Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 122: John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman, Nov. 18, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 364-366 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 364, continued:]

122. John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman

My dear Providence,

I am so glad to get your letters, especially when they are so full of the old esprit as this one [Nov. 1] is, although you tell me in it that your heart is [illegible] elsewhere. And the tale “begun & broke off in the middle!”(1) Well, I have written to your Rose & sent her a copy of my phiz for herself, to criticise & hypercriticise to her heart's content. I suppose she is now en route for the Old World.

And now to the business of your letter. I shall certainly send the P.S. to Mallarmé & strongly urge the sending of Le Corbeau — in fact, did that when giving your address — but he is forgetful, or lazy, & the P.S. will arouse him. Do not be disappointed with the illustrations. Manet [page 365:] carries the weird to its very uttermost verge — is sometimes in danger of overstepping the one step from the sublime. In the last stanza, for instance, he seems to have taken Poe's allegory for a literal fact, to fancy the material nature absorbed by “the shadow which lies floating on the floor.” The complete translation of the poems & select “Marginalia” is, I fear, far from ready. I should be glad to hear of its being in printer's hands. The “Memoir,” I suppose, will be founded on my data. Preface will quote some lines of Swinburne's referring to me. I will try & send them in my next. I wish Browne would do something new about Eureka — he is capable & Poe's admirers generally are not. The world that cares [illegible].

[If] Dr. Buchanan has not replied when your next arrives, I will send him a few polite lines, having your permission. Secretary of Monumental Committee (which I fancy is “much cry & little wool” & intended for the advertisement of Mr. Child & the glorification of some nobodies) has sent to ask me to give them “some expression of admiration” to be read at the ceremony.(2) Reply had to go at once. I was very busy & bothered & though I replied politely, yet, I fear, my answer was too curt.(3) Can’t be helped. Thanks for the N.Y. Herald. I have already given you my views about that. Gill will, doubtless, find prudence in dealing with me necessary. If he keeps to his present track & does not make public or printed allusions to me, I shall leave him alone. Does he give full account of the West Point Court Martial, or anything more than Gibson's paper in Harper's about “Poe at West Point”? Which latter Stoddard so misquoted. Do ask him (Gill) why he does not speak of Poe's adventures in Europe.

Gill claims to have first draft of “The Bells” — he doubtless has Sartain's copy, from which Stoddard took his, but I have the veritable first. I have in a former letter described to you how “The Bells” was composed, have I not? & why Poe put the name of M. L. Shew to it? I am going to give full account to Appleton's London correspondent & will see you get early copy. All is vrai, & I have the poem in Poe's own MS. I cannot fix the date at this moment but will try & do my best to. It was not — as I received it, to pass in public as Mrs. Shew's, but only playfully ascribed to her by Poe, as she suggested the theme. Mrs. H[oughton] emphatically declares — what is evident — that she is not literary, but loved Poe for his nobleness & gentleness. She has not read his works! I love her only second to yourself. There is only one point you ask about that I cannot answer, save by word of mouth — viz., that Mrs. S[hew], when she gave the 25 dollars for “The Beautiful Physician,” was just going to he married. I have, I believe, an explanation, but that may not be right & she may have had a lengthy engagement with Dr. Houghton — but I believe in my own views. Latterly, in 1849, I do not think Poe did see much of Mrs. H[oughton], [page 366:] I fancy, for the reason the poem was suppressed, his intercourse was objected to. All is capable of explanation when we meet. Mrs. H[oughton] (who may not recollect these matters so precisely as you do, & she says she has forgotten so much which even these old letters &c. recall) probably deems Griswold omitted the lines from the poem to her out of spite, whereas, I fancy, Poe did it from prudence — after the publication of the lines “To M.L.S.” had caused comment. Is not that vraisemblable? Mrs. L[ewis] knows nothing & is more imaginative than Mrs. E[lizabeth] O[akes] Smith.

But now a short goodbye. All will be clear & coherent in the “Memoir,” so pray that for its completion may live [illegible]

 

1. The bottom third of pages 1 and 2 of this holograph have been cut off; the last three lines of pages 4 and 5 have crumbled.

2. George William Childs (1829-1894) was a wealthy Philadelphia publisher and philanthropist. It was he who had contributed the last $650 needed before the contract for the planned monument could be let.

3. Ingram's reply to Miss Sara Sigourney Rice, Baltimore schoolteacher and moving spirit behind the erection of the monument to Poe, was printed in the book she edited about the services held at the unveiling of the monument over Poe's remains on Nov. 17, 1875, Edgar Allan Poe, a Memorial Volume (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1877), p. 89: “I thank you and your Committee for the honor they do me in inviting any expression of my opinion with respect to the object of their labours, but during the last few years my views respecting Edgar Allan Poe have been so frequently brought before the public that I fear a repetition of them upon the present occasion is scarcely likely to prove interesting. I have little faith in ‘heaps of stone’ as memorials of the great, but must confess that a public expression of admiration for an illustrious son whose memory has been so long overclouded by unmerited obloquy does seem fitting on the part of America.”