Text: John Sartain, “Graham's Magazine, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Cottrell Clarke,” The Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1899, pp. 196-217

[page 196:]

CHAPTER XIII

Graham's Magazine — Edgar Allan Poe — Thomas Cottrell Clarke

IN January, 1841, George R. Graham published the first number of his monthly called Graham's Magazine. It was based on the subscription lists of three other periodicals, namely, The Casket, published by Atkinson, another published in New York with Dr. Robert M. Bird of Philadelphia as editor, the title of which was, I think, The Atlantic Magazine, and third and most important, The Gentleman's Magazine, published by William E. Burton, the actor. The united lists of all three amounted to only five thousand, five hundred.

The reason Burton parted with The Gentleman's Magazine to Graham was that he was about to engage in a new enterprise, which would tax all his energies to the utmost. It was no less a project than the establishment of a new theatre on Chestnut Street, where the Continental Hotel now stands. Burton had been for a long time a member of the stock company of the old Chestnut Street Theatre, next to the corner of Sixth Street, of which May wood was lessee and manager. Burton often complained to me in doleful tones of repeated studied annoyances and even humiliating [page 197:] insults which he was made to suffer. At last, exasperated beyond endurance, he determined to establish a rival theatre of his own, and accomplished his purpose by remodelling Cook's Olympic Circus. I remember this ground before it was built upon, while still a vacant lot utilized as a marble-yard. Cook, the equestrian from London, erected his circus upon it, but a fire in Baltimore, which destroyed his superb stud of beautifully trained horses, ruined him. This created Burton's opportunity. With $25,000 advanced by the owner of the ground, he turned it into a handsome theatre, and here Charlotte Cushman, Wheatley, and Richings made their first appearances before a Philadelphia audience, quitting for the purpose the Park Theatre, New York, where I had often seen them as members of the stock company.

Up to the time of Graham's new publication it had been an unusual thing for the monthlies to have new plates engraved expressly for them; they were content, when they had pictorial embellishments at all, to use old worn-out plates picked up at a trifling cost. For Dr. Bird, however, I had engraved a view of the entrance to the Mammoth Cave, from a drawing by himself, and for Burton three plates, The April Fool, The Musical Bore, and The Pets, the latter after Edwin Landseer.

Graham decided to have a new plate engraved expressly for every number, and engaged me to execute [page 198:] the work. The boldness of the enterprise astonished me, yet I did not give expression to my surprise, or thought I did not, but after two or three months of extraordinary success Graham told me that he could see that I had wondered, and he explained what led him to adopt such a measure. He said that before deciding on the details of his plans he consulted all he could reach whose experience with periodical literature might assist his judgment. Principal among these was Israel Post, of New York. Post's advice was, “Go to John Sartain and get a new plate for every number, and I guarantee success. I sold three thousand extra of that number of Burton's that had his plate of The Pets in it.”

The success of the magazine was immense and a surprise to Graham himself. Beginning with five thousand five hundred, as I know because I furnished the impressions of the plates I engraved, the edition by the end of the second year had reached forty thousand, and I had to engrave four steel plates of each subject: to keep pace in the printing of them with the increased demand. But the very excess of success led to disaster. Graham was solicited on all sides to join in enterprises, and he embarked in some of these. He bought Fry's National Gazette and also, in association with Robert M. Bird and Morton McMichael, paid forty-five thousand dollars for Chandler's United States Gazette, incorporating the two journals into one, The North American. [page 199:]

The result of all these and other non-literary speculations, such as copper-mining, etc., was failure, for liberty is not the only thing that demands incessant vigilance. Graham's attention thus divided left the magazine to run itself, if it could, without commander or helmsman. Finally in 1848, all had to be sold to satisfy creditors, — magazine, newspaper, shares and everything. It was not until after Graham himself had disappeared from the field that Sartain's Magazine began, and it never would have begun but for Graham's misfortune. After a time, however, he resumed his former position with the magazine, but could not revive its prosperity.

It was in connection with Graham's enterprise that I made the acquaintance of Edgar Allan Poe. Burton's time had been so much occupied by his duties at the theatre that he associated Poe with himself as assistant editor, and when the transfer was made to Graham, the editor naturally went over with it. Besides the ordinary duties incident to the position, Poe contributed articles to its pages. Of the stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, named in his original manuscript The Murders in the Rue Trianon-Bas, appeared in the April number of the first year. In May of the second year came the Descent into the Maelstrom. Then, after one or two poetical trifles, the numbers for November and December contained his chapters on Autography, in which he presented fac-similes of no less [page 200:] than one hundred and nine signatures of popular and distinguished authors, added to which were nineteen others in what he termed an appendix, that appeared in the January number of the year following, 1843. Poe continued with Graham in the capacity of editor for about eighteen months, on a salary of $800 a year. He then had to withdraw on account of a quarrel with Graham's old friend and associate, Charles J. Peterson, from whom Graham could not part, but Poe continued to write for him occasionally as before.

The article that interested me most of all among his contributions to Graham's was that entitled “The Philosophy of Composition,” published in the number for April, 1846. In it 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 ideas 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 step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock's feathers, the red paint and black patches, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, [page 201:] constitute the properties of the literary histrio.” He then goes on to describe even to the utmost detail the methods by which he proceeded to “build the lofty rhyme” of his poem entitled The Raven.

I have always taken a deep interest in tracing the gradual progressive development of noteworthy pictures by eminent artists from the first crude general plan of the composition to the completed work and the intervening studies from nature for the several parts. These latter, however, were almost always vastly superior to the finished pictures painted from them. Witness, for example, Andrea del Sarto's drawing from nature of Joseph, for his famous fresco known as the Madonna del Sacco, in the cloister of the Annunciata at Florence. How poor and tame is this figure in comparison with the preparatory study! The same is equally true of Michael Angelo's studies for the vault of the Sistine Chapel. His figure of Adam as drawn from nature in red chalk is superb, but lost in its copy on the ceiling. Then again, Raffaelle's exquisite drawing from nature for the group of women in the foreground of the Heliodorus in the Vatican, how much of the charm is gone in its transfer to the fresco! It is also true of his studies from life for his School of Athens, in which his uncle Bramante, the Pope's architect, figures frequently. The great gain is between the first jotting down of the composition as a whole, which is generally poor, and the matured work, which is noble. [page 202:]

I have an instance of remarkable improvement in progressive development and elaboration of the original thought in Edgar Allan Poe's poem of The Bells, which he wrote for me in 1849. In its original form it was the merest trifle compared with what he made of it afterwards. It was in all eighteen lines divided into two stanzas, of which this is the first stanza:

THE BELLS — A SONG.

It is interesting to compare these lines with what he made of this first stanza in the form it afterwards assumed and as we published it in the November number of Sartain's Magazine for 1849.

Let us now compare the first draft of the last stanza with the subsequent improvement.

These lines are but eleven in number, yet in his recast of this closing stanza there are as many as forty-four. In thus prolonging it he was enabled to produce an impression on the mind of that monotonous repetition of a peal of heavy bells, an echo, as it were, of the reality he describes. The following form is that in which he finally let it remain: [page 204:]

About six months after we received this poem in its primitive form Poe sent it greatly enlarged and altered, but not yet in the final state in which we published it; the latest improvement came a month or so later. It appears that the very last poem he ever wrote was the one entitled Annabel Lee. We purchased it from him, but before we were ready to issue it we found that he had also sold it to three other publishers. The last time I saw Mr. Poe was late in that same year, 1849, and then under such peculiar and almost fearful conditions that the experience can never fade [page 206:] from my memory. Early one Monday afternoon he suddenly entered my engraving room, looking pale and haggard, with a wild and frightened expression in his eyes. I did not let him see that I noticed it, and shaking him cordially by the hand invited him to be seated, when he began, “Mr. Sartain, I have come to you for a refuge and protection; will you let me stay with you? It is necessary to my safety that I lie concealed for a time.” I assured him that he was welcome, that in my house he would be perfectly safe, and he could stay as long as he liked, but I asked him what was the matter. He said it would be difficult for me to believe what he had to tell, or that such things were possible in this nineteenth century. I made him as comfortable as I could, and then proceeded with my work, which was pressing. After he had had time to calm down a little, he told me that he had been on his way to New York, but he had overheard some men who sat a few seats back of him plotting how they should kill him and then throw him off from the platform of the car. He said they spoke so low that it would have been impossible for him to hear and understand the meaning of their words, had it not been that his sense of hearing was so wonderfully acute. They could not guess that he heard them, as he sat so quiet and apparently indifferent to what was going on, but when the train arrived at the Bordentown station he gave them the slip and remained [page 207:] concealed until the cars moved on again. He had returned to Philadelphia by the first train back, and hurried to me for refuge.

I told him that it was my belief the whole scare was the creation of his own fancy, for what interest could those people have in taking his life, and at such risk to themselves? He said, “It was for revenge.” “Revenge for what?” said I. He answered, “Well, a woman trouble.”

Now and then some fragmentary conversation passed between us as I engraved, and shortly I began to perceive a singular change in the current of his thoughts. From such fear of assassination his mind gradually veered round to an idea of self-destruction, and his words clearly indicated this tendency. After a long silence he said suddenly, “If this mustache of mine were removed I should not be so readily recognized; will you lend me a razor, that I may shave it off? “ I told him that as I never shaved I had no razor, but if he wanted it removed I could readily do it for him with scissors. Accordingly I took him to the bathroom and performed the operation successfully.

After tea, it being now dark, I saw him preparing to go out; and on my asking him where he was going, he said, “To the Schuylkill.” I told him I would go too, it would be pleasant in the moonlight later, and he offered no objection. He complained that his feet hurt him, being chafed by his shoes, which were worn [page 208:] down on the outer side of the heel. So for ease and comfort he wore my slippers, which he preferred to my shoes as less ill-fitting. When we had reached the corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets we waited for an omnibus some minutes, which were passed in conversation, and among the many things he said was that he wished I would see to it after his death that the portrait Osgood had painted of him should go to his mother (meaning Mrs. Clemm). I promised that as far as I could control it that should be done. After getting the omnibus we rode to its stopping-place, a little short of Fairmount, opposite a tavern on the north side of Callowhill Street, at the bend it makes to the northwest to reach the bridge over the river. At that spot a bright light shone out through the open door of the tavern, but beyond all was pitchy dark. However, forward into the darkness we walked. I kept on his left side, and on approaching the foot of the bridge guided him off to the right by a gentle pressure, until we reached the lofty flight of steep wooden steps which ascended almost to the top of the reservoir. There was a landing with seats, and we sat down to rest. All this time I had contrived to hold him in conversation, except while we were labouring breathless up that long, breakneck flight of stairs.

There he told me his late experiences, or what he believed to be such, and the succession of images that his imagination created he expressed in a calm, deliberate, [page 209:] measured utterance as facls. These were as weird and fantastic as anything to be met with in his published writings. Of course it is altogether beyond me to convey even a faint idea of his wild descriptions. “I was confined in a cell in Moyamensing Prison,” said he, “and through my grated window was visible the battlemented granite tower. On the topmost stone of the parapet, between the embrasures, stood perched against the dark sky a young female brightly radiant, like silver dipped in light, either in herself or in her environment, so that the cross-bar shadows thrown from my window were distinct on the opposite wall. From this position, remote as it was, she addressed to me a series of questions in words not loud but distinct, and I dared not fail to hear and make apt response. Had I failed once either to hear or to make pertinent answer, the consequences to me would have been something fearful; but my sense of hearing is wonderfully acute, so that I passed safely through this ordeal, which was a snare to catch me. But another was in store.

“An attendant asked me if I would like to take a stroll about the place, I might see something interesting, and I agreed. In the course of our rounds on the ramparts we came to a cauldron of boiling spirits. He asked me if I would not like to take a drink. I declined, but had I said yes, what do you suppose would have happened?” I said I could not guess. “Why, I [page 210:] should have been lifted over the brim and dipped into the hot liquid up to the lip, like Tantalus.” “Yes,” said I, “but that, would have killed you.” “Of course it would,” said he, “that's what they wanted; but, you see, again I escaped the snare. So at last, as a means to torture me and wring my heart, they brought out my mother, Mrs. Clemm, to blast my sight by seeing them first saw off her feet at the ankles, then her legs to the knees, her thighs at the hips, and so on.” The horror of the imagined scene threw him into a sort of convulsion. This is but a very faint sample of the talk I listened to up there in the darkness. I had been all along expecting the moon to rise, forgetting how much it retarded every evening, and the clouds hid the light of the stars. It came into my mind that Poe might possibly in a sudden fit of frenzy leap freely forth with me in his arms into the black depth below, so I was watchful and kept on my guard. I asked him how he came to be in Moyamensing Prison. He answered that he had been suspected of trying to pass a fifty-dollar counterfeit note. The truth is, he was there for what takes so many there for a few hours only — the drop too much. I learned later that when his turn came in the motley group before Mayor Gilpin, some one said, “Why, this is Poe, the poet,” and he was dismissed without the customary fine. When he alluded to his mother, which was always with feelings of affectionate devotion, it was not his [page 211:] own natural mother, who died when he was in his infancy, but Mrs. Clemm, his mother-in-law. To both he referred in the following lines:

I suggested at last that as it appeared we were not to have the moon we might as well go down again. He agreed, and we descended the steep stairway slowly and cautiously, holding well to the hand-rails. Being down I kept this time, on our return walk, on his right side, and did not suffer the conversation to flag. On arriving at the omnibus waiting for passengers at the tavern door I pressed gently against him and he raised his foot to the step, but instantly recollecting himself drew back. I urged him in, and being seated [page 212:] beside him said, “You were saying?” The conversation was resumed, I got him safe home, and gave him a bed on a sofa in the dining-room, while I slept alongside him on three chairs, without undressing.

On the second morning he appeared to have become so much like his old self that I trusted him to go out alone. Rest and regular meals had had a good effect, although his mind was not yet entirely free from the nightmare. After an hour or two he returned, and then told me he had come to the conclusion that what I said was true, that the whole thing had been a delusion and a scare created by his own excited imagination. He said his mind began to clear as he lay on the grass, his face buried in it and his nostrils inhaling the sweet fragrance mingled with the odour of the earth. While he lay thus, the words he had heard kept running in his thoughts, but he tried in vain to conned: them with the speaker, and so the light gradually broke in upon his dazed mind and he saw that he had come out of a dream. Being now all right again he was ready to depart for New York. He borrowed what was needful, and I never saw him again. In about a month from this, as near as I can make out, Poe lay dead in a Baltimore hospital. In those few weeks how much had happened, and how hopeful seemed the prospects for his future. He had joined a temperance society, delivered lectures, resumed friendly relations with an early flame of his, Mrs. Sarah E. [page 213:] Shelton, and become engaged to her. Dr. John J. Moran, who attended the poet in his last moments, says that Poe parted from her at her residence in Richmond at four in the afternoon of October 4, 1849, to go north. She states that when he said “good-bye” he paused a moment as if reflecting, and then said to her, “I have a singular feeling, amounting to a presentiment, that this will be our last meeting until we meet to part no more,” and then walked slowly and sadly away. Reaching the Susquehanna, he refused to venture across because of the wildness of the storm-driven water, and he returned to Baltimore. Alighting from the cars he was seen to turn down Pratt Street on the south side, followed by two suspicious looking characters as far as the south-west corner of Pratt and Light Streets. A fair presumption is that they got him into one of the abominable places that lined the wharf, drugged him, and robbed him of everything. After daybreak, on the morning of the sixth, a gentleman found him stretched unconscious upon a broad plank across some barrels on the sidewalk. Recognizing him he obtained a hack and gave the driver a card, with Mr. Moran's address on it and on the lower right-hand corner the name of “Poe.”

At the hospital he was disrobed of the wretched apparel which had been exchanged for his good clothing of the day before, and he was put comfortably to bed. [page 214:]

After consciousness returned the doctor said to him, “Mr. Poe, you are extremely weak; pulse very low; I will give you a glass of toddy.” He answered, “Sir, if I thought its potency would transport me to the Elysian bowers of the undiscovered spirit world, I would not take it.” “Then I will give you an opiate to ensure you sleep and rest.” He replied, “Twin sister-spectre to the doomed and crazed mortals of earth and perdition.” The doctor records he found no tremor of his person, no unsteadiness of his nerves, no fidgetting with his hands, and not the slightest odour of liquor on his breath or person. Poe said after a sip or two of cold water, “Doctor, it's all over.” Dr. Moran confirmed his belief that his end was near, and asked if he had any word or wish for friends. He answered, “Nevermore,” and continued, “He who arched the heavens and upholds the universe has His decrees legibly written upon the frontlet of every human being and upon demons incarnate.” These were his last words, his glassy eyes rolled back, a slight tremor, and the immortal soul of Edgar Allan Poe passed into the spirit world, October 7, 1849, aged thirty-eight. The accepted statement that Poe died in a drunken debauch is attested by Dr. Moran to be a calumny. He died from a chill caused by exposure during the night under a cold October sky, clad only in the old thin bombazine coat and trousers which had been substituted for his own warm clothing. [page 215:]

Poe's face was handsome. Although his forehead when seen in profile showed a receding line from the brow up, viewed from the front it presented a broad and noble expanse, very large at and above the temples. His lips were thin and very delicately modelled. Speaking of Poe recalls to me an amusing scene I witnessed in my office between two of the literary fraternity, Rufus W. Griswold and the well-known author of Ben Bolt. The latter was chatting delightfully with me when in walked Griswold. I knew of course that they must be acquainted, and yet noticing after awhile that they behaved like strangers I apologized for neglecting to introduce them and for assuming that they knew each other. “Oh yes,” said one grimly, “we know one another.” So I saw there was bad blood between them. A cheerless talk ensued for a time, when a name was spoken by chance that had a magical effect. It was Poe, and they fraternized at once, giving it to him right and left, agreeing that he was a most unjust critic and a bad fellow every way. The fact is, Poe made himself enemies all around by the cutting severity of his criticisms. Mr. Thomas Cottrell Clarke told me that he started the Stylus with Poe as its literary conductor, and the project was ruined by this intensity of his in reviewing the writings of others. He abstained equally, as a general rule, from speaking well of his own work, but on one occasion he said to my friend and neighbour, Thomas [page 216:] Buchanan Read, “Anyway, I have written one thing that will live — The Raven.”

Mr. Clarke's daughter, Miss Anne E. C. Clarke, quotes her father as saying that “it took less liquor to make a maniac of Poe than of any one he had ever known, and that Mrs. Clemm in search of Eddie at all hours of the night was as sad as death.” She says, “My first recollection of the Poes is of one of us little children singing the old song of Gaffer Poe to pretty Mrs. Poe. When her husband came home at night and found the little tot in his bed, storm-stayed after a day spent with Mrs. Poe and her flowers, she made the child repeat to him in her baby speech the only verse she knew:

(Spoken) I think I can hear the little children in the village singing,

Mr. Poe's delight was infinite, and he gave her a pretty box, which his wife filled with trinkets, and it is one of her chief treasures to this day.” Mr. Clarke was always engaged as editor upon some [page 217:] daily paper or other, and in those days editing meant something different from what it does now, when the duties are cut up and divided like our grandmothers’ patchwork quilts. Then it was real solid, all-day work, with sometimes half the night added, for one man — the editor.

Miss Clarke says of her father, “Writing into the wee hours, he worked in the basement dining-room of his house at Twelfth and Walnut Streets, where he wrote from preference because more accessible to ‘the boys,’ as he called them, for it could be entered through an area in front. Coming late from their wild evenings down town, they would find this busy worker, who, though he never drank liquor nor used tobacco in any way himself, gladly welcomed them here, where they disturbed his household little with their noise and their smoke. Tapping on the window pane, they would be let in laden like bees with news to be rehashed and delivered to the printer's devil. And often would Poe drop in on his way home, — he then lived near Locust Street on Sixteenth, at that time named Schuylkill Seventh Street, — and Mrs. Clarke would send him coffee to clear his head before going home to pretty Virginia and his patient mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm.”