Text: Killis Campbell, “Miscellaneous Notes on Poe,” Modern Language Notes (Baltimore, MD), vol. 28, no. 3, March 1913, pp. 65-69

[page 65, unnumbered:]

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON POE

I. THREE NOTES ON POE'S SOURCES

1. Poe's Sonnet — To Science may have been prompted originally by Coleridge, whose discussion of the relation of poetry and philosophy (in the fourteenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria) gave Poe the cue for his discussion of the same subject in his “Letter to B—— ,” prefixed to the 1831 edition of his poems. But the immediate inspiration to the writing of this poem came, I believe, from Keats's Lamia. The opening lines of Lamia:

find a pretty obvious parallel in the concluding lines of Poe's sonnet:

The central idea of his sonnet Poe found also in a brief passage in the second part of Lamia (11. 229-238):

2. The atmospheric device of the barking of the dog in the climactic scene of The Gold Bug (Virginia Poe, V, pp. 1151) was perhaps [column 2:] suggested to Poe by a passage in Seba Smith's The Money Diggers, where a similar device is employed to intensify the excitement attending the unearthing of a rich store of buried treasure. The Money Diggers appeared in Burton's Magazine! in August, 1840 (VII, pp. 81f.), shortly after Poe had resigned as its literary editor, and hence in all likelihood fell under his eye.

By way of making explicit the parallelism between the two stories, I give here the more significant sentences from the corresponding passages. I cite first from The Money Diggers. “While they were battling with this difficulty” [the collecting of water in the pit in which the treasure-seekers were digging], writes Smith (Burton's, VII, p. 91), “a tremendously great black dog came and stood upon the brink [of the pit], and opened his deep red jaws, and began to bark with terrific power. They shrunk back from the hideous animal, and raised their shovels to fright him off; but a second thought told them they had better let him alone. . . . They again plied their shovels with all diligence, and as they stepped to and fro at their work, that deep-mouthed dog kept up his deafening bark, and leaping round the verge of the pit. . . . When they first struck the stone [beneath which the treasure had been buried] . . . the dog began to bark with redoubled fierceness, and as they proceeded to uncover it, he seemed to grow more and more enraged.”

Poe, in describing the first attempt of Legrand and his confederates to unearth the treasure of Captain Kidd, writes as follows (Virginia Poe, V, pp. 115f.): “Our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity. The noise was, at length, very effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied [page 66:] the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders.” Later, when the company had begun to dig a second hole, in which the treasure was presently found (l. c., p. 118), they “were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog,” whose improvised muzzle had now been removed. “His uneasiness, in the first instance,” so runs Poe's account, “had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws.” A few moments later the treasure box came into view.

It will be observed that the dog in Poe's story is the property of the treasure-seekers, and hence his attitude is not, as in The Money Diggers, a hostile one; but his function is evidently the same in both stories — the heightening of the dramatic effect.

There are other parallels between the two stories: in both, for example, the scene is laid in an unfrequented island off the Atlantic Coast (in The Gold Bug, Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina; in The Money Diggers, on Jewell's Island, near Portland, Maine); in both it is a mysterious scrap of paper (or of parchment) that gives the clue to the whereabouts of the treasure; and in both, rings, necklaces, and watches are among the valuables that are found in the treasure-box. These agreements, however, can scarcely be held to possess any significance in themselves, since they involve details that are all more or less conventional in the story of buried treasure; though when taken in connection with the more striking parallel that I have noted, they seem to me to lend some support to the theory that I have advanced.

3. For a part of the material used in his essay on Anastatic Printing(1) (first published in the Broadway Journal for April 12, 1845) Poe drew on an article which appeared in the London Art Union for February, 1845.(2) Poe [column 2:] tracks his original closest in his fourth paragraph, which is largely paraphrased from the third paragraph of the original article. Poe writes, for instance, in the second sentence of this paragraph: “We dampen the leaf with a certain acid diluted, and then place it between two leaves of blotting-paper to absorb superfluous moisture;” in the second sentence of the corresponding paragraph in the earlier essay, we read: “The sheet is first moistened with diluted acid, and placed between sheets of blotting paper, in order that the superfluous moisture may be absorbed.” Again, in his fourth sentence Poe writes: “The acid in the interspaces between the letters, immediately corrodes the zinc, but the acid on the letters themselves, has no such effect, having been neutralized by the ink;” in the earlier essay we read: “The ink neutralizes the acid, which is pressed out from the blank space only, and etches them away.” It is due to Poe to say that he mentions the Art-Union in his essay, though he nowhere makes any specific acknowledgment of his indebtedness to it.

II. THE ORIGINALS OF POE'S PROPER NAMES

The musical nature of Poe's proper names has been commented on by more than one of his critics, and it has been held that a number of these names were coined by Poe. There can be no difference of opinion as to the sonorousness of Poe's names — especially of those used in his poetry; but that any considerable number of these names were coined by him seems to me improbable.

The sources of most of the proper names used by Poe are readily obvious. A good many of them came from history, as with Tamerlane, Politian, Pym, and Dupin; others were drawn from Greek or Latin legend, as Helen and Ligeia and Berenice; others from Oriental tradition or myth, as Al Aaraaf, Aidenn, Israfel, Astarte; while others, as Morella, Montresor, Arnheim, and Zante, were European place-names. Many of them, moreover, as Angelo, Ianthe, Lalage, Lenore, Prospero, Fortunato, and the like, are either conventional or so common as not to call for any explanation. [page 67:]

Among those of which the derivation is not so readily apparent, Marie Roget (in The Mystery of Marie Roget) is, as Poe tells us in a footnote, merely Mary Rogers(3) — victim of a sensational tragedy of the early forties — made French. Usher (in The Fall of the House of Usher) was the name of a Boston family that befriended Poe's parents on their visits to Boston shortly after their marriage.(4) The original of William Wilson was a hosier, first in Cheapside and later at Kendall, with whom the firm of Ellis & Allan (of which Poe's foster-father was junior member) did business during the second and third decades of last century.(5) Ermengarde (in Eleanora) and Rowena (Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine in Poe's Ligeia) perhaps come from Scott (though they may have been drawn directly from European history), and Tremaine was probably suggested by Robert Plumer Ward's novel of that title. De Vere in Poe's Lenore may have been suggested by the title of another of Ward's novels. Nourjahad (in Eleanora) was apparently taken from Mrs. Frances Sheridan's romance, The History of Nourjahad.

Julius Rodman (The Journal of Julius Rodman) found its origin, we can be all but certain, in the given names of Joseph Rodman Drake, whose lyrics Poe had reviewed in the Southern Literary Messenger in April, 1836,(6) three years before the appearance of Poe's story in Burton's Magazine. Wormley and Thornton, lay figures in the same story, are well-known family names in Virginia to this day, and the Richmond Thorntons were intimately associated with the Allans, Poe's foster-parents, during the poet's boyhood.(7) A [column 2:] third lay figure in this story, Wyatt (who also appears in the tale, The Oblong Box), was in all likelihood suggested by Professor Thomas Wyatt, with whom Poe collaborated in the translation and adaptation of his Conchologist's First-Book, which gave rise in 1847 to one of the earliest charges of plagiarism against the poet.

Baldazzar and Castiglione in Poe's drama, Politian, are but the Christian name and the surname, respectively, of the celebrated author of the Booh of the Courtyer, Baldassarre Castiglione. Alessandra, in the same poem, is doubtless to be traced to Politian's friend, Alessandra Scala. The Duke Di Broglio, likewise in Poe's play, was probably suggested by Victor de Broglie, French Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1830 to 1836, during the time both of the composition and of the publication of Politian(8) The name Lalande in The Spectacles involves an allusion to the French astronomer, Joseph de Lalande (1732-1807), and a similar allusion to the German inventor, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), is to be seen in the hero of Von Kempelen and his Discovery. D’Elormie in Bridal Ballad appears to have been borrowed from G. P. R. [page 68:] James's novel Be L’Orme (1830).(9) Ulalume was, I imagine, suggested by Eulalie, to which it is a sort of counterpart, the one connoting grief and gloom, the other lightsomeness and glee. Annabel Lee may have been influenced by the title of P. P. Cooke's Rosalie Lee, concerning which Poe and Cooke exchanged letters in 1846;(10) and the first half of the name was possibly inspired in part by his friendship for Mrs. Richmond, whom he knew as “Annie.”

Yaanek in Ulalume is, I take it, only a variant spelling of Janik, a Turkish district in Trebizond. Auber in the same poem, may have been suggested by the French Aube.(11)

Nesace, finally, queen of Al Aaraaf, is, I venture to believe, Poe's adaptation of the name Nausikaa. A Latin spelling, Nausicm, if pronounced and accented in English fashion, gives us something approximating very nearly the form that Poe adopts. Both Nesace and Nausikaa, it may be noted, dwelt upon an island, both symbolized beauty of person as well as of character, both were surrounded by a train of admiring handmaidens.

There are still other names — among them Nis(12) (in The Valley of Unrest), Trevanion (in Ligeia), and the German names, Berlifitzing and Metzenger stein — for which I have no satisfactory guess to offer, but think it probable that these, too, will ultimately be found to have originated elsewhere than in Poe's fancy. The [column 2:] situation is very much the same as with the plots of Poe's stories, which (as Poe's biographers have succeeded in showing), were based almost invariably either upon his own observation or upon his reading in contemporary literature.

III. POE'S LECTURES IN BALTIMORE AND PHILADELPHIA

Professor Woodberry (II, p. 48) mentions the tradition that Poe “made his debut as a lecturer” in Baltimore and “at some time during the summer” of 1843. It would appear, however, from the newspapers of Baltimore, that Poe did not lecture in that city until January 31, 1844. Of his lecture there on this date, the Baltimore Sun published on the morning of the day on which the lecture was to be delivered the following editorial comment: “It will be seen by a notice in another part of our paper, that the lecture of Mr. Poe, on ‘American Poetry,’ heretofore announced, will be delivered this evening, in the Egyptian Saloon of Odd Fellows’ Hall. The name of the lecturer, the subject of the lecture, and the well-known adaptation of the talents of the one to the material of the other, form a combination of attractions which will irresistibly result in a crowded audience — and our word for it a delighted one.” — There was also an editorial notice by Dr. J. Evans Snodgrass in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter of February 3, 1844, — four days after the lecture was delivered — which ran in part as follows: “Edgar A. Poe delivered a lecture in Odd-Fellows Hall, on Wednesday evening — theme ‘American poetry.’ He was very entertaining, and enforced his views well — though to some of them we cannot assent. For instance — that the inculcation of truth is not the highest aim of poetry! He was witheringly severe upon Rufus W. Griswold.”

Shortly before the Baltimore lecture, Poe had appeared a second time in Philadelphia, his first lecture there having been delivered on November 25, 1843. Of this second lecture — delivered on January 10, 1844 — the editor of the Philadelphia United States Gazette, J. R. Chandler, published this complimentary [page 69:] announcement on January 8, 1844: “We learn that Edgar A. Poe, Esq., has consented to repeat, at the Museum, on Wednesday night, his admired lecture on the Poets and Poetry of America. His first lecture was attended by one of the largest and most fashionable audiences of the season; and the Museum will doubtless be crowded by hundreds who were then unable to gain admission.”

KILLIS CAMPBELL.

University of Texas.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 66, column 1:]

1. See the Virginia Poe, XIV, pp. 153 f.

2. I have not seen the original article, but cite from a reprint of it which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger for June, 1845 (XI, pp. 383 f.).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 67, column 1, running to the bottom of column 2:]

3. Virginia Poe, V. pp. 1 F.

4. See Woodberry's Life of Poe, I, pp. 6, 9, 12.

5. William Wilson was a Quaker. A number of the letters that passed between him and the Richmond firm are preserved in the “Ellis-Allan Papers,” now among the treasures belonging to the Library of Congress at Washington.

6. Virginia Poe, VIII, pp. 275 f.

7. The nom-de-plume Quarles used by Poe with The Raven as published in the American Whig Review in February, 1845, may have been suggested by another well-known family of Richmond and vicinity [column 2:] (though Poe is said to have had the poet Quarles in mind). Littleton Barry, a pseudonym adopted by Poe with several of his publications in the Broadway Journal in 1845, suggests the influence of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (first published in 1844). E. A. Perry, the name assumed by Poe while a soldier in the United States army, was borrowed in part from a colleague of his at the University of Virginia, Sidney A. Perry (see Professor Harrison's New Glimpses of Poe, New York, 1901, the first of the facsimiles opposite p. 40).

8. Politian, Castiglione, and Alessandra Scala are all mentioned by Poe in his Pinakidia published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1836 shortly after the publication of Politian (see the Virginia Poe, XIV, pp. 48, 65). De Broglie also is mentioned by him in one of his reviews printed in 1841 (Virginia Poe, X, p. 134). Poe was fond of contemporary names. I have already mentioned Dupin and Mary Rogers. To these may be added Landor (in Landor's Cottage), and Canning (Sir Launcelot Canning, author of the apocryphal Mad Trist in The Fall of the House of Usher), — though it is barely possible that Poe in the last instance was playing upon the Chatterton tradition of “Mastre William Canynge.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 68, column 1:]

9. Poe used the name also in the first draft of his extravaganza, The Man that Was Used Up, which appeared in Burton's Magazine (V, p. 69) shortly after Poe had reviewed there one of James's books which mentioned on its title-page the author's De L’Orme (Burton's, V, pp. 60-61). James perhaps took the name from the famous French courtezan, Marion Delorme.

10. Woodberry, II, pp. 206, 210.

11. Poe makes the name rhyme with October.

12. Nis occurs in Norse mythology. But I have a theory that Poe means it merely as a play upon the word sin (note the similar inversion in the name Oldeb, who turns out to be Bedlo — in Poe's Tale of the Ragged Mountains). “The Valley of Unrest” is not, to be sure, a place sacred only to the wicked dead, but in all Poe's pictures of the realm of shades the notion of punishment is more or less prominent. The City in the Sea, it may be noted, a companion piece to The Valley of Unrest, bore in one of its earlier drafts the title “The City of Sin.”