Text: John C. Miller, “Entry 008: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Feb. 16, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 27-30 (This material is protected by copyright)

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8. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 121

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I have just received yours of Jan. 28. I will consider all your questions on another page. On the 13th I mailed to you a letter & copy of Harper's, Sept. No. 1872. In that letter I told you what I suppose to have been the origin of the story about “a distinguished woman of S. Carolina.” The lady was Mrs. Ellet, whose name you will find in Poe's “Literati.” I do not know why Dr. Griswold called her a lady of Carolina, unless he wished to divert inquiry from the actual facts of the case.(1) Perhaps she was not altogether so evil & perfidious as Poe seemed to think in the extract from his letter which I sent you. There may have been extenuating circumstances on her part. I will at some time copy for you the whole of this letter & you will understand why he spoke with so much intensity, fearing that she would seek to interrupt the relations then subsisting between us.

I believe I told you that Mr. Stoddard on receiving my first letter expressed regret at having unintentionally appeared to question any statement made by me in Edgar Poe and His Critics and said that he should be glad to see any of Mr. Poe's letters that I might be willing to send him & would send me the correspondence in relation to him [Poe] which had been drawn out by his “imperfect sketch.” The tenor of his article seemed lenient & not unfriendly; though on a subsequent reading I could not but feel that its tone was one of depreciation rather than of admiration or genuine sympathy. Believing in his general friendliness & candor of feeling toward Poe, I sent him two or three of his letters “written (as he himself says & as I implicitly believe) at the most earnest epoch” of his life.

When Mr. Stoddard returned the letters his only remark concerning them was “the letters are curious, very curious indeed. The fact is that the more I read about Poe the less I understand him. I am too commonplace a person to understand unusual developments of genius.”

Certainly Stoddard ought to know best about this. I am half inclined to think he was right. Many persons seem to think, that with the other writers who immediately succeeded Poe, he was jealous of his high & increasing reputation. At any rate, he has never sent me the promised correspondence.

The woodcut of the cottage at Fordham is typical of the spirit of the article. I have been there but should not have recognized it, although its outlines are not unlike. It looks very much as if the artist had tried to make it look as petite as possible. I begin to distrust the spirit of the [page 28:] whole article. I do not see that the account given by S[toddard] as to the last days of Poe has anything more than a very improbable rumor for its basis.

I believe I have not told you that Mr. Carleton told me, in announcing his acceptance of my MS., that it had been read by Mr. Stoddard & very highly praised by him. Mr. Aldrich also read it, as I have been told, & was supposed to have written a lengthy notice of it, but no notice was ever published by either of these gentlemen.(2) This sub rosa.

The letter which I sent to S[toddard] in evidence of my authority to say what I did about the lines to Helen (Mrs. H[elen] S[tanard]) was one in which Poe had explained to me the motives which had induced him to seek my acquaintance & the feelings which prompted him to write the lines to Helen first quoted by Griswold in the article signed Ludwig, (but omitted until the next issue of the Tribune for want of room) &, afterwards in his “Memoir.”(3) In relation to the scandalous & injurious story which Griswold has associated with his quotation of the poem in the “Memoir,” I will write you a few words of denial which you may use in any way you like. I will write it on a separate page & send by the next mail. And now, to revert to your questions. I cannot answer any of your inquiries till we come to the 9th. When was he married? Turning to a letter from Mrs. Clemm written from Alexandria [Virginia], April 14, 1859, I find that in answer to my inquiries, she says, “Edgar and Virginia were married at Richmond in 1836. Judge Stanard & his son Robert were among the first who called on us.”(4) But you must remember that Mrs. Clemm was not considered infallible in the matters of dates.

About the Broadway Journal. I have the two bound vols. of that Journal, as I told you in my last letter. I do not think there can be much of importance to you that is not already republished. I should be willing to lend them to you, but I think it would hardly repay you for the trouble.

Do I know that the articles in the “Literati” are not properly reprinted? I have had reason to think so, but I cannot now remember on what grounds; perhaps I shall recall them. I do not know anything about the libel suit, gained by Poe against English, save what Mr. Poe says in a letter which I will perhaps copy for you in a few days. The Lewis family? They saw much of him I imagine during the two or three last years of his life. In the winter & spring of 1858 Mrs. Clemm resided for a time with Mr. & Mrs. Lewis in Lafayette Place (I think) in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis separated soon after, & Mrs. Clemm, having, I believe, taken part with Mr. Lewis against the lady, was made very uncomfortable & wrote me that her situation as a guest in the [page 29:] house was becoming very embarrassing. She left them soon after & Mrs. Lewis went abroad. Some eight or nine years ago the Home Journal announced her approaching marriage with (I think) a French nobleman. Since then I have not heard anything about the family. Soon after Mrs. Clemm left, while visiting friends in New York, I received a card from Mrs. Lewis to attend one of her receptions, but, mistaking the evening, found no one at home. I have never met her.

I do not think there is any reliable account of Poe's last moments.

Some of the questions which you have asked are answered (authoritatively or not, I cannot say) by Stoddard. I think I have heard that J. M. Daniel was suspected of being the author of “The Eulogium” in the Messenger.

I will inquire about Pinckney's poems. I enclose Mr. Davidson's reply to my inquiries about Graham, etc. If you write to him, I can assure you a prompt reply. He at one time thought of writing a life of Poe, but all the valuable papers which he had collected for that purpose were burnt with his library, etc., at the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, during the war. He is a most honorable & high-minded gentleman. He is now in New York. His address is James Wood Davidson, Box 567, New York City.

I had not finished writing the above when the penny post brought me your letter of Feb. 3rd, with the richly illustrated & exquisite volume. I have only had time to see how rare a treasure of poetry & painting & tradition it is.

I must defer any reply to your letter till the next mail.

I will only say in relation to a disposal of the advance sheets of your-article that I am utterly & entirely ignorant of all transactions with publishers. I have no relations with any publishers & never made a contract in my life. I wonder if you would consent to my asking Mr. Davidson to act for you? I suppose whatever is to be done should be done at once & I am afraid there will not he time to hear from you on the subject. I would most gladly procure & send the works you need myself, but have been like all the children of Providence, so cramped in resources by the failure of the Great Sprague Manufacturing Company (which has crippled so many of our city banks), that it was with difficulty we could meet the heavy taxes of the year.

I have seen the account in the Home Journal about the engagement with the “Maiden named Alice.” Of course it is “a fiction.”

I am going to inclose to you in this letter a letter from E.A.P. from which you may if you think best have a facsimile taken of the lines I have inclosed in pencil.

Be very careful of this letter & return it as soon as possible. If you allude to it in your reply, do it on a separate piece of paper, for my [page 30:] sister is so unwilling that I should part with any of these letters even for a day that she would be sure to remonstrate.

Very gratefully & sincerely,

[Enclosure: James W. Davidson's letter, Apr. 23, 1858. Item 88 in the Ingram Poe Collection.]

 

1. Mrs. Ellet had lived in Columbia, S.C., where her husband, Dr. William H. Ellet, held a professorship from 1835 to 1849.

2. Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was, in his time, an important author and editor of the New York Evening Mirror, the New York Home Journal, and the Atlantic Monthly.

3. Jane Stith Stanard (d. Apr. 28, 1824) was the mother of Poe's schoolmate and close friend Robert Stanard and was said by Poe to have been his inspiration when he wrote the first “To Helen.” Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Clemm regularly spelled her name “Stannard.” Griswold's obituary of Poe, signed “Ludwig,” was printed in the evening edition of the New York Tribune on Oct. 9, 1849, the day after Poe was buried in Baltimore.

4. This letter was first printed in full, along with other materials, in an article by James A. Harrison and Charlotte F. Dailey in the Century Magazine, 55 (Jan. 1909), 439-52.