Poe and Jane Locke

"[M]y extremely delicate health...and all too sensitive heart, with an irrepressible--shall I call it Genius?--struggling for recognition, if nothing more..."
-Jane E. Locke, 1850

Of all the many miscreants who helped make Poe’s last few years so painful, arguably the strangest of the lot was an otherwise nondescript Massachusetts housewife and poet named Jane Ermina Locke, whose latent talent for mayhem burst into full flower when she met Poe.

Late in 1846 reports of Poe’s distressing poverty and illness were widely circulated in the newspapers. The list of his calamities only increased when these stories brought him to the attention of 41-year-old Mrs. Locke. She was inspired to publish a poem, “An Invocation for Suffering Genius,” (“Oh Charity, where hast thou fled with heavenly lustered wing/While on her low and sorrowing bed genius lies suffering?”) and in February 1847, several weeks after the death of Poe's wife Virginia, she sent him a warm expression of condolence. All of her attentions were likely inspired by the hope of utilizing him to further her own literary career, which, to her own great frustration, had failed to convince the world of her "Genius."

A correspondence was established between them, but as only three letters of his and one of hers survive, it is hard to gauge its exact nature. It is assumed that Poe saw this woman--of whom he knew nothing--as a potential second wife, but his extant letters are so stilted and artificial, it is hard to know for certain what he thought of her. There is no evidence of genuine warmth in his attitude, but he was always desperately receptive to sympathy wherever it could be found--sympathy he particularly needed after Virginia’s death--so it would not be unreasonable if in his loneliness he hoped that this stranger who was so open in her admiration for him might prove to be something more than a pen-pal.

For some months, however, the only tangible result of their epistolary acquaintance was another poem she addressed to Poe, “The True Poet,” which appeared in the June 1, 1848 “New York Morning Post.” She breathlessly described him as “the poet of her heart.”

There is some uncertainty about their first personal meeting. In the 1870s, both Sarah Helen Whitman and Annie Richmond told John H. Ingram that in the spring of 1848, Mrs. Locke visited Fordham in order to invite Poe to deliver a lecture at her residence of Lowell, Massachusetts. Presumably, he then learned that his admirer was not, as he may have imagined, well-to-do and unattached, but an impecunious, very married woman with numerous children. However, a contemporary--so presumably more reliable--letter written by Annie’s brother A.B. Heywood stated that when Poe came to Lowell in July, encountering the ineligible and undesirable Mrs. Locke for the first time was a disconcerting experience for the poet.

In any case, Poe’s Lowell lecture marked the beginning of the end of his nascent friendship with Mrs. Locke. While staying at her home, he met her friend and neighbor Mrs. Richmond, and, it was said, immediately transferred his affections to her. According to Sarah Helen Whitman, during this visit “the two ladies apparently vied with each other for Poe’s attention.” As a result, “A quarrel …had sprung up between the two ladies, and before he left, open hostility was declared.”

Jane Locke did not give Poe up without a fight. In her own inimitable fashion, she wooed him by sending a simply astonishing thirty-one stanza poem in his honor entitled “Ermina’s Tale.”  ("I felt as in the presence of a god!")

"Henceforth the raven's beak my heart shall bear,
And the strange flapping of its ebon wings
Fan my sad spirit to a deep despair,
Wild as the 'nevermore' it ceaseless sings."

The full text can be found here.  Lengthy as it is, it needs to be read in its whole to get the full flavor of “Ermina’s” singular personality.

Incidentally, I now know what killed Poe. It was the aftereffects of Mrs. Locke's poetry.

This effusion failing to win Poe’s heart, Mrs. Locke bewailed the end of love’s dream with the inevitable verses. “The Broken Charm” appeared in the “Boston Notion” in February 1849:

“Not that I thought to clasp thee as mine own. —
But I had robed thee with such holiness,
And round thy form a veil of glory thrown,
I can but weep before the false impress.”

After getting this off her chest, Mrs. Locke, like Mary Stuart after the murder of Rizzio, studied revenge. It was said she turned her efforts towards destroying both him and her “rival,” Mrs. Richmond. In the 1870s, Annie Richmond gave John Ingram a copy (the original is not extant) of a letter she claimed to have received from Poe early in 1849. In this letter, he railed against the “malignant misrepresentations” of Mrs. and Mr. Locke. According to this letter, Poe had quarreled with the Lockes over their insulting attitude towards the Richmonds. After this offense to their “insane vanity and self-esteem,” the Lockes retaliated by “ransacking the world for scandal” to use against him, with the result that Mr. Richmond (who is a curious cipher in this whole domestic melodrama) came to distrust Poe.

“Annie” informed Ingram that she showed this letter of Poe’s to her husband, who gallantly responded by sending the Lockes a letter “denouncing them in the strongest terms.”

According to the copies of Poe’s letters provided by “Annie,” this distressingly childish squabble went on for some time. Whatever the exact truth of the details--“Annie” was not as reliable a source as we would wish--it is indisputable that Poe and Mrs. Locke became estranged, although her attitude towards him remained unhealthily fanatical.

The whole episode, unedifying as it was, did not lack comic relief. According to yet another of Mrs. Richmond’s copies of her correspondence, in the spring of 1849 Poe wrote with undisguised horror that Mrs. Locke informed him that she was writing a roman a clef about their relationship. According to this letter, her tell-all novel--which, if it was anything like her poetry, would have been one for the ages--was about to be published. This is the first and last we hear of the book, however, making it impossible to know if:

A: Mrs. Locke had truly written such a manuscript, only to have saner heads in the publishing world pull the plug on her project.
B: She was only using the threat of publication as a way of getting a hold over Poe.
C: Poe or Mrs. Richmond simply invented the story.

Sarah Helen Whitman also provided testimony that Mrs. Locke’s stalkerish ways had not abated. Although her own relationship with Poe was over by 1849, she later said that in the spring of that year, Mrs. Locke sent her many invitations to visit Lowell. As the woman was a complete stranger, she declined. However, “Ermina” was so persistent in her demands for a visit that she finally gave in. Mrs. Whitman later wrote that although she liked both the Lockes very much (a statement that speaks eloquently about her judgment,) she began to suspect that “Her object in seeking my acquaintance was unquestionably to prevent any renewal of my correspondence with Mr. Poe, by whom she concieved [sic] herself to have been deeply wronged.” In another letter, Mrs. Whitman expressed her belief that Mrs. Locke hoped to “pique the Raven” by exhibiting her as a houseguest, “or perhaps bring about a reconciliation with him through my means.” (How Mrs. Whitman--herself bitterly estranged from Poe--could possibly “bring about a reconciliation” is something only she and her ether bottle could answer.)

She went on to say that after this visit to Lowell, Mrs. Locke continued to bombard her with letters expressing her continuing obsession with Poe. Mrs. Whitman observed that her unwanted correspondent “was too much under the influence of wounded pride to exercise a calm judgment in the matter.” This was evidently Sarah Helen’s typically milquetoast way of saying, “crazy with a side of fries.”

Poe’s demise did nothing to end Mrs. Locke’s unfortunate fixation on him. Her first act, of course, was to publish a "Requiem to Edgar A. Poe." ("Strike the anthem, bards and brothers/Softly sweep your many lyres/Let the low and solemn requiem/Linger on their silver wires!")

According to Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Locke followed this public expression of affectionate mourning by writing her a letter “to say that [Poe] had spoken disrespectfully of me to his friends in Lowell. In reply I made no allusion whatever to the paragraph in question. In her next letter she repeated the assertion. I passed it in silence as before. She then came to Providence and passed a night with me. On her attempting to introduce the subject which she had so often touched upon in her letters I interrupted her by saying that I did not wish to listen to any charges against one whose memory was dear and sacred to me,--that if false they could not now be refuted,--if true, I could understand and forgive them. . . I fear from her own confessions, that she has sometimes used my name very unwarrantably to endorse her own opinions of Mr. Poe's character. In a letter to Mr. Willis, written about the time of Edgar's death, she ventured to do so--citing me as authority for some impressions which she entertained with regard to his moral character. I wrote Miss Lynch at the time, requesting her to set Mr. Willis right on the matter, but as some coolness then existed between Miss Lynch and myself I am ignorant whether the request was ever complied with." Such shenanigans did not escape Maria Clemm's attention. Poe's "Muddy" wrote Thomas Holley Chivers that she had not seen Mrs. Locke since "Eddie's" death: "She spoke unkindly of him since then and that is sufficient to make me hate her."

"Ermina," in between episodes of Griswoldian trashing of the late poet's memory, also spread the word that Poe had left a fond “deathbed message” to her--conveyed via Mrs. Whitman!--a self-serving fabrication that left Mrs. Clemm sputtering in fury at her presumption: “Mrs. L[ocke] would have been the last woman in the world he would have written to…She will have to be more cautious how she speaks of him or I will have to speak as she will not wish.”

In the doughty Mrs. Clemm, we may have finally found the person capable of getting Jane Ermina Starkweather Locke to just shut up. The turbulent Mrs. L. made a quiet retreat until her death in 1859.

(Image via eapoe.org.)

Marginalia

This post is designed to provide a home for a few stray bits of Poeana I've encountered here and there.

1. The Case of the Postponed Pym

"The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" was issued by Harper's in July of 1838. However, the firm applied for copyright and had a title page prepared over a year earlier, in June 1837. (A month before, the "Knickerbocker" announced that the novel was "nearly ready for publication.") Why the long delay? We have no idea. Poe researcher Kenneth Rede suggested "they withheld the volume from the public to give Poe, desperately in need of funds, and without employment at the time, a reasonable opportunity to find a periodical willing to continue the serialization of the tale...and that when he failed in this quest, they then brought out the book as originally planned." It has also been theorized that Harper's held off releasing the book because of the uncertain economic climate of the times. (May 1837 saw a financial panic which inaugurated a severe depression that lasted until 1843.)


These theories, though plausible, fail to completely convince me. Admittedly, however, I cannot think of any better explanations. It is a curious coincidence that we know almost nothing of Poe's personal and professional activities between his move to New York City early in 1837 and his relocation to Philadelphia about a year later. Could this strange gap in his timeline have any connection to the simultaneous pause in the life of "Pym?"



2. Bayard Taylor's Poe Parody

In October of 1845, Poe became the sole proprietor of the "Broadway Journal." He bought out his partner, John Bisco, with the help of a promissory note for fifty dollars, which was endorsed by Horace Greeley. When it came due, Bisco evidently collected it from the endorser. ("As was to be anticipated," snorted Poe biographer George Woodberry.) Greeley, rather tastelessly, dined out on the episode for years to come, even proclaiming in his autobiography that he offered the note to someone seeking Poe's autograph "for half that amount."

The episode itself, thanks to Greeley, is relatively famous. What is less well-known is the fact that Greeley's friend Bayard Taylor was, for reasons known only to himself, inspired to commemorate it in a poem, "The Promissory Note." The result is one of the weirder Poe spoofs:

In the lonesome latter years,
(Fatal years!)
To the dropping of my tears
Danced the mad and mystic spheres
In a rounded, reeling rune,
'Neath the moon,
To the dripping and the dropping of my tears

Ah my soul is swathed in gloom,
(Ulalume!)
In a dim Titanic tomb,
For my gaunt and gloomy soul
Ponders o'er the penal scroll
O'er the parchment (not a rhyme,)
Out of place out of time,
I am shredded, shorn, unshifty,
(O, the fifty!)
And the days have passed, the three,
Over me!
And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me!

'Twas the random runes I wrote
At the bottom of the note
(Wrote and freely,
Gave to Greeley,)
In the middle of the night
On the yellow, moonless night,
When the stars were out of sight,
When my pulses, like a knell,
(Israfel!)
Danced with dim and dying fays
O'er the ruins of my days,
O'er the dimeless, timeless days,
When the fifty, drawn at thirty,
Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty
Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!

Fiends controlled it,
(Let him hold it!)
Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen;
Now the days of grace are o'er,
(Ah, Lenore!)
I am but as other men;
What is time, time, time,
To my rare and runic rhyme,
To my random, reeling rhyme,
By the sands along the shore,
Where the tempest whispers, "Pay him!" and I answer "Never more!"

Many poems made money, but this is the only case I know where money made poems.

3. Rufus W. Griswold, Poetic Muse

Another example of bizarre verses from the World of Poe comes to us courtesy of Frances S. Osgood. It is well known that in 1846 Poe wrote her an acrostic Valentine poem containing her name. His more frivolous biographers have tried to twist this innocuous--and probably commissioned--contribution to a Valentine party into evidence that they had some sort of close relationship (overlooking the fact that the poem misspelled her middle name and called her a dunce.) Left largely ignored is the fact that in 1850, Mrs. Osgood wrote a similar, but far more intimate poem to none other than everyone's favorite fraud, Rufus Wilmot Griswold. This poem, which George Woodberry dryly called "an illustrative document in regard to the literary group," rarely has appeared in print. I propose to do my part in correcting that omission. Fanny and the Reverend won't live this one down--in a manner of speaking--if I can help it. (Note: By reading the italicized letters, their names can be found--hers, left to right, his, right to left.)

For one, whose being is to mine a star,
Trembling I weave in lines of love and fun
What Fame before has echoed near and far.
A sonnet if you like--I'll give you one
To be cross-questioned ere it's truth is solv'd.
Here veiled and hidden in a rhyming wreath
A name is turned with mine in cunning sheath,
And unless by some marvel rare evolved,
Forever folded from all idler eyes
Silent and secret still it treasured lies,
Whilst mine goes winding onward, as a rill
Thro' a deep wood in unseen joyance dances,
Calling in melody's bewildering thrill
Whilst thro' dim leaves its partner dreams and glances.

Even more embarrassing evidence of her partiality (however self-serving) for Griswold can be found in her 1850 collection of poems, which "his attached friend" dedicated to him "As a souvenir of admiration for his genius, of regard for his generous character, and of gratitude for his valuable literary counsels."

4. In Which I Give John Evangelist Walsh the Plot of His Next Book

On a related note, an Edward A. Oldman wrote a peculiar letter to the New York Times which appeared in the August 11, 1929 issue. He claimed to know "the real reason" behind Griswold's enmity for Poe, information he gathered from "reminiscences at first-hand" he acquired from Poe's old classmates at the University of Virginia. (It was not explained how these youthful acquaintances would have the slightest "first-hand" knowledge about the relations between the two men, but never mind that.)

"From this material," wrote Oldham, "one important statement is recalled. It was in the effect that Rufus Wilmot Griswold was smitten with the flower-like charms of the poet's wife, and had on at least one occasion been rebuffed by her, the incident very nearly causing a permanent rupture between Poe and Griswold. The latter never forgot the circumstance and was known to have harbored a feeling of rancor against the poet."

This is nearly as silly a tale as the old cliché that Poe and Griswold were rivals for the dubious charms of Mrs. Osgood, but far more delightful. As long as the world is going to be plagued by badly-written, ahistorical Poe novels, I wish somebody would write one featuring a scene where the lustful Reverend makes impassioned advances to Virginia, only to have flowery Mrs. Poe "rebuff" him with a well-aimed knee to the groin. And perhaps a karate chop to the neck.

I may have to write it myself.

Poe scholars, showing a distressing lack of humor, have ignored Mr. Oldham's revelations, with the exception of Thomas O. Mabbott. He wrote the Times a week later, saying that he had never heard the story, "but it is one of those things that may very well be true." Thus proving a point I have made several times on this blog: There were no, I repeat, no Poe myths too nutty for Mr. Mabbott to embrace.

5. A "Lost" Portrait of Virginia Poe?

Mrs. W. H. Jackson, a self-described "admirer of Poe," wrote an article for the May 7, 1899 issue of the Detroit Free Press describing a visit she paid "many years ago" to Maria Clemm when Poe's aunt/mother-in-law was living in the Church Home in Baltimore. The article is brief and says nothing new or interesting, except for one brief statement that caught my eye. Mrs. Jackson said that on the wall of Mrs. Clemm's room hung "a colored lithograph" of Virginia holding "her favorite cat." She added, "Mrs. Clemm looked with a mother's tenderness upon this shadow of her frail child, whose nature 'touched to finer issues' was an inspiration to her gifted husband, sitting at his feet while many of the fantastic though purely rhythmic lines were dictated."

This does not fit the description of any known picture of Virginia, either accepted or apocryphal, and I have yet to find any other reference to this alleged portrait. There are several possibilities: This lithograph was lost or destroyed at some early date. Mrs. Jackson saw a generic portrait of a young woman and mistakenly assumed it was of Mrs. Clemm's daughter. Possibly, the portrait is still extant and simply has yet to be identified as Virginia. Finally, and most probably, Mrs. Jackson simply made that detail up. (That would be entirely typical of the newspaper stories of the day.)

6. A Glimpse of Poe in 1845

The May 1, 1895 issue of the Boston Globe carried a letter from a George Barron, who claimed to have been a fellow-boarder with the Poe family ("on Greenwich St., near the Battery") in the early half of 1845. I have never seen his brief reminiscences reprinted, so I quote them here. Barron described Poe as "particularly kind and attentive" to Virginia and Mrs. Clemm, "and they all seemed much devoted to each other."

"From what I saw of this remarkable man at that time, his kind attentions to his wife and mother-in-law, and his natural politeness to his fellow-boarders sitting near him at the table, I was sure he was at heart a true gentleman, notwithstanding what his detractors may have then or since said of him. While he was not a communicative man, but rather reticent and reserved in his manner, yet he was always courteous in responding to those who addressed him. He was always neatly and well dressed when I saw him, although I had the impression he was suffering somewhat from poverty at that time."

Barron's only specific anecdote regarding Poe was about the poet giving him and some of the other boarders complimentary passes to a lecture he was giving, only to have it cancelled due to bad weather, "to the great disappointment of those of us who were present." (The April 18, 1845 issue of the New York Evening Mirror noted that Poe was scheduled to lecture the previous evening, but was forced to postpone "in consequence of the inclemency of the weather.")

7. All You Need to Know About Sarah Helen Whitman

In 1874, she wrote John H. Ingram that she had never seen a ghost, "though I once saw a beautiful luminous hand that wrote for me three initial letters, which I still preserve & look upon with awe & wonder!"

8. Stop the Internet, I Want to Get Off

Finally, let me address a few of the utterly idiotic and equally indestructible Poe Myths I've seen floating around online:

A. No, Poe was not kicked out of West Point for showing up for drill stark naked. Sorry, flashers.

B. No, Poe was not an atheist. A widely-circulated quote attributed to him, that "all religion is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry," is apocryphal. It originated from a justifiably obscure 1901 biography by a noisy crackpot named John Alexander Joyce, which is full of outlandish and clearly fictional statements. (Of especial note is his chapter claiming that "The Raven" was stolen from an 1809 poem called "The Parrot"--a work which never actually existed outside of Mr. Joyce's fevered mind.) Joyce claimed to have received this quote from a "Mr. William Barton, who was a typo and foreman on the 'Broadway Journal' when Poe was editor of the paper." I have not found any other indication this Barton even existed, and there is absolutely no reason to take this as evidence of Poe's spiritual beliefs. His views were unquestionably unorthodox, but I dare anyone to read "Eureka," "The Island of the Fay," "Mesmeric Revelation," "The Poetic Principle"--to make it short, just about anything he ever wrote--and still say he was an atheist.

C. No, as far as we know, Poe did not have any sort of connection to "Barnaby's Castle" in Providence, Rhode Island. However, judging by the keyword searches used to find this blog, a puzzling number of people seem to think he did, which makes me suspect that an overimaginative tour guide is lurking somewhere in the background.

D. No, Poe did not die of poison on a park bench, he never had a pet raccoon, he never wore a goatee, and Sarah Elmira Shelton was no Alice Eve. Thanks a bunch, Cusack.

E. I shall close with one sentence I never thought I'd ever have to write: No, Elizabeth Poe was not pecked to death by crows. Please, people. You're beginning to depress me.

The Name of Annabel Lee (Part One of Two)

"It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee..."

The debate over which woman--or women--inspired what is arguably Poe's most beautiful poem has raged with remarkable vigor practically from the moment "Annabel Lee" first appeared in print, only days after the author's death.

It is a tribute to the unique emotional resonance of the poem that such a controversy even exists, considering that it is so overtly allegorical, rather than autobiographical, and there is certainly no valid evidence that Poe himself gave clues about any personal significance it may have had for him. (Poe was never one to offer explanations for any of his writings--in fact, he seemed to rather enjoy mystifying his readers with an air of, "It's none of my concern if you're too dull-witted to know what I mean.") However, this has not stopped Poe fans from linking his fable of the "kingdom by the sea" with virtually every woman he ever knew--something that, I suspect, would have both amused and disgusted him.

The leading actresses who have auditioned for the role of "Annabel Lee" are, roughly in order of popularity:

1. Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe

Poe's wife, is, by far, the woman most identified with the poem, and, while one Poe scholar perhaps became overly partisan when he said it was "sacrilege" to associate any other name with "Annabel Lee," she is the only logical choice if one wishes to read the lines as having any basis in fact.

The first to publicly state that the poem was a tribute to Virginia was Frances S. Osgood, in the "Reminiscences of Edgar A. Poe" she published in "Saroni's Musical Times" in December 1849. (Rufus W. Griswold later reprinted her account in his "Poe memoir.") Osgood's stated aim was to counter a current rumor that the poem was written in memory of a "late love affair" of the poet's. (It is not known if she was referring to Sarah Helen Whitman, Sarah Elmira Shelton, Sarah Anna Lewis, or some other lady--who hopefully was not named "Sarah.") Osgood commented disdainfully that "There seems a strange and almost profane disregard of the sacred purity and spiritual tenderness of this delicious ballad, in thus overlooking the allusion to the kindred angels and the heavenly Father of the lost and loved and unforgotten wife."

Whatever Osgood's motives may have been in making this assertion--whether it was out of spite against one of these other women, a desire to show intimate knowledge of the love between Poe and his wife, or simply a wish to give Virginia her due--she may have, for once, told the truth. Aside from the probability that Virginia was, as Mrs. Osgood conceded, his one genuine love, of all the women Poe knew, she was the only one who had "no other thought than to love and be loved by me," she alone was his "bride," and, of course, unlike the other leading candidates, she was dead when he wrote the poem. (The "wind" that "came out of the cloud, chilling/And killing my Annabel Lee" could be interpreted as a reference to Virginia's tuberculosis.) "Annabel Lee" is very possibly simply a lovely piece of imagery with no specific personal implications, but if Poe did intend it as autobiography, applying it to anyone other than his late wife is pure absurdity.

Not that this has stopped many people from trying.

2. Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton

Mrs. Shelton is the only other "Annabel" whose candidacy has developed any sort of following, in spite of the fact that her sole claim to the role rests upon a 1901 article by Edward Alfriend, "Unpublished Recollections of Edgar Allan Poe." Alfriend, who claimed to have been a friend of Shelton's (even though he gave her first name as "Elizabeth,") stated that she told him that Poe had assured her that she was his inspiration for the poem (and that she was the "lost Lenore," to boot!) Alfriend's piece is among the most easily-ridiculed Poe articles--it is packed from beginning to end with statements that are both easily disproved and manifestly ludicrous. It is impossible to read his "recollections" without coming to the conclusion that he didn't know the first thing about either Poe or Mrs. Shelton.

There is absolutely no other valid reason to link La Royster to "Annabel Lee," (and it should be noted that in the interview Mrs. Shelton allegedly gave Edward V. Valentine in 1875, she stated that Poe never addressed any poems to her.) Nevertheless, she still has her champions, most notably Thomas O. Mabbott.

Mabbott, as was often his habit in many other matters, gave varied and uncertain opinions about the poem's origins, but he was fondest of naming Mrs. Shelton as the poem's inspiration--largely, it seems, because of his strange antipathy towards Virginia Poe. For whatever reason, he swallowed whole all of Susan Archer Talley Weiss' unfounded slurs against Virginia and her marriage, making it impossible for him to accept the possibility that Poe had loved his wife enough to immortalize her memory in verse. (Mabbott was also under the impression that Poe wrote the poem during the brief period of his 1849 reacquaintance with Mrs. Shelton. He seemed oblivious to the fact that "Annabel Lee" was completed by the early spring of that year--months before Poe reconnected with his old neighbor.)

Here I must pause for an admittedly off-topic rant: What made all of Mabbott's pronouncements regarding Virginia all the more exasperating is the fact that--like other Poe biographers, most notably Hervey Allen, George Woodberry, and Frances Winwar--he seldom directly named Weiss as his source. He would instead write statements along the lines of, "Rosalie Poe's foster-brother John Mackenzie said..." or "Rosalie said..." or simply relate anecdotes without giving any source at all. (He often did this trickery with other sources as well.)

This was completely misleading Mabbott's readers. What he quoted was, rather, what Mrs. Weiss--a chronicler who made King Rufus himself seem a model of probity--alleged these people said to her. (Susan Weiss is also, lest we forget, the same person who asserted that Elmira Shelton instigated Poe's murder.) The fact is, we have no statements about Poe that come directly from any of the Mackenzies--I suspect they had only a formal social acquaintance with him--and nothing of any interest or importance from Rosalie, who made it clear to John H. Ingram that she had virtually no personal knowledge about her famous brother--she did not even know she had siblings until she was "a good size girl." In short, Mabbott, Allen, Winwar, Woodberry, et al, relied on uncorroborated and easily discredited hearsay. Mabbott's boast that, unlike others who wrote about Virginia, he was relying on the words of people who were close to Poe, while dismissing first-hand testimony from those who actually did know both the Poes, all of whom lauded Virginia and testified to the couple's devotion to each other, witnesses such as Maria Clemm, Lambert A. Wilmer, George Lippard, Mayne Reid, George R. Graham, Thomas C. Clarke and his daughter Anne, Mary Brennan, William Gowans--even Rufus W. Griswold and Frances S. Osgood, for crying out loud--makes one wonder if Mabbott wasn't permanently possessed by the Imp of the Perverse.

Mabbott's copious and incredibly influential writings (the question of how he obtained this influence is a mystery I will likely never solve) were usually not even bad scholarship--they were bad historical fiction.

3. Sarah Helen Power Whitman

What makes Mrs. Whitman stand out among the parade of Annabel wannabes is that she herself was the sole promoter for her connection to the poem. Sometime after Poe's death, she conceived the notion that "Annabel Lee" was written to her as a "peace offering." She insisted the poem disproved the common belief that Poe went to his grave harboring negative feelings towards her. (Although, in a letter to Rufus W. Griswold written two months after Poe's death, Mrs. Whitman evinced no personal knowledge about the origins of "Annabel Lee"--in fact, she even asked Griswold if he had any idea who had inspired the poem. He offered no opinion on the subject.) To the end of her life, Mrs. Whitman tried, with increasing desperation, to convince the world of her link to "Annabel Lee," and how it proved she had a special place in Poe's heart--despite the fact that she must have been aware that few people, if any, believed her. Of all the parade of possible Annabels, Mrs. Whitman's exercise in self-delusion is undoubtedly the saddest and most pitiful of the lot.



Next post: The Annabel Also-Rans.

Marginalia

I have always instinctively believed that "The Raven" was not, as is generally assumed, some sort of autobiographical expression of his private, tormented longings for his own "lost Lenore," or even, as he himself claimed in "The Philosophy of Composition," a mere mathematical exercise. Indeed, the poem strikes me as cryptic black comedy, with "Nevermore" as the punchline. It was only recently, however, that I unexpectedly stumbled upon the key to Poe's inside joke.

It centers around St. Expedite, the patron saint for those who wish to avoid procrastination, and obtain general financial success. Expedite is usually depicted as a Roman centurion crushing a crow beneath his foot. The dying crow is shown as saying "Cras," the Latin word for "tomorrow." In other words, Expedite vanquishes tomorrow in favor of today."Cras" (which was later anglicized to "Caw") was a Roman pun, as it also stood for the sounds made by crows and ravens. Thus, these birds were seen as speaking of nothing but "tomorrow."

This is where we reach the night's Plutonian shore. The narrator of "The Raven" obsessively asks his feathered visitor when he will be reunited with his beloved, expecting to hear "Cras"--tomorrow. Instead, to his discomfiture, he gets the answer, "Nevermore."

This helps illustrate why this compulsion to read all of Poe's writings as mere psychological autobiography is so inexpressibly exasperating. The man was a mystic, a satirist, a practical jokester, a savant, an esoteric philosopher...in short, he was the last writer in the world who could be described in such shallow terms.

(Many thanks to the invaluable Pauline at Triple P and HoodooQ for guiding me in Expedite's direction.)

*****

One of the many oddities about the letters Sarah Helen Whitman said she received from Poe is the fact that, in her own correspondence to others, she herself echoed passages from these letters.

For example, in a letter to Mary Hewitt written not long after Poe's death, Whitman said:

"In the fall of 1848 I one day heard Mr. Poe talking about the intellectual women of New York to a gentleman of our city. Something that he said of you arrested my attention &, in reply to my questions, he drew a portrait of you which imprinted itself on my heart and caused my thoughts often to revert to you with feelings of unwonted sympathy & interest."

Similarly, one of the Poe letters to Whitman stated:

"I have already told you that some few casual words spoken of you--[not very kindly]--by Miss Lynch, were the first in which I have ever heard your name mentioned. She described you, in some measure, personally...enchained and riveted, my attention...A profound sympathy took immediate possession of my soul...your unknown heart seemed to pass into my bosom..."

In regards to Poe, Whitman wrote Hewitt:

"I can never forget the impressions I felt in reading a story of his for the first time about six or seven years ago. I experienced a sensation of such intense horror that I dared neither look at anything he had written or even utter his name...I now think that the conscious soul recoiled with an instinctive apprehension of the agonies it was destined to suffer through its strange union with his own--By degrees this terror took the character of fascination..."

From the "Poe letters":

"I dared not speak of you--much less see you. For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you. The merest whisper that concerned you awoke in me a shuddering sixth sense, vaguely compounded of fear, ecstatic happiness, and a wild, inexplicable sentiment..."

So...Whitman wasn't merely a Transcendentalist, (one of the "Crazyites," as Poe called them,) a Fourierist (a group about whom he had even worse things to say,) a spiritualist, and a woman who spent most of her days in an ether fog (how did that affect her memories of Poe?) while dressing like an antebellum Stevie Nicks--she was either a plagiarist or, as I often suspect, something far worse. And she presented herself to history as Poe's soul mate?

The Grotesque and Arabesque Stella Lewis (Part One of Two)

In an earlier post, I touched briefly on the odd and rather slimy role Sarah Anna Lewis played in the last two years of Poe's life. I realized that this woman was just deranged, destructive, and creepy enough to earn her very own post. Happy reading.

We do not know exactly how and when Lewis made Poe's acquaintance, but it was possibly during the period he lived in New York City in 1845. However, her real involvement in his history did not commence until late in 1846. The twenty-two year old woman was the wife of a wealthy lawyer named Sylvanus D. Lewis. Mrs. Lewis (who made several increasingly colorful changes to her Christian name until she finally settled on "Stella,") had, like so many members of the 19th century literati, both the money and leisure to pursue an interest in poetry. The question of whether or not they had the talent for it was considered irrelevant. She was a theatrical, narcissistic, flashily-dressed woman who imagined herself to be not only a profound artist, but a fascinating siren and muse. (Alas, no one else seemed to concur in this.) Mrs. Lewis was, in short, a living, breathing embodiment of the worst caricatures of the female literary dilettante, with a touch of a Hogarth engraving thrown in.

She insinuated herself into Poe's life when he was at the lowest point he would see until he turned up at that Baltimore tavern in October 1849. His wife Virginia was dying, and he himself was sick, persecuted, increasingly broken in spirit, and virtually penniless. His misery was widely--and, by his enemies, gleefully--advertised in the press. Although we--probably mercifully--do not know the details, the Lewises took full advantage of his public vulnerability, and provided the Poe family with money and other assistance. In exchange, there was said to be an unabashed extortion that Poe would do what polishing he could to Stella's clumsy verses and write laudatory notices of her for the magazines.

As I have said before, if this latter tale is true (and it mostly relies upon the ever-questionable testimony of Marie Louise Shew Houghton, who was infuriated about Mrs. Lewis' desire to present herself as the official Poe Family Protector--a role Houghton herself coveted--and thus wished to demean the woman's role in Poe's life as much as possible,) one must feel sadness and pity, rather than the scorn Poe and Mrs. Clemm have garnered. At that time, the Poes were virtually helpless, and if Stella Lewis took the opportunity to exploit this helplessness for her own ends, the odium belongs entirely on her own head. As later events would show, it was an odium she thoroughly deserved for more reason than one.

As it happened, it was not until after Poe died that Mrs. Lewis' talents for crude self-aggrandizement reached their full flower. At some point, she reputedly began circulating the story that she was the model for "Annabel Lee." When this reached the ears of Poe's erstwhile quasi-fiancee Sarah Helen Whitman, she was indignant. How dare this woman poach on her own claims to have inspired Poe's most romantic poem? Mrs. Whitman informed everyone within earshot that Mary Hewitt (another gossipy "literary lady") had written her that Mrs. Clemm told Mrs. Lewis that she was Poe's heroine as mere flattery, a way of paying back favors granted--the implication being that there was not a word of truth to Lewis' boasts. Quite cleverly, Whitman added that Hewitt also told her that Frances S. Osgood had written that the poem was a tribute to Virginia Poe only to spite Mrs. Lewis. Thus, her account achieved a neat double play, by simultaneously discrediting Whitman's two rival "claimants" to "Annabel Lee," Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Poe. (Not to mention discrediting Osgood's declaration that Virginia had been Poe's one true love, a statement Whitman took as a deliberate insult to herself.) Sarah H. Whitman was an absurd woman in many ways, but stupid she was not.

We have no other evidence Hewitt actually made this statement about the poem, (Whitman, quite suspiciously, did not preserve these letters she allegedly received from her,) and it seems like an implausible thing for Mrs. Clemm to have done, no matter how indebted to Mrs. Lewis she may have felt. (For what it's worth, Annie Richmond wrote Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that Mrs. Clemm maintained that "Annabel Lee" was about Virginia, and was always somewhat affronted whenever anyone did not seem to grasp that fact on their own. If Mrs. Richmond spoke accurately--which, admittedly, would be something of a novelty for her--that would settle the "who was Annabel Lee" debate once and for all.) It seems most likely that Mrs. Lewis herself, always eager for publicity and indifferent about how she got it, simply invented her connection to Poe's poem.Mrs. Lewis--when she was not asserting that Poe had asked her to write his biography--also played a key, if still-mysterious role in Rufus W. Griswold obtaining the job of acting as Poe's literary executor. From what both she and Griswold said afterwards, it appears that she was the one to actually enlist him for the task. She claimed this is what Poe had instructed her to do, but she never offered any proof of this. Why she would so interest herself in the matter is also unclear, but her involvement only adds to the dark, unfragrant cloud that hangs around the whole issue of Griswold's appointment.

The Lewises divorced in 1858. The breakup of their marriage seems to have also permanently estranged her from Mrs. Clemm--reputedly, Poe's aunt took Mr. Lewis' side in their dispute. However, there was never any real friendship between the two women--all that ever bound them was hunger on one side, and hunger for glory on the other. In any case, thereafter Maria Clemm became one of Mrs. Lewis' favorite targets for vilification.

In Part Two: The return of Elizabeth Ellet!

Marginalia

In his recent book, "Poe in His Own Time," Benjamin F. Fisher made reference to Elizabeth Oakes Smith's copious writings about Poe by commenting that Smith "knew well the American literary milieu of Poe's own day, even if she hadn't known Poe himself." Strangely, Fisher either overlooked or deliberately disregarded the significance of his own observation. If Fisher is correct that Smith never actually knew Poe at all, then everything she wrote about him--most particularly her detailed, and highly implausible, accounts of her meetings and conversations with the poet, which his biographers have extensively used for source material--were massive and flagrant fictions.

Evidence that Fisher's statement was accurate comes from Smith's close friend Sarah Helen Whitman. When writing to John H. Ingram in the 1870s, Whitman expressed her contempt for a recent article Smith had published about Poe. In particular, she pointed to Smith's description of an intimate talk she claimed to have had with Poe about his relationship with Mrs. Whitman. Whitman, who described Smith as "constitutionally inaccurate," stated flatly that she was certain no such conversation had ever taken place. How could Whitman know Poe had never expressed the sentiments in question unless she was aware that Smith had never had any conversations with Poe at all?

Whitman made an even more intriguing remark on the subject. She wrote Ingram a strangely cryptic reference to Smith's Poe reminiscences. She stated they "did not spring so much from genuine friendliness & regard as from other motives which are betrayed in some of the--but I will not carp or criticize."

Maddeningly, Whitman never explained what these "other motives" may have been. I'd certainly like to know.

*****

One of the innumerable overlooked little oddities in Poe's history is that Maria Clemm's handwriting bore a distinct resemblance to her nephew's. In fact, it was said that she could copy his manuscripts so exactly that no one could guess it was not his writing. (A copy, presumed to have been made by Mrs. Clemm, of a letter Poe sent her on September 18, 1849 has sometimes been mistaken for an actual Poe MS. Incidentally, for whatever mysterious reason, we have only a fragment of the original letter.) Richard Henry Stoddard even quoted her as saying to him that after Poe's death, she received so many requests for his autograph that she would simply forge samples of his writing and send them on to his admirers.

All of this puts a curious question mark over many of our extant "Poe" letters and manuscripts.

*****

The only full transcript we have of the last letter Poe sent to Sarah Helen Whitman comes to us from Annie Richmond, of all people. (Whitman herself, in her typically strange fashion, preserved only an meaningless eight-line fragment of the original letter. She always aimed to shape the historical record by carefully copying, destroying, and mutilating her Poe-related correspondence in an effort to display the story she wanted told.) Mrs. Richmond told John Ingram that before Poe sent Mrs. Whitman this letter discussing the end of their relationship and the ugly gossip surrounding that event, he sent it to her so that she could read it over and then forward it (anonymously, I presume) to Whitman in Providence. Mrs. Richmond claimed to have made a copy of this letter, which she sent to Ingram.

Now, can I possibly be the only one who finds her story to be exceedingly suspicious? First of all, I find it odd that Poe would send Mrs. Richmond the actual letter to forward to the other woman. Aside from the unseemliness in sharing his private relations with Mrs. Whitman with a third party, if he wished to defend his actions in the Whitman episode to Annie (she told Ingram that the stories she had heard about his disgraceful behavior in Providence led her to contemplate ending her friendship with Poe--which says a lot about her "devotion" to him,) it would have been sufficient for Poe to tell her "I wrote Mrs. Whitman this-and-this..." Secondly, why in the world would Mrs. Richmond have bothered to write out and keep a copy of this letter--particularly since the contents were certainly none of her business? Surely, in January of 1849 she could have had no idea that, nearly thirty years later, her transcript of this letter might be useful biographical source material.

The final oddity about this story is that Mrs. Whitman--a fragile and cowardly woman who shrank from even the mildest confrontation--never worked up the nerve to even answer this letter. (Which confirms my suspicion that she was hardly blameless in whatever went on between her and Poe.) Mrs. Richmond, however, told Ingram that Whitman had responded, with a letter exonerating Poe's behavior. What makes Annie's statement even more peculiar is the fact that among the copies of Poe's letters to her that she gave Ingram is one where he commented on Whitman's failure to answer his letter!

Annie Richmond, like so many other figures in Poe's history, made a very unsatisfactory witness. Nearly everything she ever said about him inevitably took on an air of shenanigans.

Poe, Providence, and the Second "To Helen"

"Hardly anybody behaves normally in this history...In other words, if there ever was a life to illustrate the truth that there are many more questions in the world than answers, this is that life."
-Edward Wagenknecht, trying and failing to make sense of it all in "Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend"

Edgar Allan Poe traveled to or through Providence RI on at least one, and quite possibly two occasions in 1845. Both these visits have engendered controversy, and unfortunately many of the details surrounding these trips are engulfed in fog, thanks largely, as usual, to Sarah Helen Whitman.

In November of 1848, Poe published a poem titled simply "To ---," which opened with the lines, "I saw thee once--once only..." After his death, Rufus Griswold republished these verses under the title "To Helen," with the explanation that Poe addressed these lines to Mrs. Whitman, and that the sighting described in the poem was based on a true incident. According to Griswold, when Poe stayed overnight in Providence while returning to New York after his appearance at the Boston Lyceum in October 1845, he took a midnight walk through the town. During this stroll, he chanced to see Mrs. Whitman standing in front of her house, and supposedly the sight so inspired him that, three years later, he wrote this poem. (Although the "enchanted" garden in Poe's verses bore no resemblance to Whitman's actual residence.)Whitman, on the other hand, claimed this "sighting" of her (of which she had at the time been unaware--which is odd, considering that it must have happened on a small, otherwise deserted street,) took place in 1845, but, as the poem said, in July.

Perhaps the most curious part of her story is that we have no proof she ever heard of this poetic and momentous incident from Poe himself.***

The letters he allegedly wrote to Whitman indicate that the first time he ever actually saw her was when he visited Providence in September 1848. Whitman said she learned details of Poe's little Peeping Tom episode from Frances S. Osgood, of all people. Decades later, Whitman described a visit Osgood made to her in the fall of 1848, apparently with the aim of gleaning information about Whitman's rumored engagement to Poe. Whitman claimed Osgood told her that in mid-1845 (presumably in July,) he was passing through Providence on his way from Boston to New York, and stopped overnight at the same hotel where Osgood was staying. The next day, he informed her that he had spent most of the night walking in and around the town, and happened to pass Mrs. Whitman's home (he had "previously ascertained" its location from Osgood.) There, he observed the lady of the house herself walking up and down the sidewalk (he made the identification through Osgood's description of Whitman--and the question of why Frances would bother giving Poe a minute physical description of another woman, let alone directions to her home, was never explained.)

One of the letters Poe supposedly sent Whitman late in 1848 described an occasion when, while he was passing through Providence, Mrs. Osgood tried to persuade him to join her on a call to Mrs. Whitman, but he refused. A date is not given for this incident, although Whitman herself annotated the letter to indicate it was in July '45. We are not told why he rejected the opportunity to actually meet this woman he supposedly already adored from afar, other than the vague assertion that he "dared not" risk laying eyes upon her. This letter seems to contradict the scenario given in "I saw thee once..."

Incidentally, these Poe/Whitman letters also contradict another bit of known history. One of these letters stated that until Mrs.Whitman sent to him some Valentine verses she had written in his honor in February 1848, he had been unaware she even knew of his existence. Aside from the fact that it would be absurd for him to assume that a fellow member of the literati was ignorant of the writer of "The Raven," we know for a fact that in late 1845 or early 1846, Whitman requested her friend, New York socialite Anne Lynch, to ask Poe on her behalf for a copy of his critique of Elizabeth Barrett's poetry. Whitman--who had been intensely interested in Poe and his writings for some time--undoubtedly hoped he would write her personally. Instead, he merely gave Lynch a copy of the article to forward to Whitman. In other words, unless Poe had so little interest in Whitman that he immediately forgot about this incident, that letter simply makes no sense.

There is much uncertainty in what we're told about Poe's Providence visits. In late June/early July 1845, he was embroiled in an accusation of forgery that had been made against him by a New York merchant named Edward Isaiah Thomas. Poe and Thomas were strangers, but Thomas was a friend of the Osgood family, and passed on to Frances gossip he had heard about Poe. She, in turn, informed the poet of the accusations. Osgood was making an extended stay in Providence and Boston during this period--according to at least one Poe biographer, in the company of her husband--so all this rumor-mongering and tattle-taleing between the three principals was evidently being carried on through the post. According to his published "Reply to Thomas Dunn English," Poe briefly left New York in early July 1845 to "procure evidence" for his planned lawsuit against Mr. Thomas. The inference is that he wished to interview Osgood, and possibly others as well, to get details of these slanders being promulgated against him, and probably to persuade Osgood to provide a deposition. (In a later issue of the "Broadway Journal," Poe mentioned a visit he made to Boston around this time. It is unknown whether Osgood was then in that city, or if he merely questioned her in Providence en route to a visit made to Boston for other reasons.)

Now, contrary to what Whitman later said, Poe and Osgood could not have stayed at the same hotel in July of 1845, as Osgood's correspondence shows that when she was in Providence during that month, she was staying with friends, the family of Henry Bowen Anthony. When Poe traveled through Providence on his way to Boston in October, Osgood was living in Providence's City Hotel (with, her correspondence suggests, her husband, and presumably her young children!) The ineffable John Evangelist Walsh assumed that Poe stopped overnight at that same hotel, but, as usual with him, had no evidence this was the case. At that time, the City Hotel was the most prominent of Providence's many hostelries, an unlikely place for Poe to stay, even for one day. Even when he was in funds, he had little liking for ostentatious surroundings (he hated New York's lavish Astor House.) It is more likely that he spent the night at a more modest establishment. There is actually no indication that Poe so much as saw Mrs. Osgood during his overnight stop-over in Providence, or was even aware she was in the city. In short, whichever way you look at it, Whitman's account of what she claimed Osgood told her has problems. (Although in regards to her story, it should be noted that Mrs. Whitman not only knew both Poe and Osgood, but she had many contacts among New York's gossipy and cruel literary circles. Thus, she would know as well as anyone the true nature of their relationship. Particularly when she was in her self-appointed role of Poe's personal defender/love interest, her guileless openness about depicting Poe and Osgood in each other's society indicates her knowledge that their relations had been wholly innocent.)It is very curious how much of what we're told about the Poe/Whitman relationship originated from the Reverend Doctor Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He was the first to state publicly that the poem Poe published in November 1848 to an unknown addressee was written for Sarah Helen Whitman. She afterwards endorsed this tale, of course, stating that she received this poem as an anonymous manuscript in the spring of that year. Unfortunately, we have no proof this was the case, as this reputed manuscript disappeared. Whitman claimed she sent it to a psychic for a "reading," in whose hands it vanished without a trace. (Corroborating evidence for Mrs. W's stories had a way of doing that.)

Many months before they met, Poe supposedly sent Whitman a copy of his first "To Helen," torn out of one of his books. The mailing gave no indication that he was the sender, but, according to Whitman, a male New York acquaintance of his who happened to be visiting Providence identified Poe's handwriting on the envelope. This "acquaintance" may very well have been Griswold.

Similarly, the romantic tale of Whitman unknowingly captivating Poe's attention during this midnight walk of his was also first recorded by the good Doctor. Whitman herself claimed not to know how Griswold heard the story. She vaguely assumed he learned about it from Mrs. Osgood, but it taxes one's brain to come up with a motive for Osgood--who had had a falling-out with Whitman--to give Griswold this information. And if such a dramatic incident truly happened, why did Poe himself never write to Whitman about it? And if, as Griswold claimed, "I saw thee once..." referred to that encounter, why did he describe it as happening in October, when the poem describes a "July midnight?"It is undoubtedly impossible for anyone this side of the grave to find definitive answers to all these conundrums, but these are nevertheless questions that Poe scholars must ask themselves.


***A footnote: Mrs. Whitman possessed a bound set of the "Broadway Journal," which she said Poe gave her in October 1848. Among the handwritten annotations is the comment, "N. B.--The poem which I sent you contained all the events of a dream which occurred to me soon after I knew you. Ligeia was also suggested by a dream. Observe the eyes in both tale & poem."

Years later, after George W. Eveleth learned of this annotation, he pointed out to Mrs. Whitman the obvious discrepancy: She claimed that the "I saw thee once..." poem was sent to her long before she and Poe met. So how to explain Poe's reference to writing the poem "after I knew you?"

Mrs. Whitman always had an explanation for everything. She--rather too stridently--wrote Eveleth that what Poe had actually written was that this poem, and the dream which inspired it, occurred to him "soon after I knew you through Mrs. Osgood's description." She said she had cut out those last four words and sent it to someone wanting a sample of Poe's handwriting. (This alleged scrap of writing--who'd have dreamed it?--vanished.) She offered this same alibi to John H. Ingram, who appears to have politely ignored it.

Whatever else one might have to say about Sarah Helen Power Whitman, one certainly has to give the lady high credit for ingenuity. Or perhaps it was all simply thanks to the ether she was constantly inhaling.


(Poe & Griswold images: NYPL Digital Gallery)

The Facts in the Case of Mrs. Osgood and Mrs. Ellet

"'The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether.'
'Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which put you at fault,' said my friend."
-"The Purloined Letter"

As I have noted before, all of Poe's biographers accept as fact Sarah Helen Whitman's story (which she only began relating in the 1870s,) that a great scandal erupted when, while visiting the Poe household, Elizabeth Ellet happened to see--Whitman was never clear how--a letter written by Frances S. Osgood. Whitman never claimed to know, even in general terms, what this letter said, but she said it inspired Ellet to persuade Osgood to allow other ladies--Whitman thought they were Margaret Fuller and Anne Lynch--to call on Poe and insist that all Osgood's letters to him be placed in their hands.

It is deeply frustrating how no one questions this illogical and completely undocumented story. If this absurd scenario had actually happened, why would Osgood, in her "Reminiscences of Poe," make such a point of informing her readers that she and Poe kept up a correspondence during the year of their acquaintance? Wouldn't she be anxious that this correspondence--which, according to Whitman, had such embarrassing and scandalous consequences--be utterly forgotten? Osgood's eagerness to convince the world that she and Poe had at least written contact (she admitted that she was away from New York during most of the period that Poe lived there,) proves there was no contemporary scandal involving their letters--or anything else about their relationship.

And why would Osgood agree to make a public spectacle out of the issue of her private correspondence? If her letters to Poe were innocent, why make herself look guilty by demanding their return? If she did write something indiscreet, why would she agree to involve outside parties in the matter--parties who would undoubtedly spread the degrading details all over town?

What little evidence we have directly contradicts Whitman's account, and certainly none of the women supposedly involved ever hinted such a confrontation took place. Arthur Quinn and John Carl Miller have noted that when Lynch herself (whom Whitman cited as her source for the story) was asked about the scandal in the 1870s, she denied ever even having heard of such an episode. Lynch also wrote George W. Eveleth that aside from "a wide difference of opinion between us in reference to his treatment of another lady"--it is not clear if this was Mrs. Osgood or Mrs. Ellet--she knew nothing of Poe "that was discreditable or unworthy of his remarkable genius."

It is all too reminiscent of the Anna Blackwell saga. Whitman somehow learned some of the truth--that trouble ensued from Ellet seeing a particular letter written by Osgood, and that this somehow led to Poe revealing to the world that he possessed some sort of incriminating letters from Mrs. E--and, in her usual eccentric fashion, she built upon these facts to present the world with a completely erroneous scenario.

Our major clue to what really happened is a letter (now in the Boston Public Library's Griswold collection) Ellet wrote in July of 1846, in response to a (now lost) communication from Osgood. As it describes a version of events that renders Whitman's story an impossibility, it is worth scrutinizing in detail--a task Poe's biographers have yet to attempt. They tend to mention this letter only briefly--when they mention it at all--and it is invariably misinterpreted.

The letter indicated that Osgood had written to Ellet complaining of being "misrepresented and traduced." She apparently denied having even written the letter that had started the whole controversy, as Ellet responded to her self-defense by eagerly agreeing that "The letter shown me by Mrs. Poe must have been a forgery, and any man capable of offering to show notes he never possessed, would not, I think, hesitate at such a crime." In other words, Osgood was now claiming that the letter Virginia Poe had shown Ellet, and which had caused Ellet to express hostility towards Osgood, was a fraud devised by the Poes themselves. Fanny Osgood, as even her partisan biographer Mary De Jong admitted, was a woman who "generally set about having her own way." She was certainly having it now--at the direct expense of Edgar Poe and his wife.

It is amazing how the significance of this has been completely ignored. Osgood, after both the Poes were dead, portrayed herself as their devoted friend. While they lived, however, she deliberately led a mutual enemy to pretend they were forgers in an effort to disengage from a dispute she herself had instigated. That alone says all one needs to know about the real Frances Sargent Osgood--and her true feelings for the Poes. It also proves that the letter Ellet was deliberately shown--not, as Whitman claimed, "just happened" to see lying about the Poe house--was no love-letter. If it had been, Virginia would have been the last person in the world to display it to anyone. And Ellet, a sophisticated married woman whose own morals were hardly irreproachable, would not describe a mere love-letter as containing "fearful paragraphs" that "haunted me day and night like a terrifying spectre." She could only be describing a letter that was some sort of attack or exposure--one which Virginia used to confront her. (Incidentally, considering that Virginia Poe was the one to reveal the contents of this letter, Osgood may well have addressed it to her. There is nothing in Ellet's letter that reveals whether this troublesome document was sent to Mr. or Mrs. Poe.)

Ellet would not have been so ready to go along with Osgood's witless efforts to disown the letter if it had not affected her personally. Also, she would certainly not be in a position to agree that the letter's contents were false unless they directly concerned herself. And, of course, in regard to Whitman's version of events, Osgood could hardly have agreed to request the return of letters she was now claiming never to have written.

Ellet assured Osgood that Poe would not now "dare to work further mischief with the letter," and that he was so personally disgraced that any "verbal calumnies" he made against either of them would be discredited. That statement is further proof that Osgood's letter was an assault upon Ellet. The reference to "verbal calumnies" clearly implies that this letter consisted of "written calumnies" of some sort. (Ellet's letter also contradicts another element of Whitman's story by indicating that whatever letter or letters Osgood had written were still in the possession of the Poes.)

It is also interesting that Ellet referred to Poe as speaking disparagingly not just of herself, but of Osgood as well. Whatever the exact content may have been of the vicious stories Ellet was circulating against Osgood and Poe, if she had helped spread gossip about a romance, she would hardly describe Poe as uttering "calumnies" against both of them. (And here, for once, she was speaking the truth. Two months before Ellet wrote this letter, Horace Greeley commented, in an obvious reference to these two women, that Poe had recently "scandalized"--i.e. insulted--a pair of well-known literary ladies.)

Ellet wrote that she will "preserve utter silence in future on the subject"--she avoided saying precisely what "the subject" was--only saying, should others mention Osgood's name "in connection with it" that Osgood had been "traduced, wrongfully." This, again, disproves the idea that some sexual scandal involving Osgood and Poe was making the rounds. Ellet assumed that discussion of "the subject"--obviously, Ellet's feud with Poe, which broke into open warfare when he declared that she had written him some sort of compromising letters--would not necessarily involve references to Osgood. Ellet went on to decry "the falsehoods told by the Poes" about her--again, she is clearly not describing any love letters written by another woman. (And if Poe had possessed any embarrassing letters from Ellet, would she, as Whitman alleged, seek to make an issue about another lady's correspondence?)

Ellet assured Osgood that she had "no unkind feeling toward Mr. Osgood for what he said under mistaken impressions against me. Some of the things that reached me were too terrible to repeat, but even at the time I felt sure he was not willfully wronging me, and I rest in your assurance that he will not do so, now that he knows the truth."

This is another key statement. Samuel Osgood had clearly been repeating his wife's denunciations of Ellet, and she presumed now that "he knows the truth"--that the letter Virginia Poe displayed was a "forgery"--he will hold his peace. Surely, if the letter Mrs. Poe revealed was a mere indiscreet note from Mrs. Osgood, Frances' husband would hardly have cause for denouncing Ellet in the matter. He would be angry at his wife--or Poe--or Poe's wife and her bizarre desire to publicize her husband's flirtations--not some innocent bystander.

Ellet sighed that it was "most unfortunate both for you and me that we ever had any acquaintance with such people as the Poes--but I trust the evil is now at an end. Heaven sends such trials as merciful warnings--let us accept and profit by them." (This statement showed that Osgood obviously shared her anger towards Poe and his wife.) She closed in this same somewhat menacing vein with the pious hope that God will guard Osgood from future "danger."

Their collusion in blaming Mr. and Mrs. Poe for all their difficulties produced only a temporary truce. In January of 1849, Rufus Griswold wrote a friend that Ellet had quarrelled with, and been "cut" by many people in New York, including Mrs. Osgood. What caused the resumption of hostilities is not clear, but the New York literati--a crowd that would have made the Borgias blush--needed little reason to slash at each other. As Poe was long out of both those women's lives by that point, it seems unlikely that he was a factor in their later disputes. Be that as it may, in a sense, it was a great pity that the friendship between Mesdames Ellet and Osgood failed to last. The two certainly deserved each other.

***A footnote: Among Rufus Griswold's papers in the Boston Public Library is a very curious memorandum he wrote sometime in the 1850s, detailing his own ongoing war with Elizabeth Ellet. It is unknown to whom this memo was written, and his purpose in writing it is also unclear. This memo described a showdown he allegedly had with Ellet either in 1849 or 1850--his dating of the meeting is inconsistent--about "calumnies" (unspecified, but evidently concerning the 1846 fracas involving Poe) she was spreading about Frances Osgood. (This claim, incidentally, smacks of "cover story." An 1849 letter of Osgood's to her mother proves that in actuality, damaging gossip was then circulating about Osgood and Griswold himself--not Poe. Not even Elizabeth Ellet would bother to recycle old tittle-tattle everyone had already heard featuring a man Osgood had not even seen for years.) According to Griswold, he threatened to publish Ellet's letter to Osgood if she did not cease her smear campaign.

Although many of Poe's biographers repeat his account without question, there are--as usual with Griswold--problems with his story. First of all, he characterized Ellet's letter as one of "apology" and "confession," that she wrote only after Samuel Osgood threatened to sue her on his wife's behalf. Ellet's letter itself indicated that she only wrote in response to an olive branch from Mrs. Osgood, where she repudiated the letter shown to Ellet by Virginia Poe. Ellet's tone is self-justifying, not apologetic, (she even wrote that if Frances herself could have seen the letter Virginia displayed, "you would not wonder I regarded you as I did.") There would be no reason for Ellet to fear the publication of a letter where she painted herself as innocent victim of the scheming, evil Mr. and Mrs. Poe. There is no other indication that Mr. Osgood threatened any lawsuit, and it is impossible to believe that he would compound scandal and do incalculable additional damage to his wife's reputation by dragging everyone's dirty laundry out into a public court. Ellet's letter itself showed that Samuel was indeed saying "terrible" things about her, but it also revealed that Ellet assumed that Frances' husband now felt he had "wronged" her. (And, in any case, as Sidney P. Moss noted in another context, the mores of the time forbade a gentleman from suing a lady--even as equivocal a lady as Elizabeth Ellet.)

As I say, we do not know Griswold's reason for recording this story (which he never made public,) unless it was simply the fact that at the time he wrote this memo, he and Ellet were in a lively competition to see who could make the most venomous accusations against the other. (Their feud always reminds me of Henry Kissinger's famous remark about the 1980s Iran/Iraq war: "It's a pity they can't both lose.") Whatever his motivation, this anecdote involving the Ellet letter can only be taken as yet another example of his strange and nebulous relationship with reality.



(Images: New York Public Library.)

Marginalia

In analyzing the relationship between Edgar Allan Poe and "Annie" Richmond, one little-known, but interesting fact stands out: Among her circle, she was known to be what we now would call a "literary groupie." Prominent writers were the pop stars of that era, and Mrs. Richmond revelled in the reflected intellectual glamour she felt she gained from their company. One gets the suspicion that if she had never met Poe, she would have been equally happy to become close to anyone of equal renown.

As a matter of fact, there is an extremely strange message Mrs. Richmond wrote Mrs. Clemm in 1854. (Now in Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Library.) It is one long, rambling, incoherent love letter about Nathaniel P. Willis, one of the most commercially popular American writers of his time. "Annie" did not know Willis, but she was aware that Mrs. Clemm did, and she was clearly angling for Poe's aunt to arrange an introduction. (It is an amusing irony that several people who knew both Poe and Willis--including Charles F. Briggs, Marie Shew Houghton, and James Russell Lowell--asserted that Poe thought little of Willis' writings and despised him personally.)

In her usual breathless, hyper-emotional style, Mrs. Richmond wailed, "how I do pity Mr. Willis, & I am sure, I love him more than ever--oh how I wish I were his sister, & I would love him so dearly..." She goes on to call Willis "one of my idols, for you know Muddie, I always told you, that I longed to see Mr. Willis more than any other human being...he who has ever touched the most sacred & the deepest recesses in my heart...I do, pray for him, & to pray Heaven to send him comfort, & to surround him with gentle and loving spirits, such as he knows so well, how to appreciate & enjoy...Why I almost worship him, his name is connected, with my earliest & sweetest remembrances, & I learned to love him, as soon as I learned to read..."

Nowadays, letters like this about celebrities usually get the writer slapped with a restraining order.

******

For years prior to her death in 1878, Sarah Helen Whitman sent extracts from the letters she claimed to have received from Poe to many of her correspondents. Mrs. Whitman believed--with complete sincerity, so far as anyone could tell--that these rather horrifying letters illustrated not only the nobility of Poe's nature, but his profound bond with herself. (It is a completely un-amusing irony that these letters--as well as the similar missives provided by Annie Richmond--have instead usually been used as proof that Poe was going mad in his last years.)

The recipients of these extracts were generally either too polite or too sycophantic to contradict her. There was, however, at least one exception. In 1872, she sent the poet Richard Henry Stoddard, who had written what she felt was an unsatisfactory magazine article about Poe, copies of some of her precious letters. Whitman claimed the letters would cause Stoddard to see Poe in a more sympathetic light.She made a grave miscalculation. Whitman passed on to Stoddard the notorious letter that depicted Poe, as part of his wooing, declaring to her that when he married Virginia, he knew he was sacrificing his own happiness. After reading this letter, Stoddard told her frankly that he found the implied assertion that Poe had not loved his wife very disturbing, and he hoped the dead poet had not been truthful. Stoddard had had no real acquaintance with Poe, but he knew many people who had, and he stated in print that all of them, including Poe's enemies, testified that whatever his faults may have been, Poe's obvious love for Virginia was a true "bright spot in his character." Stoddard made it quite clear that he believed this letter simply lied about Poe's marriage.

Whitman's reaction to this negative feedback was interesting. She went completely to pieces. Among her papers in the University of Indiana's Lilly Library is an unfinished rough draft of her response to Stoddard. Its sheer incoherence is testimony to her inability to handle any challenge to her carefully crafted illusions.

"I am sorry," she wrote, "that you condemn him for what he said to me of his marriage. He did not say that he did not love her but that he married exclusively for her happiness. Assuredly he loved & very dearly her but doubtlessly he [the following section in bold was crossed out] was as a sister & a child rather doubtless felt that she could not enrich his life with felt there could be little reciprocity of thought or life between them. Again, it was not in his first letter that he said this but it was in defending himself against some implied charge a passage contained in my letter which had deeply pained & wounded him & for which he [word illegible] & he had no sooner said it than condemned himself for the admission."

What comes out most clearly from this letter--aside from her obvious agitation--is that Whitman really did not know what Poe's true relationship with his wife had been. Or perhaps she did not want to know. As was so often the case when discussing Poe, she retreated into contradiction and unfounded theorizing. One has to wonder if she ever really knew the first thing about him.

Whatever she eventually actually sent Stoddard in defense of these letters had little effect. After her death, Stoddard published an article where he expressed his disgust with the "Poe letters" he had read. He reiterated that the letters were remarkably insincere, dishonest, and strained, and it astounded him that Mrs. Whitman appeared to put a near-religious faith in them.

For her part, Mrs. Whitman never forgave Stoddard's disparaging remarks. Several years later, she sent copies of these same letters to John Henry Ingram (it appears, however, that Stoddard's reaction taught her to omit the passage referring to Poe's marriage.) She told Ingram haughtily that she was sure he would appreciate them, unlike Stoddard, who, she seethed, had dismissed them as "very curious, very curious, indeed." Her correspondence with Ingram is peppered throughout with complaints against Stoddard, all clearly stemming from her continual resentment over his failure to duly applaud her relationship with Poe. (Ingram, for his part, avoided directly commenting on these "Poe letters." In his biography of Poe, he could only gingerly--or rather, queasily--describe these epistles as "idiosyncratic." Worse still, from Whitman's point of view, Ingram wound up asserting--in print--his conviction that Poe had never really loved "Helen.")

**A footnote: Kenneth Silverman's "Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance"--a book I always pick up whenever I need a good laugh--published portions of this draft letter of Whitman's quoted above. However, in his usual muddled fashion, Silverman rather vaguely depicted these lines as Mrs. Whitman directly quoting remarks Poe supposedly made to her. In other words, Silverman led his readers to assume that Whitman's baseless speculations about Poe's feelings for Virginia were actually statements from Poe's own mouth. This is a fine example of why the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore commented that Silverman's book "...has been much derided in academic Poe circles..." and that it "suffers badly from a deep bias against Poe, a silly preoccupation with discredited psycho-analytical approaches, a convenient oversimplification of the subject matter and an inadequate identification in the text of its rather selective sources. Read it if you must, but take what it offers with large doses of skepticism."

Amen to that.