Just a line or two my dearest friend, my comrade & father, dearest of all to my soul,
to express the triumph & joy & cheer with which I think of you & with which
I receive tidings of you. Outwardly sad enough, but deep within my soul I know that all is well,
& that our last words should be triumph & praise.2
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Day by day I think of you with tenderest sympathy & love. If only I could come for a
moment to your bedside & imprint upon your lips a long & loving kiss. Be it as if
I were with you,3 & here upon the paper I send you one as a
token of my dearest love
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).