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A LOVER OF EDGAR ALLAN POE AND A POET HIMSELF
Orrin C. Painter's Appreciation Inherited And Strengthened By Association With Those Who had Known The Poet — Some Extracts From the Verse of Mr. Painter On Various Themes.
IN the person of Mr. Orrin C. Painter Baltimore has a devoted admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. This fondness for the poet was inherited from Mr. Painter's father, the late William Painter, the well-known inventor. He made frequent visits to Mrs. Maria Clemm, the aunt and mother-in-law of Poe, while she was an inmate of the Church Home and Infirmary here in Baltimore, where she spent the latter years of her life. This was the place at which Edgar Allan Poe had died, and it was then known as the Washington College University Hospital. Upon one of William Painter's visits to Mrs. Clemm, in 1868, that lady gave to him one of her most prized possessions, a daguerreotype of her beloved “son Eddie,” which she believed to have been the last of him ever taken, and requested Mr. Painter never to part with it. This daguerreotype is now in the possession of Mr. Orrin C. Painter, who treasures it beyond price. Facsimiles must have been in the possession of others, for they have appeared in various publications.
Mr. Orrin Painter's recollections revert to the reading of “The Raven” to him by his father when he was quite young, and the circumstance made a lasting impression upon him. A natural Impulse has always possessed him to grasp at every opportunity offered to familiarize himself with the Poe spirit and to visit the homes and Poe. This inclination has been gratified to such a an extent that he is well acquainted with the poet's life and works.
“His poems,” said Mr. Painter, “have upon me deep and abiding hold, so much so that rarely a day passes that some of his lines are not running through my mind. To me, genuine poetry means very much. I think that those are the most fortunate who are endowed with healthful imaginations, for all that we get out of anything in this life is what we think into it. Apart from imagination and sentiment, this world would be very barren — at least, it would be quite commonplace to me, apart from these qualities. Idealism is inseparable from all lofty minds and should Anally be encouraged in every one. The love of the beautiful is admirably treated of in Poe's essay, “The Poetic Principle.” His prose works are, in many cases, deeply philosophical and analytical, and, while many are weird and gruesome, others reveal a keen sense of humor, for which he is not commonly given credit.
“Few people, I think, realize at what a comparatively youthful age Poe died, for he was less than 41. As to his character, he has been greatly maligned, but justice has been done him by Prof. James A. Harrison, in his Virginia edition of ‘The Complete Works of Edgar Allan I believe that his weaknesses have been much exaggerated by those who suffered under his criticism, yet I regard him as having been quite human — not, however, that he was ever anything but a gentleman. The calumnies of Rufus W. Griswold been amply refuted by Sarah Helen Whitman. George R. Graham, John H. Ingram, Dr. John J. Moran, who attended him at the time of his last illness, and many others. In fact, was he noted for his chivalrous deportment, and for one, can certainly excuse whatever digressions may have been justly charged to him, upon the ground of his highly-strung temperament and many vicissitudes. He certainly suffered greatly from the hardships which fell to his lot and has rendered to the world a thousand measures for the little wrong he has done it. I am glad to observe that his most severe critics seem to be mellowing in their Judgment of him. than himself, and He harmed no one more paid the uttermost farthing for whatever temptations he had fallen into. Nature breaks all her molds, and, as there will never be another Shakespeare, so there will never be another Poe. Therefore, I say, all honor and sympathy for this wonderfully inspired, yet ill-fated genius.” edition the Mr. Painter has visited the cottage at Fordham, where Poe lived from 1844 to 1849, and where his young wife, Virginia, died. He has also met three persons who have seen Poe in the flesh. These were Andrew Jackson Davis, the writer upon spiritual philosophy; John Sartain, the noted writer and engraver, who died some years ago in Philadelphia, and, lastly, Mr. G. W. Spence, the old sexton of the Westminster Church, in the graveyard of which lies buried the mortal part of Poe. About 12 years ago Mr. Spence, who has since died, stated to Mr. Painter that he had a number of times seen Poe wandering around among the old graves of the burial ground, completely absorbed in his own thoughts. He seldom had anything to say unless spoken to. Upon such occasions he may have been visting [[visiting]] the burial lot of his this great-grandfather, David Poe. Mr. Spence showed Mr. Painter the spot where Edgar Allan Poe had been buried in the Westminster [column 2:] churchyard, which was back of the church, and where his remains had lain for 26 years, part of which time the graves of Mrs. Clemm an his wife, Virginia, had been next to his, until they were all transferred to their present location under the monument erected through the efforts of Miss Sara Sigourney Rice, on November 17, 1875.
Upon the inauguration of the Poe Memorial Association some years ago Mr. Painter became deeply interested in the purpose of that body, and at that time and since has aided its work materially. This memorial association, which was formed by the officers of the Woman's Literary Club of Baltimore, their respective boards being long identical, was not the first association of its kind which had been organized with the same object in view. The Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association of Baltimore held its Arst meeting at Me. Coy Hall, Johns Hopkins University, on February 10, 1896, at which Mr. Painter was present. This body was incorporated March 11, 1896, but its energies became relaxed.
Apropos of Mr. Painter's connections in these respects, a brief sketch of that gentleman's literary career will be of interest. He does not claim that anything great has emanated from his pen. He states that the Genealogy of the Painter Family, which he completed some years ago, was well received by those who were most concerned. His literary productions have been chiefly upon a small scale and have been privately circulated among his friends. These have been of a philosophical and poetical nature, and have never been designed to be offered for sale. He has found himself most congenially employed in the production of his poetical effusions, which have never been of any magnitude in respect to length or in any way pretentious or pedantic.
He remembers that before the age of 7 he had made little books of his own drawings and paintings for the amusement of himself and his playmates. Later, during his school days, he found occasions to express his poetic feelings while rolling around on the floor of his father's library, when the rest of the family had retired for the night. These immature productions, were, of course, never published. Nevertheless, they were wrought with the same depth of feeling which has characterized those of later years. Being of a retiring disposition, he has often wandered unaccompanied in solitary places, “never less alone than when alone.” Mr. Painter claims among his friends Ella Wheeler Wilcox and many other people of literary note. Nixon Poindexter Clingman, the North Carolina poet, whose poems Mr. Painter edited after his death, was a cousin of Mr. Painter. Howard Pyle, the American artist and author, who recently died in Florence, Italy, was a first cousin of Mr. Painter's father.
Some extracts from the edition of poems published by Mr. Painter during the last summer are given herewith. The dedication to his readers at once reveals some of the most striking qualities of the poems, in the simple naturalness their feeling and style:
As along life's path we wander,
‘Tis a pleasant thing
Now and then to sit and ponder
By some cooling spring.
Drinking Nature's inspiration
With the sparkling draught
Yielding unto meditation
As the cup is quaffed.
Pilgrim, take the draught I offer
From my shady spring,
‘Round the waters which I proffer
Greenest mosses cling.
Drink and feel thy spirit welling
Upward, glad and free,
As from Nature's bosom swelling.
It hath come to me.
To a degree rarely found in the active [column 3:] life of the twentieth century man is the beautiful devotion to the first dear ties of life, as evinced in the pre-eminence given in this book to the offering of tender thoughts to the writer's parents, word breathing ideal confidence and affection.
TO MY FATHER.
The lonesome latter days are here,
I walk ‘mid fallen leaves;
They drift around far and near,
My heart in silence grieves.
TO MY MOTHER.
Thou art my dearest friend, my mother,
No one loves me so, no other,
No heart doth beat so warm as thine;
Thy life is one of pure devotion,
True and deep in each emotion,
Thy love is most like that Divine.
HIS TRIBUTE TO POE.
The inherited fondness of the Painter family for Edgar Allan Poe and the writer's loyalty and enthusiastic admiration for Poe's writings And words in the following lines that poet written upon viewing his daguerreotype:
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE.
———
Poet of Sorrow, how strange is the feeling
Which comes like a reverie over me stealing,
As deeply I gaze in the depths of thine eyes!
The profoundest emotions which were thy possession
Are clearly revealed by thy mournful expression,
Which shows thou hast dwelt in “an ether of sighs.”
The world never knew thee, through all its divining,
Yet paid thee its tribute by fondly enshrining
In memory, all that It could of thy spell;
It heard not the voice of that spirit in Heaven
Who sang wildly well amid the red leven, —
The voice of the angel Israfel.
The raven which sat in the lamplight streaming,
Casting its shadow over thee, dreaming,
Has flown to the “Night's Plutonian
Thou hast greeted, at last, in the distant Aidenn,
That rare and radiant, sainted maiden, —
Her “whom the angels name Lenore.”
The whole poem of five stanzas is imbued with an all-possessing and sensitive reverence for Poe's genius.
Like all students of Poe at home or aboard, Mr. Painter has not escaped that poet's influence upon his writings, an influence not of imitation, but of suggestion, which, for all who come within his spell, must exercise a fascinating domination. “The Angel In the Ward” may be classed among the productions showing the impress of thorough study of Poe, as in the following excerpts:
THE ANGEL IN THE WARD.
I rolled and a tossed that dread night in July
And I fervently wished and prayed I might die
To the Father of All, that I might die.
The fever of living had burned in my brain,
Like a maddening ichor had swept through my brain,
Till I writhed and moaned in unbearable pain.
* * * * * * * *
In the ward where I lay was an Angel in white,
An Angel of mercy, in radiant white,
Who tiptoed in at all hours of the night.
She crept up softly to the side of my bed
And bathed with her hands my feverish head
This Angel-like Lily, her fragrance she shed.
* * * * * * * *
As she bended above me I looked in her eyes
Which were deep with the blue of Italian skies —
With the azure and purple of far-away skies.
“A Spirit's Message,” written beneath the weight of mortality, but in the spiritual light that can never burn low, is worthy of its name, reflecting the joy of the pilgrim upward bound. The verses given convey some insight into the spiritual qualities of this poem:
A SPIRIT'S MESSAGE.
———
Last night I longer warm
Is that poor clay, my earthly form,
A ruin now, wrecked in life's storm.
The eyes are closed. their light is gone,
The pulse had ceased long ere the dawn
When last my conscious breath was drawn.
The floral tokens fragrance shed.
My friends come in with noiseless tread
To view and eulogize the dead.
Where think ye, loved ones, am I now,
While ye touch my icy brow
And by my casket lowly bow?
“The Haunted possesses strong picturesque colors drawn with a firm hand that fears no shadows, desolation of humanity [column 4:] and nature, standing as spectres warning of evil. Here it is.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE,
‘Mid a forest dark and gloomy
Stands a dwelling quaint and roomy
By the tarn of “Deep Despair,
Where the lonely reeds and rushes
Nod in sombre twilight hushes,
Save when weird sounds rend the air.
On the lake are lilies lying,
In the swamp the herons, crying,
Perch upon the rotten logs;
From the cat-tails and the grasses
Of the tall and thick morasses
Comes the croaking of the frogs.
In the yard the weeds are springing,
Around the house the vines are clinging
To mortared of faded brown;
Hollyhocks, untouched, are growing,
Roses wild are freely blowing,
The fences all are broken down.
One of the best poems in the book written in infinite sadness and revealing his own sympathetic nature, is “The Burial”:
THE BURIAL.
From the belfry of the tower,
The Ivy tower
Among the trees,
Sadly tolls the funeral bell
A deep and mournful knell
Upon the breeze.
Through the churchyard moves a train,
A long and lordly train,
With stately tread,
Bearing to its resting place,
Unto the Earth's embrace,
The honored dead.
The mourners chant a solemn dirge,
A sacred, solemn dirge,
With voices low,
And leaving ‘mid the sombre gloom
Their burden In the tomb,
They turn and go.
The lurid sun, among the pines,
In hazy mist declines
Behind the hill;
The droning village noises cease,
The day expires in peace,
And all is still.
That Mr. Painter has been traveler as well as a student of life and letters is evidenced in the poem “The Parthenon.” The classic spirit which pervades the first lines could only have been awakened upon the soil of Athens, and in view of the monuments of antiquity which it apostrophizes. It follows:
THE PARTHENON.
Incarnate Glory of the ancient Hellas,
Solemn Temple, grand, superb, sublime,
Mould of Thought, Embodiment of Power,
Sacret to Athene, mighty goddess
Loved and worshipped by the proud Hellenes:
At last in thy great presence do I stand!
Majestic Columns of a perfect race,
Destined to impress and thrill the world
With evidence of wisdom, culture, art;
Friezes which portray Athene's birth,
Her contest waged for Athens with Poseidon,
God supreme of all the stormy seas;
Triumphant Pageantry with pipes and timbrels
Celebrating victories of war:
Thy grandeur now with awe do I behold!
Wrecked, despoiled by — worse by far
Than all the ravages of ruthless Time,
Thy wondrous potency doth still remain.
Mecca of the learned and the elite
From every portion of the modern world,
Mute, — more noble yet in wounded pride,
Thou still dost teach thy greatness to mankind.
Among the nature poems two stand out vividly. The spirited “Ode to Norway,” which, as “The Parthenon,” bears the stamp of having been written on the spot, is a faithful picturing of mountain heights and the wild seas of those far nothern [[northern]] climes. Two verses are quoted from this song of the North.
ODE TO NORWAY.
Lift thy hoary, whitened heads.
Thou Peaks of Norway, grand, sublime,
From whose crags and snowy beds.
Unmarked by human drifts of time.
Thy torrents pour in thunderous tones
Unceasing ‘midst thy rugged pines, [column 5:]
O’er boulders great and mossy stones
Where midnight sun in summer shines.
Thou dark Fjords and deep Ravines,
Embrace thy mists and fleecy clouds,
Until the wooing sunlight weens
Aloft these billowy, hanging shrouds;
Surge in, thou all-pervading Sea,
Which bore the Vikings from thy shores,
Where now the Norseman's banners free
Wave o’er the land his heart adores.
The second nature poem given here is the word-painting “An Alpine Sunset,” as full of sound as it is of color, with the lilt of the heart music of the true Alpine lover, whose nature reflects the inspiration of such surroundings. The very breath of the Alps is here.
AN ALPINE SUNSET.
Hark, the Alpine horn is sounding!
Echoes endless are rebounding
Through the dim and distant hills;
From the eagle upward soaring
To the torrent downward pouring,
Music all the valley fills.
Mountain shepherds yodels singing,
Grazing flocks with bells a-ringing,
Lend a clear and sweet refrain,
While some rustic maiden pleasing
Murmurs gently at the squeezing
Of her loving, sighing swain.
Banks of purple clouds are drifting
And their brilliant rims uplifting
From a lake of molten gold;
Foaming billows heavenward rearing,
Fleecy cloudlets lightly veering,
Vistas rare and rich unfold.
But the sunny nature, the light-heartedness of youth that instinctively turns to the brightness of life's exhilarating pleasures, also sings its own song in the happy measures of [column 6:]
SLEIGHING.
Brightly beams the moon tonight,
Flooding with its silvery light
All the snow, here below;
Nature round us seems to glisten,
While we skim along and listen,
As we go,
To the music of the bells,
As it loud and louder swells
Drawing near, now we hear
Voices sing in time and mingle,
As they ring and chime and jingle,
Sweet and clear.
In soberer mood comes the recipe for happiness, which, if daily followed, in the broad spirit of its noble prompting, would bring the world all in all.
HAPPINESS.
If happiness you strive to find
‘Midst all this world's confusion,
With beauty try to fill your mind
And yield to sweet illusion.
Help the man beneath to rise;
Be friendly your neighbor;
In doing for another lies
The recompense of labor.
Have a kindly word for all;
Live up to your ideal:
Answer to the spirit's call,
Make your prayers real.
Of the poems of love, many are beautiful, perhaps the best being “The Theory of Love,” in which tenderness of feeling, as deep as exalted, guided the hand that wrote:
A shooting star from Heaven fell
The night my Love was born;
An Angel came awhile to dwell
Upon this Earth forlorn.
This is one of the seven verses. [column 7:]
In the same attitude, but with more demand for response, is “The Soul Language,” of which the two last verses are quoted:
The purest love language knows,
But like the perfume of the rose,
Arises from the heart;
And well I know a silent voice
May make a kindred soul rejoice
When love it would impart.
And still I feel, at twilight hour,
Unfolding like an evening flower,
That gentle presence nigh
Some angel bends, my prayer to hear,
Whose voice is but a falling tear,
Whose language is a sigh.
Many of the large collections forming the book show a fully developed sense humorous. Of these the brightness of the to My Old Shoes” demands full quotation:
O, must we part, my good old shoes,
My friends of russet leather?
I scarce have heart to cast you off,
We've been so long together. [column 8:]
I pity both your weary soles,
And could your tongues but talk,
They'd tell of many ups and downs
Since you have learned to walk.
Downtrodden you have always been,
I much regret to say,
Yet, without plaint, you've stood your ground
Until the present day.
But now, alas, you are pegged out,
And wrinkles show your age;
The ties which bind are breaking fast;
You've reached your final stage.
So fare you well, and go your way,
And if again we meet,
I hope it may be where we both
May walk the golden street.
All readers of the poems of Orrin C. Painter must be impressed with their qualities of earnestness, spirituality and purity. There is superfluity of words, the writer says what he sees and feels, giving directly the expression of a lofty nature, mental vision ever open to the true light, and an exalted temperament, ever turning to that light. He writes from purest volition — the volition of love.
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Notes:
Orrin Chalfant Painter (1864-1915) was a Baltimore businessman, an amateur poet and a fan of Edgar Allan Poe. His generous donations made possible several improvements near Poe's memorial grave in the Westminster Cemetery. Among these are the elegant iron gates that allow direct access to the monument.
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[S:0 - BS, 1912] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - A Lover of Edgar Allan Poe and a Poet Himself (Anonymous, 1912)