Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 130: John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman, Dec. 21, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 376-378 (This material is protected by copyright)

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130. John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman

My dear Providence,

I am trying to scrawl off a line to let you know that I am still alive & have received all your dear letters, the papers & postcard safely. I have been working too hard (for Xmas) & am knocked up. Sunday & yesterday quite useless & I have dozens of letters waiting reply. So be patient, my dear friend, & write when you can. I write to you when I do not respond to anyone elsewhere. I saw Miss Peckham & party for a short time. Miss Rose locked better than I had ever seen her before, [page 377:] but did not think that I looked any better than at our last meeting. I was very tired. They had a terrible voyage.

I enclose the cutting about the Arnolds. I don’t place any faith in it — one of the most circumstantial accounts recently received from Baltimore positively asserts Poe's mother was a widow when married to his father. The old story over again. Mrs. Shelton has spoken out — (this is strictly entre nous) & says she was not engaged to Poe when he died, although he would not be denied, & does not seem to have been quite refused — more hereafter — when young they were engaged, but their letters intercepted & Poe deeming himself neglected, went off, &c., &c.(1)

I see Gill has already published your letters from Poe in the Daily Graphic & more, apparently, than I have had.(2) Why mutilate them at this late date? If ever I get to see you, I shall expect to see them in full, & to hear that you will not harden your heart any longer, by keeping them unpublished. My life I hope to make a poem — I mean my life of Poe. I have just had a nice letter from Japp, who wrote the British Quarterly Review paper — he has made a study of Poe. I have asked him to come after Xmas & see me. I have just been elected to a Club he belongs to.

The Irish Poës have written again & now hope to claim Poe as a scion of their family.(3) They are all in Burke's Landed Gentry.

Widdleton now announces my “Vindication” for his Memorial edition of the poems!(4) I have received photo of the Monument & papers continue to arrive. The engraving you send is the best yet to hand — may I keep it? It is, I fancy, from the photo in possession of Neilson Poe's family. I asked them for a copy & they said “Their photo was so like the engraving I sent them (same as in book) that I should not find it (i.e., theirs) of any use.”

Perhaps ’tis the one selected for Widdleton's new edition — several papers have given engravings of this [one] engraved by Harper's Weekly (as sent by you), but none so well as this.

In haste & headache this is sent off — but in all, I am, believe me ever yours most devotedly,

P.S. I hope I shall find Japp nice because I want a true sympathiser, ready to carry on the work if I should pass away before its completion — but my family motto is “Hope Ingram.”

 

1. Edward V. Valentine mailed to Ingram, Nov. 20 and 22, 1875, several pages of notes he had taken during conversations with Mrs. Shelton (Items 261 and 263 in the Ingram Poe Collection). Ingram used most of this information, without revealing his source, in his Life, Vol. II.

2. Under the title “A Poet on His Critics,” the New York Daily Graphic for Nov. 16, [page 378:] 1875, printed perhaps a quarter of a column containing excerpts from Poe's letter of Oct. 18, 1848, as having been taken “from advance-sheets of Mr. William F. Gill's article on ‘New Facts in Regard to Poe,’ to be published in ‘Laurel Leaves.”’

3. Ingram received two letters from James Jocelyn Poë, Riverston, Penagh, about the genealogy of the Poe family, dated Nov. 17, and Dec. 4, 1875. Items 259 and 269 in the Ingram Poe Collection.

4. W. J. Widdleton brought out Poems and Essays of Edgar Allan Poe, Memorial Edition (New York, 1876), replacing Griswold's “Memoir” with Ingram's, as it had appeared in Ingram's 1874-75 edition of Poe's Works but appending a statement that William F. Gill had permitted Ingram to use materials previously assigned to him.