By C. E. BISHOP.
Less is known while more is written and disputed about Edgar Allan Poe,
than about any other character in American literature. In the narrative
of his life there are gaps of months and years in which nothing can be
told of his whereabouts or acts; and as if to atone for this lack he is
at other times credited with feats of ubiquity. There are also stories
of a quixotic mission to fight for Greek independence, _a la_ Byron; of
his escapades in St. Petersburg; of enlistment in and desertion from
the United States army; of phenomenally protracted debauches, during
which he threw off the most wonderful productions of his pen—most of
which stories, so far as can be shown now, were evolved from the inner
consciousness of those writers who, upon his death, “woke to ecstacy, the
living liars,” to blacken his name.
A general reason for this paucity of particulars may be found, perhaps,
in Poe’s enforced seclusion from the public by the exigencies of poverty
during much of his life, and the low rank of authors in the general
estimation of the times; a special reason may be that Poe’s literary
executor and biographer, Dr. Griswold, to whom in his lifetime he had
entrusted all the material he ever furnished any one, suppressed the
facts and substituted inventions, in order to assassinate the character
of the dead poet. For twenty-six years Poe’s body rested in an unmarked
grave, and his character was buried under a living heap of obloquy. When
at last, in 1875, a few devoted women of Baltimore sought to redeem both
tombs, nearly all the contemporary witnesses to his acts were dead. It
was not until twenty-six years after the event that Dr. Moran, who had
attended Poe’s last illness, broke silence and put to rest the story that
he died in the midst of a drunken debauch in the streets of Baltimore.
“There was no smell of liquor upon his person or breath, and no delirium
or tremor,” says this tardy vindicator. It was 1878 (twenty-nine years
late) when Mrs. Weiss, of Richmond, told the story of his last visit to
that city, and contradicted Griswold’s story of his engagement with Mrs.
Stalton, and his prolonged inebriety there. It was later still, when
the posthumous letter of Mrs. Whitman, of Providence, was published,
silencing the long-accepted tale of Poe’s engagement to her, and his
disreputable conduct and intemperance the evening before they were to
have been married. Many chivalrous pens now—alas! too late—essayed his
defense; but his true history has not yet been written, and it probably
never will be. Dr. Johnson’s summary of Butler’s life almost literally
applies to Poe’s: “The date of his birth is doubtful, the mode and place
of his education unknown, the events of his life are variously related,
and all that can be told with certainty is that he was poor.”
“The persistent and palpably malignant efforts to damn him with some
drops of faint praise and some oceans of strong abuse,”[A] have, indeed,
produced a reactionary tendency toward panegyric, since the angels rolled
the stone away from his tomb. The best any one can now do is to pity
the man and admire his works, and weigh probabilities. A careful view
as well of his time as of his character and environment is necessary.
Premising that I am not so presumptuous as to expect to add much to the
general fund of misinterpretation of his acts and misunderstanding of
his character, a brief summary of the less controverted features of this
history is submitted.
In “that stray child of Poetry and Passion” concentered hot Celtic
and Southern blood, stimulated upon his father’s side by drink, upon
his mother’s by the artificial surroundings of an actress’s life,
and in both intensified by a runaway marriage, followed by a joint
“barn-storming” life. Himself an inter-act, his nursery was the green
room, his necessary nourishment narcotics. It is a sad thing to say, but
probably one of the few fortunate circumstances of his life was that
his parents died in his infancy—one of his many misfortunes was to have
been adopted and raised by a wealthy family (Mr. Allan’s of Baltimore).
He was born in 1809, or 1811, in either Boston, Baltimore or Richmond,
through all of which he, living, “begged his bread,” _a la_ Homer. The
Allans assiduously spoiled the child with unlimited money, indulgence
and praise. It was easy, for he was rarely beautiful, affectionate,
and precocious; he recited with marvelous childish effect, spun webs
of imaginative stories, and composed rhymes. “He lisped in numbers,
for the numbers came,” and when he was nine or ten years old his proud
foster-father seriously contemplated issuing a volume of his baby-verse,
but was dissuaded by the boy’s tutor, who said he had conceit enough
already, and such additional celebrity would probably ruin his prospects.
Edgar was schooled in England, at the University of Virginia, and
at West Point, but he must have picked up independently of schools
and school masters the varied culture which shows in his versatile
writings—especially his acquaintance with science, psychology and
literature. At these schools he was distinguished alike for fast learning
and fast living—his easy absorption of the branches he liked, his utter
revulsion against those he did not like (mathematics, notably), for his
literary and critical tastes, athletic exercises, and the lavishness with
which he scattered his guardian’s money. These characteristics won him
the jealousy of his plodding classmates, distinction at the university,
expulsion from West Point, and quarrels with his foster-father.
Over-indulgence by parents produced the usual result of disrespect and
ingratitude in the youth; and the marriage of Mr. Allan to a second wife,
and the birth of heirs to his estates brought about a final separation
and a disinheritance of the adopted son, and so Edgar, at about his
majority age, was thrown on his own resources. He chose literature as his
profession, and doomed himself to poverty, anguish, professional jealousy
(especially strong among authors), triumphs, defeats, ruin and insanity.
Poe’s real début in letters was in 1833, when (ætat 24) he won a prize of
a hundred dollars offered by the proprietor of _The Saturday Visitor_,
Baltimore, for the best story. Better than the money, the contest brought
him the friendship of the judges, and about a year later the editorship
of _The Southern Literary Messenger_, Richmond, at ten dollars a week.
The intervening year is one of the blanks.
The Richmond editorship marks a turning point in Poe’s career. He made
the fortune of the _Messenger_; married (’35) his cousin, Virginia
Clem; and first began that line of work which is, in my opinion, its
distinctive feature, as it certainly proved to be decisive of his
destiny—to-wit: criticism. He published in some issues as much as thirty
or forty pages of book reviews. They created a tempest; for, rare as is
his imagery and wonderful as is his imagination, Poe’s distinguishing
mental characteristic is analysis. He is more logician than poet, more
metaphysician than romancer.
Poe subsequently (’37-’38) edited the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, and then
_Graham’s Magazine_, both in Philadelphia, and in ’44 we find him in
New York, employed on the _Mirror_, the journal of the poets N. P.
Willis and George P. Morris. In Philadelphia he did the best work of
his life in romance and criticism. Here, too, he made the acquaintance
of his evil genius, Dr. Griswold. Poe believed that Griswold supplanted
him from the editorship of _Graham’s_; G.’s subsequent enmity, while
professing friendship, was of the unforgiving nature that often comes of
the consciousness of having inflicted a secret wrong on another. The only
other causes of disagreement between them alleged are that Poe criticised
Griswold’s book in a lecture, and that Griswold attempted to buy a
favorable criticism from Poe’s pen. But they were outwardly friendly,
after a reconciliation, till Poe’s voice and pen were beyond the power
of response. The work of detraction had preceded Poe to New York, for Mr.
Willis writes of this engagement:
“With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness
to let it alone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led
by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his
duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time
went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious.
To our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a
criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too highly
with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and
courteously assented—far more yielding than most men, we thought,
on points so excusably sensitive. Through all this considerable
period we had seen but one presentment of the man—a quiet,
patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the
utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deportment and
ability.”
In 1845 appeared the work on which Poe’s poetic fame most depends, that
poem in which he wedded Despair to Harmony, “The Raven.” It marks the
acme of his life, also; his star declined rapidly thereafter. His wife,
who bore the hereditary taint of consumption, was in a decline; care and
anxiety on that account, and his own ill health, took away his ability
to write and he was without means of support. He was driven to ask loans
from one or two friends, and by a fatality such as he sometimes made to
drive his fictitious characters upon their worst expedients, he chose Dr.
Griswold as one of them. “Can you not send me five dollars?” he pleaded
with G.; “I am ill and Virginia is almost gone.” This and one or two
other such letters Griswold published, in connection with his slanders
on Poe’s character, to give his attack the cover of friendly sincerity.
Something was published in New York papers regarding the distress of the
Poes, and a lady friend (Mrs. Shew) visited them at Fordham. The worst
was confirmed.
“There was no clothing on the bed—which was only straw—but a
snow-white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick
lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of
consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband’s
great coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The
wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat
and the cat were the sufferer’s only means of warmth, except as
her husband held her hands and her mother her feet.”
Mrs. Poe died January 30, 1847. Captain Mayne Reid, the novelist, who
visited often at her house, thus describes her:
“No one who remembers that dark-eyed, dark-haired daughter of the South;
her face so exquisitely lovely; her gentle, graceful demeanor; no one who
has ever spent an hour in her society but will endorse what I have said
of this lady, who was the most delicate realization of the poet’s ideal.”
Another said: “She had large, black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of
complexion which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes,
and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was
almost a disrobed spirit.”
After this Poe’s decline was rapid. He was ill for a long time, and
never quite recovered his mental balance. In the autumn of this year he
visited Mrs. Shew, his benefactress. She says that at this time, under
the combined influence of her gentle urgency, a cup of tea and the sound
of neighboring church bells, he wrote the first draft of “The Bells.” She
adds:
“My brother took Poe to his own room, where he slept twelve
hours and could hardly recall the evening’s work. This showed
his mind was injured—nearly gone out for want of food and from
disappointment. He had not been drinking and had only been a
few hours from home. Evidently his vitality was low, and he was
nearly insane. I called in Dr. Francis (the old man was odd but
very skilful), who was one of our neighbors. His words were, ‘He
has heart disease and will die early in life.’ We did not waken
him, but let him sleep.”
Since I began writing this paper I have heard recited in a company of
literary people an account of Poe’s staggering into a stranger’s house at
midnight, calling for a pen and dashing off “The Bells;” then falling
into a drunken stupor on the library table. It was evidently believed
by the narrator, despite Mrs. Shew’s circumstantial and more rational
account.
During these dark days, as indeed during all Poe’s adult life, Mrs. Clem
was his guardian angel. The poet Willis touchingly draws this picture of
devotion:
“It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote
with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the
popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary
difficulty and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the
merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years,
the most touching sight to us in this whole city has been that
tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad,
going from office to office with a poem or an article on some
literary subject to sell—sometimes simply pleading in a broken
voice that ‘he was ill,’ whatever might be the reason for his
writing nothing—and never, amid all her tears and recitals of
distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that would
convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride
in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died a year and
a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his
ministering angel, living with him, caring for him, guarding him
against exposure, and when he was carried away by temptation,
amid grief and the loneliness of feeling unreplied to, and
awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and
suffering, begging for him still. If woman’s devotion, born with
a first love and fed with human passion, hallows its object, as
it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this—pure,
disinterested and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit—say
for him who inspired it.”
By this test, Poe’s was always a pure nature, for he inspired respect,
pity and regard in every woman he came in contact with. It was a reflex
sentiment, for Poe revered woman, and there is not in all his writings an
impure suggestion or an indelicate word.
The rest of the history is one of occasional indulgence in intoxicants
and rarely intermitting mental aberration. It is to him during these last
months of his unhappy career that the least charity has been extended.
He conducted a courtship of three ladies at once, making to each like
frantic protestations of love, the same despairing appeals to each to
become his savior from some dreadful impending fate. In June, ’49, he
departed for Richmond, for what purpose is unknown. In Philadelphia
he appeared the subject of a hallucination that he was pursued by
conspirators, and had his mustache taken off for the sake of disguise.
In Richmond he remained until the latter part of September, writing some
and renewing old acquaintances. During these three or four months he was
twice known to be overcome and in danger of his life from drink; he was
credited with having been almost continuously “in a state of beastly
intoxication” during the whole time. Mrs. Weiss thinks that this was one
of the brightest and happiest seasons of his life; if so, it was light at
its eventide. The return voyage is shrouded—that is the fit word—shrouded
in mystery and controversy.
This seems to be true—that he was taken up unconscious in Baltimore at
daybreak, taken to a hospital, and died there at midnight of the same day
(October 7, 1849). It is also known that he left Richmond by boat on the
evening of the 4th, he then being sober and cheerful. In proper course
he must have arrived in Baltimore the night of the 5th or morning of the
6th; he was himself then, for he removed his trunk to a hotel. There was
thus left less than twenty-four hours in which for him to travel to Havre
de Grace and back, miss the New York connection, vote eleven times in the
Baltimore city election, go through the “prolonged debauch,” fall into
the delirium, and lapse into the comatose state in which he was found—as
described in most of his biographies; and he immediately thereafter is
found to have no smell of liquor about him, no tremor, and is conversing
rationally when roused to consciousness.
The event was announced by Griswold in the _Tribune_ with this brutal
bluntness:
“Edgar Allan Poe is dead. This announcement will startle many, but few
will be grieved by it. He had few or no friends.” But the _Southern
Literary Messenger_ said: “Now that he is gone, the vast multitude of
blockheads may breathe again.” Griswold simply elected himself mouthpiece
of that host.
On Poe’s supersensitive organization stimulants told with fearful effect.
Mrs. Clem said “A single cup of coffee would intoxicate him.” N. P.
Willis explained the vagaries and sins of Poe by supposing him to be
possessed of two antagonistic spirits, a devil and an angel, each having
complete mastery of him by turns. But, says Willis, “With a single glass
of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became uppermost and,
though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was
palpably insane. He easily seemed personating only another phase of his
natural character, and was accused accordingly of insulting arrogance and
bad heartedness. It was a sad infirmity of physical constitution which
puts it upon very nearly the ground of temporary and almost irresponsible
insanity.”
That these lapses were infrequent, instead of almost continuous, we
have plenty of testimony from those who were much with him as business
associates and inmates of the same house. “I have never seen him
otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred and particularly refined,” is
a certificate of one who was intimate in the family, which was confirmed
by many witnesses of different periods and places. The poet Swinburne was
probably right in declaring that Poe’s inebriety was “the _effect_ of a
terrible evil, rather than its _cause_.” That evil lay not alone, perhaps
not chiefly, in his inherited and educated predisposition to indulgence
and his morbidness of mentality; but in the character and consequences of
his chiefest literary work.
It is a hard enough lot, under the best circumstances and in the best
times, to live by the pen. The characteristics as well of Poe’s genius
as of his times made that lot a doom for him. The rewards of authorship
were on an eleemosynary scale (Poe received only $10 for “The Raven,” and
$10 a week as editor-in-chief of a magazine: the _North American Review_
then paid only $2 a page for matter); literary taste was unformed and,
worst of all, the market was drugged and cheapened and the best public
appreciation perverted by a silly school of writer who had arisen—similar
to the “Della Crusca School” which a few years before had infested
literature in England. Their lucubrations were both barren of ideas
and bad in style. It was the lollipop stage of our literature. Now Poe
possessed in high degree two parts which, when addressed to criticism,
would most offend these callow writers, to-wit: The musical sense of
language, and marvelous analytical powers. The most obvious quality of
his poetic style is its rhythm. The musical ear led him to adopt refrains
and euphonious syllables, like “Never more,” “Lenore,” “bells,” and to
dwell on their cadence; it made a bad composition distract him as a
discord does a sensitive musician. For him divine harmonies lay in the
relation of words to each other, as if they had been notes.
Coupled with this, to him, uncomfortable sensitiveness to verbal
sounds, was his almost superhuman power of dissecting thought—extremely
uncomfortable to others, even to the best of writers. Thus gifted with a
mental touch equally for the substance of language and the substance of
thought which language struggles to give birth to; possessed of the power
of an eager and a nipping sarcasm and an infernal courage, fortified
with extensive reading and a retentive memory, Poe became a scourge to
mediocrity, imitation, sham and pretense. There could not have been a
more critical time for such a man to attempt a livelihood at letters;
there could not have been a man better fitted to work havoc among the
essayists and poetasters of the day, to compel literary reform and to
bring misfortunes on himself. “He elected himself chief justice of the
court of criticism and head hangman of dunces,” says Stoddard. “He hated
a bad book as a misdemeanor.” Burton, proprietor of the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, remonstrated with Poe against the severity of some of his book
reviews. “You say,” said he to Poe, “that the people love havoc; I think
they love justice.” One adds, “Poe thought literary justice meant havoc
with such mediocrity as then flourished.” To the cause of pure literature
he thus devoted his life with example, with precept and with destructive
force. He was the Wendell Phillips of American literature. He did a work
that was necessary to be done in behalf of American literature. He pulled
down upon his own head and theirs, the sham temple which the little
scribbling Philistines had erected.
So it is not to be wondered at that “he contrived to attach to himself
animosities of the most enduring kind,” as the _Messenger_ declared. It
became Poe against the whole literary world of America in a very short
time—for he had unstinted praise for no one. It is doubtless due to
the influence of this army of foes that he lost in succession all his
editorial situations and was impoverished. There were other enemies as
unscrupulous as Griswold. One of these put in successful circulation the
theory that Poe, by cruelty, deliberately caused the death of his wife in
order to get the inspiration for “The Raven,” and the story may still be
met on its rounds, notwithstanding the fact that the poem was written two
years before she died. (Amiable human nature delights in contemplation
of human monsters.) She declared on her death-bed that her life had been
shortened by anonymous letters slandering and threatening her husband.
Perhaps it was to meet this story that he wrote that curious analysis
(“The Philosophy of Composition”) of the mechanical and prosaic methods
by which he constructed “The Raven.”
The critical instinct, coupled with an impulsive temperament, high ideals
of perfect performance and a powerful pen, is a fatal gift to any man.
The path of such a one will be strewn with the tombs of friendships
which he has stabbed, many and many a time unconsciously; his life will
be haunted with vain regrets for words gone past recall, carrying with
them consequences he did not reckon upon, hurting those he loves, missing
those he aimed at. His way leads steadily through bitter animosities,
bitterer remorse and, bitterest of all, isolation from his fellows, who
shall clothe him with a character foreign, antagonistic and repulsive to
his better nature. If he be not possessed of an o’ermastering will, a
thick skin and a healthy, cheerful temper it leads to morbidness, gloom
and despair.
Poe was not of that will and temper. He was affectionate, sociable and
supersensitive to coolness of manner in others. A rebuff was a stab to
him, hatred a calamity. It is said his early life was clouded by the
stigma put on him by his parents’ theatrical associations and his own
dependence on charity; and that when a lad he wept many wild nights
at the grave of a lady who had spoken kindly to him and become the
confidante of his boyish sorrows and hopes. So with this nature and with
his devastating pen in hand he traced that descent into the living tomb.
If from its gloom he sometimes sought “respite and nepenthe” in drink
it is not to be wondered at; he was often tempted to suicide. He once
solemnly protested: “I have no pleasure in stimulants. It [indulgence
in drink] has been in the _desperate attempt to escape from torturing
memories—memories of wrong, and injustice and imputed dishonor_—from a
_sense of insupportable loneliness_ and a dread of some strange impending
gloom.”
I fancy he tried to typify this unhappy mission that had come to blast
his life in that poem in which he “wedded despair to harmony.” “The
Raven” was a “grim, ghastly, ominous messenger from the night’s Plutonian
shore” that settled on the bust of Pallas, goddess of wisdom, even as
that critical impulse had settled upon his genius. His soul never was
lifted from the shadow. He was himself, of that fell work, the
—“Unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster.”
And why did he not stop the war on the literati and pseudo-authors?
Who can tell? He “wasn’t practical.” He lacked some of Falstaff’s
“instinct.” He was not good and sweet. He wasn’t well-balanced; he was
an Eccentric. Pity the Eccentric—the man who knows himself called and
chosen to a cause, whether by the necessities of his own nature or
by divine impulse—if, indeed, this and that be not the same. Whether
that cause be warring upon high injustice, exposing hypocrisy in high
places, reforming an art, lifting up the lowly—anything that sets a man
apart to a purpose other than self-seeking, brings him ingratitude,
misinterpretation, isolation and many sorrows. Hamlet called to set right
the out-of-joint times would rather, if he had dared, have taken his
quietus with a bare bodkin than face this life of heart-ache, oppressors’
wrongs, law’s delays to correct the wrongs, and the spurns that patient
merit of the unworthy takes. The greatest of Eccentrics became a stranger
unto his brethren, was despised and rejected of man, a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief; even His chosen disciples when He tried to purify
the holy places from the profanation of greed misunderstood him; “the
zeal of his house hath eaten him up,” sneered they.
Edgar A. Poe’s personal appearance matched his genius. Let those who saw
him tell it: “He was the best realization of a poet in features, air
and manner that I have ever seen, and the unusual paleness of his face
added to its aspect of melancholy interest.” “Slight but erect of figure,
of middle height, his head finely modeled, with a forehead and temples
large and not unlike those of Bonaparte; his hands as fair as a woman’s;
even in the garb of poverty ‘with gentleman written all over him.’ The
handsome, intellectual face, the dark and clustering hair, the clear and
sad gray-violet eyes—large, lustrous, glowing with expression.” “A man
who never smiles.” “Those awful eyes,” exclaimed one woman. “The face
tells of battling, of conquering external enemies, of many a defeat when
the man was at war with his meaner self.” He was both much sinned against
and much sinning. But he was not a monster, nor an ogre. He was only a
poet and an Eccentric.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode.
[A] Davidson.