Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 102: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, June 25, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 310-312 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 310, continued:]

102. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 234

My dear Don Felix,

I find in my writing desk a fragment of a letter — two pages & a half — which I wrote on the very day, June 13th, when I received your letter telling me of your interview with the Cleavelands, the letter in which you intimated that you had sent me a rose for my violet! I was too unwell to finish it, & must write now the briefest of acknowledgments. I did not see dear Rose till yesterday. She came to me for a bright, brief half hour, with her sister Kate. She told me of her ride with you in the “handsome” from depot to depot, and evidently likes you, but you must remember that she is only an “American,” after all — a good specimen of a bad lot, as you & Swinburne have [page 311:] pronounced us to be. For my own part, I doubt if any distinctive characteristics can properly be ascribed to us. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, & Italians have undoubtedly distinctive national characteristics, but as for Americans, we are too many, too large a lot, to be judged by a few specimen bricks. I have emphatically no national prejudices or prepossessions, but I believe that nations & empires, races & republics move, and I as devoutly believe that their “march” is “westward.”

Rose tells me that you are coming in the fall. I hope you will like us. I know we shall like you.

I send you a cutting from a recent Richmond paper which seems to settle the question about Poe's prowess as a swimmer. Parton, in a sketch in the New York Ledger six or seven years ago, in which he repeated the old stories of expulsion from the University, etc., assumed to deny the story of Poe's swimming seven miles under the circumstances recorded, as an impossible feat.(1) Be careful of the fragment, as it might be difficult to replace it. Mr. Harris sent it to me last evening. You ask me if he expects you to answer his letter. I understood him to say that you had answered it some weeks ago. You asked for a copy of a letter in which Poe spoke of the great things he could yet accomplish in literature under more favorable circumstances. You say it would be “of great use to you.” I think you misapprehend its character. It indicates rather an exultant mood of mind, rather than any definite plan or purpose.(2) I would send you the letter if I dared to trust it to our treacherous steamboat navigation. I will copy for you the portion referring to this subject on an enclosed sheet. You will see that it will not do for publication. Am I not right? What think you? As an indication of his mental moods, his remorse, his sorrow, his proud exultant sense of power, it is full of profound significance & strange interest, & yet I shrink from the publication of that which so nearly touches my own inmost life.

I must mail this word of acknowledgment for your long & interesting letter tonight. Will try to write again soon.

With sincerest faith & friendship in you, my dear Don Felix, I am ever & ever your friend,

[Fragment:] Mrs. Locke has been dead many years, fortunately, perhaps, for you, for she might probably have involved you in a “coil” like that which the ladies H[oughton] & L[ewis] seem to be weaving for you. You may have divined something of this from one of Mrs. Clemm's letters addressed to me from Lowell. I do not know Mrs. Richmond. When Poe was lecturing in Lowell in the summer of 1848, he was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. John Locke. Mrs. L[ocke] introduced [page 312:] him to Mrs. R[ichmond], and the two ladies apparently vied with each other in attentions to their brilliant

[Fragment:] of her arrival. Received last week a copy of the Southern Magazine for June with a notice of your “Memoir.” Good! I perceive the writer feels as I do, however, about certain portions of Mrs. N[ichol]s’ account as being “too painful for publication.” I felt it so when I read it years ago in some paper — perhaps the Home Journal. You say Mrs. Botta remains silent. Mrs. Botta is eminently practical, very enterprising, engrossed with the urgent cares and responsibilities of her active and busy life, very prudent, circumspect & cautious. Whatever she might say would be strictly true, but if

 

1. James Parton (1822-1891), a biographer and miscellaneous writer, was a steady contributor to Robert Bonner's New York Ledger.

2. This was almost certainly Poe's letter to Mrs. Whitman, dated Oct. 18, 1848. See Ostrom, II, 396. As was her custom, Mrs. Whitman had copied only a portion of the letter previously for Ingram; she never did copy an entire letter for anyone.