Literary Hearthstones of Dixie | Page 3

ancient institution.
England was thrilling with the triumph of Waterloo, and even
Stoke-Newington must have awakened to the pulsing of the atmosphere.
Not far away were Byron, Shelley, and Keats, at the beginning of their
brief and brilliant careers, the glory and the tragedy of which may have
thrown a prophetic shadow over the American boy who was to travel a
yet darker path than any of these.
Under the elms that bordered the old Roman road, what forms of
antique romance would lie in wait for the dreamy lad, joining him in
his Saturday afternoon walks and telling him stories of their youth in
the ancient days to mingle with the age-youth in the heart of the

dual-souled boy. The green lanes were haunted by memories of
broken-hearted lovers: Earl Percy, mourning for the fair and fickle
Anne; Essex, calling vainly for the royal ring that was to have saved
him; Leicester, the Lucky, a more contented ghost, returning in
pleasing reminiscence to the scenes of his earthly triumphs,
comfortably oblivious of his earthly crimes. What boy would not have
found inspiration in gazing at the massive walls, locked and barred
against him though they were, within which the immortal Robinson
Crusoe sprang into being and found that island of enchantment, the
favorite resort of the juvenile imagination in all the generations since?
At Stoke-Newington the introspective boy found little to win him from
that self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world that rarely
pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself." In the
depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson," with
its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of solemn truth.
Incidentally, he uplifted the reputation of the American boy, so far as
regarded Stoke-Newington's opinion, by assuring his mates when they
marvelled over his athletic triumphs and feats of skill that all the boys
in America could do those things.
At the end of the year in which the family returned from
Stoke-Newington Mr. Allan moved into a plain little cottage a story
and a half high, with five rooms on the ground floor, at the corner of
Clay and Fifth Streets. Here they lived until, in 1825, Mr. Allan
inherited a considerable amount of money and bought a handsome
brick residence at the corner of Main and Fifth Streets, since known as
the Allan House. With the exception of two very short intervals, from
June of this year until the following February was all the time that Poe
spent in the Allan mansion.
The Allan House, in its palmy days, might appeal irresistibly to the
mind of a poet, attuned to the harmonies of artistic design and
responsive to the beauties of romantic environment. It was a two-story
building with spacious rooms and appointments that suggested the taste
of the cultivated mistress of the stately dwelling. On the second floor
was "Eddie's room," as she lovingly called it, wherein her affectionate

imagination as well as her skill expended themselves lavishly for the
pleasure of the son of her heart.
A few years later, upon his sudden return after a long absence, it was
his impetuous inquiry of the second Mrs. Allan as to the dismantling of
this room that led to his hasty retreat from the house, an incident upon
which his early biographers, led by Dr. Griswold, based the fiction that
Mr. Allan cherished Poe affectionately in his home until his conduct
toward "the young and beautiful wife" forced the expulsion of the poet
from the Allan house. The fact is that Poe saw the second Mrs. Allan
only once, for a moment marked by fiery indignation on his part, and
on hers by a cold resentment from which the unfortunate visitor fled as
from a north wind; the second Mrs. Allan's strong point being a grim
and middle-aged determination, rather than "youth and beauty." Not
that the thirty calendar years of that lady would necessarily have
conducted her across the indefinite boundaries of the uncertain region
known as "middle age," but the second Mrs. Allan was born
middle-aged, and the almanac had nothing to do with it.
It was in the sunshine of youth and the warmth of love and the
fragrance of newly opening flowers of poetry that Edgar Poe lived in
the new Allan home and from the balcony of the second story looked
out upon the varied scenes of the river studded with green islets, the
village beyond the water, and far away the verdant slopes and forested
hills into the depths of which he looked with rapt eyes, seeing visions
which that forest never held for any other gaze. Mayhap, adown those
dim green aisles he previsioned the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir"
with the tomb of Ulalume at the end of the