I see, my dearest Friend, I must not look for those dashes1 under
the words I thought were going to convey a joyful confirmation of my hopes. I see how the dark
clouds linger. Full of pain & indignation. I read the paragraph—but fuller still of
yearning tenderness & trust and hope. I believe my dear love that what you need to help on
your recovery is a
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woman's tender cherishing love and care and that in that warm genial atmosphere the spring
of life will be quickened once more and flow full and strong through all its channels as of
old, gradually, not quickly, even so. I dare say: but with plenty of patience; with utmost
intelligent care of all conditions favourable to health, of diet, of abundant oxygen in the
rooms you inhabit, of as much
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outdoor life as possible, of happy cheerful companionship & all the homely everyday
domestic joys which are so healthful in their influences.
America is doing what nations in all times have done towards that which is profoundly new
& great, that which discredits their old ideals and offers them strange fruits &
flowers from another world than that they have been content to
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dwell in all their lives. But for all that, I do not believe the precious seed is lying
dormant even now—everywhere a few in whose hearts it is treasured & yields a
noble growth. Since it is America that has produced you nourished your soul and body. She
is silently unnoticed producing men & women who will justify you, who will understand
the meaning of all and respond with
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a love that will quicken & exalt humanity as Christ's influence once did. Still it is
inscrutable to me that the heart of America is not now passionately drawn toward the great
heart that beats & glows in these Poems—that Drum Taps,2 at
any rate are not as dear to her as the memory of her dead heroes sons brothers husbands.
It must be that they really do not reach the hands of the American people at large—that
the professedly literary cultivated class
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asking for nothing better than the pretty sing song sentimentalities which "join them in
their nonsense," or else slavishly prostrating their judgments before the models of the
past (so perfect for their day, so wholly inadequate for ours) raise their voices so loud
in news papers & magazines as to prevent or everywhere check the circulation
Jan 1. The New Year has come in bleakly & keenly—to
the inner as well as to the outer sense, with the papers full of the details of the dark fate
of the emigrant ship3 & of the terrible railway accidents.4
Percy5 was not able to join us at Xmas (through business,) but I
am expecting him tonight. My mother bears up against the cold wonderfully—& even
continues to go out in her chair—so Bee's6 letters are very
bright & cheerful—she & indeed all my children enjoy the cold
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much provided they have plenty of outdoor exercise—above all skating, which they are
now enjoying. I too like it, but am so haunted by the thought of the increased misery it
brings to our hundreds of thousands of illfed illclothed illhoused.—I trust the family
circle round you & your nieces7 at St. Louis, & all near
& dear to you are well, and that you have felt the warm grasp of many loving friends this
wintry cloudy time my dearest—and that there may breathe out of these poor words a warm
bright glow of love and hope & unshakable trust in the future.
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).