Text: Richard Lew Dawson, “A Genius and a Gentleman,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY) (no volume or issue number specified, but just 77th year), January 19, 1909, p. 7, cols. 2-3

[page 7, column 2, continued:]

A Genius and a Gentleman.

To Editor of the Democrat and Chronicle:

Sir: Only one Christian minister was announced to notice the centenary birthday of Edgar Allan Poe in the pulpit on Sunday, and all praise should be due to him if he had analyzed the great ministry of this spirit of beauty, so I went to hear him do so. On the back of his announcement were the words “this great American Poet.” and that implies that Poe did great work for the world. Yet all this modern Christian minister could offer to the memory of Poe was a rehash of the slanders of that detestable traitor Griswold, “for whom to-day no student or devotee of literature has anything but scorn and contempt, because Poe trusted him as his friend and literary executor and was betrayed by him from motives of low revenge for the criticisms he had received from Poe.

I have studied Poe all my literary life, and for the past three and a half years have read in the Library of Congress every book written about Poe or concerning his work. So I know what I am talking about, as this minister does not, for [column 3:] he repeats only the matter that la untrue, He said that I’ve at the University of Virginia was wont to drink a whole glass of whisky at one snip without a wink or tremor. That is lie No. 1. He said Poe's wife married him to reform him, but “his old habit returned.” That is lie No, 2. He went over that old story of Poe being drank A and used many times by corrupt politicians on the day of his death as repeater. That is lie No. 3, long ago exploded. He used the words “his diesipate1 repeatedly in his sermon, and that is lie No. 4. And he quotes only that most contemptible of curs and muck rakers, Griswold, and we know his charges were nothing but lies.

Poe never sought drink habitually. The testimony of his real friends in that he was a gentleman of the highest honor and Otto sweetest and most courtly souls that was upon earth. Let his own words settle this drink slander forever. In letter to a friend, the late Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, April 1, 1811, Poe said:

“I pledge you before God the solemn word of a gentleman that I am temperate even to rigor. * * * At no period of my life was I ever wont men call intemperate; I never was in the habit of intoxication. * * * My sole drink is water.”

I do not quote all of this letter, but the rest tells how he was tempted in Richmond and was made ill by doing what was daily habit of the other students. In a letter to George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848, Poe explains how his grief over his wife made him Insane, then says:

“I am constitutionally sensitive. * * * I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these periods of absolute unconsciousness I drink. * * * As a matter of course my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity.”

Now the voting slander and his death; Dr. John J. Moran, the physician who attended Poe in his last hours, says in his book: “A Defense of Poe.”

“I here affirm that Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the influence of any kind of intoxicating drink. I here avow that there is no evidence, and never has been, that Poe was ever seen drunk, or that he ever got drunk from the year 1845 to 1849. We have the clearest testimony that he was a temperate man.”

Then Dr. Moran details the particulars of Poe being followed by two men on return to Baltimore after starting to Philadelphia, These men waylaid, drugged and robbed Poe because he was well-dressed and had the bearing of man of distinction, They left him unconscious, and he was found by hackman, who called Moran, and this hackman and the conductor of the train testify that Poe was perfectly sober. The story of his being repeated as a voter is an absolute lie. Enough for this brief note. I can give the whole evidence if necessary. I hope this minister will next Sunday retract the slander he thoughtlessly repeated. Yet granting that he did not know was a malicious fabrication, he, as than of culture who realizes the greatness and high message of this sweet and noble spirit of beauty, and as a minister of God's mercy and love, should not hare told of the weaknesses, hut should have held up the good work of the genius.

RICHARD LEW DAWSON.

Rochester, Jan. 18, 1908.