The Home Life of Poe Part 13

When Rose left me, I could but hope that she would be kindly received by her relatives in Baltimore. But some months thereafter, being in New York, I received from her a number of photographs of her brother, which she begged of me to dispose of for her benefit at one dollar each. Mrs.

M. A. Kidder, of Boston, kindly interested herself in the matter, but wrote me that she met with but poor success, at even the reduced price of twenty-five cents, people saying that they had not sufficient respect for Poe's character to care to possess his portrait. I found it to be nearly the same in New York. And meantime Rose wrote me every few days.

"DEAR S----: Haven't you got anything for me yet? Do try and do something for me, for I am worse off now than ever. I walk about the streets all day" (trying to dispose of her brother's pictures), "and at night have to look for a place to sleep. I feel like a lost sheep."

Thus the sister of Edgar A. Poe, in the year 1868, wandered homeless and friendless through the streets of Baltimore, as more than thirty years previous her brother had done.

We heard long afterward that, through some kind Northern lady, she applied for admittance to the _Louise Home_, in Washington, which Mr.

Corcoran was willing to grant, but that certain of his "guests"--ladies who had formerly occupied high social positions--were of opinion that, considering Miss Poe's eccentricities, she would be better suited and better satisfied in a less pretentious establishment. Finally she was received into the "_Epiphany Church Home_," in Washington, where she seems to have enjoyed a good deal of liberty, being often seen riding on the street cars and visiting the offices of wealthy business men, who, if they did not care to possess a photograph of Poe, were yet willing to a.s.sist his penniless sister. It was never known what she did with the money so collected; but from a letter to Mrs. Byrd, it would appear that her intention was to purchase a grave for herself near that of her brother. Mrs. Byrd wrote to me: "I think Poe's friends might lay Rose in a grave beside him. It has always been her dearest wish."

Rosalie Poe died suddenly, with a letter in her hand but that moment received, and which, when opened, proved to be from Mr. George W.

Childs, enclosing a check for fifty dollars; doubtless in answer to an application for aid.

They gave her a pauper's grave in the cemetery of the Epiphany Church Home. The record of her death by the Board is:

"_Rosalie Poe. Died June 14, 1874. Aged 64._"

Some years after the death of Rose Poe, I received a visit from Mrs.

Byrd, whom I had not seen since the war, and we talked over times past and present. It had been Rosalie's own choice, she said, to go to Baltimore. She did not like the country or the hard life which they were leading. She must have collected considerable money, but never told where she kept it; nor was it ever found.

She told me about her family. Her pretty daughter had married a poor man in preference to a rich one who had offered, and they had two beautiful babies and were very happy. Her brother Richard was infirm and able to do but little work. They had a little place in the country, where they raised their own vegetables, and sent poultry and eggs to market. She and her son-in-law did all the hard work about the place. "I wash and cook for six persons," said she, cheerily. "Yes," she continued, in her old quaint way, "we are poor, but respectable, and I am more content than ever I was at Duncan Lodge. I feel that I have something to live for, and the working life suits me. Yes, we are happy; although there are not two tea-cups in the house of the same pattern."

She spoke of Poe, whom she considered to have been always unjustly treated. Everybody could see what his faults were, but few gave him credit for his good qualities--his generous nature and kindly and affectionate disposition, especially as exemplified in the harmony always existing between himself and his wife and mother-in-law. While giving the latter full credit for her devotion to Edgar, her impression was that, except in the matter of his dissipation, her influence over him had not been for good. Her mother and brother, John, believed that the marriage with Virginia had been the greatest misfortune of his life, and that he himself, while patiently resigning himself to his lot, had come to regard it as such.

Some ten years after the death of Poe I received from Mrs. Clemm a letter giving a pathetic account of her homelessness and poverty. But, she added, she had been offered a home with her relatives at the South; and she appealed to me, as a friend of her "Eddie," to a.s.sist her in raising the money necessary to pay her expenses thither. A similar appeal she made to other of Poe's former friends; but we heard of her afterward as an inmate of the Church Home Infirmary in Baltimore, where she died in 1871, having outlived her son-in-law some twenty-two years.

It is a curious coincidence that the building in which she died was the same in which, as the Washington Hospital, Poe had breathed his last.

Her grave is in Westminster cemetery, and in sight of Poe's monument.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

POE'S CHARACTER.

In order thoroughly to understand Poe, it is necessary that one should recognize the dominant trait of his character--a trait which affected and in a measure overruled all the rest--in a word, _weakness of will_.

"Unstable as water," is written upon Poe's every visage in characters which all might read; in the weak falling away of the outline of the jaw, the narrow, receding chin, and the sensitive, irresolute mouth.

Above the soul-lighted eyes and the magnificent temple of intellect overshadowing them, we look in vain for the rising dome of _Firmness_, which, like the keystone of the arch, should strengthen and bind together the rest. Lacking this, the arch must be ever tottering to a fall.

To this weakness of will we may trace nearly every other defect in Poe's character, together with most of the disappointments and failures in whatsoever he undertook. He lacked the resolution and persistence necessary to battle against obstacles, to persevere to the end against opposition and discouragement, and to resist temptations and influences which he knew would lead him astray from the object which he had at heart. In this way he lost many a coveted prize when it seemed almost within his grasp.

The accepted opinion is that Poe's dissipation was his chief fault, as it was that to which was owing his ruin in the end. But even this was the effect chiefly of weakness of will. He was not by nature inclined to evil, but the contrary; and we have seen that, when left to himself and not exposed to temptation, he was, from all accounts, "sober, industrious and exemplary in his conduct." But he lacked firmness to resist the temptation which, more than in the case of most men, a.s.sailed him on every side.

Dr. William Gibbon Carter has told me how, when Poe was in Richmond on his last visit, and doing his best to remain sober, he would in his visits and strolls about the city be constantly greeted by friends and acquaintances with invitations to "take a julep." It was the custom of the time. Poe, said Dr. Carter, in one morning declined twenty-four such invitations, but finally yielded; and the consequence was the severe illness which threatened his life whilst in the city. The effect of one gla.s.s on him, said the Doctor, was that of several on any other man.

Often he was tempted to drink from an amiable reluctance to decline the offered hospitality.

A marked peculiarity of Poe's character was the restless discontent which from his sixteenth year took possession of and clung to him through life, and was to him a source of much unhappiness. It was not the discontent of poverty or of ungratified worldly ambition, but the dissatisfaction of a genius which knows itself capable of higher things, from which it is debarred--the desire of the caged eagle for the wind-swept sky and the distant eyrie. He was not satisfied with being a mere writer of stories. He believed that, with a broader scope, he could wield a powerful influence over the literary world and make a record for strength, brilliancy and originality of thought which would render his name famous in other countries as in this. His desire was to set established rules and conventionalities at defiance, and to be fearless, independent, dominant in his a.s.sertion of himself and his ideas and convictions. As an editor writing for other editors, he found himself trammeled by what he called their narrowness and timidity. He must be his own master, his own editor; and hence his lifelong dream and desire took form in the conception of the Stylus--that _ignis fatuus_ which he pursued to the last day of his life--uncertain, elusive, yet ever eagerly sought, and always ending in disappointment and bitterness of soul. Time and again it seemed within his grasp, and, as he exultantly proclaimed, "his prospects glorious," when, by his own weakness of will, it was lost to him.

Undoubtedly, one of the chief factors in the non-success of Poe's life and its consequent unhappiness was his marriage.

Setting aside the poetic imaginings which have been and doubtless will continue to be written concerning this marriage as one of idylic mutual love and "idolatry," the story, in the light of established facts, resolves itself into a very prosaic one.

Mr. John Mackenzie, Poe's lifelong and only intimate and confidential friend, never hesitated to say that had Poe been left to himself the idea would never have occurred to him of marrying his little child-cousin. In no transaction of his life was his pitiable weakness more manifest than in this feeble yielding of himself to the dominant will of a mother-in-law.

Had Poe remained single or have married another than Virginia, his regard for her would have continued just what it had been in the beginning and what it remained to the end--the affection of a brother or cousin for a sweet and lovable child. But no one can believe that Poe's nature could have found its satisfying in such a marriage; and, in fact, whatsoever sentimental things he may have written concerning it, his whole conduct goes to prove its insincerity.

Poe was of all men one who most craved and needed the love and sympathy of a woman of a nature kindred to his own--a woman of talent and qualities of mind and heart to appreciate his genius and all that was best in him; one who would be to him not only a congenial companion, but a "helpmeet" as well. Had he married one of Mrs. Osgood's tender sensibilities and feminine charm, or Mrs. Whitman, with her talent and strong character, or even a woman of the practical good sense and judgment of Mrs. Shew, who knew so well how to care for him mentally and physically--Poe would have been a different man.

But his imprudent and, as it has been called, unnatural marriage, cut him off from what would probably have been the highest happiness of his life, with its accompanying worldly and social advantages, and bound him down to a life of unceasing toil, penury and helplessness. It deprived him of a social position and social enjoyment; for his poverty-stricken "home" was never one to which he could invite his friends; and he himself seems never to have found in it any real pleasure, but to have regarded it merely as a haven of refuge in seasons of distress. But as the years went by and, despite his incessant toil, his life and his home grew more cheerless and poverty-stricken, he became hopeless and in a measure reckless. It is to be noted that it was only after the death of his wife that he appeared to recover anything like hope or energy. Then his prospects suddenly brightened in the love of a good and talented woman who could have made his life happy and prosperous, when, owing to his miserable weakness of will in yielding to temptation, for which there was no excuse, it was all at once swept from his grasp.

Mr. John Mackenzie might well have said, as he did, that Poe's marriage was the greatest misfortune of his life and as a millstone around his neck, holding him down against every effort to rise. But perhaps not even this close friend knew how keenly the poet must have felt the narrowness of his life, the sordidness of his home, and the humiliation of his poverty. Patiently and uncomplainingly he bore his unhappy lot; and it is to be noted to his credit that howsoever he might at times go astray, no word or act of unkindness toward the wife and mother who loved him was ever known to escape from him.

It will be seen from all that has here been written, in the light of prosaic truth, that Poe's real character was one very different from that which it has pleased the world in general to ascribe to him--judging him as it does by the character of his writings as a poet.

The folly of such judgment, and the extent to which it was until recently carried, is simply surprising. It is true that he appeared to have but one ideal--the death of a woman young, lovely and beloved--and that ideal in the imagining of the world resolved itself into the personality of his wife. She, they concluded, was the original of all the Lenores, and Anabel Lees, and Ullalumes, which inspired his melancholy and despairing lyre; and in its gloom and hopelessness they could see nothing but the expression of the poet's own nature. As well have accused Rembrandt of being gloomy and morose because he painted in dark colors. Like the artist, Poe loved obscure and sombre ideas and conceptions, and he delighted in embodying these in his poems as much as Rembrandt did in transferring his own to canvas.

APPENDIX.

NO. 1.

Lest the reader should be under the impression that much of what I relate concerning Poe's childhood and certain circ.u.mstances connected with his early youth is taken from Gill's _Life of Poe_, I will make an explanation.

At the time when the first edition of Gill's work was issued I was engaged in writing what I intended to be a little book concerning Poe, compiled from my own personal knowledge of him and what I had been told by others. In some way Gill heard of this, and wrote to me, coolly requesting to be allowed to see my ma.n.u.script, which I, of course, excused myself from doing. Again and again he wrote, saying that he "merely wished to see exactly what I had written." In self-defence, I finally sent him the first part or chapter of the ma.n.u.script, he promising to return it as soon as read. After some weeks it was returned to me, without a word accompanying; and at the same time a second edition of Gill's "_Life_" was issued--the first having been suppressed--in which, to my surprise, I found copious extracts from my ma.n.u.script. All those little anecdotes of Poe's childhood were thus appropriated, with more important matter--such as Poe's dissipation when in Richmond and his enlisting in the army, both of which Gill had in his first edition positively denied; and this he made use of as though it had been his own original material. My book was, of course, ruined, and all that I could do was, some years after, to write "_The Last Days of Poe_," published in _Scribner's Magazine_, though even from this Gill made "_Notes_" for the Appendix of his second or third edition.

Some of the material thus appropriated by Gill I have reclaimed and inserted in this work. A comparison between the first and second edition of Gill's "_Life of Poe_" affords a curious study, since in the second he has carefully corrected the misstatements of the former from my ma.n.u.script.

My friend, Gen. Roger A. Pryor, late Judge of the Supreme Court of New York, brought suit against Gill in this matter, but met with so much trouble and annoyance by reason of the latter's persistence in evading it, that it was finally, at my own earnest request, abandoned.

Mr. Gill, I am informed, is still living.

NOTE 2.

A strange fate was that of the poet's family, all of whom were indebted to charity for a last resting place.

His father, David Poe, died in Norfolk in the summer of 1811. His grave is unknown.

His mother was buried by charity in Richmond, December 9, 1811.

His wife was indebted for a grave near Fordham, in New York, to charitable contributions of friends.

His sister, Rosalie Mackenzie Poe, died July 14, 1874, and was given a pauper's grave in the cemetery of the Epiphany Church Home, in Washington.

Mrs. Clemm, his mother-in-law, died an inmate of the Church Home Infirmary, Baltimore, and was buried by the charity of friends in Westminster churchyard of that city in 1871.