Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 068: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Sept. 29, 30, and Oct. 1, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 212-215 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 212, continued:]

68. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 172

My dear “Sir John the Graeme,” alias, MacRaven!

I am so glad that I have at last found a mystical significance, or synonym in your name affiliating you with the Raven!!! I have tried so long in vain. But you are a tyro in the sublime science of telling fortunes by names & numbers if you think that the name which a married woman receives from her husband is to be taken into account in the evolution of an anagram that shall reveal the secrets of her destiny. That would be entirely out of rule.

I am so glad that you & my friend Rose know & like each other so well. I had a charming note from her on the 15th, in which she promised to write again soon. I should have written at once, but I was very ill when I received her letter, & have been growing worse daily. A cough & fever, accompanied with a severe stricture on the lungs, is making rapid inroads on my fragile health.

The Harrises have not yet returned. They are expected to-night; but though they are my near neighbors, it is doubtful when I shall be well enough to see them. I will try to let Mr. Harris know your wish for a copy of the early poems. Would it not be well for you to write to him?

I am so glad that you have now met someone who can speak to me of [page 213:] you. It brings us so much nearer. And yet from the time I read your early poems I have felt that we were very near. Don’t forget to tell me the promised story of your life, & tell it soon.

Thanks for the dear & kind words at the close of your letters. I shall cherish them in my heart of hearts. Thanks, too, for your kind advice about my Critics. I do not propose to enlarge it or make other changes, than the correction of mistakes. I think I could easily manage about the first quotation from Daniel by leaving out the words “at this period,” &, in relation to the latter one, I might say, “one who saw much of him during the last year of his life” instead of “the last years.”

I know well that Daniel had not love for Poe, but for this very reason his powerful & graphic delineation seemed to me the more valuable. I am glad to know about “Ver Vert.” I wish to prepare the book for publication after my death, with the new edition of the poems which my friends often urge me to bring out — but if I prepare them for publication, I am unwilling to have them appear until after my translation.

I am well satisfied with E.A.P. & His Critics just as it is. I like it better & better as the years go by. Its significance as throwing light on one dominant phase of Poe's genius will be better understood in the near future than it has ever yet been. I only wish I knew something more of Mrs. Helen Stanard. Have you obtained any light in that direction?

I had a letter today from Mr. Gill in which he seemed to fear that your “Memoir” would be likely to take the wind out of his sails, & said he had thought seriously of delivering his lecture this winter in London. I am inclined to think he has already too much wind in his sails for his amount of ballast. His programme speaks well for him, but I do not understand how he could have been “fairly at work” in his defence of Poe, when he had evidently never seen Griswold's “Memoir.” About Griswold & his second marriage: I once saw the little Jewess & her rich aunt at the house of my aunt, Mrs. Tillinghast. She was a petite brunette, not attractive in appearance. Soon after this Mr. Griswold obtained from Mrs. Tillinghast an introduction to these ladies, & immediately devoted himself to the little heiress. I heard that on finding the aunt held the purse strings he made a great rumpus & a separation ensured, the little Jewess living with her aunt at the South & coming on with some of her aunt's gold every year to New York or Philadelphia to see her husband & keep up appearances. Finally, having an opportunity to make a better parti, he sought a divorce, etc. All this I had heard, but nothing of Mrs. Ellet's connection with the matter. What a revelation of character & motive!

I think Griswold was about 50 when he died of consumption. He was so wrapt up about the throat & so altered in appearance when I [page 214:] met him at Alice Cary's that I did not recognize him. When he came to Providence to see me in the summer of ‘48, he was very handsome & looked not more than thirty. I was told that on seeing me at the. Carys’, he turned away in evident confusion.

I shall enclose a few lines to Rose, because I cannot make out the address she gave me. You will perhaps forward them to her.

I was very much exhausted when I ceased writing to you last evening, but I cannot close without thanking you for Mr. Wertenbaker's statement. Shall I keep it or return it to you? How thoroughly it refutes the story of Poe's dissolute habits & expulsion from a dissolute University, so carelessly repeated by Stoddard, when the facts were so accessible to all who might take the trouble to enquire. Even after I had furnished Stoddard with copies of the essential points of Mr. Wertenbaker's statement, he made no use of them, but brought out, in the Aldine, papers to show that Poe's statement that the Wiley & Putnam edition of poems was a verbatim reprint from the earlier printed versions was untrue, showing plainly his secret hostility to Poe.(1)

In Mr. Gill's letter of Sept. 17 he wrote, “I have a magazine article very strong against Griswold now ready. I shall take it to New York tonight. Shall you be at home Thursday or Friday of next week, & if so, may I hope to call upon you?” I wrote in reply that I would certainly see him if well enough to do so, but have heard nothing further from him. I cannot help thinking that your articles may have helped him in preparing his “strong magazine article against G.”

Once more, don’t return anything I send you unless I request you to do so.

And now I must for the present say goodbye. I will write again when I am able to write without so much pain; and do you write only when it is pleasant & quite convenient to your sincere friend

Sarah Helen Poer

Of course you know that I found “Sir John the Graeme” in the notes to Scott's “Lady of the Lake.” You are a Scotchman then, & first cousin to an Irishman. Good!

My dear Mr. Ingram,

I had a note from Mr. Gill this morning in which he says, “I have been working unceasingly at my biography of Poe — there seemed to be no end to the items of information that kept coming to me, & months after I met you I got from Mr. George R. Graham (to find whom, I walked six miles over hilly roads) some especially important & fresh information most damaging to Dr. Griswold. The subject has [page 215:] never been out of my mind, etc.” I was very much surprised to learn that Graham, another Graeme, perhaps, was still living. Are not you? Or did you know of it before?

Of course when I say that I am well satisfied with my essay on Poe, you will understand me as being satisfied with having done well what I attempted to do. I knew well that I could make a more popular book, but I sought briefly & earnestly to throw light on an obscure phase of his genius which no one else would be likely so well to understand. I send you an extract from an article by Ben Lane Posey, an eloquent writer (a friend of Madame Octavia Le Vert) well known at the South, who wrote long eulogistic notices of my book for the New Orleans & Mobile papers. Send me back the printed scrap, & destroy anything which I may send you that you do not care to keep, unless I ask you at the time of sending it to preserve or return.

Once more, dear friend, Vale atque Vale,

 

1. There is indeed an article, “Poe's Early Poems,” in the Aldine, a Typographic Art Journal, 6 (May 1873), 101, in which the author calls Poe “a liar” for saying that he printed in the 1829 volume, his first, poems he had written and printed before: “They are printed verbatim from the original edition, the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.” The author of the article adds, “But they were not printed verbatim.” This article is signed with the name “Frank Jocelyn.”