Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 063: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, July 31, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 195-198 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 195:]

63. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 165

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I need not tell you how happy I was made by your letter of July 15, your last. I am so glad you are better & that you are going to take a long rest in September. I received from Washington last Monday, July 27, two papers containing notices of the death of Miss Rosalie Poe. I of a letter to you, which I have, for the present, thrown aside to reply to which came yesterday when I had just completed three or four pages mailed them to you on the same evening, to go by a steamer that sailed for Queenstown on Tuesday. It must be pleasant to you to know that your kind intentions toward her must have cheered her last moments. I wish I could learn something of her true history. Mrs. Clemm never named her in any of her letters to me. You speak in your letter of July 7 of having received “another letter” from her. What did she say in it? Did she speak of being ill?

To revert to your last letter, what was the subject of Mrs. Ellet's grievance against Griswold & about what did she pursue him to his grave? Did you understand? Did you find out when & where the portrait Mrs. L[ewis] has of Poe was taken? I enclosed with the cuttings from the Washington papers a paragraph from the Boston Commonwealth naming, as among the papers in the last Eclectic, “an [page 196:] interesting article on Edgar Poe from Temple Bar.” I hope you will have received duly the copy of Appleton's Journal with a sketch of the Fordham cottage. I will try to find out whether the signature attached to it is a genuine one. On Tuesday I received two hurried lines from Davidson enclosing an extract from the Commercial Advertiser — the same which I had enclosed to you & which I told you was sent to me by Col. Dwight, a dear friend of mine who left college at the commencement of the Civil War to take command of a Rhode Island battery, & who passed through all the great battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, etc. without a scar, ever in the hottest of the fight. At Gettysburg he had a horse shot under him & lay for a while amid floundering horses & dying comrades, weltering in their blood, yet received not even a bruise or a single scratch. He passed the dreadful summer of [18]63 in the fatal swamps of Chickahominy, where so many of our bravest soldiers died of malaria, yet suffered no loss of health or strength. Yet now, after all these perils, he is slowly dying of consumption, in the prime of his manhood. He studied medicine in Paris & Germany & passed last winter with his young wife travelling from place to place in search of health, which ever eludes him.

He had for Poe an interest amounting to infatuation, & when in Paris a few years ago, sought everywhere for Baudelaire's translation of the poems to send to me, but could not find them. As I said before, he sent me the article which I enclosed to you. He has been too ill to see me since his return, but in sending it, he said:

I enclose Mr. Neal's answer to my note. When I last saw him he was a most noble looking old man with hair as white as wool, but without any of the apparent infirmities of age, but he must be between eighty & ninety, I think. I saw him last in 1868. He addressed a large audience in this city on the question of woman suffrage, which he eloquently advocated.

I believe Mr. George Poe is dead. It was in 1865 that my aunt saw him in Georgetown, & he was then an old man. I think he had an unmarried daughter who attended with her father the Episcopal church in that city, of which my cousin, Nicholas Power Tillinghast, was then pastor. Mr. Poe was rich & misanthropic.

In one of your last letters you asked me about Alice Cary — if I had any letters of hers, & if I knew her intimately? I have no letters of hers, [page 197:] & I did not know her intimately. I know so many of her intimate friends, and she was herself a person so easily known & understood that I, nevertheless, seem to have known her well. She called on me, & I returned her call, & she invited a small party to meet me on the evening of which I have spoken in E.A.P. & His Critics (don’t forget to tell me of the alterations which you would suggest in the book, in case it is ever republished). They were, Alice & Phoebe, enthusiastic spiritualists — “mediums,” their friends said — & late in the evening the conversation turned on that subject. They talked of what might be their possible occupation in that dimly-discovered country from which so many travellers were beginning to return. Alice asked me what life I aspired to, & I playfully said I wished to live in a haunted castle like those evoked by Mrs. Radcliffe, with echoing corridors & a North Tower which had not been explored within the memory of man, a moat & a drawbridge & a bower-window & troubadours & wandering minstrels to beguile the melancholy time during my knight's absence in the Holy Land. “Good,” said Alice, “and I should like to be your dairymaid & look after your cows.” “I engage you in that capacity,” I said, “and feel confident that my cows will always live in clover & that the milking songs of my dairymaid will be the sweetest in all the land.”

Have you read Mrs. Mary Clemmer Ames's book about Alice & Phoebe Cary?(1) She tells a singular story about a vision which all the family had of two sisters, seen in the daytime, standing in the door of their new house a few months before the death[s] of the two. Strangely enough, Mrs. Ames says nothing of Griswold, who was, to the last, one of their most constant visitors. He was there on the evening of which I speak, but I did not know it until he was gone! I will tell you about it sometime when I am stronger. I will think about the stories which might seem attractive enough for your collection.

Do you like Bret Harte? In a number of Temple Bar that I read lately, there was an article on his stories, and special praise given to one called “How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar.” The writer of the article praised it for its pathos, & said it was “in itself sufficient to make a reputation.” The story had certainly fine elements in it, the ride was unquestionably stirring & spirited, but my sister & I thought the “pathos” was slightly overstrained & factitious. So that in response to Bret Harte's invocation, “Sing, oh Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen, I must fain follow him, in prose, afoot!” we commenced in ballad style “Dick Bullen's Ride,” which had great success & wide circulation. I send you a copy of our “Condensed Ballad.” I suppose you have seen Bret Harte's “Condensed Novels.” The ballad should be read in connection with the story “How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar.” My sister asked me to send it to you, thinking it might amuse you if [page 198:] you are familiar with the original, published in the Atlantic for March, 1872.

I am so glad to know that you have faith in me & like to receive my letters, on condition that I don’t “moralize,” & preach “no sermons.”(2)

Have I ever moralized or preached sermons to you? It is not my vocation. I have implicit faith in you & like you, ever so much, just as you are/ — sure that at some time, we shall meet in “our own order of star,” & become friends, near & dear friends, through the never-ending cycles of eternity. And so, good night, till morrow.

You say that Davidson has omitted to answer some important questions. Perhaps I can help you in the matter.

[Enclosure: John Neal to Sarah Helen Whitman. Item 161]

My dear Mrs. Whitman,

I am sorry that I cannot answer you satisfactorily. Not remembering the year, nor in which journal or paper my “protest” appeared, I am unable to trace it.

Nor indeed can I distinctly recall the nature of my protestation, though my wife has some recollection of it, without being able to say when or where it was published.

Truly & heartily your friend & well-wisher,

[Mrs. Whitman continued her letter to Ingram, on the back of Neal's:]

I am so glad to know that you are satisfied with the engraving from the photograph I sent you. I could not bear to think that by using it you had missed the chance of a better. It was taken at the rooms of Masury, the original daguerre, I mean.

[Pasted beneath the above lines is a newsclipping from the Providence Journal, July 11, 1874 announcing the death of Samuel Masury.]

 

1. Mary Clemmer Ames (1839-1884) published A Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1873).

2. It would appear that a letter from Ingram is missing, for no such injunction to Mrs. Whitman appears in the preceding correspondence; such a tart remark from him could have been on a page returned to him, as she did on occasions.