The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Joseph M. Stoddart to Walt Whitman, 13 January 1891
Date: January 13, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04677
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 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.
Editorial note: The annotation, "ans'd | told them | to come," is in the hand of Walt Whitman.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, Alex Ashland, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Lippincott's
Monthly Magazine
Philadelphia,
Jany 13 1891
Dear Mr. Whitman
I am coming over on Thursday about noon or say one o'clock p.m. with the proofs &c.— & I am going, unless you stop me, to bring with me several young ladies and Francis Wilson (the actor)1 who is much anxious to meet you—
Will it be all right?—
The young girls are beautiful one of them is Julian Hawthorne's2 daughter—
The March number3 is to be a great one—Whitman-galore—
Yours Truly
J.M. Stoddart
Perhaps DuChaillu4 will be in the party—Do you know him?—
Correspondent:
Joseph Marshall Stoddart
(1845–1921) published Stoddart's Encyclopaedia
America, established Stoddart's Review in 1880,
which was merged with The American in 1882, and became
the editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1886. On
January 11, 1882, Whitman received an
invitation from Stoddart through J. E. Wainer, one of his associates, to dine
with Oscar Wilde on January 14 (Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931],
235n).
Notes:
1. Francis Wilson (1854–1935) was an actor, playwright, and memoirist. He would go on to become the founding president of Actor's Equity. [back]
2. Julian Hawthorne (1846–1934), an American critic and journalist, was the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody. He was a prolific writer in his own right, and he publicly frowned upon Whitman and his writings. [back]
3. In March 1891, Lippincott's Magazine published "Old Age Echoes," a cycle of four poems including "Sounds of the Winter," "The Unexpress'd," "Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht," and "After the Argument," accompanied by an extensive autobiographical note called "Some Personal and Old-Age Memoranda." Also appearing in that issue was a piece on Whitman entitled, "Walt Whitman: Poet and Philosopher and Man" by Horace Traubel. [back]
4. Paul Belloni du Chaillu (1831–1903) was a French-American explorer, anthropologist, and zoologist. [back]