Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 066: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Aug. 18, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 203-206 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 203, continued:]

66. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 168

My dear Mr. Ingram,

The days when I receive your letters are marked with a white stone in my calendar. Yesterday was such a day. I cannot wonder at the languor of which you complain. After such prolonged & intense mental action, it is but natural & will be, I trust, restorative. Do not trouble yourself to return any papers & letters which I send you, unless I expressly ask you to do so. My copy of Graham's letter (if you have introduced the printed letter in your book), I do not care for. I shall have it in the book. I would send you Eugene Benson's article on Poe & Hawthorne if I did not fear that it might be lost, as was the copy of Appleton's Journal. I am also afraid that you may have left home before another mail arrives. I will try to get a duplicate of the Galaxy number which contains it. I think that I copied nearly all that was not in the printed slip that you sent me. I am sorry my copy of Appleton's miscarried, as I had made some pencil notes on the margin — not of much importance, however, I fancy. About the influence of the stars, etc., you say, “I do not believe in those distant bodies exercising any influence on our bodies, whatever they may do on our minds.” I [page 204:] thought that it was an admitted fact that whatever influences the mind has a reflex influence on the body. Is it not? I am inclined to believe in the stars. I have a conviction not to be shaken that the occult sciences covered great truths, dimly discerned & obscured by superstition, doubtless, but nevertheless truths.

I recollect reading with an interest which few persons will understand a work by Cornelius Agrippa on Occult Philosophy, which has been edited by Morley.(1) He believes in the power of words, the power of names, & the significance of anagrams.

Did I ever tell you of an anagram which can be made from the words

If not, place the letters in the order in which I have numbered them.(2)

I was strangely thrilled when I saw the result, & you, I think, will admit that it was at least curious. By the way, what does the initial letter “H” in your name stand for?

You excite my curiosity by what you tell me about Griswold & Mrs. Ellet & the printed letter about Griswold's marriage. I know that he married a lady, thinking her to be an heiress & behaved very scandalously toward her. At least that was the story, but I do not remember anything about a charge of bigamy imputed to him.(3) If I ever heard it, I have forgotten it. The Temple Bar article has, I imagine, been read with great interest & without any adverse criticism. Mr. Eveleth writes me that “the Southern Maga. for August has an article on Poe in which reference is made to two French commentators — high appreciation of the poet's genius.”(4) He said he had, when he wrote, merely glanced at the article. I think he told me that the letter of Dunn English was among papers in a distant city, not at the time accessible to him.

I do not think the Southern Magazine is taken in this city. I cannot learn whether English is still living on the planet. Did you not write me that he had taken his departure?

Strange to relate, I received with your letter a letter from Mr. Gill containing the enclosed program of his intentions in the lecturing field. With the letter came an elegant printed little vol. called The Martyred Church, consisting of some verses by Mr. Gill & elaborate illustrations drawn by Hammatt Billings, the whole dedicated to the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., who has lately been preaching at St. Paul's, London.(5) Mr. Brooks was the pastor of the “martyred church,” or the Church of the Trinity, destroyed by fire Nov. 9, 1872, when half Boston was destroyed. Mr. Gill's dedication of the poem to Mr. Brooks is quite characteristic: “To Rev. Phillips Brooks, who a witness of the incident here described has kindly encouraged the author by his warm approval of the verses, etc., etc.” [page 205:]

The little book was issued by Shepard & Gill last winter, but I only now have seen a copy. Mr. Gill says in his letter that he looks forward to meeting me again ere long & that he should have sent me a copy of his verses, but for a criticism which had naturally made him sensitive about doing so. He says he had been charged with the resemblance of his poems to some verses of mine — a translation of Uhland's Lost Church, to be found in a vol. which I gave him last fall.

He says he had not read my poem at the time of publishing his verses, etc., etc. (which I can readily believe & which I could as readily condone, if he had.) On having his attention called to the resemblance, he feared that I, too, should regard him as a trespasser, etc., etc. He thinks I will at least be pleased with the illustrations, & sends me, as he says, one of his lecture circulars, to show me that he has not given up the defence of Poe. I shall of course write at once to assure him of my cordial approbation of his little book & my utter freedom from any suspicions or fears in relation to plagiarism, etc. I will tell him that I shall be glad to have him return the letter of Mr. Willis, if he does not care to use it.

I hope you will have an interview with my friend Miss Rose Peckham before you leave the city. Mr. Harris (Caleb Fiske Harris) will be absent from his home for five or six weeks longer; when he returns, I will tell him what you say. I do not know his present address, as he is travelling from place to place. You say you have never seen a single illustration of Poe's works that you like. Do you not, then, like Birket Foster's “July Midnight” in the “enchanted garden,” of the Revised Edition of [18]68, Palmer's “Haunted Palace” & “City of the Sea,” in Widdleton's of 1870?(6) I think these & a few others are fine, though my witty friend Col. Dwight (of whom I wrote you in a recent letter) says the “Haunted Palace” looks like a railroad depot, with a frantic crowd of excursionists rushing from the platform. Nevertheless, I think it is a weird & splendid picture.

How I wish you could have heard Poe's voice! To have heard his reading of “Ulalume” or “The Bridal Ballad” is a never-to-be-forgotten memory!

I entirely agree with you that “a calm, severe, summing up” is better, far better, than any vehemence of [sic] denunciation. I have not had a line from O’Connor since he sent me the papers containing the news of Miss Poe's death. I fear he must be very unwell.

Of my own health, I will only say that I have been very ill with neuralgic spasms in the head — intense & agonising. I am much better for the last week, but the malady is lying in wait, I know well, to seize on me with renewed virulence at the first unfavorable change of weather. Yet I am enjoying this summer beyond any summer of my life, that is, so far as my sense of the beauty of nature can make life [page 206:] serene & beautiful. And never before had I such a sweet, enduring sense, such unmistakable tokens of the presence of loved ones ever near and in sympathy with all my inmost hopes & aspirations. I dare not speak to you of things which make life to me so transcendently & mysteriously beautiful. I do not care to see the presences that surround me; I know that they are near. I could tell you strange things, but you are not yet ready to hear them.

Is this “preaching”? I hope not, because I wish to obey your injunction not to preach. But good night, and may the “High Gods” guard & bless you!

 

1. Cornelius Agrippa [1486?-1535]: The Life of Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim; doctor and knight, commonly known as a magician, ed. Henry Morley (London: Chapman & Hall, 1856).

2. Mrs. Whitman had printed this anagram of her name in the New York Evening Post sometime in the 1860s; along with it she had published an anagram formed from Edgar Poe's name: “A God Peer.”

3. Joy Bayless handles thoroughly the enmity between Griswold and Mrs. Ellet, the charge of bigamy against Griswold, the relationships between Poe and Griswold, as well as other controversies that swirled around Griswold. See chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Poe's Literary Executor (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1943).

4. W. Baird, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Southern Magazine, 15 (1874), 190-203. The commentators were Baudelaire and Gautier.

5. This book of Gill's consists of fourteen pages and is dated 1874.

6. For Birket Foster see p. 34, n. 3.