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

work of art as many of its predecessors from the same pen, but from the fact that it referred to real and widely-known circumstances. To some extent the story is a sequel, or rather sequence, of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and purports to be carried on, so far as the mere spectators of the tragedy are concerned, by the same personages; but whilst that was pure fiction from beginning to end, this recital refers to fact, that is to say, to fact but slightly veiled. The author furnishes the following preliminary words in explanation of the general design of his narrative: — “A young girl, Mary Cecilia Ropers, was murdered in the vicinity of New York; and although her death occasioned an intense and long-enduring excitement, the mystery attending it had remained unsolved at the period when the present paper was written and published. Herein, under pretence of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, the author has followed in minute detail the essential, while merely paralleling the inessential, facts of the real murder of Mary Ropers. Thus all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth; and the investigation of truth was the object. ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ was composed at a distance from the scene of the atrocity, and with no other means of investigation than the newspapers afforded. Thus much escaped the writer of which he could have availed himself, had he been on the spot, and visited the localities. It may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of two persons (one of them the ‘Madame Deluc’ of the narrative), made at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely all the chief hypothetical details by which that conclusion was attained.” Poe, under the garb of the magazine’s editor, concludes the narrative thus: “For reasons which we shall not specify, but which to many readers will appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here omitting, from the MSS. placed in our hands [by Mr. Poe], such portion as details the following up of the apparently slight clue obtained “ ‘Latterly it has been the fashion (especially by foreigners) to disbelieve that Marie Roget’s mystery had any real existence, and that the whole recital was the coinage of the poet’s brain, and the notes only appended to give it an air of vraisemblance. Nevertheless, such was not the case; the narrative was founded on fact, although the incidents of the tragedy differed widely from those recounted in the tale. The naval officer implicated was named Spencer. In a letter to a literary friend asking about the omitted portions of the manuscript, above referred to, Poe says, “Nothing was omitted in ‘Marie Roget’ but what I omitted myself — all that is mystification. . . . The ‘naval officer,’ who committed the murder (rather the accidental death arising from an attempt at abortion) confessed it; and the whole matter is now well understood; but, for the sake of relatives, I must not speak further.” This narrative, or rather this analysis of the Unknown by ratiocination, is, presumedly, based upon the fact that even chance may be made a matter of absolute calculation. The subject was peculiarly suited to the mind of Poe, a mind in which mathematical accuracy was balanced by lofty imagination tinged by superstition. “There are few persons,” he remarks, “even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments — for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought — such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this calculus is in its essence purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation.” Recurring to this doctrine, he continues: — “Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen. But perhaps you do not comprehend me. The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events, we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base upon what has been a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unhooked for and unimagined to the mathematical formulæ, of the schools. I repeat that it is no more than fact that the larger portion of all truth has sprung from the collateral.” Analogous speculations form the bases of other succeeding stories, such as “The Purloined Letter” and “The Gold Bug,” hereafter to be referred to. There is, however, another reference in “The Mystery of Marie Roget” to an all-important and but-too-rarely-alluded-to truth, the vital importance of which cannot be overestimated — the effects of which, however, are beheld and experienced much more injuriously in America than in the Old World: — “We should bear in mind,” is the commentary, “that in general it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation — to make a point — than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only pursued when it seems coincident with the former. The print which merely falls in with ordinary opinion (however well founded this opinion may be), earns for itself no credit with the mob. The mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both it is of the lowest order of merit.” The Gift for 1843 contained “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a tale of less philosophical value, perhaps, than the class of works just alluded to, but of intense fascination to the general reader. It is founded upon, or rather suggested by, the terrible sufferings of a Spanish refugee, who closed his miserable career amid the company of actors to which Poe’s mother belonged, and it would be interesting to discover hove the story reachedthe poet’s knowledge. The author of this tale of the inquisition’s tortures, reproduces in its earliest sentences somewhat similar psychological fancies to those found in the “Colloquy of Monos and Una,” but richer in tone and riper in experience. There is a truth and suggestiveness in the following passages which can be recognised and appreciated by many who would fail to grasp the shadowy hints of the earlier work: “Even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages: first, that of the sense Of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is — what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention. “Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember, amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness.” Another noteworthy point about this story is the artistic accuracy of taste displayed in what may be regarded by some as mere minor details; for instance, instead of a description of the concrete horrors, such as a commonplace mind would have given, of the interior of the pit, the imagination only is appealed to and all its terror is suggested but left untold. What a far finer instinct, and more profound knowledge of art, does this restraint imply, than if the narrator had afforded a circumstantial account of some such loathsome mediæval pit as is the one, for instance, shown at Baden-Baden. The idea of the collapsing chamber, also, unlike in other tales in which that oft-told-of apparatus of torture plays a part, is made subservient to the other purposes of the work, rather than they to it. Upon leaving Mr. Graham, Poe once more exerted himself towards carrying into execution his life-long scheme of a magazine of his own. He wrote to his friends in various parts of the States, issued prospectuses from time to time, and for a long while did his best, but in vain, to resuscitate his embryo periodical. Ultimately he induced Mr. Thomas C. Clarke, a Philadelphia publisher, and founder and editor of several well-known publications, to join him in his speculation. Poe, as literary and art critic for the Saturday Evening Post — for many years one of the most popular and flourishing journals of its kind in the country — had already afforded Mr. Clarke, who was the proprietor, evidence of his literary and editoral ability. Accordingly, on January 31, 1843, Mr. Clarke took Edgar Poe into partnership, so far, at least, as the projected periodical was concerned, and issued a prospectus and other publications connected with it signed “Clarke and Poe.” The address to the journals and anticipated contributors, alluding to the prospectus which had already been circulated of the proposed Penn Magazine, stated that that project had been suspended through circumstances of no interest to the public, and that it had now been resumed, under the best auspices, subject only to a change of title. The name given to the stillborn journal had been deemed too local in its suggestions, it was, therefore, proposed to adopt that of The Stylus for the new speculation. Allusion was made to “the general knowledge, on the part of the public,” of Poe’s former connection with the Southern Literary Messenger, and Graham’s Magazine, and such knowledge, it was pre-supposed, obviated the necessity for any very rigid definition of the literary character or aims of the new publication. “In many important points, however,” said Poe, “the new magazine will differ widely from either of those named. It will endeavour to be more varied, more vigorous, more pungent, more original, more individual, and more independent.” Again, referring to the two periodicals with which his connections had been best known, he said: — “I shall be pardoned for speaking more directly of the two magazines in question. Having in neither of them any