A STUDENT NAMED POE

THE TRUTH, THE LIE...
THE IN-BETWEEN


BY RICK BRITTON

he small circle of Greek and Latin students prepared to depart Pavilion V, the residence of Professor George Long. They had passed a pleasant, stimulating evening with the 26-year-old instructor of ancient languages, a man Jefferson had called "most amiable." As they bundled themselves into thick greatcoats and woolen scarves, a slender, wiry youth invited William Wertenbaker to his room on the West Range. Wertenbaker, a future University librarian, nodded his acceptance. It was a frigid night in December of 1826, and the two classmates bent into the wind as it howled up between the serpentine walls that lined a portion of their way. When the door to No. 13 was latched shut, Wertenbaker was surprised to discover that the hearth contained but a few smoldering embers. The young scholar, however, seemed undaunted. "[B]y the aid of some tallow candies and the fragments of a small table, which he broke up for the purpose, he soon rekindled [his fire]," Wertenbaker later remembered. They seated themselves close to the crackling and spitting blaze. Rejuvenated, the flames now lit up strange and grotesquely formed charcoal figures that slithered across the opposing wall. "On this occasion he spoke with regret of the large amount of money he had wasted and of the debts he had contracted during the session," recounted Wertenbaker. "If my memory is not at fault, he estimated his indebtedness at $2,000, and, though they were gaming debts, he was earnest and emphatic in the declaration that he was bound by honor to pay at the earliest opportunity every cent of them ... I think it probable that the night I visited him was the last he spent [at the University of Virginia]." The host? Edgar Allan Poe. And perhaps that was the last of Poe's corporeal sojourns at No. 13 "Rowdy Row," but his spirit, his writings and the stories of his 10-month stay have haunted Jefferson's Academical Village ever since.

BIRTH OF RUMOR: DEATH OF CHARACTER

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. His parents were David Poe, Jr. -- a man enamored of the stage -- and Elizabeth Arnold, a beautiful young English actress. Their life together was tragically short. David, after fathering two other children by his wife, disappeared from the scene; Elizabeth died in Richmond in 1811. Almost immediately the three Poe children were taken in by comparative strangers, Edgar moving into the home of John Allan, a wealthy partner in the Richmond-based firm of Ellis and Allan, general merchants and exporters of tobacco.

John Allan -- who gave the future writer his middle name -- promised to provide a good education for his foster son. Indeed, that intention had only the best of beginnings. Young "Master Allan" began his education in 1816 at a London boarding school kept by the Misses Dubourg in Chelsea. The following year Edgar was sent to a Manor House School overseen by the Rev. John Bransby at Stoke Newington near London. Dr. Bransby later said he "liked the boy," but that his parents had "spoilt him, and allowed him an extravagant amount of pocket-money, which enabled him to get into all manner of mischief." From 1820 to 1823, Edgar Poe studied Latin and Greek at Joseph H. Clarke's school in Richmond. These years were followed by two five-month terms under the tutelage of William Burke, and, once it was determined to send him to the University of Virginia, many months of special coaching.

The Edgar Allan Poe who entered the University in February of 1826 was, therefore, an unusually good Latin and French scholar for a lad of 17. He was extremely well-read and refined. Unfortunately, many of the other students were not.

Prior to its opening the previous year, the University's Board of Visitors had seen fit to adopt regulations considered appropriate. Minor infractions included, among other things, misbehaving in the classroom and the use of alcohol. Major offenses were things such as "dissipation" (the playing of games of chance) and disorderly or indecent conduct. Despite these rules, however, the University's early years were marred by drinking and gambling, out-and-out riots, and even assaults against professors and hotelkeepers. In April of 1826, in fact, Jefferson wrote that although the students, on the whole, were a fine body of youths, they were "much obstructed by about a dozen of vicious and worthless scape-graces whom we shall endeavor to ferret out and get rid of as soon as possible.'

Was young Poe among this party of incorrigible rascals? He was if you believe the words of his first biographer -- ironically, Edgar Allan Poe's literary executor -- the Rev. Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Griswold wrote Poe's obituary for the New York Daily Tribune and expanded on its themes for a longer memoir that accompanied his three-volume edition, The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, completed in 1850. He referred to the writer as a self-conceited person with "few or no friends" and "no moral susceptibility." According to Griswold, Poe was (in a passage Griswold lifted word for word from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's description of a fictitious character): "Irascible, envious [and possessed ofl a cold repellent cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers." At the University, Poe "led a very dissipated life," and "was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class ... [His] gambling, intemperance, and other vices, induced his expulsion."

Fortunately, Griswold was later recognized for what he truly was -- a writer full of vindictive animosity toward the poet, someone not ashamed to invent facts and even forge letters in order to create, as wrote Charles W. Kent, a "scurrilous and irresponsible indictment" of Edgar Allan Poe. But, for many years, the hateful words have stuck.

THE POET AS A STUDENT

Edgar Allan Poe matriculated at the University of Virginia on Tuesday, February 14, 1826. The institution's second session had begun 13 days earlier. On the school roster, Poe is listed as No. 136 out of a total enrollment of 177. The same document shows that he elected to attend two schools: that of ancient languages, presided over by Professor Long, and modern languages (French, German, Italian and Spanish) taught by German-born Professor George Blaettermann.

The no-small matter of University expenses created friction with Poe's foster father from the very beginning. Poe had enrolled in only two schools instead of the customary three, "The expenses of the institution at the lowest estimate were $350 per annum," wrote Edgar to John Allan after the fact in 1831. "You sent me with $110. Of this $50 were to be paid immediately for board, $60 for attendance upon 2 professors, and you even then did not miss the opportunity of abusing me because I did not attend 3 ... I had, of course, the mortification of running in debt ... against the known rules of the institution, and was immediately regarded in the light of a beggar."

Beggar or not, the fastidiously dressed Poe attracted the attention of a few of his classmates. Over 50 years later, Thomas Goode Tucker remembered that Poe "had about him the air and action of a native-born Frenchman." Poe possessed a wonderful memory, said Tucker, and therefore required but a few minutes of study in order to prepare his recitations. In stature he was short and compact, according to Tucker. Former classmate Dr. Miles George concurred, remembering Poe as short, and compactly set, but "of rather a delicate and slender mould," a young man who moved about with "ease and grace."

Ex-University student John Willis wrote that young Poe had "many noble qualities," including "more of genius, and a far greater diversity of talent, than any other whom it had been my lot to have known ... [H]is disposition was rather retiring, and he had few intimate associates." Willis also recalled the young eccentric's talent for sketching -- and that his dormitory walls were often completely covered with charcoal drawings.

Poe was also athletic. Several of his former U.Va. acquaintances recalled his penchant for hiking alone into "the chain of wild and dreary hills that lie westward and southward of Charlottesville," as Poe himself so aptly described years later in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains."

NOT THE SCOUNDREL OF RECORD

So, what of the rumors surrounding Edgar Allan Poe's private life?

Was the man fond of drink? By fable, yes, but there's more. "He certainly was not habitually intemperate," wrote Wertenbaker, "but he may occasionally have entered into a frolic." On the other hand, Tucker wrote that the young poet "was very mercurial in his disposition and exceedingly fond of peach and honey" -- an alcoholic beverage very popular at the time. Perhaps the seeming contradiction can be rectified thus: According to Tucker, Poe "would seize a full glass ... and send it home at a single gulp. This frequently used him up; but, if not, he rarely returned to the charge." After all, the 17-year-old was, wrote Kent, "a nervous, sensitive boy."

What of the charge of gambling? It is best, perhaps, to allow the accused to speak for himself. In a letter written to John Allan from West Point, Poe reminded his foster father that he had been insufficiently funded at the University. Poe had tried to borrow more, he wrote, but failing at that proposition "I became desperate, and gambled -- until I finally involved myself irretrievably." It is open to debate whether the amount was as large as Wertenbaker claimed -- $2,000, certainly a huge sum -- but, wrote Mary Newton Stanard, "Mr. Allan declined to pay these so-called 'debts of honour' and some other debts which he may have regarded as debts of extravagance." In this way, unfortunately, began the rift between Allan and Poe--one that was never reconciled.

And expulsion? The records show that Poe was a good, if not great, student. At the end of the session on December 15, Professor Long listed Poe among 19 students who "excelled in senior Latin." Professor Blaettermann noted as well that he "excelled in senior French." The faculty minutes for that year refer to many instances of student drinking and gambling. They are also "filled with trials of students," wrote Stanard, "but contain no mention of Poe, who was not included in a long list of students summoned before the local grand jury,"

So how do we best answer Griswold's triple indictment of drinking, gambling and expulsion? The first: perhaps occasionally; the second: yes, certainly; and the third: absolutely not!

Unfortunately, accurate accounts of Poe's stay at the University did not surface until the 1870s and 1880s. And, despite the efforts of Poe's friends to pull his reputation up from the gutter, many of the early impressions created by writers such as Griswold clung to the unfortunate poet like so much refuse.

TO THE RESCUE: A MAN, A COLLECTION

Enter John Henry Ingram. Born in Middlesex, England, Ingram spent much of his childhood in Stoke Newington, close by the Manor House School that "Master Allan" had attended. He was educated in private schools and later studied briefly at the City of London College. Ingram spent his professional life working as a civil servant in the London General Post Office.

But he was fascinated by Edgar Allan Poe. He recalled how, as a child, when reading one of Poe's poems he had "shuddered with intense excitement" until he "felt as if a star had burst within [his] brain." But what started as a childhood fascination grew to the point where, wrote historian John Carl Miller, "it became his obsession" -- an obsession that spanned 53 years. "He wrote two biographies, several Memoirs, more than fifty magazine articles, as well as Prefaces and introductions to writings on Poe by others, and he published and republished Poe's tales, poems, and essays in eight separate editions," wrote Miller.

He also attacked in print almost everyone else who wrote about the defamed poet. For John Henry Ingram, wrote Miller, "secretly regarded himself as the sole redeemer of Poe's besmirched personal reputations."

Naturally, a heavy dose of Ingram's venom was directed at Rufus Griswold. In the preface to his two-volume biography, published in 1880, for example, the reader can almost sense Ingram snickering when he referred to "Griswold's so-called "`Memoir of Poe.'"

"To perceive how folk [Edgar Allan Poe) scarcely knew, and probably detested," wrote Ingram, "will claim ... to have enjoyed his friendly intimacy; to have supplied him with ideas; to have suggested his themes ... is quite appalling. They [speaking of Griswold and others] misrepresent his idlest words; distort his most trivial remarks ... falsify dates, invent anecdotes; fabricate conversations, and, indeed, refrain from nothing, in order to prove their acquaintance with departed genius."

In the process of a life thus spent, Ingram collected a massive number of items pertaining to the poet -- a veritable "room-full of Poe" as he called it. In order to properly discern the writer's inner self, Ingram had solicited information -- letters and accounts -- from those who knew him. Poe's friends, sensing Ingram's fierce desire to vindicate the poet, sent him materials by the score.

The Poe-Ingram Collection housed in the Special Collections department of Alderman Library, therefore, which boasts more than 1,000 pieces, contains letters written by Poe, to Poe, about Poe, photographs, newsprint clippings, and, of course, many recollections by people such as William Wertenbaker and Dr. Miles George.

A set of letters written to Poe by Sarah Helen Richmond -- a woman who considered herself, wrote Miller, Poe's "one great love' -- is, perhaps, the collection's most revealing. "And an outstanding element of the collection is one of the original daguerreotype portraits taken of him," says Michael Plunkett, Alderman Library's Director of Special Collections, "but it is missing, it was stolen in 1973."

John Henry Ingram died in Brighton, England, in 1916. Shortly afterward, his sister, Miss Laura Ingram, created quite a literary commotion by advertising for sale her departed brother's entire Poe library. Three years later, University Librarian John S. Patton began a correspondence with Miss Ingram that led to the University's 1921 purchase of the materials for the sum of only $800. Two large, well-stuffed shipping crates, which had passed customs duty-free, consigned as "settler's effects," arrived in Charlottesville in November of that year.

U.Va. Professor of English James Southall Wilson, who taught a seminar on Poe, was given the task of sifting through the contents. "John Ingram's Poe collection," wrote Miller, "was bulky, varied, and rich."

"One can safely say," wrote Miller, "that had it not been for John Ingram's skill and energy ... we should not now have many of these unusual and dependable accounts of Poe's activities and personality."

With the benefit of Alderman Library's fabulous Poe-Ingram Collection, researchers and writers can attempt to unravel for themselves the brilliance of the man C. Chauncey Burr called "the greatest artist among modern authors."