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SOME POE COUNTERFEITS
BY ALICE M. TYLER.
As the Poe centenary draws nearer everything related to one of the greatest American poets is invested with increasing interest
At different times fake poems attributed to Poe have appeared, have created enormous sensations, and then, when their real nature was discovered, have faded into insignificance and been forgotten.
One of the most ingeniously written and authenticated of these poems was entitled “Leonainie,” and has been attributed finally, and it is supposed, conclusively, to James Whitcomb Riley. When it appeared, the Kokoma (Indiana) Despatch published this story along with the poem, which said:
“In the house of a gentleman in this city, we saw a poem written on the blank fly-leaf of an old book. Noticing the initials E. A. P. At the bottom of the poem, it struck us that possibly we had run across a bonanza. The owner of the book said he did not know who the author of the poem was. His grandfather, who gave him the book containing the verses, kept an inn in Chesterfield county, near Richmond, Va.
“One night a young man, who plainly showed the marks of dissipation, rapped at the door, asked if he could stay all night, and was shown to a room. That was the last they saw of him. When they went to his room the next morning to call him to breakfast he had gone, but had left the book, on the fly-leaf of which he had written the verses.”
The poem, which was widely published [column 3:] and given general credence, added immensely to James Whitcomb Riley's reputation when he claimed it as his own. These are the verses:
Leonaine.
Leonainie — Angels named her;
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars and framed her
In a smile of white;
And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In the solemn night.
In a solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to greet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;
All forebodings that distressed me
I forgot as Joy caressed me —
Lying Joy! that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!
Only spake the little lisper
In the Angel-tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper —
“Songs are only sung
Here below that they may grieve you —
Tales but told you to deceive you, —
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young.”
Then God smiled and it was morning.
Matchless and supreme,
Heaven's glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem:
Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.
Mr. Laughlin's Fake Poem.
A cleverly planned fake poem appeared [column 4:] in the University of Virginia annual, published 1895, with Mr. Randolph Houston Laughlin, of St. Louis, Mo., as its editor-in-chief. The annual was beautifully gotten out, and one of its chief attractions was a poem claimed to have been found by Mr. Laughlin in a volume of Rollins’ Ancient History on the university library shelves, a work which Poe, during his university year, was very fond of reading, but which, in general, had been little used.
The manuscript of the poem was apparently in Poe's handwriting, and bore his signature. At first “the find” was accepted as genuine. Then the matter was thoroughly investigated, and it was finally proven that Mr. Laughlin had added another to the name of literary men, masquerading in Poe guise only he had gone a little further and been much shrewder than the others.
A fac-simile of a page of the manuscript “found” by Mr. Laughlin appears here by way of illustration. A verse of the poem reads:
“Sailing over seas abysmal
From a world of shame
Once a vessel strange and dismal,
Phantom vessel, came.”
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RTD, 1909] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Some Poe Counterfeits (A. M. Tyler, 1909)