Text: Killis Campbell, “New Notes on Poe's Early Years.” The Dial (Chicago, IL), vol. 60, whole no. 712, February 17, 1916, pp. 143-46

[page 143, column 2:]

There are still sundry dark places in the life of Poe. For this no one is so much responsible as the poet himself. He was extremely fond of mystifying his public; and where he did not resort to mystification — or to misrepresentation, as happened more than once — he was disposed to observe a more or [page 144:] less complete silence with regard to himself. In particular he was inclined to reticence concerning his early life in London and Richmond and Baltimore. Several years ago I succeeded, through a partial examination of the letters and office-books of the business firm to which the poet's foster-father, John Allan, belonged (papers now in the possession of the Library of Congress and known as the “Ellis- Allan Papers”), in. clearing away some of the obscurities that have surrounded Poe's earliest years in London and Richmond. I am now able, as a result of a further examination of these papers, to throw light on certain other obscure or disputed points in his history at this time. And I have, through an examination of certain court records and of the files of several old newspapers, and a re-examination in the light of these of the evidence already at hand, managed also to uncover one or two new facts about his life in Baltimore in the early thirties.

I.

The most interesting of the new bits of information that I have come across in the Ellis- Allan Papers is a bill for Poe's schooling in London in 1816. This document makes it clear that Poe was not a pupil, as has been generally supposed and as he himself held (“Virginia Poe,” I, p. 344), at the school of the Rev. John Bransby at Stoke Newington throughout his five years’ stay in England (1815-20), but that he spent a part of this time at a school in the city of London — a boarding school kept by the Misses Dubourg in Sloane street, near the South Kensington Museum. This bill runs as follows:

On the verso of this paper the words “Masr. Allan's School Acct. School recommences, Monday, 22nd, July” are written; and in one corner of the same page is entered the notation: “Bill & Rect Edgar's School [column 2:] Acct to midsumr 1816 [£] 12-2-0.” On a slip of paper accompanying the bill is a receipt bearing date July 6, 1816, and signed by George Dubourg. On the cash-book of the firm of Allan & Ellis there appears under the same date the following entry: “pd Miss Dubourgs a/c for Edgar [£] 12-2-0.” George Dubourg was a brother of the Misses Dubourg, as appears from several letters in the collection, and was employed by Allan & Ellis in 1816-7 as a book-keeper and copyist in their London establishment.

That Poe was also a pupil of the Misses Dubourg in the second half of 1816 is shown by an entry in the Ellis- Allan cash-book under date December 28, 1816: “pd Miss Dubourg's a/c for Edgar [£] 23-16-0.” There is a similar entry in the same volume under date August 28, 1817, for “Edgar's School a/c [£] 24-16-0.”; but whether this was paid to the Misses Dubourg or to Dr. Bransby is not clear, — though the fact that the amount specified tallies closely with that paid the Misses Dubourg in the preceding December would indicate that Poe continued his studies in Sloane street down to the middle of 1817.

Not without interest also are several letters written by John Allan in 1815 to his partner, Charles Ellis, in Richmond, in which mention is made of the boy Poe. In a letter from Liverpool on July 29, 1815, the day after his arrival in England, Allan gives an account of his voyage across the Atlantic, and notes that although certain of his party were “verry sick” on the voyage, Edgar was only “a little sick, and soon recovered.” From Greenock, Scotland, he wrote on September 21 on the same subject: “Edgar says Pa: say something for me say I was not afraid coming across the sea.” In a letter from London written one October evening shortly after he went up to the city, Allan represents himself as seated, as he writes, before “a snug fire in a nice little sitting parlour in No. 47 Southampton Row,” while “Frances” and “Nancy” (Mrs. Allan and her sister) are sewing and Edgar is “reading a little Story Book.” A letter of May 18, 1816, from one of Poe's playmates in Richmond, C. M. Portiaux, conveys this message to the future poet: “Give my love to Edgar and tell him I want to see him very much .. I expect Edgar does not know what to make of such a large City as London tell him Josephine and all the children want to see him.”

Several entries in the office-books of Charles Ellis serve to confirm certain traditions as to Poe's visit to Richmond in 1829-30. Under date of March 3, 1829, John Allan is [page 145:] charged with a bill of dry-goods sold “p[er] order to E A P,” which authenticates the tradition that Poe returned to Richmond soon after the death of the first Mrs. Allan. (Among the items in this bill are three yards of black cloth at twelve dollars a yard, three pairs of black hose at four shillings per pair, and one “London Hat” at ten dollars.) Another entry, under date of January 8, 1830; proves that Poe was again in Richmond early in the following year; and an entry on January 28 of the same year indicates that he remained in Richmond on this visit for several weeks. On May 12, 1830, Allan is charged with a bill of dry-goods, “p[er] E. Poe,” in which four blankets (evidently intended for the poet's use at West Point) are the leading item.

II.

The most obscure period in the life of Poe is that of the two and a half years immediately following his expulsion from West Point in March, 1831. That he went to Baltimore shortly after leaving the Academy is established by a letter that he wrote to a Baltimore editor, William Gwynn, on May 6, 1831. That he was living in Baltimore in the autumn of 1833 is established by John P. Kennedy's reminiscences of him in connection with his winning “The Baltimore Visitor's” short-story prize in October, 1833. The evidence as to his whereabouts in the intervening years is conflicting. Mr. Ingram, Poe's English biographer, declares that the correspondence of Mrs. Clemm, aunt and mother-in-law of the poet, indicates that he did not live in Baltimore at this time. To like effect, also, as Professor Woodberry points out, is the testimony of a Baltimore cousin and sweetheart. Miss Elizabeth Herring. But the testimony of another Baltimore sweetheart, Miss Mary Devereaux, and of an early friend, Lambert A. Wilmer, is to the effect that he did live in Baltimore most of this time. * [column 2:] Professor Woodberry takes the position in his revised life of Poe that the testimony of Mrs. Clemm and of Miss Herring must give way before the more circumstantial accounts of Wilmer and Miss Devereaux, and he concludes that the evidence in the case justifies the assumption that Poe was living in Baltimore throughout the period in question. An examination of the testimony of Wilmer and Miss Devereaux in the light of contemporary evidence not hitherto brought to bear on the case leads me to believe that Professor Woodberry is correct, in the main, in the inferences that he draws from their testimony, but that he is mistaken in assuming that they connect Poe with Baltimore for the entire period. The reminiscences of these two early acquaintances of the poet make it reasonably certain that Poe lived in Baltimore from May, 1831, to the autumn of 1832; but in my judgment they do not prove that he lived in Baltimore during the following year.

Mr. Woodberry proceeds on the theory that the year of Wilmer's association with Poe — when he saw the poet daily “for weeks together” — was 1833. “It is necessary,” he asserts, “to connect Wilmer's recollections with the year 1833, and especially with its latter part, when Poe won the prize in the ‘Visiter’ competition.” But notices of the “Visiter” in the “Baltimore Chronicle” of January 6, 1832, and later dates, make it plain that Wilmer's connection with the “Visiter” began in January, 1832, with the establishment of that paper; and it terminated six or eight months later, as he tells us in his recollections, when, after a squabble with the proprietors of the paper, he brought suit against them in chancery. The Baltimore court records show that this suit was instituted on August 10, 1832, and that, after a preliminary trial, it was transferred, on September 29, to the higher courts at Annapolis. It was settled soon afterward, and about the same time (in the “chinkapin season,” as Wilmer tells us, or before the end of October) he left Baltimore; and he was not closely associated with the poet again until 1834 or 1835.

The recollections of Miss Devereaux, which Professor Woodberry associates with the years 1832-3, relate, I believe, to the years 1831-2. She declares that she first met the poet in the summer, shortly after his return from West Point, and that the period of her intimacy with him (when he called on her daily) lasted but a year — “from summer to summer.” She associates in time the termination of their intercourse with an occasion apparently referred to also by Wilmer, — that of an evening's [page 146:] carousal on the part of the poet with some West Point comrades whom he had chanced to meet. It would seem, then, that the break between the two lovers came shortly before Wilmer left Baltimore; and she states that she did not see the poet again until several years after his marriage.

We are accordingly justified, I think, in concluding that Poe made his home in Baltimore from the spring of 1831 to the autumn of 1832; but until further evidence is forthcoming, we can not be certain where he lived from the autumn of 1832 to the autumn of 1833.

There is uncertainty also as to Poe's activities during these years. Mrs. Weiss records a story to the effect that he was seen on one occasion during his early life in Baltimore at work in a brick-yard. F. W. Thomas reports — on the testimony, apparently, of another (see Whitty's edition of the poems, p. xxxiv) — that he wrote for the newspapers while in Baltimore; and according to the same authority he went on a voyage to Ireland at some time during this period. Wilmer states that when he knew him in 1832 he had already composed some of his stories. That his chief literary employment at this time was upon his stories is the view that now seems most plausible, though he may also have had some irregular newspaper connection. That he was at work on his stories then is established by the fact, which has escaped his biographers, that he published five of his tales in a Philadelphia weekly in the year 1832.

On January 14, 1832, there appeared in the Philadelphia “Saturday Courier” his story “Metzengerstein.” The same paper published on March 3, 1832, his “Duc de l’Omelette”; this was followed on June 9 by “A Tale of Jerusalem”; and on November 10 by “Loss of Breath “ (under the title “A Decided Loss”); and on December 1 by “Bon-Bon” (under the title “The Bargain Lost”). Each of these was published anonymously, and each was to be republished, in revised form, several years later in the “Southern Literary Messenger.”

The “Courier” was a weekly much after the order of the “Saturday Evening Post,” its most important rival. It had been established early in 1831; and in its issue of July 31, 1831, it had announced a short-story contest, in which a prize of one hundred dollars was offered. It is probable that Poe originally submitted his tales in competition for this prize. According to the rules of the contest, all stories submitted had to be in the hands of the proprietors by December 1, 1831. The decision of the judges was announced in [column 2:] the “Courier” on December 31, 1831: the prize of one hundred dollars was awarded to “Miss Delia S. Bacon, of the State of New York, author of ‘The Tales of the Puritan, etc.,” for her story “Love's Martyr.” This story was printed in the “Courier” on January 7, 1832; and in the “Courier” of the following week appeared “Metzengerstein.”

The revelation that Poe published some of his stories so early as 1832 makes it necessary to revise slightly the view heretofore held as to the time at which he began his short-story writing. His biographers have assumed that the earliest of his tales to find its way into print was the “MS. Found in a Bottle,” published in the “Baltimore Visiter” in October, 1833, and it has been supposed that he first became actively interested in the short story either in 1833 or in the preceding year. It now becomes plain that he began his career as a writer of stories not later than the autumn of 1831.

KILLIS CAMPBELL.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 145:]

*The reminiscences of Miss Devereaux are embodied in an article contributed by Augustus Van Cleef to “Harper's Monthly” for March, 1889. Wilmer's reminiscences were published in the “Baltimore Commercial” of May 23, 1866, and in his volume, “Our Press Gang.” Miss Devereaux's name is not mentioned by Van Cleef, but it is given by F. W. Thomas in his sketch of Poe on the authority of a Baltimore acquaintance of his, James Tuhey (see J. H. Whitty, “Poems of Poe,” p. xxxiv), and the identification of the two is virtually established by the Baltimore directories for the early thirties. Miss Devereaux asserts that she lived on Essex street (evidently a slip for Exeter street — there was no Essex street in Baltimore), next door to the home of her landlord, a Mr. Newman, and that Mrs. Clemm “lived around the corner” in a street that crossed her own. The Baltimore directory for 1831 (there was no issue for 1832) represents the uncle of Miss Devereaux, James Devereaux (with whom, apparently, she lived), as making his home at 38 North Exeter street, and reports at the same time that Lawson Newman lived in Exeter street, near Wilks, and that Mrs. Clemm lived in Mechanic's Row, Wilks street. Before May, 1833, according to the directory of that year, Mrs. Clemm had moved to Amity street, but Newman still lived on Exeter street, and both Newman and the Devereaux family were living on Exeter street in 1835-6