And how fares it with you tonight? I look out across the western sky, now studded with twinkling stars & wonder how you are, my dear good friend of friends
My heart's best & truest affection flows out to you & my sympathy can hardly find words to express itself in. But I know you will understand. Oh how often have I wished of late to go to you & to be with you to help you in some real & tangible way!3
I have my dear good old father4 with me tonight, & with him here & you to write to I am happy!—I had a "postal" & a splendid photo from Rudolf Schmidt5 tonight—George Humphreys6 has just been & sends his love as does yours affectionately
J JohnstonGod bless you & keep you! Good night!7
I gave George a copy of the '/92 L of G.8 tonight.9
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).