I Am Mr. Poe

By Elle Powers

It's been 172 years since we last heard from him...

Brace yourself for one last word from the Master of Mystery.

The life and death of Edgar Allan Poe are as strange and disturbing as the tales he authored. With all the cont

• Language: English
• Publisher: Royal Raven Books
• Release date: May 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986245614

Elle Powers

Elle Powers is an editor, book coach, and author of supernatural fiction living in Virginia with a houseful of handsome lads. Coming from a Poe family (her grandmother's grandmother was a Poe), this book is all for Cousin Edgar. Visit her website for more stories and stuff: To-Elle-and-Back.com.

Book preview

A Note of Caution

My dear Reader,

Is my being dead going to be a burden to you?

My deepest apologies, friend, but this is no way to begin a tale, is it? Forgive me for being brusque, and before proper introductions, but I must know forthright. And so I ask again: Is the state of my being a stumbling block? A show-stopper? A tear in the fabric of your reality?

If so, I give you leave to close the book. If you are still in the bookshop, then all the better. Set it back on the shelf and do not think about wasting any of your hard-earned coin on this manuscript. (Believe me, I know about the cost of living. Consider the money better spent elsewhere.)

The last thing I want is my condition coming between us. Perhaps I am—openly, selflessly—giving you a significant detail regarding my untimely demise. Alas, I foresee in your biased reading something important slipping past because you cannot let go of this perceived character flaw.

And then, This from a ghost! you declare. How very unreliable.

Go away then, I say. Close the book. Leave it on the bench. Return it to the shelf. It is not for you, friend. For once in my pitiable existence, I do not want you to read my story and would rather you forget about me.

No, no, no. I do not mean that. Do not forget me, but rather revert your impressions to the myth you made up about me. That will do just fine.

As for the rest of you, hear me out.

I know the popular narratives and gossips have painted me an unreliable, unstable character—weak, disgraceful, immoral, mad. Drunken blackguard at best and demon-possessed fiend at worst.

I, however, would have you believe me vulnerable, ill-starred. A flawed human being. A victim of circumstances. No better, no worse than any man. Mad, you say? Show me a sane man who lived through all that I did and did not do himself in or find himself committed to the lunatic asylum.

For this brief history, I ask your cooperation. Read carefully every word, for the signs are hidden within, and if you commit yourself diligently, you will decipher the mystery herein. I will tell all in pure truthfulness. I do not lie. None of this is self-serving. How can it be? How can I be affected now?

No. It is all for you, dear Reader.

Once in my life, I said that to transform all human thought, it would be necessary to write and publish a little book titled My Heart Laid Bare. I said also that it must be true to its title to attain its end.

Unable to do so while I still lived and breathed in this world, I present it to you now, without repression. Here it is: My Heart Laid Bare—for you.

Will there be horror? A bit, unfortunately. Certainly there will be fear, to which man is contrarily attracted and sickened. As inevitable to sublunary life, none of these can be edited out. My state makes me invulnerable to these attractions and aversions, but it is not without compassion that I record such realities. I give you this account with all the sensitivity of a doctor telling his patient he has developed some incurable disease and has only weeks to live.

But you yourself are dead!

What? Oh, that claptrap again. Have you never read anything written by a ghost? Now think before you answer that question. We dead men of letters seem incapable to rest our pens, as well as our souls. It is time to move on from that bit of old news and make your choice.

As I’ve already said, this testimony is not for the weak-minded, feeble-hearted, living, breathing man or woman.

It is for the curious. For the insightful. The outsider. For he who might look beyond himself and the material world and wonder, Why? For God’s sake, why is life so bitterly cruel and unfair?

I am as inclined as ever to tell this tale if you will listen. Forget that I am dead. Forget that I am famous. Remember this only:

I am an orphan.

Respectfully & truly,

Your Narrator,

Edgar A. Poe

b. January 19, 1809–d. October 7, 1849

PART ONE: The Orphan

Chapter One

1815

In speaking of my mother you have touched a string to which my heart fully responds. To have known her is to be an object of great interest in my eyes. I myself never knew her—and never knew the affection of a father. Both died (as you may remember) within a few weeks of each other. I have many occasional dealings with Adversity—but the want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials. —Edgar

He was very beautiful, yet brave and manly for one so young. —Thomas Ellis

Lothair

Atlantic Ocean

Ah, I am pleased to see you are still with me. Coming along then?

Let us go now, if you will, to my earliest definable memory, in which you will meet the character who most dominated my young life—dominated being the crucial word here. Indeed, his mark can be seen on the whole of my forty years.

See there, that small boy on the sea? The pale lad with the over-large gray eyes and dark curls?

Yes, that is me, six years old, all alone, amidship, on the North Atlantic.

What’s that? Not alone? That big man there, you say?

Who is he?

Ah, yes. That is John Allan, from whom we derive the initial A in my name.

You should know, I never meant Allan to be central in my nom de plume. That was a Griswold blunder—my erstwhile biographer. But enough about him for now. At this age, I am content to be young Master Allan; Poe sounds like poor, or worse, the Scottish expression for chamber pot: chanty po.

Mr. Allan is not particularly big, though bigger than me at this time—big frown, big beak, big chin. That chin, how it haunts me. Mighty, one would say of John Allan, and booming too, in speech, temper, and opinion—an imposing Scotchman in personality and stature.

Is he your father?

My father? I see why you might assume so. He sits me on his knee and reads to me, quite attentive and tacitly fond.

How rare. John Allan is most often distracted by business and airs. That is how we find ourselves on this vessel in the middle of summer, 1815. But I suppose on the ocean there’s not much worry can do about one’s profits and losses.

When my stomach is settled, we practice in the cabin with Murray’s Reader and Speller. But he reads to me here, on deck, I think because I am unnerved by confined spaces, and we both crave the open air.

John Allan is my father by fostering, not by birth.

My foster mother, Frances Keeling Valentine, or Mrs. Allan as it were—young and fetching and sentimental—is below decks, seasickness having sent her to bed. She is always a bit frail, my Ma, and I am thoroughly devoted to her.

I am her pet, not John Allan’s. He tolerates me for a while, and at first, I think he takes pride in me. Or perhaps he is proud of his charitable nature, which obligated him to take me in and lend me his name. He is an orphan too, but that doesn’t earn me any sympathy.

Since every tale must have a villain, most suggest my foster father for the part. Disguised as a gentleman and patron, he is in fact autocratic and shallow. Allan is flesh, however, not a monster or a demon. But for the sake of tradition and simplicity, we will cast him as the antagonist for the time being.

My deficiency in Allan’s mind is that I am the son of strollers. That is what he calls the parents of my birth, actors who traveled with a troupe. To hear him say it in his rolling Scotch conjures a grotesque image of debauchery and squalor: strrrolll-errrs.

They died of consumption, my parents. At least I think so. My father somewhat disappeared first.

Frances Allan, who had called on my mother during her final illness, brought me home to her and Mr. Allan’s stately brick in Richmond’s business district like a troublesome stowaway. I was not yet three years old.

Now, in my sixth year on earth, I have departed Virginia, setting out from the James River, fixing a course to Hampton Roads, and from there onwards to England by boat. I am up for an adventure, but this ocean voyage unsettles me.

The only significant attachments I leave in Virginia are my playmate Catherine (my sweetheart, to whom I was married in the nursery upon leaving for this expedition); Judith, the negro woman who takes care of me; and Tom, the Ellises’ young son.

One of our man servants has come with us, as well as Ma’s sister, Miss Nancy Valentine, who is also in bed and queasy. They, along with Frances and John Allan, comprise what I think of as family, even if the bond is flimsy. For a boy with dead parents, I hold onto it with all the ignorance and tenacity I possess.

Yet I do not feel safe. I cannot remember ever feeling safe.

See how Allan doted on me then? Why, he looks positively smitten. His affection shocks me even now, that I could once make him grin so liberally.

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Och, come on, Ned. There’s naught to be afraid of now. There’re no wars. No pirates. He scoops me up in his arms and bears me to the railing as I kick and fuss.

See? It’s water, is all. It’s not going to hurt you.

Once I’m righted and secure between the wooden side of the boat and John Allan’s sturdy legs, I settle, looking down at the water as if in a trance.

Mind yourself, Master Allan. It is like serpents slithering under a dark silken veil. What hides within that chilly blue abyss? Something immense, surely…

I shiver at this inner voice. It’s one I have heard before … I recall its first emergence a year or two ago and how it disturbed me. It must be my imagination, but it sounds so very old.

I didn’t think of it then, but now I’m reminded that my mother sailed this route when she was a girl. Only she was going towards the New World, not away from it. She had left the London theatre of her mother’s generation for the playhouses of the Colonies, to travel from one stage to another and back again, finding a new-old costume, a new-old dialogue, and a new-old dingy room in which to wither away. Over and again. The American audiences adored the delicate English starlet—my mother, Eliza, the ghost.

Pa? You sailed this way before?

Aye. On bigger ships than this. But she’s a sturdy wee vessel, he says, patting the gunwale of the pilot boat Lothair. The salty wind stiffens his hair into untidy waves. She’ll get us there soundly.

The sides of the boat groan as it wobbles. I cannot tell that it advances at all, only that it plunges and shudders. It is the water that travels, dancing its serpentine curl. My mind conjures tales of shipwreck and peril at sea, told by the merchants and ship captains who dine with us at the Allans’ home in Richmond.

I hear the Voice again: This is where the spirits of the dead reside.

Thomas says they’s monsters down there.

Grim creases score Allan’s brow. "Therrrrre—‘Thomas says there are monsters.’ Do not start talking like them, lad."

I know better. At only six years of age, I know how to speak properly, but I also know how to mimic what I hear. Thomas says, They’s monsters down there.

They’re afraid of the water is all, Allan is saying. But you don’t have to be afraid. Tell Thomas you don’t believe in devils and spirits. Guinea-folk superstition…

I don’t reply but frown at the roiling sea below. I quite like Thomas’s and Judith’s ghost stories, carried over from a wilder continent, which both terrify and delight, and in hindsight are probably intended to keep me from mischief. Being afraid keeps me out of trouble, but it also feeds my excessive imagination.

Chapter Two

1815–16

Edgar is growing wonderfully & enjoys a good reputation and is both able & willing to receive instruction. —John Allan

My voice was a household law when few children were not out of leading strings. —Edgar

Ayrshire

Scotland

Pa, say something for me. Say I was not afraid coming across the sea.

Writing to Charles Ellis, his partner in the tobacco-export business, John Allan corroborates my story when I ask him. You see? He can be generous when so inclined. I also send a kiss to wee Tom Ellis and my sister Rosalie. (Pa includes Rose’s foster mother, whereas I neglected her.)

Very good, Ned, I’ll write it. Quiet now, and let Mrs. Allan give me her tidings. Franny, I cannot think much less write when he’s underfoot. Thomas, do something with him.

When we reach Liverpool, John Allan conducts his business dealings, then moves us along to Ayrshire, his homeland in Scotland. In spite of the almost constant rain, being on stable land again brings out the wild monkey in me. The shaken seasick laddie did not disembark the ship with the rest.

Irvine, Kilmarnock, Greenock—this is Rabbie Burns country, and I hear a good deal of crowing about the Scottish bard from the masses of Allan relatives, who call my Pa Johnny.

Some of these cousins are children, with whom I romp over the damp and enchanted coast. We chase each other across muted beaches and watch ships come in and out of port, while I thank the gods I am not on one. And once in a while, the fog is so blinding, it buries me in its white nothingness. Ma and Aunt Nancy come nearly undone one evening after sundown when I cannot find my way to our door, much less discern which door is ours, until alas, I have missed supper. (Do not worry, dear Reader: their fraught kisses make my delay worthwhile.)

You see the fear (the Voice) hasn’t abandoned ship. It is always there, in my chest, behind my eyes, like some shadowy stalker. And I find the best way to forget its presence is to become utterly absorbed in activity.

To please my foster parents, I consume every storybook I’m given. To please my new chums, I run faster, climb higher, and play harder than the rest. We find cobblestones to pound, puddles to leap, and mud to bring home on our boots. The lads I clobber, and the lassies I charm. When we ride through the village, I insist on sitting with the driver, imagining this creaky, plodding cart as a dragon, sweeping its tail along the doorsteps, knocking over wagons and barrels. Indeed, the books I read by the home fire kindle the boyish adventure of the following day.

And I know now why Bobby Burns wrote verse. It’s not the voices of dead poets I hear here. This land, of secrets and mists, speaks to me in images only lyrics can paint properly. Even as a child, I suspect this ancient countryside a theatre of violence and romance, blood and desire. (For can you not have one without the other?)

The Voice tells me so.

The fairies steal unwatched children for their own and leave fairy children in their stead. Perhaps you are a changeling, Master Allan, and the fairies want you back.

The superstitions here would rival the slaves’ back home. There are fairies and elves; bodachs, or bogeymen; castle ghosts; water spirits connected to rivers, lakes, and the like; and the Auld Black Divil himself. Such delicious torment. And we mustn’t forget that I am exposed to the most colorful cursing and swearing I will hear in my whole lifetime.

Bridgegate House on High Street

&

The Old Grammar School at Kirkgatehead

Irvine

By Christ’s cross and all the saints…

The Voice says John Allan is trying to be rid of me.

He wants to leave me with his sisters in Irvine while he and Ma tour Glasgow and Edinburgh. Ma and her sister Nancy protest on my behalf, and I’m permitted to attend. However, when it’s time to set up house in London, Allan prevails, despite the ladies’ outcry, and I’m sent back to his birthplace to live with Aunty Mary.

I am afraid I press Pa’s sister Mary nearly to her ruin. She is patient and well-meaning, but she is not my mother, and I do not want to be here and make her miserable for it.

To make matters worse, it rains almost every day, and for an almost seven-year-old precocious boy, this is like trying to confine a lion in the parlor. The wild animal needs its wilderness, and the Allan family’s two-story Bridgegate House, maintained by the prim Mary Allan, is no jungle.

At my antics, this otherwise gentle woman turns into a shrieking, incoherent banshee.

I’ll skelp ye, ye wee rascal!

I think she means scalp, which is the custom of the natives in my country, who, so I hear, remove the tops of their enemies’ heads for trophies. I do not take her at her word; she hardly looks fierce enough to me. And my Pa, who could be severe in his own right, surely wouldn’t have me maimed.

As I refuse meals—only to steal food later at night—and stomp out my displeasure, my Pa’s aunt calls me an imp and a devil, and although I cannot disagree with her, I take offense.

My school day is tedious and crude. For lack of inspiration, the teacher sends me to the churchyard to copy the inscriptions on the old gravestones. Although I go where I’m told, for the master here will not spare the rod, I refuse to perform any academic work. Instead, I make my dispute known at home, much to Aunt Mary’s vexation. She threatens, she coddles, she cries, and I sulk.

You must fight this banishment, Master Allan. You belong with your mother. Fight this with all that is in you, or you will be left here on the coast of Scotland. Pa will forget about you, and he will make Ma forget you too. And then you will die and be buried in this kirkyard, and your stone will read Edgar Allan Poe, Orphaned Son of Heathen Strollers.

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Sharing a room with my older cousin James, I confide in him one night: I am going to run away.

Where’re you going to, Ned?

To find my Ma.

Och, aye, he says, his tone dripping with disbelief and mirth.

She’s in London. I insist I know where that is.

And how’re ye going to get there?

I do not know the details of my escape, but I reckon I can make it out alive. Ships with English destinations anchor in the harbor on any given day, and I’m quite the old hand at seafaring by now. If I get caught or stuck, I will call upon the name of John Allan, and he will make way for my rescue. I am not afraid of any old sea captain, even if he ties me to the mast or makes me sleep in the bilge.

If you’re thrown overboard, locked in the brig, or sold as a slave, do you think Allan will give two shillings? It would be a tidy and inexpensive end to any obligation he feels to you.

The Voice must be wrong. John Allan is my father. He is dutiful and oft indulgent. He would not abandon me.

I divulge my schemes, but Cousin James is less than encouraging. That sounds right dangerous, Ned. I think ye ought to quit your fussing and mind yourself before ye wind up in a world of trouble.

My ambitions succeed without my stowing away, however. James, I suspect, tells on me to Aunt Mary because she soon packs up my belongings and sends me to London, straight into the arms of my bonny mother, who languished without me.

Chapter Three

1816–20

Edgar Allan was a quick and clever boy and would have been a very good boy if he had not been spoilt by his parents, but they spoilt him, and allowed him an extravagant amount of pocket-money, which enabled him to get into all manner of mischief—still I liked the boy… —Rev. John Bransby

"Edgar is in the Country at School, he is a verry [sic] fine Boy and a good scholar." —John Allan

John Allan Residence

Southampton Row, Russell Square

London, England

Ma, what’s he saying?

Who do you mean, Edgar?

That black bird. I point at the raven perched on the hanging sign of an inn.

It’s not saying anything. It’s a wild bird, my darling. My foster mother speaks softly with a slight yet endearing lisp.

‘Rock, rock.’ What could he mean by that? The bird squawks again, fixing me with a beady eye.

It says wrong, not rock, Master Allan. Listen again.

The Voice is right.

"No, Ma, it’s not rock. It’s ‘wrong, wrong.’ That’s what he says. Hear him? What did we do wrong that he scolds us so?"

I do not notice at the time that Ma looks disturbed. She grips my hand tighter and yanks. My dear, there’s nothing wrong. A raven cannot make any sense. It’s not speaking, only making a clamor.

Yet it seems to be talking to me, and I resist her pulling. My tam-o’-shanter nearly slips off my curly head in the struggle. Wrong, wrong. This baffles! What is so wrong?

He’s laughing, Ma, I say, laughing myself. He laughs because he thinks it’s funny that he’s upsetting us.

I’m not upset, tumbles past her lips with a false laugh and then a shudder. I see a shadow fall over her face, the smile falling with it. It sounds like shrieking to me, she mumbles.

Well, I think he means to say that it’s wrong to deny me a sweet from the shop when we get there, I say, finally allowing my feet to follow in the direction of her tugs. I beam up at her, trying to recover her better mood.

Ah, Edgar, it will spoil your supper, she sighs, but I can already hear the yielding in her voice.

That’s a smart lad there, Mrs. Allan. A man with ruddy cheeks doffs his hat.

Why, thank you, Mr. Wilson. This is my son, Edgar. Say hello, dear.

"Good evening, sir. Do you know why the raven says ‘wrong’?"

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When I reached London, I was pleased to find a letter from my little wife, Catherine, all the way from Richmond. I am happy she hasn’t forgotten me (although I hadn’t thought much of her):

Give my love to Edgar and tell him I want to see him very much.

I will ask Pa if I can write her back.

Pa… My childish mind cannot abide this discrepancy in our relationship. Being intellectually mature for my age does not mean I can abstract, and although my imagination is vast, it is also cast-iron. This is the man who pays for my education, my clothing, my doctor bills. But this is also the man who sent me away, who separated me from my mother.

He meant to keep you away for good, Master Allan. He wants Ma all to himself.

This fear of being separated from her is not a new one. I expect it comes straight from the side of my mother’s deathbed. My mother Eliza, I mean—the vague, dreamy actress, who died so young.

Sometimes I swear it’s easier to love people who are dead. Thank you, Mother, for being such a saint.

I suppose you, dear Reader, ought to thank me for being so agreeably, appealingly dead. Enchanting, isn’t it? I tell you secrets. I give you counsel. I cannot hurt you … because I am dead. See? Nothing to be afraid of here.

You are most welcome, dear Reader. Most welcome indeed.

Manor House School

Stoke Newington

Frances, my foster mother—still alive and still my whole