Text: John H. Ingram, “Edgar Poe and His Biographers,” Academy (London, UK), vol. XXIV, whole no. 597, October 13, 1883, pp. 248-249

[page 248:]

London: Oct, 4, 1883.

Under the above heading Temple Bar Magazine for August printed a severe attack upon my integrity. Absence from all sources of reference, and correspondence with the publishers, have delayed my repudiation of the charges begs against me. The anonymous author of the libel is sheltered under the imprint of Messrs. Bentley and Son, who have refused my appeal for suitable amends — viz., a reply in the magazine which contained the attack. To seek legal redress would be to incur costly and still more deferred reparation. I appeal, therefore, directly to that public with which I have had a literary connexion of more than twenty years.

In the first place, it may be permitted me to demand what possible interest, beyond the promptings of a desire for justice, I could have in striving to vindicate the memory of a long deceased foreign author, whose friends and foes were alike unknown tome? I sought merely [page 249:] to place before the world a more faithful portrait of the dead man than that extant, and my efforts have been successful. Indeed, the raison d’être of the present article is that I have succeeded in propounding my work “as a triumphant and lasting vindication of a maligned and suffering man,” added to ‘the extraordinary complacency, to employ no harsher term, with which Mr. Ingram's reviewers have suffered his claim to pass unchallenged, or even acknowledged and guaranteed it.” It is true that my reviewers have accepted my vindication of Poe, and that the reading public of two continents have endorsed their verdict. I accept their decision not so much as a compliment to my powers as a concession to the demands of justice. Who is this anonymous author, then, that he or she should strive to reverse this judgment? And what evidence has he or she to proffer against me after these many years of silence?

It will not be necessary for me to deal singly with the whole contents of the attack. I will not waste time over the unmanly sneers, not only at myself, but at a lady recently deceased, nor will I do more than allude to the absurd blunders of my assailant. I content myself here with exposing the falseness of some of the more direct accusations.

1. My Life of Poe is asserted to have been uncalled for, as “Mr. Gill, an American, has practically anticipated Mr. Ingram on all essential points.” Anyone acquainted with literary matters knows that the reverse is the case; that Mr. Gill's book is so gross a plagiarism of my labours that it cannot be published in this country. In courtesy to Messrs. Chatto and Windus I consented to let them sell the few copies bearing their London imprint, as this was the only dividend they were able to obtain from the bankrupt estate of Mr. Gill.

2. To prejudice readers against me, I am accused of falling with violence on all my predecessors, friendly or hostile, who have written about Poe. And this by a person pretending to have read my life of the poet! I demand proofs of this baseless assertion.

3. It is asserted that I cannot understand, and have not read, Baudelaire upon Poe. This charge of having written about what I am ignorant of I can refer to my French critics; even so recently as last year M. Hennequin (whose capacity to judge can hardly be questioned) noticed most favourably my remarks on Baudelaire's Essays, and cited them in his Vie d’ Edgar Poe.

4. The writer alleges that Griswold's charges against Poe are not worse than mine against Griswold, and that mine are based upon mere assertion. The most careless reader of my work will see that I have produced unimpeachable affidavits and other documentary evidence of continual falsehood and direct fabrications on Griswold's part. This first slanderer of Poe bore too unsavoury a character for public examination, but those interested in the subject may be referred to his own account (in the British Museum) why he repudiated his second wife. Thackeray, having proved him a liar, told him so publicly, and would not touch his proffered hand; while Dickens convicted him of fraud, and made his employers pay for it.

5. By taking short extracts from different letters, and making them appear to refer to Mrs. Whitman, the writer, besides misrepresenting my words, tries to blacken Poe's character.

6. Nowhere have I depicted Poe, as alleged, as “a suffering saint.” So impartially have I described his failings, as well as his virtues, that some of my reviewers called me to account for not having thrown a veil over the errors thus candidly exposed. I have striven to tell the truth about this “unhappy creature,” this “miserable idol of Mr. Ingram's worship,” [column 2:] of whom my critic does not scruple to invent and retail new calumnies without adducing a single iota of evidence in their support.

7. By garbled and grossly misrepresented sentences, it is attempted to be proved that I affirmed in 1880 what I denied in 1874 (vide p. 535, para. 2). I am never ashamed to change my opinions for others more matured, but there is not a shadow of evidence in the instance referred to as a sample of my mutability; no distortion of my words can prove the charge.

8. P. 536, ll. 18-30, clearly accuses me of “malicious suppression” with respect to disputes between Poe and Burton. Griswold inserted a letter the authenticity of which I had every reason to doubt, and which I did not, therefore, republish; but, as it in no was referred to the same period of time as the letter I printed (asa mere cursory inspection will show anyone), the suppressio veri was not mine, as is insinuated.

9. As an instance of misquoting from my work, let me refer to p. 535, para. 2, wherein it is stated that “Mr. Ingram gravely prints an astounding tissue of absurdities,” according to which Poe, when visiting France, “had various successful love affairs,” one of which resulted in a duel. Will it be believed that the only basis for this assertion is Poe's story that “he was drawn into a quarrel about a lady,” and, in a fight which ensued, was wounded! “Only that, and nothing more!” Not a word to intimate one, much less “various, love affairs.”

JOHN H. INGRAM.