Text: Anonymous, “[Review of Gill Life of Poe],” Atlantic Monthly (New York, NY), vol. 40, whole no. 239, September 1877, pp. 373-374

[page 373:]

RECENT LITERATURE.

WHEN Edgar Poe ended his troubled career so drearily in a Baltimore hospital, at the age of forty, two antagonistic but equally decided opinions of him were left behind in that of his life might be prolonged in the popular discussion of him after death. It seems to us that the holders of both opinions have been wrong in maintaining that Poe must be painted either all in one color or all in the public mind, as if in order the struggles and misunderstandings of his life might be prolonged in the popular discussion of him after death. It seems to us that the holders of both opinions have been wrong in maintaining that Poe must be painted either all in one color or all in another; must be set down as very bad, or else regarded as a remarkably praiseworthy being, with slight faults, who has been the victim of wholly unaccountable criticism. In a measure. Mr. Gill, in his new life of the poet, has followed the same method.(1) He says frankly, in his preface, that he means to be “ ‘to his [Poe's] faults a little kind,’ without shrinking from the duty of a biographer;” but he omits part of the duty of a biographer, we think, in giving no satisfactory explanation of Poe's doubtful repute. Dr. Griswold's calumnies he refutes in most particulars; and he even convicts that disingenuous editor of actually making alterations in Poe's paper on Thomas Dunn English before inserting it in the collected works, in order to sustain his (Griswold's) remarks about the offensiveness of the article, though we notice that nothing is said about the charge that Poe several times sold the fame or nearly the same poem to more than one magazine. The misdemeanors of Dr. Griswold, every one will agree, were censurable enough; and yet it is not a finality to assert that they were the product of fiendish and inexplicable malice. We hardly see how any one can read his curious, self-contradictory memoir without discovering that — besides the evil animus, which is quite obvious — there was present a considerable proportion of stupidity, and also some ground for adverse judgment in the subject himself. Mr. George R. Graham, who published a criticism of Griswold's story soon after its appearance, gives the reason for this, in saying: “The opportunities afforded Mr. Griswold to estimate the character of Poe occurred, in the main, after his stability had [column 2:] been wrecked, his whole nature in a degree changed, and with all his prejudices aroused and active.” Mr. Graham himself says that Poe, during his relation with him, “was always the same polished gentleman, the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful scholar, the devoted husband, frugal in his personal expenses, punctual and unwearied in his industry, and the soul of honor in all his transactions. This, of course, was in his better days, and by them we judge the man.” A Mr. Clarke, proprietor of The Museum, a Philadelphia publication, who saw much of Poe in 1840, writes that he “ was a pattern of domestic worth.” Mr. Gill seems to be persuaded that the poet's health was not, as commonly supposed, undermined by frequent intoxication, but by the effects of grief for the death of his wife and the action of his morbid imagination; and he also contends, with good reason, as we think, that Poe was a man of chaste habits and at heart of scrupulous nicety of feeling. Yet it is within the memory of probably a good many persons that a gentleman closely connected with Poe in a periodical publication in New York, and not known to have any unworthy motive for the report, retained always afterward the opinion that he was one of the worst of men. To multiply instances of these conflicting impressions is only to run off into the worn-out gossip of the subject; and we may content ourselves with noticing how Mr. Gill has laid open the sources of discordant opinion without showing the relation between cause and effect.

It is worth while to review the facts of Poe's life as here given, for they have not been presented before so fully and so well. The poet's ancestry Mr. Gill traces back to a noble Italian family, De la Poe, some of whom, wandering into France and through England and Wales into Ireland, either changed their title to Le Poer or preserved the original form and anglicized it to Poe. The Chevalier le Poer, friend of the Marquis de Grammont, is mentioned as having been of the family of David Poe, the grandfather of the poet. This grandfather was a patriot and a general in our war of the [page 374:] Revolution, but his son was degenerate, and it is probable that Edgar Poe owed many of his misfortunes to his father's proclivity for drink. Edgar Poe, it is maintained, did not drink brandy at Lexington and West Point, but Mr. Gill shows us that, soon after the engagement with the Southern Literary Messenger, when his prospects were greatly improved, he was overwhelmed with a despairing melancholy, like that which “in later years wrought upon him the direst effects,” — doubtless a direct inheritance from his father, complicated with the nature which had come down to him from that high-spirited ancestry. It seems quite probable that this depression drove him sometimes to take stimulants. What else does the expression in Poe's letter to Mr. Kennedy mean? “I am suffering under a depression of spirits which will ruin me should it be long continued. Write me, then, and quickly; urge me to do what is right.” Towards the last of his life, his engagement of marriage with Mrs. Whitman. which has been the source of a good deal of discussion, seems to have been conditional on his abstaining from liquor, — a condition which he could not fulfill. Something of this sort most, of course, have been at the bottom of that great change in his character which Mr. Graham mentions as one cause of Griswold's errors. Poe had a brother who wrote verses, but fell into bad habits and died early. The poetic temperament had existed far back in the family, one of the Poes being the author of that song of Gramachree which Burns thought so highly of; and with it was combined the strong animal nature, the turbulence, of the old Irish and Italian lords. Mr. Gill describes at length Poe's terrible condition of mania during his last visit to Mr. Sartain, in Philadelphia, shortly before his death; and, however small the quantity of wine may have been which produced these fits, they must not only have sapped the unhappy victim's vital forces, but also have made it as impossible for unsympathetic people to understand his condition as if he had taken a quart of rum at a sitting. In various degrees of insanity of this sort, he probably at times said things utterly unfounded, most damaging to himself, and of which he could have not the slightest remembrance when restored to his senses.

Mr. Gill says justly that, “sensitive to a degree altogether incornprehensible to practical [column 2:] minds,” Poe “yet was so unfortunate as to live among the practical-minded only, and at a time when temperament as such was essentially omitted in society's estimate of a man.” But it is rather loose to say that Poe's “temperament was totally at variance with the spirit of the age in which he lived,” for it is at variance with that of any age.

There is hardly a question of moral responsibility in the case at all. Men like Poe are illustrations of how far certain irreconcilable traits may developed and actually embodied in a human career, — the career, too, of a remarkable genius; but such men are predestined to misfortune and disappointment, ns Alfred de Musset was. Poe is almost the only representative of this class whom our literature contains, and public opinion has been shocked by the sharp contrast between his career and that of our more symmetrical masters. But it is impossible to read, without a deep sense of pathos, the narrative of his hap-hazard bringing up, his rash yet in many ways happy marriage; of his drifting from magazine to magazine, and his wretched poverty; his continual hope of establishing a magazine of his own to bo called The Stylus; and finally of his utter defeat, and the constant devotion of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, who was wont to soothe him to sleep in his unstrung and over-excited condition as one does a timid child. Then, too, Poe's personal appearance and manners, his fondness for domestic pets, and all that was attractive about him are agreeably brought out; and we are enabled to sympathize with him in the spirit of the author of this generous and excellent memoir. We must refer all who are interested in Poe's poetry to the volume itself for an analysis of the Raven and its composition which is as penetrating as it is new. Mr. Gill has certainly performed a service in the preparation of this biography, for which he deserves serious thanks.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 373, column 1:]

1 The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. By William F. Gill. Illustrated. New York: C. T. Dillingham. Chicago: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger. Boston: William F. Gill A Co. 1877.