Poe and the Milk of Paradise

"[I] was afraid, from the wild imaginations manifested in your writings, that you were an opium-eater--had some chance for hope that this might not be the case, as the same wildness was evident in your childhood productions--supposed that you could not have acquired the habit when so young, and therefore hoped."
-George W. Eveleth, letter to Edgar Allan Poe, January 11, 1848

One of the many disastrous effects of a strange, near-universal mania for reading Poe’s writings as hidden autobiography is the fact that, because several of the narrators of his stories used opium, it is often assumed that he himself was familiar with the narcotic. No serious modern-day Poe biographer credits the idea that he was a habitual drug user, as scholars recognize that his literary depictions of the drug were inspired by contemporary works such as Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.” However, the image of him as the wild-eyed poète maudit ecstatically scribbling verses and stories while in an opium-fueled frenzy is amazingly durable, particularly on the Internet. Never underestimate the power of mythology.Considering the popularity of the belief that Poe was an opium addict, it is rather remarkable that the evidence in its favor is so weak. In 1850, the poet William Ross Wallace wrote John Neal that alcohol, taken alternately with opium, “kept him [Poe] half his days in madness.” Wallace knew Poe, but not at all intimately, and Poe seems to have privately disliked him, although he admired some of Wallace’s poetry. The tone of Wallace’s letter is of someone passing on gossip rather than relaying first-hand information. (Ironically, Wallace himself was an unstable character notorious for his dissipation. He may well have been projecting his own failings on Poe.) Poe’s biographer George Woodberry said that Neilson Poe’s daughter Amelia told him that Edgar’s cousin Elizabeth Herring stated that “his periods of excess were occasioned by a free use of opium.” I have mentioned my reasons for doubting this—at best—third-hand testimony here. Our ubiquitous old friend Susan Archer Talley Weiss wrote that Rosalie Poe had visited Fordham in the spring of 1846 (we have no other evidence this visit took place,) and had witnessed an incident where her brother “begged for morphine.”

I have chronicled Mrs. Weiss’ amazing powers of imagination since literally the first day of this blog. Suffice to say that if she asserted the sun rose in the east, that alone would be enough to make me dismiss the notion.

In the 1870s, Annie Richmond produced a copy of a letter she claimed to have received from Poe in November of 1848, describing his attempts to commit suicide through an overdose of laudanum. According to this letter, he miscalculated. His body, unused to such poison, rejected the laudanum and sent him into unconsciousness before he could take the full dose. Assuming Mrs. Richmond provided an accurate transcript of this letter—and it must be said I believe her to be only slightly more honest than Susan Weiss—and also assuming the incident was not one of the colorful fables Poe enjoyed telling about himself, this has been seen as proof that Poe was not accustomed to taking drugs.

In his 1896 “Reminiscences of Poe,” Thomas Dunn English firmly rejected the idea that Poe took drugs. He said, “Had Poe the opium habit when I knew him, I should, both as a physician and a man of observation, have discovered it…” English’s account is a remarkably ingenious work of libel, relying on malicious, sly intimations against Poe which he did not have even have the courage to explicitly describe (likely because he knew they could be refuted if he did.) It is something of a minor masterwork of the use of vague insinuation in the cause of character assassination. As I have said before, I do not believe English knew Poe nearly as well as he claimed, but in any case, it is reasonable to believe that if he thought he could get away with using charges of drug use against his old enemy, he would have done so. The fact that he did not is surely a strong piece of evidence in Poe’s favor.

Similarly, English’s business associate Thomas H. Lane, who knew Poe in his Philadelphia and New York years, alleged that one or two drinks could instantly transform Poe from someone “in every way a gentleman” into a surly drunk. However, he was positive the poet was never a drug user.

John Carter, a Richmond doctor who had socialized with Poe during the poet’s visit there in 1849, wrote Woodberry that “Poe never used opium in any instance that I am aware of, and if it had been a habitual practice, we certainly would have detected it, as he numbered amongst his associates half-dozen physicians…I never heard it hinted before, and if he had contracted the habit, it would have accompanied him to Richmond.” (Unfortunately for Poe, Woodberry ignored this unequivocal, first-hand medical testimony in favor of the Susan Weiss/Amelia Poe hearsay. In his biography of Poe, he asserted his belief that Poe used drugs, although he admitted that “it is only a personal view, and may be erroneous.”)

Incidentally, this passage from Woodberry’s book serves as an example of the dangers of trusting Poe biographies too implicitly. Hervey Allen, in his inexplicably popular “Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe,” quoted—whether through a deliberate desire to smear Poe or sheer stupidity (the baroque silliness of his book makes either theory plausible) repeated Woodberry’s conjecture that Poe used drugs—but quoted it as part of Dr. Carter’s letter to Woodberry. Thus, the unsuspecting reader of Allen’s book was left to believe that a medical man who knew Poe well believed he was an addict, when, in truth, he said precisely the opposite. This is just one of the many reasons why, whenever I begin to peruse Allen’s biography, I am faced with the strong urge to hurl it against the wall. (I refrain, however—flinging around Kenneth Silverman’s “Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance” left enough damage in my home.)

In short, while it cannot be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Poe did not take opium—in history, nothing is more futile than trying to prove a negative—there is no reliable evidence of his drug use, and the testimony refuting the charge is considerably more assertive and credible.

There is, as well, an odd legend that Poe also took absinthe, which, in his day, acted as a hallucinogenic. The sole evidence for this is a 1988 book describing itself as a “history” of the liqueur. It listed “Edgar Allen Poe” (whenever a Poe source cannot get the middle name right, you know you’re in for a rocky ride,) as a drinker of “absinthe and brandy.” This claim is found nowhere else in history, and the author provided no documentation or source for his statement.

Unfortunately, once any allegation, no matter how absurd and unproven, gets into print, it takes on an invincible life of its own. Sure enough, every few weeks or so I stumble upon a blog, website, or newspaper article chattering merrily about the notorious madman Edgar Poe, opium and absinthe addict.

It’s all enough to make a poor-devil Poe blogger want to reach for the laudanum bottle herself. With an absinthe-and-brandy chaser, please.

Quote(s) of the Day

"'The Legend of Edgar Allan Poe' would not be an inappropriate title for his biography. The most striking of the few things that the narratives of Poe's life have in common is a mythological strain, as if some subtle influence were at work in the minds of men to transform his career into a story stranger than truth, and to make his memory a mere tradition. It appears in that first newspaper article which Griswold wrote before the earth had chilled the body of the dead poet: 'He walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses, or with eyes upturned in passionate prayer for their happiness who at the moment were objects of his idolatry; or with his glances introverted to a heart gnawed with anguish and with a face shrouded in gloom, he would brave the wildest storms, and all night, with drenched garments and arms beating the winds and rains, would speak as if to spirits that at such times only could be evoked by him from the Aidenn.' It is as plain to be seen in Baudelaire's declamatory eulogy over him as the martyr of a raw democracy. In Gilfillan he is the archangel ruined; in Ingram he is the ruined archangel rehabilitated; in all the biographies there is a demoniac element, as if Poe, who nevertheless was a man and an American, were a creature of his own fancy."
-George Woodberry, "Poe's Legendary Years," The Atlantic Monthly, December 1884

Woodberry certainly had his flaws as a Poe biographer. He was commissioned, against his inclination, to write a life of the poet, even though he made no secret of the fact that he detested Poe personally and thought little of most of his writings. It was rather like choosing me to write a biography of Fanny Osgood. He never understood Poe, and made it clear he did not want to even try. (In what Edward Wagenknecht delightfully described as "one of the most beautiful examples of New England snobbery on record" which "goes far toward justifying even Poe's attitude toward that region," Woodberry sighed that the difficulty with describing Poe's history is "that it is a life led outside of New England.")

After his biography was completed, Woodberry even had to flee to Italy for a spell simply to try and get the taint of Poe out of his system!

Despite all that, the first version of his biography, published in 1885, has value. It was certainly the first truly professional book about Poe, and would prove to be the last until Arthur Quinn's 1941 work. Unfortunately, his subsequent, heavily revised editions are increasingly riddled with factual errors, absurd, utterly unfounded speculations, and painfully damaging misconceptions (particularly when he began relying heavily upon Susan Talley Weiss as a source.) With all that, however, he was still more scholarly and readable than the average Poe biographer, and he often came up with interesting observations and conclusions. The above passage is one of them.

Of course, so far as Poe's posthumous reputation goes, I think the man himself said it best, in a well-known quote from "Marginalia," published in the "Southern Literary Messenger" in June 1849:

"I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to fancy what would be the fate of any individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course, he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind--that he would be considered a madman, is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.

In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit--truly feeling what all merely profess--must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction--its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in its last degree:--and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race, is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."

I believe that's the closest anyone has ever gotten to writing an honest account of Poe's life.

Rating Poe Biography: The Good, the Bad, and the Simply Insane (Part Two)

The Bad:

(A note: Essentially, this category consists of practically every book ever published about Poe other than the ones mentioned in my previous post. However, these works listed below are what I consider to be the most important and influential disasters.)

*Mary E. Phillips, "Edgar Allan Poe, the Man." I long for the day when someone translates this book into English.



*Hervey Allen, "Israfel." Of all the major Poe biographies, this is perhaps the one I find most offensive. Allen was, by profession, a writer of trashy fiction (and, it was claimed, plagiarized trashy fiction, to boot,) and it shows. His lengthy Poe biography is often inaccurate, and highly speculative. That itself is hardly unusual in books about Poe. However, what makes his book particularly notable among the Poe Hall of Shame is the coarse, almost prurient tone that is diffused throughout--a tone that has proved to be quite influential, as it has been adopted by all the worst Poe-related biographers and novelists since. In that sense, I suppose you could say that Allen was a pioneer in his way. Of course, you could say the same about Typhoid Mary.

*Kenneth Silverman, "Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance." The book's insufferably pompous title sets the tone for the entire work. Considering Silverman makes no secret of his disdain for Poe--as both a writer and a man--one wonders what drew him to such a project. "Remembrance" has many factual errors that appear to be due to hasty and sloppy research and writing (the book often reads like a failing grad student's first draft,) and his only interest in Poe's works seems to be in making endless juvenile pop-psychology attempts to view them as some mirror of what he imagines to have been Poe's warped psyche. Silverman also misses no opportunity to interpret every event in Poe's life in a way that paints him in the worst possible light--even when the circumstances clearly suggest otherwise. Silverman is also extremely inconsistent and vague in his descriptions and interpretations of Poe's personal life--his relationship with Virginia in particular. He gives the overall impression that he simply had not bothered to think out or had not been able to decide who or what Poe was, or what had even happened in the more controversial events of his life. This often causes him to take the easy way out by dismissing this or that situation by simply calling it, "murky," while simultaneously setting himself up as a censorious analyst of it all. (Which, again, brings up the question why this book was even written.) The fact that this goofy tripe is considered the standard modern biography of Poe quite frankly appalls the hell out of me.

*Thomas O.Mabbott never wrote a biography of Poe, but he published numerous magazine artcles about the poet, and edited the best-known modern editions of Poe's works, with extensive notes and annotations. Unfortunately, he spread a great deal of myths, errors, and flat-out libels about Edgar and Virginia Poe in the process. He seemed completely unable to judge historical evidence, accepting--and thus giving credibility to--a frightening amount of sheer hogwash. For reasons that completely elude me, Mabbott is considered something of a "dean" among Poe specialists, with his opinions having been given a quite unjustified air of authority. This was a man who considered Susan Talley Weiss to have been a most trustworthy source. Enough said. Mabbott also seemed to have odd problems with simple reading comprehension. I have found a number of instances where his descriptions of what someone said or wrote in no way matched the actual quotes or writings. Very strange stuff.

*George Woodberry, "The Life of Edgar Allan Poe" Woodberry evidently wrote his Poe biography on commission. He was a peculiar choice for the job, as his tastes and sympathies were all with the New England Transcendentalists who were particularly anathema to Poe. (Not to mention the fact that he was a friend of Rufus Griswold's son William.) Like Silverman, Woodberry made no bones about his instinctive antipathy to both Poe's writings and personality. The 1885 edition of his biography is reasonably scholarly and not without interest, but by the time he released a heavily revised edition in 1909, he had fallen under the baleful influence of the ubiquitous Susan Talley Weiss, and the book suffered accordingly. If you wish to study Woodberry, stick to the earlier edition.

*Peter Ackroyd, "Poe: A Life Cut Short." Another publisher-commissioned hack job. A mere summary of recent Poe books--mostly Silverman's--and this summarizing is not even done well. This book is most notable for featuring one of the worst metaphors I've seen in some time--where he compares Poe to a "cuttlefish floundering in its own ink." Methinks Ackroyd wound up floundering in his own attempts at profundity.

*William Gill, "The Life of Edgar Allan Poe." Gill was among the more eccentric Poe enthusiasts. His book about Poe has some interesting original information, but on the whole is not of any importance. He is perhaps best known for his claim of having retrieved the bones of Virginia Poe when her Fordham graveyard was demolished, and keeping her remains under his bed for years. Every time I think of Gill, I'm reminded of Robert Bloch's short story "The Man Who Collected Poe."

*J.H. Whitty. Whitty never did an actual book about Poe, but he wrote extensively about the writer, and provided information to several biographers (most notably Mary Phillips and Hervey Allen.) Very unfortunately, Whitty was--in the words of an acquaintance--"a crank." He had a long history of claiming to have uncovered important Poe material that turned out to be either misrepresented by him or simply nonexistent. He also had a passion for attributing practically every poem published anonymously or under pseudonyms during the 1830s and 1840s to Poe's pen. Most of these attributions have been contested or discarded, which is a blessing for Poe's reputation, as the poems Whitty promoted were always dreadfully bad. Even Thomas Mabbott--not exactly Mr. Reliable himself--admitted that Whitty was in the habit of blending fact with fiction. How such a person could remain as any sort of Poe authority astounds me, but such is the case.

He attributed two poems that appeared anonymously in "Graham's Magazine" in 1845, "Stanzas" and "The Divine Right of Kings," as Poe's work, on the grounds that he claimed to have discovered a volume of that magazine annotated by Frances S. Osgood, where she identified EAP as the author. Whitty never produced this volume when asked to do so, but the attribution has stuck, largely because Mabbott claimed that, some years later, someone else discovered a "Graham's" volume in the Boston Public Library, where some unknown person had written Poe's name under these poems. It does not seem to have occurred to Mabbott that someone hearing of Whitty's claim--or even Whitty himself--had used his story as an excuse to label these poems as being by Poe. He also ignored the fact that these highly mediocre poems are not in the least in Poe's style, and that Poe would have had no reason not to claim them as his own, if he had truly written them.

Similarly, a Poe "memoir" Whitty wrote for an edition of his poems featured hitherto unknown and unpublished reminiscences Whitty claimed were written by Poe's friend Frederick W. Thomas. Whitty never produced the actual manuscript of these "reminiscences," or even an account of how these papers came into his hands. Nevertheless, this completely unauthenticated information has become part of standard Poe biography. There are many other examples of Whitty's mendacious influence. Like Mrs. Weiss, he deserves a special infamy for his particularly large amounts of untrustworthy or outright false contributions to the Poe record.

* "Poe" by James M. Hutchisson

All you need to know about this derivative, astonishingly inaccurate, and rather pitiful biography comes near the end of the book. Hutchisson briefly describes the later life of Sarah Elmira Shelton, adding the statement that "After expressing her anguish over Poe's death in the October letter to Muddy, Poe's last love, Elmira Royster Shelton, entered into a discreet silence on all
matters about the author for twenty-six years. She broke it only in 1875, when she granted an interview to Edward V. Valentine, of Richmond, who tape-recorded her statements. After Elmira's death on 11 February 1888, the recording was placed in the Valentine Museum in Richmond, where it remains today."

Tape-recordings. In 1875. Brilliant, Mr. Hutchisson. Simply brilliant.

Coming next: The worst of the worst!