Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 024: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 16, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 77-79 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 77, continued:]

24. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 133

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I acknowledged by Saturday's post your very interesting letter of Feb. 27. Yesterday morning came a note from Mr. Gill, a copy of which I enclose. I fancy he has received a letter from you which has in some way given an impulse to his energies. I have not yet replied to his note. I hardly know what to think of him. I am afraid that his ambition outruns his ability. What do you think?

I am so sorry about the loss of your stories! There can be no compensation, no consolation for such things unless, indeed, one can believe (as I devoutly do) that a beneficent destiny shapes our lives to finer issues than we know, & that all our losses are gains.

No, I have not travelled to Via Mala — not the Via Mala of which you speak (though many another, doubtless, quite as desolate & sombre), nor have I seen the Splügen Pass, nor Italy, nor Eldorado, nor Atlantis, nor the Happy Islands. I am content to see these beautiful things thro’ the eyes of poets & prophets — content to remember & to dream.

And you will send me your photograph. I am so glad & grateful.

By this time you have received the Ultima Thule picture. I thought it was good when I first looked at it — at Coleman's copy, I mean. It recalled to me, then, so vividly the sombre gloom of the original daguerre. But as I became more familiar with it, the memory of the original faded out of it, & it had an unnatural, galvanized look about it. I am sorry I sent you either of the copies from that picture,

I think the one he had taken for me is far better, though neither is capable of suggesting to one who had never seen him the unrivalled beauty & nobility of his face in its serener mood & aspects. Both of those portraits were taken, as you must remember, when he had just been passing through the terrible excitements to which he alluded in the autograph letter I sent you. “The agonies which I have lately endured have passed my soul through fire.”

The photograph taken for me was taken on the 13th or 14th of November, just as he was about to leave Providence after his third visit to the city. During this visit he had sought to persuade me, as he did in [page 78:] all his letters, that his happiness & welfare in time & in eternity depended upon me, & after many sad & stormy experiences he had won from me a promise that nothing should cause me to break my plighted troth to him but his own infirmity of purpose. Just before we parted he had said something to me about Arcturus which I promised to remember in looking at it.

An hour or two after he had left the city certain representations were made to my family in relation to the imprudence of the conditional engagement subsisting between us which augmented almost to phrenzy my mother's opposition to the relation. During the painful scenes which followed, I chanced to look toward the western horizon & saw there Arcturus shining resplendently through a rift in the clouds, while Ophiuchus, or a star which I believed to be Ophiuchus, in the head of “the serpent,” was faintly glimmering through the gathering darkness with a pale & sickly lustre.

To my excited imagination everything at that time seemed a portent or an omen. I had been subjected to terrible mental conflicts & was but imperfectly recovered from a painful & enervating illness.

That night, an hour after midnight, I wrote under a strange accession of prophetic exaltation the lines “To Arcturus,” beginning “star of resplendent front.” The words from Virgil “Nec morti esse locum,” etc. were prefixed to them, through why I should then have thought them appropriate I cannot tell. I only remember that as I repeated the Latin words they had a sound so majestic, so exultant, so full of solemn & triumphant augury that the remembrance of it, even now, fills me with a mysterious joy. You will better understand through this account the references in the autograph letter of E.A.P. the 13th of November. This puzzled me very much for a time when I recollected that I had discovered soon after the lines were written that Arcturus & Ophiuchus must have been below the horizon when I thought I saw them thro’ the western clouds & that it must have been some other stars that I mistook for them.

When the poem was printed in my volume of poems it was therefore dated as if written in October. But I forget that you have not yet seen the poem.

I will send you some little things of myself soon.

I was greatly perplexed to know whether you wished your 2nd no. of “New Facts” to be circulated in the papers or whether the danger of their being appropriated by others would interfere with such a wish.

I wish that I had some literary friend at hand who could advise one how to forward best your purposes. I am afraid that Davidson is very [page 79:] busy. He lost nearly everything in the War of the Rebellion, & is, I fear, not “in funds.” I have not heard from him since I sent him a copy of your paper.

I have found that an oval about the size of the one I enclose may be placed over the photograph of Poe, the one taken for me, & greatly improve it. The lower curve of the oval should go just below the shadow of the shirt bosom & just above the buttonhole of the coat. The photo might be placed on a larger card & an oval of the size or a little larger than the one I enclose placed over it.

I will send you something finished in this way soon. This picture of mine has been hidden away all these years because I thought it did not represent him truly, but many persons who have seen it lately think it has the best expression of any picture yet taken of him.

I sent notices of my poems from Putnam's & from the Tribune & a copy in a Newport paper of Poe's comparative estimate of three New England poets — Mrs. Osgood, Miss Lynch, & S.H.W. Were they sent between the pages of the book & lost with it, I wonder, or did you receive them?

I feel sure that “Isadore” was not Poe's. Others may not know this & I shall say nothing to anyone but you. It was very like him.