∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
HOOD'S SONG OF THE SHIRT AND POE'S RAVEN.
——
The analogy between those two poems, to which their respective authors owe more of their fame and immortality than to all the rest of their works, worthy as many of those works are of their undying genius, is wholly in the vicissitudes of unpublished wanderings and early rebuils. Not long since London Society rehearsed an anecdote which Mark Lemon loved to tell of the period when Tom Hood became contributor to Punch. Looking over his letters one morning, Mark opened an envelope inclosing a poem which the writer said had been rejected by three cotemporaries. If not thought available for Punch, he begged the editor, whom he know but slightly, to consign it to the waste basket, as the author was “sick at the sight of if.” The poem was signed “Tom Hood,” and the lines were entitled “The Song of the Shirt.” The song was altogether different from anything that had ever appeared in Punch, and was considered so much out of keeping with the spirit of the periodical that at the customary weekly meeting of the editorial staff its publication was opposed by several members. Mark Lemon was so firmly impressed, not only with the beauty of the work, but with its suitability for the paper, that he stood by his decision and published it. Even the question of illustrating the poem was entertained and discussed, though the lines were published without illustration, except the humorous border of grotesque figures which made up “Punch's Procession” on December 16, 1848. “The Song of the Shirt” trebled the sale of the paper, and created profound sensation throughout Great Britain.
The probability is that after finding so popular and magnanimous a publisher “The Song of the Shirt” was well paid fo in something which even to poets is sometimes of more consequence than appreciation and renown. Not so with “The Raven,” however, if we have been correctly informed; and our information came from one who ought to know, as a party to the purchase, and the man who made the meager offer — because it was the best he was permitted to do — which the poet accepted. And this man, it may be said, en passant, in later years, as editor of “The United States Review,” which succeeded “The Democratic Review,” was one of the first and firmest defenders of “Leaves of Grass,” even before its now famous and afflicted author, Walt Whitman, received from Emerson, on perusing it, that magnificent and prophetic approval, “I greet you at the commencement of a great career.” As has recently and often been stated, “The Raven” first appeared to the public in “The U. S. Whig Review” of this city, in 1845. But it had previously appeared to numerous editors, here and hereabout, only to be rejected, without wholly destroying its author's appreciation of its merits. And finally, in a pecuniary emergency, neither strange to him nor wholly peculiar to men of his mould, he brought it to the office of “The Whig Review,” where, fortunately, it fell into the hands of the late David W. Holley, the editor before alluded to, and who, though then and always a democrat always Democrat, was a nest relative of the Whig editor, and being a gentleman of education and literary tastes, and safe and fearless in judgment, was a trusted attache of the Whig Review establishment. To him Poe related the perplexities of poet and poem. And finally, with characteristic indifference to the adverse opinion of others, after having equal chance to form an opinion for himself, Holley expressed his decided admiration of the poem. And after listening to the poet's need, and the story of his endeavors to dispose of his weird pet, expressing his regret and even chagrin that he could do no better, he said to Poe, in a most unpoetically business way, the better to conceal his real sensibility in the matter. “If five dollars is of any use to you, I will give you that for your poem, and take the chances of its publication;” for his own judgment might be overruled. And so “The Raven” became the property of our lamented friend of “The Whig Review,” and of the world, and the impoverished and pinched poet completed with a bound his ascent of Parnassus and fame.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
The text of this article is taken from a clipping in the Ingram-Poe collection, where it is cataloged as item 634, although with an incomplete date. The precise date is specified based on a reprint in the Oakland Tribune of December 7, 1875, which introduces the reprint and cites the date. Another reprint, in the Daily Encinal (of Alameda, CA) for December 11, 1875, includes an acknowledgment of “The South (Baltimore, MD),” confirming that it was the Baltimore newspaper. No full run of this newspaper is known, and the Maryland State Archives has only a few scattered issues of 1861 and 1862.
In any case, the value of this information can hardly be very great as “The Raven” was first published in the American Whig Review, not the Democratic Review. Ingram repeats this account in his 1885 book on The Raven with Literary and Historical Commentary (p. 24), and the comments by Ingram from this source have been widely repeated in subsequent notes about “The Raven.” The Wilmington Chronicle (Wilmington, NC) for May 16, 1849 states that David W. Holley was an editor of the Democratic Review, more properly the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, which was published in Washington, DC and is not the same as, or even associated with, the American Review, later the American Whig Review. Mabbott dismisses these claims as “pure fiction” (Poems, 1969, p. 360n19).
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - SNY, 1876] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Hood's Song of the Shirt and Poe's Raven (Anonymous, 1876)