Poe's Quarrel with Boston Writers

Edgar Allan Poe
"Editorial Miscellany"
The Broadway Journal, November 1, 1845

In this first major comment on the Lyceum lecture, Poe quoted a positive account of his performance that had appeared in the (New York) Sunday Times and Messenger and referred to Cornelia Walter as a "beguiling little" divinity, "adorable creature," and "amiable enemy." In what has struck his biographers as a self-defeating defense, he insisted that he was trying to teach the lesson-loving Frogpondians a lesson by reading a poem he wrote as a teenager. Wielding his tomahawk and hurling insults, he noted that Frogpondians were dull, soulless, and chronically asleep, that their hotels were "bad" and their poetry "not so good." In the general onslaught, Poe offered only one crumb of praise: "Their pumpkin pies," he wrote, "are delicious."

November 22, 1845

In this second lengthy discussion of the Lyceum brouhaha, Poe again insisted that he deliberately read a "bad poem" because the Frogpondians deserved no better. Looking back, he declared that the experience of "making a fuss" had been "delightful."

...We never saw the Frog-Pondians so lively in our lives. They seem absolutely to be upon the point of waking up. In about nine days the puppies may get open their eyes. That is to say they may get open their eyes to certain facts which have long been obvious to all the world except themselves–the facts that there exist other cities than Boston–other men of letters than Professor Longfellow–other vehicles of literary information than the Down-East Review.

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts