Poe Read Free Page B

among other orthodox subjects, and took dancing lessons. At a later date Bransby recalled his erstwhile pupil as “a quick and clever boy and would have been a very good boy if he had not been spoilt by his parents; but they spoilt him, and allowed him an extravagant amount of pocket money, which enabled him to get into all manner of mischief…” On another occasion he described the boy as “intelligent, wayward and wilful.” These were all characteristics that would also be applied to Poe in later life. It was no doubt Fanny, rather than John, who pampered the child; the pocket money may have been “extravagant,” however, by English rather than American standards.
    Poe left his own account of the school, in heightened form, in “William Wilson,” where he describes it as a ponderous and roomy establishment with innumerable floors and chambers and “no end to its windings.” Poe was always acutely sensitive to buildings, and this “quaint” and “Gothic” structure gave him cause for much imaginative contemplation. He recalled the “dusky atmosphere” ofthis “misty-looking village,” too, so Stoke Newington helped to inspire his first reveries. They were not, however, necessarily pleasant ones. He told a friend, in later years, that his school days in England had been “sad, lonely and unhappy.”
    His unhappiness was fully shared by Frances Allan. She was never able to reconcile herself to life in London, and as a consequence suffered from a number of unspecified ailments in the five years of residence. John Allan described “Frances complaining as usual” and, at later date, “complaining a good deal;” a female relative wrote that she is “very Weak—and is afraid she will feel much too fatigued to write.” She went down to Cheltenham to sample the waters, but nothing could alleviate her distress. Her husband was of more sanguine temperament. In the autumn of 1818 John Allan reported that “Edgar is growing wonderfully and enjoys a reputation as both able and willing to receive instruction.” A year later he remarks that Poe “is a very fine Boy and a good scholar.”
    His optimism did not perhaps extend to his own affairs, since in 1819 a sudden collapse in the price of tobacco on the London market threatened his business with ruin. His debts grew ever larger, and he determined to give up the mercantile life in order to become a farmer or planter. He prepared to leave England, and to return with his family to his adopted country. So, on 16 June 1820, they set sail from Liverpool on the
Martha.
They docked in New York almost six weeks later, and then took the steamboat to Richmond.
    • • •
    In this period Richmond was a slow-moving, sleepy, sultry place with a population of 10,000. It was in large part an industrial city, but half of its population were slaves. The American South was then a land of servitude, with all the torpor and casual violence associated with that condition. The city was built on eight green hills overlooking the James River, the houses clustered on the sides of the hills; the river was a consolation in what was often an oppressive climate, making its way past small islands and over broken boulders. The landscape at the height of summer, when the Poes returned, was decorated with the peach tree and the magnolia. There were many fine and well-built houses along the main streets of the town, with large gardens filled with roses and linden trees, myrtle and honeysuckle. There was a legislature, and a splendid public library; there were assembly rooms and white wooden churches. But, close to them, were the crumbling tenements and sheds where some of the black population lived.
    The streets were filled with goats, and pigs, and horses. There were still cows grazing in Capitol Square as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. There were stage coaches, and carriages, with their black footmen and coachmen. The larger plantation houses were very spacious, with cool