Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 172: Review of Eugene L. Didier's Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by John H. Ingram, Feb. 10, 1877,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 476-480 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 476, continued:]

172. Review of Eugene L. Didier's Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by John H. Ingram, London Athenaeum, Feb. 10, 1877, pp. 188-89

FOR A QUARTER of a century his countrymen allowed Poe's memory to moulder under the obloquy heaped upon it by Griswold: some of the poet's friends, it is true, uttered faint protests and then relapsed into silence. In Europe it was otherwise; Baudelaire, Hannay, and Mr. Moy Thomas — notably the last — chose to disregard the biographer's deductions, and drew from Poe's life a very different moral from that accepted, or at least acquiesced in, by his countrymen. The view which these writers arrived at by instinct was amply confirmed by Mr. Ingram's “Memoir of Poe,” published in Edinburgh in 1874, and thrice republished in the United States. Finally, the Americans seem to have come to the conclusion that a little hero-worship on their own behalf may prove acceptable, and during the last two years have not only erected a “Memorial” to, but have also published six or seven biographies of Poe, and, if the essay before us may be regarded as expressive of their opinion, have adopted the belief that he was one of the noblest, best, and most virtuous of mortals. Whether Mr. Didier, the writer of the present “Life” will convert many persons on this side of the Atlantic to this creed may be a matter of opinion, but as to his manner of setting about it there cannot be two opinions.

In his preface, Mr. Didier proclaims that the true story of Poe's life has not yet been told, and that he, in now telling it for the first time, has corrected “many false statements heretofore accepted without question”; he also avers that “much fresh and interesting information has been obtained,” that “every person accessible to the writer, who possessed any information upon the subject, has been approached, and seldom in vain,” and that the dedicatee of the volume has permitted him to have “extracts from Poe's letters.” After this preliminary flourish of [page 477:] trumpets, those who sympathize with Dr. Johnson's avowal, “I am a famished man for literary anecdote,” will not be gratified to learn that this essay contains scarcely anything true which has not been already published and republished ad nauseam; scarcely anything new which is not palpably incorrect; not a single line, apparently, from any letters of Poe, which has not been previously printed, — not anything, indeed, addressed to the gentleman named in the dedication, — and that nearly every page abounds with blunders, which even a slight knowledge of the subject might have prevented. An “Introductory Letter” by Mrs. Whitman, whose “Edgar Poe and his Critics” is laid under heavy contribution, follows the Preface: it is, of course, written in an authoritative tone, but, in following out some such subtile researches in the domain of “antenatal influences” as those which inclined Mr. Shandy to forbode misfortunes for Tristram, the lady has been somewhat out in her reckoning; it would scarcely be safe to carry such delicate investigations back further than nine months, even for such a phenomenal person as Poe, who was born on the 19th of January, 1809 — just 276 days after his parents appeared as the leading characters in an English version of Schiller's “Robbers.” A lucky coincidence, truly, for the admirers of “prenatal influence!”

Few will care to hear retold the old story of how Poe's father, when a law student, beheld and married a pretty English actress; but it is but right to warn those who may meet with Mr. Didier's sketch, that there is no truth in his ultra-romantic story of the young couple having been killed in the burning of Richmond Theatre, on the 26th of December, 1811: Mrs. Poe died in her bed on the 8th day of the said December, as reference to a file of any Richmond paper for the current month would have shown: when and where the poet's father died is still a mystery.

The school experiences of Poe, as given on the authority of a Mr. Clarke, formerly a tutor in Richmond, Virginia, are equally untrustworthy. This gentleman, who, it is stated, has attained the age of eighty-six, must be gifted with a wonderful memory, if the reminiscences he supplies are to be relied on. He states: —

“In September, 1818, Mr. John Allan, a wealthy Scotch merchant residing in Richmond, brought to my school a little boy between eight and nine years old. ‘This is my adopted son, Edgar Poe,’ Mr. Allan said. ‘His parents were burned to death when the theatre was destroyed. The little fellow has recently returned from a residence of two years in Scotland, where he has been studying English and Latin. I want to place him under your instruction.’ I asked Edgar about his Latin. He said he had studied the grammar as far as the regular verbs. He declined penna, domus, fructus, and res. I then asked him whether he could decline the [page 478:] adjective bonus. I was struck by the way in which he did it: he said, ‘bonus, a good man; bona, a good woman; bonum, a good thing.’ Edgar Poe was five years in my school. During that time he read Ovid, Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, and Horace in Latin, and Xenophon and Homer in Greek.”

Unfortunately for this circumstantial introduction to Mr. Clarke's recollections of Poe, there is abundant evidence extant, including that of the poet himself and of his mother-in-law, to prove that during this epoch (1816-1821) of his life he was at school in England.

Other data proffered by Mr. Didier, in his anxiety to correct the “many false statements” of previous biographers, are equally unfortunate. It is not necessary that we should adduce all his errors; but, in perusing this compilation, we noted, amongst other inaccuracies of detail, the following needing correction. Poe's first volume of poems was not published in 1824; it was not styled “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems”; it was not stated to be “by a Virginian”; it did not contain the lines “To Helen,” nor were those lines written by their author when thirteen years of age. At p. 42, Mr. Didier declares that Poe was “the least creditable cadet that ever entered the Military Academy” at West Point, which proves how little he knows of the history of that institution, whilst his account of the poet's few months’ stay at it shows how little he knows of that. At p. 53, speaking of the “Tales of the Folio Club,” a collection of six of the poet's earliest prose pieces, he contrives to give an incorrect catalogue of them, although he must have had their proper titles before him; and, moreover, declares that they were perfect when they left their author's hands — an opinion from which Poe certainly differed, as he subsequently greatly revised them. At p. 58, the date of Poe's marriage is misstated, in order to explain certain expressions contained in a letter of the poet, and which really was written eight months before, instead of the nine days after, his wedding; whilst the statement that, to gratify his wife's taste for music, Poe — then living on 100l. a year — “had her taught by the best masters,” is not only contrary to reason, but to what Mrs. Clemm, in a well-known letter, tells of the matter. In January, 1837, Poe who had not then as here declared already “made a brilliant reputation,” was not offered the associate editorship of the New York Quarterly Review, with a salary larger than he was receiving on the Literary Messenger, nor did he contribute to said Review critiques on current literature: he left Richmond for other reasons; he was never offered any position on the Review, and never wrote but one critique for it, and then at his own request. The magazine which Mr. Didier speaks about at p. 65, upon investigation, he will doubtless find was known as the North American Magazine, and not the Museum, as he repeatedly styles it, and even makes Poe so name it. The statement that Graham bought the [page 479:] Gentleman's Magazine of Burton in the “autumn” of 1840 is also incorrect; it had changed hands some time before, as the title-page proves. There is no truth in the allegations that Poe was “the first to proclaim the genius of Mrs. Browning to the world,” or that “he was the first to introduce to American readers the then unknown poet, Tennyson, ... at a time when the English critics had failed to discover the genius of the future Poet Laureate.” Long before Poe had published a sentence about either of these English poets, their works were well known in both hemispheres. Nor did Poe declare that Dickens — for whom he had intense admiration — owed his great success as a novelist to the delineation of characters that “were grossly exaggerated caricatures,” whether the truth of such an assertion be, or be not, “now generally admitted,” as Mr. Didier avers.

It was in April, and not November, 1840, that Poe retired from editing Graham's Magazine; and it was from the Dollar Newspaper, and not the Dollar Magazine, that he obtained a prize for “The Gold Bug.” “The Raven” was not, by a great many, the only composition that its author published under a nom de plume; nor is it correct to state, as Mr. Didier does, that “not a stanza, not a line, not a word, was changed” after it was first printed. Poe frequently altered it, as has been recently pointed out in the Athenaeum, in a letter which has been widely circulated in the United States. The note which originally headed “The Raven” was undoubtedly the production of Poe himself — a fact that will probably astonish Mr. Didier, who deems the author of it “could not have been long out of his short-clothes,” but that it was never written as published in this book is as certain as it is that Poe never said he intended to limit the projected poem to 108 lines precisely. Indeed, Mr. Didier would appear throughout to have read his hero's works as witches said the Lord's Prayer. The account of a visit paid to the Poes at Fordham, derived from Mr. Ingram's “Memoir of Edgar Poe,” and, like many other lengthy extracts from the same source, taken without acknowledgment by the compiler, exhibits other blunders: the visit was not paid by “a gentleman,” but by the well-known Mrs. Gove-Nichols, and the account given by Mr. Didier, at pp. 99-102, of Mrs. Poe's death, notwithstanding its circumstantiality, is fictitious: letters from Poe and Mrs. Clemm are in existence which prove that, thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Houghton and other noble-hearted women, the poet's wife, during the last days of her existence, wanted for nothing that money and kindness could procure.

Enough has, doubtless, been said to prove the incorrectness of this “Life of Poe,” and to show that if, as its author avers, the world has remained, up to the time of this publication “in ignorance of the true story of the poet's life,” it is certain to remain some time longer in the same unenlightened condition. This soi-disant memoir, indeed, has [page 480:] nothing new of value to offer us, and even ignores entirely some of the most interesting episodes of Poe's career, such as his school-days at Stoke Newington; his subsequent adventures in Europe; the story of his first love, and of the fidelity and generosity of the friends of his latter years; nor does it, notwithstanding its pretensions, furnish a scrap not already well known of Poe's correspondence. Had Mr. Didier possessed the industry and ability necessary for the work he has attempted, he might have succeeded better than any of his predecessors, of whose labours he has so largely made use, but to not one of whom he has proffered a single word of acknowledgment. He lives among many of the surviving friends and relatives of the poet, and near to the scenes and abodes in which a large portion of Poe's life was passed. He claims to have been intimate with Mrs. Clemm, and to have had placed at his disposal details and letters which were inaccessible to others, and the result of the advantages which he appears to have enjoyed is this incon-grous compilation of hackneyed details and ludicrous blunders.

Mr. Didier's critical acumen and brilliancy of style a few specimens will suffice to prove, whilst his classical learning may be inferred from such remarks as that of schoolboys writing Latin odes “after the style of the ‘O jam Satis (sic) of Horace.” Poe's tales, Mr. Didier tells us, fascinate and astonish the reader with “the verisimilitude of their improbability”; and his reviews, he deems, prove their author to have been “the most consummate critic that ever lived.” “The Raven,” this same authority asserts, placed its writer “in the front rank of the poets of the world”; and that to Poe America is indebted — “prenatal influences” not-withstanding — for conferring upon it the glory of having produced “the most original poet of the century,” and a genius who “always dressed with extreme elegance and in perfect taste,” and who “generally wore grey clothes, a loose black cravat, and turn-down collar.” With the mis-ascription of “Genius is patience,” Mr. Didier informs us that “there never was a more patient genius than Edgar A. Poe”; that he was “never idle, never lounging; when not engaged upon a critique, he was writing a tale or a poem”; and that he knew English literature “from the very source — from Chaucer, the first Poet Laureate”; which latter information will, doubtless, prove acceptable to Notes and Queries.

Space will not admit of any of Mr. Didier's varied portraitures of his hero — with his brow “white as a girl's and as beautiful as a god's” — who “did not attempt to shake any man's religion,” and “seduced no one from the path of virtue by the voluptuous enchantment of his writings. Byron did this,” concludes Mr. Didier, “and more than this: to the evil influence of his writings he added the evil example of his life.” After this parting kick at a Britisher, we must bid farewell to the whitewasher of the Raven. As for the “Additional Poems” of the title-page, there is not one discoverable in the book itself.