Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 028: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 20, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 87-89 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 87, continued:]

28. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 135

My dear Mr. Ingram,

Your letter of March 2 reached me last evening, that of March 6 this morning. I have so much to say, but must, in order to avail myself of tomorrow's steamer, write very briefly. What you tell me of your mental history in the last thrilled me with strange sympathy. I had suspected, nay, I had felt assured that you had passed through some such experience. But I must not dwell on this now. I have many questions to answer & many things to say. I am not sorry that the book was lost, since I should be sorry to have you review it without suggesting some changes in relation to several things; I am sorry on one account. It makes me apprehensive about sending other books. But for this, I would send you tonight the [two volumes of the] Broadway Journal, which you can keep till I ask you for them, which will not probably be before the opening of “the seventh seal.” I wish to consult with some friends about the safest way of sending them. [page 88:]

I did not mean to speak “sadly” of the great event of death. To me it is the culminating hour of life — the hour of triumph & enfranchisement. It may not be so near as I imagine, for I am always flattering myself that it is at hand, & yet I have stayed so long & know that it has all been well.

You ask about Tuckerman. He died not long ago. I was invited to meet him one evening some ten or twelve years ago at Mrs. Botta's. I liked him, but we did not speak of E.P. I have not seen his book on Kennedy, but will try to get it.

I intended to have copied for you the letter speaking of Mrs. H[elen] S[tanard]. It was a mere allusion. The letter contained no matter for the biographer, but, as a psychological relic — as a revelation of the poet's tender heart & impassioned soul — it is, to the poet & the man of genius, a rare & priceless record. I am sure you will regard it as such. Yet it has nothing, I imagine, that can be revealed to the public. Perhaps the next letter, which I will send with it, or soon after, may have a few passages of publishable matter. About the autograph letter which I sent you. I hope you will not think from the erased words, which I have supplied in pencil, that my family were harsh or ungracious to him. They were, at times, even ready to place implicit trust in his power to retrieve his destiny. No person could be long near him in his healthier moods, without loving him & putting faith in the sweetness & goodness of his nature & feeling that he had a reserved power of self-control that needed only favoring circumstances to bring his fine qualities of heart & mind into perfect equipoise. But after seeing the morbid sensitiveness of his nature & finding how slight a wound could disturb his serenity, how trivial a disappointment could unbalance his whole being, no one could feel assured of his perseverance in the thorny paths of self-denial & endurance. My mother did say more than once in his presence that my death would not be regarded by her so great an evil as my marriage under circumstances of such ominous import. For myself, I had no thought but for his happiness & for my mother's. I had a firm conviction that we should soon be separated by death, & that it was my death & not his that was to part us. I had no fears about the results of such an imprudent union, because I believed that its earthly tenure would be of very brief duration.

I allowed Stoddard to see this letter, partly to show him that I had not spoken unadvisedly in what I said of H[elen] S[tanard], & partly because my last hope of seeing some competent writer speak in defense of Edgar Poe was that S[toddard] might at some future day write out a fuller & more truthful life of him than had yet been attempted. I thought that the perusal of these letters, which he assured me should not be shown to others, would awaken a chord of sympathy [page 89:] in his heart for the writer & show him that he was utterly incapable of the brutality & coarseness which G[riswold] had ascribed to him.

I send with this hurried letter a German sketch of Poe, with a translation of “The Raven.”(1) It has Poe's autograph & a crude copy of Sartain's mezzotint from Osgood's portrait. I have the original of this mezzotint in the two vols. of prose & poetry published by Redfield in 1850. If you have not got it & would like to see it, I will cut it out of my copy & send it to you.

I seem, now, distinctly to remember having asked Edgar about “Isadore,” believing it to have been his. I cannot remember his answer, but if he had said that it was his, I could never have forgotten it, & he would most certainly have subscribed it with the “P,” as in the other cases [in the two volumes of the Broadway Journal].

What a singular case that was about a claim to the authorship of one of Hood's poems in Temple Bar some time ago. What do you think about it?

 

1. This translation was very likely “Der Rabe,” by Carl Theodor Eben, published in Philadelphia in 1869. Ingram reproduced it in his edition of The Raven, pp. 59-65.