[page 346:]

CHAPTER XIII
 
Following the Illusion

In contrast to the cloudy and often doubtful course of Poe's professional career, there was one shining certainty. Whatever might be thought or said of him by the men with whom he came in contact and conflict, there was always the love of Virginia, steadfast and unalterable. As she matured, the adoration of the child he had married grew into the devotion of the woman, and the physical attraction for the handsome young cousin she worshipped blossomed into a spiritual passion which his love had nurtured and which, in its turn, sent its roots deeper and deeper into his life. How deeply those roots were planted can be measured only in terms of “Eleonora,” of “The Raven,” of “Ulalume” and of “Annabel Lee.” His constant presence has deprived us of the letters which might have told us of their mutual affection, but Poe's distraught appeal from Richmond in 1835 tells us clearly what they would have been. To a husband who was always hovering over her to protect her from the threatening dangers of her illness, she had no need to write.

So much emphasis has been placed upon Virginia, the “child wife,” that biographers have apparently forgotten that children grow up and that the woman of twenty might possibly be a little girl no longer. While Mrs. Clemm's statement that Virginia was an accomplished musician and spoke Italian like a native of Italy must be taken with several grains of salt, like all her utterances, it is correct at least concerning Virginia's competence in music. When Thomas sent Poe a song he hoped to publish, Poe replied, “I have delayed answering [your letter] in hope that I might say your song was out, and that I might give you my opinion and Virginia's about its merits.”(1)

Captain Mayne Reid, the Irish novelist, was a constant visitor to the Poe home in 1843, and later painted a vivid portrait of her. In speaking of pleasant hours spent at Poe's cottage, he said: “They were passed in the company of the poet himself and his wife — a lady angelically beautiful in person and not less beautiful in spirit. No one who [page 347:] remembers that dark-eyed, dark-haired daughter of Virginia — her own name, if I rightly remember — her grace, her facial beauty, her demeanour, so modest as to be remarkable — no one who has ever spent an hour in her company but will endorse what I have above said. I remember how we, the friends of the poet, used to talk of her high qualities.”(2)

In speaking of Poe's attraction for women, which Reid thought overestimated, he added, “It was enough for one man to be beloved by one such woman as he had for his wife.” Even Thomas Dunn English, who heartily disliked Poe, spoke of Virginia's “air of refinement and good breeding.”(3) Although some of the feminine visitors to the Poe home did not estimate so highly the charm or mentality of Virginia, that is, perhaps, only more conclusive proof that her attraction for the men friends like Thomas and Reid was shared by her husband.

This love of Poe for Virginia brought soon its tragedy. Some time in January, 1842, Virginia, while singing at her piano in the Coates Street house, broke a blood-vessel. Poe's own words tell best of the event, and of its consequence. Six years later he wrote to George Eveleth:

If ever drinking were excusable, it was certainly in this desperate effort to forget. A sorrow can be borne, when it is final, by any one who pretends to be a man. But the daily load of apprehension, which one takes on at waking, and from which even sleep is no refuge, is hardest to bear. Yet in one sense Virginia was Poe's protector, as we shall see. And no matter how hard life was for them all, a great devotion filled it with beauty. The impression it made upon Graham was a lasting one:

There were intervals, naturally, when Virginia's health seemed restored. In August, 1842, Poe despaired of her recovery; in September her health was “slightly improved,” and he wrote Thomas “my spirits are proportionately good.” In these brighter days there were no doubt picnics in Fairmount Park and on the Wissahickon, and there were visits from friends who have left testimony as to the neatness and self-respecting atmosphere, for which all three of the family were responsible. [page 349:]

Reid's description of Poe “during two years of intimate, personal association” speaks of his “analytic reasoning such as few men possess,” of his “original character” and of his personal habits:

Reid adds how he knew Poe to be a whole month in his own house, working hard at his writing.

Some of these visitors, unlike Reid, were to bring trouble to Poe in his lifetime and to cloud his memory after death. Dr. Thomas Dunn English, a Philadelphian who graduated from the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania in 1839, met Poe in the same year. English contributed verse to Burton's, and his graduation thesis upon phrenology, in which he defended the theories of Gall and Spurzheim, gave him mutual interests with Poe, who had been reading up on phrenology for some time. English, however, was only twenty years old when he met Poe first on the corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets, and since his description of their cottage tallies most definitely with the house in Spring Garden, his intimacy must have been later in the Philadelphia period. He was a tall, well built man, and when I met him in 1895 at a gathering of Pennsylvania alumni, he was of rather distinguished appearance. Unfortunately, I lost the opportunity to obtain his informal opinion of Poe, for Du Maurier had just published Trilby, and revived interest in English's sentimental ballad, “Ben Bolt.” Dr. English would talk of nothing but the harm that song had done his reputation as a poet. An examination of his Select Poems, however, will confirm Poe's unfavorable strictures upon them, though the manner of his attack was hardly justified. English published in 1896 his [page 350:] Reminiscences of Poe (6) a fairly clever account written with apparent frankness, which, by hinting at scandals that he was too much of a gentleman to reveal, gave a worse impression than if he had presented the supposed facts for possible refutation. In view, however, of his general tone of animosity, the testimony of Dr. English concerning the much discussed question of Poe's use of drugs is valuable: “Had Poe the opium habit when I knew him (before 1846) I should both as a physician and a man of observation, have discovered it during his frequent visits to my rooms, my visits at his house, and our meetings elsewhere — I saw no signs of it and believe the charge to be a baseless slander.”(7) He and Poe were probably companions on occasions when Poe yielded to temptation to drink the one glass which was too much for him, but in view of English's comparative youth, the blame can hardly be allotted to him. Their relations are of much greater importance during the later period in New York.

It was also in Philadelphia that Poe met his evil genius, the Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Griswold was born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1815. He was a printer and a newspaper man, and was licensed in 1837 as a Baptist clergyman, though he seems not to have had any permanent charge. After editorial work in New England and New York, where he made influential friends like Horace Greeley and Park Benjamin, he came to Philadelphia on November 27, 1840, to join the staff of the Daily Standard, and while he returned to Boston for a few months, he was once more in Philadelphia in September, 1841.(8)

Griswold at this time was one of those unattached writers who are called “free lances” by those they praise and “literary scavengers” by those whom they attack. His Biographical Annual, containing memoirs of thirty-six “eminent persons recently deceased,” and his Gems from American Female Poets, With Brief Biographical Notices, will indicate how he was living on the work of others, with a definite slant toward the desire of human beings to see themselves or their dead friends given publicity. Griswold had the sense for publicity well developed. For some years he was planning the first of his major anthologies, The Poets and Poetry of America. He was not troubled by the woes of [page 351:] the anthologists of today in this field. Poets, who had usually been paid nothing for their verses by the magazines, were only too willing to give Griswold carte blanche to select from their works. By this anthology, which appeared in April, 1842, and by his later Prose Writers of America, and Female Poets of America, he acquired a position as a species of literary dictator, whose favor it was advisable to seek and whose power to hurt the vanity of literary aspirants steadily grew.

Griswold met Poe first, according to his own statement,(9) in the spring of 1841 in connection with the Poets and Poetry of America. In a letter of March 29, 1841, Poe offered several poems to Griswold, and said he would be proud to see “one or two of them in the book.”(10) He also sent a memorandum of his biography, containing, incidentally, several errors. Griswold selected “The Coliseum,” “The Haunted Palace,” and “The Sleeper” for the anthology, devoting two pages to Poe, including a brief biographical notice. Since he gave three to Lowell, four to Longfellow, nineteen to Whittier, twelve to Charles Fenno Hoffman, seven to J. G. C. Brainard, eight to Lydia Sigourney, and ten to R. C. Sands, Griswold's critical taste in poetry or his impartiality cannot be ranked very high.

Poe spoke of Griswold in his “Autography” in December, 1841, as “a gentleman of fine taste and sound judgment,” and in the Boston Miscellany for November, 1842, he published a favorable review of The Poets and Poetry of America, although he differed with Griswold as to certain of his selections.

Poe quoted with approval Griswold's definition of poetry, which agreed with his own, stated that, “The book should be regarded as the most important addition which our literature has for many years received,” and concluded that Griswold had shown himself “a man of taste, talent, and tact.”(11) [page 352:]

Griswold's appointment to the staff of Graham's was announced in the July number,(12) although he had probably been employed before then. In writing to Thomas in May, Poe had expressed no resentment at Griswold's becoming his successor. But in Poe's letters during the summer there are cutting remarks about Griswold's book. On June 4th, he wrote to Snodgrass, “Have you seen Griswold's Book of Poetry? It is a most outrageous humbug, and I sincerely wish you would ‘use it up.’ ”(13)

In a letter to Thomas of September 12, 1842, Poe relates an incident which, if true, points to growing ill feeling. The letter contains other information of importance:

It is hard to see how the two men could have remained friends after such an incident. According to C. F. Briggs, Griswold told him “shocking bad stories” about Poe, which Poe's “whole demeanor contradicts.”(15) These may have been of later occurrence. Poe and Griswold were both suspicious, and both had caustic tongues. On January 28, 1843, in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum appeared a review of the Poets and Poetry of America, unsigned. It is a blistering attack upon Griswold as a poet and an anthologist, and if he believed it to be by Poe, anyone of his vindictive nature would have long remembered it. There are sharp differences of opinion concerning its authorship.(16)

In the criticism are certain traces of Poe, such as the elaborate analysis of the rules of versification, and the definition of poetry, which make it clear that if he was not the author of the entire review, he was at least a collaborator. The most striking sentence is the last, which, in view of Griswold's treachery as Poe's literary executor, [page 355:] sounds like a prophecy: “Forgotten, save only by those whom he has injured and insulted, he will sink into oblivion, without leaving a landmark to tell that he once existed; or, if he is spoken of hereafter, he will be quoted as the unfaithful servant who abused his trust.”

The two men saw little of each other for two years, and it was inevitable that a breach should occur. With the evangelical abolitionist, Poe had no intellectual kinship.

Poe's resignation from Graham's did not interrupt his creation of fiction, but he found it more difficult to place his stories. A letter to Snodgrass reveals this, and also his method of writing, and how strong was his desire for publicity:

Poe must have been in desperate need for money, for he offered the story on the same day to the Boston Notion, one of the mammoth weeklies of that time, for fifty dollars.(18) Neither magazine accepted the offer, for “Marie Rogêt” was published in Snowden's Ladies’ Companion in November and December, 1842, and February, 1843.

Poe's own explanation in his letter to Snodgrass of his method in writing “The Murder [[Mystery]] of Marie Rogêt” is clear. By placing the murder in Paris, he could alter details, since he does not claim to solve the Mary Rogers case, but only to show how such a case should be approached. He kept quite close to the facts as known.(19) Mary Cecelia Rogers, a clerk in the tobacconist's shop of John Anderson, 114-116 [page 358:] Liberty Street, New York, was murdered in August, 1841.(20) She was last seen alive at the Lossburg Steps in Weehawken, New Jersey, with a man, apparently a naval officer. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River, and the mystery of her death baffled the police. Poe made clear that his principal interest was the character study of Dupin, his detective, and Dupin sleeps behind dark glasses while the Prefect of Police is explaining his theory of the crime, and then proceeds to examine all the newspapers for accidental and collateral information. He has become the model for detectives in fiction, whose contempt for official sources has hardened into a convention. Dupin analyses the statements of police and press and destroys them. His main effort is to prove that the murder was not the action of a gang of ruffians as the press indicated, but was the work of one man. Several years later Poe stated to Eveleth that “ ‘The naval officer’ who committed the murder (or rather the accidental death arising from an attempt at abortion) confessed it.”(21)

“Marie Rogêt,” while ingenious, is not as interesting as any of the three other great stories of ratiocination. It is too long and too much time is spent on upsetting false theories. Poe probably recognized that it was growing out of proportion, for he did not follow out the clues suggested by Dupin. In a paragraph attributed to the editors of the magazine, the statement is made that the portion of the Ms. dealing with the following up of the clues was omitted. But, of course, as Poe admitted to Eveleth, that paragraph is part of the story. Here really lies the reason for the comparative failure of Marie Rogêt. It is just in Dupin's method of solution, step by step, from the clues he has discovered, that Poe is supreme. Again the fact that he was following a real case hampered him. It was only when his imagination had complete sway that he excelled.

“The Landscape Garden” had been published in October, 1842, [page 359:] in the Ladies’ Companion. In “The Landscape Garden,” Poe expressed again his love of natural beauty. There is something pathetic in Poe's creation of a hero, Seabright Ellison, who, owing to the inheritance of a vast fortune,(22) can indulge his love of beauty by devoting himself to landscape gardening, on a large scale. Poe took occasion to present his theory that while the loveliness of natural objects cannot be improved by art, the composition or arrangement of the elements of the landscape may well add greatly to the beauty of the whole. Poe was consistent, in his theory of beauty — the landscape artist who merely restored the scene to its original beauty was not as great an artist as the man who added creatively a new charm. One can be taught — the other must spring from the flame of inspiration. “The Landscape Garden” ended abruptly with the plans of Ellison; later Poe amplified the story as “The Domain of Arnheim.”

“The Pit and the Pendulum” belongs also to 1842, since it appeared in the Gift for 1843, which came out in the fall. It is a remarkable study of the effect of terror upon a man imprisoned in a dungeon of the Inquisition. Of greatest interest is the analysis of the different strata of dreams through which we pass from sleep into waking. Any competent dreamer will recognize the truth of Poe's statement: “In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages: first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical existence.” Any one who has lain, powerless to move, in the first of these stages, will remember how every faculty of his mental powers struggled to attain the second stage.

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is a fine example of Poe's use of several sources in a combination of his own. In Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly (1799) the hero falls in a pit, believes he is a victim of a tyrant and is to be buried alive, is tormented by thirst, and is especially stricken with fear because, like Poe's hero, he is deprived through darkness and unfamiliar surroundings of his usual experiences. The Inquisition probably came from Poe's reading Leonard Gallois’ translation of Juan Antonio Llorente's Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition (23) in which a prisoner lies tightly bound in the path of a slowly descending pendulum. From “The Iron Shroud,” by the author of “First and Last,”(24) Poe may have taken the idea of a [page 360:] dungeon whose walls become heated and close in on the victim. But, as before, the best way to appreciate Poe's excellence in the creation of a mood is to note his superiority in the combination of these incidents into something new, and his own.

Poe continued his efforts to obtain a government post, this time in the Custom House in Philadelphia. He had some encouragement from Thomas,(25) who engaged the interest of Robert Tyler, the son of the President. Poe as usual began to consider the appointment as already made. Two letters to Poe's friend, James Herron,(26) a civil engineer in Washington, reveal not only Poe's optimism concerning the appointment but also his despairing mental condition. In the first letter, an undated fragment, he speaks of his abandonment of all mental exertion and his determination to take advantage of the Bankruptcy Act. After mentioning the appointment as certain, Poe concludes, “Mrs. Poe is again dangerously ill with hemorrhage from the lungs. It is folly to hope.”

The second letter speaks for itself:

Even in his despair, in both letters Poe congratulates his friend on his own success. Herron evidently did what he could, but nothing happened. Then on September 2nd, Thomas evidently wrote to Poe reopening the question and Poe replied on September 12th.(28) Before Thomas received this letter, he had come to Philadelphia(29) and visited the family at the Coates Street home. Poe wrote to Thomas apologizing for his failure to meet him:

On November 19th, however, he wrote Thomas again showing how little fitted Poe was to cope with a politician:

It is pleasant to turn from these “hopes deferred” to Poe's early association with Lowell. Several of Lowell's poems had been printed in Graham's while Poe was an editor, and when Poe heard that Lowell was about to found The Pioneer, a monthly magazine, he wrote to him:

Lowell in reply offered ten dollars for any article Poe sent him, promising more if his venture succeeded and asking especially for stories. The prospectus for the Pioneer(33) is not unlike those which Poe issued for the Penn Magazine or the Stylus. It emphasizes the need for a “natural” rather than a “national” literature. Lowell and Carter, his partner, owned as well as edited the Pioneer.

Poe had evidently sent “The Tell-Tale Heart” to the Boston Miscellany, which had printed his review of Griswold's anthology, but H. T. Tuckerman had become its editor and declined it, possibly because Poe's description of him in his “Autography” as “insufferably tedious and dull” did not appeal to him. He turned the story over to Lowell who printed it in the first number of the Pioneer in January, 1843. Lowell's letter telling Poe of this transfer closes with the words “Wishing you all happiness, I remain your true friend.”(34) [page 365:]

Poe sent Lowell on December 23rd,(35) his poem, “Lenore,” a revision of “A Pæan,” with some caustic remarks on Tuckerman, and Lowell printed it in the issue of February, 1843, with the short lines which spread it over two pages. It was greatly improved by the changes, which are so many as to forbid retelling here. How careful Poe was concerning the appearance of his verses is shown in a letter to Lowell:

Poe wrote a letter of congratulation to Lowell concerning the Pioneer:

Alas, the Pioneer died with the March issue. Lowell's severe disease of the eyes, which took him to New York for treatment for some time, and the rather impossible conditions of the contract with his printers were the immediate causes of the failure. But the general conditions which operated against the success of the Pioneer were those which defeated Poe. The “Notes on English Verse” appeared in the March number, but I shall postpone discussion of them until Poe's theories of versification are treated in connection with “The Rationale of English Verse.”

Poe's intercourse with Charles Dickens in Philadelphia in March, 1842, was also pleasant, but led to nothing definite. Dickens evidently tried to secure the publication of a volume of Poe's stories in England, but was unsuccessful. Poe must have made a favorable impression [page 367:] upon Dickens, for on the British novelist's second trip to the United States, he hunted up Mrs. Clemm and made a contribution to her support.

During the Philadelphia period there developed also a correspondence between Poe and a strange being whose importance, except as it contributes to our knowledge of Poe, seems to me to have been greatly exaggerated. Thomas Holley Chivers was a Georgian, born in 1807, who wrote poetry which is thought by some to resemble Poe's work, and even to anticipate it. Poe asked him to obtain subscriptions for the Penn Magazine in 1840, and Chivers replied with an assurance of support, but no definite financial aid.(38)

In his “Autography”(39) Poe gave him more than adequate notice:

The correspondence lapsed, at least on Poe's part, but in July, 1842, seeing possibly a chance to interest Chivers in his projected periodical, Poe wrote him, giving what could hardly have been a sincere tribute, and Chivers resumed the correspondence. Poe's letter in September is illuminating in revealing undaunted his hopes for the magazine:

The magazine, as we know, did not appear in October. Chivers’ personal association with Poe belongs more definitely to the later period.(42)

As this letter indicates, Poe was never forgetful of his project for a magazine of his own. On January 31, 1843, he entered into an agreement with Thomas C. Clarke and Felix O. C. Darley concerning the publication of a magazine to be called “The Stylus.” Darley was to furnish the illustrations at seven dollars apiece. This document, which seems to be in Poe's handwriting,(43) betrays a certain familiarity with [page 370:] legal terms, although it may have been dictated by his friend Henry B. Hirst, who was completing his law studies at this time.

In order to secure Clarke's interest in the Stylus, Poe permitted the announcement to be made that he had joined the staff of the Saturday Museum of Philadelphia, a weekly paper published by Clarke and Company at 101 “Chesnut” Street. In the issue of February 25, 1843, an extensive biography of Poe with his portrait and with reproductions of many of his poems, was published in this sheet.(44)

This biography was reprinted in the issue of March 4th(45) together with an editorial note:

The biography fills the entire first page of the large sheet, fifteen by twenty inches, printed in that infinitesimal type with which our ancestors tried their eyes. It is stated to be based on information given by T. W. White, of the Messenger, and F. W. Thomas, but as will be seen, it was really by Henry B. Hirst. Thomas wrote Poe on February 1st, excusing himself on the grounds of his labors at the Department from compiling the article from the memoranda Poe had sent him.(47)

Thomas sent Poe a letter of introduction to Robert Tyler on February 8, 1843,(48) explaining that he was too ill to present Poe in person. Poe did not go down to Washington, however, in February, but his letter to Thomas makes a number of points clear:

This biography in the Philadelphia Museum has, therefore, unusual importance since Poe furnished the material and evidently edited the poems. It included, and in some cases, was the primary source of information, correct and incorrect, concerning Poe's ancestry and personal history. The myths concerning the elopement of Poe's parents, their death “on a visit to Richmond,” Poe's journey to Greece and St. Petersburg, his return from Europe on the night after Mrs. Allan's burial, are mingled with more authentic accounts of the West Point episode, and the University of Virginia. No mention of the army service is made. Poe's connection with the Messenger is correctly stated, and the account proceeds:

The account then proceeds with thirty-two laudatory criticisms of Poe's stories, including quotations from all the leading writers of the day. Poe did not hesitate to quote from private letters like those from Irving or Longfellow, turning them into the third person, as though they had been printed. From Hawthorne he quoted the passage from “The Hall of Fantasy” as it first appeared in the Pioneer in February, 1843: “Mr. Poe gained ready admission [into the Hall of Fantasy] on account of his imagination, but was threatened with ejection as belonging to the obnoxious class of critics.” This passage was omitted in later versions of the “Hall of Fantasy.”

Of greater significance, however, is that portion of the article which deals with Poe's poetry. Those who, like the present writer, believe that it is as a poet that Poe will ultimately be remembered, are supported by the statement: “But notwithstanding his success as a prose writer, it is as a poet we now wish chiefly to consider him.” [page 374:]

Although Poe had constantly made changes in his poems for the magazines in which he republished them since the appearance of his volume of 1831, the Saturday Museum text is important because it contains an extensive revision of his poetry up to that time.(50)

Poe did not make these changes merely for the sake of more pleasing sounds. On the most important of the poems, like “To Helen” and “Israfel,” Poe lavished the care which still further enhanced the beauty of verses that might have seemed perfect to a lesser poet. In “To Helen” by changing “that shadowy window niche” in which Psyche stands, to “yon brilliant window niche” and the “folded scroll” which she holds to “the agate lamp,” Psyche becomes not a shrouded figure, but a shining beacon to light the “weary way worn wanderer” back to his “native shore.” In “Israfel” “He might not sing one half so well” became “He might not sing so wildly well.” In “Romance,” the long passage of the Poems of 1831 referring to “the idle boy, who read Anacreon and drank wine” was omitted. Poe had probably begun to feel the criticisms of his habits, and thought it discreet to give his enemies no support. The lines themselves are not self-revelation, but an early and Byronic assumption of the easy distinction of dissipation. The textual changes were usually preserved in the 1845 edition of Poe's poems with the exception of those in “Al Aaraaf,” where Poe reverted to the 1829 version.(51)

The biography lists among Poe's works “a work of fiction, in two volumes, under a nom-de-plume, never acknowledged; — also two papers, on American topics, for a Parisian critical journal — with one or two anonymous articles in a British periodical, and several also anonymous, in an American Quarterly.” The novel and the foreign articles have so far baffled research.

The biography closes with a description of Poe:

The Prospectus of the Stylus resembled closely in some of its paragraphs the announcement of the Penn Magazine, and so these need not be repeated. There are, however, a few remarks pertaining only to the new magazine:

In another part of the Museum the statement is made that Poe will begin his connection with the paper on May 1, 1843, “at a high salary,” but no record of his salary has come down to us, because, apparently, there was none.

Notwithstanding all the trumpeting in the Saturday Museum, Poe did not join the staff(53) at least in any active way, although he did write occasionally for it. He republished his “Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” as “The Destruction of the World,” and printed some conundrums.(54) He went to Washington early in March, unfortunately as it proved, partly to solicit subscriptions for the Stylus and partly to keep an open eye upon an appointment under the Tyler Administration. Two letters tell sufficiently the story of this visit. The first was to T. C. Clarke:

Poe did not lecture, however, for on the next day his friend, J. E. Dow, wrote to Clarke:

Poe was in good enough shape to return to Philadelphia alone, but the vigilant Mrs. Clemm met him at the train. His letter to his two [page 379:] friends in Washington is that of a man deeply mortified and trying to believe that he had not disgraced himself:

On this letter Thomas wrote a note of sympathetic understanding.

Clarke seems not to have been unduly disturbed by the incident, and Thomas wrote Poe on March 27th that he was still trying to interest President Tyler. But nothing came from his efforts.

Poe sent his poem “Eulalie” to Carter on February 16, 1843, but was too late, as the Pioneer died in March.(58) [page 382:]

Lowell wrote to Poe on March 24, 1843, apologizing for his failure to pay Poe for his contributions to the Pioneer, and Poe, while depending upon this money to repay Dow and Thomas, replied:

In view of the insistence upon Poe's applications for loans, this generosity should be remembered in his behalf. Lowell tried to secure the story from Hawthorne, sent one of his own poems, and signed his letters as an “affectionate friend.” Poe's note to him on June 20, 1843, tells him that the Stylus had to be abandoned:

Philadelphia, June 20, 1843.

My Dear Friend, — I owe you fifty apologies for not having written you before — but sickness and domestic affliction will suffice for all.

I received your poem, which you undervalue, and which I think truly beautiful — as, indeed, I do all you have ever written — but alas! my Magazine scheme has exploded — or, at least, I have been deprived, through the imbecility, or rather through the idiocy of my partner, of all means of prosecuting it for the present. Under better auspices I may resume it next year.

What am I to do with the poem? I have handed it to Griswold, subject to your disposition.

My address is 234 North Seventh St., above Spring Garden, West Side. Should you ever pay a visit to Philadelphia, you will remember that there is no one in America whom I would rather hold by the hand than yourself.

With the sincerest friendship I am yours,

EDGAR A. POE.(60)

This letter gives Poe's address for the first time as 234 North Seventh Street, now 530. It was in the district known as Spring Garden. This cottage has a special interest, since it is the only actual [page 385:] home of Poe, maintained as a Poe museum, which contains any large amount of associated literary material.(61)

This house, on the corner of Seventh Street and Brandywine Alley, a small street running parallel to Spring Garden Street, was a three-story brick cottage, with a garden toward the east, and a porch in the rear. The garden is now occupied by the front buildings on Seventh Street, which were added after Poe left Philadelphia. Even now when the cottage is simply the back building of a larger house, it is not hard to picture a comfortable home in 1843. The living room and kitchen have good light and open fireplaces, where Poe sat with Virginia and Mrs. Clemm, reading and writing. There are pleasant rooms on the second and third floors, although the roof is low.

We do not know exactly when the family moved to North Seventh Street. Poe told Thomas in September, 1842, that he had moved out “in the neighborhood of Fairmount” and since the Directory for 1843, gave him as a resident of the Coates Street house, it was probably for only one year or less that he lived at North Seventh Street.(62)

They were probably settled there in the spring of 1843, and Virginia's health was good enough to permit her to take care of the flower garden, even if the “rose-covered cottage” as it is often called, must have been an exaggeration. While it was still on the outskirts of the city, is [[it]] was much nearer the centre than Fairmount. As Poe went down Seventh Street, he passed the houses of respectable families whose names are still well known today, although the neighborhood has radically changed, and they have moved away. Poe passed Buttonwood Street next, where Graham had lived; but just about the time Poe moved to Spring Garden, Graham departed to Arch Street. At the next street, Callowhill, Poe could see the home of George Lippard, the novelist of scandal and history who was later to help save him from disaster. Continuing down to High or Market Street, he was near [page 386:] the publishing house of Haswell, Barrington and Haswell, who had printed his Conchologist's First Book. Turning left at Chestnut Street, he was within a block of the law office of his friend Henry B. Hirst, at 40 South Sixth Street. One of Poe's biographers states that he registered for the study of law, with Hirst as a sponsor, at the University of Pennsylvania.(63) I should be delighted to claim Poe as an alumnus of my own University, but, unfortunately, the old Law School, founded in 1790, had lapsed temporarily before Poe came to Philadelphia, and was revived only in 1850.

It would be pleasant to imagine that the comparative comfort in the appearance of the house on Seventh Street reflected some measure of prosperity for the Poe family. On the contrary, there was evidently the spectre of care ever present. Though Poe wrote bravely to Lowell, there is a letter to Griswold on June 11, 1843, which it must have galled him to send, if indeed he did write it:

After having written as Poe did to Lowell in June, it must have been dire want which made him appear to dun his friend in September:

Poe's letter to Lowell in October shows that Carter and Lowell were dividing the debts of the Pioneer. It has other interesting information:

If Poe wrote the review of Longfellow's “Spanish Student” it did not appear in Graham's in December, and this episode may prove that Poe was not able to place his criticisms at will. Lowell tried to help [page 389:] him obtain lectures in Boston. Poe proposed to him a scheme for a new form of magazine:

This plan has been described as absurd, and it has not been tried. But the Playwrights’ Theatre, recently established, in which five of the leading American playwrights combined successfully to produce their own plays, may indicate that Poe's idea was not so chimerical.

The year 1843 was more fruitful of quality than quantity in Poe's poetry and fiction. “The Conqueror Worm,” the only new poem by Poe during this period, appeared first in Graham's Magazine in January, [page 391:] 1843. The association of the worm with death had appeared in “The Sleeper” and is, of course, an ancient idea. The title was probably suggested by “The Proud Ladye,” a poem by Spencer Wallis Cone, which was reviewed in Burton's in June, 1840. This contained the lines

The poem is very uneven in its merit. The conception of the tragedy of mankind, conquered by the Worm, who symbolizes the Serpent, the spirit of evil, is powerful. But in its expression, the fourth stanza transcends the limits which separate the horror that is awe-inspiring from the horror that becomes banal through its excess. In the last stanza Poe explains the meaning of the poem so carefully that it seems as though he were afraid we should miss the moral. This flavor of the didactic is alien to his poetry.

“The Conqueror Worm” is important, however, historically, as marking one step in the poetic treatment in America of the relations of God and man. Here the “mimes, in the form of God on high,” that is, human beings, are destroyed by the Serpent, and the “Angel throng” are helpless to prevent the tragedy.

Many years later, William Vaughn Moody, in his “Masque of Judgment” took the next step. God is no longer simply indifferent to the struggle. Having failed to make the best use of the good in man, He also is attacked by the Serpent, and the Angelic host fight to the last in His defence, but are defeated. Man is justified by Moody in his struggle for free will, whether he sin or not. Eugene O’Neill went further, in his own words,(69) in treating “the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious, self-destructive struggle to make the Force (God, or his biological past) express him, instead of being, as an animal is, an infinitesimal incident in its expression.” O’Neill has gone further even than this, in Lazarus Laughed, where he pictures dying as a return to a full communion with Eternal Life, in which, however, the individual human will is preserved. Poe was ahead of his time, as usual, in his conception of this relation between God and man, but it was not in “The Conqueror Worm,” but rather in his later story, “Mesmeric Revelation,” that he shows his undoubted influence on later writers. In this story, he rejected the idea of the absorption of [page 392:] the individual in God. That would be “an action of God returning upon itself — a purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures are thoughts of God. It is in the nature of thought to be irrevocable.”

While there are differences in their treatment of this problem, Poe, Moody, and O’Neill, each in his own way, insist on the essential dignity of man, through the freedom of his will. Their kinship is only one of the many instances which prove Poe to be in the main stream of American thought. That he was one of the fountainheads of that stream has unfortunately caused him to be dubbed an “exotic” by those who have not traced the stream to its sources.

Poe also sent Graham's his most famous story of this year. Graham paid Poe fifty-two dollars for “The Gold Bug.” Poe learned, however, that the Dollar Newspaper, one of the blanket sheets, was offering a prize of one hundred dollars for the best short story, so he asked Graham to return it. That friendly editor did so, and evidently took his repayment in reviews. As the first of these, “Flaccus,” appeared in March, 1843, “The Gold Bug” must have been written quite early in that year. It won the prize and was published in the Dollar Newspaper, June 21 and 28, 1843. It was reprinted in The Saturday Courier of Philadelphia on June 24th, July 1st, and July 8th, the last installment including the two woodcuts by F. O. C. Darley.(70) This reprint, which must have been arranged before the story was published, indicates Poe's growing reputation in Philadelphia. It was the first time that one of his stories received practically simultaneous publication in two journals. The positions of the story in the Courier indicate the immediate popularity of “The Gold Bug.” On June 24 it appeared on the third page. On July 1, it was promoted to the first page, where it remained on July 8. The Dollar Newspaper also reprinted it on July 12th, evidently to meet a continuous demand. It was dramatized by Silas S. Steele, a prolific playwright of Philadelphia, and played on August 8th, at the Walnut Street Theatre. As Steele's three-act verse drama, Clandare, was also given, The Gold Bug; or, the Pirate's Treasure, was probably a short melodrama. The play has not survived, but we know that it had four characters.(71) “Friendling” is the name given by Steele to the narrator of the story, [page 393:] whom Poe left nameless, and who was evidently the chief character, since he was played by the leading man, J. S. Charles. In addition to Legrand and Jupiter, Steele gave the old woman who led Legrand to the high seat the name of “Old Martha.”

I have already discussed the setting of “The Gold Bug” on Sullivan's Island.(72) The continued popularity of the story has been due to Poe's skill in building up the anticipation of the finding of the treasure and by the very immensity of the sum. At once the reader begins to speculate, consciously or unconsciously, upon what he would do with so much money. When Legrand begins his explanation of the parchment which has led him to the discovery, the reader is again held by the thought that all this wealth might have been lost except for an accident. If the narrator had not brought the parchment near the fire, the secret drawing of the skull and the cipher which had lain so long concealed from the eyes of man might never have been discovered. In the solution of the cipher, Poe again shows his constant effort to limit the strain on the attention of the reader. He chose a very simple form of cipher, that in which a letter is represented always by the same character. His explanation and substitutions are clear, and he stops when he has secured ten letters and wisely remarks that it is unnecessary to proceed further with the details of the solution. Legrand finds the tree by the same power of analysis that had solved the cipher. There is even more connection between the characters and the incidents than in the “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” or in “Marie Rogêt.” Legrand is an enthusiast, and a visionary, and both the narrator and Jupiter become real characters.

When “The Gold Bug” was reprinted in the Tales of 1845, Poe made some verbal changes,(73) and later in the Lorimer Graham copy(74) of the Tales he added two paragraphs toward the end of the story, defending his choice of a skull on the ground that the “object, if small, should be white,” and that a skull would increase its whiteness when exposed to the weather. Evidently he was feeling some criticism! He also changed the elevation of the glass from forty-one to twenty-one degrees, with that careful attention to reality which even in his wildest dreams did not desert him.(75) [page 394:]

“The Tell Tale Heart,” which Lowell welcomed for The Pioneer in January, 1843, is in one sense a companion piece to “The Pit and the Pendulum.” It is also a study of terror, but this time it is related, partially, in terms of the memory of terror. The madman who tells the story of his murder of the old man whose eye is so repellent to him, paints a remarkable picture of the fright of his victim. But it is vivid because he has himself suffered causeless terrors in the night and he enters, therefore, with sympathy into those of the old man, even as he is preparing to murder him. The transition to the supernatural takes place, also, in the imagination of the narrator. With his faculties keyed up beyond the mental register, he believes he hears the old man's heart beating, first when he is alive, and finally when he is dead. The complete unity of the story disarms the critical faculties until the imagination of the madman seems for the moment reality. It is an almost perfect illustration of Poe's own theory of the short story, for every word contributes to the central effect.

Poe may have read Charles Dickens’ story of “The Clock-Case,” included in Master Humphrey's Clock (76) in 1840-1841, in which a retired lieutenant kills his nephew, a child whose death would enrich him and whose gaze maddens him. The murderer even sits on the child's grave when visitors come. But the discovery is made not by the conscience of the murderer, but by bloodhounds who scent the concealed corpse. Here, as usual, if Poe took a suggestion he wove it into his own pattern.

“The Black Cat,” which appeared in August(77) is even more closely related to “The Tell-Tale Heart” than the latter is to “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Again the preservation of the tone makes the tale a complete unity. The narrator is afflicted with that spirit of perverseness, of which Poe himself was so aware. His sadistic passion tortures the very animal he loves best, and he murders his wife in a fit of [page 395:] maniacal rage. The disclosure of the crime, as in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” is caused by the conscience of the murderer. “The Black Cat” is one of the most powerful of Poe's stories, and the horror stops short of the wavering line of disgust.

From this mood of horror, Poe turned to his satirical treatments of cheats and impostures in “Raising the Wind; or, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences,” published in the Saturday Courier on October 14, 1843. It is another of his grotesque trifles and is simply a succession of incidents whose only unity consists in their portraying of the success of clever scoundrels in preying upon the unsuspecting. Poe is said with some reason to have been lacking in humor. Still, I heard recently one of the episodes in this story told over the radio as a new joke!

Another tale of 1843 represents Poe in his quest for beauty, and he found it in Philadelphia in one of its loveliest forms. He may have been attracted to the Wissahickon River by Fannie Kemble's Journal, or by some verses which had appeared in Burton's, or he may have discovered the stream in one of his many walks. When he first saw it we do not know, but certainly on more than one summer day, Poe left the Coates Street house and struck across Fairmount Park until he joined the Ridge Road. This is one of the long avenues which defied Philadelphia's love of rectangles and insisted upon leading the pedestrian or coach rider by a shorter route to the country. Poe has given us his own impressions in the sketch, “Morning on the Wissahiccon,” as it was then spelled, which appeared in The Opal for 1844, ornamented by a picture of an elk, standing on a rock overlooking the stream. But Poe's own words are better than any paraphrase. After a general discussion of American scenery, he proceeds:

Poe really saw an elk, and the “villa” still stands.(78) On the rock where the elk was poised, a statue of William Penn, erected by John Welsh, with the words “Toleration” cut deep in it, crowns the east bank of the stream. Poe was evidently floating down from the northwest, and the morning sun lit up his favorite tulip poplars, which must have carried his thoughts back to the luxuriant woods near Charleston. On the Wissahickon, however, they were set against a contrast of the evergreens which line the shores. Little has been done to spoil the beauty of the Wissahickon, and if Poe should return today, he could look up or down the stream from the spot past which he was drifting, and find it hard to decide which view is the lovelier.

Undiscouraged by his failure to secure a publisher for his Phantasy Pieces, Poe attempted to issue his tales in pamphlet form. William H. Graham, a Philadelphia publisher, printed in 1843 The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, in what was hopefully described on the title page as a “Uniform Serial Edition.” “No. 1” contained “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Man That Was Used Up.” These were [page 399:] the two stories which had led the Table of Contents in the Phantasy Pieces, and if the first issue had been successful, Poe would probably have proceeded in that order to continue the publication of his stories. But no further issues appeared, and the pamphlet has become one of the rarest of all Poe's publications. The volume in the Library of Congress, which Poe gave to Francis J. Grund, the Bohemian traveller and writer upon American life, is insured for $50,000. On the same title-page on which his autograph has enhanced the present value, there is clearly printed — “Price 12½ Cents.”

Poe revised the stories with his usual care. A comparison with the earlier versions shows constant verbal alterations, usually improvements, which were generally retained in the edition of 1845.(79)

Notwithstanding Poe's retirement, Graham's continued to be his principal outlet for criticism, some of which was repayment for the sum Graham had paid for “The Gold Bug.” Reviews of “The Poetry of Rufus Dawes” in October, 1842, of “Flaccus” (Thomas Ward) in March, 1843, and of William Ellery Charming, the younger, in August, were examples of that destructive criticism which was so easy for Poe and which, at least in the case of Channing, was undeserved. He closed the castigation of Dawes with the sentence: “The laudation of the unworthy is to the worthy the most bitter of all wrong.” But Poe could have permitted time to take care of Dawes and “Flaccus.” They were harmless, and, indeed, Dawes’ “Athenia of Damascus,” a play in verse, is not bad. But the review of Ellery Channing's poetry represents Poe at his worst in criticism. Stickler for accuracy as he was, he begins and ends with the mistaken idea that Ellery Channing was the son of the essayist of the same name, while, of course, he was his [page 400:] nephew. Then Poe tears the verses apart and subjects the poetry to that unfair test of demanding a realistic explanation of individual lines of poetry separated from their context. It would seem that Poe had a sadistic delight in torturing a poet somewhat akin to the spirit in which the hero of “The Black Cat” maltreated his equally innocent victim.

The account of Fitz-Greene Halleck in September is in better taste. It repeats, however, much of the matter in Poe's earlier review. In his discussion of Cooper's Wyandotté, in November, he showed unusual lack of discrimination in placing Cooper among those writers who are popular but will not achieve fame, while he placed Brockden Brown, John Neal, Simms, and Hawthorne, in a group above Cooper in permanent appeal. On the other hand, he anticipated W. C. Brownell for many years in his appreciation of Cooper's women, and rightly placed Maud Meredith among those characters that have reality. In his lengthy review of Orion, by the English poet R. H. Home, he lost control of his critical faculties and pronounced portions of that poem the most “sublimely imaginative in the wide realm of poetical literature.” In the same number of Graham's for March, 1844, he was on surer ground in his brief criticism of Lowell's second volume of verse, for he revealed his insight into qualities in Lowell which had hardly as yet been recognized.

The two stories which appeared in the spring of 1844 were of quite different calibre. “The Spectacles,” which found a market in the Dollar Newspaper for March 27, 1844, is one of the most absurd of the Grotesques. The story of Mr. Talbot, who is so near-sighted that he falls in love with his great-great-grandmother, defies criticism. “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” which appeared in Godey's for April, 1844, has much more significance. For the setting Poe returned to Charlottesville, and the strange adventure of Bedloe takes place in the mountains toward the South. But the University of Virginia does not enter into the story. Before taking a walk in the mountains, Bedloe has swallowed his usual morning dose of morphine, which, combined with the fact that Dr. Templeton, his attendant physician, has been hypnotising Bedloe for neuralgia, leaves a possible natural explanation for what follows. Bedloe sees an Eastern city in insurrection, believes that he takes part in the defence of a citadel held by British soldiers, and is killed while leading a sally. Then his spirit returns to the place in the mountains where he had begun the vision, and he resumes his natural body and his normal faculties. The skill of Poe is shown first in the handling of Bedloe's dream, which is quite in keeping with the normal dream state. In creating dreams in fiction, the authors, if they [page 401:] are not competent dreamers, are unaware that they may describe the strangest of incidents, provided that these incidents are consistent with themselves. One must also preserve the dreamer's belief in the validity of the dream. Poe truly says: “When one dreams, and in the dream suspects that he dreams, the suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and the sleeper is almost immediately aroused.” Bedloe's dream proceeds in accordance with these rules. Poe succeeds also in preserving an atmosphere of the supernatural through the tale of Dr. Templeton, who reveals his knowledge of Bedloe's dream before he tells it. Templeton has taken part in this very defence of Benares under Hastings in 1780, and the reader may believe if he likes, that Bedloe was the re-incarnation of Oldeb, the officer whom Templeton knew, and who had led the disastrous sally. The realistic treatment of the supernatural was rarely better done by Poe.

In this period we see, as usual, the two natures in Edgar Poe coming out in response to circumstances. On one side there is Poe's demand of his correspondent, John Tomlin, a poet of Tennessee, that he break the seal of confidence in which Lambert Wilmer had written to Tomlin, and send Wilmer's letter to Poe. Tomlin did so, requesting Poe in a postscript to “return Wilmer's letter.” Wilmer's note has rarely been quoted fully, only the paragraph concerning Poe being given. But the entire letter retails gossip of an unfavorable character, and his description of Poe must be read in that light:

What Poe did with the letter, we do not know. When we remember Wilmer's account of Poe's sobriety in Baltimore, and his defence of Poe after his death, this letter evidently points to some lapses of Poe, caused by anxiety and poverty. On the other hand, a letter which Poe wrote to Cornelius Mathews in March, 1844, represents the other Poe, manly in his apology for a mistake and written in the clear, firm hand of a man quite in control of himself:

Poe referred to his review of Mathews’ Wakondah in Graham's Magazine for February, 1842, in which he had described the poem as “trash.”

What determined Poe to leave Philadelphia for New York in April, 1844, may never be known. It seems idle to recount the vague rumors of scandal hinted at by those who retailed them at second hand. Even to deny them is to dignify them. Among other qualities which made Edgar Poe unfit to cope with the world was his inability to see that the best way to kill a scandal is to ignore it. This is all the more noteworthy since he could give to a friend good advice in this regard which he was unable to profit by himself.(82) On February 18, 1844, Poe wrote to George Lippard the novelist —

There need, perhaps, be no other reason given for the change of residence than Poe's constant restlessness and his realization of the steadily growing importance of New York. His six years in Philadelphia marked the summit of his achievement as a man of letters. Thirty-one of his short stories had been published while he was living [page 404:] there, and among them “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “William Wilson,” “Eiros and Charmion,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Eleonora,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Gold Bug.” He had been the Editor of the foremost monthly journal in the United States, and had published there some of the few pieces of constructive criticism that this country had so far seen. While little new poetry had come from him, he had perfected his earlier poems in many cases through his revisions, and in “The Haunted Palace” at least had reached the heights. He had become widely known, and if he had made enemies, he also had made friends. For part of his stay in Philadelphia he was even happy, and when he left it, it is not too much to say that he left happiness behind him.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 346:]

(1)  Poe to Thomas, October 27, 1841. Lewis Chase, “A New Poe Letter,” American Literature, VI (March, 1934), 67.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 347:]

(2)  Mayne Reid, Edgar Allan Poe. Taken from a Memoir of Mayne Reid, written by Elizabeth Reid, his widow, and published in London, 1890. Edited by Vincent Starrett (Ysleta, Texas, 1933), pp. 3-4. First printed as “A Dead Man Defended” in Reid's Magazine, Onward, for April, 1869.

(3)  Independent, XLVIII (1896), 1,415.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 348:]

(4)  Ms. of original letter in possession of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, through whose courtesy it is reproduced here in part. For the complete letter, see Chapter XVII.

(5)  “The Late Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham's Magazine, XXXVI (March, 1850), 225.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 350:]

(6)  Independent, XLVIII (October 15, 22, 29, November 5), 1,381-82; 1,415-16; 1,448; 1,480-81.

(7)  Independent, XLVIII (October 15, 1896), 1,382.

(8)  For information concerning Griswold's career, see W. M. Griswold, Passages from the Correspondence . ... of Rufus W. Griswold (Cambridge, 1898); J. L. Neu, “Rufus Wilmot Griswold,” University of Texas Studies in English, V (1925), 101-165. Also, D. A. B.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 351:]

(9)  Preface to “Memoir,” Griswold's edition of The Literati — by Edgar A. Poe (New York, 1850), p. v.

(10)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

(11)  “Griswold's American Poetry,” “By Edgar A. Poe.” Boston Miscellany, II (November, 1842), 218-221. This review contains a list of the authors treated by Griswold, usually omitted in reproductions. There was a very brief but laudatory notice of the book in the May number of Graham's. There is also a review of the book in Graham's for June, 1842, which has been attributed to Poe. It does not have any marked characteristics of his style. Since Poe had left Graham's and since he repudiated the leading review in the June number, on Bulwer's Zanoni, in a letter to Snodgrass of June 4, 1842, Poe's authorship of these two reviews is doubtful.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 352:]

(12)  Graham's Magazine, XXI (1842), 60.

(13)  Original Autograph Ms., Pierpont Morgan Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 354:]

(14)  Original Autograph Ms., Anthony Collection, New York Public Library. According to Thomas's endorsement, he did not receive the letter until he returned to Washington.

(15)  Briggs to Lowell, quoted by Woodberry, II, 123, as of January 6, 1845.

(16)  Woodberry and Harrison accept it on internal evidence. Killis Campbell does not. He lays stress upon the fact that Poe does not mention it among the articles he states he has written upon Griswold's work. But since that list is given in a letter from Poe to Griswold, “undated, but in 1849” printed in Griswold's “Preface” but not found among the Griswold Mss., that evidence, unsupported, is not important. Campbell thinks it might be by Hirst, and there is a certain plausibility here, as Hirst is not mentioned among the Philadelphia poets who should have been treated. Dr. Mabbott believes it is a collaboration between Poe and Hirst, mostly by the former. He has called my attention to the suggested substitution for “In the greenest of our valleys” of “In a sunny, smiling valley,” which is in a poem by Hirst, “To a Ruined Fountain,” Snowden's Ladies’ Companion, September, 1842. Poe would hardly have made such a suggestion, unless of course, he did it to throw people off the scent.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 357:]

(17)  Original Autograph Ms., Pierpont Morgan Library.

(18)  Poe to George Roberts, June 4, 1842. Original Autograph Ms., Collection of J. K. Lilly, Jr.

(19)  Mary's betrothed, Daniel C. Payne, of 47 John Street, probably killed himself at the supposed site of the murder, in October, 1841. He had been drinking and death may have been caused by laudanum or exposure. Dr. T. O. Mabbott quotes Brother Jonathan, October 16, 1841, in sending me these facts.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 358:]

(20)  See New York Mail and Express, April 19, 1900, where a picture of the store is given. The steps have only recently been destroyed through the widening of the road between Nineteenth and Gregory Streets, a W. P. A. project.

(21)  Poe to Eveleth, January 4, 1848, Chapter XVII. In a footnote to the story as it appeared in the Tales of 1845, Poe claimed that the confession of two persons established the truth of his deduction. See, however, R. V. Costello, “Poe and Marie Rogêt,” New York Evening Post, January 10, 1920, who claims the gang really committed the murder. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., in Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, LVI (March, 1941), 230-248, collects the newspaper accounts and reviews the situation, but arrives at no conclusion.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 359:]

(22)  Poe called attention to the Thelluson will, which suggested the accumulation of “ninety million pounds.”

(23)  See Margaret Alterton, Modern Language Notes, XLVIII (June, 1933), 349-356.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 359, continuing to the bottom of page 360:]

(24)  Blackwood's Magazine, XXVIII (August, 1830), 364-371. See D. L. [page 360:] Clark, Modern Language Notes, XLIV (June, 1929), 349, whose other suggestions I do not follow.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 360:]

(25)  Thomas to Poe, May 21, 1842. Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

(26)  Herron was well known for his inventions, among them a trellis railway structure. He won the gold medal of the American Institute in 1846. The Philadelphia Directory for 1844 shows he was a resident of that city.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 361:]

(27)  Both letters, Autograph Mss., are in the W. H. Koester Collection.

(28)  See letter on pp. 352-354, in connection with Griswold.

(29)  Thomas's notation on the letter — “Did not get this until my return. Saw Poe in Philadelphia.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 362:]

(30)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 363:]

(31)  Woodberry, Century Magazine, XLVIII (September, 1894), 733-734, quotes from a Ms. in possession of C. W. Frederickson. Harrison checks through independent copying of a letter said to be in the Lenox Library. It is not now in the New York Public Library, which absorbed the Lenox.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 364:]

(32)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

(33)  See Horace E. Scudder's James Russell Lowell, I, 103-105.

(34)  Woodberry, I, 347.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 365:]

(35)  Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library. This letter has the signature and possibly the date torn off. The postmark is December 25th. C. E. Norton noted “December 23, 1842,” on the letter.

(36)  Original Autograph Ms., W. H. Koester Collection.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 366:]

(37)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 367:]

(38)  His letter of August 27, 1840, in the Boston Public Library may be consulted by the curious. One sentence will suffice, “He who has never wandered amid the labyrinthine vistas of the flower-gemmed solitudes of thought knows nothing of the capabilities of the soul in its aspirations after the Beautiful in Natural Truth.”

(39)  Graham's Magazine, XIX (December, 1841), 284-285.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 369:]

(40)  The Mighty Dead. [Note inscribed in Chivers’ hand, on the Ms. letter.]

(41)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

(42)  Woodberry printed Poe's letters to Chivers in the Century, LXV (1903), 435-447; 545-558, and reprinted this account in part in the Life of Poe (1909) in the Appendix. Harrison had in the meantime published the letters of Chivers in the Virginia Edition. S. Foster Damon, in Thomas Holley Chivers, Friend of Poe (New York, 1930), wrote the standard biography.

(43)  Original agreement is in the Huntington Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 370:]

(44)  An issue of February 25th, apparently unique, was in possession of the late Mr. J. H. Rindfieisch, of Richmond, to whose courtesy I owe a photostat of the original. It does not contain Poe's “Song of the Newly Wedded” (Bridal Ballad), which was added in the reprint of March 4th, and there are other verbal differences. The dates have been cut out. It may have been a dummy for the printer, who was to fill in the new dates.

(45)  For this issue, I am indebted to Dr. James S. Wilson, who owns one of the rare copies, and to Mr. John C. Wyllie, also of the University of Virginia, for the photostat in enlarged type which enabled me to read it. Mr. J. H. Rindfieisch also sent me a photostat copy of this issue.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 371:]

(46)  Page 2 of the issue of March 4, 1843. This editorial does not mention the reprinting on its own first page. There was an Extra which contained a reprint of the notice concerning the Stylus, but not the biography. This is in the American Antiquarian Society. There were probably two Extras, but I have not found the one announced in the notice in the Museum.

(47)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

(48)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 372:]

(49)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library[[.]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 374:]

(50)  Revised versions of the following poems: “To Helen,” “Al Aaraaf” (partially), “Sonnet — To Science,” “Romance,” “To the River,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “Lenore,” “Sonnet to Zante,” “The Sleeper,” “To One in Paradise,” “Sonnet — Silence,” “Israfel,” “Song of the Newly Wedded (Bridal Ballad),” “To One Departed,” “The Coliseum,” and “The Haunted Palace.” The omitted poems of importance are, “Tamerlane,” “A Dream Within a Dream,” “The Lake,” “Fairyland,” “The City in the Sea,” “The Valley of Unrest,” and the “Hymn.”

(51)  For a detailed textual comparison, which would be out of place here, see Dudley Hutcherson, “The Philadelphia Saturday Museum Text of Poe's Poems,” American Literature, V (March, 1933), 38-48.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 376:]

(52)  Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843, p. 3.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 377:]

(53)  See his letters to Lowell, March 27 and October 19, 1843.

(54)  April 1, 1843. I owe these two items to Dr. T. O. Mabbott, who examined this issue in the Library of the University of North Carolina.

(55)  Original Autograph Ms., Young Collection, New York Public Library. The handwriting of this letter shows that Poe was not himself when he wrote it.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 378:]

(56)  Gill's Life, pp. 120-122.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 380:]

(57)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library. There is another form in the Pratt Library, Baltimore, which is probably a first draft. It does not contain the annotation by Thomas, and there is no sure indication that it was sent through the mail.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 381, running to the bottom of page 382:]

(58)  Original Autograph Ms., Collection of J. K. Lilly, Jr. This early version of “Eulalie” differs from the first printed form in the American Review for July, 1845, in the second stanza:

The sixth line of the third stanza read:

but “the Moon” was crossed out and “Astart” [sic] inserted. This may mean that Astarté was substituted for the moon, and represented Venus, or it may help settle the question whether Astarté in “Ulalume” meant Venus or the moon. Another Ms. of “Eulalie,” in the W. H. Koester Collection, is identical with this early form, except that the line

indicates that it is a stage between the first form and the later one. The number of manuscripts of “Eulalie” probably reflect the difficulty Poe had in placing it. These early forms also do away with several supposed “sources” of “Eulalie,” which appeared in 1845 — and are a warning to those who attribute to Poe inspiration from others’ work without knowing the date of first composition of his poems. [[One of those who maintained several sources of “Eulalie” dated from after the letter to Carter, although in 1843 rather than 1845, was T. O. Mabbott (see Poems, 1969, 1:347 and 1:349). As a result, Mabbott dismissed the letter to Carter as a forgery, without further explanation, although the letter was accepted by Ostrom in his The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe (1958) and retained in the revised edtion of The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe (2008).]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 384:]

(59)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

(60)  Copy of letter, Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library. Harrison XVII, 149, prints it as to J. T. Fields from the Fields Collection.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 385:]

(61)  It was purchased in 1933 by Mr. Richard Gimbel, who has collected a large library of magazines containing articles by Poe, all the well known biographies, and works dealing with Poe, including manuscript material. An attractive brochure, The Rose Covered Cottage by Mr. Anthony Frane, Custodian of the house, gives full information concerning its history.

(62)  The descriptions given by Graham and Griswold evidently refer to the Coates Street residence. Mayne Reid's description of “a lean-to of three rooms (there may have been a garret with a closet) of painted plank construction, supported against the gable of the more pretentious dwelling” can apply to neither the Coates Street nor the Spring Garden Street houses, both of which were built of brick. The Directory for 1844 reads “Poe, E. A., editor 7th ab. S. Garden.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 386:]

(63)  Mary E. Phillips, Poe the Man, p. 289.

(64)  The original letter, so far as I can ascertain, is not in existence. It was printed in Griswold's “Preface” to his “Memoir” of Poe, in The Literati, etc., of 1850, p. v. In view of Griswold's forgeries, such unsupported evidence is not trustworthy.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 387:]

(65)  Original Autograph Ms. Letter, Norton Collection, Harvard College Library. Norton wrote on the margin that the money was paid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 388:]

(66)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 390:]

(67)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 391:]

(68)  Killis Campbell, Poems of Poe, p. 242, quoting Ingram's article in London Bibliophile, May, 1909.

(69)  See his letter to the present writer in 1925. History of the American Drama from the Civil War to the Present, II, 199.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 392:]

(70)  In collection of William H. Koester, of Baltimore. A copy of “The Gold Bug,” also in this collection, is a pamphlet published in London, without date, but apparently early. It contains thirty-six pages, and was “No. 1” of a projected issue of “The Thousand and One Romances.”

(71)  See A. H. Wilson, A History of the Philadelphia Theatre, 1835 to 1855 (Philadelphia, 1935).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 393:]

(72)  See Chapter VI.

(73)  A detailed comparison by T. O. Mabbott of the text in the Dollar Newspaper and in the Tales may be found in a special edition of “The Gold Bug,” New York, 1929.

(74)  Now in the Century Association in New York City. [[Now at the HRCL, University orf Texas, at Austin.]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 393, continuing to the bottom of page 394:]

(75)  The source hunters have been busy, of course, with “The Gold Bug.” [page 394:] There may have been some remembrance of his friend, Dr. Robert M. Bird's Sheppard Lee, which Poe had reviewed in The Messenger in September, 1836. In that novel a Negro, Jim Jumble, dreams three nights of finding a treasure at the foot of a beech tree in a swamp and his master digs for it. But since Jupiter in “The Gold Bug” does not dream, and his master does not dig on account of anything the Negro says or does, the connection between Sheppard Lee and “The Gold Bug” seems very uncertain.

(76)  See E. S. Krappe, “A Possible Source for Poe's ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Black Cat,’ ” American Literature, XII (March, 1940), 84-88.

(77)  Published August 19, 1843, in the United States Saturday Post, a temporary substitution for its old title, The Saturday Evening Post.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 397:]

(78)  The house, known as “Spring Bank” was in 1838 a sanitarium conducted by Samuel Mason, who kept a number of pets for the amusement of his patients. While the house was sold in May, 1838, to George Wilson, a farmer, he, in turn, sold it in 1840 to Dr. Edward Lowber, who also had a sanitarium and probably inherited the elk with the property. The rock was known as “Mom Rinker's Rock,” in honor of an American spy who sat on it and dropped her letters over the brink, concealed in a ball of yarn, which found its way to Washington at Valley Forge. John Welsh purchased the place in 1870 and his descendant, Mr. J. Somers Smith, still owns it. I am indebted to him and to my colleague, Dr. Cornelius Weygandt, for facts concerning “Spring Bank,” and also to the Portrait of a Colonial City, by H. D. Eberlein and C. Van D. Hubbard (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 200-203.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 399:]

(79)  There are fifty-two alterations in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” of the text as given in Graham's. The quotation from Sir Thomas Browne is inserted, at the beginning, and the reference of the last quotation to Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise is added. The most interesting text addition occurs in the last paragraph. As this edition is so rare that Harrison could not collate the changes in the Virginia Edition, I give it here: “Nevertheless, that he [the Prefect] failed in the solution of the mystery, is by no means, that matter for wonder which he supposes it. Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio, is, perhaps, the only line in the puerile and feeble Seneca not absolutely unmeaning; and, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound.” In Graham's the Prefect had been “too cunning to be acute.” The quotation from Seneca was omitted in the 1845 revision.

“The Man That Was Used Up” contains for the first time in print the motto from Corneille which Poe wrote into the Phantasy Pieces. It has fifteen corrections of the 1840 text, but the trivial nature of the story makes any comparison superfluous.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 402:]

(80)  Original Autograph Ms., Boston Public Library.

(81)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 403:]

(82)  Lippard published the letter of which this is a part, on pages 167 and 168 of his novel Herbert Tracy, or the Legend of the Black Rangers (Philadelphia, 1844). Lippard quoted the letter in “A Word to the Reader,” in which he refers to Poe as “universally confessed one of the most gifted men in the land.” The novel is in the William H. Koester Collection.