THE OVAL PORTRAIT EDGAR ALLAN POE AN APPRECIATION

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of “never—never more!”

This stanza from “The Raven” was recommended by James Russell

Lowell as an inscription upon the Baltimore monument which marks

the resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and

original figure in American letters. And, to signify that

peculiar musical quality of Poe’s genius which inthralls every

reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this additional verse, from the

“Haunted Palace”:

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling ever more,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

Born in poverty at Boston, January 19, 1809, dying under painful

circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary

career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere

subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his

earliest biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last

routed falsehood and how magnificently has Poe come into his own.

For “The Raven,” first published in 1845, and, within a few

months, read, recited and parodied wherever the English language

was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year

later his brother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal

to the admirers of genius on behalf of the neglected author, his

dying wife and her devoted mother, then living under very

straitened circumstances in a little cottage at Fordham, N. Y.:

“Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men

of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary

profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor,

from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the

common objects of public charity. There is no intermediate

stopping-place, no respectful shelter, where, with the delicacy

due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, till, with

returning health, he would resume his labors, and his unmortified

sense of independence.”

And this was the tribute paid by the American public to the

master who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of

witchery and mystery as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and

“Ligeia”; such fascinating hoaxes as “The Unparalleled Adventure

of Hans Pfaall,” “MSS. Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent Into a

Maelstrom” and “The Balloon-Hoax”; such tales of conscience as

“William Wilson,” “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-tale Heart,”

wherein the retributions of remorse are portrayed with an awful

fidelity; such tales of natural beauty as “The Island of the Fay”

and “The Domain of Arnheim”; such marvellous studies in

ratiocination as the “Gold-bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”

“The Purloined Letter” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” the

latter, a recital of fact, demonstrating the author’s wonderful

capability of correctly analyzing the mysteries of the human

mind; such tales of illusion and banter as “The Premature Burial”

and “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”; such bits of

extravaganza as “The Devil in the Belfry” and “The Angel of the

Odd”; such tales of adventure as “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon

Pym”; such papers of keen criticism and review as won for Poe the

enthusiastic admiration of Charles Dickens, although they made

him many enemies among the over-puffed minor American writers so

mercilessly exposed by him; such poems of beauty and melody as

“The Bells,” “The Haunted Palace,” “Tamerlane,” “The City in the

Sea” and “The Raven.” What delight for the jaded senses of the

reader is this enchanted domain of wonder-pieces! What an

atmosphere of beauty, music, color! What resources of

imagination, construction, analysis and absolute art! One might

almost sympathize with Sarah Helen Whitman, who, confessing to a

half faith in the old superstition of the significance of

anagrams, found, in the transposed letters of Edgar Poe’s name,

the words “a God-peer.” His mind, she says, was indeed a “Haunted

Palace,” echoing to the footfalls of angels and demons.

“No man,” Poe himself wrote, “has recorded, no man has dared to

record, the wonders of his inner life.”

In these twentieth century days—of lavish recognition—artistic,

popular and material—of genius, what rewards might not a Poe

claim!

Edgar’s father, a son of General David Poe, the American

revolutionary patriot and friend of Lafayette, had married Mrs.

Hopkins, an English actress, and, the match meeting with parental

disapproval, had himself taken to the stage as a profession.

Notwithstanding Mrs. Poe’s beauty and talent the young couple had

a sorry struggle for existence. When Edgar, at the age of two

years, was orphaned, the family was in the utmost destitution.

Apparently the future poet was to be cast upon the world homeless

and friendless. But fate decreed that a few glimmers of sunshine

were to illumine his life, for the little fellow was adopted by

John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va. A brother and

sister, the remaining children, were cared for by others.

In his new home Edgar found all the luxury and advantages money

could provide. He was petted, spoiled and shown off to strangers.

In Mrs. Allan he found all the affection a childless wife could

bestow. Mr. Allan took much pride in the captivating, precocious

lad. At the age of five the boy recited, with fine effect,

passages of English poetry to the visitors at the Allan house.

From his eighth to his thirteenth year he attended the Manor

House school, at Stoke-Newington, a suburb of London. It was the

Rev. Dr. Bransby, head of the school, whom Poe so quaintly

portrayed in “William Wilson.” Returning to Richmond in 1820

Edgar was sent to the school of Professor Joseph H. Clarke. He

proved an apt pupil. Years afterward Professor Clarke thus wrote:

“While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote

genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet. As a scholar he was

ambitious to excel. He was remarkable for self-respect, without

haughtiness. He had a sensitive and tender heart and would do

anything for a friend. His nature was entirely free from

selfishness.”

At the age of seventeen Poe entered the University of Virginia at

Charlottesville. He left that institution after one session.

Official records prove that he was not expelled. On the contrary,

he gained a creditable record as a student, although it is

admitted that he contracted debts and had “an ungovernable

passion for card-playing.” These debts may have led to his

quarrel with Mr. Allan which eventually compelled him to make his

own way in the world.

Early in 1827 Poe made his first literary venture. He induced

Calvin Thomas, a poor and youthful printer, to publish a small

volume of his verses under the title “Tamerlane and Other Poems.”

In 1829 we find Poe in Baltimore with another manuscript volume

of verses, which was soon published. Its title was “Al Aaraaf,

Tamerlane and Other Poems.” Neither of these ventures seems to

have attracted much attention.

Soon after Mrs. Allan’s death, which occurred in 1829, Poe,

through the aid of Mr. Allan, secured admission to the United

States Military Academy at West Point. Any glamour which may have

attached to cadet life in Poe’s eyes was speedily lost, for

discipline at West Point was never so severe nor were the

accommodations ever so poor. Poe’s bent was more and more toward

literature. Life at the academy daily became increasingly

distasteful. Soon he began to purposely neglect his studies and

to disregard his duties, his aim being to secure his dismissal

from the United States service. In this he succeeded. On March 7,

1831, Poe found himself free. Mr. Allan’s second marriage had

thrown the lad on his own resources. His literary career was to

begin.

Poe’s first genuine victory was won in 1833, when he was the

successful competitor for a prize of $100 offered by a Baltimore

periodical for the best prose story. “A MSS. Found in a Bottle”

was the winning tale. Poe had submitted six stories in a volume.

“Our only difficulty,” says Mr. Latrobe, one of the judges, “was

in selecting from the rich contents of the volume.”

During the fifteen years of his literary life Poe was connected

with various newspapers and magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia

and New York. He was faithful, punctual, industrious, thorough.

N. P. Willis, who for some time employed Poe as critic and

sub-editor on the “Evening Mirror,” wrote thus:

“With the highest admiration for Poe’s genius, and a willingness

to let it alone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led

by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his

duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time

went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious.

We saw but one presentiment of the man—a quiet, patient,

industrious and most gentlemanly person.

“We heard, from one who knew him well (what should be stated in

all mention of his lamentable irregularities), that with a single

glass of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became

uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication

were visible, his will was palpably insane. In this reversed

character, we repeat, it was never our chance to meet him.”

On September 22, 1835, Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in

Baltimore. She had barely turned thirteen years, Poe himself was

but twenty-six. He then was a resident of Richmond and a regular

contributor to the “Southern Literary Messenger.” It was not

until a year later that the bride and her widowed mother followed

him thither.

Poe’s devotion to his child-wife was one of the most beautiful

features of his life. Many of his famous poetic productions were

inspired by her beauty and charm. Consumption had marked her for

its victim, and the constant efforts of husband and mother were

to secure for her all the comfort and happiness their slender

means permitted. Virginia died January 30, 1847, when but

twenty-five years of age. A friend of the family pictures the

death-bed scene—mother and husband trying to impart warmth to her

by chafing her hands and her feet, while her pet cat was suffered

to nestle upon her bosom for the sake of added warmth.

These verses from “Annabel Lee,” written by Poe in 1849, the last

year of his life, tell of his sorrow at the loss of his

child-wife:

_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,

In a kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea.

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her high-born kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

Poe was connected at various times and in various capacities with

the “Southern Literary Messenger” in Richmond, Va.; “Graham’s

Magazine” and the “Gentleman’s Magazine” in Philadelphia; the

“Evening Mirror,” the “Broadway Journal,” and “Godey’s Lady’s

Book” in New York. Everywhere Poe’s life was one of unremitting

toil. No tales and poems were ever produced at a greater cost of

brain and spirit.

Poe’s initial salary with the “Southern Literary Messenger,” to

which he contributed the first drafts of a number of his

best-known tales, was $10 a week! Two years later his salary was

but $600 a year. Even in 1844, when his literary reputation was

established securely, he wrote to a friend expressing his

pleasure because a magazine to which he was to contribute had

agreed to pay him $20 monthly for two pages of criticism.

Those were discouraging times in American literature, but Poe

never lost faith. He was finally to triumph wherever pre-eminent

talents win admirers. His genius has had no better description

than in this stanza from William Winter’s poem, read at the

dedication exercises of the Actors’ Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885,

in New York:

He was the voice of beauty and of woe,

Passion and mystery and the dread unknown;

Pure as the mountains of perpetual snow,

Cold as the icy winds that round them moan,

Dark as the caves wherein earth’s thunders groan,

Wild as the tempests of the upper sky,

Sweet as the faint, far-off celestial tone of angel whispers,

fluttering from on high,

And tender as love’s tear when youth and beauty die.

In the two and a half score years that have elapsed since Poe’s

death he has come fully into his own. For a while Griswold’s

malignant misrepresentations colored the public estimate of Poe

as man and as writer. But, thanks to J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill,

Eugene Didier, Sarah Helen Whitman and others these scandals have

been dispelled and Poe is seen as he actually was—not as a man

without failings, it is true, but as the finest and most original

genius in American letters. As the years go on his fame

increases. His works have been translated into many foreign

languages. His is a household name in France and England—in fact,

the latter nation has often uttered the reproach that Poe’s own

country has been slow to appreciate him. But that reproach, if it

ever was warranted, certainly is untrue.

W. H. R.