The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William Ingram, 8 September 1885
Date: September 8, 1885
Whitman Archive ID: loc.06098
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:319. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Stefan Schöberlein, and Kyle Barton
Camden New Jersey1
Sept. 8 noon2
Thanks, my friend, for your kind invitation—but am not able to accept at present—Will call soon at the store—
Walt Whitman
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.
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Wm Ingram | 31 North Second Street | Philadelphia. It is postmarked: Philadelphia | Pa | Sep 8 85 | 1 PM. [back]
2. The postmark establishes the date. Whitman was "unwell" from July 20 to September 3, 1885 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]