Henry Poe

William Henry Leonard Poe (born January 30, 1807 in Boston , † August 1, 1831 in Baltimore ) was an American sailor and poet . He was the older brother of the writer Edgar Allan Poe and their common sister Rosalie Mackenzie Poe.

life and work

Henry Poe was the first child of actor David Poe, Jr. , the second husband of the widowed actress Eliza Poe . His brother Edgar was born on January 19, 1809, his sister Rosalie on December 20, 1810, she died in 1874. Even before the birth of the last child in July 1810, the father no longer lived in the same household. It is believed that he either left the family previously or passed away.

After Poe's mother died on December 8, 1811 at the age of only 23/24, the three children (4, 2 and 1 years old) were separated and raised in different locations by three different families. Henry came to David Poe senior , the paternal grandfather, called "General Poe" and his wife Elizabeth, b. Cairnes. He had already lived with both of them shortly after his birth for some, if not most of the time, when his mother had given him to his grandparents to care for because she could not look after him (for professional reasons). The grandparents lived in Baltimore , Maryland . After the “General” died in 1816, Henry's godfather, Henry Didier , took care of the upbringing of the 9-year-old boy. Brother Edgar was taken in by the childless couple Frances (1785-1829) and John Allan (1779-1834) and from then on lived with them in Richmond , the capital of Virginia, 270 km south . Rosalie, the youngest child, came to live with the large couple Jane and William Mackenzie (1775-1829) also in Richmond. Both the Allans and the Mackenzies were wealthy merchants who immigrated to the British colonies from Scotland . Due to the separation, the three siblings had relatively little contact with each other, with Rosalie having the least contact with her brothers, which could have been due to the fact that she was considered mentally retarded.

Henry Poe's descriptions vary widely. Some described him as handsome and talented, but unsteady. Which could have led to his fiancée breaking up with him. Allan and Mabbott describe him as melancholy , like his brother Edgar. Both suffered from the early death of their mother, at which they were both probably also present. Still others described Henry as a "slim, feeble young man with dark, expressionless eyes." Henry is said to have written poetry as early as 1826, at the age of 19. He probably knew the Richmond-born poet Edward Coote Pinkney . He was also friends with the writer Frederick William Thomas , who was a friend of his brother Edgar.

Even before his 20th birthday, Henry Poe had either joined the navy or the merchant navy and so had come to the Caribbean , South America and the Mediterranean , possibly even to Russia . At this point his interest in writing had already developed. When he returned from his travels, he frequented young poets and read his own texts in front of an audience. His short story The Pirate as well as two romantic prose pieces and some poems were published in 1827 under the initials W.HP (for William Henry Poe ) in the very short-lived newspaper The North American , which appeared in Baltimore , as was a letter he received from one of his sea voyages Montevideo had written. He also published around 20 stories, poems and literary sketches under the same initials. At the same time, however, his alcoholism was already beginning to show.

The few works of Henry Poe that have passed down to posterity were only published in 1926 by Hervey Allen and Thomas Ollive Mabbot in the book Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. collected and published. Mabbott added a few other works in the first volume of his posthumous trilogy Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe , published in 1969 .

Influence on Edgar Allan Poe

Henry and Edgar Poe initially had little contact with each other, although Henry sought this early on. In addition, contact was made and a. made more difficult by the fact that the Allans, including Edgar, went back to Scotland for a few years and only returned to Richmond in 1820 due to economic failure there, as well as the fact that both Edgar's foster mother Frances Allan and her husband John did a lot, to alienate the two brothers. Frances Allan for fear that her "son" could be taken away from her and John Allan for rejecting Edgar. However, neither of them succeeded. The brothers were soon in correspondence and met u. a. 1825, 1827, 1829 and 1831. By this time Henry was already an alcoholic. Edgar mentioned this in a letter dated August 10, 1829 to his stepfather, John Allan. In addition, Henry left large debts, which his brother complained about in another letter to John Allan dated November 18, 1831.

Still, Edgar Allan Poe adopted his brother 's seaman's thread for some of his own tales. Henry Poe's character traits are associated with those of Augustus Barnard , friend of Arthur Gordon Pym , the protagonist in Edgar Allan Poe's only novel (fragment) The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket . Edgar admired his older brother and they both felt extremely connected through the loss of their mother. In an early phase with Henri le Rennét , Edgar Poe had adopted a kind of “ Frenchized ” form of the first name of his older brother Henry Leonard as a pseudonym . Henry in turn mentioned z. B. one of the heroes of his stories Edgar Leonard .

death

Henry Poe died at the age of 24 in the house of his aunt Maria Poe Clemm (1790–1871), presumably of tuberculosis . He was buried the following day in the First Presbyterian Church cemetery in Baltimore.

literature

• Hervey Allen , Thomas Ollive Mabbot : Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. George H. Doran, New York 1926. ( digitized from eapoe.org)
• Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Main Line: The Poe Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, Westport 1997, ISBN 0-313-27768-0 .
• Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1969, pp. 515-520.

Web links

• Grave of William Henry Leonard Poe on findagrave.com.
• The Pirate on thepoeblog.org.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The life data of Rosalie Mackenzie Poe on eapoe.org.
2. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 278.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Hervey Allen, Thomas Ollive Mabbot: Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. P. 20.
4. ↑ Hervey Allen, Thomas Ollive Mabbot: Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. P. 19.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. P. 515
6. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 216.
7. ↑ Philip Lindsay : The Haunted Man. A Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe. Hutchinson, London 1953, p. 28.
8. ↑ Wolf Mankowitz : The Extraordinary Mr. Poe. Summit Books, New York 1978, p. 110.
9. ↑ ^{a b c d} Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. P. 516.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Hervey Allen, Thomas Ollive Mabbot: Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. S. XIV.
11. ^ ^{A b c} Kenneth Silverman : Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York et al. a. 1991, ISBN 0-06-092331-8 , p. 83.
12. ^ Letter from Frederick William Thomas to Edgar Allan Poe dated November 10, 1841 at digitalcommonwealth.org.
13. ↑ Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. P. 515 FN 3.
14. ↑ Hervey Allen, Thomas Ollive Mabbot: Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. Pp. 21-22.
15. ↑ Hervey Allen, Thomas Ollive Mabbot: Poe's Brother. The Poems of William Henry Leonard Poe. P. 21.
16. ↑ Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. Pp. 515-519.
17. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 281.
18. ↑ Kenneth Silverman: Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York et al. a. 1991, ISBN 0-06-092331-8 , p. 135.
19. ↑ Una Pope-Hennessy : Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849: A Critical Biography. Macmillan, London 1934, p. 37.
20. ↑ Kenneth Silverman: Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. P. 84.
21. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. Pp. 73-74.