your love, had
I known my name to be so stained as your expressions imply. There is no
oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I
bear you. By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in heaven, I swear
to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of
my life which would bring a blush to my cheek or to yours."

Carried away by the ardor and eloquent passion of her poet-lover, and full
of the sweetest human sympathy and the tenderest human charity for one so
gifted but so unfortunate, Mrs. Whitman, against the advice of her
relatives and friends, consented to a conditional engagement. It was in
relation to this engagement, and the cause of its being broken off, that
one of the most calumnious stories against Poe was told, and believed both
in America and in Europe, but especially in England. Why the engagement
was broken, and by whom, still remains buried in mystery, but that Poe was
guilty of any "outrage" at her house upon the eve of their intended
marriage was emphatically denied by Mrs. Whitman. She pronounced the whole
story a "calumny." In a letter before me she says: "I do not think it
possible to overstate the gentlemanly reticence and amenity of his
habitual manner. It was stamped through and through with the impress of
nobility and gentleness. I have seen him in many moods and phases in those
'lonesome, latter years' which were rapidly merging into the mournful
tragedy of death. I have seen him sullen and moody under a sense of insult
and imaginary wrong. I have _never_ seen in him the faintest indication of
savagery and rowdyism and brutality."

Some of the most tenderly passionate of Mrs. Whitman's verses were
inspired by her affection for Poe. She wrote six sonnets to his memory,
overflowing with the most exalted love and generous sympathy. The first of
these sonnets ends thus:

_Thou_ wert my destiny: thy song, thy fame,
The wild enchantments clustering round thy name,
Were my soul's heritage--its regal dower,
Its glory, and its kingdom, and its power.

When malice had exhausted itself in heaping obloquy upon the name of the
dead poet, it was the gentle hand of woman that first removed the odium
from his memory. It was Mrs. Whitman--who loved him and whom he
loved--that dared to penetrate the "mournful corridors" of that sad,
desolate heart, with its "halls of tragedy and chambers of retribution,"
and tell the true but melancholy