Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 154: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, June 16, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 435-436 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 435, continued:]

154. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 214

My dear friend,

Your letter of May 1 [31] with the copy of your article in the Belgravia duly reached me on the 12th, & yesterday came your card of June 3. Thanks for your prompt compliance with my request about the magazine. I am quite satisfied now that you had no covert meaning in proposing the question about Graham's. Had you said the poem appeared in the Union Magazine, I should at once have recalled the fact, but your assertion that it was first published in Sartain's Union Magazine, which I felt well assured was not then in existence, made me think that somebody had told you this in order to discredit my assertion.

We were both mistaken as to the name of the magazine, it seems. I had only my memory to depend upon & I thought it was Graham's, & that it was published in the Oct. number. I have, since receiving your card, corrected this impression by obtaining with some difficulty a bound vol. of the Union for 1848, and there found the poem which I told you Poe read to me & also the poem by Wallace, which I remembered was in the same number & of which I could recall but one line or couplet. It was not (as I supposed) the first poem in the [page 436:] number, nor was the line precisely as I quoted it, though the thought was identical. Did you notice it?

These were the lines which Poe commented upon.(1)

I do not think that there was any connection whatever between the New York Magazine edited by Mrs. Kirkland & Sartain's Magazine afterwards published in Philadelphia.(2) But at all events my doubts are satisfied. I am sorry that you were troubled by my making “such a fuss” about it. Do not be afraid to ask me any questions that suggest themselves to you. I will answer them as well as I can, & at all events with sincerity.

I was greatly interested in your extracts from the suppressed “booklet.” I have as yet only had time to read them hurriedly. I will be careful not to say where you found them. Mr. Harris said that he wished you had appropriated the jewel, so that his conscience was unburthened.

Did I send you an extract or article from the Brooklyn Times referring to a letter from Mrs. Weiss? The letter was published in the Herald, but I did not see it.

I have lately heard that a paragraph had been going the rounds of the papers stating that the house in which Poe was born is still standing. I doubt not that innumerable tales & anecdotes, true & false, will continue to flood the press about our mysterious poet.

I have just received another letter from Didier. He says Widdleton has written that his MS. must be forwarded by the 2nd week in July. This looks like business. I hope he may add something of value if he enters the arena, but the facts must be better borne out than the Scribner facsimile would seem to promise.

I have not yet heard from M. Mallarmé in reply to the letter I mailed to him on the 19th of May, I think, nor have I yet received the book. I begin to fear that it will not come, but I shall cherish his beautiful letter not the less. I have heard nothing of the literary merit of the translation, save what was intimated in Swinburne's letter. The London Quarterly is quite savage on Swinburne, I see.

I have been looking at Notes & Queries, which is taken at the Athenaeum Library, for the replies to certain attacks on Poe. I did not find them in the last issue. I wish you would name the monthly number in which I can find them.

I have not had a single line from Rose, not even a message through her sister! What can be the matter? They have had some family jars at home which have caused a great scandal here, i.e., her stepmother's father sued his daughters for the care of the property which their uncle [page 437:] left to them, & (being incensed at his having taken a wife) they refused to pay the debt, leaving him utterly destitute. He went to law about it & was so overcome in stating the case that he dropt down dead in the courthouse. Mrs. Peckham was in possession of a hundred & fifty thousand dollars at the time. It is talked of openly as a King Lear tragedy. But Rose, happily, is in no way responsible for her stepdame's delinquencies.

I am grieved to the heart by what you tell me of your ill health & other annoyances; above all, I am sorry that my causeless suspicions should have added to your troubles or given you a moment's unnecessary pain. I should not have been so stirred by having my testimony doubted if the letters received from you last winter had not so deeply wounded me. But it is over & I will not distrust you anymore. Your friendship & sympathy were very dear to me in the strange isolation of my life & I should be sorry indeed to lose them.

You know something of the anxieties of my life. These have increased alarmingly with the last year. It is true that I have hosts of friends and correspondents who look to me for sympathy & cheer, for counsel & inspiration. But they are not near enough to react on my own spirit, which would often be desolate indeed but for the few who understand & love me. And these few are often excluded by the morbid moods & baseless antipathies of the one whose peace of mind it is the object of my life to preserve at any sacrifice.

You will understand & will keep sacred the confidence I repose in you. But my whole life seems sometimes a sacrifice to this object. It may lead you to understand much that may otherwise seem incomprehensible. Yet I doubt not the whole will seem in that life which awaits us not only just & right but supremely beautiful & good.

I will try to write again soon. In the meantime think of me as faithfully and sincerely your friend,

Ask me any questions you like. I will not make “a fuss,” nevermore.

 

1. William Ross Wallace's poem “Chant of a Soul” appeared in the Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Oct. 1848, p. 215.

2. For Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, see p. 114, n. 3.