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Personalities.
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IT is very well for newspaper writers to have a convenient subject to enlarge upon whenever they happen to run dry or be at a loss for a topic. In ordinary conversation the weather may always be mentioned without offense; and among contributors to popular journals it is always safe to write something about Poe, and, while praising his genius and bewailing his miseries, to abuse Dr. Griswold, as though Rufus were responsible for all of Poe's misfortunes and misconduct because he exposed them. The truth of the matter is that Griswold was as great an admirer of Poe as Boswell was of Johnson; and if Poe had not believed in his friendship for him he would never have named him his literary executor. In Mr. M. D. Conway's last letter from London to the Cincinnati Commercial he serves up again the old story of Poe and Griswold — probably from a lack of a more novel and gossippy topic. Mr. Conway says:
“Poe died aged 40, and that he did not produce the work to which al! he wrote is a mere prelude {s owing to his having committed suicide by drink. The real defense of him, as it seems to me, is that he fell upon that crude Griswoldian age of American literature which preferred tinsel to gold. It was an age which would have starved Hawthorne if it had not been for Frank Pierce; and it did starve Poe — in full sight of the fat paunches of fools. It is not a thing that Americans can think of with satisfaction that the finest works of imagination their country has produced — the Tales of Hawthorne and Poe — never brought their authors half as much money as an inferior reporter on a provincial paper now gets.”
Byron died at 87, and it might with just as much truth be said that all he wrote was only a prelude to what he did not produce as to say this of Poe. Poe was a more precocious genius than Byron and wrote better when he was “a minor” than the author of “Childe Harold” ever did; and, as he lived three years longer, there is no reason to believe that he had not produced his possible best work. As for Poe's falling upon that crude Griswoldian age of American literature — which preferred tinsel to gold, which would have starved Hawthorne if it had not been for Frank Pierce, it must be remembered that it was the age of Cooper, Bryant, Hawthorne, Emerson, Irving, Lowell, Willis, Holmes, Bancroft, Whittier, Prescott, and many lesser literary producers, who certainly did not starve and whose works were not tinsel. Poe was just as well paid for his productions as any of them were. He had the same chances and better opportunities than some of them; and, if he starved, as he did not, the fault was his own. The fling about Hawthorne and Frank Pierce is a very absurd one. Hawthorne was at the zenith of his reputation and in the receipt of a large and increasing income from his writings when Frank Pierce was nominated for the Presidency. As they had been classmates at college, Hawthorne wrote a biography of Pierce, and, as an acknowledgment for it, when Pierce got into the White House he gave his biographer the Liverpool consulate, and that was all he ever did for him. As for Poe, he had exceptional advantages over any of the literary Americans whose names are now fondly cherished by their countrymen. Whittier, for example, was working as a shoemaker when Poe was tenderly cared for by his adopted parents, who sent him to the best schools and treated him as their own child. When Irving was retrieving by hard work the losses he had incurred by his failure in the hardware business, Poe was at the University of Virginia, squandering the generous allowance which his adopted father bestowed upon him, Longfellow was earning his living as a tutor at Cambridge, Hawthorne was a customhouse officer in Boston, and Bryant was employed in the drudgery of assistant editor of the Evening Post. When Poe was enjoying the advantages of a cadetship at West Point, Cooper, who Lad commenced his career as a sailor before the mast, was industriously producing the novels which gave him an income sufficient to support his family in luxury. Poe, who had advantages which none of the writers of his time enjoyed and a genius superior to most of them, came to a wretched end, not because he fell upon the Griswoldian period of American literature, as Mr. Conway strangely says, but because he lacked conscience end stability, aud preferred, as Mr. Conway says, to “commit suicide by drink.” Otway and Chatterton actually starved in London from sheer neglect and Savage and Johnson walked the streets together at night because they lacked the means to pay for their lodgings; but Poe was never reduced to want in any lack of a ready market for his writings, which the publishers were always glad to get and to pay for liberally. In spite of his irregularities, his ingratitude to his friends, and his many disreputable acts, he was never neglected, and if he suffered it was from his perverse nature, which no one could control. To impute his misfortunes to the age in which he lived is pure maudlin sentimentalism, which Mr. Conway would be the last person in the world to be guilty of if he had chosen to exercise his ordinary sturdy common sense, instead of repeating the trumpery which others have written.
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Notes:
A likely author of this article is Charles Frederick Briggs, who held a grudge with Poe after their unhappy dealings over the Broadway Journal and who, in his later years, was on the staff of The Independent.
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[S:0 - INY, 1875] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Personalities (Anonymous, 1875)