[page 180:]

IN the late spring of 1846, Poe removed to the picturesque locality of Fordham in Westchester County, New York. The excitement incident to a residence in the metropolis had proved injurious to the rapidly failing strength of his stricken wife, and it was thought that the pure, free air of the country [page 181:] home would prove beneficial to the delicate Virginia.

Some charming descriptions of the poet’s home at Fordham have been given by his contemporaries.

One of these, writing of his first visit there, says of the place and its inmates, —

“We found him and his wife and his wife’s mother, who was his aunt, living in a little cottage at the top of a hill.

“There was an acre or two of greensward fenced in about the house, as smooth as velvet and as clean as the best kept carpet. There were some grand old cherry trees in the yard, that threw a massive shade around them.

“Poe had somehow caught a full-grown bobolink. He had put him in a cage, which he had hung on a nail driven into the trunk of a cherry tree. The poor bird was as unfit to live in a cage as his captor was to live in the world. He was as restless as his jailer, and sprang continually, in a fierce, frightened way, from one side of the cage to the other. I pitied him; but Poe was bent on training him. There he stood, with his arms crossed, before the tormented bird, his [page 182:] sublime trust In attaining the impossible, apparent in his whole self. So handsome, so impassive in his wonderful intellectual beauty so proud and reserved, and jet so confidentially communicative, so entirely a gentleman, upon all occasions that I ever saw him, so tasteful, so good a talker, was Poe, that he impressed himself and his wishes, almost without words, upon those with whom he spoke.

“On this occasion I was introduced to the young wife of the poet, and to the mother, then more than sixty years of age. She was a tall, dignified old lady, with a most lady-like manner, and her black dress, old and much worn, looked really elegant on her. She seemed hale and strong, and appeared to be a sort of universal Providence for her strange children.

“Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes and a pearly whiteness of complexion which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look.

[[image of Maria Clemm here]]

“One felt that she was almost a dissolved spirit; and when she coughed, it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away. [page 183:]

“The cottage had an air of taste and gentility that must have been lent to it by the presence of its inmates.

“So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, and yet so charming a dwelling I never saw. The sitting-room was laid with check matting; four chairs, a light-stand and a hanging book-shelf completed its furniture.

“There were pretty presentation copies of books on the little shelves, and the Brownings had a post of honor on the stand. With quiet exultation Poe drew from his side-pocket a letter that he had recently received from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He read it to us. It was very flattering. . . .

“He was at this time greatly depressed. Their extreme poverty, the sickness of his wife, and his own inability to write, sufficiently accounted for this. We strolled away into the woods, and had a very cheerful time, till some one proposed a game at leaping; I think it must have been Poe, as he was expert in the exercise. Two or three gentlemen agreed to leap with him, and though one of them was tall, and had been a hunter in times past, Poe still distanced them all. But, [[sic]] [page 184:] in contrast to this specimen of the poet’s rugged manliness, is the statement of a near friend of the poet, who writes that Poe was so effeminately sensitive as to be seriously disturbed by the rustle of a silk dress, and would plead with his lady friends to wear stuff that would hang in graceful drapery and make no noise.

Of a later visit, the author from whom we have previously quoted writes: “The autumn came, and Mrs. Poe sank rapidly in consumption, and I saw her in her bed-chamber. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption.

“She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband’s great coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer’s only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet.

“Mrs. Clemm was passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful to see.

“As soon as I was made aware of these painful [page 185:] fill facts, I came to New York and enlisted the sympathies and services of a lady whose heart and hand were ever open to the poor and the miserable.

“The lady headed a subscription, and carried them sixty dollars the next week. From the day this kind lady* first saw the suffering family of the poet she watched over them as a mother.

“She saw them often, and ministered to the comfort of the dying and the living. Poe,” this writer adds, in concluding his impressions and reminiscences, “has been called a bad man. He was his own enemy, it is true, but he was a gentleman and a scholar. If the scribblers who have snapped like curs at his remains had seen him, as his friends saw him, in his dire necessity and his great temptation, they would have been worse than they deem him, to have written as they have concerning a man of whom they really knew next to nothing.”

Griswold, with ferocious cruelty, states that “his habits of frequent intoxication, and his inattention to the means of support, had reduced him [page 186:] to much more than common destitution;” when he must have known, or could have readily ascertained from Mrs. Clemm, that his health had been broken by his incessant watching with his sick wife, and he had been unable to get opportunity to make new literary engagements.

The writer from whose reminiscences we have quoted, took the well-meant liberty of making Poe’s necessities public without, of course, the poet’s knowledge. This mistaken kindness called forth many sympathetic words, however, which showed, Griswold to the contrary, that Poe was not without true friends.

The following paragraph announcing Poe’s distress appeared originally in “The New York Express:” —

“We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe and his wife are both dangerously ill with the consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavy upon their temporal affairs. We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the necessaries of life. This is indeed a hard lot, and we hope that the friends and admirers of Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitterest hour of need.” [page 187:]

Mr. Willis, anticipating Mr. Edwin Forrest’s plan of a home for disabled members of the dramatic profession, wrote an article favoring the establishment of a home or hospital where educated persons of reduced circumstances might be received and cared for. In it, he says, apropos of Poe’s calamities:

“The feeling we have long entertained on this subject has been freshened by a recent paragraph in “The Express,” announcing that Mr. Edgar A. Poe and his wife were both dangerously ill, and suffering for want of the common necessaries of life. Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There was no intermediate stopping-place — no respectful shelter where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, unadvertised, till, with returning health, he could resume his labors and his unmortified sense of independence. He must either apply to individual friends — (a resource to which death is sometimes [page 188:] almost preferable) — or suffer down to the level where Charity receives claimants, but where Rags and Humiliation are the only recognized Ushers to her presence. Is this right? Should there not be, in all highly civilized communities, an Institution designed expressly for educated and refined objects of charity — a hospital, a retreat, a home of seclusion and comfort, the sufficient claims to which would be such susceptibilities as are violated by the above-mentioned appeal in a daily newspaper?”

From a letter to Willis, which we quote, the effect produced upon the proud, sensitive nature of the poet by the wholesale publication of his distress will be evident:

This letter, Griswold charges, was written for effect. Poe, he declares, had not been ill a great while, nor dangerously ill at all; that there was no literary or personal abuse of him in the journals, and that his friends in turn had been applied [page 190:] to for money until their patience was nearly exhausted. It is needless to say that these statements are, like others by the writer, parts of the patchwork of falsehood with which the narrative facts of his memoir of the poet are covered. That malicious slanders of Poe were published, the fact of his recovery of heavy damages from “The Mirror” at a subsequent time, sufficiently proves; and that he was ill, we have Willis own statement, which no one would presume to gainsay, as proof.

Within a month after the writing of the letter to Willis, Poe’s child-wife died. Although not now a child, in appearance she was actually girlish, and a portrait which we have seen, taken after death, while robed for the grave, depicts her face as one of singular sweetness and purity. Although her disease was a lingering one, the face is not wasted nor marked by any lines of suffering. It seems the face of a child sweetly sleeping; and, after looking upon it, one does not wonder at the devoted affection which its living presence inspired.

No other picture of Virginia is known to be in existence; and it is to be hoped that at some future [page 191:] day the owner of the picture, a sister of the deceased, will waive her present scruples to having the portrait copied, for there is nothing ghastly or deathlike about it. Its atmosphere is that of peace, not of grim death.

Deprived of the companionship and sympathy of his child-wife, the poet suffered what was to him the exquisite agony of utter loneliness.

Night after night he would arise from his sleepless pillow, and, dressing himself, wander to the grave of his lost one, and throwing himself down upon the cold ground, weep bitterly for hours at a time.

The. same haunting dread which we have ventured to ascribe to him at the time of his writing “The Raven,” possessed him now, and to such a degree that he found it impossible to sleep without the presence of some friend by his bedside when he sought slumber. Mrs. Clemm, his ever-devoted friend and comforter, more frequently fulfilled the office of watcher. The poet, after retiring, would summon her, and while she stroked his broad brow he would indulge his wild flights of fancy to the Aidenn of his dreams. He never spoke nor moved in these moments, [page 192:] unless the hand was withdrawn from his forehead; then he would say, with childish naïveté “No, no, not yet!’ ‘ — while he lay with half-closed eyes.

The mother, or friend, would stay by him until he was fairly asleep, then gently leave him. He rarely awoke from troubled sleep when his slumbers were thus preluded as he desired; but if, through accident or necessity, he was obliged to seek sleep with no sweet soothings, save the weird conjurings of his own strange fancies, he was invariably distraught and wretchedly uncomfortable.

He continued to reside at Fordham, and the memory of his cherished mate was sacredly preserved in his devoted care of the quaint and pretty little villa with its surroundings of fruit trees and flowerbeds, and its family of home pets, which to him were, from their associations with his Virginia, as dear as if they had been his children.

Poe had many visitors during his isolated residence at this charming place. An English writer who visited Fordham in the early autumn of 1847, thus described it to Mrs. Whitman: — [page 193:]

“It was at the time bordered by a flower garden, whose clumps of rare dahlias and brilliant beds of fall flowers showed, in the careful culture bestowed upon them, the fine floral taste of the inmates.”

An American writer who visted [[visited]] the cottage during the summer of the same year, described it as “half-buried in fruit trees, and as having a thick grove of pines in its immediate neighborhood. Round an old cherry tree, near the door, was a broad bank of greenest turf. The neighboring beds of mignonette and heliotrope, and the pleasant shade above, made this a favorite seat.” “Rising at four o‘clock in the morning,” writes Mrs. Whitman, “for a walk to the magnificent Aqueduct bridge over Harlem River, our informant found the poet, with his mother, standing on the turf beneath the cherry tree, eagerly watching the movements of two beautiful birds that seemed contemplating a settlement in its branches. He had some rare tropical birds in cages, which he cherished and petted with assiduous care. Our English friend described him us giving to his birds and his flowers a delighted attention that seemed quite inconsistent with the [page 194:] gloomy and grotesque character of his writings. A favorite cat, too, enjoyed his friendly patronage, and often when he was engaged in composition, it seated itself on his shoulder, purring in complacent approval of the work proceeding under its supervision.

“During Mr. Poe’s residence at Fordham, a walk to High Bridge was one of his favorite, and” habitual recreations. The water of the aqueduct is conveyed across the river on a range of lofty granite arches which rise to the height of a hundred and forty-five feet above high-water level. On the top a turfed and grassy road, used only by foot passengers, and flanked on either side by a low parapet of granite, makes one of the finest promenades imaginable. The winding river and the high rocky shores at the western extremity of the bridge are seen to great advantage from this lofty avenue. In the last melancholy years of his life — ‘the lonesome latter years’ — Poe was accustomed to walk there at all times of the day and night, often pacing the then solitary pathway for hours without meeting a human being. A little to the east of the cottage rises a ledge of rocky ground, partly covered with pines and [page 195:] cedars, commanding a fine view of the surrounding country and of the picturesque college of St. John’s, which had, at that time, in its neighborhood an avenue of venerable old trees. This rocky ledge was also one of the poet’s favorite resorts. Here, through long summer days and through solitary star-lit nights, he loved to sit, dreaming his gorgeous waking dreams, or pondering the deep problems of ‘The Universe,’ that grand ‘prose poem’ to which he devoted the last and maturest energies of his wonderful intellect.”

The proximity of the railroad, and the great increase of population in the village, have since wrought great changes, and the place would be scarcely recognizable from this description now.

It was during the period of solitariness at Fordham that Poe wrote the mystic “Ulalume;” and, taking into consideration the distraught condition of the poet at this time, it is not singular that, when subjected to Mrs. Whitman’s clear-cut analysis, it should be found to be “the most original and weirdly suggestive of all his poems.” “It resembles at first sight,” says this writer, “some of Turner’s landscapes, being apparently ‘without form and void, and having darkness on the [page 196:] face of it.’ It is, nevertheless, in its basis, although not in the precise correspondence of time, simply historical.”

Such was the poet’s lonely midnight walk; such, amid the desolate memories and sceneries of the hour, was the new-born hope enkindled within his heart at sight of the morning star —

coming up as the beautiful harbinger of love and happiness yet awaiting him in the untried future; and such the sudden transition of feeling, the boding dread, that supervened on discovering that which at first had been unnoted, that it shone, as if in mockery or in warning, directly over the sepulchre of the lost “Ulalume.”

A writer in “The London Critic” says, quoting the opening lines of “Ulalume,” —

“These to many will appear only words; but what wondrous words! What a spell they wield! What a weird unity is in them!The instant they are uttered, a misty picture, with a tarn, dark as a murderer’s eye, below, and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering above, exponents of [page 197:] a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, is hung up in the chambers of your soul forever.”

Of the psychal atmosphere of Poe when saturated with the supematurally imaginative condition, under the spell of which “Ulalume,” “The Raven “and “Eureka “were inspired, the author of “Poe and his Critics” writes, “Nothing so solitary, nothing so hopeless, nothing so desolate, as his spirit in its darker moods, has been instanced in the literary history of the nineteenth century.”

The poet’s extraordinary conceptions of the future were first revealed in the form of a lecture suggestively entitled, “The Universe,” delivered before the Society Library of New York city. This was the first of a series of lectures from the proceeds of which Poe expected to realize his long-cherished idea of a monthly magazine of his own, as the following letter to Willis will show: —

The subject was sufficiently ponderous to forbid a large attendance, and the sanguine enthusiast was obliged to possess his soul with patience, until opportunity offered for realizing upon his effort from the publication of the completed work, which was published not long after by Mr. G. P. Putnam. The preliminary business negotiation incident to its publication has been graphically described by Mr. Putnam. It is worth recalling in this place.

“I was in his office in Broadway,” he states, “when a gentleman entered, and with a somewhat [page 199:] what nervous and excited manner claimed attention on a subject which he said was of the highest importance. Seated at my desk, and looking at me a full minute with his ‘glittering eye,’ he at length said, ‘I am Mr. Poe.’ I was ‘all ear,’ of course, and sincerely interested. It was the author of ‘The Raven,’ and of ‘The Gold Bug!’ ‘I hardly know,’ said the poet, after a pause, ‘how to begin what I have to say. It is a matter of profound importance.’ After another pause, the poet seeming to be in a tremor of excitement, he at length went on to say that the publication he had to propose was of momentous interest. Newton’s discovery of gravitation was a mere incident compared with the discoveries revealed in this book. It would at once command such universal and intense interest that the publisher might give up all other enterprises, and make this one book the business of his lifetime. An edition of fifty thousand copies might be sufficient to begin with; but it would be a small beginning. No other scientific event in the history of the world approached in importance the original developments of this book. All this and more, not in irony or in jest, but in intense [page 200:] earnest — for he held me with his eye like the Ancient Mariner. I was really impressed, but not overcome. Promising a decision on Monday (it was late Saturday p.m.), the poet had to rest so long in uncertainty upon the extent of the edition — partly reconciled, by a small loan, meanwhile. We did venture, not upon fifty thousand but five hundred.”

Although the poet’s works are filled, perhaps unconsciously, with a deep sense of the power and majesty of Deity, his theory, as expressed in “Eureka,” which he regarded as the crowning work of his life, of the universal diffusion of Deity in and through all things, has been regarded as identical with the Brahminical faith as expressed in the “Bagvat Gita.” But the closer criticism of Mrs. Whitman reveals that in the vast reaches of his thought he arrived at a form of unbelief that assumes that the central, creative soul is alternately, not diffused only, but merged and lost in the universe, and the universe in it.

“No thinking man lives,” he says, “who, at some luminous point of his life, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding or believing that anything exists [page 201:] greater than his own soul. The intense, over-whelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the thought, together with the omniprevalent aspirations at perfection, are but the spiritual, coincident with the material, struggle towards the original unity. The material and spiritual God now exists solely in the diffused matter and spirit of the universe; and the regathering of the diffused matter and spirit will be but the reconstitution of the purely spiritual and individual God.”

The following ingenious and characteristic note was found in a copy of the original edition of “Eureka,” purchased at a sale of Dr. Griswold’s library. The note, inscribed on the half-blank page at end of the volume, is in the handwriting of the author:

“NOTE. — The pain of the consideration that we shall lose our individual identity ceases at once when we further reflect that the process as above described is neither more nor less than that of the absorption by each individual intelligence of all other intelligences (that is, of the universe into its own. That God may be all in all, each must become God.”

The publication of “Eureka” naturally aroused [page 202:] controversy, at a time when sectarian dogmatism and Puritanical narrowness were less tolerant of heretical theories than at the present. A flippant critique of “Eureka” in “The Literary World” drew forth from Poe the following characteristic letter, addressed to the editor, Mr. C. T. Hoffman, that indicated that his many privations had in no way tempered the severity of his powers of criticism when once they were thoroughly aroused: —

In July, 1848, Poe visited Lowell, Massachusetts, and there delivered his lecture on Poetry. Another visit to this city, in the spring of 1849, was eventful in that, during the time he remained there, at the house of a dear friend, he composed and finished his greatest descriptive poem, “The Bells,” a study of which he had previously made and sent to “Sartain’s Magazine.”

Commenting on the wonderful contrast presented between the study and the finished masterpiece, the editor of “Sartain’s” gives the following, including a copy of “The Bells,” as originally composed: — [page 206:]

“The singular poem of Mr. Poe’s, called ‘The Bells’ which we published in our last number has been very extensively copied. There is a curious piece of literary history connected with this poem, which we may as well give now as at any other time. It illustrates the gradual development of an idea in the mind of a man of original genius. This poem came into our possession about a year since. It then consisted of eighteen lines! They were as follows: —

“About six months after this, we received the poem enlarged and altered nearly to its present size and form; and about three months since, the author sent another alteration and enlargement, in which condition the poem was left at the time of his death.”

The original MSS. [[MS.]] of “The Bells,” in its enlarged form, from which the draft sent to “Sartain’s” was made, is in our possession at this time. The interlinings and revisions are peculiarly interesting as showing the author’s extraordinary care in fine points of versification.

In the twelfth line of the first stanza of the original draft, the word “bells” was repeated five times, instead of four, as Poe printed it, and but twice in the next line. In changing and obviously improving the effect, he has drawn his pen through the fifth repetition, and added another, underlined to the two of the next line.

The same change is made in the corresponding lines in the next stanza.

In the sixth line of the third stanza, the word “much” is placed before “too,” with the usual mark indicating the transposition which he made in printing it, and as originally written the word [page 208:] “anger,” in the fifth line from the last in this stanza, was written “clamor,” while anger” was placed in the last line. By the transposition of these, he gained the euphonious alliterative effect in the last line which would otherwise have been wanting.

In the sixth line of the fourth stanza, the word meaning “was first used in lieu of the more impressive “menace,” to which it gave place. The eighth line of this stanza was first written, “From out their ghostly throats;” and the eleventh line was changed twice, reading first, Who live up in the steeple,” then “They that sleep “was substituted for “who live,” and finally “dwell” was printed instead of “sleep.”

After the eighteenth line, a line was added that was elided entirely in the poem as printed. It read, —

The ideality of the poem is immeasurably improved by the elision of this repulsive thought. In making the change, omitting this line, he simply substituted,“They are ghouls,” in the next line, in pencil. [page 209:]

A fac simile of a portion of this fourth stanza, which we give, showing some of the important alterations, is, perhaps, the most interesting specimen of the poet’s hand that has been printed.

Some informal but quite suggestive recollections of the poet have been given us by a lady now living, at that time a school-girl in her teens. According to this lady’s statement, — and she is certainly disinterested, — the poet does not seem to have been the moral wreck that some of his biographers have sought to make him appear.

“I have in my mind’s eye a figure somewhat below medium height, perhaps, but so perfectly proportioned, and crowned with such a noble head, so regally carried, that to my girlish apprehension he gave the impression of commanding stature. Those clear, sad eyes seemed to look from an eminence rather than from the ordinary level of humanity, while his conversational tone was so low and deep that one could easily fancy it borne to the ear from some distant height.

“I saw him first in Lowell, and there heard him give a lecture on Poetry, illustrated by readings. His manner of rendering some of the selections [page 210:] constitutes my only remembrance of the evening which so fascinated me. Everything was rendered with pure intonation and perfect enunciation, marked attention being paid to the rhythm. He almost sang the more musical versifications. I recall more perfectly than anything else the undulations of his smooth baritone voice as he recited the opening lines of Byron’s ‘Bride of Abydos,’ —

measuring the dactylic movement perfectly as if he were scanning it. The effect was very pleasing.

“He insisted strongly upon an even, metrical flow in versification, and said that hard, unequally stepping poetry had better be done into prose. I think he made no selections of a humorous character, either in his public or parlor readings. Indeed, anything of that kind seems entirely incompatible with his personality. He smiled but seldom, and never laughed, or said anything to excite mirth in others. His manner was quiet and grave. John Brown of Edinboro’ might have characterized it as “lonely.” In thinking [page 211:] of Mr. Poe in later years I have often applied to him the line of Wordsworth’s Sonnet, —

“I did not hear the conversation at Mrs. Richmond’s after the lecture, when a few persons came in to meet him; but I remember that my brother spoke with enthusiasm of the elegance of Mr. Poe’s demeanor and the grace of his conversation. In alluding to it he always says, ‘I have never seen it equalled.’ A lady in the company differed from Mr. Poe, and expressed her opinions very strongly. His deference in listening was perfect, and his replies were models of respectful politeness. Of his great satirical power his pen was generally the medium. If he used the polished weapon in conversation, it was so delicately and skilfully handled that only a quick eye would detect the gleam. Obtuseness was always perfectly safe in his presence.

“A few months later than this, Mr. Poe came out to our home in Westford. My recollections of that visit are fragmentary, but vivid.

“During the day he strolled off by himself ‘to look at the hills,’ he said. I remember standing [page 212:] in the low porch with my sister as we saw him returning; and as soon as he stepped from the dusty street on to the greensward which sloped from our door, he removed his hat and came to us with uncovered head, his eyes seeming larger and more luminous than ever with the exhilaration of his walk. I recall his patiently wh winding from a nail a piece of twine that had been carelessly twisted and. knotted around it, and then, hanging it back again over the nail in long, straight loops. It was a half-unconscious by-play of that ingenious mind which deciphered cryptographs, solved enigmas of all kinds, and wrote ‘The Gold Bug’ and ‘The Balloon Hoax.’ My memory photographs him again sitting before an open wood fire in the early autumn evening, gazing intently into the glowing coals, holding the hand of a dear friend, while for a long time no one spoke, and the only sound was the ticking of the tall clock in the corner. I wish I knew what he was dreaming about during that rapt silence.

Later in the evening he recited, before a little reading club, several of his own poems, one of Willis’, commencing, ‘The shadows lay along [page 213:] Broadway,’ which, he said, was a special favorite with him; and one or two of Byron’s shorter pieces. I thought everything was perfect; but others said that much more effect might be given to his own unique poems. I suppose his voice and manner expressed the ‘Runic rhyme’ better than the ‘tintinnabulation’ or the ‘turbulency’ of the ‘bells, bells, bells.’ That poem was then fresh from the author’s brain, and we had the privilege of hearing it before it was given to the world.

“The next morning I was to go to school; and before I returned he would be gone. I went to say good-bye to him, when, with that gracious, ample courtesy of his, which included even the rustic school-girl, he said, ‘I will walk with you.’ He accompanied me nearly all the way, taking leave of me at last in such a gentle, kindly manner that the thought of it brings tears now to the eyes that then looked their last upon that finished scholar, and winning, refined gentleman.”

In 1845, Poe had visited Providence on his way to deliver his poem before the Boston Lyceum; and there, while wandering through a retired street, he saw, walking in her garden, [page 214:] Mrs. S. H. Whitman, to whom, in “his lecture on Poetry, he had awarded “a preeminence in refinement of art, enthusiasm, imagination and genius.” The romantic incident of his meeting with Mrs. Whitman has, as is generally known, been exquisitely described by him in the poem “To Helen.”

Dr. Griswold’s citation of the lines in connection with one of his most scandalous anecdotes, has given them a celebrity which even their sumptuous beauty might not otherwise have insured to them.

Early in September, 1848, the poet, having obtained a letter of introduction to Mrs. Whitman, again visited Providence, and made her acquaintance. Notwithstanding some opposition from the relatives of the lady, they were subsequently, engaged.

The lack of all moral sense has been so universally imputed to Poe by his biographers, that the following passages from a letter by the poet, one of a series addressed to his fiancée in which he speaks for himself upon this subject, may be worthy of consideration in this place:

Further on in this letter, the poet draws this picture of his ideal home: —

This letter of eloquent protest and appeal bears [[the]] date October 18, 1848. No engagement at the time subsisted between the parties.

Shortly after its date an incident occurred which has been widely chronicled as “an outrage on the eve of an appointed marriage.”

Mrs. Whitman has permitted us to publish her own clear and authentic statement of the facts which underlie this scandal, thereby placing the story in its true light, and imparting a profound interest to the fragment of a letter to which she alludes, and of which we present [page 219:]

a fac-simile copy. Later, a conditional engagement was made. The poet was not able to adhere to the conditions, and the lady was, in duty and honor to her family, bound to give up the alliance.

But it was not broken under any such circumstances as those fabricated by Dr. Griswold in his narration of the affair in his memoir. As this misstatement of Griswold is probably the most malicious of all his published mendacities, we have taken special pains to gather the evidence of its falsity; evidence that Griswold deliberately suppressed, although most of it was published previous to his issue, of his memior [[memoir]] of Poe in a permanent form. The correspondence which we quote, principally comprises letters from Wm. J. Pabodie, Esq., a prominent lawyer of Providence, very intimately acquainted both with Poe arid with Mrs. Whitman, at the time of their engagement.

To the editors of the “New York Tribune,” Mr. Pabodie writes, after the misstatements of Griswold had been published and repeatedly copied by various perodicals [[periodicals]]:

In answer to this, we find Dr. Griswold, in the rˆle of a bully, impudently attempting to put [page 222:] down Mr. Pabodie’s dignified statement vi et armis. He writes to Mr. Pabodie a private letter, as follows: —

To this insolent and impotent letter, which was [page 223:] tesselated with scandalous and irrelevant stories respecting Mr. Poe’s relations with some of his esteemed and valued friends, Mr. Pabodie replied by calmly reiterating his published statement in “The New York Tribune,” and by adducing further proof of Griswold’s audacious fabrications. The tone of this letter is in striking contrast to that of Griswold’s virulent and threatening note. Its forbearing mildness, indeed, renders it open to criticism on this ground.

It will be seen by this correspondence that the attempt of Dr. Griswold to browbeat Mr. Pabodie was courteously but firmly and unanswerably met. Dr. Griswold never paid the slightest attention to this letter, contenting himself with leaving on record the outrageous scandal that has since obtained an almost unprecedented circulation in the numerous memoirs of Poe, based upon Dr. Griswold’s malicious invention, that have [page 227:] been published. The introduction of the story of the banns would seem to come under the head of what lawyers call “an accessory after the fact.” Dr. Griswold had probably heard that the banns were written, if not published, and took advantage of this information to adroitly garnish his story with them. To set this question at rest forever, we have obtained permission to quote the following passages of a letter received from Mrs. Whitman in August, 1873:

Apropos of Mr. Griswold’s professed friendship for Poe, which he endeavors to demonstrate in copies of a correspondence which I cannot refrain from thinking was extensively “doctored “by the doctor to suit his purpose, we are able to present, perhaps not inappropriately in this place, an extract from an autograph letter of Dr. Griswold, written to Mrs. Whitman in 1849.

The object of this was evidently to cool Mrs. Whitman’s friendship for Mrs. Clemm, thus preventing their further intimacy. This was desirable to Dr. Griswold for evident reasons.

This brief note affords a tolerably good specimen of the utter duplicity of the man. In his printed memoir of Poe, he quotes a correspondence indicating professed friendship; in private, he unequivocally owns that no friendship ever existed between Poe and himself.

He writes that Mrs. Clemm is a friend to no one, and stigmatizes her character; and in the same breath speaks of her warm friendship for him.

Had Griswold lived in Othello’s time, no one could have disputed with him the position of mine ancient, “honest Iago.” [page 230:]

While living at Fordham, at this time, Poe is said to have written a book entitled “Phases of American Literature.”

Mr. M. A. Daly has stated that he saw the complete book; but as nothing is known as to the fate of the manuscript, it is to be inferred that Dr. Griswold, who, of course, had charge of all of Poe’s literary papers, found it desirable, to escape further scarifying, to destroy it.

In the summer of 1849, the poet quitted Fordham, and returned to Richmond, partly for the purpose of delivering his lectures, and pardy to accept an engagement on The Southern Literary Messenger,” to which the whirligig of time thus brought him back, to end the work he had begun twelve years before. For “The Messenger,” at this time, he wrote his sharp paragraphic papers, “Marginalia,” a few poems and several reviews, among which were reviews of Mrs. Osgood and Mrs. Lewis (Stella). With the exception of a brief visit to Philadelphia, he remained in and about Richmond for several months, making his headquarters at the office of “The Messenger.”

The editor of “The Messenger”at that time. [page 231:] the late J. P. [[R.]] Thompson, has related not a few anecdotes of his acquaintance with Poe during his latter days

One of these we recall in connection with one of his truest and most beautiful poems.

Poe had completed his engagement with “The Messenger,” and had called to take leave of Mr Thompson. He was about to take a trip North for Mrs. Clemm, to bring her South. He was needy, and had asked Mr. Thompson for a loan of five dollars to help out his travelling expenses.

As he was about to go, he turned to Mr. Thompson, saying, “By the way, you have been very kind to me, — here is a little trifle that may be worth something to you;” and he handed Mr. Thompson a small roll of paper, upon which was written the exquisite lines of “Annabel Lee.”

During this same season, Poe had apparently had better luck than had been his fortune in former times, in obtaining material guarantees for starting “The Stylus,” and as late as August in this year, had formed definite plans with Mr. E. H. N. Patterson, for issuing the magazine in July of the following year. [page 232:]

The following letter from Mr. Patterson indicates that definite plans had been formed. It is interesting as being the last allusion anywhere to be found of this fated enterprise of the sanguine but unfortunate poet:

One of the saddest pictures of Poe’s later days, when the dark mantle of a blighting sorrow was enshrouding him, is afforded in an account, which is gathered from an old-time associate of the poet, of his last visit to Philadelphia, which took place at this time. The picture is none the less sad in that some of the poet’s happiest hours had been passed in his cosy little home in that city, years before, with his charming and devoted child-wife, Virginia.

During this visit, which was made only a [page 234:] short time previous to his death in Baltimore, Poe was an inmate of the hospitable mansion of the artist and publisher, Mr. J. Sartain, widely known as the proprietor of “Sartain’s Magazine,” whose kindness the poet had frequently shared. Fortunate, indeed, would it. have been for Poe had he met with this staunch friend on first reaching the city at this time. Had he fallen into his protecting hands earlier, instead of meeting with reckless associates, ready as in old times to tempt him to the indulgence inevitably fatal to him, how different might have been his fate I But it was ordained otherwise. When he finally reached the residence of his kind friend, Poe was in a highly excited condition, almost distracted indeed. His mind seemed bewildered and oppressed with the dread of some fearful conspiracy against his life; nor could the arguments or entreaties of his friend convince him that some deadly foe was not, at that very moment, in pursuit of him. He begged for a razor for the purpose of removing the mustache from his lip, in order, as he suggested, that he might disguise his appearance, and thus baffle his pursuers. But, unwilling to place such an instrument [page 235:] in his hands, he was prevailed upon to allow his host to effect the desired change upon which he imagined his safety depended. The condition of Poe’s mind was such, that Mr. Sartain, after persuading him to lie down, remained watching with him through the night with anxious solicitude, unwilling to lose sight of the unfortunate sufferer for a moment. The following night, Poe insisted upon going out. He turned his steps towards the River Schuylkill, accompanied, however, by his devoted friend, whose apprehension was strengthened by the vehemence with which, without cessation, he poured forth, in the rich, musical tones for which he was distinguished, the fervid imageries of his brilliant but over-excited imagination. The all-absorbing theme which still retained possession of his mind, was the fearful conspiracy that threatened his destruction. Vainly his friend endeavored to re-assure and persuade him. He rushed on with unwearied steps, threading different streets, his companion striving to lead him homeward, but still in vain.

Towards midnight, they reached Fairmount, and ascended the steps leading to the summit, [page 236:] Poe all the while giving free scope to the conversational powers for which he was always remarkable, insisting upon the imminence of his peril, and pleading with touching eloquence for protection.

In the darkness of the night, the solemn stillness only broken by the even faBl of the water below, in peaceful contrast with the wild disorder of the unhappy poet’s brain, he seemed a personification of the subject of his own Raven,” —

He did not recover from this intense excitement until, subsequently escaping from the house, he wandered out into the neighborhood of the city, and, throwing himself down in the open air in a pleasant field, his shattered nerves found a comfortless but sorely needed repose.

He awoke refreshed; but, like Cassio, “remembered a mass of things, but nothing distinctly.”

All that he could recall to mind were the entreaties and persuasions of some “guardian angel,” [page 237:] who had sought to dissuade him from a frightful purpose. He recalled the kind remonstrances, but nothing more, — not even the identity of the friend to whose kind offices he had been indebted. The next day, his friend parted with him, and, as fate ordained, forever.

While in Richmond, Poe had renewed his acquaintance with Mrs. Shelton, to whom he had paid attentions in his youth, and before he left “The Messenger,” they had become engaged.

When he left Richmond, it was with the intention of going North to bring Mrs. Clemm from Lowell, to attend his marriage with Mrs. Shelton.

At Baltimore, he had the misfortune to meet a friend at the depot who persuaded him to drink. He accepted, with the usual result — actual mental derangement, to a degree that at Havre de Grace, the conductor of the train, finding him in a jstate of delirium, and knowing that he had friends and relatives in Baltimore, brought him back to that city. He arrived at night. It was the eve of a municipal election, and as he was still partially deranged, wandering through the streets, he was seized by the ruffianly agents of one of the political clubs, and locked up for the night for use at the polls in the morning. [page 238:]

The next day he ‘was taken out, still in a state of delirum, drugged, and made to repeat votes at eleven different wards.

The following day he was found in the back room of one of the political headquarters, and removed to the Washington University Hospital, situated on Broadway, north of Baltimore street.

What wonder that an organization as sensitive as his, should have succumbed to the terrible exposure and humiliation which had been his lot at the hands of the brutal wretches among whom he had unwittingly fallen. The exposure, combined with the effects of liquor and drugs, had brought on an inflammation of the brain, and shortly after midnight of the 7th of October, 1849, the unfortunate man breathed his last, surrounded by the few friends and relatives whom it had been possible to notify during the day.

Mr. Neilson Poe, his cousin, his nearest living male relative, was with him in his last moments, and took charge of his papers after his death.

J. J. Moran, M.D., attended the poet at the hospital. During the conversation that passed between the physician and his patient, Dr. Moran asked, wishing to ascertain whether he would be [page 239:] inclined to take liquor, “Will you take some wine?” “He opened wide his large eyes,” writes Dr. Moran, “and fixed them so steadily Upon me, and with such anguish in them, that I looked from him to the wall beyond the bed, while he said, ’Sir, if its potency would transport me to the Elysian bowers of the undiscovered spirit world, I would not taste it, — I would not taste it. Of its horrors who can tell?’ ” His last coherent words, as recalled by Dr. Moran, were, “It’s all over; write ‘Eddie is no more.’ ”* He had previously directed that letters be written to Mrs. Shelton, at Norfolk, Virginia, and to Mrs. Clemm, at Lowell, Mass., acquainting them with his illness.

He was buried on the 8th of October, in the burial ground of the Westminster Church, near the comer of Fayette and Greene streets, Baltimore.

For months previous to his untimely deaths Poe had been carefully abstemious, up to the last week, during which his misfortunes in Philadelphia and Baltimore occurred; and the sudden and fearful change, from the most careful and tender [page 240:] nursing, to the most reckless exposure to the damp and cold of an out-of-doors bed, produced immediate effects, planting the insidious seeds that flowered into deadly bloom, with the aid of his later unfortunate exposure when in the hands of the Baltimore roughs.

We are prone to accept the most obvious explanation of an event as the true explanation or cause of that event. The lesson of experience teaches us that the most obvious analyses are, as a rule, the most deceptive. It is commonly believed, for instance, that Edgar Poe died from the effects of dissipation, which, gradually from long continuance, undermined his constitution. Wc are convinced that his death is not to be assigned to any such positive and debasing cause. For many years of his lifetime, spite of all accounts to the contrary, he lived happy and comfortable, in a charming home, with a companion that realized his delicate and refined ideal. The shadow of the destroying angel’s hand that first cast its blight upon this companion, was the one great, unlooked-for sorrow that he could not, would not, accept unrepiningly.

From the moment of his wife’s death, he waged an unequal battle with a relentless fate. Well [page 241:] knowing his need — the balance and support afforded by the interchange of spiritual sympathy with a congenial mind — he was deprived even of the possible gratification of this want by the peculiar construction of his mental organism.

The Upas of his morbid imagination, no longer controlled by the healthful restraints of the pure, simplicity of the atmosphere that his child-wife had thrown around him, twined like a poisonous blight about him, enervating his nobler energies, and, spite of his reason, blasting the healthier aspirations of his genius.

Poe may be regarded as a man who lived and died never entirely understood, — one who, sensitive to a degree altogether incomprehensible to practical minds, yet was so unfortunate as to live among the practical-minded only, and at a time when temperament, as such, was essentially omitted in society’s estimate of a man. It was Poe’s misfortune that his temperament was totally at variance with the spirit of the age in which he lived.

In a certain sphere of thought, his ideas were altogether in advance of those of the people with whom he was associated. The world at large was never responsive to him in any significant degree. [page 242:] It could admire or despise him. It could not sympathize with him, or appreciate him

The nineteenth century, generous as it has been in the production of geniuses, has been none too prolific in these rare creations. Many of them, alas, now live only in memory and in their works.

It behooves us then to preserve their memories free from baleful calumny. The veil of calumny has heavily clouded the memory of Edgar Allan Poe.

May we be permitted to hope that, from the facts and impressions which our researches, which claim not to be adequate or complete, have enabled us to give, some rays of light may find their way through the repelling gloom that has, in the past, shut out from view much of the fairer side of the poet’s life.

THE END.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 185:]

*  Mrs. Estelle Lewis.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 224:]

*  In another letter Mrs. H. writes, referring to this conversation, indignant at the use which Dr. Griswold had made of these innocent words, more than a year after she had reported them, “These were Mr. Poe’s words, and these were all.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 239:]

*  “Eddie” was the name Mrs. Clemm called him by.