Edgar Allan Poe (22 page)
Authors: Kevin J. Hayes
The other major offer Poe received this year came from Boston. Frederick Gleason, the publisher of the weekly
Flag of Our Union
, wrote to Poe in January 1849, inviting him to become a regular contributor and offering to pay five dollars a page. As a contributor to Gleason’s paper, Poe would have a steady, if modest source of income, which would help fill the gap until he and Patterson could get
The Stylus
going. Poe accepted Gleason’s offer and got to work.
In 1849, of course, the newspapers were filled with stories of Americans seeking their fortune in the California goldfields. The idea of people rushing west to dig for gold disgusted Poe. Though he had long dreamt of great personal wealth, he refused to compromise his personal standards for it. He only wanted wealth if he could get it on his own terms, that is, as an author, editor, and publisher. In a letter to F. W. Thomas in February, Poe celebrated the benefits of the literary life regardless of the poverty it typically entailed:
Did it ever strike you that all which is really valuable to a man of letters – to a poet in especial – is absolutely unpurchaseable? Love, fame, the dominion of intellect, the consciousness of power, the thrilling sense of beauty, the free air of Heaven, exercise of body and mind, with the physical and moral health which result – these and such as these are really all that a poet cares for: – then answer me this – why should he go to California?
21
Poe channelled his disgust with the Forty-Niners into two works for
Flag of Our Union
: ‘Von Kempelen and His Discovery’, a short story about a successful alchemical process that transmutes lead into gold and thus makes lead more valuable, and ‘Eldorado’, a moody and evocative poem that transmutes the quest for gold into a symbolic quest for any and all elusive goals.
The juxtaposition of Patterson’s offer and Gleason’s illustrates a central problem in Poe’s literary life. Gleason’s offer motivated Poe to excel by writing more short stories. Besides ‘Von Kempelen and His Discovery’, Poe wrote three additional tales for
Flag of Our Union
: ‘Landor’s Cottage’, which describes another idealized landscape in the manner of ‘The Domain of Arnheim’; ‘X-ing a Paragrab’, a hilarious send-up of printers, publishers and the futility of literary quarrels; and ‘Hop-Frog’, another great revenge tale and, indeed, Poe’s final masterpiece. In short, Gleason’s offer prompted a burst of creativity, the likes of which Poe had not seen in years. In four months, Poe published more new stories than he had during the three years previous. And what resulted from Poe’s association with Patterson? Nothing.
Though well intended, Patterson’s offer was made without him knowing Poe personally. Like Sarah Helen Whitman, he formed his initial opinion of Poe based solely on his written work. But as Whitman could have told Patterson by now, Poe the man differed greatly from Poe the poet. Patterson wanted to meet Poe in person to finalize their plans for
The Stylus
and invited him to Oquawka. Had Patterson really known Poe, he never would have asked him to undertake such a lengthy solo journey, which involved untold dangers for anyone with Poe’s personal weakness. Poe nevertheless agreed to visit Illinois.
After critiquing the Forty-Niners earlier this year, Poe, ironically enough, found himself heading west to find his fortune. He planned to lecture along the way to help finance the trip and solicit subscriptions for
The Stylus
. He would first travel from New York to Richmond. Then a combination land and river journey would take him to western Illinois. In earlier attempts to recruit magazine subscribers, Poe had found readers in the South and West particularly supportive. He was counting on their support again. The journey made good sense to Patterson, who sent Poe fifty dollars to help defray his expenses.
On Saturday, 30 June 1849, less than twenty-four hours after leaving New York, Poe was drunk in Philadelphia. After spending some hours in Moyamensing Prison for public drunkenness he was released. A cholera epidemic raged, and Philadelphia seemed deserted. He located some old friends, but they could do little to dispel the paranoid delusions haunting him. Convinced that some mysterious men were chasing him, Poe wanted to leave Philadelphia for Richmond, but two weeks passed before he could escape the city.
Poe routed his journey through Richmond partly because he had learned that childhood sweetheart Elmira Royster Shelton was now the Widow Shelton. He envisioned her as the new Mrs Poe. Upon reaching Richmond, he renewed their acquaintance. The story of their relationship does not take long to tell because it is almost identical to the story of Poe’s relationship with Sarah Helen Whitman. After seeing her briefly, he proposes marriage. Startled by his suddenness, she hesitates to accept. He delivers ‘The Poetic Principle’ to a large audience. With other members of the audience, she is impressed by his performance. He gets drunk. She tentatively accepts his marriage proposal but insists he quit drinking. He promises to quit. This time, Poe took an extra step to help guarantee his promise. The last week of August he joined the Sons of Temperance and took the pledge to abstain from alcohol.
Settling down in Richmond, Poe kept his pledge and achieved a degree of equanimity he had not experienced for some time. The local chapter of the Sons of Temperance provided a powerful support network, and made it almost impossible for him to drink. The Widow Shelton noticed his improved behaviour, and their engagement became less tentative and more sure. In late September, Poe decided to return to New York, collect Mrs Clemm, and bring her to Richmond to stay. On Thursday, 27 September, he left Richmond on a steamer bound for Baltimore.
Poe’s whereabouts between the time he boarded the steamer early Thursday morning and the time Joseph W. Walker, a local printer, sighted him the following Wednesday remains a mystery. One thing seems sure: after more than a month of sobriety, Poe reached Baltimore dying for a drink. Perhaps he headed for Widow Meagher’s oyster bar. Or perhaps he stopped at the first tavern he saw. When Walker noticed him on Wednesday, 3 October in Gunner’s Hall, a tavern on East Lombard Street, Poe looked like he had been on a bender for days. It was Election Day, and Gunner’s Hall was being used as the polling place for Baltimore’s Fourth Ward. Taverns made convenient polling places: campaign workers could treat to a glass of spirits whomever promised to vote for their candidate. Poe could be sure of finagling a free drink here.
Walker sent an urgent message to Poe’s old friend Joseph Snodgrass, who came as quickly as he heard. Snodgrass recalled:
When I entered the bar-room of the house, I instantly recognized the face of one whom I had often seen and knew well, although it wore an aspect of vacant stupidity which made me shudder. The intellectual flash of his eye had vanished, or rather had been quenched in the bowl; but the broad, capacious forehead of the author of ‘The Raven’ … was still there, with a width, in the region of ideality, such as few men have ever possessed.
22
Poe was so drunk he could hardly walk. Snodgrass and some others carried him to a buggy and brought him to Washington College Hospital. Dr John J. Moran, the attending physician, noted tremors of the limbs and constant talking: ‘vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.’
23
Poe’s condition worsened in the hospital. Deprived of alcohol after a long binge, he experienced acute alcohol withdrawal or the
DTS
, which can be fatal in extreme cases. Much mystery has surrounded Poe’s final days, but the cause of his death is not hard to fathom. Hours before sunrise on Sunday, 7 October 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died of the
DTS
.
The tale of Poe’s death is one of the most pitiful stories in the history of American literature. Instead of dwelling on it, let’s return to a happier moment seven months earlier, when he wrote a letter to F. W. Thomas celebrating the literary life. Poe’s letter responds to the news that Thomas was starting a new magazine, the
Chronicle of Western Literature
. Poe was thrilled to see Thomas turn editor: ‘Right glad am I to find you once more in a true position – in the field of Letters. Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path. I shall be
a littérateur
, at least, all my life.’
24
True to his word, Poe remained a littérateur until his death. His dedication to his craft, even in the face of debilitating personal poverty, is inspiring. The timing may be coincidental, but Poe wrote to Thomas on 14 February 1849: Valentine’s Day. Perhaps this letter is the best Valentine Poe ever wrote, for it takes for its subject the greatest love of his life: literature.
Introduction
1
[John M. Daniel], ‘Edgar Allan Poe’,
Southern Literary Messenger
,
XVI
(1850), pp. 172–87.
2
Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Literature’,
Academy
,
VII
(1875), p. 1.
3
W. T. Bandy, ‘New Light on Baudelaire and Poe’,
Yale French Studies
, x (1952), pp. 65–9.
4
F. Lyra, ‘Poe in Poland’, in
Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities
, ed. Louis Davis Vines (Iowa City,
IA
, 1999), p. 101.
5
Eloise M. Boyle, ‘Poe in Russia’, in
Poe Abroad
, p. 20; Rachel Polonsky,
English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance
(Cambridge, 1998), pp. 97–114.
6
Sonja Bašić, ‘Antun Gustav Matoš’, in
Poe Abroad
, pp. 200–3.
7
Susan F. Levine and Stuart Levine, ‘Rubén Darío’, in
Poe Abroad
, pp. 215–220.
8
Kevin J. Hayes, ‘One-Man Modernist’, in
The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe
, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 227–32.
9
Ibid., pp. 235–7.
10
Barbara L. Kelley, ‘Ravel, (Joseph) Maurice’, in
The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 2d edn, 29 vols (New York, 2001).
11
Kristin Thompson, ‘The Formulation of the Classical Style, 1909–1928’, in
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production in 1960
, by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (New York, 1985), pp. 167–9.
12
Mary G. Berg, ‘Julio Cortázar’, in
Poe Abroad
, pp. 227–32.
1
John Hill Hewitt,
Recollections of Poe
, ed. Richard Barksdale Harwell (Atlanta,
GA
, 1949), p. 19, which is the source of the following exchange.
2
Kevin J. Hayes,
Poe and the Printed Word
(Cambridge, 2000), p. 38.
3
‘The Premiums’,
The Bouquet
,
I
(1832), p. 31.
4
[Henry B. Hirst], ‘Edgar Allan Poe’,
Saturday Museum
, 4 March 1843, p. 1.
5
Dover Gazette and Strafford Advertiser
, 28 June 1831;
Carolina Observer
(Fayetteville,
NC
), 13 July 1831.
6
Mayne Reid, ‘A Dead Man Defended’,
Onward
I
(1869), p. 306.
7
Quoted by John Grier Varner, ed.,
Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier
(Charlottesville,
VA
, 1933), p. 5.
8
‘In the Last Number of the Philadelphia
Saturday Courier’, Greenville Mountaineer
, 28 January 1832.
9
‘Review of New Books’,
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine
, v (1839), p. 169.
10
David R. Hirsch, ‘Poe’s “Metzengerstein” as a Tale of the Subconscious’,
University of Mississippi Studies in English
,
III
(1982), p. 41.
11
‘Literary Premium’,
Cincinnati Mirror
, 29 September 1832, p. 7.
12
Theodore Besterman, ‘Edgar Allan Poe’s Occult Knowledge’,
Theosophist
,
XLVI
(1925), p. 790.
13
Edgar Allan Poe,
Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems, 1831
, ed. William F. Hecker (Baton Rouge,
LA
, 2005), p. 28.
14
Benjamin F. Fisher, ‘Poe and the Gothic Tradition’, in
The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe
, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge, 2002), p. 80.
15
Varner, ed.,
Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier
, p. 10.
16
Victor Oscar Freeburg,
The Art of Photoplay Making
(New York, 1918), pp. 124, 156.
17
Sergei M. Eisenstein,
Selected Works
, ed. Richard Taylor, trans. William Powell, 4 vols (London, 1995), vol.
IV
, p. 463.
18
Varner, ed.,
Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier
, pp. 23–4.
19
Kevin J. Hayes,
The Cambridge Introduction to Herman Melville
(Cambridge, 2007), pp. 116–17.
20
Varner, ed.,
Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier
, p. 51.
21
Ibid., p. 59.
22
Augustus Van Cleef, ‘Poe’s Mary’,
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine
,
LXXVIII
(1889), pp. 634–40, the source of the following exchange.
23
Reid, ‘A Dead Man Defended’, p. 308.
24
J. Thomas Scharf,
The Chronicles of Baltimore
(Baltimore,
MD
, 1874), p. 93; John E. Semmes,
John H. B. Latrobe and His Times, 1803–1891
(Baltimore,
MD
, 1917), p. 105.
25
‘Edgar Allan Poe’,
Boston Daily Advertiser
, 24 September, 1878.
26
Lambert A. Wilmer,
Merlin: Baltimore, 1827
, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (New York, 1941), p. 30.
27
Quoted by Alexander Hammond, ‘Edgar Allan Poe’s
Tales of the Folio Club:
The Evolution of a Lost Book’, in
Poe at Work: Seven Textual Studies
, ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher (Baltimore,
MD
, 1978), p. 18.
28
Frank Luther Mott,
A History of American Magazines
, 5 vols (Cambridge,
MA
, 1938–68), vol.
I
, pp. 599–600.
29
Poe to Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham, 4 May 1833, in Edgar Allan Poe,
Letters
, ed. John Ward Ostrom, 2 vols (New York, 1966), vol.
I
, p. 54.
30
Semmes,
John H. B. Latrobe and His Times, 1803–1891
, p. 560.
31
Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson,
The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849
(Boston,
MA
, 1987), p. 132.
32
Semmes,
John H. B. Latrobe and His Times, 1803–1891
, p. 563.
33
Jorge Luis Borges,
Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges
, ed. Fernando Sorrentino, trans. Clark M. Zlotchew (Troy,
NY
, 1982), p. 83.
1
Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson,
The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849
(Boston,
MA
, 1987), p. 11.
2
Ibid., p. 13.
3
Ibid., p. 26.
4
Kevin J. Hayes,
Poe and the Printed Word
(Cambridge, 2000), pp. 3–5.
5
Edgar Allan Poe,
Collected Works
, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, 3 vols (Cambridge,
MA
, 1969–78), vol. I, pp. 427–8.
6
Hayes,
Poe and the Printed Word
, pp. 5–6.
7
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 47.
8
John T. L. Preston, ‘Some Reminiscences of Edgar A. Poe as a Schoolboy’ in
Edgar Allan Poe: A Memorial Volume
, ed. Sara Sigourney Rice (Baltimore,
MD
, 1877), p. 37.
9
Ibid., p. 39; Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 47.
10
Preston, ‘Some Reminiscences of Edgar A. Poe as a Schoolboy’, p. 38.
11
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, pp. 59–60.
12
Preston, ‘Some Reminiscences of Edgar A. Poe as a Schoolboy’, p. 41.
13
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 58.
14
Ibid., p. 65.
15
Quoted by Kevin J. Hayes,
The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
(Oxford, 2008), p. 626.
16
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 75.
17
Ibid., p. 70.
18
Hayes,
Road to Monticello
, p. 632.
19
Henry Tutwiler, ‘Thomas Jefferson’,
Southern Opinion
, 17 October 1868.
20
Theodore Pease Stearns, ‘A Prohibitionist Shakes Dice with Poe’,
Outlook
, 1 September 1920, p. 25.
21
Poe to John Allan, 21 September 1826, in Edgar Allan Poe,
Letters
, ed. John Ward Ostrom, 2 vols (New York, 1966), vol. I, p. 6.
22
Robley Dunglison, ‘At a Public Examination’,
Richmond Enquirer
, 27 December 1826.
23
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 74.
24
Stearns, ‘A Prohibitionist Shakes Dice with Poe’, p. 25.
25
Edgar Allan Poe,
Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems, 1831
, ed. William F. Hecker (Baton Rouge,
LA
, 2005), p. xxix.
26
Ibid., p. xxxiv.
27
[Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza], ‘On the Modern Spanish Theatre’,
New Monthly Magazine
VII
(1824), p. 331.
28
‘Notes for Bibliophiles’,
Dial
LXII
(1917), pp. 448.
29
Ulysses S. Grant,
Memoirs and Selected Letters
(New York, 1990), p. 31.
30
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 114.
31
[Henry B. Hirst], ‘Edgar Allan Poe’,
Saturday Museum
, 4 March 1843, p. 1.
32
Hayes,
Poe and the Printed Word
, pp. 26–7.
33
Stearns, ‘A Prohibitionist Shakes Dice with Poe’, p. 25.
34
Poe,
Private Perry
, p. 14.
35
Frederick Locker-Lampson,
The Rowfant Library: A Catalogue of the Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Drawings and Pictures
(London, 1886), p. 189; ‘To Helen’,
Saturday Evening Post
, 21 May 1831; ‘We Extract the Following Poetry’,
Atkinson’s Casket
, May 1831, pp. 239–40.
36
Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser
, 28 and 29 April 1831; ‘Poems by Edgar A. Poe’,
Baltimore Patriot
, 30 April 1831.
1
Benjamin F. Fisher, ‘Poe and the Gothic Tradition’, in
The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe
, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 82–3.
2
John Gribbel,
Autograph Letters, Manuscripts and Rare Books: The Entire Collection of the Late John Gribbel, Philadelphia
(New York, 1940), lot 544.
3
Poe to John P. Kennedy, 11 September 1835, in Edgar Allan Poe,
Letters
, ed. John Ward Ostrom, 2 vols (New York, 1966), vol.
I
, p. 74.
4
‘The Baltimore Book’,
Baltimore Monument
II
(1837), p. 68.
5
‘The Gift’,
Cincinnati Mirror
IV
(1835), p. 346.
6
Washington Irving, ‘An Unwritten Drama of Lord Byron’, in
The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1836
, ed. Eliza Leslie (Philadelphia,
PA
, 1835), p. 171.
7
Poe to Washington Irving, 12 October 1839, in
Letters
, vol.
II
, p. 689.
8
Geoffrey Rans,
Edgar Allan Poe
(Edinburgh, 1965), p. 29.
9
Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson,
The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849
(Boston,
MA
, 1987), p. 149.
10
Poe to Thomas W. White, 30 April 1835, in
Letters
, vol.
I
, p. 57.
11
Ibid., pp. 57–8.
12
Edgar Allan Poe,
Collected Works
, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, 3 vols (Cambridge,
MA
, 1969–1978), vol.
II
, p. 210.
13
Poe to John P. Kennedy, 11 February 1836, in
Letters
, vol.
I
, p. 84.
14
Lambert A. Wilmer,
Merlin: Baltimore, 1827
, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (New York, 1941), p. 34.
15
Thomas W. White to Poe, 29 September 1835, in Edgar Allan Poe,
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
, ed. James A. Harrison, 17 vols (New York, 1902), vol.
XVII
, p. 21.
16
Wilmer,
Merlin
, p. 34.
17
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 171.
18
John P. Kennedy to Poe, 19 September 1835, in Poe,
Complete Works
, vol.
XVII
, p. 19.
19
Thomas W. White to Poe, 29 September 1835, in Poe,
Complete Works
, vol.
XVII
, p. 20.
20
Edgar Allan Poe,
Essays and Reviews
, ed. G. R. Thompson (New York, 1984), p. 778.
21
Salvador Dalí,
Maniac Eyeball: The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí
, trans. André Parinaud (London, 2004); Dalí,
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
[1942] (New York, 1993), p. 23.
22
Poe,
Essays
, p. 539.
23
Jean Cocteau,
Past Tense
, ed. Pierre Chanel, trans. Richard Howard, 2 vols (New York, 1987), vol.
I
, p. 37.
24
Thomas and Jackson,
The Poe Log
, p. 208.
25
Quoted by Arthur Hobson Quinn,
Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography
(New York, 1941), p. 251.
26
Quoted by [Henry B. Hirst], ‘Edgar Allan Poe’,
Saturday Museum
, 4 March 1843, p. 1.
27
Poe,
Complete Works
, vol. xv, pp. 181–2.
28
Kevin J. Hayes,
Poe and the Printed Word
(Cambridge, 2000), p. 45–7.
