The newspapers have both come to hand & been gladly welcomed. I shall realize you
on the 26th sending living impulses into those young men, with results not to cease—their
kindled hearts sending back response through glowing eyes that will be warmer to you
than the June sunshine. Perhaps too, you will have pleasant talks with the eminent
astronomers there. Prof. Young1 who is so skillful
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a worker with that most subtle fetcher of tidings from the Stars, the Spectroscope—always,
it seems hitherto bringing word of the "vast similitude that interlocks all"2
nay of the absolute identity of the stuff they are made of with the stuff we are made of."—The
news from Denmark,3 that too, is a great pleasure.
I have been what seems to me a very long while since last writing, because it has been
a troubled time within & what I wrote I tore up again, believing it was best wisest
so—You said in
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your first letter that if you had leisure you could write one that "would do me good
& you too"; write that letter dear Friend after you have been to Dartmouth,4
for I sorely need it. Perhaps the letters that I have sent you since that first, have
given you a feeling of constraint towards me because you cannot respond to them. I will
not write any more such letters; or, if I write them because my heart is so full it
cannot bear it, they shall not find their way to the Post.
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But do not, because I give you more than friendship, think that it would not be a very
dear & happy thing to me to have friendship only from you—I do not want you
to write what it is any effort to write—do not ask for deep thoughts, deep feelings—know
well those must choose their our own time & mode—but for the simplest current
details—for any thing that helps my eyes to pierce the distance & see you as
you live & move today. I dearly like to hear about your Mother5—want to
know if all
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your sisters are married, & if you have plenty of little nephews & nieces—I
like to hear anything about Mr. O'Connor6 & Mr. Burroughs,7
towards both of whom I feel as toward friends. (Has Mr. O'Connor succeeded in getting
practically adopted his new method of making cast steel? Percy8
being a worker in the field of Metallurgy make me specially glad to hear about this). Then,
I need not tell you how deep an interest I feel in American politics & want to know if
you are satisfied with the result of the Cincinnati Convention9
& what of Mr. Greely?10
& what you augur as to his success—I am sure dear friend if
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you realized the joy it is to me to receive a few words from you—about anything that
is passing in your thoughts & around—how beaming bright & happy the day a letter
comes & many days after—how light hearted & alert I set about my daily tasks, it
would not seem irksome to you to write. And if you say, "Read my books, & be content—you
have me in them"—I say, it is because I read them so that I am not content. It is an
effort to me to turn to any other reading; as to highest literature what I felt three years
ago is more than
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ever true now, with all their precious augmentations—I want nothing else—am
fully fed & satisfied there. I sit alone many hours busy with my needle; this used to
be tedious; but it is not so now—for always close at hand lie the books that are so
dear so dear I brooding over the poems sunning myself in them, pondering the Vistas—all
the experience of my past life & all its aspirations corroborating them—all my
future & so far as in me lies the future of my children to be shaped modified vitalized
by & through these—outwardly & inwardly. How then can I be content to live
wholly isolated from you? I
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am sure it is not possible for any one,—man or woman, it does not matter which, to
receive these books, not merely with the intellect critically admiring their power &
beauty: but with an understanding responsive heart, without feeling it drawn out of their
breasts so that they must leave all & come to be with you sometimes—without a
resistless yearning for personal intercourse that will take no denial. When we come to America,
I shall not want you to talk to me; shall not be any way importunate. To settle down where
there are some that love you & understand your poems, some
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where that you would be sure to come pretty often—to have you sit with me while I worked, you
silent, or reading to your self, I don't mind how: to let my children grow fond of you—to
take food with us; if my music pleased you, to let me play & sing to you of an evening; do
your needlework for you—talk freely of all that occupied my thoughts concerning the
childrens
welfare &c—I could be very happy so. But silence with the living presence &
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silence with all the Ocean in between are two different things. Therefore, these years stretch
out your hand cordially trustfully that I may feel its warm grasp.
Correspondent:
Anne Burrows Gilchrist
(1828–1885) was the author of one of the first significant pieces of
criticism on Leaves of Grass, titled "A Woman's Estimate
of Walt Whitman (From Late Letters by an English Lady to W. M. Rossetti)," The Radical 7 (May 1870), 345–59. Gilchrist's long
correspondence with Whitman indicates that she had fallen in love with the poet
after reading his work; when the pair met in 1876 when she moved to
Philadelphia, Whitman never fully returned her affection, although their
friendship deepened after that meeting. For more information on their
relationship, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828–1885)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).