DGA ILLUSTRST sssSSttMiW T5 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ; THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A COLLECTION MADE BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 AND BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library PS 2631.J89 1901 3 1924 022 108 660 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022108660 EDGAR ALLAN POE (FROM THE LAST DAGUERREOTYPE TAKEN), EDGAR ALLAN POE BY COLONEL JOHN A. JOYCE Author of **A Checkered Life," ''Peculiar Poems," ''Zigzag," "Jewels of Memory/' "Complete Poems/' '^ Oliver Goldsmith," and Many Popular Songs. Speak nothing of the living or the dead but TRUTH \— Joyce. constantly eummuning with nature, seeing- in the flowery fields, roaring forests, dashing cataracts, mountain crags, stormy seas, flashing suns and twinkling stars^ emblems of a mysterious omnip- otence but sure memorials of the Creator. Shakespeare, the mammoth mind of all the ages, characterizes the poetic spirit in the following in- cisive declaration: "The lunatic, the lover and the poet, are of imagination all compact ! * * * The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation * * * g^ name." There never was a school or college that made or graduated a poet. It is an old and true saying that poets are bom and not made; and the axiom is as true to-day as when it was first conceived and uttered. The world, with all its millions of mortals, has not produced more than a score of great poets. xvi Introduction. Ehymes axe as thick as blackberries in July, and ballad-makers are found in every country; but the lofty, imperial, sublime, soul-lit poet, who "bathes his plumage in the thunder's home," ir- radiates his course with the lurid light of genius, and circles in a celestial sphere where suns and stars shine forever, is only produced once or twice in a century I J. A. J. EDGAR ALLAN POE. CHAPTER I. BIETH AND LINEAGE. Edgab Allan Poe was bom in Boston, Mass., on the 30th of January, in 1809, and died sud- denly in Baltimore, Md., on the 7th of October, in 1849, Biographers of Poe have disputed as to the time and place of his birth and the cause and manner of his death; but the world cares little for the lineage or location of the birth of a genius. The thought and matter that the poet, painter or sculptor gives to mankind is the only point at issue. The world cares nothing for the ancestors or posterity of a genius. Whether they were naked Arabs from the hot sands of the desert, or savages, who wore skins, from the headwaters of the Po or Danube, is of no consequence to the reader. Adam, such as hs was, stands sponsor for all of us! 2 Edgar Allan Poe. The world seeks the plain unvarnished truth, although in the practical affairs of life it often substitutes policy for principle and tolerates "white lies" in business. But in dealing with a genius, and particularly a true poet, mankind is anxious for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is better to tell it even when against you. The poet's deeds and words survive. When stone and bronze decay; For when he's dead he's still alive! Immortal in his clay! Sir Eoger de la Poe, of Italy, accompanied Prince John into Ireland in the year 1185, and the la Peer, Poe or Power family continued to flourish in the Emerald Isle until a Eoundhead Rough Eider, named Oliver Cromwell, in 1649 ripped up the rebellious Irish Catholics and crushed their civil and religious rights under the iron heel of despotism, murder and robbery in the name of God. It still prevails. John Poe, the father of Lady Blessington and great-grandfather of Edgar Allan Poe, suffered by the Puritan inundation. David Poe, bom in Lon- donderry, the grandfather of the poet, married the daughter of John MacBride, Scotch-Irish Admiral of the Blue. He emigrated to Pennsylvania be- fore our Eevolutionary War, and was afterwards a wheelwright by trade and worked at his busi- ness in Baltimore, being a leader among the labor fraternities in that city. Birth and Lineage. 3 David Poe was appointed Deputy Quartermas- ter-General for Baltimore, and during the War for Independence he aided very materially in sup- plying the troops with victuals and clothes. He was an intimate friend of Washington and La Fa- yette, and when the latter visited the United States in 1824 he made a special visit to General Poe's widow in Baltimore, and paid the wife of his old friend marked attention while being entertained in the Monumental City. General La Payette accompanied Mrs. Poe to the First Presbjrterian Church graveyard and placed a bunch of forget-me-nots on the lowly mound that covered the dust of his Revolutionary com- patriot and kissed the grass above him, exclaim- ing: "Here lies a noble heart." General Poe died in his seventy-fourth year, leaving behind as a legacy to his wife the unset- tled debts due and never paid by Uncle Sam — and six children. David Poe, Jr., the father of our poet, was the first-bom, and had all the advantages of education that could be obtained in Baltimore at that time. As the son of the old warrior and dry goods merchant he was lauded and toasted, no doubt, by the "boys" of that city. He studied law to no particular purpose, as his nature ran to show and theatricals, being a member of the Thespian Club of Baltimore — one of the chivalric blades found at that time in every southern city. During his young manhood he became enamored of a charming young English actress named Eliza- beth Arnold, the leading lady in a company of 4 Edgar Allan Poe. strolling players that ■vrere circuiting the coun- try. Elizabeth Arnold, the brilliant young actress, who played equally well in comedy and tragedy, had been a Mrs. Hopkins, but that did not prevent her from marrying the law student, David Poe, in the spring of 1806, and drilling him into her theatri- cal company as a member of the wandering play- ers. In Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, New York and Boston, Miss Arnold played as Mrs. Poe and seemed to be the "star" of the company, while her liege and lord remained as an amateur attach- ment, becoming in the meantime the father of three bright and lovely children — William, Edgar and Eosalie — who were left penniless orphans at Rich- mond, Va., by the death of their beautiful and accomplished mother, on the 10th of December, 1811. She played the part of Maria in "The Spoiled Child," and Priscilla in "Fortune's Pool," with the same facility and enthusiasm as she acted the Shakespearean parts of Ophelia and Juliet. Old General Poe, the Baltimore tradesman, seems to have disowned his son for marrying a strolling foreign actress, and of course the inno- cent progeny of the theatrical pair were left to the charity of a cold, but often kind world. The father of the children, David Poe, seemed to have been lost in the theatrical shufiBe. The youngsters were adopted by business merchants ; William, four years old, fell to the lot of Henry Didier of Baltimore ; Rosalie, the girl baby, got a home with Mr. McKinzie of Eiclunond, while Edgar was Birth and Lineage. 5 adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and child- less merchant of that city. Mr. Allan voluntarily assumed all the responsi- bility of a father to the three-year-old boy Edgar, and attached his own name to this child of genius, who was destined to give the Allan family all the fame it ever had. And yet how cruel was the conduct of Mr. Allan, the materialist, to his "handsome, curled, brilliant darling;" when Poe reached the age of manhood he was discarded and thrown out of a warm home nest by an old grasping merchant, who disinherited, at the dictation of a blooming young wife, the son he had reared, flattered and educated ! No wonder poor Poe, the brilliant young genius, had the iron of adversity rankle in his heart, and often, with gloomy, sardonic snetr, hated mankind for its heartless stabs and indifference to him- self. Like a young eagle he was thrown out of the parent nest from the lofty heights of comfort and prosperity to the bare nooks and flinty rocks in the vale below, just as the pin-feathers of hope, love and ambition were growing out into full plu- mage. His whole life afterwards was a struggle and battle for personal existence, and no orphan bird left by its parents was ever more helpless to war against the dashing waves of the ocean of life than Edgar Allan Poe. Sentiment for a sail and inexperience for a rudder are not good guides for a human bark amid a sea of troubles. 6 Edgar Allan Poe. And thus, without a friend or home. His destiny was still to roam Where grief beset him night and day. Along his troubled, thorny way. And Nature with a fatal gloom Pursued him to the silent tomb. ELIZABETH POE, UOTHER OF BDGAR ALLAN POE. Precocity and Early School Days. 7 CHAPTER II. PRECOCITY AND EARLY SCHOOL DAYS, When Master Poe was about six years of age he was placed at a private school kept by a widow in Richmond. This lady, it seems, had a vegeta- ble garden attached to her scholastic kindergarten, and gave the young scholars to understand that they were not under any circumstances to romp or play in her private domain. If, by impulsive action, any of the children violated the injunction of the mistress of the in- stitution, the penalty was wearing around the neck in school hours a specimen of the potato, carrot, beet or cabbage extracted from the kitchen garden. The children were often decorated with these hor- ticultural adornments, and it fell to the lot of young Poe to wear a specimen of early York cab- bage on one occasion, which caused him to run out of the school and make his way to the Allan mansion as quick as his legs could carry him, cry- ing and yelling, in appeal to his adopted father. Mr. Allan was terribly indignant at the treat- 8 Edgar Allan Poe. ment of his child, paid off the "schoolmarm" and kept the boy at home, where Mrs. Allan, who loved him devotedly, assisted in teaching him to read and write, which he mastered in a very short time, and devoured the thoughts of ancient poets and philosophers with avidity. Poe had a marvelous memory, and all outward objects in nature made a sudden and lasting im- pression on his mind. He was a handsome boy, with bright, grayish, large blue eyes, dark brown curls and beaming face, showing a breadth and height of forehead seldom seen in one of his age. Pictures and poetry were his daily studies, and when the neighbors called of an evening it was the pride and delight of old Mr. Allan and his good- natured wife to "show off" their "spoiled child" to the parlor audience. The child's recitations were cheered and ap- plauded by the neighbors, and his little boy and girl friends were fascinated, and perhaps envious of their brilliant playmate who commanded marked attention by his manly and amusing attainments. In the year 1816, when Poe was about eight years of age, Mr. Allan and family went to Europe and took his child along, placing the boy at the Manor House School, at Stoke Newington, near London. Dr. Bransby was the dictatorial rdaster of this school and the minister of the village church near- by, oscillating in his duties between the tyrant teacher on week days, to the polished, sanctimoni- ous divine on Sunday. The school and grounds where the boys were Precocity and Early School Days. 9 corralled and tortured into Latin verbs and Greek roots bore more of the appearance of a penal in- stitution than a nursery for the education of youth. Deathoboy Hall, as pictured by Charles Dickens, was a mild sample of the Manor House School, and in the story of "William Wilson," an auto- biographical remembrance, Poe told some of the social escapades of Dr. Bransby's institution, which were life pictures of the private religious schools of that day. The following memory of his somber school sur- roundings conveys an idea of the place of his in- carceration : "The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed, the eonnings, the recitations, the periodi- cal half-holidays and perambulations, the play- ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues ; — these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, a universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit stir- ring. "The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison- like rampart formed the limit of our domain; be- yond it we saw but thrice a week — once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighboring fields, and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same 10 Edgar Allan Poe. formal manner to the morning and evening serv- ices in the church of the village. . . At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. . . . What impression of deep awe did it inspire ! . . . The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine, hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees nor benches, nor anything similar, within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs, but through this sacred division we passed only on rare occasions indeed — such as a first advent to school, or final departure thence, or perhaps when a parent or friend having called for us we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or midsummer holidays." The real character of a writer can be solved and ascertained from his various works, and this feature is particularly shown in the poet, whose sighing and soaring soul is almost autobiographi- c£d of his inner life, disguised though it may be in an enlistment of the gods and goddesses of mythology who represent only himian passions. The poet may try to bamboozle, mystify and de- ceive the world, but in offhand, unguarded mo- ments, he lifts the veil of mystery, and betrays the tallow dips, smudge fire and broken furniture of his garret establishment. Precocity and Early School Days. 11 In the tale of the "Black Cat," Poe utters words through the mouth of ;his hero that have a smack of personal experience. "From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feed- ing and caressing them. This peculiarity of char- acter grew with my growth, and in my manhood I derived from it one of the principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog I hardly need be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the in- tensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man." In other words, the friendship of a dog is far more sincere than that of man! Poe was very susceptible to kindness and grate- ful for human sympathy when a boy — an animated sensitive plant. Mrs. Helen Stannard, a Eichmond lady, whom he first saw by moonlight in her garden, the mother of his schoolmate, Robert Stannard, received him with marked kindness into her home, speaking 12 Edgar Allan Poe. words of love and encouragement to the orphan child. He never forgot her sympathy, and when she died, Poe woxdd visit her green grave nightly, when the dreary winds of autumn scattered the withered leaves and the rains and frosts pattered against the gleaming gravestones. The memory of Mrs. Stannard lingered in the poef s soul through all the vicissitudes of his wan- dering life; and Mrs. Whitman, one of his affec- tionate friends and biographers, states that "the one idolatrous and purely ideal love," his mythi- cal Lenore, was the lady in question, immortalized in the following poem : TO HELEN. I saw thee once — once only — years ago! I must not say how many — iut not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-oried moon, that, like thine own soul, soar- ing. Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven. There fell a silvery-silken veil of light. With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber. Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Boses that grew in an enchanted garden. Where no winds dared to stir, unless on tiptoe — Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in retwrn for the love light. Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — Fell on the upturn d faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted Precocity and Early School Days. 13 By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the uptum'd faces of the roses. And on thine own, upturn' d — alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate {whose name is also Sorrow), That bade me pause before that gate. To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept. Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! — oh, God! How my heart heats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked — And in an instant all things disappeared. {Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly luster of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths. The happy flowers and the repining trees. Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All — all expired save thee — save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes — Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them — they were the world to me. I saw but them — saw only them for hours — Saw them only until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep — How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight. Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; 14 Edgar Allan Poe. And thou, a ghost, amid the entomiing trees 'Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go — they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night. They have not left me (as my hopes have) since They follow me — they lead me through the years. They are my ministers — yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enhindle — My duty, to be saved by their bright light. And purified in their electric fire. And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with beauty {which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still — two sweetly scintillant Ven/uses, unextinguished by the sun!. College Days and Wanderings. 15 CHAPTER III. COLLEGE DAYS AND WANDERINGS. After spending about five years abroad Poe re- turned to Eichmond, when he was placed at the Latin Academy of Mr. Joseph H. Clarke, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained until he was seventeen years of age, and then entered the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He had read sucessfully land intelligently Ovid, Csesar, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Xenophon and Homer, and was a passable French scholar. His mind ran almost entirely to mythology, his- tory, poetry and eloquence, not grasping the in- tricate problems of mathematics, which are un- congenial and tiresome to persons who live in the realms of imagination, where stars and dewdrops become diamonds, and mountain ranges gossamer threads of Omnipotence! Mr. Eufus Wilmot Griswold, the magazine owner and literary executor of Poe, says that while he was a student at the University of 16 Edgar Allan Poe. Virginia "he led a very dissipated life and that he was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class; he would have graduated with the highest honors had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices induced his ex- pulsion from the University." To offset this blunt biography of Mr. Gris- wold, the friend of our poet — the Secretary of the University of Virginia, Mr. William Werten- baker, in May, 1860, gave the folowing official statement : "Edgar A. Poe was a student of the University of Virginia during the second session, which com- menced February 1st, 1836, and terminated De- cember 15th of the same year. He signed the matriculation book on the 14th of February, and remained in good standing as a student till the session closed. He was born on the 20th of February, 1809, being a little under seventeen when he entered the institution. He belonged to the schools of ancient and modern languages, and as I was myself a member of the latter, I can testify that he was tolerably regular in attend- ance, and a very successful student, having ob- tained distinction in it at the final examina- tion, the highest honor a student could then ob- tain, the present regulation in regard to degrees not having been at the time adopted. On one occasion Professor Blatterman requested his Italian class to render into English verse a portion of the lesson in Tasso, assigned for the next lecture. Mr. Poe was the only one who complied with the College Days and Wanderings. 17 request. He was highly complimented by the professor for his performance. "Although I had a passing acquaintance with Mr. Poe from an early period of the session, it was not until near its close that I had any social intercourse with him. After spending an evening together at a private house, he invited me to his room. It was a cold night in December, and his fire having gone nearly out, by the aid of some candle ends and the wreck of a table, he soon rekindled it, and by its comfortable blaze I spent a very pleasant hour with him. On this occa- sion he spoke with regret of the amount of money he had wasted and the debts he had contracted. In a biographical sketch of Mr. Poe I have seen it stated that he was at one time expelled from the University, but that he afterwards returned, and graduated with the highest honors. This is entirely a mistake. He spent but one session at the University, and at no time did he fall under the censure of the faculty. He was not at that time addicted to drinking, but had an ungovern- able passion for card playing. Mr. Poe was sev- eral years older than his biographer represents him. His age, I have no doubt, was correctly entered on the matriculation book." It is a notorious and acknowledged fact that college boys all over the world, since time began, have been more or less addicted to the wine cup, games of chance, and the fascination of Venus and her train. Outrageous escapades, drunken riots and even 18 Edgar Allan Poe. murderous assaults are practiced to the present day in many of our best colleges and Government schools ; and so it will be until "boys" and "girls" are translated into saints and angels ! Poe was a robust, athletic, brainy student — not one of your soggy, muddy, sour-liquored lads, where fermentation never takes place. Nature furnished him with "wild oats" and he continued to sow them to the day of his death. He was given by his adopted father all the clothes and money that he demanded, and the "old man" seemed to stand the drain, proud to have his 'T)oy" line up with the other chivalric bloods of the Old Dominion. To say that Poe, who served only one session in the University, was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class, and was ex- pelled from the University, is a falsehood, and Griswold must have known it when he promul- gated the scandal ! Hyenas of literature are still prowling through the land rooting into the graves of buried genius. They live on the dead carcasses of ambition and renown. In the spring of 1836, Poe for some unknown reason determined to seek his fortune in foreign lands, and as it was the period when classic Greece was in a death struggle to gain her liberty and throw off the tyrant yoke of the unspeakable Turk, his friends imagined that he was fired with the fever of glorious war and "ran away" from home to aid in the liberation of the heroic sons of the Ionian isles. College Days and Wanderings. 19 The poem of Pitz Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozzaris," must have fired the heart of Poe, for these grand patriotic lines had just been flashed on the world: "Strike — till the last arm'd foe expires; Strike for your altars and your fires; Strike for the green graves of your sires; God, and your native land!" At least a blank or hiatus of nearly two years has been generally unaccounted for in the life of Poe, for he entirely disappeared from Eiehmond, and did not show up again until the last day of February, 1839, the day after the funeral of his adopted mother. In May, 1827, when Poe was in his nineteenth year, he found himself stranded financially in the city of Boston, and to keep from starvation he enlisted in the First Eegiment of United States Artillery, under the false name of Edgar A. Perry. The following letter of Colonel House throws ,Eome light on the wandering conduct of our genius, if the soldier he speaks of was really Poe. "PoETEESS Monroe, March 30th, '29. "General: I request your permission to dis- charge from the service Edgar A. Perry, at pres- ent the Sergeant-Major of the First Eegiment of Artillery, on his procuring a substitute. 20 Edgar Allan Poe. "The said Perry is one of a family of orphans, whose unfortunate parents were the victims of the conflagration of the Kichmond Theatre in 1809. The subject of this letter was taken under tne protection of a Mr. Allan, a gentleman of wealth and respectability of that city, who, as I under- stand, adopted his protege as his son and heir; with the intention of giving him a liberal educa- tion he had him placed at the University of Vir- ginia, from which, after considerable progress in his studies, in a moment of youthful indiscretion he absconded, and was not heard from by his patron for several years; in the meantime he be- came reduced to the necessity of enlisting in the service, and accordingly entered as a soldier in my Kegiment, at Fort Independence, in 1827. "Since the arrival of his company at this place he has made his situation known to his patron, at whose request the young man has been permitted to visit him; the result is an entire reconcilia- tion on the part of Mr. Allan, who reinstates him into his family and favor, and who in a letter I have received from him requests that his son may be discharged on procuring a substitute; an experienced soldier and approved sergeant is ready to take the place of Perry so soon as his dis- charge can be obtained. The good of the service, therefore, cannot be materially injured by the dis- charge. "I have the honor to be, with great respect, "Your obedient servant, "Jas. House, "Colonel First Artillery. College Days and Wanderings. 21 "To the General Commanding the E. Depf, U.8.A., New York." As a set ofE to this army story of Poe I give the following facts: In the spring of 1867 I met an old, battered sailor, named William Wilson, in a restaurant at Norfolk, Va. He told me he had been a school- mate and friend of Edgar Allan Poe. That he was the son of a wealthy flour merchant of Eich- mond, and through some wild freak in the spring of 1826 he concluded to run away from the re- straints of home and try his fortune on the open sea and test fate in foreign lands. He said that he and Poe shipped on a fast sailer from the port of Norfolk for adventure among Grecian isles and through the Mediterra- nean Sea, first landing at Naples, and afterwards visiting Florence, Milan, and Eome, finally turn- ing up in Marseilles and Paris, the great objec- tive point of their wanderings. Among gay grisettes, cafe loungers, Latin Quar- ter students, fantastic studios, mobile dancers, demi monde and gendarmes, they became quickly acquainted with the eccentricities of that gay and licentious capital. Wilson said he had been provided by a bachelor uncle with all the money he needed, and while the "filthy lucre" lasted he divided lii« funds and fun with Poe, who was sharing the hospitality of his generous schoolmate as a matter of course, having been pressed and invited to wander in foreign lands by a rich companion. 22 Edgar Allan Poe. It seems after the pair "did up" Paris, tli^ threw their caster into the whirlpool of London life, and there upon some frivolous quarrel be- tween the "chums," Poe, in a moment of despera- tion, shipped before the mast for a tour through the fishing grounds of the Baltic Sea, reaching St. Petersburg in his lunatic rambles. Wilson never saw Poe again, but heard from him often as he climbed the ladder of literary re- nown, which seemed to greatly please this old battered "sea dog," who would boast by the hour about "Eddie Poe" while harboring continuous "rounds" of "grog"! I became very much interested in the narrative of the old sailor and ocean roamer, and composed for him there and then the following poem, on TEE SEA. How I long to roam o'er the hounding sea. Where the waters and winds are fierce and free; Where the wild bird sails in his tireless flight. As the sunrise scatters the shades of night; Where the porpoise and dolphin sport at play In their liquid realm of green and gray. Ah, me! It is there I would love to be Engulfed in the tomb of eternity! In the midnight hour when the moon hangs low And the stars beam forth with a mystic glow; When the mermaids float o'er the rolling tide And Neptune entangles his beaming bride — College Days and Wanderings. 23 It is there in that phosphorescent wave I would gladly sink in an ocean grave — To rise and fall with the songs of the sea. And live in the chant of its memory. Around the world my form should sweep — Part of the glorious, limitless deep; Enmeshed by fate in some coral cave. And rising again to the topmost wave. That curls in beauty its snowy spray And kisses the light of the garish day; Ah! there let me drift when this life is o'er. To be tossed and tumbled from shore to shore. 24 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTER IV. ,WEST POINT EXPERIENCE, AND BREAK WITH ALLAN. The return of Poe, after his wild and mys- terious wanderings, to his old home at Richmond, was not calculated to make himself or old Mr. Allan happy. The light that ever shone in the window for "her brilliant boy" had been snuffed out of life by the gloom of the graveyard, and the only "mother" he knew, Mrs. Allan, was no longer nigh to excuse his failings and soothe his sorrows. What to do with a young man of twenty years of age was a puzzle to his adopted father, but after several months of cogitation it was deter- mined to send him to the Military Academy at West Point. In the meantime Mr. Allan had published for private distribution a small volume of juvenile poems, composed at various times by his talented son, and many of them have been pronounced very good, considering that some were written when Poe was only thirteen years of age. If ever a boy had good endorsers for West West Point Experience. 25 Point, Poe had, for his recommendations were signed by Chief Justice Marshall, General Scott, and John Eandolph. Putting a race horse to the plough, a watch- maker to the blacksmith trade, or an oculist to the butcher business, was about as reasonable as to send a boy of ethereal imagination to a strictly mathematical school, where scholars are taught and drilled into the rudiments of killing their fellow man according to national vengeance or law! — official murder, the officer's future trade and ambition. Poe was admitted into the Academy on the 1st of July, 1830, and was dismissed from the same institution on the 6th of March, 1831, having been convicted by court martial of disobedience of orders and neglect of duty. He lasted but one session, being pronounced by the other boys on his entrance as a "January colt," one that kicked in the traces and didn't give a "continental" whether school kept or not. Military rules cannot curb or harness imagination. While at West Point he was continually writ- ing satirical verses, lampooning those that came under the scope of his displeasure, and was a "toast" with the "boys," who flattered his poetical genius. He hits off his Inspecting Officer as fol- lows: 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! 26 Edgar Allan Poe. Eichard Henry Stoddard, in a recent cnmber- Bome and prejudiced compilation of Poe's varied life, gives to the world this account of his West Point conduct: "Poe was idle, he was lawless, and he drank. He had not profited by his experience at the Uni- versity of Virginia, except thkt he had given up gaming and exchanged champagne for brandy. His room was seldom without a bottle in it — a circumstance which was known to his bibulous fellow cadets, and of which they used to avail themselves; for when their own bottles were emptied they stole into the room between tattoo and taps and sampled the ebbing supply. It was smuggled in from Benny Haven's, a feat which demanded address, in that it had to be accom- plished without detection and the possession of certain moneys, or their equivalent in salable commodities — blankets, candles, and what not." How did Mr. Stoddard find out these blunt details of the dead poet's life? Were they true? Stoddard, himself a poet, informs us further, that: "The whole bent of Poe's mind at that time seemed to be towards criticism, — or, more properly speaking, cavilling. Whether it was Shake- speare or Byron, Addison or Johnson, the ac- knowledged classic or the poetaster — all came in alike for his critical censure. He seemed to take especial delight in cavilling at passages that had West Point Experience, 27 received the most unequivocal stamp of general approval. I never heard him speak in terms of praise of any English writer living or dead." This indictment, as a whole, bears with it jeal- ousy and spleen, and only brings into doubt- ful credit the man who wrote it. There is one thing sure, and that is, that the lives of the splenetic biographers of Poe, from Griswold down to Stoddard, who have delved like jackals into the personal detailed wanderings, eccentricities and sorrows of this erratic child of genius, will never be the subject themselves of the world's investigation! It oares not a "toss of a copper" for their personal grievances or so-' called literary opinions and conclusions. They pile up critical platitudes for publishers' pay. Assassin biographers are only momentarily no- ticed by the spray they spew on the shores of thought, while the craggy crest of Poe's genius shines like a lighthouse amid the ocean gloom of literary scavengers. After the dismissal of Poe from West Point he drifted back to New York, where a publisher named Bliss issued his third volume of poetry, which had been subscribed for by many of the mili- tary cadets. It sold very well to the public, and such men as Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Willis, ■Griswold, Goodrich, Morris, and Washington Irv- ing saw that a new poetic meteor had appeared in the sky of letters. Leaving New York in a few months, Poe visited his former home at Eichmond to test the friend- 28 Edgar Allan Poe. ship of old acquaintances and schoolmates. The sting of his dismissal from West Point no doubt rankled in his sensitive heart; but he could eon- sole himself with the thought that hundreds of bright and brave men had been expelled before from military service for disobedience of orders and neglect of duty. At least it was no hanging matter and in a short time he was reconciled to his fate. But the household of his adopted father was entirely changed, as the old man had taken unto himself a second wife forty years his junior — a Miss Louise Patterson. Poe wished to marry his schoolgirl sweetheart. Miss Eoyster, about seventeen years old, four years his junior; but the passionate old merchant went into a fury about the matter, and the re- sult was that he and Poe quarrelled and broke the last tie that bound the poet to home and for- tune. Even his girl sweetheart, through the con- nivance of her father, married a wealthy man named Shelton. "It never rains but it pours," and certainly this seems to have been the forlorn situation of Poe, "whom unmerciful disaster fol- lowed fast and followed faster." Old man Allan, puffed up in his pride, property and passion, could take unto himself a young and beautiful damsel to replace his devoted old wife, before the annual snow fell upon her lonely grave ; but he would not tolerate the happiness of his brilliant son, and cast him adrift upon the world West Point Experience. 29 without a penny in his pocket or a roof to shel- ter his weary head. After three years Allan followed his first wife to the grave and left his whole estate and three children to his second spouse, cutting off en- tirely poor Poe from inheriting a single dollar of his fortune. Under all the circumstances it was a cruel and dastard act towards a son, and deserves the severest reprobation. Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, must have had such a character as Allan in his mind when he uttered this epigram: "Our virtues disappear when put in competition with our interests, as rivers lose themselves in the ocean." Allan with all his wealth and power was com- pelled by Fate to go down to the cold and silent grave, to be a brother to the clod and a meal for the worm; poor as the meanest pauper. The prince and the peasant, the serf and the slave Are equal at last in the dust of the grave! THERE'S NO POCKET IN A SHROUD! You must leave your many millions And the gay and festive crowd; Though you roll in royal billions. There's no pocket in a shroud. 30 Edgar Allan Poe. Whether pauper, prince, or peasant; Whether rich or poor or proud — Remember that there im't Any pocket in a shroud. You'll have all this world of glory With a record long and loud. And a name in song and story, But no pocket in your shroud. So he gen'rous with your riches. Neither vain, nor cold, nor proud. And you'll gain the golden niches In a clime without a cloud! Drifting About Baltimore. 31 CHAPTBK V. DEIPTING ABOUT BALTIMOKE — LITEEARY SUCCESS. When the rude world turns its back on a poor but brilliant wandering mortal, and particularly a sensitive bard, he naturally turns, as a last re- sort, to the home of his blood-relatives to fathom the depths of their friendship — a very risky and doubtful venture. So Poe turned his footsteps in the summer of 1833 to Baltimore, where his brother William Henry, and his affectionate old aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, resided. It is presumed that he found shelter at least on his first arrival, although his brother was con- sidered a kind of chivalric individual, who "run the town" to suit himself. But Mrs. Clemm, who lived on Styles Street, came to his rescue as a guardian angel and con- tinued so to the end of his days. Poverty and per- secution only made him dearer to her affectionate heart and she finally bestowed upon the wander- ing minstrel her beautiful young daughter Vir- ginia, his first cousin. 32 Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. Wilmer, editor of the Saturday Visitor, offered a prize of one hundred dollars in gold for the best story and best poem. Poe saw the notice in the paper and sent in six "Tales of the Folio Club" and a short poem called the "Coliseum." The names of the au- thors were placed in a sealed envelope, while the stories and poems were submitted without names. After three well-known prominent men of Bal- timore examined the various manuscripts, they unanimously decided for Poe's tales. The examining committee even went so far as to issue the following statement, which must have been very flattering to the poor orphan boy, who had been but recently cast adrift by a self- ish old curmudgeon, a kind of replica of a self-constituted father. "Amongst the prose articles 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 'Manuscript 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 gratification of the community, to publish the entire volume ('Tales of the Polio Club'). These tales are eminently distinguished by a wild, vigorous, and Drifting About Baltimore. 33 poetical imagination, a rich style, a fertile inven- tion, and varied and curious learning. "John P. Kennedy, "J. H. B. Latkobe, "James H. Miller." Griswold, the literary executor of Poe, inti- mates that the committee decided in favor of our poet when they were enjoying the fumes of cigars and lushing down wine, and that it was the pretty handwriting of Poe that finally did the business. Hear the jealous editor: ' "Such matters are usually disposed of in a very ofEhand way. Committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer's health in good wines over unexamined manuscripts, which they submit to the discretion of publishers, with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote the publisher's advantage. So, perhaps, it would have been in this case, but that one of the com- mittee taking up a little book remarkably beau- tiful and distinct in caligraphy, was tempted to read several pages; and becoming interested, he summoned the attention of the company to the half dozen compositions it contained. It was unanimously decided that the prizes should be paid to 'the first of the geniuses who had written legibly.' Not another manuscript was unfolded. Immediately the 'confidential envelope' was opened, and the successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely known name of Poe." 34 Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. John P. Kennedy, one of the committee, and author of "The Eed Book" and "Swallow Barn" and afterwards Postmaster-General of the United States, became very much interested in Poe and invited him to his home to share the well-known hospitality of his mansion. It must have been heartrending for the poor fellow, when he received the invitation to dinner, as his clothes and personal appearance were un- suited to the occasion. Poe says in his reply: "Your invitation to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come, for reasons of the most humiliating na- ture — my personal appearance. You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but it is necessary." Mr. Kennedy sought out Poe and found him in poverty quarters, threadbare clothes and half starved. In the diary of Mr. Kennedy, he says: "I gave him clothing, free access to my table and the use of a horse for exercise whenever he chose; in fact, brought him up from the very verge of despair." Through all the shifting scenes of Poe's poverty he continued to compose stories and poetry and endeavored to find sale for his mental wares. Al- though his tales were weird, ghoulish and terrible, reflections, no doubt, of his tortured mind, he knew that intense and desperate narratives would command the attention of the "rabble" world, when the refined and beautiful emanations of his Drifting About Baltimore. 35 brain would find few buyers in the booths of Vanity Fair. In other words, poor Poe prostituted his celes- tial muse for daily bread and pawned her rarest gems for food and shelter, as many lofty poets had done before him. There seems to be a provi- dence in all this, for were it not for desperate ad- versity and absolute necessity. Genius would not think and work, but drift along on the sunbeams of imagination dancing with Terpsichore, vault- ing with Venus, or banqueting with Bacchus! THE BOAST OF BACCHUS. I reign over land, I reign over sea. The proudest of earth I bring to my Jcnee As weak as a child in the midnight of care; The prince and the peasant I strip bleak and bare. A taste of my blood sends a thrill to the heart. And speeds thro-wgh the soul like a poisonous dart; While I leave it a wreck of trouble and pain That never on earth can be perfect again. The youth in his bloom and the man in his might I capture by day and I conquer by night; The maid and the matron respond to my call; I rule like a tyrant and ride over all. 36 Edgar Allan Poe. In the gilded saloon and glittering crowd I deaden the senses and humble the proud. And tear from the noble, the good, and the great The love and devotion of home, church, and state. I blast all the honor that manhood holds dear; I smile with delight at the sight of a tear; And laugh in the revel and rout of a night — My mission on earth is to blur and to blight. I ruin the homes of the high and the low; J blast every hope of the friend and the foe; The world J sear with my blistering breath. And millions I lead to the portals of death. In the parlor and dance-hous'e I sparkle and roar Like billows that break on a wild, rocky shore; I crush every virtue, destroy every truth. That blossoms in beauty or blushes in youth. My power is mighty for sin and despair; I crouch, like a lion that waits in his lair. To mangle the life of the pure and the brave. And drag them in sorrow to shame and the grave. Baltimore Sidelights. 37 CHAPTEE VL BALTIMORE SIDELIGHTS. In Poe's wild wanderings over the earth his heart always turned to Baltimore, the city of beautiful belles and gallant beaux, and the place of his father's social eccentricities, his mother's theatrical triumphs, his grandfather's patriotism, and, above all, the spot where he had married Vir- ginia, his angelic wife. Although Philadelphia, ISTew York, and Kich- mond had given him opportunity to display his literary merit, Baltimore gave him the first chance to win a prize. He regarded that patriotic city (which kept the Star Spangled Banner fly- ing over Port McHenry in the very teeth and face of monarchy) as his home, and might well have exclaimed with poor Goldsmith: "And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue. Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, I still had hopes my long vexatious past — Here to return — and die at home at last!" 38 Edgar Allan Poe. Old citizens of Baltimore even to-day will dis- course with pleasure and pride of their acquaint- ance with Poe, and run over reminiscences of his erratic career. Professor John H. Hewitt was one of the edi- tors and critics of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, when it offered a hundred dollar prize, and also a iifty dollar prize, for the best tale and poem. Hewitt died a few years since, but left behind a written autobiography, which is now in the possession of William M. Marine, late Collector of Customs of Baltimore, and a lawyer with poetic proclivities, interested in the relics and remem- brance of Poe. In a recent letter Mr. Marine gives thus a few of his own memory milestones: "Years previous to the placing of a monument over Poe's remains, I was in the habit of visiting his neglected grave. The lot was one in which his ancestors were buried, in the rear of the church, in Westminster burial ground, half way between it and the south wall. I do not recall that any of the graves were marked in the lot. A slender granite stone, octagonal shaped, stand- ing opposite Edgar Allan Poe's supposed grave, a few feet out of the ground, apparently a lot marker, was the only memorial. It was subse- quently possessed by a Westerner, who presented it to a museum in his section, as the sentinel stone which for twenty-six years stood at Poe's grave. "After the supposed removal of Poe's remains. Baltimore Sidelights. 39 Doctor Moran, his attending physician in his last illness, told me Poe had not been removed; that be procured a poplar coffin, stained to resemble walnut, in which his remains were buried. Poe was said to have been exhumed in a mahogany coffin, pieces of which were exposed for sale by the sexton. I have such a piece, which was pro- cured from him myself. Poe's monument stands in a lot at the corner of Fayette and Green Streets, to which his supposed remains were re- moved. Several years ago, on the obliteration of the Dutch Cemetery, near Pordham, where his wife had been buried, her remains, filling a very small sized box, were removed and reinterred in the Poe monument lot. "Poe resided but a few years in Baltimore after the commencement of his literary career; he was engaged in Eichmond, Philadelphia and New York. Two of his residences in this city were, one of them on Styles Street, north side, near Gough Street; the other was on Eastern Avenue, south side, west of Central Avenue. When Hatch and Dunning, printers, were engaged in putting in type the Baltimore copy of his published poems, Poe then resided on Eastern Avenue. In the employ of Hatch and Dunning was a lad, Robert Sherwood, afterwards a member of a well- known firm of printers of his name in Baltimore. Mr. Sherwood told me of his repeated visits to Poe's residence with poem proof. They were usually received by a lady, who took them, and on the return of Mr. Sherwood she handed them back to him — Poe remaining invisible, rarely ap- 43 Edgar Allan Poe. pearing at the printing office. During Poe's residence in Baltimore he had his mail left at an apothecary store on Baltimore Street near Charles. A clerk who was in that store, stated to me that he saw him daily when he would call for his mail; he was a quiet, unobtrusive, modest person, who did not formally address others. He used few words, only enough to indicate his wishes; when he received his mail it was his in- variable custom to leave the store; he did not stand around and chat; he would bow politely to those whom he knew and walk off. He was described as of serious mien, given to reflection; neat in appearance, clothes glossy from wear, and scrupulously tidy. Cleanliness was a habit with him, which he never transgressed. He was never seen with any indications showing indulgence in alcoholic potations. That charge, at the time, was not raised against him. "I was present at the ceremonial of unveiling the monument to Poe's memory, November 17th, 1875, held in the Western Female High 'School. The auditorium was crowded. William Winter's poem, 'At Poe's Grave,' an exquisite one, was read in a masterly manner by Miss Eice. "When at the monument, the Philharmonic Society rendered the dirge 'Sleep and Rest.' "The monument was unveiled, when William F. Gill of Boston recited 'Annabel Lee,' and Miss Dillihunt 'The Bells.' No further exercises took place at the monument ; while they were in prog- ress, a keen cutting wind, sharp and violent, swept and howled in furious frenzy. So great Baltimore Sidelights. 41 was the flurry and disquieting the sighing wind, that people had to resist it to hold their ground. The cold was bitter; the bystanders shivered and crouched before such a Borean blast. "Besides those named by Professor Hewitt as present, were Professor Clark, at whose school Poe attended in Eichmond; Professor N". C. Brooks, who had edited the American Magazine, to which Poe contributed some of his earliest writings. Brooks was himself a famous poet. "The Baltimore book published in 1838 by W. H. Carpenter and T. H. Arthur, contained poems by Brooks, S. L. Wallis, John H. Hewitt, B. T. Eeese, McJilton, Arthur, and Carpenter. Poe contributed 'Slope: A Fable.' "Others who were invited and were not present, were Tennyson, Swinburne, Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes and others; they responded by letters. Walt Whitman, with his silvery, streaming locks, was the most prominent person- ality there. Home, of London, sent a lengthy tribute, as long as Tennyson's was short. S. D. Lewis and Margaret J. Preston were eulogistic. Saxe said, 'The occasion was to perform a patri- otic office,' Helen Whitman expressed her 'warm- est sympathies and most grateful appreciation;' John Neal said, 'Having given him his first push in his upward career, he was bound to keep him moving.' Ingram said, 'He had little faith in heaps of stones as memorials of the great, but must confess that a public expression of admira- tion for an illustrious son whose memory has been so long overclouded by unmerited obloquy 42 Edgar Allan Poe. does seem fitting on the part of America.' Ald- rieh and Davidson were equally as favorable. Mallarine, Hayne and Pawcett sent poetical wreaths. "A contrast were the letters of Bryant and Longfellow. Poe had unmercifully criticised the latter in his literati papers. Bryant wrote a let- ter not at all creditable. Longfellow sent one beautiful as his poetry, and without the slight- est tinge of the human in it, partaking of the sweetness of the divine." Professor Hewitt, editor and poet, the personal acquaintance of Poe, speaks as follows about the peculiarities of our great story-teller: "So much has been written and said of late years concerning Edgar Allan Poe and myself, that I feel disposed to dilate on that part of his history and mine which relates to our acquaint- ance. In the year 1875, November 17th, a small memorial stone was placed over the bones of the favorite poet of America, and dedicated to the memory of that poet, who had lain under the sod of old Westminster Church graveyard for twenty- six years, unhonored and scarcely noticed, save by curious strangers, who were anxious to look at the grave of a poor scholar who, while living, found it hard work to keep from starving. This dead poet, after he had 'shuffled off his mortal coil,' was noticed by some of the leading English journalists, who discoursed that America had at length produced a poet worthy of notice. Baltimore Sidelights. 43 "The large hall of the Western High School was selected for the performance of the cere- monies. The room was handsomely decorated, there was a select choir, — a spacious platform on which sat a number of distinguished citizens, while the front seats were crowded with the beauty and fashion of the city. The exercises commenced with the rendering of the 'Pilgrims' Chorus' by the Philharmonic Society. Professor William Elliot then arose and delivered an address, in which he related the history of the movement which had culminated in the exercises of the oc- casion. He stated that Poe was born in Boston, January 20th, 1809, and died in Baltimore, 7th of October, 1849. Two days after his death his remains were interred in the cemetery attached to the Westminster Presbyterian Church. Those who attended the burial on that gloomy day were named. Many of them had gone down to their own graves." For a number of years after the burial of the poet no steps were taken to mark his grave. At length a stone was orderd by Nelson Poe, Edgar's cousin; but unfortunately this stone was broken to pieces "by a train of cars," which accidentally ran into the marble works of Mr. Hugh Sisson, and so damaged it that it was unfit to be used as intended. Another series of years intervened, but yet no monument to mark the grave. But Poe's neg- lected grave "was not long to remain such." At a regular meeting of the Public School 44 Edgar Allan Poe. Teachers' Association, held on October 7th, 1865, Mr. John Basil, a principal, offered a number of resolutions, which resulted in the appointing of a committee of six to work up the object of erecting a monument over the poet's remains. Funds were raised among the teachers and pupils of the vari- ous schools, the collections being under the super- intendence of Miss S. S. Rice. The sum raised was scarcely sufficient — so the large hearted George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, was applied to, who at once made up the deficiency, which was estimated at $650. The memorial stone was chiseled at the establishment of Mr. Hugh Sisson, and placed in its position. Much was due to the energy of Miss Sara S. Eice, and when presented to the audience she was received with rounds of ap- plause. John H. B. Latrobe, Esq., delivered an oration, which was almost entirely made up of reminis- cences of Poe. He being on the committee that awarded Poe and myself premiums, offered by the proprietors of the Visitor, honestly gave his experience in that labor. He stated as nearly as he could recollect the facts, and when he announced that the committee, after much con- sideration, awarded to me the premium for the best poem, the audience shook the building with their long and loud applause. I was seated on the platform, Walt Whitman in front of me. Dr. Snodgrass on my right, and my eldest son, Horatio, on my left. I was so taken by surprise that I hid my head, but my name being called by himdrede of mouths I arose and bowed my ac- Baltimore Sidelights. 45 knowledgments — for I have always been a poor offhand orator. Mr. Latrobe said: "The poetry offered, al- though better than the prose, was bad enough, and when we had gone more or less thoroughly over the pile of manuscripts, two pieces only were con- sidered worthy of consideration. The title of one was 'The Coliseum,' which was Poe's. The title of the other I have forgotten, but upon opening the accompanying envelopes we found that the author was Mr. John H. Hewitt, still living in Baltimore, and well known, I believe, in the musi- cal world both as a poet and a composer. I am not prepared to say that the committee may not have been biased in awarding the fifty dollar prize to Mr. Hewitt, by the fact that they had al- ready given the one hundred dollar prize to Mr. Poe. I recollect, however, we agreed, under the circumstances, that the excellence of Mr. Hewitt's poem deserved a reward, and we gave the smaller prize to him with clear consciences." About the time of the dedication of the me- morial stone there appeared in the papers of the day a number of sketches of the life and char- acter of Edgar Allan Poe. (I have as many as I can rake together in my scrap book.) Some were unbecomingly bitter, and others fulsome and almost sickening in their tone — while others again were mere fiction. In order to show my readers how much confidence is to be placed in the "rec- ollections" of these ephemeral penny-a-liners, I will quote a passage from an article written by 46 Edgar Allan Poe. E. H. Stoddard, a very popular contributor to several of the leading magazines: "It is in the summer or early autumn of 1833, and the proprietors of the Saturday Visitor have offered two prizes to the aspiring literati of Amer- ica — one for the best tale that may be sent them, the other for the best poem. Among those who competed was Poe, who submitted a poem and six prose sketches. The elegance of his penman- ship tempted one of the committee who was to make the award to read several pages of the man- uscript volume in which the sketches were written. He was interested in them, as were also the others ; so much so, that they decided to read no more of the manuscripts but to give the prize to the first of the geniuses who had written legibly. When the confidential envelope was opened it was found that the writer's name was Poe, and Mr. Poe was accordingly notified by advertisement of his success. He rushed at once before the publisher of the Saturday Visitor, who was moved by his ap- pearance, and came (to see the Hon. John P. Ken- nedy) just as he was (the prize money not having been paid him), thin, pale, with the marks of sickness and destitution in his face. His seedy coat, buttoned up tight to his chin, concealed the absence of a shirt. Less successful were his shoes. Out at the elbows as he was, the gentleman was apparent in his bearing, and the man of genius in his conversation." This is all sheer nonsense. To show that it is Baltimore Sidelights. 47 so, I will merely make an abstract from an article written by myself at the request of the editor of the Baltimorean, a weekly literary journal for which I have written much. "The ignis-fatuus prosperity of the Saturday Visitor (published by Messrs^ Cloud and Ponder and edited by myself) induced the proprietors to offer two premiums for two of the best liter- ary productions by Baltimoreans — a tale for which one hundred dollars was offered, and a poem, the value of which was fixed at fifty dollars. Some fifty or sixty productions, in both prose and poetry, were sent in — ^the names of the writers, according to arrangement, being in separate en- velopes. The committee, appointed by Messrs. Cloud and Ponder, were John H. B. Latrobe, Esq., Hon. John P. Kennedy and Dr. James H. Miller. "After detaining the manuscripts several days, these gentlemen reported the result of their labors. The first premium was awarded to Edgar Allan Poe, for a wild story in the style of the 'Eime of the Ancient Mariner,' entitled 'A Manuscript Found in a Bottle ;' the second, to a poem bearing the title of 'The Song of the Winds,' which came in competition with Poe's 'Coliseum.' The report of the gentlemen composing the committee stated that the contest for the second premium was nar- rowed down to these two poems, and in consid- eration of Poe having received the award for the story, they thought it nothing more than right that the writer of the 'Song of the Winds' should receive the prize for the poem, when the contest 48 Edgar Allan Poe. was so closed. Poe received his money with many thanks. I preferred a silver goblet, which is now in the possession of my family. "The glory of the achievement was merely ephemeral, for with the public the afEair was soon forgotten. Not so with my testy eompeti- tor. He thought he had found a mare's nest, and determined to abstract the egg therefrom. "A week or two afterwards, I met the irrita- ble poet near the office of the Visitor. This meeting was anything but pleasant to both of us. He had taken it into his head that I, being the known editor of the paper, should be debarred from being a competitor for either of the prizes. I did not deny the charge of being the editor, but I denied using the name of the editor, and also of using underhand means to bias a committee of gentlemen so well known to the public as men of honor and integrity. The committee did not know the author of the successful poem until they had consulted the sealed envelopes ; when they did this, they found the name of Henry Wilton, a name which I used instead of my own, and when Mr. Latrobe asked who was Henry Wilton, I told him that I represented that obscure personage. "Poe was handsome, with a broad forehead, a large, magnificent eye, dark brown and rather curly hair, well formed, about five feet seven in height. He dressed neatly in his palmy days — wore Byron collars and a black neckerchief, look- ing the poet all over. The expression of his face was thoughtful, melancholy, and rather stern. In disposition he was somewhat overbearing and Baltimore Sidelights. 49 spiteful. I saw him drunk once, or perhaps under the influence of narcotics. "Some years subsequently I met Poe on Penn- sylvania Avenue, Washington. His appearance was woe-begone, his features haggard, and his expressive eye had lost its lustre. I thought on the instant of four lines in his poem of 'Al Araaf : " 'Beyond that death no immortality — But sleep that pondereth and is not to be — And there — oh! may my weary spirit dwell — Apart from Heaven's — eternity — and yet how far from hell.' He offered me his hand, and asked if I would let 'bygones be bygones !' Of course I did not turn my back on him, but relieved his wants to the best of my ability. I never saw him afterwards." The following lines, from the poems, "Song of the Winds," and "Coliseum," are submitted for the reader's poetic judgment : SONG OF THE WINDS. I have come pure and fresh from the soft sunny climes. With the richest incense of a thousand sweet flowers; I have frolicked in many a forest of limes And stolen the dewdrops from jessamine bowers. 50 Edgar Allan Poe. I have hissed the white crest of the moon-silvered wave. And bosom'd the sail of the light skimming iarquej I have sung my mad dirge o'er the sailor ioy's grave, And fann'd up the Haze of the meteor's spark. I have warbled my song by the sea's pebbly shore. And wandered around young Andromeda's form; I have played with the surf when its frolic was o'er. And bellowed aloud with the shout of the storm. I have wildly careered through the shivering shrouds. And rent the broad sail of the corsair in twain; I have screamed at the burst of the thunder charged clouds. And laughed at the rage of the petulant main. THE COLISEUM. Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquM-y Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length — at length — after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, {Thirst for the springs of love that in me lie,) Baltimore Sidelights. 51 I Teneel, an altered and an humble man. Amid thy sfiadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grwndeur, gloom, and glory! Vastness! and age! and Memories of Eld! Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night! I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength — spells more sure than e'er Judwan king Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane! O charms more potent than the rapt Chaldee Ever drew down from out the quiet stars! Were, where a hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy hat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! 52 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTER VII. WKITING FOB "lITEHABT MESSBSTGEE" — EEMOESE AND REVIEWS. In August, 1834, Mr. T. W. White, a gentleman with bravery and cash, started a magazine in Rich- mond, Va., called the Southern Literary Messenger, which at that time was considered a doubtful venture south of Mason and Dixon's line." Although many fine writers had come from the south and lent renown to their section, yet litera- ture did not seem to prosper in a land where slavery was an institution ; and liberty of thought like a poor relative at a wedding, was compelled to take a back seat and preserve a modest silence ! Literature cannot prosper where slavery and tyranny dominate. In the March and April numbers, of the year 1835, we find two stories of Poe in the Messenger — "Bemiee," and "Morella," which created quite a sensation, and lifted Poe out of the common rut of authors. While the stories were uncanny and wild yet there, was a literary sweep and beauty "Writing for "Literary Messenger." 53 about the lofty lines that struck the reader with a kind of shudder at the magnetic audacity of the author. Mr. White said, "There can be but one opinion as to the force and elegance of his style. He discovers a superior capacity and a highly cul- tivated taste in composition." Mr. Kennedy, the faithful patron and friend of Poe, wrote the following letter to Mr. White, pro- prietor of the Messenger, which resulted in the reg- ular employment of our poet as assistant editor, at a salary of about forty-three dollars a month. "Baltimore, April 13, 1835. "Dear Sir: Poe did right in referring to me. He is very clever with his pen — classical and scholarlike. He wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he can be made very useful to you. And, poor fellow! he is very poor. I told him to write something for every number of your magazine and that you might find it to your advantage to give him some permanent employ. He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of , in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been promising to publish them. This young fel- low is highly imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money, and I have no doubt you and he will find your account in each other." Poe was under great restraint, socially, while "rooting" around Eichmond, conjuring up tales and stories for the magazine, It was said that in 54 Edgar Allan Poe. fits of melancholy or remorse he would resort to the wine cup with old schoolmates, and endeavor to drown the remembrance of his early love and disappointed ambition. This letter to Mr. Kennedy, containing suicidal thoughts, betrays Poe's state of mind at that time. Any mortal with a particle of human pity must feel a sincere sympathy to know that a God-given genius could be so "wretched," and did not know ''that it is at all necessary to live." "Richmond, September 11, 1835. "Dear Sir : I received a letter from Dr. Miller, in which he tells me you are in town. I hasten, therefore, to write you, and express by letter what I have always found it impossible to express orally — my deep sense of gratitude for your fre- quent and ineffectual assistance and kindness. Through your kindness Mr. White has been in- duced to 'employ me in assisting him with the editorial duties of his magazine, at a salary of five hundred and twenty dollars per annum. The situation is agreeable to me for many reasons, but, alas! it appears to me that nothing can give me pleasure or the slightest gratification. Excuse me, my dear sir, if in this letter you find much incoherency. My feelings at this moment are pitiable indeed. 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 T am still miserable in spite of the great im- provement in my circumstances. I say you will Writing for "Literary Messenger." 55 believe me, and for this simple reason, that a man who is writing for effect does not write thus. My heart is open before you; if it be worth reading, read it. I ain wretched and know not why. Con- sole me — for you can. But let it be quickly, or it will be too late. Write me immediately; con- vince me that it is worth one's while, that it is at all necessary to live, and you will prove your- self indeed my friend. Persuade me to do what is right. I do mean this. I do not mean that you should consider what I now write you a jest. Oh, pity me ! for I feel that my words are incoherent, but I will recover myself. You will not fail to see that I am suffering under a de- pression of spirits which will ruin me should it be long continued. Write me then and quick- ly; urge me to do what is right. Your words will have more weight with me than the words of others, for you were my friend when no one else was. Fail not, as you value your peace of mind hereafter. E. A. PoE." Mr. Kennedy sends this reply: "I am sorry to see you in such a plight as your letter shows you in. It is strange that just at this time, when everybody is praising you, and when fortune is beginning to smile upon your hitherto wretched circumstances, you should be invaded by these blue devils. It belongs, how- ever, to your age and temper to be thus buffeted — but be assured it only wants a little resolution to master the adversary forever. You will doubt- less do well henceforth in literature, and add to 56 Edgar Allan Poe. your comforts, as well as to your reputation, which it gives me pleasure to assure you is every- where rising in popular esteem." In the December Messenger Poe took a fling for the first time at authors in general as a book reviewer, and ever after kept up his attack where- ever his pen had free force. He seemed delighted to puncture mediocre and established authors alike, and consequently raised a host of enemies, that flew and buzzed about his ears like mosquitoes from the Dismal Swamp. Poe's criticism was as searching as a modern X-ray, and although other tripod critics might miss the internal mistakes and missiles of book writers, Poe never failed to locate some error, and too often magnified it with his intellectual searchlight. He ridiculed and tore to pieces the authors of his day, and while moaning over the world's neglect, he should have known that a man seldom receives courtesy and kindness if he does not ex- tend it to others. Poe swooped down upon the authors of his time like a hawk into a country poultry yard; and the cocks, hens and chickens of the literary tribe ran to cover with a startled crow and cackle that even now echoes at the mention of the crit- ic's name. Life is too short to hate each other, and love is too sweet to barter for vengeance ! His nature in later years became saturnine, as shown in his "Murders of the Eue Morgue," "The Black Cat," "The Fall of the House of Usher," Writing for "Literary Messenger.'* 57 "The Gold Bug," "Moon Hoax," "The Pit and Pendulum," and "Adventures of Sir Gordon Pym." Even the poetry he wrote breathes but the wail of buried hopes and disappointed ambition. Poe reveled in mysteries, and his tales and stories are filled with surprises and unexpected denouements, mystifying the reader by his litera- ture as well as his secretive life. He fully intended to let the world "guess" him, imitating a veiled prophet, whose influence is measured in proportion to the amouni of fantas- tic glamour thrown around the precincts of his enchanting sanctum. Poe possessed the industry, cunning and pa- tience of a spider, and yet while weaving subtle webs of fancy, many blue-bottle flies, wasps and hornets of practical literature tore to pieces his finest structures and left him often without food and shelter. He seemed to regard the praise and fame of contemporary authors as a personal rebuke and insult to himself, wondering at the presumption and ignorance of a rushing world that could ad- mire anything but the central sun of American literature! It was, however, a pleasant and somewhat justified conceit, and flattered the ma- jestic egotism of our genius, who took praise as the principal emoluments of his intellectual la- bors. Ifs human to err, divine to forgive. Our motto should ie — to li'B& and let live, 'And he who is pure in smd and in bone. May throw if he dare a clod or a stone! 58 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTER VIII. MARRIAGE — MAGAZINE WRITINGS — MIGRATION TO NEW YORK. PoE sought for sympathy and praise from a cold and calculating world, but found it not. At last he turned to the ties of blood, and found sweet love and devotion in the heart and soul of his sixteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, the daughter of Maria Poe, his father's sister. At the age of twenty-seven he was married to his consumptive relative, at old Christ Church, Baltimore, by Rev. John Johns, September 2d, 1835. A few days after this event he went to Rich- mond, Va., leaving his young wife with her mother in Baltimore; but a few months afterwards they were again united, while he was writing stories and cutting reviews for the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe warmed over the cold meats of literature and dished them up for the delectation of his southern readers. "A Manuscript Found in a Marriage — Magazine Writings. 59 Bottle," "The Valley of Nis," "Irene," and other productions were "hashed" over, and seemed to startle and amuse the newspapers of that day, although many of the Journals lashed the young poetic genius with whips of logic and sneers of scorn. Poe continued to write and ruminate around Eichmond, and when not chained to the society of his beautiful wife, men who knew him at that time told me he spent his leisure hours in snug saloons, roystering with tavern tipplers and old schoolmates. Mr. White could not tolerate his conduct any longer and a separation took place, Poe going to New York, and securing a position on the New York Review with Dr. Hawkes. After leaving the Messenger Poe had a fit of remorse, a frequent condition with him, and wrote to Mr. White, making promises of amendment. The following letter, found among the papers of Poe, will be about the best evidence that can be produced as to his drinking habits. I'm sorry to say that this child of genius, like his prototypes through all the centuries, was addicted to indul- gence in the wine cup, but the truth must be told though the heavens fall. I have been guilty of over- indulgence myself, and should anybody care to delve into the actions of my life when the grave grass whispers above my tomb, let them tell the truth, and say that for forty years (up to January 1st, 1900), in war and peace, Bacchus, the Adjutant- General of the devil, commanded me more or less, as social cheer, financial or family troubles in- 60 Edgar Allan Poe. spired or afflicted my heart and soul. What's the use of sneaking and lying about a matter of fact? Let others, in home, church and state, play the hypocrite, I shall not do it, and while I live shall never knowingly consent to use a particle of policy in my principle ! The plain words of Mr. White clear up the murky atmosphere of Poe's commenders and critics. "My Dear Edgar: I cannot address you in such language as this occasion and my feelings de- mand; I must be content to speak to you in my plain way. "That you are sincere in all your promises I firmly believe. But when you once again tread these street I have my fears that your resolutions will fail, and that you will again drink till your senses are lost. "If you rely on your own strength you are gone. Unless you look to your Maker for help you will not be safe. How much I regretted in parting from you is known to Him only and myself. I had become attached to you; I am still, and I would willingly say 'return,' did not a knowledge of your past life make me dread a speedy renewal of our separation. If you would make yourself contented with quarters in my house, or with any private family where liquor is not used, I should think there was some hope for you. But if you go to a tavern, or to any place where it is used at table, you are not safe. "You have fine talents, Edgar, and you ought Marriage — Magazine Writings. 61 to have them respected as well as yourself. Learn to respect yourself and you will soon find that you are respected. Tell me if you can and will do BO? "If you become again an assistant in my office, it is to be strictly understood that all engagements on my part cease the moment you get drunk. I am, your true friend, "T. W. White." The poems "Israfel" and "The City of Sin," first-class productions, appeared in the August number of the Messenger, and in January and February, 1837, his first chapters of the "Narra- tive of Arthur Gordon Pym," professedly a per- sonal sea experience, was given to the world, and created quite a stir among general readers as well as literary critics. "Gordon Pym" was published in book form by the Harper Brothers in July, 1838. Poe and his wife and mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, removed to New York in the spring of 1837, and remained there until the following fall of 1838. While writing on the Review Poe had full swing with his literary scythe, and cut into the rank meadow of current periodicals and books with a bold and unsparing hand, pricking with the cambric needle of his genius the pimples and warts of local literature, or slashing into the tall timbers of noted authors with a broadaxe. We find Poe and his wife residing in modest quarters at 113 Carmine Street, where Mrs. Clemm 62 Edgar Allan Poe. kept a boarding-house to drive the wolf from the door, as many a finely reared woman had done before her. The financial help that Poe gave to the support of the family could not have been much, as ten dollars a week seemed to be the pay of newspaper and magazine writers of that day. A dealer in old books, named Gowans, a Scotch- Irishman, or hyphenated nondescript, tells the fol- lowing fulsome story of Poe and his beautiful Virginia : "I will also show you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate genius. It may be estimated as worth little, but it has this merit — it comes from an eye and ear witness; and this, it must be re- membered, is the very highest of legal evidence. For eight months or more one house contained us, one table fed ! During that time I saw much of him, and had an opportunity of conversing with him often, and I must say I never saw him the least affected with liquor, nor even descend to any known vice, while he was one of the ftiost courte- ous, gentlemanly, and intelligent companions I have met with during my journeyings and baitings through divers divisions of the globe; besides, he had an extra inducement to be a good man as well as a good husband, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and loveliness. Her eyes could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate; a temper and dis- position of surpassing sweetness; besides, she eeemed as much devoted to him and his every in- Marriage — Magazine Writings. 63 terest as a young mother is to her first-born. . . . Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing coimtenanee — what the ladies would call decidedly handsome." LOVE. Love and beauty ever lingers. Like the blush upon the jlowers, Spreading hope with fairy fingers Through the darkest, loneliest hours. And when every earthly pleasure Takes its reeling lightning flight. Love is still our radiant treasure. Like the glittering stars of night. Winter cannot chill its glory. It can all the world defy. And 'twill shine in song and story. For true love can never die! 64 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTEE IX. LIFE IK PHILADELPHIA — CRITICISMS OF AUTHORS. We find Poe and his family in Philadelphia in the fall of 1839, writing occasionally for the North American Magazine of Baltimore, published by Nathan C. Brooks ; and also an assistant editor for the Gentleman's Magazine of Philadelphia, owned by William E. Burton, a former English come- dian. Mr. Brooks, of Baltimore, was anxious that Poe should write a review of the works of Washington Irving, who was the most noted American author of his day. Poe, it seems, had other work on hand just at that time, and declined the proffered job. He had time enough, however, to say to Brooks: "I can hardly say that I am conversant with Ir- ving's writings, having read nothing of his since I was a boy." "Irving is much overrated, and a nice distinction might be drawn between his just and his surreptitious and adventitious reputation." "If you would delay the Review I would be happy to do my best." It seems that Poe never did undertake to root Life in Philadelphia. 65 and plough up the works of Irving; yet he was willing to "assail" the best classical writer of our country, concluding at the start that the author of the "Crayon Papers," "Granada," "Brace- bridge Hall," and "Alhambra," was a "much over- rated man." In the spring and summer of 1840 "The Fall of the House of Usher," and the story of "William Wilson" appeared in the Gentleman's Magaeine, and created a marked sensation in the reading world. Poe seemed to be again sailing on the high tide of prosperity ; but, as usual, his restless nature never knew when to let "well enough" alone, and a break took place between him and Mr. Burton, the proprietor of the magazine. A letter of confession and remorse, periodical ebullitions of Poe, was written to Mr. Burton, and that gentleman, with a forgiving nature, like Mr. White of Richmond, answered the wail of our poet, wiping out the old score of indiscretions, but at the same time warning his brilliant employee in the following language. (The world has a very forgiving spirit for a genius.) "I am sorry that you thought it necessary to send me such a letter. Your troubles have given a mor- bid tone to your feelings, which it is your duty to discourage. I myself have been as severely handled by the world as you can possibly have been, but my sufferings have not tinged my mind with mel- ancholy, nor jaundiced my views of society. "You must rouse your energies, and if care as- sail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook the 66 Edgar Allan Poe. past. I hope you will as easily fulfill your pledges for the future. We shall agree very well, though I cannot permit the nlagazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so 'suc- cessful with the mob.' I am truly much less anx- ious about making a monthly 'sensation' than I am upon the point of fairness. "You must, my dear sir, get rid of your avowed feeling towards your brother authors. You see I speak plainly; I cannot do otherwise upon such a subject. You say the people love Tiavoc' I think they love justice. I think you, yourself, would not have written the article on Mr. Dawes in a more healthy state of mind. I am not trammeled by any vulgar consideration of expediency ; I would rather lose money than by such undue severity wound the feelings of a kind-hearted honorable man. "Now, I am satisfied that Dawes has something of the true fire in him. I regretted your word catching spirit. But I wander from my design. I accept your proposition to recommence your in- terrupted avocations on the magazine. Let us meet as if we had not exchanged letters. Use more exercise, write when feeling prompts, and be as- sured of my friendship. You will soon regain a healthy activity of mind and laugh at your past vagaries." Mr. Eufus Dawes, referred to by Mr. Burton, was considered by the public one of the best poets of his day, and many regarded his "Geraldine" and "Athenia of Damascus" as first-class. Life in Philadelphia. 67 Poe says, however, that these lengthy poems were "pompous nonsense, and ridiculous imitations, in which the beauty of the originals have been sedu- lously avoided, as the blemishes have been blunder- ingly culled ! In style Dawes is perhaps the most inflated, involved and falsely figurative of any of our noted poets. His apparent erudition is mere verbiage, and were it real would be lamentably out of place." Poe pronounces "Geraldine" "abomi- nable rigmarole," and that "the whole poem is per- vaded by unintelligibility !" It occurs to me right here to say that a man who is poor and brilliant, and ostracized from society by his genius, from keeping step to the music of fashionable society, is ever on the lookout for some fault or sensation to bring his imagined enemies into disrepute and expose them to the ridicule of the "mob." Poe was ever tearing down established reputa- tions, reveled in gloom and ghoulish thoughts, and delighted in destruction. Such a man will have intellectual admirers, but no friends. His very intimates and desk workers did not know what mo- ment he would cry "havoc," and let slip the dogs of war ! It is well to "steer clear" and "fight shy" of such a character, for he has nothing to lose and nothing but notoriety to gain, which will enable him to sell to some ambitious publisher his next sensational article, coined from his burning brain and elastic conscience into ready cash-all for the pathetic purpose of "keeping the wolf from the door!" How much literature is indebted to dire neces- 68 Edgar Allan Poe. sity ! A beautiful and brilliant flower exhales its sweetest perfume only when crushed; so the im- pulsive product of genius thrUls and enlightens mankind. Eichard Henry Stoddard, a personal acquaint- ance and compiler of the life of Poe, says : "Poe's narrow but acute mind enabled him to detect the verbal faults of those whom he criticised, but it disqualified him from perceiving their mental qual- ities. He mastered the letter, but the spirit es- caped him. He advanced no critical principle which he established ; he attacked no critical prin- ciple which he overthrew. He broke a few butter- flies on his wheel, but he destroyed no reputation. He was a powerless iconoclast !" Yet this "narrow but acute mind" produced this soul-sigh : DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. Take this kiss upon thy hrow! And, in parting from you now. Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream j Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day. In a vision, or in none. Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. Life in Philadelphia. 69 / stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore. And I hold with my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep. While I weep — while I weep! God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream ? 70 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTER X. home at speing garden — family felicity — "geaham's magazine." The re-established relations with Burton seemed to give a temporary solace and profitable occupa- tion to Poe. We find him living in a neat and comfortable cottage at Spring Garden, a suburb of Philadelphia, surrounded by the loving influ- ence of his delicate wife and energetic mother-in- law, Mrs. Clemm, who through all the poet's vicis- situdes acted the constant part of guardian angel. The literary atmosphere of Philadelphia was sunny and congenial, and its proverbial hospitality and loyalty was extended to Poe by neighbors and newmade friends. Captain Mayne Eeid, the Irish novelist, seemed to be on friendly terms with Poe, and frequently visited him at his rural home. He describes the house as neat and snug, surrounded by trees, trail- ing vines and blooming flowers, made musical by the songs of variegated birds and cooled by the vagrajit zephyrs that skipped across the waters of Home at Spring Garden. 71 the Schuylkill, when sunset rays purpled the gath- ering shadows of the dying day ! Speaking of Poe's young wife, Eeid says: "No one who remembers that dark-eyed daughter of the south, her face so exquisitely lovely; her gentle, graceful demeanor; no one who has ever spent an hour in her society, but will endorse what I have said of this lady, who was the most delicate realiza- tion of the poet's ideal. But the bloom upon her cheek was too bright for earth. It was consump- tion's color — that sadly beautiful light that beck- ons to an early grave." Mrs. Clemm is described by the same florid author as follows : "She was the ever vigilant guardian of the house, watching over the comfort of her two chil- dren, keeping everything neat and clean, so as to please the fastidious eyes of the poet; going to market and bringing home the little delicacies that their limited means would allow; going to publishers with a poem, a critique or story, and often returning without the much needed money." What a faithful slave to love and duty ; and how sad and pathetic the sight to see a poor, practical female housekeeper trudging the streets of a great city, searching from office to office for some pub- lisher or editor who would listen to her story and deign to look over and purchase the mental pro- ductions of her "darling Eddie!" Few poets have ever been blessed with such a faithful friend, one who, in the deepest vale of ad- versity, would persistently overlook and excuse 72 Edgar Allan Poe. the faults of genius, and mantle with kind words and flowers the pallet of poverty or the dungeon of disgrace. If God is good He must certainly have a snug corner in His house of many mansions, where such love-lit, pure souls as those of Mrs. Clemm are cheered and cherished with everlasting happi- ness, as a slight recompense for the unselfish trials they have endured on this sin-cursed and sordid earth. Out of such lovely and beautiful creatures angels are made! Where is the man living who will suffer in silence, in sorrow or in poverty, as long as a true woman ? The Gentleman's Magazine and The Cachet were merged into Graham's Magazine in Novem- ber, 1840, Mr. George E. Graham becoming the proprietor. Poe continued as editor, and in his monthly "reviews" made it "red hot" for the struggling authors of his day, slashing right and left with his merciless adjectives, vicious verbs and "naked nouns !" In the interval of his magazine hack work he found time to compose and publish a lot of horri- ble and impossible stories, such as "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Mary Ro- get," and "The Purloined Letter." These were sensational to the highest degree, and even now they give the sensitive reader "the shivers," in perusing their complicated and unearthly plots. But they sold, and pleased the mob. In the spring of 1841 Poe became acquainted with Eev. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a pulpitless Baptist preacher, who betrayed an itching for Home at Spring Garden. 73 literature and pretended to a critical knowledge of poetry. He compiled "The Poets and Poetry of America," from the early colonial days down to 1855 — more than a hundred veritable patriots, who, no doubt, all imagined that the mantle of Homer, Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, would not make a respectable vest for their greatness! Biographical sketches were given, mostly in lauda- tory, flattering language, to tickle the vanity of the authors and at the same time enlist their ef- forts in the sale of the book! Griswold seemed to be a business fellow; and while he cared not a straw for all the poets in creation he knew how to make himself solid with the proprietor of Gra- ham's Magazine, and finally succeeded in landing Poe "outside the breastworks" of that material periodical. Poe "knifed" Griswold's poetry book and that broke the friendship. After floundering about Philadelphia a couple of years, Poe, as usual, became restless, and sighed for new scenes and strange avocations. He had a literary friend named Frederick William Thomas, who had secured a Government clerkship in Wash- ington City, and Poe as a last resort applied for a Government Job, where the work would be easy and the emoluments sure, while toying among the pigeonholes of clerical circumlocution. It seems that he knew President Tyler and his son "Bob," and being a son of "Old Virginia" and a protege of Postmaster-General John P. Kennedy, he thought he saw his calling clear. Poe says in a letter to his friend Thomas, dated July 4th, 1841 : "I would be glad to get almost 74 Edgar Allan Poe. any appointment, even a five-hundred-dollar one, so that I have something independent of letters for daily subsistence. To coin one's brain into silver and gold at the nod of a master is, to my think- ing, the hardest task in the world !" In another wail of anguish he exclaims: "I wish to God I could visit Washington — ^but the old story, you know — I have no money; not enough to take me there, saying nothing of getting back. It is a hard thing to he poor; but as I am kept so by an honest motive I dare not complain." Poor fellow ! What a providential thing it was for humanity at large that Edgar Allan Poe missed that "five-hundred-dollar" clerkship ! In all probability, with his social and languishing nature, had he been appointed to a Government clerkship he would have drifted into a rut of de- pendence, sycophancy and inanity, moving along in his tread mill avocation among musty files, or tortured with Departmental rules and orders of some petty tyrant, a puffed-up "scrub" from the back woods in temporary power — apd thus situ- ated the world would have lost "Annabel Lee," "The Bells," and "The Baven." A verse from "The Conquering Worm" shows the state of Poe's gloomy mind, the sad drama of the world passing before him like a bloody, writh- ing serpent : Out — out are the lights — out all! And over each quivering form. The curtain^ a funeral pall — 'Comes down with the rush of a storm. Home at Spring Garden. 75 And the angels, all pallid and wan. Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy MAN, And its hero — the Conquering Worm. 76 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTEE XI. REMOVAL TO NEW YORK — WOEK ON THE "DAILY MIEKOE" EEEATIC NATUEE. Mr. Geaham reluctantly lost Poe from his magazine. He had just added to his literary laurels "The Gold Bug," a prize story for which he cap- tured one hundred dollars. In competing for literary prizes offered by practical publishers, Poe invariably carried off the honors from all com- petitors, showing his superior genius in the com- position of thrilling tales and stories. In his line of fantastic and frantic literature he has had no equal or superior in America, and this very fact made him a constant target, living and dead, for the arrows of muddled mediocrity, that is ever envious of a shining mark. The uncharitable censures of Griswold over the cold remains of the dead poet find a consoling con- trast in the encomiums of Mr. Graham, who was conversant with the daily life of our genius. He says: "I shall never forget how solicitous of the happiness of his wife and mother-in-law he was Removal to New York. 77 whilst one of the editors of Graham's Magazine. His whole efforts seemed to be to procure the com- fort and welfare of his little home. Except for their happiness, and the natural ambition of hav- ing a magazine of his own, I never heard him de- plore 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 re- ceived from me, in regular monthly instalments, 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 home, 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 away 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 him a shudder, a heart chill that was visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the re- membrance 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 anticipation of her loss that made him a sad and thoughtful man, and lent a mournful melody to his undying song." After Poe relinquished his hold on Graham's Magazine he endeavored for a year to secure sub- scribers for a magazine to be called the Stylvs, to be published in conjunction with Mr. Clark. Ifot- 78 Edgar Allan Poe. withstanding his efforts in Philadelphia, New York, Kichmond and Washington, he failed to get even five hundred paying subscribers. He never learned the worldly injunction — to crook the preg- nant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning. Poets are not experts in that line. Poe spent more than a month in Washington, endeavoring to secure his southern friends' patron- age for his cherished Stylus, and applied per- sonally to President Tyler and cabinet for sup- port. Brady, the noted photographer, told me in 1866 that he met Poe in March, 1843, at the house of a widow Barrett, where he was rooming on New York Avenue, south side, near the junction of H and Thirteenth Streets, adjoining "Halls of the Ancients." Poe, it seems, was enjoying himself with his friend Mr. Thomas, and the "boys," paying more attention to Bacchus than to business. In one of his "moody moments," as Brady expressed it, he wrote the first draft of "The Eaven." This fac simile letter to Mr. Clark will show the forlorn condition of Poe at this time : THE HOUSE (EECENTLY DEMOLISHED) ON THE BLOOMINGDALE ROAD. NEW YORK CITY, IN WHICH "THE RAVEN" WAS WRITTEN. 2. POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM. 80 Edgar Allan Poe. In the fall of 1844 Poe removed from Philadel- phia to New York, and took up his literary task of sub-editor on the Evening Mirror, a paper made noted in its day by the delicate and felicitous writ- ings of N. P. Willis. In October, 1859, ten years after Poe's death, Mr. Willis, in writing to his former partner. Gen- eral George Morris, gives the following pen picture of our poet's daily life : "Poe came to us quite incidentally, neither of us having been personally acquainted with him till that time; and his position towards us, and con- nection with us, of course, unaffected by claims of previous friendship, were a fair average of his general intercourse and impressions. As he was a man who never smiled and never said a propitia- tory or deprecating word, we were not likely to have been seized with any sudden partiality or wayward caprice in his favor. ... It 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 mechan- ical 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 good-humoredly ready he was for any sug- gestion ; 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 ab- Removal to New York. 81 straeted. We loved the man for the entireness of the fidelity with which he served us. When He left us we were very reluctant to part with him; but we could not object — ^he was to take the lead in another periodical." Poe wrote over the heads of the people of his day, and even now his ethereal, weird and lofty flights of imagination find responsive echoes in only the hearts of the thinking few. He would not have almost frozen and starved to death in the great metropolis of the Republic had he turned his lyre, and stubbed his pen to writing up prize fights, bar-room brawls, bur- glaries, divorce scandals and financial embezzle- ments for the press. Had he been a tinker and blacksmith of literature he could have potted and horseshoed himself into comfortable board, clothes and lodgings; but as he was a maker of chronometer thoughts his customers were fine and few ; and yet he occasionally carried ofE prizes from the carping, crawling penny-a-liners, who pur- sued him like the Pilkingtons, Kelleys and Nu- gents who barked along the thorny paths of Gold- smith. Poe had no money sense, and he never in the whole course of his literary life had five hundred dollars ahead that he could call his own. His am- bition to start a newspaper or magazine that he could absolutely control was the aim of his life, and while he tried to lecture and secure subscribers for his venture, he literally failed in both efforts, 82 Edgar Allan Poe. and was abused and vilified for even trying to get out of the dark slough of financial despondency. The shirt of Nemesis clung close to his restless body, and every room he tenanted with four bare walls seemed to close in on his expectations, and crush his hopes, leaving only the wild witches of fear and doubt to croon their mournful dirges into his startled, listening ear. He imagined that every man was his enemy, and that the world bore only thistles, briars and poison vines, not knowing, poor fellow, that these gloomy conjurations were but the flitting ghosts of his Satanic self, and not the sweet angel that could at times reign over his beautiful, sensitive, lofty mind. In moments of mental torture and personal poverty he betook himself to the consoling and oblivious influence of the wine cup, thinking to banish the devils of care and drown the recollec- tions of what "might have been." But the resort to Bacchus for relief only added to his discom- fiture and pain, leaving a prostrate wreck to mourn the loss of vanished friends, fortune and glory. Many men before him have tried this panacea for their corroding troubles, and now and hereafter they will turn to the same sparkling, alluring wine cup for consolation ; but vain shall be their efforts to secure that happiness, evolved only in a healths- temperate body and a good, reasonable, self-reliant mind. Poe was ever walking in the "valley of unrest," wishing for the unattainable and sighing; Removal to New York. 83 "Over the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye — Over the lilies there that wave And weep above a nameless grave!" 84 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTEB XII. COMPOSITION OF "THE BAVEN." It was a brave and daring act for Poe, poor and friendless, to throw his literary lance into Gotham, that boiling cauldron of intermingled vice and virtue, riot and riches, greed and great- ness, that revel in the licentious lairs of Baxter Street, the Bowery and Broadway, and on to the luxurious, sensuous haunts of Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and Harlem Heights! "The Raven" was first published anonymously in the American Review, in the month of Febru- ary, 1845, under the non de plume of "Quarles." It was some time after before it appeared in the Evening Mirror and accredited to Poe, with a fulsome review by N. P. Willis, who was noth- ing if not polite, laudatory, superserviceable in his flattering encomiums. He was the direct op- posite of Poe, preferring to say "nice things" about people; knowing full well, like the Irish- man who spreads on his genial "blarney," that "kind words are more than coronets," and will eventually return to console apd delight the in- Composition of "The Raven." 85 habitants of "Blarney Castle" ! Politeness does not cost a cent, and even if it cost a thousand, the "genial gentleman" who indulges his nature in that line, will carry with him always — A POCKET PULL OF 8UN8HINE. A pocket full of sunshine Is better far than gold; It drowns the daily sorrows Of the young and of the old; It fills the world with pleasure In field, in lane, and street. And brightens every prospect Of the mortals that we meet. A pocJcet full of sunshine Can make the world akin And lift a load of sorrow From the burdened backs of sin — Diffusing light and knowledge Through thorny paths of life; It gilds with silver lining The storm clouds of strife. A pocket full of sunshine On mount, or vale, or wave. Irradiates our pathway To the silent, gloomy grave; And when our race is finished. With ang^els far above, We'll bask in heavenly sunshine And everlasting love! 86 Edgar Allan Poe. Why Poe should put out "The Raven" under the name of "Quarles" has always been a mystery to many of his personal and literary friends ; hid- ing himself under an assumed name, mystifying and clouding his identity like the ink fish. In Poe's essay on "The Philosophy of Compo- sition," he takes up fifteen pages of type in ex- plaining how he came to write "The Raven." No lawyer ever made more of a special plea for a client, or endeavored by analytical phrases to prove authorship for the verses. To an unbiased per- son reading between the lines Poe puts himself on the defensive, when no one at that time thought of doubting ; and yet the following admis- sions from his own pen pluck "The Raven" of a great many of its fantastic feathers, that may have been borrowed from "The Parrot" ! "It will not be regarded as a breach of de- corum on my part to show the modus operandi by which some of my own works were put together. I select 'The Raven' as most generally known. "It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable to acci- dent or imitation!" * * * ie Hf "As a keynote to the construction of the poem, I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." "In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word — ^'Nev^rjpgre,' " Composition of "The Raven." 87 "Immediately arose (in my mind) the idea of a wow-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, sug- gested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven !" 4: ^ :]« Hi 4: "I may as well say a few words of the versifica- tion of 'The Eaven.' For centuries, no man, in verse, has ever done or ever seemed to think of doing an original thing!" :]e :{c 4; :|: 4: "Of course I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or metre of 'The Raven' ! What origi- nality 'The Eaven' has is in its combination into stanza." As the last chapter in this volume will be de- voted to the Italian poem, "The Parrot," com- posed in 1809, I insert here the American poem, "The Eaven," composed in 1845, and let the reader draw his own conclusion. TEE RAVEN. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary. Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgot- ten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping. 88 Edgar Allan Poe. As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door: " 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more." 'Ah, 'distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my boohs surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors, never felt before; 80 that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my cham- ber ioor; This it is ^nd nothing more." Composition of "The Raven.*' 89 Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir" said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping^ And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door. That I scarce was sure I heard you,." — Here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darJcness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing. Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroTcen, and the stillness gave no toTcen, And the only word there spohen was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured bach the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Bach into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning. Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; 90 Edgar Allan Poe. Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart ie still a moment, and this mystery explore; 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter. In there stepped a stately Baven of the saintly days of yore: Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he. But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas jv^t above my cham- ber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling. By the grave and stem decorum of the counte- nance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven. Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Baven, "Nevermore." Composition of "The Raven." 91 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear dis- course so plainly. Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy tore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living hu- man being Ever yet was Messed with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bu^t above his chamber door. With such name as "Nevermore." But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour; Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered — Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore." Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store. Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerci- ful Disaster 92 Edgar Allan Poe. Followed fast and followed faster, till the song one iwden tore. Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy bur- den bore Of 'Never — nevermore.'" But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling. Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore — What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er. But whose velvet violet lining, with the lamp-light gloating o'er She shall press, ah, nevermore ! Composition of "The Raven.*' 93 Then, meihougM, the air grew denser, 'perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee, hy these angels he hath sent thee 'Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memo- ries of Lenore! Quaff, quaff this hind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Baven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore. Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted. On this home hy horror haunted, — tell me truly, I implore — 7s there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell m,e — tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Baven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! By that heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore. Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, 94 Edgar Allan Poe. It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom, the angels name Lenore — Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting; "Get thee hack into the tempest, and the night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soid hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bu.9t above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my cham- ber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming. And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul from out that shadow, that lies float- ing on the floor. Shall be lifted nevermore. Praise for "The Raven." 95 CHAPTER XIII. -WOMEN ADMIEEES. When it became known that Poe was the au- thor of "The Eaven," many writers and citizens who passed him by unnoticed before, sought his society and flattered his genius. It is the way of the world. Mrs. Whitman, a great admirer and personal friend of Poe, says that one evening at the resi- dence of a noted poetess at Waverly Place, Poe recited "The Eaven" with great effect and electri- fied the critical audience. Willis gave it as his opinion that "The Eaven" "was the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is un- surpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift." Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, an English poetess, wh® was a member of the "Mutual Ad- miration Society" of Poe, says of "The Eaven": "This vivid writing, this power which is felt, has produced a sensation here in England. Some of 96 Edgar Allan Poe. my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons who are haunted by the 'Nevermore/ and an acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas, cannot bear to look at it in the twilight." Another female admirer of Poe says: "Every- thing about him distinguished him as a man of mark; his countenance, person, and gait, were alike characteristic. His features were regular, and de- cidedly handsome. His complexion was clear and dark; the color of his fine eyes, seemingly a dark gray, but on closer inspection they were seen to be of that neutral violet tint, which is so difficult to define. His forehead, broad and high, was, with- out exception, the finest in proportion and ex- pression that I have ever seen." About this time Poe became acquainted with Mrs. Prances Sargent Osgood, the most noted fe- male American poetess of her day, and mutual ad- miration burst spontaneously from these twin spirits — love at sight ! Those who court the Muses are prone to indulge in florid and spontaneous expressions. Mrs. Osgood delivers herself in this rhapsody: "My first meeting with the poet was at the Astor House. A few days previous Mr. Willis had handed me at the table d'hote that strange and thrilling poem, 'The Eaven,' saying that the author wanted my opinion on it. Its effect upon me was BO singular, so like that of a 'weird, unearthly music,' that it was with a feeling almost of dread I heard he desired an introduction. Praise for "The Raven." 97 'Tet I could not refuse without seeming un- grateful, because I had just heard of his enthusi- astic and partial eulogy of my writings, in his 'Lec- ture on American Literature.' "I shall never forget the morning I was sum- moned to the drawing-room by Mr. Willis to re- ceive Mr. Poe. With his proud and beautiful head erect, his dark, gray eyes flashing with the elec- tive light of feeSng and thought, a peculiar and illimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur in his expression and manner, he greeted me calmly, gravely, almost coldly ; yet with so marked an ear- nestness that I could not help being deeply im- pressed by it. "Prom that moment until his death we were friends, although we met only, the first year of our acquaintance. And in his last words, ere reason had forever left her imperial throne in that over- tasked brain, I have a touching memento of his un- dying faith and friendship." It is little wonder that Mrs. Osgood went into comparative spasms over the introduction to Poe, when one reads the following bits of his laudatory criticism on her own poetic works but a few months before : " 'Necessiiy,' says the proverb, 'is the mother of invention'; and the invention of Mrs. Osgood at least springs plainly from necessity — from the necessity of invention. Not to write poetry, not to act it, think it, dream it, and be it, is entirely out of her power. 98 Edgar Allen Poe. "The warm abandonment of her style, that charm which now so captivates, is but a portion and consequence of her unworldly nature, of her disregard of mere fame." In speaking of Mrs. Osgood's dramatic poem of "Blfrida," he says: "The woman's soul here shrinks from the direct avowal of want of love for her husband, and flies to poetry and appeals to fate, by way of excusing that infidelity which is at once her glory and her shame." Where the glory comes in to justify a woman's infidelity, is not well understood by moralists. Poe did not bother himself much about morality. The celebrated dancer, Fanny Ellsler, was lauded to the skies by Mrs. Osgood in the fol- lowing fashion: "And now with flashing eyes she springs — Her rich iright figure raised in air. As if her soul had spread her wings. And poised for one wild instant there! "She spoke not — but so richly fraught With language are her glance and smile. That when the curtain fell I thought She had been talking all the while." Poe praises in this strain: "This is indeed poetry — ^not of the most un- questionable kind — poetry truthful in the proper sense — that is to say, breathing nature. There is Praise for "The Raven." 99 here nothing forced or artificial, no hardly sus- tained enthusiasm. The poetess speaks because she feels; but then what she feels is felt only the truly poetical. "The idea in the two first lines is exquisitely naive and natural! That in the two first lines of the second quatrain, magnificent, unsurpassed in the entire compass of American poetry!" Well, at any rate, in the desert fields of Poe's censure it is a consolation to find even a few oases of praise, where the flowers of flattery and lauda- tion smother the briars of condemnation. His poetic soul went out to women. Who can blame him? Poets, orators, warriors and statesmen have been remarkably successful in launching them- selves into the affections of the ladies. ■Poe was a master of language and rhythmical construction, but he wrote no poem like this, com- posed in memory of my first sweetheart, whom the green billows of the Mediterranean Sea en- gulfed more than forty years ago : RETROSPECTION. I see before A cottage door Id form I loved in days of yore; Her words to me Were light and free. As airs upon some sumrtier sea. 100 Edgar Allan Poe. The garden bloom With sweet perfume Came stealing round each nook and room; The birds of spring Would soar and sing While bees were buzzing on the wing. A cooing dove. She sang of love. And led me to a world above. Where pure and bright. Both Siy and night We'd live amid celestial light. Her eyes of blue — A sapphire hue. Shone o'er me fondly, bright, and true; And in that face I still can trace The beauty of her modest grace. And she was fair. With dark brown hair — Her voice rang out upon the air Like vesper bells In convent cells. When Love its holy music tells. She said, "Some day We'll sail away. O'er bounding billows fringed with spray. And for a while We'll bask and smile Within some sweet, enchanted isle." Praise for "The Raven." 101 Our magic boat We cast afloat From summer sands and castle moat. And swept along With love and song Till ocean winds grew loud and strong. Par, far away The island lay — A tropic isle within a hay. Where storms sleep Within the deep. And Love its holy vigils keep. The clouds grew dark Around my bark. The petrel sang, and not the lark — A thunder roll From pole to pole Came sounding o'er my sinking soul. I rose and fell, Yet could not tell That sea nymphs sang her funeral knell; The rocky shore Was right before And dashed my hopes forevermore. Down in the wave Of ocean's cave. She sleeps within a coral grave, And dreams of me Beneath the sea. While winds are blowing o'er the lea. 102 Edgar Allan Poe. 'Ah! thus we find. When love is hind. Some cruel fate will strike us Hind, And steal away The sunny ray That shines upon our life to-day. Though hope he gone I'll still hope on. And ever think of thee, dear one. Until "some day" I'll sail away To greet you in a brighter hay! Personal Vagaries. 103 CHAPTER XIV. EDITOR "BROADWAY JOURNAL" — PERSONAL VA- GARIES. In 1845, Poe left the Mirror and became one of the editors of the Broadway Journal, a weekly paper devoted mostly to criticism of all kinds, where our poet had full swing to vent his spleen and passion against any author that happened to come under his literary scalping knife. Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard, Poe's most vo- luminous biographer, gives the following bitter at- count of the new venture: "The Broadway Journal is a curious medley of good and bad writing, the bad, I think, predom- inating. It was savagely critical and bitterly per- sonal, and dignity was absent from its columns. It astonished and amused its readers, which was probably all that Poe cared for. That he was continually in hot water on account of it could not have surprised and could hardly have amused 104 Edgar Allan Poe. him. It was useful to him, however, if to be feared is ever useful to a man of letters. "It was while he was one of the editors of the Broadway Journal that I became acquainted with Poe. My remembrances of him, slight as they are, must be the excuse, if any is needed, for the appar- ent egotism of what follows. "I was a young man, and I had a weakness not wholly confined to young men ; I wrote verses and thought it poetry. Something I had written as- sumed that pleasing form to my deluded imagina- tion. It was an 'Ode on a Grecian Flute.' I had a strong suspicion that I was fresh from the reading of Keats, and that I particularly admired his 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Be this as it may, I sent my 'Ode' to the Broadway Journal, with a note to Edgar Allan Poe, Esq., and waited with fear and trembling. One week, two weeks passed, and it did not appear. Evidently the demand for 'Odes' was slack ! "When I could bear my disappointment no longer, I made time to take a long walk to the office of the Broadway Journal, and asked for Mr. Poe. He was not in. Might I inquire where he lived ? I was directed to a street and number that I have forgotten, but it was in the eastern part of the city, a neighborhood now given up to sundry of the tribes of Israel. I knocked at the street door, and was presently shown up to Poe's rooms, on the second or third floor. He received me very kindly. I told my errand and he promised that my 'Ode' should be printed next week. "I was struck with his poetic manner and the Personal Vagaries. 105 elegance of his appearance. He was slight and pale, I saw, with large, luminous eyes and was dressed in black. "When I quitted the room I could not but see his wife, who was lying on a bed, apparently asleep. She too, was dressed in black, and pale and wasted. 'Poor lady,' I thought, 'she is dying of consump- tion.' I was sad on her account, but glad on my own ; for had I not seen a real live author, the great Edgar Allan Poe, and was not my 'Ode' to be pub- lished at once in his paper? "I bought the next number of the Broadway Journal, but my 'Ode' was not in it. I was men- tioned, however, somewhat in this style: 'We de- cline to publish the "Ode on a Grecian Flute," unless we can be assured of its authenticity.' I was astonished, as almost any young man would have been. I was indignant also. I made time to take another long walk to the office of the Broadway Journal, and asked again for Mr. Poe. I was told that he was out, but would probably return in half an hour. I sauntered about, heat- ing myself in the hot sun, and went back at the end of an hour. Poe had returned, and was in the inner of3fice. He was sitting on a chair asleep, but the publisher woke him. He was in a morose mood. 'Mr. Poe,' I said, 'I have called to assure you of the authenticity of the "Ode on a Grecian Flute." ' He gave me the lie direct, declared that I never wrote it, and threatened to chastise me un- less I left him at once. I was more indignant and astonished than before; but I left him, as he de- 106 Edgar Allan Poe. sired, and walked slowly home, 'chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies.' "I had a glimpse of Poe afterwards in the streets, but we never spoke. The last time that I remember to have seen him was in the afternoon of a dreary autumn day. A heavy shower had come up suddenly, and he was standing under an awning. I had an umbrella, and my impulse was to share it with him on his way home; but some- thing, certainly not unkindness, withheld me. I went on and left him there in the rain, pale, shiver- ing, miserable, the embodiment of his own un- happy master, " 'Whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster!' " If Mr. Stoddard Tcnew and felt that he was the real author of the "Ode on a Grecian Flute," he displayed wonderful forbearance for a man of twenty-one years of age, to take from Poe "the lie direct" without striking him at once. I'm sure if a "morose" or drunken editor would treat a writer in that style down in "Old Kentucky," the "printer's devil" would be in immediate demand to pick up the fragments of the pampered auto- crat of the tripod! Some of these arrogant edi- tors imagine that they are all of it, but the adorn- ment of a pair of brunette optics and a jolted jaw has often brought audacity and power to a reali- zation of the fact that the public have rights, as well as those who have money enough to run an un- licensed tongue and press ! Personal Vagaries. 107 In tlie spring of 1846 the Broadway Journal died, without mourners, Poe having become, sev- eral months previous to the demise of the "mud machine," the sole proprietor. He seemed to de- light in making havoc among brother writers and bringing them into ridicule and contempt. These phrases show his sardonic disposition: "Were the question demanded of us, 'What is the most exquisite of sublunary pleasures?' we would reply without hesitation, the 'making a fuss;' or in the classical words of a Western friend, 'Kicking up a bobbery.' " He certainly succeeded in "making a fuss," yet, I pity any poor creature on earth who has no higher ambition than inflict- ing terrible tales and rotten stories on mankind. The religious opinions of Poe may be found in the following conversation he had one night at the old Astor House with Mr. William Barton, who was a typo and foreman on the Broadway Journal when Poe was editor of that paper, Mr. Barton told me this : "One night when Poe and myself were mellowed with the fumes of the wine cup, I asked him his opinion of the hereafter. He said: " 'I don't bother myself about a thing of which I know nothing — ^just as much as anybody else! " 'I believe, however, that we are like any other part of animated nature. The dog, horse, fox, lion, tiger and elephant are endowed with a certain, amount .of reason, like ourselves, and have pro- duced their kind since the beginning of creation, 108 Edgar Allan Poe. without having improved much on the original stock. " 'Man, however, has improved in the arts and science, and particularly in the inventions for the destruction of his kind. But so far as Jealousy, envy, hypocrisy, greed, tyranny and hate, he is about the same now as when he was in an ignorant and savage state, wearing leaves, grass and skins of beasts to cover his nakedness. " 'The strongest crush the weakest, and say what we will — might is still right.' " 'Mr. Poe, what do you think of the religions of the world ?' " 'Prom the earliest dawn of creation man has worshipped something — sticks, stones, snakes, stars, suns, mountains, rivers, seas, myths, calves, popes and preachers. He is largely an ape and mimics anything with glitter, pomp and power. " 'AH the doctrines of the world, from the dawn of paganism, Buddhism, Mohammedism, and so-called Christianity, are but the conjurations of worldly sharpers, who make a splendid living by setting up themselves as agents of God and estab- lishing rules and laws for fools and cowards to follow ! " 'The ass must still bear his burden, and fools build palaces and cathedrals for wise men to in- habit. " 'No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter. Barton, than you and I, and all religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of chi- canery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry ! " 'In every age and clime the religious sects Personal Vagaries. 109 have persecuted and tortured each other, pagan killing Jew and Christian and they in turn burn- ing pagans, all in the name and for the glory of God! " 'The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind, and while forcing their trumped-up doctrines on the heathens, they are but the cunning skirmish line of armies that rob, burn and murder, for the benefit of popes, princes, kings, queens, emperors and czars — ^hu- man vultures, who arrogate to themselves the hor- rible pretence of "divine right" to plunder and destroy mankind !' " While Poe professed the greatest love for the beautiful, and stalked over the world in lonely, lofty pride, he forgot the genteel amenities of life: that sweet pervading politeness that is ever welcome in palace or cot, and fills every nook and comer of the earth with smiles and sunshine. My own poem, "Love and Laughter," written for George D. Prentice, journalist and poet, in Louisville, Ky., January, 1863, might well be in- serted here for the information and education of the rushing world. The reader can do no better than memorize it, and act upon its precepts. The idea of the poem can be found in Homer, Horace, Shakespeare and the Bible, but not in such rhythmic, epigram- matic and synthetical form. It is a philosophic sermon and will be repeated on the lips of mankind as long as Truth is triumphant ! no Edgar Allan Poe. LOVE AND LAUGHTER. (Dedicated to George D. Prentice.) Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone; This grand old earth must borrow its mirth. It has troubles enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answers- Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound to a joyful sound But shrink from voicing care. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all; There are none to decline your nectared wirve. But alone you must drinh life's gall. There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train. But one by one we mv^t all file on Through the narrow isles of pain. Feast, and your halls are crowded; Fast, and the world goes by; Succeed and give, 'twill help you live; But no one can help you die. Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go — They want full measure of all your pleasure. But they do not want your woe! Literary Scorings. Ill CHAPTEE XV. LITERARY SCORINGS — LIFE ABOUT NEW YORK — ^AT FORDHAM. In 1846 Poe wrote up "The Literati of New- York," for Godey's Lady's Booh, and dealt with the local writers as if they were a lot of ninnies to be punctured by his imperial pen. In the interval of his stone throwing at the literary frogs of Gotham he is found in the social swim, either sporting with Bacchus at a grocery, or playing the polite. among the ladies in Amity Street or Pordham. "A boon companion" writes of him about this time, and says: "He was not a steady drinker. Appreciation was his thirst; often he found it in the society of intellectual women who visited him- self and wife in the city. Ordinarily grave and silent among them, he could be chatty and witty. Craving excitement apart from his labor, he sought companionship downtown, and he found that, too, in a little grocery store in Nassau Street, between Amity and Beekman, where gathered a 112 Edgar Allan Poe. few elevated literary minds, reinforced by a sprinkling of actors like Peter Cunningham, John Brougham, Oliver Raymond, Tom Johnson and John Nickerson. It was not a dramshop, but it dispensed various kinds of 'nervine,' and it had facilities for adding emphasis to what 'the Gov- ernor of North Carolina once said to the Governor of South Carolina.' ("Isn't it a long time be- tween drinks?") "Par from being in the line of promotion as a sot, Poe lacked mental storage for deep draughts or many. His nerves were always at too high a key for him to guzzle like a Gargantua. When bent on looseness it did not take him long to get tight." The reader can imagine what kind of "nervine" bohemian newspaper men and actors indulge in at a downtown grocery store about the precincts of Nassau Street! It has been the fashion for Poe's friends and sentimental male and female biographers to gloss over, excuse and deny the drinking habits of our poet. I never saw any use or good in falsification about a genius, living or dead, just for the sake of accommodating a set of homemade hypocrites or "Lydia Languish" loungers, who have about as much force in the world of letters as a breastwork of swamp grass has in damming the waters of the Mississippi. It is a well known and established fact that since Poe's boyhood days at the University of Virginia, through all the subsequent wanderings of his restless life, he was addicted to periodical Literary Scorings. 113 fits of intoxication, like his father before him, which principally injured his own mind and body, and left him at last a broken and dying wreck on the streets of Baltimore. Mrs. Osgood, the genial admirer of Poe, writes thus pleasantly of his family surroundings as she saw them in New York : "I recollect one morning towards the close of his residence in this city, that Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a press- ing invitation to come to them; and I, who could never resist her affectionate summons, and who en- joyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity Street. I found him just completing his series of papers, entitled 'The Literati of New York.' 'See,' said he, displaying in triumph several little rolls of narrow paper (he always wrote thus for the press), 'I am going to show by the difference of length in these, the dif- ferent degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these one of you are rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, help me.' And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to one which seemed intermina- ble. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. 'And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?' said I. 'Hear her,' he cried; 'just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself.' " A friend who visited Poe at his rural home in Fordham in the fall of 1846, describes his sur- roundings as follows: 114 Edgar Allan Poe. "There were some grand old cherry trees in the yard, that threw a majestic shade around them. Poe had somehow caught a wild, full grown bobo- link. He had put him in a cage, which he had hung on a nail driven into the trunk of a cherry tree. ''The poor bird was as unfit to live in a cage as his captor was to live in the world! He was as restless as his jailor, and sprang continually in a fierce, frightened way, from one side of the cage to the other. I pitied him, but Poe was bent on training him. There he stood with his arms crossed before the tormented bird, his sublime trust in attaining the impossible apparent in his whole self. So handsome, so impassive in his wonderful intellectual beauty, so proud and re- served, and yet so confidentially communicative, so entirely a gentleman upon all occasions that I ever saw him; so tasteful, so good a talker was Poe, that he impressed himself and his wishes, even without words, upon those with whom he spoke. Poe's voice was melody itself. "He always spoke low, even in a violent dis- cussion, compelling his hearers to listen if they would know his opinions, his facts, fancies, phi- losophy, or his weird imaginings. These last usually flowed from his pen, seldom from his tongue. "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, digni- fied old lady, and her black dress, though old and much worn, looked really elegant on her. Mrs. Literary Scorings. 115 Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion which was a perfect pallor. The pale countenance, her ex- pressive face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair, gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was a disrobed spirit, and when she coughed it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away. "The mother seemed hale and strong, and ap- peared to be a sort of universal providence for her strange children. The cottage had an air of taste and gentility that must have been lent it by the presence of its inmates. So neat, so poor, so un- furnished, and so charming a dwelling I never saw. The sitting-room was laid witTi cheek mat- ting, four chairs, a light table stand; and a hang- ing bookcase completed its furniture. "There were pretty presentation copies of books on the little shelves,, and the Brownings had post of honor on the stand. With quick exultation Poe drew from his side pocket a letter which he had recently received from Elizabeth Barrett Brown- ing. He read it to us. It was very flattering. "Pee at this time was greatly depressed. Their extreme poverty, the sickness of his wife, and his inability to write sufficiently, accounted for this. "We strolled away into the woods and had a very cheerful time till some one proposed a game of leaping. I think it must have been Poe, as he was expert in the exercise. Two or three gentle- men agreed to leap with him, and though one of them was tall m^ had been a hunter in time§ 116 Edgar Allan Poe. past, Poe still distanced them all. But, alas ! his gaiters, long worn, and carefully kept, were both burst in the grand leap that made him victor. I was certain he had no other shoes, boots or gait- ers. Though we had money, who had the effront- ery to offer it to the poet ?" Another writer who knew Poe at Fordham says that poor as he was, he contrived to have pets about him, in the shape of rare flowers, tropical birds in cages, and a favorite cat, which used to sit on his shoulder when he was engaged in com- position and purr its complacent approval of his work. The Evening Express speaks thus of Poe's for- lorn condition: "We regret to learn that Edgar Allan Poe and his wife are both dangerously ill with consumption, and that the hand of mis- fortune lies heavy on their temporal affairs. We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the neces- saries of life. This is indeed a hard lot, and we hope that the friends and admirers of Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitter- est hour of need." Mr. Willis, through the Home Journal, made a strong appeal for "one of the most original men of genius and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose tempo- rary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common ob- jects of public charity." Poe professed to be displeased at these well Literary Scorings. 117 meaning appeals for private or public charity, but the truth remained that himself and family were in a poverty plight. A lady friend visited the Poes, and says: "I found Mrs. Poe in her bed chamber, which was neat and clean, but poverty stricken. There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick woman had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed wrapped in her husband's greatcoat, with a large tortoise shell eat 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 !" Can anything be more pathetic than the heart- rending situation of an insane poet, and his child- wife, in the last throes of consumption, dying among strangers, hungry and cold, while Mam- mon on red wheels, dancing under red lights and banqueting on the luxuries of all lands and seas, turns a deaf ear to the wail of love and genius! Virginia died on the 30th day of January, 1847, and was buried in a neighboring vault. Poor Poe might exclaim: There's crape on the door; my heart is so sore For the beauty and love that I cherished; Her life it is past, like dust on the blast Or blush on the rose that has perished. 118 Edgar Allan Poe. There's crape on the door; alas! nevermore Shall I gaze on her image to-morrow; She's gone like a dream, my beautiful beam. That shone in my moments of sorrow. There's crape on the door; down in my heart's core There's a scar that will last o'er the billow Of time undefiled, till I meet my lost child And sleep by her side 'neath the willow. His Lost "Ulalume." 119 CHAPTBE XVI. GEIEVING JOE HIS LOST "ULALUME" — "eUEBKA" — > A "PKOSE poem" is LAUNCHED CEITICISMS "a dollae oe two." The death and burial of Poe's young wife sank into the poet's heart, and over the household at Fordham a cloud of impenetrable blackness low- ered, with only the silver lining of Mrs. Clemm's practical devotion to heal the heart of her sorrow stricken and bewildered nephew and son-in-law ! A brilliant ship, with sentiment for sails, and imagination for a rudder ! For several weeks and months Poe was in a dazed condition, tortured by daily wants, drink- ing deep of the cup of remorse, and mingling his daily and nightly dreams with the visions of de- parted love and vanished glory. Often when the sun's first rays flashed its rosy tints over the Lower Bay and the grand rolling Hudson, the poet could be seen seated on a rocky promontory overlooking High Bridge, with Port Lee in the shimmering distance. And many a night when the distant chimes from cathedral 120 Edgar Allan Poe. towers echoed the hour of twelve, when leaves were falling, "and star-dials pointed to morn," he kept watch, "in the lonesome October of his most im- memorial year," for his lost Lenore, and — "Ula- lume." ULALUME. The shies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere — The leaves they were withering and sere — It was night in the lonesome Octoler Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid-region of Weir — It was down by the dank tarn of Auber In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. Sere once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. These were days when my heart was volcanic. As the scoriae rivers that roll — As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaaneh In the ultimate climes of the pole — That groan as they roll down Mount Yaaneh In the realms of the boreal pole. Our talk had been serious and sober. But our thoughts they were palsied and sere — Our memories were treacherous and sere — For we knew not the month was October, His Lost "Ulalume." 121 And we marked not the night of the year — {Ah, night of all nights in the year!) We noted not the dim lake of Auber — (Though once we had journeyed down here) — Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. And now, as the night was senescent And star-dials pointed to morn — As the star-dials hinted of morn — At the end of our path, a liquescent And nebulous luster was born. Out of which a miraculous crescent Arose with a duplicate horn — Astarte's bediamonded crescent Distinct with its duplicate horn. And I said — "She is warmer than Dian: She rolls through an ether of sighs — She revels in a region of sighs: She has seen that the tears are not dry on These cheeks, where the worm never dies. And has come past the stars of the Lion To point us the path to the skies — To the Lethean peace of the skies — Come up, in despite of the Lion, To shine on us with her bright eyes — Come up through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes." But Psyche, uplifting her finger, Saidr— "Sadly this star I mistrust — Her pallor I strangely mistrust : — Oh, hasten! — oh, let us not linger! 122 Edgar Allan Poe. Oh, fly! — let vs fly! — for we must." In terror she spohe, letting sink her Wings until they trailed in the dust — In agony sobbed letting sink her Plumes till they trailed in the dust — Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. I replied — "This is nothing hut dreaming: Let us on by this tremulous light! Let us bathe in this crystalline light! Its sibyllic splendor is beaming With Hope and in Beauty to-night: — See! — it flickers up the sky through the night! Ah, we safely may trust to a gleaming That cannot but guide us aright. Since it flickers up the Heaven through the night." Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her. And tempted her out of her gloom — And conquered her scruples and gloom; And we passed to the end of the vista. But were stopped by the door of a tomb — By the door of a legended tomb; And I said — "What is written, sweet sister. On the door of this legended tomb ?" She replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume — 'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crisped and sere — As the leaves that were withering and sere. And I cried — "It was surely October His Lost "Ulalume." 123 On this very night of last year That I journeyed — I journeyed down here — That I brought a dread burden down here — Of this night of all nights in the year, Ah, what demon has tempted me here ? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — This misty mid-region of Weir. Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." This poem of "TJlalume/' is the most original of the poet's conjurations, and is a deep delving into the infinite of his wandering stars, and a com- munion with Psyche, who led him to "the dim lake of Auber" — "the misty mid-region of Weir," to "the door of a legended tomb/' to "the vault of his lost Ulalume" — all the lunatic lingerings of a grief-haunted heart and volcanic and titanic soul. Poe was sure that in his so-called philosophic "Eureka" that he had solved the secrets of the universe, and that Aristotle, Laplace, Herschell, Newton, Voltaire and Bacon, would through the coming ages only shine through the electric re- flection of his great discovery — the secret of birth, life and death. He broached the subject very gingerly to Willis, Lowell, Griswold, Putnam, and various other authors and publishers, as if he was entitled to a patent for a great scientific discovery, that would revolutionize the established rules of law, science and religion. Poe had a wonderful faculty of complimenting and flattering himself as a genius and critic in 124 Edgar Allan Poe. every avenue of literature that he pursued, and regarded it as personal impudence in any person to question the originality of his conceptions or the correctness of his conclusions! He showered literary arrows of criticism with great glee, but squealed when he himself was gaffed. It may be all very well to bunco-steer the public and '^bamboozle" editors and publishers with warmed-over literary hash, but I can say to the spirit of Poe, or any other author, that when a self-constituted critic attempts to palm off a lot of high-flown "stuff" as original and scientific mat- ter, he will, in the end, find a vanished audience and empty benches for his egotistical delectation. After the publication of "Eureka," the press punctured it with ungloved hands, and an anony- mous correspondent in the Literary World, under the non de plume of a "Student of Theology," ripped up Poe's pet with great severity, drawing from him the following letter to Mr. C. P. Hoff- man, editor of the paper: "Deak Sie : In your paper of July 29th I find some comments of 'Eureka,' a late book of my own, and I know you too well to suppose for a mo- ment that you will refuse me the privilege of a few words in reply. I feel even that I might safely claim from Mr. Hoffman the right which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone, — ^that is to say, of answering your corre- spondent's flippancy by flippancy, and sneer by sneer, — ^but, in the first place, I do not wish to disturb the World, and in the second, I feel that His Lost "Ulalume." 125 I should never be done sneering in the present instance were I once to begin. Lamartine blames Voltaire for the use which he made of misrepre- sentations (ruses) in his attacks on the priest- hood; but our young students of theology do not eeem to be aware that in defense — or what they fancy to be defense — of Christianity, there is any- thing wrong in such gentlemanly peccadilloes as the deliberate perversion of an author's text — to say nothing of the minor indecora of reviewing a book without it, and without having the faintest suspicion of what it is about. "You will understand that it is merely the mis- representations of the critique in question to which I claim the privilege of reply; the mere opinions of the writer can be of no consequence to me — and I should imagine of very little to himself — that is to say, if he knows himself personally as well as I have the honor of knowing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in, this sen- tence: 'This letter is a keen burlesque on the Aristotelian or Baconian method of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridicules and de- spises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstaeies in a glorification of a third mode — the noble art of guessing.' What I really say is this: 'That there is no absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process; that for this reason neither philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself, and that neither has a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws), since "In- tuition," after all, is but the conviction arising 126 Edgar Allan Poe. from those inductions or deductions, of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our con- sciousness, elude our reason, or defy our capacity of expression. "The second misrepresentation runs thus : 'The developments of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and non-luminous, moons and planets, with their rings, etc., is deduced, very much according to the nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle propounded above.' Now, the impression intended to be made here upon the reader's mind by the 'Student of Theology' is, evi- dently, that my theory may be all very well in its way, but that it is nothing but Laplace over again with some modifications that he ('the Student of Theologjr') cannot regard as at all important. I have only to say that no gentleman can accuse me of the disingenuousness here implied: inasmuch as, having proceeded with my theory to that point at which Laplace's theory meets it, I then give Laplace's theory in full, with the expression of my firm conviction of its absolute truth at all points. The ground covered by the great French astronomer compares with that covered by my theory, as a bubble compares with the ocean on which it floats ; nor has he the slightest allusion to 'the principle propounded above,' the principle of Unity being the source of all things — ^the prin- ciple of Gravity being merely the Eeaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all things from Unity. In fact, no point of my theory has been even so much as alluded to by Laplace. "I have not considered it necessary here to His Lost "Ulalume." 127 speak of the astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'stars and suns' of the 'Student of Theology/ nor to hint that it would be better grammar to say that 'development and formation are/ than that 'development and formation is.' The third mis- representation lies in a footnote, which the critic says : 'Further than this, Mr. Poe's claim that he can account for the existence of all organized be- ings — ^man included — merely from those principles on which the origin and present appearance of suns and worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bold assertion, without a particle of evidence. In other words, we should term it arrant fudge.' The perversion of this point is involved in a will- ful misapplication of the word 'principles.' I say 'willful' because at page 63 I am particularly care- ful to distinguish between the principles proper — Attraction and Eepulsion — and those merely re- sultant sub-principles, swayed by the immediate spiritual influence of Deity, I leave, without ex- amination, all that which the 'Student of The- ology' so roundly asserts I account for on the prin- ciples which account for the constitution of suns, etc. . . . "Were these 'misrepresentations' (is that the name for them ?) made for any less serious a pur- pose than that of branding my book as 'impious,' and myself as a 'pantheist/ a 'polytheist,' a 'pagan,' or a God knows what (and, indeed, I care very little, so it be not a 'Student of Theology'), I would have permitted their dishonesty to pass un- noticed, through pure contempt for the boyish- ness, for the turn-down-shirt-eollarness of their 128 Edgar Allan Poe. tone ; but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, that I have been compelled to expose a 'critic' who, courageously preserving his own anonymousity, takes advantage of my absence from the city to misrepresent, and thus villify me, iy nan. "Bdgak a. Poe. "FoEDHAM, September 30th, 1848." The sentimental footprints of Coleridge, Quincy, Eousseau, Voltaire, Laplace, Byron, Tennyson and Browning, can be clearly traced through all of Poe's writings, and, like a glinting chameleon, he shone brightly with the borrowed colors of these renowned authors. His constant boast of originality is not borne out by the record of his life, and the literary off- shoots and "suckers" of his garish genius are easily discovered in the ground roots of ancient and mod- em philosophers. Poe possessed a very keen and analytical mind, and when he attempted to paraphrase and plagia- rize from his superiors he did it with a deft hand and often improved on the originals. Had riches kept pace with his pride there is no telling to what distance this Free Lance might have thrown his polished literary weapons, and even as it is, they will shine and quiver down the ages like meteors in a midnight sky. With the single exception, however, of ''Ligeia" and "Annabel Lee," the seventy-five tales and stories, and forty-five poems of Poe, could be en- tirely blotted out of literature without any great loss to beauty, love, truth or morality. He was His Lost "Ulalume." 129 lashed by Fate with merciless fury, and in retalia- tion and self-defense struck back with a vengeance, showing that his proud and lofty spirit could not be intimidated or conquered. Since Poe had no powerful friends or wealth to back him, he, no doubt, made up his mind to dash throufi^h the world as a "forlorn hope," and "run amuck" for garish glory. He never knew the "magical power" of A DOLLAR OB TWO. With circumspect steps as we picle our way thro' This intricate world, as all prudent folks do. May we still on our journey he able to view The benevolent face of a dollar or two. For an excellent thing is a dollar or two; No friend is so true as a dollar or two. In country or town as we pass up and down. We are coch-of-the-walh with a dollar or two. Do you wish to escape from the bachelor crew. And a charming young innocent female to woo. You must always be ready the handsome to do Although it may cost you a dollar or two. For love tips his darts with a dollar or two; Young affections are gained by a dollar or two; And beyond all dispute the best card of your suit Is the eloquent chink of a dollar or two. 130 Edgar Allan Poe. Do you wish to have friends who your bidding will do. And help you your means to get speedily through. You'll find them remarkably faithfully true By the magical power of a dollar or two. For friendship's secured by a dollar or two; Popularity's gained by a dollar or two. And you'll ne'er want a friend till you've no more to lend And yourself need to borrow a dollar or two. Do you wish in the courts of the country to sue For the right or estate that's another man's due. Your lawyer will surely remember his cue When his palm you have crossed with a dollar or two. For a lawyer's convinced with a dollar or two. And a jury set right with a dollar or two. And though justice is blind, yet a way you can find To open his eyes with a dollar or two. If a claim that is proved to be honestly due. Department or Congress you'd quickly put through. And the chance for its payment begins to look blue. You can help it along with a dollar or two. For votes are secured by a dollar or two. And influence bought by a dollar or two; And he'll come to grief who depends for relief Upon justice not braced with a dollar or two. His Lost "Ulalume." 131 Do you wish that the press should the decent thing do. And give your reception a gushing review. Describing the dresses by stuff, style and hue. On the quiet, hand Jenkins a dollar or two. For the pen sells its praise for a dollar or two. And flings its abuse for a dollar or two. And you'll find that it's easy to manage the crew When you put up the shape of a dollar or two. Do you wish your existence with faith to imbue. And so become one of the sanctified few; Who enjoy a good name and a well-cushioned pew. You must really oome down with a dollar or two. For the gospel is preached for a dollar or two; Salvation is reached for a dollar or two; Sins are pardoned sometimes, but the worst of all crimes Is to find yourself short of a dollar or two. Do you wish to get into a game with the crew Who sport on the "green" with the "red," "white" and "blue" In a small game of draw where your chances are few. You must bach up your talk with a dollar or two. For the "dealer" is "fly" with a dollar or two. And the "banker" is "flush" with a dollar or two. And whate'er you say, they won't let you play Unless you come down with a dollar or two. 132 Edgar Allan Poe. Should you "hanker^' for Wall Street as Gentile or Jew, Where the "bulls" and "hea/rs" wait for "gud- geons" like you. Your pile they will measure and take into view. And scoop with a smile your last dollar or two. For the "hull" is rampant for a dollar or two. And the "hear" ever growls for a dollar or two; Yet, I'll say on my oath that the broker rules both And seldom gets left on his dollar or two. Do you want a snug place where there's little to do. Civil service evade and its rules to break through, A land bill to pass or a patent renew — You can fix the thing up for a dollar or two; For Commissions can see through a dollar or two; Even Congressmen wink at a dollar or two. And you need not he slow to . .vince friend or foe Vf the virtue contained in a dollar or two. First Visit to New York. 133 CHAPTEE XVII. FIEST VISIT TO NEW YOKE — UPS AND DOWNS WITH NEWSPAPERS. The advent of Poe and his child-wife into the voracious pool of New York City, in search of literary work and fame, is only a sample ease of Chatterton, Otway, Hood and Goldsmith plung- ing into the vortex of London life. It is a notorious fact that Poe invariably quarrelled with his editors and publishers; and those who kindly wrote him up in biographical laudation — ^like Lowell, Willis, Kennedy, Hirst, Griswold, Ingraham and Graham — often received most ungrateful stabs from his satirical pen. His constant need of money made him hypothecate his burning brain for small loans from old friends or comparative strangers, who admired his genius or pitied his impecuniosity, and when he lapsed into bankruptcy of promises and the torturing toils of Bacchus, he was doubly doused in the elough of financial despondency. The following letter written to his mother-in- 134 Edgar Allan Poe. law, Mrs. Clemm, shows the innocence of his heart, his hope, and the low ebb of his finances. "New York, Sunday morning, "April 7th— Just after breakfast— 1849. "My Deab 'Muddy' : We have just this minute done breakfast, and I now sit down to write you about everything. I can't pay for the letter, be- cause the P. 0. won't be open to-day. In the first place we arrived safe at Walnut Street wharf. The driver wanted to make me pay a dollar, but I wouldn't. Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the baggage car. In the mean- time I took Sis (Virginia) in the Depot Hotel. It was only a quarter past six, and we had to wait till seven. We saw the Ledger and Times — nothing in either — a few words of no account in the Chronicle. We started in good spirits, but did not get here until nearly three o'clock. We went in the cars to Amboy, about forty miles from New York, and then took the steamboat the rest of the way. Sissy coughed none at all. When we got to the wharf it was raining hard. I left her on board the boat, after putting the trunks in the Ladies' Cabin, and set off to buy an umbrella and look for a boarding-house. I met a man selling umbrellas, and bought one for twenty-five cents. "Then I went up Greenwich Street and soon found a boarding-house. It is juot before you get to Cedar Street, on the west side going up — the left-hand side. It has brownstone steps, with a porch with brown pillars. 'Morrison' is the name on the door. I made a bargain in a few First Visit to New York. 135 minutes and then got a hack and went for Sis. I was not gone more than half an hour, and she was quite astonished to see me back so soon. She didn't expect me for an hour. There were two other ladies waiting on board — so she wasn't very lonely. When we got to the house we had to wait about half an hour before the room was ready. The house is old and looks buggy." — (The letter is cut here for the signature on the other side.) — "The cheapest board I ever knew, taking into consideration the central situation and the living. I wish Kate ('Catterina,' the cat) could see it — she would faint. Last night, for supper, we had the nicest tea you ever drank, strong and ihot' — wheat bread and rye bread — cheese — tea cakes (elegant), a great dish (two dishes) of elegant ham, and two of cold veal, piled up like a moun- tain and large slices — three dishes of the cakes and everything in the greatest profusion. No fear of starving here. The landlady seemed as if she couldn't press us enough, and we were at home directly. Her husband is living with her — a fat, good-natured old soul. There are eight or ten boarders — two or three of them ladies — two servants. For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong — not very clear and no great deal of cream — ^veal cutlets, elegant ham and eggs, and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs — and the great dishes of meat. I ate the first hearty breakfast I have eaten since I left our little home. Sis is 136 Edgar Allan Poe. delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any and had no night sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in ex- cellent spirits, and haven't drunk a drop — so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very in- stant I scrape together enough money I will send it on. You can't imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty cry last night, be- cause you and 'Catterina' weren't here. We are resolved to get two rooms the first moment we can. In the meantime it is impossible we could be more comfortable or more at home than we are. It looks as if it were going to clear up now. Be sure and go to the P. 0. and have my letters forwarded. As soon as I write Lowell's article I will send it to you, and get you to get the money from Graham. Give our best love to C. "Be sure and take home the Messenger to Hirst. "We hope to send for you very soon. "Eddie." The following extracts of letters to Lowell from Mr. Briggs, Poe's partner in the publication of the Broadway Journal, will show the personal peculiarities of our poet: First Visit to New York. 137 "June 29th, 1845. "I have arrangements on foot with a new pub- lisher for the Journal, who will enable me to give it a fresh start, and I trust very soon to be able to give you an earnest of its profits. 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 criticisms; but they are so verbial, and so purely selfish that I can no longer have any sympathy with him. "The nonappearance of the Broadway Journal has probably surprised you. I had made arrange- ments with a new publisher, — a very good busi- ness man, — and had agreed upon terms with Bisco to buy his interest ; but when I came to close with him he exacted more than I had stipulated for, and finding that he was determined to give me trouble I refused to do anything with the Journal. I had the first number of the new volume all ready to be issued, with a handsomely engraved title, etc.; but, as I could not put the new pub- lisher's name upon it without Bisco's consent, I let it go a week, meaning to issue a double number — not doubting that I could agree with him upon some terms; but he had fallen into the hands of evil advisers, and become more extortionate than ever. Poe in the meantime got into a drunken spree, and conceived an idea that I had not treated him well, for which he had no other grounds than my having loaned him money, and persuaded Bisco to carry on the Journal himself. As his doing so would give me a legal claim upon him, and enable me 138 Edgar Allan Poe. to recover something from him, I allowed him to issue one number, but it is doubtful if he issues another. Mr. Homans, the publisher with whom I had agreed to undertake the publication of the Journal, is an educated man and a thorough good fellow with a very extensive book-selling connec- tion. He is still desirious of taking hold of the Journal, and has made me a very liberal offer to go on with him if he can purchase Bisco's share. But I do not yet know how the affair will termi- nate. 'Toe'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 delivered a poem before the societies of the New York University a few weeks since, but drunk- enness prevented him. I believe he had not drunk anything 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. I am sorry for him. He has some good points, but, taken altogether, he is badly made up. I was deceived by his superficial talents when I first met him, and relied too much upon the high opinion which you had expressed of him. His learning is very much like that of the famous Mr. Jenkinson in the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' He talks about dactyls and spondees with surprising glibness; and the names of metres being caviare to nine men out of ten, he has gained a reputation for erudition at a very cheap rate. He makes quo- First Visit to New York. 139 tations from the German, but he can't read a word of the language. "You have formed a correct estimate of Poe's characterless character. I have never met a per- son so utterly deficient of high motive. He cannot conceive of anybody's doing anything except for his own personal advantage; and he says, with perfect sincerity and entire unconsciousness of the exposition which it makes of his own mind and heart, that he looks upon all reformers as madmen ; and it is for this reason that he is so great an egotist. He cannot conceive why the world should not feel an interest in whatever interests him, because he feels no interest himself in what does not personally concern him. Therefore, he at- tributes all the favor which Longfellow, yourself, or anybody else receives from the world as an evi- dence of the ignorance of the world, and the lack of that favor in himself he attributes to the world's malignity. It is too absurd for belief, but he really thinks that Longfellow owes his fame mainly to the ideas which he has borrowed from his (Poe's) writings in the Southern Literary Messen- ger. His presumption is beyond the liveliest imagination. He has no reverence for Homer, Shakespeare, or Milton, but thinks that 'Orion' is the greatest poem in the language. He has too much prudence to put his opinions into print, — or, rather, he can find nobody impudent enough to print them, — ^but he shows himself in his private converse. The Bible, he says, is all rigmarole. As to his Greek, — ^you might see very well if it 140 Edgar Allan Poe. were put in your eyes. He does not read Words- worth, and knows nothing about him." Mr. Biseo, one of the triumvirate of the Broad- way Journal, says to Briggs: "You take Poe's 'niaiseries' too seriously. I only eared for his unhandsome allusion to me in the B. J. because it proved him a baser man than I thought him before. . . . The truth is that I have not given him the shadow of a cause for ill-feeling; on the contrary, he owes me now for money that I lent him to pay his board and keep him from being turned into the street. But he knows that I am possessed of the secret of his real character, and he no doubt hates me for it. Until it was absolutely necessary for me to expose some of his practices to save myself from contempt I never breathed a syllable of his ill habits, but I tried in vain to hide them from observation out of pure compassion, for I had not known him long before I lost all respect for him and felt a loath- ing disgust for his habits. I did not much blame him for the matter of his remarks about Jones, although the manner of them was exceedingly im- proper and unjust; the real cause of his ire was Jones' neglecting to enumerate him among the humorous writers of the country, for he has an inconceivably extravagant idea of his capacities as a humorist. The last conversation I had with Poe he used all his power of eloquence in persuad- ing me to join in the joint editorship of the 'Stylus." First Visit to New York. 141 Bisco sold out his interest in the Broadway Journal to Pee for fifty dollars, and Poe, having no money, gave his note with Horace Greeley as indorser. Poe could not pay the note when due, so Greeley paid it, and refers to the transaction in a satirical vein in the following letter to a man who was very anxious for an autograph of Poe : "Deae Sir : Among my literary treasures there happens to be exactly one autograph of our coun- try's late lamented poet, Edgar A. Poe. It is his note of hand for fifty dollars, with my indorse- ment across the back. It cost me exactly $50.75 (including protest), and you may have it for half that amount. Yours respectfully, "HoEACE Greeley." He who has financial dealings with a genuine bohemian poet, musician, painter, or sculptor, should know as a practical proposition that he simply puts up his money as a quid pro quo for the association of genius, and should thank his stars that he was privileged to know a God-given child of romance and imagination. The library, the parlor, palace and the plaza, are decorated to-day by the unrewarded gems of genius; and were it not for these wild, untamed, truthful intellects, civilized life would be a Black Forest of ignorance and desolation. People would be wearing feathers and skins on Broadway ! The world can never pay a genius in dollars and cents for the imperishable beauties he leaves behind; but he has one consolation — ^that he out- 142 Edgar Allan Poe. lives in fame the rulers and dynasties he has me- moralized by chisel, brush and pen. Genius and bravery have ever been consoled by woman, and while jealous, sordid man endeavors to push the thinker aside, glorious woman, with her pure and lofty heroism, lifts him up to the stars, and stands as his pedestal of constant and ever- lasting love ! I imagine that these were the dying words of CLEOPATRA TO ANTONY. I am dying, Antony, dying. Yet I long for one embrace To entwine my arms around you. And still greet you face to face; Ere I cross the Stygian river Testing highest heaven or hell, I am, pining for thy presence — Come, and Mss a fond farewell. I am dying, Antony, dying. While the conquering hosts of Rome Batter down my palace portals And despoil my royal home; Let great Ccesar's dashing legions Rule the land and rule the sea, I defy his sharpest torture — You and Love rule only me. I am dying, Antony, dying. Yet, my soul-lit love forbids To quench great furnace fires Burriing 'neath the pyramids First Visit to New York. 143 Of passion's deep foundation. Laid by nature and her laws. That abide by blood and impulse From some great eternal coMse. «" I am dying, Antony, dying. Yet, the "splendors of my smiW Shall light thy pathway onward To some grand celestial Nile, Where among bright heavenly bowers We shall clasp with magic might. Crowned with everlasting flowers Blooming always, day and night. Come, my lion-hearted hero To the jungles of my heart. Feed upon the upland hillocks. Never more to pine or part; Wander grandly to the valley Where the springs of life abound. Cool the ardor of thy passion In dark grottoes underground. 144 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTER XVIII. POE MISERABLE MES. SHEW's EEIENDSHIP THE BELLS. In the winter of 1846-7 Poe was almost a physi- cal and mental wreck as he pondered and wan- dered about the cottage walks of Fordham. With a dying wife, and at times not a dollar in the house to buy food or medicine, it is a wonder that he did not seek eternal shelter in suicide, as many a genius had done before him. In this forlorn condition several literary people in New York espoused his desperate cause, and among the number of guardian angels Mrs. Maria Louise Shew was foremost She collected sixty dol- lars from admiring friends and gave it to Mrs. Clemm, who spent it with care and discretion. Mrs. Shew was the daughter of a physician, she studied the art of medicine herself and aided her father in his practice, as well as looking after worthy cases among the poor. The following letter, written the day before his wife died, will show Poe's gratitude to this benev- olent lady : Poe Miserable. 145 "Kindest, Deaeest Friend : My poor Vir- ginia still lives, although failing fast and now suf- fering 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 blessing 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 'warm- est 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 en- close the order to the Postmaster. Heaven bless you and farewell! "Bdgae a. Poe, "PoEDHAM, January 29th, '47." Mrs. Shew was a frequent visitor at the Pord- ham cottage after the death of Virginia, and min- istered to Poe's delirious condition for several weeks. She says of him at this time : "In his best health he had lesion of one side of the brain. He could not bear stimulants or tonics without pro- ducing insanity. I did not feel much hope that he could be raised from the brain fever, brought on by extreme suffering of mind and body — ac- tual want and hunger and cold having been borne by this heroic husband in order to supply food, medicine and comforts to his dying wife, until esliaustion and lifele^suess were sq wear at every 146 Edgar Allan Poe. reaction of his fever that even sedatives had to be administered with extreme caution." Through the summer and fall of 1847 Poe re- covered his strength and began to write again — and, on the advice of Mrs. Shew and others, began to look for a wife who would take care of his health and prospects. He would remain all night occasionally in the city, at the home of Mrs. Shew and, when drinking, would, of course, act with in- sane freedom. There was a final break in the friendship be- tween himself and the Shew family. Something very curious must have happened. The following appealing and pathetic letter was written by Poe to Mrs. Shew in reply to her sev- erating lines: "Can it be true, Louise, that you have the idea fixed in your mind to desert your imhappy and unfortunate friend and patient ? You did not say so, I know, but for months I have known you were deserting me, not willingly, but none the less surely — my destiny, " 'Disaster, following fast and following faster, till his song one burden bore — Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy bur- den bore — Of "Never — nevermore: . " > So I have had premonitions of this for months. I repeat, my good spirit, my loyal heart ! must this follow as a sequel to all the benefits and blessings Poe Miserable. 147 you have so generously bestowed? Are you to vanish like all I love, or desire, from my darkened and 'lost soul' ? I have read over your letter again and again, and cannot make it possible, with any degree of certainty, that you wrote it in your right mind. (I know you did not without tears of an- guish and regret.) Is it passible your influence is lost to me ? Such tender and true natures are ever loyal unto death; but you are not dead, you are full of life and beauty ! Louise, you came in, . . . . in your floating white robe — 'Good morning, Edgar.' There was a touch of conven- tional coldness in your hurried manner, and your attitude as you opened the kitchen door to find 'Muddie,' is my last remembrance of you. There was love, hope, and sorrow in your smile, instead of love, hope, and courage, as ever before. Louise, how many sorrows are before you! Your ingenuous and sympathetic nature will be con- stantly wounded in its contact with the hollow, heartless world; and for me, alas! unless some true, tender, and pure womanly love saves me, I shall hardly last a year longer alive I A few short months will tell how far my strength (physical and moral) will carry me in life here. How can I believe in Providence when you look coldly upon me? Was it not you who renewed my hopes and faith in God ? . . . and in humanity ? Louise, I heard your voice as you passed cut of my sight leaving me . . . ; but I still listened to your voice. I heard you say with a sob, 'Dear Muddie.' I heard you greet my 'Catterina,' but it was only as a memory , , , nothing escaped my ear, 148 Edgar Allan Poe. and I was convinced it was not your generous self . . . repeating words so foreign to your nature — ^to your tender heart ! I heard you sob out your sense of duty to my mother, and I heard her re- ply, 'Yes, Loui . . . yes.' . . Why turn your true work for the desolate to the thankless and miserly world ? . . . I felt my heart stop, and I was sure I was then to die before your eyes. Louise, it is well — it is fortunate — you looked up with a tear in your dear eyes, and raised the window, and talked of the guava you had brought for my sore throat. Your instincts are better than a strong man's reason for me — I trust they may be for yourself. Louise, I feel I shall not prevail — a shadow has already fallen upon your soul, and is reflected in your eyes. It is too late — ^j'ou are floating away with the cruel tide. . . it is not a common trial — it is a fearful one to me. Such rare souls as yours so beautify this earth! — so relieve it of all that is repulsive and sordid, so brighten its toils and cares, it is hard to lose sight of them even for a short time . . . but you must know and be assured of my regret and sorrow if aught I have ever written has hurt you. My heart never wronged you. I place you in my es- teem — in all solemnity — beside the friend of my boyhood — the mother of my schoolfellow, of whom I told you, and as I have repeated in the poem . . . as the truest, tenderest of this world's most womanly souls, and an angel to my forlorn and darkened nature. I will not say 'lost soul' Again, for j^our s^ke. I will try to overcome mj Poe Miserable. 149 grief for the sake of your unselfish care of me in the past, and, in life or death, I am ever yours, gratefully, and devotedly, "Edgae a. Poe." It was in the conservatory of Mrs. Shew that Poe composed "The Bells," while listening to those from the surrounding church towers. She says she suggested "The Bells," "the little silver bells," "the heavy iron bells" — and "he was nearly insane" when writing the poem — and slept twelve hours after the effort. Dr. Francis was called in to see Poe, and after studying his pulse said that he had heart disease and would die early in life. The jingle, roll, rhythm, iteration, painful re- iteration and refrain of "The Bells" are built upon the lines of lunacy, as the reader will know by perusing the poem. It is a jumble of jingle from beginning to end, interspersed with maudlin fancy and ghoulish inspirations. The aroma of alcohol and opium is felt in its construction. A muddled mingling of maudlin metaphors and mechanical combinations ! THE BELLS. Hear the sledges with the bells — Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretellsl 150 Edgar Allan Poe. How they tinhle, tinhle, tinkle. In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinJcle All the heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time. In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells — From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II. Hear the mellow wedding hells Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes. And all in tune. What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the iells, hells, hells. Poe Miserable. 151 Of the hells, hells, hells, hells. Bells, hells, hells — To the rhyming and the chiming of the hells! III. Hear the loud alarm, hells — Brazen hells! What a tale of terror, now, their turhul&ncy tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak. They can only shriek, shriek. Out of tune. In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire. In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic Leaping higher, higher, higher. With a desperate desire. And a resolute endeavor Now — now to sit, or never. By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the hells, hells, hells! What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the hosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows. By the twanging. And the clanging. How the danger eihs md flows; 152 Edgar Allan Poe. Yet the ear distinctly tells. In the jangling. And the wrangling. How the danger sinks and swells. By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells — Of the I ells — Of the bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells — In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! IV. Hear the tolling of the hells — Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their melody corny- pels! In the silence of the night. How we shiver with affright 'At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people — ah, the people — They that dwell up in the steeple. All alone. And who tolling, tolling, tolling. In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone—' Poe Miserable. 153 They are neither hrute nor human — They are ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls. Bolls, A pcean from the hells! And his merry bosom swells With the pcean of the bells f And he dances and he yells; Keeping time, time, time. In a sort of Runic rhyme. To the pcean of the bells — Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time. In a sort of Runic rhyme. To the throbbing of the belts— Of the bells, bells, bells, — To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time. As he Jcneels, kneels, kneels. In a happy Runic rhyme. To the rolling of the bells — Of the bells, bells, bells — To the tolling of the bells. Of the bells, bells, bells, bells — Bells, bells, bells — To the moaning and the groaning of the hells. 154 Edgar Allan Poe. CHAPTEE XIX. DRIFTING — SEARCHING FOB A WIFE — ^THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH. PoE drifted between New York, Boston, Lowell, and Providence, R. I., in search of love and literary reward. He had made up his mind (such as he had at that time) to marry some one who could fill the chasm caused by the absence of his lost "Ulalume." Poets are noted for variegated eccentricities in pursuit of the human passions; and while sighing like a furnace for the Priscillas of the present, they are planning to placate and purloin the Pomonas of the future. Genuine poets, painters, musicians, and sculp- tors, should never marry anythii^j^ but the art ideal, for they are perfect strangers to the obliga- tions of domestic duties, and should live and die as they were born, bohemians, for the public good ! God help any domestic woman who is hitched to a genius ! Far better a sexton for both. A romantic attachment, or an impulsive spurt Searching for a "Wife. 155 after matrimony, impelled Poe to pay his dsYo- tions to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, a poetess, of Providence. She had been an admirer of Poe and lie had reciprocated, even when his wife was living, by dedicating to this lady his poem, "Helen," which is considered one of his best. Mrs. Whitman, on the advice of relatives, it is said, broke off her engagement with Poe, writing him a chiding letter for his erratic conduct. Poe, with indignant words in self-defense, made the following reply: "... You do not love me, or you would have felt too thorough a sympathy with the sensi- tiveness of my nature, to have wounded me as you have done with this terrible passage of your let- ter — 'How often I have heard it said of you, "He has great intellectual power, but no principle — ^no moral sense." ' "Is it possible that such expressions as these could have been repeated to me — to me — ^by one whom I loved — ah, whom I love! . . . "By the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor — that, with the exception of occasional follies and ex- cesses, which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and which are hourly committed by others without attract- ing any notice whatever — I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours. If I have erred at all in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world 156 Edgar Allan Poe. could call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous. The indulgence of this sense has been the true voluptuousness of my life. It was for this luxury of independence, that in early life I deliberately threw away from me a large fortune rather than endure a trivial wrong. "For nearly three years I have been ill, poor, living out of the world; and thus, as I now pain- fully see, have afforded opportunity to my enemies to slander me in private society without my knowl- edge, and thus, with impunity. Although much, however, may (and, I now see, must) have been said to my discredit during my retirement, those few who, knowing me well, have been steadfastly my friends, permitted nothing to reach my ears — unless in one instance, of such a character that I could appeal to a court of justice for redress. . . . I replied to the charge fully in a public newspaper — afterwards suing the Mirror (in which the scandal appeared), obtaining a verdict and receiving such an amount of daraages as for the time to completely break up that journal. And do you ask why men so misjudge me — why I have enemies? If your knowledge of my char- acter and of my career does not afford you an an- swer to the query, at least it does not become me to suggest the answer. Let it suffice that I have had the audacity to remain poor, that I might preserve my independence — that, nevertheless, in letters, to a certain extent, and in certain regards, I have been 'successful' — that I have been a critic — an unscrupulously honest, and, no doubt, in many cases a bitter one — that I have uniformly Searching for a Wife. 157 attacked — where I attacked at all — those who stood highest in power and influence; and that, whether in literature or society, I have seldom re- frained from expressing, either directly or indi- rectly, the pure contempt with which the preten- sions of ignorance, arrogance, or imbecility in- spire me. And you who know all this, you ask me why I have enemies? . . . Forgive me if there be bitterness in my tone. . . . "E. A. P." The following fac simile letter is of interest, be- ing to a dear friend, from Poe: 158 Edgar Allan Poe. ''ntunuor utm n% c v^