LETTER LXX

ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN

Keats Corner

Aug. 5, ’84.

Dearest Friend:

The notion [that] one is going to write a nice long letter is fatal to writing at all. And so I mean to scribble something, somehow, a little oftener & make up in quantity for quality! For after all the great thing, the thing one wants, is to meet—if not in the flesh—then in the spirit. A word will do it. I am getting on—my heart is in my work—&though I have been long about it, it won’t be long—but I think & hope it will be strong. Quite a sprinkling of American friends—some new ones this spring—among them Mr. & Mrs. Pennell41 from Philadelphia—whom you know—we like them well—hope to see them again & again. Also Miss Keyse (her sister married Emerson’s son) from Concord, and the Lesleys—Mary Lesley has married & gone to the West—St. Paul—has just got a little son.

How does the “little shanty” answer, I wonder? Herby has been painting some charming little bits in an old terraced garden here. I do wish you could hear Giddy sing now; I am sure her voice would “go to the right spot,” as you used to say. Good-bye, dearest friend. Love from all & most from

Anne Gilchrist.

41 Artists, famous for their etchings. Mr. Pennell made several etchings for Dr. Bucke’s biography of Whitman.