The Home Life of Poe

by Susan Archer Talley Weiss

In order thoroughly to understand Poe, it is necessary that one should recognize the dominant trait of his character—a trait which affected and in a measure overruled all the rest—in a word, weakness of will.

"Unstable as water," is written upon Poe's every visage in characters which all might read; in the weak falling away of the outline of the jaw, the narrow, receding chin, and the sensitive, irresolute mouth. Above the soul-lighted eyes and the magnificent temple of intellect overshadowing them, we look in vain for the rising dome of Firmness, which, like the keystone of the arch, should strengthen and bind together the rest. Lacking this, the arch must be ever tottering to a fall.

To this weakness of will we may trace nearly every other defect in Poe's character, together with most of the disappointments and failures in whatsoever he undertook. He lacked the resolution and persistence necessary to battle against obstacles, to persevere to the end against opposition and discouragement, and to resist temptations and influences which he knew would lead him astray from the object which he had at heart. In this way he lost many a coveted prize when it seemed almost within his grasp.

The accepted opinion is that Poe's dissipation was his chief fault, as it was that to which was owing his ruin in the end. But even this was the effect chiefly of weakness of will. He was not by nature inclined to evil, but the contrary; and we have seen that, when left to himself and not exposed to temptation, he was, from all accounts, "sober, industrious and exemplary in his conduct." But he lacked firmness to resist the temptation which, more than in the case of most men, assailed him on every side.

Dr. William Gibbon Carter has told me how, when Poe was in Richmond on his last visit, and doing his best to remain sober, he would in his visits and strolls about the city be constantly greeted by friends and acquaintances with invitations to "take a julep." It was the custom of the time. Poe, said Dr. Carter, in one morning declined twenty-four such invitations, but finally yielded; and the consequence was the severe illness which threatened his life whilst in the city. The effect of one glass on him, said the Doctor, was that of several on any other man. Often he was tempted to drink from an amiable reluctance to decline the offered hospitality.

A marked peculiarity of Poe's character was the restless discontent which from his sixteenth year took possession of and clung to him through life, and was to him a source of much unhappiness. It was not the discontent of poverty or of ungratified worldly ambition, but the dissatisfaction of a genius which knows itself capable of higher things, from which it is debarred—the desire of the caged eagle for the wind-swept sky and the distant eyrie. He was not satisfied with being a mere writer of stories. He believed that, with a broader scope, he could wield a powerful influence over the literary world and make a record for strength, brilliancy and originality of thought which would render his name famous in other countries as in this. His desire was to set established rules and conventionalities at defiance, and to be fearless, independent, dominant in his assertion of himself and his ideas and convictions. As an editor writing for other editors, he found himself trammeled by what he called their narrowness and timidity. He must be his own master, his own editor; and hence his lifelong dream and desire took form in the conception of the Stylus—that ignis fatuus which he pursued to the last day of his life—uncertain, elusive, yet ever eagerly sought, and always ending in disappointment and bitterness of soul. Time and again it seemed within his grasp, and, as he exultantly proclaimed, "his prospects glorious," when, by his own weakness of will, it was lost to him.

Undoubtedly, one of the chief factors in the non-success of Poe's life and its consequent unhappiness was his marriage.

Setting aside the poetic imaginings which have been and doubtless will continue to be written concerning this marriage as one of idylic mutual love and "idolatry," the story, in the light of established facts, resolves itself into a very prosaic one.

Mr. John Mackenzie, Poe's lifelong and only intimate and confidential friend, never hesitated to say that had Poe been left to himself the idea would never have occurred to him of marrying his little child-cousin. In no transaction of his life was his pitiable weakness more manifest than in this feeble yielding of himself to the dominant will of a mother-in-law.

Had Poe remained single or have married another than Virginia, his regard for her would have continued just what it had been in the beginning and what it remained to the end—the affection of a brother or cousin for a sweet and lovable child. But no one can believe that Poe's nature could have found its satisfying in such a marriage; and, in fact, whatsoever sentimental things he may have written concerning it, his whole conduct goes to prove its insincerity.