The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-01-08
Edward Allen Poe
Not a Drunkard.
TESTIMONY GIVEN.
He Was a Martyr to His
Ideals.

I
bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe, who,
seventy-three years ago next February,
matriculated as it's student, brings again
prominently before his countrymen this
unique and unhappy personality, who,
in his short lifetime, while sounding
every note of personal discomfort, pri-
walton and sorrow, seems never to have
despaired for a moment of the future
of his own achievement
For the evidence seems to be that
Edgar Poe was a man with single
heroic purpose-a purpose to which he
devoted his life, says Appleton Morgan,
in the New York Commercial Adver-
tiser And that purpose was to achieve
the literary independence-as his an
cestors had done their share to achieve
the political independence-of his coun-
try. If this should happen to be the
fact. too high praise cannot be tender
ed to the venerable institution which
has been undeterred by noise about dis
sipated habits, which, alone in poor
Poe's case, has survived by 80 years
the pathetic termination of his pathet-
io struggle for existence
Edgar Allan Poe, we are assured, was
drunkard, a dipSomaniac and an in
CRATE, who wrote under the impulse of
alcoholic saturation, who lived by
fraud upon his friends, and levied con-
tribution upon all with whom he came
in contact! Are these statements con-
temporary or post norton? No such
report as to Mr.. Poe circulated at all
in his lifetime, but appeared only after
his death. l have been unable to find
single contemporary trace of it. That
it was uttered first by the man whom
Poe himself selected for his biographer
| is something l cannot-and do not pro-
pose to attempt to-account for.
The fact appears to be that Poe's
bad epitaph" Gas Hamlet would say
was never earned by himself. And 1t is
beginning to be suspected that Edgar
| Allan Poe was a patient, modest, court
eous gentleman, a kin-loving and fam
| y-loving-albeit very poor and a
| very northumberland, and that he
was a martyr, not to his own excuses
or evil courses, but to his idealsl
| He was that martyr, it seems to the
poverty stricken, and entirely unre-
munerative and non-revenue- producing
state of American literature-how I'M
lremunerative and non-revenue- produc-
| ing can better be told by the following
letter than by any amount of sympa-
| thetlc comment:
"Messrs. Lea & Blanchard, Philadel-
phia:
Gentlemen: / wish TO publish a new
collection of my prose tales with some
such title as this: The Prose Tales of
Edgar A. Poe, Including the Murders
| in the Rue Morgue, the Descent Into
the Maelstrom, and all His Later
Pieces, With a Second Edition of the
Tales Of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
| The later pieces will be eight in mum
Der, making the entire collection thirty
three, which would occupy two thick
| volumes
Il am anxious that your firm should
continue to be my publishers, and If
you would be willing to bring out the
book | should be glad to accept the
terms which you allowed me before I;
that is. you receive all profits and al
low me twenty copies for distribution
to friends.
"Will you be kind enough to give me
an early reply to this letter, and be-
/ lieve me,
Yours respectfully,
Edgar A. Poe.
philadelphia. Office Graham's Mag
azine. Aug. 13, Al
Compared with this, a ten-pound note
for Paradise Lost was princely NUM-
ficence! No wonder that an aged farm
er in Fordham related that on one oc--
casion when engaged with an assistant
in wedding turnips or hoeing potatoes,
he looked up and saw Mr.. Poe lean
ing over the fence regarding him. On
accostng him. Mr. Poe inquired what
wages he Ghe farmer) paid for that
sort of labor. He was told six shillings
a day, and the farmer says that he
heard Mr.. Poe repeating over to him
self, six shillings a day, six shillings
a day" and that he (the farmer) some
how absorbed the idea that Mr.. Poe
was casting over in his mind the COM
parative affiuence of the lot of farm
laborer over th*t Of a poet.
But, of course said the farmer in
them kind at any such fair prices as
that"
1t is hard to imagine a less tempting
field than spread itself before Edgar
Allan Poe in those years of 1825-1848 in
the United States OF America. Ameri-
can literature was. if possible, less than
a name. And yet in the face of this
Poe, without a friend or a hacker
without a trade, resource or avocation,
determined to live to the last by his
pen; and to his loyalty to his pen he
chung. The result was as it was. 1t
meant hunger and it meant hunger for
every day In the year The lily nour-
ished body craved stimulants no doubt
but could not retain them, while the
effect of the slightest employment of
them was precisely that which dissipa-
ton or a heightened orgy would pro
duce in man of full habit.
1t was the age of sideboards. But
there is no trace in his case, as there
Is plentifully in the case Of Poes con-
temporaries, of even convivial habits.
On the contrary, he had few acquaint-
ances and no intimates. He never wrote
a bacchanal or a drinking song. In
deed, there is no English author not
worker in pure mathematics or in the
physical sciences, whose work is so
absolutely deficient in sensuous or SEN
sual matter, or exploitation of appetite
or passion. | would like to devote the
rest Of this paper to demonstrating
that NJ contemporary story of Poe eX-
hibits him as a drunkard. however it
may admit his temptations and his oc-
caeionai yielding to them, by reason
Of badly nourished body and the I'M
reuunerative character OF his work
I'VE lived so near that we exchanged
visit. almost daily" says one inform
ant, speaking of her own girlhood. II
Used t. hold the sheets Of his manu-
scripts until he had finished what he
had written, when he would paste one
shte, uocn the edge Of the other until
the scroll would reach across the room.
Then | would roll 1t lightly, and my
greatest pleasure was to have II n
symmetrical cylinder.
las to his personal appearance, /
think no portrait could do justice TO
those flashing eyes, which fascinated
me like a charm and won my heart as
a child. He was like one inspired when