Text: John Grier Varner, “Chapter 09,” Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, dissertation, 1940, pp. 350-393 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 350:]

Almost a month had passed before Poe took the opportunity of communicating with William J. Pabodie in order to thank him for his kindnesses during his last visit to Providence. Then on December 4th he wrote expressing his gratitude for “considerate and gentlemanly attention”, and asking that Pabodie deliver messages to both Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Wright (no doubt Mrs. Paulina Wright). “Say also,” he said, “that perhaps Mrs. Wright is right, but that I believe her wrong.”(1)

So the month of December began with both Poe and Mrs. Whitman apparently believing that their marriage would eventually take place. But they had not reckoned sufficiently on another force. Mrs. Power had never ceased in her opposition, and she was not to desist until she had made the match between Poe and her daughter in every way an extremely inadvisable one; and her activities did not proceed without great mortification to Poe. From an attitude of apparent sympathy with Poe she had changed to a violent opposition, an opposition which at times reached the point of frenzy. She preferred her daughter's death to such an evil as her marriage under such ominous circumstances, and her antagonism was encouraged by Anna. Mrs. Whitman never blamed her mother for her attitude; she attributed it to the fact that Poe had shown through his “morbid sensitiveness” that his future was not to be one of “self denial and endurance”. But Mrs. Power also knew something of Poe's financial circumstances. [page 351:] She knew that he had no visible or certain means of supporting her daughter, and she was thus encouraged to believe that he had designs on Mrs. Whitman's portion of the fortune which had been left by Ruth Marsh. Feeling that neither of her daughters was well endowed with what she would term “common sense”,(1) she took matters in her own hands and made a final effort to avert the danger which she felt was threatening the peace and safety of her household.

On November 2 the Franklin Lyceum of Providence announced a series of ten lectures to be given before that body during the ensuing winter, and on November 4 the Providence Journal carried a list of the lecturers who were to be their guests. Among these names was that of Edgar Poe.

The date set for Poe's lecture was December 13.(3) For some reason the lecture was not given until December 20,(4) but Poe apparently did return to Providence on the thirteenth as he had planned. By this time Mrs. Power, realizing that Mrs. Whitman was not to be swayed in her determination to marry Poe, sought to secure Mrs. Whitman's property in such [page 352:] a way as to make it impossible for Poe to obtain possession of any portion of it in the event of marriage. Evidently withholding her consent to the marriage until such a security was made, she persuaded both Mrs. Whitman and Anna to transfer their expectancy to her, leaving its disposition entirely in her hands. On December 15 the transfer was legally executed, and to the document of transfer Poe appended his name as a witmess.

This document was followed by another in which Mrs. Whitman and her sister gave full consent to the release of their future interest in the property.

Whether Mrs. Whitman had connived with or merely acceded to Mrs. Power in this scheme, we cannot be certain; yet in any light the act must have been extremely galling to Poe, and Mrs. Whitman hastened to write to both him and Mrs. Clemm as soon as he returned to New York. She expressed hope that all would go well and possibly apologized to some extent for her mother's actions, for Poe replied, on December 17 with the following rather bitter words:

Whatever Poe's feelings rat have been after having been forced to witness such an obvious move as the transfer of property from Mrs. Whitman to the safe-keeping of her mother, he had not perhaps entirely abandoned hope for a suitable arrangement with Mrs. Whitman. On the other hand, the insults had rankled and he was without doubt beginning to waver in his purpose. On that Wednesday morning of December 20, just before taking the train for his last visit to Providence, he met Mrs. Mary Hewitt; and in answer to some of her questions he made replies which seem to hold rather definite indications that he would not continue to bear with equanimity the treatment he had been receiving in Providence.

Mrs. Whitman in later years always blinded herself to the significance of these words; but one cannot lose sight of the fact that though Poe perhaps had perhaps had not at this point [page 355:] time definitely decided upon a break, he had either made up his mind to suffer little more at the hands of Mrs. Power and if necessary make the break which he had urged Mrs. Richmond to approve, or he had experienced again that ominous feeling of a forthcoming doom.

But Pabodie was defending Mrs Whitman in this letter, and he no doubt never knew the mental struggle under which Poe was at this time suffering. Insulting precautions were being taken against him in Providence, and in spite of Poe's warnings the marriage had been long delayed. In urging Mrs. Whitman to an immediate marriage, he had often said to her: “Be sure, Helen, if delayed it will never take place.”(2) So when Poe came to Providence on the 20th of December it was with either some definite plans or with some foreboding of ill.

The Providence Journal of December 20 carried the following announcement of the lecture for the evening:

Poe had been regularly announced as one of the lecturers of the series since November 2nd, and this particular advertisement had been run in the Journal for the past four days. Consequently, his audience was large, Pabodie's estimate giving his as many as 2000 people.(1) Poe himself wrote Mrs. Richmond that there were 1800 people present and that there was much applause.(2) The subject of his lecture was “American Poetry”, and in making up this lecture he had used material a his previous critical papers. In addition he delighted his audience with quotations from ‘The Raven”, and other of his poems.(3)

Mrs. Whitman and Poe had not yet published their marriage banns, but there were few in Providence who did not know of their erratic courtship and their matrimonial plans. There war, consequently much interest in the two at this lecture; for Mrs. Whitman sat directly in front of Poe, and many watched, observing their every expression. In closing his lecture Poe added a bit of drama to the scene by steadily looking down into the eyes of Sarah Whitman and repeating with much emphasis those lines of Edward Pinkney which he had once before given as a toast to her back in the office of John M. Daniel in Richmond: “I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,” etc.(4)

Mrs. Whitman was now besieged with Poe's requests that she marry him immediately, and she promised that she would endeavor to obtain her mother's consent to do so before the end of the month.(5) Mrs. Power, therefore, sensing [page 357:] the uselessness of any further attempt to delay the marriage longer, made one last frantic effort to close all gates to the family fortune, and then gave her daughter permission to cast her lot with that of Edgar Poe.(1) It had apparently occurred to her after the signing of the conveyance December 15 that in spite of this transaction her estate was not as yet secure. Since she had sought the transfer after her knowledge of the intended marriage, in accordance with Rhode Island law Poe could later have had the conveyance declared a fraudulent procedure, and after marriage have demanded the return of the property to his wife; and it he so desired, he could then have reduced the property to his own possession. Apparently it was just this sort of thing that Mrs. Power feared that he would do; accordingly, on December 22 Poe was asked to sign in the presence of witnesses the following humiliating contract to the effect that the transfer of the property had not been made without his knowledge and approval:

Poe could not have been more insulted than he now was by the insinuations and machinations involved in the transfer of the Power property to its adamant guardian. Having signed this final paper, he repaired to the bar room [page 358:] of the Earle House at 67 North Main Street and later in the evening returned to call on Mrs. Whitman, knowing that his engagement to her rested solely on the condition of his abstinence.(1) It is true that he conducted himself on this evening in such a way as not to reveal his infringement to his fiancée, but others present knew of his broken pledge; and strangely enough, it seems that Poe's promise of abstinence had been made not only to Mrs. Whitman but also to her friends.(2) Pabodie, who was there nearly the whole of the evening, was aware of Poe's intoxication, and later remarked that this was “the only evening on which he was intoxicated during his last visit to the city,” and “that there was no unusual noise, no disturbance, no outrage,” and that “Mr. Poe said but little and was very quiet.”(3) Poe, however, did not confine his drinking to the evening, but the following morning renewed his assault upon the marriage pledge before calling upon Mrs. Whitman.(4)

Mrs. Whitman was not aware of Poe's having visited the Earle House Bar on either the morning of Saturday the 23rd or the previous evening, and she knew nothing of his infringement [[infringement]] until later informed by her friends. Poe then made an effort to disabuse her mind, saying that she had been misinformed, especially in relation to his having that morning taken wine. However, the authority upon which she had received her information was not to be questioned, and the word of the man whom she had promised to marry she could not rely upon.(5) The events of this fatal Saturday are best told in Mrs. Whitman's own words: [page 359:]

Shades of the old domestic tragedy persisted. There must have come before her the face of Nicholas Power and a remembrance of those long years of his desertion and of his dissoluteness; the pathetic figure of Anna hovered in the shadow that filled the house; and ter mother, roused to new apprehension, seemingly depended upon her for her happiness. Even her friends controlled her life as though she were their own possession. “They had suffered deeply in view of our engagement,” she wrote Griswold, and they had held Poe accountable to them in his promise of abstinence.(2) It was their place to prevent the marriage.

“Many of Mrs. W's friends deprecated this hasty and imprudent marriage,” Pabodie wrote Griswold, “and it was their urgent solicitations and certain representations which were that afternoon made by them to Mrs. W and her family, that led to the postponement of the marriage, and eventually to a disolution [[dissolution]] of the engagement.”(3)

Mrs. Whitman now felt that she had not the power to change [page 360:] habits, and she had not the courage to enter as his wife into the circumstances of his life at Fordham. Furthermore, she could not plunge her family again into a new calamity which she knew would be of a progressive nature. “For myself I had no thought,” she later explained, “but for his happiness and for my Mother's.”(1) She must have welcomed the opportunity he had given her to find her way out; and as she later stated, she, at this bitter moment, was not unsolaced by a sense of relief at being freed from the intolerable burden of responsibility which he had sought to impose upon her by persuading her that his fate, for good or for evil, depended upon her.(2)

In this exasperating silence Mrs. Whitman told more than words could tell. There was no sign that Poe had broken his promise, and she had his word that she had been misinformed. But again that question of his honor arose in her mind. Poe's words could not be believed when balanced against the more authoritative and reliable words of her friends. So she maintained that “marble stillness of despair.” [page 361:]

Mrs. Whitman was not altogether alone at this meeting, and there were means of assistance and escape from the ordeal and humiliation of this final parting. There were Mrs. Power and Anna and Mr. Pabodie — and ether.(1) Medical students had perhaps first used ether for the purpose of getting a “jag”, and popular New England medicine books described it as “a cordial, an anodyne, a stimulant, and an anti-spasmodic”. It was to be used in faintness, sickness at the stomach, giddiness, epilepsy, hysterics, asthma, angina pectoris, and almost all diseases where the powers of life are prostrated. Miss Anna Blackwell had once taunted Mrs. Whitman, asking that she reach for the ether bottle, for she was going to inform her that her name had not been included in Caroline May's collection of women poets.(2) But whether Mrs. Whitman was guilty of using this stimulant for giddiness or faintness, her ostensible excuse was for angina pectoris, though Poe once suggested that there might have been a little too much over-stimulation for her own heart's ease. Now in her great mental consternation she sought the ether bottle, not hoping for a stimulant, but wishing for a drug — a means of escape from the almost sordid realities of their parting. Thus by artificial means she brought on unconsciousness and left Poe in the hands of Mrs. Power and Anna and Mr. Pabodie, while Mrs. Power took the opportunity to say things which she might otherwise have left unsaid. This act was hardly fair; Poe never forgave it. Mrs. Whitman has described these last few minutes before the final [page 362:] parting:

Mrs. Power had become impatient at Poe's prolonged stay, and she was filled with anxiety lest her daughter be influenced again by the eloquent pleading of Poe. She had therefore hastened his departure with expressions which long “rankled” in his heart. It would be interesting to know what these expressions were. Mrs. Whitman of course learned them from her mother, but she never revealed them. It is clear however from some of her later remarks that Mrs. Power intended to have no repetition of scenes or the previous November; and no doubt suggesting to Poe in no uncertain terms that she desired to rid her parlor of his presence, [page 363:] she insisted upon an immediate termination of the interview. Poe and Mr. Pabodie left the house together, and in a half hour Poe was on his way to New York.(1)

The engagement was not altogether broken with the events of December 23; the marriage was simply postponed.(2) Though Sarah Whitman had countermanded. the order for the publication of the banns, she almost certainly did not plan for this act to terminate completely her relations with Poe. She had not broken the engagement. She had merely uttered three words of love and then sink into a torpor, leaving the rest to and Mrs. Power. The New York papers, unaware of the little scene of December 23 in Providence, announced that Poe was to marry Mrs. Whitman;(3) and New York friends, like those of her own city, became solicitous for the welfare of the Providence poet. Writing to Rufus Griswold in January, 1849, Horace Greeley voiced a feeling which was prevalent among Mrs. Whitman's New York friends:

Mrs. Osgood did know Mrs. Whitman; and though Greeley knew nothing of it, she had attempted to explain Poe to Sarah Whitman; but she had done so with tears in her eyes and a [page 364:] bit of jealousy concerning the long letters which Mrs. Whitman had received from her former idol; and she had begged Mrs. Whitman to bear messages to Poe which would have lessened the latter's own influence over him. Mrs. Osgood would not take further pains to explain Poe to Mrs. Whitman. And the literati for a short time believed that Poe was to marry Mrs. Whitman, while Poe and iirSo whit= waited.

On December 28 Poe confided to Mrs. Richmond that he had distinguished himself at the lecture and that now “all is right”, but that Mrs. Clemm would explain.(1) Mrs. Clemm wrote:

On January 11 Mrs. Clemm wrote a second letter informing Mrs. Richmond that the match was now entirely off between Poe and Mrs. Whitman, and Poe enclosed a note in Valet’ he revealed his happiness over the opportunity which the rupture had provided for him to sever completely his relations with Mrs. Whitman. He himself would break the engagement.(3)

“I need not tell you ‘Annie’, how great a burden is taken off my heart by my rupture Mrs. W.”; he wrote, “for I have fully made up my mind to break the engagement . ... Nothing would have deterred me from the match but — what I tell you . ... “(4)

It has been said that in breaking the condition of his engagement Poe was merely playing the part of a gentleman and making it possible for Mrs. Whitman to be ostensibly the one who took the step. Some interest might therefore [page 365:] be centered on the fact that three weeks after the engagement was disrupted, Poe wrote Mrs. Richmond that he had fully made up his mind to break the engagement; and only a short time later he informed Mrs. Whitman that “so far I have assigned no reason for my declining to fulfil my engagement.”(1) Mrs. Whitman had not broken the engagement.”

Although Mrs. Richmond, sympathized with Poe in his actions in Providence, there were reasons for her to question the reports that she had heard concerning him, some of which purported to come from Mrs. Whitman herself. Mr. Richmond's family were at this time living in Providence, and were continually sending Mr. Richmond the gossip which was in circulation there about the Poe-Whitman affair. In answering the inquires of relatives and friends as to what Poe said about the “unhappy affair”, Mrs. Richmond merely replied that Mrs. Whitman's reported statement was a false one. But such an answer would not do; they must have something more definite. Even when Mrs. Whitman made a reply to Providence gossip which Mrs. Richmond felt completely exonerated Poe, Mr. Richmond's relatives were Inclined to discredit Mrs. Whitman's statement and to persist in believing Poe to be “a very unprincipled man, to say the least”. Feeling that she had no other alternative, Mrs. Richmond wrote Poe of these reports and asked him for an explanation.(2)

Continuing later, he added:

Mrs. Richmond had been back of Poe's schemes — and long ago he had begged for her permission to retract while he could honorably do so.(3) She had seen the beginning of his relations with Mrs. Whitman. Now she was to see the end. When on January 25 Poe wrote his last letter to Mrs. Whitman, telling her of rumors, begging that she deny them, threatening if she did not, and placing all blame on her mother and sister, he sent the letter first to Mrs. Richmond with the following note:

The letter which Sarah Whitman received, mailed from Boston, showed a cold or formality quite strange to the recent passion of her lover.

Possibly for several reasons Mrs. Whitman did not comply with Poe's request. In the first place, his accusations were no doubt true. She probably did tell that Poe had been published to her once, for arrangements for a publication of banns had been made on the morning after they become engaged in November; and December 24, though she might not have gone to Dr. Crocker in person to ask that he stop further proceedings concerning the second banns, this act would have been the natural and proper thing for her to do — and at least we know she did countermand the order through Pabodie. These facts were all a matter of common knowledge among her friends, and their repetition would not have been unusual. Again, there was no answer to Poe's attack on her mother and sister. She knew what they had said, and she knew that they had perhaps repeated the story outside her own home. She could not say that the marriage had been postponed because of her ill health. The facts of December 24 were a matter of common knowledge. And furthermore she had no particular reason to fear Poe's threats. But in her own words she has given at least one of her reasons [page 369:] for not answering his letter:

In January, 1849, Poe wrote Mrs. Richmond that it was his opinion that Mrs. Power, whom he now styled “an old devil”, had intercepted his last letter to Mrs. Whitman and that it had never reached her hands.(2) As late as March he begged Mrs. Richmond to ascertain from her relatives in Providence who had slandered him there, for he felt that such a report should not go unpunished, and he wished for details upon which to act.(3) But Poe never carried out his threat to Mrs. Whitman; neither did he come again or write again to Providence for those “future reminiscences and explanations” she wished to make and thought she would have the opportunity of making. His retaliation for his injuries continued to consist only of “some very ungenerous and unkind things” which he said of Mrs. Whitman, “all of which”, she wrote rather bitterly, “my ‘friends’ were careful to report to me. These I freely pardoned in view of the terrible humiliation to which he was subjected in consequence of all that had occurred in Providence.”(4) Then when Griswold's [page 370:] Poets and Poetesses of America came out in 1849, she found, much to her disappointment, that in his review of the book Poe had made but a short, cold allusion to her poetry, rather than the long one be had promised in the fall of 1848.(1) She longed now to answer his letter and to assure him of her “unalterable sympathy”; and believing that Mrs. Osgood was on terms of friendship with him, she wrote to her many times during the winter and spring of 1849, requesting information concerning his health and welfare.(2)

In answer Griswold wrote:

Mrs. Whitman was much pained because Mrs. Osgood had ignored her requests, and she thought Mrs. Osgood very ungenerous in her attitude. At Mrs. Osgood's request we will remember Mrs. Whitman had repeated to Poe many things which would increase Mrs. Osgood's influence over him and consequently lessen her own. And now Mrs. Osgood had not reciprocated fairly. [page 371:]

The truth of the matter is that Mrs. Osgood no longer felt friendly toward Mrs. Whitman, and rumors of her bitterness were beginning to reach the Providence poet. When there could be no doubt concerning the unkind things which Mrs. Osgood had uttered concerning her, Mrs. Whitman “charitably construed them as the peevish utterings of a sick woman”, to whom her “heart went out in sorrow and loving sympathy”.(2)

Perhaps the last opportunity for Mrs. Whitman to see Poe personally came in the sprint of 1849 through the efforts of Mrs. Osgood's sister-in-law, Mrs. Locke of Lowell; but Mrs. Whitman knew enough of the circumstances of the Lowell situation to prevent herself from becoming involved in complications there. Those reports concerning the Poe-Whitman affair which had come to Lowell from Mr. Richmond's Providence relatives and friends had served to turn this gentleman against Poe. But Mr. Richmond's antagonism had been increased by reports made to him concerning Poe by both Mr. and Mrs. Locke. Poe later proved to the Richmonds that the Lockes had been equally venomous in statements made to himself concerning Mr. Richmond, and he claimed that it was because of these statements that he one day arose and left the Lockes’ house, thus insuring “the unrelenting vengeance of that worst of all friends, ‘a woman [page 372:] scorned’.”(1) Poe therefore represented the center of a rather tense situation existing between the Richmonds and the Lockes, and his relation with Sarah Whitman had not served to mitigate feelings.

In the spring of 1849 Mrs. Locke, after many notes expressing a desire to make her acquaintance and urging her to visit her in Lowell, persuaded Mrs. Whitman to spend a few days in her home. While there, Mrs. Whitman began to suspect that Mrs. Locke had hoped to pique Poe by exhibiting her as a guest, or possibly to bring about her own reconciliation with Poe through Mrs. Whitman's intervention. At all events, she told Mrs. Whitman as an inducement to prolong her stay that she had taken care that Poe should hear of her visit, and that she had reason to believe that Poe would be in Lowell during the time fixed for her stay. Mrs. Whitman's “heart thrilled with the thought of seeing him again”, but she could not accede to the request. As she journeyed back to Providence, she passed Poe on the road.(2)

The comfort of a further message from Poe, or a message concerning him from her friends was therefore denied Mrs. Whitman. But she did find sone solace in Poe's poem, “Annabel Lee”, which she always felt was addressed to her and represented a psychic answer to a poetic message which [page 373:] she had published in the American Metropolitan Review. Concerning Poe's poem and these lines she wrote:

These lines are as follows:

To Sarah Whitman the mood of conception had been a mood which Landor describes as that, dissolving power of dreams to fuse yet not confuse identity.

There were a few “other persons” who found an allusion to themselves in “Annabel Lee”, and like several other women of her acquaintance Sarah Whitman had found solace in this poem. She was evinced that Poe had addressed it to herself. She felt that after seeing her poem he had experienced a sense or shame because of his scent and cold allusion to her in his review, and that he had written “Annabel Lee” as an expression of his undying remembrance.(2) But she was to receive no encouragement on this point from Fanny Osgood. Mrs. Osgood held the letter which Mrs. Whitman thought might have suggested portions of the poem. It is more than likely that Poe saw the letter. He knew that Mrs. Whitman had gone to New Bedford, and rererked that she had [page 376:] “left Providence for the first time of her life”.(1) But Mrs. Osgood either thought or feigned to think that “Annabel Lee” had no reference to “a recent love affair”; rather she found its inspiration in Virginia Clemm, who she claimed was “the only woman Poe ever loved”.(2) Mrs. Osgood expressed her opinion in a sketch of Poe written a short time before her death for Griswold's memoir. From the beginning Mrs. Whitman felt that Mrs. Osgood's opinion was “dictated by pique”, and she was very much consoled when Mrs. Hewitt informed her that Mrs. Osgood had expressed such an opinion in order to “put down” Mrs. Lewis, whose relations with the Poes had never been acceptable to Mrs. Osgood.(3)

Poe is said to have remarked to Judge Hughes during his last visit to Richmond that Mrs. Whitman “had repeated efforts toward reconciliation, which he refused”. Possibly the poet had reference to this poem which Mrs. Whitman felt had inspired “Annabel Lee”. But he could have had in mind a more obvious effort on her part which came later in the year of 1849. For the June issue of the Southern Literary Messenger, a magazine which as sure to be read by Poe, Mrs. Whitman forwarded a poem, “Song”, which she subtly dated “Isle of Rhodes, March 1849”. The first and last stanzas of this poem, quoted below, show an obvious effort on her part to reveal her regret at the tragic outcome of her engagement.

Journeying to Richmond in June, 1849, Poe renewed his attentions to the prosperous Mrs. Shelton, a boyhood sweetheart. Mrs. Whitman was always curious about Poe's relations with Mrs. Shelton, and years later she asked Mrs. Clemm if a marriage ha been intended between Poe and Mrs. Shelton. Mrs. Clemm replied that it had been so, that she herself was to have had a home free from anxiety, and that Poe was to have enjoyed an income from Mrs. Shelton's property, and to add to his resources by teaching his wife's son.(2) This was a far less parsimonious arrangement than he had found in Providence, and he had apparently now dismissed Providence from his mind. But on October 4 Poe was found dying in a Baltimore gutter, and three day later he breathed his last, gasping out a prayer to the Lord to have mercy on his poor soul.(3) “He lies alongside his ancestors in the Presbyterian burying ground on Green Street”, Neilson Poe wrote Mrs. Clemm in answer to an inquiry.(4) Mrs. Clemm, noticing an announcement of Poe's death in the papers, wrote of the tragedy to Mrs. Richmond, and later to Mrs. Whitman.(5) It is hardly probable that she wrote Mrs. Osgood; there was no love lost between Mrs. Clemm and any of Mrs. Osgood's family.(6) Mrs. Richmond's response was a pathetic wail: [page 378:]

Mrs. Whitman seems to have received the news far more calmly. But had she felt Poe's death to the extent that Mrs. Richmond felt it, it is hardly probable that she would have mainfested [[manifested]] her feelings in the same way. Death had come to hold no terror for her,(2) and she perhaps welcomed for Poe the escape which he himself apparently continually longed for. In some lines from her poem”Resurgamus” we can possibly find her reaction.

But she was haunted with remorse because she had failed to answer Poe's last letter, and she was anxious that Mrs. Clemm understand why she had not answered and what her true attitude was concerning him. So she replied to Mrs. Clemm, and receiving no answer, wrote to Griswold asking that he make the necessary explanations and expressions of sympathy: [page 379:]

And Griswold replied:

There were a few of the literati whom Mrs. Clemm did not care for; yet her opinions were without doubt formed by Poe. Mrs. Clemm had found comfort in the rupture of [page 380:] Poe's engagement to Mrs. Whitman. But her love for Sarah Whitman was to increase as her need for Sarah Whitman grew, and like several of the ladies of the literati Mrs. Whitman was to repay the boon of Poe's flattering attentions by helping to care for the woman who had provided for Poe during the greater portion of his life. Mrs. Clem lived for many more years, and she became something of a burden before the end.

———————————

Poe was now gone, and through no human means could Mrs. Whitman communicate further with him. For any future relations she would have to resort entirely to the metaphysical. But throughout the whole period of her association with him, Poe had sought to persuade Mrs. Whitman that their affinity was not of this earth; and now that his soul had fled, she, in her spiritual faith, would feel no severance of the occult tie. Once Andrew Jackson Davis had made a psychometric sketch of Poe in which he saw a perfect shadow of the poet proceeding in front of him, “causing the singular appearance of one walking in a dark fog produced by himself”. And into this shadow Sarah Whitman apparently felt that she had been drawn. She now even saw a fatality is her first heart palpitations which she had experienced on reading that weird story of Poe's many years ago;(1) and she saw this same fatality in the events of that bleak December day when Poe, through the invitation of her mother, had walked out of her physical life forever.(2) There was at work, [page 381:] she felt, an occult influence, a mysterious something over which neither she nor Poe had any power.

In their attempt to create a poetic passion both Poe and Mrs. Whitman had worked the sense of Shelley's words into a philosophy. Furthermore they had endeavored to persuade each other that that magnetism which was drawing them together was something even more than mere occult power. It was actually a blood relation. In speaking of this matter Mrs. Whitman once wrote James Wood Davidson:

Mrs. Whitman liked to tell this story, and it sometimes grew with the telling. In 1855 she told Eveleth that on this occasion she was sitting with her eyes downcast when suddenly the original identity of the names Power and Poe flashed upon her, and looking up, she met the fixed, intent gaze of Poe who, when she expressed her conviction of their kinship, replied: “Helen, you startle me — therewith hangs a history!”(2)

Mrs. Whitman was convinced always that at this moment she was en rapport with Poe; she believed that there was a “strange, spiritual energy or effluence which seemed to surround or ensphere ‘The Raven’”, and her spiritual faculties insight and intuition had at this time been enhanced and intensified by this occult element. Those piercing eyes of Poe had at this moment conveyed the knowledge of their blood relationship to her very soul.

Davidson had just related to Mrs. Whitman how a lady had seen in his visible image an express portraiture of one long dead — one she had known long before his birth, and Mrs. Whitman had attempted an explanation, saying that such experience belonged to “a class of psychal phenomena which has hunted and perplexed me through life”. She continued,

And her affinity with Poe Mrs. Whitman felt had the security of a blood relation.

In connection with this same theory Mrs. Whitman had always liked to believe that there had existed between her and the spirit of Mrs. Stanard an unconscious rapport — there had been an interfusion or possession of the whole personality through occult means which had sat aside laws of personal identity. This spirit of Mrs. Stanard, who incidentally she thought bore her same name of Helen, had always hovered around Poe, and it was this spirit that had drawn Poe to her.(2) Poe himself was responsible for Mrs. Whitman's acceptance of this idea. He had professed to connect Mrs. Whitman strangely with his memoirs of Mrs. Standard, and he often declared to her that he had known and loved her ages ago. During the walk in the Swan Point Cemetery when he had first asked Mrs. Whitman to become his wife, he had told her of Mrs. Stanard — how she had spoken [page 384:] a few kind words to him as an imaginative child, and how, when she died, it was his habit for months after her decease “to visit nightly the cemetery where the object of his boyish idolatry lay entombed. When the nights were very dreary and cold, when the autumnal rains fell and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he lingered longest and came away most regretfully.”(1)

Whatever the truth of Poe's stories concerning this Richmond lady might have been, Mrs. Whitman was persuaded that there was some psychic connection between herself and Mrs. Stanard. And in their romance she and Poe had managed to find incidents strangely suggestive. In attempting to show further this interfusion of identity she once wrote:

There could be no doubt in the mind of Sarah Whitman that there had been something more than ordinary circumstances which had drawn her to Poe. Her aunt Mrs. Rebecca Power Tillinghast, who had married the Hon. J. L. Tillinghast, encouraged her by assurances of a strange resemblance between the faces of her father, Nicholas Power, and Mr. George Poe of Georgetown, D. C.(2) Then once in 1849 when Mrs. Power saw her daughter Sarah dressed as an Albanian chief for a tableau, the poor old lady was so appalled by the resemblance to Edgar Poe that she refused to remain in the room or give her daughter a second look.

Poe had also taught Mrs. Whitman to trace subtle relations in words. The very name of Helen held some charm for him, and it will be remembered that in writing to Mrs. Whitman on October 1 he said that he had felt a “thrill of intense superstition”, a feeling of “positive miracle he discovered how appositely his lines to Mrs. Stanard, had fulfilled his need in communicating with Mrs. Whitman. There had been an agreement not only in thought but also in name — [page 386:] the rare agreement of “Helen and not the far more usual Ellen”. Mrs. Whitman consequently later came to see this same significance in others of his poems. In earlier versions of “Lenore” she found that Poe had addressed the lines to “Helen” rather than “Lenore”, and in this fact she found some satisfaction.(1) And thus later, becoming interested in the anagrammatic mode of divination as “practiced by the professors of the ‘black art’,” she found that by adopting the original Norman spelling of her family name, a name also common to Poe, she could transform the letters of her name so as to produce a phrase suggestive of Poe. Thus “Helen Poer” transposed became “Ah Seraph Lenore”. “I confess that when I war the result she wrote Mrs. Julia Deane Freeman, “I felt a strange sense of what Macbeth would call ‘Fate and metaphysical aid’.”(2)

This philosophy of identity, and this doctrine of magnetic rapport were not sciences she had acquired altogether in her association with Poe, but whether with true or false intent, he had served to confirm her belief. In seeking for romantic reasons to impress upon her his theory of her identity with the spirit of a woman who had been more than mother to him, he left her with ideas upon which to build a firm belief in Spiritualism.

In her relations with Poe Mrs. Whitman in more ways than one had come to associate the poet with ideas peculiar to the now rapidly increasing interest in objective Spiritualism. And either before or after his death and after his death she had [page 387:] begun to see in him a divinely appointed medium through which God was working some purpose.

To Sarah Whitman Poe was a man who possessed a rarely gifted mind, a mind which because of its peculiarities of psychic and physical organization was accessible to the subtle vibrations of an ethereal medium, which conveyed but feeble impressions to the senses of ordinary persons.

In the “supernatural soliciting” of this mind Mrs. Whitman saw a significance, a wise purpose, — “an epochal fitness”. She found in many of Poe's strange narratives a degree of truth which Poe himself was not willing to avow. In one of his stories he had written:

And in contemplating Poe's was dreams Mrs. Whitman was mindful of Dante's words that

She felt that Poe's dreams were presageful and significant, and that while Poe had but dimly apprehended through higher reason the truths which his dreams foreshadowed, he had through his genius compelled men “to read and accredit as possible truths his most marvelous conceptions.”(1) Poe had often spoken of the imageries and incidents of his inner life as more vivid and true than those of his outer experience. And it attempting to analyze the character and conditions of his introverted life Poe had written that he regarded these visions with an awe, and as glimpses of “the spirit's outer world”. “His mind was indeed a ‘Haunted Palace’,” Mrs. Whitman remarked, “echoing to the footfalls of angels and demons.”(2)

In “Ligeia”, “Morella”, and “Eleanora” Mrs. Whitman had seen prevailing and dominant thoughts of psychic and spiritual agencies, energies, and potencies. Here were “intimations of mysterious phenomena”, which though regarded at the time they were indited as mere fables and dreams, were later to be recognized in their phenomenal aspect as matters of popular experience and scientific research. Each of these stories, Mrs. Whitman felt, commemorated “a psychal attraction which transcends the dissolution of the mortal body and oversweeps the grave; the passionate soul of the departed transfusing itself through the organism of another to manifest its deathless love.”(3) The reality of this theory Poe had attempted to prove to her by suggesting the subtle relation which he would have her believe she bore to the departed Mrs. Stanard. [page 389:]

Though Poe had admitted those dreams and visions of his inner life with skeptical reservation, Sarah Whitman had gone further in her credence. She saw in him an unconscious spiritual medium acting through the purpose of God and anticipating scientific wonders shortly to be proven. In some respects, like more recent philosophers, she was beginning to confuse genius with what the medievalist would simply have termed divine grace.

It is therefore not strange that since Mrs. Whitman had been convinced of her own unconscious rapport with one so close to Poe in the invisible world as Mrs. Stanard, and of the fact that Poe was himself something of a medium, she should seek and eventually feel that strange rapport with Poe even after he had “disappeared over the edge of the world”. She had never felt that Poe had been entirely separated from her, and she had sometimes employed astrological means of communicating with him. But in 1848 Katie Fox of Hydesville, New York, had snapped her fingers at certain mysterious rappings and thus bridged the gulf between the living and the dead. Spiritualism was no longer subjective, and for those who wished to believe here was a means of direct communication with the departed. Love could now make answer to love o’er the grave, and that most eloquent of Mrs. Heman's poems, “The Spirit's Return” became to some a reality.

Mrs. Whitman was now to spend some time in attempting a communication with Poe by of spiritualistic mediums.

It was in the autumn of 1849 soon after the death of Poe, that Mrs. Whitman began to hear those mysterious rappings which caused so much excitement among those who had followed the news of the Fox sisters and the happenings at Rochester.(2) It was therefore perhaps this early that she came to the conclusion that Poe was attempting to communicate with her by one of peculiar objective methods, and she never lost faith in the fact that he was seeking to establish from another world that spiritual communication with her which had been his ambition when alive. As was the case with most of those who embraced Spiritualism, she felt that frequently see was being guided from that other world — and often by Poe.(3) Once in 1850 she was compelled by a mysterious and spiritual suggestion to write to Mrs. Hewitt, who was at that time almost a stranger, and request that she find out the origin of a piece of gossip concerning herself and Poe; Mrs. Hewitt was herself the source of the anecdote.(4) It is said that Mrs. Whitman visited the Fox sisters, now famous as rapping mediums, in order to communicate with Poe, going in the company of the ever faithful Pabodie.(5) She did learn much from Mrs. Pauline Wright Davis of wonderful things Mrs. Davis experienced in a physico-spiritual way at Mrs. Brown's (later Mrs. Margaret Fish Fox Brown Underhill).(6) And later after [page 391:] Mrs. Brown had become Mrs. Underhill, Mrs. Whitman promised to accompany a Mrs. Cleveland to her studio on 35th street in New York.(1) It is not known just what spiritual experiences Mrs. Whitman had at the studio of Mrs. Underhill; but through the mediumship of Sarah Gould, a trance poet with whom she was closely associated, Mrs. Whitman did feel that she more than once came into communication with the spirit of Poe. Miss Gould, possessed of spirit messages, frequently gave way to improvisations of a poetical nature, which though not always good poetry, and sometimes not even coherent, were powerful to one who wished to believe.

One night when Mrs. Whitman and Miss Gould were crossing Long Island Sound on their passage from Providence to New York, Miss Gould became cognizant of a spiritual presence which she assumed to be that of Edgar Poe. Miss Gould then delivered a poetic message to Sarah Whitman which she believed to be a message of some sort from the spirit of her lost lover, still in the throes of “serpent” agony and chiding her for neglect.(2)

One would gather from Miss Gould's improvisation that Poe had been consigned to a sort of Carrie Nation Hall — a prolonged and exaggerated delirium tremens. This conception perhaps would have been in agreement with Sarah Whitman's creed. For in answering the question as to whether or not souls are lost, she once replied:

To the world Poe had been afflicted with a “ruling love” of evil. He had died murmuring the words “Lord, help my poor soul”; and the Spiritualists had pitied this poor soul, believing it destined for more torture in another world before achieving its final redemption.

Once in order to learn what she could of Poe Mrs. Whitman forwarded to Joseph R. Buchanan a copy of Poe's MS poem “To Helen”, hoping that he would compare the handwriting of this poem psychometrically with something that Poe had written through a medium. Buchanan had felt that in this way the spiritual identity of Poe could be made evident. But Buchanan lost the poem, and Mrs. Whitman was never able to add this assurance to her grouwing faith in spiritualism.(1) It was perhaps through Sarah Gould that she was best able to feel that she could communicate with Poe, and she remained a close friend of Sarah Gould until her death many years later.

Concerning Mrs. Whitman's feelings toward Poe and her ability to come into rapport, with “his spirit through the mediumship of Sarah Gould, Mrs. Eva Oakes Smith related an incident which occurred while these three ladies were travelling together in New England:

Before receiving this alleged massage from Poe, Mrs. Whitman had made slight attempts to clear his name from aspersions, but it was perhaps in this message that she found some of the inspiration for her most intensive defense of Poe against his critics; and always she sought for spiritual signs that her efforts were acceptable. But “this fact”, Mrs. Oakes Smith wrote, “was no sign that hers was not a labor of love.”(2)