WCP3530

Letter (WCP3530.3422)

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

England

May 25th. 1905

Dewitt Miller Esq.1

Dear Sir

The origins of Leonainie2 remains to me as much a mystery as ever. My second article in the Fortnightly Review of April 1904, not having elicited from Mr. Riley3 any defense of his special version of the poem, which I have impugned as in many places unmeaning and inconsistent — I am more than ever convinced that he did not compose it. I know of no other writer than Poe to whom to impute it.

[2] In the New York Sun of April 14th 1904is an article giving "a statement" by Riley, blaming himself in an [1 word blotted] exaggerated way for the hoax, but giving no further particulars whatever, & concluding with these words — "Even as it is now, there is nothing for [1 word blotted] me to do but to acknowledge that I wrote it, as I do; but that does not stand, since I once denied being the author. I wrote it, but I did not; I did not write it, but I did, and I am a liar any way you put it."

Now if he wrote the above after he had seen my second article, it is a[n] evasion of the whole of the [3] points at issue. He replies to none of my criticisms or difficulties.

If he wrote it without having seen my 2nd article, why does he not reply to that, defend his own version; and point out what he meant by it.

To me there is an ideality, a high poetic imagination in Leonainie which none of Riley's verses I have seen make any approach to. He has poetic feeling but not poetic imagination.

I hope you will be able to [4] throw some light on this curious problem.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

I see the New York Sun prints it twice "Leonaine" instead of "Leonainie".

1
American librarian, orator, and educator Dewitt Miller (1857 — 1911).
2
The short poem Leonainie was attributed to Edgar Allen Poe (1809 — 1849) in 1877, supposedly discovered in the margins of a Latin dictionary the poet had left at an inn. The doggerel was widely accepted as Poe's, until its actual author revealed that it had been a hoax. ARW, who discovered the poem and the scandal around it decades later, became convinced that Leonainie was in fact a work of Poe's, and would not surrender his position.
3
Writer and poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849 — 1916). In 1877, Riley penned Leonainie as a satirical jab at critics, whom he felt only cared about a poet's name, not their writing. By the 20th Century he had become quite popular on his own merits, often referred to as the 'National Poet' of the United States.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3530.3422)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Klug, Benjamin [2013-07-08] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-07-08]

Please cite as “WCP3530,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3530