What a long long time it seems since I wrote to you & what a long dreary time you
have spent in bed!2 But, as you will doubtless know, we are & have been in constant
communication with Horace3 & Warry4—the
faithful Horace & Warry!—& know all
about you & your ups & downs.
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Some of the letters have made my heart ache with sympathy & love for you, my dear
good old Friend of friends & your illness has bound me all the closer to you
God bless you & give you peaceful days and restful nights at all times!
Warry told me about your dear little namesake, "Walt Whitman Fritzinger."5 &
how you have held him in your arms. That I am sure would delight you.
The other
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evening I read the story of "The Carpenter"6
aloud to some friends who came in to see me
& when I got to the part which told how the Carpenter sat crowded all over &
around with children who "flocked around him like birds, bloomed around him like flowers,
wreathed around him like vines, swarmed around him like bees, & close to his breast
he held the little lame girl Lilian & read on,
the mothers in the group gave way to tears.
This is a snowy day here & the snowflakes are still falling, falling, falling,
slowly, slowly,
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& transfiguring the black & grimy town into a city of beauty & radiance. Oh the
blessed, the beauteous snow!
And now I wonder how you are faring over in that upper room in Camden. Better I trust today & freer from pain & distress
The friends here7 all send their warmest love & sympathy as does also
Yours most affectionately J JohnstonPS I had a brief note from your friend Symonds8 today
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).