Text: John H. Ingram, “New Facts about Edgar Allan Poe,” The Mirror (London, UK), vol. 3, January 24, 1874, vol. 3, whole no. 65, pp. 159-160

[page 159:]

I.

On Sunday, October 7th, 1848, Edgar Allna [[Allan]] Poe died of consumption, accelerated, if not engendered, by the privations of earlier years. He died in the common ward of a Baltimore hospital, his last words being “a touching memento of his undying faith and friendship” for his friend, Mrs. Osgood, to whom he had addressed the lines beginning:

Two days after his death a long review of his life and works appeared in the New York Tribune, signed “Ludwig,” and after declaring that the announcement of Poe's decease “will startle many, but few will be grieved by it,” as “he had few or no friends,” the writer proceeds to quote the particulars of the poet's life from Rufus W. Griswold's “Poets and Poetry of America.” Thanks to Willis, it transpired that Griswold himself wrote this notice — he was the “Ludwig” of the newspaper!

This article created some sensation, and naturally so, but even at the time was taken exception to. Willis declared that it “differed in some important details from his own impression of the nature of the poet,” and Mr. George R. Graham, originator and proprietor of the well-known Graham's Magazine[[,]] in what Griswold says was “a sophomorical and trashy but widely-circulated letter,” denounced it as “the fancy sketch of a jaundiced vision,” and as “an immortal infamy.” John Neal, an author well known on both continents, also asserted that this “characterization of Poe is false and malicious,” and its author a “calumniator,” between Edgar Poe and whom “there was a long, intense, and implacable enmity,” which, in his eyes, disqualified the rev. [[Rev.]] gentleman for the office of the poet's biographer. Other writers followed on the same track, deluging the papers with disproofs of the soi-disant “Ludwig's” “highly-finished portraiture,” the New York Tribune, however, only condescending at that time, to print one — and that a poem — refuting their reviewer's statement that “the poet had no friends.”

This notice was but the prelude to something much worse. Griswold, undaunted by the outcry he had already created, proceeded to contort Poe's desire that he should “act as his literary executor, and superintend the publication of his works,” into an excuse for writing the poet's life. Accordingly, under the title of a “Memoir of Edgar Poe,” he proceeded to what Allibone calls “embalm the least creditable points of his friend's character.” Almost simultaneously with the “Memoir” appeared a life of Poe, by Thomas Powell, author of the “Living Authors of England.”The latter was candid, truthful, and sympathetic, and gives a noble portraiture of the chivalric and high-minded but unfortunate poet; but by the force of circumstances Griswold's has become the popular “Memoir;” the basis of all the lives of the poet familiar to the public, and the means of disseminating as false a view of his life and character as it is possible for jaundiced envy and unpleasant detestation — surviving even the grave — to give currency to.

The worthlessness of this “Memoir” is beginning to be recognized in America, and it is time that this should be the case in England. We have therefore set ourselves the task of collecting the necessary materials for refuting Griswold, and placing the character of Poe in its true [page 46:] light, in which proceeding we are much aided by the reverend biographer's own admissions and conflicting statements.

Mr. Moy Thomas was the first in England to draw attention to this painful matter.

“God forbid,” said he, writing in 1857, “that I should be in haste to say that Mr. Griswold has done wilful injustice to the memory of Poe; but this matter is too important to humanity to be settled without question. That a man may ‘love beauty only,’ and become a glorious devil, large in heart and brain; that he may attain the highest culture, yet be in daily life the vilest, is a fact of which, if true, few men, I hope, would desire to multiply the proofs. Now it is right that English readers should know what even American readers appear to have forgotten, that when Mr. Griswold's ‘Memoir’ was first published, its assertions were denied by many who had known Poe; that no person corroborated the worst portions of his story; that some went so far as to impugn his motives; and that others who had known and had closer relations with the poet, gave accounts differing materially from Griswold's.” Mr. Moy Thomas concludes by drawing attention to the fact that there are portraits of Poe less repulsive than the one which is best known.

Doubt was also cast upon the impartiality of the “Memoir” by the editor of “Chambers's Handbook to American Literature,” whilst in France it was vehemently attacked by Baudelaire, who pointed out the evident enmity of its author to Poe. No one, however, as yet had ventured systematically to examine its accusations, or to produce independent evidence towards a new biography. Yet materials for this purpose exist, and we are enabled, after years of research, not only to assert that we have authority for terming nearly every so-called fact “utterly fabulous,” but also the evidence to prove it so. In the meanwhile we would premise that, on examination, Griswold's work itself will be found so contradictory — especially in its dates — and one anecdote or extract so opposed to its neighbour, that a careful reader cannot avoid arriving at the conclusion that veracity is not its author's forte.

Griswold's hatred for Poe is unquestionable, as may be proved even by reference to his “Preface” to the works, in the final paragraph of which he accuses Poe of having disposed of his last poem, “Annabel Lee,” to two publishers, after having given it to him, Rufus Griswold, as security for a debt of fifty dollars, which is distinctly refuted by what Mr. Thompson, of the Southern Literary Messenger, says of it in his kindly notice of Poe. It is in the “Memoir,” however, that the reverend gentleman more markedly displays the cloven foot. Whence, it may be asked, came his knowledge of Poe's life? In the first place from the poet himself, he having supplied Griswold with the dates of the principal events of his career, for use in the “Poets and Poetry of America;” and here is a most noticeable fact: When Poe died, Griswold quoted those dates correctly in the famous “Ludwig” review, and although that was so vehemently assailed, it did not contain a single accusation against the poet's honourable conduct beyond such general remarks as that whilst his works reveal his personal character, in them we “see only the better phases of his nature, only the symbols of his juster action, for his harsh experience had deprived him of all faith in man or woman. . . . This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society as altogether composed of villains, the sharpness of his intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with villany [[villainy]], while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of the success of honesty. . . . Passion, in him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against human happiness. You could not contradict him but you raised quick choler; you could not speak of wealth but his cheek paled with gnawing envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy — his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere — had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious — bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellent cynicism — his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honour.”

Fiercely attacked as even this characterization of Poe was by his personal friends and public admirers, it contained little to call forth the astonishment and disgust of foreigners, and it is to that masterpiece of every hatred and malice, the “Memoir,” that we must turn for the darker places. Whence, we reiterate, the materials for its manufacture? In the first place a collection of Poe's works was announced, and two thick volumes purporting to contain the whole of his writings were published. The poet's admirers cried out against this collection as a fraud, as much of his choicest writings was excluded, nor did it contain the life which had been promised, and for which the loan of his letters and papers had been requested by advertisement. The collection was reviewed by, there is scarcely any doubt, its editor “Ludwig,” alias Griswold, in the Tribune, and he, with more work in view, whilst speaking very depreciatingly of Poe's literary abilities, joined in the cry for a “Memoir.” In February, 1850, the Southern Literary Messenger produced what Griswold styles “an eulogium” of Poe. It is but just towards the late Mr. Thompson, the proprietor, to state that in an editorial note, in the same number, he expresses “his regret at the general tone” of this “eulogium,” and states that “it was furnished to the printers during his absence from the city, and he did not see it before the sheets had gone through the press.”Of its tones [[tone]] it suffices to say that no press in England would have dared to print such a scurrilous paper; of its facts it avers that they are a “compilation of those contained in the New York Tribune's obituary of Poe; in Griswold's ‘Prose Writers;’ one or two others which we pick from Mr. Willis's three pages; and several furnished by our own recollections of and conversations with the subject of discourse.”

From this personal knowledge what new facts do we learn? For the first time we hear of Poe's drunkenness — habitual and chronic, it is averred, and known by thousands of the citizens of Richmond. He would pour the raw spirits down his throat like water, we are assured, until he attained a state of utter insensibility; and this style of living, or rather dying, we are informed, upon positive data, had been going on ever since Edgar had reached the hoary age of eleven years! But this veracious authority tells us, strange to relate, what he could not deny, that the force of Poe's intellect was unimpaired to the last. “Poe was,” continues his “defender,” vide his “friend” Griswold, “a learned man. In spite of his irregular life, he managed to master both literature and science to an extent far beyond any other American we have known.”

This same writer says also that he has heard it stated “that Poe once lived in London, and had hinted that he had met Hook and Hunt — that class of men like himself dragging out a precarious existence in garrets, doing drudge work, writing for the great presses and for the reviews.” It is to be hoped that the friends of Theodore Hook and Leigh Hunt will recognize their portraits.

Having thus defamed his hero, and, in doing so, used whole paragraphs of Griswold without inverted commas, or any notice of quotation, this Richmond journalist furnishes the reverend gentleman with a like revenge; he taking whole paragraphs and anecdotes without any acknowledgment. Griswold even copies the errors in dates of this reliable authority, and, whereas he had them correct in his former works, gets all adrift in the “Memoir.”

A strong advocate for fair play, Poe detested the heavy reviewers who domineered over American literature, and dictated to the public who should or who should not be deemed a genius — who strove to depress a Hawthorne or a Bryant and exalt a Dr. D————— or a Mr. B———. Some of the hardest hits and most cruel cuts in his “Marginalia” are aimed at the North American Review, which certainly at that time pursued a most shameless course of puffing its own contributors. This Review took its revenge on Poe after his death by an elaborate depreciation of his genius and doings.

This is, however, but a sample of what was written. Poe was no respecter of persons: he pitched into the transcendentalists, showed up the plagiarists, laughed at Bostonian exclusiveness, defied the reviewers, protested against the ignoring of Southern talent, and made himself so obnoxious to mediocrity in general, that, instead of being surprised more cudgels were not taken up on his behalf, we are only astonished — looking at the then position of American littérateurs — that so many advocates dared to appear in vindication of his slandered name and fame.

In our next paper we will endeavour to prove how utterly false or grossly misrepresented are many of the supposed facts contained in Griswold's “Memoir,” and as such constituting what we have been accustomed to accept as the life of Edgar Poe. The character of that life we shall further endeavour to illustrate on unquestionable data.

JOHN H. INGRAM.