Edgar Allan Poe, Moral Idiot

In our last post we printed a letter written by my son, William McCrillis Griswold, in which he cites a letter written him that somewhat corroborates my memoir of the wretch, Edgar Allan Poe.  Realizing that the shadow cast by my predilection for forgery is longer than I care to dwell upon, it occurs to us that the word of the spawn of my loins may not be readily accepted by the general public.  For this reason we are happy to exhibit this article which appeared in The Old Guard for June, 1870, some twenty-five years before the aforementioned letter quoted by my son in his letter to the Nation on "Poe's Moral Nature".

“DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN.”

Edgar A. Poe.

From the Old Guard, for June, 1870

                A recent writer in a southern periodical complains of the unfair treatment of Poe by Rufus W. Griswold, in the biographical sketch prefixed to the poems of the former, asserting that he was dead.  But, though Griswold spoke of those pecadilloes [sic] of Poe best known, he softened those he noticed, and omitted much he might have said.  Still, had Griswold reflected, he might have put in an ingenious plea in behalf of the poet, and have assumed that Poe’s frequent violations of the code of morals and honor, was from the lack of a thorough appreciation of right and wrong.

                Poe’s mind was not well balanced.  Certain of the intellectual faculties were in excess, while some of the moral ones appeared to be deficient.  I doubt, indeed, whether, with all his undoubtedly fine genius, he was not a moral idiot.  Griswold has himself reason to know –If I may credit Poe’s statement.  The latter came to me one day, chuckling over “a neat little trick” he had just played upon Griswold.

                “I told him that I thought he had made a capital book of his ‘Poets and Poetry of America,’ and I’d like to write a favorable review of it; but I was hard pressed for money and couldn’t afford the time.  He bit at the bait like a hungry pigeon, and told me to write the notice, and, as his publishers could use it, he would pay me for them my price.  So I wrote, and handed it to him, and he paid me.”

                “Well,” I asked, for I saw nothing in that but one of the traded tricks of the publishing trade.

                “I knew he wouldn’t read it until he got home,” continued Poe, “but I should like to have seen his face when he got to the middle.”

                “Wasn’t it favorable, then?”

                “Favorable?  Yes!  to the amateur in scalping.  I abused the book and ridiculed him, and gave him the most severe using up he ever had, or ever will have, I fancy.  I don’t think he’ll send that to the publishers, and I’m quite sure they wouldn’t print it if he did.”

                “It is a good joke—of its kind,” was my answer.  “You did not keep the money?”

                “Keep it?  No, Indeed!  I spent it at once.”

                Now, no amount of argument would convince him that he had not obtained money under false pretenses in the matter, there was no intent of wrong itself.

                Another case occurs to me which will put the matter in an even clearer light.  Poe came into my office one day, looking especially haggard.  He had evidently just got through one of his drinking bouts and looked very much the worse for it.  I commenced to lecture him a little, but he interrupted me with—“Oh, you needn’t say a word on that.  I’ve made up my mind on that subject, and I have given my word as a gentleman and a man of honor never to drink anything but cold water again.  But I’m in a terrible straight.  I promised the Bostonians to read them an original poem this week, and I got on this beat, and never wrote a line.  I haven’t time now, and what to do I don’t know.”

                I suggested that he should write, postponing the delivery two weeks; and he might say that circumstances, over which he had no control—for he had no control over himself in the matter of drink—had prevented him, and so on.  “Better still,” I said, “plead simply that you would explain when you come, and then tell the truth frankly to some member of the committee.”

                “Yes,” he answered, “but they’re to pay me for it, and I want the money.”

                “You can’t expect to get it unless you earn it.”

                “Can’t I?  Well, you’ll see.  I’ve just thought of a way.”  And off he went.

                He appeared in Boston on the night set and read a juvenile poem, written before he was of age—he used to say when he was a child, but that was an exaggeration.  He had a critical audience, who were dissatisfied and disappointed, but they treated him with courtesy.  On his return, finding his work was criticized sharply in the Boston papers, he wrote a series of paragraphs for “The Broadway Journal,” vehemently assailing the Bostonians, and asserted that he had planned the thing deliberately; and that he had selected the greatest trash possible to test their literary acumen; that they had gone into raptures over it; that they were asses and noodles—I think he used those very words—and claimed it as a great triumph.  It never entered his head to think there was anything wrong in this.

                I could name a dozen other instances of this same lack of appreciation.  To h old such a man to a strict responsibility for his acts is unfair.  You might as well convict a raving lunatic of murder.  It was not his fault that he had no sense of honor, and no feeling of shame.  The fact of which Griswold speaks, transcribing a copy of Captain Brown’s work on Conchology, and selling it to a Philadelphia publisher as his own original production, would have been a crime in another; but Poe had no idea that he was obtaining money on false pretenses.  He thought it all fair and a clever piece of diplomacy.  The unfairness of Griswold did not consist in mentioning facts that were necessary to be known, but in not stating the one great fact that would explain, and, in some measure, excuse them.

                I could tell some very curious anecdotes about Poe; but as they would not add anything to his good reputation, and as what I have said will be enough to palliate a good many of his shortcomings by showing his irresponsibility, I refrain.  But one thing should be noted.  Some fool critic, a few years since, charged him with stealing “The Raven” from the Persian, with which language Poe was familiar.  The charge is utterly false.  Poe knew no more of the Persian than he did of the Chocktaw, and nothing of either.  In two places in “The Raven,” there is a line taken from the “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”—a quite unconscious borrowing;  but the spirit, recurring refrain, general idea and mode and management of the poem, are all Poe’s own.  Perhaps the charge was retributive justice, however.  Poe was very fond of charging others with plagiarism; accusing Longfellow, for instance, with having stolen from him and others.  But in either his prose or poetry Poe was the master of his art.  Some one has compared him with a Savage.  In his private life there a few points of resemblance, and in ingenuity and the inventive faculty, he was Savage’s infinite superior.

For those that would reject the offerings of The Old Guard on the grounds of prejudice against Poe, it should be here stated that this same periodical, in 1866, printed an article most unflattering to myself in the wretch's defense; thus charges of prejudice have no merit.  

"Poe's Moral Nature" by William McCrillis Griswold

The following is a response by my dear son William to a review of "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe" (edited by George Woodberry & Edmund Stedman, 1894-5) in which he continues my important work of blackening the reputation of the wretch.

I would like to thank Undine from The World of Poe blog for helping me locate this document (nearly 2 years ago, and I am only just transcribing it!).

                                      POE'S MORAL NATURE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:

     SIR:  Will you permit me to correct a statement made in your notice of the new edition of Poe?  It is of some consequence because it implies a wrong notion of the copyright law, about which it is important that literary people should not have indefinite or hazy ideas.  You say that the publishers "have taken advantage of the recent expiration of copyright," which you date from the issue of the works of Poe edited by Dr. Rufus Wilmot (not William, as you have it) Griswold in 1850.  But nothing was covered by the 1850 copyright except the editor's "memoir."  Poe's tales and poems had been published from twenty to four years previously, and the copyright on any contribution could not have extended, under the most favorable circumstances, more than forty two years from the date of first publication.  If all legal requirements had been complied with, the copyright on 'The MS. Found in a Bottle,' for instance, would have expired in 1875.  But, in fact, if there had been any copyright on this production, it would have ended in 1861, and that on Poe's last published article in 1878, the original term of copyright (twenty-eight years) never having been renewed, since neither the author nor his wife was alive at these dates.  Nor would it have made any difference, except in half-a-dozen cases, if he or she had then been living, for, with these exceptions, Poe's writings were published in uncopyrighted periodicals, and were not individually entered.
     In view of the additional light thrown of late years on Poe's career, and the fact that the Nation has several times pricked the bubbles blown by Ingram and other admirers, it is strange that your present critic should blame Prof. Woodberry for mentioning other faults than his hero's drunkenness and irritable temper.  "His worst faults," you say, "were as surely congenital as his genius."  His worst faults, however, were not the ones named, but his utter lack of honor.  Nor was this lack the result of ill treatment or misfortune.  His first employer, T. W. White, whose honesty and even generosity are admitted even by Poe's defenders, declared, from his early knowledge of him, that "he was an unmitigated rascal."  But his moral character is perhaps best illustrated by incidents related in a letter lately written to me by one of his few surviving contemporaries, and which I desire to put on record:

                                                                                                                                      "Jan. 10th, 1895.
"MY DEAR SIR:
     "The incident to which I alluded was as follows: Poe called on me one day in great glee and said: 'I have a good joke on Griswold.  I met him the other day and suggested to him that he should get me, through his publishers, to write a review of his last work, "The Poets and Poetry of America."  He said it would be a good idea, and that he would speak to his publishers about it, and said, "I am sure they'll pay fairly, and I think you can go on and do the work without waiting."  Well, I wrote the review, and, a few days after, handed it to him, when he gave me the money for it from the publishers.'
     "'Well,' I said, 'this is nothing more than the ordinary bookseller's device, and I dare say your review was a fair one and will be of use to the work.'  'There lies the joke,' he replied.  'I began at the very beginning and did not allow a single merit in the book: I assailed it to the extent of my powers, and should like to have seen Griswold's face as he read the manuscript.'  I looked at him and said, 'That is a very good joke, doubtless, for you, but Griswold and the publishers paid you; of course you returned the money?'  'No,' said he, 'I spent it.'  He had not the least idea that he had been doing a very contemptible thing, and it was impossible to get angry with him because, in spite of his unsurpassed ability in certain lines of literary work, he was in morals an absolute idiot.
     "In other instances I remember that he showed this lack of appreciation of right and wrong, and one of them was his trip to Boston.  He came to me one day looking very dilapidated, and I knew from the fact he was just recovering from indulging to excess in liquor, for Poe was naturally a very neat man in his person, and dressed with great care even when poorest.  Whenever you found him slovenly or careless in his dress, you knew that he was on a drinking bout or he had been on one.  I said to him rather testily: 'You have been on another of your sprees.'  'Well,' he said, 'it is the last; I never intend going on another.'  I said, 'I have heard that so often it has lost its force with me, but what can I do for you?  what do you want?'  'Well,' said he, 'I don't know what to do; I am in a strait.'  'What is the matter?'  'Well, you see, they have invited me in Boston to deliver an original poem, and I have been in such a condition that I am unable to do it; I have got to go next week.'  'Well,' I said, 'write to them that you have been indisposed, because you have been (I consider it a case of disease in you), and postpone the event.'  'But,' said he, 'I want the money.'  'Well,' I said, 'you can't get the money without you earn it.'  He said 'I'll fix that,' and went off.  The next thing I heard was that he went down to Boston and read 'Al Araaf,' a poem which he wrote when he was a young man (he said when he was a boy, but that is another of his figments).  They were disappointed.  It was not what they expected, but they treated him with great courtesy, gave him a supper, and, speaking under the influence of champagne and excitement, he let the facts out.  Of course, they became very indignant, and when Poe came back he wrote an article in the Broadway Journal in which he assumed that he had gone there with this poem in order to test their acumen.  He had not the least notion that he was doing anything wrong.  He never had.  Anything that he did was right, regardless of its morality, or lack of it; and everything he said was true to him, however false it might be.  I could cite numerous instances of his recklessness of assertion and bold statement without basis.  In morals, as I have said before, he was an idiot."

                                                                                                               Yours, etc., W.M. Griswold


SOURCE:
W. M. Griswold, “Poe’s Moral Nature,” The Nation, p. 381

Rufus Griswold's "It’s a Wonderful Libel"

It was Christmas Eve. In a moment of despair over the wretch Edgar Allan Poe’s posthumous fame, which I had thought an ironic consequence of my controversially scandalous biography of He that I loathe, and in frustration at having so imperiled my own reputation and posterity, I lamented having ever been born and prepared to end my life.

My ingestion of the fatal dose of the poison I was to employ to this end was interrupted by an odd fellow, Horace Nobody, who claimed to be my guardian angel and assured me of the significance of my existence. I thought him mad until he cursed me with a vision of a reality in which I had not been.

I saw my “graveyard of poets” untenanted; those poets I would never anthologize truly and utterly cast into oblivion.

I saw the Duyckinck’s had produced an absurdly inadequate Cyclopedia of American Poetry that would be credited as the first attempt at a truly comprehensive anthology of American poetry.

I saw the ‘Young America’ literary clique that would emerge and flourish in the absence of one of their most vital and relentless opponents.

I saw that Graham’s Magazine would fail ever to exceed the quality of that which it could boast under Poe’s editorship.

I saw Francis Osgood would die never knowing her soul mate or her greatest champion.

I saw Charlotte Myers would marry and make some lucky lady a fine husband.

I saw that womb-pipe Elizabeth Ellet, not having my marital affairs as a venue nor I as a victim of her poisonous machinations, would, with her coven of gargoyles, interfere in the lives of others as innocent of her malevolent attentions as I had been, had I been.

I saw George C. Foster would die alone and miserable in Moyamensing Prison, unable in my absence to secure the funds needed to extricate himself from his legal entanglement.

I saw scores of hungry aspiring poetesses who would never know the unparalleled ecstasy of my touch, nor the breathtaking honor of publication in one of my anthologies. 

But most horrifying of all, I saw a literary establishment that would elevate Poe above all his countrymen. I had been on the verge of suicide at the thought that my libelous biography of Poe had, by painting him a dark and deformed character with a luster of evil, improved his success post-mortem; but what I saw in this vision showed me how wrong I had been and sent me into spasms of bitterness previously unknown even to me.

My never having known Poe would not have much interfered with Poe's life, but oh, in death! Poe's literary estate would be managed and anthologized by another, and his biography would be written with respect for the deceased and considerations of veracity.  With Poe's literary and biographical fate entrusted to one with a, let us say different, disposition than I, what would become of it?

Just imagine, if you can stomach it, a universally revered American poet, critic and writer of tales named Edgar Poe who’s literary achievements overshadowed his flaws as a human being.  I recoil still at the thought!

I begged of Horace Nobody to take me back!  I had been wrong; had not realized all the good I had done and the lives I had touched.  And do you know, my prayers were answered...for when I googled Poe I immediately encounted comments about the madness, drug abuse, necrophilia and alcoholism etc. of Edgar Allen [sic] Poe, while those lauding his literary genius were to be found in a much smaller proportion.  Yes, it truly had been a wonderful libel.

My spirits were lifted; and it truly was a Merry Christmas for all-including Horace Nobody, who, for having rescued me from the myself, had finally earned his wings to become a full-fledged Angel.

So remember:

Every time a voice rings out with sound of one of my lies about Poe being repeated, an angel gets its wings.