Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 052: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, May 14, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 156-157 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 156:]

52. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 154

My dear Mr. Ingram,

Your proofs came this evening. The article is all that I could have wished — better, far better, than I had dared to hope. You have treated the subject admirably & like a master. I am delighted. There is nothing in it like patronage or partisanship. It is impartial, appreciative, & full of kindly sympathy & clear apprehension. I have not a fault to find with it. I congratulate you, from my inmost heart.(1)

That you may not be anxious about anything you have spoken to me in confidence, I return you the page which you requested me to burn — with the letters of L[ewis] & S[winburne]. The “Life & Death” in Graham's is “The Oval Portrait,” a little altered, I find.

I am so anxious about your health. That is my only anxiety, now. I hope you will try to obtain a copy of Mrs. L[ewis]'s daguerreotype.

Do not fear that I shall want the Broadway Journal again. I must soon leave them behind me, and I would rather leave them to you, with you, than with any other whom I know. There are copies of Eureka, & the Wiley & Putnam edition, with his writing on the fly leaf, which I wish you to have. And — but we will talk of that another time.

I have a lock of his hair, too, which, if you like, you shall share with me. He sent it to me in the letter of which I copied so large a portion for you — the one written after his first visit to Providence.

Is it not astonishing that such absurd stories as that of the “MS. Found in a Barn” should be circulated & copied in respectable journals? But it shows the interest evoked by his name, even when associated with such palpable falsehoods.

I am glad to find that you read and like the Academy. I have not, however, chanced to see Mr. Saintsbury's article.

You are mistaken in thinking there is the faintest resemblance between Walt Whitman & the immortal Tupper.

I cannot read our “dear, dear Don Quixote” in the original. But he translates into my heart nevertheless. I do not know Christina Rossetti's poems well enough to retain any of them in my memory, but I will look for the lines you like so well. Name to me, when you have time, some more of the “glorious & beautiful” poems you like in her volume.

In your penultimate letter you say that, for the present, you believe only “in nature, in intellect, in beauty, etc.” If you had added to the belief in these divine things a faith in an all-pervading, all-controlling spirit of Love & Wisdom — in “the Love that reigneth & ruleth,” I should have asked no more. Do not think for an instant, from the words & phrases used in some of the sonnets, that I believe in the dogmas of theology — of the churches. I believe in redeeming Love, but it is in a [page 157:] redemption as inevitable & universal as creation itself. As for with those who have carefully studied its alleged phenomena. It came “Spiritualism,” it is not a matter of belief, but a matter of knowledge, to me without my seeking, & there may come a time for you to believe it, if it is best for you to do so.

I write these hurried lines, my dear Mr. Ingram, simply to acknowledge your proofs. I was greatly interested in the letters you sent me, which I return.

Have you read Lord Lytton's Ring of Amasis, and is it good? I bought it a day or two ago, but have not had time to look at it.(2) The subject is one strangely attractive to me. His poetical writings have so much that approaches poetry in them, & yet are so far from attaining it that they affect me painfully. I cannot analyze the feeling. There is the machinery, but the soul is wanting.

When I avow my interest in the spiritual phenomena, you must not imagine that it implies a belief in all the charlantry practised in the name of spiritualism. But I must not speak to you on this subject, nor would I have you believe in it at present if I could.

I saw today in the Contemporary Magazine or Quarterly for April some interesting papers — letters & extracts of letters from Mrs. Browning to R. H. Horne, the author of “Orion.”(3) Have you seen the articles?

But goodbye for tonight. You see I am getting very tired. Our first sultry days came on so suddenly, after the long, cold Spring, that they take away all my vitality.

 

1. These were apparently revised proofs of Ingram's long-delayed article “Edgar Poe,” which was published in Temple Bar in June and reprinted in the Eclectic Magazine, 20 (Aug. 1874), 203-10. It is here reprinted on pages 168-80.

2. Edward Robert Bulwer, first Earl of Lytton [Owen Meredith] Ring of Amasis (London: Chapman & Hall, 1863). The first American edition was published in New York by Harper & Brothers in 1863.

3. The two volumes of this correspondence were not published until 1877. See p. 462, n. 1.