Poe and the John-Donkey —A Nasty Piece of Work
by Benjamin F. Fisher
The University of Mississippi
The John-Donkey, a Philadelphia- and New York-based weekly per-iodical, edited by Thomas Dunn English and George G. Foster, which ran from 1 January to 21 October 1848, includes material relevant to the contemporaneous negative image of Edgar Allan Poe that has continued from his day to ours as an underpinning of what I term the Poe legend. That is, notions concerning the effects of a wastrel and diabolic personal life upon his writings (which, in this view, are themselves at best inferior to those of others among his contemporaries, and at worst exemplify downright immorality and depravity) still count strongly as influences upon many general readers of Poe, or upon those who take no time to examine reliable biographical or critical accounts, but who prefer to have their Poe as the liver of a melodramatic life whose works reflect events in that life. Poe the man and Poe the writer are attacked, often with wholesale scurrilities, throughout The John-Donkey. His fiction, verse, and criticism come in for some pointed barbs, as do his personal habits. As such, allusions to Poe in this publication may shed new light on old literary quar-rels, and on one old quarrel in particluar, that between Poe and English, who had at one time been friends. As the light on English’s animosity toward Poe intensifies, we may also discern some familiar traits of earlier nineteenth-century American humor, notably its propensities for vicious-ness and hyperbole, characterizing the image of Poe that emerges from the pages of The John-Donkey.
By the time The John-Donkey was established, relations between Poe and many of the New York literary and other cultural personages had worn thin or turned into downright hostility because of Poe's pugilistic critiques of several prominent writers and their works.1 For example, his early, devastating notice of Theodore Sedgwick Fay's atrocious novel, Norman Leslie (all the more telling because Fay's book was so egregiously conceived and written); his subsequent altercations--with Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the prestigious Knickerbocker Magazine, with his own quondam editorial associate on the Broadway Journal, Charles F. Briggs, with several Northeastern literary ladies, and, of course, with English him-self--had set up Poe as an opponent whose downfall they would naturally relish.
Fay had retaliated with a lampoon of Poe's character in his comic sketch, "The Successful Novel!," and Clark with repeated abuse in the Knickerbocker (in which columns Poe was lumped with writers in the "Young America" movement under satiric lambastings, and where he was mercilessly, if ineffectually, parodied). Briggs had portrayed Poe unflatter-ingly as "Austin Wicks," a drunken hack who callously exposed his romantic affairs with literary ladies, who also brought grief to his wife, who wrote the (valueless) "Literati" papers, and who, finally, died by over-dosing on quack medicine. Such was the portrait of Poe in Briggs's serial novel, The Trippings of Tom Pepper, which commenced on 14 November 1846 in the New-York Mirror.
The English-Poe relationship has presented shadowy corners until the present day, despite explorations by English's biographer, William H. Gravely, Jr., and the diligent researches of Dwight Thomas. Thomas has proved that, with a most unkind satiric casting of Poe, English opened what was to prove a half-century's grand-slamming of Poe as man and as writer. This unflattering portrait English initially incorporated into a novel, The Doom of the Drinker, first serialized in the Cold Water Magazine, a temperance publication, during October 1843; again within a short time in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum; and finally as a hardcover book in 1847. According to English's portrait, Poe, who had earlier jested in conversation about English's moustaches, is depicted, first, with an over-large forehead. Poe did have a prominent forehead, and that feature elicited comment from numbers of his contemporaries in that age when phrenology repeatedly occupied the public mind. More significant, how-ever, English served up a character who was obviously affected in adverse ways by untempered consumption of wine, whose consequent "brilliant jests" went uncomprehended by an assembled company who could grasp only "coarse and open" humor. Moreover, the jester is a plagiarist, and one who, "as a man [was] the very incarnation of treachery and falsehood." Poe and English had met because of mutual involvement in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, perhaps as early as June of 1839. In the years following, English probably came to dislike Poe because of the latter's attempts at political preferment during the Tyler administration, when English's own father sustained difficulties because of such changes in political appointees. Poe's troubles with alcohol apparently intensified English's antipathies toward him and may have led to English's scotching of Poe's chances for success with the Tyler administration.
Whatever the origins of the ill feelings between the two men, such antipathies did not diminish. Acerbic interchanges between the two in periodicals made for entertaining reading. Poe's animus was expressed most savagely in his paper on English in the "Literati" series, in Godey's for July 1846. English's response to Poe's sketch appeared in the New York Evening Mirror. Poe's equally insulting reply ran in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times; in the columns of the Spirit he imputed any but manly characteristics to English. Shortly thereafter, in his novel, 1844; Or the Power of the SF, which began its serial run in the New York Mirror in August, English once again scarified Poe as "Marmaduke Hammerhead," author of a weak poem, "The Black Crow," as a being who stayed drunk five in seven days, and who was, moreover, a wife beater, plagiarist, spon-ger, faulty student of languages (English included), and who finally went mad. All these complimentary ascriptions, and much more in a like vein, enlivened this novel. Poe instituted a lawsuit against the editors of the Mirror. He was awarded damages in 1847, but by that time his conduct had so alienated many in New York and Philadelphia literary circles that he effectively brought about his own commercial destruction as a writer. Vitriolic abuse was darted at him from many quarters in the journalistic world. English was quick to seize such an opportunity as The John-Donkey presented him for blackening Poe's name and character. I say "English" because, it would seem from evidential sources that Foster, the other editor, and Poe had no notable quarrels. In fact, they once seemed to be on the verge of collaborating in the publishing of a literary periodical.
In the first number of The John-Donkey, that for 1 January 1848, in a squib entitled "A Nice Job," Poe's drunkenness is highlighted: "We understand that Mr. E. A. Poe has been employed to furnish the railings for the new railroad over Broadway. He was seen going up the street a few days ago, apparently laying out the road." This volley was pointedly unkind, not solely in terms of Poe and drink, but because his continuing poverty was well-known. Maybe perverse satisfaction motivated this bit of malice on English's part. His last thrust at Poe, on 23 September, leaves readers with an impression of a Poe who never paid debts, reinforcing the determined negativism in English's depiction of his adversary.
The following week, on 8 January, however, John-Donkey resorted to lying in calling unfavorable attention to Poe. In a piece entitled "Mr. Edgar A. Poe," "John" reports that the Miner's Journal, a Pottsville, Penn-sylvania newspaper, used the John-Donkey satire from the previous week as an excuse to puff Poe, adding, though, that Poe doesn't object to abuse from "men of talent, but to be praised by the editor of the Miner's Journal is an insult not to be forgiven" (p. 27). One wonders what grudge English may have nursed against the Pottsville editor! That worthy replied in his own paper, on 15 January, in words that give the lie to John-Donkey and, at this latter date, suggest that intentional chicanery was perpetrated by its editors. "Mr. John-Donkey twits us for `puffing' Mr. Poe. We never `puffed' that gentleman at all; but if we did, and should thereby excite the indignation of the whole Donkey family, we certainly should have nothing to regret." Several times thereafter the Miner's Journal referred sympa-thetically to Poe.2 More to the point, this rejoinder confirms that English would leave no stone unturned to villify Poe--and in consequence his much later "factual" recollections may be called more loudly into question. Not to be silenced in its castigation of Poe, The John-Donkey followed on 29 January with "Sophia Maria:--A Ballad," a parody of "Ulalume" that does little other than reveal the clumsiness of the parodist:
The cerulean with clouds overrid is;
The times, people know it, are hard—
The times, like a stone fence, are hard;
And the tomcats and young chickabiddies
Are making a muss in the yard.
The tomcats are miauwing and squalling,
The pullets go "chook-a chook choo!"
And the rain-drops are certainly falling,
Because they've no better to do.
Uprises the bright star, ASTARTE,
And soars to the indo sky;
Like WOODRUFF, that rider so hearty,
It winks with its wicked left eye—
As it lists to the musical party
That seems to be getting so high,
Where BOTNER is trying his art (he's
a steamboat!) to mak 'em less dry—
With juleps to make 'em less dry.
So I thought that my hobby I'd mount her,
And treat every other with scorn;
But first go to FRANK'S simple counter,
And swallow a duplicate horn—
Then taking my darling SOPHIA
MARIA GOLACHRYMISE HZNIBBS,
I would roll up my eyes with a sigh (a
rouser!) expanding my ribs—
And made by contracting my ribs.
For I said, "She is warmer than BETSY;
She rolls in an ocean of fat—
Her form is encased in fat:
And a bard could not certainly yet see
Eyes like hers which are black as my hat—
And naught is there blacker than that.
Her voice it is pitched in a high key,
And despite of the weight of her fat,
She's the counterpart sure of a Psyche,
With more of aerial than that.
"Come up, then," I said, "my soul's idol,
Let us stroll 'neath the light of the moon,
Be the doll of no other, but my doll,
Pure eidolon thou of a tune.
Come out 'neath the brilliance of Luna,
The cow has jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed at Mount Dhuna
And the dish ran away with the spoon—
The dish has eloped with the spoon."
But SOPHIA, her nostrils dilating
As though snuffing some old Naketosh,
Exclaimed, "You may stop with your prating,
In my own private thought you're a squash."
With these words she refused to let sink her
Fair form in my eagerly arms—
For she feared that my fingers might ink her
New dress that she wore—t'was her marm's—
And she would not for worlds I would ink her
New Mousselin de Laine of her marm's.
I cried in my madness, "SOPPHIAR
MARIA GOLACHRYMISE dear!
Remember the next door there's a dyer,
And therefore of ink have no fear."
I offered a new dress to buy her;
I pressed her my sorrows to hear,
I sighed out—"SOPHIAR MARIAR!"
And she sunk in my arms with a tear—
With an extemporaneous tear.
Thus I pacified Sophy and smacked her
Two lips with my two lips again;
And declared that I'd ne'er be an actor
In scenes which to her would bring pain.
Otherwise when my race I had ran it,
I would go to the blackest of holes.
Where they roasted the folks of this planet,
"The limbo of lunary souls"
And help the young imps to crack coals
Shades of Swinburne and his idylls of pain! A jab at "Ulalume" may have been timely, as John-Donkey perceived it, because of the hostile criticism of the poem as "Golgothian idiosyncrasy" in the Philadelphia Sat-urday Courier for 22 January [ Poe Log: 717-718 ]. The Golgotha echoes in the parody make that allusion more sure. An aura of liquorishness min-gles with the highjinks concerning astrological lore, doubtless to point up that Poe as drinker was also detectable in the composition of "Ulalume."
Poe the poet is drubbed again in the 12 February installment of "The Adventures of Don Key Haughty," a serialized parody (99-101). Here "the minstrel of the raven" appears to the Don and his servant, SIMON (simple Simon, to be sure), as "a melancholy-looking little man, in a rusty suit of black—whose spade-shaped countenance seemed as though soap and razors had been lost to the world, to say nothing of an entire out-rooting of the whole race of barbers." Poe's customary black garb is targeted in this vignette, although the "spade-shaped countenance," along with the jabs at unshavenness and uncleanliness amounts to nothing more than gratiuitous nastiness. He attracts attention because of "the zeal and energy with which he flourished a roll of manuscript and the abstrac-tion which he evinced while engaged in examining its contents."
To the Don's request for a meeting, the poet's reply is: "If he adores the gentle muse...the minstrel of the Raven will commune with him —always provided he is fully satisfied that nobody ever did, could, would, should, does, can, will, or shall write poetry but myself. The true office of poetry...is much misunderstood. It has been supposed by many that the office of the minstrel was to rouse up the better feelings and impulses of man's nature, through the medium of bold thoughts and stirring words—to denounce vice with sarcasm, and laud virtue in glowing terms—to do battle for the right, and oppose the wrong. A poet has been regarded as the knight-errant of rhyme—the holy minister in a holy temple—the priest at the altar of good, commissioned to pour the coals of a high art upon the heads of the world." The Knight concurs with this idea, which, of course, exemplified what Poe had termed the heresy of the didactic, that is, the tendency to sermonize in platitudinous verse, which was practiced by many other poets, whose role as secular prophets was much admired by the reading public of the day. Poe's own pronouncements about poetry are then lampooned by the satirist, who employs Poe's own words against him: "The poem is the rhythmical creation of beauty, the impersonation of the not-to be personated—the ideal, in a succession of musical syllables; and whenever it possesses an object or an end—whenever it has anything like sense—or whenever point is not entirely sacrificed to euphony, it can no longer claim the name of poem, or be regarded as a work of art. In illustration of these ideas, permit me to read to you a production of mine, which is incomparably superior to than of any writer ever known before me." Then follows a burlesque of Poe's poems about dying or dead beautiful women:
ROSALINE.
A Dactylo-Spondaic Poem.
There where they strangled the Quakers in old times,
Ditto the witches--where girls wear the small-clothes,
There where LLOYD GARRISON talketh his nonsense--
All about black people,
Dwelt a young couple. The man he was called BOB,
Otherwise Robert; the maiden was named SAL;
Lovely they both were—and strikingly handsome—
She in particular.
Blue were her eyes, as the o'erarching skies are;
Black was her hair as the bottom of a teapot;
White was her neck and her hand; and her lips were
Redder than pokeberries.
High was her forehead—three inches, at least three—
Long was his nose as JOHN TYLER'S—yea! quite long—
Great was his altitude also, 'twas just six
Feet perpendicular.
Early one morning when up arose Phoibos,
Bright in his blazed as a long-lighted coal fire,
Birds they were singing, and boys whistling Jim Crow,
Both most industriously.
Then arose Bob and drew on his best small-clothes—
Made by an elegant tailor—of broadcloth,
Also a dress-coat of blue, and a waistcoat
Made of black taffety.
Brushed he his whiskers and hair with a hair-brush,
Pinched he a pimple from out of his forehead—
Pulled up his shirtcollar, buckled his black stock—
Made himself nice-looking.
Then to his lady-love quickly he went, and
Down on his marrow-bones getting he told her
How much he loved her, and with what strong love
Quaked he eternally.
Vain were his protests—and vain were his strong vows;
Vain were his efforts and struggles to win love;
Mocking his agony, she in her scorn there
Turned up her nose at him.
Tore he his hair and most frantical he cried,
"Pity the sufferings of BOBBY, my dear one!
Marry me quickly, or else I shall to my
Whiskers do violence."
Still most immovable on her chair, sat she,
Twiddling her thumbs as though not at all care-rid,
Then from her presence in deep despair BOB went
Down to the ocean wave.
Sadly he roamed by the shell-covered seaside,
Pondering in wo, looking much like a scarecrow,
Deeply despairing, nor caring for roast beef—
Having no appetite.
There while he roamed, to his brain a new thought came.
—Would it not better be now to destroy life?
"Yes!" muttered he, and at once to a rock went,
Bent upon suicide.
There, on a rock, which on high reared its tall cliff,
Stood he a moment and gazed on the green waves--
Then with a single speech--"Farewell, my dear SAL,"
Dove to the bottom down.
Sad sat sweet SAL, by the pearly-white sea shore,
Looking the oriel out through a spy-glass,
When she beheld something queer on the white sand
Black as a tea-kettle.
Hastily then of her shoes she the strings tied,
Ditto her bonnet, adjusted her new shawl,
Which half a thousand of dollars has cost pa;
Then to the beach she went.
Gaily she cut her stick down to the spot where
She had beheld from above, with her spy-glass.
Something in black, when, oh! horrible sad sight!
There she her lover saw.
Flat on his back lay the suicide, poor Bob!
Up stood his nose and wide spread were his coat-tails;
While all around him were swimming the mud-eels
Slimy and ravenous.
Looked she a moment as though to be quite sure,
Then with a shriek like a steam-whistle said she,
"Fate most relentless has cropped his life short off—
Lover the loveliest!
"Fate! Thou'rt a rascal, a black-hearted numbskull,
Thus to destroy all the hopes of a lifetime—
Probably now I shall linger an old maid—
No one to marry me.
"Fate! You're a noodle! Ah, how I must hate fate!
Will it not find me another man like Bob?"
But cruel Fate to his nose clapt his broad thumb,
Twiddling his fingers four.
Soon went the maiden as mad as a March hare,
Mad as a poet while under the pale moon;
Mad as a fellow who has to take pale ale
Rather than ratafia.
Mad then she went, and her cap with a grim grasp
Seizing, and likewise her bonner, she soon tore
Both into fragments, and kicked up a hubbub,
And a high bobbery.
Madder than that went the maiden; a grand pas
Flourished she off, going round like a cartwheel,
Standing the while on the tip of one great toe,
Shaking the other one.
Maddest of all, sitting down on a cane chair,
Took she a razor, which, honed on a brickbat,
And strapped on her boot, she drew over her white neck,
Settling her business.
Sad was the sight, when her body to sit on,
Came in the corner, who, with his twelve men,
Gave in a verdict unanimous—"Sal died
Felo-de-se—she did!"
Toll the bell sadly and loudly—toll, ding! Dong!
Lay out the lovers as dead as a door-nail—
Cold as a wedge, while so sad I their fates write
Here in hexameters.
"There!" exclaimed he triumphantly, "that is a true poem. If any body can find any sense in that, I am much mistaken."
"Nevertheless," said the Knight, "I think it might be improved by a moral. Suppose you add these lines;
"Mark you the moral, refactory young maids!
Never your lovers so warm to despair drive—
Else they may drown themselves, while you with throats cut,
Have to go after them."
"And so spoil the whole," replied the poet. "No, sir!" and he walked away in a passion.
But the poem and the conversation had inspired the Knight...."
True to the general practices in The John-Donkey, varied persons and topics of the day are lambasted. The hits at love poetry in those passages that commence in typical fashion, only to be inverted for comic purposes, and the concluding bit of inperfect sight that makes the lovelorn lady perceive her lover's corpse as a tea kettle, are well managed. These verses present an amusing reversal of situation informing typical love poems by Poe in that the man dies instead of the woman. Perhaps this represents a dismissal of Poe's dictum that the most poetic of all themes is the death of a beautiful woman; Sal is anything but prepossessing, physically or emotionally, and her beloved is presented as a well-matched consort, aligned, no less, with several politicians, most notably William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, who were likewise satirically needled by the writer.
In "Treatise on Poetry" (p. 140) a drunken Poe is again targeted: "A metonymy is the substitution of the cause for an effect, or the effect for the cause, &c. If we say—`A man carried off POE'S drunk'—we mean that the man carried off that which made POE drunk—i.e. the liquor. Again, if we say that EPPIE SARGENT has no brains, we by no means mean that EPPIE'S skull is empty. It is simply a metonymy, or a round-about way of imparting the fact that EPPIE is a fool." Implicitly, drunken-ness and brainlessness come to mind simultaneously as John-Donkey contemplated his specimens of defective authors.
Companion reading for such ideas next crops up under the heading of "Juvenile Department. Lectures on Composition—To the Larger Boys" [18 March 1848: 182]. Characterizing methods for conveying "Profundity," the essayist remarks that "sentences of a profound essay ought always to be long, involved, and mysterious. Never select a trifling subject, or one of inferior importance. The best topics are such as these, viz:—The Nature of the Human Soul, The Origins of the Universe; The Final Destiny of the Human Race." The "works of the author of the Black Raven" are recommended for "cultivation of this quality." Here are barbed allusions to Poe's renowned poem, his apocalyptic tales, and Eureka in lecture form. The overall manner in this "Juvenile Department" piece also suggests a hit at "How to Write a Blackwood Article," with its mock-profundity in Mr. Blackwood's editorial counsel as to the composition of successful magazine wares. English's earlier labelling of Poe as the writer of "The Black Crow" echoes unmistakably as well. And we find yet another thrust at Poe's famous poem in the 15 July issue (p. 26), insinuated into a parody of another, but more respected and revered, American poet, "The Day is Undone. By one of them `long-fellows'":
Not from that HIRST'S "Endymion,"
Not from that jingling stuff;
I'd rather you'd read the "Raven,"
Though that is bad enough.
Interestingly enough, Hirst's volumes of verse were often met with compliments from reviewers. Elsewhere Poe the critic and lecturer was impaled by English's sharp quill. On 5 February, derogation was directed toward "Mr. Poe, who used to flourish in this city [again making promi-nent Poe's disgraced state] [and who] is announced to deliver a lecture on the `Universe' at the New York Society Library. Some of our friends say that they hope he will not disappoint his auditors, as he did once before. We suspect he will, whether he delivers his lecture or not" (p. 96). This double-edged onslaught pricks at Poe's debacle at the Boston Lyceum in 1845, when he read "Al Aaraaf" as if it were a new poem, at his irregu-larities occasioned by drinking, and at his propensities to disappoint when he attempted to be profound. When Eureka appeared in book form, John-Donkey relates that its ponderousness literally brought down the shelves at the publisher Wiley’s, just as it figuratively brought down or baffled listeners and critics. This is a viciously witty, but untruthful observation, calculated to hurt (12 August: 67). Likewise, a report that Poe's "Literati" essays might continue is met with insults toward Poe the scholar, who is so "ripe" as to have "gone to seed." Similar unkindness sounds in terming Poe "famous," but implying "notorious," concerning the attention he drew because of the "Literati" articles.
Poe's methods in book-reviewing are also mocked (17 June: 389) in a notice of an imaginary biography of "John Smith." Poe's style, his mathematical analyses, and his critical stance in listing a book's faults are amusingly highlighted. Brief though this parody is, it captures the essence of Poe’s well-known acridness, and of his fondness for the arabesque. In giving us this piece, The John-Donkey reprints a satire on Poe from the New York Town of 17 May 1845. Another obvious incongruity between what is stated and what implied is embedded in a remark about "Frank Poemax," from "Slanderville", a "possible relative to Mr. Poe, the very sober and sensible critic." (1: 382—10 June 1848). The alliterative -s- sounds may have aimed at rasping Poe's own poetic techniques, his personal habits, and his abilities as critic. In such contexts they are deft touches. Kindred wordplay enlivens a column, "Latest from Below" (1: 155), in noting that Dr. Johnson, rewriting his Lives of the Poets, substi-tuted the name "Poe for that of another of his Savage heroes." Later, writing in The Old Guard (June 1870: 468), English again compared Poe to Savage in contexts of disparaging the former. Poe's name also takes a roasting in "Natural History of John-Donkey": the "ranks of Poe-ts and philosophers are infested" with donkeys, or jackasses who have made themselves donkeys. Another bit of poison-tipped punning, which aims at Poe's egotism, occurs in the column aptly entitled "Names" (4 March: 191): "One of the most important men (in his own estimation) that ever existed, bears a patronymic so peculiar, that no one ever thinks of him without saying involuntarily—POE!"
Concentrating elsewhere on Poe the fiction writer, John-Donkey singled out his hallmarks in fiction in an article that is part travesty of "German" or Gothic fiction per se and part exemplum of such writing. "Hints to Authors. On the Germanesque," the first portion, makes fun of the typicalities in Gothic fiction, and appends an example, "The Ghost of a Grey Tadpole," obviously modelled upon "The Black Cat." This parody had first appeared in the Philadelphia Irish Citizen, a Philadelphia period-ical, in January 1844, was quickly reprinted by the Baltimore Republican and Daily Argus on 1 February, and used again in The John-Donkey on 3 June 1848 (364-365). The original publication of this extravaganza had been good-humored, but the headnote to it in The John-Donkey, alluding, as it does, to Poe's debacle with the letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Ellet, is a piece of gratuitous nastiness to cast Poe as a deplorable figure. The take-off on Poe's methods in tale-writing is, however, actually fine parody. The article commences with hits at supernatural terror fiction in general, alluding, however, to Poe's doctrine of unity of effect, and, apparently, to his own "How to Write a Blackwood Article," in which the tale of terror was mocked. If what follows is not from Poe's own pen, it is, The John- Donkey tells us, "a palpable imitation of his style."
The opening paragraph in the tale proper travesties the practice of employing pretentious quotations from foreign languages—which Poe was wont to do—although the tale is preceded by several epigraphs from languages other than English, which, like the "Extracts" and "Etymology" in Melville's Moby-Dick, move us rapidly into realms of the absurd. In contexts of ridiculousness, mention of Mrs. Radcliffe and the Newgate Calendar as representative reading in this vein, plus allusions to ideas about probability, cryptography, Monsieur Dupin, and Poe's demolitions of other writers in his book reviews, heighten the mirth. This method is very like that in Poe's own "How to Write a Blackwood Article" and its sequel, "A Predicament." Once the narrator turns to the events of his story, we find his language to be cast inescapably in the manner of Poe. The personality revelations of a super-sensitive character, replete with favorite Poe phrases, such as cui bono, the nervous expression overall— intensified with liberal sprinklings of dashes and exclamation points, just as they appear repeatedly in Poe's tales—the increasingly murderous impulses that well up within the narrator, the violence of murder turned into mock-heroic as the man crushes the tadpole who he sees as the source of incalculable torment to him, the temporary satisfaction of the murderer, which rapidly gives way to hallucinatory astonishment and terror as he beholds the tadpole's image on a nearby fence, his ultimate realization, in the closing line, of being "haunted": all these features, with a few alterations, might well fit into many of Poe's own tales. This storyteller also betrays his kinship with Poe's when, in expression and practice, he says that impulse "drove" him to the tad-pole’s lair in the cistern in his cellar-kitchen, and that he quickly became obsessed "to penetrate the mystery" of its attraction. Shades of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," and "The Tell-Tale Heart!" Interestingly, des-pite what he later wrote in regard to the genesis of "The Raven," we may discern in the "Tale of a Grey Tadpole" a more than passing resemblance to the conclusion of that (then well-known and oft-parodied) poem. In "The Raven," the speaker sits still, in both senses of that word, rendered volitionless, below the bird and because of the power of the bird, who is perched symbolically on the bust of Pallas, goddess of rationality and intellect. In the conclusion of "Tale of a Grey Tadpole" we read that the narrator "sat like a statue of Pagan Rome, white, chiseled and motionless. I was haunted by a merciless fiend." Need we question the similarities?
HINTS TO AUTHORS.
On the Germanesque.
The Germanesque is a name, which, for want of a better, we have given to a species of tale or sketch of incident, which seems to be getting into vogue. As it may be —for popular taste is sometimes monstrous in its character —the rage, at one time or other, you shall be taught all the rules by which it is composed. They are few and easy to comprehend. Indeed, judging by the works and mind of its chief and almost only follower on this side of the Atlantic, it is a pure art, almost mechanical—requiring neither genius, taste, wit nor judgment—and accessible to every impudent and contemptible mountebank, who may choose to slander a lady, and then plead insanity to shelter himself from the vengeance of her relatives.
You must by all means choose a subject, which every one under ordinary management could comprehend. To mystify such a thing as this proves your genius. An ordinary man, in an ordinary disquisition upon a vegetable so ordi-nary as potatoes, would be easy to comprehend. What he wrote those who read would fathom at once. But if you write about such a matter, satisfy them that although you may be yourself the smallest of small potatoes, you and your productions are alike difficult of digestion.
Pay great attention to minutiae, and lay great stress on trifles. This makes the reader expect that the story will hinge upon these especially, and he becomes very thankful if he be disappointed. For instance—if your hero wears boots, give the exact height of their heels, the breadth of their toes, the name of their maker, and the number of pegs in their soles. Every one will conclude that you are possessed of an observation so rigorous that nothing can escape it, and think you qualified at least to search in a haystack for a lost needle.
You can frequently produce a great effect by writing the first part of your work with a certain design, which you change before you get to the end. This will make a very pretty confusion. But your best plan is to carry your work through without any design at all. Thus, neither yourself nor your reader will understand your intent; and to effect this delicious state of bewilderment is the true office of the Germanesque.
Preface your production by a number of quotations, from as many languages as possible. It is not necessary that these should have any reference to the subject, indeed, that they should have any meaning. Your purpose will be sufficiently answered, if you impress your reader with a belief that you are a profound linguist and an untiring reader.
The little sketch which follows combines the greater part of these requisites. It has been attributed to Mr. Poe. We are not sure that it is from the pen of that very distin-guished writer; but if not his, is a palpable imitation of his style. You will do well to study its characteristices with great care before venturing upon the composition of the Germanesque.
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TALE OF A GRAY TADPOLE
"Muhazzin al zerdukkaut, munaskif al filfillee."
Jamee al Hukkaiaut.
"Al del Carpio freguenta 'l moro altiva
Le diga por merced—
Su nombre, y quien el por ser costumbre:
Bernaldo respondio, Bernaldo soy."
Espinosa, c. 2, 30, 1.
"Magnanimo signore, ogni vostro atto
Ho siempre con rajion laudato, e laudo."
Orlando Furioso, Car. xviii. stan. 1.
"Mihi an Beate Martin." Plautus.
"Nolus volus." Gen Taylor, Ord. Capt. May.
"Quel heure est il? Une heure apres midi."
Le Cid, par Corneille.
"A___." Herodotus, b. 1.
"Wir bekoomen trek schuyt."
Der Vrye Metsalaaren.
"Karl, der reiber, ist der mann." Schiller.
"Nid mugrell ond ceiliogwdd."
Gr. ad. M. ab Dafydd.
"Akt 2¶co†l = + _rm. Fy! O!! p ?"
Nokt Intwopi.
"Iak ptak oknem przszcznztzskczjzmnkscznlwy."
Spiewy Hystorycne.
"Oysters are quiescent, bibulatory of seawater and bearded. The human mind luxuriates in the vague and mysteresque as a pike in a fish-pond. Hence springs that longing after the immortal which pervades the universe. Hence lovers engrave the names of their heart's idols upon gate-posts, with their jack-knives."—Lord Bacon.
There are strange antipathies and stranger attachments. It may be said of a female infant, in the language of JAN CHODSKWICZSZNSKI, the well-known Pole—"Ona luba mleka." By the addition of the English words "and water," the remark may be applied to the writings of the great EPPIE SARGENT; and at the same time refer to the taste of her admirers. Now, while many admire, there are benighted few who detest both the writings of the divine MISS EPPIE SARGENT, and the milk-and-water to which they may be likened. They prefer for their reading, MRS. RADCLIFFE and the Newgate Calendar, and refresh their inner man by that peculiar draught known as "cold without." There is no accounting for this peculiar state of things. The calculus of probabilities fails us. Crypt-ography affords no solution. It would baffle the analytical powers of my friend, the Chevalier DUPIN. BABINGTON MACAULAY might write a disquisition on the matter, and CARLYLE might pen a book—but "cui bono?" They are both asses. I have said so in one of my reviews, and I ought to know.
From my infancy to the present time, I have possessed a dislike to tadpoles. Now, per se, the tadpole is not an object of dislike. Indeed, it is rather graceful than otherwise. The rotundity of body, with its gradual and pro-gressive diminution at one extremity into a beautiful caudal appendage, gratifies the eyes of all lovers of the curvilinear and picturesque. But tadpoles are disgusting from their associations. They do not always remain in a state of tad-poledom. They emerge as it were into another nature. From graceful, gliding creatures, they pass into squatting, croaking, winking, leaping, diving and discontented frogs. The mind of the looker-on is obliged to travel to the future, and contemplate their probable destiny. A vision of innum-erable mud-puddles crosses the fancy—green slime makes its appearance—and the ear is offended with pond-concerts, conducted with a scanty supply of musical knowledge, and in violation of the first principles of harmony.
But to my story.
Underneath the house in which I lived, there was a cellar. This was divided. The front part was arranged for the purpose of holding wood, coal, refrigerators, mice, and the usual appurtenances of such apartments. The back part was a kitchen—of the kind denominated by the unthinking vulgar, a cellar-kitchen. This communicated with the yard by means of steps. These steps were partly outside of the house, in a kind of area, six feet broad by fifteen long. The area was paved with damp bricks, and in its northeast cor-ner, about six inches from the wall, stood a watercask, filled by means of a conductor leading from a rain-spout above.
I know not what peculiar impulse drove me to the spot. I have thought of it since, as I think of it now, with a vain attempt to penetrate the mystery. Be the cause what it may, that I did go there is undoubtedly true. I bent over the water-cask. It was, as I said before, filled; and just two inches from the botton—I am certain it was two inches, for my eyes never deceive me—just two inches from the bottom, suspended there by a vibratory motion of his tail, was a large, grey tadpole, measuring five inches and four lines and three lines from the end of his tail to the tip of his snout.
I was horror struck. I stood over the cask with the upper part of my body bent to an angle of forty-five de-grees, ten minutes, from the perpendicular. My eyes dilated to their upmost extent, and rolled painfully in their sockets. The left eye tried to catch the glance of the right—the right eye tried to catch the glance of the left. There I stood, mo-tionless, transfixed for several minutes I was shocked, and retired in a state of perfect disgust.
Again I stood over it. The tadpole, who had hitherto remained motionless, seemed to read my thoughts by a kind of mesmeric power. He curled his body until the end of his tail reached his nose, and remained there with a peculiar vibratory motion. The figure thus formed, although very strange, and strikingly arabesque, was nevertheless insulting, and inflamed my already excited temper to madness. Seizing a huge stick, I carefully poised it in a perpendicular position, over the spot where the reptile rested. I drove it as I thought with unerring aim. It descended vehemently— the water was agitated—dirt and bubles arose to the surface. I congratulated myself on my success. I laughed.
The particles gradually subsided, the water became clear, and I looked in again. The laugh passed from the dexter to the sinister side of my mouth. Instead of the crushed, mangled and vile fragments of my enemy, I beheld the same tadpole as before—in the same spot—and in the same insulting position, with the tip of his tail applied to the end of his nose.
I sat down coolly and began to reflect. A thought stuck me. I drew a plug which was inserted at the base of the water-cask, for I knew if the waters escaped through the aperture thus made, my enemy would be drawn along with them. The result showed the greatness of my judgment.
At first the waters flowed fastly, then slower—but before their entire subsidence, the vainly-resisting reptile was borne out, and cast floundering upon the wet, brick floor. He waggled about, and looked piteously in my face. I had no pity. There was no remorse at my heart. With a fury at which my conscience now shudders, I raised my right foot, which is fifteen inches in length and seven in breadth, and with one stroke destroyed the wretch who had tor-mented me. I trampled on him again and again in a perfect fury of hatred. I fairly revelled in destructive joy.
Now that I had succeeded, a strange thirst came over me. I hastened to the hydrant in the yard, and setting the water in motion applied my mouth to the end of the spout. I sucked the water in greedily, till I was fully sated.
The peculiar sensation of thirst had now passed, and I sat down on the pavement to reflect. I began to speculate on the possibility of my head becoming one of HENSON's flying machines, and had actually thought of getting a tumbler of brandy by way of steam, when I saw a strange profile on the opposite fence.
Wonderful! The appearance assumed a definity—a fixity—a certainty. Madness! horror! There on the wall before me was a grey, gigantic, strange tadpole, with a ferocious glare. I knew it. I knew it for the tadpole I had slain. I sat like a statue of Pagan Rome, white, chiseled and motionless. I was haunted by a merciless fiend.
There are but two remaining allusions to Poe in The John-Donkey, which occur as the periodical drew near its own terminus. On 12 September (83), in a query as to who actually killed Cock Robin (it was not the legendary sparrow, our editors state), Poe is held up as the probable villain. John-Donkey is quick to point out that that submission probably derives from Poe having "threatened at various and divers times, to exterminate everybody and everything—as well as set the river on fire, and pay all the money which he has borrowed." Seeing to it that Poe has a fitting companion in defectiveness, though, John-Donkey offers that Henry B. Hirst, another of its favorite butts of satire, was the genuine killer. Finally, on 14 October, among those whose services, we are assured, have not been secured for The John-Donkey, is Poe "(by the permission of all the booksellers)."
The foregoing commentary indicates an unmistakably zealous piece of work in the manufacturing of damage to Poe's reputation throughout the run of The John-Donkey. Satire, parody, plagiarizing (the lifting of lampoons from other periodicals into The John-Donkey) were all employed in stacking the deck against Poe, and that on all fronts of his literary endeavors: poet, fiction-writer, lecturer, reviewer, and everyday person. That English and, not long afterward, Poe's biographer, R. W. Griswold, succeeded reasonably well in promoting vilifications of Poe, is undeniable. Moreover, undependable, sensationalizing biographies of Poe continue to come forth as if they were thoroughly researched, dependable studies. Just so, creative works featuring a Poe who resembles the deliberately caricatured personage foregrounded in the pages of The Johh-Donkey also continue to be published in no small numbers. The John-Donkey portrai-ture adumbrates the Poe who would later be presented in English's back-stabbing reminiscences, which long sustained the guise of plausible biographical information. We have, perhaps, seen sufficient, though, from my presentation above, to realize how untrustworthy are the John-Donkey columns treating Poe, and to understand something of the nature of such mid-nineteenth-century American humor, which often ran into viciousness and savagery as it aimed at eliciting smiles from readers.
Notes
1. I dedicate this study to the memory of Clarence Gohdes, who taught me the great values for literary study to be found in newspapers and periodicals. I also thank Michael Kiskis for providing me a forum for a slightly different version of this work at a meeting of the American Humor Studies Association. For technical assistance, I am grateful to my colleague, T. J. Ray, and to my wife, Julie A. Fisher.
Backgrounds for the present essay appear or are synthesized in Perry Miller, The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and Melville (New York, 1956, 1962); Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu (Durham, N. C., 1963); Poe's Major Crisis: His Libel Suit and New York’s Literary World (Durham, N. C., 1970); Heyward Ehrlich, "The Broadway Journal (1) Briggs's Dilemma and Poe's Strategy," BNYPL, 73 (1969), 74-93; Bette S. Weidmann, "The Broadway Journal (2): A Casualty of Abolition Politics," idem., 104-106; William H. Gravely, Jr., "Poe and Thomas Dunn English: More Light on a Probable Reason for Poe's Failure to Receive a Custom-House Appointment," Papers on Poe: Essays in Honor of John Ward Ostrom, ed. Richard P. Veler (Springfield, Oh., 1972), pp. 165-193. Gravely's unpublished dissertation, "The Early Political and Literary Career of Thomas Dunn English," University of Virginia, 1953, furnishes a wealth of information, but see particularly pp. 272-273, 307 ff.; Dwight R. Thomas, "Poe in Philadelphia, 1838-1844: A Documentary Record," dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1978, supplies essential documents in handy form, as does his "Poe, English, and The Doom of the Drinker: A Mystery Resolved," PULC, 40 (1979), 257-268. See also Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 (Boston, 1987), pp. 263-264, for comment on Poe’s meeting English.
2. Files of the Miners' Journal attest the editor's veracity and English’s treachery; no puffing of Poe appears in the Pottsville paper at this time.
3. The generally favorable reception of Poe's book is demonstrated in Arthur H. Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (New York, 1941), p. 539; and Burton R. Pollin, "Contemporary Reviews of Eureka: A Checklist," Poe as Literary Cosmologer in `Eureka', ed. Richard P. Benton (Hartford, 1975), pp. 26-30.
4. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, "Poe and `The Philadelphia Irish Citizen'," Journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, 29 (1931), 121-131. A misprint occurs in the final paragraph of Mabbott's text: his version begins "It" instead of "I" — "I knew it for the tadpole I had slain." I acknowledge kindness from Frank Paluka and Robert McGown in making available to me materials from the Thomas Ollive Mabbott Poe Collection in the University of Iowa Libraries.
5. English's "Reminiscences of Poe" appeared in The Independent in four installments: 15 October 1896, pp. 1-2; 22 October, pp; 3-4; 29 October, p. 4; 5 November, pp. 4-5. See also his "Down Among the Dead Men" [Installment Eight], The Old Guard, 8 (1870), 466-468; "Between the Ebb and Flow: Reminiscences of American Authors from 1834 to 1844," New York Times Saturday Review, 21 January 1899, p. 44; 25 March, p. 200. His letters to J. H. Ingram, in The Independent for 15 and 22 April 1886, are also worth consulting. Briggs, too, left recollections damaging to Poe because they emphasized his drunken debauches and his personal treachery, just as they emphasized Griswold's reliability as a biographer: "The Personality of Poe," The Independent, 13 December 1877, pp. 1-2. I thank Richard Fusco for making this item available to me. A more tempered assessment appears in Briggs's "Memoir" to The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1858). Cf. J. H. B. Latrobe, "Poe and His Biographer, Griswold," The Old Guard, 4 (1866), 353-358. Thomas's dissertation and the Poe Log contain nothing suggestive of bad feelings by Foster toward Poe. See also The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John Ward Ostrom. rev. ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 212-213. A sketch of The John-Donkey, appears in David E. E. Sloane, ed. American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals (New York et al., 1987), pp. 103-106.
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