Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 050: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, May 6, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), p. 151 (This material is protected by copyright)

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50. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 152

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I mailed a hurried letter to you last evening to tell you that I had found George Graham's letter.

In the evening I saw again the lady who sent me the volume containing it, and I asked her if I might hope to obtain the volume or the pages containing the letter, but she seemed unwilling to ask her friend, thinking she would be very unwilling to part with it. So I had to content myself with copying it. I made one or two trifling elisions where the writer weakened the effect of his statements by repetition or introducing irrelevant reflections.

I think it is a most valuable & eloquent & truehearted statement. It is incomprehensible to me how I could have missed seeing this letter when it was first published. Some of the paragraphs which I have indicated by a blue pencil mark are so well expressed that I cannot help thinking they were of more than mortal phrasing — were inspired utterances. I wish I had known the writer.

A circumstance which I forgot to tell you in speaking of my interview with Mr. Clarke in December, 1859 — the missing publisher — (I think he will yet come to light), I now recall with singular interest. I was residing at the corner of 36th St. & Madison Avenue, in the upper part of the city, & Mr. Clarke told me in his long ride from the lower part of the city, George Graham had accompanied him. He said that Graham expressed great pleasure at the announcement of my little book, & told him that it was a disgrace to the American Litterateurs — to American Literature, that such a shameless desecration of the dead should have gone so long unrebuked. I did not know then how kindly & tenderly Graham had written about Poe, or I should in some way have sought his acquaintance.

But was it not a singular coincidence that the two should have been accidentally thrown together in one of the New York omnibuses on that particular occasion, & that I should then for the first time have heard of Graham's indignation against Griswold?

I have only time to send the enclosed & will tell you more about the volume for 1842 in which are some of Poe's articles — but only an appendix to the two papers on autographs, which must have appeared in the autumn of 1841.

You were ill when I last heard from you, and I am very anxious.

Do let me hear as soon as you can, and do be careful of your health.