Text: William Whipple, “Chapter II,” A Study of Edgar Allan Poe's Satiric Patterns Story, dissertation, 1951, pp. ??-?? (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 50:]

Edgar Allan Poe was indebted for many of his early stories to foreign models. It is natural that most of these models were English stories, since Poe read widely in the periodical fiction of England. It is a little strange, however, to find Poe, a novice story writer, devoting his early fiction to satirizing this same popular, current fiction. Yet, this is what he did. Later, Poe sometimes used borrowed elements of stories to satirize American subject; but at first his satire was limited to his foreign models or to their authors.

The first of Poe's satires — if we exclude the story, “Metzengerstein,” as being an imltation of the German tale and not a satire of it — is “The Duc de L’Omelette,” published March 3, 1832.(1) There have been two able treatments of this satire, one by Mr. Daughrity in 1933 and the other by Miss Hudson in 1937; but the findings conflict. Mr. Daughrity holds that the satire is the long-sought “Quiz [page 51:] on Willis.”(1) Miss Hudson's article, seemingly unaware of Mr. Deughrity's claims, states that the satire is directed against Disraeli's story, The Young Duke, published in 1830.(2)

There has been no attempt since the appearance of Miss Hudson's article to resolve these two conflicting claims.(3) It is true that Poe sometimes satirizes more than one subject in a single satire; but when he does so the satire is either very general in nature or it has one unmistakeable, primary satiric theme along with sec ondary or incidental themes. The majority of Poe's satires seem to coincide most nearly with the latter practice.

The plot of “The Duc De L’Omelette” is trivial. the story is about a dandy who is almost too delicate and sensitive to live amid the crudeness of ordinary existence. The Duc, in fact, does expire “in a paroxysm of disgust.”(4) Shortly after the Duc's death, the Devil [page 52:] comes to collect his soul, a collection offensive to the Duc's self-esteem. The Duc, being a man of honor, has recourse to a duel or to cards. Since the Devll does not fence, the Duc lures him into a game ofcards. The wager is the Duc's life and, by artfully “slipping” a card, the Due wins.(1)

The slight tale is without satiric significance if we interpret it only in terms of its plot. The real satiric point lies in the personality of the Duc. The Duc is a sort of prototype of Ferdinand the bull — for the Duc loves to scent exquisite perfumes, eat exotic foods (including olives,) and rest luxuriously on an ottoman. He does, in fact, sacrifice his loyalty to his King to secure his own comfort. He dresses in the choicest and most colorful of fineries. He has a fine appreciation of the Arts and of the recognized soclal graces and pro prieties. In short, the Duc is an unprincipled, conceited dandy.

Viewed as a satire on the dandy as a type, the tale would be too banal; and any individual explanation of the satire is dependent on specific identiflcation of the Duc. Both Miss Hudson and Mr. Daughrity have made their claims accordingly. Their conflicting proofs can best be clarified by balancing one claim against the other. [page 53:]

Mr. Daughrity's argument points out the numerous similarities between the Duc de L’Omelette and the char acter of Nathaniel Parker Willis, as Willis portrayed hime self in his own editorial column.(1) Willis, like the Duc, Daughrity contends, was a conceited dandy. Willis pic tured himself as eating olives while he wrote his editorials, He wrote of his ottoman, of his rosewood desk, and of his South Anesikoiln. Munthe Willis sprinkled his writing liberally with French phrases, He used perfume. And for these extravagances he was being criticized, editorially, by Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier, If one accepts Daughrity's claim that Poe was referring to Trulian when he wrote of the “ortolan,” and that he meant Buckingham when he wrote that the Duc had studied under B — , and that he meant a Boston supper club when he sald that the Duc was a member of the Academy, then the comparisons made are congenial to Poe's satire.(2) However, before we pass on their reliability, we must examine Miss Hudson's cone tradictory findings. Her main points, briefly summarized, are these: in both stories the central character is a [page 54:] duke.(1) Poe's story has the Duc perish of an ortolan while soft music is played.(2) The hero of The Young Duke says, “Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft msic.”(3) The gift of the ortolan comes to the Duc from a Bellissima,”(4) while the hero of Disraeli's story is in love with May Dacre whom he calls “La Bellissima.”(5) There are also phrases used ln common, such as, “the most delicate of birds,” and “dishabille de ses plumes.”(6) The Duc De L’Omelette wins his life at cards; the Duke St. James loses his fortune. The Duc's exclamation on seeing the architecture and painting of the lower region to which he has passed recalls to the reader the Duke's castle, Alhambra, which is fllled with the art treasures of past generations. Again, there are similarities in the personalities of the two heroes and their manner of living: dandyism, concelt, an effete quality, and the love of sumptuous banqueting. Both stories are sprinkled with French words and phrases. And finally, although Miss [page 55:] Hudson does not say this, the mention in Poe's story that the Duc studied under B — if aimed, through The Young Duke, could have reference to Disraeli's older friend, fellow author, and parliamentarian, Bulwer-Lytton.

The reader can readily see that these two discussions do not completely overlap. Miss Hudson attaches no significance to the Duc's eating olives or to his member ship in the Academy — although she might, we suppose, have claimed that Disraeli's being a member of parliament might be as likely an allusion as Daughrity's suggestion of the Boston supper club. If we were forced, too, to choose between Willis's rosewood desk and the Duke's rivulet of rosewater, which coursed down the banquet table, to explain the allusion of the rosewood coffin we would have to consider the desk as the more likely one.(1)

Actually, to what conclusions do we come? Poe's use of specific names, phrases, and characters from Disraeli's The Young Duke is convincing enough proof that Poe meant “The Duc De L’Omelette” as a satire of Disraeli. While we agree that the character of N., P. Willis come pares rather closely with that of the Duc, so also does the character of Disraell; and the identification of Disraeli's book with Poe's story makes it conclusive that Poe intended Disraell as the object of his satire, not [page 56:] Willis, We assume Miss Hudson presented even more sup i porting evidence in her dissertation of which the mentioned article is a part.(1)

Does this conclusion altogether negate Mr. Daughrity's findings? Not entirely. The starting point of his investigation — Paulding's reference, in 1836, to some one of Poe's early tales as “a quiz on Willis” — remains to be explained. It seems perfectly possible that Pandding, “or any other contemporary, faced with the similarities Mr. Daughrity has shown, might readily assume that the tale was a satire on N. P. Willis. This is a possibility to keep in mind, since our sole authority that one of Poe's early tales indeed was a “Quiz on Willis” is Mr. Paulding's own letter.(2) We wonder, too whether this same possible confusion of reference may not explain why Poe's contemporaries, while recognizing the Stories as satires, said so little about their object.

Poe's next tale was “A Tale of Jerusalem,” published June 9, 1832, in the Saturday Courier.(3) The tale is an account of a siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. The [page 57:] priests have made an arrangement with the Roman beslegers which will allow the Jews to continue their religious observances; they will lower money down to the Romans who, in turn, will place a lamb in the lowered basket, which the priests may use for their sacrifice. But the basket, when drawn up to the top of the wall, is discovered to contain a pig.

In this satire, as in the preceding one, we have a thrust at a popular novel of the period. But where “The Duc De L’Omelette”looked beyond the character of the Duke to the author, Disraeli, “A Tale of Jerusalem” goes only as far as the burlesque of a tale. The story that Poe directed his satire toward was Horace Smith's Zillah, A Tale of Jerusalem, a popular novel of 1829. Besides lifting his title from Zillah, Poe also took over such phrases as: “true as the Pentateuch,” “bigger than the letter Jod,” and the concluding line, “it is the unutterable flesh.” Poe added point to his satire by borrowing such exclamations as “El Emanul”, “Booshoh he!,” and “El Elohim!” The siege of Se clty, too, takes place in Zillah.(1) The anecdote itself upon which the satiric elements rest comes not from Zillah, but seems to have been borrowed from either the Talmud or, asclir. J. G. Varner thinks more likely, from the 1830 edition of [page 58:] the History of the Jews, by H. H. Milman.(1)

“A Tale of Jerusalem” is so general in its satire that one is led to believe that it is one of the tales whose place in the plans of the Folio Club, if it could be learned, ls necessary before the tale comes into sharper focus.

“Bon-Bon” or “The Bargein Lost,” as it was initially called, is an enigma not because, like “A Tale of Jerusalem,” it is too general but because its allusions are too obscured to be fixed upon with any degree of certainty.(3) A pattern of satiric reference shows through dimly; but one can get only the haziest outlines of the satiric object of the tale.

Bon-Bon is a restasuranteur in Rows, France, who is equally an inspired cook and a metaphysician.(4) His [page 59:] kitchen is littered with his cooking utensils and his volumes of works, for Bon-Bon has written on everything. He is a dandy of a little fellow, cocky, conceited, and brash. He tries to sell his soul to the Devil but becomes so drunk that even the Devil finds him offensive and refuses to accept his soul.[[(1) ]] The satire in the story is di rected toward a person who mixes Epicureanism and philosophy in his writings. While the reference may have been clear enough to Poe it is not for us, for gastronomy seems to have been a characteristic of both Disraeli and Bulwer, as well as many lesser literary men of the period.

There are many similarities between “Bon-Bon” and “The Duc De L’Omelette.” The stories are parallel in plot, each being concerned with the hero's attempt to traffic with the Devil. In each satire the point is bound up in the figure of the hero. And the heroes, too, are similar. Each is a dandy, concelted, and cocky. Each is interested in food, one as a restauranteur, the other as a gourmet. Each has endangered his soul.

What, then, is the meaning of the satire? We cannot answer that question categorically but we can come to a hypothesis which may serve until further research sifts the facts from the present uncertainties, Mr. Killis Campbell suggests that “The Duc De O’Omelette [[L’Omelette]]” may [page 60:] have been a fore-study for “Bon-Bon.”(1) That there is an affinity between the two stories is evident from the review we have given of their salient elements. In The Young Duke, there is the Duke's expressed wish that he might sell himself to the Devil.(2) Bon-Bon, of course, tries this. Bon-Bon's discovery that the words, “Rituel Catholique,” were printed on the Devil's black book serves to remind us that the young Duke gave a speech on Catholic emancipation.(3) It is interesting to note, too, the identical use of the Devil's laugh in each story. Of course, the laugh was borrowed from the review which Poe found so “annihilating.”(4) The classic note (in the description of Bon-Bon's cafe) in “Bon-Bon”“ figures just as it did in “The Duc De L’Omelette,” only not as prominently. Poe described Bon-Bon's bed in this manner: “In a corner of the spart ment stood the bed of the metaphysician An array of curtains, together with a canopy à la Grecque, gave it an air at once classic and comfortable.”(5) As to the foods, we [page 61:] cannot resist quoting one more passage from The Young Duke in which not the Duke but the author, Disraell, is speaking.

Certainly Disraeli loved to sprinkle his storles with exotic banquets of strange foods but an even worse offender in this respect was Bulwer. Epicureanism figured a prominent part in both Pelham and Paul Clifford; in fact Pelham himself was something of an Epicurean.(2) Poe recognized this one, for in January, 1836, when reviewing Willlam Gilmore Simms's book, The Partisan, Poe recognized in one of the characters, Porgy, a backwoods imitation of “Sir Somebody Guloseton, the epicure, in one of Pelham's novels” [page 62:] and called him a “very silly compound of gluttony, slang, belly, and balderdash philosophy.”(1) One whole chapter of Pelham is devoted to a dinner during which Lord Guloseton and Pelham eat and exchange Epicurean philosophy.(2) The fact that Pelham should be an Epicurean is significant both from the fact that the Devil is “Bon-Bon” is really Epicurus — an identification Bon-Bon refuses to accept.(3)

The evidence that Poe had reference to Bulwer in the tale “Bon-Bon” is more suggestive than conclusive, but it seems strong enough for us to make an hypothesis to that effect: keeping always in mind the possibility that Poe was satirizing “French Gastronomy” as it found its way into English and American fiction as well.(4) Is this the cook-writer connection that Poe saw and which stimulated him to make Bon-Bon a restauranteur-metaphysician? and to draw the parallels between Bon-Bon's “fricandeaux” and his “Idee de Bon-Bon”?(5) or to his getting his literary works mixed up with his recipes?(6) [page 63:]

Certain allusions in the story remain to be explained. The reason for introducing Voltalre as a man who had completed the sale of his soul to the Devil is perplexing. It might be no more than one of those inci dental satirical elements that Poe sometimes included in his satiric tales; although there seems to be no motive for his satirizing Voltaire at that time. The “Ritual Catholique” turning into the “Régitre des Condamnés” may have an allusion that escapes us.(1)

“Lionizing” was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in May, 1835, several years after the publication of “Bon-Bon.”(2) As in most of Poe's satiric stories, the plot is trivial. A boy, Robert Jones, is born blessed with an extraordinary nose. Under the encouragement of his father's kick he devotes his life to the study of Nosology. He is lionized by society until, in a duel, he shoots off his opBosbutts nose-after which he loses his popularity because he cannot compete with someone who has no nose at all.(3)

The story suggests, superficially, Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne; but it may have borrowed its idea from “A Tale of a Nose,” a story published in the [page 64:] Southern Literary Messenger in April, 1835 — the same issue in which Poe had published “Morella.”(1) In this story of a boy who spent a wild youth and who was, to his aunt, a good-for-nothing spendthrift, there is the concluding satirical moral, “Do not think do much of your nose — or hold it too high, — lest it should be brought to the grindstone in good earnest.”(2)

“Lionizing,” like “Bon-Bon” is partly a satire on facile writers and scholarship. “Nosology” takes its place in the narrow fields of learning which Poe is satire 1zing, where men specialize in one area of knowledge such as: ‘geology, history, literature, ethics, philosophy, wines, and even cooking.(3)

As in “Bon-Bon,” too, the satire seems directed at one man. It has been generally accepted, since James S. Wilson's important article, “The Devil Was in It,” that, although following in style and conception “Too Beautiful for Anything” by Bulwer-Lytton, this, rather than “The Duc De L’Omlette [[Omelette]])” was the “Quiz on Willis.”(4) This solution seems predicated on the misconception that Poe's satiric [page 65:] interest was primarily national at this time. Yet, a study of his early satiric tales shows us that Poe was largely turning to forelgn literati for the subjects of his satire.

N. P. Willis was a traveling correspondent for the American Monthly magazine and his newspaper letters described his encounters with the nobility and literary great of each country he visited. Poe undoubtedly read these letters, especially the ones about Willis's travels in England, for he refers to them in his review, “I Promessi Sposi,” which was published the same month as “Lionizing,” both in the Southern Literary Messenger.(1) The most interesting of Willis's letters was about his visit to Lady Blessington, the leading social figure in literary circles at that time.

“Do they like D’I — in America?”

“I am pleased at that for I like them bothe . . In his manners, D’I — the younger is quite his own character of Vivian Grey; full of genius and eloquence, with extreme good nature and a perfect frankness of character.” (Willis and Lady Blessing ton speak of her own literary reputation in America.)(1)

The two letters which follow this letter speak of a gather ing at Lady Blessington's to which came: & German Prince, the Duke de Richelieu, Count D’Orsay, and Henry and Edward Bulwer.(2) And there is talk of O’Connell's failure to give satisfaction in a duel to P —.(3)

There is ample evidence that Poe used these pare ticular letters for his story. The German Prince equates well enough with “Elector Bluddennuff,” Lady Blessington with “her Grace Bless-my-soul,” and the journey to Almacks and the large number of titled people present all suggest Poe's use of the letters.(4) Nevertheless, the satire does not seem to be aimed at Willis for even Poe could see that [page 67:] Willis was hardly the principal lion of the group he wrote abouts. That place, judging from Willis's own letter, went to Bulwer. Moreover, in Poe's review of “I Promessi Sposi,” he shows that at the time he published “Lionizing” he was regarding Bulwer in much the same way as he did the satiric object of the tale, “Lionizing.”

Compare Poe's feeling that Bulwer reproduced carbon copies of himself, for the hero of each of his books, with the portrayal of Robert Jones in “Lionizing.”

When we couple the fact that “Lionizing” was published the same month as “I Promissi Sposi” and that both [page 68:] reflect a similar attitude wlth the observation that the conception of the story was borrowed from Bulwer's “Too Beautiful for Anything,” we cannot avold the conclusion that the satire was aimed at Bulwer-Lytton. Especlally is this so when we see by the same review that Poe regarded Willis as one who “paises the wind,” a traveling coxcomb who was an observer, not a member of the group he wrote about. Poe's explanation to Kennedy that the tale is a satire on the “rage for Lions and Shs facility of becoming one” is correct enough in the story's general effect, although the specific lion he chose to satirize seems to have been Bulwer.(1)

Poe published his Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840, and included among the stories was “Why ‘the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling,” a humble Cinderella among Poe's haughtier stories.(2) The use of Irish dialect was an unusual thing for Poe to attempt, as it was unusual, too, for Poe to tell a story in the first person and have the narrator prove to be neither learned nor an observer but a man of action.

The story is a flash-back on the pursuit of the widow, Mrs. Tracle, by the Irish narrator and a Frenchman. The two suitors arrive at the widow's house at the same [page 69:] time, and Mrs. Tracle, not wishing to show favoritism, sits between them on the sofa. Later, when she arises, the Irishman finds he has been holding hands with the Frenchman. And that, as he assures the reader, is why the Frenchman wears his left hand in a sling.(1)

There is little else to be said of this satire except to emphasize that the struggle is between two men of different nationalities for Mrs. Tracle's hand, Poe scholars have generally considered this story a satire on Lady Morgan, since Lady Morgan's stories were a strange mixture of Irish stories and French phrases, all spiced for the English taste. The stories were largely written to flaunt Lady Morgan's acquaintance with nobility and her learning. As a rule the English periodicals gave her unfavorable reviews, partly because her stories deserved no better and partly because she incurred the wrath of particular editors.(2) It is probable that the full satire of this story is another of those which would have been made clear to us had the Follo tales been published, for the host, Mr. Rouge-et-Noir, admired Lady Morgan.(3) [page 70:]

“Three Sundays in a Week” can be most convenlently discussed in this chapter because it is a satire of a British professor who was lecturing in New York at the time Poe felt impelled to satirize him.(1) Dr. Dionysius Lardner was an outstanding lecturer on scientific subjects, although Poe seems not to have had much respect for him, for Poe attacks Lardner's reasoning in his “Marginalia.”(2) Nevertheless, as Professor T. O. Mabbott points out, Poe later used Dr. Lardner's Lectures for some of his data in “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade.”(3)

Mr. Rumgudgeon's daughter and his poetically ambitious nephew were very much in love. They have long besieged him for permission to marry, since the daughter, Kate, could not have her legacy without his consent, Mr. Rumgudgeon, while a man who never reneged on a promise, was loath to be pushed into an action, preferring to be the originator himself, Therefore, when Kate and Robert asked him to set a date, he promised he would consent when three Sundays came in one week. When some travelers visited the uncle — each having circumnavigate the globe from opposite directions — it was discovered that, for [page 71:] these, there were three Sundays in that week.(1)

Alongside this plot of boy-wins-girl there is the constant refrain of “consult Doctor Dubble L. Dee.” The point of the satire is seen when we realize that Mr. Rumgudgeon takes especial pride in the fact that he is mistaken for “Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon Quack physics,” and as a result has plunged into the study of physic.(2) Once we are introduced to the Doctor we see that, for Rumgudgeon, “Doctor Dubble L. Dee” is the beginning and the end of all knowledge. The story even ends on this very note: “Three Sundays all in a row! I’ll go and take Dubble L., Dee's opinion upon that.”(3)

Poe got his idea for “Three Sundays in a Week” from an article in The Philadelphia Public Ledger of October 29, 1841, entitled “Three Thursdays in One Week” and explaining how circumnavigating the globe would result in a variation of days.(4)

In the story, too, are allusions that seem almost personal. The boy and girl in love are cousins, the boy [page 72:] is the ward of Mr. Rumgudgeon, and Mr. Rumgudgeon has been something of a stern, harsh foster parent. These suggest Poe's own life; but their unimportant part in the story and their private nature rob them of any significance as far as the satire is concerned.

This satiric tale has many characteristics of Poe's style of humor, some we have already mentioned. There is, for example, Poe's penchant for repetition of vowel sounds. In this satire the boy calls his uncle a “rusty, crusty, musty, fusty, old savage”;(1) in “Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences,” Poe uses, “Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs & Co.”;(2) in “The Spectacles” he uses the family names, “Moissart, Voissart, Croissart, and Foissart.”(3) Also, Poe repeats the laugh which he seemed to think so amusing — “Ha! ha! ha! — he! he! he! — hi! hi! hi! — ho! ho! ho! — hu! hu! hu!(4) He includes, too, the comment he was to include twice in his “Marginalia,” that the translation of ‘Poeta nascitur non fit! was a ‘nasty poet for nothing fit.’(5)

One of the more interesting of Poe's satires is [page 73:] the one he called “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” published in Graham's Magazine in November, 1845.(1) It is the story of a traveler in France who is duped by a chance companion, one of the inmates of a nearby insane asylum, into believing that a Monsieur Maillard is the superintendent of the asylum. The truth is that, as a result of too much leniency, the inmates have overthrown and imprisoned the attendants. Unlike the former advocates of the “soothing system,” the inmates follow the ideas of restraint as taught by the fictitious doctors, “Tarr and Fether.” Eventually the attendants escape and restore order to everyone except the bemused traveler who still believes in the reality of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.(2)

The general satire against the leniency used in handling insane people is clear even in the bare outline of the story which we have given above. Most students of Poe have accepted the general satire as embodying the whole of Poe's satiric intent and have not attempted to trace the elements of the story through the treacherous, lsbyrinthian maze in which Poe customarily obscured his meaning.

It might be asked what grounds there are for [page 74:] believing that two levels of satire exist in this story. A close examination of the story wlll answer this question. The story is told, we must remember, by the traveler, who never completely understands what has happened. Therefore, we have three levels of understanding: the level of the inmates, the level of the credulous traveler, and the level of the readers. If the traveler were merely the observer or interpreter of the story, as the narrator so often is in Poe's straight tales, then we would agree that the story is intended only as a general satire on the management of insane hospitals. However, Poe has done here, in a lesser way, what Swift did in “The Modest Proposal”; he has made the narrator open to us s second level of the satire: the satire upon the narrator himself, While the story, “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” has escaped the usual criticism of Poe's satires, that they are only expanded anecdotes, it cannot be fully understood without understanding both levels of its satire. The level we shall consider first is Poe's satire against the “soothing system.”

What Poe calls the Ysoothing system” was referred to in the psychiatric circles of the time as the “Moral Treatment.” The idea of the moral treatment originated primarily with Philippe Pinel, a French physician, and William Tuke, an English Quaker-physician. Both men begen their efforts at reform of the insane hospitals in 1792, [page 75:] each in his respective country.(1) Acceptance in America of the principles of Pinel and Tuke was rapid if not widespread. In 1811, Dr. T. Romeyn Beck of New York published, for American physicians, a small dissertation which set forth the outline of the moral treatment.

Several American asylums were modeled after Tuke's York Retreat in England: the most notable ones being the asylum at Frankford, Pennsylvania, and the asylum at Bloomingdale, New York.(3) It is significant that these [page 76:] two leading hospitals, one Just outside of Philadelphia and the other near New York City, should advocate the moral treatment, for Poe lived rang the early 1840's in Philadelphia, and moved, in 1844, to New York. It is more significant that Pliny Earle, a literary friend of Poe's, was resident physician at the Frankford Asylum In the early ‘40's and moved, the same year as Poe did, to New York and became superintendent at the Bloomingdale hospital.(1)

Poe was always on friendly, but not close, terms with Dr. Earle. on October 10, 1840, Poe, then living in Philadelphia, accepted a poem by Dr. Pliney Earle for use in his prospective Penn Magazine.(2) In 1841 he spoke well of the Doctor in his “Autography” papers.(3) Apparently, the two men's acquaintance was a literary one for there is nothing to indicate that their relations were more personal. Poe was to write to H. S. Root, on June 28, 1849, that the last he, Poe, knew of Dr. Earle he was superintendent of the asylum at Bloomingdale.(4) [page 77:]

In the light of this paralleling of the two men's lives, it is reasonable to suppose that whatever acquaintance Poe had with the moral treatment in practice was likely gotten from the asylums of which Dr. Earle was a staff member. Consequently, a study of Dr. Earle's views may give us an indication of what Poe conceived to be the “soothing system.”

Dr. Pliny Earle received his medical degree in 1837 and went to Europe to study the institutions for the insane. He visited asylums from England to Turkey.(1) He knew Tuke and Pinel, and like them he was opposed to mechanical he confinements.(2) He credits himself, after his return to America, with being one of the first to lecture to insane people on a subject which was not a moral one (a sermon). This lecture was given at the asylum at Frankford.(3) Dr. Earle was one of the charter members of the “Association of Superintendents and Physicians of Hospitals and Asylums for the Insane” which was organized October 16, 1844, in Philadelphia.(4) He was an early advocate of the “curability fallacy” — the belief that insanity could easily be cured; [page 78:] although it is only just to admit that, when the Doctor saw his error, he was, also, the leader in exposing the fallacy.(1) Dr. Earle believed, too, in the restorative powers of manual exercises. These were Dr. Earle's principles and practices in caring for the insane; and under his leadership they were the practices used in the hospitals at Frankford and at Bloomingdale.(2)

Not all doctors believed as did Dr. Earle and not all hospitals were run under the enlightened principles of the Frankford and Bloomingdale hospitals, The ordinary attitude toward insanity is best shown by Dorothea Dix's famous “Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts,” 1843, which shows that the general practice was to keep insane people chained and locked up like beasts or to sell them for labor.(3) The idea of restraint, as the proper way of controlling and healing the insane, was a matter of violent controversy in both England and America from 1839 until after 1844, when only gradually did non-restraint win out.(4) Even the Association, of which Dr. Earle was a charter member, faced the question [page 79:] of the wisdom of restraint, in dealing with the insane, at almost every one of its sessions — until after 1888.(1) And we must remember that this association was made up of physicians and superintendents of hospitals for the insane who were abreast of the reforms of their age and would be expected to be first to accept enlightened reforms.

Nevertheless, by 1844, the benevolent treatment of insane people was still rare enough to be news. The National Intelligencer of January 30, 1844, gives this report of a ball held for the insane at the Insane Retreat at Hartford, Connecticut.

The Insane Retreat at Hartford was another of those too few hospitals which were following the teachings on Pinel and Tuke.(3)

In the controversy which raged between the two forces which believed in moral treatment on the one hand and in isolation through confinement on the other, between [page 80:] non-restraint as opposed to restraint, we can recognize the foundation for Poe's satire of the “soothing system.” This is but another evidence of the fact that Poe was caught up in the current of his age to an extent not always recognized by recent Poe scholars. That Poe chose to satirize the moral treatment instead of the system represented by his fictitious Dr. Tarr and Prof Fether is just another bit of evidence of Poe's essential conservatism in facing issues which were not literary.

Undoubtedly Poe was aware of this controversy concerning the best treatment for insane people. A close reading of the satire leads one to wonder if he had ever visited an insane hospital and observed the conduct of the inmates. The partiuclar [[particular]] clue which causes us to wonder is Poe's picturing the gradually mounting excitement of the deranged people in the presence of a stranger. One has only to pass through certain wards of our modern hospitals to recognize the effect a stranger's presence has on certain nervous disorders. One can only speculate, put the effect adds a note of reality to the satire not common to Poe's narrative technique.

In our initial analysis of the story, it appeared that a more subtle, yet a more important, level of the satire centered on the person of the narrator, The narrator, we remember, falls to recognize in the traveling companion whom he has picked up, and who doesn’t wish to [page 81:] return to the asylum, an inmate of the hospital, a fact made evident to the reader by the companion's introducing Monsieur Malllard as the superintendent. The satire of the narrator's obtuseness is heightened when we find that his suspicions of the “niece's” brilliant eyes being caused by insanity are allayed by the greater craftiness of the impostor, Monsieur Maillard. Even after the denouement of the story, when he is brought to recognize the facts of the revolt, the narrator still does not realize that there are no such doctors as Tarr and Fether.

Who was Poe satirizing by the narrator? Naturally, Poe's friendship with Dr. Earle immediately suggests itself to us. This is too obvious a solution. In the first place, this satire is not of the superintendent of the hospital but of the visitor. In the second place, Poe's friend ship with Dr. Earle was a casual literary one and there is nothing, except Dr. Earle's acceptance of the method of moral treatment and the geographical paralleling of their lives, that would indicate Dr. Pliny Earle was the subject of the satire. No, we must look elsewhere. The satire seems to me to have been aimed at Charles Dickens.

For the present purpose it is not necessary to trace the Poe-Dickens relationship back to its beginning in 1836. Mr. Gerald G. Grubb has given an excellent treatment of that relationship.(1) We shall begin, instead, [page 82:] with Poe's visit with Dickens early in March, 1842, when Dickens, on his tour of America, stopped briefly in Philadelphia. Poe apparently introduced himself to Dickens by a letter in which he enclosed his review of Barnaby Rudge and his two volumes of Tales. Dickens read them and asked Poe to call.(1) No one knows exactly what was said in the two meetings Poe had with Dickens but Poe seems to have asked him, among other things, to try to interest an English publisher in re-publishing his Tales.(2) This, we gather, Dickens promised to do. The meeting seems to have passed pleasantly enough and perhaps Poe even allowed his hopes of realizing a substantial sum of money from his tales to rise. Dickens, too, was interested. He wrote Forster:

Whether driven by circumstances or by his own nervous impatience, Poe could not let matters take their wonted course. He seems to have written an admonitory [page 83:] letter to Dickens late in the summer of 1842, even before Dickens sailed for England, reminding Dickens of his offer to secure a publisher for Poe's Tales.(1) Dickens answered Poe's letter on November 27, 1842, and told him that no English publisher would chance publishing the tales of an “unknown” author at that time. The letter was friendly, but it dashed Poe's hopes for income from that particular sources.(2) In the meantime American Notes had been published and had met with little enthisiasm [[enthusiasm]] in America.(3) Poe made no comment on it,(4) Emerson considered the book superficial and ignorant, and few other Americans cared for it.(5)

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that he did not review the book, at least one section of it must have interested Poe. It is an account of Dickens's visit to an insane hospital in Boston.

Dickens also reports seeing the asylum at Blackwell Island but he admits he spent little time there because he was appalled by the restraints used and by the resulting bestiality of the inmates.(2)

There is no evidence of any personal contact between [page 87:] between Poe and Dickens during the year 1843. In January, 1844, the Foreign Quarterly Review contained a review of Rufus Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America.(1) This review accused Poe of imitating Tennyson and gave a rather unfriendly sketch of his life, although it must be added that the reviewer was equally unenthuisiastic about all American literature and literary men. Foe was offended by the article. March 30, 1844, he wrote to Lowell:

This letter plainly shows Poe's pique and explains the coolness he evidenced toward Dickens in his review of Lowell's “Legend of Brittany”(3) and, also, in his third letter on the Doings of Gotham, which was published on May 27, 1844.(4) Poe still accorded Dickens a high place [page 88:] in literature, just as he had earlier, but the warmth was gone. One day later, May 28, 1844, Poe again wrote to Lowell, from whom he had received no answer to his March letter, and repeated in essence his earlier belief in Dickens's authorship of the review. Poe did change his reason for knowing Dickens to be the author from “internal evidence” to “personal reasons.”(1) It is significant, too, that we have here, in this letter, Poe's first mention of the manuscript story of “The System of Doctors Tarr and Fether,”(2) The story did not secure a publisher until Graham's Magazine published it in November, 1845.(3)

Lowell did answer the letter of May 28, but he ascribed the article to John Forster, a close friend of Dickens and editor of the magazine in which the article appeared.(4) Poe was not convinced.

Just how long this irritation on the part of Poe [page 89:] lasted we don’t know but probably it was not too extended. Sometime after the publication of “The Raven” (January, 1845, ) Poe wrote Dickens and presented him with a copy and at the same time, characteristically enough, requested Dickens to help him secure a position as a foreign correspondent for an English journal.(1) Dickens again disappointed Poe, but the casual friendliness of the letter proves that there was no animosity on Dickens's part toward Poe and no hint that he recognized any on the part of Poe toward him.(2) However, brief though the misunderstanding must have been, it resulted in the last of Poe's satires on his English contemporaries.

In the analysis of the satire, “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” it was indicated that the object of the satire was not only the moral system but the visitor to the insane hospital — a visitor who, like Dickens, came to observe the moral treatment in practice. If we interpret the satire correctly, and it seems clear enough, Poe is saying — Dickens, you were duped. The man you thought the resident physician was an inmate and his wife, like Monsieur Maillard's niece, was a member of the ‘family.’ The decorum you praised was the crafty conniving of the inmates to keep you credulous. The music you [page 90:] praised was discordant bedlam. In short, Dickens, you were. taken in!

This point of the satire has been stated baldly, of course, but the comparison of American Notes and Poe's tale is so close as to remove doubts. Besides the elements in common, which we have already mentioned — the visitor, the doctor and his relatives, the music, and the use of the “soothing system” — there is the discussion of the banquet or meal, the presiding officer's attempt to humor the deranged as the doctor humored the would-be queen, in Dickens's account, and as Maillard humored his charges. There is ridicule of Dickens's belief that each insane person was tolerant of the fancies of all but his own.

There are other satiric thrusts, too: Monsieur Maillard's remark, “There is scarcely an insane asylum in France which cannot supply a human tea-pot. Our gentleman was a Britannia-ware tea-pot, and was careful to polish himself every morning with buckskin and whiting.” (Is this another thrust at Dickens who was something of a dandy?) Nor was the idea of a connection between Dickens and in sanity dependent, in Poe's mind, on reading the American Notes. As early as May, 1841, Poe remarked in his review of the Old Curiosity Shop,

After such a review of the background of this satire in terms of the interest of the times and 1n terms of Poe's own pique with Dickens and remembering Poe's practice of working his moments of pique out, either in critical quarrels or by satiric treatment in his tales, it is not surprising to find the two levels in Poe's satire in this tale: the satire of the moral treatment which was a matter of contention at the time, and the more covert satire upon Dickens who had, Poe thought, attacked him in a review.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 50:]

1 First published in the Saturday Courier, II, (March 33, 1832), 1, as “The Duke De L’Omelette.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 51:]

1 Kenneth L. Daughrity, “Poe's Quiz on Willis,” American Literature, V (March, 1933), 55-62, James Kirke Paulding mentions one of Poe's stories as being a “Quiz on Willis,” but gives no clue to the story to which he refers. Amos L. Herold, James Kirke Paulding, Versatile American (New York: Columblas University Press, 1926), pp. 74-76.

2 Ruth Hudson, “Poe and Disraeli,” American Literature, VIII (January, 1937), 402-16.

3 Even such a competent biographer as Mr. A. H. Quinn has sidestepped this issue. Mr. Quinn cites Miss ‘Hudson's findings on the story “King Pest,” but mentions neither Miss Hudson nor Mr. Daughrity in discussing “The Duc De L’Omlette.”

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 101.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 52:]

1 Ibid., pp. 100-03.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 53:]

1 Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote in this extravagant manner in the “Editor's Table” of the Boston magazine he edited, the American Monthly Magazine. He also was one of the few editors to comment on Poe's poem, “Al Aaraaf,” when it was first published, in 1829.

2 Daughrity, op. cit., pp. 55 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 54:]

1 Hudson, op. cit., pp. 402-16. Unless stated other wise all the points in this argument may be found in this article.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 101-02.

3 Benjamin Disraeli, The Young Duke, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d.).

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 102.

5 Disraeli, op. cit., p. 64.

6 Hudson, op. cit., pp. 402 ff,

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 55:]

1 Disraeli, op. cit., pp. 186-88.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 56:]

1 Miss Hudson surely noted the young Duke's desire to sell his soul to the Demon, and his having the Lapland sisters dance the mazurka. See: Disraeli, op. cit., pp. 252, 186.

2 Amos L. Herold, James Kirke Paulding, Versatile American (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926), pp. 74-76.

3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 103-06.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 57:]

1 J. S. Wilson, “The Devil Was in It,” American Mercury, XXIV (October, 1931), 215-20.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 58:]

1 J. G. Vainer, “Poe's Tale of Jerusalem and The Talmud,” American Book Collector, VI (February, 1935), 56.57.

2 H. H. Milman, History of the Jews (New York: Harper and Bros., 1857), II, 70.

3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 116 ff.

4 In “The Bargain Lost” the hero was called Pedro Garcia and kept a restaurant in Venice. See: Saturday Courier, II (December 1, 1832), 1.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 59:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 116-28.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 60:]

1 Campbell, op. cit., p. 175. Mr. Campbell even suggests that perhaps “Bon-Bon” was written first but published second. If that were true, it would make the identity between the two even more plausible.

2 Disraeli, op. cit., p. 252.

3 Ibid., p. 11.

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 101, 122, See: Ostrom, op. cit., I, 77 (aforementioned letter to Beverley Tucker, December 1, 1835.)

5 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 119.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 61:]

1 Disraeli, op. cit., p. 95.

2 Edward Bulwer Lytton, Pelham (2 vols.; New Yorks: J. F. Taylor and Company, 1897); and Paul Clifford (2 vols. New York: J. F. Taylor and Company, 1897). Pelham was published in June, 1828, and Paul Clifford in August, 1830.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 62:]

1 Harrison, op. cit., VIII, pp. 151.

2 Bulwer, Pelham, I, 315-326.

3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 124-25.

4 Harrison, op. cit., p. 15.

5 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 116.

6 Ibid., p. 120.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 63:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 122, 127, 120.

2 Ibid., pp. 156 ff. Published in the Southern Literary Messenger, I (May, 1835), 515-16.

3 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 64:]

1 Pertinax Placid, “A Tale of a Nose,” Southern Literary Messenger, I (April, 1835), 445-48.

2 Ibid., p. 448.

3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 158.

4 James S. Wilson, op. cit., pp. 217-18.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 65:]

1 Harrison, op. cit., VIII, 12 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 66:]

1 Nathaniel Parker Willis, Pencillings By the Way. (London: Dell and Daldy, 1836), pp. 855-60.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 365.

4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 156-60.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 67:]

1. Harrison, op. cit., VIII, 12-14.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 159.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 68:]

1 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 84. Letter to John P. Kennedy, February 11, 1856.

2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 296 ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 69:]

1 Ibid.

2 J. S. Wilson, op. cit., p. 219.

3 Harrison, op. cit., II, xxxviii. 70

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 70:]

1 Thomas O. Mabbott, “Poe and Dr. Lardner,” American Notes and Queries, III (November, 1943); 115-17.

2 Harrison, op. cit., XVI, 20-25.

3 Mabbott, op. cit., pp. 116-17.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 71:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 387 ff.

2 Ibid., p. 378.

3 Ibid., p. 381.

4 Fannye N. Cherry, “The Source of Poe's ‘Three Sundays in a Week,’” American Literature, II (November, 1930), 232 ff. Mr. Archer Taylor holds that the title is a locution for the proverbial “never three (or 2) Sundays in a Week.” See: Archer Taylor, “Answers,” American Notes and Queries, III (January, 1044), 153-55.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 72:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 377.

2 Ibid., p. 591.

3 Ibid., p. 496.

4 Ibid., p. 377.

5 Ibid., p. 378.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 73:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 642 ff.

2 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 75:]

1 J. K. Hall et al. (eds.), One Hundred Years of Psychiatry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), p 277.

2 Albert Deutsch, The Mentally Ill in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), pp. 91-92, 95-08, 88 ff.

3 Ibid., pp. 95-98. See also: Hall et al., op. cit., p. 277.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 76:]

1 Pliney Earle (comp.), Ralph Earle and His Descendants (Worcester: Press of Charles Hamilton, 1888), p. 111.

2 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 147. Dr. Earle had just become superintendent of the Frankford Hospital for the Insane.

3 Harrison, op. cit., IV, p. 230 [[.]]

4 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 451.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 77:]

1 Earle, op. cit., p. 111.

2 Hall et al., op. cit., pp. 61-65.

3 Earle, op. cit., p. 111.

4 H. M. Hurd, Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1916), I, 16, 225.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 78:]

1 Hall et al., op. cit., pp. 61-65.

2 Hurd, op. cit., III, 143 ff.

3 Dorothea L. Dix, “Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts,” Old South Leaflets, No. 143, VI (1843), 489-519.

4 Hall et al., op. cit., p. 279.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 79:]

1 Hurd, op. cit., I, 225.

2 National Intelligencer, XIV (January 30, 1844), 6.

3 Hall et al., op. cit., p. 277.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 81:]

1 Gerald G. Grubb, “The Personal and Literary Relationship of Dickens and Poe” (Part I), Nineteenth Century Fiction, V (June, 1950), 1-22.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 82:]

1 Hesketh Pearson, Dickens, His Character, Comedy and Career (New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1949), p. 110.

2 Ibid., p. 110.

3 Ibid., pp. 110-11.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 83:]

1 Grubb, op. cit., p. 21.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., Part III, Nineteenth Century Fiction, V (December,1950), 216.

4 Ibid., p. 217.

5 Pearson, op. cit., p. 122. See also: Grubb, op. cit., pp. 220-21.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 86:]

1 Charles Dickens, American Notes, intro. Andrew Lang (London: Chapman and Hall, Ld., 1898), XXVIII, 52-55.

2 Ibid., pp. 109-10.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 87:]

1 “The Poets and Poetry of America,” Foreign Quarterly Review, XXXII (January, 1844), 291 ff.

2 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 246-47.

3 Grubb, op. cit., part II, Nineteenth Century Fiction, V (September, 1950), 119.

4 Jacob E. Spannuth, Doings of Gotham (Pottsville, Pennsylvania: Jacob E. Spannuth, Publisher, 1929), pp. 42-43.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 88:]

1 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 253-54.

2 Ibid.

3. Quinn, Poe, p. 417.

4 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 256-58. See footnote, also.

5 Ibid.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 89:]

1 “The Raven” was first published in the Evening Mirror, January 29, 1845. The Raven and Other Poems was published in November, 1845.

2 Grubb, op. cit., pp. 112 ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 91:]

1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 915.