Text: C. W., “Edgar Allan Poe,” Bristol Times and Mirror (Bristol, UK), whole no. 13,728, January 2, 1909, p. 20, col. 3

[page 20, column 2:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

One form of celebrating the centenary of the birth Edgar Allan Poe is to be the publication by a London house within a few days of a new edition of his poetical works, with a sketch of the poet's life by Mr. J. H. Ingram. The price will be a shilling. There are two or three of Poe's pieces which have been very popular in this country for a couple of generations. In the sixties, when Penny Readings were a craze, one heard “The Bells” ad nauseum, for it was not every one who could effectively recite —

Bathonians who are old enough will remember the late Canon Flemming's zeal for Penny Readings and his elocution class. I dare say there are some survivors of that class among the readers of this column. They will not have forgotten that sensational death of Alderman Slack at a Guildhall reading.

FIRST VERSION OF “THE BELLS.”

“The Bells” appeared in “Sartain's Union Magazine,” November 1849, and the verses were very generally quoted. The editor, in the next issue, said there was a curious history connected with the poem demonstrating the development of the idea in the poet's mind. A year before, it had come to the editor in this form: —

The Bells. — Song

Six months later Poe sent in an altered poem near its persent length and form, and three months afterwards he submitted the final version.

“THE RAVEN.”

But “The Bells” was one of Poe's later poems. He had previously published “The Raven,” which attained instant success. It was first printed in an American newspaper in January 1845, and in November was included in a volume entitled “The Raven and other Poems.” In his preface the author said that events had prevented him from making “any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me, poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion.” His prose tales about now attracted more attention in literary circles, and he was welcomed in New York drawing-rooms. He worked at criticism — praising Tennyson, Browning, and Dickens, among others — and he lectured on American Poets, some of whom were obscure and forgotten. He grew weary of Longfellow, and said unkind things of him. Early in 1846 he retired with his sick wife to a tiny cottage, leaving her from time to time to earn bread. Mr. Ingram prints this beautiful letter, written to her in one of those absences: — “My dear Heart — My dear Virginia, our mother will explain to you why I stay away from you this night. I trust the interview I am promised will result in some substantial good for me, for your dear sake and hers. Keep up your heart in all hopefulness, and truest yet a little longer. On my last great disappointment I should have lost my courage but for you, my little darling wife. You are my greatest and only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory, and ungrateful life. I shall be with you to-morrow (illegible) p.m., and be assured until I see you I will keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer! Sleep well, and may God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted Edgar.”

AMERICA'S GREATEST POET.

Virginia died, almost starved, in the following January, and Poe was left alone and neglected, also to starve. Mr. Woodberry, his best biographer, says that the acquaintance managed to save the life of America's greatest poet by a collection of a hundred or two dollars — less, I suppose, than would have been the collection for any street arab whose case should have happened to be reported in the police news. True, Poe was a man whom few could love, but he was a genius. He died October 7th 1949 — in his forty-first year. Mr. Andrew Lang wrote wisely when he warned us not to compare Poe with stronger men, or to expect to live with him always — “by the sea, in the hills, in the market place. He is a singer of rare hours of langor, when the soul is vacant of the pride of life and inclined to listen, as it were, to the echo of a lyre from behind the hills of Death.” In his “Letters to Dead Authors,” the same critic concludes with a happily-worded farewell to the “sombre and solitary spirit” of Poe — “a genius tethered to the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among cannaille, a poet among poetasters, dowered with a scholar's taste without a scholar's training, embittered by his sensitive score, and all unsupported by his consolations.” There are local touches with Edgar Allan Poe. In “The Journal of Llewellin Penrose, a Seaman,” Poe obtained the materials for that strong story of a pirates’ hoard, “The Gold Beetle.” Penrose was found begging in the streets of Bristol by Thomas Eagles, and through that gentleman's influence he was placed in the Merchant Seamen's Almshouse. Penrose bequeathed his journal to Eagles, and when Murray published it, Byron sat up half the night to read the book and dreamt about it the other half. John Taylor, in his “Book about Bristol,” suggests that Tennyson must have read this journal before writing “Enoch Arden,” as some of the incidents are practically reproduced. There is no record of Tennyson's indebtedness to the journal. He said he got the story from the East Coast, and that it was not singular to that part of England. But he made unconscious use of what he read and heard, just as everybody else does. Then Poe praised the wit and humour of Southey's now never-read “Doctor.” It was so good he did not think Southey could have written it.

C. W.