River Falls journal. [volume], July 02, 1908, Image 6

About River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019

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■PwSqNOR EDGAR ALLAN POE
BHIP Aj THE OCCASION OF fflS CENTENARY
■pSaiFv K w m fittingly observed all
Tins COUNTRY 34 Q&
Hgira2*6fi®aso3 MERICANS who deplore
| ,a the fact that the memory
a JEL of Poe has not been duly
j honored in a conventional
way may extract a grain
or two of comfort from
the thought that it was
not until last summer
(1907) that the first me
morial to Dickens was
erected in London. De
spite the great love of
Englishmen, and espe
cially of Londoners, for Dickens, it
was nearly 40 years after his death
he died, it will be remembered, in
1870 —before a memorial of any kind
was erected to his memory in the Brit
ish capital. This memorial is a sim
ple portrait bust, with a bronze tablet,
and was placed upon the site of Fur
nival’s inn, Holburn. It w r as at Fur
nival’s inn that Dickens wrote “Pick
wick,” and it was there, in a little
room on the third floor, that he awoke
one morning, in 1836, to find himself
famous.
Poe’s failure of election to the Hall
of Fame is another very real griev
ance to many of his countrymen, but
a parallel, in a way, to this situation,
too, may be found oversea. Last No
vember the authorities of the British
museum undertook to select 19 names
as the greatest and most representa
tive in English literature to be paint
ed on 19 panels in the reading room
of the British museum. It was no
easy task, but the names finally set
tled upon by the trustees of the mu
seum were: Chaucer, Caxton, Tin
dale, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon,
Milton, Locke, Addison, Swift, Pope,
Gibbon, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron,
Carlyle, Macaulay, Tennyson and
Browning.
This selection, of course, by no
means met with universal commenda
tion. On the contrary, loud cries of
complaint and inquiry were heard
from all over the country as soon as
it was announced. Where was Dick
ens? Where was Thackeray? Where
was Robert Burns? Where were
Dryden, Johnson and Burke? —and, to
continue: Where were Fielding, Shel
ley, Blake, Richardson, Butler and
Ruskin? And where, asked George
Bernard Shaw, in a stern and
wrathful tone, was Bunyan?
Thus we see that other national
households besides our own have
trouble in arranging their literary
treasures to suit all the members of
the family.
No one, perhaps, could speak with
more authority on the subject of Poe
than the late Mr. EdmurnJ Clarence
Stedman. himself a poet, the writer
of a delightful life of Poe, and one
of the hundred electors to the Hall
of Fame. In the August number of
the North American Review he said:
“If the vote for Cooper gave cause
for wonder, what of the insufficient
tally score for Poe, whose manes prob
ably w ill never cease to be vexed by a
witling class of followers, but concern
ing whose place in imaginative litera
ture the world at large has not the
slightest doubt? As a writer he
was among the first to recognize the
powers of Hawthorne; both were
idealists, and if one produced no sus
tained romances like “The Scarlet Let
ter,” the other gave voice to no lyric
melodies such as “Israfel” and “The
Haunted Palace.” These artistic,
beauty-haunted compeers were twdn
in their nineteenth century con
stellations. And as for the matter of
renown —of a place in the Hall of
Fame —what is fame? On your con
science, fellow r judges, whether you
are realists or dreamers, jurists,
scholars or divines, pay some slight
regard to that voice of the outer
world, which one of our own writers
termed the verdict of ’a sort of con
temporaneous posterity;’ note that
there is scarcely an enlightened
tongue into which Poe’s lyrics and
tales have not. been rendered —that he
is read and held as a distinctive
genius, in France, Spain, Germany,
Italy, Russia, Scandinavia —that the
spell of his art is felt wherever our
own English speech goes with the flags
of its two great overlands. Fame! Is
there one of us still unconscious of
Poe’s fame?
“‘Not hear? When noise was every
where! It tolled
Increasing like a bell.’
“Those who have given their votes
ror Franklin and Hamilton surely
have not demurred on ethical grounds
to one against whom no charge of im
morality can lie, seeing that his life,
like his handiwork, was chaste as
moonlight. That he was poor and
headstrong is true; and that he was
the congenital victim of an abnorr il
craving for stimulants, now accounted
a disease, is true; but what of all this
beside the gift that made its shining
way against such odds —beside one’s
gratitude for his crystallization of
our inchoate taste and for the recog
nition which his poetry and romance
did so much to gain for the literary
product of his native land.”
Charles Frederic Stansbury in an
article on Poe’s life in Tidewmter Vir
ginia (in the Jamestown Magazine),
written apropos of the Jamestown ex
position, says:
“Virginia is. likewise, proud of Poe.
His memory has been vindicated by
the fine old university where he was a
student, and the would-be assassins
of his character have been silenced
forever. There were all too many of
these vultures, the chief of whom was
the unspeakable Griswold, the ghoul
ish slanderer, destined, like the tem
ple burner of ancient Ephesus, to live
forever in lasting infamy, his dis
honored name dragging after that of
the brilliant genius, to emulate the
work of whom is the despair of great
minds and the confusion of little ones.
"The exquisite bronze bust of Poe,
which adorns the University of Vir
ginia. was modeled by the famous
sculptor. George Julian Zolnav. It is
probably the most sympathetic and
beautiful portrait of the poet extant.
It was brought into existence through
the efforts of Prof. Charles W. Kent
of the University of Virginia. Many
lives of Poe have been written, and
few can remember the names of the
writers; Poe’s name was not thought
worthy to grace the alleged Hall of
Fame, while nobody can remember
whose names were thought to be thus
worthy. Many a hardened toper on
reading the many Pharisaical biogra
phies of Poe, is highly shocked at the
stories of his occasional intemperance
on which those writers love to dwell.
Griswold started it, and the rest of
the sorry pack followed in full cry. An
excerpt from Augustine Birrell’s essay
on Charles Lamb might well apply to
Poe. With fine scorn this writer says:
‘Lamb was rich in all that makes life
valuable or memory sweet. But he
used to get drunk. This explains all.
Be untruthful, unfaithful, unaind; j
darken the lives of all who live under
your shadow, rob yourself of joy, take
peace from age, live unsought for, die
unmourned —and remaining sober, you
will escape the curse of men’s pity
and be spoken of as a worthy person.
When Maarten Maartens visited
New York city last summer to attend
the peace conference one of the first
things he touched on in an interview
(in the New York Times) on literary
matters was the subject of Poe. He
said:
“Can you tell me where Poe is
buried? I scarcely expected the an
swer I have been inquiring for ever
since I landed. He is buried some
where, isn’t he? and he is your great
est writer, isn’t he? The greatest in
terest attaches, if one might judge
from the controversy which rages to
this day, to the cause and manner of
his death, but apparently no one
knows or cares where his body lies or
can direct the foreign pilgrim whith
er to repair to render his meed
of reverence.”
Mr. Stedman’s judgment is thus con
firmed —indeed, mere than confirmed,
it is strongly emphasized by Mr. Maar
tens, who places Poe at the head of
American men of letters. Let us
now listen to a voice from England;
that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who
said of Poe in a recent article in an
English (Cassell’s) magazine:
“I have said that I look upon Poe
as the w r orld’s supreme short story
writer. His nearest rival, I should
say, was Maupassant. The great Nor
man never rose to the extreme force
and originality of the American, but
he had a natural power, an inborn in
stinct towards the right way of mak
ing his effects, which mark him as a
great master. He produced stories be
cause it was in him to do so as nat
urally and as perfectly as an apple
tree produces apples. What a fine,
sensitive, artistic touch it is! How
easily and delicately the points are
made!”
Poe was proud of being a Virginian.
In 1841 he wrote to a friend in Balti
more: “I am a Virginian—at least
I call myself one, for I have resided
all my life, until w’ithin the last few
years, at Richmond.” *
Another writer, Mr. Charles L.
Moore, invites attention to Poe’s
merits as a “tone-painter,” in an arti
cle in the Dial. Most epics and great
works of fiction, he thinks, have no
trace of tone —the region of tone be
ing the drama, the lyric and the prose
story. Hamlet begins with a tone
picture, the scene on the platform at
Elsinore, hardly equaled in Shake
speare. Continuing Mr. Moore says:
“With, of course, other immense in
feriorities, Poe cannot come into com
parison with Shakespeare in variety
of tone. Shakespeare’s different
pieces are keyed to all the notes of
color, from ebon black to the purest
gold of sunlight. Poe keeps in the
main in the dark side of the spectrum.
But within his range there are great
differences in shade and always abso
lute certainty of effect. Consider the
varieties of tone in the grave, somber
colors of ‘The Fall of the House of
Usher,’ the restless brilliancy of ‘The
Masque of the Red Death,' and the
sober, ordered daylight of ‘Landor’s
Cottage;’ or the range between the in
tangible shadows of ‘Ulalume,’ the rich
gloom of the ‘Raven,’ and the faceted
sparkle of ’The Haunted Palace.’ As
the modern world of letters has main
svv<rx<>«>o^
rnrrAnF at Fnpmmn
ly gone to Keats to learn style—the per
fection of word phrasing—so it has gone
to Poe to learn tone, the truths of
keeping an atmosphere in composition.
“Poe did not set himself to write
copy-book maxims of morality, but the
total effect of his work is that of lofti
ness and nobility. His men are brave
and his •vumen are pure. He is the
least vulgar of mortals. Perhaps, if
books have any effect at all, his tend
to make men too truthful, too sensi
tive, too high-minded.”
Standards, evidently, have changed
since Emerson referred to Poe as
“that jingle man.” Alluding to this
disparaging comment Dr. H. G. Wells,
the English novelist and writer on so
ciology, said at a dinner in Boston: “I
think hardly of your New England
writers for their contempt of Poe. I
shall never be able to forget that
Emerson called him ‘that jingle man.’
To-day a thousand read Poe where one
reads Emerson, and not to know Poe’s
work is rather a disgrace.”
Rupert Taylor, LL. 8., in a recently
printed “Study of Edgar Allan Poe,”
has this to say of Poe’s private life:
“Poe took pleasure in the softer in
fluences of home life, although there
is little or no reflection of it in his
writings. He dearly loved his wife
and her mother, of whom he speaks in
an excellent sonnet addressed to her
after the death of his wife, as ‘more
than mother.’ In the ‘Black Cat’ he
gives evidence of a fondness for do
mestic pets. His cottage at Fordham
was beautified by vines and flowering
plants, and he kept in cages several
singing birds and tropical birds of
plumage. He was as all who knew
anything about the matter attested on
every occasion a devoted and model
husband.” •
People in general are so accustomed
to regard Poe as a poet and short
story writer that they fail to realize
that he was also a profount specula
tive thinker. In an article entitled
“Poe as an Evolutionist” (Popular
Science Monthly, September) Mr.
Frederic Drew Bond points out that
in estimating his character too little
attention is bestowed on this phase
of his work. He finds that Poe enter
tained in its broad outlines that idea
of the changes and development of the
world which goes, nowadays, by the
name of the theory of evolution. On
February 3, 1848, Poe delivered, as a
lecture at the Society library of New
York, an abstract of his speculations
on the material and spiritual uni
verse—its essence, origin, creation,
present condition and destiny. Short
ly afterward this was published by
Putnam under the title “Eureka.”
After quoting the paragraphs from
Eureka in w’hich Poe sums up his
theory of cosmic development, Mr.
Bond says:
“The statement of Poe that ‘hetero
geneousness, brought about directly
through condensation, is proportional
with it forever,’ appears to contain the
germ of Herbert Spencer’s developed
formula: ‘Evolution is a change from
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity
to a definite, coherent heterogeneity
through continuous differentiations
and integrations.’ Noteworthy, also,
is Poe’s statement of the correlation
between mental development and
physical organization.”
After a thorough investigation and
consideration of Poe’s theory Mr.
Bond concludes that:
“In its important features, ‘Eureka’
is a perversion of the modern doctrine
of evolution. In the statements that
the universe is in a perpetual flux,
that it is now evolving and will in the
future dissolve, that it has developed
from a condition of homogeneity, and
that our own system sprang from a
nebula, Poe is in accord wdth the
Spencerian philosophy and very prob
ably with the actual facts; while in
the assertions that the earth has, dur
ing successive geological ages, pro
duced a higher and higher organic life
characterized by an ascending devel
opment of mind, hand in hand with an
increasing complexity of the physical
organization, he is stating what are
now known to be simple scientific
facts. Erroneous, of course, the de
tails of his conceptions very frequent
ly are; but this is common to him
with the pioneers of every great idea.
Only in the course of time does the
germ -of truth attain its full growth
and reveal its true character. To
criticise ‘Eureka’ from a contempo
rary standpoint would be as beside
the mark as to treat the ‘Naturphiloso
phie’ of Schelling or of Hegel in the
same way. It was a remark of John
P. Kennedy, Poe’s old friend, that the
latter ‘wrote like an old Greek phil
osopher’ and any one who reads the
fragments of the Greek thinkers be
fore Aristotle can easily verify for
himself the truth and aptness of the
statement. The merits of Poe, in
common, more or less, with the other
pre-Spencerian evolutionists lie in
how far and how truly his genius en
abled him to divide the mode of
development of Iho universe.
“It is improbable that ‘Eureka’had
any influence in preparing the way for
the reception of evolutionary idea 3,
a little later; at the most such influ
ence must have been of the slightest,
for though his work was early trans
lated into foreign languages, the failure
to find fitting recognition of its true
character, and the general obscurity
in which it has lain, seems to preclude
such a likelihood. Its interest lies
in the light it throws on its author
and in the honorable place it assigns
him in that long line of thinkers from
Thales to Darwin.”
The status, then, of Edgar Allan
Poe, 60 years after, is as follows:
Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman
finds that Poe “is read and held as
a distinctive genius in France, Spain,
Germany, Italy, Russia, Scandinavia—
that the spell of his art is felt
wherever our own English speech goes
with the flags of its two great over
lands.”
Mr. Maarten Maartens declares that
Poe is “at the head of American lit
erature,” and “that Europe is quite
agreed, as it has been from the first,
in recognizing the overshadowing
genius of Edgar Allan Poe.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle looks upon
Poe “as the world’s supreme short
story writer,” whose “nearest rival
was Maupassant.”
Charles Frederic Stansbury pro
nounces Poe “a brilliant genius to em
ulate the work of whom is the despair
of great minds and the confusion of
little ones.”
Mr. Charles L. Moore tells us that
“Poe was the least vulgar of mortals,”
and that “the total effect of his work
is that of loftiness and nobility.”
Miss Myrtle Reed says that Poe
“fought bravely against cruel odds.”
Mr. Rupert Taylor finds that Poe
was “on every occasion a devoted and
model husband.”
Mr. Frederic Drew Bond points out
that Poe “had a prevision of the doc
trine of evolution,” and that “he Is
entitled to an honorable place in that
long line*of thinkers from Thales to
Darwin.”
This, then, is the testimony, on di
rect examination, of the year 1907 In
the case of Edgar Allan Poe versus
those electors to the Hall of Fame
who have, so far, withheld from him
their votes.
Gentlemen, the defense rests.
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wby JOHN W. MORRIS,
Washington, D. 0.