Text: John Grier Varner, “Chapter 10,” Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, dissertation, 1940, pp. 394-437 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 394:]

Mrs. Oakes Smith's intimation that Mrs. Whitman's effort to whiten the name of Poe was purely a labor of love can hardly be accepted without reservation. One can scarcely be unaware of some selfish motives in Mrs. Whitman's defense of Poe. It is true that as the years passed and the poet won daily more and more posthumous fame, Mrs. Whitman idealized the romance, and she began to experience a considerable amount of pleasure in her reminiscences of those days when she had received the flattering courtship of Poe; but in her defense of Poe, and particularly in her early defense, Mrs. Whitman was moved to a great extent by a desire to clear her own name, for aspersions had been cast concerning her manner of treating him, and false and perverted stories were told concerning those hectic days in Providence. When rumors passed around that Poe had not been particularly sincere and had deliberately played wanton with his affections, all of her personal and family pride, and, shall we say, all of her feminine vanity, arose within her, and she set out to prove to the world that she had been the only true love of Poe's life. The fact that she had pursued him to some extent without success after the dissolution of their engagement,(1) and a feint suspicion of Poe's insincerity which always bothered her made it imparative [[imperative]] now that she prove him to have been sincere; and Poe now being gone, set about her task by proving the falsity of his biographer. It is strange that [page 395:] the man most responsible for malignant stories concerning Poe and Mrs. Whitman, and most influential in laying the basis for Poe criticism both in America and abroad for the greater portion of the 19th century, was the person who had been instrumental in bringing the two poets together, a man who had held the confluence of Sarah Whitman.

Passing through Providence in the summer of 1848, Rufus Wilmot Griswold had told Mrs. Whitman of Poe's Lowell lectures and of his flattering words concerning the Providence poet. But Griswold's relations with Poe, apparently friendly, had for some years been troubled, and until Poe's death Griswold had harbored a hostility for him which might clearly be seen in the “Ludwig Article”, his obituary notice of Poe.(1)

The obvious animus in Griswold's sketch, as was inevitable, called forth many protests.. Mr. Henry B. Hirst in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier called Griswold's estimate “brilliant” but “unjust”; an anonymous poet in the New York Tribune challenged Griswold's statement that Poe had died without friends; and N. P. Willis, writing in the Home Journal October 20, 1849, made a protest against Griswold's judgement which Mrs. Whitman remembered many years later as one of the very few articles that had been written in Poe's defense.(2) Willis suggested that Poe's alleged irregularities of conduct were attributable to a “reversed character displayed by him only when he was under the influence of drink”. Mrs. Whitman worried about Willis’ [page 396:] article, for she feared that he had formed some opinions from rumors of what had happened in Providence. Therefore in writing to Griswold a short time later she said:

It is possible that Mrs. Whitman suspected that Griswold already knew something of her correspondence with Poe and that he had some of her own letters in his possession, for she continued:

If Mrs. Whitman was greatly disturbed by the unjust remarks concerning Poe in Griswold's “Ludwig” article, she gave no particular evidence of her feeling.

And the world looked upon Griswold's edition with interest, for with the exception of a brief autobiography which Poe had contributed to a Philadelphia paper before his death, Griswold's Memoir, which accompanied the third volume of his edition, was the first life of Poe to be published; and it was the only biography of Poe to be appear before 1870. Add to the fact of its priority the false supposition rife that Poe had designated Griswold as his biographer, and it is not to be wondered at that Griswold's Memoir furnished the basis for the generally accepted truths about Poe for many years to cone. Twenty-four years later when J. H. Ingram sought to prepare his biography, he complained to Sarah Whitman that all French and English opinions concerning Poe were based upon Griswold's Memoir, and that he was being scoffed at in England for attempting to disprove these stories.(2) Even today, in spite of numerous reliable biographies, many of the weird stories whispered about Poe by American school boys or their elders are to be traced to this first edition of Poe. But more important still is the fact that practically all nineteenth century Poe scholarship found its stimulus [page 398:] in the controversy which hovered about Griswold's Memoir. Many found truth in all that Griswold said; others found a sufficient amount of falsehood to them discredit anything that Griswold said. Some saw in him only a Judas who had betrayed the dead. As a matter of fact, although we cannot deny the reality of Griswold's animosity and in some cases his deliberate falsification, many of Griswold's errors lie not in pure falsehood but in simple perversion of facts resulting from nothing more than careless scholarship. But these perversions in their retelling suffered still more monstrous changes, and Griswold has taken credit for stories which have turned his one-time friend into nothing short of a fiend.

Griswold's Memoir was published in September, 1850. Mrs. Whitman received a copy, for which she presumed she was “indebted to the politeness of Mr. Griswold.”(1) She seems to have scanned Griswold's first calumnies dispassionately, possibly not being sufficiently informed about Poe's earlier life to judge of Griswold's statements. But on turning to page 45 her eyes fell upon the following paragraph relating to herself:

Mrs. Whitman was “perplexed in the extreme” to account for the insertion of these anecdotes which were so “obviously painful” to her, and which she felt were uncalled for even if they had rested upon a basis of reliability; and she was intensely humiliated at being publicly assigned the position of a “lady whose hand has been sought and rejected in mere wantonness”. She had received many polite attentions from Griswold; he had always spoken of her in his reviews and elsewhere with great kindness, having recently written her that both he and Mrs. Osgood had enjoyed her poem, “Hours of Life”. But most important was the fact that she had always “reposed” her confidence in Griswold in matters concerning Poe, and there had always been friendly feelings between them. Griswold's course in the matter was “utterly inexplicable”.(2) Then some of her “helpful” friends came to her with an explanation. In the summer of 1849 she had published her lines to “Arcturus”, and her friends had thought that in addressing this star which

her allusion to the serpent might have been construed by Griswold as an allusion to his own published memoir of Poe, and that this supposition would have made him more reckless of her feelings he might otherwise have been. This was [page 400:] an explanation which is not absolutely impossible but which was highly improbable. She was convinced that it was a “serpent” of a different order which had caused Griswold's change of heart.(1)

Mrs. Whitman did not write to Griswold concerning the Memoir, though this had been her first intention; for, as she remarked, the more she considered the statement, the more it perplexed and grieved her; and while she felt uncertain of the motives which prompted Griswold's remarks, she she did not like to trouble him with any communication.(3)

Then occult forces directed her in her sorrow to Mrs. Hewitt. “Toward you, my Dear Mrs. Hewitt,” she wrote, “I am for the present compelled to obey the law of attraction.” She had first known Mrs. Hewitt through some poems which that lady had published in The Harbinger; then one day in 1848 Poe had said something of her which “arrested her attention”, and in reply to her questions Poe had drawn a portrait of Mrs. Hewitt which “imprinted itself on my heart, and caused my thoughts often to revert to you with feelings of unwonted sympathy and interest.” Poe had spoken of a peculiar charm in the expression of [page 401:] Mrs. Hewitt's face, and a soul which seemed to shine” from a disembodied spirit”.

All of this Mrs. Whitman told Mrs. Hewitt, but the did not add that she had been compelled a mysterious and spiritual suggestion to communicate with her in order to ascertain the origin of Griswold's gossip.(2)

But whether the direction, a matter of instinct, suspicion, or occult influence, the direction was correct; and Mrs. Whitman found the perpetrator of the original story to be Mrs. Hewitt. Mrs. Hewitt seems to have been no less astonished and indignant than Mrs. Whitman, and in reply she gave her own version of what passed between herself and Poe.(3) Mrs. Whitman was quick to forgive Mrs. Hewitt, writing in 1850:

In her first letter to Mrs. Hewitt Mrs. Whitman had said:

There had been a small amount of suspicion in Mrs. Whitman's mind when she read Griswold's statement. She had hopefully denied the possibility of Poe's having been capable of such a statement. She was not willing to believe that Poe had involved himself in the humiliation of their final parting by a preconceived and deliberate piece of acting. Yet, when Mrs. Hewitt's admission came, she found little comfort in Poe's true words. So Mrs. Whitman's reply to Mrs. Hewitt bore an expression of pain at Poe's statement and an attempt to justify his act. She could but regret that Poe had spoken as he did of their proposed marriage, “yet,” she added, “when I consider his strange and wayward nature1I ought not to be surprised at it.” In attempting to disclose a motive she wrote:

At this time Mrs. Whitman's attitude toward Griswold was simply one of disappointment in his lack of faith. She grieved to lose confidence in an old friend. She wanted to think that he had been worked upon by an enemy, and she “hoped” and tried to believe that Griswold had not been “instigated by any unkind feeling toward me.” She begged Mrs. Hewitt to explain to Griswold that her allusion to the serpent in her “Arcturus” was no allusion to him, and she trusted in Mrs. Hewitt to give him the true story and thus put an end to such gossip.

There could be little doubt as to Griswold's enmity, and concerning this Mrs. Hewitt now offered a clue in confidence, a story which in part Mrs. Whitman had heard more then a year before. That woman who had been among the first to bring Mrs. Whitman to the attention of Poe had now exercised her power to influence Griswold in his slanders. [page 404:] Unhappy in his fradulent [[fraudulent]] marriage to a little Charleston Jewess, Griswold old had fastened his attentions on Fanny Osgood, and her attitude toward Mrs. Whitman during the last days of her life had not been kind. Mrs. Hewitt offered her “clue” in the form of a note from Griswold written in the spring of 1850(1) which Mrs. Whitman later showed to G. W. Eveleth. In this note Griswold said:

——————————

Mrs. Whitman forgave Mrs. Osgood her unkind words because she knew Mrs. Osgood to have been a sick women [[woman]]. Griswold, she thought, had been misinformed. She now trusted Mrs. Hewitt to tell Griswold the true story, to show him her letter, and Urns induce him to omit the Providence story from his next Memoir.(4)

One wonders what might have been the result had Griswold taken this courteous warning and omitted stories concerning the Providence episode. But this was an important part of his story; and though he still looked upon Mrs. Whitman with some respect, he lacked faith in her sanity on certain subjects. Therefore, when his Memoir was republished in the International Magazine, he made no such omissions as Mrs. Whitman had hoped for, and she was again [page 405:] pained, feeling that Griswold had doubted the truth of her statement. But her pain reached the point of indignation when she found the anecdote of the police re-told in The Westminster Review with the comment that Poe was either a brute or a seraph according to the company he kept.(1) Here was an insult to a lady, still which could not go unanswered. Both her friends and Poe's she felt must now be explicit on the subject. She was urged to make a public statement. Griswold had “raised a fabric, — a temple of fame” that would make her “immortal”. “You will go down to posterity”, one of her witty friends once told her, “as the brilliant New England lady who sent her Raven lover to prison on the evening of the bridal.”(2) Shrinking from public notoriety in a story sufficiently embarrassing even in its unperverted form, Mrs. Whitman had long refused to make a statement. But now her name had become too notoriously involved in a persistent scandal. At length, with great reluctance, she allowed her friend William J. Pabodie to come to her defense end to answer insinuations and accusations in an article which was published in the New York Tribune on June 7, 1852:(3)

For some years to come Mrs. Whitman's efforts to clear the story of the “Providence episode” were to consist of a mere denial of Griswold's story, with no attempt to tell just what did happen. The facts of the case were just about as embarrassing to her as had been Griswold's fiction. The result was that Griswold was kept in ignorance as to just what facts Mrs. Whitman and Pabodie had on hand. Consequently in a personal letter he answered Pabodie's article with an assurance that he might otherwise not have had. On the day following Pabodie's publication, he wrote:

Mrs. Whitman allowed Mr. Pabodie to enclose with his answer to Griswold's letter, a copy of Mrs. Hewitt's own version of what passed between her and Poe on the subject of his intended marriage;(2) and Griswold, evidently convinced of the authority of Pabodie, was silenced. Pabodie did not send a letter of explanation to the Tribune, and Griswold made no attempt to make good his threat, following is a copy of Pabodie's answer to Griswold on [page 409:]

Griswold had demanded that he have no contraction unless he could be shown to be wrong. Pabodie had wisely witheld [[withheld]] a portion of the truth, but he had told enough for Griswold to know that Pabodie dealt with facts whereas he himself dealt with rumors only. Griswold was silenced. But it remained for the whole truth to be told before his Memoir lost weight.

Pabodie's article in the Tribune came to the notice of Thomas Holley Chivers, who was at that time engaged in writing a life of Poe. Writing to Pabodie June 21, 1852, Chivers congratulated him on the stand that he had taken and begged that he send him letters or other remembrances pertaining to Poe which he might publish.(2) Chivers [page 412:] also made the same request of Mrs. Whitman and several months later she replied, but as yet she shrank from giving forth information which so touched her personal life. On August 9th, 1852, she wrote Chivers:

———————

Griswold's own affairs were now assuming complexities sufficient to make him willing to let those of others remain in their own hands. Sarah Whitman had known and had observed with interest the personal life of Griswold, though she had not “repaid” him by tell it publicly [page 413:] what she knew of his private life. In 1845 Griswold had “reluctantly” and “almost secretly” married Charlotte Meyer, a little Jewess of Charleston whom he had met in the home of Mrs. Whitman's aunt, Mrs. Tillinghast. This marriage had not been either a happy or a successful one — in fact it was never consummated. Meanwhile Griswold had turned his attention to some of his feminine literary protegees, among whom were Mrs. Osgood, Alice Cary, and Mrs. Elisabeth Ellet. But later declaring that literary women lacked too much of the practical, he obtained a divorce from Charlotte Meyer and married a widow whose wealth was more than sufficient to provide for the practical.(2) By this time Fanny Osgood was dead, but Alice Cary, who possibly loved Griswold sincerely, was left with a broken heart. Mrs. Ellet, with whom Griswold claimed to have been “improperly intimate”, was not to be easily cast aside.(3) Already disappointed by some biographical changes which Griswold had made in his Poets and Poetry of America, she deliberately planned to ruin him.

In 1852-1853 Mrs. Ellet commenced a correspondence with Mrs. Whitman on the subject of spiritualism, but [page 414:] Mrs. Whitman wrote “cautiously” and “reservedly”, fearing that Mrs. Ellet sought her acquaintance in order to prejudice her against Poe. The correspondence soon dropped. Bur Mrs. Whitman was kept well aware of the complexities of Griswold's life, and in the early fifties she exchanged some playful doggerel with Mrs. Oakes Smith concerning the “Doctor” who had been her literary advisor. In answer to a request by Mrs. Oaks Smith for some autographs, she replied:

TO MRS. ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH

Mrs. Oakes Smith, not to be outdone in the doggerel art, retorted with some words designed to inform Mrs. Whitman of the secondary place which she now occupied in the complex life of her literary god-father. Not only was he interested in new protegees, but he was being “undone by three jealous women”:

Mrs. Whitman's final reply carried not only humorous references to Griswold and the Cary sisters, but also the coveted signatures ingeniously woven into doggerel which she later begged Mrs. Smith to destroy.

REPLY TO MRS. OAKES SMITH

Mrs. Whitman never saw Mrs. Ellet. She did see Griswold again, in that memorable year when his enemies had sought to set aside his divorce, but she failed to recognize him.(1) It was on that evening when a little group of authors and poets had assembled at Alice Cary's in order to meet Mrs. Whitman, now a poet of some reputation. Griswold was there — but not the Griswold that Sarah Whitman had known — ”young and very handsome” as he had looked back in 1848. Now he was so wrapped up about the throat and so altered in appearance that Mrs. Whitman did not recognize him. She would have liked to see him, for after all, she herself like Mrs. Osgood and Alice Cary belonged to that long list of women who considered themselves Griswold's protegees; and only the previous year he had broken a long silence and written a congratulatory letter concerning her “Hours of Life” which had been published in 1853.(2) But Griswold had preferred to remain unknown to Mrs. Whitman, and she was later told that on seeing her at the Cary's he had “turned away in evident confusion”.(3)

The truth of the matter is that Griswold was dying — ”goaded to death” in fit retribution by Mrs. Ellet, as Mrs. Lewis liked to think;(4) but more apparently from the ravages of consumption, the disease which had killed Mrs. Osgood in 1851. Since 1833 be had been dangerously ill. In 1854 George William Curtis wrote Mrs. Whitman that Griswold was “fact going beyond praise or blame.” “It is hard to tell,” Curtis continued, “he is so determined a deceiver he might even affect death, but he would find it hard to [page 418:] pretend the deathly look which now lies on him.”(1) But there was no pretense in 1856. The look of death was not feigned. His friends were gone, and his money was gone. And now it was Alice Cary who “went to the bedside of the man who had deceived her, and watched with him day after day, and week after week as his life slowly ebbed away, making his sick room cheerful with books, flowers and comforts.” When on August 27, 1857, Griswold died, he left to Alice Cary, in that strangest of wills, his bed, bedding, bedroom furniture, and his gold watch.(2)

Mrs. Whitman did not see the copy of Griswold's will published in the Daily Tribune October 20, 1857, and she for a long time wondered about it, for she was particularly anxious to know what disposal was made of those portraits of Poe and Mrs. Osgood which had stared down at them on that strange evening at “Clovernook”.

——————

There had been another lady more closely attached to Poe than all the others, whose life was to touch Mrs. Whitman's for the next twenty years. Mrs. Clemm, or “Muddy” as Poe had affectionately called her, had spent the latter half of the poet's life providing for him; consequently when he died, she was left with no one to take care of her except that group of literary ladies who had enjoyed the flattery aid friendship of her son. In due respect to these ladies it must be said that most of them did offer to do their part in providing for the sorrow-striken [[sorrow-stricken]] and childlish [page 419:] old lady who now found it difficult to be satisfied in any home, and whose sentimental simplicity made her an easy prey to those involved in controversies raging about Poe.

After the death of Poe Mrs. Clemm found her first hone with Mrs. Richmond who had written in her letter of October, 1849:

Mrs. Clemm had gone first to Annie who was perhaps best able to offer that sympathy which she needed. But she did not remain with Annie long, for her physicians said that she could not survive in that climate. So the winter of 1850 found Mrs. Clemm in New York with Mrs. Marie L. Houghton, the Mrs. Shew who had so patiently administered to the Poes during Virginia's last illness. Not being able to go west with the Houghtons in 1851, Mrs. Clemm returned to Mrs. Richmond's, later going to the home of Mrs. Lewis in Brooklyn, where she was extremely unhappy, having sided, perhaps unwisely, with Mr. Lewis in a quarrel with his wife. The next few years were to find Mrs. Clemm with friends in Alexandria, with Sallie Robins in Ohio, and eventually a Church Home in Baltimore — always unhappy, wailing for her lost children, begging for small amounts of money for bare necessities, and longing for an independence which she was [page 420:] now too old to have. But strangely enough Mrs. Clemm never found a home with either of the two ladies who supposedly claimed Poe's most rapt attentions during his last two years of life. There is no record that Mrs. Shelton ever offered her home; and though Mrs. Whitman from time to time, and even at what she thought was a sacrifice, contributed toward Mrs. Clemm's expenses, she never offered her home for any length of time. Once in writing Mrs. Whitman concerning Mrs. Shelton Mrs. Clemm remarked:

Mrs. Clemm had had no particular love for Mrs. Whitman in the beginning, and Griswold no doubt did not speak without reason when be wrote Mrs. Whitman in 1849, that Mrs. Clemm was not her friend, though Mrs. Whitman always attributed these words to an “unauthorized” and unsought effort on Griswold's part to prejudice her against one whose name she had never mentioned to him.(2) Then when in 1852 Griswold wrote Pabodie that Poe's relations with his mother-in-law were sometimes criminal, and that he had wished to live near Mrs. Richmond in order to enjoy her as his mistress, Mrs. Whitman thought these charges both “monstrous” and “malevolent”. Some years later Mrs. Clemm allowed Mrs. Whitman to read the letters from Poe which had given Griswold basis for his perverted statement about Mrs. Richmond, and she found in these letters only “a sad foreboding”, and messages [page 421:] of tender and grateful remembrance” to Mrs. Richmond. “This the Interpretation, which the insane hatred of Griswold put upon this expression of grateful remembrance”, she wrote concerning Griswold's charge, and later added, “Griswold little dreamed that I should ever read these very letters when he wrote about them so grossly and so falsely.”(1) Some years later when rumors had reached Ingram, he wrote Mrs. Whitman asking if Mrs. Clemm were a “bad” woman, and Mrs. Whitman replied:

This opinion of Mrs. Clemm seems to have become prevalent among Poe's friends, and in 1853 even Mrs. Richmond was constrained to remark in a letter to Mrs. Houghton:

Mrs. Whitman's first letter from Mrs. Clemm came only 19 days after Poe's death, and Mrs. Whitman did make an earnest effort to get in touch with her in order that she might understand as such as possible of the circumstances of the dissolution, of their engagement.(4) When in [page 422:] spite of Griswold's warning and malignant statements, in 1852 she invited Mrs. Clemm to visit her in Providence, offering to meet her in Fall River as she was returning to New York from Mrs. Richmond's home in Lowell.(1) Mrs. Clemm had expressed a great desire to see Mrs. Whitman, for she knew that “for Eddie's sake” she would advise her as to what to do.(2) But for some reason Mrs. Clemm was unable to make the visit, and Mrs. Whitman made no attempt to bring her to Providence as a permanent guest, excusing herself by saying she had no home, but that if she did she should wish Mrs. Clemm to share it.(3) However, as early as 1853, Mrs. Whitman was contributing money toward Mrs. Clemm's expenses — money toward necessary medicine — toward travel expenses — and finally toward finding a permanent abode in the Baltimore Church Home. Often Mrs. Clemm obtained this money by calling for it is [[in]] “Eddie's” name.

Then later:

Certainly all the sentimentality of the age must have found repose in the bosom of the sorrowful Mrs. Clemm. She once begged Mrs. Whitman for a small piece of her hair to be enclosed in a locket with that of Edgar and Virginia, and once in 1860 she wrote:

“I am deeply interested in all that concerns you, not only for your own sake but for the sake of my dear Eddit, I know how much he loved you. When I go to heaven, and if it is permitted me to tell him everything, how much he will rejoice to hear of all your kindness to his desolate mother.”(2)

Mrs. Whitman held no faith in the sincerity of Maria Clemm, and she had absolutely no confidence in her accuracy in remembering facts and dates. But the sentimentality of the sorrowful and desolate Maria Clemm could not have been without its appeal to Sarah Whitman, now a confirmed spiritualist, and herself growing daily more sentimental about the memory of Poe.(3) She learned much from Mrs. Clemm about Poe's other loves, and she was soothed by Mrs. Clemm's assurances of Poe's love for herself and his sincerity in addressing her. This was a point she herself [page 424:] hoped to establish. And Mrs. Clemm was her ally. Ear1y in the 50's Mrs. Clemm had ruffled at unkind words which Mrs. Locke had uttered concerning “Eddie”, and she had written a soathing [[soothing]] note to this lady, so unliked by the literati.(1) Her later resentment must have been added inspiration to Mrs. Whitman in preparing that defense of Poe which his spirit had indirectly asked her to undertake. In November, 1858, Mrs. Clemm bewailed the republication of “another lying biography” and begged Mrs. Whitman for a letter denying “the police story” in order that she might prove its falsity to the strangers among whom she lived.(2) But by the first of July , 1858, Mrs. Whitman had already completed an article defending Poe, which she hoped would be acceptable for publication. In reply to a letter by Dr. Frederick Hedge concerning this article, James Russell Lowell wrote:

The article which Lowell mentions was evidently the basis for “Edgar Poe and His Critics”, for in November of the following year Mrs. Whitman wrote Mrs. Clemm that she had been spending the past months on a little book she [page 425:] was preparing, and that she would soon send her a copy.(1) In 1859 Edgar Poe and His Critics was published.

For ten years Mrs. Whitman had waited to see if any friend of Poe's in the literary phalanx would come forward to do the dead poet justice. She resented the fact that Griswold had violated his trust to the dead, and that few had done anything about this violation.

In 1852 Chivers had told her of a proposed life, but she had heard nothing more of this;(3) then in 1857 James Wood Davidson, incensed at the indignities offered by Griswold, had proposed a biography of the poet and obtained a great deal of assistance from Mrs. Whitman;(4) but so far nothing had come of this biography. Mrs. Whitman's little brochure was therefore perhaps the fist defense of the poet to assume any length.

The death of Griswold in 1857 had checked the possibility of any new rumors from his pen concerning Poe; and since Pabodie's letter of 1852 he had remained “discreetly” silent. But there was only one way to silence the stories concerning Mrs. Whitman which his Memoir had carried to the world. That was to tell the true story of the Providence episode. Americans must have looked forward with some [page 426:] interest to Edgar Poe and His Critics, thinking that Mrs. Whitman would enter the petty quarrels, and exercise her knowledge and authority in proving many of Griswold's anecdotes utterly fabulous, and others merely perversions of the truth. But excusing herself in her introduction on the ground that Griswold now claimed from her “the tender grace of charity” she merely spoke of the falseness of Griswold's stories, and attempted in the best taste to give a critical estimate of the poet's genius — taking up the cudgel with the most recent of Poe's literary critics — in particular the North American Review and Edinburgh Review.(1) She once remarked that she would have written a more popular book, but that this — was not what she was after. She merely sought briefly and earnestly to throw light on an obscure phase of Poe's genius — a phase which no ono else would be likely to understand. She set out to defend Poe in much the same way that she had once defended Shelley and Goethe.(2)

One of the chief charges against Poe had been that he lacked sincerity both in his personal life and in his intellectual activities. With the view of lessening the sting of this accusation, Mrs. Whitman now cited instances of his sincerity. She told of his devotion to Virginia Poe, and mentioned his fidelity to the memory of Mrs. Stanard as an example of almost fanatical sincerity in his scintillating conversation, and showed that even his intellectual creations were genuine, not mere exhibitions of effort and skill, but time outgrowths [page 427:] of Poe's inner life. Even in his ideas of fate and metaphysical aid she saw not an effort to be grotesque, but simply a display of the poet's own mental struggles; these were the experiences of his own inner life.(1) She once wrote Mrs. Oakes Smith:

Critics had contended that Poe's religion was simply a worship of the beautiful, and he was condemned on the ground that he knew no beauty but that which was sensuous. There was no moral appreciation in his conception of beauty. But Sarah Whitman maintained that Poe's aesthetic religion was simply “a recognition of the divine and irreparable harmonies of the supremely beautiful and the Supremely Good.” The North American Review had asserted that Poe “repudiated moral uses in his prose fictions as in his poetry, and that if moral or spiritual truths are found in them they must have got there accidentally, without the author's permission or knowledge.” This accusation, Mrs. Whitman felt, was unjust, and to prove its injustice she quoted Poe's own words:

And again,

These current strictures on Poe's sinful worship of Beauty reminded Sarah Whitman of satirical thrusts at the Germans, who never sought the Beautiful without looking for collateral advantages — their caryatides must uphold pulpits; their angels must bear baptismal fonts.

Mrs. Whitman was ready to admit with the critics that a large proportion of Poe's stories were filled with monstrous and appalling images — images which were oppressive to the reader. But she maintained that as out of mighty and terrific discords noblest harmonies are sometimes evolved, “so though the purgatorial ministries of awe and terror, and through the haunting nemesis of doubt, Poe's restless and unappeased soul was urged on to the fulfillment of its appointed work — groping out blindly towards the light, and marking the approach of great spiritual truths by the very depths of the shadow it projected against them.”

Poe had been wanting in that supreme central force or faculty of the mind whose function is a God-conscious and God-adoring faith, but he had sought conscientiously for such a solution of the great problems of thought as were alone attainable to an intellect hurled from its [page 429:] balance the abnormal preponderance of the analytical and imaginative faculties. So Mrs. Whitman felt that it was to this very disproportion of which Poe had been accused that the world was indebted for some of his marvelous creations which she believed had had an especial significance and especial adaptation to the time. It was therefore from this point of view that she would judge the genius of Poe. All orders of genius, she felt, were revealed to some purpose, and there could be no doubt in her mind but that the genius of Poe had had its peculiar mission one significance in relation to the age. Nor would the age have gained anything had Poe proven another Wordsworth or another Longfellow, for “these far-wandering comets not less than ‘the regular, calm stars’,” obeyed a law and followed a pathway that had been marked out for them by infinite wisdom and essential love.

Mrs. Whitman would have had the critics see the mission of every man of electric temperament and prophetic genius in his more or less conscious and willful representation and anticipation of those latent ideas which were about to unfold themselves in humanity. In this particular mission of genius she found excuse for some of the skepticism of which Poe had been accused. When Poe's genius had begun to unfold itself, the age was moving through processes of transition and development which, seemed about to unsettle things, yet these processes gave no indication of where they were taking people. In the leading minds of the age, [page 430:] she had found skepticism; therefore she would believe that Poe had simply represented more or less the latent ideas of his time.

There had been a time when Sarah Whitman, in that period of her own philosophical development, had given much credence to Emerson's theories of absolute identity which manifestly would not have admitted doctrines of individual immortality, but certainly by now her belief in Modem Spiritualism had made it impossible for her to deny the immortality of personality. Consequently she had come to look upon Emerson's theories with some distrust, and to regard with a great deal of distress those gloomy pantheistic doctrines which Poe had so dogmatically expressed in “Eureka.”

Poe had been unable to comprehend an Intelligence greater than his own — anything greater than his own Soul. The material and spiritual God, to him, existed solely in the diffused mutter and Spirit of the Universe. He had therefore written;

Just as she had pitied Shelley in his skepticism, so Mrs. Whitman was now filled with sadness and awe at the too daring speculations of Poe which seemed to have in them “a mocking and malign import, ‘which is not man's, not angel's.’” She felt that he had shown a mysterious isolation from the “Heart Divine”; and she confessed that when she read his words of “proud-assertion”, she felt a half faith in the old superstition of the significance of anagrams when she found in the transposed letters of Edgar Poe's name the words “a God-peer.” But in all of his possible error the abstracted enthusiasm with which Poe pursued his great quest into the cosmogony of the Universe was to Sarah Whitman an earnest of his passionate intellectual sincerity. He was genuine, furthermore she now found some comfort in the belief that Poe's, proud. intellectual assumption of the supremacy of the individual soul was an expression of “its imperious longing for immortality and its recoil fits the haunting phantasms of death and annihilation.” Again, she [page 432:] believed that Poe's mental and temperamental idiosyncrasies had fitted him to come readily into rapport with psychic and spiritual influences; and thus, in spite of his unbelief she saw in Poe something of an unconscious spiritual medium, who without himself fully comprehending those truths foreshadowed by his dreams had by the strange fascination of his style., the fine analytical temper of his intellect, and the weird splendors of his imagination compelled men to accredit as possible truths his most marvelous conceptions.

Poe had suffered very little criticism because of an intellectual insincerity. He had been blessed chiefly for his physical infirmities, and this was a subject which in her little brochure Mrs. Whitman felt sone timidity about discussing. So much of her own personal life was involved, and besides, she felt, Poe's weaknesses had already been too extensively elaborated. And here is where Mrs. Whitman erred. It was a refutation of Poe's excesses, of the gossip and scandal, that people wanted. She failed to make this refutation. Furthermore, she admitted the poet's weakness and attempted to justify them by showing that he had suffered remorse for these weaknesses. Poe had been accused of wholly ignoring ideas of right and wrong; it was said that “no recognitions of conscience or remorse are to be found in his pages.” Mrs. Whitman showed how with “terrible fidelity” he had portrayed the retributions of conscience in “William Wilson”, “The Man of the Crowd”, and [page 433:] “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and then she cited passages from personal letters in which Poe had shown the keenest pangs of remorse. He had seen the handwriting on the wall but had not possessed the power to avert his impending doom. She ingeniously proved Poe's intellectual sincerity, but not without showing that in his cental processes Poe was what the world would have then styled “morally diseased.” An earnest enthusiasm in his pursuit after metaphysical knowledge, and a remorse not sufficient to control his weaknesses were no proof to the 19th century that Poe was not an immoral character.

A review in the New York Advertiser suggests the tenor of opinion concerning Mrs. Whitman's book:

And the New York Leader:

No, Mrs. Whitman's composition was “beautiful, and marked with literary taste and knowledge”, but it was not successful as an effort to clear Poe's character; and that was what the world wanted. At least that is a part of what the world wanted. No doubt a great many who had looked for interesting stories from Sarah Whitman in refutation of oft told scandals were not able to understand her intellectual defence when it did come. She had sought to make his morality consist chiefly in his sincerity — and as in her defence of Shelley many years before, she had hoped to make the world see only his genius, forgive and forget his weaknesses, and pity him for that lack of faith which should have been combined with so lofty a mind.

The edition was sold out during the year.(2)

As soon as Edgar Poe and his Critics had been announced by Rudd and Carlton, Mrs. Whitman received a note from a Mr. T. Cottrell Clarke, first editor of the famed Saturday Evening Post, who had known Poe personally in Philadelphia. Clarke, who found his stimulus in the literary atrocities of Griswold, was planning a vindication of Poe. He soon came to New York to see Mrs. Whitman, who was that time residing at the corner of 36th Street and Madison [page 435:] Avenue. They had a long talk in which Clarke told of his pleasure in learning that she was about to “make a protest against Griswold's injustice”, and he expressed an affectionate and admiring interest in Poe as a man and acquaintance.” Clarke also told hoar in his long ride from the lower part of the city he bed been accompanied by George Graham who had expressed great pleasure at the announcement of her book and said it was a disgrace to American literature that such a shameless desecration of the dead should have gone so long unrebuked. Mrs. Whitman thought it a singular coincidence that these two should be thrown together on this particular occasion, for she now learned for the first time of Graham's indignation. Clarke told Mrs. Whitman of his own projected work, and she complied with his request for assistance. But something seems to have intervened to hinder Clarke's plans. There were one or two letters during the following spring, and then Mrs. Whitman had no further news of Clarke until fifteen years had passed.(1)

But there was now another person contemplating a vindication of Poe who had come to the attention of Mrs. Whitman at about the same time that she first heard from Clarke. Through her publishers she led received a note But there mus uo^ another person contemplating a vindication of Poe who had come to the attention of Mrs. Whitman at about the same time that she first heard from Clarke. Through her publishers she had received a note signed S. E. Robins, and requesting copies of the reviews of Edgar Poe and his Critics.(2) Mrs. Whitman forwarded clippings; and some correspondence had ensued when S. E. R., revealed to Mrs. Whitman the fact that she had been masquerading as a man, whereas she was in reality Sarah E. Robins, a [page 436:] young about twenty-three years of age.(1) Mrs. Clemm had known her secret, and had disclosed it to Davidson; but Mrs. Whitman had been completely deceived by her correspondent.(2)

Sarah E. Robins of Putnam, Ohio, had for some time resented the injustice which had been done Poe, although she did not see Griswold's Memoir before December, 1859. But she had determined to “reverse public judgment concerning Poe”, and had “proceeded toward the completion of a biography” when Mrs. Whitman's book was announced, and she found that much of her task had already been “perfectly accomplished”.(3) She did not alter her plans, however, and Mrs. Whitman made efforts to assist her in her work, in turn receiving information concerning Poe which she had not previously known. Sallie Robins was sufficiently interested in her subject to offer her home to Mrs. Clemm in 1860, and at one tine even planned to pay Mrs. Clemm's epenses through Europe as her companion.(4) But Mrs. Clemm was not destined to be happy in Ohio, and Sallie Robins’ plans for a biography were never to be completed. The mental strain of her work was too great. She grew exceedingly “restless” and then became “violent”. In 1861 Sallie Robins was carried to asylum — hopelessly mad.(5)

The spirit of Griswold still prevailed, and there was to be a lapse of a decade before further efforts should be made to refute his statements concerning Poe. Until then Poe must remain an immoral character, an abnormality — a fiend; and Sarah Whitman was forced to hear reverberations [page 437:] of old falsifications and perversions, the truth of which it was now left in her power only to reveal.

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In the early fifties Griswold had suggested that those were two subjects on which Mrs. Whitman was insane — one of these was the subject of Poe. In Sarah Whitman's oversentimentalization one might see cause for Griswold's impulsive remark. Furthermore, into her life had now come other experiences and influences which could very well have increased her mental peculiarities. The “strange,” sad fate of Sallie Robins had toucher her, and her life was daily becoming more miserable because of the constant fear of a reoccurrence of insanity in her own family. Anna was growing more erratic and restless, and could never be satisfied with any plan or purpose. She had been bitter about Poe, and had never overcome a certain “touchiness” when his name was mentioned. Consequently, Mrs. Whitman's days were filled with consternation lest Anna again succumb to sever mental aberrations and necessitate her removal for treatment.

The second subject upon with Griswold had accused Mrs. Whitman of mental abnormality had been that of Spiritualism; and judging by those standards of religious insanity which Emerson sets in his essay “The Over-Soul”, one might be tempted to agree with Griswold's accusation. Mrs. Whitman had now reached a stage of spiritual intensity and superstition which was nothing less than fanatic. Yet the whole world was grasping at the outgrowth of those “isms” [page 438:] which were spawned by curious early 19th century fanatics, and was rushing toward a tremendous enthusiasm not to be dampened until the tragic days of the War. In her romantic agitation over the dead bones of Edgar Poe, Sarah Whitman had found in religion further fields for speculation which were to divert her attention somewhat from the sad memory of the poet. She became a seer and a medium, and because of her intellectuality, her spirituality, and her poetic imagination, she mas soon looked upon as one of the leaders in the movement of Modern Spiritualism.