As 2013 beckons, I have selected a New Year’s poem with which to say not only a happy New Year to all, but also a monster thank-you to everyone who has read anything I’ve written this year; I remove my bowler hat and bow in humble thanks to you all, for without readers, I would not bother to clutter the internet by writing these pages.
And now, selected from the Leisure Hour New Year 1877 number, an anonymous poem with which to sweep away the old year and usher in the new:
Ah me! Ah me! The Year is dying;
When first he came in joyous state,
On youth and hope and strength relying,
We formed a hundred projects great, resolved and planned; but Time was flying,
And winter winds surprised us, sighing -
"Too late! Too late!"
What lofty schemes employed our leisure,
The glad New Year should these unfold;
But Spring was surely made for pleasure,
And Summer's tale was quickly told;
Then Autumn filled his horned measure,
But while we revelled in his treasures
The Year grew old.
Oh, Spring, too soon thy zenith gaining,
Oh, Summer, of thy beauty shorn,
Oh, Autumn, for brief season reigning,
What fruit, what harvest, have ye borne?
The Year is grey, the Year is waning,
Few be the wintry hours remaining,
And we must mourn.
What, mourn when Christmas songs are sending
Their sweetest echoes o'er the earth?
What, mourn when rich and poor attending,
So gaily wait the New Year's birth?
Aye! Then must joy and sorrow blending
With retrospection, still be lending
Soft tinge to mirth.
So must we look, with gracious glances.
On deeds that rise to our distress;
So must we think of wasted chances,
For heavenly gain we did posses;
Of misspent hours, of foolish fancies,
Of broken vows, and small advances
In holiness.
Oh, it is well to pause and ponder -
Shall every year thus lightly go?
Shall it be only ours to squander?
No, by the grace of heaven, no!
See, the dim future stretcheth yonder,
And thither, prayerless, shall we wander?
Not so, not so.
Go, rest, Old Year! Thy life is ending;
Thy strength is gone, thy glory fled.
Go, rest! While God our way defending,
We the new path before us tread.
Hark! As we listen, meekly bending,
The midnight bells proclaim, ascending.
The Year is dead.
- Leisure Hour, New Year, 1877
Wishing everyone a prosperous, successful, and above all a happy new year!
I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas day and have had a super festive period! I return with another Christmas poem which is again a rather downbeat and melancholy affair, but nevertheless beautiful and evocative. The image painted by the writer is quite vivid here:
A Contrast
By E.M. Maizey
Halls of costly brightness,
Splendour, pomp, and show
Streets of dazzling whiteness,
Carpeted in snow;
Petted lap-dogs sleeping,
Couched at beauty's feet;
Human beings weeping,
Houseless in the street.
Fires brightly blazing,
Couches made to bear
Forms of dainty moulding -
Hearts that know no care;
Roofless sheds containing
Creatures stamped with woe -
Wearied with complaining
Dying as they go.
Happy children treading
Carpet-covered floors;
Wretched young ones shedding
Tears at workhouse doors;
Parents, some! too wealthy
For the charge they bear;
Some! Oh, God! sustain them,
Crushed by grief and care.
- People's & Howitt's Journal, 1850
I will be back with one final piece of Victorian poetry on New Years day, but in the meantime, enjoy the remainder of the season!
One thing that always
strikes me about Victorian Christmas poetry is the downcast and melancholy
nature of it. Perhaps it’s just the particular efforts I have in my collection,
but its quite rare that I come across happy and jolly Christmas poems, and this
is no exception. The vivid imagery, though, is absolutely wonderful, and more
than makes up for the gloomy subject. Maybe the Victorian poets liked to temper
the festivities of the season by highlighting the predicaments of the less
fortunate with their poetry? Who knows? But here is this weeks festive
tear-jerker:
The Sempstresses Christmas Song
By Thomas Russell
Here's Christmas, but no holly-boughs on these lone walls are hung,
A gala time - but rind this hearth no carol rhymes are sung;
No merry greeting grateful comes to my neglected ear,
No footfall on the stair to tell of lov'd ones drawing near!
I'll deck my Robin's cage to day afresh with groundsel bloom,
He'll warble his accustom'd note until the shadows loom;
The busy needle while I ply, and gather thread on thread,
My "Christmas fare" a scanty meal of dry and stone-like bread.
The golden days of infancy, when berries red and white
were mingled on our walls at home, I'll dream of them at night;
I'll fancy that these icy limbs are frolicking again,
As then they gambolled, though I know the fancy will be vain.
The holly and the mistletoe, ah! What are they to me?
To see them waste their greenness here, a mockery would be;
Enough to know the freshness of my heart hath passed away,
It needs no forest-gathered things to tell me that today!
I've opened my casement window, that the warbling of my bird
May mingle with the joyous strains that in the streets are heard;
And the pealing notes of countless chimes come softly stealing in,
As if to woo my darkened thoughts to gladness back again.
The laugh of merry childhood comes mingling with their strain,
Enough! I cannot hear that sound, I'll shut it out again;
It brings the tear-drop in mine eye, retards my feeble hand,
There, Robin, sing to only me thy carol soft and bland.
- People's and Howitt's Journal, 1850
This is to be my last post before Christmas day, so may I wish all readers a happy and joyous Christmas day, and here’s hoping Father Christmas brings you all that you desire!
Christmas is almost upon us again, and I find myself in the familiar
place of bringing you little-known Victorian Christmas poetry as has become my
custom here for the last couple of years. However, for my first Christmas poem
this year (last week’s was only a poem
about winter) I have decided to opt for a piece of poetry by someone
famous.
My usual source for Christmas poetry is Victorian periodicals, which
published poems by members of the public, aspiring writers and little-known
published writers alike. I must reiterate here that I am not into poetry, but I
can appreciate a simple poem, and I find something a little more sincere and
interesting about poetry written by non-famous Victorians.
That said, I have chosen to usher in the Christmas season this year with
quite a famous poem by quite a famous Victorian poet.
Born in London in 1830, Christina Rossetti was, as you may have guessed,
if you don’t already know, the sister of the great pre-Raphelite artist Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, as well as of the writer and founding member of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood William Michael Rossetti and author Maria Francesca
Rossetti. She was the youngest child in this great artistic family; and as well
as her talented siblings, her father was an Italian poet, and her mother,
whilst not herself of an artistic bent, was the sister of John William Polidori
– the author of one of the first English vampire stories, The Vampyre, in 1819.
Christina, growing up in a household overflowing with artistic ideas,
soon began to show promise as a poet. By the age of twelve she had written a
book of poetry, and by eighteen she had published her first two poems (Death’s Chill Between and Heart’s Chill Between) in the literary
magazine Athenaeum. Many of her early poems focused on death and loss and were
somewhat melancholy. When she was nineteen Christina began contributing poems
to the (ultimately unsuccessful)
Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyn.
Christina Rossetti by Dante Rossetti, 1866
Goblin Market and Other
Poems – by far her most famous collection – was first published in 1862, when
Christina was thirty-one. This was her first work widely available to the
public and proved to be very successful, receiving critical acclaim from, not
only the press, but eminent and popular poets of the day, including Tennyson. In
the year prior to the release of Goblin Market the great female poet Elizabeth
Barrett Browning had died in Italy, leaving her place as Britain’s premier
female poet vacant. The success of Goblin Market and Other Poems saw Christina
take on that mantle, becoming the most popular female poet in the country,
although she never quite reached the same heights of fame and popularity as
Browning.
Christina sat as a model for her brother, Dante, for some of his best
known paintings, including his first oil painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, for which, at the age of eighteen, she
was the model for the Virgin Mary. This painting was was the first instance of
a piece of work bearing the initials ‘PRB’,
which signified the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood.
In the paintings it is quite plain to see that she was a handsome woman;
despite this, as well as her great talent, Christina never married. She was
engaged to James Collinson, a painter and founding member of the pre Raphaelite
Brotherhood, but his converting back to Catholicism following a crisis of
conscience (having reverted to
Anglicanism in order to marry Christina) caused staunch Anglican Christina
to end the relationship in 1850. She also turned down the hand of Charles
Cayley – the linguist best known for his translations of the work of Dante
Alighieri – on religious grounds, and also the offer of painter and agnostic
John Brett.
'The Girlhood of Mary Virgin' by Dante Rossetti, 1848
From 1859 until 1870 she volunteered at the St Mary Magdelene House of
Charity in Highgate, which was a refuge for former prostitutes. Her experiences
here with the fallen women lead many to believe the idea for her poem Goblin
Market – the protagonists of which are two sisters, and there being a distinct
undercurrent of sexual imagery throughout – to have been born there.
In the early 1870’s Christina was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a
thyroid disorder that includes insomnia, palpitations and hair and weight loss
amongst a long list of possible symptoms. By the 1880’s the bouts of the
disease had become so severe that she was made an invalid, but she continued to
write. The following decade saw further health complications when, in 1893 she
developed breast cancer. The tumour was removed, but returned in September
1894. Three months later she died in London.
Christina is buried in the Rossetti family plot in Highgate Cemetery West.
In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti, c. 1872
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.
Christina never achieved the heady heights of success – in life or after – that her brother Dante did, but she did leave behind a body of work, which, unlike a lot of nineteenth century poetry, is quite accessible and enjoyable to read, particularly the fairy-tale-esque Goblin Market.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Pre Raphaelites, or seeing their work, the Tate is currently running an exhibition entitled ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde’ but hurry, the exhibition ends on 13th January! See details here:
It has become somewhat customary here to usher in Christmas
with some Victorian festive poetry, and this year will be no different. There’s
something about nineteenth century winter and Christmas-themed poems that
really evoke – to me, anyway – the spirit of past Christmasses; and by that I don’t
mean Victorian Christmas necessarily, but even festive periods as early as
twenty or thirty years ago, when, to me, Christmas seemed a little more simple
than it does now.
Perhaps it was just where I was living at the time, or maybe
(more likely) that I was a child, but I’m sure there were more carol singers,
snowy days and a shorter build-up to Christmas than now; but maybe I look upon
the past with rosy spectacles.
Today’s poem is not one about Christmas, but rather, now that
there is a chill upon the air and we’ve had a little snowfall here in Britain this
week, one about winter.
If you find modern-day Christmas a little bit of a blur,
then I hope you’ll enjoy the simple spirit of the poems featured here over the
next couple of weeks.
'London in Winter' by William Walcot, 1909
Here’s this year’s first:
An Old Body's Winter Song.
The touches of Winter are round us;
He is busy with wind and with rain,
The leaves are all swept from the branches,
The pools are brimful in the lane.
How sombre the noontide! how sullen
The lowlands, where snowflakes fly fast!
How plaintive the notes of the robin!
For Winter has reached us at last.
The touches of Winter are on us;
Our cheeks waning pallid and thin,
Our eyes fading slowly in colour,
Bespeak some sure fading within.
But if mind has grown larger and purer,
Its thoughts and its aims all more clear,
Its perceptions of truth all corrected,
We care not tho' Winter is here.
The touches of Winter are on us;
Our hands are now feeble and slow,
Our feet totter round the small garden -
Are chilly beside the hearth glow.
But if in the long past behind us
Our words and our works have been great
In number and kind, and refreshing,
We welcome our winter estate.
The touches of Winter are on us;
How dull beats the heart in the breast!
The breath comes and goes in long pauses,
We are fond of our room and our rest.
But if the soul's hope has been garnered,
The will trained to strike passion dumb,
Tho' bruises and blood linger on us,
We are thankful our winter has come.
The touches of Winter are round us;
And weather yet wilder draws nigh,
Stormy days with their weltering cloud rack,
Frigid nights with no star in the sky.
But if in the world beyond this world
Springs life free from cold or decay,
Oh, Winter, you herald His working
Whose will is as right as His way.
- Alfred Norris, from Leisure Hour, 1877
More festive poetry next week, and if you’ve enjoyed this,
click on the ‘poetry’ label in the ‘looking for something specific?’ list of
words on the right more.
The Victorian era is absolutely littered with talented individuals who, for some reason or another, become forgotten and lost in the midst of time until they either become ‘fashionable’ – as is often the case with artists of the era – or are gradually discovered by wider modern audiences, who give these people posthumous publicity and they are recognized as the talent that they deserve to be.
One such person, who was brought to my attention recently, is the poet and writer, Amy Levy.
To be described by Oscar Wilde as a genius is not a compliment to be taken lightly, and in the periodical, Women’s World which he edited for a couple of years, he published enough of Amy’s short stories and poems to know what he was talking about.
Amy Levy was born the second of Lewis and Isobel Levy’s seven children in Clapham, South London, in 1861. The Levy’s were a middle class Jewish family, her father was an export merchant, and sent Amy to school in Brighton, where she studied at Brighton High School.
Amy Levy
Amy began writing at a very young age, and, as many aspiring writers of the time did, she sent her poems and short stories to the editors of various periodicals. The Pelican, a feminist journal, had published within its pages Amy’s poem, ‘The Ballad of Ida Grey’ and the previous year, she had contributed several literary reviews to the young person’s magazine, Kind Words.
The Headmistress of Brighton High School was twenty-one year old Edith Creak, a graduate of NewnhamCollege in Cambridge, and one of its first ever female pupils. Amy greatly admired Miss Creak, and developed an intense passion for her Headmistress.
After leaving high school, Amy followed in Miss Creak’s footsteps by attending NewnhamCollege, where she became their first Jewish student in 1879 at the age of eighteen. By now she already had a small body of published work behind her, and whilst she was at college, published a collection of poetry; ‘Xantippe and Other Verses’ in 1881.
When she left Newnham after three years, she traveled across Europe, often returning to London to spend time with her family, who by now had moved to RegentsPark, in North West London.
Her writings continued to appear in many and various periodicals, from The Jewish Chronicle to the Pall Mall Gazette, and in her social life, she had become friends with fellow literary and political peers such as Clementia Black (who would go on to become a member of the Women's Trade Union League, and in 1886 would become its honorary secretary) Amy was also good friends with daughter of Karl Marx, Eleanor, novelist Olive Shreiner and playwright George Bernard Shaw. She also started to mix with followers of Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas, as well as people in favour of eugenics, such as statistician Karl Pearson (credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics) She began to move in a social circle far different from that of her conformist Jewish family, and struggled to straddle both worlds, continually finding herself stuck in the gap between the two.
‘A Minor Poet and Other Verses’ was published in 1884, and contained sad and melancholy poetry, mostly upon the subject of death and suicide.
In 1886 Amy was in Florence, where she met writer Violet Paget (Better known by her pseudonym of Vernon Lee, under which she wrote supernatural fiction, as well as essays on the arts) Violet was a lesbian, and was involved in a relationship with poet and writer Agnes Mary Robinson. Amy soon fell in love with Violet, and upon her return to England would send her many letters, but Violet, it seems, did not love Amy, but, as she admitted in letters send to her mother, (“…I don't love her, but she's a poor little person and clever and can talk poetry...”) saw her more as a friend and someone to pass the time with.
Violet Paget / Vernon Lee
In 1888 Amy’s first novel was released, entitled ‘Romance of a Shop’ it was published in ‘Woman’s World’ and described by its editor, Oscar Wilde as:
“…the adventures of some young ladies who open a photographic studio in Baker Street to the horror of some of their fashionable relatives . . . the book is admirably done, and the style is clever and full of quick observation. Observation is perhaps the most valuable faculty for a writer of fiction…”
‘Romance of a Shop’ is essentially the story of four young ladies who, following the death of their father open a photographic studio in bohemian London, which disappoints their prim and proper relatives. The story explores the differences between the well established Victorian lady, happy (or not) to be kept at home by her husband and bound by social and moral codes of conduct, and the ‘new women’ who began to spring up in the late 1870’s – women who did not take husbands and went out and earned their own money by doing jobs. (The phrase ‘new women’ did not become widely used until the 1890’s, when famous novelists included ‘new women’ in their books, most notably, George Gissing’s ‘The Odd Women’)
The following year, Amy’s second novel was published, ‘Reuben Sachs’, which shone a light upon the lives of the Jewish community in London, which had had a romantic veil thrown over it by George Eliot in her final novel, ‘Daniel Deronda’, in 1876.
The character of Reuben Sachs is a young Jewish man living in a Jewish community. A brilliant political career awaits him, but he must marry a wealthy woman to support himself. Reuben, however, is in love with a poor girl, Judith. The community surrounding Reuben and Judith snobbishly gossip about them, and the novel criticizes societies requirement for women to marry, and for people with ambition to marry into money.
Its criticism of the codes and morals of polite society caused controversy when it was first released, as well as its harsh, unblinking view of claustrophobic Jewish communities.
Oscar Wilde confirmed:
“…its uncompromising truth, its depth of feeling, and above all, its absence of any single superfluous word, make it, in some sort, a classic.”
To this day it remains Amy’s most successful novel. However, whilst she was enjoying literary success, her young body, now only twenty-seven years old, was failing her. She suffered from numerous abscesses, eye infections, painful neuralgia and, by now, worsening deafness. Whilst in Dresden, Germany in 1880, she had written home to her sister, whilst seemingly in one of her dark and self-loathing moods, saying:
“I write to you out of the very depths of affliction brought on by a diseased body. God must love me awfully for he chasteneth me without cease ... Really if this confounded neuralgia don't stop I shall have to go to a chemist - no, not a chemist - the river; for the German chemist is alas! not permitted to retail the death-fraught drug to the chance customer.”
Throughout her life Amy was never happy with herself. Ever since she had studied at BrightonSchool she had attempted to ‘be’ Edith Creak. The fact that she was not caused her to supper bouts of depression. She was unhappy with her looks, too, thinking herself ugly and unattractive. Also from Dresden, she wrote to her mother:
"There won't be any impropriety in my teaching any number of young men… I have never excited in anyone a desire to forget themselves."
In the summer of 1889 she holidayed in a cottage in Dorking, Surrey with a friend. Here, they spent some time with the science writer, novelist and advocate of the theory of evolution, Grant Allen and his family, who lived not far away, in Haslemere. They spent time walking and talking, and Amy seemed apparently happy. She returned to London and in the early hours of the 10th September, she locked herself in her bedroom and lit a charcoal fire in the grate, from which she breathed in carbon monoxide until she died, aged only twenty-seven.
The coroner’s report states that Amy Levy died of ‘Suicide when of unsound mind.’ Did Violet Paget think the same? Writing from Florence to a friend she shared with Amy, she wrote:
“…Poor Miss Levy! The truth has little by little dribbled out. She killed herself with charcoal ... But she had every right: she learned in the last 6 weeks that she was on the verge of a horrible and loathsome form of madness apparently running in the family”
That Violet Paget did not reciprocate the affection Amy felt for her is quite clear here.
But Amy had a bright future, so why did she commit suicide? Was it the pain she was in, either physically or emotionally? Was it depression? Was it the struggle to fit in to two very different worlds? The reasons are unclear, and yet the fact that her death was a tragic waste is perfectly plain.
It is only really in the last ten years that Amy Levy’s life and work have been looked at in more detail, and in between the release of Linda Hunt Beckman’s ‘Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters’ in 2000, and ‘The Woman Who Dared: A Biography of Amy Levy’ by Christine Pullen, released in 2010, there are a couple of re-releases of Amy’s work, including ‘Reuben Sachs’ in 2001 by Persephone Books, who re-print largely forgotten but important work from mainly female authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and a similar publisher, Black Apollo Press, re-printed ‘Romance of a Shop’ in 2005.
Also in 2010, the book ‘Amy Levy: Critical Essays’ was released, but prior to these, I can see only one release, from 1993; ‘The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-89’. Perhaps there are others, but these are the only ones I could find.
Like so many of the great talents of the Victorian Era, Amy Levy was lost to us for over a century, until she began to make a posthumous comeback in the last decade, her work being of enough cultural importance – especially her criticisms, chronicles and portrayals of the Anglo-Jewish communities of the nineteenth century – for people to research it and re-publish it. How many other lost Victorian talents and treasures will be unearthed over the coming decades?
The first Victorian that ever fascinated me was Edgar Allan Poe when, in my early twenties, I had a minor obsession with him and his work. I bought a few books and read through them with vigor, gasping in amazement at the detective powers of Dupin, the imagery of his disturbing poetry, the horror of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ and the beauty and melancholia of his sonnets. Perhaps this fascination stemmed from my childhood in which, like most boys, I was fascinated with horror and the macabre, and the work of Poe was a more adult way to feed that fascination.
As some fascinations have a tendency to do, my obsession with Poe wore off, but I have always felt some sort of sympathy with the man and his work, and he is still responsible for my favourite poem, which I shall disclose later, along with a Victorianist Blog first.
Prior to that, let us investigate the life of this interesting man, and, who knows, he may even gain some new fans.
He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, America, on 19th January 1809 the second child of his traveling actor parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe. He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe. His brother William also went on to become a poet before his early death, and his sister Rosalie taught penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school when she grew up.
John Allan
When Edgar was just over one year old, in 1810, his father abandoned the family, and a year later his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving the children orphaned. Edgar was taken in, but never officially adopted, by the wealthy Scottish tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances in Richmond, Virginia. Edgar’s siblings, William and Rosalie were both being sent to live with other families. The Allan’s, from whom Edgar gets the ‘Allan’ part of his name, dealt not only in tobacco, but also cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves. The Allan’s had Edgar baptized in 1812.
Three years later – with Edgar now aged six – the Allan’s sailed to Britain, with Edgar being sent to John Allan’s birthplace of Irvine, Scotland, whilst he and Frances headed for London. In Irvine, Edgar attended a grammar school for a brief period, before making his way to London to join John and Frances in 1816.
In London, Edgar was enrolled in a boarding school in Chelsea, again only for a year, before being sent to Reverend John Bransby’s Manor House School in Stoke Newington, North London. Edgar and the Allans’ remained in England until 1820, when they returned to Virginia.
John had ambitions to raise the boy to be a businessman, but Edgar wished to become a writer like his hero, Byron, and had no interest in the tobacco business. John Allan’s business ledgers bear testament to this, and tell a story of a young boy working in a dusty old office at a boring job with his mind elsewhere, as, in young Edgar’s handwriting, poems and verses can be seen scribbled down on the backs of papers and receipts.
By the time Edgar was thirteen, he had written enough poetry to publish a book. This was discouraged by John.
In 1825, John Allan’s rich uncle died and bequeathed to his nephew several acres of real estate, believed to be worth around $750,000 (close to $30 million in today’s money) John used some of this money to buy Moldavia, a two story house. Later this year, the now sixteen year old Edgar met Sarah Royster, and the two became sweethearts and may have been engaged (although this is unclear.)
Sarah Royser
The following year Edgar moved away from Richmond to attend the University of Virginia to study languages. The University had been founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 on christian principals. The establishment employed strict rules against gambling, horses, guns, tobacco and alcohol, but, despite his new riches, John had sent Edgar to the University with very little money for fees, books or lodgings. The boy soon ran out of funds and desperately resorted to gambling to raise money. By the end of his first term Edgar was in such dire straits that he resorted to burning his furniture to keep warm. Deciding that enough was enough, he quit the University after just one year.
During his torrid time at the University, Edgar had not only fallen out with John over his lack of money, but also lost touch with Sarah. When he arrived back in Richmond, angry with his foster father, he opted not to go home, but to go to Sarah instead. The visit was to leave him heartbroken as, in his absence she had got engaged to another man.
Desperate to leave Richmond, Edgar traveled to Boston in 1827 and took on odd jobs to survive. He worked as a clerk and then as a writer for a newspaper.
This same year, Edgar achieved one of his goals and, at the age of eighteen, he published his first book, ‘Tamerlane and other poems’ although he did not attach his name to the publication, which bore the author name of simply; ‘A Bostonian’
Two years later, it became known to him that Frances Allan was dying of tuberculosis and wished to see him one last time before she died. Despite rushing back to Richmond, by the time he arrived she was already dead and buried.
Frances Allan
Following this, he had a brief stint in a United StatesMilitaryAcademy. More difficult times lay ahead, as, in October 1830 John Allan re-married. Barely a year had passed since the death of Frances, and his marriage to Louisa Patterson led to further quarreling with Edgar which ended with John disowning his foster son once and for all.
Edgar decided to leave the MilitaryAcademy by purposely getting court-martialed. In February 1831, he was tried for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders for refusing to attend formations, classes, or church. He tactically pled not guilty to induce dismissal, knowing he would be found guilty.
Finding himself parentless, homeless and jobless, Edgar made his way to Baltimore, where he had relatives. He stayed with his Aunt, a widow named Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia Clemm (Edgar’s first cousin), his brother, William Henry, and their crippled grandmother.
Whilst living in Maria’s home, he began to think of her as a second mother, and also became very close to Virginia, with whom he soon started a relationship. He published his second book, another volume of his poems, entitled ‘Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems’.
Whilst Edgar was living with his aunt, John Allan died. He had left Edgar out of his will entirely, and yet had left money and belongings to an illegitimate child he had never met.
He left for New York in February 1831, and released a third volume of poems, simply titled ‘Poems.’ The book once again reprinted the long poems ‘Tamerlane’ and ‘Al Aaraaf’ but also six previously unpublished poems including early versions of ‘To Helen’, ‘Israfel’, and ‘The City in the Sea’ He returned to Baltimore, to his aunt, brother and cousin, in March 1831. His brother Henry, who had been in ill health in part due to problems with alcoholism, died on August 1st 1831.
Virginia Clemm
By 1833, Edgar had started publishing his short stories, one of which, ‘Ms. Found in a Bottle’ won a contest sponsored by weekly periodical the Saturday Visiter. The story brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a wealthy resident of Baltimore, who helped Edgar establish connections with various editors, one of whom was Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, with which magazine Edgar was awarded an editorial position.
Edgar contributed not only sensational stories to the magazine, but also scathing book reviews. He was trying to do something which was, at the time, quite radical in America. He wanted to concentrate on a career as a writer, and, in a difficult time in American publishing history, due to the lack of any international copyright, he became the first popular writer to attempt to earn a living by writing alone. Other writers of the time subsidized their literary careers with second or third jobs.
In 1836, Edgar returned to Richmond, bringing Maria and Virginia with him. Despite his being twenty seven and her only thirteen, Edgar married Virginia. The marriage was a happy one, and the family is said to have enjoyed singing together at night. Virginia expressed her devotion to Edgar in a Valentines poem, and he celebrated the joy and happiness of married life in his poem ‘Eulalie’:
I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride-
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.
Ah, less- less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl-
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless
curl.
Now Doubt- now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye- While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.
After leaving his job with the Southern Literary Messenger because of apparently low pay and lack of editorial control, Edgar and his new family moved to New York City. This was a difficult time. America had suffered a devastating financial crisis knows as the Panic of 1837. As a result of this, Edgar struggled to find work as a writer for any newspapers or magazines, and so wrote what would turn out to be his one and only novel. ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’, published in 1838, is the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. The story includes shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, and despite not being that well received at the time, elements of Edgar’s book would later appear in the work of Jules Verne.
After a year in New York, in 1838 Edgar moved to Philadelphia and made money writing for a number of different magazines and working as editor of, first Burton’s and then Graham’s magazines. He also sold articles he had written to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger and various other journals. By now he was becoming relatively well known for his articles, but being well known does not necessarily mean being well paid, and he continued to struggle to make a living. His first book of short stories, a compendium named ‘Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque’ earned him virtually no money, and he wasn’t even paid in cash by his publisher, but instead was given twenty-five copies of the book for free.
Despite having a wretched time of it financially, Edgar was blissfully happy at home with Virginia and Maria.
In 1842, however, tragedy was to strike, as Virginia showed the first signs of tuberculosis, the condition, (at the time known as consumption) that killed his foster mother Frances Allen, and also his real mother Elizabeth Poe. Edgar began to drink heavily under the stress of Virginia's illness. In January 1845 Edgar published a poem entitled ‘The Raven’ in The Evening Mirror to enormous success. ‘The Raven’ caused a sensation and made him famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures and command better fees for his work. He even briefly realized one of his life’s ambitions of running his own magazine when he became the sole owner of Broadway Journal after buying out the owners. Under Edgar’s stewardship however, the magazine failed. This, coupled with Virginia’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, forced him to leave Philadelphia and they moved to a cottage in The Bronx, New York.
'Not the Least Obeisance Made He' by Gustave Dore
Virginia never fully recovered from her condition, and like Edgar’s two mothers, died in the cottage on the 30th January 1847 aged just twenty four. Edgar was devastated, and was unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead.
They were right.
After Virginia died Edgar became increasingly unstable. He attempted to marry the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, but, supposedly because of his drinking and strange behaviour the engagement lasted only a month. He returned to Richmond to seek out his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Royster, who was, by now, a widow and so, twenty three years after they first became sweethearts, they did so again. It wasn’t to last however, as Edgar returned to Baltimore, and on the 3rd October 1849, was found in a disheveled and gibbering state walking the streets of the city. The man who found him, Joseph Walker, claimed that Edgar was;
"in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance" He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, but, in his delirious state never became coherent enough to explain the circumstances that had led to his state of disarray, or why he was wearing someone else’s clothes.
Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism
Sarah Helen Whitman
At five in the morning on October 7th 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in hospital surrounded by people he did not know. His apparent last words were; “Lord help my poor soul!”
The actual cause of death remains a mystery, with anything from cooping, delirium tremens, (sometimes referred to as ‘The Horrors’) heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera and rabies all being cited as the possible disorder or disease that killed him.
One of Edgar’s poems is – and has been since the day I first read it in my early twenties – my favourite poem. I’m not that keen on poetry of any era, I must admit, but I never tire of reading his ‘Ulalume’;
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere-
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir-
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul-
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
There were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll-
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole-
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere-
Our memories were treacherous and sere-
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year-
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber-
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent,
And star-dials pointed to morn-
As the star-dials hinted of morn-
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn-
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said- "She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs-
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion,
To point us the path to the skies-
To the Lethean peace of the skies-
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes-
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said- "Sadly this star I mistrust-
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-
Oh, hasten!- oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! - let us fly! - for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust-
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust-
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied- "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night:-
See! - it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright-
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom-
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb-
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said- "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied- "Ulalume- Ulalume-
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere-
As the leaves that were withering and sere-
And I cried- "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed- I journeyed down here-
That I brought a dread burden down here-
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber-
This misty mid region of Weir-
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
And for the first time on the Victorianist, a video! This is Jeff Buckley reading ‘Ulalume’ beautifully to music, in a fashion I am sure Edgar would have approved of:
Edgar’s life was an unsettled one, in which, from his earliest memories, upheaval followed disappointment, poverty walked hand in hand with rejection, and misery lurked over the crest of every hill of success.
He led a varied life, travelled to many places and suffered many trials and tribulations. His death, however, in mysterious circumstances, with all his medical records, including his death certificate, having been lost, was a tragically fitting end to the melancholy life this tortured man led, but would his iconic and unique work have been possible without the tribulations he endured? It is the genius of his work which ensures his name is, even 162 years after his death, synonymous with horror and the macabre.
Much like the artist, Richard Dadd, Poe is the kind of tragic figure who sums up the Victorian age. An age of poverty, tragedy and, ultimately, groundbreaking artistic works of art and literature.
For more in-depth information about Edgar Allan Poe and his life and works, please see the blog of an Edgar expert over at World of Poewhere you will find everything you'll ever need to know!
