The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: William Ingram to Walt Whitman, 24 December 1890
Date: December 24, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: aas.00025
Source: Bolton-Stanwood Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Related item: Whitman drew a line in ink through this letter. On the back, he wrote draft of his poem, "Ship Ahoy!," which is signed and dated "Jan. 2 1891."
Contributors to digital file: Andrew David King, Cristin Noonan, and Stephanie Blalock
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William S. Ingram,
DEALER IN
TEA, COFFEE, SUGAR AND SPICES.
31 N. SECOND STREET.
(Opposite Christ Church.)
Phila., Pa.,
12 mo 24 1890
Walt Whitman.
Dear Friend:
I send you over to-day Tea, Coffee Spices and a bottle of wine as a Christmas Present.
Hoping you will have a pleasant one and many of them
I remain
your friend,
Wm Ingram
per W S.I.
Correspondent:
William Ingram, a Quaker, kept a tea
store—William Ingram and Son Tea Dealers—in Philadelphia. Of Ingram,
Whitman observed to Horace Traubel: "He is a man of the Thomas Paine
stripe—full of benevolent impulses, of radicalism, of the desire to
alleviate the sufferings of the world—especially the sufferings of
prisoners in jails, who are his protégés" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, May 20, 1888). Ingram and his wife visited the physician
Richard Maurice Bucke and his family in Canada in 1890.