The Man Who Called Himself Poe Read online

  T H E M A N W H O C A L L E D H I M S E L F P O E

  THE MAN

  WHO CALLED

  HIMSELF POE

  Edited by Sam Moskowitz

  Doubleday 6 ׳ Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 291

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thomas Ollive Mabbott, in The Readers Encyclopedia of American Lit-

  erature, by Max J. Herzberg. Copyright © 1962 by Thomas Y. Crowell Com-

  pany, New York, publishers.

  In W hich an Author and His Character Are W ell Met, Copyright 1928 by

  Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., for Seaports in the Moon by Vincent

  Starrett. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  W hen It Was Moonlight by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright 1940 by

  Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Unknown, February 1940. Reprinted

  by permission of the copyright owner, The Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

  The Man Who Collected Poe by Robert Bloch. Copyright 19 5 1 by Pop-

  ular Publications, Inc., for Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 19 5 1. Re-

  printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Harry Altshuler.

  The Man Who Thought He Was Poe by Michael Avallone, Tales of the

  Frightened, August 1957. Copyright 19 57 by Republic Features Syndicate,

  Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Dark Brotherhood by H. P. Lovecraft and August W. Derleth. Copy-

  right 1966 by August Derleth for The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces

  by H. P. Lovecraft 0 ־ Divers Hands, Arkham House, Suak City, Wisconsin.

  Reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

  Manuscript Found in a Drawer by Charles Norman. Copyright 1968 by

  Charles Norman.

  Castaway by Edmond Hamilton. Copyright 1968 by Edmond Hamilton.

  Published by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Mere-

  dith Literary Agency, Inc.

  The Lighthouse by Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Bloch. Copyright 19 5 2

  by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. for Fantastic, January-February 19 53. Re-

  printed by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Harry Altshuler.

  Edgar Allan Poe by Adolphe de Castro, published in the M ay 19 3 7 W eird

  Tales magazine. Copyright © 19 3 7 by the Popular Fiction Company. Re-

  printed by permission of the copyright owners.

  Providence: Two Gentlemen Meet at Midnight by August W. Der-

  leth. Published in The Arkham Sampler, Autumn 1948. Copyright 1948 by

  August Derleth. Reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

  Baltimore, October 3rd by Robert A. W. Lowndes. Copyright 1968 by

  Robert A. W. Lowndes.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 69-20079

  Copyright © 1969 by Sam Moskowitz

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  To Madeline Haycock

  Who has always possessed a real interest

  in Edgar Allan Poe

  the man and his works

  Contents

  Introduction

  By Sam Moskowitz

  ix

  E d gar Allan Poe: A By Thomas Ollive Mob-

  Biography in Brief

  bott

  1

  Fiction About Poe

  The Valley of Unrest

  By Douglass Sherley

  17

  My Adventure with Ed- By Julian Hawthorne

  gar Allan Poe

  54

  In Which an Author and By Vincent Starrett

  His Character Are

  Well Met

  67

  When It Was Moonlight

  By Manly Wade Well־

  man

  86

  The Man Who Collected By Robert Bloch

  Poe

  104

  The Man Who Thought By Michael Avallone

  He Was Poe

  123

  Manuscript Found in a By Charles Norman

  Drawer

  139

  The Dark Brotherhood

  By H. P. Lovecraft and

  August W. Derleth

  146

  Castaway

  By Edmond Hamilton

  177

  v iii

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  Fiction by Poe (?)

  The Lighthouse

  By Edgar Allan Poe and

  Robert Bloch

  189

  The Atlantis

  By Peter Prospero,

  L.L.D.; M.A.; P.S.

  207

  Poetry About Poe Cub

  minating in a Meeting

  between H. P. Love-

  craft and Edgar Allan

  Poe

  Edgar Allan Poe

  By Adolphe de Castro

  235

  St John’s Churchyard

  By R. H. Barlow

  236

  In a Sequestered Church- By H. P. Love craft

  yard Where Once Poe

  Walked

  237

  Providence: Two Gentle- By August W. Derleth

  men Meet at Midnight

  238

  Untitled Valentine Poem By Virginia Poe

  to Edgar Allan Poe

  from His Wife, 1846

  240

  Baltimore, October 3rd

  By

  Robert

  A.

  W.

  Lowndes

  243

  Introduction

  By Sam Moskowitz

  If the life of any American author can be said to be making

  transition from fact to folklore, it is that of Edgar Allan Po<

  He stands unique among American authors, a strange an

  tragic figure, a victim of his times and of his temperamen

  striking chords of originality that marked him a multifac

  eted literary genius. He is revered by devotees of the d<

  tective and mystery story as the true father of the genr<

  He flawlessly designed the basic principles of the moder

  science fiction story, which through Jules Verne create

  the field as we know it today. He presaged the effectivenei

  of the psychological in tales of terror.

  In poetry, he had an absolute pitch for the cadence c

  words, supreme and unsurpassed in the art. Quite pract

  cally, he was the first important literary critic on the Amer

  can scene, and as an editor, except for his own poorl

  financed venture, he was dramatically effective.

  He appeals to a wide range of readers, many of whoi

  evince a considerable interest in his background, philosophy

  and times. The result has been a substantial number (

  biographies and literary critiques that reflect considerab]

  research and information.

  First editions of some of his books command among tl

  highest prices for works produced upon American presse

  His original letters and manuscripts are sought after t

  X

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  wealthy men and well-financed institutions, the only ones

  who can afford them.

  As a result, much is known about the life of the man and a

  substantial amount of what is known has received wide-

  spread circulation not only among the literary but also

  among the general public.

  At least one biography, substantially
buttressed with orig-

  inal scholarship, was a best seller— Israfel by Hervey Allen

  (19 2 4 )—and other scholars have never forgiven him his

  success. The biography generally acknowledged to be the

  most satisfactory, Arthur Hobson Quinn's Edgar Allan Poe,

  has gone into six printings since its publication in 1941. The

  foregoing, and the considerable number of other biogra-

  phies, have contributed to building the Poe mystique.

  Literary critics and historians referring to the ‘ mystery״

  of Edgar Allan Poe the man infuriated Arthur Hobson

  Quinn, who though he was probably that author's leading

  biographer, was also his apologist.

  “Most of the problems have arisen from the deliberate

  perversion of facts by his biographers, beginning with him-

  self, or by the invention of theories concerning his nature

  which reveal not his impotency but that of his critics,"

  Quinn stormed in his American Fiction (1936). “There is

  no mystery about the real Poe, the hard working man of

  letters, proud as a demon, yet, in order to make a living,

  descending to many of the tricks he despised."

  He was railing against such critics and literary historians

  as Fred Lewis Pattee, who in The First Century of American

  Literature, 1770-1870 (19 35), after conceding Poe no

  virtue but “ genius," then justifies his undiminished literary

  reputation across the generations by concluding: “To read

  him with fullest effect, however, one must be conscious at

  every moment of Edgar Allan Poe. He has been kept alive

  these two generations or three not because of his work but

  because of himself. And the mystery has become a myth, the

  shadow of which lengthens with the years."

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  XÍ

  It would seem that Pattees logic had flip-flopped. He

  was correct when he stated that a delicious note of mystery

  increasingly surrounded the name of Edgar Allan Poe. He

  was wrong when he attributed the longevity of the works

  to the interest in the man. It is only because the stories and

  poems are unlike any other in literature; because they are

  cast in formats superlative to any of their predecessors;

  because they deal with subject matter remarkable in origi-

  nality and bizarreness; because they are written in rhythms

  and arrangements flashed through with genius; that the

  public is interested in the man.

  How did he come to create masterpieces which stand so

  uniquely alone? What was he prevented from writing and

  what did he plan to do had he lived?

  Speculation on the life of Poe is impelled by the same

  unbridled curiosity that causes people to read science fie-

  tion. Up until the dawn of the space age, astronomy had

  revealed to mankind that the sky was filled with myriad

  worlds, and concerning some of them it uncovered tanta-

  lizing hints and absorbing mysteries. To the truly imagina-

  tive the point where astronomical knowledge ended was

  one of maddening frustration. Beyond this point writers of

  science fiction were called upon to astound the reader with

  intriguing speculations and to parade the planets like fashion

  models through the pages of pulp magazines, clad in the

  garments of the firmament, as a palliative for a curiosity

  that had grown to the proportions of lust.

  The cult that has formed with fascination around the

  unelaborated inferences and minutia of Sherlock Holmes

  bears close resemblance to the attitudes of the more rabid

  science fiction readers. What started out as a “don’t take

  yourself so serious” joke from friend to friend when Robert

  Barr, writing under the name of Luke Sharp, published The

  Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs in the April 1892 issue of

  The Idler has achieved the proportions of a separate

  literary genre. The field of Sherlock Holmes research, pas­

  XÜ

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  tiche writing, and errata has developed lead writers, second

  stringers, and hacks. Pieces concerning “the sacred writings”

  appear in leading national publications; specialized peri-

  odicals are issued by its devotees, and not a year passes

  when there are not at least a couple of hard covers adding

  to the legend.

  If you want a Who's Who of all characters in Sherlock

  Holmes stories, a plot outline of each of the stories, a gen-

  erous selection of quotations concerning the Great De-

  tective, a dossier on Holmes' biographer Watson and a brief

  one on A. Conan Doyle, read The Sherlock Holmes Com־

  panion by Michael and Mollie Hardwick (John Murray,

  1962). Lest there is any doubt concerning the authenticity

  of the locale of the Sherlock Holmes stories, they will be

  mitigated by In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes by

  Michael Harrison (Cassell & Company, 1958), which sub-

  stantiates them all thoroughly. If a lingering question still

  remains that Sherlock Holmes was anything but a real

  person, it will be eliminated by William S. Baring-Gould's

  Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (Clarkson N. Potter,

  1962), which fills in all the gaps in Holmes' “life” and joins

  together his cases in an incredibly believable scholarly and

  literary achievement. The foregoing are but a sample se-

  lection of an entire literature on the subject of Sherlock

  Holmes.

  As can be seen, the efforts of the Baker Street Irregulars

  has been dedicated to turning a fictional character into a

  real person. Only one readership phenomenon in literary

  history can be compared to it and that is the attempts of the

  admirers of Edgar Allan Poe to turn his fife into fiction!

  The more people read Poe, the more absorbed they be-

  come in the man himself. Few fives are as thoroughly docu-

  mented as that of Edgar Allan Poe, yet his admirers are

  not satisfied. They are sure there is more, much more, to the

  fife of Poe than has yet been told, particularly since Poe

  deliberately spread fanciful stories about himself. As strange

  • • •

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  X lll

  as Poe’s life was, it does not adequately supply them with

  the feeling that they know why he wrote as he did.

  This book is dedicated to assisting those thousands of

  readers all over the world who are determined to turn the

  real Edgar Allan Poe into a fictional character in order to

  assuage their curiosity concerning him.

  It collects for the first time in literary history the best

  stories in which Edgar Allan Poe appears as an integral

  character. It is intended to serve the same purpose that

  science fiction offers to the young student of astronomy—

  conjecture of what is beyond the sight of the telescope.

  Like all good science fiction, each story begins from a

  factual premise, some basic and valid information about

  Edgar Allan Poe, and proceeds from there. Yet only a few

  of these stories are science fiction, for quite logically they


  tend to cover the gamut of Poes own genius: the detective

  story, murder mystery, horror tale, supernatural, humor,

  bittersweet remembrance, and even verse.

  This volume goes one step further and includes rarely

  seen Poe marginalia, tipping the book in the direction of

  scholarship. Though the intent is entertainment, the method

  is serious and the tongue is not in the cheek.

  This compilation leads off with a biographical sketch of

  Edgar Allan Poe by the late Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who

  was widely regarded during his lifetime as the greatest

  authority on that author. Before his death, Professor Mab-

  bott had completed preparation on the definitive edition of

  the works of Edgar Allan Poe, to be published by Harvard,

  containing 20 per cent more material than any previous

  assemblage and running into a number of volumes. The

  purpose of his biographical sketch of Poe here is to supply a

  jumping-off-place for the readers of the fiction. Supplied

  are the facts of Poe’s life set down by the man best qualified

  to tell them. The biography should be read first, and as the

  reader relates the truth to the events described in the fiction,

  enjoyment will be greatly enhanced.

  x iv

  THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE

  Perhaps the most remarkable item in this collection is

  “The Valley of Unrest״ by Douglass Sherley. This novelette

  with its two introductions by the author actually comprised

  an entire book originally printed in 1884 and reprinted here

  in its entirety. It is virtually unknown to Poe scholars, Pro-

  fessor Mabbott asserting he had never previously seen or

  heard of it, and is the one selection which may be more than

  fiction, for mixed in with facts about Poe’s school days

  known to be true there are others which might be and have

  not been verified or disproved. It should provide an enter-

  taining exercise for Poe scholars to separate fact from fiction

  in this one with the conceivable result of adding a few

  footnotes of interest to the life of Poe.

  Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was

  one of those to whom the facts of Poe’s fife were not

  enough. He delves into psychology in “ My Adventure with

  Edgar Allan Poe,” in which the author is brought back to

  life and given a chance for a new start.

  Perhaps the best-known short story featuring Edgar Allan

  Poe is the work of the deservedly popular literary critic