Text: Warren Barton Blake, “Commemorations of Edgar Allan Poe,” The Dial (Chicago, IL), vol. 47, whole no. 557, September 1, 1909, pp. 118-20

[page 118:]

It is not too much to say that most of the books and critical articles on Poe published in this his centenary year have been a negligible quantity. This has been true of what has appeared in French and English reviews, as well as of what we have written in Poe's own gaslighted Philistia. The romance of the life was written by the poet himself, and by those earlier admirers for whom he wore a green halo. Then came the Griswolds and their like, on the one hand; and, on the other, extravagant admirers and apologists like Mr. Didier. Last of all came the opportunity of the critical biographer, whose privilege it is to clear the life of its legends and to arrive at its facts. This is just what Professor Woodberry essayed to do some years ago, in his memoir of Poe contributed to the “American Men of Letters” series; and in the new two-volume biography which he calls “Personal and Literary” he takes several steps further in the same direction: seeking to represent a Poe who was neither hero nor superman nor scoundrel, merely a man of unquestioned intellectual force, of keen analytical powers, of intense if never very varied imagination, — a man lacking only in that fine something that may or may not accompany genius, moral strength.

The enlargement of the memoir which he wrote more than twenty-five years ago has given Professor Woodberry the opportunity to include here an increased quantity of material descriptive of that sad career. We realize more than ever how the poet's life was forever embarrassed and troubled, and with what a whole soul Poe could cry out, “To coin one's brain into silver, at the nod of a master, is, to my thinking, the hardest task in the world.”

And yet it is not solely in biographic detail [column 2:] that Professor Woodberry's memoir has been enriched in the rewriting. Thus, in the earlier biography the name of Hoffmann does not so much as appear; while in the first of the two new volumes several pages are given to an examination of Poe's possible debt to or kinship with the German romancer. Professor Woodberry is skeptical here. “It is essential,” he writes, “to show Poe's contact with Hoffmann before that time,” the time, that is, of the publication of “The Visionary,” in October, 1833. He adds:

The earlier memoir, as has been suggested, is the basis of the two volumes now published — their more or less fleshy skeleton. In modernizing his former work, Mr. Woodberry has found it necessary to modify very few of his opinions; he has, however, dealt more full [page 119:] with the question of Poe's weaknesses and with the controversial aspects of his subject, — for he has everywhere used a greater amplitude of detail. The study of Poe gains, by this method, as a record of fact, as a repository of much useful information : here, be it confessed, rather than in firmness or proportion. Professor Woodberry seems to have found it impossible to incorporate all of his material in these volumes; each volume is swelled by undigested notes in the form of appendices, along with various pieces justicatives and unpublished letters. As an encyclopedia of the professional and private adventures of Poe, this new memoir is indeed of the highest value. It is Professor Woodberry's modest suggestion that while “there will be other lives of Poe” he will be content “to have here edited with care the materials for his life,” making easier the way of the future “ideal biographer.” This sentence has phrased the final criticism of the book before us.

A newspaper paragrapher has justly enough remarked that some critics know better what Poe drank than what he wrote. Chacun son gout. Some find the details of a poet's amours no less attractive. We have had minute accounts of “George Sand and her Lovers,” of “Rousseau and the Women he Loved,” ad nauseam. In Poe's case this kind of interest centres upon his relations with the various “poetesses,” both before and after Virginia's death. It is true that no one in recent years has questioned the fidelity of Poe to his child-wife.

One of Professor Woodberry's chapters is, then, devoted to Helen Whitman. It will be remembered that the Rhode Island poetess was one of the two women whom Poe asked to marry him in the period of his widowerhood. It seems a great pity that these matters ever became the subject of controversy or even of discussion. They reflect no credit on any side — though the scandals which mischief-makers have sought to weave around them have fallen flat enough. In giving his account of Mrs. Whitman, and in quoting Poe's letters to her, written in the year 1848, the biographer has been obliged to follow the incomplete and garbled versions of Poe's letters supplied by Ingram. Now, however, we have “The Last Letters of Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman,” edited by Professor Harrison, and published “under the auspices of the University of Virginia.” Professor Harrison writes that in foreign countries it is the custom to celebrate the jubilee of a distinguished author by a Festschrift, “or Literary Memorial of [column 2:] some kind containing unpublished data, original research, or memorabilia of a notable kind”’; and that “it seemed appropriate that the Alma Mater of Edgar Allan Poe should carry out this graceful custom in honor of his Hundredth Birthday.” The memorial volume is handsomely printed, and very scrupulously prepared from the original manuscripts; its text is preceded by a reproduction of the unfamiliar miniature of Poe painted when he was aged twenty-six — the earliest known portrait. It is none the less difficult to share Professor Harrison's enthusiasm for these letters, that “rival the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ or the letters of Abelard and Héloise in interest and eloquence.” Their issue serves at least to emphasize the inaccuracy of the portions of these “‘ Last Letters’ previously reproduced — to emphasize certain inaccuracies even in Professor Woodberry's book. Words altered by the meddlesome Ingram; passages suppressed without indication of the fact; mistaken dates, — these remain to be corrected in the reprinting of the fourteenth chapter of this latest biography. Professor Woodberry attributes also to Miss Anna Blackwell, and not to Miss Lynch, the description of Mrs. Whitman given to Poe before his meeting her, referred to by him in his letter of October 1, 1848, which is reproduced in part (undated) on pages 266-267. These are matters of detail, however; the biographer's general statements remain true enough. “Poe had made up his mind,” is the conclusion, “to adopt Mrs. Shew's advice, and to try to save himself in what she had declared the only possible way, — marriage. He meant to extricate himself from his poverty by marrying a woman with property. This was his practical plan, wholly aside from his entanglement with any particular woman; but he worked it out under the conditions of his temperament. He had found romantic attachments consistent with his previous marriage, and he did not consider them inconsistent with his wooing. He was irresponsible”; and, besides, “the contact of such abnormal natures as Poe and Mrs. Whitman was full of danger.”

There is every reason to accept Professor Woodberry's affirmation that his attack upon some of the questions raised here was rather against his will — that it is only the circumstance that so many lies have been told that makes it worth while to tell the whole truth. As far as these last matters go, they only remind us of what Ik Marvel wrote, — words quoted in THE DIAL only a few months since. “He was never the [page 120:] same again” after the loss of Virginia — the culmination of his troubles. “It were better, perhaps, if the story of it all had never been told.” Had good taste been used from the beginning, it never would have been told. Yet, since part has been repeated, it is well that we should now have it all out and done with. And if the story is not, even to-day, complete, it is as fully documented as it is ever likely to be.

WARREN BARTON BLAKE.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 118:]

*THE LIFE OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, PERSONAL AND LITERARY. With his Chief Correspondence with Men of Letters. By George E. Woodberry. In two volumes, illustrated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

THE POE CULT, AND OTHER PAPERS. With a New Memoir. By Eugene L. Didier. New York: Broadway Publishing Co.

THE LAST LETTERS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE TO SARAH HELEN WHITMAN. Edited by James A. Harrison, in Commemoration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Poe's Birth, January 19, 1909. Published under the Auspices of the University of Virginia. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.