The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1416]
My object in writing this is to introduce you to my friend, Charles F. Briggs, who is about to start a literary weekly paper in New York & desires your aid. He was here a month or two since, & I took the liberty of reading to him what I had written about you & today I received a letter from him announcing his plan & asking your address. Not knowing it, & not having time to write him I thought that the shortest way would be to introduce you to him. He will pay & I thought from something you said in your last letter that pay would be useful to you. I also took the liberty of praising you to a Mr. Colton, who has written “Tecumseh” . . . . & whom I suspect, from some wry faces he made on first hearing your name, you have cut up. He is publishing a magazine & I think I convinced him that it would be for his interest to engage you permanently. But I know nothing whatever of his ability to pay.
I am not to be married till I have been delivered of my book; which will probably be before Christmas, & I shall spend the winter in Philadelphia. I shall only stop one night in New York on my way on. Returning I shall make a longer stay & shall of course see you. You will like Briggs & he will edit an excellent paper. Opposite, I write a note to him.
Yr. affectionate friend,
J. R. Lowell.
P. S. You must excuse me if I have blundered in recommending you to Colton. I know nothing of your circumstances save what I gleaned from your last letter, &, of course, said nothing to him which I might not say as an entire stranger to you. It is never safe to let an editor (as editors go) know that an author wants his pay. I was in hopes that I should have been able to revise my sketch of you before it appeared. It was written under adverse circumstances & was incomplete. If you do not like this method of getting acquainted, send Briggs your address. His is No. I Nassau St. I never wrote an introductory letter before & do not own a complete letter writer — so you must excuse any greenness about it.
LYNCH, MRS. ANNE CHARLOTTE
Anne C. Lynch to Edgar Allan Poe — June 25, 1845
My dear Mr. Poe,
I take the liberty of sending you the poem for Mr. Keese, if you will be so kind as to give it him you will oblige me. Mr. Tuckerman promised to call for it but done so. Will you ascertain if Mr. Keese wishes the poem for The Opal for 1846? I wrote him a note but he has not answered it.
Very truly yours,
Anne C. Lynch
Wed. 25
Anne C. Lynch to Edgar Allan Poe — June 27, 1845
My Dear Mr. Poe, — I thank you for your very kind notice of my poems, no less than for your kind and friendly note. Indeed, I thank you more for the last than for the first, for I value literary reputation only for the bread and butter considerations, and friendship to me is invaluable. It is my mental sustenance — as absolutely necessary as the material, and infinitely higher. But I am exceedingly pained at the desponding tone in which you write. Life is too short & there is too much to be done in it, to give one time to despair. Exorcise that devil, I beg of you, as speedily as possible. The ancients, I believe, had a saying, that it was essential to have overcome the fear of death before we could attain true greatness. Now if you have accomplished this, as I dare say you have, what remains to be feared? what to be despaired of? I see nothing. Tell me what you see, & ten to one I can prove to you it is a chimera of your own vivid imagination. At all events come over and see me tomorrow evening (Saturday) & we will talk the matter over. “I have thought — long & darkly,” but out of the “whirling gulf of phantasy & flame” there has sprung a firm will or resolution to meet the realities of life with an iron