And my Eulalie. I dwelt alone a In a world of moan, voul was a Fill the fair and gentle Eulake became my blushing bride Till the yellow-haired young Ah, less, less bright The sins of the "night Eulalie became my smiling bride. Than the eyes of the radiant girl, And never a flake · That the vapor can make with the moon-tints of purple and pearl Gan vie with the misdest Eulalie's most unregarded curl Gan compare {curl. Resp? 7 BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS Published monthly by The New York Public Library at 476 Fifth Avenue, New York City. President, George L. Rives, 476 Fifth Avenue; Secretary, Charles Howland Russell, 476 Fifth Avenue; Treasurer, Edward W. Sheldon, 45 Wall Street; Director, Edwin H. Anderson, 476 Fifth Avenue. Subscription One Dollar a year, current single numbers Ten Cents. Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter, January 30, 1897, under Act of July 16, 1894. Printed at The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue. Edmund L. Pearson, Editor. VOLUME XVIII DECEMBER, 1914 NUMBER 12 THE TWO MANUSCRIPTS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY I. THE MANUSCRIPT OF POE'S "EULALIE" HE original holograph manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe's "Eulalie," of which a facsimile is presented herewith, was discovered recently by the Keeper of Manuscripts in a leatherette-bound copy-book. On a front page the book bears the original autographs of President James K. Polk and some members of his cabinet. Upon other leaves are mounted, by means of wafers, cut autographs of a number of presidents, vice-presidents and statesmen of the United States, as well as of a few literary personages. It is safe to say that this copy-book was used as an autograph album in the period from 1845 to 1850. The Poe manuscript was folded and laid in loose. There are no evidences of its ever having been fastened or mounted. It is written on the light bluish tinted writing paper so common to the period in which it was produced. The salutation and signature of Poe, pasted on the lower right hand corner of the poem, are written on a strip of white paper of the time, similar to paper which Poe used for letters of which the library has some originals. The copybook is a part of the Robert L. Stuart collection, presented in 1892. Poe's "Eulalie" was printed for the first time in The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Science, for July, 1845 (vol. 2, p. 79), with the title "EULALIE.—A SONG. | BY EDGAR A. POE." The text as first printed varies from our manuscript in the heading, in punctuation and in the last lines, which read: While all day long Shines, bright and strong, Astarté within the sky, And ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye- These variations are interesting only as another instance of Poe's practice of freely altering his writings. "Eulalie" may be classed as one of his twelve best poems, in which his temperamental regard for the beautiful in woman finds peculiar expression. The year of 1845, moreover, was the year in which the pendulum of Poe's career alternated between new literary conquests on the one hand and poverty, illness and moroseness on the other. On January 29th, "The Raven" had appeared in the Evening Mirror, with a favorable word from Nathaniel P. Willis, its editor. Poe's manuscripts, so often pigeonholed by the editors of journals in the past, were now in demand. The end of November, of this year, his collected poems dedicated to Elizabeth Barrett (afterwards Mrs. Browning), were published at New York by Wiley and Putnam, under the title: The Raven and other Poems, and "Eulalie" was among them. This papercovered duodecimo of less than a hundred pages, which now sells at several hundred dollars, was published at thirty-one cents, and was not destined to yield much of a revenue for the alleviation of Poe's hardships. It is true that Poe declared in his preface with singular abnegation: "I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not they cannot at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind." Here he also tells us that "these trifles" were collected by him "with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random 'the rounds of the press,'" and added: "If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it." The text of "Eulalie" in this collection agrees with our manuscript in the last lines, thus showing these changes had been made some time between the period of first publication in the American Review, in July, and republication in the collected edition issued in November. Poe's youthful wife, Virginia Clemm, was already suffering from that physical disability which ended in her death from consumption in January, 1847, at the little cottage in Fordham, whither they had removed less than a year before. She was his "fair and gentle Eulalie" - that "blushing bride" whose radiant eyes had cheered him and stimulated his ambitions in the midst of disappointments without number. On the back of the manuscript of "Eulalie" may yet be read in faint lines a couplet in his handwriting, thus: Deep in earth my love is lying And I must weep alone. |