The Man Who Called Himself Poe

by Sam Moskowitz

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  “indicating by the whole carriage of his life that he was of

  a different order from those among whom he lived; timid,

  susceptible, lost in re very, fond of solitude, or seeking no

  better company than a book, the years had stolen on till he

  had arrived at the mournful period of boyhood when ec-

  centricities excite attention and command no sympathy.

  Poe, unlike Isaac Disraeli, could at times completely yield

  himself to the gay companionship of reckless young fellows.

  But down in his heart he cared nothing for that wild dis-

  sipation that so often characterized his actions. It was but an

  effort, an unsuccessful effort, to make himself like unto

  others. Eccentricity is often a curse, and always a crime

  —a crime perpetrated against the ignorance of willfully

  common-place people; people who live according to rule;

  people who erect a standard, and who would have all live

  up, or rather down to it, and woe unto the man who departs

  therefrom.

  Edgar Allan Poe, when first I knew him, was seventeen

  years of age, rather short of stature, thick and somewhat

  compactly set. He was strong of arm and swift of foot—for

  he was an expert in athletic and gymnastic arts. A more

  beautiful face on man or woman I have never seen. It was

  the beauty of the soul, always near the surface, always in a

  glow of strange, unearthly passion. His walk was rapid,

  and his movement quick and nervous. He had about him the

  air of a native-born Frenchman, and a mercurial disposition

  deliciously unstable. He was fond of cards. Seven-up and

  loo were his favorite games. He played like a mad-man. He

  drank like a mad-man. He did both under a sudden impulse.

  Something always seemed to drive him on. Unseen forces

  played havoc with his reason. He would seize the glass that

  he actually loathed, yet always seemed to love, and with-

  out the least apparent pleasure swallow the contents,

  quickly draining the last drop. One glass, and his whole

  nervous nature ran riot within its highly tortured self. Then

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  2J

  followed a flow of wild talk which enchained each fortunate

  listener with a syren-like power.

  It is curious to follow the subsequent lives of those men

  who were his constant companions around the card-table,

  and who filled, from out of the same punch-bowl, their

  never-empty glasses with the same peach and honey.

  Peach and honey, that drink once so popular, long years

  ago, with the Virginia and Carolina gentlemen of the old

  school.

  There was Thomas S. Gholson, and of all the set there

  was not one more reckless. He was afterward a pious judge

  of some distinction and of great integrity.

  Upton Beale, who always held the winning card, became

  an Episcopal Minister. He was stationed for years, in fact

  until his death, at Norfolk, Virginia, and he was beloved

  by the people of his parish.

  Philip Slaughter, Poe’s most intimate card-friend, is still

  living. He, too, a minister of the gospel. I am told that he is

  an excellent God-fearing man. I wonder if he remembers

  those wayward days of his youth, when he and Poe were

  partners at cards, and held between them a common

  treasury.

  I have lost sight of Nat. Dunn and Wm. A. Creighton. In

  all likelihood they have gone unto that other land.

  Billie Burwell, a rare genius of that old set, has suffered

  many changes of fortune. He is neither judge nor minister;

  unlike the rest, he has never been able to finish sowing his

  wild oats. When last I heard of him he was living in New

  Orleans. He was still assiduously cultivating the refined

  society of kings and queens, and he was still a large dealer

  in diamonds and clubs. And there was yet another one,

  Thos. Goode Tucker, of North Carolina. He was a great-

  hearted fellow. He was handsome, bold, and reckless. He

  was a warm friend and a bitter enemy, and he was passion-

  ately devoted to young Poe. This same Tucker was a great

  fox hunter. Poe and he were the constant terror of that

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  Piedmont country. Whenever the farmers of Albemarle found

  their fences down, their fields of small grain trampled and

  all but ruined, they would roundly swear those infernal

  young rascals—Poe and Tucker—were the guilty ones, out on

  the chase again. And those farmers were right.

  Tucker is now, like unto myself, an old man; yet he wrote

  me the other day, “Come with me for the sake of those old

  times, let us follow the hounds once more.”

  A strong, linked intimacy existed between Tucker and

  Poe. Tucker was not only intimate with the dissipated side

  of his nature, but with that other and better side known to

  only a few, principally women. It was a side which good

  and pure women were so sure to find out, appreciate, and

  defend, when others were so ready to blame. W hatever

  Poe may have been in after years, he was, when I knew him

  at the University of Virginia, as honest a friend as the

  sometimes waywardness of his otherwise noble nature

  would allow. There was then not the least touch of insin-

  cerity, and never the slightest indication of that maliciously

  fickle disposition which in after times was so often brought

  up against him in life, and against his memory in death.

  Marked peculiarities do not elicit sympathy from the com-

  mon run of people—the great majority. They place the

  unhappy possessor in a most undesirable position. Misunder-

  standings constantly arise, and they can not often be ex-

  plained, even if explanation be sought. Therefore it is not a

  m atter of much surprise that Edgar Poe did not have many

  intimate friends. For he was indeed, even when I knew him

  —a mere boy—a man of strongly marked peculiarities. These

  peculiarities constantly led him into trouble. He made

  enemies out of those who should have been his friends. And

  of this he was more oftentimes unaware. For his enemies

  at the university were of that most dangerous, most con-

  temptible order —secret enemies—fellows ready to give the

  stab from behind, and under cover of darkness. A band of

  envious cowards outskirt the ways of all such men as Poe.

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  2g

  And always must eccentric greatness pay a penalty; nay, not

  one, but numberless ones to the clamoring, commonplace

  fool and the silent, envious knave.

  Yet Poe was a power when he cared to try his strength. He

  was full of adaptability. He could play cards and drink

  peach and honey hour after hour, and day in and day out,

  with those who merely chanced to be thrown in his way.

  But a genuine friendship asks for something more and

  better than ordinary conviviality and a shuffling, each in

  turn, the same pack of cards. Other ties than those must

&n
bsp; be found to bring two souls together in a life-long attach-

  ment.

  There was a curious magnetic sympathy existing not only

  between our hearts but even between our minds. In the

  silent watches of the night I have often closed the book be-

  fore me, no m atter how interesting, risen from my seat and,

  moving under the guidance of an irresistible impulse, gone

  out beneath the arcade, so full of strange shadows, and

  started toward the room near by, occupied by Poe, and have

  met him in his own doorway, coming to me, actuated by

  the same irresistible impulse. Not once, twice, or thrice, but

  again and again has this happened. And often in those silent

  watches of the night did he read to me the early productions

  of his youth. They were not published—not one of them —

  because unspared by his critical hand. His sensitive nature

  oftentimes made him a ruthless destroyer of much that was

  good. He could not brook the idle, laughing censure of his

  comrades. On several occasions I persuaded him to give his

  own small circle of intimate friends the rare privilege of

  listening to him read his own weird writings.

  Those men—now all dead but Tucker and myself—who

  were so fortunate as to hear those impromptu readings

  could never forget them. In their old age their fireside

  stories were all the better for that memory. From out of the

  past, clear and strongly outlined, rise those readings. It is the

  memory of one especial night. The hour is late—after twelve.

  3 0

  ׳THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE

  On West Range one midnight lamp is burning. It is the room

  of Edgar Allan Poe—No. 13. Our small circle is complete.

  By accident we have gathered there. It is a rare meeting,

  unmarred by the presence of uncongenial souls. Each a kin-

  dred spirit, each in sympathy with the other. There is a short,

  impressive silence. Then, spell-bound, barely breathing, we

  listen to a story, weird and wonderfully strange, which Poe

  has just written—the ink not yet dry on the last page.

  He reads with his whole soul thrown into every action

  and into each musical intonation of his well-toned voice. Now

  loud and rapid, like the mad rush of many waters; now

  low and slow, like the trickling of a stream in a hollow

  cavern. Then sinking into a whispered sentence of incan-

  tations and mad curses; then into a softly murmured, yet

  passionate vow of some ardent, hopeless lover, and—the

  story is told, the reading over. Ah, it was indeed a privilege

  to be there!

  Once he wrote and read to us a long story full of quaint

  humor. Unlike the most of his stones, it was free from that

  usual somber coloring and those sad conclusions merged in

  a mist of impenetrable gloom that we so often find in his

  published writings. In a spirit of idle jest and not of adverse

  criticism, some one of our number spoke lightly of the story.

  This produced within him a fit of nervous anger, and he

  flung every sheet behind the blaze on his hearth. And thus

  was lost a story of excellent parts. “Gaffy,” the name of his

  hero, furnished a name for the story. He was often there-

  after good humoredly called “Gaffy” Poe, which was a

  name that he did not like.

  Now, in those early days of the University of Virginia,

  a pernicious practice prevailed among the students at large.

  It was gambling at cards and for money. This vice was then

  prevalent among the best of Southern people. But Thomas

  Jefferson did not propose to tolerate its dangerous presence

  in his well-planned institution of learning. He found that

  it needed a speedy and effectual check. This, the year before

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  31

  his death, he promptly attempted to give; and while he may

  not have been entirely successful, yet, as one of the results

  of that effort, we were driven into The Valley of Unrest,

  which lies hidden in the wooded heart of the Ragged Moun-

  tains.

  Mr. Jefferson, after much anxious deliberation with the

  University Board of Directors and others, decided upon a

  plan to eradicate the baleful habit of playing cards for sake of

  gold and silver coin. He consulted with the civil authorities.

  He found out the names of the most noted young gamblers,

  and he gave instructions that they should be indicted in

  due form and brought before the next grand jury. So, one

  bright morning in the early spring, the sheriff, with a goodly

  posse, suddenly appeared within the doorway of our lecture-

  room during the Latin hour. The staid old professor was

  calling the roll. That servant of the law stood in readiness

  to serve his writs on certain ones as the professor should

  mention the names of each guilty party. But gay young

  rascals are not to be so easily ensnared within the toils of the

  eager enemy. We needed no word of warning. The shadow

  across the doorway, and a gang of men behind, told its own

  story. With Edgar Allan Poe for our leader, we scattered in

  every direction—some through the window, and some through

  an opposite door.

  Sheriff, posse, and professor were left in full possession of

  the lecture-room. Once on the outside, under the guidance

  of Poe—our master spirit in all times of danger—we mar-

  shaled our scattered forces. Then, the hot pursuit. But those

  whom they wanted the most, the ringleaders—our own set—

  had made a successful escape, not to our rooms, for there

  we would not have been safe, but off to the wild Ragged

  Mountains, a jagged spur of the Blue Ridge, over an almost

  untrodden path.

  But it was a hidden way well known to Poe, over which,

  always alone, he had often traveled. W ith ruling passion,

  strong even in hasty flight, some of the party had managed

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  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  to arm themselves with a deck of cards and a goodly portion

  of peach and honey. This, in order that the hours of our

  self-imposed banishment might not hang heavy upon our

  idle hands.

  Our place of concealment was The Valley of Unrest. It

  was a beautiful dell, high up in the mountains, almost inac-

  cessible, and far away from the beaten path. It was the

  favorite haunt of Edgar Allan Poe. W hen almost over-

  powered by those strange spells of mental depression, ap-

  proaching near unto the border-land of insanity, thither

  would he go, and alone. There for hours he would often

  linger, buried deep in the bitter-sweets of melancholy; and

  there, environed by low-sweeping pines, murmuring perpet-

  ual dirges, his active brain became strongly imbued with

  those wild, fanciful ideas which are so realistic even in

  their unreality; for, out of the dark-green, needle-pointed

  foliage of those low-sweeping pines there forever actually

  seemed to ooze a dreary sombemess that permeated all

  the atmosphere with a gloom which hung like an uncanny

  mist ove
r the beautiful dell.

  It was a mysterious place. Something seemed to hush our

  voices and to muffle each footfall. If the spirit of adventure

  had not within each one of us been driven up to fever heat

  by the excitement of the moment, there could have been

  no human power able to detain us in that place of mystery.

  Surely it was this haunt of his youth that Poe did in after

  years so cunningly picture in exquisite verse, and fittingly

  termed The Valley of Unrest.

  It must indeed be true that Poe was filled with the memory

  of that lonely dell, which lies so deeply buried in the great

  wooded heart of the Ragged Mountains, when he wrote

  that beautiful poem. And in that lonely dell, for the better

  part of three days and nights, we did conceal ourselves

  from the search of the sheriff and his posse in that long ago

  springtime.

  Each day it was our custom to play cards and drink

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  3 3

  peach and honey. Each night we would light our torches,

  kindle a fire of pine fagots to dispel the chill night airs of

  early spring, then each in turn tell his story. After midnight

  we would go in single file and in silence down the mountain

  side. On the outskirts of the University we would find a

  little knot of anxious friends ready to supply us with pro-

  visions and peach and honey.

  Before the coming of the dawn we would find ourselves

  back again within the shadows of that lonely dell, The

  Valley of Unrest.

  Two lines that occur in the poem—

  “ Over the lilies there that wave

  A nd weep above a nameless grave” *

  were uttered by Edgar Allan Poe while he told his story on

  the last night of our banishment in the Ragged Mountains;

  and it was the last story told on that night. Each time Poe’s

  tale was the last; and while he talked we would forget to

  replenish the fire, forget every thing but the intricate plot

  which he might chance to unroll before us. W hen he finished

  we would, shivering, rise to our feet, and hastily depart from

  the spot and pass away from under its uncanny shadows,

  but not from the memory thereof. All of these years have not

  brought me a forgetfulness of those springtime nights and

  of that one last night.

  On the afternoon of the third day the glad news came

  that we had been forgiven. Poe, our ringleader, was the only