Many thanks to you for your kind letter dated Sept 13th 18901 and for the two letters2 from Dr Bucke3 to you which I will return by next mail.
I am glad to hear such a good account of your health and I hope it may continue to improve
Thanks too for the domestic details and glimpses into your daily life which you favour me with, all of which possess a genuine and deep interest for me and which serve to vivify and deepen the ever-present and loc.02447.002.jpg ineradicable image & memory of yourself and your surrounding and to recall the numerous & unexampled kindnesses you have shewed me
Dr Bucke's letters are extremely interesting but two paragraphs are of especial interest to us here The first is that "Horace"4 (? H. L. Traubel) is preparing a new book about you—"W W to date."5 Will you please kindly order two copies for me & I will forward the cash when I know the price?
The second is that he (Dr B.) will probably be in England before so long6 & will call & see "Johnston Wallace & Co! (It shd be W. J. & Co!) This is news indeed! There is none of your friends whom I would like more to see than he & loc.02447.003.jpgthere is no place where he would receive a warmer welcome than in Bolton among "the boys."7 We are none of us wealthy but such as we have would be at his disposal during his stay among us. We have had many "Whitman evenings" but a "Whitman Evening" with Dr. Bucke in the rostrum would be the climax of all & a life long remembrance. The thought of it is almost enough to take one's breath away—Let us hope it may not prove "too good to be true"!
Our birthday "Surprise party" came off very successfully on the 25th and it proved to be a veritable surprise to our victim loc.02447.004.jpg The Revd F. R. C. Hutton M.A.8 who had not the slightest suspicion of our intentions although his own wife9 was in the plot and had prepared a grand supper "on the sly." Our arrival in a body surprised him, the giving of a reading-machine inscribed—
"To the Revd F. R. C. Hutton M. A.—'Something for a token' from the boys of the College"
astonished him; but the presentation of the pocket book copy of L. of G.10 with an inscription—
"To the Revd F. R. C. Hutton MA with all good wishes from the boys of the College and from Walt Whitman"
fairly overwhelmed him.
The inscription is a most artistic piece of work and the bordering is a beautifully executed design in leaves of grass, wild flowers & "straw coloured & other psyches" the whole being the work of W. M. Law11 one of "the boys" & a clever draughtsman12
Correspondent:
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).