It is impossible for me to write much now, but I want to get a letter off by this mail in acknowledgement of your very kind post card1 to hand this morning.—Thanks to you indeed!
a photo: the bust taken half length like the one you haveYes! I received your portrait2 "in good order"—and with emotions which I have
already tried to indicate.3—Apart from its extrinsic loc_vm.02169.jpg value to me as a gift
from yourself, I find its intrinsic merit very great
indeed.—It has "grown" upon me very much, and
authenticates itself, to my mind, more and more, as a true characteristic portrait.
Indeed, I am delighted with it. (Certainly, far better
than the "Illustrated News" one!)
I wished to carry out your instructions literally, & to put it in place of the other
in the same frame.—But it did not fit quite satisfactorily so I decided loc_vm.02170.jpg to have a new frame
made like the old one (plain oak 3" wide) and to use the old frame for something
else.
Dr Johnston,4 too, has had the portrait you gave him (of yourself—painted by Sidney Morse5) framed, (gold mat & frame) and is very pleased with it
He called on me at noon today & I shewed him your post card. He is deeply sensible of
your great loving–kindness & your solicitude about him. He has improved in health
since loc_vm.02171.jpg his return, &
is, I think, very well now.
He kindly brought me, as a present, the two vols. of "Essays" by J. A. Symonds6 which I have not yet read.7 I have glanced them over & find much to stir my appetite.
But I must not write more now.
With the deepest love gratitude & reverence to you always, Dr. Johnston joining me I remain Yours affectionately J. W. WallaceCorrespondent:
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).