Poe Is Overwhelmed by London

This podcast returns to the life of Poe with the Allans.  In this episode, the Allans go to the United Kingdom (Scotland, Ireland, and especially England) for Mr. Allan's business. At one time, Poe lives just a few minutes from the British Museum!

Then Mr. Poe and Mr. Bartley begin a discussion of Mr. Poe's hesitancy to write about social issues and not have many of his works take place in specific geographical locations.  London, however, proves to be a bit of a exception!

https://archive.org/details/TheLovesOfEdgarAllanPoe

Why did Poe live in England for 5 years?
Did Poe live near the British Museum?
How big was London during Poe’s lifetime?
What are some works by Poe that were set in London?
Was King Pest set in London?
Was The Tell-Tale Heart set in London?
What boarding school has a connection to Stoke Newington?

00:00 Intro and URL note
02:04 Background (review of early life)
04:10 Embargo is lifted and Allans journey abroad
09:54 Life in London
12:48 Poe and British Museum
18:16 Poe’s “non-interest” in social issues and writing works with geographical locations
20:15 Cabs
22:24 Peter Snook
25:17 Other London works set in London
26:42 Future episodes
28:36 Sources
30:17 Outro

Transcript

Link to The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - 67 minutes
https://archive.org/details/TheLovesOfEdgarAllanPoe

00:00 Intro and URL note

Welcome to Celebrate Poe. This is episode Eighty Six - Poe Is Overwhelmed by London. The opening melody for this episode is said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song - Come Rest in This Bosom.  Today’s  podcast episode begins a look at Poe’s days in of London.

Now before I start, I want to say something about The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe from the last episode that was a total surprise to me.  I mentioned that I was going to include a link to the movie The Loves of Edgar Poe in the show notes and transcript for the last episode - The Best Poe Movie Ever (Kinda) and I did.  What I did not know for sure was that on some podcast catchers - I hesitate to say all, so don’t hold me to this if you don’t see a link  to the movie - but I know that on the Apple Podcast app on the iphone, the show notes show up as well as the link to the movie.  And it is a working link - it goes to the movie itself on the web.

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is from 1942, and doesn’t have the clearest resolution on a computer - but the version you would see on a mobile phone is far clearer because of the smaller screen - actually one of the few times when it is a real advantage to watching a movie on a cell phone versus a computer.  After all, this is the intimate story of The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - it is NOT Dune or The Avengers with sprawling special effects and awesome spectacle.

02:04 Background (review of early life)

This year Celebrate Poe has largely taken a detour onto Tambora, the competition that eventually resulted in Frankenstein and a vampire story, and the Romantic writers, but now I want to return to a deep dive into the life of Edgar Allan Poe - and not just some of the influences on his works.
It would be great to talk with him. I sure do wish Mr. Poe was here.

Ghost Enters

Some new music. Glad that you are here Mr. Poe.  Just the person I was hoping for. Perhaps you could get us up to speed.

Yes, Mr. Bartley - As you may remember, my father had deserted the family, and my dear mother passed away, so the Poe children were - as you say - split up and sent to live with other families.  Whereas my brother William Henry Leonard Poe went to live with a family in Baltimore, my younger sister Rosalie Poe went to live with the MacKenzies in Richmond.
I was taken in by John Allan and his wife.

As I understand it, John Allan was a relatively wealthy merchant.

Yes, one might articulate that opinion. And while the Allans never formally adopted me, they gave me the name Edgar Allan Poe.  I was baptized in the Episcopal Church.

Yes, Mr. Poe - I would say that is a very good summation of the facts of your early life.  For a deep dive into the dynamics of the many incidents that made up your early development and personality, I suggest that the listener check out the earlier episodes of this podcast.

Yes, that would be a capital idea. 

As I understand it, the War of 1812 - also known as the “Second War for Independence,”ended with a peace treaty negotiated by a delegation that included John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, and Henry Clay. The country ended the war with an increased sense of national identity.  This included support for a standing army, and a huge increase in the navy. The war also fueled the political career of Andrew Jackson, the victor of the Battle of New Orleans.

04:10 Embargo is lifted and Allans journey abroad

Yes, Mr. Bartley, and I later learned that with the embargo lifted, John Allan was able to more easily sell his stores of tobacco.  He was now able to envision having new buyers for all his tobacco in Scotland and England.  In June 1815, John Allan, his wife Francis, his wife’s sister, and myself began the preparations for a voyage across the Atlantic.  We packed up our necessities and sold a considerable amount of our belongings.  The Allans also sold one of their slaves, Scipio, and hired the others out.

Mr. Poe - can you tell us about your journey.

Well - really that is not a great deal of narrative to relate.  Of course it took us several days to go by coach to Norfolk, Virginia, and from Norfolk we set sail on the Lothair to New York.  Then from New York, we headed to Liverpool.  The family’s eventual destination was the metropolis of London, England, but first we visited Scotland.  I find it most interesting that we disembarked on July 29, 1815, and the following day, John Allan wrote in a letter “I am now on English ground after an absence of more than 20 years. After a passage of 34 days all well — Frances and Nancy verry sick but are now perfectly Hearty. Edgar was a little sick but soon recovered.”

So you must have been in Scotland during this time?

Yes, and John Allan received a letter sent from Richmond from his wealthy uncle William Galt on August 25, 1815.  In the correspondence, Mr. Galt wrote his nephew:

I hope the Health of Mrs. Allan is very much improved by your passage and she has got quite strong and hearty & that I shall soon hear from you to that effect. I hope the other Branches of your family are well & in good health also. I expect Edgar was like Boys generally highly pleased with being at sea, and that it would add to his health very much. I hope Miss Nancey Valentine is in her usual good Health she was so Healthy - there was but little room for improvement. I have miss’d you all very much  more than I thought I would have done — Since you left this nothing very particular has turn’d up to me nor unto your House of Ellis & Allan that I know of

In Kilmarnock Scotland  we visited John Allan’s younger sister and his beautiful hometown. We also visited Irvine.  Now one must remember that Robert Burns had lived in Irvine just a few years before I arrived, and the influence of Robert Burns was still felt among the locals.

Yes, I remember a brief segment in the movie that the last episode dealt with - The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - where the actor playing the young Poe is talking to the actor playing John Allan.  Poe mentions how he about is influenced by Lord Byron from England.  John Allan suggests that it would be better if Edgar were interested in the poetry of Bobbie Burns.

Yes, John Allan definitely believed in what he felt were Scottish values - especially his obsession with money.

Certainly you must have enjoyed the landscapes that you saw in Scotland -
landscapes that John Allan’s travels allowed you to see.

Yes - the landscapes were like a scene from another world - out of place and out of time.  I saw plunging cliffs, verdant hills and glens, and vivid skies - the kind of scenery that I later read about in Walter Scott’s classic novels.  We traveled though Edinburg, a teeming modern city built around a distinct medieval town. This was home to scientific endeavors, sold publishing industries, and deep philosophy.

It seems that Edinburg made quite an impression on you.

09:54 Life in London

The city definitely had that effect, but its impressions were nothing comparied to the glories of London.  In fact one of my Richmond playmates was to write “Give my love to Edgar and tell him I want to see him very much. . . . I expect Edgar does not know what to make of such a large City as London.”

Mr. Poe - do try to temper your excitement. But I do feel the areas you saw provided an atmosphere where your imagination could grow as you were influenced by sights and sounds that remained with you on some level the rest of your earthly life.

London was unlike any city I had ever seen before.  We eventually found a flat in Bloomsbury at 47 Southampton Row.  My family stayed there for two years but moved in 1817 to a nearby house at 39 Southampton Row, where the Allans resided until returning to the United States.
Oh, Mr. Allan hoped to earn money from the sale of Virginia tobacco in England - and he did - for a while.  His shop was tucked inside the ancient London Wall in a commercial district near the old guild halls.  His firm had previously been known as Ellis and Allan in Richmond, and now he did business in London as Allan and Ellis.
John Allan was not a man who concentrated on only one enterprise. But  one of his most successful ventures was with tobacco.  Some have said that his wealth allowed him to occasionally spoil me with his wealth.

Let’s backtrack a little here - After the Allans arrived in London, what did they do during that time?

One might currently refer to our activities as urban sightseeing—we would visit places like St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London; London Bridge; Piccadilly, and The Mall; we would go to places like St. James’s Palace or the Queen’s Palace as well as Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hall.

From what I understand, Richmond at that time had less than 10,000 inhabitants - London was a sprawling city with more than 1 million people - making it the greatest metropolis in the Western world.  I can imagine that as a young boy you must have been especially excited to explore London.

12:48 Poe and British Museum

Oh yes, I actually lived around the corner from the British Museum.

Basically in your neighborhood.

Yes. The museum had only been open for about 50 years, did not charge admisssion.  The British Museum had reached a stage where it was open to the public - not just the nobility. You see, nothing exactly like the British Museum had ever been built before.  Many of the artifacts were acquired from private collections owned by wealthy benefactors.

I would imagine that artifacts might have been easier to acquire then than they would be today.  Currently museums seem to have more protections for the antiquities themselves, and respecting the countries where those works of art originated - for example there would be less possibility of display an Egyptian mummy in a European country. Instead that mummy  would be more apt to be displayed in its native country - in this case,  Egypt.

Anway, when I was a young boy, the British Museum had recieved the Rosetta Stone just a few years before I saw the antiquity. It seemed there were always a mob of visitors standing in line to see the stone up close.

Sort of like the crowd that is always present in the Louvre Museum in Paris eager to see the Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting - La Giaconda or the Mona Lisa - which really is not that big a painting in size.

That is a most interesting comparison.  Trite in scope - but interesting, nevertheless.

And I know that your descendant, Dr. Harry Lee Poe has written for the Baltimore Post Examine that, The recently acquired Rosetta Stone may have sparked your lifelong interest in cryptography which played the central role in The Gold-Bug - one of the most popular works written during your eathly life. The collection of mummies may have been the origin of your A Few Words with a Mummy.

The British Museum had a magnificent collection of glorious and grand statues from the Parthenon.  Though the museum had a wonderful collection of treasures from all over the world, Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts seemed to be the museum’s main contents.

Perhaps that is where you got your inspiration for the “glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome”

You must be referring to my poem “To Helen”

Helen, thy beauty is to me
   Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
   The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
   To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
   Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
   To the glory that was Greece,      
   And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
   How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
   Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
   Are Holy-Land!

One must remember that the United States was merely forty years old, and the British Museum was a treasure of art, paintings, and even mummies that were a testimony to ancient times.  Have I mentioned that the museum was located just a few minutes away from my home.

Yes, and you must have been incredibly excited by being so near such a massive collection.

Such a declaration has to be an understatement because, this had to be one of the most wonderful periods of my life.  I had never seen anything like the wonders of London and  the British Museum before.  And even when my family returned to Richmond, I read British poetry and fiction to keep alive my thoughts of England. This is especially true of my fascination with the works of Lord Byron.

Sort of like being so excited today by a Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings movie that you buy a book or souvenir to keep your fond memories of those momentous movies alive.

Mr. Bartley, you never cease to amaze me with your - shall we say - innane comparisons.

I’ll ignore that statement and give it all the attention it deserves.

18:16 Poe’s “non-interest” in social issues and writing works with geographical locations

Now Mr. Poe - I must take an aside here that I hope you will understand.
While you lived in such relatively large American cities as Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, London was by far the largest.
But the majority of your works show a distinct lack of interest in specific locations.  Oh, you did write about places with a geographical location in your travel works - such as England’s Stonehenge and Harper’s Ferry in the western part of Virginia.  But it seems that you preferred to write stories that did not have definite settings - more of a psychological location - whatever that is.

You mean “out of space, out of time.”

I couldn’t have said it better - Tell me, who wrote that, and when?

Mr. Bartley MOI wrote the words  “out of space, out of time.” in 1844.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that you were not as interested in politics and social issues around you as most writers.  For example, with slaves being sold a few blocks from your office in the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, you wrote very little about the evils of slavery.

Mr. Bartley, I was forced to devote my efforts to just ekeing out a living - keeping my family healthy and warm.  And I think it would be appropriate to discuss the issue of racial relations in greater depth later.  But first, I would like to look at how I set several of my works in London.

That’s a clever way to change the subject.

20:15 Cabs

In 1943 I wrote a short piece called Cabs for Alexander’s Weekly Messenger:  CABS. These anomalous vehicles, of which we Americans know so little by personal inspection, and so much through the accounts of the travelled, and the pages of the novelist, are about to be introduced among us “as a regular thing.” In New-York they are already gaining ground, and going over it. The cab proper, as used in London, has very little affinity with any thing else in nature. It resembles, in some respect, the old-fashioned sedan chair, and carries two inside passengers, who sit with the coachman at top. The bottom nearly touches the pavement, and the entire vehicle has an outré appearance. Those in New York at present, are of a bright chocolate color, and look very stylish. Their charge is twenty five cents for any distance under two miles. The cab introduction will bring about among us a peculiar race of people — the cabmen. These creatures bear a droll kind of resemblance to the human species — but their faces are all fashioned of brass, and they carry both their brains and their souls in their pockets.

I like that last line - I know quite a few people who carry both their brains and their souls in their pockets. And yes, in that short piece you do mention New York AND London.

Note that in London, the Allans lived at 39 Southampton Row, Russell Square.

That is really a posh neighborhood.

I used that address in my humourous piece Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling

22:24 Peter Snook

I also wrote a brief piece dealing with British and American journalism called Peter Snook. Several of the characters are DEFINITELY British - for example, in this section, Mr. Snook has gone to Mr. Bluff at the local bank to request permission to withdraw a hundred pounds:

“ ‘Humph,’ said Mr. Bluff, ‘money is very scarce; but — Bless me! — yes — it's he! Excuse me a minute, Mr. Snook, there's a gentleman at the front counter whom I want particularly to speak to — I’ll be back with you directly.” As he uttered these words, he rushed out, and, in passing one of the clerks on his way forward, he whispered, “Tell Scribe to look at Snook's account, and let me know directly.” He, then, went to the front counter, where several people were waiting to pay and receive money. “Fine weather this, Mr. Butt. What! you’re not out of town like the rest of them?”

“No,” replied Mr. Butt, who kept a thriving gin-shop, “no, I sticks to my business — make hay while the sun shines — that's my maxim. Wife up at night — I up early in the morning.”

The banker chatted and listened with great apparent interest, till the closing of a huge book on which he kept his eye, told him that his whispered order had been attended to. He then took a gracious leave of Mr. Butt, and returned back to the counting-house with a slip of paper, adroitly put in his hand while passing, on which was written, “Peter Snook, Linen Draper, Bishopgate Street — old account — increasing gradually — balance: £153 15s. 6d. — very regular.” “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Snook,” said he, “but we must catch people when we can. Well, what is it you were saying you wanted us to do?”

“I should like to be able to overdraw just for a few days,” replied Peter.

“How much?”

“A hundred.”

“Won’t fifty do?”

“No, not quite, sir.”

“Well, you’re an honest fellow, and don’t come bothering us often; so, I suppose we must not be too particular with you for this once.”

That sounds like something from Dickens.

25:17 Other London works set in London

And I wrote a most interesting story in 1835 for the Southern Literary Messenger called King the Pest the First. 

I am surprised Mr. Poe that you set so many of your works in London.

King Pest the First deals with the spread of a plague, as well as a revolt against oppression.

What follows is the brief opening paragraph:

About twelve o’clock, one sultry night, in the month of August, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the “Free and Easy,” a trading schooner plying between between the rivers Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London

Mr. Poe, well - when you look at it that way -  you did mention London -
And I wrote what you might call a romantic comedy called  A Succession of Sundays or Three Sundays in a Week.  The concluding joke of the story deals with the London sun.

Mr. Poe, we are running out of time, but you have convinced me that you did set several of your works in London.

Oh, I have not mentioned The Man of the Crowd.

26:42 Future episodes 

No, I think that The Man of the Crowd is one of your best stories - and I am going to devote the entire next episode to that work.

And for the episode after that, I am going to devote one - maybe two - podcast episode s to your story William Wilson because of its connections to the boarding school you attended near London - Stoke Newington.

Technically, Mr. Bartley William Wilson is felt by some scholars to possibly reflect my experiences at Stoke Newington, but I never specifically mention the school by name.

Thank you, Mr. Poe - and in the next few weeks this podcast will certainly delve into your experiences at Stoke Newington, as well as William Wilson.

Thank you, Mr. Bartley - I do hope that at least by the end of this calendar year, the narrative of my earthly life will return to the United States on this podcast.

GHOSTLY EXIT

You know, I was kinda concerned there. I could see Mr. Poe did not seem very comfortable discussing slavery, and I will respect that - for now.
But racial issues cannot be ignored.

Anyway, join this podcast while it examines The Man of the Crowd - one of Poe’s creepiest stories.  Celebrate Poe will try to explain how the story is far more than it might seem at first - or even second - glance.

28:36 Sources

Sources for this episode include The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by James Albert Harrison, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson, “Edgar Allan Poe:London’s claim on Baltimore’s greatest poet,” by Harry Lee Poe from the Baltimore Post Examiner, Edgar Allan Poe: A Life From Beginning to End (Biographies of American Authors,) Evermore by Dr. Harry Lee Poe: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night by John Tresch, Poe and Place by Phillip Edward Phillips, Poe in His Own Time by Benjamin F. Fisher, and The Story of the British Museum by Marjorie Caygill, and The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe by Scott Peoples.

And why not visit my podcast web site at celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - click on the episode you want to learn more about to see its show notes and a transcript. And just for the heck of it, I am going to include a link to the movie The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe again at the tops of the show notes and transcript for this episode - the movie doesn’t cover all of Poe’s life in depth - not with just 67 minutes - but I think it is a good introduction.

30:17 Outro

Congrats for making it this far, as we take a deep dive into the life, works, and influences of America’s Shakespeare.

As usual, this podcast began and ends with the melody of Come Rest in This Bosom - said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.