Text: John Grier Varner, “Chapter 04,” Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, dissertation, 1940, pp. 108-134 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 108:]

Those five years which Mrs. Whitman had spent in the city of Boston represent a period of great intellectual stimulus in her life; for coming into contact as she did with the revolutionary ideas which rocked the staid old city, she developed a keen critical appreciation of spiritual, philosophical, and literary values. Furthermore, by the time of her return to Providence she had begun to acquire some recognition as a poetess among the literary dilettantes of New England, and although her poetic execution appears never to have reached quite the standards of her critical ability, she was coning to be looked upon by her contemporaries as a woman of more than ordinary literary talent, John Winslow Whitman had popularized her name in the Boston Spectator, and Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, at a time when she knew but little and scarcely recognized such beginners as Edgar Poe,(1) had south to make Sarah Whitman a stated contributor to the Ladies’ Magazine. When in 1837 Mrs. Hale assumed the editorship of Godey's Ladies’ Book, she not only urged Sarah Whitman to contribute to this magazine, but she also listed her in the Ladies’ Wreath, a gift book, along with Felicia Hemans and her disciples, as one of the “luminous stars of the poetic heavens”.(2)

But the “poetic heavens” were now rather full of female “stars”, and the number was rapidly increasing, [page 109:] so much so that Rufus Griswold was later to declare that their proportion in America far exceeded that which the present or any other age in England exhibited,(1) and Hawthorne shouted with some resignation that America was “wholly given over to a mob of scribbling women”.(2) As early as 1830 the Ladies’ Magazine boasted that women of America might justly put in their claims for distinction in every path of literature, but particularly in poetry. “It is considered among the elegant accomplishments of the age”, this magazine asserted, “and the great number to possess the talent prove that this is a land of pure ethereal fancy and correct taste.”(3)

Sarah Whitman now definitely belonged to that “mob of scribbling women”; and when she returned to Providence, she had fulfilled one of the primal requirements of the female author. She had suffered! A heritage from the eighteenth century had left early nineteenth century American writers burdened with sentiment, and this sentiment had been intensified, particularly among women, by an extragavent tombstone religiosity. Consequently the virtue of a woman's genius, if she had any, rested first upon the virtue of her character, and then upon the amount of unhappiness which she had enjoyed. Thus one finds the Providence papers in 1828 recommending the poetry of Mrs. Elizabeth Jones on the basis of her being a woman of “exemplary character” [page 110:] who “like many other children of song has drunk deeply of the cup of poverty and sorrow.” And some years later Rufus Griswold, remarking on the lack of vigor and grandeur in the poetry of Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, suggested that “it is only because the flower has not been crushed that we have not a sweeter perfume”.(1) Sorrow was a tradition and a requisite for the female poet; and Sarah had suffered. American poetesses came by much of their melancholy sentiments through imitiont and they did znt have to look far for. a nodal. Mrs. Hemans had set the standard; and as Mrs. Hale once remarked, the name of Felicia Dorothea Hemans stood pre-eminent among female poetic writers “as unquestionably as the rose holds the rank of ‘garden queen’ among the flowers”.(2) Mrs. Hemans was a “matron of sorrows” and her tears were profuse. It has been said that those tears which she held back eventually found their way to the surface in the form of poetic sentiments. When just a naive maiden, she had married a captain of the militia, and she had borne him five sons, only to be deserted by her scamp of a husband and left upon her own resources, which, in her case consisted of an unlimited but marketable supply of second-rate poetic sentiments. For a generation after her death there were few who could not recite the life-story of Mrs. Hemans, and no other poet was so cherished [page 111:] or so unanimously respected in the early nineteenth century by American readers.(1)

Surely the sorrows of Sarah Whitman could compare favorably with those of Felicia Hemans in satisfying the sentimental fancies of her generation. The desertion of Mrs. Hemans’ uninformed husband had been no more severe in its consequences than that desertion which Nicholas Power inflicted upon his family when he sailed for southern seas. And Sarah Whitman had known other woes. So in presenting the details of Mrs. Whitman's life to the reading public in 1837, Mrs. Hale gave the young poet ample claim to the distinction of sorrow. She spoke of her as one whose father had died when she was a mere child (how much the Powers might have preferred this fiction to the actual fact!), and whose mother, although left to the solitariness of a widow's lot, had devoted herself with unwearied care to the education of her daughters. Furthermore, she said, Mrs. Whitman had suffered the loss of a husband whose death came to dissolve “a marriage of affection”, and she had men forced to return”to her mother's arms”. Then Mrs. Hale added to these attractions the fact that Mrs. Whitman's health was constitutionally delicate, although her mental faculties had developed with that quickness and brilliancy which surely indicates the predominancy of imagination”. Poetry [page 112:] had been the favorite study of her youth, and she had “soon manifested the propensity, which the muse will foster in those she elects her votaries to ‘write in rhyme’.”(1)

Like her numerous sister poets Sarah Whitman had looked to the ladies’ magazines and gift books as a. means of bringing her sentiments before the public; for, as Mrs. Hale remarked in 1837, “she appears never to have contemplated making a volume, but only allows her thoughts to visit the temple of the Muses to gratify her own love of the beautiful and glorious in nature and art.” Then too, like the other ladies of talent, she had sought her models among English poets. Byron was still popular, and ambitious disciples were imitating his stanza. Edward Young had set a standard, and it is said that his “Night Thoughts” brought about more imitative poetry in America than any other item of English literature unless it were “The Graves of the Household” by Mrs. Hemans. But among feminine writers especially Mrs. Hemans held the position of first rank; and when she died in 1835, she left a host of American disciples.(2)

Sarah Whitman was from the beginning until the close of her literary career an imitator; and though often in a somewhat more intelligent way, she followed most of the popular trends of her time, imitating her [page 113:] English and American predecessors or contemporaries and writing, particularly in her prose, in florid Della-Cruscan style. And this great hoard of “scribbling females” had certain set literary customs and conventions of their own. Therefore, in becoming one of the honored poetic sisterhood which Mrs. Hale listed in the Ladies’ Wreath, Mrs. Whitman had adhered rather closely to poetic custom.

Modesty was still one of the chief virtues among women, and few women dared brave the publicity of the printed page without cover of a suitable nom de plume.(1) It was Mrs. Whitman's custom to sign her literary productions with her second name, Helen, a name which she herself preferred, although it was never used by her family in addressing her. After her return to Providence Mrs. Whitman proved herself thus early ambitious of the rôle of literary priestess among Providence neophytes by signing some of her poetry and practically all of her prose with the pseudonym ‘Eqeria’,(2) a name which she perhaps adopted from her close study of Byron. But she did not overstep the bounds of modesty, and Mrs. Hale praised her for this virtue, explaining that “the genius of this amiable woman seems naturally of that delicate presence which shrinks like the ‘Sensitive plant’ from any collision with the actual world.” Not yet daring to attempt “Parnassus’ top”, [page 114:] women were content to look upon poetic lore simply as a pastime. By remaining humble dilettantes they not only preserved their femininity, but also spared the themselves the labor of revising their verses. But judging from a statement of Mrs. Hale, we might conclude that Sarah Whitman was delivered from the burdens of revision not so much by a sense of humility as by a streak or ingenuity and an uncommonly retentive memory. For, as Mrs. Hale said. Mrs. Whitman was able to “elaborate her poems in a rather peculiar manner, arranging, correcting, and finishing them as compositions perfectly and wholly in mind, be they ever so long, before committing a line to paper.”(1)

Being an humble dilettante and less cautious than otherwise about the degree of perfection attained, the American poetess tried her hand at any subject which happened to present itself to her fancy. Consequently the range of subjects of these songstresses was unique. Mrs. Hemans had set the standard with a list of subjects ranging “from mountains, sea, and forest, the fragile beauty of wild flowers, and the joyous life of uncage birds, to affecting delineations of humanity, favoring lofty virtues in her men, and gentle ardors in her women.” Mrs. Sigourney preferred the pathos of death, particularly when it applied to infants, Methodist missionaries, the deaf and dumb, or cripples; [page 115:] she once wrote an elegiac verse to console the owner of a canary bird which had been accidentally starved to death, and at another time a verse to the father of a child “drowned in a barrel of swine's food”.(1) There was apparently no limitation placed on the choice of subjects; and Sarah Whitman's subjects included the miseries of to afflicted poor, memories evoked by the entire range of flowers and seasons, and before the close of her career everything from such subjects as “A Pat of Butter”, “Miss Angel's Imaginary Dog”, and “Mr. Hoppin's Rooster” to her more dignified sonnets to Poe and Mrs. Browning.

Once in the very early part of her career Mrs. Whitman proved herself a true disciple of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Sigourney by writing a poem to be passed about by a blind man in an attempt to earn money for his dependent family.(2) “The Blind Man's Appeal” began with a plea for sympathy from those “whose eyes are open to the glorious light of day”, and after lamenting a series of woes incumbant [[incumbent]] upon the blind, promised a rich reward in Heaven for those who made some material contribution toward the relief of the afflicted. But these was earthly consolation to be offered the blind, and in a second and similar poem, “The Blind Man's Lay”,(3) Mrs. Whitman informed her public that not all of the life of the blind man was filled with sorrow, [page 116:] for he was compensated with the joy of second sight, something denied the rare blessed unless they were poets. He could feel the gladness of the season, for he could hear the spring winds blow, and the gurgling fountains, and

After listing the various pleasures of the external world and their respective turns, Mrs. Whitman showed how for each lack the afflicted had their compensations. But no true poet of the school could leave the blind surrounded with purely earthly joys. No! For at times all sweet sense of the external world faded, and the blind man saw forms which were denied those more blessed; deep within his silent soul there came high thoughts and holiest visions. Angel messengers cheered his path, and in rapture he heard the solemn sweet music of heaven.

Even Lydia Huntley Sigourney could not have made a better imitation of the sainted Mrs. Hemans.

Every condition of life was sacred to the songstress, for every condition as the lot of humanity. But it was easy to sing of the humble poor or the afflicted, for herein was more opportunity for drawing a moral; and in an age where virtue was the chief requisite for artistic talent, the moral was a requisite for artistic production. Poe later railed against the heresy of the didactic and said that it had in a brief period accomplished more in the corruption of poetical literature than all other enemies combined. Americans had especially patronized the idea that every poem should inculcate a moral, and that the poetical merit of the work was to be adjudged by its moral. And Poe declared that chief among the offenders were the Bostonians who had taken it into their heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to be the design, would be “to confess oneself radically wanting in true poetic dignity and force”.(1) Previously literature [page 118:] had been forbidden because of its tendency to make giddy fancies more giddy, but now it had come to be prescribed as a panacea for some of the world's ills. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Hale had urged that poetry be served up as a sort of mental cordial in an effort to allay the thirst for core intoxicating beverages. But no literary production was cable of proper stimulation without a moral, and en ever watchful public was busy “rewarding virtue with its garlands and vice with its scorn”.

Poetasters were also “nature-tasters”, and from no source could better morals be drawn than from the natural world as it lay spread about in all of its “God-given beauty”. The English Romanticists had had their effect either directly or indirectly, and poets were beginning to read lessons in nature. It is said that the sparrow twittering outside one ‘s window called up memories that reached back half a lifetime, and a penny bunch of roses on a merchant's desk carried him back to the days when flowers were profuse and unpriced. “No blossom was safe from the nature sampler who limned the petals and sketched a moral significance.”(1) And Sarah Whitman was a “nature-sampler”. For instance, she wrote:(2)

And what thoughts could have been kindled by the faint perfume of a withered rose? Sweet thoughts of a time when this flower had been culled, a time before sorrow came, a time when early love made a blissful dream!

Then again she wrote:

And what lesson could Sarah Whitman learn from the flowers? That love dies and is consumed by a fierce ray, just as the passion-pale violets are scorched by the sun.

The lily bending on its spray became to her the drooping head of the young martyr; the hawthorn bush outside her window brought back poetic memories of childhood; a sunset carried her back to those days when she wandered about the hills of Providence; dim, showery April nights brought thoughts of a lone grave on a green hillside far away — and with these thoughts her dream of youth returned. All of these sentiments took metrical form. Sarah Whitman did more than sample nature; she drank it to its dregs. She did more then cull a moral [page 120:] from nature; In true Berkeleyan fashion, she made nature a part of her philosophy and her religion. Margaret Fuller was a nature sampler also, and often the two strolled through the New England bypaths together, “leaning on the bosom of nature and inhaling new life with her breath”. Margaret especially liked the aster; for their “corollas looked like eyes” and she had a delicious sensation of being watched.(1) It was the flower which received the closest attention from all the poets, and especially the feminine poets.

One might search the index of flowers and find but few of the better known varieties that Sarah Whitman omitted from her verse; yet her favorite flower was the arbutus. When years had passed and she was a little old women too feeble to climb the hills and walk through the wood about Providence, friends would bring her flowers, and in exchange she would present them with an “Epigaea” or “To One Who Brings Me Flowers on my Birthday”. It is of some significance that a poem which his done more than anything else to keep her memory alive today, clothes her in melancholy and enshrines her amid flowers in an enchanted garden, for in addressing his poetical tribute “To Helen”, Poe wrote:

Everyone admired flowers. Ladies pressed them between the pages of a book, and sometimes the gentlemen did likewise. They brought memories of an afternoon and sometimes a loved one. Mrs. Whitman wrote:

In her scrapbook(3) Mrs. Whitman kept many pressed flowers which had been collected during her life — a leaf from Isola Bella, such as was formerly used for wreaths; a flower from the fountain of Egeria; a bit of ivy, a daisy, and a pansy from the grave of her kinswoman, Marguerite le Poer, Countess of Blessington; a musk plant given her by Walter Savage Landor; a bit of “Heart's Ease” from the tomb of Shelley, and a pansy from the grave of Keats. [page 122:]

A book stuffed with pressed blossom was something web the ladies opened when they wished to indulge in an emotional spree; and if it happened to be a ladies’ book, even the title itself was no doubt of floral inspiration. It might have been “A Ladies’ Wreath”, “The Rose of Sharon”, “The Floral Offering”, “The Garland”, “The Magnolia”.(2) Once in 1828 when Mrs. Hemans was preparing to issue another volume of verse, the Bower of Taste, announced that “this noble hearted woman — one of nature's sweetest and truest poets — is preparing for the press another volume of her ‘breathing flowers’.”(3)

But always with the fragrance of nature came the familiar moral. The fading beauty of an autumn evening brought more than an idle languor. It brought melancholy reveries, and one learned to look upon the very leaf beneath his feet as emblematical of his mortality.(4) The modest flowerets, the choral melody of June, the perfumed breath of heaven, the dewy morn, the radiant moon, and the lingering light of evening brought [page 123:] only a melancholy sadness to Sarah Whitman, for

Autumn was the most popular of seasons with all of the poets, and especially with Sarah Whitman, for it was a season of sad contemplation.

There was a soothing melancholy about the season of autumn; and when the “green leaves turned to golden bronze and life and death seemed melting into one”, Sarah Whitman and abandon her mind to that sort of dreaming reverie, partaking both of pleasure and sadness, which Rousseau had described as “the most luxurious indulgence of the heart”. So when “the flowers stood desolate and uncherished”, waiting for the blast that would lay their fair heads low, she compared them to herself who would some day pass into nothingness and leave her place to be filled by another as transient.(1) Sarah Whitman enjoyed this self-centered sadness, this gentle delight of melancholia, which was not mourning or sorrow but which might best be described in the words of Hannah Gould who called it “melting”. It was fashionable to be melancholy. Health and happiness were incompatible with the refinements of cultivated society. It was reputed genteel to be nervous and sentimental, sickly and melancholy. On the other hand it was moral to be melancholy, and again — it was pleasant to be melancholy. This was the one sort of pleasure in which women could indulge unmolested. Restricted, unhealthy, and introspective, they received an almost sensual pleasure out of a sad, amatory self-sympathy.(2)

The graveyard became a great enticement into romantic melancholy, and a large number of literary tributes [page 125:] were called forth by its beguiling sadness. Sarah Whitman was amply supplied with cemeterial inspiration, for her own garden bordered on the silent tombs of old St. John's; but she did not wander out of her way in search of graveyard materiel, confining such allusions as she did make of this variety to those sorrows which constituted her intimate personal experiences. In contrast to many of the sentimentalists, her sorrows were in most instances real; and though she experienced the pleasure of “melting”, she was not altogether guilty of affectation.

Mrs. Hale continued that though Mrs. Whitman looked with pleasurable emotion upon these beauties, still, there was always in her heart a sensation of sadness like that which its had so powerfully described in his “Ode on Melancholy”. It was as if she tasted the bitter ingredient in the sweetest draught, yet could always say of the “Goddess sage and holy” that “she dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die.” Like others of her period Mrs. Whitman had come to connect beauty with sorrow; but she was a lover of all beauty, both physical and abstract. She was somewhat vain and always proud and protective of [page 126:] her own physical charms; and she liked to be surrounded by objects of beauty. Of this phase of her character Henry Lee Higginson once wrote:

Transcendentalism was spreading over New England, and with it had come a Platonic philosophy which taught one to rise above the impure, the ugly, and the incongruous. These were things which could be eliminated as the soul moved on in its natural virtues toward a higher sphere. People — and poets in particular — searched for the beautiful.

Feminine poets paid sentiments tribune to the beauty of each other's eyes, their hair, and the ethereal quality of their voices; and women wrote long treacly letters, lauding whatever qualities of beauty the recipient might happen to possess, and always mentioning the matter of health. One no more ignored the question of health than one ignored the tribute to beauty, for health and beauty were closely entwined. If a woman's health needed no inquiring after, then one might be suspicious that the question of her beauty was equally settled, for always beauty was joined with sorrow. Poetic had decreed that the languishing woman was the fashionable [page 127:] woman; women therefore permitted delicate constitutions, and the men loved them for it. Consumption, now prevalent, became a popular poetic theme; and poets, led by Kirke White, the patron saint of the consumptive, praised in elaborate superlatives the “hectic beauty” of untimely decay.(1)

Reflecting these earlier sentiments, Edgar Poe in speaking later of the close connection of beauty and sadness said that the death of a beautiful woman was unquestionably the most poetic topic in the world, for beauty had its highest manifestation in sadness, and melancholy was the most legitimate of all poetical tones.(2) Critics have seized upon Poe's seeming preference for pale, diseased, and dying women as an evidence of some sexual abnormality; but surely what might be said of the individual in this case night be very well said of the generation, for it was an age when the languishing woman attracted. Beauty was enhanced by sorrow, and it was worshipped when accompanied by melancholy. In accordance with these standards of beauty, Sarah Whitman qualified as a woman of great personal charm.

Mrs. Whitman had come to possess a keen sensitivity toward the beauties of the exoteric world, and she had also formed definite conceptions of the abstract qualities of beauty.(3) It was her belief that all mankind possessed something of that yearning for the beautiful, [page 128:] and she would thus judge of the soul of a man by the extent of his appreciation of the beautiful. To her the aesthetic sense was an immortal instinct within the soul of all; but it was an instinct which varied with the individuals and it was thus left to the poet to grasp for ordinary mortals that portion of beauty which they could not obtain for themselves. It was the poet who was most capable of attaining that loveliness for which all men thirst, for in all the aspects and changes in the world about him he alone perceived most readily a significant beauty in and felt a mysterious sympathy with humanity.(1)

Just as she would measure the soul of a man by the extent of his aesthetic appreciation, she would measure the genius of the poet by the extent of his perception of the beautiful; for she felt that the origin of genius was to be found in that peculiar species of organization which rendered one exquisitely susceptible to whatever is beautiful or sublime in the material world, and that this genius manifested itself in the power it possessed of embodying these exquisite impressions in the rare creations of art. Like Emerson, she would admit that the native element of genius existed in many individuals who did not have the facility of execution which would enable them to impart to others even the faintest reflection of their own glorious inspirations. But, on [page 129:] the other hand, she believed that if genius itself were actually present, the mind would be so oppressed by its own keen and thrilling conceptions of beauty that it would breathe forth these conceptions into the arts of poetry, painting, sculpture, or music as into a natural language. In this way the mind was able to express those intense and vivid impressions which, if revealed, would produce a morbid excitement and cause the mind to consume and pine away amid the lustre of its own fires — or, to use an expression of Byron, “render it diseased with its own beauty”.

In thus estimating genius Mrs. Whitman would not place limits to her definition of beauty. The word must be used in the most comprehensive sense, as including all that Burke or Allison comprised in their definition of the sublime and the beautiful. Beauty and sublimity, in the sense in which she used them, were terms equally applicable to the moral and the physical world. She saw just as much power and sublimity in Shakespeare's representation of the noble mind of Othello struggling in the coils of jealous passion as she dia in the far-famed Laocoon writhing in the folds of the serpent. It was to this and similar impressions of power and beauty and sublimity — whether in the moral or the physical world — that the mind of genius was so exquisitely susceptible, and it was such impressions that his pen or [page 130:] pencil so vividly portrayed.

But in attributing to a genius a power of clairvoyance, and ability to perceive those supernal beauties denied the ordinary individual, Mrs. Whitman did draw definite limits for those who she felt might lay claim to the divine gift. This virtue of genius had been ascribed to many in whom she could find no justification for such a claim, and in her attempt to arrive at a correct definition of the term, she tore down many literary idols.

To Sarah Whitman, ths course of genius was not to be found in the faculty of attention; neither did it proceed as a special concomitant of habits at abstraction and internal concentration of thought. It was to some extent an innate and independent power of the soul, and the germ from which it was derived existed independently of education or circumstance. On the other hand, it was something which could not be cut off from the external world. By attributing was solely to the faculty of attention and observation, one implied ‘effort proceeding from a desire for information’; and such a theory do felt to be false, for the impressions of genius came from an intuitive feeling for whatever was elevated and beautiful, not from an effort of the will. But the creative power of genius see immediately derived from a certain delicacy of organization which renders the mind in a peculiar degree susceptible to external impressions. [page 131:] Thus Mrs. Whitman found in genius an element which was dependent upon both external and internal circumstances.

It was not often that Mrs. Whitman discovered a combination of those necessary elements which comprised genius. Seldom was the faculty of attention and observation to be found united with that meditative, impassioned, and imaginative cast of character which was mused amid solitude and seclusion. Shakespeare, she agreed, was an exception to this rule; but Coleridge and Wordsworth, for instance, were little indebted to the observation of external objects for their powerful productions. Scott, on the other hand, was an example of the opposite extreme. His success, she felt, was the result of accuracy of observation and habits of close attention respecting the external peculiarities of man and of the material creation, rather than of great native powers of thought and imagination. She looked in vain in Scott for those comprehensive views of man's nature and destiny which she found in Goethe and Wieland, for the pathos of Mackenzie and St. Pierre, and for the impassioned eloquence of Godwin and de Staël. Failing to find these elements in Scott, she seriously questioned his claim to a high order of genius.

Another definition of genius had comprised it under the terms ‘inventive power’, but Mrs. Whitman thought this explanation liable to objection since many persons exhibited this power who deserved no highs epithet [page 132:] than that of cleverness and ingenuity. She felt that the nature of the thing invented would determine whether or not the power which produced it could lay claim to the name of genius. The power of invention entered into the dramas of Shakespeare and into the construction of a patent cooking apparatus. Yet surely it would be incongruous to allow the hallowed name of genius in common to their originators.

The excellencies in the pursuits of the mathematician, the moralist, the historians and the statesman Mrs, Whitman attributed to a discriminating and powerful intellect rather than to that peculiar character of mind which constitutes genius. And again, she thought that talent, though sometime miscalled genius, was merely that peculiar facility in execution which belonged to many individuals who possessed neither profound intellect nor powerful geniuses. To her, Pope was an example of powerful talent, independent of any of the peculiar attributes of genius. He showed a great subtlety of intellect — a shrewd and sarcastic wit, and a keen perception of the follies and frailties of human nature. Yet she did not find in these talents anything to awaken those intense and fervid aspirations after perfection and beauty — after purity and truth, which elevate one above the sordid cares and earth-born interests of life, and inspire the soul with a lofty and refining sense of its sacred attributes and high destinations. [page 133:]

It was by a test like this that Sarah Whitman would estimate an author's claim to genius. Genius to her was something divine in essence, purifying and elevating in its effects. It recalled one to the sense of the glory of his nature, and of those high capacities of happiness with which he was endowed. The old aphorism that poets were born, not made, had never been disproved, To Sarah Whitman genius had become a portion of the soul's individual essence, an endowment of Heaven, possessed in holy trust for the elevation and solace of the human race. Though often perverted and united with evil, it was in itself pure and holy, allied to all religious faiths, to an exalted enthusiasm, to all unfeigned love of goodness, beauty, and truth. It was a ray from the Divinity, throwing a halo aroung [[around]] all objects within the sphere of its influence everything that it touched with a portion of its own glory, and like the alembic of the alchemist, converting all common metals into gold.

It was with some degree of reverence, therefore, that Sarah Whitman came to look upon those who, she felt, possessed the divine gift of genius. And although in her early attempts at poetry she herself adhered rather closely to the conventional Hemans school, she would rarely if ever have attributed to this group anything more than mere talent. Like herself they were dilettantes who wrote simply to gratify their “love for [page 134:] the beautiful in art”. On the other hand there could have been no doubt in her mind as to her own intellectual superiority; for although her poetry had not reached and never did reach present-day standards of poetic arts it was seldom that she allowed herself to sink to quite the low level of the majority of her feminine contemporaries. Furthermore, although her powers of poetic execution were not great, she did possess a keen perception and critical ability in recognizing the truly great in others. She was a woman of much culture who had read widely in several languages, and who had a depth of penetration and understanding perhaps not possessed by any of her feminine contemporaries until Margaret Fuller made herself known in the field of letters. And Sarah Whitman was conscious of the fact that the power of penetration and the gift of understanding were not a common possession. She therefore became something of a literary seeress, exercising her powers for those who gathered about her or read what she had to offer. She became the “Egeria” of Providence.