Edgar Allan Poe (5 page)

Poe left the Dubourgs in late 1817 or early 1818 to attend the Manor House School, Stoke Newington, then about four miles from London. The school and its overseer, the Reverend John Bransby, would receive fictional treatment in ‘William Wilson’. Poe characterized the place as ‘a misty-looking village’ filled with ‘gigantic and gnarled trees’ and houses ‘excessively ancient and inordinately tall’.
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Giving students a grounding in the classics, Bransby also taught English literature and history, frequently tossing off apt quotations from Shakespeare.
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The London branch proved unsuccessful. John Allan closed the office in 1820 and brought his family back to Richmond. Ellis found the Allans ‘a little Englishised’ upon their return but predicted that their Englishness would soon wear off.
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Allan enrolled Edgar in a classical school run by Joseph H. Clarke, a hot-tempered, pedantic, Irish bachelor from Trinity College, Dublin. ‘Only the pure Latinity of the Augustan age’, Clarke would tell parents repeatedly to assure them of the quality of education he provided.
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Students sharpened their Latin by capping verses or, for a greater challenge, double-capping them, a competition at which Poe excelled. Besides reading much Latin poetry and history at Clarke’s school, Poe began studying Greek. Since his teacher believed in a well-rounded education, Poe also learned maths and science during his three years with Clarke. He excelled in elocution as well. One year he competed in a city-wide elocution contest and took home the prize. He wrote poetry while Clarke’s student, hoping to publish a collection of his schoolboy verse, an early indication of his literary ambition.
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Poe’s athleticism complemented his intellect. Schoolmate John Preston called him ‘a swift runner, a wonderful leaper, and what was more rare, a boxer’. Thomas Ellis, the son of Allan’s business partner, became his protégé. Poe taught him how to shoot, swim and play field hockey. Preston remembered a footrace between Clarke’s and another school. Fellow students chose Poe to represent them. ‘The race came off one bright May morning at sunrise, on the Capitol Square’, Preston remembered. ‘Poe ran well; but his competitor was a long-legged, Indian-looking fellow, who would have outstripped Atalanta without the help of the golden apple.’
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Atalanta? Preston was recalling an episode from Ovid. It seems Poe was not the only student to leave Clarke’s school with a working knowledge of the classics.

Poe’s most renowned athletic feat was a six-mile swim down the James River – which he undertook on a wager. Several friends accompanied him in a boat. As his back grew sunburned, they urged him to quit. He refused. Upon accepting a challenge, Poe would not back down. By the time he finished, he had first- and second-degree burns on his back and neck. He resembled a boiled lobster, one eyewitness said, but he successfully completed the swim.
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Regardless of his intellectual and athletic prowess, Poe did not always receive his classmates’ respect. Those who considered themselves part of Richmond aristocracy looked down on him. Preston explained, ‘Of Edgar Poe it was known that his parents were players, and that he was dependent upon the bounty that is bestowed upon an adopted son.’
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Poe’s insecurity about his upbringing, combined with his romantic inclinations, prompted him to invent elaborate fictions about his early life.

When Clarke left Richmond in 1823, Poe transferred to William Burke’s academy, another excellent local school. John Allan took pains to give his foster child the education of a proper gentleman. Since Poe’s classical knowledge outstripped that of his fellow students, he pursued independent study. One classmate at Burke’s remembered him finishing assignments quickly and devoting time to desultory reading and creative writing.
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Poe left Burke’s in March 1825, the month William Galt died. A lifelong bachelor, Galt bequeathed a considerable portion of his estate to John Allan. By one estimate Allan inherited three-quarters of a million dollars. He soon purchased Moldavia, a grand brick home in Richmond at the corner of Main and Fifth. Across the street lived the Royster family. When Edgar, now sixteen, caught sight of their teenaged daughter Elmira, he fell in love.

Elmira found him ‘beautiful’ but ‘not very talkative’.
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In short, she too fell in love. Before he went to university, they considered themselves engaged. Disliking their relationship, her father did what he could to separate them. He intercepted Edgar’s letters to Elmira and prevented her from writing him. Each assumed the other had lost interest, and their relationship cooled. Her father ultimately arranged her marriage to local businessman Alexander Shelton.

Poe reached the University of Virginia in February 1826. Just one year old, it was already among the finest institutions of higher learning in the nation – largely due to the Herculean efforts of its founder Thomas Jefferson, who designed the campus, hired the faculty, planned the curriculum, established the library and served as rector. One progressive aspect of Jefferson’s curriculum concerned the amount of personal choice students had to create their own plan of study. They could take whichever courses they wished.

According to Poe, Allan prevented him from taking full advantage of the innovative curriculum. Most students took three courses, but Allan, despite his newfound wealth, had not provided Poe with sufficient funds to afford tuition for a third class. In addition to Ancient Languages and Modern Languages, Poe had intended to take Mathematics. Neither had Allan provided basic college expenses. Poe had to borrow money locally at usurious rates to buy textbooks. One book he acquired in college was
The Satires of Persius
in Sir William Drummond’s English/Latin parallel text edition. His copy, which survives at the University of Virginia, is inscribed with his name and dated ‘1826, Virginia College’. The work’s influence on Poe has so far gone unnoticed, but Persius’s satire of literary trends in ancient Rome provided another inspiration for Poe’s satirical poetry and fiction.

Detail from
A Bright Spot
[A Panoramic View of the University of Virginia], 1911.

Professor George Blaetterman taught Modern Languages: French, Italian and Spanish. Though, a ‘rather a rough looking German’, he possessed, as Jefferson said, an ‘excellent mind and high qualifications’.
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One week Blaetterman challenged Poe’s class to translate a passage from Tasso into English verse. Poe accepted the challenge – the only student who did – and Blaetterman subsequently ‘paid a very high compliment to his performance’.
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Professor George Long came from Cambridge University. Jefferson had wanted someone to teach Greek, Latin, and Hebrew but realized the only way to get a Hebrew scholar would be to hire a clergyman, which he adamantly refused. Long taught Latin and Greek, supplementing his linguistic courses with lessons in ancient geography.

Outside the classroom Poe had other opportunities to pursue his passion for literature. He joined the Jefferson Society and became its secretary. Members discussed what books they read, made recommendations for reading and shared writings of their own composition. On one occasion, Poe read a tale he had written only to have his friends laugh at it. Incensed, he flung the manuscript into the fire. Classmate Thomas Goode Tucker also remembered Poe ‘quoting authors and reading poetic productions of his own’ and reading the histories of David Hume and John Lingard.
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Tucker’s reminiscence reveals an important moment in Poe’s university experience, one requiring some elaboration. Jefferson dreaded that students might learn English history solely by reading David Hume’s
History of England
. He ordered books for the university library refuting Hume – George Brodie’s
History of the British Empire
, John Lingard’s
History of England –
and personally recommended them to students.
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Henry Tutwiler, one student who dined at Monticello, vividly remembered Jefferson’s attitude: ‘He used to say that the reading of Hume would make an English Tory, and that the transition to an American Tory was an easy one. He never failed to recommend to the youthful student, as an antidote to Hume, Brodie’s
British Empire
; the latter, he said, had “pulverized” Hume.’
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Though Jefferson often invited students to Sunday dinner at Monticello, there is no direct evidence that Poe dined with him. According to Tutwiler, Jefferson’s dinner invitations were both systematic and insistent. If a student were unable to visit Monticello when invited, Jefferson invited him again. During these dinners, he talked books with students and advised them what to read. The conclusion is obvious: Poe may have read Hume on his own, but he read Lingard on Jefferson’s advice.

Poe’s literary interests took him from the dining room at Monticello to the back room of a Charlottesville second-hand store, where clerk Peter Pease was buying a copy of William Hogarth’s
Works
in instalments. Poe invited Pease to his dorm room, an increasingly renowned place for intimate, late night intellectual conversation. As they examined Hogarth’s engravings, Poe suggested they gamble for it. A throw of the dice would settle the matter. Whoever won would get the book; whoever lost would pay for it. Poe lost.
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Final exams were scheduled for December. Poe wrote to Allan complaining how unfair it was that junior students like him would be examined with the seniors.
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Poe’s letter was just a ploy for sympathy. Juniors and seniors were examined separately. Poe
chose
to be examined with the seniors – and did quite well. He placed among the top students in both the senior Latin class and the senior French class.
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Why did Poe choose to be tested with the seniors? His competitive spirit partly explains his choice. He always had a desire to prove himself, to lift himself above the level of his peers. His financial difficulties gave him a practical reason for advancing quickly. If Allan would only pay for two courses per term, so be it. Poe would advance through his classes in half the time, giving himself the opportunity to take courses in different subjects in his second year at school.

This was not to be the case. Poe had compensated for Allan’s stinginess by gambling recklessly. He incurred huge gambling debts – around two thousand dollars, according to contemporary estimates. With a good memory, an ability to imagine what others were thinking and excellent mathematical skills, Poe had the makings of a good gambler, but one crucial aspect of his personality prevented him from gambling success: he could not back down from a challenge. Hearing the phrase, ‘Double or nothing’, or words to that effect, Poe could not resist. Allan refused to honour his debts and withdrew him from university in December.

Embittered by Allan’s neglect, Poe returned to Richmond and moved back into Moldavia. Allan put him to work in the counting room at Ellis and Allan, where Poe could learn accounting, bookkeeping and commercial correspondence.
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To an aspiring poet, few endeavours could be more distasteful. The two quarrelled frequently. By mid-March Poe had moved out. He remained in Richmond briefly but took passage to Boston without saying goodbye. Allan assumed he had gone to sea.

Boston seems an odd destination for Poe. Philadelphia, which rivalled New York as the nation’s most important literary centre, would seem more amenable. But Poe had his reasons for choosing Boston. Of all the major American cities, it was the furthest from Richmond, and he wanted to distance himself from John Allan. Besides, Boston was his birthplace. Returning there offered him a way to be reborn, to start afresh, to make himself into the person he wanted to be. And Poe wanted most to be a poet.

He reached Boston at the end of March 1827, carrying with him a sheaf of manuscript verse. He needed a job but spent time tinkering with his poems, making last-minute revisions, getting them ready to publish. Within the next month or two he met Calvin F. S. Thomas, a young printer eager to expand his business. Many have wondered why Thomas risked publishing a collection of verse from this unknown eighteen-year-old poet. But when Poe got to talking about his work, his enthusiasm was infectious. Thomas apparently became enthralled and agreed to issue the slender volume.

While the book was in press, Poe worked a variety of jobs, according to Peter Pease, who had also left Virginia for Boston. Seeing Poe one day, Pease hailed him. Surprised to hear his own name spoken aloud, Poe quickly approached, silencing Pease. They ducked into an alley, where Poe explained his odd behaviour. He implored Pease to keep his identity secret, explaining that ‘he had left home to seek his fortune, and until he had hit it hard he preferred to remain incognito’. Poe said he had clerked in a wholesale merchant house, unsuccessfully sought editorial work and briefly worked on an obscure newspaper as a market reporter.
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