Text: Eugene L. Didier, “Poe and Mrs. Whitman,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 117-122

[page 117:]

Burns’ Highland Mary, Petrarch's Laura, and other real and imaginary loves of the poets, have been immortalized in song, but we doubt whether any of the numerous objects of poetical adoration were more worthy of honor than Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the friend and defender of Edgar A. Poe. That he should have inspired so deep and lasting a love in the heart of so true and pure a woman would alone prove that he was not the social pariah his vindictive enemies have held up to the world's wonder and detestation. The poet's love for Mrs. Whitman was the one gleam of hope that cheered the last sad years of his life. His letters to her breathed the most passionate devotion and the most enthusiastic admiration. One eloquent extract from his love letters to Mrs. Whitman will suffice. In response to a passage in one of her letters in which she says, “How often have I heard men, and even women, say of you, ‘He has great intellectual power, but no principle, no moral [page 118:] sense!’ He exclaims, ‘I love you too truly ever to have offered you my hand, even to have sought your love, had I known my name to be so stained as your expressions imply. There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you. By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek or to yours.’ ”

Why the engagement was broken, and by whom, still remains buried in mystery, but that Poe was guilty of any “outrage” at her house upon the eve of their intended marriage was emphatically denied by Mrs. Whitman. She pronounced the whole story a “calumny.” In a letter before me she says: “I do not think it possible to overstate the gentlemanly reticence and amenity of his habitual manner. It was stamped through and through with the impress of nobility and gentleness. I have seen him in many moods and phases in those ‘lonesome latter years’ which were rapidly merging into the mournful tragedy of death. I have seen him sullen and moody under a sense of insult and imaginary wrong. I have never seen in him the faintest indication of savagery and rowdyism and brutality.” [page 119:]

Some of the most tenderly passionate of Mrs. Whitman's verses were inspired by her affection for Poe. She wrote six sonnets to his memory, overflowing with the most exalted love and generous sympathy. The first of these sonnets ends thus:

In one of Mrs. Whitman's letters, now lying before me, she says: “So much has been written, and so much still continues to be written, about Poe by persons who are either his avowed or secret enemies, that I joyfully welcome every friendly or impartial word spoken in his behalf. His enemies are uttering their venomous fabrications in every newspaper, and so few voices can obtain a hearing in his defense. My own personal knowledge of Mr. Poe was very brief, although it comprehended memorable incidents, and was doubtless, as he kindly characterized it in one of his letters of the period, ‘the most earnest epoch of his life;’ and such I believe it to have been. You ask me to furnish you with extracts from his letters, literary or otherwise. There are imperative reasons why these letters cannot and ought not be published at present — not that [page 120:] there was a word or a thought in them discreditable to Poe, though some of them were imprudent, doubtless, and liable to be construed wrongly by his enemies. They are for the most part strictly personal. The only extract from them of which I have authorized the publication is a fac simile of a paragraph inserted between the 68th and 69th pages of Mr. Ingram's memoir in Black's (Edinburgh) edition of the complete works of Poe. The paragraph in the original letter (dated Nov. 24, 1848) consists of only eight lines: ‘The agony which I have so lately endured — an agony known only to my God and myself — seems to have passed my soul through fire, and purified it from all that is weak. Henceforward I am strong: this those who love me shall see, as well as those who have relentlessly endeavored to ruin me. It only needed some such trials as I have just undergone to make me what I was born to be by making me conscious of my own strength.’ This was a protest against the charges of indifference to moral obligations so often urged against him, which I permitted Mr. Gill to extract for publication from a long letter filled with eloquent and proud remonstrance against the injustice of such a charge, are the only passages of which I have authorized the publication. [page 121:]

Other letters have been published without my consent. I have endeavored to reconcile myself to the unauthorized use of private letters and papers, since the effect of their publication has been on the whole regarded as favorable to Poe.”

It was Mrs. Whitman who first attempted to trace Edgar Poe's descent from the old Norman family of Le Poer, which emigrated to Ireland during the reign of Henry II. of England. Lady Blessington, through her father, Edmund Power, claimed the same illustrious descent. The Le Poers were distinguished for being improvident, daring and reckless. The family originally belonged to Italy, whence they passed to the north of France, and went to England with William the Conqueror.

When Stephané Mallarmé, an enthusiastic admirer of Poe, undertook to translate his works into French, he addressed Mrs. Whitman in a complimentary letter, from which the following passages are translated: “Whatever is done to honor the memory of a genius, the most truly divine the world has seen, ought it not first to obtain your sanction? Such of Poe's works as our great Beaudelaire left untranslated — that is to say, the poem and many of the literary criticisms — I hope to make known to France. My first [page 122:] attempt, ‘Le Corbeau,’ of which I send you a specimen, is intended to attract attention to a future work now nearly completed. I trust that the attempt will meet your approval, but no possible success of my future design could cause you, Madam, a satisfaction equal to the joy, vivid, profound and absolute, caused by an extract from one of your letters in which you expressed a wish to see a copy of my ‘Corbeau.’ Not only in space — which is nothing — but in time, made up for each of us of the hours we deem most memorable in the past, your wish seemed to come to me from so far, and to bring with it the most delicious return of long cherished memories; for, fascinated with the works of Poe from my infancy, it has been a long time that your name has been associated with his in my earliest and most intimate sympathies. Receive, Madam, this expression of gratitude such as your poetical soul may comprehend, for it is my inmost heart that thanks you.”