Horace's2 last letter (February 25th) is the most hopeful & cheering letter we have received since last December. We eagerly await the next mail. But whatever news it brings—better or worse, joyful or sad—our dearest love & our heart's best wishes go out to you continually.3
An exquisitely beautiful moonlight night outside. I am anxious to get out into it, & to walk briskly along the country lanes & field paths.—I shall think of you all the time, & shall believe—in presence of the inexpressibly beautiful night, solemn & tender—that all is well with you in life or in death & that infinite love is about you in all.
Our love to you always. How deep & tender I cannot say. God bless you
Your loving WallaceCorrespondent:
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).