Edgar Allan Poe
A FRagment of the only known letter from Longfellow to poe
AUTOGRAPH LETTER FRAGMENT (from Henry W. Longfellow to Edgar Allan Poe) (Cambridge: May 19, 1841). Written in black ink on a rectangular slip of wove paper, measuring approximately 4½ x 7¾.” Declining a request from Poe (as editor of Graham’s Magazine) to contribute material, Longfellow writes: “I am much obliged to you for your kind expressions of regard; and to Mr. Graham for his very generous offer, of which I should gladly avail myself under other circumstances. But I am so much occupied at present, that I could not do it with any satisfaction either to you or to myself. I must therefore respectfully decline his proposition.” This text was heretofore known only from Samuel Longfellow’s “Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” published in 1886. At that time the letter was already fragmented, Longfellow’s signature on the verso having been clipped out with loss, on the recto, to a handful of words in the first paragraph. That paragraph (with the missing text bracketed) read: “Dear Sir: Your favor of the 3rd inst. with the two Nos. of the magazine reached me [but a] day or two ago, which will account [….] a more speedy [answer was not returned.]” By the time the letter came into the possession of psychiatrist and Poe collector John W. Robertson (1856-1933) the present fragment, being the entire second paragraph, had gone missing. Robertson assumed that the section “containing Longfellow’s declination (had) been destroyed by (the) autograph vandal” (Poe: A Psychopathic Study, 1923. p. 52). The surviving portion of the letter was subsequently acquired by Colonel Richard A. Gimbel (1898-1970) whose Poe collection was gifted to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1971. At some point along the way, the first 4 ½ words of the third and final paragraph were also lost. That paragraph reads: “[You are mistaken in supp]osing you are ‘not favorably known to me.’ On the contrary, all that I have read from your pen inspires me with a high idea of your power; and <I think> you are destined to stand among the first romance-writers of the country, if such be your aim.” There’s some darkening to the paper, a fair amount of faint residual creasing, an inch-long closed tear at the bottom, just touching the second ‘l’ in ‘respectfully,’ and some possible tape residue at the top corners, but overall the fragment is in good condition. Thought lost for over a century, this is a significant relic of a compelling literary association, being part of Longfellow’s only known letter to Poe.
