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2. Charles F. Briggs
Charles Frederick Briggs (1804-1877) was born on Nantucket Island. In his youth he went to sea, making several voyages to Europe and South America. He frequently drew upon his experiences as a seaman in his novels, the first of which, The Adventures [page 243:] of Harry Franco; A Tale of the Great Panic, was published 1839. In the same year he became a regular contributor to Knickerbocker, where his humorous and satirical tales, essays, and poems usually appeared under the nom de plume “Harry Franco.” A volume of tales, Bankrupt Stories, appeared in 1843 and his second novel, Working a Passage; or Life in a Liner, in following year. His third and final novel, The Trippings of Tom Pepper; or the Results of Romancing, appeared serially in the Mirror in 1846-1847, and later in volume form (2 vols., 1847-1850). This work, like some of his earlier productions, contained caricatures of actual persons, whose protests are said to have been responsible for Briggs's decision to write no more fiction.
Briggs's long editorial career began in January, 1845. when he commenced publication of the Broadway Journal. At about this time also began his brief personal association with Poe, who was his co-editor for a few months before a disagreement ended in Brigg's withdrawal from the periodical in June. Both before and after editing Holden's Dollar Magazine from 1848 until 1850, Briggs served as Hiram Fuller's associate on the Mirror.(1) Subsequently he held editorial posts on the New York Times, Putnam's Magazine, the Brooklyn Union, and at the time of his death was associated with the Independent.
Briggs was acquainted with and respected by many of the literary figures of his time, and was on good terms with a number [page 244:] of Poe's enemies, especially with Clark, Fuller, and Griswold, Irving spoke of him as “a writer of excellent parts, and great promise,”(2) and Lowell dedicated to him his A Fable for Critics and made him a present of its copyright. Lowell's sympathetic sketch of his friend in that work is perhaps the best that survives:
There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near,
You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer;
One half of him contradicts t’other; his wont
Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt;
His manner's as hard as his feelings are tender,
And a sortie he’ll make when he means to surrender;
He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest,
When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest;
He has common sense in a way that's uncommon,
Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman,
Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak,
Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke,
Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer,
Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her;
Quite artless himself, is a lover of Art,
Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart .... (3)
Poe's acquaintance with Briggs, in its results one of the most unfortunate associations he formed in New York, was brought about by Lowell, who knew Poe as a correspondent and as a contributor to the short-lived Pioneer. On December 12, 1844, Lowell then at work upon the sketch of the poet which appeared in [page 245:] Graham's in February, wrote to Poe:
My object in writing this is to introduce you to my friend Charles F. Briggs who is about tp start a literary-weekly paper in New York & desires your aid. He was here a month or two since, & I took the liberty of reading to him what I had written about you & today I received a letter from him announcing his plan & asking your address. Not knowing it, & not having time to write him I thought that the shortest way would be to introduce you to him. He will pay & I thought from something you said in your last letter that pay would be useful to you ....
You will like Briggs & he will edit an excellent paper. Opposite, I write a note to him.(4)
Lowell's letter seems to have effected a meeting, for Poe was a contributor to the Broadway Journal from the which appeared on January 4, 1845. Briggs's first impress of his new acquaintance was highly favorable; “I like Poe exceedingly well,” he wrote to Lowell on January 6; “Mr. Griswold has told me shocking bad stories about him, which his whole demeanor contradicts.”(5) Three weeks later he wrote again to Lowell: “I have always strangely misunderstood Poe, from thinking him one of the Graham and Godey species, but I find him as different as possible. I think that will like him well when you come to know him personally.”(6) About this time also Briggs inserted [page 246:] complimentary references to Poe into the columns of the Journal.(7)
Poe had been writing for the Journal at the rate of two dollars a page, but on February 21 he entered into a contract with John Bisco, the publisher, which stipulated that, in compensation for certain services, he was to receive one third of the profits of the periodical.(8) By the terms of the contract Poe seems to have become a full partner in the enterprise, but Briggs considered him as only a subordinate. “Poe is only an assistant to me,” he wrote to Lowell on March 8, “and will in no manner interfere with my own way of doing things.”(9) In the meantime “The Raven” had made a great hit and Briggs had introduced Poe to some of the literati.(10)
While Poe was waging the “little Longfellow War” in answer to “Outis” in the Journal,(11) Briggs maintained a tolerant attitude, although he did not wholly approve of the series. On March 19 he wrote to Lowell that he did not like Poe's “fol-de-rol about plagiarism” but that the “replies which it provokes serve [page 247:] us as advertisements, and help us along.”(12)
These pleasant relations, however, were not to last, and an event of early May probably hastened the complete estrangement between Briggs and his assistant which soon followed. Poe wrote of this matter to Laughton Osborn on August 15, 1845, after Briggs's retirement from the Journal:
Some months ago there appeared in the “Broadway Journal” a very malevolent and flippant attack on “Alnwick Castle,” and this attack (since I had been known to write previous criticisms on poetical works, for the Journal) was universally attributed to me — and even Halleck himself was misled — although in two biographies, and at least half a dozen long critiques — to say nothing of a public lecture — I had uniformly treated him with respect. Nevertheless — for the sake of that “editorial courtesy” which I now violate, and by which I shall never consent to be bound again, I endured the loss of Mr. Halleck's good will, until by mere accident, he discovered that the offensive article had been written by a brother poet, Lowell, at the malicious instigation of my former associate, Mr. Briggs — Mr. Lowell especially requesting of Mr. B. that the critique should not have the name of its author appended (as was usual with us in all cases of communication) but appear editorially — although he well knew that the odium would inevitably fall upon myself.(13)
Poe was correct in attributing the review to Lowell,(14) though there is no evidence that Briggs and Lowell had conspired to [page 248:] place Poe in an unfavorable light with Halleck. The review is severe in its condemnation, however, and was accompanied by no name or initials to indicate that it was not written by one of the Journal's editors. Halleck's mistake in thinking Poe the author is understandable; an eminent Poe scholar, presumably on the basis of the style of the piece, fell into the same error.(15) It seems reasonable to assume that sharp words were exchanged between Briggs and Poe as a result of Lowell's unsigned review.
By late May, at any rate, Briggs had threatened to discharge Poe, and at the end of June a disagreement between Briggs on the one hand and Poe and publisher Bisco on the other ended in voluntary withdrawal from the Journal.(16) The periodical did not appear in the last week of June, but resumed publication on July 5 without Briggs. Poe later intimated that he had [page 249:] brought about Briggs's retirement as part of a plan to gain control of the periodical. After purchasing Bisco's interest in the magazine, he wrote to John P. Kennedy in October: “By a series of manoeuvres almost incomprehensible to myself, I have succeeded in getting rid, one by one, of all my associates in ‘The Broadway Journal’ .... ”(17) However, in view of Briggs's own account of the matter and the absence of other evidence, it would be difficult to convict Poe of machination. Certainly, had they suspected that Poe had acted dishonorably, his enemies would have made much of the matter, but even Briggs himself brought no accusation. Apparently, however, Briggs was not paid for his share in the periodical, and perhaps he felt that he had been treated unjustly,
The extent to which relations between the two had deteriorated since March is shown by Briggs's letters to Lowell in the weeks following the dispute. After a long period of abstinence Poe had begun to drink again, and this habit disgusted Briggs, who had also found additional reasons for disliking his former partner: “I was taken at first with a certain appearance of independence and learning in his criticisms, but they are so verbal, and so purely selfish that I can no longer have any sympathy with him,(18) he wrote on June 29. A few weeks later he wrote that Poe “talks about dactyls and spondees with surprising glibness; and the names of metres being cavaiar to nine men out of ten, he has [page 250:] gained a reputation for erudition at a very cheap rate.”(19) In August Briggs brought a charge to which he frequently returned later — that Poe lacked moral sense:
You have formed a correct estimate of Poe's characterless character. I have never met a person so utterly deficient of high motive. He cannot conceive of anybody's doing anything, except for his own personal advantage; and he says, with perfect sincerity, and entire unconsciousness of the exposition which it makes of his own mind and heart, that he looks upon all reformers as madmen; and it is for this reason that he is so great an egotist .... He has too much prudence to put his opinions into print, — or, rather, he can find nobody impudent [sic] enough to print them, — but he shows himself in his private converse. The Bible, he says, is all rigmarole. As to his Greek, — you might see very well if it were put in your eye.(20)
At the time of the rupture in the affairs of the Journal most of the ill feeling seems to have been on Briggs's side; “The last conversation I had with Poe,” he wrote to .Lowell in October, he used all his power of eloquence in persuading me to join him in the joint editorship of the ‘Stylus.’”(21) Poe would hardly have made such a proposal to a person he regarded as an enemy, another indication that Poe thought he had parted with his former partner on friendly terms is his praise, in the Journal for August 16 (II, 88), of a tale which Briggs had recently published in the Democratic Review. A month later, however, he characterized Briggs as a “vulgar driveller” who lacked ability “to pen a sentence of even decent English.” Perhaps Poe's attack had [page 251:] been provoked by statements Briggs had been making to his discredit: “Until it was absolutely necessary for me to expose some of his practices to save myself from contempt,” wrote Briggs to Lowell in October, “I never breathed a syllable of his ill habits .... ”(23)
The hostility occasioned by these events accounts for the prejudice with which Poe wrote the “Literati” sketch, which appeared in the first installment of the series in May, 1846. Briggs's fiction, Poe stated here, is a dull and vulgar imitation of Smollett's. Of his occasional criticism, “as might be expected, he made a farce.” Briggs, continued Poe, “is grossly uneducated” and has “never composed in his life three consecutive sentences of grammatical English.” There is nothing offensive in Poe's description of Briggs's personal appearance, and the sketch of his personality contains qualified compliments: “He has much warmth of feeling, and is not a person to be disliked, although very apt to irritate and annoy.” But he “pretends to a knowledge of French,” of which language he “is profoundly ignorant.”(24)
But, as regards personal insult, the sketch was no match for Briggs's reply in the Mirror for May 26.(25) “It was a capital thought in Mr. Poe,” wrote Briggs, “to call his opinions of the [page 252:] New York literati honest, to distinguish them from his other judgments, and because nobody but himself would ever be likely to apply such an epithet to them.” Of the sketch of himself, Briggs remarked that it offers proof that Poe “can be guilty of the meanness of making attacks on individuals to gratify personal malice.” On the other hand, he noted, the complimentary sketches “prove that he can be a toady when he has any thing to gain.”(26)
Poe made no reply to Briggs's attack, except to state in his reply to English, that, in penning the personal descriptions of the sketches, he had yielded to delicacy to the extent of deleting references to the “brandy-nose of Mr. Briggs,” who, he “is only one third described when this nose is omitted.”(27)
Shortly after Poe's libel suit against the Mirror was settled in his favor on February 17, 1847, Briggs, whose novel The [page 253:] Trippings of Tom Pepper was appearing serially in that periodical, wrote into his story an episode which ridiculed Poe. This hitherto unnoticed caricature of Poe, who appears as “Austin Wicks,” is unmistakable, and readers who were familiar with his writings and who knew of his intemperance and of the year-old scandal concerning Mrs. Ellet's letters undoubtedly understood it clearly. The episode, which appeared in the weekly edition of the Mirror for February 27, 1847, seems to have been written for the particular purpose of counteracting Poe's recent victory. At the point of the novel where the caricature occurs, Briggs's picaresque hero is living in the house of “old Gil,” whose daughters Lizzy and Pauline entertain at a literary soiree. Briggs, through his hero, introduced the episode in a manner which indicates that the memory of the “Literati” sketch still rankled:
I have been extremely careful so to disguise the distinguishing peculiarities of the characters in my little drama, that I am very sure the originals will never be suspected ... for nothing is more painful to my feelings than to know that I have inflicted pain upon others, and I have always looked upon those authors who write histories of their own contemporaries from mercenary motives, with abhorrence. Such a person I became acquainted with while residing in the family of old Gil, whose character shall form the only episode in my autobiography, and the reader may skip it or not, without danger of being greatly a loser in either case.
Austin Wicks, accompanied by his friends Ferocious and Tibbings, arrives at the gathering and is announced as “the celebrated critic ... author of the ‘Castle of Duntriewell,’ a metaphysical romance, and a pscychological [sic] essay on the sensations of shadows.” Then follows a description of Wicks, which has [page 254:] been given.(28) Pauline is amused at the “monstrously absurd air of superiority with which this little creature carried himself” and vexed at the respect with which her sister received him. “But the truth was,” Briggs's hero explains, “he had praised some of Lizzy's verses, and had talked to her about spondees and dactyls until she thought him a miracle of learning.” Though shallow on most subjects, “he had committed to memory a few pedantic terms, and continued to pass himself off among literary ladies, for a profound critic.” According to the custom of naming American writers after their closest British counterpart, Wicks was —
... the American Jeffrey, a singularly unfortunate name to apply to the poor creature, as he had neither the learning, the wit, the respectability, the honesty, the independence, nor a tithe part of the talents of the great Scotch critic. But Mr. Wicks called Jeffrey a humbug, and sneered at the pretensions of everybody who attempted criticism, although his highest efforts in literature had been contributions to a lady's magazine.
Except for the fact that the guests amuse themselves by “saying the most ill-natured things they could utter about all their acquaintances who were not present,” things go well until refreshments are served, “when Mr. Wicks, having drank a glass full of wine, the little spirit that it contained flew into his weak head, and he began to abuse all present in such profane and scurrilous terms, that all the ladies went into hysterics.” Ferocious [page 255:] and Tibbings at first defend this outburst on the ground that “it is one of the infirmities of genius,” but when Wicks begins to abuse them also, they retaliate with physical violence. The drunken critic is rescued and taken home. At this point Lizzy becomes Identifiable with Elizabeth Eries Ellet, and Briggs introduces a grotesque distortion of the affair of the letters:
Her [Lizzy's] admiration for Mr. Wicks was not in the least diminished by this scandalous occurrence; she regarded it as an eccentricity of genius, and wrote a sonnet about it, which she published in a weekly paper. Mr. Wicks sent her a letter, lamenting his destiny, praising her poetical abilities, and asking for a loan of five dollars. The kind-hearted Lizzy was so shocked at the idea of so great a genius being in want of so trifling a sum, that she made a collection among her friends, for a man of genius in distress, and sent him fifty dollars, accompanied by a note so full of tender compassion for his misfortune, and respect for his genius, that any man possessed of the common feelings” of humanity must have valued it more than money. But Mr. ‘Wicks had no such feelings, and with a baseness that only those can believe possible who have known him, he exhibited Lizzy's note to some of her acquaintances, as an evidence that she had made improper advances to him. The scandal had been very widely circulated, before some candid friend brought it to Lizzy, who, on hearing it, was thrown into an agony of grief and shame, which nearly deprived her of reason. She could not call upon her father to avenge the wrong that had been done her, but one of her married sisters having heard of it, told it to her husband, who sought for the cowardly slanderer, with the intention of chastising him for his villany [sic]. But he had become alarmed for the consequences of his slanders, and had persuaded a good natured physician to give him a certificate to the effect that he was of unsound mind, and not responsible for his actions. Having showed this to Lizzy's brother-in-law, and signed another paper acknowledging that he had slandered her and was sorry for it, he was allowed to escape without a personal chastisement. But shortly after, being employed to write for a fashionable magazine, he took an occasion, in a series of pretended biographical sketches of literary men and women who had been so unfortunate as to become known to him, to hold poor Lizzy up to ridicule by imputing to her actions of which she was never guilty, and by misquoting from her verses. Lizzy had the good sense to laugh at such imbecile spite, and when the poor wretch had brought himself and his family into a starving condition by his irregularities, she had the goodness to contribute her quarterly allowance of purse-money to the gatherings of some benevolent ladies who had exerted themselves in his behalf. [page 256:]
Briggs concluded the episode with further slanders:
The poor creature, Wicks, having tried a great variety of literary employments, and growing too dishonest for anything respectable, at last fell into the congenial occupation of writing authentic accounts of marvellous cures for quack physicians, and having had the imprudence to swallow some of the medicine whose virtues he had been extolling, fell a victim to his own arts, and was buried at the expense of the public.
To point out any but the most glaring discrepancies between this “fictional” account and the facts of Poe's life to which it roughly corresponds would be a tedious and a superfluous task. The variations are consistently to Poe's discredit. So far as is known, Poe's conduct at literary gatherings was beyond reproach. An account of the affair of the letters, as factual as it seems possible to arrive at, has been given.(29) Briggs's version of the origin of the scandal in Poe's borrowing fifty dollars from Mrs. Ellet seems to be entirely fictional; Miss Lynch, who was in a position to know the details of the affair, said she never heard of it while Poe was living.(30) Poe published no “Literati” sketch of Mrs. Ellet, and in none of the sketches is any woman ridiculed as Briggs's account indicates. There is no evidence that Mrs. Ellet participated in the effort to relieve the Poe family at their time of need. [page 257:]
Briggs's caricature apparently drew no response from Poe. But he made an uncomplimentary reference to Briggs when, in 1849, he revised his poem, “A Valentine,” in which the letters of Mrs Osgood's name are concealed. Poe described the letters as —
... naturally lying —
Like the knight Pinto (Mendez Ferdinando) —
Briggs had assumed the name of the Portuguese traveler and teller of incredible in 1846. The tales in a series of letters begun in the Mirror in 1846. The letters purportedly from a European correspondent were shams in the manner of the genuine reports of Willis more than a decade earlier. Poe's reference to the “letters” indicates that he had Briggs in mind; certainly he had sufficient motive for the implication that Briggs could lie “naturally.” In one of the letters “F. M. Pinto” had reported from England a conversation with Richard H. Horne, whose Orion Poe had praised and with whom he had carried on a friendly correspondence. “Horne enquired after Mr. Poe,” wrote Briggs, “and said that he had received from him a review of ‘Orion,’ in some wishy-washy Magazine — the name of which he had forgotten. I asked him what he thought of Poe as a critic? He replied, ‘He is a very good critic for a lady's magazine.’”(31)
Two months after Poe died an unsigned notice of his death appeared in Holden's Dollar Magazine, of which Briggs was then [page 258:] editor. As if in anticipation of the protests which Griswold's “Memoir” were to call forth from the friends of the poet, the writer defended Poe's literary executor in advance:
A biography of Mr. Poe is soon to be published with his collected writings, under the supervision of Rev. Rufus W. Griswold; but it will be a long while, if ever, before the naked character of the sad poet will be exposed to the public gaze. There is a generous disposition on the part of those who knew him intimately to bury his failings, or rather personal characteristics, in the shade of forgetfulness; while nothing is dwelt upon but his literary productions. He was a psychological phenomenon, and more good than harm would result from a clear, unprejudiced analysis of his character. But when will any one be found bold enough to incur the risk of an imputation of evil motives, by making such a revelation as the task demands?
Further observations on Poe's character follow the pattern Briggs had previously drawn:
One of the strange points of his strange nature was to entertain a spirit of revenge toward all who did him a service. His pecuniary difficulties often compelled him to solicit aid, and he rarely, or never, failed to malign those who befriended him. It was probably this strange propensity which caused him to quarrel with his early benefactor, and forfeit the aid which he might have received from that quarter. He was altogether a strange and fearful being, and a true history of his life would be more startling than any of the grotesque romances which he was so fond of inventing.
Poe's poetry was characterized as “mere machine work” and the merits of his criticism were said to be “very slender.(32)
In 1858 an illustrated edition of Poe's poems was published [page 259:] in New York, the “Memoir” of which, though unsigned., can confidently be attributed to Briggs.(33) The account given here of Poe's [page 260:] career is little more than an abridgment of that in Griswold's “Memoir.” Briggs repeated a number of Griswold's falsehoods, charging that Poe was expelled from the University of Virginia because of his profligacy, that he deserted from the army, and that at the time of the breaking off of his engagement with Mrs. Whitman he conducted himself “with such indecent violence that the aid of the police had to be called to expel him.”(34) Apparently upon his own authority Briggs added that Poe's parents were “dissolute in their morals, and members of a profession which almost always begets irregularity of habits” and implied that Poe was born out of wedlock.(35) He offered as the key to the character of Poe the observation that in his works “there is nowhere discoverable ... a consciousness of moral responsibility ... a sense of moral rectitude.”(36) Griswold, he wrote, had “generously suppressed much that he might have given,” and remarked that “a truthful delineation of his [Poe's] career would give a darker hue to his character than it has received from any of his biographers.”(37) Briggs made no use of the few complimentary references to Poe in the Griswold “Memoir,” and added none of his own unless the personal description he offered of his subject may be considered such.(38) [page 261:]
A few months after Briggs's death his final sketch of Poe appeared in the Independent.(39) In some respects it is less unfair and in others more severe than anything he had previously written of his former associate. He described at some length Poe's engaging social qualities and the favorable impression he was capable of creating upon others.(40) And for the first time he acknowledged Poe's literary merits, granting that he “is entitled to rank among the greatest of American writers.” But his opinion of Poe the man had not softened:
He loved no one, though the objects of his hatred were many; and, if Dr. Griswold had not been restrained by a foolish delicacy, he might have given some startling evidences of the utter contempt which the poet entertained for persons who trustingly believed they were passionately beloved by him. He could write the tenderest and most touching letters, which he would bedabble with real tears, as he folded the paper, to women upon whom he had no other designs than an intention of sending his wife or her mother to them to solicit a loan of $50. Some of these women fondly believed in his passionate infatuation for them; but some others were cruelly undeceived before he died.
His description of Poe when intoxicated contains some remarks on the home life of his subject which are not substantiated by other evidence:
Those who had seen him only in his serene moments were amazed and overwhelmed with disgust when he presented himself [page 262:] before them either during the wild excitement of a debauch or in the dreary moments when he was shattered in strength, feeble, and nervously striving to get the better of his conscious degradation. After drinking much less liquor than an ordinary man could have easily carried off without showing any ill effects from it, he was wild in his looks, insolent and aggressive in his language, reckless as to his personal appearance, filthy to an offensive degree in his talk, and in every respect intolerably indecent. In such a condition he must have been a terror to his wife and aunt; and she had on several occasions been compelled to call for help to prevent his committing violence upon the unresisting and helpless creature whom he is represented as loving so tenderly.
Briggs did not fail to include what by now was with him a familiar accusation:
What rendered him so obnoxious to those who knew him intimately were his treachery to his friends, his insincerity, his utter disregard of his moral obligations, and his total lack of loyalty and nobleness of purpose. He aimed at nothing, thought of nothing, and hoped for nothing but literary reputation; and in this respect he gained all that he aspired to, and his friends should be satisfied to know that he accomplished all he labored for, and not endeavor to compel the world to award him a character which he never coveted and held in supreme contempt.
After reading Briggs's attacks one is surprised to find that George Cary Eggleston regarded Briggs as a defender of Poe's character. Eggleston reported that during a long period of close friendship with Briggs he had “never heard him say an unkind word on Poe”; on the contrary, he said, Briggs frequently contradicted “any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's character and life which might be mentioned in his presence.”
It was not [Eggleston continued] that he [Briggs] was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of his character was [page 263:] a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe ‘and the supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on my mind:
“He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He was merely unmoral. He had no perception of the difference between right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate.”(41)
The discrepancy between Briggs's remarks and Eggleston's interpretation of them is obvious.
These assaults came from a man who had been personally associated with Poe for six months and who, for half that period at least, had been on friendly terms with him. Briggs's chief provocation seems to have been the “Literati” sketch, and certainly, in the one-sided exchange of insults that followed its publication, Poe was soundly defeated. It is debatable whether Briggs's continued attacks owed more to the endurance of an old hatred or to a willingness to exploit what has continued to be his principal claim to fame, a brief acquaintance with a man whose writings and career have commanded a wider interest than his own.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 243:]
1 Above, p. 35n.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 244:]
2 Knickerbocker, XXII, 584 (December, 1843).
3 The undocumented data on Briggs rely on Howard Howland's sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography; the Duyckincks’ Cyclopaedia (1880), II, 485; the National Cyclopaedia, IX, 254-255; and Appletons' Cyclopaedia.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 245:]
4 Woodberry, op. cit., II, 107-108. Poe apparently had not acted upon an earlier opportunity to meet Briggs; Lowell had written him on September 27, 1844: “I have kept back the biography a short time in order to send it on by a private hand .... You will find the package at No. 1 Nassau Street, up stairs. It was addressed to the care of C. F. Briggs” (Ibid., II, 100).
5 Ibid., II, 123.
6 Ibid., II, 123-124. Briggs's prophecy concerning the meeting of Poe and Lowell was not fulfilled; see Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, p. 461.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 246:]
7 I, 60-61 (January 25, 1845)
8 Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, p. 751
9 Woodberry, op. cit., II, 125. Poe wrote to Laughton Osborn later in the year that during the first six months of the Journal's existence (i.e., until the end of June, 1845), he had been merely a contributor, and that he had had nothing to do with the acceptance or rejection of articles (Ostrom, op. cit., I, 293).
10 Above, pp. 17-18.
11 In five papers dating from March 8 to April 5, 1845.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 247:]
12 Woodberry, op. cit., II, 128.
13 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 294. The review of Halleck's Alnwick Castle appeared in the Journal for May 3, 1845.
14 On February 15, 1845, Lowell had written to Briggs: “Halleck, I see, is about to publish a new edition, which I should like to write a notice of if you have made no other arrangements” (Horace E. Scudder, James Russell Lowell; A Biography, Boston, 1901, I, 161). The review is assigned to Lowell in George W. Cooke, A Bibliography of James Russell Lowell, New York, 1906, p. 26. In Poe's file of the Journal Lowell's name is signed to that review in what may be Poe's handwriting.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 248:]
15 Killis Campbell, “Bibliographical Notes on Poe — I,” Nation, XXXIX 623-624 (December 23, 1909).
16 In August Briggs wrote to Lowell concerning the abrupt termination of his association with the Journal; “I did not give you sufficient particulars to enable you to understand my difficulties with Bisco and Poe. Neither has done anything without my full consent, and I have nothing to complain of but their meanness, which they couldn't help. I had told P. a month before that I should drop his name from the ‘Journal.’ He said I might keep it there if I wanted to, although he intended to go into the country and devote his time to getting up books, and would not before be able to assist me. I had also told Bisco that I would have nothing more to do with him after the close of the first volume, and that I would not carry it on unless I could da publisher to my mind. I did find such a publisher, and Bisco, thinking that I was very anxious to go on with it, was more exacting in his demands for his share of the ‘Journal’ than I thought just, so I told him I would not take it, and he, thinking to spite me, and Poe thinking to glorify himself in having overmastered me, agreed to go on with it” (Woodberry, op. cit., 143-144).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 249:]
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 250:]
19 Ibid., II, 143.
20 Ibid., II, 145-146.
21 Ibid., II, 147.
22 Broadway Journal, II, 168 (September 20, 1845).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 251:]
23 Woodberry, op. cit., II, 147.
24 Godey's, XXXII, 199-200; Works, XV, 20-23.
25 The more abusive portions of Briggs's reply have been noted; above, pp. 34-35.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 252:]
26 The quotations are from the weekly edition of the Mirror, May 30, 1846, in which the article is reprinted from the Mirror for May 26.
27 Works, XVII, 241; reprinted from the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times, July 10, 1846. Poe, perhaps, was dissuaded from making a full-length reply by a letter he received from Willis, who also had been attacked at some length in Briggs's article of May 26. Willis, who usually handled such matters with more wisdom than Poe, wrote: “Why reply directly to Mr. Briggs? If you want a shuttlecock squib to fall on the ground, never battledore it straight back. Mr. B's attacks on me I never saw, & never shall see. I keep a good-sense-ometer who reads the papers & tells me if there is anything worth replying to, but nothing is that is written by a man who will he honor’d by the reply. A reply from me to Mr. Briggs would make the man. So will yours, if you exalt him into your mate by contending on equal terms.” (Works, XVII, 206). The letter was not dated by Willis, but is placed by Harrison among others belonging to 1845 and is tentatively dated “ca. 1845” in Ostrom, op. cit., II, 610. However, Briggs’ joint attack on Poe and Willis seems to supply both a motive and a more accurate dating for the letter.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 254:]
28 Above, p. 36n.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 256:]
29 Above, pp. 20 ff.
30 Above, p. 22n. Miss Lynch probably first heard of the matter through Griswold's Memoir, where it was reported as fact that the scandal began with Poe's borrowing fifty dollars from Mrs. Ellet (Literati, 1850, p. xxiii).
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 257:]
31 Mirror, weekly edition, September 12, 1846.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 258:]
32 Holden's, VI, 765-766 (December, 1849). The notice is attributed to Briggs in Bayless, op. cit., pp. 172-173.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 259:]
33 Briggs's authorship of the “Memoir” was suspected shortly after its appearance. On March 10, 1859, Mrs. Whitman wrote to Mrs. Clemm: “Can you tell me who wrote the Memoir prefixed to the Illustrated Poems? Mr. O’Connor tells me he thinks it may have been Briggs” (Works, XVII, 422). Many points of correspondence in content and language between the “Memoir” and other pieces known to be by Briggs can be cited, but it will perhaps be sufficient to compare only the description of Poe given in the “Memoir” with that offered in Briggs's signed article “The Personality of Poe” (Independent, XXIX, 1-2; December 13, 1877). A few of the more striking parallels have been underscored:
In person Edgar Allan Poe was slight, and hardly of the medium height; his motions were quick and nervous, and his air was abstracted, and his countenance generally serious and pale. He never laughed, and rarely smiled; but in conversation he was vivacious, earnest, and respectful; and though he appeared generally under restraint, as though guarding against a half-subdued passion, yet his manners were engaging, and he never failed to win the confidence and kind feelings of those with whom he conversed for the first time; and there were a few who knew him long and intimately who could never believe that he was ever otherwise than the pleasant, intelligent, respectful, and earnest companion he appeared to them. Though he was at times so reckless and prof ligate in his conduct, and so indifferent to external proprieties he was generally scrupulously exact in everything he did. He dressed with extreme neatness and perfectly good taste, avoiding all ornaments and everything of a bizarre appearance” (“Memoir,” p. xxix, in The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with Original Memoir, New York, 1858).
There were some, who knew him only on one side, who were utterly incredulous to his appearance on the other, and who preferred not to know him in any other character than that of. the decorous, genial, respectful, and accomplished gentleman in which he was presented to them ....
In personal appearance Poe was extremely interesting, and it was hardly possible to meet him in his sober moments and converse with him without being strongly impressed in his favor .... He never laughed and rarely smiled; but when he did smile there was always a partially-suppressed expression of sadness, which might be easily interpreted as a sardonic reproach for his levity .... His dress was always scrupulously neat and free from anything bizarre or eccentric. He never wore an ornament of any description and wholly avoided colors. His manners were free from affectation, and, although they were graceful and unrestrained, yet he was perfectly respectful and deferential ...” (Independent, XXIX, 1).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 260:]
34 The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with Original Memoir, p. xxviii.
35 Ibid., p. xx.
36 Ibid., p. xix.
37 Ibid.
38 Most of this description is given above, p. 259n.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 261:]
39 “The Personality of Poe,” Independent, XXIX, 1-2 (December 13, 1877). This is the only paper Briggs wrote on Poe to which his name was signed.
40 Above, p. 12.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 263:]
41 Recollections of a Varied Life, New York, 1910, pp. 101-102.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - PNYL, 1954] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe and the New York Literati (Reece)