Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions — John H. Ingram, 1880, volume II — reading text

Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions — John H. Ingram, 1880, volume II Historical biography by John H. Ingram, published by John Hogg in London in 1880. This volume preserves chapters XV–XXI, appendices A–G and the index. The two original volumes are separate local records. The historical illustrations are supplied as local JPEG downloads at the source repository’s resolution. This is a later electronic transcription of the historical book, not a complete photographic facsimile. Ingram’s biographical claims, quoted correspondence and assessments are historical testimony, including disputed claims, rather than modern verified findings. Modern website navigation, commentary, correction glosses and the later 1886-only index entry are excluded. Typography and page layout are simplified. The text has not been independently proofread word by word. This record does not claim to preserve Ingram’s separate 1874 memoir. jhi800c2.htm EDGAR ALLAN POE His Life, Letters, and Opinions BY JOHN H. INGRAM. “Unhappy Master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his Songs one burden bore — Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of ‘Never, — nevermore.’ ” With Portraits of Poe and His Mother. VOL. II. LONDON: JOHN HOGG, PATERNOSTER ROW 1880. ———— [All rights reserved.] CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. ——o—— PAGE PORTRAIT OF POE’S MOTHER   ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · Frontispiece CHAP. XV. THE “BROADWAY JOURNAL”      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 1 XVI. THE LITERATI OF NEW YORK       ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 61 XVII. MARIE LOUISE SHEW      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 98 XVIII. EUREKA!      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 129 XIX. HELEN WHITMAN      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 160 XX. “ANNIE”      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 187 XXI. LAST DAYS      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 222 FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM POE       ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 107 APPENDIX A. POE’S ANCESTRY      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 245 ″   B. WILLIAM HENTRY LEONARD POE      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 253 ″   C. ROSALIE M. POE      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 256 ″   D. LADY FRIENDSHIPS      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 259 ″   E. THE POE MEMORIAL      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 263 ″   F. BIOGRAPHIES OF POE      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 289 ″   G. BIBLIOGRAPHY      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 297 INDEX      ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     ·     · 305 John H. Ingram, “Chapter 15,” Edgar Allan Poe: Life, Letters, and Opinions (1880), pp. 1-60 EDGAR ALLAN POE. ——♦—— CHAPTER XV. THE “BROADWAY J0URNAL.”. ON the 8th of March 1845, Edgar Poe became joint-editor, with two New York journalists, of the Broadway Journal, a publication of no particular influence or circulation. One of his coadjutors devoted himself to the musical and dramatic section of the paper, and the other shred the literary department with their new associate. The views of Poe and his literary companion being diametrically opposite, it was arranged that each should be free to enunciate his own opinions independently of the other — an arrangement that produced a somewhat novel, not to say unseemly, appearance, during the few weeks the system lasted. No sooner was Poe reseated in an editorial chair than he resumed an unfortunate “Discussion with Outis,” which he had commenced in Willis’s paper, the Evening Mirror, on the unsavoury subject of plagiarism, and which he now continued, from week to week, in the columns of the Broadway Journal. How this unprofitable disputation arose was thus: In the Evening Mirror for the 14th of January, Poe had published a short notice of “The Waif,” a collection of fugitive verses edited by Longfellow, observing in the course of his remarks. — “We conclude our notes on the ‘Waif’ with the observation that, although full of beauties, it is infected with a moral taint — or is this a mere freak of our own fancy’? We shall be pleased if it be so; but there does appear, in this little volume, a very careful avoidance of all American poets who may be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr. Longfellow can continually imitate (is that the word?), and yet never even incidentally commend.” “Much discussion ensued,” says Poe, proceeding to narrate in the Journal that “a friend of Mr. Longfellow’s penned a defence, which had at least the merit of being thoroughly impartial; for it defended Mr. Longfellow not only from the one-tenth of very moderate disapproval in which I had indulged., but from the nine-tenths of my enthusiastic admiration into the bargain. . . . This well-intended defence was published in the Mirror with a few words of preface by Mr. Willis, and of postscript by myself. Still dissatisfied, Mr. Longfellow, through a second friend, addressed to Mr. Willis an expostulatory letter, of which the Mirror printed only the following portion: “ ‘It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neglected in this collection? Might it not as well be asked why Bryant, Dana, and Halleck were neglected? The answer is obvious to any one who candidly considers the character of the collection. It professed to be, according to the Poem [sic, but query Proem. — J. H. I.], from the humbler poets; and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anonymous, or which were [sic, query not] easily accessible to the general reader — the waifs and estrays of literature. To put anything of Lowell’s, for example, into a collection of waifs, would be a particular liberty with pieces which are all collected and christened.’ ” “Not yet content,” continues Poe, “or misunderstanding the tenor of some of the wittily-put comments which accompanied the quotation, the aggrieved poet, through one of the two friends, as before, or perhaps through a third., finally prevailed upon the good-nature of Mr. Willis to publish an explicit declaration of his disagreement with ‘all’ the disparagement of Longfellow’ which had appeared in the criticism ill question. “Now when we consider that many of the points of censure made by me in this critique were absolutely as plain as the nose upon Mr. Longfellow’s face, that it was impossible to gainsay them, that we defied him and his coadjutors to say a syllable in reply to them, and that they held their tongues and not a syllable said — when we consider all this, I say, then the satire of the ‘all’ in Mr. Willis’s manifesto becomes apparent at once. Mr. Longfellow did not see it; and I presume his friends did not see it. I slid. In my mind’s eye it expanded itself thus: — “ ‘My dear sir, or sirs, what will you have? You are an insatiable set of cormorants, it is true; but if you will only let me know what you desire, I will satisfy you, if I die for it. Be quick! merely say what it is you wish me to admit, and (for the sake of getting rid of you) I will admit it upon the spot, Come! I will grant at once that Mr. Longfellow is Jupiter Tonans, and that his three friends are the Graces; or the Furies, which ever you please. As for a fault to be found with either of you, that is impossible, and I say so. I disagree with all, with every syllable of the disparagement that ever has been whispered against you up to this date, and (not to stand upon trifles) with all that ever shall be whispered against you henceforward, for ever and for ever.’ . . . In the meanwhile Mr. Briggs in this paper, in the Broadway Journal, did me the honour of taking me to task for what he supposed to be my insinuations against Mr. Aldrich.” In his reply in the Mirror (prefaced by a few words from Mr. Willis), the poet reiterated the charge that “Somebody is a thief,” with reference to the palpable “parallelism” between Hood’s beautiful poem “The Deathbed,” and some verses entitled “A Deathbed,” by Mr. J. Aldrich; but, after a collation of the two pieces, and a demonstration that the resemblance was too close to be accidental, he left it to the public to form its own judgment upon the affair. “At this point the matter rested for a fortnight,” continues the narration, “when a fourth friend of Mr. Longfellow took up the cudgels for him, in another communication to the Mirror,” which communication, signed “Outis,” Poe reprinted in full, and then proceeded to criticise thus: — “What I admire in this letter is the gentlemanly grace of its manner, and the chivalry which has prompted its composition. What I do not admire is all the rest. In especial, I do not admire the desperation of the effort to make out a case. No gentleman should degrade himself, on any grounds, to the paltriness of ex parte argument; and I shall not insult Outis at the outset by assuming for a moment that he (Outis) is weak enough to suppose me (Poe) silly enough to look upon all this abominable rigmarole as anything better than a very respectable specimen of special pleading. “As a general rule, in a case of this kind, I should wish to begin with the beginning, but as I have been unable, in running my eye over Outis’ remarks, to discover that they have any beginning at all, I shall be pardoned for touching them in the order which suits me best. Outis need not have put himself to the trouble of informing his readers that he has ‘some acquaintance with Mr. Longfellow.’ It was needless, also, to mention that he did not know me. I thank him for his many flatteries, but of their inconsistency I complain. To speak of me in one breath as a poet, and in the next to insinuate charges of ‘carping littleness,’ is simply to put forth a flat paradox. When a plagiarism is committed and detected, the word ‘littleness’ and other similar words are immediately brought into play. To the words themselves I have no objection whatever; but their application might occasionally be improved. “Is it altogether impossible that a critic be instigated to the exposure of a plagiarism, or still better, of plagiarism generally, wherever he meets it, by a strictly honourable and even charitable motive? Let us see. A theft of this kind is committed — for the present we will admit the possibility that a theft of this character can be committed. The chances, of course, are that an established author steals from an unknown one, rather than the converse; for in proportion to the circulation of the original is the risk of the plagiarism’s detection. The person about to commit the theft hopes for impunity altogether on the ground of the reconditeness of the source from which he thieves. But this obvious consideration is rarely borne in mind. We read a certain passage in a certain book. We meet a passage nearly similar in another book. The first book is not at hand, and we cannot compare dates. We decide by what we fancy the probabilities of the case. The one author is a distinguished man — our sympathies are always in favour of distinction. ‘It is not likely,’ we say in our hearts, ‘that so distinguished a personage as A would be guilty of plagiarism from this B, of whom nobody in the world has ever heard. We give judgment, therefore, at once against B of whom nobody in the world has ever heard; and it is for the very reason that nobody in the world has ever heard of him that, in ninety-nine