Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 058: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, June 30, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 181-184 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 181, continued:]

58. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 160

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I cannot tell you with what “wondering, unbelieving, joy” I received yesterday your letter of June 15. Your letter of May 19, written in pencil while you were ill in bed, filled me with terrible forebodings, & twenty-nine interminable days of waiting made me sure, quite sure, that I should never hear from you again. I resigned myself, as I have long, long ago learned to resign myself, to the inevitable, but my heart was heavy as lead. Not that I should have found the certainty of your death insupportable, for death (as our Milesian cousins might say) I have always looked upon as the best thing in life — but I feared for you lingering illness & the exhaustion of mind & body that so often succeeds to a prolonged mental strain, in temperaments like yours.

Oh, I am so glad that you are getting better & that you have gone away for a time of rest & recuperation to the Isle of Wight.

For myself, I have been utterly nerveless & good for nothing since I was stung by the venomous poison ivy. Perhaps it may be doing for me the gracious service which the “aspic” that stung Cleopatra did for that “Serpent of old Nile.” I doubt if you have this species of ivy in England.

I wrote you a hurried note about a fortnight ago, entreating you if you were too unwell to write, to let some friend send me a word. You had not received this when you wrote, I believe. I enclosed a paragraph from the Boston Commonwealth about an article in Every Saturday on Poe's early poems. I did not then know that it was yours, published there without signature, but credited to the Gentleman's Magazine. As soon as I received your letter I copied the notices from the Academy & the Examiner & sent them to the [Providence] Journal. I send you a copy of the Journal's reprint, which came out in the editorial columns of this morning's paper. I would have added something about the forthcoming work, but was not sure what you would like to have said about it & thought it would be best to let the paragraphs appear as an editorial gleaning from English papers.

I wrote to Davidson a few days ago to enquire if he had heard from you. His answer came this morning & would have added to my anxiety, if I had not previously received your letter. In reply to a question about Dr. Powell, he says, “I do not know Dr. Powell beyond what he himself writes me, & an occasional notice in the newspapers.” [page 182:]

This morning came Temple Bar & Baudelaire, both of which I am delighted to receive, though I have not yet had time to look at them.

I do not wonder that Mrs. Lewis thinks Poe was “an angel.” In-spite of his “irregularities” (that is the harshest word which I could ever find in my heart to apply to him), I have always felt that he was essentially noble, gentle, & good, beyond any other person I have ever known, but I have hardly dared to say I think so. Do you understand this?

You will see that in copying the Examiner's notice, I have left out the word associated with “irregularities.” It gives a false idea of his excesses, such as they were. Perhaps I am too fastidious about words, but I do not like to see the one omitted associated with his name.

In reply to a letter of enquiry which I wrote recently to Mr. Eveleth, he says,

I have written to Neal this morning.(1) While I was so anxious about you, I had not the heart to write.

I think this is all there is to tell about “The Mystery.”

Your notice of the Talmud, etc. was admirably done. I remember with what interest I groped through the article in the Quarterly one hot summer day in 18 something — I forget whether 71 or 2.

You ask how I know, or how I found out, that Poe was descended from the Le Poers. I “found it out,” in the first place, much the same way that Falstaff discovered “the true Prince” — by instinct. I am as sure of it as if his descent in a direct line from “the high & mighty Baron” with whom I claim kinship had been traced out for him at the Herald's office by Sir Bernard Burke himself, but I know about it only what I am going to tell you. One evening he had been speaking of the strange sympathies & correspondence in our tastes, feelings, & habits of thought, when I said suddenly, “Do you know, I think we must be related & that your name, like my own, was once spelled le Poer.” He looked up with a surprised & radiant look, & said, “Helen, you startle me! I know that certain members of my grandfather's family did so spell their name.” The names of John Poe, & John Poer or Power were common in both our families. [page 183:]

My father is said, by some of my relatives who knew Mr. George Poe of Georgetown, the cousin of Poe's father, to have resembled him in feature & expression as closely as if he had been his twin brother.(2) Mr. Poe was a very rich but a stern & misanthropic old man who cared nothing for his wonderfully gifted relative. I think he is no longer living.

Thierry, in his History of the Norman Conquest, says, “The desperate fortunes of Strongbow's followers in the invasion of Ireland may be inferred from the surnames of some of these adventurers: Raymond (or Roger) Le Pauvri, without altering that casual appellation or soubriquet, became a high & mighty baron on the eastern coast of Ireland,” & Poer or Power is still the name of a noble family in Ireland.(3)

Thierry seems to be ignorant of the fact that the name of this “adventurer,” Roger le Poer was the name that nearly half a century earlier became so illustrious in England in the person of Roger le Poer, the Norman Chaplin of Henry the First.

But I must not tire you with my hobby — I am very tired myself. I have so much to say & to ask. But now goodnight. My heart's blessing follows you in your excursion to the beautiful island.

Don’t trouble yourself to write to me when you are weary. Only let me get a brief word from you at least fortnightly, if you can. I will write again soon.

I will send you soon perhaps another briefer letter of Poe's which may show you something of the great things which he hoped to achieve in literature.

Be very careful of Mr. Latto's letter & return it as soon as it has been used.

Try to get a copy of Mrs. Lewis's photograph.

Ever & forever, your friend,

I shall send copies of the notices in this morning's Journal to all my correspondents.

O’Connor has been very ill, or he would have written to you. Mr. Eveleth asks for all the copies of the Mirror containing your articles.

I do not wonder that you feel you were appointed for the work you are doing. (Nobody could have done what you have done, & done it so well.) I have often thought, “Can a man be so wronged as Poe has been & no voice raised to defend him?”

And now at the right time, & in the right place, you have come, so admirably equipped & trained for the championship, as no other ever was or could be. Ave!

You asked if I had many copies of Poe & His Critics left. I have but [page 184:] five remaining & there are none to be bought anywhere. I will send you a volume of poems soon.

 

1. John Neal (1793-1876) of Portland, Maine, was a novelist as well as editor of the Yankee. He reviewed Poe's early poems encouragingly, and Poe dedicated Tamerlane to him in 1827 [[1829]].

2. George Poe was the brother of “General” David Poe and grandfather to Neilson Poe.

3. Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry (1795-1856), History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, trans. William Hazlitt (London: H. G. Bohn, 1856).