Those Who Gathered about Poe
When New York was a much younger city than it is, when it was well
within bounds on the lower part of the island of Manhattan, long
before there was a thought that it would overspread the island, jump
over a stream and go wandering up the mainland, overleap a river and
go spreading over another island to the sea,--long before the time
when these things came to be, there lay scattered in several
directions on the island of Manhattan and dotting the rolling country
land beyond, several tiny villages. These were Harlem, and Yorkville,
and Odellville, and Bloomingdale, and Chelsea, and Greenwich. The last
was the hamlet closest to the city. Quaint and curious, it spread its
scattered way along the Hudson River where houses had been set up
according to the needs and vagaries of men on roads natural and
unplanned. When the city grew larger and finally swept around
Greenwich Village, the roads becoming city streets, the village
continued a labyrinthian way, where strangers wandered and were lost
before they knew it.
[Illustration: On Bloomingdale Road near 75th St. in Poe's time]
In the very core of this old-time Greenwich section and at the very
place where the streets are so tangled, so irregular, so crooked, so
often no thoroughfare, so winding that they seem to be seeking out the
old farmhouses which they led to in early days, there is a pretty
little playground for children. This Hudson Park is an open spot with
green lawns and marble walks and a tall iron fence surrounding it;
quite a model park with everything about fresh, and new, and modern.
It is so very new and so very neat and so very clean that one would
not look there for old-time flavor. But curiously enough one thing
about it seems out of tone. On the green lawn is a monument old and
faded which, in an effort to match it with its natty surroundings, has
been set upon a base of glistening white marble. The monument is a
sort of key for the antiquarian, for without it this playground in its
spick-and-span newness might not be readily identified as the old St.
John's Burying-Ground, where once stood the accumulated tombstones of
more than fourscore years, until they were swept away and buried as
deep as those whose memories they marked. A new generation tramples
in and romps over the new park, with no knowledge or thought of what
is below the surface.
The graveyard of St. John's was a quiet, restful place in a quiet,
restful locality in the year 1837, when Edgar Allan Poe had a habit of
wandering through it. In that year Poe lived within a few steps of the
burial-ground in a modest wooden house that was numbered 113 Carmine
Street. He was then in his twenty-eighth year, had published three
volumes of poems, and had written some short stories and criticisms.
He had but just given up the editorship of the _Southern Literary
Messenger_ at Richmond, a position he had secured through the
friendship of John P. Kennedy, who had been his friend in his early
struggles in Baltimore and who was to continue a friend to him through
all his life. In 1832 Poe had first met him, when Kennedy was writing
_Swallow Barn_. Afterwards Kennedy wrote _Horseshoe Robinson_ and
other books before abandoning literature for politics and, in time,
becoming Secretary of the Navy.
[Illustration: The House in Carmine Street]
So Poe came to New York, and with him Virginia, his child wife, who
was already marked a victim of consumption, and there in the Carmine
Street house they lived. Sometimes she walked with her sombre-faced
husband through the nearby burying-ground, but more often she sat at
an upper window from which she could watch him on his ramble. In the
same house lived William Gowans the bookseller of Nassau Street; and
there Poe did work for the _New York Quarterly Review_; there also he
finished _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_.
In another house, some little distance away but in a direct course up
Carmine Street, in Sixth Avenue close by Waverley Place, Poe lived for
a short time, but long enough to write _The Fall of the House of
Usher_ and some magazine work, when he went to Philadelphia to _The
Gentleman's Magazine_, edited by William E. Burton, the famous
comedian. Oddly enough, when Burton died years afterwards, he found a
resting place in the obscure St. John's Burying-Ground.
[Illustration:
1. RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
2. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
3. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
4. BAYARD TAYLOR.
5. EDGAR ALLAN POE.
6. ROBERT FULTON.]
It was not until 1844 that Poe returned to New York, and during the
years of his absence several writers with whom he was to become
acquainted on his return had forged their literary way. There was Seba
Smith, more generally known as "Major Jack Downing," from the
humorous papers which he wrote under that name, and who about this
time was writing the romance in verse called _Powhatan_. There was
William Ross Wallace, the lawyer and magazine writer, who in after
years was to be known through his poem of _The Liberty Bell_. There
was the Congregational clergyman George B. Cheever making his way,
having resigned his first pastorate, at Salem, Massachusetts, where he
had been imprisoned for libel on account of his temperance sketch
_Deacon Giles's Distillery_. There was Robert H. Messinger, known
through his Horatian ode, _Give Me the Old_, his fame daily expanding
in fashionable and literary circles. There was Edward Robinson,
Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, just returned from a tour
of exploration in Palestine with Rev. Eli Smith, publishing _Biblical
Researches in Palestine_. And there was Isaac McLelland, whose verse
was as good as his sportsmanship. These were some few of the men who
were first to recognize the genius of the poet.
Poe returned to New York the wiser for his experience with _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ and with _Graham's Magazine_, but having failed
to establish _The Stylus_, a proposed publication of his own, which
during all his life was to be a vision of Tantalus, just beyond his
grasp. He returned rich in experience, strong in adversity, poor in
pocket. There was no glorious opening for him, and finally he accepted
a sub-editorship on the _Evening Mirror_, grinding out copy for
several hard-working hours each day.
The _Evening Mirror_ was a newly started publication, but its
interests were so entwined with others that its history stretched back
something more than twenty years from the day when Poe first occupied
a desk in the office. Going back these one and twenty years, the
better to understand the atmosphere in which Poe worked, to the spring
of 1823, the time is reached when George P. Morris and Samuel
Woodworth joined forces and opened an office for the publication of
the _New York Mirror_ at 163 William Street. Morris was a young man
then, but already gave strong evidence of the decided character he was
to develop as an eminently practical printer and successful writer of
songs--a man of such unusual personal magnetism that well-nigh every
man who walked towards him a stranger walked away from him a friend.
The eight years which followed the starting of the _New York Mirror_
saw many changes; saw Morris becoming more and more popular as a
writer of songs; saw him publishing the memorable _Woodman, Spare
that Tree_, that was to make his name known over the land; saw
Woodworth withdraw from the _Mirror_, and that publication
strengthened and starting anew when Morris drew to the enterprise
Theodore S. Fay and Nathaniel P. Willis; saw Fay going abroad in a few
years as Secretary of Legation at Berlin, in which city he was to live
out most of his life.
N.P. Willis was a young man, too, in those early days of his
association with Morris. He had given up the _American Monthly
Magazine_ at Boston to devote his energies to the _New York Mirror_.
In the year that he became associated with Morris, 1831, he went
abroad at a salary of ten dollars a week, hoping to add strength and
diversity to the paper by a series of letters. In London, poor and
struggling, he managed to introduce himself into the fashionable set
at that time presided over by Lady Blessington, and he came to be the
adoration of all the sentimental young ladies in that set. There was a
daintiness about his dress, a suggestion of foppishness in the
arrangement of his blond hair, trifles about him which suggested the
dandy and the idler; but withal there was a terrific capacity for work
under the smooth outside. His letters to the _Mirror_ and other papers
did much for the refinement of literature and art, and, indirectly,
for the manners of the times. He was in America again in 1836,
bringing with him an English lady as a bride,--the Mary for whom the
country place Glen Mary at Owego was named, where he wrote his
delightful _Letters from under a Bridge_. He was again in Europe in
1839, soon starting _The Corsair_, and back to America in 1844, to
join his friend Morris (the _Mirror_ by this time being defunct) in
the starting of a daily paper which took the name of the _Evening
Mirror_. From this on Willis lived an active social-literary life,
singing of Broadway with the same facileness as he sang of country
scenes. He came to be a grave and patient invalid, living happily with
his second wife as he had with his first, and ending his days at
Idlewild,--his home on the Hudson.
It was with the newly started _Evening Mirror_ that Poe became
connected on his return from Philadelphia, and it would seem that if
he ever had prospects bright to look forward to it was with the
fair-minded, business-like Morris and the gentle-hearted Willis. But
when Poe had continued with them a brief six months even that gentle
restraint proved too much. The _Evening Mirror_ did not last long
after his going, though this had little to do with its failure. Then
the indefatigable Morris, with Willis, started the _Home Journal_ at
107 Fulton Street, which continued into the twentieth century, and is
now known under its changed title of _Town and Country_.
[Illustration: Where Poe wrote "The Raven"]
While Poe was working on the _Mirror_ he lived with his frail wife
Virginia and her mother, Mrs. Clemm, in Bloomingdale Village. It was a
village indeed then, and about the scattered houses were broad roads
and shaded lanes and clustering trees. The house in which Poe lived
was on a high bluff beside a country road which is now Eighty-fourth
Street, the house standing (as the thoroughfares run now) between
Broadway and West End Avenue. It was a plain, square, frame dwelling
with brick chimneys reaching high above the pointed roof, kept by Mrs.
Mary Brennan, and Poe rented rooms of her. Two windows faced towards
the Hudson, and he could sit and looking through the trees catch a
silvery glimpse of the river. Here he wrote _The Raven_ and _The Imp
of the Perverse_. From here he sent _The Raven_ to the _American
Review_ at 118 Nassau Street, where it was published over the pen name
of "Quarles"; and he was still living here when the poem was reprinted
in the _Evening Mirror_, for the first time over his own name.
[Illustration: POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM.
(From a drawing by C.W. Mielatz, by permission.)
Copyright, 1899, by The Society of Iconophiles.]
It had come to be the summer of 1845 when Poe left the _Evening
Mirror_ for the long black desk in lower Nassau Street where he helped
Charles F. Briggs conduct the _Broadway Journal_. Briggs was the
matter-of-fact "Harry Franco," a journalist of great ability who in
another ten years was to edit _Putnam's Magazine_ from 10 Park Place.
More than one of Poe's friends said that the combination of Harry
Franco and the poet must assuredly bring forth great literary results
and financial success. But the partnership did not work at all well.
In a very short time Poe bought out his partner's interest through an
arrangement with Horace Greeley and moved the office of the paper into
Clinton Hall. But the _Broadway Journal_ under the management of Poe
was less of a success than it had been under Briggs and Poe, and the
poet retired from it in the first month of 1846.
This Clinton Hall in which Poe had his office was a substantial
building at the southwest corner of Nassau and Beekman streets. Temple
Court now stands on the site. A second and a third building of the
name have arisen in Astor Place, the second having been remodelled in
1854 from the Astor Place Opera House, the scene of the
Forrest-Macready riots. The present building, tall and heavy-looking,
is the home of the Mercantile Library, as each Clinton Hall has been
in its turn, and still retains the name first given to it in 1830,
when Governor De Witt Clinton presented a _History of England_ as a
nucleus for the library.
About the time when Poe was with the _Broadway Journal_ he moved into
a house not a great many steps from Broadway, in Amity Street, since
renamed West Third Street. Here amid surroundings marked by a
simplicity due less to simple tastes than poverty Poe lived and wrote
by the side of the delicate wife who was wasting away before his eyes.
Here he penned the _Philosophy of Composition_, by which he would make
it appear that _The Raven_ was not a product of inspiration, but the
work of calm reason and artistic construction,--a theory which no one
seems to have accepted. Here, too, he wrote _The Literati of New
York_, a series of papers that appeared in _Godey's Lady's Book_, and
were the sensation of the hour in literary circles. Their criticisms
were severe and impassioned, and one of the criticised, believing
himself ill-treated and his writings unjustly abused, sought
vindication. His answer entirely overlooked the libel laws and he was
promptly sued for damages by Poe. This was Thomas Dunn English, a
young man then twenty-four years old, who a few years before, in 1843,
had been asked by N.P. Willis to write a poem for the _New Mirror_.
The poem was written and sent to Willis with the suggestion that he
either print it or tear it up as he thought best. Willis printed it,
and though the writer came to be known as a poet, author, physician,
lawyer, and statesman, the best known of his achievements were these
verses of _Ben Bolt_.
In the spring of 1846, when the poet's wife grew more feeble, her
brilliant eyes more brilliant, and her pallid look more unearthly, Poe
moved out into the country to a little village called Fordham in
Westchester County. This was then far out from the city, a secluded
spot with rocky heights from which a view could be had of country
lanes and broad sweeps of meadow where farmers worked in the fields.
Since then the open landscape has given way to the regularity of city
streets and buildings.
Not a great distance from the railroad station still stands the house
where Poe lived; such a plain, low wooden building that those that
have grown up around it seem to be shouldering it out of the way, and
the widening and improving of streets have pushed it somewhat aside
from its original position. But there the dingy little house still
stands with its veranda, where Poe walked in the night just outside
the sitting-room windows,--walked and dreamed out his _Eureka_. There
are the door and the dwarf hallway. Inside, to the right, is the room,
with its meagre furniture, much of which was purchased with the
proceeds of the suit against Thomas Dunn English, where Poe received
the friends who remembered him in his hours of illness, of poverty,
and distress. In a room towards the front lay the dying wife on her
straw bed, covered with the poet's coat and clasping the
tortoise-shell cat closely to her wasted form. Up the stairs is the
attic chamber, with its slanting roof, where Poe worked, with the cat
at his elbow; where after his wife's death he penned a dirge for her
in the exquisite _Annabel Lee_; where he wrote the first draught of
_The Bells_, which he was to revise and complete while on his lecture
trip to Lowell. Next to it is the room where slept Mrs. Clemm, his
more than mother.
So many memories cling to this home of Poe that those who search for
substantial literary reminders have made it a visiting shrine, much to
the dismay of landowners who hold to the strong belief that
historic old houses are well enough as curiosities, but are
inconvenient things when they stand in the way of money-making
improvements.
[Illustration: THE BATTERY IN 1830.
(From a drawing by C. Burton.)]
After passing through these rooms and with the memory of Poe strong
upon you, walk away along the street remembering that in Poe's time it
was a delightful country road. Stroll towards the Harlem River as he
wandered many a moonlight night, his brain busy with the deep problems
of _The Universe_. After a time you will pass on to the High Bridge,
that carried the pipes of the Croton Aqueduct over the river,--this at
least unchanged since his day. Walk over the path there, high above
the water, and visit the lonely spot where the suggestion came to Poe
for that requiem of despair, the mystic _Ulalume_.
In the little wooden house at Fordham Poe lived, weak and lonely and
poor, after the death of his wife, making daily visits to her nearby
grave,--the grave that is there no longer. He was cared for by
Virginia's mother for something more than two years. Then in the June
of 1849 he left Fordham. Before the end of the year he was dead.