Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 016: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 3, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 58-59 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 58:]

16. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 126

Dear Mr. Ingram,

I sent you by Saturday's steamer a letter enclosing two photographs. I will send the more direct copy of which I spoke in the steamer that sails next Saturday. It will not be ready sooner.

I have this morning received from Mr. Gill the article from the Evening Mail containing Mr. Gowans’ reminiscences of literary men, & among others, of Edgar Poe. His testimony is very important in making up an estimate of Poe's habitual character in private life. I sent it to Mr. Gill with a request that he would preserve and return it. If he writes the lecture which he proposes, he will undoubtedly use it, but that need not prevent you from doing so, if you think it advisable. Keep it as long as you like, or keep it until I ask you for it.(1)

Thinking that you might like to see the remainder of the article from which I cut the portion enclosed in my letter, I have sent it with the printed matter by the same steamer. I hope to hear something about Graham's Magazine soon. The number containing Lowell's article was Feb., 1845.

I have much to say to you, but am suffering from severe pain in my eyes today. Will write soon.

I find among my papers portions of Savage's article in the Democratic Review. His note to Fuller in relation to my little book, I have mislaid. I think he said the title page & the genealogical part were the most significant things in it to him, & he thought somebody might take it up & make a goodsized, saleable book out of it. I think Mr. Savage is dead within the last year or two, but I am not sure.(2)

I wonder if he is the son of the old gentleman with whom I had a passage at arms, as reported in the letter about Dry Facts which I sent you.

I fancy he is an Irishman by the manner in which he speaks of poor Clarence Mangan, whose life was so sad & strange. I see that you, too, are an admirer of Horne's Orion. The history of that neglected volume shows that popular poetry is popular for something in it that is not necessarily or essentially poetry.

I am glad that you said good words about Paracelsus.(3) I think you & I have many parallel attractions in literature. It is a genuine bond of sympathy to like the same books & the same authors — is it not?

 

1. This paragraph contains the basis for William F. Gill claiming that Ingram had used materials in his biographies that had been previously assigned to him. When Gill forced W. J. Widdleton, the New York publisher who had bought the copyright to J. S. Redfield's [page 59:] edition of Griswold's volumes on Poe, to insert a statement to the effect that Ingram had done so, Ingram angrily replied in a widely published “Disclaimer,” Gill with a “Reply,” and Ingram again with a “Rejoinder.” All of these are ahead.

2. John Savage lived until 1888.

3. These references to Horne and Browning raise the possibility that a letter is missing, for in the letters above Ingram has not mentioned Orion or Paracelsus. Another surmise is that such remarks could have been on a page that she returned to Ingram later in order to prove a point.