one 'Reynolds', which he did through the night up to
The precise cause of death is unknown – no death certificate was issued. No one, then or now, knows who 'Reynolds' is or was. My agents state that, while neither Snodgrass nor Moran may be entirely trustworthy as a witness, there seems no reason to doubt the essential veracity of their accounts. They add that Poe appeared in good spirits in Richmond, where he had lectured to great applause and become engaged to be married. They also drew my attention to rumours current in Baltimore to the effect that when Poe arrived in the city he fell in with old friends, who persuaded him to take a drink to celebrate their reunion. Poe had eschewed alcohol for some months, and it is said that he was yet another victim of
Perhaps. But may there not be another explanation for Edgar Allan Poe's disappearance and for the extraordinary prostration that led to his collapse and death? Remember Poe's despair – his wish for suicide – his repeated calls for 'Reynolds'. Remember that according to the Parish Register, Tom Shield's middle name was Reynolds, the surname of his mother's family.
Was Shield in Baltimore in 1849?
As a man, Edgar Allan Poe was frail in mind and body. What if he had suddenly learned the true history of those months in England in 1819-20? Above all, what if he had come face to face with the terrible truth about his father?
It could drive a stronger man to drink. It could drive a stronger man to death itself.
VII
It is time to lay down my pen. I shall lodge this narrative with my lawyers and leave instructions that it is to be opened by the head of the family seventy-five years after my decease. After such an interval of time, neither Shield's account nor these notes I have appended to it will have the power to hurt anyone.
The older I become, the more I wonder about Sophie herself. Is she alive? Is she with Thomas Shield? If they were lovers, and I think there can now be little doubt of that, did they marry? If they married, what became of their lives? Which continent gave them a home? Are there children, grandchildren? Is she happy?
Mr Carswall's watch has informed me with its tiny chime that it is two o'clock in the morning. If I blow out the candles and pull back the curtains of the library's bow-window, I shall look out over mile after mile of nothing, a night without boundaries.
I wrote earlier that if truth is infinite, then any addition to our knowledge of it serves also to remind us of what is unknowable. And that of course brings me back to what might have been, to Sophie, for ever unknowable, for ever hidden in the illimitable darkness.
JRR
Clearland-court
A HISTORICAL NOTE ON EDGAR ALLAN POE
'Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history,' wrote Novalis, a remark Penelope Fitzgerald chose as the epigraph to her novel about him,
Poe's grandfather, David, Sr, was born in Ireland in about 1742. The family emigrated to America, eventually settling in Maryland. David became a shopkeeper and manufacturer of spinning wheels. During the Revolutionary War he was commissioned as Assistant Deputy Quartermaster General for Baltimore, and given the rank of major. In 1781 he used his own money to buy supplies for American forces under Lafayette, and his wife is said to have cut 500 pairs of pantaloons with her own hands for the use of his troops. In David Poe's old age he may have taken part in the defence of Baltimore against British attack in 1814, during the War of 1812.
Poe's father, David, Jr, was born in 1784. He made an abortive attempt to study law but in 1803 became an actor. In 1806 he married Elizabeth Arnold, a widowed Englishwoman who had made her debut as an actress ten years before in Boston, Massachusetts. Edgar, the second of their three children, was born on 19th January 1809. What evidence survives (mainly from hostile theatre critics) suggests that David Poe was a mediocre actor, hot- tempered and often intoxicated. On the other hand in his six years on the stage he played one hundred and thirty- seven parts, some of them important ones, which suggests that he was neither incompetent nor unreliable.
David Poe was commended by the editor of a Boston theatrical weekly in December 1809. Afterwards we are left with hearsay. He was reported in New York in July 1810. It is probable, but by no means certain, that he deserted his wife in 1811.
Elizabeth Poe died in Richmond, Virginia, on 8th December 1811. No one knows where or when her husband died, which has not prevented biographers from providing at least three specific dates for his death over a period of approximately fourteen months. All we know for sure is that David Poe drops out of recorded history at some point after December 1809.
In other words, Edgar Allan Poe's life began with a mystery, still unsolved.
After his mother's death, Edgar took the fancy of a childless couple, Mr and Mrs John Allan. Born in Scotland, Allan was a prosperous citizen of Richmond, and a partner in a firm of tobacco exporters and general merchants. Though the Allans never formally adopted Edgar, he took their name and it was generally understood that he was not only their son but their heir.
In June 1815, John Allan sold Scipio (one of his slaves) for $600 and set sail for Liverpool with his little family. He intended to set up a London branch of his business. For five years, between the ages of six and eleven, Edgar Allan Poe lived in England. He was the only important American writer of his generation to spend a significant part of his childhood in England, and the experience marked him profoundly.
At first Allan prospered. He took a house in Southampton Row – number 47; in the autumn of 1817, the family moved to number 39. It is clear from surviving correspondence that Mrs Allan's health was a constant source of worry – and perhaps, for Mr Allan, a source of irritation as well. The Allans paid at least two visits to Cheltenham, on the second of which they stayed at the Stiles Hotel. Here Mrs Allan could take the waters and benefit from the country air.
While they were at Cheltenham in 1817, a parrot ordered for Mrs Allan arrived at Liverpool. This was a bird reputed to speak French, and was designed to replace a parrot left behind in Virginia (who had been able to recite the alphabet in English). In his 'Philosophy of Composition', the adult Poe revealed that when he was planning 'The Raven' his first thought was that the bird should be a parrot.
At some point in the first six months of 1818, John Allan withdrew Edgar from his school in London and, despite business reverses, transferred him to a more expensive establishment, the Manor House School in the nearby village of Stoke Newington. The schoolmaster was the Reverend John Bransby. 'Edgar is a fine boy,' Allan wrote to one of his correspondents in June that year, 'and reads Latin pretty sharply.'
The Manor House School is long since gone, but we know what the roadside facade looked like from a contemporary sketch and a photograph of 1860. We also have a photograph of a portrait of Bransby. Several of Master Allan's school bills have survived, which reveal among other things that Allan paid an extra two guineas a term for Edgar to have the privilege of a bed to himself. We know from other sources a good deal about life in English private schools of the period.
Best of all, we have Poe's own short story, 'William Wilson', which contains a fictional version of the Stoke Newington school, complete with its own 'Reverend Dr Bransby'. The story is particularly interesting, because it concerns a boy haunted by a schoolmate who appears to be his double.
Years afterwards, a former pupil at the Manor House School questioned John Bransby about the school's most
