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 loc_gt.00176.jpg one of them is Julian Hawthorne's2 daughter—
The March number3 is to be a great one—Whitman-galore—
Yours Truly J.M. StoddartPerhaps 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).