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Notes
The following editors accept these lines as genuine: Richard Henry Stoddard, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Amontillado Edition, 1884), I, 35, 430; Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1895), X, 138, 237; R. Brimley Johnson, The Complete Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1909), 143; J. H. Whitty, The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1911), 135, 283; Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Selected Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1928), 93. For the comments of James A. Harrison, see The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1902), VII, 227, and XVI, 378. Killis Campbell, in The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1917), 299, places it under "Poems Attributed to Poe," but he adds in a note that "the poem is clearly in Poe's early manner." The poem is not included in Arthur Hobson Quinn and Edward H. O'Neill, The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1946).
The Ingram correspondence, purchased after the removal of some of its more valuable letters, is now in the manuscript holdings of the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia. The letters cited in this paper are from that collection.
For this information I am grateful to Mr. Rollo G. Silver, Peabody Institute Library. In a private communication, October 21, 1949, he writes that, because of the use of the word "fac-simile" by Didier, "we may be sure that photography was employed." Ringwalt's American Encyclopedia of Printing (1871), states that "wood-engraving, which, as applied to printing purposes, precedes all others, still holds a front rank for popular purposes; and its utility has been immensely increased during the present century by the readiness and certainty with which perfect copies of an engraved block can be electrotyped, and the rapidity with which impression can be made on machine presses." (p. 158). It is also pointed out that "designs can readilv be photographed on wood for the use of the engraver" (p. 348) and, furthermore, on the same page, he states that "various attempts have been made to produce cuts capable of being printed on typographic presses without the aid of an engraver." Later (p. 506) he notes that zinc plates are "specifically useful when only small editions are required." As Mr. Silver writes, "we can arrive at the conclusion that the manuscript was printed from a plate which may have been made from a wood-cut or from a zinc-plate. The consensus of opinion in these parts is that no one person can be sure of identifying the method employed." It must be pointed out that, while modern facsimiles do not employ a human element, this Scribner's plate most likely had the engraver's hand between the photograph that Didier submitted and the final, published plate. Thus handwriting characteristics might be slightly modified, and certain irregular formations that might partake of the appearance of forgery could very well be incorporated.
ALS, Parker to Ingram, July 7, 1875. There is no record in the files of the Peabody Institute Library of "a new style of photography" having been invented at that time. For this and other information about Baltimoreans connected with this poem, I am again grateful to Mr. Rollo G. Silver, Peabody Institute Library. These photographs are not at present in the Ingram collection, nor is there any record of their receipt.
The Poe Cult and Other Papers (1909), p. 270. Judge Isaiah Balderston (1806-1883) was a non-practicing dentist of Baltimore who was Chief Judge of the Orphans' Court from 1867 to 1871. He married Lucy Holmes, daughter of Dr. Oliver Holmes, surgeon-dentist.
Letter 11 from Poe to John Allan, The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by John Ward Ostrom (1948), I, 16-17.
ALS, Mrs. Whitman to Ingram, September 28, 1875. Ingram also commented on his copy of the poem, clipped from Scribner's, "not Poe's calligraphy."
The album in which Poe presumably wrote the poem was described, as pointed out above, by Didier on several occasions. However, Poe editors—not having traced the album itself— have been content perforce to use the Scribner's reproduction as a basis for the poem. After many fruitless searches, the album now has been located as the property of Mrs. E. H. Welbourn of Cantonsville, Maryland, a granddaughter of the original owner. It is through the generosity of Mrs. Welbourn that I am able to describe this album and the manuscripts it contains.
Mr. Dard Hunter of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has kindly written to me of the history of this firm: it was established in Suffield, Hartford County, Connecticut, by Asa Butler and his brother Simeon, in 1816. In 1819 they received the first government contract for supplying paper to the United States Senate, which before this time had used foreign-made papers. The firm went through several hands, and in 1877 the old "Eagle Mill" of the Butler firm was destroyed by fire.
For example, one of the writers is Franklin James Didier (1794-1840), a Baltimore physician-author, the father of Eugene Didier.
This poem was noted by T. O. Mabbott, "Poems by W. H. Poe" N & Q, CLXII (May 21, 1932), 369, as having been first published in No Name Magazine, Baltimore, August 1890, I, no. 11, by E. L. Didier. In the album ms. the only variants are some slight differences in punctuation from the text Mr. Mabbott printed from the magazine.
Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, edited by Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise (Bonchurch Edition, 1927), XVIII, 134-135. The letter is dated "April 21st, 1874" but this is incorrect: a date more consonant with events mentioned in the letter is 1876: see my "Swinburne's Letter on Poe," Papers Bibl. Soc. America, XLIV (1950), 185-90.
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