Your letter of May 28th received yesterday morning.2 Deep responding gratitude & love to you for writing at all under such sad conditions—"still badly prostrated—horrible torpidity." And cordial thanks to you not only for the letter, which I deeply prize, but for its address to my old & dear friend Wentworth Dixon.3
I took the earliest opportunity of calling on him
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with it at his office & giving it to him. I read it to him first—in a sort of casual way—& when I
came to the words "Give this scrawl to Wentworth Dixon to keep if he cares for it" it was notable how his face &
neck flushed deep red with pleasure. It was a rare joy to me as well as to him.
No gift could possibly have been better, & I know well he will treasure it as long as he lives.
Quiet, cool & undemonstrative—no man in Bolton is more true & genuine. A model husband & father, he
is also a friend after Horatio's4 pattern—to be worn in one's heart of hearts.
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Uncompromising in his reverence for truth alone, he quietly puts aside all that is doubtful or undemonstrable,
& takes his stand on what is verifiable only.
Leaving the orthodoxy in which he was brought up, he became an agnostic. Then, to his deep delight,
he found in the writings of Epictetus5 & Marcus Aurelius6 portraitures of noble souls, strong brave,
& sincere, whom he could with a whole heart reverence & love.
He studied their books closely and with genuine enthusiasm. I have heard nothing better than two papers on
Epictetus he once read to our little "College"7—himself a worthy representative of the noble old Roman.—
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And now he is coming more & more under your influence.
He has long since learned to love & honour you as a man.
I can see that he does this increasingly, with keener desire to understand your words, & a nearer approach to
sympathy & receptiveness. And I expect that "they will itch at his ears"8 evermore, &
that the unfolding spirit of life within him will drive him more & more into fuller sympathy with a faith
& hopes that will enrich & irradiate his life.
To that divine spirit I leave him with hope & trust. Often in talking with him I have realized the force of
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your words that "logic & sermons never convince"9 & that the man's own evolution can alone supply
what is lacking. And a man so quietly faithful & true, so resolutely good, loyal,
candid & helpful as he cannot long fail of the best.
I think you will see now why I rejoice so much that you should have addressed your letter, with its brief comments on Stoicism,10 to him. I thank you, & I thank God, with a full heart.
He sent me a facsimile tracing of it, which I have carefully read again & again, & pondered over—
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Some day I hope to make it the text of a talk to the friends.
I do wish that you were better, & I think of you continually with loving sympathy.
The weather here has been beautiful these last 2 days though with rather cool N.E. winds. A more beautiful morning than the one today never dawned out of the deep.—
Thanks & love & best wishes to you always. J. W. WallaceP.S. Love to Warry, Mrs Davis11 & Traubel12
Johnston was unwell last week, but is better again. Is still very busy. W.D. will write himself to thank you13
Correspondent:
James William Wallace
(1853–1926), of Bolton, England, was an architect and great admirer of
Whitman. Wallace, along with Dr. John Johnston (1852–1927), a physician in
Bolton, founded the "Bolton College" of English admirers of the poet. Johnston
and Wallace corresponded with Whitman and with Horace Traubel and other members
of the Whitman circle in the United States, and they separately visited the poet
and published memoirs of their trips in John Johnston and James William Wallace,
Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 by Two
Lancashire Friends (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). For more
information on Wallace, see Larry D. Griffin, "Wallace, James William (1853–1926)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).