Travels in Philadelphia/Anne Gilchrist's House
ANNE GILCHRIST'S HOUSE
The Kensington car that goes northward on Seventh street carries one straightway into a land of adventure. Hardly have you settled in your seat when you see a sign, The Pickwick Cafe, 53 North Seventh street. Admirable name for a chophouse! Glancing about, across the aisle is a lady with one of those curious hats which permit the wearer to scrutinize through the transparent brim while her head is apparently bent demurely downward. The surprising effect of impaling oneself upon so unexpected a gaze is startling. Bashfully one turns elsewhere. On a hoarding stares a theatrical sign: "Did You Tell Your Wife ALL Before Marriage?"
I got off at Master street and walked stolidly west. It is a humble causeway in that region, rich in junk shops and a bit shaky in its spelling. At the corner of Warnock is an impromptu negro church, announcing "Servers every Sunday, 3 p. m." The lithograph which is such a favorite on South street, crops up again: the famous golden-haired lassie with a blue dress, asleep under a red blanket, guarded by a white dog with a noble, steadfast expression. Fawn and Camac streets reappear and afford quiet vistas of red brick with marble trimmings. I believe this is Fawn's first venture north of Bainbridge. As its name implies, a shy, furtive street. One could spend a lively day afoot tracing the skip-stops of these two vagabonds. Camac street has tried to concentrate attention on itself between Walnut and Spruce, calling itself arrogantly the Greatest Little Street in the World. But it leads a multiple life. I have found it popping up around Race street, at Wallace, and even north of that most poetically named of all Philadelphia's thoroughfares, Rising Sun avenue.
The greenery of Ontario Park is likely to lure the wayfarer from Master street for a detour. There is a large public school there, and an exceedingly pretty young teacher in a pink dress and shell spectacles was gravely leading a procession of thirty small urchins for their morning recess in the open air. Two by two, with decent gravity, they crossed the street, and demobilized in the park for hair ribbons, shoe-laces and blouse strings to be retied.
As it approaches Broad street, Master goes steadily up grade, both physically and in the spirit. At the corner of Broad it reaches its grand historic climax in the vast ornate brown pile where Edwin Forrest died in 1872. A tablet says, "This house was the residence of Edwin Forrest, the greatest tragedian of his time." It is interesting to remember (with the aid of an encyclopedia) that one of Forrest's favorite rôles was Spartacus. Until the arrival of Liebknecht he was supreme in that accomplishment.
At the top of the hill, at Fifteenth street, Master street becomes almost suburban and frisky. It abounds in gracious garden vistas, rubber plants and an apartment house of a Spanish tinge of architecture. A patriotic Presbyterian church has turned its front lawn into a potato patch. At 1534 one of the smallest and most delightful black puppies ever seen was tumbling about on a white marble stoop. He was so young that his eyes were still blue and cloudy, but his appeal for a caress was unmistakable. I stopped to pay my respects, but a large Airedale appeared and stood over him with an air of "You haven't been introduced."
A few blocks further on one abuts upon Ridge avenue, the Sam Brown belt of Philadelphia. In its long diagonal course from Ninth and Vine up to Strawberry Mansion, Ridge avenue is full of unceasing life and interest. It and South street are perhaps the two most entertaining of the city's humbler highways. Master street crosses it at a dramatic spot. There is a great cool lumber yard, where the piled-up wood exhales a fragrant breath under the hot sun, and lilac-breasted pigeons flap about among the stained rafters. A few yards away one catches a glimpse of the vast inclosure of Girard College, where the big, silvery-gray parthenon rises austerely above a cloud of foliage.
One aspect of Ridge avenue is plain at a glance. It is the city's stronghold of the horse. You will see more horses there than anywhere else I know (except perhaps down by the docks) . From horse-shoeing forges comes the mellow clang of beaten iron. As the noon whistles blow, scores of horses stand at their wagons along the curb, cheerfully chewing oats, while their drivers are dispatching heavy mugs of "coffee with plenty" in the nearby delicatessens. Ridge avenue conducts a heavy trade in furniture on the pavements. Its favorite tobaccos are of a thundering potency: Blue Hen, Sensation, Polar Bear, Buckingham cut plug. There is a primitive robust quality about its merchandising. "Eat Cornell's Sauer Kraut and Grow Fat," says a legend painted aross the flank of a pickle factory. "Packey McFarland Recommends Make-Man Tablets," is the message of a lively cardboard "cutout" in a druggist's window. Odd little streets run off the avenue at oblique angles: Sharswood, for instance, where two horses stood under the shade of a big tree as in a barnyard picture. On a brick wall on Beechwood street I found the following chalked up:
Clan of the Eagle's Eye
Lone Wolf
Red Hawk
Arrowfire
Red Thunder
Deerfoot
This seemed a pathetic testimony that not even the city streets can quench the Fenimore Cooper tradition among American youth. And, oddly enough, below this roster of braves some learned infant had written in Greek letters, "Harry a dam fool." Evidently some challenge to a rival tribe.
Twenty-second street north of Ridge avenue is a quiet stretch of red brick, with occasional outcroppings of pale yellow-green stone. At the noon hour it is a cascade of children, tumbling out of the Joseph Singerly Public School. Happily for those juveniles, there is one of the best tuck shops in Philadelphia at the corner of Columbia avenue. It is worth a long journey to taste their cinnamon buns. And in the block just behind the school, at 1929 North Twenty-second, there is a little three-story yellow-green house with a large bay window, which gives Whitman lovers a thrill. That little house is associated with one of the most poignant and curious romances in the story of American letters. For it was here that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist and her children came in September, 1876, and lived until the spring of 1878. Mrs. Gilchrist, a noble and talented English woman, whose husband had died in 1861, fell passionately in love with Walt after reading "Leaves of Grass." Her letters to Walt, which were published recently by Thomas Harned, are among the most searchingly beautiful expressions of human attachment. After Whitman's paralytic stroke Anne Gilchrist insisted on coming from London to Philadelphia to be near the poet and help him in any way she could; and to this little house on Twenty-second street Walt used to go day after day to take tea with her and her children. Walt had tried earnestly to dissuade her from coming to America, and his few letters to her seem a curiously enigmatic reply to her devotion. Perhaps, as Mr. Harned implies, his heart was engaged elsewhere. At any rate, his conduct in this delicate affair seems sufficient proof of what has sometimes been doubted, that he was at heart a gentleman—a banal word, but we have no other.
The present occupant of the house is Mrs. Alexander Wellner, who was kind enough to grant me a few minutes' talk. She has lived in the house only a year, and did not know of its Whitman association. The street can hardly have changed much—save for the new public school building—since Centennial days. The gardens behind the houses are a mass of green shrubbery, and in a neighboring yard stands an immense tree in full leaf. Perhaps Walt and his good friends may have sat out there for tea on warm afternoons forty-two years ago. But it seems a long way from Camden!
As I came away, thinking of that romantic and sad episode in the lives of two who were greatly worthy of each other, the corner of my eye was caught by a large poster. In a random flash of vision I misread it in accordance with my thoughts. THE GOOD GRAY POET, it seemed to say. For an instant I accepted this as natural. Then, returning to my senses, I retraced my steps to look at it again. THAT GOOD GULF GASOLINE!