Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor: A Book for Young AmericansCody, Sherwin
History
Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor: A Book for Young Americans
Cody, Sherwin
Authors, American; Irving, Washington, 1783-1859; Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891; Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849; Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
Poe had already been thinking about starting a periodical of his own,
and now he sent out the prospectus of _The Penn Magazine_. To found a
magazine which should be better and higher in literary art than any
other in America was his lifelong ambition. He tried again and again
to do this, first with _The Penn Magazine_, and later with a
periodical to be called _The Stylus_. He never succeeded, however.
George R. Graham, proprietor of the _Saturday Evening Post_, now
bought _The Gentleman's Magazine_, united it with a periodical of his
own called _The Casket_, and named the new venture _Graham's
Magazine_. Of this Poe soon became the editor.
After Poe's death, Mr. Graham published an article in which he said
that, while he was in Philadelphia, Poe seemed to think only of the
happiness and welfare of his family. There were but two things for
which he cared to have money--to give them comforts and to start a
magazine of his own. He never spent any money on himself. Everything
was intrusted to Mrs. Clemm, who managed all his household affairs.
His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of
beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. "I have seen him,"
says Mr. Graham, "hovering around her when she was ill, with all the
fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born--her
slightest cough causing him a shudder, a heart chill, that was
visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the remembrance
of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in
that loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain. It was
this hourly anticipation of her loss which made him a sad and
thoughtful man, and lent a mournful melody to his undying song."
At last he left Philadelphia and returned to New York, where he
remained for the rest of his life. This is the childlike way he writes
to his mother-in-law concerning the journey:
"My Dear Muddy,
"We have just this minute done breakfast, and I now sit down to write
you about everything. * * * In the first place, we arrived safe at
Walnut St. wharf. The driver wanted to make me pay a dollar, but I
wouldn't. Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the
baggage car.
"In the meantime I took Sis [Virginia] in the Depot Hotel. * * * We
went in the cars to Amboy, * * * and then took the steamboat the rest
of the way. Sissy coughed none at all. I left her on board the boat. *
* * Then I went up Greenwich St. and soon found a boarding house. * *
* I made a bargain in a few minutes and then got a hack and went for
Sis. * * * When we got to the house we had to wait about half an hour
before the room was ready. The house is old and looks buggy, * * * the
cheapest board I ever knew, taking into consideration the central
situation and the _living_. I wish Kate [Catterina, the cat] could see
it--she would faint."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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