Text: Moncure D. Conway, “[Review of Ingram's Life of Poe],” Academy (London, UK), whole no. 429, July 2, 1880, pp. 55-56

[page 55, column 1:]

LITERATURE.

Edgar Allan Poe: his Life, Letters, and Opinions. By John H. Ingram. In 2 vols. (John Hogg.)

A LITERARY labour of love has its advantages and disadvantages, and Mr. Ingram's work is no exception to this rule. The same may be said when to the love is added the feeling that its object suffers a wrong requiring redress. This biography of Poe, implying elaborate research, could hardly have been demanded by any interest more concrete than the sentiment of justice; and it is not a matter for wonder or reproach that the book sometimes impresses the reader as a vindication rather than a biography. Nor does this impair the interest of the work. Mr. Ingram writes with an animation and force which hide sundry faults of style, because his hero has been raised in his mind to a Cause. Notwithstanding his success, however, in clearing Poe's name from some of the worst charges which had stained it, one can hardly repress a regret that the poet himself, during his life, was not always as keenly alive to his own reputation as his latest champion.

It is not the fault of the author so much as of his subject that so many parts of the story he has told seem mythical, or at least apocryphal. The child of a wandering actress, who drew her Virginian husband also to the stage, Poe would appear to have carried with him through life an inherited taste for thrilling situations and effective attitudes. Scepticism begins to arise even in Mr. Ingram's first chapter, where we find him naming January 19, 1809, as Poe's birthday. But Mr. R. H. Stoddard has found files of the Boston Gazette of that year showing that Poe's mother appeared on the stage on January 20. Why has Mr. Ingram selected the 19th? It is to be feared because William Wilson in the poet's tale was born on that day. The doubt thus arising is felt in the second chapter, relating to Poe's residence from his seventh to his thirteenth year (1816-21) at Stoke Newington as a pupil of the Rev. Dr. Bransby. The records of a considerable London school ought to contain items of more importance to a biographer than the imaginative descriptions written by Poe himself in one of his tales; and where a writer who has manifested such eagerness to discover every scrap of information about his subject is reduced to depend mainly on the tale of William Wilson for the facts of these school-years, it is suggested that there must be an absence of actual data. There is nothing improbable in the story; but there is an air of [column 2:] romance about it, it is connected in Poe's tale with ideal residences at Eton and Oxford, and it would be more satisfactory if Mr. Ingram had treated it more cautiously. He imposes on his reader a duty of vigilance not consistent with full confidence in a pains. taking work.

But why approach the Life of Poe with any feeling of suspicion? It would be hardly fair to Poe's peculiar powers as an artist not so to approach it. His ability to tell an unreal thing as if it were real and to invest an illusion with intensity, and his constant inclination toward imaginative experiments, have rarely been equalled. The difficulties surrounding one of his personated romances are so great as to shake the faith even of Mr. Ingram. It “would appear,” to use the biographer's cautious expression, that in 1827, when Poe was eighteen, he was led by philhellenic enthusiasm to sail for Europe. According to his own story, dictated to a Mrs. Shew during a severe illness, he arrived at “a certain sea port in France.” Here he was drawn into a quarrel about a Scotch lady who was there trying to persuade a prodigal brother to return home; he was wounded in a duel and nursed by the lady for thirteen weeks. She provided for all his wants; he addressed to her a poem, “Holy Eyes.” No wonder that, “ owing to the peculiarity of her position in this foreign seaport, she did not wish her name made public, and impressed this upon the youthful poet.” The chivalrous poet would not even mention the name of the seaport, in America, twenty years later; but he did mention that during his stay in France he wrote a novel which was attributed to Eugène Sue, but which he would never have published in English because it was too sensational, and so personal in its scenes and pictures that it would have made him enemies among his kindred.

But is there not room for the theory that poor Mrs. Shew took au sérieur a Tale of the Arabesque, which ought now to be adorning Mr. Ingram's excellent edition of Poe's Works?

Happily, with regard to Poe's early life as a schoolboy at Richmond, Virginia, as a student in the university of the same State, and afterwards as a cadet at West Point, Mr. Ingram enables us to feel solid ground under our feet. Poe charmed his schoolfellows by his combination of athletic skill with talent for versification; was less intimate with his college-mates, but fond of gambling with them; and, having left the university after one session, subsequently obtained a scholar ship at the military college at West Point, from which he was expelled for obstinately refusing to attend church. All this, and the publication of a small volume, Tamerlane, and other Poems (1827), fill up the first twenty-one years of Poe's life, and they are traced with much care by his biographer. That Poe had left a reputation for [column 3:] genius both at the University of Virginia and at West Point seems unquestionable; but this did not, in the estimation of Mr. Allan, the Virginian-Scotch gentleman who had adopted him on the death of his parents, make up for the gambling debts he had left at the one place and his dismissal from the other; the unfriendliness of the second Mrs. Allan rendered a reconciliation impossible; and, as Poe reached his majority, he was thrust forth on the world with no better friend than a genius for writing fantastic tales and poems, and for getting himself into scrapes.

It really seems that his genius of the latter kind exceeded. The Southerners appear to have been in want of a writer of Poe's capacity, and both Richmond and Baltimore were pre pared to adopt the youth whom Mr. Allan had discarded. In 1833 he was awarded a prize at Baltimore for the MS. Found in a Bottle, and the gentlemen who made the award — Kennedy, the novelist, and Latrobe, the most influential citizen of Baltimore — at once offered him their friendship. He was introduced to Mr. White, of the Southern Literary Messenger, published at Richmond, Virginia, to whom he wrote, “My poor services are not worth what you give me for them.” The sum at which Poe was settled as editor, five hundred and twenty dollars, was not so small, time and place considered. It was enough for an unmarried man to live on ; but Poe in a year's time was married to a lady as poor as himself; and in another year he had thrown up his engagement, against the wishes of Mr. White, and was off in New York with wife and mother-in-law. The two years spent at Richmond, while he was editing this Southern periodical, are the only ones upon which a reader of these volumes can dwell with much satisfaction. Never did a man more gratuitously leap out of the light into the dark than Poe when he left Richmond.

But how deep the darkness was to be his gloomiest mood could hardly have imagined. The necessity of borrowing money had become chronic, and an Ishmaelitish style of criticising his literary contemporaries made lenders few. Undoubtedly Poe had a far higher literary standard than that which Griswold and his set had set up in New York. And, not withstanding his inability to see in Emerson “more than a respectful imitation of Carlyle,” or in Carlyle more than a subject for ridicule, he must be credited with having exposed a good many quacks. But his style of doing such work sometimes suggests Grammont's description of Rupert, as polite even to excess, unseasonably, but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought to have been gentle and courteous. It is impossible to read the criticisms and Marginalia of Poe without recognising his wide reading and great carefulness in the elaboration of his ideas; but there is little that is sympathetic, much that is cynical, and their writer is not of the kind that make friends. As a matter of fact, he made enemies normally, but they could have harmed him little had he not included among them opium and drink.

Amid constant quarrels with editors and authors, and in poverty under whose pressure his dearly loved wife was daily sinking into the grave, Poe wrote most of the tales and poems [page 56:] which have made his unique reputation. It is probable that no other example exists of so wide an influence exerted by such slight and, on the whole, such imperfect poetical work as that represented in these poems. The thrilling, feverish vision in Winwood Reade's Outcast, where the gods have assembled to witness the performance of a new drama, composed by a young deity — this drama being the world, and the actors mankind — would appear to have expanded out of “The Conqueror Worm’’: —

And Victor Hugo's “Epic of the Worm” (La Légende des Siècles) has much in it which suggests impressions once made, probably now forgotten, by the

Floating thus about the world, with their runic charm and indefinite mystical suggestiveness, the poems of Poe have had an effect that must always be regarded as phenomenal in literature. The clear ideas in them are few, the feeling pervading them is rarely healthy; but there is a pure aeolian quality, a music as of storms telling their secret on the strings of a heart passionate in their own wild way, which possess a fascination of their own. It would be pleasant to find beyond these works a brave life and admirable character. But even Poe's friendliest biographer does not enable us to do that. Mr. Ingram does, indeed, merit high praise for his indefatigable efforts in pursuing to their extinction some painful rumours, which had gathered around Poe during his life; but he is compelled to give historical confirmation to several unpleasant misgivings about the poet's relations with the ladies he professed to adore. Helen Whitman's account of her last inter view with Poe is quoted: —

The response could hardly have been out of Poe's ears before he was writing to “My Annie,” that “all is right!” and “I need not tell you, Annie, how great a burden is taken off my heart by my rupture with Mrs. W.” Mr. Ingram remarks that “Edgar Poe did not know the real cause of the rupture of this engagement;” and if this be true, as is probable, it only shows how unconsciously theatrical certain natures become whose passionateness is merely intellectual. Loyalty in friendship could hardly have been among Poe's virtues. Although he was constantly and generously assisted during his life by gentlemen in Richmond, Baltimore, and New York, few or none of them remained his friends; and the bad reputation he left among [column 2:] those who knew him is by no means explicable by Mr. Ingram's theory of resentment on the part of those whose works he criticised with severity. Much of it was certainly due to Poe's perpetual borrowing, and carelessness as to keeping his word. Mr. Ingram speaks of an article on Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger as “a dastardly attack on the dead man.” The article in question was written, as I happen to know, by a gentle man who had assisted Poe in every possible way, who had never suffered by the poet's criticisms, and was lenient to his intemperate habits, but who, after some years of intimacy, came reluctantly to the conclusion that Poe was unprincipled. For reasons like these the poet has had to wait long for friendly memoirs. Of these, the most devoted is this work of Mr. Ingram. But it is to be feared that its author has not been sufficiently warned by the fate of his predecessors, who trusted too much Poe's own accounts of himself; notably, that of Mr. Lowell, whose memoir, submitted to Poe before publication, was permitted to state that he graduated with honours at the University of Virginia (which at that time conferred no degrees); and that after joining the insurgents in Greece he was arrested in St. Petersburg, and set free by the American consul (a story which Mr. Ingram has shown to be untrue). Before issuing a second edition Mr. Ingram would do well to read a valuable paper on “Some Myths in the Life of Poe,” contributed by Mr. Stoddard to the New York Independent (June 24, 1880). He should also remove certain blemishes of style and language, which seem surprising in the work of so good a student of Poe, who, for instance, would hardly have “opined “ anything (i. 74), or condemned “the preva lent generalising, and other vicious practices of the critics” (i. 208). There are also too many details about persons, some of them rather commonplace, whose relation to Poe was unimportant. Despite such drawbacks as these, however, this book is one that well repays perusal. It is the record of a per sonal life which can only be regarded as a failure, while it suggests many circum stances in extenuation of that failure. And although the many unfair statements made concerning the unhappy poet sufficiently justify this further research into his life, there remains still the record of a failure, and the romantic episodes of it only increase the sadness its perusal will cause most readers. I have heard it stated that when, near the close of his life, Poe was found, by one searching for him, in a low public-house in Baltimore, he raised his tipsy head and exclaimed, Sic transit gloria mundi. The story is more credible than the wild legend which Mr. Gill relates, and Mr. Ingram inclines to believe — that Poe was drugged by an electioneering band, “cooped,” dragged to the polls, made to vote, then left on the street to die — and those words ascribed to him may express the feeling with which one lays down this last Life of Edgar Allan Poe.

MONCURE D. CONWAY.