Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 127: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Dec. 7, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 373-374 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 373, continued:]

127. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 270

My dear MacRaven,

Since I wrote to you Nov. 30, I have received two brief but most interesting notes from you, & today came the London [Quarterly] with your valuable paper on Politian. The facsimile is unquestionably a genuine reproduction, & having been, as, it would appear;. written nearer the assumed date of the Scribner poem than anything else yet presented as a specimen of Poe's writing, a careful examination of the two may throw some light on the genuineness of the Scribner writing. I have not yet compared them, but shall do so, so soon as I have dispatched this hurried note. I sent you on the 26th Ulto. a postal card & several papers on the Poe monument. I hope they reached you safely.

I enclose a copy of the monument, etc. from Harper's Weekly of Saturday last, which bears date Dec. 11, though issued. Dec. 7. It is decidedly the best copy of the daguerre taken ten days before Poe's death that I have seen, and, indeed it is more like him, has more of his habitual & characteristic expression, than any known portrait of him. It is from the same original I presume with the engraving prefixed to Stoddard's “Memoir,” but how utterly superior. If you could obtain an engraving from this copy it would give great additional interest to your Life. Everybody admires it. I must find out its history from Miss Rice. If Poe looked like this only “ten days before his death,” there needs no better refutation of the scandal of his enemies.

Even that “loss of brain power,” of which Mrs. H[oughton] speaks:, cannot be accredited to this sad & noble: face, which corresponds in the hopeless melancholy of its expression to the tone of the two letters written to Mrs. Clemm from Richmond during the last days of his stay, the last days of his life on earth.

Did I tell you that the private letter (from which the writer of the Journal article quoted a description of the speech of Mr. Latrobe, etc.) was Wm. D. O’Connor. I sent you a proof of the article before it came out in print the following day. I laid aside a portion: of one of O’Connor's letters to send you. It expressed an affectionate interest in you & in your proposed work of writing a Life of Poe, as’ a separate work. If I cannot find it tonight, I will send it: another time. It was O’C[onnor] who intended & still intends to take Fairfield in hand. If two such pitiless critics as you & he fall upon him, may heaven have mercy on his defenceless head. But O’Connor is so overwhelmed with business that he scarcely has time for sleep. I wish I could send you his account of our friend G[ill]'s recitation of “The Raven.” It was intensely funny. This is strictly under the Rose — so keep my counsel or dread the consequence.

Rose will have told you of our meeting & parting before this is read.

I enclose a story which you may have heard before — about Poe's mother having been a daughter of Benedict Arnold, who was a kinsman of my maternal grandmother, Mary Arnold Wilkinson.(1) Perhaps if the story be true, which seems not improbable, it indicates the same attraction of races or families suggested by the name of [page 374:] Arnold Le Poer. Send back the paragraph about Poe's mother when you have done with it.

And now for a few days & forevermore, peace be with you.

Faithfully & affectionately,

I hope I shall soon see your letter to the Tribune, but they often keep an article in type for a month, so full are their columns.

O’Connor says, “If habitual lying is a sign of epileptic neurosis, Bedlam's best man is outside limbo in Fairfield.”

Where did you unearth his [Fairfield's] past sins & infirmities as to the breach of that darkest sin in the decalogue, “Thou shalt not bear false witness”?

 

1. Item 1031 in the Ingram Poe Collection, an undated clipping from an unidentified newspaper, states that Poe's mother, Elizabeth Arnold, was a natural daughter of Benedict Arnold. Shortly after Mrs. Whitman had mentioned this probability to Ingram, the question came up again, in Notes and Queries, 5th ser., 5 (Jan. 29, 1876) 88: “The Utica Observer mentions, as a fact which has escaped the notice of all his biographers, that Edgar Allan Poe was the grandson of Benedict Arnold. His mother, who was known before her marriage as Elizabeth Arnold, an English actress, was the natural daughter of the traitor. This statement rests on the concurrent testimony of a number of old actors who knew Elizabeth Arnold well. Poe himself alluded to the matter occasionally in the company of those who knew this chapter in his family history.”