Text: Dwight R. Thomas, “Directory: G-L,” Poe in Philadelphia, 1838-1844 (1978), pp. 768-844

­ [page 768, continued:]

WILLIAM DAVIS GALLAGHER (1808-1894). This Cincinnati, Ohio, editor and poet wrote Poe on March 10, 1841, forwarding a complimentary copy of his Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West. In the June, 1841, number of Graham's Magazine, Poe commented that this anthology contained “a great deal of trash with which the public could well have dispensed.” The notice accorded Gallagher in the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 223) was more favorable: “He is the author of some of our most popular songs, and has written many long pieces of high but unequal merit. He has the true spirit, and will rise into a just distinction hereafter.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and William T. Coggeshall's Poets of the ­[page 769:] West, pp. 132-36. Additional information is provided by John T. Flanagan in the “Introduction” to his edition of Gallagher's Poetical Literature of the West (1841; rpt. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles &Reprints, 1968), pp. v-xx.

MISS LYDIA HART GARRIGUES. As a child Miss Garrigues often watched Poe walking down Seventh Street from the windows of her father's house. As an old woman she related her memories of the poet to Ellis P. Oberholtzer (q.v.). Her reminiscence is preserved in Phillips’ Poe, I, 827. During the years 1843 and 1844 the Poe family lived at 234 North Seventh Street, above Spring Garden Street. The name “Garrigues” frequently appears in McElroy's Philadelphia Directory between 1837 and 1845. For 1843 and 1844 McElroy's lists two persons having this surname whose residences were located on North Seventh Street. Isaac B. Garrigues, a marble mason, lived at 181 North Seventh; and James R. Garrigues, a clerk, lived at 278 North Seventh. Possibly Isaac B. Garrigues was the father of this Poe acquaintance, since she remembered seeing him “going down Seventh St., into the city.” The residence of James R. Garrigues was above that of the Poe family and farther away from the city. John Hart (q.v.), Poe's next-door neighbor in the Spring Garden district, was Miss Garrigues’ grandfather.

DAVY GIBBS. Horace Wemyss Smith (q.v.) remembered that around the year 1840 he frequently visited “Davy Gibbs's eating-saloon” in the company of Poe, Henry B. Hirst, and Andrew Scott. The restaurant operated by Gibbs was a popular oyster cellar located in the basement of the ­[page 770:] Philadelphia Arcade, on Chestnut Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets. Additional information on Gibbs's establishment, on the Arcade, and on oyster cellars in Philadelphia may be found in Joseph Jackson's Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, I, 98-99; II, 383, 386-87. Davy Gibbs and his restaurant appear in McElroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1837 and in every edition of McElroy's issued between 1841 and 1845.

WILLIAM FEARING GILL (1844-1917). This early Poe biographer preserved the reminiscences of several Philadelphians who had known Poe. Gill was an accurate reporter, but not a discriminating scholar. He accepted without question two fictitious stories related to him by George R. Graham; for additional information, see the chronology for April 19 and September 7, 1842. Notwithstanding Gill's lack of scholarly acumen, some of the reminiscences which he preserved are probably authentic. There is no reason to question the recollections of Thomas C. Clarke which Gill quotes, apparently from letters this Poe associate had sent him, or to question the recollection contained in Graham's May 1, 1877, letter to him, which he reproduces. Gill's Life of Edgar Allan Poe originally appeared in 1877, but there were several later editions. The edition cited throughout this study is the most recent: the fifth edition, described as “revised and enlarged,” which was issued by W. J. Widdleton, New York, in 1880. The reminiscences of Graham and Clarke are reproduced on pp. 100-03, 110-12, 137-38. A sketch of Gill may be found in Brown.

CHARLES GILPIN (1809-1891). In his Reminiscences, p. 210, John Sartain stated that during his July, 1849, ­[page 771:] visit to Philadelphia, Poe was taken to Moyamensing Prison for “the drop too much,” but that he was recognized as “Poe, the poet,” when “his turn came in the motley group before Mayor Gilpin,” and that “he was dismissed without the customary fine.” Sartain's reminiscence provides sufficient evidence to identify Charles Gilpin, a Philadelphia lawyer, as a possible Poe acquaintance during his earlier residence in the city. According to Joseph Jackson, Encyclopedia of Philadelphia, III, 881, and to Ellis P. Oberholtzer, Philadelphia: A History, II, 442, Gilpin was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1850; and he served through the year 1853. He is listed in every edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory between 1837 and 1845. A sketch may be found in John Russell Young's Memorial History of the City of Philadelphia (New York: New York History Co., 1895-98), 11, 436-37.

LOUIS ANTOINE GODEY (1804-1878). During his residence in Philadelphia, Poe was almost certainly acquainted with the rotund, affable publisher of Godey's Lady's Book; their relationship was probably a social, rather than a professional, one. According; to Horace Wemyss Smith (q.v.), Poe and Godey attended a supper party at the home of the Philadelphia playwright Richard Penn Smith. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 218), Poe praised Godey for his genial personality: “No man has warmer friends or fewer enemies.” In his March 30, 1844, letter to James Russell Lowell, Poe revealed his private opinion of Godey's Lady's Book when he expressed a fear that unless American writers of genius started their own magazine, they would be “devoured, without mercy, by the Godeys, the Snowdens, et id genus omne.” Poe appreciated ­[page 772:] Godey as a man; he had scant respect for him as the publisher of a magazine characterized by colored fashion plates and sentimental fiction. The only composition he contributed to Godey's during the Philadelphia period was “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” which appeared in the April, 1844, number. According to the Wealth and Biography of Philadelphia (1845), p. 11, Godey acquired a personal fortune of fifty thousand dollars from the profits of his magazine. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia. His magazine has been studied by Joseph Nichols Satterwhite, “Godey's Lady's Book and Fiction: 1830-1850,” Diss. Vanderbilt 1954. In the “Editor's Table” of the Knickerbocker Magazine, 49 (January, 1857), 106, Lewis Gaylord Clark discussed a letter which suggests that Godey may have taken an active role in defending Poe's character: “MR. L. A. GODEY, publisher of ‘The Lady's Book,’ Philadelphia, writes us to say, that he is not to be ‘counted in’ among those in Philadelphia to whom the late EDGAR A. POE proved faithless, in his business and literary intercourse. His conduct toward Mr. GODEY was in all respects honorable and unblameworthy. The remark which elicits the note of Mr. GODEY was copied as a quotation into our pages from the ‘North-American Review,’ in a recent notice of that venerable and excellent Quarterly.”

JAMES GOODMAN (1807-1863). This Philadelphia lawyer is a probable Poe acquaintance. Horace Wemyss Smith (q.v.) recalled that Poe and Goodman were associates of his father Richard Penn Smith. William E. Burton's July 4, 1839, letter to an unnamed correspondent, presumably Poe, provides further evidence that these two men may have been ­[page 773:] acquainted. James Goodman was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania: biographical notices may be found in the University of Pennsylvania: Biographical Catalogue of the Matriculates of the College, 1749-1893 (Philadelphia: Society of the Alumni, 1894), p. 72, and in W. J. Maxwell's General Alumni Catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Alumni Association, 1922), p. 16.

PETER K. GORGAS. This Philadelphian was one of Poe's neighbors in the Spring Garden district. According to Ellis P. Oberholtzer (q.v.), Gorgas operated a lumberyard “Across the street from Poe's Spring Garden home, to the West” (see Phillips’ Poe, I, 827-28). Peter K. Gorgas appears in every edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory between 1837 and 1845. McElroy's uniformly locates his lumberyard at the corner of Seventh and Buttonwood Streets, and his residence at 310 North Sixth Street. When Poe walked down Seventh Street toward the center of Philadelphia, he would have passed Gorgas’ lumberyard, which was located approximately one block below his residence at 234 North Seventh Street.

HANNAH FLAGG GOULD (1789-1865). Poe included this Newburyport, Massachusetts, poetess in both the August, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 166, 196-97). Sketches of Miss Gould may be found in the DAB and Appleton's.

WILLIAM GOWANS (1803-1870). When the Poe family resided in New York City in 1837, they shared the same boarding house with this bookseller for “eight months, or ­[page 774:] more.” Gowans defended Poe's character in a reminiscence published in Gowans Catalogue of American Books, No. 28 (New York: William Gowans, 1870), p. 11. A copy of this catalogue is held by the Library of Congress; the most informative portions of Gowans’ account are quoted by Quinn, p. 267. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

GEORGE REX GRAHAM (1813-1894). The publisher of The Casket, Graham's Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post was one of Poe's closest associates. Graham was born in Philadelphia on January 18, 1813, the son of a prosperous shipping merchant. His father's death left the Graham family in straitened circumstances, and young George received little formal education. At the age of nineteen he apprenticed himself to a cabinetmaker; in his spare time he studied law and literature. Graham's early ambition was to practice law; but by the time he gained admission to the Philadelphia bar on March 27, 1839, he had already turned his energies to publishing. In the January 12, 1839, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, p. 2, col. 2, Samuel C. Atkinson, then this weekly's publisher, announced that he had given “the Editorial charge of the paper” to Graham. On April 13, 1839, the Post, p. 3, col. 7, announced that Atkinson had sold The Casket, a Philadelphia monthly magazine, to “GEORGE R. GRAHAM &CO.” On November 9, 1839, the Post, p. 2, col. 3, carried Atkinson's announcement that it had been sold to Graham. and John S. Du Solle. Early in 1840 Charles J. Peterson (q.v.), Graham's close friend, replaced Du Solle as his partner on the Post (see the chronology for March 28, 1840). On October 20, 1840, Graham purchased Burton's Gentleman's Magazine for thirty-five hundred dollars; in December he combined Burton's and The Casket to ­[page 775:] issue the first number of a new monthly, Graham's Magazine. The proprietor of Graham's wanted it to reach a wide audience throughout the nation, and he did not hesitate to spend money on superior illustrations and on contributors of proven popularity. To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet of national stature, Graham offered fifty dollars a poem. James Russell Lowell received only ten dollars a poem; as he became better known, he could command twenty. But many other contributors were not paid. For additional information, see the chronology for May, May 1, August 18, 1841, and April 25, June 13, November 27, 1842. Graham was a commercial publisher rather than a patron of literature, and he seems to have believed that fashion plates and mezzotint engravings were the most important ingredients of the successful periodical. In the Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1842, p. 2, col. 7, he boasted that he had spent “over two thousand dollars “ on embellishments for the May, 1842, number of Graham's. Poe probably met Graham early in the Philadelphia period. The first evidence that they may have been acquainted is provided by the publication of the Prospectus of the Penn Magazine in the June 6, 1840, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, p. 3, col. 7. After the February 4, 1841, financial crisis in the Philadelphia banks forced Poe to postpone the Penn Magazine, he accepted employment as the book review editor of Graham's Magazine; his salary was around eight hundred dollars per year. For additional information, see the chronology for February 20, March 25, April 1, September 18, and October, 1841. Poe found Graham to be personable and kind, but he did not admire him; he disliked Charles J. Peterson, who had much to do with the preparation of both Graham's and the Post. Poe resented the fact that he had little control over the policies of Graham's, and he was disgusted by its fashion ­[page 776:] plates, costly mezzotints, and saccharine poetry and fiction. When he joined the staff, its proprietor made him a verbal promise to provide financial backing for the Penn Magazine at the end of six months or a year. Graham, preoccupied with his own journal, never kept this promise. Poe withdrew from Graham's Magazine of his own volition after the preparation of the May, 1842, number, which was completed by April. 1. He remained on good terms with Graham, and he continued to contribute to his magazine. Poe's letters are the best source of information on his association with Graham, especially his June 26, 1841, and February 3, May 25, 1842, letters to Frederick William Thomas, and his July 6, 1842, letter to Daniel Bryan. In 1845 Graham's personal fortune was estimated at one hundred thousand dollars by the Wealth and Biography of Philadelphia, p. 11. In 1847 he made several unwise investments, and both his publishing empire and his fortune soon dissolved. In 1848 Samuel D. Patterson (q.v.) purchased the controlling interest in Graham's Magazine, although Graham remained as editor. In his last years Graham was dependent on the charity of others. Poe praised the publisher for “the energy which particularly distinguishes him as a man” in the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 213). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, and Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia. Charles J. Peterson contributed a laudatory characterization of his friend to Graham's Magazine, 37 (July, 1850), 43-44. The best sources are J. Albert Robbins’ “History of Graham's Magazine,” Diss. Pennsylvania 1947, and his “George R. Graham, Philadelphia Publisher,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 75 (1951), 279-94. Graham published two reminiscences of Poe. In “The Late Edgar Allan Foe,” Graham's Magazine, 36 ­[page 777:] (March, 1850), 224-26, he defended Poe against Rufus W. Griswold's “Ludwig” obituary. The February, 1854, number of Graham's (Vol. 44, pp. 216-25) contained an unsigned article on “The Genius and Characteristics of the Late Edgar Allan Poe,” which has been attributed to Graham by Quinn, pp. 681-83. In his old age Graham related several fabrications which have been repeated by Poe biographers. In one story he claimed that Poe withdrew from Graham's Magazine upon discovering Griswold in his chair, and in another he claimed that he dismissed Griswold from the monthly's staff because this employee had published “a most scurrilous attack” on Peterson. Evidence to disprove these two accounts may be found in the chronology for April 19 and September 7, 1842. In his Philadelphia Magazines, p. 217, Albert H. Smyth reproduced still another anecdote. Graham claimed that he accepted Poe as an employee when he purchased the Gentleman's Magazine from William E. Burton: “‘There is one thing more,’ said Burton, ‘I want you to take care of my young editor.’ That ‘young editor,’ who in this manner entered the employ of George Graham, was Edgar Allan Poe.” Of course, Poe's employment on the Gentleman's Magazine ended with its June, 1840, number. When Graham purchased this monthly from Burton on October 20, 1840, both men would have known that Poe was preparing to issue the Penn Magazine.

WILLIAM H. GRAHAM. This Philadelphian published The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, No. 1 on or before July 18, 1843. Graham does not appear in any edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory between 1837 and 1849. The outside front cover of the Prose Romances gives his address as No. 98 Chestnut Street. The establishment he operated at ­[page 778:] this address was not a publishing house, but a magazine agency, which seems to have been opened earlier in the year. In its March 25, 1843, issue, the Saturday Evening Post, p. 3, col. l, mentioned “the new periodical depot of Mr. W. H. Graham, No. 98 Chestnut Street.”

HORACE GREELEY (1811-1872). This New York City editor was a leading spokesman for the Whig party; he controlled The New-Yorker, the New-York Daily Tribune, and other journals. Greeley took an early interest in the career of Rufus W. Griswold (q.v.), to whom he sent frequent letters of advice and encouragement. In the January, 1842, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 250-51), Poe found that Greeley, “one of the most able and honest of American editors,” had “written much and invariably well.” He added that he had no personal knowledge of Greeley. In his Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford &Co., 1868), pp. 196-97, Greeley recalled that he had once lent Poe fifty dollars; this loan almost certainly occurred during Poe's later residence in New York. Sketches of Greeley may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, and the Directory of the American Congress.

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS (1843-1928). He was an educator, clergyman, and author. As a young man Griffis taught at universities in Japan, and he later became one of the leading American authorities on the Far East. From 1877 through 1886, he served as pastor of the First Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York. One of the members of his congregation was James Barhyte (q.v.), who remembered meeting Poe at the summer resort at Saratoga Springs, New York. According to Woodberry, Life, II, 112, and Phillips, ­[page 779:] Poe, I, 764, Griffis originally published the reminiscence Barhyte related to him in the New York Home Journal of November 5, 1884. This 1884 account does not seem to be accessible at present. Almost forty years later, Griffis published a second article based on the Barhyte reminiscence in the New York Times Book Review, January 20, 1924, p. 2. This account, entitled “Behind the Mystery of Poe's ‘Raven,’” places Poe at Saratoga during the 1842 and 1843 summer seasons. For additional information, see the directory entries for James and Mary Barhyte. Two letters which Griffis wrote to Mary E. Phillips, both stressing the authenticity of the Barhyte reminiscence, are held by the Boston Public Library. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD (1815-1857). He was one of the most influential critics and editors of the 1840's and 1850's; but he has been remembered for his devastating “Memoir” of Poe, who had unwisely appointed him as his literary executor. Griswold was born on February 13, 1815, in Benson, Rutland County, Vermont, the twelfth child of Rufus and Deborah Griswold. His father was a farmer; his mother, a fundamentalist Christian who often quoted the Scriptures. At the age of fifteen Griswold became an apprentice journalist in Albany, New York; for several years he worked on small newspapers in upstate New York and Vermont. On March 20, 1837, he married Caroline Searles of New York City. In the same year Griswold obtained a license as a Baptist minister; he kept the title of “Reverend” throughout his life, but he never took charge of a congregation. Around the year 1838 Griswold attracted the attention of Horace Greeley (q.v.), the editor of The ­[page 780:] New-Yorker, a weekly journal, and a leading spokesman for the Whig party. Greeley and Griswold became close friends and frequent correspondents. In 1840 Greeley assumed the editorship of The Log Cabin, a weekly newspaper which was the foremost organ of the Harrison campaign; and he gave Griswold control of The New-Yorker. On October 3, 1840, The New-Yorker announced Griswold's forthcoming anthology The Biographical Annual. Harrison's victory in the Presidential election became apparent in November; Griswold left The New-Yorker around November 27 and went to Philadelphia, where he joined the staff of the Daily Standard, a Whig newspaper published by Francis J. Grund (q.v.). On February 13, 1841, The New-Yorker announced that Griswold had a contract with the Philadelphia publishers Carey &Hart to prepare an anthology entitled The Poets and Poetry of America. Poe first made Griswold's acquaintance in the spring of 1841, when they had “a long conversation about literature and literary men, pertinent to . ... ‘The Poets and Poetry of America” (see the chronology for ante May 8, 1841). Around May 8 Griswold went to Boston to accept an editorial position on the Boston Notion; in the May 22 issue of this weekly, he commented adversely on several literary criticisms which Poe had published in Graham's Magazine. On August 18, 1841, Griswold wrote Carey &Hart that he had resigned from the Notion and was returning to Philadelphia “to superintend in person the stereotyping of ‘The Poets and Poetry of America.’” When he arrived, he asked Poe to furnish information on Frederick William Thomas for the anthology (see Poe's September 1, 1841, letter to Thomas). Griswold fell ill in the first week of September; his health deteriorated in the closing months of 1841. He was suffering from tuberculosis, or consumption of the lungs, a disease which was eventually to [page 781:] end his life some sixteen years later. In a December 27, 1841, letter Epes Sargent advised him to take a sea voyage; during the early months of 1842 Griswold attempted without success to obtain a chaplaincy in the United States Navy. On April 18, 1842, Carey &Hart notified him that they had issued The Poets and Poetry of America. George R. Graham (q.v.), the publisher of Graham's Magazine, was impressed by Griswold's anthology, and on April 19 he wrote him to inquire whether he would accept an “editorial chair” in Philadelphia. In a May 3, 1842, letter Graham welcomed Griswold to the staff of Graham's Magazine at a salary of “$1,000 per annum.” Griswold became the monthly's book review editor, succeeding Poe, who had withdrawn around the first of April. Griswold was more adept than his predecessor in attracting popular contributors, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, to Graham's Magazine; but most literati realized that he lacked Poe's brilliance. The Poets and Poetry of America proved both popular and controversial. Although the anthology was recognized as the most complete compilation of American poetry, many reviewers either criticized Griswold's taste or condemned him for undue preference to New England poets. In July, 1842, Griswold engaged Poe to review the anthology; he was offended when the finished critique was “not decidedly as favorable as it might have been” (see the chronology for July, August 12, September 7, 1842). Evidence of Poe's lessening regard for Griswold may be found in his June 4, 1842, letter to Joseph Evans Snodgrass, his July 6, 1842, letter to Daniel Bryan, and his September 12, 1842, letter to Frederick William Thomas. On January 28, 1843, the Saturday Museum published a vitriolic review of The Poets and Poetry of America by Poe's friend Henry B. Hirst (q.v.). In the following autumn [page 782:] Poe deeply offended Griswold by the strictures he passed on the anthology in his popular lecture on “American Poetry.” For additional information, see the chronology for November 29, 1843, January 2, and February 3, 1844. Griswold was noticed in the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 215); sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. His letters are held by different repositories; most remain unpublished. The Griswold Collection of the Boston Public Library contains the majority of the letters sent to him. His son William M. Griswold published many documents in Passages from the Correspondence and Other Papers of Rufus W. Griswold (Cambridge, Mass.: W. M. Griswold, 1898). Jacob L. Neu's monograph “Rufus Wilmot Griswold,” University of Texas Studies in English, 5 (1925), 101-65, has been superseded by Joy Bayless’ biography Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943). Griswold's May 22, 1841, criticism of Poe in the Boston Notion has been reprinted by B. Bernard Cohen and Lucian A. Cohen, “Poe and Griswold Once More,” American Literature, 34 (1962), 97-101. On October 9, 1849, the New York Tribune published Griswold's controversial “Ludwig” obituary of Poe, which has been reprinted in the Works, I, 348-59. His distorted characterization evoked protests from three men of letters — George R. Graham, John Neal, and Nathaniel P. Willis. To defend his original verdict, Griswold prepared a detailed, often intentionally inaccurate “Memoir,” in which he portrayed Poe as a misanthropic drunkard. His “Memoir” first appeared in the International Monthly Magazine, 1 (October, 1850), 325-44; it was reprinted in his edition of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, Volume I: Tales (New York: Redfield, 1855), pp. xxi-lv. For several decades this “Memoir” remained the [page 783:] standard biography of Poe.

FRANCIS JOSEPH GRUND (1798-1863). This politician and journalist was born in Austria, but he emigrated to the United States around 1827. During the years Poe lived in Philadelphia., Grund played an active role in the city's politics. He edited a Whig newspaper, the Daily Standard, during the campaign of 1840; and he afterwards became a staunch supporter of the Tyler administration. On October 26, 1842, The Spirit of the Times, p. 2, col. 1, reported that Grund had been appointed “weigh master” in the Philadelphia Custom House. In Our Press Gang, p. 45, Lambert A. Wilmer recalled that Grund, while holding “a fat office in the Custom-House,” controlled the “political department” of the Evening Mercury, the organ of the Tyler administration in Philadelphia. Reasonably conclusive evidence that Poe knew Grund is provided by the existence of a presentation copy of the Prose Romances inscribed to Grund “With Mr Poe's respects” (see Quinn, pp. 398-99). Possibly Poe sought Grund's assistance in his attempt to secure a political appointment to the Philadelphia Custom House. Sketches may be found in the DAB Supplement One (1944), Appleton's, and Brown.

HIRAM H. HAINES (1802-1841). This poet and editor of Petersburg, Virginia, was an early supporter of the Southern Literary Messenger. On May 16, 1836, Poe and Virginia Clemm were married in Richmond; and they went on a honeymoon to Petersburg, where Haines entertained them. Poe and Haines corresponded during the Philadelphia period; the only surviving item of their correspondence from these years is Poe's April 24, 1840, letter. ­[page 784:] In the March 18, 1840, issue of Alexander's Weekly Messenger, Poe favorably noticed “a new weekly and tri-weekly paper” published by Haines at Petersburg, the Virginia Star (see Brigham, Poe's Contributions, pp. 58-59). Hiram H. Haines died on January 15, 1841. An obituary in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, January 23, 1841, p. 3, col. 3, described him as “a gentleman of acknowledged ability, and always courteous in his editorial deportment.” Additional information is provided by Ostrom, Letters, I, 99-100, 1.29; by Mabbott, Poems, p. 546; and by Phillips, Poe, I, 532-33.

SARAH JOSEPHA HALE (1788-1879). This American poet and editor is remembered as the author of the popular children's poem “Mary's Lamb” and as the woman who encouraged President Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. Mrs. Hale contributed to the Southern Literary Messenger during Poe's editorship; she had occasion to correspond with him at this time (see the Letters, I, 105-06). In 1837 she became the literary editor of Godey's Lady's Book, but she did not settle in Philadelphia until several years later. On November 10, 1840, the Daily Chronicle, p. 2, col. 4, reported: “Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, the editor of the Lady's Book, has been in town some days. She is staying at Mrs. Tillinghurst's, Walnut, above Ninth.” In all probability, Mrs. Hale was one of Poe's Philadelphia acquaintances. He discussed her in both the August, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 171, 203). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, and Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia. She has been the subject of two biographies: Ruth E. Finley, ­[page 785:] The Lady of Godey's: Sarah Josepha Hale (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938), and Isabelle Webb Entrikin, Sarah Josepha Hale and Godey's Lady's Book (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1946).

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK (1790-1867). Poe could have met this notable American poet at the New York Booksellers Dinner on March 30, 1837. On June 24, 1841, he wrote Halleck, soliciting this author's contributions to the new monthly magazine he planned to begin with the financial backing of George R. Graham. In the sketch of Poe published by the Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843, p. 1, col. 3, Henry B. Hirst seems to be quoting from Halleck's unlocated reply to this letter. Hirst predicted success for Poe's forthcoming journal, The Stylus: “In so saying, we but endorse the opinion of every literary man in the country, and fully agree with Fitz Greene Halleck, that, however eminent may be the contributors engaged, it is, after all, ‘on his own fine taste, sound judgment, and great general ability for the task, that the public will place the firmest reliance.’” Poe held a similarly high opinion of Halleck's abilities. He recorded it in the February, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 150-51, 189), and in “Our Contributors, No. VIII: Fitz-Greene Halleck,” which appeared in the September, 1843, number of Graham's Magazine. Evidence that these two authors were friends during the New York period is provided by Poe's December l, 1,345, and January 10, 1846, letters to Halleck (Letters, I, 304-05; II, 310), and by the 1875 reminiscence of Gabriel Harrison, which is reprinted in the directory. Sketches of Halleck may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. Additional sources are cited in ­[page 786:] the LHUS Bibliography.

ROBERT HAMILTON. This actor and poet edited Snowden's Ladies’ Companion, a monthly magazine published in New York City. Poe's October 3, 1842, letter to Hamilton suggests that he may have sold “The Mystery of Marie Rôget” to this editor during his trip to New York around June 25, 1842. Before Hamilton joined the Ladies’ Companion, he was a minor actor on the Philadelphia stage. Evidence that he was in Philadelphia in 1840 is provided by a report in the Daily Chronicle, June 2, 1840, p. 2, col. 4: “Robert Hamilton, formerly of the Chestnut st. theatre, who was fined a few days since $100 for interfering with a dog catcher, while in the lawful discharge of his duty, paid the amount in full, on Saturday.” Hamilton left the Ladies’ Companion in 1843; the Saturday Courier, August 5, 1843, p. 3, col. 5, reported:

Hamilton, late editor of the “Ladies’ Companion,” has gone to Boston, where he is to be Stage Manager of the National Theatre. Mr. Hamilton, it will be recollected, married, some years ago, the beautiful widow of the late lamented Rowbotham, formerly Manager of “Old Drury” [the Chestnut Street Theatre] in Philadelphia. She died a year or two since. Mr. Hamilton is a good writer — and a Poet of very considerable pretensions and power. We wish him success in his new avocation, and especially from the fact, that in days gone by, he has thought he had reason to complain of some critiques which we wrote upon his acting in the highest walks of the Drama. However severely we expressed ourselves in those criticisms — we know we never entertained a malignant feeling, at that time or at any other, towards ROBERT HAMILTON.

Hamilton edited The May Flower for 1846, a Boston annual, in which he reprinted Poe's “The Imp of the Perverse.” He ­[page 787:] He also edited several anthologies of poetry: Silent Love, and Other Poems (1844) and The Oracles of Shakespeare (1850).

SAMUEL HARKER (?-1850). In his September 11, 1839, letter to Joseph Evans Snodgrass, Poe requested his correspondent to prepare a notice of the September, 1839, number of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine: “The critique when written might be handed to Neilson Poe. If you ask him to insert it editorially, it is possible he may do it — but, in fact, I have no great faith in him. If he refuses — then upon your stating the fact to Mr Harker of the ‘Republican’ — you will secure its insertion there.” Samuel Harker edited the Baltimore Republican, a daily newspaper. In 1835 Poe published several critiques of the Southern Literary Messenger in the Republican; he was probably acquainted with Harker at this time. For documentation, see David K. Jackson, “Four of Poe's Critiques in the Baltimore Newspapers,” Modern Language Notes, 50 (1935), 251 — 56. According to J. Thomas Scharf, Baltimore City and County, II, 615, Harker retired from the editorship of the Republican on September 7, 1840. The Washington Daily Union, November 17, 1850, p. 3, col. 5, carried a brief obituary: “The papers this morning announce the death of the venerable and much-esteemed Samuel Harker, esq., after a protracted illness. He has held a number of prominent posts in the city and State government, and was for many years the able and fearless editor of the Baltimore Republican.”

ROBERT HARMER. He was the proprietor of the Cornucopia Restaurant, located at 44 North Third Street. According ­[page 788:] to an unsigned reminiscence published in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch in 1850, Poe became intoxicated when he visited Harmer's Cornucopia one evening in the company of Jesse E. Dow. For additional information, see the directory entry for Thompson Westcott. Robert Harmer and his restaurant appear in every edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory issued between 1837 and 1845. In McElroy's for 1844 (p. 368) and 1845 (p. 420), they are also listed in the “Business Directory” section under the heading of “Taverns.” The Cornucopia Restaurant is described as “a first-class establishment” by Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, II, 992.

AMANDA BARTLETT HARRIS (1824-1917). She was a frequent contributor to nineteenth-century magazines and the author of many books for children. In 1875 she published a reminiscence of the Poe family during the Philadelphia period in Hearth and Home, a weekly magazine issued in New York City; her account was quoted by John Henry Ingram in his Edgar Allan Poe (1886; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1965), pp. 178, 180-81, 184; and it has furnished details for many biographers of a later date. In his Life, I, 382, Woodberry quoted Miss Harris’ January 22, 1896, letter to William M. Griswold, in which she described her source: “The incidents concerning Poe were told me in 1852. My informant was a lady who lived in Philadelphia when Poe had ‘a little cottage on the outskirts’; she was in some way connected with an association intended to assist in a delicate manner those in reduced circumstances who had been accustomed to a life of refinement and perhaps luxury. She became personally acquainted with the little family, and befriended them. This lady is dead.” The account ­[page 789:] in Hearth and Home, 8 (January 9, 1875), 24, is apparently an authentic — although somewhat exaggerated — reminiscence. Since it is not accessible in most libraries, it is reproduced from a copy of Hearth and Home held by the Library of Congress:

A sketch of Miss Harris may be found in Brown.

SANDY HARRIS. In his June 27, 1846, letter to Henry B. Hirst (Letters, II, 322), Poe mentioned this Philadelphian: “I write now, to ask you if you can oblige me by a fair ­[page 791:] account of your duel with [Thomas Dunn] English. I would take it as a great favor, also, if you would get from Sandy Harris a statement of the fracas with him.” In his “Reply to Mr. English and Others,” also dated June 27, 1846, Poe described the “thrashing” administered to English “by the Hon. Sandy Harris, who (also for an insult to ladies at a private house) gave him such a glimpse of a Bowie knife as saved the trouble of a kick — having even more vigorous power of propulsion.” See Poe's “Reply,” reprinted by Moss, Poe's Major Crisis, p. 53. Sandy Harris is a possible Poe acquaintance. No sketch seems to be available; the identification of him as Ira Harris (1802-1875), a United States Senator from the state of New York, is incorrect (see Moss, p. 44). “Sandy” was apparently his given name, rather than a sobriquet. On April 1, 1841, for example, the Philadelphia Gazette, p. 2, col. 6, reported: “MARRIED. On Wednesday evening, the 31st ult., by the Rev. Mr. Odenheimer, SANDY HARRIS, late of North Carolina, to MARGARET POGUE, of Philadelphia.” Harris was an active supporter of the Tyler administration. On Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1842, he was a highly visible figure at a large Tyler rally (see the Public Ledger, February 23, p. 2, cols. 2-5, and February 24, p. 1, cols. 2-3). The toast given to Harris by his fellow Tyler supporters suggests that he had a history of political activity: “Hon. Sandy Harris — Too long retired from public life, we welcome him again in its midst.” Harris was in financial difficulties during the year 1842: on March 28 The Spirit of the Times, p. 2, col. 2, reported that he had filed a petition for bankruptcy. His fortunes improved later in the year; on November 17 The Spirit, p. 2, col. 4, recorded his appointment as “a day inspector” in the Philadelphia Custom House. Harris’ “fracas” with English, mentioned by Poe in ­[page 792:] his letter to Hirst, could have been an internal dispute within the city's Tyler organization. Harris does not appear in McElroy's Philadelphia Director between 1837 and 1844. In 1845 McElroy's contains the following entry: “Harris Sandy, 100 Walnut.” He does not appear again until 1849: “Harris Sandy, 1 Sansom.”

GABRIEL HARRISON (1818-1902). This actor and artist was a close friend of Poe during his later residence in New York City. Harrison left several reminiscences of Poe. On November 17, 1875, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, p. 4, col. 4, published a letter in which he described his friend. Almost a quarter of a century later, the New York Times Saturday Review, March 4, 1899, p. 144, published another account written by an unnamed journalist who had talked with Harrison. The reminiscence which appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, being written by Harrison himself, is more trustworthy than the one published by the New York Times; but most Poe biographers have relied solely on the latter account. In his Life, II, 422, for example, Woodberry stated that Poe “seems to have sojourned at times in New York” during 1843 and 1844, citing Harrison's reminiscence in the New York Times as “the only direct evidence.” More recently, John Walsh cited this account in Poe the Detective, pp. 65, 91, as evidence that Poe may have visited New York City in “late 1842” or “early 1843.” Poe is not known to have visited New York in late 1842 or during the year 1843, and the reminiscence written by Harrison in 1875 provides some evidence that the two men did not become acquainted until after he had left Philadelphia. It is reproduced from a copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for November 17, 1875, held by the New York Public Library: ­[page 793:]

Harrison states that he first met Poe “in the Fall of 1843 or ‘44”; there are several reasons for dating their initial encounter in the autumn of 1844. The White Eagle Club he mentions was a Democratic political organization which flourished during the Presidential campaign of 1844 (see Gravely, “Thomas Dunn English,” pp. 206-20). Moreover, Harrison specifically states that the song Poe composed was “used by the club successfully through the campaign of 1844”; and he adds that he met with the poet “from 1844 to 1847, whenever he was in the city.” On March 17, 1894, Harrison was interviewed by Eugene L. Didier, who preserved his remarks in The Poe Cult, pp. 257-59. According to this source, Harrison was intimate with Poe “in 1846-7 when his fame had reached its zenith by the publication of the ‘Raven.’” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. The poem Poe composed for the White Eagle Club is reproduced by Mabbott, Poems, pp. 340-42.

JOHN HART. He was identified as one of Poe's next-door neighbors in the Spring Garden district by Ellis P. Oberholtzer (q.v.); see Oberholtzer's Philadelphia, A History, II, 214, and see Phillips’ Poe, I, 827. John Hart does not appear in any edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory issued between 1837 and 1845, but there is no reason to question Oberholtzer's account. McElroy's for 1845 contains the following entry: “Hart Lydia Mrs. 7th ­[page 797:] bel[ow] Green.” Green Street ran south of Coates Street, from North Front Street to Broad Street. The residence of Mrs. Hart would have been in the same block with the Poe residence located on Seventh Street above Spring Garden Street. Oberholtzer identified Mrs. Lydia Hart as the aunt of Miss Lydia Hart Garrigues (q.v.); presumably, she was the daughter-in-law of John Hart, whom he identified as Miss Garrigues’ grandfather.

JOHN SEELY HART (1810-1877). This educator and editor may have been acquainted with Poe during the Philadelphia period. In 1842 Hart became the principal of the Philadelphia High School. From 1849 to 1851 he was co-editor of Sartain's Magazine. Reasonably conclusive evidence that Poe saw Hart during his July, 1849, visit to Philadelphia is provided by the reminiscence of Henry Graham Ashmead; see the directory entry for Isaac Ashmead and see Phillips’ Poe, II, 1296-97. Sketches of Hart may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, and Franklin Spencer Edmonds, History of the Central High School of Philadelphia, p. 328.

ALEXANDER HARVEY. On June 19, 1892, the Philadelphia Press, p. 26, published a lengthy article entitled “Poe in Philadelphia.” This unsigned account is largely a careless rehash of nineteenth-century biographies; but it is worthy of note because its author performed some original research, interviewing John Sartain (q.v.) and apparently consulting city records, and because it furnished many details for Hervey Allen's best-selling biography. In his Israfel, p. 421, n. 600, Allen attributed it to Alexander Harvey. He was probably referring to Alexander Elmslie Harvey (1824-1919), a Philadelphia lawyer who graduated from ­[page 798:] the University of Pennsylvania in 1843, or to his son Alexander Elmslie Harvey, Jr. (1854-1914), a civil engineer who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1873. A sketch of the elder Harvey is given in Joshua L. Chamberlain's Universities and Their Sons: University of Pennsylvania, II, 67. Additional information on Harvey and his son may be found in the University of Pennsylvania: Biographical Catalogue of the Matriculates of the College (1894), pp. 134, 287, and W. J. Maxwell's General Alumni Catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania (1922), pp. 22, 40. Possibly the most significant item in the 1892 account of “Poe in Philadelphia” is its author's claim to have seen an official document in which Poe registered to study law under Henry B. Hirst (q.v.):

Hirst belonged to a family prominent at the Philadelphia bar, and had himself become a lawyer in February of this year [on February 4, 1843] . ... . He proposed to Poe that they both become partners in the law. As a consequence, Poe filled out and signed a blank form, and had himself registered in the District Court of Philadelphia, on July 19, 1843, as a student of law, with H. B. Hirst for legal preceptor. This fact has never been discovered by any biographer, pro-Poe or anti-Poe, and is now for the first time printed.

Young Hirst . ... died in 1874. Drink was his ruin as it was the ruin of his student at law. Mr. Sartain . ... was much surprised when told a day or two ago that Poe had registered under Hirst's legal preceptorship . ... . Poe's age is given on the court records as thirty-two, and, as he made the declaration in 1843, the poet must have believed himself born in 1811 . ... .

Almost ten years after the Press published its account, Alfred Mathews contributed a similar article on “Poe's Career in Philadelphia” to the Philadelphia Times Saturday Book-Review, 1 (July 20, 1901), 101-02. Mathews also asserted that Poe registered to study law with Hirst on July 19, 1843; but unlike the author of the 1892 article, ­[page 799:] he did not claim to have examined court records. The document cited in the 1892 account cannot presently be located in the files of the Philadelphia District Court. However, it is not unlikely that Poe signed a document in the District Court on July 19, 1843, because at this time he was involved in a libel suit against Francis H. Duffee (q.v.). The court record might have named Hirst, who seems to have been Poe's attorney in this action (see the chronology for July 27, 1843). Conceivably, the author of the 1892 article may have seen a document related to this litigation; at present the Philadelphia City Archives contain no records of suits instigated, but not brought to trial, before the year 1874. Given this author's lack of scholarly acumen, his statement that Poe registered as Hirst's “student of law” cannot be accepted until corroborated by additional evidence.

FRANCIS LISTER HAWKS (1798-1866). As one of the editors of the New York Review, this Episcopal clergyman may have had occasion to correspond with Poe in 1837 (see the chronology for post January 3, 1837). A perfunctory notice of Bishop Hawks appeared in the November, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 205). In the Columbia Spy in 1844, Poe expressed his opinion that Hawks was “a most amiable man, but by no means fit to edit a Review. His writings, like his sermons, are excessively fluent, but little more. They are never profound.” See Doings of Gotham, p. 41. These remarks suggest that Poe may have known this clergyman and have listened to his sermons during his 1837 residence in New York City. Sketches of Hawks may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. ­[page 800:]

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864). Poe's failure to include Hawthorne in “Autography” was almost certainly due to his inability to obtain a sample of this New England author's signature: Hawthorne did not become a contributor to Graham's Magazine until after Poe's departure. The lengthy criticism of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales which Poe published in the April and May, 1842, numbers of Graham's more than compensates for this significant omission in the “Autography” series, and it establishes that Poe recognized his contemporary's genius at an early date. Evidence that Hawthorne was aware of Poe's career is provided by his favorable notice of this author in “The Hall of Fantasy,” which appeared in the February, 1843, number of The Pioneer. In the early months of 1843, Poe corresponded with James Russell Lowell in an attempt to secure Hawthorne's services as a contributor to The Stylus. Although Hawthorne agreed to contribute, there is no evidence that he forwarded an article to Philadelphia. For documentation, see the extant letters from the Poe-Lowell correspondence entered in the chronology for February 4, March 27, April 17, May 8, 1843. Additional references are provided in Eight American Authors and the LHUS Bibliography.

JAMES EWELL HEATH (1792-1862). This Richmond author frequently provided advice and assistance on literary matters to Thomas Willis White, the proprietor of the Southern Literary Messenger. During his editorship of the Messenger, Poe almost certainly had occasion to make Heath's acquaintance. The two men corresponded during the Philadelphia period; Heath's September 12, 1839, letter is apparently the only extant item from this correspondence. Heath admired Poe's literary criticism, but he objected ­[page 801:] to his fiction because it failed to convey salutary lessons in morality. Heath probably wrote the review of the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque which appeared in the January, 1840, number of the Messenger (see the chronology). In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 241), Poe described him as “almost the only person of any literary distinction residing in the chief city of the Old Dominion.” A sketch may be found in the DAB.

CALEB SPRAGUE HENRY (1804-1884). Poe discussed this clergyman and teacher in the November, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 197). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT (1807-1858). This author emigrated to the United States from England in 1831; he is remembered principally for the articles and books on field sports which he published under the pseudonym of “Frank Forester.” Poe had the opportunity to make Herbert's acquaintance at the New York Booksellers Dinner on March 30, 1837. In the November, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 206), he recorded his opinion that Herbert's “longer works evince much ability, although he is rarely entitled to be called original.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

ELIZABETH REBECCA HERRING (1815-1889). She was Poe's first cousin, being the eldest daughter of his aunt Eliza Poe (1792-1822), who married Henry Herring (q.v.), a Baltimore lumber merchant. Around the year 1829, when Poe was living in Baltimore, he composed an acrostic poem ­[page 802:] in Elizabeth Herring's honor (see Mabbott, Poems, pp. 147-49). On December 2, 1834, Elizabeth married Arthur Turner Tutt; and she subsequently moved from Baltimore to Woodville, Rappahannock County, Virginia. She corresponded with the Poe family during the Philadelphia period; only one letter is known to survive from this correspondence — Poe's July 7, 1842, letter — and only a brief excerpt from this item has as yet been published. Additional information on Elizabeth Herring may be found throughout Mabbott's Poems and Phillips’ Poe.

HENRY HERRING (ca. 1791-1868). This citizen of Baltimore became Poe's uncle through his marriage to Eliza Poe on November 17, 1814. He was the father of Poe's cousins Elizabeth Rebecca Herring and Mary Estelle Herring (q.q.v.). According to the reminiscence left by his daughter Mary, Herring went to live in Philadelphia around the year 1840; he presumably had occasion to visit the Poe family. Three editions of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory issued between 1837 and 1845 list a Philadelphia resident by this name. McElroy's for 1840 contains the following entry: “Herring Henry, steam mill, Cedar n[ear] Broad.” In 1841 and 1842 McElroy's gives a different address: “Herring Henry, gent., 117 Vine.” According to Phillips, Poe, I, 421, Herring was by profession “a lumber dealer”: conceivably, the “steam mill” mentioned by McElroy's in 1840 may have been a lumber mill. On March 9, 1868, the Baltimore Sun, p. 2, col. 3, reported the death of Herring at age seventy-seven.

MARY ESTELLE HERRING. She was the daughter of Henry Herring (q.v.) and the half-sister of Elizabeth Rebecca ­[page 803:] Herring (q.v.). Her married name was Mrs. James Warden. Around 1840 Mary Herring and her father were living in Philadelphia. Over forty years later she related her memories of Poe to Amelia Fitzgerald Poe, who transmitted them to George E. Woodberry. Miss Poe's August 28 and September 13, 1884, letters to Woodberry cannot presently be located in the collections of his papers held by Columbia and Harvard. In his Life, II, 429, Woodberry mentioned Mary Herring's account as evidence that Poe may have been addicted to opium; and he quoted from Miss Poe's letters:

The only direct testimony [for Poe's addiction] is that of Miss Herring (Miss Poe to the author, Aug. 28, 1884): “She told me that she had often seen him decline to take even one glass of wine, but says that, for the most part, his periods of excess were occasioned by a free use of opium.” At my request Miss Poe had another interview with Miss Herring, and wrote again, Sept. 13, 1884, with reference to Miss Herring's acquaintance with the family at that time: “In 1840 or ‘41 her father, Mr. Herring, went to live in Philadelphia, and she was then a widow and lived with him. To her surprise one day she met Mrs. Clemm on Chestnut St., and then for the first time learned that the Poes were living in Philadelphia. After that she frequently went to see them, and had the misfortune to see him often in those sad conditions from the use of opium. ... . During these attacks he was kept entirely quiet, and they did all possible to conceal his faults and failures. After recovery his penitence was-genuine, but he made good resolutions only to be broken.”

Woodberry does not indicate whether the “Miss Herring” whom Amelia Poe interviewed was Elizabeth Herring or Mary Herring. The reminiscence is attributed to Mary Herring (Mrs. James Warden) by Phillips, Poe, I, 698, and Allen, Israfel, p. 417, n. 503. Her testimony that Poe was guilty of “a free use of opium” is not corroborated by the reminiscences of his close Philadelphia associates. For additional ­[page 804:] information on Mary Herring, see Phillips, I, 219, 421, 425, 698.

JAMES HERRON. This civil engineer and inventor was a native of Virginia, and conceivably he may have made Poe's acquaintance when this author was living in Richmond. Herron was sufficiently close to Poe to provide him with financial aid and to attempt to assist him in securing a position in the Philadelphia Custom House. For documentation, see Poe's letters to Herron entered in the chronology for early June and for June 30, 1842. Some information on Herron's career is provided by Quinn, p. 360, by Ostrom, Letters, I, 199, 204, and by Phillips, Poe, I, 755-56. He was the author of two pamphlets: a report of a survey for a railroad, which was prepared for the Virginia House of Delegates and which was published in Richmond in 1834, and a description of his trellis railway track, which was published in Philadelphia in 1841. Herron was apparently living in Washington in 1842; evidence that he later resided in Philadelphia is provided by McElroy's Philadelphia Directory, which lists him in its 1844 and 1845 editions.

JOHN HILL HEWITT (1801-1890). This editor, poet, and musician had known Poe in Baltimore during the early 1830's; the two men were not on good terms. Hewitt published an unfavorable review of Poe's Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829) in the Minerva, a Baltimore weekly newspaper he edited with Rufus Dawes (q.v.); and he was subsequently Poe's rival in a premium contest held by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter (see Quinn, pp. 165, 203). In 1840 Hewitt moved from Baltimore to ­[page 805:] Washington. When Poe visited the capital city in March, 1843, he saw Hewitt again. In his Shadows on the Wall; Or, Glimpses of the Past (1877; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1971), p. 43, Hewitt mentioned his encounter with Poe: “Our last meeting was in Washington City; he was then poor and almost friendless, and I extended to him the hand of friendship, partially relieved his wants, and parted with him on amicable terms.” Hewitt gave a more revealing account in his Recollections of Poe, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Atlanta, Ga.: Emory University Library, 1949), p. 19: “I happened to meet him on Pennsylvania avenue in Washington city ..... He was then un homme blasse — seedy in his appearance and woe-begone. He came boldly up to me, and, offering me his hand, which I willingly took, asked me if I would forget the past. He said he had not had a mouthful of food since the day previous, and begged me to lend him fifty cents to obtain a meal. Though he looked the used-up man all over — still he showed the gentleman. I gave him the money — and I never saw him afterwards.”

There is no reason to doubt Hewitt's reminiscence: he appears in the Washington Directory for 1843, and his presence in the capital city in “the early part of March, 1843,” is established by his own statement in Shadows on the Wall, p. 168. Sketches may be found in the DAB and George C. Perine's Poets of Maryland, pp. 42-45.

ISAAC WINTER HEYSINGER (1842-1917). This Philadelphia physician and art collector once owned a portrait of Poe by the artist Thomas Sully (q.v.). Heysinger left a note in which he described the circumstances under which the portrait was painted; this was published by Edward Biddle and Mantle Fielding, The Life and Works of Thomas Sully ­[page 806:] (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1921), p. 249:

NOTE BY DR. H. — This portrait of Edgar Allen [sic] Poe was painted by Thomas Sully in 1839 or 1840, while Poe was residing in Philadelphia. George R. Bonfield, the artist, was well acquainted with both Poe and Sully. All three attended social meetings of artists, actors, writers, etc., in the Old Falstaff Hotel, 6th St. above Chestnut, Phila. John Sartain was also a participant. It was the fashion at this time to call Poe the American Byron, . ... and Sully posed him, for his own pleasure, in the Byron attitude, modified by Poe's dress. James McMurtrie furnished the cloak. John Sartain says of Poe at page 215 of his “Recollections” [Reminiscences of a Very Old Man ], “Poe's face was handsome. Although his forehead when seen in profile showed a receding line from the brow up, viewed from the front it presented a broad and noble expanse, very large at and above the temples. His lips were thin and delicately moulded.”

This picture alone shows these features. ... . Poe wore no mustache at that time, as shown in Sully's picture.

This reminiscence is plausible. Heysinger was an intelligent student of art whose private collection included paintings by such European masters as Rembrandt, Mantegna, Jan Steen, and Titian. In 1913 he offered some of his paintings for sale in his Catalogue of the Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings and Objects of Art (Philadelphia: Privately printed, 1913). A copy of this auction catalogue is held by the New York Public Library; it contains a preface by Heysinger in which he discussed his close friendship with many of “the older artists of Philadelphia”:

The pictures embraced in this catalogue are offered as the genuine original works of the artists whose names are attached.

They are the gathering of more than forty years, known and confirmed by the most eminent artists of Philadelphia, and often of New York, with whom it was my good fortune to be closely associated since shortly after the close of the War of the Rebellion [Civil War]. Among these artists the one I knew best and loved most was the venerable George R. Bonfield, who ­[page 807:] died a dozen years ago, more than ninety years of age, under my care, and whose family physician I had been for more than thirty years.

I may say that I learned art under his teachings and guidance, although the older artists of Philadelphia (and with them, of New York), were at that time more of a guild than they now are, and used to meet at each other's houses, and with them our art collectors, and the whole talk was sociability and art.

I was among the favored few, and through them, and most of all Bonfield, I gathered most of my pictures (for good pictures were far more easily obtainable than at present) . ... . Most of my old artist friends are now no more, but their lessons and their memories are, to me, as vivid as when we used so often to meet, almost weekly or even oftener, with a few chosen friends in an atmosphere of art and close friendship.

In all probability, Heysinger obtained his knowledge of Poe's presence at the Falstaff Hotel from George R. Bonfield (1802-1898), although he might have discussed these “social meetings of artists, actors, writers, etc.,” with John Sartain (1808-1897) or Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Bonfield would have been a likely member of the Falstaff Hotel circle: he appears in every edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory between 1837 and 1845, except that for 1844, and he is uniformly identified as an “artist.” Sartain and Sully were the best known Philadelphia artists of the time. James McMurtrie, a merchant, could have afforded to furnish Poe with a cloak; his wealth was estimated at fifty thousand dollars in the Memoirs of the Wealthy Citizens of Philadelphia (1846), p. 45. According to Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, II, 1074, McMurtrie became the first president of the Art Union of Philadelphia when it was organized in March, 1843. The Falstaff Hotel is discussed by Scharf and Westcott, II, 984, as well as by John F. Watson and Willis P. Hazard, Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time, Rev. ed. (1879; rpt. Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart &Co., 1909), III, 366, and by ­[page 808:] John Russell Young, Memorial History of Philadelphia, II, 133. The Falstaff was opened as the Washington Tavern around 1790; the name was changed around 1830, when William Warren, an actor noted for his portrayal of Shakespeare's Falstaff, became its proprietor. There is good reason to accept Dr. Heysinger's statement that this establishment was frequented by actors: it was adjacent to the Chestnut Street Theatre, familiarly known as “Old Drury,” which was located on the north side of Chestnut, a few feet west of Sixth Street. The Falstaff was not so much a hotel for transients as a tavern which served as a meeting place. Scharf and Westcott refer to it as the “Falstaff Inn” and describe it as a tavern; they add that “Its principal uses were in renting its rooms for arbitrations, the use of juries, audits, and other legal proceedings, and as a meeting-room for societies.” The Falstaff is no longer extant; it was located on the west side of Sixth Street, between Chestnut and Market Streets.

WILLIAM J. HIGH (1866-?). In her Poe, I, 439, 640-41, Mary E. Phillips quoted a reminiscence preserved in the family of William J. High, a Baltimore artist. According to this account, Poe visited Baltimore “(at intervals in 1840) in connection with legal business for his wife. She having inherited a portion of the Wm. Clemm Sr. and his wife's estate of Mt. Prospect, Balto. County, Md. They were Virginia's grandparents.” During one trip to Baltimore, Poe is said to have had a likeness made by Stanton and Butler. There is no evidence that Poe visited Baltimore in 1840; but his October 10, 1843, letter to John B. Morris, a prominent attorney of this city, raises the possibility that he may have been involved in legal ­[page 809:] proceedings relating to the estate of William Clemm, Sr., during the Philadelphia period. Moreover, Stanton and Butler did in fact make a daguerreotype of Poe: it is held by the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore. The reminiscence preserved by High may be authentic, but it has not been corroborated. According to Phillips, I, 439, II, 1663, High published these “traditions in the family of his grandfather Joseph B. Jenkins” in an article entitled “New Poeana” in the Baltimore Sun of June 26, 1921. The Baltimore Sun for this date does not contain High's account.

HENRY BECK HIRST (1817-1874). This eccentric poet was often in Poe's company. Hirst was born in Philadelphia on August 23, 1817, the son of Thomas Hirst, a shipping merchant. He received little formal education, but he was an apt student. In an 1849 biographical memorandum addressed to Rufus W. Griswold, Hirst wrote: “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. ... . 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. ... . At school my scansion of the Latin Poets was always perfect.” See Passages from the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, pp. 254-55. During his youth Hirst was a legal apprentice in the office of his ­[page 810:] half-brother, William L. Hirst, a successful lawyer. Around the year 1838 Hirst and Henry A. Dreer (q.v.), a merchant, opened the firm of Hirst &Dreer, Nursery Seedsmen and Florists, at 97 Chestnut Street. In 1840 Hirst withdrew from the firm and opened his own “horticultural warehouse” at 27 South Fourth Street (see the chronology for December 24, 1840). In the same year he also began to publish poetry: the June, 1840, number of The Casket (Vol. 16, p. 260) contained his “Stanzas,” and the July 3 issue of the Daily Chronicle, p. 1, col. 3, contained his “Return, Oh! Return.” Hirst subsequently became a frequent contributor to these two Philadelphia journals, to Graham's Magazine, and to Snowden's Ladies’ Companion, a monthly issued in New York City. Some of the poems he contributed to magazines were signed with the pseudonym “Anna Maria Hirst.” As a poet, Hirst's defects proved more numerous than his virtues. He was proud of his detailed knowledge of English versification, and he experimented ably with a variety of meters; but his poems were carelessly written and characterized by banal diction and forced rhymes. In reviewing Hirst's first volume of poetry, The Coming of the Mammoth (1845), for the July 12, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal (Works, XII, 166-80), Poe gave a judicious appraisal of his friend:

We have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Hirst has not only given indication of poetical genius, but that he has composed some very commendable poems. His imagination is vigorous, bold, and at the same time delicate. His sense of the true provinces of poetical art is remarkably keen and discriminating, and his versification is superior to that of any American poet. We perhaps should qualify this latter remark by observing that his knowledge of the principles of the metrical art is more profound and more accurate than that of any American poet — but that his knowledge too frequently leads him into the pedantry of hyperism. He is apt to overdo a good thing. ­[page 811:]

He insists upon rhythmical and metrical effects until they cease to have any effect at all — or until they give to his compositions an air of mere oddity. — His other defects are, chiefly, a want of constructive ability, occasional extravagance of expression, and a far more than occasional imitativeness. This last sin, is, in poetry, never to be forgiven, and we are sorry to say that Mr. Hirst is inordinately given to it. There is not a single poem in the beautifully printed volume before us which does not remind us, instantly, of some other composition. If we except some rhythmical effects (for which the author deserves great praise) there is nothing in the book which is fairly entitled to be called original, either in its conception, execution, or manner, as a whole. Of detached thoughts nevertheless, there are many very striking ones which are quite new, for any evidence that we have to the contrary.

Hirst's principal eccentricities were a craving for notoriety and an inordinate vanity. He was small in stature, and as a young man he had flowing red hair. Few Philadelphians took his pretensions seriously; the city's newspapers humorously alluded to him as “Henry B. Hirst, the poet,” or as “the golden-haired poet.” He was a close friend of Thomas Dunn English (q.v.), another young poet of limited talent. On October 26, 1840, the Daily Chronicle published Hirst's parody of a poem by English (see the chronology). In 1842 Hirst quoted English's poetry in his ornithological treatise The Book of Cage Birds (Philadelphia: Bernard Duke, 1842), pp. 277-78; he described his friend as “the gifted poet.” During the years 1841 and 1842 English seems to have devoted more time to politics than to poetry; evidence that Hirst attended political gatherings with him may be found in the chronology for May 31, 1841, and May 23, 30, July 4, and October 24, 1842. George Lippard (q.v.), a young reporter for The Spirit of the Times, satirized the close association of Hirst and English in “The Bread Crust Papers” ­[page 812:] (see the chronology for March 22, 26, 27, 28, 1842). The sobriquets Lippard invented for these two poets —”Henry Bread Crust” for Hirst, and “Thomas Done Brown” for English — were repeated by other Philadelphians.

According to Woodberry, Life, II, 419, English introduced Hirst to Poe. According to Horace Wemyss Smith (q.v.), Poe and Hirst were frequent companions while the former was on the staff of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. They seem to have been especially close during the last two years Poe spent in Philadelphia. On January 31, 1843, Hirst was one of the two witnesses signing the contract which Poe and Thomas C. Clarke made with Felix O. C. Darley, the artist who was to furnish illustrations for The Stylus. Hirst contributed a biographical sketch of Poe to the February 25 issue of Clarke's Saturday Museum; it was reprinted in the March 4 issue. The January 28, 1843, issue of the Museum contained a blistering critique of Rufus W. Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America. Although this review has been reprinted in Poe's Works, X1, 220-43, it reveals Hirst's handiwork. The reviewer vauntingly displays his knowledge of versification and his ability to scan Latin poetry. For additional information, see the chronology for January 28 and February 8, 1843. When Hirst reviewed the March, 1843, number of Graham's Magazine for the Saturday Museum, March 4, p. 2, cols. 5-6, he satirized Griswold, the monthly's editor, as “Mr. Driswold” (see the chronology for March 4 and October 19, 1843). Hirst gained admission to the Philadelphia bar on February 4, 1843; in the following summer he seems to have represented Poe in his libel suit against Francis H. Duffee (q.v.). For additional information, see the chronology for June 27 and July 27, 1843. Phillips, Poe, I, 838, and Mabbott, Poems, p. 553, state that Poe once ­[page 813:] registered to study law under Hirst, but this tradition has not been corroborated; for additional information, see the directory entry for Alexander Harvey. According to William Sartain (q.v.), Hirst owned a pet raven which was one inspiration for Poe's poem “The Raven.” This tradition is plausible: Hirst's interest in birds and in their domestication is manifested in his Book of Cage Birds. He was particularly interested in birds which have some ability to mimic human speech; see his comments on crows, magpies, and parrots (pp. 197-201, 262-68). In his later years Hirst became addicted to absinthe; this addiction eventually destroyed his mind; and he was committed to the department for the insane of the Philadelphia General Hospital, where he died on March 30, 1874. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia and his Encyclopedia of Philadelphia. Helen Lucile Watts prepared an informative master's essay on “The Life and Writings of Henry Beck Hirst” at Columbia University in 1925. John Sartain's Reminiscences, pp. 224-27, contains his description of the decline of Hirst's intellectual powers, as well as Anne E. C. Clarke's account of Hirst's friendship with Poe and English. Shortly after Poe's death on October 7, 1849, Hirst submitted a defense of his character to McMakin's Model American Courier, a Philadelphia weekly previously known as the Saturday Courier. Andrew McMakin (q.v.), the Courier's editor, provided a brief introduction to Hirst's remarks. Both McMakin's preface and Hirst's eulogy are reprinted from the Courier, October 20, 1849, p. 2, cols. 3-4:

MEMOIR OF EDGAR A. POE.

We had just sat down to pen a notice of EDGAR ALLAN POE, when we received the following communication from one who knew the Poet better than ourself. The ­[page 814:] initials at the foot mark the writer as the successful author of “Endymion,” “Penance of Roland,”&c.&c. We gladly present our readers with Mr. Hirst's recollections of poor Poe, whose brilliant but erratic genius always commanded our admiration. He knew him well, and in those things in which he was little known by the world. Such a tribute to the deceased, from such a man and such a pen, has something in it which speaks volumes in favor of the “mystic tie” which unites the brotherhood of song.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

EDGAR A. POE is no more. We knew him well, perhaps better than any other man living, and loved him, despite his infirmities. He was a man of great and original genius, but the sublime afflatus which lifted him above his fellows, made him a shining mark for the covert as well as open attacks of literary rivals, and, alas! that it should be so, eventually proved his ruin. So much we gather from the unwritten history of his latter years. His was a life of strange vicissitudes. His father and mother, while he was yet an infant, died within a few weeks of each other, of consumption. ... . [Several hundred words are omitted; in this passage Hirst repeats biographical information taken from the inaccurate sketch published by the Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843, p. 1.]

Poe had his faults — who has not his errors? We are none of us infallible; but had his opportunities equalled his genius and his ambition, he would have died an universally esteemed great man. As it is, the world of authors and author-lovers, with some few pitiful exceptions, will mourn a departed brother. His name, under any circumstances, cannot be forgotten. His tales are without existing equals in English literature, and his “Raven,” the personification of his own despair at the loss of his wife, has made him immortal.

Poor Poe! Hour by hour have we listened to his delightful abstractions, poured forth in a voice so remarkable in the peculiarity of its intonation as to incline to the extraordinary in tone. He was unfortunate in every sense of the word. When miserable authors of still more miserable love stories and puling love poems, were winning gold from the Magazines of the day, he was rarely able to “sell an article,” and was ­[page 815:] always suffering in the iron grasp of penury,

and that, too, when the brilliant coruscations of his genius were eagerly sought for by the public in vain. Poe wielded too formidable a pen; he was no time-server, and as a critic he could not, and would not, lie. What he thought he wrote, and, as a consequence, he made enemies, — little carping muck-worms in the barnyards of literature, whose very odor offended the nostrils of his genius. But their number was legion — and he was only one. Gulliver was in the hands of the Lilliputians; they triumphed — he fell. Few could imagine his occasional sufferings under the awful wrong of undeserved poverty, for Poe was an industrious man, who would and did toil, delving, when his labors were demanded, imperishable gold from the California of his heart — gold which was exchanged for copper in the Jewry of American literature. And with all his talent how little was he understood! We saw him twice and thrice a day, for two years. We sat night by night, a welcome guest at his often meagre, but, when fortune smiled on him, his well-filled board. In all that time, in all our acquaintance, we never heard him express one single word of personal ill-feeling against any man, not even in his blackest hours of poverty.

His criticisms of individuals, and they were nervous enough, referred only to their literary merits, and he was always just and always right. Unamiable he was not; he was otherwise to a fault; and always ready to forget and forgive. But his philippics against pretenders in literature, which he loved as an art, and for its own sweet sake, have been misunderstood; they were the expression of the artist, not the man; the object of them would have found a brother in the individual, who, as a critic, would have weeded him from the garden of song, with joy that he had done so much toward perfecting its parterres. Poor Poe!

H. B. H.

Hirst seems to have subsequently modified his testimony that Poe never expressed “one single word of personal ill-feeling against any man.” In her “Autobiographic Notes: Edgar Allan Poe,” Beadle's Monthly, 3 (1867), 147, Elizabeth Oakes Smith quoted from a conversation she had with Hirst: “He remarked that, ‘the real contempt which Poe ­[page 816:] felt for his cotemporaries came out at once under the influence of the wine-cup, and he ridiculed, satirized, imitated and abused them right and left without mercy.”’

CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN (1806-1884). This New York City editor and poet was a close friend and frequent correspondent of Rufus W. Griswold; and many American literati believed that the generous space allotted him in this anthologist's The Poets and Poetry of America had been determined by friendship, rather than by literary merit. Poe may have made Hoffman's acquaintance during his brief residence in New York in 1837; he contributed his tale “Von Jung, the Mystic” to the June, 1837, number of the American Monthly Magazine, which was edited by Hoffman and Park Benjamin (q.v.). In the January, 1842, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 250), he described Hoffman as “a gentleman of talent.” These two authors almost certainly were acquaintances during Poe's later residence in New York. In the October, 1846, installment of “The Literati” (Works, XV, 122), Poe mentioned that Hoffman's “manners are graceful and winning in the extreme” and that “He converses much, earnestly, accurately and well.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. The best source is Homer F. Barnes’ Charles Fenno Hoffman (1930; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1966).

DAVID HOFFMAN (1784-1854). This Baltimore lawyer was a friend of Joseph Evans Snodgrass (q.v.), and he probably communicated with Poe during the Philadelphia period. In his January 17, 1841, letter to Snodgrass, Poe mentioned that Hoffman had promised to aid the forthcoming Penn Magazine. These two men are not known to have ­[page 817:] exchanged letters, but Hoffman may have offered his assistance in person. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 232), Poe favorably evaluated this author's work: “DAVID HOFFMAN, Esq., of Baltimore, has not only contributed much and well to monthly Magazines and Reviews, but has given to the world several valuable publications in book form.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

EZRA E. HOLDEN (1803-1846). He was one of the two proprietors and editors of the Saturday Courier, a widely circulated Philadelphia weekly newspaper; his partner was Andrew McMakin (q.v.). Holden almost certainly wrote the laudatory notices of Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque published by the Courier on November 2 and December 14, 1839; and he may have been responsible for the Courier's favorable reviews of The Conchologist's First Book, the Penn Magazine, “The Gold-Bug,” and the Prose Romances. This weekly's comments on Poe are quoted in the chronology for April 20, September 14, November 2, December 14, 1839; June 13, 1840; and June 17, 24, July 29, November 25, 1843. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 212), Poe wrote that Holden stood “high in the public estimation, as a sound thinker, and still more particularly as a fearless expresser of his thoughts”; but he retracted his praise in his February 3, 1842, letter to Frederick William Thomas, complaining that George R. Graham had forced him into “speaking well of such ninnies as Holden.” The fact that Poe addresses this editor as “My Dr Holden” in his August 26, 1843, letter suggests that they were familiar acquaintances. Holden was born at Otisfield, near Portland, Maine, on ­[page 818:] August 3, 1803. At the age of twenty he enrolled in the Gardiner Institute of Gardiner, Maine, where he remained for three years. He began his editorial career on the Portland Eastern Argus and the Boston Courier. On June 1, 1830, he married Almira Webster Lincoln of Portland, by whom he had seven children. In 1836 Holden settled in Philadelphia and became co-editor of the Saturday Courier. He died in Washington on March 20, 1846. Sketches may be found in the Saturday Courier, March 28, 1846, p. 2, cols. 2-3, and in Eben Putnam's Holden Genealogy, II (Boston: Privately printed, 1926), 190-92. The Courier described Holden as a popular lecturer before lyceums and as the author of many essays and tales, “the theme of which was always improvement.”

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894). In the January, 1842, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 256), Poe favorably noticed this Boston physician and poet:

“DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, of Boston, late Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, has written many productions of merit, and has been pronounced, by a very high authority, the best of the humorous poets of the day.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. Additional references are provided in Fifteen American Authors and the LHUS Bibliography.

JOSEPH HOPKINSON (1770-1842). This Philadelphia jurist is remembered as the author of the patriotic song “Hail, Columbia!” Poe may have possibly introduced himself to Hopkinson when he visited Philadelphia in May, 1829 (see Quinn, p. 138). Hopkinson contributed to the Southern Literary Messenger during Poe's editorship, and ­[page 819:] the two men may have had occasion to correspond at this time (see the Letters, I, 96). In January, 1841, when Poe was seeking contributors for his Penn Magazine who would impart “caste “ to its pages, he asked Hopkinson for his assistance. Hopkinson wrote him on January 25, declining to make “engagements” which might interfere with his duties as a federal judge, but promising to contribute to the Penn Magazine whenever he had “any communications” which would be acceptable to its readers. He was noticed in both the February, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 162-63, 201). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, Henry Simpson's Eminent Philadelphians, Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia, and Joshua L. Chamberlain's Universities and Their Sons: University of Pennsylvania, II, 14.

RICHARD HENRY HORNE (1803-1884). Poe favorably reviewed this English author's epic poem Orion in the March, 1844, number of Graham's Magazine, praising it as “one of the noblest, if not the very noblest poetical work of the age.” Shortly after this review appeared, Poe forwarded a manuscript copy of “The Spectacles” to Horne, asking him to secure the tale's publication in a British periodical. The contents of Poe's letter, dated post March 15, 1844, are surmised from his March 15 letter to Cornelius Mathews and from Horne's April 16 and 27

letters in reply. Poe wrote Horne again on January 25, 1845; this letter is cited in Horne's May 17 reply. In his Life, II, 50-55, 116-19, Woodberry published the three letters Horne sent Poe. Harrison included only his April 27, 1844, and May 17, 1845, letters in the Works, XVII, 167-69, ­[page 820:] 208-10. A sketch of Horne may be found in the DNB.

ROLAND STEBBINS HOUGHTON (1824-1876). When he was a fifteen-year-old student at the University of Vermont, Houghton submitted an article to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine as an entry in its premium contest (see the chronology for November 20, 1839). On the front inside wrapper of the April, 1840, number, William E. Burton announced the cancellation of the contest. On April 27, 1840, Poe wrote Houghton, offering to publish his article in the Gentleman's Magazine, but stating that the journal's editors could not pay him for this contribution. Houghton presumably accepted Poe's offer, because his story “John A’ Combe, A Character, By an Undergraduate,” appeared in the September, 1840, number of Burton's (Vol. 7, pp. 137-39). Houghton became a physician and an editor in later life; he is identified in the Catalogue of the University of Vermont, 1791-1890 (Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Association, 1890), p. 47, and in the General Catalogue of the University of Vermont, 1791-1900 (Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Association, 1901), p. 71. Houghton married Marie Louise Shew, who aided the Poe family during their subsequent residence in New York City (see Quinn, P. 525).

ABIJAH METCALF IDE, JR. (1825-1873). This young poet of South Attleborough, Massachusetts, initiated a correspondence with Poe by sending him samples of unpublished poetry and requesting an honest opinion of their merits. Poe's October 19, 1843, letter to Ide, containing expressions of “friendship, approval and encouragement,” has not been located. The three letters ­[page 821:] which Ide is known to have sent Poe during the Philadelphia period are entered in the chronology for October 1 and November 2, 1843, and March 22, 1844. In 1845 Ide became a contributor to both Poe's Broadway Journal and Thomas Dunn English's Aristidean. He was the author of two pamphlets of poetry which were privately printed in Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1862 and 1864 respectively. Some information on his ancestry may be found in the “Genealogy of the Ide Family” included in Louis W. Flanders’ Simeon Ide (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle Co., 1931), pp. 206-07.

JOSEPH HOLT INGRAHAM (1809-1860). This Mississippian wrote dozens of romanticized historical novels. Poe favorably noticed Ingraham's novel The South-West in the January, 1836, number of the Southern Literary Messenger; he reviewed his novel Lafitte; or, The Pirate of the Gulf in the August, 1836, number. In Graham's Magazine for June, 1841, he criticized The Quadroone, another historical romance. Strong evidence that Poe knew Ingraham is provided by his June 26, 1841, letter to Frederick William Thomas: “As a man I like him [Ingraham] much, and wherever I could do so, without dishonor to my own sense of truth, I have praised his writings.”. In the November, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 188), Poe described Ingraham as “one of our most popular novelists, if not one of our best.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, and Jay B. Hubbell's The South in American Literature, pp. 622-24, 938.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859). Poe had the opportunity to make Irving's acquaintance at the New York Booksellers Dinner on March 30, 1837. His discussion of Irving in his ­[page 822:] September 4, 1838, letter to Nathan C. Brooks leaves little doubt that he was unimpressed by his contemporary's writings. He was nevertheless aware of the value which Irving's name could have in forwarding his own literary ambitions. In September, 1839, Poe initiated a correspondence with Irving in the hope of eliciting a few words of praise which Lea &Blanchard could reprint in an appendix of critical opinions to be included in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. For additional information, see the chronology for post September 1, ante September 21, October 12, November 6, and November 11, 1839. Poe wrote Irving again on June 21, 1841: he urged his correspondent to become a contributor to the monthly magazine which he planned to begin with the financial backing of George R. Graham. The two notices Poe accorded Irving in “Autography” provide further evidence that he held him in low esteem. In the February, 1836, installment (Works, XV, 153-54), he opined that Irving's handwriting has “nothing indicative of genius about it.” In the November, 1841, installment (Works, XV, 182), he commented: “Mr. Irving has travelled much, has seen many vicissitudes, and has been so thoroughly satiated with fame as to grow slovenly in the performance of his literary tasks. This slovenliness has affected his hand-writing. But even from his earlier MSS. there is little to be gleaned, except the ideas of simplicity and precision.” Additional references may be found in Fifteen American Authors and the LHUS Bibliography.

J. W. JOHNSTON (?-ante 1890). This apprentice printer rescued the manuscript of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from a wastebasket in the early months of 1841. Some forty years later Johnston sold the manuscript to George William ­[page 823:] Childs, a Philadelphia publisher and collector. Johnston's July 26, 1881, letter to Childs is reproduced from The American Antiquarian, 3 (1885), 249-50:

The foregoing original manuscript of Edgar A. Poe's story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” has a history which may be of interest to admirers of the distinguished author.

I have no data whereby I can fix the exact date at which the manuscript came into my possession, but it was about forty years ago, probably in the spring of 1841, at which time I was an apprentice in the office of Barrett &Thrasher, Printers, No. 33 Carter's Alley, Philadelphia. If my memory is not at fault, Graham's Magazine, in whose pages the story first appeared, was printed in the aforesaid office, and the revised proof read in the Saturday Evening Post office, Chestnut Street above Third, within a door or two of the old Public Ledger building.

After the story had been put in type and the proof read, the manuscript found its way into the waste-basket. I picked it from the basket, asked and obtained leave to keep it, and took it to the residence of my father, with whom I then boarded. Here it was put away so carefully that I have no recollection of seeing it for years.

In 1846, my father, leaving me in Philadelphia, removed to Fawn Township, York County, and thence, a few years later, to Manchester, Md., and Darksville, Va. In these several pilgrimages he had, unknown to himself, carried the Poe manuscript along with him, folded up in one of the books of his library. Determining to return to Pennsylvania, he made sale of his personal effects, and among a lot of old books offered was found the Poe MS. It was at once recognized, rescued from the rubbish among which it had so nearly been lost, and forwarded to me — I having in the meantime, 1847, removed to Lancaster, Pa., and commenced business as a daguerrotypist. Twice my daguerrean rooms took fire, and once (March 8, 1850), almost all my books, papers, pictures and apparatus were consumed; but the Poe manuscript, folded within the leaves of an old music book, escaped the wreck.

About the year 1857 (I think it was), a grocery store, occupying the first floor of the building in which were my rooms, took fire and burned furiously. The flames did not reach my rooms, but the smoke did, ­[page 824:] and the firemen drenched them with water, destroying books, papers and other property, but, by rare good fortune, the Poe manuscript again escaped all injury, except a slight discoloration.

From 1861 to 1864 I was in the army, but, on my return therefrom, I found the Poe manuscript in the old music book where I had left it on leaving home.

In the spring of 1865 I took charge of the Swan Hotel, Lancaster. Removing therefrom in 1869, a great deal of rubbish was consigned to the ash-pile, the old music book sharing the fate of other worthless articles. My next-door neighbor, thinking it had been inadvertently thrown away, picked it from the ash-pile and handed it to me. On opening the book, I again beheld the much-neglected and long-mislaid manuscript! Resolved that it should not again be subjected to so many unnecessary risks, I at once had it bound in its present form.

J. W. JOHNSTON.

Lancaster, Pa., July 26, 1881.

In its 1844 edition McElroy's Philadelphia Directory lists a J. W. Johnston, “stone cutter”; conceivably, this entry might represent either the J. W. Johnston who wrote Childs or his father, whom he identified as a resident of Philadelphia. Johnston died before 1890, because Childs referred to him as the “late Mr. J. W. Johnston” in his Recollections (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1890), pp. 52-54. In 1891 Childs presented Poe's manuscript to the Drexel Institute of Philadelphia; for additional information, see Ernest Boll, “The Manuscript of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ and Poe's Revisions,” Modern Philology, 40 (1943), 302-15.

WILLIAM JOHNSTON. In her Home Life of Poe, pp. 106-07, Susan Archer Weiss claimed that William Johnston, an office boy on the staff of Graham's Magazine, was present when Poe offered “The Raven” to George R. Graham:

Poe now again applied himself to his writing, but, for some reason, with but little success. In ­[page 825:] desperation he hastily finished the manuscript of The Raven and offered it to Graham, who, not satisfied as to its merits as a poem, declined it, but expressed a willingness to abide by the decision of a number of the office employees, clerks and others, who, being called in, sat solemnly attentive and critical while Poe read to them the poem. Their decision was against it, but on learning of the poet's penniless condition and that, as he confessed, he had not money to buy medicine for his sick wife, they made up a subscription of fifteen dollars, which was given, not to Poe himself, but to Mrs. Clemm, “for the use of the sick lady.”

This account, given in a New York paper by one of the office committee many years after the poet's death, has been denied by a Mr. William Johnston, who was at that time an office-boy in Graham's employ. He says that he was present at the reading of the poem, and that no subscription was taken up. This may have been done subsequently, without his knowledge. Of Poe, he spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of admiration and affection . ... .

Conceivably, the “office-boy” mentioned by Mrs. Weiss may have been one William Johnston, “clerk,” who appears in the 1840 edition of McElroy's Philadelphia Directory; or he may have been J. W. Johnston (q.v.), the printer's apprentice who rescued the manuscript of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from a wastebasket. This reminiscence tends to corroborate the testimony of Horace Wemyss Smith (q.v.), who also claimed to have witnessed Graham's refusal of “The Raven”; but since neither Mrs. Weiss nor Smith can be characterized as a reliable source, this tradition has yet to be adequately documented. No account “given in a New York paper” has been recorded; Smith's reminiscence appeared in The American, a Philadelphia weekly. If a third reminiscence were to be discovered, it might provide sufficient evidence to establish this tradition as fact.

MRS. C. JONES. She operated a boarding house at 202 ­[page 826:] Mulberry (or Arch) Street, where the Poe family seems to have lived after arriving in Philadelphia early in 1838. Previous biographers have attempted to determine the location of Poe's first residence in the city on the basis of a single document: Poe's September 4, 1838, letter to Nathan C. Brooks. He described a change of residence: “I am just leaving Arch street for a small house, and, of course, somewhat in confusion.” In his Israfel, pp. 342-43, Hervey Allen postulated two incorrect locations:

In the Summer of 1838, probably toward the end of August, Poe and his little family journeyed to Philadelphia and took up their residence with James Pedder in a boarding house that was kept by the Pedder sisters on Twelfth Street, a little above Mulberry (Arch).

A few weeks after his arrival in the city that was to be his home for the next six years, Poe and his family moved from the Twelfth Street boarding house to another boarding establishment at Fourth and Arch (then Mulberry) ..... Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque were partly prepared at this Arch Street boarding house, to which Lowell came later, in 1845, bringing his bride. Mrs. Lowell wrote a letter from there during her honeymoon days and described the house as being then 127 Arch Street, at the northeast corner of Fourth and Arch, kept by Mrs. Parker, a Quakeress. It was clean and neat with a genteel reputation, the upper rooms in the rear being light and airy with white curtains and green trimmings. The Poes remained there until the beginning of September, 1838.

The locations given by Allen are repeated by Quinn, p. 273. During the early part of the Philadelphia period, Poe was almost certainly acquainted with James Pedder (q.v.), an English author who settled in the city in 1832; but there is no evidence that the two men knew each other as early as the summer of 1838. McElroy's Philadelphia Directory as not issued in 1838; the 1839 edition contains the following entry: “Pedder James, 12th ab[ove] Mulberry.” Pedder's ­[page 827:] residence was located on Twelfth Street, just north of Arch Street; but it was not a boarding house, because such dwellings were identified in McElroy's by the abbreviation “b.h.” Moreover, Poe, in his September 4, 1838, letter to Brooks, speaks of “leaving Arch street,” not Twelfth Street. The second location mentioned by Allen and Quinn is also improbable. Evidence that James Russell Lowell and his wife Maria roomed at a boarding house run by Mrs. Parker

at 127 Arch Street is provided by Maria's January 16, 1845, letter to Sophia Hawthorne, cited by Duberman, Lowell, pp. 68-69, 407, and by Lowell's January 16, 1845, letter to Charles F. Briggs, partially printed in Charles Eliot Norton's edition of the Letters of James Russell Lowell (New York: Harper, 1894), I, 83-84. It is unlikely that the Poe family stayed with Mrs. Parker during the summer of 1838, because her boarding house is not listed by McElroy's until its 1844 edition: “Parker Eliza, bh, 127 Mulberry.” Quinn's biography appeared in 1941; a second document containing a clue to the location of Poe's first Philadelphia residence became available with the publication of his Letters in 1948. In his December 6, 1839, letter to John C. Cox, a Philadelphia merchant, Poe discussed the financial difficulties which plagued him during his first two years in the city: “my greatest exertions have been in vain; and it was only with the most painful sacrifices that I managed to pay Mrs Jones — which I did about last Christmas.” Since Poe paid Mrs. Jones around Christmas, 1838, he must have met her, and become indebted to her, shortly after his arrival from New York. McElroy's for 1839 lists only two persons as “Mrs. Jones”

Jones C. Mrs., b.h., 202 Mulberry. ­[page 828:] Jones S. Mrs., corset maker, 62 S 4th.

Mrs. C. Jones is the only person of this surname listed as the operator of a boarding house on Arch, or Mulberry, Street. Her boarding house is no longer extant; it would have been located on the south side of Arch Street, several blocks west of Fourth Street.

JOHN BEAUCHAMP JONES (1810-1866). This Baltimore journalist contributed to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine during Poe's editorship. On August 6, 1839, Jones wrote him, discussing several unfavorable reviews the Gentleman's Magazine had received in the Baltimore newspapers (see Poe's August 8, 1839, reply). Jones edited the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, a popular weekly newspaper, from May 9, 1840, until November 8, 1841 (see the chronology for these dates). In the November 13, 1841, issue of The Index, p. 3, col. 2, Jesse E. Dow reported that Jones was to assume the editorship of the Washington Daily Madisonian. He edited this important newspaper until April 7, 1845, when Dow succeeded him. Poe discussed Jones in the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 235), noting that he had been “connected for many years past with the lighter literature of Baltimore,” and praising him for the “judgment and general ability” he displayed during his editorship of the Visiter. Sketches may be found in the DAB and Appleton's.

JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY (1795-1870). This Baltimore author and statesman was Poe's early benefactor. The two men became acquainted shortly after Poe's tale “MS. Found in a Bottle” was awarded the first prize in the premium contest held by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter in 1833 ­[page 829:] Kennedy subsequently provided Poe with material assistance and literary advice, and he helped him to obtain an editorial position on Thomas Willis White's Southern Literary Messenger. On December 31, 1840, Poe wrote Kennedy, asking him to become a contributor to the forthcoming Penn Magazine. The Baltimore author is not known to have answered Poe's letter. At this time Kennedy seems to have been preoccupied with his own political activities. In March, 1841, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives on the Whig ticket; and he was to be an important Congressional spokesman for this party until March, 1845, when he lost his seat to a Democrat. During the last six months of 1841, Poe sought — through his Washington correspondent Frederick William Thomas — to obtain Kennedy's aid in securing a government clerkship in the capital city. Kennedy expressed a willingness to assist Poe, but he was a public opponent of the Tyler administration, and he probably did not have the power to produce an appointment for his friend. For additional information, see the chronology for July 1, 4, 19, post July 19, August 30, September 13, November 23, 26, 1841. Poe had sent Kennedy a lengthy letter on June 21, 1841, inviting him to contribute to the new monthly magazine he planned to issue with George R. Graham. The Baltimore author may not have answered this letter, because on November 26, 1841, Poe complained to Thomas: “I have not heard from Kennedy for a long time, and I think, upon the whole, he has treated me somewhat cavalierly — professing to be a friend.” Evidence that Poe held Kennedy in high regard, both as an author and as an individual, is provided by the laudatory notices he accorded him in the February, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 155, 184-85). In January, 1844, when Poe visited Baltimore to deliver his ­[page 830:] lecture on “American Poetry,” he renewed his acquaintance with Kennedy, who invited him to dinner (see Poe's February l, 1844, letter to him). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and the Directory of the American Congress. The best source is Charles H. Bohner's John Pendleton Kennedy: Gentleman from Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961). Kennedy commented on his relationship with Poe in his April 13, 1869, letter to George W. Fahnestock: this document has been published by Bohner, “The Poe-Kennedy Friendship,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 82 (1958), 220-22, and by William S. Osborne, “Kennedy on Poe: An Unpublished Letter,” Modern Language Notes, 75 (1960), 17-18. Additional references may be found in the LHUS Bibliography and Jay B. Hubbell's The South in American Literature, pp. 481-95, 941-42.

THOMAS HENRY LANE (1815-1900). He was a friend of Thomas Dunn English (q.v.); in 1845 he became the publisher of English's Aristidean, a monthly magazine issued in New York City which lasted for only six numbers. On December 3, 1845, Lane purchased a half interest in Poe's Broadway Journal, a weekly newspaper which ceased publication exactly one month later, with its January 3, 1846, issue. Before he became the publisher of The Aristidean and the Broadway Journal, Lane had been a portrait painter in Philadelphia. In her Poe, II, 1080-81, Phillips quoted Lane's statement that he first met Poe “in the early forties” at the office of Henry B. Hirst, a Philadelphia lawyer. Possibly these two men became acquainted in 1843, because Hirst gained admission to the city's bar on February 4, 1843, and he had opened his legal office by March 4, 1843 (see the chronology). Lane appears in the 1841, 1842, and 1843 editions of ­[page 831:] McElroy's Philadelphia Directory; his occupation is given as “miniature painter.” He is briefly noticed by Groce and Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America, and by Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters. Evidence of Lane's involvement with the Tyler organization in Philadelphia and of his- friendship with English may be found in the chronology for February 22, 1842, and for March 20, 1844. Lane left several reminiscences of Poe. English published a lengthy letter from him, dated July 23, 1896, in his “Reminiscences of Poe,” The Independent, 48 (1896), Lane also left unpublished memoranda; these passed into the possession of his cousin, Dallett Fuguet. Lane's manuscripts are quoted by Phillips, II, 896, 1080-81, 1498-99, and by Quinn, pp. 693-94.

WASHINGTON L. LANE (ca. 1813-1865). This Philadelphian was a member of the committee which selected “The Gold-Bug” as the prize story of the Dollar Newspaper (see the chronology for June 19, 1843). As an editor of the Public Ledger, Lane was the only one of the three judges connected with A. H. Simmons &Co., the firm that published both the Ledger and the Dollar Newspaper. In their History of Philadelphia, I, 827, Scharf and Westcott provide a brief obituary: “Washington L. Lane, for many years managing editor of the Public Ledger, died November 14th, [1865,] in his fifty-second year. He had been connected with the Ledger for twenty-eight years.”

SAMUEL DALY LANGTREE (ca. 1811-1842). This native of Ireland emigrated to the United States in 1832. In 1837 Langtree founded the United States Magazine and Democratic Review with his brother-in-law John L. ­[page 832:] O'sullivan (q.v.). Langtree disposed of his interest in the Democratic Review at the end of the year 1840; he subsequently became a planter in Virginia, where he died on September 8, 1842. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 232), Poe described him as a “just, bold and acute” critic and as a “man of talent and taste.” An obituary of Langtree may be found in the Democratic Review, II (October, 1842), 446; his career is discussed by Mott, American Magazines, pp. 346, 606-07, 678-80.

DIONYSIUS LARDNER (1793-1859). From 1840 until 1845 this British physicist travelled around the United States, giving lectures on a variety of scientific topics. Lardner was a popular speaker. On March 5, 1842, The Spirit of the Times, p. 2, col. 2, reported that “Dr. Lardner's Second Lecture on Thursday night, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, was attended by perhaps fifteen or sixteen hundred persons, a very large proportion of whom were ladies — fashionable, unfashionable and otherwise.” Lardner frequently visited Philadelphia, and it is not unlikely that Poe attended one of his lectures. In any case, Lardner attracted Poe's attention, because this physicist is satirized as “Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics,” in his story “Three Sundays in a Week,” which appeared in the November 27, 1841, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. A sketch of Dionysius Lardner, LL.D., may be found in Appleton's; an obituary appeared in the New York Times, May 20, 1859, p. 4, col. 5. Poe's allusion to him was first discussed by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, “Poe and Dr. Lardner,” American Notes &Queries, 3 (1943), 115-17. ­[page 833:]

ISAAC LEA (1792-1886). This eminent Philadelphian was a partner in the publishing house of Carey &Lea, which later bore the name of Lea &Blanchard. During May, 1829, Poe visited Philadelphia in an unsuccessful attempt to find a publisher for his poem “Al Aaraaf”; and on this occasion he corresponded with Lea and later had a “short interview” with him at the offices of Carey &Lea (see the Letters, I, 18-28). The two men almost certainly renewed their acquaintance during the Philadelphia period. Lea was a leading Philadelphia scientist and the foremost American authority on conchology. In the preface to The Conchologist's First Book (1839), Poe acknowledged the “private assistance of Mr. Isaac Lea.” However, even if Lea assisted Poe and Thomas Wyatt (q.v.) in the preparation of The Conchologist's First Book, it is possible that he did not play a significant role in Lea &Blanchard's decision to publish the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. By the year 1839, when the firm undertook to issue this collection, Lea was devoting an increasing amount of his time to his studies of conchology and other natural sciences rather than to publishing. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown. His career as a publisher is discussed by David Kaser, Messrs. Carey &Lea.

HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ (1797-1843). This Charleston, South Carolina, author and statesman played an active role in the Whig campaign for the Presidency in 1840; in 1841 President Tyler appointed him Attorney General of the United States. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 215), Poe noted that Legaré had contributed “many articles of high merit” to the Southern Review and that he had “a wide reputation for ­[page 834:] scholarship and talent.” Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Brown, the Directory of the American Congress, and Jay B. Hubbell's The South in American Literature, pp. 263-74, 945-46.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903). This young Philadelphia author may have been a casual acquaintance of Poe. From 1841 to 1845 Leland was a student at Princeton; and during these years he was often in the company of John S. Du Solle (q.v.), the editor of The Spirit of the Times, who was then living at the Congress Hall Hotel operated by John Sturdivant (q.v.). In his Memoirs (New York: Appleton, 1893), pp. 100-01, Leland described Du Solle as “a good-natured, rather dissipated man, who kept horses” and who frequented “theatres and coffee-houses”; and he recalled that most Philadelphians considered him to be “a rather dangerous companion for youth.” He also mentioned one of this editor's companions: “Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle's office and at Congress Hall.” During the early 1850's Leland became a close friend of another Poe associate, Rufus W. Griswold, whom he described in his Memoirs, pp. 196-97, 200-04. Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

ELIZA LESLIE (1787-1858). This Philadelphia authoress wrote cookbooks, stories for children, and sentimental poetry; and she edited the first four volumes of Carey &Hart's literary annual The Gift. Poe contributed his tale “William Wilson” to Miss Leslie's edition of The Gift for 1840, and she was a contributor to Graham's Magazine when he was on its editorial staff. Poe noticed Miss Leslie in both the February, 1836, and the November, 1841, ­[page 835:] installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 152, 198-99). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, Henry Simpson's Eminent Philadelphians, and Joseph Jackson's Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia.

FRANCIS LIEBER (1800-1872). This author and educator was born in Germany, but he emigrated to the United States in 1827. From 1835 until 1856 Lieber was Professor of History and Political Economy in the University of South Carolina. On June 18, 1836, Poe wrote Lieber, soliciting a contribution to the Southern Literary Messenger; and Lieber forwarded an article which appeared in the August, 1836, number (see Ostrom's “Fourth Supplement,” 514-15). Poe favorably noticed Lieber in both the August, 1836, and the November, 1841, installments of “Autography” (Works, XV, 170-71, 202). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.

GEORGE LIPPARD (1822-1854). This young journalist and social reformer became famous as the author of The Quaker City; Or, The Monks of Monk Hall (1844), a sensational Gothic novel which depicted the seamier aspects of Philadelphia, and which was the best-selling American work of fiction until the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Lippard was born in West Nantmeal Township, Chester County, Penn sylvania, on April 10, 1822, the son of Daniel B. Lippard, a farmer. In 1824 the Lippard family moved to Germantown, Penn sylvania; young George spent his early years in this village on the outskirts of Philadelphia. At the age of fifteen Lippard became a legal apprentice in the office of William Badger, a Philadelphia lawyer; he soon abandoned the study of law for journalism. In the autumn ­[page 836:] of 1841, he was hired as a reporter by John S. Du Solle (q.v.), the editor of The Spirit of the Times. Lippard's contributions to this popular daily newspaper were signed with the pseudonym “Flib”; they are characterized by their author's gift for humorous caricature, by his indignation at injustice and pretension, and by his ebullient sympathy with the common man. In the February 7, 1842, issue of The Spirit, Lippard published the first of his “Boz in Philadelphia” satires, in which he excoriated his countrymen for their adulation of the visiting English novelist Charles Dickens. In the following month he satirized two young Philadelphia poets, Thomas Dunn English and Henry B. Hirst (q.q.v.), in “The Bread Crust Papers.” Lippard seems to have left The Spirit of the Times at the beginning of April, 1842, probably because of poor health. For additional information, see the chronology for February 7, March 22, and April 5, 1842. Poe almost certainly had occasion to make Lippard's acquaintance during his association with Du Solle's newspaper. In late 1841 and early 1842, Poe was employed in the office of Graham's Magazine at the southwest corner of Chestnut and Third Streets; the office of The Spirit was located at the northwest corner. Lippard returned to journalism in 1843; he became the editor of The Citizen Soldier. To this Philadelphia weekly he contributed “The Spermaceti Papers,” a series of satires aimed at George R. Graham, the publisher of Graham's Magazine, and his associates Rufus W. Griswold, Samuel D. Patterson, and Charles J. Peterson (see the chronology for May 31, 1843). The Citizen Soldier contains substantial evidence of Lippard's admiration for Poe; his laudatory notices of his greater contemporary are reproduced in the chronology for June 28, July 26, October 11, November 15, 29, 1843, and January 10, 1844. When he noticed Poe's ­[page 837:] death in the October 20, 1849, issue of the Philadelphia Quaker City, a weekly newspaper, Lippard remarked that he had visited the poet “in his quiet home in Seventh street,” in the Spring Garden district. Additional evidence that these two authors were intimate acquaintances during the latter part of the Philadelphia period is provided by Poe's February 18, 1844, letter to Lippard. This document suggests that Poe valued Lippard's friendship, but that he was well aware of the artistic limitations of a writer “in too desperate a hurry to give due attention to details.” When Poe paid his last visit to Philadelphia in July, 1849, Lippard was one of the few who came to his aid (see Quinn, pp. 618-22, and see the Letters, II, 452-56). The young journalist did not long survive his friend; he died of tuberculosis on February 9, 1854. The last years of his life were largely devoted to the Brotherhood of the Union, a fraternal organization which he founded in 1850 to promote patriotism and egalitarianism. E. W. C. Greene published an early sketch of Lippard in the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, March 5, 1854, p. 1, cols. 6-8; Thompson Westcott (q.v.) identified his contributions to The Spirit of the Times in “Philadelphia and the Philadelphians in 1850,” Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch, September 8, 1850, p. 1, cols. 1-2; September 22, p. 1, cols. 2-4; and October 6, p. 1, cols. 1-2. Present-day scholarship rests largely on the work of Joseph Jackson, who furnished sketches for the DAB and his own Literary Landmarks of Philadelphia. Jackson published two seminal studies in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography: “A Bibliography of the Works of George Lippard,” 54 (1930), 130-54, and “George Lippard: Misunderstood Man of Letters,” 59 (1935) 376-91. At his death he left an unfinished biography entitled “George Lippard: Poet of the Proletariat”; the manuscript ­[page 838:] is held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The best source is Emilio De Grazia's “The Life and Works of George Lippard,” Diss. Ohio State 1969. Evidence that Lippard, not Poe, wrote “The Spermaceti Papers” may be found in De Grazia's “Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard and the Spermaceti and Walnut-Coffin Papers,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 66 (1972), 58-60. Lippard's October 20, 1849, obituary of Poe has been reprinted by De Grazia, “Poe's Devoted Democrat, George Lippard,” Poe Studies, 6 (1973), 6-8. In 1853 Lippard contributed a reminiscence of Poe's July, 1849, visit to Philadelphia to the Sunday Mercury; this has been reprinted by T. C. Duncan Eaves, “Poe's Last Visit to Philadelphia,” American Literature, 26 (1954), 4451. Three other scholars have also published studies: Roger Butterfield, “George Lippard and His Secret Brotherhood,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 79 (1955) 285-309; Heyward Ehrlich, “The ‘Mysteries’ of Philadelphia: Lippard's Quaker City and ‘Urban’ Gothic,” ESQ, 18 (1972), 50-65; and Burton R. Pollin, “More on Lippard and Poe,” Poe Studies, 7 (1974), 22-23.

RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE (1800-1871). This journalist was born in England, but he emigrated to New York City in 1832. Locke attracted public attention by his celebrated “Moon Hoax,” which was published in the New York Sun in August, 1835. It was reprinted by many journals. In his September 11, 1835, letter to John P. Kennedy (Letters, I, 74), Poe asserted that Locke's “Moon Hoax” had been inspired by his own “Hans Phaall,” which appeared in the June, 1835, number of the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe and Locke had the opportunity to meet each other at the New York ­[page 839:] Booksellers Dinner on March 30, 1837. The laudatory notice which Poe accorded Locke in the January, 1842, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 259-60) suggests that he may have known this journalist: “MR. RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE is one among the few men of unquestionable genius whom the country possesses. Of the ‘Moon Hoax’ it is supererogatory to say one word — not to know that argues one's self unknown. ... . But Mr. Locke is also a poet of high order. We have seen — nay more — we have heard him read — verses of his own which would make the fortune of two-thirds of our poetasters; and he is yet so modest as never to have published a volume of poems.” Sketches may be found in the DAB and Appleton's.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882). Poe recognized Longfellow as one of the significant American poets, but he never regarded him as a genius of the first rank. During the Philadelphia period Poe had several opportunities to pass judgment on Longfellow's writings. In October, 1839, he reviewed the prose romance Hyperion in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, describing its author as a “man of true talent,” while condemning the book as “a profusion of rich thought” which was “without design, without shape, without beginning, middle, or end.” The February, 1840, number of Burton's contained Poe's critique of Longfellow's first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night. Although he found that the “Hymn to the Night” revealed “a poet of high genius,” he nevertheless complained that Longfellow was “singularly deficient in all those important faculties which give artistical power, and without which never was immortality effected. He has no combining or binding force. He has absolutely nothing of unity.” Poe's review ­[page 840:] of Voices of the Night may be regarded as the opening volley in his “Longfellow War,” because he charged that this poet's “Midnight Mass for the Dying Year” was a “plagiarism, which is too palpable to be mistaken,” from Tennyson's “The Death of the Old Year.” Longfellow, who was then living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, learned of these two reviews from newspaper reports. On July 5, 1840, he wrote his friend Willis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Philadelphia Gazette: “Pray who is it that is attacking me so furiously in Philadelphia?” Poe and Longfellow became correspondents in the following year. On May 3, 1841, acting on the request of George R. Graham, Poe wrote this New England poet to solicit his contributions for Graham's Magazine. Longfellow replied on May 19, stating that he was “so much occupied” that he could not accept Graham's “very generous offer.” A month later, on June 22, 1841, Poe again wrote Longfellow, inviting his correspondent to become a contributor to the monthly magazine he planned to begin with Graham's financial backing. In the November, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 191-92), Poe mixed praise and criticism: “H. W. LONGFELLOW (Professor of Moral Philosophy at Harvard,) is entitled to the first place among the poets of America — certainly to the first place among those who have put themselves prominently forth as poets. His good qualities are all of the highest order, while his sins are chiefly those of affectation and imitation — an imitation sometimes verging upon downright theft.” To the March and April, 1842, numbers of Graham's Magazine, Poe contributed a lengthy review of Longfellow's second volume of verse, Ballads and Other Poems. He found that Longfellow was guilty of didacticism, and he took this occasion to give a detailed statement of his own conception of the ­[page 841:] nature and aim of poetry. Longfellow proved more willing to contribute to Graham's Magazine after Poe had departed (see the chronology for July 16, November 27, 1842). In 1843 Poe submitted an unfavorable critique of Longfellow's The Spanish Student to Graham's Magazine. George R. Graham purchased this article; but since Longfellow was a valued contributor to his periodical, he never permitted its publication. For documentation, see the chronology for October 19, December 26, 1843, and February 9, 1844. Andrew Hilen has edited four volumes of The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1814-1865 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966-1972). Longfellow's relations with Poe are discussed by Sidney P. Moss in Poe's Literary Battles, pp. 132-89. William Charvat's study of “Longfellow's Income from his Writings, 1840-1852,” which originally appeared in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 38 (1944), 9-21, has been reprinted in his Profession of Authorship in America, pp. 155-67. This volume also contains a previously unpublished article on Longfellow (pp. 106-54). Additional sources are cited in Fifteen American Authors and the LHUS Bibliography.

MARGUERITE ST. LEON LOUD (ca. 1800-1889). This Philadelphia poetess was a contributor to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, and Graham's Magazine. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 230), Poe gave a favorable assessment: “Mrs. M. ST. LEON LOUD is one of the finest poets of this country; possessing, we think, more of the true divine afflatus than any of her female contemporaries.” In 1849 Poe accepted a commission to edit her ­[page 842:] poetry for one hundred dollars (see the Letters, II, 458-59, 727-28); but he did not live to complete this task. Mrs. Loud's only volume of poetry, Wayside Flowers (1851), was edited by Park Benjamin. She is mentioned in Appleton's, Rufus W. Griswold's Female Poets of America (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1849), p. 141, and Thomas Buchanan Read's Female Poets of America, 8th ed. (Philadelphia: E. H. Butler &Co., 1864), p. 422.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891). This young New England poet seems to have been a reader of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine when Poe was on its editorial staff. Using a pseudonym, Lowell submitted his poem “Callirhöe” as an entry in the abortive premium contest conceived by William E. Burton (q.v.). Lowell's poem never appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine; Burton included it in a collection of unpublished manuscripts which he presented to George R. Graham when this publisher purchased his magazine. In 1841 Charles J. Peterson, Graham's assistant, discovered Lowell's pseudonymous poem, recognized its quality, and published it in Graham's Magazine. Peterson and Lowell subsequently became frequent correspondents. For additional information, see the chronology for February 18, March 29, 1841, and see the directory entry for Peterson. Lowell continued to contribute to Graham's Magazine during Poe's editorship. In the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 239-40), Poe favorably noticed this emergent author: “Mr. J. R. LOWELL, of Massachusetts, is entitled, in our opinion, to at least the second or third place among the poets of America. We say this on account of the vigor of his imagination — a ­[page 843:] faculty to be first considered in all criticism upon poetry. In this respect he surpasses, we think, any of our writers (at least any of those who have put themselves prominently forth as poets) with the exception of Longfellow, and perhaps one other. His ear for rhythm, nevertheless, is imperfect, and he is very far from possessing the artistic ability of either Longfellow, Bryant, Halleck, Sprague, or Pierpont.” In late 1842 Lowell was in the process of starting The Pioneer, a Boston monthly magazine of high literary quality; at this time Poe wrote him to offer his contributions. The two corresponded frequently during the last sixteen months of Poe's residence in Philadelphia. The extant letters from this correspondence are entered in the chronology for November 16, 19, December 17, 25, 27, 1842, February 4, March 24, 27, April 17, May 8, 16, June 20, September 13, October 19, 1843, and March 6, 30, 1844. Lowell may well have been the only one of Poe's American correspondents whom he regarded as a creative artist of great potential. Notwithstanding Poe's enthusiastic appreciation of Lowell, the laudatory notices of this New England author's poetry which appeared in the June, 1842, and March, 1844, numbers of Graham's Magazine, and which have been previously attributed to him, were almost certainly written by some other critic or critics (see the chronology for these dates). Charles Eliot Norton's collection of the Letters of James Russell Lowell, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1894), is antiquated and incomplete. The most reliable biography is Martin Duberman's James Russell Lowell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). An informative account of Lowell's only meeting with Poe, which occurred in New York City in 1845, has been provided by Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., “Lowell on Poe: An Unpublished ­[page 844:] Comment, 1879,” American Literature, 24 (1952), 230-33. Additional references may be found in Fifteen American Authors and the LHUS Bibliography.

GEORGE LUNT (1803-1885). This Massachusetts author contributed several poems to Graham's Magazine in 1841 and 1842; Poe noticed him in the December, 1841, installment of “Autography” (Works, XV, 216). Sketches may be found in the DAB, Appleton's, and Brown.