Edgar Allan Poe (16 page)

Before the summer of 1842 ended, Poe moved his family to a small row house on Coates Street in the Fairmount district of Philadelphia. Maria Clemm kept the house ‘neat and orderly’, but even she could not mask the ‘air of pecuniary want’.
²⁶
Located on the edge of town, their new home was close to the Wissahickon River, or Wissahiccon, as Poe spelled it. He enjoyed walking through the woods along the river. Beyond the opportunities for contemplation, the river also gave Poe opportunities for sport and sustenance. His military training had made Poe a crack shot. The boy next door remembered, ‘When Poe asked me to go with him for reed birds I went. I was an active boy. We got into a boat and paddled down to about Gray’s Ferry. I rowed while he loaded and shot. For many of the birds I waded in water up to my chin. We brought home a big bag.’
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Mostly Poe kept busy with piecemeal literary work.
The Gift for 1843
accepted ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, a graphic story of medieval torture subtly structured as a dream vision, which a contemporary reader called ‘one of his sombre and thrilling narratives, exhibiting the intense nature of his “graver musings”’.
²⁸
Graham’s
accepted the retrospective review of Rufus Dawes that Burton had rejected years earlier. And Snowden accepted ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’, publishing it in three instalments in the
Ladies’ Companion
. But all this scattered work frustrated Poe. He longed for a magazine of his own.

He was not alone. Several of his ambitious literary friends dreamed the same dream – and experienced similar frustrations. After establishing the semi-weekly Washington
Index
in August 1841, Jesse Dow kept it afloat as long as he could. The
Index
initially proved successful, going from semi-weekly to tri-weekly to daily over its first year, but the endeavour nearly exhausted the otherwise energetic Dow. Suffering from illness in July 1842, he resigned as editor. Without Dow’s leadership, the paper languished. The
Index
instantly reverted to a tri-weekly and folded a month later.

James Russell Lowell,
c
. 1860.

Also this year James Russell Lowell planned his own magazine,
The Pioneer
. He accepted ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ for his first issue, which appeared in January 1843. The way Lowell paid Poe indicates the tenuous financing of contemporary periodicals. At the moment Lowell did not have sufficient funds to pay for Poe’s contribution to
The Pioneer
. Meanwhile Graham still owed Lowell money for a contribution to his magazine. Consequently Lowell asked Graham to pay Poe out of what he (Graham) owed him (Lowell). Eager to cultivate his relationship with
The Pioneer
, Poe offered to write a new article for each issue. Lowell agreed. After the third issue, however, Lowell found himself hopelessly in debt and suffering from a debilitating eye injury that required surgery to save his sight. There was no fourth issue of
The Pioneer
.

In the second week of December 1842, Philadelphia publisher Thomas Cottrell Clarke issued the first number of his mammoth weekly, the
Philadelphia Saturday Museum
. Poe’s precise involvement with this paper is unclear, yet he sufficiently befriended its proprietor that Clarke agreed to publish Poe’s long-planned magazine, now called
The Stylus
. To promote the magazine, which they hoped to launch the first half of 1843, Clarke decided to include some advance publicity in the
Saturday Museum
. The 25 February 1843 issue was covered with all things Poe. His prospectus appeared on the back page, and the front page contained Henry Hirst’s biography of Poe accompanied by a wood-engraved portrait based on a recent daguerreotype, which was reprinted the following week. Such publicity was just what Poe needed to promote his new magazine.

The second week of March 1843 brought Poe to Washington – the ‘land of excitement and rascality’, as F. W. Thomas called it.
²⁹
Since obtaining a clerkship with the Treasury Department, Thomas had held out the possibility that Poe could obtain some kind of clerical position with the Tyler administration and thus free himself from relying on his pen to survive. Later that year Dow, who also lived in Washington, would be elected Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, a position bringing him a $1500 salary and giving him time to write. The possibility of employment in Washington for Poe had faded, but he hoped for a place with the Collector of Customs in Philadelphia. Coming to Washington, he planned to see Robert Tyler, the president’s son, to assure his appointment with us Customs. He also hoped to generate further support for
The Stylus
.

The story of Poe’s trip to Washington is almost predictable. He checked in at Fuller’s City Hotel at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, where Thomas roomed. But Thomas was ill, so Poe had to fend for himself. The hotel bar lured him inside, where a glass of port initiated another lengthy drinking spree. The extent of his drunken behaviour has gone unrecorded. Dow mentioned some ‘senseless creatures’ making sport at Poe’s expense, and Poe admitted walking around with his coat inside out at one point and generally making a fool of himself at Fuller’s Hotel.
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His old nemesis John Hill Hewitt, who now lived in Washington, met him on Pennsylvania Avenue one day. ‘Seedy in appearance and woebegone’, Poe shook his hand and asked him to forget the past. Hewitt recalled, ‘He said he had not had a mouthful of food since the day previous, and begged me to lend him fifty cents to obtain a meal. Though he looked the used-up man all over – still he showed the gentleman. I gave him the money.’
³¹

Dow grew so concerned about Poe’s wayward behaviour that he wrote to Clarke, asking him to come and retrieve him. Dow could safely get Poe on the train but worried that he would get off at Baltimore and continue his spree there. Clarke, a temperance man, did not like hearing such news, especially about a possible business partner. His relationship with Poe briefly remained cordial, but before another two months had passed, Clarke withdrew his financial support for
The Stylus
. Once again Poe had to abandon his planned magazine.

Edgar Allan Poe House, 530 North Seventh Street (rear), Philadelphia.

Despite his personal failings, Poe was determined to succeed as an author. In or before March 1843 he completed ‘The Gold Bug’ and submitted it to Graham, who accepted it, magnanimously paying Poe fifty-two dollars, money that allowed him and his family to rent a house on Seventh Street in the Spring Garden district just north of Philadelphia. When the Philadelphia
Dollar Magazine
advertised a literary contest with a hundred-dollar first prize, Poe thought ‘The Gold Bug’ would make an ideal submission and asked for the story back. Graham agreed and, even more magnanimously, let Poe repay the fifty-two dollars not in cash but in additional articles for
Graham’s
. On Wednesday, 14 June, the
Dollar Newspaper
announced the winner of the hundred-dollar grand prize: ‘The Gold Bug’. Illustrated by F.O.C. Darley, the story appeared over the next two weeks. Poe’s most successful tale to date, ‘The Gold Bug’ was reprinted across the
USA
, dramatized for the American stage, translated into French and circulated around Europe.
Le Bibliophile Belge
, for example, appreciated Poe’s combination of pathos and logic to create a masterfully original tale.
³²

After the success of ‘The Gold Bug’, Poe revived plans for
Phantasy-Pieces
. William H. Graham – George’s brother – agreed to publish it but insisted on some changes. Though he accepted Poe’s organization, he wanted to change the title and decided to issue the collection in individual parts instead of publishing the multivolume work simultaneously. Part-by-part publication let publishers maximize profits while minimizing risk. Consumers accepted more easily a forty-eight-page pamphlet selling for pennies than a multi-volume work selling for dollars. If an edition proved unsuccessful, the publisher could quietly let it die. Such was the case with
The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe
, as the collection was retitled. The first part, which contained the complete texts of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and ‘The Man that was Used Up’, appeared in July 1843. There was no second part.

Regardless of his various projects, Poe had not lost his fascination for the tourist, which he continued to explore in ‘Morning on the Wissahiccon’. Published in early November 1843, this sketch articulates ideas Poe had been subtly exploring since ‘A Descent into the Maelström’. It was in ‘Morning on the Wissahiccon’ that he coined the phrase ‘natural lions of the land’. Tourists, he critiques, ‘content themselves with a hasty inspection of the natural
lions
of the land – the Hudson, Niagara, the Catskills, Harper’s Ferry, the lakes of New York, the Ohio, the prairies, and the Mississippi’.
³³

America, he suggests, offers much attractive scenery beyond its major attractions: ‘There are innumerable quiet, obscure, and scarcely explored nooks, within the limits of the United States, that, by the true artist, or cultivated lover of the grand and beautiful amid the works of God, will be preferred to each
and to all
of the chronicled and better accredited scenes to which I have referred.’ The ‘real Edens of the land’, Poe continues, ‘lie far away from the track of our own most deliberate tourists’.
³⁴
Instead of always looking for the sublime, people should seek out the beautiful, which they may find in many places, some quite close to home. Poe essentially gives everyone regardless of wealth or leisure the chance to enjoy nature. There was no need to go to the expense of travelling to distant Niagara or the even more distant prairies for the aesthetic appreciation of nature.

In terms of intellectual improvement, the edifying lecture provided an important form of middle-class wintertime recreation. It also gave authors an avenue of income that was typically more lucrative than writing. From November through February, many authors criss-crossed the nation, speaking at local athenaeums, civic centres, lecture halls and schools. The edifying lecture supplied entertainment and instruction to those who frowned upon more popular forms of amusement. Some contemporary authors – Emerson most importantly – became celebrities on the lecture circuit. Others disliked lecturing, which could be wearisome and which took precious time from writing. Poe had so far avoided it, but ‘The Gold Bug’ prompted numerous lecture invitations. He decided to take the plunge. On Tuesday, 21 November 1843, he delivered a spirited lecture, ‘American Poetry’, to a standing-room-only crowd at the William Wirt Literary Institute. He repeated his lecture in Wilmington, Delaware the following Tuesday but did not lecture again until nearly a month later, when he travelled to Newark, Delaware on 23 December to deliver ‘American Poetry’ at Newark Academy. Poe lectured at Baltimore on 31 January 1844 and at Reading, Pennsylvania on 12 March.

Poe could have been more aggressive in seeking lecture invitations. Herman Melville averaged two lectures a week from late November through February in the first year he went on tour, travelling as far west as Cincinnati. Poe’s reluctance to visit cities beyond those within about a hundred-mile radius of Philadelphia partly stems from a growing awareness of himself and his personal limitations. He also hated to leave his wife, whose tuberculosis was growing noticeably worse. Poe sometimes fooled himself into thinking her ailment was only bronchitis, but in the midst of her increasingly frequent coughing fits there could be little denying its nature.
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As March gave way to April, Poe realized Philadelphia had nothing more for him in terms of literary employment. He decided to move to New York. Leaving Maria Clemm behind to take care of loose ends, Edgar and Virginia left their Philadelphia home before sunrise on Saturday, 6 April 1844. They soon boarded the train to Amboy, New Jersey, where they transferred to the New York steamer. The letter Poe wrote Mrs Clemm bristles with specifics. Remarkably, Virginia hardly coughed at all during the trip. He tore his pants on a nail at some point, but the journey was otherwise uneventful. Leaving Virginia on the steamer in the ladies’ cabin, he went to find a boarding house. It was raining so hard he had to outlay a hurtful sum from their meagre savings – sixty-two cents – for an umbrella. The image of Edgar Allan Poe traipsing around New York alone on this cold, gray, rainy afternoon sheltering his threadbare jacket and torn pants with a shiny new umbrella is nothing short of Chaplinesque.