Edgar Allan Poe (9 page)

Harper Brothers,
c
. 1860.

Despite their age difference (Poe was now twenty-seven), he and Virginia made a handsome couple. Out walking around Richmond soon after their marriage, they happened to meet Elmira Royster Shelton. Now married with children, Elmira retained feelings for Edgar. It was hard for her to encounter the newlyweds. She recalled, ‘I remember seeing Edgar, and his lovely wife, very soon after they were married – I met them – I never shall forget my feelings at the time – They were indescribable, almost agonizing.’
²⁴

Still hoping to publish
Tales of the Folio Club
, Poe sought Paulding’s help to place the book with Harpers. Paulding had less influence than Poe assumed. He could not convince Harpers to publish the
Tales of the Folio Club
. Since the tales had already appeared in the magazines, they lacked novelty. A longer, book-length narrative was more marketable than a collection of short stories. Though Poe gave
Tales of the Folio Club
unity by creating a narrative framework and bridging the stories with burlesque criticism, the work could not pass muster as a single narrative. Republished magazine articles, Harpers told Poe, ‘are the most unsaleable of all literary performances’.
²⁵

Though he had no particular desire to write a book-length work of fiction, Poe took Harpers’ suggestion as a challenge and began drafting
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
. Before releasing Pym separately, he decided to publish it serially. One instalment appeared in the January 1837
Messenger
, another the following month. Poe had done what the publishers told him to do: he had written a sustained narrative long enough to fill an entire volume. Harpers accepted the work in 1837, copyrighted it, and advertised its forthcoming publication.

Poe quit the
Messenger
before the second instalment of
Pym
appeared. Frustrated with the paltry wages he received – ten dollars a week – he could not convince his employer to give him a raise. His growing national reputation let him think he could obtain a better editorial position elsewhere. Francis L. Hawks, a contributor to the
New York Review
, wrote, ‘I wish you to fall in with your
broad-axe
amidst this miserable literary trash which surrounds us.’
²⁶
Poe misinterpreted Hawks’s wishful thinking as an actual job offer. In January 1837 he left Richmond for New York in January 1837 with his wife and mother-in-law.

They found an apartment at Sixth Avenue and Waverley Place, where they shared a floor with William Gowans, a rare book dealer who became friends with the family and fueled Poe’s interest in ‘quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore’. Poe also befriended the eminent classical scholar Charles Anthon. Asked to review John Stephens’s
Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land
, Poe approached Anthon for help with some of the book’s Hebrew phrases. Thomas Jefferson was right: University of Virginia students did need to know Hebrew. Poe even had the opportunity to visit Anthon’s home. Impressed with his personal library, Poe noted that Anthon’s ‘love of elegance’ prompted him ‘to surround himself, in his private study, with gems of sculptural art and beautifully bound volumes, all arranged with elaborate attention to form, and in the very pedantry of neatness’.
²⁷
Professor Anthon’s luxurious lifestyle was one Poe could only dream of living.

In the last week of March Poe, Gowans, Anthon and many other important litterateurs attended the booksellers’ banquet at the City Hotel. The attendees devoted hours to formal and informal toasts. Toward the evening’s end, Poe stood up, offering a somewhat self-serving toast to the ‘
Monthlies
of Gotham – Their distinguished Editors, and their vigorous Collaborateurs’. Poe came away from the event with great hope for his career. His plans seemed to be falling into place. With such enthusiastic support, the world of literature seemed destined to flourish. All that would soon change.
²⁸

Broadway, New York
, 1836.

Dr Charles Anthon,
c
. 1860.

Though Harpers planned to publish
Pym
in 1837, an economic event of nationwide significance intervened. In April businesses failed almost daily. Adverse economic conditions precipitated the ‘Panic of 1837’, which marked one of the worst depressions in American history. The land boom, which had lasted a dozen years, collapsed. Across the nation, banks failed and factories closed. Every industry was affected – including the publishing industry. Harpers curtailed their new publications, withdrawing works that were not surefire hits.
Pym
was withheld from publication.

Other authors were affected by the depression. Harpers discontinued its multi-volume edition of Paulding’s collected works. Poe could take heart knowing he was in good company, but Harpers’ decision to stop publication of Paulding’s works sent the message that a well-established name was no guarantee of continued success. Though disappointed with the decision, Paulding did not rely on his pen for survival. The setback had no effect on his career. He reached the pinnacle of his profession the next year when President Martin Van Buren appointed him Secretary of the Navy.
²⁹

From the time Poe’s review of Stephens’s
Incidents of Travel
appeared in October 1837 until the middle of the following year, little evidence survives to document his whereabouts. By the third week of July 1838, Harpers had yet to release
Pym
, and Poe had exhausted the possibilities for employment in New York. He and his family left for Philadelphia. Poe wrote Paulding, asking him for a clerical position with the us Navy: ‘Could I obtain the most unimportant Clerkship in your gift –
any thing, by sea or land –
to relieve me from the miserable life of literary drudgery to which I, now, with a breaking heart, submit, and for which neither my temper nor my abilities have fitted me?’
³⁰
By the summer of 1838 Poe was at his nadir and ready to abandon the literary life. Before the end of July Harpers finally released
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
.

Philadelphia did not have much to offer in terms of literary employment. James Pedder, a popular children’s author, found Poe and his family living ‘on bread and molasses for weeks together’ and ‘literally suffering for want of food’.
³¹
Pym
, which met with mixed reviews, provided little income. In hard times, magazines hesitated to pay contributors. With few opportunities to publish tales in the periodicals, Poe’s development as an author of short fiction had been on hold for three years. ‘Hans Phaall’ was the last original story he had published. Though he had published it in 1835, its composition dates back to the previous year. ‘Morella’ had been the last story Poe had written. Asked to contribute to a new magazine in 1838, Poe picked up where he had left off. ‘Ligeia’, as he titled this story, revisits a theme he had introduced in ‘Berenice’ and developed in ‘Morella’.

In some ways ‘Ligeia’ is a redaction of ‘Morella’. Both tales are narrated by husbands whose wives look alike and think alike. Furthermore, each contracts a fatal illness and seemingly returns from death in different form, largely through the dual power of intellect and will. But key differences separate the two stories. The description in ‘Ligeia’, simultaneously vague yet ornate, surpasses that of ‘Morella’. Poe took great pleasure in the newer story’s complexity. Eight years later he still considered ‘Ligeia’ his best story.
³²

Poe’s use of ambiguity in ‘Ligeia’ contributes to its richness. Morella’s supernatural return in the figure of her daughter must be taken at face value. The return of Ligeia in the body of the Lady Rowena is more ambiguous. It may be supernatural, but there are alternate ways to explain the transformation. Perhaps the narrator, his mind addled by opium, is hallucinating. The resemblance between Rowena’s bridal chamber and a phantasmagoria show – a form of popular entertainment in Poe’s day – presents another way to explain what happens in ‘Ligeia’. Phantasmagoria shows often featured at least one transformation, during which a projected image of one person would be transformed into another. Rowena’s final resemblance to Ligeia could be the result of a similar optical illusion. Black magic may also play a part. Rowena’s bridal chamber is shaped like a pentagram, the traditional five-sided figure used to cast spells and make curses. Suggesting all these possibilities, and more, to explain Ligeia’s return in the form of Rowena, Poe let his readers decide, creating a tale that would continue to captivate and beguile. With ‘Ligeia’, Poe made the Gothic woman timeless.

‘Ligeia’ appeared in the first issue of the
American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts
, a monthly edited by two of Poe’s Baltimore friends, Nathan C. Brooks and Dr Joseph E. Snodgrass, which premiered in September 1838. Poe had several reasons for publishing his story here. Unable to find a new editorial position himself, he needed other outlets for his work, and, as always, he desperately needed money. But he had reasons beyond self-interest for placing ‘Ligeia’ with the
American Museum
. He wanted to help his friends launch the magazine with style and hoped to encourage the development of American periodical literature by example. Brooks and Snodgrass, in turn, had similar reasons for asking Poe to contribute. Knowing he was in dire straits, they hoped to help him. The ten dollars they paid for ‘Ligeia’ temporarily relieved Poe from destitution.
¹
But they wanted to establish a successful, high-quality magazine, too. They recognized Poe as one of the nation’s finest authors
and
one of its most controversial literary figures. The reputation Poe had developed at the
Southern Literary Messenger
remained fresh in the minds of American readers. Brooks and Snodgrass knew Poe’s name would help sell magazines.

They rightly foresaw its market value. Nathaniel Parker Willis applauded the first issue of the
American Museum
in his column in George P. Morris’s
New-York Mirror
, but Poe was the only contributor he mentioned specifically.
²
Poe himself had long been aware of the importance of establishing a name for himself. When Henry Carey told him in the mid-1830s that if he could ‘obtain anything like a name’ he would find it easier to get a book published, he was not telling him anything new. Trying to convince John Allan to subvent the publication of
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
in 1829, Poe explained, ‘At my time of life there is much in being
before the eye of the world –
if once noticed I can easily cut out a path to reputation.’
³
In ‘Letter to Mr —’, Poe observed, ‘It is with literature as with law or empire – an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.’
⁴
While at the
Messenger
, he solicited contributions from James Fenimore Cooper and other prominent authors for a special issue ‘consisting altogether of articles from distinguished Americans, whose
names
may give weight and character to this work’.
⁵