Text: Helen Lucile Watts, “Biography,” Poe's The Life and Writings of Henry Beck Hirst of Philadelphia Story, Masters Thesis, 1925

[page i:]

Henry Beck Hirst, lawyer and poet, was born in Philadelphia on August 23, 1813.(1) We know the name of his father only through a letter written by Henry B. Hirst in 1849 to Griswold, in which he says: “My father, Thomas Hirst, Esq., was a shipping merchant. He subsequently became unfortunate in business, a fact which, of course, interfered materially with my early advancement, and will explain some matters which occur hereafter in my notes.”(2) With this information as a clue, we look in the Philadelphia directory for 1823(3) and find: “Hirst, Thomas, merchant, 156 S Second”. In 1828 he is listed as “Hirst, Thomas, tin plate worker, 170 N 4th”,(4) which seems to corroborate his son's statement with regard to his [page 2:] business. In the 1840 directory,(5) the next one available, no Thomas Hirst is listed, but he appears in 1841 as “Hirst, Thomas, gent., Sen. [Schuylkill] ab George”, with Henry living at a different address. In 1842 he is again listed as “gent.”, living at “22 Pine”, where Henry also lived in that year. But by the next year, Thomas Hirst is at still another address, and this is the last year when he appears in the directory.

We have no information whatever about Hirst's mother, nor of any brother except his half-brother, William L. Hirst. Anna Maria Hirst, mentioned by some as his sister, was only a pen-name of Henry Hirst, as will be seen later.(6)

Our information about his early life comes only from his own letter to Griswold, which says: “At the age of nine or ten years, with no other education than that received previously at an infant school, I entered the office of my half-brother, Wm. L. Hirst, Esqr., since a distinguished member of the Philadelphia Bar. At the age of sixteen I was sent to the Preparatory School of our University, where I remained nine months. I carried off the leading honors in all my classes and was looked upon by my preceptor, the Principal of the Academy, Revd. Saml. W. Crawford, as one of the best boys, if not the best boy in school. At the end of this time my half-brother thinking that I had received a sufficient classical education, recalled me to his office. My classical acquirements since have been the result [page 3:] of my own industry

“My boyhood was enlivened by a passionate fondness for Natural History. I studied Ornithology, Botany, Mineralogy and Conchology very closely — made drawings from Nature in the two first studies — and corresponded and exchanged specimens with some of the most distinguished savans of Europe. During all this time I received no assistance, pecuniary or otherwise, from my half-brother, although all my time was spent in his service, but remained, as I have ever since done, dependent on my own personal exertions for support.”(7)

The conceit which marked Hirst's character throughout his life may be noticed in this account of his education.

He does not tell us what sort of “personal exertions” they were by which he earned his support, but in the directory gives him as a merchant, and in 1841 and 1842 the directory lists; “Hirst, H. B. and P.M., seedsmen and florists, 27 S 4th”. Moreover, in the “Review of New Books” in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1840, there is a review of a book called. “The Florist's Guide, containing Practical Directions for the Cultivation of Annual, Biennial and Perennial Flowering Plants, of different classes, Herbaceous and Shrubbery, Bulbous, Fibrous and Tuberous-rooted; including the Double Dahlia; with a Monthly Calendar, containing instructions for the management of Green House Plants throughout the year T. Bridgeman, New York. Hirst and Dreer, Philadelphia.” The review of the book was probably [page 4:] written by Poe, who was then assistant editor of the magazine. It is brief, and reads as follows: “This is indisputably one of the best directories to Flora's beauties that can be placed in the hands of an amateur gardener. There is no ostentatious humbug in the development of botanical knowledge, no diffuse spread of scientific details and technicalities, written to gratify the scribbler's vanity, and confuse the tyro, rather than instruct. We have some knowledge of horticulture, and can safely recommend this unpretentious Volume to the attention of our readers. Messrs. Hirst and Dreer are well known as superior florists, and, the insertion of their name in the title page is a sufficient guarantee of the work's utility.” We cannot ascertain which Hirst this was, but we may hazard a guess that Henry B. Hirst had some hand in the book. —

His half-brother, William L. Hirst, was indeed “a distinguished member of the Philadelphia Bar”. He was probably born in 1802, and was admitted to the Bar on Dec. 18, 1827.(8) He is listed in the Philadelphia directory of 1828 as “att'y at law”, and from 1840 to 1860 as “attorney and counsellor”. In 1857 he had a residence on Chestnut Hill, and in1849 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Town Council.(9) He died in 1876, two years after the death of his younger half-brother.(10)

Henry Hirst describes the beginning of his legal and poetic careers as follows: “At the age of twenty-one not [page 5:] satisfied to remain any longer with that gentleman I left his office without taking my certificate of studentship, which I obtained from him in 1842 with very great difficulty. In February, 1843,(11) I passed a most honorable examination and was admitted to the Bar. I was tolerably successful even at first, but now I have a very excellent practice.

“My first poetical efforts, to the best of my recollections, occurred either in my 21st or 22nd year. They were crude and unmusical and I at once sat down to master the difficulties of English versification. You know how far I have succeeded. At school my scansion of the Latin poets was always perfect.

“I commenced my public contributions in ‘Graham,’ and have since contributed to all the leading magazines and annuals.”(12)

Griswold writes in his account of Hirst in Poets and Poetry of America: “Mr. Hirst's first attempts at poetry, he informs me, were in his twenty-first or twenty-second year, but he printed nothing under his proper signature until he was thirty, about which time he became a contributor to Graham's Magazine.”(13) Duyckinck makes a similar statement, apparently copying Griswold.(14)

Either Hirst's memory failed him on this point, or else he deliberately falsified. His first contribution to the magazines, so far as we have been able to discover, was the [page 6:] publishing of “The Autumn Wind.” in the Ladies’ Companion (Snowden's, N.Y.) for December, 1841. At this time Henry Hirst was twenty-eight years of age. Five more poems of his appeared in the Ladies’ Companion during the last six months of 1842, and many more in the following year. Two sonnets came out in the Southern Literary Messenger for 1843. His first contribution to Graham's was the poem “The Wren”, which appeared in November, 1846, when he was thirty-three years old. Nothing more by Hirst appeared in Graham's that year. In the latter part of 1847 “Lucretid.” and “The Last Tilt” were published in that magazine, and five more poems were included in the first six months of 1848. He contributed a larger number of poems to the Ladies’ Companion than he did to Graham's, but he probably chose to be remembered as a contributor to the more literary periodical. In one volume of the Southern Literary Messenger, that for the year 1844, there are twelve poems by Hirst, and this was two years before he had published anything in Graham's. It is also significant that these early contributions to the Southern Literary Messenger included the first canto of “Endymion,” which made him well known in the American literary world. All of these magazines paid for contributions.

Before his admission to the Bar, and before any of his poems had appeared in Graham's. Hirst had published a book which seems to have made but little impression on his contemporaries, and is rarely listed among his works. This is The Book of Cage Birds.(15) The copy in the New York Public Library is a “third edition”, and bears the date 1843. The [page 7:] “Advertisement” with which the book opens, written by Bernard Duke of Philadelphia, the publisher, is dated 1842. This book is a tangible result of the study of one branch of the “Natural History” with which Hirst had “enlivened” his boyhood. But this early publication is even more important to us as showing Hirst's acquaintance with poetry, and most of all because it contains three poems of his own on birds, one of which (“To the Indigo Finch”) was not republished. In the chapters dealing with various birds he quotes poems by Henry Pickering, Lord Byron, (John?) Ford, Francis Cosby, Jr. David Paul Brown, Charles Sprague, and Thomas Dunn English. This is important to keep in mind in connection with his later statement in the preface of his book Endymion of the amount of poetry he had read.(16)

In the “Advertisement”, Bernard Duke says: “The book is written by a gentleman well known as one of the best practical Ornithologists of the day. This fact must give the directions on its pages the fullest credit and reliance. The portion devoted to the Canary-bird (Fringilla serinus) is the most perfect description of its character and habits ever published; while the remainder displays the most correct judgment and scientific knowledge.”

This book is mentioned among Hirst's writings in Woodberry's Life of Poe(17) and also in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, but Hirst himself does not mention it in his autobiographical letter to Griswold, and it therefore does not appear in Griswold's account of him. Nor is [page 8:] it mentioned, elsewhere.

In 1838 Edgar Allan Poe moved to Philadelphia, and lived there for six years.(19) Woodberry in the notes to his Life of Poe quotes from a letter that he received, from Dr. Matthew Woods (who was then beginning the preparation of a biography of Hirst which has, however, never been published) as follows: “Poe and Hirst became intimate in Philadelphia, so Thomas Dunn English, who told me he introduced them, says. I know also that Mr. Hirst took breakfast with Poe quite frequently Sunday mornings preliminary to their spending the day in country stroll.”(20) Woodberry also quotes Theodore F. Wolfe as writing: “Poe and Hirst were intimate friends and companions during the greater part of the period of the residence of the former in the Quaker. City, and were closely associated not only in the follies and dissipations to which both were more or less addicted, but also in their literary work. Unto his dying day Hirst. solemnly affirmed that he and not Poe was the writer of ‘The Raven’, and that, at most, Poe had written but one stanza and part of another of the poem, the reminder of that stanza having been plagiarized by Poe from a poem well known to students of poetry. I saw in the hands of Dr. Matthew Woods of Philadelphia the materials for an as yet unpublished biography of Hirst, in which the doctor expects to substantiate Hirst's claim authorship of ‘The Raven’. Several of the poems published in Hirst's first volume had previously appeared in periodicals of which Poe was editor, and Poe's harsh criticisms [page 9:] of Hirst were subsequent to a quarrel with him and a rupture of the boon relationship which had existed between the two.”(21)

In his Literary History of Philadelphia, Dr. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer writes of Hirst as “one of the group of young literary men who used to gather with Poe at Thomas Cottrell Clarke's house at Twelfth and Walnut Streets. Hirst was an amorous fellow who drank absinthe at a ruinous rate, and he and his associates would often tap on the pane of the window of the basement room in which Clarke worked, the signal for an evening frolic.(22) Poe accused Thomas Dunn English of having got all the good there was in him did not leave the victim of the piracies from Hirst, which barren of poetical thoughts, or the ability to express them gracefully and musically. Hirst on his side was obviously influenced by Poe and more than one of his poems is suggestive of the intimacy and communion of the two poets.”(23)

During these years, 1838 to 1844, Hirst was doing a large amount of writing for periodicals, especially for the Ladies’ Companion and the Southern Literary Messenger. A considerable number of these poems appeared under a woman's name — Anna M. Hirst, Anna Maria Hirst, or even Mrs. Anna Maria Hirst. There was some speculation as to the identity of this person. N. P. Willis wrote, at the end of a criticism of the first canto of Endymion in the Weekly Mirror in 1844: “By the way, [page 10:] let us wonder whether the sweet poetess by the same name is a sister of Mr. Hirst.”(24) Willis was already penetrating the flimsy disguise. It therefore seems strange that Woodberry, could write in 1909: “Mr. J. H. Whitty informs me that ‘through his [Poe's] efforts poems were published in the Messenger, 1843 to 1845, “by Anna Marie Hirst, some relative of H. B. Hirst.”(25) The fact that Henry Hirst included almost all of these poems ascribed to Anna Maria in his forthcoming collection, The Coming of the Mammoth, the Funeral of Time, and Other Poems, and acknowledges in the preface that some “were originally published under a nom-de-plume”,(26) should be conclusive evidence that he wrote them all himself.

Hirst seems to have used the woman's name for his poems when they were especially feminine in their sentimentality (as, for example, the poems, “Mary. — A Memory”(27) and “The Forsaken”(28) ) or when he was having a considerable number of poems published in a single issue of a magazine.

The first book of poems by this young Philadelphian was called “The Coming the Mammoth, the Funeral Time, and Other Poems”, and was published in Boston by Phillips and Samson in 1845. It probably came out late in June or early [page 11:] in July, because the preface is dated “June, 1845”, and Poe, who was then editing The Broadway Journal, reviewed the volume in the issue for July 12th. Moreover we have a letter from Anne C. Lynch to Hirst, from New York on July 23, 1845, in which she regrets that her ill health will prevent her from complying with his request that she review his volume of poems. The book contained, besides the two, long poems which give it its title, fifty-two shorter poems, twenty of which are sonnets. Very nearly all of these shorter poems had previously been introduced to the public in magazines.

The opening and closing paragraphs of the author's preface to this volume help us to form an idea of what sort of person he was in 184.5, and in particular to learn what was his attitude towards his writings. He begins by saying: “Most of the following poems were written during the intervals of a preparation for the Bar. Those among them which have already enjoyed their hour of notoriety in magazines, or more ephemeral publications, appeared to deserve some further notice from their parent; and they have received it, in order that they may be launched upon the waste of literary waters with somewhat better hope of riding the ripple of the coast, whatever may be their fate among the billows of the broader sea. Whether whelmed in the storm of criticism, or returned to port with some small cargo of renown, the issue is of little consequence to the author — whose all is not invested in this single adventure.”

In the second paragraph he apologizes for, or tries to explain, the “uncouthness” of the style of the first poem in the volume, and then he concludes his christening of the book [page 12:] by saying: “Several of the longer poems, as well as some of the sonnets, were originally published under a nom de plume, but the public, it is hoped, will not consider them the less worthy, that they have now reclaimed their proper paternity.

Griswold says of this volume that it “certainly received all the praises to which it was entitled” — which is a delightfully and safely ambiguous way to put it — and that “its reception was such as to encourage the author to new and more ambitious efforts.”(29)

The only separate review of this volume which we have found is the long one by Poe in the Broadway Journal, to which we have already referred. This review shows without a doubt that the two men were still friends, though Poe had moved to New York. Poe's general attitude to Hirst's writing at that time is shown in these sentences with which his criticism begins:

Who were Hirst's other friends at this time? Aside from Thomas Dunn English and Thomas Cottrell Clarke, who are mentioned by Woodberry and by Oberholtzer, we have a letter from Nathaniel Parker Willis which shows that he became interested in Hirst after the publishing of the first canto of “Endymion”. Since Willis was no mean literary figure in that period, we quote his brief letter in full:

The letter is addressed on the outside to “Henry B. Hirst Esq., Philadelphia, Pa.” and bears the postmark “New York, Jul. 19” but no year is given. From the reference to Willis's [page 14:] editorial, however, we know that it was written in 1844:

His volume of poems was making him known to other aspirants to literary fame. Early in 1846 Thomas Buchanan Read wrote to him, apparently in reply to some overture of friendship made by Hirst:

About his other friends and acquaintances at this period, we can only conjecture that he knew such men as Andrew McMakin of the Saturday Courier, and George R. Graham of Graham's Magazine, and most of the other Philadelphia writers, among whom Robert Morris, Willis Gaylord Clark and Robert T. Conrad were once prominent. We shall see later that he had some correspondence with Bayard Taylor and with Longfellow.

It is impossible to assign any exact date to the end of his cordial relations with Poe, but we can advance two theories of the cause. For the first we quote Woodberry, who has only this to say “The cause of the later coolness of the friends, says T. H. Lane, was Hirst's parodying two lines of ‘The Haunted Palace’ thus; —

This is a parody, of course, of the lines:

But the lines as given here must have been an early version of the parody, or else T. H. Lane's parody of the parody, for we have the entire parody preserved. It appeared in Sartain's Union Magazine for May, 1852, among the puzzles and enigmas, and Poe's poem was printed opposite it. No author for the parody is given with the text, but in the index of the volume it is attributed to “H. B. H.”, and we have therefore no doubt that it was Hirst's. It is enough of a literary curiosity to be given here in its entirety: [page 16:]

The Ruined Tavern.

There is another possibility — that the breach may have come during the quarrel between Poe and Thomas Dunn English. Their quarrel began with a reference to Hirst. Poe wrote, in an account of English in his series of articles called “The Literati of New York City”, the following paragraph:

“The inexcusable sin of Mr. E. is imitation — if this be not too mild a term. Barry Cornwall and others of the bizarre school are his especial favorites. He has taken, too, most unwarrantable liberties, in the way of downright plagiarism, from a Philadelphian poet whose high merits have not been properly appreciated — Mr. Henry B. Hirst.”(34)

This appeared in June, 1846. Soon after this, English in the New York Telegraph and the New York Mirror accused Poe of forgery, and Poe sued the Mirror for libel.(35) The following letter from Poe to Hirst was very evidently written in the heat of this quarrel:

Poe's attitude to Hirst; sounds friendly enough here. Whether or not Hirsr gave him all the desired information, we do not know. But Hirst's feeling for Poe must have cooled at about this time, if we are to believe what Thomas Dunn English says in his discussion of these incidents in 1896. He first says; “Poe's rejoinder to my reply showed extreme irritation and an unrivaled command of billingsgate.” Then he comes to further statements which interest us more: — “My sur-rejoinder to this was brief. I merely quoted the choice words and phrases as I have done now, said that to such wit I had no reply to make, and added that if either of the gentlemen whose names he had used to my disadvantage would confirm his statements [page 19:] I would take notice of it. Neither of these did, however. One of them, Mr. Hirst, offered to write a contradiction; but I did not think the game worth the candle.”(37) If English is telling the truth here, we must believe that Hirst had already become estranged from Poe; but he may be only boasting, in which case our theory has no basis whatever.

During the three years 1845, 1846 and 1847, Hirst's contributions to the magazines were not so numerous as might be expected, and we may therefore Suppose that he was occupied with his law business. In 1844 he had published in the Ladies’ Companion a series of five sonnets which we have not mentioned before. He called them “Sonnets to the Poets”, and they were addressed to William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, Robert Conrad, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Robert Morris of Philadelphia. The one to Robert Morris was copied in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier for August 10, 1844.

In 1845, the year of the publication of The Coming of the Mammoth, Funeral of Time, and Other Poems, there was, as far as we know, only one of his poems published in a magazine, — “Mare Mentis”, in the Southern Literary Messenger. This poem was reprinted in his book, with the title translated into English.(38)

In 1846, besides his first contribution to Graham's, “The Wren”, of which we have already spoken, he contributed to Friendship's Offering and Leaflets of Memory, two annuals. In the former there were three poems, “Heart-Land”, “Summer”, [page 20:] and “Natal Stars”, all of which, had previously appeared in his collection. In this annual there is also a short story by him, called “The Disputed Will”, which is, as far as our information goes, his only published prose narrative. The story opens with a description of a young lawyer's feelings and thoughts when he has first opened his office and is waiting for a client. This much of the story must have been drawn from his own experience. The remainder is a truly romantic account of the first client, who is a beautiful young lady who is contesting a will. Hence the title. We are glad to note that Hirst, in spite of his egotism, does not have the lawyer in the story win the fair lady, allowing another to claim her instead. But of course he wins the lawsuit for her.

In 1847 he again contributed to both of these annuals. In Leaflets of Memory he published “Madeline”, a long poem which reappeared in his second, collection. In Friendship's Offering for that year there were two worthless poems — a sonnet called “Love”, and a short poem called “A Ballad: Ellen Dale”. These poems he did not use again. In Graham's there appeared two poems which were reprinted in the later collection.

But Hirst had been writing other poetry during these years. In July, 1844, the Southern Literary Messenger had published a long poem of his called “Endymion” which had been commended, as we have seen, by N.P. Willis, and undoubtedly by others. Using these stanzas as the first canto, he composed a much longer poem in four cantos, all concerned with the story of Endymion and the goddess of the moon. [page 21:]

Then he began negotiations for its publication, and two interesting letters with regard to this are preserved. Both are to Hirst from J. T. Fields of Boston.(39) The first one reads:

Apparently Hirst could find no other publisher that fall, or for some reason still preferred this one, and sent to Fields in the spring the whole of Endymion, if one can judge from this second letter:

Hirst probably agreed to these terms, because Endymion, A Tale of Greece, was published in 1840 in Boston by William D. Ticknor & Co., with whom Fields was associated. The volume was dedicated by Hirst to “The Honourable William D. Kelley”, one of his “brotherhood at the Bar”, and this dedication is dated April 1st, 1840.

In his letter to Griswold, Hirst says: “In July, 1840, I published ‘Endymion. A Tale of Greece’, an epic poem in four cantos, a second edition of which will appear during the present year; the first is almost if nor quite exhausted.” We do not know whether this second edition ever came out or not, but no copy has been located. In the same letter he continues by saying: “I have now in the press of the same house ‘The Penance of Roland, a Romance of the Peine Forte et Dure; Florence, with other Poems’. This volume will appear in a very few weeks.”(40) Earlier in the same letter he stated that a second edition of his first collection would also be forthcoming. There is (confirmation of these last two statements in a notice printed in the back of Endymion which reads:

This second edition of the earlier poems may have been published, but we have not seen it or any other reference to it. It is noteworthy that he was apparently intending to omit the poem, “The Coming of the Mammoth”, in this new edition.

Some time early in 1848, Hirst must have tried to initiate a periodical, either as editor or manager, or both. We do not know the name or the precise nature of this publication, but we have several letters regarding it. The first of these is from Poe.

The tone of this letter, while not so friendly as the letter of June 27, 1846, would at least indicate that there was not at this time any serious misunderstanding between the two men.

The second letter referring to this magazine is from Philip Pendleton Cooke to Hirst, under date of May 11th, 1848, in which Cooke says:

We also have Hirst's reply to Cooke, which we quote here in full:

This reference to Endymion as already published contradicts his previous statement in the letter to Griswold that it was published in July. Hirst was not an accurate man.

The fact of his acquaintance with Simms is confirmed by the survival of two letters from him to Hirst, neither of which bears any year dare. One is simply described as “a friendly letter”, and was written from Woodlands, S.C., on Nov. 8 of some unknown year.(44) The other was written from Charleston, on Oct. 24, and contains references to Endymion and to The Penance of Roland which make it probable that it was written in 1849, or even later. However, we quote it here:

The contents of this letter permit us to guess that the other letter was written from his “plantation residence” on Nov. 8 of the same year as this letter, and was either an expression of thanks for receiving Hirst's poems, or a letter regarding the appointment with the Governor. But why should Hirst want to interview the Governor of South Carolina? If it had been on a matter concerning his law business, he would more probably have sought the appointment through a lawyer. It is hard to imagine what other business there could have been, unless it was in connection with his periodical.

There are two surviving letters from Bayard Taylor to Hirst, dated from the “Tribune Office”, on May 19 and June 8, 1846. In the first letter Taylor promises to send Hirst something for his proposed periodical, in the second he commends Hirst's Endymion. and promises to send him “St. Catharine” [page 29:] shortly.(46) The date of this second letter is a further proof that Endymion was published before July.

That Hirst contributed to very minor publications is known. His words in the preface to The Coming or the Mammoth saying that some of his poems had previously appeared in “magazines, or more ephemeral publications” seems to prove that some poems appeared in newspapers. The Ladies’ Garland contains a poem in Feb., 1840.

We have a record of a letter from Longfellow to Hirst dated Nov. 13, 1849, in which he says: “Included are two poems, that Mr. Patterson may take his choice.”(47) Who Mr. Patterson was, we do not know, but he may have been connected with Hirst's publication, or with Graham's, with which Hirst seems to have been connected for a time.(48)

Hirst's fourth and last book was “The Penance of Roland. a Romance of the Peine Forte et Dure: and other Poems”, published in 1849 by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields of Boston. Hirst's dedication of this volume reads:

The most interesting thing about this volume from the biographical point of view is that it opens with a poem called “Proem: To My Wife”, from which we conclude that Hirst was married before, or during, the year 1849. The same poem had appeared in Graham's in July of that year, addressed “To —— ”. The only other references we have to Mrs. Henry B. Hirst are in a letter from Hirst's friend Dallas, written four years later, in which Dallas asks to be remembered to Hirst's “female partner”, and in a letter’ from Longfellow from which we shall quote below.

Many of the other poems in this last collection had previously appeared in Graham's in 1847, 1848, and 1849. The long poem which gave the volume its name was in Graham's in January, 1848. The volume was reviewed quite favorably in Graham's. Poe wrote a very caustic and sarcastic criticism of Hirst's poems, which Campbell says was “apparently not printed in Poe's lifetime”,(49) in which he accused Hirst of a great deal of imitation, and specifically of imitating some lines of his “Lenore” in “The Penance of Roland”. This review may have been written late in 1848, and it is certain that the friendship between the two no longer existed when [page 31:] this was composed. Nevertheless Hirst wrote a kindly obituary of Poe in the Saturday Courier of Oct. 20, 1849, in which he stated that at one time he saw Poe twice a day, often three times.(50) It was concerning this obituary that Mrs. Clemm, Poe's mother-in-law, wrote to Hirst on October 23, 1849, saying: “God bless you for doing Justice to my own dear Eddie. You who knew him so well, knew what a noble heart he had. And now will you do me a very great favor, me your old friend. Since this deep affliction, I have been staying at the house of Mrs, S. Anna Lewis,” — and going on to ask Hirst to write a criticism of Mrs. Lewis's “pieces”, which Poe had intended to do.(51)

In December 1849 a very poor poem by Hirst, called “The Death of the Year”, accompanied an engraving in Graham's Magazine. Six long poems by him “Ariadne”, “Narcissos”, “The Pirate”, “The Two Worlds”, “The Valley of Shadow”, and “Uriel”, appeared in that magazine during the first six months of 1850. His last publication in Graham's was the poem, “The Fall of the Fairies”, in July, 1850.

His last poems, so far as we know, appeared in Sartain's Union Magazine for 1852, and are: “Launcelot of the Lake”, “Death in Fever”, “Ballad of Ruth”, “The Valley of Repose”, a parody of Poe's “The Haunted Palace” called “The Ruined Tavern” and attributed to Hirst only by his initials in the index of the magazine,(52) and two poems on German legends [page 32:] called, “Rhein-Wein, Flagon First; The Pilgrim of Love” and “Rhein-Wein, Flagon Second: The Legend of Lurlei”.

We have portions of two letters written to Hirst by Longfellow in 1849 and 1850. The first of these may refer to some one of the poems mentioned above, or even to some other which has never been published. The portion which we have reads as follows:

The second fragment of a letter seems to indicate that Hirst was connected with Graham's Magazine, for Longfellow contributed to it at about this time. It says;

The last paragraph of Hirst's letter to Griswold(54) was: “I am the author of various sporting articles (prose) which appeared in the New York ‘Spirit of the Times’ under the nom [page 33:] “de plume of Harry Harkaway . . . . I have always been an enthusiastic sportsman both in field and on flood, and am perhaps, one of the best ‘shots’ in the country.” We know from references in the letters to and from Hirst that he was interested in sports, but a search through several volumes of “The Spirit of the Times” failed to reveal any articles by “Harry Harkaway”.

There is more available information about Hirst as a writer and as a man during the first years of the decade, 1850 to 1860, than for any other period of his life. There is an account of considerable length in a book of reminiscences published by John Sartain, the engraver, in 1899, and we have a long manuscript letter to Hirst from Dallas. Sartain's account deals chiefly with the period before and during the year 1852, while Dallas's letter is dated 1853, so we quote the former first.

Sartain first of all gives us a different version of the gay evenings of the Poe group, (in 1842 to 1844) as related by the daughter of Thomas Cottrell Clarke, as follows:

“Miss Clarke says of her father, ‘Writing into the wee hours, he worked in the basement dining-room of his house at Twelfth and Walnut Streets, where he wrote from preference because more accessible to ‘the boys’, as he called them, for it could be entered through an area in front. Coming late from their wild evenings, down town, they would find this busy worker, who, though he never drank liquor nor used tobacco in any way himself, gladly welcomed them there, where they disturbed his household little with their noise and their smoke. Tapping on the window pane, they would be let in laden like [page 34:] bees with news to be re-hashed and delivered to the printer's devil. And often would Poe drop in on his way home, — he then lived near Locust Street on Sixteenth, at that time named Schuylkill Seventh Street, — and Mrs. Clarke would send him coffee to clear his head before going home to pretty Virginia and his patient mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm.”(55)

Sartain then proceeds to tell how he and William Sloanaker bought the subscription list of The Union Magazine, (N.Y,), engaged Professor John S. Hart as editor, and re-christened the magazine “Sartain's Union Magazine”. The first issue of the magazine with the new name appeared on January 1, 1849.(56)

It is in the course of telling the fortunes of his magazine that Sartain gives us the following very interesting material about Hirst:

“As literary men are always of interest to the public, I will devote a few pages to the recollections of my intercourse with some of the contributors to Sartain's Magazine. Henry B. Hirst, a rollicking companion of Poe's, to whom recently there has been an effort made to ascribe some of Poe's best poems, wrote for the magazine every month during 1852. In May he began a series called Rhein Wein, Flagon First and so on. The poems were brilliant till the fourth, which showed a sudden breaking down, and he soon gave marked signs of a complete decay of his faculties. Hirst's office [page 35:] was within a stone's throw of my house in Sansom Street, and he would come in on me two or three times every day. Sometimes he would insist on dragging me off to drink absinthe with him, but he succeeded twice only. I then resolutely stopped, for I knew the evil of it. He did not stop, and the end is well known. Every time he left my office he said, ‘Eau reservoir’, with a wave of his hand, and seemed proud of the witticism.

“Miss Clarke speaks of him as one of the nightly visitors in her father's editorial sanctum. She says, ‘Henry B. Hirst would come swaggering in, making rings of cigar smoke and telling yarns galore. ‘The most accomplished liar of his day’ they used to call him. Among his highly figurative accounts of his own talents was one, that it was a common thing for him when a school-boy to commit to memory ten-pages or three hundred lines of a Greek or Latin poem while walking up three flights of stairs. He was always falling in love with one or other of the girl visitors at our house, and would spout extempore verses by the yard. Some impromptu verses of his in an album are still preserved. A very pretty girl, now Mrs. Robert Mustin, had begged him to write something for her. He asked her what he should write on. She quickly answered, ‘On paper’. Without hesitation he indited the following:

Another day for the same lady he wrote,

“Miss Clarke continues, ‘Among the callers or stoppers-in would be ‘Tom’ as he was called, Dr. Thomas Dunn English, who, after being bon camarade with Hirst and Poe, quarrelled with one or both. All three of them happening in early one evening, they had to be kept apart lest they come to deadly strife. English was put in the parlour, Hirst in the library, where he was in the habit of lying prone on a lounge by the hour, dreaming dreams and seeing visions, and Poe was shown as usual into the dining-room.’

“In his broken-down condition, result doubtless of the absinthe habit, Hirst would come to see me often and stay until late, in the night. Seated beside me he would attempt to write poetry. Purring like a cat and swaying his body to and fro to the rhythm he was trying, he would jot down words here and there with intervals left to be filled up. Sometimes I would suggest an appropriate word, when down it would go with ‘That's it, that's just it’. He was in such a dilapidated state physically and mentally that I continued in dread that he might die on my hands then and there.

“But before he fell into this sad condition, and while he was still in his prime, we had some pleasant times. I well remember a day when my valued friend, R. H. Stoddard, an afternoon in my office with Hirst and me. [page 37:] It was a genuine feast of reason and flow of soul, but Bacchus was not of the company.”(57)

Here ends the account of Hirst in Sartain's book, but we should quote in this connection a letter from him to Hirst, bargaining for the poems published in 1852: —

The “Launcelot” is of course the poem, “Launcelot, of the Lake”, printed in the magazine for January, 1852. “The other two” were probably either “Death in Fever” or “The Ballad of Ruth”, and “Rhein-Wein, Flagon First: The Pilgrim of Love”, since the latter was printed with an engraving and made the feature in the April issue of the magazine. [page 38:]

The long letter from J. A. Dallas is of sufficient biographical interest to be quoted entire:

The extremely informal tone of this letter and its contents give us a very clear idea of at least one of the friends of Hirst's later years, and thereby some knowledge of character of Hirst himself. It leads us to suspect that [page 41:] his poetry was not always an expression of his inner life.

It is again a letter, this time written by Hirst himself, which gives us some insight into his life in the following decade. It is written on ruled paper, and is as follows:

The Oxford University Calendar does not show any degree conferred in 1859 on any American, much less poor Hirst, nor have we found the poems which he mentions here. Insanity already had its grip upon him.

Oberholtzer gives us a vivid though brief account of his last years: “With dissipated habits Hirst is said to have coupled inordinate self-esteem, which later developed into insanity. For a long time he was allowed to go about the streets in strange habiliments, imagining himself by turns the President of the United States and the various emperors, kings, and queens of Europe. He was finally placed in the insane department of the Blockley Almshouse. At first he believed himself in the moon or in Japan, but later he seemed to understand his true situation and a friend who visited him believed him convalescent, until, approaching him, Hirst gravely explained that his name was Beauregard,(62) ‘the grandson of the stars and the eldest child of the late Comet, Christianized and heir to the throne of Morocco’, etc. He died in 1874 at the age of sixty. Such was the miserable end of a great American poet, some of whose work entitles him to [page 43:] place beside the best writers of English Verse.(63) The exact date of his death was March 30, 1874.

A much calmer account is given in the obituary notice in The New York Times for Wednesday, April 1, 1874, which we quote as a fitting conclusion to this biography:

“On Monday afternoon, in Philadelphia, Henry B. Hirst, once well known as a poet of considerable promise, died at the age of sixty. He was born there, and was admitted to the Bar in 1843. The best of his poems was his ‘Endymion’, which attracted the attention of literary circles at the time of its appearance. For many years before his death he had been in bad health.”

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