Edgar Poe and His Critics — Sarah Helen Whitman, 1860 — reading text

New York that Mr. Poe became acquainted with the editors of the Mirror, and was employed by them as a writer for that Journal. Mr. Willis, in a recent notice of the illustrated poems, has paid an eloquent tribute to his memory, expressed in a spirit of rare kindliness and generosity. From March 1845, to January 1846, he was asso- ciated with Mr. C. F. Briggs in editing the Broadway Journal. In the autumn of 1845 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 22 Edgar Poe and his Critics. of the best intellectual society of tlie city. At the request of his hostess, Mr. Poe one evening electrified the gay company, assembled there, by the recitation of the wierd poem to whose sad, strange burden so many hearts have since echoed. This was a few weeks pre- vious to the publication of the Raven in the American Review. Mrs. Browning, in a private letter, written a few weeks after its publication in England, says, " This vivid writing — this power which is felt — has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons who are haunted by the 'Nevermore,' and an acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas, cannot bear to look at it in the twilight. Then there is a tale going the rounds of the newspapers, about mesmerism, which is throwing us all into 'most admired disorder' — dreadful doubts as to whether it can be true, as the children say of ghost stories. The certain thing about it is the power of the writer." Edgar Poe and his Critics. 23 A woman of fine genius, who at this time made his acquaintance, says, in some recently published com- ments on his writings : " It was in the brilliant circles that assembled in the winter of 1845-6 at the houses of Dr. Dewey, Miss Anna C. Lynch, Mr. Lawson, and others, that we first met Edgar Poe. His manners were at these re-unions refined and pleasing, and his style and scope of conversation that of a gentleman and a scholar. Whatever may have been his previous career, there was nothing in his appearance or manner to indicate his excesses. He delighted in the society of superior women, and had an exquisite perception of all graces of manner, and shades of expression. He was an admiring listener, and an unobtrusive observer. We all recollect the interest felt at the time in every- thing emanating from his pen — the relief it was from the dulness of ordinary writers — the certainty of some- thing fresh and suggestive. His critiques were read v.'ith avidity ; not that he convinced the judgment, but that people felt their ability and their courage. Eight 24 Edgar Poe and his Critics. or wrong lie was terribly in earnest." Like De Quincey, he never supposed anything, he always Jcnew, • The peculiar character of his intellect seemed with- out a prototype in literature. He had more than De Quincey's power of analysis, with a constructive unity and completeness of which the great English essayist has given no indication. His pre-eminence in constructive and analytical skill was beginning to be universally admitted, and the fame and prestige of his genius were rapidly increasing. ■ But the dangerous censorship he soon after assumed, as the author of a series of sketches, some of which have been since published as the "Literati," exposed him to frequent indignant criticism, while, by his personal errors and indiscretions, he drew upon himself much social censure and espionage^ and became the victim of dishonoring accusations from which honor itself had forbidden him to exculpate himself. It has been said, in allusion to the severity of his literary strictures, that a most fitting escutcheon for Edgar Poe and his Critics. 25 Mr. Poe mio-lit liave been found in the crest of Walter o Scott's puissant Templar, Bois Guilbert, — a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, " Gare le Corheaur Mr. Longfellow has very generously said, in a letter to the editor of the Literary Messenger : " The harsh- ness of his criticism I have always attributed to the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some inde- finite sense of wrong." A recent and not too lenient critic tells us that "it was his sensitiveness to artistic imperfections, rather than any malignity of feeling, that made his criticisms so severe, and procured him a host of enemies among persons towards whom he entertained no personal ill- will." In evidence of the habitual courtesy and good- nature noticeable to all who best knew him in domestic and social life, we remember an incident that occurred at one of the soirees to which we have alluded. A lady, noted for her great lingual attainments, wishing 3 26 Edgar Poe and. his Critics. to apply a Avliolesome check to the vanity of a young author, proposed inviting him to translate for the com- pany a difficult passage in Greek, of which language she knew him to be profoundly ignorant, although given to a rather pretentious display of Greek quota- tions in his published wTitings. Poe's earnest and persistent remonstrance against this piece of mechancete alone averted the embarrassing test. Sometimes his fair young wife was seen with him at / tliese weekly assemblages in Waverley Place. She sel- dom took part in the conversation, but the memory of her sweet and girlish face, ahvays animated and viva- cious, repels the assertion, afterwards so cruelly and recklessly made, that she died a victim to the neglect and unkindness of her husband, " who," as it has been said, "deliberately sought her death that he might embalm her memory in immortal dirges." An article in Eraser's Magazine, published some two years ago, repeats the assertion that Poe was the murderer of his wife, " causing her to die of starvation and a broken Edgar Poe and his Critics. 27 lieart." Gilfillan, ascribing to him "passions controlled by the presence of art until they resembled sculptured flame," tells us that he caused the death of his wife that he might have a fitting theme for the Raven. A serious objection to this ingenious theory may perhaps be found in the "refractory fact" that the poem was published more than a year before the event which these persons assume it was intended to commemorate. We might cite the testimony alike of friends and enemies to Foe's unvarying kindness towards his young wife and cousin, if other testimony were needed than that of the tender love still cherished for his memory by one whose life was made doubly desolate by his death — the sister of his father, and the mother of his Virginia. It is well known to those acquainted with the parties that the young wife of Edgar Poe died of lingering consumption, which manifested itself even in her girl- hood. All who have had opportunities for observation in the matter have noticed her husband's tender devotion 28 Edgar Poe and his Critics. to lier during her prolonged illnesses. Even Dr. Gris- wold speaks of having visited him during a period of illness caused by protracted anxiety and watching by the side of his sick wife. It is true that notwithstanding her vivacity and cheerfulness .at the time we have alluded to, her health was, even then, rapidly sinking ; and it was for her dear sake and for the recovery of that peace which had been so fatally perilled amid the irritations and anxieties of his New York life, that Poe left the city and removed to the little Dutch cottage in Fordham, where he passed the three remaining years of his life. It was to this quiet haven in the beautifiil spring of 1846, when the fruit trees were all in bloom and the grass in its freshest verdure, that he brought his Virginia to die. Here he watched her failing breath in loneliness and privation through many solitary moons, until, on a desolate, dreary day of the ensuing winter, he saw her remains borne from beneath its lowly roof to a neighbouring cemetery. It was towards the close of the vear followino; her death — his "most Edgar Poe and his Critics. 29 immemorial year " — that he wrote the strange threnody of " Ulakime." This poem, perhaps the most original and wierdly suggestive of all his poems, resembles at first sight some of Turner's landscapes, being apparently " without form and void, and having darkness on the face of it." It is, nevertheless, in its basis, although not in the precise correspondence of time, simply historical. Such was the poet's lonely midnight walk — such, amid the desolate memories and sceneries of the hour, was ^— — • — ■ ^ — '■ — ■ — — ' — " the new-born hope enkindled within' his heart at sight of the morning '*Astarte's bediamonded crescent " — ■ coming up as the beautiful harbinger of love and happiness yet awaiting him in the untried future, and such the sudden transitioh of feeling, the boding dread, that supervened on discovering that which had at first been unnoted, that it shone, as if iD_ mockery or in warning, directly over the sepulchre of the lost " Ula- lume." A writer in the London Critic, after quoting 30 Edgar Poe and his Critics. tlie opening stanzas of Ulalume, says, " These to many will appear only wo?'ds, but wliat wondrous words ! What a spell they wield ! "What a withered unity there is in them! The instant they are uttered a misty picture with a tarn, dark as a murderer's eye, below, and the thin yellow leaves of October fluttering above, exponents of a misery which scorns the name of sorrow, is hung up in the chambers of your soul for ever." An English writer, now living in Paris, the author of some valuable contributions to our American period- icals, passed several weeks at the little cottage in Ford- ham, in the early autumn of 1847, and described to us, with a truly English appreciativeness, its unrivalled neatness and the quaint simplicity of its interior and surroundings. It was at the time bordered by a flower- garden, whose clumps of rare dahlias and brilliant beds of fall flowers showed, in the careful culture bestowed upon them, the fine floral taste of the inmates. An American writer, who visited the cottage during