Mayne Reid: A Memoir of his Life

by Elizabeth Hyde Reid

At Cincinnati, Ohio, by way of a change, he joined a company of strolling players, but very soon convinced himself that play-acting was not his forte. This little episode in his life, the gallant Captain was anxious to keep from the knowledge of his family in Ireland. They, strict Presbyterians as they were, looked upon play-actors as almost lost to the evil one. However, the fact got into print some years later.

Of all his varied adventures, the Captain would never tell us of his failure in this one line of business, though he would dwell on his talent as “storekeeper” and schoolmaster.

Between the years 1842 and 1846 we hear of him as a poet, newspaper correspondent and editor. In the autumn of 1842 Mayne Reid had reached Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here he contributed poetry to the Pittsburgh Chronicle, under the nom de plume of the “Poor Scholar.” In the spring of 1813 he settled in Philadelphia, and devoted all his energies to literature, the most ambitious of his efforts being a poem, “La Cubana,” published in “Godey’s Magazine.” Here he also produced a five-act tragedy “Love’s Martyr,” which is full of dramatic power.

During Mayne Reid’s residence in Philadelphia he made the acquaintance of the American poet, Edgar Allan Poe, and the following account of the poet’s life, written by Mayne Reid some years later, in defence of his much maligned friend, is of interest.

“Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I knew a man named Edgar Allan Poe. I knew him as well as one man may know another, after an intimate and almost daily association extending over a period of two years. He was then a reputed poet; I only an humble admirer of the Muses.

“But it is not of his poetic talent I here intend to speak. I never myself had a very exalted opinion of it—more especially as I knew that the poem upon which rests the head corner-stone of his fame is not the creation of Edgar Allan Poe, but of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ you will find the original of ‘The Raven.’ I mean the tune, the softly flowing measure, the imagery and a good many of the words—even to the ‘rustling of the soft and silken curtain.’

“This does not seem like defending the dead poet, nor, as a poet, is his defence intended. I could do it better were I to speak of his prose, which for classic diction and keen analytic power has not been surpassed in the republic of letters. Neither to speak of his poetry, or his prose, have I taken up the pen; but of what is, in my opinion, of much more importance than either—his moral character. Contrary to my estimate, the world believes him to have been a great poet; and there are few who will question his transcendent talents as a writer of prose. But the world also believes him to have been a blackguard; and there are but few who seem to dissent from this doctrine.

“I am one of this few; and I shall give my reasons, drawing them from my own knowledge of the man. In attempting to rescue his maligned memory from the clutch of calumniators, I have no design to represent Edgar Allan Poe as a model of what man ought to be, either morally or socially. I desire to obtain for him only strict justice; and if this be accorded, I have no fear that those according it will continue to regard him as the monster he has been hitherto depicted. Rather may it be that the hideous garment will be transferred from his to the shoulders of his hostile biographer.

“When I first became acquainted with Poe he was living in a suburban district of Philadelphia, called ‘Spring Garden.’ I have not been there for twenty years, and, for aught I know, it may now be in the centre of that progressive city. It was then a quiet residential neighbourhood, noted as the chosen quarter of the Quakers.

“Poe was no Quaker; but, I remember well, he was next-door neighbour to one. And in this wise: that while the wealthy co-religionist of William Penn dwelt in a splendid four-story house, built of the beautiful coral-coloured bricks for which Philadelphia is celebrated, the poet lived in a lean-to of three rooms—there may have been a garret with a closet—of painted plank construction, supported against the gable of the more pretentious dwelling.