University of Virginia Library

XXXII. Distinguished Alumni—Literary

In designating the alumni by their employments, we
omitted one division because its representatives were
too few to constitute what could be correctly referred
to as a class. There was, in that diversified body, no
such section as men of letters, if the test applied is mere

number; and yet the most famous man of letters whom
America has ever produced was an alumnus of the University
of Virginia, the only higher seat of learning
which he ever attended. And the foremost man of letters
of Virginia, during the same interval, was also a
graduate. The name of Poe has been carried from one
end of the civilized world to the other; the name of
John R. Thompson has almost faded from the memory
even of the living generation, and yet both, in their several
degrees, were as distinctly men of letters as the
great figures in the splendid province of English literature,
such as Pope or Johnson, Goldsmith or Byron,
Dickens or Thackeray, Kipling or Meredith.

The two most illustrious names associated with the
University of Virginia are those of Jefferson and Poe.
There is no reason to doubt that these two had frequently
met each other face to face, for Poe was a student
of the institution in 1826, and Jefferson did not
die until the Fourth of July, in the course of that year.
The poet was certainly one of the band of young men
who were invited to dine at Monticello, and he had
thus the fullest opportunity to converse with the philosopher
and statesman. Though always reserved, Poe
was never diffident, and the extraordinary distinction
of his host would not in itself have deterred him from
expressing his own opinions. But if he caught any sort
of inspiration from Jefferson's words, it did not take
the shape of an excessive admiration for democracy.
This was a subject, however, to which he had given only
scant thought, since it touched at no point on the province
of his real interests; but he was not prevented by this
fact, in after life at least, from characterizing with pungency
the supposed evils of that condition of society which
Jefferson had always advocated. It will be recalled

that, in the course of a conversation, in one of his tales,
he informs a resuscitated mummy, a former nobleman,
that the principal benefits of American democratic institutions
could be summed up in the words "universal
suffrage, and no King." "The mummy listened with
marked interest," Poe continues, "in fact, he seemed not
a little amused. When I had done, he said that a great
while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar
sort,—thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all
at once to be free, and so set a magnificent example to
the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men
and concocted the most ingenious constitution it is possible
to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably
well, only their habit of bragging was prodigious.
The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the
thirteen states with fifteen or twenty others, and the
most odious and insupportable despotism that ever was
heard of upon the face of the earth. I asked what
was the name of the usurping tyrant. As well as the
count could recollect, it was 'mob'."

Had Jefferson survived to read this passage, it would
have been quite clear to him that, among the students
who had gathered about his table, at least one was as
reprehensible in his political opinions as the worst of the
Hamiltonians. Beyond the Tale of the Ragged Mountains,
there is no tangible allusion to the University of
Virginia or its environment in the works of the poet
and romancer. Perhaps, the impressions which the
place stamped upon his mind were entirely obliterated
by the cruel penury of so much of his subsequent life;
but there never was in his nature any touch of that geniality
which usually prompts men to recur, with softened
thoughts, to the scenes of their college careers. The
University itself was, during many years, dully indifferent

to the posthumous appeal of his fame to its protective
consideration. "We have no right to claim him,"
remarked a writer in the Virginia University Magazine
for 1872. "His name has been blackened, and his sleep
desecrated, by the entire puritanical element of America,
and we have calmly looked on as though we were not
lending our approval to the aspersion of our own good
name." The reasons for this culpable neglect were:
(1) the comparative modernity of the academic disposition
to capitalize the fame of a celebrated alumnus;
and (2) the cloud which lowered over the reputation
of the poet during so many years after his death.
Charges against his conduct which could have been disproved
by the records of the University were suffered
to pass from printed page to printed page unchallenged
and unrebuked. The earliest defense of his character
suggested by these records was made by William Wertenbaker
as late as 1868, long after Griswold's odious
slanders had taken deep root and spread abroad their
poison; and it is quite probable that this vindication
would have been deferred indefinitely by representatives
of the University, had not the demand for information
about the poet by the public at large grown so insistent.

Poe matriculated but a short time after he completed
his seventeenth year. There is reason to think that
he expected to continue his studies during at least two
sessions. Had he not anticipated doing this, he would
hardly have restricted the course of his first term to the
languages, both ancient and modern, The record of the
books which he borrowed from the library would seem
to point to a decided taste for history,—Rollin's, Voltaire's,
Marshall's and Robertson's works were the principal
volumes which he obtained from its shelves. An
anecdote told of him as a student demonstrates his capacity,

even in his youth, for composing excellent verse.
Blaettermann had suggested to his pupils that they should
test their grasp upon the Italian language by turning
certain stanzas into English metre. Poe alone attempted
the scholarly task, and his performance of it
was of such striking merit as to win the professor's commendation.
His knowledge of the Latin and French
tongues, in consequence of his training at Stoke Newington
and Richmond, was very remarkable in one of his
age; and so confidently did he rely on it that he rarely
made any preparation to answer questions in these
classes before he had taken his seat in the lecture-room.
He had a fondness for cards, and a relish for a glass
of peach and honey, but he was intemperate in the use
of liquor so infrequently, and he gave up so few of his
hours to cards, that he was able to win distinctions in
the Latin and French schools, and also to write the immature
tales which he was not adverse to reading to the
small group of friends who possessed his intimacy. He
was in the habit of going off for long walks alone,—a
proof either of moody exclusiveness, or of preoccupation
with literary projects, which, however, failed to
crystalize for the printer.

It has been surmised, and perhaps with some foundation,
that the famous couplet,

first took vague shape in his brain as his eye wandered
along the classic façades of the University pavilions to
the massive Rotunda, rising like its noble model, the
Pantheon, at the end of the perspective. The dormitory
which he first occupied opened on the Lawn, and
he had to pass but a few steps from his doorway, across
the intervening pavement of the arcade, to bring into
the scope of his vision that entire group of ancient temples
that carried the spectator in thought back to the
ages in which the public edifices of Rome and Greece had
reached the highest point that has been achieved by human
genius in architecture. Profound must have been
the appeal to his subtle aesthetic sense even in youth as
he looked at all those classic buildings on some night
when the rays of a full moon had softened and blended
the separate details of roof and entablature, cornice and
pillar. It may well have been that, at such an hour and
in such a spot, the most celebrated expression in the
entire body of his writings was suggested to him by so
extraordinary an interfusion of Nature's beauty with the
beauty of art in one of its loveliest forms. He had not
been long withdrawn from his studentship at the University
when the poem in which these famous lines appear
was written, and it is quite as reasonable to attribute
their conception to the sight of these buildings, the
only ones of that character which he had ever seen in a
group, as to impressions derived from the works of the
ancient authors, with which he had become familiar at
school and at college.

When did Poe's literary influence begin to rise to the
surface in the circle of the University? We can only obtain
an answer to this question through the printed testimony
of its periodicals. There is no allusion in the
pages of the Collegian which would indicate that such a
man had ever existed. Poe died in the course of 1849,
and yet it was not until 1860 that his death received a
poetical notice; and this was copied from a newspaper.
The first unmistakable recognition of his fame appears in
the magazine for April, 1857, in the form of a parody
of the Raven, always a rather flagrant proof of popularity.

In a later number, Byron and himself were coupled
as the poets who stood the highest in the admiration of
the students. Many of the tales published in the same
pages, during the years just anterior to the war, had
caught some of the color of his unprecedented and unduplicated
genius. No poet or story-writer ever possessed
idiosyncrasies more seductive to imitators than
Poe, and as the aspiring writers of the arcades were in
the most receptive stage of life, and as his fame was
constantly rising in the world at large, they became increasingly
disposed to yield to the influence of his phenomenal
and peculiarly salient example. It has been calculated
that, between 1867 and 1885, about forty notices
of the poet, in one form or another, were printed in the
pages of the magazine. Among these was an ingenious
article which applied to the Raven the analytical method
which Professor Minor had applied so skillfully to the
principles of law in his Institutes. It stood this searching
test successfully.

Another contribution was a parody of Ulalume, in
which the primitive performances of the drunken Calathumpian
bands were recounted with Homeric gusto.
Another,—still in the form of a parody,—celebrated
the epic incidents of a collision of town and gown on the
debatable confines of Vinegar Hill. The Bells excited
as keen an itch in the imitators as Ulalume or the Raven,
and its metre was frequently used to convey some mock
heroic sentiment, or to describe some unlicensed scene in
the lives of the students of that day. The editorial references
to Poe during these years increase steadily in
number, while the prose contributions to the body of the
magazine, on the same subject, keep step with this rising
editorial interest. In addition to avowed imitations of
his tales, there are found in its pages stories which are

solemnly put forward as the recently discovered works
of the great author, while others are palpable imitations,
without any acknowledgement of the inspiration. Labored
criticisms of his masterpieces also appear, and dissertations
upon his literary and personal life at large.
And there are also found descriptions of his association
with the University, both in his friendships, his classes,
and his dormitories.

So strong was the hold, which, in 1861, the memory
of the man had on the imagination of the members of the
Jefferson Society, the society to which he had belonged,
that a committee was nominated by that body to visit the
Washington Society to solicit its cooperation in relieving
the penury of Mrs. Clemm; but the application was
passed upon adversely, owing to the emptiness of the
treasury. Poe, who was not lacking in fluency, or self-possession,
made no effort to win distinction as an orator
and debater; he comes to the surface in the minutes of
the Jefferson Society only in the character of an essayist,
and as the incumbent of a minor office.