Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 111: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Oct. 5, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 333-335 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 333:]

111. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 248

My dear Friend,

The books have arrived safely. The 2nd volume came this morning. Receive my grateful acknowledgements. I sent the item about the “Corbeau” etc. to Mr. Browne, with a note referring him to Fairfield's “Mad Man,” etc, etc. Also commending to him the article in the British Quarterly. By return mail I received a very cordial & kind note from him. He thinks all Americans owe you a debt of gratitude for the disinterested zeal you have shown in clearing the memory of Poe from the “fiendish malice” with which Griswold & his followers have sought to blast the memory of their too illustrious countryman.

Of the Scribner article he says, “It scarcely deserves a reply. The writer's evident ignorance & folly put him outside the pale of those who are entitled to hearing & reply.” My commentary on the article is still held back, though a polite note from Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York Tribune, assures me that it is soon to appear. It ought to be out in today's Tribune, which I shall have this evening. If it is I will enclose a copy of the article.

I have been looking over some of your letters. In one of March 14, [18]75, you say, speaking of intelligence received from Mrs. Houghton, “Poe's first love was named Mary Star; she was very kind to Poe during his wife's illness; she is supposed to be still alive & married.” Have you any further light on this matter? Don’t fear to trust me with any private matters in relation to Poe's history. I am as loyal to you, as mindful of your interest in all that appertains to this subject, as I have been loyal to him & mindful of his reputation.

About the “Lines to M.L.S.” In the published copy, Poe writes, “With thy dear name as text / Though bidden by thee, I cannot write.” Now was not this the poem for which Mrs. H[oughton] paid him the 25 dollars? She had furnished the death shroud for Mrs. Poe. After the wife's death, she attended the husband through a dangerous illness. May not her patient, filled with grateful devotion & passionate admiration for his beloved physician, have said to her, “How shall I ever repay you for your kindness to Virginia & me?” And may not Mrs. H[oughton], then Mrs. S[hew], have replied, “Write me a poem.” I cannot conceive her to have said to him, “Write a poem to me & I will pay you 25 dollars for it.”

Undoubtedly Poe made the alterations which appear in the published copy. The metaphor involved in the lines “Merged forevermore / Beneath the palpitating tide of passion / Heaped o’er my soul by thee” is forced & somewhat awkward, and in preparing his poems for publication, he may have omitted the four preceding lines to avoid it. Is the New London Magazine taken here, I wonder? [page 334:]

When your article on the scenes in Politian appears, let me know. Is the New Eclectic an English publication? Mr. Browne, in his letter to me, speaks of an article of his in the New Eclectic in 1868 or ‘69 in which he attempted to do some slight justice to the scientific side of Poe's genius.(1) He promised to send me a copy. Perhaps the New Eclectic is only the Eclectic that I already know so well, probably it is. If so, I can find it in our bookstore.

Among the magazine notices which occupied two or three columns of the Tribune on the 28th of September was the enclosed notice of Fairfield's book. And on the 2nd of October, the sonnets. The animus is so palpable that I am less surprised at the delay of my article than that the ed[itor] should have accepted it with thanks.

Stoddard evidently has a purchase on the proprietors. I, too, am glad to know that Stoddard was the author of those articles in the Round Table. Mr. Eveleth wrote me in 1867, I think, that he had replied to one of those anonymous attacks, but his reply never appeared.

I had a postal card from Davidson this morning. It contains only these words, the first received from him for months — “New address, here for the winter. Health good. Greetings. Best wishes. Sincerely always, Jas. Wood Davidson, 819 21st St. N.W., Washington, D.C.”

I have written so many letters within the last 24 hours, not all such scratchy scrawls as I favor you with, that I must stop for today. Lotus Leaves and other matters next time, certainly.

The Northern Monthly writer, you say, is now revealed as T. C. Clarke!

You say that Widdleton has expressed his willingness to preface his next edition of the poems with your “Memoir.” Can you prevail upon him to give you the name of the author of the first “Original Memoir” prefixed to the 1858 illustrated edition of the poems, & afterwards to the small Blue & Gold edition, both published by J. S. Redfield? This was the “Memoir” which claimed that “Annabel Lee” was addressed to the New England lady whose home Poe had desecrated by his brutal orgies. When Stoddard was in correspondence with me about his article in Harper's, I asked the question of him, the question as to the authorship of the article, but in his next letter he either forgot or intentionally omitted to reply to it. You who can find out everything, perhaps can find out this.

And now with heartfelt gratitude to you and with fervent hope & faith in your power to fight the dragons of envy, malice, & all uncharitableness, I am your friend,

Dr. Porteus, who you may remember lectured on Poe to raise money [page 335:] in behalf of his sister, was drowned on his return from a boating excursion from Sea Cliff near Brooklyn to Glen Cove, under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

Don’t forget about Mary Star.

 

1. William Hand Browne had written in the New Eclectic Magazine, 5 (Aug. 1869), 190-99, that Eureka was “a prose poem and one of the boldest speculations conceived by the brain of man.”