do southern home. You became the foster son of the Allan family of the state of Virginia. John and Frances Allan were like your parents for the next fifteen years or so, but they never adopted you. In some ways, the psychological scars John Allan inflicted on
you after behaving as a loving parent for many years sentenced you to a life of economic hardship when he easily could have given you a life of comfort. He became one of the richest men in Virginia, but there came a day when he would not give you one more dollar. However, before you were cut off from the Allan fortune and
forced to make your way in the world with no help at all, there were some good years of childhood. And as a child, John Allan spoiled you. He gave you everything you wanted and more. The Allans knew you had many talents.You excelled at almost everything you attempted. You were an athlete. You outshined all your friends in athletics and even took up arduous physical challenges including long distance swimming. In school, you distinguished yourself. When the well-to-do Allan family moved to England for several years, the teachers quickly had you pegged as their favorite. You read so much and mastered the meaning and intent of much literature. The town in Scotland where you lived (where John Allan was born) was also the home town of writer Daniel Defoe, who wrote ROBINSON CRUSOE about one century before you were born. How you loved that book! And how many times you read it! It helped you as a writer, teaching you precision and detailed description. Your foster father was proud of you then, for a brief time. If only
you had remained true to him, and he to you, but that wasn’t to be. When John Allan came into his inheritance from his uncle, making him incredibly rich, your future security could have been assured if you didn’t do everything you could think of to spoil it. You had strong self-knowledge and you revealed, in one of your
short stories, what your principle problem was in life. That story was called “The Imp of the Perverse”. It was about how people can be the source of their own undoing. It told how there is a little imp in the brain which dares us again and again to go against our better judgment An imp that makes us take horrible risks. An imp who convinces us to push every situation in life into something dangerous and self-destructive. And that described you perfectly.
You allowed your “Imp of the Perverse” to rule you. Part of the problem was alcohol. When John Allan sent you to college, you drank and gambled. You were a miserable gambler, and John Allan resented having to clean up your gambling debts. After one semester, he stopped paying for you to go to the university (where old man Thomas Jefferson had once shown up personally). Your only choice then was to join the army. And when you self-published your first book of poems and could no longer tolerate being an enlisted man, you appealed to John Allan for help. He ignored you. He didn’t even write you to tell you that your foster mother, Frances Allan, was deathly ill. After Frances died, John Allan reconciled with you briefly. He supported your effort to gain an appointment to the U.S. military academy at West Point. That also turned to disaster. In spite of your own personal imp of the perverse, you somehow
were entirely confident of your eventual success. Your first book of self-published poems is very rare today. One single copy has sold at auction for over $600,000. You were determined to be the first American writer to support
himself entirely with his writing. And you did an admirable job, considering the terrible circumstances. There were no copyright laws protecting European writers, so why would American publishers want to publish your work when they could publish Charles Dickens for free? You gradually worked your way onto the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger as assistant editor. They published and helped place some of your early stories. With a small salary, you even secretly married your thirteen year old cousin, Virginia, whom you deeply loved. You both lied about her age on the marriage certificate. And then you were fired for drinking. But somehow, no matter what the disaster in your personal life,
you always kept writing. In your day, some suspected you of living an immoral life, of being a drug addict, or being sinister and perverse. The truth was rather different, though. You were a handsome gentleman, polished and charming and sweet to the ladies, a captivating public speaker, some said considerate, and somewhat modest. It was only your imagination that was dark, and therein you knew a world without limits. The horrors of your black cat whose eye one of your characters sliced out, the terror
The old home of Edgar Allan Poe, as it originally stood on Kingsbridge Road. FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • MAR/APR 2012
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