Text: Anonymous, “Eugene L. Didier and the Author of ‘The Raven’,” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD), vol. CXLV, no. 42, June 27, 1909, p. 12, cols. 1-2

[page 12, column 1:]

THE POE CULT AND OTHER POE PAPERS. With a new memoir. By Eugene L. Didier. pp. 301. Cloth. Illus. $1.50.) The Broadway Publishing Company, New York.

“The only fair way to examine an author is with the enthusiasm of a lover and the intelligence of a scholar —” so says Mr. Eugene L. Didier in his recently published book, “The Poe Cult,” upon the writing of which he has brought to bear both these qualities he deems so essential to worthy biographical criticism.

Mr. Didier has long been acknowledged an authority upon the life and literary work of Edgar Allan Poe, and the collection of articles embraced in this volume, and written at intervals covering a period of some 35 years has the assured touch of one who knows his subject from beginning to end, who has allowed no detail pertaining to Poe's life and work to escape investigation and verification, and whose utterances possess the finality of dealing with proven facts.

Without being in any degree blinded by partiality toward the subject of his study, Mr. Didier has stripped Poe's personal memory of many false conceptions and traditions that have clung to it for years with the destructive tenacity of ghostly parasites and left revealed the live oak of truth. He has disclosed the inner life of one whose reserve precluded cordial and inmate relations with his fellow-men, and whose misfortune it was to die under dramatic and tragic circumstances that exposed him to uncharitable criticism and misconception.

The author's own conclusion, based upon a lifetime of study, are that the poet was neither the demon painted by some of his early, nor the angel described by some of his later, biographers. He mingled among men neither as a ‘prying fiend’ nor as a ‘bewildered angel.’ He was a man of rare and remarkable genius, with the infirmities that often accompany it. While endowed with extraordinary intellectual gifts, he was a most unfortunate victim of circumstances.”

Comprising as it does a collection of separate articles, each independent of the other, the book deals more particularly with Poe's personal character, the exact facts of his life, his appreciation of other writers and the appreciation or denunciation of his biographers than with study of his literary works. The first chapter tells, very briefly, the story of the poet's life. Dignity, good breeding, personal magnetism, kindness of heart, unusual freedom com selfishness, deep love and reverence or women the finest types, are qualities Mr. Didier proves to have been characteristic of the poet, and he regards the latter as “the most accomplished literary can we have ever had.”

Poe's devotion to his wife, Virginia, is emphasized. Her pathetic death in midwinter, poverty and chill, wrapped in her husband's coat, clasping to her breast for warmth her pet tortoise-shell cat and with her agonized husband and mother endeavoring by chafing her hands and feet to restore the exhausted circulation — this death scene is presented by Mr. Didier with a simplicity, an appreciation of the intensity of its pathos, that could scarcely be excelled. The little glimpses the biographer gives of this simple home before death snatched away the young and flower-like wife are charming in the atmosphere of refinement and love they suggest, and the prices quoted for poems that have contributed to the world's music show the fearful odds against which the unpretentious household was maintained and the unflagging industry and heroic courage of the poet breadwinner. “Gifted,” says Mr. Didier, “as few are gifted, he made a splendid fight against Fate.”

The form of the book and the independent character of its chapters have resulted in frequent repetition of facts, and occasionally in the introduction of errors which the writer himself corrects in subsequent statements. It includes all essential formation concerning Poe and his literary work while eliminating nonessentials, and shows admirable discrimination in choice of material. Dates, proof and names confirm most of the statements except in the very important details pertaining to Poe's last day in Baltimore, concerning which the author gives no more definite authority than that of “a former Baltimorean, now living in San Francisco.”

Mr. Didier ascribes the rise of what he terms the present “Poe Cult,” the extraordinary development of interest not only the poet's work, but in ascertaining the facts of his career, to two circumstances: The stimulus given to investigation of the truth concerning Poe and his life by the erection of the Poe monument in Westminster churchyard, Baltimore, and its unveiling November 17, 1875, and to the sustained efforts of Sarah Helen Whitman, at one time Poe's promised wife and always his fearless and unswerving friend, to correct false statements concerning the poet's life and habits.

Also he says “The present reaction in favor of Edgar A. Poe is greatly due to the intelligent appreciation of Mr. Widdleton, the American publisher of his works. He generously aided and encouraged every attempt to vindicate the poet's memory.”

Of the poet's remarkable critical faculties, Mr. Didier writes “Although Poe's own countrymen were slow to recognize his genius, he was quick in recognizing the genius of others and in bestowing generous praise upon all deserving contemporaries. He was the first American critic to proclaim the genius of Mrs. Browning (then Miss Barrett) to the world, and when he collected his poems into a volume, the book was dedicated to her. He was the first to introduce to American readers the then unknown poet, Tennyson, and boldly declared him to be ‘the noblest poet that ever lived’ at a time when the English critics had failed to discover the genius of the future poet-laureate. He discovered the morbid genius of Hawthorne, when the latter was, as he said to himself ‘the most obscure literary man in America.’ Poe's estimate of Willis, Halleck, Cooper, Simms, Longfellow and other contemporaries was eminently just.”

Mr. Didier calls attention to the fact that 12 lives of Poe have been written — a number far exceeding the biographies of other writers: and it is in considering some of these biographies that Mr. Didier departs from his scholarly and interesting consideration of the poet and his works [column 2:] and descends to harsh criticism of and invective against other biographers of Poe that is be much regretted in an author of his ability and reputation.

The author refers to “Barnaby Rudge” in connection with Poe's correct forecast of the denouement of Dickens’ story after reading the opening serial chapters, In that novel is found also the self-opinionated Mr. Willett, who monopolized conversation concerning the moon who, if others essayed that luminary as a topic of conversation, resented it as an invasion of his private domain. Somewhat in like fashion Mr. Didier appears from the later chapters of “The Poe Cult.” to ride the hobby of his favorite Poe — with a stern sense of proprietary rights in expression of opinion upon the subject. Concerning Mr. William F. Gill's book, he says it “was written with a twofold object — the deification of Poe and the damnation of Griswold.” He regrets that he cannot praise Mr. Gill's literary style and objects that the latter's “grammar is not always as Cæsar's wife was required to be above suspicion.” And that he does not know the “delicate distinction between a verb and a noun.”

Elsewhere the author says “Professor Harrison. [Prof. James A. Harrison, of the University of Virginia], Dr. Charles W. Kent and Dr. R. A. Stewart have formed a mutual admiration society, and have used the Virginia edition of Poe's works to exploit themselves and show off their ‘learning,’ much to their own satisfaction. no doubt, but not to the entertainment of their readers. It worked beautifully from a narrow. provincial point of view, but thinking persons only laugh at such transparent folly. A man is written up, or written down, by himself and by himself alone. The thousands of verbal notes scattered through the 17 volumes by these industrious gentlemen are useless, annoying and distracting.

“I take pleasure in saying that Professor Harrison has my best wishes, but I respectfully advise him, in the future, should he undertake to edit a literary work, to do the hunting himself, but to turn the material over to an experienced literary expert; because, with the most friendly feeling, I am compelled to say that when he tries to be instructive he becomes laughable; when he tries to be profound he is silly: when he attempts to sketch Poe's wonderful stories he is simply ridiculous. and when he attempts to be critical he is enough to make a stuffed owl die of laughing.”

Of President Alderman, who offended Mr. Didier's sense of fitness by inviting Professor Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University, to deliver an address at the Poe centennial celebration at the University of Virginia, he says: “He (Dr. Alderman) is unfit to be the president of the leading university of the South.”

Again he says: “The most laughable ignorance about Poe was displayed by a writer who claims to be a relative of the poet.”

Mr. Ingram's contribution to the Poe literature Mr. Didier damns with faint praise. Of Mr. George E. Woodberry's contribution concerning Poe for the American Men of Letters, however, Mr. Didier says: “In a compact volume of 350 pages we have a complete, reliable and interesting life of the author of “‘The Raven’ written with absolute literary candor and entirely free from prejudice, one way or the other * * * a work. which should satisfy all readers for a long time to come.”

Of Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman also he writes: “Mr. Stedman has written the most careful analysis of Poe's genius that has yet been given to the world.”

Mr. Didier lays himself open to criticism of egotism when he says of an Englishman who claimed to have discovered Poe and made him known to the American people, “I was a student of Poe's life and works before this presumptuous Englishman had emerged from his original obscurity.” And again, when referring to one of the faculty of the University of Virginia, he says of himself, “Does this provincial professor suppose that a man of the world. I who have traveled in many lands. and met some of the greatest men of Europe and America. would care for his petulant and childish anger?”

To an unprejudiced reader of “The Poe Cult” it would appear that an author's real responsibility lies with his own utterances. He is not called to the judgment of others and it is to be regretted when he essays so ungracious and thankless a task. “Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds — you can’t do this when you are flying words.”