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Poe's Poem of “The Raven.”
To Editors of Richmond Dispatch:
Gentlemen, — I have read with much interest your notice of a publication, purporting to come from Mr. J. Shaver, of Burlington, N. J., which puts in issue the fact that Edgar A. Poe was the author of “The Raven.” You say very truly “The vile attempt will fail. Poe's peculiarities are so marked that his poems can be easily identified.” Certainly no poet, English or American, has ever produced anything so marked with his peculiarities — his vague, wierd [[weird]], shadowy ideas, flitting like phantasmagoria — his reduplications and repetitions, that soothe without tiring the ear — the marvellous melody and rymth [[rhythm]] of his versification. As you observe, when Mr. Shaver can produce something else from the pen of Mr. Fenwich (or his own) that will bear comparison with “The Raven,” he will have done something towards the end at which he aims. But there are other important matters to be remarked upon. All that the public has before it is Mr. Shaver's statement that he has read and copied a portion of a letter of which he could not make out all the writing, and copied only what he could decypher — in which Mr. Poe confesses a gross fraud on his part, not deliberately begun, but afterwards persisted in, because it has “produced a sensation.” Moreover, this letter is written to Mr. Daniels, of Philadelphia: forms a part of the library Mahlon Dickerson, deceased; is stored away in an old barn in a New Jersey village, “in possession of the rats and a man who will not let them be touched, because of some family quarrel about property”; but which remarkable letter Mr. J. Shaver somehow gets access to in the city of Burlington, N. J., and in the hands of one Mr. John T. Tompkins. My own impression, from reading the statement, is this: That some mischievous boy or childish man has tried to practice one of those hoaxes which are so tempting to people of weak intellect and loose morality. If, however, Mr. J. Shaver is not prepared to own this “soft impeachment,” it will be necessary for him to answer the following questions (perhaps others) before he can have any standing in court:
1. Is there such a man as Mr. J. Shaver, and what are his claims to credibility?
2. Who is Mr. Daniels, of Philadelphia, and how came Mr. Poe to write him the alleged letter?
3. How came Mr. Poe's letter to Mr. Daniels in the possession of Mahlon Dickerson, deceased?
4. What village in New Jersey is that in which the letter was stored away? Whose old barn was the depository?
5. How came the “rates” and the “man” in possession to allow the letter to go to Burlington? How did this “rat-man” come into possession of the letter, and why did he part with it?
6. Who is Mr. John T. Tompkins, and how came he by this alleged letter?
7. Who first discovered the letter?
8. What are the characters, claims to credibility, and what is the actual testimony in relation to this letter of the different persons connected with it, and who are named in the statement and in the foregoing questions?
9. Who can swear to the genuineness of the handwriting of the alleged letter? What are the qualifications of the witness (if any one is prepared so to swear) to judge of such a question> What his character and credibility?
10. Where is the alleged letter itself? For nothing less than its actual production and its submission to the examination of experts will satisfy any person of ordinary sense and judgement that there is any truth in the story.
11. Why should Mr. Poe be so much affected by the “sensation” which the Raven produced? His name was already distinguished by other works, both in verse and prose, which were of higher flight that the raven himself.
12. How comes Mr. Poe to volunteer a discharge so damaging to his reputation? Why to Mr. Daniels? Why on the 29th of September, 1849, after concealing it so long? [It had been published at least four years, perhaps more.]
13. Why does Mr. Poe in this letter indulge in a style of writing which is so unlike his own pithy, choice, expressive, and grammatical English, and which is so much like the common-place, slip-shod language employed by Mr. Shaver in that part of the communication which is avowedly his own? If Mr. Shaver were a medium, and had received spiritual revelations from Mr. Poe, the thing would be intelligible, for it is well known that able men, even geniuses like Franklin, Webster, and Shakspeare himself, become drivelers under such treatment. But why should Poe thus decay before his death?
14. Why should Mr. Poe say in his letter to Mr. Daniels that “he signed his name to it, and thus it went to the printer and was published, &c.: and by that means he enjoyed all the credit and applause, &c.”? Why should Mr. Poe say all this when it was not true? For “The Raven” was published in the Whig Review (I do not remember the date) ANONYMOUSLY, and the writer of this article — a classmate of E. A. Poe's in his school-days — did not know who was the author till long after.
When Mr. Shaver (ominous name) shall answer these questions, and shall produce satisfactory proof of the truth of his answers, and when it shall appear that the answers themselves have something in them that resembles probability, it will be time enough to give this “discovery” a serious consideration. Until then it can hardly find any respectable scholar in America or in Europe who will look upon it as anything more than a silly and shallow endeavor on the part of somebody (we care not of whom) to practice on the ignorance, credulity, or prejudice of the public. J.
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Notes:
“The Raven” was first published in the American Review for February 1845, although probably available to subscribers about the middle of January of that year. Needless to say, Mr. Shaver, if he existed at all, never came forward to answer any of these questions.
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[S:0 - DDRVA, 1870] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Poe's Poem of The Raven (Anonymous, 1870)