Page:Edgar Allan Poe - a centenary tribute.pdf/50

 work and the hostility of an influential family and other causes led to a comparative social obscuration. We do not know clearly how his habits affected his relations with his former friends and his new employer, the proprietor of the Messenger; the circumstances of his marriage with his child-cousin Virginia are distinctly mysterious; there is a possibility that the dark Baltimore period may have extended its shadow over this Richmond period. Even with regard to a matter which it would seem should have been thoroughly investigated long ago, viz: his editorial management of the Messenger as that is revealed in the pages of the magazine itself, it may be fairly held that the facts have not yet been thoroughly sifted and given to the world. I think I do not exaggerate when I say both that there is need of additional and close study of the material we have already amassed, and that there is a chance that some stray entry in a diary or a reference in a letter may throw light on this or that dark period in the narrative and thus help us to a clearer conception of Poe's character. I know at least that in my own study of that character I have been checking myself at almost every step with the query—Is there a sufficient basis for this inference?

There is another point about another Richmond period that may bear mentioning. Poe is usually depicted for us as a romantically melancholy and lonely boy. We are told about his haunting the grave of Mrs. Stanard by night. We picture him as a sensitive orphan child, proud, misunderstood, yearning for sympathy. How far this exceptional boyhood helps distinguished psychological pathologists to give us a scientific diagnosis of the