Do not think me too wilful or headstrong but I have taken our tickets & we shall sail Aug 30,
for Philadelphia.1 I found if I did not come to a decision now, we could
not well arrange it before next summer. And since we have to come to a decision
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my mind has been quite at rest. Do not feel any anxiety or misgivings about us. I have a clear and
strong conviction I am doing what is right & best for us all.—After a busy anxious time
I am having a week or two, rest with Percy,2 who I find fairly well in
health & prospering in his business—indeed he bids fair to have a large private practice
as an analyst
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here, & is already making income enough to marry on only there is to build the nest—&
I think he will have actually to build it, for there seem no eligible
houses—& to furnish it—so that the wedding will not be till next spring or early
summer—nevertheless with a definite goal & a definite time & the way between not so
very rugged though rather dull & lonely I think he will be pretty cheery.
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This little town (of 11000 inhabitants all miners, smelters &c.) lies up among the hill 1100 ft
above the sea—glorious hills here spreading then converging, with wooded flanks & swift
brooklets leaping over stones in the hollows—the air too of course deliciously light &
pure.—I have heard through a friend of ours of Bee's3 fellow students
who lives in Camden (Mr. Süerkrop4 I think his name is) that we shall
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be able to get a very comfortable house with pleasant garden there for about £55 per an : I think
I can manage that very well—so all I need is to hear of a comfortable lodging or boarding house
(the former preferred,) where we can be, avoiding hotel expenses while we hunt for the house. I have
arranged for my goods to sail a week
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later than we do, so as to give us time.
Bee has obtained a very satisfactory account of the Womens Medical College in Philadelphia & introductions to the Head, &c.
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).