Text: Eugene L. Didier, “Memoir of Edgar A. Poe,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 7-74

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The year of Edgar A. Poe's birth — 1809 — was an annus mirabilis in literary history. In that year were born Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edward Fitzgerald, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Darwin, William E. Gladstone, besides the subject of this Memoir. Among these illustrious names, Edgar A. Poe was the first in point of time, and, in the estimation of many, the first in genius. For three score years and more the time and place of his birth were unknown. His early biographers gave 1811 as the time, and Baltimore as the place of his birth. In order to ascertain the truth about the matter, I consulted Mrs. Maria Clemm, the poet's aunt and mother-in-law, who told me that he was born in Boston, on the 19th of January, 1809.

Although more than a dozen lives of Poe have been written, there is an amazing amount of ignorance upon the subject. This ignorance is not confined to the “average reader,” but I have known college professors — professors of English in reputable colleges — so grossly ignorant of the facts of Poe's life that they did [page 8:] not know when and where some of his most remarkable tales were written; and who accepted with childish credulity the malicious and mendacious stories told of him by his enemies.

David Poe, Junior, the father of the poet, was the eldest son of General David Poe, of Baltimore. As the younger Poe grew to manhood, he displayed a fondness for amateur acting, and, with some other youths, formed a Thespian Club which met in an attic room of his father's house. David Poe was a law student, but so great was his passion for the stage, that, in 1804, he threw aside his law books, and joined a troup of strolling players. C. D. Hopkins, the light comedian of the company, died in 1805, and in a few months, Poe married his widow, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Arnold. She was of English birth — pretty, clever, sprightly, vivacious, and a great favorite on the stage. After their marriage they continued their wandering theatrical life, traveling up and down the Atlantic Coast from Boston to Charleston. When they died — Mrs. Poe on December 8, 1811, in Richmond, her husband, in Norfolk, a few weeks previously — they left three helpless children — the eldest, William Henry Leonard, was adopted by his grandfather. General Poe; Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan, of Richmond, and [page 9:] Rosalie, by Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie, of the same city. The future poet was early taught to read, write, draw, and recite verses. On the 17th of June, 1815, Mr. and Mrs. Allan sailed for London, taken their adopted son with them. They remained abroad five years, during which time Edgar was a pupil of Dr. Bransby's Manor House School, at Stoke-Newington, near London. This school and its surroundings made a lasting impression upon the receptive mind of the young student, and he described it with minute accuracy in “William Wilson,” one of his most striking and original tales.

When the Allans returned to Richmond, in 1820, Edgar became successively a pupil of the schools of Joseph H. Clarke and William Burke. He stood high in all his classes, and was a great favorite of his teachers and fellow students. Professor Clarke told me that Edgar wrote genuine poetry even in those early days; he was a born poet; his poetical compositions were universally admitted to be the best in the school, while the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses. As a scholar, he was ambitious and always acquitted himself well in his studies. During the three years he was at Professor Clarke's school, he read the principal Latin and Greek authors; but he had no [page 10:] love for mathematics. He had a sensitive and tender heart, and would do anything to serve a friend. His nature was entirely free from selfishness, the predominant defect of boyhood. At the end of the scholastic year, in the summer of 1823, Professor Clarke removed from Richmond, upon which occasion Poe addressed a poetical tribute to him.

William Burke took Professor Clarke's school and most of his pupils; among them Edgar Poe. Several years ago Andrew Johnston, of Richmond, furnished me with the following particulars:

“I entered Mr. Burke's school on the first of October, 1823, and found Edgar A, Poe already there. I knew him before, but not well, there being two, if not three, years difference in our ages. He attended the school all through 1824, and part of 1825. Some time in the latter year he left. He was a much more advanced scholar than any of us; but there was no other class for him — that being the highest — and he had nothing to do, or but little, to keep at the head of the school. I dare say he liked it very well, for he was fond of general reading, and even then he wrote verses very clever for a boy of his age, and sometimes satirical. We all recognized and admired his great and varied talents, and were proud of [page 11:] him as the most distinguished schoolboy in Richmond.

“At that time Poe was slight in person, but well-made, active, sinewy, and graceful. In athletic exercises he was foremost: especially, he was the best, the most daring, and most enduring swimmer that I ever saw in the water. When about sixteen years old, he performed his well-known feat of swimming from Richmond to Warwick, a distance of five or six miles. He was accompanied by two boats, and it took him several hours to accomplish the task, the tide changing during the time.

“Poe was always neat in his dress, but not foppish. His disposition was amiable, and his manners pleasant and courteous.”

After leaving Burke's school in March, 1825, Mr. Allan placed Edgar under the best private tutors in order to prepare him for the University of Virginia. He devoted himself to the classics, modern languages, and belles-lettres. Richmond at that time, as now, was celebrated for its polished society. Into this society Edgar Poe was early welcome — a boy in years, but a man in mind and manners. The refined grace and courtesy toward women that ever distinguished him may have been then acquired in the best society of Virginia's beautiful capital. [page 12:]

On the 14th of February, 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia. The studies which he selected were ancient and modern languages, and he attended lectures in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. He read and wrote Latin and French with ease and accurately, and, at the close of the session, was mentioned as excellent in those languages. His literary tastes were marked while at the University, and among the professors he was regarded as well behaved and studious. At the end of the session, December 15, 1826, he graduated in Latin and French, and returned to Richmond. Soon after his return, Mr. Allan placed him in his counting room, but the future poet could not brook the dull life of a clerk, and, in a few weeks, took French leave. Now commenced that restless, wandering life which continued until the end. In the Spring of 1827, he found himself in Boston, his native city, where his mother had made many friends before his birth. Here the first edition of his “Tamerlane and Other Poems,” was printed — forty copies. This tiny volume of less than forty pages has become one of the rarest books in the world, only three or four copies are known to be in existence, and has sold as high as $2,550.

Having no money, and no prospect of making [page 13:] any, on May 26, 1827, he enlisted as a private soldier in the United States Army, under the name of Edgar A. Perry, and was assigned to Battery H of the 1st artillery. After a short service in Boston his battery was ordered to Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, S. C. It was while stationed there that the story of a buried treasure was suggested to him, which was afterward made the subject of one of his most remarkable tales — “The Gold Bug.” By 1829 he was at Fortress Monroe, his good conduct and strict attention to his duties having earned his promotion to the rank of sergeant-major. The officers under whom he served soon discovered that he was far superior in education to his position, and he was employed as company clerk and assistant in the Commissary Department. The discovery of Poe's army record, taken from the Records of the War Department at Washington, disproves at once and forever the romantic story that he went to Europe after leaving the University of Virginia for the purpose of engaging in the struggle for Grecian independence, to which the death of Byron had attracted the attention of the world.

On February 28, 1829, his kind, indulgent mother, by adoption, Mrs. Allan, died. Her death was a great misfortune to Poe, as she [page 14:] had always stood between him and her stern, relentless husband. On April 15, 1829, having secured a substitute, our sergeant-major was honorably discharged from the army, and paid a visit to Baltimore, probably in order to look up his relatives there. His second book, “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems,” was published in Baltimore in 1829 — a thin volume of seventy-one pages. A copy of this edition, enriched with notes by the author, has advanced in price from $75, in 1892, to $1,825, in 1903.

Mr. Allan, wishing to place his wayward ward where he could earn a living, and, at the same time, be free from all future responsibility, obtained his appointment to West Point. He entered the academy on July 1, 1830, perhaps the most brilliant and gifted cadet that ever went there. He was in the flower of youth, and in the first bloom of that remarkable beauty of face and form which distinguished him through life. His rich, dark hair fell in abundant clusters over his high, white, magnificent forehead, beneath which shone the most beautiful, the most expressive of mortal eyes. He was of medium height, but elegantly formed, his bearing being proud, lofty, and fearless. [page 15:]

Poe stood high in his classes, especially in French and mathematics — his great fault was his neglect of, and apparent contempt for, his military duties: His capricious temper made him, at times, utterly oblivious or indifferent to the ordinary routine of roll-calls, drills, and guard duty. These were all and each utterly distasteful to the young poet, whose soul was filled with a burning ambition. He turned with delight from military tactics to the classic pages of Virgil; he neglected mathematics for the fascinating essays of Macaulay, which were just then beginning to charm the world; he escaped from the evening parade to wander along the beautiful banks of the Hudson, meditating his tuneful “Israfel,” and, perhaps, planning “Ligeia,” or, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

These irregular habits subjected the cadet to frequent arrests and punishments, and effectually prevented his learning to discharge the duties of a soldier. Before Poe had been at West Point six months, he found the rigid discipline so intolerable that he asked permission of Mr. Allan to resign. This was peremtorily refused. The reason was obvious: within a year after the death of his first wife, Mr. Allan married Louise Gabrielle Patterson, of New Jersey, and, a son being born, Edgar Poe [page 16:] was no longer the heir to his princely fortune, and he wished to keep his ward in an honorable profession which would give him a support for life. Hence he refused to allow him to leave West Point — consent of father or guardian being required before a cadet could resign. But Poe was determined to get away from the academy, with or without Mr. Allan's consent. So he commenced a regular and deliberate neglect of duties and disobedience of rules: he cut his classes, shirked the drill, and refused to do guard duty. The desired result followed: on January 7th, 1831, cadet Edgar A. Poe was brought before a general court-marshal, charged with “gross neglect of all duty, and disobedience of orders.” The accused promptly pleaded “guilty” to all the specifications, and, to his great delight, was sentenced “to be dismissed from the service of the United States.”

About the time that Poe was dismissed from West Point, he published a third volume, entitled “Poems, by Edgar A. Poe.” The volume contained “Al Aaraaf,” and “Tamerlane,” from the edition of 1829, omitting all the others, but adding the exquisite lines “To Helen,” which has won the admiration of all readers; the tuneful “Israfel,” “Irene” (afterward remodeled into “The Sleeper”), and four [page 17:] smaller poems. The book was dedicated to the United States Corps of Cadets, an honor which the cadets did not deserve, for they declared the verses “ridiculous doggerel.”

When Poe was dismissed from West Point, he was in the situation of Adam when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden — the world was all before where to choose. He was homeless, penniless, friendless. He had been taught to spend thousands, but had never been taught to earn a dollar. In this emergency he made his way to Richmond, and presented himself at the home of his youth — the only home he had ever known — the Allan mansion on the corner of Fifth and Main Streets. His reception was not that of the Prodigal Son when he returned to his father's house: no fatted calf was killed — no friends were invited to meet him — no feast was spread to welcome the wanderer home. He was coldly received, where he had once been the idolized child of the house. We all know the influence of a young wife upon a fond, doting old husband. The second Mrs, Allan looked with disfavor upon Poe's presence in the house, and when he appeared, he was told that his former room, which was always kept ready for him by the first Mrs. Allan, was now a guest chamber, and he was assigned [page 18:] to a small room at the back of the house, which had been occupied by Mrs, Allan's maid. The proud and high-spirited young man keenly felt this indignity, and, refusing to allow his satchel to be carried to the room, determined to see Mrs. Allan. A stormy interview followed, and Poe left the house forever. A letter written to me by a Richmond lady, who claimed to be “a confident of Mr. Poe's,” says the cause of the quarrel between Poe and Allan “was very simple and very natural under the circumstances, and completely exonerates Poe fiom ingratitude to his adopted father.” Whatever was the cause, the result was that Poe left the house as already mentioned. Writing many years afterward to one who possessed his entire confidence, Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, he used this passionate language:

“By the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that I am incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek or to yours. If I have erred at all, in this regard, it has been on the side of what the world would call a Quixotic sense of the honorable — of the chivalrous. The indulgence of this sense has been the true voluptuousness of my life. It was for this species of luxury that in early youth I [page 19:] deliberately threw away from me a large fortune, rather than endure a trivial wrong.”

After the affair with Mrs. Allan, just mentioned, Poe probably went to Baltimore, and resided with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm. For the next two years all trace of him is lost, excepting a letter which he wrote on May 6th, 1831, in which he asked William Gwynn, a Baltimore editor, for employment in his office. Not meeting with any encouragement, he next applied to Dr. N. C. Brooks for a position in the school which he had recently established at Riestertown [[Reisterstown]], in Baltimore County. Fifty-eight years afterward. Dr. Brooks told me of this, and said he regretted at the time there was no vacancy, as he knew that Poe was an accomplished scholar.

During those two years Poe was not idle, for, when the Baltimore Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]], in the summer of 1833, offered one hundred dollars for the best prose story, and fifty dollars for the best poem, he submitted his “Tales of the Folio Club,” comprising “A Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” “Adventures of Hans Pfaall,” “Berenice,” “Lionizing,” “A Tale of the Ragged Mountain,” etc. He also sent in for competition a poem, “The Coliseum.” Both prizes were awarded to Poe by the committee, [page 20:] but, as it was not deemed expedient by the proprietor of the Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] to bestow both prizes upon the same person, he was awarded the hundred-dollar prize for “A Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” and an unknown local genius was given the fifty dollars for the best poem, which was no poem at all.

The hundred-dollar prize was the first money that Poe ever received from literary work, and, from that time until his death, he never earned a dollar except by his pen. He was at that time twenty-four years old, unconscious that there was before him sixteen years of suffering and sorrow, of heroic struggle, of splendid achievement, and immortal fame!

In winning the hundred-dollar prize, Poe won, at the same time, a good and true friend in John P. Kennedy, who was one of the three gentlemen who composed the committee of award. Every admirer of Poe should appreciate Mr. Kennedy's kindness to the young poet. He alone, of the committee, extended a helping hand to the unknown but ambitious young author. He invited him to his house, made him welcome at his table, and furnished him with a saddle horse, that he might take exercise whenever he pleased. He did more: he introduced him to Thomas W. White, proprietor of the Southern Literary Messenger, [page 21:] then recently started in Richmond, and recommended him as being “very clever with his pen, classical, and scholar-like.” Mr. White invited Poe to send him a contribution, and, in the March number, 1835, his strangely beautiful tale, “Berenice,” was published in the Messenger, and attracted immediate attention. From that time, for two years, Poe was a regular contributor to that magazine, and was rapidly making his name and that of the Messenger known through the country.

Malice and ignorance have caused Poe to be charged with pride and ingratitude. That these vices were foreign to his nature, we have abundant evidence, all through Im life. Here are two examples which occurred at the period about which we are now writing: He visited each of the gentlemen who awarded him the prize, and thanked them for their approval of his literary work. Again, in order to show Poe's gratitude to Mr. Kennedy, I quote two passages from a letter written to Mr. White, dated Baltimore, May 30, 1835. He had written a criticism of Kennedy's once famous historical novel, “Horse-Shoe Robinson,” and apologizing for the hasty sketch he sent, instead of the thorough review which he intended, says, “At the time I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, [page 22:] and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy proved himself a true friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many acts of generosity and attention.” In that same letter, in answer to Mr. White's query, whether he was satisfied with the pay he was receiving for his work on the Messenger, Poe wrote: “I reply that I am, entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them.”

For two or three years, Edgar Poe had been engaged in the most delightful of occupations — the instruction of a young girl, singularly beautiful, interesting, and truly loved. For two or three years Virginia — his starry-eyed young cousin — had been his pupil. Never had teacher so lovely a pupil, never a pupil so tender a teacher. They were both young; she was a child ——

Under the name of Eleonora, Edgar tells the story of their love: “The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the seraphim, and she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers — I, and my cousin, and her mother.” [page 23:]

Mr. White soon saw how valuable to his magazine were the contributions of Edgar Poe, and in the summer of 1835 he offered him the position of assistant editor of the Messenger, at a salary of ten dollars a week. He gladly accepted this offer, and prepared to remove to Richmond immediately, and his letters show that, on the 20th of August, 1835, he was in that city.

In spite of his rising fortune and increasing fame, he felt most keenly the separation from “her he loved so dearly.” For years Virginia had been his daily companion and confidante. Like Abelard and Heloise, they had but one home and one heart. In the first days of this separation he wrote his friend, Mr. Kennedy, a letter, dated Richmond, September 11, 1835, in which, after expressing a deep sense of his gratitude for his frequent kindness and assistance, he says: “I am suffering under a depression of spirits such as I never felt before. I have struggled in vain against the influence of this melancholy; you will believe me when I say that I am still miserable, in spite of the great improvement in my circumstances. Write me immediately; convince me that it is worth one's while — that it is at all necessary — to live, and you will prove indeed my friend. Persuade me to do what is right. [page 24:] I do, indeed, mean this. Write me, then, and quickly. Your words will have more weight with me than the words of others, for you were my friend when no one else was.”

So great satisfaction did Poe give by his work as assistant editor of the Messenger, that, in December, 1835, White made him the editor of the magazine, and increased his salary to $800 a year.

As his pecuniary prospects brightened, his first thought was to bring his aunt and cousin to Richmond, where, in May, 1836, Edgar and Virginia were married.

During the nineteen months that Poe was with the Messenger, the circulation of the magazine increased from 700 to 5,000. This remarkable increase of circulation was chiefly due to Poe's brilliant contributions, which attracted the attention of the whole country. Between December, 1835, and September, 1836, he wrote ninety-four reviews, more or less elaborate, but all striking. Even at that early period of his literary life, he showed that artistic finish of style which distinguished his whole career, and that power of analysis and abhorrence of careless writing which was always one of his marked characteristics. These early critiques were not by any means condemnatory. In fact, only three of the whole [page 25:] ninety-four were decidedly harsh. No American critic had a more sincere appreciation of literary excellence than Poe, and he showed it in his criticism. George Parsons Lathrop, whose worship of Hawthorne was inspired by his love of Hawthorne's lovely daughter, Rose, was unjust and unappreciative of Poe, but he was forced to admit that, “we owe to Poe the first agile and determined movement of criticism in this country, and, although it was a startling dexterity which winged his censorial shafts, he was excellently fitted for the critic's office in one way, because he knew positively of what standards he meant to judge by, and kept up an inflexible hostility to any offense against them. He had an acute instinct in matters of literary form; it amounted, indeed, to a passion, as all his instincts and perceptions did; he had, also, the knack of finding reasons for his opinions, and of stating them well. All this is essential to the equipment of the critic.”

An estimate of Poe as a poet by the same unfriendly critic is worth preserving: “As a mere-potency, Poe must be rated almost highest among American poets; and high among prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and frightful energy crowded into such small space. . . . Let us call Poe a positive genius. He would have flourished [page 26:] anywhere in much the same way as he did in America.”

Hawthorne said: “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister and live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, I do not know that there is anything for me but to be an author.” His relatives urged him to go into business, his genius forbade it. He was made to feel that he was a useless dreamer, and this drove him in upon himself; but he persisted. Poe must have felt the same way, saying, “I do not want to be a soldier and kill men, and I won’t; I will be an author;” and he was. Hawthorne was the natural result of the grim, gloomy, stern Puritan spirit, but Poe had no literary ancestors: he stands alone as a strange, unique, mysterious, fascinating figure in the literature of the world, representing no country, no race, no time. His genius was alien to American soil. He stands alone among American poets as Shakespeare stands alone among the poets of the world. He had no predecessor; he has had no successors. His appearance in the literary world was as sudden and unexpected as it was strange and wonderful. His original and distinct genius astonished the world like a new, brilliant planet suddenly appearing in the heavens. [page 27:]

Poe's message to the world was that man does not live by bread alone — that there is a higher, nobler, grander ideal to be realized than money-getting, commercialism, materialism. Poe's genius was a revelation to the world — his extraordinary gifts elevated him far above all his contemporaries, and placed him as a star, apart. His own countrymen were not ready to receive him when he came, and he suffered accordingly. One poet like Poe is worth more to the world than a hundred Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Goulds, Carnegies, and Harrimans. Such men are the natural product of American life, but Almighty God alone can produce a poet of inspired genius. Poe had the culture that sometimes is lacking in genius; he had the refinement which is sometimes wanting in great! minds. It is not the millionaire, but the poet, that makes life worthy living. The millionaire is really a blot upon American civilization; the poet gives life a tone and a color. It has been! said that the memories of kings and conquerors flit like troubled ghosts through the pages of history; but it is only the name of the thinker of great thoughts, the poet of rare gifts that foreign nations and after generations cherish. Like Bacon, Poe might have left his “name to the next ages and to foreign nations.” For [page 28:] his fame has grown steadily since his tragical death, not only in his own land, but among “foreign nations.”

It should be mentioned that Poe was only twenty-six years old when he was made editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, and that, in less than two years, he gave it a commanding position among American magazines. Perhaps no similar enterprise ever prospered so largely in its commencement, and none in the same length of time — not even Blackwood, in the brilliant days of Maginn, ever published so many dazzling articles from the same pen. Strange stories of the German school, akin to the most fanciful legends of the Rhine, fascinating and astonishing the reader with the verisimilitude of their improbability, appeared in the same number with lyrics plaintive and wondrous sweet, the earliest vibrations of those chords which have since sounded through the world.

In January, 1837, the blood of the wanderer, which he derived from his actressmother, drove him from Richmond to New York, in which city Mrs. Clemm started a boarding house on Carmine Street. One of the few boarders was William Gowans, the eminent second-hand bookseller, who has left [page 29:] an interesting account of Poe at that time: “For eight months or more ‘one house contained us, as one table fed.’ During that time I saw much of Edgar A. Poe, and had an opportunity of conversing with him often, and, I must say that, I never saw him the least affected with liquor, nor even descend to any vice, while he was one of the most courteous, gentlemanly, and intelligent companions I have met with during my journeyings and haltings through divers divisions of the globe; beside, he had an extra inducement to be a good man as well as a good husband, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and loveliness; her eye could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate; a temper and a disposition of surpassing sweetness; besides, she seemed as much devoted to him and his every interest as a young mother to her first-born. Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing countenance, what the ladies would call decidedly handsome.”

Poe's object in removing to New York, at this time, was because he thought that city offered greater advantages to a professional man of letters than the provincial town of Richmond. He was promised a position on the New York Review, but that periodical was already in the throes of dissolution, and did not [page 30:] long survive the financial panic of 1837. Poe's only contribution to it was an elaborate review of Stephens’ “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea, and the Holy Land.”

In the number of the Southern Literary Messenger which announced Poe's retirement, Mr. White promised that he would “continue to furnish its columns from time to time with the effusions of his vigorous and powerful pen.” In the January number of the Messenger, 1837, which was the last under Poe's editorship, appeared the first installment of “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” which was continued in the February number, and afterward published in book form in New York and London. As usual with Poe's works, it attracted more attention abroad than at home. It should be mentioned that he never relinquished his early interest in the Messenger, but wrote for it as long as he lived. As some of his earliest, so some of his latest, writings first appeared in that magazine.

Poe's first residence in New York lasted from the winter of 1837 to the summer of 1838, when he removed to Philadelphia. Soon after his arrival in the Quaker City, he was asked by his old friend. Dr. N. C. Brooks, to write the leading article for the first number of The American Museum, a monthly magazine [page 31:] about to be started in Baltimore, and destined to add to the collection of dead magazines for which that city enjoys an unenviable reputation; in fact, while many magazines have been born and died in the Monumental City, it can boast of no living monthly, although it boasts of a population of 600,000 inhabitants.

Dr. Brooks suggested that Poe should write an article on Washington Irving. In answer to this request, Poe wrote a letter which Professor Harrison credits to an Englishman who claims to have “discovered” Poe, but he did not “discover” this letter, for I saw the original, in 1873, and printed it in my first “Life of Poe,” which was published in 1876, although the book was dated for the next year. From my work, the Englishman copied the letter into his Memoir, which was not published until 1880. Poe did not write the article on Washington Irving for Dr. Brooks, but the first number of the American Museum contained “Ligeia,” which its author regarded as his best story, because it displays the highest range of imagination. In this same magazine he published his clever satirical sketch, “The Signora Psyche Zenobia,” “Literary Small Talk,” and the dainty, airy, exquisite “Haunted Palace.” A Northern critic, who is not over-favorable [page 32:] to Poe, pronounces “Ligeia” a story “as faultless as humanity can fashion.”

Poe had several homes during the six years that he lived in Philadelphia — from 1838 to 1844 — but he resided for the longest time at Spring Garden, then a suburb of the city. It was there that Captain Mayne Reid visited him, and wrote a most delightful description of his home and family. The house was small, but furnished with much taste; flowers bloomed around the porch, and the singing of birds was heard. It was, indeed, the very home for a poet. “In this humble domicile,” says Mayne Reid, “I have spent some of the pleasantest hours of my life — certainly, some of the most intellectual. They were passed in the company of the poet and his wife — a lady angelically beautiful in person, and not less beautiful in spirit. No one who remembers the dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter of the South — her face so exquisitely lovely — her gentle, graceful demeanor — no one who has been an hour in her society, but will indorse what I have said of this lady, who was the most delicate realization of the poet's rarest ideal. But the bloom upon her cheek was too pure, too bright for earth. It was consumption's color — that sadly beautiful light that beckons to an early grave.

“With the poet and his wife there lived another [page 33:] person — Mrs. Clemm. She was the mother of Mrs. Poe, and one of those proud Southern women who have inspired the song and chivalry of their beautiful land. Mrs. Clemm was the ever-vigilant guardian of the house, watching over the comfort of her two children, keeping everything neat and clean, so as to please the fastidious eyes of the poet — going to market, and bringing home little delicacies that their limited means would allow; going to editors with a poem, a critique, or a story, and often returning without the much-needed money.”

This is a very pleasing glimpse at the home life of our poet, and all the more valuable, coming as it does, spontaneously from a foreigner. Such scenes show more truly a man's real character than volumes of human analysis. I shall close this personal description of the poet with some particulars which Mrs. Clemm furnished me toward the close of her life, and which I took down in shorthand at the time: “Eddie had no idea of the value of money. I had to attend to all his pecuniary affairs. I even bought his clothes for him; he never bought a pair of gloves or a cravat for himself; he was very charitable, and would empty his pockets to a beggar. He loved Virginia with a tenderness and a devotion which [page 34:] no words can express, and he was the most affectionate of sons to me.”

Not long after Poe's removal to Philadelphia, he was engaged as a contributor for The Gentleman's Magazine, which was owned by William E. Burton, an English comedian, who is better remembered as an actor than as an editor and publisher. He drew immediate attention to the magazine by his powerful criticisms and strange, fascinating tales. Among the latter was “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which is regarded by most readers as Poe's masterpiece in imaginative fiction; but, as already mentioned, he gave that preference to “Ligeia.” It has been said that “both have the unquestionable stamp of genius. The analysis of the growth of madness in one, and the thrilling revelation of the existence of a first wife in the person of a “second, in the other, are made with consummate skill; and the strange, and solemn and fascinating beauty, which informs the style, and invests the circumstances of both, drugs the mind* and makes us forget the improbabilities of their general design.”

So well pleased was Burton with Poe's contributions to The Gentleman's Magazine, that, in May, 1839, he made him its editor. The [page 35:] pay was small — ten dollars a week — a paltry salary for a man of Poe's genius and reputation. In the Autumn of 1840, Burton sold his magazine to George R. Graham, owner of The Casket. The two periodicals were merged into one under the name of Graham's Magazine, with Poe as its editor. In two years he raised the circulation from 5,000 to 50,000. In the April, 1841, number of Graham's appeared the extraordinary, analytical story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which first introduced him to French readers, and, also, made his name known to the French courts. A Paris Bohemian, having come across the story, dressed it up to suit the Parisian palate, published it in Le Commerce, as an original tale, under the name of “L’Orangotang.” Not long afterward, another French journal. La Quotidienne, published a translation of the story under another name. Thereupon Le Steele charged La Quotidienne with having stolen said feuilleton from one previously published in Le Commerce. This led to a war of words between the editors of La Quotidienne and Le Siecle. The quarrel became so warm that it was taken to the law courts for settlement, where the aforesaid Bohemian proved that he had stolen the story from Monsieur Edgar Poe, an American [page 36:] writer. It was shown that the writer in La Quotidienne was himself an impudent plagiarist, for he had taken Monsieur Poe's story without a word of acknowledgment; while the editor of Le Siecle was forced to admit that not only had he never read any of Poe's works, but had not even heard of him. The public attention having been thus directed to Poe, his best tales were translated by Madame Isabelle Mennier, and published in several French magazines. The leading Parisian journals showered praises upon our author for the remarkable power and amazing ingenuity displayed in these tales. Many years afterward, Charles Baudelaire, having thoroughly imbued himself with the spirit of Poe's prose writings, published a translation of them in five volumes. Poe is the only American author who is known, or, at least, popular, in France; and that he is known there is due, in a great measure, to the patient industry of Baudelaire.

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was followed, in November, 1841, by “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” in which the scene of the murder of a cigar girl, named Mary Rogers, in the vicinity of New York, was transferred to Paris, and, by a wonderful train of analytical reasoning, the mystery that surrounded the affair was completely disentangled. These, [page 37:] and a succeeding story, “The Purloined Letter,” are the most ingenious tales of ratiocination in the English language, and were the foundation of the modern detective story, so successfully carried out by Conan Doyle, the creator of “Sherlock Holmes,” Robert Louis Stevenson and others, who have frankly admitted their indebtedness to Poe. It will be interesting to know that Monsieur G —— , the Prefect of the Parisian police, who is mentioned in these stories, was Monsieur Grisquet, for many years Chief of the Paris Police, who died in February, 1866.

The most extraordinary of Poe's successful efforts at ratiocination was that in which he pointed out what must be the plot of Dickens’ celebrated novel, “Barnaby Rudge,” when only the beginning of the story had been published. In the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of May I, 1841, Poe printed what he called “a prospective notice” of the novel, in which he used the following words:

“That Barnaby is the son of the murdered man may not appear evident to our readers; but we will explain: The person murdered is Mr. Reuben Haredale. His steward (Mr. Rudge, Senior), and his gardener, are missing. At first both are suspected. ‘Some months afterward,’ in the language of the [page 38:] story, ‘the steward's body, scarcely to be recognized, but by his clothes and the watch and the ring he wore, was found at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast, where he has been stabbed by a knife,’ etc., etc.

“Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts that the steward's body was found; he has put the words in the mouth of one of his characters. His design is to make it appear in the dénouement that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener, then went to his master's chamber, murdered him, was interrupted by his (Rudge's) wife, whom he seized and held by the wrist, to prevent her giving the alarm, that he then, after possessing himself of the booty desired, returned to the gardener's room, exchanged clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterward discovered at so late a period that the features could not be identified.”

Readers who are familiar with the plot of “Barnaby Rudge,” will perceive that the differences between Poe's preconceived ideas and the actual facts of the story are immaterial. Dickens expressed his admiring appreciation of Poe's analysis of “Barnaby Rudge.” He would not have expressed the same appreciation [page 39:] of Poe's opinion of him, when reviewing the completed novel. At the time when Charles Dickens was the most popular writer in the world, Edgar Poe (who could never be made to bow his supreme intellect to any idol) boldly declared that he “failed peculiarly in pure narrative,” pointing out, at the same time, several grammatical mistakes of the great Boz. He also showed that Dickens occasionally lapsed into a gross imitation of what itself is a gross imitation — the manner of Charles Lamb — a manner based in the Latin construction. He further showed that Dickens's great success as a novelist consisted in the delineation of character, and that those characters were grossly exaggerated caricatures — all of which is now admitted by judicious readers; but it required considerable courage to announce such an opinion at the time when Poe proclaimed it at the height of Dickens's popularity. When Dickens visited the United States in 1842, Poe had two long interviews with him. He made a lasting impression upon the impressible Boz, and when he made his last visit to this country in 1867-8, he called upon Mrs. Clemm, in Baltimore, and presented her with $150.00.

Poe's restless spirit grew tired of the “endless toil” of the editorial work on Graham's [page 40:] Magazine, and he endeavored to obtain more certain and more remunerative employment. His intimate friend and lifetime correspondent, F. W. Thomas, of Baltimore, author of “Clinton Bradshaw,” “East and West,” and other novels of some repute sixty or seventy years ago, had obtained a Government clerkship in one of the Departments in Washington. In 1842, Poe wrote to Thomas, expressing a wish to get a similar position, saying that he “would be glad to get almost any appointment — even a five hundred dollar clerkship — so that I have something independent of letters for a subsistence. To coin one's brain into silver, at the nod of a master, is, I am thinking, the hardest task in the world.” At the conclusion of his letter, he says he hopes some day to have a “beautiful little cottage, completely buried in vines and flowers.” How fortunately for the world that Edgar Poe did not secure “even a five hundred dollar clerkship!” Had he settled down to the dull routine of official life in Washington, he would probably not have written “The Raven,” “Eureka,” “The Literati of New York,” “Ulalume,” “The Bells,” and other productions that form an imperishable portion of American literature.

About a year after Poe removed to Philadelphia, [page 41:] he collected his stories, including “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Ms. Found in a Bottle, “Morella,” “The Assignation,” and others less known, and published them, in 1840, under the title of “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.” The edition was small, and small was the notice it received from the press and the public. The publishers allowed Poe no remuneration for this first edition of his Prose Tales, and gave him only twenty copies for distribution. Two years after the book was issued, he was informed that the edition was not all sold, and that it had not paid expenses. Yet, within a few years, this same edition of these same tales has sold at a fabulous price at the book auctions in New York.

During his early residence in Philadelphia, Poe edited a work on Conchology which caused some controversy at the time, of little interest then, and of no interest now.

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 [page 42:] book was dedicated to her, as “To the noblest of her sex, with the most enthusiastic admiration, and with the most sincere esteem.” 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 of himself, “the most obscure literary man in America.” Poe's estimate of Willis, Halleck, Cooper, Simms, Longfellow, and other contemporaries, was eminently just. He placed the last the first among American poets; the position which Poe himself now holds, in the opinion of the leading scholars of England, France and Germany. It should be added that he qualified this praise of Longfellow by declaring that he was over-rated as an original poet.

Edmund Clarence Stredman [[Stedman]], who had only a half-hearted appreciation of Poe, was honest enough to say that he “was a critic of exceptionable ability,” and agreed with James Russell Lowell that “his more dispassionate judgments have all been justified by time,” and that he “was a master in his own chosen field” of poetry. It has been well and truly [page 43:] said by an unknown writer in the Atlantic Monthly, of April, 1896, in an article on “The New Poe,” that until “we have a critic of the History of the Intellectual Development of this Country during the 19th Century, . . . it is impossible to form any conclusions in regard to Poe that can be considered final.” Charles Leonard Moore, in a carefully written article in the Chicago Dial of February 16, 1903, pays a just tribute to Poe's critical powers when he says: “Undoubtedly, Poe performed one of the most difficult feats of criticism. With almost unerring instinct, he separated the? wheat from the chaff of his contemporary literature.” In this same article, Mr. Moore declares that “Poe is the most sublime poet since Milton — a sublimity which stirs even in his most grotesque and fanciful sketch. It rears full-fronted in the concluding pages of the ‘Narrative of A. Gordon Pym.’ It thrills us in the many-colored chambers of ‘The Mask of the Red Death.’ It overwhelms us with horror in ‘The Murders of the Rue Morgue.’ It is sublime and awe-inspiring in ‘Ligeia,’ ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ in ‘Ulalume,’ and ‘The Raven.’ He reaches a climax of almost too profound thought in ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una,’ ‘The Power of Words,’ and ‘Eureka.’ His sublimity accounts [page 44:] for his fate with the American public. A true Democracy, it abhors greatness and ridicules sublimity.” Mr. Moore says, further: “The total effect of his work is lofty and noble. His men are all brave and his women are pure. He is the least vulgar of mortals. In every land which boasts of literary culture, or civil enlightenment, Poe's poems and tales are read, and he is regarded as a distinctive genius.”

The first four years of Poe's residence in Philadelphia — 1838-42 — were the most productive of his literary life. These four years show the most extraordinary amount of firstclass literary work that has even been accomplished in this country in the same space of time. Unfortunately, the author of all of this fine, artistic work received only a pittance as his pecuniary reward. All this time he was poor — desperately poor — and in the last of these four years of surpassing achievements, a great affliction came upon him — his wife — his idolized Virginia — broke a blood-vessel in singing. From that hour until her death, five years afterwards, the delicate condition of his wife's health was a constant source of care and anxiety to the devoted husband. While struggling against poverty, and in the midst of the most disheartening surroundings, his [page 45:] wonderful imagination filled his soul with dreams of princely palaces and royal gardens, in which lived and moved forms of more than earthly beauty.

Friends and foes alike agree in testifying to Poe's tender devotion to his darling wife, “in sickness and in health.” The most unrelenting of his enemies mentions having been sent for to visit him “during a period of illness, caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife.” George R. Graham, in a generous defense of the dead poet, said, “I shall never forget how solicitous of the happiness of his wife and mother-in-law he was, whilst editor of Graham's Magazine. His whole efforts seemed to be to procure the comfort and welfare of his home. . . . His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty which he felt was fading before his eyes. I have seen him hovering over her, when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born; her slightest cough causing in him a shudder, a heart-chill that was visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and remembrance of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in that loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. It was this hourly anticipation of [page 46:] her loss that made him a sad and thoughtful man, and lent an undying melody to his undying song.”

In the spring of 1842, Poe retired from Graham's Magazine. His reputation as the most brilliant editor in America; his fame as a poet and as a writer of purely imaginative tales, and his success in making Graham's Magazine the most profitable in the United States, made him feel the very natural ambition of having a magazine of his own — a magazine in which he would be perfectly untrammeled, entirely free from the control of timid publishers. With this object, he issued the prospectus of a magazine to be called The Stylus. Contributors and illustrators were engaged; the day was fixed for the appearance of the first number; everything was ready but the most important thing of all — the money to publish it. So the enterprise was temporarily abandoned, to be taken up again and again until the close of Poe's life.

In 1843 he won the hundred dollar prize offered by the Dollar Magazine [[Dollar Newspaper]], of Philadelphia, for the best short story. It was one of his most popular tales, “The Gold Bug,” which gained this prize. It is founded on the discovery of the supposed buried treasure of Captain Kyd. The story displays a remarkable [page 47:] illustration of Poe's theory that human ingenuity can construct no enigma which the human mind, by proper application, cannot solve. The chief interest centres on the solution of an abstruse cryptogram.

This one hundred dollar prize came when Poe was much in need of money, for after leaving Graham's Magazine, he was without any regular work during the rest of his stay in Philadelphia. He wrote for James Russell Lowell's short-lived magazine. The Pioneer, and some notable reviews for Graham's Magazine. After the issue of three numbers, The Pioneer was discontinued, and Lowell was very much distrest because he could not pay his contributors, among them Poe, who, although wanting the money, wrote to the unfortunate editor: “As for the few dollars you owe me ($35.00), give yourself not one moment's concern about them. I am poor, but must be much poorer, indeed, when I even think of demanding them.” Lowell requited Poe's generosity very ungratefully, when, in A Fable for the Critics, he thus characterized his former friend:

Poe showed a great deal of “heart” when he refused to ask Lowell for money due him for his contributions to The Pioneer. In return for Lowell's base ingratitude, Poe denounced him as “one of the most rabid of the Abolition fanatics — a fanatic simply for the sake of fanaticism.”

In April, 1844, Poe again removed to New York, hoping to find a better field for his literary work than Philadelphia had proved since he retired from Graham's Magazine. On Saturday, April 13, within a week after his arrival in New York, the Sun, of that city, published his famous “Balloon Hoax.” In this extraordinary narrative, Poe anticipated the wonderful achievements of the twentieth century in crossing the Atlantic. It created an immense sensation at the time. In the same month, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” was published in Godey's Lady's Book, and, in June, his poem, “Dreamland,” in Graham's Magazine.

In the spring of 1844, Poe resumed his correspondence with James Russell Lowell. From [page 49:] the first of these letters, dated May 24, 1844, we learn that six of his stories were in the hands of different editors waiting publication. Poe was an industrious, painstaking, fascinating writer; he was known as the author of some of the best short stories that had ever been published in an American magazine yet, after ten years of unceasing work, he could not find a ready market for his writings, and when published, he received a wretched remuneration for the highest kind of imaginative prose — compositions that have taken a front rank in the literature of the world.

In October, 1844, Poe was engaged by N. P. Willis as assistant on the Evening Mirror. For a small weekly salary, the greatest American writer was obliged to drudge seven hours in a corner of the Evening Mirror office — from nine to four — “ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the day.” Willis furnishes the following tribute to his gifted “assistant”: “With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and, occasionally, a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, [page 50:] beautiful, intellectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him with deferential courtesy, and, to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too deeply with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously assented — far more yielding than most men, we thought, on points so excusably sensitive. With a prospect of taking the lead in another periodical, he, at last, voluntarily gave up his employment with us, and, through all this considerable period, we had seen but one presentment of the man — a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good feeling by his unvaring [[unvarying]] deportment and ability.”

The other periodical, in which he was “to take the lead,” was The Broadway Journal, a weekly paper which had been started in New York in January, 1845. March, of that year, Poe became associate editor and one-third owner. In July, when the paper was slowly dying, Poe became its sole editor. Looking over the volumes of the Broadway Journal, I was astonished to see so many highly finished articles from his pen, at the very time, too, when his adored wife was ill, almost dying, and [page 51:] when he himself was in poor health, and harassed by cares and troubles of all kinds.

While Poe was still working for N. P. Willis as assistant on the Evening Mirror, he electrified the world by the publication of The Raven. This famous poem was originally published in The American Review — a New York Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art, and Science — in the number for February, 1845. It has been truly said that the first perusal of The Raven leaves no distinct impression upon the mind, but fascinates the reader with a strange and thrilling interest. It produces upon the mind and heart a vague impression of fate, of mystery, of hopeless sorrow. It sounds like the utterance of a full heart, poured out — not for the sake of telling its own sad story to a sympathetic ear — but because he is mastered by his emotions, and cannot help giving vent to them. It more resembles the soliloquies of Hamlet, in which he betrays his struggling thoughts and feelings, and in which he reveals the workings of his soul, stirred to its utmost depth by his terrible forebodings.

Dr. Henry E. Shepherd, the distinguished Southern scholar, critic, and educationalist, has furnished the most admirable study of The Raven that has ever been written. After assigning to Poe a place in that illustrious procession [page 52:] of classical poets, which includes Milton, Ben Johnson, Herrick, Shelley and Keats, he says of The Raven: “No poem in our language presents a more graceful grouping of metrical appliances and devices. The power of peculiar letters is evolved with a magnificent touch; the thrill of the liquids is a characteristic feature, not only of the refrain, but throughout the compass of the poem; their ‘Linked sweetness long drawn out,’ falls with a mellow cadence, revealing the poet's mastery of those mysterious harmonies which lie at the basis of human speech. The continuity of the rhythm, illustrating Milton's ideal of true musical delight, in which the sense is variously drawn out from one verse into another; the alliteration of the Norse minstrel and the Saxon bard; the graphic delineation and the sustained interest, are some of the features which place The Raven foremost among the creations of a poetic art in our age and clime.” Dr. Shepherd, continuing his beautiful address, proceeded to show “the versatile character of Poe's genius, the consummate, as well as the conscious, art of his poetry, the graceful blending of the creative and the critical faculty — a combination perhaps the rarest that the history of literature affords — his want of a deference to prototypes or models, the chaste [page 53:] and scholarly elegance of his diction, the Attic smoothness and the Celtic magic of his style . . . Much of his work will perish only with the English language. His riper productions have received the most enthusiastic tributes from the sober and dispassionate critics of the Old World. I shall ever remember the thrill of grateful appreciation with which I read the splendid eulogium upon the genius of Poe in The London Quarterly Review, in which he is ranked far above his contemporaries, and pronounced one of the most consummate literary artists of our era, potentially the greatest critic that ever lived, and possessing perhaps the finest ear for rhythm that was ever formed. You are doubtless familiar with the impressions produced by The Raven upon the mind of Mrs. Browning, who has been called ‘Shakespeare's daughter and Tennyson's sister.’ It was but recently that one of the master spirits of the new poetic school has accorded to Poe the pre-eminence among American poets. Alfred Tennyson has expressed his admiration of our poet, who, with true poetic ken, was among the first to appreciate the novelty and delicacy of his method, and who, at a time when the Laureate's fame was obscured by adverse and undiscerning criticism, plainly foretold the [page 54:] serene splendor of his matured greatness.” The address of Dr. Shepherd was delivered upon the occasion of the unveiling of the Poe Monument in Baltimore on the 17th of November, 1875. He concluded his remarks in the following lofty language: “This graceful marble, fit emblem of our poet, is the expression — perhaps unconscious, undesigned, but none the less effective, of sympathy with this grand intellectual movement of our era. While we pay the last tributes of respect to the memory of- him who alone was worthy, among American poets, to be ranked in that illustrious procession of bards around whose names is concentrated so much of the glory of the English tongue, from Chaucer to Tennyson, let us cherish the admonition to nurture and stimulate the poetry of our land, until it ascend, ‘with no middle flight,’ into the ‘brightest heaven of invention,’ and the region of the purest phantasy.”

Poe's own account of the composition of The Raven is one of the strangest revelations that any author has ever given to the world; indeed, it would be incredible if told by any other person than the poet himself. Setting out with the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste, and keeping originality always [page 55:] in view, the work proceeded, says Poe, step by step until its completion, with the precision and rigid consequences of a mathematical problem. One of Poe's peculiar theories being that a long poem does not and cannot exist, he limited his poem to one hundred and eight lines. He next considered the impression, or effort, to be produced, and he declares that he kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. Regarding beauty as the only legitimate province of poetry, and sadness as the highest manifestation of its tone, he selected the idea of a lover lamenting the death of his beautiful beloved as the grand work of the poem. He then bethought himself of some keynote, some pivot, upon which the whole structure might turn, and decided upon the refrain; determining to produce continuously novel effects by the variation of the application of the refrain, the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried. The next thing in order was to select a word which would be in the fullest possible keeping with the melancholy tone of the poem. The word “nevermore” was the very first that presented itself. Then it was necessary to have some pretext for the repetition of the one word, “nevermore.” The poet says he saw at once that it would not do to put the monotonous [page 56:] word into the mouth of a human being. Immediately, the idea arose of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and very naturally a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself; but was superseded forthwith by a raven, as infinitely more in keeping with the intended melancholy tone.

Having then decided upon the rhythm of the poem, the next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the lover and the raven. The poet determined to place the lover in the chamber rendered sacred by memories of her who had frequented it. The bird was next to be introduced. The night was made tempestuous, to account for the raven's seeking admission, and also for the effect of contrast with the physical serenity within the chamber. The bird was made to alight on the bust of Pallas, also, for the effect of contrast between the marble and the plumage, the bust of Pallas being chosen as most in keeping with the scholarship of the lover. The poem then proceeds, in mournful but melodious numbers, to the dénouement, when we are told the soul of the unhappy poet, from out the shadow of the raven, that lies floating on the floor, shall be lifted nevermore.

This is a mere outline of Poe's masterly [page 57:] analysis of his most extraordinary poem. The world should be grateful to the poet for his “confidential disclosures” in regard to The Raven. With what delight would the world have welcomed Shakespeare's own account of the conception and composition of “Lear,” of “Macbeth,” of “Hamlet”!

Of all the writers of his time, Poe was the only one who could not have been foreseen. This of itself shows the originality of his work, and the strong, distinct individuality of his genius, which has given him a high place, not only in the literature of America, but in the literature of the world. The quantity of Poe's poetry is small, but, as has been said of it by a judicious critic, “its quality is perfect.”

The Raven established Poe's fame as the most original, the most remarkable of American poets. The Edinburgh Review, in a harsh article, was forced to admit that, “The Raven has taken rank all over the world as the very first poem yet produced on the American Continent.” The poem has been translated into most of the modern and several of the ancient languages. Stephen Mallarmé translated and published, in Paris a superbly illustrated edition of The Raven, in 1876. He sent Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman a copy of the volume, with a highly appreciative letter, from [page 58:] which I was permitted to make the following extracts:

“Whatever is done to honor the memory of a genius the most truly sublime the world has ever seen, ought it not first to obtain your sanction? Such of Poe's works as our great Baudelaire has left untranslated, this is to say, the poems, and many of the critical fragments, I hope to make known to France, and my first attempt (The Raven) is intended to attract attention to a future work, now nearly completed. . . . Fascinated with the works of Poe from my infancy, it is already a very long time since your name became associated with his in my earliest and most intimate sympathies.” In ft letter addressed to one of his relatives in Baltimore, a few months after the publication of The Raven, Edgar Poe alludes, with just pride, to the renown which his poetical reputation had conferred upon the family name. A writer in the Southern Literary Messenger declared with equal truth and beauty, that on the dusky wings of The Raven, Edgar A. Poe will sail securely over the gulf of oblivion to the eternal shore. So much interest has this immortal poem created in the world of letters, that it has caused a literature of its own to be written.

In the winter of 1845-6, the literary reputation [page 59:] of Edgar A. Poe had attained its greatest brilliancy. A cousin of the poet, Judge Neilson Poe, of Baltimore, told me that he visited him during that time, and Edgar, Virginia, and Mrs. Clemm formed the happiest little family he had ever seen. Edgar was sick at the time of the visit, and the visitor was invited to his chamber. He found the poet reclining on a lounge, with Mrs. Clemm and Virginia in attendance upon him. A small table by his side held three or four books, a bouquet of sweet flowers, and some delicacies. Mrs. Osgood and other ladies called. Edgar Poe, lying sick upon his lounge, was the centre of attraction. The conversation, in such company, naturally took a literary turn. The invalid poet directed it, and all listened, enchanted, by his low, rich, musical voice, and the brilliant play of his imagination.

Mrs. Osgood, writing after Poe's death, speaking of her first acquaintance with Poe, soon after the publication of The Raven, said: “Of the charming love and confidence that existed between his wife and himself, I cannot speak too earnestly, too warmly. It was in his own simple yet poetical home that, to me, the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful affectionate, witty; alternately docile and wayward as a [page 60:] petted child; for his young, gentle, idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of the harassing literary work, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention.”

Poe was the most accomplished literary man we have ever had. He possessed wonderful skill as a literary artist. All through his life he was refining and improving his work, and was never satisfied until he had made it as perfect as possible. Compare, for instance, “A Pæan,” of 1831, and “Lenore,” of 1843. The only fair way to examine an author is with the enthusiasm of a lover and the intelligence of a scholar. Poe has seldom been thus examined: His critics have been either devoted admirers who could see no fault in him, or enemies who could see no good. Another class of critics has appeared within the present generation who have examined him with a candid judgment and unprejudiced minds. These have not been his own countrymen, except in rare cases, but the scholars of England, France and Germany. Poe showed his mastery of artistic composition in his remarkable restraint, in his wonderful concentration. Goethe says “in his illiminations the master shows himself.”

In May, 1846, Poe commenced a prose dunciad [page 61:] in Godey's Lady's Book, his celebrated critical papers, “The Literati of New York.” The majority of these “Literati” have passed to their merited oblivion, but the series, which ran from May to October, caused an immense sensation among the dunces and their friends as well as the reading public generally. Poe caused as much terror among the literary pigmies as Gulliver caused among the Lilliputian pigmies. As the natural result of such just but severe criticism, he made a “host of enemies among persons toward whom he entertained no., personal ill-will.” These little men and their friends nursed their wrath, and kept it warm until Poe died, then they attacked the character of the defenseless poet, inventing lies, grossly exaggerating the truth, and besmirching the honor of him who was the soul of honor. Poe has been dead sixty years, yet these libels still live and circulate, and are believed by ignorant or malicious persons, although they have been refuted a hundred times.

Poe was one of the first American writers who appeared on the lecture platform. He possessed a personal magnetism which completely fascinated his audience. His voice was beautifully modulated, his language was elegant, [page 62:] and his opinions were bold, original, and always forcefully expressed. His first lecture, or at least, the first one of which we have record, was delivered before the William Wirt Institute, in Philadelphia, on the 25th of November, 1843. The subject was “The Poets and Poetry of America.” It was in this lecture that Poe gave public utterance to his private opinion of Rufus W. Griswold's pretentious compilation, bearing a similar title to that of Poe's lecture. His criticism was just, but extremely severe, and excited much attention in Philadelphia, where both Poe and Griswold lived at the time. The latter person was highly indignant, and never forgave his assailant, but, although he took no notice of it at the time, he waited until Poe was in his grave, and then published the Memoir which has been pronounced one of the three most infamous Memoirs ever written — the other two being Froude's Life of Carlyle, and Hogg's “Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott.”

Poe repeated the lecture on “The Poets and Poetry of America” in New York, on the 25th of February, 1845, after the publication of The Raven had made him famous. Of this lecture, he himself said: “I took occasion to speak what I know to be the truth. I told these [page 63:] gentlemen (the audience was composed chiefly of editors and publishers), with a few noble exceptions they had been engaged for many years in a system of indiscriminate praise and puffery of American books.”

As the summer of 1846 approached, the health of Mrs. Poe continued to decline, and dreading the effects of the city heat upon the already feeble health of the lovely and loved invalid, the little family removed to Fordham. The new home was a tiny Dutch cottage, containing four rooms, but it was cool, quiet, and away from the excitement and temptation of New York. The parlor was the poet's study. Here he wrote “Ulalume,” “Eureka,” and other productions of his “lonesome, latter years.” The room was neatly furnished: red and white matting covered the floor; four cane-seat chairs, a small table, a set of hanging bookshelves, and two or three engravings completed the furniture. A lady, Mrs. Gove-Nichols, who visited Poe's cottage home, in 1846, says: “There was an air of taste and gentility about the place that must have been lent to it by the presence of its inmates. So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, and yet so charming a dwelling I never saw. There was an acre or two of greensward fenced in about the house, as smooth as velvet, and as clean as [page 64:] the best-kept carpet. Mr. Poe was so handsome, so impassive in his wonderful, intellectual beauty, so proud and reserved, so entirely a gentleman upon all occasions — so good a talker that he impressed himself and his wishes even without words upon those with whom he spoke. His voice was melody itself. He always spoke low, even in a violent discussion, compelling his hearers to listen if they would know his opinion, his facts, fancies, or philosophy. Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was almost a disrobed spirit, and when she coughed, it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away.”

Darker and darker grew the shadows over the Fordham cottage — sadder and sadder grew the hearts of the devoted husband and mother as the autumn passed, and the winter of 1846-7 drew near. The sickness of his wife, and his own ill health incapacitated Poe from literary work, his only source of revenue, and, consequently, the family were reduced to the last extremity, wanting even the barest necessaries of life — at a time, too, when Mrs. [page 65:] Poe required the little delicacies so grateful to the sick. At this, the darkest hour of Poe's life, an angel of mercy in the person of Mrs. Mary Louise Shew appeared on the scene, and relieved the wants of the family, and brought comfort to the sick room of the dying wife. I have not the heart to linger over the deathbed, which was as sad and pathetic as ever told by poet or romance writer. The weather was intensely cold — for it was midwinter — and Mrs. Poe suffered from the chills that followed the hectic fever of consumption. The bed was of straw, and covered only with spread and sheets; no blanket. Here the dying lady lay, wrapped in her husband's overcoat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The cat and the coat afforded the only warmth to the sufferer, except that imparted by her mother chafing her feet and her husband her hands. And thus died, on January 30, 1847, at the early age of twenty-five, the wife of America's greatest genius.

This loss, though long expected, was not the less crushing when it came at last; To a lady of Massachusetts, who had sent him expressions of sympathy, Edgar Poe wrote, a few weeks after his wife's death: “I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poignant as to deprive me, for several weeks, of all power of [page 66:] thought or action.” Mrs. Clemm told me that “Eddie” often wandered to his wife's grave at midnight, in the snow and rain, and threw himself upon the mound of earth, calling upon her in words of devoted love, and invoking her gentle spirit to watch over him. It is now known that Edgar Poe was never the same man after the death of his idolized young wife. For weeks and months after that crushing sorrow, he was buried in an agony of grief, from which nothing could arouse him. His books and studies were abandoned; his pen was thrown aside; his usual occupations were neglected. He wandered up and down the country by day, and at night kept long and solitary vigil at the grave of his “Lost Lenore.” He who rarely smiled and never laughed before, now might almost be said to have “never smiled again.” The unhappy Master of the Raven, tortured by intolerable memories of the lost one, sought to drown his sorrow in the waters of Lethe. It was not for pleasure that he thus sank his noble intellect. “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants to which I sometimes so madly indulge,” he wrote within a year of his death. “It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been in the desperate attempt to escape from [page 67:] torturing memories, from a sense of insuperable loneliness, and a dread of some strange, impending doom.”

But it must not be supposed that this “mad indulgence” was habitual. It was only occasional, only when driven to despair by “intolerable sorrow,” that he was guilty of folHes and excesses, “which,” as he very justly complained, “are hourly committed by others without attracting any notice whatever.” But he was famous — he was the author of The Raven — they were unknown, and, therefore, unnoticed. It is very easy for men who live in comfort, men who have no trials of poverty and sorrow, to condemn Edgar Poe as a drunkard; whereas, if the truth were known, he seldom drank, while they are regular drinkers, and for mere sensual gratification, but he only when driven to it by misery and despair. This is proved by the unimpeachable testimony of such persons as N. P. Willis, who was in daily intercourse with him for months, and saw nothing of the “frequent fits of intoxication,” of which his malicious biographer spoke; L. A. Wilmer, during an intimate friendship of twelve years, saw nothing of it; George R. Graham, who was associated with him daily for two years, saw nothing of it; S. D. Lewis, the husband of Estelle Anna Lewis, [page 68:] and who lived in the closest intimacy with Poe, never saw him drink a glass of beer, wine, or liquor of any kind. In fact, it has been proved beyond a doubt, that it was only at rare intervals, and more especially after the death of his adored wife, that he indulged in stimulants at all. Upon these occasions, the lines in Dermody's “Enthusiast,” might be applied to Poe:

In the autumn of the year in which Poe lost his wife, he wrote that strange, mysterious, fascinating poem, “Ulalume,” which was published in the American Review, for December, 1847. Willis copied the poem in the Home Journal, January 1, 1848, with the following remarks: “We do not know how many readers we have who will enjoy as we do this exquisitely piquant and skillful exercise of variety and niceness of language. It is a poem full of beauty — a curiosity (and a delicious one, we think), in philologic flavor.” When Willis wrote this notice, it was not known that Poe was the author of the poem, which was published anonymously. Mrs. Whitman, speaking of this strange threnody, says: “This poem, [page 69:] perhaps the most original and weirdly suggestive of all his poems, resembles, at first sight, some of Turner's landscapes, being, apparently, without form, and void, and having darkness on the face of it. It is, nevertheless, in its basis, although not in the precise correspondence of time, simply historical. Such was the poet's lonely midnight walk; such, amid desolate memories and sceneries of the hour, was the new-born hope enkindled within his heart at the sight of the morning star — ‘Astarte's be-diamond crescent’ — booming up as the beautiful harbinger of love and happiness, yet awaiting him in the untried future,” etc.

The original autograph of “Ulalume” was sold at auction, in New York, several years ago, which contained a stanza that was suppressed before the poem was published. Poe once recited the whole poem at an evening gathering in Richmond, Va. One of the guests, Miss Susanna Ingram, was deeply affected, but confessed that she could not understand it at a first hearing, and asked the privilege of seeing it in manuscript. The next morning Poe sent her a copy of the poem accompanied by a characteristic note, which runs as follows: “Monday evening. I have transcribed ‘Ulalume’ with much pleasure, dear [page 70:] Miss Ingram, as I am sure I would do anything at your bidding, but I fear you will find the verses scarcely more intelligible to-day in my manuscript than last night in my recitation. I would endeavor to explain to you what I really meant by the poem if it were not that I remember Dr. Johnson's bitter and rather just remarks about the folly of explaining what, if worth explaining, would explain itself. He has a happy witticism, too, about some book which he calls ‘as obscure as an explanatory note.’ Leaving ‘Ulalume’ to its fate, therefore, and in good hands, I am yours truly, Edgar A. Poe.”

Although Poe published only this one poem in 1847 — his “most immemorial year,” his busy brain was not idle. It was during the last months of that year “Eureka” was planned, thought out, and mostly written. Mrs. Clemm told me that, when engaged upon the composition of this extraordinary prose-poem, he would walk up and down the porch in front of the cottage in the coldest nights of December, with an overcoat thrown over his shoulder, gazing at the stars, and “pondering the deep problem” of the universe, until long after midnight. Having finished “Eureka,” Poe used it as a lecture, which he delivered in New York on Thursday evening, February 3, 1848. [page 71:] The night was stormy, but there was present a “select but highly appreciative audience that remained attentive and interested for nearly three hours, under the lecturer's powerful, able, and profound analytical exposition of his peculiar theory on the origin, creation, and final destiny of the universe.” “Mr. Poe's delivery” was described as “pure, finished, and chaste in style; his power of reasoning acute, his analytic perceptions keen. The lecturer appeared inspired; his eyes seemed to glow like those of his own Raven.”

The special object of the lecture was to obtain funds to start The Stylus, a magazine in which he intended “to maintain a sincere and fearless opinion,” and “absolutely independent criticism,” guided by the “intelligible laws of art.”

Having failed to make any money by “Eureka” as a lecture, he determined to publish it in book form. Having carefully revised and enlarged it, that generous patron of literature, George P. Putnam, published the work in the Spring of 1848. “Eureka” was the most ambitious production of Poe's pen, and the least successful.

Early in the Summer of 1848, Poe visited Richmond, and became acquainted with John R. Thompson, the editor of the Southern [page 72:] Literary Messenger, who engaged him to write for the magazine. The September number contained an elaborately eulogistic review of Mrs. Estelle Anna Lewis's poems; and the October number was enriched by Poe's famous “The Rationale of Verse.” While in Richmond, at this time, he renewed his acquaintance with his early sweetheart, Elmira Royster (now Mrs. Shelton, a rich widow). Rumor has it that he was about to engage himself to this lady when he received a complimentary poem from Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, whom he had first seen in 1845, when he was returning from Boston to New York, and had stopped in Providence en route. The two had never met until in October, 1848, when Poe, provided with a letter of introduction, called upon her, and after a short acquaintance of forty-eight hours, asked her to marry him. As the story of Poe's affair with Mrs. Whitman is told at length in other portions of this volume, it need not be repeated here; suffice it to say that they were engaged, and were on the eve of being married, when the engagement was broken off forever. Mrs. Whitman died on the 27th of June, 1878, remaining to the last an enthusiastic admirer and defender of Edgar A. Poe. [page 73:]

Edgar Poe passed the Winter and Spring of 1849 at his cottage in Fordham. The only variety in the monotony of his secluded life was the occasional visit of a friend, or a visit of a few days by Mrs. Clemm and himself to their friend, Mrs. Estelle Anna Lewis, in Brooklyn.

On the 30th of June, 1849, Poe departed from this lady's house, where he and Mrs. Clemm had passed the previous night, on his last journey to the South. July, August and September were spent in Richmond and Norfolk, and in both cities he delivered his lecture on “The Poetic Principle,” and was everywhere received with cordial appreciation. In September he became engaged to Mrs. Shelton, and he wrote to Mrs. Clemm that his marriage would take place on the 17th of October. This letter, although announcing the “happy event,” was very sad, as though the writer was oppressed by a sense of impending doom. On Tuesday, the 2d of October, he left Richmond by boat for Baltimore, where he arrived the next morning. His intention was to go to Fordham and to bring Mrs. Clemm to Richmond for his wedding. He told her to be ready to return with him on the loth, that he had determined to pass the rest of his life amid the scenes of his happy youth. What [page 74:] became of Poe, after he arrived in Ba,ltimore on that October morning, will probably never be known. It was an election day. His cousin, the late Judge Neilson Poe, told me that, on the evening of October 3d, he was informed that a gentleman named Poe was in a back room of the Fourth Ward polls, on Lombard Street, between High and Exeter Streets. On going there, he found Edgar Poe in a state of stupefaction. He was told that his cousin had been “cooped” and voted all over the city. The dying poet was taken to the Washington College Hospital, on Broadway, now the Church Home and Infirmary. There, on the following Sunday, October 7th, he died, and was buried the next afternoon at four o’clock. It was a dull, cold, dreary day — such a day as he had described in ‘Ulalume’:”