Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 131: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Dec. 28, 1875,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 378-379 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 378, continued:]

131. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 275

My dear “Sir John the Grame,”

I have time but for a few words tonight. I told you in my last [Dec. 21] that Widdleton had sent me a copy of his “Memorial Volume” in which he publishes the dedication ceremonies at the unveiling of the monument, your “Memoir,” Eureka, etc., etc. with the poems. The book being dedicated to me by the publisher! A liberty which he hopes I shall “not disapprove.” There is a fine copy of the portrait from your “Memoir.” I have not had time to read the volume yet.

At the close of the publisher's “Preparatory Notice,” he has inserted, as you perhaps already know, “That it should be stated that a considerable portion of Mr. Ingram's ‘Memoir’ is gathered from materials previously used by Mr. Wm. F. Gill in his lecture ‘The Romance of Edgar A. Poe,’ written in September 1873!” I fancy the Romance was never made public.(1)

Yesterday he sent me a copy of Laurel Leaves in which appears the account of Poe's West Point career, of which I told you. More of this next time. Accompanying his article, “Some New Facts about Edgar Poe,” there is an engraved portrait copied from the daguerre of which you sent me a copy last summer — I mean the photograph of Mrs. Lewis's portrait. It is engraved by Frederick, & surrounded by some fine vignettes illustrative of the poems, but the portrait filled me with dismay. I have no words to express my sense of the wrong it does him.

You will remember that I did not like the photograph you sent me, but this engraving from it is — hideous. There is no other word that can describe it. The expression is weak, nerveless, inane — altogether unlike him & unworthy of him. Frederick is, judging from what I have seen of his work, a fine artist. What malign spirit inspired him in making this memento mori, it is difficult to conceive.

I know that a fine daguerreotype may often be so changed by an engraver as to lose all its characteristic expression. Witness the [page 379:] woodcut prefixed to Stoddard's “Memoir” in Harper's which is from the same original with the fine head in Harper's Weekly, of which I sent you a copy in my last letter, I think. Did you not like it? The head in Laurel Leaves is so bad that I have pasted the wood engraving from the Weekly over it.

I had a letter yesterday from Miss Rice in which she tells me that she had received a pleasant letter from you in reply to an invitation to be present at the dedication, but that it came too late to be used. She asks what I know of Mr. Gill, “a gentleman,” she says, “who at his own request read ‘The Raven’ at the Baltimore celebration.” This strictly entre nous. The announcement in the paper containing Dr. Moran's letter was that he “had been invited to deliver the address,” was it not?

I hope you have received a copy of my notice of your article on Politian.

What do you know of Mr. Lewis? His testimony to Poe's habits & disposition was very creditable to his own feelings, but I wish he had left out the pet phrase, or name, by which Poe addressed his mother. I do not think that every word a man utters in private life should be printed.

I have so much to say, but must still wait, & say now only au revoir. Your faithful “Providence,”

 

1. Widdleton's printed statement that Ingram had been permitted to use in his “Memoir” materials previously used by Gill and Mrs. Whitman's seeming casualness in reporting it to him were to cause much trouble between these two builders of Poe biography. Ingram's violent reaction took the form of a widely distributed “Disclaimer” and a rude, insulting letter to Mrs. Whitman. But the time had not yet come for Mrs. Whitman to break with Ingram, although his “Disclaimer” did bring into the open the long-held and deep-seated hostilities that had existed between Ingram and any would-be American biographer of Poe.