Episode Eighty Eight - This SOUNDS like Poe’s School?
Episode Eighty Eight - This SOUNDS like Poe’s School?
00:11 Introduction
Welcome to Celebrate Poe. This is episode Eighty Eight - This SOUNDS like Poe’s School? Today’s episode looks at a passage from Poe’s story, William Wilson, that may - or may not - be about the boarding school that Edgar Poe attended about 5 miles outside of London at Stoke Newington.
First I feel I need to make a comment concerning the way that this episode is dealing with Poe’s story “William Wilson.” The story itself would take almost 2 hours to read aloud, and I really don’t think it is one of Poe’s best works - I know there are people that might disagree with me - but I listened to the ghost of Mr. Poe reading The Man of the Crowd in the previous episode - and realized the sound was bad - I need to do some serious audio work with the sound of the ghost of Mr. Poe - and I DEFINITELY WILL within the next few weeks before Mr. Poe makes another appearance.
The story, William Wilson, was published about 10 years before Poe’s death - so I know Celebrate Poe will eventually deal with Willian Wilson on down the road. And interestingly enough, like The Pit and the Pendulum, William Wilson was published first in a publication called The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present. Though it doesn’t really strike me as a Christmas story.
Anyway, in this episode, I want to concentrate on the earlier sections of the story - especially those that may have been written about Stoke Newington.
While Poe often writes sections that are open to a great deal of interpretation, I think the story begins with the narrator of William Wilson speaking from his deathbed
The story begins with:
LET me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real name. This has been already too much an object for the scorn — for the horror of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned! — to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? — and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch — these later years — took unto themselves a sudden elevation, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. What chance — what one event brought this evil thing to pass, oh, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy — I had nearly said for the pity — of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me the details I am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow — what they cannot refrain from allowing And is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all visions.
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.
The narrator is definitely in a bad way - but now shifts to his memories of his days at a boarding school.
My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England -- where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.
A brief aside here - Technically speaking, the steeple of the church connected with Stoke Newington was NOT built until 1829 - years after Poe left the school.
Now, back to the story - It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am — misery, alas! only too real — I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.
The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week — once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighboring fields — and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast, — could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!
Basically Poe is saying, “I can’t believe this religious man is so cruel.”
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery — a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor any thing similar within it.
But the house! — how quaint an old building was this! — to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings — to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable — inconceivable — and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars.
The school-room was the largest in the house — I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, “during hours,” of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby.
Note here - when Poe attended Stoke Newington, the principal WAS named Bransby - although Bransdid not have the title of Dr.
It was a solid structure, with massy door. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the “classical” usher, one of the “English and mathematical.” Interspersed about the room, crossing and re-crossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Poe is pretty much on target with his descriptions here.
Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is gray shadow — a weak and irregular remembrance — an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable. Yet in fact — in the fact of the world's view — how little was there to remember! The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and perambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; — these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring.
Poe is doing a very good job describing the busy world of boarding schools in England.
Now Poe never specifically refers to the school as Stoke Newington - but he seldom confined the majority of his stories to a specific physical location. True - he does use the name Rev. Bransby - and the descriptions of the town ring true for most part.
While some scholars might disagree with me, I think it is fair to say that there is no definite proof that William Wilson was written about Stoke Newington - but Poe’s memories of the boarding school definitely influenced the initial part of the story.
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.
You know, now that the weather (at least here in Indianapolis) is a lot colder I have far more time to spend inside, and am working a lot more on Celebrate Poe. For example, this month there will be 13 more episodes - many of then tied in with the holiday season. Episode 89 will deal with An Unpardonable Crime (a book known in England as The American Boy) by Andrew Taylor an excellent writer of historical fiction. The title of the book - unpardonable crime - is taken from William Wilson - I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. Now Two days later, on December 21, 2021 episode 90 of this podcaST will deal with one of Poe’s literary competitors, Washington Irving. This episode will have a brief introduction to Washington Irving, his importance, and the first part of his classic work - Old Christmas. Written 30 years before Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol - Irving’s Old Christmas deals with similar subject matter, and is a classic of Christmas literature. The next day Episode 91 will deal with the next part of Old Christmas - The Stage Coach. And on the day of Christmas Eve, the episode will deal with - you guessed it - Christmas Eve. This podcast will release Irving’s Christmas Day ON Christmas Day. And since I like to keep episodes around 30 minutes or less, I will release the final section of Old Christmas - The Christmas Dinner a few minutes later by iteself. Then on the day after Christmas, the podcast episode is The Festival by H.P. Lovecraft. It would hardly be accurate to call The Festival a Christmas story in the traditional sense - it is FAR too dark - but, as you probably know, Lovecraft was greatly influenced by Poe, and The Festival is a really cool story.
And starting on Monday 27, I am going to begin a 5 part recap series that looks back at the episodes so far.
You see, when I started this podcast, I did a list in chronological order of what to cover in Poe’s life. With the mass of information available about Poe, if you don’t have a written and thought out pIan, then you bascially wander around aimlessly and end up no where.
Just the outline was about 50 pages, and I quickly found that as I did research, I would run into subjects that were interesing that were fascinating and I couldn’t leave out. For example, in one chronological listing, I saw the eruption of Tambora as an event that took place during Poe’s life. Well, I had never heard of Mount Tambora in my life, and was amazed at the massive effect that the eruption had on the world - the explosion took place in Indonesia, and actually affected life in England and Virginia. And you can’t talk about Mount Tambora without talking about how the volcano’s effects led to a competition between a group of Romantic writers. This contest led to Frankenstein and the first modern day vampire story. And that led to the events and dynamics surrounding the series of Frankenstein movies, as well as Dracula.
Meanwhile - to quote the great comedian Stephen Colbert - meanwhile, I will start on Monday 27 with a recap series covering roughly 20 episodes of Celebrate Poe per episode. I will talk about format of this podcast, a bit about its background, some of the elements of Poe’s early life, and the introduction, and why I feel qualified to do this podcast.
There will also be episodes every day during that week after Christmas on Tuesday - Friday - each dealing with roughly 20 podcasts each day. At that rate, it should take 5 episodes in the series until Celebrate Poe reaches 100 episodes - which should happen on December 31. Hope this all becomes a lot clearer as time goes by.
And one last thing - instead of aiming for 12:00 midnight as a release time for episodes, I am releasing the rest of the episodes this month starting at 8:00 am in the morning. Not that I will be up at 8:00 - that’s asking too much - but I am doing all these episodes in advance. Then I can upload a podcast episode and set a time for that episode to be released. For example, the episode on Christmas Eve should be available on the morning of Christmas eve.
Sources for this episode include Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night. by John Tresch, Poe and Place by Phillip Edward Phillips, and the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Alive Mabbott.
Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.