Text: James B. Reece, “Henry Cary,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 303, continued:]

Henry Cary (d. 1857), by birth a Bostonian, spent most of [page 304:] his adult years in New York, where by 1840 he was president of Phoenix Bank. Later he was a wine merchant. His industry during his business career enabled him to spend his later years in opulence and leisure. He died in Florence, Italy, while on a tour of Europe.

His essays and poems appeared chiefly in the New York American and the Knickerbocker under his pen name “John Waters.” The former were frequently in the vein of Charles Lamb, with whom Cary was sometimes compared, and the latter often made use of religious themes. Cary apparently made no collection of his works.

“His literary reading,” wrote Cary's friend Lewis Gaylord Clark, “had been of the selectest kind ... and his refinement of taste in all matters, (not by any means excluding the aesthetics of the table,) were [sic] readily admitted by the distinguished and congenial circle of friends whom he had the ‘nameless charm’ to gather round him.”(1)

Three months before the “Literati” sketch of Cary appeared in Godey's for July, 1846,(2) Poe had included a few paragraphs on Cary in a “Marginalia” article published in the Democratic Review.(3) The “Literati” paper drew heavily upon the previously [page 305:] published article, but in it Poe made changes which Illustrate the extent to which his criticism could be influenced by personal prejudice. In both articles Poe commented at length upon the unsigned and highly complimentary paper on Cary which had appeared in the Broadway Journal for January 25, 1845.(4) In the “Marginalia” article there is no indication that Poe knew who had supplied the Journal with what he termed the “well-written memoir” of Cary; but when he wrote the “Literati” sketch, Poe thought the Journal critic, “possibly Mr. Briggs,” had gone to the “extreme of toadyism” in praising Cary's merits. Whether correct or not, Poe's suspicion that Briggs had written the laudatory article seems to have altered his critical attitude toward Cary. In “Marginalia” Poe observed that Cary had written “some of the happiest magazine papers, of the Spectator class, in the language”; in the “Literati” sketch he described his subject as a “vivacious, fanciful, entertaining essayist — a fifth or sixth rate one.” Poe first termed Cary's style “pure, correct, and vigorous — a judicious mixture of the Swift and Addison manners — although he is by no means either Swift or Addison”; later he found it “respectable, and no more .... [Cary] is continually guilty of all kinds of grammatical improprieties.” Several complimentary remarks in the first paper were omitted from the second. In revising the “Literati” sketch, Poe followed the Godey's paper closely, but added a remark which, in view of the change [page 306:] in his critical attitude toward Cary, is significant: “His [Cary's] greatest literary misfortune ... is the having for friend and defender so warm a critic as Mr. Briggs.”(5)

Noting that the “Literati” sketch of Cary lacked the usual personal description, a writer for the Mirror said in effect that Poe was personally unacquainted with his subject.(6) Further evidence on this point is found in Poe's letter to Duyckinck, January 30, 1846: “Have you any personal acquaintance with Carey [sic] (John Waters)? If so will you be kind enough to note me a few memoranda resp^g his personal appearance, age, residence, etc?”(7)

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