Chapter XII: Part 12

"Phoebus! you know
That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe,
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl,
Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul."

But people who knew her well soon lost this unfavorable impression, and she was almost idolized by her real friends. Mr. Emerson thus records his first impressions of her: "She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity of life. . . . She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing pre-possessing. Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice,--all repelled; and I said to myself, 'We shall never get far.'" He adds: "I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody's foibles. I remember she made me laugh more than I liked." But, "soon her wit had effaced the impression of her personal unattractiveness, and the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with fun and drolleries and the very tides of joy and superabundant life," and he saw "that her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her talent;" and as he came to know her better, "her plane of character rose constantly in my estimation, disclosing many moods and powers in successive platforms or terraces, each above each." All superior women were drawn to her at once, and even those noted only for beauty or social talent vied in their devotion to her. A few years later, it was for this circle that her famous conversation classes were held in Boston; and so great was their popularity that she continued them for six years. These conversations were entirely unique in character, and attracted great attention in their day. The novelty of such a departure in the Boston of forty years ago may be imagined, and the criticism drawn upon a woman who should inaugurate such an innovation was in some cases very severe. In regard to these same conversations, as in other things, the impression she made was twofold. Mrs. Howe says: "Without the fold of her admirers stood carping, unkind critics; within were enthusiastic and grateful friends." But as to her great eloquence and ability, there was but one opinion. Even critics admitted that no woman had spoken like this before. And she addressed her fine audience of Boston's most cultivated women with entire ease and freedom, and gave many of them an impulse toward an intellectual career which nothing else at that time could have done.

Here was the real beginning of what may be called the woman question in this country. Before Margaret Fuller's day the agitation regarding woman's career and work in the world was practically unknown here; and all the ideas which have now become incorporated into the platform of the woman's party found in her their first and perhaps their best exponent. Very little that is new has since been urged upon this question. Her powerful mind seemed to have grasped the whole subject, and to have given it the best expression of which it was capable. She embodied her ideas after a time in her book, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century;" and although the literature of the subject is now voluminous, that book is still read and referred to.

Finding it necessary to support herself and to care for her mother and brothers after her father's death, she at first taught school, at one time in Mr. Alcott's famous school in Boston and afterwards in Providence, and then took a position upon the "New York Tribune," kindly offered her by Mr. Greeley. She supported her brothers in college, and aided her mother for some years, putting by her own ambitions with a cheerful outward appearance, though oftentimes with a heavy heart. She had many and very ambitious literary projects, few of which were ever destined to be carried out. For a woman who occupied so much the minds of the men of her day and of a succeeding generation, she really left little upon which to base their admiration. What she was, rather than what she did, seems to have made its impression upon her time. That her vocation was to speak rather than to write, there seems little doubt. She had the rare but much-prized gift of eloquence, and in these latter days would no doubt have made a very large success as a speaker. Some who listened to her think that she might have been the peer of Wendell Phillips in oratory, had she bent her powers entirely in that direction. As it is, her genius has become almost wholly a tradition. There are many to-day who cannot guess the secret of the continued interest the world feels in her. That secret lies largely in the impression she made upon many of the famous men of her time. They have transmitted her name to posterity along with their own. Horace Greeley at first determined not to like her personally, and avoided her even after she became a member of his family; but he ended by growing as enthusiastic over her as the rest. Even crabbed Carlyle, though much prejudiced against women of her sort, bore testimony to his liking for her. He writes to Emerson:--

"Margaret is an excellent soul; in real regard with both of us
here. Since she went I have been reading some of her papers in a
new book we have got; greatly superior to all I knew before,--in
fact, undeniable utterances of a truly heroic mind, altogether
unique, so far as I know, among the writing women of this
generation; rare enough too, God knows, among the writing men. She
is very narrow, but she is truly high. Honor to Margaret, and more
and more good speed to her!"

It was not until 1846 that Margaret's long desire to visit Europe was gratified. It had been the dream of her life, and one cannot but be sad at thought of its tragic ending. She spent some time in London, seeing all the celebrities of the day there, and then crossed over to Paris. Like London, Paris had then some brilliant men and women, whose peers she has not seen since. Rachel was the queen of the tragic stage, George Sand queen of the literary domain. De Balzac, Eugene Sue, Dumas _pere_, and Beranger were all alive, and the centre of the Parisian literary coterie. Liszt and Chopin held the musical world in the bondage of sweet sounds. Into this little inner circle Margaret entered, and did not fail to make her mark there. She was a second Madame de Stael in conversation, and in her little circle was recognized as such.

From Paris she went to Italy, where the real romance of her life was enacted and its tragic _denouement_ prepared for. Italy had been her promised land from early youth. She had longed for its sunny clime, amid the storms and winds of bleak New England; for its historic associations, amid the poverty of a land without a past; for its architectural splendors, amid the bareness and baldness of the New World cities; for the grandeur of its ancient art, amid the poverty of the America of that day; for its impassioned music, in a land almost devoid of musical culture; and she had longed for the beautiful, sensuous, idle life of its people, through all the strain of a strenuous and overworked existence. Her vision had been fair, and at first she was much disappointed. In artistic or architectural magnificence St. Peter's and the Transfiguration could not disappoint a soul like Margaret's, but she was deeply disappointed in the life of the Italian people and in the general charm of the country.

She fell upon exciting times in Italy. There had grown up the fiercest hatred of the Austrian rule, which had recently been aggravated by foolish acts of repression and violence. The whole country was in a ferment. Mazzini, whom Margaret had met in London, was here awaiting his opportunity. Mrs. Howe says: "Up and down went the hopes and the hearts of the Liberal party. Hither and thither ran the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and resentment. The Pope was the idol of the moment. The Grand Duke of Tuscany yielded to pressure whenever it became severe. The minor princes, who had from their birth been incapable of an idea, tried as well as they could to put on some semblance of concession without really yielding anything." Margaret was soon in close relations with leading Liberals, and shared all their hopes and fears and some of their dangers.

At this time she first met the young Italian nobleman, Ossoli, who became her husband. She became separated from her party one day at some service at St. Peter's, and, wandering around trying to find them, became tired and somewhat agitated. A young man of gentlemanly address offered his services to her as guide; and after looking in vain for her friends, she was obliged to accept his escort home, night having come on and no carriages being in attendance. They became mutually attracted, and the acquaintance continued, with that disregard of conventionality for which American women are noted when abroad. Although much younger than Margaret, he seemed to be greatly interested in her; and although he had none of her intellectual tastes, she was equally interested in him.

A very romantic attachment sprang up between them, which ended after a few months in a secret marriage. Her reason for the secrecy lay in the troubled times, and the fear of Ossoli's being deprived of his paternal inheritance on account of marrying a Protestant. They had great hopes of the coming revolution, and trusted to a more liberal government to give him his rights despite the fact of his marrying outside the Church of Rome. He was as poor as Margaret herself; and this was another reason for living apart for a time. He was a captain in the Civic Guard, and at this time much occupied with military duties. It was at this time that the Roman Republic was proclaimed, with great pomp of rejoicing; and Margaret chronicles the opening of the Constitutional Assembly, with great display of processions and banners. In one procession walked a Napoleonic prince side by side with Garibaldi, both having been chosen as deputies. All this raised the hopes of the Liberals throughout Europe to the highest point, and Margaret was almost transported with happy excitement,--probably not understanding as well as the natives of Italy how ill prepared that country was for liberty, and how soon the despotic power would again close around the people. In point of fact, the Republic lasted but a few days, and Margaret's brief time for rejoicing was over, and her own personal troubles became very urgent and oppressive.

A son had been born to her some months before, and had of necessity been left in the hands of a nurse in the country, as the marriage had not yet been made known. During all the pomp of processions and the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, she had heard the voice of her infant crying at Rieti. She had not seen him for three months, on account of the troublous times. She lay awake whole nights contriving how she might end the separation which seemed killing her; but circumstances were too strong for her, and the object so dear to her heart could not be compassed. The French were already in Italy. The siege of Rome soon ended in the downfall of the Republic, and the government was placed in the hands of a triumvirate. The city once invested, military hospitals became a necessity. Margaret was named superintendent of the hospital of the Fate Bene Fratelli. "Night and day," writes Mrs. Story, "Margaret was occupied, and with the Princess Belgiojoso so ordered and disposed the hospitals that their conduct was admirable. Of money they had very little, and they were obliged to give their time and thoughts in its place. I have walked through the wards with Margaret, and have seen how comforting was her presence to the poor suffering men. For each one's peculiar taste she had a care. To one she carried books; to another she told the news of the day; and listened to another's oft-repeated tale of wrongs, as the best sympathy she could give. They raised themselves on their elbows to get a last glimpse of her as she went away." Ossoli was stationed with his command on the walls of the Vatican, and in great danger. He refused to leave his post even for food and rest. The provisions which Margaret sent him he shared with his comrades. Sometimes she could visit him at his post and talk about the little Angelo, now always in her thoughts. As the wounded men were brought into the hospital she was always expecting to see her husband; and as the nurse had threatened to abandon the babe, and it was utterly impossible for Margaret to get outside the lines now investing the city, the two horrors were almost more than she could bear. It was only in trying to help the helpless that she found any consolation in this dreadful time. The night of the 20th of June, the French effected an entrance into the city; and although the defence was gallantly continued until the 30th, there was really no hope for the patriots.

At that time Garibaldi informed the Assembly that further resistance would be useless. The French occupation then began, and the end of all liberties. The gates once open, Margaret, with all her sorrow for Rome, was happy in the thought of reaching her child. She did reach him just in time to save his life. He had been forsaken by his nurse, and his mother found him "worn to a skeleton, too weak to smile or lift his wasted little hand." All that Margaret had endured seemed slight compared to this. She could but compare the women of the Papal States to wolves. The child, however, recovered with good nursing, and the family, now united, enjoyed a little season of repose and happiness. The marriage was announced, and Margaret's many friends in Rome extended their help and sympathy. Life in Italy had now become so painful to them that she resolved to return to the New World. Her husband was willing to accompany her. They accordingly engaged passage upon a merchant-vessel from Leghorn, the same vessel being engaged to bring over the heavy marble of Powers's "Greek Slave." She seemed to have great forebodings about this voyage, and was almost induced to give up their passage on the vessel at the last moment; but she overcame her fears, and they embarked. After a few days the captain died of small-pox. The disease spread; and Margaret, as courageously as ever, went about the ship nursing the sick. Soon the little Angelo was taken with the dread disease; they nursed him safely through it, however, and after many dangers and trials the vessel arrived off the Jersey coast in thick weather. At night, the mate promised them a landing in New York in the morning; but the vessel ran upon the sand-bars near Long Island, and on Fire Island beach she struck at four o'clock on the morning of July 19. Margaret, with husband and child, was lost, after refusing to be separated in the efforts at rescue. They went down together, and the career of a great and noble woman ended thus tragically on that desolate coast.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Among the names that were occasionally mentioned in the brief and fleeting annals of the stage from the year 1798 to the year 1811, were those of Mr. David Poe and the beautiful Miss Arnold--afterward Mrs. Poe,--the father and mother of that most brilliant but erratic genius Edgar A. Poe.

David Poe was the son of old General Poe, who won his honors in Revolutionary times and was a man of sterling character and many heroic qualities. Miss Arnold belonged to the stage by birth, and from earliest youth had been attached to the theatre in some capacity. It is a most miserable fate for a child, but she knew of nothing better. She came before the public with a naivete that was touching, and played her little airs on the piano and sung her little songs and uttered her childish sentences always to the very best of her ability, putting up with the late hours and the hasty and often scanty meals and the general discomfort of her lot with the utmost amiability and good-nature. No sheltered home, no days of careless pleasure, no constant and watchful care over health or manners or morals, fell to her lot; but the frowns and sometimes the curses of the older actors, the ill-nature of the manager, and the wearied fretfulness of her mother, who was growing old in the drudgery of her profession,--for she never rose above that at any time. Nor does it appear that Miss Arnold had any particular talent, though she won a moderate share of favor upon the stage; but she was always much esteemed by those who knew her in private. She sung and sometimes danced, as did her husband, who was an actor of inferior merit. There is something very pathetic in the story of the little second-rate actress who was so conscientious and so persevering, and one cannot but hope that she received her due share of the applause which lends such a fascination to the life of the actor that he rarely abandons it for any other career.

There is a hint of the hardship of her life in the fact that there are but three short breaks in her dramatic career through all those years,--the times when the three children were born to them. Edgar was born Jan. 19, 1809, and his mother appeared upon the stage again February 10, and played to the end of the season almost incessantly. The family were poor to the verge of destitution at all times, and the little woman had need of a brave heart when the children came crowding into the poor unfurnished nest. One cannot doubt that there was much of pain and worry in the little creature's heart before the birth of Edgar; and no doubt the paint covered the traces of many tears on the faded cheeks, and the smiles which wreathed her face were more artificial than the usual stage smiles during all those weary months. In 1811 she and her husband were playing in Richmond, when her health failed her, and they were brought to great straits for the means of life. The actors gave her a benefit, but the receipts were small, and the following card was inserted in the Richmond papers:--

"TO THE HUMANE: On this night Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of
disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance; _and
asks it perhaps, for the last time_."

Before the second benefit night the Richmond ladies had come to her relief, and she was tenderly cared for during the brief remainder of her life by stranger hands. She had never had a home. She had passed her whole life in poor, mean lodgings, about which no household charm could linger. In these desolate places had been passed even her honeymoon; in some garret lodgings had her children been born; here all that she had known of domestic joy or sorrow had been enacted; here she had doubtless wept her hot tears and had her little triumphs, and here she had died. Poor little variety-actress of the olden time! there is one heart at least that is touched by your lot, even at this distant day, and has dropped a tear to your memory on the page where she has read your history.

The three children were cared for by the kind people of Richmond, and Edgar was adopted by Mrs. John Allan, whose husband gave but a reluctant consent to the arrangement. Edgar was a most beautiful and precocious child, and attracted much attention in the new home. If the poor mother on her dying-bed could have known of the good fortune which awaited him, it would have eased somewhat the bitter pangs of her parting with her beautiful and idolized child. He was taken to England, where he spent several years of his childhood, and when he returned, entered a classical school, where he was prepared for college. He was described as "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and, though of generous impulses, not steadily kind or even amiable." He was a facile scholar and fond of Latin and English poetry. He was nearly always alone, making few friends among his schoolmates, and was of a dignified and reserved disposition and inclined to melancholy. He entered the University of Virginia at the age of seventeen, and it was here that his fatal habit of drinking was first formed. One of his schoolmates writes:--

"Poe's passion for strong drink was as marked and peculiar as that
for cards. It was not the _taste_ of the beverage that influenced
him. Without a sip or smack of the mouth he would seize a full
glass, without water or sugar, and send it home at a single gulp.
This frequently used him up; but if not, he rarely returned to the
charge."

This, for a lad of seventeen, with an excitable temperament, was sufficient to sow the seeds of all his future woe. The youthful brain inflamed with alcohol never really recovers its normal condition, even when abstinence follows, and Poe's life-long struggle with his adversary began at this tender age. Dr. Day, long connected with the inebriate asylum at Binghamton, N. Y., once had an opportunity to examine the brain of a man who, after having been a drunkard, reformed and lived for some years as a teetotaller. He found to his surprise that the globules of the brain had not shrunk to their natural size. They did not exhibit the inflammation of the drunkard's brain, but they were still enlarged, and seemed ready on the instant to absorb the fumes of alcohol and resume their former condition. He thought he saw in this morbid condition of the brain the physical part of the reason why a man who has once been habituated to liquor falls so easily under its sway again in spite of every moral reason for refraining. Doubtless he was right, and poor Poe was only one of a vast number of men of brilliant intellects and kind hearts, who after a life-long struggle are defeated by the enemy they have taken into their stomachs to destroy their brains.

It is not our purpose to trace the poet through all the devious windings of his life, but to dwell for a little while upon the course of his domestic life and give some of the striking points in his character. We will pass over the close of his college career and the episode at West Point, as well as the publication of his earliest volume of poems, and look at him as we find him in the summer of 1833, living in Baltimore. He had a home here with his father's widowed sister, Mrs. Clemm, who with her daughter Virginia lived in a very humble way in that city. The little Poe could earn--for he was then at one of his lowest financial periods--went into the common stock, and the three struggled along together. Virginia was a child of eleven, beautiful, delicate, refined; and Mrs. Clemm was then, as always thereafter, the best and kindest of friends to the poet. She had little to offer him, save kindness and motherly love; but she gave these most abundantly, and they were of priceless value to Poe. For many months he kept himself from his besetting sin, and worked faithfully at whatever literary work he could get to do. But he was poor to the point of destitution, and the mental strain upon him was great, with his extraordinary pride and sensitiveness. He had been well reared, with fine and delicate tastes, and accustomed to money; and privation was very bitter to him. He was naturally an aristocrat, too, and found in the associations to which he was almost compelled by poverty a heavy cross. At the end of two years he felt himself forced to leave Baltimore, and thought he could obtain employment in Richmond. He had become greatly attached to Virginia, and she was equally so to him; and although she was but a child of thirteen, Poe proposed to marry her and take her and Mrs. Clemm with him to his new destination. The youth of Virginia seems to have been the only obstacle in the mind of Mrs. Clemm, who had conceived the deepest affection for Poe and had great confidence in his abilities. She was friendless and unable to take care of herself and her daughter, and after some hesitation she consented to the marriage. It did not take place, however, till Virginia was fourteen years old.

Ill-starred and ill-timed as this marriage seemed to be, it was the one bright and beautiful thing about the life of Poe. He remained passionately devoted to the youthful wife as long as she lived; and it is thought by those who knew him best that, despite his numerous romantic passages with ladies after her death, Virginia was the only woman he ever really loved. In spite of the bad habits which clung to him so persistently, he seems to have been a really kind and devoted husband to the end. She, on her part, worshipped him with a supreme infatuation that was blind to all his faults. The romance of the first months of married life seemed never to wear off, and through all their sorrows--and they were many and bitter--their love burned as brightly as at first.

To Mrs. Clemm, also, Poe was always a devoted son, and through all his waywardness; and folly and sin she clung to him with the devotion of a true mother. The sturdy figure of this woman shows through all the dark spots of his life, casting a gleam of brightness. She was a strong, masculine-looking woman, full of energy, and took upon herself all the practical affairs of the little household. She received the money from Poe, and expended it in her own way; and she had a faculty of getting a good deal of comfort out of a very little money. So their home was almost always comfortable, even when they were poorest. And she never gave way to reproaches, even when Poe was at his worst. She seemed to consider his failing only in the light of a misfortune, and never blamed, but always pitied him. She worshipped his genius almost as blindly as did Virginia, and it is pleasant to think that with all their misfortunes and privations, they had much real happiness in their little home. Poe was very proud and very fond of Virginia, and liked to take strangers to see her. She had a voice of wonderful sweetness and sung exquisitely, and in some of their more prosperous days she had her harp and piano. One evening when she was singing she ruptured a blood-vessel, and for a time her life was despaired of Poe describes the affliction long afterwards in a letter as follows:--

"Six years ago a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before,
ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. I took leave of her forever,
and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered
partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel again
broke. I went through precisely the same scene. Then
again--again--and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I
felt all the agonies of her death, and at each accession of the
disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more
desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally
sensitive,--nervous to an unusual degree. I became insane, with
long intervals of possible sanity. During these fits of absolute
unconsciousness, I drank--God only knows how often or how much. As
a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink,
rather than the drink to the insanity."

Although Poe's word is not always to be taken in regard to his own affairs, this doubtless describes his feelings over Virginia's condition quite truthfully; and whether the drinking was cause or effect we shall probably never really know.

During one of the periods of Virginia's improved health Poe took her and went to New York, leaving Mrs. Clemm behind to settle up domestic affairs. In a letter which he wrote to his mother-in-law, we have a glimpse of the kindlier side of the man's nature and of his real affection for this devoted friend, as well as some hints of the straits of poverty to which they had been accustomed, by the fulness of his descriptions of the plenty upon which they had fallen. He is speaking of his boarding-house:--

"I wish Catarina [the cat] could see it; she would faint. Last
night for supper we had the nicest tea you ever drank,--strong and
hot,--wheat and rye bread, cheese, tea-cakes (elegant--a great
dish), two dishes of elegant ham and two of cold veal, piled up
like a mountain and large slices, three dishes of the cakes, and
everything in the greatest profusion. No fear of starving here. The
landlady seemed as if she couldn't press us enough, and we were at
home directly. For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot
and strong,--not very clear and no great deal of
cream,--veal-cutlets, elegant ham and eggs, and nice bread and
butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast.
I wish you could have seen the eggs and the great dishes of meat.
Sis is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has
coughed hardly any, and had no night-sweat. She is now busy mending
my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and
bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of
slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept all night. We
have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to
try and borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go
upon. I feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop--so
that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant I scrape
together enough money I will send it on. You can't imagine how much
we both do miss you. Sissy had a hearty cry last night because you
and Catarina weren't here. We hope to send for you very soon."

It is hard to read of the straits to which Poe was often reduced for a little money, and to know that all this time he was writing those immortal tales which would now make a man's fortune as soon as produced. It is true that he had two or three times good salaried positions,--good for that day,--but he never kept them long, and his chronic state was one of poverty, if not of destitution.

Mrs. Osgood, who knew him in the later days in New York, says of him:--

"I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred,
and fastidiously refined. To a sensitive and delicately nurtured
woman there was a peculiar and irresistible charm in the chivalric,
graceful, and almost tender reverence with which he invariably
approached all women who won his respect."

The home in the suburbs where he lived in the last days of his wife's life is described as a story-and-a-half house at the top of Fordham Hill. Within on the ground floor were two small apartments,--a kitchen and sitting-room,--and above, up a narrow stairway, two others, one Poe's room,--a low, cramped chamber lighted by little square windows like port-holes,--the other a diminutive closet of a bedroom, hardly large enough to lie down in. The furnishing was of the scantiest, but everything faultlessly neat.

"Mrs. Clemm, now over sixty, in her worn black dress made upon all
who saw her an impression of dignity, refinement, and deep motherly
devotion to her children. Virginia, at the age of twenty-five,
retained her beauty, but the large black eyes and raven hair
contrasted sadly with the pallor of her face. Poe himself, poor,
proud, and ill, anticipating grief and nursing the bitterness that
springs from helplessness in the sight of suffering borne by those
dear to us, was restless and variable, the creature of
contradictory impulses."

Virginia now failed rapidly, Poe was ill, and the household was reduced almost to the starving-point. Winter was upon them; and when at last a sympathizing friend found them she thus describes the situation:--

"There was no clothing upon the bed, which was only straw, but a
snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the
sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever
of consumption. She lay on the straw bed wrapped in her husband's
great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The
wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat
and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as her
husband held her hands and her mother her feet. Mrs. Clemm was
passionately fond of her daughter, and her distress on account of
her illness and poverty and misery was dreadful to see."

This friend at once interested some benevolent people in the case, and poor Virginia's last days were made comfortable by their aid. Poe's heart seemed filled with inexpressible gratitude to all who aided him in this sorest crisis of his life; and although he was much broken by his loss, he rallied once more and was sober and industrious for a time. Mrs. Clemm stood faithfully by him, and even watched over him through some of the fearful seasons of delirium which followed his complete giving up to the habits of drinking and of taking opium.

Of the final scenes of this unhappy life it is needless to write. They have been often described, and though the accounts vary, the sum and substance are the same. Poe was attacked with delirium-tremens in Baltimore, and died in a hospital in that city in October, 1849. Beautiful, gifted, and sensitive, proud, ambitious, and daring, endowed with a subtle charm of manner as well as of person, amiable and generous in his home life, loyal and devoted to his family, a very pleasing picture is presented of the man if we look but on this side. Could he have overcome the fatal fascination of drink, we might never have seen the reverse side of all this. As it is, let us cover his follies with our mantle of charity and dwell only upon his genius and his virtues.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

During a portion of Thackeray's life there seemed to be in the public mind a complete misapprehension of the character of the man. Superficial readers of his books, who knew nothing of him personally, were fond of applying the name of cynic to him; and he was even accused by some of these of being a hater of his kind, a misanthropist, a bitter satirist, a hard, ungenial man.

As no adequate personal memoir of him has ever been written, it being understood by his family that such a publication would have been distasteful to him, it has taken time to correct all the false impressions that have gained credence in regard to the great humorist; but at the present time his character has been practically cleared of the former false charges. As one by one the friends who knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men that our time has produced; this hater of his kind, a man so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a serious drawback to him in life; this misanthropist, one of the most genial and kindly companions in the world; this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by his speech; this hard man, one who actually threw money away, as all his friends thought, by bestowing it upon every applicant whether he could afford it or not.

So great a change in the world's estimate of a man has seldom been made after the man's death. It is to be accounted for by the fact that while he was living his friends never told what they knew of him, and that only very gradually did they reveal his virtues, even after he had gone, feeling always that he would have preferred them to be silent; and by the other fact that he often appeared other than he was, to cover up his excessive sensibility, of which he was very much ashamed.

The world will come to a truer knowledge of him still some day; and then it will be found what a great, loving, noble heart was hidden behind his thin crust of cynicism,--what gentleness, what tenderness, what wise kindness he was capable of,--what loyalty to his friends and to his principles, what reverence for sacred things, what infinite depths of pathos, lay beneath that mocking exterior. Let us gather together a few of these personal traits as they have been given us by different hands, and try to make thus a true likeness of the man as he appeared to those who knew him best. The events of his life were few and by no means striking.

He was born in Calcutta in 1811, and brought to England when six years of age. At eleven he was placed in Charter-House School, where he is described as a rosy-faced boy, with dark curling hair, and a quick intelligent eye, ever twinkling with good-humor. For the usual school sports he had no taste, and was only known to enjoy theatricals and caricatures, for which he retained his taste throughout life. He was wonderfully social and vivacious, and the best of good company, even at this early day. Merry, light-hearted, unselfish, not very industrious, but a fair classical scholar, and possessed of a wonderful memory,--so he is remembered by those who knew him at this time. In a great school, where nearly all the boys bullied those who were beneath them, he was noted for his invariable kindness to the smaller boys, and it was remarked of him, even at this age, that for one who had such powers of sarcasm he made very few wounds by his tongue. At eighteen he entered Cambridge University, but left it at nineteen and went to study art in Paris. Here he remained for several years, and began his literary work. Here, too, he was married, when twenty-six years of age, to Miss Isabella Shawe, and here they passed the first happy days of their married life together. He has himself sketched a picture of the time, in these words:--

"The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend
watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in
her lap, and with fond smiles or silence, or both, cheering his
labors."

For a few short years they were very happy together, and three children were born to them. Then the most terrible misfortune of his life fell upon him,--his wife, after a severe illness, became hopelessly insane. For some time Thackeray refused to believe that it was more than an illness from which she would recover, but at last the terrible truth was forced upon him that he had lost her forever, and in a way so much more cruel than death. She was placed in the home of a kind family employed to care for her, and there she remained until death released her. His grief was of the most hopeless kind, and it made a melancholy man of him throughout life. At times and seasons his natural gayety would return to him; but he was a sad man at heart from that dreadful day when the horror of her fate was revealed to him. He never spoke directly of his grief, but once in a while he would speak of it in parable, as when he talked to a friend about somebody's wife whom he had known becoming insane, and that friend says:--

"Never shall I forget the look, the manner, the voice, with which
he said to me, 'It is an awful thing for her to continue to live.
It is awful for her so to die. But has it ever occurred to you how
awful the recovery of her lost reason would be, without the
consciousness of the loss of time? She finds the lover of her youth
a gray-haired old man, and her infants young men and women. Is it
not sad to think of this?'"

His mother came to live with him, and his children grew to maturity beneath his roof, one of them the Miss Thackeray now so well known as a novelist. But tenderly as he was attached to them,--and there could have been no fonder father,--he no doubt felt all the sadness of the thought that

"The many make the household,
But only one the home."

In one of the "Roundabouts" he says:--

"I own, for my part, that in reading papers which this hand
formerly penned, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It
is not the words I see, but that past day, that by-gone page of
life's history, that tragedy--comedy it may be--which our little
home company were enacting, that merry-making which we shared, that
funeral which we followed, that bitter, bitter grief which we
buried."

That he should live much in that vanished past, was but natural; yet it was hard for a man like Thackeray, who had naturally such great capacity for the enjoyment of life.

That his home was a pleasant and goodly place, all who have ever visited it bear witness. He made it his refuge from all outer troubles, and practised a genial and kindly hospitality there. It was a long time before he was able to buy a house, though he made a good deal of money from his books, his free-handed generous ways always keeping him back financially; but when he was enabled to buy one, he took great pride and pleasure in it, and decorated it according to his artistic tastes. To make a little more money for his daughters, that they might be independent when he was gone, he began lecturing, and was twice induced to come to America for that purpose, much as he dreaded leaving home, and especially crossing the ocean.

His speech at the farewell dinner given him before leaving for America the last time, expressed this dread in a very comical manner, and was received with great cheering and uproar. "I have before me," he said, "at this minute the horrid figure of a steward with a basin perhaps, or a glass of brandy and water, which he will press me to drink, and which I shall try to swallow, and which won't make me any better. I know it won't." This with a grimace which put the whole table in a roar. Then he went on to tell of the last dinners given to criminals and convicts, and how they were allowed always to choose what they would have, in a manner so droll that all thought him in the happiest mood, while he was scarcely able to keep up, so sad was his heart at the prospect of leaving home. Next morning, we are told by a spectator, "he had been round crying in corners; and when the cab finally came, and the luggage had all been bestowed, and the servants stood in the hall, 'This is the moment I have dreaded,' said Thackeray, as he entered the dining-room to embrace his daughters, and when he hastily descended the steps to the door, he knew that they would be at the window to cast one loving, lingering look. 'Good-by,' he murmured in a suppressed tone, 'keep close behind me, and try to let me jump in unseen.' The instant the door of the vehicle closed behind him, he threw himself back in the corner, and buried his face in his hands."

His allusion to his little girls, in the poem of "The White Squall," is well known, and shows how constantly he had them in his thoughts:--

"And when, its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended,
And as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o'er the sea,
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling, and making
A prayer at home for me."

His love for these little girls, to whom he felt he must be both father and mother, gave him unusual tenderness for all children, and he once said he never could see a boy without wanting to give him a sovereign. This he did very often too in England, where children, like servants, are allowed to receive "tips" from their parents' friends; and when in this country he felt it quite a hardship that the children of his friends were not allowed to take his money.

His American visits afforded him much pleasure--and profit too; and he always spoke kindly of us after his return. His light way of expressing his feeling towards us was extremely characteristic, as when he said he hoped he should never be guilty of speaking ill either of the North or the South, as he had been offered equally good claret by both. His frequent allusions to eating and drinking give the idea of a much more convivial person than he really was; he was temperate in both, but he loved to write of these things. In the "Memorials of Gormandizing," he writes in the most appetizing manner of all the good dinners he has eaten in many lands. Each dinner is an epic of the table. They make one hungry with an inappeasable hunger, and make him long to have Thackeray at his own board as a most appreciative guest. He was quite a diner-out in London, and a great favorite wherever he went. He was not one of the professional talkers, but always had one or two good things to say, which he did not repeat until they were stereotyped, as so many do. Though he said witty things now and then, he was not a wit in the sense that Jerrold was. He shone most in little subtle remarks on life, little off-hand sketches of character, and descriptive touches of men and things. He could be uproariously funny on occasion, and even sing his "Jolly Doctor Luther" at table to a congenial company; but he was often very dignified, and always gentlemanly. The bits of doggerel with which he was wont to diversify his conversation are spoken of by all his friends as irresistibly ludicrous, and he seems to have indulged in this pastime from a boy, as he did in those of caricaturing and parodying. Mr. Fields tells us that--

"In the midst of the most serious topic under discussion he was
fond of asking permission to sing a comic song, or he would beg to
be allowed to enliven the occasion by the instant introduction of a
double shuffle. . . . During his first visit to America his jollity
knew no bounds, and it became necessary often to repress him when
walking in the street. I well remember his uproarious shouting and
dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course of
readings were all sold; and when we rode together from his hotel to
the lecture-hall, he insisted on thrusting both his long legs out
of the carriage window, in deference, as he said, to his
magnanimous ticket-holders."

Some of his fun was a little embarrassing to his friends, as when Mr. Fields had taken him to the meeting of a scientific club at the house of a distinguished Boston gentlemen, and Thackeray, being bored by the proceedings, stole into a little anteroom, where he thought no one could see him but his friend, and proceeded to give vent to his feelings in pantomime.

"He threw an imaginary person (myself, of course) upon the floor,
and proceeded to stab him several times with a paper-folder which
he caught up for that purpose. After disposing of his victim in
this way, he was not satisfied, for the dull lecture still went on
in the other room, and he fired an imaginary revolver several times
at an imaginary head; still the droning speaker proceeded; and now
began the greatest pantomimic scene of all, namely, murder by
poison, after the manner in which the player King is disposed of in
'Hamlet.' Thackeray had found a small phial on the mantel-shelf and
out of it he proceeded to pour the imaginary 'juice of cursed
hebenon' into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The whole
thing was inimitably done, and I hoped nobody saw it but myself;
but years afterwards a ponderous fat-witted young man put the
question squarely to me: 'What _was_ the matter with Mr. Thackeray
that night the club met at M----'s house?'"

Thackeray's playfulness was indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the flavor is gone from them when any one tries to do so. He was the life of the clubs he frequented, and spent much time in them and at theatres, of which he was passionately fond. His duties as a man of fashion took much of his time, and his friends were always wondering when he wrote his books. Much of the jollity and boyish hilarity of his life in society was a rebound from the strain of these books. He was wont to live much, as did Dickens, in the creations of his fancy, and sometimes his emotional nature became overwrought in his work. Mr. Underwood tells us:--

"One day while the great novel of 'The Newcomes' was in course of
publication, Lowell, who was then in London, met Thackeray on the
street. The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks and voice
told of weariness and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the
poet's eyes, and said, 'Come into Evans's and I'll tell you all
about it. _I have killed the Colonel!_' So they walked in and took
a table in a remote corner; and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh
manuscript from his breast-pocket, read through that exquisitely
touching chapter which records the death of Colonel Newcome. When
he came to the final _Adsum_, the tears which had been swelling his
lids for some time trickled down his face, and the last word was
almost an inarticulate sob."

Thackeray's sensibility was really extreme, and he could not read anything pathetic without actual discomfort,--never could get through "The Bride of Lammermoor," for instance,--and would not listen to any sad tales of suffering in real life if he could escape them. If he did hear of any one in want or distress, he relieved his feelings by instantly appropriating to their use all the money he found himself in possession of at the time. When he was editor of the "Cornhill Magazine," this soft-heartedness was a great drawback to him. He was always paying for contributions he could not use, if they were sent, as so many are, with some pitiful tale accompanying; and was always wasting his valuable time by writing to poor creatures about their dreary verses, which there was no hope of his being able to improve. When quite young, he loaned--or rather gave, though he called it a loan--three hundred pounds to poor old Maginn, when he was beaten in the battle of life and lay in the Fleet Prison. But he denied this act with the utmost vehemence when accused of it, and berated the old fellow in a laborious manner for having been beaten when he should have fought on. Indeed, he was very much ashamed of his soft-heartedness always, and would oftentimes bluster and appear very fierce when appealed to for assistance.

Anthony Trollope tells a story about going to him one day and telling him of the straits to which a mutual friend was reduced.

"'Do you mean to say that I am to find two thousand pounds?' he
said angrily, with some expletives. I explained that I had not even
suggested the doing of anything,--only that we might discuss the
matter. Then there came over his face a peculiar smile, and a wink
in his eye, and he whispered his suggestion, as if ashamed of his
meanness. 'I'll go half,' he said, 'if anybody will do the rest.'
And he did go half at a day or two's notice. I could tell various
stories of the same kind."