Various
International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1
In 1822, he returned to the United States, and after passing a few months at an academy in Richmond, he entered the University at Charlottesville, where he led a very dissipated life; the manners which then prevailed there were extremely dissolute, and he was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class; but his unusual opportunities, and the remarkable ease with which he mastered the most difficult studies, kept him all the while in the first rank for scholarship, and he would have graduated with the highest honors, had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices, induced his expulsion from the university.
At this period he was noted for feats of hardihood, strength, and activity; and on one occasion, in a hot day of June, he swam from Richmond to Warwick, seven miles and a half, against a tide running probably from two to three miles an hour.1 He was expert at fence, had some skill in drawing, and was a ready and eloquent conversationist and declaimer.
His allowance of money while at Charlottesville had been liberal, but he quitted the place very much in debt; and when Mr. Allan refused to accept some of the drafts with which he had paid losses in gaming, he wrote to him an abusive letter, quitted his house, and soon after left the country with the quixotic intention of joining the Greeks, then in the midst of their struggle with the Turks. He never reached his destination, and we know but little of his adventures in Europe for nearly a year. By the end of this time he had made his way to St. Petersburg, and our Minister in that capital, the late Mr. Henry Middleton, of South Carolina, was ummoned one morning to save him from penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. Through Mr. Middleton's kindness he was set at liberty and enabled to return to this country.
His meeting with Mr. Allan was not very cordial, but that gentleman declared himself willing to serve him in any way that should seem judicious; and when Poe expressed some anxiety to enter the Military Academy, he induced Chief Justice Marshall, Andrew Stevenson, General Scott, and other eminent persons, to sign an application which secured his appointment to a scholarship in that institution.
Mrs. Allan, whom Poe appears to have regarded with much affection, and who had more influence over him than any one else at this period, died on the 27th of February, 1829, which I believe was just before Poe left Richmond for West Point. It has been erroneously stated by all Poe's biographers, that Mr. Allan was now sixty-five years of age, and that Miss Paterson, to whom he was married afterward, was young enough to be his granddaughter. Mr. Allan was in his forty-eighth year, and the difference between his age and that of his second wife was not so great as justly to attract any observation.
For a few weeks the cadet applied himself with much assiduity to his studies, and he became at once a favorite with his mess and with the officers and professors of the Academy; but his habits of dissipation were renewed; he neglected his duties and disobeyed orders; and in ten months from his matriculation he was cashiered.
He went again to Richmond, and was received into the family of Mr. Allan, who was disposed still to be his friend, and in the event of his good behavior to treat him like a son; but it soon became necessary to close his doors against him forever. According to Poe's own statement he ridiculed the marriage of his patron with Miss Paterson, and had a quarrel with her; but a different story,2 scarcely suitable for repetition here, was told by the friends of the other party. Whatever the circumstances, they parted in anger, and Mr. Allan from that time declined to see or in any way to assist him. Mr. Allan died in the spring of 1834, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, leaving three children to share his property, of which not a mill was bequeathed to Poe.
Soon after he left West Point Poe had printed at Baltimore a small volume of verses, ("Al Aaraaf," of about four hundred lines, "Tamerlane," of about three hundred lines, with smaller pieces,) and the favorable manner in which it was commonly referred to confirmed his belief that he might succeed in the profession of literature. The contents of the book appear to have been written when he was between sixteen and nineteen years of age; but though they illustrated the character of his abilities and justified his anticipations of success, they do not seem to me to evince, all things considered, a very remarkable precocity. The late Madame d'Ossoli refers to some of them as the productions of a boy of eight or ten years, but I believe there is no evidence that anything of his which has been published was written before he left the university. Certainly, it was his habit so constantly to labor upon what he had produced—he was at all times so anxious and industrious in revision—that his works, whenever first composed, displayed the perfection of his powers at the time when they were given to the press.
His contributions to the journals attracted little attention, and his hopes of gaining a living in this way being disappointed, he enlisted in the army as a private soldier. How long he remained in the service I have not been able to ascertain. He was recognized by officers who had known him at West Point and efforts were made, privately, but with prospects of success, to obtain for him a commission, when it was discovered by his friends that he had deserted.
He had probably found relief from the monotony of a soldier's life in literary composition. His mind was never in repose, and without some such resort the dull routine of camp or barracks would have been insupportable. When he next appears, he has a volume of MS. stories, which he desires to print under the title of "Tales of the Folio Club." An offer by the proprietor of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, of two prizes, one for the best tale and one for the best poem, induced him to submit the pieces entitled "MS. Found in a Bottle," "Lionizing," "The Visionary," and three others, with "The Coliseum," a poem, to the committee, which consisted of Mr. John P. Kennedy, the author of "Horse-Shoe Robinson;" Mr. J.H.B. Latrobe, and Dr. James H. Miller. Such matters are usually disposed of in a very off-hand way: Committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer's health in good wines, over unexamined MSS., which they submit to the discretion of publishers, with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote the publishers' advantage. So perhaps it would have been in this case, but that one of the committee, taking up a little book remarkably beautiful and distinct in caligraphy, was tempted to read several pages; and becoming interested, he summoned the attention of the company to the half-dozen compositions it contained. It was unanimously decided that the prizes should be paid to "the first of geniuses who had written legibly." Not another MS. was unfolded. Immediately the "confidential envelope" was opened, and the successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely-known name of Poe. The committee indeed awarded to him the premiums for both the tale and the poem, but subsequently altered their decision, so as to exclude him from the second premium, in consideration of his having obtained the higher one. The prize tale was the "MS. found in a Bottle." This award was published on the twelfth of October, 1833. The next day the publisher called to see Mr. Kennedy, and gave him an account of the author, which excited his curiosity and sympathy, and caused him to request that he should be brought to his office. Accordingly he was introduced. The prize-money had not yet been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A well-worn frock-coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the want of hose. But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and feeling, and his voice and conversation and manner, all won upon the lawyer's regard. Poe told his history, and his ambition, and it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor opportunities for just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a clothing-store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman.
His new friends were very kind to him, and availed themselves of every Opportunity to serve him. Near the close of the year 1834 the late Mr. T.W. White established in Richmond the Southern Literary Messenger. He was a man of much simplicity, purity, and energy of character, but not a writer, and he frequently solicited his acquaintances' literary assistance. On receiving from him an application for an article, early in 1835, Mr. Kennedy, who was busy with the duties of his profession, advised Poe to send one, and in a few weeks he had occasion to inclose the following answer to a letter from Mr. White:
"BALTIMORE, April 13, 1835.
"Dear Sir: Poe did right in referring to me. He is very clever with his pen—classical and scholarlike. He wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he can be made very useful to you. And, poor fellow! he is very poor. I told him to write something for every number of your magazine, and that you might find it to your advantage to give him some permanent employ. He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of –, in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been promising to publish them. This young fellow is highly imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money, and I have no doubt you and he will find your account in each other."
In the next number of the "Messenger" Mr. White announced that Poe was its editor, or in other words, that he had made arrangements with a gentleman of approved literary taste and attainments to whose especial management the editorial department would be confided, and it was declared that this gentleman would "devote his exclusive attention to the work." Poe continued, however, to reside in Baltimore, and it is probable that he was engaged only as a general contributor and a writer of critical notices of books. In a letter to Mr. White, under the date of the thirtieth of May, he says:
"In regard to my critique of Mr. Kennedy's novel, I seriously feel ashamed of what I have written. I fully intended to give the work a thorough review, and examine it in detail. Ill health alone prevented me from so doing. At the time I made the hasty sketch I sent you, I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy has proved himself a kind friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many acts of generosity and attention. You ask me if I am perfectly, satisfied with your course. I reply that I am—entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them."
About a month afterward he wrote:
"You ask me if I would be willing to come on to Richmond if you should have occasion, for my services during the coming winter. I reply that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I have been desirous for some time past of paying a visit to Richmond, and would be glad of an reasonable excuse for so doing. Indeed I am anxious to settle myself in that city, and if, by any chance, you hear of a situation likely to suit me, I would gladly accept it, were the salary even the merest trifle. I should, indeed, feel myself greatly indebted to you if through your means I could accomplish this object. What you say in the conclusion of your letter, in relation to the supervision of proof-sheets, gives me reason to hope that possibly you might find something for me to do in your office. If so I should be very glad—for at present only a very small portion of my time is employed."
He continued in Baltimore till September. In this period he wrote several long reviews, which for the most part were rather abstracts of works than critical discussions, and published, with others, "Hans Phall," a story in some respects very similar to Mr. Locke's celebrated account of Herschel's Discoveries in the Moon. At first he appears to have been ill satisfied with Richmond, or with his duties, for in two or three weeks after his removal to that city we find Mr. Kennedy writing to him:
"I am sorry to see you in such plight as your letter shows you in. It is 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 those 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 recourse but in reconciliation, and he wrote letters and induced acquaintances to call upon Mr. White with professions of repentance and promises 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 to 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 interrupted 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 tho 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 Stephens'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 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"3, and upon the recommendation 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 Cursoe; but it has none of the pleasing interest of these tales; it is as full of wonders as Munchausen, 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 bizarréries 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 cohesive cumulation.
Near the end of the year 1838 he settled in Philadelphia. He had no very Definite purposes, but trusted for support to the chances 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. In the same month he agreed to furnish such reviewals as he had written for the "Literary Messenger," for the "Literary Examiner," a new magazine at Pittsburgh. 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 theunquestionable 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 consummate 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 practice. 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 two volumes, under the title of "Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque." The work was not salable, 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 have gladly continued the connection; 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 proceeding with arrangements with 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 if care assail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook the past. I hope you will as easily fulfill your pledges for the future. We shall agree very well, thought 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 state of mind. I am not trammeled 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 the true fire in him. I regretted your word-catching spirit. But I wander from my 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 fulfill 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 used 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 that 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 encouraged Poe in its editorship. His connection 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 ciphers. In the first, adopting a suggestion of Lavater, he attempted the illustration of character from handwriting; and in the second, he assumed that human ingenuity could construct no secret writing which human ingenuity could not resolve; a not very dangerous proposition, since it implied no capacity in himself to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He however succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and the direction of his mind to the subject led to the composition of some of the tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor; but Poe still remained in Philadelphia, engaged from time to time in various literary occupations, and in the vain effort to establish a journal of his own to be called "The Stylus." Although it requires considerable capital to carry on a monthly of the description he proposed, I think it would not have been difficult, with his well-earned fame as a magazinist, for him to have found a competent and suitable publisher, but for the unfortunate notoriety of his habits, and the failure in succession of three persons who had admired him for his genius and pitied him for his misfortunes, by every means that tact or friendship could suggest, to induce the consistency and steadiness of application indispensable to success in such pursuits. It was in the spring of 1848—more than a year after his dissociation from Graham—that he wrote the story of "The Gold Bug," for which he was paid a prize of one hundred dollars. It has relation to Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most remarkable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning. The interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. In the autumn of 1844 Poe removed to New York.
It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy.
He had now written his most acute criticisms and his most admirable tales. Of tales, beside those to which I have referred, he had produced "The Descent into the Maelström," "The Premature Burial," "The Purloined Letter," "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," and its sequel, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The scenes of the last three are in Paris, where the author's friend, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, is supposed to reveal to him the curiosities of his experience and observation in matters of police. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" was first published in the autumn of 1842, before an extraordinary excitement, occasioned by the murder of a young girl named Mary Rogers, in the vicinity of New York, had quite subsided, though several months after the tragedy. Under the pretense of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, Mr. Poe followed in minute detail the essential while merely paralleling the inessential facts of the real murder. His object appears to have been to reinvestigate the case and to settle his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. There is a great deal of hair-splitting in the incidental discussions by Dupin, throughout all these stories, but it is made effective. Much of their popularity, as well as that of other tales of ratiocination by Poe, arose from their being in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious; but they have been thought more ingenious than they are, on account of their method and air of method. In "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," for instance, what ingenuity is displayed in unraveling a web which has been woven for the express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story. These works brought the name of Poe himself somewhat conspicuously before the law courts of Paris. The journal, La Commerce, gave a feuilleton in which "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" appeared in translation. Afterward a writer for La Quotidienne served it for that paper under the title of "L'Orang-Otang." A third party accused La Quotidienne of plagiary from La Commerce, and in the course of the legal investigation which ensued, the feuilletoniste of La Commerce proved to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he had stolen the tale entirely from Mr. Poe,4 whose merits were soon after canvassed in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and whose best tales were upon this impulse translated by Mme. Isabelle Meunier for the Democratic Pacifique and other French gazettes.