Born to Nicholas and Anna Marsh Power of Benefit Street on January 19, 1803, Sarah Helen Power (later Whitman) became a prominent cultural figure in nineteenth century New England. She engaged in many pursuits, including poetry, literary criticism, travel, women's rights, and spiritualism, and built a strong reputation for herself in each. Sarah Helen Whitman is today remembered mostly for her courtship with now legendary Gothic poet and author Edgar Allen Poe (after being widowed by her husband John Whitman), but regarding Whitman simply as “Poe’s Helen” undervalues this talented and passionate individual.
Whitman’s early family life was unstable. Her mother, Anna Power, the parent with whom Sarah had most contact, has been described as “straitlaced and prosaic,” while her father was apparently more reckless and less reliable, abandoning the family when Sarah was ten and returning (briefly) when she was thirty. Sarah also acted as caretaker for her younger sister Anna for many years, with Anna’s mental illness taking its emotional and financial toll on Sarah.
In 1828, Sarah married John Winslow Whitman, a lawyer recently graduated from Brown University. The couple moved to Boston and remained there until 1833, when John unexpectedly died from complications from a cold. Whitman had been publisher of two periodicals, the Bachelors’ Journal and the Boston Spectator and Ladies’ Album, to which Helen contributed some poetry.
Moving back into her childhood home on Benefit Street with her mother and sister, the widowed Whitman devoted herself to her myriad intellectual endeavors. From the 1830s until after the Civil War, Whitman maintained Rhode Island’s preeminent literary salon at her Providence home. It was frequented by prominent writers and intellectuals, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Sarah Hale, John Hay, and Poe. Whitman also engaged in spiritualism, which had captivated other elite New Englanders as well. She became a medium for communicating with the dead and held séances in her house through the 1860s. Incorporating theatricality into her séances, she created a unique persona that she carefully maintained in public. Friends remembered that she always wore her veil, even when she ate. An 1865 photograph depicting her in the veil survives at Brown University. When Poe first saw Whitman he witnessed “a Pym-like apparition dressed in white, with a thin white shawl or scarf thrown over her head.” This encounter marked the beginning of their romantic relationship and led to his renowned poem, “To Helen.”
In 1853, Whitman published her first poetry collection, Hours of Life, and Other Poems. She penned the official hymn for the dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in downtown Providence in 1871, sung by a chorus of 300. In addition to poetry, Whitman wrote essays and articles for various publications, including theProvidence Journal, and contributed poetry to the Providence Ladies Anti-Slavery Society’s 1845 volume Liberty Chimes. She served as vice president of the Rhode Island Women’s Suffrage Association and published several incisive pieces supporting women’s suffrage. These included an 1868 essay entitled “The Woman Question,” in which she asked facetiously, “How can woman ever hope to adapt herself to the masculine standard of perfection—a standard so capricious, so variable, so exacting?” She wrote impassioned essays about the merits of then-underappreciated authors such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats. By far her most ambitious effort of this kind was her advocacy for Poe's work. Her 1865 book Edgar Poe and His Critics contributed the first serious scholarship on her former fiancé.
Whitman and Poe may have been romantic and intellectual soul mates, but their relationship was doomed. Whitman’s community, particularly her mother and sister, strongly disapproved of the union. Whitman herself had many reservations, largely because of Poe’s ravaging alcoholism, an addiction he could not overcome. Still damaged by the pain caused by her father’s abandonment, “she had also grown wary of entrusting real affection to men.”
Since biographers mainly focus on Whitman’s association with Poe and their broody Heathcliff and Cathy-like relationship, Whitman sometimes comes across as a neurotic, dour woman. In fact, she had an idiosyncratic penchant for anagramming names and a quirky sense of humor. For example, she gleefully partook in writing tongue-in-cheek epitaphs for the other ladies in her literary club, the Phalenstary. Whitman even remained cheery upon confronting death. Rose Peckham, a friend who spent “two delightful afternoons with her” only a few days before her demise, remembered that although initially Whitman “was troubled for breath, almost suffocated,” she “passed that off and became more herself than I remember her.” Ultimately, Whitman’s heart gave out and she passed away on June 27th, 1878 at the age of seventy-five.
The following year, a collection of Whitman’s poems was published posthumously in Boston, although her works have received scant attention subsequently. Yet her work reflects a gifted aptitude for literature and language, and her achievements far surpassed those of most 19th century women. She approached each of her many endeavors with grace, humility, and a keen intelligence. As Whitman’s biographer Caroline Ticknor deftly articulated, “Her youth was a characteristic feature, not assumed, but an ever-present charm, spontaneous and most delightful. And it was said of her that in her presence ‘one felt that noble and beautiful things were possible.’”
Adam Tawfik and Olivia Taillon, students, Rhode Island College
Further Reading
Harrison, James A. and Charlotte F. Dailey. “Poe and Mrs. Whitman- New Light on a Romantic
Episode.” Century Magazine 55 (Jan. 1909): 349-52.
Moore, R. Laurence. “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit
Rappings.” American Quarterly 24.4 (Oct. 1972), 474-500.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711685 .
Poe, Edgar Allen. The Last Letters of Edgar Allen Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman. ed.
James A. Harrison. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909. http://archive.org/stream/lastlettersofedg00poeeiala#page/n9/mode/2up
Poe, Edgar Allen and Sarah Helen Whitman. Last Flowers: The
Romance and Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman . ed. Brett Rutherford. Providence, RI: The Poet’s Press, 2011.
Miller, John Carl, Ed. Poe's Helen Remembers. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1979.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York:
Harper Perennial, 1991.
Ticknor, Caroline. Poe’s Helen. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vnBbAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Wayne, Tiffany K. Woman Thinking: Feminism and Transcendentalism in Nineteenth-Century
America. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. http://books.google.com/books?id=XlVBxViDygMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed 26 Feb. 2013).
Whitman, Sarah Helen. Edgar Poe and His Critics. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1859.
http://archive.org/stream/edgarpoecritic00whitrich#page/n9/mode/2up .
Whitman, Sarah Helen and Susan Anna Power. Cinderella. Providence, RI: Hammond, Angell &
Co., 1867.
There are several pertinent archival collections at the Rhode Island Historical Society and the John Hay Library, Brown University.