Actors led a miserable life in those days, and the Poes were no exception. They died comfortless in Richmond; their three children were separated; and Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. It was in the luxurious Allan home that the boy began the drinking habits which were his bane ever afterwards.
[Sidenote: POE'S SCHOOL DAYS]
The Allans were abroad on business from 1815 to 1820, and during these years Edgar was at a private school in the suburbs of London. It was the master of that school who described the boy as a clever lad spoiled by too much pocket money. The prose tale "William Wilson" has some reflection of these school years, and, so far as known, it is the only work in which Poe introduced any of his familiar experiences.
Soon after his return to Richmond the boy was sent to the University of Virginia, where his brilliant record as a student was marred by his tendency to dissipation. After the first year Mr. Allan, finding that the boy had run up a big gambling debt, took him from college and put him to work in the tobacco house. Whereupon Edgar, always resentful of criticism, quarreled with his foster father and drifted out into the world. He was then at eighteen, a young man of fine bearing, having the taste and manners of a gentleman, but he had no friend in the world, no heritage of hard work, no means of earning a living.
[Illustration: WEST RANGE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA]
[Sidenote: HIS WANDERINGS]
Next we hear vaguely of Poe in Boston where he published a tiny volume, Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a Bostonian (1827). Failing to win either fame or money by his poetry he enlisted in the army under an assumed name and served for about two years. Of his army life we know nothing, nor do we hear of him again until his foster father secured for him an appointment to the military academy at West Point. There Poe made an excellent beginning, but he soon neglected his work, was dismissed, and became an Ishmael again. After trying in vain to secure a political office he went to Baltimore, where he earned a bare living by writing for the newspapers. The popular but mythical account of his life (for which he himself is partly responsible) portrays him at this period in a Byronic rôle, fighting with the Greeks for their liberty.
[Sidenote: FIRST SUCCESS]
His literary career began in 1833 when his "Manuscript Found in a Bottle" won for him a prize offered by a weekly newspaper. The same "Manuscript" brought him to the attention of John Pendleton Kennedy, who secured for him a position on the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger. He then settled in Richmond, and in his grasp was every thing that the heart of a young author might desire. He had married his cousin, Virginia Clem, a beautiful young girl whom he idolized; he had a comfortable home and an assured position; Kennedy and other southern writers were his loyal friends; the Messenger published his work and gave him a reputation in the literary world of America. Fortune stood smiling beside him, when he quarreled with his friends, left the Messenger and began once more his struggle with poverty and despair.
[Sidenote: A LIFE OF FRAGMENTS]