Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 038: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Apr. 7, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 112-114 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 112, continued:]

38. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 141

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I am so sorry that I have no more definite answers to give to your many questions. Perhaps by the next mail I may be able to do better. I have made fruitless inquiries for old numbers of Graham's Magazine, and not until last night could come upon any trace of them. Last evening, Mrs. Latham (sister of Senator Sprague) promised to send me a set of Graham's running through a year, but what year I could not ascertain.

I have, so far, looked over tons of old magazines without avail.

I will try to obtain for you the papers on “Autography”.

I enclose a letter — portions of a letter, from the same friend who entrusted to me the original letters of Dr. Maupin & Mr. Wertenbaker — a friend whose sad history I dare not now tell you.(1) In a passage of the letter, marked with my blue pencil lines, there is something about his West Point career which I fear can now, alas, never be verified.

About dates. I remember to have learned in some way that the date of Mrs. Allan's death as given by Griswold was not the correct date. I forget on what authority I heard this, but I well remember that I made a note of the date given as the true one. Perhaps I may find it, but I fear not. If somebody could examine her tombstone.

I speak of this as important, in reference to what you said about the [page 113:] record of Poe's age on the books of the University as throwing out of order other dates. I have not myself given much attention to these matters because, like poor Mrs. Clemm, I have an inherent incapacity in that direction, & only yesterday dated a letter as April 6, 1863!! — which however I discovered in time to bring my figures up to time.

I have been looking through & through the “Marginalia” for those “keys” — have not yet found them, but am sure that I saw them there not many weeks ago. I shall find them sooner or later, rest assured. I think you have Mr. Eveleth's address in a letter of Davidson's which I sent you. I enclose you a letter written in [18]66, which may have something of interest for you.(2)

I once saw a copy of a Richmond paper (I have forgotten the name of the paper) containing an account of this feat of swimming, with several names of Poe's classmates attached to it.

I send you a few of the poems which contain allusions to the Raven [Poe]. “Arcturus,” I have told you about. The poems which contain allusions I have spoken of are indicated by the blue pencil marks.

But — “Ave atque Vale.” I must leave many things for another time.

Tell me about the old house & its ghostly chambers.

I send by the same mail an answer to your question about “Cinderella” & “Sleeping Beauty”. Will send my own volume soon.

Mr. Parton quotes from Rufus W. Griswold, though without quoting his authority, the story of a marvellous feat of swimming performed by Mr. Poe while at the University at Charlottesville. Mr. Parton stigmatises the biographer who relates this story as a notorious falsifier, & utterly discredits the story. “Neither Byron, nor Leander, nor any of the great swimmers, could,” he says, “have performed such a feat as this.” Yet on the authority of this very biographer, Mr. Parton proceeds to repeat the story of Mr. Poe's expulsion from the University. No such expulsion ever took place.

You ask if “Cinderella” & “The Sleeping Beauty” were in my volume. They were not, with the exception of two extracts from the latter, exclusively my own.

When the ballads first appeared in Mrs. Kirkland's Union Magazine (nos. for August & December, 1848), the names of my sister & myself were prefixed to them.(3) Her name coming first in the “Cinderella”, & mine in “The Sleeping Beauty.” She wrote half of “The Sleeping Beauty” & two-thirds of the “Cinderella.”

Griswold introduced the former among my poems in his Female [page 114:] Poets of America with a note signifying that the poem was “a joint production of Mrs. Whitman & her sister Miss Power, as before stated” — alluding to his introductory remarks.

In 1867 & [18]68 a few copies of these ballads, improved & revised, were reprinted in pamphlet form for preservation, in view of a future illustrated edition. It was these revised copies that I sent you.

Griswold having given undue precedence to my name in connection with the two poems, in these later reprints my sister's name alone appeared on the title page with Griswold's note appended at the foot of the first page. Confidential — you may have inferred that there is in my life a power behind the throne. Say a pleasant word about the ballads for my sake. I speak of them as hers.

 

1. This “friend” was S.E.R. (Sallie Elizabeth Robins), the young girl from Putnam, Ohio, who planned as early as 1861 to write a complete vindication of Poe's reputation and to whom Mrs. Whitman sent items of biographical interest. It was she who invited Mrs. Clemm to live in her Ohio home and serve as a primary source of information about Poe. Mrs. Clemm accepted the invitation eagerly, for she had worn out her welcome in many homes in the Baltimore and New York area; she moved to Ohio in mid-1861. For some reason, certainly not divorced from the difficulties of Poe biography, Miss Robins was shortly thereafter confined in a nearby mental institution, leaving Mrs. Clemm stranded during the winter of 1861-62 in a strange household, on no member of which had she the slightest claim. The beginning of the Civil War made traveling back to Baltimore difficult, but Mrs. Clemm overcame that, as she had so many other obstacles. See, in Building Poe Biography, a letter dated June 29, 1861, pp. 54-55, from Mrs. Clemm to Annie Richmond in Lowell, Mass., and the editorial commentary following for a summary of Mrs. Clemm's uncomfortable situation in Ohio.

2. In this letter, dated Dec. 30,1866, George Eveleth tells Mrs. Whitman that if she is to be the memorialist of either of the forthcoming editions of Poe's works, he is willing to furnish for her use Poe's “Rejoinder” to Thomas Dunn English, a letter from Poe about the Poe-English quarrel, and Poe's statement about the conclusion of “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”

3. Mrs. Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801-1864) wrote early popular books and edited or assisted with editing the Union Magazine from 1847 through 1851.