On coming up from a Saturday to Monday visit to Logan1 at Oxford, I have found the
delightful surprise of a letter from thee dated January
22nd2 The enclosures, too, I
have much enjoyed, & I am sending one of the proofs to Logan, with thy letter to
read & return. We were talking a great deal
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about thee yesterday. There are a great many of the "coming men" there who are deeply
influenced by "Leaves of Grass" & who find in the curious English mingling of
tradition & freedom, history & change, the most appropriate setting to thy
lines of Thought. Probably it is only the stress of urgent national crises, such as
a war, or of equally urgent national reforms, of which there are many now
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talked about here, that make the masses of men really think freely & generously
& act unselfishly—
As thee says—"all goes on well in the United States"—and though one
cannot wish for any lack of prosperity, seeing what miseries it entails upon the
poor & defenceless, yet one realizes that it is not, as yet, the best condition
for the appreciation of bright things. From another point of view,
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in which perhaps thee will not agree with me, I think the "Saints" were quite right
in attempting to free the spirit by torturing the body!
Our chief political interest now is in watching, & assisting as far as we can, the spread of "Socialism"—It seems to be permeating everything. I cannot now imagine what life would be like with no interest in politics! And yet I used to be very happy in Germantown!
We had a more interesting visit to Logan. He is very busy, outside his College work,
with a "Social Science Club," & also with an attempt to reduce the excessive expenses
of Oxford, which make it impossible for any poor men to get educated there. As rich
people have evidently no monopoly of brains, it is a great pity that all this
splendid training is accessible only to them. Some day a Royal Commission or
something like will thoroughly
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expose the manifold inequities of that most delightful of all
Universities—& perhaps things will be changed then. We spent all our
Sunday discussing the desirable reforms of Oxford, but in spite of that we shall go
again to visit it, even in its unregeneate state, as soon as we possibly can.
Rukh–mabai,3 my Indian friend was with us—her first visit to Oxford, and she
was tremendously interested in it.
I am sitting in the nursery to write, and the exigencies of the
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situation make it very difficult to pursue a connected train of thought. Ray4 is
romping about with a huge stuffed monkey of belligerent tendencies, who beats us all
unmercifully when Ray brandishes him in her arms. Karin5 is babbling on the floor,
playing with blocks, & both nurses are adding a not insignificant share to the
general babel. Outside there is a peculiarly disagreeable fog—next door
similar sounds from the nursery can be faintly heard through the walls, & I
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grow appalled to think of the awful volume of sound that daily arises from all the
nurseries in London!
This is a most unsatisfactory letter—but I feel as if the fog had got into my head. We are to have here tonight a meeting of the Westminster Women's Liberal Association. I am to take the chair, but I haven't yet thought of the necessary speech. I must begin now—so I will close this letter as I began it, with many many thanks for thy kind and most interesting letter.
Mary Whitall CostelloeCorrespondent:
Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe
(1864–1945) was a political activist, art historian, and critic, whom
Whitman once called his "staunchest living woman friend." A scholar of Italian
Renaissance art and a daughter of Robert Pearsall Smith, she would in 1885 marry
B. F. C. "Frank" Costelloe. She had been in contact with many of Whitman's
English friends and would travel to Britain in 1885 to visit many of them,
including Anne Gilchrist shortly before her death. For more, see Christina
Davey, "Costelloe, Mary Whitall Smith (1864–1945)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).