The Strange Life and Death of the "Broadway Journal" (Part Three)

"Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform."
-"Berenice"

Whatever the true story may have been, the Briggs/Bisco deadlock was ended--and the downfall of Edgar Poe well and truly set in motion--when Briggs presumably left the "Journal." He allowed his erstwhile partner to continue publication, with his own name removed from the masthead. Bisco and Poe signed an agreement on July 14 making Poe sole editor. The contract also gave him half the profits and an "absolute lien" on the "Journal." However, as the original Briggs/Bisco contract had never been abrogated--and never would be--this agreement Poe entered into must have been legally worthless. It would be interesting to know when Poe discovered this--if he ever did--and if this had something to do with the "lies" Briggs claimed Poe was spreading about him at around this time. One also has to wonder what Bisco was thinking. Even if Poe did not know the terms of Bisco's first contract with Briggs, Bisco himself certainly did. Why did he even want to continue so troublesome a publication, particularly when he knew perfectly well Briggs could pull the plug on his enterprise on a whim? The only logical inference is that he and Briggs had a private mutual understanding, of which Poe knew nothing.

In any case, Briggs certainly acted as though he still had the upper hand. He huffed and puffed about taking Poe and Bisco to court in order to halt publication of the "Journal," but these threats proved to be empty. In spite of his claim that he could "displace" Poe and Bisco whenever he chose, Briggs actually seemed suspiciously pleased to allow Poe to dig himself deeper into that hole called the "Broadway Journal."

The apparent lack of capital, as anyone could have predicted, made the paper's continued existence increasingly unlikely. Because the original contract permitted Bisco to demand payments from his partners within three days, Poe, having replaced Briggs as the putative partner, made attempts to acquire personal loans for the magazine. The relatively small sums he acquired in this manner were hardly enough to keep the "Journal" afloat. His efforts saddled him with additional debts and gave his enemies the opportunity to brand him as a shameless borrower and sponger. By October, Bisco suddenly announced his decision to abandon the magazine altogether. Through what Poe dryly described as "a series of maneuvers almost incomprehensible to myself," he thus became sole editor and owner of the "Journal." He had finally achieved his long-cherished dream of owning his own magazine, but with the tragic irony that characterized his entire life, it was hopelessly dysfunctional financially and--he privately believed--contemptible artistically. Adding to his difficulties was the fact that, when Briggs left the "Journal," he was allowed to simply abandon his moiety, but when Bisco jumped ship, he insisted that Poe pay him off.

Although Poe wrote in the "Journal" that he was counting on the aid of "friends" to sustain the magazine, whatever promises he had been given for financial assistance failed to materialize. Early in December, Poe threw up his hands. He transferred half his interest in the "Journal" to Thomas H. Lane, who handled the magazine's liquidation. (Poe later characterized Lane to George Eveleth as "the person to whom I transferred the Journal and in whose hands it perished.")

The true and complete history of the "Broadway Journal" can never be known, because everyone involved, including Poe, had his own individual reasons for not wishing it to be known. However, enough evidence remains on record to show the "objects" for which the "Broadway Journal" was established. That "series of almost incomprehensible maneuvers" which left Poe as sole editor and owner was all part of a complex legal scheme which wound up entrapping and neutralizing Poe as a force in the literary world. (The fact that this crisis in his professional affairs was practically simultaneous with the equally disastrous personal crisis involving Elizabeth Ellet's letters may or may not be coincidental.) When Poe was lured into the magazine, he felt justified in believing that his name and the quality of his contributions would increase circulation and advertising, and thus put the "Journal" on firm footing. In fact, an honest endeavor would undoubtedly have proved successful. The joint venture was set up in a way that ensured failure for the last man standing, and Poe was designated as that man. The "Boston Transcript," a newspaper which had close ties to Poe's worst enemies, commemorated their common opponent's downfall with a mocking elegy referring gleefully to the empty promises from Poe's "friends" which had lured him into the whole disaster. It revealed as much of the truth as they dared:

"To trust in friends is but so so,
Especially when cash is low;
The Broadway Journal's proved 'no go'--
Friends would not pay the pen of Poe."

The Strange Life and Death of the "Broadway Journal" (Part Two)

"For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known..."
-"Shadow--A Parable"

The means of blowing away at least some of the fog that shrouds the history of the "Broadway Journal" lies in the succession of very curious business contracts made amongst its proprietors, which reveal a series of maneuvers that would have embarrassed Bernie Madoff. Key to the whole strange story is the original contract between the founders of the "Broadway Journal," Briggs and a shadowy real estate dealer named John Bisco. If one believes their story, the planned publication lacked even a minimal amount of capital, utilizing instead a Rube Goldberg-like joint-stock improvisation, where all the partners worked for little or no hard cash. The paper originally had seven partners; later, its only way of staying afloat at all was supposedly by luring in additional "shareholders" (i.e. "suckers.")

Now, if Quinn saw the difficulty of believing that Poe could imagine that the magazine could survive without initial capital, surely Bisco and Briggs knew such an enterprise was untenable, as well. The two founders of the "Journal" liked to keep their personal business affairs shrouded in mystery, but they must have had a private source of funds from somewhere, or their magazine could not have been initiated at all.

Briggs and Bisco's original agreement had them sharing equally in both ownership and profits, with Briggs taking control of the magazine's editorial department and Bisco acting as publisher. Either partner's expenditures would be paid only in cash, and were to be partly reimbursed by the other partner. It was also agreed that "Neither partner shall dispose of his interest in the publication without the consent of the other." While all this protected the pair from any serious financial loss, it also eliminated any possibility for the "Journal" to be reorganized or recapitalized. Bizarrely, Briggs and Bisco seemed to be guaranteeing the ultimate collapse of their magazine.

Briggs had to hire professional writers for a publication that was incapable of paying them. In February 1845, he offered Poe, who was then, thanks to "The Raven" at the apex of his celebrity, a "work and share" contract. In return for providing the cachet of his name, and a certain amount of written contributions, Bisco promised Poe one-third of the profits. Briggs, as Poe himself later noted somewhat resentfully, kept sole editorial control of the paper until his departure that July.

How Bisco and Briggs actually defined and divided profits was and still is their own secret. Doubtless, that is exactly what Bisco intended. However, as the original contract between Bisco and Briggs was never annulled, it seems most likely that the pair each took half of the profits, and left subsequent so-called "partners" holding the bag.

Very soon, Poe realized he was putting in an enormous amount of work on the paper with little or no reward, either financial or artistic. By June, he was hoping to quit New York City altogether, "as the sole means of recruiting my health and spirits." He hoped to find someone willing to buy his "interest" in the "Journal," but, of course, he found it impossible to sell the unsaleable. He could not leave the "Journal" without buying out his partners, which was a practical impossibility. He was, in a word, trapped.

By this time, Briggs also claimed he wanted to be free of the essentially unworkable foundations of the "Journal." He told Lowell that without any capital on hand, his only option was to jettison both Poe and Bisco and start fresh with a different partner to act as publisher/financial angel. He claimed that a publisher and book dealer named J. Smith Homans had agreed to buy out Bisco and, for the first time, bring conventional capital to the increasingly shaky publication. Poe, whose personal relations with Briggs had by then hopelessly deteriorated, would be cast aside. Bisco, however, according to Briggs, derailed his plan (on the advice of unnamed "evil advisers,") by insisting on selling his share of the "Journal" for more than was called for in their original agreement.

This claim of Briggs', like practically everything he said about the "Journal," makes little sense. If the magazine was as badly off as he said, why wouldn't Bisco be eager to unload his worthless share of it for whatever he could get? And why would a successful, and presumably savvy, businessman like Homans want to invest his money in a failing literary weekly, particularly if Briggs truly aimed to rid it of Poe, the magazine's only real asset?

In September of that year, William Fairman, a traveling representative for the "Journal," wrote Bisco that "Mr. Poe has a great many friends and is held in the highest estimation both by those who know him as a man and as a writer. My only hopes is [sic] among his friends." Fairman also informed Bisco of the strange distribution problems plaguing the "Journal"--in many cities it either came too late or never came at all. Fairman thought the "Journal's" prospects were good, thanks to Poe, but that Bisco's method of individually canvassing for subscribers was outdated. "I do not think any person can make it for his interest to travel and solicit subscribers." Now, the person responsible for the "Journal's" distribution and subscription methods was Bisco himself, and he apparently ignored Fairman's warnings--which only gave advice that Bisco, who had acted as publisher for other periodicals, should have already known. It gives the impression that Bisco was strangely unconcerned with making the "Journal" a success.

In Part Three: The man that was used up.


(Image: NYPL Digital Gallery)