Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 128: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Dec. 14, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 374-375 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 374, continued:]

128. Sarah Helen Whitman to John Ingram. Item 272

My dear friend,

I received yesterday from the Tribune your capital paper on Fairfield's audacious fabrications. The editor returns it on the ground that “Fairfield's article has already received in the Tribune all the attention that it deserves.”

Your article is full of valuable material that must be incorporated in any history of Poe's prose & poetical works. You are mistaken in some minor points. It was Sartain's Magazine, so says Mr. Hart, in which “The Bells” first appeared. The last issue of the Union Magazine was that of December 1848. To what “olden fantasy” do you refer? “Poe's Plagiarisms”? Did Fairfield really write such a paper? I long to know when & where.

I have written something about your article on Politian which will appear in a few days. I will send you a copy by the next steamer.

I have seen Swinburne's letter to the Committee of the Monument dedication. It was in Appleton's Journal of Saturday the 11th, & very good.(1) [page 375:]

An extract from a delayed letter of Davidson's has also been circulating through the press.

The paragraph which you sent me about the Edinburgh edition having been “set up & printed by women,” which I mentioned in a letter to Miss Rice, I see has been going also through all the papers.

I enclose your article, which I hope to see again. Will write soon, but must say goodbye tonight.

Your watchful & ever guardant “Providence” —

You have seen ere this our Rose & the other roses & lillies that follow in her train.

I hardly know what to think about the Scribner facsimile, but incline very much to doubt.

The Journal of yesterday says that Proctor, the English star-gazer, & Wm. F. Gill, the Boston lecturer & publisher, were “badly shaken up” by a railroad accident in Westerly, R.I., Sunday night. No bones broken, I believe.

Au revoir

I hope you received the copy of Harper's Weekly that contained the woodcut of the last photograph of E.A.P. & that you liked it.

 

1. Swinburne's letter, dated Nov. 9, 1875, to Miss Sara S. Rice was also reprinted in facsimile, pp. 69-72 of the memorial volume.