Memoir of the Author — Rufus Wilmot Griswold’s 1850 account of Poe — reading text

strange that just at this time, when everybody is praising you, and when fortune is beginning to smile upon your hitherto wretched circumstances, you should be invaded by these blue devils. It belongs, however, to your age and temper to be thus buffeted — but be assured, it only wants a little resolution to master the adversary forever. You will doubtless do well henceforth in literature, and add to your comforts as well as to your reputation, which it gives me great pleasure to assure you is everywhere rising in popular esteem.” But he could not bear his good fortune. On receiving a month’s salary he gave himself up to habits which only necessity had restrained at Baltimore. For a week he was in a condition of brutish drunkenness, and Mr. White dismissed him. When he became sober, however, he had no resource but in reconciliation, and he wrote letters and induced acquaintances to call upon Mr. White with professions of repentance and promise of reformation. With his usual considerate and judicious kindness that gentleman answered him: “My dear Edgar: I cannot address you in such language as this occasion and my feelings demand: I must be content to speak to you in my plain way. That you are sincere in all your promises I firmly believe. But when you once again tread these streets, I have my fears that your resolutions will fail, and that you will again drink till your senses are lost. If you rely on your strength you are gone. Unless you look to your Maker for help you will not be safe. How much I regretted parting from you is known by Him only and myself. I had become attached to you; I am still; and I would willingly say return, did not a knowledge of your past life make me dread a speedy renewal of our separation. If you would make yourself contented with quarters in my house, or with any other private family, where liquor is not used, I should think there was some hope for you. But, if you go to a tavern, or to any place where it is used at table, you are not safe. You have fine talents, Edgar, and you ought to have them respected, as well as yourself. Learn to respect yourself, and you will soon find that you are respected. Separate yourself from the bottle, and from bottle companions, forever. Tell me if you can and will do so. If you again become an assistant in my office, it must be understood that all engagements on my part cease the moment you get drunk. I am your true friend. T.W.W.” A new contract was arranged, but Poe’s irregularities frequently interupted the kindness and finally exhausted the patience of his generous though methodical employer, and in the number of the “Messenger” for January, 1837, he thus took leave of its readers: “Mr. Poe’s attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present, number, the editorial duties of the Messenger. His Critical Notices for this month end with Professor Anthon’s Cicero — what follows is from another hand. With the best wishes to the magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous of bidding all parties a peaceful farewell.” While in Richmond, with an income of but five hundred dollars a year, he had married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a very amiable and lovely girl, who was as poor as himself, and little fitted, except by her gentle temper, to be the wife of such a person. He went from Richmond to Baltimore, and after a short time, to Philadelphia, and to New-York. A slight acquaintance with Dr. Hawks had led that acute and powerful writer to invite his contributions to the “New-York Review,” and he had furnished for the second number of it (for October, 1837) an elaborate but not very remarkable article upon Stephen’s then recently published “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petrea, and the Holy Land.” His abilities were not of the kind demanded for such a work, and he never wrote another paper for this or for any other Review of the same class. He had commenced in the “Literary Messenger,” a story of the sea, under the title of “Arthur Gordon Pym,”* and upon the recommendations of Mr. Paulding and others, it was printed by the Harpers. It is his longest work, and is not without some sort of merit, but it received little attention. The publishers sent one hundred copies to England, and being mistaken at first for a narrative of real experiences, it was advertised to be reprinted, but a discovery of its character, I believe prevented such a result. An attempt is made in it, by simplicity of style, minuteness of nautical descriptions, and circumstantiality of narration, to give it that air of truth which constitutes the principal attraction of Sir Edward Seaward’s Narrative, and Robinson Crusoe; but it has none of the pleasing interest of these tales; it it as full of wonders as Muchausen, has as many atrocities as the Book of Pirates, and as liberal an array of paining and revolting horrors as ever was invented by Anne Radcliffe or George Walker. Thus far a tendency to extravagance had been the most striking infirmity of his genius. He had been more anxious to be intense than to be natural; and some of his bizarreries had been mistaken for satire, and admired for that quality. Afterward he was more judicious, and if his outlines were incredible it was commonly forgotten in the simplicity of his details and their exhaustive cumulation. Near the end of the year 1838 he settled in Philadelphia. He had no very definite purposes, but trusted for support to the chance of success as a magazinist and newspaper correspondent. Mr. Burton, the comedian, had recently established the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” and of this he became a contributor, and in May, 1839, the chief editor, devoting to it, for ten dollars a week, two hours every day, which left him abundant time for more important labors. ln the same month he agreed to funish such reviewals as he had written for the “Literary Messenger,” for the “Literary Examiner,” a new magazine at Pittsburg. But his more congenial pursuit was tale writing, and he produced about this period some of his most remarkable and characteristic works in a department of imaginative composition in which he was henceforth alone and unapproachable. The “Fall of the House of Usher,” and “Legeia,” are the most interesting illustrations of his mental organization — his masterpieces in a peculiar vein of romantic creation. They have the unquestionable stamp of genius. The analyses of the growth of madness in one, and the thrilling revelations of the existence of a first wife in the person of a second, in the other, are made with consumate skill; and the strange and solemn and fascinating beauty which informs the style and invests the circumstances of both, drugs the mind, and makes us forget the improbabilities of their general design. An awakened ambition and the.healthful influence of a conviction that his works were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct. He wrote to a friend, the author of “Edge Hill,” in Richmond, that he had quite overcome “the seductive and dangerous besetment” by which he had so often been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he had become a model of temperance,” and of “other virtues,” which it had sometimes been difficult for him to practise. Before the close of the summer, however, he relapsed into his former courses, and for weeks was regardless of everything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of intoxication. In the autumn he published all the prose stories he had then written, in tow volumes, under the title of “Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque.” The work was not saleable, perhaps because its contents were too familiar from recent separate publication in magazines; and it was not so warmly praised, generally, as I think it should have been, though in point of style the pieces which it embraced are much less perfect than they were made subsequently. He was with Mr. Burton until June, 1840 — more than a year. Mr. Burton appreciated his abilities and would gladly have continued the connextion; but Poe was so unsteady of purpose and so unreliable that the actor was never sure when he left the city that his business would be cared for. On one occasion, returning after the regular day of publication, he found the number unfinished, and Poe incapable of duty. He prepared the necessary copy himself, published the magazine, and was proceeded with arrangements for another month, when he received a letter from his assistant, of which the tone may be inferred from this answer: “I am sorry you have thought it necessary to send me such a letter. Your troubles have given a morbid tone to your feelings which it is your duty to discourage. I myself have been as severely handled by the world as you can possibly have been, but my sufferings have not tinged my mind with melancholy, nor jaundiced my views of society. You must rouse your energies, and it care assail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook the past. I hope you will as easily fulfil your pledges for the future. We shall agree very well, though I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so “successful with the mob.” I am truly much less anxious about making a monthly “sensation” than I am upon the point of fairness. You must, my dear sir, get rid of your avowed ill-feelings toward your brother authors. You see I speak plainly: I cannot do otherwise upon such a subject. You say the people love havoc. I think they love justice. I think you yourself would not have written the article on Dawes, in a more healthy say the state of mind. I am not trammelled by any vulgar consideration of expediency; I would rather lose money than by such undue severity wound the feelings of a kind-hearted and honorable man. And I am satisfied that Dawes has something of the true fire in him. I regretted your word-catching spirit. But I wander from design. I accept your proposition to recommence your interrupted avocations upon the Maga. Let us meet as if we had not exchanged letters. Use more exercise, write when feelings prompt, and be assured of my friendship. You will soon regain a healthy activity of mind, and laugh at your past vagaries.” This letter was kind and judicious. It gives us a glimpse of Poe’s theory of criticism, and displays the temper and principles of the literary comedian in an honorable light. Two or three months afterward Burton went out of town to fulfil a professional engagement, leaving material and directions for completing the next number of the magazine in four days. He was absent nearly a fortnight, and on returning he found that his printers in the meanwhile had not received a line of copy; but that Poe had prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and account books, to be sued in a scheme for supplanting him. He encountered his associate late in the evening at one of his accustomed haunts, and said, “Mr. Poe, I am astonished: Give me my manuscripts so that I can attend to the duties you have so shamefully neglected, and when you are sober we will settle.” Poe interrupted him with “Who are you to presume to address me in this manner? Burton, I am — the editor — of the Penn Magazine — and you are — hiccup — a fool.” Of course this ended his relations with the “Gentleman’s.” In November, 1840, Burton’s miscellany was merged in “The Casket,” owned by Mr. George R. Graham, and the new series received the name of its proprietor, who engaged Poe in its editorship. His connexion with “Graham’s Magazine” lasted about a year and a half, and this was one of the most active and brilliant periods of his literary life. He wrote in it several of his finest tales and most trenchant criticisms, and challenged attention by his papers entitled “Autography,” and those on cryptology and cyphers. In the first, adopting a suggestion of