Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 173: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Mar. 2, 1877,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 481-482 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 481:]

173. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 316

Dear Mr. Ingram,

Yours of Feb. 14 just received. Something in its tone pains me more than I can express. Are there then two Ingrams as well as “two Poes”?

Since you are disposed to question and cross-examine my testimony so peremptorily with regard to Miss Blackwell, let me once more tell you, very briefly, that all that I have said to you with regard to her knowledge of Poe & of the Fordham cottage was derived from herself. She it was who told me of her visit to Fordham in company with a lady whose name she seems now to have “forgotten,” Mrs. Gove Nichols.

Her visit of a few weeks at the cottage for the benefit of country air and rest from protracted labors was also, as I understood her to say, induced by the kind advice of the same lady in the spring of 1847, while she was under her medical treatment.

You quote from Miss Blackwell's letter to you the words “I do not think I ever received a line from him .... there must be some mistake ... the extreme slightness of my acquaintance with him precluding all probability of his having ever written to me.”

Now it is possible that Miss Blackwell never did receive from Poe any letter save that of which I sent you a copy. The letter was written in reply to one which she had addressed to him as to the publication of a volume of poems which had already appeared in the magazines of the time.

The passage in which he spoke of his interest in me, etc. etc., his seeing me but once, & his wish that she should write to him of me could have had little interest for her, since she did not speak of it to me until she had had it more than a fortnight, although we saw each other daily. I have told you how she happened to give me the letter. I have told you also that in Feb. 1861 I gave the letter to the Hon. John R. Bartlett of this city, at his earnest request for an autograph of Poe, which, though intimate with many of Poe's intimate friends, he had long sought for in vain. He had perhaps the finest collection of autographs in New England, superbly bound in heavy folios. He is brother-in-law to Senator Anthony, & like him, was an intimate friend of Mrs. Osgood, yet neither of these gentlemen had been able to procure a fragment of Poe's writing. Mr. Bartlett is also an intimate friend of our friend, Mr. C. Fiske Harris. They are both enthusiastic bibliophiles.

But to the letter just received from you. You say, “Do you not think there must be some mistake about Miss Blackwell's ever having stayed at Fordham as you have described? Who could have given you the information? Nothing one gets about Poe seems reliable.” Again, “If my memory serves me right, Mrs. Gove Nichols, who, you thought [page 482:] introduced Miss A[nna] Blackwell to the Poes, did not know Miss Blackwell.” (1)

Let me once more remind you, since you seem to have forgotten, that you wrote me you had spoken to Mrs. Nichols about Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, & she replied that she was not acquainted with her, and that I then wrote to you that it was not Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell but Miss Anna Blackwell of whom I had spoken to you.

Write once more to Mrs. Nichols & I doubt not she will confirm all that Miss Blackwell told me in relation to the Fordham visit.

As to the letter, you can find all that I have said authenticated by addressing a line to Hon. John R. Bartlett.

If Mrs. Nichols does not confirm my report, I shall think that there is either no Miss Anna Blackwell or that there are two Mrs. Nichols.

In the meantime, I enclose a letter from Miss Blackwell written from England in the spring of [18]49 to her Providence friend, lest you should think there is no

“Tis bitter cold & I am sick at heart.”

I should not have felt so deeply wounded by the acrimonious tone of your letter had you not evaded a request I made to you, for a copy of a paragraph in one of Mrs. Clemm's letters to me, by saying all my papers, etc. should be returned to me when demanded!(2)

I will apprise Mr. Harris of your request.

Return Miss Blackwell's letter at your convenience. It contains nothing of importance save the verification of identity, but I should like to retain it.

Benedicite.

I am not aware that Mr. Didier has ever spoken an unkind or disparaging word of you. Why should you be enemies?

 

1. The first of these two quotations is in Ingram's letter of Feb. 14, 1877, p. 475; the second is on a stray page from one of Ingram's letters which Mrs. Whitman must have returned to him to prove her point, for it is filmed with his papers on Roll No. 2, following Item 174.

2. This exact wording is not discoverable in any of the surviving Ingram letters.