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THE POE BUST.
In Position in the Library.




THE UNVEILING
OF THE
BUST OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
IN THE
LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,


OCTOBER THE SEVENTH,
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED       AND NINETY-NINE,
Being an account of Poe's connection with the University of Virginia,
the Origin and History of the Poe Memorial Association,
and the Exercises attending the Unveiling of
Zolnay's Bust of Poe.
COMPILED AND EDITED
By CHARLES W. KENT,
President of the Association.
PUBLISHED BY J. P. BELL COMPANY,
LYNCHBURG, VA.


I..




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TO
POE'S FRIENDS AND THE ADMIRERS OF HIS GENIUS
IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED THIS
PERMANENT RECORD
OF
HIS ALMA MATER'S TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY
ON THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH.




I




PREFACE.


N the preface, however the word may imply the contrary, the
author or editor does not look forward to the unmade book,
perhaps even without plan and formless, but upon his work wellnigh completed.  He is, almost certainly, dissatisfied with the
results, but at least he is not called upon to undergo again the
anxiety as to its processes.  With a sense of relief, if not of
rejoicing, he dwells now upon the labor and experiences through
which he has passed, and breathes a sigh, instinct with hope,
that the book may not utterly disappoint the expectations of
those who have wished for its appearance. Fortunately the petty
annoyances, the things that went amiss, the delays that begot impatience, and, worse than all else, the lukewarmness that chilled
enthusiasm, are lost sight of in the pleasure and gratitude with
which it is recalled and recorded that there were helping hands,
cheering words, and hearty cooperation.
In a general felicitation of all the members of the Poe Memorial Association upon the attainment of their first and most important object-the presentation to the University of Virginia of
a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe-no apology is needed for
expressing here our especial thanks to Mr. W. A. Clark, Jr., not
so much for his financial aid, which was generous, as for his
thoughtfulness in relieving us of all anxiety by promising long
beforehand that our plans should not fail for want of means.
To Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, whose magnificent address forms
the most valuable feature of this small volume, as well as to Mr.
Wilson, Mr. Reade, and others who took part in our programme,
and to the hundreds all over the country that followed our movement with interest and found pleasure in our success, we express
our appreciative recognition of their part in making October the
Seventh, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-nine, the most memorable
day in our literary annals.
Upon the Officers and the Executive Committee of the Association fell the burden of the work, but this burden was cheerfully




6


PREFACE.


borne, for theirs was a labor of love, finding its full reward in the
significant part they had in what has not inaptly been styled the
" Poe Revival." The fruits of this revival have not all been
garnered. Our distinguished Secretary, Professor James A. Harrison, is now engaged upon a Critical Edition of Poe's Works.
This edition, with its peculiar merits and its scholarly accuracy in
all details, will, it is hoped, leave so little to be done hereafter
that it will be recognized at once as the final critical edition. Our
Association, besides the honor it derives from the work of one of
its charter members, will have special interest in the biography
that will retell, and with sympathy, the story of our Poet's life,
and particularly of his connection with the University of Virginia.
In the preparation of this volume free use has been made of
the Historical Sketch of the Association written by Mr. James
W. Hunter, Jr., for Corks and Curls of 1900, and of the Account
of the Unveiling Exercises, edited by Mr. A. I. Miller for the
Alumni Bulletin for November, 1899. To both of these gentlemen, and to all others who have directly or indirectly been of
service, grateful acknowledgment is here made. But my constant
companion in the making of this book has been my assistant, Mr.
Carol M. Newman, from whom I would not withhold a formal
avowal of peculiar gratitude for his intelligent and sympathetic
aid.
CHARLES W. KENT.
May 1, 1901.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.
POE'S STUDENT DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,
HISTORY OF THE POE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION,..
GEORGE JULIAN ZOLNAY,...
TIHE UNVEILING EXERCISES,....
POE'S PLACE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE,...
TIE MEMORIAL POEM,......
TIE EVENING EXERCISES,....
IN TIIE RAGGED MOUNTAINS,..
APPENDIX I.-SESSION OF 1826...
APPENDIX II.-MATRICULATION OF 1826,.
APPENDIX III.-POE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION,...
APPENDIX IV.-POE LIBRARY AT THIE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


PAGE..9
24
28.    32. 38.   60. 62.    83.  87.    88.    91.   93


POE BUST IN POSITION,..
FACSIMILE OF MATRICULATION BOOK,
POE'S ROOM ON WEST RANGE,.
SCHEDULE OF LECTURES,.
IN TIIE RAGGED MOUNTAINS,.
EXCELLED IN LATIN,.
EXCELLED IN FRENCH,...
FACSIMILE OF FACULTY RECORD,
GEORGE JULIAN ZOLNAY,..
FACSIMILE OF FACULTY RECORD,
HAMILTON W. MABIE,...
INVITATION,..
THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS,
SIGNATURES OF FAMOUS VIRGINIANS,


Frontispiece.........10.........13.......... 14............  16.......... 20........21.........22.......... 28.......37.......... 38............ 62......... 83........... 87




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POE'S STUDENT DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA.
EVENTY-FIVE years ago EDGAR ALLAN POE became a
student of the University of Virginia. His entire sojourn
here lies between St. Valentine's Day and Christmas, while his
connection with the University covered exactly ten months and a
day. There was at the time nothing strange, surprising, or even
exceptional in his career, which would readily have been merged
into hundreds of others equally uneventful and been forgot but
for his subsequent fame. But this renown has carried the University's name to remote lands and made every incident of his
student days, however insignificant in itself, of universal interest.
Indeed, any fact in Poe's life is of value in enabling us to determine his erratic orbit and in furnishing us substantial material
out of which imagination may make real the full picture of his
perplexing life.
There was displayed by his earliest biographers a singular and
perverse facility in creating for him an incongruous and impossible
University experience, but the later students of his life here have
striven zealously to discover and to disclose every fact. This
they have done frankly, but not always with a due appreciation
of the significance of these facts, and certainly not always with
full sympathy for Poe himself.
Among the investigators of his University period Mr. Douglas
Shirley (University of Virginia Magazine, March and April, 1880)
and Mr. Schuyler Poitevent (idem, December, 1897) were most
successful in adding to our limited store of knowledge. The facts
furnished by them and by earlier students have, as far as possible,
been verified as a basis for this sketch, which, however, contains
other material, procured by a minute examination of all University records and by personal interviews.
The University of Virginia, for many years lingering an unfinished creation in the fruitful brain of its prescient founder, Thomas
Jefferson, was so far completed in 1825 that on Monday, March




10


POE MEMORIAL.


the Seventh, the first session began, but without ceremony or
celebration. There were fifty students present on that day, and
during the whole session, which closed on December the Fifteenth,
there were one hundred and sixteen students.
The session was peculiarly stormy. The professors, who were
mainly English and seem to have been unpopular because of that
fact, were the victims of unpardonable disrespect. The facultymeetings in the first session, when so many matters of policy
should have engaged the attention of those called to direct aright
the infant University, were largely given up to disciplining students guilty of the use of ardent and vinous liquors, or of gambling. There were open outbreaks as well as personal rebellion
against rules. The University seemed in imminent peril from
within, because of the unrestrained wildness, rampant disrespect,
and obstreperous conduct of a body of immature young men, who
mistook this new liberty for license.
The second session began on February the First, 1826. On
that day (see Appendix II) thirty-four students matriculated.
After that they came in day by day, until by Tuesday, February
14th, one hundred and thirty-one students had matriculated. On
the 14th five students entered, among them Edgar Allan Poe, who
was No. 136 out of a total enrollment for the session of 177.
In the matriculation book, at the very bottom of the page, as
shown in the cut, the line runs:
IRemarks.
Edgar A. Poe 1 19 Jan: 1809 | John Allen I Richmond | 1  1
Unfortunately this is not in Poe's handwriting. The lists of
students for both 1825 and 1826 were neatly copied out by the
same hand that wrote the formal pledge required of all students
in 1827 and since that day. Presumably the copyist was Mr.
Brockenborough, the Proctor.  The blank space under Remarks
is itself of interest, and is prima facie evidence that Poe did not
at any time during the session sever his connection with the University, for comments in this column show that of the 177 stu



7,  1 4


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FACSIMILE OF THE MATRICULATION BOOK.








POE MEMORIAL.


11.


dents of the session six withdrew, three were suspended, three
dismissed and three expelled, but no one of these records stands
against Poe.
According to the unimpeached testimony of a college-mate and
warm personal friend, Thomas Goode Tucker, Poe roomed at first
on the Lawn with Miles George, of Richmond. There is no
evidence of any kind to show the location of this Lawn room.
Miles George (born September 17, 1807), the son of Bird George,
of Richmond, Virginia, matriculated on February 3, 1826, entering the classes of Professors Long and Key, and remained at the
University two sessions. While he does not seem to have been
engaged in any of the disturbances or guilty of any misdemeanors,
he was not reported by any of his professors among those who
excelled in their examinations. He afterwards graduated from
the Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Early in the session Poe and George had some difficulty. The
cause of this youthful disagreement is unknown, and in all probability was not at all serious. The result, however, of the discord
was a fisticuff in a field near the University, after which the participants shook hands and parted in peace. George remained in
possession of the Lawn room and Poe moved to West Range.
If remaining in possession of the territory formerly occupied
is good ground for inference as to the victor, then Poe was probably whipped by his older companion. Perhaps, however, Poe's
withdrawal was merely one of the conditions of their amicable
settlement and does not point to his defeat.
It is true that Poe was just past seventeen, but his athletic
record was already well established. He was " rather short of
stature, thick and somewhat compactly set, but very active, being
quite an expert in athletic and gymnastic arts." It may spoil a
poetic illusion to add that "he was bow-legged and walked
rapidly, with a certain jerkiness in his hurried movements." His
greatest athletic achievement dates from June, 1825, when he swam,
under a hot sun, from Ludlam's Wharf to Warwick, a distance
of six miles, against a very strong tide. "Any swimmer in the
falls in my days," says Poe, "would have swum the Hellespont




12


POE MEMORIAL.


and thought nothing of the matter." This feat on the James,
which is duly attested, was indeed remarkable for a boy, and in a
measure justifies his boast that he could swim the English Channel
from Dover to Calais. But Poe's prowess was not confined to
swimming. He had the reputation of being the best young boxer
in Richmond, and if in fights he ever had to exercise the valorous
discretion of flight he could readily have outstripped most contestants, for his swiftness in running was noted among his companions. His athletic record in field sports, however, would have
been made in the running broad jump, for during his early life,
probably here at the University, he jumped 21 feet 6 inches on a
level, with a running start of twenty yards.  His chief competitor in athletic contests here was one of the Labranche brothers, of
New Orleans, who had been educated in France and trained in
physical exercise. But the sad-faced Poe took his sports seriously
and exhibited little boyish enthusiasm or spirit in his triumphs.
On April 29th, 1826, William Matthews, formerly a cadet of
West Point, was "allowed the use of the Gymnasium [then where
the Chairman's office now is] for the purpose of giving instruction upon military tactics to such of the students as may choose
to be drilled. Mr. Matthews is held responsible to the faculty
for all riots, or other disturbances of the peace, happening during
his attendance upon the students composing his class." The first
Physical Director proved worthy of his appointment and so commended himself to the faculty that later in the session he was
assigned one of the elliptical rooms in the Rotunda. Still later
in the session, when his name was mentioned in connection with
a local scandal, he was not only completely exonerated, but the
faculty took occasion, officially, to commend him. As his class
was not officially recognized, there is extant no list of his students
and no account of their progress, but it is natural to suppose that
among those who took particular interest in his course was the
ex-Lieutenant of the Junior Volunteers of Richmond.
But we have wandered too far from his matriculation and the
early experiences of the session.  Poe, after the difficulty with
George, moved to West Range. There was for some while a tradi



POE MEMORIAL.


13


tion here that his room was No. 17, but no evidence of any kind
can be found for this number. On the other hand, Mr. Tucker's
confident assertion that it was 13 is in part confirmed by the
memory of Mr. Jesse Maury, who still lives, in honored old age,
near the University. Mr. Maury's memory goes back some years
prior to 1826, and still holds securely the important events of
that year. During that session young Maury, who was never a
student at the University, was put in charge of his father's teamsters, who were frequently employed in hauling wood to Conway's
boarding-house. The wood-pile was just back of the block on
West Range, containing rooms 5 to 15 (odd numbers).  This
block was then known as Rowdy Row. It was in this Row,
beyond any doubt in Mr. Maury's mind, that Poe roomed. Mr.
Maury recalls vividly the charcoal decorations on his walls and
his marvellous penmanship, of which Poe was then so proud.
Poe used to entertain himself and his friends by writing on a bit
of paper of fixed size the largest possible number of words.
These independent reminiscences of Mr. Maury are themselves
confirmed, for John Willis tells of Poe's talent for drawing and of
the crayon sketches on his walls; and Thomas Bolling relates that
he once found Poe engaged in copying on the ceiling of his dormitory an interesting plate from an English edition of Byron's
Poems.
With Poe now domiciled for the session in 13 West Range, we
can turn to his occupations. The round of lectures-lectureslectures, of which Dr. Emmet complained, had begun, and Poe,
on the day he entered, had to elect what courses of lectures he
would attend. Poe had shown at Stoke-Newington, in England,
as well as under Masters Clarke and Burke in Richmond, not
only an aptitude and fondness for literary and linguistic studies,
but also an unusual skill in construing Latin and in 'capping'
Latin verses. In addition, he had exhibited a marked facility in
French conversation. It was natural, then, that Latin and French
should be among the subjects elected. The matriculation book
shows that he took the classes of Professors Long and Blaetterman. The announcement for 1826 thus outlines these courses:




14


POE MEMORIAL.


"In the school of Antient Languages are to be taught the higher
grade of the Latin and Greek languages, the Hebrew, rhetoric,
belles-lettres, antient history and antient geography.  In the
school of Modern Languages are to be taught French, Spanish,
Italian, German, and the English language, in its Anglo-Saxon
form; also modern history, and modern geography." It seems
almost preposterous to suppose that any student would be
required to pursue work in all these branches, yet we find
that Henry Tutwiler at the end of the session is reported as
having excelled in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and mathematics, while Gessner Harrison, whom Mr. Tucker
mentions with Tutwiler among the "hard students," excelled in
Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, and medicine. It may,
then, be true that Poe was a member of the classes in Greek,
Latin, French, Spanish and Italian, though there is no mention
of him in connection with Greek.
Of his class-room career we know little except that the librarian,
Mr. Wertenbaker, a fellow-student, avers that Poe was tolerably
regular in his attendance upon the French, Italian, and Spanish
classes, and was a successful student. He was publicly commended for a verse translation from Tasso. It is easy to believe
that, with his previous training, he had little difficulty in keeping
up with classes composed of young men, for the most part, with
far less preparation than his. And, even if he were not a close
student, he possessed, in addition to his training, a quick eye and
an alert mind that made the perilous process of "reading ahead"
less hazardous for him. According to the schedule of lectures
made out by Mr. Jefferson in his own handwriting (see cut), Poe's
classes came between 7:30 and 9:30 each day of the week, including Saturday. After the lectures were over, there was the long
day and the evening hours at his disposal. How did he pass his
time?
To proceed gradually from studies to practices far removed
therefrom, it is in place to mention first that he spent much time
in the library. Mr. Tucker, who enjoyed his intimate friendship,
gives a pleasing account of their reading together Lingard and




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POE MEMORIAL.


15


Hume, their favorite historians. In view of the fact that Poe's
writings have been declared not immoral, but unmoral, it is interesting to note that Lingard had encountered the censure of strict
Protestants, and Hume, by his philosophy, fallen under the temporary obloquy of all Christians. But these young readers turned
willingly from history to English poetry from Chaucer to Scott.
From their chosen poets each copied for the other his own favorite
passages.
During the early part of the session Central college building
(Pavilion VII, West Lawn, now occupied by Professor Noah K.
Davis) was used as a meeting place of the Board of Visitors, and
for a library and reading room. The library was in the front
room up-stairs. But the Rotunda had been begun in the spring of
1823, and on November 5, 1824, was under roof and so far
advanced that it was used for the famous entertainment given
Lafayette. In October, 1825, Jefferson reports that the circular
room, destined for the receipt of books, had been pressed forward,
and "we trust will be ready for them." In October, 1826, Madison, the Rector, says: "The library room in the Rotunda has
been nearly completed and the books put in it." Exactly when
this transfer of the books was made it is impossible to ascertain,
and so we are forced into some uncertainty in picturing Poe in
the Library. He may have read in the somewhat restricted quarters of the upper room in the " Old Library," as Pavilion VII was
called as late as the forties, and he was certainly a frequenter of
the large and meagrely supplied circular room in the Rotunda as
it existed before the fire of 1895.
Poe not only used the books in the Library, but, according to
Mr. Wertenbaker, the Librarian, borrowed during the session the
following books: Rollin, Histoire Ancienne; Robertson's America; Marshall's Washington; Voltaire, Histoire Particuliere; Dufief, Nature Displayed.
The class-room and the library could not fully meet the
requirements of his retiring and reflective nature. Love of moody
solitude led him on long and lonesome walks in the Ragged
Mountains, where he was surely a " first adventurer" in many a




16


POE MEMORIAL.


secluded dell. From these long walks, or rather on them, he
found material for weird tales, written out and read to some boon
companions, and, if favorably received, repeated perhaps to a larger
audience, spellbound but somewhat irreverent toward art. His
sensitive nature, so exacting of his own work as to destroy these
college efforts, recoiled from harsh or jeering criticism. For
example, the good-natured taunt that gave Poe the nickname of
" Gaffy," because a character of that name was so prominent in
one of his stories, cost the world this tale, for the author petulantly
tossed the manuscript into the flames.
In the invention and elaboration of these stories Poe served his
apprenticeship as a short-story writer, and enrols himself as perhaps first in time, as he certainly became one of the first in
importance in this art. It could hardly fail to be true, though it
is now no longer capable of demonstration, that Poe, who was so
frugal of his themes and so disposed to use his material over and
over, has embodied the substance of some of these college stories
in his famous tales.
Poe began to write verse at an early age, and kept up the practice during his student days. Bolling recalls that sometimes while
Poe was taking part in conversation he would also write verse,
training himself to listen and think of something else at the same
time. This rhyming, pronounced creditable, was after all but a
sign of his skill in versification, which was also shown in his
translation from the Italian. There is good reason for believing
that during the session he was seriously busied with poetry. His
first volume of poetry was published prior to August, 1827; it
probably went to press prior to May, 1827, when he enlisted in
the United States Army as a private under the name of Edgar A.
Perry.* Between December 20, 1826, and May 26, 1827, there
was not very much time for writing poetry, because he was first in
a Richmond counting house, then on a visit to Baltimore, then on
his journeying to Boston. But Poe says that the contents of this
volume were written in 1821-22, when he was twelve or thirteen


*Just a few names above Poe's in the matriculation book (see Appendix II) is
that of Sidney A. Perry. Does this not suggest the source of his borrowed name?




IN THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS.








POE MEMORIAL.


17


years old. Very little credence can be given to this claim, for
many of these poems show unexpected maturity of mind for a
youth of seventeen, and could hardly have been written by a boy
of twelve; and some of them were distinctly influenced by Byron,
in whom Poe was especially interested during his University days.
As this volume of 1827 was not, in all probability, written in the
troublous months succeeding his University career, and could not
have been written at a very early age, it is fair to conclude that
some of the poems in this volume were written, and perhaps all of
them, with a single exception (The Song), were revised while he
was a student in the University of Virginia. His alma mater may
justly claim him as her poet, though with his unique disregard of
time and location he nowhere pays her a passing tribute.
Athlete, student, saunterer, story-teller, and poet, he aspired also
to another honor, and became very much interested in the debating
society organized that year and named after the University's
founder. Is it worth while now to prove that a boy of seventeen
so multifariously busy could not have found time to be a habitual
drunkard or an untiring gambler? There is no attempt to gloss
over Poe's failings, but he is entitled to justice.
The students divided themselves into two classes; those like
Gessner Harrison, Henry Tutwiler, and others who were noted for
their quiet, studious habits; and those like the Brunswick county
group, Dunn, Creighton, Gholson, and Tucker, who gave their
studies a small share of their time. But in this large number who
were not altogether studious there were all varieties of delinquents.
There were the confirmed gamblers, who met over Jones' book
store, or in one of the rooms clearly designated in the Faculty
minutes, to play loo or all-fours, at from one to ten dollars a game.
There were those who played occasionally for large stakes, but
more frequently played whist or seven-up for small amounts, or
indulged in the forbidden game of backgammon. In the Faculty
minutes, filled in that year with trials of students, we read of visits
to Mosby's and Daffan's confectioneries, where all manner of
drinks, such as mint-sling, mixed and unmixed wine, toddy,
Madeira, eggnog, peach and honey, and ardent and vinous liquors




18


POE MEMORIAL.


might be had; and we learn further of dormitory entertainments,
where such beverages were known. But in all these records we
nowhere find any mention of the name of Edgar Poe: and when
a long list of students summoned to appear before the Alltemarle
grand jury was made out Poe was not included, though iany of
his boon companions were. Poe was not, then, among the offenders known to University or civil law, but from the private testimony of his college mates it is evident that he did sometimes play
seven-up and loo, his favorite games, for money. That he was not
so expert as Tucker considered him and his companions would
seem to be established by his considerable losses. His partner,
afterwards a devout clergyman, and his adversaries, including frequently two friends, who became respectively a well-known divine
and a pious judge, were far better known to the University sporting circle than was Poe.
That there was much gambling at the University in the first
sessions is, unfortunately, true.  At one of the numerous trials
conducted by the Faculty a certain witness deposed that there
were not fifty students at the University who did not play cards.
With as much readiness and no less accuracy he might have affirmed, that not fifty of the fathers of these students were free
from the same vice. The sentiments against it in the Faculty
could not have been unyielding, for in 1825 three out of seven of
the members wished gambling removed from the infractions punished seriously and transferred to the list of minor offences punishable by insignificant fines. It is no excuse for gaming that it
was common, and but little extenuation that sentiment against it
was not strong, but when gaming was both common and but
mildly condemned, it is uncharitable to select one out of many
and pronounce him the arch-criminal. It is unreasonable and unjust to select as this arch-criminal Edgar Poe, who, when others
were tried and expelled for this offence, never at any time fell
under any kind of official censure.
In the scurrilous and irresponsible indictment drawn up by
Griswold in his notorious Memoir of Poe, is the count that at the
University of Virginia Poe " led a very dissipated life," and " was




POE MEMORIAL.


19


known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class." Mr.
Wertenbaker, on the contrary, who as librarian and class-mate
saw him perhaps every day, says: "He certainly was not habitually intemperate, but he may occasionally have entered into a
frolic. I often saw him in the Lecture Room and in the Library,
but never in the slightest degree under the influence of intoxicating liquors."  Mr. Wertenbaker evidently did not know of his
own knowledge that Poe even occasionally entered into a frolic,
but presumed this to be true because there was later a rumor to
that effect. The rumor was true, but it does not seem to have
been substantiated until Mr. Tucker wrote to Mr. Shirley in 1880,
and his account probably states the whole case against Poe. "Poe's
passion for strong drink was as marked and as peculiar as that for
cards.  It was not the taste of the beverage that influenced him;
without a sip or smack of the mouth he would seize a full glass,
without water or sugar, and send it home at a single gulp. This
frequently used him up; but, if not, he rarely returned to the
charge."* " He was very mercurial in his disposition and exceedingly fond of peach and honey," adds Mr. Tucker. There is
nothing astonishing in this account of Poe's drinking. As a tiny
tot he had been trained to stand on a chair at dinner parties and
with a glass of wine pledge the brilliant company in Richmond or
at the Old White Sulphur Springs.  He lived in a land veritably
flowing with peach and honey, where every sideboard held its full
weight of inviting decanters. Drinking habits then prevailing in
the homes were naturally transferred in part to the University,
and Poe did not entirely escape the temptation. Nor need we be
surprised that Poe was so easily affected. He was a nervous,
sensitive boy, and a full glass might, according to his physical
condition, readily excite him to "wild and fascinating conversation," or render him unfit for any companionship.
Filled for Poe with the duties, diversions, and occasional dissipations, the session passed with but one event of public moment
and few of local interest. The Faculty in June passed this reso

*Thomas Goode Tucker to Douglas Shirley, April 5, 1880. Printed in Woodberry's Poe (American Men of Letters Series).




20


POE MEMORIAL.


lution: "That the students be permitted to celebrate the 4th of
July next by an oration and by a dinner within the Gymnasium."
But before this day came Mr. Jefferson was seriously ill and it
took all the skill of Dr. Dunglison (then Chairman of the Faculty)
to prolong his illustrious patient's life until July 4th, a date for
which he anxiously inquired. There is nothing more said of the
celebration, which presumably was given up. On July 5th the
Faculty passed most appropriate resolutions drafted by Prof. Tucker
and determined to wear mourning on the left arm for the space of
two months and to attend individually the interment at the family
burying place. This decision on the part of the Faculty was no
doubt operative among the students, who were probably present on
the same sorrowful occasion.
The summer, as hot then as now, if we may judge from the
complaints of the students of 1825, soon yielded to the golden
autumn days, when rambles in the Ragged Mountains must have
been a genuine delight.  As December approached there was
doubtless then as now the somewhat feverish preparations for the
final examinations. In the previous session the Board of Visitors
had decreed that there should be public examinations, which they
themselves would attend, but at which by Faculty resolution no
strangers should be present unless specially invited. In issuing
invitations, preference was to be given parents and guardians (of
the male sex). These public examinations began on Monday,
December 4th, in the Elliptical Room of the Rotunda, and were
attended during that week by Madison (Rector) and Monroe,
Joseph Cabell, and General John H. Cocke. The examination in
Modern Languages was held on Tuesday, December 5; presumably Ancient Languages came on the previous day. If so, then
Poe stood all of his examinations in the presence of these four
distinguished men. There is no record of the length of the examinations, which were oral, but in July, 1827, they were either
two or three hours long, and began at the very unseasonable, if
not unreasonable, hour of 5 A. M. They could hardly in midwinter have begun earlier than the usual lecture hour, 7:30.
The examinations were over on December 13 or 14, and on




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POE MEMORIAL.


21


the next day, December 15, the Faculty met. The very first
resolution offered indicates that the method of examination had
not proved satisfactory, and provides for material changes next
session. It was further resolved " that, for publishing the result
of the examinations, a brief statement from each professor be subjected to the faculty." The reports of the several professors were
then submitted. " Mr. Long made a report of the examination of
the classes belonging to the school of ancient languages and the
names of the students who excelled at the examination of these
classes."  For the first time in the Faculty minutes for 1826 the
name of Edgar Allan Poe appears, as fourth in a list of nineteen
who excelled in Senior Latin. These distinguished students are
divided into groups, and Poe is third in the second group, Gessner
Harrison standing alone in the first group. At the same meeting
"the names of the students who excelled in the Senior French
class " were reported by Professor Blaetterman. The eight names
are arranged alphabetically, so Poe's stands sixth in the list. Mr.
Wertenbaker says that under regulations existing in 1869 Poe
would have been entitled to diplomas as a graduate in these two
languages. This is not to be reconciled with the fact that Gessner
Harrison, who heads the list in 1826, is again reported as excelling in Senior Latin in July, 1827. In other words, Poe was not
necessarily a graduate in these languages, but he had excelled in
the examinations, and this was a high honor.
At the Faculty meeting on December 20, 1826, "the Chairman
presented to the Faculty a letter from the Proctor giving information that certain hotel keepers, during the last session, had been in
the habit of playing at games of chance with the students in their
dormitories; he also gave the names of the following persons, who,
he had been informed, had some knowledge of the facts." Then
follows a list of nine, including Edgar Poe. Except in the official
lists of those who excelled in examinations, this is the very first
time Poe's name had ever been before the Faculty, and this time
it was merely as a witness. The Proctor, however, seems to have
been misinformed as to the knowledge possessed by some of the
witnesses summoned, for several have no information in point.




22


POE MEMORIAL.


Among these is Poe, for "Edgar Poe never heard until now of
any hotel keepers playing cards or drinking with students." It
is not at all necessary to suspect this clear and explicit statement,
for Poe's circle of gaming friends was perhaps select and was
almost certainly small.
In his reminiscences, Mr. Wertenbaker says: "As Librarian I
had frequent official intercourse with Mr. Poe, but it was at or
near the close of the session before I met him in the social circle.
After spending an evening together at a private house [could this
possibly have been the evening Professor Long led to the altar
the beautiful Widow Selden?] he invited me on our return into
his room. It was a cold night in December, and, his fire having
gone pretty nearly out, by the aid of some tallow candles and the
fragments of a small table, which he broke up for the purpose,
he soon rekindled it, and by its comfortable blaze I spent a very
pleasant hour with him. On this occasion he spoke with regret
of the large amount of money he had wasted and of the debts he
had contracted during the session. If my memory is not at
fault, he estimated his indebtedness at $2,000, and, though they
were gaming debts, he was earnest and emphatic in the declaration that he was bound by honor to pay at the earliest opportunity every cent of them.              I think it probable that the night I visited him was the last he spent here. I
draw this inference, not from memory, but from the fact that,
having no further use for his candles and table, he made fuel of
them."
Whether Mr. Wertenbaker's inference is sound or not, Poe's
confession to him contains the real reason why he never returned
to the University. Edgar Allan Poe was not expelled, nor dismissed, nor suspended, nor required to withdraw, nor forbidden
to return, nor disciplined in any wise whatsoever, at the University of Virginia, but Mr. Allan was shocked and incensed at the
extent of his dishonorable "debts of honor "-which he at first
refused to consider, but finally settled-and determined to put his
extravagant foster son in his counting-room.
Like Hawthorne, Poe may have been guilty of "doing a hun



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POE MEMORIAL.                     23
dred things the faculty never heard of, or else it had been worse
for him," but it is too late now to expel him for vices then undetected, or disgrace him for faults long ago outlived by his former
college-mates and companions-the respected planter, the upright
judge, the saintly clergyman.




HISTORY OF POE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION.


THE Poe Memorial Association was the outcome, partly of
an article contributed to College Topics, in which it was
suggested that the room occupied by Edgar Allan Poe in 1826
should be furnished as a 'Poe Room' and filled with pictures,
autographs, and all the editions of Poe's works, and partly of a
lecture on Poe delivered by Dr. Charles W. Kent before the class
in English Literature. The interest in the poet, so stimulated,
led several students to approach Dr. Kent and consult him about
the desirability of setting on foot some movement to do honor to
the memory of the University's greatest alumnus. It was noted
that October 7, 1899, would be the semi-centennial of the poet's
death, and it was determined that immediate steps should be
taken. This was on March 29, 1897, and on the following Friday the first preliminary meeting was held in Dr. Kent's office,
those present being Dr. Kent, Mr. Edgar Dawson, Mr. W. Berkley Williams, and Mr. James W. Hunter, Jr. A letter was read
from an eminent sculptor in regard to the cost of the proposed
memorial, and it was unanimously agreed that the sentiments of
the students on this subject should be ascertained. So a massmeeting was called for that purpose.
On Tuesday evening, April 13, 1897, the mass-meeting of
students was held in the hall of the Jefferson Literary Society.
The meeting was a most enthusiastic one, and the movement was
greatly encouraged by Dr. Harrison's valuable suggestions and
pecuniary offers. It was finally decided that an executive committee, to act as directors of the movement and receive contributions, should be selected. The committee chosen was composed
of Professors Kent and Harrison and Messrs. Sidney E. Bradshaw,
Lewis C. Williams, and Morris P. Tilley. Plans for raising
money were then considered, and, after some discussion, the following resolution was unanimously adopted:
"Resolved, That this movement be a popular student movement, with a subscription of one dollar, though any one who so




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POE'S ROOM.
No. 13 West Range is back of the Second Arch to the left of the Letter Pox.










POE MEMORIAL.


_ *


desires may give more, and that each man present to-night agree
to see at least three others about the matter."
But little of the session of 1896-97 remained, yet this time
was used to the best advantage. The committee set to work to
secure such subscriptions and pledges as could be obtained; many
of the leading newspapers and magazines encouraged the enterprise; the success of the movement was assured. So far had the
work progressed before the session closed that, at the instance of
Professor Harrison, the Board of Visitors, at their annual meeting, June 15, 1897, adopted the following resolution:
"Learning that an effort is being made by the friends of the
University, both here and in the North, to gather together a Poe
Memorial Library for the Library of the University of Virginia,
at the suggestion of the friends of the movement here, it is
resolved that an alcove of the University Library be set aside
as the Poe Memorial Alcove for the reception of said memorial
library; said alcove to be selected by the Library Committee of
the Faculty."
The band of workers had as yet received no definite name.
On the evening of Monday, November 7, 1898, however, Bishop
Fitzgerald, of Nashville, Tenn., gave an informal account of his
personal recollections of Poe, after which a meeting of those
present was held, and for the first time the Poe Memorial Association received its distinctive name.  Dr. Kent was elected
president; Mr. Schuyler Poitevent, vice-president; Dr. J. A.
Harrison, secretary and treasurer, while Messrs. M. L. Bonner,
M. L. Halif, Gordon Wilson, E. H. H. Old, L. C. Williams,
and R. S. Brank were chosen as the remaining members of the
executive committee. A constitution was adopted at the same
time, and also the following resolution:
"WHEREAS, Our most famous alumnus, Edgar Allan Poe, has
never been sufficiently honored here at the University of Virginia
by public testimonials of his worth; and
" WHEREAS, It has now been determined to erect to his memory a bronze bust in the new Library; and. 11 " 'i




26


POE MEMORIAL.


"WHEREAS, It is clearly the pious duty of the University of
Virginia to collect and preserve all of his literary productions,
souvenirs of his life and work, and material contributing to the
full understanding and appreciation of his career; therefore, be it
"Resolved, That for these and kindred purposes we here and
now organize a permanent Poe Memorial Association."
Subsequently the offices of secretary and treasurer were separated, Mr. Bonner being called to the treasurer's duties, while his
former place on the executive committee was taken by Mr. E. L.
Grace.
Considerable progress was made during the succeeding months.
Toward the end of the session it was decided that sufficient funds
were on hand to warrant the engagement of a sculptor, and for
this purpose a special committee, consisting of Dr. Kent, Dr.
Harrison, and Mr. Gordon Wilson, was appointed. After much
deliberation the contract for the execution of the bust was awarded
to Mr. George Julian Zolnay, of whose life and work a sketch
will be found elsewhere. Nor has the Poe Memorial Association
ever had reason to regret the selection.
The Association held its second annual meeting on November
10, 1898, and at the same time was favored with an address by
Judge R. T. W. Duke, Jr., of Charlottesville, on "Poe's Student
Days." Upon the conclusion of Judge Duke's remarks a photograph of the clay model of the bust was shown, and the announcement was made that sufficient funds were on hand to meet the
first payment. The Association then proceeded to the election of
officers. Dr. Kent and Dr. Harrison were re-elected president
and secretary respectively; Mr. W. A. Clark, Jr., was made vicepresident, and Mr. F. H. Abbot, treasurer. The newly-chosen
executive board were Messrs. R. S. Brank, E. H. H. Old, Gordon
Wilson, M. P. Tilley, A. B. Rhett, and L. P. Chamberlayne.
When the session of 1899-1900 arrived all had gone well and
only the final arrangements remained to be completed. As soon
as possible the Association held a meeting. Details of the unveiling exercises were then discussed, and it was decided that all matters




POE MEMORIAL.                     27
be left in the hands of a Committee of Arrangements, consisting of
Dr. Kent, Dr. Harrison, Prof. Thornton, Messrs. E. R. Rogers,
W. I. Stuart, W. T. Shannonhouse, and J. W. Hunter, Jr. The
meeting then adjourned until Saturday, October 7, 1899, the day
which was to witness the unveiling of Zolnay's bust of Poe.
The bust, which was delivered at the University in May and
at once approved and accepted by the executive committee, is of
bronze, representing the poet as leaning on his left hand, with the
other nervously clutching the lappel of his coat. The expression
of the eyes has been noted by art critics as being unusual for
bronze. The bust, in position on its solid oak pedestal, is of
heroic size. This pedestal bears a tablet with the inscription:
" Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, student at the University of Virginia, February to December, 1826." There is on the bust itself
a facsimile of the poet's signature.




GEORGE JULIAN ZOLNAY.


THE best idea of the life and works of this great sculptor
before he was commissioned with the execution of the Poe
bust may be gained from the following account, which appeared in
a Brooklyn paper of January 28, 1898:
"The career of an artist is generally an interesting chain of
struggles, hopes, and disappointments of which the public little
dreams.
"What little the public ever knows of these tribulations it only
knows from the history of the few chosen ones who finally succeed. One of these successful artists whose history is of more
than usual interest is Mr. George Julian Zolnay, of New York,
whose recent successes have brought him to such prominence that
he must be considered one of our leading sculptors.
" The first of Mr. Zolnay's difficulties was the strong opposition
of his family against his making art his profession, but this could
not muzzle the impulse of genius. So at the first opportunity he
went to Paris either to become a sculptor in the fullest sense of
the word or to be submerged and disappear in the great current
of human struggle.
"From Paris he went to Vienna and competed for a place in
the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating with
highest honors from that famous institution, he was commissioned
to model a pediment for the Carmelite Cloister illustrating the
verse, 'Come unto Me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and
I will give you rest.' The originality of conception and power
of execution which this young sculptor displayed in this work
foreshadowed the brilliant success he was to achieve in later life.
After a short visit to Paris in 1889 he returned to Vienna, and
while there the American Consul-General to the Austrian capital
urged him to come to this country and participate in the sculpture
work of the Chicago World's Fair. Mr. Zolnay at once seized
with enthusiasm this suggestion. His original intentions were to




GEORGE JULIAN ZOLNAY.




I




POE MEMORIAL.


29


do the sculpture work in Chicago and then return to Europe.
But before he got through with his work he had become identified
with the people and the country, and he decided to remain here.
" However, Chicago not being congenial after the exposition,
he returned to New York, which has remained his home.
"In 1896 he entered the competition for the large monument
to be erected in Galveston, Texas, representing the history of the
Texan Revolution of 1836. This was the first work that brought
Mr. Zolnay prominently before the public.  The press of the
whole country recognized in most flattering terms Mr. Zolnay's
remarkable power.
" His next work was a series of musicians-Beethoven, Mozart,
Schuman, Chopin-in which his constant tendency to portray the
spiritual was so strongly revealed that to-day these busts are considered the best portraits ever made of these heroes of the musical
realm.
" When modeling the musicians the necessity for some material
which should be a worthy substitute for bronze and marble presented itself more strongly than ever before, and Mr. Zolnay took
up the thread of his former experiments and succeeded in giving
to the world a compound for statuary which, it is predicted, will
give sculpture work a popularity which it has not enjoyed since
the times of Phidias. It is as durable as stone or bronze and as
beautiful, but it reduces the cost of production to a minimum. In
the early spring of this year Mr. Zolnay was offered a part of the
work of the Nashville Centennial Exposition. While doing the
large statues for the Centennial, he heard the pathetic story of
Sam Davis, the Confederate scout, who preferred to sacrifice his
life rather than betray a friend.
"The heroism of the young Southron so appealed to Zolnay's
mind that he at once determined to make a bust of the hero.
When exhibited in the Parthenon it was a revelation to the
people, who saw their ideal of manliness, courage, and selfsacrifice embodied in marble. This work revealed, more than
any of Zolnay's creations, his strong personality and his extraordinary power of portraying the soul and all that is noble and




30


POE MEMORIAL.


elevating in human nature. His success was instantaneous. After
leaving Nashville Mr. Zolnay was entrusted with the execution
of the pediment of the new buildings of the University of Virginia."
It was in the fall of 1898 that the Executive Committee of the
Poe Memorial Association agreed to entrust to Mr. Zolnay the
execution of the Poe bust. The bust itself was completed during
the early spring of 1899, and was put on view in the art exhibits
of New York and also in the sculptor's studio.       It at once
attracted unusual attention, and photographs of it were reproduced in more than a hundred of the leading magazines and
newspapers, both in the United States and Canada.
The Poe bust has been universally regarded as Zolnay's best
achievement, since he has succeeded in the well-nigh impossible
task of shaping in bronze the features of the man whose story is
one of the most pathetic in the annals of American letters, and
giving a vision of the soul and mind of the poet who has made
for our literature its most notable, significant, and enduring part.
Not only is this Zolnay's best production, but it is also the best
portrait of Poe yet produced. Besides representing the physical
features of the poet with such accuracy that those who knew him
praise its fidelity, it has caught to an unusual degree the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of the poet as they are exhibited in his writings.
Two letters from the sculptor are here quoted in extract, the
one showing his conception of the task before him, the other his
opinion of his work when finished:
" The work on our Poe is progressing so successfully that I consider myself most fortunate in the undertaking. Everybody considers it an immense improvement over the original sketch of
which you have a photograph, and I confidently hope my ambitions in this work will be fully gratified..
"I personally think that Poe was an unfortunate, more sinned
against than sinning, who bore his misfortune with resignation,
lacking the strength to 'fight it out.' On the other hand, I think
he had more the nature of an artist than of a profound thinker;
consequently, he probably was careless in many ways, which his
enemies made capital of against him.




POE MEMORIAL.


31


"Be that as it may, it seems to me that the mission in transmitting the image of Poe to posterity, is not to emphasize his
shortcomings, if he had any, but his great qualities of a genius.
However, I think I ought to preserve a certain sadness in his expression which depicts his unfortunate life. This, in a general
way, is my idea of Poe, and I should be under great obligations
if you would kindly let me know to what extent my views coincide
with your wishes..
"Yours very truly,
" G. J. ZOLNAY."
"The general verdict is that this is by far the best piece of
work I ever did. Stimulated by this signal success, I have prolonged the work by two weeks, and I am satisfied now that there
is nothing I could possibly improve in this bust.
" Mrs. Jefferson Davis, for whom I am designing a memorial
for her lost daughter, said that this Poe bust is the most remarkable piece of sculpture she has ever seen.
"The commendation which is of the highest importance, however, I received from Dr. Charles D. West, of Brooklyn. Dr.
West, who was the head of the first female college in this city, was
Poe's next-door neighbor, and appointed him chairman on the
jury awarding medals for the best compositions in that institution.
After Poe moved to Fordham, Dr. West visited him several times.
Dr. West, although in his ninetieth year, retains his remarkable
memory and intellectual powers, and his enthusiastic approval of
the bust is the strongest guarantee that we have obtained not only
a powerful representation of Poe's worth and personality, but a
physical portrait as well. He thinks that the pose and general
conception is most fortunate and characteristic of Poe."




THE UNVEILING EXERCISES.


THE programme arranged by the committee was as follows:
Prayer................................ Rev. Charles A. Young.
A Word of Welcome............Dr. P. B. Barringer, Chairman.
President's Address......................Dr. Charles W. Kent.
Presentation of the Bust..........Mr. Sidney Ernest Bradshaw.
Bust Unveiled..................M aster John Letcher Harrison.
Acceptance of the Bust.........r. Paul B. Barringer, Chairman.
Memorial Address................... Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie.
Memorial Ode......................Mr. Robert Burns Wilson.
In the best account given of the exercises it was said: One was
impressed chiefly by two points: the bright, quiet, business-like
way in which everything passed off-not allowing the audience
for a moment to feel dull, bored or tired; and the literary and
historical value of the new matter produced in relation to a subject
and a person so well known and so long and thoroughly discussed."
The large public hall in the new Academic Building was well
filled with a sympathetic audience of students, residents in the
community and distinguished visitors.
The following report is taken from the Alumni Bulletin:
After a brief and appropriate prayer by the Rev. Charles A.
Young, of the University, Dr. Paul B. Barringer, the Chairman
of the Faculty, in an informal way turned over the meeting to the
Association. In response, Dr. Charles W. Kent, the president of
the Poe Memorial Association, to whose earnest efforts and hearty
sympathy is largely due the success of this movement, delivered
an address that met with the warmest appreciation and approval.
He spoke first of the recognized aims of a university to collect
and disseminate human knowledge, both in the halls and to the
outside world; then of the duty to preserve the historic past of
the land or section in which it is situated, and then of the higher,
nobler, and more practical purpose belonging to a university to
apply knowledge to life, and thus cultivate wisdom and make men.
The last two purposes are at once subserved by due honor paid to




POE MEMORIAL.;33


the illustrious dead, for the record of their achievements, the
revival of interest in their lives and work, serve at the same time
to elicit the admiration of young men for the great and to incite
them to the emulation of the deeds of their fathers. The University of Virginia has not, he said, been remiss beyond other institutions in honoring her sons, but she has been blessed with many
whose substantial attainments, exemplary citizenship, and laudable
contributions to letters and arts deserve full recognition at her
hands.
But to-day, he continued, we have met on a most notable occasion-an occasion attracting not the attention of our University
and Virginia alone, but, as you will hear to-night, of men and
women all over our land. And surely no son is more worthy of
our homage, for no other has become so widely known, or has so
clearly established his claim to an immortality of fame. And
Poe's connection with the University is more close and essential
than many have supposed. He has been often pictured as one
who came into our midst for a brief period-as for example did,
later, Wolcott Balestier, the collaborator of Rudyard Kiplingand his career here has been described as stormy, and abruptly
and rudely ended. Not only is this not true, but the truth is that,
despite lapses from the path of exemplary conduct, despite an
occasional surrender to the prevailing vices of his day, he conducted himself in his associations with the professors and officers
of the institution so as to command their respect. For his attainments they had a high regard, which they testified privately, by
public commendation, and by their official signatures. Moreover,
his literary career afterwards had more than is supposed to do with
his life here. It is true that there is difficulty in determining
when Poe served his prentice years, but it is known that in his
own room on the Range-in Rowdy Row, as it was then significantly called-as well as in the rooms of his fellow-students, he
often fascinated them with his weird creations. His long walks
around these hills furnished him with both mood and material, and
there are echoes of his life here in the Tale of the Ragged Mountains and in other stories. Presumably, too, poetic exercises were




34


POE MEMORIAL.


usual with him, else how would he have merited that famous coinmendation for his metrical translation of a passage from Tasso?
His reading here, too, might have been taken as a slight indication
both of his taste and his mental traits. It was here, no doubt,
that he laid the foundation for his mental achievements, and we
can claim to have influenced him in his development as much as
any other institution or as any experience of his early life. We
do ourselves honor in honoring him, and on this day, which
reminds us of his life and death, we can lay aside for the moment
all censure of his life, all scorn for his weaknesses, all pity for his
fate, and rejoice in the unique productions of his solitary genius
and the world-wide recognition of his literary greatness.
The presentation of the bust was made by Mr. Sidney Ernest
Bradshaw, of Kentucky, who spoke as follows:
" Nearly three-quarters of a century ago there came to the University of Virginia a youth unknown to fortune and fame. His
sojourn here was short, and he left these academic halls before the
completion of his course; yet his brief stay is one of the most
memorable events in the history of this grand old institution.
Though his subsequent life was marred by inherited weaknesses,
he was gifted nevertheless with that which places a man among
the immortals-genius; a genius unique and rare; a genius that
marked his name as one of the very greatest in American literature. By accident of birth a Bostonian, he was by training and
sympathy a Southerner, and much of his work was done in the
South, where he has always been recognized and very popular.
But the recognition of the wonderful genius of Edgar Allan Poe
has not been confined merely to the South; his readers and
admirers are numbered by multitudes in the North; one of his
best biographies was written by a, Northern man, and the best
edition of his works was edited by two Northern men. To quote
from the current number of a leading critical journal, His place
among our greatest writers becomes every year more and more
firmly assured.' Abroad, Poe has been regarded even more highly,
if possible, than at home. His works have been translated into the
leading foreign languages-French, German, Spanish, Italian



POE MEMORIAL.


35


and by several of these nations he is considered the greatest and
most original writer America has yet produced.
"' Through many a year his fame has grownLike midnight, vast, like starlight, sweetTill now his genius fills a throne,
And nations marvel at his feet.'
"With these facts before us, we cannot but feel that while Poe
is of the South, Southern, he is also of the nation, national, and
that as such his memory deserves all honor and respect.
" It was with this feeling that a number of University of Virginia students met together in the spring of 1897 to discuss plans
for a suitable commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
poet's death. A temporary organization was formed, and, after
due consideration, it was determined that the occasion should be
marked by the presentation to his Alma Mater of a life-size bust of
Poe. The session of 1896-97 was already far advanced, but committees were appointed to feel the pulse of the student body and
see what could be done. These met with encouragement, and a
sufficient number of men were enrolled as members and supporters
of the movement to warrant its ultimate success. The session of
1896-97 closed. The next year several of the original workers
failed to return to the University, but more competent hands took
up the work, and on November 8, 1897, a permanent organization
was effected under the name of the Poe Memorial Association.
The constitution, adopted in due form, did not forbid membership
to persons outside of the University, but from the first the movement was distinctively a student movement-the aim being to pay
a tribute from present students to a former student-and the main
endeavor was directed towards continuing it as such. Dr. Kent
and Professor Harrison, of the Faculty, had given their hearty
sympathy and support, and at the permanent organization the
former was elected president and the latter secretary. The matter
was kept before the students by the work of the committees, by
the reading of papers on Poe in the University Book Club, and
by notices from time to time in College Topics.
"The commission for the bust was entrusted to Mr. George




36


POE MEMORIAL.


Julian Zolnay, the well-known sculptor of New York. At the
second annual meeting of the Association, in November, 1898, the
completion of the clay model was announced, and the bust was
soon afterwards cast in bronze. It was exhibited in New York,
and accounts of it were published in the magazines. Wide interest was manifested throughout the country, and many enthusiastic
letters were received from eminent people. As in every movement
of this kind, however, obstacles and discouragements were not
wanting; interest sometimes seemed to flag; subscriptions did not
come in as rapidly as might be desired; but happily, through the
skilful guidance of the president, all these things have been overcome, and the main purpose of the Association has been accomplished.
"I therefore now have the honor, Mr. Chairman, of formally
presenting to the University of Virginia, in the name of the Poe
Memorial Association, the Zolnay bust of Edgar Allan Poe."
Just as Mr. Bradshaw uttered his last words Master John
Letcher Harrison touched the cord and the covering veil fell to
the floor. The impression produced is thus variously described:
"A wave of sadness swept over every heart present, for the
sculptor had portrayed with magic power the sorrowfulness of the
poet's life."
" The tension of silence that fell upon the beholders was the
best proof of the power and fidelity with which the sculptor had
done his work. Mr. Zolnay never saw Poe, but he has studied
his subject in all the positions in which the kindred art of painting
has represented him, and has produced what Mr. E. C. Stedman
very aptly calls 'a not untruthful likeness.'
" One fancies that the resemblance between artist and subject
has aided in that revelation of the poet's true self which has
assuredly been achieved; for Zolnay's bust is the real Poe. Not
at the age of thirty-five, not in the act of composing 'The
Raven'-all this is pure Philistinism. It is Poe-poor, struggling, suffering, misunderstood, longing, but unable to reveal himself; Poe, 'whose heart-strings were a lute,' often sadly out of








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POE MEMORIAL.


37


tune, and quivering sharply and discordantly under a rude or
careless touch.'
"' I feel as if I were one of those who misunderstood him,' said
a beholder. The words were a justification of the sculptor's conception of his task, and a tribute to the manner of its execution."
Dr. Barringer, on behalf of the University, expressed his appreciation of the handsome gift, and promised the Association that
the bust of Edgar Allan Poe should ever have an honorable place
among the treasures of the institution, and the care and attention
its artistic value merited.  He also took occasion to deny the oftrepeated falsehood that Poe was expelled from the University of
Virginia. On the contrary, he produced the records of the University, which show conclusively that Poe was never before the
Faculty but once, and then as a witness in a case about which he
knew nothing.
The feature of the day, a masterly memorial address by Mr.
Hamilton W. Mabie, of New York, was a fitting and eloquent
tribute to the dead poet and to his position in American letters.
Broad and comprehensive in grasp, simple and elegant in style,
tender and poetic in sentiment, just and unbiased in criticism,
hopeful and optimistic in mood, this address held the audience
spellbound for an hour, and marked, perhaps, the climax of the
many literary addresses of this University. Taking as his theme
"Poe's Place in American Literature," Mr. Mabie spoke as
follows.




38


POE M EMORIAL.


POE'S PLACE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE.
MIr. President and Members of the Poe Mlemorial Association,
Ladies and Gentlemen of the University:
No wise man would seek the responsibility which rests on the
speaker of to-day, nor would any wise man decline the opportunity which this occasion presents. The presence of an audience
at once critical and inclusive, representative of so many sections
and interests, furnishes the most convincing evidence of the dignity and significance of this memorial celebration.
It is fitting that the impressive memorial of this rare and gifted
spirit should be placed here, where the young men of this ancient
commonwealth will bring their aspirations in all the time to come.
Virginia has never lost touch with the spirit of her earlier traditions; has never parted with that generous idealism which gave
fire to the speech of Henry, ardor to the poise of Washington,
prophetic breadth to the statesmanship of Jefferson, and the highest personal distinction to the genius of Lee. Under the roof of
her historic University, in the heart of a landscape touched with
some of her noblest traditions of public service, the face of Poe
will look into the faces of those who are to make or mar the fortunes of the future.  Those fortunes must be spiritual in their
uses, however material in their forms. They can never be great
so long as they can be measured and valued; it is only when they
fly the scales and refuse to be computed that they become part of
the immortal heritage of the race. They cannot be reckoned in
gold or silver; they are not to be measured in lands and ships;
they are not even to be counted in political rights and privileges.
The fortunes of the race are not bound up with forms of government, but with nobility of soul, freedom of spirit, richness of
life. This country stands in sore need of the men who shall set
it free from servile devotion to success, and bring its body into
subjection to its spirit; who shall redeem it from content with
inferior men and satisfaction in small and easy achievements. It




I1


HAMILTON W. MABIE.








POE MEMORIAL.


39


needs the love of greatness, the passion for perfection. It needs
the opening of the windows of the imagination. Here, then, let
this beautiful image stand, to remind the men of the future that
the things of the hand perish, but the things of the spirit are immortal; and that we live, not in the things we measure, but in
the things which measure us.
One fact about our literature has not received adequate attention-the fact that it had no childhood. In its beginning it was
the record of a people who had long passed the age of play and
dreams, and were given over to pressing and exacting work. We
are a young nation, but an old people; and our books, as distinguished from English books, are the products of a mature people
in a new world. The world in which books are written has much
to do with their quality, their themes, and their form; but the
substance of the books of power is the deposit of experience in
the hearts and minds of a race. In American literature we have
a fresh field and an old race; we have new conditions, and an
experience which antedates them. We were educated in the Old
World, and a man carries his education with him. He cannot
escape it, and would lose incalculably if he could.
The kind of originality which inheres in a new race and runs
into novel forms we do not and shall not possess; the kind of
originality which issues out of direct and hand-to-hand dealing
with nature and life we may hope to develop on the scale of the
Greeks or the English. A great literature must be waited for,
and while we are waiting it is wise to be hopeful of the future;
for expectation is often a kind of prophecy, and to believe in the
possibility of doing the best things in the best way is in itself a
kind of preparation. To say that literature in this country, to
the close of this century, is the product of an old race is not to
charge it with lack of first-hand insight and force, but to explain
some of its characteristics.
Goethe speaks of his mother's joyousness and love of stories.
Her temperament was the gift which irradiated the pedantic
father's bequest of order, industry, and method to the author of
Faust. Art is the constant assertion that man has a right to live




40


POE MEMORIAL.


as well as to work; that the value of work depends largely upon
spontaneity; and that the springs which gush from the soil have
the greatest power of assuaging the thirst of the soul. This element of the uncalculated, the spontaneous, the uncontrolled, or at
least undirected play of human energy finds full and free expression in the literature of the youth of races, and is the special and
prime quality of literature at that stage of development. As the
man is born first in the boy's temper and spirit and ideals, and
born again in the struggles of experience, so the creative imagination of a race is shaped, colored, and formed largely in the earliest
contacts of that race with nature and with life; with the order
about it, and the inward and outward happenings of its life.
Work and play, the conscious putting forth of energy and the
unconscious responsiveness to all manner of impressions, must be
kept in equilibrium, if there is to be continuous and rich productiveness.  But the pressure of suffering and toil is so great upon
the mature race, as upon the mature man, that it can be met only
by a great accumulation in youth of idealism and joy. In the
popular epics and in the early ballads there is a freshness, a
vitality, an uncalculated and captivating charm, which make the
reader of a more sophisticated age feel that in reading or hearing
them lie is near the springs of literature.
That there are close and vital ties between all the arts of
expression and the life behind them; that the poem and the story
reflect in interior and elusive but very real ways the quality of the
race which fashioned them; that genius itself, although in a sense
independent of character, is conditioned, for its full, free, and
highest expression, upon character, the large majority of students of
literature are agreed. But these structural laws are never obvious in
the great works of art; they are obeyed, not because they have been
arbitrarily imposed by an authority from without, but because they
are at one with the deepest artistic impulses and necessities.
Shakespeare does not need to remind himself that he is an Englishman in order to write like one; he has but to follow the line
of least resistance in expression, and his work will be English to
the core.




POE MEMORIAL.


41


Literature may be said to approach perfection in the degree in
which it reveals the life behind it, and at the same time conceals
all trace of intention, contrivance, or method in making its revelation. In the highest work of all kinds, obedience is spontaneous
and apparently unconscious; for it is the very essence of art that
all traces of the workman should be effaced. A great poem has
the volume, the flow, the deep and silent fullness, of a river; one
cannot calculate the force of the springs which feed it; one gets
from it only a continuous impression of exhaustless and effortless
power. One has but to glance at the Rhone to feel that the Alps
are feeding it. In the literature of races in their youth there may
be no greater power than in the literature of the same races at
maturity, but there is likely to be more buoyancy, confident ease,
overflowing vitality, than at a later period; and these earlier works
enrich all later work by the qualities they bring into the race consciousness. There was something in Homer which the dramatists
could not reproduce, but which profited them much; there was a
joy, a delight in life, a fragrance of the morning, in Chaucer
which, reappearing in Shakespeare, make the weight of tragedy
bearable. It is well for a race, as for a man, that it has childhood
behind it, and that in those first outpourings of energy in play the
beauty of the new day and the young world sinks into.its heart
and becomes part of its deepest consciousness; for it is out of
these memories and dreams that the visions of art issue. The
artist is always a child in freshness of feeling; in unworldly
delight in the things which do not add to one's estate, but which
make for inward joy and peace; in that easy possession of the
world which brings with it the sense of freedom, the right to be
happy, and the faith that life is greater than its works, and a man
more important than his toil. A race, like an individual, must get
this consciousness of possession before the work of the day becomes
imperative and absorbing. The man who has not learned to play in
childhood is not likely to learn to play in maturity; and without the
spirit of play-the putting forth of energy as an end in itself, and
for the sake of the joy which lies in pure activity-there can be no
art. For work becomes art only when it is transformed into play.
~,.




42


POE MEMORIAL.


Our race has had its youth, its dreams and visions; but that
youth was lived on another continent; so far as the record of
experience in our literature is concerned, we have always been
mature people at hard work. The beginnings of our art are to be
found, therefore, not in epics, ballads, songs, and stories, but in
records of exploration, reports of pioneers, chronicles and histories; in Captain John Smith's True Relation of such Occurrences
and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia; in William Bradford's History of Plymouth; in John Winthrop's History of New England, a narrative not without touches of youth,
"We had now fair sunshine weather, and so pleasant a sweet air
as did much refresh us, and there came a smell off the shore like
the smell of a garden;" in Cotton Mather's Magnalia; in Poor
Richard's Almanac; in Mrs. Bradstreet's rhymed history of The
Four Monarchies; in Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, of
which Lowell said that it became " the solace of every fireside, the
flicker of the pine knots by which it was conned perhaps adding a
livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal combustion." There
are touches of beauty in Jonathan Edwards at his best; there is a
spiritual charm in John Woolman's Journal; the directness and
simplicity of genuine literature are in Franklin's Autobiography;
in Freneau and Hopkinson there are strains which, in a more fortunate time, might easily have turned to melody; there were great
notes struck by the writers and orators of the Revolutionary
period-by Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Henry. But in all this
early expression of the English race in the New World there is a
clear, definite purpose, an ulterior aim, a subordination of the art
to the religious or political intention, which stamp the writing of
the time as essentially secondary. Art involves forgetfulness of
immediate ends; complete surrender to the inward impulse to
give form to the beautiful idea or image or truth because it is
beautiful. Of the naivetg of the old ballad, the careless rapture of
Chaucer when the lark sings and the meadows grow sweet with
the breath of May, the free and joyous play of imagination in
Shakespeare, there is no trace in early writing on this continent.
That writing was serious and weighty, often touching the heights




POE MEMORIAL.


43


of eloquence in noble argument for the inviolability of those rights
which are the heritage of the English race; but the spontaneity,
the freedom, the joyousness, of creative art were not in it. They
could not be in it; the men who wrote our early chronicles and
histories, who took part in the great debates which preceded the
Revolution, and made the speeches which were heard from Williamsburg to Boston, had other work to do.
In Charles Brockden Brown a new note is heard-a note of
mystery and tragedy; as if into the working world of the new
continent the old elements of fate had come, to give experience a
deeper tinge, and to make men aware that in the fresh as in the
long-tilled soil the seeds of conflict and sorrow are sown. There
is none of the joyousness of youth in Brown's romances; but there
is the sense of power, the play of the imagination, the passion for
expression for its own sake, which are the certain signs of literature. There is, above all, the daemonic element, that elusive,
incalculable, mysterious element in the soul of the artist, which is
present in all art, and which, when it dominates the artist, forms
those fascinating, mysterious personalities, from Aristophanes to
Poe, who make us feel the futility of all easy endeavors to formulate the laws of art, or to explain with assurance the relations of
genius to inheritance, environment, education, and temperament.
In art, as in all products of the creative force, there is a mystery
which we cannot dispel. If we could analyze genius, we should
destroy it. To the time of the publication of " Wieland, or the
Transformation," it is easy to explain the written expression of
American life, to show how it was directed and shaped by conditions in the New World; but with the publication of Wieland the
inexplicable appears, the creative spirit begins to reveal itself.
Charles Brockden Brown did not master his material and organize
it, and his work falls short of that harmony of spirit and form
which is the evidence of a true birth of beauty; but there are
flashes of insight in it, touches of careless felicity, which witness
the possession of a real gift.
The prophecy which the discerning reader finds in Brown's
sombre romances was fulfilled in the work of Poe and Hawthorne.




44


POE MEMORIAL.


It is conceivable that a student of the Puritan mind might have
foreseen the coming of Hawthorne; for the great romancer, who
was to search the Puritan conscience as with a lighted candle, was
rooted and grounded historically in the world behind him. There
was that in Hawthorne, however, which could not have been predicted: there was the mysterious co-working of temperament,
insight, individual consciousness, and personality which constitutes
what we call genius. On one side of Hawthorne's work there are
lines of historical descent which may be clearly traced; on the
other there is the inexplicable miracle, the miracle of art, the creation of the new and beautiful form.
It is the first and perhaps the most obvious distinction of
Edgar Allan Poe that his creative work baffles all attempts to
relate it historically to antecedent conditions; that it detached
itself almost completely from the time and place in which it made
its appearance, and sprang suddenly and mysteriously from a soil
which had never borne its like before.
There was nothing in the America of the third decade of the
century which seemed to predict The City in the Sea, Israfel, and
the lines, To Helen. It is true, work of genuine literary quality
had been produced, and a notable group of writers of gift and
quality had appeared. Irving had brought back the old joyousness and delight in life for its own sake in Knickerbocker's History of New York and in the Sketch Book; Cooper had uncovered
the romantic element in our history in The Spy; Thanatopsis had
betrayed an unexpected touch of maturity; Emerson was meditating at Concord that thin volume on Nature, so full of his penetrating insight into the spiritual symbolism of natural phenomena
and processes; Longfellow had returned from that first year of
foreign residence which had enriched his fancy, and through the
sympathetic quality of his mind was to make him the interpreter
of the Old World to the Nbew. Hawthorne, born five years earlier
than Poe-so like him in certain aspects of his genius, so unlike
him in temperament and character-destined to divide with him
the highest honors of American authorship, was hidden in that
fortunate obscurity in which his delicate and sensitive genius




POE MEMORIAL.


45


found perhaps the best conditions for its ripening. The TwiceTold Tales did not appear until 1837. Lowell was a school-boy,
a college student, and a reluctant follower of the law; the Bigelow
Papers, his most original and distinctive contribution to our literature, being still a full decade in the future. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, born in the same year with Poe-that annus mirabilis
which gave the world Poe, Holmes, Tennyson, Lincoln, Gladstone,
Darwin, Mendelssohn, and Chopin-had touched the imagination
of the country by the ringing protest in Old Ironsides against
the destruction of the Constitution, and in the same decade revealed
his true lyric gift in The Last Leaf. Whittier was a young
Quaker, of gentle nature but intense convictions, who was speaking to hostile audiences and braving the perils of mob violence in
his advocacy of the anti-slavery cause.
These names suggest the purity and aspiration, the high idealism and the tender domestic piety, which were soon to give early
American literature its distinctive notes. To these earlier poets,
romancers, and essayists were, later, to be added the name of
Sidney Lanier, whose affluent nature needed another decade for
its complete unfolding and coordination; and of Walt Whitman,
who was so rich in the elemental qualities of imagination, and so
rarely master of them. There was something distinctive in each
of these writers-something which had no place in literature before they came, and is not likely to be repeated; and yet, from
Bryant to Whitman, there were certain obvious relationships, both
spiritual and historical, between each writer and his environment.
Each was representative of some deep impulse finding its way to
action; of some rising passion which leaped into speech before it
turned to the irrevocable deed.
To the men who were young between 1830 and 1840, there
was something in the air which broke up the deeps of feeling and
set free the torpid imagination. For the first time in the New
World it became easy and natural for men to sing. Hitherto the
imagination had been invoked to give wings and fire to high
argument for the rights of men; now the imagination began to
speak, by virtue of its own inward impulse, of the things of its




46


POE MEMORIAL.


own life. In religion, in the social consciousness, in public life,
there were stirrings of conscience which revealed a deepening life
of the spirit among the new people. The age of provincialism,
of submission to the judgment and acceptance of the taste of
older and more cultivated communities, was coming to an end.
Dr. Holmes called the address delivered before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society at Harvard College in August, 1837, "our declaration of intellectual independence." That independence was
already partially achieved when Emerson spoke those memorable
words:"Perhaps the time is already come... when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids
and fulfill the postponed expectation of the world with something
better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws
to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life
cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests.
Events, actions, arise that must be sung, that will sing themselves.
Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as
the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith,
astronomers announce, shall one day be the polestar for a thousand years."
This striving of the spirit, breaking away from the old forms
and feeling after new ways of speech, was shared by all the New
England writers. Beneath his apparent detachment from the
agitations of his time, Dr. Holmes was as much a breaker of old
images as Lowell or Whittier; and Hawthorne, artist that he was
to the last touch of his pen, is still the product of Puritanism.
The breath of the new time was soft and fecundating on the old
soil, and the flowers that were soon afield had the hue of the sky
and the shy and delicate fragrance of the New England climate
in them.
Poe stood alone among his contemporaries by reason of the fact
that, while his imagination was fertilized by the movement of the
time, his work was not, in theme or sympathy, representative of
the forces behind it. The group of gifted men, with whom he




POE MEMORIAL.


47


had for the most part only casual connections, reflected the age
behind them or the time in which they lived; Poe shared with
them the creative impulse without sharing the specific interests
and devotions of the period. He was primarily and distinctively
the artist of his time; the man who cared for his art, not for
what he could say through it, but for what it had to say through
him. Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Bryant, Irving, and, in
certain aspects of his genius, Hawthorne might have been predicted;
reading our early history in the light of our later development,
their coming seems to have been foreordained by the conditions of
life on the new continent; and, later, Whitman and Lanier stand
for and are bound up in the fortunes of the New World, and its
new order of political and social life. Poe alone, among men of
his eminence, could not have been foreseen.
This fact suggests his limitations, but it also brings into clear
view the unique individuality of his genius and the originality of
his work. His contemporaries are explicable; Poe is inexplicable.
He remains the most sharply-defined personality in our literary
history. His verse and his imaginative prose stand out in bold
relief against a background which neither suggests nor interprets
them. One may go further, and affirm that both his verse and his
prose have a place by themselves in the literature of the world.
There are, it is true, evidences of Poe's sensitiveness to the
English landscape, and to certain English philosophical and literary influences. The five years spent in the Manor House school
in the suburbs of the London of the early part of the century
gave the future writer of William Wilson and The Fall of the
House of Usher a store of reminiscences and impressions of landscape and architecture which touched some of his later work with
atmosphere effects of the most striking kind, and gave that work
a sombre and significant background of immense artistic value.
It is not difficult to find in his earlier verse, as Mr. Stedman has
suggested, the influence of Byron and Moore, whose songs were
in the heart of that romantic generation. It is easy also to lay
bare Poe's indebtedness to Coleridge. This is only saying, however, that no man of imagination ever grows up in isolation;




48


POE MEMORIAL.


every sensitive spirit shares in the impulses of its time, and
receives its education for its own work at the hands of older
teachers.  When all is said, however, Poe remains a man of singularly individual genius, owing little to his immediate or even to
his remoter environment; an artist who felt keenly the spirit of
his art as it has found refuge in beautiful forms, but who detached
himself with consistent insistence from the influence of other
artists.
Until Poe began his brief and pathetic career, the genius of
Virginia and of the South had found expression chiefly in the
moulding of national institutions and the shaping of national
affairs; and it may be said without exaggeration that rarely in
the history of the world has public life been enriched by so many
men of commanding intellect and natural aptitude for great
affairs. The high intelligence, the wide grasp of principles, and
the keen practical sense of the earlier Southern statesmen gave
the stirring and formative periods of our early history epic dignity. In such a society Bacon might have found food for those
organ-toned essays on the greatness of states and the splendor of
national fortunes and responsibilities.  It was due largely to the
Virginians that the earlier public discussions and the later public
papers so often partook of the quality of literature. In Poe,
however, the genius of the South seemed to pass abruptly from
great affairs of state into the regions of pure imagination. In
The City in the Sea, Israfel, and the verses To Helen-to recall
three of Poe's earliest and most representative poems-there is
complete detachment from the earlier interests and occupations,
and complete escape into the world of ideality. It is part of the
charm of these perfect creations that they are free from all trace
of time and toil. Out of the new world of work and strife
magical doors were flung wide into the fairyland of pure song;
out of the soil, tilled with heroic labor and courage, a fountain
suddenly gushed from unsuspected springs.
In this disclosure of the unforeseen in our literary development,
in the possession of the daemonic element in art, Poe stands alone
in our literature, unrelated to his environment and detached from




POE MEMORIAL.


49


his time; the most distinctive and individual writer who has yet
appeared in this country.
Among the elements which go to the making of the true work
of art, the dtemonic holds a first place.  It is the essential and
peculiar quality of genius,-the quality which lies beyond the
reach of the most exacting and intelligent work, as it lies beyond
the search of analysis.  A trained man may learn the secrets of
form; he may become an adept in the skill of his craft; but the
final felicity of touch, the ultimate grace of effortless power, elude
and baffle him. Shakespeare is never so wonderful as in those
perfect lines, those exquisite images and similes, those fragrant
sentences akin with the flowers in their freshness, and in their
purity with waters which carry the stars in their depths, which
light comedy and tragedy and history as with a light beyond the
sun. Other aspects of his work may be explained; but the careless rapture of such phrases as
"And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn;"
"Daffodils,
That come before the swallow' dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,"
leaves us wondering and baffled. We have no key to them. This
natural magic, this divine ease in doing the most difficult things,
is the exclusive property of the man of genius, and is his only in
his most fortunate hours. No man can command this consummate
bloom on human speech; it lies on his work as it lies on the fields,
because the creative spirit has passed that way. It came again
and again to Wordsworth during fifteen marvelous years; and
when it passed it left him cold and mechanical. It is the pure
spirit of art moving like the wind where it listeth, and, like the
wind, dying into silence again. This magic was in Poe, and its
record remains, and will remain, one of our most precious literary
possessions. The bulk of the work upon which it rests is not
great; its ethical significance is not always evident; it is not
representative after the manner of the great masters of poetry;
but its quality is perfect. The importance of half a dozen per



50


POE MEMORIAL.


feet poems is not to be discovered in their mass; it lies in the
revelation of the imagination which shines in and from them.
Among a practical people, dealing with the external relations of
men, and largely absorbed in the work of the hands, the sudden
flashing of the "light that never was on sea or land" was a
spiritual event of high significance. That men do not live by
bread alone is the common message of religion and of art. That
message was delivered by Poe with marvelous distinctness of
speech. That he knew what he wanted to say, and that he deliberately and patiently sought the best way of saying it, is clear
enough; it neither adds to nor detracts from the artistic value of
what he did that he knew what he wanted to do. The essential
fact about him and his work is, that he was possessed by the
passion for beauty for its own sake, and that at his best he had
access to the region of pure ideality.
The spiritual value of art lies not only in its power to impart
ideas, but also in its power to clear the vision, to broaden the
range of human interests, and to liberate the imagination. Poe's
work attests again the presence of an element in the life of man
and in the work of his hand which cannot be foreseen, calculated,
or controlled; a quality not dissociated in its perfect expression
from historic or material conditions, but in its origin independent
of them. It is the witness, in other words, of something divine
and imperishable in the mind of man-something which allies
him with the creative energy, and permits him to share it. The
fact that he is sometimes unworthy of this high disclosure of the
ultimate beauty, and sometimes recreant to his faith and his gift,
diminishes the significance and value of his work no more than a
kindred infidelity nullifies the word of prophets of another order.
In the mysterious spiritual economy of the universe, there are
coordinations of gift and character, relations of spirit and environment, which elude all efforts to formulate them; not because they
lie outside the realm of law, but because the mind of man has not
yet been able to explore that realm. And in this very incompleteness of the philosophy of art lies that inexhaustible spiritual
suggestiveness which is at once the inspiration of art and its bur



POE MEMORIAL.


)51


den. Poe is distinctively and in a unique sense the artist in our
literature-the man to whom beauty was a constant and sufficient
justification of itself.
Such a faith is not without its perils; but in a new and working world, whose idealism had run mainly along lines of action,
it was essential and it was of high importance.  This singlemindedness of Poe in the pursuit of perfection in phrase and form
was not a matter of mere workmanship; it was the passion to
match the word with the thought, the melody with the feeling, so
vitally and completely that the ultimate harmony, in which all
men believe and for which all men crave, might become once
more a reality amid the dissonances of a struggling and imperfect
society. It is the function of the prophet to declare the inexorable will of righteousness amid a moral disorder which makes that
will, at times, almost incredible; it is the office of the artist to
discern and reveal the ultimate beauty in a time when all things
are in the making, and the dust and uproar of the workshop conceal even the faint prophecies of perfection.
In the vast workshop of the new society, noisily and turbulently
coordinating itself, Poe's work has been often misunderstood and
undervalued.  Its lack of strenuousness, its detachment from
workaday interests, its severance from ethical agitations, its remoteness from the common toils and experiences, have given to it
many an unreal and spectral aspect; there has seemed to be in it
a lack of seriousness which has robbed it of spiritual significance.
Its limitations in several directions are evident enough; but all
our poetry has disclosed marked limitations. The difficulty in
estimating Poe's work at its true value has lain in the fact that
his seriousness was expressed in devotion to objects not yet included in our range of keen and quick sympathies and interests.
Poe was a pioneer in a region not yet adequately represented on
our spiritual charts. To men engrossed in the work of making
homes for themselves the creation of a Venus of Melos might
seem a very unimportant affair; its perfection of pose and moulding might not wholly escape them, but the emotion which swept
Heine out of himself when he first stood before it would seem to




52


POE MEMORIAL.


such men hysterical and unreal. When the homes were built,
however, and men were housed in them, they would begin to crave
completeness of life, and then the imagination would begin to discern the priceless value of the statue which has survived the days
when gods appeared on the earth. The turmoil of the struggle
for existence in Greece has long since died into the all-devouring
silence, but that broken figure remains to thrill and inspire a
world which has forgotten the name of the man who breathed the
breath of life into it. It is a visible symbol not only of the passion for perfection, but of the sublime inference of that passionthe immortality of the spirit which conceived, and of the race
among which the perfect work was born.
This passion, which is always striving to realize its own imperishableness in the perfection of its work, and to continue the
unbroken record of creative activity among men, possessed Poe in
his best moments, and bore fruit in his imaginative work. He
was far in advance of the civilization in which he lived, in his
discernment of the value of beauty of men struggling for their
lives in a world full of ugliness because full of all manner of
imperfection; he is still in advance of any general development of
the ability to feel as he felt the inward necessity of finding harmony, and giving it reality to the mind, the eye, and the ear. In
older communities, looking at our life outside the circle of its
immediate needs and tasks, he has found a recognition often denied
him among his own people. If Poe has failed to touch us in certain places where we live most deeply and passionately, we have
failed to meet him where he lived deeply and passionately. MIatthew Arnold held that contemporary foreign opinion of a writer is
probably the nearest approach which can be made to the judgment
of posterity. The judgment of English, French, and German
critics has been, as a whole, unanimous in accepting Poe at a much
higher valuation than has been placed upon him at home, where
Lowell's touch-and-go reference in the Fable for Critics has too
often been accepted as an authoritative and final opinion from the
highest literary tribunal.
The men of Lowell's generation in New England could not




POE MEMORIAL.


53


have estimated adequately the quality of Poe's genius nor the
value of his work. Their conception of their art was high and
their practice of it fruitful, but their temper of mind threw them
out of sympathy with the view of art which Poe held, and which
has been illustrated in much of the most enchanting poetry in the
literature of the world. The masters of pure song, with whom
Poe belongs, could hardly have drawn breath in the rarefied air of
the New England of the first four decades. It was an atmosphere
in which Emerson breathed freely, and the purity and insight of
his work, like that of Hawthorne's, will remain an enduring evidence that intense moral conviction and deep moral feeling are
consistent with a true and beautiful art. But Keats could not
have lived in the air which Emerson found so full of inspiration;
and Keats is one of the poets of the century. This is only saying
that if you have one quality in a very high stage of development,
you are likely to be defective in other qualities equally important.
A national literature must have many notes, and Poe struck some
which in pure melodic quality had not been heard before. As literary interests broaden in this country, and the provincial point
of view gives place to the national, the American estimate of Poe
will approach more nearly the foreign estimate. That estimate
was based mainly on a recognition of Poe's artistic quality and of
the marked individuality of his work. Lowell and Longfellow
continued the old literary traditions; Poe seemed to make a new
tradition. The daemonic element in him, the pure individual
force, brought with it that sense of freshness and originality which
men are always eager to feel, and to which they often respond
with exaggerated cordiality. It is not surprising that those who
are full of the passion to create, and rarely endowed with the
power, sometimes go too far in rewarding the man who does what
they long to do, but cannot. The artist always pushes back the
boundaries a little, and opens a window here and there through
which the imagination looks out upon the world of which it
dreams so gloriously, but which it sees so rarely; and we are not
prone to mete out with mathematical exactness our praise of those
who set us free. If we lose our heads for a time when Kipling




54


POE MEMORIAL.


comes with his vital touch, his passionate interest in living things,
the harm is not great. Poe may have been overvalued by some
of his eager French and German disciples, but, after all deductions
are made, their judgment was nearer the mark than ours has been;
and it was nearer the mark because their conception of literature
was more inclusive and adequate.
The nature of Poe's material has had something to do not only
with foreign appreciation of his genius, but with the impression of
distinct individuality which his work produces. Sprung from a
people of naturally optimistic temper, with unbounded confidence
in their ability to deal with the problems of life, Poe stands solitary among men of his class in fastening, as by instinct, upon the
sombre and tragical aspects of experience.  In the high light
which rests upon the New World, the mysterious gloom which
enshrouds The Fall of the House of Usher, The Lady Ligeia, and
Ulalume is thrown into more impressive relief. Against the wide
content and peaceful domesticity of this fruitful continent, the
story of Berenice, The Assignation, and The Masque of the Red
Death are projected with telling effectiveness. The very limitations of Poe's interests and insight contribute to the definiteness
and striking individuality of his work. One finds in it no trace
of that vague generalizing tendency which an English critic has
recently called the "Alexandrine note" in American literature;
on the contrary, every touch contributes to the sharp distinctness
of the whole.
The severance between the writer and his surroundings, already
noted, is constantly brought home to the reader by the subjects,
the persons, and the landscapes which appear in Poe's work.
Tragedy in Shakespeare's historical plays is felt to be unusual
and exceptional; it belongs to a few periods, it is wrought out in
the careers of small groups of persons; but it is in no sense abnormal; it readily relates itself to English character and society.
The tragic element in Scott and Dickens has the same natural
setting, the same normal relationship to obvious social or political
conditions. The tragic element in Poe's work, on the other hand,
lies deep in the recesses.of individual temperament, and seems




POE MEMORIAL.


55


remote, unreal, and fantastic, unless we approach it sympathetically. Some of it is unreal and phantasmal; but the potentialities
of Poe's tragedy are in most men. They are, however, essentially
subjective; for the action in Poe's stories is really symbolical;
that which is significant and appalling lies behind it. At this
point Poe and Hawthorne approach each other, and it is the pure
subjectivity of the tragedy which gives its working out at the
hands of both writers a touch of remoteness, and in some cases an
element of unreality.
Poe, like Hawthorne, gives expression to the ideality of
the American mind: an ideality disclosed in very different
ways by Emerson and Lowell and Whittier; an ideality which
has made our literature pure and high, but has robbed it so far of
a certain robustness and power shared by all the great writers of
our language beyond the sea. American literature, as contrasted
with other literature, is touched throughout with aspiration, but
lacks solidity and passion. These defects in Poe's work, which
are often regarded as peculiar to it, are found in the work of his
contemporaries. It would seem as if, so far, the imagination of
the country had not been adequate to the task of penetrating and
illuminating its immense practical energies; or as if its activities
were too vast and varied to admit of imaginative coordination at
this early day in our history. Poe reacted so radically from the
practical ideals and work of his time that he took refuge in pure
ideality. The refuge of the artist is always to be found in his
art; and to a nature so sensitive as Poe's, a mind so delicately
adjusted to its tools and its task, and so easily thrown out of relation to them, there was perhaps no other resource. Between the
art of the author of Israfel and the life about him there was a
deep abyss, which the poet never attempted to cross. The material with which he constantly dealt becomes significant alike of
the extraordinary susceptibility of his genius, and of the lack of
the forms of life about him to satisfy and inspire him. He expresses the dissonance which has so far existed between the essentially ideal quality of the American mind and the intensely
practical character of the task which has fallen to Americans.




56


POE MEMORIAL.


If he had been born a century later, his verse and prose might
have come closer to the heart of his people, without losing that
exquisite fineness which reveals the rare and beautiful quality of
his genius. It is hardly possible to miss the significance of the
fact that two men of such temper and gifts as Hawthorne and
Poe were driven by inward necessity to deal with the life of an
earlier time, with life in an older and riper society, or with the
life of the spirit in its most disturbed and abnormal experiences.
Such a fact throws a penetrating light on the delicacy of the adjustments between a genius of great sensitiveness and its environment, and sets at naught the judgment, so often and so hastily
reached, that the American mind is essentially materialistic. That
judgment is impeached by the whole body of our literature, but
Poe and Hawthorne made it absolutely untenable.
Poe's daemonic force, his passion for perfection of form, his
ideality, and the sensitiveness of his temperament are all subtly
combined in the quality of distinction which characterizes his best
work in prose and verse. His individuality is not only strongly
marked, but it is expressed with the utmost refinement of feeling
and of touch. In his prose and verse, Poe was preeminently a
man who not only brought artistic integrity and capacity to his
work, but suffused it with purity, dignity, and grace. In the disconnected product of his broken life there is not a line to be
blotted out on the score of vulgarity, lack of reticence, or even
commonplaceness. In his most careless imaginative writing the
high quality of his mind is always apparent. So ingrained is this
distinction of tone that, however he may waste his moral fortunes,
his genius is never cheapened nor stained.  In his worst estate
the great traditions of art were safe in his hands.
The quality of distinction was of immense importance in a
literature like our own, which is still in its formative stages.
Poe's exquisite craftsmanship has made the acceptance of cheap
and careless work impossible. Such work may secure an easy
popularity from time to time, but it can -find no lodgment in the
memory of the race on this continent. To go so far as Poe went
toward perfection of form is to exclude from the contest all save




POE MEMORIAL.


57


the fleetest and the strongest. It is to do more, for the service of
the artist really begins when his work is completely finished, and
separated from his own personality: it is to keep before a people
tempted to keep lower views of life the reality of individual
superiority. In a society which holds all the doors open, and
affirms in institution and structure that a man shall go where he
can, there is always the danger of confusing opportunity with
gift. The final justification of democracy lies in its ability to
clear the way for superiority; but it is often interpreted as signifying equality of endowment and skill. If, in the long run,
democracy lowers instead of advancing the standards of character
and achievement, it will be the most disastrous of political failures. Equality of opportunity for the sake of preparing the way
for the highest and finest individualities will bring us, perhaps, as
near a perfect social order as we can hope to attain. Poe was such
a personality; a man whose gifts were of the most individual kind,
whose tastes were fastidious, whose genius was full of a distinction
which involved and expressed remoteness from average standards,
detachment from the rush and turmoil of practical tasks. A
nation at work with grimed hands is a noble spectacle; but if
such a people is to get anything out of life after it has secured
comfortable conditions, it must not only make room for poets and
scholars and thinkers, but it must reserve for them its highest
rewards.
Without the presence of the superior man, the " paradise of the
average man," as this country has been called, would become a
purgatory to all those who care chiefly, not for success, but for
freedom and power and beauty. One of the greatest privileges of
the average man is to recognize and honor the superior man,
because the superior man makes it worth while to belong to the
race by giving life a dignity and splendor which constitute a common capital for all who live. The respect paid to men like
Washington and Lincoln, Marshall and Lee, Poe and Hawthorne,
affords a true measure of civilization in a community. Such men
invest life for the average man with romance and beauty. Failure
to recognize and honor superiority of character, gift, and achieve



58


POE MEMORIAL.


ment is the peculiar peril of democracies, which often confuse the
aristocracy of the divine order in the world with the aristocracy
of arbitrary and artificial origin. So long as the saints shine in
their righteousness it will be idle to attempt to conceal their superiority; in the order of the spiritual life the best survive.  Of
these best was Poe; a man whose faults are sufficiently obvious,
because they bore their fruit in his career, but the quality of whose
genius and art was of the finest, if not of the greatest. In expressing the idealism of the American mind, this rare and subtle workman made images of such exquisite shape and moulding that by
their very perfection they win us away from lesser and meaner
ways of work. By the fineness of his craftsmanship he revealed
the artistic potentialities of the American spirit.
Of a proud and sensitive nature, reared among a proud and
sensitive people, Poe found in the region of pure ideality the
material which expressed most clearly his genius, and received
most perfectly the impress of his craftsmanship. In the themes
with which he dealt, and in the manner in which he treated them,
he went far to eradicate the provincialism of taste which was the
bane of his time and section-the bane, indeed, of the whole
country. Poe's very detachment in artistic interest from the
world about him was a positive gain for the emancipation of the
imagination of the young country, so recently a province of the
Old World.   His criticism was almost entirely free from that
narrow localism which values a writer because he belongs to a
section, and not because his work belongs to literature. He
brought into the field of criticism large knowledge of the best that
had been done in literature, and clear perception of the principles
of the art of writing. His touch on his contemporaries who won
the easy successes which are always within reach in untrained
communities was often caustic, as it had need to be; but the
instinct which made him the enemy of inferior work gave him also
the power of recognizing the work of the artist, even when it came
'     lunknown hands. He discerned the reality of imagination
awthorne and Tennyson as clearly as he saw the vulgarity
and crudity of much of the popular writing of his time. By criti



POE MEMORIA L.


59


cal intention, therefore, as well as by virtue of the possession of
genius, which is never provincial, Poe emancipated himself, and
went far to emancipate American literature, from the narrow
spirit, the partial judgment, and the inferior standards of a people
not yet familiar with the best that has been thought and said in
the world. To the claims of local pride he opposed the sovereign
claims of art; against the practice of the half-inspired and the
wholly untrained he set the practice of the masters. When the
intellectual history of the country is written he will appear as one
of its foremost liberators.
Poe's work holds a first place in our literature, not by reason of
its mass, its reality, its range, its spiritual or ethical significance,
but by reason of its complete and beautiful individuality, the distinction of its form and workmanship, the purity of its art. With
Hawthorne he shares the primacy among all who have enriched
our literature with prose or verse; but, unlike his great contemporary, he has had to wait long for adequate and just recognition.
His time of waiting is not yet over; for while the ethical insight
of Hawthorne finds quick response where his artistic power alone
would fail to move, Poe must be content with the suffrages of
those who know that the art which he practiced with such magical
effect is in itself a kind of righteousness. " I could not afford to
spare from my circle," wrote Emerson to a friend, "a poet, so
long as he can offer so indisputable a token as a good poem of his
relation to what is highest in being." To those who understand
that character is never perfect until it is harmonious, and truth
never finally revealed until it is beautiful, Poe's significance is not
obscured nor his work dimmed by the faults and misfortunes of
his life. The obvious lessons of that pathetic career have been
well learned; it is time to seek the deeper things for which this
fatally endowed spirit stood; for the light is more than the
medium through which it shines.




I
i
il
ii I
1,


60


POE MEMORIAL.


MEMORIAL POEM.
BY ROBERT BURNS WILSON.
On account of the unavoidable absence of the poet, Mr. Robert
Burns Wilson, of Frankfort, Ky., the following poem, written
for the occasion, was excellently rendered by Mr. Willoughby
Reade, of the Episcopal High School:
Clothed with the flame immortal is that soul,
A flame that flashed amid the midnight shadows,
Veiled by the chilly gloom of mists and clouds;
A flame that wavered but was never quenched,
Whose light shines on with steady glow, undimmed,
Despite the darkness and the vexing storms
Through which his spirit passed.
Though love was his —
Love gentle and consoling, stricken he walked,
An alien on the earth, with scornful lips,
Cursing or praying in his poverty.
Fencing amidst the hatred of his foesFighting with his one weapon, which for his mood,
Was either wand or dagger, his keen pen,
Goaded to frenzy by the spawn of fools,
The world's pets ever, fretted beyond control
In his unceasing battle with the dull
Complacency of mediocrity,
Wildly he struck at times, but oftener
His pen point pierced the mark.
His faults were such
As thousands live and die with, unobserved,
But, being his faults, because of his mind's light,
They loomed like towers upon a sunset hill.
Broken upon the wheel of his misfortunes,
Toiling, alone, where life's dark pathway leads
Close by the steep and treacherous brink of hell,
Haunted by spectres, vexed by easeless griefs,
His soul went down to death, in loneliness,
A death too pitiful for aught save silence,
Too mournful in its wretchedness for tears.




POE MEMORIAL.


61


But not with death he dwells. Above his dust
Time's slow impartial hand has made for him
A shaft, memorial, builded of the stones
Which Hate and Envy cast upon his grave.'
He dwells not with the shadows. They no more
Have power upon him, leaguing on his path
To threaten and mislead. They cannot touch
The undying fire that wraps him. Far above
The fitful flaws and passions of the world,
Borne by the wings of his own eagle thought,
Serene and undisturbed his soul finds rest
Within his splendid palace of the clouds.
With this poem the morning exercises were concluded.




62


POE MEMORIAL.


THE EVENING             RERCISES.
O    the invitations sent to distinguished men of letters at a
distance came many responses, some expressing          regrets,
others accepting, and a far larger number sending some tribute
to Poe or congratulations upon the auspicious occasion. It was
deemed appropriate that representatives of the guests present
should be requested to take some part in the evening exercises,
and that the contents of these interesting letters should, as far as
time allowed, be made known.
The committee, therefore, arranged for a kind of Poe Symposium in the evening, and the following programme was carried
out:
Reading, in part or in full, of letters. Mr. W. R. Abbot, Prof. W.
M. Thornton, and Dr. Charles W. Kent.
Reading of Father Tabb's Poetic Tribute..Mr. Willoughby A. Reade.
Recitation of Poe's Israfel..............Mr. Willoughby A. Reade.
Informal Remarks..............................   Col. T. E. Davis.
Recitation and Explanation of The Raven.....Mr. Win. Fearing Gill.
Remarks on Poe's Last Days...................Mr. E. R. Reynolds.
As it was impossible at the time to read many of the letters,
advantage is gladly taken of this opportunity to make in one form
or another due record of them all.
LETTERS IN FULL OR IN EXTRACT.
I am grateful for the invitation. I regret that I am unable to be with you
to join personally in this fitting act of homage to the great genius whose name
now shines so bright in all the civilized world.
MosES COIT TYLER.
The occasion cannot fail to be one of great interest, and, beside the enjoyment that I should derive from the exercises of the day, I should be glad to
express by my presence my admiration for the genius of Poe.
C. E. EVERETT.




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POE MEMORIAL.                           63
109 GREAT PORTLAND ST., LONDON, W., Sept. 28.
DEAR SIR-Obviously, as I am living here now, I cannot accept your kind
invitation. But I appreciate the honor which it confers, and tender you for it
my warm thanks.             Very faithfully,
To Chas. W. Kent, Esq.                         EDGAR FAWCETT.
I regret being compelled to decline the invitation to the unveiling of the Poe
bust, at the University, on the 7th proximo. The Ellis family had a personal
relation to Edgar A. Poe. My father, Charles Ellis, was the partner and intimate friend of Mr. John Allan, who adopted Poe, and at one time Mr. and Mrs.
Allan and Edgar resided in my father's house for about a year. This was in
1819. My uncle, Judge Powhatan Ellis, who was U. S. Senator from Mississippi,
gave Poe his appointment to West Point.
POWHATAN ELLIS.
It would give me great pleasure to accept the invitation of the Association
and by my presence at the unveiling of Zolnay's bust of Edgar Allan Poe on the
7th of October to testify to the appreciation so universally felt (in my native
State, New York, and in the State where I have recently presided for nine years
over Amherst College, in Massachusetts) for the brilliant genius of the master
of romantic prose and of the weird power of poetic rhythm whose memory you
honor. I greatly regret that an engagement to speak in another State on that
day compels me to decline.                      MERRILL E. GATES.
DEAR SIR-The occasion which your Association will celebrate on the 7th is
to me one of peculiar interest and significance. Few, I fancy, will be present at
that festival who can recall, as I do, the effect of the first publication of the
poem which flamed like a meteor across our literary heavens and made the name
of Poe immediately famous. When a boy in the backwoods of western New
York, I saw "The Raven" in one of the hundred of country papers in which it
was almost simultaneously copied, and recognized at once that a new genius had
arisen to divide the homage I paid to Byron, my prime favorite in those early
days. Anything connected with the name of Poe interested me intensely from
that time; and though I never met him, I felt a shock of personal bereavement
when his tragic death occurred, in 1849. Then, it was thought by some, a
meteor of a night-time had burned itself out in space. But the genius of Poe
was no meteor; it was a star of peculiar brilliancy, from which the mists of
doubt and misunderstanding have parted more and more, and which still shows
no signs of fading, amidst the brightest luminaries of our sky.
It is most fitting that the anniversary of the poet's death should be celebrated
duly, and it would give me great pleasure to be present at the unveiling of the
bust by your Association, but distance compels me to forego that satisfaction.
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
But let me express a heartfelt interest in this movement in the University to
do honor to her poets and men of letters.           C. W. COLEMAN.




64


POE MEMORIAL.


WiLLIAMSBURG, VA., Oct. 6, 1899.
DEAR SIR-In behalf of the President and Professors, or Masters, of the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, I desire to express my earnest hope that
the occasion of the unveiling of the bust of Edgar A. Poe will be a most brilliant
one in the history of your great University. He undoubtedly ranks as the
most original poet in the history of the United States. When the poems of
nearly all others are forgotten, his will continue to be read ages to come. He
was worthy of the University, and the University was worthy of him.
Truly yours,
LYON G. TYLER,
President of the College of William and Mary, in Virginia.
To Dr. Barringer, Chairman of the Faculty.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Oct. 6, 1899.
Charles W. Kent, Esq.:
DEAR SIR-I regret that absence from home has made me tardy in acknowledging your kind invitation. When a boy of seventeen, in Harvard College, I
read Poe's " Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." It was just after the publication of the book and before it had attracted general attention; but I felt it
at once to be the most remarkable production of the imaginative genius of this
nation, save the works of Hawthorne alone; nor have I ever varied from that
opinion. Later I heard Poe read his "Ligeia," before an audience in Boston,
in a voice whose singular music I have never heard equalled. These two early
impressions sustained my admiration and gratitude for Poe through all his
stormy and sad career; and I again thank you for doing me the honor of an
invitation to be present at the unveiling of his bust.
I am, dear sir,            Very respectfully yours,
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
Your courteous invitation for the 7th of October came to New Haven during
my temporary absence, or I should sooner have expressed to you my regrets at
being unable to assist in doing honor to the memory of one whose rare genius
has made his work the admiration of the world.
DON. G. MITCHELL.
3 ST. EDMUND'S TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK, N. W.
LONDON, 19 Oct., 1899.
DEAR SIR-I have just received the invitation card with which you favored
me for the unveiling, on the 7th of October, of Zolnay's bust of Edgar Poe.
Of course you see that the dates would not have admitted of my attending, even
had that been possible on other grounds.
Most heartily do I thank you for the complimentary act. My brother Dante
Gabriel and myself must have been among the earliest readers of Poe's Raven




POE MEMORIAL.


65


when first that classical bird reached the English shore, and how many and
many times did we not re-peruse it, and (more especially my brother) recite it!
Then came scores of other glorious things upon which we battened; we supped
full, indeed, of horrors in Arthur Gordon Pym, not to speak of The Black Cat,
The Murders in the Rue Morgue, &c., &c. Possibly you may be aware that an
English edition of Poe's Poems (James Hannay's edition) was dedicated to
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Perhaps I ought scarcely to have intruded upon you this intimation of the
not important fact that Edgar Poe was one of the glories of our youth. Important it is that the American people should be aware that he is one of the
permanent glories of their race, and that they should have given evidence of
their feeling by forming the Association of which you were privileged to be
President.
Honour to Edgar Poe-the early and deservedly admired in two continents,
yet none the less the lowly maligned.
Believe me, dear sir, gratefully and faithfully yours,
W. M. ROSSETTI.
I deeply regret that from the fact of old age (82 years) and sickeness, that I
cannot be present at the unveiling of the Poe bust in the University of Virginia.
I believe that I am the only person living who personally knew the great
Poet, and it is with great pleasure that I have received your invitation to the
unveiling of the Memorial, which, in every respect, cannot do him too much
honor, and alike reflects great credit on those of the Association concerned in
the matter.
GABRIEL HARRISON.
Mr. Clinton Scollard presents his compliments to the Poe Memorial Association of the University of Virginia, and deeply regrets that it will not be possible
for him to be present upon October the Seventh, at the unveiling of the bust to
Poe, whom all true lovers of song delight to honor.
It is with unfeigned regret that I must tell you that circumstances force me
to deny myself the pleasure of being present to do honor to our famous Southern
poet, for whom I have always felt the greatest admiration. In my early girlhood, in Fairfax county, I listened often to anecdotes of Poe and praises of his
character from the loving lips of Mrs. Clemm-this lady living then in Alexandria, as a guest in the home of my mother's most intimate friend.
KATE MASON ROWLAND.
It is most fitting that the name and fame of Poe should be thus honored at
the University of Virginia, though such a recognition has been delayed more
than half a century. He was Southern in ancestry and characteristics; his birth




66


POE MEMORIAL.


at Boston was accidental; and while he unquestionably made a permanent contribution to the world's literature, he found a personal gratification in the boast
that he was a Virginian.
Boston's own "Autocrat," writing in 1875, said that Poe was " one of the few
names which will outlive the graven record meant to perpetuate its remembrance." Tennyson is quoted as stating, some fifteen years before his death,
that any wish he might have to visit America would be prompted by the desire
to stand with bared head by the grave of Poe at Baltimore.
Poe is perhaps more widely known and appreciated in Europe to-day than
any other American writer, among either the dead or the living. The Quantin
edition (Paris, 1884) of Baudelaire's translations, "HIistoires Extraordinaires "
and "Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires," remains to this time the most pretentious dress with which the writings of any American have been honored
abroad.
Poe and Lanier will be bright, fixed stars, in American literature, when
many of the New England constellations shall have become obscured and forgotten.                                      ROBERT LEE TRAYLOR.
Mr. Laurence Hutton begs to thank the members of the Poe Memorial Association of the University of Virginia for the courtesy of their invitation, and
to express his regrets that his engagements will prevent his presence at the
unveiling of the bust of the American Man of Letters whom he most delights
to honor.
With the earnest wish that October 7th may be in every respect a pleasant
and memorable day in the annals of your University,
S. H. TRUMBULL.
Regarded throughout Europe as the greatest and most original man of genius
that our country has produced, Poe's reputation has been strangely obscured by
a host of minor celebrities in his native land, and I am glad that in our own
University at least his claims will be properly recognized and honored. The
Coleridge of America, his wonderful gifts have been too long undervalued.
When we consider the position of Hawthorne in American literature we cannot
but see that the South, while not indifferent to the claims of such sons, does not
bear them before her perpetually on their shields, while trumpets loudly proclaim their achievements in the endless fanfaronnades of books, magazines,
newspapers, literary societies and clubs, after the manner of New England. Poe,
Hayne, Lanier, are still caviare to the general American reader, and it has been
left to the distinguished critics of England and the continent to set them with
their own poets of the first rank.
FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR.
It would be pleasant to me to unite with my fellow alumni and students in
doing honor to an eminent son of the University, and I am sorry that I shall be
unable to be present.                                   C. H. ToY.




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67


Plans already made will preclude the possibility of my being with you in the
flesh-as I surely will be in the spirit-on the occasion of the unveiling, October 7.                                               T. C. DELEON.
Thanks for your kind invitation to be present at the unveiling of Zolnay's
bust of Edgar Allan Poe, in the Library of the University of Virginia, on the
fiftieth anniversary of his death, which occurred October 7, 1849.
My acquaintance with Poe began in New York sixty years ago. Our boarding houses were opposite each other in East Broadway. I had just entered upon
my duties as Principal of Rutgers Female Institute. Mr. Poe was writing for
the New York papers and making a very scanty living. He soon after moved
to Fordham, where I called to see him. He was holding a loaf of bread, and
said, " Here is all the food I have in the world for myself and family." He was
almost in a state of despair. I did what I could to cheer him, assuring him
there was something of good in life for him.
In 1845 he served as chairman of a committee to examine the compositions
of the collegiate department of my institution and award the gold medal to the
writer of the prize composition, which he read at the sixth commencement of
the Institnte.
In regard to the bust which is soon to be unveiled, Mr. Zolnay has been very
successful. He had never seen Poe, and had to depend upon the portraits of
the etching needle and the photographic lens.
CHARLES E. WEST.
I regret this extremely, for it would give me great satisfaction to
testify by my personal presence my appreciation of the efforts made by your
association to honor the memory of the poet.
JOHN PRENTISS POE.
Virginia honors herself in her gratitude to one of our greatest imaginative
poets. If it is much to have great sons, it is more to recognize their greatness.
ALICE FRENCH.
I regret my inability to be present at the unveiling of the Poe bust on October 7. I would gladly do honor to his memory. He had a purer and higher
art than any other writer of his time in this country.
JOHN BURROUGHS.
The University is doing a gracious act in thus handing down to future generations the lineaments of one who has exerted an undying influence on literature. If the intellectual and vesthetic development of a people is the standard
of progress, then has Poe done more for his country than her armies and locomotives.
Again expressing my sincere regret that I am denied the pleasure of being
present at the unveiling of the bust of the most original literary genius America
has yet produced,...                               H. L. FLASH.




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I remember with keen pleasure the Poe evening at which I was present
nearly two years ago, and therefore regret all the more that I cannot be with
you on the 7th.                                   W. H. MILBURN.
I deeply regret that I cannot have the pleasure and honor of attending the
ceremonies at the unveiling of the bust of Edgar Poe. His memory is dear to
every American man of letters.            THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
It is gratifying to every Southerner that the fame of Poe is yearly more and
more widened.
R. A. BROCK.
Were it possible I would most gladly accept this invitation.... A half
century has passed since the death of our poet and romancer, and no man has
appeared who is worthy to stand beside him in his chosen field of literature.
His maligners make his sky very dark, but the stars of his intellect-and they
are many-shine all the brighter.
FRANK R. STOCKTON.
At the request of your Association, I had the pleasure of inspecting, with
my colleague, Professor Woodberry, Mr. Zolnay's admirable work as it approached completion. We tested it by comparison with all the known likenesses
of its subject, and, after the sculptor's additional touches, it seemed to us a
somewhat idealized, but noble and not untruthful portrait of your great Southern poet, critic, and romancer. Permit me, then, to congratulate your Association upon the outcome of your loyal effort to place a lasting and artistic memorial in the University to which the author of "The Haunted Palace," "The
Raven," and "Ligeia" unquestionably owed so much, and which in turn justly
finds increase of eminence from the growth and perpetuation of his fame.
It was in recognition of this indissoluble bond between the man of letters and
his alma mater that the editors of what was meant to be the most accurate and
inclusive setting forth of Poe's life and writings dedicated their edition to the
University of Virginia-well assured, no less, that in this wise they might gain
for it a certain honor and authority.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
I hope that you will convey to the Committee of the Association my sense of
the honor which they have conferred on me in inviting me to be present upon
so auspicious an occasion, and also an expression of the fervent veneration in
which I hold the noble poet to whom you are rendering this fitting tribute, a
poet nearer, indeed, to the hearts of Virginia, but not dearer to you than to all
other true lovers of poetry.                  FELIX E. SCHELLING.




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69


It would be most delightful to me if I could accept your invitation to be
present at the unveiling of the bust of Edgar Allan Poe, but it appears to be
impossible. I had hoped that the Shakespeare Society of New York would
have taken the initiative and erected the first statue; and that the City of Baltimore would have been the second to place in bronze the form and features of
the first American poet.
But, as you have distanced both of us, I congratulate you, and I believe that
in fifty years every one of our national Walhallas will have followed your distinguished example and have raised a statue to the memory of this illustrious
alumnus of your University, who first attracted the attention of Europe to the
fact that an American literature, which should not be mere servile imitation
and copy of European literatures, was possible, and was, in him, a fact.
Whatever laurels the memory of Edgar Allan Poe may share with the memory of his fellow-countrymen who have written words that the world shall not
willingly let die, this, at least, is secure. And the late Laureate of England
was, I think, one of the first to concede, as surely he was one of the last to
remind us, that Edgar Allan Poe first, in point of time, commanded the attention of European criticism to a distinct and original American literary product.
APPLETON MORGAN.
It is an honor as well as a pleasure to be asked to come to the University of
Virginia.  But, unfortunately, my duties at the Brick Church, which are
resumed next Sunday, are imperative, and will prevent my coming to take part
in the proposed tribute to the genius of Poe.  HENRY VAN DYKE.
Every friend of American letters must rejoice in such a worthy recognition
of the genius and talents of Edgar Allan Poe, whose name ever rises higher
among those who have honored their country by literary achievement.
W. I. FLETCHER.
Poe was the foremost of American melodists, and his high literary work is
worthy of all the honor that can be bestowed upon him by American men of
letters.                                           A. R. SPOFFORD.
My regret is the greater since the memorial is in the dear honor of one whom
I hold to be, not only one of my favorite writers, but immeasurably the truest
of American poets.                                ELLEN GLASGOW.
In honoring the memory of the distinguished men in literature the University is ennobling one of the arts of civilization that has been too long neglected
in the South.                                    W. H. W. MORAN.
While the occasion is one which enlists my warmest sympathies, owing to
the high estimate that I place upon Poe as a poet, and the desire I have always
had to see the famous University of Virginia, yet I am constrained to forego the
pleasure of attending the unveiling.                CHAS. DE KAY.




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POE MEMORIAL.


I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your kind invitation to be
present at the unveiling of Mr. Zolnay's bust of Edgar Allan Poe in the Library
of the University of Virginia on the fiftieth anniversary of the poet's death.
It would give me great pleasure to be able to share in so interesting a ceremony,
and pay my tribute of respect to the memory of one of our greatest men of
letters; but I have made engagements for that date from which it is not possible
to free myself. I am, therefore, not able to avail myself of your courtesy.
JOHN HAY.
It is eminently proper that there should be a statue of Poe at the University
of Virginia, of which he was such a distinguished alumnus. Let us hope that
statues of other illustrious alumni will soon be gathered around that of the
author of "The Raven."                             ALCEE FORTIER.
The event you celebrate is a significant one, and it is most fitting that your
Association should perform this service. It is a service in which all will be
interested and for which all will be grateful.  WILLIAM R. HARPER.
To witness the unveiling of a tribute to our greatest American poet by the
historic and venerable University of Virginia, is a privilege which no one of
Southern birth can fail to prize.
CATHERINE PEARSON WOODS.
I hope the time will come when the Rotunda will be a gallery of statues and
busts of our distinguished men.                    W. G. STANARD.
I am glad that honor is being given where honor is due, and hope a large
number will attest by their presence that the great writer, though dead, still
lives in the hearts of the people.             BELLE R. HARRISON.
I regret this the more because I am a great admirer of his writings, and still
mourn his early death, at the moment when his developed power and native
genius were ready in their curiously yet strictly logical art, to startle and win
the admiration of the world by works even more worthy of him, and to the
greater honor of Virginia, than those he has left to immortalize his name.
W. C. ELAM.
I need not remind you that poems of mine have not been wanting, to honor
the memory of Poe. I wish that I could tell you to depend on me for still
another tribute to the genius of that extraordinary and most unfortunate man.
I deeply sympathize with the purpose of the University, and I thank you for
the honor of the invitation, and for your kind remembrance of me.


The most distinctive poetical genius that America has produced.
WILLIAM WINTER.




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71


I rejoice with the Association, their friends, and indeed the whole country,
on so interesting an occasion as the proposed ceremonies in memory of that
brilliant meteor, Edgar Allan Poe.           EDWARD B. POLLARD.
I am sorry I am too far away to attend, but glad that you have been able and
willing to do this honor to a representative American poet.
RICHARD BURTON.
Did circumstances allow, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take
part in doing honor to the illustrious poet.    JAMES K. HOSMER.
I congratulate the University upon the commemoration of our greatest
Southern poet and greatest American literary genius.
F. C. WOODWARD.
It would be a great pleasure to me to unite with you in doing honor to a
genius I have long admired.                 ARCHIBALD C. GUNTER.
I consider it the most interesting occasion I have known in the history of the
University in the department of letters, and I congratulate you most heartily
upon its inception and happy consummation.
JOHN BELL HENNEMAN.
Mr. Justice Harlan would be glad to testify his respect for the memory of the
dead poet and his interest in the prosperity of the University.
I have all my life been a lover of Poe, and believe that he did something for
literature not only excellent, but of a rare quality, adding to our poetry something more fresh and more poetic and to our prose a vivid imaginative motive.
Accordingly I rejoice in all that keeps Edgar Allan Poe in memory.
ELLEN OLNEY KIRK.
The editors of East and West thank the University of Virginia for its courteous invitation, which they regret they are not able to accept. They wish, however, to express their deep appreciation of the honor done them in being asked
to attend a ceremony in commemoration of one of the greatest American poets
at a University which is so intimately connected with the history of our country.
It is a fitting tribute to America's greatest poet that his adopted State should
thus do honor to his transcendent genius. I venture to hope that in process of
time other great Virginians may receive similar honor, and that the beautiful
University Library may, like Westminster Abbey, be adorned and hallowed by
memorials of our noble dead.                        SUSAN P. LEE.


4*




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POE MEMORIAL.


The memorial which you offer to Poe must be as grateful to his spirit as it
will be useful to his fame.
CHAS. LEONARD MOORE.
You must, however, accept my sincerest good wishes for the happy
success of so memorable an event. It is an occasion which ought to stir the
lyric mood of Poe's unworthy successors; but he would be a bold man to attempt
any occasional verse on that subject after John Boner's matchless poem on Poe.
BLISS CARMAN.
I think we have come to understand that our American literature has in it
two names that, beyond cavil and dispute, are the names of literary artists of
transcendent skill and charm. However the "wind of doctrine" may beat
about other names, Poe and Hawthorne are secure. The spites and fears that
were excited by Poe during his brief and brilliant period have an enduring life,
and there are those still living who perhaps felt the sting of Poe's genius for
satire and who detest his memory. Where, as in France, the critic Poe is
unknown, Poe the man of genius has undergone a singular apotheosis. And
therefore all the more I am moved to repeat what I have elsewhere repeated,
that in his long illness and weariness Mr. George R. Graham, who knew Poe
long and intimately, assured me that he had never had occasion to rebuke Poe,
or to find fault with him as editor, author, or friend, in all the years of their
association.
ALBERT H. SMYTH.
I may possibly be with you-I cannot speak with certainty-but in any event
I shall be with you in spirit, and predict an assured success for the occasion. I
have been a devotee of Poe from my boyhood, and my memorial addresses have
been reproduced in all lands in which our literature is regarded as a source of
culture and inspiration.
HENRY E. SHEPHERD.
I am very sorry that I cannot do myself the pleasure of witnessing the honor
done to the great American poet.
J. A. LEFEVRE.
I believe that it will not be long before Poe is acknowledged on all hands to
be the most original and versatile literary genius America has produced, as well
as the most influential in point of artistic form. But, even were this consummation not so near, the University would still owe it to herself to honor in every
way her greatest alumnus.                              W. P. TRENT.
I rejoice extremely in the event, for surely the South ought to begin at last
to show worthy honor to her poets. And she is awaking to this sacred duty to
them and to herself.... With the hope that the occasion will prove all
that its friends can wish, and will have a far-reaching effect on other sections
and schools,...                                    LOUISE MANLY.




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73


I am glad that the University is thus to honor both herself and the great
poet who died a half-century ago, and I take the fact as one of a good many
recent indications that Poe is not only a "living subject," but that his hold
upon the best critical thought of the day is growing rather than declining. For
my own part, I have always been of his champions against unjust aspersion and
belittlement.                             WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.
Personal hobble and misconstruction of Poe's faults and weakness has so
often in late years taken the place of appreciation of his work that it is time
for those who love literature to emphasize the other side.... Hoping and
believing that the occasion may and will be felicitous,
ARLO BATES.
I am a great admirer of Poe's genius, and have always protested indignantly
against the calumnies which those who feared and envied him while living
heaped upon his memory when his death assured their impunity. The University has honored herself in thus honoring her gifted son.
WM. HAND BROWNE.
I am very glad that your University has done this honor to the memory of
Poe. The Poe Memorial Association has already done service to literature by
its investigations, and now crowns its work with this tribute.
FRANCIS H. STODDARD.
I should like to be present to witness the ceremonial and still more to testify
my gratification at the acquisition by the University of this fitting memorial of
a son, whose literary fame has grown steadily in the half century since his
death, and who seems now safely enrolled among the great names of American
literature.                                       WM. L. WILSON.
Since my youth I have been an ardent admirer of the Poet, and an enthusiastic student of his wonderful writings.
EUGENE L. DIDIER.
If it were in my power I should go, for I reverence the genius of Poe.
HANNIS TAYLOR... So I send you my sincere regrets in not being able to participate in
the event which is to be so honorable to the Poe Memorial Association..
Hoping, and not doubting, that your exercises will be what you expect, and
every way worthy of the notable occasion, I am, &c.,
JOEL BENTON.




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In response to your request of the 21st inst., I will state, that my personal
acquaintance with Edgar A. Poe was so limited-and, indeed, fragmentaryand it is now so long ago, that I fear my memory will fail to furnish any important recollections of the poet. But I may at least add, that my conviction of
his presence inspired me with the evidence of his being a man of genius, yet
without pretension. This conviction was confirmed by subsequent interviews
with him, and especially when reading "The Raven," which-like Coleridge's
"Ancient Mariner" -is now of such world-wide fame. I first met Poe when
conducting the agency of Messrs. Saunders & Otley, publishers, of London, for
the reproduction in New York of their own publications, and also to seek the
enactment of an international copyright treaty with Great Britain. At that
time I had the pleasure of the friendship and the kindly aid and support of the
enterprise by Washington Irving, Bryant, Willis, Everett, Henry Clay, and
others of the literary profession. It was then that Poe called occasionally at
my office, and I found his personnel and deportment always genial and gentle,
and his conversation usually of a literary tone.
FREDERICK SAUNDERS.
The Memorial Association in this latest recognition of genius, unappreciated
when the poet was among the living, will find a welcoming response in the
hearts of all in all lands who cherish the memory of Edgar Allan Poe.
SARA S. RICE.
Mr. F. J. Stimson regrets his inability to be present at the unveiling of the
bust of Poe by the Poe Memorial Association at the University of Virginia,
October 7th, and hopes the nine lines, beginning " O Israfel, if I could dwell,"
will be inscribed, if anything, as typical of Poe's life, rather than the commonplace mis-quotation on the New York statue.
I have always been a great Poe enthusiast, claiming that no other American
writer of verse was as original as he; and only one other American writer of
fiction surpassed him, and that one Hawthorne. It was a pretty hard task for
me to attempt to sum up in four lines such a versatile genius as Edgar Allan
Poe, but I tried it; and, thinking that it might interest you, I copy it herewith:
POE.
Night's raven o'er its portal and day's dove,
Wild witch-lights haunt an old-world sculptured tomb;
Beside the corpse of beauty and of love
Song's everlasting-lamp burns in the gloom.
MADISON J. CAWEIN.
Yours, asking me to the unveiling of the great poet's bust, finds me in San
Francisco, en route, as usual. I can only say I shall be there in the spirit. My
work calls for my presence in the far Northwest, but I shall think of you and




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75


yours on the 7th of October. You are building wisely. That land that has no
poets has no lasting place in history. Babylon, Nineveh, they stoned the
prophets, and where are they? But for the poets round about Jerusalem their
very names were not. Jerusalem is but a small place comparatively, yet is she
more than all the Orient because she cherished and revered the poets. This
is history, this is equity, this is poetic justice.
JOAQUIN MILLER.
If ever man had music in his soul, that man was Poe. For him rhyme's
river rippled and thought's billows beat. He enriched the world's literature,
and his sad, sweet life, with its shade and shine, a poem fashioned by a hand
divine.                                           ROBERT LOVEMAN.
The career of Poe as a writer came in the earlier years of my professional
life, and I suppose I read everything published by him. I still look over my
shoulder with a shiver of horror when I think of the " Fall of the House of
Usher," and no day passes without his "Bells" ringing their chimes in my
memory.                                                 A. D. MAYO.
I should have had much pleasure in attending and helping to do honor to
the memory and worth of one of America's greatest poets.
J. L. M. CURRY.
From my early youth I have been almost an idolater of the genius of Edgar
A. Poe.                                            GEORGE DUNLOP.
I have only good wishes to express for the exercises, and hope they may in
every way prove worthy of the great poet whose memory they are intended to
cherish.                                                R. S. TURK.
It would give me great pleasure, especially as I am and have been all my life
an admirer of Edgar Poe, but it will not be possible for me to come to Virginia
at the time you mention.                            WM. T. HARRIS.
DEAR SIR-I wrote you a year or two ago of my appreciation of Poe's genius
and position in letters. The same holds to-day; but now again it is impossible
for me to attend, though I so much desire to do so.
Gratefully, faithfully yours, Poe's and the South's,
JAS. WOOD DAVIDSON.
I am delighted that at last our greatest American genius is to be honored
thus in the University in which he waQ never dishonored, Griswold et als. to the
contrary notwithstanding. Poe was something truly wonderful. Hawthorne




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POE MEMORIAL.


and others toiled with prentice hand to learn and perfect their art, but Poe
comes before us with his six "Tales of the Folio Club," stories well-nigh perfect, and yet brings us no hint as to where his hand acquired its cunning. With
no school of criticism at hand, he created one. You honor yourselves in honoring him.                                              S. A. LINK.
No honors are too great for such a rare genius at a time when, in literature,
we are levelling to mediocrity.
AUSTIN BIERBOWER.
I am a great admirer of the writings of Poe, and should like to join in the
becoming honors you are about to pay to his memory. I had a slight acquaintance with him in life, and with many regrets I shall be compelled to be absent
on the occasion which recalls him to the memory of the living.
R. T. DURRETT.
As I have not forgotten my old-time acquaintance with that gifted poet,
therefore I regard with sympathetic interest the worthy tribute to his memory
by friends of his native State.              FREDERICK SAUNDERS.
As an admirer of Poe it would have given me great pleasure to join in doing
honor to his memory.                       JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
It would afford me much pleasure to manifest my appreciation of the unique
genius of Edgar Allan Poe, and my sympathy with the pride in which the
University of Virginia so justly holds his great and enduring work.
MARY N. MURFREE.
You must feel a great satisfaction in this consummation of your efforts to do
honor to the memory of our Southern poet.
A. H. MERRILL.
It is certainly a pleasing thought to me that one so deserving of honor is at
length receiving his due from his countrymen.
FRED. LEWIS PATTEE.
Although I cannot be present, I can rejoice in this fresh interest in a truly
great poet-one who has long been loved by me, despite his faults and failures,
and one of whose name and fame your University may justly be proud.
E. L. POWELL.
I regret that I cannot be present at an occasion of so much interest and pay
my little tribute to the greatest literary artist of the South.
HENRY S. PANCOAST.




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77


I am in receipt of your invitation to assist in the unveiling of the bust of
Poe. In reply thereto, permit me to say that it is my present hope to be with
you on that occasion and to help the Poe Memorial Association with my presence in doing honor to America's greatest genius in poetics.
G. L. SWIOGETT.
I beg to congratulate your Association and the University on the completion
of this fitting memorial of thle greatest literary genius of his country. May it
stand, in one sense, as our protest against the calumnies so long current that
would belittle his name and his work.
CHAS. POINDEXTER.
You and your colleagues deserve the gratitude of all admirers of the great
poet whose memory you so fittingly preserve. I hope that the example that
you and your University have set will lead to a renewed interest in Poe and
other Southern writers.
EDWIN MIMS.
I regret that it is impossible for me to accept your hospitable invitation, as
Edgar Allan Poe is very dear to me.
WALLACE BRUCE.
THE SHELBURNE, ATLANTIC CITY, Oct. 10, 1899.
My Dear Dr. Kent:
Just a line to say that since I wrote my letter to you, for the Poe ceremonies,
on the 5th, your letter of October 2d has been forwarded to me by my secretary
from my home at Bronxville. Its kind expressions serve to increase my regret
that I was disabled and could not be with you on the 7th; but much must be
forgiven to a sick man whose sixty-sixth birthday was the 8th, as it chanced.
I well remember learning of Poe's death as soon as the news could get north,
after my sixteenth birthday. Had just become a freshman at Yale, but had
read then the poems and the "Tales of the Arabesque," etc., and didn't I
preach Poe to all those fellows of the " class of '53!
Yes, marry, and by the same token I imitated him, too; but little thought
to be his editor half a century later.
Am glad to see from the Baltimore papers that the affair went off so effectively, and I hope soon to read your address in full somewhere. All the proceedings should appear in the next Critic.
Sincerely yours,
EDMUND C. STEDMAN.
Every ceremonial event commemorative of genius ought to be an inspiration
to study, to work, to strenuous effort; and it is gratifying to see that while our
people magnify the heroic deeds of men of action, they will not ignore nor neg



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lect the memory of those who were great in thought, in invention or in any of
the arts of expression.
The secure judgment of the world ranks Poe very high in more than one literary art; measured by the thought and achievement of this present century, he
was a master of rhythm and a pioneer in the modern art of short-story telling.
I can only express my deeply felt regret for inability to be present on this
notable occasion.
CLIFFORD A. LANIER.
I rejoice to know that the genius of Poe, so long apparently homeless in
his own country, will be visibly honored by this perpetual memorial in the University that bred him, and I hope that successive generations of students
there may feel its influence in devoting them to literary fame and attaching
them to poetry and sentiment and the things of the imagination and of
romance, and in inspiring them to work for American distinction in letters. So
considerable a part of my own time and labor has been given to an attempt to
set forth adequately Poe's contribution to our national literature, and to do due
honor to his work, that this tribute to him must be peculiarly pleasant to me,
and I sincerely regret my inability to be present when the bust is unveiled.
GEO. E. WOODBERRY.
I would like by my presence to join in a tribute to the first and purest genius
of American poets. Virginia and her University cannot do too much honor
to the singer whom they gave to the world.
BEVERLEY D. TUCKER.
A Virginian glories in seeing how, after the apathy of years, there comes
into our University life at last this enkindling of enthusiasm for the poet, whose
name, filling now the world, gives its special lustre to the home of his own
youthful studies. It is plain, now that the time of snarling is over, and that a
just oblivion is sinking down both over the critics that attacked Poe's reputation and the school of poets that they sought to build up and glorify. Our
University claims in Poe the one poet that the world has recognized as great
among us Americans; and this new bust will speak to every generation of students of the final glory which comes, in spite of all malice and all silliness, to
the man that seeks and attains the utterance of a perfect art. I am heartily
sorry that I cannot be with you.
THOS. R. PRICE.
It is eminently fitting that the University of Virginia should commemorate
the fiftieth anniversary of Poe's death, and thus emphasize to the world her
pride in being the Alma Mater of so rare a genius.
WILLIAM H. HAYNE.




POE MEMORIAL.                          79
There is surely no genuine lover of literature anywhere who will not rejoice
in the honor you are conferring upon Poe's memory.
BLISS PERRY.
Only a few days ago, in reading Lord Tennyson's (Hallam) memoirs of his
father, I noticed that Alfred Tennyson gave Poe the place of the first among
American poets. I think you are doing a great and beneficent work in directing the attention of the youth of the South to literature. Too long have politics and business engrossed them, and it is surely high time that a word should
be spoken for literature and art.
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE.
ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF IIS DEATH.
Dead fifty years? Not so.
Nay, fifty years ago,
Death, Obloquy, and Spite,
To curse his ashes, came.
But, lo, the living light,
Beneath the breath of shame
Indignant, spurned the night,
And withered them in flame.
JOHN B. T1ABB.
This poem was effectively read by Mr. Willoughby Reade.




80


POE MEMORIAL.


By request, Mr. Reade recited with excellent taste and skill
Poe's Israfel.


Letters of regret or
lowing:


acceptance were also received from the fol

S. Z. Ammen,
Edward A. Allen,
Waitman Barbe,
W. S. Currell,
-1. S. Edwards,
A. S. Hardy,
T. R. Lounsbury,
A. K. McClure,
Carl Mann,
Albert Shaw,
M. E. M. Davis,
Geo. S. Duncan,
Sara S. Rice,
H. J. Stockard,
E. C. Valentine,


Dr. James B. Ayer,
Dr. J. Mount Bleyer,
Winston Churchill,
Mary M. Coleman,
J. B. Gilder,
R. U. Johnson,
S. S. McClure,
Mrs. J. H. Marr,
Polk Miller,
Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Piatt,
Andrew Downing,
W. F. Gill,
Maud Howard Peterson,
W. W. Scott,
Marcus J. Wright,


Marcus B. Allmond,
F. F. Browne,
Stephen Crane,
C. O'B. Cowardin,
D. C. Gilman,
Andrew S. Kerr,
J. Moellenhoff, Munich,
B. B. Minor,
Rosewell Page,
William Sartain,
Col. T. E. Davis,
A. C. Gordon,
Chevalier Reynolds,
Marguerite Tracy,
Rich'd Weightman.


There were many visitors from a distance, notably a number of
representatives of newspapers, who honored the occasion by their
presence.
After some informal but interesting remarks by Colonel T. E.
Davis, of the New Orleans Picayune, Mr. William Fearing Gill,
of New York, was introduced.
Mr. Gill is the author of a Life of Poe and has been a devoted
student of his writings for many years. He essayed the explanation of. The Raven," which he recited with effect, calling attention, among other things, to the interesting fact that the germ
of the poem was perhaps traceable to Poe's life while at the
University.
The last speaker of the evening was Chevalier E. R. Reynolds,
of Washington, D. C., whose subject was "The Death of Poe."
As there was at the time some misunderstanding on the part of




POE MEMORIAL.


81


the audience as to the conclusions reached by Mr. Reynolds, he
has kindly furnished us with a written abstract of his remarks, the
substance of which is here given:
The belief that Poe died as the result of an attack of delirium
tremens is based upon a statement made by Dr. Moran to the
Rev. W. T. D. Clemm on the morning after Poe's death. How
little stress can be placed on this statement is shown by the fact
that, in a lecture delivered in 1882, Dr. Moran flatly contradicts
himself by declaring that "the poet showed unmistakable evidences of having been drugged." In fact, neither of these statements can be relied upon. On the one hand, Poe could not have
had delirium tremens, even in its mildest form, for the simple
reason that the incubative period was too brief, as evidenced by
our knowledge of the poet's movements at this time; on the other,
there is no proof whatever that Poe was drugged, and, had such
been the case, it is strange that Dr. Moran did not mention it to
Dr. Clemm on the morning after the poet's death, nor on any
other morning during the years in which both resided in Baltimore. The real fact is, that Poe's death was due to natural
causes.  His shocking exposure, when thinly clad, to the low
temperature of a frosty October night could have killed a strong
man, much less one of his frail and exquisitely delicate structure.
Furthermore, Dr. J. F. C. Hadel, Health Commissioner, announces in his official report for Sunday, October 8th, three
deaths, one from congestion of the brain and the others from
cerebral inflammation, the first referring to Poe, as is shown by a
letter from Neilson Poe to Mrs. Clemm, the poet's mother-in-law.
That the alcohol verdict was unhesitatingly accepted by the
American press of the day is due to the fact that such notices
of the poet's death as appeared were based either upon the first
announcement in the Baltimore Sun-in which the delirium
tremens theory was accepted as a vague and easy way of accounting for his death-or upon Griswold's malignant screed in the
New York Evening Tribune. That Poe's death did not arouse
great sympathy and sorrow appears to have been due, in part, to
his shortcomings as a friend and his vigor as an enemy, and in




82                    POE MEMORIAL.
part to the fact that neither the American press nor the American
people could recognize his phenomenal worth because " they had
no national standard by which to compare him" or measure his
strikingly characteristic gifts.
Omitting the numerous newspaper accounts of the exercises
and the appreciative tributes paid by them to all who were in any
wise responsible for the success of the occasion, we offer no apology for reproducing in conclusion this poem, written for the University of Virginia Magazine:




I




THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS,
Near the University of Virginia.




POE MEMORIAL.


83


IN THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS.*
(Near Charlottesville, Va.)
Hush! In these hills
How silence thrills!
The breathless trees of forests old
Scatter autumnal gold,
In yellow leaves and ember-red,
(Burning with memories scarce dead)
That float and flutter to the groundFancy but feels a ghost of sound.
All's hushed and dim as Lethe. Though
The wild-fowl and the crow
Give startling voice, they pass and leave
A deeper silence round.
The spell-hung forests do not grieve,
But listless-lovely like despair
Lulled with vague tuned dreams, are fair
In the forlornness of their moods.
They might be immemorial woods,
Muse-haunted, east in Italy,
By the Adriatic sea.
Cloudlike and strange
Yon distant range,
Looming along the horizon's verge,
Where skies and storms and mountains merge,
Gloom upon gloom, dark thunder-blue,
Anon with radiance bursting through
Intense as heaven, sombre-grand,
And flooding all the land
With fearful splendor. Ere 'tis gone,
Sudden from out the black pines pierce,
With aspect grim and fierce,
Lit cliffs of blood-red stone.
But in the wild brake here
What presence seems so near?
Did these shades whisper ever so,
In spirit words intense and low,
* These beautiful lines, written by Mr. Henry Tyrrell, editor of 1Frank Leslie's
Monthly, during his visit to Charlottesville, were sent by him to Dr. Chas. W. Kent,
for exclusive publication in the Magazine. It is with many thanks to the author
that we give them to our readers.-ED.




84


POE MEMORIAL.


Since earthly time began?
Or caught they something human, warm,
Remembrances of sigh and storm
Waked in the heart of man?
This wilderness could never so
Have thrilled and trembled but to know
In every hill and tree and stone,
That through these tangled ways,
In other autumn days,
Silent, remote, proud, mystic, lone,
The pensive dreamer, Edgar Poe,
Passed, seven decades ago.
A sunken tarn, with baleful eye,
Up-gazes to the sky;
Myrtle, nightshade, and grasses tall
Are silver-misted, one and all,
And in the morning hung anew
With glistening pearls of dew,
Robbed not by the roving breezeTears, that the world ne'er sees.
HENRY TYRRELL.


October 7, 1899.




APPENDIX.




0








A6~a/ky             /1                            ask
4~.  ~      /   ~ (<-A~~      i~~~       ~~~A       C*4
FAMOU VIRGNIANSOF#PO'SJDA
Facsimile of Record of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia.




APPENDIX I.
SESSION OF 1826.
Rector: THOMAS JEFFERSON, to July 4, 1826.
JAMES MADISON, October 2, 1826.
Visitors: Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison,
Chapman Johnson,
Joseph C. Cabell,
James Breckinridge,
John H. Cocke,
George Loyall,
James Monroe.
Secretary to the Board: Nicholas P. Trist.
Chairman of the Faculty: Dr. Robley Dunglison.
Secretary of the Faculty: Dr. John P. Emmet.
Professors: George Long-Ancient Languages.
George Blaetterman-Modern Languages.
Charles Bonnycastle-Natural Philosophy.
John P. Emmet-Chemistry.
George Tucker-Moral Philosophy.
Robley Dunglison-Medicine.
Francis Walker Gilmer-Law. [Died in 1826, before
entering upon his duties.]
John Taylor Lomax-Law.     [From Spring 1826.]
Instructor: William Matthews-Military Tactics and Drill.
Librarian: William Wertenbaker.
Proctor: Mr. Brockenborough.
Hotel-keepers: Richardson, Chapman, Spottswood, Gray, Minor, and
Conway.
Janitor: J. Brockman.




APPENDIX II.
MATRICULATION OF THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY                   OF
VIRGINIA-1826.
The matriculation book is ruled in seven columns. The first is marked
"Entered 1826," and in this column is put the month and day of matriculation.
The second column contains names of students; the third, date of birth; fourth,
parent or guardian; fifth, place of residence of the student, parent, or guardian.
The sixth is headed "Professors attended," and this column is subdivided, the
subdivisions being given to Long, Blaetterman, Key, Bonnycastle, Emmet,
Dunglison, Tucker, and "Law Professor."  In each of these subdivisions a
pen stroke indicates whether a given student was a member of this particular
professor's class. The seventh column is entitled "Remarks." For the information of those to whom this matriculation-book is not accessible there follows
a list of the students of 1826 in the order of their matriculation:


February 1st.
John Cary.
William E. Cunningham.
Henry L. Davis.
Willia' A. Crichton.
Henry H. Worthington.
William Wertenbaker.
Tazewell Taylor.
Robert Blow.
Henry L. Allmand.
Paul A. Clay.
Turner Dixon.
William Aylett.
John Walker Waller.
Henry Shackleford.
Robert Yates.
Joseph W. Chalmers.
Chas. E. Dade.
Thomas H. Nelson.
William N. Wellford.
William McC. Burwell.
Hugh Pleasants.
Thos. Swann.
Albert L. Holloday.
Richard Brown.
Frederick Brown.
Geo. T. M. Long.
Robert Carter.


Richard Garland.
Henry A. Tayloe.
Wm. Seawell.
Thos. Pemberton.
Wm. W. Michie.
Wm. S. Daniel.
Thos. S. Gholson.
February 2d.
Benj. H. Magruder.
Wm. V. Loving.
February 3d.
Archibald Glenn.
Travis H. Epes.
Sam'1 Robinson.
Oscar F. D. Bower.
James A. Clarke.
Chas. Peyton.
Thos. J. Boyd.
Edward T. Harrison.
Gessner Harrison.
Henry Tutwiler.
Patrick Aylett.
John T. Wormeley.
Reubin Newman.
Berthin Jones.
Levingston Lindsay.
Joel E. Mathews.
Simpson Fouche.




APPENDIX.


89


Henry E. Coleman.
Miles George.
James S. French.
February 4th.
Richard Stuart.
Chas. C. Lewis.
John Lyle.
Robert L. Kennon.
Chapman Johnson.
Jos. S. Watson.
John B. Garrett.
Thomas Goode Tucker.
Orlando Fairfax.
Lewis Harvie.
Chas. B. Calvert.
Edward G. Crump.
Arthur H. H. Bernard.
Robert Wallace.
Robert Scott.
Wm. H. Newsum.
Wilson C. Newsum.
Lewis F. Douglass.
Richard Akin.
John Wall.
Henry Clagett.
Chas. Shreve.
February 6th.
John Temple.
Wm. M. Murphy.
George F. Chew.
John A. Carter.
Sam'l Smith.
John Preston.
Wm. L. Cabell.
Geo. Teackle.
Edmond W. Hubard.
James M. Smith.
Wm. H. Clarke.
Wm. Selden.
Benedict Crump.
John B. Magruder.
Wm. E. Allen.
Wilson C. Swann.
Z. C. Lee.
John H. Hilleary.
Philip L. Lightfoot.
Robert W. Thomas.
Thomas Miller.


February 7th.
Wm. Cross.
Robert R. Collier.
John H. Walker.
Arthur R. Smith.
John S. Turner.
Charles Preston.
Jerman Baker.
Wm. H. Haxall.
Charles T. Botts.
Wm. F. Gray.
February 8th.
G. W. Lewis.
Wm. Emmet.
Alexander Henderson.
John Hansbrough.
Benj'n F. Randolph.
Lewis Randolph.
February 9th.
Philip Slaughter.
Wm. D. Sims.
Geo. W. Johnson.
James M. Huston.
John Willis.
February 10th.
Robert Taylor.
Sidney A. Perry.
Ebenezer Zane.
February 13th.
Nathaniel Dunn.
Thomas Barclay.
Philip St.G. Ambler.
Emanuel I. Miller.
Upton Beall.
John L. Labranch.
Euphemon Labranch.
Thos. Bolling.
February 14th.
Wm. W. Shriver.
Charles F. Urquhart.
St. George T. Coalter.
John H. Waring.
Edgar A. Poe.
February 15th.
Conway R. Nutt.
T. Jefferson White.
Wm. A. Spottswood.
Hamilton Loughborough.




90


APPENDIX.


February 17th.
Benjamin Anderson.
February 20th.
Burwell Starke.
Wm. N. Whiting.
Collin M. Clarke.
Charles T. Beale.
*George B. Skellern.
February 22d.
Robert M. Forbes.
February 23d.
William H. Meriwether.
February 24th.
William E. Taylor.
February 25th.
William T. Maclin.
February 27th.
Hugh Minor.
Nathaniel D. Ellis.
James Harding.
MIarch 7th.
Robt. M. T. Hunter.
3March 8th.
Anselm B. Urquhart.
Mlarch 14th.
Edwin C. Drummond.
Isaac Medley, Jr.
cMarch 20th.
Charles T. Taylor.
March 28th.
Wilson C. Nelson.
Charles A. Lewis.


March 30th.
Geo. W. McCulloch.
April 3d.
Chas. Wickliffe.
Mann A. Page.
April 5th.
Abraham Barnes Mason.
April 6th.
John Wesley Vick.
April 11th.
Sterling F. Edmunds.
April 19th.
George M. Graham.
John P. Willcox.
April 21st.
Charles Patton.
~May 3d.
Algernon Sidney Brown.
May 9th.
Henry T. Dixon.
May 11th.
George E. Hoffman.
May 20th.
Edgar Mason.
June 5th.
John H. Sothoron.
July 13th.
Samuel A. Townes.
July 19th.
Richard Baylor.
July 26th.
Charles Tayloe.


Close of the second session in December, 1826. Number of each school second session: Long, 107; Blaetterman, 90; Key, 98; Bonnycastle, 43; Emmet,
45; Dunglison, 16; Tucker, 28; Lomax, 26-177 students.
* So spelled in Matriculation Book. See Semi-Centennial Catalogue of the University of Virginia.




APPENDIX III.
POE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION.
(At the time of the Unveiling)
Founded April 13, 1897.
OFFICERS.
President: Dr. C. W. Kent.
Vice-President: W. A. Clark, Jr.
Hon. Vice-Presidents: Bishop 0. P. Fitzgerald.
Dr. B. L. Gildersleeve.
Secretary: Dr. Jas. A. Harrison.
Treasurer: J. W. Hunter, Jr.


Abbot, F. H.
Abbot, C. M.
Baillio, G.
Barnwell, N. B.
Barringer, Dr. P. B.
Beckwith, J. R.
Blair, L. H.
Bonner, M. L.
Bonney, J. L. V.
Bosher, R. S., Jr.
Bradshaw, S. E.
Brank, R. S.
Brodnax, J. M.
Buck, G. M.
Carter, Col. T. H.
Chamberlayne, L. P.
Chapman, J. H.
Clark, W. A., Jr.
Clay, B. J.
Cocke, M. E.
Comer, G. L., Jr.
Crook, M.
Crimmins, M. J.
Dame, W. P.
Davis, Dr. J. S.
Davis, Prof. N. K.


MEMBERS.
Dawson, E.
Dickinson, M. B.
Downer, J. W.
Duke, Judge R. T.W., Jr.
Dunkle, O.
Edwards, P. H.
Ellis, Col. Thos. II.
Foster, J. G.
Furniss, H. D.
Garnett, J. M., Jr.
Garnett, T. S., Jr.
Gary, Hampson.
Gaskins, J. D.
Garland, H. A.
Godfrey, E. S.
Goodrich, F. A.
Gordon, J. L.
Grace, E. L.
Graves, Prof. C. A.
IIairston, W. H.
Halff, M. L.
Harrison, G.
Harrison, Dr. Jas. A.
Harrison, W. H.
Haynes, F. M.


Heard, J. L.
IHeneberger, A. S.
Iolland, C. G.
Huger, W. E., Jr.
Hume, F. N.
Hunt, W. H.
Hlunter, J. W., Jr.
Hutcheson, J. C.
Johnston, F.
Jordan, P. B.
Joynes, Prof. E. S.
Kent, Dr. C. W.
Kent, Mr. H. T.
Kittridge, D. W.
Knox, K. H.
Lee, E. J.
Loeb, L.
Liggin, S. B.
Lile, Prof. W. M.
Lilliston, A. H.
Long, C. M.
Mallet, Dr. J. V.
Mathewson, W. W.
McCartney, T. B., Jr.
McCloskey, J. J.




92


POE MEMORIAL.


McNair, W. I.
Merrill, Prof. A. H.
Miller, A. I.
Miller, Mr. Polk.
Minor, Prof. R. C.
Moomaw, B. C.
Morrison, A. J.
Murfee, W. L.
Nelson, R. C.
Nininger, M. L.
Oast, J. W., Jr.
O'Brien, S. M.
Old, E. H. H.
Peery, H. J.
Persinger, D. W.
Peters, Col. W. E.
Portner, A. O.
Price, Prof. Thos. R.
Prince, J. B.
Ramsey, F. G.
Read, B. J.
Reade, W. A.


Rhett, A. B.
Richardson, R. R.
Roach, E.
Robb, R. G.
Robinson, M. P.
Rogers, E. R.
Rogers, G. F.
Rogers, R. L.
Scott, W. C., Jr.
Shaffer, E. M.
Shannonhouse, W. T.
Simmes, T. H.
Smith, Prof. F. H.
Smith, J. P., Jr.
Stroud, A. T.
Stuart, W. II.
Swartz, M. W.
Swift, H. H.
Templeton, G. M.
Thom, Mr. DeC. W.
Thornton, Prof. W. M.
Tilley, M. P.
Toney, R. B.
Tunstall, R. B.


Tuttle, Prof. A. H.
Turner, J. A.
Van der Horst, A.
V. V. V. Dramatic Club.
Walke, L. T.
Walke, R. A.
Walker, J. C.
White, J. J.
White, L. M.
White, R. M.
Wilson, G.
Winston, J. E.
Wise, Dr. J. O.
Williams, L. C.
Williams, R. G.
Williams, W. B.
Wolff, H. D.
Woodward, E. L.
Wright, C. C.
Wright, R. H.
Young, Rev. C. A.


Ushers who served at the unveiling exercises:


C. C. Wright.
H. D. Wolff.
H. H. Bonner.


M. E. Cocke.
M. B. Dickinson.


M. W. Swartz.
J. L. Heard.




APPENDIX IV.
THE POE LIBRARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
American and English Editions.
1838*-THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, of Nantucket, North America: comprising the Details of a Mutiny, Famine, and Shipwreck, during
a Voyage to the South Seas; resulting in Various Extraordinary Adventures and Discoveries in the Eighty-fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude.
London: Wiley & Putnam... Whittaker and Co.; and Charles Tilt. London, 1841.
1839 —THE CONCHOLOGIST'S FIRST BOOK: A System of Testaceous Malacology,
arranged expressly for the use of schools, in which the animals, according to Cuvier, are given with the shells, a great number of new species
added, and the whole brought up as accurately as possible to the present
condition of the science. By Edgar A. Poe. Philadelphia: Haswell,
Barrington and Haswell. Second Edition. 1840. 166 pp. 12 colored
plates.
1839*-THE GIFT: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1840. Edited by
Miss Leslie. Carey and Hart, Philadelphia. Contains, pp. 229-253, Poe's
William Wilson.
1850-THE WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE: With Notices of his Life
and Genius, by N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, and R. W. Griswold. In
two volumes. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1850.
1856-THE WORKS OF THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE: With a Memoir by Rufus
Wilmot Griswold, and Notices of his Life and Genius by N. P. Willis
and J. R. Lowell. In four volumes. Redfield, New York. 1856.
Contents: Vol. I., Tales; II., Poems and Sketches; III., The Literati
and Critical Essays; IV., Arthur Gordon Pym, and Miscellanies.
Same-New York: Blakeman & Mason. 1859. (Vol. IV.)
1858-THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE: With Original Memoir
by Charles F. Briggs. Illustrated by T. R. Pickersgill, R. A., John
Tenniel, Birket Foster, F. O. C. Darley, Jasper Cropsey, Paul P. Duggan,
Percival Skelton, A. M. Madot, and W. Harry Rogers. Engraved by
Cooper, Linton, Evans, and others. With a Portrait of the Author, from
a Daguerreotype taken shortly before his Death. London: Sampson, Low,
Son and Co. MDCCCLVIII.
1865-POEMS, BY EDGAR ALLAN POE. Complete, with an Original Memoir.
W. J. Widdleton, New York.
1866-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. In Four Volumes. New York:
W. J. Widdleton. 1866. [Vols. I., III., IV.]
1867-THE PROSE TALES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. First Series. New York:
W. J. Widdleton. 1867.




94


POE MEMORIAL.


1872-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, Including the Choicest of his Critical Essays, from the French of C. Baudelaire [by H. Curwen]. With
Sketches of Poe's School near London. Portraits and Fac-similes. London: John Camden Hotten. 1872.
1872*-THE BELLS. By Edgar Allan Poe. Presented by Tyndale and Mitchell,
Philadelphia. 1872.
1874-5-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Edited by John 11. Ingram......
Edinburg: Adam and Charles Black. 1874-5. 4 Vols.
1876-Same; New York: W. J. Widdleton.
1876-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, including Poetical and Prose Writings. New York: W. J. Widdleton. 1876.
1880*-EDGAR ALLAN POE: His Life, Letters, and Opinions. By Jolln H.
Ingram. London: John IHogg. Vols. I., II., 1880. 2 sets, one presented
by author.
1891t-Same; London: Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co. (Minerva Library.)
1885t-THE RAVEs;i. With a Literary and Historical Commentary by John II.
Ingram. London: G. Redway. 1885.
1886-THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Witl a Prefatory Notice,
Biographical and Critical. By Joseph Skipsey. London: W. Scott
(Canterbury Poets). 1886.
1889*-THE, FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, and Other Tales and Prose
Writings of Edgar Poe. Selected and Edited, with Introduction, by
Ernest Rhys. London: Walter Scott. 1889.
1894-THE COMPLETE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. With an Introduction
and a Memoir by Richard Henry Stoddard. Fordham Edition. New
York. 1894. 6 Vols.
1894-5-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Newly collected and edited, with
a Memoir, Critical Introduction, and Notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry. The Illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner. Chicago: Stone and Kimball. MDCCCXCIV-V. 10 Vols.
t.(Same.)
1895-THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott.
1895. 8 Vols.
1897-POEMS AND TALES FROM THE WRITINGS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Edited
by William P. Trent. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (Riverside Literature Series). 1897.
Foreign Editions.
1876t-RACCONTI INCREDIBILI. Milano: Tip. Edit. Lombarda. 1876.
1881t-SELTSAME GESCHICHTEN VON EDGAR ALLAN POE. Stuttgart (Collection Spemann. Ur. 29). 1881.
1882t-CONTES GROTESQUES. Traduction E. Hennequin.   Troisieme edition.
Paris. 1882.




POE MEMORIAL.


95


1883-86t-AUsGEWAEHLTE NOVELLEN. Deutsch von J. Mollenhoff. Leipzig.
3 Vols.
1885t-RACCONTI STRAORDINARI. Milano: Edoardo Souzogno. 1885.
1885t-Nuovi RACCONTI STRAORDINARII II E. POE. Traduzione di Rodolfo
Arbib. Milano: Edoardo Souzogno. 1885.
1891t-AUSGEWAEHLTE GEDICHTE, von Edgar Allan Poe. tbertragen von Hedwig Lachmann. Berlin: Verlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus.
1892t-AVENTURES D' ARTHUR GORDON PYM. EUREKA. Par Edgar Poe.
Traduction de Charles Baudelaire (Complete Works of Charles Baudelaire, Vol. VII). Paris: Calmann Levy. 1892.
1897t —(EuvRES D' EDGAR POE. Calmann Levy, Editeur. Paris. 1897.
Biographical and Critical.
1860* —EDGAR POE AND His CRITICS. By Sarah Helen Whitman. Rudd
and Carleton, New York.
1877* —LIFE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. By William F. Gill. C. T. Dillingham,
New York. 1877.
Same-presented by author.
1877*-EDGAR ALLAN POE: A Memorial Volume. By Sara Sigourney Rice.
Baltimore: Turnbull Bros. 1877.
1881*-EDGAR ALLAN POE. By Edmund C. Stedman. London: Samson, Low,
Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1881.
1881t-Same.
1883* —THE VALLEY OF UNREST: A Book Without a Woman-Edgar Allan
Poe. By Douglas Shirley. John P. Morton & Company, mnprimery,
Louisville, Ky. (Second edition.)
1885-A DEFENSE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE. Life, Character, and Dying Declarations of the Poet. An Official Account of his Death by his Attending
Physician, John J. Moran, M. D. Washington: Wmn. F. Boogher. 1885.
1892-EDGAR ALLAN POE. By George E. Woodberry. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. American Men of Letters. 1892.
1896-EDGAR ALLAN POE. By Samuel A. Link. Nashville: Barbee and Smith
(Pioneers of Southern Literature). 1896.
1899t-IN THE POE CIRCLE: With Some Account of the Poe-Chivers Controversy, and Other Poe Memorabilia. By Joel Benton. Mansfield &
Wessels, New York. 1899.
1899-THE MIND AND ART OF POE's POETRY. By John Phelps Fruit. New
York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1899.
1900-ON SOUTHERN POETRY PRIOR TO 1860. By S. E. Bradshaw. Richmond:
B. F. Johnson Pub. Co. 1900.




96                         POE MEMORIAL.
Magazine Articles in the Poe Library.
POE tLetters, in New York-Century, 1894.
Letters, in Philadelphia-Century, 1894.
Letters, in the South-Century, 1894.
Personality of-A. Yorgan-Munsey, 1897.
Lyric Poet of America-Jas. L. Onderdonk-(Mid-Continent, 1895?).
The New Poe-Atlantic, 1896.
At West Point-Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
Grave of-L. R. Meekin-Critic, 1898.
Works of (review)-1850?
tObsession of-John P. Fruit-Poet-Lore, 1900.
Grave of-Jennie Bard Dugdale-Poet-Lore, 1899.
His Last Hours.
Books and pamphlets marked with an asterisk (*) were presented by Mr. E.
R. Reynolds, of Washington; those marked with a dagger (t) are in the Harrison case.




INDEX.
Acceptance-Letters of....................................................................
Aldrich, T. B.-Letter from.........................................................
Athletics-Poe's Record in............................................................


PAGE
80
68
11-12


Bangs, J. K.-Letter from.............................................................
Barringer, P. B.-Accepts                 Bust....................................................
Bates, A.-Letter from...................................................................
Baylor, F. C. —Letter from...................................................
Benton, J.-Letter from..................................................
Bierbower, A.-Letter from...........................................................
Board of Visitors-Resolution                  of..................................................
Bolling, Thomas-Testimony                    about Poe..........................................
Bradshaw, S. E.-Presents Bust.......................................................
Brock, R. A.-Letter from..............................................................
Brown, W. H.-Letter from...........................................................
Bruce, W.-   Letter from................................................................
Burroughs, J.-Letter from.........................................................
Burton, R.-Letter from.................................................................
Byron-Influence            on   Poe............................................................
Carman, Bliss-Letter from.............................................................
Cawein, M. J.-Letter from..........................................................
Coleman, C. W.-Letter from..........................................................
Curry, J. L. M.-Letter from........................................................
Davidson, J. W.-Letter from.......................................................
DeKay, C.-Letter from..............................................
De Leon, T. C.-Letter from..............................................
Didier, E. L.-Letter from............................................................
Dunlop, G.-         Letter from....................................................
Durrett, R. T.-Letter from..................................................
Editors East and          West-Letter from........................................
Elam, W. C.-Letter from.......................................................
Ellis, P.-Letter from..................................................................
Evening       Exercises..........................................................................
Evening       Exercises-Programme                of...................................................
Everett, C. E.-Letter from............................................................
Fawcett, E.-Letter from.................................................................
Flash, H. L.-Letter from..............................................................
Fletcher, W. I.-Letter               from..........................................................


76
37
73
66
73
76;-,: '.:
25
13
34-36
68
73
77
67
71
17
72
74
63
75
75
69
67
73
75
76
71
70
63
62-82
62
62
63
67
69




98                                        INDEX.
PAGE
Fortier, A.-Letter from.................................................................   70
French, Alice-Letter from.........................................................   67
"Gaffy," Nickname applied to Poe..................................................         16
Gates, M. E.-Letter from.............................................................      63
George, Miles-Poe's room-mate.....................................................         11
Gill, Wm. Fearing-Recital of Raven.................................  80
Glasgow, Ellen-Letter from................................................  69
Griswold-Memoir of Poe........................................................  18
Gunter, A. C.-Letter from.........................................     71
Harlan, Mr. Justice-Letter from...................................  71
Harper, W. R.-Letter from............................................................      70
Harris, W. T.-Letter from............................................................       75
Harrison, B. R.-Letter from......................................................          70
Harrison, G.-Letter from..............................................................     65
Harrison, Master J. L.-Unveils Bust................................................         36
Iay, John-Letter from.............................................................  70
Hayne, W. H.-Letter from....................................................... 78
Henneman, J. B.-Letter from.........................................................       71
Higginson, T. W.-Letter from.....................................                          64
HIosmer, J. K.-Letter from............................................................     71
Hutton, L.-Letter from...............................................................      66
"In the Ragged Mountains "-Poem              by Tyrrell.............................       83
Jefferson-Death of........................................................................  20
Kent, C. W.-Address................................................................... 31-34
Kirk, E. O.-Letter from..................................................   71
Lanier, C. A.-Letter from..............................................................    78
Lee, S. P.-Letter from................................................                     71
Lefevre, J. A.-Letter from..........................................        72
Letters-Extracts from.................................................................. 62-80
Letters of Acceptance or Regret.....................................................        80
Link, S. A.-Letter from.....................................................  76
Loveman, R.-Letter from...........................................               75
Mabie, H. W.-"Poe's Place in American Literature........................ 38-59
Comment on his Address.........................................         37
Manly, L.-Letter from................................................................  72
Matthews, Wm.-Athletic Instructor at University..............................              12
Maury, Jesse-Testimony about Poe................................................  13
Mayo, A. D.-Letter from..........................................................          75
M  em orial  Poem............................................................................  60-61
Merrill, A. H.-Letter from............................................76




INDEX.                                                      99
PAGE
Milburn, W. H.-Letter from.......................................................  68
Mims, E.-Letter from................................................................                             77
Mitchell, D. G.-Letter from.........................................................            64
Moore, C. L.-Letter from...............................................................                        72
Moran, W. H. W.-  Letter from.......................................................                69
Morgan, A.-Letter from.............................................................                            69
Moellenhoff, J.-Letter from............................................................                         75
Murfree, M. N.-Letter from.........................................................                             76
Pancoast, H. S.-Letter from...............................................              76
Pattee, F. L.-Letter from...............................................................        76
Payne, W. M.-Letter from...................................................           73
Perry, B. —Letter          from...................................................................              79
POE, EDGAR ALLANBiographers of his University Career.................................         9
Enters University          of Virginia.................................................                10
In  Matriculation        Book...................................................      10
His Difficulty with          Miles George...............................................                11
His Athletic Record........................................................     11-12
His Interest in        Military     Tactics................................................             12
His Room.......................................................               13
His Penmanship           and Drawing..................................................                  13
His Early      Literary      Training............................................        13
Iis Studies at University of Virginia.......................................  13
His Class-room         Career.............................................................             14
In   the University        Library.....................................................            14-15
In  the Ragged        Mountains......................................................15-16
Called     "Gaffy"..................................................................       16
Iis Apprenticeship           as Story      Teller............................................           16
His Early Verse..................................................................      16-17
Influence of Byron           on..........................................................          17
Iis Interest in        Debates...........................................................               17
Not an Offender against University                  or Civil Law.......................                  18
His Mercurial Disposition..............................................             19
His Dissipation at University..................................................                         19
Result of his Examinations.....................................................                        21
A   Witness before University              Faculty...................................      21-22
His Evening with            Mr. W     ertenbaker...........................................             22
POE BUSTDelivered at University............................................................                      27
W   est's Commendation           of...................................................       31
Zolnay's Opinion          of................................................................           31
Exercises at Unveiling of........................................................ 32-61
Poe, J. P.-Letter from............................................................                 67
Poe Memorial Alcove..............................................................             25




100                                                   INDEX.
PAGE
POE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATIONOrganized.............................................................................                 25
Resolutions Passed            by......................................................              25
Officers of............................................................................                      25
Second      Annual Meeting            of.......................................................               26
Arrangement Committee of....................................................           27
"Poe's Place in          American         Literature"..............................................             38-59
Poindexter, Chas.-Letter                  from......................................................             77
Poitevent, Schuyler-Investigations by...........................................                9
Pollard, E. B.-          Letter from.........................................................                 71
Powell, E. L.-Letter from..............................................................                               76
Price, T. R.-         Letter from...............................................................              78
Ragged       Mountains-Poe             in...........................................................   15-16
Poem       on.........................................................               83
READE, WILLOUGHBYRead     W   ilson's Memorial Poem................................................       60
Read     Tabb's Poem................................................................                 79
Read     "Israfel................................................................80
Regret, Letters         of.......................................................................                 80
Reynolds, E. R.-On                the   Death     of Poe.............................................  80-82
Gifts to the       Library............................................... 93-96
Rice, S. S.-Letter from..................................................................              74
Rossetti, W. M.-Letter from...........................................................             65
Rowland, K. M.-Letter from........................................................               65
Saunders, F.-Letter from.........................................................             74
Letter from..............................................................                76
Schelling, F. E.-Letter from........................................................         68
Scollard, C.-Letter from...............................................................                               65
Seawell, M. E.-Letter                from............................................................                 79
Shepherd, H. E.-Letter                  from.......................................................        72
Shirley, Douglas-Tucker's                   Letter to..............................................                  19
Investigations         by..................................................               9
Smyth, A. H1.-           Letter from..............................................................                    72
Spofford, A. R.-Letter from...........................................................             69
Stanard, W. G.-Letter from..........................................................             70
Stedman, E. C.-Letter from............................................................             68
Letter from......................................................           77
Stimson, F. J. —Letter from............................................................              74
Stockton, F. R. —Letter from.........................................................               68
Stoddard, F. H.-Letter                 from.........................................................                 73
Swiggett, G. L.-Letter from.........................................................               77
Tabb, John         B.-    " To Edgar Allan            Poe".............................................               79
Taylor, H.-Letter from.............................................................                                 73




INDEX.                                                 101
PAGE
"       To  Edgar Allan Poe";............................................. 79
Toy, C. H. —Letter from.................................................................       66
Traylor, R. L. -Letter from..........................................................                      65
Trent, W. P.-Letter from.................................................      72
Trowbridge, J. T.-Letter from..............................................      63
Trumbull, S. H.-Letter from..........................................................                      66
Tucker, B. D.-Letter from..........................................................                       78
Tucker, T. G.-Testimony               about Poe......................................11, 14, 18, 19
Turk, R. S.-Letter from...............................................................                     75
Tyler, L. G.-Letter from.........................................................        64
Tyler, M. C.-Letter from..............................................................                     62
Tyrrell, H.-       " In the Ragged Mountains "........................................                     83
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIAPoe's Student Days at......................................................   9-23
First Session of...............................................................           10
Second Session of..........................................................       10
School of Antient Languages at (1826)......................................                         14
School of Modern          Languages at (1826)......................................                 14
Library of (1826).......................................................   15
Two Classes of Students at.......................................................  17
Gambling at...........................................................                18
Final Examinations at (1826).................................................                     20
Unveiling Exercises...........................................................   32-59
Unveiling Exercises-Programme of...............................................                          32
Van Dyke, H.-Letter from.............................................................                     69
Wertenbaker, Wm.-Testimony about Poe..............................14, 15, 19, 22
West, C. E.-Letter from............................................................        67
Wilson, Robert B.-Memorial Poem................................................. 60-61
Wilson, W. L.-Letter from............................................................                     73
Winter, Wm.-Letter from..................................................  70
Woodberry, G. E.-Letter from.....................................................       78
Woods, C. P.-Letter             from..............................................................         70
Woodward, F. C.-Letter from........................................................                        71
ZOLNAY, GEORGE JULIANEngaged as Sculptor...............................................................                  26
Sketch of his Life..................................................   28-31
His Conception of Poe......................................................          30
His Opinion of the Poe Bust..........................................31




















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