[page 405:]

CHAPTER XIV
 
New York — “The Raven” and Other Matters

It was with his usual optimism that Poe took Virginia to a city where he had met disappointment in 1837. It was, he hoped, to be different, and yet it is difficult to see what was the basis for that hope. It is true that the book trade was more flourishing. Poe succeeded in having both his Tales and his Poems published in 1845. But so far as the magazines, to which he must look for support, were concerned, there was no improvement in the situation, which New York had not yet begun to dominate. The leading magazines, the Knickerbocker, the New Mirror, the Democratic Review, were no more prosperous than Graham's and Godey's. He could hardly have expected to be helped by the Knickerbocker Magazine, considering what he had said concerning Lewis Gaylord Clark, its editor, and yet it set the tone in New York more than any other periodical. It may be, indeed, that Poe, sensing this lack of leading magazines, hoped to find the opportunity to found his own.

Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the growing metropolis that attracted Poe, rather than any specific advantage. New York had more than 300,000 inhabitants, and had become the great port of entry from Europe. Notwithstanding its poorly paved and poorly lighted streets, the endless throng of people on Broadway, the luxurious dresses of the women, the evidences of wealth, the hurry-scurry that Willis and Dickens described, all these gave an appearance of prosperity. Poe had visited New York during his residence in Philadelphia and like many thousands since his day, he saw opportunity there. He was to experience both the readiness of New York to treat a visitor with open arms if he has any wares to sell, and equal willingness to close its doors to the aspirant who remains to storm the citadel. It was, however, the best place to attract foreign recognition, and in this respect it widened the reputation for which Poe always longed.

Poe's letter to Mrs. Clemm describing the journey of himself and Virginia from Philadelphia reveals again how much his own vivid account is to be preferred to any paraphrase: [page 406:]

How much they depended upon Mrs. Clemm, who had been left behind to sell such books as she could, how pitiful was Poe's narrow margin, how almost childlike was his attitude toward the bitter realities of life, this letter makes clear.

Let us hope that the house at 130 Greenwich Street was a more cheerful home than it is today. The brownstone steps and the porch have gone, but the old staircase, now unused, remains, also the dingy [page 408:] rooms, uninhabited now, over the more cheerful ground floor, adorned by the “Old Brokers’ Café.” In 1844 the nearby river on which Virginia looked while she waited for her mother to join them and the more open spaces would have improved the situation of the house, located almost at the lowest point of Manhattan. The old Planters’ Hotel, a few houses below, claims a Poe tradition with much less certainty. It was a well known place in 1844 and would have strained his pocketbook unduly.

The postscript of Poe's letter to Mrs. Clemm refers to a matter which was later to plague him. Poe had wished to see a volume of the Southern Literary Messenger and Henry B. Hirst had borrowed one for his use from William Duane. Either through dire need or carelessness Mrs. Clemm did not return the Messenger to Hirst, but sold it with other books to Leary, the Philadelphia bookseller. When Duane, some months later, asked for the return of the book, Mrs. Clemm evidently did not tell her nephew the facts, for he wrote to Duane as follows:

When Duane showed this letter to Hirst, the latter replied that it was “a damned lie.” Duane found out soon after that Leary had sold the volume to a bookseller in Richmond, who sold it to the publishers of the Messenger, who in turn sold it to a friend of Duane, through whom it was recovered. When Duane called Poe's attention to these facts, Poe replied, with a marked change in the tone of his note:

On this letter Duane endorsed the words: “Bombastes Furioso Poe. Dated Jan. 28. 1845. Received, Jan. 31, 1845. Not to be answered.” Then after retailing the events given above, he continues: “Poe had the grace to be ashamed of himself, when he heard of the manner in which I had had to repurchase my own book. He remarked to H. B. Hirst Esqr: ‘What must Mr. Duane think of me?’ ”(2)

I have given this correspondence, not on account of the importance of the incident itself, but because it reveals between the lines one of those occasions in which Mrs. Clemm brought upon Poe lasting trouble. For many years this story, magnified, of course, shadowed his reputation in Philadelphia. But Duane misinterpreted Poe's second letter. It was written by a man who had been permitted by a woman he loved to place himself in a false position, and who defended her at the cost of his own reputation. Mrs. Clemm might have sold the [page 410:] book by accident before Poe's letter of April 7th reached her, but with the postscript before her, she should have reclaimed it. Instead, she concealed the sale from Poe, and let him write the letters to Duane. She could by no stretch of imagination confuse a trip to Leary's with a visit to Hirst's office. Poe's remark to Hirst was not a confession of guilt; it was an assumption of the blame for an action of which he was innocent. He could not even have the satisfaction of returning the five dollars it had cost Duane to buy his own property back, for Poe never had it to spare.(3)

Poe's first activity, after reaching New York City, was to publish in the New York Sun on April 13, 1844, what is now known as the “Balloon-Hoax.” It appeared under the caption, “Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk! The Atlantic Crossed in Three Days, Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine! Arrival at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, S. C. — After a Passage of Seventy-Five Hours, etc.”

The effect of this clever bit of imaginary narrative is best told in Poe's own words, written by him to the Columbia Spy, and published on May 25th:

Poe's letters to the Columbia Spy are of unusual importance. They reveal how dependent he was upon some immediate if small return, for the paper was limited in circulation. It was published at Columbia, Pennsylvania, by Bowen and Gossler, while Poe was a correspondent.(5)

The letters give us, at first hand, Poe's impressions of New York from the time of his arrival until June 25th. The power of description which he often employed in purely imaginative flights, he spent here on reality:

A vivid touch this, of the district in which Edward Harrigan was to lay the scene of his delightful comedy of Squatter Sovereignty. Later, Poe reveals how he sought exercise and pleasure as he had done on the Wissahickon:

Poe found the city thronged with strangers, and wearing an aspect of intense life. From the point of cleanliness, it was far below Philadelphia. The change in administration of the city brought reprisals from the officials about to be removed and plunged Third Avenue, “One of the most important thoroughfares,” in darkness. Poe objected from purely constitutional grounds to the new Mayor, Harper, closing the “Rum Palaces” and “Rum Hovels” on the Christian Sabbath. Why, he asks, with connotations of which he could not have been aware, should they not be closed on Saturday also? The Magazines, he remarks, “are dragging their slow length along.” Of the Knickerbocker he “hears little and sees less,” probably because of his relations with [page 413:] Lewis Gaylord Clark, the Editor. The Ladies’ Companion, which had bought “Marie Rogêt” was “the ne plus ultra of ill-taste, impudence and vulgar humbuggery.” He scoffs at the winner of a ten-mile race, in an hour and four minutes; remarking that he had done it himself in less time and that at least a thousand men in the West could do twelve miles an hour. His constant impatience with the dogmatic speculations of science comes to the surface in his account of Wilkes’ expedition to the Antarctic region:

By June 12th he had become a regular New Yorker for the letter is devoted to a scathing criticism of the architecture of Brooklyn. The street cries in New York and the noise of the wagons over the cobblestones drive him mad, and his sane suggestions about street paving prove again how close his observation was of things near at hand. His keen critical sense shows in his notice of Willis's poems, when he regrets that Willis had to leave Glen Mary “and the tranquility and leisure he might there have found. In its retirement he might have accomplished much, both for himself and for posterity; but, chained to the oar of a mere weekly paper, professedly addressing the frivolous and the fashionable, what can he now hope for but a gradual sinking into the slough of the Public Disregard?”(9)

Was it his own situation Poe had in mind when he was writing about the man who chose to be the most popular writer in the United States in 1844, and is now almost forgotten? Poe devotes much of the next letter to Willis, and to Graham's. Then the letters cease. It was not his forte to be a columnist, but they give a valid pen picture of New York of a century ago, as well as a revelation of Poe's interests. They also indicate other contributions by Poe that have not been reprinted. In the letter of May 21st, Poe speaks of the biography of [page 414:] Robert T. Conrad in Graham's for June, 1844, which was “already out” — as being “by a friend of yours” and doing Conrad no more than justice. The review has a resemblance to Poe's critical style, but if it was by him, it is curious that he should speak of Judge Conrad's Jack Cade or Aylmere, as it was variously called, as “perhaps the best American play.” For in a later article on the American drama he does not mention Conrad. Why he should not have signed the article is not clear.

Poe may also have contributed three editorials to the Public Ledger of Philadelphia on July 17, 18, 19, 1844, of a satirical nature, two on the “Omnibus” and one on “Cats.” The second was reprinted in the Columbia Spy of August 14th, with a note by Eli Bowen, which implied it was by Poe. The articles are pleasant reading, but are of interest mainly as evidence of his dependence upon newspapers for support.(10)

In one of his strolls in upper New York, Poe saw the home of Patrick Brennan, surrounded by a farm of two hundred and sixteen acres, extending from the Hudson River to a point about two hundred feet west of the Bloomingdale Road, later called the Boulevard, and now Broadway. If the house were standing today, it would be in the neighborhood of 84th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. It was a comfortable “double framed” dwelling of two stories. With Virginia's health in mind, Poe asked Mrs. Brennan to take the family to board. Although the neighborhood had some reputation as a summer resort, they were the first guests Mrs. Brennan received, and she became much attached to them. She always denied the charges concerning Poe's drinking, and insisted that she never saw him under the influence of liquor. She also paid tribute to his devotion to Virginia.

Poe was in the habit of taking long rambles in the neighborhood, especially to a rock overlooking the Hudson, known as “Mount Tom,” where he would spend hours gazing at the river. He was fond of children and took some of the Brennan family, especially Thomas, one of the boys, with him at times to the river side, where he would draw figures of all sorts to amuse them.

One of the Brennan girls, later Mrs. James R. O’Beirne, was a witness of his long hours of work, when she was permitted to sit in his room while he was composing. She seems to have made the most acute test of a writer's patience by rearranging his manuscripts in accordance [page 415:] with her own feminine sense of order. So far, the traditions rest on solid foundation.(11)

General O’Beirne's identification of a room in the Brennan house as the identical one described by the poet in “The Raven,” and the arrangement of a plaster cast of Pallas, on a high shelf in front of a few smoky panes of glass, seem fanciful, notwithstanding Poe's own statement about the plaster cast. If Poe read the poem to Mrs. Brennan, she said nothing about it to Gill, who was keen to pick up matters of that sort. There can be little doubt, however, that “The Raven” was completed, if not begun, in the Brennan home.

Poe's only new poem to be published in 1844 was “Dreamland,” in Graham's for June, but it is one of his finest creations. Dangerous as subjective interpretations are, it is hard to believe that this poem does not reflect Poe's own remarkable power of projection “Out of Space — Out of Time.” He produces the effect of vastness and desolation by his usual methods of denying limitations:

Notwithstanding its unholy aspect, and the shrouded forms that greet the traveller:

These shrouded figures are not to return, and by comparison with this life they are progressing apparently to a happier state: [page 416:]

And so the dreamer returns:

Every phrase tends to the one effect, the description of the reaction of a human traveller to this land between Death and Life. As ever, the vowels and consonants are chosen by a master of sounds and the poet strikes with the fingers of harmony a note that resounds in any understanding ear with the inevitability of great poetry.

A letter from Poe to Lowell deals with the projected biography of Poe to be written by Lowell and gives a list of Poe's still unpublished stories:

Poe was evidently having difficulties in placing his fiction. He had offered “The Oblong Box” to Willis for the New Mirror, but Willis had suggested that the Opal would be a better place to print it. Poe's letter of May 29th to Mrs. Hale, who was the editor both of the Opal and Godey's, urges her to accept an article from him, and “to take it unseen, upon Mr. Willis's testimony in its favor. It cannot be improper to state, that I make the latter request to save time, because I am as usual, exceedingly in need of a little money.”(14)

Mrs. Hale evidently gave him encouragement, for he wrote on May 31st:

Poe probably referred to “A Chapter of Suggestions” which appeared in the Opal for 1845. In this “Chapter of Suggestions” Poe repeated his earlier views on Dickens, Bulwer, and Macaulay, and discussed his favorite subject of dreams. He also paid his respects to “those little people who habitually sneer at greatness.” It hardly needs comment that Poe, already well known, was more than glad to write for fifty cents a page and that he was still depending upon a Philadelphia editor to take his contributions. Mrs. Hale also bought “The Oblong Box” and “Thou Art the Man” for Godey's.

Notwithstanding the slowness of editors in accepting or publishing his contributions, Poe kept on hard at work with his fiction, some of which must have been written before he left Philadelphia. “The Premature Burial” which the Dollar Newspaper printed on July 31, 1844, was another story of terror. Poe began by establishing the general truth that in a tale of horror the recital of actual fact is more impressive than any fictional treatment, because the reader believes it. Then by reciting certain actual cases of premature burial,(16) he built up that willingness to believe which prepared the reader to accept the main story. Poe's narrator has suffered from catalepsy, and returns to consciousness slowly through an intermediate stage of helplessness. [page 419:] He goes through all the terrors of one who is buried alive, especially acute because the many precautions he has taken against such an event seem to have been neglected by those who should have seen to them. When he is awakened to find that he is lying in a berth in a small sloop, and the coffin lid he has imagined is really the bottom of the berth, above him, the story does not become burlesque. The active violent terror has driven the shadows of fear of imaginary danger away, and he is cured of his disease.

“Mesmeric Revelation” which appeared in the Columbian Magazine in August, 1844, is a prelude to Eureka. Poe assumes the validity of mesmerism and tries through placing of a man, ill with phthisis, under such a trance, to ascertain the truth of immortality. Mr. Van Kirk asks to be mesmerized, hoping that the consequent exaltation will permit him to perceive a train of reasoning which has convinced him while in his trance, but of which, when he awakes, he is aware only of the effect, and not of the cause. He asks, therefore, that the narrator who is also the mesmerizer should ask him questions while he is in the trance, thereby noting the origin of Van Kirk's beliefs. I have already spoken in another connection of this story as an expression of Poe's certainty of man's free will and the persistence of his individuality after death.(17)

Van Kirk's answers tell us that “what we call ‘death,’ is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal.” Poe bases the distinction between inorganic life and organic beings upon a Creator. Opposed to Emerson's conception of spirit being the only creator, God, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter. If God had so willed it, law could have been inviolate, with its result, perfection. But in order to produce violation of law, impediments, afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, have been created. Thus pain is produced. Pain is reality and is necessary to happiness. “All things are either good or bad by comparison. — Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. ... The pain of the primitive life of Earth is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life of Heaven.” Thus Poe in 1844-45(18) expressed [page 420:] the idea of relativity in human happiness. It was, of course, not original with him, but he put it forcibly. He also made clear that the future life cannot even be described by our terms. We will have to create terms before we can describe it. It was in this essay also that he suggested the indivisibility of matter.

Poe wrote to George Bush, then Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at New York University, concerning this story:

What Bush replied is not known. But the reproduction of the story in the Dollar Newspaper of Philadelphia is intriguing, to say the least. The readers who expected another “Gold Bug” must have been puzzled. Perhaps the editor of the Columbian may have asked Poe for a [page 421:] lighter story, for he published “The Angel of the Odd” in October. This is as absurd as “Mesmeric Revelation” is thought-provoking, and is, as Poe said “an Extravaganza.” Viewed even from that point of view, its humor is tiresome and the dialect which the “Angel” speaks, was not spoken anywhere on the globe.

“The Purloined Letter” belongs to this group of stories, mentioned by Poe to Lowell as still in the hands of editors in May, 1844, although it found a place in the Gift for 1845. It is the most unified of the stories of ratiocination, and in motive it is the best. Dupin is given the problem by the Prefect of Police at a point where the detective story usually ends. The robber is known; the problem lies in securing the letter, for its possession by the Minister D—— gives him a power over the owner of the letter, a royal personage, and a woman, which he has been using for political blackmail. Poe scorns the usual obvious details of a search, in which his imitators have revelled. Through the conversation of the Prefect we learn that all known methods have been employed. Dupin proceeds upon his knowledge of the character of the Minister D——, because he, unlike most detectives of fiction, is also a character. He knows that the robber is both a mathematician and a poet, therefore he is a master of mathematical processes of reasoning and also aware of their limitations. Through Dupin, Poe shows that mathematical axioms are not universally, but only relatively, true, and once more announces his doctrine of relativity, a prelude in a sense to Eureka.

Identifying himself with the imaginative processes of such a man as D——, Dupin decides that the Minister will employ the simplest method of concealment, because that will baffle the police. Dupin visits the apartments of D——, notices a letter, soiled and half torn, standing conspicuously on a rack, and decides it is the letter which the police have disregarded. Their reasoning, without imagination, has led them to believe no one would leave exposed such a valuable letter. Here a lesser artist would have concluded the story. But Dupin dislikes the Minister, for an evil turn he has done him. Dupin leaves, prepares a facsimile of the letter, and returns, after arranging that a disturbance shall be created in the street which attracts the Minister's attention. He then substitutes the false letter for the real one. Thus the Minister D——, believing that he still retains his power, will try to use it, will be defied and will be ruined. Poe created, therefore, two characters, Dupin and the Minister D——. Both of them have characteristics of Poe, the power of analysis and the imagination that transcends analysis. Like Dupin, Poe could long remember an injury; [page 422:] like D—— he could neglect to remember that he had injured a possible enemy.(21)

“The Oblong Box” was suited quite well to Godey's, where it appeared in September, 1844. Charleston is simply a place to leave for a boat trip to New York, and the devices by which a bereaved husband endeavors to carry secretly the corpse of his wife, are singularly uninteresting. In “Thou Art the Man,” which appeared in Godey's for November, the great master of ratiocinative stories burlesqued that branch of fiction. There is no attempt to treat the murder seriously. The tale has more significance through Poe's use of the moral contrast, in which Dickens was so adept, and which they bestowed on Bret Harte as a heritage. The guilty man has the reputation of probity and good fellowship; the innocent party, who is convicted and saved from execution only at the last minute, is a rake.

Poe must have enjoyed writing “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” which came out in his old magazine, the Southern Literary Messenger, in December, 1844. It is a grotesque of the better quality. There is the literary charlatan, who sends in contributions to the magazines, made up of quotations from famous authors, and the ignorant editors who fail to recognize them, but criticize such lines as

on the ground that hail can not be holy light and an offspring at the same time. The absurd verses which are accepted, the log-rolling, the “tomahawking” of poor devil authors, while exaggerated, nevertheless have a verity that makes the satire effective. Of the few real names used, scarcely any were of living men, but in revising the story, Poe included Lewis Gaylord Clark which, of course, made his exclusion from the Knickerbocker secure.

Meanwhile, Poe never forgot his hopes for his magazine. A long letter to Professor Anthon in this connection is of great interest because Poe gives a summary of all his magazine experience up to this time and explains why he has devoted himself to this field. With the letter he sent one of the tales, which one, he does not say. Poe evidently built high hopes upon Anthon's influence with Harpers, for the [page 423:] manuscript draft was prepared with the greatest care, constant alterations giving it the appearance of a literary composition:

Anthon did not reply until November 2nd: [page 427:]

The disappointment must have been great, but Poe did not abandon his hopes.

Poe's correspondence with Lowell and others continues to reveal his personal as well as his literary experiences during 1844. Lowell apologized for his delay in writing the biography of Poe for Graham's and asked Poe for “a sort of spiritual biography,” written “as to a friend.”(24) Poe replied, in an important letter, in which he combined some of the scientific ideas which he had already written in “Mesmeric Revelation” with his own estimates of his poems and stories:

This letter contains one of Poe's most striking epigrams: “Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.” Perhaps it is as true today as it was in 1844.

Poe repeated this phrase, with many others, in a letter to Chivers on July 10, 1844, and also urged the latter to join him in the Stylus. “You will find me here — at New York — where I live at present, in strict seclusion, buried with books and ambitious thoughts. ... ” Poe was evidently uncertain about his address, for he asks Chivers to “put a letter to my address [which he does not give] in the P. Office, and we will thus find each other.” Poe also tells him that he has been lecturing on American Poetry.(27)

Poe was working hard on his projected Critical History of American Literature, which never was completed, and he wrote to Lowell on August 18th, telling him of it and sending him “Mesmeric Revelation” asking him to get it reprinted in some paper. “I am living so entirely out of the world, just now,” he continues, “that I can do nothing of the kind myself.”(28)

This seclusion had evidently been constant, for in his letter to Thomas of September 2, 1844, he emphasizes it: [page 431:]

Poe received the critical biography from Lowell, shortly after the receipt of a letter from his friend written on September 27, 1844.(30) [page 432:] Poe's acknowledgment contains two important paragraphs. The first makes clear that he felt authorized to alter the biography before he gave it to Graham's, and the second refers to his happiness in his own married life:

Lowell's critical article on Poe is one of the best appraisals he received during his lifetime. Although it did not appear until February, 1845, in Graham's, it was written as we have seen, in 1844, before “The Raven” was published. Lowell pronounced Poe “the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America. It may be [he continued], that we should qualify our remark a little and say that he might be, rather than that he always is, for he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic-acid for his inkstand. If we do not always agree with him in his premises, we are, at least, satisfied that his deductions are logical, and that we are reading the thoughts of a man who thinks for himself, and says what he thinks, and knows well what he is talking about. His analytic power would furnish forth bravely some score of ordinary critics. We do not know him personally, but we suspect him for a man who has one or two pet prejudices on which he prides himself. These sometimes allure him out of the strict path of criticism, [page 433:] but, where they do not interfere, we would put almost entire confidence in his judgments. Had Mr. Poe had the control of a magazine of his own, in which to display his critical abilities, he would have been as autocratic, ere this, in America, as Professor Wilson has been in England; and his criticisms, we are sure, would have been far more profound and philosophical than those of the Scotsman. As it is, he has squared out blocks enough to build an enduring pyramid, but has left them lying carelessly and unclaimed in many different quarries.”

In speaking of Poe's early poems Lowell said with an insight only a poet critic possesses: “They display what we can only express by the contradictory phrase of innate experience.” He dwelt also upon the grace and symmetry of “To Helen.” “There is,” he said, “the smack of ambrosia about it.” He also selected one of the exquisite lyric passages in “Al Aaraaf.” Then he proceeded, “Mr. Poe has that indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius.”(32)

Lowell selected unerringly the two qualities that made Poe a genius — “a faculty of vigorous, yet minute analysis, and a wonderful fecundity of imagination.” These led to a combination of “two faculties which are seldom found united; a power of influencing the mind of the reader by the impalpable shadows of mystery, and a minuteness of detail which does not leave a pin or a button unnoticed.”

The closest rival Edgar Poe had among the critics of that period saw how Poe's realistic method corrected and held in check the treatment [page 434:] of the romantic material in which he delighted. Lowell paid his tribute also to the form of Poe's art, selected “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Haunted Palace” for especial praise and one other poem for which Poe, according to his letter of October 28th, substituted “Lenore.”

Poe's desire for seclusion and the time to write could not be gratified. There was soon urgent need for regular income, and Poe found it with Nathaniel Parker Willis and George Pope Morris, who had revived the New York Mirror, a weekly literary magazine. This became the Weekly Mirror. The high postage rates for magazines caused it to become a daily newspaper, the Evening Mirror, with a weekly supplement, the Weekly Mirror. Poe contributed to both papers, joining the staff either directly or by correspondence in October, 1844. Willis has given clearly the picture of Poe at this time:

Poe was not at Fordham, of course, at this time. His letter to Thomas, January 4, 1845, makes clear that he was still out of town at Brennan's, contrary to the usual statements that he had moved into town in November, 1844:

Poe's statement that he seldom visited the city seems to place his office work on the Mirror after January, 1845. Yet Willis could hardly have imagined Poe's coming to the office from the country, even if he had confused the two places.(35) In any event, Poe's distinctive note is seen in the editorial columns. His criticism of the relative returns to authors, publishers, and booksellers in his “Authors’ Pay in America,” and “The Pay for Periodical-Writing”(36) give interesting information on those subjects. According to Poe, the publisher never distributed profits until the printing and binding were paid for, thus playing safe, and the bookseller received from twice to five times as much as the author. In view of the frequent discussions as to what is the matter with the publishing business today, Poe might be called in as an expert. While publishers no longer require writers to wait for royalties until the initial cost has been repaid, booksellers still take forty percent of the sales’ price as compared with the authors’ ten or fifteen. Perhaps Poe was not so unpractical as he seemed, but there is no evidence that his protest was effective.

Poe continued this theme in January and February, 1845, hammering away at the lack of international copyright. Those who minimize his interest in American affairs have evidently not read his protest that “irreparable ill is wrought by the almost exclusive dissemination among us of foreign, that is to say of monarchical or aristocratical sentiment, in foreign books.”(37) Poe also stated that “Any American for eight dollars, may receive any four of the British periodicals for a year.” This was an early example of the “club rate,” and had naturally a discouraging effect upon native periodicals.

In November, 1844, Poe published the first installment of his “Marginalia” in the Democratic Review. These are short or long paragraphs of the familiar or expository essay type, usually culled from his reading. Frequently they are repetitions of earlier reviews. Poe continued to publish these “Marginalia” in the Democratic Review, in Godey's, Graham's and finally in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1849. From their nature they defy any individual critical appraisement, but Poe treated them quite seriously. There have recently come [page 438:] to light,(38) a number of the pages from the first chapters, which were evidently being prepared for a new printing, or perhaps even for book publication. How well Poe kept up with recent astronomical science, is illustrated by his adding to the list of the planets, in an article on the measurement of time, the name of “Astraea,” the minor planet, discovered December 8, 1845. (39)

In the first installment Poe anticipated Eureka in his definition of a plot. In another passage he suggested that “The orange ray of the spectrum and the buzz of the gnat (which never rises above the second A) affect me with nearly similar sensations.” This is one more illustration of his belief in the identification of the effects of the ‘senses. A long passage concerning the limitations of our eyesight is still worth reading, wherever he obtained the information.

It was in the Evening Mirror that “The Raven” appeared, in the issue of January 29, 1845. It was prefaced by a note by Willis: “We are permitted to copy (in advance of publication) from the 2d No. of the American Review, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’ ”

Poe had sold the poem to the Review, where it appeared as “The Raven. By — Quarles.”,(40) with an introduction apparently by the editor of the Review, but bearing marks of Poe's metrical theories.

There has been a great deal of discussion concerning the priority of the publication dates of the Mirror and the Review. Willis's words seem clear enough, and he did not speak of an “advance copy” as has been suggested, but “in advance of publication.” Poe's relation with [page 439:] Willis and the Mirror would have suggested his offering the poem in manuscript to his own paper. He evidently did not see the Mirror proof, for there were errors like the repetition of “he” in the fifth line of the tenth stanza. This error was carried over to the Weekly Mirror of February 8th, but it does not appear in the Review. On the other side of the argument it is true that magazines were published in advance of their dates, and the Review may have been out before January 29th. Inasmuch as the Weekly Mirror of February 8th solemnly repeats the statement that it is publishing the poem “in advance of publication,” too much stress need not be laid on Willis's first notice. Evidently when matter was reprinted for the weekly edition it was simply copied verbatim. In any event, the honor of first accepting the poem belongs to George H. Colton, the editor of the American Review.

“The Raven” made an impression probably not surpassed by that of any single piece of American poetry. It was widely copied, parodied,(41) and one humorist even took over a page of the Mirror to suggest five alternatives as to the relation of Lenore to the poet.(42)

It seems almost certain that “The Raven” was a growth, that the first form began to shape itself before Poe left Philadelphia. Several of the stories about the earlier reading of the poem are undoubtedly apocryphal, but since none of them make any valid contribution to its interpretation or bear any credible testimony concerning vital changes, they are really of little consequence.

With our knowledge of Poe's methods in writing his other poems, the best argument for the gradual inception of “The Raven” lies in the few changes made by Poe in the many opportunities he had for revision, after publication. They are limited generally to slight verbal alterations. Three lines are materially altered — and these are improved;’ — but there is no such radical progress as in “To Helen” or “Israfel.”(43)

The arch enemy of plagiarism met during his lifetime many claimants for the honor of having provided him with ideas, words, metrical form, and even the raven himself. And since Poe's death, there have [page 440:] been many more such attributions. These may usually be disregarded. There is no doubt, however, that the bird was suggested by the raven in Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, especially since Poe called attention to the possible symbolic association between Barnaby and “Grip,” of which Dickens had not made full use. The similarity of the verses in Mrs. Browning's “Lady Geraldine's Courtship,”

and Poe's

also the less striking resemblance of her

and Poe's

have often been pointed out.

But as Stevenson remarked when he acknowledged his own indebtedness to Poe in the preface to Treasure Island, no one can have a corner in talking birds. And the theme of Mrs. Browning's rather turgid poem is quite different from that of “The Raven.”

More important is the spiritual ancestry of “The Raven” and here Poe is clearly his own ancestor. Those who have dismissed his account of the construction of the poem in “The Philosophy of Composition,” as an artificial deception, a hoax upon critics and public alike, are only superficially correct.(44) Poe did not write the poem in a series of logical and mathematical operations, of course. But there is no one of the various ideas he describes in his essay which might not have come to him. What his critics have not seen is that he did not have them all at once, in the preparation of one poem, or in the logical order in which he retails them in “The Philosophy of Composition.”

With most of them he had long been familiar. Poe was an artist [page 441:] in the short story, and his method of approach in this field is not at all unlike that which he describes in his account of the genesis of “The Raven.” At the beginning, he looks within himself for an effect. He exceeds his usual number of lines because he has chosen an effect which demands a climax of a nature which takes time to establish. He desires critical as well as popular appreciation. So he chooses an effect which is universal in its appeal. He thinks deliberately of the most universal of all effects, and he decides it is Beauty, beauty of the soul. This choice to Poe is obvious. He had been talking and writing about it all his thinking life, and his first poem “Tamerlane” is based upon the tragedy which springs from the sorrow which comes to a lover on the death of the woman he loves.

His choice of a raven, Poe said, was due to his need for a “non-reasoning creature, capable of speech.” Surely the success of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” provided him with this suggestion. The choice of a refrain is also quite natural; he had already used it in “Lenore,” and he knew its history in English poetry. “Nevermore,” or its variant, “No more” was in the “Sonnet to Zante” and “The Haunted Palace,” and the sonorous quality of the long “o” was an old story with him. Poe's use of the refrain “Nevermore,” however it came to him, is masterly. His insight into the perverse nature of man suggested to him the mounting torture of the lover as he puts the questions. First, shall he find peace in forgetfulness; second, is there peace in the future, and at last he cries

He knows the answer beforehand, yet he cannot keep from asking the question. It is one of the most profound impulses of human nature.

Poe spoke of the stanza in which this final appeal to the raven is framed as the climax of the poem, and he said he wrote it first. This again is quite possible, and his remark that even if he had been able to construct more vigorous stanzas preceding this one, he would have purposely enfeebled them, may not have been an afterthought.

It will be noticed that Poe did not include the two final stanzas in this category. There was no enfeebling here. Within them, he said, he [page 442:] established the Raven as “The emblem of Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.” But Poe in his essay, did not make clear a quality in these two stanzas which marks the poem with greatness. The seventeenth stanza, no longer an appeal, but a defiance, is the climax of action:

A lesser artist would have ended the poem here. But Poe knew that action is transitory, so he wrote another, in which he lifted the poem into a climax of feeling:

And there he could safely leave it, for the rest of time.

Reams of print have dealt with the question of whether the sorrow of the poet was described objectively by Poe or whether he was dramatizing a real love. This controversy is really unnecessary. Poe's dread of the loss of Virginia, born of her recurring danger and nurtured by his devotion, had become a spiritual offspring, as concrete to him as the child he was denied could ever have been. In one sense, therefore, the poet was describing an emotional creation which had become objective to him, and the vivid reality of the poem is a consequence. [page 443:] But the primary inspiration was the abstract love of a beautiful woman — whether she was Helen, Eleonora, Lenore, or any other variant of the same name. Whether she was actually dead, or whether he feared her inevitable doom, is a detail.

There were critics in those days, of course, who found fault with the lamplight and the footfalls — Poe's own explanation to Eveleth is best:

The weakest portion of “The Philosophy of Composition” is its discussion of metre. But that must be postponed until it is taken up in a later discussion of “The Rationale of Verse.”

Prompted perhaps by his “Imp of the Perverse,” Poe resumed in January, 1845 his relations with Griswold, who was preparing his Prose Writers of America. According to a letter printed in Griswold's “Preface,” Poe made the first approaches on January 10, 1845, offering something for the Prose Writers of America, yet expressing doubt concerning Griswold's feelings for him.(46) As this letter is not extant in Poe's hand, it may never have been written — at least in this form. Griswold wrote Poe on January 14th. I print in parallel columns the correct text from the autograph Ms. in the Boston Public Library and the text as printed by Griswold in his “Preface”: [page 444:]

It will be noticed that there is nothing in the real letter to show that it is in response to a letter by Poe. Griswold introduces the subject of the anthology, which he would certainly not have done in a reply to an offer of a contribution. But since he could falsify Poe's letters, there is no reason to doubt his ability to invent one.

Poe replied:

Poe would never have written a letter like this in reply to a curt note such as Griswold prints in his “Preface.” Again, there is nothing in Poe's reply of January 16th which implies any previous note by him. Griswold wished to represent Poe as making the advances toward a reconciliation. As in the case of the forgery of the Burton letter,(50) Griswold knew that the most dexterous method was to print Poe's [page 446:] letter of January 16th correctly, but to change its whole tenor by implication through his forgery of a letter by himself to which it was ostensibly a reply.

Shortly afterwards they met, superficially at least, on friendly terms, and Poe sent him material for selection. This letter is another specimen of Griswold's manipulation:

Griswold's changes not only represent Poe in a fawning attitude to a man he wishes to please, but they portray him as conceited and Griswold as a fine critic.

After all this correspondence Griswold published only “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in the prose anthology. Griswold was preparing a new edition of the Poets and Poetry of America, and Poe's next letter to him is important not only as providing material for another forgery but also because it proves that Poe permitted him to publish “The Raven” in short lines. Here Griswold omitted much of the letter but added another sentence which apparently convicts Poe out of his own mouth of injustice to the forger. The letter is not dated, but the postmark is “New York April 19,” and the reference to the lecture puts it in 1845: [page 449:]

 

One can smile at the vanity of a man who could thus steal some praise from the most acute critic of his day. But his alteration of the manly and self-respecting attempt of Poe to meet Griswold's advances, into fawning, sycophantic overtures to a critic whose good word was valuable, is unforgiveable.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 407:]

(1)  The Original Autograph Ms. letter has been mutilated for the signature. It is now in the Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore. I have inserted probable words in brackets.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 409:]

(2)  The original autograph letters are in the Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 410:]

(3)  The Duane copy of the Messenger is now in the collection of Mr. Henry Bradley Martin. There are some notes in Poe's hand, but none which identify his own work.

(4)  Letter II, New York, May 21, 1844, Doings of Gotham, p. 33.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 411:]

(5)  Copies of this journal are rare. Woodberry published the Letter of June 18th (II, 81-87) from the manuscript in the Ridgeway Library, Philadelphia, without, however, identifying the paper. The Letter of June 4th was published in the New York Times, January 14, 1912, as from the Columbia Spy. It remained for Mr. Jacob E. Spannuth to discover the file containing the seven letters, which he published under the title Doings of Gotham, with Introduction and Comments by Thomas O. Mabbott (Pottsville, 1929).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 412:]

(6)  Letter I, May 14, 1844, Doings of Gotham, pp. 25-26.

(7)  Letter III, May 27, 1844, Doings of Gotham, pp. 40-41.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 413:]

(8)  Letter IV, June 4, 1844, Doings of Gotham, p. 49.

(9)  Letter VI, June 18, 1844, Original Autograph Ms., Library Company of Philadelphia, Doings of Gotham, p. 68.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 414:]

(10)  For other unsigned articles in the Columbia Spy, which may be by Poe, see Doings of Gotham.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 415:]

(11)  Gill talked to Mrs. Brennan and gave a first-hand account in his Life, pp. 148-150. General James R. O’Beirne, Mrs. Brennan's son-in-law, added some facts in an interview, “Poe and ‘The Raven,’” in the N. Y. Mail and Express, April 21, 1900. Through the good offices of Dr. T. O. Mabbott, I have checked the personal accounts with Mr. H. Mott Brennan, whose grandfather was the Thomas Brennan whom Poe took with him to Mount Tom.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 416:]

(12)  In Graham's these six lines are repeated three times, but in later versions they occur only at the beginning and ending of the poem.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 417:]

(13)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

(14)  Ms. Letter, Sales Catalogue of Anderson's Galleries, January 25, 26, 1917.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 418:]

(15)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

(16)  One of these, at least, that of Mdlle. Victorine Lafourcade, had been reported in The Philadelphia Casket for September, 1827 (Campbell's Mind of Poe, p. 167). Another, possibly imaginary, of a “Mr. Stapleton,” has parallels in a tale “Buried Alive” in Blackwoods, October, 1821 (King, Texas Studies in English, X, 128). As usual, the sources were only incidental to Poe's story.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 419:]

(17)  See pp. 391-392.

(18)  Poe added a long passage in the revision of this story for the Tales of 1845. In order to avoid confusion, I have dealt with the story in its final form, including quotations which were not printed in 1844.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 420:]

(19)  Poe probably referred to Bush's Anastasis; or, The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, Rationally and Scripturally Considered (1844).

(20)  Copy of Original Autograph Ms. Through the courtesy of Mrs. Thomas F. Madigan. The journals interested took the matter seriously. See Poe's comment on The Regenerator, Broadway Journal, II (September 20, 1845), 174.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 422:]

(21)  “The Purloined Letter” was published in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal in November, 1844 (II, 348 f.) with extensive revision, principally in cutting down conversation. As Poe printed the longer version from The Gift in his Tales of 1845 he evidently preferred it, if indeed he had anything to do with the version as published in Chambers’.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 426:]

(22)  Woodberry prints a letter, dated “June, 1844” (II, 72-79), crediting it to the Griswold Collection. It is not signed and is not at the Boston Public Library. Since Anthon makes no mention in his reply of the delay of five months, I question the date Woodberry assigns to Poe's Letter, especially since Poe states that he has written “sixty-six tales.” The manuscript draft, now in the Huntington Library, is not dated or signed, and bears no writing on the verso of any of the sheets. I have printed from the Huntington Ms., but have not attempted to print the many crossed-out words, or repetitions, except in one case, “in 15 months,” where it is not clear which phrase Poe intended to omit.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 427:]

(23)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

(24)  Woodberry, II, 87-89, attributing it to the Griswold Ms., among which it is not at present.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 429:]

(25)  In the Philadelphia Saturday Museum, March 4, 1843.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 430:]

(26)  Autograph Ms. Letter, Harvard College Library.

(27)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

(28)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 431:]

(29)  Woodberry, Century Magazine, XLVIII (October, 1894), 863. “The Beechen Tree” was a poem by Thomas. The editor of the Aurora at this time was probably Thomas Dunn English.

(30)  Original Autograph Ms. Anthony Collection, New York Public Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 432:]

(31)  Original Autograph Ms., Harvard College Library. The remainder of the letter repeats the long account of his projected coöperative scheme for a magazine.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 433:]

(32)  This striking phrase is curiously like Poe's own expression in “The Literary Life of Thingum-Bob, Esq.” “After all what is it? — this indescribable something which men will persist in terming genius?” This story was published in The Southern Literary Messenger in December, 1844, while Lowell's article appeared in Graham's in February, 1845. But Poe had Lowell's biography by October 1, 1844. Did he appropriate the phrase from a manuscript entrusted to him? The Messenger was probably in print by November 15th, and Poe's stories often lay unpublished for some time in editorial hands. Moreover, his letter to Anthon, if not written in June, 1844, was certainly sent before he received Lowell's article, and Poe speaks of having written “sixty-six stories,” which would have included “The Literary Life of Thingum-Bob.” The phrase may have been in both men's minds from an earlier source. Lowell, in his essay on Dryden published in 1868, said, “Cowper, in a letter to Mr. Unwin (5th January, 1782) expressed what I think is the common feeling about Dryden, that with all his defects, he had that indefinable something we call Genius.” I thought the puzzle was solved. But the letter of Cowper, to which Lowell referred, does not contain the phrase! Nor does any other letter of Cowper to Mr. Unwin published in Hayley's edition (1806), so far as I can see.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 435:]

(33)  N. P. Willis, “The Death of Edgar A. Poe.” Home Journal, October 20, 1849.

(34)  Original Autograph Ms., Huntington Library.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 436:]

(35)  Poe's letter to Griswold, written January 16, 1845, and one of the authentic notes, invites Griswold to call at the Mirror office.

(36)  Weekly Mirror, I (October 12, 1844), 15, and (October 19), 28. These were reprints of similar articles in the Evening Mirror.

(37)  These articles are unsigned, but the passage quoted, from the Weekly Mirror of February 8, 1845, is in Ms. in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 438:]

(38)  In the papers of the late President Gilman of Johns Hopkins. Dr. J. C. French has kindly furnished me with photostats of the corrected pages. In the first two installments, there are more than twenty corrections. See his article “Poe's Revision of Marginalia” in Ex Libris, Quarterly Leaflet issued by Friends of the Library, IX (January, 1940), 2-3, containing a facsimile of page 493 of the Democratic Review. [[Note: Quinn also reproduces two of the pages, showing Poe's manuscript changes.]]

(39)  The “Marginalia” should be read in the Virginia Edition, Vol. XVI. Harrison omitted, however, the installments from the Democratic Review for July, 1846, and from Graham's for March, 1848. Griswold did not follow the arrangement of the text in the magazines, except for the introductory paragraphs. There is a good deal omitted in his third volume of the Works (1850), and his version was reprinted by Stoddard and others. [[Note: for the full text of the original installments, see the texts listed here.]]

(40)  The American Review. A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature and Science, I (February, 1845), 143-145.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 439:]

(41)  See the Weekly Mirror, II, 62 and 132.

(42)  Weekly Mirror, II (April 26, 1845), 42-43.

(43)  The eleventh stanza was changed by Poe in the Broadway Journal to read as we now have it. In the American Review it had read in part:

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 440:]

(44)  Notwithstanding Mrs. Weiss's statement, quoted by Gill, Life, p. 150.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 443:]

(45)  Poe to Eveleth, December 15, 1846. Original Autograph Ms., Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

(46)  This letter is printed in Virginia Edition, XVII, 196, from the “Griswold Memoir.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 444:]

(47)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 444, continuing to the bottom of page 445:]

(48)  Griswold's “Preface” to his “Memoir.” The Literati, 1850, p. vi. I have [page 445:] italicized the words not in Griswold's real letter. It will be noticed that Griswold also changed the place and date of writing this letter, to make his account in the “Preface” of the meeting more probable.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 445:]

(49)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library. “Confidential” seems to be erased, but it is clearly in Poe's hand.

(50)  See pp. 279-281.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 448:]

(51)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.

(52)  Griswold's “Preface,” The Literati, 1850, p. vi. I have italicized some of the important additions of Griswold. Notice that he has omitted much that Poe wrote, or has modified it.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 449:]

(53)  Griswold's “Preface” to Memoir. The Literati, 1850, p. vi. Killis Campbell called attention in his Mind of Poe, page 91, to the fact that Poe's “Notice” of Hoffman's sketch did not appear until May 17th!

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 450:]

(54)  Original Autograph Ms., Griswold Collection, Boston Public Library.