Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 160: John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman, Sept. 12, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 451-453 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 451, continued:]

160. John H. Ingram to Sarah Helen Whitman

My dear Providence,

Still my Providence — although I am now Mr. “Ingram”.

I am just returned to town after an absence (from office) of five weeks, and meet your ever welcome epistle (Aug. 25). I have had to give up America this year as my engagements would not well permit me to go beyond two or three days’ post from London.

I went through Normandy, came back to town, & then went to Weymouth, a pleasant English seaside place, where a party of my relatives were staying. Among young people — children — I grew quite a boy once more, & can scarcely, as yet, buckle to the stern matter-of-factness of work.

My health, I am thankful to relate, is marvellously improved, and I feel in that state when open air life — even an agricultural labourer's — would be preferable to this prison-like existence here. However, I must be grateful for even a temporary lease of health — it won’t last long!

I wish you had better news of yourself to give, but the terribly hot weather has been most trying. Now we are are [[sic]] complaining in London of the cold.

I have heard twice lately from Miss Peckham & owe her a letter. Had the first letter arrived two days sooner I should have sought her out in Holland, but it was too late. I had already made my plans & left for France. But this is not very interesting for you.

Many thanks for the memo. about John Neal. I had received a letter & papers announcing his decease from his daughter, but had no time to notice his death here. I must do so, though.

Did you see the letters in Athenaeum by Forman & Theodore Watts, which my paper “Bibliography of Poe” invoked?(1) As soon as settled down, I shall answer latter.

I have several letters needing reply from Browne, Davidson, & others in America.

Mrs. Houghton has just written & so has Mrs. Richmond. Latter writes a long letter declaring the purity & beauty of Poe's character. Shall I not be able to produce an unassailable & exhaustive protraiture of our hero? I feel that I must live to do it.

The République des Lettres is now giving translations of the poems, [page 452:] &c. The last (by Mallarmé) was the “Lines to Helen” — to you. I must get you a copy. I have thoroughly stirred up Young France, through some of its leaders, about Poe.

Entre nous, I regret to say that I do not believe a single word of your imaginative friend “Eva”'s denial of the paragraph in the Home Journal. I had the MS. in my own hands, in her writing, containing it! Pray be careful about accepting her denial in print. I will return her card in my next, but do not ask for the outside leaf of your letter back. I do not wish to part with a scrap of your letters to me, & there is nothing in the leaf for you to be ashamed of, my dear Providence.

I fancy “Uneda” has collapsed. My private letter was too much for her, or him.

I will look up a copy of the letter from Mrs. Weiss to send in my next.

My heap of unanswered communications is so terrible that I must forego all further news for the present, save that relating to a portrait of Poe.

Do you know Bruckmann's Gallery of Celebrated Men — poets, musicians, &c.?(2) Well known in Europe & America. From my portraits (especially the one used for my “Memoir”) he has had a portrait painted, & photographed in various sizes, & as soon as it is copyrighted in Washington you shall have one of the largest size. Then let me know your opinion. Though, necessarily, an ideal portrait, I deem it, in most respects, doubtless a good one. It will be published & known all over the globe. Even my poor efforts, you see, spread the fame of our hero & I shall never cease, whilst life & brain remain, to continue these efforts, & to be, yours most devotedly,

 

1. Harry Buxton Forman (1842-1917) had asked in the London Athenaeum, Aug. 5, 1876, p. 177, for clarification of Ingram's statement in his recent paper on the bibliography of Poe that there had been “earlier publications” of the title poem before it appeared in the 1845 The Raven and Earlier Poems. Foreman added that while both Tennyson and Poe had Southey's example of the familiar epigraph from Martial before them, Tennyson had reversed the opening words to Haec nos, while both Poe and Southey had used Nos Haec novimus esse nihil.

Ingram answered Forman in the Athenaeum, Aug. 19, 1876, p. 241, that “The Raven” had been published earlier in various periodicals and under Poe's supervision before it appeared in book form.

Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914) on Sept. 2, 1876, brought up in the Athenaeum, p. 306, the old question about Poe's having adapted “The Raven” from the Persian, and suggested that Poe had read Mr. Mudford's story in Blackwood's before he composed “The Pit and the Pendulum,” as well as suggesting that Poe's “Arthur Gordon Pym” owed something to Coleridge's “Mariner,” a Scottish story, “Allan Gordon,” and another remarkable story, “The Lonely Man of the Ocean,” which had appeared in the Monthly Magazine, four years before “Pym” came out in the Southern Literary Messenger.

Ingram did not answer Watts-Dunton. [page 453:]

2. Friedrich Bruckmann (1814-1898) was a well-known photographer, certainly, although a search through both the Library of Congress and the British Museum Library catalogues failed to reveal a book with this title.