The Portable Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [5]
Sick and discouraged, Poe lingered in New York for several weeks, but finding no work he returned to Baltimore, residing with his grandmother, his aunt Maria Clemm, and her daughter Virginia. Poe also rejoined his older brother, Henry, a poet and former sailor then in the last stages of tuberculosis. Surrounded by illness and poverty, Poe replied to an announcement in a Philadelphia newspaper of a hundred-dollar premium for the “best American tale” by composing that summer and fall a handful of clever narratives set in the Old World, mostly satirical imitations of magazine fiction—a Gothic tale of revenge, a pseudobiblical farce, a spoof about the indignities of dying, and two separate fantasies about men bargaining with the devil for their souls. Poe reinvented himself as a magazinist under depressing circumstances: His brother died in August, and soon thereafter a cholera epidemic gripped Baltimore. That fall poor health and abject poverty impelled Poe’s penitent appeal to John Allan in which he acknowledged his “flagrant ingratitude”—an apology that Allan, then celebrating the birth of a legitimate male heir, rewarded with monetary assistance.
The new year brought some encouragement: Although Poe did not win the coveted literary prize, the Saturday Courier in January 1832 published his first prose tale, “Metzengerstein,” and four other stories subsequently appeared in print, perhaps bringing him a few dollars. In the same playful, parodic vein, Poe added several new tales to his portfolio and in August showed them to Lambert Wilmer, a Baltimore writer and editor. Still unable to find regular employment, though, Poe apparently tried his hand as a school-teacher, an editorial assistant, and a manual laborer at a brick kiln. He also began tutoring his young cousin, Virginia, a girl of sweetly sentimental temperament to whom he became emotionally attached. By May 1833 his accumulating cache of stories—now conceived as “Tales of the Arabesque” told by members of a literary club—numbered eleven, and in June, when the Baltimore Saturday Visiter announced prizes of fifty dollars in both fiction and poetry, Poe submitted six new pieces from a collection he rechristened “Tales of the Folio Club.” The selection committee found itself “wholly unprepared” for their wild novelty and selected “MS. Found in a Bottle” for the prize in fiction. Through this competition Poe met two influential men of letters, J. H. B. Latrobe and John Pendleton Kennedy, and in November, Kennedy himself delivered Poe’s manuscript collection to publisher Henry C. Carey in Philadelphia. One of Poe’s best “Folio Club” tales, a piece later titled “The Assignation,” soon appeared in Godey’s Lady’s Book, the first large-circulation periodical to feature his work.
A lawyer and novelist, Kennedy also became a mentor: He hired Poe to do odd jobs, gave professional advice, furnished new clothes, and provided occasional meals. He encouraged the younger writer to send his work to Thomas W. White, a Richmond editor who had just launched the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe needed a fresh start: John Allan’s death in March 1834 had ended any possibility of reconciliation, and his will contained no mention of his impoverished former ward. Moreover, despite Kennedy’s intervention, Carey seemed politely reluctant to publish the “Folio Club” tales. How Poe sustained himself during this period remains unclear; by 1835 his appearance was so “humiliating” that he declined a dinner invitation from Kennedy. But an important literary connection was already in the making: Poe’s shocking new tale, “Berenice,” had appeared in the March issue of the Messenger. Though chastened by White about the story’s grisly finale, Poe supplied another mystical tale, “Morella,” for the April issue, along with several critical notices. By May he was a regular contributor, and by June he was advising White about promotional strategies.