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9. William M. Gillespie
William Mitchell Gillespie (1816-1868) seems to have attracted the attention of few contemporary sketch writers other than Poe, and the facts of his life and career are known only in their general outline. He was born in New York City, the son of a tailor. In 1834 he graduated from Columbia College and was awarded a master's degree by that institution three years later. He spent several years in Europe, traveling and attending an engineering school in Paris. By 1845 he had returned to New York and in that year was appointed to the newly founded chair of civil engineering at Union College at Schenectady, New York, which position he held until his death. In 1864 he married Harriet Bates, of Scarsdale, New York.
Poe seems to have included Gillespie among the literati as much for personal as for literary reasons, but Gillespie had some claim to the station in his Rome; As Seen by a New Yorker in 1843-4 (1845), portions of which had appeared as letters in the New York Tribune. He later published four works on mathematical and engineering subjects, one of which, A Manual of the Principles and Practice of Road-Making (1847), Hah gone through ten editions by 1871.(1)
Poe's association with Gillespie appears to have been confined [page 318:] to a few months in 1845, there being no evidence that it continued after Gillespie began his work at Union College. Gillespie was a member of the literary group which Poe joined soon after the publication of “The Raven.” He was on good terms with Mrs. Osgood and Mrs. Hewitt, and it is not unlikely that Poe's introduction to the coterie which attended Miss Lynch's receptions owed something to his offices. Gillespie's letter to Poe of March 1, 1845, the day following a lecture by Poe, probably provided the opening for the first meeting of the two:
I was one of your delighted hearers last night, but have to complain that you tempted me to load my memory with so many points of thought and expression, that I carried off very imperfectly one passage which I particularly desired to remember — your characterization of Mrs. Osgood.
I had left her in the Astor house with her hat on awaiting the friend with whom she was coming to the lecture; but she was disappointed, and lost the pleasure of hearing you, which she had so eagerly anticipated, though not knowing that she would be noticed. I fear that she was not sufficiently en rapport with me to share my thrill of pleasure at the passage, and the applause which followed it; and therefore I ask of you the favor of giving me an opportunity to copy it from your manuscript, as I should be unwilling to give you that trouble.(2)
A letter from Mrs. Hewitt to Poe, dated March 15, 1845, makes it clear that Gillespie had met Poe by that date and had discussed with him a poem by Mrs. Hewitt.(3) Poe's friendly note [page 319:] to Gillespie, apparently written later in 1845, indicates that an amiable relationship had developed between the two:
My Dear Gillespie,
An unlucky contretemps, connected with the getting out of the “Journal” will, I fear, detain me until after 10 tonight — too late for the appointment.
If you can (this evening) see Mrs. O[sgood]. & make any decent apology for me, I will be greatly obliged. Any evening (except to-morrow) I shall be disengaged, and will be happy to accompany you.
In haste Yours truly
Poe.
Thursday Evening
8. o’clock.(4)
These letters exhaust the positive evidence concerning the personal association of Poe and Gillespie, but an interesting additional hint is provided by a comment in Briggs's attack upon Poe and the “Literati” series. One of the sketches, wrote Briggs, “is of a pot companion, contained in half a dozen lines, whose name appears for the first and probably for the last time, associated with the literati.”(5) At the time Briggs wrote thus, only two installments of the “Literati” papers had appeared, and of those who had been sketched Gillespie seems to be the most likely target of Briggs's remark. Gillespie's connection with literary affairs seems more tenuous than that of any other of [page 320:] the subjects involved, and of the sketches in question that of Gillespie is equaled in brevity only by those of Cheever and Maroncelli, with neither of whom Poe is known to have had any personal association. Hunt is known to have had a weakness for drink,(6) but the sketch of him is of more than usual length. Moreover, when the order in which the sketches appeared in Godey's is compared with the order in which Briggs discusses them, the evidence again points to Gillespie.
In a paragraph of “Marginalia,” published in the Democratic Review for April, 1846, Poe termed Gillespie's Rome; As Seen by a New-Yorker “a very respectable book.” He found the style of the work “pure and sparkling, although occasionally flippant and dillettantesque,” and the “tone of remark ... much in the usual way — selon les règies. — never very exceptionable, and certainly never very profound.”(7) These remarks, all that Poe had to say of Gillespie critically, reappeared a month later in the “Literati” sketch.(8)
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 317:]
1 George H. Genzmer's sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia; the National Cyclopaedia, XXIII, 184-185; and the obituary notice in the New York Tribune, January 4, 1868, p. 8.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 318:]
2 MS in the Griswold Collection of the Boston Public Library. Gillespie's letter is dated only “Saturday Morning,” but on February 28, 1845, Poe had delivered a lecture on the “Poets and Poetry of America,” in which he had praised Mrs. Osgood (Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, p. 457); the following day, March 1, fell on a Saturday.
3 Mabbott, “Letters from Mary E. Hewitt to Poe,” op. cit., pp.116-117.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 319:]
4 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 306. Poe's reference to the Broadway Journal establishes the date of the note as prior to January 3, 1846, the date of the last number.
5 Weekly edition of the Mirror, IV, 126 (May 30, 1846).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 320:]
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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)