Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 308
Very respectfully and admiringly
Yours,
Edgar A Poe.
To. Mrs Mary E. Hewitt.
“Broadway Journal” Office
March 20 -- 45.
MARY E. HEWITT TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — MARCH 21, 1845
My dear Sir,
“You have spoken roses,” and I hardly know how to reply to words so polite and complimentary.
I certainly intended to place the “Tale of Luzon” quite at your disposal — and beg you to believe that I appreciate highly the kindness that has prompted your favorable notice of my lines. After the “Raven,” my verse seemed to me but a broken chime — and since sending it to you, I have wondered at my own temerity. I shall be proud to see it published in the columns of the “Broadway Journal.”
Very truly
(portion of letter, with signature, cut away.)
Athenaeum Hotel March 21st/45
To Edgar A. Poe, Esq.
MARY E. HEWITT TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — MAY 29, 1845
Dear Mr Poe
I send you a translation that I have made from the old French edition (1716) of Madame Dacier.
The Greek line at the top, which I have copied from the same volume, and of which language I am of course femeninely (sic), I hope you may find correctly transcribed. The decapitated state of my manuscript — for which I beg leave to apologize — will betray the fact of my having made more than one attempt at copying the hieroglyphics. After all perhaps the quotation was unnecessary and may appear like an affectation, or pedantry in your correspondent — so have the kindness to strike it out if you think it best to do so.
With compliments to Mrs Poe — whose acquaintance I am happy to have made —
I remain
Very sincerely yours
M. E. Hewitt
Athenaeum Hotel, May 29th
MARY E. HEWITT TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — NOVEMBER 10, 1845
Athenaeum Hotel Nov. 10th, 1845
Dear Mr. Poe,
Permit me to tell you how much your very, very kind and encouraging notice of my volume has gratified me.
The Broadway Journal was the Scylla and Charybdis of my fear, and its editor’s criticism more to be dreaded than that of fifty Blackwoods. Judge then of the measure and quality of my delight on finding that I had passed the strait in safety! I fear that I was guilty of tossing up an imaginary cap, in my heart, at all future critics, with the “N(orth) American” at the top, and of whispering something to myself that if uttered might have sounded very like defiance! — I enclose you a little song for the Journal — and don’t think it was written to anybody in earnest, but only for the music that it never was set to. And may I ask you to be so kind as to tell your carrier not to forget to leave me the paper.
Very truly yours
M. E. Hewitt
MARY E. HEWITT TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — DECEMBER 22, 1845
Dear Mr. Poe,
The fiery ordeal to which our time-honored friends, Shadrach, Meshack & Abednego were subjected, as you will remember to have read in the book of Daniel — has always appeared to me to be a mere allegory, and capable only of a spiritual interpretation. I have endeavoured, in a moment of idleness, to work out my idea in a Swedenborgian fashion, and herewith enclose the result for the B’way Journal. I scarcely dare add the hope that the Sonnet may please you.
With kindest wishes
Very truly yours
M. E. Hewitt
Dec 22nd/45
MARY E. HEWITT TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — APRIL 15 (14), 1846
Dear Mr. Poe,
With the most friendly desire to convey to you my sympathy, and to learn the present state of your health, yet ignorant where to address you, I venture to trust my little book to the guidance of that great Ganges, the Post Office, hoping that by some favorable chance, wind and tide may favor its direction.
We were all exceedingly sorry to hear of your illness in Baltimore, and glad when we heard that you had so far recovered as to be able to return to our latitude, though it were to play hide-and-seek with your friends. Our charming friend Mrs Osgood, and myself, indulge often in talking of you and your dear wife. Next to seeing those we remember, is the luxury of talking of them — and you know the power of the femenine (sic) organ at laudation, as well as its opposite.
All Bluedom misses you from its charmed circle, and we often ask when are we to have Mr Poe back again among us.
Will you not favor me with a reply, should this reach you? And do me the favor to read and find fault with my last poem, which I enclose for your perusal. It has caused some question with regard to my sanity. Strange that we must always be charged with the expression of our true feelings in our writings. I assure you some of the married men have decided that it was an exceedingly improper production! Ah! the world that binds us, Ixion like, to its own dull round, may never chain the poet’s thought to its earthly level.
Let us hear that you are well again, and with kindest regards to Mrs Poe believe me
Very sincerely yours
M. E. Hewitt
Athenaeum Hotel.
New York April 14th/46
HEYWOOD, MISS SARAH HARTWELL
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO SARAH H. HEYWOOD — NOVEMBER 23, 1848
Fordham Nov. 23d 1848 —
Dear Sarah — my own dear sister Sarah —
If there is any pity in your heart reply immediately to this letter, & let me know why it is, I do not hear from Annie — If I do not hear from her soon, I shall surely die — I fancy everything evil — sometimes I even think that I have offended her, & that she no longer loves or cares for me — I wrote her a long letter eight days ago, enclosing one from my mother who wrote again on the 19th[.] Not one word has reached us in reply[;] oh Sarah, if I did not love your sister, with the purest & most unexacting love, I would not dare confide in you — but you do know, how truly — how purely I love her, & you will forgive me, for you know also, how impossible it is to see & not to love her — In my wildest dreams, I have never fancied any being so totally lovely — so goof — so true — so noble so pure — so virtuous — her silence fills my whole soul with terror — Can she have received my letter? If she is angry with me dear Sarah, say to her, that on my knees, I beseech her to pardon me — tell her that I am her slave in all things — that whatever she bids me do, I will do — if even she says, I must never see her again or write to her — Let me but hear from her once more, & I can bear whatever happens. oh Sarah you would pity me, if you knew the agony of my heart, as I write these words — do not fail to answer me at once[.]
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO SARAH H. HEYWOOD — MARCH 1, 1849
For Sarah —
My dear sweet sister — why have you not kept your promise & written me. Do not you be influenced against me by anybody — at least in my absence when I have it not in my power either to deny or to explain. Present my warmest regards to your father, mother & brother — & kiss dear Carrie for me.
Your own friend & brother
Edgar
March 1. — 1849
HIRST, HENRY BECK
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO HENRY B. HIRST — JUNE 27, 1846
New: York — June 27. 46.
My Dear Hirst,
I presume you have seen what I said about you in “The New-York Literati” and an attack made on me by English, in consequence. Vive la Bagatelle!
I write now, to ask you if you can oblige me by a fair account of your duel with English. I would take it as a great favor, also, if you would get from Sandy Harris a statement of the fracas with him. See Du Solle, also, if you can & ask him if he is willing to give me, for publication, an account of his kicking E. out of his office.
I gave E. a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death — and, luckily, in the presence of witnesses. He thinks to avenge himself by lies — but I shall be a match for him by means of simple truth.
Is it possible to procure me a copy of E’s attack on H. A. Wise?
Truly yours,
Poe.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO HENRY B. HIRST — MAY 3, 1848
New-York: May 3, 48.
My Dear Hirst,
Your letter came to hand but not your Prospectus — so that I am still in the dark as to what you mean to do. Send me a Prospectus in a letter-envelope. It is more than possible, however, that I will be in Philadelphia before the week is out: — but at all events send the Prospectus.
I am glad to hear that you are getting out “Endymion”, of which you must know that I think highly — very highly — if I did fall asleep while hearing it read.
I live at Fordham, Westchester Co: — 14 miles from the city by rail-road. The cars leave from the City Hall. Should you have any trouble about finding me, inquire at the office of the “Home Journal” — or “Union Magazine.”
Truly your friend
Edgar A Poe.
HOFFMAN, CHARLES FENNO
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN — SEPTEMBER 20, 1848
Dear Sir: —
In your paper of July 29, I find some comments on “Eureka,” a late book of my own; and I know you too well to suppose, for a moment, that you will refuse me the privilege of a few words in reply. I feel, even, that I might safely claim, from Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone — that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer — but, in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the “World;” and, in the second, I feel that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. Lamartine blames Voltaire for the use which he made of (ruse) misrepresentation, in his attacks on the priesthood; but our young students of Theology do not seem to be aware that in defence, or what they fancy to be defence, of Christianity, there is anything wrong in such gentlemanly peccadillos as the deliberate perversion of an author’s text — to say nothing of the minor indecora of reviewing a book without reading it and without having the faintest suspicion of what it is about.
You will understand that it is merely the misrepresentations of the critique in question to which I claim the privilege of reply: — the mere opinions of the writer can be of no consequence to me — and I should imagine of very little to himself — that is to say if he knows himself, personally, as well as I have the honor of knowing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in this sentence: — “This letter is a keen burlesque on the Aristotelian or Baconian methods of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridicules and despises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third mode — the noble art of guessing.” What I really say is this: — That there is no absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process — that, for this reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself — and that neither has a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws;) since “Intuition,” after all, “is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason or defy our capacity of expression.” The second misrepresentation runs thus: — “The developments of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and non-luminous, moons and planets, with their rings, &c., is deduced, very much according to the nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle propounded above.” Now the impression intended to be made here upon the reader’s mind, by the “Student of Theology,” is, evidently, that my theory may all be very well in its way, but that it is nothing but Laplace over again, with some modifications that he (the Student of Theology) cannot regard as at all important. I have only to say that no gentleman can accuse me of the disingenuousness here implied; inasmuch as, having proceeded with my theory up to that point at which Laplace’s theory meets it, I then give Laplace’s theory in full, with the expression of my firm conviction of its absolute truth at all points. The ground covered by the great French astronomer compares with that covered by my theory, as a bubble compares with the ocean on which it floats; nor has he the slightest allusion tO the “principle propounded above,” the principle of Unity being the source of all things — the principle of Gravity being merely the Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all things from Unity. In fact, no point of my theory has been even so much as alluded to by Laplace.
I have not considered it necessary, here, to speak of the astronomical knowledge displayed in the “stars and suns” of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it would be better grammar to say that “development and formation” are, than that development and formation is. The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where the critic says: — “Further than this, Mr. Poe’s claim that he can account for the existence of all organized beings — man included — merely from those principles on which the origin and present appearance of suns and worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bald assertion, without a particle of evidence. In other words we should term it arrant fudge.” The perversion at this point is involved in a wilful misapplication of the word “principles.” I say “wilful;” because, at page 63, I am particularly careful to distinguish between the principles proper, Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant, sub-principles which control the universe in detail. To these subprinciples, swayed by the immediate spiritual influence of Deity, I leave, without examination, all that which the Student of Theology so roundly asserts I account for on the principles which account for the constitution of suns, &c.
In the third column of his “review” the critic says: — “He asserts that each soul is its own God — its own Creator.” What I do assert is, that “each soul is, in part, its own God — its own Creator.” Just below, the critic says: — “After all these contradictory propoundings concerning God we would remind him of what he lays down on page 28 — “Of this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile — he alone is not impious who propounds nothing. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and impiety needs no further refutation.” Now the sentence, as I wrote it, and as I find it printed on that very page which the critic refers to and which must have been lying before him while he quoted my words, runs thus: — “Of this Godhead, in itself, he alone is not imbecile, &c., who propounds nothing.” By the italics, as the critic well knew, I design to distinguish between the two possibilities — that of a knowledge of God through his works and that of a knowledge of Him in his essential nature. The Godhead, in itself, is distinguished from the Godhead /observed in its effects. But our critic is zealous. Moreover, being a divine, he is honest — ingenuous. It is his duty to pervert my meaning by omitting my italics — just as, in the sentence previously quoted, it was his Christian duty to falsify my argument by leaving out the two words, “in part,” upon which turns the whole force — indeed the whole intelligibility of my proposition.
Were these “misrepresentations” (is that the name for them? ) made for any less serious a purpose than that of branding my book as “impious” and myself as a “pantheist,” a “polytheist,” a Pagan, or a God knows what (and indeed I care very little so it be not a “Student of Theology,”) I would have permitted their dishonesty to pass unnoticed, through pure contempt for the boyishness — for the turndown-shirt-collar-ness of their tone: — but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, that I have been compelled to expose a “critic” who, courageously preserving his own anonymosity, takes advantage of my absence from the city to misrepresent, and thus villify me, by name.
Edgar A. Poe.
Fordham, September 20, 1848
HOLDEN, DR. EZRA
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO EZRA HOLDEN — AUGUST 26, 1843
Philadelphia
Saturday Morning
Aug. 26.
My Dr Holden,
I am obliged to go to Richmond for a few weeks, on pressing business, and all the money I can raise I am forced to take with me. I leave this note, however, with my mother-in-law, Mrs Clemm, who will hand it to you. If you can spare the amount for the article I left with you, please to do so & oblige,
Yours most truly
Edgar A Poe
Patterson, of The “Post,” gave me, some weeks ago, for “The Black Cat”, 20$. I presume the article you have is worth as much — being longer &, I think, better.
HONLAND, T.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO T. HONLAND — MAY 25, 1846
Dr Sir,
It gives me great pleasure to comply with your very flattering request for an autograph.
Respy Yr Mo Ob St
Edgar Allan Poe
HOPKINS, JOHN HENRY, JR.
JOHN H. HOPKINS, JR. TO EDGAR ALLAN POE — MAY 15, 1848
Gen. Theol. Sem. May 15, 1848.
My dear Sir,
On glancing over your MS. The other day at Mr. Putnam’s, I perceived that you had added a new development of your ideas. After the closing the magnificent and sublime >>idea<<
Now I do not intend to object to this on theological grounds at present, for that would lead me into an almost interminable discussion, besides being out of place in me. But I think that on further reflection you will see that scientifically it is unsound, and contradictory of other parts of your theory.
