The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (2 page)

Financial reverses in 1820 compelled John Allan’s return to Richmond, where his ward resumed the name Edgar Allan Poe in the city where Eliza Poe was buried. At Joseph H. Clarke’s academy the boy studied mathematics and geography, excelling in Latin and Greek; he also revealed a gift for verse satire, collecting his clever poems in a portfolio that he begged Allan to publish. His foster father pondered the request and consulted the schoolmaster but finally refused, wishing not to excite authorial vanity. When Clarke left in 1822, Poe entered the school of William Burke, where he was instructed in French as well as the classical languages. In adolescence, he became adventurous and mischievous, an “imperious” lad whose enthusiasm for pranks sometimes provoked Allan. Poe enjoyed sports, loved to box, and challenged schoolmates to long-jumping contests or swimming competitions. Though slight in stature, he was combative and scornful; classmates declined his leadership. His friends nevertheless included Ebenezer Burling, Robert Cabell, and Robert Stanard.

At fourteen Poe turned to Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of his companion, for emotional comfort and understanding, later idealizing her in his poem “To Helen” after her sudden derangement and untimely death in 1824. Her loss intensified his own reckless impulsiveness: Not long afterward, he swam six miles in the James River against an incoming tide under a scorching sun to prove his indomitability. Hints of estrangement from his foster father lurk in Allan’s comment of 1824 that Poe “does nothing & seems quite miserable, sulky, and ill-tempered to all the family.” His lack of “affection” and “gratitude” galled Allan in light of the “care and kindness” he allegedly received. Poe fell into line—literally—when General Lafayette visited Richmond in 1824 during his American tour; the boy paraded with the junior militia that formed an honor guard for the Revolutionary hero who had known his late grandfather, Major David Poe of Baltimore. But the moodiness Allan noted was soon exacerbated by emerging romantic interests. For several years Poe had scribbled poems to local girls, and most had been bantering in tone until he met Sarah Elmira Royster in the summer of 1825. She lived opposite Moldavia, the Richmond mansion John Allan had bought that year with a huge inheritance left by an uncle, and she later recalled Poe as a “beautiful boy” with a “sad” manner who occasionally came calling with verses in hand. The two developed a mutual fondness, spoke of marriage, and remained close until Poe left Richmond to enroll in the University of Virginia early the following year.

Classes at Mr. Jefferson’s university brought Poe in contact with some of the great minds of the young republic. The author of the Declaration was (until his death on July 4 of that year) very much an intellectual presence in Charlottesville, where he shaped the curriculum; the faculty included former presidents Madison and Monroe, who examined Poe in Latin and Greek. But the students were a brawling, hot-tempered lot who sometimes settled personal differences by dueling, and Poe (lacking sufficient funds from Allan) took to gambling and drinking. He also wrote poems, concocted stories, and covered the walls of his room with charcoal sketches; a classmate described him as “excitable & restless, at times wayward, melancholic, and morose.” Examinations intimidated him, but he performed well, excelling in “ancient languages” and French. By the end of the year, however, Poe was in deep trouble: summoned to testify about student gambling, he denied involvement but privately begged Allan to cover his losses. In late December, Allan journeyed to Charlottesville, settled the debts he deemed legitimate, withdrew Poe from the university, and hauled him back to Richmond in disgrace. To complete the debacle, Poe soon learned that Miss Royster’s father, having intercepted Poe’s love letters, had compelled her to break the engagement.

A fateful clash with Allan soon ensued. Condemned to disciplinary toil in the office of Ellis and Allan, Poe accused his foster father of heartlessly “exposing” his youthful indiscretions and thus blasting his hopes for “eminence in public life.” Packing his bags and leaving Moldavia, he demanded funds to journey north to earn enough money to resume his university studies, and a few days later embarked on a perilous new life. In Baltimore he apparently visited his brother, and then he traveled on to Boston, where he assumed an alias to dodge creditors from Virginia.

In the city of his birth, Poe led a dire, hand-to-mouth existence, working first as a clerk in a mercantile store, then briefly as a market reporter for a struggling newspaper, and in May he enlisted in the army as “Edgar A. Perry.” Through relocation and travail Poe had continued to write poetry, and during the summer he found a publisher willing to print his little volume,
Tamerlane and Other Poems,
ascribed to “a Bostonian.” Recasting oriental legend, the exotic title poem showed the influence of Byron as Poe concocted a thinly disguised version of the cruelties that had separated him from Miss Royster. But the book received little notice. Reassigned to duty at Fort Moultrie, Poe in November boarded a brig bound for South Carolina, where he arrived eleven days later after nearly perishing in a gale off Cape Cod.

On desolate Sullivan’s Island, Poe became an artificer, maintaining the cannons and small artillery at the fort. He staved off boredom by writing verse and reading Shakespeare as well as other English poets; he also developed literary contacts in nearby Charleston, where he perhaps met writer-editor William Gilmore Simms. Military life proved irksome, however, and Poe contrived to shorten his five-year enlistment; when his unit was reassigned to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in December 1828, he begged Allan to arrange his release even as he accused him of utter neglect. About his outsized ambition Poe defiantly boasted, “The world shall be my theatre.” A promotion to regimental sergeant-major, however, apparently inspired a different plan: While still seeking the discharge, he asked Allan to enquire about an appointment to the military academy at West Point. But in early 1829, just as Poe was refining this scheme, another blow fell: He learned that his foster mother, the sickly Frances Allan, had died of a lingering illness.

Poe reached Richmond too late to attend Mrs. Allan’s burial, but he achieved a temporary truce with Allan, who replenished Poe’s wardrobe and on his behalf contacted several men of political influence. After hiring a replacement and securing a military release on April 15, Poe carried letters from Allan to Washington and then traveled on to Baltimore, there conferring with former Richmond acquaintance William Wirt, the U.S. attorney general, who assessed his poetry and offered cautionary advice. Undaunted, Poe tracked down publishers and editors, submitting his poems to periodicals and negotiating publication of a new volume of verse. He pursued his appointment to West Point while living in cheap hotels or lodging with impoverished relatives. In late 1829, a Baltimore publisher issued
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems,
attributed to “Edgar A. Poe.” With a touch of drama Poe declared himself “irrecoverably a poet,” savoring a favorable review from the irascible New England critic John Neal.

By 1830 Poe had secured a place in the entering class at West Point. Initially he flourished at the academy; his scholastic efforts earned commendations in mathematics and French, and he played occasional pranks while regaling classmates with clandestine “doggerel” about cadet life. But again he lacked adequate funds to meet living expenses. When Allan journeyed to New York City in October to remarry, he departed without contacting his foster son, and then refused further communication with him, the cadet grasped that he had been permanently disowned. Without an allowance or inheritance, Poe knew that he could never properly sustain himself as an officer, and resentment of Allan provoked his subsequent drinking and neglect of duty. He later claimed that he had no love of “dissipation” but had been victimized by Allan’s “parsimony.” After several weeks of missed roll calls, parades, and inspections, Poe faced a court-martial and was dismissed from the academy on February 18, 1831. But appreciative of Poe’s literary talents, the cadets subsidized the New York publication of
Poems by Edgar A. Poe,
which included “To Helen” and “Israfel.”

Sick and discouraged, Poe lingered in New York for several weeks, but finding no work he returned to Baltimore, residing with his grandmother, his aunt Maria Clemm, and her daughter Virginia. Poe also rejoined his older brother, Henry, a poet and former sailor then in the last stages of tuberculosis. Surrounded by illness and poverty, Poe replied to an announcement in a Philadelphia newspaper of a hundred-dollar premium for the “best American tale” by composing that summer and fall a handful of clever narratives set in the Old World, mostly satirical imitations of magazine fiction—a Gothic tale of revenge, a pseudobiblical farce, a spoof about the indignities of dying, and two separate fantasies about men bargaining with the devil for their souls. Poe reinvented himself as a magazinist under depressing circumstances: His brother died in August, and soon thereafter a cholera epidemic gripped Baltimore. That fall poor health and abject poverty impelled Poe’s penitent appeal to John Allan in which he acknowledged his “flagrant ingratitude”—an apology that Allan, then celebrating the birth of a legitimate male heir, rewarded with monetary assistance.

The new year brought some encouragement: Although Poe did not win the coveted literary prize, the
Saturday Courier
in January 1832 published his first prose tale, “Metzengerstein,” and four other stories subsequently appeared in print, perhaps bringing him a few dollars. In the same playful, parodic vein, Poe added several new tales to his portfolio and in August showed them to Lambert Wilmer, a Baltimore writer and editor. Still unable to find regular employment, though, Poe apparently tried his hand as a school-teacher, an editorial assistant, and a manual laborer at a brick kiln. He also began tutoring his young cousin, Virginia, a girl of sweetly sentimental temperament to whom he became emotionally attached. By May 1833 his accumulating cache of stories—now conceived as “Tales of the Arabesque” told by members of a literary club—numbered eleven, and in June, when the Baltimore
Saturday
Visiter
announced prizes of fifty dollars in both fiction and poetry, Poe submitted six new pieces from a collection he rechristened “Tales of the Folio Club.” The selection committee found itself “wholly unprepared” for their wild novelty and selected “MS. Found in a Bottle” for the prize in fiction. Through this competition Poe met two influential men of letters, J. H. B. Latrobe and John Pendleton Kennedy, and in November, Kennedy himself delivered Poe’s manuscript collection to publisher Henry C. Carey in Philadelphia. One of Poe’s best “Folio Club” tales, a piece later titled “The Assignation,” soon appeared in
Godey’s Lady’s Book,
the first large-circulation periodical to feature his work.

 

A lawyer and novelist, Kennedy also became a mentor: He hired Poe to do odd jobs, gave professional advice, furnished new clothes, and provided occasional meals. He encouraged the younger writer to send his work to Thomas W. White, a Richmond editor who had just launched the
Southern Literary Messenger
. Poe needed a fresh start: John Allan’s death in March 1834 had ended any possibility of reconciliation, and his will contained no mention of his impoverished former ward. Moreover, despite Kennedy’s intervention, Carey seemed politely reluctant to publish the “Folio Club” tales. How Poe sustained himself during this period remains unclear; by 1835 his appearance was so “humiliating” that he declined a dinner invitation from Kennedy. But an important literary connection was already in the making: Poe’s shocking new tale, “Berenice,” had appeared in the March issue of the
Messenger
. Though chastened by White about the story’s grisly finale, Poe supplied another mystical tale, “Morella,” for the April issue, along with several critical notices. By May he was a regular contributor, and by June he was advising White about promotional strategies. Two months later he ventured to Richmond, ostensibly to pursue a teaching position but actually to negotiate employment with White. Arriving in Richmond—and curiously affected by his separation from Mrs. Clemm and Virginia—Poe became overwhelmed by a paralyzing melancholy and sought respite in drink. The dubious White judged Poe “rather dissipated” upon arrival and chose to hire him “not as Editor” but as an untitled assistant.

With a new job and an annual salary of $520, Poe nevertheless suffered from depression, and in late August contemplated suicide. Within a month he bolted from the
Messenger
office, returning to Baltimore perhaps to wed his cousin in secret and certainly to beg her and Mrs. Clemm to join him in Richmond. He then asked White for reinstatement, which the editor reluctantly granted. With his aunt and cousin installed in Richmond, Poe threw himself into the task of making the
Messenger
a leading national periodical. He did so less by featuring his own tales and poems—which in 1836 consisted mostly of reprinted pieces—than by begging contributions from respected authors, eliciting favorable notices of the
Messenger
in other publications, and composing pungent critical notices. He gradually expanded the journal’s circulation—though not so greatly as he later claimed. Defiantly he attacked the “misapplied patriotism” of nationalistic critics “puffing” inferior books by American authors. He also performed journalistic stunts, concocting an exposé about a chess-playing automaton as well as a pseudoscientific exercise in handwriting analysis. In May, perhaps to quash local rumors, he publicly married his cousin (then not quite fourteen) before a handful of witnesses that included his employer. Although White recognized his assistant’s brilliance, he nevertheless refused to name him the editor, struggled to restrain Poe’s literary attacks, and deplored his recurrent insobriety.

Meanwhile, Poe renewed his efforts to publish his “Folio Club” tales, approaching Harper & Brothers in New York through James Kirke Paulding; when the Harpers declined the volume, advising Poe to write a novel instead, he offered the collection—without avail—to Philadelphia and London publishers. But he also began an American novel about a Nantucket youth who revolts against his family by going to sea in quest of romantic adventures. The opening chapters of
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
appeared in the
Messenger
in early 1837, just as White, beset by financial woes and exasperated by Poe’s instability, dismissed his mercurial assistant.