Poe Page 4

  His relationship with John Allan entered a new phase. It seems that his guardian had been softened by the death of Fanny, and that the presence of Poe was no longer objectionable to him. Poe related his plans to enroll at West Point, and he obtained Allan's consent. The way was now open for him to be honourably discharged. He left Richmond a week later, and on his return to Fortress Monroe he sent a letter to Allan as “My dear Pa” rather than as the “Dear Sir” of his previous correspondence.

  • • •

  At the end of March the process of discharging Poe began. He was obliged to find a substitute for his service, and informed the colonel of the garrison that he was “one of a family of orphans whose unfortunate parents were the victims of the conflagration of the Richmond theatre,” a flagrant lie designed to cover up what he considered to be his dubious origins. The explanation was accepted, however, and in the following month he returned to Richmond.

  The path to West Point, however, was not easy. In the first weeks of his return Poe set about gaining political referees to bolster his application, among them a local major and the representative in Congress for his district. Allan must have materially assisted him, but wrote a reference that was curiously impersonal: “Frankly, sir,” he wrote to the Secretary of War, “I do declare that he is no relation to me whatever … but I do request your kindness to aid this youth in the promotion of his future prospects.” Allan did have some interest, however, in dispatching Poe to West Point; he would be out of the house and, more important, no longer a financial burden.

  Poe submitted a formal application to West Point in May and, with a gift from Allan of fifty dollars in his pocket, travelled to Washington in order to present in person his letters of recommendation to the Secretary of War. He learned that there were some forty-seven candidates already on the list of appointments, but that it still might be possible for him to enroll in September. He then travelled thirty miles north to Baltimore. He wanted to be reunited with his older brother, Henry, who had been living with General Poe and his family since infancy; this visit would also allow Poe to become acquainted with his paternal relatives. Now that his substitute family had been fragmented, he was happy to be embraced by what might be called his true relations. It was also possible that some erstwhile colleague of General Poe might help his enlistment at West Point.

  Baltimore was the third largest city in the United States, but still at the very beginning of its fortunes. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had just been completed. The Patapsco river-front was lined with warehouses. Baltimore was becoming a centre for manufacturing as well as for shipping, an energetic and serious city with broad streets and a skyline made memorable by buildings and churches. Two years before, John Quincy Adams had called it “Monument City.” The earliest photographs depict the busy area of the port, behind which, in the distance, can be seen the Basilica of the Assumption, the steeples of Saint Paul's Episcopal church and the German Reformed Church, and the Washington Monument. It was also the first city of slavery for those travelling south. In that sense, at least, Poe felt at home.

  Poe had a further purpose in coming to Baltimore. He was eager to publish another volume of poetry. He had the abiding dream of literary success but, in addition, he possessed an almost visceral need to be seen by the eyes of the world. He yearned for distinction. Soon after his arrival he took the steamboat to Philadelphia and presented his manuscript of poems to a likely publisher, Carey, Lea & Carey. Mr. Lea seemed to be interested in the volatile and no doubt voluble young poet, and promised to study the manuscript carefully with a view to publication. Much encouraged, Poe returned to Baltimore. A few weeks later Lea sent him a standard and disheartening letter. The poems might be published if the publishers were guaranteed against loss.

  Poe had very little money of his own. So he wrote to Allan, asking him to furnish the financial subsidy for the book. This was a surprising and perhaps foolish action. Nothing was more calculated to arouse Allan's anger. He had considered Poe to be on the way to a distinguished military career—but here the young man was, pursuing an insecure and even reprehensible destiny. Poetry was not at a premium in early-nineteenth-century America. Allan scribbled at the end of Poe's letter that he had replied, “strongly censuring his conduct & refusing any aid.”

  Allan had meanwhile been supporting Poe at the least possible cost. He sent his young charge a further fifty dollars in the summer of 1829, upon which sum he was supposed to live for the next three months. It amounted to a daily allowance of some fifty-three cents. Poe decided to move out of lodging houses and into the home of his relatives, situated in the business district, “down-town” from the wealthier and more fashionable quarter.

  General Poe was dead, survived by his widow; in her little house in Mechanics Row, Milk Street, was also Maria Clemm, Poe's aunt, together with her small daughter, Virginia. And here lived Poe's brother, Henry. It was not necessarily a happy family: old Mrs. Poe was paralysed, and Mrs. Clemm also in a poor state of health; Henry was dying of tuberculosis, and according to Poe, “entirely given up to drink & unable to help himself, much less me.” There was real poverty in Mechanics Row, where Poe experienced a life very different from that of the Allan household in Richmond. Yet his entrance into the family marked a decisive change in his life. He became attached to Maria Clemm, and to her young daughter. In succeeding years these two women would become the lodestones of his life, the harbour into which he crept from the wild waves of the world.

  • • •

  Poe's poetic ambitions left everything in doubt. Allan was now not at all convinced that the young man was serious about a military career, and accused him of shiftiness and prevarication. He was also enraged by Poe's requests for more money, in order to procure a substitute for his service at Fortress Monroe. Poe wrote that, while in Baltimore, one of his cousins had stolen money from his pockets. It must have seemed to Allan that his demands would never cease. In a letter to him of this period, Poe declared that “I would have returned home immediately but for the words in your letter ‘I am not particularly anxious to see you.’ ”

  He was happy to remain in Baltimore for a specific reason. He had retrieved the manuscript of his poetry from Carey, Lea & Carey, offering it instead to the Baltimore publishing firm of Hatch and Dunning. To his delight, it was accepted. Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems by Edgar A. Poe was published in December 1829. In some respects it is a reprise of Tamerlane, published two years earlier. But there are many new poems, among them “Al Aaraaf” itself, which owes as much to Milton as to the Romantics. The newly published poems once more evince Poe's mastery of form and cadence; his characteristics are those of intensity aligned with indefiniteness, of lyricism melting into morbidity.

  There was one particular person to whom he had yet to prove himself. Poe wrote to his foster father announcing the publication, and one of the publishers, Mr. Dunning, promised to present a copy of the volume to Allan in person.

  For the first time, Poe received praise for his accomplishment. John Neal, the editor of the Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette, having been sent some poems in advance of publication, wrote that if he “would but do himself justice he might make a beautiful and perhaps a magnificent poem.” Poe was always immensely susceptible to praise, and wrote a reply to Neal in which he stated that “I am young—not yet twenty—am a poet—if deep worship of all beauty can make me one…” He added that “I have no father—nor mother.” This insistence upon his status as an orphan was another way of gaining sympathy and attention.

  Poe probably wished to stay in Baltimore, but he was miserably poor. Poetry could not save him from destitution. There is a record of his selling one of Mrs. Clemm's slaves in December 1829, but in the early months of 1830 he was forced to return to the Allan household. There was nowhere else to go except to Richmond. There he was tolerated rather than welcomed, with the clear understanding that he would be departing for West Point in a relatively short time. The atmosphere in the house was not pleasan
t, and in a letter to Sergeant Graves, one of his creditors, he confessed that “I have tried to get the money for you from Mr. A[llan] a dozen times—but he always shuffles me off.” He also remarked that “Mr. A is not very often sober,” an accusation that would later rebound against him.

  Poe left Richmond in the middle of May 1830. He told Allan in a subsequent letter that “when I parted from you—at the steamboat, I knew that I should never see you again.” He stopped at Baltimore for a day or so, and then went on to West Point. The United States Military Academy, built on a green plain, on high ground some two hundred feet above the Hudson River in New York State, had been established in 1804 for the training of officers. Charles Dickens in his American Notes described it as a “beautiful place: the fairest among the fair and lovely highlands of the river: shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of Newburgh, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff…”

  Poe was lodged with three other cadets at 28 South Barracks, and was paid an allowance of $16 per month. The young poet wore a uniform of blue cloth, with a single-breasted coat; his cap sported a cockade; and he wore his sword in a frog belt under his coat. Reveille was at sunrise. Breakfast was followed by lectures; then at 4:00 p.m. there were various exercises and drills before the cadets were given their supper in a large mess hall and sent back to quarters for further study. The lights were dimmed at 9:30 p.m. There was little time for leisure.

  There are contrary reports about Poe from his contemporaries. One cadet recalled him as “a slovenly, heedless boy, very eccentric, inclined to dissipation, and, of course, preferred making verses to solving equations.” This does not ring altogether true. Poe was never “slovenly” in dress or demeanour. Another cadet more plausibly described him as “shy, proud, sensitive, and unsociable with the other cadets. He spent more time in reading than in study …” Yet his study, brief though it may have been, was sufficient. He was always a quick learner. He attended the classes in French and mathematics; at the general examination in the following year, he was placed seventeenth in mathematics and third in French. He cannot have been altogether unsociable, either, since the cadets learned from him some interesting details about his past life. He told them that he had graduated from a college in England, had become one of the crew on a whaler, had visited South America as well as the East. He was a congenital fabulist, a mendacity that suggests insecurity and pride in equal measure.

  The most complete description of him comes from one of his roommates, Cadet Gibson, who recorded “a worn, weary discontented look, not easily forgotten by those who were intimate with him. Poe was easily fretted by any jest at his expense … Very early in his brief career at the Point he established a high reputation for genius, and poems and squibs of local interest were daily issued from Number 28 …” Gibson also added that “I never heard him speak in praise of any English writer living or dead.” On occasions Poe accused his contemporaries of plagiarism or, even worse, bad grammar. He always would be scornful of those who might rival him. He also had a reputation for “hoaxes” or practical jokes, a habit he was never really able to break in later life. These jokes tended to be of an eerie or bloody kind. On one occasion he insisted that the corpse of a strangled gander was in fact the severed head of an unpopular teacher. He enjoyed scaring his companions. In this respect, too, he would not altogether change.

  Poe soon became weary of West Point life. One contemporary states that within “a few weeks” he “seemed to lose interest in his studies and to be disheartened and discouraged.” This was not the life he had imagined for himself. He was also in debt again. So he set about resigning. Unfortunately, such a course could not be pursued without the permission of a parent or guardian; Poe wrote to John Allan asking for his consent, and was “flatly refused.” It was clear to Allan that Poe had returned to a capricious and wayward life.

  Something else had happened in the Allan household, however, which rendered Allan even less sympathetic than before. He had married again, and had before him the prospect of legitimate children. Why should he any longer help to sustain a scapegrace? The gossip that eventually reached Allan only added to the impression that Poe was malicious as well as mendacious; he had described his surrogate father to Sergeant Graves as “not very often sober.”

  Allan, in a letter now lost, asked Poe not to trouble him with any “further communication.” In his reply Poe rehearsed the litany of complaints against his erstwhile guardian, and justified his previous behaviour at the University of Virginia on the grounds that “it was my crime to have no one on Earth who cared for me, or loved me.” He seemed to have forgotten Fanny Allan for the moment, but the note of anguish and self-pity was never far from the surface. He added that “my future life (which thank God will not endure long) must be passed in indigence and sickness. I have no energy left, nor health.” This is the first indication that the manifest strength and healthiness of his boyhood years had now left him forever, and it may be related to another observation of his roommate, Gibson, that “I don't think he was ever intoxicated while at the Academy, but he had already acquired the more dangerous habit of constant drinking.” Yet Poe was determined. In the absence of express permission from his guardian, he would obtain his discharge from West Point by other means. He told Allan, “I shall neglect my studies and duties at the institution.” On the back of this letter Allan scrawled, “I do not think the Boy has one good quality … I cannot believe a word he writes.”

  The subject of Poe's drinking has often been invoked as the cause of all his misfortunes. There is no doubt that he drank often and that he drank heavily; but the theory that he became intoxicated after only one drink does not stand up to scrutiny. He often had “just the one” and did not become inebriated. On the other hand, there are many reports of his drinking through the afternoon, through the night, or even through the week. And he did become very drunk indeed, with the urgent necessity of being rescued or assisted home. The police were sometimes called. He did not drink for the pleasure of it—there are reports of him downing a glass of wine or spirits in one gulp, as if he were in the thrall of some unconquerable need. Once he had started, he found it difficult to stop. As one friend put it, “if he took but one glass of weak wine or beer the Rubicon of the cup was passed with him, and it almost always ended in excess and sickness.” Drink absolved him from fears of the future. Drink allowed him to forget his poverty and his sense of failure. Drink tempered his nervous disposition, and lent him confidence. Drink may perhaps have helped him to regain some state of infantile bliss, freed from the constraints and difficulties of the world. Yet, when he became drunk, he was aggressive and peremptory and ferocious. Since both his father and brother were heavy drinkers, there may have been an inherited disposition or tendency. Nevertheless he could abstain from drink for long periods without any noticeable ill effects. Yet there is no doubt that frequent intoxication severely damaged his physical, as well as his mental, health. From the time of West Point forward, he would never be wholly well.

  His plan to leave the academy, through dereliction of duty, succeeded admirably. From the beginning of 1831 he absented himself from military exercises, and refused to attend the mandatory church services. He did not report for parades or for guard duty. At the end of January he was brought before a court martial, where he was charged with “gross neglect of duty” and “disobedience of orders.” He pleaded guilty to all charges, and was therefore judged as such. Edgar Allan Poe was dismissed from the service of the United States and, on 19 February, took his place aboard a steamboat bound for New York. He told Allan that he had embarked with “no cloak” to protect him from the winter weather. That was not strictly true. He kept his cadet's overcoat for the rest of his life.

  The Journalist

  So Poe came to New York. He rented a poor lodging somewhere near Madison Square, but almost at once fell ill with an ear infection and a bad cold. The life of New York was in every resp
ect different from that of Richmond and even of Baltimore. He had grown up in what was still primarily an agricultural society, with various gradations in rank and standing; he had come to a city that was beginning its industrial and mercantile career, with all the energetic and levelling forces unleashed by such enterprise. It was faster, and harder, than any city he had ever known. Henry James described it as “the old liquor-scented, heated-looking city,” a city of pigs and horses, a city of flash money. In the year of Poe's arrival, the first street car made its way along Fourth Avenue.

  The city was growing slowly and surely northward; with its seed in the old port neighbourhood, it had reached by the early 1830s the approximate point of what is now Canal Street. Above that line were small shanty towns of Irish squatters as well as the dwellings of labourers and builders clearing the ground for further construction. There were also large farms and farmhouses planted in what was once virgin territory. Now the smell of brick-dust was in the air as the growth of the city increased in momentum. It was a noisy, thriving, and sometimes bewildering place. Broadway and the Bowery were already in existence, exhibiting some of the characteristics that until recently they still possessed. Broadway was the home of retail shops and theatres, while the Bowery led a more penurious existence as the haven for slums and saloon bars.