LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class "155 LIFE AND LETTERS OF bgar By JAMES A. HARRISON of the University of Virginia VOLUME I. NEW YORK p, Crcrtoell & Co, PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1902 and 1903, by THOMAS Y. CROWELL &> CO. v/.t CONTENTS. PAGE Editor s Preface .......... vii CHAPTER I. 1809-1824. Poe s Ancestry, Birth, and Earlier Years at Rich mond : School-Days in England and Virginia . i CHAPTER II. 1826. Poe s Environment at the University of Virginia . 35 CHAPTER III. 1827-1829. The Early Poems. The Legendary Years . . 64 CHAPTER IV. 1829-1830. At West Point. The Poems of 1 8 3 1 . __ 1 _ 1 ___ fc ~__ 2 CHAPTER V. 1831-1836. The Dark Years. The Baltimore " Visiter " and Latrobe s Reminiscences. Marriage ... 96 CHAPTER VI. 1837-1840. Adrift : New York and Philadelphia .... 120 iv CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. 1840-1844. . PAGE Philadelphia: New York; Burton s " Gentle man s Magazine ;" tf Graham s Magazine " . 153 CHAPTER VIII. 1844-1845. New York ; " The Broadway Journal " . . . 187 CHAPTER IX. 1845. "The Raven" 213 CHAPTER X. 1845. Tales : Poems; Longfellow War; End of "The Broadway Journal " 228 CHAPTER XI. 1846. Social and Literary Life in New York : The Literati 241 CHAPTER XII. 1846-1847. P ordham : The Death of Virginia Poe .... 252 CHAPTER XIII. 1848. "Eureka" 269 CHAPTER XIV. 1848. Mrs. Whitman; " The Bells ;" Mrs. Osgood . 281 CHAPTER XV. 1848-1849. "Stella." "Annie." Philadelphia . . . . 299 CONTENTS. V CHAPTER XVI. 1849. PAGB Last Days in Richmond 310 CHAPTER XVII. 1849. In Baltimore : The End 327 APPENDIX. Foe s Autobiography 343 Mrs. ClemnVs Preface to the Griswold Edition . 347 The "Ludwig Article" (R. W. Griswold) . . 348 Death of Edgar A. Poe (N. P. Willis) ... 360 Edgar Allan Poe (J. R. Lowell) 367 Edgar A. Poe (P. Pendleton Cooke) . . . . 383 The Late Edgar A. Poe (John R. Thompson) . 392 Defence of Poe (George R. Graham) . . . 399 Index 411 Index to Appendix 427 Bibliography of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe 431 INTRODUCTION THE present two volumes, devoted to the Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Foe, have their justification from several points of view. They have to deal with one of the foremost if not the foremost of literary figures in America. They give a new picture of the author s habits and works. They represent original research and the accumulation of important material from widely scattered or generally inaccessible places. And, aside from their value, they tell the story of a strange, romantic life. The biography is justified by recently discovered letters and facts which substantiate many things and disprove many others. Through inquiry and corre spondence with Poe s still surviving contemporaries, new light has been thrown on the poet s early and middle life. Many important articles, moreover, have appeared in the periodical press in the last decade, and their substance has been utilized in this volume. A perusal of the Life side by side with the Letters now for the first time collected will prove thorough going and of unusual interest. After reading a chapter in the life-story, the letters from Poe and to Poe, per taining to that period, will gleam with hidden meaning and human feeling. In this way, it is hoped, the viii INTRODUCTION publication of this Life and these Letters conjointly will be of service to the world of literature. The story of Poe s life has been subject to so many errors, popular fallacies, and editorial misstatements, that a true and unbiassed account of it is difficult to set forth. The present volume is the result of much delving among original material and first-hand sources. The effort, throughout, has been to present the man as he was, neither deified by over-admiring friends nor vilified by over-zealous enemies. Poe s autobiographic "Memorandum," found among Dr. R. W. Griswold s papers, is printed from the original MS., through the courtesy of Mrs. Wm. M. Griswold. Its inaccuracies are brought out in an editorial note. It will be found in the Appendix, together with several articles by the poet s contempo raries. Letters quoted in the Life are not repeated in the volume of Letters, but are referred to in their proper chronological place. These two volumes were originally prepared for a complete edition of Poe s Works, in seventeen volumes, known as the <f Virginia Edition." In the General Preface to that edition, the editor makes grateful ac knowledgment to biographers, editors, librarians, and other generous assistants whose active co-operation was essential to the completion of the work. To the authors of lives or memorials of Poe Messrs. G. E. Woodberry, J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill, R. H. Stod- dard, E. L. Didier, J. G. Wilson, and Miss S. S. Rice especial thanks are due. ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME 1 PACK EDGAR ALLAN POE Frontispiece From painting, by Samuel S. Osgood, owned by the New York Historical Society. ELIZABETH POE 10 Mother of Edgar Allan Poe. From a miniature in the possession of J. H. Ingram. JOHN ALLAN 16 From a silhouette. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, WEST RANGE . . 52 Poe s room, No. 13, is back of the second arch to the left of the letter-box. The room at the extreme right of the picture (in the other building) is also claimed to be Poe s room. FACULTY RECORD FOR DEC. 20, 1826 ... 56 Containing an examination into the charge that the University of Virginia hotel-keepers drank and gam bled with students. FACULTY RECORD FOR DEC. 20, 1826 ... 58 Containing an examination into the charge that the University of Virginia hotel-keepers drank and gam bled with students. FACULTY RECORD 61 University of Virginia. ( Excelled in Latin. ) x ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE FACULTY RECORD 62 University of Virginia. (Excelled in Senior French Class. ) TAMERLANE. (Titlepage) 65 AL AARAAF. (Titlepage) 74 MRS. JOHN ALLAN, zd 78 From a small, white marble bust carved in Naples, here reproduced by the courtesy of Mrs. G. W. Mayo, Mrs. Allan s niece. POEMS, 1831. (Titlepage) 94 WILLIAM CLEMM no Father of Virginia Poe. From an engraving in the possession of Amelia F. Poe. THE POE MARRIAGE BOND 114 SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER BUILDING, RICHMOND, VA. (1902) n8 Poe edited the "Messenger" here from December, 1836, to January, 1837. The back building ad joining was occupied by Allan & Ellis, tobacconists, the firm in which Poe s " foster-father " was senior partner. GEORGE R. GRAHAM 138 From engraving, by Armstrong, of portrait by Read RUFUS W. GRISWOLD 142 From engraving. CONCHOLOGIST S FIRST BOOK. (Titlepage) . . 146 VIRGINIA POE 180 Mrs. Clemm s daughter and the wife of Edgar Allan Poe. Reproduced from a photograph of a water- color sketch in the possession of Amelia F. Poe. Copyright, 1893, by Amelia F. Poe. ILLUSTRATIONS. xi PAGE MARIA CLEMM 206 Poe s mother-in-law. From daguerreotype taken in Lowell in 1849. CHARLES F. BRIGGS 212 From engraving by Capewell and Kimmell. THE RAVEN. (Titlepage) 213 FRANCES SARGE"NT OSGOOD 244 From engraving. POE S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM 252 Where he resided, 184649. LETTER FROM POE TO MRS. SHEW (Facsimile) 265 THE BELLS. (Facsimile of original MSS.) . . 286 SARAH HELEN WHITMAN ....... 290 From an engraving by Charles Skinner, after a painting by C. J. Thompson. Reproduced by permission of the Whitman heirs. THE SHELTON HOUSE 312 From photograph by Edyth Carter Beveridge, Rich mond, Va. EDGAR ALLAN POE. BIOGRAPHY. CHAPTER I. 1809-1824. POE S ANCESTRY, BIRTH, AND EARLIER YEARS AT RICHMOND: SCHOOL-DAYS IN ENGLAND AND VIRGINIA. WHEN he was five-and-twenty years old Edgar Allan Poe wrote the following letter to his life-long friend Kennedy, author of " Swallow Barn," (< Horseshoe Robinson," etc., and afterwards Secretary of the Navy under President Fillmore, in 1852 : BALTIMORE, November, 1834. DEAR SIR : I have a favor to beg of you which I thought it best to ask in writing, because, sincerely, I had not courage to ask it in person. I am indeed too well aware that I have no claim whatever to your atten tion, and that even the manner of my introduction to your notice was at the best equivocal. Since the day you first saw me, my situation in life has altered materially. At that time I looked forward to the inheritance of a large fortune, and, in the meantime, was in receipt of an annu ity for my support. This was allowed me by a gentle man of Virginia (Mr. Jno. Allan) who adopted me at VOL. i. i EDGAR ALLAN POE. the age of two years (both my parents being dead), and who, until lately, always treated me with the affection of a father. But a second marriage on his part, and I dare say many follies on my own, at length ended in a quarrel between us. He is now dead, and has left me nothing. I am thrown entirely upon my own resources, with no profession and very few friends. Worse than all this, I am at length penniless. Indeed no circumstances less urgent would have induced me to risk your friendship by troubling you with my distresses. But I could not help thinking that if my situation was stated as you could state it to Carey & Lea, 1 they might be led to aid me with a small sum in consideration of my MS. now in their hands. This would relieve my immediate wants, and I could then look forward more confidently to better days. At all events receive the assurance of my grati tude for what you have already done. Most respectfully, your obedient servant, EDGAR ALLAN POE. This letter is an epitome in brief of Poe s whole career, containing as it does indubitable data as to his early life, intimations of his marvellous precocity (second only to that of Shelley, Heine, Keats, or Hugo), and indications of the long-lasting misery in which his short life (also like that of Shelley and Keats) was to be spent. Poe, the poet Virginian, as he loved to call himself "I am a Virginian, at least I call myself one, for I have resided all my life, until within the last few years, in Richmond," he says to his friend F. W. Thomas was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. 1 In a note Mr. Kennedy explains : " This refers to the volume of Tales sent to Carey & Lea Tales of the Arabesque, etc., being two series submitted for the prize, for which one was chosen, and two others at my suggestion sent to Carey & Lea." J. P. K. BIOGRAPHY. 3 He was not "born in Baltimore, in January, 181 1," l as Griswold s memoir puts it, perhaps following a wrong date given by Poe himself, repeating the statement in "Prose Writers of America " (second edition: Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1847) ; an error enlarged unintentionally by James Russell Lowell in the February number of Graham s Magazine, i 845, who says that "Mr. Poe was then [1845] about thirty-two years of age " and " still in the prime of life." In his later years Poe either could not or would not tell the truth about his age. The fact is however undeniable that Poe was born in Boston, disagreeable as the fact was to him "all through his life, and that his first volume the famous "Tamerlane and Other Poems," of 1827 bore on its titlepage, " By a Bostonian," in capital letters. With the peculiar perversity with which children sometimes rail at their mothers, however, Poe per petually railed at Boston and treated her as the unfor tunate noverca of the Roman plays ; and Boston in return has avenged herself on her wayward child by bringing railing accusations against him and supplying for him an endless chain of embittered biographers. The biographers of Poe are indebted to Mr. John H. Ingram 2 for the surest testimony, obtained from the poet s family in Baltimore, as to his ancestry. " There is no good reason," says John P. Poe, Esq., of Baltimore, " to suppose that the ancestors of 1 Edgar A. Poe s Miscellaneous Works, Redfield, New York, 1849, p. xxiii. 2 Edgar Allan Poe : His Life, Letters, and Opinions : By John H. Ingram : London, 1880 : John Hogg : 2 vols. : p. 245, Vol. H., W. F. Gill (London, 1878), pp. 9-20. 4 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Edgar A. Poe were descended from the Le Poers [the Anglo-Norman family who passed from Italy to France, and from France to England, Wales, and Ireland, and with whom Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet s fiancee in 1848 connected her own and Poe s progenitors]. John Poe, the progenitor of the family in America, emigrated from the north of Ire land a number of years before the Revolution, and purchased a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, whence he afterwards removed to Cecil County, Maryland. At the time of the Revolution he was residing at Baltimore. His wife was Jane McBride, believed to be a sister [not a daughter, as frequently stated] of James McBride, Admiral of the Blue, and M. P. for Plymouth in 1785." Mrs. Clemm, Poe s aunt and mother-in-law, says, " My father was born in Ireland, but his parents left there when he was only six weeks old, and he was so patriotic that he never would acknowledge he was any other than an American. He lived in Baltimore from the time of the Revolution ; he took my mother there from Pennsylvania, a bride." x General David Poe, the poet s grandfather, was a distinguished veteran of the American Revolution, a devoted friend of Lafayette (for whose ragged troops in 1781 Mrs. Poe personally cut out and superin tended the manufacture of five hundred garments), and quartermaster-general of the American forces in Baltimore. David, the eldest son of General Poe, was the poet s father. Beverley Tucker, the well-known contributor to The Southern Literary Messenger and author of " The 1 Ingram, Vol. II., p. 249 seq. BIOGRAPHY. 5 Partizan Leader," wrote in 1835 that he "remem bered Poe s beautiful mother when a girl." This beautiful girl had elements of the sprite about her, being a "girl without a country," born in mid- ocean while her English mother was journeying across the Atlantic from England to America, and she possessed rare talents for singing, dancing, and acting. No one can look at the portrait of Elizabeth Arnold (for such was her maiden name) without seeing in it foreshadow- ings of those ethereal Eleonoras and Ligeias that haunted the poet s dreams with their delicate impalpabilities, their Indian-summer-like vagueness : the childlike figure, the great, wide open, mysterious eyes, the abundant curling hair confined in the quaint bonnet of a hundred years ago and shadowing the brow in raven masses, the high waist and attenuated arms clasped in an Empire robe of faint, flowered design, the tiny but rounded neck and shoulders, the head proudly erect. It is the face of an elf, a sprite, an Undine who was to be the mother of the most elfish, the most unearthly of poets, whose luminous dark-gray eyes had a glint of the supernatural in them and reflected, as he says in one of his earliest poems, " the wilder d " nature of the man. Rich currents of Irish, Scotch, English, and Ameri can blood ran together in his palpitating veins and pro duced a psychic blend unlike that of any other American poet : Celtic mysticism, Irish fervor, Scotch melody, the iris-tipped fantasy of the Shelleys and the Cole- ridges, and the independence and alertness of the trans atlantic American into whom all the Old- World characteristics had been born, on whom all these treasures of music and imagination, of passion and mystery had been bestowed by some fairy godmother. 6 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Elizabeth Arnold was a widow when she married David Poe, Jr., in 1805, her first husband having been the light comedian C. D. Hopkins. He died in October, 1805, and the Poe marriage followed shortly after. Mr. George E. Woodberry, in his painstaking biography, 1 traces out the Bohemian wanderings of grandmother Arnold, Elizabeth Arnold, Mrs. Hopkins, David Poe, and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, from Maine to Charleston and from New York ar\d Boston to Rich mond, Washington, Norfolk, and Petersburg, where the gay little company (sad enough at times) performed all sorts of pieces in which the arch, roguish, Ariel-like nature of Mrs. Poe drew the attention of critics, and in which her great versatility now enabled her to imper sonate tender Ophelias and Cordelias, Palmyras and Sigismundas, now to sing and dance Polish minuets to David Poe s reels and horn-pipes. Mr. Woodberry has killed the elopement slander : there was no elopement ; and David Poe was simply a wayward, handsome, theatre-loving young gallant of twenty-five who joined the Hopkins Company in 1804, and became a strolling player like Will Shak- spere and Jean Poquelin Moliere, giving up forever his law-books and his uncle s home in Augusta, Georgia, in favor of the boards. After their marriage the two became "Virginia Comedians," and the career of the couple may be traced in the various gazettes and periodicals of the time, especially in the so-called " elegant literature " of the period. At length a stop in Boston came to the wan derings : January 19, 1809, Mrs. Poe did not appear but Edgar did ! 1 Edgar Allan Poe : American Men of Letters, pp. 114. BIOGRAPHY. / Three weeks after, the poor little woman whose great eyes look out on us so wistfully from the minia ture so passionately beloved by her son was singing and dancing again merrily before the Boston boards, with that merriment that must have been nigh to heart-break, for she was now the mother of two little sons, William Henry Leonard and Edgar (followed two years later by Rosalie Poe) , with no steady or reliable means of support, and her husband probably already attacked by consumption. All her life the mother engaged in a life-and-death struggle with pov erty and penury, like her gifted son : all their lives mother and son were entangled in that vast Disaster which came to such thrilling expression in " The Raven," sinking in " desperate seas " of misery and succumbing at last to the storm and stress of life, the one in Richmond, the other in Baltimore. " For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends " : such are the words 1 written in delicate caligraphy by the mother on the back of a little picture which she painted and bequeathed to her son ; words, however, written before the final tragedy, a fore-knowledge of which would perhaps have substituted Richmond for Boston, and the lifelong Virginia friends for the casual Boston theatre acquaintances. It is singular that some of these Boston friends had the names of Usher and Wilson, names afterwards so celebrated in the tales of the author. The year 1 8 1 1 found the players in Richmond, Virginia, if, indeed, David Poe was at this time living, which is at least doubtful. Little Rosalie (who 1 Ingram, I., 6. 8 EDGAR ALLAN POE. lived until 1874 an< ^ died in the Epiphany Church Home at Washington, D. C., an object of charity) came after her father s death to add to the troubles and distresses of the mother. The two short years which Edgar Poe had already lived had been signalized by some remarkable things : the year of his birth was indeed an Annus Mirabilis. His favorite poets, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (to whom, as " the noblest of her sex" he dedicated " The Raven and Other Poems" in 1845) and Alfred Tennyson ("the greatest poet that ever lived") were born in that year ; Charles Darwin, who revo lutionized science, and Chopin and Mendelssohn, the great musicians ; Abraham Lincoln, the great Southern emancipator ; Gladstone, the famous orator ; Fanny Kemble, the subtle interpreter of Shakspere ; Oliver Wendell Holmes, the wit and poet, formed an illustrious galaxy of new-born children -contempo raries of Poe, making the year i 809, when Madison was president, Metternich prime minister of Austria, and the Battle of Wagram was fought, a starred year in the historic calendar. No tragedy in later times is more fraught with in finite pathos than the sufferings and death of the Poes in 1 8 1 1 . Travelling in those days was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, accompanied by all the incon veniences, not to say horrors, of the old " Conti nental " stage-coach system, terrible roads, and inter minable distances. From 1805, when their marriage took place, the Poes incessantly travelled from Boston to New York, from New York to Philadelphia, Washington, far South to distant Charleston, Norfolk, Richmond, back to New York again, flitting like wandering birds from bough to bough, in hopes of an BIOGRAPHY. 9 engagement, rolling over the country in the wretched vehicles of the time, encumbered with theatrical bag gage and two forlorn little babes (sometimes left with Baltimore relatives). With the mighty will of Ligeia, which in more than one trait appears to be the life of Foe s mother wrought into a strange and tender story, the delicate woman moves in her appointed task, determined to support herself and her children, until she reached Richmond, Virginia, in August, 1 8 1 1 . All these years it had been romantic and sentimental drama, song, dance, light comedy ; Mrs. Poe had represented nymphs and Ariels and cupids, distressed Ophelias and Shaksperian Desdemonas. Now, it was tragedy, pure and simple starvation death. After Rosalie s birth the mother fell into a swift de cline, beginning to waste and fade like a waxen taper before the inward burnings of consumption. Never surrendering or giving up hope, she went on announc ing and acting until the destitution of the family attracted somehow the charitable attention of the Rich mond ladies : benefits were arranged by the kind- hearted players ; and at last the following card appeared in the Enquirer for November 29, 1811 : l "TO THE HUMANE HEART. " On this night Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of dis ease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance, and asks it, perhaps, for the last time. The generosity of a Richmond audience can need no other appeal. For particulars see the bills of the day. 1 1 The author is indebted to Dr. Wm. Hand Browne for these clippings, which are accurately reprinted. 10 EDGAR ALLAN POE. A few days later, on a date very near the happy and blessed Christmas time, the time of supremely happy mothers and loving children, the curtain rose for the last time on the final act of the tragedy of David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold : " DECEMBER 10, 1811. " Died, on last Sunday morning, Mrs. Poe, one of the actresses of the company at present playing on the Richmond boards. By the death of this lady the stage has been deprived of one of its chief ornaments j and to say the least of her, she was an interesting actress, and never failed to catch the applause and command the ad miration of the beholder." Enquirer, December 10, 1811. If, as Mr. Gill asserts, 1 the father died three days later of the same dread disease, the cup of suffering must have overflowed and the orphaned children been desolate indeed. The Gill Biography further con tains an unsupported statement (Appendix, 319) that " Mr. Allan and Mr. Mackenzie, both wealthy and benevolent Scotch gentlemen, having been informed that the Poes were in great distress, sought them out to afford them relief. They were found in wretched lodgings, lying upon a straw-bed, and very sick, Mr. Poe with consumption, and his wife with pneumonia. There was no food in the house. They had no money or fuel, and their clothes had been pawned or sold. " Two little children were with the parents, in the care of an old Welsh woman who had come over from England with Mrs. Poe, and who was understood to be her mother. The children were half-clad, half- 1 Life of Edgar A. Poe, p. 20 ; Chatto & Windus : 1878. ELIZABETH POE. Mother of Edgar Allan Poe,from a miniature in the possession of J. H. Ingram. BIOGRAPHY. II starved, and very much emaciated. { The youngest was in a stupor, cailsed by feeding on bread steeped in gin. The old woman acknowledged that she was in the habit of so feeding them, to keep them quiet and make them strong. **j This account has drily too many touches of verisimil itude in it. And the author adds : " Mr. Mackenzie, shocked at this spectacle, took the children to his own house, where they were tenderly cared for. A few days wrought a great change in their appearance, and the beauty and intelligence of little Edgar became a subject of universal comment. William Henry, the elder brother, had already been sent to his grandfather [General PoeJ in Baltimore." Two weeks and two days later, after Mrs. Poe had been laid to rest in a now unknown grave in one of the beautiful Richmond cemeteries, the Broad Street Theatre where Mr. Placide s gay little company of Virginia Comedians had so merrily pranced and capered, was consumed in the awful conflagration of Christmas Eve, 1811, in which the governor of Vir ginia and sixty other persons of high social distinction perished ; and from its ashes rose the Monumental Church in memory of the tragic event. The tragedy quoted in The Conqueror Worm could not have been more sudden and terrible : "Lo ! tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years : An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. 12 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Can the exquisite yet awful imagery of this poem, full as it is of theatre memories, mimes, puppets, shifting scenery, funereal curtains, phantom forms, have twined itself somehow about the memory of his mother in connection with the burning of the Rich mond Theatre, about which all Virginia never ceased to talk for half a century, and which sent a thrill of horror all over the United States ? Little Edgar must often have heard it discussed, and must have watched the memorial church as it slowly rose out of the grave of the theatre where his mother had charmed the Rich mond audiences with her beauty and grace so many times long before. 1 It is asserted that only an accident kept the Allans from the theatre that evening. ii. RICHMOND, Virginia, is one of the most beautiful places in the old Commonwealth renowned for beauti ful sites. Founded more than one hundred and fifty years ago, it got its name from the lovely old English village of Richmond above London near which Car dinal Wolsey had built lordly Hampton Court, with Pope s Twickenham near by, Stoke Pogis Church and its immortal Elegy in the distance, and Horace Wai- pole s villa and the glimmering Thames throwing their clustering associations into the picture. At Richmond it was (and is) delightful to live, and here, in 1 8 1 1 , having been adopted by Mr. John Allan, an Ayrshire Scotchman from the land of 1 There was even a long-lasting tradition that the Poes had been burned alive in the theatre. BIOGRAPHY. 13 Burns, Edgar Allan Poe took up his abode, a two- year-old child, precociously clever and beautiful. Dur ing his most impressionable years, the city was the most intellectual and with the exception of New Or leans the gayest city of the South. It was full of old families that had furnished statesmen, legislators, gov ernors, generals, and Congressmen to the United States ; the presidents of the United States frequently resorted there in family reunions and on social visits ; distin guished foreigners like Lafayette, after visiting Mount Vernon and Monticello and Montpelier, drifted natu rally to the hospitable metropolis of the oldest of the states and were royally entertained with the far-famed Old Virginia profusion. Little Edgar s childhood and youth were passed in an atmosphere of sociability, open-air sports, oratory, and elocution. Patrick Henry, the great orator of the Revolution, lay in the neighboring churchyard of Old St. John s ; Chief-Justice Marshall, the greatest of the justices of the Supreme Court, and John Ran- doph of Roanoke, celebrated for silver voice and stinging sarcasm, were familiar figures in Richmond streets ; retired presidents like Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, after they had laid off the robes of office mingled with democratic simplicity in the cul tured throngs that haunted the parlors of Capitol Square and Shockoe Hill, or of the suburban homes where the neighboring plantations projected far into the edges of the city. Almost within hailing distance were the pleasant mansions of the Pages (ancestors of Thomas Nelson Page), Wickhams, Cockes, Harrisons, Mayos, and others socially and politically famed in the fashionable annals of the times, and in the city itself were gathered a goodly company of social celebrities. 14 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Richmond has for a century been famous for its schools, classical and denominational, at first taught by English or Irish graduates of famous transatlantic schools, and later by distinguished masters of arts of the University of Virginia. Rosalie Poe was adopted by the Mackenzies, who kept a well-known ladies school still remembered by persons of the older generation and "old gentlemen of the black stock." Edgar fell into the hands of kindly folk who taught him at the age of five or six to read, write, draw, paint, and "spout verse" from his adopted father s dining-table, intermingling the recitations (it is asserted, but only on hearsay evidence) with toasts and potations to the guests. It seems at least impossible at this date to believe that a hard, stern Scotchman such as Mr. Allan is described to have been, should for the amusement of an evening, so far forget himself and his responsibilities to the poor little waif as deliberately to ruin his constitution and his morals with practices so oiFensive, alike to decency and common-sense. As an educated Scot, he must have known the history and fortunes of Burns, his Ayr shire fellow-countryman, and must have noted, if he had his eyes open at all, the resemblance between the temperaments of the poet-ploughman and the players son. Much mythical nonsense has been talked and written about the " wealth " of Mr. Allan when he adopted Poe, and about the " luxury " in which the boy was reared in the "palatial home of the Allans." The fact is, Mr. Allan was a poor man when he adopted Poe and lived upstairs over his store. A correspondent, in a letter dated December 17, 1900, writes : BIOGRAPHY. 15 " Because the Allans for some half century were known in Richmond as rich people, all the books assume forsooth that Foe s youth was spoiled by indul gence of luxury and extravagance such as large wealth may command. It may have been, and doubtless was, somewhat spoiled as the adopted child of a good, loving woman, childless herself, but wealth was an unknown factor in that household until the windfall of the Gait legacy in 1825, just before Poe left for the University. That the Allans in 1811, when they adopted Poe, were living upstairs over their store, in which John Allan carried on a small trade, is a fact not discreditable, but inconsistent with wealth, and a great contrast with their later condition. The fact of this mode of business and living rests as yet on tradi tionary information, of which I have not yet found record proof: but I have no doubt of its correctness. " The end of the War of I 81 5 reopened commer cial relations with England, presenting fine chances for business enterprise, of which the Scotch factor was not slow to take advantage. That the results were unprofitable and disastrous is evidenced by a deed of assignment in 1822, two years after his return to Richmond. The assignment was made on private account and as partner of Ellis and Allan of Richmond, and Allan and Ellis of London. " The schedule includes household furniture, his negroes, etc., and interest in a small farm inherited by his wife : from which it would seem that he had no realty in his own right. By consent of creditors Allan was allowed to remain in possession of the property until the Trustee be required to sell ; with agreement to release if he could settle with creditors. The Deed of Release is not found, and it is probable that he was 16 EDGAR ALLAN POE. under stress of the misfortune until relieved by the Gait legacy. . . . Old Mr. Gait was one of the wealthiest men in the state, and John Allan s share of that wealth (he was Gait s nephew) made him one of the richest men in a town that had comparatively few large fortunes. The fortune revolutionized the Allan family life, and gave them new position. "The Gait Will was probated in March, 1825, and the city records show that within three months the legatee, with his newly acquired wealth, bought the house on Main Street, afterwards known as the Allan House. " Poe s stay in that house was not more than about six months, before leaving for the University, and for short periods after return therefrom. I wonder some times how much the sensibilities of the new- rich man may have been offended by satirical comment of the bright youngster who the critics to the contrary notwithstanding bad keen sense of the humorous, and wonderful talent in all sorts of criticism [witness Dr. Ambler s account of his satire upon the members of a debating society to which he belonged, aetat. 1 4 ; Ingram, I., 30], I doubt not that some such criticism, not malicious, was one of the ingredients in their sub sequent disagreement and quarrel. " I do not believe that dissipation, and a quarrel about money matters were the real cause of Poe s leav ing Richmond and his self-effacement for two years in the army. Doubtless, after return from the Uni versity, there was some such quarrel and falling out, but they do not adequately explain the situation and its results, for which there are far better and natural reasons." This then at once disposes of the myth of " mil- BIOGRAPHY. 17 lionaire " Allan, certainly not to the discredit of the canny Scot who was persuaded by his excellent wife a Miss Valentine of Richmond much against his will, it seems, to adopt the boy. In June, 1815, tne ^ay before the Battle of Waterloo, Mr. Allan, his wife, and his wife s sister, and Edgar sailed for England on this business venture, possibly for a short stay, but, as it turned out, for an entire lustrum of five years. Thus early into Edgar s most impressionable life a slice of Old England, his mother-land, intruded ; a bit of Old-World romance beset his infant imagination at its most sensitive period ; the spell of Europe, in the time of Waterloo and the great Napoleon, wove itself subtly over his fancy, and he doubtless drank deep of the poetic and semi-mysterious atmosphere of the quaint English town where his foster-father left him Stoke- Newington, then a suburb of London. We shall here embellish our narrative with a pictur esque quotation from Woodberry s Life (p. 16): " His residence there [Stoke-Newington] seems to have left deep marks of remembrance upon his mind, nor is it unlikely that the delight in the ancient, which afterwards characterized him, sprang partly from this early familiarity with a memorable past not yet van ished from the eye and hand. The main village, which has since been lost in the overflow of the me tropolis, then consisted of a long elm-embowered street of the Tudor time, following the track of a Roman road ; near the old Green, by deeply-shaded walks, that still bear the names of Henry and Elizabeth, stood the houses of Anne Boleyn s ill-fated lover, Earl Percy, and of her daughter s fortunate courtier, the favorite Leicester ; to the west ran the green lanes, over hazy VOL. i. 2 1 8 EDGAR ALLAN POE. inland fields, and to the east the more modern street of Queen Anne and early Georgian architecture, where behind its formal box-bordered parterre rose the white Manor House School, old and irregular, sloping in the rear to the high brick wall, with its ponderous spiked and iron-studded gates, which enclosed the play ground. " In the seclusion of these grounds Poe spent his school-days from his eighth [ ? ] to his thirteenth year ; there in the long, narrow, low school-room, oak- ceiled, gothic- windowed, with its irregular, black, jackknife-hewed desks and the sacred corner-boxes for master and ushers (in one of them once sat the mur derer, Eugene Aram), he conned his Latin and mis pronounced his French ; in the bed-room beyond the many tortuous passages and perplexing little stairways, he first felt the wakening of the conscience, whose self- echoing whispers he afterwards heightened into the voice and ghostly terror of the Spanish Hombre Embozado; in that wide, gravelled, treeless, and bench- less playground he trained his muscles in the sports, and when on Saturday afternoon the mighty gate swung open he and his mates filed out to walk beneath the gigantic and gnarled trees amid which once lived Shakespeare s friend Essex, or to gaze with a boy s eyes of wonder at the thick walls, deep windows and doors, massive with locks and bars, behind which Robinson Crusoe was written ; and on Sunday, after the holiday ramble, he would obey the summons of the hollow-toned church-bell, sounding from its fretted tower." In this Old- World town, therefore, with its mean dering lanes and elm-embowered pleasaunces, Edgar Poe was placed by the Allans, and there he was for BIOGRAPHY. 19 the first time regularly trained in English, Latin, mathematics, and French. All about him were associations of a venerable antiquity ; boys of genius like himself though older Byron, Shelley, Keats were beginning in these memorable five or six years to utter the first musical pipings of the most musically gifted of English poets, all of them living then at no great distance from Stoke-Newington ; England was in the flush and exultation of the Waterloo period, after the shame and humiliation of the Battle of New Orleans fought just six months before. The boy could not but have been impressed by the stir and glory of the time. "^^ Dr. Bransby, his teacher, and the ancient Manor House School, imbedded themselves so deeply in his ductile memory that they were enshrined later in his * William Wilson," which in one of his letters he calls his best story. The broad, benignant face of the doctor smiled complacently out of a huge wig that made him look like a lord chancellor ; his ready eru dition revelled in quotations from Horace and Shak- spere (spoken of by Poe with so deep a reverence in the Letter prefixed to the 1831 edition of his Poems), and he remembered his little American pupil well enough to speak in after years kindly of his aptitude while criticising his over-abundant pocket-money. Poe s English education, thus so favorably begun In England under a learned ecclesiastic, never ceased to be conducted by Englishmen or Irishmen, for after he returned with the Allans to Richmond in 1820, he was successively coached by Messrs. Clarke and Burke at their classical academies, and when he went to the University of Virginia in 1826, all the professors with two exceptions were accomplished Englishmen. Even 20 EDGAR ALLAN POE. as a boy Poe was placed by Col. J. T. L. Preston (a friend of the present writer) on a level with "Nat " Howard, afterwards known as one of the most dis tinguished Latinists in the South, and a school-boy contemporary, at Clarke s, of Poe. " To dream, * cries Poe in an autobiographic pas sage in "The Assignation," " to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself as you see, a bower of dreams. * This "bower of dreams" doubtless began its aerial architecture among the immemorial elms, the misty fragrances and shadows, the poetic reveries, the trance- like tranquillities of this time when the English school boy, ten or twelve years old, had already begun to scribble the little volume which he handed to Mr. Allan, and to be haunted by rhythmic fancies and tantalizing poetic thirsts. Nor will the conscientious biographer overlook what must have been the curious psychological effects of the sea on Poe s sensitive temperament during the long- drawn-out ocean voyages of eighty years ago, when a month was a quick passage across the gray Atlantic, and the precocious child, first at six, then at twelve or thirteen, spent a month or two of existence amid the midsummer splendors of the June seas. No one has depicted wind in all its myriad and magic shapes and forms and sensations, or water in its infinite diversities of color and motion, more graphically than the author of "Arthur Gordon Pym," "A MS. found in a Bottle," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," whether the one is gently agitating the whispering cur tains of the Lady Rowena s bed-chamber or the other is swallowing in its mystic embrace the crumbling battlements of the last of the Ushers. The Eolian BIOGRAPHY. 21 petulance of the poet s fancy, the Shelleyan versatility of phrase and rhythm with which he portrays wind and water, storm and calm, tarn and lake, interpreting the thousand-fold mysteries of the air and unlocking thrills of suggestion and horror from its chambered recesses, must all at least have started to germinate in these lengthened boyish ocean travels. Both times he crossed the Atlantic in June when the glory of the stars would be revealed in all their midsummer beauty, and when " Astarte s bcdiamonded crescent" and the starry hieroglyphs of heaven would stain themselves on the heavens in pigments of fire, ever to be treasured up in "Al Aaraaf" and many another star-poem or star allusion. The " MS. found in a Bottle" is a water-poem from beginning to end, written at an early age when the youth was vividly reminiscent of actual experience. The zephyrlike gossamer women of the Tales are incarnations of whispering winds ; their movements are the breezy undulations of air travelling over bending grain ; their melodious voices are the lyrics of the wind articulating themselves in flutelike throats ; and full of passion and pregnancy of meaning are the musical inflections that exhale from their lips as perfumes exhale from the chalices of flowers. In 1820 we find the travellers again at home in their beloved Virginia, beloved by Poe for many reasons, and in later days because it bore the name of his idolized wife. Col. Thomas Mann Randolph, son-in-law of the illustrious Jefferson, was Governor of Virginia when the family returned home ; a wave of prosperity had passed over the country since the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Waterloo ; Napoleon was 22 EDGAR ALLAN POE. dying at St. Helena ; and the Bourbon Restoration had sent a thrill of joy through aristocratic France : the world seemed to rest. The firm of Ellis and Allan, dealing in the famous "Virginia leaf" now rejoicing in a world-wide reputation, was beginning to look up, though there is no evidence for the assertion that it had acquired great fortune at this time ; pros perous it had been, as we see from the following sketch of Poe s boyhood furnished the writer by the late Col. T. H. Ellis, son of the senior member of the firm. 1 This final statement of Colonel Ellis will cor rect several mistakes of the biographies, which assert that Mr. Allan went abroad to settle an estate, etc. It gives also an authentic reference to the place and time of David Poe s death: " her husband had died not long before, in Norfolk ; " and shows that the names " Edgar Allan " and ft Rose Mackenzie " were the baptismal names of the two younger children. " On the 8th of December, 1811, Mrs. Poe, of English birth, one of the actresses of the company then playing on the Richmond boards, died in Rich mond, leaving three children. Her husband had died not long before, in Norfolk. She had made herself a favorite with those who were in the habit of attending the theatre, which was then the fashionable entertain ment with educated people, both in this country and England. There was general sympathy for the little orphans left by her. The eldest of the three, William Henry, was adopted by his grandfather, Mr. Poe, of Baltimore, a gentleman of social position there, and of family pride, who had been much offended by his son s 1 Here reprinted by the courtesy of the editor of the New York Independent, in which the account first appeared, Septem ber, 1900. BIOGRAPHY. 23 marriage with an actress. This child died young, but lived long enough to develop rare promise. The second child, born January 19, 1809, was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan, of Richmond ; the young est, a daughter, was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. William Mackenzie, also of Richmond ; and the names Edgar Allan and Rose Mackenzie were given in baptism by the Rev. John Buchanan, D.D., at the residence of Mr. John Richard, who was a friend of all the parties concerned. " The death of Mrs. Poe occurred eighteen days before the burning of the Richmond Theatre, and it is not improbable that Mr. and Mrs. Allan would have been present on that occasion but for the circum stance that they were spending the Christmas holidays at Mr. Boiler Cocke s, at Turkey Island, with Edgar. Mr. Allan and my father were partners in business. They had been raised together as clerks in the store of Mr. William Gait, who was the most successful merchant of his day in Virginia. The business of Ellis and Allan, beginning in 1 800, so prospered that after the war of 1812 15 they determined to establish a branch house in London, for which purpose Mr. Allan went abroad and remained in England five years. He was accompanied by his wife (a cousin of my mother), by his sister-in-law, Miss Anne M. Valentine, and by his adopted son. On their return, his own house having been leased, so that he could not get possession of it, Mr. Allan and his family be came members of my father s family, and lived with us, I suppose, nearly a year. It was then and there that my recollections of Edgar A. Poe began. " He was very beautiful, yet brave and manly for one so young. No boy ever had a greater influence 24 EDGAR ALLAN POE. over me than he had. He was, indeed, a leader among his playmates ; but my admiration for him scarcely knew bounds. The consequence was, he led me to do many a forbidden thing, for which I was duly punished. The only whipping I ever knew Mr. Allan to give him was for carrying me into the fields and woods beyond * Belvidere, adjacent to what is now Hollywood Cemetery, one Saturday, and keep ing me there all day and until after dark, without any body at home knowing where we were ; and for shooting a lot of domestic fowls, belonging to the proprietor of Belvidere, who was at that time, I think, Judge Bushrod Washington. He taught me to shoot, to swim, to skate, to play bandy; and I ought to mention that he once saved me from drown ing for having thrown me into the falls headlong, that I might f strike out for myself, he presently found it necessary to come to my help or it would have been too late ! Mr. and Mrs. Allan, having no children of their own, lavished upon him their whole affection ; he was sent to the best schools, he was taught every accomplishment that a boy could acquire, he was trained to all the habits of the most polished society. There was not a brighter, more graceful or more attractive boy in the city than Edgar Allan Poe. Talent for declamation was one of his gifts. I well remember a public exhibition at the close of a course of instruction in elocution which he had attended, and my delight when, in the presence of a large and distinguished company, he bore off the prize in com petition with Channing Moore, Gary Wickham, An drew Johnston, Nat Howard, and others who were regarded as among the most promising of the Rich mond boys. BIOGRAPHY. 25 " Not content with an adopted son, Mr. and Mrs. Allan desired to adopt a daughter also, and were constantly begging for my sister, now Mrs. Beverley Tucker. The intimacy between the two families my father s and Mr. Allan s was naturally very close ; on one side I mean the side of the Ellis boys and girls our largest Christmas gifts, birthday presents, etc., came from the Allans. Edgar was once guilty of a piece of meanness for which I have not forgiven him to this day. With our father and mother we had gone down to spend Christmas even ing with the Allans. Among the toys provided for our entertainment was a snake a long, slim, shiny thing made in sections, which were fastened to each other by wires, and a boy, by taking hold of the tail and holding it out from his body, could make it wriggle and dart about in the most lifelike manner. This hideous imitation of a serpent Edgar took in his hand, and kept poking it at my sister Jane until it almost ran her crazy. " Of course I knew about his swim of seven miles in James River down to Warwick, accompanied by Robert G. Cabell, Robert C. Stanard, and perhaps two or three other schoolboys, with Mr. William Burke, their schoolmaster, who went along in a row- boat to rescue him in case his strength should fail. I knew also of his Thespian performances, when he and William F. Ritchie and James Greenhow and Creed Thomas and Richard Cary Ambler and other school mates appeared in dramatic character under a tent erected on a vacant lot one or two squares beyond what is now St. James Church on Fifth Street admittance fee, one cent ! But never was I prouder of him than when, dressed in the uniform of the 26 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Junior Morgan Riflemen (a volunteer company composed of boys, and which General Lafayette, in his memorable visit to Richmond, selected as his bodyguard), he walked up and down in front of the marquee erected on the Capitol Square, under which the old general held a grand reception in October, 1824. " One evening there was a meeting of the Gentle men s Whist Club at my father s house. The members and a few invited guests had assembled and were seated at whist tables set out all over the large parlor, and things were as quiet as they were on a certain night before Christmas, of which we have read, when a ghost appeared ! The ghost, no doubt, expected and intended to frighten the whole body of whist players, who were in truth stirred to a com motion. General Winfield Scott, one of the invited guests, with the resolution and promptness of an old soldier, sprang forward as if he was leading a charge in Lundy s Lane. Dr. Philip Thornton, of Rappa- hannock, another guest, was, however, nearer to the door and quicker than he. Presently the ghost, find ing himself closely pressed, began to retreat, backing around the room, yet keeping his face to the foe, and as the Doctor was reaching out and trying to seize the ghost s nose with the view to twitch it off, the ghost was f larruping him over the shoulder with the long cane which he carried in one hand, while with the other hand he was struggling to keep from being tripped by the sheet which enveloped his body. When finally forced to surrender and the mask was taken from his face, Edgar laughed as heartily as ever a ghost did before. "In. February, 1826, Poe was entered as a student BIOGRAPHY. 27 at the University of Virginia. There began that course of conduct which, step by step, led to the wretchedness of the after part of his life. Sad, inex pressibly sad, and pathetic it was, indeed." This sketch gives us a vivid account of the spirited, handsome, gifted boy as he appeared seventy-five years ago to one of his intimate friends and playmates, the son of his foster-father s partner, even then full of precocious elocutionary and athletic talents, spoiled, wayward, devoted to practical jokes and open-air sports, a leader in school, accomplished in all the pastimes of the day, skating, swimming like a Lean- der or a Byron, leaping, running, acting in the Thes pian performances, drilling in the military company, and getting a too-rare chastisement for his capricious and thoughtless conduct. Another interesting glimpse of Poe at this time is afforded by the following account sent the writer by Dr. Hugh Wythe Davis of Richmond, Virginia, whose uncle, Dr. Creed Thomas, was Poe s desk- f mate at Burke s School. Dr. Thomas was very inti mate with Poe in after years also, and died only a few months ago, aged eighty-seven : "Dr. Thomas was educated at Burke s School in Richmond, Virginia, and at the University of Medi cine of Maryland. At the first-named institution, which stood near the present site of Ford s Hotel, he was a deskmate of Edgar Allan Poe during the years 1823, 1824, and 1825, and a schoolfellow of the Stanards, Cabells, Seldens. Selden told somebody that Poe was a liar or a rascal. The embryo poet heard of it, and soon the boys were engaged in a fight. Selden was heavier than Poe whom he pommelled vigorously for some time. The delicate boy appeared 28 EDGAR ALLAN POE. to submit with little resistance. Finally Poe turned the tables on Selden, and much to the surprise of the spectators, administered a sound whipping. When asked why he permitted Selden to pommel his head so long, Poe replied that he was waiting for his ad versary to get out of breath before showing him a few things in the art of righting. " Poe was a quiet, peaceful youngster, and seldom got into a difficulty with his schoolmates. He was as plucky as any boy at school, however, and never per mitted himself to be imposed upon. When it came to a question of looking after his individual rights, however, the young classic asserted himself. He was not at all popular with his schoolmates, being too retir ing in disposition and singularly unsociable in manner. The only two boys he was intimate with were Monroe Stanard, who afterwards became Judge Stanard, and Robert G. Cabell. He was quite fond of both of them, and the three boys were continually in each other s company. It was a noticeable fact that hel never asked any of his schoolmates to go home w\th\ him after school. Other boys would frequently spend the night or take dinner with each other at their homes, but Poe was seldom known to enter into this social intercourse. After he left the play-grounds at school that was an end of his sociability until the next day. Dr. Thomas was a member with Poe, Beverley Anderson, and William F. Ritchie, of the Thespian Society, that had its headquarters in the old wooden building which stood on the northeast corner of Sixth and Marshall Streets. Poe was a member of this society, contrary to the wishes of Mr. Allan. He had undoubted talent in this direction. The audience usually numbered about forty or fifty. A small admis- BIOGRAPHY. 29 sion fee was charged, and this was divided between the actors, who used it as pin money. A singular fact, Dr. Thomas used to say, was that Poe never got a whipping at school. He remembered that the other boys used to come in for a flogging quite frequently, and that he got his share. Mr. Burke believed in the moral power of the birch. He accepted the theory, Spare the rod and spoil the child, as a matter of course, and the consequence was that whippings were so frequent that they created no sensation among the scholars who witnessed them." l It is thus seen to be untrue that " no one knew him ; " on the contrary, the boy Poe had many de voted friends : Ellis, Thomas, Stanard, and Cabell are distinctly mentioned, or mention themselves, among them ; and later, when he wertt to the Univer sity, these friends increased in number and cordiality : Tucker, Burwell, Beale, Slaughter, Wertenbaker, Willis, Ambler, all testified to their friendship, many of them in their written recollections. The " mar vellous boy that perished in his pride " was not prouder ; Leopardi, agonized by humiliating deformity, could not at times hold more aloof; the shrinking and shadowy Tennyson, wandering over his lawns, did not recoil at times with more physical horror from contact with the clamorous world ; but there is noth ing in Poe s early years to justify the assertion that he passed them in supreme loneliness. 2 1 Obituary Notice of Dr. Creed Thomas, Richmond Dispatch, Feb. 24, 1899. 2 See Mrs. Whitman s "Edgar Poe and his Critics," Preface to the First Edition, 1860, where a similar statement is warmly combated. Cf. the utterances of A. Lang, N. T. Independent, Nov. 23, 1899, who doubts whether Poe was even a " gentleman." 30 EDGAR ALLAN POE. His feeling of unmeasured superiority to his school mates in book-learning and athletic accomplishments ; his boyish gift of rhyming readily ; the applause of his teachers and playmates at the performances of the infant prodigy; and the undisguised admiration of the home-circle for his dramatic and poetic powers, un doubtedly enhanced an innate self-consciousness which never left Poe to his latest breath ; but it is baseless^ useless, and cruel to affirm that he was "the man in the crowd " pursued even as a child by relentless in-^\ stincts of solitariness. / There are two spots in this normal childhood that loom up with shining distinctness : the episode with Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, and his first love. We quote a passage from Mrs. Whitman s "Ed gar Poe and his Critics," pp. 4855, in which this charming biographer and defender of the poet gives us a glimpse of the boy at fourteen in the throes of a first affection : " While at the academy in Richmond, he one day accompanied a schoolmate to his home, where he saw for the first time Mrs. H. [elen] S.panard], 1 the mother of his young friend. This lady, on entering the room, took his hand and spoke some gentle and gracious words of welcome, which so penetrated the sensitive heart of the orphan boy as to deprive him of the power of speech, and for a time almost of con sciousness itself. He returned home in a dream, with but one thought, one hope in life, to hear again the sweet and gracious words that had made the desolate world so beautiful to him, and filled his lonely heart with the oppression of a new joy. This lady after- 1 Really, Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard : Poe disliked the name Jane, and substituted Helen for it. BIOGRAPHY. 31 wards became the confidante of all his boyish sorrows, and hers was the one redeeming influence that saved and guided him in the earlier days of his turbulent and passionate youth." When she died of mental alienation in 1824, it is related that the boy-poet would not give her up, but haunted her grave in the April and autumnal nights with the passionate feeling of undying companionship, even with the dead, which afterwards ran like a line of fire through his romances of death, trance, and sen tience after death. This abiding element of Foe s life, his intimacy with Mrs. Stanard, and her sorrowful death, furnished the theme for that exquisite woman-element in his poems which beads itself into a string of pearls and runs now in shadowy and beautiful shapes of dreamlike Melusines through his Tales, now coins itself into cameo-like stanzas, " To Helen," " Lenore," " Annabel Lee " or the lost " Ulalume," in stanzas as imperishable in beauty as those which rise wraithlike from the passion and spume of the early life of Goethe. What would these two lives indeed Goethe s and Poe s be without their rich idealizations of woman snatched from Dreamland, but hovering in the mid-air of actual experience ! " It was the image of this lady " (continues Mrs. Whitman), " long and tenderly and sorrowfully cher ished, that suggested the stanzas To Helen, pub lished among the poems written in his youth, which Russell Lowell says have in them a grace and symme try of outline such as few poets ever attain, and which are valuable as displaying what can only be expressed by the contradictory phrase of innate experience.* 32 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 4< Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicaean barks of yore That gently o er a perfumed sea The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore." "In a letter now before us " (continues the lady), " written within a twelvemonth of his death, Edgar Poe speaks of the love which inspired these verses as the one, idolatrous, and purely ideal love of his pas sionate boyhood/ In one of the numbers of Rus sell s Magazine, there is a transcript of the first published version of the exquisite poem entitled Le- nore, commencing " * Ah ! broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown forever. Let the bell toll : a saintly soul floats on the Stygian River. "It is remarkable, that, in this earlier version, in stead of LENORE, we have the name of HELEN. The lines were afterwards greatly altered, and improved in structure and expression ; and the name of Lenore was introduced, apparently for its adaptation to rhythmical effect." With Sarah Elmira Royster, a neighbor of Mr. Allan s, came a real love-affair. This young lady was a year or two younger than the mature Poe (aged sixteen or so) and met his advances in an amiable and appreciative spirit. " He was a gentle man " (she writes) "in every sense of the word. He was one of the most fascinating and refined men I ever knew. I never saw him under the influence of wine. I admired him more than any man I ever knew." In an earlier letter the same lady continues : 1 1 Appleton s Journal, May, 1878. BIOGRAPHY. 33 " Edgar was a beautiful boy ; he was not very talk ative, and his general manner was sad, but when he did talk his conversation was very pleasant. He was devoted to the first Mrs. Allan, and she to him. Of his own parents he never spoke. I have seen his brother Henry, who was in the navy. He had very few associates, but he was very intimate with Ebenezer Berling, a widow s son, of about the same age as him self. Berling was an interesting, intelligent young man, but somewhat inclined to dissipation. They used to visit our house together very frequently. " Edgar was warm and zealous in any cause he was interested in, being enthusiastic and impulsive. He had strong prejudices, and hated everything coarse and unrefined. I can still remember him saying to me, when an acquaintance made an unladylike remark, I am surprised you should associate with anyone who could make such a remark ! He was very generous. He drew beautifully and drew a pencil likeness of me in a few minutes. He was passionately fond of music. ... It distresses me greatly when I see anything scurrilous written about him. Do not believe a tenth part of what is said. It is chiefly produced by jealousy and envy. T have the greatest respect for his memory. Our acquaintance was kept up until he left to go to the University, and during the time he was at the University he wrote to me frequently. But my father intercepted the letters because we were too young for no other reason. I was between fifteen and sixteen when we were en gaged. I was not aware that he had written to me from the University until after I was married, when 1 was seventeen, to Mr. Shelton." Thus the Ideal and the Real jostle each other in VOL. i. 3 34 EDGAR ALLAN POE. actual life : "the one like the shield of bronze whose color was so long contested by the knights of fable ; " the other, "presenting at least a silver lining." 1 The year 1825 seems to have been spent by Poe in busy preparation, under private tutors, for entrance into the University of Virginia. The University, planned and founded by Jefferson, had opened the year before and had attracted great attention all over the country. Its magnificent buildings, its corps of accomplished European professors, drawn mostly from England, its novel system of elective studies, and its hitherto unknown and untried system of democratic self-government by the students themselves, had inter ested educators everywhere, and many eyes were turned curiously on Jefferson s experiment. 1 Mrs. S. H. Whitman, " Edgar Poe and his Critics," p. 69. BIOGRAPHY. 35 CHAPTER II. 1826. POE S ENVIRONMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.* ALBEMARLE County, in which the University of Vir ginia is situated, is one of the finest and most fruitful counties in the Old Dominion. Originally near the centre of Virginia before it was dismembered, it seemed to President Jefferson an ideal spot for the erection of the great institution which he had been planning since 1779 and which, overcoming innumerable obstacles, he succeeded in establishing and opening in March, 1825. Around this lovely land, through which trails for more than one hundred miles the delightful green ery of the South-West Mountains, gather all the confluent lines of grace that characterize a gently mountainous country where, exhausted with uplifting giant Alleghanies, the poetic mountain sprites exercise their ingenuity in carving out graceful vales, long un dulating slopes, the winding labyrinths of silver rivers, and wooded dells thick with Vallombrosan shades. 1 Unpublished MSS. Archives of the University of Virginia. Bound Catalogues of the University of Virginia, 182544. Schele de Vere Catalogue of Students of the University of Virginia, 1825-75. Files of the University of Virginia Magazine, 185657, 1900. H. B. Adams "Jefferson and the University of Virginia." 36 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Albemarle might indeed, apart from its musical name, be called the "picture" county of Virginia, and it was the spirit of the poet who wrote our great epic of the Declaration of Independence that chose this favored spot as the birthplace, cradle, and home of his Uni versity. From his own Parnassus of Monticello, three miles away, he looked down and beheld the spacious vale wherein the cunning magic of his persuasive tongue had evoked a scene of Grecian beauty that breathed the spirit of Old World enchantment. Obdurate legislatures had melted before the " old man eloquent " as he pleaded for his University ; avaricious pockets emptied their contents into his Educational Fund as he spoke of the boundless advantages of the new institu tion ; distinguished foreign savants listened with atten tion as his marvellous pen discoursed in countless letters (30,000 of Jefferson s letters are said to be in exist ence !) of his plans and projects for an Oxford, a Cambridge or a Gottingen in the New World. The result was the beautiful scene that lay below Monticello, the exquisitely situated mountain-crest towering eight hundred feet in the air where " The Father of the University of Virginia " had built him self an eyrie among the century-old trees overlooking a view of rolling, river-bounded loveliness, where Pied mont hill and sapphire Blue Ridge, gaunt Alleghany and solemn Ragged Mountains blend into a delightful harmony, all gathering round and enshrining in their bosom the jewel of Jefferson, the white-domed Uni versity. Such was the spot where Edgar Allan Poe arrived in 1826 and wrote his name, the 13 6th on the list, on good St. Valentine s Day, in the Matriculation Book of the University. BIOGRAPHY. 37 A young man s teachers are often those who in after life influence his career most vitally ; and Jeffer son s sagacity had gathered at the University a galaxy of brilliant scholars who soon worked themselves into this influence and into reputations unrivalled for learn ing, profundity and force. The eight men with whom Edgar Poe was thrown into intimate official and scho lastic contact were Dunglison, Long, Blaettermann, Key, Bonnycastle, Emmet, Tucker, and Lomax ; and from this list one dare not leave out the venerable librarian of the University, William Wertenbaker, who was appointed by Jefferson himself and held the position for forty-three years : a man with whom Poe came frequently in contact. " During the year 1826," said Mr. Wertenbaker, 1 " there used to come into the library a handsome young student, perhaps eighteen years of age, in search of old French books, principally histories ; that young man, even the little I chanced to see of him, made a deep impression on me, and in fact I am sure I will always tenderly cherish my recollections of Edgar Allan Poe." Six out of the eight professors (1826) were foreign- born, a little irreverently called by the students in the Faculty Minute Books of the time, when they were summoned up for some student pranks, ff those damned European professors." At least seven were men of the highest character, scholarship, and worth ; all were comparatively young, except Mr. George Tucker, who had been called from the halls of Congress by Jefferson to as sume the professorship of Moral Philosophy, and who afterwards greatly distinguished himself as the biog- 1 University of Virginia Magazine, Vol. XIX., p. 45. 38 EDGAR ALLAN POE. rapher of Jefferson, the historian of the United States, the novelist of the Shenandoah, and the brilliant essayist and statistician, first chairman of the faculty. Another, Mr. George Long, had an eminent liter ary career, adorned by many successes and intimately interwoven with the intellectual life of Greece and Rome as investigator, geographer, historian, editor, and translator. The University Matriculation Book of 1826 shows that Edgar Allan Poe wrote his name and the date of his birth, 1 the name of his parent or guardian, his resi dence and the schools that he attended as follows : Edgar A. Poe; | 19 January, 1809; | John Allan; 2 | Richmond, Va. ; | and the Schools of Ancient and Modern Languages. 3 Out of the 177 students present that year, 107 " elected " Ancient Languages and 90 elected Modern Languages, the number gathering from thirteen differ ent states (Catalogues of the University of Virginia, 182544), including New York and Pennsylvania. George Ticknor s active and open advocacy of the reform educational views of Jefferson had already aroused uneasiness in New England, and particularly at Harvard, whose alert and learned President, Josiah Quincy, favored the elective system and began to inquire into the workings of the new institution (Adams, 130). Edward Everett, too, viewed with admiring but critical eyes the Jefferson experiment and copied into his "North American Review " article for January, 1820, Jefferson s entire scheme of studies 1 Not "the place," as Professor Woodberry states, "Edgar Allan Poe," p. 25. 2 Misspelt Allen in the records. 3 Professors Long and Blaettermann. BIOGRAPHY. 39 proposed for the University of Virginia and printed in the proceedings and report of the Commissioners for the University in 1818. What induced Mr. Allan to send his adopted son to the University, apart from the boy s precocious talents and excellent preparation, and the reputation of the University, we know not ; but hither he came in February, rooming, first on the Lawn, and then, after a pugilistic encounter with his room-mate, Miles George, transferring himself and his goods to No. 13, West Range, according to his friend, Mr. T. G. Tucker ; to No. 1 7, West Range, according to another tradition. 1 Being Foe s intimate friend at the University, Mr. Tucker may be taken, along with Mr. Wertenbaker and Mr. Burwell, as giving a fairly accurate account of Poe s career while the two young men were fellow- students. He describes the poet at this period of life as rather short of stature, thick, compactly set but active, an expert in all the athletic and gymnastic arts. A gymnasium had been opened in the University, and a military drill-master, one Matthews, from West Point, had been employed to instruct volunteers in nilitary evolutions and tactics, an association which nay have influenced Poe, a little later, first to enter he army under an assumed name and then formally o enroll himself as a cadet at the United States Academy in 1830. Mr. Tucker in 1880 remem bered his famous contemporary as bow-legged, jerky and hurried in his movements, and with the air and 1 University of Virginia Magazine, Vol. XIX., p. 426 seq. Mr. Allan had only recently inherited large wealth from his uncle, Mr. Gait (1825), and thus felt able to give his foster-son the best University education. 40 EDGAR ALLAN POE. action of a native-born Frenchman. He was very mercurial in his disposition and exceedingly fond of peach-and-honey. Seven-up and loo were his favorite games, for everybody played cards in those days, and he played in so impassioned a manner that it amounted almost to infatuation. Card-playing and drinking alike were carried on under the spell of impulse or uncon trolled excitement. His passion for strong drink was even then (continues Mr. Tucker) of a most marked and peculiar character. He would always seize the tempting glass, generally unmixed with sugar or water, in fact, perfectly straight, and without the least apparent pleasure, swallow the contents, never pausing until the last drop had passed his lips. One glass (the size is not stated) at a time was all that he could take ; but this was sufficient to rouse his whole nervous nature into a state of strongest excitement, which found vent in a continuous flow of wild, fasci nating talk that irresistibly enchanted every listener with siren-like power. Poe is described as having been an excellent French and Latin scholar ; he could read and speak both lan guages with great ease, although he could hardly be said to have known either language thoroughly. Greek he read indifferently. Time and again he would enter into the lecture-room (Pavilion V. or Pavilion IV., where Professors Long and Blaettermann lived) utterly unprepared to recite if called upon. But his brain was so active and his memory so excellent that only a few moments study was necessary, and then he was ready to make the best recitation in the class. To have opportunity of "reading ahead". . . was all that Poe desired when unprepared. As a consequence of this wonderful faculty he was able to maintain a very BIOGRAPHY. 41 high position in his classes, and win for himself the admiration, but more often the envy of his fellow- students. " It is delightful to know " (continues the author of the paper from which we are quoting : " Edgar Allan Poe while a student at the University of Virginia ") "that Poe was not exempt from that college weak ness ... a good, healthy quarrel with . . . one s room-mate. When he first came to the University, he roomed on the Lawn with a young man from Rich mond, Miles George. They had been together but a short time when something arose to disturb the har monious intercourse perhaps Miles refused to arise one morning to answer the knock of Mr. Wertenbaker (librarian and secretary of the faculty) who in those good old days made the rounds each morning to see if the fellows were up and dressed and ready for work, ... or perhaps Edgar Allan was unwilling to count over the clothes on Monday morning when the washer-woman came [there were seven different an cient colored dames who in 1880 claimed to have washed for " Marse Ed. Poe ! "]. They had a fall ing-out and a genuine, good old-fashioned fight, retiring to a field near the University ; and after one or two rounds they agreed that they were satisfied, shook hands, and returned to the University as warm friends, but not as room-mates. Poe after this little affair moved into No. 13 on West Range." Poe s constant companions were Thomas S. Ghol- son (afterwards a distinguished Judge), Upton Beale and Philip Slaughter (later Episcopal ministers, the latter the eminent historiographer of the Diocese of Virginia), Wat Dunn, Wm. A. Creighton, and Wm. M. Burwell (afterwards well-known as editor of " De Bow s Review "). 42 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " Whatever Poe may have been in after years, he was at the University " (says Mr. Tucker) "as true and perfect a friend as the waywardness of his nature would allow. There was never then the least trace of insincerity, and never the least indication of that fickle ness of disposition with which he was afterwards so often although in the main, we think, unjustly accused. " Poe showed his warm appreciation and high re spect for his friend Tucker by reading to him the early productions of his youth, productions that his critical hand afterwards destroyed, thinking them unfit for publication. Sometimes, when he had written an article that Tucker would especially praise, he would call in a few of his friends and read it to them. Those men who were fortunate enough to hear these im promptu readings never forgot them, and those of the number who were still living in 1880 declared that there was no impression on their minds more strikingly vivid. They were mostly stories characterized by that same weirdness of style, graphically picturing hor rible scenes and incidents, that so strongly marked all of his published writings. His little room on West Range was often filled with a small, select audience of his most particular friends who, spell-bound, scarcely breathed while they eagerly listened to some story, strange and wild, like all the rest, that he had just written and that he read with his whole soul thrown into every action and intonation of his voice now loud and rapid, like the mad rush of many waters, and now sinking into a scarcely audible whisper, of some terrible sentence of incantation or curse sending a shiver over all that heard. " On one occasion Poe read a story of great length BIOGRAPHY. 43 to some of his friends who, in a spirit of jest, spoke lightly of its merits, and jokingly told him that his hero s name, Gaffy, occurred too often. His proud spirit would not stand such open rebuke ; so in a fit of anger, before his friends could prevent him, he had flung every sheet into a blazing fire, and thus was lost a story of more than ordinary parts which, unlike most of his stories, was intensely amusing, entirely free from his usual sombre coloring and sad conclusions merged in a mist of impenetrable gloom. He was for a long time afterwards called by those in his particular circle f Gaffy Poe, a name that he never altogether relished. " Gaming during the first two or three sessions of the University was very prevalent. In fact, during the early quarter of the present century it was indulged in to a certain extent more or less by our very best people. But, of course, it was something in an insti tution like this of so pernicious a nature as to demand a decided check. This, /the year before his death, Mr. Jefferson attempted by trying to stop the general card-playing at the University ; he and the Board of Visitors made an arrangement with the civil authorities to ferret out the most noted of the young gamblers and have them indicted and brought before the next Grand Jury. So on a given day the Sheriff with a goodly posse appeared within the doorway of one of the lecture-rooms just as the morning-roll was about to be called, ready to serve his writs on certain young men as they answered to their names. But these young rakes were not to be so easily ensnared in the toils of the enemy. They needed no worH of warning ; the mere glimpse of the Sheriff s ^shadow in the dotJrway with his men behind him, was more than enough to 44 EDGAR ALLAN POE. convey to their minds an idea of what was coming. With Edgar Allan Poe for a leader they indiscrimi nately bolted, some through the open windows [probably at Professor Long s, a house having a lower room of many windows, now occupied by Prof. F. H. Smith], and some through the opposite door. Sheriff, posse, and professor were left in full possession of the empty lecture-room. Then the hot pursuit ! " But those who were most wanted made their suc cessful escape, not to their rooms they would not have been safe there ; but off to the * Ragged Moun tains over an unfrequented by-path, but one well- known to Poe and over which he had often travelled. They were aware it would not be well to return to the University until after night ; so some of the party had managed in their hasty flight to snatch up a deck or so of cards with which to while away the hours of their self-imposed banishment. Their place of retreat was a beautiful dell high up in the mountains, and very inaccessible, being far away from any beaten path, but the spot that was a favorite haunt with Poe. And here the fugitives remained three days." 1 Many of Poe s well-known views on landscape gardening ("Landor s Cottage," "The Domain of Arnheim," etc.) were doubtless shaping themselves in his fertile youthful brain as he rambled over these De lectable Mountains and drank in their delicious beauty, doubtless too visiting the many lordly plantation houses in the neighborhood, swimming in the yellow Rivanna that cleaves the plain with its golden torrent, and tramping through the hickory and locust forests that 1 The writer has considerably condensed the account in the Magazine, BIOGRAPHY. 45 fairly flash in spring with the white flame of the milky dogwood blossom. The following recollections 1 by Mr. William Wer- tenbaker, were drawn up in 1869. The aged Libra rian says : " Mr. Poe was a student during the second session, which commenced February 1st and terminated De cember 1 5th, 1826. He signed the matriculation book on the I4th of February, and remained in good standing until the session closed. He was born on the 1 9th day of January, 1 809, being a little over seventeen when he matriculated. He entered the schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, attending the lectures in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and Italian. " I was myself a member of the last three classes, and can testify that he was tolerably regular in his attendance, and a successful student, having obtained distinction at the Final Examination in Latin and French ; and this was at that time the highest honor a student could obtain. The present regulations in re gard to degrees had not then been adopted. Under existing regulations he would have graduated in the two languages above named, and have been entitled to diplomas. On one occasion Professor Blaettermann requested his Italian class to render into English verse a portion of the lesson in Tasso, which he had assigned them for the next lecture. He did not require this of them as a regular class exercise, but recommended it as one from which he thought the students would derive benefit. At the next lecture 1 Here reproduced by the present writer from his paper in The Independent for September, 1900, with the kind permission of the editor. 46 EDGAR ALLAN POE. on Italian the Professor stated from his chair that Mr. Poe was the only member of the class who had responded to his suggestion, and paid a very high compliment to his performance. As Librarian I had frequent official intercourse with Mr. Poe, but it was at or near the close of the session before I met him in the social circle. After spending an evening to gether at a private house, he invited me in on our return to his room. It was a cold night in December, and his fire having gone pretty nearly out, by the aid of some tallow candles, and the fragments of a small table which he broke up for the purpose, he soon rekindled it, and by its comfortable blaze I spent a very pleasant hour with him. On this occasion he spoke with regret of the large amount of money he had wasted and of the debts he had contracted during the session. If my memory is not at fault, he estimated his indebtedness at $2,000, and, though they were gaming debts, he was earnest and emphatic in the declaration that he was bound by honor to pay, at the earliest opportunity, every cent of them. He certainly was not habitually intemperate, but he may occasionally have entered into a frolic. I often saw him in the lecture-room and in the library, but never in the slightest degree under the influence of intoxicating liquors. Among the professors he had the reputation of being a sober, quiet and orderly young man, and to them and the officers his deport ment was uniformly that of an intelligent and polished gentleman. Although his practice of gaming did escape detection, the hardihood, intemperance and reckless wildness imputed to him by his biographers, had he been guilty of them, must inevitably have come to the knowledge of the faculty and met with BIOGRAPHY. 47 merited punishment. The records of which I was then, and am still, the custodian, attest that at no time during the session did he fall under the censure of the faculty. Mr. Poe s connection with the Uni versity was dissolved by the termination of the session on the 1 5th of December, 1826. He then wanted little over a month of having attained to the age of eighteen : the date of his birth was plainly entered in his own handwriting on the matriculation book. Were he now living, his age on the I9th of this month (January, 1869) would be sixty. He never returned to the University, and I think it probable that the night I visited him was the last he spent here. I draw this inference not from memory, but from the fact, that having no further use for his candles and table he made fuel of them. " Mr. Poe s works are more in demand and more read than those of any other author, American or for eign, now in the library. To gratify curiosity, I copy from the register a list of the books which Mr. Poe borrowed from the library while he was a student : Rollin Histoire Ancienne, < Histoire Romaine ; Robertson s America ; Marshall s Washing ton ; Voltaire Histoire Particuliere ; Dufief s Nature Displayed. (University of Virginia, January, 1869.) Mr. Wertenbaker s statements may well be supple mented by the following extracts from " Edgar A. Poe, and his College Contemporaries," published by the Hon. Wm. M. Burwell, editor of " De Bow s Review," in the New Orleans "Times-Democrat," May 1 8, 1884 : " My recollection of Poe, then little more than a boy, is that he was about five feet two or three inches 48 EDGAR ALLAN POE. in height, somewhat bandy-legged, but in no sense muscular or apt in physical exercises. His face was feminine, with finely marked features, and eyes dark, liquid, and expressive. He dressed well and neatly. He was a very attractive companion, genial in his nature and familiar, by the varied life that he had already led, with persons and scenes new to the unsophisticated provincials among whom he was thrown. . . . What, however, impressed his asso ciates most were his remarkable attainments as a classi cal scholar. The professor of ancient languages and literature was an accomplished linguist and philologer. He was a terror to those who had only learned to translate the curriculum of authors taught in the average academy. To these Juvenal and Statius, Homer and Hesiod were the bounds of all classical knowledge, while to most of them the history, litera ture, geography, and the social conditions of the ancients beyond the lids of the text-books and the dic tionary, were unknown. " With this literature in texts and comments Poe was familiar. It had no doubt been inculcated at Stoke- Newington and is manifest in many beautiful allusions throughout his writings. . . . Among the most signifi cant tributes to his extraordinary powers of analysis and metaphysical reasoning may be noted that Jules Verne, in one of his later novels . . . pronounces Poe the ablest analytical writer of his day, and em ploys the mathematical methods of The Gold-Bug to solve a cryptographic mystery in his own story. " The particular dissipation of the University at this time was gaming with cards, and into this Poe plunged with a recklessness of nature that knew no bounds. . He called on the writer in Baltimore BIOGRAPHY. 49 after his return, as was understood, from Russia. He was in temporary trouble incurred by intemperance. " Whatever may have been his natural tendencies to dissipation, Poe found a state of things favorable to their development at the University. Southern young men were indulged in abundant means and entire absence of restraint. They flocked to this new insti tution as to a watering-place. . . . To the first ses-t sions of this admirable school poured in the Southern* youth, most of them intent upon availing themselves of the advantages afforded. Among them, however, were many who had little other object than to com bine enjoyment with the preparatory routine of a liberal education. Some of this class arrived with unlimited means, others with elegant equipages. One came from the Eastern Shore with a tandem of blooded horses, a servant, a fowling-piece and a pointer or two. Some were afflicted with habits of extravagance, and contempt for the toilsome acquisition of Knowledge. . . . Mr. Jefferson, having assumed that these high-spirited coad jutors in the defense of our constitutional ramparts comprehended his patriotic motives, had provided no discipline for their scholastic deportment. He con fided that the restraints of propriety would be sufficient to make them behave themselves as gentlemen. " They certainly did behave themselves as gentle men of the highest style. They gamed, fought duels, attended weddings for thirty miles around, and went in debt in the most liberal manner. " But we repeat that the University was not rilled with this gay and determined class which has been described. There were hundreds who appreciated the privileges of the institution, and who paid no attention to the follies which occurred among their fellow- VOL. i. 4 50 EDGAR ALLAN POE. students. These steady students passed through their course of study and vindicated its value by their after lives. " The particular habit of gaming prevailed because there was no other excitement in which the animal spirits of these wild young men could have evaporated. The buildings first completed stood in the midst of uncultivated fields and other unattractive scenery. The county of Albemarle contained many families of the highest worth. Indeed, it had furnished many of the most eminent men in the State s history. Mr. Jeffer son, Lewis, the explorer of the Missouri, Clark, his associate, Gen. Rogers Clark, who captured Kaskaskia from the British, General Sumter of the Revolution, the Minors, Gilmers, Carters, Carrs and others were all natives of Albemarle, but these families were scat tered over a large country. The court-house town of Charlottesville had been the place near which the prisoners captured at Saratoga had been confined. It had been the temporary seat of the Legislature during the invasion or raid of Tarleton. It had a population of several hundred, but at the period now spoken of Mr. Jefferson had recorded, as one of the religious tolerations, that there being no church in the village, each of the principal church persuasions held its services in the court-house under a rotation agreed on among themselves. The families of the professors were too limited to furnish social facilities to the students. So far, then, from there being at or around the University a social intercourse of sufficient extent to have pro vided even reasonable recreation for so many young men, there was not even a public opinion strong enough to rebuke their excesses. "The public opinion and corporate ordinances of BIOGRAPHY. 51 the village were alike disregarded. The disorder and dissipation of the students were subjects of indignant censure. The few merchants and hotels found their accounts in this extravagance, though the reckless creation of debt led to the enactment of a statute sub sequently by which such debts when beyond the rea sonable wants of a student, were declared void. A party of students on a frolic were coming along the road between the village and the University, when they suddenly encountered the professor of moral philosophy and political economy. Most of the party escaped; but one, after a distinguished advocate, disdained con cealment. I am, said he, K. M. M. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., too firm to fly, and far too proud to yield. And, said the professor, Mr. M. might have added "almost too drunk to stand." " n. A close study of the Faculty Books for 1825, 1826, and 1827 reveals many facts of interest to the student of University life in Virginia in the first quarter of the century. Starting out with a democratic theory that the stu dents should be a self-governing body and should being put on their honor take care of their own morals and manners, Mr. Jefferson and the early trus tees of the institution were before long brought to the conclusion that an outside police was essential to the comfort and reputation of both students and professors. A riot having broken out in October, 1825, among the matriculates, the professors informed Mr. Jefferson that they would resign in a body if a proper police 52 EDGAR ALLAN POE. were not appointed to take care of the grounds and buildings, and of their inhabitants. Rules and regula tions gradually increased in number and severity (there were already some ninety odd printed in the Enact ments of 1825) ; the blood that oozed from Draco s famous code began to sprinkle the laws of the " rude forefathers " of the Virginia " hamlet ; J> and tradition yet lives that one of Jefferson s own kinsmen was the first student expelled, Roman-like, by the angered founder, through the faculty, from his beloved institu tion. As early as December, 1825, a University Reading Room was suggested ; the Lawn, well-known and be loved by all University men as the beautiful verdure- clad parallelogram that flows in dropping, five-fold terraces from the column-crowned esplanade of the Rotunda down to Lovers Walk of the olden days, and to the Ionic-pillared Aula of the present, edged by cloistered dormitories and by the Greek porticoes of the professors Pavilions, is first mentioned in the Minutes in October, 1825 ; the old University bell, purchased by Jefferson himself (now cracked, and pre served as a sacred relic in the Brooks Museum), tolled for the first time July 5, 1826, in honor of the august memory of the great President, who had died the day before ; and the first fourth of July oration was ap pointed to be delivered in this memorable year. This year, too, a library catalogue was suggested ; the library (originally placed in the old Central Col lege building, now Pavilion VII., the residence of Prof. N. K. Davis, and first of the Pavilions to be built) was ordered opened every day except Saturday and Sunday, from 3.30 to 5 P.M., so that students might consult the rare and fine collection of standard BIOGRAPHY. 53 works picked and chosen by Jefferson himself, and afterwards enriched by President Madison s collec tion and many miscellaneous donations and purchases. Over and over again during these troublesome years a triad of experimental beginnings the stu dents names were ordered to be painted on the doors of their dormitories, and professors were permitted to break down these doors if they were not instantly opened on requisition ; but for some reason the paint ing does not appear to have been done. Parents and guardians were admitted to the examinations, reports of which were ordered printed in 1826, in the Rich mond " Enquirer " and other papers ; and in midsum mer, 1827, there is a record of examinations beginning at 5 o clock in the morning ! Ever since this same year the janitor has rung the morning alarum-bell at 6.30, and this year was also signalized by the first use of the merit system in the arrangement of the names of the successful examinees, the names being arranged in several divisions (ist, 2nd, 3rd) according to the standing of the student ; the earlier announcements, as in Poe s two certificates quoted below, having been alphabetical. The final examinations of this year seem to have lasted only one and one-half to two and one-half hours each. Profes sors reports were handed in and discussed in full faculty meeting in 1826 and 1827, an ^ t^ e fi rst refer ence to monthly circulars to parents occurs in October, 1827. The faculty balloted for chairman, and already, in 1827, there were complaints of the arduous duties of the chairmanship. A valued correspondent throws amusing light on the difficulties of student life at the University in those days, and writes : 54 EDGAR ALLAN POE. "I will relate a little incident of Dr. Thomas " -Thomas was Poe s desk-mate at Burke s Academy, Richmond, " student days at the University as he told me. It may be an incentive to students of to day. At that time, while Mr. Jefferson was Rector, . . . there was only one text-book in Mixed Mathe matics, which had to be used by a class of ten students to prepare on the lectures given by the professor. Consequently, the class would divide in two sections, one party studying until one o clock at night, and the other party after that time until morning ! No wonder that the chairmanship went a-begging ; the professors would not elect, and the appointment had finally to be made by the Visitors. Poe s introduction to Latin and Greek, to ancient rhythms and metres in their higher artistic forms, and to ancient and modern literatures in all their myriad cultural and aesthetic associations, was thus in the hands of accomplished men who took him up at the point where his thorough training in England for five years and his brilliant record at Mr. Clarke s and Mr. Burke s classical schools in Richmond for four or five years more, rendered him their fit and apt pupil. Col. J. T. L. Preston attested privately and publicly especially in his reminiscences of Poe in the Ingram Biography the poet s rare accomplishments for a mere boy in reading and " capping" Latin verse, and Professor Blaettermann eulogized his translation from Tasso. It may not be at all impossible that Poe s penchant for geography, wild and weird as it is, in "Arthur Gordon Pym," "The Journal of Julius Rodman," and elsewhere, may have been suggested by Professor Long s passion for this study and continu ous harping on it, following Jefferson s contention that BIOGRAPHY. 55 geography and ^history must be studied together as essential subsidiaries to textual researches in Latin and Greek; and Foe s passion for moon-hoaxes and lunar voyages may have had their inception in Professor Tucker s (f A Voyage to the Moon," published in 1827 and reviewed by Dr. Dunglison in the " Amer ican Quarterly" for March, 1828. " Its evident aim was to fulfil for the existing age," says the Doctor, " what Swift had so successfully accomplished for that which had passed ; to attack, by the weapons of ridi cule, those votaries of knowledge who may have sought to avail themselves of the universal love of novelty amongst mankind to acquire celebrity, etc., who may have been misled by their own ill-regulated imagina tions to obtrude upon the world their crude and im perfect theories and systems, to the manifest retardation of knowledge." x It was at any rate the seed-time for this precocious genius who, according to every account, had already composed many a rhyme, even before he came to the University, and possessed a tropically luxuriant im agination only too ready to take in hints and suggestions from every quarter. His fondness for French and for France was evinced by the little episode in Richmond in 1824, when Lafayette visited the city, and by Poe s historical read ings in that language in 1826. In 1824 Lafayette had visited Jefferson and was superbly entertained at a banquet in one of the unfinished corridors of the Rotunda; and traditions still float about the ancient burgh of enthusiastic spectators watching the three presidents driving around in a coach with the French general as their guest. 1 University of Virginia Magazine, XIX. 557. 56 EDGAR ALLAN POE. While Poe was at the University, the death of Jeffer son occurred, on the ever-memorable 4th of July, i 826, when he and his president-friend Adams passed over to the other shore on the same day. The years 1825, 1826, and 1827 were undoubtedly critical and crucial years in the history of the Univer sity. The novelty of the educational experiment, heralded far and wide over the continent ; the scepti cism with which it had been viewed by Northern specialists in pedagogy ; the doubt as to whether a faculty so thoroughly European could adapt itself to republican institutions ; the untried democratic govern ment of the students by themselves ; the abolition (so warmly advocated at Harvard by George Ticknor), of the ancient class system, and the wholesale intro duction of the elective system of the German univer sities, a hundred years in advance of the time ; the introduction of non-compulsory attendance at chapel and of optional military drill the very first year of the University ; the establishment of workshops for practi cal education in 1825 ; the encouragement of vacci nation by gratis treatment, inaugurated by the medical professors under the supervision of Jefferson were all items and experiments viewed, some with interest, others with amazement and incredulity by the peda gogues of the time. The Minutes of this period abound in allusions to the wildness and extravagance of the young men, peculiar not to the University, but common to the whole country during the first decades of the century. Boyish pranks of all kinds, such as ringing the college bell, firing of squibs and pistols, playing loo and whist, etc., are duly and solemnly recorded in these naive notes (which were never intended for the <// A/ - />< v/^f at t ./ 7* u. /(f Y c/ ^" v - < ^ ^zs ^ Faculty Record for Dec. 20, 1826, containing an examination gambled wit *^ <**>< j&* ,^<i -*-*-7V-w ^ ^ ^^ ^N y^ ^ ^*-*^ sfe**.*^? - V ^ &~~. r^^-^ /yvv /*-..^^. t^t^^i^^M^i, *ZZ/o**r *r&s ^"V,* 3 *^*- I/ *>-*?. * f^t^^^<e^--f^~J^ ^2. V? J?Ss+ ft, /^~* y^? 7 ^ ^ the charge that the University hotel keepers drank and udents, BIOGRAPHY. 57 public eye), along with the mention of drinking "mint-slings," apple-toddy, and egg-nog, the keep ing of dogs by the students, gambling, riotous living, and licentious conduct. It was merely the bubbling, ebullient life of the Young Republic released for a moment from discipline, gambolling in its conscious strength, effervescing momentarily in intemperance and revelry, not essentially or irremediably bad. In fact, of the men who were at the University with Poe in 1826, a long and remarkable list may be compiled showing thirty or forty who became distin guished in various departments of literary, political or ecclesiastical life, his class-mates or intimate friends ; members of legislatures, members of Congress, con suls, generals, doctors of divinity, judges, a governor, chairmen of the Faculty, University professors, presi dents of colleges, missionaries, editors, scientists, officers in the United States and Confederate States armies, physicians, railroad presidents, a list l long and remarkable indeed, partially as follows : Baylor, Richard, Member Virginia Legislature. Boyd, T. J., Member Va. Legislature and of Board of Public Works. Brown, Algernon S., M.D. ; Member of La. Legislature. Brown, Geo. F. , U. S. Consul to Algiers. Burwell, Wm. M., Author, Editor of De Bow s Review. 1 The list of contemporaries of Poe drawn up by Hon. Wm. M. Burwell (New Orleans Times Democrat for May 18, 1884) is very inaccurate; ours is taken from the official catalogue of the University for 1826. This list was compiled for the editor by the obliging Librarian of the University, Mr. F. W. Page. 58 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Carter, John A.^Member of Va. Convention of 1850 $ Member Va. Legislature. Chalmers, Joseph W., Vice-Chancellor of Mississippi ; Member U. S. Senate ; Judge. Coleman, Henry E. , Member Va. Legislature 5 County Supt. Schools. Collier, Robert R. , Member Va. Senate, Daniel, Wm., Judge. Davis, J. A. G., Professor of Law and Chairman of Faculty U. Va. Dixon, Henry T. , Major and Paymaster U. S. A. Gholson, Thomas S., District Judge, Member of Con gress of Confederate States (Poe s intimate friend). Graham, Geo. Mason, Capt. U. S. Vol. Mexico ; Vice- President and Supervisor Louisiana State Military Academy ; Adj. Gen* 1 La. Harrison, Gessner, eminent philologist, Professor and Chairman of the Faculty of the University ofVa. Harvie, Lewis E. , Member of Va. Legislature, President R. & D. R. R. Holladay, Albert L., Presbyterian Minister, Missionary to Persia, President of Hampden-Sidney College. Hubard, Edmund W., Member of Congress. Hunter, R. M. T.,M. C. and U. S. Senator, Senator C. S., Secretary of State Confederate States, Treasurer of Virginia. Lee, Zaccheus C., An eloquent and able advocate, of Washington. Lewis, Geo. W. , Member of Va. Legislature ; Member Va. Senate 5 Judge. X / *^W v >?^erfM sSe^-f ft* ^&&s*^? & ^^^^^:^m * *** * v> **f ^ ?K->?< , Faculty Record for Dec. 20, 1826, containing an examinatio gambled w *&> V -V 7" & ,S S # X ^ to the charge that the University hotel keepers drank and tudents. BIOGRAPHY. 59 Loving, Wm. V., Common wealth s Attorney $ Judge. Magruder, B. H., Colonel 5 Member Va. Legislature. Magruder, John Bankhead, Capt. U. S. A. in Mexico j Maj.-Gen. C. S. A. Murphy, Wm. M., Member Alabama Legislature. Pleasants, Hugh R., Author, Editor of the Richmond Whig and of the Dispatch. Preston, John S., Orator, Brig. General C. S. A. Scott, Robert E. , Commonwealth s Attorney ; Member of Va. Legislature, Member of Virginia Convention of 1861. Shackelford, Henry, Member Va. Legislature ; Common wealth s Attorney ; Judge. Sims, Wm. D., Member Va. Legislature. Slaughter, Philip, Episcopal Minister 5 D.D., author, Historiographer of the Diocese of Virginia. Sothoron, J. H., Member Maryland Legislature. Swann, Thomas, Pres. B. & O. R. R., Mayor of Balti more, Governor of Maryland, Member of Congress. Taylor, Robert E., Member Va. Legislature. Taylor, Tazewell, Member Va. Convention of 1850 ; Col. C. S. A., Member of Va. Senate. Tutwiler, Henry, ist M.A. of the University of Vir ginia, University Professor in Alabama. Wallace, Robert; Member Va. Legislature. Wertenbaker, Wm., 42 years P.M. Univ. of Va., 43 years librarian and secretary of the Faculty. Willis, John, Member Va. Legislature. 60 EDGAR ALLAN POE. It will thus be seen that there could have been in many respects no more admirable social and intellec tual environment in the United States for a young man of precocious promise than existed at the University of Virginia in 1826. The place was renowned for its hospitality, heightened by the delightful sociability that reigned at Monticello ; the faculty was full of brilliant men of European culture, distinguished or soon to be in various lines of literature and research ; while the vices prevalent at Charlottesville were only those prev alent all over the continents of America and Europe at the time. A sensitive youth, impressionable to all the fashions of the day, and surrounded by a social circle that thought convivial drinking and card-playing "At Homes" indispensable to remaining at all in polite society, would easily fall in with the habits of his " set," and perhaps cultivate them with passion and excess. It was the fault of the time, as the Essays of Elia and the contemporary novels will show to any one who is not maliciously predetermined to fix these vices on Poe alone. That Poe was not indifferent to the advantages of debate and of literary exercises is shown by his signa ture : "Edgar A. Poe, Secretary Jefferson Society," appended to the Minutes of the Jefferson Literary Society. 1 His own fine gifts of elocution were noted even when he was a child and continued to distinguish him all through his life, in public as well as in private. Many testimonials attest the beauty of his readings and recitals in parlor and hall, gifts inherited from his mother, who was both musically and dramatically en- 1 It is well to add that some doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of this signature. g BIOGRAPHY. 6l dowed ; and these gifts were doubtless exercised in the halls of the Jefferson Society where so many future Congressmen and legislators were his compeers and associates. The following extracts from the Faculty Minutes of December, 1826, give the finishing touch to Poe s career at the University of Virginia : At a meeting of the Faculty, December I5th, " Mr. Long made a report of the examination of the classes belonging to the School of Ancient Languages, and the names of the students who excelled at the ex amination of these classes : Senior Latin Class : GESSNER HARRISON of Rockingham. ALBERT L. HOLLADAY of Spottsylvania. BERTHIER JONES of Amelia. EDGAR A. POE of Richmond City. etc., etc., etc." " The names of the students who excelled in the Senior French Class as reported by the Professor of Modern Languages were as follows : PHILIP ST. GEORGE AMBLER of Richmond City. JOHN GARY of Campbell. GESSNER HARRISON of Rockingham. WM. MICHIE of Hanover. CONWAY NUTT of Culpepper. EDGAR A. POE of Richmond City. WM. SELDEN of Norfolk. HENRY TUTWILER of Rockingham." 62 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Thus Poe s University career was crowned with scholastic honors in the particular studies which he "elected" to pursue. He was only seventeen years of age, an orphan, the foster-son of a man who in the last six months had inherited a fortune : a child supremely gifted with the excitable poet s temperament and therefore easily urged to nervous excess, thrown sud denly, a mere boy, into the free-and-easy set of Uni versity students over whom, at the time, no restraints had been set. The wonder is that Edgar Poe did not turn out a complete reprobate instead of being men tioned in the final examination reports as " distin guished in Latin and French. During the next three or four years he still further distinguished himself by publishing three volumes of poems at eighteen, nine teen, and twenty-one years of age respectively, the product of these so-called dissipated years when he was supposed to be doing little or nothing. Ill-fitted as he was, yet, for his life-work, undisciplined, absolutely alone in the world, without a guiding hand to direct and lead him, the object of a capricious charity that might at any time instantaneously be withdrawn as actually happened a waif from the start, yet with" influential relations who never seem to have acknowl edged him, the eccentric lad of genius developed into the sensitive and sarcastic man with no weapon but his tongue and pen, urged by the irresistible force of his mind to write, to attempt creative work, to com pose poems from his tenth year, to long for public recognition. Apparently with little or no moral training, yet with an abnormal consciousness of conscience, the boy left the University to return to a home whither, as one of his early friends significantly remarks, be was never known v BIOGRAPHY. 63 to invite even his most intimate friend, in the sponta neity of boyish friendship ; a home now rendered chill ing and inhospitable from the rumors of his escapades at the University, which he was soon to leave, first for the Allan counting-house and then for the army, in the desperate endeavor to work out for himself a posi tion and a career. For the next three years the iron indeed entered into the soul of the boy ; his one solace was the beautiful gift of Poesy, which burst all bounds of restraint and was soon to revel in the bold and fan ciful lines of Al Aaraaf. 64 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER III. 1827-1829. THE EARLY POEMS. THE LEGENDARY YEARS. IN the life of nearly every literary man who has occupied a conspicuous position in the world s eye there is a " dark period " a period of eclipse, obscu ration or hibernation during which he mysteriously disappears, as the religious recluse does in his periodical " retreat," and is lost to the public gaze. The literary historian immediately thinks of the seasons of obscura tion in the careers of Keats and Shelley, of Hugo and Heine, of Coleridge and Gray, of Chateaubriand and Gerard de Nerval to mention only a few modern instances and wonders what these men of genius were doing in the eclipse-period. Poe was no exception to a very general rule. The period 18271833 embraces more than a lustrum of shadow only a part of which has been skilfully illumi nated by Professor Woodberry s investigations. In December, 1826, Poe graduated in Latin and French at the University of Virginia. If one can re gard <f A Tale of the Ragged Mountains " as at all autobiographic and it is full of local and personal touches that cannot but be regarded as such he writes at the beginning of this tale : " During the fall of the year 1827, while residing near Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the acquaintance of Mr. Augustus Bedloe." BIOGRAPHY. 65 This date does not harmonize by a few months with the now known army record of Poe, but it seems to show that he was at least in Virginia a part of the year 1827. The current account is, that he returned to Richmond, entered Mr. Allan s counting-room, quarrelled with his adopted father on account of the large "debts of honor " he had contracted at cards while at the University, and left the Allan home in consequence. This account is confirmed by Mr. Allan himself in a letter dated May 6, 1829, in which he says : " He [Poe] left me in consequence of some gam bling at the University at Charlottesville, because (I presume) I refused to sanction a rule that the shop keepers and others had adopted there, making Debts of Honour of all indiscretions. I have much pleasure in asserting that he stood his examination at the close of the year with great credit." l The second fact of importance for the year 1827 is the appearance at Boston, probably in June, of a diminutive volume : " Tamerlane and Other Poems. By a Bostonian : Boston : Calvin F. S. Thomas . . . Printer " : "the tiniest of tomes, numbering, inclusive of titles and half-titles, omy forty pages, and measuring 6^ by 4.^6 inches. Its diminutiveness " (continues Mr. R. H. Shepherd), "probably quite as much as the fact that it was suppressed through circumstances of a private nature, accounts for its almost entire dis appearance. The motto on the title-page purports to be from Cowper : that from Martial, which closes the Preface (Nos baec novimus esse nib il} was, by a curious coincidence, the very same that figured on the 1 Woodberry, Life, p. 42. VOL. I. 5 66 EDGAR ALLAN POE. title-page of Alfred and Charles Tennyson s Louth volume. "In 1827, when the little Tamerlane booklet was thus modestly ushered into the world, Poe had not yet attained his nineteenth year. Both in promise and in actual performance, it may claim to rank as the most remarkable production that any English-speaking and English-writing poet of this century has published in his teens. " In this earliest form of it the poem which gives its chief title to the little volume is divided into seventeen sections, of irregular length, containing a total of 406 lines. Tamerlane was afterwards remodelled and rewritten, from beginning to end, and in its final form, as it appeared in the author s edition of 1845, is divided into twenty-three sections, containing a total of 243 lines. Eleven explanatory prose notes are added, which disappear in all subsequent editions. . . . Of the nine Fugitive Pieces which follow, only three, and these in a somewhat altered form, were included by the author in his later collection. The remaining six have never been reprinted in book form " [this was in I884]. 1 This precious little volume, only forty copies of which are said to have been printed, was published by the nineteen-year-old printer, Calvin F. S. Thomas, then living in Boston. Thomas afterwards moved West and died, probably in Springfield, Mo., in 1876, without being aware that he had ushered into the world the most unique specimen of American poetic genius. 1 Tamerlane and Other Poems. By Edgar Allan Poe. First Published at Boston in 1827 and now First Republished from a Unique Copy of the Original Edition, with a Preface. By Richard Herne Shepherd. London : George Redway : MDCCCLXXXIV. TAMER LANE OTHER POEMS BY A BOSTONIAN Young heads are giddy and young beam are warm And make mistakes for manhood to reform. COWPER BOSTON CALVIN F. S. THOMAS . . . PRINTER 18*7 Wl x. ^ BIOGRAPHY. 67 The poor little volume is now one of the bibliophile s "nuggets," and a copy of it, going, at the McKee sale in November, 1900, for $2050, was immediately resold to Mr. F. R. Halsey at an advance of $500. Poe must have had these poems in his portfolio long before he went to the University ; some of them he claims to have written when he was ten years old, consequently when he was a pupil at Dr. Bransby s School. In their crude boyish metres one can feel the dancing Ariel spirit of his mother taking form in verse and reincarnating itself, Morella-like, in the work of the child. The elements of strangeness and beauty were all there ; quaintness and witchery echo from "those unusual strings," and the harp of Israfel is already attuning itself to extraordinary harmonies. The boy of eighteen writes the following Preface : " The greater part of the Poems which compose this little volume were written in the year 1821-22, when the author had not completed his fourteenth year. They were of course not intended for publication ; why they are now published concerns no one but himself. Of the smaller pieces very little need be said : they perhaps savour too much of egotism ; but they were written by one too young to have any knowledge of the world but from his own breast. "In Tamerlane he has endeavoured to expose the folly of even risking the best feelings of the heart at the shrine of Ambition. He is conscious that in this there are many faults (besides that of the general character of the poem), which he flatters himself he could, with little trouble, have corrected, but unlike many of his predecessors, he has been too fond of his early productions to amend them in his old age. (t We will not say that he is indifferent as to the 68 EDGAR ALLAN POE. success of these Poems it might stimulate him to other attempts but he can safely assert that failure will not at all influence him in a resolution already adopted. This is challenging criticism let it be so. Nos baec novimus esse nibil. This was the first of those defiant Prefaces which all his life after Poe was flinging like gauntlets in the faces of his critics : the attitude of one at bay, even then, in his teens. "The soul, which knows such power, will still Find Pride the ruler of its will a couplet imitated, consciously or unconsciously, by Cardinal Newman in his famous "Lead, Kindly Light" (" Pride ruled my will : remember not past days"). It gives the fundamental note of "Tam erlane," whose vagueness is also Poesque in its Ossianic nebulosity. It is full of Moore and Byron ("the sound of revelry by night actually occurs imbedded in the text, without quotation-marks) ; its metre is the ancient octosyllable of Gower and the pre-Chau- cerians, as if the lad had unconsciously reverted to ancestral musical conditions ; dreams, mysteries, blighted hopes, blasted expectations, visions of the night, terrors and tremblings, well up artificially or otherwise in the boy s imagination and point pro phetically almost mockingly to his future. A fitful melody, windlike in its aerial waywardness, flits through couplet and stanza and recalls the melodious friction of the air on the strings of a viol : a sigh, a murmuring of the waves, a whispering of parted lips, an elegy breathing from the tremulous pine-tops, could hardly be more faint, sprite-like, poetical than this zephyr-like music, this disembodied passion, these BIOGRAPHY. 69 almost inorganic harmonies that each take a line as an oaten reed and utter silken cadences half song, half soliloquy. This little book is more like some extraor dinary child-musician s improvisations than anything else : shell-like murmurings, indefinite, unreal, almost spectral shadows of song here run up and down the keys with their flitting golden tones, now crushing all the wayward sweetness out of a trampled chord, now up and away through the ascending diapason of some chance-struck air, melting into the " choir invisible. * Trouble, passion, poignant regret are already there tumult of soul and body, uneasy visionings, phantasy surcharged with intimations of the supernatural, scorn, contempt, rebellion, angel pride, the "ill demons " of the latter day already foreshadowed in the plaintive susurrus of many a line, occur in Tamerlane and Other Poems in the fitful, unsubstantial flickerings of the phantasy of a gifted and unhappy boy who finds himself caught in print a Swanhilda without her magic raiment and wails in vain for the recovery of his incognito. Another fact of vital importance for the year 1827 was Poe s enlistment at Boston in the army of the United States under the assumed name of Edgar A. Perry : a fact established by Professor Woodberry through Mr. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War, and Adjutant- General Drum. This occurred in May, about the time of the publication of the Poems, and opens up one of the most honorable vistas in this short and tragic life. Poe may have been attracted to the army and, afterward, to West Point, from the fact of the University of Virginia having established a system of military drill in 1826, and from the further fact of one of his class-mates, John B. Magruder (afterwards 70 EDGAR ALLAN POE. the well-known Confederate general) having left the University that year for West Point. "The examination of documents " (says Professor Woodberry, in " The Atlantic Monthly " for Decem ber, 1884) "both at Washington and elsewhere has been exhaustive. From these papers it appears that on May 26, 1827, Poe enlisted at Boston in the army of the United States as a private soldier, under the name of Edgar A. Perry. He stated that he was born at Boston, and was by occupation a clerk ; and although minors were then accepted into the service, he gave his age as twenty-two years. He had, says the record, gray eyes, brown hair, and a fair com plexion ; was five feet eight inches in height. He was at once assigned to Battery H of the First Artil lery, then serving in the harbor at Fort Independence ; on October 3 1 the battery was ordered to Fort Moul- trie, Charleston, S. C., and exactly one year later to Fortress Monroe, Virginia. The officers under whom he served are dead, but it appears that he discharged his duties as company clerk and assistant in the com missariat department so as to win the goodwill of his superiors. On January i, 1829, he was appointed Sergeant-Major, a promotion which, by the invariable custom of the army, was given only for merit. He now made his circumstances known to Mr. Allan, and shortly after Mrs. Allan s death, February 28, 1829, he returned to Richmond on leave of absence. Of this furlough there is no record, but on February 28 he is reported on the rolls as present for duty." The only discrepancy with the facts in this account is that of his personal appearance : he had black hair and a dark, clear, olive complexion, instead of the "brown hair and fair complexion" of the army de scription. BIOGRAPHY, 71 This account is further absolutely authenticated by the letters of Colonel James House, Adjutant-General Lowndes, Lieutenant-Colonel Worth, Captain Gris- wold, and Lieutenant Howard, three of whom were connected with the same regiment and one was com mandant of Fortress Monroe. The most gratifying feature of this discovery is that it not only eliminates from his biography the wild stories about Poe s journey to Europe in the cause of the Greeks, the escapade at St. Petersburg, and the romance of the French duel, novel, etc., but that it unfolds an admirable record of unblemished conduct, prompt and faithful performance of military duties, freedom from bad habits, and the unhesitating recom mendation of his superior officers. Lieutenant Howard admiringly writes of his " unexceptionable conduct " and his excellence as a clerk : "his habits are good, and entirely free from drinking. Captain Griswold testifies that "up to this date" (Jan. i, 1829), "he has been exemplary in his de portment, prompt and faithful in the discharge of his duties and is highly worthy of confidence. " Colonel Worth, in command of Fortress Monroe, adds : "I have known and had an opportunity of observing the conduct of the above-mentioned Sergeant- Major Poe some three months during which his de portment has been highly praiseworthy and deserving of confidence. His education is of a very high order and he appears to be free from bad habits, in fact the testimony of Lieutenant Howard and Adjutant Gris wold is full to that point. Understanding he is, thro his friends, an applicant for cadet s warrant, I unhesi tatingly recommend him as promising to acquit himself of the obligation of that station studiously and faith- fully." 72 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Poe, having according to the army requirements procured a substitute, was honorably discharged from the service April 1 5, with this splendid record of silent and devoted service testified to by his army associates. The wayward, spoiled, impulsive boy had in two years turned out to be the conscientious, exemplary soldier a sergeant-major in his twentieth year. It is delightful indeed to substitute these creditable facts for the feverish romance and fabulous gossip of con temporaries who doubtless applied to Poe some of the adventures said to have occurred to his gifted but un fortunate elder brother, William Henry Leonard, who was a cadet in the navy and who died in July, 1831. Brilliant reminiscences of Poe s service in the army adhere to his South Carolina romance, "The Gold- Bug," to the " Balloon Hoax," and to the humorous "Man that was Used Up." Through these two eventful years, too, " Al Aaraaf and Minor Poems " was ripening in the young sol dier s brain and showing the ideal side of the mechani cal routine of the army. These shadowy years have left their crystalline deposit in poems, in which an in creasing purpose, a maturer power, a richer and less adumbrated imagination, a finer metrical skill are ap parent. Perhaps the precision of the army routine had something to do with the growing precision of Poe s style, a precision which grew on him while he lived and which is sometimes in his more faultless prose almost painful. His intense feeling for rhythm may have been energized by the measured tread of soldiers feet, the martial regularity of all their movements, the inflexible order of their evolutions, the symmetry of whatever they did. While the West Point project was maturing in his BIOGRAPHY. 73 mind and purpose, he went to Baltimore, became more fully acquainted with his Maryland kindred, and was introduced to William Gwynn, editor of " The Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser," to whom he showed the MS. of Al Aaraaf." About this MS. he fell into correspondence with John Neal of Boston, then editor of "The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette," a man who proved a lifelong friend of the penniless author and who gave him through the columns of "The Yankee " excellent literary advice. The communications between author and editor ap peared in the new series, iii, 168, and vi. 295298, and the journal contains two poems by Poe not hitherto found in any collected edition of his works. One of them is called " The Magician " and is as follows : THE MAGICIAN. Magician Thou dark, sea-stirring Storm, Whence comest thou in thy might ? Nay ; wait, thou dim and weary form, Storm-spirit, I call thee t is mine of right, Arrest thee in thy troubled flight. Storm-Spirit Thou askest me whence I came, I came o er the sleeping sea ; It roused at my torrent of storm and flame, And howled aloud in its agony, And swelled to the sky that sleepy sea. Thou askest me what I met A ship from the Indian shore ; 74 EDGAR ALLAN POE. A tall, proud ship with her sails all set, Far down in the sea that ship I bore My storm s wild rushing wings before. And her men will forever lie Below the unquiet sea ; And tears will dim full many an eye Of those who shall widows and orphans be, And their days be years for their misery. A boat with a starving crew, For hunger they starved and swore, While the blood from a fellow s veins they drew, I came upon them with rush and roar Far under the waves that boat I bore. Two ships in a fearful fight, Where a hundred guns did flash : I came upon them no time for flight, But under the sea their timbers crash, And over their guns the wild waves dash. A wretch on a single plank, And I tossed him on the shore ; A night and a day of the sea he drank, But the wearied wretch to the land I bore, And now he walketh the earth once more. Magician Storm-spirit, go on thy path ! The spirit has spread his wings, And comes on the sea with a rush of wrath, As a war-horse when he springs ; And over the earth nor stop nor stay The winds of the Storm King go out on their way. AL A ATI A AT"j TAMERLANE, AND KIITCP. PC3KS. BY XSDCULB. A. POE BALTIMORE: HATCH & DUNNING. BIOGRAPHY. 75 " Early in 1829 " (says Mr. E. L. Didier, in his Biography, p. 39) " we find Poe in Baltimore, with a manuscript volume of verses, which in a few months was published in a thin octavo, bound in boards, crimson sprinkled, with yellow linen back. . . . The Peabody Library of Baltimore has a copy of this rare volume, which I have carefully examined. It num bers seventy-one pages. On the sixth page is the Dedication : " f Who drinks the deepest? Here s to him. Al Aaraaf is printed the same as now, except eight unimportant verbal changes. < Tamerlane, which is dedicated to John Neal, is preceded by an advertise ment, as follows : This poem was printed for publi cation in Boston, in the year 1827, but suppressed through circumstances of a private nature. There is only one word changed in the whole poem. After Tamerlane follow nine miscellaneous poems, all of which, with the exception of the first and part of the eighth, are in the last editions of Poe s works. The first of these miscellaneous poems consists of four stan zas, and is headed To . It has never been reprinted in full, but the third stanza contains the germ of A Dream within a Dream. " "The book" (adds Mr. Didier) "was printed by Matchett & Woods, who printed the Baltimore City Directory for nearly half a century. * So far from there being "only one word changed" in the "Tamerlane," it was entirely rewritten. Of "Al Aaraaf" the critics have made a nine days wonder : its melodious incoherence has left it a jumble of jewelled words that have caught their irides cence partly from Moore and partly from the inconse quence and nebulous radiance of the poet s nascent 76 EDGAR ALLAN POE. fancy. Poe himself says, in his letter to Neal, " C A1 Aaraaf 1 has some good poetry, and much extrava gance, which I have not had time to throw away. <A1 Aaraaf is a tale of another world the star dis covered by Tycho Brahe, which appeared and disap peared so suddenly or rather, it is no tale at all." It is indeed a tale with the "tale" left out. It was unfavorably reviewed by the Baltimore " Minerva and Emerald " edited by J. H. Hewitt and Rufus Dawes, the latter of whom Poe remembered later among those whom he flagellated in " Minor Contemporaries." 1 " * Al Araf, or Al Aaraaf, as the poet preferred styling it, is designed by the Mahommedan imagination as an abode wherein a gentle system of purgatory is instituted for the benefit of those who, though too good for hell, ere not fitted for heaven." Ingram, I., 78. BIOGRAPHY. 77 CHAPTER IV. 1829-1830. AT WEST POINT. THE POEMS OF 1831. AT the beginning of 1829, the beloved first Mrs. Allan (Miss F. K. Valentine, cousin of the sculptor) died, February 28, leaving Poe bereft of his truest friend. It is said that he reached Richmond the day after her burial, which took place at Shockoe Hill Cemetery, where a fitting memorial stone was erected to her memory by her husband. Not many months after this Mr. Allan (after ad dressing Miss Anne Valentine, sister of his deceased wife, and being rejected) was united in marriage, Oc tober 5, 1830, to Miss Louisa Gabriella Patterson of New York, of whom the following authentic sketch has been kindly furnished the writer by a member of the lady s family : " Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan was born in the City of New York, March 24, 1800. Her mother was Miss Louisa De Hart, daughter of John De Hart, a member of the Continental Congress of 177476 from New Jersey, Attorney- General of his State, a lawyer of great distinction and a man of large means and influence. Her father was Mr. John William Pat terson, a lawyer of New York, a son of Capt. John Patterson of the English army who married Catharine Livingston of Livingston Manor, N. Y., and was the 78 EDGAR ALLAN POE. first U. S. Collector of the port of Philadelphia after the Revolution. Mrs. Allan was a niece of Mrs. Col. John Mayo (nee De Hart) of Belleville near Richmond, and it was when on a visit to her aunt that she first met Mr. Allan, who became at once very much enamoured with her and subsequently married her at her father s house in New York City, October 5, 1830. Mrs. Allan was a lady of much stateliness and dignity, and of great firmness and de cision of character, very clannish in her feelings, and while apparently very calm and reserved in manner, had one of the warmest hearts in the world, was a firm and steadfast friend and profuse in concealed and un ostentatious charities. She had three children, all sons John, William Gait, and Patterson, all of whom died during her life, John leaving two children, Hoffman Allan now of Danville, Va., and Louisa G., now Mrs. W. R. Pryor of New York. William G. left no issue. Patterson had two children, Genevieve, now Mrs. Dwight Montague, and John, who died young. After her sons became of age Mrs. Allan s house was the centre of Richmond hospitality, and the beauty and frequency of her entertainments were pro verbial and few visitors of prominence failed to par take of them, but while the acknowledged leader in society her prominent characteristics were unaltered. She was the fond mother, cherished friend, and quiet dispenser of many charities, not impulsive but con stantly flowing, and many a home of her impoverished friends has been blest by her thoughtful considera tion and practical affection. Mrs. Allan was of mas culine personality and of so much impressiveness and attraction that few who met can forget her ; and though the war had to a great extent swept away her wealth, BIOGRAPHY. 79 and the death of loved ones saddened her life, she yet remained the same lovely, dignified, and respected lady to the end, which occurred April 24, 1881, forty- seven years after the death of her beloved husband, by whose side she now lies in Shockoe Hill Cemetery." In securing the West Point position which then commanded a salary of $28 a month, besides subsist ence and instruction Poe was fortunate in obtaining letters from Mr. A. Stevenson, speaker of the House of Representatives, and three eminent Virginians, John Campbell, James P, Preston, and Powhatan Ellis, senator from Mississippi, uncle of Col. Thomas H. Ellis, who furnished us with the interesting recollections in Chapter I. These were supplemented and rein forced by letters from Mr. Allan to Major John Eaton, then Secretary of War. The appointment was really due to Senator Ellii.. The reason why Mr. Ellis became interested in Poe vvas that he was a younger brother of Mr. Allan s partner, and Mr. Allan would naturally mention to 50 influential an acquaintance his desire to get Edgar the appointment. While waiting for the appointment, Poe had passed the legal age of twenty-one ; but he did not scruple to report his age as nineteen years and five months. So July i, 1830, he entered the Academy at West Point, which had been founded in 1802 and was con sidered a most desirable opening for a penniless young man on account of the income of $336 (afterwards increased to $540) attached to a cadetship, and the possibility of a rapid rise in the profession. Poe had martial blood in his veins ; he had had two years of admirable practical training in the artillery branch of 8o EDGAR ALLAN POE. the service ; he was an excellent mathematician and linguist ; and there was every reason to hope that he would ultimately attain the rank of his grandfather, Quartermaster-General Poe. The years 1829 and 1830 were very stirring ones in the ancient Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1829 the famous Convention to revise the Constitution as sembled in Richmond, and included among its num ber more distinguished men than any other public body perhaps that ever assembled in the United States. Among these were ex-presidents Madison and Monroe, Chief Justice Marshall, John Randolph of Roanoke, and a host of other famous Virginians who made the little town ring with their eloquence, and all through the winter of 1829-30 elaborated changes in the Con stitution connected with the suffrage and other im portant questions. The lobbies of the old State-house (planned by Jefferson) and the inns on Main and Broad Streets hummed with voices discussing the momentous questions of statecraft ; the streets and private houses were full of historic figures come to lend their aid in settling the vexed questions ; and Poe doubtless heard many a voice that had been listened to in Revolutionary times as the Convention proceeded with its order of business. Gentlemen in tie-wigs, knee-buckles, and black stocks were seen everywhere; and it was a resurrection of the olden times. The atmosphere of West Point was very different from the bland and genial social environment of Rich mond with its freedom from restraints, its air of uni versal bonhomie and relationship - everybody was a tf Virginia cousin " to everybody else its social card- playing, drinking, smoking, and leisurely practice of the professions. BIOGRAPHY. 81 The Academy occupied the site of a ruined fortress captured by the British in the War of Independence, and towered aloft on a plateau nearly two hundred feet above the Hudson in a scene of landscape beauty almost unrivalled. Instead of the social relaxation of Richmond, a rigorous discipline reminded the nearly three hundred young men that there were three hun dred offences scheduled for which they could be punished; that they had "signed" for five years as servants of the United States ; and that for the four years course they could hope only for ten weeks vacation in all. It was even whispered around that less than half of those who hopefully entered on the courses ever graduated. A remarkable assemblage of young men were gath ered at West Point the half-year Poe was there, among them the following : LIST OF POE S CONTEMPORARIES AT WEST POINT IN 1830 :i [To the names given below, annotated by General Wilson, may be added that of Thomas H. Williamson, Va., many years pro fessor, with Stonewall Jackson and Commodore M. F. Maury, at the Virginia Military Institute : appointed General by the Governor of Virginia.] Class of 1830, U. S. M. A. Rev. Francis Vinton, D.D., of Rhode Island. Distin guished clergyman of the P. E. Church. No. 4 in his class. Died in 1872. 1 This list has been kindly compiled for this work by Cadet W. D. A. Anderson of West Point ; and the biographical memo randa have been supplied by General James Grant Wilson to whom thanks are returned for the courtesy. VOL, I. -6 82 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Rev. W. N. Pendleton, of Va. No. 5 in his class. Be came a General in the Confederate Service. Died in 1883. Brevet Lieut. -Col. John B. Magruder, of Va. Served in the Mexican War, and became a General in the Confederate Army. Died 1871. Brig. -Gen. Robert C. Buchanan, of Md. Served with distinction in the Mexican and Civil Wars. Died in 1878. Class of i8ji. Rev. Roswell Park, D.D., of Ct. Distinguished Clergy man, Professor, and Poet. Graduated No. i in his class, and resigned from the army in 1835. Died in 1869. Gen. Jacob Ammen, of Va. (Brig. -Gen. of Vols.). In timate friend of General Grant. Died in 1894. Brevet Major-Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys, of Pa. Served in the Mexican and Civil Wars. Chief of Engineer Corps. Died in 1883. Brevet Major-Gen. W. H. Emory, of Maryland. Died in 1887. Samuel R. Curtis, of Ohio, Major-Gen. Vols. Died in 1866. Class of 1832. President Benjamin S. Ewell, of D. C. Graduated No. 3 in the class. Distinguished General in the Con federate Army. Died in 1894. Brevet Brig. -Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes, of Mass., Major- Gen. Vols. and Corps Commander Army Potomac. Died in 1895. Lieut. Tench Tilghman, of Md. Became General in the Confederate Service. Died in 1874. BIOGRAPHY. 83 Lieut.-Col. George B. Crittenden, of Ky., son of U. S. Senator Crittenden. Became General in the Confed erate Army. Died in 1880. Brevet Brig. -Gen. Randolph B. Marcy, of Wash. In spector-General U. S. Army. Daughter married Gen eral McClellan. Died in 1887. Lieut. Humphrey Marshall, of Ky. Colonel of Ken tucky Volunteers in war with Mexico and General in Confederate Army. Died in 1872. Class of 1833. Capt. Frederic A. Smith, of Mass. Graduated at the head of his class. Engineer Officer U. S. A. Died in 1842. Major-General John G. Barnard, of Mass, zd in the class. Distinguished Engineer Officer in the Civil War and Author of Military Monographs. Died in 1882. Brother of President Barnard of Columbia University. Brevet Major-Gen. George W. Cullum, of New York. 3d in class. Meritorious Officer of Engineer Corps and military author who left $250,000 for the Cullum Memorial at West Point. Died in 1892. Brig. -Gen. Rufus King, U. S. V., of New York. 4th in class. Minister to Italy and Journalist. Son of President Charles King of Columbia. Died in 1876. Colonel Francis H. Smith, of Virginia. 5th in class, Prof, and later Superintendent with rank of General in Virginia Mil. Institute. General in the Confederate Army. Died in 1890. Brevet Lieut.-Col. William Bliss, of New York, gth in class. Served in Mexican War. Private Secy, and son-in-law of President Taylor. Died in 1853. (His widow, Mrs. Dandridge, still living.) 84 . EDGAR ALLAN POE. Brevet Major-Gen. Edmund Schirer, of Pa. Meritorious Officer during the Civil War. Inspector General U. S. A. Died 1899. Brevet Major-Gen. Alexander E. Shiras, of Pa. Meritori ous Officer Subsistence Dept. U. S. A. Died in 1875. Brevet Brig. -Gen. Benjamin Alvord, of Vt. Served in the Mexican and Civil Wars. Author of Essays and Reviews. Died in 1884. Brevet Brig. -Gen. Henry W. Wessells, of Ct. Died in 1889. Colonel Henry L. Scott, of N. C., son-in-law of Gen. Winfield Scott. Died in 1886. Brevet Lieut. -Col. Daniel Ruggles, of Mass. Served in Mexican War, and General in the Confederate Army. Died in 18-97. Just as in the case of Poe s contemporaries at the University of Virginia we find him here at West Point thrown with the best blood of the country : General Robert E. Lee had graduated the year before, and a long line of illustrious soldiers and statesmen followed the mercurial poet. Unfortunately, Poe soon began to chafe under the discipline, though he stood high and well in his classes : third in French and seven teenth in mathematics, in a class of eighty-seven. One of his contemporaries there indeed writes : " He was an accomplished French scholar, and had a wonderful aptitude for mathematics, so that he had no difficulty in preparing his recitations in his class and in obtaining the highest marks in these departments. He was a devourer of books, but his great fault was his neglect of and apparent contempt for military duties. His wayward and capricious temper made him at times BIOGRAPHY. 85 utterly oblivious or indifferent to the ordinary routine of roll-calls, drills, and guard duties. These habits subjected him often to arrest and punishment, and effectually prevented his learning or discharging the duties of a soldier." In what singular contrast this Poe is to the honor ably discharged United States soldier who distinguished himself for two years by the most exemplary conduct ! The only explanation is that either Poe and Perry were different beings or that Poe s <( Imp of the Perverse " was now in the ascendant, and that, learn ing in October of Mr. Allan s second marriage, he went to work deliberately to undo his excellent record and get himself, by insubordination and neglect of duty, courtmartialled and expelled from the Academy, with a view to pursuing a literary career. "Harper s Magazine" for November, 1867, con tains some highly colored though not incredible ac counts of " Poe at West Point," written thirty-seven years after the events by Mr. T. H. Gibson : " Number 28 South Barracks, in the last months of the year of our Lord 1830, was pretty generally regarded as a hard room. Cadets who aspired to high standing on the Merit Roll were not much given to visiting it, at least in daytime. To compensate in some measure for this neglect, however, the inspecting officer was uncommonly punctual in his visits, and rarely failed to find some object for his daily report of de merit. The old barracks have passed away, and are now only a dream of stone and mortar ; but the records of the sins of omission and commission of Number 28 and its occupants remain, and are filed 1 A. B. Magruder to Professor Woodberry : Life, p. 55. 86 EDGAR ALLAN POE. carefully away among the dusty archives of the Aca demy. " Edgar A. Poe was one of the occupants of the room. Old P and the writer of this sketch completed the household. The first conversation I had with Poe after we became installed as room-mates was characteristic of the man. A volume of Camp bell s Poems was lying upon our table, and he tossed it contemptuously aside, with the curt remark : < Camp bell is a plagiarist ; then without waiting for a reply he picked up the book, and turned the leaves over rapidly until he found the passage he was looking for. " There, said he, is a line more often quoted than any other passage of his : " Like angel visits few and far between," and he stole it bodily from Blair s (f Grave." Not satisfied with the theft, he has spoiled it in the effort to disguise it. Blair wrote : "Like angel visits SHORT and far between." Camp bell s " Few and far between " is mere tautology. " Poe at that time, though only about twenty years of age, had the appearance of being much older. He had a worn, weary, discontented look, not easily for gotten by those who were intimate with him. Poe was easily fretted by any jest at his expense, and was not a little annoyed by a story that some of the class got up, to the effect that he had procured a cadet s ap pointment for his son, and the boy having died, the father had substituted himself in his place. Another report current in the corps was that he was a grandson of Benedict Arnold. Some good-natured friend told him of it, and Poe did not contradict it, but seemed rather pleased than otherwise at the mistake. " Very early in his brief career at the Point he established a high reputation for genius, and poems and BIOGRAPHY. 87 squibs of local interest were daily issued from Number 28 and went the round of the classes., One of the first things of the kind that he perpetrated was a dia tribe in which all of the officers of the Academy, from Colonel Thayer down, were duly if not favorably noticed. I can recall but one stanza. It ran thus : " John Locke was a very great name ; Joe Locke was a greater in short ; The former was well known to Fame, The latter well known to Report. " Joe Locke, it may be remarked by way of explana tion, was one of the instructors of tactics, and ex-officio Inspector of Barracks, and supervisor of the morals and deportment of cadets generally. In this capacity it was his duty to report to head-quarters every violation of the regulations falling under his observation ; a duty in which he was in nowise remiss, as the occupants of Number 28 could severally testify. " The studies of the Academy Poe utterly ignored. I doubt if he ever studied a page of Lacroix, unless it was to glance hastily over it in the lecture-room, while others of his section were reciting. It was evident from the first that he had no intention of going through with the course, and both the Professors and Cadets of the older classes had set him down for a January colt before the corps had been in barracks a week. " Poe disappointed them, however, for he did not remain until the January examination, that pons asin- orum of plebe life at West Point. He resigned, I think, early in December, having been a member of the corps a little over five months. " Some month or two after he had left, it was an nounced that a volume of his poems would be pub- 88 EDGAR ALLAN POE. lished by subscription, at the price of two dollars and fifty cents per copy. Permission was granted by Colonel Thayer to the corps to subscribe for the book, and as no cadet was ever known to neglect any op portunity of spending his pay, the subscription was pretty nearly universal. The book was received with a general expression of disgust. It was a puny volume, of about fifty pages, bound in boards and badly printed on coarse paper, and worse than all, it contained not one of the squibs and satires upon which his reputation at the Academy had been built up. Few of the poems contained in that collection now appear in any of the editions of his works, and such as have been preserved have been very much altered for the better. "For months afterward quotations from Poe formed the standing material for jests in the corps, and his reputation for genius went down at once to zero. I doubt if even the Raven J of his after years ever en tirely effaced from the minds of his class the impression received from that volume. " The unfortunate habit that proved the bane of his after-life had even at that time taken strong hold upon him, and Number 28 was seldom without a bottle of Benny Haven s best brandy. I don t think he was ever intoxicated while at the Academy, but he had already acquired the more dangerous habit of constant drinking. "Keeping up the communications with our base of supplies at Old Benny s was one of the problems that occupied a good deal more of our thoughts than any of the propositions in Legendre; but, upon the whole, this branch of the commissary department of Number 28 was a success ; and many a thirsty soul, with not enough of pluck to run the blockade himself, BIOGRAPHY. 89 would steal into our room between tattoo and taps to try the merits of the last importation. " The result of one of these foraging parties after supplies created for a time no little excitement in the South Barracks. People had been burned and hung in effigy, from time immemorial, but it was reserved for Number 28 to witness the eating of a Professor in effigy. " It was a dark, cold, drizzling night, in the last days of November, when this event came off. The brandy bottle had been empty for two days, and just at dusk Poe proposed that we should draw straws the one who drew the shortest to go down to Old Benny s and replenish our stock. The straws were drawn, and the lot fell on me. "Provided with four pounds of candles and Poe s last blanket, for traffic (silver and gold we had not, but such as we had we gave unto Benny), I started just as the bugle sounded to quarters. It was a rough road to travel, but I knew every foot of it by night or day, and reached my place of destination in safety, but drenched to the skin. Old Benny was not in the best of humors that evening. Candles and blankets and regulation shoes, and similar articles of traffic, had accumulated largely on his hands, and the market for them was dull in that neighborhood. His chicken suppers and bottles of brandy had disappeared very rapidly of late, and he had received little or no money in return. " At last, however, I succeeded in exchanging the candles and blanket for a bottle of brandy and the hardest-featured, loudest-voiced old gander that it has ever been my lot to encounter. To chop the bird s head off before venturing into barracks with him was 90 EDGAK ALLAN POE. a matter of pure necessity ; and thus, in fact, old Benny rendered him before delivery. I reached the suburbs of the barracks about nine o clock. The bottle had not as much brandy in it as when I left Old Benny s ; but I was very confident I had not spilled any. I had carried the gander first over one shoulder and then over the other, and the consequence was that not only my shirt front, but my face and hands were as bloody as the entire contents of the old gander s veins and arteries could well make them. " Poe was on the lookout, and met me some distance from the barracks, and my appearance at once inspired him with the idea of a grand hoax. Our plans were perfected in an instant. The gander was tied, neck and feet and wings together, and the bloody feathers bristling in every direction gave it a nondescript ap pearance that would have defined recognition as a gander by the most astute naturalist on the Continent. Poe took charge of the bottle, and preceded me to the room. Old P. was puzzling his brains over the binomial theorem, and a visitor from the North Barracks was in the room awaiting the result of my expedition. " Poe had taken his seat, and pretended to be ab sorbed in the mysteries of * L^ons Franchises. Laying the gander down at the outside of the door, I walked or rather staggered into the room, pretending to be very drunk, and exhibiting in clothes and face a spec tacle not often seen off the stage. My God ! what has happened ? exclaimed Poe, with well-acted horror. < Old K , old K ! I repeated several times, and with gestures intended to be particularly savage. BIOGRAPHY. 91 " Well, what of him ? asked Poe. " He won t stop me on the road any more ! and I produced a large knife that we had stained with the few drops of blood that remained in the old gander. I have killed him ! " Nonsense ! said Poe, you are only trying one of your tricks on us. " I didn t suppose you would believe me, I re plied ; so I cut off his head and brought it into barracks. Here it is ! * and reaching out of the door I caught the gander by the legs, and giving it one fear ful swing around my head dashed it at the only candle in the room, and left them all in darkness with what two of them believed to be the head of one of the Pro fessors. The visitor leaped through the window and alighted in the slop-tub, and made fast time for his own room in the North Barracks spreading, as he went, the report that I had killed old K , and that his head was then in Number 28. The story gained ready credence, and for a time the excitement in bar racks ran high. When we lit the candle again, Old P was sitting in one corner, a blank picture of horror, and it was some time before we could restore him to reason. " The gander was skinned picking the feathers off was out of the question and after taps we cut him up in small pieces, and cooked him in a tin wash-basin, over an anthracite fire, without seasoning of any kind. It was perhaps the hardest supper on record, but we went through with it without flinching. We had set out to eat old K in effigy, and we did it ; whether he ever learned of the honors we paid him that night I never learned. " Upon the whole the impression left by Poe in his 92 EDGAR ALLAN FOB. short career at West Point was highly favorable to him. If he made no fast friends, he left no enemies behind him. But up to that time he had given no in dications of the genius which has since secured for him a world-wide fame. His acquaintance with English literature was extensive and accurate, and his verbal memory wonderful. He would repeat both prose and poetry by the hour, and seldom or never repeated the same passage twice to the same audience. " The whole bent of his mind at that time seemed to be toward criticism or, more properly speaking, caviling. Whether it were Shakspeare or Byron, Ad- dison or Johnson the acknowledged classic or the latest poetaster all came in alike for his critical cen sure. He seemed to take especial delight in caviling at passages that had received the most unequivocal stamp of general approval. I never heard him speak in terms of praise of any English writer, living or dead. I never met him after he left the Academy in December, I 830 ; and hence my recollections and impressions of him are Wholly uninfluenced by his after-life." He was courtmartialled and dismissed from the Academy for disobedience to orders and absence from roll-calls, guard-duty, and class-work, the sentence taking effect March 6, 1831. This third crisis-point of his career was signalized by a third volume of Poems, published by Elam Bliss of New York and subscribed to, at seventy-five cents a copy, by his fellow-cadets. They, supposing the volume to contain squibs and pasquinades, satires and jokes against the professors, were, it is said, egregiously disappointed on receiving the volume, to find it con tained only " Israfel," " To Helen," " Lenore" (in its first version), "The Sleeper," " The Valley of Unrest," and other masterpieces ! BIOGRAPHY. 93 Guffaws of amazement received this third venture of " Gaffy " Poe, according to General Cullum, who instead of using the marvellous tambour of Heine s Monsieur Le Grand to convey his meaning to the world, had simply picked up a golden strand from Israfel s harp and strung it in the world s window. The Dedication read : To the U. S. Corps of Cadets This Volume is Respectfully Dedicated. Then follows, a few pages later, the long and ram bling "Letter to Mr. ," afterwards re printed in the "Southern Literary Messenger " for July, 1836, and containing Poe s peculiar views of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Lake School. This is followed by the following eleven poems : Introduc tion ("Romance, who loves to nod and sing "), "To Helen," " Israfel," " The Doomed City," "Fairy Land," "Irene," "AP<ean," The Valley Nis ;" " Al Aaraaf," Parts i and ii, Sonnet ("Science"), "Tamerlane:" in all one hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages, in green boards. Nearly all the rubbish of the earlier volumes has been dropped : " the trash shaken from them in which they were embedded," says Poe in the prefatory letter to " Dear B ." The sculptor is busy hewing away at the marble the brilliant chips flying and draw ing forth the delicate imprisoned image from the envel oping chalk. In three years a wonderful gain in precision, defmiteness, lucidity, music, has taken place. What before was as uncertain as a choir of whispering 94 EDGAR ALLAN POE. reeds along a river s marge, as vague as the crescendo and diminuendo of the footfalls of the wandering winds at night, has gathered itself into focal form and becomes incarnate in the stanzas of " Helen " and " Israfel." The poet of twenty-one is still awkward, clumsy, stumbling in rhyme and metre, a prentice in the nice ties of verse, yet haunted by inexpressible verbal melo dies, as voluptuous as Spenser in the rippling flow of some lines, as gauche as Whitman in the hiatuses of others. The volume of 1831 is the visible parturition of a great poet whose complete birth will require fifteen years more. The increasing delicacy of perception and feeling, the sentiment of the magical beauty of the world, and of its mystery, the consciousness of the harmonies that well up from mere words in their vowel and consonantal combinations and contrasts, the poetry that there is in Death, in Doom, in Sorrow, in Sin (carried to an extreme by his admirer and imitator, Baudelaire, in his " Fleurs du Mai ") all haunt this plastic young imagination with their soft and vivid blandishments and blow their triton-horns in his subtle ear, enticing to new and sometimes happier fields. "Second edition" on the title-page of this little work means that this volume was regarded by its author as the book of 1829 with some things left out. His statement is : " Believing only a portion of my former volume to be worthy a second edition that small portion I thought it as well to include in the present book as to republish by itself. I have therefore herein combined Al Aaraaf and Tamerlane with other Poems hitherto unprinted." The "other Poems hitherto unprinted " must be the product of the year 1830, in between the 1829 and the I 83 1 volumes, and they are perhaps the only POEMS BY EDGAR A. POE. TOUT LB MONDE A RAISON. ROCHEFOUCAULT, SECOND EDITION. Yotfe: PUBLISHED BY E.LAM BLISS 1831. BIOGRAPHY. 95 poems of this period that will live the eight beauti ful minor poems of the collection composed either at West Point between July I, 1830, and January I, 1831, or during that period and the preceding six months when the poet was idle and waiting for his cadet s commission. Viewed in this light, the Paean " may be in its first draft a memorial dirge in memory of the first Mrs. Allan. All accounts say that the two were very fond of each other, and the poem brims with a heartfelt feeling that no mere ficti tious incident could have inspired. Just the year before Tennyson had published " Poems chiefly Lyrical," and certainly this collec tion contains nothing of finer edge or dreamier grace than Poe s work, which was contemporary with it; while for 1829 Poe s "Al Aaraaf " may certainly com pare favorably with Tennyson s prize-poem " Tim- buctoo," of the same year. 96 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER V. 1831-1836. THE DARK YEARS. THE BALTIMORE "VISITER" AND LATROBE S REMINISCENCES. MARRIAGE. IT is at this point from March, 1831 to the sum mer of 1833 tna t P e s biography slips within the penumbra of almost total obscurity. 1 Now, if at all, occurred those wanderings of the new Odysseus of which Burwell, Mrs. Shelton, Mr. Ingram, even Mrs. Allan (in her letter to Colonel T. H. Ellis) speak the Russian journey, the French adventure, etc., the former of which Poe left uncontradicted in Hirst s biography of him, the latter he is reported to have re lated to Mrs. Marie Louise Shew in a supposed death bed confession. A hiatus of two years and a half occurred during which the only glimmering of light is afforded by a letter from Poe to William Gwynn, a Baltimore editor, dated May 6th, 1831, referring to Mr. Allan s second marriage, and to Poe s own fool ish conduct on a former occasion, and asking for em ployment of some kind, "salary a minor consideration." None seems to have been forthcoming, nor could Mr. N. C. Brooks (afterwards well known as an editor and litterateur ) procure him even an usher s place in his school. Another glimmer proceeds from a paper in " Har per s " for March, 1889, entitled "Poe s Mary," by Augustus van Cleef, according to which Poe spent 1 See Appendix to Letters, for a recently discovered letter of Poe on this subject. BIOGRAPHY. 97 the year immediately following his dismissal from West Point, with his aunt Mrs. Clemm, in Baltimore. If one can credit the statements of this paper, which pur port to be the story of Poe s love for a Baltimore girl of that time, the poet had just returned from the Academy, was a handsome, fascinating young man who "wrote poetry." " Any young girl would have fallen in love with him " and " Poe s Mary " did. "Mr. Poe," Mary continues, "was about five feet eight inches tall, and had dark, almost black hair, which he wore long and brushed back in student style over his ears. It was as fine as silk. His eyes were large and full, gray and piercing. He was then, I think, entirely clean shaven. His nose was long and Straight, and his features finely cut. The expression about his mouth was beautiful. He was pale and had no color. His skin was of a clear, beautiful olive. He had a sad, melancholy look. He was very slender when I first knew him, but had a fine figure, an erect, military carriage, and a quick step. But it was his manner that most charmed. It was elegant. When he looked at you it seemed as if he could read your very thoughts. His voice was pleasant and musical, but not deep." Colonel T. W. Higginson, many years later, hearing Poe read " Ligeia," bore testi mony to the beauty of his voice. The confession of " Mary " bears internal evidence of being true. She describes his dress, his originality, his affectionate, even passionate manner in his ad dresses, his hauteur, aristocratic manners, and reserve. Excitable, jealous, intense, tender, the sensitive youth appears before us in these pages just as he must have been. Little Virginia Clemm carried the notes that passed to and fro between the lovers, a lovely, violet- VOL. i. 7 9& EDGAR ALLAN POE. eyed school-girl of ten who even then loved her cousin to distraction. He proposed marriage to Mary," but his penniless condition stood in the way of the match. Finally, the inevitable lovers quarrel took place, brought on by jealousy of a supposed rival and by chance indulgence with some West Point cadets in a glass of wine. " A glass made him tipsy. As to his being a habitual drunkard, he never was as long as I knew him " [and this lady sat beside Virginia s death bed in 1847]. All intercourse was then broken off by the inamo rata, who left his letters unanswered or returned them. Poe then wrote her satirical notelets and pub lished a poem "To Mary " in a Baltimore paper, dealing severely with her fickleness and incon stancy. This brought about a personal difficulty be tween Poe and the lady s uncle, during which Poe drew a cowhide and chastised the old gentleman ; afterwards palling the cowhide out of his sleeve, and throwing it passionately to the feet of his beloved, ex claiming : " There, I make you a present of that ! " The lady afterwards married another, lived in Phila delphia and New York, visited the Poes at Fordham and in Amity Street, and died in the West in 1887. The article is rambling and erroneous in some of its statements, but is evidently inspired by a real acquaint ance with Poe in his earlier years. A search in the contemporary Baltimore papers for the poem might throw additional light on its authenticity. Whether Poe went to Richmond during this dark period or received any help from the Allans is alto gether problematical. A vivid gleam of light, however, is thrown upon his career by the famous competition of BIOGRAPHY. 99 the summer of 1833, when " The Baltimore Visiter " announced that it would give two prizes, one, of a hundred dollars, for the best story, another, of fifty dollars, for the best poem to be published in its columns by a given date. The committee of award was com posed of three distinguished Baltimore gentlemen : John P. Kennedy, J. H. B. Latrobe, and Dr. James H. Miller ; and the contest was so interesting that it is worth while giving an account of it in Mr. Latrobe s own words, many years afterwards, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Poe Monument in Baltimore, in 1875. "The Saturday Visiter" was a weekly paper whose origin has been entertainingly described by L. A. Wilmer in " Our Press Gang, or The Crimes of the American Newspapers : 1859." This new liter ary weekly had been established by Mr. C. F. Cloud (not by Wilmer, as asserted by Professor Woodberry), who placed the editorial management in Mr. Wilmer s charge and afterwards associated Mr. W. P. Pouder, his brother-in-law, and Mr. Hewitt, a musician and poet, with the enterprise. The weekly throve beyond all expectations and would, doubtless, have proved a decided success had not the editors fallen out, dissolved partnership, and lampooned each other. It then passed into the hands of T. S. Arthur, who subsequently transferred it to Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, Poe s physician- friend. Shortly afterwards it expired. Wilmer, in this curious book, bears the following testimony to Poe s character : " The late Edgar A. Poe has been represented by the American newspapers in general as a reckless libertine and a confirmed inebriate. I do not recognize him by this description, though I was intimately ac- 100 EDGAR ALLAN POE. quainted with the man, and had every opportunity to study his character. I have been in company with him every day for many months together ; and, within a period of twelve years, I did not see him inebriated ; no, not in a single instance. I do not believe that he was ever habitually intemperate until he was made so by grief and many bitter disappointments. And, with respect to the charge of libertinism, I have similar tes timony to offer. Of all men that I ever knew, he was the most passionless ,- and I appeal to his writings for a confirmation of this report. Poets of ardent tempera ment, such as Anacreon, Ovid, Byron, and Tom Moore, will always display their constitutional pecu liarity in their literary compositions; but Edgar A. Poe never wrote a line that gave expression to a libid inous thought. The female creations of his fancy are all either statues or angels. His conversation, at all times, was as chaste as that of a vestal, and his conduct, while I knew him, was correspondingly blameless. " Poe, during his lifetime, was feared and hated by many newspaper editors and other literary animalcules, some of whom, or their friends, had been the subject of his searching critiques; and others disliked him, naturally enough, because he was a man of superior intellect. While he lived, these resentful gentlemen were discreetly silent, but they nursed their wrath to keep it warm, and the first intelligence of his death was the signal for a general onslaught. The primal slander against the deceased bard was published in a leading journal of Philadelphia, the literary editor* of which had formerly received not only a critical rebuke, but something like personal chastisement also from the hands of the departed poet." 1 1 Our Press Gang, pp. 243-5. BIOGRAPHY. 101 In spite of the large circulation of " The Baltimore Visiter," not a single file of it is known to exist. The attention of rare-book hunters might well be called to the value of the unique number (October I 2) in which the "MS. Found in a Bottle" appeared, as well as to that of the other numbers to which, for six months, Poe is said to have contributed. The announcement of his winning of the prize at once surrounded Poe with a blaze of publicity, in which, afterwards, he never ceased to live. He had emerged out of the penumbra into the full light of day, a vexatious apocalypse which enabled the critics to turn their microscopes upon him and subject his every thought, attitude, and gesture to minute inves tigation. The vivisection has gone on for three- quarters of a century, while the "subject" lies in a haunted sleep, and mutters anathemas against the anatomists ! The "Visiter" of October 12, 1833, contained the following notice : "Amongst the prose articles [submitted for the prize] were many of various and distinguished merit, but the singular force and beauty of those sent by the author of The Tales of the Folio Club leave us no room for hesitation in that department. We have ac cordingly awarded the premium to a tale entitled The MS. Found in a Bottle. It would hardly be doing justice to the writer of this collection to say that the tale we have chosen is the best of the six offered by him. We cannot refrain from saying that the author owes it to his own reputation, as well as to the gratifi cation of the community, to publish the entire volume [ Tales of the Folio Club ]. These tales are emi nently distinguished by a wild, vigorous, and poetical 102 EDGAR ALLAN POE. imagination, a rich style, a fertile invention, and varied and curious learning. " (Signed) JOHN P. KENNEDY, J. H. B. LATROBE, JAMES H. MILLER." How this tale came to be selected may be seen from the 1 Reminiscences of Poe by John H. B. Latrobe : "About the year 1833 there was a newspaper in Baltimore called The Saturday Visiter an ephemeral publication, that aimed at amusing its readers with light literary productions rather than the news of the day. One of its efforts was to procure original tales, and to this end it offered on this occasion two prizes, one for the best story and the other for the best short poem one hundred dollars for the first and fifty for the last. The judges appointed by the editor of the Visiter were the late John P. Ken nedy, Dr. James H. Miller (now deceased), and myself, and accordingly we met, one pleasant after noon, in the back parlor of my house, on Mulberry Street, and seated round a table garnished with some old wine and some good cigars, commenced our critical labors. As I happened then to be the youngest of the three, I was required to open the packages of prose and poetry, respectively, and read the contents. Alongside of me was a basket to hold what we might reject. " I remember well that the first production taken from the top of the prose pile was in a woman s hand, written very distinctly, as, indeed, were all the articles submitted, and so neatly that it seemed a pity not to 1 Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Volume. By Sara Sigourney Rice. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers: 1877. BIOGRAPHY. 103 award to it a prize. It was ruthlessly criticised, how ever, for it was ridiculously bad namby-pamby in the extreme full of sentiment and of the school known as the Laura Matilda school. The first page would have consigned it to the basket as our critical guillotine beheaded it. Gallantry, however, caused it to be read through, when in it went along with the envelope containing the name of the writer, which, of course, remained unknown. The next piece I have no recollection of, except that a dozen lines consigned it to the basket. I remember that the third, perhaps the fourth, production was recognized as a translation from the French, with a terrific denouement. It was a poor translation too ; for, falling into literal accuracy, the writer had, in many places, followed the French idioms. The story was not without merit, but the Sir Fretful Plagiary of a translator deserved the charge of Sheridan in the Critic, of being like a beggar who had stolen another man s child and clothed it in his own rags. Of the remaining productions I have no recollection. Some were condemned after a few sen tences had been read. Some were laid aside for re consideration not many. These last failed to pass muster afterwards, and the committee had about made up their minds that there was nothing before them to which they would award a prize, when I noticed a small quarto-bound book that had until then acciden tally escaped attention, possibly because so unlike, externally, the bundles of manuscript that it had to compete with. Opening it, an envelope with a motto corresponding with one in the book appeared, and we found that our prose examination was still incomplete. Instead of the common cursive manuscript, the writing was in Roman characters an imitation of printing. 104 EDGAR ALLAN POE. I remember that while reading the first page to myself, Mr. Kennedy and the Doctor had filled their glasses and lit their cigars, and when I said that we seemed at last to have a prospect of awarding the prize, they laughed as though they doubted it, and settled them selves in their comfortable chairs as I began to read. I had not proceeded far before my colleagues became as much interested as myself. The first tale finished, I went to the second, then to the next, and did not stop until I had gone through the volume, interrupted only by such exclamations as capital ! excel lent ! how odd ! * and the like, from my compan ions. There was genius in everything they listened to ; there was no uncertain grammar, no feeble phrase ology, no ill-placed punctuation, no worn-out truisms, no strong thought elaborated into weakness. Logic and imagination were combined in rare consistency. Sometimes the writer created in his mind a world of his own and then described it a world so weird, so strange " Far down by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid-region of Wier ; Far down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir j * and withal so fascinating, so wonderfully graphic, that it seemed for the moment to have all the truth of a reality. There was an analysis of complicated facts an unravelling of circumstantial evidence that won the lawyer judges an amount of accurate scientific knowledge that charmed their accomplished colleague a pure classic diction that delighted all three. " When the reading was completed there was a diffi culty of choice. Portions of the tales were read again, BIOGRAPHY. 105 and finally the committee selected " A MS. Found in a Bottle." One of the series was called " A Descent into the Maelstrom," and this was at one time pre ferred. 1 I cannot now recall the names of all the tales there must have been six or eight but all the circumstances of the selection ultimately made have been so often since referred to in conversation that my memory has been kept fresh, and I see my fellow- judges over their wine and cigars, in their easy-chairs both genial, hearty men, in pleasant mood, as dis tinctly now as though I were describing an event of yesterday. " Having made the selection and awarded the one hundred dollar prize, not, as has been said, most un justly and ill-naturedly, because the manuscript was legible, but because of the unquestionable genius and great originality of the writer, we were at liberty to open the envelope that identified him, and there we found in the note, whose motto corresponded with that of the little volume, the name, which I see you antici pate, of Edgar Allan Poe. "The statement in Dr. Gris wold s life prefixed to the common edition of Poe s works, that It was unani mously decided by the committee that the prize should be given to the first genius who had written legibly ; not another MS. was unfolded, is absolutely untrue. " Refreshed by this most unexpected change in the character of the contributions, the committee refilled their glasses and relit their cigars, and the reader began upon the poetry. This, although better in the main 1 This at once establishes the fact that " A Descent into the Maelstrom" was one of the sixteen "Tales of the Folio Club," and enables us to correct Professor Woodbeny s statement (Poe s Works, IV., p. 283) that the "sixteenth Tale is unidentified." Io6 EDGAR ALLAN POE. than the prose, was bad enough, and, when we had gone more or less thoroughly over the pile of manu script, two pieces only were deemed worthy of consid eration. The title of one was The Coliseum, the written printing of which told that it was Poe s. The title of the other I have forgotten, but, upon opening the accompanying envelope, we found that the author was Mr. John H. Hewitt, still living in Baltimore, and well known, I believe, in the musical world, both as a poet and composer. I am not prepared to say that the committee may not have been biased in award ing the fifty dollar prize to Mr. Hewitt by the fact that they had already given the one hundred dollar prize to Mr. Poe. I recollect, however, that we agreed that, under the circumstances, the excellence of Mr. Hewitt s poem deserved a reward, and we gave the smaller prize to him with clear consciences. " I believe that up to this time not one of the com mittee had ever seen Mr. Poe, and it is my impression that I was the only one that ever heard of him. When his name was read I remembered that on one occasion Mr. William Gwynn, a prominent member of the bar of Baltimore, had shown me the very neat manuscript of a poem called Al Aaraaf, which he spoke of as indicative of a tendency to anything but the business of matter-of-fact life. Those of my hearers who are familiar with the poet s works will recollect it as one of his earlier productions. Although Mr. Gwynn, being an admirable lawyer, was noted as the author of wise and witty epigrams in verse, Al Aaraaf was not in his vein, and what he said of the writer had not pre pared me for the productions before the committee. His name. I am sure, was not at the time a familiar one. BIOGRAPHY. 107 "The next number of the Saturday Visiter con tained the < MS. Found in a Bottle/ and announced the author. My office, in these days, was in the building still occupied by the Mechanics Bank, and I was seated at my desk on the Monday following the publication of the tale, when a gentleman entered and introduced himself as the writer, saying that he came to thank me, as one of the committee, for the award in his favor. Of this interview, the only one I ever had with Mr. Poe, my recollection is very distinct in deed, and it requires but a small effort of imagination to place him before me now, as plainly almost as I see any one of my audience. He was, if anything, below the middle size, and yet could not be described as a small man. His figure was remarkably good, and he carried himself erect and well, as one who had been trained to it. He was dressed in black, and his frock- coat was buttoned to the throat, where it met the black stock, then almost universally worn. Not a par ticle of white was visible. Coat, hat, boots, and gloves had very evidently seen their best days, but so far as mending and brushing go, everything had been done, apparently, to make them presentable. On most men his clothes would have looked shabby and seedy, but there was something about this man that prevented one from criticising his garments, and the details I have mentioned were only recalled afterwards. The impression made, however, was that the award in Mr. Poe s favor was not inopportune. Gentleman was written all over him. His manner was easy and quiet, and although he came to return thanks for what he regarded as deserving them, there was nothing obse quious in what he said or did. His features I am unable to describe in detail. His forehead was high, 108 EDGAR ALLAN POE. and remarkable for the great development at the temple. This was the characteristic of his head, which you noticed at once, and which I have never forgotten. The expression of his face was grave, almost sad, except when he was engaged in conversa tion, when it became animated and changeable. His voice, I remember, was very pleasing in its tone and well modulated, almost rhythmical, and his words were well chosen and unhesitating. Taking a seat, we conversed a while on ordinary topics, and he in formed me that Mr. Kennedy, my colleague in the committee, on whom he had already called, had either given, or promised to give him, a letter to the South ern Literary Messenger, which he hoped would pro cure him employment. 1 I asked him whether he was then occupied with any literary labor. He replied that he was engaged on a voyage to the moon, and at once went into a somewhat learned disquisition upon the laws of gravity, the height of the earth s atmos phere, and the capacities of balloons, warming in his speech as he proceeded. Presently, speaking in the first person, he began the voyage : after describing the preliminary arrangements, as you will find them set forth in one of his tales, called The Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, and leaving the earth, and becoming more and more animated, he described his sensation, as he ascended higher and higher, until, at last, he reached the point in space where the moon s attraction overcame that of the earth, when there was a sudden bouleversement of the car and a great confusion among its tenants. By this time the speaker had become so 1 There is some confusion of dates here : the Messenger was not established until August, 1834, nearly ten months after this interview. ED. BIOGRAPHY. 109 excited, spoke so rapidly, gesticulating much, that when the turn up-side-down took place, and he clapped his hands and stamped with his foot by way of emphasis, I was carried along with him, and, for aught to the contrary that I now remember, may have fancied myself the companion of his aerial journey. The climax of the tale was the reversal I have men tioned. When he had finished his description he apologized for his excitability, which he laughed at himself. The conversation then turned upon other subjects, and soon afterward he took his leave. I never saw him more. Dr. Griswold s statement that Mr. Kennedy accompanied him (Poe) to a clothing store and purchased for him a respectable suit, with a change of linen, and sent him to a bath, is a sheer fabrication. " That I heard of him again and again, and year after year, in common with all English-speaking people, more and more, it is unnecessary to say heard of him in terms of praise sometimes, sometimes in terms of censure, as we all have done, until now, that he has passed away, leaving his fame behind him, to last while our language lasts, I have grown to think of him only as the author who gave to the world the Raven and the Bells, and many a gem beside of noble verse ; who illustrated that power of the English tongue in prose composition not less logical than im aginative ; and I forget the abuse, whether with or without foundation, that ignorance, prejudice, or envy has heaped upon his memory. Unfortunately in the first biography following his death, where the author, with a temper difficult to understand, actually seemed to enjoy the depreciation of the poet s life, Edgar Allan Poe was seen by a malignant eye, and 110 EDGAlfc ALLAN POE. his story was told by an unkindly tongue ; and the efforts since made by friends to do him justice are slowly succeeding in demonstrating that there was in him an amount of good which, in all fairness, should be set off against that which we must regret while we attempt to palliate. " To Poe, there well may be applied the verse of one of the most gifted of oar poetesses, addressed to a great name in a very different sphere : " * The moss upon thy memory, no I Not while one note is sung Of those divine, immortal lays Milton and Shakspeare sung 5 Not till the gloom of night enshroud The Anglo-Saxon tongue. " Poe of course became the talk of the town. Mr. Kennedy (author of "Swallow Barn," recently pub lished, and, later, of " Horse-Shoe Robinson," and other works) immediately interested himself in the forlorn young genius, invited him to dinner, gave him clothing and free access to his house and table, and "brought him up," as he records in his diary, "from the very verge of despair." In a letter often quoted, but which never loses its intense pathos, Poe wrote to Kennedy at this time : " Your invitation to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come for reasons of the most humili ating nature my personal appearance. You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but it is necessary." The other judges also, Messrs. Latrobe and Miller, were kind to him, and he sustained himself precari- BIOGRAPHY. Ill ously by "jobs " for the " Visiter," and for Mr. Ken nedy. Wilmer was his frequent companion in walks and talks about the suburbs, and testifies, as we have noted, to his good conduct. He was living with his aunt Mrs. Clemm, who had married a widower, William Clemm, with a son and a daughter. The lady is said to have supported herself by teaching and dressmaking, and to have resided first in Wilkes Street and then at No. 3 Amity Street, Baltimore. There is no reason to doubt Poe s statement that the " MS. Found in a Bottle" was written and " Politian " al ready begun, in 1831. We now approach one of the most vexed and ob scure controversies of Poe s vexed existence his rupture with the Allans. We are fortunately enabled for the first time to give an authentic statement of the events from a member of the Allan family, giving the Allan version of the affair. Mr. Allan died of dropsy March 27, 1834. Three children had been born to him by the second marriage, and the birth of these children had of course been a death-blow to Poe s hopes of becoming Mr. Allan s heir. Still some lingering expectation of one kind or another must have haunted the poet s brain, for while Mr. Allan was ill he appeared in Richmond and went to the house, having been there previously only once in four years. In justice to Mrs. Allan, who was a most estimable woman, and who apparently had never seen Poe but once, we print perhaps indiscreetly the following letter from her niece as giving her side of the unfortunate occurrence, premising that in certain .Virginia circles the view prevails to this day that Poe was utterly bad, that on his return from the University he gambled with Mr. Allan s servants, and that when 112 EDGAR ALLAN POE. he demanded money of one of the Allan ladies, he stoned the house and smashed the windows on being refused ; adding, however, that the same accusation of forgery was brought against Poe, later, in Philadelphia, was tried in a court of justice, and triumphantly refuted, heavy damages being awarded the poet : " I am afraid I can give you very little assistance about Edgar Allan Poe, for he has been so often written up, and there are none of his contemporaries now living that I know of, and all that I could write you would be family tradition, and that, you know, is not always authentic. Mr. John Allan had no chil dren during his first marriage, and after he adopted Poe he became as devoted to him and as proud of his talents as if he were his own son, sparing no expense on his education, dress, and living. Poe, expecting to be his heir, began at the University a wild and reckless career, and was guilty of conduct so unbecom ing a gentleman that it offended Mr. Allan seriously. That, however, did not break the ties that had so long existed, and Mr. Allan tried in every way to reform him. Poe, however, continued the same dis solute life, breaking good resolutions and promises often and over, and ended by forging Mr. Allan s name. The money was paid, but then it was that Poe was discarded and forbidden the house of his benefactor, and all intercourse was refused. Mr. Allan married, secondly, my aunt, Miss Patterson of New Jersey, and she told me that Poe had never been to their house but twice, and she only saw him once. It was when her eldest son was three weeks old. He came up stairs to her bedroom, and began in an abusive manner to rail at herself and baby. She asked her nurse to ring the bell. It was answered by the butler, and BIOGRAPHY. 113 she said : James, put this drunken man out of the house, which he did. The next time he visited the house must have been about four years afterwards, for it was during the last illness of Mr. Allan. He was sitting in a large chair trying to read a newspaper when the door opened, and Poe came in. Mr. Allan became very much excited, shook his cane at him, and ordered him out of the house, using very strong lan guage, for he had never forgiven him, and whether he came to plead for forgiveness, or to upbraid, no one knew, for the old gentleman did not give him a chance to say a word. My aunt always felt it bitterly that the public so often blamed her for the estrangement when she had nothing to do with it, and rarely spoke of him. Of course these things happened long before my day." The palliation for such conduct could only be the unfortunate manner in which the orphan waif had been reared. Bitter indeed must have been the anguish and despair of such a spirit as Poe s on finding himself thus publicly cut off without even a mention in the will, the laughing-stock of the town where he had lived nearly all his life. In a moment of supreme agitation he was doubtless misled to commit acts which in cold blood would have been atrocious, and this must be his excuse. Thrown upon his own resources, Poe despairingly turned to a Philadelphia publishing house (Carey & Lea), and sent them the "Tales of the Folio Club," following his friend Kennedy s advice ; and, consult ing with Wilmer, he and the young editor of the " Visiter " determined to issue the prospectus of a first-class literary journal, of the usual " fearless, inde pendent, and sternly just " kind, an ideal about which VOL. i. 8 114 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Poe at least was really in earnest, and which he cherished up to his dying breath. Virginia Clemm, meanwhile, the poet s cousin, had developed into a beautiful girl of twelve or thirteen, whose charms, intelligence, and refinement had captivated the heart of Edgar, thirteen years older. A proposition of marriage followed, which was strenu ously opposed by Neilson Poe, a third cousin, who had married Virginia s step-sister, and who offered to care for Virginia until she was of a suitable age to marry. This Poe vigorously opposed, and, with Mrs. Clemm s consent, they were licensed to marry, accord ing to the Marriage Records of the City of Baltimore, September 22, 1834. The records of St. Paul s Church Parish, Baltimore, show that Virginia Clemm was born August 22, 1822. Whether the marriage was actually performed by a minister, after the license was obtained, cannot be pos itively ascertained. An unfounded tradition affirms that Rev. John Johns (afterwards Bishop of Virginia) performed the ceremony ; but the writer has taken the trouble to make careful inquiries of the Johns family, as well as of the registrar of St. Paul s Church, with the following result : Bishop Johns s son writes : WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 2, 1900. MY DEAR SIR, Replying to your favor of Nov. ist, let me say that the records of marriages performed by Rev. Dr. Johns, in Balto., are, I presume, to be found at Christ Church, Balto., Rev. Dr. Niver, rector. . . . We have no traditions or other information. Very truly, A. S. JOHNS. KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, That we <*?** arc held and 6rraly bound unto /ryfy tt***rf7eK *itS>v*. &2^^e^ f ^^- Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the just and full sum of ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS, to the S2&& i i$s payment w bereol, well and truly to be maae 10 the said Governor, or his successors, for the use of the said Commonwealth, we bind ourselves and each of us, our and each of our heirs, executors and administrators, jointly and severally, firmly by these presents Sealed with oar seals, end dated this /(f> day of ???6Cst-rs 183<^ THE CONDITION OF THE ABOVE OBLIGATION IS SUCH, That whereas a marriage is shortly intended to be had and so/emnlzed between the above bound and of the City of Richmond. Now if there is no lawful cause to obstruct said marriage, theo toe abovo obligation to be void, else to remain in full force and virtue. C/TK OF RICHMOND, To wit . This day S<r?77a~? r?&?i & -- above flamed, made ODtfi H bclore me, as ^-^Sx Clerk of the Court of Hustings for the said City, thai Z^-^px^tx.c^- 5 &j&b**vm Is of the full age of. twenty-one years, and * resident of the said City. Given under my hand, this y& day of s?J BIOGRAPHY. 115 CHRIST CHURCH, Nov. 9th, 1900. DEAR SIR, There is no record of Poe s marriage in the books of Christ s Church in the years 1834, 5, or 6. I would suggest that you write to Dr. Hodges at St. Paul s Church. They may have it recorded there, as Christ s Church is a daughter of St. Paul s Church. ROBERT B. NELSON, Assistant. BALTIMORE, Nov. 15, 1900. MY DEAR SIR, Your letter of the i2th inst. to Rev. Dr. Hodges, rector of St. Paul s Parish, has been handed to me, as Registrar of the Parish, for reply in reference to the marriage of Edgar Allan Poe and Vir ginia Clemm. In reply I would say that as long ago as Sept., 1884, I made a careful examination of the Records of St. Paul s Parish for Mr. Geo. E. Woodberry, who was about to publish a life of E. A. Poe, and then told him that no record of Poe s marriage appeared in our books, though there were several records of the Clemm family. I forget now the year of the marriage, but think it was prior to 1828 [an error : 1834 was the year. ED.], for in that year Christ Church was set off from St. Paul s Parish, and any marriage after that time should appear in Christ Church Records, and not in ours. . . . Yours truly, CHAS. HANDFIELD WYATT. There is no complete legal proof that the marriage took place, because there is no return of the minister officiating. This is doubtless the reason why, some months later, May 16, 1836, as seen in the marriage bond, a second license was secured, and the ceremony was performed in Richmond, Va., by the Rev. Amasa Converse, a Presbyterian minister who edited fe The Southern Religious Telegraph." Il6 EDGAR ALLAN FOE. The cause of the removal to Richmond at this time was the establishment of the famous " Southern Liter ary Messenger," and Poe s engagement, first as a casual contributor to the magazine, and then as its literary editor. This engagement had been brought about by the kind offices of his good friend Kennedy, to whom T. W. White, editor and proprietor of the " Messenger," had written for a contribution, and who recommended Poe as a very remarkable young man. Poe sent White some of his " Tales of the Folio Club," one of which "Berenice" (not, how ever, one of those named below) appeared in the number for March, 1835, attracting wide attention. The stories known to have been among " The Tales of the Folio Club" were the "MS. Found in a Bottle," " Lionizing," " The Visionary (" Assigna tion")," "Siope," "Epimanes," and "A Descent into the Maelstrom " (the latter on the authority of Mr. J. H. B. Latrobe, in Miss Rice s Baltimore Me morial Volume, p. 59). Poe seems to have had ten other " Tales of the Folio Club " ready, which he did not use in the competition : t( Berenice" (above mentioned), " Morella," " Hans Phaall " (so spelled in the "Messenger" for June, 1835, though re peatedly, in his correspondence, with one / only), "Bon-Bon," "Shadow," "Loss of Breath," "King Pest," " Metzengerstein," "Due de 1 Omelette," and "A Tale of Jerusalem." These tales must have been those described by Mr. J. P. Kennedy in his note to Poe s letter of No vember, 1834, as tnen m tne hands of Carey & Lea, of Philadelphia, for consideration : " being two series submitted for the prize, for which one was chosen, BIOGRAPHY. 117 and two others at my suggestion sent to Carey & Lea." One of these tales was sold to Miss Leslie, for the " Souvenir," at $i 5. Letters dated December, 1834, and March, May, June, and July, 1835, show the author in lively correspondence with Kennedy and White on matters largely pertaining to his new con nection with the " Messenger" as critical reviewer. In one of these letters to White he writes : " I must insist on your not sending me any remuneration for ser vices of this nature [aiding the circulation of the " Messenger " by notices in the Baltimore " Repub lican," "American," etc.]. They are a pleasure to me, and no trouble whatever." Occasional sums from White of $5 or $20 reached Poe through the mails, and were welcome additions to his purse. Number 10 of the "Messenger" con tained thirty-four columns by the new contributor, including " Hans Pfaall " (which, he asserts, "was written especially for the Messenger "). In September, 1835, his correspondence shows that he was already in Richmond, probably at Mrs. Yar- rington s boarding-house, and, a little later, was receiving a salary of $520 a year as editor of the " Messenger," increased to $800 by Mr. White s liberality for extra work. This was to be still further increased to $ 1,000 the next year. He writes exultantly that "his friends had received him with open arms," asks Kennedy s advice as to his course in the " Messenger," and finds that his reputation is increasing in the South. Already, however, a note of warning sounds from White in September, 1835. "No man is safe that drinks before breakfast. No man can do so and attend to business properly." Poe was beginning to complain Ii8 EDGAR ALLAN POE. of "ill-health," and had contracted this unfortunate habit of morning potations, either from the delicacy of his constitution or from the hereditary " blue devils " from which he suffered. Just after his arrival in Richmond, indeed, when everything seemed bright, and he had been employed by White at something more than $4.0 a month, he fell into low spirits, and wrote Kennedy a despairing letter in which he says : "I am suffering under a depression of spirits, such as I have never felt before. I have struggled in vain against the influence of this melancholy ; you will believe me, when I say that I am still miserable, in spite of the great improvement in my circumstances. ... I am wretched, and know not why. Con sole me, for you can. But let it be quickly, or it will be too late. . . . Persuade me to do what is right. . . . Urge me to do what is right. . . . Fail not, as you value your peace of mind hereafter." Kennedy replied in consoling words and lulled the rasped spirit of the poet as well as he could, fearing that the constitutional hypochondria might drive him to desperation. In later life Poe affirmed that to Ken nedy he owed life itself, possibly referring to the ad mirable conduct of the Baltimore novelist in lending him money at critical periods of his existence and giving him the sound advice which he so much needed. The bibliography of Poe s writings will show the variety and multiplicity of his work during the eighteen months he resided in Richmond, two whole volumes alone of the present edition being devoted to the uncol- lected reviews and essays in the "Messenger." He showed himself a most industrious and indefatigable editor, author, and critic, pouring forth a tide of re views, critiques, poems (revised or original), stories, BIOGRAPHY. 119 satires, and romances such as hardly any two men could have been expected to supply. These are treated more fully in the following chapter and show the epoch-making character of Poe s work as an imagi native writer and scientific critic. In the early stage of the Richmond period, after the marriage, the Poes seem to have kept house and taken boarders, borrowing money from Kennedy and the Poe family to establish themselves. The evil habit of borrowing began to grow on Poe in spite of the abun dant support his "Messenger" connection gave him. One is loath, however, to believe that there was any sharp practice connected with it. That Poe abun dantly understood the humorous side and the practices of the "dead beat" is plain from his "Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences." 120 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER VI. 1837-1840. ADRIFT : NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA. THE last leaf of the t( Southern Literary Messen ger " for January, 1837, contained the following announcement : To the Patrons of the Southern Literary Messenger : " In issuing the present number of the Messen ger* (the first of a new volume) I deem it proper to inform my subscribers, and the public generally, that Mr. Poe, who has filled the editorial department for the last twelve months with so much ability, retired from that station on the 3d inst., and the entire man agement of the work again devolves on myself alone. Mr. P., however, will continue to furnish its columns, from time to time, with the effusions of his vigorous and popular pen, and my old contributors, among whom I am proud to number some of the best writers in our state and country, will doubtless continue to favor me with their valuable contributions. . . . " It is perhaps due to Mr. Poe to state, that he is not responsible for any of the articles which appear in the present number, except the reviews of Bryant s Poems, George Balcombe, Irving s Astoria, Rey nolds s Address on the South Sea Expedition, An- thon s Cicero, the first number of Arthur Gordon Pym, a sea story, and two poetical effusions to which BIOGRAPHY. 121 his name is prefixed. . . . RICHMOND, January 26, 1837. In an earlier number, for December, 1835, the publisher had said : "Among these [contributors], we hope to be par doned for singling out the name of Mr. EDGAR A. POE ; not with design to make any invidious distinction, but because such a mention of him finds numberless prece dents in the journals on every side, which have rung the praises of his uniquely original vein of imagination, and of humorous, delicate satire." Page 72 of the "Southern Literary Messenger" for January, 1837, contained a foot-note printed in small type attached to the review of " Anthon s Cic ero," to the following effect : " Mr. Poe s attention being called in another direc tion, he will decline, with the present number, the Editorial duties on the Messenger. His Critical Notices for this month end with Professor Anthon s Cicero what follows is from another hand. With the best wishes to the Magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous of bidding all parties a peaceable farewell." Whatever may have been the cause of the " peace able farewell," the rupture between Poe and White, it is absolutely incredible that it could have been the "idleness" or irregularity" of the former, for in this final number for January, 1837, fully one-third of the ninety-six pages is occupied by the eight contribu tions of the poet-critic, nor is it correct to say (Wood- berry, 103) that "Poe furnished no more installments of his serial narrative, Arthur Gordon Pym, which had just been begun in The Messenger. The very next number of the "Messenger," for 122 EDGAR ALLAN POE. February, 1837, contains over fifteen columns more of the serial narrative! Quis credat ? The previous two years of the "Messenger" had been crowded enriched beyond compare with a prodigious variety of work from Foe s ever-fertile, ever- flying pen. If he ventured to republish occasionally what had appeared in his first three timid, scarce, and unknown volumes of 1827, 1829, and 1831, he sel dom reproduced an old poem without embellishing it and reducing it to a shape and form that have re mained incomparable. The literary perfection which he demanded from his contemporaries was no less sternly exacted from his own writings : with the result that he has yet to be convicted of a tech nical error in his finished works. The 1827 volume of Foe was suppressed immediately after its pub lication by C. F. S. Thomas of Boston, and is now so rare that the McKee copy sold in New York, November, 1900, for $2,050. The 1829 " Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems" became almost as great a rarity, and the West Point "Poems " of 1831 in which the forty pages of 1827 had grown to one hundred and twenty-four are like wise a bibliographical rarity, doubtless even more so then than now when an occasional copy can be picked up at a fabulous price. To the "Messenger" for 183435 (beginning August, 1834, an d extending to September, 1835) Poe contributed nine articles; in the "Messenger" for 1835-36 (from December to the following No vember) Poe had no less than eighteen contributions ; and in the volume for 1837, nine contributions, many of them of great length, appear by him : an almost in credible array of work for a young man of "idle," BIOGRAPHY. 123 "drunken," and "irregular" habits, encumbered with a delicate wife and mother-in-law ! Of the fourteen long prose pieces contributed during these three years, seven are Poe classics: "A MS. Found in a Bottle"; " Berenice "; Morella " ; "Hans Pfaall " ; "The Visionary (Assignation) "; "Shadow"; " Metzengerstein " ; seven are the re markable "A Tale of Jerusalem," " Lionizing," " Bon-Bon," " Loss of Breath," " King Pest," "Due de F Omelette," and "Four Beasts in One (Epimanes) ". Besides this striking abundance of prose master pieces, some of which have placed themselves among the rarest prose-poems in the language, there were numerous metrical poems in their early stages " The Coliseum," " Irene," " Politian," " Israfel," "Paean," "To Helen," "To Science," "The Valley of Nis," and others: enough to make in all an average of four each month during the period of Poe s incumbency as editor. There is no doubt, however, that Poe was ad dicted to drugs and stimulants at irregular intervals and under strong temptations. That he was either an habitual drunkard or an habitual opium-eater is con tradicted both by the unanimous testimony of his intimate friends those who really knew him and by the piles of exquisitely-written manuscript, manu script written at all hours of the day and night, under all circumstances of good and bad health, hurriedly or deliberately, that have remained behind to attest a physical condition absolutely the opposite of that of a victim of delirium tremens^ No opium sot, no 1 The author (who had formed this view independently) was glad to see it confirmed by Mr. Appleton Morgan, The Personality of 124 EDGAR ALLAN POE. habitual victim of spirituous liquors, could have written this firm, clear, steady, delightfully legible feminine hand- writing. Poe s case has never been scientifically diagnosed by a competent neurologist who possessed the combined pathological and literary equipment and freedom from prejudice necessary to render his case more singular than "The Case of M. Valdemar " intelligible to the reading world. Poe himself comes nearest to it in his ghastly tale of "Hop- Frog," in which he describes autobiographically, one cannot but think the frightful effects of a single glass of wine on the deformed cripple. His brain was always at fever-heat, a volcano raging with inward fires and full of the molten lava of nervous irritability : to add a single drop of external stimulant to it was to cause it to overflow, and destroy or ravage everything within reach. There are temperaments that come into the world in toxicated, like the " God-intoxicated Spinoza" so brimming with spiritual fire that there is no room for anything more. Such temperaments are perilously allied to hysteria and madness, but one needs only to glance over the literary annals of the globe to pick out the Sapphos, the Lucans, the Tassos, the Pascals, the Burnses, the Holderlins, the Collinses. That Poe maintained his absolute sanity to the last, and increased the lofty reasonableness and perfection of his style up to the very gates of Death, is an historical fact illuminative alike to the literary historian and the pathologist. Poe s position, first as contributor to the "Messen ger," then as its editor, had never been a bed of roses. Almost at the outset a confidential correspondent of Poe" {Munsey s Magazine, July, 1897), and by the experts in handwriting to whom he submitted Poe s MSS. BIOGRAPHY. 125 Mr. T. W. White (its proprietor) wrote to him as follows : "June 22, 1835. James M. Garnett, Essex, to Mr. Thomas W. White, Editor South. Lit. Mess. With respect to Mr. Poe, if I am to judge by his last communication, I should determine that he will rather injure than benefit your Paper. His sole object in this seems to be, to inform your Readers how many Authors he knows, at least by name. That he may be a scholar of the very highest grade I will not question ; but it is not always the best scholars that write best, or have the best taste and judgment. Read his piece over again, and I think you will agree with me that it has neither wit nor humor; or that if it has any, it lies too deep for common understanding to follow it." (MS. letter in the Virginia Historical Society s Library, Richmond, Va.) Envy and jealousy followed the gifted and unfor tunate man wherever he went, and Richmond was no exception. That he did splendid and epoch-making work for White was shown in the enormous increase (from 700 -to 5,000) in circulation of the magazine and the great attention that was paid to its literary and critical judgments all over the North and South. Mr. White himself was an excellent man and busi ness manager who had the sense to see the value of Poe to his journal and to retain these invaluable services as long as he could. Of Mr. White himself Dr. B. B. Minor (one of the editors of the "Messenger") writes the author under date of November 16, 1900 : " Mr. Thomas W. White, founder and proprietor of the Southern Literary Messenger, was not a man of education or self-culture; but a practical printer. 126 EDGAR ALLAN POE. He was small and of unprepossessing presence ; yet pleasant, kind-hearted, and conciliatory : so that he could enlist others in what he proposed to them. In establishing the Messenger, he probably had an ad vantage that he would not have had as a literary man. He had a printing office and needed only patronage enough to pay him for a good monthly job. In ap pealing to the pride and patriotism of our people, which he did sincerely, he could evoke the assistance and co operation of literary men. Thus he obtained for a whole year, gratuitously, the faithful and efficient edi torial services of Mr. James E. Heath, grandfather of Professor Richard Heath Dabney. Mr. Heath had a good salary as 2nd Auditor of the State of Virginia and could and did afford to help Mr. White s ap proved enterprise. " Mr. Heath was recognized as a literary man and had published a Virginian novel entitled (I think) Edge Hill. I would like to read it again. Mr. White could write a very good and coaxing letter and drew other influential men to the support of his praise worthy adventure. At first he announced himself as printer and proprietor of the Messenger. "In Vol. II. he announced himself proprietor, but said that the intellectual department was under the conduct of the proprietor, assisted by a gentleman of distinguished literary talents. He also said : The gentleman referred to in the gth Number of the Mes senger as filling its Editorial chair, retired thence with the nth Number. "In Vol. I., No. 9, p. 481, most cordial thanks are given to the gentleman (Mr. Heath) who had up to that time rendered gratuitously such valuable services to the Messenger, and it was stated that an BIOGRAPHY. 127 Editor of acknowledged capacity had been engaged, who would devote his whole attention to the work. This was the person who so soon retired, with the i ith Number. I do not know who this was. I be lieve that Lucian Minor was of great assistance to Mr. White, after both Mr. Heath and Mr. Poe. Mr. White thought all the world of Mr. Lucian Minor and the Messenger once gave him the highest sort of notice. I think it was in connection with Mr. Minor s Eulogy on Professor John A. G. Davis and his fine picture of a Model Lawyer. e< As early as Vol. III., Mr. White announced himself as Editor and Proprietor, and continued to do so. He died January 19, 1843, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. He was a native of Virginia, but was engaged for some time as a printer in Boston, which may have been a benefit to him in his subse quent work in Richmond. It was once stated some where that he was a Northern man, but he had this corrected in the Messenger, which declared that he was a Tuckahoe. " Mr. White s Editors were James E. Heath, Lucian Minor, Edgar A. Poe ; Judge Henry St. George Tucker, for a short time, upon the testimony of Colonel Thomas H. Ellis ; and Lieutenant Mathew F. Maury, U. S. N. I must have become acquainted with him soon after I settled in Richmond, in 1841. Mr. John W. Fergusson has reminded me that he took to my law office proof-sheets which Mr. White sent and asked me to correct for the Messenger. My first contribution was published in January, 1842, and must have been written some time before. It was in behalf of my Alma Mater, the University of Vir ginia, and was edited by Lieutenant Maury, as his writing on the MS. plainly shows. I still have it." 128 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Mr. White s daughter, Eliza, to whom Poe ad dressed the stanzas "To Eliza, was said to be a beautiful girl who visited the Clemms and Poes after they removed to Philadelphia, and afterwards became a well-known Shaksperian reader, dying unmarried in 1888, seventy-six years of age. After the severance of his connection with the " Messenger," in January, 1837, Poe is found some months after in New York, at a Carmine Street house numbered with the unfortunate figure 113^. It will be remembered that he occupied the dormitory No. i 3 West Range, while he was at the University, a fact in which the superstitious seers of signs and wonders may revel. The house was a wretched wooden shanty, abun dantly large for the little party of three and a few boarders whom the indefatigable Mrs. Clemm decided to take as a help in the household expenses. Invaluable testimony as to Poe s sobriety at this time is rendered by one of these boarders, a Mr. William Gowans, " the wealthy and eccentric bibli- opolist," who lived eight months with the Pbes in the Carmine Street house. 1 Mr. Gowans joins N. P. Willis, Frances Sargent Osgood, George R. Graham, and many others with whom Poe was intimately asso ciated in social life and in literary office work, in the assertion that he was never otherwise seen than as the courteous and perfect gentleman whose manners, to women especially, were almost reverential, and to his employers habitually respectful and considerate. In his letter Mr. Gowans says : " For eight months or more one house contained us, as one table fed. During that time I saw much 1 New York Evening Mail, December, 1870 ; Ingram, I., 143. BIOGRAPHY. 129 of him, and had an opportunity of conversing with him often, and I must say, that I never saw him the least affected with liquor, nor even descend to any known vice, while he was one of the most courteous, gentlemanly, and intelligent companions I have met with during my journeyings and haltings through divers divisions of the globe ; besides, he had an extra induce ment to be a good man as well as a good husband, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and loveliness ; her eye could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate ; a temper and disposition of surpassing sweetness ; besides, she seemed as much devoted to him and his every interest as a young mother is to her first-born. . . . Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing counte nance, what the ladies would call decidedly hand some." Poe himself had carefully trained the beautiful young Baltimore girl, and under his loving and patient tuition reversing the position of Morella and Ligeia, whose " profound erudition" instructed their husbands she became an expert linguist. Her mother speaks of her rare musical powers and beautiful voice : " Of all the women I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia [that mingled reminiscence of wife and mother] was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passions 1 could form no esti mate, save by the miraculous expression of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice." "Eddie," declares Mrs. Clemm, " was domestic in all his habits, seldom leaving home for an hour un- VOL. i. Q 130 EDGAR ALLAN less his darling Virginia, or myself, were with him. He was truly an affectionate, kind husband, and a devoted son to me. He was impulsive, generous, affectionate, and noble. His tastes were very simple, and his ad miration for all that was good and beautiful very great. . . . We three lived only for each other." J And here again arises the exquisite form of Eleonora the loveliest of all Poe s fable-autobiographies: " She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these reminiscences, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long de parted. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had always dwelled together beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the. Many-Colored Grass. No un- guided footstep ever came upon the vale ; for it lay far away up among a range of giant hills that hung bee tling around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was trodden in its vicinity ; and, to reach our happy home, there was need of put ting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. " Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing noth ing of the world without the valley, I, and my cousin, and her mother." With this we may combine two other autobio graphic touches for Poe may best be interpreted by himself one from " Berenice," the other, the remark able opening lines of " Eleonora " : "I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad ; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence : whether much that is glorious, 1 Ingram, I , 146. BIOGRAPHY. 131 whether all that is profound, does not spring from disease of thought, from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awaking, to find that they have been on the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wis dom which is of good, and more of the mere knowl edge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the * light ineffable ; and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturiS "We will say, then, that I am mad. {Eleo- nora. ) " To muse for long unwearied hours, with my at tention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book ; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer s day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor ; lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp or the embers of a fire ; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower ; to repeat, , monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind ; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in : such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bid ding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation." (Berenice.) 132 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Here is Poe drawing his own silhouette out of the cloudland of memory and self-analysis : the dreamer, the poet, the madman, the monomaniac, if you will, passionately addicted to revery, as passionately as the Hindoo who fixes his lifelong glance on the mystic lotus, the ineffable flower, that lifts its chalice above the slime of Life ; the ardent lover, the remnant of an ancient race feverishly enamored of the Beautiful, the solitary deluged with poetic visions, whose eye for the Unknown is almost celestially clear, while every step in the Actual is a stumble. " Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I, ill of health, and buried in gloom she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy ; hers, the ramble on the hill-side mine, the studies of the cloister ; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful medita tion she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice ! I call upon her name Berenice ! and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound. Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy ! O gorgeous yet fantastic beauty ! O sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim ! O Naiad among its foun tains ! And then then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease, fatal disease, fell like the simoom upon her frame ; and even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person." BIOGRAPHY. 133 Here is the premonition of the ill husband, solitary, introspective, Hamlet-like in his profuse soliloquizing on Death and the Eternal, a more than Werther in the fiery intensity of his monologue, and of the mortally stricken wife ten or twelve years before the dread catastrophe of his illness and her death came to pass, a prophetic realization, in advance, of what was to happen in I 847. The early New York period was devoted to the completion of " The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," a story of an Antarctic Cruise as far south as the 84th parallel, made up of equal ingredients of Poe, "The Ancient Mariner," and Benjamin MorelPs "Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and Pacific" (New York: 1832: pp. 183 seq.}. To give realism to the adventures, Poe paraphrased Morell largely as to facts, but had only to draw on his own marvellous imagination to explain them or to conceive situations full of graphic horror and exquisite though terrible landscape-painting, alternately Claudelike and Salvatoresque in their poetic or their supernatural beauty. Such was the realism of the narrative that it was taken for genuine and, after its appearance in book form in 1838, it was reprinted by the Putnams in England. The period from 1838 to 1844 Poe and his little family spent in Philadelphia, then the literary metrop olis of the Union. While he was in Richmond he is said to have received an invitation from Dr. F. L. Hawks of North Carolina to come to New York and collaborate with him on the newly projected " New York Review." His one contribution to this theo logical quarterly then in the throes of the financial panic of 183738 was a review of Stephens 134 EDGAR ALLAN POE. "Travels in Arabia Petraea," partly original, partly compiled from the book itself and from Keith s work on Prophecy. Professor Anthon contributed the Hebrew learning of the article. In a faded and time-stained copy of the " Baltimore Book" for 1839, edited by W. H. Carpenter and T. S. Arthur, now lying before us, we find : Siope A Fable. [In the manner of the Psychological Autobiographists] By Edgar Poe. Ours is a world of words : Quiet we call Silence which is the merest word of all. (At Aaraaf.) the earliest form of an allegory which is perhaps Poe s most majestic piece of prose, worthy of Jean Paul Richter in its music and magnificence. This earliest form of the fable is destitute of the fine lines from the Greek of Alcman and their English interpretation by Poe, found in later editions, and shows that " Arthur Gordon Pym " did not wholly occupy the poet s time at this period. Philadelphia in the late thirties and forties was an interesting place intellectually. Here the first monthly magazine, the first daily newspaper, the first religious magazine, the first religious weekly, the first penny paper, mathematical journal, juvenile magazine, and illustrated comic paper, ever published in the United States, had started on their career about the middle of the eighteenth century. We have several pleasant glimpses of the Poes dur ing this period of their sojourn in Philadelphia, even 13IOGRAPHY. [35 Griswold paying a tribute to the beauty of their home life: " It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with him. " His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly. He was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance, and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neat- iess and the air of refinement in his home. " It was in a small house in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the centre of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius." "The residence described," adds Gill, 1 "was a small, brick tenement in North Seventh Street, in that part of the city then known as Spring Garden. The house was on the rear portion of the lot, leaving a large vacant space in front, affording Poe and his gentle invalid wife opportunity for indulging their pen chant for plants and flowers." Mr. C. W. Alexander, publisher of the "Gentle man s Magazine," and a founder of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," wrote a year after Poe s death of his association with him on the magazine : " I had long and familiar intercourse with him, and very cheerfully embrace the opportunity which you now offer of bearing testimony to the uniform gentle ness of disposition [italics Mr. A. s] and kindness of heart which distinguished Mr. Poe in all my inter- 1 Life of Edgar A. Poe, p. 1005 Chatto and Windus: 1878. 136 EDGAR ALLAN POE. course with him. With all his faults, he was a gentle man ; which is more than can be said of some who have undertaken the ungracious task of blacking the reputation which Mr. Poe, of all others, esteemed the precious jewel of his soul. "That Mr. Poe had faults," he continues, "seri ously detrimental to his own interests, none, of course, will deny. They were, unfortunately, too well known in the literary circles of Philadelphia, were there any disposition to conceal them. But he alone was the sufferer, and not those who received the bene fit of his pre-eminent talents, however irregular his habits or uncertain his contributions may occasionally have been." There is a continuous array of testimony of this kind, acknowledging indeed Poe s infirmities though there is far from unanimity as to these, some absolutely denying them but almost universally emphasizing his essential goodness of heart. His continual necessi ties made him an incessant borrower, and his accounts occasionally became entangled ; but no one familiar with his published and unpublished correspondence will deny his equally incessant anxiety to pay his whole indebtedness to the very last penny. Another pleasing glimpse of the domestic life of the Poes at this time is given by one who knew them well: " Their little garden in summer, and the house in winter, were overflowing with luxuriant grape and other vines, and liberally ornamented with choice flowers of the poet s selection. Poe was a pattern of social and domestic worth. It was our happiness to participate with them in the occasional enjoyment of the beauty of the flowers, and to watch the enthusiasm BIOGRAPHY. 137 with which the fondly attached pair exhibited their floral taste. Here, too, we were wont to participate in the hospitality which always rendered Foe s home the home of his friends. We call to mind some inci dents in the pleasantly remembered intercourse that existed between the ladies of our families, especially in the hours of sickness, which rendered so much of Vir ginia s life a source of painful anxiety to all who had the pleasure of knowing her, and of witnessing the gradual wasting away of her fragile frame. " But she was an exquisite picture of patient love liness, always wearing upon her beautiful countenance the smile of resignation, and the warm, ever-cheerful look with which she ever greeted her friends. " How devotedly her husband loved the gentle being is touchingly illustrated in the Griswold descrip tion of his visit [quotation]. . . . This, coming from the malignant Griswold, is an eloquent tribute to the kindly and tender spirit of Poe, whose devotion no adversity, not even the fiend that haunted him in the fatal cup, could warp or lessen, and this attachment, intense as it was, was equally strong and enduring in the soul of his Annabel Lee, his gentle mate, whose affection that poem so touchingly and sadly commemorates : " * And this maiden, she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. " She was a child, sings the poem; and, indeed, Poe himself was little else in the everyday perplexities and responsibilities of life. On leaving Philadelphia for New York, when breaking up their simple, fairy- like home, we were favored with some of their pet flowers, which, preserved and framed, remain in our 138 EDGAR ALLAN POE. household to this day as interesting relics of those happy days with Edgar and Virginia." The author of this pretty pen-picture of the Poe home life was T. Cottrell Clarke, first editor of the famous Philadelphia " Saturday Evening Post," which had been founded in 1821 by Atkinson & Alexander and was published in the office once occupied by Ben jamin Franklin, back of No. 53 Market Street. In fact, no one ever came very near the Poes without being struck by the wholesomeness, sanity, beauty, and brightness of their surroundings. The direst poverty might reign as it did through life in their immediate vicinity, yet there is none of the squalor or moral degradation, irresponsibility or seedy neglect which the health of both husband and wife and the frequent extremity of their needs might well have excused. The Imp of the Perverse ruled there rarely, only as the Imp of the Cup the hereditary fiend which William Poe, his cousin, in a well-known letter to Edgar, declared to be "a great enemy to our family " : " There is one thing I am anxious to caution you against, and which has been a great enemy to our family, I hope, however, in your case, it may prove unnecessary, a too free use of the bottle. " 1 In Philadelphia it was Poe s singular fortune to fall in with the Good and the Evil Angel of his life with George R. Graham and Rufus Wilmot Griswold two persons whose influence on his career during critical periods was profound and far-reaching. The dead French Academician is usually eulogized by his successor ; the dead man of letters is sometimes kicked by his expected eulogist. 1 Century Magazine, Sept., 1894, p. 737. BIOGRAPHY. 139 The story of s( Graham s Magazine," which exer cised an influence on American ante-bellum letters un equalled by any other periodical, not even excepting the younger "Atlantic Monthly," is condensed by Mr. A. H. Smyth from Mr. Graham s own lips, as follows : l " Graham was the owner and editor of Atkinson s Casket, when, in 1841, William E. Burton, the actor, came to him with the request that he should buy The Gentleman s Magazine, of which Burton had been the proprietor for four years. Burton explained that money was needed for his new theatre, that the magazine must be sold, that it numbered 3,500 sub scribers, and that it would be sold outright for $3, 500. Graham, who at that time had 1,500 subscribers to his own magazine, accepted the offer, and The Gentleman s Magazine was transferred to him. There is one thing more, said Burton, I want you to take care of my young editor. That young editor who, in this manner, entered the employ of George Graham was Edgar Allan Poe." Mr. Graham bore clear and willing testimony to the efficient service rendered by Poe to the new magazine, which, now combined with the "Casket," took the name of its new owner. From 5,000 subscribers, the number soon increased to over 37,000 (Smyth), certainly a good sign of a new editor ! Graham found little in Poe s conduct to reprove, nor did he remem ber (continues Mr. Smyth) any cause beyond envy and malice for Griswold s truculent slanders. A quarrel of an hour led to Poe s dismissal, but the friendly relations between the poet and his former em- 1 A. H. Smyth : Philadelphia Magazines and their Contribu tors: 1892. 140 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ployer remained unsevered. From New York, Poe sent Graham the manuscript of a story for which he asked and received $50. The story remained unpub lished for a year, when Poe again appeared in the editorial room and begged for the return of the manu script, that he might try with it for the prize of $ i oo offered by the " Dollar Magazine " for the best prose tale. Graham showed his <f love and friendship " for the author by surrendering the story, and the judges awarded to Poe the prize for " The Gold-Bug." The "Dollar Magazine" began its career in January, 1843, and its publishers were the publishers of the " Ledger." When George W. Childs pur chased the "Ledger," he bought also the "Dollar Magazine," and changed its name to the "Home Weekly and Household Newspaper." In it Haw thorne published, in 1851, "The Unpardonable Sin." Meanwhile, after the resignation of Poe, the maga zine, still under Graham s management, was edited by Ann S. Stephens and Charles J. Peterson, until Rufus Wilmot Griswold sat in the responsible chair. James Russell Lowell was a subordinate editor of the maga zine as early as 1 843 and invited Hawthorne, at the instance of Poe, to become a contributor. Graham himself took a large hand in the editorial conduct of his magazine, though after Gris wold s dismissal, the well-known critic E. P. Whipple wrote the editorial reviews of more important books. Beginning with Volume XVIII., being the addition of the ten volumes of Atkinson s " Casket," and the seven volumes of Burton s " Gentleman s Magazine," Graham s first volume, in 1841, was distinguished by the appearance of Poe s "Descent into the Mael- BIOGRAPHY. 141 strom," and his "Murders in the Rue Morgue. On the cover of Volume XXI., 1 842, appears the name of Griswold; and Bayard Taylor and Charles Godfrey Leland were successive editors. According to Graham s own statement (Smyth, 223), the circulation of the magazine at the height of its popularity never exceeded 35,000, or 37,000. He sold the magazine in 1 848, but bought it back in 1849, parting with it definitely only in 1854. No publication of the day, on this side of the water, had so many and such remarkable contributors, Wash ington Irving being the only prominent literary Ameri can of the day who held aloof. He was the editor of the rival " Knickerbocker," which is said jealously to have guarded the productions of its one great writer. In "Graham s" appeared Longfellow s " Spanish Student," "Belfry of Bruges," "Nuremberg," "Childhood," "The Arsenal at Springfield," and other poems. Hawthorne s "Twice-Told Tales" largely appeared first in "Graham s." George D. Prentice, Fanny Forrester, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Grace Greenwood, William Gilmore Simms, Miss Sedgwick, Frances S. Osgood, N. P. Willis, J. K. Paulding, Park Benjamin, W. W. Story, Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Albert Pike (of " Isadore " fame) were among the writers who aided to surround the new venture with a halo of literary glory. And this glory came from Graham s honest recog nition of the fact that his contributors must be well paid : the first American magazine manager that recog nized such business responsibilities. The popularity of the new magazine, under the new management and with such a corps of contributors, was almost instan taneous. 142 EDGAR ALLAN POE. The other the Evil angel of Poe s life was Griswold, who succeeded him in the editorial chair of "Graham s." The Rev. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, D.D., was a Baptist minister who divided his time between literature and religion. Born in Vermont in 1815, he was of excellent Puritan and English lineage, with marked literary tastes and acquirements and so indefatigable as a compiler and editor that though dying at the early age of forty-two, in 1857, he left behind an immense mass of work in history, memoirs, editions, and com pilations creditable to his taste and skill. Among the journals he edited were "The New Yorker," "The Brother Jonathan," " The New World," "Graham s Magazine" (1842-1 843), and "The International Magazine." His contributions to journalism alone would fill a dozen octavo volumes, while he wrote six or eight independent works on history, biography, philosophy, and theology, with poems, and a novel. But the work which of all others has endowed Griswold s name with immortality an " immortality of infamy," as George R. Graham calls it is <( The Works of Edgar A. Poe ; Poems, Tales, and Miscel lanies ; with a Memoir;" two vols., 1849, followed by a third containing the notorious suppressed biogra phy, and a fourth, completing the publication. All the authorities of the time gave unstinted praise to Griswold as a compiler ; the poet Campbell, Whipple, Irving, Poe, Prescott the historian, Bryant, Tuckerman, and other eminent literati praised the collections dedicated to the American poets and prose writers of the first jubilee of the century, works which are, indeed, invaluable for the facts they contain and for what they have rescued from oblivion. Griswold BIOGRAPHY. 143 possessed, too, a brilliant and pungent style, which reveals itself often in the Poe Memoir and a critical gift delicate, incisive, penetrating of no mean order. With all the masculine strength and untiring industry that he displayed was mingled, however, one soft, one weak spot : he believed himself to be a poet ; and on this spot Poe as might have been expected in fallibly put his finger. But in contrasting these good and evil demons of Poe s existence so much at length, the conscientious biographer should not overlook the smaller but likewise significant agencies that contributed to mould and round out existence for him at this time. Among these were Dr. N. C. Brooks of Baltimore and his "American Museum," published in the Mon umental City, "The Gift" (Miss Leslie s "An nual"), the Pittsburg "Literary Examiner," and Burton s "Gentleman s Magazine." Instead of writing a review of Irving, whom he did not like but considered an "overrated writer" of "surreptitious and adventitious reputation," of "tame propriety and faultlessness of style" as Dr. Brooks had requested him Poe sent the freshest and most powerful of his tales the dream- tale "Ligeia," said on the margin of Ingram s copy, in a MS. note, to have been dreamed, like Kubla Khan, while he was asleep. In December, 1838, Poe contributed to "The American Museum," "The Signora Zenobia," and "The Scythe of Time" (rechristened, later, "How to Write a Blackwood Article," and "A Predica ment"). "The Gift" for 1839 energized him into writing his story of dualism, the favorite Doppelganger idea 144 EDGAR ALLAN POE. of German literature, "William Wilson, " in which he dramatizes Conscience and makes it subordinate to the animal nature. The old balladry of England and Germany is full of the story of the man of two natures so loosely amalgamated that they slip asunder and the evil one goes forth to roam at the midnight hour, or the good one fiercely incarnates itself and confronts the other : ideas as old as the ancient Persian dualism of Light and Darkness, of Ormuzd and Ahriman dallied with by Shelley, and Hawthorne, and Calderon, and Stevenson, and Goethe (whose Faust and Mephisto appear simply radiations of the good and the evil in a naturally combined Fanst-Mephisto) . Poe has artisti cally slipped the razorlike edge of his analysis in be tween these twin natures, separated their sutures without the spilling of blood, and set them adrift as marvellous automata, to play over against each other. "The Museum" for April contained "The Haunted Palace," and the " Gentleman s Magazine" for September " The Fall of the House of Usher," two masterpieces which by a sort of magnetic affinity ultimately ran together and were combined in one story. Of this combined masterpiece Lowell said in "Gra ham s" for February, 1845: "As an example of his style we would refer to one of his tales, The House of Usher, in the first vol ume of his Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque. It has a singular charm for us, and we think that no one could read it without being strongly moved by its serene and sombre beauty. Had its author written nothing else it would alone have been enough to stamp him as a man of genius, and the master of a classic style. In this tale occurs one of the most beau tiful of his poems. It loses greatly by being taken out of BIOGRAPHY. 145 its rich and appropriate setting, but we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of copying it here. We know no modern poet who might not have been justly proud of it." [Here he quotes " The Haunted Palace," and adds :] " Was ever the wreck and desolation of a noble mind so musically sung ?" In a note evidently inspired by Poe himself this number of " Graham s " (p. 52) says : " Since the publication of the Tales of the Gro tesque and Arabesque, Mr. P. has written, for this and other journals, the following tales, independently of essays, criticisms, etc. : The Mystery of Marie Roget/ Never Bet Your Head [sit], < A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, The Masque of the Red Death/ The Colloquy of Monos and Una, The Landscape Garden [stf], * The Pit and the Pendu lum/ The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Man of the Crowd, The System of Doctors Tarr and Fether [sic], The Spectacles, The Elk, < The Business Man, The Premature Burial/ The Oblong Box/ Thou Art the Man/ Eleonora/ Three Sundays in a Week/ The Island of the Fay/ Life in Death/ The Angel of the Odd/ The Lit erary Life of Thingum-Bob/ The Descent into the Maelstrom/ The looz-Tale of Scheherazade/ Mesmeric Revelation, The Murders in the Rue Morgue/ The Purloined Letter/ and The Gold- Bug. He is also the author of the late Balloon- Hoax. The Grotesque and Arabesque included twenty-five tales." "The Haunted Palace" appeared in April, and in the following November appeared Longfellow s Beleaguered City " in the " Southern Literary Mes- VOL. i. 10 146 EDGAR ALLAN POE. senger." A furious controversy arose in which Poe accused the New England poet of stealing his idea. The reader may judge for himself by comparing the two poems. There was no reason for Poe s jealousy of Long fellow since the poems are as unlike as charcoal and diamond. Poe never seems to have realized that he could not be plagiarized, that he was too unique and original to be copied, that Poe could not under any circumstances be Longfellow. The pretty and pic turesque conceit of "The Beleaguered City," is as different from the glory and ghostliness of "The Haunted Palace" as the solemn, almost insane head of Dante is from that of a cherub afloat in one of Cor- reggio s ceilings. The year 1839 was signalized by two events, one unimportant, but remarkable as showing the spirit of his enemies, the publication of "The Conchologist s First Book" ; the other as witnessing the issue of perhaps the most original volume of short stories ever published the " Tales of the Grotesque and Ara besque." As we write, the first and second editions of the manual on conchology (1839, 1840: Philadelphia: Haswell, Barrington, & Haswell) are before us. The facsimile of the title-page of the edition of 1839 re veals all the minutiae of the descriptive title once in vogue. This is followed by a preface signed E. A. P., ex plaining the terms Malacology and Conchology, with acknowledgments to Mr. Isaac Lea of Philadelphia and Mr. Thomas Wyatt, "and his late excellent Manual of Conchology.* Three pages of intro duction, with quotations from De Blainville, Parkinson, and Bergman pages very agreeably written intro- THE CONCHOLOGISTS FIRST BOOK: OK, A S Y S T E M OF TESTACEOUS MALACOLOGY. 3rvaitflcTi evprcsslj for tfte use of Schools, IX WHICH THE ANIMALS, ACCORDING TO CUVIBR, ARE GIVEN WITH THE SHELLS, A GREAT NUMBER OF NEW SPECIES ADDED, AND THE WHOLE BROUGHT UP, AS ACCURATELY AS POSSIBLE, TO THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE SCIBNGE. BY EDGAR A. POE. ITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEXS SHELLS, CRtSU.S-TIJ.-ii A COfillECT TTPE OF EACH OEVUS. PHILADELPHIA : PCBI.18HED FOE THE ACTHOB, BY HASWELL, BABRINGTON, AND HASWELL, M TH L 1839. BIOGRAPHY. 147 duce twelve pages of engraved plates of shells, their parts, hinges, etc. Chapters on <e Explanation of the Parts of Shells," and on "Classification," then fill up fourteen or fifteen pages more; when at p. 25 the body of the text begins, and extends to p. 1 46 inclusive. A " Glossary " and "Index " complete the volume, which contains ten pages fewer than the slightly en larged edition of 1840. The outside cover has a stamped illustration of shells, weeds, and grasses, and the book is bound in paper boards, and copyrighted in Poe s name. Poe s course in the composition of this work up to page 20 was undoubtedly irregular and reprehensible in not calling attention to the fact that the first twenty pages of the work, including preface, introduction, and explanation of the shells, were a close paraphrase of Captain Thomas Brown s " Conchologist s Text- Book," published in Glasgow in 1837, whence also Poe s plates are drawn. The remainder of the book is a bit of "job work" arranged between Professor Wyatt, Professor McMurtrie, and Poe, Poe s "name being put to the work, as best known and most likely to aid its circulation." "I wrote the Preface and Introduction, and translated from Cuvier the accounts of the animals, etc. All schoolbooks are necessarily made in a similar way. The very title-page acknowl edges that the animals are given according to Cuvier." (Poe, February, 1847.) Wyatt, it seems, had published through the Har pers an expensive work that would not sell ; hence, turning to Poe as a brilliant and necessitous litterateur of the day, willing and anxious for a "pot-boiler," he engaged the poet to popularize the work and issue an edition under his own (Poe s) name. Wyatt sold the 148 EDGAR ALLAN POE. book himself and is, jointly with Poe, responsible for it and its exhibition of moral obliquity. The translation and digest of Lemmonnier s " Na tural History," attributed to Poe, cannot now be traced to him, though he speaks of his intimate know ledge of it in Burton s " Gentleman s Magazine" for July, 1839. In July, 1839, he became associate-editor with the comedian Burton of f< The Gentleman s Magazine and American Monthly Review," the enterprise of a his trionic Englishman who claimed to be a graduate of Cambridge University. Some of his old poems, book- notices, reviews of various kinds, " The Man That Was Used Up," The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion " (the last three appearing for the first time) summed up his contributions to "Burton s" from July to December, the last two alone being sufficient to make the reputation of an unknown writer. At this point, in a two-volume publication copy righted in 1839, published by Lea & Blanchard, of Philadelphia, and dedicated to Colonel William Dray- ton, the student reaches the first golden milestone in the poet s career. At thirty years of age, before George Eliot or Emerson or, one might say, Walter Scott had begun to write, Poe had produced most of the prose and much of the verse upon which his enduring fame will rest. All the Poe types reveal themselves in these volumes and stand before us in statuesque perfection : the lonely forlorn woman stricken with early disease and death ; the tale of terror and conscience ; the old- world romance charged with poetic German mediae- valism ; the story whose germ is found in an exquisite BIOGRAPHY. 149 poem imbedded in the text, like the Mignon poems of the Wilhelm Meister ; the wonderful fictions of pseudo-science in which imagination scarce outdoes reality ; the eloquent Platonic dialogue discussing the high themes of immortality, the emotions and sensations of death and the death-chamber, or the destruction of the globe ; the humorous grotesque in which whims and vices are scored with a fun and fancy that recall the quaint mythologic life and quainter landscapes on the walls of a Pompeian villa ; life-in-death with its dramatic self-realization and infinitely subtle self- analysis ; and the wondrous fables of Siience and Shadow that recall the marvellous allegories of Novalis or of Schleiermacher. The ratiocinative tale alone is absent from these 500 pages, agenresoon to develop with swift and magic force in " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," " The Mystery of Marie Roget," and " The Gold-Bug." What Poe did in the remaining decade of his life was to refine, polish, amplify this already ample achievement, and to add those inimitable " jingle" poems which Emerson, having no sense of rhythm himself, strove vainly to sneer out of existence with an epithet. To have accomplished all this in three decades, handicapped as Poe was by disease, illness, poverty, want, and persecution, was to achieve a high and noble distinction that places him even above the young immortals, Keats and Andre Chenier, who possessed solely the gift of song. The 1840 edition of the "Tales" was entered in the clerk s office for the eastern district of Pennsylvania in 1839. The following is the title-page copied from the original : " Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. I By 150 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Edgar A. Foe. | (Seltsamen tochter Jovis seinem schosskinde Der Phantasie. GOETHE.) | In two volumes. | Philadelphia : Lea and Blanchard. 1 840. "Dedication. These Volumes are Inscribed to Colonel William Drayton, of Philadelphia, with every Sentiment of Respect, Gratitude, and Esteem, By his obliged Friend and Servant, THE AUTHOR. " Preface. The epithets Grotesque and Ara besque will be found to indicate with sufficient pre cision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published. But from the fact that, during a period of some two or three years, I have written five-and-twenty short stories whose general character may be so briefly denned, it cannot be fairly inferred at all events it is not truly inferred that I have, for this species of writing, any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar taste or preposses sion. I may have written with an eye to republica- tion in volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to preserve, as far as a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the fact ; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never compose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led to think it is this prevalence of the ( Ara besque in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have pleased to term Germanism and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of the ac cusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the phantasy-pieces now given are Germanic, or what "not. Then Ger manism is the vein for the time being. To morrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else. These many pieces are yet one book. My friends would be quite as wise in taxing BIOGRAPHY. 151 an astronomer with too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too largely of morals. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognize the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of Ger man literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results. " There are one or two of the articles here, (con ceived and executed in the purest spirit of extrava ganza,) to which I expect no serious attention, and of which I shall speak no farther. But for the rest I can not conscientiously claim indulgence on the score of hasty effort. I think it best becomes me to say, there fore, that if I have sinned, I have deliberately sinned. These brief compositions are, in chief part, the results of matured purpose and very careful elaboration. " Contents of Vol. I. Morella ; Lionizing; Wil liam Wilson ; The Man that was Used Up ; The Fall of the House of Usher ; The Due de 1 Omelette ; MS. Found in a Bottle ; Bon-Bon ; Shadow ; The Devil in the Belfry ; Ligeia ; King Pest ; The Signora Zenobia ; The Scythe of Time. "Contents of Vol. II. Epimanes ; Siope; Hans Phaall [sic] ; A Tale of Jerusalem ; Von Jung ; Loss of Breath ; Metzenger stein ; Berenice ; Why the Little Frenchman wears his Hand in a Sling ; The Visionary ; The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion. "Appendix [containing a criticism of R. A. 152 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Locke s famous Moon Hoax, in addition to Foe s short note to * Hans Phaall ]." Of these prose romances Mr. Andrew Lang, in his " Letters to Dead Authors," writes : * An English critic . . . has described them as Hawthorne and delirium tremens. I am not aware that extreme orderliness, masterly elaboration, and unchecked progress towards a predetermined effect are characteristics of the visions of delirium. If they be, then there is a deal of truth in the criticism, and a good deal of delirium tremens in your style. But your ingenuity, your completeness, your occasional luxuriance of fancy and wealth of jewel-like words, are not, perhaps, gifts which Mr. Hawthorne had at his command. He was a great writer the greatest writer in prose fiction whom America has produced. But you and he have not much in common, except a certain mortuary turn of mind and a taste for gloomy allegories about the workings of conscience. " For your stories has been reserved a boundless popularity, and that highest success the success of a perfectly sympathetic translation. By this time of course you have made the acquaintance of your trans lator, M.Charles Baudelaire." BIOGRAPHY. 153 CHAPTER VII. 1840-1844. PHILADELPHIA: NEW YORK; BURTON S "GEN TLEMAN S MAGAZINE;" "GRAHAM S MAGA ZINE." IN i 840 the great Republic rejoiced in a population of more than 17,000,000, among whom were a vast number of travelled and cultured persons profoundly interested in reading and in things of the spirit. A wave of idealism had passed over New England, woven of the study of German mysticism, the worship of Carlyle and Goethe, and a healthy reaction against the overwhelming materialism of the age. As far back as 1824, 1825, and 1827, indeed when Carlyle unsealed the deep fountains of German ideology, romance, and poetry with his translations of Wilhelm Meister, his " German Romance," and his biography of Schiller, fortified by the works of Sir Walter Scott as a translator, and the immense in fluence of Coleridge, the subtle spirit of German philosophy, metaphysics, and medievalism had begun to spread like an invisible oil, tenuous, expansive, all-pervading, over the English and American mind, aided by the numerous translations of Tieck, La Motte Fouque, Chamisso, the Schlegels, Schiller, Schelling, Heine, and Uhland that began to pour 154 EDGAR ALLAN POE. from the press, opening up a wonder-world of pic turesque " Germanism" that had before been inac cessible. Where or how, precisely, Poe became first inoculated with this spirit of occult Germany : whether it was bred in him and born with him, naturally, as part of his constitutional heritage from a mixed and high- strung ancestry ; or whether he drank it in with his Morellas and Eleanoras and Ligeias as he read and studied with them in the enchanted castles of his fancy, is not clear : Poe nowhere reduces his beliefs "Eureka" alone excepted to a system, and he revels in occultism, in mesmerism, in the miraculous revelations of science merely for the intellectual delight of the moment. That somehow somewhere he became saturated with the doctrines of Schelling and founded some of his finest tales and " dialogues of the dead " (" Monos and Una " and " Eiros and Char- mion," for example) on their poetic mysticism, there can be no doubt. Poe indeed was constitutionally disposed to "the flight into the land of the supernatural and the miracu lous ; " "a wilder d being from his birth," he never ceased to see visions and dream dreams ; along with all the great poets that have ever lived Homer, Vir gil, Dante, Caedmon, Chaucer, Langland, Tennyson his dreams were his most vivid realities, and he was of the dreaming race the Germanic the race of Novalis and Schelling, his masters across the German sea. With the publication of " The Tales of the Gro tesque and Arabesque" in 1840, Poe found himself in an environment of unexampled richness, not only for what it had already accomplished, but also for BIOGRAPHY. 155 what it promised. Lowell, Hawthorne, Motley, Em erson, Holmes, Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant, Irving, were his immediate contemporaries and brethren in art ; all about him the glades the magazines were vocal with the male and female songsters to whom he was now to turn a biting or a flattering pen ; literary animalcules thirsting for recognition swarmed in every hedge-row and flooded the press with their pipings. Among these Poe soon towered as a giant ; even the lordly Irving, who had so long figured as the supreme pontiff of American letters, acknowledged his genius Irving, who was to America, in the forties, what Goethe had been to Germany and Voltaire had been to France. Possessed of a fearless and independent mind, of extensive knowledge, and of a definite, indi vidual, and sententious system of criticism, Poe lived in an exceedingly trying age certainly that part of it which extended from 1840 to 1849 when cir cumstances forced him to turn his attention criti cally to his contemporaries. He believed himself to be a great critic ; and he spoke from his judicial throne with a " cock-sure " Macaulayan infallibility that was exceedingly irritating to the mob ; as sur prising, indeed, as his belief in his own infallible powers of solving puzzles and enigmas, of the cryptographic kind which he now began contributing to Alexander s " Weekly Messenger ;" asserting that " human in genuity cannot construct any cryptograph human inge nuity cannot decipher." Our preceding chapter contained a brief notice of Burton and his "Gentleman s Magazine," with an account of its ultimate purchase by George R. Gra ham and its absorption, with " The Casket," into "Graham s Magazine." 156 EDGAR ALLAN POE. The partnership of Poe and Burton never ami cable appears in their joint names in the title-page of the " Gentleman s Magazine," 1 for 1840. He had been appointed editor of this in July, 1839, anc ^ to the September number he contributed one of the most thrilling and artistic of his tales, "The Fall of the House of Usher," incidentally, in the portrait of Roderick Usher, painting the following portrait of himself : " The character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion ; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison ; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpass ingly beautiful curve ; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations ; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy ; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity : these features, with an inordinate expansion of the temple [see the Cole portrait of Poe] made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten." The Israfel motif appears in the couplet from Beran- ger, which introduces this spectral sonata in words : " Son coeur est un luth suspendu ; Sitot qu on le touche il resonne." During the remainder of 1839 Poe reprinted in the " Gentleman s " " William Wilson" and " Mo- rella," some of his short poems, short reviews of books, and in the December number, an original contribution, "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," a dia- 1 The author is much indebted to Mr. John Thomson, Librarian of the Free Library, Philadelphia, for the loan of files of this magazine and of Graham s : 1839-1849. BIOGRAPHY. 157 loguc intensely dramatic in its word-painting, carrying to a rare point of perfection a literary form in which he indulged but three times, though each time master fully : " The Colloquy of Monos and Una," "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," and "The Power of Words. In "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion " one sees the calm Platonic dialogue, surcharged with a frightful meaning and working up to its acme by means of terrific supernatural machin ery undreamt of in the days and in the dreams of Plato : certainly no more plausible theory vision one may truly call it of the ultimate destruction of the globe was ever imagined or conjured up in words. All his life Poe pursued the will o the wisp idea of establishing a literary journal that should be fearless, independent, critical, and classical in style and spirit ; the last journey of his restless and fevered life being undertaken with this object. In Philadelphia the demon pursued him while he was in the employ of Burton and Graham ; it pursued him in New York ; and his correspondence is full of it. The Philadelphia " Saturday Chronicle" for June 13, 1840, contained the announcement that " The Penn Monthly," edited by Edgar A. Poe, would appear January I, 1841, and prospectuses were widely distributed. It is supposed that a quarrel arose between Poe and Burton on account of the new magazine ; Poe was accused of stealing Burton s subscription list and of neglecting his office duties on "The Gentleman s," and a rupture ensued. That he neglected these duties is emphatically denied by Mr. C. W. Alexander, publisher of the magazine, who in October, 1850 (Gill, p. 97), wrote: " The absence of the principal editor [Burton] on professional duties left the matters frequently in the 158 EDGAR ALLAN POE. hands of Mr. Poe, whose unfortunate failing may have occasioned some disappointment in the preparation of a particular article expected from him, but never inter fering with the regular publication of the Gentle man s Magazine, as its monthly issue was never interrupted upon any occasion, either from Mr. Foe s deficiency, or from any other cause, during my publi cation of it, embracing the whole time of Mr. Poe s connection with it." This candid and clear statement is ingeniously twisted by one of Poe s biographers into a confirmation of the poet s intemperance and into a refutation of the following admirable letter to his old friend Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, in which he describes his habits at Rich mond and Philadelphia : PHILADELPHIA, April i, 1841. MY DEAR SNODGRASS, I fear you have been think ing it was not my design to answer your kind letter at all. It is now April Fool s Day, and yours is dated March 8th ; but believe me, although, for good rea son, I may occasionally postpone my reply to your favors, I am never in danger of forgetting them. In regard to Burton. I feel indebted to you for the kind interest you express; but scarcely know how to reply. My situation is embarrassing. It is impos sible, as you say, to notice a buffoon and a felon, as one gentleman would notice another. The law, then, is my only resource. Now, if the truth of a scandal could be admitted in justification I mean of what the law terms a scandal I would have matters all my own way. I would institute a suit, forthwith, for his personal defamation of myself. He would be un able to prove the truth of his allegations. I could BIOGRAPHY. 159 prove their falsity and their malicious intent by wit nesses who, seeing me at all hours of every day, would have the best right to speak I mean Burton s own clerk, Morrell, and the compositors of the print ing office. In fact, I could prove the scandal almost by acclamation. I should obtain damages. But, on the other hand, I have never been scrupulous in re gard to what I have said of him. I have always told him to his face, and everybody else, that I looked upon him as a blackguard and a villain. This is notorious. He would meet me with a cross-action. The truth of the allegation which I could [as] easily prove as he would find it difficult to prove the truth of his own respecting me would not avail me. The law will not admit, as justification of my calling Billy Burton a scoundrel, that Billy Burton is really such. What then can I do ? If I sue, he sues : you see how it is. At the same time as I may, after further reflec tion, be induced to sue, I would take it as an act of kindness not to say justice on your part, if you would see the gentleman of whom you spoke, and as certain with accuracy all that may legally avail me ; that is to say, what and when were the words used, and whether your friend would be willing for your sake, for my sake, and for the sake of truth, to give evidence if called upon. Will you do this for me ? So far for the matter inasmuch as it concerns Burton. I have now to thank you for your defence of myself, as stated. You are a physician, and I pre sume no physician can have difficulty in detecting the drunkard at a glance. You are, moreover, a literary man, well read in morals. You will never be brought to believe that I could write what I daily write, as I write it, were I as this l6o EDGAR ALLAN POE. villain woukl induce those who know me not, to be lieve. In fine, I pledge you, before God, the solemn word of a gentleman, that I am temperate even to rigor. From the hour in which I first saw this basest of calumniators to the hour in which I retired from his office in uncontrollable disgust at his chicanery, arro gance, ignorance and brutality, nothing stronger than water ever passed my lips. It is, however, due to candor that I inform you upon what foundation he has erected his slanders. At no period of my life was I ever what men call intem perate. I never was in the habit of intoxication. I never drank drams, &c. But, for a period, while I re sided in Richmond, and edited the "Messenger," I cer tainly did give way, at long intervals, to the temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of Southern convivi ality. My sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an every-day matter to my companions. In short, it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after each excess I was invariably confined to bed. But it is now quite four years since I have abandoned every kind of alcoholic drink four years, with the excep tion of a single deviation, which occurred shortly after my leaving Burton, and when I was induced to resort to the occasional use of cider , with the hope of reliev ing a nervous attack. You will thus see, frankly stated, the whole amount of my sin. You will also see the blackness of that heart which could revive slander of this nature. Neither can you fail to perceive how desperate the malignity of the slanderer must be how resolute he must be to slander, and how slight the grounds upon which he would build up a defamation since he can BIOGRAPHY. l6l find nothing better with which to charge me than an accusation which can be disproved by each and every man with whom I am in the habit of daily intercourse. I have now only to repeat to you, in general, my solemn assurance that my habits are as far removed from intemperance as the day from the night. My sole drink is water. Will you do me the kindness to repeat this assurance to such of your own friends as happen to speak of me in your hearing? I feel that nothing more is requisite, and you will agree with me upon reflection. Hoping soon to hear from you, I am, Yours most cordially, DR. J. E. SNODGRASS. EDGAR A. PoE. 1 It is thus seen that it was the occasional convivial glass, not the habitual slip, that was the bane of the poet s existence a view confirmed by his friend Tucker s testimony when they were boys at the University of Virginia, and reasserted all through his later life by those nearest to him. Mrs. Clemm as serted positively, " For years I know he did not taste even a glass of wine," the period embraced being that between 1837 and 1841 ; testimony confirmed by L. A. Wilmer ("Our Press-Gang," p. 284), by Wil liam Gowans, "the eccentric book-miser of Nassau Street, who bought so many volumes, and sold so few, that both cellar and attic of his place of business were found, at his death, packed with forgotten pur chases ; " 2 and by many others. Mr. Appleton Morgan, president of the New York 1 Poe to Snodgrass, Baltimore American, April, 1881. 2 Appleton Morgan, Munsey j s Magazine, July, 1897, p. 529. VOL. I. II 162 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Shakspeare Society, which interested itself successfully in getting the New York legislature to pass a bill es tablishing Poe Park and removing to it the Fordham cottage where Virginia died, writes : l " From those who claim to have been Poe s neigh bors at Fordham (184649), or who said that their parents had been, there came curiously contradictory statements as to the poet s character and habits. I heard it asserted that he was a shiftless, careless, un happy man, with a kind word for nobody a drunk ard who was pointed out to strangers as he reeled home at night. On the other hand, people who knew him personally, or whose fathers and mothers have so testified to them, have assured me that Poe never drank liquor simply because his stomach was so deli cate that a single glass of wine was poison to him, and that he could not, even by a physical effort, swallow, much less retain, a drop of ardent spirits. "I have been assured by this latter group of wit nesses, that Edgar Poe was a sweet and lovable gen tleman, with a smile and a courteous word or gesture for every one who met him ; that he dressed with scrupulous care, and that, however threadbare his gar ments, he was always precise and dainty, even dapper, in his neatness and in his gait ; that, far from pointing him out with scorn and reproach, his neighbors loved to see him, spoke highly of him, sympathized with his misfortunes, and, had they dared, would have openly offered him the assistance which they did, as often as possible, clandestinely render him." Dr. J. J. Moran, who attended him in his dying hours, asserted solemnly that there was no smell of liquor on his breath, and that he recoiled with horror 1 Appleton Morgan, Munsey^s Magazine^ July, 1897, p. 5 2 9* BIOGRAPHY. 163 from the offer to take what the physician thought was a necessary stimulant ; and the attention of the reader is called to the statement of the official who adminis tered the oath of temperance to Poe when he joined the society just before his death. Another most interesting letter from Poe to Burton, dated June I, reveals clearly Poe s lack of vanity as to his writings, his precision and punctiliousness in money matters, the large amount of work he contributed to the " Gentleman s Magazine" during his twelve months connection with it, and his exculpation of him self from the charge of underhanded dealing in " The Penn Monthly " affair. Though the total number of pages he contributed is inaccurately added up, the correct number of pages being 123 (not "132") still this leaves Poe an average of ten pages per month, not eleven, as he sums it up, for his usual monthly contribution to the magazine. The letter, whatever be its temper, is an epistolary masterpiece, clear, elo quent, and convincing. That Burton was really a good fellow, that Poe was not justified in denounc ing him to Snodgrass as "a buffoon and a felon" is plain from what we printed in a previous chapter where, when Graham is about to purchase the " Gen tleman s Magazine" and combine it with "The Cas ket," Burton makes a special condition that his " young editor [Poe] is to be taken care of." Poe wrote to Burton as follows : SIR, I find myself at leisure this Monday morn- ning, June I, to notice your very singular letter of Saturday. ... I have followed the example of Victorine and slept upon the matter, and you shall now hear what I have to say. In the first place, your attempts to bully me excite in my mind scarcely any 164 EDGAR ALLAN POE. other sentiment than mirth. When you address me again, preserve, if you can, the dignity of a gentle man. ... I shall feel myself more at liberty to be explicit. As for the rest, you do me gross injustice ; and you know it. As usual, you have wrought your self into a passion with me on account of some imagi nary wrong ; for no real injury, or attempt at injury, have you ever received at my hands. As I live, I am utterly unable to say why you are angry, or what true grounds of complaint you have against me. You are a man of impulses ; have made yourself, in consequence, some enemies ; have been in many respects ill-treated by those whom you had looked upon as friends and these things have rendered you suspicious. You once wrote in your magazine a sharp critique upon a book of mine a very silly book Pym. Had I written a similar criticism upon a book of yours, you feel that you would have been my enemy for life, and you therefore imagine in my bosom a latent hostility to wards yourself. This has been a mainspring in your whole conduct towards me since our first acquaintance. It has acted to prevent all cordiality. In a general view of human nature your idea is just but you will find yourself puzzled in judging me by ordinary mo tives. Your criticism was essentially correct, and therefore, although severe, it did not occasion in me one solitary emotion either of anger or dislike. But even while I write these words, I am sure you will not believe them. Did I not still think you, in spite of the exceeding littleness of some of your hurried actions, a man of many honorable impulses, I would not now take the trouble to send you this letter. I rannoc permit myself to suppose that you would say to me in cool blood what you said in your letter of yes- BIOGRAPHY. 165 terday. You are, of course, only mistaken, in assert ing that I owe you a hundred dollars, and you will rectify the mistake at once when you come to look at your accounts. Soon after I joined you, you made me an offer of money, and I accepted $20. Upon another occasion, at my request, you sent me enclosed in a letter $30. Of this $30, I repaid $20 within the next fortnight (drawing no salary for that period). I was thus still in your debt $30, when not long ago I again asked a loan of $30, which you promptly handed to me at your own home. Within the last three weeks, three dollars each week have been retained from my salary, an indignity which I have felt deeply but did not re sent. You state the sum retained as $8, but this I believe is through a mistake of Mr. Morrell. My postage bill, at a guess, might be $9 or $10 and I therefore am indebted to you, upon the whole, in the amount of about $60. More than this sum I shall not pay. You state that you can no longer afford to pay $50 per month for 2 or 3 pages of MS. Your error here can be shown by reference to the magazine. During my year with you I have written in July, 5 pp.; in August, 9 pp.; in Sept., 1 6 pp.; in Oct., /j. pp.; in Nov., 5 pp.; in Dec., 12 pp.; in Jan., 9 pp.; in Feb., 12 pp.; in March, n pp.; in April, 1 7 pp.; in May, 14 pp., plus 5 copied Miss Mc- Michael s MS.; in June, 9 pp., plus 3 copied Chandler s. Total, 132 pp. [y/r]. Dividing this sum by 1 2, we have an average of II pp. per month not 2 or 3. And this estimate leaves out of question everything in the way of extract or compilation. Nothing is counted but bona fide composition. Eleven pages, at $3 per page, would be l66 EDGAR ALLAN POE. $33, at the usual magazine prices. Deduct this from $50, my monthly salary, and we have left $17 per month, or $4.25 per week, for the services of proof reading ; general superintendence at the printing office ; reading, alteration and preparation of MSS., with com pilation of various articles, such as plate articles, field sports, &c. Neither has anything been said of my name upon your title-page, a small item you will say but still something, as you know. Snowden pays his editresses $2 per week each for their names solely. Upon the whole, I am not willing to admit that you have greatly overpaid me. That I did not do four times as much as I did for the magazine was your own fault. At first I wrote long articles, which you deemed inadmissible, and never did I suggest any to which you had not some immediate and decided ob jection. Of course I grew discouraged, and could feel no interest in the journal. I am at a loss to know why you call me selfish. If you mean that I borrowed money of you you know that you offered it, and you know that I am poor. In what instance has any one ever found me selfish ? Was there selfishness in the affront I offered Benjamin (whom I respect, and who spoke well of me) because I deemed it a duty not to receive from any one com mendation at your expense ? . . . I have said that I could not tell why you were angry. Place yourself in my situation and see whether you would not have acted as I have done. You first " enforced," as you say, a deduction of salary : giving me to under stand thereby that you thought of parting company. You next spoke disrespectfully of me behind my back this as an habitual thing to those whom you sup posed your friends, and who punctually retailed me, BIOGRAPHY. 167 as a matter of course, every ill-natured word which you uttered. Lastly, you advertised your magazine for sale without saying a word to me about it. I felt no anger at what you did none in the world. Had I not firmly believed it your design to give up your journal, with a view of attending to the Theatre, I should never have dreamed of attempting one of my own. The opportunity of doing something for my self seemed a good one (and I was about to be thrown out of business) and I embraced it. Now I ask you, as a man of honor and as a man of sense what is there wrong in all this ? What have I done at which you have any right to take offence ? I can give you no definitive answer (respecting the continu ation of Rodman s Journal) until I hear from you again. The charge of $100 I shall not admit for an instant. If you persist in it our intercourse is at an end, and we can each adopt our own measures. In the meantime, I am, Yr. Obt. St., WM. E. BURTON, ESQ. EDGAR A. POE. In a previous chapter we have recounted from Graham s own lips the story of the origination of " Graham s Magazine," which was destined for the next ten years to exercise an almost preponderating in fluence on American letters. No one can look over the files of the magazine for these years without being struck with the wealth and distinction of remarkable names which embellish its pages and with the imme diate success which from February, 1841, began to attend Poe s critical and, finally, editorial responsibility for its contents. In his <( Chapter on Autography," Poe expressed himself thus of Mr. Graham : l68 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " Mr. Graham is known to the literary world as the editor and proprietor of Graham s Magazine the most popular periodical in America, and also of the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia. For both of these journals he has written much and well. His MS. generally is very bad, or at least very illeg ible. At times it is sufficiently distinct, and has force and picturesqueness, speaking plainly of the energy which particularly distinguishes him as a man." "Energy" indeed was Graham s characteristic, reinforced by exceptional good nature and a kindliness of feeling for his "young editor" which made him come out after Poe s death in an eloquent defence of him. Of Burton he goodnaturedly wrote in the same "Autography " : " Mr. Burton is better known as a comedian than as a literary man, but he has written many short prose articles of merit, and his quondam editorship of the Gentleman s Magazine would, at all events, entitle him to a place in this collection. He has, moreover, published one or two books. An annual issued by Carey and Hart in 1 840 consisted entirely of prose contributions from himself, with poetical ones from Charles West Thompson, Esq. In this work many of the tales were good. "The Penn Monthly" scheme went up in the usual smoke to which illness, indigence, and financial panic chronic in those times so often reduced the journalistic dreams of the poet. Its ambitious pros pectus Prospectus of "The Penn Magazine," a monthly literary journal, to be edited and published in the city of Philadelphia by Edgar A. Poe was BIOGRAPHY. 169 all that ever appeared of it. It was a Poe journal that Poe craved ; a journal that would give free play to his own individuality such as he had not been allowed to show in the " Messenger ; " a journal that would deal out critical justice in a calm yet stern and fearless manner, guided by the purest rules of Art, im personal in its judgments, avoiding the "involute and anonymous cant of the Quarterlies * and the arrogance of the cliques and Mutual Admiration Societies ; ver satility, originality, pungency would enable it to please ; there should be " no tincture of the buffoon ery, scurrility, or profanity, which are the blemish of some of the most vigorous of the European prints." It was, however, perhaps just as well that Poe s time should not have been taken up at this moment with the harassing responsibilities of an independent journal ; otherwise he might never have made the striking record or produced the profound impression on contemporary literature which his contributions to "Graham s * up to 1842 began to show. To the last number of the "Gentleman s" before it be came "Graham s" he had contributed "The Man of the Crowd," a Hugoesque sketch filled with the power, the terrors, the shadows of unknown and un- conjecturable crime ; the cipher papers in Alexan der s "Weekly Messenger" had at this time created a great sensation, ninety-nine of the cryptographs (he says) sent in by his correspondents being solved by him ; and there were contributions (untraced as yet) to the " United States Military Magazine." In "Graham s Magazine" for July, 1841, he speaks in an entertaining way about his cryptographic studies and challenge : "In the discussion of an analogous subject, in one I ;o EDGAR ALLAN POE. of the weekly papers [Alexander s " Weekly Messen ger"] of this city [Philadelphia], about eighteen months ago, the writer of this article had occasion to speak of the application of a vigorous method in all forms of thought, of its advantages, of its extension, of its use even to what is considered the operation of pure fancy and thus, subsequently, of the solution of cipher. He even ventured to assert that no cipher, of the character above specified, could be sent to the address of the paper which he would not be able to resolve. This challenge excited, most unexpectedly, a very lively interest among the numerous readers of the journal. Letters were poured in upon the editor from all parts of the country ; and many of the writers of these epistles were so convinced of the impenetra bility of their mysteries as to be at great pains to draw him into wagers on the subject. At the same time, they were not always scrupulous about sticking to the point. The cryptographs were, in numerous in stances, altogether beyond the limits defined in the beginning. Foreign languages were employed. Words and sentences were run together without interval. Several alphabets were used in the same cipher. One gentleman, but moderately endowed with conscien tiousness, inditing us a puzzle composed of pot-hooks and hangers to which the wildest typography of the office could afford nothing similar, went even so far as to jumble together no less than seven distinct alphabets without intervals between the letters or between the lines. Many of the cryptographs were dated in Phila delphia, and several of those which urged the subject of a bet were written by gentlemen of this city. Out of, perhaps, one thousand ciphers altogether received, there was only one which we did not immediately BIOGRAPHY. 171 succeed in resolving. This was one we demonstrated to be an imposition that is to say, we fully proved it a jargon of random characters, having no meaning whatever. In respect to the epistle of the seven alphabets, we had the pleasure of completely non plussing its inditer by a prompt and satisfactory trans lation. " The weekly paper mentioned was, for a period of some months, greatly occupied with the hieroglyphic and cabalistic-looking solutions of the cryptographs sent us from all quarters. Yet, with the exception of the writers of the ciphers, we do not believe that any individuals could have been found among the readers of the journal who regarded the matter in any other light than in that of a desperate humbug. One party averred that the mysterious figures were only inserted to give a queer air to the paper, for the purpose of attracting attention. Another thought it more prob able that we not only solved the ciphers, but put them together ourselves for solution. This having been the state of affairs at the period when it was thought expedient to decline further dealings in nec romancy, the writer of this article avails himself of the present opportunity to maintain the truth of the journal in question, to repel the charges of rigmarole by which it was assailed, and to declare, in his own name, that the ciphers were all written in good faith, and solved in the same spirit." (Article on " Cryp tography," " Graham s," July, 1841.) But up to his abrupt departure from Philadelphia for New York in the spring of 1844, Poe wrote almost as assiduously for Graham and ff Graham s" as he had written in 1834, 35, 36, and 37 for White and the "Messenger." Tales, poems, 172 EDGAR ALLAN POE. critiques flowed from his ever-facile pen, which copied also and reprinted we can see nothing "fla grant about the action some of his already printed poems. Poe rarely printed a poem without improv ing it ; but for this reprinting and embellishing process we should miss the final and exquisite forms of "Lenore," " To Helen," "The Raven" " Isra- fel," "The Bells," and a number of other beautiful things. What Poe reprinted was not old trumpery : it was the new and dainty coinage of a mind ruminat ing in its maturity over immature juvenilia and re touching them with a magician s wand. The overflow of Poe s genius, what did not ap pear in " Graham s " appeared in " The Saturday Evening Post" (owned by Graham), Snowden s "Lady s Companion," the "Saturday Museum," Lowell s "Pioneer," Miss Leslie s "Gift," "The Dollar Newspaper," " The United States Saturday Post" (anew form of the old "Saturday Post"), and Willis s " Opal," besides lectures delivered once in Baltimore and once in Philadelphia on " The Poets and Poetry of America." These fruitful years developed in Poe probably as a corollary from his cryptographic studies, in which his faculty of concentrated reasoning grew almost visibly the power of writing the ratiocinative tale, a genre in which he has never been excelled. An ex hibition of this power startled Charles Dickens when, in the "Saturday Evening Post" for May, 1841, he predicted the plot of " Barnaby Rudge " from data furnished by the book itself. Poe s power, hitherto, had been descriptive, mystic, emotional ; he had revelled in the senses and in sense-products rhythm, landscape, psychologic phenomena of a dim BIOGRAPHY. 173 and terrible yet sensualistic character, borderlands betwixt life and death, flashes of the subliminal con sciousness whence well up mysterious telepathic com munications between the Seen and the Unseen, fateful and funereal scenes of ruin, desolation, and decay draped in the utmost pomp and magic of style. Now his mind developed a strange and lucid power of analytical reasoning, like a sixth sense suddenly superadded to a brain already abnormally developed. The absurd statement that the poet left West Point be cause he could not learn mathematics, or the technique of mathematics, would be refuted, if refutation it required, by the mathematically clear reasoning of " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," " The Mystery of Marie Roget," " The Purloined Letter," and "The Gold-Bug," belonging to this period. During the wonderfully productive period of his stay in Philadelphia, Poe wrote or published the fol lowing items : "Siope a Fable [Silence]," "Ligeia," "How to Write a Blackwood Article [The Signora Zenobia]," "A Predicament [The Scythe of Time]," "The Devil in the Belfry," " The Man that was Used Up," " The Fall of the House of Usher," "Wil liam Wilson," " The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," "Mystification [Von Jung]," "Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling," "The Business Man [Peter Pendulum]," "The Man of the Crowd," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "A Descent into the Maelstrom," "The Island of the Fay," " The Colloquy of Monos and Una," " Never Bet the Devil your Head," " Three Sundays in a Week [A Succession of Sundays]," " Eleonora," "The Oval Portrait [Life in Death]," 174 EDGAR ALLAN POE. "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Land scape Garden [part of " The Domain of Arn- heim"]," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Gold-Bug," "The Black Cat," "The Elk [Morning on the Wissahiccon]." This long list does not include literary hack-work like " The Conchologist s First Book," or " Arthur Gor don Pym " (in book form), " The Journal of Julius Rodman," (first unearthed by Mr. J. H. Ingram in Burton s) and the very numerous and brilliant critiques and poems in " The Gentleman s," "Graham s," " The Pioneer," and other periodicals ; nor " A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," "The Spectacles," " Diddling Considered as one of the Exact Sciences," "The Balloon-Hoax," "Mesmeric Revelation," "The Premature Burial," "The Oblong Box," "Thou art the Man," and the " Literary Life of Thingum-Bob " : all of which were probably com posed in Philadelphia but came out in 1844, after Poe left the town. There are here enumerated thirty-six pieces, all highly original, six or eight standing among the most celebrated of Poe s masterpieces. Ordinary brains impelled to this extent must needs have felt the "fag" which follows inevitably upon overworked mental pro cesses ; "his daring critiques, his analytic essays, and his weird stories, following one another in quick suc cession, startled the public and compelled it to an ac knowledgment of his powers;" but Poe at least for a time seemed to possess a mind bathed in perpetual vigor and rejuvenation. With admirable good humor he worked through the quires of puzzles, ciphers, enigmas and cryptographs that poured down upon him BIOGRAPHY. 175 after his famous challenge; for fifteen or eighteen months he reigned as the absolute sovereign of " Gra ham s," dispensing critical justice to Longfellow, Hawthorne, Dickens, Bulwer, Bolingbroke, " The guacks of Helicon," " L. E. L.," the Davidson Sis ters, Campbell s "Petrarch," "The Vicar of Wake- field," Heber, Walpole, Christopher North, Brainard, Lever, Brougham, Howitt, and others ; and his cre ative powers as a storyteller revelled in the long list of works we have enumerated. He made three contributions to Lowell s " Pioneer," a Boston monthly, which unsuccessfully aspired to the calm, courageous place dreamed of by Poe. It was unsuccessful in that it lived through only three numbers. Lowell, like Poe, was thus pursued by the vision of an impossible magazine which should altruistically at $3 per annum substitute for the " namby-pamby love-tales and sketches poured forth " on the long- suffering public, a "healthy and manly Periodical Lit erature," such as it could digest. But the well-deserving enterprise failed, and Lowell was to reserve his strength for the "Atlantic Monthly," some fourteen years later. Nothing in Poe s career is more creditable to him than his letters to and his true courtesy toward Lowell on the falling through of the unfortunate un dertaking, creditable alike to head and heart and purse, when we know how sorely pressed Poe was at this time and at all times for his daily bread. When Lowell, overwhelmed with debt and suffering from ophthalmia, gave up "The Pioneer," Poe wrote, March 27, 1843 : 176 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " MY DEAR FRIEND, I have just received yours of the 24th and am deeply grieved that you should have been so unfortunate, and, secondly, that you should have thought it necessary to offer me any apology for your misfortunes. As for the few dollars you owe me [it was $30 or $40] give yourself not one moment s concern about them. I am poor, but must be very much poorer, indeed, when I even think of demand ing them. " But I sincerely hope all is not so bad as you suppose it, and that, when you come back to look about you, you will be able to continue The Pioneer. Its decease, just now, would be a most severe blow to the good cause the cause of Pure Taste. I have looked upon your magazine, from its outset, as the best in America, and have lost no opportunity of expressing the opinion." l In April he ceased to be editor of " Graham s." Why he resigned is not circumstantially known, but the following quotation from Gill (pp. 109, 110) is suggestive : " Speaking of the severing of Poe s connection with Graham s Magazine, Dr. Griswold writes, The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to find another editor ; and also in the same connection, It is known that the personal ill-will on both sides was such that for some four or five years not 1 Dr. E. E. Male s "James Russell Lowell and his Friends," 1898, contains an interesting account of " The Pioneer," as does also Vol. 5 of the " New England Magazine " (new series). BIOGRAPHY. 177 a line by Poe was purchased for Graham s Maga zine. The italics are Dr. Griswold s. . . . "Mr. Graham, from whom the magazine was named, is now [1878] living, and when we last saw him, December, 1873, ne was m excellent health. We were then, of course, intent upon securing data in regard to the life of Poe ; and in a conversation with Mr. Graham, some peculiarly significant facts touching Griswold s veracity in particular were elicited. " Mr. Graham states that Poe never quarrelled with him; never was discharged from Graham s Maga zine ; and that during the four or five years itali cized by Dr. Griswold as indicating the personal ill-will between Mr. Poe and Mr. Graham, over fifty articles by Poe were accepted by Mr. Graham. " The facts of Mr. Poe s secession from Graham s were as follows : " Mr. Poe was, from illness or other causes, absent for a short time from his post on the magazine. Mr. Graham had, meanwhile, made a temporary arrange ment with Dr. Griswold to act as Poe s substi tute until his return. Poe came back unexpectedly, and, seeing Griswold in his chair, turned on his heel without a word, and left the office, nor could he be persuaded to enter it again, although, as stated, he sent frequent contributions thereafter to the pages of the magazine." Griswold himself, according to Gill (p. 112), was shortly afterwards dismissed by Mr. Graham from the editorship of the magazine for writing a scurrilous anonymous attack on Mr. Charles J. Peterson, a gen tleman prominently connected with many American magazines, who was associated with Griswold in the same office, apparently on the friendliest terms. VOL. i. 12 178 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Though out of immediate editorial work, Poe con- tinued to write with fiercest energy, and naturally re curred to his hope of establishing an independent" Poe" magazine. The following unpublished letter, kindly copied by Dr. B. W. Green for us from a MS. in the State Library, Richmond, is one of many explaining the projected enterprise : PHILADELPHIA, March 24, 1843. MY DEAR SIR, With this letter I mail to your ad dress a number of the " Philadelphia Saturday Museum/ containing a Prospectus of "The Stylus," a Magazine which I design to commence on the first of July next, in connection with Mr. Thomas C. Clarke of this city. My object in addressing you is to ascertain if the list of "The South : Lit : Messenger " is to be disposed of, and, if so, upon what terms. We are anxious to purchase the list and unite it with that of "The Stylus," provided a suitable arrangement could be made. I should be happy to hear from you on the subject. I hear of you occasionally, and most sincerely hope that you are doing well. Mrs. Clemm & Virginia desire to be remembered to all our old acquaintances. Believe me, Yours truly, P. D. BERNARD, EsgRE. 1 EDGAR A. POE. Poe was never famous for his tact, and it is doubt ful whether a review announced with such a battailous flourish of trumpets so denunciatory in its character, especially of the "dull" and "dishonest" Quarter lies so fierce, stern, uncompromising, and ideal in its aims as the new-born " Stylus " was to be could 1 This Mr. Bernard was the husband of one of Mr. T. W. White s daughters, the brother-in-law of the "Eliza" to whom Poe ad dressed a poem. He was a prominent printer, publisher, and author connected with " The Messenger." BIOGRAPHY. 179 ever have succeeded with Poe as manager. It did succeed admirably, afterwards, in the seventies as "The New York Nation," but a wider, wiser, and more enlightened public opinion had taken the place of the acrimonious cliques and silly little " corners in lit erature " that then disfigured Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Richmond. At the same time, feeling more or less keenly the des- perateness of his situation, he fell into eager correspon dence with his friend F. W. Thomas, a Baltimorean of literary proclivities who was an office-holder at Washington under President Tyler, as to the possibility of procuring some small government place as a support for Virginia, Mrs. Clemm, and himself. Thomas was an amiable man, deeply interested in his friend s welfare ; but his efforts to secure Poe even the humblest place, though his early friend Kennedy was then a high-placed official in Washington, were unavailing. Burns got into the excise, Lamb into the India House, Haw thorne into a consulship, but official patronage was not for Poe. The unfortunate man journeyed to the cap ital nevertheless and returned in terrible plight, men tally and physically unbalanced. His " Imp of the Perverse," so graphically pictured in "The Black Cat," had made him present himself in Washington in the most unfavorable light and shatter such opportuni ties or outlook as there may have been for him by an access of wild conduct. What was really the matter with Poe during a part of this tragic period may be gathered from a heart rending letter dated six years after the occurrence. 1 " In this letter to an old and esteemed correspond ent, dated January 4, i 848, Poe thus unbosoms him- 1 Ingram, I., p. 215. l8o EDGAR ALLAN POE. self of his secret a secret as gruesome as any told in the most terrible of his tales : " You say, Can you bint to me what was the "terrible evil" which caused the "irregularities," so profoundly lamented ? Yes, I can do more than hint. This " evil " was the greatest that can befall a man. Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in sing ing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever, and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year, the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene. . . . Then again again and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive nervous in a very un usual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute uncon sciousness, I drank God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink, rather than the drink to the insanity. I had, indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure, when I found one in the deatb of my wife. This I can and do endure [Vir ginia died January 30, 1847] as becomes a man. It was the horrible, never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have en dured, without total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I received a new but Oh God ! how melancholy an existence. This, then, was the worm that gnawed relentlessly atPoe s heart for six years, and well-nigh drove him BIOGRAPHY. 181 mad did madden him, if we read between the lines of this letter. As a writer in "Scribner s Monthly," reviewing Gill s "Life of Poe," puts it: "It is now well ascertained that Poe s intoxication was a thing caused by even the smallest quantity of wine, and took the form of terrible despondency or of strange and highly intellectual but deranged orations on abstruse subjects, and that he was a kind husband, gentle-mannered in his associations with many persons, and exceedingly industrious about his writing. Still, that he was subject to intoxication, and was at times intensely irritable, are facts sufficiently attested. The excessive susceptibility to liquor is to be charged prob ably to his father, who was a drinker ; and Poe s de scent from an old line of Italian nobles who went to Normandy and thence to Ireland, mixing their peculiar traits with the ardor, the simplicity, the powerful affections of the Irish character, may account for his keen sensitiveness, as well as for some of his metrical predilections. When we reflect that, in addition, he was bred in our high-tempered South, we have an other factor in the difficult problem of his life." The critic then goes on to show that the other writers of note of the time or a little later had ex traneous help in their literary struggles : Longfellow and Lowell became professors ; Irving and Prescott, Motley and Bancroft, Bayard Taylor and G. P. Marsh rose to be ministers plenipotentiary ; Bryant and Whittier were successful journalists ; Hawthorne was snugly ensconced in government positions at Salem and Liverpool ; and Holmes practised medicine. " But Poe had not the business talents requisite to gain even their transient and harassed ascendency. It is not difficult for any one who knows the literary life, to 1 82 EDGAR ALLAN POE. conceive how great was the strain, therefore, to which Poe was subjected. With his delicate and emotional organization it would hardly have been wonderful had he sunk into the depths where Griswold s unsympa thetic report placed him. All things considered, then, it must be admitted that he made a brave fight, but was overborne by a legacy of drink, by an over weight of genius naturally morbid, and by the asperity of circumstances." Poe himself wrote passionately to Mrs. Whitman : "I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories." In "Graham s Magazine" for March, 1850, Mr. Graham himself wrote of him at this period : " I shall never forget how solicitous of the happi ness of his wife and mother-in-law he was, whilst one of the editors of Graham s Magazine ; his whole efforts seemed to be to procure the comfort and welfare of his home. Except for their happiness, and the natural ambition of having a magazine of his own, I never heard him deplore the want of wealth. The truth is, he cared little for money, and knew less of its value, for he seemed to have no personal expenses. What he received from me in regular monthly instal ments went directly into the hands of his mother-in- law for family comforts ; and twice only I remember his purchasing some rather expensive luxuries for his house, and then he was nervous to the degree of misery until he had, by extra articles, covered what he considered an imprudent indebtedness. His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the BIOGRAPHY. 183 spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. I have seen him hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born her slightest cough causing in him a shudder, a breast chill, that was visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the remembrance of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in that loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. It was this hourly anticipation of her loss that made him a sad and thoughtful man, and lent a mournful melody to his undying song." The worship of Woman indeed das ewig Weib- licbe was an absorbing feature of the domestic as well as of the literary life of Edgar Poe. Women are the most eager and impassioned defenders of his be draggled memory ; women were the idols and the guardian angels of his household ; women are the themes of his most exquisite poems ; women have erected, in Baltimore, the most costly monument to his memory. No writer has described, analyzed, viewed Poe more sympathetically, with deeper insight, than Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Weiss, "Stella," Mrs. Shelton, or Mrs. Shew, four of them at least women of genius capable of describing and analyzing what they saw. In the " Poetic Principle," after quoting Byron s " Though the day of my destiny s o er," Poe adds : " No nobler theme ever engaged the pen of poet. It is the soul-elevating idea, that no man can consider himself entitled to complain of Fate while, in his adversity, he still retains the unwavering love of woman." And later, in the same lecture, he continues : 184 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " He feels it [true Poetry ] in the beauty of woman, in the grace of her step, in the lustre of her eye, in the melody of her voice, in her soft laughter, in her sigh, in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments, in her burning enthusiasms, in her gentle charities, in her meek and devotional endurances ; but above all ah! far above all he kneels to it, he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty of her love." It is this love which Mrs. Frances S. Osgood so beautifully depicts in the following words : - 1 "I believe she [Virginia] was the only woman whom he ever truly loved ; and this is evidenced by the exquisite pathos of the little poem, lately written, called Annabel Lee, of which she was the subject, and which is by far the most natural, simple, tender, and touchingly beautiful of all his songs. I have heard it said that it was intended to illustrate a late love affair of the author ; but they who believe this have, in their dulness, evidently misunderstood or missed the beautiful meaning latent in the most lovely of all its verses, where he says : " A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee, So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me. " There seems a strange and almost profane disre gard of the sacred purity and spiritual tenderness of this delicious ballad, in thus overlooking the allusion to the kindred angels and the heavenly Father of the lost and loved and unforgotten wife." And surely no loveless son-in-law could ever have 1 See Vol. II. BIOGRAPHY. 185 addressed to his mother-in-law such a sonnet as Poe addressed to Mrs. Clemm his <( more than mother " who was " dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life." Poets do not usually celebrate their mothers-in-law in strains like these. " It was during their stay there " [in Spring Garden, Philadelphia], relates Mr. A. B. Harris in "Hearth and Home," i 870, " that Mrs. Poe, while singing one evening, ruptured a blood-vessel, and after that she suffered a hundred deaths. She could not bear the slightest exposure, and needed the utmost care ; and all those conveniences as to apartment and surround ings which are so important in the case of an invalid were almost matters of life and death to her. And yet the room where she lay for weeks, hardly able to breathe, except as she was fanned, was a little place with the ceiling so low over the narrow bed that her head almost touched it. But no one dared to speak, Mr. Poe was so sensitive and irritable ; quick as steel and flint, said one who knew him in those days. And he would not allow a word about the danger of her dying ; the mention of it drove him wild." And yet, wrung in heart and soul as he was during these melancholy Philadelphia years (1842-44), he continued to pour forth a rich volume of work in " The Mystery of Marie Roget," " The Purloined Letter," "The Gold-Bug," The Oblong Box," < The Pit and the Pendulum," and many reviews of Home, Charming, Halleck, Cooper, Gris wold s "Poets," etc., the poem "Dreamland," "The Balloon- Hoax/ etc., etc. 1 86 EDGAR ALLAN POE. In 1843 an attempted edition in parts, of "The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe " fell through, only "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Man that was Used Up," appearing in paper covers. Poe s Parthian dart his fatal offence before leaving Philadelphia, was flung at Griswold in the shape of a lecture on (t The Poets and Poetry of America," delivered in November, 1843: a caustic excoriation of the compiler who yet had done much admirable work in his self-imposed function of Old Mortality to the unknown. In April, 1844, Poe found himself again in New York whither he seemed inevitably to drift. The seven years from 1837, when he gave up the editor ship of the " Southern Literary Messenger," to April, 1844, during which he had successfully edited and abandoned Burton s lt Gentleman s Magazine" and " Graham s," had been the most fruitful of his career. This period was the high-water mark period of the publication of the (f Tales of the Grotesque and Ara besque," and of the editorship of the chief literary journal of the country : a period of many friendships and many enmities, of constant struggle, of varied and continuous authorship, of rapid and remarkable intel lectual advance. The health of the family had suffered terribly in Philadelphia ; Virginia had entered on the course of lingering illness which was to terminate fatally in 1847 when she was hardly more than a girl ; and Poe, unstrung by her alarming hemorrhages, by over- work, and by semi-starvation, gave up to the fearful temptation which assaulted him at times with irresistible force and made him seek oblivion in drugs and drink. Philadelphia had become a disenchanted place : the family moved to New York. BIOGRAPHY. 187 CHAPTER VIII. 1844-1845. NEW YORK j "THE BROADWAY JOURNAL." CONSCIENCE is an awkward ingredient to mingle with things. The conscientious man is always a ter ror to the community. Let it be known that a man has a conscience, that he means to exercise it, that neither fear nor favor will intimidate him from his sense of duty to himself and to that community : and instantly such a man becomes a bugbear, a scarecrow, an offence, and a scourge to the evil-doer and the un- conscientious. When he settled in New York, for the second time, in April, 1 844, Poe had become this incarnation of the literary conscience of the time. From the moment he had reviewed " Norman Leslie " in the " South ern Literary Messenger and pricked the spangled bubbles that then danced before the public eye, down to the date of his departure from Philadelphia, the crit ical instinct the literary conscience had been growing in him with vast strides. (f I have sometimes amused myself," he says in (S Marginalia," "by en deavoring to fancy what would be the fate of an in dividual gifted, or rather accursed with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his own superiority ; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifest- 1 88 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ing his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all man kind that he would be considered a madman, is evident. How horribly painful such a condition ! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of a being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong. In his many letters and prospectuses touching upon this subject, Poe had continually referred to the need of a free, independent, and fearless school of criticism in this country. What, in his " Marginalia," he describes as the "disgusting spectacle of our subservi ency to British criticism," was no less painful to him than the indiscriminate laudation of every American poetaster by the native, one might call it the domestic , press of the period. " We know the British to bear us little but ill-will ; we know that, in no case, do they utter unbiassed opinions of American books ; we know that in the few instances in which our writers have been treated with common decency in England, these writers have either openly paid homage to English institutions, or have had lurking at the bottom of their hearts a secret prin ciple at war with Democracy : we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the de grading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland. Now if we must have nationality, let it be a nationality that will throw off this yoke." Year by year the accumulating wrath of his literary conscience, his sense of self-respect and national inde pendence, had gone on growing until it became a lake of fire, and finally broken forth volcanically in "The Literati " and the group of studies on " The Minor BIOGRAPHY. 189 Contemporaries" extending from 1839, with " George P. Morris," to 1845, with "Elizabeth Oakes Smith." Not that the "lake of fire" did not illuminate as well as flame, scorch, and burn : much of this criti cism is optimistic and sweet-tempered, but into it entered one element of discrimination, of art, of sound literary feeling and sense of proportion that was not to be found in contemporary criticism before. Poe from the start was an analyst of admirable powers : he never wrote from mere "instinct" or intuition, and he was as far from the rhapsodic, ignorant, and egotistical Wilson in temperament as he was distant from him, geographically, in space. If he wrote a fine or a noble poem, he was ready instantly with a (f Rationale of Verse " or a " Philosophy of Composition " to explain it ; and what one reads, in him, with such exquisite ease, grace and melody, was based upon profound know ledge and subtle analytical reasoning. The "trick" of Poe is easily caught, but it was not easily originated : he was the sovereign of lyrical form in America in his day, and his sovereignty was based upon supreme rhythmical feeling backed by completest poetic know ledge. Being, like his supposititious critic, "gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race," conscious of this superiority and unable to control the consciousness, with opinions and specula tions widely different from those of all mankind, he easily made himself enemies and was hooted at as a madman, as abnormally weak, because he was so ab normally, so unintelligibly, strong. Heine was hooted at in almost the same terms and for almost the same reasons : the man of " accursed conscience " in liter- 190 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ary matters who could not and would not endure the literary sloven. Apropos of Foe s pungency in criticism, it will be well to quote here a letter from the famous Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers who, on receiving one of Poe s pro spectuses, wrote in 1 840 as follows : No. 47, CANAL STREET, N.Y., August 27th, 1840. DEAR SIR, I received your letter this evening, containing a Prospectus of the " Penn Magazine," which you intend publishing in the City of Philadel phia. My absence from the City, among the emerald highlands of the beautiful Hudson, prevented my answering it sooner than to-day. In answer to your solicitation for my support for the forthcoming Journal, I must say that I am much pleased with your "Pro spectus " the plan which you have in view and hope sincerely that you may realize all your antici pations. As it regards myself, I will support you as long as you may continue the Editor of the above- named work. In the Paradise of Literature, I do not know one better calculated than yourself to prune the young scions of their exuberant thoughts. In some instances, let me remark, you seemed to me to lay aside the pruning-knife for the tomahawk, and not only to lop off the redundant limbs, but absolutely to eradicate the entire tree. In such cases there is no hope of its afterwards bearing any fruit. In surgical operations we always use a sharp knife, and wish to be as expeditious as possible ; but we never go so far as to cut away so much of a part as to endanger the vitality of the whole. If we find, as in cases of gangrene, that the vital part is so affected that an operation would be unsafe, we BIOGRAPHY. 191 then choose to let the patient die a natural death, rather than hasten it by our surgical art. I have seen a little sapling transplanted before now, which had every appearance of dying until it had undergone a gentle pruning and watering, when, to the astonish ment of the gardener, it towered above all the rest in the grove, and remained a living monument of his skill and kind attention. The same thing is true in regard to the literary world. Bad treatment to the human economy will make a chronic disease sooner than a functional one, [and] by its own process, will termi nate in organic derangement. 1 Poe s mistake was in using the giant spear and the mighty girdle of Brunhilda in crushing infinitesimal foes : in rushing upon Dawes and Fay and " Flaccus " and Headley, upon Channing, English, and Clark with the fury of a whirlwind when a zephyr would have sufficed. The " Dunciad " and "English Bards" were blown full of futile breath in the same way : flies that would have perished of their own inanity now embalmed in indestructible amber. To use a homely image, it will not do for the barber that shaves us to sever our jugular vein ! As a physician, Dr. Chivers understood well the application of his sur gical metaphor, and it would have been well for Poe if he had taken the letter to heart. Up to the present date Poe had been going through the first of the two cycles of psychological prepara tion which he attributed to the Germany of his day : the " impulsive" and the "critical" stages. "Germans have not yet passed this first epoch" 1 Passages from the Correspondence of R. W. Griswold. By W. M. Griswold, Cambridge, 1898. 192 EDGAR ALLAN POE. [" the impulsive epoch of literary civilization M ] . " It must be remembered that during the whole of the middle ages they ]*ved in utter ignorance of the art of writing. From so total a darkness, of so late a date, they could not, as a nation, have as yet fully emerged into the second or critical epoch. Individual Germans have been critical in the best sense ; but the masses are unleavened. Literary Germany thus presents the sin gular spectacle of the impulsive spirit surrounded by the critical, and, of course, in some measure influenced thereby. . . . For my own part, I admit the German vigor, the German directness, boldness, imagination, and some other qualities of impulse, just as I am willing to admit and admire these qualities in the first (or impulsive) epochs of British and French letters. At the German criticism, however, I cannot refrain from laughing all the more heartily, all the more se riously I hear it praised. Not that, in detail, it affects me as an absurdity but in the adaptation of its details. It abounds in brilliant bubbles of suggestion, but these rise and sink and jostle each other, until the whole vor tex of thought in which they originate is one indis tinguishable chaos of froth." This statement is simply tantamount to saying that Poe had ripened, that the richness and luxuriance of his youth had mellowed down into clear vigor and manly strength, that this youth was fading into a mel lowed manhood in which the full plenitude of his powers was developing along intellectual lines. Nearly all his early work up at least to 1839, when he was thirty years old seems to have come in jets, in instantaneous inspirations, in impulsive spurts, geyser- like in splendor and abundance but bearing all the birthmarks of his theory of the short story, the short BIOGRAPHY. 193 poem that they must be read at a sitting. When he worked at all he worked with a kind of frenzy, a blind fury, that pursued him day and night until he had rid himself of it by writing it off. In colder moments, he returned to the polishing process, using his delicate emery wheel, his diamond dust, dili gently to erase the angles and roughnesses of the earlier sketches or poems ; substituting critical for impulsive moods, and turning the cold light of reason upon the imaginative landscapes and emotional tropics which his exuberant youth had evoked. With the 1840 edition of "The Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque," Poe had virtually crossed the equatorial line of youth and entered the new territory of deductive reasoning and perfection in rhythmical form. Nothing henceforth passed his pen that did not possess perfection of one kind or another : his prose style simplifies and clarifies to complete lucidity ; his poems take on changing lights and lustres that they never had before ; his critical sense awakens to a keenness and alertness that did not scruple to analyze Tennyson, Dickens, Macaulay, Miss Barrett, Longfellow, Lowell, Emer son, and show their defects as well as their excel lences : in short, Poe was ripe ; whatever was to come from him henceforth, in the new cycle of exist ence on which he had entered, was to show this ripe ness. Poe signalized his arrival in New York in April, 1844, ^7 a characteristic bit of fun : the " Balloon- Hoax," published in the New York "Sun" for April i 3 . "About twelve years ago, I think," he remarks in his critique on Richard Adams Locke, "the New VOL. i. 13 194 EDGAR ALLAN POE. York Sun, a daily paper, price one penny, was established in the city of New York by Mr. Moses Y. Beach, who engaged Mr. Richard Adams Locke as its editor. In a well- written prospectus, the object of the journal professed to be that of supplying the public with the news of the day at so cheap a rate as to lie within the means of all. The consequences of the scheme, in their influence on the whole newspaper business of the country, and through this business on the interests of the country at large, are probably be yond all calculation. "... The Sun was revolving in a compara tively narrow orbit when one fine day, there appeared in its editorial columns a prefatory article announcing very remarkable astronomical discov eries at the Cape of Good Hope by Sir John Herschel. The information was said to have been received by the Sun from an early copy of the * Edinburgh Journal of Science, in which appeared a communication from Sir John himself. This prepara tory announcement took very well (there had been no hoaxes in those days), and was followed by full de tails of the reputed discoveries, which were now found to have been made chiefly in respect to the moon, and by means of a telescope to which the one lately constructed by the Earl of Rosse is a plaything. As these discoveries were gradually spread before the pub lic, the astonishment of that public grew out of all bounds ; but those who questioned the veracity of the Sun the authenticity of the communication to the Edinburgh Journal of Science were really very few indeed ; and this I am forced to look upon as a far more wonderful thing than any man-bat of them all." BIOGRAPHY. 195 ting from the pen of Locke about three weeks after the publication of Poe s " Hans Pfaall s Journey to the Moon," in the " Southern Literary Messenger " for June, 1835. "From the epoch of the hoax, the <Sun, " con tinues Poe, " shone with unmitigated splendor. The start thus given the paper insured it a triumph ; it has now a daily circulation of not far from 50,000 copies, and is, therefore, probably the most really influential journal of its kind in the world. Its success firmly established the penny system throughout the coun try, and (through the Sun ) consequently, we are indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of the most important steps ever yet taken in the pathway of human progress." It was in this " Sun," already famous for its astro nomical hoax, that Poe appeared one morning (fit tingly on April i ) , in large capitals, bearing "Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk ! The Atlantic crossed in Three Days ! ! Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason s Flying Machine ! ! ! " Arrival at Sullivan * Island, near Charleston, S. C., of Mr. Mason, Mr. Robert Holland, Mr. Hen- son, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and four others, in the Steering Balloon, Victoria, after a passage of seventy- five hours from Land to Land ! Full Particulars of the Voyage ! " " The Balloon-Hoax " produced a prodigious sen sation, and once more Poe rode, Triton-like, on the crest of a wave of popularity, blowing his horn and scattering the spray of his laughter in the faces of the 196 EDGAR ALLAN POE. gullible. This lifelong love of hoaxing was, in Poc, curiously intertwined with a continual mystical hanker ing after the incredible, after the dim borderlands be tween conscious and subconscious life, after such a literary utilization of science as might half persuade him self and others of things undreamt of in the crude physical philosophies of the day. His tales of pseudo- science were just " pseudo," just false, and just true enough to confuse and becloud the half-educated mob of the " forties," and make them take delight in such transcendental physics and metaphysics as Poe, ex pressing them in his supremely convincing and strenu ous style, could conjure up at will. Poe might talk the most absolute scientific nonsense, as doubtless he often did, but he did it in such forceful and capti vating style that none but trained scientists could dis sent or protest. How few read " The Power of Words" or " Eiros and Charmion," beautiful and imaginative as these pieces are, with any feeling of the absolute baselessness of the physical theories on which they rest, lost in admiration of the fantastic energy and pictorial quality of the entirely new language in which all their impossibilities are arrayed. And this breaks the way into a suggestive line of speculation for us, to wit : in these " Tales of Psuedo- Science," "Hans Pfaall," "MS. Found in a Bottle," "Descent into the Maelstrom," "The Thousand- and-Second-Tale of Scheherazade," "Some Words with a Mummy," "Mesmeric Revelation," "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "Power of Words," " Eiros and Charmion " even in " Eu reka " may not Poe be indulging, as he undoubtedly and confessedly was in "Hans Pfaall" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," in a kind of BIOGRAPHY. 197 subtle, subterranean banter, using his physical and scientific knowledge just plausibly enough to bewilder the psuedo-scientific reader and extort from him cries of delight over what probably Poe himself knew, and the twentieth century physicist adjudges to be, the wildest extravaganza? "The fairytale of science" in the hands of a great verbal artist like Poe could be made a wonderfully prolific source of pleasure to readers who could simply admire and not follow his semi-mystic excursions into the scientific realm. To them every hour of Hans Pfaall s lunar journey would be a rapturous panorama of unfolding facts, every whirl in the Maelstrom descent would be a shuddering possibility, every toss of the phantom ship on the ghostly foam of the " MS. Found in a Bottle/ hurry ing to destruction yet never destroyed, would be re alizable in imaginative experience. And the more one recognizes the fact that Poe was a recondite and most exquisite humorist that he con tinually preyed with almost morbid pertinacity upon the gullibility of human nature, "accursed " as he was with "the gift of intellect superior to his race " the more one is inclined to believe that his use of science was not intentionally ignorant or unconsciously false, but that it was another and subtler method of capturing other and subtler intellects to his spells, as he captured many physicians with his " mesmeric revelations," and found "a grave professor of mathe matics in a Virginian college " ready to believe the " Moon Hoax " of Locke. The delicious rigmarole^ the refined Miinchausenism, of his scientific romances, show an unparalleled fertility of talent in the line of artistic deception, just as " The Murders in the Rue Morgue was so plausibly written that it deceived 198 EDGAR ALLAN POE. the French critics and was looked upon as a true nar rative. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" was republished in London as an actual voyage of discovery. Hoaxing is thus seen to be an ingrained element of Foe s intellectual make-up, and he has, in our opinion, carried it to a far greater distance and into far more mysterious realms than his students and biographers have hitherto noticed. Poe s places of residence in New York prior to his final removal to Fordham cottage (now the property of the New York Shakspere Society), in 1846, were numerous and varied. A writer in " The Ledger Monthly" for December, 1900, speaks of them as follows : " Edgar Allan Poe once dwelt with his ailing wife on the upper floor of a small brick house at 195 East Broadway, now replaced by the building of the Edu cational Alliance, and other neighboring places have piquant associations with this gifted man. Temple Court, in Beekman Street, covers the site of an office of his short-lived Broadway Journal ; at the cor ner of Ann and Nassau streets he was employed by Willis upon the Evening Mirror, and in Green wich Street, near to Rector, there stands in the shadow of the elevated railway a shabby structure that was his abode when he wrote f The Balloon-Hoax and the curious poem of Dreamland. " Going farther afield one finds on the west side of Carmine Street above Varick the site of the modest frame house in which Poe lived when he gave the finishing touches to the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and had Gowans, the bookseller, for a fellow- BIOGRAPHY. 199 lodger ; later, with Gowans, he had brief occupancy of one of the floors, now darkened by passing trains, of a building in Sixth Avenue, near Waverley Place, and in this forbidding abode produced Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher/ while in an old- fashioned dwelling lately gone from West Eighty -fourth Street the poet and his family boarded when he wrote The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar/ and, if tradition is to be relied upon, his most famous poem, The Raven." 51 The remainder of the year 1844 was rilled out with the following list of literary work : Review of Home s "Orion," "Graham s," for March; "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," " Godey s Lady s Book," April; Review in "The Pioneer"; "Dreamland," "Graham s," for June; "Mesmeric Revelation," "Columbian Magazine," August; "The Oblong Box," "Godey s," September; work as sub-editor and paragraphist on " The Evening Mirror "; " Thou Art the Man," " Godey s," November; " The Lit erary Life of Thingum-Bob, Esq., late editor of the Goosetherumfoodle, "Southern Literary Mes senger," December; "Marginalia," I. and II., "Democratic Review," November and December. "The Premature Burial," "The Purloined Let ter," "The System of Doctors Tar and Fether " (as he gives the title in a letter to Lowell, May 28, 1844), were in the hands of different editors, but as yet unpublished. One of his least amiable biographers, commenting on Poe s industry, writes: "The list of the tales still in the hands of editors which this letter gives, brings out strongly one source i From Baltimore Sun December 30, iqoo. 200 EDGAR ALLAN POE. of the discouragement under which Poe had to bear up. He had been for ten years a writer of untiring industry, and in that time had produced an amount of work large in quantity and excellent in quality, much of it belonging in the very highest rank of imaginative prose ; but his books had never sold, and the income from his tales and other papers in the magazines had never sufficed to keep the wolf from the door unless he eked out his resources by editing." The continual necessity for hackwork of this descrip tion injured the poet s spontaneity beyond measure and left him fagged, exhausted, enervated, in the humor to lapse into that fearful addiction to morphine so vividly pictured in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains." Thinking he had found a congenial spirit in Lowell, he wrote to him at this time : "I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things to give any continuous effort to anything to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim impulse passion a longing for solitude a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future. {f Now profoundly excited by music, and by some poems, those of Tennyson especially whom, with Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (occasionally), and a few others of like thought and expression, I regard as the sole poets. Music is the perfection of the soul, or idea, of poetry. The vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air (which should be strictly indefinite and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we should aim at in poetry. Affectation, within bounds, is thus no blemish." The "whim, the impulse, the passion," rode and ruled him to the last and perhaps con- BIOGRAPHY. 201 stituted the temperamental factor that coined itself into his theory that all phases of literary art, to be effective, must be brief, intense, concentrated, im pressionistic, just as impulse, whim, and passion are shortlived and ephemeral. His best poems, of the ante-" Raven " period, he declared to be " hurried and unconsidered " " The Sleeper," "The Conqueror Worm, "The Haunted Palace," "Lenore," "Dreamland," "The Coliseum," in the order named ; and in similar fashion he names to Lowell as his best tales, "Ligeia," "The Gold- Bug," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "William Wilson," and "A Descent into the Maelstrom," also in the order named, adding that perhaps " The Purloined Let ter," forthcoming, was the best of his tales of ratiocination. Poe s correspondence with Lowell ranged up and down the whole gamut of greeting, from " My Dear Friend," "My Dear Mr. Lowell," to the form which the friendship took under the cooling influ ence of Charles F. Briggs s criticisms and insinuations in Poe s review of Lowell s "Fable for Critics." Later on, in the "Messenger " for February, 1849, there were indications that this promising friendship had frozen to an icicle. " To show the general man ner of the Fable," he writes, " we quote a portion of what he says about Mr. Poe : " There comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make all men of common sense damn metres j Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind. " 202 EDGAR ALLAN POE. In return for this Poe denounced Lowell as "one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics ; and no Southerner, who does not wish to be insulted, and at the same time revolted by a bigotry the most obsti nately blind and deaf, should ever touch a volume by this author. His fanaticism about slavery is a mere local outbreak of the same innate wrong-headedness which, if he owned slaves, would manifest itself in atrocious ill-treatment of them, with murder of any abolitionist who should endeavor to set them free. A fanatic of Mr. Lowell s species is simply a fanatic for the sake of fanaticism, and must be a fanatic in what ever circumstances you place him. . . . All whom he praises are Bostonians. Other writers are bar barians, and satirized accordingly, if mentioned at all." Just about this time (1844-45) Lowell was en gaged on the paper "Our Contributors. No. XVII: Edgar Allan Poe. With a Portrait. By James Rus sell Lowell/ which appeared in Graham s" for February, 1845, and which delighted Poe with its laudation. Lowell was ten years younger than Poe, and was at the time a young man who viewed his elder with a reverence and appreciation almost amount ing to awe. "Mr. Poe," he remarks, "is at once the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America. It may be that we should qualify our re mark a little, and say that he might be, rather than that he always //, for he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic acid for his inkstand. If we do not always agree with him in his premises, we are, at least, satisfied that his deductions are logical, and BIOGRAPHY. 203 that we are reading the thoughts of a man who thinks for himself, and says what he thinks, and knows well what he is talking about. His analytic power would furnish forth bravely some score of ordinary critics. . . . Had Mr. Poe had the control of a magazine of his own, in which to display his critical abilities, he would have been as autocratic, ere this, in America, as Professor Wilson has been in England ; and his criticisms, we are sure, would have been far more profound and philosophical than those of the Scotsman. As it is, he has squared out blocks enough to build an enduring pyramid, but has left them lying carelessly and unclaimed in many different quarries." Mr. Lowell then continued in a penetrating com parison of Poe s precocity with that of Shakspere, Milton, Pope, Collins, Chatterton, Kirke White, Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, and Cowley, ending with, "We call them [the poems] the most remarkable boyish poems that we have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for maturity of purpose, and a nice under standing of the effects of language and metre. . . . Mr. Poe has that indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius. Alas, that this honey should turn into gall, and that the two quondam friends should live to bespatter each other s reputation ! Professor Woodberry s version of the rupture is as follows : " Not long before," June 29, 1845, "being on his way from Philadelphia back to Cambridge, Lowell called on Poe ; but as, in Mrs. Clemm s words to the former, he was not himself that day, none of those golden hopes, indulged in by Poe, and at an earlier 204 EDGAR ALLAN POE. day by Briggs also, were realized from this personal meeting. The interview, however, prepared Lowell for the following passage in Briggs s next letter, in explanation of what seemed a sudden demise of the [Broadway] Journal. Then follows an account of a " drunken spree," in which Poe had indulged : " Foe s mother-in-law told me that he was quite tipsy the day that you called upon him, and that he acted very strangely ; but I perceived nothing of it when I saw him in the morning. He was to have de livered a poem before the societies of the New York University a few weeks since, but drunkenness pre vented him. I believe he had not drank \_sii\ any thing for more than eighteen months until within the past three months, but in this time he has been very frequently carried home in a wretched condition. That Mrs. Clemm, Poe s guardian angel, the one woman in all the world most anxious to shield her nephew and son-in-law s reputation from the cruel criticism of strangers, should confess to the stranger Briggs that he was " tipsy " is altogether incredible and rests only on the unauthenticated testimony of a man who was now Poe s professed enemy. Mrs. Clemm, all her life long, showed herself the truest friend of her daughter s husband ; and why Willis s style in his famous characterization of her in the " Home Journal " for October 13, 1849, snou ^ be stigmatized except by a determined enemy as " falsetto," we are at a loss to conceive. This char acterization ran as follows : " Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe s removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for him, and she excused BIOGRAPHY. 205 her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their cir cumstances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself. The countenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long- forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined man ners, and her appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for him, mentioning nothing but that he was ill, whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint , or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions [italics ours]. Her daughter died a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel living with him caring for him guarding him against exposure, and, when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke 206 EDGAR ALLAN POE. from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and suffering, begging for him still. If woman s devotion, born with a first love, and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this pure, disinterested, and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit say for him who inspired it ? " Of this venerated and excellent woman the follow ing is a little sketch furnished us by her relative Miss Amelia F. Poe, to whom this edition is also indebted for likenesses of Virginia and Edgar. " Maria Poe was a daughter of Gen. David Poe and Elizabeth Cairnes Poe. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, March I zth, 1 790, and was married at St. Paul s Church, Baltimore, Maryland, July 13, 1817, by the Rev. William Wyatt, to William Clemm, Jr., son of Col. William and Catherine Clemm, of Mount Prospect, now (1901) Walbrook, a suburb of Baltimore. They had children, Henry and Maria, who died young. Virginia, afterwards wife of Edgar Allan Poe, born August 13,* 1822, died at Fordham, New York, January 30, 1847. Her father, William Clemm, Jr., died in Baltimore, Febru ary 8th, 1826, and was buried in St. Paul s graveyard, Baltimore. His widow, Maria Poe Clemm, died in Baltimore, February 16, 1871. She was first buried in her father s lot, No. 27, Westminster Churchyard, Baltimore, and her remains were transferred at the same time as those of her nephew and son-in-law, Edgar Allan Poe, November 17, 1875, and they both lie now under the Poe Monument." 1 St. Paul s records say August 22. BIOGRAPHY. 207 Poe s first engagement in New York seems to have been with Willis, as " mechanical paragraphist " and sub-editor of the latter s " Evening Mirror." Of Willis he had a very kindly opinion, evinced in the following extract from <f The Literati " : " As a writer of* sketches, properly so called, Mr. Willis is unequalled. Sketches, especially of society, are his for te, and they are so for no other reason than that they afford him the best opportunity of introduc ing the personal Willis ; or, more distinctly, because this species of composition is most susceptible of im pression from his personal character. The degage tone of this kind of writing, too, best admits and en courages that kind of fancy which Mr. Willis possesses in the most extraordinary degree ; it is in fancy that he reigns supreme ; this, more than any one other quality, and, indeed, more than all his other literary qualities combined, has made him what he is. It is this which gives him the originality, the freshness, the point, the piquancy, which appear to be the immediate, but which are, in fact, the mediate sources of his popu larity. . . . Mr. Willis s career has naturally made him enemies among the envious host of dunces whom he has outstripped in the race for fame ; and these his personal manner (a little tinctured with reserve, brusquerie or even haughtiness) is by no means adapted to conciliate. He has innumerable warm friends, however, and is himself a warm friend. He is impulsive, generous, bold, impetuous, vacillating, irregularly energetic apt to be hurried into error, but incapable of deliberate wrong." Poe s association with Willis on The Evening Mirror" left a most agreeable impression on the mind and memory of the latter. In a letter dated Idlewild, October 17, 1859, Willis writes: 208 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " In our harassing and exhausting days of daily * editorship, Poe, for a long time, was our assistant the constant and industrious occupant of a desk in our office. . . . Poe came to us quite incidentally, neither of us having been personally acquainted with him till that time ; and his position towards us, and connec tion with us, of course unaffected by claims of previous friendship, were a fair average of his general inter course and impressions. As he was a man who never smiled, and never said a propitiatory or deprecating word, we were not likely to have been seized with any sudden partiality or wayward caprice in his favor. / should preface my avowal of an almost reverence for the man, as I knew him, by reminding the reader of the strange double, common to the presence and mag netism of a man of genius, the mysterious electricity of mind. " tt was rather a step downward, after being the chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had been, to come into the office of a daily journal as a mechanical paragraphist. It was his business to sit at a desk, in a corner of the editorial room, ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the day ; yet you remember how absolutely and how goodhumoredly ready he was for any suggestion ; how punctually and industriously reliable in the following out of the wish once expressed ; how cheerful and present-minded his work when he might excusably have been so listless and abstracted. We loved the man for the entireness of fidelity with which he served us. When he left us, we were very reluctant to part with him." And he goes on : " Poe was employed by us, for several months, as critic and sub-editor. This was our first personal BIOGRAPHY. 209 acquaintance with him. . . . With the highest admira tion for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by com mon report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and, occasionally, a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intel lectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential courtesy, and, to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage coloured too highly with his resent ments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously assented far more yielding than most men, we thought, on points so excusably sensitive. With a prospect of taking the lead in another periodical, he, at last, voluntarily gave up his employment with us, and, through all this considerable period, we had seen but one presentment of the man a quiet, patient, indus trious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deport ment and ability." l The year 1845 was the "banner" year of Poe s literary life : never afterwards never before did he attain such maturity, such variety, or such ripeness in his intellectual work. The short-lived ff Broadway Journal enabled him to revise and reprint, generally in more finished form, nearly everything that he had yet produced. He has been bitterly reproached and sneered at for this by persons who ought to know better, whose own search for //^perfection is directly the reverse of Poe s continual search for perfection. This 1 Ingram, I., pp. 260-262. VOL. I. 14 210 EDGAR ALLAN POE. was the only opportunity he ever had an opportunity for which he perpetually prayed of running a journal, however shortlived, for himself, on independent lines, and, after the paper passed into his hands, he availed himself of it in a way for which posterity can be but grateful, for the " Broadway Journal " form is, first and last, with The Raven and Other Poems" of 1845, and the Eureka" of 1848, the final and un changeable form in which, substantially, the Poe texts have been left to us. In his sketch of Charles F. Briggs, in " The Liter ati," Poe writes : " In connection with Mr. John Bisco, he was the originator of the late Broadway Journal my edi torial connection with that work not having commenced until the sixth or seventh * number, although I wrote for it occasionally from the first. . . . Mr. Briggs is better known as Harry Franco, a nom de plume assumed since the publication, in the Knickerbocker Magazine, of his series of papers called Adventures of Harry Franco. . . . Mr. Briggs s manner, how ever, is an obvious imitation of Smollett ; and, as usual with all imitations, produces an unfavorable impression upon those conversant with the original. . . . He is from Cape Cod or Nantucket, . . . and is the centre of a little circle of rather intellectual people, of which the Kirklands, Lowell, and some other notabilities are honorary members." The reference to Lowell is significant, as it is to him that after a fortissimo of laudation in which super- 1 Mr. Ingram, I., 270, writes : " It was not until Nov. 10 that I had anything to do with this journal as editor, is Poe s en dorsement upon our copy, but from its commencement he wrote for it." BIOGRAPHY. 211 latives seem inadequate, Briggs begins, trickle trickle, drop by drop piano, piano, pianissimo then with a torrential fury, to swell into a tumult of abuse and denunciation of his editorial assistant. The laudation began with : "I like Poe exceed ingly well ; Mr. Griswold has told me shocking bad stories about him, which his whole demeanor contra dicts. ... I have always strangely misunderstood Poe, from thinking him one of the Graham and Godey species, but I find him as different as possible. I think that you [Lowell] will like him well when you come to know him personally." l "The rift within the lute" began with the un savory "Longfellow War," in which Poe accused the Maine poet of plagiarism : " Poe has left the Mirror. Willis was too Willisy for him. Unfortu nately for him (Poe) he has mounted a very ticklish hobby just now, Plagiarism, which he is bent on riding to death, and I think the better way is to let him run down as soon as possible by giving him no check. Wiley and Putnam are going to publish a new edition of his tales and sketches. Everybody has been raven-mad about his last poem, and his lecture, which W. Story went with me to hear, has gained him a dozen or two of waspish foes who will do him more good than harm." Then, vacillatingly, in a letter a few days later, " Poe has, indeed, a very high admiration for Long fellow, and so he will say before he is done [with the " Outis "-Longfellow controversy]. For my own part I did not use to think well of Poe [compare this with our first extract], but my love for you and im plicit confidence in your judgment, led me to abandon 1 Woodberry, Life, p. 226. 212 EDGAR ALLAN POE. all my prejudices against him when I read your ac count of him [in te Graham s" for February]. The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of Philadelphia, told me some abominable lies about him, but a personal acquaintance with him has induced me to think highly of him. Per haps some Philadelphian has been whispering foul things in your ear about him. Doubtless his sharp manner has made him many enemies. But you will think better of him when you meet him." Later, " I shall haul down Poe s name, he has latterly got into his old habits and I fear will injure himself irretrievably. I was taken at first with a certain appearance of independence and learning in his criti cisms, but they are so verbal, and so purely selfish that I can no longer have any sympathy with him." This is followed by the charges of drunkenness, the temporary suspension of the "Journal," the exclu sion of Briggs from its management when it was re sumed, and a rigmarole of denunciation of Poe by Briggs as a man utterly destitute of "high motive" because, apparently, Briggs could not make as much money out of Poe s brains as he had hoped and did not have brains enough himself to make a success. At all events, Poe succeeded Briggs as editor and Bisco went on with the publishing, allowing Poe until October a one-third interest in the publication. October 24 he became sole proprietor of the "Jour nal," having bought out Bisco s interest for $50. BIOGRAPHY. 213 CHAPTER IX. 1845. "THE RAVEN." MEANWHILE, it is necessary to retrace our steps and recall a date the most memorable in Poe s history, the zgth of January, 1845. Hitherto he had been a local, an American, writer : henceforth whatever he wrote was to be the world s possession. The medium of this marvellous expansion was "The Raven," first published in Willis s "Evening Mirror" from ad vanced sheets of the "American Whig Review." It was introduced by Willis in the following note : "We are permitted to copy (in advance of publica tion), from the second number of the American Re view, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country ; and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle concep tion, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift. ... It is one of those dainties bred in a book, which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it." A few days later "The Raven" appeared in the February number of this magazine and gave both it and "The Evening Mirror " a wonderful "send off." The poem floated over the Atlantic as the three Parisian romances of " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," and 214 EDGAR ALLAN POE. "The Purloined Letter" had done and called forth the enthusiastic admiration of Miss Barrett and Robert Browning. One " Quarles " commented pseudonymously on the poem in " The Review," but the mystification was soon apparent, and the authorship attributed to the proper source. " Quarles had commented as follows and Quarles is a thinly-veiled Poe : "The following lines from a correspondent, besides the deep quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impres sive, as was doubtless intended by the author, ap pear to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of mel ody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, have been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the lan guage. While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of The Raven arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. In regard to its measure, it may be noted that, if all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form ; but the presence in all the others of one line mostly the second in the verse which flows continuously with only an aspir ate pause in the middle, like that before the short line THE RAVEN OTHER POEMS EDGAR A. POE. NEW YORK: WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 1845. BIOGRAPHY. 215 in the Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the mid dle pause no similarity of sound with any part beside, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language, in prosody, were better understood." Technically, Poe afterwards, in the (t Outis " controversy, explained the verse of " The Raven " as "trochaic octarneter acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic. * In "The Philosophy of Composition " he lifts the lid from the cauldron where glowed the constituent ele ments of his wonderful poem-philtre and reveals to us its mechanism : the poem was to be about one hundred lines long, made up of equal proportions of Beauty and Quaintness intermingled with Melancholy. A strange and thrilling refrain was to impress this combi nation on the reader by means of long sonorous o s and r s swelling on the ear and the memory in anthemlike ululations, reverberations of waves on the shore, clothed, the whole, in rhythms whose luxuriance of allitera tions, susurrus of honeyed vowels and liquids and rise and fall of Eolian cadences would attune the very soul to melody and make the poem as sweet as the dissolv ing notes of Apollo s lute. The refrain was to be uttered by a Raven : "I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven the bird of ill-omen monot onously repeating the one word, Nevermore, at the conclusion of each stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object supremeness or perfec tion, at all points, I asked myself Of all melan choly topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy ? 216 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Death was the obvious reply. And when/ I said, is this most melancholy of topics most poeti cal ? From what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is obvious When it most closely allies itself to Beauty ; the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poeti cal topic in the world and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover.* " I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven continu ously repeating the word Nevermore. How masterfully this is done the most cursory reading of the poem will show until, as the poet says, the Raven becomes in the last stanza ft emble matical of Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance," embalmed in a stanzaic form "each of whose lines, taken individually, has been employed before," but "what originality The Raven has is in their combi nation into stanzas ; nothing even remotely approach ing this combination has ever been attempted. The effect of this originality of combination is aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration." The lame efforts of " Outis " to trace the quaint repetition, in the last two lines of many of the stanzas, to a palpable imitation of the manner of Coleridge, in several of the stanzas of "The Ancient Mariner," produced by running two lines into one, thus : " For all averred, I had killed the bird that made the breeze to blow, * Ah, wretch ! said they, * the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow ! " BIOGRAPHY. 217 remain lame ; and equally futile are the attempts to trace magic rhythms of "The Raven" into the re cesses of "Lady Geraldine s Courtship." Mrs. Browning herself was familiar with the American poem and never accused Poe of stealing her metres. Of the genesis and evolution of the poem until it appeared in print little or nothing authentic is known. It was one of Poe s surprises, and we cannot trace its growth as we can that of " The Bells" or " Le- nore," from the germ to the perfect flower. In print it went through six stages, all immediately under Poe s eye "The Evening Mirror," "The American Review," "The Broadway Journal " for February 8, 1845, the poet s edition of 1845; the "South ern Literary Messenger ; " and there is a copy of the 1 845 edition owned by the Century Association which contains a few of Poe s MS. notes. The nearest approximation to authenticity in the accounts of an earlier origin for "The Raven " is that given by Mr. Rosenbach, in " The Baltimore American" for February 26, 1887: "I read The Raven long before it was published, and was in George R. Graham s office when the poem was offered to him. Poe said that his wife and Mrs. Clemm were starving, and that he was in very pressing need of the money. 1 carried him $15 contributed by Mr. Graham, Mr. Godey, Mr. McMichael, and others, who condemned the poem, but gave the money as a charity." 1 As the poem appeared January 29, 1845, it is evi dent it must have been composed some weeks before, 1 Woodberry, Poems, p. 157. 21 8 EDGAR ALLAN POE. which would place its composition somewhere within the year 1 844. The following newspaper clipping (newspaper not named) sent the writer by John P. Poe, Esq., of Bal timore, the poet s relative, throws interesting light on this obscure subject and affords a variant reading for one of the lines in the famous " Raven " : "Judge George Shea, formerly of the Marine Court of New York, has a letter written to his father by Edgar Allan Poe. " The letter from Poe is written on a glazed paper without lines, the penmanship is clear and legible, the ink is unfaded, and this is the way the letter read, punctuation and capitalization being followed : DEAR SHEA, Lest I should have made some mistake in the hurry I transcribe the whole alteration. Instead of the whole stanza commencing " Wondering at the still ness broken 1 &c substituting this : Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, " Doubtless," said I, (t what it utters is its only stock and store Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore, * Nevermore oh, Nevermore ! " At the close of the stanza preceding this, instead of " Quoth the raven Nevermore," substitute " Then the bird said Nevermore/ * Truly yours, POE. " On the back of the letter is the address, J. Au gustus Shea, Esq., and the words, To be delivered as soon as he comes in. "John Augustus Shea in his time was a literary man of ability and industry. His son, Judge Shea, speaking of the Poe letter, said : BIOGRAPHY. 219 " While at West Point my father and Edgar Allan Poe, who was then a cadet, were the closest associates, and it is probable that in his company Poe received his first poetic impulses, for it was at that time he first began writing verses. Poe left West Point before the time of graduation, and soon after published a volume of poems, now a very rare book, a copy of which was sold in Boston not long since for several hundred dollars. The friendship between the two men continued until Shea s death. Poe often consulted with Shea about the publication of his poems. It was in this way that he committed to Shea the publication, anonymously, of the "Raven " which made its first appearance in the February number of the "American Review," 1845, under the nom de plume of " Ouarles. " " It was at this time that the letter from Poe to Shea, given at the beginning of this article, was written and left at Shea s house during his absence. As you will see it is without date. For a short time among those who knew that Shea caused the poem to be published he was regarded as the author, an inference not at all im probable to those who read his "Address to the Ocean," his lines to "The Mountain Pine of Scotland," or "TheO Kavanaugh." "Judge Shea himself knew Poe personally, and in the forties was often in his company. Judge Shea said only the other day : Poe was one of the best elocutionists I have ever heard. It was my good fortune to be present when Poe and my father read and recited to each other. I remember distinctly Poe s rendering of " Florence Vane " and "Annabel Lee," and more than once his own "Raven." His reading of the " R.aven " left upon the mind a very different impression from that which it inspires in 220 EDGAR ALLAN POE. print. It was a weird, rapturous invocation as to an actual presence. " Poe was among the first of the authors that took to reading and lecturing as a professional occupation. I heard him in the society library in New York in March, 1845, on "The Poets and Principles of Poetry." But he was at his best in smaller circles of intimate friends. He told me that he recalled me in my early childhood, but I have no recollection of meeting him at West Point. The autograph letter from him to my father was found among my father s papers after his death. In the summer of 1848 the letter was given to Miss Adelaide Burkle of Oswego, now the wife of Major General John P. Hatch, formerly commandant at West Point and afterward the distinguished military commander at Charleston. Mrs. Hatch retained the letter until 1889, when she gave it to my children as a souvenir properly due to them as showing the rela tions between Poe and their grandfather. The por traits of Poe represent him with a moustache. I do not recall that he wore one when I saw him. He had a graceful walk, a beautiful olive complexion, was strikingly handsome, but he had a weak chin. Additional light is thrown on this period by the fol lowing extract from a private letter to the author : "I wrote you that I did not have any personal ac quaintance with Mr. Poe. I employed him to write for the Messenger* at his own price, $3 a printed page. He sent me two or three articles entirely un worthy of him, and the magazine. Still, they were published and paid for. ff I have, however, one pleasant thing of him to tell you. When he had published his * Raven in the BIOGRAPHY. 221 American Whig Review/ he was dissatisfied and wrote me a very kind and diplomatic letter, requesting me to suspend the well-known rule of the Messenger against republications, to take out the middle dividing line of its pages and let the poem appear in full, in the beautiful typography of the ( Messenger. I complied with his request. One of his biographers, speaking of his writings, says he never altered his final composi tions ; that he neither dotted an i nor crossed a t. If this were true, it would only show with what care Mr, Poe prepared his revised versions for the press. But my recollection was that one of the reasons he as signed for wishing me to republish The Raven was, that he desired to make some alterations. Therefore I collated the versions of the Whig Review and the Messenger, and there were alterations not many ; but in my judgment every one was an improvement. " Yours very truly, " B. B. MINOR." Dr. B. B. Minor is the venerable, still living editor of " The Southern Literary Messenger," who pur chased that magazine and edited it from 1843 to 1847. His testimony gives witness to a sixth " state " of " The Raven " hitherto overlooked by commentators, and confirms the statement that Poe never revised without improving : non tetigit quod non ornavit, an aphorism which he himself iterates to satiety. Poe s theory of the death of a beautiful woman being the most poetical of all themes was repeatedly exemplified by him not only in "The Raven," but in " Annabel Lee," "Lenore," "The Sleeper," "Ulalume," and "To One in Paradise" ; a theme which haunted him as did the themes of Death, De- 222 EDGAR ALLAN POE. cay, "the worm that dieih not," and the dethroned reason. The "bleak December" of "The Raven " seems a subtle allusion to the death-month of his mother, who died in that month at Richmond, while " Ulalume," with its "sere October," pro phetically names his own death-month. Poe s manner of reciting "The Raven " soon at tracted attention and he was frequently called upon to repeat it. "The other afternoon," writes a correspondent of the Louisville "Courier-Journal" (March 8, 1885), "I asked a lady who knew him to tell me all about Poe ; to recall for my benefit the memories of hours passed in his society, and to allow me a sight of her souvenirs. The favor denied others was granted me, and in a few moments we were sitting where the wintry sunlight filtered through the curtains, talking of him ; while close at hand was a parcel containing his letters, a portrait, and some Marginalia, all tied together with a faded blue ribbon. There was something in expressibly touching in her veneration for his memory ; friendship for him was too sacred a thing to parade before a curious public. Before opening the parcel she spoke of The Raven J and described Poe s manner of rendering that poem ; he would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the centre of the apartment he would recite those wonderful lines in the most melodious of voices ; grad ually becoming more and more enthused with his new creation, he forgot time, spectators, his personal identity, as the wild hopes and repressed longings of his heart found vent in the impassioned words of the poem. To the listeners came the sounds of falling rain and waving branches; the Raven flapped his BIOGRAPHY. 223 dusky wings above the bust of Pallas, and the lovely face of Lenore appeared to rise before them. So marvellous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken. " He was a distinguished-looking man ; his com plexion was very odd, at times overcast with an < in tellectual pallor, and again his cheeks were rosier than a child s ; the eyes were marvellous : such orbs, perhaps, as shone in the head of the Lady Ligeia, whilst his mouth wore the sneering expression visible in all portraits of him. " He was noted for his perfect taste, and was the only person who could render his own poems effec tively. He gave lectures and public and private read ings ; the public readings were given in the ball-room of the Exchange Hotel [Richmond]. He would allow this lady to put some favorite pieces on the programme, and before beginning any of these he would turn towards her seat in the room and preface the reading with a profound bow. One of these fa vorite pieces was Shelley s A Name is too often Profaned. He would render it exquisitely, blending language with expression, as the music with the words of song." Poe himself preferred " The Sleeper," one of his boyish poems, to " The Raven." The following interesting account of the environ ment within which "The Raven" was written appeared in a recent New York {f Mail and Ex press " : " In spite of the oft-repeated story that Edgar Allan Poe composed his masterpiece < The Raven, in the Poe cottage, at Fordham, the most indisputable 224 EDGAR ALLAN POE. tradition proves that the poem was written while Poe was spending the summer at the homestead of Patrick Brennan, father of Deputy-Commissioner Thos. S. Brennan, of the Department of Charities and Correc tion," said General James R. O Beirne, a brother-in- law of the Commissioner, to a party of friends a few nights ago. " Edgar Allan Poe," continued General O Beirne, "spent the summers of 1843 and 1844 at the home stead of my father-in-law. I have frequently heard the story from my wife s lips, who was about ten years old when she became acquainted with the great poet. In those days, more than half a century ago, Patrick Brennan owned a farm of 216 acres, extend ing from a point about 200 feet west of Central Park to the Hudson River. It was a picturesque spot, and the neighboring territory was considered a sort of summer-resort whither a number of persons migrated in the hot weather." [Near where the homestead stood, on Eighty-fourth Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, there is at present building a factory which will bear a tablet commemorative of Poe s composition of "The Raven" near that spot.] " In the summer of 1843, Poe went to the home of Mr. Brennan, taking with him his invalid wife, Virginia, and her mother, Mrs. Clemm. If Poe s biographies, which paint him as a dissipated man, are true, then they must refer to his younger days, for Mrs. Brennan invariably denied these charges when they were made in her presence. " During two years she knew him intimately and never saw him affected by liquor or do ought that evinced the wild impetuous nature with which he has BIOGRAPHY. 225 been accredited. He was the gentlest of husbands and devoted to his invalid wife. Frequently when she was weaker than usual, he carried her tenderly from her room to the dinner-table and satisfied every whim. "Mrs,, Brennan was noted for her kindheartedness and sympathetic nature, and once I heard her say that Poe read The Raven to her one evening before he sent it to the Mirror. "It was Poe s custom to wander away from the house in pleasant weather to Mount Tom, an im mense rock, which may still be seen in Riverside Park, where he would sit alone for hours, gazing out upon the Hudson. <{ Other days he would roam through the surround ing woods, and, returning in the afternoon, sit in the big room, as it used to be called, by a window and work unceasingly with pen and paper, until the even ing shadows. " No doubt it was upon such an evening, when sitting later than usual by the window, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before, until every one else had retired, and the moon hidden her light behind a cloud, that he heard the tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. He starts and listens for a moment and then forces open the door, anticipating some midnight visitor but darkness there and nothing more. For awhile he peers out into the darkness, but he can see no one and returns to his chair. " Then again he hears the rapping somewhat louder than before. This time the sound apparently comes from the window and he flings open the shutter, when with many a flirt and flutter, in there steps a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. VOL. i. 15 226 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " Above the door opening into the hallway, there stood the pallid bust of Pallas. It was a little plaster cast and occupied a shelf nailed to the door casing, immediately behind the bust, and occupying the space between the top casing and the ceiling; a number of little panes of smoky glass took the place of the partition. " This bust of Minerva was either removed or broken by one of the Brennan tenants after the family had moved to the city, and no trace of it can be found at the present time. " Poe was extremely fond of children, and Mrs. O Beirne used to tell of lying on the floor at his feet and arranging his manuscript. She didn t under stand why he turned the written side toward the floor, and she would reverse it and arrange the pages according to the number upon them. " Mrs. Brennan was never vexed with Poe except on one occasion, when he scratched his name on the mantelpiece in his room. It was a very quaint and old-fashioned affair, with carved fruit and vines and leaves, and Mrs. Brennan always kept it carefully painted. On the day in question Poe was leaning against the mantelpiece, apparently in meditation. Without thinking, he traced his name on the black mantel, and when Mrs. Brennan called his attention to what he was doing he smiled and asked her pardon. " It seems strange that people will persist in saying that The Raven was written at the Poe cottage in Fordham, while it is well known that the author did not move to Fordham until 1846, and the poem ap peared in the New York Mirror, in January, 1845, and was copied the following month in the Review. BIOGRAPHY. 227 " The mantel upon which Poe scratched his name now adorns the library fireplace of Mr. William Hem- street, at 1332 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, who bought it when the Brennan homestead was demolished, about twelve years ago. " Mrs. Manley, a daughter of Patrick Brennan, has the lock from Poe s chamber door. It is an old- fashioned affair and fully six inches long and five wide. Mrs. Manley took it as a souvenir when the Brennan home was taken down. " The- present occupant of the Poe cottage at Ford- ham makes the assertion that the poem was composed at the latter place, and exhibits to the credulous sight seers the very window where Poe wrote his im mortal verses." 1 The author is indebted to Dr. William Hand Browne, of Baltimore, for this account. 228 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER X. 1845. TALES: POEMS; LONGFELLOW WAR; END OF "THE BROADWAY JOURNAL." THE year 1845 was, of all Poe s years, perhaps the fullest of work : it was distinguished by the publica tion of "The Raven," by his editorship of The Broadway Journal," first as subordinate, then as one- third proprietor, finally as editor and proprietor ; the appearance of the complete and, in one sense, final edition of his collected poems ; and the collection of twelve of his tales selected and edited (presumably) by Duyckinck, whose name however nowhere ap pears in the rather shabby-looking volume. Poe s best work had been repeatedly rejected by the Har pers ; Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia had shrewdly accepted and published the two-volume "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" in 1840; and now Wiley and Putnam were to immortalize themselves by issuing the twelve Tales and the Poems. The volume of Tales was without preface, extended to 228 pages, and contained the following title-pages and contents (copied from the original edition) : Tales | by | Edgar A. Poe. | New York : | Wiley and Putnam, 161 Broadway; 1845. Contents. The Gold-Bug ; The Black Cat ; Mes meric Revelation ; Lionizing ; The Fall of the House of Usher ; A Descent into the Maelstrom ; The BIOGRAPHY. 229 Colloquy of Monos and Una ; The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion ; The Murders in the Rue Morgue ; The Mystery of Marie Roget ; The Pur loined Letter ; The Man in the Crowd. Poe objected strongly to the selection because he thought it revealed his ratiocinative side too exclu sively, to the detriment of the romantic, poetic, humorous, and imaginative facets of his many-sided au thorship. His own opinion of his prose work as revealed in the well-known letter to Lowell (July 2, I 844) was as follows : "My best tales are Ligeia/ The Gold-Bug/ the Murders in the Rue Morgue/ The Fall of the House of Usher, the Tell-Tale Heart, the Black Cat, William Wilson, and the Descent into the Maelstrom " " The Gold-Bug " having attained, shortly after its publication, a circulation of 300,000 copies. Only five of these are contained in the Duyckinck collection, which constituted No. 2 of Wiley and Putnam s "Library of American Books." Early in the year Poe had become entangled in the notorious " Longfellow War/ which had smouldered in a subterranean way ever since the publication of "The Haunted Palace" in the " Southern Literary Messenger," followed six weeks later by Longfellow s " Beleaguered City," and now broke out afresh with renewed fury on the occasion of the appearance of Longfellow s (S Waif." Poe was an exceedingly alert and zealous critic, frequently, from his monomania on the subject of plagiarism, pouncing on intangible re semblances or haunting reminiscences as the basis of a long argument in favor of this or that poet s " thefts." 230 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Just as his physical machine was extraordinarily irri table and open to ^nfluences inapprehensible to less deli cate natures, so his moral and intellectual constitution was like an Eolian cord strung between window sashes, vibrating to whispers inaudible to others, continually a-swing with unseen excitements, the prey of stimula tions which in some are called madness, in others, genius. "What the world calls genius, " says he in "A Chapter of Suggestions," " is the state of mental dis ease arising from the undue predominance of some one of the faculties. The works of such genius are never sound in themselves, and, in especial, always betray the general mental insanity. . . . That poets (using the word comprehensively, as including artists in gen eral) are a genus irritabile, is well understood ; but the wby, seems not to be commonly seen. An artist is an artist only by dint of his exquisite sense of Beauty a sense affording him rapturous enjoyment, but at the same time implying or involving, an equally ex quisite sense of Deformity, of disproportion. Thus a wrong an injustice done a poet who is really a poet, excites him to a degree which, to ordinary ap prehension, appears disproportionate with the wrong. Poets see injustice never where it does not exist but very often where the unpoetical see no injustice what ever. Thus the poetical irritability has no reference to temper in the vulgar sense, but merely to a more than usual clear-sightedness in respect to wrong : this clear-sightedness being nothing more than a corol lary from the vivid perceptions of right of justice of proportion in a word, of TO KO.\OV. But one thing is clear that the man who is not irritable (to the ordinary apprehension), is no poet." BIOGRAPHY. 231 Superadded to these reflections came the fact that Poe had all his life lived too fast, in a seventh heaven of imaginative exaltation, fevered by the continual search for Beauty and the impulse to create it, over- energized by a powerful fancy which made him view things in an unreal, almost spectral, light, haunted psychologically by the pale colors of the spectrum the violets, purples, blues that enveloped his spirit in a kind of halo and withdrew it from the warm reds and flesh-colors of life as it really was. Out of this nimbus of encircling glooms he never effectually es caped, and his intellectual view became jaundiced and purblind towards many of his contemporaries. " There are few men of that peculiar sensibility which is at the root of genius," says he, "who, in early youth, have not expended much of their mental energy in living too fast ; and, in later years, comes the unconquerable desire to goad the imagination up to that point which it would have attained in an ordinary, normal, or well-regulated life. The earnest longing for artificial excitement, which, unhappily, has char acterized too many eminent men, may thus be re garded as a psychal want, or necessity an effort to regain the lost a struggle of the soul to assume the position which, under other circumstances, would have been its due." In his charges of plagiarism brought in " The Even ing Mirror" (January 14, 1845) and reiterated in five instalments (beginning March i) of "The Broadway Journal," against Aldrich, Longfellow, and others, Poe was walking on exceedingly thin ice very dangerous ground in fact which easily broke in and threatened to swallow up critic as well as criticised. Undoubtedly the cultured reader of Longfellow is con- 232 EDGAR ALLAN POE. tinually teased by haunting reminiscences of things seen and heard and read before, and the more cultured the reader, the more abounding the haunting reminiscences. Longfellow had access to many languages ; he spent years of his life teaching these languages and translating artistically from them ; and he would have been more than mortal if assimilable particles of the foreign gold had not clang to his memory and inwrought themselves here and there with the filaments of a most malleable and plastic nature. The student of <f The Golden Legend," or of " Keramos, " feels " Der Arme Heinrich," the Schiller background, of these poems shimmering through the rich texture of woven gold as the bit of verbal Gobelins is being fingered ; but then : is there any absolute originality predicable ? do we not see the very story of Genesis rooting itself in the Babylonian tablets, and the tragedy of Faust germinating from the fifteenth century Faust Buch ? " Outis " easily turned the tables on Poe and showed how readily the Coleridgean rhythms took on a Poesque tinge when they were arranged in a certain order ; and others have shown how the "silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain might possibly be traceable to the curtains hanging in a certain tf Casa Guidi s Windows ! " Poe s criticisms of these poetic contemporaries only made him the more vulnerable in spite of his daily Achillean bath in the waters of self-sufficiency and in tellectual pride ; and they did not fail to retort on him with cruel detail and pertinacity. The accusation that scenes from " The Spanish Student " imitated par allel scenes from his own "Politian" was altogether unworthy of Poe, and about as true as that Chivers in " Conrad and Eudora," William Gilmore Simms in BIOGRAPHY. 233 "Beauchampe," and Fermo Hoffman in " Greys- laer," all plagiarized from "Politian," because Chi- vers, Simms, Hoffman, and Poe all drew in common, for their romances and tragedies, from the well-known murder of Sharp, the Solicitor-General of Kentucky, by Beauchampe. Of this murder Poe wrote : "The real events were more impressive than are the fictitious ones. The facts of this remarkable tragedy, as ar ranged by actual circumstance, would put to shame the skill of the most consummate artist. Nothing was left to the novelist but the amplification of character, and at this point neither the author of Greyslaer nor of Beauchampe is especially au fait. The incidents might be better woven into a tragedy." " Politian " is indeed a delicate idealization of this tragedy, never sufficiently appreciated by the critics. If Poe, in this ill-tempered and unworthy contro versy, had only incidentally called to mind from the stores of his own extensive and accurate reading, Chaucer, all ablaze and a-hum with " reminiscences " of Dante and Boccaccio; Shakspere, with Plutarch and the Celtic romances behind him; Milton saturated with classical savors ; and Tennyson, the beloved of his heart, all compact of Homeric and Virgilian mem ories, he might not have inveighed so fiercely against Longfellow, the gentlest and most lovable of the chameleon school of poets whose very essence it is to color and flavor themselves with what they feed on. Who, at all events, does not prefer the glistening, silken thread of the cocoon to the original mulberry leaf which has furnished it ? Later on, in a mood of penitence, he wrote in "The Literati" notice of James Aldrich, whom he had accused of plagiarizing from Thomas Hood s "The Death-Bed" : 234 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " The charge of plagiarism, nevertheless, is a purely literary one; and a plagiarism even distinctly proved by no means necessarily involves any moral delinquency. This proposition applies very especially to what appear to be poetical thefts. The poetic sentiment presupposes a keen appreciation of the beau tiful with a longing for its assimilation into the poetic ideality. What the poet intensely admires becomes thus, in very fact, although only partially, a portion of his own soul. Within this soul it has a secondary origination ; and the poet, thus possessed by another s thought, cannot be said to take of it possession. But in either view he thoroughly feels it as his own ; and the tendency to this feeling is counteracted only by the sensible presence of the true, palpable origin of the thought in the volume whence he has derived it an origin which, in the long lapse of years, it is impos sible not to forget, should the thought itself, as it often is, be forgotten. But the frailest association will regenerate it ; it springs up with all the vigor of a new birth ; its absolute originality is not with the poet a matter even of suspicion ; and when he has written it, and printed it, and on its account is charged with plagiarism, there will be no one more entirely as tounded than himself. Now, from what I have said, it appears that the liability to accidents of this charac ter is in the direct ratio of the poetic sentiment, of the susceptibility to the poetic impression ; and, in fact, all literary history demonstrates that, for the most fre quent and palpable plagiarisms, we must search the works of the most eminent poets." Corneille and Guillen de Castro, Vergil and The ocritus, Plautus and Menander, Manfred and Faust, Byron and Coleridge, are names that one uncon- BIOGRAPHY. 235 sciously couples together in confirmation of the last sentence. Poe s other contributions to the magazines during the fourteen months now under consideration were : " The Oblong Box" and " Thou Art the Man" ("Godey s" for September and October), "The Literary Life of Thingum- Bob" ("Southern Literary Messenger" for December), "The Purloined Letter" ("The Gift" for 1845), " Marginalia " ("Demo cratic Review" for November and December), "The 1002 Tale of Scheherazade " (" Godey," February, 1845), a lecture before the New York Historical Society, February 28, and a connection with " The Broadway Journal," beginning January 4, becoming a co-editorship with Watson and Briggs in March. This connection resulted, during the time that he was co-editor, in the following contributions new and old: "Peter Snook," "The Premature Burial," "Lionizing," "Berenice," " Bon-Bon, " "The Oval Portrait," " The Philosophy of Furni ture," " Three Sundays in a Week," "The Pit and the Pendulum," " Eleonora," "Shadow," "The Assignation," " Morella," "To F ," "The Sleeper" (rejected by O Sullivan of " The Demo cratic Review" !), "To One in Paradise," "The Conqueror Worm," review of W. W. Lord, miscel laneous papers on "Anastatic Printing," "Street Paving," and a sour-sweet review of Mrs. Browning s (Miss Barrett s) works. The " Journal " did not monopolize his busy pen. In the April "Whig Review" appeared "The Doomed City," "The Valley Nis," and Some Words with a Mummy," "The Power of Words " ("Democratic Review"), "The Facts in the Case 236 EDGAR ALLAN POE. of M. Valdemar" (" Whig Review" one of the rejected Grotesques), " Eulalie " (July "Whig Re view"), "The American Drama" (August "Whig Review"), "The Imp of the Perverse" ("Gra ham s"), "Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether " ("Gra ham s"), "Marginalia I. and II." ("Godey s"). After his assumption of the editorship of the "Broadway Journal, October, 1845, he revised and reprinted many of his former publications : " How to Write a Black wood Article," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Literary Life of Thingum-Bob," "The Business Man," "The Man who was Used Up," "Never Bet the Devil your Head," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "William Wilson," "Why the Little Frenchman wears his Hand in a Sling," "The Landscape Garden," "The Tale of Jerusalem," " The Island of the Fay," " MS. Found in a Bot tle," "The Due de 1 Omelette," "King Pest," " The Power of Words," "Diddling considered as one of the Exact Sciences," "The Coliseum," "Zante," " Israfel," "Silence," "Science," "Bridal Ballad," "Eulalie," "Lenore," "A Dream," "Catholic Hymn," "Romance," "City in the Sea," " To the River ," " The Valley of Unrest," "ToF ," "To ," song, "Fairy land," and reviews of Hoyt and Hirst (the young poet who had written a sketch of Poe) . Before the year quite ended, and with it (December 26) his editorship, he had added to these, "Some Words with a Mummy," " The Devil in the Belfry," " A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," "Four Beasts in One," " The Oblong Box," "Mystification," "Loss of Breath," and "The Spectacles." The relentless war which Poe waged on Transcen- BIOGRAPHY. 237 dentalism and its votaries in New England Emerson, Margaret Fuller, William Ellery Channing, and others came to a violent and rather discreditable culmina tion in October (one of Poe s astrologically fatal months) of this year. He had been invited with every courtesy, probably at Lowell s instance, to read a poem before the Boston Lyceum on the evening of the 1 6th ; he accepted ; but instead of the expected treat he read, " Al Aaraaf," to the vexation and dis appointment of his audience, following up the reading however with an artistic recitation of "The Raven." The papers did not hesitate to vent their spleen on the poet, whose "imp of the perverse " was again in the ascendant, and who retorted from New York in a malicious and inexcusable vein of insult. His vilifiers now streamed from lecture-room, lyceum, and periodi cal press, and hurled their venom on the unfortunate man whose uncurbable tongue was the root of all his misfortunes. He continually confused independence of speech with dogmatic arrogance on questions about which open-minded men might well disagree ; and his imperious tone and temper were anything but con ciliatory. Poe had now received the honor of being pirated and reprinted in England, and pirated, quarrelled over, and translated in France: the "Revue des Deux Mondes," the "Charivari," and other French re views and journals had noticed, copied, or reviewed him, and his Morgue and Mystery Romances had created a profound sensation on the Seine. Charles Baudelaire, author of "Les Fleurs du Mai," took up Poe as a lifelong study and translated him so per fectly as to leave little to be desired ; Mallarme, later, reproduced " The Raven " in magnificent form ; and 238 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Poe (Poe, as the Quantin edition prints the name) became a cult with Theophile Gautier and his school. In a scarce pamphlet now before the writer "Mes merism in Articulo Mortis, an Astounding and Hor rifying Narrative, shewing the Extraordinary Power of Mesmerism in Arresting the Progress of Death : By Edgar A. Poe, Esq., of New York. London: Short & Co. 1846," we have a curious instance of the intense interest excited by Poe s mesmeric hoax, an interest shared by Miss Barrett and many others, and doubtless heightened by the Advertisement to the pamphlet : " The following astonishing narrative first appeared in the American Magazine, a work of some stand ing in the United States, where the case has excited the most intense interest. "The effects of the mesmeric influence, in this case, were so astounding, so contrary to all past ex perience, that no one could have possibly anticipated the final result. The narrative, though only a plain recital of facts, is of so extraordinary a nature as almost to surpass belief. It is only necessary to add, that credence is given to it in America, where the occur rence took place." Poe was certainly the transcendentalist the Cagli- ostro the Apollonius of the crude practical joke etherealized to a work of art : he juggled with the baubles of science, of the intuitional life, of the Shadow- land between sleep and consciousness until, like an Indian fakir, he hoodwinked his gaping audiences be fore their very faces and made the incredible everyday probabilities. The crowning achievement, however, of this year of many things accomplished was : " The Raven and BIOGRAPHY. 239 other Poems *: New York: Wiley and Putnam: 1845, with its glowing dedication : "To the Noblest of her Sex To the Author of < The Drama of Exile To Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, of England, I Dedicate this Volume, with the most Enthusiastic Admiration, and with the most Sincere Esteem. E. A. P." The thirty poems of this thin volume (from a copy of the original edition of which we derive these details) are the quintessence of Poe s poetical genius, the de canted spirit of a rare poetic power which was not yet complete indeed, but which was approaching its con summation. " The Raven " alone, of this volume, 1 has given rise to a literature and afforded perhaps the widest discussion of any single poem of its length ever published. The other poems of the 184.5 volume remain as Poe edited them, in their final form for future genera tions. They had been put through many crucibles of publication and republication " Southern Literary Messenger/ "Graham s," "The Broadway Jour nal," and what not until they reached their ulti mate crystallization and avatar in this form. "The Broadway Journal," however, was not to extend its fevered and ephemeral existence beyond the year : the January child became the December old man. Appeals to George Poe and others for pecuni ary assistance were made in vain ; embarrassments came thick and fast though the circulation of the peri odical had largely increased, and some things connected 1 See J. H. Ingram s edition of the poem : London : George Redway : 1885. 240 EDGAR ALLAN POE. with it seemed hopeful. Its collapse was announced the day after Christmas in the following terms : Maledictory. Unexpected engagements demanding my whole attention, and the objects being fulfilled so far as regards myself personally, for which "The Broadway Journal" was established, I now, as its editor, bid farewell as cordially to foes as to friends. EDGAR A. POE. A final number, dated January 3, is said to have been issued under the editorship of Thomas Dunn English. Among the last words written by Poe this year was the Preface to his Poems : Preface. These trifles are collected and repub- lished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random "the rounds ot the press." * If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incum bent upon me to say, that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the held of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion ; and the passions should be held in reverence ; they must not they cannot at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compen sations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind. E. A. P. 1 Poe slightly changed the form of this sentence in a MS. note to his copy of the Poems. BIOGRAPHY. 241 CHAPTER XL 1846. SOCIAL AND LITERARY LIFE IN NEW YORK: THE LITERATI. IT is time now to take a little peep at the social environment by which Poe and his family were sur rounded in the winter of I 846, this time through the spectacles of the poet Richard Henry Stoddard, a keen admirer of Poe s genius, but an unsparing foe to what he considers and calls, in season and out of season, Poe s moral delinquencies and mendacity. 1 In a re view of Mrs. Botta s (Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch s) Memoirs, he writes : " The best preparation for reading these Memoirs of Mrs. Botta is a glance over the first forty or fifty names in the series of papers which Edgar Allan Poe contributed, in 1845, to * The Lady s Book of L. A. Godey. Familiar with the reputation of the ladies and gentlemen who figure in this list, my acquaintance with Mrs. Botta dates back only forty-four years, when, a timid young person of twenty-four, I was introduced into her salon, either by Dr. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, or by Mr. Bayard Taylor. I had scrawled some im mature verse, which Mr. Seba Smith and Mrs. Caro line M. Kirkland thought not entirely unworthy of the places which they gave it, one in < The Rover, a 1 The Independent, Feb. i, 1894. VOL. I. 1 6 242 EDGAR ALLAN POE. little weekly, the other, in The Union Magazine, a monthly of larger size, with illustrations on wood and steel, mezzotints, if my memory is not at fault, by Mr. John Sartain. Mrs. Botta, who was then Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch, was known to me before the date I have specified through her poems in Graham s Maga zine and other periodicals, which were copied in The Evening Mirror, of which Mr. Nathaniel Parker Willis was editor-in-chief, and in The New York Tribune, the critical chair of which was filled by Mr. George Ripley. To meet this accomplished gentlewoman was a distinction, since in meeting her one met her friends, the least of whom was worth knowing. She lived, as nearly as I now recollect, on the south side of Ninth Street, not far from Fifth Avenue, and with her was her elderly mother and a young woman who is now Mrs. S. M. C. Ewer, and was a sister of Mr. Charles Congdon, a brilliant hu morist, whom I did not know until ten years later. " Who witnessed my awkward entrance into Miss Lynch s well-lighted parlor ? I have forgotten who they were. I only know that the night was a cold one ; late in November, I fancy, and that, chilled through and through, in spite of a thick cloak which I wore, I stooped and chafed my hands before her glow ing coal fire. Many a day passed before I heard the last story about my blundering gaucherie on that woful night, a gaucherie which worsened itself in the sharp eyes of Phyllis, who declared that she wondered at her foolish Corydon. The Willises were there, the poet who wrote * Scripture Sketches in his youth, and had written much versatile poetry ana prose since letters from all quarters of the world his second wife and his daughter Imogen. But before these I see Miss BIOGRAPHY. 243 Lynch, tall, gracious, kindly, the woman that she re mained until the cold March morning two years ago when she wandered out into the worlds beyond this work-a-day world of ours. Present, also, were two of the swarming sisterhood of American singers, one elderly spinster Miss BogartJ who was remembered through one of her solemn lyrics, entitled, I think, He came too Late, and a more hopeful married wo man, whose songs were of a more cheerful cast. . . . " On a later occasion, early in the following spring, I met another singer of tender melodies. She came of a poetic family, for, besides herself, I can recall a sister who wrote fairly well. Born in Boston, child of a merchant there named Locke, Frances Sargent spent a portion of her girlhood where I passed my boy hood, in Hingham, Mass., where, in my seventh year, Mr. William Gilmore Simms improvised his Atalan- tis : A Tale of the Sea. Miss Locke married a painter named Osgood, with whom she sailed for Lon don, where he drew many celebrities, and she warbled her way into their affections, remembering her native land in her first book, A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England. When I met this gentle lady, seven-and-thirty, or it may be, thirty-eight summers had touched her, lightly, as it seemed, but heavily, as it proved ; for, always fragile, she was in a decline, reminding her friends, after her soul had taken its flight, of Young s Narcissa, " She sparkled, exhaled and went to Heaven. Mrs. Osgood was a paragon. For, loved of all men who knew her, she was hated by no woman who ever felt the charm of her presence. Poe was enamored of her, felt or fancied that he was, which with him was the 244 EDGAR ALLAN POE. same thing. He dedicated a copy of verses to her, a trifle which had served the same purpose twice before. He concealed her name in an effusion of twenty lines, and he reviewed her in his glowing fashion, and no one disputed the accuracy of his verdict, in her case. But Poe had a rival in her affections in Dr. Griswold, whom she transformed for the moment into an impas sioned poet. When Edgar Allan was drugged to death in Baltimore, about six months before the time of which I am writing, I scribbled some verse in his memory ; and she was good enough to think some of it not unworthy of its theme. She died a fevv weeks later. . . . " I return to the list of names in Poe s Literati of New York City, and recover others whom I saw at Miss Lynch s evenings at home. Constantly there was Mr. W. M. Gillespie, a mathematician of emi nence, who stammered in his speech ; Dr. J. W. Francis, who knew and was known to everybody, a florid gentleman with flowing white locks ; and Ralph Hoyt. Then came Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, poetess, writer of stories, and, later, of three or four novels ; and next Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Embury, Miss Sedg- wick, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Dr. Thomas Ward, who, under the Horatian signa ture of Flaccus celebrated Passaic,. a Group of Poems Touching that River, with other Poems. " Greater names were those of Bryant and Halleck, and one lesser, in the person of the bard who entreated the woodman to spare the tree [G. P. Morris]." In her interesting "Introductory Letter" prefixed to Mr. E. L. Didier s " Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe " (W. J. Widdleton : 1876), Mrs. Whit man writes : BIOGRAPHY. 245 "During the whole of the winter 1845-46, he was residing in the city of New York I think in Amity Street. He was, at that time, a frequent visitor and ever- welcome guest at the houses of many persons v/ith whom I have long been intimately acquainted among others, the Hon. John R. Bartlett . . . and Miss Anne C. Lynch, now Mrs. Botta who were accustomed to receive informally at their houses, on stated evenings, the best intellectual society of the city. To reinforce my memory on the subject, I have just referred to letters received from various correspondents in New York, during the winters of 1845 and 1846, in all of which the name of the poet frequently occurs. "In one of these letters, dated January 20, 1846, the writer says : Speaking of our receptions, I must tell you what a pleasant one we had on Saturday even ing, in Waverley Place; or rather I will tell you the names of some of the company, and you will know, among others, that of Cassius Clay, Mr. Hart, the sculptor, who is doing Henry Clay in marble ; Hal- leek, Locke (the Man in the Moon), Hunt, of the " Merchant s Magazine " ; Hudson, Mr. Bellows, Poe, Headley, Miss Sedgwick, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Seba Smith, Mrs. Ellet, and many others more or less distinguished. " One of these letters, in which the date of the year is wanting, alludes to a controversy, which took place at one of the soirees between Margaret Fuller (Ossoli) and Poe, about some writer whom, in her lofty, auto cratic way, the lady had been annihilating. Miss Fuller was then writing critical papers for the New York Tribune. Poe, espousing the cause of the vanquished, with a few keen, incisive rejoinders, ob- 246 EDGAR ALLAN POE. tained such ascendancy over the eloquent and orac ular woman, that somebody whispered, The Raven has perched upon the casque of Pallas, and pulled all the feathers out of her cap. "In another letter, dated January 7, 1846, I find the following : I meet Mr. Poe very often at the re ceptions. He is the observed of all observers. His stories are thought wonderful, and to hear him repeat " The Raven," which he does very quietly, is an event in one s life. People seem to think there is something uncanny about him, and the strangest stories are told, and, what is more, believed, about his mesmeric ex periences, at the mention of which he always smiles. His smile is captivating ! . . . Everybody wants to know him ; but only a few people seem to get well acquainted with him/ "This was in the spring of 1846, when Poe was at the very acme of his literary and social success among the literati of New York." And how, one may ask, did Poe comport himself among the illuminati of this defunct and mutually ad miring generation ? " As a conversationist," remarks Mrs. Whitman, " we do not remember his equal. We have heard the veteran Landor (called by high authority the best talker in England) discuss with scathing sarcasm the popular writers of the day, convey his political ani mosities by fierce invectives on the pretentious cox comb Albert and the cunning knave Napoleon, or describe, in words of strange depths and tenderness, the peerless charm of goodness, and the naive social graces in the beautiful mistress of Gore House, the most gorgeous Lady Blessington. We have heard the Howadji talk of the gardens of Damascus till the BIOGRAPHY. 247 air seemed purpled and perfumed with its roses. We have listened to the trenchant and vivid talk of the Autocrat ; to the brilliant and exhaustless colloquial resources of John Neal and Margaret Fuller. We have heard the racy talk of Orestes Brownson in the old days of his freedom and power, have listened to the serene wisdom of Alcott, and treasured up memo rable sentences from the golden lips of Emerson. Un like the conversational power evinced by any of these, was the earnest, opulent, unpremeditated speech of Edgar Poe. "Like his writings, it presented a combination of qualities rarely met within the same person, a cool, decisive judgment, a wholly unconventional courtesy and sincere grace of manner, and an imperious enthu- .siasm, which brought all hearers within the circle of its influence. "J. M. Daniel, Esq., United States Minister at Turin, who knew Poe well during the last years of his life, says of him : His conversation was the very best we have ever listened to. We have never heard any so suggestive of thought, or any from which one gained so much. On literary criticism it was the essence of correct and profound criticism divested of all formal pedantries and introductory ideas the kernel clear of the shell. He was not a brilliant talker in the common, after-dinner sense of the word ; he was not a maker of fine points, or a frequent sayer of funny things. What he said was prompted entirely by the moment, and seemed uttered for the pleasure of uttering it. In his animated moods he talked with an abstracted earnestness, as if he were dictating to an amanuensis ; and, if he spoke of individuals, his ideas ran upon their moral and intellectual qualities, rather 248 EDGAR ALLAN POE. than upon the idiosyncrasies of their active, visible phenomena, or the peculiarities of their manner. " We have said that the charm of his conversation consisted in its genuineness^ its wonderful directness, and sincerity. We believe, too, that, in the artistic utterance of poetic emotion, he was at all times passion ately genuine. His proud reserve, his profound melancholy, his unworldliness may we not say his unearihlincss of nature made his character one very difficult of comprehension to the casual observer. The complexity of his intellect, its incalculable resources, and his masterly control of those resources when brought into requisition for the illustration of some favorite theme or cherished creation, led to the current belief that its action was purely arbitrary, that he could write without emotion or earnestnes* at the deliberate dictation of the will." 1 The year 1846 was the beginning of Foe s "de scent" into the moral and physical "Maelstrom," in which he was finally swallowed up. All his bril liant literary and social successes had been in vain, had proved incapable of lifting him to a prosperous plane, had made him indeed only a shining mark for malice and malignity. " In his white ideal All statue-blind." Even while he was frequenting these delightful salons, with his gentle Virginia by his side, he was personally and anatomically studying its frequenters with a view to presenting them in full-length life-like 1 Mrs. Whitman, " Edgar Poe," Sec., pp. 36-38. BIOGRAPHY. 249 portraits for the fashionable journal of a neighboring city. "In the series of papers which I now propose," he writes, in his Introduction, " my design is, in giving my own unbiassed opinion of the literati (male and female) of New York, to give at the same time very closely, if not with absolute accuracy, that of conver sational society in literary circles. It must be expected, of course, that, in innumerable particulars, I shall differ from the voice, that is to say, what appears to be the voice, of the public ; but this is a matter of no conse quence whatever. " New York literature maybe taken as a fair repre sentation of that of the country at large. The city is itself the focus of American letters. Its authors include, perhaps, one-fourth of all in America, and the in fluence they exert on their brethren, if seemingly silent, is not the less extensive and decisive. As I shall have to speak of many individuals, my limits will not permit me to speak of them otherwise than in brief; but this brevity will be merely consistent with the de sign, which is that of simple opinion, with little of either argument or detail. With one or two excep tions, I am well acquainted with every author to be introduced. . . . Each individual is introduced abso lutely at random." Thirty-eight of these accomplished gentlemen and gentlewomen of a past generation pass panoramically before us, make their brief curtsy, and, as briefly, pass into the oblivion devoted to the Dilettanti. Poe s manner is sharp, French, epigrammatic ; the crisp dis tinction of his style, the absolutely lucid form of his statement in these papers, has never been surpassed and seldom equalled ; and yet he contrives to bring within 250 EDGAR ALLAN POE. it just enough of the vanishing personality of his subject to pique attention and avoid offence. Only a few reputations were assailed by the critic : coarse personalities were altogether absent ; the women were treated with chivalrous respect and discrimina tion even the dreaded Margaret Fuller was discussed with Castilian courtesy ; and the fellow-journalists . Briggs, Willis, Colton, Hoffman, Locke were al most universally appreciated and praised. Notes of discord sounded in the case of Aldrich and " Thomas Dunn Brown " and Lewis Gaylord Clark. " Mr. Clark, as a literary man, has about him no determin- ateness, no distinctiveness, no saliency of point; an apple, in fact, or a pumpkin has more angles. He is as smooth as oil, or a sermon from Dr. Hawkes ; he is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing. " Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Child, Miss Sedgwick, Miss Bo- gart, Miss Lynch, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Stephens, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Mowatt, and Margaret Fuller are the " immortelles " beaded on Poe s eternal scroll; Halleck, Willis, and Fenno Hoffman (founder of "The Knickerbocker") are the only poets still distinguishable from the throng of minor contemporaries. It is a curious fact that the two great historic foes of this period of American literature should also have been the Supreme Court of the time for the adjudica tion of literary reputations. Griswold revelled in an thologies, in volumes of prose and poetical selections, in old-fashioned florilegiums and "elegant extracts" sealed with the seven seals of Solomon s wisdom. Poe was the taster and tester in these cellars of Amon tillado, often delicately and derisively sceptical of its BIOGRAPHY. 251 being Amontillado at all. Both men were phenomenally industrious, and both have left monuments of erudi tion. Rivals even in their surreptitious loves, they worked shoulder to shoulder in the bustling forties amid the noise of presidential campaigns and the far-off mut- terings of the Mexican War ; and the one bequeathed his reputation to the other to be ravenously de voured ! Gris wold s cohort of friends Horace Greeley, Raymond, Hoffman, Donald G. Mitchell, Bayard Taylor, C. G. Leland, the Carys, James T. Fields, etc., was offset by Poe s cohort of foes made in his self-imposed task as a censor morum of more than Catonian severity. Vermont and Virginia were certainly reflected in their temperaments : the one keen, cold, incisive, indefatigable, resourceful, devot ing an entire lifetime to the altruistic presentation of others claims to literary recognition, a Dryasdust of a superior kind whose labors in collecting and in com mentary were informed by an intelligent spirit, if not by a flaming zeal ; the other, warm, imaginative, high-strung, impelled by an irresistible genius that never let him rest, imperiously creative, haughtily egotistic, forced rather to the presentation of his own claims than to the recognition of others. 252 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER XII. 1846-1847. FORDHAM : THE DEATH OF VIRGINIA POE. THE sensation caused by the successive issues of " The Literati " was very great, and when the series reached "Thomas Dunn Brown " [English], a violent explosion ensued. English published in " The Even ing Mirror" (then managed by Fuller & Co.) a libellous and slanderous article, full of filth and inde cency, accusing Poe of forgery, theft, and drunkenness : "he is not alone thoroughly unprincipled, base, and depraved, but silly, vain, and ignorant, not alone an assassin in morals, but a quack in literature," etc., etc. It is needless to say that Poe brought suit and re covered damages for defamation of character. The old gentleman (author of "Ben Bolt" and ex-mem ber of the United States Congress) died in Newark April i, 1902. The controversy, 1 coarse and abusive as it was on both sides, had one good consequence for Poe : it re sulted in a verdict of $225 in his favor, the costs and all running up a bill of $492 for the other party. With this money, apparently, Poe furnished the little 1 English s letter appeared in the New York Mirror of June 23 July 13, 1846, and Poe s reply in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times July 10, 1846. See Vol. II. p. 233, BIOGRAPHY. 253 Dutch cottage at Fordham, Westchester Co., New York, a suburb of the city, whither he now moved from Amity Street. Mr. F. M. Hopkins thus describes the little home in "The Review of Reviews " for April, 1896 : "At the top of Fordham Hill, on the Kingsbridge Road, in the recently annexed or northern district of New York City, is a little old Dutch cottage known to fame as the home of Edgar Allan Poe during the last four [three ?] years of his life. The building is a small one containing only three rooms, a porch extending along its entire front, and standing with its gable end to the street. Instead of being clapboarded, it was shingled, as was customary in the early days in which it was built, making a good specimen of the dignified little homes that dotted northern New York, but which have almost wholly disappeared before the march of modern improvements. "In Foe s time the cottage was pleasantly situated on a little elevation in a large open space, with cherry- trees about it. Many literary workers of his day visited him here, and mention was quite frequently made of the cosy home which Virginia Poe made, notwithstand ing her limited means and contracted quarters. The sur roundings have somewhat changed with passing years. The cherry-trees are gone, and neighboring houses elbow the cottage quite closely, but the poet s old home remains the same as a half century ago, aside from the neglect of recent years. " The hallway entrance leads directly to the main room of the house, a good-sized, cheerful apartment with four windows, two opening on the porch. Be tween these stood the poet s table, at which much of his reading and editorial work was done. In the little 254 EDGAR ALLAN POE. sleeping-room facing towards the street, Virginia died. 1 At the left of the little hallway is an old-fashioned winding staircase to the attic above. In this low- roofed room Poe had a writing-table and his meagre library. Here in seclusion his more ambitious work was done. The musical Bells/ the pathetic An nabel Lee, the weird Ulalume/ and the enig matic Eureka/ as well as some of his best fiction were written here." Hither, then, came the poet in the early summer of 1846, while the " Literati " excitement was raging, and here doubtless many of the articles were written. Mrs. Whitman, in a few words describing these "lonesome latter years," paints graphically the charm of the new residence : "It is well known to those acquainted with the parties, that the young wife of Edgar Poe [she was only twenty-four or five] died of lingering consump tion, which manifested itself even in her girlhood. All who have had opportunities for observation in the matter have noticed her husband s tender devotion to her during her prolonged illness. ... It is true that, notwithstanding her vivacity and cheerfulness at the time we have alluded to, her health was even then rapidly sinking ; and it was for her dear sake, and for the recovery of that peace which had been so fatally perilled amid the irritations and anxieties of his New York life, that Poe left the city, and removed to the little Dutch cottage in Fordham, where he passed the three remaining years of his life. It was to this quiet haven, in the beautiful spring of 1846, when the fruit-trees were all in bloom and the grass in its 1 She died, according to all descriptions, upstairs, in a room where the ceiling sloped. BIOGRAPHY. 255 freshest verdure, that he brought his Virginia to die. Here he watched her failing breath in loneliness and privation through many solitary moons, until, on a deso late, dreary day of the ensuing winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly roof to a neighbor ing cemetery. It was towards the close of the year following her death, his most " immemorial year, " that he wrote the strange threnody of " Ulalume." This poem, perhaps the most original and weirdly sug gestive of all his poems, resembles at first sight some of Turner s landscapes, being apparently without form and void, and having darkness on the face of it. It is, nevertheless, in its basis, although not in the precise correspondence of time, simply historical. Such was the poet s lonely midnight walk ; such, amid the deso late memories and sceneries of the hour, was the new born hope enkindled within his heart at sight of the morning star " * Astarte s bediamonded crescent coming up as the beautiful harbinger of love and hap piness yet awaiting him in the untried future ; and such the sudden transition of feeling, the boding dread, that supervened on discovering that which had at first been unnoted that it shone, as if in mockery or in warning, directly over the sepulchre of the lost Ula lume. " A writer in the * London Critic, after quoting the opening stanzas of Ulalume, says : < These to many will appear only words. But what wondrous words ! What a spell they wield ! What a withered unity there is in them ! The instant they are uttered, a misty picture, with a tarn dark as a murderer s eye below, and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering 256 EDGAR ALLAN POE. above, exponents of a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, is hung up in the chambers of your soul forever. An English writer, now living in Paris [1860], the author of some valuable contributions to our American periodicals, passed several weeks at the little cottage in Fordham in the early autumn of 1847, and described to us, with a truly English appreciativeness, its unrivalled neatness, and the quaint simplicity of its interior and surroundings. It was at the time bordered by a flower-garden, whose clumps of rare dahlias and brilliant beds of fall flowers showed, in the careful cul ture bestowed upon them, the fine floral taste of the inmates. "An American writer who visited the cottage dur ing the summer of the same year [1847], described it as half buried in fruit-trees, and having a thick grove of pines in its immediate neighborhood. The prox imity of the railroad, and the increasing population of the little village, have since wrought great changes in the place. Round an old cherry-tree, near the door, was a broad bank of greenest turf. The neighboring beds of mignonette and heliotrope, and the pleasant shade above, made this a favorite seat. Rising at four o clock in the morning for a walk to the magnificent Aqueduct bridge over Harlem River, our informant found the poet, with his mother, standing on the turf beneath the cherry-tree, eagerly watching the move ments of two beautiful birds that seemed contemplating a settlement in its branches. He had some rare tropi cal birds in cages, which he cherished and petted with assiduous care. Our English friend described him as giving to his birds and his flowers a delighted atten tion that seemed quite inconsistent with the gloomy BIOGRAPHY. 257 and grotesque character of his writings. A favorite cat, too, enjoyed his friendly patronage ; and often, when he was engaged in composition, it seated itself on his shoulder, purring as in complacent approval of the work proceeding under its supervision. "During Mr. Poe s residence at Fordham, a walk to High Bridge was one of his favorite and habitual recreations. The water of the Aqueduct is conveyed across the river on a range of lofty granite arches, which rise to the height of 145 feet above high- water level. On the top a turfed and grassy road, used only by foot-passengers and flanked on either side by a low parapet of granite, makes one of the finest promenades imaginable. "The winding river, and the high, rocky shores at the western extremity of the bridge, are seen to great advantage from this lofty avenue. In the last melan choly years of his life the lonesome latter years Poe was accustomed to walk there at all times of the day and night, often pacing the then solitary path way for hours without meeting a human being. A little to the east of the cottage rises a ledge of rocky ground, partly covered with pines and cedars, com manding a fine view of the surrounding country, and of the picturesque college of St. John s, which had at that time in its neighborhood venerable old trees. This rocky ledge was also one of the poet s favorite resorts. Here through the long summer days, and through solitary, star-lit nights, he loved to sit, dreaming his gorgeous waking dreams, or pondering the deep prob lems of The Universe, that grand prose poem to which he devoted the last and maturest energies of his wonderful intellect." Along with the "Literati" sketches of this sum* VOL. i. 17 258 EDGAR ALLAN POE. mer went "The Philosophy of Composition/ and instalments of Marginalia" to "Graham s and "The Democratic Review," for collecting and pub lishing which Poe has been taunted by a recent biog rapher, because some of them consisted of paragraphs already used in his printed reviews of this or that notability or nonentity. The fact is, that the "Marginalia" and the neglected " Pinakidia " of the early "Southern Literary Messenger" are among the most interesting products of Poe s mind, giving his most intimate thoughts about men and things, treasur ing his favorite quotations from a wide world of read ing, and singling out remarkable sayings such as one finds imbedded in the prose of Pascal or the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. In them Poe often strikingly exemplifies his powers of sarcasm, satire, pith and epi gram, not to speak of his sardonic humor a mental feature altogether denied Poe by one of his most sym pathetic critics James Hannay. 1 "He has, for in stance, no Humor had little sympathy with the various forms of human life. But he is perfectly poetic in his own province. If his circle was a narrow, it was a magic one. His poetry is sheer poetry, and bor rows nothing from without, as Didactic Poetry does. For Didactic Poetry he had a very strong and very justifiable dislike." This same critic singularly errs when he says (in the first of the following sentences) : " Traces of spiritual emotion are not to be found there [in his youthful poems] . Sorrow there is, but not divine sorrow. There is not any approach to the Holy to the Holiness which mingles with all Tennyson s 1 The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by James Hannay : London, 1863. BIOGRAPHY. 259 poetry as the Presence with the Wine. And yet, when you view his poems simply as poems, this char acteristic does not make itself felt as a Want. It would seem as if he had only to deal with the Beauti ful as a human aspirant. His soul thirsted for the supernal loveliness. That thirst was to him Reli gion all the Religion you discover in him. But if we cannot call him religious, we may say that he sup plies the materials to worship. You want flowers and fruit for your altar; and wherever Poe s muse has passed, flowers and fruits are fairer and brighter. (f With all this passion for the Beautiful, no poet was ever less voluptuous. He never profaned his genius whatever else he profaned. Irene, Ula- lume, Lenore, < Annabel Lee, Annie, are all gentle, and innocent, and fairy-like. A sound of music rising as from an unseen Ariel brings in a most pure and lovely figure, sad, usually ; so delicate and dreamy are these conceptions, that, indeed, they hint only of some transcendent beauty some region where passion has no place, where " Music, and moonlight, and feeling are one, as Shelley says. "Poe loved splendour he delighted in the gorgeous in ancient birth in tropical flowers in southern birds in castellated dwellings. The hero of his Raven sits on a violet velvet lining ; they have crested palls. He delighted, as Johnson said of Collins, to gaze on the magnificence of golden pal aces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. His scenery is everywhere magnificent. His Genius is always waited upon with the splendour of an Ori ental monarch." 260 EDGAR ALLAN POE. The " Marginalia" of which we have been speak ing were in all likelihood paragraphs originally trans ferred from Poe s note-books to this or that review as occasion called for them, and then reclaimed from these reviews for an independent purpose, later. "We know now that the charge," says Mr. Ap- pleton Morgan, "that Poe resold his manuscripts is a lie, circumstantially nailed by the publisher, still fortu nately living, from whose reminiscences the allegation originated. This publisher did, it seems, pay Poe three times for three versions of The Bells, himself insisting on so doing, because the poems were substan tially distinct pieces. The statement that Poe stole the theme, metre, rhythm, and technique of The Raven from a certain lunatic in a certain madhouse has also fallen to the ground, it having been ascer tained that there never was either such a lunatic or such a madhouse. " The truth is, perhaps, that Poe s greatest crime was his poverty often abject, and always extreme." Echoes of this misery reverberated pathetically through the Griswold correspondence. "I know nothing of the Poe family," writes Miss M. L. Sew- ard to Mrs. Osgood, New York, November 23d, 1846, "except that they are in great poverty." "The Poes are in the same state of physical and pecuniary suffering indeed worse, than they were last summer," writes Mrs. M. E. Hewitt to the same correspondent, under date of December 20, 1846; " for now the cold weather is added to their accumu lation of ills. I went to inquire of Mr. Post [publisher of the "Columbian Magazine"] about them. He confirmed all that I had previously heard of their condition. Although he says Mrs. Clemm has never BIOGRAPHY. 261 told him they were in want, yet she borrows a shilling often, to get a letter from the office but Mrs. Gove has been to see the Poes and found them living in the greatest wretchedness. I am endeavoring to get up a contribution for them among the editors, and the matter has got into print very much to my regret, as I fear it will hurt Foe s pride to have his affairs made so public." Almost the last day of this distressful year (De cember 29th), Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to Griswold : " I hope you will do whatever you can to favor Mr. Poe in the matter of which he spoke to you in his letter. . . . T have always thought Mr. Poe en tertained a favorable opinion of me since he taught me how to scan one of my own poems. And I am not ashamed, though it may be very unphilosophical, to be grateful for his good opinion, and even venture to hope that he may find something to approve in one or two of my last poems." Poe was only too eager to welcome young talent like that of Holmes, Bayard Taylor, the Davidson sisters, and others ; even from the depths of his black est misery he had evidently written for a copy of Holmes s poems with a view to a notice of them. Mrs. Gove-Nichols (whom, as Mrs. Gove, Poe had reviewed sympathetically in "The Literati") gives us a pathetic glimpse of Poe and of Virginia s last month about this time : " Poe s voice was melody itself. He always spoke low, when in a violent discussion, compelling his hear ers to listen if they would know his opinion, his facts, fancies, or philosophy, or his weird imaginings. These last usually flowed from his pen, seldom from his tongue, 262 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " On this occasion I was introduced to the young wife of the poet, and to the mother, then more than sixty years of age. She was a tall, dignified old lady, with a most lady-like manner, and her black dress, though old and much worn, looked really elegant on her. She wore a widow s cap, of the genuine pattern, and it suited excellently with her snow-white hair. Her features were large, and corresponded with her stature, and it seemed strange how such a stalwart and queenly woman could be the mother of her petite daughter. Mrs. Poe looked very young ; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair, gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was almost a dissolved spirit, and when she coughed it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away. " The mother seemed hale and strong, and appeared to be a sort of universal Providence to her strange children. " The cottage had an air of taste and gentility that must have been lent to it by the presence of its inmates. So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, and yet so charming, a dwelling I never saw. The floor of the kitchen was white as wheaten flour. A table, a chair, and a little stove that it contained, seemed to furnish it com pletely. The sitting-room floor was laid with check matting ; four chairs, a light stand, and a hanging book-shelf composed its furniture. There were pretty presentation copies of books on the little shelves, and the Brownings had posts of honour on the stand. With quiet exultation Poe drew from his side-pocket a letter he had recently received from Elizabeth Barrett (Brown ing). He read it to us. It was very flattering. She BIOGRAPHY. 263 told Poe that his " poem of the Raven had awakened a fit [of] horror in England. This was what he loved to do." 1 . . . "The autumn came, and Mrs. Poe sank rapidly in consumption," continues Mrs. Gove-Nichols. "I saw her in her bed-chamber. Everything here was so neat, so purely clean, so scant and poverty-stricken, that I saw the poor sufferer with such a heart-ache. . . . There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw-bed, wrapped in her husband s great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer s only means of warmth ; except as her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet. " Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daugh ter, and her distress on account of her illness and poverty was dreadful to see. " As soon as I was made aware of these painful facts, I came to New York and enlisted the sympa thies and services of a lady, whose heart and hand were ever open to the poor and miserable. A feather bed and abundance of bed-clothing and other comforts were the first-fruits of my labour of love. The lady headed a private subscription, and carried them $60 the next week. From the day this kind lady saw the suffering family of the poet, she watched over them as a mother watches over her babe. She saw them often, and ministered to the comfort of the dying and the living. 2 1 Ingram, II., p. 91. z Ibid., p. 97. 264 EDGAR ALLAN POE. This angel of mercy was Marie Louise Shew (after wards Mrs. Houghton), to whom Poe addressed the beautiful lines in "The Home Journal" for March 13, 1847: TO M. L. S Of all who hail thy presence as the morning ; Of all to whom thy absence is the night, The blotting utterly from out high heaven The sacred sun ; of all who, weeping, bless thee Hourly for hope, for life, ah ! above all, For the resurrection of deep-buried faith In truth, in virtue, in humanity ; Of all who, on despair s unhallowed bed Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen At thy soft-murmured words, " Let there be light !" At the soft-murmured words that were fulfilled In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes ; Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude Nearest resembles worship, oh, remember, The truest, the most fervently devoted, And think that these weak lines are written by him : By him, who, as he pens them, thrills to think His spirit is communing with an angel s. In March, 1 848, Poe again addressed the passion ate lines " To ," beginning : " Not long ago the writer of these lines, In the mad pride of intellectuality, Maintained the power of words " to this same lady, thus evincing his eternal gratitude for her goodness to his dying wife. It is to her that we owe the first suggestion of " The Bells," </iU / v / 01 W- HvAAl sto^kifU "> si* 1&LC4** /e ^ w m *+ . c4 ^T^JL. So i - /id ri Ui. t JTY BIOGRAPHY. 265 The pitiable condition of the family got into print : the ever-ready Willis heard of it and printed an ap peal in "The Home Journal" for help; which brought forth a painful protest from Poe at thus having his private affairs thrust upon the public. He might die of starvation, like Otway and Spenser, but he did not wish the public to know anything about it. Thirty days after his letter of protest was written Virginia ac tually did die, January 30, 1847. The day before the sad event he wrote as follows to Mrs. Shew : FORDHAM, Jan. 29, 47. KINDEST DEAREST FRIEND My poor Virginia yet lives, although failing fast and now suffering much pain. May God grant her life until she sees you and thanks you once again ! Her bosom is full to overflowing like my own with a boundless inexpressible gratitude to you. Lest she may never see you more she bids me say that she sends you her sweetest kiss of love and will die bless ing you. But come oh, come to-morrow ! Yes ! I will be calm everything you so nobly wish to see me. My mother sends you, also, her " warmest love and thanks." She begs me to ask you, if possible, to make arrangements at home so that you may stay with us to morrow night. I enclose the order to the Postmaster. Heaven bless you and farewell, EDGAR A. PoE. 1 Mrs. Shew attended to the last sad rites of the dead, and Virginia was temporarily placed in the family vault of the Valentines, in the Reformed Church at Ford- ham. Any one who remembers the awful vividness with which Poe has depicted the slow consuming away of 1 Ingram, II., p. 107. 266 EDGAR ALLAN POE. a beloved one through a lingering illness, in the illumi nated pages of " Ligeia," "Morella" and " Eleo- nora " lit by sepulchral lamps, wherein every footfall of the approach of " The Conqueror Worm " is de lineated with muffled yet magical detail ; every one to whose soul have penetrated the melodious dirges of "Ulalume," "Lenore," and " The Raven," which assume in their writhings almost the agonizing grace of the Laocoon, must realize, faintly indeed yet sympa thetically, the abysmal grief into which this death must have plunged the greatest Artist of Death whom the world has ever seen, the man who most keenly and most wonderfully has conjured up its horrors before the quailing imagination and made them stand, instinct with their own quivering and hideous life, before the recoiling eye of the mind. The half-frantic mood of the time may be read in the mystic interlineations of " Ulalume," peeping between the lines of this mad yet most musical autobiographic poem that is wreathed with the opiate vapors of frenzy. " Deprived of the companionship and sympathy of his child- wife," writes a friendly biographer, 1 "the poet suffered what to him was the exquisite agony of utter loneliness. Night after night he would arise from his sleepless pillow, and, dressing himself, wan der to the grave of his lost one, and throwing him self down upon the cold ground, weep bitterly for hours at a time. " The same haunting dread which we have ven tured to ascribe to him at the time of his writing The Raven, possessed him now, and to such a degree that he found it impossible to sleep without the presence of some friend by his bedside. Mrs. Clemm, his ever- 1 W. F. Gill, Chatto and Windus, London, 1878, BIOGRAPHY. 267 devoted friend and comforter, more frequently fulfilled the office of watcher. The poet, after retiring, would summon her, and while she stroked his broad brow, he would indulge his wild flights of fancy to the Aidenn of his dreams. He never spoke nor moved in these moments, unless the hand was withdrawn from his forehead ; then he would say, with childish naivete, No, no, not yet ! while he lay with half-closed eyes. " The mother, or friend, would stay by him until he was fairly asleep, then gently leave him." The excesses to which the ruptured throat of his wife had impelled him in Philadelphia, and all through the five years preceding her death, with their alterna tions of hope and despair, now ended in a settled gloom that threatened his reason : henceforth Poe was a broken man, an unstrung harp wildly and wistfully singing of things long gone by, a " seraph-harper Is- rafel " that had lost his harp or sat discrowned and disconsolate among the asphodels. A few uneven things, a few weird and beautiful threnodies, and the great prose-poem tf Eureka," were practically all that Death and Grief had left him to utter, now that the inspiration of his life had gone and the home of his heart was built up against her tomb. A radiant joy indeed broke fitfully on the poet late in these latter years, but this, too, was doomed to extinction, and soon hung, like his trembling Astarte, directly over a grave. The excesses, brought on by extreme anguish and straitened circumstances, were only too real though never habitual, never baccbanalia of mere maudlin sensuality such as one reads of in the annals of drunken Elizabethans : they were the ups and downs, the un even tight-rope walking of a nature trying to balance 268 EDGAR ALLAN POE. itself amid impossible conditions and morbid neurotic states, wrung from its natural rectitude by overpower ing temptation to seek relief in stimulants coffee, wine, drugs, opium, anything that would soothe the intense malaise. Alas, how full of Verlaines and de Mussets and Baudelaires the world has been men like Poe, endowed w r ith preternaturally sensitive nerves, unable to grapple with the coarse flesh -and -blood around them, pierced on all sides by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and succumbing at last to the superincumbent mass of misery. Poor little Virginia lay for many years in the bor rowed tomb, but now at last rests beside her husband in Westminster Church grave-yard, Baltimore, under neath the Poe monument. BIOGRAPHY. 269 CHAPTER XIII. 1848. " EUREKA." OWING to Mrs. Shew s untiring efforts, Poe s friends (including General Winfield Scott) raised about $100 and helped to pay the debts incurred by long illness. He himself seems to have been desperately ill and un nerved for a long time after Virginia s death and never really recovered from the shock. A famous New York physician (Dr. Mott) diagnosed the case, apparently agreeing with Mrs. Shew (who had been medically educated and was a doctor s only daughter), that Poe was suffering from a lesion of one side of the brain which would not permit him to use stimulants or tonics without producing insanity. "I did not feel much hope," says the lady in her diary, 1 " that he could be raised up from brain fever brought on by extreme suffering of mind and body actual want and hunger, and cold having been borne by this heroic husband in order to supply food, medi cine, and comforts to his dying wife until exhaus tion and lifelessness were so near at every reaction of the fever, that even sedatives had to be administered with extreme caution." He clung pathetically to the little Dutch cottage, went out little and wrote less ; and yet this year of trouble 1 Ingram, II., 115. 270 EDGAR ALLAN POE. is the one 1847 in which his great prose-poem of " Eureka " began to dawn on him as he walked the piazza, looked out on the immeasurable " field of the cloth of gold " of stars, and speculated eagerly and philosophically about its future. Again " The Stylus " his teasing evil genius crops up and impels him to lecture and work for funds for its resuscitation. That he was not wholly idle this almost fatal year, in spite of the long and depressing illnesses that re peatedly brought him to death s door, may be seen from the following unaddressed MS. letter in possession of the University of Virginia : NEW YORK, August 10, 1847. DEAR SIR, Permit me to thank you, in the first place, very sincerely, for your considerate kindness to me while in Philadelphia. Without your aid, at the precise moment and in the precise manner in which you rendered it, it is more than probable that I should not now be alive to write you this letter. Finding myself exceeding ill so much so that I had no hope except in getting home immediately I made several attempts to see Mr. Graham, and at last saw him for a few minutes just as he was about returning to Cape May. He was very friendly more so than I have ever known him, and requested me to write continuously for the Mag. As you were not present, however, and it was uncertain when I could see you, I obtained an advance of $10 from Mr. G. in order that I might return home at once and thinking it, also, more proper to leave you time in which to look over the articles. I would be deeply obliged if you could now give me an answer respecting them. Should you take both, it would render me, just now, the most important service. I owe Mr. G. about $50. The articles, at the old price ($4 per page), will come to $190 so that, if you write BIOGRAPHY. 271 me that they are accepted, I propose to draw on Mr. G. for $40 thus squaring our account. P. S, I settled my bill with Arbuckle before leav ing Phil., but am not sure how much I owe yourself for the previous bill, etc. Please let me know. Very gratefully your friend, EDGAR A. POE. The same "immemorial year" was sealed, in De cember, with the anonymous publication, in " The American Whig Review," of the mystic (f Ulalume," reprinted by Willis, at Poe s request, in " The Home Journal," with remarks on its "exquisitely piquant and skilful exercise of rarity and niceness of lan guage," " a curiosity in philologic flavor." The " Union Magazine " had rejected the poem, as other magazines or publishers had rejected or held up many of Poe s best things "The Sleeper," " The Gold- Bug," "The Bells," etc., and the "Tales" in volume form. Poe s work was so strange, so extraordinary, so original as it towered and sparkled in columnar beauty amid the flat commonplace of the time, that it is no wonder if editors were startled and looked askance, as they looked askance at "Jane Eyre," at Carlyle s "French Revolution," at Lamardne s "Jacqueline." j Willis was one of the few editors of the time who ap preciated Poe at his exact value, and gave him un stinted praise to the last. The rest gazed at him Graham, and, it may be, Lowell excepted as one might imagine the aborigines of Nubia gazing at the gorgeous bark of Cleopatra as it swept flashing down the Nile with all its oriental splendor and paraphernalia, a vision of light, perfume, and beauty. 272 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Dark as the year preceding this had been, it had shot a ray of sunshine athwart the poet s path before Virginia s death in the shape of hearty recognition abroad. About the time the Godey sketches were running out, and literary Manhattan began to breathe a sigh of relief, the " Revue des Deux Mondes" printed a highly appreciative review of the Tales of 1845, which was followed by Mme. Gabrielle Men- nier s translation of the best of them. A disgraceful squabble indeed had arisen between two Parisian papers "Le Commerce " and " La Quotidienne " soon after the publication of " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in April, 1841, in which it was shown that " Le Commerce " had stolen Poe s tale from the " Charivari," and republished it as an original feuilleton under the title of " L Orang-Otang." This, in turn, was stolen by " La Quotidienne " and transferred to its columns ; whereupon a lawsuit ensued, when the source of the theft was shown to be Poe s tale published shortly before in "Graham s." And now, recently, a writer in " Notes and Queries" (May 12, 1894) comes forward to show that Poe probably stole his tale from an incident re corded in the " Shrewsbury Chronicle," apropos of " a ribbon-faced baboon " that had been taught to "burgle" ! "The Case of M. Valdemar " was traced to one Miss Prevorst, the " William Wilson " to "The Man with Two Lives" (Boston, 1829), and to Calderon ; the germ of " Metzengerstein " was discovered in tf Vivian Grey," " Three Sundays in a Week" comes from Herschel s "Astronomy," " Hans Pfaall " is a free paraphrase of current scien tific works, and Bulwer and Disraeli have been abun dantly plundered for the rest ! BIOGRAPHY. 273 Other rays of sunshine that fell before he died into his darkened life were the vogue and republication of some of his tales in England "The Fall of the House of Usher/ in "Bentley s," " The Purloined Letter," in Chambers " Edinburgh Journal," " Mes meric Revelation "and " The Case of M. Valdemar," in the London " Popular Record of Modern Science," and, of course, the Poems of 1845. Poe s transatlantic reputation may, indeed, as Pro fessor Trent l justly remarks, be regarded as a test of his value as a writer : " It is quite plain thatPoe is con sidered by competent European critics to be the greatest author America has yet produced. His tales at least have been translated into all the chief languages, and have been widely read and more or less imitated. His poems, if less well known, have perhaps been even more influential, their melody, their weirdness, their ideality having affected in considerable measure most modern lyrical poetry. . . . With the partial excep tion of Cooper, Poe is practically the only American since Franklin who has been accorded sincere and widespread homage in Europe for intellectual achieve ments other than scientific who has, in other words, been recognized as one of the world s master writers. Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne, and other American authors have indeed been cordially received by British readers; but this is not the same thing as breaking down the barriers of language and winning the ap plause of the whole civilized world." It is an astounding circumstance that a mind so ap parently wrecked as Poe s was all through the weary months of 1847 months hyphened together by 1 " Poe s Rank as a Writer," East and West, Aug. 1900. VOL. I. 18 274 EDGAR ALLAN POE. unalterable gloom from the death of Virginia, in Janu ary, to the apparition on the December horizon of the fantastic flame of" Ulalume " could have recovered vitality or even vivacity enough to meditate upon the deep themes of "Eureka," of the cosmogony of the Universe, of the destiny of the human soul and the fate of the circumambient matter ; but so it was. Poe s argumentative faculty attained perhaps its highest expression in "Eureka": the theme, in itself so abstract, so transcendental, burns and glows with a concrete radiance that seems to convince the reader that it is true light and not quagmire phosphorescence ; the suppleness of the poet s tongue never abandons him as he climbs the empyrean in his Excelsior flight and forces one stronghold after another of retreating Deity, talking volubly of Newton, Kepler, and La Place the while, until at last "Eureka!" bursts from his lips and he fancies he has found the Eternal. Having worked the book out through the long and hollow hours of 1 847 hollow from the full life of his sweet Virginia having left him he was ready with it as a lecture in the early months of 1848. His hope was to rent a hall and secure an audience of three or four hundred persons who would pay him sufficiently to start on a lecturing tour in the interests of " The Stylus " which now again sweeps up to the surface like the drowned face of Delacroix s maiden. Instead of three or four hundred, sixty per sons assembled in the hall of the Society Library, New York, and shivered through three hours of a bleak February night, listening, as one of them reported, to a " rhapsody of the most intense brilliancy. Poe ap peared inspired, and his inspiration affected the scant audience almost painfully. His eyes seemed to glow BIOGRAPHY. 275 like those of his own Raven. : His true friend, Willis, so often abused as a mere dilettante dandy of literature, helped in this project as in so many others relating to Poe, and did what he could to further it : " My general aim is to start a Magazine [magazines, in that virgin soil and time were burgeoning all over the country] to be called the Stylus, " he wrote; " but it would be useless to me, even when established, if not entirely out of the control of a publisher. With this end in view, I must get a list of, at least, 500 subscribers to begin with : nearly 200 I have al ready. I propose, however, to go South and West, among my personal and literary friends old college and West Point acquaintances and see what I can do. In order to get the means of taking the first step, I propose to lecture at the [New York Historical] So ciety Library on Thursday, the 3rd of February and that there may be no cause of squabbling my sub ject shall not be literary at all. I have chosen a broad text The Universe. The Lyceum system of lecturing so entertainingly , described by Edward Everett Hale in recent chapters of "James Russell Lowell and his Friends," was just then beginning its popular and fashionable career in New York and New England, and intelligent men and women were flocking to the lecture courses with pencil and note-book, eager to take down the words of inspir ation as they dropped from the lips of eloquent speakers. The Lowell foundation was one of the re sults of the movement which, according to Dr. Hale, was a sort of spill-over, protest or expansion from the Sunday lecture, secular topics, however dramatic or useful, not being allowed (as was right) in the Sunday pulpit. 276 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Not disheartened at his poor success nor at the ab surdly caricatured accounts of the lecture in the public prints, Poe went bravely to work and wrote out the theory in book form, offering it, with flashing eyes and exuberant enthusiasm, to Mr. Putnam, the publisher of two of his books. He suggested an edition of 50,- ooo ; Mr. Putnam listened attentively, and ventured upon an edition of 500. The title, preface, etc., are as follows (we quote from a copy of the original edition) : Eureka: | A Prose Poem, | by | Edgar A. Poe. | New York: | Geo. P. Putnam, | of late Firm of "Wiley and Putnam," | 155 Broadway. | MDCCCXLVIII. With very Profound Respect, | This Work is Dedicated j to | Alexander Von Humboldt. Preface. To the few who love me and whom I love to those who feel rather than to those who think to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth ; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art- Product alone : let us say as a Romance ; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true : therefore it can not die : or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will "rise again to the Life Everlasting." Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead. E. A. P. The book is bound in boards and contains about 136 pages of text, outside of the preface,, dedication, BIOGRAPHY. 277 and title-page. What Poe himself considered the gist of "Eureka" may be gathered from the following letter : NEW YORK, February 29, 1848. GEO. E. ISBELL, ESQ. : DEAR SIR, A press of business has hitherto prevented me from replying to your letter of the loth. "The Ves tiges of Creation " I have not yet seen ; and it is always unsafe and unwise to form opinions of books from reviews of them. The extracts of the work which have fallen in my way abound in inaccuracies of fact ; still these may not materially affect the general argument. One thing is certain j that the objections of merely scientific men men, I mean, who cultivate the physical sciences to the exclusion, in a greater or less degree, of the mathematics, of metaphysics and logic are generally invalid except in respect to scientific details. Of all persons in the world, they are at the same time the most bigoted and the least capable of using, generalizing or deciding upon the facts which they bring to light in the course of their experiments. And these are the men who chiefly write the criticisms against all efforts at generalization de nouncing these efforts as " speculative 11 and "theoretical." The notice of my lecture, which appeared in the " New \Vorld," was written by some one grossly incompetent to the task which he undertook. No idea of what I said can be gleaned from either that or any other of the news paper notices with the exception, perhaps, of the " Ex press" where the critique was written by a gentleman of much scientific acquirement, Mr. E. A. Hopkins, of Vermont. I enclose you his report, which, however, is inaccurate in numerous particulars. He gives my general conception so, at least, as not to caricature it. I have not yet published the lecture, but, when I do so, will have the pleasure of mailing you a copy. In the meantime, permit me to state succinctly my principal 278 EDGAR ALLAN POE. GENERAL PROPOSITION. Because nothing was, there fore all things are. 1. An inspection of the universality of gravitation of the fact that each particle tends not to any one com mon point, but to every other particle, suggests perfect totality of absolute unity as the source of the phenomenon. 2. Gravity is but the mode in which is manifested the tendency of all things to return into their original unity. 3. I show that the law of the return ;. e., the law of gravity is but a necessary result of the necessary and sole possible mode of equable irradiation of matter through a limited space. 4. Were the universe of stars (contradistinguished from the universe of space) unlimited, no worlds could exist. 5. I show that unity is nothingness. 6. All matter, springing from unity sprang from nothingness, /. e. , was created. 7. All will return to unity, / . e. , to nothingness. I would be obliged to you if you would let me know how far these ideas are coincident with those of the " Vestiges." Very resp y yr. ob. st., EDGAR A. POE. He had opened the discussion with words almost as solemn as the chords which prelude some divine sym phony: "Eureka: an Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe. " It is with humility really unassumed it is with a sentiment even of awe that I pen the opening sen tence of this work : for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn the most comprehensive the most difficult the most au gust. " What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in BIOGRAPHY. 279 their sublimity sufficiently sublime in their simplic ity for the mere enunciation of my theme ? " I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical of the Material and Spiritual Universe : of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its Present Condition and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the greatest and most justly reverenced of men." Poe was a great admirer of Humboldt s " Cosmos," and he therefore dedicates to its author his famous tract " De Natura Rerum." Lucretius had written a wonderful poem in Latin hexameters on this topic, astonishing the ancient world by his elevated Epicure anism and passionate enthusiasm for what was true ; and there is more than one striking analogy between the Roman and the American. Both, in their poems, were passionate inconoclasts, idealists, dreamers of the speculative philosophies that looked into the causes of things ; both set aside what they considered the degrad ing superstitions, and reinstated Divinity in its rights. What a critic has well called "the impassioned solem nity " of Lucretius, is the religious, the almost rever ential, spirit with which Poe approaches the problem of the Universe. Both are refined materialists of an almost spiritual type. Lucretius s object was to clear the mind from the fear of the gods and the terrors of a future state, endeavoring to "show that the world is not governed by capricious agency, but has come into existence, continues in existence, and will ulti mately pass away in accordance with the primary conditions of the elemental atoms which, along with empty space, are the only eternal and immutable sub stances. That atoms are themselves infinite in num.- 280 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ber, but limited in their varieties, and by their ceaseless movement and combinations during infinite time and through infinite space the whole process of creation is maintained." Poe s object was not far different from Lucretius s in his abhorrence of superstition; and all that the critic has to say about Lucretius s power of reasoning the subtlety and fertility of invention with which he applies analogies, the keenness and clearness of his observation, the consecutive force, precision, and distinction of his style as employed in the processes of scientific exposition, are as if written of Poe. The Roman went mad from a love-philtre and committed suicide in his forty-fourth year ; the mixed elements of Poe s life his dangerous deliriums, his passionate loves, hates, and adorations brought him very near to Lucretius s fate. And both threw their sublime speculations into poem-form, the one into six or seven thousand sonorous Latin lines that roll majestically as ocean-surges on the shore, the other into a brilliant monologue which, but for the ill-judged burlesque element at its beginning, might be an oratorio of the Creation. BIOGRAPHY. 281 CHAPTER XIV. 1848. MRS. WHITMAN. "THE BELLS;" MRS. OSGOOD. (t HELEN my Helen the Helen of a thousand dreams ! " Such are the words, in one of Poe s impassioned letters to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, which from now on form the key-note of his existence, an exist ence in which the love of woman, the adoration of the Womanly, had always formed an essential part. Starting with his devotion to the gentle Mrs. Allan, and to Mrs. Stanard, continuing with his adoration of his child-wife, and of his "more than mother, * > s / i concentrating into affectionate admiration for Mrs. Shew and Mrs. Osgood, all the love that was now left in Poe s volcanic nature rose to brief fever-heat in the passion for the beautiful and spiritual New Eng land soul that had " Come up through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes," and smiled at him over the "legended tomb " of the lost Ulalume. Rarely gifted as a poet herself, accomplished in many literatures, imbued with the culture of France and Germany, and tracing descent from an ancient Celtic- 282 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Norman stock to which she believed Foe s lineage also ran up, Sarah Helen Power was born in Providence, Rhode Island, January 19 (Poe s birthday), 1803, and died June 27, 1878. 1 " Marrying John W. Whitman, a lawyer of Boston, in 1828, she was left a widow by his death in 1833. Betrothed to Edgar / Poe, in 1848, a few months before his death, the engagement was broken, on the eve of the marriage, by the interference of friends. The early life of the poet was shadowed by the long absence of her father, and her later years were almost wholly devoted to a sister, left her in sacred charge by her mother. The poem In Memoriam is the requiem of this sister. This poem, Mrs. Whitman s last, has all the intel lectual vigor of youth, though written at the age of seventy-five. The freshness of her spirit and the charm of her presence were not lost in the vicissitudes of a life of strange and romantic experience. No one ever associated with her the idea of age. She is represented as lying beautiful as a bride in death, her brown hair scarcely touched with gray. "... Mrs. Whitman s poems, to an unusual degree, illustrate the author s life. By her direction the poems relating to Edgar Poe . . . have been grouped together, though not placed under a separate head. To this group belong Remembered Music, Our Island of Dreams, The Last Flowers, Song, Withered Flowers, The Phantom Voice, Arc- turus in October, Resurgemus, the six Sonnets To , Arcturus in April, and The Portrait. " In 1 860 Mrs. Whitman published the little book, Edgar Poe and his Critics, of which Curtis wrote in 1 We quote by permission the Introduction to "Poems : By Sarah Helen Whitman" : Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879. BIOGRAPHY. 283 Harper s Weekly : In reading the exquisitely tender, subtle, sympathetic, and profoundly apprecia tive sketch of Edgar Poe, which has just been issued under this title, it is impossible not to remember the brave woman s arm, thrust through the slide to serve as a bolt against the enemy. . . . The author, with an inexpressible grace, reserve, and tender, heroic charity, having a right which no other person has to speak, tells in a simple, transparent, and quiet strain, what she thinks of his career and genius. 3 In 18543 small volume of Mrs. Whitman s poems, entitled "Hours of Life," appeared in Providence, and received a warm welcome from George Ripley, Curtis, and others ; and this, in 1879, was followed by her collected Poems in the edition from which we make these extracts. It is impossible, in looking over these poems, not to be struck by their Poesque diction, music, and idiosyncrasy, as of a kindred soul caught by the spell of an overmastering genius. " The Golden Ball " is musically reminiscent of " The Raven " ; " To " has grown out of the magic root of " To Helen " ; the poems in memory of Poe are impassioned dirges, kindling with cadences of " beauty, majesty, and woe " that sweep from out the chords of the seraph harp of Israfel. Full of delicacy, spontaneity, appreciation of Nature, and mastery over rhythm, these poems pre sent a spirit of rare sweetness and refinement, and it is no wonder that they caught Poe s eye and soul, and drew from him enthusiastic praise in a lecture on "The Female Poets of America." In 1849 Mrs. Whitman addressed to him the following lines ; 284 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ARCTURUS. [WRITTEN IN OCTOBER.] "Our stars look through the storm." STAR of resplendent front ! thy glorious eye Shines on me still from out yon clouded sky, Shines on me through the horrors of a night More drear than ever fell o er day so bright, Shines till the envious Serpent slinks away, And pales and trembles at thy steadfast ray. Hast thou not stooped from heaven, fair star ! to be So near me in this hour of agony ? So near, so bright, so glorious, that I seem To lie entranced as in some wondrous dream, All earthly joys forgot, all earthly fear, Purged in the light of thy resplendent sphere : Kindling within my soul a pure desire To blend with thine its incandescent fire, To lose my very life in thine, and be Soul of thy soul through all eternity. The occasion of Poe s first sight of Mrs. Whitman is romantically described as follows : (t Poe caught a glimpse of a white figure wandering in a moonlit garden in Providence, on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near mid night, he wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterwards in one of his most ex quisite poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion. " BIOGRAPHY. 285 These lines begin : " I saw thee once once only years ago : I must not say how many but not many. It was a July midnight ; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturned faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tip-toe. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half-reclining ; while the moon Fell on the upturned faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturned alas, in sorrow ! "Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses ? " The lady in 1 84748 addressed an anonymous Valentine to the author of " The Raven"; in the summer or early fall of 1 848 the two met at her mother s house, Poe carrying a letter of introduction from the authoress, Maria Mclntosh. Always looking for the mystic and the improbable, the poet believed, from the agreement of name between this Helen and the one he had so musically worshipped in his far-off boyish days, that there was a pre-ordained connection between their fates. " I yielded at once," he writes, " to an overwhelming sense of Fatality. From that hour 286 EDGAR ALLAN POE. I have never been able to shake from my soul the be lief that my Destiny, for good or for evil, either here or hereafter, is in some measure interwoven with your own." One must turn to the most glowing letters of Abelard and Eloiise, or to the "Sonnets from the Por tuguese for the fire, the urgency, the consuming thirst to be loved that burn and glow in Poe s letters of this period a period of new-risen Hope, of resur rection from a dead self, of rebirth into an existence that began to shimmer with the new leaves and new light of a dawning spring after the autumnal blasts and blights of the months just gone by. The eager, tremulous, stormy joy of these new weeks and months is prophetic of the new Poe that was about to be born, or that might have been born, had not Disaster inter vened here, as at every important crisis-moment of the poet s life, and cried Halt ! One of the most remarkable incidents in this remark able summer was the suggestion and composition of " The Bells," the second of the great brace of poems that have given Poe world-wide celebrity. The poem was, singularly enough, suggested by a lady who, she confessed, had never read a line of the poet s writings Mrs. Shew, the guardian angel of Fordham. Busied Vin philanthropic work, she had never had time to read /the poems of Poe. "One day," says Mr. Ingram, " he came in and said : Marie Louise, I have to write a poem ; I have no feeling, no sentiment, no inspiration. His hostess persuaded him to have some tea. It was served in the conservatory, the windows of which were open, and admitted the sound of neigh boring church bells. Mrs. Shew said, playfully, U\VA> ^s 0" v ^ 1^ ^ r,^ ^ ^ ^ ^5 ^ ^b ^o 5i ^ ^-*^ ^ ^ - ^c* -j- ^ 5" ^ *%s ^ 5 ^ ^ 5^ o \ > 4 ^ ^^^: : ^ | Y ^ <5T -^4^ ** ^ ^ g ^S^J ^> j <-, ^- -*>^ ^ ^1^ \ k -^ I $i ^ , f> I *l ^ -i ^\ ^s ^> K BIOGRAPHY. 287 Here is paper/ but the poet, declining it, declared : I so dislike the sound of bells to-night, I cannot write. I have no subject I am exhausted. The lady then took up the pen, and pretending to mimic his style, wrote The Bells, by E. A. Poe ; and^ then in pure sportiness, The bells, the little silver \/ bells, Poe finishing off the stanza. She then sug- gested for the next verse s The heavy iron bells ; and this Poe also expanded into a stanza. He next copied out the complete poem, and headed it By Mrs. M. L. Shew, remarking that it was her poem, as she had suggested and composed so much of it. 7 Such was the germ of this melodious onomato-poem, the most perfect imitation in word, sound, and rhythm, in suggestion, in exquisite mimicry, of its theme ever written, not even excepting the marvellous " Les Djinns " of Victor Hugo or the " Lodore " of Southey. The very spirit and spirituality the essence and aura of the musical bell-metal, with all its golden and silver and brazen tones, seems to have flowed into the poet s soul as he wrote, and to have taken tongues never before so musically voiced, not even by Schiller. " The Bells " went through no less than three transformations before it reached the public in its final form, being published in Sartain s " Union Magazine " for November, 1849 (after Poe s death). The editor of the magazine gave the following account of its evo lution : "The singular poem of Mr. Poe s, called The Bells, which we published in our last num ber, has been very extensively copied. There is a curious piece of literary history connected with this poem, which we may as well give now as at any other time. It illustrates the gradual development of 288 EDGAR ALLAN POE. an idea in the mind of a man of original genius. This poem came into our possession about a year since [consequently, about December, 1 848] . It then con sisted of eighteen lines ! They were as follows : THE BELLS. A SONG. THE bells ! hear the bells ! The merry wedding-bells ! The little silver bells ! How fairy-like a melody there swells From the silver tinkling cells Of the bells, bells, bells ! Of the bells! The bells! ah, the bells ! The heavy iron bells ! Hear the tolling of the bells ! Hear the knells ! How horrible a monody there floats From their throats From their deep- toned throats ! How I shudder at the notes From the melancholy throats Of the bells, bells, bells ! Of the bells! " About six months after this we received the poem enlarged and altered nearly to its present size and form ; and about three months since, the author sent another alteration and enlargement, in which condition the poem was left at the time of his death." This was one of the poems which Poe was accused of selling three times a charge indignantly denied by Mr. Sartain himself. BIOGRAPHY. 289 Poe s excited condition this memorable summer the summer that Dr. Francis said "he has heart-dis ease and must die young," as he looked on the sleeping V poet brought his devoted friendship with Mrs. Shew to a sudden close : Mrs. Shew naturally became afraid of her gifted patient, who could sink into a twelve- hours slumber, and not know that he had slept ; who was liable to fits of overwhelming depression ; the prey of melancholia, evidently near the last stages of cerebral congestion, and possessed by a world of weird \ and uncanny thoughts. The rupture was a very natu ral one from a woman s point of view ; and yet the lady herself has been handed down to history as one of the four "holy women " who stood by the tomb and defended the "resurrected" poet with all the eloquence of their pens. When one looks into the life-record of this Pilgrim of Sorrow, it is the faces of Mrs. Shew, Mrs. Osgood, Mrs. Whitman, and Mrs. Weiss that peer luminously through the gloom, their tender and beautiful hands that hold the lamp illuminating it, their words of cheer, of comfort, of recognition, that sound across the abyss and stay the harsh voice of criticism, their ministering remem brances that explain much and put much in its true light. When Horace Greeley heard of Poe s contemplated marriage to Mrs. Whitman, he wrote to Griswold in January, 1 849 : " Do you know Sarah Helen Whitman ? Of course you have heard it rumored that she is to marry Poe. Well, she has seemed to me a good girl, and you know what Poe is. Now I know a widow of doubtful age will marry almost any sort of a white man, but this seems to me a terrible conjunction. VOL. i. 19 290 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Has Mrs. Whitman no friend within your knowledge that can faithfully explain Poe to her ? I never at tempted this sort of thing but once, and the net pro duct was two enemies and a hastening of the marriage ; but I do think she must be deceived. Mrs. Osgood must know her. 1 Poe had once borrowed $50 of Horace Greeley, and had been unable to repay it : the matter is duly almost gleefully recorded in Greeley s "Reminis cences." The story of Poe and Mrs. Whitman their strange fascination for each other the magnetism which drew their poetic natures together the breaches and reconciliations and interviews, and stormy and reproachful letters is a modern "Lei den des jungen Werthers that ended, not like the story of Jerusalem in actual, but in attempted, sui cide : when Mrs. Whitman s indecision and natural hesitancy to accept his love continued, Poe was driven to laudanum, and tried to end his life. Intimidated by the frightful violence of her lover hoping per haps to save him from wilder excesses and believing the essential goodness and refinement of his nature she at length, on receiving solemn pledges from Poe not to yield to temptation, consented to appoint a day for the marriage. The unhappy man, his moral fibre relaxed by disease, the victim of hereditary pre dispositions, destitute of will and of self-control since the terrible years that preceded Virginia s death, broken in constitution and in health from the awful vigils by her bedside, yielded to some unknown but irresistible pressure of evil, and broke his pledges. The friends of the family so we are privately as- 1 Griswold s Correspondence, p. 249. BIOGRAPHY. 291 sured l not Mrs. Whitman herself, broke off the marriage, letters of renunciation passed between the two poets, and they never saw each other again. But what Mrs. Whitman s feelings were, and ever contin ued to remain, may be gathered from her beautiful lines : OUR ISLAND OF DREAMS. " By the foam Qf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." KEATS. Tell him I lingered alone on the shore, Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore ; The night wind blew cold on my desolate heart But colder those wild words of doom, "Ye must part!" O er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry ; Save the wail of those waters there came no reply. I longed, like a bird, o er the billows to flee, From our lone island home and the moan of the sea : Away, far away from the wild ocean shore, Where the waves ever murmur, " No more, never more," Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hear The lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear. Where the clouds that now veil from us heaven s fair light, Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night ; When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispel, He shall know if I loved him ; but never how well. J In a letter from the late Dr. W. F. Channing, her friend and biographer. 292 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Mrs. Whitman, says Ingram, firmly believed that Poe wrote "Annabel Lee " in response to this poem. The story of the lovely spiritualist, robed always in white, and of her spirit-like habits of going and coming in Shelleyan wise, is said to have suggested to Charles Dickens a character in one of his famous later novels. One who evidently knew Mrs. Whitman well writes in the New York " Saturday Times," October 25, 1899: ^ "This tragedy of the heart colored all the rest of Sarah Helen Whitman s life. It could not affect her appreciation of Poe s brilliant powers, nor diminish her love of his finer nature, the gentle, winning side, which revealed the man God meant him to be. But it cast a soft, half-veiling shadow over her. She walked the rest of the way under a kindly cloud that seemed to protect her from the glaring light of day and save her from the scrutiny of prying eyes. She seemed different and apart from other women. There was about her something mysterious and elusive. As she glided softly into the room, she brought with her a dreamy, other- world atmosphere, which subdued noisy laughter or idle talk ; and when she spoke, in her low, sweetly modulated voice, others listened. Mrs. Whitman s talk was always worth while; whether of poetry or politics, of every day affairs or spiritual things, it was sure to be interesting. She could be merry, too, and sarcastic if it suited the occasion. She had flitting, spirit-like ways, of coming softly and dis appearing suddenly, of half concealing herself behind a curtain and peeping out as she joined in the conversa tion. " Strictly unconventional in the matter of clothes, she loved silken draperies, lace scarfs, and veils, and BIOGRAPHY. 293 seemed to be always lightly shod. At one time she wore constantly around her throat a black velvet rib bon, pinned with a tiny coffin which a friend had carved for her in some dark-colored wood, and this funereal badge she seemed to prize above diamonds or pearls. She liked a fan in her hand to screen her eyes from the light, and her own pleasant rooms were never glaring. On one wall hung a portrait of her poet, hidden by a silken curtain. It had his wonderful eyes. This picture was the subject of Mrs. Whitman s poem < The Portrait. " These lines (written in 1870) begin : " After long years I raised the folds concealing That face, magnetic as the morning s beam: While slumbering memory thrilled at its revealing, Like Memnon wakening from his marble dream. " Again I saw the brow s translucent pallor, The dark hair floating o er it like a plume ; The sweet, imperious mouth, whose haughty valor Defied all portents of impending doom j and they end with the stanza on our title-page. The " Whitman episode is closed by the follow ing letter from Mrs. Whitman herself to W. F. Gill, dated August, 1873 ;1 "No such scene as that de scribed by Dr. Griswold ever transpired in my presence. No one, certainly no woman, who had the slightest acquaintance with Edgar Poe, could have credited the story for an instant. He was essentially and instinctively a gentleman, utterly incapable, even in moments of ex citement and delirium, of such an outrage as Dr. Gris wold has ascribed to him. No authentic anecdote of 1 Life of Poe; Chatto and Windus : London: 1878, p. 227, 294 EDGAR ALLAN POE. coarse indulgence in vulgar orgies or bestial riot has ever been recorded of him. During the last years of his unhappy life, whenever he yielded to the tempta tion that was drawing him into its fathomless abyss, as with the resistless swirl of the maelstrom, he always lost himself in sublime rhapsodies on the evolution of the universe, speaking as from some imaginary plat form to vast audiences of rapt and attentive listeners. During one of his visits to this city [Providence], in the autumn of 1 848, I once saw him after one of those nights of wild excitement, before reason had fully re covered its throne. Yet even then, in those frenzied moments when the doors of the mind s Haunted Palace were left unguarded, his words were the words of a princely intellect overwrought, and of a heart only too sensitive and too finely strung. I repeat that no one acquainted with Edgar Poe could have given Dr. Griswold s scandalous anecdote a moment s credence." The whole Petronius-like scene was also flatly contradicted by Mrs. Whitman s intimate friend, Wm. J. Pabodie, Esq., of Providence, in the "New York Tribune" for June 2 and n, 1852, and has now been thrown aside by all right-minded people as utterly discredited. The union of these two ethereal natures "the pale, poetic presence " of the one, the Ligeian har mony of the other promised indeed to be of ex quisite fruition, but was destined never to be fulfilled. The coarse rumors of drunken intoxication, of ribald scenes in Mrs. Whitman s gardens and house, and of police interference, reported by various biographers, have thus been proved to be absolutely false, as they were on the face of them absolutely impossible. This one can see from the testimony of another woman of BIOGRAPHY. 295 genius who was intimate with the Foes, and whose noble affection dictated some of the warmest words in defence of the poet Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood. On her death-bed, seven months after Poe s death, she wrote : l "I think no one could know him no one has known him personally certainly no woman with out feeling the same interest [as I did]. I can sin cerely say, that I have frequently heard of aberrations on his part from the straight and narrow path. I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, . well bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irre sistible charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost ten der reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect. It was this which first commanded and always retained my regard for him. " / have been told that when his sorrows and pecu niary embarrassments had driven him to the use of stimulants, which a less delicate organization might have borne without injury, he was in the habit of speaking disrespectfully of the ladies of his acquaint ance. It is difficult for me to believe this ; for to me, to whom he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defence ; and though I re buked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but for give the offence for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet, even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise and well-informed knew how to regard, as they would the impetuous anger of a spoiled 1 Mrs. Osgood to Griswold, from the Griswold Memoirs of Poe. 296 EDGAR ALLAN POE. infant, baulked of its capricious will, the equally harm less and unmeaning phrensy of that stray child of Poetry and Passion. For the few unwomanly and slander-loving gossips who have injured him and them selves only by repeating his ravings, when in such moods they have accepted his society, I have only to vouch safe my wonder and my pity. They cannot surely harm the true and pure, who, reverencing his genius and pitying his misfortunes and his errors, endeavored by their timely kindness and sympathy, to soothe his sad career. " It was in his own simple yet poetical home, that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of his most harassing duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost super human swiftness, the lightning thoughts the rare and radiant fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and ever- wakeful brain." The woman referred to in Mrs. Osgood s recollec tions was a certain Mrs. Ellet, who made herself notorious by meddling in Poe s private affairs and following him with relentless persecution when he denounced her. It seems that on a certain occasion she saw a letter of Mrs. Osgood s to Poe lying open \ on a table, read it, and immediately got up a com mittee of ladies, with Margaret Fuller at their head, to call on the offending poet at Fordham, and remon- BIOGRAPHY. 297 strate. Poe, who detested both Mrs. Ellet and Margaret Fuller, though in his " Literati " he did full justice to the genius of the latter, denounced the Paul Pry, and angrily said she had better look after her own correspondence. This brought down on the poet a personal difficulty with the woman s family and re sulted in a world of slanders, lies, and abuse heaped on his devoted head. In a letter only lately accessible through the pub lication of the Griswold Correspondence (p. 256), Mrs. Osgood in a letter referring to these slanders and the whole painful episode of her correspondence with and friendship for Poe, writes to Griswold in 1850 : "I trust you will write that life of Poe [she never saw the Life after it was written!]. I will do as you wished : I will write, as far as is proper, in a letter to you, my reminiscences of that year [apparently 1846 47], and try to make it interesting and dignified, and you in introducing it by one single sentence can put down at once my envious calumniators. You have the proof in Mrs. Poe s letter to me, and in bis to Mrs. Ellet, either of which would fully establish my innocence in a court of justice certainly hers would. Neither of them, as you know, were persons likely to take much trouble to prove a woman s innocence, and it was only because she felt that I had been cruelly and shamefully wronged by her mother and Mrs. E. that she impulsively rendered me that justice. She, Mrs. Poe, felt grieved that she herself had drawn me into the snare by imploring me to be kind to Edgar to grant him my society and to write to him, be cause, she said, I was the only woman he knew who influenced him for his good, or, indeed, who had any lasting influence over him. I wish the simple truth to 298 EDGAR ALLAN POE. be known, that he sought me, not I him. It is too cruel that I, the only one of those literary women who did not seek his acquaintance, for Mrs. Ellet asked an introduction to him, and followed him everywhere, Miss Lynch begged me to bring him there and called upon him at his lodgings, Mrs. Whitman besieged him with valentines and letters long before he wrote or took any notice of her, and all the others wrote poetry and letters to him, it is too cruel that I should be singled out after his death as the only victim to suffer from the slanders of his mother. I never thought of him till he sent me his Raven and asked Willis to introduce him to me, and immediately after I went to Albany, and afterwards to Boston and Providence to avoid him, and he followed me to each of those places and wrote to me, imploring me to love him, many a letter which I did not reply to until his wife added her entreaties to his and said that I might save him from infamy, and her from death, by showing an affectionate interest in him." Stung to the quick by the slanders growing out of her Platonic correspondence with Poe, who never ceased to be devoted to her, Mrs. Osgood penned this self-contradictory communication to Griswold; which did not prevent her from addressing an impassioned dirge to the poet s memory as the last poem in the volume of verse published just before her death in May, 1850 : "The hand that swept the sounding lyre With more than mortal skill, The lightning eye, the heart of fire, The fervent lips are still ! No more, in rapture or in woe, With melody to thrill, Ah! Nevermore!" BIOGRAPHY. 299 CHAPTER XV. 1848-1849. "STELLA." "ANNIE." PHILADELPHIA. DURING the Whitman episode and while he was travelling to and fro between New York, Providence, and Lowell, where he lectured in August on " The Poetic Principle," he made some valuable acquaint ances the Richmonds, of Westford who became attached and life-long friends to himself and Mrs. Clemm. We find him soon after in Richmond, Va., and on intimate terms with the poet John R. Thomp son, editor of " The Southern Literary Messenger," for which he was furnishing new instalments of " Marginalia." Thompson became extremely fond of Poe, and wrote, after his death, a lecture on him which, it is greatly to be regretted, has seemingly per ished. "When in Richmond," reports Mr. Thomp son, " he made the office of the Messenger a place of frequent resort. His conversation was always at tractive, and at times very brilliant. Among modern authors his favorite wa Tennyson, and he delighted to recite from The Princess the song Tears, idle tears and a fragment of which, " t when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square, he pronounced unsurpassed by any image expressed in writing." 300 EDGAR ALLAN POE. For Mr. Thompson, whom he inspired with an affection similar to that with which he inspired all with whom he had personal dealings, he wrote much of his sparkling and vivid "Marginalia," as well as re views of " Stella and Mrs. Osgood. To his quality and general worth Mr. Thompson, who saw so much of him in his latter days, bears feeling testimony. In 1853, writing to Mr. James Wood Davidson, Mr. Thompson remarks : <f Two years ago, I had a long conversation with Mr. Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning concerning Poe. The two poets, like your self, had formed an ardent and just admiration of the author of * The Raven, and feel a strong desire to see his memory vindicated from moral aspersion." " Stella was another link in the golden chain of women who honored and almost worshipped the poet, and who have done more than any other per sons to vindicate and cleanse his bedraggled memory. She was the woman to whom Poe, as he parted with her the day he left for the fatal journey to Rich mond, entrusted the writing of his life Miss Rob inson, an accomplished lady of Baltimore, who had spent much of her early life in Cuba, where her father was engaged in business. She was a thorough linguist in the ancient and modern languages, and married an attorney in Brooklyn, Mr. S. D. Lewis. She tells of her acquaintance in the following lines : " I saw much of Mr. Poe during the last year of his life. He was one of the most sensitive and refined gentlemen I ever met. My girlish poem, Forsaken, made us ac quainted. He had seen it floating the rounds of the press, and wrote to tell me how much he liked it : It is inexpressibly beautiful, he said, and I should very much like to know the young author. " BIOGRAPHY. 301 Poe wrote of her : " Mrs. Lewis is, perhaps, the best educated, if not the most accomplished of Ameri can authoresses. . . . She is not only cultivated as re spects the usual ornamental acquirements of her sex, but excels as a modern linguist, and very especially as a classical scholar ; while her scientific acquisitions are of no common order. The lady translated charmingly from Vergil, pub lished " Records of the Heart" (Appletons, 1844), "The Child of the Sea," (Putnams, 1848), "The King s Stratagem," "Sappho: A Tragedy" (published in London, 1876, and dedicated to her "devoted friend Adelaide Ristori, the greatest living tragedienne"^, and many fugitive poems. To her Poe addressed "An Enigma," which appeared in the " Union Magazine" for March, I 848 easily solved by combining, as in "A Valentine," the first letter in the first line with the second in the second, and so on, until " the dear names that lie concealed within t " are spelt out ; and she was one of the warm friends who assisted Mrs. Shew and the Union Club in raising a purse of $100 for the destitute family after Virginia s death. Not long before the Virginia trip a cheering beam fell across Poe s path in the friendship of the Rich- monds (to which we have already referred) a family who gave Mrs. Clemm a hospitable home and divided with the Lewises the kind offices of true friendship towards her after Poe s death. This friendship began in the summer of 1848, when he was lecturing in Lowell on "The Female Poets of America," and later, the same year, when he lectured on " The Poetic Principle;" and it was to the "Annie" of this household that he addressed his strange and beau tiful death-poem, " For Annie," first mentioned in a 302 EDGAR ALLAN POE. letter to her, dated March 23, 1849, and first pub lished in "The Flag of Our Union " the same year. It begins : "Thank Heaven! the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last, And the fever called Living Is conquered at last." The last two lines have the additional interest that Longfellow suggested them as an epitaph for Poe s grave l when the Baltimore monument was erected in 1875. Of this poem Poe wrote: "I enclose also some other lines For Annie, and will you let me know in what manner they impress you ? I have sent them to the Flag of Our Union, ... I am sorry to say that the Metropolitan has stopped and Landor s Cottage is returned on my hands unprinted. I think the lines For Annie (those I now send) much the best I have ever written ; but an author can seldom depend on his own estimate of his own works, so I wish to know what Annie truly thinks of them. . . . Do not let the verses go out of your possession until you see them in print, as I have sold them to the pub lisher of the Flag. " At Poe s request Willis, his faithful friend, " disen tombed " the poem from the newspaper in which it was buried and reprinted it in " The Home Journal." At this time Poe was suffering from repeated disap pointments ; the numerous literary engagements which he had formed with "The Columbian Magazine," "The Post," "The Whig Review," and "The 1 Miss S. S. Rice : Edgar Allan Poe : Memorial Volume : Baltimore: 1877. BIOGRAPHY. 303 Democratic," were broken either by the failure of the periodicals or by their inability to pay ; even his stand-bys "The Southern Literary Messenger," "Graham s," and " Sartain s," began to vacillate in their hospitality and to threaten to drop from under him. Articles were returned, were held up indefinite ly after acceptance, or disappeared in the mails. He pours out his lamentations to his new Massachusetts friends and reveals to "Annie," with a singular warmth of tone, all his personal feelings, hopes, and forebodings. All this fateful year was full of extraordi nary portent for him : tl No, my sadness \sunaccountable" he writes to her, " and this makes me the more sad. I am full of dark forebodings. Nothing cheers or comforts me. My life seems wasted the future looks a dreary blank : but I will struggle on and * hope against hope/ " This was a little while before he set out for Rich- mond on the final journey. A lady correspondent of Mr. Gill s 1 has given some graphic recollections of Poe at this time as he appeared to his Lowell-Westford friends : "I have in my mind s-eye a figure somewhat be low medium height, perhaps, but so perfectly pro portioned, and crowned with such a noble head, so regally carried, that to my girlish apprehension he gave the impression of commanding stature. Those clear, sad eyes seemed to look from an eminence rather than from the ordinary level of humanity, while his conversational tone was so low and deep that one could easily fancy it borne to the ear from some distant height. 1 Life of Poe : Chatto and Windus : 1878, p. 209 304 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " I saw him first in Lowell, and there heard him give a lecture on Poetry, illustrated by readings. His manner of rendering some of the selections constitutes my only remembrance of the evening which so fasci nated me. Everything was rendered with pure into nation, and perfect enunciation, marked attention being paid to the rhythm. He almost sa?2g the more musical versifications. I recall more perfectly than anything else the undulations of his smooth baritone voice as he recited the opening lines of Byron s Bride of Abydos : " Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, measuring the dactylic movement perfectly as if he were scanning it. The effect was very pleasing. " He insisted strongly upon an even, metrical flow in versification, and said that hard, unequally stepping poetry had better be done into prose. I think he made no selections of a humorous character, either in his public or parlor readings. He smiled but seldom, and never laughed, or said anything to excite mirth in others. His manner was quiet and grave. ... In thinking of Mr. Poe in later years I have often applied to him the line of Wordsworth s sonnet, " * Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart. * The first mention of the ballad of " Annabel Lee " (published two days after his death in the " New York Tribune" for October pth, then in " The Southern Literary Messenger" for November, 1849, then in Sartain s "Union Magazine " for January, 1850) literally a voice from the tomb, with the accents of Death and of undying music in it is found in one BIOGRAPHY. 36$ of the letters to "Annie," in which, speaking of the lines " For Annie," he says : "The Flag, so mis printed them that I was resolved to have a true copy. The Flag has two of my articles yet A Sonnet to my Mother, and Landor s Cottage. ... I have written a ballad called Annabel Lee, which I will send you soon." In her "Stanzas for Music," subsequently enlarged and published as " Our Island of Dreams," quoted on p. 291, Mrs. Whitman l saw the germ of " Annabel Lee," which she firmly believed was an answer to her poem from the striking allusions to " the night wind blew cold on my desolate heart" and " our lone island home and the moan of the sea," occurring therein. Richard Hengist Home saw in it one more instance of Poe s "studied artifice, selection, or coin age, of liquid and sonorous sounds and words such as (to spell them phonetically) ullaleume annabellee ells (in the < Bells ),ore in The Raven, which abounds in that long-drawn tone." The last pathetic glimpse that we get of Poe in New York is on an early summer morning in June, when, having spent the night with his " dear Mud- die " (as he affectionately called Mrs. Clemm) at Mrs. Lewis s, he stood on the threshold of the hos pitable home and, with streaming eyes and heart full of foreboding, bade farewell i a slight, poetic figure, tense with emotion, so full of dynamic force that even then, after many almost deadly illnesses, his brain teemed with projects for the future. All through these latter years one hears of "A Critical History of American Literature," "The Literati: Some Hon- 1 Ingram, II., 200. VOL. I. 20 306 EDGAR ALLAN POE. est Opinions about Autorial Merits and Demerits, with Occasional Words of Personality, together with Mar ginalia, Suggestions, and Essays " : an expanded reprint of his Literati series, with quotations from Bacon and Coke ; and " Phases of American Liter ature " ; but nothing came of them. " The day before he left New York for Richmond," says Mrs. Lewis, " Mr. Poe came to dinner and stayed the night. He seemed very sad and retired early. On leaving the next morning he took my hand in his, and, looking in my face, said, Dear Stella, my much-beloved friend : You truly understand and appreciate me I have a presentiment that I shall never see you again. I must leave to-day for Richmond. If I never return, write my life, you can and will do me justice. " I will ! I exclaimed. And we parted to meet no more in this life. That promise I have not yet felt equal to fulfil." Mrs. Clemm noted the wretched spirits in which he parted from them, before leaving home, arranging all his papers and telling her what to do in case he died. The parting on the steamboat was a very dejected one, though he tried in vain to cheer and comfort her with promises to return soon full of love and consolation. John Sartain, the artist and magazinist, who edited the well-known periodical Sartain s f< Union Maga zine " in which " The Bells " was published, lifts the veil and tells us what happened in Philadelphia to the ill-controlled and impoverished poet : another scene from Dante s Inferno. Poe s low nervous condition, y his run-down physical system, his extreme mental de- j\ pression on separating from his friends, the slow ravages of the lesion in the brain from which he was all this BIOGRAPHY. 307 time suffering, an apparent utter prostration of the will before drugs or stimulants that would for a moment lift him out of the Slough of Despond or even momentarily restore an artificial vigor, were the subtle agencies at work to overthrow his brave determination to show Mrs. Clemm "how good he could be while he was away." " Poe," says Mr. Gill, 1 "was an inmate [at Phila delphia] of the hospitable mansion of the artist and publisher, Mr. J. Sartain, widely known as the pro prietor of Sartain s Magazine, whose kindness the poet had frequently shared. Fortunate, indeed, would it have been for Poe had he met with this staunch friend on first reaching the city this time. Had he fallen into his protecting hands earlier, instead of meet ing with reckless associates, ready as in old times to tempt him to the indulgence inevitably fatal to him, how different might have been his fate ! But it was ordained otherwise. When he finally reached the resi dence of his kind friend, Poe was in a highly excited V condition, almost distracted indeed. His mind seemed bewildered and oppressed with the dread of some fear ful conspiracy against his life ; nor could the arguments or entreaties of his friend convince him that some deadly foe was not, at that very moment, in pursuit of him/"~He begged for a razor for the purpose of re moving the moustache from his lip, in order, as he suggested, that he might disguise his appearance, and ~A thus baffle his pursuers. But, unwilling to place such / an instrument in his hands, he was prevailed upon to allow his host to effect the desired change upon which he imagined his safety depended. The condition of 1 Life of Poe : Chatto and Windus : London : 1878, p. 234. 308 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Poe s mind was such that Mr. Sartain, after persuad ing him to lie down, remained watching with him through the night with anxious solicitude, unwilling to lose sight of the unfortunate sufferer for a moment. ^ The following night, Foe insisted on going out. He turned his steps towards the River Schuylkill, accom panied, however, by his devoted friend, whose appre hension was strengthened by the vehemence with which, without cessation, he poured forth in the rich, musical tones for which he was distinguished, the fervid imageries of his brilliant but over-excited imagi nation. The all-absorbing theme which still retained possession of his mind, was the fearful conspiracy that threatened his destruction. Vainly his friend en deavored to reassure and persuade him. He rushed on with unwearied steps, threading different streets, his companion striving to lead him homeward, but still in vain. " Towards midnight, they reached Fairmount and / ascended the steps leading to the summit, Poe all the while giving free scope to the conversational powers P for which he was always remarkable, insisting upon the imminence of his peril, and pleading with touch ing eloquence for protection. . . . " He did n t recover from this intense excitement until, subsequently, escaping from the house, he wan- %. / dered out into the neighborhood of the city, and, throwing himself down in the open air in a pleasant field, his shattered nerves found a comfortless but sorely needed repose. He woke refreshed. . . . t All that he could call to mind were the entreaties and persuasions of some * guardian angel who had sought to dissuade him from a frightful purpose." More than three weeks elapsed before Mrs. Clemm, BIOGRAPHY. 309 distracted with apprehension and grief, heard from "Eddie," and then he had reached Richmond and was at the house of Mrs. Nye, an old friend of the family. The man who could trace Conscience with such terrible force in others, through all the minute convolutions of the diseased brain ; the man who could figure it in " William Wilson," a frenzied Kriem- hild as she pursues Hagen through the blood-stained stanzas of the " Nibelungen Lay " ; the man who in carnated it, with its sister Remorse, in the flashing eyes and shadowy form of the "Raven": this man had left his devoted " mother " without a line for three interminable weeks, and now turned up in the home of his youth, an honored and feted guest ! This episode alone shows that Poe had become a wreck and should have been in some beneficent sani tarium where good food, perfect quiet, the laws of spiritual and physical hygiene, and absolute freedom from excitements might have restored his broken sense of responsibility. 310 EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER XVI. 1849. LAST DAYS IN RICHMOND. THE last days in Richmond have fortunately been painted for us by a sympathetic and artistic hand in a picture to which we can add a few important imprinted details gathered from still living contemporaries of the poet. In his return a prodigal to the beautiful old city of his youth where so many innocent and happy hours had been spent, fishing, hunting, swimming in the ancient yellow "Jeems," running the flower- bespangled woods, acting in the Thespian Club, verse-capping at old Burke s Academy, the city where his mother lay in a nameless and unknown grave, Poe found for a brief two months and a half a renewal of the eagle-like strength of his earlier years. The city had of course grown immensely since his youth ; the Mexican War, with its wave of excitement, had passed over the land and brought the great Virginians, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott prominently before the public ; the streets swarmed with new faces ; new literary figures had appeared on the scene ; but it was, fundamentally, the same dear old Richmond, social, hospitable, sunshiny, richly read in eighteenth century literature, a trifle pedantic in its culture, but full of winsome women and cultivated men who had watched the career of this extraordinary " cosmopolite" (as the BIOGRAPHY. 311 novelist Virginian Cooke, called him) and were ready to welcome the wanderer back to what many of them thought was his native town. The Mackenzies and Cabells, the Mayos and Sul- lys, the Sheltons and Carters and Thomases were still there, friends of his youth, ready to kill the fatted calf in honor of the return, and their houses were thrown wide open to the gifted and distinguished stranger. Poe, like Chaucer in his famous "I am a Sotherne man," continually referred to Virginia as his home and shrank from the hyperborean clime and criticism of certain latitudes in the north-east, albeit deriving from thence many an auroral beam of true and lasting friendship. In his own Virginia consecrated, to him, by the tenderest of names he felt perfectly at - home ; and here he felt, too, that his " Stylus " pro ject might grow into a real thing. Friends flocked around him ; offers of subscriptions and of subscribers were freely made ; and he delivered several lectures in the parlors of the old Exchange Hotel, where, a little later, the Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII.) was entertained in 1860. Poe put up at the old " Swan Tavern, * which is referred to, among other interesting matters, in the following letter to the author : RICHMOND, Nov. 26th, 1900. DEAR SIR, Your letter of November twenty-fifth re ceived, in which you state I might know something of the poet, Edgar Poe, and his visit to Richmond in eighteen forty-nine. My impression is he was a resident at that time of this city, and boarded at the old " Swan Tavern," on Broad Street, between Eighth and Ninth. Dr. George Rawlins, an intimate friend of mine, told me he attended him there in an attack of " delirium tremens," 312 EDGAR ALLAN POE. and before he had ceased to visit him, he left the tavern, and when next heard from, was in Baltimore, where he re newed his frolic, and died in a few days. I had no personal acquaintance with Poe, but have often seen him. The only time I ever heard him speak was the summer of eighteen forty-eight in the Exchange Concert-room in this city. The inspiration of the lecture was no doubt need of money. In elucidating his subject "The Poetic Principle 1 he recited excerpts from some of his poems " Annabelle Lee," " Tintinnabulations of the Bells, 1 etc. 5 and in conclusion repeated "The Raven " with all the rhythm and pathos of which he was capable. All this before an audience of about twenty per sons. The occasion to this day I recall with pleasure. I have heard that at times his necessities were so urgent he would write a poem and sell it to an acquaintance for the paltry sum of one dollar. He was said to be moody and peevish, but always recognized by his school-fellows as a boy of true courage. On one occasion a friend found him lying on the wayside intoxicated. As he approached him he exclaimed: "Why, Edgar Poe!" when Poe looked at him and replied : " No ; poor Edgar," showing he always retained his wits. The "Swan Tavern" is still in existence, but hardly recognizable, having been con verted into offices, lodging-rooms, and so on. Miss Jane McKenzie, who adopted Miss Rosalie Poe about the time Mr. Allan took Edgar Poe, is, of course, long since dead in fact every member of her family, so far as I know, is dead. I had a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Shelton, to whom he was said to be engaged, but of her family I can tell you nothing. It may be emphasized, in connection with one matter referred to in this letter, that Richmond has for fifty years past been divided into two antagonistic camps on the "Poe question," the minority holding the " delirium tremens theory of his irregularities, the ma- BIOGRAPHY. 313 jority taking the more humane and charitable view of Mrs. Susan Archer Weiss, in her " Last Days of Ed gar A. Poe." 1 The occurrences undoubtedly occurred to use an expressive tautology ; but the explanation of them is a purely pathological one : morbid condi tions existed which overpowered any will-power that may have been left, honeycombed as this power had become by a string and concatenation of disasters un paralleled in the history of any literary man on record. Schiller, in the " Wallenstein," mercifully keeps the murder of the hero out of sight ; Poe is presented to us by his biographers undergoing all the torments of the damned before the gaping eyes of the audience. This little visit shed an Indian summer glow over the life of the poet that lingers still in the memory of some who saw him. He hunted up his old haunts, made new friends, recited his "Raven" and other poems in the parlors of his intimates, stayed at Dun can s Lodge with the Mackenzies, met his eccentric sister, Rosalie Poe, once more, and above all renewed the acquaintance with the old flame of his University and Academy days, Miss Royster (now Mrs. Shelton, widow of a prosperous merchant a lady whom the author, living in the same town with her in 187176, used to hear familiarly called f( Poe s Lenore ") . P.QC had come down from New York to Richmond in 1848 and had then, it is said, renewed the suit begun more than twenty years before, a period during which both had become widowed. Mrs. Weiss asserts that the engagement was renewed, but that it was broken off when Mrs. Shelton learned that it was purely mer cenary that it was the << Stylus," not herself, that 1 Scribnet s Monthly, March, 1878. 314 EDGAR ALLAN POE. Poe was in pursuit of. That Poe s affections for women were intense but fleeting, is a part of the uni versal record of him ; and in the case of Mrs. Shelton it may well have been a momentary recrudescence of the old feeling mixed with new elements of self-in terest. The lady herself believed she was engaged to Poe, and so asserted by pen and mouth to/ Dr. J. J. Moran, the physician who attended Poe in his last ill ness. 1 In the Ingram correspondence ("Appleton s Journal," May, 1878) she thus describes their meeting in the summer of 1 849, describing their relation, how ever, as a "partial understanding" only : " I was ready to go to church, when a servant entered and told me that a gentleman in the parlor wished to see me. I went down and was amazed at seeing him [Poe], but knew him instantly. He came up to me in the most enthusiastic manner, and said: Oh ! Elmira, is it you ? I told him I was going to church, that I never let anything interfere with that, and that he must call again. . . . " When he did call again, he renewed his addresses. I laughed ; he looked away serious, and said he was in earnest, and had been thinking about it for a long time. When I found out that he was very serious, I became serious also, and told him that, if he would not take a positive denial, he must give me time to con sider. He answered, A love that hesitated was not a love for him. . . . But he stayed a long time, and was very pleasant and cheerful. He came to visit me frequently. ... I went with him to the * Exchange K Concert- Room, and heard him read. . . . When he was going away, he begged me to marry him, and prom- 1 A Defence of Edgar Allan Poe. By Jno. J. Moran, M.D. : Washington, 1885. BIOGRAPHY. 315 ised he would be everything I could desire. He said, when he left, that he was going to New York to wind up some business matters, and that he would re turn to Richmond as soon as he had accomplished it, although he said, at the same time, that he had a pre sentiment that he should never see me any more. . . . I was not engaged to him, but there was a partial understanding. ... He was a gentleman in every sense of the word. He was one of the most fascinat ing and refined men I ever knew. I never saw him under the influence of wine." Thus bathing in the sunlight of his youth, touching the hand of people he had not met for twenty years, lounging in the comfortable office of the " Messenger," whose accomplished young editor, the poet John R. Thompson, eagerly received anything he might send, and freshening up old associations at "The Hermit age, " the home of the Mayos, fondly intertwined with his earliest memories, Poe seemed well on the way to the happy rejuvenation that awaited a man emerging / as from a hideous dream a life of penury, persecu tion, and humiliation into the daylight of restored peace and happiness. " Poe s personality is as vivid to me," writes Prof. B. C. Gildersleeve to the editor, "as if I had heard and seen him yesterday. I am old enough to remember what an excitement his Gold- Bug created in Charleston when it first appeared, and how severely we boys criticised the inaccuracies in the de scription of Sullivan s Island. Poe himself I saw and heard in Richmond during the last summer of his life. He was lodging at some poor place in Broad Street, if I am not mistaken. At least I saw him repeatedly in that thoroughfare a poetical figure, if there ever was 316 EDGAR ALLAN POE. one, clad in black as was the fashion then slender erect the subtle lines of his face fixed in medita tion. I thought him wonderfully handsome, the mouth being the only weak point. I was too shy to seek an introduction to the poet, but John R. Thomp son procured for me Poe s autograph, a possession of which I was naturally very proud. " While Poe was in Richmond some of his friends got up a reading for his benefit, and I heard him read The Raven and some other poems before a small audience in one of the parlors of the Exchange Hotel. In spite of my admiration of Poe I was not an un critical listener, and I have retained the impression that he did not read very well. His voice was pleas ant enough, but he emphasized the rhythm unduly a failing common, I believe, to poets endowed with a keen sense of the music of their own verse/ "A compact, well-set man," wrote Bishop Fitz gerald, "about five feet six inches high, straight as an arrow, easy-gaited, with white linen coat and trousers, black velvet vest and broad Panama hat, features sad yet finely cut, shapely head, and eyes that were strangely magnetic as you looked into them this is the image of Edgar Allan Poe most vivid to my mind as I saw him one warm day in Richmond in 1849. There was a fascination about him that everybody felt. Meet ing him in the midst of thousands a stranger would stop to get a second look, and to ask, Who is he ? He was distingue in a peculiar sense a man bearing the stamp of genius and the charm of a melancholy that drew one toward him with a strange sympathy. He was scarcely less unique in his personality than in his literary quality. His writings had already given him national reputation. The gentleness of his manner and BIOGRAPHY. 317 the tones of his voice seemed to me to be strangely contrasted with the bitterness that characterized his personal controversies. These controversies were strangely numerous, and in nearly all cases their in tensity was in the inverse ratio to the importance of the issues involved. Poe, I suspect, was one of the men who said worse things than he felt, his talent for satire proving a snare to him, as it has been to many others who with pen or tongue sacrifice moderation for brilliancy or piquancy of expression. He was harshly treated by some of his contemporaries, but he owed them nothing on this account, giving them as good as they sent in the way of invective or sarcasm. The bitter \ personalities of literary men at that time were owing in part to an evil fashion then prevalent. The duelling and street fights among politicians had their counter part in the shedding of vitriolic ink among the literati, great and small. Poe only differed from the rest in that he had a sharper thrust and a surer aim. " The Richmond Examiner was just then achiev ing its first and winning distinction as an able and ultra advocate of State Rights politics. John C. Cal- houn was the leader, and the young chivalry of the South made a following that was heroic, and that did not stop to count the cost. The Examiner was their organ in Virginia and a live organ it was. John M. Daniel, its editor-in-chief, wrote political leaders that were logic and rhetoric on fire. Robert W. Hughes discussed in good English economic ques tions from the standpoint of his time and his section. Arthur E. Petticolas wrote concerning art with much enthusiasm and some show of culture. Patrick Henry Aylett, a kinsman of the great orator of the Revolu tion, whose Christian name he bore, with a free hand 31 8 EDGAR ALLAN POE. touched up current politics and living politicians. Aylett was a picturesque Virginian of that time a man nearly seven feet high, who had something of the eloquence of his renowned ancestor, and the easy swing of a man of the people, a man who believed with all his heart in the Revolution of 98 and 99, and uniformly voted the straight Democratic ticket. Mr. Poe now and then contributed a literary article critical and peculiar, unmistakably his own. There were others who wrote for the Examiner among them a youth who felt called upon to expound oracularly certain controverted Constitutional questions that Clay, Calhoun and Webster had failed to settle. He was a young man then, and need not be named now. " Poe and Daniel were often together, and I was not surprised when informed that arrangements had been made by which the former was soon to become the literary editor of the Examiner, was talked of in newspaper circles, and much satisfaction expressed by the initiated, who regarded it as a transaction promis ing good things for Southern journalism and literature. The * Examiner, the new star in the journalistic firmament, was expected to blaze with added lustre and fill all the South with the illumination. " Poe had the sensitive organization of a man of genius, to whom alcoholic stimulation brings madness; for such there is no middle ground between total ab stinence and inebriety. By the persuasion of friends he was induced to take a pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity. His sad face took on a more hopeful expression ; with a new hope in his. heart he was about to make a new start in life. ; It was an- BIOGRAPHY. 319 nounced that he would soon make a visit to New York // to close out hk.affairs there, preparatory to his entrance upon his nw engagement at Richmond. With a view to giving mm pecuniary assistance in a delicate way, and an expression of the good will of the Richmond public toward him, Poe was invited to deliver a lecture on some topic to be chosen by himself. The tickets were placed at five dollars each, and at that price three hundred persons were packed into the assembly rooms / of the old Exchange Hotel. The lecture prepared for \f that occasion was on The Poetic Principle, and it was read by him as it is now presented in his works. He was a charming reader, his manner the opposite of the elocutionary or sensational quiet, without gesture, / with distinctness of utterance, nice shadings of accent, easy gracefulness, and that indefinable element that draws the hearer toward the speaker with increasing good will and pleasure. I am glad that I heard Poe read that lecture ; its sentences on the printed page have for me an added charm from the recollection. The net pro ceeds of the lecture amounted to fifteen hundred dollars. There was a touch of old Virginia in the way this was done. There is some of that old Virginia still left. The Virginia of that day and this will demonstrate their identity in the outcome of the movement to provide here at your university a suitable memorial of her most distinguished alumnus. "With the proceeds of this lecture in hand, Mr. Poe started to New York, but he never made the journey. Stopping in Baltimore en route he was invited to a birth day party. During the feast the fair hostess asked him to pledge with wine ; and he could not refuse. That glass of wine was a spark to a powder magazine. He went on a debauch, and a few days later died in a 320 EDGAR ALLAN POE. hospital of mania a potu. On its nearer side death is a tragedy whenever, wherever, and however it may come. But the tragedy of Poe s death is too deep for words of mine. He was only thirty-nine years old. His best work ought to have been before him. Had he lived and worked with unclouded brain and ardent purpose during the tremendous decades that followed, what might he not have achieved ! Who can compute the loss to our literature from his untimely death ! "Go on with your work, gentlemen of the Uni versity of Virginia, provide a fitting memorial to Edgar Allan Poe, your illustrious son. Young gentlemen of the University, do your part in this good work and shun the rock on which he was wrecked." * Associated with these striking new particulars con nected with Poe s last sojourn in the home of his youth, may well be added the following statement from the gentleman (now living) who administered the temperance oath to Poe while he was there. 617 E. LEIGH ST., RICHMOND, VA., Dec. 4, 1900. PROF. ]. A. HARRISON, UNIVERSITY OF VA. : DEAR SIR, Your favor of the a6th ult. I have. I regret to say that I fear I can contribute very little that will help you in your grand undertaking, that of placing fairly before the people the bright side of the character of the poet Poe. About fifty years ago I heard Mr. Poe deliver a lecture at the Exchange Hotel lecture-room this city. I did not meet him again until early in the sum- 1 Zolnay s bust of Poe was unveiled with brilliant ceremonies in the Public Hall of the University, October 7, 1899. Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, the guest of the Poe Association, delivered a masterly address on " Poe s Place in American Literature." BIOGRAPHY. 321 mer of 1 849. He made his home at the old Swan Tavern (now standing on Broad Street between Eighth and Ninth north side). There he made the acquaintance of some member or members of the Division of the Sons of Temperance (this was a large organization previous to the war of 61 65)5 he was proposed for membership, elected, and initiated about the ist of July, 1849. The position I held in the Division made it my duty to ad minister to the candidate the obligation of total absti nence. During his stay in the city of the next three months or more there was not the least intimation that he had failed to live up to his obligation. In October he started to Baltimore (as was reported and generally believed to make preparation for his marriage to Mrs. Shelton, who as Miss Royster was a sweetheart of earlier life). A few days later we heard of his death at a hos pital in that city, and the statement was made and too busily circulated that his death was the result of a spree commenced as soon as he reached Baltimore. We of the temperance order to which he belonged exerted our selves to get at the facts, and the consensus of opinion was that he had not been drinking, but had been drugged. A gentleman by the name of Benson, born in Baltimore in 1811, and living there until he was twenty -one years old, went to Baltimore, and, as he knew Poe and felt much interest in the manner of his death, went to the hospital at which he died, and had a talk with the doctor (an acquaintance), who told him that Poe had not been drinking when brought to the hospital, but was under the influence of a drug ; he added that he suggested the use of stimulants, but that Mr. Poe positively declined tak ing any. Mr. Poe lived very quietly while here. Some stories were told like the following, showing eccentricity: " He left with a Broad Street shoe merchant (who was also a member of the above mentioned order, and of the same division of which our friend had become a member) a pair of boots for repairs. Our shoe merchant was sur prised a few mornings later at being knocked up by the VOL. i. 21 322 EDGAR ALLAN POE. poet about two hours before daylight, who had called for the boots. He explained that as he was out walking he thought to get the boots then would save him another trip." I have stated only such facts in regard to Mr. Poe s last visit as I was in some manner mixed up with, and only wish they were of such a character as to be useful to you. Very Respectfully Yours, W. J. GLENN. Bishop Fitzgerald mentions two important circum stances not hitherto known of Poe : that he was to be literary editor of "The Examiner " and had already contributed critical articles to it, and that be left Rich mond with $1,500 in bis pocket. The possession of this money throws significant light on the theory that he was drugged. " The evening of the day," reports Mrs. Weiss, " previous to that appointed for his departure from V Richmond, Poe spent at my mother s. He declined to enter the parlors, where a number of visitors were assembled, saying he preferred the more quiet sitting- \f room ; and here I had a long and almost uninterrupted conversation with him. He spoke of his future, seem ing to anticipate it with an eager delight, like that of youth. He declared that the last few weeks in the society of his old and new friends had been the hap piest that he had known for many years, and that when he again left New York, he should there leave behind all the trouble and vexation of his past life. On no occasion had I seen him so cheerful and hope ful as on this evening. Do you know, he inquired, * how I spent most of this morning ? In writing a critique of your poems to be accompanied by a bio- BIOGRAPHY. 323 graphical sketch. I intend it to be one of my best, and that it shall appear in the second number of " The Stylus" so confident was he in regard to this magazine. In the course of the evening he showed me a letter just received from his friend, Dr. Gris- wold, in reply to one but recently written by Poe, wherein the latter had requested Dr. Griswold in case of his sudden death to become his literary executor. In this reply, Dr. Griswold accepted the proposal, expressing himself as much flattered thereby, and writ ing in terms of friendly warmth and interest. It will be observed that this statement is a contradiction of his statement that previous to Poe s death he had had no intimation of the latter s intention of appointing him his literary executor. " In speaking of his own writings, Poe expressed his conviction that he had written his best poems, but that in prose he might yet surpass what he had already accomplished. He admitted that much which he had said in praise of certain writers was not the genuine expression of his opinions. . . . You must not judge of me by what you find me saying in the magazines. Such expressions of opinion are necessarily modified by a thousand circumstances, the wishes of editors, personal friendship, etc. " Poe expressed great regret in being compelled to leave Richmond, on even so brief an absence. He would certainly, he said, be back in two weeks. He thanked my mother with graceful courtesy and ; , warmth for her kindness and hospitality, and begged that we would write to him in New York, saying it would do him good. " He was the last of the party to leave the house. We were standing on the portico, and after going a \ 324 EDGAR ALLAN POE. few steps he paused, turned, and again lifted his hat, in a last adieu! At the moment, a brilliant meteor appeared in the sky directly over his head, and van ished in the east. We commented laughingly upon the ^ r j incident; but I remembered it sadly afterwards." The prophetic words of " Ulalume " immediately recur : " The skies they were ashen and sober 5 The leaves they were crisped and sere, The leaves they were withering and sere ; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year. October somehow seems mystically entangled with the poet s fate, just as the great dirge of " The Raven, which Dore has transformed into a magic and ardent Passion Play of Shadow-Land, swarming with the >-* mystic imagery of Dreams, seemingly points in its " bleak December," to the month in which the poet s mother died in Richmond. "As he was about to leave Richmond, he turned to Mr. Thompson, saying, By the way, you have been very kind to me, here is a little trifle that may be worth something to you ; and he handed Mr. Thompson a small roll of paper, upon which were written the exquisite words of Annabel Lee. " l Just a little while before, on St. Valentine s Day, 1849, he wrote to his friend Thomas : "Right glad am I to find you once more in a true position in the field of Letters. Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my part, there is no seducing me from the path. I 1 Gill s Life of Poe : Chatto and Windus : 1878 : p. 231. BIOGRAPHY. 325 shall be a Litterateur at least all my life ; nor would I abandon the hopes which still lead me on for all the gold in California [the Argonaut " craze " was just then starting and the whole country was aflame with fabulous reports from the western Golconda]. Talk ing of gold, and of the temptations at present held out to poor-devil authors, did it ever strike you that all which is really valuable to a man of letters to a poet in especial is absolutely unpurchasable ? Love, fame, the dominion of intellect, the consciousness of power, the thrilling sense of beauty, the free air of Heaven, exercise of body and mind, with the physical and moral health which result these and such as these are really all that a poet cares for: then answer me this why should he go to California ? " Life seemed bewilderingly bright almost as bright as the fairy landscapes of "Arnheim " and "The Island of the Fay" painted it now that he had arranged with a Mr. E. H. W. Patterson, of Oquawka, Illi nois, for the simultaneous publication, in St. Louis and New York, of "The Stylus," to appear in July, 1850. Meanwhile, there were dark sides to the pic ture: Mrs. Clemm was actually suffering, as she wrote Griswold, for the necessaries of life, and begged a small loan from the supposed friend ; neither " Annie nor " Estelle " had yet come to the rescue as they so nobly did, later. But the wedding-ring was ready, and the scene so exquisitely pre-figured in "The Bridal Ballad" with the situation of bride and groom reversed was about to take place : only a dress-coat was still wanting, to make Richmond, the scene of the first marriage, the scene of a second and happier one. Much, and elo quently, as Poe had written against second marriages 326 EDGAR ALLAN POE. in " Ligeia " for instance, and "The Bridal Bal lad he was about to embark on one himself, the same match from which, a year before, he had been mysteriously recalled by the reception of two anony mous stanzas from Mrs. Whitman when he was in Richmond on the same mission. Apparently, he did not remember his own prophetic and incisive words : "Would God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how, And my soul is sorely shaken Lest an evil step be taken, Lest the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now." " The [last] night," continues Mrs. Weiss, "he /spent at Duncan s Lodge [the home of the Macken- \f zies, who had adopted his sister] ; and as his friends said, sat late at his window, meditatively smoking, and seemingly disinclined for conversation. On the fol lowing morning, he went into the city, accompanied by his friends, Dr. Gibbon Carter and Dr. Mackenzie. , / The day was passed with them and others of his in timate friends. Late in the evening he entered the office of Dr. John Carter, and spent an hour in look ing over the day s papers; then taking Dr. Carter s cane he went out, remarking that he would step across to Saddler s (a fashionable restaurant) and get supper. From the circumstance of his taking the cane, leaving his own in its place, it is probable he had intended to return ; but at the restaurant he met with some acquaintances who detained him until late, and then accompanied him to the Baltimore boat. According to their accounts, he was quite sober and cheerful to the last, remarking, as he took leave of them, that he would soon be in Richmond again." BIOGRAPHY. 327 CHAPTER XVII. 1849. IN BALTIMORE : THE END. ACCORDING to even modern standards, Poe could not have reached Baltimore by the James River and Chesapeake Bay Patapsco route under from twenty- four to twenty-eight hours ; then, when steam navi gation was so much slower and more imperfect, it must have required much longer. At present a steamer leaves Richmond at 6 or 7 A. M. and reaches Old Point at 5 or 6 P. M. ; the fast Bay steamers then reach Washington about five or six in the morning, the Baltimore route being even longer. Possibly he met on this rather prolonged and tedious water-trip persons who induced him to break his v pledge : one does not know. The following note from Dr. William Hand Browne to the author is self-explanatory and also explanatory of the last act in the tragedy : " The following is an exact copy of the pencil note sent to Dr. Snodgrass to notify him of the condition in which Poe was. The writer, J. W. Walker, was (I have been informed) a printer of Baltimore. The note was copied by myself from the original in the possession of Mrs. Snodgrass, widow of Poe s friend. Dr. Snodgrass, on receipt of the note, hastened to \j 328 EDGAR ALLAN POE. attend Poe, and finding him in a dangerous state, had him icrnoved to the hospital, where he died. W. H. B." BALTIMORE CITY, 3d, 1849. DEAR SIR, There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan s 4th ward polls, who goes under the cogno men of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, and he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in need of immediate assistance. Yours in haste, Jos. W. WALKER. To Dr. J. E. SNODGRASS. What preluded the situation above pictured is a matter of supposition. One report is that Poe started for Philadelphia by rail and got as far as Havre de Grace, when, falling into a stupor, he was brought back to Baltimore and fell into the hands of political toughs at Ryan s Fourth Ward Polls, was drugged, and carried round from polls to polls in the interests of the Whig party. Dr. Snodgrass s own garrulous and garbled account of the affair in "Beadle s Monthly " for 1867 "The Facts of Poe s Death and Burial" has been shown by an intelligent writer (Mr. Spencer) in the New York "Herald," March 27, 1 88 1, to be wholly untrustworthy. This gentleman had the whole Poe-Snodgrass correspondence in his possession and copied and printed in "The Herald " 1 many interesting extracts from it, including the " coop letter. We quote from it the following : "The compositor (Walker) was well-known among the earlier printers upon the Baltimore Sun. He was afterwards drowned while swimming in the Spring 1 Kindly lent the author by Miss A. F. Poe, of Baltimore. BIOGRAPHY. 329 Gardens. The tavern to which reference was made [in Dr. Snodgrass s account] was in East Lombard Street, a door or two east of High Street. Dr. Snod- grass himself lived on High Street at that time, within a block or two of the tavern, and it was probably his immediate proximity as much as anything else, which prompted Walker to send for him. Poe was mani festly very ill, though he did not die until the follow ing Sunday morning (this note was written on Wednes- / day night) .... It will be noticed that, in spite of the fact that Snodgrass had the original of this note in his possession, he preferred to quote it from memory, and in so doing, utterly perverted its contents. He gave the wrong day of the month, the wrong day of the week, the wrong name for the tavern, and an ab solutely false and illusory statement of the printer s representations as to Poe s condition. A gentleman rather the worse for wear, who appears in great dis tress/ and is in evident need of immediate assist ance, is put down as being in a state of beastly intoxication and evident destitution. Walker speaks of a gentleman and stranger, who is so ill as to excite his sympathy and cause alarm ; Snodgrass makes him speak of a drunken and penniless loafer. Griswold, of course, makes worse out of Snodgrass s bad enough. He assigns Thursday, October 4, as the day, speaks of a night of exposure and insanity, etc., resolu tions and duties forgotten, and all the rest of an in famous rigmarole. " What are the actual facts in regard to Edgar A. Poe s death? The Baltimore < Sun of October 8, i 849, has only this announcement : " We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe, Esq., the / distinguished American poet, scholar, and critic, died 330 EDGAR ALLAN POE. in this city yesterday morning, after an illness of four or five days. This announcement, coming so sudden and unexpected, will cause poignant regret among all who admire genius and have sympathies for the frailties too often attending it. Mr. Poe, we believe, was a native of this State, though reared by a foster-father at Richmond, Va., where he lately spent some time on a visit. He was in the thirty-eighth year of his age. "Let us suppose," continues Mr. Spencer, not ; noticing the errors as to the place and time of Foe s j birth, " that Poe arrived in Baltimore on Wednes- - day, October 3, 1849, not entirely free from the effects of bad hours in the capital of Virginia. He must have reached the city in the forenoon, and, whether he came by rail or by steamboat, he would have naturally and almost instinctively gone to the United States Hotel (the present Maltby House), opposite which, at that time, was the depot of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. " Poe was a Whig in politics. There was an elec tion going on that day, a very wet and disagreeable one, for members of Congress and members of the ^* State Legislature. If Poe had been drinking at all, and it is altogether likely that he had, he would talk, and on election day all men talk politics. " Eight blocks east of the hotel where he [presum ably] was, was High Street, and in the rear of an engine-house in this vicinity the Fourth Ward Club, a notorious Whig organization, had their coop. There was no registry of voters at this time in Balti more, and almost any one could vote who was willing to face the ordeal of a challenge and the oath ad ministered by a judge of elections. Hence, personal BIOGRAPHY. 331 voting material was valuable, and the roughs of the period, instead of acting as rounders themselves, used to capture and coop innocent strangers and foreigners, drug them with bad whiskey and opiates, and send them round to the different voting-places under custody of one or two of their party, to help the cause. The system of cooping probably culminated in this year, 1849, and, if the writer s memory does not play him a trick, the < coop of the Democrats on Lexington Street, near Eutaw, in the rear of the New Market engine-house, had 75 prisoners, while that of the Whigs, on High Street, had 130 to 140 the equiv alent of 600 votes. "The prisoners in these coops/ chiefly foreigners, strangers, countrymen, fared wretchedly. They were often, at the outstart, and in the most unexpected way, drugged with opiates and such other delirifaciants as would be most likely to keep them from being trouble some and prevent them from resenting their outrageous treatment. They were thrust into cellars and back yards, and kept under lock and key, without light, without beds, without provisions for decency, without food. Only one thing they were supplied with, and that was a sufficient deluge of whiskey to keep their brains all the time sodden, and prevent them from im parting intelligibility to their complaints. "The Whig coop in the Fourth Ward, on High Street, was within two squares of the place where Poe was found. It is altogether possible . . . that Poe was cooped and that his outlaw custodians, discovering too late the disastrous effects of their infa mous decoctions upon the delicate tissues and convolu tions of his finely organized brain, sought to repair some of the damage they had done, and caused in quiry to be 332 EDGAR ALLAN POE. made for the friends of the man they had murdered. Too late ! "Poe was taken that night to the hospital, which is now called the Church Home * (on North Broad way), suffering from a violent brain fever of a conges tive character. He never recovered consciousness, he made no dying speeches and remarks, and his little candle, which now shines so far, went out very briefly about daybreak on Sunday morning, October 7." Such were in all probability the environing circum stances of the death of the great lyrist. Of Dr. J. J. Moran s account of the poet s last hours and his dying declarations, 1 written thirty-five years after the events, one can say that it is romanti cally interesting, but not convincing. Judge Neilson Poe, his third cousin, who was at the hospital con stantly until he died, asserted that he never regained consciousness. Dr. Snodgrass, who wrote in 1867, seventeen years after the catastrophe, asserts that he was conscious, and adds (if we may believe them) the following particulars : " The Washington Hospital having been fixed upon, a messenger was despatched to procure a carriage. While awaiting its arrival, I had an opportunity to ob serve more closely than I had taken time to do pre viously, the condition and apparel of the strangely metamorphosed being in the bar-room who wore a name which was a synonym for genius the first glance at whose tout ensemble was well calculated to recall Poe s own so frequently hinted doctrine of the 1 A Defence of Edgar Allan Poe : Life, Character, and Dying Declarations of the Poet : An Official Account of his Death by his Attending Physician, John J. Moran, M.D., Washington, D.C. : 1885. BIOGRAPHY. 333 metempsychosis. His face was haggard, not to say bloated and unwashed, his hair unkempt, and his whole physique repulsive. His expansive forehead, with its wonderful breadth between the points where the phrenologists locate the organ of ideality the widest I ever measured and that full-orbed and mellow yet soulful eye, for which he was so notice able when himself, now lustreless and vacant, as shortly I could see, were shaded from view by a rusty, almost brimless, tattered and ribbonless palm-leaf hat. His clothing consisted of a sack-coat of thin and slazy black alpaca, ripped more or less at several of its seams, and faded and soiled, and pants of a steel-mixed pattern of cassinette, half-worn and badly-fitting, if they could be said to fit at all. He wore neither vest nor neck-cloth, while the bosom of his shirt was both crumpled and badly soiled. On his feet were boots of coarse material, and giving no sign of having been blacked for a long time, if at all. " The carriage having arrived, we tried to get the object of our care upon his feet, so that he might the more easily be taken to it. But he was past locomotion. We therefore carried him to the coach as if he were a corpse, and lifted him in in the same manner. While we were doing this, what was left of one of the most remarkable embodiments of genius the world has pro duced in all the centuries of its history the author of a single poem which alone has been adjudged by more than one critic as entitling its producer to a lasting and enviable fame was so utterly voiceless as to be capable of only muttering some scarcely intelligible oaths, and other forms of imprecation upon those who were trying to rescue him from destitution and disgrace. 334 EDGAR ALLAN POE. " The carriage was driven directly to the hospital, where its unconscious occupant was assigned to the care of its intelligent and kindly resident physician [Dr. J. J. Moran] . "... He lived nearly a week, instead of dying next day, as one account has it, or in a few hours, as another records it, dying on the yth of the same month, Monday [Sunday] . Besides, it might convey the idea that he had no lucid moments. But he had, and in one of these an incident transpired which, while its mention may serve to extend the already long, as well as interesting record of the last words of noted men, it will be recognized as anything but character istic of Mr. Poe, who was always haunted by a terri ble though vague apprehension of death and the grave. When the hospital physician became satisfied that the author of William Wilson a favorite tale of Mr. Poe and of < The Raven had written his last story and his last poem, he addressed him concernedly and kindly, saying : Mr. Poe, it is my painful duty to inform you that you have, in my judgment, only a very short time to live. If you have any friends whom you would like to see, name them, and your wish shall be gratified ; I will summon them. " < Friends ! exclaimed the dying son of genius friends ! repeating the word for a moment as if it had no longer a definite meaning ; { my best friend would be he who would take a pistol and blow out these d d wretched brains! pressing his hand to his forehead as he uttered the awful imprecation." Fortunately, however, we are not dependent upon Dr. Snodgrass s harrowing account as our sole testi mony for Poe s last hours : there is in existence a let ter from Dr. J. J. Moran to Mrs. Clemm, written five BIOGRAPHY. 335 or six weeks after the event, which gives an account of bare facts without the romantic coloring of Dr. Moran s later statement, at the same time relieving the sufferer of the stain of dying with an imprecation on his lips : BALTIMORE CITY MARINE HOSPITAL, November 15, 49. MRS. CLEMM: MY DEAR MADAM, I take the earliest opportunity of responding to yours of the gth inst., which came to hand by yesterday s mail. . . . But now for the required intelligence. Presuming you are already aware of the malady of which Mr. Poe died, I need only state concisely the particulars of his circum stances from his entrance until his decease. When brought to the hospital he was unconscious of his condition who brought him or with whom he had been associating. He remained in this condition from five o clock in the afternoon the hour of his admis sion until three next morning. This was on the 3d October. To this state succeeded tremor of the limbs, and at first a busy but not violent or active delirium constant talking and vacant converse with spectral and imagi nary objects on the walls. His face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration. We were un able to induce tranquillity before the second day after his admission. Having left orders with the nurses to that effect, I was summoned to his bedside so soon as consciousness supervened, and questioned him in reference to his family, place of residence, relatives, etc. But his answers were incoherent and unsatisfactory. He told me, however, he had a wife in Richmond (which I have since learned was not the fact), that he did not know when he left that city, or what had become of his trunk of clothing. Washing to rally and sustain his now fast sinking hopes, 336 EDGAR ALLAN POE. I told him I hoped that in a few days he would be able to enjoy the society of his friends here, and I would be most happy to contribute in every possible way to his ease and comfort. At this he broke out with much energy, and said the best thing his best friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol that when he beheld his degradation, he was ready to sink into the earth, etc. Shortly after giving expression to these words, Mr. Poe seemed to doze, and I left him for a short time. When I returned I found him in a violent delirium, resisting the efforts of two nurses to keep him in bed. This state continued until Saturday evening (he was admitted on Wednesday), when he commenced call ing for one " Reynolds," 1 which he did through the night until three on Sunday morning. At this time a very decided change began to affect him. Having become enfeebled from exertion, he became quiet, and seemed to rest for a short time ; then gently moving his head, he said, " Lord help my poor soul!" and expired. This, Madam, is as faithful an account as I am able to furnish from the Record of his case. . . . His remains were visited by some of the first individuals of the city, many of them anxious to have a lock of his hair. . . . Respectfully yours, J. J. MORAN, Res. P/tys. 2 His relatives, Judge Neilson Poe and Mr. Henry Herring, took charge of the remains, which were buried Monday afternoon in the churchyard attached to Westminster Presbyterian Church, corner of Fay- ette and Greene Streets, the Rev. W. T. D. Clemm 1 This Reynolds may have been the author of the "Address on the South Sea Expedition" a project in which Poe was deeply interested and which doubtless gave him ideas for f Arthur Gordon Pym." 2 Miss A. F. Poe, MS. BIOGRAPHY. 337 reading the burial service of the Methodist Episcopal church. Only a few friends witnessed the solemn rites, among them his class-mate at the University of Virginia, Hon. Z. Collins Lee, Poe s cousin, Edmund Smith, Dr. Snodgrass, the officiating clergyman, and Mr. N. Poe. His trunk and clothes were sought in vain : they had most probably been stolen. The writer is enabled to supplement these state ments by the following interesting recollections of Mrs. J. J. Moran, furnished him by her nephew, Mr. J. B. Green, of the University of Virginia: " Mrs. Mary O. Moran, wife of the physician in charge of Washington College Hospital, Baltimore, where Poe died, made substantially the following statement as to his last hours. * When the young man was brought into the hospital in a stupor, it was sup posed he was overcome by drink. It was election time, and the city was very disorderly. We soon saw he was a gentleman ; and as our family lived in a wing of the college building, the doctor had him taken to a room easily reached by a passage from our wing. I helped to nurse him here, and during an interval of consciousness he asked if there was any hope for him. Thinking he referred to his physical condition, I said, "My husband thinks you are very ill, and if you have any directions to give regarding your affairs I will write them down." He replied, " I meant, hope for a wretch like me, beyond this life." I assured him that the Great Physician said there was. I then read him the fourteenth chapter of St. John s Gospel, gave him a quieting draught, wiped the beads of perspiration from his face, smoothed his pillow, and left him. Not long afterwards they VOL. i. 22 338 EDGAR ALLAN POE. brought me a message that he was dead. I made his shroud and helped to prepare his body for burial. " "It is impossible, * says Mr. Ingram, in conclud ing his sympathetic Memoir the fullest and best of the biographies of Poe " to conceive the horror and heart-rending grief of Mrs. Clemm when the intelligence of Poe s death was conveyed to her. She was awaiting his arrival, to bear her away to her native South, and instead of welcoming an affectionate son happy in the prospect of an anticipated mar riage and a prosperous future she received the tid ings of his terrible and mysterious death. In the first moments of her loneliness and anguish she wrote to her best friend, for sympathy, in these terms : Oct. 8, 1849. Annie, my Eddy is dead. He died in Baltimore yesterday. Annie ! pray for me, your desolate friend. My senses nvill leave me. I will write the moment I hear the particulars. I have written to Baltimore. Write and advise me what to do. Your distracted friend, M. C. " Writing again on the 1 3th ol October to the same faithful friend, Mrs. Clemm says : " MY OWN DEAREST ANNIE, I am not deceived in you. You still wish your poor desolate friend to come to you. ... I have written to poor Elmira [Mrs. Shelton], and have to wait for her answer. They are already making arrangements to publish the works of my darling lost one. I have been waited on by several gen tlemen, and have finally arranged with Mr. Griswold to arrange and bring them out, and he wishes it done imme diately. Mr. Willis is to share with him this labor of BIOGRAPHY. 339 love. They say that I am to have the entire proceeds, so you see, Annie, I will not be entirely destitute. I have had many letters of condolence, and one which has, indeed, comforted me. Neilson Poe, of Baltimore, has written to me, and says he died in the Washington Med ical College, not the Hospital, and of congestion of the brain, and not of what the vile, vile papers accuse him. He had many kind friends with him, and was attended to his grave by the literati of Baltimore, and many friends. Severe excitement (and no doubt some impru dence) brought this on ; he never had one interval of reason. . . . Never, oh, never, will I see those dear lovely eyes. I feel so desolate, so wretched, friendless, and alone. , " 1 The poor old woman, now advanced in years, became literally a wanderer on the face of the earth, accepting, first, the hospitality of "Annie/ at Lowell, Mass., with whom she resided for a few months ("years," says Ingram), and then staying with "Stella," in Brooklyn, until I 858, 2 when she removed to Baltimore. There she died in " the Church Home and Infirmary," February 16, 1871, more than 80 years of age the very place where her "Eddy" had died. At Poe s death a few papers and articles of a mis cellaneous nature were found in the hands of publishers and editors, and two of his most striking poems "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee" came sud denly to the surface, drawn thither by the solemn reverberation of the news of the poet s death. " Sar- tain s Union Magazine " for November contained the final version of "The Bells," the design of which, 1 Ingram, II. p. 239. 2 Edgar Allan Poe : A Memorial Volume : 1875 : p. 86. 340 EDGAR ALLAN POE. as he informed the poet Thompson, was "to express in language the exact sounds of bells to the ear"; and the "Southern Literary Messenger " for November contained "Annabel Lee," prefaced by the following words : " The day before he [Poe] left Richmond, he placed in our hands for publication in the Messenger the MS. of his last poem, which has since found its way (through a correspondent of a northern paper with whom Mr. Poe had left a copy) into the news paper press, and been extensively circulated. As it was designed for this magazine, however, we publish it, even though all of our readers may have seen it before." 1 It seems strange that this tender and beautiful ballad should appear in " The Tribune " for Oct. 9, 1849, almost side by side with the attack on Poe s memory now known to have been written by Griswold a poem in every line refuting the anonymous assault whose "intense energy of delineation " is pronounced "a piece of writing that has the power of genius and cannot be forgotten while his memory lives." In "Graham s" for January, 1850, appeared a paper " On Critics and Criticism," and this was fol lowed in October by "The Poetic Principle, * in " Sartain s Union Magazine" ; completing the tally of Poe s works which, even after death, streamed forth in these puissant channels and taught the world not only what he conceived to be the true theory of poetry but exemplified it in two wondrous poems. "The singu lar and exquisite genius of Poe," as Swinburne calls it, was thus singular and exquisite to the last breath. 1 So. Lit. Mess. The Late Edgar A. Poe: Nov. 1849, p. 697. APPENDIX. (340 POE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. THE following document possesses a curious in terest, being Poe s own account of his early life as furnished by him to Dr. Rufus Wilmot Griswold. The MS. is in the possession of Mrs. Wm. M. Griswold, of Cambridge, Mass., daughter-in-law of Dr. Griswold, by whose courtesy it is here printed for the first time. The reader should compare it with the letter by Poe on his ancestry to be found in our Volume XVII., dated August 20, 1835. The Memorandum abounds in inaccuracies. The birth-date is wrong by two years : Poe was born in 1809. The elder Mrs. Poe did not die of "con sumption" but of pneumonia. Mr. Allanjnever le gally f f adopted Poe, b.ut befriended and reare3TIiim and gave him a home. This statement is confirmed by Mrs. S. A. Weiss and Dr. John F. Carter, who are still living and who knew Poe and the Allans inti mately. Poe remained only one year (1826, not 1825) at the University oTTirginia, not "three/ as he states in the Memorandum. The University of Virginia never had a "president; " its executive offi cer is the Chairman of the Faculty. The runaway trip to Russia is altogether mythical : Poe was a pri vate and then a sergeant-major in the UnitecT States army, under the name of Edgar A. Perry, from May 26, 1827, to April 15, 1829, when, having supplied a substitute, he was honorably discharged. Mr. Allan 344 POE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. was not so old as Poe makes him out to be on his sec ond marriage, and he left three children, not " one son," to inherit his large estate. It would be most interesting to know what two British journals " Poe " wrote continuously for, " " whose names he was not permitted to mention." No traces of these contri butions have been found ; perhaps they were never printed. MEMORANDUM. Memo. Born January, 1 8 1 1 . Family one of the oldest and most respectable in Baltimore. Gen. David Poe, my paternal grandfather, was a quarter-master general, in the Maryland line, during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of Lafayette, who, during his visit to the U. S., called personally upon the Gen. s widow, and tendered her his warmest acknowledg ments for the services rendered him by her husband. His father, John Poe, married, in England, Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, noted in British naval history, and claiming kindred with many of the most illustrious houses of Great Britain. My father and mother died within a few weeks of each other, of consumption, leaving me an orphan at two years of age. Mr. John Allan, a very wealthy gentleman of Richmond, Va., took a fancy to me, and persuaded my grandfather, Gen. Poe, to suffer him to adopt me. Was brought up in Mr. A. s family, and re garded always as his son and heir he having no other children. In 1816 went with Mr. A. s family to G. Britain visited every portion of it went to school for 5 years to the Rev. Doctor Bransby, at Stoke Newington, then 4 miles from London. Re- POE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 345 turned to America in 1822. In 1825 went to the Jefferson University at Charlottesville, Va., where for 3 years I led a very dissipated life the college at that period being shamefully dissolute. Dr. Dungli- son of Philadelphia, President. Took the first honors, however, and came home greatly in debt. Mr. A. refused to pay some of the debts of honor, and I ran away from home without a dollar on a quixotic expe dition to join the Greeks, then struggling for liberty. Failed in reaching Greece, but made my way to St. Petersburg, in Russia. Got into many difficulties, but was extricated by the kindness of Mr. H. Middle- ton, the American consul at St. P. Came home safe in 1829, found Mrs. A. dead, and immediately went to West Point as a Cadet. In about 18 months afterwards Mr. A. married a second time (a Miss Patterson, a near relative of Gen. Winfield Scott) he being then 65 years of age. Mrs. A. and myself quarrelled, and he, siding with her, wrote me an angry letter, to which I replied in the same spirit. Soon afterwards he died, having had a son by Mrs. A., and, although leaving a vast property, bequeathed me nothing. The army does not suit a poor man so I left W. Point abruptly, and threw myself upon literature as a resource. I became first known to the literary world thus. A Baltimore weekly paper (The Visiter) offered two premiums one for best prose story, one for best poem. The Committee awarded both to me, and took occasion to insert in the journal a card, signed by themselves, in which I was very highly flattered. The Committee were John P. Ken nedy (author of Horse-Shoe Robinson), J. H. B. Latrobe and Dr. I. H. Miller. Soon after this I was invited by Mr. T. W. White, proprietor of the 346 FOE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. South. Lit. Messenger, to edit it. Afterwards wrote for New York Review at the invitation of Dr. Hawks and Professor Henry, its proprietors. Lately have written articles continuously for two British journals whose names I am not permitted to mention. In my engagement with Burton, it was not my design to let my name appear but he tricked me into it. Written on half sheet evidently used for an en velope, marks of seal left on back, stamp, " (paid) i J. B." x part of an address, severed by scissors-cut : "Id, Esare., Boston, Mass." T MRS. CLEMM S PREFACE. 347 MRS. CLEMM S PREFACE TO THE GRISWOLD EDITION. 1 THE late Edgar Allan Poe, who was the husband of my only daughter, the son of my eldest brother, and more than a son to myself, in his long continued and affectionate observance of every duty to me, under an impression that he might be called suddenly from the world, wrote (just before he left his home in Fordham, for the last time, on the 29th of June, I 849) requests that the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold should act as his Literary Executor, and superintend the publica tion of his works ; and that N. P. Willis, Esq., should write such observations upon his life and char acter, as he might deem suitable to address to thinking men, in vindication of his memory. These requests he made with less hesitation, and 1 This edition of Poe s works was copyrighted by J. S. Red- field in 1849, appearing first in two volumes, then with a third volume containing the notorious Memoir, and finally ending with a fourth and last volume in 1856. It will be noticed that Mrs. Clemm s preface is prefixed gratefully to the volumes that had no Memoir, she apparently never having been cognizant of Griswold s intention to write her nephew s life : Mrs. Estelle Anna Lewis had been specially requested by Poe himself, when they parted, to do this, and N. P. Willis had been invited to assist with a bio graphical Notice. This appeared in "The Home Journal" the Saturday afrer Poe died, and is incorporated with James Russell Lowell s sketch in the 1849 edition. See succeeding pages for the Griswold, Willis, and Lowell articles. What must have been the poor lady s horror and indignation when she read the Memoir, "a concentration of hatred and malice that had already done duty ... in the * International Maga zine " ! After reading it, she never ceased to speak of its author as that villain. ED. 348 APPENDIX. with confidence that they would be fulfilled, from his knowledge of these gentlemen ; and he many times expressed a gratification of such an opportunity of de cidedly and unequivocally certifying his respect for the literary judgment and integrity of Mr. Griswold, with whom his personal relations, on account of some un happy misunderstanding, had for years been inter rupted. In this edition of my son s works, which is pub lished for my benefit, it is a great pleasure for me to thank Mr. Griswold and Mr. Willis for their prompt fulfilment of the wishes of the dying poet, in labors which demanded much time and attention, and which they have performed without any other recompense than the happiness which rewards acts of duty and kindness. I add to these expressions of gratitude to them, my acknowledgments to J. R. Lowell, Esquire, for his notices of Mr. Poe s genius and writings which are here published. MARIA CLEMM. THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." BY R. W. GRiswoLD. 1 [New York Tribune (Evening Edition), October 9, 1849.] Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will 1 On April 2, 1850, Walter Colton wrote to Griswold as fol lows: "1 have read your criticism on E. A. Poe; it is terrific, but not more so than the moral aspects of your subject. In lit erary execution it rivals the best passages in Macaulay. I knew THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 349 startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was well known personally or by reputation, in all this country ; he had readers in England, and in sev eral of the states of Continental Europe ; but be bad few or no friends ; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of its most brilliant, but erratic stars. The family of Mr. Poe, we learn from Griswold s "Poets and Poetry of America," from which a con siderable portion of the facts in this notice are derived, was one of the oldest and most respectable in Balti more. David Poe, his paternal grandfather, was a Quartermaster-General in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of Lafayette, who during his last visit to the United States, called personally upon the General s widow, and tendered her acknowledgments for the services rendered to him by her husband. His great-grandfather, John Poe, married in England, Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, noted in British naval history, and claiming kindred with some of the most illustrious English families. His father and mother, both of whom were in some way connected with the theatre, and lived as precariously as their more gifted, and more eminent son, died within a few weeks of each other, of consumption, leaving him an orphan at two years of age. Mr. John Allan, a wealthy gentleman of Richmond, took a fancy to him, and persuaded his grandfather to suffer him to adopt him. He was brought up in Mr. Allan s family ; and as that gentle- something of POP something of the unfathomed gulfs of dark ness out of which the lightning of his genius sent its scorching flashes. ..." 350 APPENDIX. man had no other children, he was regarded as his son and heir. In 1 8 1 6 he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Allan to Great Britain, visited every portion of it, and afterward passed four or five years in a school kept at [Stoke] Newington, near London, by Rev. Dr. Bransby. He returned to America in 1822, and in 1825 went to the Jefferson University, at Charlottes- ville, in Virginia, where he led a very dissipated life, the manners of the College at that time being extremely dissolute. He took the first honors, however, and went home greatly in debt. Mr. Allan refused to pay some of his debts of honor, and he hastily quitted the country on a quixotic expedition to join the Greeks, then struggling for liberty. He did not reach his original destination, however, but made his way to St. Petersburg, in Russia, when he became in volved in difficulties, from which he was extricated by the late Henry Middleton, the American Minister at that Capital. He returned home in 1829, and imme diately afterwards entered the Military Academy at West- Point. In about eighteen months from that time, Mr. Allan, who had lost his first wife while Mr. Poe was in Russia, married again. He was sixty-five years of age, and the lady was young ; Poe quarrelled with her, and the veteran husband, taking the part of his wife, addressed him an angry letter, which was answered in the same spirit. He died soon after, leaving an infant son heir to his property, and bequeathing Poe nothing. The army, in the opinion of the young poet, was not a place for a poor man ; so he left West Point abruptly, and determined to maintain himself by au thorship. He printed, in 1827, a small volume of poems, most of which were written in early youth. THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 351 Some of these poems are quoted in a reviewal by Mar garet Fuller, in The Tribune in 1 846, and are justly regarded as among the most wonderful exhibitions of the precocious developments of genius. They illus trated the character of his abilities, and justified his anticipations of success. For a considerable time, however, though he wrote readily and brilliantly, his contributions to the journals attracted little attention, and his hopes of gaining a livelihood by the profession of literature was nearly ended at length in sickness, poverty and despair. But in 1 83 1, 1 the proprietor of a weekly gazette, in Baltimore, offered two premiums, one for the best story in prose, and the other for the best poem. In due time Poe sent in two articles, and he waited anxiously for the decision. One of the Committee was the accomplished author of " Horseshoe Robin son," John P. Kennedy, and his associates were scarcely less eminent than he for wit and critical sagac ity. Such matters were usually disposed of in a very off-hand way ; committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer s health, in good wines, over the un- examined MSS., which they submit to the discretion of the publisher, with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote the publisher s advan tage. So it would have been in this case, but that one of the Committee, taking up a small book, in such ex quisite caligraphy as to seem like one of the finest issues of the press of Putnam, was tempted to read several pages, and being interested, he summonsed the atten tion of the company to the half-dozen compositions in the volume. It was unanimously decided that the i 1833. ED. 352 APPENDIX. prizes should be paid to the first of geniuses who had written legibly. Not another MS. was unfolded. Immediately the confidential envelope was opened, and the successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely known name of Poe. The next day the publisher called to see Mr. Ken nedy, and gave him an account of the author that ex cited his curiosity and sympathy, and caused him to request that he should be brought to his ofHce. Ac cordingly he was introduced ; the prize money had not yet been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A tattered frock-coat concealed the ab sence of a shirt, and the ruins of boots disclosed more than the want of stockings. But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and feeling, and his voice and conversation, and manners, all won upon the lawyer s regard. Poe told his history, and his am bitions, and it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor oppor tunity for a just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a clothing store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he re turned with the suddenly regained bearing of a gentle man. The late Mr. Thomas W. White had then recently established The Southern Literary Messenger, at Rich mond, and upon the warm recommendation of Mr. Kennedy, Poe was engaged at a small salary we believe of $500 a year to be its editor. He en tered upon his duties with letters full of expressions of THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 353 the warmest gratitude to his friends in Baltimore, who in five or six weeks were astonished to learn that with characteristic recklessness of consequence, he was hur riedly married to a girl as poor as himself. Poe con tinued in this situation for about a year and a half, in which he wrote many brilliant articles, and raised the Messenger to the first rank of literary periodicals. He next removed to Philadelphia, to assist William E. Burton in the editorship of the Gentleman s Maga zine, a miscellany that in 1840 was merged in Gra ham s Magazine, of which Poe became one of the principal writers, particularly in criticism, in which his papers attracted much attention by their careful and skilful analysis, and general caustic severity. At this period, however, he appeared to have been more am bitious of securing distinction in romantic fiction, and a collection of his compositions in this department, pub lished in i 84 1, 1 under the title of Tales of the Gro tesque and the Arabesque, established his reputation for ingenuity, imagination, and extraordinary power in tragical narration. Near the end of 1844 Poe removed to New York, where he conducted for several months a literary mis cellany called the Broadway Journal. In 1845 he published a volume of "Tales" in Wiley and Put nam s " Library of American Books ;" and in the same series a collection of his poems. Besides these poems he was the author of "Arthur Gordon Pym," a ro mance ; "Eureka," an essay on the spiritual and material universe ; a work which he wishes to have "judged as a poem ; " and several extended series of papers in the periodicals, the most noteworthy of which are " Marginalia," embracing opinions of books and 1 1840. ED. VOL. i. 23 354 APPENDIX. authors ; " Secret Writing," "Autography;" and "Sketches of the Literati of New York." His wife died in 1847, at Fordham, near this city, and some of our readers will remember the paragraphs in the papers of the time, upon his destitute condition. We remember that Col. Webb collected in a few moments fifty or sixty dollars for him at the Metropolitan Club ; Mr. Lewis, of Brooklyn, sent a similar sum from one of the courts, in which he was engaged when he saw the statement of the poet s poverty ; and others illustrated in the same manner the effect of such an appeal to the popular heart. Since that time Mr. Poe had lived quietly, and with an income from his literary labors sufficient for his sup port. A few weeks ago he proceeded to Richmond, in Virginia, where he lectured upon the poetical char acter, etc. ; and it was understood by some of his correspondents here that he was this week to be married, most advantageously, to a lady of that city, a widow, to whom he had been previously engaged while a stu dent in the University. The character of Mr. Poe we cannot attempt to describe in this very hastily written article. We can but allude to some of the more striking phases. His conversation was at times almost supra-mortal in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with as tonishing skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood, or drew it back frozen to his heart. His imagery was from the worlds which no mortal can see but with the vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition exactly and sharply defined in terms of utmost sim- THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 35:5 plicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and in a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghostliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty, so minutely, and so distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful cre ations till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or by exhibitions of the ignoble passions. He was at times a dreamer dwelling in ideal realms in heaven or hell, peopled with creations and the accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indis tinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayers, (never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, ) but for their happi ness who at that moment were objects of his idolatry; or with his glance introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms ; and all night, with drenched garments and arms wildly beating the wind and rain, he would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from that Aidenn close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his constitution subjected him close by that Aidenn where were those he loved the Aidenn which he might never see but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose listing to sin did not involve the doom of death. He seemed, except when some fitful pursuit subjected his will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow. The re- 356 APPENDIX. markable poem of The Raven was probably much more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. He was the bird s unhappy master, Whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster Till his song the burden bore Melancholy burden bore Of " Nevermore," of " Nevermore." Every genuine author in a greater or less degree leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his personal character ; elements of his immortal being, in which the individual survives the person. While we read the pages of the Fall of the House of Usher, or of Mesmeric Revelation, we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the idio- syncracies, of what was most peculiar in the au thor s intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of this nature, only the symbols of his juster action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole sys tem was with him an imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still though he regarded society as com posed of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villainy, while it continually caused him overshots, to fail of the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian in Bulwer s novel of the " Caxtons." Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 357 emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advan tage of this poor boy his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery at mosphere had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admi ration into prejudice against him. Irascible, envious bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant cynicism while his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility ; and what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed not shine, not serve succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit. We have suggested the influence of his aims and vicissitudes upon his literature. It was more conspic uous in his later than his earlier writing. Nearly all that he wrote in the last two or three years including much of his best poetry was in some sense biograph ical ; in draperies of his imagination, those who had taken the trouble to trace his steps, could perceive, but slightly covered, the figure of himself. There are perhaps some of our readers who will understand the allusions of the following beautiful poem. Mr. Poe presented it in MS. to the writer of these paragraphs, just before he left New York recently, remarking it was the last thing he had written. 358 APPENDIX. It was many and many a year ago, In this kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE ; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. /was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea ; And we loved with a love that was more than love I and my ANNABEL LEE ; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful ANNABEL LEE j So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The Angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me Yes ! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. But our love it was stronger by far than love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams, Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE 5 And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE ; THE "LUDWIG ARTICLE." 359 And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling my darling my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea. We must omit any particular criticism of Mr. Poe s works. As a writer of tales it will be admitted gen erally, that he was scarcely surpassed in ingenuity of construction or effective painting ; as a critic, he was more remarkable as a dissector of sentences than as a commenter upon ideas. He was little better than a carping grammarian. As a poet, he will retain a most honorable rank. Of his "Raven," Mr. Willis ob serves, that in his opinion, "it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conceptions, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift." In poetry, as in prose, he was most successful in the metaphysical treatment of the passions. His poems are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. They illustrate a morbid sensitiveness of feeling, a shadowy and gloomy imagination, and a taste almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of beauty most agreeable to his temper. We have not learned the circumstance of his death. It was sudden, and from the fact that it occurred in Baltimore, it is presumed that he was on his return to New York. "After life s fitful fever he sleeps well." LUDWIG. 1 1 " Diary : Oct. 8 [1849]. Wrote, hastily, two or three col umns about Poe, ibr the Tribune. Diary: Oct. 16. Call on Mrs. Lewis, to assort, at her home, Poe s papers. Diary : Oct. 17. The affairs of Poe." Passages from the Correspondence of R. W. Griswold : 1898 : p. 2,52-3. 360 APPENDIX. DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 1 BY N. P. WILLIS. The ancient fable of two antagonistic spirits im prisoned in one body equally powerful and having the complete mastery by turns of one man, that is to say, inhabited by both a devil and an angel seems to have been realized, if all we hear is true, in the character of the extraordinary man whose name we have written above. Our own impression of the nature of Edgar A. Poe differs in some important degree, however, from that which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death. Let us, before telling what we personally know of him, copy a graphic and highly finished portraiture, from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, which appeared in a recent number of the Tribune: 2 Apropos of the disparaging portion of the above well-written sketch, let us truthfully say : Some four or five years since, when editing a daily paper in this city, Mr. Poe was employed by us, for several months, as critic and sub-editor. This was our first personal acquaintance with him. He resided with his wife and mother at Fordham, a few miles out of town, but was at his desk in the office from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press. With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common report to expect a very capri- 1 These remarks were published by Mr. Willis, in the " Home Journal," on the Saturday following Mr. Poe s death. 2 The preceding Ludwig article. DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 361 cious attention to his duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intellectual face as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential cour tesy, and to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too highly with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously as sented, far more yielding than most men, we thought, on points so excusably sensitive. With a prospect of taking the lead in another periodical, he at last voluntarily gave up his employment with us, and through all this considerable period we had seen but one presentment of the man, a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, command ing the utmost respect and good feeling by his un varying deportment and ability. Residing as he did in the country, we never met Mr. Poe in hours of leisure ; but he frequently called on us afterwards at our place of business, and we met him often in the street, invariably the same sad- mannered, winning, and refined gentleman such as we had always known him. It was by rumor only, up to the day of his death, that we knew of any other de velopment of manner or character. We heard, from one who knew him well (what should be stated in all mention of his lamentable irregularities), that, with a single glass of wine, his whole nature was reversed, the demon became uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane. Possessing his reasoning faculties in excited activity at such times, and seeking his ac- 362 APPENDIX. quaintances with his wonted look and memory, he easily seemed personating only another phase of his natural character, and was accused, accordingly, of insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness. In this re versed character, we repeat, it was never our chance to see him. We know it from hearsay, and we men- don it in connection with this sad infirmity of physical constitution, which puts it upon very nearly the ground of a temporary and almost irresponsible insanity. The arrogance, vanity, and depravity of heart of which Mr. Poe was generally accused seem to us referable altogether to this reversed phase of his char acter. Under that degree of intoxication which only acted upon him by demonizing his sense of truth and right, he doubtless said and did much that was wholly irreconcilable with his better nature ; but when him self, and as we knew him only, his modesty and un affected humility, as to his own deservings, were a constant charm to his character. His letters (of which the constant application for autographs has taken from us, we are sorry to confess, the greater portion) exhibited this quality very strongly. In one of the carelessly written notes of which we chance still to retain possession, for instance, he speaks of " The Raven," that extraordinary poem which electrified the world of imaginative readers, and has become the type of a school of poetry of its own, and, in evi dent earnest, attributes its success to the few words of commendation with which we had prefaced it in this paper. It will throw light on his sane character to give a literal copy of the note : FORDHAM, April ao, 1849. MY DEAR WILLIS, The poem which I enclose, and which I am so vain as to hope you will like, in some DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 363 respects, has been just published in a paper for which sheer necessity compels me to write, now and then. It pays well, as times go but unquestionably it ought to pay ten prices ; for whatever I send it I feel I am con signing to the tomb of the Capulets. The verses ac companying this, may I beg you to take out of the tomb, and bring them to light in the Home Journal ? If you can oblige me so far as to copy them, I do not think it will be necessary to say "From the ," that would be too bad 5 and, perhaps, "From a late paper" w^uld do. I have not forgotten how a "good word in season" from you made "The Raven," and made " Ulalume," (which, by-the-way, people have done me the honor of attributing to you) therefore I would ask you, (if I dared), to say something of these lines if they please you. Truly yours ever, EDGAR A. POE. In double proof of his earnest disposition to do the best for himself, and of the trustful and grateful nature which has been denied him, we give another of the only three of his notes which we chance to retain : FORDHAM, January 22, 1848. MY DEAR MR. WILLIS, I am about to make an effort at re-establishing myself in the literary world, and feel that I may depend upon your aid. My general aim is to start a Magazine, to be called " The Stylus ; " but it would be useless to me, even when established, if not entirely out of the control of a pub lisher. I mean, therefore, to get up a Journal which shall be my own, at all points. With this end in view, I must get a list of, at least, five hundred subscribers to begin with : nearly two hundred I have already. I propose, however, to go South and West, among my personal and literary friends old college and West 364 APPENDIX. Point acquaintances and see what I can do. In order to get the means of taking the first step, I propose to lecture at the Society Library, on Thursday, the 3d of February and, that there may be no cause of squab bling, my subject shall not be literary at all. I have chosen a broad text "The Universe." Having thus given you the facts of the case, I leave all the rest to the suggestions of your own tact and generosity. Gratefully most gratefully Your friend always, EDGAR A. POE. Brief and chance-taken as these letters are, we think they sufficiently prove the existence of the very quali ties denied to Mr. Poe, humility, willingness to persevere, belief in another s kindness, and capability of cordial and grateful friendship ! Such he assuredly was when sane. Such only he has invariably seemed to us, in all we have happened personally to know of him, through a friendship of five or six years. And so much easier is it to believe what we have seen and known than what we bear of only, that we remember him but with admiration and respect, these descrip tions of him, when morally insane, seeming to us like portraits, painted in sickness, of a man we have only known in health. But there is another, more touching and far more forcible, evidence that there was goodness in Edgar A. Poe. To reveal it, we are obliged to venture upon the lifting of the veil which sacredly covers grief and refinement in poverty ; but we think it may be ex cused if so we can brighten the memory of the poet, even were there not a more needed and immediate service which it may render to the nearest link broken by his death. DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. 365 Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe s removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for him, and she excused her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their cir cumstances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself. The countenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long- forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined manners, and her appealing and yet appreciative men tion of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for him mentioning nothing but that " he was ill," whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing ; and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died, a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued 366 APPENDIX. his ministering angel, living with him, caring for him, guarding him against exposure, and, when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and suffer ing, begging for him still. If woman s devotion, born with a first love, and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a de votion like this pure, disinterested, and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit say for him who in spired it ? We have a letter before us, written by this lady, Mrs. Clemm, on the morning in which she heard of the death of this object of her untiring care. It is merely a request that we would call upon her ; but we will copy a few of its words, sacred as its privacy is, to warrant the truth of the picture we have drawn above, and add force to the appeal we wish to make for her : "I have this morning heard of the death of my darling Eddie. . . . Can you give me any circumstances or par ticulars ? . . . Oh ! do not desert your poor friend in this bitter affliction. . . . Ask Mr. to come, as I must deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie. ... I need not ask you to notice his death and to speak well of him. I know you will. But say what an affec tionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother. ..." To hedge round a grave with respect, what choice is there between the relinquished wealth and honors of the world and the story of such a woman s unre warded devotion ! Risking what we do, in delicacy, by making it public, we feel other reasons aside that it betters the world to make known that there are such ministrations to its erring and gifted. What we EDGAR ALLAN POE. 367 have said will speak to some hearts. There are those who will be glad to know how the lamp, whose light of poetry has beamed on their far-away recognition, was watched over with care and pain, that they may send to her, who is more darkened than they by its extinction, some token of their sympathy. She is destitute and alone. If any, far or near, will send to us what may aid and cheer her through the remainder of her life, we will joyfully place it in her hands. EDGAR ALLAN POE. BY JAMES RUSSELL LowELL. 1 The situation of American literature is anomalous. It has no centre, or, if it have, it is like that of the sphere of Hermes. It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its several sun, and often present ing to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and- watery way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart, from which life and vigor radiate to the extremities, but resembles more an isolated umbilicus, stuck down as near as may be to the centre of the land, and seeming rather to tell a legend of former usefulness than to serve any present need. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has its literature almost more distinct than those of the differ ent dialects of Germany ; and the Young Queen of the West has also one of her own, of which some articu late rumor barely has reached us dwellers by the 1 From " Graham s Magazine," Phila., February, 1845, with a super-caption : " Our Contributors. No. XVII." 368 APPENDIX. Atlantic. Meanwhile, a great babble is kept up con cerning a national literature, and the country, having delivered itself of the ugly likeness of a paint-bedaubed, filthy savage, smilingly dandles the rag-baby upon her maternal knee, as if it were veritable flesh and blood, and would grow timely to bone and sinew. But, before we have an American literature, we must have an American criticism. We have, it is true, some scores of " American Macaulays," the faint echoes of defunct originalities, who will dis course learnedly at an hour s notice upon matters, to be even a sciolist in which would ask the patient study and self-denial of years but, with a few rare exceptions, America is still to seek a profound, orig inal, and aesthetic criticism. Our criticism, which from its nature might be expected to pass most erudite judgment upon the merit of thistles, undertakes to de cide upon " The plant and flower of light." There is little life in it, little conscientiousness, little reverence ; nay, it has seldom the mere physical merit of fearlessness. It may be best likened to an intellec tual gathering of chips to keep the critical pot of pota toes or reputations boiling. Too often, indeed, with the cast garments of some pigmy GifFord, or other for eign notoriety, which he has picked up at the rag-fair of literature, our critic sallies forth, a self-dubbed Amadis, armed with a pen, which, more wonderful even than the fairy-gifts in an old ballad, becomes at will either the lance couched terribly at defiant wind mills, or the trumpet for a half-penny paean. Perhaps there is no task more difficult than the just criticism of cotemporary literature. It is even more grateful to give praise where it is needed than where EDGAR ALLAN POE. 369 it is deserved, and friendship so often reduces the iron stylus of justice into a vague flourish, that she writes what seems rather like an epitaph than a criticism. Yet if praise be given as an alms, we could not drop so poisonous a one into any man s hat. The critic s ink may suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is easier to be generous than to be just, though there are some who find it equally hard to be either, and we might readily put faith in that fabulous direction to the hiding-place of truth, did we judge from the amount of water which we usually find mixed with it. We were very naturally led into some remarks on American criticism by the subject of the present sketch. Mr. Poe is at once the most discriminating, philo sophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America. It may be that we should qualify our remark a little and say that he MIGHT BE, rather than that he always is, for he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic-acid for his inkstand. If we do not always agree with him in his premises, we are, at least, satisfied that his deductions are logical, and that we are reading the thoughts of a man who thinks for himself, and says what he thinks, and knows well what he is talking about. His ana lytic powers would furnish forth bravely some score of ordinary critics. We do not know him personally, but we suspect him for a man who has one or two pet prejudices on which he prides himself. These some times allure him out of the strict path of criticism, 1 1 We cannot but think that this was the case in his review of W. E. Channing s poems, in which we are sure that there is much which must otherwise have challenged Mr. Poe s hearty liking. NOTE BY LOWELL. VOL. I. 24 370 APPENDIX. but, where they do not interfere, we would put almost entire confidence in his judgments. Had Mr. Poe had the control of a magazine of his own, in which to display his critical abilities, he would have been as autocratic, ere this, in America, as Professor Wilson has been in England ; and his criticisms, we are sure, would have been far more profound and phil osophical than those of the Scotsman. As it is, he has squared out blocks enough to build an enduring pyramid, but has left them lying carelessly and un claimed in many different quarries. Remarkable experiences are usually confined to the inner life of imaginative men, but Mr. Poe s biography displays a vicissitude and peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. The offspring of a romantic mar riage, and left an orphan at an early age, he was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose barren marriage-bed seemed the warranty of a large estate to the young poet. Having received a classical education in England, he returned home and entered the University of Virginia, where, after an extrava gant course, followed by reformation at the last ex tremity, he was graduated with the highest honors of his class. Thencame a boyish attempt tq_jojn the_ fortunes of the insurgent Greeks, which ended at St. Peters burET where he got into difficulties through want oTa passport, From which he was rescued by the AmerJ ican consul and sent home. He now entered the military academy at West Point, from which he ob tained a dismissal on hearing of the birth of a son to his adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut off his expectations as an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name was not men tioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this re- EDGAR ALLAN POE. 371 gard, and he committed himself at once to authorship for a support. Previously to this, however, he had published (in 1827) a small volume of poems, which soon ran through three editions, and excited high ex pectations of its author s future distinction in the minds of many competent judges. That no certain augury can be drawn from a poet s earliest lispings there are instances enough to prove. Shakspeare s first poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and picturesqueness, give but a very faint prom ise of the directness, condensation and overflowing moral of his maturer works. Perhaps, however, Shakspeare is hardly a case in point, his "Venus and Adonis" having been published, we believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton s Latin verses show ten derness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate apprecia tion of classic models, but give no hint of the author of anew style in poetry. Pope s youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later produc tions. Collins callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more in the " marvelous boy," Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitation of obscure and anti quated dullness. Where he becomes original (as it is called) the interest of ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White s promises were endorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely with no authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional piety, which, to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable in the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober raiment of prose. They do not clutch hold of the memory with the drowning per- 372 APPENDIX. tinacity of Watts ; neither have they the interest of his occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns, having fortunately been rescued by his humble station from the contaminating society of the "best models," wrote well and naturally from the first. Had he been unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, we should have had a series of poems from which, as from his letters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass of chaff. Coleridge s youthful efforts give no promise whatever of that poetical genius which pro duced at once the wildest, tenderest, most original and most purely imaginative poems of modern times. Byron s " Hours of Idleness" would never find a reader except from an intrepid and indefatigable curi osity. In Wordsworth s first preludings there is but a dim foreboding of the creation of an era. From Southey s early poems, a safer augury might have been drawn. They show the patient investigation, the close student of history, and the unwearied explorer of the beauties of predecessors, but they give no assur ances of a man who should add aught to stock of house hold words, or to the rarer and more sacred delights of the fire-side or the arbor. The earliest specimens of Shelley s poetic mind already, also, give tokens of that ethereal sublimation in which the spirit seems to soar above the region of words, but leaves its body, the verse, to be entombed, without hope of resurrec tion, in a mass of them. Cowley is generally in stanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement of certain conventional com binations of words, a capacity wholly dependent on a delicate physical organization, and an unhappy mem ory. An early poem is only remarkable when it dis- EDGAR ALLAN POE. 373 plays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception of the ends of poetry, are worth all the miracles of smooth juvenile versification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire the regular see-saw of Pope merely by an asso ciation with the motion of the play-ground tilt. Mr. Poe s early productions show that he could see through the verse to the spirit beneath, and that he al ready had a feeling that all the life and grace of the one must depend on and be modulated by the will of the other. We call them the most remarkable boyish poems that we have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for maturity of purpose, and a nice understanding of the effects of language and metre. Such pieces are only valuable when they dis play what we can only express by the contradictory phrase of innate experience. We copy one of the shorter poems written when the author was only fourteen ! There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever attain. There is a smack of ambrosia about it. TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. 374 APPENDIX. Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand ! The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah ! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land ! It is the tendency of the young poet that impresses us. Here is no "withering scorn," no heart "blighted" ere it has safely got into its teens, none of the drawing-room sansculottism which Byron had brought into vogue. All is limpid and serene, with a pleasant dash of the Greek Helicon in it. The melody of the whole, too, is remarkable. It is not of that kind which can be demonstrated arithmetically upon the tips of the fingers. It is that finer sort which the inner ear alone can estimate. It seems simple, like a Greek column, because of its perfection. In a poem named " Ligeia," under which title he intended to personify the music of nature, our boy poet gives us the follow ing exquisite picture : Ligeia ! Ligeia ! My beautiful one, Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, Say, is it thy will On the breezes to toss, Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, Incumbent on night, As she on the air, To keep watch with delight On the harmony there ? John Neal, himself a man of genius, and whose lyre has been too long capriciously silent, appreciated the high merit of these and similar passages, and drew a proud horoscope for their author. The extracts EDGAR ALLAN POE. 375 which we shall presently make from Mr. Poe s later poems fully justify his predictions. Mr. Poe has that indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have still one foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself, so that a sunset shall seem like a quotation from Dante or Milton, and if Shakspeare be read in the very presence of the sea itself, his verses shall but seem nobler for the sublime criticism of ocean. Talent may make friends for itself, but only genius can give to its creations the divine power of winning love and veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of its sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asun der, that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand at the devil. When we say that Mr. Poe has genius, we do not mean to say that he has produced evidence of the highest. But to say that he possesses it at all is to say that he needs only zeal, industry, and a reverence for the trust reposed in him, to achieve the proudest triumphs and the greenest laurels. If we may believe 376 APPENDIX. the Longinuses and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition asserts, a necessary part of their idiosyncrasy. There is scarce a gentleman or lady of respectable moral character to whom these liberal dispensers of the laurel have not given a ticket to that once sacred pri vacy, where they may elbow Shakspeare and Milton at leisure. A transient visiter, such as a critic must neces sarily be, sees these legitimate proprietors in common, parading their sacred enclosure as thick and buzzing as flies, each with " Entered according to act of Con gress " labeled securely to his back. Formerly one Phoebus, a foreigner, we believe, had the monopoly of transporting all passengers thither, a service for which he provided no other conveyance than a vicious horse, named Pegasus, who could, of course, carry but one at a time, and even that but seldom, his back being a ticklish seat, and one fall proving generally enough to damp the ardor of the most zealous aspirant. The charges, however, were moderate, as the poet s pocket formerly occupied that position in regard to the rest of his outfit which is now more usually conceded to his head. But we must return from our little his torical digression. Mr. Poe has two of the prime qualities of genius, a faculty of vigorous yet minute analysis, and a wonder ful fecundity of imagination. The first of these facul- EDGAR ALLAN POE. 377 ties is as needful to the artist in words, as a knowledge of anatomy is to the artist in colors or in stone. This enables him to conceive truly, to maintain a proper relation of parts, and to draw a correct outline, while the second groups, fills up, and colors. Both of these Mr. Poe has displayed with singular distinctness in his prose works, the last predominating in his earlier tales, and the first in his later ones. In judging of the merit of an author and assigning him his niche among our household gods, we have a right to regard him from our own point of view, and to measure him by our own standard. But, in estimating his works, we must be governed by his own design, and, placing them by the side of his own ideal, find how much is wanting. We differ with Mr. Poe in his opinions of the objects of art. He esteems that object to be the creation of Beauty, 1 and perhaps it is only in the definition of that word that we disagree with him. But in what we shall say of his writings we shall take his own standard as our guide. The temple of the god of song is equally accessible from every side, and there is room enough in it for all who bring offerings, or seek an oracle. In his tales, Mr. Poe has chosen to exhibit his power chiefly in that dim region which stretches from the very utmost limits of the probable into the weird confines of superstition and unreality. He combines in a very remarkable manner two faculties which are seldom found united ; a power of influencing the mind of the reader by the impalpable shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which does not leave a pin or a button unnoticed. Both are, in truth, the natural results of the predominating quality of his mind, to 1 Mr. P. s proposition is here perhaps somewhat too generally stated. ED. Mag. 378 APPENDIX. which we have before alluded, analysis. It is this which distinguishes the artist. His mind at once reaches forward to the effect to be produced. Having resolved to bring about certain emotions in the reader, he makes all subordinate parts tend strictly to the com mon centre. Even his mystery is mathemathical to his own mind. To him AT is a known quantity all along. In any picture that he paints, he understands the chemical properties of all his colors. However vague some of his figures may seem, however formless the shadows, to him the outline is as clear and distinct as that of a geometrical diagram. For this reason Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism. The mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it ; it colors all his thoughts ; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ab extra. He analyzes, he dissects, he watches with an eye serene, The very pulse of the machine, for such it practically is to him, with wheels and cogs and piston-rods all working to produce a certain end. It is this that makes him so good a critic. Nothing baulks him, or throws him off the scent, except now and then a prejudice. This analyzing tendency of his mind balances the poetical, and, by giving him the patience to be mi nute, enables him to throw a wonderful reality into his most unreal fancies. A monomania he paints with great power. He loves to dissect these cancers of the mind, and to trace all the subtle ramifications of its roots. In raising images of horror, also, he has a strange success ; conveying to us sometimes by a EDGAR ALLAN POE. 379 dusky hint some terrible doubt which is the secret of all horror. Me leaves to imagination the task of finishing the picture, a task to which only she is competent. " For much imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles image stood his spear Grasped in an armed hand ; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind." We have hitherto spoken chiefly of Mr. Poe s col lected tales, as by them he is more widely known than by those published since in various magazines, and which we hope soon to see collected. In these he has more strikingly displayed his analytic pro pensity. Beside the merit of conception, Mr. Poe s writings have also that of" form. His style is highly finished, graceful, and truly classical. It would be hard to find a living author who had displayed such varied powers. As an example of his style, we would refer to one of his tales, "The House of Usher," in the first volume of his "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." It has a singular charm for us, and we think that no one could read it without being strongly moved by its serene and sombre beauty. Had its author written nothing else, it would alone have been enough to stamp him as a man of genius, and the master of a classic style. In this tale occurs one of the most beautiful of his poems. It loses greatly by being taken out of its rich and appropriate setting, but we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of copying it here. We know no modern poet who might not have been justly proud of it. 380 APPENDIX. THE HAUNTED PALACE. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace Radiant palace rear d its head. In the monarch Thought s dominion It stood there ! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair ! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow, (This all this was in the olden Time, long ago, ) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute s well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting ( Porphyrogene ?) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all "with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door. Through which came flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The *wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assail d the monarch s high estate. ( Ah, let us mourn ! for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate !) EDGAR ALLAN POE. 381 And round about his home the glory That blush d and bloom d, Is but a dim remember d story Of the old time entomb d. And travelers, now, within that valley^ Through the red-litten ivindoivs see f^ast forms, that move fantastically To a discordant melody, While, like a ghastly rapid river , Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever , And laugh but smile no more. Was ever the wreck and desolation of a noble mind so musically sung ? A writer in the " London Foreign Quarterly Re view," who did some faint justice to Mr. Foe s poet ical abilities, speaks of his resemblance to Tennyson. The resemblance, if there be any, is only in so sen sitive an ear to melody as leads him sometimes into quaintness, and the germ of which may be traced in his earliest poems, published several years before the first of Tennyson s appeared. We copy one more of Mr. Foe s poems, whose effect cannot fail of being universally appreciated. LENORE. Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown forever ! Let the bell toll ! a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river. And, Guy De Vere, hast tbou no tear ? weep now or never more ! See, on yon drear and rigid bier, low lies thy love, Lenore ! Ah, let the burial rite be read the funeral song be sung An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young ! " Wretches ! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, And, when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her that she died. 382 APPENDIX. How shall the ritual then be read ? the requiem how be sung By you by yours the evil eye by yours the slanderous tongue, That did to death the innocence that died and died so young ? " Peccavimus ; but rave not thus ! and let a Sabbath song Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong. The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope that flew beside, Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride For her the fair and debonair that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes The life still there, upon her hair the death upon her eyes. " Avaunt! to-night my heart is light ; no dirge will I upraise, But waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days ! Let no bell toll ! lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth, Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned earth. To friends above, *rom friends below, the indignant ghost is riven From Hell into a high estate far up within the Heaven From moan and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven. How exquisite, too, is the rhythm ! Besides his < f Tales of the Grotesque and Ara besque," and some works unacknowledged, Mr. Poe is the author of "Arthur Gordon Pym," a romance, in two volumes, which has run through many editions in London ; of a system of Conchology, of a digest and translation of Lemmonnier s Natural History, and has contributed to several reviews in France, in England, and in this country. He edited the "South ern Literary Messenger" during its novitiate, and by his own contributions gained it most of its success and reputation. He was also, for some time, the editor of this magazine, and our readers will bear testimony to his ability in that capacity. Mr. Poe is still in the prime of life, being about thirty-two years of age, and has probably as yet given but an earnest of his powers. As a critic, he has EDGAR A. POE. 383 shown so superior an ability that we cannot but hope that he will collect his essays of this kind and give them a more durable form. They would be a very valuable contribution to our literature, and would fully justify all we have said in his praise. We could refer to many others of his poems than those we have quoted, to prove that he is the possessor of a pure and original vein. His tales and essays have equally shown him a master in prose. It is not for us to assign him his definite rank among cotemporary authors, but we may be allowed to say that we know of none who has displayed more varied and striking abilities. EDGAR A. POE. By P. PENDLETON COOKE, Author of the " Froissart Ballads." [Southern Literary Messenger, January, 1848.] (The following paper is a sequel to Mr. Lowell s Memoir, (so-called,) of Mr. Poe, published two or three years since in Graham s Magazine. Mr. P. edited the Messenger for several years, and the pages of that maga zine would seem, therefore, a proper place for the few hurried observations which I have made upon his writings and genius. P. P. C.) Since the memoirs of Mr. Poe, written by James Russell Lowell, appeared, Mr. P. has written some of his best things ; amongst them The Raven, and Dream land poems and M. Valdemar s Case a prose narrative. 384 APPENDIX. " The Raven " is a singularly beautiful poem. Many readers who prefer sunshine to the weird lights with which Mr. Poe fills his sky, may be dull to its beauty, but it is none the less a great triumph of im agination and art. Notwithstanding the extended publication of this remarkable poem, I will quote it almost entire as the last means of justifying the praise I have bestowed upon it. The opening stanza rapidly and clearly arranges time, place, etc., for the mysteries that follow. " Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door, * Tis some visiter, I muttered, tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more. Observe how artistically the poet has arranged the circumstances of this opening how congruous all are. This congruity extends to the phraseology ; every word is admirably selected and placed with reference to the whole. Even the word "napping" is well chosen, as bestowing a touch of the fantastic, which is subsequently introduced as an important component of the poem. Stanza zd increases the distinctness and effect of the picture as already presented to us. The "Midnight Dreary" is a midnight "in the bleak December," and the "dying embers" are assuming strange and fantastic shapes upon the student s hearth. We now pass these externals and some words of ex quisite melody let us into the secret of the rooted sor row which has led to the lonely night-watching and fruitless study. EDGAR A. POE. 385 tf Vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden, ivAom the angels named Lenore, Nameless here forever more." A death was never more poetically told than in the italicised words : The "tapping" is renewed " And the silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me, filled me, with fantastic terrors never felt before, So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating T is some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door, Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door, Only this and nothing more. " After some stanzas, quaint and highly artistical, the raven is found at the window ; I quote now continu ously to the end. [Here follows " The Raven."] The rhythm of this poem is exquisite, its phrase ology is in the highest degree musical and apt, the tone of the whole is wonderfully sustained and appro priate to the subject, which, full as it is of a wild and tender melancholy, is admirably well chosen. This is my honest judgment ; I am fortified in it by high authority. Mr. Willis says : " It is the most effec tive single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift. It is one of those dainties which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of every one who reads it." Miss Barrett says : " This vivid writing ! this power which is felt ! * The Raven has produced a sensation a fit horror here in England. Some of VOL. i. 25 386 APPENDIX. my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the Never more, and one acquaintance of mine, who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas, never can bear to look at it in the twilight. Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of Paracelsus, etc., is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm. . . . Then there is a tale of his which I do not find in this volume, but which is going the rounds of the newspapers, about mesmerism, throwing us all into most admired dis order, or dreadful doubts as to whether it can be true, as the children say of ghost stories. The certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer, and the faculty he has of making horrible improbabili ties seem near and familiar." The prose narrative, " M. Valdemar s Case" the story of which Miss Barrett speaks is the most truth-like representation of the impossible ever written. M. Valdemar is mesmerized in articulo mortis. Months pass away, during which he appears to be in mesmeric sleep ; the mesmeric influence is withdrawn, and instantly his body becomes putrid and loathsome he has been many months dead. Will the reader believe that men were found to credit this wild story ? And yet some very respectable peo ple believed in its truth firmly. The editor of the Baltimore Visiter republished it as a statement of facts, and was at the pains to vouch for Mr. Poe s veracity. If the letter of a Mr. Collier, 1 published just after the original appearance of the story, was not a quiz, he also fell into the same trap. I understand that some foreign mesmeric journals, German and French, re printed it as being what it purported to be a true 1 See Vol. II. ED. EDGAR A. POE. 387 account of mesmeric phenomena. That many others were deceived in like manner by this strange tale, in which, as Miss Barrett says, " the wonder and ques tion are, can it be true ? " is very probable. With Mr. Foe s more recent productions I am not at all acquainted excepting a review of Miss Bar rett s works, and an essay on the philosophy of com position. The first of these contains a great deal of noble writing and excellent criticism ; the last is an admirable specimen of analysis. I believe Mr. P. has been for some time ill has recently sustained a heavy domestic bereavement and is only now returning to his literary labors. The public will doubtless welcome the return of so favorite an author to pursuits in which heretofore he has done so much and so well. Unnecessary as the labor may be, I will not con clude this postscript to Mr. Lowell s memoir, without making some remarks upon Mr. Poe s genius and writings generally. Mr. P. s most distinguishing power is that which made the extravagant fiction of M. Valdemar s Case sound like truth. He has De Foe s peculiar talent for filling up his pictures with minute life-like touches for giving an air of remarkable naturalness and truth to whatever he paints. Some of his stories, written many years ago, are wonderful in this fidelity and dis tinctness of portraiture ; " Hans Phaal," " A Descent into the Maelstrom," and " MS. Found in a Bottle," show it in an eminent degree. In the first of these a journey to the moon is described with the fullness and particularity of an ordinary traveller s journal ; entries, astronomical and thermical, and, on reaching the moon, botanical, and zoological, are made with ^an inimitable matter-of-fact air. In A Descent into the 388 APPENDIX. Maelstrom you are made fairly to feel yourself on the descending round of the vortex, convoying fleets of drift timber, and fragments of wrecks ; the terrible whirl makes you giddy as you read. In the MS. Found in a Bottle we have a story as wild as the mind of man ever conceived, and yet made to sound like the most matter-of-fact veracious narrative of a seaman. But in Mr. Poe, the peculiar talent to which we are indebted for Robinson Crusoe, and the memoirs of Captain Monroe, has an addition. Truthlike as nature itself, his strange fiction shows constantly the presence of a singularly adventurous, very wild, and thoroughly poetic imagination. Some sentences from them, which always impressed me deeply, will give full evidence of the success with which this rare imaginative power is made to adorn and ennoble his truthlike pictures. Take this passage from Ligeia, a wonderful story, written to show the triumph of the human will even over death. Ligeia, in whom the struggle between the will to live, and the power of death, has seemed to terminate in the defeat of the passionate will, is con signed to the tomb. Her husband married a second wife, "the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena." By the sick bed of this second wife, who is dying from some mysterious cause, he sits. Again take this passage from the Fall of the House of Usher. These quoted passages the " white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth " in " Berenice " the visible vulture eye, and audible heart-beat in the f Tell-tale Heart " the resemblance in " Morella " of the liv ing child to the dead mother, becoming gradually fear- EDGAR A. POE. 389 ful, until the haunting eyes gleam out a terrible iden tity, and prove as in Ligeia the final conquest of the will over death these and a thousand such clinging ideas, which Mr. P. s writings abound in, prove in disputably that the fires of a great poet are seething under those analytic and narrative powers in which no living writer equals him. This added gift of a daring and wild imagination is the source of much of the difference between our author and De Foe. De Foe loves and deals always with the homely. Mr. Poe is nervously afraid of the homely has a creed that Beauty is the goddess of the Poet : not Beauty with swelling bust, and las civious carriage, exciting passions of the blood, but Beauty sublimated and cherished by the soul the beauty of the Uranian, not Dionean Venus. De Foe gives us in the cheerful and delightful story of his colo nist of the desert isles, (which has as sure a locality in a million minds as any genuine island has upon the maps,) a clear, plain, true-sounding narrative of mat ters that might occur any day. His love for the real makes him do so. The (t real " of such a picture has not strangeness enough in its proportions for Mr. Poe s imagination ; and, with the same talent for truth- like narrative, to what different results of creation does not this imagination, scornful of the soberly real, lead him ! Led by it he loves to adventure into what in one of his poems he calls " a wild weird clime Out of space, out of time j " deals in mysteries of " life in death," dissects mono manias, exhibits convulsions of soul in a word, wholly leaves beneath and behind him the wide and happy realm of the common cheerful life of man. 390 APPENDIX. That he would be a greater favorite with the major ity of readers if he brought his singular capacity for vivid and truth-like narrative to bear on subjects nearer ordinary life, and of a more cheerful and happy char acter, does not, I think, admit of a doubt. But whether with the few he is not all the more appre ciable from the difficult nature of the fields which he has principally chosen, is questionable. For what he has done, many of the best minds of America, England and France, have awarded him praise ; labors of a tamer nature might not have won it from such sources. For my individual part, having the seventy or more tales, analytic, mystic, grotesque, arabesque, always wonderful, often great, which his industry and fertility have already given us, I would like to read one cheer ful book made by his invention, with little or no aid from its twin brother imagination a book in his admirable style of full, minute, never tedious narrative a book full of homely doings, of successful toils, of ingenious shifts and contrivances, of ruddy firesides a book healthy and happy throughout, and with no poetry in it at all anywhere, except a good old Eng lish "poetic justice " in the end. Such a book, such as Mr. Poe could make it, would be a book for the million, and if it did nothing to exalt him with the few, would yet certainly endear him to them. Mr. Lowell has gone deeply and discriminatingly into Mr. Poe s merits as a poet. Any elaborate re marks of mine on the same subject, would be out of place here. I will not, however, lose this oppor tunity of expressing an admiration which I have long entertained of the singular mastery of certain externals of his art which he everywhere exhibits in his verse. His rhythm, and his vocabulary, or phraseology, are EDGAR A. POE. 391 perhaps perfect. The reader has perceived the beauty of the rhythm in The Raven. Some other verses from poems to which Mr. Lowell has referred, are quite as remarkable for this beauty. Read these verses from Lenore : And take these, in the most graceful of all mea sures they are from " To One in Paradise. " ** And all my days are trances And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams." Along with wonderful beauty of rhythm, these verses show the exquisite taste in phraseology, the nice sense of melody and aptness in words, of which I spoke. We have direct evidence of this nice sense of verbal melody in some quotations which are intro duced into the dramatic fragment " Politian." Lalage reads from a volume of our elder English Dramatists : I must conclude these insufficient remarks upon a writer worthy of high and honorable place amongst the leading creative minds of the age. As regards the Wiley & Putnam publication of Mr. Poe s tales a volume by which his rare literary claims have been most recently presented to the public I think the book in some respects does him injus tice. It contains twelve tales out of more than sev enty ; and it is made up almost wholly of what may be called his analytic tales. This is not representing the author s mind in its various phases. A reader gathering his knowledge of Mr. Foe from this Wiley 392 APPENDIX. & Putnam issue would perceive nothing of the diver sity and variety for which his writings are in fact re markable. Only the publication of all his stories, at one issue, in one book, would show this diversity and variety in their full force ; but much more might have been done to represent his mind by a judicious and not wholly one-toned selection. 1 THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. BY JOHN R. THOMPSON. [Southern Literary Messenger, November, 1849.] So much has been said by the newspaper press of the country concerning this gifted child of genius, since his recent death, that our readers are already in pos session of the leading incidents of his short, brilliant, erratic and unhappy career. It is quite unnecessary that we should recount them in this place. We feel it due to the dead, however, as editor of a magazine which owes its earliest celebrity to his efforts, that some recognition of his talent, on the part of the Messenger, should mingle with the general apotheosis which just now enrolls him on the list of heroes in history and gods in song." Mr. Poe became connected with the Messenger dur ing the first year of its existence. He was commended to the favorable consideration of the proprietor, the late 1 See Vol. II. for the Poe-Cooke correspondence on this sub ject. ED. THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. 393 T. W. White, by the Honorable John P. Kennedy, who, as chairman of a committee, had just awarded to Poe the prize for the successful tale in a literary com petition at Baltimore. Under his editorial management the work soon became well known everywhere. Per haps no similar enterprise ever prospered so largely in its inception, and we doubt if any, in the same length of time even Blackwood in the days of Dr. Maginn, whom Poe in some respects closely resembled ever published so many shining articles from the same pen. Those who will turn to the first two volumes of the Messenger will be struck with the number and variety of his contributions. On one page may be found some lyric cadence, plaintive and inexpressibly sweet, the earliest vibrations of those chords which have since thrilled with so many wild and wondrous harmonies. On another some strange story of the German school, akin to the most fanciful legends of the Rhine, fasci nates and astonishes the reader with the verisimilitude of its improbabilities. But it was in the editorial depart ment of the magazine that his power was most conspic uously displayed. There he appeared as the critic, not always impartial, it may be, in the distribution of his praises, or correct in the positions he assumed, but ever merciless to the unlucky author who offended by a dull book. A blunder in this respect he considered worse than a crime, and visited it with corresponding vigor. Among the nascent novelists and newly fledged poetasters of fifteen years ago he came down "like a Visigoth marching on Rome." No elegant imbecile or conceited pedant, no matter whether he made his avatar under the auspices of a society, or with the prestige of a degree, but felt the lash of his severity, Baccdlaurei baculo portius quam laureo digni was 394 APPENDIX. the principle of his action in such cases, and to the last he continued to castigate impudent aspirants for the bays. Now that he is gone, the vast multitude of blockheads may breathe again, and we can imagine that we hear the shade of the departed crying out to them, in the epitaph designed for Robespierre, Passant ! ne plains point mon sort, Si je vivais, tu serais mort ! * It will readily occur to the reader that such a course, while it gained subscribers to the review, was not well calculated to gain friends for the reviewer. And so Mr. Poe found it, for during the two years of his connection with the Messenger, he contrived to attach to himself animosities of the most enduring kind. It was the fashion with a large class to decry his literary pretensions, as poet and romancer and scholar to rep resent him as one who possessed little else than th extravagancy And crazy ribaldry of fancy and to challenge his finest efforts with a chilling cut bono, while the critics of other lands and other tongues, the Athenaeum and the Revue des deux Mondes, were warmly recognizing his high claims. They did not appreciate him. To the envious obscure, he might not indeed seem entitled to the first literary honors, for he was versed in a more profound learning and skilled in a more lofty minstrelsy, scholar by virtue of a larger erudition and poet by the transmission of a diviner spark. Unquestionably he was a man of great genius. 1 We translate it freely : Traveller ! forbear to mourn my lot, Thou would st have died, if I had not. NOTE BY THOMPSON. THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. 395 Among the litterateurs of his day he stands out dis tinctively as an original writer and thinker. In nothing did he conform to established custom. Conventionality he condemned. Thus his writings admit of no clas sification. And yet in his most eccentric vagaries he was always correct. The fastidious reader may look in vain, even among his earlier poems where " wild words wander here and there," for an offence against rhetorical propriety. He did not easily pardon sole cisms in others ; he committed none himself. It is remarkable, too, that a mind so prone to unrestrained imaginings should be capable of analytic investigation or studious research. Yet few excelled Mr. Poe in power of analysis or patient application. Such are the contradictions of the human intellect. He was an impersonated antithesis. The regret has been often expressed that Mr. Poe did not bring his singular capacity to bear on subjects nearer ordinary life and of a more cheerful nature than the gloomy incidents of his tales and sketches. P. P. Cooke, (the accomplished author of the Froissart Bal lads, who, we predict, will one day take, by common consent, his rightful high position in American letters,) in a discriminating essay on the genius of Poe, pub lished in this magazine for January, 1848, remarks upon this point : " For my individual part, having the seventy or more tales, analytic, mystic, grotesque, arabesque, al ways wonderful, often great, which his industry and fertility have already given us, I would like to read one cheerful book made by his invention, with little or no aid from its twin brother imagination a book in his admirable style of full, minute, never tedious narrative a book full of homely doings, of successful 396 APPENDIX. toils, of ingenious shifts and contrivances, of ruddy firesides a book happy and healthy throughout, and with no poetry in it at all anywhere, except a good old English poetic justice in the end." That such a work would have greatly enhanced Mr. Poe s reputation with the million, we think, will scarcely be disputed. But it could not be. Mr. Poe was not the man to have produced a home-book. He had little of the domestic feeling and his thoughts were ever wandering. He was either in criticism or in the clouds, by turns a disciplinarian and a dreamer. And in his dreams, what visions came to him, may be gathered to some extent from the revealings he has given visions wherein his fancy would stray off upon some new Walpurgis, or descend into the dark realms of the Inferno, and where occasionally, through the impenetrable gloom, the supernal beauty of Lenore would burst upon his sight, as did the glorified Beatrice on the rapt gaze of the Italian master. The poems of Mr. Poe are remarkable, above all other characteristics, for the exceeding melody of the versification. " Ulalume " might be cited as a happy instance of this quality, but we prefer to quote " The Bells " from the last number of the Union Magazine. It was the design of the author, as he himself told us, to express in language the exact sounds of bells to the ear. He has succeeded, we think, far better than Southey, who attempted a similar feat, to tell us ( how the waters come down at Lodore." [Here follows "The Bells."] The untimely death of Mr. Poe occasioned a very general feeling of regret, although little genuine sorrow was called forth by it, out of the narrow circle of his THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. 397 relatives. We have received, in our private corre spondence, from various quarters of the Union, warm tributes to his talent, some of which we take the liberty of quoting, though not designed for publication. A friend in the country writes : " Many who deem themselves perfect critics talk of the want of moral in the writings and particularly the poetry of Poe. They would have every one to write like ^Esop, with the moral distinctly drawn at the end to prevent mistake. Such men would object to the meteor, or the lightning s flash, because it lasts only for the mo ment and yet they speak the power of God, and fill our minds with the sublime more readily than does the endur ing sunlight. It is thus with the writings of Poe. Every moment there comes across the darkness of his style a flash of that spirit which is not of earth. You cannot analyze the feeling you cannot tell in what the beauty of a particular passage consists 5 and yet you feel that deep pathos which only genius can incite you feel the trembling of that melancholy chord which fills the soul with pleasant mournfulness you feel that deep yearning for something brighter and better than this world can give that unutterable gushing of the heart which springs up at the touch of the enchanter, as poured the stream from * Horeb s rock, beneath the prophet s hand ! " I wish I could convey to you the impression which the 4 Raven * has made upon me. I had read it hastily in times gone by without appreciation j but now it is a study to me as I go along like Sinbad in the Valley of Diamonds, I find a new jewel at every step. The beau tiful rhythm, the mournful cadence, still ring in the ear for hours after a perusal whilst the heart is bowed down by the outpourings of a soul made desolate not alone by disappointed love, but by crushing of every hope, and every aspiration. " 398 APPENDIX. In a recent letter the following noble acknowledg ment is made by the first of American poets Henry W. Longfellow towards whom, it must be said, Mr. Poe did not always act with justice. Mr. Longfellow will pardon us, we trust, for publishing what was intended as a private communication. The passage evidences a magnanimity which belongs only to great minds. " What a melancholy death," says Mr. Longfellow, " is that of Mr. Poe a man so richly endowed with genius ! I never knew him personally, but have always entertained a high appreciation of his powers as a prose-writer and a poet. His prose is remarkably vigorous, direct and yet affluent ; and his verse has a particular charm of melody, an atmosphere of true poetry about it, which is very winning. The harsh ness of his criticisms, I have never attributed to any thing but the irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong." It was not until within two years past that we ever met Mr. Poe, but during that time, and especially for two or three months previous to his death, we saw him very often. When in Richmond, he made the office of the Messenger a place of frequent resort. His conversation was always attractive, and at times very brilliant. Among modern authors his favorite was Tennyson, and he delighted to recite from " The Princess" the song "Tears, idle tears; " a fragment of which when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square, he pronounced unsurpassed by any image expressed in writing. The day before he left Richmond, he DEFENCE OF POE. 399 placed in our hands for publication in the Messenger, the MS. of his last poem, which has since found its way (through a correspondent of a northern paper with whom Mr. Poe had left a copy) into the newspaper press, and been extensively circulated. As it was de signed for this magazine, however, we publish it, even though all of our readers may have seen it before : [Here follows "Annabel Lee."] In what we have said of Mr. Poe, we have been considering only the brighter side of the picture. That he had many and sad infirmities cannot be questioned. Over these we would throw in charity the mantle of forgetfulness. The grave has come between our per ception and his errors, and we pass them over in silence. They found indeed a mournful expiation in his alienated friendships and his early death. J. R. T. DEFENCE OF POE. BY GEORGE R. GRAHAM. [Graham s Magazine, 1850.] MY DEAR WILLIS, In an article of yours which accompanies the two beautiful volumes of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, you have spoken with so much truth and delicacy of the deceased, and, with the magical touch of genius, have called so warmly up before me the memory of our lost friend as you and I both seem to have known him, that I feel warranted in addressing to you the few plain words I have to 400 APPENDIX. say in defence of his character as set down by Mr. Griswold. Although the article, it seems, appeared originally in the " New York Tribune," l it met my eye for the first time in the volumes before me. I now purpose to take exception to it in the most public manner. I knew Mr. Poe well, far better than Mr. Griswold ; and by the memory of old times, when he was an editor of "Graham," I pronounce this exceedingly ill-timed and unappreciative estimate of the character of our lost friend, unfair and untrue. It is Mr. Poe as seen by the writer while laboring under a fit of the nightmare, but so dark a picture has no resemblance to the living man. Accompanying these beautiful volumes, it is an immortal infamy, the death s head over the entrance to the garden of beauty, a horror that clings to the brow of morning, whispering of murder. It haunts the memory through every page of his writ ings, leaving upon the heart a sensation of utter gloom, a feeling almost of terror. The only relief we feel is in knowing that it is not true, that it is a fancy sketch of a perverted, jaundiced vision. The man who could deliberately say of Edgar Allan Poe, in a notice of his life and writings prefacing the volumes which were to become a priceless souvenir to all who loved him, that his death might startle many, "but that few would be grieved by it" and blast the whole fame of the man by such a paragraph as follows, is a judge dishon ored. He is not Mr. Poe s peer, and I challenge him before the country even as a juror in the case. " His harsh experience had deprived him of all faith in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the 1 The " Ludwig Article " expanded afterwards into the "Me moir." ED. DEFENCE OF POE. 401 numberless complexities of the social world, and the whole system with him was an imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable char acter. Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with vil lainy, while it continually caused him, by overshots, to fail of the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francois Vivian in Bulwer s novel of The Caxtons/ Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emo tions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised quick choler ; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy, his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere, had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arro gance that turned his very claims to admiration into preju dices against him. Irascible, envious, bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all var nished over with a cold, repellant cynicism ; his pas sions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility , and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, too, a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, nor serve, succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit." Now, this is dastardly, and, what is worse, it is false. It is very adroitly done, with phrases very well turned, and with gleams of truth shining out from a setting so dusky as to look devilish. Mr. Griswold does not feel the worth of the man he has undervalued; he had no sympathies in common with him, and has VOL. i. 26 402 APPENDIX. allowed old prejudices and old enmities to steal, insen sibly perhaps, into the coloring of his picture. They were for years totally uncongenial, if not enemies, and during that period Mr. Poe, in a scathing lecture upon " The Poets of America," gave Mr. Griswold some raps over the knuckles of force sufficient to be remem bered. He had, too, in the exercise of his functions as critic, put to death summarily the literary reputa tion of some of Mr. Griswold s best friends ; and their ghosts cried in vain for him to avenge them during Poe s lifetime ; and it almost seems as if the present hacking at the cold remains of him who struck them down, is a sort of compensation for duty long delayed, for reprisal long desired, but deferred. But without this, the opportunities afforded Mr. Griswold to estimate the character of Poe occurred, in the main, after his stability had been wrecked, his whole nature in a degree changed, and with all his prejudices aroused and active. Nor do I consider Mr. Griswold com petent, with all the opportunities he may have culti vated or acquired, to act as his judge, to dissect that subtle and singularly fine intellect, to probe the mo tives and weigh the actions of that proud heart. His whole nature, that distinctive presence of the departed, which now stands impalpable, yet in strong outline before me, as I knew him and felt him to be, eludes the rude grasp of a mind so warped and uncongenial as Mr. Griswold s. But it may be said, my dear Willis, that Mr. Poe himself deputed him to act as his literary executor, and that he must have felt some confidence, in his ability at least, if not in his integrity, to perform the functions imposed, with discretion and honor. I do not pur pose, now, to enter into any examination of the ap- DEFENCE OF POE. 403 pointment of Mr. Griswold, nor of the wisdom of his appointment, to the solemn trust of handing the fair fame of the deceased, unimpaired, to that posterity to which the dying poet bequeathed his legacy, but simply to question its faithful performance. Among the true friends of Poe in this city and he had some such here there are those, I am sure, that be did not class among villains; nor do they feel easy when they see their old friend dressed out, in his grave, in the habiliments of a scoundrel. There is something to them in this mode of procedure on the part of the literary executor that does not chime in with their notions of " the true point of honor." They had all of them looked upon our departed friend as singularly indifferent to wealth for its own sake, but as very positive in his opinions that the scale of social merit was not of the highest ; that mind, somehow, was apt to be left out of the estimate altogether ; and, partak ing somewhat of his free way of thinking, his friends are startled to find they have entertained very unami- able convictions. As to his "quick choler " when he was contradicted, it depended a good deal upon the party denying, as well as upon the subject discussed. He was quick, it is true, to perceive mere quacks in literature, and somewhat apt to be hasty when pes tered with them ; but upon most other questions his natural amiability was not easily disturbed. Upon a subject that he understood thoroughly, he felt some right to be positive, if not arrogant, when addressing pretenders. His "astonishing natural advantages" bad been very assiduously cultivated ; his " daring spirit" was the anointed of genius ; his self-confidence the proud conviction of both ; and it was with some thing of a lofty scorn that he attacked, as well as re- 404 APPENDIX. pelled, a crammed scholar of the hour, who attempted to palm upon him his ill-digested learning. Litera ture with him was religion ; and he, its high priest, with a whip of scorpions, scourged the money-changers from the temple. In all else, he had the docility and kind-heartedness of a child. No man was more quickly touched by a kindness, none more prompt to return for an injury. For three or four years I knew him intimately, and for eighteen months saw him almost daily, much of the time writing or conversing at the same desk, knowing all his hopes, his fears, and little annoyances of life, as well as his high-hearted struggle with adverse fate ; yet he was always the same polished gentleman, the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful scholar, the devoted husband, frugal in his personal expenses, punctual and unwearied in his industry, and the soul of honor in all his transactions. This, of course, was in his better days, and by them we judge the man. But even after his habits had changed, there was no literary man to whom I would more readily advance money for labor to be done. He kept his accounts, small as they were, with the accuracy of a banker. I append an account sent to me in his own hand, long after he had left Philadelphia, and after all knowledge of the transactions it recited had escaped my memory. I had returned him the story of "The Gold Bug," at his own request, as he found that he could dispose of it very advantageously elsewhere : We were square when I sold you the " Versi fication " article, for which you gave, first, $25, and afterwards $7 in all $32.00 Then you bought "The Gold Bug" for . . 52.00 I got both these back, so that I owed . . . $84.00 DEFENCE OF POE. 405 Brought over $84.00 You lent Mrs. Clemm 12.50 Making in all $9 6 -5 The review of " Flaccus " was 3^ pp., which, $4, is $15.00 Lowell s poem is 10.00 The review of Channing, 4 pp., is $16, of which I got $6, leaving . . . 10.00 The review of Halleck, 4 pp.j is $16, of which I got $10, leaving ... 6.00 The review of Reynolds, 2 pp. . . 8.00 The review of Longfellow, 5 pp., is $20, of which I got $10, leaving . 10.00 So that I have paid in all 59.00 Which leaves stiil due by me $37-5 This, I find, was his uniform habit with others as well as myself, carefully recalling to mind his indebt edness with the fresh article sent. And this is the man who had "no moral susceptibility," and little or nothing of the "true point of honor." It may be a very plain business view of the question, but it strikes his friends that it may pass as something, as times go. I shall never forget how solicitous of the happiness of his wife and mother-in-law he was whilst one of the editors of Graham* s Magazine his whole efforts seemed to be to procure the comfort and welfare of his home. Except for their happiness, and the natural ambition of having a magazine of his own, I never heard him deplore the want of wealth. The truth is, he cared little for money, and knew less of its value, for he seemed to have no personal expenses. What he received from me, in regular monthly instal- 406 APPENDIX. ments, went directly into the hands of his mother-in- law for family comforts, and twice only I remember his purchasing some rather expensive luxuries for his house, and then he was nervous to the degree of misery until he had, by extra articles, covered what he considered an imprudent indebtedness. His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty which he felt was fading before his eyes. I have seen him hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born, her slightest cough causing in him a shudder, a heart-chill that was visible. I rode out, one summer evening, with them, and the remembrance of his watchful eyes eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in that loved face haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. It was the hourly antici pation of her loss that made him a sad and thought ful man, and lent a mournful melody to his undying song. It is true, that later in life Poe had much of those morbid feelings which a life of poverty and disappoint ment is so apt to engender in the heart of man the sense of having been ill-used, misunderstood, and put aside by men of far less ability, and of none, which preys upon the heart and clouds the brain of many a child of song. A consciousness of the inequalities of life, and of the abundant power of mere wealth, allied even to vulgarity, to override all distinctions, and to thrust itself, bedaubed with dirt and glittering with tinsel, into the high places of society, and the chief seats of the synagogue ; whilst he, a worshipper of the beautiful and true, who listened to the voices of angels and held delighted companionship with them as the cold throng swept disdainfully by him, was often DEFENCE OF POE. 4.07 in danger of being thrust out, houseless, homeless, beggared, upon the world, with all his fine feelings strung to a tension of agony when he thought of his beautiful and delicate wife, dying hourly before his eyes. What wonder that he then poured out the vials of a long-treasured bitterness upon the injustice and hollowness of all society around him. The very natural question " Why did he not work and thrive ? " is easily answered. It will not be asked by the many who know the precarious tenure by which lit erary men hold a mere living in this country. The avenues through which they can profitably reach the country are few, and crowded with aspirants for bread, as well as fame. The unfortunate tendency to cheapen every literary work to the lowest point of beggarly flim- siness in price and profit, prevents even the well-dis posed from extending anything like an adequate support to even a part of the great throng which genius, talent, education, and even misfortune, force into the strug gle. The character of Foe s mind was of such an order as not to be very widely in demand. The class of educated mind which he could readily and profitably address was small the channels through which he could do so at all were few and publishers all, or nearly all, contented with such pens as were already engaged, hesitated to incur the expense of his to an extent which would sufficiently remunerate him ; hence, when he was fairly at sea, connected per manently with no publication, he suffered all the horrors of prospective destitution, with scarcely the ability of providing for immediate necessities ; and at such moments, alas ! the tempter often came, and as you have truly said, " one glass" of wine made him a madman. Let the moralist, who stands 408 APPENDIX. upon " tufted carpet/* and surveys his smoking board, the fruits of his individual toil or mercantile adventure, pause before he let the anathema, trem bling upon his lips, fall upon a man like Poe, who, wandering from publisher to publisher, with his fine, print-like manuscript, scrupulously clean and neatly rolled, finds no market for his brain with despair at heart, misery ahead, for himself and his loved ones, and gaunt famine dogging at his heels, thus sinks by the wayside, before the demon that watches his steps and whispers oblivion. Of all the miseries which God, or his own vices, inflict upon man, none are so terrible as that of having the strong and willing arm struck down to a childlike inefficiency, while the Heart and Will have the purpose of a giant s out doing. We must remember, too, that the very organization of such a mind as that of Poe the very tension and tone of his exquisitely strung nerves the passionate yearnings of his soul for the beauti ful and true, utterly unfitted him for the rude jostlings and fierce competitorship of trade. The only drafts of his that could be honored were those upon his brain. The unpeopled air the caverns of ocean the decay and mystery that hang around old castles the thunder of wind through the forest aisles the spirits that rode the blast, by all but him unseen and the deep, metaphysical creations which floated through the chambers of his soul were his only wealth, the High Change where only his signature was valid for rubies. Could he have stepped down and chronicled small beer, made himself the shifting toady of the hour, and, with bow and cringe, hung upon the steps of great ness, sounding the g ory of third-rate ability with a DEFENCE OF POE. 409 penny trumpet, he would have been feted alive, and perhaps been praised when dead. But, no ! his views of the duty of the critic were stern, and he felt that in praising an unworthy writer he committed dis honor. His pen was regulated by the highest sense of duty. By a keen analysis he separated and studied each piece which the skilful mechanist had put together. No part, however insignificant or apparently unimpor tant, escaped the rigid and patient scrutiny of his saga cious mind. The unfitted joint proved the bungler the slightest blemish was a palpable fraud. He was the scrutinizing lapidary, who detected and exposed the most minute flaw in diamonds. The gem of first water shone the brighter for the truthful setting of his calm praise. He had the finest touch of soul for beauty a delicate and hearty appreciation of worth. If his praise appeared tardy, it was of priceless value wher given. It was true as well as sincere. It was the stroke of honor that at once knighted the receiver. It was in the world of mind that he was king ; and, with a fierce audacity, he felt and proclaimed himself autocrat. As a critic, he was despotic, supreme. Yet no man with more readiness would soften a harsh ex pression at the request of a friend, or if he himself felt that he had infused too great a degree of bitterness into his article, none would more readily soften it down after it was in type though still maintaining the justness of his critical views. I do not believe that he wrote to give pain ; but in combating what he con ceived to be error, he used the strongest word that presented itself, even in conversation. He labored not so much to reform as to exterminate error, and thought the shortest process was to pull it up by the roots. 410 APPENDIX. He was a worshipper of intellect longing to grasp the power of mind that moves the stars to bathe his soul in the dreams of seraphs. He was himself all ethereal, of a fine essence, that moved in an atmosphere of spirits of spiritual beauty, over flowing and radiant twin-brother with the angels, feeling their flashing wings upon his heart, and almost clasping them in his embrace. Of them, and as an expectant archangel of that high order of intellect, stepping out of himself, as it were, and interpreting the time he revelled in delicious luxury in a world beyond, with an audacity which we fear in madmen, but in genius worship as the inspiration of heaven. But my object, in throwing together a few thoughts upon the character of Edgar Allan Poe, was not to at tempt an elaborate criticism, but to say what might palliate grave faults that have been attributed to him, and to meet by facts unjust accusation ; in a word, to give a mere outline of the man as he lived before me. I think I am warranted in saying to Mr. Griswold that he must review his decision. It will not stand the calm scrutiny of his own judgment, or of time, while it must be regarded by all the friends of Mr. Poe as an ill-judged and misplaced calumny upon that gifted son of genius. Yours truly, GEO. R. GRAHAM. PHILADELPHIA, February 2, 1850. To N. P. WILLIS, Esq. INDEX. 1 ADAMS, JOHN, President, death of, 1826, 56. " Al Aaraafand Minor Poems," 72, 75. Albemarle, county of, distinguished families in, 50. Alexander, C. W., testifies to Poe s gentleness of disposition, 1355 denies Poe s neglect of his office duties, 157. Allan, Hoffman, son of John Allan, 2d, 78. Allan, John, adopts Edgar Poe, 12 5 mythical stories of his wealth, 14 5 business failure of, 15 ; receives inheritance from his uncle Gait, 1 6 5 sends Poe to University of Virginia, 16 ; sails with his family to England, 1 7 5 engaged in tobacco business, 22 j dies of dropsy, 1 1 1 . Allan, John, son of John and Louisa Gabriella Allan, 78. Allan, Mrs. (the first), dies, 77. Allan, Patterson, son of John and Louisa Gabriella Allan, 78. Allan, William Gait, son of John and Louisa Gabriella Allan, 78. Ambler, Richard Gary, appears in dramatic representation with Poe, 25. Anderson, Beverley, member of the Thespian Society, 28. " Annabel Lee," first mention of, 304. " Arcturus," poem addressed by Mrs. Whitman to Poe, 284. Arnold, Elizabeth, mother of the poet. See Poe, Mrs. Elizabeth. Arthur, T. S., assumes control of " The Saturday Visiter," 99. Aylette, Patrick Henry, writes for Richmond "Examiner," 317. "BALLOON HOAX," the, published, 193. Barrett, Elizabeth (Mrs. Browning), admires "The Raven," 214. Bartlett, Hon. John R., Poe visits, 245. Beale, Upton, companion of Poe at University of Virginia, 41. Bedloe, Augustus, Poe makes the acquaintance of, 64. " Bells, The," occasion of its production, 286. Bernard, P. D., receives letter from Poe in relation to establishing new magazine, 178. Bisco, John, connection of, with the " Broadway Journal," 210 ; sells the "Journal " to Poe, 212. 1 The Appendix is indexed separately ; see page 427. 412 INDEX. Blaettermann, professor at University of Virginia, 40, 45, 46, 54. Bliss, Elam, publishes Poe s third volume of poems, 92. Botta, Mrs. (Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch), Memoirs of, reviewed by R. H. Stoddard, 241 5 salon of, 241-245. Bransby, Dr., Poe s teacher at Stoke-Newington, 19. Brennan, Patrick, "The Raven" written at the house of, 224. Brennan, Mrs. Patrick, denies charges of Poe s dissipation, 224, et seq. Brennan, Thomas S., 224. Briggs, Charles F. , criticisms and insinuations of, 201 5 sharply criticised by Poe, 210 ; excluded from management of " Broad way Journal , " 212. Broad-street Theatre, Richmond, burned, 1 1 . " Broadway Journal," Poe acquires control of, 210 ; collapse of, 240. Brooks, N. C., unable to procure an usher s place for Poe, 96. Browne, Dr. William Hand, 227, note , note from, concerning Poe s death, 327. Browning, Robert, admires "The Raven," 214. Bryant, William C., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Buchanan, Rev. John, baptizes Edgar and Rose Poe, 23. Burke, William, Poe s schoolmaster, 25. Burton, William E., requests Graham to buy "The Gentleman s Magazine," 1395 criticised by Poe, 128. Burwell, William M., gives account of Poe s career at University of Virginia, 39, 41, 47. CABELL, ROBERT G., accompanies Poe in a swim down the James River, 25 ; close friend of Poe, 28. Calhoun, John C., leader of State Rights politics, 317. Campbell, John, assists Poe in obtaining admission to West Point, 79- Carlyle, Thomas, unseals the fountains of German ideology, romance, and poetry, 153. Carter, Dr. Gibbon, spends day in Richmond with the poet, 326. Carter, Dr. John, Poe spends last evening in Richmond in office of, 326. Childs, George W., purchases "Ledger" and "Dollar Maga zine," and changes name to the " Home Weekly and House hold Newspaper," 140. Chivers, Dr. Thomas Holley, writes friendly letter to Poe, 1905 writes of German "criticism," 192. Clarke and Burke, teachers of Poe, 19, 54. INDEX. 413 Clarke, T. Cottrell, gives pen-picture of Poe s home-life in Phila delphia, 138. Clay, Cassius, a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. Cleef, Augustus van, writes an article in " Harper s" on Poe s " Mary," 96. Clemm, Mrs. (Poe s mother-in-law), gives account of her ances try, 45 testifies to Poe s temperance, 161 ; praised by N. P. Willis, 204 ; sketch of, by Miss Amelia F. Poe, 206 j be friended by the Richmonds, 301 ; parting of, from Poe, 306 5 suffering "for the necessaries of life," 325 ; grief of, upon poet s death, 338 ; dies in Baltimore, 339. Clemm, Rev. W. T. D., reads burial service at Poe s funeral, 336, 337- Clemm, Virginia, carries letters between the lovers (Poe and "Mary"), 975 marries Poe, 1145 ruptures a blood-vessel while singing, 180, 185 ; her death, 265 5 burial-place of, 268. Clemm, William, stepfather of the poet s wife, in. Cloud, C. F., establishes "The Saturday Visiter," 99. " Conchologist, The," published by Poe, 146. Converse, Rev. Amasa, marries Poe and Virginia Clemm, 115. Creighton, William A., companion of Poe at University of Vir ginia, 41. Cullum, Gen., criticises Poe s third volume, 93. Curtis, George W., welcomes Mrs. Whitman s poems, 283. DANIEL, JOHN M., writes reminiscence of Poe, 247 ; editor of Richmond "Examiner," 317. Davidson, James Wood, letter of J. R. Thompson to, concerning Poe, 300. Davis, Dr. Hugh Wythe, gives interesting glimpse of Poe, 27. Davis, N. K., professor at University of Virginia, 52. Dawes, Rufus, editor, reviews " Al Aaraaf" unfavorably, 76. De Hart, John, grandfather of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan, 77. Dickens, Charles, startled by Poe s power, 172; character in one of his famous novels suggested by Mrs. Helen Whitman, 292. Didier, E. L., gives account of publication of " Al Aaraaf," 75 ; " Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe," 244. Distinguished men, list of, graduated from University of Virginia, 57-60. " Dollar Magazine " awards prize to Poe for " The Gold-Bug," 140. Drayton, Col. William, work dedicated to, by Poe, 148. Drum, Adjutant-General, verifies fact of Poe s enlistment, 69. INDEX. EATON, MAJOR JOHN, U. S. Secretary of War, 79. Ellet, Mrs., a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. Ellis, Powhatan, senator from Mississippi, appointment of Poe to West Point, due to, 79. Ellis, Col. T. H., furnishes sketch of Poe s boyhood, 2227. Embury, Mrs., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. E - , Mrs., meddles in Poe s private affairs, 296 ; trouble of Poe with family of, 297. English, Thomas Dunn, issues final number of " Broadway Jour nal," 240 ; engaged in libel suit with Poe, 252. " Eureka," production of, 274. Everett, Edward, on Jefferson s educational views, 38. " Examiner," the Richmond, organ of the State Rights politics, FERGUSSON, JOHN W ., corrects proofs for "Messenger," 127. Fitzgerald, Bishop, sketches Poe s personal appearance in 1849, 316. Francis, Dr. J. W., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Fuller, Margaret (Countess Ossoli), has controversy with Poe, 245 ; remonstrates with Poe, 296, 297. GALT, WILLIAM, leaves fortune to John Allan, 165 successful merchant, 23. " Gentleman s Magazine," Poe becomes assistant editor of, 148. George, Miles, roommate of Poe at University of Virginia, 39,41. German philosophy, metaphysics, and medievalism, spirit of, spreads over the English and American mind, 153. Gholson, Judge Thomas S., constant companion of Poe at Uni versity of Virginia, 41. Gibson, T. H., writes of Poe at West Point, 85-92. Gildersleeve, Prof. B. C., writes of Poe s personality, 315. Gill, W. F., statement of, regarding David Poe s death, 10 ; de scribes Poe s residence in Philadelphia, 135 ; receives letter from Mrs. Sarah Whitman in relation to Poe, 293. Gillespie, W. M., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244- Gove, Mrs., finds the Poes living in great wretchedness, 261 ; gives pathetic glimpse of the Poe family, 261. Gowans, William, testifies to Poe s sobriety while in New York, 128. Graham, George R., the good angel of Poe s life, 138 ; testifies to Poe s solicitude for the happiness of his wife and mother-in-law, 182. INDEX. 415 " Graham s Magazine," its influence on American letters, 139; remarkable contributors to, 141. Greeley, Horace, writes to Griswold of Poe s contemplated mar riage with Mrs. Whitman, 289. Green, J. B., furnishes recollections of Mrs. Mary O. Moran, 337- Greenhow, James, appears in dramatic representation with Poe, 25. Griswold, Capt., in regiment with Poe, 71. Griswold, Dr. Rufus Wilmot, statement of, in relation to prize won by Poe, refuted by J. H. B. Latrobe, 105 ; statement of, in re gard to Poe s clothing, a sheer fabrication, 109 5 pays tribute to the beauty of the Poes home in Philadelphia, 135, 137; the evil angel of Poe s life, 1385 becomes editor of "Graham s Magazine," 1405 biography of, 1425 writes concerning Poe s severance of connection with "Graham s," 176- dismissed by Graham from editorship of the magazine, 177 ; introduces R. H. Stoddard into Mrs. Botta s salon, 241 ; a rival of Poe in the affections of Mrs. Osgood, 244 ; contrasted with Poe, 250, 251 $ receives letter from Horace Greeley in relation to Poe s marriage with Mrs. Whitman, 289 ; scandalous anecdote related by, denied by Mrs. Whitman, 294 ; accepts proposal to become Poe s literary executor, 323. Gwynn, William, editor, becomes acquainted with Poe, 73 ; shows manuscript of " Al Aaraaf" to Latrobe, 106. HALE, REV. EDWARD EVERETT, describes Lyceum system of lectur ing, 275. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244, 245. Halsey, F. R., pays $2,550 for a copy of Poe s first volume, 67. Hannay, James, denies Poe s sense of humor, 258 ; reviews his mental characteristics, 258, et seq. Harris, A. B., writes of sickness of Poe s wife, 185. Hart, Mr., the sculptor, a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. Hatch, Mrs. John P. (Miss Adelaide Burkle ), owner of autograph letter from Poe, 220. Haven, Benny, 88, et seq. Hawkes, Dr. F. L., invites Poe to New York, 133. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, publishes "The Unpardonable Sin" in "Home Weekly and Household Newspaper," 140. Headley, , a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. Heath, James E., editor of " Southern Literary Messenger," 126, 127. Herring, Henry, takes charge of Poe s remains, 336. 4 i6 INDEX. Hewitt, John H., editor, reviews " Al Aaraaf" unfavorably, 76 5 wins second prize in literary contest, 106. Hewitt, Mrs. M. E., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244 5 describes suf fering condition of Poe s family, 260. Higginson, Col. T. W., bears testimony to the beauty of Poe s voice, 97. Hirst, biographer of Poe, 96. Hodges, Dr., rector of St. Paul s parish, 115. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, writes to Griswold in behalf of Poe, 261. Hopkins, C. D., first husband of Mrs. Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe, 6. Home, Richard Hengist, criticises " Annabel Lee," 305. House, Col. James, in regiment with Poe, 71. Howard, Lieut., in regiment with Poe, 71. Howard, " Nat," a distinguished Latinist, schoolmate of Poe, 20. Hoyt, Ralph, at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Hughes, Robert W., discusses economic questions in Richmond " Examiner," 317. Hunt, Freeman, a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. INGRAM, JOHN H., testimony of, in relation to Poe s ancestry, 3 ; describes origin of " The Bells," 286 5 "writes the best biography of Poe, 338. Irving, Washington, editor of "Knickerbocker," 141 ; acknowl edges Poe s genius, 155. Isbell, George E., letter of Poe to, relating to "Eureka," 277. JEFFERSON, THOMAS, founds the University of Virginia, 34 j at tempts to stop card-playing at the University, 43 5 considers an outside police necessary at University, 51 5 contends that geog raphy and history should be studied together, 54, 555 death of, 1826, 56. Johns, Rev. John, reported to have married Poe and Miss Clemm, 114. KENNEDY, JOHN P., letter to, from Poe, I j on committee to award prizes for poem and story for " Saturday Visiter," 99 ; invites Poe to dinner, no; aids Poe in securing position on "Southern Literary Messenger," 116. Kirkland, Mrs., at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244, 245. LAFAYETTE visits Richmond and Jefferson in 1824, 55. Lang, Andrew, writes of Poe s prose romances, 152. Latrobe, J. H. B., on committee to award prizes for story and INDEX. 417 poem for "The Saturday Visiter," 99 5 his account of the con test, 99, 102-110; kind to Poe, no. Lee, Gen. Robert E., 84. Lee, Hon. Z. Collins, present at Poe s burial, 337. Leland, Charles Godfrey, editor of " Graham s Magazine," 141. Lewis, Mrs. S. D. See Robinson, Miss. Lincoln, Robert T., verifies fact of Poe s enlistment, 69. Literati of New York, Poe s opinion of, 249, 250. Livingston, Catherine, grandmother of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Al lan, 77. Locke, Joe, satirized by Poe, 87. Locke, Richard Adams, editor of New York " Sun," 1935 a visitor at the salon of Mrs. Botta, 245. Long, George, literary career of, 38 ; professor at University of Virginia, 40, 44. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, accused of plagiarism by Poe, 1465 suggests lines from "For Annie " as an epitaph for Poe s monu ment, 302. Lowell, James Russell, error of, in relation to Poe s age, 3 ; praises Poe s stan/a "To Helen," 31 ; a subordinate editor of " Gra ham s Magazine," 140; eulogizes Poe s tales, 1445 publishes the "Pioneer," 175; lauds Poe s genius, 202, 2035 de nounced by Poe as an abolitionist, 202. Lowndes, Adjutant-General, in regiment with Poe, 71. Lyceum system of lecturing, 275. Lynch, Miss Anne Charlotte. See Botta, Mrs. MACKENZIE, DR., with Poe on his last day in Richmond, 326. Mackenzie, Mr., cares for the Poe children, n. McBride, Jane, wife of John Poe, 4. Mclntosh, Maria, gives Poe letter of introduction to Mrs. Whit man, 285. McMurtrie, Prof., joint author with Poe of " Conchologist s Text- Book," 147. Madison, James, ex-President, 80. Magruder, John B., classmate of Poe at West Point, 69. Manley, Mrs., takes lock from Poe s chamber door as souvenir, 227. Marshall, Chief-Justice, 80. " Mary," Poe s sweetheart, 97, 98. Matthews, drill-master at University of Virginia, 39. Maury, Mathew F., editor of " Southern Literary Messenger," 127. Mayo, Col. John, uncle of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan, 78. VOL. I. 27 418 INDEX. Miller, Dr. James H., on committee to award prizes for story and poem for " The Saturday Visiter," 99 ; kind to Poe, no. Minor, Dr. B. B., writes notice of Thomas W. White, 125 ; gives reminiscences of Poe to author of this book, 220. Minor, Lucian, editor of "Southern Literary Messenger," 1*7. Monroe, James, ex-President, 80. Montague, Mrs. Dwight, 78. "Moon Hoax," the, 195. Moran, Dr. J. J., testifies to Poe s temperance, 162 ; receives com munication from Mrs. Shelton regarding her relations with Poe, 314 ; gives account of the poet s last hours, 332, et seq. Moran, Mrs. Mary O., reminiscences of, 337. Morgan, Appleton, writes of Poe s character and habits, 161, 162$ defends Poe against charge of reselling his manuscripts, 260. Morris, George P., criticised by Poe, 189 ; at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Mott, Dr., diagnoses Poe s case, 269. NEAL, JOHN, corresponds with Poe, 73, 76. Nelson, Robert B., writes concerning Poe s marriage, 115. Newman, Cardinal, imitates Poe in his famous "Lead, Kindly Light," 68. O BEIRNE, GEN. JAMES R., describes Poe s residence at the home of Patrick Brennan, 224. Osgood, Mrs. Frances Sargent, testifies to Poe s love for his wife, 184; at Mrs. Botta s salon, 243; a paragon, 243; her death, 2445 defends the poet, 295, 2975 pens self-contradictory com munication to Griswold, 298. PABODIE, WILLIAM J., contradicts scandalous anecdote told by Griswold, 294. Patterson, E. H. W., arranges with Poe to publish "The Stylus," 3*5- Patterson, Capt. John, grandfather of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan, 77- Patterson, John William, father of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan, 77. Patterson, Mrs. Louisa De Hart, mother of Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan, 77. Patterson, Miss Louisa Gabriella, marries Mr. John Allan, 77 ; her character, 78. Perry, Edgar A., name assumed by Poe on enlisting in U. S. Army, 69, 70. INDEX. 419 Peterson, Charles J., edits fl Graham s Magazine," 140. Petticolas, Arthur E., contribution to Richmond " Examiner," 317. Philadelphia, intellectual atmosphere of, in the thirties and forties, 134. Poe, Miss Amelia F., furnishes sketch of Mrs. Clemm, 206. Poe, Gen. David, the poet s grandfather, a veteran of the Revolu tion, 4. Poe, David, father of the poet, 4 ; marries Mrs. C. D. Hopkins, 6; becomes a strolling player, 6 ; death of, 10. Poe, Edgar Allan, writes letter to J. P. Kennedy, I ; precocity of, compared to that of Shelley, Heine, Keats, and Hugo, 2 ; states that he w?s born in Boston, 2 ; discussion in relation to his birthplace, 3 5 rails at Boston, 3 5 his ancestry, 4, 5 j birth in Boston, 6 ; his birth year coincident with that of many eminent persons, 8 ; death of his parents, 10 5 adopted by Mr. John Allan, 12; atmosphere of his childhood, 13; leaves home for the University, 16; goes to school in England, 17; influence of his training there, 17-20; psychological effect on his tem perament of long sea-voyages, 20, 21 ; boyhood of, sketched by Col. T. H. Ellis, 22-27 5 entered as a student at the University of Virginia, 26 ; interesting glimpses of, while in the University, 25-34 ; love episode with Miss Sarah Elmira Royster, 32, 33 ; prepares to enter the University of Virginia, 34 ; joins the Uni versity, 36 ; associates at the University, 37 ; social habits and scholarship, 40 ; his constant companions, 41 ; reads his literary productions to friends, 42; nicknamed " Gaffy " Poe, 43; escapades, 44; his proficiency in Italian, 45, 46; leaves the University, 47 ; extraordinary powers of analysis, 48 ; his intro duction to Latin and Greek, 54 ; his penchant for geography, 54 ; his penchant for moon-hoaxes and lunar voyages, 55 ; his fond ness for French and France, 55 ; not indifferent to the advantages of debate, 60 ; his university career crowned with scholastic hon ors, 62 ; little or no moral training, 62 ; the gift of poesy his one solace, 63 ; his early poems, 64 ; had contracted debts at the University, 65 ; leaves the Allan home, 65 ; appearance at Bos ton of "Tamerlane and Other Poems," 65 ; the first of his defiant prefaces, 68 ; enlists in U. S. Army, 70 ; promoted ser geant-major, 70; returns to Richmond, 70; honorably discharged from the service, 72 ; influence of army routine, 72 ; publishes " Al Aaraaf," 75 ; writes to Neal in relation to " Al Aaraaf," 76 ; enters the Academy at West Point, 79 ; the atmosphere of West Point, 80 ; chafes under the discipline at West Point, 84 j 420 INDEX. contrast to his honorable career as a U. S. soldier, 85 ; account of his life at West Point by T. H. Gibson in " Harper s Maga zine," 85-92; court-marti ailed and dismissed from the Academy, 92.; publishes a third volume of poems, 92; contents of the volume, 93 ; obscurity in his biography from 18311836, 96 ; seeks employment from William Gwynn, a Baltimore editor, 96 ; unable to secure an usher s place in Brooks s school, 96 ; love episode with "Mary," 97, 98; competes for a prize story and poem for "The Baltimore Visiter," 98110; winning the prize surrounds him with a blaze of publicity, 101 ; becomes the talk of the town, 110; rupture with the Allans, in ; death blow to his hopes of becoming Allan s heir, 1 1 1 ; Mrs. Allan s niece relates story of the rupture with the Allans, 111-113 ; issues the prospectus of a first-class literary journal, 113; licensed to marry Virginia Clemm, 114; a second license procured, and ceremony performed by Rev. Amasa Converse, 115; becomes editor of the " Southern Literary Messenger," 116; sends tales to " Messenger," 1 16 ; sends tales to Miss Leslie for "Souvenir," 117 ; his income and reputation increasing, 117 ; receives warn ing note from White, 117; suffers from depression of spirits, Ii8; his gratitude to Kennedy, 118; variety and multiplicity of his work, 118; the evil habit of borrowing grows upon him, 119; retires from editorship of "Messenger," 120; cause of the rupture between Poe and White, 121 ; his contri butions to the "Messenger," 121123 ; addicted to drugs and stimulants, 123; his case never scientifically diagnosed, 124; his position on the "Messenger" not a bed of roses, 124 ; re moves to New York, 128; testimony to his sobriety at this time, 128; carefully trained his wife, 129; Mrs. Clemm testi fies to his domesticity, 129 ; his fable-autobiographies, 130132 ; completes "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," 133; removes to Philadelphia, 133 ; pleasing glimpses of his domestic life, 134-138; contributes to " Graham s Magazine," 139; a quarrel leads to his dismissal, 139 ; wins prize with "The Gold- Bug" from "Dollar Magazine," 140; his "Descent into Maelstrom" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue " appear in " Graham s Magazine," 140, 141 ; declines to review Irving, 143; contributes u Ligeia " and other tales to "American Museum," 143, 144 ; eulogized by Lowell, 144 ; list of his contributions to various magazines, 145 ; accuses Longfellow of plagiarism, 146; publishes "The Conchologist " and "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," 146, 147 ; becomes associate editor of " Gentleman s Magazine and American Monthly Re- INDEX. 421 view," 148 ; dedicates volume to Col. William Drayton, 148 ; types and characteristics of his works, 148, 149 ; amount of work accomplished, 149 ; title-page, preface, and dedication to 11 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," 149-152 j becomes inoculated with the spirit of German occultism, 154; towers among his contemporaries as a giant, 155; Irving acknowledges his genius, 155 ; believes himself to be a great critic, 155 ; ap pointed editor of the "Gentleman s Magazine," 156; re prints some of his poems in the magazine, 156; announces publication of new magazine, 157 ; quarrel with Burton, 157161 ; letter to Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, describing his habits at Richmond and Philadelphia, 158-161 5 Dr. J. J. Moran testifies to his temperance, 162; writes letter to Burton, 163-167; expresses his opinion of Mr. Graham, 168 ; writes good-natured criticism of Burton, 168 ; " Penn Monthly" scheme fails, 1685 in fluence of his contributions to " Graham s " on contemporary literature, 169; his cryptographic studies, 169-171 ; great liter ary industry, 172; his power startles Dickens, 172; develops a strange power of analytical reasoning, 173; wonderfully produc tive period of his stay in Philadelphia, 173, 174; contributes to Lowell s " Pioneer," 175 ; writes courteous letter to Lowell, 176; ceases to be editor of "Graham s," 176; letter in re gard to establishing a new magazine, 178; seeks a government position, 179 ; effect on his mind of his wife s sickness and death, 180 ; susceptible to effect of intoxicating liquors, 181 ; writes to Mrs. Whitman concerning his indulgence in stimulants, 182; Graham testifies to his solicitude for the happiness of his wife and mother-in-law, 182 ; the worship of woman an ab sorbing feature in his life, 183 j his love for his wife, 1845 son net to his mother-in-law, 185 ; caustic excoriation of Griswold, 1 86 ; again finds himself in New York, 186 ; growth of his critical instinct, 187, et seq. ; an analyst of admirable powers, 189 5 receives friendly letter from Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, 190; his literary " ripeness," 193; writes the "Balloon Hoax," 195; a recondite and most exquisite humorist, 197; hoaxing an ingrained element of his intellectual make-up, 198 ; his places of residence in New York, 198 ; his literary labors in 1844, 199; corresponds with Lowell, 200, 201; denounces Lowell as an abolition fanatic, 202 ; engagement on " Evening Mirror," 207 ; his opinion of N. P. Willis, 207, 208 5 the banner year of his literary life, 209 ; acquires control of the " Broadway Journal," 210 ; sharp criticism of Charles F. Briggs, 210 j accuses Longfellow of plagiarism, 211 ; leaves the "Mir- 422 INDEX. ror," 211 j first appearance of "The Raven," 213 ; author criticises it under pseudonym of "Quarles," 214; analyzes the mechanism of his poem, 215, 216 ; its genesis and evolution, 2175 letter to John Augustus Shea, 218; frequently called upon to recite "The Raven," 222 5 the poem written in New York, 224; the year 1845 "the fullest of work," 228 j his own opinion of his prose work, 229 ; entangled in the " Long fellow War," 229, et seq. ; his charges of plagiarism, 232 234; numerous contributions to the magazines, 235, 236; his war on transcendentalism, 236238 ; disappoints a Boston au dience in his readings, 237 ; becomes a cult with the French school of Theophile Gautier, 2385 interest excited by his mes meric hoax, 238 ; dedicates a volume of poems to Elizabeth Barrett, 2395 collapse of the "Broadway Journal," 240; his social and literary life in New York, 241 ; enamored with Frances S. Osgood, 243 ; has controversy with Margaret Fuller, 245 5 the year 1846 the beginning of his " moral and physical descent," 248 5 gives his opinion of the literati of New York, 249, 250; contrasted with Griswold, 250, 251 5 his libel suit against Thomas Dunn English, 252; his home at Fordham, 252, et seq. , his mental characteristics reviewed by Hannay, 258, 259 5 poverty his greatest crime, 260 ; suffering condition of his family, 260, et seq. ; O. W. Holmes writes to Griswold in his behalf, 261 j Mrs. Gove-Nichols gives pathetic glimpse of the Poe family, 261-263 j addresses passionate lines to Mrs. M. L. Shew (Mrs. Houghton), 264; death of Virginia Poe, 265; agony of Poe s utter loneliness, 266 5 Mrs. Clemm watches over him, 267 5 a settled gloom threatens his reason, 267 ; des perately ill and unnerved, 269 ; his genius recognized abroad, 272, 273 ; reads his " Eureka " to a small audience, 2745 the book published by Putnam, 276 ; gives analysis of the work, 277-279 5 compared with Lucretius, 279, 280 ; his passion for Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, 281, et seq. ; writes poem of "The Bells," 2865 engaged to Mrs. Whitman, 290; the marriage broken off, 29 1 ; his memory defended by Mrs. Whit man and Mrs. Osgood, 294, 295 ; has personal difficulty with family of Mrs. E , 297 ; visits Richmond, 299 5 his ac quaintance with Mrs. S. D. Lewis ("Stella"), 300, et seq. ,- suffering from repeated disappointments, 302 ; writes " Annabel Lee," 3045 last glimpse of him in New York, 305; leaves for Richmond, 306; the last days in Richmond, 310, et seq. ; renews acquaintance with his old flame, Miss Royster, 313 ; reads "The Raven" in Richmond, 316; arranges to become INDEX. 423 literary editor of " Examiner," 3185 takes a pledge of total abstinence, 318; starts for Baltimore, 321; cheerfulness on leaving Richmond, 322; requests Griswold to become his liter ary executor, 323 ; gives Thompson manuscript of " Annabel Lee," 3245 getting ready for his second marriage, 325; his last day in Richmond, 3265 in Baltimore, 327; death, 328- 336; burial, 337; manuscripts left at his death, 339. Poe, Mrs. Edgar A. See Clemm, Virginia. Poe, Mrs. Elizabeth (Arnold, Hopkins), description of, 5 j theat rical wanderings of, 6, 8, 95 finds her best friends in Boston, 7; decline of, 95 death of, 10 j burial of, in Richmond, Va., II ; reference to, 22, 23. Poe, John, progenitor of the family in America, 4. Poe, John P., statement of, concerning Poe s ancestry, 3, 4. Poe, Neilson, opposes marriage of Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm, 1145 takes charge of Poe s remains, 336. Poe, Rosalie, birth of, 7 5 adopted by the Mackenzies, 14. Poe, William, declares "the cup" to be "a great enemy to the Poe family," 138. Poe, William Henry Leonard, birth of, 7 ; adopted by his grand father, 22 ; death, 23 ; a cadet in the navy, 72. Pouder, W. P., connected with "The Saturday Visiter," 99. Power, Sarah Helen. See Whitman, Mrs. Sarah Helen. Preston, Col. J. T. L., places Poe on a high level as a scholar, 20, 54. Preston, James P., aids Poe in entering West Point, 79. Pryor, Mrs. W. R., daughter of John Allan, 2d, 78. Putnam, G. P., publishes "Eureka," 276. RANDOLPH, JOHN, of Roanoke, 80. Randolph, Col. Thomas Mann, Governor of Virginia, 21. "Raven, The," first appearance of, 213 ; analyzed by Poe, 215, 216; its genesis and evolution, 217. Richard, John, the Poe children baptized at residence of, 23. Richmond, Va. , account of, 12. Richmonds, the, befriend Poe and Mrs. Clemm, 301. Ripley, George, in critical chair of " New York Tribune," 242 ; warmly welcomes Mrs. Whitman s poems, 283. Ritchie, William F., appears in dramatic representation with Poe, 25 ; member of the Thespian Society, 28 . Robinson, Miss (Mrs. S. D. Lewis), the "Stella" of Poe, tells of her acquaintance with him, 300; Poe s admiration of, 3015 writes of Poe s last day in New York, 306. 424 INDEX. Royster, Miss Sarah Elmira (Mrs. Shelton), engaged to Poe, 32, 33; renews acquaintance with Poe, 313. SARTAIN, JOHN, denies that Poe sold his poems several times, 288 j gives glimpses of Poe s last days, 306.. et seq. Scott, Gen. Winfield, charges on a ghost, 26 ; assists in raising money for relief of Poe, 269. Sedgwick, Miss, at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244, 245. Selden has fight with Poe at Burke s school, 27. Seward, Miss M. L., writes of poverty in Poe s family, 260. Shea, Judge George, possesses letter written to his father by Poe concerning "The Raven," 218; his personal acquaintance with Poe, 219. Shea, John Augustus, letter from Poe to, 218; associates at West Point, 219. Shelton, Mrs. See Royster, Miss Sarah Elmira. Shew, Mrs. Marie Louise (Mrs. Houghton), 96; assists the Poes, 264, 265 ; inspires Poe to write " The Bells," 286. Simms, William Gilmore, at Hingham, Mass., 243. Slaughter, Philip, companion of Poe at University of Virginia, 41. Smith, Edmund, present at Poe s burial, 337. Smith, Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes, criticised by Poe, 189; at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Smith, F. H., professor at University of Virginia, 44. Smith, Mrs. Seba, a visitor at Mrs. Botta s salon, 245. Smyth, A. H., relates story of " Graham s Magazine," 139. Snodgrass, Dr. J. E., acquires control of "The Saturday Visiter," 99 ; letter of Poe to, describing his trouble with Burton, 158- 161 ; his account of Poe s death, 328 ; present at Poe s burial, Spencer, Mr., writes concerning Poe s death, 328, et seq. Stanard, Mrs. Jane Stith, Poe s first love, 305 death of, 31; Poe s devotion to, 281. Stanard, Monroe, intimate with Poe, 28. Stanard, Robert C., accompanies Poe in a swim down James River, 25. Stephens, Ann S., edits " Graham s Magazine," 140; at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Stevenson, A., speaker of House of Representatives, 79. Stoddard, Richard Henry, sketches literary celebrities in New York in 1846, 241. Sroke-Newington, residence of Poe in, 17-19. Story, W., hears Poe lecture, 211. INDEX. 425 " Stylus," the, new magazine proposed by Poe, 275. " Sun," the New York, made famous by Locke s " Moon Hoax," and Poe s "Balloon Hoax," 195. " Swan Tavern," the, in Richmond, where Poe put up, 311. " TAMERLANE and Other Poems " appears at Boston, 65. Taylor, Bayard, editor of " Graham s Magazine," 141. Tennyson compared with Poe, 95. Thayer, Col., of West Point, satirized by Poe, 87. " The Magician," poem by Poe, 73. Thomas, Calvin F. S., Poe s first publisher, 66. Thomas, Dr. Creed, appears in dramatic representation with Poe, 25; Poe s desk-mate at Burke s school, 27, 54; member of the Thespian Society, 28. Thomas, F. W., receives letter from Poe, 2 j fails to secure a gov ernment position for Poe, 179. Thompson, John R., on intimate terms with Poe at Richmond, 299; writes concerning Mr. and Mrs. Browning s admiration of Poe, 300; receives " anything Poe might send," 3155 re ceives manuscript of " Annabel Lee," 324. Thornton, Dr. Philip, unveils a ghost, 26. Ticknor, George, advocates Jefferson s reform educational views, 38, 56. Tucker, Beverley, remembers Poe s mother when a girl, 5. Tucker, George, professor of moral philosophy at University of Vir ginia, 37. Tucker, Judge Henry St. George, editor of " Southern Literary Messenger," 127. Tucker, T. G., intimate friend of Poe at University of Virginia, 39, 42. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA founded and planned by Jefferson, 34 5 scenery surrounding it, 35 ; arrival of Poe at, 36 ; gambling at, 43> 4^> 5j dissipation at, 49, 51 ; outside police necessary to preserve order, 51, 52; rules and regulations gradually increased, 52; improvements, 52; student life at, 53, 54; crucial years in its history, 56 ; graduates remarkable list of distinguished men, 57-60 ; its social and intellectual environment, 60 ; possesses unaddressed letter of Poe, 270. VALENTINE, Miss, wife of John Allan, 17. Valentine, Miss Anne, rejects the suit of Mr. Allan, 77. 4 z6 INDEX. WALKER, JOSEPH W., sends note to Dr. Snodgrass on Poe s distress, 328. Ward, Dr. Thomas, at Mrs. Botta s salon, 244. Wat, Dunn, companion of Poe at University of Virginia, 41. Weiss, Mrs. Susan Archer, speaks of Poe s last days, 313 5 de scribes Poe s cheerfulness on leaving Richmond, 322. Wertenbaker, William, librarian of University of Virginia, 37, 39, 4 1 , 45-47- West Point, Poe enters, 79 ; atmosphere of, 80 5 list of contem poraries of Poe at, in 1830, 81-845 P e dismissed from, 92. Whipple, E. P., writes book reviews for " Graham s Magazine," 140. White, Eliza, visits the Clemms and Poes, 128. White, Thomas W., editor and proprietor of " Southern Literary Messenger," n6j increases Poe s salary, 1175 sends warning note to Poe, 1175 notice of, by Dr. B. B. Minor, 125. Whitman, John W., husband of Mrs. Sarah H. Whitman, 282. Whitman, Mrs. Sarah Helen, connects her own and Poe s ances try with the Anglo-Norman family of Le Poer, 4 ; gives sketch of Poe s first love episode, 30 5 Poe s statement to, concerning his indulgence in stimulants, 1825 " Introductory Letter " of, to "Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe," 2445 describes Poe s home at Fordham, 254, et seq. ; Poe s passion for, 281 ; poems of, 282, etseq.$ Horace Greeley s description of, 289; her engagement to Poe, 290; the engagement broken, 291; effect on her life of her connection with the poet, 292 ; her story suggests a character in one of Dickens s novels, 292 ; let ter from, to W. F. Gill, 293. Willis, Nathaniel P., praises Mrs. Clemm, 204; gives his impres sions of Poe, 207 5 Poe s opinion of, 207, 208 j publishes Poe s "Raven" in his "Evening Mirror," 2135 at Mrs. Botta s salon, 242 j one of the few editors of his time who appreciated Poe, 271 ; helps Poe in his project of establishing a new maga zine, 275 ; reprints Poe s lines " For Annie," 302. Wilmer, L. A., describes origin of "The Saturday Visiter," 99 ; frequent companion of Poe in his walks, in. Woodberry, Prof. George E., traces out the wanderings of the Ar nolds and Poes, 6 5 establishes fact of Poe s enlistment in U. S. Army, 69, 70 5 gives version of rupture between Poe and Low ell, 203. Wyatt, Prof., joint author with Poe of " Conchologist s Text- Book," 147. INDEX TO APPENDIX. ALLAN, JOHN, did not legally adopt Poe, 343 ; Poe brought up in the family of, 344, 3495 refuses to pay Poe s "debts of honor," 345 ; marries Miss Patterson, a relative of Gen. Winfield Scott, 345, 35- " Annabel Lee," Poe presents manuscript of, to Griswold, 357. "Arthur Gordon Pym," 353, 382. Autobiography of E. A. Poe, 343. Autography, " 354. "BALTIMORE Saturday Visiter, The," awards prize to Poe for con tributions, 345. Barrett, Elizabeth B., speaks of Poe s tales, 386. "Bells, The," 396. Bransby, Rev. Doctor, Poe attends school of, at Stoke Newington, 344, 350- British journals, no trace of Poe s contributions to, 344. Browning, Robert, admiration of Poe by, 386. Burton, W. E., Poe s engagement with, 346, 353. CARTER, DR. JOHN F., mentioned in connection with Poe s auto biography, 343. Channing, W. E., his poems alluded to, 369. Clemm, Mrs. Maria, her Preface to the Griswold edition of Poe s works, 3475 letter of, to N. P. Willis, 366. Collier, Mr., letter of, alluded to, 386. Colton, Walter, writes to Griswold on his criticism of Poe, 348 . Cooke, P. Pendleton, paper of, on Poe, 383. "DESCENT into the Maelstrom, A," 387. Dunglison, Dr., president of University of Virginia, 345. " EUREKA," 353. 428 INDEX TO APPENDIX. "FALL of the House of Usher," alluded to by Griswold, 356 ; by J. R. Lowell, 379. Fuller, Margaret, reviews Poe s first volume of Poems in * New York Tribune," 351. GRAHAM, GEORGE R., defence of Poe by, 399, et seq. "Graham s Magazine," Poe writes for, 353. Griswold, R. W., Poe furnishes account of his early life to, 343 5 requested by Poe to be his literary executor, 347 ; writes bio graphical notice of Poe for " New York Tribune," 348 ; Wal ter Col ton to, on his criticism of Poe, 348 5 his obituary notice of Poe mentioned by N. P. Willis, 360. Griswold, Mrs. Wm. M., Poe s manuscript autobiography in pos session of, 343. " HANS PHAAL," 387. "Haunted Palace, The," 380. Hawks, Dr., invites Poe to write for " New York Review," 346. " Heart, The Tell-Tale," 388. Henry, Professor, invites Poe to write for " New York Review," 346. " Home Journal, The," biographical sketch of Poe in, 347, 360. KENNEDY, JOHN P., on committee to award prizes to contributors to " Baltimore Saturday Visiter," 345, 351. LAFAYETTE, Gen., David Poe an intimate friend of, 344, 34$ Latrobe, J. H. B., on committee to award prizes to contributors to "Baltimore Saturday Visiter," 345. "Lenore," 381. Lewis, Mr., of Brooklyn, assists Poe, 354. Lewis, Mrs. Estelle Anna, requested by Poe to write his life, 347. "Ligeia," 374, 388. Longfellow, H. W., tribute of, to Poe, 398. Lowell, James Russell, sketch of Poe, 347. "Ludwig Article, The," 348. , Admiral JAMES, daughter of, marries John Poe, father of Gen. David Poe, 344, 349. McBride, Jane, daughter of Admiral James McBride, mother of Gen. David Poe, 344, 349. "Marginalia," 353. INDEX TO APPENDIX. 429 Middleton, Henry, American consul at St. Petersburg, befriends Poe > 345> 35. Miller, Dr. I. H., on committee to award prizes to contributors to "Baltimore Saturday Visiter," 345. " MS. Found in a Bottle," 388. NEAL, JOHN, alluded to, 374. " New York Review," Poe writes for, 346. PATTERSON, Miss, marries John Allan, 345. Perry, Edgar A., assumed name of Poe in U. S. army, 343. Poe, Gen. David, service of, in the Revolution, 344, 349 5 an intimate friend of Lafayette, 344. Poe, Mrs. David, mother of the poet, died of pneumonia, 343. Poe, Edgar A., autobiography of, 343 5 in the University of Vir ginia, 343, 345 5 no trace of his contribution to British journals, 344 ; goes to school to Rev. Doctor Bransby at Stoke Newing- ton, England, 344, 350; Mr. John Allan refuses to pay his "debts of honor," 345 ; desires R. W. Griswold to be his lit erary executor, and N. P. Willis to write observations upon his life and character, 347 ; attempts to join revolutionary army in Greece, 345, 3505 visits St. Petersburg, 345, 3505 goes to West Point as a cadet, 345, 350 ; leaves West Point, 345, 350 5 prints a small volume of poems in 1827, 350 5 conducts " Broad way Journal," 353; writes for "Graham s Magazine," 353; publishes volume of "Tales," 3535 presents manuscript of "Annabel Lee" to Griswold, 357; N. P. Willis on death of, 360, et seq. , early efforts of, compared by Willis, with those of Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, Collins, Chatterton, Kirke, White, Southey, Watts, Coleridge, Byron, Wordsworth, and Cowley, 371, 372; P. Peadleton Cooke on, 383; obituary memoir of, by John R. Thompson, 392 ; tribute of Longfellow to, 398 ; defence of, by George R. Graham, 399, et seq. Poe, Mrs. Edgar A. (Virginia Clemm), death of, 354. Poe, John, father of Gen. David Poe, 344, 349. "RAVEN, THE," alluded to by Griswold, 356 ; observation of N. P. Willis on, 359; praise of, by P. P. Cooke, 384; mention f, 397- Redfield, J. S., publishes Griswold s edition of Poe s works, 347. "SECRET WRITING," 354. " Sketches of the Literati of New York," 354. 430 INDEX TO APPENDIX. " Southern Literary Messenger," Poe invited to assume editorship of, 345, 35*- Stoke Newington, Poe attends Rev. Doctor Bransby s school at, 344, 35- Stylus, The," 363. THOMPSON, JOHN R., obituary memoir of Poe by, 392. To Helen," 373. To One in Paradise," 391. Tribune, New York," biographical notice of Poe in, 348. <ULALUME," alluded to, 363. Universe, The," subject of Poe s lecture, 364. University of Virginia, Poe enters, 343, 345, 350. " VALDEMAR Case, The," 386. WEBB, Colonel, collects money to assist Poe, 354. Weiss, Mrs. S. A., mentioned in connection with Poe s autobi ography, 343. White, T. W., writes Poe to assume editorship of "Southern Lit erary Messenger," 345, 352. Willis, N. P., requested by Poe to write observations on his (Poe s) life and character, 347. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF EDGAR A. POE. EXPLANATORY. Titles of the editions of collected poems are printed in ITALIC CAPITALS; titles of the editions of collected tales, in ROMAN CAPITALS; single poems, in SMALL CAPITALS; single tales, in italics; books reviewed by Poe are "quoted"; essays, miscella nies, and editorials are not quoted; newspapers and maga zines are printed in italics ; B. J. means Broadway Journal, vols. i. and ii. ; S. L. M. indicates Southern Literary Mes senger ; 1827, 1829, 1831, 1833, 1840, 1843, T S4S, are dates of the editions of collected poems and tales. 1827 TAMERLANE AND OTHER POEMS. By A Bos- TONIAN. Boston : Calvin F. S. Thomas. 1827. 40 pp. izmo. Reprinted in London, by George Redway, 1884, with a Preface by R. H. Shepherd. 1829 AL AARAAF, TAMERLANE AND MINOR PO EMS. By EDGAR A. POE. Baltimore: Hatch & Dunning. 1829. 71 pp. 8vo. 1831 POEMS. By EDGAR A. POE. Second Edition. New York: Published by Elam Bliss. 1831 Though the second edition of AL AARAAF, most of the poems are here published for the first time. 124 pp. i2mo. 432 BIBLIOGRAPHY. , I8 33 / MS. Found in a Bottle. Baltimore Saturday Visiter, Oct. " 12, 1833; S. L. M., December 1835; The Gift, 1836, 1840; B. J., ii. 14. 1835 List of Poe s Tales, Reviews, etc., in the Southern Literary Messenger. William Cullen Bryant s "Poems " (review), January. Berenice (tale), March 1835, 1840; B. J., i. 14. Morella (tale), April 1835; Burton s Gentleman s Magazine, November 1839, 1840; B. J., i. 25. HYMN (in "Morella"). "Confessions of a Poet" (review), April. Some Passages in the Life of a Lion: Lionizing (tale), April 1835, 1840, 1845; B. J., i. ii. eathe Featherstonhaugh s " I Promessi Sposi " (review), May. John P. Kennedy s "Horse-Shoe Robinson" (review), May. " Frances Anne (Kemble) Butler s Journal " (review), t May. TJu- -Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Phaal (tale), June 1835, 1840. R. M. Bird s " The Infidel, or the Fall of Mexico" (review), June, The Crayon Miscellany, No. II. (review), July. (Poe re viewed No. III. of this series in the December number.) Theodore Irving s " The Conquest of Florida " (review), J ul y- The Assignation (The Visionarv) (tale), July 1835, 1840; B. J., i. 23. Notices of Foreign Reviews (review), July. To MARY, July 1835; To ONE DEPARTED, Graham s Mag azine, 1842 ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843; To F B - J- i- T 7- A running commentary on Current Literary Events, called " Critical Notices and Literary Intelligence," August. THE COLISEUM. Baltimore Saturday Visiter, Southern Lit erary Messenger, August ; Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, June 12, 1841 ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843; Broadway Journal, ii. i. Bon Bon (tale), August 1835, 18405 B. J., i. 16. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 433 Shadow: A Parable (tale), September 1835, 1840; B. J., i. 1 6. To F s O D. Lines written in an Album. Sep tember. Loss of Breath : A Tale Neither in nor Out of " Blackwood" September 1835, 1840; B. J., ii. 26. King Pest: A Talc containing an Allegory, September 1835, l8 4; B - J- " J 5- Mephistopheles in England (review), September. " The Classical Family Library," Nos. xv., xvi., xvii. (re view), September. Robert Southey s " The Early Naval History of England " (review), September. "The Gift" (review), September. "Scenes from an Unpublished Drama" (Poe s drama poem POLITIAN), December. E. S. Barrett s " The Heroine ; or Adventures of Cheru- bini " (review), December. Lady Dacre s " Tales of the Peerage and Peasantry " (review), December. " The Edinburgh Review," No. cxxiv. (review), December. Robinson s Practice (review), December. R. M. Bird s "The Hawks of H^vk Hollow" (review), December. William Maxwell s " A Memoir of the Reverend John H. Rice, D.D." (review), December. "The Crayon Miscellany" (review), December. Walter Anderson s " Oration on the Life and Character of the Rev. Joseph Caldwell, D.D." (review), December. Reynolds s Francis Glass s " A Life of George Washington in Latin Prose " (review), December. Theodore S. Fay s "Norman Leslie" (review), December. Miss Sedgwick s " The Linwoods " (review), December. William Godwin s "Lives of the Necromancers" (review), December. James HalFs " Sketches of Life and Manners in the West " (review), December. "Clinton Bradshaw" (review), December. "Nuts to Crack," etc. (review), December. Charles Joseph Latrobe s " The Rambler in North Amer ica" (review), December. Judge Story s " Discourse on Chief- Justice Marshall," Bin- ney s " Eulogium " (review), December. Inaugural Address of the Rev. D. L. Carroll, D.D. (review), December. VOL. i. 2S 434 BIBLIOGRAPHY. E. Stannard Barrett s "The Heroine " (review), December. Sarah J. Rale s "Traits of American Life" (review), De cember. Lucian Minor s "An Address on Education," etc. (review), December. "Legends of a Log Cabin. By a Western Man." (Re view.) December. 1836 In the Southern Literary Messenger. "Zinzendorf and Other Poems," by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney ; 41 Poems," by Miss H. F. Gould ; " Poems," Translated and Original, by Mrs. E. F. Ellet (review), January. Metzenger stein (tale), January 1836, 1840. W. G. Simms s " The Partisan : A Tale of the Revolution " (review), January. " The Young Wife s Book " (review), January. Miss Sedgwick s " Tales and Sketches " (review), January. Francis Lieber s " Reminiscence of an Intercourse with M. Niebuhr the Historian," etc. (review), January. SCENES FROM " POLITIAN," January. "The South-West " (review), January. Defoe s " The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," etc. (review), January. Sarah Stickney s " The Poetry of Life " (review), January. " The Christian Florist " (review), January. Morris Matson s " Paul Ulric," etc. (review), February. Peter Mark Roget s " Animal and Vegetable Physiology " (review), February. Joseph Martin s "A New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of Virginia" (review), February. Lieut. Slidell s " The American in England " (review), February. Bulwer s " Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes" (review), February. Henry F. Chorley s " Conti the Discarded " (review), Feb ruary. L. A. Wilmer s " The Confession of Emilia Harrington " (review), February. " Rose Hill" (review), February. Palaestine (essay), February. " Noble Deeds of Woman (review), February. A Chapter on Autography (essay), February and August. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 435 The Due de L Omelette (tale), February 1836, 1840; B. J., ii. 14. " Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States of America Virginia," etc. By Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D.D. (Review.) March. Mrs. L. Miles s " Phrenology/ etc. (review), March. "Mahmoud" (review), March. "Georgia Scenes, Characters/ etc. (review), March. To HELEN, March. J. K. Paulding s " Slavery in the United States" (review), April. Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Cameleopard (tale), March 1836, 1840; B. J., ii. 22. The Poems of J. R. Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck (review), April. Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau" (review), April. Maelzel s Chess-Player (essay), April. A Tale of Jerusalem, April 1836, 1840; B. J., ii. n. To SCIENCE, May 1845 \ B - J- n - 4- Robert Walsh s "Didactics Social, Literary, and Politi cal" (review), May. Anthon s "Sallust" (review), May. Lieut. Slidell s "Spain Revisited" (review), May. Frances Trollope s " Paris and the Parisians " (review), May. J. K. Paulding s "Life of Washington " (review), May. J. F. Cooper s " Switzerland" (review), May. IRENE, May; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843; B - J-> i- l8 - " A Pleasant Peregrination through Pennsylvania," etc. (review), June. John Armstrong s "Notices of the War of 1812 " (review), June. " Recollections of Coleridge" (review), June. Rev. Calvin Colton s " Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country," etc. (review), June. Maury s " Navigation " (review), June. Stone s "Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gen tleman" (review), June, Dickens s " Watkins Tottle" (review), June. "Flora and Thalia" (review), June. " House of Lords " (review), July. Mrs. L. H. Sigourney s " Letters to Young Ladies (re view), July. 43 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY. " The Doctor " (review), July. Frederick Von Raumer s England in 1835" (review), July. " Memoirs of an American Lady " (review), July. William D. Gallagher s " Erato " (review), July. "Camperdown" (review), July. Leigh Ritchie s " Russia and the Russians " (review), July. Rev. Orville Dewey s " The Old World and the New," etc. (review), August. THE CITY OF SIN, August (THE DOOMED CITY in the edition of 1831); American Whig Re-view (sub-title A PROPHECY), April 1845; B - J- 8 - Charles Richardson s " New Dictionary of the English Language" (review), August. S. C. Hall s "The Book of Gems" (review), August. Lynch s " South Sea Expedition " (review), August. James S. French s " Elkswatawa" (review), August. "Letters Descriptive of the Virginia Springs" (review), August. Lieut. Slidell s " A Year in Spain " (review), August. * The Adventures of a Gentleman in Search of a Horse " (review), August. Prof. J. H. Ingraham s "Lafitte" (review), August. " Report of the Committee on Naval Affairs," March 31, 1836 (review), August. Pinakidia (essay), August. Draper s "Lectures" (review), August. Lieber s "Memorial" (review), August. David B. Edwards s "The History of Texas" (review), August. ISRAFEL, August ; Graham s Magazine, October 1841 ; Phil. Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843; B. J., ii. 3. "Inklings of Adventure" (review), August. Lydia Maria Child s " Philothea : a Romance " (review), September. Also Broadway Joiirnal, " Sheppard Lee" (review), September. William Hazlitt s * Literary Remains," etc. (review), Sep tember. Joseph Robinson s " The Swiss Heiress " (review), Octo ber. S. A. Roszel s "Address at Dickinson College" (review), October. Sir N. W. Wraxall s " Posthumous Memoirs of His Own Times " (review), October. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 437 "American Almanac for 1837" (review), October. J. F. Cooper s Sketches of " Switzerland" (review), Octo ber. Prof. Thomas R. Dew s " Address before the Students of William and Mary " (review), October. Henry F. Chorley s "Memorials of Mrs. Hemans" (re view), October. Dr. Robert W. Haxall s "Dissertation," etc. (review), October. Captain Basil Hall s " Skimmings, or a Winter at Schloss Hainfeld" (review), October. " Peter Snook " (review), October. Also Broadway Journal, G, P. R. James s "Life of Richelieu," etc. (review), Octo ber. Baynard R. Hall s " Latin Grammar" (review), October. Eland s "Chancery Reports" (review), October. " Memoirs of Lucien Bonaparte " (review), October. "Madrid in 1835" (review), October. " Medical Review " (review), November. Z. Collins Lee s " Address delivered before the Baltimore Lyceum," etc. (review), November. "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" (review), November. 183? THE BRIDAL BALLAD, Southern Literary Messenger, January; Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, July 31, 1841 J B. J., ii. 4. Beverley Tucker s " George Balcombe " (review), Southern Literary Messenger, January. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Southern Literary Messenger, January, February, 1837, 1838. Washington Irving s " Astoria " (review), Southern Liter ary Messenger, January. Charles Anthon s "Select Orations of Cicero" (review), Southern Literary Messenger, January. J. N. Reynolds s "South Sea Expedition" (review), South ern Literary Messenger, January. "Poems by William Cullen Bryant" (review), Southern Literary Messenger, January. To ZANTE, Southern Literary Messenger, January ; Phila delphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843 > B. J-> " 2 - [Poe adds a note here : " Mr. Poe s attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present 43 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY. number, the editorial duties of the Messenger. His Crit ical Notices for this month end with Professor Anthon s Orations what follows is from another hand. With the best wishes to the Magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous of bidding all parties a peaceable farewell."] J. L. Stephens s "Arabia Petraea" (review), New York Review, October. 1838 THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET. By EDGAR A. POE. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1838. 201 pp. I2mo. Reprinted in London, 1838, 1841, 1861, etc. Foe s Reply to his Critics. Southern Literary Messenger ; July Supplement. Ligeia (tale), The American Museum, September 1838, 1840; B. J., ii. 12. How to Write a Blackwood Article. The American Mu seum, December, 1838, 1840; B. J., ii. I. A Predicament ( The Scythe of Time] (tale), The American Museum, December 1838, 1840; B. J., ii. 18. 1839 Silence: A Fable (tale), Baltimore Book, 1839, 1840; B. J., ii. 9. Literary Small Talk (essay), American Museum, January, February. Preface and Introduction to " The Conchologist s First Book." THE HAUNTED PALACE, Baltimore Museum, April ; Bur ton s Gentleman s Magazine (in "The Fall of the House of Usher"), September; in "Tales," 1840. The Devil in the Belfry (tale), Philadelphia Saturday Chron icle and Mirror of The Times, May 18, 1839, 1840; B. J., ii. 18. THE CONCHOLOGIST S FIRST BOOK. By EDGAR A. POE. Philadelphia : Haswell, Barrington, and Has- well. 1839. pp. 156. I2mo. Second edition, with 12 colored plates. Philadelphia, 1840. I2mo. Also re printed anonymously, Philadelphia, 1845. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 439 Contributions to Burton s Gentleman s Magazine. "George P. Morris" (review), May; Southern Literary Messenger, April, 1849 (revised). To IANTHE IN HEAVEN, July. SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, July. J. Fenimore Cooper s " History of the American Navy " (review), July. James s " Celebrated Women" (review), July. Wyatt s " Synopsis of Natural History " (review). Short notices, etc., July. The Man that was Used Up (tale), August 1839, l8 4> l8 43 5 B. J., ii. 5. FAIRY LAND, August; also appeared in 1829, 1831, 1845; B. J. ii. 13. To THE RIVER , August. Wallace s " Triumphs of Science " (review), August. N. P. Willis s " Tortesa," and several short notices, Au gust. Fall of the Hoiise of Usher (tale), September 1839, 1840, 1845- Glenn s "Reply to the Critics" (review), September. Lord Brougham s " Historical Sketches of Statesmen " (review), September. "Solomon See-saw" (review), September. " Undine " (review), September. William Wilson (tale), October 1839; The Gift, 1840; B. J. ( ii. 8. Longfellow s " Hyperion" (review), October. Murray s " Travels in North America " (review), and short notices, October. Morella (tale), November. "Canons of Good Breeding" (review), November. W. Gilmore Simms s " Damsel of Darien" (review), and short notices, November. fThe Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (tale), December * 1839, 1840, 1845. Dickens s "Nicholas Nickleby" (review), December. Joseph O. Chandler s " Address before the Goethean Soci ety " (review), December. Thomas Moore s " National Melodies of America " (re view), and short notices, December. 44 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1840 TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARA BESQUE. By EDGAR A. POE. In two volumes. Phil adelphia: Lea & Blanchard. pp. 243, 228. i6mo. Contributions to Burton s Gentleman s Magazine* Journal of Julius Rodman, chap. I. (tale), January. Moore s "Alciphron" (review), January. Mathews "Memoirs" (review), January. Journal of Julius Rodman {continued}, February. The Business Man (Peter Pendulum] (tale), February; B. J., ii. 4. Longfellow s " Voices of the Night " (review), February. Marryat s " Diary in America " and short notices (re view), February. Journal of Jiiliiis Rodman (continued}, March. Henry Duncan s " Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons " (review), March. N. P. Willis s " Romance of Travel " and short notices (review), March. SILENCE, April ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843; B. J.,ii. 3. Journal of Julius Rodman (continued], April. A Notice of William Cullen Bryant, May. Journal of Julius Rodman (continued), May. The Philosophy of Furniture (essay), May; Broadway Jour nal, i. 1 8. Madame Malibran s " Memoirs and Letters " (review), May. Some Account of Stonehenge (essay), June. Journal of Jiilius Rodman (tale) (continued], June. The Man of the Crowd (tale), December 1840, 1845. Mystification (Von Jung] (tale), 1840; Broadivay Journal, ii. 25. Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling (tale) r 1840 ; Broadway Journal^ ii. 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 441 1841 Contributions to Graham s Magazine. J. Fenimore Cooper s "Mercedes of Castile" (review), January. Mrs. Norton s " Dream and Other Poems " (review), January. James McHenry s " The Antediluvians, or the World De stroyed" (review), February. W. H. Ainsworth s " The Tower of London " (review), March. Longfellow s Ballads and other Poems " (review), March. William Howitt s " Visits to Remarkable Places," etc. (re view), March. R. M. Walsh s (trans.) " Sketches of Conspicuous Living Characters of France " (review), April. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (tale), April 1841, 1843, 1845. Bulwer s " Night and Morning" (review), April. A Descent into the Maelstrom (tale), May 1841, 1845. C. F. Francis s "Writings of Charles Sprague " (review), May. Dickens s " Old Curiosity Shop " and " Master Humph rey s Clock " (review), May. The Island of the Fay (tale), June ; B. J., ii. 13. G. P. R. James s " Corse de Leon " (review), June. Macaulay s " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (review), June. A Few Words on Secret W T riting (essay), July. Pue s " Grammar of the English Language " (review), July. Seba Smith s " Po what an " (review), July. Lord Bolingbroke s " Works" (review), July. The Colloquy of Monos and Una (tale), August 1841, 1845. "Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L." (Letitia E. Lan- don), (review), August. L. A. Wilmer s " Quacks of Helicon " (review), August. Irving s Margaret M. Davidson s "Biography and Poeti cal Remains" (review), August. J. L. Stephens s " Incidents of Travel in Central America" (review), August. Secret Writing (Thomas s Letter and Poe s Answer), Au gust. To HELEN, September. 44 2 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Never Bet the Devil your Head: A Tale with a Moral, September 1841 ; B. J., ii. 6. Thomas Campbell s " Life of Petrarch " (review), Septem ber. Marryat s " Joseph Rushbrook " (review), September. ISRAFEL, October. A Chapter on Autography (essay), November. "John G. Palfrey " (review), November. W. H. Ainsworth s "Guy Favvkes " (review), November. "The Gift" (review). November. E. L. Bulwer s " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (re view), November. " The Pic Nic Papers," edited by Dickens (review), No vember. Napier s "Peninsular War" (review), November. Warren s "Ten Thousand a Year" (review), November. A Chapter on Autography, II. (essay), November. " Lucretia Maria Davidson s Poetical Remains " (review), December. Simms s "Confession" (review), December. Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House (essay), Broad way Journal, i. 7. Anastatic Printing (essay), Broadway Journal, i. 15. Street Paving (essay), Broadway Journal, i. 16. Three Sundays in a Week (tale), Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 27 ; B. J., i. 19. 1842 Contributions to Graham s Magazine. An Appendix of Autographs (essay), January. Henry Cockton s " Stanley Thorn" (review), January. Oliver Goldsmith s " Vicar of Wakefield " (review), Janu ary. Christopher North s (Prof. John Wilson) "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays" (review), January. Mrs. Sigourney s " Pocahontas and Other Poems " (review), January. Review of New Books, January. A Few Words about Brainard (review), February. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 443 Cornelius Mathews "Wakondah" (review), February; Godey s Lady s Book, November, 1845. Dickens s "Barnaby Rudge " (review), February; Philadel phia Saturday Evening Post, May I, 1841. Charles Lever s "Charles O Malley, the Irish Dragoon" (review), March. " The Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Lord Brougham" (review), March. To ONE DEPARTED, March ; Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843. L. P. Poulter s "Imagination" (review), March. Longfellow s " Ballads and Other Poems " (review), April. Algernon Henry Perkins s " Ideals and Other Poems " (review), April. The Oval Portrait (tale), April; B. J., i. 17. Hawthorne s " Twice-Told Tales " (review), April. The Masque of the Red Death, A Fantasy (tale), May 1842 ; B. J., ii. 2. Hawthorne s " Twice-Told Tales " (review, continued from April), May. Bulwer s "Zanoni" (review), June. Griswold s "Poets and Poetry of America" (review), June. Tennyson s " Poems " (review), September. The Poetry of Rufus Dawes : A Retrospective Criticism, October. Mr. Griswold and the Poets, Boston Miscellany, November. Eleonora (tale), The Gift, 1842; B. J., i. 21. The Landscape Garden (tale), Snowdetfs Lady s Companion, October 1842; B. J., ii. n. The Mystery of Marie Roget, a Sequel to the " Murders in the Rtie Morgue (tale), Snowden s Lady s Companion, November, December, 1842; February 1843, l8 45- 1843 THE CONQUEROR WORM, Graham s Magazine, January ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843 ; B. J., i. 21 j ii. 12 (LIGEIA). 444 BIBLIOGRAPHY. The Tell- Tale Heart (tale), The Pioneer, January ; B. J,, ii. 7. The Pit and the Pendulum (tale), The Gift, 1843 ; B - J-? i. 20. The Mystery of Marie Rogfa (tale), Snowden s Lady s Com panion, February. Our Amateur Poets, No. I ; Flaccus, Graham" 1 * Magazine, March. LENORE, The Pioneer, Graham s Magazine, February ; Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4. Appeared in the edition of 1831, and in the Southern Literary Messen ger, January, 1836, under the title A P^EAN, B. J., ii. 6. The Rationale of Verse (essay), The Pioneer, March 1843, as " Notes on English Verse," in its first draft : Southern Literary Messenger, October, November, 1848, elabor ated. ROMANCE, Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1845 > B. J, ii. 8. AL AARAAF, Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4. THE SLEEPER, Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4. Appeared in the edition of 1831, and in the Southern Literary Messenger, May 1836, under the title of IRENE. The Gold-Bug (tale), Prize Story of The Philadelphia Dol lar Newspaper, June 21-28, 1843; l8 45- THE PROSE ROMANCES OF EDGAR A. POE, No. i [all published]. The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man that was Used Up. Philadelphia. 1843. 8vo. The Black Cat (tale), The Philadelphia United States Satur day Post, Aug. 19, 1843, 1845. Contributions to the New Mirror published by Willis and Morris, New York. Attributed to Poe as follows : Souvenirs of Youth (headed " Original Translation from the French," signed E. P.), May 13. The Master Spirits of their Age. Translated from the French (signed E. P.), June 3. Anecdotes of Suwarrow. Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), June 3. The Head of St. John the Baptist (Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), June 17. The Literary Pirate Foiled. An Incident in the Life of BIBLIOGRAPHY. 445 Anne Radcliffe. Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), June 24. A Morning s Walk in the Luxembourg. Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), July i. The Merchant s Daughter. Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), July 15. The above continued under the same title (signed E. P.), July 22. The above continued, with the heading " The Merchant s Daughter." A Novel from the French of M. Scribe. Translated by A Lady for the New Mirror (no initial signed), July 29. The above continued, under the same heading as in July 29 (signed E. P.), Aug. 5. The same story and title (signed E. P.), Aug. 12. The same (signed E. P.), Aug. 19. The same (signed E. P.), Aug. 26. The same (signed E. P.), Sept. 2. The same under the following heading : (Communicated.) The Merchant s Daughter. A Novel from the French of M. Scribe (concluded) (signed E. P.), Sept. 9. Ennui. From the French of Eugene Guinot. Translated for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), Sept. 23. The Yellow Rose. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of Bernard. A novel in Four Parts. Part I., Oct. 7. The same. Part II. (not signed), Oct. 14. The same. Part III. (not signed), Oct. 21. The same, concluded (signed E. P.), Oct. 28. The Two Marines in India. From the French of A. Lig- niers (signed E. P.), Nov. 4. Women are Sometimes Fickle. Translated for the New Mirror horn the French of De Maynard (signed E. P.), Nov. ii. The Man Without a Name. Translated for the New Mir ror from the French of S. H. Berthoud (signed E. P.), Nov. 25. The Two Empresses. Translated for the New Mirror from the Gazette de Lausanne (signed E. P.), Dec. 2. Expectation. Translated from the French of Souvestre (signed E. P.), Dec. 2. The Story of a Cup of Tea. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of J. Lecompte (signed E. P.), Dec. 16. 446 BIBLIOGRAPHY. The Poet s Laura. Translated from the French for the New Mirror (signed E. P.), Dec. 23. Three Visits to the Hotel des Invalides, 1705-1806-1840. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of Emile Marco de Saint Hilaire (signed E. P.), Dec. 30. Our Amateur Poets, No. 3. William Ellery Channing, Graham s Magazine, August. Our Contributors, No. VIII. Fitz-Greene Halleck, Gra ham s Magazine, September. J. F. Cooper s " Wyandotte " (review), Graham s Magazine , November. Griswold s "The Poets and Poetry of America," Phila delphia Saturday Museum, 1843. 1844 In New York Evening Mirror. Attributed to Poe. Three Visits to the Hotel des Invalides. Second visit, 1806 (not signed), Jan. 6. Three Visits to the Hotel des Invalides (signed E. P.), Jan. I 3- Translated for the New Mirror horn the French of Eugene Scribe. The Price of Life (signed E. P.), Jan. 13. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of Louis Lurine. The Jailer (signed E. P.), Jan. 20. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of La- seaux. The Bracelet (signed E. P.), Feb. 3. The Pearl of Geneva. Translated from the French of De Mirecourt (signed E. K., a typographical error for P.), Feb. 17. Misfortune of having a Dowry. Translated from the French of Paul Merruau (signed E. P.), Feb. 24. Parisian Chronicle. __ Translated for the New Mirror from the Courrier des tats Unis (signed E. P.), March 2. The Oath that Was Kept. Translated for the New Mirror from the French of Mark Perrin (not signed), March 9. The same (concluded) (signed E. P.), March 16. Paris in Robe de Chambre (signed E. P.), March 23. The Princess Pauline (signed E. P.), March 30. The Professor s Daughter (signed E. P.), April 13. \ BIBLIOGRAPHY. 447 Parisian Chronicle (signed E. P.), April 27. The Love Letter ; or, A Secret of the Confessional (signed E. P.), May 18. Parisian Chronicle (signed E. P.), June 8. Parisian Chronicle (signed E. P.), June 15. Parisian Correspondence (signed E. P.), June 22. A Cottage and a Palace (signed E. P.), July 13. The Passport A Parisian Story (signed E. P.), Aug. 3. The Will (signed E. P.), Aug. 31. The Times of the Emperour (signed E. P.), Sept. 7. Little Tarts of Prince Bedridden. In two chapters. Chapter First, A Dinner by Careme (signed E. P.), Sept. 21. R. H. Home s "Orion" (review), Graham s Magazine, March. The Elk (tale), The Opal. J. R. Lowell s " Poems " (review), Graham s Magazine, March. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, Godey s Lady s Book, April ; B. J., ii. 21. The Spectacles (tale), sent to Home, April ; B. J., ii. 20. Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences (tale), B. J., ii. 23. The Balloon Hoax (tale), The (New York) Sun, April 13. DREAMLAND, Graham s Magazine, June 1844, 1845 J Broadway Journal, i. 26. Mesmeric Revelation (tale), Columbian Magazine, August 1844, 1845. Reprinted in London, 1846. The Premature Biirial (tale), some unknown Philadelphia publication, August; B. J., i. 24. The Oblong Box (tale), Godey s Lady s Book, September ; B. J., ii. 23. Thou Art the Man (tale), Godey s Lady s Book, November. The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (tale), S. L. M., December 1844 ; B. J., ii. 3. The Angel of the Odd (tale), Columbian Magazine, October. Marginalia, No. I, Democratic Review, November ; No. 2, December. Amelia Welby (review), Democratic Review, December. 44 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1845 THE RAVEN, The Evening Mirror, January 29, 1845; The American Whig Review, February 1845; Southern Literary Messenger, March 1845; Broadway Journal, i.6. THE RA VEN AND O THER POEMS. BY EDGAR A. FOE. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1845. pp. 3, 228. I2mo. TALES BY EDGAR A. POE. New York : Wiley and Putnam. 1845. PP- 3 22 8- I2mo. EULALIE. American Whig Review, with " A SONG " as subtitle, July 1845; K . J-> " 5- The Purloined Letter (tale), The Gift, 1845 5 l8 45- The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade (tale), Godey s Lady s Book, February ; B. J., ii. 16. Some Words with a Mummy (tale), American Whig Re view, April; B. J., ii. 17. THE VALLEY OF UNREST, American Whig Review, April ; B. J., ii. 9. Appeared in the edition of 1831, and the S. L. M., February, 1836, as THE VALLEY Nis. Fifty Suggestions (essay), Graham s Magazine, May, June; A Chapter of Suggestions, The 0/a/, 1845. The Power of Words (essay), Democratic Review, June ; B. J., ii. 1 6. The Imp of the Perverse (tale), Graham s Magazine, July 1845 5 Mayflower, 1845. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (tale), Graham s Magazine, November. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (tale), American Whig Review, December; B. J., ii. 24. Reviews, essays, etc., in the Broadway Journal, signed with Poe s initial (P.) in his own copy, now in the possession of F. R. Halsey, Esq., or otherwise indicated as Poe s. The Tales and Poems which had appeared previously in other forms, or in other journals, are not repeated here. Elizabeth B. Barrett s " Drama of Exile " (review in two parts), Jan. 4 and n ; cf. Evening Mirror, 1844. American Prose Writers, No. 2, N. P. Willis, Jan. 18. "Poems by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer " (review), Feb. 8. Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House (essay), Feb. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 449 Imitation Plagiarism. Mr. Foe s Reply to the letter of " Outis," March 8. 1 "A Continuation of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War," March 15. " Satirical Poems " (review), March 15. Some Passages in the Life of a Lion, March 15. Mrs. R. S. Nichols (review), March 22. Continuation of a Reply to " Outis," March 22. "The New Comedy," by Mrs. Mowatt (review), March 28. " Human Magnetism," etc. (review), April 5. Conclusion of a Reply to " Outis," April 5. Prospects of the Drama, Mrs. Mowatt s Comedy (review), April 5. " Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," edited by William Smith, Ph.D. (review), April 12. " The Magazines " (a short review), May 26. Mrs. L. M. Child s " Philothea" (review), May 31. Magazine Writing Peter Snook, June 7. Anastatic Printing (essay), April 12. "The Antigone" at Palma s (review), April 12. Street Paving (essay), April 12. "Achilles Wrath" (review), April 19. "Old English Poetry The Book of Gems," edited by S. C. Hall (review), May 17. " Poems by William W. Lord" (review), May 24. "Plato contra Atheos," etc., by Tayler Lewis, LL.D. (re view), June 21. "The Coming of the Mammoth," by Henry B. Hirst (re view), July 12. "Alfred Tennyson" (review), July 19. House Furniture (essay), May 3. How to Write a Blackwood Article (essay), July 12. 1 The Broadway Journal headings to Divisions II., III., IV., V., of the " Longfellow War " are as follows : II. "A Continuation of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfellow War Mr. Foe s Further Reply to the Letter of Outis." III. " More of the Voluminous History of the Little Longfel low War Mr. Poe s Third Chapter of Reply to the Letter of Outis." IV. "Imitation Plagiarism The Conclusion of Mr. Poe s Reply to the Letter of Outis." V. " Plagiarism Imitation Postscript to Mr. Poe s Reply to the Letter of Outis." EDITOR. 450 BIBLIOGRAPHY. "The Magazines" (short review), July 12. " The Drama" (Mrs. Mowatt at Niblo s), July 19,26, Aug. 2. "The Chaunt of Life," by Rev. Ralph Hoyt (review), July 26. "The Lost Pleiad and Other Poems," by T. H. Chivers (review), Aug. 2. " The Fortune Hunter ; or, The Adventures of a Man About Town." By Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt (review), Aug. 2. " Wiley and Putnam s Library of Choice Reading." No. XVI. Prose and Verse. By Thomas Hood (review), Aug. 9. "Ettore Fieramosca," etc. By Massimo D Azeglio. Trans lated by C. Edwards Lester (review), Aug. 9. Editorial Miscellany, Aug. 9. HYMN (Catholic Hymn), Aug. 16. Wiley and Putnam s Library of Choice Reading. No. XVII. The Characters of Shakspeare. By William Hazlitt (review), Aug. 16. The Poetical Writings of Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith (re view), Aug. 23. " Review of Graham s Magazine for August, Aug. 16. "Wiley and Putnam s Library of Choice Reading" No. XIX. Prose and Verse. By Thomas Hood. Part II. (review), Aug. 23, 30. " Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil." By N. P. Willis. Part III. (review), Aug. 23. "Wiley and Putnam s Library of Choice Reading." No. XX. The Indicator and Companion. By Leigh Hunt (review), Aug. 30. "Wiley and Putnam s Library of Choice Reading." No. XXI. Genius and Character of Burns. By Professor Wilson (review), Sept. 6. "Festus: A Poem by Philip James Bailey" (review), Sept. 6. " Saul, a Mystery. By Rev. Arthur Coxe " (review), Sept. 6. " Review of the Democratic Review" Sept. 20. " The Prose Works of John Milton. With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold " (review), Sept. 27. "Wiley and Putnam s Library of American Books." No. IV. The Wigwam and the Cabin. By William Gilmore Simms (review), Oct. 4. "The Broken Vow and Other Poems. By Amanda M. Edmond" (review), Oct. n. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 451 " Historical Sketch of the Second War between the United States of America and Great Britain. By Charles J. Ingersoll" (review), Oct. n. "The Songs of Our Land and Other Poems." By Mary E. Hewitt (review), Oct. 25. The Power of Words (tale), Oct. 25. " Alice Ray ; a Romance in Rhyme. By Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale" (review), Nov. I. The Fine Arts, "La Sortie du Bain," Nov. I. Editorial Miscellany (Boston and the Bostonians), (review), Nov. i, 22 F. Von Raumer s " America and the American People " (review), Nov. 29. " Poems by Frances S. Osgood " (review), Dec. 13. "Notes on Hudson" (review), Dec. 13. Brook Farm (review), Dec. 13. Editorial Miscellany (notice of Leigh Hunt), Dec. 20. A Chapter of Suggestions. First Part. Opal, 1845. The American Drama (essay), American Whig Review, August. Marginalia. No. 3. Godey s Lady s Book, August. No. 4. September. "Big Abel and the Little Manhattan" (review), Godey s Lady s Book, November. 1846 Valedictory, signed E. A. Poe, Broadway Journal, Jan. 3. " The Wigwam and the Cabin " (review), Godey s Lady s Book, January. Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood s " Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England" and "Poems" (review), Godey s Lady s Book, March. Marginalia. No. 5. Graham s Magazine, March. No. 6. Democratic Review, April. No. 7. Graham s Magazine, November. No. 8. Graham s Magazine, December. The Philosophy of Composition (essay), Graham s Maga zine, April. " William Cullen Bryant " (review), Godey s Lady s Book, April. The Literati, published in Godey s Lady s Book, May to October, 1846. 4$2 BIBLIOGRAPHY. May. i. George Bush. 2. George H. Colton. 3. N. P. Willis. 4. William M. Gillespie. 5. Charles F. Briggs. 6. William Kirkland. 7. John F. Francis. June. i. Anna Cora Mowatt. 2. George B. Cheever. 3. Charles Anthon. 4. Ralph Hoyt. 5. Julian V. Verplanck. 6. Freeman Hunt. 7. Piero Maroncelli. 8. Laughton Osborn. July. i. Fitz-Greene Halleck. 2. Ann S. Stephens. 3. Everett A. Duyckinck. 4. Mary Gove. 5. James Aldrich. 6. Thomas Dunn English. 7. Henry Carey. 8. Chris topher Pearse Cranch (Poe printed " Pease"). August. i. Sarah Margaret Fuller. 2. James Lawson. 3. Caroline M. Kirkland. 4. Prosper M. Wetmore. 5. Emma C. Embury. 6. Epes Sargent. September. i. Frances S. Osgood. 2. Lydia M. Child. t Elizabeth Bogart. 4. Catherine M. Sedgwick. 5. ewis Gaylord Clark. 6. Anne C. Lynch. October. i. Charles Fenno Hoffman. 2. Mary E. Hewitt. 3. Richard Adams Locke. The Cask of Amontillado (tale), Godey s Lady s Book, No vember. 1847 The Domain ofArnheim (tale), Columbian Magazine, March. This tale is an enlargement of " The Landscape Gar den." To M. L. S., Home Journal, March 13. Nathaniel Hawthorne s " Twice-Told Tales," " Mosses from an old Manse," etc. (review), Godey s Lady s Book, November. ULALUME (sub-title, To ), American Whig Re view, December ; Home Journal, January, 1848 ; Gris- wold, 1850. Marginalia, No. 9, Graham s Magazine, January ; No. 10, February. To H. H., Columbian Magazine, March. EUREKA. A PROSE POEM. By EDGAR A. POE. Geo. P.Putnam: New York. 1848. pp. 143. I2mo. Repub- lished in London by Chapman. AN ENIGMA (Sonnet), Union Magazine, March. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 453 Mrs. S. Anna Lewis s " The Child of the Sea, and Other Poems " (review), Southern Literary Messenger, Septem ber. The Rationale of Verse (essay), Southern Literary Messen ger, October, November. To HELEN, To , Union Magazine, November, 1848. 1849 Mdlonta Tauta (tale), Codecs Lady s Book, February. Hop-Frog (tale), The Flag of our Union. To MY MOTHER, Flag of our Union. A VALENTINE, Sartain s Union Magazine, March ; Flag of our Union, 1849. Lowell s "A Fable for Critics" (review), Southern Liter ary Messenger, February ; Graham s Magazine, March. Marginalia, Nos. n, 12, 13, 14, 15; Southern Literary Mes senger, May to September. FOR ANNIE, Flag of our Union-, Griswold, 1850. ANNABEL LEE, N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 9; Sartain s Union Magazine, January, 1850. A Chapter of Suggestions. Second Part (essay), Graham s Magazine, May, June. "Frances Sargent Osgood" (review), Southern Literary Messenger, August. THE BELLS, Sartain s Union Magazine, November 1849. 1850 " About Critics and Criticism " (review), Graham s Maga zine, January. "Edwin Percy Whipple and Other Critics " (review), Gra ham s Magazine, January. Joel Tyler Headley s "The Sacred Mountains" (review), Southern Literary Messenger, October. The Poetic Principle, Sartain s Union Magazine, October. A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM, Griswold. ELDORADO, Griswold. No earlier publication known. THE WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE. With a Memoir by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, and Notices of His Life and Genius by N. P. Willis and J. R. Lowell, in four volumes. Redfield, 34 Beekman. 454 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Street. 1850-1856. (Preface by Mrs. Maria Clemm.) (Copyrighted, 1849.) T ne same in three volumes, 1850; in four volumes, 1853. THE LITERATI : Some Honest Opinions about Autorial Merits and Demerits, with Occasional Words of Person ality, together with Marginal Suggestions, and Essays, With a Sketch of the Author, by R. W. Griswold. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1850. pp. xxxix, 607. I2mo. (Vol. III. of Griswold s edition.) " Henry B. Hirst " (review), Griswold. "Elizabeth Frieze Ellett" (review), Griswold. "Estelle Anna Lewis" (review), Griswold. ALONE, Scribner s Magazine, September 1875. 1896 Poe s Addenda to " Eureka," Methodist Review, January. DATE UNKNOWN. X-ing a Paragrab (tale). The text follows Griswold. The Sphinx (tale), Griswold. Von Kempelen and his Discovery (published not earlier than 1848), Griswold. Lander s Cottage. Sent to Metropolitan before 1848. Once accepted, then rejected by the Metropolitan. Mentioned in Poe s Correspondence, 1848-49. Griswold. Poe s Introduction to " The Tales of the Folio Club," in MS. in the possession of Mrs. Wm. M. Griswold, of Cambridge, Mass., printed for the first time in this edition. Poe s Autobiographic Memorandum, 1841-1843? POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO POE. THE SKELETON HAND, The Yankee, August 1829. THE MAGICIAN, The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette, December 1829? UNPUBLISHED POETRY, The Yankee, December 1829. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 455 To ISADORE, Broadway Journal, 1845. THE VILLAGE STREET, Broadway Journal, 1845. THE FOREST REVERIE, Broadway Journal, 1845. ANNETTE, Broadway Journal, I845. 1 THE MAMMOTH SQUASH, 1845. THE FIRE LEGEND, Southern Literary Messenger, July 1863. From an unpublished MS. of the late Edgar A. Poe. THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA. A Satire. By Lavante. Philadelphia: William S. Young, No. 317 Race Street. 1847. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWS: LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. REC D LD REC D LD DEC26 64-lPM JUN 9 19 LD2lA-40m-ll, 63 (E1602slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley y * x ^> V- W