EDGAR ALLAN POE
AN APPRECIATION
Caught from some
unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and
followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of
his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of
“never—never more!”
THIS stanza from “The Raven” was recommended
by James Russell Lowell as an inscription upon the Baltimore monument which
marks the resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and original
figure in American letters. And, to signify that peculiar musical quality of
Poe’s genius which enthralls every reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this additional
verse, from the “Haunted Palace”:
And all with pearl and ruby
glowing
Was the fair palace
door,
Through which came
flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling ever
more,
A troop of Echoes,
whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of
surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom
of their king.
Born in poverty at Boston, January
19, 1809, dying under painful circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his
whole literary career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere
subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his earliest biographer,
Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed falsehood and how
magnificently has Poe come into his own. For “The Raven,” first published in
1845, and, within a few months, read, recited and parodied wherever the English
language was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later
his brother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of
genius on behalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her devoted
mother, then living under very straitened circumstances in a little cottage at
Fordham, N. Y.:
“Here is one of the finest scholars,
one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the
literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from
bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of
public charity. There is no intermediate stopping-place, no respectful shelter,
where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, till,
with returning health, he would resume his labors, and his unmortified sense of
independence.”
And this was the tribute paid by the
American public to the master who had given to it such tales of conjuring
charm, of witchery and mystery as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and
“Ligeia”; such fascinating hoaxes as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pall,”
“MSS. Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent Into a Maelstrom” and “The Balloon-Hoax”;
such tales of conscience as “William Wilson,” “The Black Cat” and “The
Tell-tale Heart,” wherein the retributions of remorse are portrayed with an
awful fidelity; such tales of natural beauty as “The Island of the Fay” and
“The Domain of Arnhem”; such marvelous studies in ratiocination as the
“Gold-bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter” and “The
Mystery of Marie Roget,” the latter, a recital of fact, demonstrating the
author’s wonderful capability of correctly analyzing the mysteries of the human
mind; such tales of illusion and banter as “The Premature Burial” and “The
System of Dr. Tar and Professor Father”; such bits of extravaganza as “The
Devil in the Belfry” and “The Angel of the Odd”; such tales of adventure as
“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”; such papers of keen criticism and review
as won for Poe the enthusiastic admiration of Charles Dickens, although they
made him many enemies among the over-puffed minor American writers so
mercilessly exposed by him; such poems of beauty and melody as “The Bells,”
“The Haunted Palace,” “Tamerlane,” “The City in the Sea” and “The Raven.” What
delight for the jaded senses of the reader is this enchanted domain of
wonder-pieces! What an atmosphere of beauty, music, color! What resources of
imagination, construction, analysis and absolute art! One might almost
sympathize with Sarah Helen Whitman, who, confessing to a half faith in the old
superstition of the significance of anagrams, found, in the transposed letters
of Edgar Poe’s name, the words “a God-peer.” His mind, she says, was indeed a
“Haunted Palace,” echoing to the footfalls of angels and demons.
“No man,” Poe himself wrote, “has
recorded, no man has dared to record, the wonders of his inner life.”
In these twentieth century days—of
lavish recognition—artistic, popular and material—of genius, what rewards might
not a Poe claim!
Edgar’s father, a son of General
David Poe, the American revolutionary patriot and friend of Lafayette, had
married Mrs. Hopkins, an English actress, and, the match meeting with parental
disapproval, had himself taken to the stage as a profession. Notwithstanding Mrs.
Poe’s beauty and talent, the young couple had a sorry struggle for existence.
When Edgar, at the age of two years, was orphaned, the family was in the utmost
destitution. Apparently, the future poet was to be cast upon the world homeless
and friendless. But fate decreed that a few glimmers of sunshine were to
illumine his life, for the little fellow was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy
merchant of Richmond, Va. A brother and sister, the remaining children, were
cared for by others.
In his new home Edgar found all the
luxury and advantages money could provide. He was petted, spoiled and shown off
to strangers. In Mrs. Allan he found all the affection a childless wife could
bestow. Mr. Allan took much pride in the captivating, precocious lad. At the
age of five the boy recited, with fine effect, passages of English poetry to
the visitors at the Allan house.
From his eighth to his thirteenth
year he attended the Manor House school, at Stoke-Newington, a suburb of
London. It was the Rev. Dr. Brans by, head of the school, whom Poe so quaintly
portrayed in “William Wilson.” Returning to Richmond in 1820 Edgar was sent to
the school of Professor Joseph H. Clarke. He proved an apt pupil. Years
afterward Professor Clarke thus wrote:
“While the other boys wrote mere mechanical
verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet. As a scholar he was
ambitious to excel. He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness. He
had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend. His nature
was entirely free from selfishness.”
At the age of seventeen Poe entered
the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He left that institution after
one session. Official records prove that he was not expelled. On the contrary,
he gained a creditable record as a student, although it is admitted that he
contracted debts and had “an ungovernable passion for card-playing.” These
debts may have led to his quarrel with Mr. Allan which eventually compelled him
to make his own way in the world.
Early in 1827 Poe made his first
literary venture. He induced Calvin Thomas, a poor and youthful printer, to
publish a small volume of his verses under the title “Tamerlane and Other
Poems.” In 1829 we find Poe in Baltimore with another manuscript volume of
verses, which was soon published. Its title was “Al Aarav, Tamerlane and Other
Poems.” Neither of these ventures seems to have attracted much attention.
Soon after Mrs. Allan’s death, which
occurred in 1829, Poe, through the aid of Mr. Allan, secured admission to the
United States Military Academy at West Point. Any glamour which may have
attached to cadet life in Poe’s eyes was speedily lost, for discipline at West
Point was never so severe nor were the accommodations ever so poor. Poe’s bent
was more and more toward literature. Life at the academy daily became
increasingly distasteful. Soon he began to purposely neglect his studies and to
disregard his duties, his aim being to secure his dismissal from the United
States service. In this he succeeded. On March 7, 1831, Poe found himself free.
Mr. Allan’s second marriage had thrown the lad on his own resources. His
literary career was to begin.
Poe’s first genuine victory was won
in 1833, when he was the successful competitor for a prize of $100 offered by a
Baltimore periodical for the best prose story. “A MSS. Found in a Bottle” was
the winning tale. Poe had submitted six stories in a volume. “Our only difficulty,”
says Mr. Latrobe, one of the judges, “was in selecting from the rich contents
of the volume.”
During the fifteen years of his
literary life Poe related to various newspapers and magazines in Richmond,
Philadelphia and New York. He was faithful, punctual, industrious, thorough. N.
P. Willis, who for some time employed Poe as critic and sub-editor on the
“Evening Mirror,” wrote thus:
“With the highest admiration for
Poe’s 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. We saw
but one presentiment of the man-a quiet, patient, industrious and most
gentlemanly person.
“We heard, from one who knew him
well (what should be stated in all mention of his lamentable irregularities),
that with a single glass of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became
uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible,
his will was palpably insane. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was
never our chance to meet him.”
On September 22, 1835, Poe married
his cousin, Virginia Clam, in Baltimore. She had barely turned thirteen years,
Poe himself was but twenty-six. He then was a resident of Richmond and a
regular contributor to the “Southern Literary Messenger.” It was not until a
year later that the bride and her widowed mother followed him thither.
Poe’s devotion to his child-wife was
one of the most beautiful features of his life. Many of his famous poetic
productions were inspired by her beauty and charm. Consumption had marked her
for its victim, and the constant efforts of husband and mother were to secure
for her all the comfort and happiness their slender means permitted. Virginia
died January 30, 1847, when but twenty-five years of age. A friend of the
family pictures the death-bed scene—mother and husband trying to impart warmth
to her by chafing her hands and her feet, while her pet cat was suffered to
nestle upon her bosom for the sake of added warmth.
These verses from “Annabel Lee,”
written by Poe in 1849, the last year of his life, tell of his sorrow at the
loss of his child-wife:
I was a child and
she was a child,
In a kingdom by
the sea;
But we loved with
a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that
the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and
me.
And this was the
reason that, long ago;
In this kingdom
by the sea.
A wind blew out of
a cloud, chilling
My beautiful
Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away
from me,
To shut her up in
a sepulcher
In this kingdom
by the sea,
Poe was connected at various times
and in various capacities with the “Southern Literary Messenger” in Richmond,
Va.; “Graham’s Magazine” and the “Gentleman’s Magazine” in Philadelphia; the
“Evening Mirror,” the “Broadway Journal,” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book” in New
York. Everywhere Poe’s life was one of unremitting toil. No tales and poems
were ever produced at a greater cost of brain and spirit.
Poe’s initial salary with the
“Southern Literary Messenger,” to which he contributed the first drafts of several
his best-known tales, was $10 a week! Two years later his salary was but $600 a
year. Even in 1844, when his literary reputation was established securely, he
wrote to a friend expressing his pleasure because a magazine to which he was to
contribute had agreed to pay him $20 monthly for two pages of criticism.
Those were discouraging times in
American literature, but Poe never lost faith. He was finally to triumph
wherever pre-eminent talents win admirers. His genius has had no better
description than in this stanza from William Winter’s poem, read at the
dedication exercises of the Actors’ Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885, in New York:
He was the voice
of beauty and of woe,
Passion and
mystery and the dread unknown;
Pure as the
mountains of perpetual snow,
Cold as the icy
winds that round them moan,
Dark as the caves
wherein earth’s thunders groan,
Wild as the
tempests of the upper sky,
Sweet as the
faint, far-off celestial tone of angel
whispers,
fluttering from on high,
And tender as
love’s tear when youth and beauty die.
In the two and a half score years
that have elapsed since Poe’s death he has come fully into his own. For a while
Griswold’s malignant misrepresentations colored the public estimate of Poe as
man and as writer. But, thanks to J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill, Eugene Didier,
Sarah Helen Whitman and others these scandals have been dispelled and Poe is
seen as he actually was-not as a man without failings, it is true, but as the
finest and most original genius in American letters. As the years go on his
fame increases. His works have been translated into many foreign languages. His
is a household name in France and England-in fact, the latter nation has often
uttered the reproach that Poe’s own country has been slow to appreciate him.
But that reproach, if it ever was warranted, certainly is untrue.
W.
H. R.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
By James Russell Lowell
THE situation of American literature
is anomalous. It has no center, or, if it has, it is like that of the sphere of
Hermes. It is divided into many systems, each revolving round its several suns,
and often presenting to the rest only the faint glimmer of a milk-and-water
way. Our capital city, unlike London or Paris, is not a great central heart
from which life and vigor radiate to the extremities, but resembles more an
isolated umbilicus stuck down as near as may be to the center of the land, and
seeming rather to tell a legend of former usefulness than to serve any present
need. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, each has its literature almost more
distinct than those of the different dialects of Germany; and the Young Queen
of the West has also one of her own, of which some articulate rumor barely has
reached us dwellers by the Atlantic.
Perhaps there is no task more
difficult than the just criticism of contemporary literature. It is even more grateful
to give praise where it is needed than where it is deserved, and friendship so
often seduces the iron stylus of justice into a vague flourish, that she writes
what seems rather like an epitaph than a criticism. Yet if praise be given as alms,
we could not drop so poisonous a one into any man’s hat. The critic’s ink may
suffer equally from too large an infusion of nutgalls or of sugar. But it is
easier to be generous than to be just, and we might readily put faith in that
fabulous direction to the hiding place of truth, did we judge from the amount
of water which we usually find mixed with it.
Remarkable experiences are usually
confined to the inner life of imaginative men, but Mr. Poe’s biography displays
a vicissitude and peculiarity of interest such as is rarely met with. The
offspring of a romantic marriage, and left an orphan at an early age, he was
adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy Virginian, whose barren marriage-bed seemed the
warranty of a large estate to the young poet.
Having received a classical education
in England, he returned home and entered the University of Virginia, where,
after an extravagant course, followed by reformation at the last extremity, he
was graduated with the highest honors of his class. Then came a boyish attempt
to join the fortunes of the insurgent Greeks, which ended at St. Petersburg,
where he got into difficulties through want of a passport, from which he was
rescued by the American consul and sent home. He now entered the military
academy at West Point, from which he obtained a dismissal on hearing of the
birth of a son to his adopted father, by a second marriage, an event which cut
off his expectations as an heir. The death of Mr. Allan, in whose will his name
was not mentioned, soon after relieved him of all doubt in this regard, and he
committed himself at once to authorship for a support. Previously to this,
however, he had published (in 1827) a small volume of poems, which soon ran
through three editions, and excited high expectations of its author’s future
distinction in the minds of many competent judges.
That no certain augury can be drawn
from a poet’s earliest lisping's there are instances enough to prove.
Shakespeare’s first poems, though brimful of vigor and youth and
picturesqueness, give but a very faint promise of the directness, condensation
and overflowing moral of his mature works. Perhaps, however, Shakespeare is
hardly a case in point, his “Venus and Adonis” having been published, we
believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton’s Latin verses show tenderness, a fine
eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint
of the author of a new style in poetry. Pope’s youthful pieces have all the singsong,
wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later
productions. Collins’ callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous
and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that
the world lost more in the “marvelous boy,” Chatterton, than a very ingenious
imitator of obscure and antiquated dullness. Where he becomes original (as it
is called), the interest of ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke
White’s promises were indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but
surely with no authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional
piety, which to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable in the
retired closet of a diary, and in the sober raiment of prose. They do not
clutch hold of the memory with the drowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have
they the interest of his occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns having
fortunately been rescued by his humble station from the contaminating society
of the “Best models,” wrote well and naturally from the first. Had he been
unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, we should have had a series
of poems from which, as from his letters, we could sit here and there a kernel
from the mass of chaff. Coleridge’s youthful efforts give no promise whatever
of that poetical genius which produced at once the wildest, tenderest, most
original and most purely imaginative poems of modern times. Byron’s “Hours of
Idleness” would never find a reader except from an intrepid and indefatigable
curiosity. In Wordsworth’s first preluding's there is but a dim foreboding of the
creator of an era. From Southey’s early poems, a safer augury might have been
drawn. They show the patient investigator, the close student of history, and
the unwearied explorer of the beauties of predecessors, but they give no assurances
of a man who should add ought to stock of household words, or to the rarer and
more sacred delights of the fireside or the arbor. The earliest specimens of
Shelley’s poetic mind already, also, give tokens of that ethereal sublimation
in which the spirit seems to soar above the regions of words, but leaves its
body, the verse, to be entombed, without hope of resurrection, in a mass of
them. Cowley is generally instanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early
insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement
of certain conventional combinations of words, a capacity wholly dependent on a
delicate physical organization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is only
remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which
we can trace some conception of the ends of poetry, are worth all the miracles
of smooth juvenile versification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire
the regular seesaw of Pope merely by an association with the motion of the
play-ground tilt.
Mr. Poe’s early productions show
that he could see through the verse to the spirit beneath, and that he already
had a feeling that all the life and grace of the one must depend on and be
modulated by the will of the other. We call them the most remarkable boyish poems
that we have ever read. We know of none that can compare with them for maturity
of purpose, and a nice understanding of the effects of language and meter. Such
pieces are only valuable when they display what we can only express by the contradictory
phrase of innate experience. We copy one of the shorter poems, written when the
author was only fourteen. There is a little dimness in the filling up, but the
grace and symmetry of the outline are such as few poets ever attain. There is a
smack of ambrosia about it.
TO HELEN
Helen, thy beauty
is to me
Like those Nicaean
barks of yore,
That gently, o’er
a perfumed sea,
The weary,
way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native
shore.
On desperate seas
long want to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs
have brought me home
To the glory
that was Greece
And the grandeur
that was Rome.
Lo! in yon
brilliant window-niche
How statue-like
I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within
thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from
the regions which
Are Holy Land!
It is the tendency of the young poet
that impresses us. Here is no “withering scorn,” no heart “blighted” ere it has
safely got into its teens, none of the drawing-room sans-culottes which Byron
had brought into vogue. All is limpid and serene, with a pleasant dash of the
Greek Helicon in it. The melody of the whole, too, is remarkable. It is not of
that kind which can be demonstrated arithmetically upon the tips of the
fingers. It is of that finer sort which the inner ear alone can estimate. It
seems simple, like a Greek column, because of its perfection. In a poem named
“Ligeia,” under which title he intended to personify the music of nature, our
boy-poet gives us the following exquisite picture:
Ligeia! Ligeia!
My beautiful one,
Whose harshest
idea
Will to melody
run,
Say, is it thy
will,
On the breezes to
toss,
Or, capriciously
still,
Like the lone
albatross,
Incumbent on night,
As
she on the air,
To keep watch
with delight
On the harmony
there?
John Neal, himself a man of genius,
and whose lyre has been too long capriciously silent, appreciated the high
merit of these and similar passages, and drew a proud horoscope for their
author.
Mr. Poe had that indescribable
something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us
precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its
presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has
no such magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are
wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have still one
foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself,
so that a sunset shall seem like a quotation from Dante, and if Shakespeare be
read in the very presence of the sea itself, his verses shall but seem nobler
for the sublime criticism of ocean. Talent may make friends for itself, but only
genius can give to its creations the divine power of winning love and
veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will
he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a
disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed
and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did,
securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of
the spiritual world is ever rent asunder that it may perceive the ministers of
good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere talent ever
flung his inkstand at the devil.
When we say that Mr. Poe had genius,
we do not mean to say that he has produced evidence of the highest. But to say
that he possesses it at all is to say that he needs only zeal, industry, and a
reverence for the trust reposed in him, to achieve the proudest triumphs and
the greenest laurels. If we may believe the Longinus's and Aristotle's of our
newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a
place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or
its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen,
by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which
must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical
temperament, if love of solitude be, as immemorial tradition asserts, a
necessary part of their idiosyncrasy.
Mr. Poe has two of the prime
qualities of genius, a faculty of vigorous yet minute analysis, and a wonderful
fecundity of imagination. The first of these faculties is as needful to the
artist in words, as a knowledge of anatomy is to the artist in colors or in
stone. This enables him to conceive truly, to maintain a proper relation of
parts, and to draw a correct outline, while the second groups, fills up and
colors. Both Mr. Poe has displayed with singular distinctness in his prose
works, the last predominating in his earlier tales, and the first in his later
ones. In judging of the merit of an author, and assigning him his niche among
our household gods, we have a right to regard him from our own point of view,
and to measure him by our own standard. But, in estimating the amount of power
displayed in his works, we must be governed by his own design, and placing them
by the side of his own ideal, find how much is wanting. We differ from Mr. Poe
in his opinions of the objects of art. He esteems that object to be the
creation of Beauty, and perhaps it is only in the definition of that word that
we disagree with him. But in what we shall say of his writings, we shall take
his own standard as our guide. The temple of the god of song is equally accessible
from every side, and there is room enough in it for all who bring offerings or
seek in oracle.
In his tales, Mr. Poe has chosen to
exhibit his power chiefly in that dim region which stretches from the very
utmost limits of the probable into the weird confines of superstition and
unreality. He combines in a very remarkable manner two faculties which are
seldom found united; a power of influencing the mind of the reader by the
impalpable shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which does not leave
a pin or a button unnoticed. Both are, in truth, the natural results of the
predominating quality of his mind, to which we have before alluded, analysis.
It is this which distinguishes the artist. His mind at once reaches forward to
the effect to be produced. Having resolved to bring about certain emotions in
the reader, he makes all subordinate parts tend strictly to the common center.
Even his mystery is mathematical to his own mind. To him X is a known quantity
all along. In any picture that he paints he understands the chemical properties
of all his colors. However vague some of his figures may seem, however formless
the shadows, to him the outline is as clear and distinct as that of a
geometrical diagram. For this reason, Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism.
The Mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it; it colors all his
thoughts; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a
rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ab extra. He
analyzes, he dissects, he watches
“with an eye
serene,
The very pulse of
the machine,”
for such it practically is to him,
with wheels and cogs and piston-rods, all working to produce a certain end.
This analyzing tendency of his mind
balances the poetical, and by giving him the patience to be minute, enables him
to throw a wonderful reality into his most unreal fancies. A monomania he
paints with great power. He loves to dissect one of these cancers of the mind,
and to trace all the subtle ramifications of its roots. In raising images of
horror, also, he has strange success, conveying to us sometimes by a dusky hint
some terrible doubt which is the secret of all horror. He leaves to imagination
the task of finishing the picture, a task to which only she is competent.
“For much
imaginary work was there;
Conceit deceitful,
so compact, so kind,
That for Achilles’
image stood his spear
Grasped in an
armed hand; himself behind
Was left unseen,
save to the eye of mind.”
Besides the merit of conception, Mr.
Poe’s writings have also that of form.
His style is highly finished,
graceful and truly classical. It would be hard to find a living author who had
displayed such varied powers. As an example of his style we would refer to one
of his tales, “The House of Usher,” in the first volume of his “Tales of the
Grotesque and Arabesque.” It has a singular charm for us, and we think that no
one could read it without being strongly moved by its serene and somber beauty.
Had its author written nothing else, it would alone have been enough to stamp
him as a man of genius, and the master of a classic style. In this tale occurs,
perhaps, the most beautiful of his poems.
The great masters of imagination
have seldom resorted to the vague and the unreal as sources of effect. They
have not used dread and horror alone, but only in combination with other
qualities, as means of subjugating the fancies of their readers. The loftiest
muse has ever a household and fireside charm about her. Mr. Poe’s secret lies
mainly in the skill with which he has employed the strange fascination of mystery
and terror. In this his success is so great and striking as to deserve the name
of art, not artifice. We cannot call his materials the noblest or purest, but
we must concede to him the highest merit of construction.
As a critic, Mr. Poe was aesthetically
deficient. Unerring in his analysis of dictions, meters and plots, he seemed
wanting in the faculty of perceiving the profounder ethics of art. His
criticisms are, however, distinguished for scientific precision and coherence
of logic. They have the exactness, and at the same time, the coldness of
mathematical demonstrations. Yet they stand in strikingly refreshing contrast
with the vague generalists and sharp personalities of the day. If deficient in
warmth, they are also without the heat of partisanship. They are especially
valuable as illustrating the great truth, too generally overlooked, that
analytic power is a subordinate quality of the critic.
Overall, it may be considered
certain that Mr. Poe has attained an individual eminence in our literature
which he will keep. He has given proof of power and originality. He has done
that which could only be done once with success or safety, and the imitation or
repetition of which would produce weariness.
DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE
By N. P. Willis
THE ancient fable of two
antagonistic spirits imprisoned in one body, equally powerful and having the complete
mastery by turns-of one man, that is to say, inhabited by both a devil and an
angel seems to have been realized, if all we hear is true, in the character of the
extraordinary man whose name we have written above. Our own impression of the
nature of Edgar A. Poe, differs in some important degree, however, from that
which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death. Let us, before
telling what we personally know of him, copy a graphic and highly finished
portraiture, from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, which appeared in a recent
number of the “Tribune”:
“Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in
Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle many, but few
will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all
this country; he had readers in England and in several of the states of
Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death
will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has
lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.
“His conversation was at times
almost supramental in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with astonishing
skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery
tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless
in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his
heart. His imagery was from the worlds which no mortals can see but with the
vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply
defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of
customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular
demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of
the most airy and delicious beauty, so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly,
that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his
wonderful creations, till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his
hearers back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of
the ignoble passion.
“He was at all times a dreamer
dwelling in ideal realms in heaven or hell peopled with the creatures and the
accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with
lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer
(never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned,
but) for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry; or
with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face
shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms, and all night, with
drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if the
spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aiden, close by
whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget the ills to which his
constitution subjected him—close by the Aiden where were those he loved—the Aiden
which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to
receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not
involve the doom of death.
“He seemed, except when some fitful
pursuit subjugated his will and engrossed his faculties, always to bear the
memory of some controlling sorrow. The remarkable poem of ‘The Raven’ was
probably much more nearly than has been supposed, even by those who were very
intimate with him, a reflection and an echo of his own history. He was that
bird’s
“‘Unhappy master
whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and
followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of
his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of
‘Never-never more.’
“Every genuine author in a greater
or less degree leaves in his works, whatever their design, traces of his
personal character: elements of his immortal being, in which the individual
survives the person. While we read the pages of the ‘Fall of the House of Usher,’
or of ‘Mesmeric Revelations,’ we see in the solemn and stately gloom which invests
one, and in the subtle metaphysical analysis of both, indications of the
idiosyncrasies of what was most remarkable and peculiar in the author’s
intellectual nature. But we see here only the better phases of his nature, only
the symbols of his jester action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of
all faith in man or woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless
complexities of the social world, and the whole system with him was an
imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally
unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society as composed altogether
of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled
him to cope with villainy, while it continually caused him by overshoots to
fail of the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis Vivian in
Bulwer’s novel of ‘The Caxton's.’ Passion, in him, comprehended—many of the
worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict
him, but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek
paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor
boy—his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like
a fiery atmosphere—had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an
arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against
him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles
were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented
themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what
was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of
honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that, desire to rise which is vulgarly
called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only
the hard wish to succeed-not shine, not serve—succeed, that he might have the
right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit.
“We have suggested the influence of
his aims and vicissitudes upon his literature. It was more conspicuous in his
later than in his earlier writings. Nearly all that he wrote in the last two or
three years-including much of his best poetry-was in some sense biographical;
in draperies of his imagination, those who had taken the trouble to trace his
steps, could perceive, but slightly concealed, the figure of himself.”
Apropos of the disparaging portion
of the above well-written sketch, let us truthfully say:
Some four or five years since, when
editing a daily paper in this city, Mr. Poe was employed by us, for several
months, as critic and sub-editor. This was our first personal acquaintance with
him. He resided with his wife and mother at Fordham, a few miles out of town,
but was at his desk in the office, from nine in the morning till the evening
paper went to press. With the highest admiration for his genius, and a
willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by
common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and
occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he
was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intellectual
face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course,
not to treat him always with deferential courtesy, and, to our occasional
request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase
a passage 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. With a prospect of taking the lead
in another periodical, he, at last, voluntarily gave up his employment with us,
and, through all this considerable period, we had seen but one presentment of
the man-a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding
the utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deportment and ability.
Residing as he did in the country,
we never met Mr. Poe in hours of leisure; but he frequently called on us
afterward at our place of business, and we met him often in the
street-invariably the same sad mannered, winning and refined gentleman, such as
we had always known him. It was by rumor only, up to the day of his death, that
we knew of any other development of manner or character. We heard, from one who
knew him well (what should be stated in all mention of his lamentable
irregularities), that, with a single glass of wine, his whole nature was
reversed, the demon became uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of
intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane. Possessing his
reasoning faculties in excited activity, at such times, and seeking his acquaintances
with his wonted look and memory, he easily seemed personating only another
phase of his natural character, and was accused, accordingly, of insulting
arrogance and bad heartedness. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was
never our chance to see him. We know it from hearsay, and we mention it in
connection with this sad infirmity of physical constitution; which puts it upon
very nearly the ground of a temporary and almost irresponsible insanity.
The arrogance, vanity, and depravity
of heart, of which Mr. Poe was generally accused, seem to us referable
altogether to this reversed phase of his character. Under that degree of
intoxication which only acted upon him by demonizing his sense of truth and
right, he doubtless said and did much that was wholly irreconcilable with his
better nature; but, when himself, and as we knew him only, his modesty and
unaffected humility, as to his own deserving's, were a constant charm to his
character. His letters, of which the constant application for autographs has
taken from us, we are sorry to confess, the greater portion, exhibited this
quality very strongly. In one of the carelessly written notes of which we
chance still to retain possession, for instance, he speaks of “The Raven”—that extraordinary
poem which electrified the world of imaginative readers, and has become the
type of a school of poetry of its own-and, in evident earnest, attributes its
success to the few words of commendation with which we had prefaced it in this
paper.—It will throw light on his sane character to give a literal copy of the
note:
“FORDHAM,
April 20, 1849
“My DEAR WILLIS—The poem which I enclose,
and which I am so vain as to hope you will like, in some respects, has been just
published in a paper for which sheer necessity compels me to write, now and
then. It pays well as times go-but unquestionably it ought to pay ten prices;
for whatever I send it I feel I am consigning to the tomb of the Capulets. The
verses accompanying this, may I beg you to take out of the tomb, and bring them
to light in the ‘Home journal?’ If you can oblige me so far as to copy them, I
do not think it will be necessary to say ‘From the ——, that would be too bad;
and, perhaps, ‘From a late —— paper,’ would do.
“I have not forgotten how a ‘good
word in season’ from you made ‘The Raven,’ and made ‘Unalumed’ (which
by-the-way, people have done me the honor of attributing to you), therefore, I
would ask you (if I dared) to say something of these lines if they please you.
“Truly yours ever,
“EDGAR A. POE.”
In double proof of his earnest
disposition to do the best for himself, and of the trustful and grateful nature
which has been denied him, we give another of the only three of his notes which
we chance to retain:
“FORDHAM, January 22, 1848.
“My DEAR MR. WILLIS—I am about to try
at re-establishing myself in the literary world and feel that I may depend upon
your aid.
“My general aim is to start a Magazine,
to be called ‘The Stylus,’ but it would be useless to me, even when
established, if not entirely out of the control of a publisher. I mean,
therefore, to get up a journal which shall be my own at all points. With this
end in view, I must get a list of at least five hundred subscribers to begin
with; nearly two hundred I have already. I propose, however, to go South and
West, among my personal and literary friends—old college and West Point
acquaintances—and see what I can do. In order to get the means of taking the first
step, I propose to lecture at the Society Library, on Thursday, the 3d of
February, and, that there may be no cause of squabbling, my subject shall not
be literary at all. I have chosen a broad text: ‘The Universe.’
“Having thus given you the facts of the
case, I leave all the rest to the suggestions of your own tact and generosity.
Gratefully, most gratefully,
“Your friend always,
“EDGAR A. POE.”
Brief and chance-taken as these letters
are, we think they sufficiently prove the existence of the very qualities
denied to Mr. Poe-humility, willingness to persevere, belief in another’s
friendship, and capability of cordial and grateful friendship! Such he assuredly
was when sane. Such only he has invariably seemed to us, in all we have
happened personally to know of him, through a friendship of five or six years.
And so much easier is it to believe what we have seen and known, than what we
hear of only, that we remember him but with admiration and respect; these
descriptions of him, when morally insane, seeming to us like portraits, painted
in sickness, of a man we have only known in health.
But there is another, more touching,
and far more forcible evidence that there was goodness in Edgar A. Poe. To reveal
it we are obliged to venture upon the lifting of the veil which sacredly covers
grief and refinement in poverty; but we think it may be excused, if so we can
brighten the memory of the poet, even were there not a more needed and immediate
service which it may render to the nearest 2147link broken by his death.
Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe’s
removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced
herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for
him, and she excused her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her
daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their circumstances were such as
compelled her taking it upon herself. The countenance of this lady, made beautiful
and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and
sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her
long-forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined manners, and her
appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son,
disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in
adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote
with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to
be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife,
frequently in want of the merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for
years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that
tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office
to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell,
sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for
him, mentioning nothing but that “he was ill,” whatever might be the reason for
his writing nothing, and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress,
suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or
a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter
died a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his
ministering angel—living with him, caring for him, guarding him against
exposure, and when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the
loneliness of feelings unreplaced 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, hallow its
object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this-pure,
disinterested and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit-say for him who
inspired it?
We have a letter before us, written
by this lady, Mrs. Clam, on the morning in which she heard of the death of this
object of her untiring care. It is merely a request that we would call upon
her, but we will copy a few of its words—sacred as its privacy is—to warrant
the truth of the picture we have drawn above, and add force to the appeal we
wish to make for her:
“I have this morning heard of the death of my darling
Eddie.... Can you give me any circumstances or particulars?... Oh! do not
desert your poor friend in his bitter affliction!... Ask Mr. —— to come, as I
must deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie.... I need not ask you to
notice his death and to speak well of him. I know you will. But say what an
affectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother...”
To hedge round a grave with respect,
what choice is there, between the relinquished wealth and honors of the world,
and the story of such a woman’s unrewarded devotion! Risking what we do, in
delicacy, by making it public, we feel—other reasons aside—that it betters the
world to make known that there are such ministrations to its erring and gifted.
What we have said will speak to some hearts. There are those who will be glad
to know how the lamp, whose light of poetry has beamed on their far-away
recognition, was watched over with care and pain, that they may send to her,
who is more darkened than they by its extinction, some token of their sympathy.
She is destitute and alone. If any, far or near, will send to us what may aid
and cheer her through the remainder of her life, we will joyfully place it in
her hands.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Reviewed by bsm
on
February 20, 2020
Rating:
No comments: