Text: Eugene L. Didier, “The Truth about Edgar A. Poe,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 216-240

[page 216:]

For a quarter of a century after Poe's death, his enemies had the ear of the world. The weakness of human nature makes us listen with willing ears, and with more pleasure to blame than to praise. The lies that were told about Poe, the crimes that were recklessly imputed to him, the dark stories that were laid at his door, the vile slanders that were repeated about him, with “ghoulish glee,” must have delighted “the demons down under the sea.” Poe was scarcely cold in his grave before Rufus W. Griswold published his malignant Memoir of the Poet, which, for twenty-five years, was accepted as the true story of the life and death of the author of “The Raven.” With few exceptions, this mendacious memoir was followed in all subsequent biographies of Poe; and, naturally, for Griswold was supposed to be his trusted friend and chosen biographer. The world did not know that Griswold, smarting under Poe's severe but well-deserved criticism of his “Poets and Poetry of America,” had nursed his wrath and kept it [page 217:] warm until the poet was dead and helpless, and then told his venomous story. Of this biography, one who knew Poe well has truly said, that, “compared with its remorseless violations of confided trust, the unhallowed act of Trelawney in removing the pall from the feet of the dead Byron, seems guiltless.”

It should be unnecessary, at this late day, when ten lives of Poe have been published, to point out Griswold's numerous misstatements, false charges, and insinuations, which were employed with the devilish ingenuity of Iago, were it not much easier to start a falsehood than to stop it when it is once on its travels.

Conversing with an accomplished woman, one evening, the name of Poe was mentioned, when she exclaimed:

This is given as a fair specimen of the opinion that still prevails among many intelligent persons of the poet. Too many persons who [page 218:] should know better still believe that Poe was a drunken vagabond, a literary Ishmael, a Pariah among poets. He was devoted to his young, beautiful, and accomplished wife, and her death, under distressing circumstances, unparalleled in literary annals, destroyed his health, and, for a time, drove reason from its imperial throne. I knew Mrs. Clemm, in the last years of her life, and visited her with youthful enthusiasm, as the “more than mother” of the poet. She told me that “Eddie” (as she always called him) was the most gentle, affectionate and devoted of husbands and sons — that he never went to bed at night without asking her blessing, and, if he had done anything to displease her, he would kneel at her feet, and humbly ask her forgiveness. This was the man who, Griswold said, “had no faith in man or woman.” This was the man whom Griswold pronounced “naturally unamiable, irascible, envious, self-satisfied, self-confident.” N. P. Willis, who knew Poe intimately, declared that he possessed the very qualities which his enemies denied to him — humility, belief in another's kindness, and capability of cordial and grateful friendship. Willis remembered him with respect and admiration, saying that his “modesty and unaffected humility as to his own deservings were [page 219:] a constant charm to his character.” Poe not only had the greatest “faith in woman,” but women, the best, the most refined, the most cultivated women, had the greatest faith in him. Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, speaking of her own “affectionate interest” in Poe, said: “No woman could know him personally without feeling the same interest — he was so gentle, generous, well-bred and refined. To a sensitive and delicately nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful and almost tender reverence with which he approached all women.” “So far from being selfish and heartless,” said Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, “his devotional fidelity to those he loved would, by the world, be regarded as fanatical.” He carried his chivalry to the fair sex so far that when women were the subjects of his criticism, his usually stern and severe opinions were greatly modified, and, as he himself said, “I cannot point an arrow against any woman.”

Poe lived and died a mystery to himself, to his friends, and to the world. We know that his life was a romance, his death a tragedy, that his fame is immortal, and that never before nor since has so much misery been united to so much genius. He is the most interesting and picturesque personality in American literature. [page 220:] His strange and romantic life has always possessed a singular fascination for me, while his wonderful poems, and still more wonderful tales have been my literary passion since boyhood. When still in my teens, I was presented with the original four-volume edition of Poe's works containing Griswold's infamous memoir. I could not reconcile the dark story of the poet's life, as there told, with the purity, beauty, and refinement of his writings. I began a systematic study of his life; I put myself in communication with his surviving friends and relatives, personally and by letter; I saw Professor Joseph H. Clarke, his first teacher in Richmond; I visited the University of Virginia, and secured the recollections of Mr. William Wertenbaker, the librarian, who was at the University when Poe was a student there; I corresponded with Col. J. T. L. Preston, a former schoolmate of the poet; I consulted my father-in-law, the late Gen. Lucius Bellinger Northrop, who was the last survivor of Poe's classmates at West Point; I called on Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, one of the committee of gentlemen who awarded the prize to Poe for the best tale; I interviewed Judge Neilson Poe, the nearest surviving relative of the poet; I became acquainted with Mrs. Clemm, in the last years of her life; I sought [page 221:] out Gabriel H. Harrison, one of the last of Poe's friends; I went to Richmond, and had a talk with Mr. Valentine, the brother of Edward V. Valentine, the distinguished sculptor, who retained a vivid recollection of Poe's appearance when he delivered his lecture in Richmond on “The Poetic Principle,” on his last visit there in 1849; but the best of all my achievements in search of Poeana was a correspondence with Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe's most devoted friend.

Professor Clarke, after over half a century, recalled with much interest and manifest pleasure Edgar Poe as one of his pupils at his school in Richmond. He said: “The boy was a born poet, and, as a scholar, he was anxious to excel, and always acquitted himself well in his classes. He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness. In his demeanor toward his playmates, he was strictly just and correct, which made him a general favorite. His predominant passion seemed to me to be an enthusiastic ardor in everything he undertook. Even in those early years, he displayed the germs of that wonderfully rich and splendid imagination which has placed him in the front rank of the purely imaginative poets of the world. While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry, and [page 222:] he wrote it not as a task, but con amore.” When Professor Clarke left Richmond in 1823, young Poe addressed to his beloved teacher a poem which was a remarkable production for a boy of fourteen. In after years, the Professor was proud of his distinguished pupil, and referred, to his dying day, to the fact that Poe always called upon him when he visited Baltimore, to which city Mr. Clarke removed from Richmond.

Colonel John T. L. Preston was one of Poe's schoolmates at Clarke's Academy, and furnished me with some interesting particulars of the future poet's school-days in Richmond: “As a scholar, he was distinguished specially for Latin and French; in poetical composition, he was facile princeps. He was the best boxer, the swiftest runner, and the most daring swimmer at Clarke's school. Indeed, his swimming feats at the Great Falls of the James River were not surpassed by the more celebrated feat of Byron in swimming from Sestos to Abydos.

Griswold's most reckless and untruthful statement about Poe was that, “in 1822 he entered the University of Virginia, where he led a very dissipated life, and was known as the wildest student of his class; but his unusual opportunities, and the remarkable ease [page 223:] with which he mastered the most difficult studies, kept him all the while in the first rank for scholarship, and he would have graduated with the highest honors, had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices induced his expulsion from the university.” So much for the Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold! This reverend defamer of the dead had given Poe's birth as having taken place in January, 1811, thus making him a gambler, drunkard, and debauche at the tender age of eleven years! — surpassing in precocious vice the infamous Elagabalus. The fact is that Poe was born in 1809, the annus mirabilis which produced Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Gladstone, and other illustrious men. To ascertain the truth about Poe at the University of Virginia, I went there, and interviewed Mr. William Wertenbaker, the librarian, who had been a classmate of the poet. He gave me the following facts: “Edgar Poe entered the University February 14, 1826, and remained until the 15th of December of the same year. He entered the schools of ancient and modern languages, attending the lectures on Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. I was myself a member of the last three classes, and can testify that he was regular in attendance, and a very successful student, having obtained distinction at [page 224:] the final examination in Latin and French. This would have entitled him to graduate in those two languages. I often saw Mr. Poe in the lecture room and in the library, but never in the slightest degree under the influence of intoxicating liquors. Among the professors he had the reputation of being a sober, quiet, and orderly young man. To them, and to the officers, his deportment was universally that of an intelligent and polished gentleman. The records of the university, of which I was then, and am still, the custodian, attest that at no time during the session did he fall under the censure of the Faculty. It will gratify the many admirers of Poe to know that his works are more in demand and more read than those of any other author, American or foreign, now in the library.”

General Lucius Bellinger Northrop, the last survivor of the classmates of Poe at West Point, told me that Edgar Poe, at West Point, was the wrong man in the wrong place — although, from an intellectual point of view, he stood high there, as elsewhere: the records of the academy show that he was third in French, and seventeenth in mathematics in a class of eighty-seven. The severe studies and dull routine duties were extremely distasteful to the young poet, and, at the end of six months, he [page 225:] applied to his adopted father, Mr. Allan, for permission to leave the academy, which request was promptly refused. Poe then determined to find a way for himself, and began a systematic neglect of his duties, and a regular disobedience of orders. He was summoned before a court-martial, charged with the “gross neglect of all his duties, and of disobedience of orders.” To these charges he pleaded guilty, and was at once sentenced to be dismissed from the service of the United States. Poe was as much out of place at West Point as Achilles was when he was hid among the women in his youth. The rough sports and practical jokes of the cadets were utterly repugnant to the proud, sensitive, and dreamy young poet who already aspired to be the American Byron.

In my search after Poe material, I called upon Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, who, as already mentioned, was one of the three gentlemen who awarded him the prize of $100 for the best prose tale. He said that Poe showed his gratitude by calling on each of the gentlemen composing the committee, and thanking them for awarding the prize to him.

Neilson Poe told me his cousin Edgar was one of the best-hearted men that ever lived. In society, his manner was sometimes cold and [page 226:] his bearing proud and haughty, but at home, and among intimate friends, his kind and affectionate nature manifested itself in all its sweetness. The late Dr. Nathan Covington Brooks, of Baltimore, who was Poe's friend from first to last, said to me that “Edgar Poe impressed him as a man inspired by noble and exalted sentiments.”

Count de Maistre declared that “history for the last three hundred years has been a conspiracy against the truth.” With equal truth we might say that American literature for the last fifty years has been a conspiracy against the truth so far as Edgar A. Poe is concerned. The unimpeachable witnesses already produced, and those that follow, should convince every unprejudiced mind that America's most illustrious poet possessed the very virtues which have been persistently denied to him.

I wish to repeat here what I have said before, namely, that Burns’ Highland Mary, Petrarch's Laura, Byron's Mary Chaworth, Dante's Beatrice, Surrey's Fair Geraldine, Spenser's Rosalind, Carew's Celia, Waller's Sacharissa, Klopstock's Meta, Swift's Stella, Lemartine's Elvire, Campbell's Caroline, Wordsworth's Lucy, Allan Cunningham's Bonnie Jean, and other real and imaginary loves of the poets, who have been immortalized [page 227:] in song, were not more worthy of poetical adoration than Sarah Helen Whitman, the friend and defender of Edgar A. Poe. Of this gifted lady it has been beautifully said: “She was ever sensitive to the slightest criticism of Poe's faults, walking softly backward and throwing over them the shielding mantle of her love. Heedless of the world's cold sneer, she seized her pen whenever she thought him treated with injustice, and defended his memory with all the warmth of a woman and a poet.” Some of her most beautiful verses were inspired by the recollections of her poetlover. Of these, one not known to the present generation of readers has always been a particular favorite of mine. It is called:

The Portrait of Poe.

The prophecy contained in the last verse of Mrs. Whitman's poem has been gloriously fulfilled. Time has not only “restored” his “glory,” but placed him first among American poets. The strange, imaginary mythology used so effectively by Poe, is very happily introduced by Mrs. Whitman in the above poem. She was deeply imbued with the spirit of Poe's genius, and her pure, poetic soul responded with delicate, feminine grace to the inspiration of his divinely beautiful poetry.

It was Mrs. Whitman, and other refined and cultured women, including Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, Mrs. Estella Anna Lewis, etc., who first began the Poe cult, which has since spread over the civilized world. While many ignorant or prejudiced men have attacked Poe, few, if any, self-respecting women have taken part in his defamation. It was this fact that first convinced me that there was good in the author of “The Raven.” The defamers of the poet have invented a Frankenstein monster — a being devoid of all human affection, sympathy, and feeling — and labelled it Edgar Allan Poe.

The most disgraceful story invented by Griswold about Poe was in regard to the breaking off his engagement with Mrs. Whitman. He said that Poe, wishing to break the engagement, [page 230:] went to her house in a state of intoxication, and behaved so outrageously that the police had to be called in to expel the drunken intruder. This scandalous story was believed, and did more to injure Poe's character than any of the many lies that have been invented about him. Mrs. Whitman emphatically denied Griswold's story: “No such scene as that described by Dr. Griswold ever transpired in my presence. No one, certainly no woman, who had the slightest acquaintance with Edgar Poe could have credited the story for an instant. He was essentially, and instinctively a gentleman, utterly incapable, even in moments of excitement and delirium, of such an outrage as Dr. Griswold has ascribed to him. . . . During one of his visits in the autumn of 1848, I once saw him after one of those nights of wild excitement, before reason had fully regained its throne. Yet even then, in those frenzied moments, when the door of the mind's ‘Haunted Palace’ was left all unguarded, his words were the words of a princely intellect overwrought, and of a heart only too sensitive and too finely strung. I repeat that no one acquainted with Edgar Poe could have given Dr. Griswold's anecdote a moment's credence.”

A man is known by his enemies as well as by [page 231:] his friends. Who were Poe's enemies? It is not necessary to mention any others, as it would only serve to keep alive their ignoble names; they were men whose malignancy was equalled by their mendacity. He has outlived their worst enmity, and while they have disappeared in a sea of oblivion, he has landed safely on the shore of immortality. While Poe's enemies have in the end injured themselves, his friends have builded better than they knew, and their names shall live with his in American literature. Perhaps the time will come when N. P. Willis — the once popular poet and magazinist — shall be known only as Poe's generous friend and defender, when the literary jackals were rending his defenceless remains. The name of George R. Graham should long since have passed away but for the fact that Poe was the editor of Graham's Magazine, whose publisher wrote a splendid defence of the poet, in which he denounced Griswold's Memoir as “an immortal infamy — the fancy sketch of a perverted, jaundiced vision.” Such a “devilish” piece of work should not have accompanied Poe's writings, being, said Graham, “the death's-head over the entrance to the garden of beauty, a horror that clings to the brow of the morning, whispering of murder.” [page 232:]

When the Poe monument was unveiled in Baltimore, on the 17th of November, 1875, many of the American poets were invited to the ceremonial, but, excepting Walt Whitman, they sent “regrets.” James Russell Lowell wrote: “I need not assure you that I sympathize very heartily with the sentiment which led to the erection of the monument.” Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed himself more at length, and more enthusiastically, as follows: “No one, surely, needs a monument less than the poet.

Yet we would not leave him without a stone to mark the spot where the hands ‘that waked to ecstasy the living lyre’ were laid in the dust. He that can confer an immortality which outlasts bronze and granite deserves this poor tribute, not for his sake so much as ours. The hearts of all who reverence the inspiration of genius, who can look tenderly upon the infirmities too often attending it, who can feel for its misfortunes, will sympathize with you as you gather around the resting place of all that was mortal of Edgar Allan Poe, and raise. the stone inscribed with one of the few names [page 233:] which will outlive the graven record meant to perpetuate its remembrance.” Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe's gifted and devoted friend, whose beautiful little volume, “Edgar Poe and his Critics,” was one of the first as it was the best defence of the poet from the malicious aspersions of Griswold, sent a very feeling note, in which she said: “I need not assure you that the generous efforts of the association in whose behalf you write, have called forth my warmest sympathy and most grateful appreciation.” Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote: “Your desire to honor the genius of Edgar A. Poe is in the heart of every man of letters, though perhaps no American author stands so little in need of a monument as the author of ‘The Raven.’ His imperishable fame is in all lands.” One of the most eloquent tributes came from S. D. Lewis, the husband of Estelle Anna Lewis, who was one of Poe's most cherished friends. His interesting letter is too long to be quoted entire, but the following paragraph speaks for itself: “Edgar Poe was one of the most affectionate, kind-hearted men I ever knew. I never witnessed so much tender affection and devoted love as existed in that family of three persons. I have spent several weeks in the closest intimacy with him, and I never saw him drink a drop of liquor, or [page 234:] beer, in my life. He was always in my presence the polished gentleman, the profound scholar, the true critic, the inspired oracular poet — dreamy and spiritual, lofty, but sad.” Longfellow, who was asked to suggest an appropriate inscription for the monument, wrote that “the only lines of Mr. Poe that I now recall as in any way appropriate to the purpose you mention are from a poem entitled ‘For Annie.’ They are,

From across the sea came tributes from Tennyson, Swinburne, Richard H. Horne, and Mallarmé, the French poet. Tennyson's note was brief, saying simply: “I have long been acquainted with Poe's works, and am an admirer of them.” A poet whose verses brought five pounds a line, could not afford to spend many lines on the subject of a monument to a brother-poet although that poet had been one of the first to recognize the other's genius, and before his own countrymen had begun to appreciate him had pronounced him “the noblest poet that ever lived.” Swinburne, full of the glowing enthusiasm of youth, paid a noble tribute to Poe: “The genius of Edgar Poe has won, on this side of the Atlantic, such wide [page 235:] and warm recognition that the sympathy which I cannot hope fitly or fully to express in adequate words, is undoubtedly shared at this moment by hundreds, not in England only but France as well. . . . It is not for me to offer any tribute here to the fame of your great countryman, or dilate, with superfluous and intrusive admiration, on the special quality of his strong and delicate genius — so sure of aim, and faultless of touch, in all the finer and better part of the work he has left us. Widely as the fame of Poe has already spread, and deeply as it is already rooted in Europe, it is even now growing wider and striking deeper as time advances, the surest presage that time, the eternal enemy of small and shallow reputations, will prove, in this case also, the constant and trusty friend and keeper of a true poet's full-grown fame.” Mallarmé, with the grace of a true Frenchman, placed a poem on

THE TOMB OF EDGAR POE.

This poem was translated by Sarah Helen Whitman from the original copy which the French poet sent to her. Mrs. Whitman was good enough to furnish the present writer with a copy of her translation.

Of all the tributes to Poe, prose or poetry, inspired by the unveiling of the monument, the poem by William Winter was by far the most beautiful.

AT POE'S GRAVE.

The greatest critics of England and France have pronounced Poe the most consummate literary artist of the nineteenth century, the greatest critic of his age, and one of the most [page 238:] remarkable geniuses of all time. Swinburne, the master-spirit of the new school of English poetry, places Poe first among the American poets. Tennyson's admiration of the poet who was the first to recognize his own youthful genius has been already mentioned. The impression made upon Mrs. Browning by “The Raven” is familiar to all readers.

The impetus given to the fame of Poe by the erection of the monument to his memory in his own city of Baltimore attracted the attention of an Englishman who was otherwise unknown. This obscure individual claimed to have “discovered” Edgar A. Poe, and to have introduced that poet to his countrymen and ours. This claim, preposterous as it may seem now, when the name and fame of Poe has gone abroad into all civilized lands, was not absolutely without foundation a quarter of a century ago. Poe's fame, which rose high after the publication of “The Raven” in 1845, sank low after his wretched death in 1849. When he could no longer wield his powerful pen, his name and fame were assailed by a crowd of writers whose literary pretensions he had exposed with merciless severity. It was a case of asses kicking at a dead lion. These men and their friends had access to the periodicals of the time, and they painted Poe in such dark [page 239:] colors that his fame was obscured, and his name covered with obloquy. Some of these literary jackals are still alive, and they have lived to see the fame of Poe cover the world, having burst in triumphant splendor through the dark clouds with which they had hoped to cover it forever.

In 1869, a copy of Poe's Poems, New York, 1831, in the original boards, was knocked down at auction for $1. In 1902, a copy of the same edition brought $360 under the hammer. For “The Raven,” one of the most remarkable poems in all literature, Poe was paid $10. For the original manuscript of the same poem the present fortunate owner asks $10,000. Such is fame! I can myself remember when the poet's grave was unknown — the place uncertain — the very churchyard a matter of doubt and dispute.

Edgar Poe fought a desperate battle against a pitiless fate, and fell in the midst of the struggle, wounded, defeated, and destroyed. He never earned a dollar except by his pen, and he was miserably paid for his elegant and scholarly work. As the editor of the leading American magazine, his salary was only $10 a week, the pay of many boys of seventeen, as shorthand writers, at the present day. His life of sadness and suffering, of sorrow and [page 240:] song, was brought to a sudden close, when a brighter future seemed to be opening for him whom

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 235:]

* Annabel Lee.