Text: Francis Howard, “On a Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe,” Anglo-Saxon Review (London, UK), vol. IV, March 1900, pp. 95-97

[page 95:]

THE portrait of Poe, by the American portrait painter, Henry Inman, from which the accompanying reproduction is made, has a peculiar and unique interest, apart from its intrinsic merit, and from being the only existing portrait of Poe in his youth.

There are two periods of about two years in the American poet's life to which mystery and uncertainty still attach, despite the microscopic investigation to which it has been subjected through the rivalry of differing biographers.

That careful and discriminating editor of the collected works, J. H. Ingram, whose ‘Memoir’ dispersed the myths of debauchery, abnormality, and even crime, floated by Poe's first biographer, Griswold, is my authority for the following passage respecting the disappearance, in his eighteenth year:

This appears to have been Poe's last night at the university. He left it never to return, yet, short as was his sojourn there, he left behind him such honourable memories that his a/ma mater is now only too proud to enrol his name among her most respected sons.

Poe's adopted father, however, did not regard his son's collegiate career with equal pleasure; whatever view he may have entertained of the lad's scholastic successes, he absolutely refused to discharge the gambling debts which, like too many of his class-mates, he had incurred. A violent altercation took place between Mr. Allan and the youth, and Poe hastily quitted the shelter of his home to try and make his way in the world alone.

Taking with him such poems as he had ready, Poe made his way to Boston, and there looked up some of his mother's old theatrical friends. Whether he thought of adopting the stage as a profession, or whether he thought of getting their assistance towards helping him to put a drama of his own upon the stage — that dream of all young authors — is now unknown. He appears to have wandered about for some time and by some means or other to have succeeded in getting a little volume of poems printed ‘for private circulation only.’ This was towards the end of 1827, when he was nearing nineteen. Doubtless Poe expected to dispose of this volume by subscription among his friends, but copies did not go off, and ultimately the book was suppressed, and the remainder of the edition, ‘for reasons of a private nature,’ destroyed. What happened to the young poet and how he contrived to exist for the next year or so is a mystery still unsolved.

It has always been believed that he found his way to Europe, and met with some curious adventures there, and Poe himself certainly [page 96:] alleged that such was the case. Numbers of mythical stories have been invented to account for this chasm in the poet's life, and most of them self-evidently fabulous. In a recent biography of Poe an attempt had been made to prove that he enlisted in the army under an assumed name and served in the artillery for about eighteen months in a highly creditable manner, receiving an honourable discharge at the instance of Mr. Allan. This account is plausible, but will need further explanation of its many discrepancies of dates, and verification of the different documents cited to prove it, before the public can receive it as a fact.

So many fables have been published about Poe, and even many fictitious documents quoted, that it behoves the unprejudiced to be wary in accepting any new statements concerning him that are not thoroughly authenticated. It is rather surprising that an apologist like Ingram should have penned the words, ‘and Poe himself certainly alleged that such was the case.’

Why his own explanation of this absence should not meet with credence it is difficult to understand. Equally difficult is it to regard the story of his having enlisted under an assumed name as at all plausable.

Under no delusions as to his own temperament, Poe was one of the last men who would have invited the restraint and discipline attending the life of a common soldier; nor could he, in the comparatively sparsely populated country the United States then was, have successfully hidden a personality so marked, for so long a time in the face of the strict surveillance of military routine. The period of his later disappearance may have been, and in all probability was, passed within the borders of his own country; but during that time, he was free to come and go where, and under what names, he chose.

Personally, 1 had always accepted his own explanation as the correct one; and what more natural than that, having spent five happy years at school in England — perhaps the five happiest years of his life — he should turn his steps to this country in a time of trouble and perplexity.

That, as a matter of fact, he did do so can be no longer doubted; the portrait here reproduced furnishes as material proof of this as can be exacted. Painted in the poet's nineteenth year, as the original label on the original frame clearly sets forth, its history, apart from its unmistakable characteristics and style, leaves no doubt of its authenticity. The particular point, however, is this: Henry Inman, the painter of the picture, spent the whole of the year 1828 and the end of the year 1827 in London. Poe became nineteen years old on January 19, 1828 — his disappearance dating from the end of 1827. The more precise biographical dictionaries confirm the fact regarding Inman; who, indeed, made a second visit to

[page 97:] England in 1844, which was attended with unusual success, since the artist obtained opportunities of painting as he did portraits of Wordsworth, Dr. John Chalmers, Lord Chancellor Cottenham, Macaulay, and other equally noted men.

Time and opportunity presenting themselves, I hope to pursue the subject further and possibly dispel a little of the mystery which still attends it.

FRANCIS HOWARD.