Text: Eugene L. Didier, “Recollections of Edgar A. Poe,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 252-260

[page 252:]

Edgar Poe lived and died a mystery to the world, and, although more than a half century has elapsed since his death, to many persons he remains a mystery still.

The intention of the present article is to show Poe in a brighter and lovelier light — to see him as he appeared to the witnesses of his life. During the many years that I have been devoted to the investigation of Poe's life, I have made the acquaintance of several persons who were more or less associated with him from his childhood until his death. They were men and women who spoke of their own knowledge of the poet, and they were, therefore, the most competent witnesses to testify to the truth concerning him.

I was personally acquainted with a gentleman who knew little Edgar when a boy — knew him intimately — who saw him every day. This was Professor Joseph H. Clarke, of Trinity College, Dublin, who was the Principal of an English and classical school in Richmond from 1818 to 1823. [His recollections of Poe will be found elsewhere in this book.] [page 253:]

Among Poe's fellow cadets at West Point was Lucius Bellinger Northrop, of South Carolina, afterward the confidential friend of Jefferson Davis and Commissary General of the Confederate Army, and one of the last survivors of Poe's classmates at West Point. Young Northrop was two years Poe's junior, but, even at that early day, he manifested that firm and determined character which distinguished him through life, and made him follow what he believed to be the right, although on one memorable instance it caused a temporary break in his lifelong friendship with Jefferson Davis.

I met General Northrop long after he had retired from public life, and was spending his last years on his farm amid the grand old Blue Ridge Mountains, near Charlottesville, Va. I was a guest at his house, and ascertaining that he had been at West Point with Poe, I lost no time in interviewing him on the subject. His recollection was that Poe was entirely out of place at West Point — that the routine of military duties was utterly repugnant to his tastes: the severe studies, the strict discipline, the roll-call, the morning drill, the evening parade, the guard duty were each and all distasteful to the poetical young dreamer. He was shy, proud, sensitive, and unsociable with the other cadets. [page 254:] He spent more time in reading than in study. This literary taste kept him away from his uncongenial classmates: he was absorbed in his thoughts, his poetical dreams, his golden aspirations, for he was at that time preparing a third edition of his poems for the press, the second having been published in Baltimore, in 1829. The rough sports of the West Point boys — their youthful pranks, their practical jokes, their childish follies — possessed no attractions to the young poet who aspired to be the American Byron, or Shelley.

During his short stay at West Point, Poe made a high reputation for poetical genius, and when it was announced that he intended to publish his poems, great expectations were formed of the book. Gen. Northrop informed me that the cadets eagerly subscribed for the volume. Although he made few friends at West Point, he made no enemies there; or elsewhere, except among the small poets and prose writers whose shortcomings were shown up in his critical capacity.

After leaving West Point, as already mentioned, Poe found a home in the family of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, in Baltimore. She was his nearest living relative, and the intimacy thus begun was the most fortunate event in the poet's unhappy life. From that [page 255:] time, however dark his prospects, however suffering his condition, however sad his thoughts, this devoted woman, this “more than Mother,” as he called her, was always by his side as friend and comforter. I knew Mrs. Clemm in her last years, when she was an inmate of the Church Home, in Baltimore. She was then four score years old. In my youthful admiration of Poe, I sought her out, made her acquaintance, got her to talk about Poe. All the world knows that he married her daughter, Virginia Clemm. But all the world does not know of his constant devotion to his child-wife (she was only fourteen years old at the time of her marriage) in sickness and in health. Mrs. Clemm never tired of speaking about “Eddie's” unceasing love of her daughter, and of his filial affection for herself.

Mrs. Clemm said Poe was most industrious with his pen, and would sometimes sit down at his desk at nine in the morning, and write until six in the evening, finishing five pages of Graham's Magazine during that time.

In my enthusiasm I persuaded Mrs. Clemm to visit a photographer's and have her picture taken. When it was finished, she looked at it for some time, and asked “Do I look as old and ugly as that?” (forgetting that forty years had passed since her last picture was painted). It [page 256:] is a copy of that photograph which is used in this article. I continued my visits to her as long as she lived, and when she died, I saw her laid by the side of her “Darling Eddie” in Westminster Churchyard, Baltimore.

It was while Poe was living in Baltimore, with his aunt, that he made his first success in literature, by gaining the $100 prize, offered by the Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] for the best tale. The limits of this article will not permit me to give the particulars of this contest, especially as it has been told more than once; but the late John H. B. Latrobe, one of the committee who bestowed the prize, was kind enough to furnish me the following account of the affair, a few years before his death: “John P. Kennedy, Dr. James Miller and I were selected by the publishers of the Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] to decide the best story and poem for the two prizes, one of $100 and the other of $50. We met, one evening, in my back parlor, on Mulberry Street, Baltimore. The Mss. were piled on a table, with a waste basket conveniently at hand. I sat at the head of the table, with Mr. Kennedy on one side, and Dr. Miller on the other, with a decanter of good old sherry and a box of fine havanas between them. Most of the Mss. were utter rubbish, and I, who acted as reader, was getting tired of reading, and [page 257:] the other gentlemen of listening to, the silly love stories, and sillier verses, when at the very bottom of the pile was found a small book, inscribed “A Manuscript Found in a Bottle, and other Tales of the Folio Club,” with several poems, including “The Coliseum.” We decided that Edgar A. Poe, whose unknown name was found in the envelope that accompanied his Mss., was entitled to both prizes, but the publishers of the Visitor [[Visiter]] did not wish the same person to receive both, and Poe was given $100 for the best story, and $50 was awarded to a local versifier.”

After the prize was awarded, Poe palled upon each of the gentlemen who composed the committee in order to thank them. Mr. Latrobe, who had graduated at West Point, first in his class, and afterward studied law, was impressed by Poe's erect, soldier-like bearing, as well as by the grace and elegance of his manners and the remarkable originality of his conversation. Mr. Latrobe said it was absolutely untrue, as stated by Poe's early biographers, that the prize was awarded to him on account of his beautiful handwriting; the decision of the committee was made because of the “unquestionable genius and great originality of the writer.”

On the 17th of March, 1894, I called to see [page 258:] Mr. Gabriel Harrison, at his pretty, artistic home on Madison Street, in Brooklyn. The object of my visit was to learn some particulars of his acquaintance with Poe. He said his personal knowledge of the poet was in 1846-7 when his fame had reached its zenith by the publication of the “Raven.” “He read the poem to me from a newspaper,” said Mr. Harrison, “and, of course, I was struck with its many beauties, and was delighted to know the man who had the genius to compose so wonderful a piece of alliteration and harmony. When I praised those special and distinctive qualities in the poem, he said, ‘alliteration and euphony of words are the genius of poetry.’ The next time we met, I said. ‘Poe, I am going to recite a fine poem to you; sit down and listen,’ I then recited “The Raven.” While I was repeating it, his eyes were suffused with tears, and when I got through, he cried, ‘My God, Harrison, did I write that?’ He then took me by the hand, and said, ‘by the power of your elocution, you have made me see beauties in my poem that I did not think it possessed.’ From that time he and I became constant companions. Many an afternoon did we walk to a favorite spot on the banks of the East River, where I read to him passages from Shelley and Byron, and heard him express his [page 259:] passionate admiration of the former poet.” Mr. Harrison was a witness of Poe's devotion to his delicate young wife. “They were in perfect accord: the one was the Harp, the other the Strings upon it, and what the one uttered the other vibrated back the concordance. They were, indeed, ‘two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.’ Poe had a melancholy and worried expression of countenance. His voice was a low mezzo tone. His articulation was fine, and from his lips and tongue fell his words like the tones of a well-tuned lute. His soul was all in harmony with perfect sounds, and he was always deeply affected by anything tender and pathetic. Often when he was reading to me, and came to a pathetic passage, the tears would blur his eyes, and he was obliged to hand me the poem to finish. He was always refined. Gentleman was written all over him. His thoughts were elevated; his language inspiring; his ambition high and noble. He was a remarkable man, and when once acquainted with him, he could not be forgotten.”

The fame of Edgar A. Poe has passed into many lands. His genius is one of the greatest intellectual gifts that America has bestowed upon the world. While we are justly proud of him as a poet, we have no cause to be [page 260:] ashamed of him as a man, for the true witnesses of his life prove beyond question that he possessed the very qualities that his enemies have willfully and persistently denied him. From their unbiased testimony, I have shown that he was gentle, affectionate, grateful, and “incapable of dishonor.”