Text: Edgar Allan Poe, “Mary E. Hewitt”, from Literary America, 1848, manuscript


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[page 59:]

Mary E. Hewitt.

I am not aware that Mrs. Hewitt has written any prose; but her poems have been many, and occasionally excellent. A collection of them was published, about two years ago, in an exquisitely tasteful form, by Ticknor & Co., of Boston. The leading piece, entitled “Songs of our Land”, although the longest, was by no means the most meritorious. In general, these compositions evince poetic fervor, classicism, and keen appreciation of both moral and physical beauty. No one of them, perhaps, can be judiciously commended as a whole; but no one of them is without merit, and there are several which would do credit to any poet in the land. Still, even these latter are particularly rather than generally commendable. They lack unity, totality — ultimate effect, but abound in forcible passages. For example:

Shall I portray thee in thy glorious seeming,

Thou that the pharos of my darkness art?

——

Like the blue lotos on its own clear river

Lie thy soft eyes, beloved, upon my soul.

——

And there the slave, a slave no more,

Hung reverent up the chain he wore.

——

Here ‘mid your wild and dark defile

Oerawed and wonder-whelmed I stand,

And ask — “Is this the fearful vale

That opens on the shadowy land?”

——

Oh friends! we would be treasured still,

Though Time's cold hand should cast

His misty veil, in after years,

Over the idol Past,

Yet send to us some offering thought

O’er Memory's ocean wide,

Pure as the Hindoo's votive lamp

On Ganga's sacred tide. [page 60:]

Mrs. Hewitt has warm partialities for the sea and all that concerns it. Many of her best poems turn upon sea adventures or have reference to a maritime life. Some portions of her “God bless the Mariner” are naïve and picturesque: E.g. —

God bless the hardy mariner!

A homely garb wears he,

And he goeth with a rolling gait,

Like a ship before the sea.

He hath piped the loud “ay, ay, Sir!”

O’er the voices of the main

Till his deep tones have the hoarseness

Of the rising hurricane.

But oh, a spirit looketh

From out his clear blue eye,

With a truthful childlike earnestness,

Like an angel from the sky.

A venturous life the sailor leads

Between the sky and sea,

But, when the hour of dread is past,

A merrier who than he?

The tone of some quatrains entitled “Alone”, differs materially from that usual with Mrs. Hewitt. The idea is happy and well managed:

[[The section marked for deletion, by a series of large pencilled x's, begins here:]]

There lies a deep and sealéd well

Within yon leafy forest hid,

Whose pent and lonely waters swell

Its confines drear and chill amid.

It hears the birds on every spray

Trill forth melodious notes of love;

It feels the warm sun's seldom ray

Glance on the stone its waves above. [page 61:]

And quick the gladdened waters rush

Tumultuous upward to the brink —

A seal is on their joyous gush

And back, repressed, they coldly shrink.

Thus, in their caverned space, apart,

Closed from the eye of day they dwell: —

So, pinioned deep within my heart,

The tides of quick affection swell.

Each kindly glance, each kindly tone,

To joy its swift pulsations sway;

But none may lift the veiling stone

And give the franchised current way.

Smite THOU the rock whose eye alone

The hidden spring within may see

And bid the flood, resistless one,

Flow forth rejoicing unto THEE.

The merit of this piece, however, is greatly obscured first, by its frequent inversions and, secondly, by its rythmical defects. The lines,

Its confines chill and dread amid,

and

Glance on the stone its waves above,

might easily have been written, with directness, “Amid its chill and dread”, etc., and “Glance on the stone above its waves”. The putting the adjective after the noun is an inexcusable Gallicism; but the putting the preposition after the noun is alien to all language and in opposition to all its principles. Such things, in general, only betray the versifier's poverty of resource; and when an inversion occurs we usually say to ourselves — “Here the poet lacked the skill to make out his line without distorting the natural or colloquial order of the words”. Now and then, however, we must refer the error not to deficiency of skill, but to something far less defensible — to an idea that such things belong to the essence of poetry — that it needs them to distinguish it from prose — and that we are poetical very much in the ratio of our unprosaicalness at these points. Even while employing the [page 62:] phrase “poetic licence” — a phrase which has to answer for an infinity of sins — people who think in this way seem to have an indistinct conviction that the licence in question involves within itself a necessity of being adopted. The true artist will avail himself of no “licence” whatever. The very word will startle and disqust him; for it says: “Since you appear unable to manage without these pecadillo advantages, you must have them, I suppose, and the world, half shutting its eyes, will do its best not to see the awkwardness which they stamp upon your poem.” Few things have greater tendency than inversion to render verse feeble and ineffective. In most cases where a line is spoken of as “forcible”, the force may be referred to the directness of expression. A vast majority of the passages which have become household through frequent quotation, owe their popularity either to this directness, or, in general, to the scorn of poetic licence. In short, as regards verbal construction, the more prosaic a poetical style is, the better. Through this species of prosacism Cowper, with scarcely one of the high or poetical elements, came very near making his age fancy him the equal of Pope; and to the same cause are attributable three fourths of that unusual point and force for which, in later days, Thomas Moore has become so justly distinguished. It is the prosaicism of these two writers to which is owning their special quotability.

The rythmical defects of “Alone” arise not from redundancies or deficiencies of syllables, but from the excessive use of difficult consonants. Such a line, for example, as

And back, repressed, they coldly shrink,

is scarcely pronounceable.

[[The section marked for deletion ends here]]

Mrs. Hewitt's sonnets are, upon the whole, her most praiseworthy compositions. One entitled “Hercules and Omphale” is noticeable for the vigor of its rythm.

Reclined, enervate, on the couch of ease,

No more he pants for deeds of high emprize;

For Pleasure holds in soft voluptuous ties

Enthralled, great Jove-descended Hercules.

The hand that bound the Erymanthean boar,

Hesperia's dragon slew with bold intent,

That from his quivering side in triumph rent

The skin the Cleonœan lion wore, [page 63:]

Holds forth the goblet — while the Lydian queen,

Robed like a nymph, her brow enwreathed with vine,

Lifts high the amphora brimmed with rosy wine,

And pours the draught the crownéd cup within.

And thus the soul, abased to sensual sway,

Its worth forsakes — its might foregoes for aye.

The unusual force of the line italicized, will be observed. This force arises first, from the directness, or colloquialism without vulgarity, of its expression: — (the relative pronoun “which” is very happily omitted between “skin” and “the”) — and, secondly, to the musical repetition of the vowel in “Cleonœan”, together with the alliterative terminations in “Cleonœan” and “lion”. The effect, also, is much aided by the sonorous conclusion “wore”.

Another and better instance of fine versification occurs in “Forgotten Heroes”.

And the peasant mother at her door,

To the babe that climbed her knee,

Sang aloud the land's heroic songs —

Sang of Thermopylæ

Sang of Mycale — of Marathon —

Of proud Platæa's day —

Till the wakened hills from peak to peak

Echoed the glorious lay.

Oh, godlike name! — Oh, godlike deed!

Song-borne afar on every breeze,

Ye are sounds to thrill like a battle shout,

Leonidas! Miltiades!

The general intention here is a line of four iambuses alternating with a line of three; but, less through rythmical skill than a musical ear, the poetess has been led into some exceedingly happy variations of the theme. For example; — in place of the ordinary iambus as the first foot of the first, of the second, and of the third line, a bastard iambus [page 64:] has been employed. These lines are thus scanned:

An4d  th4e  peas  |  a2nt  moth  |  e2r  at  |  he2r  door  |

To4  th4e  babe | tha2t  climbed  |  he2r  knee  |

Sa4ng  al4oud | the2  land's  |  he2ro  |  i2c  songs  |

The fourth line,

Sang  o2f  |  The2rmo  |  py2læ,

is well varied by a trochee, instead of an iambus, in the first foot; and the variation expresses forcibly the enthusiasm excited by the topic of the supposed songs, “Thermophylæ”. The fifth line is scanned as the three first. The sixth is the general intention, and consists simply of iambuses. The seventh is like the three first and the fifth. The eighth is like the fourth; and here again the opening trochee is admirably adapted to the movement of the topic. The ninth is the general intention, and is formed of four iambuses. The tenth is an alternating line and yet has four iambuses, instead of the usual three; as has also the final line — an alternating one, too. A fuller volume is in this manner given to the close of the subject; and this volume is fully in keeping with the rising enthusiasm. The last line but one has two bastard iambuses, thus:

Ye4  ar4e  sounds  |  to2 thrill  |  lik4e  a4  bat  |  tl2e  shout |

Upon the whole, it may be said that the most skilful versifer could not have written lines better suited to the purposes of the poet. The errors of “Alone”, however, and of Mrs. Hewitt's poems generally, show that we must regard the beauties pointed out above, merely in the light to which I have already alluded — that is to say, as occasional happiness to which the poetess is led by a musical ear.

I should be doing this lady injustice were I not to mention that, at times, she rises into a higher and purer region of poetry than might be supposed, or inferred, from any of the passages which I have hitherto quoted. The conclusion of her “Ocean Tide to the Rivulet” puts me in mind of the rich spirit of Horne's noble epic, “Orion”. [page 65:]

Sadly the flowers their faded petals close

Where on thy banks they languidly repose,

Waiting in vain to hear thee onward press;

And pale Narcissus by thy margin side

Hath lingered for thy coming, drooped and died,

Pining for thee amid the loneliness.

Hasten, beloved! — here! — ’neath the o’erhanging rock!

Hark! from the deep, my anxious hope to mock,

They call me back unto my parent main.

Brighter than Thetis thou — and, ah, more fleet!

I hear the rushing of thy fair white feet!

Joy! joy! — my breast receives its own again!

The personifications here are well managed. The “Here! — ‘neath the o’erhanging rock!” has the high merit of being truthfully, by which I mean naturally, expressed, and imparts exceeding vigor to the whole stanza. The idea of the ebb-tide, conveyed in the second line italicized, is one of the happiest imaginable; and too much praise can scarcely be bestowed on the “rushing” of the “fair white feet”. The passage altogether is full of fancy, earnestness, and the truest poetic strength. Mrs. Hewitt has given many such indications of a fire which, with more earnest endeavor, might be readily fanned into flame.

In character, she is sincere, fervent, benevolent — sensitive to praise and to blame; in temperament melancholy; in manner subdued; converses earnestly yet quietly. In person she is tall and slender, with black hair and large grey eyes; complexion dark; general expression of the countenance singularly interesting and agreeable.


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Notes:

Prior to the current presentation, this MS has never fully been printed, and is currently inaccessible in a private collection. Consequently, it has been necessary to base the text on other sources. The section beginning “The merit of this piece, however, is greatly obscured ...” and ending ‘unprosaicalness at these points [[...]]” is quoted in the sale catalogue for th library of John A Spoor, New York, May 3, 4, and 5, 1939, item 682, where it is noted as a manuscript of “8 pp., 4to, about 2,100 words”, including both the Hewitt and Bush items. Although the specific poem quoted is not noted, this section is repeated from Poe's review of Mrs. Hewitt's The Songs of Our Land, and is supplied here from that source. The same catalogue reproduces one page, beginning “[Iam]bus has been employed. These lines are ...” and ending “of the rich spirit of Horne's nobel epic, ‘Orion.’” The sale catalogue of H. B. Martin divides the two articles as “6 1/2 page” for Mary Hewitt, and “1 1/2 pages” for George Bush. The Martin catalogue perpetuates the misidentification of this manuscript as an early draft for “The Literati of New York City”, even ascribing the changes between this written form and the printed form of 1846 as indicating “the reasons for postponing publication until October”. In all of the catalogs only the first page of the Mary E. Hewitt portion of the manuscript has been reproduced. The current presenation has been made possible due to the presense of a careful typescript of the full manuscript that was made by John A. Spoor and sent to J. H. Whitty, currently part of the Whitty collection at the Rubenstein Library of Duke University (Box 23). This typescript sat unnoticed until 2019, when the collection was thoroughly examined by Jeffrey A. Savoye.

At the top of the first page appears, written in pencil, the name Anthony, presumably a typesetter for this portion of Griswold's third volume of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe. A large section in the middle of the manuscript is marked for omission, although it is not clear if this marking was done by Poe or by Griswold.

A note pencilled on the bottom of the transcript reads “Wimbleton N.Y. 1861 Vol. 3 p. 116.” It is possible that the note refers to the W. J. Widdleton editon of 1861, published in New York, which reprints the earlier Griswold collection published by J. S. Redfield in 1850 and 1856. In the Griswold edition, in all of its incarnations, this item does appear in vol. 3 on pp. 116-119. The supposition is made more likely by the fact that there does not appear to be an actual location of Wimbleton, NY.

Practical limiations of XHTML have made it necessary in the current presentation to put the numbers marking syllables at the revelant point within the word rather than beneath it, as they appear in the manuscript.

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[S:1 - LTAM, 1848] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Misc. - Mary E. Hewitt