Text: William Henry Gravely, Jr., “Chapter 08,” The Early Political and Literary Career of Thomas Dunn English Story, dissertation, 1953 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 430:]

Whatever were the motives that led Poe to renew an association with a man whom he had only recently described to F. W. Thomas as “a bullet-headed and malicious villain,” it was Poe himself who made the first conciliatory move if English accurately recorded the facts in his reminiscences. “I resided in New York when Poe came there,” English wrote, “being engaged in managing a dally journal for a specific purpose. Poe soon sought me out and became my frequent visitor. He seemed all right in his habits, but very dejected and with apparent forebodings as to his future. N. P. Willis, who was a very kindhearted man, gave him employment in the office of The Evening Mirror.(1) Actually, of course, when English arrived in New York about the middle of July, 1844, to take charge of the Aurora, Poe had already lived either in New York or just a few miles outside the city for more than three months. But this fact does not seriously [page 431:] conflict with English's statement. Shortly before English moved to New York, Poe and his family had apparently already given up their lodgings in the city and had gone to board at the home of Patrick Brennan and his wife, a few miles out in the country. Since Poe lived a secluded life at that time and hardly ever visited the city until long after English established himself there, English may not have known where Poe was or even that he had lived in the city of New York after leaving Philadelphia. In his letter to Thomas of September 8 Poe remarked: “I have left Philadelphia, and am living, at present, about five miles out of New York. For the last seven or eight months I have been playing hermit in earnest, nor have I seen a living soul out of my family. . . .”(2) It is quite possible, then, that English did not think of Poe as a resident of New York until the latter put an end to his self-imposed isolation in the country and sought a life of renewed activity in the city.

It is impossible to say with any certainty just when the relationship was resumed, for biographers of Poe have never been able to establish conclusively even the approximate date of Poe's return to the city proper. The confusion is due largely to the impossibility of reconciling Willis's account of Poe's connection with the Evening Mirror and Poe's description of his own way of life in a letter to [page 432:] Thomas dated January 4, 1845. In his article, “Death of Edgar Poe,”(3) written about five years after Poe began contributing to the columns of the Evening Mirror, Willis states that he employed Poe “for several months, as critic and subeditor” and that Poe “resided with his wife and mother, at Fordham, a few miles out of town, but was at his desk in the office, from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press.” He also states that he had no knowledge of Poe's removal to New York until Mrs. Clemm came to him, seeking employment for Poe. Needless to say, Willis was badly mistaken in stating that Poe lived at Fordham while he worked in the Mirror office. Evidently, he confused the Brennan farm with Poe's later residence. But, as Quinn points out, it is difficult to see how Willis could have “imagined Poe's coming to the office from the country, even if he had confused the two places.(4)

At any rate, it has generally been assumed — since there can be no doubt that Poe began contributing to the Mirror as early as October, 1844 — that Poe's office work on the paper began during the same month. Seemingly on the basis of Willis's account, Hervey Allen makes an unsupported statement that Poe journeyed a total of ten miles back and forth to work, sometimes on foot because he lacked money for public transportation.(5) He further states that Poe [page 433:] moved his family back to the city in November in order that he might be close to his office and because his energies were unequal to the long walks which his living out in country made necessary.(6) But these statements cannot be reconciled with two remarks in a letter from Poe to Thomas of January 4, 1845. “You know I do not live in town,” Poe wrote,” — very seldom visit it — and, of course, am not in the way of matters and things as I used to be.”(7) Further on in the same letter Poe added: In about three weeks, I shall move into the City, and recommence a life of activity under better auspices, I hope, than ever before.”(8) According to Quinn, “Poe's statement that he seldom visited the city seems to place his office work on the Mirror after January, 1845,”(9) although there is no reason to conclude that this work did not begin before the end of the month. Although Quinn notes that Poe's statement is inconsistent with Willis's account, he offers no solution other than his comment that Poe joined the staff of the Mirror “either directly or by correspondence in October, 1844.”(10) Thus the confusion remains both as to how soon Poe's office work began and as to when the family moved from the country to the city. It is pretty certain, however, that Poe was working regularly in the office of [page 434:] the Mirror by January l6, 1845, for on that date he wrote to Griswold, suggesting a meeting either at a place designated by the latter or “at the Mirror Office, any morning about 10.”(11) In the light of Poe's letters to Thomas and Griswold, and of Willis's recollections, probably the safest assumption is that Poe's office work on the Mirror began between January 4 and January 16, and that he continued to live in the country until near the end of January or perhaps until he gave up his office work on the Mirror to become one of the editors of The Broadway Journal.

It is highly improbable that English and Poe renewed their association any later than January, 1845, for by February 12 the March number of English's long-promised magazine, The Aristidean, had appeared,(12) and in it was one of the most amusingly devastating of all Poe's book reviews “George Jones’ Ancient America.” Moreover, in the bound volume of The Aristidean English returns his thanks to no less than sixteen collaborators, including Poe, for their aid in the publication of the magazine.(13) [page 435:] Although English undoubtedly did most of the editing and contributed by far the largest share of the articles, his use of the term collaborators indicates that even before the publication of the first number he probably had an arrangement with a large group of writers whereby they would be called on to furnish copy for various numbers of the magazine. Each of the sixteen collaborators contributed at least one article, and several furnished as many as three or four each. Whether English had entered into an arrangement with any or all of his contributors by the time his prospectus appeared, it is impossible to say, but his designation of them as collaborators would at least suggest the possibility of such an arrangement. At any rate, it will be recalled that English's project was announced in the New York Evening Mirror on November 25, 1844, and that his prospectus had been printed for some time before January, 1845.(14)

It is quite likely that Poe exerted some influence on the general plan of English's magazine. In the autumn of 1844 Poe was much engrossed in a scheme of his own whereby [page 436:] some of the most prominent writers In the United States would form a coalition, publish a magazine of their own, and supply It with their own contributions. In a letter to James Russell Lowell dated October 28, 1844, Poe explained his plan as follows:

The scheme which Poe proposed in this letter is essentially the same as that which he had already broached to Lowell in a letter of March 50, 1844.(16)

But Poe was still primarily interested in establishing a magazine of his own, as his letter to Charles Anthon(17) probably written in October, 1844 — unmistakably reveals. In this letter, Poe outlined in considerable detail the kind of magazine he hoped to found with Anthon's financial aid. It is clear that he wished to reach a more cultivated type of reader than he had been able to reach when editor of Graham's Magazine. Partly because of Poe's excellent contributions and able editing, but partly, too, because of expensive embellishments and a yearly price of only three dollars, Graham had been able to build up a subscription list of about 50,000 among a group of readers who, as a whole, did not read widely. But the low price charged for Graham's despite the costly embellishments precluded the possibility of very large profits even when the magazine was at the peak of its popularity. Poe was convinced that a magazine designed to appeal to a more discerning type of reader through its superior articles and format [page 438:] could attract many more readers than Graham's had ever been able to attract, even though it were to cost five dollars annually rather than three. Poe felt, moreover, that a subscription price of five dollars would alienate very few subscribers among the permanent reading public, and he also felt that money accruing from this increased price, together with money saved by a complete eschewal of garish embellishments, would insure handsome profits. Although the magazine described to Anthon was not to be controlled by a coalition and hence necessarily differed in some respects from that proposed to Lowell, its general ideals and mechanical features were to be the same.

Of course, The Aristidean was in many respects a far different kind of magazine from any that Poe had in mind. It was much less literary in tone and much more concerned with politics and social reform. Thoroughly Democratic in its sympathies, it championed equal rights, and, being anti-royalist, tended also to be anti-British. It strongly urged the annexation of Texas and of other territory adjacent to the United States, and it advocated the abolition of punishment by death. In all these matters it merely reflected policies in which English, as editor, was intensely interested, but which aroused little or no sympathy in Poe.

In other respects, however, The Aristidean embodied a good many of Poe's ideas. In his letter to Lowell of October 28, Poe proposed a coalition of twelve writers [page 439:] who would sustain a publication of their own by means of their own contributions. Aside from two brief translations from the Spanish, everything published in The Aristidean was furnished by sixteen collaborators. Also, in the same letter to Lowell, Poe mentioned that one of the aims of the proposed magazine would be “to further justice.” The very title of The Aristidean, as well as the motto selected by English for his magazine cover — ”Men call me cruel; I am not: — I am Just” — provides another interesting point of similarity. Two of the cardinal principles of Poe's theory of literary criticism were that the critic should be absolutely fearless and independent, and that he should never allow personal considerations to modify in any way his evaluation of an author's work. Hence, in his letter to Lowell of March 50, 1844, Poe stated that the chief aims of the magazine which he proposed “should be independence, Truth, and Originality.”(18) Although English later condemned Poe for the severity of his criticism, there is nothing in English's advertisement of the second volume of The Aristidean, published in The Broadway Journal not long before the demise of the latter magazine, to indicate that his conception of the critic's duty differed from Poe's at that time. “The aim of the editor,” said English, “has been to establish a Journal of Art and Letters, whose papers should be distinguished for force, vigor, sarcasm [page 440:] and pith, rather than an unutterable and bathetic profundity; one, which should not fear to expose literary quackery, and give to writers a proper precedence; one that had the moral courage to praise an enemy's good works, and censure a friend's bad ones; one that would maintain a rigorous independence on literary, political and religious matters; one that was insensible to fear, and deaf to favor; and one that depended for success on the merit of its papers, and not on the names announced as contributors.”(19) English's editorial aims as expressed in this advertisement are identical In many ways with those which Poe had published long before in his prospectuses of The Penn Magazine and of The Stylus.

Admittedly, The Aristidean was modeled to some extent on The American Review, the January (1845) number of which was published far in advance in the autumn of 1844. A Whig magazine edited by George H. Colton, The American Review was priced at five dollars per year. It was designed as a magazine of higher quality than the three-dollar periodical available to Democratic readers entitled The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. As Professor Mabbott pointed out long ago, English hoped to profit at the expense of the latter magazine by offering to Democratic readers a five dollar magazine comparable in quality to The American Review.(20) [page 441:] According to Poe's review of the first number of The Aristidean, the cover of English's magazine was merely a duplication of that of The American Review.(21)

Aside from the appearance of the cover, however, The Aristidean seems to have embodied mechanical features which were more characteristic of the magazine proposed by Poe to Anthon than of The American Review. In his letter to Anthon, Poe said: “The journal I proposed would be a large octavo of 128 pp. printed with clear, bold type, in single column, on the finest paper, and disdaining everything of which is termed ‘embellishment’ with the exception of an occassional [sic] portrait of a literary man, or some well-engraved wood design in obvious illustration of the text.”(22) The price Poe expected to charge was five dollars per year. English advertised The Aristidean in remarkably similar fashion. “The ARISTIDEAN,” he said, “is published monthly, each number containing 80 pages, octavo, printed on handsome white paper, with bold, clear type, at Five Dollars per annum, payable in advance.”(23) Especially significant, however, is the fact that The Aristidean embodied two [page 442:] important mechanical features proposed by Poe which English did not mention in his advertisement. It was printed in single column, and it contained occasional portraits of ) literary men, as well as wood designs illustrating the text. The American Review, on the other hand, was printed in double column and contained no illustrations of any kind. Although Poe generously welcomed the appearance of both The American Review and The Aristidean,(24) he could have hardly been altogether happy to see two new five-dollar magazines get under way in New York at a time when he was making every effort to start one of his own. Indeed, the establishment of The Aristidean not long after another five dollar magazine had begun operating successfully may have hastened Poe's decision to postpone his own efforts and to take advantage of Charles F. Briggs’ proposal that he join the editorial staff of The Broadway Journal. At any rate, the following comment in The Town, facetiously directed at English shortly after the first number of his magazine appeared, at least suggests such a possibility: “Mr. EDGAR A, POE has it in contemplation to publish a new five dollar Magazine. If a wide celebrity, as the most interesting and original of Magazine writers, and a fearless critic be of any avail, it may succeed unless prevented by the overshadowing popularity of the Aristidean, by ‘Doctor Thomas [page 443:] DUNN ENGLISH, M. D.’ as he whilom wrote his name.”(25)

Whether the publication of The Aristidean had any direct bearing on Poe's immediate plans or not, about nine or ten days after the first number appeared, Poe entered into an agreement with John Bisco, publisher of The Broadway Journal, to assist Charles F. Briggs in the editing of the latter magazine. Although the contract, dated February 21, specifically states’ that Poe's duties were to be those of assistant editor, Bisco agreed to pay him one third of the profits yielded by the magazine.(26) On the following day I it was formally announced in The Broadway Journal that Poe and Henry C. Watson would thereafter “be associated with the Editorial department,” the letter having charge of the Musical department.(27) Not until the number of March 8 was issued, however, did Poe's name formally appear as one of the editors.

Meanwhile, Poe had already favorably noticed the March number of The Aristidean in the Evening Mirror of February 12. There can be no doubt whatever that Poe wrote this notice, for he included the long introductory paragraph, with only minor alterations, in an installment of his “Marginalia” appearing in Godey's Lady's Book for September, 1845.(28) [page 444:] The notice in the Mirror, which was entitled “Magazine Literature,” is as follows:

Inasmuch as no contribution to The Aristidean was signed and the identity of the individual contributors was purposely concealed until all six numbers of the magazine appeared in a single bound volume, Poe would probably net have felt free to state unequivocally who was the author of any particular article even though he had been informed of the fact. Since he was one of English's collaborators, however, and since he never mistakenly assigned any article appearing in The Aristidean to the wrong author, we may be fairly sure that he knew more about the authorship of the articles he discussed than he pretended to know. Both Poe's notices of The Aristidean and English's reviews of Poe's [page 446:] tales and poems, shortly to be discussed, indicate that the two editors supplied each other with detailed information that mutually concerned them. The “very beautiful poem” which Poe correctly attributed to English and which he promised to transfer to the columns of the Mirror appeared the following day without comment, under the title of “A Lover's Song”:

Although the general tone of Poe's brief review is favorable to English and to his magazine, one must be wary of accepting entirely at its face value either this review in the Mirror or any other notice of The Aristidean which [page 447:] Poe afterwards published from time to time in The Broadway Journal. All of them must be read in the light of the friendship of convenience which Poe and English had formed, as well as in the light of the disparaging remarks which Poe made about English's literary attainments after the two men had finally broken with each other. When Poe wrote his sketch of English in “The Literati,” he belittled the poetry of a man whose work he had often praised — ostensibly, at least — during the preceding year. English caustically commented on this apparent change of front when he replied to Poe. “His review of my style and manner,” said English, “is amusing when contrasted with his former laudation, almost to sycophancy, of my works. Whether he lied then or now, is a matter of little moment.”(31) Poe's answer to this comment was equally caustic. “I solemnly say,” Poe remarked, “that in no paper of mine did there ever appear one word about this gentleman — unless of the broadest and most unmistakable irony — that was not printed from the MS. of the gentleman himself.”(32) At the same time, however, Poe condescendingly acknowledged that he had been guilty of attempting to patronize English.(33) Obviously, Poe's sarcastic retort was an intentional overstatement of the [page 448:] truth.(34) Even though his motive may have been primarily self-interested, he frequently said complimentary things about English and his magazine which contain no trace of irony whatever. It is true that no single notice of The Aristidean in either the Evening Mirror or The Broadway Journal is without one or more comments which Poe apparently made with his tongue in his cheek, But praise and censure often occurred in a single review by Poe, and his censure was not infrequently transmitted by means of ironical comments. Thus, Poe's sarcastic retort may be regarded merely as one of the studied inaccuracies or insulting half-truths which he employed from the beginning to the end of his rejoinder to English.

How Poe often wrote with his tongue in his cheek, even while he was being complimentary on the whole, is clearly revealed in his review of the March number of The Aristidean quoted above. By way of commendation, Poe made the appearance of the new periodical an occasion for a brief essay on the importance of magazine literature in general. Aside from the cover, to which he took mild exception, Poe pronounced The Aristidean to be an excellent magazine. Even though he was amused at the way in which English indifferently [page 449:] praised his enemies and rasped his friends, Poe commended him for his impartiality and made it clear that such a critical attitude was entirely in accord with his own. Although one might suspect his sincerity in asserting that one of English's poems was “quite worthy of Harrington or Carew,” there is surely no broad or unmistakable evidence that he was being sarcastic in praising it so extravagantly. Else, he hardly would have reprinted it without comment in the Evening Mirror on the day after his notice appeared. On the other hand, in appraising certain individual articles which may be classified either wholly or in part as anti-gallows propaganda, Poe clearly wrote with Ironical intent. A man who supposedly told Briggs that he looked upon all reformers as madmen could hardly have Intended to be taken seriously when he made the following observations: “‘Whom shall we hang?’ is a vigorous paper of just the right length, on a topic of precisely the right kind. ‘The Ropemaker’ is in verse, just such a paper as ‘Whom shall we hang?’ is in prose, and by this we intend a compliment, beyond doubt. ‘Arrow-Tip’ is a long story — too long.” The very inanity of Poe's observations, if taken at their face value, indicates that they are studiedly ironical. Nor would Poe have felt the necessity of explaining that “beyond doubt” he was complimenting the author of “The Ropemaker” (who was English, by the way) in comparing it with “Whom Shall We Hang?” unless he was being facetiously contemptuous. [page 450:]

“Whom Shall We Hang?”(35) is a caustic article by Henry S. Patterson in which the author pointed out how inconsistent the clergy were in approving punishment by hanging. Although they preached the doctrine that God, in his own good time, called the sinner to repentance, they approved of a form of punishment which frequently sent to perdition an unregenerate sinner who might have repented had he lived longer. English's “The Ropemaker”(36) is a poem of four stanzas in which the ropemaker is represented as gloating over the evil uses to which his product will be put. The third stanza is typical of the rest:

It is difficult to imagine Poe's having been genuinely pleased with verse of this kind. “Arrow-Tip”(37) is a rather long drawn-out and loosely constructed novelette in nine chapters, by Walt Whitman. It is the story of how a mentally warped hunchback and half-breed named Boddo avenged himself on a noble Indian named Arrow-Tip by allowing him to be hanged for an alleged murder that was never committed. Boddo knew that the man supposedly murdered was alive, but he withheld the information that would have saved Arrow-Tip's life. [page 451:] Although Whitman's account of how the noble Indian stoically met his unjust punishment suffers from romantic sentimentality, his handling of incident is fairly effective. English, however, thought much more highly of “Arrow Tip” than Poe did. “We must apologise to our readers,” English remarked editorially, “for the length of the tale — ‘Arrow-Tip’ — but we could not bear to cut it In two; and it was too good to be excluded.”(38) Poe's disparaging comment that the tale was “long — too long” indicates how far it fell short of measuring up structurally to his own conception of a skillfully designed tale. His observation is interesting, however, for it is the first of only three comments which Poe is known to have made about anything that Whitman wrote. Later, Poe called another story by Whitman — ”Richard Parker's Widow” — ”admirable.”(39) Whitman also contributed a brief story entitled “Shirval”(40) to the March number of The Aristidean, but it drew no comment from Poe. It is a delicately conceived fictionized account of Jesus’ coming to the city of Main and raising from the dead the only son of a grief-stricken widow.

Five important notices of The Aristidean appeared in various numbers of The Broadway Journal. Since neither [page 452:] Poe's name nor his initials were attached to any of these notices and since none of them was acknowledged by Poe in the complete copy of The Broadway Journal which he presented to Sarah Helen Whitman with a good many of his anonymous contributions initialed in pencil,(41) the question of whether Poe wrote them or not must be determined chiefly on the basis of internal evidence and, to some extent, on the basis of presumptive evidence. In considering this question, we must not lose sight of the fact that the absence of a pencilled “P.” beside numerous brief critical notices in Mrs. Whitman's copy is no proof at all that Poe did not write them. As early as the year 1909, Killis Campbell demonstrated that a considerable amount of unacknowledged editorial and critical writing in The Broadway Journal might safely be assigned to Poe without reservation. Some of this writing, as Campbell pointed out, Poe may have unintentionally overlooked, and some of It, he may not have wished to acknowledge.(42) After his bitter quarrel with English, Poe would hardly have been disposed to acknowledge to Mrs. Whitman or to anyone else the authorship of any unsigned notice in which he had singled out English's individual contributions for excessive, even though at times patronizing, praise.

On the basis of either internal or presumptive evidence, [page 453:] we may safely assign to Poe the first two notices of The Aristidean that appeared in The Broadway Journal and, almost as safely, the third and fourth.(43) The first of these appeared in the number of February 15, only three days after Poe had reviewed the March number of English's magazine in the Evening Mirror. Although the notice of February 15 appeared before Poe had actually joined the staff of The Broadway Journal, and that of May 3, while he still shared the editorial duties with Briggs, these very notices are the ones that contain the most convincing internal evidence of Poe's handiwork. Not only do they have points in common, but each of them resembles, in a somewhat different way, the notice which Poe is known to have written for the Evening Mirror. Although the notices appearing in The Broadway Journal of October 4 and November 29 are slighter and therefore less identifiable, stylistically, as Poe's, they appeared at a time when Poe was sole literary editor and therefore presumably furnished most, if not nearly all, of the brief miscellaneous editorial and critical comments. The authorship of the notice in the final number of The Broadway Journal, January 3, 1846, is doubtful. It will be seen shortly that both [page 454:] Poe and English denied writing it and that they tried to pin it on each other.

Let us now proceed to follow chronologically the relationship between English and Poe while they were magazine editors in the same city. Wherever the notices of The Aristidean in The Broadway Journal happen to fall in this chronological account, we shall examine the evidence pointing to Poe as the author. The notice in The Broadway Journal of February 15 begins as follows:

The author's comment on the difficulty of classifying English's drinking song and his description of it as non-Aristidean are obviously Ironical observations, as well as thoroughly Poesque and suggestive of the tone adopted in a portion of Poe's review in the Mirror. But the following extract from the notice in The Broadway Journal of February 15 provides far more substantial evidence of Poe's authorship:

Now let us compare the foregoing excerpt with the last two sentences from a notice of the April number of The Aristidean in The Broadway Journal of May 3. The notice of May 3, as we shall see later, can be safely assigned to Poe on grounds of internal evidence. Commenting on the morale of The [page 456:] Aristidean, the reviewer says:

The similarity of thought and phrasing in the foregoing passages is exceedingly strong evidence that the reviews of February 15 and May 5 are the work of the same author. If, then, it can be shown that the review of May 5 is Poe's beyond any reasonable doubt, it automatically follows that the review of February 15 is almost certainly his also.

But there is still further reason for attributing the review of February 15 to Poe. Just as Poe's review of February 12 in the Mirror begins with a paragraph on the growing popularity of magazine literature, so the review of February 15 ends with a rather similar paragraph:

When the foregoing paragraph was written, not only the establishment of a really Influential magazine, but the passing of an international copyright law had been very much on Poe's mind for a good many months. Less than a year previously, Poe had remarked in a letter to Lowell: “How dreadful is the condition of our Literature! To what are things tending? We want two things certainly: — an International Copy-Right Law, and a well-founded Monthly Journal, of sufficient ability, circulation, and character, to control and so give tone to, our Letters.”(48) Although these remarks to Lowell, considered alone, would certainly not justify the assumption that Poe wrote the notice in question, they do tend to reinforce evidence that is more substantially based.

In the March number of The Aristidean appeared the first of the critical essays which Poe contributed to English's magazine and which have not yet been published in any edition of Poe's works, except insofar as some of the material in one or more of them may also be found in certain of his betterknown reviews. It is a review of a book which is a real curiosity of literature, both internally and externally — George Jones’ An Original History of Ancient America. This extraordinary book was first published in London in 1843.

If the eccentric George Jones did not purposely falsify the facts of his early life, he was English-born and [page 458:] migrated to the United States at the age of seven, along with his family.(49) He early developed into a competent actor and gained considerable fame in Shakespearian roles — particularly in the role of Hamlet. He first appeared on the New York boards as a leading man at the Bovery Theatre in the spring of 1831.(50) Although a man of Inordinate selfconceit, he became a passionate hero-worshiper of Shakespeare and at times carried his idolatry beyond the limits of good taste and common sense. At any rate, his early devotion was soon rewarded, for at the age of twenty four he journeyed to his native country and before returning to the United States “actually passed the night of the 25th of April 1835, on the oaken floor of the room in which the Bard was born.”(51) No one else, apparently, had been so honored since Shakespeare's room had “been shewn as the poetical Loretto of Britain.(52) But Jones’ crowning reward during his first visit to his native country was an invitation [page 459:] to deliver, on April 25, 1856, the first jubilee oration on Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. It was delivered before the Royal Shakesperian Institute, as well as before the municipal authorities, and, in its printed fora, was ostentatiously dedicated to King William IV.(53) Jones returned to the New York stage late in 1856, married the following year, and then disappeared from the New York boards until sometime during the decade of the 1860's. His wife, Malinda, who was also an actress, resumed her stage career in New York in 1842, but Jones apparently went to England in 1841(54) and remained in Europe until, with his second wife, he again appeared in the theatrical circles of New York, posing as “Count Joannes” and making himself the laughingstock of the theatre-going public. For a part of the time from 1858 to 1841, Jones lived in Richmond, Virginia, where on July 4, 1840, he delivered a lengthy oration on the National Independence.(55)

Thomas Dunn English, whose acquaintance with George Jones could net have dated back to the latter's palmier days as an actor, wrote an account of the eccentric tragedian [page 460:] which is both informative and amusing. English wrote his story in 1900 — less than two years before his death:

Although English's account shows considerable familiarity with Jones’ life, it is not entirely free of inaccuracies. Particularly noticeable are the Incorrect statements concerning the publication of the very work of Jones which Poe reviewed in English's magazine. English states that two handsome volumes were published and that the first was dedicated to Lord Cowley and the second, to the King of Prussia. According to the records of the British Museum, no second volume was ever published. Moreover, although English is correct in asserting that Lord Cowley [page 462:] befriended Jones when the latter went to France,(57) the first volume of The History of Ancient America was inscribed, not to Lord Cowley, but to the King of Prussia. The work as a whole, although never completed, was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The general thesis of Jones* book is concisely stated in the first paragraph of Poe's review, the tone of the whole review being that of contemptuous ridicule mingled with rollicking merriment:

However absurd Jones’ theory may seem to the modern reader, it was apparently taken quite seriously and believed implicitly by certain distinguished persons in [page 463:] Jones’ day. In the Preface to his Tecumseh and the Prophet of the West — a play which he had completed before he wrote The History of Ancient America, but which he withheld from publication until 1844 — Jones not only defended himself rigorously against the attacks of his “atheistical” enemies, but used these attacks as an excuse to publish, in his Preface, letters from men of distinction who had commended him for proving what he had set out to prove in the first volume.(59) Those who had written such letters were Samuel R. Meyrick, the English antiquary; R. Skelton Mackenzie, the critic; and G. R. P, James, the novelist. James mentioned that he had purchased the book on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, who was convinced by Jones’ argument that the Tyrians had peopled the southern part of America.

After explaining the general purpose of the book, Poe sarcastically commends Jones for having, “by hook or by crook,” performed his mission as successfully as other writers on American antiquities had done, and also for not having been much more unoriginal than they had been. Then, after giving a sample of Jones’ style and sarcastically commenting on the self-glorification of his eloquent concluding remarks, Poe turns to the externals of the book, which he feels to be in thorough keeping with its absurd contents. Although pointedly flippant in tone, Poe's comments are [page 464:] worth giving at some length to show how his analytical mind rebelled against specious argument or pretentiousness of any kind. Poe has frequently been accused of lacking a sense of humor, but whether the accusation is just or not, there can be no doubt that he had a keen sense of the ludicrous, as the remaining excerpts from his review will demonstrate. A portion of his criticism of the externals of Jones’ book is as follows:

Perhaps the most entertaining part of Poe's hilarious and ruthless exposé of the external features of Jones’ book is his playful attempt to describe for the edification of his readers three engravings — one of which precedes, and the other two of which are set in the midst of, the ponderous verbiage of the title pages. Having already indicated the relative position of these engravings by a circle and two squares, Poe amuses himself by trying to make his readers see the engravings in the ridiculous light in which he sees them. The first is an ostentatious circular engraving of George Jones himself: [page 466:]

It is interesting to observe the manner in which Poe commented on his own review of Jones’ book when he noticed the March number of The Aristidean in both the Evening Mirror and The Broadway Journal. His brief remark in the Mirror — ”The critique on George Jones is powder wasted”(62) — may have had a double meaning. Undoubtedly, Poe meant that the absurdities of the book would kill it soon enough anyhow, without the need of a critic to hasten the process. But he may have meant, also, that few people would ever see his slashing review; for after he quarreled with English he sarcastically commented on the narrow circulation of The [page 468:] Aristidean. Poe's notice in The Broadway Journal contained a somewhat more extended comment: “Article III. is a notice of George Jones’ Ancient America, the fairest specimen of an elegant book that we have seen in many a day. The notice is funny enough, and it has a little vignette by Barley, worthy of Punch. This article might have been written by Aristides himself without casting a shadow upon his reputation.”(63) it is doubtful whether any reasonable person would dispute Poe's humorous assertion that his review had dealt justly by George Jones.

The April number of The Aristidean also contains a critical essay which is attributed to Poe in the table of contents of the bound volume of English's magazine: a lengthy, but rather cursory, discussion of five separate volumes of Longfellow's poems.(64) These were various editions of Poems on Slavery, Voices of the Night, Ballads and other Poems, The Spanish Student, and The Waif. Quinn accepts this article as Poe's on the ground that the “repetition of the charge of plagiarism from the Broadway Journal, I (March 29), p. 198” so identifies it.(65) An equally valid reason for the same conclusion may be found in the close resemblance between the first paragraph of the review in The Aristidean and a paragraph relating to Longfellow in Poe's Introduction [page 469:] to “The Literati of Mew York City,” first published in Godey's Lady's Book for May, 1846.(66) in the latter paragraph is a repetition of the assertion contained in the former that Longfellow's reputation was due chiefly to his social position as an owner of property and as a professor at Harvard University. There is also a repetition of the assertion that in literary circles outside his own coterie Longfellow was universally much less respected as a poet of original genius that he was inside his own immediate group.

There is convincing internal evidence, then, to prove that English correctly assigned the review of Longfellow's poems to Poe. But it must be admitted that at least some of the evidence indicates that he did not. The most puzzling contrary evidence may be found in a review entitled “Poe's Tales,” which appeared in the October number of The Aristidean and which is attributed to English in the bound volume of the magazine.(67) In this review is the following passage relating to “The Haunted Palace,” which occurs in the course of a brief discussion of “The Fall of the House of Usher”: “‘The Haunted Palace,’ from which we stated in our review of his poems, LONGFELLOW had stolen, all, that was worth stealing, of his ‘BELEAGUERED CITY,’ and which is here introduced with effect, was originally sent to O'SULLIVAN of the ‘Democratic Review,’ and by him rejected, [page 470:] because ‘he found it impossible to comprehend it.’”(68) Now if English wrote the review of Poe's tales as he indicated he did by initialing it in his table of contents, how can we explain that in the passage just quoted he unquestionably claims the authorship of, or — as editor — accepts responsibility for, a review which, in the table of contents, he assigned to Poe? It is difficult to escape the conclusion either that the authorship of one of the reviews was intentionally misrepresented or that there was some measure of collaboration in the writing of one or both which, in English's opinion, justified his action.

Another indication that English may have had a hand in the review of Longfellow's poems, or at least that he and Poe had both agreed to create the impression that it came from the editorial pen, may be found in an article by English entitled “The American Poets,”(69) which also appeared in the October number of The Aristidean. This article contains an imitation in verse of Longfellow's poetic style, accompanied by a letter written by English himself but allegedly addressed to the editor of The Aristidean by Longfellow. Longfellow is represented as having said in part: “I learned three months since, that you had abused me, and denied my claims to originality. What was it your business, if I did steal the ideas of others. I stole [page 471:] nothing from you. Why concern yourself about the losses, by theft, of other people? I will steal as much as I please You have made yourself a literary policeman — but I defy you.”(70) in a postscript signed H. W. L., Longfellow is made to say: “Take another tack. Praise my poems; and all the magazines wilt swear you are the greatest writer in the country. Think of the advantages of puffing.”(71)

Stylistically, there is less evidence of English's hand in the review of Longfellow's poems than of Poe's. Yet, at times, there is a coarseness of tone which, ordinarily, is more in keeping with English's abusive manner than with Poe's. In his notice of the very number of The Aristidean in which the review of Longfellow's poems occurs, Poe described the review as being possibly “a little coarse.”(72) True, this remark might well have been part of a coverup device which Poe employed to dissociate himself from the authorship of the review in the public mind; but, if so, why would he have said in the same notice that “coarseness of vituperation” was the rock upon which The Aristidean was “most in danger of splitting”(73) it is strange that he should have censured The Aristidean. even mildly, because of a fault for which he himself was partly responsible. Finally, there are a few expressions like [page 472:] “our old friend, SATAN,” which seem more typical of English's style than of Poe's.(74) In another article in the same number of The Aristidean, English employed the expression, “our old friend, the DEVIL.(75)

Although well written, this review is coarser in tone than any of Poe's replies to “Outis.” It begins with an acknowledgment that Longfellow had to some extent deserved the reputation he had won, but the acknowledgment is qualified with the observation that he never would have received much acclaim if he had not married an heiress and thereby attained to a position of social prominence. According to the reviewer, Longfellow was everywhere considered to be a greatly overrated poet outside a “small coterie of abolitionists, transcendentalists and fanatics in general,” centered in Boston.(76) in support of his very reasonable contention that Longfellow lacked “poetical genius,” the reviewer uncritically introduces an ill-considered phrenological argument in his discussion. “We should as soon expect to see our old friend, SATAN, presiding at a temperance meeting,” he observes, “as to see a veritable poem — of his own — composed by a man whose head was flattened at the temples, like that of Professor Longfellow.”(77) [page 473:] Having pronounced Longfellow phrenologically deficient, the reviewer continues: “Holding these views, we confess that we were not a little surprised to hear Mr. POE, in a late lecture, on the Poetry of AMERICA, claim for the Professor a preeminence over all poets of this country on the score of the ‘loftiest poetical quality — imagination.’ There is no doubt in our minds, that an opinion so crude as this, must arise from a want of leisure or inclination to compare the works of the writer in question with the sources from which they were stolen.”(78) After calling Longfellow “the GREAT MOGUL of the Imitators,” the reviewer proceeds to consider each of the volumes in turn and to “make a few observations, in the style of the marginal note, upon each one of the poems in each.”(79)

Perhaps the most interesting part of the essay is a discussion of Longfellow's Poems on Slavery, for the treatment of the other volumes is more nearly duplicated elsewhere in the body of Poe's critical works. Particularly notable is the reviewer's complete sympathy with the South as revealed in his comments on the moral and social consequences of slavery treated in some of Longfellow's poems. Concerning “The Good Part that shall not be taken away,” he remarks: “No doubt, it is a very commendable and comfortable thing, in the Professor, to sit at ease in his library chair, and write verses instructing the southerners how to [page 474:] give up their all with a good grace, and abusing them if they will not; but we have a singular curiosity to know how much of his own, under a change of circumstances, the Professor himself would be willing to surrender.”(80) “The Slave in the Dismal Swamp,” according to the reviewer, “is a shameless medley of the grossest misrepresentation. When did Professor LONGFELLOW ever know a slave to be hunted with bloodhounds in the DISMAL SWAMP? Because he has heard that runaway slaves are so treated in CUBA, he has certainly no right to change the locality, and by insinuating a falsehood in lieu of a fact, charge his countrymen with barbarity. What makes the matter worse, he is one of those who insist upon truth as one of the elements of poetry.”(81) The poem entitled “The Warning,” says the reviewer in concluding his discussion of Poems on Slavery, “contains at least one stanza of absolute truth — as follows. [sic]

As the essay continues, the reviewer places increasing emphasis on what he considers to be indications of Longfellow's [page 475:] faulty rhythm and rhyme, the insipidness of much of his poetry, and his frequent thefts from other poets — especially from Poe himself. The essay ends with a rather coarse paragraph on Longfellow as a plagiarist which, if Poe was responsible for everything that it contains, is clearly too biased to be worthy of a critic whose judgments, though severe, were usually penetrating and just:

The only other article in the April number of The Aristidean which has any special bearing on the relationship between English and Poe is English's “Notes about Men of Note,”(84) In a sketch of Poe at the very beginning of this article, there is none of the spitefulness which English [page 476:] had previously displayed when he introduced a thinly veiled portrait of Poe in his novel, The Doom of the Drinkers. There is no attempt, however, to minimise those traits which always made Poe a difficult person for English to get along with. Although humorous and not unfriendly in tone, the sketch leaves little doubt that in English's opinion Poe was still prejudiced, dogmatic, perverse, and lacking in forthrightness. The sketch is as follows:

It has already been pointed out that the notices of the March and April numbers of The Aristidean in The Broadway Journal for February 15 and May 3, respectively, contain convincing evidence of having been written by the same [page 477:] author. It has further been pointed out that if convincing internal resemblance can be found between the notice of May 3 and Poe's notice of English's magazine in the Evening Mirror of February 12, then it automatically follows that I both Broadway Journal notices must be assigned to Poe. Let us follow, therefore, the text of the greater part of the notice of May 3 before any specific parallelism is drawn between this notice and that of February 12. The notice of May 3 begins as follows:

At this point in the notice is a reproduction of English's poem, which need not concern us here. Observe, however, the resemblance in style between the last two lines of the fore [page 478:] going excerpt and the following lines from Poe's notice in the Evening Mirror of February 12, already quoted:

Not only was Poe, as a collaborator in the publication of The Aristidean, the most likely person on the editorial staff of The Broadway Journal to be continually accrediting English with the authorship of poems published anonymously in the former magazine, but the two passages in question reveal a similarity of pattern in both phrasing and content that is frequently characteristic of an author's perfunctory and uninspired writings.

It will be recalled that in his notice of February 12 Poe commented ironically on certain articles that may be classified as anti-gallows propaganda. In the notice of May 3 similar articles are treated ironically. In the notice of February 12 Poe remarked: “‘Whom shall we hang?’ is a vigorous paper of just the right length, on a topic of precisely the right kind. ‘The Ropemaker’ is in verse, just such a paper as ‘Whom shall we hang?’ is in prose, and by this we intend a compliment, beyond doubt.”(88) Compare these remarks with the following observation in the notice of May 3: [page 479:] “‘The Necessity of Strangling’ is worthy of Hood, and ‘The Hanging of Polly Bodine’ is perhaps a better thing in the same way.”(89) Surely, the similarity of tone in these passages is strongly indicative of a common authorship.

In commenting on the mechanical features of The Aristidean in his notice of February 12, Poe, it will be remembered, mildly objected to the cover on the ground that it looked exactly like that of The American Review. Otherwise, the new magazine was “an excellent thing” in his estimation.(90) The notice of May 3 contains the following comment: “in mechanical execution — that is to say, in its general external and internal arrangement, the ‘Aristidean’ is infinitely before any American magazine: — although the cover, perhaps might be improved.”(91) it is quite understandable why Poe would have praised the mechanical execution of The Aristidean so highly, for, as we have previously observed, English embodied in his magazine almost all the distinctive mechanical features which Poe had hoped to incorporate in a five-dollar periodical of his own. All in all, then, the cumulative evidence is sufficiently impressive to justify the assumption that Poe wrote the Broadway Journal notice of May 5 and consequently that of February 15. [page 480:]

Inasmuch as it is now assumed in this study that Poe wrote the notice of May 3, how can his comment on the review of Longfellow's poems be explained? It can be satisfactorily explained only in the light of the theory that one holds concerning the authorship of the review. If Poe was the sole author, his mild disapproval of the coarseness of his own handiwork and his dissent from some of the opinions which he had expressed indicate either that he was being ironical or that he was unwilling to express, openly, opinions which he had been willing to state anonymously. On the other hand, if Poe and English collaborated in writing the review, then Poe's mild dissent from some of the coarser comments may have reflected his true feelings at that time.

After the appearance of the April number of The Aristidean, English suspended the publication of his magazine for four months. His announced purpose in adopting this course was to overcome the objections of his subscribers to a magazine whose semiannual volumes would have otherwise begun in March and November rather than in January and July.(92) instead of printing four numbers during May and June in order to round out the first volume and, at the same time, make it possible for the second volume to begin in July, English decided to issue only one volume of six numbers during the first year of publication and to begin his second volume in January, 1846. The state of English's health may have contributed to his change of plan, for prior to the publication of the September number “a severe attack of arthritis” had [page 481:] compelled him to remain in bed, flat on his back, for a period of five weeks or longer. But the chief reason for the long suspension of publication can probably be found in the following editorial announcement by Poe in The Broadway Journal of August l6: “‘THE ARISTIDEAN,’ suspended for a brief period for political reasons, will be immediately resumed — under the conduct, of course, of its spirited editor, Thomas Dunn English.”(93) Moreover, since English was appointed Weigher of Customs in June, 1845, by Van Ness, perhaps his official duties made it difficult for him to edit his magazine regularly — especially, during the first month or two after his appointment.

Meanwhile, Poe had grown dissatisfied with his position on the editorial staff of The Broadway Journal and had again fallen into the habit of drinking excessively. Unfortunately, the Longfellow War had resulted in a deterioration of his friendly relations with Lowell, and when he and Lowell first met — probably in May, 1845 — neither was impressed by the other. Poe, according to Thomas Holley Chivers,(94) was disappointed because he thought Lowell's appearance to be lacking in intellectuality and nobility, and Lowell was probably not charitable enough to excuse Poe for meeting him “a little [page 482:] soggy with drink.”(95) But the friendship which they had nourished by corresponding with each other had already begun to decay, and their first meeting, no doubt, merely served to hasten the process. Thwarted in his efforts to establish a magazine of his own and unable to work happily or harmoniously with those whose editorial policies he disapproved, Poe had inevitably found his business association with Lowell's friend, Briggs, becoming more and more intolerable. Sometimes, after English returned to his rooms at the end of a day's work in the Custom House, Poe would visit him and give vent to his growing dissatisfaction. The following remarks by English with reference to The Broadway Journal after Poe became associated with it indicate, in all probability, the main cause of Poe's unhappiness: “It did not achieve success; and Poe, who had frequently given me glowing prophecies as to its future circulation, told me one day that its comparative failure was owing to the fact that he had it not all in his own hands. ‘Give me,’ said he, ‘the entire control, and it will be the great literary journal of the future.’ During this time he reiterated this expression of discontent on his visits to my rooms; for I rarely met him anywhere else at that time, being kept busy all day with my official duties.”(96) [page 483:] Presumably, the combined strain of poverty and overwork accounted for much of Poe's dissatisfaction. On May 4, 1845, he wrote F. W. Thomas that for several months he had been working steadily for as many as fourteen or fifteen hours every day. But even though he had been a veritable slave, he was still as poor as ever.(97)

At a time when his relations with Briggs were near the breaking point, Poe became involved in two unfortunate episodes which reveal, and to some extent account for, the high nervous tension under which he was suffering. Unluckily, he sought English's help in each instance and thereby put him in possession of information which English afterwards used in an effort to discredit Poe.

The first of these episodes has to do with Poe's failure to compose an original poem which he had promised to read before the Philomathean and Eucleian literary societies of the New York University on the evening of July 1, 1845. The reading was scheduled to take place immediately after an oration by the Hon. D. D. Barnard. When the hour of the meeting arrived, the beautiful new Gothic church in University Place was crowded for the occasion; but at the conclusion of Mr. Barnard's address Chancellor Frelinghuysen (or Professor Mason, according to one newspaper account) announced that Poe would be unable to deliver his poem because [page 484:] of illness.(98) After his quarrel with Poe, English unfeelingly publicized the episode as follows:

There is some question, however, as to just how seriously indisposed Poe was. In a letter to Lowell, Briggs stated unequivocally that drunkenness prevented Poe from delivering the poem.(100) But Chivers — who, although admittedly an unreliable witness, is known to have been in New York at some time during July, 1845 — recalled having been told by Mrs. Clemm that Poe had feigned illness for a week in order to have an excuse not to appear according to schedule.(101) True, Chivers said that he had just brought an inebriated Poe home, but he also asserted that when he next saw his [page 485:] friend, two days later, he found him in bed reading Macaulay's Miscellanies and — in Chivers’ opinion — merely pretending to be ill. However that may be, neither English nor Chivers really understood Poe's condition. Poe may not have been continuously drunk for a while week as English maintained, but he was certainly not in perfect health as Chivers implied. In any case, Poe's behavior at this time was that of a nervously ill man.

The second episode led to even more unfavorable publicity, insofar as Poe was concerned, than did the first. Sometime prior to July 5, 1845, one Edward J. Thomas had told Mrs. Frances S. Osgood, whom Poe had met only a few months before, that he had heard a charge of forgery whispered against Poe.(102) On being informed of the matter by Mrs. Osgood, Poe called on Thomas and received from him a promise to investigate the source of the rumor. When Thomas failed to report the results of his investigation within a satisfactory period of time, Poe wrote him a terse note, which English delivered in person, but which drew from Thomas only an evasive verbal reply. Thereupon, Poe decided to resort to a law suit, which a friend of English, at the latter's request, kindly consented to conduct without charging Poe a fee. Later, however, on receiving from Thomas a letter dated July 5, 1845, which he considered to be an [page 486:] acceptable explanation of the unfounded accusation, Poe decided against legal action. But his decision did not meet with the approval of English, who urged vigorous prosecution of the suit on the ground that no satisfactory amends had been made. This episode evidently resulted in some ill feeling between English and Poe, for, as we shall see in the following chapter, English later all but charged that Poe's unwillingness to proceed with the suit was tantamount to an admission that the accusation of forgery was true.

The state of Poe's mind about this time can easily be surmised from his letter to Evert A. Duyckinck of June 26. Virginia's health was precarious, and Briggs had decided to “haul down Poe's name” as one of the editors of The Broadway Journal if he could buy Bisco's interest and secure another publisher.(103) “I am still dreadfully unwell,” Poe wrote, “and fear that I shall be seriously ill. Some matters of domestic affliction have also happened which deprive me of what little energy I have left — and I have resolved to give up the B. Journal and retire to the country for six months, or perhaps a year, as the sole means of recruiting my health and spirits.”(104) But Bisco demanded more compensation for his interest in the magazine than Briggs was willing to pay;(105) and consequently, when the [page 487:] first number of the second volume of The Broadway Journal appeared on July 12, after a lapse of one week, it was Poe who was in complete editorial charge rather than Briggs. Bisco continued as publisher, and Henry C. Watson remained in charge of the Musical Department.

When The Aristidean resumed publication in September, there was no indication in the editorial policy of either English's magazine or The Broadway Journal that Poe's decision not to bring suit against Edward J. Thomas had altered his outwardly cordial relations with English. In fact, the two men seemed to be cooperating with each other more closely than ever, for Poe had evidently aided English materially in the preparation of the September number of The Aristidean for publication. English, it will be recalled, had been in bed for a number of weeks with a painful attack of arthritis. Although he had managed to sit up and write the editorial remarks under his monthly feature, “Our Pigeon-Holes,” he had apparently turned over to Poe the task of writing the book notices which regularly appeared under the caption of “Our Book-Shelves.” Since it can be shown that at least two of the notices are indisputably Poe's, and since the very coherence of the running comments suggests that all of them are probably the work of the same hand, it follows that Poe was the probable author of all the September notices.

The following introductory sentences, however, create the illusion that these notices were written, not by Poe, [page 488:] but by the editor: “Since the issue of our last number there has been much briskness in the publishing world. We proceed to speak, concisely, of the most important works which have come under our notice.”(106) The reviewer then proceeds to consider, in order, the various works recently published by Wiley and Putnam under two separate series: the “Library of Choice Readings” and the “Library of American Books.” The notice of the third number of the first of these series — Baron de la Motte Fouqué's Undine,(107) is merely a condensation of Poe's comments on Undine in his “Marginalia,” which appeared in The Democratic Review for December, 1844.(108) Some of the phrasing is altered, but enough remains unchanged to establish it as Poe's beyond any question whatever.

In addition to the notice of “Undine,” that of John Wilson's The Genius and Character of Burns was unquestionably by Poe. In The Broadway Journal of September 6, 1845, Poe had made the following comment on the same book by Wilson:

The notice of The Genius and Character of Burns in the September number of The Aristidean contains the following observations:

Surely, the similarity of thought and phrasing in these two passages is close enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Poe wrote the second passage as well as the first If additional evidence is sought, however, it can be found in English's “Reminiscences of Poe,” published more than fifty years after the notice of The Genius and Character of Burns appeared in The Aristidean. The notice in The Aristidean contains the following passage:

English evidently had the foregoing passage in mind when he made the following observations in his “Reminiscences,” accusing Poe of having “no love for productions in general that arouse the tender feelings or elevate the heart of humanity”: [page 490:]

However biased in tone this passage may be, it at least provides further convincing evidence that Poe wrote the notice of The Genius and Character of Burns which appeared under “Our Book-Shelves” In the September number of The Aristidean.

Among the other works noticed under “Our Book-Shelves” was the 1845 volume of Poe's tales. This volume was No. 2 of Wiley and Putnam's “Library of American Books,” but it fell far short of winning Poe's approval. The notice, presumably written by Poe himself, is mainly concerned with the mistake which Poe made In consenting to so brief a selection — especially since “variety of tone and subject” had always been his aim.(113) “He has made a point of versatility of invention,” said the reviewer. “But it is [page 491:] obvious that this point is entirely lost in a selection of merely twelve stories from eighty.”(114) Near the end of the following year, Poe expressed much the same feelings in a letter to George W. Eveleth: “The collection of tales issued by W. & P., were selected by a gentleman whose taste does not coincide with my own, from 72, written by me at various times — and those chosen are not my best — nor do they fairly represent me in any respect.”(115)

Further indication that the episode involving Edward J. Thomas had no lasting adverse effect on the relationship between English and Poe prior to their quarrel may be found in The Broadway Journal of September 27. In this number, Poe published English's poem “The Bread-Snatcher,” immediately after his own “Ligeia.” It is possible, of course, that Poe may have yielded to a mischievous desire to demolish English's poem by allowing his readers to see it in direct contrast with “Ligeia.” Otherwise, it is surprising that Poe would have consented to publish the poem at all — the doggerel nature of which may be seen from the following stanzas:

Strangely enough, however, Poe's friend, F. W. Thomas, seems to have admired the poem. Two days after it appeared Thomas remarked in a letter to Poe: “I see that Thomas Dunn English — ‘the Doctor,’ is one of your correspondents — He has certainly a fine vein of poetry in him — I like talent in friend or foe, and always try to do it justice.”(117)

Another article by English which has some bearing on the Poe-English relationship appeared in The Aristidean for September. It was a slashing review of Hirst's recent volume of poems, The Coming of the Mammoth, The Funeral of Time, and other Poems. In this review, English accused Hirst of frequently imitating Poe among numerous other writers.(118) “Mr. HIRST, said English, “appears to have drawn his material and style alternately from TENNYSON, BYRON, SHELLEY, TOM MOORE, BARRRY CORNWALL, SHERIDAN KNOWLES, BRYANT and POE, occasionally from all — and seems to have thrown just enough of his own nonsense into the mess to make it silly.”(119) Closing his review with an urgent suggestion that Hirst inflict no more poetry on the public, English remarked: “If he will persist in publishing we have our remedy. The Grand Inquest can present all [page 493:] nuisances, and have them abated. We shall hand over his next volume to its tender consideration. If one of its members read ten lines of the nasty stuff — Heaven help the luckless author. He will be undoubtedly condemned to a ducking in the nearest horsepond.”(120)

The Broadway Journal of October 4 contains a brief notice of the September number of The Aristidean.”(121) Although it is perhaps not so Poesque, stylistically, as the previous notices, there is no valid reason for disputing its authorship. Not only was Poe the sole literary editor at that time, but the adjectives used in appraising the various contributions are frequently identical with those employed in the earlier notices. “Pungent,” “pointed,” “forcible,” “vigorous,” and “independent” are among the adjectives used. Moreover, as in the previous notices, certain contributions are presumed to be from the editorial pen. Then, too, the general tone of the notice suggests the same Intermingling of serious and humorously ironical comments that is present in the earlier notices. In view of Poe's extremely favorable critique on Hirst's poems in The Broadway Journal of July 12, his comment on English's review of the same poems is almost certainly ironical: “There is a scorching review of Hirst's Poems — a good thing for everybody but Mr. Hirst:this is a very laughable [page 494:] article.” The double meaning possible in “very laughable” can hardly escape notice. Nor is it easy to believe that Poe really thought as much of the poetry of the September number of The Aristidean — a great deal of which was written by English — as the following remarks seem to indicate:

Not only is the final comment patronizing in tone, but the description of many of the poems as being “of a high order of excellence,” including English's epigram, can hardly be taken seriously. It may well be that Poe's frequent use of irony in his notices of The Aristidean was his way of rebelling against the galling restraint of having to overpraise the work of a man with whom, from motives of self-interest, he wished remain on friendly terms. Also in The Broadway Journal of October 4 is an editorial [page 495:] vigorously condemning one of the many attempts by various musical composers to alter the wording of English's “Ben Bolt” in order to set the poem to music of their own.(122) Although Poe never actually acknowledged this editorial, it is highly probable that he wrote it. At any rate, English apparently regarded Poe as the author, for he intimates as much in his comment on the editorial in the November number of The Aristidean. In view of the close association of English and Poe during 1845, it is most unlikely that English would have been mistaken on a matter of this kind. The editorial, which begins as follows, contains no trace of irony:

After reprinting “Ben Bolt” as it appeared in The New Mirror, Poe continues:

After reprinting Webster's mutilated version and italicizing the variations from the text of the original, Poe concludes:

In The Aristidean for October, 1845, English reproduces this Broadway Journal editorial in his own editorial columns.(126) Immediately preceding the reproduction is English's comment on Poe's article:

Already mentioned in connection with the Poe-English relationship is English's article, “The American Poets,” which appeared in The Aristidean for October, 1845. In this article the poetic styles of certain contemporary(128) American writers, including Poe, are burlesqued. In order to create the illusion of a hoax, English prefaced his article with an in obtaining poetic explanation of how he had succeeded (129) specimens from these poets. He said that he had written notes to various authors informing them of his wish to bring before the readers of his magazine “the best specimens of the poetry of the country” and requesting them to supply these specimens free of charge. After this explanation, English printed replies allegedly received from some of the poets whose verses he pretended to have solicited, along with the “specimens” which he pretended to have received. The letter and accompanying poem allegedly written by Poe are as follows: [page 498:]

It is difficult to believe that this burlesque poem could have ever been seriously assigned to Poe. Yet, as late as 1955, Killis Campbell felt called upon to eliminate it from the Poe canon on the ground that it was “included among the ‘Poems attributed to Poe’ by both Harrison and Whitty.”(131) In fairness to Harrison, however, Campbell should have pointed out that a note appended to the poem as reprinted [page 499:] in the Virginia Edition makes it clear that Harrison considered the poem to be an imitation of Poe's manner.(132) The humorous reference at the end of the poem to the dullness of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, .English undoubtedly inserted because of its timely interest. In The Broadway Journal of September 6, 1845, Poe had quoted a little epigrammatic jeu d’esprit concerning himself and Coxe which had recently appeared in various newspapers.(133) In this jeu d’esprit Poe is represented as having pronounced Coxe's dramatic poem, “Saul, a Mystery,” to be stupid — evidently because he had built up a reputation for abusing new books. Commenting on this fact, Poe remarked that he had never expressed any opinion at all of Coxe's poem.

The 1845 edition of Poe's tales, which was briefly noticed — probably by Poe himself — under “Our Book-Shelves” in the September number of The Aristidean, was reviewed in much greater detail in the October number.(134) it has already been pointed out that English later acknowledged the authorship of the longer review and that in it he seems to claim the review of Longfellow's poems which he afterwards assigned to Poe. Of course, Poe may have written the review of Longfellow's poems without any collaboration at all, and he may have even written the longer review of his own [page 500:] tales, in spite of English's acknowledgment of the authorship. The latter possibility is unlikely, I think, although the information contained in the review of Poe's Tales is sufficiently detailed to indicate that a considerable degree of collaboration may have occurred. I am convinced, however, that the actual phrasing was English's own. Expressions used in the review like “if we mistake not” and “by-the-by” were clichés with English.

This review begins with the accusation that the authors of both England and the United States were too slavishly imitative, but with the qualification that the enthusiastic reception of the recently published volume of Poe's tales, both at home and abroad, was a sign that a general emancipation was at last in progress. Next, the various tales are briefly discussed, some of them being dismissed with a single comment or two. The discussion of the individual tales is followed by the observation that the volume, as a collection, might have been considerably improved. Finally, there is the following clear commentary on Poe's style and general aims:

A notice of the October number of The Aristidean appeared in The Broadway Journal of November 29.(136) Since it is made up chiefly of quotations from various poems and contains very little critical comment, there is nothing particularly Poesque about it. That Poe wrote it, however, is indicated not only by the fact that the writer clearly had inside Information as to the authorship of the poems or stanzas which he quoted, but by the fact that he singled out for special praise a poem by A. M. Ide — a young poet [page 502:] whom Poe had encouraged by publishing his work from time to time in The Broadway Journal. Moreover, the ironical undercurrent present in all of Poe's previous brief notices of The Aristidean may be observed in the comment on English's burlesque article, “The American Poets.” One of the fabricated letters and the poem alleged to have been sent with it are quoted, but not those ascribed to Poe. They are prefaced by the following ironical remark: “Among the prose papers there is an exceedingly queer one (no doubt by the editor. [sic] In Poe's notice of The Aristidean in The Broadway Journal of May 5, English's “Shood-Swing” is described as “queer.”(137)

The tardy appearance of Poe's notice may have been due partly to a delay in the publication of the October number of The Aristidean, but it was probably due also to other circumstances which weighed upon Poe during the autumn of 1845. On October 25 Poe had, for the first time in his life, published a number of a magazine which he both owned and edited. But his ownership was more apparent than real. In buying out Bisco on the preceding day,(138) he had contracted obligations which he was unable to meet and which kept his hands tied until the demise of his journal a little more [page 503:] than two months later. There can be no doubt that his futile efforts to finance his magazine and liquidate his debts dissipated both his tine and his energies.

Shortly before he contracted these obligations, he had gone to Boston and precipitated one of the most unfortunate controversies of his career. He had been invited to appear before the Boston Lyceum on October 16 to read a poem written especially for the occasion. But the necessity of composing a poem under such circumstances always subjected Poe to severe nervous strain, as the Nev York University incident earlier in the same year had already demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, instead of remaining at home as he had done on the former occasion, he appeared before the Lyceum and, in lieu of reading a special poem, read his juvenile “Al Aaraaf.” The hour being late — Caleb Cushing having already delivered a lengthy address — the audience was hardly in a receptive frame of mind to hear any poem, not to mention one like “Al Aaraaf.” On the following day Poe's performance was berated in a sarcastic and ill-mannered editorial by Miss Walter of the Boston Evening Transcript.(139) Naturally [page 504:] provoked by Miss Walter's attack, Poe published a reply under his “Editorial Miscellany” in The Broadway Journal of November 1, and followed it up with another article under the same heading on November 22.(140) In the first of these articles Poe said that from the beginning he had planned the whole affair as a hoax. Both articles were extremely contemptuous of Miss Walter, Boston, and the Bostonians in general. Consequently, they served merely to give widespread publicity to an incident which might otherwise have been forgotten. Unfortunately for Poe's future reputation, however, the incident received special attention by English, in his libelous attack on Poe in June, 1846; by Griswold, in his infamous “Memoir”; and by English, again, in “Down Among the Dead Men? and in his “Reminiscences of Poe.” After his quarrel with Poe, English repeatedly dragged the incident into public view to support his contention that Poe was morally deficient. Yet the evidence indicates that before he quarreled with Poe he had not regarded the incident so seriously. It will be interesting to compare one of English's later accounts with his discussion of the incident in The Aristidean for November, 1845. English's later version of the incident as related in “Down Among the Dead Men” is as follows:

Now let us compare the foregoing account of the Boston incident with the version which English wrote shortly after [page 506:] Poe delivered his controversial lecture. English described the incident, as follows, in a review of the 1845 edition of Poe poems:(142)

One could hardly desire a more pertinent illustration of the way in which bitter personal enmity can drastically alter one man's recorded judgment of another's actions [page 507:] than that which is afforded by a comparison of these two accounts of the same incident. It is true that, from the first, English disapproved of the trick (if it was a trick) which Poe had played on his Boston audience. But in the earlier article English adopted a tone of amusement at the whole controversy, and in a manner not unlike that of Poe he ridiculed the Bostonians as “transcendental donkies.” Even though English thought Poe had been in the wrong, there is no indication that he regarded Poe's conduct as dishonorable and shameless. Although in the earlier article English himself called the Bostonians “transcendental donkies,” in the later article he condemned Poe for abusing those identical Bostonians in a similar manner, on the ground that they had treated him courteously. Yet English said nothing in the later article about the extremely discourteous editorial by Miss Walter in the Evening Transcript which had provoked Poe's retort. Miss Walter's article was not merely “sharp,” as English characterized the comments of the Boston newspapers; it was studiedly insulting. The disparity between these two accounts, then, indicates how unjust it would be to accept without reservation, or without the closest possible scrutiny, any judgment of Poe's life and character which English pronounced after he and Poe had become bitter enemies.

English's review of Poe's The Raven and other Poems in The Aristidean for November is by no means unreservedly laudatory, although the general tenor of it is more favorable [page 508:] than otherwise. English praised “The Raven” and “The Sleeper” extravagantly; commended “Dream-Land,” “The City in the Sea,” “The Haunted Palace,” and “The Conqueror Worm” as well-managed allegories; and called the “Sonnet — To Zante” beautiful.(144) On the other hand, he criticized “The Coliseum” ‘both favorably and unfavorably, and dismissed “Israfel,” strange to say, as “a very pretty specimen of fiddle-de-dee.”(145) English was especially severe in censuring the second part of the work. Although he cited certain lines from “Al Aaraaf” as indicating marvelous juvenile talent, he said that they fall to compensate the reader for doses of less palatable stuff “given ad nauseam, through the poem.”(146) Having commented unfavorably on the poems of the second part of the volume, he proceeded as follows:

After reproducing certain passages from Poe's poetry which could affect him in the mood described above, English concluded:

The critical estimate of Poe's poetry which English recorded in the paragraphs quoted above is almost identical with that which he reaffirmed more than fifty years later in his “Reminiscences of Poe.”

That English had the highest admiration for “The Raven” is particularly in evidence, and his full and appreciative discussion of the poem indicates not only that he had given considerable thought to the manner in which Poe had sought to achieve his artistic effects, but also that he had probably discussed the poem frequently with Poe. In a portion of his reminiscences not published in The Independent, English recalled how a remark which he had made during a discussion of the poem had offended Poe and had probably accentuated the feeling of dislike which Poe had developed for him. “We were discussing ‘The Raven,’” English recalled. [page 510:] “Of [sic] the line which speaks of the footsteps of the angels tinkling ‘on the tufted floor,’ and I suggested that the angels wouldn’t make much tinkling on the carpet unless like the old woman who mounted the white horse at Banbury Cross, they had bells on their toes. This was not meant as serious criticism and was intended to be entirely good-natured on my part, but it made him very angry.”(149) Certainly, English intended no disparagement of “The Raven” in making this abortive attempt at humor. In the review under discussion English expressed the opinion that the poem was one “of high merit” and that it entitled Poe to “high rank” as a poet.

Because of his close association with Poe at this time, English's views concerning the origin of “The Raven” are interesting. His notice of The Raven and other Poems contains perhaps the earliest allusion in print to the Influence of Mrs. Browning's “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” on “The Raven.” “The peculiar arrangement of the lines and meter,” English observed, “is not original with Mr. POE, the same thing being found — with the exception of the repetition, in meaning, of half of the last line of each stanza — in Miss BARRETT'S book.”(150) Although English did not mention “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” specifically, he unquestionably had that poem in mind. It [page 511:] was one of the poems published in The Drama of Exile, and other Poems — the book of Miss Barrett's to which English referred.

English was not impressed by Thomas Holley Chivers’ claims against the author of “The Raven,” and he indicated as much in a portion of his reminiscences which he did not publish in The Independent. Here, he specifically referred to the influence of “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” on “The Raven,” and also to Poe's debt to John Wilson. “Dr. Chivers lived and died,” said English, “with the idea that he was not appreciated by his contemporaries, and he labored under the delusion that Poe had stolen the idea of “The Raven” from him. Had he read that chapter in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae,. devoted to the Starling, the Parrot, and the Raven, he would have found the norm from which grew Poe's magnificent poem; and had he read Mrs. Browning's ‘Lady Geraldine's Courtship,’ he would have discovered where Poe obtained some of the trochaic lines which he worked up with such splendid genius; and at the close of Mrs. Browning's poem he would have found some phrases which Poe unconsciously borrowed.”(151)

An amusing, if somewhat astonishing, comment by English on Chivers’ poetry is one which indicates that he looked upon Chivers and Walt Whitman as two poets of a kind. “As a writer of Bedlam verses,” observed English, “Chivers had a [page 512:] predecessor In McDonald Clarke, and a successor In Walt Whitman. The rhapsodies of the latter however, are intelligible, although at times they violate decency. You could understand what Whitman was driving at, but the meaning of Chivers no one could comprehend.”(152) There is no indication, however, that English had more than a passing acquaintance with Chivers, and it is impossible to say just when their paths crossed. It is not improbable, however, that the two men became acquainted with each other about the time that Chivers and Poe first met in New York during the summer of 1845. In his reminiscences English said merely: “I met Dr. Chivers once or possibly twice, and I know scarcely anything of his history. In ordinary matters he seemed to be sensible enough, but in making verse he appeared to be as mad as a March hare.”(153)

Also in the November number of The Aristidean may be found the last of the three critical essays attributed to Poe in the table of contents of English's magazine: “American Poetry.”(154) Although it is by far the most substantial of these essays, it was made up almost entirely of critical material which Poe had previously published. The first and last parts of the essay, Poe reproduced in large measure from his review of Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America which had appeared in the Boston Miscellany three [page 513:] years earlier.(155) Much of the earlier review was repeated word for word, although the portion dealing with the shortcomings of Griswold and his book is somewhat more censorious in the later article than in the earlier one. Most of the middle part of the essay was reproduced nearly verbatim from an even earlier criticism of Poe's — a review of L. A. Wilmer's The Quacks of Helicon — first published in Graham's Magazine for August, 1841.(156) Sandwiched in between long passages taken from his critique on The Quacks of Helicon, however, is a substantial passage which Poe extracted from his review of R. H. Horne's Orion. The latter review was first published in Graham's Magazine for March, 1844.(157) But even though Poe's essay is decidedly a hodgepodge, it is surprisingly unified and coherent.

Poe introduced the topic of his essay with a denial of the frequently repeated observation that Americans were innately non-poetical and with a positive and unqualified assertion that their seemingly utilitarian outlook was the result of their necessities rather than of their propensities. In support of his contention, he called attention to the eagerness displayed by Americans in seeking information concerning their poets and their poetry. But Americans, he felt, were unable to obtain this information because of a combination of circumstances. In the remainder of the essay [page 514:] he attempted to explain why they were unable to find what they eagerly sought.

The ephemeral press, Poe contended, offered no hope to American readers seeking information about their poets and their poetry. The sort of criticism that it fostered was notoriously corrupt. It displayed little independence and was frequently the expression of a manufactured pseudo-public opinion for which the machinations of literary coteries and prominent booksellers were responsible. Puffery and bribery abounded. Nor did Poe feel that the “heavier journals” offered any real hope. Even the best of them had foisted on the public a kind of review which was so generalized and conglomerate that it was everything but a criticism. Holding that a review should be limited in scope and logically precise rather than all-inclusive and intuitively vague, Poe singled out the Transcendentalists for special censure because he considered them to be the chief exponents in the United States of the critical heresies of his day. It was also idle to look to the quarterlies for help, inasmuch as they, too, were guilty of encouraging generalized opinions and a disgusting kind of puffery.

Having pointed out why, in his opinion, Americans could not depend upon either the newspapers or the periodicals to provide the kind of information about their poets and poetry that they sought, Poe turned to the various compilations of the writings of American poets. The very success of these [page 515:] works — poor though some of them were — Poe regarded as proof that Americans were eager for information about the poetical literature of their country. After criticizing a number of these volumes briefly and, on the whole, adversely, Poe brought his essay to a close with a discussion of Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America, to which he devoted more space than to all the other compilations put together. Although Poe did not hesitate to point out various objections to the sixth edition of Griswold's book, he acknowledged that under no conditions would it have been possible for such a book to give universal satisfaction. “Had the work,” said Poe, “nevertheless, been that of the finest critic in existence — and this, we are sorry to say, Mr. GRISWOLD is not — there would still have been these inevitable discrepancies of opinion, to startle and to vex us, as now.”(158) Finally, in a tone more commendatory than faultfinding, Poe concluded:

One of the most interesting portions of this essay is that in which Poe expressed strong opposition to generalization in criticism, and hence his disgust for the group of persons whom he felt to be the chief American offenders in this respect — the Transcendentalists centered in Boston. Nowhere in this essay did Poe speak of these critics as Transcendentalists, but he left no room for doubt as to whom he was referring. He asserted that the conglomerate, generalized science currently passing for criticism was merely a reflection of the affectations of this group. He felt that the term “criticism,” to which he, along with “a majority of mankind,” had “been accustomed to attach a certain and very definitive idea”(160) had been misappropriated by the Transcendentalists to apply to their own obscure and generalized opinions. He suggested that what this group termed criticism he called “Orphicism, or Dialism, or Alcottism” — in fact, anything but criticism.(161) In the following passage Poe burlesqued the sort of criticism which, in his opinion, the Transcendentalists were guilty of:

That Poe thus burlesqued the criticism of the Transcendentalists, in the same language that he had previously employed to ridicule the jargon used by British critics in their comments on Horne's Orion,(163) can be explained in part, of course, by the fact that he prepared his critique for publication at a time when the controversy over his unfortunate appearance before the Boston Lyceum was still raging. But it must be remembered that Poe was consistently and unalterably opposed to what — rightly or wrongly — he conceived this kind of criticism to be. Poe had little patience with the notion that an exceedingly complex or profound idea can be evolved only by means of language that is correspondingly vague or obscure. Hence, although Poe's attack on the Transcendentalists was perhaps more scathing than it would have been if he had not recently quarreled with the Bostonians, it is nonetheless an honest indictment of a kind of criticism which he could not abide and which was irrefragably linked in his mind with Carlyle and his school abroad, and with Emerson and other Transcendentalists at home.(164) [page 518:]

The final number of The Aristidean, published in December, 1845, contains nothing that concerns the relationship between English and Poe, and little, indeed, of anything that would interest many readers today aside from a series of unrelated and rather sentimental anecdotes by Walt Whitman. These anecdotes, according to 1 Whitman, were essentially true, as their general title, “Some Fact-Romances,” suggests. He wrote them, he said, because he felt that truth, as well as romance, possessed great charm and because he wished to try truth “against romance, even on romance's chosen ground of love and death.”(165)

Meanwhile, The Broadway Journal was nearing the end of its brief existence. Having had little success persuading others to invest a sufficient amount of money in the magazine to enable it to survive, Poe was obliged to sell one half of his interest on December 5. The purchaser was Thomas H. Lane, the publisher of English's Aristidean. According to the terms of the contract drawn up on December 5, [page 519:] Lane agreed to assume the burden of all expenses necessary for the operation of the magazine, as well as any indebtedness up to the amount of forty dollars which the magazine had contracted on or since November 17.(166) Lane agreed to take charge of the business of the magazine, although Poe, if he so wished, could demand an equal voice in this respect. The editorial management, however, continued to be Poe's undivided responsibility.

But the new arrangement was unsuccessful, and The Broadway Journal died with the issue of January 5# 1846, exactly one month after Poe and Lane had signed their contract. Since Poe was unable to prepare the final number for publication, the thankless task devolved upon Lane. English assisted Lane by furnishing some of the copy. Apparently on the basis of assertions which Poe later made in his reply to English's libelous attack, both J. H. Ingram and George E. Woodberry — the latter, in his first life of Poe — stated that English edited the final number of the magazine.(167) Poe's remarks on the subject are as follows: The last number of ‘The Broadway Journal’ (the work having been turned over by me to another publisher) was edited by Mr. English. The editorial portion was wholly his, and was one interminable Paean of his own praises. The truth of all this — if any one is weak enough to care a penny about who praises or who [page 520:] damns Mr. English — will no doubt be corroborated by Mr. Jennings, the printer.(168) Since Poe's charges, like many obviously intentional overstatements in his reply, are hardly borne out by the facts, Woodberry — in his second life of Poe — and other more recent biographers have not insisted upon the truth of Poe's remarks, but have said merely that English assisted Lane in the preparation of the final number. Not one of Poe's biographers, however, has discussed in sufficient detail English's own story of the last days of The Broadway Journal, as he related it both in an open letter to Ingram and in his “Reminiscences of Poe.” Although both accounts contain some inaccuracies, there is less reason to reject English's story of his connection with The Broadway Journal than there is to reject any other portion of his “Reminiscences of Poe.” After completing his “Reminiscences,” English submitted his paper to Lane “in order to be sure,” as he said, “that I had given accurately these facts, especially in regard to the closing of The Broadway Journal, with which that gentleman was familiar.”(169) Lane wrote in reply: “I have carefully read the paper you handed me, relative to your troubles with Mr. Edgar A. Poe, or rather with his biographers and critics, as well as with himself. With a positive knowledge of much which it contains, and floating memories of other portions, [page 521:] I do not hesitate to endorse it as correct, and, under the circumstances surrounding the case, quite gentle in tone.”(170) Even more significant is the following statement further on in Lane's reply: “All the incidents connected with my short experience with The Broadway Journal are truly stated, as far as my memory recalls the unimportant events of half a century ago.”(171) Although any endorsement that Lane might give to portions of the “Reminiscences” which did not concern his and English's combined experiences with Poe would be suspect, his corroboration of English's account of the last days of The Broadway Journal cannot be dismissed, despite some glaring inaccuracies in the account. English's story is as follows:

An examination of the contract between Poe and Lane as reproduced from the original manuscript by Kenneth Rede will reveal one inaccurate statement in English's account. According to English, the agreement was witnessed by George H. Colton and George Sweet. The document, however, reveals that the agreement was signed in the presence of Samuel Fleet and witnessed by George H. Colton, it contains no signature of any George Sweet, although possibly, of course, [page 523:] a person of that name might have been present at the signing. English made no mistake, however, when he said that the contract had been drawn up in Poe's own handwriting, and he was correct in stating that The Broadway Journal for December 6 carried an erroneous announcement of the removal of the office to 104 Broadway which was changed to read 504 in the next number. This mistake, however, occurred only in the advertisement. In every issue beginning with that of November 29, an announcement of the removal of the office to 504 Broadway may be found on the first page in the upper left corner.

A more serious inaccuracy on English's part, however, is his statement that because of Poe's drunkenness following the publication of The Broadway Journal for December 20 a break of two weeks occurred before the final number appeared on January 5, 1846. An examination of a complete file of The Broadway Journal will disclose that no such break occurred Thus, it would seem that English's account of Poe's drunkenness during the last days of the Journal is inaccurate at least in point of time, notwithstanding Lane's endorsement of it. But errors of this sort are understandable in any attempt to piece together the hazy details of events which occurred many years ago. It is unlikely, however, that both English and Lane would have been wholly mistaken about Poe's having gone on a spree during the closing days of the Journal. The evidence is overwhelming that after Virginia's first serious illness Poe customarily resorted to the use [page 524:] of alcoholic stimulants when major crises in his life induced fears and anxieties that imposed an intolerable strain on his highly wrought nervous system.

In one of his open letters to Ingram, written about ten years before the “Reminiscences” appeared, English had been more specific than he was in his later account about identifying his own contributions to the last number of The Broadway Journal. The letter contains the following passage bearing on the subject:

The two stanzas of verse mentioned by English as one of his four contributions to the final number of The Broadway Journal were entitled “Azthene” and had been reprinted from The [page 525:] Aristidean for November.(174) Although unacknowledged by English in the bound volume of his magazine, they appeared in The Broadway Journal with English's name attached. Not long afterwards, Poe reproduced the stanzas in his Literati sketch of English in order to expose a grammatical blunder contained in them and otherwise to ridicule them. Years later, English denied having ever written them,(175) but certainly appearances are against him. The other unnamed contribution by English — a doggerel couplet which he furnished “to fill out a column” — had also appeared in the November number of The Aristidean:

When Poe declared that the editorial portion of the final number of The Broadway Journal “was one interminable Paean” of English's own praises, he was referring specifically to a notice of the November number of The Aristidean.(177) Actually, the notice is no more complimentary to English than are some of the earlier notices in The Broadway Journal. It is not at all unlikely that Poe wrote the notice himself [page 526:] and that his effort to pin it on English was merely a part of a studied plan, after English had libeled him, to bring discomfort to his enemy and to make him appear as ridiculous as possible. In the notice, one of English's articles is described as “queer.” Inasmuch as Poe had used the adjective “queer” to describe articles by English in two previous notices of The Aristidean, there would seem to be some ground for this supposition. Moreover, one should not overlook the possibility that Poe may have written his notices largely on the basis of information furnished him by English and that this practice may have led Poe to say that he mischievously decided to “put the pen into Mr. English's own hand, and permit him to kill himself off by self-praise.”(178) Perhaps there was an even greater measure of collaboration between English and Poe during the year 1845 than the findings of the present study indicate or than it will ever be possible actually to establish.

If continual worry over the illness of Virginia, along with weary hours of drudgery in the office of The Broadway Journal leading only to financial failure, marked the year 1845 as a disheartening one for Poe, his life was not without its less grim side. Soon after he abandoned the seclusion of the country for the busy life of a newspaperman and magazinist in the city, he became acquainted with numerous [page 527:] literati of New York whom he had previously known only through their works, “in the autumn of 1845,” said Mrs. Whitman, writing from secondhand knowledge, “he was often seen at the brilliant literary circles in Waverley Place, where weekly reunions of noted artists and men of letters, at the house of an accomplished poetess, attracted some of the best intellectual society of the city. At the request of his hostess, Mr. Poe one evening electrified the gay company, assembled there, by the recitation of the wierd [sic] poem to whose sad, strange burden so many hearts have since echoed.”(179) described here took place at the house of Miss Anne C. Lynch, afterwards Mrs. Botta. Although Mrs. Whitman did not write from her own observations of Poe's presence at these gatherings, she was acquainted with Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith and others, whose knowledge wa3 firsthand.

According to Mrs. Smith, these brilliant receptions took place not only at the house of Miss Lynch, but also at the houses of Marcus Spring, James Lawson, the Rev. Orville [page 528:] Dewey, and various others, including her own.(180) But those of Miss Lynch were especially notable. “To be invited to the reception of Miss Lynch,” said Mrs. Smith, “was an evidence of distinction, and one in itself, for she was strict in drawing the moral as well as the intellectual line.”(181) Poe was “an accepted and honored guest”(182) at any of these houses, and Mrs. Smith saw him from time to time at one or more of them. “Perhaps,” said Mrs. Smith, “no one received any more marked attention than Edgar A. Poe. His slender form, pale, intellectual face and weird expression of eye never failed to arrest the attention of even the least observant. He spoke in a low voice, without any sympathetic vibration; yet it was one you listened to hear again. He did not affect the society of men, rather that of highly intellectual women with whom he liked to fall into a sort of eloquent monologue, half dream, half poetry. Men were intolerant of all this, but women fell under his fascination and listened in silence.”(183) Although Mrs. Whitman said that Virginia would occasionally attend these gatherings with her husband,(184) Mrs. Smith intimated that she did not because she “dared not encounter the night air.”(185) Perhaps, however, Mrs. Smith meant only that [page 529:] Virginia did not often accompany Poe.

Although English was not a frequent guest at these soirées, his recollections of one of them are especially noteworthy in that, for once, he did not disparage Poe, but painted him in an attractive light:

Perhaps it would have been good for Poe, in view of his obvious penchant for, and dependence upon, the companionship of sympathetic and admiring women, if circumstances had permitted him to continue to seek relaxation from his innumerable cares in the society of congenial literary women at such gatherings as English's sketch rather sentimentally portrays. Unfortunately, however, this pleasant avenue of diversion and escape was fraught with the most serious consequences for Poe himself. Scarcely had The Broadway Journal breathed its last, when Poe became involved in a foolish controversy growing out of the petty female jealousies of this supposedly sophisticated group. This controversy culminated in a violent quarrel between English and Poe which destroyed forever the last trace of personal friendship — however ill-founded it may have been between them; and it led directly to a newspaper disputation and lawsuit which brought far more unfavorable publicity to Poe than any other misfortune or series of misfortunes that befell him during his lifetime.

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