Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 042: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Apr. 17 and Apr. 21, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 121-125 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 121, continued:]

42. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 145

My dear Mr. Ingram,

In my last hurried letter [Apr. 14] I neglected to advert to your questions about the possibility of obtaining autographs of letters etc. They are very rare. Three years ago, Mrs. Botta, in aid of some great national charity, got up a costly & valuable collection of autographs & portraits of distinguished people. While it was in preparation, she wrote to me earnestly entreating me to let her have a fragment, if no more, of one of Poe's letters or poems. I was obliged to decline doing so, and, when the catalogue of the collection was published, I observed that, in connection with the announcement of an autograph of E. A. Poe, the words were affixed, “very rare.” Mrs. Botta has unrivalled enterprise in the pursuit of any desired object, & she would not have appealed to me so earnestly & repeatedly if it had not been exceedingly difficult to obtain one elsewhere. The last fragment of his writing which I gave away — I mean the last addressed to me, was a brief postcript [[postscript]], cut from a letter & signed only by his first name. I gave it to James T. Fields, the Boston publisher & litterateur, ten years ago. Mr. Fields would never have applied to me (since he has never been friendly to Poe, I hear), had he been able to have obtained his autograph from any other source. In reply to your next question — I cannot point out any letter in Griswold's. “Memoir” as authentic. I have reason to think that many of them were not authentic, but it might be difficult for me now to prove this.

You will see from the copies of the letters of Poe which I have sent you that it would be difficult to find in his letters to me lines or sentences sufficiently impersonal to use.

You say in your last letter, “I was hoping to hear the sequel of your former reminiscences — why am I kept from hearing the result of the [Letter breaks off]

I must leave this story fbr another letter. No time today.

My dear Mr. Ingram,

Your letters of April 2nd & 7th received. You do not say anything of having received mine of March 17th, with a copy of a note written by E.A.P. on board one of the Long Island Sound steamers. Have I lost one of your letters, or have you lost one of mine, or did you in your [page 122:] hurry forget to announce its reception? You speak of one of later date, but not of that, which makes me a little anxious. And now to our dry facts again. I will take up the questions in yours of April 2nd first. You ask about the German “Raven.” I do not want you to return it. I- know nothing of the Mr. Whitman to whom the book is inscribed. The pamphlet was sent me by a young lawyer of New York, Franklin Burdge, who graduated at Brown University in Providence. I have distributed all the copies of “New Facts” which you have sent me. You speak of other mistakes than those I pointed out. Do you refer to anything relating to the Dunn English article? I fancy that some things left out in Godey's article are to be found in Broadway Journal. Is it not so? I hope that the Broadway reached you safely. I sent with it a letter containing an autograph letter of Poe's, & copies of the Wertenbaker & Maupin letters, on March 27th. March 30th, I sent comments on proof of Temple Bar article. I hope it will not reach you too late for alteration of the paragraph about Mrs. Osgood's kindness to Mrs. Clemm — ninety-nine readers in a hundred might not notice it, but it might be criticized by those who knew about it.

Mr. Latto wrote to me a few days ago to ask if the pictures which I described as hanging in a quiet parlor in New York — the pictures of Poe & Mrs. Osgood, were not seen by me in the house of Mrs. Osgood!

Everybody in New York understood by “that fragrant & delicious Clover-nook” I meant the home of Phoebe & Alice Cary. Alice had written a volume of stories called Clovernook, praised by the critics as better than Miss Mitford's stories of Our Village.(1) I did not agree with them. The pictures belonged to Griswold & were lent by him to the Carys. Even if you could get a reply from Miss Rosalie Poe, I doubt if you could obtain any particulars of interest from her, for the reasons which I have stated before. However, I have never seen her, nor do I know anyone who knows her. It is only through a paragraph in the papers that I have heard of her destitution. I will try to find out through O’Connor. I know no one in Richmond. I should not know where to obtain for you the earlier collections of the poems. The 1845 collection published in the Wiley & Putnam series called “Library of American Books,” I have. It was given to me by Edgar Poe & has his autograph, etc. on the fly-leaf. I cannot part with it, but I can give you the titles. On the first title page, “Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books. The Raven & Other Poems.” On the following page,

[page 123:]

Then, after the poems, another title page, “Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books. Poe's Tales.”

I shall cut out the Preface & Index & enclose them in my letter. You need not return. They are published in the editions issued after his death. Certainly I cannot object to your using such parts of “The Paean” as you think best. I only tell you my own view of the matter. But if you think they will not injure his reputation, by all means print them, especially if you think they will be of interest to his friends. I am glad that you found the German pamphlet likely to be of use. Do you know that I am an admirer of Clarence Mangan, though I thought Savage could know little about Poe, to say that his grief was superficial or assumed, while Mangan's was real & heartfelt. They had both only too much knowledge of “the burden & the mystery of all this unintelligible world.”

There can be no doubt of the genuineness of the autograph in Stoddard's article — the lines from “Annabel Lee.” Did I understand you rightly as saying that you doubted them? The mezzotint in my volumes is the same as that in the four-vol. edition of [18]56, if that is a copy of Osgood's painting.

I have just received a letter from O’Connor. He cannot tell me the name of the writer of that paper on Willis — thinks the magazine continued only through a few numbers — will try to find out & let me know.

And now, after these brief & imperfect replies to your letter of April 2. (which came yesterday), I will take up yours of the 7th, which came this morning. My allusion to the reading of “The Raven,” before the appearance of the poem in the autumn of 1845, at one of Miss Lynch's soirees, must of course be regarded as an anachronism. I have been looking over the letters of that lady, but find the one in which she described Poe's reading of “The Raven” at her house is missing. I know that she spoke of it in one of her letters of that winter, 1844 or perhaps 1845, but can find no letter of hers earlier than May 20, 1845, in which she says nothing of the reading. I must leave it. “Some one has blundered,” as the Laureate sings. It is very much more likely to be me than anybody else. I think that I can guess how it happened. A Providence lady passed that winter or the next with Miss Lynch & described to me the effect of the reading upon the assembled company. Perhaps I referred to her for the date after the letter was lost, & it might have been given me incorrectly by her. I now think that the reading must have been given early in January of 1845. Again, I may have been misled in thinking the reading was before the publication of the poem. I think in my next edition (?) I shall have to leave out “a few weeks.” etc.

Certainly, on p. 16, should have been 1844 instead of 1847. I thought [page 124:] I corrected it in the book I sent you, did I not? And will you make the correction for me in the copy in the British Museum? It was a misprint, which I pointed out to Carleton at the time. It should have been corrected in the list of errata — but I believe this would begin & end the “list.”

I knew that you would feel the truth & fervor & passionate sincerity of that wonderful letter. It is an utterance of love so profoundly real, yet so divinely ideal, that it has to me the deathless fragrance of an immortal flower.

Burton is dead. Has been dead many years.(2) I will look for “The Elk.” It may have been in the summer that Poe moved to Fordham, but I am quite sure that he told me that he took Virginia out there in the spring of the year to see the cottage, & that it was half-buried in fruit trees, which were then all in blossom. That she was charmed with the little place, which was rented for a very trifling sum. They may not have gone there to live immediately, however, but I thought from what he said that they did. I saw the place in March, 1856. I went there with some friends. The cottage was occupied by a Mr. Pond, a composer and professor of music. We were permitted to enter the house, which was then kept in nice order, and everything remained much as it did in the time of its celebrated inmate. The neighborhood was then very picturesque — there were groves of trees which extended for a long distance on either side of the road, through which the beautiful little river, called the Bronx, wandered deviously, now seen on one side of the road & now on the other. But everything is changed now, & the city of New York, once 14 miles from Fordham, now reaches almost to the quiet little village. The lady who spent several weeks there in the early autumn of 1847 was Miss Anna Blackwell. She was in very delicate health at the time, & a friend of hers who chanced to know Mrs. Clemm prevailed upon that lady to receive her as a boarder for a few weeks. She was charmed with the exquisite neatness & quiet of the household & the delicious repasts, prepared for her by Mrs. Clemm. She was not much acquainted with Poe & saw but little of him during her stay there, but spoke of him as a courteous & gentlemanly person. She came to Providence for magnetic treatment in the summer of 1848, & returned to England in the fall. There is in a no. of Harper's Monthly, quite recent, a view of the University at Charlottesville & an account of its early history. You will find it within the last two years.(3)

I don’t know how I can find out about The Gift. I have one annual of that name, but no year. No date. It contains “William Wilson.”(4) But I must stop now.

 

1. Alice Cary (1820-1871) and her sister Phoebe (1824-1871) were both popular poets and members of the New York literati; both were especially good friends with Rufus [page 125:] Griswold. Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) had published in 5 volumes between 1824-32 Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery (London: G. and W. B. Whittaker). Alice Cary had published Clovernook; or Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1852).

2. William Evans Burton, born in London on Sept. 24, 1804, had emigrated to the United States in 1834 where he became a popular actor and author, as well as publisher of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia from 1837 to 1840, with Poe as his editor for part of that time. He died in New York City on Feb. 10, 1860.

3. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 44 (May 1872), 815-26.

4. “William Wilson” was published first in The Gift for 1840.