Edgar Poe found persons of noble penetration, who could worthily estimate him. I find among my letters the following, from Sarah Helena Whitman, of Providence, R. I. I had written a critique upon Mr. Poe, published in the United States Magazine, to which she refers:
“It is said that all men have two natures — a higher and a lower — a divine and a demoniac sphere of life. It has been so painful for me to contemplate the lower sphere of his life, that I have habitually turned away from it to look at the other nobler or more interior nature. In this I believe, and would fain ignore the rest. *** From any other point of view, I see that your estimate is a most kind and tolerant one. I like, especially, the passage commencing, ‘We listen as to a dirge, but it is not of mortal sounding,’ and that in which you speak of his manner toward women. I do not think with you, that his manner gave the impression of habitual insincerity. On the contrary, he seemed to me — in his private character — simple, direct and genuine, beyond all other persons that I have known. *** I believe, too, that in the artistic utterance of poetic emotion he was profoundly, passionately genuine; genuine in the expression of his utter desolation of soul—his tender, remorseful regret for the departed; his love, his hate, his pride, his perversity, and his despair. He was, it is true, vindictive, revengeful, unscrupulous in the use of expedients to attain his ends; but never false and fair-seeming from an inherent perfidy and hollowness of heart. *** I feel sure that your notice will be read with interest, and will help to remove from his memory some undeserved imputations.”
It is now seventeen years since Edgar Poe laid aside the earthly garment, and entered within the vail, yet, so far from sinking to oblivion, we find that every year awakens a new interest in his genius. Left without a stone to mark his place of burial, his own mind has created an imperishable monument.
He was born in the city of Baltimore, in January, 1811, and died in the same place, October 7th, 1849.
His father was studying law in Baltimore, when he became fascinated with an English actress named Elizabeth Arnold, with whom he eloped, and afterward married. It has been asserted that this girl was the daughter of the traitor Arnold — I do not know upon what authority. She seems to have been pretty and vivacious, but nothing more. The husband abandoned the law for the stage, and the two played together perhaps a half-dozen years, without acquiring either fame or money, and then died, leaving three children, two of whom fell into total eclipse, for we hear only of Edgar, the second boy.
When death entered the little dim, dingy green-room of the theater, and dropped the tinsel curtain forever between this world and the young, reckless pair, who left three helpless, uncared–for little ones to the tender mercies of men, which are often only cruelty, a merchant of Richmond, Virginia, by the name of Allan, adopted little Edgar as his own child. He was a spirited, handsome boy, precocious in intellect, and of arrogant, self-willed temper. Here was, certainly, fine material upon which to work — the germs of the scholar or the hero. But nature is stronger than education. I do not believe the blood of father or mother were of the best quality to produce the most reliable results. The excitements and exhaustions of the profession are not favorable to the best maternity — the tawdry accessories of the stage are not the most desirable associations for the growing mind and heart of a young child, who has every thing to learn.
