By the fall of 1849, where you joined me some pages earlier, I had my profession in place so securely I hardly took notice of it. Peter Stuart and I made excellent partners. My parents were both gone by then, killed by a carriage accident while they were traveling in Brazil for my father's business. There was an empty spot where there once had been guidance from my father. And yet, the life he'd arranged for me flowed on in his absence-all this, Hattie, Peter, the well-pressed clients appearing daily in our offices, my stately family house shaded by ancient poplars and known as Glen Eliza, after my mother. All this ran on as though operated by some noiseless and ingenious automatic machine. Until Poe's death.
I had the young man's weakness of wishing others to understand everything that concerned me-of needing to
My very first letter to Edgar Poe, on March 16, 1845, was brought about by a question I had when reading 'The Raven,' then a recently published poem. The final verses leave the raven sitting atop a bust of Pallas 'above my chamber door.' With these last lines of the poem, the impish and mysterious bird continues to haunt the young man of the poem, perhaps for eternity:
If the raven sits at the top of the chamber door, though, what lamplight would be behind him in such a way as to cast his shadow to the floor? With the impetuousness of youth, I wrote to Poe himself for an answer, for I wanted to be able to envision every crevice and corner of the poem. Along with the question, I enclosed in the same letter to Mr. Poe a subscription fee for a new magazine called
After months without receiving any reply, and without a single number of
Signed Edgar A. Poe.
How startling, how uplifting that was, such a lofty visionary bringing himself to personally address a mere reader of three and twenty years! He even explained the minor mystery regarding the raven's shadow: 'My conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust-as is often seen in the English palaces, and even in some of the better houses in New-York.'
There was the very nature of the raven's shadow explained just for me! Poe also thanked me for my literary opinions and encouraged me to send more. He explained that his financial partners in
I wrote nine letters to Poe between 1845 and his death in October 1849. I received in return four courteous and sincere notes in his own hand.
His most energetic comments were about his ambitions for his proposed journal,
Poe anticipated with excitement a trip to Richmond to gather finances and support, commenting that if everything went as he intended, his final success was certain. He needed to raise funds and subscriptions. But he continued to be hindered by the rumors in the so-called professional press of irregular and immoral habits, questions about his sanity, unfit romantic dalliances, general excessiveness. Enemies, he said, were always at his throat for publishing honest criticisms of their writings, and for having had the great nerve to point out the complete lack of originality in revered authors like Longfellow and Lowell. He feared that the animosities of small men would attack his efforts by painting him as a sot, an unworthy drunk not deserving any public influence.
That is when I asked. I asked plainly, maybe too plainly. Were these at all true, these accusations I had heard for years? Was he, Edgar A. Poe, a drunkard who had given himself over to excess?
He wrote back without the least air of offense or conscious superiority. He vowed to me-me, a practical and presumptuous stranger-that he was wholly abstemious. Some readers might question my ability to judge his truthfulness from afar, but my instincts spoke with unclouded certainty. In my next letter, I replied that I put full confidence in his word. Then, just before sealing my reply, I decided to do better.
I made a proposal. I would bring suit against any false accuser attempting to damage his efforts to launch
'Thank you for your promise about
That was shortly before Poe began his lecture tour in Richmond. Emboldened by his response to my offer, I wrote again, pouring out a myriad of questions about his
I had been reading Poe's work more than ever. Particularly after my parents died. Some considered it distasteful that I would read literature that frequently touched on the topic of death. Yet in Poe, while death is not a pleasant subject, it is not forbidden. Nor is it a fixed end. Death is an experience that can be shaped by the living. Theology tells us that spirits live on beyond the body, but Poe believes it.
Peter, of course, had at the time vocally dismissed the idea of our law practice taking up the cause of
'I would sooner cut off my hand than spend my time worrying about magazines of blasted fiction! I would sooner get run down by an omnibus than-' You can see what he was driving at.
You'd probably guess that the real reason Peter objected was because I could not answer his questions about the
What I wanted to say to Peter was 'Do you not ever feel you are becoming hackneyed by the lawyer's routine?