The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

  sonal habits, and early literary efforts harmonize so closely wil

  anecdotes told by various schoolmates of Poe that one has the vei

  sure feeling that the story may contribute some elaboration on existir

  material if not a few new facts. Its version of the origin of the poei

  “ The Valley of Unrest” was quite unacceptable to Thomas Ollive Mai

  bott, who had established to his personal satisfaction that the wo!

  referred to a location in Scotland.

  1 »

  THE M AN WHO CALLED IHMSELF POE

  The closeness of the style of the introductions to that of the stoiy

  leads one to believe that the entire work is not only edited by but also

  written by Douglass Sherley. Though the early portion is believably

  factual, the latter part of the story would seem to be fiction.

  Just who was Douglass Sherley, and is there the slightest basis for

  believing that he could have come into possession of some informa-

  tion concerning Poe that was not previously published?

  George Douglass Sherley was born in 18 5 7 , quite possibly in the

  area of Louisville, Kentucky. That would make him only twenty-six

  at the time he wrote The Valley of Unrest, which appears to be his

  first published book. Three other titles are known: Love Perpetuated;

  The Story of a Dagger ( 18 8 4 ) , A F e w Short Sketches ( 1 8 9 3 ) , and

  The Inner Sisterhood; A Social Study in High Colors (no date). All

  books were initially published by J. P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ken-

  tucky, and all are outsize, printed on strange-color stock and relatively

  short in length. It is quite conceivable that the printing of T he Val-

  ley of Unrest by White, Stokes, and Allen is a second edition, though

  this is not stated. All the books seem to have been privately published.

  George E . Woodberry in his Edgar Allan Poe ( 1 8 8 5 ) specifically

  states that Douglass Sherley was in correspondence with Thomas

  Goode Tucker and that some of that correspondence exists. Thomas

  Goode Tucker was one of Poe’s closest schoolmates at Virginia Uni-

  versity. Douglass Sherley included material from two letters by Thomas

  Goode Tucker in two pieces titled Old Oddity Papers which appeared

  in the Virginia University Magazine for March and April 1880. Doug-

  lass Sherley is referred to as “ a student of the (Virginia) University” by

  Floyd Stovall in his article Edgar Allan Poe and the University of Vir-

  ginia (The Virginia Quarterly Review , Spring 1 9 6 7 ) .

  It is not inconceivable that the mention of Poe’s various companions

  in The Valley of Unrest may have had something to do with another

  of Poe’s Virginia University schoolmates, W . M. “ Billie” Burwell,

  writing his remembrances in the N ew Orleans Times-Democrat of M ay

  18 , 1884.

  The Valley of Unrest is a very strange book, unquestionably ex-

  tremely rare and not likely to be easily found by students of Poe.

  For that reason the entire contents follow. They include the two in-

  troductions by Douglass Sherley, the poem from which the book de-

  rives its title, and, of course, the entire text of the story itself,

  complete with the original footnotes. The f’s have been changed to s’s

  for easy reading, otherwise no alterations of any nature, not even of

  outdated punctuation or eccentricities of word separation or conjunc-

  tion, were made in the text.

  Despite a certain ornateness of style, this narrative is one of the

  most effective pieces yet contrived in which Edgar Allan Poe is a

  major character and central to the theme of the story. It deserves to

  THE M AN WHO CALLED H IM SELF POE

  IQ

  be preserved on its own merits regardless of its possible historical

  value.

  INTRODUCTION—I

  This book does not begin with an apology for its appearance. I, the

  editor, have none to offer. But it begins instead with what I am sure

  will be an unsatisfactory statement. I have neither the right nor the in-

  clination to make public the knowledge which, b y a mere accident, I

  chance to possess, concerning the author of the following pages.

  This much I feel at liberty to state: H e was well born, well reared,

  eccentric. H e passed through life bearing the burden of some par-

  ticular grievance of which the world did not know. His education

  was of his own curious making. His writings, a trifle weird, bear more

  plainly the marks of a peculiar originality than they do of erudition.

  He was the only son, the hope and the pride of a proud man full

  of bitterness and world-hate. Between this father and child there

  was but little love, and absolutely no sympathy. A roving spirit early

  developed, and a fondness for studying human nature direct, rather

  than through the oftentimes more tedious medium of books, soon dissi-

  pated the hope and soon broke the pride of this over-ambitious and

  too exacting father. Young, erratic, with only the uncertain memory of

  a good mother, long dead, to keep him pure—without guile—he drifted

  beyond the line that sharply defines the difference between the right

  and the wrong.

  Then there came a time when he was allowed to gratify the one

  passionate desire of his early youth—travel, travel, constant, world-

  wide travel. Those many years of restless wandering gained for him a

  unique and rich experience. Fortunate, indeed, were those who lis-

  tened to his talk. He was a fanciful, magnetic man, full of strange con-

  ceits. He was a tragedy. His life was a rugged, tragic poem.

  One act of his full-primed manhood—rare, brilliant—brought him

  the applause of an hour. Yet it was an act so rare, so brilliant, that it

  deserved better things. If I could mention his name, there are those

  now living who would recall to mind the matter and the man. Later

  on in life, embittered, scorned by those who by nature and by right

  ought to have been every thing to him, he committed an awful crime.

  Each detail thereof was coldly, calculatingly planned. And each detail

  was even more coldly, more calculatingly executed. But it was a

  crime with the criminal unknown. That guilty one, now dead, speaks

  to those who may listen from the printed pages of this book. But these

  pages tell the tale of other people’s lives, and not of his own. They tell

  something of that strange man, Edgar Allan Poe, who was an intimate

  college friend. They tell something that may chance to lend a fresh

  2 0

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  interest and a new charm to the always interesting and to the always

  charming study of—to quote from the following pages—That mysteri-

  ous human fantasy.

  Autumn, 18 8 3

  The Editor.

  INTRODUCTION—II

  Whatever an idle fancy may chance to term this Valley of Unrest, it

  is woven, as may be seen, in and around about a poem, a mere frag-

  ment, seldom read, written by Edgar Allan Poe.

  The Valley of Unrest is the name of the poem, and The Valley of

  Unrest is the name of the book.

  It is a book without a woman. She does not find her subtle accus-

  tomed places in this valley of un
rest. She seems to be absent in both

  the body and the spirit. It is an Eden without an E ve : but it is not a

  paradise without a serpent.

  Harmony long ago fled the bounds of this strange unhappy valley,

  but she was not driven forth by woman.

  Discord in greedy haste found a foothold in the dell, once a land

  of sweet and quiet rest. But discord was not brought thereto by

  woman's call or by woman's art.

  Now, let the Valley of Unrest and the dwellers therein speak for

  themselves.

  Midsummer, 18 8 3

  Douglass Sherley.

  THE V A L L E Y OF UNREST

  By Edgar Allan Poe

  Once it smiled a silent dell

  Where the people did not dwell;

  They had gone unto the wars,

  Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,

  Nightly, from their azure towers,

  To keep watch above the flowers,

  In the midst of which all day

  The red sun-light lazily lay.

  N ow each visitor shall confess

  The sad valley’s restlessness.

  Nothing there is motionless—

  Nothing save the airs that brood

  Over the magic solitude.

  Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

  That palpitate like the chill seas

  Around the misty Hebrides I

  Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

  That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

  Uneasily, from mom till even,

  Over the violets there that lie

  In myriad types of the human eye—

  Over the lilies there that wave

  And weep above a nameless grave!

  They w a ve :—from out their fragrant tops

  Eternal dews come down in drops.

  They w eep :—from off their delicate stems

  Perennial tears descend in gems.

  The Valley of Unrest

  (By Douglass Sherley)

  There are moments in the lives of all men when the fra-

  grance of some one flower, or the brief snatch of some

  favorite love-song, or the sound of some familiar voice, will

  instantly charm the mind with a strange and subtle witchery.

  Mysterious moments, that bring back again the banished

  or forgotten things. Peculiar association of ideas that re-

  produce the once vivid pictures which have vanished from

  the canvas of life.

  So it was to-night.

  Here, in my den of old oddities, nothing pleased me. I

  put aside the yellow sheets of a German manuscript, a

  curious mass of erudition. It had failed to furnish solace to

  my lonely hour. I was possessed by a spirit of restlessness. I

  passed over to the square hole under the deep slant eaves

  that answers the purpose of a window. I thrust back the

  darkened unpainted shutter. It creaked dismally on its one

  rusty hinge. I looked out into the blackness of the night. A

  snow storm was raging. I could feel the soft white flakes

  falling against my withered face. And I thought of the snow

  storm of life that was beating in upon my full wintered

  years.

  From below, far down the turn of the road, there came a

  sound of many voices, and the musical ring of jingling

  sleigh-bells, and then all was silent.

  That was hours ago, early in the night. Yet the sound of

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  23

  those musical bells has somehow, by the charm of that

  strange subtle witchery, brought back from out of the past

  a mysterious human fantasy, which in those other and far-

  off years gave a coloring to my life that has not faded out,

  and never will.

  A glance, a hand-clasp, and a word. Three potent factors

  that won my home-sick heart, on the afternoon of my first

  day at Virginia University. Edgar Allan Poe was the winner

  thereof. I had stood aloof, a lonely sixteen-year-old boy, on

  the outer edge of an unsympathetic crowd. His eye met

  mine. He came forward, offered me his hand, and said, “I

  like you. I want to know you.״ From that moment dated our

  friendship. From that day I was recognized as the most

  intimate friend of Poe while he remained at the University.

  Now, in truth, he was indeed a mysterious human fantasy.

  To-day, even after all these years of diligent investiga-

  tion, there is so little actually known of the inner life of this

  strange man.

  Several periods bear so heavy a mist of uncertainty and

  false report that we are forced to content ourselves with

  the barest outline.

  Somewhere there is told a legend of a man, who did for

  sake of gold sell his shadow. But this, our human fantasy,

  must have parted with his substance, and passed through

  life only a shadow in dalliance with an immortal soul.

  In that part fanciful, part biographical sketch of his own

  life, “William Wilson,״ thus does he speak of those years

  spent in the Manor-House School at Stoke Newington, Eng-

  land: “My earliest recollections of a school are connected

  with a large, rambling Elizabethan house in a misty looking

  village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic

  and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively

  ancient.

  “In truth it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place,

  that venerable old town.

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  t h e m a n w h o c a l l e d H IM SELF POE

  “At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness

  of its deeply shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its

  thousand shrubberies and thrill anew with indefinable de-

  light at the deep hollow note of the church bell, breaking

  each hour with sudden and sullen roar upon the stillness of

  the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple

  lay embedded and asleep.״

  Many a time, while we walked arm and arm beneath

  those now crumbling arcades at the Virginia University, Poe

  has talked by the hour of that old Manor-House School,

  long before he had even thought of formulating William

  Wilson. He would often thrill my boyish fancy with his

  world of romance and dreams without wakenings. The

  other day, a lengthening street of the English metropolis

  stretched itself over the leveled ruins of that ancient Manor

  House.

  His life at the University has always been buried deep in a

  mass of obscurity. Much has been written about him, but

  little has been written and less is known about his Univer-

  sity career.

  With this one period of his life I am familiar, for he was

  then my only friend, and I knew him well.

  Now in those days, a spirit of dissipation prevailed among

  the students of the University. While men like unto Gessner

  Harrison, Henry Tutwiler, and Phil. Cooke abstained from

  the midnight revel and strictly obeyed each obligation

  placed upon them by the faculty, we, a gay rollicking set,

  with Poe for our leader, were much given to a non-

  attendance at the daily lecture, and to a freedom from all

  regulations and restraints imposed by those high in au-

  thority. Yet somehow we managed to spend a large portion

  of our time i
n the University library; seated side by side, in

  one of those curious and now musty alcoves, we read the

  histories of Lingard and Hume.

  Poe was passionately fond of French literature. Often have

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  25

  I made pause in my own reading and listened to his mu-

  sically whispered translation from some old French play,

  until Wertenbaker, the ancient librarian appointed by Jef-

  ferson, and who died only a little while ago, would place a

  warning finger on his closed lips. Of late years I have often

  made search for those particular passages in the old French

  dramas; but I have not found them. And now this is my

  thought: he would more frequently weave the alleged

  translation from his own imaginative brain than from the

  printed page; for he knew that my knowledge of French

  was limited, and that I would not be able to discover the

  charming fraud. The French drama is an old and pleasant

  story to me now. But it has never yielded the pleasure

  found in that library alcove, listening to those fraudulent

  translations, dreading the approach of W ertenbaker bidding

  us to be silent or leave the library.

  We were familiar with the whole field of English poetry

  from Chaucer to Scott. There was not a passage of singular

  beauty in either that Poe could not instantly recall. And so

  it was with intermediate writers. He declared Shakespeare

  to be a magnificent whirlpool, into which he constantly

  desired to fling away the best that was in him. Once he said

  to me, ״Shakespeare fascinates me with an evil fascination.

  He stirs up within me the demon-side of my nature. I have

  for him a passionate love-hate.”

  Halcyon indeed were those days of my youth, when Poe

  was my friend, aye, the other half of my soul. Ah, there is a

  grim philosophy in the old saying, that we are never young

  but once!

  Those weird tales and musical poems of the after years

  are but the crystallization of his thoughts and his fancies

  which so often found an echo in my heart, or that made

  echo up and down The Valley of Unrest that lies buried

  deep in the Ragged Mountains of Virginia.

  My Lord Beachonfield’s portraiture of his remarkable

  father, Isaac Disraeli, bears a strong likeness to young Poe,

  26