Upon a dark and drizzling November night of the year 1830, four cadets
of West Point Academy sat around a cosy open fire in Room 28, South
Barracks, spinning yarns for each other's amusement.
One of them--the one with the always handsome and scholarly, at times
soft and romantic, but tonight, dare-devil face, was easily recognizable
as Edgar the Goodfellow, frequently appearing in the quite opposite
character of Edgar the Dreamer, and commonly known as Edgar Poe. His
fellow cadets had dubbed him, "the Bard." Two of this young man's
companions were his room-mates in Number 28, "Old P," and "Gibs," and
the third was a visitor from North Barracks.
Taps had sounded sometime since, and the Barracks were supposed to be
wrapt in slumber, but for these young men the evening had just begun.
Several hours had elapsed since supper and it is a well-known fact that
there is never a time or a season when a college boy is not ready to
eat. Someone suggested that politeness demanded they should entertain
their guest with a fowl and a bottle of brandy from Benny Haven's shop,
and proposed that they should draw straws to determine which of the
three hosts should fetch the necessary supplies. They had no money, but
the accommodating "Bard" agreed to sacrifice his blanket in the cause of
hospitality; and armed with that and several pounds of tallow candles,
"Gibs," upon whom the lot had fallen, set forth to run the blockade to
Benny's. This was a risky business, for the vigilance of Lieutenant
Joseph Locke, one of the instructors in tactics who was also a sort of
supervisor of the morals and conduct of cadets, was hard to elude. As
one of the Bard's own effusions ran,
"John Locke was a very great name;
Joe Locke was a greater, in short,
The former was well known to Fame,
The latter well known to Report."
The best that Benny would give, in addition to the bottle, for the
blanket and candles, was an old gander, whose stentorian and tell-tale
voice he obligingly hushed by chopping off its head. Under cover of the
darkness and the storm, "Gibs" succeeded in safely returning to the
Barracks but not until his hands and his shirt were reeking with the
gander's gore. "The Bard," who was anxiously awaiting the result of the
foraging expedition ventured outside to meet him. When he beheld the
prize, he exclaimed, in a whisper,
"Good for you! But you look like a murderer caught red-handed."
His own words, almost before they left his lips, suggested to him an
idea for a mammoth hoax--the best they had tried yet, he told himself.
He hastily, and in whispers, unfolded it to "Gibs," whom he found all
sympathy, then returned alone, to his friends in Number 28, reporting
that he had seen nothing of their messenger, and expressing fear that he
had met with an accident.
All began to watch the door with anxiety. After some minutes it burst
open and "Gibs," who had carefully laid the gander down outside,
staggered into the room, appearing to be very drunk and brandishing a
knife, which he had rubbed against the fowl's bleeding neck. "Old P."
and the visitor from North Barracks, too frightened for words, sat as
though rooted to their chairs, while "the Bard" sprang to his feet and
in a horror-stricken voice, exclaimed,
"Heavens, Gibs! What has happened?"
"Joe Locke--Joe Locke--" gasped "Gibs."
"Well, what of Joe Locke? Speak man!"
"He won't report me any more. I've killed him!"
"Pshaw!" exclaimed "the Bard," in disgust. "This is another of your
practical jokes, and you know it."
"I thought you would say that, so I cut off his head and brought it
along. Here it is!"
With that he quickly opened the door and picked up the gander and,
whirling it around his head, dashed it violently at the one candle which
was thus knocked over and extinguished, leaving the room in darkness but
for a few smouldering embers on the hearth, and with the gruesome
addition to the company of what two of those present believed to be the
severed head of Lieutenant Locke.
The visitor with one bound was out of the room through the window, and
made good his escape to his own quarters in North Barracks, where he
spread the astounding news that "Gibs" had murdered Joe Locke; it was
certainly so, for his head was then in Number 28, South Barracks.
"Old P." nearly frozen with fright, did not move from his place, and it
was with some difficulty that "the Bard" and "Gibs" brought him back to
a normal condition and induced him to assist in preparing the fowl which
had played the part of Joe Locke's head, in the little comedy, for the
belated feast--which was merrily partaken of, but without the guest of
honor.
* * * * *
Edgar Poe had entered West Point in July, but hardly had its doors
closed behind him when his optimism gave place to wretchedness and he
began to feel that his appointment was a mistake. He had taken a fine
stand in his classes, but he recognized at once a state of things most
unpleasant for him for which he had not been prepared. As in his
schooldays in Richmond and at the University, a number of the boys had
withheld their intimacy from him on account of caste feeling, so now at
West Point he found history repeating itself, but with a difference. In
Richmond and at the University it had been as the child of the stage and
as a dependent upon charity, that the line was drawn against him. With
the aristocratic cadets, it was because of his promotion from the ranks.
Yet the very experience which brought their contempt upon him gave him a
sense of superiority that made their manner toward him the harder to
bear, and drilling with green boys after having been two years a
soldier, he found most irksome.
While the snubbing to which he was subjected was general enough to make
his situation extremely unpleasant, however, it was by no means
unanimous. "Gibs" and "Old P." his convivial room-mates in Number 28,
took him to their hearts at once, and he really liked them when he was
in the mood for companions of their type, but they wore cruelly upon his
nerves when the divine fire within him was burning. So indeed would any
room-mates, for at home always, and most of the time at the University,
one of his chief comforts had been his own room where he could shut out
all the world and be alone with his dreams.
There was, at West Point, nothing like a repetition of his course at the
University. The trouble which his attack of gambling fever had gotten
him into had proved a severe but wholesome lesson, and he had let cards
alone at once and forever. In his ignorance of his own family history,
he did not know that for one of his blood, the only safety lay in total
abstinence from the cup that cheers, but the intense and instantaneous
excitement he found a single glass of wine produced in his brain--an
excitement amounting almost to madness--was in itself a warning to him,
and kept him strictly within the bounds of moderation.
There were times, however, when with a chicken and a bottle of brandy,
purchased secretly from old Benny, and smuggled, at great hazard, into
the room, Edgar Goodfellow could, with zest join his rolicking
room-mates in making merry, and in spite of his strict adherence to the
single glass, generally out-do them at their own games.
But there was no place in that room for Edgar the Dreamer; and between
the spirit-dulling routine and discipline of classes and drills with
youths for the most part younger than himself and inferior in mentality
and cultivation, but who bore themselves as his superiors, and the
impossibility of an hour of solitude, the lovely "Ligeia" became unreal
and remote. He could no longer catch the sounds of her voice, or feel
her presence near. His muse, too, had become shy and difficult and when
she deigned to visit him at all, it was generally in the quite new
character of jester in cap and bells, under whose influence he dashed
off humorous and satirical squibs at the expense of the professors and
students, of which the lines on Lieutenant Locke are a specimen. These
he recited for the benefit of the little parties that gathered in Number
28, by whom they were regarded as master-pieces of wit and were
circulated through the school.
But he took no real pleasure in this perversion of his poetical gift,
and feeling his soul cramped and cabined by the uncongeniality of his
surroundings, he soon became convinced that West Point was not the place
for him, and that he should leave it as soon as possible. He wrote Mr.
Allan of his dissatisfaction--begging his assistance in securing a
discharge. At no time would this request have been granted but it came
at the most inopportune moment imaginable.
Some time before, certain ladies in Richmond who professed "to know the
signs," had given out the interesting news that Mr. Allan was "taking
notice." True it was that though such a thing had seemed impossible, his
stocks were higher and more precisely folded than ever, his broadcloth
was of a finer texture, his knee-buckles shone with a brighter lustre,
but the most marked change in him was a certain springiness of gait
altogether new to his silk-stockinged calves, and almost youthful, and a
pleased expression of the hitherto stern eyes and mouth which made his
usually solemn vizage look as if it might break out into smiles at any
moment.
The signs, the ladies said, dated from the arrival of at "Powhatan," the
country seat of the Mayo family, just below Richmond, of a fair
guest--Miss Louisa Patterson, of Philadelphia. This lady was no longer
young, according to the severe standards of that time of early marriages
and correspondingly early "old-maidenhood," but so much the better, as
she was therefore of suitable age for the elderly though spruce and
prosperous widower. She was, withal, a decidedly personable woman with
the elegant manners and conversation of the inner circles of the
exclusive, stately society in which she had been nurtured--just the
woman, the fair prophetesses said, to rule over John Allan (for
everybody knew that a man who ruled his first wife was invariably ruled
by his second) and to preside with distinction and taste over his
drawing-room and his board. She was as suitable, in fact for the wife of
ripe age as the flower-like Frances had been for the wife of youth. So
Richmond gave its unqualified approval.
Nothing could have been more out of harmony with the sound of the
"mellow wedding bells" pealing for this happy pair, than a reminder of
the first wife of the bridegroom in the shape of a letter from Edgar
Poe.
When Poe had entered West Point his foster-father had drawn a long
breath of relief. He believed that the idle youth with whom his dead
wife had been so strangely infatuated was off his hands for good and
all. When the letter came to jar upon his new dream of love he was
irritated, and in his brief mention of the matter to his bride it was
very apparent, and left upon her mind the impression that Frances Allan
must have been a weak and silly creature indeed, to have fancied an
idle, ungrateful boy who spent his time drinking, gambling and
scribbling ridiculous poetry. _And the son of an actress!_ It would have
been impossible for such a low character and herself to have remained
under the same roof for a day, she was sure, and she told her husband
so--imparting to her tone somewhat of the pity she felt to think of his
having been yoked for years to such a morally frail specimen of
womanhood as she conceived the first Mrs. Allan to have been.
So Mr. Allan's letter of refusal to help Edgar escape the life that was
growing more and more irksome to him was as decided as it was brief. But
Edgar was unshaken in his resolve to get away as soon as possible. In
the meantime, finding no outlet for his restless creative faculty that
would not remain inactive though there was no opportunity for its
satisfaction, he gave himself over by turns, to deepest dejection and
wildest hilarity.
Finally, as no other relief was at hand, he decided to force his
discharge by deliberate and systematic neglect of the rules. The plan
succeeded so well that before the session was out he was expelled from
the Academy for disobedience of orders and failure to attend roll-calls,
classes and guard-duty.