I intended to write to you last Tuesday evening for Wednesday's mail, but was kept busy all the evening with business matters & had to let it go.
And now that I write I have little to tell. I have seen nothing of the College friends2 since I last wrote & have no very special news.
loc_vm.01938_large.jpgI caught a little cold on my voyage home,3 & my outdoor work since my return home has added another to it, which at present confines me to the house.—But it is of no great consequence beyond its present annoyance.
We are having a touch of Winter just now—snowfalls, frosty nights, fog, strong winds heavy rain &c alternating. At the present moment 3-10 Saturday afternoon it is fair I think, though it has been wet all morning, & is dark & overclouded.
loc_vm.01939_large.jpgI had a postcard from Dr. Johnston4 this morning & expect him here soon—if he can get.
I was glad to receive your postal of the 15th5 & thank you for it. Yes, indeed, my trip was "satisfactory" to me, & more than satisfactory in every way. I shall thank God for it while I live.
And apart from other gains (& the greatest) I feel that I have gained in health & strength from it, too, though I expect to realize this more in the coming months than I do now.
loc_vm.01940_large.jpgOf course I have several things to attend to on my return & hardly feel settled down yet into my ordinary course. Hence, mainly, the brevity & poverty of my letters at present.
One result of my trip has been—not only to confirm my affection & reverence for yourself—but to give it a firmer sense of actuality now that I have seen you & talked with you. How much it means to me in all this I cannot tell you. But it is a constant encouragement & stimulus & joy in the battle of life.
loc_vm.01941_large.jpgI had a letter the other day from a friend in which he expressed his diffidence about writing to you (he—"a mere pigmy") even to thank you for your kindnesses to him & to the College. I replied that if he knew you better his diffidence would leave him. For it was the lesson of your personal presence & influence—as well as of L of G.—that he was not a pigmy—& that the gradations of intellect, virtue, station &c are of small account compared with the humanity—& all it holds & implies—that we all share, & the future development that awaits us all.
loc_vm.01942_large.jpgI told him that before all things else you were a man—that this included & was greater than all special merits,—& that therefore all simple human traits, & especially all honest affection & goodwill were welcome to you.
I thank you for my own lesson. I thank you, with a full heart for all your loving kindness—as simple & spontaneous as it was great & true—to me. And, please God, I will try at least to practice & incarnate some of the lessons I have learned.
loc_vm.01943_large.jpg4. 30.
Dr J. did not come but sent a telegram saying that he was detained & will come tomorrow.
I hope that you are having fairly good days and nights. I fear that you will not be able to go out now, though I hope to hear that you were able to avail yourself of the Indian Summer.
I look forward, however, with cheerfulness & hope to the spring & summer. Though you report as time goes on that you occasionally find another peg dropped, loc_vm.01944_large.jpg yet your condition seems to me on the whole to justify hope. You have a good deal of strength & vitality, & I am clear that, barring accidents, you have a fair lease yet.—May your remaining days be as comfortable as may be, and above the low-lying mists of physical weakness & suffering your spiritual skies more radiant & clear.
Love to you, my dearest friend, & best benefactor, from my heart. And may God bless you.
Yours affectionately J. W. Wallace loc_vm.01935_large.jpg loc_jm00274.jpgCorrespondent:
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).