My heart's best & warmest love to you, my dearest & best of Friends! We hear daily, from our faithful Traubel,2 about you, & our hearts bleed with sympathy & yearn with affection for you in your great affliction.3 God bless you & send you some measure of Comfort and Ease! Last night I was fighting for you at the "Bolton Literary Society"— composed mainly of the so-called "upper ten" of Bolton—& my advocacy of you elicited a good deal of adverse criticism—just what I expected from them. They want educating up to you!
I hope you liked the facsimile4 & the use we made of it in your interest. I have refused the letter to the press as I thought this best met your wishes. A sweet good night to you & God bless you!
J Johnston. loc.02547.002_large.jpgCorrespondent:
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).