Text: John C. Miller, “Introduction,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. xxv-xxviii (This material is protected by copyright)

[page xxv, unnumbered:]

Introduction

Ingram's “Providence” Comes to His Aid

When John Ingram addressed his first letter to Mrs. Whitman asking for her help in writing Poe's biography, he had just passed his thirty-first birthday on November 16, 1873. He was not completely unknown as a writer in England, for he had published and suppressed in 1863, after the manner of Poe's supposed suppression of Tamerlane, a small volume of verses called Poems by Dalton Stone, again imitating Poe's use of a pseudonym in his first volume. He had gone on to compile, sift all previous publications on the subject, and finally produce in 1869 a large volume on the history and symbolism of flowers. In addition, he had lectured in London on American literature, had learned to write and speak at least four languages other than his native English, and in 1868 had been awarded a commission in the British Civil Service, with a job in the General Post Office, which he held for the next thirty-five years and by means of which he supported his mother and two sisters. His father's death several years before had forced him to withdraw from the City of London College.

As a boy John Ingram found and read repeatedly Edgar Poe's poems and tales and became a fanatical admirer of the American writer. When he later read Rufus Griswold's 1850 biography of Poe, in which Griswold said that Poe was an immoral and dishonest man who, as a writer, was insanely jealous of any of his fellow authors, Ingram instinctively disbelieved Griswold's many unsavory allegations. He found his life's work by resolving to learn everything he possibly could about Poe and to write a truthful and definitive biography that would prove Griswold to have been a liar. Mrs. Whitman's replies to his letters made him joyously aware that he had found a literary gold mine of the primary source materials he so badly needed and hoped for in writing his long-planned biography.

Ingram had begun reading and gathering materials about Poe perhaps as early as the late 1860s, but since the British Museum Library's holdings [page xxvi:] of American magazines and newspapers were limited, he had been especially pleased to find a copy of Edgar Poe and His Critics, Mrs. Whitman's small, beautifully written defense of Poe. He quickly prepared and published in the London Mirror for January 26, 1874, a thin article which he called “New Facts about Edgar Allan Poe,” of which no known copy survives. After he received Mrs. Whitman's first letter, he had more, much more, to offer his readers, and he promptly published a second article in the same weekly, which appeared on February 21, 1874, called “More New Facts about Edgar Allan Poe.” Of this only a single known copy survives in the Ingram Poe Collection in the University of Virginia Library. It is reproduced in the text that follows.

When Mrs. Whitman replied to Ingram's first letter, she was within six days of her seventy-first birthday and she was wearily familiar with requests from would-be biographers of Poe who had written or come to her for help. But there was something different about this letter from England; the strong handwriting and choice of words showed her that the writer obviously worshiped Poe and hated Griswold and that he was determined to clear Poe's name of some, if not all, of the untruths Griswold had published about the dead poet. Ingram had not neglected to inform her that he had already published two books, that he was a recognized member of the British literati as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. It could have been any or all of these things that impressed her, for she did answer his letter very quickly. After first warning him that he would find his job difficult, if not impossible, she proceeded to write many more pages in which Ingram easily recognized her acute intellect, her sense of humor, and her factual and intimate knowledge of Edgar Poe's personality and writings. This letter became the beginning of the building of truthful and reliable Poe biography.

Sarah Helen Power was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on January 19, 1803, exactly six years to the day before Edgar Poe was born in Boston. Her father, Nicholas Power, disappeared at sea sometime after 1813, when her sister, Susan Anna, was born, and the two girls grew up with their mother; their father's return, after nineteen years of silence, apparently surprised them all. Sarah Helen married John Winslow Whitman on July 10, 1828, and moved with him to Boston, where he had started his law practice. After his death, five years and fifteen days later, she promptly returned to Providence to resume her life with her mother and her mentally affected sister, whose eccentricities even then governed the household, and Sarah Helen, apparently with much satisfaction, returned to her former activities — writing and receiving letters from the more important and well-known American literati, taking occasional trips to the mountains and the beaches; she joined a tour for a trip to Europe in 1857. She wrote better than average verses, and these [page xxvii:] were published in book form by George Whitney in Providence in 1853, at his request.

Edgar Poe had appeared at her door in September 1848, armed with a letter of introduction written in New York City by Maria J. McIntosh. He had immediately declared his love for Sarah Helen, asking her to marry him at once. Of course she temporized, flattered as she was by both his person and his undeniable abilities as a writer. Her mother and her sister, as well as her neighbor, William J. Pabodie, made strong objections to the proposed marriage, as, apparently, did many of her friends. But Mrs. Whitman did consent to a conditional engagement, after several stormy scenes with Poe and she had extracted from him a sacred promise that he would never drink again. This engagement was broken in December of that same year, and not without Poe's connivance.

When Poe died in Baltimore the next October, Mrs. Whitman must have realized that she had lost her best chance for literary and personal immortality by refusing to become the second Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe, for she was too good a critic of her own verses and his not to recognize that his writings would rank him among the very first of American authors.

Lurid stories had been told and retold as well as published about the breaking of her engagement to Poe, and these she had tried to correct by personal letters and sometime quiet but firm vocal denials. It was not until Rufus Wilmot Griswold died in 1857 that she began writing her defense of Poe, for Griswold had both a powerful personality and strong hatred for Poe, and he was so well known as an editor and author that he had access to almost every important magazine published in America — and Mrs. Whitman was afraid of him. When she did write her Edgar Poe and His Critics, published in 1860, she did not attempt to controvert every lie Griswold had written about Poe, but she did say that he had lied, and she attempted to give interested readers another and different view of Poe's personality and writings.

After the Civil War, when writers literally besieged her, she graciously tried to help everyone who asked, for she was extremely anxious that an able and truthful biographer retell the story of Poe's life, and especially the circumstances surrounding her broken engagement to him. One by one they came: Thomas Cottrell Clarke, who had once offered to finance Poe's dreamed-of-magazine, the Stylus; an anonymous writer using the initials S.E.R., who burned to write a redemptive biography but who unfortunately went insane before the work was even started; James Wood Davidson, of South Carolina, an early defender of Poe's reputation and one of the first attackers of Griswold's veracity; William Gowans, who had actually boarded for a time with the Poe family in New York City; Richard Henry Stoddard, a New York writer who did not ask for her help and who not very politely snubbed her [page xxviii:] written efforts to correct two of the more glaring errors he had written about Poe; and William Fearing Gill of Boston and New York, an impulsive but ardent admirer of Poe with whom she talked at length and whom she allowed to use some of her firsthand materials about Poe, actions she was later to regret deeply.

When none of these writers produced anything that came close to fitting her wishes, she began to despair that an impassioned and able biographer would ever appear to straighten out the record for all time. She still had an enormous amount of primary source materials for Poe biography, but her mother was dead and she alone was responsible for her insane sister, whose behavior grew harder to handle as the years passed, and she too was growing old.

It was at this point that John Ingram's first letter reached her, changing her whole outlook about the possibilities of her association and engagement to Poe being told with both dignity and tact, and she promptly began a correspondence with him. It began somewhat formally but quickly became friendly and then affectionate, even though they never met face to face. Her reply changed Ingram's career and life, too, and together they gave to us the longest, most reliable account we have of Poe's life and writings.