The letters of Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton have been published in the biography of the former, but the following is so unusual—"the lady's gentle vexation at having been made out younger than she was," commented the recipient of the letter; "is so exceptional among women as to be amusing"—that it may be quoted.
Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton
"I will speak of one or two points suggested by the expression, 'true to her early love for Edgar Poe.' Now I was first seen by Edgar Poe in the summer of 1845, when I was forty-two years old, and my earliest introduction to him was in 1848, when I was forty-five. You will see, therefore, that it was rather a late than an early love. I was born on the 19th of January, 1803—Edgar Poe was born on the 19th of January, 1809, being six years, to a day, my junior. Soon after the last edition of Griswold's 'Female Poets' was issued, I happened to be turning over some of the new Christmas books at a bookseller's, when I unwittingly opened a copy of that work, at the very page where an alert, enterprising woman sits perched on a marble pedestal. Glancing at the foot of the page, I read, in blank amazement, my own name. Turning to the preceding page, I found that the lady in question was born in 1813! I began seriously to doubt my own identity. I had never, to the best of my recollection, been modelled in plaster; I had never been 'interviewed' on the delicate point of age. Everybody knows that a lady's age after forty is proverbially uncertain; still it is as well to draw a line somewhere, and so, dear, if you should be called upon to write my obituary, and should consent to do so, here is a faithful transcript from the family Bible:—
"'Sarah Helen Power, born Jan. 19—10 o'clock p.m., 1803.'
"That was the same year that gave birth to Emerson."
Mr. Longfellow wrote to thank Mrs. Moulton for her paper on Mrs. Whitman, and at no great interval he wrote again in acknowledgment of an article upon his own poetry also in the Athenæum.
Mr. Longfellow to Mrs. Moulton
Cambridge, May 17, 1879.
Dear Mrs. Moulton: For your kind words in the Athenæum, how shall I thank you? Much, certainly, and often,—but more and more for your kind remembrance, and the pleasant hours we passed together before your departure.
... A charming country place in England is the thatched-roofed Inn at Rowsley in Derbyshire, one mile from Haddon Hall. Go there. And do not forget to write to me.