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113. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 249
Oct. 12 [18]75
My dear friend,
I received this morning the 3rd volume of Poe's works, in perfect order, like the others.
You will by this [time] have received my letter about Fairfield's infamous article in Scribner's Monthly for October. My answer to it which was accepted with thanks by the editor of the New York Tribune has not yet appeared, but a postal card just received from him tells me that it has only been delayed for want of room, the paper being just now crowded with political matter. I shall look for it this week. Meantime, I have had two very pleasant notes from Dr. Wm. Hand Browne (it is Dr. Browne, is it not?) in which he says he should like to publish it, in case the Tribune does not. Of this, however, there [page 338:] is now no doubt. I like Dr. Browne very much. A card from Davidson informs me that he shall be in Washington for the winter. Perhaps I have already told you this. I must quote for you what a friend from whom I have not had a line before for more than 13 months says about Fairfield's article:
I began to write to you yesterday about Fairfield's infamous article, begging you to answer it, & am glad that you have done so. I shall look feverishly for your rejoinder. I never so bitterly regretted my absorbing official work as when I read that article & knew that I could not possibly find time to answer it as I longed to. I hope you have not forgotten to counter on him about the lamp & the shadow of the Raven. Poe does not say that the shadow of the bird is actually cast, in fact, upon the floor by the lamplight. The last stanza is conceived rather in the spirit of Keats’ “Eve of St. Agnes,” i.e., there is a transference of the circumstances of the poem, in Keats’ poem into an immeasurable past, in Poe's from a dim past into an eternal present of mournful & never dying remembrance, and out of the circumstances of that past, the poet makes for that undying present, a purely imaginary & magical picture significant of his hopeless sorrow. All this is very evident to me, though I suppose I express it imperfectly; but Fairfield, who, in Shelley's phrase, has about as much imagination as a pintpot, does not even suspect it, & treats as a point of fact what is, in truth, a matter of fantasy. And, then his authorities! — Griswold, Prime, whom Mark Twain flagellates so beautifully in the Innocents Abroad — and Chauncey Burr, to whom Ananias was truthful & Munchausen moderate!(1)
But I wish to send off the article on Poe in Lotus Leaves, & must let Fairfield alone for the present. Bear in mind that Mr. Gill had no authority to publish anything of mine but the letter which I wrote him for that purpose & which is quoted by him on pages 302-303. The letters of Pabodie to Griswold & of Griswold to Pabodie were letters which I entrusted to him at his request that he might the better understand Griswold's perfidy & insolence. Gowans’ description of Poe's domestic life, etc., & the copy of the University letters I gave him to use at his discretion. I exacted from him a promise that he should submit to me, before delivering or printing his lecture on Poe, his MS., that I might make such suggestions or alterations as might seem desirable. I never saw the manuscript & had no idea that he had made copies (garbled copies they were) of the letters which he returned to me.
Certainly if I had seen the MS. or known of his intention to print these letters, I should have prevented their publication. But perhaps it is best that I was not consulted. I endeavored to think so when I saw that he had placed the matter beyond my own control. The most absurdly careless thing in his version was that which he imputes to a “blundering copyist,” i.e., the blunder on p. 301 in which Pabodie says, [page 339:] “Poe intrusted a note to me with a request that I should make oath to it if necessary” instead of “deliver it in person.”
The former would indeed be the request of a man not in his right mind. Again, the note which Gill has appended to my letter on page 302 assumes that the occasion on which I say Poe, “after a night of wild excitement, before reason had fully recovered its throne,” was the “identical one mentioned by Griswold as the occasion of the alleged outrage.” This is entirely a mistake. The occasion to which I alluded in my letter to Gill was the occasion to which Poe alluded in the lines of which you have given a facsimile on a leaf between the 68th & 69th pages of your “Memoir,” lines from his letter of Nov. 24, 1848. I will tell you about this in my next letter & about his visit to Lowell in the autumn of that year. Again, on the last three lines of page 298, Gill commences a very obscure & awkward sentence about certain indecent allusions designed to prejudice Pabodie against Poe & the “Bottling up of unwelcome truths of which Griswold knew the Providence gentleman was aware,” etc. etc.
Now, nine out of ten persons who might attempt to attach any meaning to these sentences would imagine that the indecent allusions applied to me, whereas they were gross insinuations with regard to his relations to his mother-in-law & to assertions which he, Griswold, professed to have found in Poe's letter to his mother (announcing his betrothal to Mrs. Shelton), i.e., that if he married her he must contrive to live near enough to another lady to continue his unlawful liason with her.
Now you will remember that these last letters of his — the only letters in which he had mentioned his intended marriage to Mrs. Clemm, as she assured me, and as was sufficiently evident from the tenor of the letters themselves — were sent to me by Mrs. Clemm when I was writing my monograph on Poe in 1859. Would Mrs. Clemm have placed these letters in my hands, would she have allowed Griswold to see them, if these things had been in them! But I am not dealing with Griswold now.
I pointed out to Mr. Gill the false interpretation to which the sentences on page 298 were liable & he expunged the whole of the matter, which I have erased with blue pencil marks, in his second edition, & inserted the following in their place:
To this insolent & impotent letter which was tesselated with scandalous & irrelevant stories respecting Mr. Poe's relations with some of his most esteemed & valued friends, Mr. Pabodie replied by calmly reiterating his published statement in the New York Tribune & by adducing further proof of Griswold's audacious fabrications. (“Edgar Poe & His Biographer,” p. 298)
But enough for tonight. In a few days I will write to you again. I [page 340:] have been very ill since I last wrote & am only able to say how faithfully I am ever your friend,
S. H. Whitman
Do not say a word about my strictures on Gill. It won’t do to have too many affairs of the kind on my hands at once.
I have said to him what I have said now to you and he seems to take in in good part.
I shall send Gill's Lotus Leaf article by tonight's mail.
S.H.W.
1. This letter was written to Mrs. Whitman by William D. O’Connor of Washington, D.C.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - PHR, 1979] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Helen Remembers (J. C. Miller) (Entry 113)