Edgar Allan Poe (13 page)

Poe made creative use of many other external signs that served to indicate personality. His first-person narrators often use the principles of physiognomy to read the personality of other characters on the basis of their facial features. Attire, physical gestures, gait, and posture provide additional ways to understand people. How others decorate their homes presents further clues for discerning identity. These different approaches toward understanding personality on the basis of external signs are all interrelated. Reading people’s parlour furnishings is akin to reading their faces. Walter Benjamin made the parallel explicit. Speaking of ‘The Philosophy of Furniture’, he called Poe ‘the first physiognomist of the domestic interior’.
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Appearing in late April 1840, ‘The Philosophy of Furniture’ was an occasional piece, meaning it was published for the occasion of Moving Day, 1 May, the day when annual leases expired and when New Yorkers who were going to move moved. Republishing ‘The Philosophy of Furniture’ five years later, Poe again timed its appearance to coincide with Moving Day. In this sketch Poe took the opportunity to describe the decor of the ideal room. To enhance his description, he placed an inhabitant inside: ‘Even now, there is present to our mind’s eye a small and not ostentatious chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor lies asleep on a sofa – the weather is cool – the time is near midnight: we will make a sketch of the room during his slumber.’
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In other words, Poe catches the proprietor in the unconscious act of leaving his impression on the room as his body makes an indentation on the sofa. ‘The Philosophy of Furniture’, as Benjamin recognized, reflects the tendency of the nineteenth-century middle-class urban population to imprint themselves on their domestic environment. Poe’s sketch verifies the close association between decor and personality and reinforces the identification between the character of a room and the personal character of its inhabitants. Depicting the homeowner asleep, Poe indicates that regardless of their level of conscious awareness, people continue to leave their mark on the spaces they inhabit.
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He also blurs the boundary between the stationary
flâneur
and the Peeping Tom: there is a creepiness that comes with staring at someone asleep.

Through much of 1840, Poe worked hard to establish the
Penn Magazine
. He solicited subscriptions, lined up contributors and got the word out. Charles Alexander proved helpful. He puffed the proposed magazine in the
Daily Chronicle
, encouraging readers to subscribe. Despite Burton’s fears, Poe’s aggressive promotion did not prevent Burton from selling his magazine. In the third week of October, in fact, he sold
Burton’s
to George R. Graham, publisher of
The Casket
, another literary monthly. Since Graham already owned a competing magazine, the principal benefit he received from purchasing
Burton’s
was its list of subscribers. Graham paid Burton $3500, one dollar per subscriber. Graham did not intend to continue
Burton’s
. Instead, he would combine it with
The Casket
to form
Graham’s Magazine
.

Poe’s hard work toward establishing the
Penn Magazine
was bringing the project closer to reality, but it was not putting any bread on the table. Since his dismissal, the covers of
Burton’s
had been closed to him for the most part. Upon taking over the magazine, Graham welcomed Poe’s work. Its last issue, simultaneously the last issue of
The Casket
and a sample issue of the forthcoming
Graham’s Magazine
, contained ‘The Man of the Crowd’, which deserves recognition as one of Poe’s major tales. The issue hit news-stands in late November 1840.

‘The Man of the Crowd’ also takes the legibility of the modern world as its theme. As Poe’s narrator relates his London experience, he describes himself seated in the bow window of a London coffee-house, alternately reading a newspaper and observing his surroundings. These two parallel activities make the act of observing analogous to the reading process.
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Every face in the crowd becomes a text for the narrator to read. He takes pride in his ability to discern personality on the basis of external appearance: ‘Although the rapidity with which the world of life flitted before the window, prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each visage, still it seemed that in my peculiar mental state, I could frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of long years.’
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Revising ‘The Man of the Crowd’ for republication, Poe made several brief changes to enhance its complexity. For one, he altered the phrase ‘world of life’ to ‘world of light’, suggesting that we do not see people as they really are: we only see what their exteriors reflect. We see the light, not the life. Unable to identify a mysterious old man who enters his visual field, the narrator leaves the comfort of the coffee-house and heads into the street in pursuit. He follows the old man through the London streets all night, commenting on the appearance of the city as he goes.

In terms of literary antecedents, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ closely resembles the city sketch, a minor literary genre that describes the life of a city, typically starting at daybreak, continuing through the day and extending into the night. Princess Marie Bonaparte called ‘The Man of the Crowd’ a ‘symphony in “ebony and silver” of the lamp-lit night of a great city’.
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Her words reinforce the association between ‘The Man of the Crowd’ and the city sketch and also link Poe’s tale with a landmark work in motion picture history, Walter Ruttman’s
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
, a grand cinematic version of the city sketch. Furthermore, Bonaparte’s words associate Poe’s story with photography. Like the daguerreotype portrait, whose invention was made public the year before, Poe’s tale attempts to capture man’s identity. In terms of the history of photography, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ resembles no other work more closely than the photography of Lisette Model, whose most memorable images depict people in a fragmented and depersonalized way. She portrays men’s lower legs and feet as they hurry through the modern city streets. Like the old man of Poe’s tale, her subjects are men of the crowd, men who remain fragmented, whose precise identities remain elusive.

Despite his lengthy pursuit, the narrator gets no closer to understanding the man he follows. He concludes that the old man is ‘the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone.
He is the man of the crowd
.’
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The narrator’s conclusion reflects paranoia bred from uncertainty. Back in the coffeehouse, he had been absolutely confident in his ability to read the faces in the crowd. Now, after a night on the streets, his confidence is shattered. His inability to read the old man frightens him. Few experiences are more terrifying than encountering the unreadable in a world we thought we could read, the unknown in a world we thought we knew.

Though one tale is serious and the other humorous, the action of ‘The Man of the Crowd’ parallels the action of ‘Little Frenchman’. Once the Frenchman visits Sir Patrick and tells him that he, too, loves Mrs Treacle, Sir Patrick must follow him to her apartment to keep him under surveillance. In other words, he must leave the safety of his own private space and venture into the dangerous space of the widow’s apartment, where he can no longer control what will happen. The two men woo, but, caring for neither, she has her footmen throw them out. Poe lets Sir Patrick return home to his apartment, where he looks out his window once more and reconstructs his fantasy. The narrator of ‘The Man of the Crowd’ leaves his cosy coffee-house for much the same reason Sir Patrick leaves his comfortable apartment: for the purpose of surveillance. Unlike Sir Patrick, the narrator never returns to where he started. Nor does he recapture his smug certainty. The action of the story ends with him standing by himself on an empty London street, his pursuit ended, his quest thwarted. The individual alone in a big city and unable to comprehend his fellow man: with this image, Poe painted the portrait of modern man.

Around the time ‘The Man of the Crowd’ appeared, Poe trekked to Andalusia, the country estate of Nicholas Biddle. Best known as the president of the Second Bank of the United States, Biddle was now retired. Poe did not know him personally, but the two had much in common. Biddle was a literary man and a patron of the arts and sciences; his home was becoming a salon visited by European and American litterateurs.
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Earlier he had helped edit
History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark
, a significant source for ‘The Journal of Julius Rodman’ and a major work of American literature in its own right. Biddle was also a correspondent of Poe’s kinsman George Poe, Jr, an Alabama banker to whom Poe also appealed for support. He found Biddle affable and greatly enjoyed discussing English literature with him.
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The precise nature of his visit to Andalusia is uncertain, but it had something to do with the
Penn Magazine
. Discussing the magazine a few months earlier, Poe had expressed his desire to form a connection ‘with some gentleman of literary attainments, who could at the same time advance as much ready money as will be requisite for the first steps of the undertaking’.
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Biddle qualified in terms of both literary attainments and ready money. To ingratiate himself, Poe presented him an autographed copy of
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
. Poe’s sales pitch left Biddle unconvinced. He hesitated to invest but agreed to a four-year subscription, which was a kind of patronage. Biddle understood that new magazines seldom lasted that long.

Andalusia, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, south elevation, showing hexastyle doric portico.

Shortly after returning from Andalusia, Poe was stricken ill and confined to bed for around a month. Consequently, he had to delay his plans for the
Penn Magazine
, the first number of which he had hoped to issue in January 1841. March was his new goal. In the first week of January he wrote Biddle to inform him of the delay but also to ask another favour. Poe hoped he would contribute an article to the magazine’s first issue:

Making this request, Poe could not fully mask his melancholy. As hard as he had worked to make a name for himself as an author, the name of a banker still meant more to the American public.

Poe continued soliciting subscriptions and lining up contributors, but when a nationwide financial crisis struck the first week of February, he was forced to postpone plans for the
Penn Magazine
indefinitely – a prudent decision, according to George Graham. ‘Periodicals are among the principal sufferers by these pecuniary convulsions,’ Graham observed, ‘and to
commence
one just now would be exceedingly hazardous.’
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Sensitive to Poe’s disappointment, Graham asked him to take charge of the book review department of
Graham’s Magazine
, offering an annual salary of eight hundred dollars. The salary was better than any Poe had yet received or, for that matter, better than any salary he ever would receive. What made the opportunity most appealing to Poe was the intellectual freedom Graham offered. Whereas Burton had severely restricted what Poe could say in his reviews, Graham would give him the freedom to express his mind. Poe accepted.

The April 1841 issue of
Graham’s
announced Poe’s association with the magazine on its front cover: ‘Mr Poe is too well known in the literary world to require a word of commendation. As a critic he is surpassed by no man in this country; and as in this Magazine his critical abilities shall have free scope, the rod will be very generously, and at the same time, justly administered.’
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This issue also contained Poe’s review of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s
Night and Morning
and another major tale, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’.

The sheer length of Poe’s review of
Night and Morning
indicates an important difference between
Burton’s
and
Graham’s
. The review of this novel is five and a half pages long, each page consisting of two columns of closely printed text. It begins with a plot summary, but even as Poe sketches out the plot, his words reflect concerns similar to those of current tales. Robert Beaufort, one of the novel’s principal characters, Poe calls ‘a crafty man-of-the-world, whose only honesty consists in appearing honest – a scrupulous decorist’.
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