred cause of human well-being. loc_vm.01076.jpg His message (with whatever
limitations,—& they are great) is one of deep importance to his
generation, & should be laid well to heart. But it still needs to be set in its
due relationship & needs (it seems to me) to be corrected & offset by the
larger & complementary (or rather over-arching) teaching which you have given us. I have long desired to attempt to do
this. And, with better health & strength,8 & under
loc_vm.01077.jpg more favourable conditions, I yet hope to
do something towards it.
I often wonder to what extent you are acquainted with his books. No doubt you know
some of them well. They are antagonistic, of course, in several essential respects,
to your own. But I am often struck, in minor points, with the degree in which they
are not only in unison with yours, but in which they support & illustrate them.
loc_vm.01078.jpg "Wisdom is
justified of all her children,"9 and the truth of every
man's work or thought is eliminated, in course of time, to the last fraction, from
the false, & helps onward the march of human progress.—If Ruskin is narrow
& wilful—if he "prescribes specifics for indispensible evils," or
if,—Quixote-like,—he tilts at times against imaginary foes, let us, not
any the less, revere the nobleness of his aims, &
loc_vm.01079.jpg & honour, with swelling love &
gratitude, the fiery war against the evils of his time, in which he has spent his
energies & wasted his heart.
One wishes, at times, that he had known you personally long ago, & could have had familiar talk with you, face to face, as he had with Carlyle.10
And I have often been disposed to wish that Carlyle could have done so too. Your
great love for him is very manifest. And
he, above
loc_vm.01080.jpg all others, loved a man
& knew one when he saw one.
—How sad & strange, it seems at times, that he should have never really
known you at all! But the Divine Providence is wise. It was Carlyle's lot to do a
great & needed service, which, under other conditions, would perhaps have never
been done. And though one wishes for his sake that he
could have learned of you, & though it might have saved him desolating pain
& loneliness of heart, yet, loc_vm.01081.jpg who shall say that his great soul was not better for the terrible
toils & grim purgatorial fires through which he passed, & for the agonizings
& fierce travail throes of his prophetic (however partial) message?
And it has seemed clear to me, in reading Ruskin's latest books, (the later vols. of
"Fors Clavigera"11 especially) that in his passionate
crusade against the evils of our modern life—notwithstanding its bruises to
his delicate, susceptible spirit, & the yet more bitter separation loc_vm.01082.jpg of life & isolation
of soul in which it has placed him.—(as of one "crying in the wilderness"12) he
has, nevertheless, gained in spiritual depth & insight, & (I think) in a
deeper trust in the ultimate good to follow the vast movements & (to him)
apparent disintegration & retrogression of our time.
He does not love your Republic & its aims. But no other living English author, I think, has made [illegible] (with all
deductions) so valuable a contribution to its loc_vm.01083.jpg sociology & evolution. (Though I
recognize its limitations & drawbacks.—& see how much better is the
ideal to which America is actually tending—independently of any authors).
Pardon my writing to you thus.—But it is partly because I have loved Carlyle & Ruskin from long years, & studied their books, that your teaching has been so precious to me.—
I hope that you are keeping better—The weather here is very variable—a
day loc_vm.01084.jpg or two of
thaw—or rain—followed by sharp frost & snow.
P.S.
Since writing this I have just received from Dr. Johnston13 your post card of Jan: 9th14 & am glad to note that you were fairly well.
Correspondent:
James William Wallace
(1853–1926), of Bolton, England, was an architect and great admirer of
Whitman. Wallace, along with Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927), a physician in
Bolton, 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 Wallace, see Larry D. Griffin, "Wallace, James William (1853–1926)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).