Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 386
In Greenwich Street he found what he sought — a genteel-looking house with “Boarders wanted,” upon a card in the window. Another good bargain was made, and hailing a passing “hack” he hastened back to the boat for Virginia and her trunk and soon they were rattling over the cobblestones.
“Why this is quite a mansion,” exclaimed the little wife, as she peered out at the house before which the carriage stopped — for while the gentility of the establishment was of the proverbial “shabby” variety, the brown-stone porch and pillars gave it an air of unmistakable dignity.
Not long after their arrival the supper-bell rang, and they found themselves responding with alacrity. When they took the seats assigned them and their hungry eyes took in the feast spread before them, they squeezed each other’s hands under the table — these romantic young lovers and dreamers. They had been happy in spite of frugality. Many a time while hunger gnawed they had kissed each other and vowed they wanted nothing (high Heaven pardoning the gallant lie!) Yet now, the traveller’s appetite making their palates keen — the travellers weariness in their limbs — they were seized upon by an unblushing joy at finding themselves seated at an ample board with a kindly landlady at the head pouring tea — strong and hot — whose aroma was as the breath of roses in their nostrels, while her portly and beaming spouse, at the foot, with blustering hospitality pressed the bounty of the table upon them. A bounteous table indeed, this decidedly cheap and somewhat shabby boarding-house spread, and to their eager appetites everything seemed delicious.
There were wheat bread and rye bread, butter and cheese, cold country ham and cold spring veal — generous slices of both, piled up like little mountains — and tea-cakes in like abundance.
They feasted daintily — exquisitely, as they did everything, but they feasted heartily for the first time in months.
After supper they went to their room — a spacious and comfortably, though plainly, furnished one, with a bright fire burning in a jolly little stove. Their spirits knew no bounds.
“What would Catalina say to this solid comfort, Sis?” queried Eddie. “I think she would faint for joy.”
For answer Virginia smiled upon him through a mist of tears.
“Why Virginia — my Heart — “ he cried in amazement. “What is it?”
“Only that it is too beautiful!” she managed to say. “And to think that Muddie and Catalina are not here to share it with us!”
“Just as soon as I can scrape together enough money to pay for Muddie’s board and travelling expenses we will have them with us,” he assured her.
She dried her eyes and perched upon his knee while he went through his pockets and bringing out all the money he had, counted it into her palm.
“Four dollars and a half,” he said. “Not much, but we are fortunate to have that. And with such fine living as we get here so cheap it will go quite a long way. Let me see — the price of board and lodging is only three and a half a week for both of us. Seven dollars would pay our way for a fortnight — and in a fortnight’s time there’s no telling what may turn up! Some editor might buy ‘The Raven,’ or money due me for work already sold might come in. If I could only contrive to raise this sum to seven dollars we could rest easy for at least a fortnight.”
“I’ll tell you how,” said Virginia. “You have acquaintances here — hunt up some of them and borrow three dollars. Then you would have enough to pay two weeks board ahead and fifty cents over for pocket money.”
“Wise little head!” exclaimed he, tapping her brow, “The very idea!”
And forthwith all care as to ways and means was thrown from both their minds, and they gave themselves up to an evening of enjoyment of the comforts of their brown-stone mansion.
While Virginia was resting her husband went out for a little shopping to be done with part of the fifty cents they had allowed themselves for spending money. First he exchanged a few cents for a tin pan to be filled with water and placed on top of the stove, for the comfort of Virginia who had been oppressed by the dry heat. Then a few cents more went for two buttons his coat lacked, a skein of thread to sew them on with, and a skein of silk with which Virginia would mend a rent in his trousers made by too close contact with a nail on deck of the steamboat.
Next day was a bright, beautiful, spring Sunday. The sky and budding trees had the newly-washed aspect often seen after a season of rain. The sound of church-bells was on the air; the streets were filled with people in their best clothes, and the new boarders in Greenwich Street, fortified with a breakfast of ham and eggs and coffee, jubilantly joined that stream of humanity which flowed toward the point above which Trinity Church spire pierced the clear sky.
On Monday, Edgar Poe was taken with what he called a “writing fit.” For several days (during which Edgar Goodfellow remained in the ascendency) the fit remained on him, and he wrote incessantly — only pausing long enough, now and then, to read the result to Virginia.
“This will earn us the money to bring Muddie and Catalina to New York,” he said with confidence.
At last the manuscript was finished and no sooner was the ink dry upon the paper than he took it to The Sun, which promptly bought and paid for it, and upon the next Sunday, April 13, printed it not as a story, but as news.
“Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk!” (The headlines said). “The Atlantic crossed in Three Days.” Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason’s Flying Machines!!!
“Arrival at Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, S.C., of Mr. Mason, Mr. Robert Holland, Mr. Henson, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, and four others, in the Steering Balloon, ‘Victoria,’ after a passage of seventy-five hours from Land to Land! Full Particulars of the Voyage!”
Strange as it may seem, the “astounding news” was received by the people of New York for fact. There was a rush for copies of the Sun which announced with truth that it was the only paper in possession of the “news,” and not until denial came from Charleston, several days later, was it suspected that the “news” was all a hoax and that Edgar Goodfellow was simply having a little fun at the expense of the public.
The story did, indeed, earn money with which to bring “Muddie” and “Catalina” to New York. It did more — it brought the editors to Greenwich Street looking for manuscript. They begged for stories as clever and as sensational as “The Balloon Hoax,” but in vain. Edgar Goodfellow had vanished and in his place was Edgar the Dreamer who only had to tell of,
“A wild, weird clime that lieth sublime Out of Space — out of Time,
Where the traveller meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past, —
Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by, — White-robed forms of friends long given In agony to the Earth and Heaven.”
It was in vain that the editors besought him to try something else in the vein of “The Balloon Hoax,” assuring him that that was what his readers were expecting of him, after his recent “hit” — that was what they would be willing to pay him for — pay him well. Was it the Imp of the Perverse that caused him to positively decline, and to persist that “Dreamland” was all he had to offer just then?
It was Mr. Graham who finally accepted this quaint and beautiful poem, and who published it — in the June number of Graham’s Magazine.
In October following the return of the Poes to New York — October of the year 1844 — Mr. Nathaniel P. Willis who was then editor of The Evening Mirror, and had been editor of The Dollar Magazine, when it awarded the prize of a hundred dollars to “The Gold Bug,” was seated at his desk in the “Mirror” office, when in response to his “Come in,” a stranger appeared in his doorway — a woman — a lady in the best sense of a word almost become obsolete. A gentlewoman describes her best of all. She was a gentlewoman, then, past middle age, yet beautiful with the high type of beauty that only ripe years, beautifully lived, can bring — the beauty that compensates for the fading of the rose on cheek and lip, the dimming of the light in the eyes, for the frost on the brow — the beauty of patience, of tenderness, of faith unquenchable by fire or flood of adversity. A history was written on the face — a history in which there was plainly much of tragedy. Yet not one bitter line was there.
It was a face, withal, which could only have belonged to a mother, and might well have belonged to the mother, Niobe.
In figure she was tall and stately, with a gentle dignity. Her dress was simple to plainness, and might have been called shabby had it been less beautifully neat. It was of unrelieved black, and she wore a conventional widow’s bonnet, with floating white strings.
The reader needs no introduction to this stranger to Mr. Willis, who in a gentle, well-bred voice, with a certain mournful cadence in it, announced herself as “Mrs. Clemm — the mother-in-law of Mr. Poe.”
No connection with a famous author was needed to inspire Mr. Willis with respect for his visitor. She seemed to him to be an “angel upon earth,” and it was with an air approaching reverence that he handed her to the most comfortable chair the office afforded.
Her errand was quickly made known. Edgar Poe was ill and not able to come out himself. His wife was an invalid, and so it devolved upon her to seek employment for him. In spite of his fame, she said, and of his industry, his manuscripts brought him so little money that he was in need of the necessities of life. Regular work with a regular income, however small, she felt to be his only hope of being able to rise above want.
Mr. Willis was distressed and promptly offered all he could. It was not much, but it was better than nothing — it was the place of assistant editor of his paper.
For months following, the figure of Edgar Poe was a familiar one in the office of the Evening Mirror. Neither in his character of Edgar the Dreamer nor that of Edgar Goodfellow was he especially known there, but simply as a modest, industrious sub-editor, doing the work of a mechanical paragraphist as quietly, as unobtrusively, as a machine. With rarely a smile and rarely a word, he stood from morning till night at his desk in a corner of the editorial room — pale, still and beautiful as a statue, punctual and efficient and the embodiment of courtesy always.
And quietly and unobtrusively his personality made itself felt. Mr. Willis came to love him for his innate charm and for his faithfulness to duty.
But the desk of a sub-editor could not long hold a genius like Edgar Poe. He bore its drudgery without complaint, but when an opening that seemed to invite his ambition, as well as to promise better pay came, he hailed it with enthusiasm. In March of the next year he formed a partnership with two New York journalists, as editors and managers of The Broadway Journal. A few months later saw him sole proprietor as well as editor, and for a short, bright period his old dream of a magazine of his own, in which he could write as he pleased, came true. Its realization seemed to inspire him with new energy. How many heads, how many right hands had the man — his readers asked each other — that he could turn out such a mass of work of such high order? His own and many other of the magazines of the day were filled with reviews and criticisms that made him the terror of other writers, and with stories and poems that made him the marvel of readers everywhere.
His works were translated into the tongues of France, Germany and Spain, and his fame grew in all of those countries.
Yet the most that he could afford in the way of a home was up two flights of stairs — two rooms in the third story of a dingy old house in East Broadway. Mother Clemm and Virginia kept them bright and spotless and “Catalina” dosing on the hearth gave a final touch of comfort, and they were far above the noise and dust of the streets, with windows opening upon a goodly view of the sky. They had a front and a back room, so that the beauties of the dawn and the noontide — of sunset and moonrise — were all theirs.
And the Wolf came not near the door, and the three whose natures were like to the natures of the oak, the vine and the heartsease, and who lived for each other only, dreamed again the dream of the wonderful valley — the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Up, up the stairs, two steps at a time, sprang The Dreamer, one white January day, and burst in upon Mother Clemm who was preparing dinner, and Virginia who was mending his coat. He was in a great glee. He caught “Muddie” in his arms where she stood with her hands deep in a tray of dough, and kissed her, then stooped over Virginia and kissed her, and dropped into her lap a crisp ten dollar bank note. She gave a little scream of delight.
“Where did you get it?” she cried?
“From Willis. I’ve sold him ‘The Raven.’ He’s vastly taken with it and not only paid me the ten, in advance, but will give the poem an editorial puff in the Mirror of the nineteenth. He showed me a rough draft. He will say that it is ‘the most effective example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country,’ and predict that it will ‘stick in the memory of everybody who reads it!’”
“And it will! It will!” cried Virginia. “Especially that ‘Nevermore.’ I’ve done everything in time to it since the first night you read it to us.”
“I’ve done everything in time to it since I was three years old,” murmured her husband. He drew the miniature from the inside pocket of his coat where he had carried it, close against his heart, throughout his life, and gazed long upon it. In his grey eyes was the tender, brooding expression which the picture always called forth. “Ever since I heard that word for the first time from the lips of my old nurse when she took me in to see my mother robed for the grave, my feet and my thoughts have kept time to it; and generally when my steps and my face have been set toward hope and happiness it has risen before me like a wall, blocking my way.”
Virginia arose from her chair letting her work and the bank note fall unheeded from her lap, and went to him. Gently taking the miniature from his hands she restored it to its place in his pocket and then with a hand on each of his shoulders lifted her eyes to his.
“Buddie,” she said, calling him by the old pet name of their earliest days, “You frighten me sometimes. The miniature is beautiful but it makes you so sad. And when you talk that way about ‘The Raven,’ I feel as if I could hear your tears dropping on my coffin-lid!” Then, with a sudden change of mood, her laugh rang out, and she pressed her lips upon his.
“I’ll have you know,” she said, “I’m not dead yet, and you will not have to journey to any ‘distant Aidenn’ to ‘clasp’ me.”
“No, thank God!” he breathed, crushing her to him.
It was upon January 29, 1845, that “The Raven” appeared, with Willis’s introductory puff. In spite of Dr. Griswold and the staff of Graham’s Magazine, it created an instant furor. It was published and republished upon both sides of the Atlantic. To quote a contemporary writer, everybody was “raven-mad” about it, except a few “waspish foes” who would do its author “more good than harm.”
It brought to the two bright rooms up the two flights of stairs visitors by the score, eager to congratulate the poet, to make the acquaintance of his interesting wife and mother and to assure all three of their welcome to homes approached by brown-stone steps.
And it brought letters by the score — some from the other side of the Atlantic. Among these was one from Miss Elizabeth Barrett, soon to become the wife of Mr. Robert Browning.
“Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation here in England,” she wrote. “Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by its music. I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore,’ and one of my friends who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas never can bear to look at it in the twilight. Mr. Browning is much struck by the rhythm of the poem.
“Then there is that tale of yours, ‘The Case of M. Valdemar,’ throwing us all into a ‘most admired disorder,’ and dreadful doubts as to whether ‘it can be true,’ as children say of ghost stories. The certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer and the faculty he has of making horrible improbabilities seem near and familiar.”
Of all the letters from far and near, this was the one that gave The Dreamer most pleasure, and as for Virginia and the Mother, they read it until they knew it by heart.
When, some months later, his new book, “The Raven and Other Poems,” came out, its dedication was, “To the noblest of her sex — Miss Elizabeth Barrett, of England.”
And there was joy in the two rooms up two flights of stairs where Edgar Poe sat at his desk reeling off his narrow little strips of manuscript by the yard. His work filled The Broadway Journal and overflowed into many other periodicals.
While he created stories and poems, he gave more attention than ever to the duties of his cherished post as Defender of Purity of Style for American Letters, and the fame to which he had risen giving him new authority, he made or marred the reputation of many a literary aspirant.
Exposition of plagiarism became a hobby with him, and his attacks upon Longfellow upon this ground, brought on a controversy between him and the gentle poet which reached such a heat that it was dubbed “The Longfellow War.” All attempts of friends and fellow journalists to make him more moderate in his criticisms were in vain; they seemed indeed, but to excite the Imp of the Perverse, under whose influence he became more merciless than ever. An admirer of this virtue carried to such an extreme that it became a serious fault, as it was assuredly a grievous mistake, humorously characterized him in a parody upon “The Raven,” containing the following stanza:
“Neither rank nor station heeding, with his foes around him bleeding, Sternly, singly and alone, his course he kept upon that floor; While the countless foes attacking, neither strength nor valor lacking, On his goodly armor hacking, wrought no change his visage o’er, As with high and honest aim he still his falchion proudly bore, Resisting error evermore.”
Many of the “waspish foes” thus made turned their stings upon his private character, against which there was already a secret poison working — the poison that fell from the tongue, and the pen of Rufus Griswold. He had the ear of numbers of Edgar Poe’s friends in the literary world, and what time The Dreamer dreamed his dreams in utter ignorance of the unfriendliness toward him of the big man whose big brain he admired, the big man watched for his chance to insert the poison. It was invariably hidden in a coating of sugar. Poe was a wonderful genius, he would declare, his imagination — his style — they were marvellous! Marvelous! His head was all right, but — . The “but” always came in a lowered tone, full of commiseration, “but — his heart! — Allowance should, of course, be made for his innate lack of principle — he should not be held too responsible. His habits — well known to everyone of course!”
