: The Ancient Stone Implements Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain Second Edition Revised by Evans John - Great Britain Antiquities; Stone age Great Britain

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PREFACE xix

INTRODUCTION xxi

A WOMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WALT WHITMAN 3

A CONFESSION OF FAITH 23

LETTER

FACING PAGE

Anne Gilchrist 54

Facsimile of a typical Whitman letter 94

PREFACE Probably there are few who to-day question the propriety of publishing the love-letters of eminent persons a generation after the deaths of both parties to the correspondence. When one recalls the published love-letters of Abelard, of Dorothy Osborne, of Lady Hamilton, of Mary Wollstonecraft, of Margaret Fuller, of George Sand, Bismarck, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, and--to mention only one more illustrious example--of the Brownings, one must needs look upon this form of presenting biographical material as a well-established, if not a valuable, convention of letters.

It is a matter of regret that so few of Whitman's letters to Mrs. Gilchrist are available. Those included in this volume, sometimes in fragmentary form, have been taken from loose copies found among his papers after his death, or, in a few instances, are reprinted from Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist's "Anne Gilchrist" or Horace Traubel's "With Walt Whitman in Camden." Acknowledgment of these latter is made in each instance. But though Whitman's letters printed in this correspondence will not compare with Mrs. Gilchrist's in point of number, enough are presented to suggest the tenor of them all.

As a matter of fact, the first love-letter from Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman was in the form of an essay written in his defense called "An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman." For that reason this well-known essay is reprinted in this volume; and "A Confession of Faith," in reality an amplification of the "Estimate" written several years after the publication of the latter, is included. The reader who desires to follow the story of this friendship in a chronological order will do well to read at least the former of these tributes before beginning the letters. Indebtedness is acknowledged to Prof. Emory Halloway of Brooklyn, New York, for valuable suggestions.

T. B. H.

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