Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 165: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Dec. 15, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 462-463 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 462, continued:]

165. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 305

My dear friend,

Gill's proofs, which I have been impatiently awaiting (having by the exercise of some diplomacy prevailed upon him to submit them to me), came yesterday.

They are a curious melange of everything comprised in Mr. Widdleton's Memorial volume of last year with some business papers in relation to the Stylus, claimed to be derived from Thomas C. Clarke, & some recollections of the domestic life of the family while residing in Philadelphia, also ascribed to Mr. Clarke, but not written in his accustomed style certainly, & of no special interest.

There is a story, however, about the house where Poe wrote “The Raven,” “important if true” — that is to say, interesting — & by no means improbable, which does not conflict with any known facts as to the matter, so far as I am aware. (I will copy it for you presently). These, with some elaborate speculations of his own concerning the true meaning lying perdu in “The Raven,” the Griswold and Pabodie letters, & certain portions of Poe's letters to me (published without my consent or knowledge in the Lotos & Laurel Leaf papers) comprise about the whole of the “Memoir.” G[ill] has the grace to make [page 463:] honorable mention of you from time to time in the “Memoir” — as a sop to Cerberus, peut-être (moi meme).

The collection may perhaps be called, to use the word of Mr. G. P. Lathrop as applied to Poe's style, promiscuous. (See the enclosed article on Lathrop's “Study of Hawthorne.”)

But there is one thing in it to me entirely new & profoundly interesting. Through your correspondence with Mrs. Richmond & Poe's friends in Lowell, you may perhaps have seen it. Indeed I am half inclined to think it may have been written by the Mrs. Osborne of whom you spoke in your last letter, was it not? I refer to a beautiful, & beautifully written, record of Poe as seen by a young lady, then in her teens, who heard his Lowell lecture on poetry in the early summer of 1848 (soon after he had sent me the “Lines to Helen”), and of other interviews with him “when he visited Lowell [in the autumn] some months afterwards.”(1) This was the time undoubtedly when he visited Lowell at the invitation of friends who hoped to make arrangements for his giving another lecture there, a hope which was defeated by the excitement attending the presidential election before the inauguration of Zachary Taylor.

As you may already have seen this record, or if not, will soon read it in the book, which I shall send you as soon as it is issued, I will not copy her recollections here. I think I know “the lady who differed from Mr. Poe, & expressed her opinions somehwat [[somewhat]] strongly,” as mentioned in the narrative.

To return to “the house where ‘The Raven” was written — Just as I wrote the last word I received a card from Gill asking for return of his proofs by the 3 P.M. train.

The book will be out at least in a day or two. Will write again by Tuesday's mail.

In haste, sincerely your guardant “Providence,”

 

1. These recollections of Poe were written by Sarah Heywood Trumbull, Mrs. Richmond's younger sister, who spent much time in the Richmonds’ home in Lowell, especially during the time Poe visited that city.