Text: Anonymous, “[William F. Gill and Poe],” The Library Table (New York, NY), vol. III, no. 10, August 30, 1877, pp. 147 and 149-150

[page 147, column 1, continued:]

In the course of a very enlightened note on William F. Gill's “Life of Edgar Allan Poe, the Atlantic Monthly has some observations that are too eminently valuable to be left buried in magazine minion; and hence, without attempting any quotation, it is a pleasure to call popular attention to them. Mr. Howells briefly notes the predestination to misfortune that appears in Poe's career, and compares the American poet with the unfortunate Alfred de Musset as one of the most intimate parallels furnished by literary history. There is a deep pathos undoubtedly in such lives as Poe's lives that seem doomed from the outset; but the pathos must not blind our judgment to the fact that the failure arises directly from inherent weakness. There is no truth more often forgotten than that fate is but a verbal symbol for one's own soul, and that the seeds of our misfortunes in the world are all within ourselves. A man's biography is but the record his soul leaves in its passage through the world. The contradiction in Poe's nature was that he had no conception of sincerity. Impulsive, passionate, wayward, he was an actor in every thing he did, and his associates soon learned that his brilliant intellect was unguided by conscience. Mr. Gill cannot understand such a nature, and hence should never have undertaken the task of a biographer. This is no deficiency of compliment to Mr. Gill, for the nature of Poe was too remote from ordinary experience to be readily comprehended.

[page 149:]

THE severity, in his just published life of Edgar Allan Poe, with which Mr. William F. Gill attacks the veracity of the late R. W. Griswold, Poe's early biographer, has provoked such general animadversion in literary circles that one may [page 150:] possibly employ it to point a moral to controversial writers. Upon careful analsyis [[analysis]], there is, for instance, no very material disagreement between Griswold and his critics as to the mysterious Providence episode. They concede that Poe was intoxicated on the evening of his visit to Mrs. Whitman, but deny that his behavior was rude or improper. It is not denied, either that the engagement was broken off in consequence of that mishap. It is denied, by implication at least, that Poe expressed an intention of severing the engagement with Mrs. Whitman to a New York lady before setting out for Providence. There is evidence, however, that he disclaimed any personal interest in the projected marriage, in the presence of literary acquaintances here, even at the moment of receiving congratulations upon the sudden betterment of his prospects, and that his passionate letters to Mrs. Whitman were either wanting in sincerity, or he was weak enough to pretend an indifference that he did not feel. Again, many of Poe's most reprehensible transactions have never been paraded in print, and the information respecting them is in the hands of persons admiring his brilliant intellect too highly to assist in undermining his reputation, even for the sake of justice. What, for example, shall be our opinion of a man who menaces a lady who has been weak enough to write some sentimental letters to him, with a reference of the letters to her husband, unless she submits to the levy of a loan required by his necessities? The late Mrs. Ellet, one of the kindest and most considerate of women, always maintained that Poe neglected his wife sadly during her later years, and that his sentimental liaisons were one cause of her early death. The truth is, there are bowlders of fact still verifiable as to Poe's unprincipled conduct on various occasions, that render the vindications of Messrs. Gill, Ingram and Didier subjects for sly laughter in well-informed literary circles. And some day, in a fit of disgust at such puny Boswellism, some clever litterateur will collect and print them, brushing away the theories of these rhapsodizing biographers as if they were cobwebs.