The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

Undoubtedly Mrs. Gilchrists Estimate of Walt Whitman, published in the (Boston) Radical in May, 1870, was the finest, as it was the first, public tribute ever paid to the poet by a woman. Whitman himself so considered itthe proudest word that ever came to me from a womanif not the proudest word of all from any source. But a finer tribute was to follow, in the sacred privacy of the love-letters which are now made public forty years and more after they were written. The purpose of this Introduction is not to interpret those letters, but to sketch the story in the light of which they are to be read. And since both Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman have had sympathetic and painstaking biographers, it will not be necessary here to mention at length the already known facts of their respective lives. The story naturally begins with Whitman. He was born at West Hills, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His father was of English descent, and came of a family of sailors and farmers. His mother, to whom he himself attributed most of his personal qualities, was of excellent Hollandic stock. Moving to Brooklyn while still in frocks, he there passed his boyhood and youth, but took many summer trips to visit relatives in the country. He early left the public[Pg xxiv] school for the printing offices of local newspapers, picking enough general knowledge to enable him, when about seventeen years of age, to teach schools in the rural districts of his native island. Very early in life he became a writer, chiefly of short prose tales and essays, which were accepted by the best New York magazines. His literary and journalistic work was not confined to the metropolis, but took him, for a few months in 1848, so far away from home as New Orleans. In 1851-54, besides writing for and editing newspapers, he was engaged in housebuilding, the trade of his father. Although this was, it is said, a profitable business, he gave it up to write poetry, and issued his first volume, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. The book had been written with great pains, according to a preconceived plan of the author to be stated in the preface; and it was finally set up (by his own hands, for want of a publisher) only, as he tells us, after many doings and undoings, leaving out the stock poetical touches. Its publication was the occasion of probably the most voluminous controversy of American lettersmostly abuse, ridicule, and condemnation. In 1862 Whitmans brother George, who had volunteered in the Union Army, was reported badly wounded in the Fredericksburg fight. Walt, going at once to the war front in Virginia, found that his brothers wound was not serious enough to require his ministrations, but gradually he became engaged in nursing other wounded soldiers, until this work, as a volunteer hospital missionary in Washington, engrossed the major part of his time. This continued until[Pg xxv] and for some years after the end of the war. Whitmans own needs were supplied by occasional literary work and from his earnings as a clerk first in the Interior and later in the Attorney Generals Department. He had gone to Washington a man of strong and majestic physique, but his untiring devotion, fidelity, and vigilance in nursing the sick and wounded soldiers in the army hospitals in and about Washington was soon to shatter that constitution which was ever a marvel to its possessor, and to condemn him to pass the last two decades of his life in unaccustomed invalidism. The history of the Civil War in America presents no instance of nobler fulfilment of duty or of sublimer sacrifice. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 35395
Author: Gilchrist, Anne (Anne Burrows)
Release Date: Feb 24, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
Editor: Harned, Thomas Biggs, 1851-1921