[page 77:]

AT the beginning of 1831, the beloved first Mrs. Allan (Miss F. K. Valentine, cousin of the sculptor) died, February 28, leaving Poe bereft of his truest friend. It is said that he reached Richmond the day after her burial, which took place at Shockoe Hill Cemetery, where a fitting memorial stone was erected to her memory by her husband.

Not many months after this Mr. Allan (after addressing Miss Anne Valentine, sister of his deceased wife, and being rejected) was united in marriage, October 5, 1830, to Miss Louisa Gabriella Patterson of New York, of whom the following authentic sketch has been kindly furnished the writer by a member of the lady's family

Mrs. Louisa Gabriella Allan was born in the City of New York, March 24, 1800. Her mother was Miss Louisa De Hart, daughter of John De Hart, a member of the Continental Congress of 1774-76 from New Jersey, Attorney-General of his State, a lawyer of great distinction and a man of large means and influence. Her father was Mr. John William Patterson, a lawyer of New York, a son of Capt. John Patterson of the English army who married Catharine Livingston of Livingston Manor, N. Y., and was the [page 78:] first U. S. Collector of the port of Philadelphia after the Revolution. Mrs. Allan was a niece of Mrs. Col. John Mayo (nee De Hart) of Belleville near Richmond, and it was when on a visit to her aunt that she first met Mr. Allan, who became at once very much enamoured with her and subsequently married her at her father's house in New York City, October 5, 1830. Mrs. Allan was a lady of much stateliness and dignity, and of great firmness and decision of character, very clannish in her feelings, and while apparently very calm and reserved in manner, had one of the warmest hearts in the world, was a firm and steadfast friend and profuse in concealed and unostentatious charities. She had three children, all sons — John, William Galt, and Patterson, all of whom died during her life, — John leaving two children, Hoffman Allan now of Danville, Va., and Louisa G., now Mrs. W. R. Pryor of New York. William G. left no issue. Patterson had two children, Genevieve, now Mrs. Dwight Montague, and John, who died young. After her sons became of age Mrs. Allan's house was the centre of Richmond hospitality, and the beauty and frequency of her entertainments were proverbial and few visitors of prominence failed to partake of them, but while the acknowledged leader in society her prominent characteristics were unaltered. She was the fond mother, cherished friend, and quiet dispenser of many charities, not impulsive but constantly flowing, and many a home of her impoverished friends has been blest by her thoughtM consideration and practical affection. Mrs. Allan was of masculine personality and of so much impressiveness and attraction that few who met can forget her; and though the war had to a great extent swept away her wealth, [page 79:] and the death of loved ones saddened her life, she yet remained the same lovely, dignified, and respected lady to the end, which occurred April 24, 1881, forty-seven years after the death of her beloved husband, by whose side she now lies in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.”

In securing the West Point position — which then commanded a salary of $28 a month, besides subsistence and instruction — Poe was fortunate in obtaining letters from Mr. A. Stevenson, speaker of the House of Representatives, and three eminent Virginians, John Campbell, James P. Preston, and Powhatan Ellis, senator from Mississippi, uncle of Col. Thomas H. Ellis, who furnished us with the interesting recollections in Chapter I. These were supplemented and reinforced by letters from Mr. Allan to Major John Eaton, then Secretary of War.

The appointment was really due to Senator Ells The reason why Mr. Ellis became interested in Poe ovas that he was a younger brother of Mr. Allan's partner, and Mr. Allan would naturally mention to so influential an acquaintance his desire to get Edgar the appointment. While waiting for the appointment, Poe had passed the legal age of twenty-one; but he did not scruple to report his age as nineteen years and five months.

So July 1, 1830, he entered the Academy at West Point, which had been founded in 1802 and was considered a most desirable opening for a penniless young man on account — of the income of $336 (afterwards increased to $540) attached to a cadetship, and the possibility of a rapid rise in the profession. Poe had martial blood in his veins; he had had two years of admirable practical training in the artillery branch of [page 80:] the service; he was an excellent mathematician and linguist; and there was every reason to hope that he would ultimately attain the rank of his grandfather, Quartermaster-General Poe.

The years 1829 and 1830 were very stirring ones in the ancient Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1829 the famous Convention to revise the Constitution as semblcd in Richmond, and included among its number more distinguished men than any other public body perhaps that ever assembled in the United States. Among these were ex-presidents Madison and Monroe, Chief Justice Marshall, John Randolph of Roanoke, and a host of other famous Virginians who made the little town ring with their eloquence, and all through the winter of 1829-30 elaborated changes in the Constitution connected with the suffrage and other important questions. The lobbies of the old State-house (planned by Jefferson) and the inns on Main and Broad Streets hummed with voices discussing the momentous questions of statecraft; the streets and private houses were full of historic figures come to lend their aid in settling the vexed questions; and Poe doubtless heard many a voice that had been listened to in Revolutionary times as the Convention proceeded with its order of business. Gentlemen in tie-wigs, knee-buckles, and black stocks were seen everywhere; and it was a resurrection of the olden times.

The atmosphere of West Point was very different from the bland and genial social environment of Richmond with its freedom from restraints, its air of uni versal bonhomie and relationship — everybody was a “Virginia cousin” to everybody else — its social card-playing, drinking, smoking, and, leisurely practice of the professions. [page 81:]

The Academy occupied the site of a ruined fortress captured by the British in the War of Independence, and towered aloft on a plateau nearly two hundred feet above the Hudson in a scene of landscape beauty almost unrivalled. Instead of the social relaxation of Richmond, a rigorous discipline reminded the nearly three hundred young men that there were three hundred offences scheduled for which they could be punished; that they had “signed” for five years as servants of the United States; and that for the four years’ course they could hope only for ten weeks’ vacation in all. It was even whispered around that less than half of those who hopefully entered on the courses ever graduated.

A remarkable assemblage of young men were gathered at West Point the half-year Poe was there, among them the following:

Just as in the case of Poe's contemporaries at the University of Virginia we find him here at West Point thrown with the best blood of the country: General Robert E. Lee graduated the year before, and a long line of illustrious soldiers and statesmen followed the mercurial poet. Unfortunately, Poe soon began to chafe under the discipline, though he stood high and well in his classes; third in French and seventeenth in mathematics, in a class of eighty-seven. One of his contemporaries there indeed writes: “He was an accomplished French scholar, and had a wonderful aptitude for mathematics, so that he had no difficulty in preparing his recitations in his class and in obtaining the highest marks in these departments. He was a devourer of books, but his great fault was his neglect of and apparent contempt for military duties. His wayward and capricious temper made him at times [page 85:] utterly oblivious or indifferent to the ordinary routine of roll-calls, drills, and guard duties. These habits subjected him often to arrest and punishment, and effectually prevented his learning or discharging the duties of a soldier.”(1)

In what singular contrast this Poe is to the honorably discharged United States soldier who distinguished himself for two years by the most exemplary conduct!

The only explanation is that either Poe and Perry were different beings or that Poe's “Imp of the Perverse” was now in the ascendant, and that, learning in October of Mr. Allan's second marriage, he went to work deliberately to undo his excellent record and get himself, by insubordination and neglect of duty, courtmartialled and expelled from the Academy, with a view to pursuing a literary career.

“Harper's Magazine” for November, 1867, contains some highly colored though not incredible accounts off — Poe at West Point,” written thirty-seven years after the events by Mr. T. H. Gibson:

“Number 28 South Barracks, in the last months of the year of our Lord 1830, was pretty generally regarded as a hard room. Cadets who aspired to high standing on the Merit Roll were not much given to visiting it, at least in daytime. To compensate in some measure for this neglect, however, the inspecting officer was uncommonly punctual in his visits, and rarely failed to find some object for his daily report of demerit. The old barracks have passed away, and are now only a dream of stone and mortar; but the records of the sins of omission and commission of Number 28 and its occupants remain, and are filed [page 86:] carefully away among the dusty archives of the Academy.

“Edgar A. Poe was one of the occupants of the room. ‘Old P——’ and the writer of this sketch completed the household. The first conversation had with Poe after we became installed as room-mates was characteristic of the man. A volume of Campbell's Poems was lying upon our table, and he tossed it contemptuously aside, with the curt remark: ‘Campbell is a plagiarist;’ then without waiting for a reply he picked up the book, and turned the leaves over rapidly until he found the passage he was looking for.

“‘There,’ said he, ‘is a line more often quoted than any other passage of his: “Like angel visits few and far between,” and he stole it bodily from Blair's “Grave.” Not satisfied with the theft, he has spoiled it in the effort to disguise it. Blair wrote “Like angel visits SHORT and far between.” Campbell's “Few and far between” is mere tautology.’

“Poe at that time, though only about twenty years of age, had the appearance of being much older. He had a worn, weary, discontented look, not easily for gotten by those who were intimate with him. Poe was easily fretted by any jest at his expense, and was not a little annoyed by a story that some of the class got up, to the effect that he had procured a cadet's appointment for his son, and the boy having died, the father had substituted himself in his place. Another report current in the corps was that he was a grandson of Benedict Arnold. Some good-natured friend told him of it, and Poe did not contradict it, but seemed rather pleased than otherwise at the mistake.

“Very early in his brief career at the Point he established a high reputation for genius, and poems and [page 87:] squibs of local interest were daily issued from Number 28 and went the round of the classes., One of the first things of the kind that he perpetrated was a diatribe in which all of the officers of the Academy, from Colonel Thayer down, were duly if not favorably noticed. I can recall but one stanza. It ran thus:

“Joe Locke, it may be remarked by way of explanation, was one of the instructors of tactics, and ex-officio. Inspector of Barracks, and supervisor of the morals and deportment of cadets generally. In this capacity it was his duty to report to head-quarters every violation of the regulations falling under his observation; a duty in which he was in nowise remiss, as the occupants of Number 28 could severally testify.

“The studies of the Academy Poe utterly ignored. I doubt if he ever studied a page of Lacroix, unless it was to glance hastily over it in the lecture-room, while others of his section were reciting. It was evident from the first that he had no intention of going through with the course, and both the Professors and Cadets of the older classes had set him down for a I January colt ’ before the corps had been in barracks a week.

“Poe disappointed them, however, for he did not remain until the January examination, that pons asinorum of plebe life at West Point. He resigned, I think, early in December, having been a member of the corps a little over five months.

“Some month or two after he had left, it was announced that a volume of his poems would be published [page 88:] by subscription, at the price of two dollars and fifty cents per copy. Permission was granted by Colonel Thayer to the corps to subscribe for the book, and as no cadet was ever known to neglect any opportunity of spending his pay, the subscription was pretty nearly universal. The book was received with a general expression of disgust. It was a puny volume, of about fifty pages, bound in boards and badly printed on coarse paper, and worse than all, it contained not one of the squibs and satires upon which his reputation at the Academy had been built up. Few of the poems contained in that collection now appear in any of the editions of his works, and such as have been preserved have been very much altered for the better.

“For months afterward quotations from Poe formed the standing material for jests in the corps, and his reputation for genius went down at once to zero. I doubt if even the ‘Raven’ of his after years ever entirely effaced from the minds of his class the impression received from that volume.

“The unfortunate habit that proved the bane of his after-life had even at that time taken strong hold upon him, and Number 28 was seldom without a bottle of Benny Haven's best brandy. I don't think he was ever intoxicated while at the Academy, but he had already acquired the more dangerous habit of constant drinking.

“Keeping up the communications with our base of supplies at ‘Old Benny's’ was one of the problems that occupied a good deal more of our thoughts than any of the propositions in Legendre; but, upon the whole, this branch of the commissary department of Number 28 was a success; and many a thirsty soul, with not enough of pluck to run the blockade himself, [page 89:] would steal into our room between tattoo end taps to try the merits of the last importation.

“The result of one of these foraging parties after supplies created for a time no little excitement in the South Barracks. People had been burned and hung in effigy, from time immemorial, but it was reserved for Number 28 to witness the eating of a Professor in effigy.

“It was a dark, cold, drizzling night, in the last days of November, when this event came of. The brandy bottle had been empty for two days, and just at dusk Poe proposed that we should draw straws — the one who drew the shortest to go down to Old Benny's and replenish our stock. The straws were drawn, and the lot fell on me.

“Provided with four pounds of candles and Poe's last blanket, for traffic (silver and gold we had not, but such as we had we gave unto Benny), I started just as the bugle sounded to quarters. It was a rough road to travel, but I knew every foot of it by night or day, and reached my place of destination in safety, but drenched to the skin. Old Benny was not in the best of humors that evening. Candles and blankets and regulation shoes, and similar articles of traffic, had accumulated largely on his hands, and the market for them was dull in that neighborhood. His chicken suppers and bottles of brandy had disappeared very rapidly of late, and he had received little or no money in return.

“At last, however, I succeeded in exchanging the candles and blanket for a bottle of brandy and the hardest-featured, loudest-voiced old gander that it has ever been my lot to encounter. To chop the bird's head off before venturing into barracks with him was [page 90:] a matter of pure necessity; and thus, in fart, old Benny rendered him before delivery. I reached the suburbs of the barracks about nine o‘clock. The bottle had not as much brandy in it as when I left Old Benny's; but I was very confident I had not spilled any. I had carried the gander first over one shoulder and then over the other, and the consequence was that not only my shirt front, but my face and hands were as bloody as the entire contents of the old gander's veins and arteries could well make them.

“Poe was on the lookout, and met me some distance from the barracks, and my appearance at once inspired him with the idea of a grand hoax. Our plans were perfected in an instant. The gander was tied, neck and feet and wings together, and the bloody feathers bristling in every direction gave it a nondescript appearance that would have defined recognition as a gander by the most astute naturalist on the Continent. Poe took charge of the bottle, and preceded me to the room. ‘Old P.’ was puzzling his brains over the binomial theorem, and a visitor from the North Barracks was in the room awaiting the result of my expedition.

“Poe had taken his seat, and pretended to be absorbed in the mysteries of ‘Leçons Françaises.’ Laying the gander down at the outside of the door, I walked or rather staggered into the room, pretending to be very drunk, and exhibiting in clothes and face a spectacle not often seen off’ the stage. ‘My God! what has happened?’ exclaimed Poe, with well-acted horror.

“Old K ——, old K —— !’ I repeated several times, and with gestures intended to be particularly savage. [page 91:]

“‘Well, what of him?’ asked Poe.

“‘He won't stop me on the road any more!’ and I produced a large knife that we had stained with the few drops of blood that remained in the old gander. ‘I have killed him!’

“‘Nonsense!’ said Poe, ‘you are only trying one of your tricks on us.’

“‘I did n't suppose you would believe me,’ I replied; 'so I cut off his head and brought it into barracks. Here it is!’ and reaching out of the door I caught the gander by the legs, and giving it one fearful swing around my head dashed it at the only candle in the room, and left them all in darkness with what two of them believed to be the head of one of the Professors. The visitor leaped through the window and alighted in the slop-tub, and made fast time for his own room in the North Barracks — spreading, as he went, the report that I had killed old K ——, and that his head was then in Number 28. The story gained ready credence, and for a time the excitement in barracks ran high. When we lit the candle again, ‘Old P —— ’ was sitting in one corner, a blank picture of horror, and it was some time before we could restore him to reason.

“The gander was skinned — picking the feathers off was out of the question — and after taps we cut him up in small pieces, and cooked him in a tin wash-basin, over an anthracite fire, without seasoning of any kind. It was perhaps the hardest supper on record, but we went through with it without flinching. We had set out to eat old K —— in effigy, and we did it; whether he ever learned of the honors we paid him that night I never learned.

“Upon the whole the impression left by Poe in his [page 92:] short career at West Point was highly favorable to him. If he made no fast friends, he left no enemies behind him. But up to that time he had given no indications of the genius which has since secured for him a world-wide fame. His acquaintance with English literature was extensive and accurate, and his verbal memory wonderful. He would repeat both prose and poetry by the hour, and seldom or never repeated the same passage twice to the same audience.

“The whole bent of his mind at that time seemed to be toward criticism — or, more properly speaking, caviling. Whether it were Shakspeare or Byron, Addison or Johnson — the acknowledged classic or the latest poetaster — all came in alike for his critical censure. He seemed to take especial delight in caviling at passages that had received the most unequivocal stamp of general approval. I never heard him speak in terms of praise of arty English writer, living or dead. I never met him after he left the Academy in December, 1830; and hence my recollections and impressions of him are wholly uninfluenced by his after-life.”

He was courtmartialled and dismissed from the Academy for disobedience to orders and absence from roll-calls, guard-duty, and class-work, the sentence taking effect March 6, 1831.

This third crisis-point of his career was signalized by a third volume of Poems, published by Elam Bliss of New York and subscribed to, at seventy-five cents a copy, by his fellow-cadets. They, supposing the volume to contain squibs and pasquinades, satires and jokes against the professors, were, it is said, egregiously disappointed on receiving the volume, to find it contained only — “Israfel,” “To Helen,” “Lenore” (in its first version), “The Sleeper,” “The Valley of Unrest,” and other masterpieces! [page 93:]

Guffaws of amazement received this third venture of “Gaffy” Poe, according to General Cullum, who instead of using the marvellous tambour of Heine's Monsieur Le Grand to convey his meaning to the world, had simply picked up a golden strand from Israfel's harp and strung it in the world's window.

The Dedication read

Then follows, a few pages later, the long and rambling “Letter to Mr. —— ——,” afterwards reprinted in the “Southern Literary Messenger” for July, 1836, and containing Poe's peculiar views of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the lake School. This is followed by the following eleven poems: Introduction (“Romance, who loves to nod and sing”), “To Helen,” “Israfel,” — (“The Doomed City,” “Fairy Land,” “Irene,‘’ “A Pæan,” “The Valley Nis;” “Al Aaraaf,” Parts i and. ii, Sonnet (“Science”), “Tamerlane;” in all one hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages, in green boards.

Nearly all the rubbish of the earlier volumes has been dropped: “the trash shaken from them in which they were embedded,” says Poe in the prefatory letter to “Dear B——.” The sculptor is busy hewing away at the marble — the brilliant chips flying — and drawing forth the delicate imprisoned image from the enveloping chalk. In three years a wonderful gain in precision, definiteness, lucidity, music, has taken place. What before was as uncertain as a choir of whispering [page 94:] reeds along a river's marge, as vague as the crescendo and diminuendo of the footfalls of the wandering winds at night, has gathered itself into focal form and becomes incarnate in the stanzas of “Helen” and “Israfel.” The poet of twenty-one is still awkward, clumsy, stumbling in rhyme and metre, a ‘prentice in the niceties of verse, yet haunted by inexpressible verbal melodies, as voluptuous as Spenser in the rippling flow of some lines, as gauche as Whitman in the hiatuses of others. The volume of 1831 is the visible parturition of a great poet whose complete birth will require fifteen years more. The increasing delicacy of perception and feeling, the sentiment of the magical beauty of the world, and of its mystery, the consciousness of the harmonies that well up from mere words in their vowel and consonantal combinations and contrasts, the poetry that there is in Death, in Doom, in Sorrow, in Sin (carried to an extreme by his admirer and imitator, Baudelaire, in his “Fleurs du Mal”) — all haunt this plastic young imagination with their soft and vivid blandishments and blow their triton-horns in his subtle ear, enticing to new and sometimes happier fields.

“Second edition” on the title-page of this little work means that this volume was regarded by its author as the book of 1829 with some things left out. His statement is: “Believing only a portion of my former volume to be worthy a second edition — that small portion I thought it as well to include in the present book as to republish by itself. I have therefore herein combined ‘Al Aaraaf’ and ‘Tamerlane’ with other Poems hitherto unprinted.”

The “other Poems hitherto unprinted” must be the product of the year 1830, in between the 1829 and the 1831 volumes, and they are perhaps the only [page 95:] poems of this period that will live — the eight beautiful minor poems of the collection composed either at West Point between July 1, 1830, and January 1, 1831, or during that period and the preceding six months when the poet was idle and waiting for his cadet's commission. Viewed in this light, the “Pæan” may be in its first draft a memorial dirge in memory of the first Mrs. Allan. All accounts say that the two were very fond of each other, and the poem brims with a heartfelt feeling that no mere fictitious incident could have inspired.

Just the year before Tennyson had published “Poems chiefly Lyrical,” and certainly this collection contains nothing of finer edge or dreamier grace than Poe's work, which was contemporary with it; while for 1829 Poe's “Al Aaraaf” may certainly compare favorably with Tennyson's prize-poem “Timbuctoo,” of the same year.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 81:]

1.  This list has been kindly compiled for this work by Cadet W. D. A. Anderson of West Point; and the biographical memoranda have been supplied by General James Grant Wilson to whom thanks are returned for the courtesy.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 85:]

1.  A. B. Magruder to Professor Woodberry: Life, p. 55.