As you see by my address I am staying with a great friend of yours. You may see him this summer for he is going to America at the end of April,—going out as a schoolmaster to settle somewhere up the Hudson. He is an uncommonly good fellow, quiet earnest serious soul and very practical, full of solid worth, whose knowledge and attainments are sure to be valued in America. His father is a clergyman, loc_jc.00566_large.jpg and this son of his reads Leaves of Grass silently & unobserved by the rest of his orthodox family.
I posted a copy of my book2 to you about a week ago: I hope that you will read it and tell me how you like it.
Andrew Lang3 wrote a leader in the Daily News about it and fine things have been said in the London, and Scotch Press particularly. As yet, I have not taken my passage, but I hope to come early in May, and to spend a nice slice of my time near you in Camden. I consider that your poems have gained ground here perceptibly within the last 2 years. Leonard Brown sends his love &
with love from Herbert H. Gilchrist. loc_jc.00568_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist
(1857–1914), son of Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, was an English painter
and editor of Anne Gilchrist: Her Life and Writings
(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). For more information, see Marion Walker Alcaro,
"Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden (1857–1914)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).