Poe

by Peter Ackroyd

  Poe never saw Elizabeth Ellet, or Fanny Osgood, again. Mrs. Ellet declared him to be “steeped in infamy.” He was ostracised from the salons of the starry sisterhood. According to Anne Lynch, Poe “said & did a great many things that were very abominable.” At a later date he was to excoriate “the pestilential society of literary women. They are a heartless, unnatural, venomous, dishonorable set, with no guiding principle but inordinate self-esteem.”

  Anne Lynch described him as having “no moral sense.” It should be added that his stories have no “moral sense,” either, and that he disdained any such principle. Is “moral sense” to be expected of the man rather than the writer?

  • • •

  Yet his appetite for controversy was not extinguished. During this period a friend and journalist, William Gilmore Simms, wrote to him that “you are now perhaps in the most perilous period of your career—just in that position—just at that time of life—when a false step becomes a capital error—when a single leading mistake is fatal in its consequences.” Poe was not one to listen to advice, however well meant; nor was he ever likely to learn from his mistakes. His presiding deity was, after all, the imp of the perverse.

  And so, perversely, in the spring of 1846, he began a series of essays for Godey's Lady's Book entitled “The Literati of New York: Some Honest Opinions at Random Respecting their Authorial Merits, with Occasional Words of Personality.” Poe was in fact planning to bring out a volume of critical essays, entitled The American Parnassus, and these sketches were the first airing of a number of pieces, critical or respectful, on the merits of the more celebrated authors of the day. He resented the undue praise and “puffery” expended on what he considered to be “unworthy” writers and, as a result, he could at times be exceedingly satirical. Indeed he launched a full-scale attack on the literary cliques and circles that controlled the publication and reception of American literature; they represented what he called “the corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism.”

  Of Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Knickerbocker, Poe wrote that “as a literary man, he has about him no determinateness, no distinctiveness, no point—an apple, in fact, or a pumpkin has more angles … he is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the marked-ness by which he is noticeable for nothing.” Of Thomas Dunn English, erstwhile friend but now confirmed enemy, Poe wrote that “I do not personally know him.” This false denial was followed up by a swipe at English's appearance: “he exists in a perpetual state of vacillation between moustachio and goatee.” Poe excelled at this kind of ad hominem criticism; it was immensely readable at the time, of course, with three editions of some issues being printed to keep up with sales. Poe was the most controversial, and most widely discussed, literary journalist in the country. It is not clear, however, that his reputation as a writer was improved.

  Some of his victims also had an unfortunate habit of fighting back. Lewis Gaylord Clark retorted, in the Knickerbocker, that Poe was “a wretched inebriate” and a “jaded hack.” He quoted from an unnamed source, most likely Clark himself, that “he called at our office the other day, in a condition of sad imbecility, bearing in his feeble body the evidences of evil living and betrayed by his talk such radical obliquity of sense … He was accompanied by an aged female relative who was going a weary round in the hot streets, following his steps to prevent his indulging in a love of drink; but he had eluded her watchful eye by some means, and was already far gone in a state of inebriation.”

  There was worse to come. Thomas Dunn English also responded in kind with an attack upon Poe in the New York Mirror, in which severe remarks about his personal appearance were mingled with more serious charges; English accused Poe of forgery, of acquiring money under false pretences and of plagiarism. Poe promptly sued the Mirror for libel.

  He had already removed himself from the city. The streets were too treacherous, and offered too many temptations. The tranquillity and purer air of the countryside were also deemed necessary for Virginia Poe's slowly fading health. In February the Poe household settled near the East River. A nine-year-old neighbour recalled how Poe would “run over every little while to ask my father to lend him our rowboat, and then how he would enjoy himself pulling at the oars over to the little islands just south of Blackwell's Island, for his afternoon swim.” Poe loved the water. The girl added that “I never liked him. I was afraid of him. But I liked Mrs. Clemm, she was a splendid woman, a great talker and fully aware of ‘Eddie's failings’—as she called them.” Of Virginia Poe she remembered that she was “pale and delicate” but “patient in her suffering.” The little girl recalled Virginia talking to Poe. “Now, Eddie,” she said, “when I am gone I will be your guardian angel, and if at any time you feel tempted to do wrong, just put your hands above your head, so, and I will be there to shield you.” It is a sad remembrance.

  • • •

  Four months later the Poe family moved further out to Fordham, a village thirteen miles to the north of New York, where they found a small cottage half-buried in blossom and fruit trees. Virginia was “charmed” by the place, according to Poe, and they rented the property “for a very trifling sum.” The house faced west. There were lilac bushes, and a cherry tree, in the small front garden, while beyond were apple orchards and a wood. It was to be their last home on earth together. It was, as always, an impoverished one. Maria Clemm resorted to digging up the turnips meant for the cattle. She was seen gathering dandelions and other greens in the country lanes to make up a palatable salad. “Greens,” she used to tell neighbours, “are cooling for the blood. Eddie's fond of them.” But Eddie had little choice in the matter.

  The not infrequent callers would bring baskets of produce for the family. Maria Clemm was also in the habit of “borrowing” money from their visitors. Since some of these visitors were aspiring writers there were occasions when Poe would be obliged to repay their generosity with little “puffs” of his own in the public prints. Maria Clemm seems to have managed the business very well.

  There are small glimpses of life at Fordham. A neighbour was passing their cottage, one morning, when she saw Poe picking cherries from the tree and throwing them down to Virginia. But then she saw that Virginia's white dress was “dashed with blood as bright as the cherries she had caught.” She would never forget the expression on Poe's face as he carried his wife into the cottage. “They were awful poor,” she said. Maria Clemm wrote that it “was the sweetest little cottage imaginable. Oh, how supremely happy we were in our dear cottage home! We three lived only for each other. Eddie rarely left his beautiful home. I attended to his literary business; for he, poor fellow, knew nothing about money transactions.”

  He could not, however, wholly escape the attentions of the city. Fordham was on the Harlem Railroad, running from Williamsbridge to City Hall, and the trains departed every four hours. Certainly he was in New York on one evening in June 1846, because he composed a letter to his wife on a piece of pocket notebook paper. “My dear Heart,” he began. He hoped that “the interview I am promised, will result in some substantial good for me … in my last great disappointment, I should have lost my courage but for you.” The nature of the “interview,” and of the “disappointment,” are not known. He added that “my darling wife you are my greatest and only stimulus now. To battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life.”

  It had become uncongenial in every sense. There had already been rumours circulating in the public prints about Poe's “insanity.” According to the Saturday Visiter of Baltimore, in April, Poe “labors under mental derangement, to such a degree that it has been determined to consign him to the Insane Retreat at Utica.” These tales were the direct result of the unfortunate letter Poe had persuaded his doctor to write, on the subject of the correspondence with Mrs. Ellet, in which he had claimed that he was suffering from a fit of temporary insanity. As the news of his explanation spread, so did the gossip.

  The gossip was fanned by the libel suit he was still pursuing.
He was suing the New York Mirror, which had published English's claims of forgery and plagiarism. Poe's lawyer submitted a suit for libel in the Superior Court of New York, claiming that Poe's “good name, fame and credit” had been wilfully injured; he demanded damages of five thousand dollars. The case was put back, and then put back again, but the coverage of the New York journals was generally hostile to Poe. “This is rather small business,” commented the New York Morning News, “for a man who has reviled nearly every literary man of eminence in the United States.”

  Poe was now physically, if not mentally, unstable. He was forced to turn down a commencement event at the University of Vermont, as a result of “serious and, I fear, permanent ill health.” One newspaper interpreted this as “brain fever.” It is as good an explanation as any. That summer, from the cottage at Fordham, he wrote a long letter to Chivers in which he confessed that “I have been for a long time dreadfully ill.” He spoke of those intending to “ruin” him. “My dreadful poverty,” he wrote, “also, has given them every advantage. In fact, my dear friend, I have been driven to the very gates of death and a despair more dreadful than death …” So did fate choose to pursue Poe throughout his life.

  He and his household now also became the object of sustained press attention. On 15 December 1846, the New York Morning Express carried an item headlined ILLNESS OF EDGAR A. POE. “We regret to learn,” the journalist wrote, “that this gentleman and his wife are both dangerously ill with the consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavy upon their temporal affairs—We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the necessaries of life.” The same facts were reprinted, with one or two embellishments, in several other newspapers. Even the Mirror, against which he had issued the libel writ, came to his aid with an appeal for contributions. Money was indeed taken up on the family's behalf. One newspaper editor collected fifty or sixty dollars, and anonymous donors sent gifts of ten dollars or more.

  Poe was alternately grateful and resentful. He needed the money, clearly, but he did not like to be paraded as an object of public charity. Nor was he pleased that his wife's mortal illness was also being publicised. At the end of the year he sent one newspaper editor a letter in which he regretted the fact that “the concerns of my family are thus pitilessly thrust before the public.” He claimed “that I have ever materially suffered from privation, beyond the extent of my capacity for suffering, is not altogether true. That I am ‘without friends’ is a gross calumny…” (Friendlessness was a condition about which he had often complained.) He added that “even in the city of New York I could have no difficulty in naming a hundred persons” to whom he could apply for aid without humiliation. He concluded the letter with a defiant declaration. “The truth is, I have a great deal to do; and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done.” He did in fact protest too much, and admitted later that his exculpatory words had put him to “the expense of truth at denying those necessities which were but too real.”

  They were real enough to enlist the active help and sympathy of some New York ladies who had become aware of the Poes’ plight during the late autumn and winter of 1846. One of them, Mrs. Gove-Nichols, recalled seeing Virginia Poe lying on a straw bed “wrapped in her husband's greatcoat, with a large tortoise shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet.” She informed a friend, Mrs. Shew, who promptly organised a subscription for the unhappy family. A feather bed and bed clothing were supplied, followed by a gift of sixty dollars.

  By the beginning of 1847 it was clear that Virginia Poe was failing. She had said to a caller, “I know I shall die soon; I know I can't get well; but I want to be as happy as possible, and make Edgar happy.” She suffered from fever and sweating, an inability to draw breath, and severe chest pain, spitting of blood and perpetual coughing. These had also been the symptoms of Poe's ailing mother. Indeed Virginia Poe died at the same age as Eliza Poe. The fatal coincidence could not have been lost upon Poe himself. A visitor to Fordham, in these last months of her life, found him “lost in a stupor, not living or suffering, but existing merely.” Maria Clemm recalled that Poe “was devoted to her till the last hour of her life, as his friends can testify.” But, in addition, the distress of Maria Clemm herself was “dreadful to see.”

  Friends and relations gathered at the little cottage in Fordham. Among them was Poe's old acquaintance from Baltimore, Mary Devereaux, now Mrs. Jennings. She found the dying woman seated in the parlour. “I said to her, ‘Do you feel any better today?’ and sat down by the big armchair in which she was placed. Mr. Poe sat on the other side of her. I had my hand in hers, and she took it and placed it in Mr. Poe's, saying ‘Mary, be a friend to Eddie and don't forsake him.’ ” That evening Poe wrote a letter to his benefactress, Mrs. Shew, observing that “My poor Virginia still lives, although fading fast and now suffering much pain … Lest she may never see you more— she bids me say that she sends you her sweetest kiss of love and will die blessing you.” And he added, “Yes, I will be calm.”

  The next morning, 30 January 1847, Mary Devereaux returned to Fordham, accompanied by Mrs. Shew. Virginia was still just alive, and gave Mrs. Shew a portrait of Poe together with a jewel box that had been owned by Poe's sister, Rosalie.

  Virginia expired soon after. It was then realised that no portrait of her existed, and so one of the ladies quickly finished a watercolour of her likeness. It survives still.

  Mrs. Shew had purchased a shroud of fine linen. On the day of the funeral the coffin was placed on Virginia's husband's desk, beside which she had so often sat in the past. It was a bitterly cold day. Poe, wrapped in the greatcoat he had owned since his days at West Point, followed her coffin to the grave with a few friends. On his return to the cottage he collapsed.

  • • •

  Then he lapsed into a state of fever or of delirium. He told an admirer, six weeks later, “I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poignant as to deprive me for several weeks of all power of thought or action.” Maria Clemm wrote to Mrs. Shew imploring her aid. “Eddie says you promised Virginia to come every other day for a long time,” she said, “or until he was able to go to work again. I hope and believe you will not fail him.”

  Mrs. Shew was so alarmed by his condition that she expected him to succumb. She believed that he suffered from a “lesion” on his brain, which on occasions might provoke madness. She raised another subscription on his behalf, and helped to nurse him through his nervous prostration. She believed fish was a sovereign remedy for “brain fever,” as it was known, but she also offered more spiritual consolations. She persuaded him to attend a midnight service with her, but on the recital of the words “he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” Poe rushed out of the church. He was not, in any case, a man of conventional religious beliefs. He had never willingly attended a church service in his life. Maria Clemm claimed that she had “wished to die” in this period, but that she “had to live to take care of… poor disconsolate Eddie.”

  There was one small consolation. In a bizarre but unavoidable chain of events (which in other circumstances he might have relished), Poe's libel suit against the Mirror was heard before the New York Superior Court on the day before Virginia's funeral. In his deposition against Poe, Thomas Dunn English reported the character of Poe to be “that of a notorious liar, a common drunkard and of one utterly lost to all the obligations of honour.” These were serious charges, enough to uproot any reputation Poe might have acquired in New York. But the jurors were not disposed to believe English. The case went in Poe's favour. One witness denied ever having said the words reported of him. Another testified that he had “never heard anything against him except that he is occasionally addicted to intoxication.” But drunkenness did not imply either forgery or larceny. The jurors found for the plaintiff, and returned a verdict of $225.06 in lib
el damages and $101.42 in costs. It was one of the largest single sums of money that Poe had ever received. “Pretty well,” he said, “considering that there was no actual ‘damage’ done to me.” He went out and purchased a new suit—black, as always—as well as a carpet and table for the cottage in Fordham.

  He was not out of danger, however. Mrs. Shew continued to visit him and to nurse him. According to her later account Poe would speak continually of the past. But it was not his true past. He told her that he had fought a duel over a woman in France. He told her that he had been rescued from subsequent illness by a cultured Scotswoman, who had visited him daily for thirteen weeks. He told her that he had written an autobiographical novel, Life of an Unfortunate Artist, that had been falsely credited to the pen of Eugene Sue. He told her, also, that his “beautiful mother” had been born at sea. He added that “it was the regret of his life, that he had not vindicated his mother to the world.” This may or may not be an allusion to the supposed illegitimacy of his sister. But, in his excited state, it does not really matter. From his earliest life he harboured within himself an emptiness—a yearning for consolation and love and protection. And at the same time he was lost in the world, fantasising about his identity.

  Slowly he recovered. Maria Clemm would sit beside him as he lay restless in his bed, continually smoothing his brow and applying “soothing” lotions to his forehead.

  • • •

  There are many reminiscences of his new life at Fordham, in the company of Maria Clemm and Catterina the cat. Catterina would settle herself on his shoulders, while he was writing, and purr with delight. A visitor said that “she seemed possessed.” Poe entertained visitors with tea, and took rambles with them along the banks of the Bronx River. On one occasion he engaged in a game of leaping, at which he had excelled as a schoolboy; he excelled again, but at the cost of a pair of broken gaiters. He sat on a garden seat beneath the cherry tree, whistling to the pet birds whose cages hung in the branches. He ate fruit, and buttermilk, and curds. He told one correspondent that “I have never been so well… I rise early, eat moderately, drink nothing but water, and take abundant and regular exercise in the open air.”