Lawyers, Gold-Bugs, and Money (Part Two)

“No doubt you will think me fanciful--but I had already established a kind of connexion.”
-“The Gold-Bug”

In 1876, the magazine "Notes & Queries" carried a letter from a regular contributor known only as “Uneda,” claiming Francis H. Duffee had proven that Poe ("a most unprincipled man") plagiarized from George Ann Sherburne’s “Imogine.”

“Uneda’s” accusations caught the attention of John H. Ingram, an ardent Poe defender who was then engaged in researching his biography of the poet. Ingram sent a reply challenging the pseudonymous writer's statement. "Uneda" retorted he had good reason for the "very decided opinion that I entertain upon Poe's moral character." (He added "I never heard any one in this country express any other opinion than that which I entertain respecting the character of Poe"--an assertion absurd enough to disqualify anything he had to say on the topic.) He quoted a letter from Duffee giving his (demonstrably and remarkably inaccurate) side of the story: "I did accuse Edgar A. Poe of plagiarism, a charge which was never disproved...Miss Sherburne...informed me, in the first place, of the plagiarism, and I exposed Poe in an article in one of our daily papers, for which he commenced a libel suit." Duffee claimed that after Poe received a letter from him, the author "soon dismissed the matter, for very good reasons."

Ingram responded by sending "Notes & Queries" what he described as a "shutter up" letter. He pointed out a long list of people who had expressed an admiring view of Poe's character, and asked “Uneda” “in justice to the dead, and for the satisfaction of the living, to state how, when, and where this charge of literary theft was proved against Edgar A. Poe. Mr. Duffee's letter gives no particulars as to the necessary data.”

“Uneda” took over a year to respond. He commented sniffily that Ingram’s query should have been addressed to Duffee, "and ought to have been answered by him." However, as that gentleman failed to respond, “Uneda” “after much trouble and a considerable expenditure of time” found a copy of “Imogine,” a story he had never before read. In a rather startling about-face, “Uneda” stated matter-of-factly, “It is a very extraordinary work for a girl of thirteen to produce, but it does not bear the slightest resemblance to Poe's story of the Gold Bug, either in its incidents or its style. I cannot imagine why my friend Mr. Duffee was made the victim of so silly a hoax.”

Yes, “Uneda” repeated in print long-discredited, long-forgotten accusations that Poe was a plagiarist without ever bothering to discover for himself whether or not the charges had merit. And he admitted it without even a shadow of visible embarrassment. Truly, if Dr. Griswold had been unable to take on the job as Poe’s official biographer, “Uneda” would have made a worthy substitute. (“Uneda” also sent Ingram a private letter accusing Poe of what the biographer described as “all kinds of filthy crimes,” but this letter, perhaps fortunately, is not extant and its exact contents unknown.)

Ingram did not record the identity of this adversary who bore such a stubborn, irrational grudge against Poe, but we now know he was William Duane, Jr. Duane, whom a contemporary once described as “a strange, solitary, unsociable man,” was of distinguished ancestry (his father had been Secretary of the Treasury, and his mother boasted Benjamin Franklin as a grandfather.) However, in Poe biography he is known solely for figuring in another odd, and seemingly embarrassingly trivial scandal. In 1844, Poe, with Henry B. Hirst acting as self-appointed go-between, borrowed a volume of the “Southern Literary Messenger” from Duane. When Poe was engaged in moving from Philadelphia to New York City in April of that year, Mrs. Clemm was given the task of returning the book. According to her, she left it in Hirst’s office, with one of his brothers.

Duane and Hirst, however, insisted otherwise. According to them, Mrs. Clemm--either accidentally or deliberately--sold the book, after which it wound up with a Richmond bookseller, thus forcing Duane to rebuy his own property. Angry letters were exchanged between Poe--who defended his mother-in-law’s integrity--and Duane over the incident. Duane claimed that Poe later realized his error, and suffered a good deal of mortification for his rudeness, but we have only Duane’s word for this, and the “Uneda” episode hardly inspires faith in his credibility.

As so often happened elsewhere in Poe’s history, there is in this saga a curious pattern of seemingly unrelated incidents having obscure links. In this case, the link between the Duffee scandal, the attempt to revive it by Duane, and the curiously overblown incident involving a misplaced book is Henry B. Hirst.

Duffee, it will be remembered, blamed Hirst for the dispute with Poe that nearly got Duffee sued. Hirst was also central in the later problems between Poe and Duane. According to Poe, Hirst “seemed to make a point” of personally obtaining the desired “Messenger” volume from Duane. (He later put it even more strongly, describing Hirst as the person “who insisted upon forcing” the book on him.) If we believe Mrs. Clemm’s story--and, unlike virtually all of Poe’s biographers, I see nothing that disproves it--the book was returned to Hirst, after which it mysteriously wound up in the hands of an out-of-town book dealer. As Duane and Poe apparently had no personal acquaintance, it is probably thanks to Hirst that Duane acquired such a vehement, oddly personal loathing of the late poet.

It all suggests that Hirst (who was once described by a woman who knew him well as "the most accomplished liar of his day") made a habit of fomenting what Duffee would call “mischief” all throughout Poe’s Philadelphia years--and beyond. Over the years, Hirst made other, equally irrational, charges of plagiarism against Poe, and it seems not improbable that he spread other unflattering gossip against his soi-disant friend. (In 1867, Elizabeth Oakes Smith quoted Hirst as telling her that "the real contempt which Poe felt for his contemporaries came out at once under the influence of the wine-cup, and he ridiculed, satirized, imitated and abused them right and left without mercy." In a column published two weeks after Poe's death, Hirst stated he "never heard [Poe] express one single word of personal ill-feeling against any man...")

Thomas O. Mabbott wrote casually that Hirst eventually went “harmlessly insane.” Hirst’s so-called madness reads more like a method that was “business as usual” in the World of Poe. And it was far from harmless.

Lawyers, Gold-Bugs, and Money (Part One of Two)

“Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles…”
-“The Gold-Bug”

Poe scholars are familiar with his 1846-47 libel suit against the "New York Evening Mirror." What is less well-known is that this was not his first effort at bringing his defamers into court. Like his later suit, this earlier legal battle has a certain air of mystery around it.

The trouble involved Poe’s most popular story, “The Gold-Bug.” In June 1843, the tale won a short-story prize offered by Philadelphia’s “Dollar Newspaper,” and the yarn about codes and hidden treasure became an immediate sensation. Soon afterwards, however, a rival publication, the “Daily Forum,” printed a very curious attack on Poe’s work. Under the headline “The ‘Gold Bug’—A Decided Humbug” came the following:

“We have no hesitation in stating the fact, that humbug beyond all question is at last the ‘Philosopher’s stone,’ in the discovery of which so many geniuses have heretofore been bewildered. In this opinion we are more fully confirmed by the recent literary production entitled the ‘Gold Bug,’ which has been paraded in flourishing capitals by the publishers of the ‘Dollar Magazine,’ [sic] and pronounced by them as the most entertaining and superbly written ‘prize tale’ of modern times! That ‘one hundred dollars’ was paid for this signal abortion we believe to be an arrant falsehood, and in this sentiment we are not singular, for several of our friends who have read the portion which has already appeared, pronounce upon it the verdict of unmitigated trash! We are inclined to think that ten or fifteen dollars satisfied ‘the talented Edgar A. Poe, Esq.’ for this excruciating effort in the tale line.”

“In the publication of this unique affair, the proprietors of the ‘Dollar Magazine’ know how to give the public ‘two bites of a cherry’; but they will find it a very difficult task to point out hereafter even ‘the man in a claret coat’ who has read the second part of the ‘Gold Bug:’ The writer threw away three cents in the purchase of the commencement of the tale, but will be exceedingly careful in not getting blistered by the ensuing dose of cantharides, which is usually made out of Gold Bugs. The public are little aware of the humbug heretofore practised in this ‘prize tale’ business. We are indebted to a friend who obtained several of these kind [sic] of prizes, for the method in which it is accomplished. It is to this effect: the publisher announces with a grand flourish the literary tournament, and after having pranced about a while on his pegasus, induces a number of really meritorious writers to enter the lists and compete for the nominal prize, which has all the appearance at first of a 'Gold Bug,' but is certain to eventuate in a humbug! The period at length arrives for the distribution, when sure enough some 'youth unknown to fame' is knighted and bears off the palm of victory, merely 'to save expense' and because his name is well known to the reading community as 'a talented man.' This is not an overwrought picture, for let it be distinctly understood that the writer of this has never had 'a kink in his tale,' and consequently can feel no jealousy, but merely vents his indignation in relation to as great a literary humbug as was ever placed before the reading community. 'Having cast the first stone,' mark our prediction if this 'Gold Bug' is not generally pronounced unworthy of existence in literature."

This anonymous and decidedly overheated “communication” was the work of Francis H. Duffee, an unimportant, if noisy, local stockbroker, dramatist and journalist. Poe, never one to ignore slights on his personal dignity, did not waste any time fighting back. Two days later, another Philadelphia paper, “Spirit of the Times,” reported that Poe had filed an action for damages against his attacker. Two days after this notice appeared, the same paper published a letter to the editor from Duffee, nervously trying to walk back his charges, saying that his communication had been “stated merely as an opinion, the contradiction of which publicly given by the publishers, sets the matter at rest, and merely goes to show that I, in my criticism, have committed an error.”

The matter might have ended there, if the paper's editor John Du Solle had not made the mistake of trying to get cute. As an addendum to Duffee’s apology, Du Solle puckishly suggested that “The Gold-Bug” plagiarized “Imogine, or the Pirate’s Treasure,” an obscure 1839 tale written by a thirteen-year-old girl named George Ann Sherburne.

Historians believe Du Solle was merely exercising his idea of wit, but the allegation was repeated, as a serious charge, in the “New York Herald.”

Meanwhile, the other Philadelphia newspapers, always in search of a good fight, did their best to fan the flames. Poe’s friend George Lippard wrote in the “Citizen Soldier” that “The Gold-Bug” was “one of the best stories Poe ever wrote” and dismissed Duffee’s attempts to tarnish it as “a humbug--a transparent, gauze-lace, cobweb-tissue humbug.” Lippard freely conceded that “name and not merit” commonly prevail among judges and other “secret critics.” “In such a system, the man of notoriety has all the chances--the man of genius none.” However, in Poe’s case, there could be no question that “the story is worth the ‘Prize money,’ ten times told.”

The “Public Ledger” also weighed in on Duffee’s allegations, stating that “Mr. P will, of course, allow the gentleman every opportunity he may desire to substantiate his charges, or any portion of them, and as he will necessarily fail in every particular to do so, or to show the least shadow or particle of the appearance of anything to justify the charges he has made, he will hold himself ready to bear the consequences of an act which must have been prompted solely and entirely by his own mere suspicions.” Duffee’s apology, they snorted, was “nothing more than an exposure of his own attempted injustice to the parties concerned.” For good measure, the “Ledger” sharply criticized the “Daily Forum” for publishing Duffee’s “foul slander” in the first place.

The “Forum” publishers defended themselves by washing their hands of Duffee. They carried an editorial stating, “the character of the gentlemen composing the committee to award the premiums, precluded the possibility of any collusion between the editors of the Dollar Weekly and Mr. Poe, and as we were of this opinion, we rejected one communication from the same source, and even cut out sentences from the published one. The correspondent spoke with certainty, and having a responsible name, we felt it a duty to lend our colemns [sic] to expose what was characterized as a humbug. Upon the first application made to us, we gave the name of our correspondent.”

This same issue of the paper carried another letter from Duffee, which was even more peevish and rambling than his last. He claimed that he had yet to receive notice that he was being sued. “If, however, to receive a polite note from a highly talented and amiable member of the bar--if to be waited upon by Mr. Edgar A. Poe, accompanied by two gentlemen with big sticks--if to meet them boldly and candidly acknowledge myself the author of the critique--if to be again waited on by the said Poe, accompanied by another gentleman with a big stick, and presented with a paper for me to sign calculated to make me acknowledge myself a liar and a scoundrel in the face of the public--if this is the commencement of legal proceedings, it is a way so outre, so 'grotesque and arabesque;’ that it could only emanate from the clique, and not from the proper tribunal, the law!” If Poe was so “excrutiating [sic] sensitive,” Duffee sputtered, why has he ignored innuendoes aimed at him by others? Poe was a man famed for his “severe and scorching criticisms” which have “driven from the field of poetry the timid and aspiring son of genius.” He had never “shown mercy to others,” so what right had he to suddenly be so “'demm’d' sensitive?” He closed by repeating as fact Du Solle’s fantasy about Poe plagiarizing from the youthful Miss Sherburne.

Du Solle soon realized his little “joke” had gone too far. Haunted, no doubt, by visions of Poe pursuing him with a pack of hungry lawyers, he quickly published a retraction, stating that the "exceedingly well written and ingenious" “Gold-Bug” bore "no further resemblance to Miss Sherburne’s tale, than it must necessarily bear from the fact of touching upon the same general grounds. Mr. Poe well deserved the prize of $100.”

The “Ledger,” meanwhile, rubbed a little salt into the self-inflicted wounds of their rivals by commenting that the “New York Herald” plagiarized a recent editorial from “Blackwood’s Magazine.” “This same paper charged Mr. Poe with having committed plagiarism in writing the prize story for the Dollar Newspaper, the Gold-Bug, by stealing the plot from a tale by Miss Sherbourne [sic]. Even this idea of the Herald was stolen from another paper, which has since retracted the charge in a handsome manner; but the Herald holds on to the stolen idea as if it was its own and honestly come by, even after the owner himself has repudiated it as unjust to Mr. Poe. For shame!”

The “Dollar Newspaper” also returned to the fray, giving an analysis of the Poe and Sherburne stories, and concluding there were no similarities between the two works other than “the finding of money--a subject which has been handled not only by Miss Sherburne, but by some fifty, if not by some five hundred talewriters.” They also reprinted Du Solle’s “magnanimously made” retraction. The "Saturday Museum" shrugged that the "supposed resemblance" was "altogether imaginary." Similarly, the "Daily Forum" "reperused" the stories in question, and could assure readers,"They are no more alike than the Gold Bug is like the 'Man that was used up.'" (Just to add to the general fun, the “Forum” also gleefully announced that Duffee was bringing a libel suit against the “Public Ledger” “for maliciously dragging his business relations before the public and throwing out intimations that he was connected with fraudulent institutions.”)

Meanwhile, the publisher of George Ann Sherburne's "Tales," which featured "Imogine," wasted no time rushing the small volume back into print, complete with notices inviting all who "like the Gold Bug" to "judge of the resemblance between the two." It's truly an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

By the end of July, Poe and Duffee had a personal meeting where they resolved their differences. Duffee evidently claimed his original column had merely been “misconstrued.” He repudiated any suggestion of collusion between Poe and the prize committee. In return, Poe dropped his suit. Duffee afterwards published a cryptic, vengeful column in the “New York Cynosure.” He made bitter reference to a certain "Petty-fogger" who "has been at the bottom of all the mischief between the belligerents in the matter of the 'Gold Bug.'" The "creature" whom Duffee accused of engineering his “mischief” was evidently a mutual acquaintance, the poet Henry B. Hirst. (Hirst, who was also a lawyer, probably represented Poe in his aborted legal action against Duffee.)

This ended the “Gold-Bug” controversy, at least during Poe’s lifetime. However, it had a brief, strange revival nearly thirty years after his death, in the magazine “Notes & Queries.” I shall relate that episode--and explore its connection to another Poe scandal--in my next post.

In Defense of Maria Clemm (Part Two of Three)

2. The next indictment against Mrs. Clemm centers around The Purloined Book. From what we know of this strange and poorly-defined story, when the Poes were living in Philadelphia early in 1844, Poe mentioned to his friend Henry B. Hirst that, for reference purposes, he needed a certain volume of the "Southern Literary Messenger." Hirst said that a friend of his named William Duane had a copy of the book in question. According to Poe, he wanted to ask Duane himself for a loan of the book, but Hirst, for some mysterious reason, insisted on acting as go-between in the transaction. When the Poe family moved to New York City in April of 1844, Edgar and Virginia went on ahead to find lodgings for the three of them, leaving Mrs. Clemm in Philadelphia to close up their house and settle any unfinished business. Among this business was the task of returning the "Messenger" volume to Hirst. The true subsequent chain of events is something we will never know, but the upshot was that Duane claimed the book was never returned to him. Mrs. Clemm evidently insisted that she had gone to Hirst's office with the volume, but as he was not in at the time, she left it with someone else there. Duane said he eventually tracked it to a bookseller in Richmond--the inference being that Mrs. Clemm, instead of returning the book, had merely sold it. Also according to Duane--we have remarkably little in this story directly from Edgar or his mother-in-law--Poe later discovered Mrs. Clemm's error, and was thoroughly ashamed of having sent Duane a stinging letter defending her veracity. (We have no other evidence Poe truly expressed such remorse.)

It is remarkable how this petty little story has somehow, in Poe's biography, been magnified to the status of scandal, if not outright felony. Even though everyone who writes about the incident assumes that Mrs. Clemm was lying about returning the book, and that she sold it either through carelessness or cupidity, I see no reason for that assumption. For all we know, she did indeed deposit the book in Hirst's office, and that it wound up in this bookstore though some sort of shenanigans there. She would hardly have been stupid enough to knowingly sell a book she knew belonged to someone else, (particularly since it had Duane's name on it,) and if she disposed of it through an innocent accident, she had no reason not to say so. In any case, the entire brouhaha revolves around a book that was worth a grand total of five dollars. The fact that nearly everyone from that time to this has behaved as though the theft of the Crown Jewels was involved is frankly baffling, and suggests either that there was some sort of "hidden history" to the whole affair of which we know nothing, or that Poe's antagonists have always been simply desperate to use any weapon they can to send him and his family into disrepute. (According to biographer Arthur H. Quinn, wildly exaggerated versions of this dispute were used for years afterward to sully Poe's reputation. This suggests that there was indeed some sort of strange orchestration against him in the matter. One would very much like to know why Hirst insisted in the first place on playing the middleman in this seemingly trivial loan.)

3. The next black mark on Mrs. Clemm's record comes from her association with a wealthy lawyer named Sylvanus Lewis and his wife, an untalented but alarmingly ambitious poetess named Sarah Anna, who eventually opted to be known as the more glamorous "Stella." Mrs. Lewis--a lady who comes off as a cross between Tallulah Bankhead and a slow-witted but particularly dangerous piranha--made the acquaintance of (or, to be more precise, latched her claws into) Poe by late 1846/early 1847, the nightmare period right before and immediately following Virginia's death. Marie Louise Shew Houghton and her friend Mary Gove Nichols both claimed that Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Clemm had a blatant "quid pro quo" deal where the Lewises would give the Poes money in exchange for Edgar rewriting Mrs. Lewis' output in order to (as John H. Ingram put it) "transform the lady's commonplace verses into some semblance of poetry," and writing glowing reviews of her work for the magazines. (Mrs. Lewis also had the dubious honor of inspiring Poe's worst poem, "An Enigma.")Assuming such a "deal" took place, it is odd that they allowed outsiders like Houghton and Nichols to be aware of it. Surely, this mutually embarrassing arrangement would be something all parties involved would want kept extremely private. Poe, these two tattling busybodies stated, loathed Mrs. Lewis (a sentiment, it must be said, shared by absolutely everyone who knew her,) but he felt he had no choice but to become her cat's paw.

This is a distressing story indeed, but not half as distressing as the air of smug moral superiority adopted by nearly every biographer who mentions it. If Mrs. Clemm did accept such a deal, it was only out of sheer desperation. Her daughter was dying, her son ill, hounded by enemies, and on the verge of a breakdown, all of which made it impossible for him to consistently earn even a bare living. In that pre-welfare, pre-unemployment benefits era, homelessness and starvation were not outlandish prospects for the family. Mrs. Clemm was the only thing keeping the trio afloat during this period, and she had to make full use of the very, very few options for survival she had. Needs must, when the devil drives. If, thanks to her and Mrs. Lewis, Poe was compelled to act as "Stella's" paid pet critic, it was certainly unfortunate, but hardly illegal, or even, considering the literary mores of the time, unusual. The self-righteous condemnations of Poe and Mrs. Clemm for acquiescing in this pitiful little charade also ignore the fact that, if he had been so unwilling to temporarily compromise literary principles for the sake of keeping loved ones from dire want, that would have made him a monster.

In her 1863 "Reminiscences of Poe," Mary Gove Nichols related an alleged conversation with Poe in late 1846 that touched upon his distasteful relations with the Lewises. Nichols' stories about Poe are decidedly untrustworthy--she was one of the multitude that Ingram classified as genus imaginative--but whether Poe actually uttered these words or not, they serve as an unanswerable defense of his painful position.

In response to Nichols' question whether reviewers "sell their literary conscience," she has Poe reply:

"'A literary critic must be loth to violate his taste, his sense of the fit and the beautiful. To sin against these, and praise an unworthy author, is to him an unpardonable sin. But if he were placed on the rack, or if one he loved better than his own life were writhing there, I can conceive of his forging a note against the Bank of Fame, in favour of some would-be poetess, who is able and willing to buy his poems and opinions.'"

"He turned almost fiercely upon me, his fine eyes piercing me, 'Would you blame a man for not allowing his sick wife to starve?' said he."



In Part Three: The Griswold Connection

Linking Fancy Unto Fancy: More "Raven" Lore

"He's a walking contradiction
Partly truth and partly fiction"
-Kris Kristofferson, "The Pilgrim"

I have, as I earlier threatened I might do, compiled a list of at least the most notable instances of stories detailing "How Poe wrote 'The Raven,'" or "How I helped Poe write 'The Raven.'" (The latter has a sub-category of "How Poe stole 'The Raven' from me.) If nothing else, it all serves as yet another cautionary tale warning of the dangers of taking Poe reminiscences (even the first-hand ones) too trustfully. I probably missed a few "Raven" legends while putting this roster together, but if there are any stories weirder than these out there, I'm not sure I even want to be reminded about them.Here is how and when Poe's most famous poem was written:

1.Under a New York streetlight sometime in the winter of 1844 (so Cornelius Mathews' niece told us in an earlier post.)

2. In the summer of 1842 or 1843, at the Barhyte estate in Saratoga Springs. (Again, see this earlier post.)

3. In the winter of 1843 in Philadelphia, as a desperate attempt to put food on the table of his starving wife and mother-in-law, an attempt that ended in failure, as no one he approached, including George R. Graham and Louis Godey, wanted anything to do with the poem. (This, according to the second or third-hand accounts related by Hyman Rosenbach, who was born nine years after Poe died. Rosenbach was one of those enterprising journalists with a nose for sniffing out colorful but extremely dubious Poe stories.)

4. It was written hurriedly during the course of one night while Poe was living in Fordham, in a frantic effort to obtain medical care and other necessities for Virginia. (So says Francis Gerry Fairfield in a particularly bizarre 1875 article, "A Mad Man of Letters." Of course, "The Raven" was first published in January of 1845, and Poe did not move to Fordham until the spring of 1846, but Fairfield was cheerfully untroubled by that pesky little detail.)

5. It was written piecemeal in New York City in the summer of 1844, with the aid of his fellow boozers at "Sandy Welsh's cellar on Ann Street." Thus, so we are told, "'The Raven' was a kind of joint-stock affair in which many minds held small shares of intellectual capital." (This was also related by Fairfield, who said he had it from a Col. Du Solle, who supposedly heard the story from Maria Clemm. Fairfield, however, insisted that #4 above was the "true" account, and that Poe, who was, according to Fairfield, a victim of "cerebral epilepsy," which turned him into a "habitual liar," simply invented the tale related by Du Solle.)

6. It was written in Richmond, in the office of "Southern Literary Messenger" editor John R. Thompson. As Thompson only took over on the "Messenger" in 1847, further comment is unnecessary. (This story comes to us from James K. Galt, John Allan's great-nephew.)

7. It was written while the Poes were boarders at the Brennan Farm outside New York City, sometime in the latter half of 1844. (This, incidentally, is the most credible account we have about the poem's creation.)

8. It was composed on an unspecified date at a Merion, Pennsylvania inn, as commemoration of Poe's failed love affair with a local girl. (This story appears to be the work of a Pennsylvania blowhard named Henry Shoemaker, who, during the early 1900s, gulled many an overzealous Poe devotee with a series of completely fabricated stories incorporating the poet into local history.)

9. It was composed over a period of ten years. (Susan Archer Talley Weiss claimed Poe confided this to her.)

10. And, of course, there is Poe's own version of how "The Raven" came to be written, "The Philosophy of Composition." Most Poe historians dismiss his account as a mere hoax, and certainly Poe was indulging himself in some gleeful nose-tweaking in this essay, but I would not be at all surprised if there wasn't a good deal of truth in his story. In any case, he must have greatly enjoyed how his account disconcerted the romantics. As he commented mockingly: "Most writers--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition--and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peek behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a word, at the wheels and pinions--the tackle for scene-shifting--the step-ladders, and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio."

Certainly, that sounds more plausible than these giddy tales of a raven-haunted Poe deliriously scribbling lines in the rain under a streetlight, or enlisting his drinking buddies or a small boy in Saratoga to help him haphazardly cobble the poem together.But wait, there's more. Not content with being an eyewitness to literary history, an equally large flock of buzzards sought even greater glory by presenting to the world their accounts of how that untalented loser Poe just couldn't have written "The Raven" without them. (And, of course, if you consider all the people who later claimed to have been among "the very first" to hear Poe recite the poem, or to read it before its publication, you'd have to assume he unveiled it before a crowd the size of Australia.) My favorite listing in this category comes, of course, from the immortal Susan Talley Weiss, who, in her "Home Life of Poe," described the poet coming to her in the summer of 1849, begging her help in rewriting the poem, as he "regretted" having ever published it in such an imperfect form. (She added that she "did not feel particularly flattered by his proposal, knowing that since his coming to Richmond he had made a similar request to at least two other persons.") Weiss wrote that Poe had asked her to recite the poem, while he took notes on the many and glaring flaws they noted in the work. (This collaboration would have been an interesting sight, considering Weiss was completely deaf since childhood and unable to lip-read. As usual when writing about Poe, the lady coyly omitted that bit of information.) She told her readers that, alas, they were interrupted in their work by "the tumultuous entrance of my little dog, Pink, in hot pursuit of the family cat," and so the world was cruelly deprived of the new, improved Poe/Weiss "Raven."For sheer unmitigated shamelessness, it is always hard to trump Mrs. Weiss when she was in top form, but many have tried. Probably the earliest entrant in the "Poe Plagiarized Me" sweepstakes was that strange and creepy being, Thomas Holley Chivers. After Poe was safely dead, Chivers worked off what seems to have been a long-festering jealousy and resentment of his "friend" by making a series of increasingly insane claims that Poe had stolen virtually his entire body of poetic work from Chivers. In 1850, he kicked off this campaign by publishing a pronouncement that "The Raven" was stolen from his own "To Allegra Florence in Heaven:"

"As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended, but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever--
So shall this dark heart of mine!
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
And shall never more cease aching
For the sleep which has no waking--
For the sleep which now is thine!"

Not to be outdone, yet another crushed egg, a Philadelphia friend of Poe's named Henry B. Hirst, became obsessed in his later years with the notion that he had actually written Poe's masterwork. His proof for this claim was evidently the fact that he had, at one point, owned a pet raven. Hirst went "harmlessly insane" in the latter part of his life, but it is difficult to say if this fantasy was a symptom of his madness or a cause. (As a side note, while Poe was still alive, Hirst aroused his wrath with claims that "Ulalume" was plagiarized from Hirst's "Endymion." Poe responded--in classic Poe fashion--by writing that on the contrary, it was Hirst who stole from him. "Now my objection, in this case, is not to the larceny per se. I have always told Mr. Hirst that, provided he stole my poetry in a reputable manner, he might steal just as much of it as he thought proper--and, so far, he has behaved very well, in largely availing himself of the privilege. But what I do object to, is the being robbed in bad grammar. It is not that Mr. Hirst did this thing--but that he has went and done did it." )

In 1870, the "New Orleans Times" published a "confession" from Poe himself, admitting that he had received "The Raven" from an unknown poet, one Samuel Fenwick, who died soon afterwards. Subsequently, said Poe, he became so intoxicated he no longer knew what he did, and while in that state signed his own name to the poem and sent it to be published. Although the letter was immediately revealed to be a hoax, the story continued to be repeated as fact for quite some time afterwards--a tribute to the power of the printed word, or the world's eagerness to denigrate Poe by any means necessary, or both.

In 1901, John A. Joyce published the claim that Poe stole "The Raven" wholesale from Leo Penzoni's "The Parrot," which he claimed had been published in the "Milan Art Journal" in 1809. (Modern-day researchers have been unable to find any clue that either Penzoni or the magazine in question ever existed.) In the years following Poe's death, claims were also made that "The Raven" was merely a translation of unspecified Chinese or Persian poems.Perhaps the apex to all this delirious nonsense was reached by one C.D. Gardette, who in 1859 published a poem entitled "The Fire Fiend," which he claimed Poe had written as an "incomplete" predecessor to "The Raven." Even after Gardette admitted in print that he had intended nothing more than a playful Poe-like hoax, "The Fire Fiend" continued to be described as Poe's genuine handiwork at least as late as the early 1900s. (Poe biographer William Gill even claimed to have seen the manuscript of the poem in Poe's handwriting!) One can best demonstrate the truly horrifying readiness of so many Poe devotees to believe virtually anything told about him by reciting these lines from Gardette's all-too-successful prank:

"Speechless; struck with stony silence; frozen to the floor I stood,
Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood--Till
I felt my life-blood oozing, oozing from those lambent lips:--Till
the Demon seemed to name me;--then a wondrous calm
o'ercame me,
And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death-damp stiff and gluey,
And I fell back on my pillow in apparent soul-eclipse!"

When the ghost of Rufus W. Griswold, in whatever strange netherworld he was by then inhabiting, heard that Poe was actually being blamed for these lines, he must have just laughed his head off.