Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Allan Poe [part 1],” Once a Week (London, UK), vol. XXV, November 4, 1871, pp. 404-410

[page 404, column 2, continued:]

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

——

WITH the exception of Longfellow, perhaps, the American poets have received as yet but scant attention from English readers. No name in connection with Transatlantic poetry is more often upon people's lips than that of the famous author of the “Raven;” but the life and character of this strange, erratic genius are far from being so generally understood as they deserve to be. The “Raven” has taken its place in the English language as one of those unique gems which shine in a special glory of their own, unlike anything that has ever been written before, or that is likely to be written hereafter. In this respect, the “Raven” may be compared with the “Ancient Mariner” of Coleridge, the “We are Seven” of Wordsworth, or Ben Jonson's famous epigram.

The “Raven” has long been a universal favourite in the land of its birth, and is an indispensable part of the programme in any public reading in the States. Mrs. Macready, an American herself, and well known as an elocutionist, made a great reputation by her exquisite rendering of this poem alone; and in the readings which she gave some years ago in London, with such gratifying success, this lady did more, perhaps, to waken in this country a general interest in the genius of

Edgar Allan Poe than any one before her. The “Raven” has since been given so often in readings, from one end of the land to the other, that few intelligent people are unacquainted with its. beauties. But of the author himself, and his strange, wilful, and lamentable career, little, we believe, is known to the great majority of the reading public. Edgar Allan Poe was of a good old Baltimore family; but the “eccentricity” — to use no harsher term — which marked the career of the poet so sadly, seems to have run in the blood. His father, David Poe, was several years a law student in Baltimore; but, falling in love with an English actress, named Elizabeth Arnold, whose beauty is said to have surpassed her histrionic genius, he eloped with her, after a while married her, and then became an actor himself. They both played, for six [page 405:] or seven years, in the theatres of the principal cities of the United States. The end of the haphazard alliance was miserable. They both died young, within a few weeks of each other, leaving three children — Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie — utterly destitute. Edgar was born at Baltimore, in January, 1811. On the death of his parents, Mr. John Allan, a wealthy merchant, having no children of his own, adopted him; and young Poe was generally regarded as the accepted heir to the fortune of his benefactor. He was a child of remarkable beauty, precocious, and full of spirit. His proud, nervous irritability was unfortunately allowed unlimited indulgence by the generous-hearted merchant. His every whim and fancy was petted and humoured. The boy was father to the man; and to the mistaken licence allowed to his wayward, ungovernable temper, when thus young, may be largely attributed his extravagancies as soon as he was old enough to go out into the world on his own responsibility.

In 1816, Mr. and Mrs. Allan came over to England, bringing their adopted child with them; and young Poe was placed at a school at Stoke Newington for four or five years. In one of his tales he gives a striking reminiscence of his life there.

“My earliest recollections of a school-life are connected with a large, rambling Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village in England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, I fancy I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the pure fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with indefinable delight at the deep hollow of the church bell, breaking each hour with sullen and sudden roar upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep.”

It is a weakness of many of us, in our maturer days, to cherish any but grateful re- collections of the hardworking Dominies who first taught our young ideas how to shoot; and we may be sure that the boy Poe was the last in the world to have any inordinate respect for the authority to which he was compelled, in those schoolboy days at Stoke Newington, to submit.

“The house, I have said, was old and [column 2:] irregular. The grounds were extensive; and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the whole of our domain — beyond it we saw but thrice a week: once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks, in a body, through some of the neighbouring fields; and twice on a Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening services in the one church of the village. Of this church, the principal of our school was the pastor. With how deep a spirit of perplexity was I wont to regard him, from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid, and so vast — could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!”

In 1822, Poe returned to America, and matriculated at the University of Charlotteville. His natural talents, and the power of working which he always had, kept him always to the front in the examinations; and he would undoubtedly, but for his own vagaries, have ultimately left the university with the highest honours; but, unfortunately, he quitted it with a far less enviable reputation. The American students of that day were noted for their dissipated habits, and Poe was the wildest and most dissipated among them, until his tastes for gambling and other vices led to his being expelled. Mr. Allan, meanwhile, had not stinted him in the way of money; yet the spendthrift student had managed, as might have been expected, to involve himself heavily in debts, mostly of a gambling nature. These his guardian refused to pay. Poe wrote him an abusive letter, quitted his house, and started off for Europe, to join the Greeks in their struggle with the Turks. He never reached Greece, however; but, having been lost sight of for twelve months, turned up at St. Petersburg. The American Minister there was summoned one morning to save him from the penalties which he had incurred in a drunken quarrel overnight, and by his kind- ness the mad-brained youth was enabled to return to America. [page 406:]

Mr. Allan, who, for all his faults, loved him still, once more received him with open arms. Poe's ambition now was to enter the army, and accordingly his patron gained him admission to the Military Academy at West Point. But the same fatal propensities followed him like a curse. In ten months he was cashiered and expelled. Once again his forgiving benefactor received him as a son; but Poe seemed utterly incorrigible, and Mr. Allan finally closed his doors against him for ever. The story of this final eschewal of Poe by his patron is veiled in some mystery. According to the delinquent's own account, he ridiculed the marriage of Mr. Allan to his second wife, who was, he says, young enough to be his grandchild. As Mr. Allan As Mr. Allan was just forty-eight at that time, his new wife must have been very young indeed to justify the truth of Poe's statement. The writer, however, of an eulogium on Poe, published in the “Southern Literary Messenger” for March, 1850, says: — “The story of the other side is different, and, if true, throws a dark shade on the quarrel, and a very ugly light on Poe's character. We shall not insert it, because it is one of those relations which, we think with Sir Thomas Browne, should never be recorded.”

Whatever the final cause of the estrangement — and it must have been a grave one — one thing at least is certain, that when Mr. Allan died, in 1834, he left his fortune to his children by the second marriage, but not a farthing to Poe.

By his own folly — or something worse — Poe had now permanently cut off his one great means of a comfortable and independent existence. Mr. Allan henceforth declined either to see or assist him; and Poe was thrown upon the world. He now sought to support himself by literature; and the remainder of his life is the chronicle of a precarious struggle to keep his head above water. His first attempts at literature were disheartening failures. Poe lost all hope, and resorted to that last expedient of a desperate man — he enlisted as a common soldier. How long he remained in this position is not exactly known. He was recognized by officers who had been students with him at West Point. Efforts were made — and with prospects of success — to get him a commission; when, one morning, it was found that he had deserted. The history of his life for the next few months is a blank, for nothing is known of his movements in the interim. [column 2:] About this time, the publishers of the “Baltimore Saturday Visitor” offered two prizes-one for the best tale, and the other for the best poem. Poe went in for both; the pieces he submitted being “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “Lionizing,” “The Visionary,” and three others; with “The Coliseum,” a poem. The prize tale was the “MS. Found in a Bottle;” but it was more through a lucky accident than the intrinsic merit of the composition that Poe was the successful candidate. On the committee which was to award the prize meeting, they were attracted by the beauty of the handwriting on one of the MSS. placed before them to decide upon. It was unanimously decided, on the mere caprice of the moment, that the prize should be awarded to the “first of geniuses who had written legibly.” Not another MS. was opened. The following description of Poe's appearance, when he was brought in to receive his prize, gives a painful idea of the position to which he had been reduced: ——

“Accordingly, he was introduced. The prize money had not yet been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin and pale, even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A well-worn frock coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the want of hose. But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and feeling, and his voice and conversation all won upon the lawyer's regard. Poe told his history and his ambition; and it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor opportunity for a just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a clothing store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman.”

Through the influence of this committee, Poe now obtained, in 1835, the editorship of a journal published in Richmond, Virginia. For a while he kept himself steady- indeed, he was forced to do so. But immediately he received his first month's pay, he relapsed into his old habits. For weeks, everything was neglected for the habitual drink; and the natural result followed — his services were dispensed with. When necessity again forced him to be sober, Poe was full of repentance. Mr. White, the proprietor [page 407:] of the journal, gave him another chance; but it was the same old story over again — regular habits and good work until he had money in his hands, and then another break out — drunkenness and dissipation, worse, if possible, than the last. Poe was now, of course, finally dismissed. It was during this early part of his literary career that Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, an amiable and beautiful girl, as poor as himself, of a gentle temper, and about the last woman in the world fitted to control the fierce passions of a man like her husband. Some months afterwards, he became editor of the “Gentleman's Magazine,” a Philadelphia publication. He now made a vigorous effort to maintain a regular His connection with this periodical, which lasted about a year and a half, was one of the most active and brilliant periods of his literary career. He wrote for it some of his most successful tales, and most of his criticisms — which latter, however, are the least valuable of all his works, from the too frequent coarseness and temper which they display.

In 1844, Poe removed to New York. This period, taken altogether, seems to have been the happiest and most respectable of his life. His biographer says: —

“Poe's manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentle- manly. He was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighbourhoods far from the centre of the town; and, though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed, that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this, and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy.”

It was soon after his arrival in New York that Poe published his celebrated “Raven,” “the most effective single example,” says Mr. Willis, “of fugitive poetry ever published in America.” His reputation as a magazine writer and a trenchant critic grew rapidly; and if he had only possessed sufficient [column 2:] strength of mind to have persevered in his more regular habits, he might have made an honourable fortune. But his old demon returned once more; and the poor, weak, brilliant man of genius henceforth passed headlong into the gulf of destruction.

The old habits of dissipation were upon him with more diabolic force than ever: the old poverty fell upon him again as the miserable consequence. He was ill, his wife was dying, and his mother-in-law was wandering the streets of New York to find a purchaser for his manuscript.

His wife died; and early in 1848 he advertised several lectures, with the view of raising sufficient funds to start a long-contemplated monthly journal. These lectures were afterwards published under the title of “Eureka, a Prose Poem.” “Eureka” is nothing more nor less than a discourse on the cosmogony of the universe. In it he utterly denies the value of the inductive philosophy, and proposes a theory of nature which should have for its principle “that divinest instinct — the sense of beauty.” Whatever the value of his notions may be on this subject, there is no doubt that in this remarkable work the subtlest and purest gifts of Poe are exhibited in their most glorious strength.

From this period, Poe's pen may be said to have been comparatively idle. He had quarrelled with nearly all the publishers with whom he had had any transactions, and they were tired of him.

In August, 1849, he left New York for Philadelphia. There, for several days, his conduct was more that of a drunken madman — which, in truth, he now was — than that of a rational human being. He was soon reduced to beggary, and forced to ask in charity the means of leaving the city for Richmond, in Virginia. One more transient gleam of a better life burst upon him for a moment. In a chance resolution of repentance he joined a teetotal society, and for a few weeks conducted himself as a respectable member of society. He travelled several towns of Virginia, delivering lectures, and getting good returns for his labours. At this time he happened to renew his acquaintance with a lady, one of the most brilliant women of New England, whom he had known in his youth. He was engaged to be married to her; and wrote to his friends that he should pass the remainder of his [page 408:] days among the scenes endeared by all his pleasantest recollections of earlier days.

On Thursday, the 4th October, 1849, he set out for New York to fulfil a literary engagement, and to prepare for his marriage. But on the evening of the 6th, passing through Baltimore, he fell in with some old acquaintances, who invited him to drink. The old, wretched weakness came back again all his good intentions were for- gotten in the hour of temptation. Through the whole of that night he wandered about, mad and distracted with the orgies of the previous day; and on Sunday morning, the 7th of October, he was found in a dying state in the public streets. He was carried to a hospital; and, on the evening of the same Sabbath, the weak, erratic soul of this remarkable genius took its flight to another world.

One of the greatest misfortunes of Poe's life — if not the greatest — was, we think, the loss of his wife. That he loved his Virginia deeply and tenderly is without doubt. He has been accused of starving his wife; but this is a harsh accusation. That at times, even during his married life, he broke loose occasionally is true; but, on the whole, Poe would seem to have been a lov- ing and affectionate husband. The very fact of the great affection and motherly love which Mrs. Clemm, his mother-in-law, entertained for him, speaks volumes in his favour on this point; and we know how pathetically he mourns the loss of his beautiful, amiable wife in that sweet poem of “Annabel Lee” —

It has been said that in all Poe's poems there is a want of true, earnest, moral principle — that they are but freaks of a gorgeous imagination, worked out in consummate [column 2:] wording; but there are few, we think, who will carefully read “Annabel Lee” from beginning to end, but will find a deep spring of genuine heart pathos therein.

Poor Poe has hitherto had little mercy shown him at the hands of his biographers and critics. “Principle he seems to have had none. Decision of character was entirely lacking. His envy of those more favoured by fortune than himself amounted to raging ferocity. He starved his wife, and broke her heart. He estranged the friends who were most firmly resolved to hold by him. He foully slandered his best benefactors. He had no faith in man or woman. He regarded society as composed altogether of villains. He had no sympathy, no honour, no truth. And we carry with us, from the contemplation of the entire subject, the sad recollection of a powerful intellect, a most vivid imagination, an utterly evil heart, and a career of guilt, misery and despair.” This is a wholesale and bitter impeachment of the memory of this remarkable man; but we are afraid that the charges have too much of the sad, miserable truth in them to allow of much justification. Even his own countrymen have little to say in his favour.

Was ever a more melancholy obituary notice written of a man than that penned on the death of Poe by Dr. Rufus Griswold, in the Tribune? It commences: —

“Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore, on Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known personally, or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him. literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.”

In the course of a tolerably lengthy notice, Dr. Griswold sums up his account of Poe in the following graphic words: —

“He was at all times a dreamer, dwelling in ideal realms — in heaven or hell — peopled with the creatures and the accidents of his brain. He walked the streets, in madness or in melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer — never for himself, for he felt, or professed to feel, that he was already damned, but for their happiness who at the [page 409:] moment were objects of his idolatry; or, with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish, and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms; and all night, with drenched garments, and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn, close by whose portals his disturbed soul sought to forget those ills to which his constitution subjected him — close by the Aidenn where were those he loved — the Aidenn which he might never see, but in fitful glimpses, as its gates opened to receive the less fiery and more happy natures whose destiny to sin did not involve the doom of death.”

All this, however — although not intended as such by the writer — is, perhaps, the best apology for the poet that could be given. It only goes to prove that the man was largely affected with insanity. The conviction of inevitable soul perdition to come is one of the strongest symptoms of insanity. Did not the same terrible shadow hang for years over the intellect of our own Cowper, whose sweet, pure life, as compared with that of Poe's, was as ermine is to scarlet? Yet the same dread terror of future damnation haunted his good, innocent soul that made the bad, wild, profligate life of the American poet even still more miserable and despairing.

We have given the gloomy view of Poe's portrait, as painted by that class of critics whose habit it is, as a rule, when discussing the follies of others, to travel from Dan to Beersheba, and find all barren. But Mr. N. P. Willis, himself an American, and an admired poet, has had the courage to say a few words in defence of his universally abused fellow-countryman and brother bard. He says: —

“Some four or five years since, when editing a daily paper in this city, Mr. Poe was employed by us for several months as critic and sub-editor. This was our first personal acquaintance with him. He resided with his wife and mother at Fordham, a few miles out of town; but was at his desk in the office from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press. With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led, by common report, to expect a very capricious attention. to his duties, and occasionally a scene of [column 2:] violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intellectual face as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential courtesy; and to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage coloured too highly with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously assented — far more yielding than most men, we thought, in points so excusably sensitive.” The most charitable justification possible, we think, of the excesses and irregularities of this man of genius, is given in the sub- sequent words of Mr. Willis; and it approaches, undoubtedly, as near the real explanation as any that has yet been given: —

“Residing, as he did, in the country, we never met Mr. Poe in hours of leisure; but he frequently called on us afterwards at our place of business, and we met him often in the street-invariably the same sad-mannered, winning, and refined gentleman, such as we had always known him. It was by rumour only, up to the day of his death, that we knew of any other development of manner or character. We heard from all who knew him well — what should be stated in all mention of his lamentable irregularities — that with a single glass of wine his whole nature was roused, the demon became uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane. Possessing his reasoning faculties in excited activity at such times, and seeking his acquaintances with his wonted look and memory, he easily seemed personating only another phase of his natural character, and was accused accordingly of insulting arrogance and bad-heartedness.” Mr. Willis then quotes two letters, which we wish we had space for here, “in double proof,” as he says, “of his (Poe's) earnest disposition to do the best for himself, and of the trustful and grateful nature which has been denied him.”

The poetical fame of this the most original of American bards depends not so much on the quantity of his work as the exquisite merit of what little he has done. Poe was compelled by necessity to write such copy as would gain the readiest market in the publishing world. Hence, the best part of his [page 410:] efforts was thrown into magazine work and tale writing; and here his chief power lay. In magnificence of fancy, in deep power of analysis, and in the art of piling up horrors in that weird, enchanting style which saved. them from being repulsive, Poe has never had his equal. His “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” has been translated into almost all the languages in Europe. It is, perhaps, the most remarkable example in literature — unless we except Defoe's “Robinson Crusoe” — of a fiction which has all the semblance of plain, unvarnished truth. Take, again, for vivid power of description, “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” The story of his own com- position which pleased Poe the most was his ‘Ligeia;” but it is too metaphysical, and too much a vehicle for his own favourite and audacious speculations, to make it comfortable reading.

The “Gold Bug,” and the “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” are too well known to general readers to require much special comment; but they are the most popular, and at the same time the most pleasing, examples of Poe's peculiar powers in the art of weaving plots. We have referred to that special power of analysis which was the most striking characteristic of his intellect. Poe knew his power in this way, and asserted it to a fault. One of the most remarkable of his essays is upon the “Philosophy of Composition.” In this he attempts to show that any man may build up a perfect poem or novel by purely artificial means, without any of the sudden impulses of natural inspiration; and, in illustration of his theory, he tells us or, at least, tries to persuade us — that his own masterpiece, the “Raven,” was put together in this manner. He says: —

“Most writers — poets in especial — prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought, at the true purposes seized only at the last moment, at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view, at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable, at the cautious selections and rejections, at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene shifting, the stepladders and demon traps, the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, [column 2:] which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary man.”