∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
C. — The Effects of the Publication of the Sketches
Most of the “Literati” papers apparently were written in January and February of 1846 — the period when Poe's relationship Mrs. Osgood and his statement about Mrs. Ellet's letters were topics of lively gossip among the literary coteries of the city. The sketches contain numerous references to publications and events of late 1845 and early 1846. In July, 1846, Poe wrote to Thomas Holley Chivers that he was ill and had not been able to write anything for the magazines for more than five [page 31:] months.(1) ln June he had stated that all the “Literati” sketches had “been long since written.”(2) Mrs. Osgood wrote of visiting Poe in his Amity Street home and finding him “just completing” the series.(3) The visit must have been made no later than February, 1846, for on April 26 Poe wrote to Philip Pendleton Cooke that he had been “living in the country for the last two months.”(4)
Word of Poe's plan to publish his opinions of the literati was circulating in the city at least six weeks before the first of the sketches appeared. To those who expected the worst, recalling Poe's ability as a slashing reviewer and the antagonisms recently aroused, a paragraph in the New York Tribune of March 7, 1846, was not reassuring:
The New-York correspondent of a Washington, paper says that Mr. Poe is engaged on a work which will embrace his opinions of the various New-York literati, and thinks that it will create a sensation, and that the uproar which attended Pope's Dunciad was nothing to the stormy confusion of the literary elements which will war and rage, ‘with red lightning winged,’ when that book makes its appearance.
The appearance of the May, 1846, issue of Godey's, containing the first of the “Literati” papers, was heralded by an advertisement in the Tribune which indicates that the publisher had [page 32:] anticipated and was willing to profit from the excitement that the series was to create. It announced that Poe's opinions of New York authors were forthcoming in Godey's and advised that “Something piquant may be expected.”(5) A writer in the “Editor's Book Table” of Godey's introduced the series with a prediction it would “raise some commotion in the literary emporium.”(6) Godey expected the papers to increase the sales of his magazine, he had reason to be pleased. Four days after the appearance of the May number of Godey's in New York, a distributor of periodical announced in the Tribune:
GREAT EXCITEMENT
EDGAR A. POE and the New-York Literati. — The great excitement caused by the publication of No. 1 of the above remarkable papers, exhausted our supply of the May No. of Godey's Lady's Book. We have this morning received a few more, and will be constant receipt of them until the extraordinary demand fully supplied.(7)
In the June number of his magazine, Godey, stating that he had to meet the demand for the May issue in New York and Boston, republished the first installment of the series.(8) Morris's National Press commented upon the “lively ... sensation” Philadelphia Saturday Courier spoke of the “excitement” [page 33:] which the series was creating.(9) In July William Gilmore Simms, then in New York, wrote that the sketches “have caused no little rattling among the dry bones of our Grub street.”(10) Griswold wrote that the papers were much talked about and that three issues of some the numbers of Godey's were needed to supply demand for of the them.(11)
The initial editorial response to the series seems to have been generally favorable. Godey stated in his June issue that the reaction in papers with which he exchanged had been almost unanimously favorable.(12) Even Hiram Fuller's Mirror, which soon afterward adopted an extremely hostile tone toward the papers and their author, reprinted two of the sketches from the May number of Godey's with complimentary remarks.(13) A great deal of apprehension, of course, was felt in New York literary circles concerning the series. Godey remarked in his June number:
We have received several letters from New York, anonymous and from personal friends, requesting us to be careful what we allow Mr. Poe to say of the New York authors .... We reply to one and all, that we have nothing to do but publish Mr. Poe's opinions, not our own. Whether we agree with Mr. Poe or not is [page 34:] another matter. We are not to be intimidated by a threat of the loss of friends, or turned from our purpose by honeyed words. Our course is onward.(14)
As the publication of the sketches progressed there must have been surprise and relief that, in most cases, Poe treated his subjects with respect, and that in dealing with women authors his errors were in the direction of flattery.
More concrete and violent expressions of unfavorable reaction were not long delayed. The prejudiced sketches of Briggs, English, and Clark, with each of whom Poe's previous association bed been unpleasant, appeared in May, July, and September respectively. The savage reprisals of this trio brought down upon Poe a flood of vilification to the discredit of his moral character. They found an ally in Hiram Fuller, against whose Mirror Poe brought suit for libel in July for the publication of English's reply to the “Literati” sketch of him. The first of these attacks on Poe appeared in the Mirror for May 26 (reprinted in the weekly edition, May 30), and, though it has been assigned to English, came from Briggs. The numerous insults of this lengthy article include the observation that:
Mr. Poe is the last person in the country who should undertake the task of writing ‘honest opinions’ of the literati. His infirmities of mind and body, his petty jealousies, his necessities even, which allow him neither time nor serenity for such work, his limited information on local subjects, his unfortunate habits, his quarrels and jealousies, all unfit him for the performance [page 35:] of such a duty, as the specimens already published abundantly prove.
Briggs ridiculed Poe in a parody of the personal descriptions of the “Literati” papers:
To conclude, after the fashion of our Thersitical Magazinist, Mr. Poe is about 39. He may be more or less. If neither more nor less, we should say he was decidedly 39. But of this we are not certain. In height he is about 5 feet 1 or two inches, perhaps 2 inches and a half. His face is pale and rather thin; eyes gray, watery, and always dull; nose rather prominent, pointed and sharp; nostrils wide; hair thin and cropped short; mouth not very well chiselled, nor very sweet, his tongue shows itself unpleasantly when he speaks earnestly, and seems too large for his mouth; teeth indifferent; forehead rather broad, and in the region of ideality decidedly large, but low, and in that part where phrenology places conscientiousness and the group of moral sentiments it is quite flat; chin narrow and pointed, which gives his head, upon the whole, a balloonish appearance, which may account for his supposed light-headedness; he generally carries his head upright like a fugleman on drill, but sometimes it droops considerably. His address is gentlemanly and agreeable at first, but it soon wears off and leaves a different impression after becoming acquainted with him; his walk is quick and jerking, sometimes waving, describing that peculiar figure in geometry denominated by Euclid, we think, but it may be Professor Farrar of Cambridge, Virginia fence, in dress he affects the tailor at times, and at times the cobbler, being in fact excessively nice or excessively something else, his hands are singularly small, resembling birds claws; his person slender; weight about 110 or 115 pounds .... (15) [page 36:]
Perhaps the affair which received widest attention and which did Poe most harm in regard to the public estimate of his character was the series of attacks and rejoinders set off by the “Literati” papers on English. The sketch appeared in Godey's for July, and English replied to it in the Mirror on June 23. Poe's reply to this attack appeared in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times on July 10; to this English responded with a second assault in the Mirror for July 13. English's attacks portray Poe as a drunkard, a forger, as “unprincipled, base and depraved ... silly, vain and ignorant ... an assassin in morals ... a quack in literature.” In these papers also English described in their most unfavorable light a number of unhappy episodes in Poe's life.(16) Poe derived little benefit from his savage reply to English of July 10. Godey refused to publish it in his magazine.(17) [page 37:] Simms, to whom Poe apparently had appealed for aid in the matter, was not sympathetic. He wrote to Poe on July 30, 1846:
It is some years, since I counseled Mr. Godey to obtain the contributions of your pen .... I hear that you reproach him. But how can you expect a Magazine proprietor to encourage contributions which embroil him with all his neighbors. These broils do you no good — vex your temper, destroy your peace of mind, and hurt your reputation.... Change your tactics & begin a new series of papers with your publisher.(18)
Poe's candid friend Eveleth wrote that in his reply Poe had “come down too nearly on a level with English himself .... You laid yourself liable to being laughed at by answering in such a spirit.”(19) In the aftermath of this affair, the libel suit against the Mirror, which came to trial in February, 1847, the defense attempted to justify the publication of English's attack on the ground that “the character of Mr. Poe was such as not to entitle him to the favorable consideration of a Jury,” and the part of English's deposition in which he stated that “the general character of said Poe is that of a notorious liar, a common drunkard, and one utterly lost to all obligations of honor” was quoted by both the Mirror and the Tribune,(20) which [page 38:] had joined the Mirror in siding against Poe.
The pen of the Knickerbocker editor was no less caustic. The appearance of the “Literati” sketch of Clark in September resulted in a long and abusive reply in the Knickerbocker for the following month.
Our thanks are due [wrote Clark] to ‘J. G. H.,’ of Springfield, (Mass.,) for his communication touching the course and the capabilities of the wretched inebriate whose personalities disgrace a certain Milliner's magazine in Philadelphia; but bless your heart, man! you can't expect us to publish it. The jaded hack who runs a broken pace for common hire, upon whom you have wasted powder, might revel in his congenial abuse of this Magazine and its EDITOR from now till next October without disturbing our complacency for a single moment. He is too mean to hate and hardly worth scorn.(21)
The references to Poe in the Mirror during the last half of 1846 and early in 1847 were numerous and offensive; perhaps both Briggs and Fuller had a hand in them. An account of a visit Poe made to the Mirror office in the summer of 1846 describes him as appearing “in a condition of sad, wretched imbecility, bearing in his feeble body the evidences of evil living, and betraying by his talk, such radical obliquity of sense that ... we could not even entertain a feeling of contempt for one who was evidently committing a suicide upon his body, as he had already done upon his character.”(22) A week later the Mirror [page 39:] asserted that Poe's “habit of misrepresentation is so confirmed, and malignity is so much a part of his nature, that he continually goes out of his way to do ill-natured things, when nothing can be gained by it.”(23) Many other examples of scurrility of this sort could be cited from the publications with which Briggs, English, and Clark were connected at the time of the appearance of the “Literati” sketches and afterward.
Poe's apprehension concerning such damaging publicity is shown by two efforts he made to counteract specific attacks. After Briggs's onslaught of May 26 he enclosed a clipping of the attack in a letter to Joseph M. Field, of the St. Louis Reveillé, requesting that Field “say a few words in condemnation of it, and to do away with the false impression of my personal appearance it may convey, in those parts of the country where I am not individually known.”(24) The Tribune for February 19, 1847, had described Poe as one who made “no pretensions to exemplary faultlessness in morals, still less to the scrupulous fulfillment of his pecuniary engagements.” Poe, who still owed editor Greeley the fifty dollars he had borrowed in the fall of 1845, when the Broadway Journal was in financial difficulty, now addressed a letter to Greeley, protesting the “vital injury” done him by those paragraphs to my discredit going the rounds of the country [page 40:] as the opinions of Horace Greeley.”(25)
It would be difficult to estimate the extent to which the unfortunate results of Poe's association with the literati of New York were responsible for his depression of spirit, his increasing use of intoxicants, and his failure, despite a number of hopeful starts, to re-establish himself in the literary world during the brief remainder of his life. It is apparent, moreover, that the conception of Poe as a man of unprincipled conduct and character was formed by his enemies in retaliation for the treatment of them in the “Literati” sketches. In writing the notorious “Memoir,” Griswold merely enlarged upon a characterization that had already been sketched. After Poe's death English, Briggs, and Clark helped further to destroy his personal reputation by repeating and vouching for Griswold's half-truths and untruths and by stating that the most damning evidence against Poe had been mercifully withheld. In 1871 Thomas C Latto, of Brooklyn, wrote to Mrs. Whitman that an article in Poe's vindication which he was planning would be more effective published in England or Scotland. “So long as C. F. Briggs & Thos[.] Dunn English are ‘to the fore,”’ he explained, “any thing I could say here would be overborne by their vituperation, [page 41:] for I understand they are perfectly rabid on the subject of Poe's enormities .... ”(26) The last of these attacks came as late as 1896. Despite the counter efforts of such defenders of Poe as N. P. Willis, George R. Graham, Mrs. Osgood, and Mrs. Whitman, it was the conception of the poet created by his enemies in their reaction to the “Literati” sketches which found widest acceptance until more objective investigations, late in the century, helped to dispel it.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 31:]
1 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 326.
2 Works, XVII, 240.
3 Literati, 1850, p. xxxvii.
4 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 313.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 32:]
5 Tribune, April 18, 1846.
6 Godey's, XXXII, 240 (May, 1846).
7 Tribune, April 25, 1846.
8 Godey's, XXXII, 288 (June, 1846).
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 33:]
9 National Press, July 25, 1846; Saturday Courier, July 25, 1846.
10 Simms's letter to the Southern Patriot, July 15, 1846; reprinted in Oliphant, Odell, and Eaves, op. cit., II, 174n. 288 (June, 1846).
11 Literati, 1850, p. xxii-xxiii.
l2 Godey's, XXXII,
13 Mirror, weekly edition, May 16, 1846.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 34:]
14 Godey's, XXXII, 288 (June, 1846)
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 35, running to the bottom of page 36:]
15 To my knowledge, Poe's assertion that Briggs wrote the article has never before found credence. Allen, op. cit., p. 563, calls it “T. D. English's reply to The Literati paper,” but the “Literati” sketch of English did not appear in Godey's until the July number, which would not have been in circulation before the middle of June at the earliest. Briggs was probably employed by the Mirror at the time the article appeared; other papers from his pen appeared there during 1846, and in 1850, after editing Holden's Dollar Magazine since the beginning of 1848, Briggs was welcomed by Fuller on his “return to his old chair in the Mirror sanctum” (Holden's, VI, 440; July, 1850). Poe assigned the article [page 36:] to Briggs in his letter (to Duyckinck?) of June 16, 1846 (Ostrom, op. cit., II, 321).
Further evidence of Briggs's authorship is provided by a Comparison of this article with his comments on Poe in his acknowledged writings. For instance, compare the description of Poe given above with that of Austin Wicks, under which name Poe was caricatured in Briggs's novel, The Trippings of Tom Pepper, which ran serially in the Mirror: “Mr. Wicks entered the room like an automaton just set a going; he was a small man, with a very pale, small face, which terminated at a narrow point in the place of a chin; the shape of the lower part of his face gave to his head the appearance of a balloon, and as he had but little hair; his forehead had an intellectual appearance, but in that Part of it which phrenologists appropriate for the home of the moral sentiments, it was quite flat .... He was small in person, his eyes were heavy and watery, his hands small and wiry ...” (Mirror, weekly edition, February 27, 1847).
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 36:]
16 English's two replies to Poe and Poe's attack of July 10 are reprinted in Works, XVII, 234-255.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 37:]
17 Poe to Godey, July 16, 1846; Ostrom, op. cit., II, 323-324.
18 Oliphant, Odell, and Eaves, op. cit., II, 176.
19 Thomas O. Mabbott, ed., The Letters from George W. Eveleth to Edgar Allan Poe, New York, 1922, p.15.
20 Mirror, weekly edition, February 27, 1847; Tribune, February 27, 1847; Tribune, February 18, 1847.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 38:]
21 Knickerbocker, XXVIII, 368 (October, 1846). Probably “J. G. H.” of Springfield was Josiah Gilbert Holland, later editor of Scribner's Monthly.
22 Mirror, weekly edition, July 25, 1846.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 39:]
23 Ibid., August 1, 1846.
24 Poe to Joseph M. Field, June 15, 1846; Ostrom, op. cit., II, 319. Field complied with Poe's request; see Anne Bryant, “Poe and Godey's Lady's Book” (unpublished master's thesis, Duke University, 1940), p.72.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 40:]
25 Poe to Greeley, February 21, 1847; Ostrom, op. cit., II, 345. Poe believed that Hiram Fuller had written the article in which the objectionable references occurred. For Poe's debt to Greeley, see Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life, New York, 4868, pp.196-197. Bayard Taylor used Poe's failure to repay Greeley as the basis for a burlesque poem, “The Promissory Note,” in The Echo Club, and Other Literary Diversions, Boston, 1876, pp. 22-24.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 41:]
26 Latto to Mrs. Whitman, May 15, 1871; MS in the Poe-Ingram Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - PNYL, 1954] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe and the New York Literati (Reece)