I must write not because I have anything to tell you—but because I want so, by help of a few loving words, to come into your presence as it were—into your remembrance loc_cb.00318.jpg Not more do the things that grow want the Sun.
I have received all the papers—& each has made a day very bright for me.
I hope the trip to California has not again had to be postponed—I realize loc_cb.00319.jpg well the enjoyment of it, & what it would be to California & the fresh impulses of thought & emotion that would shape themselves melodiously out of that for the new volume—
My children are all well. Beatrice1 is working hard to get through the requisite loc_cb.00316.jpg amount of Latin &c. that is required in the preliminary examination—before entering on medical studies. Percy2 my eldest, whom I have not seen for a year is coming to spend Xmas with us—
Good bye dearest Friend. Anne Gilchrist.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).