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

Sigourney, Miss Sedgwick, Paulding, Flint, Halleck, Cooper, Judge Hopkinson, Dew, Governor Cass, J. Q. Adams, and many others. Could you not do me so great a favour as to send a scrap, however small, from your portfolio? Your name is of the greatest influence in that region where we direct our greatest efforts — in the South. Any little reminiscence, tale, jeu d‘esprit, historical anecdote — anything, in short, with your name, will answer all our purposes. “I presume you have heard of my marriage. — With sincere respect and esteem, yours truly, “EDGAR A. POE. “J. P. KENNEDY.” The pecuniary embarrassment to which this communication alludes, even if temporarily relieved by his friend, was doubtless of a chronic character, and probably the chief cause of Poe quitting Richmond, and resigning his connection with the Literary Messenger. Although he parted on friendly terms from Mr. White, and in after years wrote and spoke of him with kindliness, there is little doubt but that the poet relinquished his post on the magazine in consequence of the rate of remuneration he received being not only much less than he deemed his name and entire services entitled him to, but even less than he could decently maintain his household upon. The number of the magazine for January 1837 was the last Messenger under Poe’s editorship, and it contained, in addition to certain reviews and reprinted poems of his, the first part of “Arthur Gordon Pym;” a second instalment of the romance appearing in the following number, after its author’s severance from the periodical. Previous to giving up charge of the Messenger, Poe, with that thoughtfulness of friends which he often manifested, wrote to Mr. Wilmer, to tell him of his intention of leaving Richmond, and suggesting that he, Wilmer, should come thither without delay, as he was certain he could obtain the post he was about to vacate. Mr. Wilmer, however, could not avail himself of the offer, as he was preparing to leave for Philadelphia.* Apparently, Mr. White parted with his clever editor with much reluctance, yet he could not, or he would not, comply with his requirements — requirements, indeed, it has been suggested, that included partnership in the publication. In the number of the magazine containing Poe’s resignation of the editorship, announced in the words, “Mr. Poe’s attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present number, the editorial duties of the Messenger,” the proprietor issued a notice to the effect, that “Mr. Poe, who has filled the editorial department for the last twelve months with so much ability, retired from that station on the 3rd instant,” but will, so it was promised, “continue to furnish its columns from time to time with the effusions of his vigorous and popular pen.” How soon after this Poe left Richmond, and what he was doing for the next few months, are still unanswered questions. After the expiration of a short interregnum, he is discovered as settled in New York once more, and this time accompanied by his wife and her mother. During one portion, at least, of this residence in New York, the Poes lived at 113 1/2 Carmine Street, where Mrs. Clemm attempted, as one method of lessening the household expenses, to keep a boarding house, but the experiment does not appear to have met with any success, and the family fell into very poor circumstances. An interesting account of the poet’s limited mènage at this epoch of the story, has been given by the late William Gowans, the wealthy and eccentric bibliopolist, who boarded with Mrs. Clemm.* Alluding to the untruthfulness of the prevalent idea of Poe’s character, the shrewd old man remarks — “The characters drawn of Poe by his various biographers and critics may with safety be pronounced an excess of exaggeration, but this is not to be much wondered at, when it is taken into consideration that these men were rivals either as poets or prose writers, and it is well known that such are generally as jealous of each other as are the ladies who are handsome, or those who desire to be considered to be possessed of the coveted quality. It is an old truism, and as true as it is old, ‘that in the midst of counsel there is safety.’ “I, therefore, will also show you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate genius. It may be estimated as worth little, but it has this merit — it comes from an eye and ear witness; and this, it must be remembered, is the very highest of legal evidence. For eight months or more, ‘one house contained us, us one table fed!’ During that time I saw much of him, and had an opportunity of conversing with him often, and I must say, that I never saw him the least affected with liquor, nor even descend to any known vice, while he was one of the most courteous, gentlemanly, and intelligent companions I have met with during my journeyings and haltings through divers divisions of the globe; besides, he had an extra inducement to be a good man as well as a good husband, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and loveliness, her eyes could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate; a temper and disposition of surpassing sweetness; besides, she seemed as much devoted to him and his every interest as a young mother is to her first-born. . . . Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing countenance, what the ladies would call decidedly handsome.” Mr. Gowans — who is remembered as “one of the most truthful and uncompromising of men” — in conversing with Mr. Thomas C. Latto with reference to Poe and his young wife, whom he described as fragile in constitution, but of remarkable beauty, testified that the poet “was uniformly quiet, reticent, gentlemanly in demeanour, and during the whole period lie lived there, not the slightest trace of intoxication or dissipation was discernible in the illustrious inmate, who was at that time engaged in the composition of ‘Arthur Gordon Pym.’ Poe “kept good hours,” he said, “and all his little wants were seen to by Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, who watched him as sedulously as if he had been a child.” Mr. Gowans was a man of known intelligence, and, writes Mr. Latto, “being a Scotchman, is by no means averse to ‘a twa-handed crack,’ but he felt himself kept at a distance somewhat by Poe’s aristocratic reserve.”* Mr. Gowans only left when the household was broken up, and the close connection which be was daily brought into with members of it, and the opportunity which be had of seeing what kind of life the poet was then leading, render his testimony valuable. Res auqustæ domi notwithstanding, the domestic life of the poet, at this period at least, was not altogether unhappy. As yet, the fact had not manifested itself to him that his girlish bride’s beauty was but the signal of the fatal disease that she was destined to fall an early victim to; nor could he forbode, that she was to succumb to that fell complaint he had erstwhile so rashly wished all he loved to perish of. A little while later and the devoted husband learnt, as he bemoaned, that “the finger of death was upon her bosom — that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die.” Ever since his marriage Poe had spent his leisure hours in continuing his young wife’s education, and under his careful tuition she became highly accomplished. “She was an excellent linguist and a perfect musician, and she was so very beautiful,” records her bereaved mother. “How often has Eddie* said, ‘I see no one so beautiful as my sweet little wife.’ ” “Eddie,” declares his “more than mother,” “was domestic in all his habits, seldom leaving home for an hour unless his darling Virginia, or myself, were with him. He was truly an affectionate, kind husband, and a devoted son to me. He was impulsive, generous, affectionate, and noble. His tastes were very simple, and his admiration for all that was good and beautiful very great. . . . We three lived only for each other.”† This epoch of quiet domestic happiness does not appear to have been one very fruitful of literary produce, or, if it were, the result has been lost sight of. During 1837 Poe contributed a critique of Stephens’s “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land,” to the October number of the New York Review. This Quarterly was a theological publication, and required a class of writing utterly unsuited to Poe’s range of thought, he therefore wisely forbore from attempting anything of a similar kind again. His next literary essay was the completion of “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” the first and second instalments of which romance, as already pointed out, had appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. The interest the work had aroused during its issue in the magazine determined Poe to complete it, that is to say, as far as he ever intended to complete it, the abrupt and unfinished state of its closing paragraph having, evidently, been intentional. The story was not issued in book form until July 1838. It is said that it did not excite much notice in America, but it was very successful in England, where, besides the authorised reprints of Messrs. Wiley and Putnam, several other editions were speedily disposed of. The truthful air of “The Narrative,” and the circumstantiality of the title-page and preface, doubtless attracted attention, but indeed the whole romance is detailed with such Defoe-like minuteness — with such an apparent want of art — especially in lengthy, almost tedious, citations from presumable kindred works — that the reading public was bound to submit to the temporary fascination, and accept the vraisemblance for truth itself. The abrupt termination of “The Narrative,” and the pretext alleged for it, both contributed greatly to the apparent fidelity to fact. The chief defect in the tale is the supernatural final paragraph — wisely omitted in the London reprint — which neither adds to the interest nor increases the life-like truthfulness. The original title-page of Poe’s longest tale deserves reproduction here; it reads thus: — “THE NARRATIVE of ARTHUR GORDON PYM, of Nantucket; Comprising the Details of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas-with an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivors; their Shipwreck, and subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine, their Deliverance by means of the British Schooner Jane Gray; the brief Cruise of this latter Vessel in the Antarctic Ocean: her Capture, and the Massacre of her Crew among a Group of Islands in the 84th parallel of Southern Latitude, together with the incredible Adventures and Discoveries still further South, to which that distressing Calamity gave rise. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1838.” Students of Poe’s works who have learned to recognise his method of thought, know how frequently he discloses his mental history in those parenthetical passages he so much affected. In the above narrative these disclosures, interwoven with autobiographical data, occur both oft and o’er. In the “preliminary notice,” and in the first chapter of the romance, fact and fiction are ingeniously blended, and real and ideal personages are mingled somewhat confusingly together. His readers are well aware how clearly Poe’s idiosyncrasies, both in his prose and in his verse, show through the transparent masks behind which his heroes are supposed to be hidden, and in this “Narrative” it is rarely that the imaginary hero is thought of otherwise than as identical with Poe himself. The adventurous lad Pym is certainly not the person to whom our thoughts tend when the second chapter of this tale begins, “In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data,” and we are at no loss to comprehend the autobiographic fidelity of the author when be says, under the pseudonym of Pym, “One of my enthusiastic temperament, and somewhat gloomy,