Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 033: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 30, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 97-100 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 97, continued:]

33. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 138

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I sent off a hurried letter with the Broadway Journal by Saturday's steamer, leaving many things I wished to say unsaid.

I wanted to thank you for the “Farewell.” There is such a strange & exquisite simplicity in it — such genuine & heart-breaking pathos, that I could hardly keep back my tears while I read it.

I am so glad to know you through the photograph you sent. I can speak to you now more unreservedly than ever before. I trust implicitly your heart & your intellect. I fear, only, your impetuosity & your impulsiveness. Don’t claim too much for our poet — be wary & keep cool and don’t be too sarcastic. Your “Grecian fiddlestick,” for instance. Not Merlin's wand could evoke a fiercer storm.

Don’t be troubled about the loss of the poems. What I most regret is a charming little photograph from Le Jenne's Cinderella, prefixed to my sister's poem. It has just been discovered that a number of letters & packages mailed here to be sent away have been opened & rifled by a young clerk in the Post Office. This may account for the loss of the poems.

I want you to tell me what poems & papers were in the letters sent by the same mail with the book — some were sent in the book & some in the letters. You need not send anything back, unless I ask. I should like to have you preserve for me the printed notice from Putnam's for Nov. 1853, by George Wm. Curtis, if, indeed, it was not lost in the book. I will send for it if I need it. I shall probably, if my health is equal to the supervision of it, republish, or prepare for republication after my departure, the volume published already, including the poems since written. Mr. Whitney, the publisher, surrendered to me the copyright before he gave up business as bookseller & publisher. Mr. Carleton also gave up to me his copyright of Edgar Poe & His Critics.

I want to correct something I said about Mrs. Lewis. I believe I told you that in the summer of 1858 when she sent me a card to one of her receptions, she was living in Lafayette Place. I gave you the name of her residence from memory only. I now distincly [[distinctly]] remember that it was [page 98:] Irving Place. Mr. Davidson, who visited New York fox the first time that summer, went with me to call on her. But I had lost her card, & mistaking the evening, did not find her. On enquiring for Mrs. Clemm who, I had heard, was residing with Mrs. Lewis, I learned that she had left her for another home in Brooklyn.

I tell you doubtless many things that may seem irrelevant, but having spoken of the lady's residence at that time, I want to be accurate about it.

I have been recurring to Mrs. Clemm's letter about the date of the marriage. I find that she does not mention the month. Her memory seems to be utterly at fault in nearly everything pertaining to dates & places. In a letter dated April 14, 1859, she says, “Eddie was not in Richmond ‘twice.’ We left there in 1837 & he never visited it again since the death of Virginia until 1849.” Now Mrs. Clemm could have had no motive for concealing the fact of his having been in Richmond in August, 1848. But her forgetfulness of the fact shows how utterly unreliable was her memory of past events. She wrote to ‘Mr. Davidson that Poe “never was in Europe ’twice’,” but her statement is of no weight, after her forgetfulness of his having been for two successive summers in Richmond at a much more recent period. I will enclose the letter. Keep the annotations sacred & preserve the letter.

You say you want to see everything Poe has ever published. Do you know there was another verse to “Ulalume” until it was republished in Providence in the autumn of 1848, when, at my suggestion, he left out the last verse?

You can use the lines about Arcturus if you see fit. Perhaps I will send you another letter or copy of another soon. I must think about the pros & cons.

I used to have the original copy, but have lost it. Perhaps I may obtain another for you if you would like to see it. The letter to Pabodie was written at my suggestion. I knew that he wanted an autograph of Poe that he could show, & I asked Poe to write one with his full signature.

Mr. Latto prizes it very much, so be careful of it & return it soon.

 

The proofs have just arrived.(1)

The paper is masterly in its refutation of Griswold's rash & reckless statements. It is admirable too, in tone & manner — earnest, energetic, & evidently springing from a profound & passionate conviction of the essential truth of its statements & the incontrovertible character of its evidence.

The paragraph at the bottom of page 11, about Mrs. Osgood, leave [page 99:] out by all means if not too late. I will tell you more another time. Mrs. Osgood was much under the influence of Griswold during the last year of her life, & saw nothing of Poe or of Mrs. Clemm. Though not important in itself, the paragraph will tend to throw discredit, I fear, on other statements.

I do not think Poe had consumptive tendencies. I have never heard any such theory advanced. Unquestionably his death was caused by inflammation of the brain.

I don’t quite like the intimation that Poe's family lost caste through the marriage of his father with an actress & his adoption of the stage as a profession. It seems to undervalue a vocation much more consonant to the tastes of a young man of genius than the routine of the law could have been — n’est ce pas?

In speaking of Miss Rosalie Poe, I should prefer to say, “Of this lady we learn no more, etc.” than of this girl. But these last remarks are, perhaps, hypercritical & unimportant.

I enclose the first letter I ever received from Mrs. Clemm. It is dated from Lowell, & was written 19 days after Edgar's death.(2) She was then visiting Mrs. Charles Richmond in Lowell. When I next heard from her she was in New York, but returned, I think, the following winter to Lowell. She subsequently passed some time, I think, in the family of Mr. W. Strong, Milford, Conn. Some years afterward she lived for a time with Mrs. Lewis.

But before I close, let me speak of your poems which came with the proofs. They are exquisite — filled with the rarest & most ineffable aroma of poetry — even their faults add to the impression of their strange beauty & pathos by showing their unstudied & spontaneous creation. “Death in the Dwelling,” “The Unknown Captive,” “The Pool of Death,” “Autumnal,” “My Childhood Home,” “October,” “In Venice,” “The Old Stone Well,” & “Our Garden Gate,” are all brimfull of poetic beauty. “The Garden Gate” is perfect in its way. It has such an indescribable naivete, such a sweet, unwonted freshness, & the close is so felicitious! I cannot begin to tell you how it charmed me. I only wanted to change one word, to make the “freed branch” the “bended branch,” & to alter the closing line of the next-to-the-last verse, Returned to our Garden Gate” to something more rhythmical.

I dare not read any more of the poems, lest I should be too late with my letter — I resolutely lay them aside for the time. But their fragrance & tenderness enfolds me & will not be put aside.

One more word about the proofs. The use you make of the “Eulogium” on the last page is very telling. It brings your summing up of evidence to a climax. Nothing could be better managed.

I wish that I had a good magazinist or journalist to do my bidding. But I cannot well do anything myself — first, because I am quoted in [page 100:] the article, & second, because I have almost blinded myself with writing, & fear every day that I shall be remanded to a dark room & wet bandages.

May I republish “The Garden Gate”? Will you let me make the changes I suggested, or will you make the changes, if you agree with me that it might be improved in these trifling particulars?

I don’t see how that objectionable line in the “Pansy” — “Waneth never” — can be improved. It troubled me at first, but I have got to liking it better. But goodbye for tonight.

 

(1) These were apparently first proofs of Ingram's forthcoming Temple Bar article. Of the various revisions suggested by Mrs. Whitman in this letter, Ingram only continued to promise that he would make them. The article is reprinted on pages 168-80.

(2) This letter, dated Oct. 26, 1849, is printed in full in Building Poe Biography, pp. 33-34.