Text: Anonymous, “[Review of Ingram's Life of Poe,” Athenaeum (London, UK), whole no. 2752, July 24, 1880, pp. 107-109

[page 107, column 3, continued:]

Edgar Allan Poe: his Life, Letters, and Opinions. By John H. Ingram. 2 vols. (Hogg.)

A TASK which has been to Mr. Ingram something more than a duty or a labour of love, which has, indeed, had the solemnity of a mission, is now successfully accomplished. Six years ‘ago an arduous portion was finished when an edition practically complete of the works of Edgar Allan Poe was given to the world. Far from answering the purpose of vindicating the fame of Poe was, however, the prefatory memoir Mr. Ingram was able to affix to that edition. Six further years have been necessary to investigate, co-ordinate, and arrange the information concerning the life of Poe, which has been drawn from all available sources, and those portions of his correspondence which survive and are accessible. Practically, then, the life of Poe now given to the world may be regarded as final and definitive. Little temptation is, indeed, offered to travel again over ground which Mr. Ingram has explored with conscientious fidelity and untiring perseverance, and has mapped out with accuracy so patient that, as Lamb says of Drayton's ‘Polyolbion,’ he “has not left a rivulet so narrow it may be stepped over without honourable mention.” If one or two tracts remain concerning which nothing is known, these may be dismissed as inaccessible.

It is pleasant to congratulate Mr. Ingram upon the close of his labours. Seldom has a duty so arduous and so necessary been discharged with equal loyalty and zeal. If Griswold's poison is not now neutralized, an antidote is provided to which all may have recourse; the malignancy which prompted the most Judas-like of modern treacheries is exposed, and the full baseness of what Graham, the proprietor of Graham's Magazine, of which Poe was editor, calls “an immortal infamy” stands revealed.

Profoundly interesting from commencement to close is the biography now given to the world. It is marred by inelegancies of style and by oversights which will have to be corrected in a future edition. These are, however, wholly forgotten by the sympathetic reader, over whom the record of Poe's life exercises a measure of the strange fascination which belongs to his writings.

That Mr. Ingram should be free from that besetting weakness which no biographer probably, except Griswold, wholly escaped was not to be expected. It is in the a nature of things that Mr. Ingram's work should be a vindication as much as a memoir. When noticing the publication of the collected works, we gave some particulars of the misrepresentations to which Poe was subject. So short are, however, human memories, 80 quickly does a new generation spring up, and so unsafe is it to assume in the majority of readers the possession of special information, that it may be pardonable to give in the fewest possible words the particulars of the offence with which Griswold is charged. On the death of Poe on the 7th of October, 1849, his mother-in-law, his most devoted [page 108:] friend, placed in the hands of Rufus W. Griswold the whole of his papers. From these Griswold, animated by a malignancy which nothing could satisfy, extracted a life of Poe, which was published in 1850 with the third volume of Poe's works. This memoir, false and scurrilous in all respects, was circulated wherever a knowledge of the poet extended. Its statements were accepted as authoritative, and the memory of the poet was blackened throughout two continents. How powerless to uproot an opinion once formed were the protests of N. P. Willis and other friends of Poe may be supposed by those who know how swiftly a lie circulates and how slowly behind it travels the contradiction. An Englishman, Mr. Moy Thomas, appears to have been among the first to point out the necessity of a serious and enduring vindication of the memory of Poe from the slanders of Griswold; a second Englishman, Mr. Ingram, has now completed the task.

Under these circumstances it is perhaps pardonable that the biography of Poe now published should present a picture of its subject so highly coloured that the darker traits in his character have all but disappeared. It is none the less to be regretted that the memoir is less a rehabilitation than an apotheosis. The gloom and sorrow which overshadow at times the life of Poe, where they are not direct visitations of fate, seem a portion of the poet's inheritance.

That any form of misconduct on the part of Poe conduced to this state of affairs is barely conceded. A more robust treatment of the subject would, on the whole, have been better. Such, while it left Poe's character free from the degrading and dishonouring accusations that have been brought against it, would have carried to the minds of not a few in whom doubt is begotten of revolt the conviction that in most respects of morality Poe stood above rather than below the level of civilized and cultivated humanity. This is all that is required. At what period Poe took to excess in drink, in opium, or in both is comparatively unimportant. That excess there was his warmest friends and admirers concede. His own plea is not more valuable or satisfactory than that ordinarily supplied in cases of similar misconduct. In a letter to Mrs. 8S. H. Whitman he states: — “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have perilled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories.’ If the desire to escape from torturing memories were a justification of excess, life, when a certain age was passed, would be one mad carnival. In a letter assumably subsequent he says: “”T am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness 1 drank — God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity.” An unhoped-for cure, temporary of course, came, as he said, with the death of his [column 2:] wife, to a state of affairs for which the vicissitudes of her fatal illness were principally responsible.

In no Philistine spirit and with no want of consideration for Poe, but rather in the conviction that his character is strong enough to stand upright beneath the burdens it has to bear, we assert that the statement that he drank in “fits of absolute unconsciousness”? can have no possible weight. A man in such a state knows nothing. The amount that he drinks he must subsequently learn from others, and it is not easy to believe that those near him, whether he were at home or abroad, would continue to supply him with stimulants. Few words ever spoken bear signs more obvious of the kind of casuistry men employ in defending before others their own actions. Sooner than admit a plea like this we would accept the characteristically subtle and whimsical defence of Baudelaire, that the best work of Poe required for its perfect development a renewal of the drunkenness in which it was begotten. So curious and ingenious, if preposterous, is this theory, we may be pardoned for transcribing from the prefatory memoir by Baudelaire to his translations from Poe the sentences in which it is enunciated: —

“Or il est incontestable que — semblable & ces impressions fugitives et frappantes, d’autant plus frappantes dans leurs retours qu’elles sont plus fugitives, qui suivent quelquefois un symptome extérieur, une espéce d’avertissement comme un son de cloche, une note musicale ou un parfum oublié, et qui sont elles-mémes suivies d’un événement semblable & un événement déja connu et qui occupait la méme place dans une chaine antérieusement révélée, — semblables & ces singuliers réves périodiques qui fréquentent nos sommeils, — il existe dans |’ivresse non-seulement des enchainements de réves, mais des séries de raisonnements, qui ont besoin, pour se reproduire, du milieu qui leur a donné naissance. Si le lecteur m’a suivi sans répugnance, il a déja deviné ma conclusion: je crois que, dans beaucoup de cas, non pas certainement dans tous, l’ivrognerie de Poe était un moyen mnémonique, une méthode: de travail, méthode énergique et mortelle, mais appropriée à sa nature passionnée. Le poéte avait appris & boire, comme un littérateur soigneux s’exerce & faire des cahiers de notes. Il ne pouvait résister au désir de retrouver les visions merveilleuses ou effrayantes, les conceptions subtiles qu’il avait rencontrées dans une tempéte précédente; c’étaient de vieilles connaissances qui l’attiraient impérativement, et pour renouer avec elles, il prenait le chemin le plus dangereux, mais le plus direct. Une partie de ce qui fait aujourd’hui notre jouissance est ce qui l’a tué.” — ‘uvres Complétes de Baudelaire,’ tom. v. pp. 27-28.

If it were worth while, instead of regarding Poe as a man of whom, in spite of extravagances and weaknesses, we have cause to be proud rather than ashamed, an excuse could be suggested far better than any that has yet, so far as we are aware, been advanced. At a comparatively early age Poe commenced to take opium. The extent to which he indulged in this dangerous and seductive poison can only be surmised. In the early draft of ‘ Berenice’ a passage subsequently suppressed alludes to its hero's “immoderate use of opium.” Subsequently Poe declared, d propos of De Quincey's ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,’ “There is yet room for a book on opium-eating which shall be the most profoundly interesting volume ever penned.” [column 3:] That De Quincey's work is incorrect and misleading, leaving out of sight what is most striking in the effects of opium, and substituting for it much that is purely imaginary, is not generally known. Its publication and the reputation of its author had the effect of discouraging inquiry, and the subject, from the physiological and psychological standpoint, has yet to be treated. There are few of the aberrations of Poe's later life that might not be explained by his use of opium. Especially characteristic of its influence is the kind of gloom of which he constantly complains.

The present is not the time in which to associate the irregularities of Poe's life with any theory whatever. It is better to look at the man as he stands before us in the light which is thrown upon him by his works, his correspondence, and the tardily gathered statements of his friends. Bright, sanguine, buoyant, and self-reliant, strong in his affections, impatient of whatever was outside the range of his sympathies, indiscreet to the extent of admitting strangers into what should be the arcana and the sanctities of his soul, solicitous of appreciation and affection, refined and courteous in bearing, and, as he says, quixotic in his sense of the honourable, the chivalrous, he was, with all his faults upon his head, a fine specimen of our weak humanity. Strength, whether of continuous resolution or of endurance, or indeed of passion, though there is much talk of it, he does not seem in any conspicuous degree to have had. His experience of life was uncomfortable, and before the end bitter. After a youth which may be said in conventional phrase to have been “‘ nursed in luxury,” he was, through little or no fault of his own, thrown upon his own resources. The profession he adopted was one out of which a man could scarcely make a living, and he became in a portion of his career a bookseller's hack. Overworked and underpaid, he struggled on until, by means of hand-to-mouth work through which filtrated a distinct genius, he won fame. By the time this was acquired he had practically succumbed in the struggle, and the crown that he wore for a short period was joyless. No unknown nor unprecedented fate is this, though it is inexpressibly sad. His married life was a poem. Difficult, indeed, is it to say whether the love of his child wife or that of her mother did more to illumine his career. His attempts after the death of his wife to win consolation or love from other women detract a little from the almost ethereal beauty of that central romance, in which love hallowed and brightened the depressing and terrible details of poverty. The loss of Virginia Poe left him rudderless, and his uncertain course ended in shipwreck.

Mr. Ingram suggests that his death in Baltimore might have been caused by his being “cooped,” drugged by electioneering agents, and dragged about from poll to poll to vote. This might possibly have been; it matters little. Speculations of this kind are unblessed as well as futile. What is known is that on the 7th of October he was brought insensible into the Washington University Hospital, having been found on a bench near a wharf, and that about midnight of the same day he died. How this sudden end was brought about no one knows, or [page 109:] knowing has dared to tell. It is probable that what ill treatment, self-inflicted or from the hands of others, he received did not greatly accelerate a death that he felt to be near at hand. He died respected and esteemed by those who knew him best, and with the love of good women attending him to the last. Here is an adequate response to the venomous accusations of Griswold, the slime of whose words is now wiped off for ever. In place of the joint epitaph over Poe and his mother-in-law, who rest side by side in the “‘ ancestral grave” of General Poe, might be put the letter that the distracted woman wrote on hearing of his death. it is hard to say on which it reflects more credit. “Annie,” she writes to her friend, “my Eddie is dead. He died in Baltimore yesterday. Annie, pray for me, your desolate friend.” By this wail should be read Poe's sonnet to the writer, the closing lines of which are: —

Before quitting the memoir of this wayward genius, it seems worth while to point out that, besides the comparisons to Marlowe, Chatterton, Byron, and Musset which suggest themselves, a less obvious kinship exists between Poe and Balzac. It would be easy to show the extent of this. At the close of a long notice one instance alone must suffice. When speaking of his ‘Eureka’ to Mr. Putnam, Poe told him with intense earnestness that

Substitute for Poe Balzac, and for Putnam Werdet or some other French publisher, and then these sentences might pass for a quotation from Léon Gozlan concerning the author of ‘Pére Goriot.’ Among errors to be rectified in a second edition are the quotation “Res augustæ domi,” vol. i. p. 145; “Parturient mountains have been fabulated to produce muscupular abortions,” p. 199; and “the animaleula with moustaches for antennal,” vol. ii. p. 79. Mr. Ingram's style would be greatly improved if he would avoid the practice of ending his sentences with prepositions or that of using such hypersuperlatives as “most extreme rarity.” For the work he has done he deserves the thanks of all lovers of literature.