Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 144: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 24, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 406-409 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 406, continued:]

144. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 288

My dear Mr. Ingram,

On the last day of Feb. I mailed a letter to you. I was very tired & ill & in my haste (as I afterwards remembered) put a three-cent stamp only on the envelope. I had been preparing a number of letters for the mail, all of which required a three-cent stamp only, & unconsciously placed the same on yours. I hope this did not prevent it from going into the foreign mail bag at New York.

The next day, March 1st, I received a letter from you in a more friendly & cordial tone than the two immediately preceding it. Since that time I have been very unwell & have been waiting to hear from you in relation to Gill's proceeding in publishing garbled extracts from my letters. I sent you copies of my letter to him, of which I took copies also for such of my friends as knew of his “Reply” to your “Disclaimer.”

Widdleton, I see, has issued a volume of the poems recently to [page 407:] which Gill's Lotus Leaves article is used as introductory! It is brought out in small quarto form & sold for a dollar.(1) Mrs. Oakes Smith has republished a portion of her essay on Poe in the Home Journal of Wednesday, March 15th.(2) A copy was sent me from the office of the Providence Journal this morning. It has the passage which, as I imagine, called forth the protest of which I spoke in defending myself against the charge which you brought against me, viz., that I had said he was “unscrupulous & revengeful.” I promised to copy for you her letter about my book. I will do it tonight.

In the Home Journal article, Mrs. Oakes Smith repeats the charge of insincerity. She says, “Mr. Poe was not one to inspire a true confidence, as a rule of life.” Much that she says in this connection does not have the ring of true friendship, & it was doubtless in reply to something of this kind which called forth my protest & comments, such as they were, on his faults. All allusion to my letter, which you quote, is omitted in this article. There is a passage which I do not remember to have seen before & which puzzles me. She speaks of the myriad little loves “... not one in a million of which is of sufficient magnitude to be at all noteworthy,” etc., etc.

I will cut out the passages in this connection & enclose them. Were they in the previous editions of her article? It has been often published before. If in the earlier copies, I should think, by the trumpeter of the “little loves” made up of vanity, jealousy, spleen, & selfishness, she meant Griswold, but I know of no later which have been open to the charge, nor indeed was his, unless his allusion to Mrs. Osgood could be so interpreted.

Mrs. Smith was no friend to Mrs. Osgood, I well know. She could not have meant me as one of “the little loves,” because she introduces in the present revised (?) copy the astonishing paragraph about his “installing” Helena & herself & a few others as queens, etc., etc.!!!

Can you enlighten me about “the myriad little loves” — can you tell me if it was in the earlier copies, such as Beadle's, which I think you said you had, and can you copy for me the exact phrase used by her in the words you say are quoted from one of my letters?

Send me back the cutting from the Home Journal article, which I enclose.

You ask if I know anything of Mr. Ross Wallace. I know that he wrote for the magazines in 1848 & that Poe greatly admired some of his poetry. There was an article, a poem by Wallace in the same no. of Graham's, that contained Poe's “Lines to Helen” (they were headed “Lines to ———”). He read them to me to show how much he felt they had lost by the omission of the line of which I told you in a former letter. He then read me a poem by Wallace from the same magazine, [page 408:] Oct., I think, and pointed out two or three phrases as of surpassing excellence. The idea contained in them that pleased him so much was “To live is Victory.” I have forgotten the words and remember only the idea. I did not know that he was intimate with Wallace. Mr. Wallace afterwards wrote regularly for the New York Ledger. I believe his habits were very irregular, but he was a writer of undoubted genius. I think you might hear of him by addressing a letter to Mr. Bonner, if he still edits the Ledger, but that I do not know. I had an impression that Wallace was not living, but it may be without foundation. Perhaps he is one of the “contemporaries” who helped forward the Raven in Sandy Welsh's cellar.

I had a letter from Mr. O’Connor lately in which he says, “Ingram's review of Stoddard in the Civil Service Review is splendid! I do hope that fraud will get his due some day.”

My Rose does not write a single word. I told her just before we parted in the street, when I saw her for the last time, that if I did not answer her letters always, she must not think it was because I did not love her. She has gathered up all her sweetness & hidden it away from me forever. When my heart is once wounded by cruel thorns it will not heal readily. I am sorry, but I can only say “a dio.” Don’t tell her this.

I am sorry that you are not well & that you have had “worries & annoyances.” I have never for a single moment wavered in my loyalty to you as a trusted friend. I have never uttered a word of disparagement or of criticism about you or your work to anybody — on the contrary, I have always spoken of both as you would like to have heard me speak. I have been perfectly sincere with you about Gill from the beginning, and I thought you ought to have known me better than to have written to me as you did, but I will not say another word, nevermore. Forgive the grammar & all my sins small & great & take my heart's blessing,

After all it is not much — it furnishes no evidence that she had faith [page 409:] in him — it did not spring so much from genuine friendliness & regard as from other motives which are betrayed in some of the — but I will not carp or criticise.

Have you forgiven me for being troubled about Mrs. Nichols’ anecdotes?

I am glad that you have found “Siope,” etc.

 

1. The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with Memoir and Vindication (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1876).

2. This article of four and one-half columns is Item 680 in the Ingram Poe Collection.