Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 8

They had a little cottage at Fordham, in the country just out of New York. It was a very humble place, but the scenery about it was beautiful. Poe himself became ill, and his dear Virginia was dying of consumption. They were so poor that friends had to help them. One of these friends wrote:

"There was no clothing on 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 bed wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat in her bosom."

On one Sat.u.r.day in January, 1847, Virginia died. Her husband, wrapped in the military cloak that had once covered her, followed the body to the tomb in the family vault of the Valentines, relatives of the family.

CHAPTER X

POE AS A STORY-WRITER

Next to "The Raven," Poe's most famous work is that fascinating story, "The Gold-Bug," perhaps the best detective story that was ever written, for it is based on logical principles which are instructive as well as interesting. Poe's powerful mind was always a.n.a.lyzing and inventing. It is these inventions and discoveries of his which make him famous.

The story of the gold-bug is that of a man who finds a piece of parchment on which is a secret writing telling where Captain Kidd hid his treasure off the coast of South Carolina. The gold-beetle has nothing whatever to do with the real story, and is only introduced to mystify. It is one of the principles of all conjuring tricks to have something to divert the attention. Poe's detective story is a sort of conjuring trick, but it is all the more interesting because he fully explains it.

Cryptographs are systems of secret writing. The letter _e_ is represented by some strange character, perhaps the figure 8. In "The Gold-Bug" _t_ is a semicolon and _h_ is 4, so that; 48 means _the_.

Sometimes the letter _e_ is represented by several signs, any one of which the writer may use; and perhaps the word _the_, which occurs so often, is represented by a single character, like _x_. Often, too, the words are run together, so that at first sight you cannot tell where one word begins and another ends.

Solving a cryptograph is like doing a mathematical problem, and Poe was very clever at it.

He published a series of articles on "Cryptography" or systems of secret writing, in _Alexander's Weekly Messenger_, and challenged any reader to send in a cipher which he could not translate into ordinary language. Hundreds were sent to him, and he solved them all, though it took up a great deal of his time.

In the same line with this was another feat of his. d.i.c.kens's story, "Barnaby Rudge," was coming out in parts from week to week, as a serial publication. From the first chapters Poe calculated what the outcome of the plot would be, and published it in the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_. He guessed the story so accurately that d.i.c.kens was greatly surprised and asked him if he were the devil.

Again at a later date Poe wrote a remarkable story, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." A young girl had been murdered in New York. The newspapers were full of accounts of the crime, but the police could get no clew to the murderers. In Poe's story he wrote out exactly what happened on the night of the murder, and explained the whole thing, as if he were an expert detective. Afterward, by the confessions of two of the partic.i.p.ants, it was proved that his solution of the mystery was almost exactly the truth.

"The Gold-Bug" was not published until sometime later, but it was as editor of _Graham's Magazine_ that Poe first became known as a writer of detective stories. One of the most famous is "The Murders of the Rue Morgue." It is an imaginary story, but none the less interesting.

A murder was committed in Paris by an orang-outang, which had climbed in at a window and then closed the window behind it. The police could find no clew; but the hero of Poe's story follows the facts out by a number of clever observations of small facts.

"The Gold-Bug" seems to have been written in 1842 for Poe's projected magazine, _The Stylus_. F.O.C. Darley, the well-known artist, was to draw pictures for it at seven dollars each. Poe himself took to him the ma.n.u.script of "The Gold-Bug" and that of "The Black Cat."

As this magazine was never published, the story of "The Gold-Bug" was sent to Graham some time after Poe had left him; but he did not like it, and made some criticisms upon it. Poe got it back from Graham in order to submit it for a prize of $100 offered by _The Dollar Newspaper_. It won the prize, and became Poe's most popular story.

CHAPTER XI

HOW "THE RAVEN" WAS WRITTEN

"The Raven" was published in New York just two years before Mrs. Poe died; it instantly made its author famous, although it brought him little or no money. It is said that he was paid only ten dollars for the poem; but as soon as it appeared it was the talk of the nation,--being copied into almost every newspaper. Poe had written and published many other poems, but none of them had attracted much attention.

We have spoken of Poe as a story-writer, and now in "The Raven" we see him a great poet.

It is not unusual to think of poetry as the work of inspiration or genius; but how it is written, n.o.body knows. Poe maintained that literary art is something that can be studied and learned. To ill.u.s.trate this he told how he wrote "The Raven." Some people considered this a sort of joke; but it was not. When Poe began to write, his work was not at all good; as years went on, he learned by patient practice to write well. It was more than anything else this long course of training that made him so great.

The essay in which he tells how he wrote "The Raven," begins by saying that when he thought of writing it he decided that it must not be too long nor too short. It must be short enough so that one could read it through at a sitting; but also it must be long enough to express fully the idea which he had in mind.

Then, it must be beautiful. All true poetry is about beauty. It doesn't teach anything useful, or a.n.a.lyze anything, but it simply makes the reader feel a certain effect. When you read "The Raven" you hardly know what the poet is saying; but you feel the ghostly scene, and it makes you shudder; and there is a strange fascination about it that makes you like it, even if it is horrible.

He goes on to say that he decided to have a refrain at the end of each stanza, the single word "Nevermore." At first he thought he would have a parrot utter it; but a raven can talk as well as a parrot, and is more picturesque. The most striking subject he could think of was the death of a beautiful woman--this he felt to be so because of his own impressions concerning the approaching death of his sweet wife.

Besides this, Poe said that poetry and music are much alike, and he tried to have his poem produce the effect of solemn music. All his best poetry is very much like music.

With these materials at his command, he now turned his attention to the construction of the poem. He would ask questions, and the raven would always reply by croaking "Nevermore." As an answer to some questions, this would sound very terrible. Says he: "I first established in my mind the climax, or concluding query,--that query in reply to which the word 'nevermore' should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. Here, then, the poem may be said to have its beginning--at the end, where all works of art should begin--for it was here, at this point of my preconsiderations, that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:--

"'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!

By the heaven that bends above us--by that G.o.d we both adore!-- Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore,-- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'

Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'"

This principle of beginning at the end or climax to write a poem or story was one so important that Poe insisted on it at great length. In the "Murders in the Rue Morgue" the author necessarily began at the end, imagined the solution of the mystery, and gradually worked back to the beginning, bringing in his detective after everything had been carefully constructed for him, though to the ordinary reader of the story it seems as if the detective came to a real mystery.

It may be observed that all of Poe's stories and poems are built up about some principle of the mind. They ill.u.s.trate how the mind works.

After the principle is stated the ill.u.s.tration is given.

Can anything be more important and interesting than to know how the mind thinks, how it is inspired with terror or love or a sense of beauty? If you know just how the mind of a man works in regard to these things, you can yourself create the conditions which will make others laugh or cry, be filled with horror, or overflow with a sense of divine holiness. Ordinary story-tellers and ordinary poets write poems or stories that are pretty and amusing; but it is only a master like Poe who writes to ill.u.s.trate and explain some great principle.

His stories teach us how we may go about producing similar effects in the affairs of life. We wish success in business, in society, in politics. To gain it we must make people think and feel as we think and feel. To do that we must understand the principles on which men's minds work, and no poet or writer a.n.a.lyzed and ill.u.s.trated those principles so clearly as Poe.

CHAPTER XII

MUSIC AND POETRY

Poe always maintained that music and poetry are very near of kin, and in nearly all his greatest poems he seems to write in such a way as to produce the impression of music. As you read his verses you seem to hear a musical accompaniment to the words, which runs through the very sounds of the words themselves.

Poe explained that poetry and music are alike in that both obey absolute laws of time, and that the laws of time or rhythm in poetry are just as exact as the laws of time in music. He wrote an essay ent.i.tled "The Rationale of Verse," in which he demonstrated that all the rules for scanning poetry are defective. Every one knows that the ordinary rules for meter have numerous exceptions, but that if the rules were exact in the first place, there would be no exceptions.

Perhaps you know something about musical notes. If so, a simple ill.u.s.tration will show you what "feet" in poetry are. You have perhaps been taught that a "foot" in verse is an accented syllable with one or more unaccented syllables, and you scan poetry by marking all the accented syllables. In Latin, poetry was scanned by marking long vowels and short. Let us scan the first two lines of "The Raven":

"once up on a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of for gotten lore."

Observe that most of the feet have two syllables each, while two have three. But if you read the lines in a natural tone you will see that you give just as much time to one foot as to another, and where there are three syllables they are short and can be p.r.o.nounced quickly. Some syllables take more time to p.r.o.nounce than other syllables; and to accent a syllable simply means to give it more time in p.r.o.nouncing. In music, time is accurately represented by notes, and a bar of music always contains exactly the same amount of time, no matter how it is divided by the notes; for if you wish, in place of a half note you can use two quarter notes, or in place of a quarter note you can use two eighth notes. Represented in music, our lines will be as follows:

[Ill.u.s.tration: (music) Once up on a midnight dreary, as I pondered, weak and weary, O-ver man-y a quaint and cur-i--ous vol-ume of for- got-ten lore.]

We see this still further ill.u.s.trated in a poem of Tennyson's, where a foot consists of but one long syllable, thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration: (music) Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O sea!]

One of Poe's greatest poems, "The Bells," was written for the express purpose of imitating music in verse. The story of how it was first written is as follows: