Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 010: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Feb. 20, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 34-37 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 34, continued:]

10. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 123

Dear Mr. Ingram,

I mailed a letter & book of poems to you last evening, forgetting that it could not leave New York before Saturday. This will go by the same steamer. You will remember that facts & dates in Poe's life were very elusive. I believe I told you that Mrs. Clemm wrote me that he was married in [18]36. Mr. Stoddard, as you will perceive, says that he entered the University in 1825. This is a mistake; he entered it in [18]26. A history of the University published about a year ago in Harper's Monthly, I think, shows that the first term of the college [page 35:] commenced in [18]26, corroborating Mr. Wertenbaker's report, & proving that Poe could not have entered in [18]25.(1)

You asked if his name was Edgar Allan. It was, & Mr. Allan was his godfather.(2) The name was not called Poë here, but undoubtedly it is one of the derivatives from the French name of Pois or Poix, as is the name of Poer or Power. Poey is another. But if I touch upon this subject I shall never stop.

About the lines entitled originally “Stanzas for Music,” but in the volume of poems “Our Island of Dreams.” I will tell you their history, for it seems to imply a fatality — a prophetic instinct of the soul, apart from the conscious reason — something which overrules our voluntary actions & gives to them an unforeseen significance.

I had promised to furnish something for a new magazine to be called the American Metropolitan (of which only two numbers were issued).(3) Poe, who was engaged to write the literary notices for the periodical, wished me to send the “Lines to Arcturus” (written in October), & had himself carefully copied them for this purpose. After the rupture of our brief engagement, I withheld them, thinking their interior meaning might be apparent to many & give further notoriety to events whose publicity was already sufficiently painful. Urged by the publisher to fulfill my promise for the February number, if only by sending half a dozen lines, & too ill, at the time, to write, I sought among my neglected manuscripts for something available, when I found three verses of an unfinished song, written four or five years before for an Italian gentleman to accompany a wild, monotonous, dirge-like air which he had composed for the guitar. I had not seen them for years, but as I now read them, they sounded so strangely weird & mournful, so eloquent of all that I would have wished to express in reply to a letter which I had received from Edgar Poe soon after our final separation, a letter which I had not dared to answer, that I added the last verse & sent them without venturing to give myself time for reflection or hesitation. Of course they elicited a good deal of comment & conjecture, but I never regretted sending them. In his letter he [Poe] had urged me to write, if but one line, to assure him that I had not countenanced the cruel reports about the causes which led to our separation which had been so widely circulated. I had suffered so much through the opposition of my friends & family to the contemplated marriage that I dared not incur the repetition of the terrible scenes I had passed through by any direct communication with him.

I sent the stanzas to the publisher & they appeared in the February number, which I think was not issued until the middle of March, when the publisher failed & the magazine was discontinued. [page 36:]

In the interval, Mr. Poe had, I have reason to think, felt himself deeply wounded & aggrieved by my silence. It was during this interval that he prepared the review of Griswold & the poets, a portion of which was first published in the Literary Messenger. In that notice he introduces my name only as among the most accomplished of the ladies quoted by Griswold. In a lecture on the female poets of America which Mr. Poe delivered in Lowell in the summer of 1848, he made a different estimate. He brought me the MS. of the lecture and read me the portion extracted in Mr. Atkinson's notice. He said that he intended to rewrite the lecture when Griswold's book on the female poets was out, & should then have very much more to say on the subject. But when his notice of Griswold's book came out in the Review, as copied into the “Literati,” I saw only the cold & incidental allusion to my poems, which you may perhaps have seen there. This notice was already in print before my poem was published.

After that, no word ever passed between us, nor had I any indication from any source of his feeling toward me, until I heard of his death.

Yet, I cannot doubt that he accepted my “Stanzas for Music” as a peace offering, nor can I doubt that in writing “Annabel Lee,” the vague, sweet fantasy, so charming in its vagueness & obscurity, that he intended that I should read in it the veiled expression (visible to no eyes but mine) of his undying remembrance. Griswold, I think, has intimated that it had reference to his Rhode Island betrothal. Most assuredly, Poe never would have told him so. I think when you see in his letters the ingenuity & subtlety of his methods of conveying his thoughts without directly expressing them, you will understand my view of the subject & will not think it fanciful. Notice in his poem the repetition of the words The wind came out of the cloud by night & compare them with the words of my song — The night wind blew cold on my desolate heart.

But all this is for you & not for the world. Do you remember what the writer in the London Morning Chronicle for October 1, 1853, says about “Annabel Lee” in a review of James Hannay's Life of Poe?(4)

Can you tell me when the beautiful book you sent me was published? I find no date on the title page.(5)

You ask if I have any anecdotes of his school or college days. I had a letter from one of his schoolfellows (written in reply to inquiries), from a “Mr. John Willis of Orange County, Virginia.” He was a classmate of Poe's, & though very slightly acquainted with him, expressed great admiration for his genius, & asserted that whatever he might since have become, he was at that time possessed of the most honorable sentiments, etc., etc. The letter was written not far from the date of the letters from the faculty of Virginia College [University of Virginia].

I gave the letter to Mr. Gill, which I now deeply regret, for I am [page 37:] afraid he is too careless to make any use of the information which he sought from me. I have heard nothing from him, though I have written twice for the printed report of Mr. Gowans’ recollections of Poe, of which I spoke in a former letter. Perhaps he has been tampered with by some of Poe's enemies. I have been looking for a letter every day for the last three weeks. I shall get some friend to call on him at his place of business. I cannot now remember about Longfellow's words to the Editor of the Literary Messenger, but they must be there. I will look for them.

You say you found Mr. Pabodie's letter to the Tribune. The “further correspondence” was not printed. I will try to procure it for you; that is, I will try to send you copies of it. Mr. Gill has seen the letters, but has returned them. I will look them over & see what can be done.

You will find Mr. Clarke's address in Allibone's Dictionary. I am quite sure it is in Philadelphia.

The photographs I shall try to get according to the promise of the artist, by the middle of next week, & will mail them at once. I hope that Poe's letter which I inclosed to you will reach you safely. I have lost so many of these letters that I dread to part with them.

I trust you implicitly, but fear the chances & accidents of its transportation. Here is a note which Mr. Savage wrote to Hiram Fuller, a soi disant friend of mine & Mrs. Osgood's.(6) Mr. Fuller gave it to me just after my book was published. He is not a man to understand Poe. I mean Savage is not. Fuller of course is not. But I am so tired with writing this long postscript to my last night's letter that I can only tell you how sincerely & earnestly I share your hopes & desire your success.

 

1. This “history” was an article, “Mr. Jefferson's Pet,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 44 (May 1872), 815-26; an engraving of the western aspect of the university is on p. 817.

2. Edgar Poe's name was never legally “Allan,” and Mr. Allan was not his godfather, certainly not as we understand the term.

3. The American Metropolitan, edited by William Landon, New York, in Jan. and Feb. 1849.

4. James Hannay, The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with a Notice of His Life and Genius (London: Addey and Co., 1853).

5. See p. 12, n. 6.

6. John Savage (1828-1888), journalist and dramatist, attempted to defend Poe's reputation against Griswold's “Memoir” in an article entitled “Edgar Allan Poe,” which appeared in installments in United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 27 (Dec. 1850), 542-44, 28 (Jan. 1851), 66-69, (Feb. 1851), 162-72. Item 515 in the Ingram Poe Collection. Hiram Fuller (1814-1880) was a journalist and editor of the New York Mirror. Poe sued him in 1846 for reprinting Thomas Dunn English's defamatory attack and was awarded $225 in damages.