Upon his arrival in Boston, our errant knight, before setting out upon
his quest for the Fame and Fortune to whose service he was sworn, spent
some hours in wandering about the old town, with mind open to the
quickening influences of historic association and eye to the irregular,
picturesque beauty about him.
It was one of those rare days that come sometimes in the month of
February when, though according to the callendar it should be cold,
there is a warmth in the sunshine that seems borrowed from Spring. Tired
out by his tramp, young Edgar at length sat down upon a bench in the
Common, under an elm, great of girth and wide-spreading. The sunshine
fell pleasantly upon him, through the bare branches. Roundabout were
other splendid, but now bare elms and he sat gazing upward into their
sturdy brown branches and dreamily picturing to himself the beauty of
these goodly trees clothed in the green vesture of summer. Suddenly, by
a whimsical sequence of suggestion, the pleasure he felt in the sunshine
of February as it reached him under the tree in Boston Common, vividly
called to mind the refreshing coolness of the shade of the elms, in full
leaf, as he, a little lad of six, had walked the streets of old
Stoke-Newington for the first time.
There was little relation between that first and this present parting
with the Allans, yet in his mind they became inseparably connected. He
recalled his happiness in his first essays at composition, made at the
Manor School, and told himself that, though he did not know it at the
time, that was the first step toward his life work. He was now, here in
Boston, the city of his birth, about to take the second; for the hour
had arrived when his work would be given to the world!
Across his knees he held the box containing his precious manuscripts. He
arose from the bench and turning toward the lower end of the Common,
walked, with brisk, hopeful step down town, in the direction of a
well-known publishing house whose location he had already ascertained.
Edgar Poe had known sorrow, real and imaginary; he was now to have his
first meeting with Disappointment, bitter and grim.
Of all the persons who had ever seen his work, every one had been warm
in its praise--everyone saving John Allan only. Some had been positively
glowing. True, they had not been publishers, yet among them there had
been gentlemen and ladies of taste and culture. But here was a different
matter. Here was a personage with whom he had not reckoned, but who was
the door, as it were, through which his work must pass into the world.
He was unmistakably a personage. His bearing, though modest, spoke of
power. His dress, though unobtrusive, was in the perfect taste which
only the prosperous can achieve and maintain. His features were cast in
the mold of the well-bred. He was past middle age and his naturally fine
countenance was beautiful with the ennobling lines which time leaves
upon the face of the seeker after truth. He was courteous--most
Bostonians and many publishers are. He was sympathetic. He was
undoubtedly intellectual, but the eyes that regarded through big,
gold-rimmed spectacles, the romantic beauty, the prominent brow and the
distinguished air of the sweet-voiced youth before him, wore a not only
thoughtful, but something more--a distinctly shrewd and practical
expression. In them was no awe of the bare mention of "original poetry."
He took the little rolls of manuscript into his strong, and at the same
time smooth and well-shapen hands, and drew them out to their full
length with the manner of one who handled as good every day. He cast his
eyes rapidly down the sheets--_too_ rapidly, it seemed to the poet--with
a not unkind, yet critical air, while the sensitive youth before him
turned red and white, hot and cold, by turns, and learned something of
the horrors of the Inquisition.
It was really but a very short space, but to the boy who seemed
suspended between a life and a death sentence, it was an age.
Finally, he experienced something like a drowning sensation while he
heard a voice that barely penetrated the flood of deep waters that was
rolling over his head, saying words that were intended to be kind about
the work showing promise, in spite of an absence of marketable value.
"Marketable value?" Heavens! Was he back in John Allan's counting house?
What could the man mean? It was as literature, not as merchandize that
he wanted his poetry to be judged!
In his dismay, he stammered something of the sort, only to be told that
when his poetry was made into a book it would become merchandize and it
mattered not how good, as poetry--it might be, the publisher could do
nothing with it unless as merchandize it would probably be valuable too.
Then--he had been politely bowed out, with his package still under his
arm!
During the few minutes he had spent in the publisher's office the sky
had become overcast and a biting east wind had blown up from the river;
but the change in the outside world was as nothing to that within him.
He had not known how large a part of himself was his dream of becoming a
poet. It now seemed to him that it was all of him--had from the
beginning of his life been all of him. Since those old days at
Stoke-Newington, he had been building--building--building--this castle
in the air; now, at one fell blow, the whole fabric was laid in ruin!
Weakness seized his limbs and deep dejection his spirits. His life might
as well come to an end for there was nothing left for him to live for.
How indeed, was he to live when the only work he knew how to do had "no
marketable value?" The money with which Mrs. Allan supplied him, before
he left home--"to give him a start"--would soon be exhausted. What if he
should not be able to make more?
Though he was in the city of his birth, he found himself an absolute
stranger. If any of those who had been sympathetic friends to his mother
were left, he had no idea who or where they were.
He went back to the lodgings he had engaged to a night of bitter,
sleepless tossing.
But with the new day, youth and hope asserted themselves. He decided
that he would not accept as final the verdict of any one publisher,
though that one stood at the head of the list. With others, however, it
was just the same; and another night of even greater wretchedness
followed.
Upon his third day in Boston (he felt that he had been there a year!)
he wandered aimlessly about, spirit broken, ambition gone. Finally, in
Washington Street, he discovered, upon a small door, a modest sign
bearing the legend:
"Calvin F.S. Thomas. Printer."
With freshly springing hope, he entered the little shop and was received
by a pale, soft-eyed, sunken-chested and somewhat threadbare youth of
about his own age, who in reply to his inquiry, announced himself as
"Mr. Thomas."
Between these two boys, as they stood looking frankly into each other's
eyes, that mysterious thing which we call sympathy, which like the wind
"bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither
it goeth," sprang instantly into being. The one found himself without
his usual diffidence declaring himself a poet in search of a publisher,
and the other was at once alert with interest.
Calvin Thomas had but just--timorously, for he was poor as well as
young--set up his little shop, hoping to build up a trade as a printer.
To be a publisher had not entered into his wildest imaginings--much less
a publisher for a poet! But he was, like his visitor, a dreamer, and
like him ambitious. Why should he not be a publisher as well as a
printer? The poet had not his manuscripts with him, but offered to
recite some extracts, which he did, with glowing voice and
gesture--explaining figures of speech and allusions as he went along.
Edgar Poe sat easily upon a high stool in the little shop. His dress was
handsome and, as always, exquisite in its neatness and taste. His whole
appearance and bearing were marked by an "air" which deeply impressed
the young printer who had promptly fallen under the spell of his
personal charm. He had laid his hat upon the desk, baring the glossy
brown ringlets that clustered about his large, pale brow. His clear-cut
features were mobile and eager; his dark grey eyes full of life. His
voice had a wonderful musical quality, becoming passionate when, as at
present, his feeling was deeply aroused.
His poetry, recited thus, gained much of distinction. Its crudities
would have been lost, to a great extent, even upon a critic. But Thomas
was no critic. He was simply a dreamy, half-educated youth with a mind
open to the beautiful and the romantic. The flights of the poet's fancy
did not seem to him obscure or too fantastic. They admitted him to a
magic world in which he sat spell-bound until silence brought him back
to his tiny bare shop which seemed suddenly to have been glorified.
"It is wonderful--_wonderful_!" he breathed.
He began to picture himself as not only sharing the wealth, but the fame
which the publication of these gems was bound to bring. But he had to
explain that he was poor, and that he could not bring out the poems
without financial aid. The money which had been given Edgar to set out
in the world with, was already dwindling, but he managed to subscribe a
sum which Thomas declared would be sufficient, with the little he
himself could add, for the printing of a modest edition, in a very
modest garb.