Text: John C. Miller, “Entry 007: Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram, Feb. 11, 1874,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 19-26 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 19, continued:]

7. Sarah Helen Whitman to John H. Ingram. Item 119

My dear Mr. Ingram,

Yesterday morning came your welcome letter [Jan. 26] & today the [page 20:] papers & poems. I glanced first at the poems & read with unwonted pleasure & surprise their fresh & fervid utterance of genuine poetic feeling. Why I should have felt surprise, I can hardly tell you. Perhaps I had unconsciously inferred from the directness of your letters & their indication of methodical habits of thought that it was the analytical & purely intellectual elements of Poe's genius that had most attracted you.

Through these early poems of yours I have come to know you better. They appeal almost exclusively to the imagination — a faculty of all others least appreciated by the professional critics of poetry. I thank you for sending them; but why not send more? Why not the whole of the lines on the 7th page?

The Old English Baron first introduced me to the realms of romance. I was eight years old at the time, yet I have never forgotten it.

I must tell you how well I like the matter & manner of your “New Facts” in the Mirror.(1) More about that presently. But, now, to your questions. I have told what I know of the “Conchology” story on another page. I wonder if it will agree with the “clue” you spoke of.

The story about the borrowing of money from “a distinguished woman of South Carolina” with all the atrocious incidents connected with it, is so incredible, as it stands, that I could not believe it — not if “forty thousand brothers” should swear to it on the faith of their fraternal fealty & the word of their knightly honor! But I have not yet heard that any-body has sworn to it. I believe it stands on the word of Dr. Griswold alone & with his character for veracity we need not waste much time in seeking for the slender & tangled thread of truth to lead us out of this dark labyrinth of fiction.(2)

Something there was which caused much scandal & gossip at the time & which doubtless served as the foundation or rather as the nebulous nucleus out of which this story was evolved. Certain benevolent ladies, friends of the invalid wife, were in the habit of visiting her in her last illness & of ministering to the comfort of the family. An open note, or letter, from Mrs. Osgood chanced to be seen by one of the ladies & was thought to call for their interference.(3) A committee was appointed to call on the poetess & to remonstrate with her against the imprudence of such a correspondence. Mrs. Osgood, in consequence of their representations, consented that they should act in her behalf and demand the return of her letters. Margaret Fuller — the late Countess d’Ossoli, was, I believe, one of the ladies who acted on the occasion, & Miss Anne C. Lynch, now Mrs. Botta, was another.(4) [page 21:] It was from the latter that I received in the summer of [18]48 the version which I have given you. But “the distinguished woman from South Carolina” was the acknowledged instigator & Grand Inquisitor of the movement.(5)

The ladies repaired to Fordham, presented their credentials & made their demand. The poor Raven, driven to desperation, ruffled his black plumage — called the fair embassadrisses “Busy-bodies!” & added injury to insult by saying that Mrs. ——— had better come & “look after her own letters. Now this was very indiscreet in him & very reprehensible, and no one knew this better than himself. But you shall hear what he himself says about it in a letter dated Nov. 24, 1848:

The extract quoted above is from the same letter, a portion of which is introduced on the 74th page of Edgar Poe & His Critics.

You will perceive that neither this letter nor the account which I have given you can be publicly used in refutation of Dr. Griswold's story. I rely on your discretion, therefore, for holding it as strictly confidential. If you can meet the charge by saying that, so far as you can learn, the story rests solely on the authority of Griswold, it might be well, perhaps, to do so. If you could say after your own manner something like what I have said in the paragraphs marked with a blue pencil mark, for instance.

It is possible that the “distinguished lady” may have advanced money to Mrs. Clemm & may, after Poe's aggressive allusion to “her own letters,” have called on him for an acknowledgment of the [page 22:] obligation. But I have never heard of anything of the kind except in Griswold's “Memoir.”

Speaking of “Isadore,” you say you think it was written by Poe. In the two bound vols. of the Broadway Journal, now in my possession, every anonymous article or paragraph written by him has the pencilled letter P. appended to it. He added these letters in giving me the volume[s]. Turning to the poem, I find no initial affixed to it, & therefore think it not his, though it has much of his style & many of his favorite phrases. Have you any other reason for thinking so than the resemblance of style? Do not return any of the printed slips I send you unless I specially request you to do so. The article on “Dry Facts & Traditionary History” you may preserve for me, as I may want it, but not for several months.

I wish to send you a corrected copy of “The Portrait.” I never liked the opening line, “Slowly I raised the purple folds” etc. After long years is simpler & more suggestive, don’t you think so?(6)

I am trying to obtain a photograph for you from a daguerre of Poe taken in this city. It was taken after a wild distracted night (of which I will tell you the story hereafter) — when

And all the stormy grandeur of that via Dolorosa had left its sullen shadow on his brow. But it was very fine. Another, taken a few days after, is sweet & serene in expression, but so faded that I fear nothing can be done with it. I wish you would send me a reflection of yourself. Won’t you?

You will see from Stoddard's article in Harper's (a copy of which I shall mail with my letter this evening) that Poe's age is given in a note differently from either of the dates in Griswold. Mrs. Clemm wrote me that Poe never knew anything about dates, but always had to appeal to her. I doubt if her own memory was more reliable. He has however assured me (vaguely) that he was older than I imagined. I think that he had, moreover, a morbid love of mystification, as had Byron, & that he sometimes purposely evaded the collectors of statistical information.

You ask for an autograph — something of his writing from which to obtain a printed facsimile. The difficulty will be to find even a paragraph that is not personal. Still I will try. I will make inquiries for the reviews & magazines which you require but can only send you Harper's today. You ask about earlier versions or editions of the poems too. Perhaps I may find some among my papers. If I can do so I will enclose them with the printed matter. [page 23:]

There is one piece of important evidence in relation to the private life of Poe, which I have been trying to obtain for you. I sent the only (printed) copy of it to Mr. Wm. F. Gill, the publisher of whom I told you. He seemed to consider it very important and I gave thinking that he would use it in the lecture he was preparing. I hear nothing further of the proposed lecture, & last week I wrote to him to ask him to lend me the copy I gave him. But as yet he has not sent it. I believe he is very busy just now republishing one of Wilkie Collins's lectures. While I think of it I will give you the address of Shepard & Gill, Publishers, 151 Washington St., Boston. The article I allude to was in the New York Evening Mail, Dec. 10, 1870. It contained an article occupying more than two columns & consisting of Mr. Gowans’ (Wm. Gowans’) recollections of authors with whom he had been personally acquainted.(7) It was sent me from New York by Mr. T. C. Latto, a Scotch gentleman who has always felt a deep interest in Poe.(8) I enclose to you some leaves from letters on Mr. Gowans’ testimony, which contain the substance of what I cut from the paper & gave to Mr. Gill. I have marked with a red pencil the parts to which I would call your attention. You need not return the letters.

If I am to mail my letter tonight I must close & leave many things unsaid. But I will write again in a few days if possible. And I will send you some of the poems of which you were kind enough to say that you would write a notice. I should certainly be glad to have you speak of them, or of the little book I sent you which of course I intended for you. I will send you some of the notices of the poems if I can find them. But of this hereafter. I shall have something to say of Stoddard, too, & his article in Harper's Monthly.

I have written on the margin of “The Portrait” something which you can cut off & paste on a fly leaf of the book if you like. I am sorry I did not write it in the book myself.

P.S. About the work on “Conchology” I will tell you what I know, & what I infer from the few facts in my possession. Whether they concur with the “clue” of which you speak I shall be glad to learn from you. Some time after the publication of R.W.G.'s “Memoir,” an Englishman by the name of Wyatt called on me in Providence.(9)

I think he had seen the article by W. J. Pabodie in the Tribune & had called on me as a friend of Edgar Poe to express to me his indignation at the injustice done to his memory in the “Memoir.” It was this gentleman who told me what I have referred to on the 75th page of my book. He assured me that having for years known Poe intimately & having often been near him in his states of utter mental delirium & [page 24:] desolation he had never heard from him a coarse or brutal word, never an expression that would have done discredit to his heart or brought reproach on his honor. He apparently felt for him, as did Mr. T. C. Clarke, a most affectionate & friendly sympathy & regard. Some years after this interview I saw in the Home Journal a communication in reference to the charge about the work on “Conchology.” It stated that “Prof. Wyatt” who had published a series of articles on natural history in Graham's Mag. was also the compiler of several works on Natural History selected from English authors; that one of these works was a work on “Conchology” in which he had been assisted by Poe & to which he had asked him to lend the prestige of his name, offering for the use of it a share in the profits. I preserved a copy of the article in the Home Journal for a long time but I cannot find it among my papers, nor can I remember the exact year of its appearance. I think it was in 58 or 9.

The transaction was not one altogether unknown to the literati of those days, I imagine, & perhaps not entirely so to those of our own.

P.S. No. 2. Mr. James Wood Davidson, the author of Living Writers of the South, a gentleman of fine culture & scholarship, in a review of the Poetical Works of Poe, published by Redfield in 1859, with an “Original Memoir,” touches some points of interest, which I will copy for you from the Courant, a literary weekly published at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1859:

Mr. G. W. Eveleth, the gentleman who, according to Griswold, was mentioned by Poe in the last letter quoted from him as “a Yankee impertinent” etc., etc., has apparently placed so little confidence in the authenticity of this letter, so maliciously published, that he has continued to the present day one of Poe's warmest & most efficient defenders.(10) Mr. Eveleth is a man of much curious learning — a mathematician & a man of science. He is not a Yankee but a Marylander, though living for many years in New England. This fact Poe of course knew, though Griswold may have supposed him to be “a Yankee.” Poe would have been very unlikely to have called him “a Yankee” & the whole letter, with its postscript, looks very much like a fabrication.

As an instance of Griswold's unreliability, Mr. Eveleth wrote to me in a letter dated April 5, 1854, that Mr. J. P. Kennedy & Mr. J. H. B. Latrobe, Esqrs., of Baltimore, assured him, in answer to his inquiries on the subject, that “the prize spoken of in Griswold's memoir of Poe was not awarded by them (as Committee) under anything like the circumstances recorded by Griswold.”(11)

 

1. This was “New Facts about Edgar Allan Poe.”

2. Griswold had written the following in his “Memoir,” pp. xxiii-xxiv: “On one occasion Poe borrowed fifty dollars from a distinguished literary woman of South Carolina, promising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and was asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might be exhibited to the husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondence which he said would make the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject. Of course there had never been any such correspondence, but when Poe heard that a brother of the slandered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking the satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he sent for Dr. Francis and induced him to carry to the gentleman his retraction and apology, with a statement which seemed true enough at the moment, that Poe was ‘out of his head.’ It is an ungracious duty to [page 26:] describe such conduct in a person of Poe's unquestionable genius and capacities of greatness, but those who are familiar with the career of this extraordinary creature can recall but too many similar anecdotes; and as to his intemperance, they perfectly well understand that its pathology was like that of nine-nine of every hundred cases of the disease.”

3. Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811-1850) was an attractive and prominent member of the New York literati and the wife of Samuel Stillman Osgood (1808-1885), the artist who painted the portraits of Poe, Frances Osgood, and Griswold that now hang in the New-York Historical Society's rooms. Poe admired and extravagantly praised Mrs. Osgood and her writings, and she returned his compliments. Griswold wrote her obituary in which he quoted from her last poem, “Israfel,” but he changed her masculine pronouns to feminine.

4. Sarah Margaret Fuller d’Ossoli (1810-1850) was a journalist and a social reformer, associated with the New England intellectuals. She married Marquis Angelo d’Ossoli in Rome in 1847. Poe did not like her.

5. [[4a.]] Mrs. Anne Charlotte Lynch. Botta (1815-1891), another member of the New York literati, lived in Waverly Place in New York City and was hostess of the first American literary salon. Poe knew her as Miss Anne Lynch; she married Professor Vincenzo Botta in 1855. [[This note should be part of note 4.]]

6. Mrs. Whitman's poems “The Portrait” and “Resurgemus” were written after her engagement to Poe was broken; both are concerned with their former relationship. They were published in her volumes Hours of Life and Other Poems (Providence: Geo. H. Whitney, 1853) and Poems (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879).

7. [[5.]] This “distinguished literary woman of South Carolina” was Mrs. Elizabeth Frieze Lummis Ellet (1818-1877), a sentimental poet and translator who had left Columbia, S.C., in 1849 to live in New York City, where she, too, became a member of the New York literati. She was at one time an ardent admirer of Poe but later became one of his bitterest and most relentless enemies. [[This note is out of order and misnumbered.]]

8. [[7.]] William Gowans (1803-1870) was a Scotch bibliophile who boarded with the Poe family in New York City in 1837. Many years later, in his Catalogue of American Books, No. 28, 1870, Gowans wrote a strong defense of Poe.

9. [[8.]] Thomas C. Latto of New York wrote Mrs. Whitman of his conversations with William Gowans, who described to him Poe's uniformly quiet, gentlemanly behavior, with not the slightest trace of intoxication or dissipation.

10. [[9.]] Professor Thomas Wyatt was the author of A Manual of Conchology (New York: Harpers, 1838).

11. [[10.]] George W. Eveleth of Phillips and Lewiston, Maine, corresponded with Poe between 1846 and 1849. Poe was apparently amused and pleased enough with Eveleth's brashness to respond at length to his pointed questions, fortunately for us. Eveleth copied all of this correspondence and that he had with other persons about Poe and sent all of it to Ingram in 1878. It is reproduced in my book Building Poe Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 195-234. After Poe's death Eveleth wrote articles for the Portland Transcript, June 8 and July 6, 1850, defending Poe against charges of intoxication and he again came to Poe's defense in an article, “Poe and His Biographer Griswold,” the Old Guard, June 1866.

12. [[11.]] John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870), biographer, novelist, and eminent Baltimore lawyer, helped Poe get his job with the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835 and proved in many other ways to be a true benefactor and friend. John Hazlehurst Boneval Latrobe (1803-1891) was a lawyer, inventor, and one of the judges, as was J. P. Kennedy, who awarded to Poe in 1833 the prize of $50 offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter for the best tale submitted.