A Descent Into Poe's Maelstrom

Few American writers are as intriguing as Edgar Allan Poe. The author of stories that are still shockingly violent, Poe himself was something of a Jekyll and Hyde—sensitive and kind when sober, but manic and violent when drunk—who lived much of his life in debt after being raised by one of Richmond's richest families. Some of the more salacious details of his life are widely known. He married his cousin, Virginia, when she was 14, and would go on occasional month-longer benders, after which he would return home sick and exhausted. He died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40 in 1849.

In Richard Kopley's exhaustive biography of the writer, Poe is more sinned against than sinning. His life got off to a difficult start. His father abandoned the family shortly after his birth, and his mother, a Richmond actress of some fame, died when he was two years old. While Poe's brother, Henry, went to live with family in Baltimore, Poe was cared for (though never officially adopted) by the Allans of Richmond.

Mrs. Allan doted on the handsome and talented boy, but Mr. Allan never became particularly attached. When Mrs. Allan died and Poe accumulated significant debts at the University of Virginia (mostly from gambling, though Poe claimed Allan never provided him with enough money to live), the relationship between the two men began to fray. When Mr. Allan eventually remarried, he ceased nearly all contact with Poe and left him with nothing upon his death in 1834.

Poe always knew he wanted to be a writer, and he worked odd jobs after dropping out of college to support himself while publishing poems and short stories. He joined the Army, which provided him with some stability, and he eventually became a cadet at the West Point military academy. A final falling out with John Allan during this time led Poe to neglect his duties at West Point. He was court-martialed and dismissed.

Poe turned to magazine editing and writing after West Point, which would become a lifelong passion. One friend noted that Poe's personal library was composed mostly of magazines and newspapers and only a few books.

When Poe was sober, he was a model employee. He would sit at his desk and produce reams of criticism for whatever weekly he was working for at the time, as well as short stories and poems. George Rex Graham, the owner of Graham's Magazine, remembered Poe as a "polished gentleman," always "the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful scholar, the devoted husband, frugal in his personal expenses, punctual and unwearied in his industry, and the soul of honor in all his transactions." Another editor at a magazine where Poe worked remembered him as "a fine gentleman when he was sober. He was ever kind and courtly, and at such times every one liked him. But when he was drinking he was about one of the most disagreeable men I have met."

Poe's sometimes acidic criticism could cause problems for his employers, but it also led to increased circulation. He disliked the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the moralistic Transcendentalists. "Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson," Poe wrote in one issue of Graham's, "belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatsoever—the mystics for mysticism's sake." In a review of Henry Cockton's now-forgotten novel Stanley Thorn, Poe wrote, "It not only demands no reflection, but repels it, or dissipates it—much as a silver rattle the wrath of a child."

Poe would only last a year or two at a magazine before invariably taking up drinking again—the vocational hazard of magazine men. This would lead to profuse apologies to his young wife, Virginia, and her mother, Maria Clemm, as well as friends. After Virginia died of tuberculosis and Poe was looking to marry again for financial reasons, his lifelong friend, John Mackenzie, warned his fiancée that Poe was "as unstable as water. He will spend all your money and if you really do love him he will break your heart. He cannot help it. Tis his nature."

He was no doubt melancholic. An early love interest remembered his black hair and "piercing" eyes: "He had a sad, melancholy look. He was very slender when I first knew him, but had a fine figure, an erect military carriage, and a quick step. But it was his manner that most charmed. It was elegant. When he looked at you it seemed as if he could read your very thoughts." After Virginia died, Poe was sometimes found sitting at her grave in the middle of the night "almost frozen in snow."

Kopley regularly reexamines Poe's stories and poems in light of his life and argues convincingly that his work contains many personal references. His story "The Tell-Tale Heart," for example, contains a scene that is evocative of Poe's last visit to his foster father and other references to John Allan. One of his most famous stories, "The Cask of Amontillado," contains a character that is based on the writer Thomas Dunn English, with whom Poe had a very public spat in 1846. Poe was a faithful friend but a merciless enemy.

Poe's fame was just beginning to grow when his life abruptly ended. He had returned to Richmond at the beginning of 1849 to give a series of lectures to raise money to start a magazine called The Stylus. The lectures were a success, and Poe made a trip to Norfolk to raise further funds. Poe's final days in Richmond were some of the happiest of his life. Kopley writes that Poe's foster father had rejected him, but the city of Richmond had welcomed him home as the triumphing genius he had always claimed to be: "Never taken back by John Allan, Poe was now taken back by Richmond."

He was engaged to be married to a wealthy widow and childhood sweetheart when he left Richmond on September 25 to return to New York to pick up Maria Clemm. He never arrived. Friends found him in a terrible state on October 3 in a tavern in Baltimore that served as a polling station and took him to the hospital. A bout of delirium tremens followed. He died on October 9.

Poe was wearing someone else's clothes when he was found. Joseph E. Snodgrass, who took him to the hospital, remarked that he was "bloated … unwashed … [and] unkept, his whole physique repulsive." One theory was that Poe was "cooped"—kept in a cellar and given drinks to vote at various polling stations—but this was dismissed by those who found him, and Kopley thinks it is unlikely. Poe did in Baltimore what he had done a hundred times before—drink for days on end until he was penniless, sick, and exhausted. Maria Clemm would always nurse him back to health, but he had been warned by his doctor that another spree could kill him. Unfortunately, Poe was simply unable to stop drinking once he started.

Still, few writers have accomplished as much in such a short time as Poe—and few have been as versatile. Poe excelled in poetry, criticism, and fiction. He was the author of hoaxes and plays, novels and works of both horror and crime fiction. James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic … who has written in America." He was that and more.

Edgar A. Poe: A Life
by Richard Kopley
University of Virginia Press, 704 pp., $49.95.

Micah Mattix, a professor of English at Regent University, has written for the Wall Street Journal and many other publications.

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