Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 115: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Oct. 22, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 342-344 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 342, continued:]

115. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 251

My dear friend,

I sent you with my last letter of Oct. 12 a copy of Gill's article on Poe in the first edition of Lotus Leaves. I hope it arrived safely. He is now it seems preparing to publish a companion vol. for Christmas to be called Laurel Leaves.

Yesterday he sent me the MS. of another article on Poe which he proposes to contribute to it. I had not heard a word from him before, [page 343:] since he sent me a copy of the last issue of Lotus Leaves in March or April, I think. His new article is entitled “Some New Facts about Edgar Allan Poe.” In it he tells the story of his career at West Point rather more fully than I have elsewhere seen it told, & he also gives an interesting account received from Sartain, the Philadelphia publisher, of Poe's state of mind while in that city for the last time — the story of a night passed with him in wandering about the city, when he had found a refuge in the home of the publisher. It is interesting & well told. I think he has seen your book. He publishes all that I gave him before you knew me about the University, Mr. Gowans’ account, etc., and publishes the extract which you published from Poe's letter to me of Oct. 18th, defending himself from the charge of want of principle & moral sense. He also publishes another brief extract from the same letter in which Poe speaks of an ideal home to which he had looked forward in his union with me.(1)

When Mr. Gill visited me in Sept. or Oct. 1873, he expressed a wish to copy these passages for publication, & I consented that he should do so. He did not use them, however, at that time, or in his Lotus Leaves, probably because he had learned or suspected before he prepared his article last fall that your book was to contain a copy or extracts from the same letter. So he copied other papers, which he had no permission to copy, & whose publication I regretted at that time, but to which I was finally reconciled.

In replying to his letter I alluded to a passage in his MS. in which he says, “I have now before me a portrait of Poe, a full-face photograph taken a year before his death.” From his description of the portrait I think it must be the one in your book. I told him so in my letter, written in reply to his of yesterday. I am anxious to hear his answer.

I send a copy of my Tribune letter about Fairfield's “Mad Man.”(2) It has been endorsed, or rather followed up, by two eminent physicians, Dr. A. H. Okie of Providence & Dr. Fred K. Marvin of New York.(3) The last is regarded as an expert in nervous diseases & has a high reputation.(4) Fairfield replied to my article in the Tribune of Monday, Oct. 18th. His article was an insincere attempt to evade the true issue by raising irrelevant questions.

The New York Evening Post came out the day but one after my article appeared with words to this effect:

Mr. Francis Gerry Fairfield having demonstrated to his own satisfaction that it was epilepsy that ailed Poe when he wrote “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” & “Ulalume,” some of poet's friends manifest a disposition to inquire what it is that ails Mr. Fairfield. There can be little doubt that the mental condition of the poet was never of a prosaically sane sort. He was not at all the kind of person one would think of consulting as to contemplated purchases of real estate. He was manifestly not made for a bank president. ... Yet if Poe was a [page 344:] madman, his insanity was of a kind which might be cultivated to advantage by a good many distressingly sane poets of the day.

All the books have arrived in good order. I am delighted. By the way, Fairfield shows his cards very transparently. He admits that he once had the Poe fever. During the attack, he sent an article to the present conductor of Scribner's Monthly, who sent it back with the word, “Only one man ever wrote like that & he was mad.” Whereupon Fairfield appears to have written another article upon that hint, to suit the market.

Have you heard from Dr. Holland in reply to your article about the Scribner facsimile poem?

I must conclude this hurried letter if I would send it off by tonight's mail. I am looking anxiously for another letter from you. I long to hear about the Politian article. Is there an agency for the New London Magazine in America?

With heartfelt wishes for your health & happiness, I am ever your friend,

Will write again in a few days about what I promised in my last.

 

1. This article appeared in Gill's book Laurel Leaves (Boston: William F. Gill & Co., 1876), pp. 359-88.

2. Mrs. Whitman's letter appeared in the New York Tribune, Oct. 13, 1875. In it she used the sharpest words she ever employed in an article or letter to be seen by the public.

3. For Okie's and Marvin's support of Mrs. Whitman against Fairfield, see Items 620 and 622 in the Ingram Poe Collection.

4. Fairfield's letter in reply, in which he repents his former admiration of Poe, was printed in the New York Tribune, Oct. 18, 1875. See Item 621 in the Ingram Poe Collection.