Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 138: John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman, Feb. 14, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 392-396 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 392, continued:]

138. John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman

My ever dear Friend,

I am profoundly grieved that I have so wounded your feelings as the tone of yours dated the 1st shows that I have, but pray forgive me.

It was not the mere fact of Gill's impudence, nor the audacity of Widdleton giving my apparent sanction to the claim, but what wounded me to the quick, was your apparent indifference. Had your letter contained a single sentence of disgust at Gill's conduct, I should have felt satisfied, but seeing, so it seemed to me, that although you expressed your disbelief (not positive knowledge, which, however, you had) of his said “Romance of Edgar A. Poe” having been written, you took his claim as a matter of course, I felt utterly despairing of having done, or being able to do, anything towards proving my theory of Poe's life. I read, and reread your letter, but vainly sought for any expression of disapprobation of this Gill's behaviour. It seemed to me that I was being placed on a level with him, & so long as I worked for the same [page 393:] end it did not matter who or what I was, or how my character suffered. Had you but expressed disgust at the man's conduct I should have felt you were true to me, & with your symapthy I would have been encouraged to continue the fight.

Quickly following your information of the claim came letters from American correspondents expressing sympathy & assuring me, long before my “Disclaimer” could reach them, of their disbelief in Gill's claim, & asking me to write something for them to publish in contradiction. Since the “Disclaimer” appeared, strong expressions of confidence in my veracity have reached me from unknown readers in France & this country.

Having to publish the “Disclaimer” has been a very bitter pill to me, because it seemed to me as if I were striving to abrogate to myself the sole right to vindicate Poe — as if I were jealous of others attempting to rival me there. On my soul, I was never inspired by such feelings! Had any properly qualified person have undertaken the task of writing Poe's life I would willingly, & without hope or wish for any kind of reward, have assisted him or her, & have given every scrap I possessed about the poet. When Gill asked me for information, I willingly sent him such published papers as I had, & would have sent him more had I have been able to trust to him. However, enough of this subject. Gill is bankrupt, I see, &, I suppose, will take to some other method of living.

I have been very unwell since I wrote to you — am still so, & have had cares & worries numberless, but the more I have thought over it, the less I feel able to resign the completion of my work. I must finish my “Memoir” of Poe. My mind can never rest until it has disburdened itself of the accumulation of ideas it has made on this subject. But I am still willing to take a partner in the work if I could only find anyone in America willing to labour on it as I have laboured here. But I feel that health & everything urge the speedy completion of this work, so I have begun to gather together rapidly the scattered ends of my story. You will be astounded at the immense amount of reliable data I have garnered together.

By the way, the name of the person who supplied Stoddard's rigmarole of Poe's early life was a Mrs. Dixon of Richmond, but he altered & garbled it very much.(1)

I presume you know that Gill offered to write the Memorial biography & was refused by Mr. Widdleton. I have heard from Baltimore that he forced himself upon the Memorial Committee.

Miss Rice has written to ask me to permit them to use my “Memoir” for the Baltimore Memorial Book. I could not, of course, having allowed Widdleton to for his, although he did not use the revised copy, as requested. I have asked Miss Rice to try for permission of the [page 394:] International Review to use their paper by me, and have made several revisions in it for her.

Don’t say anything about the 1827 edition of the poems. I have found it! & written a paper about it!(2) Mr. Harris shall have copy of the paper. I am negotiating for advance sheets for America.

“Siope” was the earliest name for “Silence”; it appeared in the Baltimore Book for 1838.

My chief blank in Poe's life now is between 1838-1844 (his stay in Philadelphia), although I have some interesting items even for that period. I have no correspondent in that city. Mrs. Hale nor Mr. Godey ever answered.

You will find that I was quite right about “The Bells” & the Union Magazine, alias Sartain's Union Magazine.

I do not think you need ignore Widdleton. I have not answered his letter offering to publish any further matter &c. and excusing his conduct, because he knowingly has treated me badly, but you have nothing to do with that.

Pray do not let my words about the North be misunderstood. You know that I have real & true friends there. Why, I have quite recently received two charming letters from your Providence Rose, who is growing quite French. I have not answered her last, although it contained — don’t be jealous! — a charming little vignette of an Italian girl model. She seems enjoying herself now.

I did receive a cutting re. my Politian paper, from the Providence Journal. I hear the paper was more noticed than anything in the London, but I saw very few — only two, I think, of the notices.

Where did you get your extract from Mrs. Browning's letter re. Poe, which I quoted? Browning has been very annoyed, entre nous, about Poe. Buchanan-Read told him that Poe told him (Read) that “The Raven” was founded on a line in “Lady Geraldine's Courtship,” but on a subsequent occasion said that was “all a lie” and that it was as described in “The Philosophy of Composition.” He (Browning) says he could not have told Thompson (vide my extract from letter to Davidson) that he hoped to see Poe's memory cleared from aspersion, as he was not aware it had been aspersed! What do you say? I shall, of course, cut all that out.

Do you know anything more of the “Alone” verses? I believe them to be Poe's, but not in Poe's handwriting. It is as like Didier's as it possibly can be.

I will get Laurel Leaves and see if there be anything new to me in it.

“The Beautiful Physician” has not come to hand — only some half-remembered lines. I believe it will, turn up, however. Look out for a bunch of new true authenticated poems! [page 395:]

And now, forgive me, and believe that my warmth of feeling has been invoked because I value your approbation in this matter more than anyone's, and to doubt it was intolerable.

May all “The winged seraphs” you believe in, and all the good I hope for, guard & protect you, is the faithful wish, oh, believe me, of yours,

P.S. Do you know anything of Wm. Ross Wallace, the poet? He, an acquaintance of Poe's (I have met several who say they knew Poe) tells me, was very intimate with Poe & knew more of him than anyone in New York. Wallace wrote some very fine poems. Is he alive?(3) He wrote a poem to Mary Star! We shall find her some day.

 

1. This account by Mrs. Dixon, and, presumably, Mrs. Ellis, related stories of Poe's mischievous propensities as a youth, debts the Allans had to pay for champagne he had drunk, seventeen broadcloth coats he had bought, of his forcing his way into John Allan's sickroom, the probable illegitimacy of Poe's sister Rosalie, and had stated that Poe's mother had died in a poorhouse.

2. This was indeed a triumph for John Ingram. Poe had said in the prefaces to his 1829 and 1831 volumes of poetry that he had included poems that were copied verbatim from the volume he had published in 1827. Poe did not leave a copy of the volume among his other books, and no one could remember having seen such a volume.

Ingram had disbelieved Griswold and Stoddard on principle, and, as letters above show, he had long questioned Mrs. Whitman and her wealthy bibliophile friend and neighbor Caleb Fiske Harris about the existence of an 1827 volume. When Ingram later learned that Harris had seen or thought he had seen Tamerlane listed in Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry (1829) as a volume of unpublished poems “which the author has seen in print,” he had all he needed: the title of the 1827 volume, the circumstances of its publication and suppression, and, most important, outside evidence that the volume had been actually sighted. Now to find the volume itself.

And find it he did. Searching through literally bales of books and pamphlets sent to the British Museum Library by American booksellers, he finally held in his hands a small volume, with front and back covers missing, that had been sent over probably in 1866 and priced at one shilling to the Library, and he knew immediately that he had located the first known copy of Poe's 1827 Tamerlane!

Very likely Ingram had made this remarkable find early in 1876, shortly before writing to Mrs. Whitman about it in this letter of Feb. 14. The paper he mentioned having written on Tamerlane appeared in the Belgravia Magazine for June 1876 and was partially reprinted in the New York Daily Graphic on June 8, 1876, as “Poe's Suppressed Poetry.” Ingram reprinted the title poem and six of the nine fugitive pieces in the unknown volume;, the other three had been reprinted almost verbatim in current collections of Poe's poetry. With this widely reprinted article Ingram was able to silence forever the debates about Poe's unknown edition; he could prove too that Poe had told the truth, about which the dead Griswold and the living Stoddard had lied. In addition, Ingram increased immeasurably his own reputation as a Poe scholar and researcher.

Ingram then proceeded to do what no other writer about Poe had been able to do: he wrote and published in the Athenaeum for July 29, 1876, “The Bibliography of Edgar [page 396:] Poe,” which traced Poe's development as a poet through all four of his published volumes.

3. William Ross Wallace (1819-1881) was first a lawyer, then an author and poet. He is best remembered for his lines “And the hand that rocks the cradle ... Is the hand that rules the world.”