University of Virginia Library

VIII

IN THE MINDS OF MEN

DR. Alois Brandl, University of Berlin:

It is not so easy to give a true estimate of
Poe's mission. He was a man of the imagination,
and he did a great deal towards rousing
the imagination of New Englanders. He
was a literary pioneer. It meant a great deal
in his day to build a poetical hunting lodge;
the temples of literature had to follow. I am
not acquainted enough with America to feel
the specifically American elements in him; he
is rather a Coleridge, separated from his English
surroundings and transplanted on Massachusetts
soil; a Coleridge without a Wordsworth
at his side, without a Napoleon to fight
with, but in a colonial country, vast and peaceful
and still in the making. A German will
always feel reminded of E. T. A. Hoffman,
for, like him, Poe was one of the few inventors
that Teutonic literature can boast of, while

the fabulistic faculty is more frequent among
Romance people. Altogether it has been a
good idea of the University of Virginia to
celebrate the birthday of an author who is
known to the educated of all nations as one
of the most fascinating "makers" of America.

President Paul B. Barringer, Virginia Polytechnic
Institute:

I have always been an admirer of Poe, not
only as our greatest literary genius, but as a
"good, safe, household poet." Poe is one of
the few writers of that day and time whose
every line is so clean and free from taint that
it can be put into the hands of one's twelveyear-old
daughter.

If those critics who always insist on judging
Poe's work by the side light of morality
would take the internal evidences of moral
cleanliness found in his work itself, rather
than the uncertain evidences of loss of stamina
which come to us through manifestly biased
tradition, their task would be simpler. When
a man's natural inclination towards literary
cleanliness is so strong that it cannot be undone
by a life of misfortune, poverty, and

physical suffering, he should at least be given
credit for his better instincts.

Dr. Sidney E. Bradshaw, Furman University:

In spite of the efforts of all the critics to
"place" him in American literature, Edgar
Allan Poe continues to be read, admired, and
discussed for the marvelous qualities of his
verse and prose. There is none like him, and
whether we agree with one critical judgment
or another, his work will endure as long as
the English language is known and read.

Professor St. James Cummings, South Carolina
Military Academy:

I should like to see you presiding in such
a high ceremony of enlarging the realm of
Poe. And indeed, I should be greatly pleased,
to vitalize our relations face to face. As you
may easily guess, I am a devoted hanger-on of
Poe: and by that I mean that I am one of those
who maintain a breathless and eager attitude
of suspense and devotion toward the yet unrevealed
fulness of grace of our poet's soul.
I hope any day for the oracle to speak with
finality, and declare the true estate of him

whose bright spirit has been beating its way
through darkness for a season. In my Hopkins
days I was allowed to feel the living influence
of Lanier, who had already left our
planet. Here in Charleston I have learned
to know the living influence of Timrod, long
since departed. I still look for a day—and it
may be to-morrow—when the Poe beyond
disclaimer will be disclosed alive and triumphant—an
avatar for those who have the faith
to wait. More than any one else, Poe represents
the South. Rich and poor, shining and
dim, passionate in soul yet calling for rights
on the dictates of cold reason, the poet, the
people and the province still retain a mystery
virginal and elusive, but are undeniably endowed
with resources, with a proper genius,
deep and abiding. The Poe world will some
time be no figure of speech, but will enjoy a
day and a night of its own, where the greater
and the lesser light may beat in splendor
against the darkness; and the God of harmony
will call it good. Hail to the day!
Your centenary celebration cannot fail to
awaken for a finer rendition the magic music
beyond words that he has left in our keeping.

Dr. Charles W. Dabney, University of Cincinnati:

The reference to No. 13, West Range, reminds
me that, upon entering the University
of Virginia, I was first assigned to that room
and lived in it for about a month. It was
a dark, dismal room with a window looking
out on the backyard, which was in those days
filled with rubbish, tin cans, etc., thrown out
from the kitchens of the dining hall, and I
was very happy to get as soon as possible a
better room over in one of the Dawson-Row
houses. The event did not fail, however, to
make a great impression upon me, and I remember
distinctly the traditions I picked up at
the time. Among others, Mr. Wertenbaker
told me his usual story about Poe and showed
me the registration book where he signed his
name.

Mr. Hamlin Garland, Chicago:

I have been a lover of Poe's verse since my
earliest boyhood and have read almost every
book and nearly every article about him, except
some of the very recent ones, and his
wonderful power over the imaginations of

men is still a kind of unaccountable wizardry
—I mean that the quality that resides in his
verse and in his best prose is like the magic
that rises from a strain of really original music.
His wizardry does not vanish with the
years—at least in my case. To this day, "The
Raven" has power to thrill me. Worn, hackneyed,
if the critic pleases, there is still something
in this poem and in "The City in the
Sea" and other of Poe's best verse which defies
the years.

Mr. Thomas Hardy, Max Gate, Dorchester,
England:

The University of Virginia does well to
commemorate the birthday of this poet. Now
that the lapse of time has reduced the insignificant
and petty details of his life to their
true proportion beside the measure of his
poetry, and softened the horror of the correct
classes at his lack of respectability, that fantastic
and romantic genius shows himself in
all his rarity. His qualities, which would
have been extraordinary anywhere, are altogether
extraordinary for the America of his
date. Why one who was in many ways disadvantageously

circumstanced for the development
of the art of poetry should have been
the first to realize to the full the possibilities
of the English language in rhyme and alliteration
is not easily explicable. It is a matter
of curious conjecture whether his achievements
in verse would have been the same if
the five years of childhood spent in England
had been extended to adult life. That "unmerciful
disaster" hindered those achievements
from being carried further, must be an
endless regret to lovers of poetry.

Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Old Rectory, Broad
Chalke, England:

Nothing that I could say could add to Edgar
Poe's fame. So far as Europe is concerned
he is secure of his immortality. I
believe myself that he will live as a poet
rather than as a prose writer; but that he will
be remembered as a genius, a creature apart,
one of those rare beings whose power constitutes
a privilege, I have no doubt whatever.
I rank him, in the quality of his gift, with our
John Keats.

Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, New York:

Whatever may be said of Poe—and hardly
any writer has been so praised and so criticised—his
service to letters has been immense.
It seems to me that the chief bases
of his fame are his original type of imagination,
which awakens and challenges that faculty
in his reader; his intense intellectuality,
and the opulence of his rhythmic resources.
If his work does not have the close touch with
real life which is an essential of great writing,
he has created a realm of his own, in
which he detains us by a sort of mesmeric
power, till we find ourselves "moving about
in worlds not realized." If his voice has not
the diapason of Emerson,—if it is not the
vox humana of our more philanthropic day;
if his theory of beauty in literary composition
leaves out of account the beauty of conduct,
nevertheless, he has been for fifty years, and
still remains, an important and vital influence
in poetry, fiction and criticism. His name was
long ago indelibly inscribed in the world's
Hall of Fame.

Professor Thomas C. McCorvey, University
of Alabama:

* * * The greatest of American poets—one
of the greatest, in my judgment, of the English
speaking race. "Time at last sets all
things even," and Poe's alma mater is to be
congratulated upon the fact that tardy justice
has slowly but surely determined his rightful
place in the world of letters as a genius of
the very highest order. The University of
Alabama has a special interest in Poe's centenary
from the fact that one of the first professors
in this institution, the late Henry Tutwiler,
was a fellow student of the poet at the
University of Virginia. While the earnest,
diligent student—intent upon appropriating
during his college course as much as possible
of the world's learning—had little in common
with the erratic child of genius, whose imagination
was even then perhaps "dreaming
dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before,"
still Dr. Tutwiler cherished, throughout
his long life, a lively recollection of the youthful
escapades of the poet while they were college
mates at Charlottesville.

Dr. Edwin Mims, Trinity College, N. C.:

The University has every reason to be
proud of Poe's relation to it. I am sure that
he was more influenced by the atmosphere of
the University than many people have thought.
It is very significant that a Southern University
should place such emphasis upon literary
work as you do in this celebration. It ought
to serve to call renewed attention to the importance
of high art in the lives of our people.

Dr. Frederick Dunglison Power, Garfield Memorial
Church, Washington, D. C.:

I have always felt America's two greatest
poems were Poe's "Raven" and Bryant's
"Waterfowl." Starkweather's word is a good
one: "To use a geographical metaphor, Poe's
life was bounded on the north by sorrow, on
the east by poverty, on the south by aspiration,
and on the west by calumny. His genius was
unbounded. His soul was music, and his very
lifeblood was purest art." Had Poe humor
and human sympathy he would be our greatest
literary genius.

Professor Walter Raleigh, University of Oxford:

I have the profoundest admiration for Poe;
and his influence on European literature has
been enormous. So I hope I may say what
I feel, that we are stifling ourselves with literary
anniversaries. I begin to think that
English literature is dead, and to wish that
I was not a professor of it, when I see all
this monumental stone-mason work engrossing
the time and attention of literary men year
after year. Have they nothing worth saying
for itself that they must search in the calendar
and speak when the clock strikes? We
have Johnson, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, on
hand in England—new season's goods for the
window to get the reluctant public drawn in.
It is all very illiterate. But if ever a centenary
was warranted, yours is,—in Virginia,
and to commemorate a poet who was barely
recognised while he lived. Pious deeds are
good; and I should love to see Virginia in its
daily life; though I prefer to honor Poe by
reading him.

Professor Franklin L. Riley, University of
Mississippi:

On the occasion of my visit to the University
last summer I found no place on your
campus more interesting than room No. 13,
West Range. I am delighted to learn that,
by making this a "Poe Museum," it will become
a more attractive literary shrine. It is
especially gratifying to know that the great
University of Virginia, the alma mater of men
of letters as well as statesmen, will commemorate
in a fitting manner the literary services
of perhaps the most talented, certainly one of
the most original, authors connected with its
history.

Dr. William James Rolfe, Cambridge, Mass.:

I have known and loved the poet from my
first acquaintance with him in my college
days, sixty years ago. The pocket edition
of his poems published by Middleton (New
York) in 1863, has often been a favorite
companion of mine in travel by sea and on
land; and, though I have the recent 1903
edition of his complete works in five volumes,

I still feel a particular love for that little
book, so frequently read and reread, and
associated with so many delightful memories.
"Annabel Lee" became fixed in my memory
when it was first printed in 1849, and I can
never forgot how its tender music and
sentiment first moved me.

Professor George Saintsbury, University of
Edinburgh:

Thirty-three years ago, when I was endeavoring
to make some opening in literature,
I horrified and almost enraged a magazine
editor of great note by sending him an essay
tending to show that Poe, with all his faults,
was "of the first order of poets." I am of
the same opinion to-day.

Professor Erich Schmidt, University of
Berlin:

Von Edgar Allan Poe hab' ich schon in
jungen Jahren starke Eindrücke empfangen
und bewundere in seinen Werken die seltene
Vereinigung der kuhnsten Phantasie mit dem
schärfsten Verstand.

Miss Molly Elliot Seawell, Washington, D. C.:

As time passes, the conviction grows that
Poe had the fire divine, and the mere survival
of his scanty and incomplete work shows
it to be of the first quality. It seems a
sort of reparation for his melancholy and
unfortunate life that the world which once
used him very ill should now be eager to do
him honor.

Dr. Wilhelm Viëtor, University of Marburg:

Ist es mir auch nicht möglich, unsere
Universität an Ihrem Festtage persönlich
zu vertreten, so gereicht es mir doch zur
hohen Ehre, als Marburger Professor der
Englischen Philologie, unsere schriftlichen
Glückwünsche senden zu dürfen. Ich werde
des Tages in meiner Vorlesung oder in der
Sitzung des Englischen Seminars gebührend
gedenken und so den Marburger Studenten
der Englischen Philologie ins Gedächtnis
rufen, was die gebildete Welt dem Genius
des Dichters der "Tales of the Grotesque
and Arabesque" und des "Raven" schuldet.

Dr. George Armstrong Wauchope:

South Carolina, where Poe once resided
and the scene of "The Gold-Bug," gladly
joins hands with his alma mater in honoring
his memory. In doing so, we believe that we
are not only ratifying an act of public justice,
but honoring this University and the South,
which gave his radiant name to the nation.

We can never discharge the unpaid debt
which the whole country owes to Poe for
our æsthetic declaration of independence,
for he was our prophet of beauty who led us
willy-nilly out of the wilderness of philistinism,
puritanism, and provincialism. The
chief causes of the failure in America to
recognize earlier the great worth of Poe,
have been, in my opinion, the challenge of
his strange and abnormal personality, the
hostility aroused by him as our first searching
and authoritative critic, the challenge to the
literary pharisees of the North of his æsthetic
literary creed, and closely, though perhaps
unconsciously, associated with the foregoing
causes, a certain vague though deep-seated
sectional prejudice. Happily such hindrances

to a just appreciation are but local and temporary,
and will soon, I believe, actually
accelerate the crowning and apotheosis of
Poe. Meanwhile, foreign criticism has hailed
him thrice-laureled victor in his chosen lists
—criticism, song, and story—and his fame is
safely enshrined in the Pantheon of Southern
hearts.

Professor Dr. George Witkowski, University
of Leipsic:

Der Universität von Virginien spreche ich
zur Feier von Edgar Allan Poe's hundertstem
Geburtstag meinen Glückwunsch aus. An
der Feier, die einem der Groszen im Reiche
eigenartiger Phantasiebegabung, einem Erschlieszer
ungekannter Tiefen des Seelenlebens,
einem Dichter von seltenem Formtalent,
einem Meister unter den Erzählern aller
Völker und Zeiten, einem der stärksten
Anreger neuer Kunst gilt, nehme ich im Geiste
Teil, und würde ihr gern persönlich beiwohnen,
wenn es mir möglich wäre.

Professor Richard Wülker, University of
Leipsic:

Ich danke vielmals für diese Ehrung, und
wäre gerne dazu erschienen, um so mehr als
ich Poe als Dichter für origineller und
damit bedeutender als Longfellow betrachte,
und damit für den ersten Dichter NordAmerikas
erklären mochte.

Mr. William B. Yeats, of Ireland:

I wish very much it were possible for me
to join with you in doing honor to the
memory of one who is so certainly the
greatest of American poets, and always and
for all lands a great lyric poet. But the
Atlantic is very wide, and therefore I can
only send my thoughts and my good wishes
to you in Virginia.

Mr. Israel Zangwill, London:

I thank the University of Virginia for the
honor of its invitation, and regret that time
and space oppose themselves to my desires
to pay honor to the memory of so great a
creative artist as Edgar Allan Poe. In verse

he created new poems and new rhythms,
in criticism he created new methods of
analysis, in prose he created the romance of
horror, of treasure-adventure, and of criminal
mystery. He is one of the few masters of
the short story, and the true father of
Sherlock Holmes. While nobody has been
able to imitate his poetry, his prose has
created a school in France, in Germany, and
in England, to say nothing of literatures
less known to me. The University of Virginia
may well celebrate the birthday of the
adopted Virginian who ranks as the most
original of the authors of America.