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

unfortunate and harassed editor found some nepenthe for his troubles, whilst under his skilful guidance the poetess learned how to produce “a bolder note” and a more impassioned song. If she now composed with less rapidity, than of heretofore, a deeper tone and a more profound pathos is beheld in her later writings, as if the “few additional years, with their inevitable sorrow,” which Poe considered ” to have stirred the depths of her heart,” were, indeed, no poetic fiction. But to the dominating influence of Edgar Poe himself, more than to anything else, must be ascribed the change in Frances Osgood’s feelings. In what light she now regarded her poetic Mentor may be best comprehended from these lines to him, published in his own periodical, the Broadway Journal: — To ———. “In Heaven a spirit doth dwell ‘whose heart-strings are a lute.’ ” — EDGAR POE. “I cannot tell the world how thrills my heart To every touch that flies thy lyre along; How the wild Nature and the wondrous Art, Blend into Beauty in thy passionate song — “But this I know — in thine enchanted slumbers, Heaven’s poet, Israfel — with minstrel fire Taught the music of his own sweet numbers, And tuned — to chord with his — thy glorious lyre!” Well known as is Poe’s exquisite response to these lines, it will still bear repetition here: — To F———s S. O———d. “Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart From its present pathway part not! Being everything which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not. So with the world thy gentle ways, Thy grace — thy more than beauty — Shall be an endless theme of praise, And love — a simple duty.” — EDGAR POE. Shortly after this reciprocation of sentiments, and the exchange of certain other poems and letters of a similar character, Poe was engaged to write a series of critiques on the “Literati of New York,” for Mr. Godey’s magazine, The Lady’s Book, and how Frances Osgood was interested in them will be best gathered from her own pleasant account: — “It was in his own simple yet poetical home, that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child — for his young, gentle, and idolised wife, and for all who came, he bad, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts — the ‘rare and radiant’ fancies — as they flashed through his wonderful and ever-wakeful brain. I recollect one morning towards the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them; and I, who never could resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity Street. I found him just completing his series of papers entitled The Literati of New York. ‘See,’ said he, displaying, in laughing triumph, several little rolls of narrow paper, ‘I am going to show you, by the difference in length of these, the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these, one of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, help me?’ And one by one they unfolded them.. At last they came to one which seemed interminable Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. ‘And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?’ said I. ‘Hear her!’ he cried, ‘just as if her little vain heart didn’t tell her it’s herself!’ ” Subsequently, when requested to furnish her reminiscences of the unfortunate poet, Mrs. Osgood replied: — “For you, who knew and understood my affectionate interest in him, and my frank acknowledgment of that interest to all who had a claim upon my confidence, for you, I will willingly do so. I think no one could know him — no one has known him personally — certainly no woman — without feeling the same interest. I can sincerely say, that although I have frequently heard of aberrations on his part from I the straight and narrow path,’ I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred, and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately nurtured woman, there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric, graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably approached all women who won his respect. It was this which first commanded and always retained my regard for him. “I have been told that when his sorrows and pecuniary embarrassments had driven him to the use of stimulants, which a less delicate organisation might have borne without injury, be was in the habit of speaking disrespectfully of the ladies of his acquaintance. It is difficult for me to believe this; for to me, to whom he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defence; and though I rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but forgive the offence for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet, even were these sad rumours true of him, the wise and well informed knew how to regard, as they would the impetuous anger of a spoiled infant, baulked of its capricious will, the equally harmless and unmeaning phrenzy of that stray child of Poetry and Passion. For the few unwomanly and slander-loving gossips who have injured him and themselves only by repeating his ravings, when in such moods they have accepted his society, I have only to vouchsafe my wonder and my pity. They cannot surely harm the true and pure, who, reverencing his genius and pitying his misfortunes and his errors, endeavoured, by their timely kindness and sympathy, to soothe his sad career.” Such were the impressions left upon Mrs. Osgood by Edgar Poe, and how she, in her turn, appeared to him is told in these words of the poet. “In character she is ardent, sensitive, impulsive. . . the very soul of truth and honour; a worshipper of the beautiful, with a heart so radically artless as to seem abundant in art; universally, admired, respected, and beloved. In person she is about the medium height, slender even to fragility, graceful whether in action or repose; complexion usually pale, hair black and glossy, eyes a clear, luminous grey, large, and with singular capacity for expression.” Although the personal acquaintance of the two poets lasted only for one year, Mrs. Osgood having to travel for her health’s sake, “I maintained a correspondence with Mr. Poe,” says the lady,” in accordance with the earnest entreaties of his wife, who imagined that my influence over him had a restraining and beneficial effect. It had, as far as this — that having solemnly promised me to give up the use of stimulants, he so firmly respected his promise and me, as never once, during our whole acquaintance, to appear in my presence when in the slightest degree affected by them” “The charming love and confidence that existed between his wife and himself,” Mrs., Osgood’s testimony has already been cited in corroboration of. It was, she declares, “always delightfully apparent to me, in spite of the many little poetical episodes in which the impassioned romance of his temperament impelled him to indulge; of this I cannot speak too earnestly, too warmly.” But an uncharitable and censorious public, fed by the jealous whisperings of envious men, and, sadder still, of jealous women, chose to regard these “poetical episodes” in another light. One of the victims of the scandals and calumnies accumulated upon the poet’s devoted head, was his warm friend and defender, Frances Osgood. Alluding to his epistolary and conversational powers, she had remarked to a correspondent, “His letters were divinely, beautiful, and for hours I have listened to hum, entranced by strains of pure and almost celestial eloquence such as I have never read or heard elsewhere.” By means of this correspondence it was sought to crush, or, at all events, inflict a cruel vengeance upon Poe, for. slighted advances and critical contempt. One implacable woman, whose name death and her sex forbid us to mention, chanced to see at Poe’s house an open note or letter from Mrs. Osgood, which she assumed to consider called for interference. This same woman, whose own advances to the poet were anything but pleasant, so busied herself that a committee of ladies was actually, appointed to call upon Mrs. Osgood, and remonstrate with her upon the imprudence of such a correspondence. In consequence of their representations, the poetess consented that they should act on her behalf and request the return of her letters. The late Margaret Fuller, afterwards Countess D‘Ossoli, was, it is understood, one of the ladies who acted upon this occasion, and a well-known literary lady of New York another, but the acknowledged instigator and “wire puller” of the movement was Mrs. E——, the woman above referred to. The story has been told us thus: — “The ladies repaired to Fordham, presented their credentials, and made their demand. The poor Raven, driven to desperation, ruffled his plumage, called the fair ambassadresses; busy-bodies,’ and added injury to insult by saying that ‘Mrs. E —— had better come and look after her own letters.’ Now this was very indiscreet of him, and very reprehensible, and no one knew this better than himself. But you shall hear what he himself says about it in a letter — ‘In the heat of passion, stung to madness by her inconceivable perfidy, and by the grossness of the injury which her jealousy prompted her to inflict upon all of us — upon both families — I permitted myself to say what I should not have said. I had no sooner uttered the words than I felt their dishonour. I felt, too, that although she must be damningly conscious of her own baseness, she would still have a right to reproach me for having betrayed, under any circumstances, her confidence. “ ‘Full of these thoughts, and terrified almost to death lest I should again, in a moment of madness, be similarly tempted, I went immediately to my secretary — (when those two ladies went away), — made a package of her letters, addressed them to her, and with my own hands left them at her door. Now you cannot be prepared for the diabolical malignity which followed. Instead of feeling that I had done all I could to repair an unpremeditated wrong; instead of feeling that almost any other person would have retained the letters to make good (if occasion required), the assertion that I possessed them; instead of this, she urged her brothers and brother-in-law to demand of me the letters. The position in which she thus placed me you may imagine. Is it any wonder that I was driven mad by the intolerable sense of wrong? . . . You will now comprehend what I mean in saying that the only thing which I found it impossible to forgive Mrs. Osgood, was her reception of Mrs. E—.’ ” Such is the account furnished by Poe himself of one of the most deplorable incidents in his life, and one which has been misrepresented, exaggerated, and distorted in a hundred different ways by foes and thoughtless retailers of scandal. The guileless nature of Mrs. Osgood, and the passionate, proud spirit of Poe, rendered both easy prey to craft and calculating cold duplicity. It is satisfactory to learn that, despite the intervention of “busybodies,” the two poets remained friendly to the close of their contemporaneously ended careers, and whilst Poe frequently alludes in his correspondence with affectionate interest to Mrs. Osgood, the final poem of that lady’s last volume,