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)

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.

In Which Undine Actually Has a Good Word For Someone

"History is full of calumnies, of calumnies that can never be effaced."
-Henry Hallam

S.S. Osgood self-portrait

Frances S. Osgood's husband has been as unfairly slandered as she has been unjustly championed. Samuel Stillman Osgood has, in recent years, acquired a reputation as a philanderer whose affairs with other women and careless neglect of his wife drove the couple into estrangement, and Frances herself into the waiting arms of Edgar Allan Poe.

There is not a word of truth to any of it. Sam's unpleasant reputation all stems from "scholar" Thomas O. Mabbott, a man who, throughout his long and influential academic career, was to Poe studies what the Black Plague was to the 14th century. It is largely thanks to Mabbott and his ilk--and those biographers who blindly repeat everything they wrote--that so much of what passes for Poe "scholarship" is, in fact, unfounded gossip-mongering. According to Mabbott, Mr. Osgood had a fling of some sort in 1842 with a Providence, RI woman named Elizabeth Newcomb. The ever-creative "scholar" built upon that claim to imagine that Sam continued his womanizing ways, and pointed to an 1844 poem Frances published, "Lower to the Level"--which Mabbott misquoted--as proof that she was then separated from her husband. (Even though the poem did not even imply anything of the sort, Mabbott imagined this gave him the right to picture the worst about her relationship with Poe, which commenced soon afterwards.) John Evangelist Walsh later took the wheel from Mabbott's fantasy vehicle and ran it straight into a roadside ditch with his infamous 1980 "book," "Plumes In the Dust," where he made the astounding (and completely undocumented) claim that since the Osgoods were, as Walsh's friend Mabbott claimed, estranged during 1845, who else but Poe could have fathered the child Mrs. Osgood conceived in the autumn of that year?



History is full of fallacies, but one seldom sees a case where so much has been built upon such a completely nonexistent foundation. In fact, when closely studied, the entire process of how the modern-day Poe/Osgood legend was built takes on an air of deliberate misrepresentation that looks positively sinister. To begin with, Samuel Osgood was no philanderer. The Elizabeth Newcomb story--which is the sole basis for the claim--rests upon an 1842 letter written by her mother to the girl's brother, Charles King Newcomb. In this letter, Mrs. Newcomb mentions that Mr. Osgood, who (along with his wife) was then living in Providence, was frequently visiting her daughter. As Elizabeth Newcomb was then a tubercular invalid, these calls could hardly have been of an amorous nature. And Mrs. Newcomb's letter makes it clear that her reference to her daughter's married "gentleman callers" was of a casually facetious nature. That is the first and last we hear of Mr. Osgood and Miss Newcomb. No one has uncovered any valid hint that during his marriage, Sam Osgood took the slightest interest in any woman other than his wife.

To put it simply, no evidence exists to show the Osgoods were ever estranged, during 1845 or any other time. Sam's work as a painter caused him to travel frequently to execute commissions, but "separation," does not automatically translate into "marital trouble." In fact, his wife and children occasionally accompanied him on his travels, (it is documented that he was with his wife in Connecticut during May 1845 and probably in Providence in the summer and fall of that year,) and he and Frances kept up (from the examples we have) an extremely affectionate correspondence during his absences.

Samuel Osgood may have been a bit dim (and a truly awful poet,) but all the evidence we have shows him to have been a decent and likable person who was a devoted husband and father.

A further note about the Osgood's marriage: Nearly all of the poetry Frances supposedly wrote "to" or "about" Poe has gained that attribution purely through modern-day unsupported guesswork. (It is grimly amusing how Frances Osgood's biographer Mary De Jong can calmly write that Osgood's poetry "appropriated conventions from literary annuals and magazines," describe her "skill in creating personae," comment that "even some of the writings presented as non-fiction incorporate fictive elements and veils," and note how many of her later poems followed "the central story of nineteenth-century literature, the affinity of lovers who cannot share their lives on earth but whose souls will be forever united in heaven," and then--urge us to see Osgood's late-1840s poems as a way of gaining insights to her relationship with Poe!)

Seen clearly and objectively, Osgood's writings tell us nothing about Poe. However, if we wish to interpret all of Frances' verses and short stories as expressions of her private life, as Mabbott, Walsh, De Jong, et al, are so anxious to do, the following poem should be noted. Unlike her alleged "Poe poems," this is open autobiography, a clear statement of her true feelings, and it tells a story that is, as the lawyers say, dispositive. It demolishes the commonly-held belief that she was deeply emotionally involved with the famous poet.

Early in 1849, Samuel Osgood, like so many people, traveled to California hoping to bolster his shaky fortunes by striking it rich in the Gold Rush. His absence, coupled with Frances' close personal and professional relationship with Rufus W. Griswold, unsurprisingly fostered some very ugly gossip. Soon after Samuel's homecoming a year later, his wife published a poem titled "The Return":

"No summer came while he was gone; but sooner than I thought,
The blissful balm and bloom of Spring, his sunny presence brought.
Worn, weary, wasted with long grief--the Faith that never died
Through all that suffering, glows again, now he is by my side.
My brave, beloved wanderer! he came to make me light,
And with a sudden morn of joy, flushed all the fearful night.
Ah! Pain, Misfortune, Care, no more your flying steps I fear;
His love has drawn a magic ring--ye cannot enter here!

Mean Envy! while your serpent speech winds hissing from those lips.
The pearls and flowers, Affection speaks, your keenest words eclipse;
Wild Hate, the child of Love disdained, yet mourned with pitying tears,
You cannot harm or fright me now--go rave to other ears;
False Slander, turn and sting yourself!--ours is a charmed sphere;
His love has drawn the magic ring--ye dare not enter here!

Sweet friends! beloved and loving ones--the gifted, pure, and true!
To heart and hearth a welcome warm!--we still have room for you,
When, scared by evil eyes--too frail to cope with coarser foes--
Your cherished one shrank mutely back, in Truth's unreached repose,
Ye did not shrink--but shamed them down to coward Falsehood's fear;
Come, enter Love's enchanted ring--you're always welcome here!"

These touching, pitiful lines--which have a realism and sincerity absent from any of her so-called "Poe poems"--singlehandedly destroy the idea that she ever had any serious extramarital entanglement, with Poe or anyone else. Aside from this poem's demonstration of her deep love and emotional need for her husband, it shows how sensitive Frances Osgood was to public opinion. She was by all accounts an immature, fragile, deeply insecure, and dependent personality who could not bear being the target of gossip or criticism. (It is a curious thing that some modern writers, such as De Jong and John May in his contemptible novel "Poe & Fanny," have tried to portray Frances as a bold proto-feminist heroine, when in truth, the poor woman was a high-strung bundle of neuroses.) Such a person, especially one who was a literary celebrity, would never purposefully risk getting the worst possible censure for a woman of her time and position--the accusation of being a morally "loose" female.

In "The Literati of New York City," Poe said of Mrs. Osgood that "Her character is daguerreotyped in her works--reading the one we know the other." If that was the case, Frances Sargent Locke Osgood was superficial, with some sprightly charm that was merely skin-deep, histrionic, childishly careless, clever rather than truly intelligent, fanciful rather than imaginative, mawkishly sentimental, intensely conventional, concerned with building a beautiful private fantasy world rather than dealing with ugly reality, and pathetically anxious to favorably impress. All those qualities undoubtedly sometimes led her into situations that, to the outside world, could appear suspicious or incriminating. They were also qualities that made her the last woman in the world to be deliberately disloyal to a loved and loving husband.

The "Penn," the "Stylus," and Poe (Part Two)

"As for the mob--let them talk on. I should be grieved if I thought they comprehended me here."
-Edgar Allan Poe, letter to P.P. Cooke, Sept. 21, 1839

If Poe needed a cautionary tale, he did not have to look any farther than James McHenry. McHenry's story provides a chilling parallel to Poe's own career. Like Poe, he was a poet and critic who dared to expose the literary Mafia for what it was. In 1832, he published in the "American Quarterly Review" an article entitled "American Lake Poetry." It noted that American poets were conducting wholesale plagiarism of the British Lake poets, and, instead of being criticized for their thievery, these writers received blind praise from "pretended friends and sciolous editors," and "hireling puffers"--critical prostitutes who wrote laudatory notices of any author willing to pay for the privilege. McHenry named names, attacking such favored members of the New York literati as Nathaniel P. Willis, William Cullen Bryant, and James Gates Percival.

The article roused a fierce counterattack in virtually all the leading US periodicals of the time. At least one New York paper suggested--or, rather, threatened--that the "Quarterly Review" might be forced to shut down as a result of McHenry's expose. No one denied a word McHenry said--they were merely outraged that he had tipped-off the public that they were being manipulated into embracing inferior literature.

McHenry--as in the case of Poe a few years later--became a pariah. As in the case of Poe, he was publicly attacked, not just as an author, but as a man. As in the case of Poe, vicious satires appeared in print caricaturing him and ridiculing his writings. As in the case of Poe, articles appeared about him containing blatant lies. As Sidney P. Moss noted, the McHenry scandal illustrated the literary milieu of the time: "...the violent sectional antagonisms, the personal malice which vitiated impartiality of criticism, the cavalier resort to invective and lies, and the not at all infrequent use of an ostensibly critical article to assault a critic of an opposing camp."

Unlike Poe, however, McHenry was not capable of effective counterattacks. He quickly retired from the field in defeat. Poe was well aware of the history of his predecessor's downfall, and it says everything about Poe's determination and moral courage--this man who is so often depicted as a sniveling weakling--that with McHenry's fearful example before him, he remained resolved to not only follow in his footsteps, but outdo him in exposing the shoddy state of American literature. In the January 1842 "Graham's," Poe described McHenry as "the victim of a most shameful cabal in this country..." When McHenry died in 1845, Poe published a heartfelt eulogy in the "Broadway Journal." He described his fellow critic as a martyr who "fell victim to the arts of a clique which proceeded, in the most systematic manner, to write him down--not scrupling, either, to avow the detestable purpose."

If the "cliques" could do all that to a mere McHenry, what might they unleash upon a Poe?

These "cliques" recognized early on that Poe had the talent, the drive, and the courage to be a terrible opponent to have, should he ever achieve a position of power in the publishing industry. (The vicious hysteria of the attacks on him in the New York press from at least as early as 1836 is instructive.) Naturally, these people--beginning with the likes of Lewis Gaylord Clark and Theodore Fay, and continuing right up to Hiram Fuller, Charles F. Briggs, Thomas Dunn English, Horace Greeley, Rufus W. Griswold, and the Transcendentalists Poe too-effectively mocked--were determined that he would never obtain that power.
There are some hints that his original plans to launch "The Stylus" were somehow sabotaged by his enemies. Shortly after Clarke's sudden and unexplained withdrawal from the project, John Tomlin, a correspondent of Poe's with ties to various Philadelphia literati, wrote him lamenting that "the devilish machinations of a certain clique in Philadelphia had completely baulked your laudable designs..." (It is possible that if these "machinations" existed, Clarke may have responded in some inept or cowardly fashion, explaining the "idiocy" of Clarke's that Poe later described.) Tomlin's quote is curiously similar in tone to a letter Poe himself later wrote to Fitz-Greene Halleck about the "Broadway Journal," where he declared that, "On the part of one or two persons who are much imbittered [sic] against me, there is a deliberate attempt now being made to involve me in ruin, by destroying 'The Broadway Journal'..." For that matter, it may be that George R. Graham--described by Poe as a "very gentlemanly" but "weak" man--reneged on his initial semi-agreement to help Poe not, as Poe suggested, out of professional jealousy, but out of simple fear of allying himself with a man who had so many powerful antagonists.

If Poe ever appeared paranoid, it only proves the old adage that paranoia is merely a state of heightened awareness.

Unfortunately, only one or two of Poe's biographers, most notably Sidney P. Moss and Nigel Barnes (Barnes' "A Dream Within a Dream" has many drawbacks, but he got this much right,) have noted that a good many of Poe's failures and apparent personal flaws were actually the result of this--there is no other way to describe it--organized persecution.

It can never be known how much of this persecution, as opposed to a truly devilish bad luck, was responsible for Poe's failure to obtain the one thing that could have saved his career, and perhaps even his life. Conspirators and general evil-doers are not in the habit of leaving road-maps behind them for the benefit of future historians. But it certainly cannot be ignored as a factor. The last thing his powerful--and numerous--enemies in the "cliques" wanted was for their chief bête noire to obtain a forum where he could for once express himself fully to a wide audience. It could have very well have been the death knell of their reign of terror over American literature.

The "Penn," the "Stylus," and Poe (Part One)

"Never pursue literature as a trade."
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The great ambition of Edgar Allan Poe's professional life was to have the means to run a magazine of his own design. His failure to do so is one of the major "what-ifs" in his eerily unlucky life, as well as one of its mysteries.

The question of why he failed to achieve this goal is one that his biographers have never been able to fully explain. His plans to establish a publication of his own appeared to fail at different times, for different reasons, but the details remain oddly obscure.

Poe first seriously pursued founding a magazine in 1840. He was increasingly exasperated with his job as editor of "Burton's Magazine," and he had come to personally despise his employer, William Burton. His unpleasant experience with Burton (and earlier, with Thomas W. White's "Southern Literary Messenger,") led him to the logical conclusion that the only way he could prosper in the literary world was if he gained some measure of autonomy over his own career. As he wrote to a Robert T. Conrad early in 1841, "I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance) but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves."

In June 1840, Poe published in the Philadelphia "Saturday Courier" an announcement that his new magazine, to be called the "Penn," would appear on the first day of the next year. The prospectus explained that "in founding a magazine of my own lies my sole chance of carrying out to completion whatever peculiar intentions I may have entertained." He promised a publication that would deal in "absolutely independent criticism--a criticism self-sustained; guiding itself only by the purest rules of Art; analyzing and urging these rules as it applies them; holding itself aloof from all personal bias; acknowledging no fear save that of outraging the right; yielding no point either to the vanity of the author or to the assumptions of antique prejudice, or to the involute and anonymous cant of the Quarterlies, or to the arrogance of those organized cliques which, hanging like nightmares upon American literature, manufacture, at the nod of our principal booksellers, a pseudo-public-opinion by wholesale."

Unfortunately, Poe was seriously ill at the beginning of 1841 (it is one of the myriad strange factors of his strange life that he tended to fall sick at particularly inopportune moments.) He was forced to delay his plans, but still hoped the first issue of the "Penn" would appear in March. He continued industriously petitioning everyone he knew for support.

A rash of bank suspensions, however, made it impossible to acquire capital. He considered using money pledged by subscribers to launch publication, but was dissuaded by one of his correspondents, who pointed out that relying on distant subscribers would not only cost him a great deal (in those days, postal rates were gauged by distance,) but he could not rely on these customers to pay promptly--if at all. Such a scheme had been attempted before, his would-be-backer noted, and had always failed. Having no choice but to suspend his plans--he assured a friend that the "Penn" was "scotched, not killed"--he instead accepted George Rex Graham's request for him to join the editorial staff of his eponymous new magazine. Poe had hopes that, in return, Graham would join him in establishing another publication under Poe's design and control.

Although, unlike with White and Burton, Poe's personal relations with Graham remained largely friendly (after Poe's death, Graham wrote two of the more interesting early defenses of his former employee,) their business association soon floundered, with Poe leaving "Graham's" in the spring of 1842. His reasons for resigning were varied. His pay--$800 a year--was almost insultingly small, considering "Graham's" sharp rise in circulation during his tenure. (His replacement, Rufus W. Griswold, received a far higher salary.) Poe was also increasingly disgusted with what he described as the "namby-pamby" character of the publication, calling particular attention to "the contemptible pictures, fashion-plates, music, and love-tales." (Incidentally, anyone who peruses old copies of "Graham's" must think that Poe spoke with great restraint.) Poe had also lost hope of enlisting Graham's backing for his own magazine. He claimed that he had unwittingly sabotaged himself: He had made such a success of "Graham's" that his employer feared having him at the helm of a rival venture. These additional frustrations clearly intensified his old eagerness to be his own master.

In January 1843, he formed a partnership with the publisher of Philadelphia's "Sunday Museum," Thomas Cottrell Clarke, to launch a magazine that was now to be called "The Stylus." However, after the usual strange and only partially-explained misadventures one comes to associate with Poe's history (most notably his famously disastrous trip to Washington D.C. that March,) the planned joint venture was abandoned by spring.

Different reasons have been proposed for this latest failure, none of them satisfactory. It has been suggested that the widespread chatter of Poe's drinking bouts and general unreliability (chatter, interestingly enough, that always seem to intensify whenever his magazine plans looked like they would come to fruition,) gave Clarke cold feet about entering a business partnership with him. There is nothing to indicate this was the case. Indeed, Clarke afterwards always made a point of praising Poe highly, as a talent and as a man. It is also theorized that the general economic uncertainty of those times, as well as his sudden personal financial problems, discouraged Clarke from launching a costly and risky enterprise. Poe himself left little record of his feelings about what must have been a particularly galling disappointment. About all we have from him on the matter was his bitter words to James Russell Lowell that "I have been deprived, though the imbecility, or rather through the idiocy of my partner, of all means of prosecuting it for the present."

After this episode, Poe was forced to put his plans on hold, but he was fiercely determined to never abandon them. Even the Greek tragedy known as the "Broadway Journal" failed to discourage him. In 1846 he told a correspondent: "Touching 'The Stylus'--this is the one great purpose of my literary life. Undoubtedly (unless I die) I will accomplish it--but I can afford to lose nothing by precipitancy...I wish to establish a journal in which the men of genius may fight their battles; upon some terms of equality, with those dunces the men of talent."

Thanks in no small part to the various public and private vicissitudes Poe suffered from 1846-48, he was unable to do much more than daydream about his life's great ambition until the winter of 1848, when a resident of Oquawka, Ill. named E.H.N. Patterson contacted him. Patterson was a great admirer of Poe's, and conceived the notion of publishing a magazine that would be under Poe's sole editorial control.

Reading between the lines, it is clear that Poe was highly skeptical about placing his hopes with a non-literary man he had never heard of, from a small western town undoubtedly equally unknown. (It took him four months to answer Patterson's initial query.) He continued to correspond with the stranger until his death settled the matter for them both, but this proposal would most likely have proved as chimerical as all the earlier ones.

If Poe had succeeded in establishing his "dream magazine," it would not only have provided him with professional satisfaction, and a forum to combat his many powerful literary enemies, but financial stability as well. If he had ever achieved the last goal in particular, its effects on his life as a whole would have been incalculable. It can be assumed that if, when Poe first formulated his plans in the very early 1840s, he had succeeded in gaining a steady, comfortable income, not only would he have benefited emotionally and physically, but his wife Virginia would have as well. It is arguable that her life would have been prolonged, perhaps by years, and Poe himself might well not have died--under whatever strange circumstances--at the early age of forty. At the very least, if Virginia had lived, Poe's last two years would certainly have been far different from the surreal demolition derby that characterized his brief time as a widower. Given a healthier, happier, longer life, who knows what else he might have contributed to literature?

How did this entire debacle come to pass? From his "Southern Literary Messenger" days, the publishing world recognized Poe as a formidable force. His brilliance as a writer was unquestioned, his success at the various publications where he worked acknowledged and respected. If he had been able to work such wonders at magazines where he had, so to speak, one hand tied behind his back, it is only logical that, given a completely free hand, he could have utterly transformed the world of literature. Many writers less admired, and with far inferior track records, had had the chance to start their own publications. Why not Poe?

Perhaps at least part of the answer lies in this recognition of his enormous potential for success, should he ever be given the opportunity. It goes far too frequently unnoticed that in his day, Poe was hated because he was feared. From the beginning of his career, he--as he stated in his "Penn" prospectus--openly made it his mission to destroy the stranglehold a small number of coteries held over American literature. There was a tightly-knit handful of people (largely in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston) who controlled the entire field of letters. If you were "in" with them, their journals and publishing houses, as well as those of their minions, enthusiastically promoted your work to the public, with little regard for merit. If you were not part of this charmed circle, you were ignored. And if you tried to enlighten the outside world about what was going on, they destroyed you.

In Part Two: The Fate of a Poe Precursor.

Quote of the Day

"What was true the brilliant intellect of Edgar Poe never failed to perceive. What was beautiful his soul recognized at first blush, and loved for its kinship. Guided by these, his conscience was rarely in fault upon points of right. An instinctive self-respect, over which he had no control, forbade his ever seeking the lenient judgment of the many by explaining circumstances or appearances, which, unexplained, he knew must be construed against him. The world has little charity for any; for one who spurns its sympathy, none; and he who contemns its tribunal invariably receives the extreme visitations of its vengeance. As no judgment can be more erroneous, so none is more dictatorially given, or, when given, more persistently ultimate. Poe spurned that sympathy and received therefor the minimum of its meagre charity and the maximum of its profuse condemnation. A morbid sensibility impelled him to seek rather than avoid such occasions. He enjoyed the luxury of being misunderstood."
-James Wood Davidson, "Russell's Magazine," Nov. 1857

Davidson did not know Poe, but he knew a number of people who did, including Maria Clemm. He had been planning to write a book about Poe, but most unfortunately all his papers were lost when his Southern home was destroyed during the Civil War. It's a great loss, as his "Russell's" article hints that such a biography might have been well worth reading. I've often wondered if the above quote might not provide a clue to explain much about Poe's life and conduct that is otherwise virtually inexplicable.

Elsewhere in this same article, Davidson quoted a letter he received from a friend of Poe's, a man Davidson identified only as "A gentleman of New York City, a scholar and a litterateur, as widely known as American literature itself." Whoever this man may have been, he made a statement that serves as a poignant coda for the late poet's strange career.

Said this anonymous friend: "I honestly regard the calumnies, to which you allude, as unqualified falsehoods...His scorn of baseness was immense, and as he gave unsparing expression to it, all 'the baser sort' feared and hated him. In his later days he was a sick lion, and the donkeys came and kicked him--him at whose faintest roar they had formerly fled in terror."

Cornelius Mathews and "The Raven"

Cornelius Mathews (1817-1889) was a minor--very minor indeed--writer of his era. Poe did not respect Mathews' talent any more than anyone else did, but for reasons having to do with the tediously complicated literary politics of the 1840s, Poe felt it worth his while for a period to ally himself with Mathews and, more importantly, Mathews' closest friend Evert Duyckinck. Mathews himself left no lengthy or important descriptions of their acquaintance--his personal relations with the poet were evidently, as was the case with most people who knew Poe, of a distant nature. However, in the "Bachelor of Arts" magazine (1896) Mathews' niece, novelist and playwright Frances Aymar Mathews, published an account of how Poe came to write "The Raven," a story which she said her uncle had often related to her during her childhood.

Her tale has the overpowering aroma of apocrypha that suffuses most of the stories concerning Poe--I fear Miss Mathews let her theatrical background get the better of her--and there are several obvious errors in fact (for instance, Poe did not move to Amity Street until the latter part of 1845.) Still, it is a "quaint and curious" story, and as it has been largely ignored by Poe's biographers, I present it here as yet another example of "Raven-lore."

I intend someday to compile a list of all the reminiscences of people who said they watched Poe write/helped him write "The Raven." Just off the top of my head, I can think of at least a baker's dozen--all given in the same tone of highly detailed assurance that theirs was the true history of the poem, and all of them completely contradictory--and I'm sure there are more. (Has there ever been any other poem that has generated so much mythology?)

Says Miss Mathews:

One day when I was a child of twelve or thirteen I stood tiptoeing in my uncle's office, whither I had been taken for a treat to see how type was set up, my eye was caught by an engraving hung high over a lamp-bracket at one side of the chimney-place. It was the portrait of a man's face, dark, sad, proud, irresistible almost in the attraction of its deep eyes and the suggestive curve of the weak though haughty mouth. Underneath the picture was written in a beautiful, firm, small, even hand: "To my friend, Cornelius Mathews, from his devoted friend, Edgar Allan Poe."

"Is that the man who wrote 'The Raven'?" I asked, breathless in my gaze at the weird spiritual face, it seemed to me, flickering with suppressed life at that very moment, in the flare of the smoky little lamp below it.
My uncle nodded, picking out at the same moment a yellowed paper from a pile in his drawer and handing it to me.

It was part of a copy of the American Review for, I think, February, 1845, and in it I found "The Raven," signed "Quarles."

My uncle laid down his pen and wheeled his chair nearer to the fire. With the ancient bits of paper in my hands I sat down too on a little bench near him, feeling instinctively that a story was in the air. I always knew by his movements when he was going to "reminisce"; and as three or four years before I had plunged into the sweet, alluring stream of printers' ink by my small self, his memories of literary folk were my especial delight; and, well knowing it, he was always happy in gratifying my taste and curiosity.

"Do you want to know how 'The Raven' was written?" my uncle asked me, as I drew a bit nearer to him and the blaze.Of course I did; hungry for the eerie and the strange, I fairly shivered with delightful anticipation, then, over its first hearing, as I have many a time since when I have begged for its repetition at my uncle's lips.

It is because I have heard it so often that I am able to put down so accurately the picturesque little history of at least one of (if not the) inceptional phases of a poem that has run the gamut of the world and ensnared its every reader.

"It was in the winter of '44-45," began my uncle, "a drizzling night full of chill and murk, made more dismal by fitful glimpses of a full moon swirling amid billowing continents of clouds, appearing only to disappear, and shifty with freaks of an east wind that shivered against the lamp-posts and rattled the swinging signs all along Broadway. Broadway was not then what it is now, and on such a night years ago, the warm flare of the gas at the entrance to the Park Theater-the old Park Theater down yonder on Park row-seemed very attractive to a young man still in his twenties, and with a play of his own in his desk into which he had put his best."

"I crossed over and went in. Don't ask me what the play was or who were the players, child--I don't remember. What I do recollect is that I found Edgar Poe in the seat beside mine; we shook hands, we had known each other for some years by letter, and for some months face to face. Did he look like that picture up there? Very much, only there was in the almost alabaster whiteness of his skin, in the radiance of his eyes, a mystery of vividness, a supernaturalness of light, that no portrait traced by mere man's bands can reproduce."

"He spoke a little of his wife, after my inquiries; of her not being able to come out on a night like this; of his mother-in-law, of Willis, of Lowell, Mrs. Browning, and, drifting homeward, of ourselves. The actors came and went, the scenes shifted, the music played, the curtain was rung up and rung down a half a dozen times--bless your heart! yes, for in those days, long ago, a five-act tragedy, and a roaring farce, and a pas seul formed no unusual program--but of the stories the players told, Poe and I knew or noted but little."

"He was one of the most courteous and attentive listeners I ever encountered, and, with a delicacy and interest unbounded, he inquired as to the play I was then so intent upon. It was 'Witchcraft,' and as briefly as I could I outlined the plot to him. As I came to the close of the fourth act, depicting the anguish and horror of my hero Gideon on being convinced that his mother is in truth a witch, beholding as he does the signs in the elements and in the sky, Poe, his gaze fixed before him, said in his low, melodious voice, 'Mr. Mathews, why do you not at this point have a raven, that bird of ill-omen, flit across the stage over the witch's head?'"

"I told him that while the picturesqueness of the bird would be undeniable, the unity of the atmosphere would be disturbed by its introduction, that a raven in Salem town would never do."

"'Do you know,' he went on, his eyes still immovably riveted on the glowing space before him, his voice so low that it could not disturb even his next door neighbor, 'that that bird, that imp-bird, pursues me mentally, perpetually; I cannot rid myself of its presence; as I sit here I seem to hear the melancholy of its croak as I used to hear it in my boyish days at school in Stoke-Newington; I seem to hear the sordid flap of its wings in my ears.'"

"I turned and looked at him; I could see very plainly that both I and my drama had been left very far behind, that his brain was busy with some strange fantasy, and I kept silent."

"Presently he drew himself up, and folded his arms across his chest."

"'I wonder, Mr. Mathews,' he said, looking at me now squarely in the face, 'if Dickens has ever been haunted by the raven as I am; I wonder if the raven in Barnaby Rudge is his expression of the monotonous power the bird has had over his mind--what do you think?'""Candidly, I answered, from a long correspondence with Dickens, I take him to be a man so little inclined to the introspective, that his presentation of Barnaby's raven is likely to have been more for its effect than the result of a deep cause."

"'I see,' Poe responded; 'that is precisely it. Some men sway trifles, foibles, or events to their own shaping, others--' he shifted his gaze back to the space no doubt peopled by his fancies--'are swayed and swung hither and fro by whispers heard only by themselves.'"

"We talked much more, and on many themes about many people, issues, schemes, books, and friends, until the audience rising in a mass, we knew that the last curtain had fallen for that night. The orchestra played the overture to 'Amelie,' a long-forgotten opera, my dear, but famous in those times, and Poe and I went out with the light-hearted crowd."

"I saw by the steaming mist through the wide open doors that the night had not bettered any, and I put out my hand to touch my companion's arm, and bid him, under the shelter of my umbrella (I observed that he had none and but a thin overcoat), come across the street and join me for a hot oyster supper."

"But my hand met nothing, my friendly eyes and invitation were to be useless--Poe, like a spirit, had dissolved seemingly in the murk of the night and left me standing alone."

"I started out and searched everywhere about for him, well understanding his rare delicacy of feeling, which, half anticipating my hospitality, thus sought to elude it. I could not find him, so I went over and took my supper by myself."

"Half an hour later I came out, jumped into the omnibus, and away it went rattling over the wet cobble-stones--oh, yes, nothing smoother in those old days--up through the mirth of Broadway. But there was not much mirth about it that winter night, and the frost-king was laying his fingers on the rain as it fell and turning every drop into a glisten, every sidewalk into a pitfall of slippery uncomfortableness; the breath of the passengers--there were but three besides myself-steamed on the omnibus windows, the oil lamp flickered and shook as we bounced along, and I, pondering on the lamentable impracticability of introducing a raven into 'Witchcraft,' sat with my damp umbrella in my grasp, staring a bit vacantly, I imagined, out of the small spot in the pane opposite me which the third passenger had just obligingly rubbed clear with his coat-sleeve."

"We had reached Bleecker street, when there, in the circle of sickly yellow light under the lamp-post, I beheld Edgar Poe standing, writing on the margin of a paper, apparently utterly oblivious of everything around him."

"I pulled the strap and dashed out, and yet, even then something made me pause as I saw him, a something that shone, like the glitter of stars in a hot summer sky, in the depths of his gray eyes, a something that exuded from his white brow where the dark curls, gemmed with the frozen rain-drops, sparkled in the meager light of the almost deserted thoroughfare; but for an instant, when common-sense came to my aid, combined with common feeling for a man standing inviting disease in such weather as this--"

"'Poe!' I cried, touching him lightly on the shoulder, as I held the umbrella over his head."

"With a curious urbanity, a gentleness which yet spoke to me in other language and told me of his chagrin at being interrupted, he greeted me and thanked me, and said, answering my earnest queries as to why he had given me the slip and deprived me of the pleasure of his company at supper:"

"'I thank you very much; I could not have eaten, or drunk, or slept, or gone a step farther than this, or waited a moment longer than now.' (Poe then lived in Amity street, only a few blocks distant.)"

"'It is the Raven,' he went on, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead, and with his feet almost frozen in a puddle; with my umbrella beaten now this way, now that, by the fierceness of the wind; with the rumble of a solitary cart emphasizing the solitude; with the creaking of a board sign at the corner--Poe said in a hushed, strained voice, a voice where some pent-up, surging sorrow seemed slipping from his control:"

"'Let me read you a stanza or two here, now, will you ?'"

"'Go on,' I answered quickly, as eager as he in my attitude; truth to tell, the fantasy of his mood was communicated to me in force, and that freezing quarter of an hour in December, '44, I shall never forget. He began in a low monotone the well-known lines:"
'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
'Tis some visitor, I muttered, tapping at my chamber door--
Only this, and nothing more.
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December'

"At this word Poe stopped for a second and, raising his eyes, looked up to the impenetrable dome above him. The flicker of the lamplight caught the brilliancy of his eyes, augmenting it to something unfathomably effulgent. A blast keener and more cutting than any that had come before nearly turned the umbrella inside out, and made his slight figure sway against the post, while the paper fluttered in his fingers."

"As rapt as he, was I. The melody incomparable and the magic rhythm of 'The Raven' had seized upon my soul as tensely as it held his, and, reckless of the storm of the December night, I repeated, 'Go on, go on.'"

'Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate, dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Nameless here forevermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain'

"I have heard," said my uncle, stopping in his reading of the poem from the paper I held in my hand, "I have heard Poe himself recite that poem later on at Miss Lynch's; I have heard distinguished actors read it, but never have I heard such an effect produced by human voice as when its author stood there in the sweep of the storm and uttered it--I presume, for the first time in mortal hearing. I could detect the stir of the curtain; I could hear, too, the sob of a stricken soul in the cadence of that matchless line."

" He read on from the scrap of paper that he held as far as the words,"

'Perched, and sat, and nothing more.'

"when lack of mere physical strength, I believe, made him stop, and I came to a realizing sense of our surroundings and position."

"'It is cold,' he said with a slight tremor, while he looked half inquiringly at me."

"'The poem is superb, Mr. Poe,' I cried, ' but it is madness for us to stop out here in the street in the storm. Come home with me to my room, come!' And I linked my arm in his and attempted to lead him up Broadway.

"Poe rarely smiled, but then he did, a reluctant, flitting movement playing about his lips as he gently disengaged himself, saying:"

"'I cannot go home with you, Mr. Mathews. You know, Virginia is expecting me. Perhaps it is late,' vaguely looking around him and adding, 'If it is not late, will you come home with me and sit a while?'"

"I assented, merely meaning to go the few blocks with him to where he then lived, in Amity street; for I knew quite well that it was nearing two o'clock in the morning."

"We walked along together, and all the while his lips were framing snatches of the poem destined to win him immortality; more often the fatal refrain coming to my ears of"

'Quoth the Raven Nevermore.'

"We reached the steps of his residence, and then he turned and thanked me with the peculiar grace and charm of manner which in my acquaintance with him always distinguished Edgar Allan Poe, saying:"

"'Will you come in?'"

"'No,' I replied, 'surely not. Some other time; meantime, if I can serve you in any way let me know, and be sure to finish this Raven poem.'"

"With a melancholy sigh, the insensible, impalpable waft of a restless and imprisoned spirit, he said:"

"'I shall have to--it has not let me rest; it will not let me sleep until it is completed. Perhaps if I have once put it on paper the ill-omened fowl will quit my ear and leave me in peace.'"

"He pressed my hand, turned, went up the stoop, raising his eyes to an upper window as he disappeared."

"A light shone above, and against the film of the curtain I saw the slender, girlish figure I knew to be his wife's."

"Not many weeks after, my dear, I bought and read that very copy of 'The Raven' which I now give to you, and a little later it was the most admired, wondered over, and written of the productions of the day."


Bottom image: Dante Gabriel Rosetti, "The Raven."

The Riddle of Neilson Poe

The relationship between cousins Neilson and Edgar Poe is one of the many impenetrable mysteries in the latter's biography. Neilson, so far as can be documented, always treated his famous relative in a respectful, if not laudatory manner. As early as 1830, he wrote to his fiancee, Josephine Clemm (the half-sister of Edgar's future wife,) "Edgar Poe has published a volume of Poems one of which is dedicated to John Neal the great autocrat of critics--Neal has accordingly published Edgar as a Poet of great genius etc.--Our name will be a great one yet." In the years following Edgar's death, Neilson's comments about him, both public and private, continued to be consistently supportive. He appeared to treat Maria Clemm, now left alone in the world, with kindness and sympathy, for which she was quite grateful. He even planned to write Edgar's biography, but was described by a friend as too "dilatory" to ever complete the project.

In return, Edgar hated him, with a passion surpassed only by his loathing for Thomas Dunn English and Elizabeth Ellet. In his well-known and quite astonishing letter to Maria Clemm in August of 1835, he reacted to the news that Neilson and Josephine Poe had offered to provide a secure home for her daughter Virginia (and perhaps Maria as well) with what seems an inexplicable panic. He endeavored to convince his aunt that this apparently generous and benign offer from Virginia's sister and brother-in-law was really part of some sinister plot to permanently separate him from the girl he loved. "[W]hen Virginia goes with N. P....I shall never behold her again--that is absolutely sure." He spoke of the proposal as one that would inevitably bring misery, not only to him, but to Virginia as well: "I do sincerely believe that your comforts will for the present be secured--I cannot speak as regards your peace--your happiness." He regarded Mrs. Clemm's willingness to even listen to this plan as "cruel," a betrayal that "wounds me to the soul."

How did he arrive at the conviction that Neilson and his wife were determined to keep Virginia away from him for good? So far as is known, they did not have a close relationship with the Clemm ladies, and surely they would have considered Virginia's matrimonial plans--assuming they even knew of them, which is not at all certain--to be the concern of her and her mother, not themselves. (For what it's worth, Neilson Poe was once quoted as having said that he never knew why Virginia turned down his offer until Maria Clemm showed him Edgar's letter many years later.)


In an 1839 letter to Joseph Snodgrass, Edgar referred to “the feelings of ill will toward me which are somewhat prevalent (God only knows why) in Baltimore.” In a subsequent letter to this same correspondent, he elaborated upon this statement, making it clear that he saw his Baltimore cousin as at least partially responsible for this "ill will," describing "N.P." as "the bitterest enemy I have in the world," adding that, "He is the more despicable in this, since he makes loud professions of friendship." Edgar claimed not to know the reason for his cousin's animosity, only suggesting that it may have been jealousy over his literary career. It has been rather vaguely suggested that Edgar's puzzling show of hostility arose from lingering bitterness over Neilson's offer to act as Virginia's protector, or perhaps from Neilson's failure (either through inability or disinclination) to provide Edgar with loans or literary favors. Such reasons seem hardly sufficient to explain the harshness of the poet's attitude towards this relative he seemingly barely knew.

His one surviving letter to Neilson, written in August 1845, is very civil, but decidedly cool. He responded to his cousin's evident friendly overtures with a bland courtesy, assenting that it was indeed a pity that their two families were estranged, but he showed no sincere desire to amend that situation. The letter also indicated that Neilson and his family were unaware that for the past three years, Virginia had been battling a hopeless illness (which Poe always mysteriously called "the accident")--a striking sign of just how alienated they were from her life.

How did this alienation arise? Edgar Poe was emotionally hyper-sensitive and frequently hyperbolic in his speech, but he was not a paranoiac. If he usually thought that the world was out to get him, it was only because the world usually was. He saw cousin Neilson not merely as someone he disliked, but as a malignant enemy. It seems impossible that he could have come to such a radical conclusion purely out of thin air, but it is equally impossible to trace the source of this conviction.

Who was Neilson Poe? A terribly misjudged friend or a secret foe? Was Edgar drastically, almost insanely, wrong about his cousin? Or could Neilson have been, virtually from the beginning, a player in some dark, hidden game of which history now knows nothing?