Text: Eugene L. Didier, “Woodberry's Life of Poe,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 145-149

[page 145:]

The interest in the strange and romantic story of Poe's life seems to increase rather than diminish. Already nine lives have been given to the world — some written by bitter enemies, others by injudicious friends, all wanting, more or less, in that calm, dispassionate tone which should characterize works of literary and historical interest. A tenth life of Poe has been written by Mr. George E. Woodberry, for the American Men of Letters series. In a compact volume of three hundred and fifty pages, we have a complete, reliable and interesting life of the author of The Raven, written with absolute literary candor and entirely free from prejudice, one way or the other. In fact, he has produced a work which should satisfy all readers for a long time to come.

Mr. Woodberry has anticipated the possible cavils of the critics by carefully substantiating, as far as possible, the fresh and interesting information which he has added to what was already known of Poe's romantic and erratic [page 146:] career. The fact of his enlisting in the United States Army has been hinted at before, but Mr. Woodberry proves by the records of the war department that Poe enlisted on the 26th of May, 1828, and served for nearly twelve months, being discharged on the 15th of April, 1829, his friends having put a substitute in his place with a view of getting him appointed a cadet to West Point. Mr. Woodberry has thus filled up a gap in Poe's life which had baffled all other biographers of the poet.

One of the most disagreeable accusations brought against the dead Poe by Griswold was, that while Poe was the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, of which William E. Burton, the comedian, was the owner, he had taken advantage of the latter's temporary absence to supplant him by starting a new magazine, and had obtained transcripts of the subscription and account books for that purpose. When Burton returned home, at the end of a fortnight, he was told that not a line of copy for the next number of the magazine had been given to the printers, and after some time Poe was found late in the evening at one of his accustomed haunts and was thus addressed: “Mr. Poe, I am astonished. Give me my manuscript, so that I can attend to the [page 147:] duties which you have so shamefully neglected, and when you are sober we will settle.” To which Poe is reported to have replied: “Who are you that presumes to address me in this manner? Burton, I am the editor of the Penn Magazine, and you are (hiccup) a fool.” Of course, this ended his relations with the Gentleman's.

Such is Griswold's story, which is now known to be false in every particular. Poe himself in a letter written to Dr. Joseph E. Snodgrass, editor of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]], says that he left the Gentleman's Magazine because he disapproved of Burton's conduct in the matter of certain prizes offered for manuscripts. They quarreled and separated. Poe in his letter to Dr. Snodgrass, dated Philadelphia, April 1, 1841, explaining the cause of his leaving Burton, says: “I pledge you before God the solemn word of a gentleman, that I am temperate even to rigor. From the hour in which I first saw this beast of calumniators to the hour in which I retired from his office in uncontrollable disgust at his chicanery, arrogance, ignorance, and brutality, nothing stronger than water ever passed my lips. You will never be brought to believe that I could write what I daily write, as I write it, were I as this man would induce those [page 148:] who know me not to believe. At no period of my life was I ever what men call intemperate. I was never in the habit of intoxication. I never drunk drams, etc., but for a brief period, while I resided in Richmond and edited the Messenger, I certainly did give way, at long intervals, to the temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of Southern conviviality. My sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an every-day matter to my companions. In short, it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after each excess I was invariably confined to bed. But it is now quite four years since I have abandoned every kind of alchoholic [[alcoholic]] drink — four years with the exception of a single deviation, which occurred shortly after my leaving Burton, and when I was induced to resort to the occasional use of cider, with the hope of relieving a nervous attack. You will thus see, frankly stated, the whole amount of my sin.”

Mr. Woodberry has done a good work by rescuing this important correspondence from the columns of a daily newspaper and giving it a permanent place in American literary biography.

For nearly a quarter of a century after Poe's untimely death, Griswold's infamous memoir [page 149:] was accepted by the world as correct, and followed by other biographers until 1875, when the erection of the monument over the poet's long-neglected grave in Baltimore led to a new investigation of his life. This, continued to the present time, has resulted in the complete refutation of all of Griswold's slanders and the bringing to light, from time to time, of important facts, affecting Poe as a man and a poet, until, as we have before remarked, the whole story of his life has been related in Mr. Woodberry's work.

Poe has had a singular literary fate; long neglected by his own countrymen, the English, French and German critics recognized him as the most original of all the American poets.