• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 16400 0

impertinent enough to think that it (the conclusion) might be mended. I of course “took” your “idea “ throughout. The whole piece is but a sermon from the text of “Joseph Glanvil “ which you cap it with — and your intent is to tell a tale of the “mighty will “ contending with & finally vanquishing Death. The struggle is vigorously described — and I appreciated every sentence as I advanced, until the Lady Ligeia takes possession of the deserted quarters (I write like a butcher) of the Lady Rowena. There I was shocked by a violation of the ghostly proprieties — so to speak — and wondered how the Lady Ligeia — a wandering essence — could, in quickening the body of the Lady Rowena (such is the idea) become suddenly the visible, bodily, Ligeia. If Rowena’s bodily form had been retained as a shell or case for the disembodied Lady Ligeia, and you had only become aware gradually that the blue Saxon eye of the “Lady Rowena of Tremaine “ grew daily darker with the peculiar, intense expression of the “look “ which had belonged to Ligeia — that a mind of grander powers, a soul of more glowing fires occupied the quickened body and gave an old familiar expression to its motions — if you had brooded and meditated upon the change until proof accumulated upon proof, making wonder certainty, and then, in the moment of some strangest of all evidence of the transition, broken cut into the exclamation which ends the story — the effect would not have been lessened, and the “ghostly proprieties” would, I think, have been better observed. You may have some theory of the story, or transition, however, which I have not caught.

As for your compositions of this class, generally, I consider them, as Mr. Crummles would say, “phenomenous.” You write as I sometimes dream when asleep on a heavy supper (not heavy enough for nightmare). — The odd ignorance of the name, lineage, &c. of Ligeia — of the circumstances, place, &c. under which, & where, you first saw her — with which you begin your narrative, is usual, & not at all wondered at, in dreams. Such dimness of recollection does not whilst we dream excite any surprise or diminish the vraisemblable aspect of the strange matters that we dream of. It is only when we wake that we wonder that so material an omission in the thread of the events should have been unnoticed by the mind at a time when it could dream in other respects so plausibly — with such detailed minuteness — with such self-possession.

But I must come to a conclusion, as I tire myself with this out-of-the-way sort of writing.

I will subscribe to the Gentlemn’s Mag. shortly & also “contribute” to it.

Yrs. sincerely

P. P. Cooke.

Charlestown, Sep. 16, 1839

P. S. — I would not say “saith Lord Verulam “ — it is out of the way. I am very impertinent.

Edgar Allan Poe to Philip P. Cooke — September 21, 1839

Philadelphia Sep. 21rst. 1839.

My Dear Sir:

I recd. your letter this morning — and read it with more pleasure than I can well express. You wrong me, indeed, in supposing that I meant one word of mere flattery in what I said. I have an inveterate habit of speaking the truth — and had I not valued your opinion more highly than that of any man in America I should not have written you as I did.

I say that I read your letter with delight. In fact I am aware of no delight greater than that of feeling one’s self appreciated (in such wild matters as “Ligeia”) by those in whose judgment one has faith. You read my inmost spirit “like a book,” and with the single exception of D’Israeli, I have had communication with no other person who does. Willis had a glimpse of it — Judge Tucker saw about one half way through — but your ideas are the very echo of my own. I am very far from meaning to flatter — I am flattered and honored. Beside me is now lying a letter from Washington Irving in which he speaks with enthusiasm of a late tale of mine, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” — and in which he promises to make his opinion public, upon the first opportunity, — but from the bottom of my heart I assure you, I regard his best word as but dust in