Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 116: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Oct. 25, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 344-350 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 344, continued:]

116. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 252

My dear friend,

Yours of Oct. 11 just received. I am so glad to know that you are well! You may retain the photograph. I shall find the Sept. number of the Dublin University Maga. at the Providence Athenaeum. I think with you that the “Alone” is genuine, the poem, not the handwriting. About Fairfield, I think I told you that he said in his Scribner article that “the facts of Poe's life, so far as they are accessible, have been thoroughly sifted by his biographer, Mr. Griswold, who knew him well, & Mr. Stoddard, who has tried to find the clue to his irregular perversity in the study of his life & works”!! [page 345:]

I cut down the Tribune letter before sending it — having on this last hint commended to him the reading of your “Memoir.” But on due reflexion, I thought it best not to mix your name up in my reply to his infamous twaddle — for it is nothing else.

I think that he will be likely to receive such a “sifting” ere long as he will not readily forget.

In the Tribune of Oct. 18 he attempted an answer in which he very clearly revealed the motives which actuated him.

In the same paper is a critique on Fairfield from Dr. Fred K. Marvin, who endorses my statement about the poems and declares that Poe was in no sense the victim of cerebral epilepsy, and Dr. Marvin is regarded as high authority in nervous diseases.

I sent Fairfield's weak reply & the accompanying article of Dr. Marvin to Dr. Hand Browne last Saturday, requesting him to return them. If I receive them before I post my letter I will enclose them to you.

I think Stoddard will have no reason to be proud of his coadjutor & accomplice, for such he, Fairfield, undoubtedly is.

Have you received the copy of the Lotus Leaf I sent? I shall look anxiously for your paper on Politian.

You ask if I think Gill ever saw Clarke? In the MS. he sent me there was a note from Clarke to somebody, but I do not think Gill spoke as if he knew him. Still I read the MS. so hastily that I cannot be sure. He was anxious to have me return it at once, having sent it that I might see what he wished to print from Poe's letter to me in defence of his integrity, which had been impugned by some of his New York associates. I drew my pencil through some of the personal allusions & expressions & it will be published in his article for Laurel Leaves substantially as it appears in your book. I had given him leave to copy & use at discretion this & another passage from the same letter, which he wished to extract from it, before I knew you.

I hope you will publish a vol. of the poems, & if you could give the order of their publication it would be most valuable & interesting. The letters, or letter, which I received from Mr. Clarke after my interview with him in New York, I sent to a friend in Ohio of whom I have spoken to you, one whose fine intellect & rare genius were afterwards hopelessly clouded by insanity.

I have seen Mrs. E. O. Smith's paper on Poe in Beadle's Monthly, but I have not seen it for years. I considered it of no value & lost it. I cannot have said anything to her against Poe. Can you tell me in what connexion she assumes it to have been said? Does she not in that paper speak of a conversation with Poe about “Helen” & herself, just before he left New York for the last time? I think I told you in speaking of this that she was very imaginative. [page 346:]

I have never been able to find any trace of the Grotesque & Arabesque. I will enquire again of Mr. Harris. He has just returned to the city. A volume of The Gift is in my possession containing the story of “William Wilson,” but the vol. has no date. It was given to me in Sept. 1841. This is the only vol. of that publication that I have ever met with. The only article it contains by Poe is “W.W.”(1)

About Mrs. Richmond & Mrs. Locke. When the article about the illness and destitution of Poe & his wife appeared in the Home Journal, it appears that Mrs. John Locke (Mrs. Jane Ermina Locke), of Lowell, wrote to the family & proffered assistance. She continued to be an occasional correspondent of Poe's until the summer of 1848 when he went to Lowell to deliver his lecture on the female poets of America. Mrs. L[ocke] was a lady of talent but wanting, I fancy, in tact & discretion. She had visited Mrs. Clemm at Fordham in the spring or early summer of the year. She was a lady of benevolent impulses & of an enterprising, active temperament. When Mr. Poe went to Lowell to lecture he was a guest in the family of the Lockes.

Mrs. Annie Richmond (Mrs. Charles Richmond) of Lowell was an intimate companion of Mrs. Locke's. I have never seen Mrs.

Richmond. She was the wife of a manufacturer and, though not herself a lady of literary culture, had an enthusiastic appreciation of it in others. I am giving you Mrs. Locke's estimate of her. Her letters to Mrs. Clemm (sent me, lent me, by that lady to show me the affectionate regard in which she was held by Mrs. R[ichmond]) were creditable to her heart & head. The daughters of General Carpenter of this city were relatives of Mr. Richmond & visited Mrs. R[ichmond] at the time when Mrs. Clemm was staying with her. They mentioned the interview to me to convey to me the affectionate messages sent me by Mrs. Clemm.

When in the autumn of that year Poe visited Lowell he was a guest of the Richmonds. A quarrel, or what the Yankees call an “unpleasantness,” had sprung up between the two ladies, & before he left, open hostility was declared.

And now to return for a moment to Poe's letter of Oct. 18, & his indignant protest against my “cruel words.” Before I had answered this letter, he came to Providence entreating me to forgive his waywardness & his reproaches & to remember only the reasons which he had urged upon me for entrusting to him my future welfare & happiness. Urging me to defer my decision for a week & exacting a promise from me that I would write to him at Lowell, before he returned from there to New York, implying that his return via Providence would depend upon my answer.

I delayed writing from day to day, unwilling to say the word which [page 347:] might separate us forever, & unable to give him the answer which he besought me to accord him. At last I wrote a brief note, which I felt afterwards must have perplexed & agitated him. He wrote by return mail to say that he should be at Providence on the following evening. He did not come, or rather he did not come to see me. He afterwards told me that, agitated by my note, he had taken the cars for Providence via Boston, but had on arriving in Providence taken something at a druggists which bewildered him instead of composing him, that he entered the next train for Boston, & remained there ill & depressed until Monday. On Monday morning he returned to Providence and confessed to me the facts I have told you, reproaching me for so long delaying to send the promised letter, & then sending one so vague & illusive [sic].

Mrs. Locke, with whom, as you will see, I afterwards became acquainted, told me that every day during his visit to Lowell on his return from the post office, he seemed nervous & abstracted, & explained his mood to his friends as having been caused by the non-arrival of an important letter which he was expecting.

On his call at an early hour on Monday morning, I felt quite unable to see him, having passed a restless & troubled night on account of his failure to be in Providence on Saturday evening, as he had purposed. I sent word to him by a servant that I would see him at noon. He replied that he had an engagement & must see me at once. He thereupon asked for paper & wrote the following note which I transcribe for you from the slip of paper on which they were written.

Dearest Helen — I have no engagement but am very ill, so much so that I must go home if possible, but if you say “stay,” I will try to & do so. If you cannot see me, write me one word to say that you do love me and that, under all circumstances, you will be mine.

Remember that these coveted words you have never yet spoken, and, nevertheless, I have not reproached you. If you can see me, even for a few moments, do so, but if not, write or send some message which will comfort me.

I wrote that I would certainly see him at noon. During that & the following day he endeavored with all the eloquence which he could exert with such matchless power to persuade me to marry him at once, and return with him to New York. It was at the end of the second day of his stay in Providence that I showed him some letters of remonstrance received from New York containing the passage quoted in his proud letter of indignant self-defence, cited by you on p. 75 of your “Memoir.” On the arrival of some casual visitors, he rose to take his departure, & I saw by the expression of his countenance as he held [page 348:] my hand for a moment in taking leave of me that something had strangely moved him. I said, “We shall see you this evening?” He only bowed without replying.

That night was the night to which I have alluded as the “Ultima Thule” night — & the morning after it was the morning in which the sombre & tragic portrait was taken, the original of which, or a daguerreotype copy of which, I wish so much to obtain.

In the evening he had sent me a note of renunciation & farewell, saying that if we met again it would be as strangers. The handwriting showed that it was written in a state of great excitement. I have the envelope of the note, with the words written on it by me, “Sent on the evening of Nov. 8th, 1848.” The note itself is lost or has been given away.

I supposed that he had taken the evening train for New York via Stonington, & had passed a night of unspeakable anxiety in thinking what might befall him travelling alone in such a state of mental perturbation & excitement. He did not return to New York, but passed the night at his hotel in a manner to which I alluded in the extract published from my letter in Lotus Leaves.

A Mr. MacFarlane, who had been very kind to Poe during the night & who had become deeply interested in him, persuaded him in the morning to go with him to the office of Masury & Hartshorn to sit for a daguerreotype. Soon after he left the office, he came alone to my mother's house in a state of wild & delirious excitement, calling upon me to save him from some terrible impending doom.

The tones of his voice were appalling & rang through the house. Never have I heard anything so awful, even to sublimity.

It was long before I could nerve myself to see him. My mother was with him more than two hours before I entered the room. He hailed me as an angel sent to save him from perdition. When my mother requested me to have a cup of strong coffee prepared for him, he clung to me so frantically as to tear away a piece of the muslin dress I wore.

In the afternoon he grew more composed, & my mother sent for Dr. A. H. Okie, who, finding symptoms of cerebral congestion, advised his being taken to the house of his friend Wm. J. Pabodie, where he was kindly cared for.

Of course gossip held high carnival over these facts, which were related, doubtless, with every variety of sensational embellishment and illustration. You will see therefore that poor Griswold had ample material to work on; he had only to turn the sympathizing physician into a police officer, & the evening before the betrothal into the evening before the bridal, to make out a plausible story, incidents which after the lapse of two years before he wrote his immortal [page 349:] “Memoir” may have become so mixed up in his mind that he worked them up to suit his motif.

You know already something of what happened in the interval between this never-to-be-forgotten day & the evening when the daguerreotype which adorns your “Memoir” was taken, & the note on board the Long Island Sound steamer was written.

To return to Mrs. Locke. In the spring of 1849 I received many notes from that lady expressive of an earnest desire to make my acquaintance & proffering urgent invitations that I should visit her in Lowell. I promised to spend a few days with her, May fixing the probable date of my visit. While there, I began to suspect that she had hoped to pique the Raven by exhibiting me as her guest, or possibly bring about a reconciliation with him, through my intervention. At all events, she told me as an inducement for me to prolong my stay a day or two after the time fixed for my departure, that she had taken care he should hear of my visit, & she had reason to think he would be in Lowell during the time fixed for my stay. My heart thrilled at the thought of seeing him again, but I could not accede to her request. We crossed each other on the road! I did not know it until a letter from Mrs. L[ocke] informed me of the fact; but if you were not such a sceptic as to spiritual or magnetic phenomena, I could tell you of a strange experience which happened to me as the two trains rushed past each other between Boston & Lowell.

But I must bring this long letter to a close, if I would have it ready for tomorrow's steamer.

You did not answer my question about Mary Star. Who is Didier?

I have so much to say & ask, & now can only say may heaven bless & keep you.

Your faithful friend,

I have read the Dublin University [Magazine] article. It is fine.(2)

A copy of the New York Herald just received contains an interesting letter from Dr. Moran, who was at the head of the institution where Poe died. It contains an account of his last hours, which if not literally correct, is doubtless the best to be had at this late date. But why did it not come before? I will try to get a copy for you & send by tonight's mail.(3)

 

1. See p. 125, n. 4.

2. James Purves, “Edgar Allan Poe's Works,” Dublin University Magazine, 86 (Sept. 1875), 296-306. This article deals with Poe's prose only.

3. Dr. J. J. Moran's account of Poe's last sickness and death is combined with an article [page 350:] on the history of the attempts to erect a monument over his remains; it appeared in the New York Herald, Thursday, Oct. 28, 1875. Item 625 in the Ingram Poe Collection.