Poe was of all men one who most craved and needed the love and sympathy of a woman of a nature kindred to his own—a woman of talent and qualities of mind and heart to appreciate his genius and all that was best in him; one who would be to him not only a congenial companion, but a "helpmeet" as well. Had he married one of Mrs. Osgood's tender sensibilities and feminine charm, or Mrs. Whitman, with her talent and strong character, or even a woman of the practical good sense and judgment of Mrs. Shew, who knew so well how to care for him mentally and physically—Poe would have been a different man.
But his imprudent and, as it has been called, unnatural marriage, cut him off from what would probably have been the highest happiness of his life, with its accompanying worldly and social advantages, and bound him down to a life of unceasing toil, penury and helplessness. It deprived him of a social position and social enjoyment; for his poverty-stricken "home" was never one to which he could invite his friends; and he himself seems never to have found in it any real pleasure, but to have regarded it merely as a haven of refuge in seasons of distress. But as the years went by and, despite his incessant toil, his life and his home grew more cheerless and poverty-stricken, he became hopeless and in a measure reckless. It is to be noted that it was only after the death of his wife that he appeared to recover anything like hope or energy. Then his prospects suddenly brightened in the love of a good and talented woman who could have made his life happy and prosperous, when, owing to his miserable weakness of will in yielding to temptation, for which there was no excuse, it was all at once swept from his grasp.
Mr. John Mackenzie might well have said, as he did, that Poe's marriage was the greatest misfortune of his life and as a millstone around his neck, holding him down against every effort to rise. But perhaps not even this close friend knew how keenly the poet must have felt the narrowness of his life, the sordidness of his home, and the humiliation of his poverty. Patiently and uncomplainingly he bore his unhappy lot; and it is to be noted to his credit that howsoever he might at times go astray, no word or act of unkindness toward the wife and mother who loved him was ever known to escape from him.
It will be seen from all that has here been written, in the light of prosaic truth, that Poe's real character was one very different from that which it has pleased the world in general to ascribe to him—judging him as it does by the character of his writings as a poet. The folly of such judgment, and the extent to which it was until recently carried, is simply surprising. It is true that he appeared to have but one ideal—the death of a woman young, lovely and beloved—and that ideal in the imagining of the world resolved itself into the personality of his wife. She, they concluded, was the original of all the Lenores, and Anabel Lees, and Ullalumes, which inspired his melancholy and despairing lyre; and in its gloom and hopelessness they could see nothing but the expression of the poet's own nature. As well have accused Rembrandt of being gloomy and morose because he painted in dark colors. Like the artist, Poe loved obscure and sombre ideas and conceptions, and he delighted in embodying these in his poems as much as Rembrandt did in transferring his own to canvas.
APPENDIX.
No. 1.
Lest the reader should be under the impression that much of what I relate concerning Poe's childhood and certain circumstances connected with his early youth is taken from Gill's Life of Poe, I will make an explanation.
At the time when the first edition of Gill's work was issued I was engaged in writing what I intended to be a little book concerning Poe, compiled from my own personal knowledge of him and what I had been told by others. In some way Gill heard of this, and wrote to me, coolly requesting to be allowed to see my manuscript, which I, of course, excused myself from doing. Again and again he wrote, saying that he "merely wished to see exactly what I had written." In self-defence, I finally sent him the first part or chapter of the manuscript, he promising to return it as soon as read. After some weeks it was returned to me, without a word accompanying; and at the same time a second edition of Gill's "Life" was issued—the first having been suppressed—in which, to my surprise, I found copious extracts from my manuscript. All those little anecdotes of Poe's childhood were thus appropriated, with more important matter—such as Poe's dissipation when in Richmond and his enlisting in the army, both of which Gill had in his first edition positively denied; and this he made use of as though it had been his own original material. My book was, of course, ruined, and all that I could do was, some years after, to write "The Last Days of Poe," published in Scribner's Magazine, though even from this Gill made "Notes" for the Appendix of his second or third edition.