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The Saturday Visiter Contest
(August 1831 - March 1834)
Edgar had his first serious romantic attachment since
Elmira Royster
with a seventeen-year-old girl named Mary
Starr. It's said that he proposed to her but that her
brother disapproved since Edgar could not support himself,
let alone a wife. Edgar was apparently jealous and the two
often quarreled. One time Edgar visited Mary late at night,
under the influence of alcohol, they started to quarrel;
Mary ran home and her mother had to stop the furious Edgar
from catching her. After that he was not allowed to visit
her anymore.
According to a Maryland journalist named Lambert
Wilmer, who also had published a play based on Edgar's
broken off engagement with Elmira Royster, Edgar was very
occupied with his writing during this period of his life,
and he had now turned to fiction, probably hoping to make
some more money than he did on poetry.
His first published
tale appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post on
August 13, 1831 and was entitled "The Dream". In the
narrator's dream he walks around in a seemingly dead
environment when he sees a distant opening in the sky from
where comes the person he had helped to slay. With a
colorful language Edgar describes the hideous charachter
approaching before the narrator awakes. The story embodies
much of Edgar's past and might have been inspired from
Henry's death. A statement where "nature mourned, for its
parent had died" could suggest a connection between Edgar's
feelings about Henry's and
their mother, Eliza's,
death.
Whether Edgar wrote the story or not is not
certain, it was published with the signature "P" but the
circumstances around the publishings and the charachter of
the story suggests that he did. Henry had published his
work in the magazine earlier and this story was published
shortly after Henry's death.
In the spring of 1831 the Saturday Courier,
also in Philadelphia, announced a contest offering $100 for
"the best AMERICAN TALE". Edgar did not win but the judges
liked his work. On January 14, 1832, they published his
first acknowledged tale - "Metzengerstein". This
story was a dreamlike, supernatural tale with strong
autobiographical overtones. Fifteen-year-old Baron
Frederick Metzengerstein had, like Edgar, been orphaned
early in life and after that he "stood without a living
relative". The palace in the tale also recalls
Moldavia.
Later in 1832, Edgar published four comic tales
in the Philadelphia Courier, "Duke de L'Omelette", "A Tale
of Jerusalem", "A Decided Loss" and "The Bargain Lost".
Even if they were comic, all the tales bring up the
subject of surviving death. The Duke de L'Omelette is
brought to Baal-Zebub to play cards with the devil. "A
Decided Loss" shows of all the ways you can die without
dying. The narrator lost his breath, got his skull crushed,
was hanged, had his ears cut off by a coroner, gets cut up,
still alive although killed again and again. Edgar's
language in these tales is full of detailed, shocking
violence, tendencies he had shown of as early as in the
letters he wrote from the University to John Allan.
By the spring of 1833 Edgar decided to gather his
work into a volume called "Eleven Tales of the
Arabeque". Six of the tales he entered in a contest
sponsored by a Baltimore newspaper, the Saturday
Visiter. The prize was $50 for the best tale and $25
for the best poem. In the latter category Edgar also
entered a new poem entitled "The Coliseum". The manuscript
he sent was called, "The Tales of the Folio Club" and
the jury had no problems picking Edgar as a winner
considering all his tales equally good. The tale that was
chosen as a winner for its originality was
"MS. Found in a Bottle" and it was
published October 19, 1833, and
the week after his poem was published.
"MS. Found in a bottle" is mainly about a man
who, together with an "old Swede", survives when their ship
gets destroyed. They end up on a phantom-ship where he
walks around and nobody notices him and as the vessel
plunges into a whirlpool the narration breaks off -
"the ship is quivering - O God! and - going down!".
The tale is as many other tales by Edgar filled with
effectful contradictions - the dead are living, the young
are old, the strange is unstrange, the near is far and so
on. The ship reappears in "The Coliseum" but this time in a
ghostly architechtural version, and also the Colliseum is a
survivor of death.
On the same day "The Coliseum" was published the
visiter ran a notice calling for subscribers for Edgar's
new volume, "The Folio Club". But one week later Edgar
decided not to publish as planned, instead he wanted to
publish in Philadelphia. These changes of plans was probably
because of the editor John Hewitt. The winner of the poem
cathegory was Henry Wilton which apparently was a psudonym
for Hewitt himself which Edgar did not like. Edgar was
furious and accused Hewitt for having tampered with the
jury in the contest and according to Hewitt some of his
friends had to stop Edgar from starting a fight.
Edgar handed over his manuscript to a Baltimore
novelist named John Pendelton Kennedy. He admired Edgar's
writing and agreed to show it to Henry Carey in
Philadelphia. Before that, Edgar got a part of it published
- "The Visionary". It was published in January 1834
and it was Edgar's debut in a monthly magazine of national
circulation.
The Death of John Allan
During these years of Edgar's life he had not much contact
with John Allan. In August 1831, John Allan's new wife gave
birth to the couples first child whom they named John Allan
Jr. Edgar, who hadn't heard from Allan since he left West
Point, probably found out about the child in October.
Edgar wrote to John Allan telling how ignorant and
thankless he had been for the help he had received from
John Allan and he was sure to say that it was not a
concealed way of asking for money. But in the end of the
letter he says that he was "wretchedly poor". And
one month later Edgar claimed that he had been arrested for
an old debt of $80 - but no evidence of this arrest has
been found. Edgar's aunt, Maria Clemm
, also wrote to John
Allan at least twice trying to help Edgar out. Help was
finally received and the debt was paid and after that Edgar
had no contact with Allan for about 15 months.
Still in financial trouble, Edgar again went to live
with Maria, his cousin Virginia and his grandmother in the
spring of 1833. In April he once again wrote to John Allan
begging for money to "save me from destruction".
Allan who was fed up with Edgar's attidude refused any
help.
In the 95 degree heat in the summer of 1833, John
Allan became ill. He had now two children with
Louisa, the
second son named after William Galt. In 1834 the couple had
a third child and John Allan health was not improving. A
second hand witness states that Edgar came to visit Allan
once and had to force himself past Louisa and into John
Allan's sickroom. John Allan had raised his cane as to hit
Edgar with it and ordered him to leave.
March 27, 1834, John Allan died sitting in his
armchair. His will was problematic and not legally valid.
John Allan's property was given to Louisa and the couple's
common children. Edgar was not even mentioned in the will
and although John Allan was good for about three quarters
of a million dollar Edgar did receive nothing!
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