Text: Henry Mills Alden, “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's Monthly Magazine (New York, NY), vol. 61, no. 5, October 1880, pp. 787-788

[page 787:]

EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR.

IF Bret Harte's “Heathen Chinee” is the “copy of verses” which became at once more universally known and quoted than anything ever printed in this country, Poe's “Raven” is the poem which ranks next to it in the same way. Poe himself makes the same general kind of impression as an author that “The Raven” makes as a poem. His position is bizarre and doubtful, and probably few critics would concede that he will take a place as an American classic. Yet the tenacious interest in the man and in his work indicates an attraction which belongs only to abiding genius. Willis seemed to many persons to belong to the same general category with Poe, although with a wholly different temperament and form of expression. They were both regarded as brilliant literary trirlers and citizens of Bohemia — Willis with a taste for coxcombry, and Poe for metaphysics. Yet Charles T. Congdon, in his pleasant Reminiscences of a Journalist, speaks of Willis as now utterly forgotten, while during the last year Mr. Gill has issued a revision of his work upon Poe, and Mr. J. H. Ingram, in England, has published a biography of Poe in two volumes, which the English critics declare to have dissipated thoroughly the darker shadows that rested upon his name. “Utterly forgotten!” Yet there are men who do not believe themselves to be old who remember when Willis, as “Philip Slingsby,” was the favorite college author, and when the school Readers were full of his “Scripture poems.”

They were both “noticeable” men. If you met Willis on Broadway, you remarked a well-built man, very erect, with clustering curling hair, fashionably dressed — evidently a man with a strong admiration of D’Orsay, and who, more than any American, satisfied the description of the London dandy of the Regency. The Easy Chair recalls a tailor's advertisement of a new English overcoat, which directed attention to Mr. Willis as wearing one; and no man could have displayed a coat more advantageously than he. But we must remember that Willis was in college, and early leaped into reputation, while the Byronic fashion was still dominant not only in the verse but in the [column 2:] dress of young poets; and while Willis was still very flexible, Disraeli's Vivian Grey and Bulwer's Pelham “took the town” and him, and he was Pelham to the end.

But younger writers remember with gratitude Willis's kindly sympathy and encouragement. If the counsel was mundane, it was delivered with friendly feeling. The maxims were not austere. In literature the Mentor's advice suggested “Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew” in society. It was the philosophy of to-day's success — epicurean and a little cynical, but kindly: a club wisdom, which was amazing chiefly as proceeding from the author of the “ Scripture poems.” Willis's Home Journal was at one time a very eccaleobion of young writers, generally of the gentler sex, and many of them have worthily won their laurels. It was a universal kindliness, and is most pleasantly remembered. Willis apparently had no literary jealousy, and his allusions to the authors whose increasing lustre outshone his own name were always admiring and friendly — a little affected, of course, the D’Orsay coat getting into the style, but frank and generous. His admiration of Irving and his respect for Bryant were undisguised. He praised Longfellow warmly, and he characteristically predicted that fame would drop the James from Lowell's name, and commemorate him as Russell Lowell.

Willis's notes of travel, especially his Pencillings by the Way, are still entertaining. His sketches of literary society in England were severely condemned as breaches of hospitality, but apart from any censure of that kind, they contain capital pictures ; the young Disraeli and Tom Moore especially are graphically drawn. The Letters from under a Bridge are also agreeable reading, but they will hardly be reprinted. The later writings were full of grotesque conceits, and were wholly temporary. But the magazines would still Avelcome the touch of his hand in slight stories, such as “Pigs and Chickens,” and little tales touched off with a jaunty gayety which he never quite lost. If Willis, as his kind commentator ruefully suggests, be “utterly forgotten,” at least [page 788:] he is no more so than Percival and others who figure in the frontispiece of Griswold's Poets of America thirty years ago.

Poe also would have been remarked upon the street. He was of a slighter form than Willis, less mindful of his dress, pale, and with a singularly dark aud commanding eye. Iu a room, without his hat, his high white forehead and intellectual aspect at once distinguished him. His domestic life was believed to be very unhappy. It was known that he was poor and lived by his pen, and it was understood that he was the victim of strong drink. He died sadly at Baltimore, and “Dr.” Griswold published a memoir of him which his friends and admirers believe to be the source of the false impression of the man, so that he is described as “a dissolute fantastic writer, who died at Baltimore in consequence of fits of intoxication.”

Poe was as bitter in commenting upon his contemporaries as Willis was friendly. He defied censure, and expressed a scorn of the public, to which, with the instinct of genius, he yet appealed. He went to Boston to read a poem. There was a large audience aud great expectation. Poe read some verses written when he was a boy. Boston said that he was drunk. Poe retorted that the poem was good. enough for Frogpondiaus. The fact apparently was that he intended to write a poem for the occasion, but was prevented by stress of occupation. In the brief preface to the slight volume of his verse, The Raven, and Other Poems, published in Wiley and Putnam's “Library of Choice Reading” in 1845, Poe says, disdainfully, “With me poetry has been, not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not — they can not — at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations or the more paltry commendations of mankind.” This seems to be merely the usual Byronic strain. But it is childish to write for those at whose judgment you sneer. If a man writes for the love of writing, he prints because he wishes other people to read what he writes. A man who withdraws as a hermit to the Central Park may scoff at mankind, but he is plainly not enamored of solitude. Yet this sneer of Poe's, in the light of the truth now told of his life, was not disdain, but unhappiness.

The memoir of Griswold really seems to be what Mr. Minto calls it, “a malignant myth,” and Mr. Ingram, who had already edited an English edition of Poe's works, has patiently and conclusively disposed of many of the slanders which have pursued the name of the poet. Of many facts in his life the true explanation is very different from the usual version. But it is the greatest service to Poe's memory to show that his dissipation was not the cause of his misfortunes, but that peculiarly trying misfortunes produced his dissipation. This is what Mr. Ingram has done for an American poet whoso verse is more justly weighed now than when he was living, and which is not found wanting.