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EDGAR A. POE AND HIS BIOGRAPHER.
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The admirers of Poe will feel grateful to Mr. William F. Gill for devoting his “Lotos Leaf” to his earnest defence of Poe from some of the statements of the biography by Dr. Griswold. As Mr. Gill remarks, this biography, which has prefaced the authorized edition of Poe's works for twenty-five years, has done not a little to limit the demand for them and to prejudice their readers against the contents. That it has stood so long, if not unquestioned, yet unanswered, is the more strange when it appears how easily its most important charges might have been refuted. Mr. Gill takes up Dr. Griswold's statements, whether made through carelessness or from whatever motive, whether important or unimportant, and discusses them seriatim. In the first place Dr. Griswold states that Poe was born in Baltimore in January of 1811, and 1822 introduces him as a gambler and rake at the University of Virginia, from which he is expelled. According to his own dates, Poe would have exhibited this remarkable precocity at the age of eleven years. “As matter of says Mr. Gill, “Poe did not enter the university 1826, when he was seventeen years of age. He was never, according to reliable evidence, intoxicated while there, nor was he ever expelled.” Against the assertion of Dr. Griswold that, failing to attract attention by his pen, Poe enlisted as private soldier, and afterwards deserted, Mr. Gill opposes the written testimony of Mrs. Clemm, that his friends were endeavoring to procure him a commission; from which he concludes he would scarcely have unnecessarily incurred the penalty and disgrace of desertion. This is the more plausible since Mrs. Clemm states that he was living at her house at this time, and was never for one night absent from home. To Dr. Griswold's statement that the prize by the Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] of Baltimore was given to Poe on account the beauty of his penmanship, the other manuscripts not being even opened, Mr. Gill responds with all extract from the Visitor calling attention to their rare literary merit. The exaggerations of Dr. Griswold concerning Poe's fallen fortunes, his personal appearance, and numerous petty charges showing the animus of Dr. Griswold's biography, Mr. Gill disposes of by the probabilities of the circumstances, which are altogether against Dr. Griswold's statements. The next allusion of importance is in regard to the “dismissal” of Poe from the Gentlemen's Magazine, which Dr. Griswold has graphically described. This is characterized by Mr. Gill, on the authority of written testimony by gentlemen at that time connected with the Magazine, as an “audacious invention.” Dr. Griswold's relation of Poe's retirement from Graham's Magazine, Mr. Gill discusses more at length. Dr. Griswold writes, “The infirmities which induced separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to find another editor.” And also in the same connection, “It is known that the personal ill-will on both sides was such that for some four five years not a line by Poe was purchased for Graham's
It will be remembered that, at the time, Mr. Graham published an indignant denial of Dr. Griswold's assertions, which nevertheless still stand in their original form. Mr. Gill quotes from Mr. Graham's letter, and adds an account of a personal interview with Mr. Graham, who is still living, in which he states —
“Poe never quarrelled with him, never was discharged from Graham's Magazine; and during the ‘four or five years’ emphasized by Dr. Griswold as indicating the personal ill-will between Poe and Mr. Graham, over fifty articles by Poe were accepted Mr. Graham.”
The fact of Mr. Poe's secession from Graham's were as follows:
“Mr. Poe was, from illness or other causes, absent for a short time from his post on magazine. Mr. Graham had meanwhile made a temporary arrangement with Griswold to act as Poe's substitute until return. Poe came back unexpectedly, seeing Griswold in his chair turned on heel without a word and left the office, could he be persuaded to enter it again, although, as stated, he sent frequent contributions thereafter to the pages of the magazine.”
Mr. Gill then gives the account of Dr. Griswold's dismissal from the magazine on account of a secret and scurrilous attack made by him on Mr. Charles J. Peterson, which involves all the disgrace he heaped on Poe.
The alleged breaking of Poe's engagement with Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, as Dr. Griswold has given it to the world, is one of unhappy poet's sins the public has visited most severely upon his memory. After Griswold's account was published, it was denied in a printed letter, with all the facts a the case, by Mr. William J. Pabodie of Providence, but Dr. Griswold's first statement has never been altered, and has been generally accepted. The following extracts from a private letter written by the lady, Mrs. Whitman, in 1873, now printed by Mr. Gill, is an effectual, if long delayed, answer to Dr. Griswold:
“No such scene as that described by Griswold ever transpired in my No one, certainly no woman, who had slightest acquaintance with Edgar Poe could have credited the story for an instant. It was essentially and instinctively a gentleman, utterly incapable, even in moments excitement and delirium, of such an outrage as Dr. Griswold has ascribed to him. No authentic anecdote of coarse indulgence vulgar orgies or bestial riot has ever been recorded of him. During the last years his unhappy life, whenever he yielded to temptation that was drawing him into fathomless abyss as with the resistless of the maelstrom, he always lost himself sublime rhapsodies on the evolution of universe, speaking as from some imaginary platform to vast audiences of rant and attentive listeners. During one of his visits this city, in the autumn of 1848, I once him, utter one of those nights of wild excitement, before reason had fully recovered throne. Yet even then, in those frenzied moments when the doors of the mind's ‘Haunted Palace’ were left all unguarded, his words were the words of a princely intellect, overwrought, and of a heart only too sensitive and too finely strung. I repeat that no acquainted with Edgar Poe could have of Dr. Griswold's scandalous anecdote a moment's credence.
Yours, &s.
S. H. WHITMAN.”
That Dr. Griswold should have edited Poe's works is a cause for astonishment; that he should have written his memoir, as he owns there was no friendship between them, is more incredible. Mr. Gill says —
“It presents simply the fact of a designing and unscrupulous man, prompted by hatred and greed of gain, taking advantage helpless woman, unaccustomed to business, to defraud her of her rights, and gratify the malice and his avarice at her expense.
A miserable pittance having been given Mrs. Clemm in exchange for Poe's private papers, Dr. Griswold draws up a paper Mrs. Clemm to sign, announcing his appointment as Poe's literary executor, not omitting, of course, a touching allusion to himself. be This is duly signed by Mrs. Clemm printed over her signature in the published editions of Poe's works. But if the wording of this curious paper be carefully observed it will be noted that nothing whatever is and in it of any request of Poe that Dr. Griswold the should write a memoir of his life. This was properly assigned to Mr. Willis, of men, familiar with the subject, the most competent to fulfil such a task, and his of and manly tribute to the stricken genius the all that could have been wished, all that with a world called for.
Mrs. Clemm had no idea, at the time signed the paper which she scarcely understood, that Dr. Griswold had any intention a supplementing Mr. Willis's obituary with any memoir by his own pen. It was a piece gratuitous malice — the act of a fiend exalting over a dead and helpless victim.” was
Mr. Gill has made a very strong case against Poe's reverend biographer, which he fortifies with outside matter revealing Dr. Griswold's character.
He does not undertake to defend Poe from his infirmities, but to loosen him from on weight which Dr. Griswold has hung his memory, and to expose the character his biographer. In consideration of the facts his readers will sympathize with the swift, emphatic words in which his evidence to its appointed end.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - NYW] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Edgar A. Poe and His Biographer (Anonymous, 1874)