Text: Moncure D. Conway, “Memories of Poe,” Home Journal (New York, NY), Thirteenth Year, no. 10, whole no, 1,518, March 10, 1875, p. 4, col. 4

[page 4, column 4, continued:]

MEMORIES OF POE.

POE died aged forty, and that he did not produce the work to which all he wrote is mere prelude, is owing to his having committed suicide by drink. The real defence of him, says Moncure Conway, is, that he fell upon that crude Griswoldian age of American literature which preferred tinsel to gold. It was an age which would have starved Hawthorne if it had not been for Frank Pierce, and it did starve Poe — in full sight of the fat paunches of fools. It is not s thing that Americans can think of with satisfaction that the finest works of imagination their country has produced — the tales of Hawthorne and Poe — never brought their authors half as much money as an inferior reporter on a provincial paper now gets. For “The Raven” Poe received ten dollars. These stories, which would bring almost any sum from a magazine, were carried about for days and sometimes weeks by the shivering, dinnerless author, while his beloved wife was dying on a spread of straw — to find a publisher willing to pay the merest pittance for them. As for Edgar Poe, the innumerable legends which accumulated round his life and name were in one sense a tribute to his extraordinary powers. He is one of the few men who are represented by mythology. I well remember, being a Virginian and familiar with Richmond during the later residence of Poe in that city, that a new story about Poe was expected every morning at breakfast. Some of the stories were wild enough and utterly untrue. One was that in order to break off an engagement with a young lady be had, in a purely Machiavellian spirit, mixed with rum, got drunk and laid down on the door-step of her father's house; when he awoke from stupor he found over his face a white laced handkerchief, with a well-known name in the corner. This was not even a characteristic legend.

Poe was remarkable in his love, and chivalrous, too. He once insisted that a cousin of mine should meet him in a duel because in his Richmond paper my relative had copied a paragraph stating that he (Poe) was reported to be engaged to a lady whose name was given, and whom the poet really ad mired. The proposed duel ended in a friendly acquaintance. This relative, the late John M. Daniel, has often told me that he believed the only faults of Poe were a tendency to drink and a way of borrowing money, which was never repaid. He was, however, sanguine of being able to repay when he borrowed. However, if must be said that most of those who could have presented any claims on Poe's assets (?) for money lent were people who had built up magazines and fortunes on his brains, giving him in some cases about five hundred dollars per annum for near three hundred and sixty-five days and nights of actual toil. Poe was a very handsome man, with an almost effeminate beauty about the mouth and chin, and a superb forehead and head; he was also a perfectly accomplished elocutionist, and if he had lived now would be the lyceum's ace of trumps. He thought Emerson's “Humble Bee” one of the finest pieces of verbal music ever composed, and when he repeated it, as he often did, his voice seemed the fittest instrument to render the exquisite movement of the piece. One story of Poe I remember to have heard in those days which I can sorrowfully believe: A gentleman passing through the streets of Baltimore saw a crowd of roughs at the door of a low drinking-house, He glanced in and saw Poe, slightly tipsy, discoursing to his brutal-looking, loud-laughing circle on the philosophy of the universe and interlarding his metaphysics with Greek quotations: as the gentleman looked in between the green shades of the door Poe raised his head, recognized in him a friend, and exclaimed, “Sic transit gloria mundi,” These may have been his last words: none could have been more appropriate.