Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 029: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 23, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 89-90 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 89, continued:]

29. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 136

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I acknowledged your deeply interesting letter of March 6th by Saturday's steamer. Before I speak further of its contents, I will copy for you the letter containing the allusion to Mrs. H[elen] S[tanard] — I mean that I will copy from it such passages as I can find time to copy today. You shall at some future day see the whole letter. I dare not yet trust it to the uncertainty & risks of an ocean steamer. When I sent it to Stoddard, it was entrusted to the care of an intimate personal friend — a friend of mine & of Stoddard's who was responsible for its safe return to me through his own hands.(1) You will not find in it (as I told you before) anything that can be used to quote from. At least not during my life, but you will find in this & the other letters of which I spoke indications of character which will enable you to understand, as nothing else could do, the singular & complex elements of his nature — the intense superstition; the haunting dread of evil; the tender, remorseful love; the prophetic imagination, now proud & exultant, now melancholy & ominous; the keen susceptibility to blame; the sorrowful & indignant protest against injustice [and] reproach.

Notwithstanding its poetic exaltation of feeling in the pure passion of [page 90:] its eloquence, its simplicity & its directness, the enclosed letter cannot fail, I think, to command the sympathy of every unprejudiced reader.

You will see that during his first visit to me in Sept. 1848, he had avowed a love for me to which for many reasons I dared not respond.

In bidding him farewell, I promised to write to him & explain to him many things which I could not impart to him in conversation. This first letter of his is in answer to the one he received from me. By the next steamer I may be able to send you something which you can use, if you think it expedient to do so.

I have written a somewhat peremptory letter to Mr. Gill, & hope to get from him in a day or two copies of the letters of Mr. Wertenbaker & Dr. Maupin, & the address of Mr. Clarke. He is very careless of these papers, of which I long ago requested a copy. Yesterday I had a note from him asking me if I could tell him where Mrs. Osgood's reminiscences of Poe were to be found! He cannot have read Griswold's “Memoir,” yet is writing a refutation of all his calumnies! I am at a loss what to make of him. I am afraid if he gets hold of your last paper in the Mirror, he will adopt it without crediting you as his authority. But perhaps I do him an injustice in this.

This must suffice for tonight. There were only a few words more, & I am very tired. Keep this, but hold it sacred, for his sake & for mine.

I know that you will not say of it — that it is “curious, very curious indeed [as Stoddard did].”

 

1. This friend was William Whitman Bailey (1843-1914), assistant librarian in the Providence Athenaeum Library, later a professor in Brown University.