Text: Wallace Putnam Reed, “The Poe Myth and the Man,” Evening Constitution (Atlanta, GA), vol. I, no. 20, February 9, 1897, p. 4, col. 2

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The revival of public interest in that ill-fated. genius, Edgar Allan Poe, has caused in his favor to be brought to light.

It seems that the Poe who was so much talked about a few years ago was a myth, The bad-tempered, unreliable, reckless bohemlan who spent half his time getting drunk and the other half getting sober, never existed anywhere, except in the imagination of his enemies.

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The poet was unfortunate at first in having unfriendly biographers.

He was proud and impulsive, and his bitter tongue and sharp pen made many enemies in literary circles, among the very people who were able to do him greatest injury. He made all New England mad when he criticised “Henry W. Longfellow and other plagiarists,” and when he ridiculed Boston culture he was more daring than the soldier who rushes upon the bayonets of an advancing host.

No writer of his time had his unerring Judgment in literary matters, and he could not resist the temptation to unmask the interlopers who had no rightful place in the world of letters.

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In the course of time Boston, New England and legions of angry writers in other sections whose vanity had been wounded by Poe's merciless criticisms, joined in a crusade against him.

They determined to write him down, and their persecution continued long after his death.

All the exaggerated gossip and miserable tittle tattle of servants and utterly unknown people was collected and circulated by persons who pretended to be respectable members of the literary profession.

If Poe was abandoned by a benefactor or friend, these gossips intimated that some disgraceful secret was at the bottom of it all.

If he falled to pay a debt, they tried to make it appear that he had swindled his creditor.

If he took too much wine, it was said that he was on a protracted debauch.

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As a matter of fact, Poe's quarrels with his friends were largely due to ‘his pride, sensitiveness and nervous excitability.

He would have been more than human if he had not made debts. A hard worker, who never had a salary of more than $40 a month. could not avoid debt at times, especially when he had to support a sick wife and a mother-in-law.

Of course, he drank too much at times. He followed the fashions of his day, but he far less than the majority of the journalists, literary men and society people of his generation.

If there had been any truth in the stories of his intemperance he would never have turned out the amount of fine work that came from his pen during his short life. The greater portion of his time, too, was occupied in editing, revising and reviewing the work of other people.

Certainly, he was not drinking when he was doing this work, and concentrating upon it all the power of his taste, judgment and reason.

But his literary enemies wanted their revenge, and they banded themselves together in the effort to send the greatest genius of his time down to posterity with a clouded name.

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The Poe revival in time to vindicate the victim of all this persecution. Old men and women who had known the poet brushed up their memories and recalled his good points.

It was recollected that his mother-in-law had always loved him and defended hima very strong point in his favor.

Men grew bold enough to come forward and deny the stories of his excesses. People who met him frequently in Richmond and York testifled that he was always the same pale, quiet, carefully dressed gentleman from brow to boot heel.”

It was said by those who knew him well that he did not like liquor, and rarely ever tasted it. When he did it affected him. and made him sick, and for that reason he did not drink except occasionally, after long periods of total abstinence.

That he was devoted to his wife and her mother, his acquaintances all admitted.

He was considerate and kind to women and children, and was disagreeable only when he was dealing with literary frauds. silly egotists and people who were themselves disagreeable.

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Little by little these facts have come out during the Poe revival. They have been Investigated and have stood the test. The old myth will have to go. The shabby, reckless, drunken Poe disappears before: the search-light of truth, and in his place we see the care-worn, hard-worked, brokenhearted slave of the desk, the most innocent and worst slandered man of his age.

The people who started out to write him down are now in their graves, and most of. them are forgotten.

Not one of them has left behind him such a name and such fame as their enemy has won for himself.

Let the old myth go. Give us the real Poe, and let the belated plaudits and laurels now offered him atone for the wrong and neglect of the past!

WALLACE PUTNAM REED.