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Poe's Scottish Connections
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Searching For Poe In Scotland
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On a lofty, prominent wall, above the elevator inside the Reading Room of the Library Archives of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a three-by-five foot marble memorial sculpture has the following lines from two pillars of Western Literature, exhibited as a stoic remembrance of a former 1831 Cadet of the Corps:
In Memoriam to Edgar Allan Poe...
How dark a woe!
Yet how sublime a hope!
How Silently Serene
A Sea of Pride
How Daring an Ambition!
Yet how deep --
How Fathomless a
Capacity for love!
THERE IS NO EXQUISITE BEAUTY WITHOUT SOME STRANGENESS IN THE PROPORTION. Sir Frances Bacon
During the Graduation Week of the Class of 2006, I again visited this memorial to Edgar Allan Poe and could not but stare and feel remorse that since Poe left very few understand why. But he did not "flunk out," as I overheard one very ignorant woman stating to her male companion "on the plain" that day. Only Hervey Allen captures the facts of human tragedy that were the cause of Poe's departure from the scholarly successes which he had otherwise enjoyed as a member of the Corps of Cadets at that time.
This website of my research project of Poe in Scotland is, therefore, dedicated to former Professor William Hecker, Major, United States Army. In 2005, Bill gave his life after two weeks in Iraq. He is survived by his wife and four children. His book of Poe's poetry, compiled from poems while Poe was a Cadet at West Point, was published before the Major was killed in an ambush: Private Perry And Mister Poe: The West Point Poems, 1831, available from Amazon Books. Professor Hecker, who asked us to call him "Bill," provides extraordinary analysis and information of Poe's intellectual brilliance and aptitude with mathematics which were the basis of his singular rise to Regimental Sergeant Major, and then on to West Point as a Cadet in the Corps. Bill's knowledge and research of Edgar Allan Poe, as both Private Perry, as well as Cadet Poe, put aside any scholars' efforts to provide a rationale of his military experiences, and show that influence upon his poetic and literary product.
I had introduced myself to then Captain, Bill Hecker, upon my first visit to the Military Academy. At that time Grace Kenmotsu's son, Derek, received notice from the Honorable Tom Lantos, M. C., D-California, of Derek's appointment to the Class of 2006, whose motto is: "Never Falter, Never Quit." Subsequent to that first meeting, Bill, Grace, and I attended the Poe Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, at which time we shared the Conference dinner table of the Poe Studies Association. Professor Hecker's loss is very personal, as is the life of our Master, Edgar Allan Poe.
The nexus of Scotland, Edgar Allan Poe, and West Point has the underlying fact that the poet's paternal ancestors were Ulster-Scots (Scots living in Ulster, Ireland, but not Irish). A fact sheet in the Poe File in the Archives Division shows what only Hervey Allen has first reported in ISRAFEL: "Edgar (Allan) Poe's ancestry, on his father's side, was Scotch-Irish [now well established by the Ulster-Scots, in Belfast, Ireland, and Ulster-Scots-American Society, Knoxville, Tenn.], and can be traced to the Parish of Fenwick in Ayrshire, Scotland, where there were intermarriages with some of the remote ancestors of the Allans and Galts. The Poes belonged to the Protestant Scotch [Presbyterians] who went to Ireland. ...." These Scotch-Irish were Protestant Presbyterians (not Roman Catholic) whose descendants now call themselves Ulster-Americans, and are themselves descendants from the Ulster-Scots. These Scots, like Poe's ancestors, were from Ayrshire. Please see The Ulster-Scot Newspaper article mentioned elsewhere. The religious conflict between Charles I and the Scots Covenanters is the basis of the American First Amendment. The Ulster-Scots are largely responsible for the culture we know in America today.
The photograph and research materials are a courtesy of both Mr. Alan Aimone, and Mrs. Alicia Mauldin-Ware, Archives Curators, U. S. Military Academy, Special Collections and Archives Division, West Point, N. Y. Mrs. Mauldin-Ware writes: "This picture was taken in the old library. When they built the present library they moved the marble archway to the now current library and located them in the West Point Room." Erected in 1903, it has been viewed by 103 years of visitors to the Library Archives.
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"AS IT WAS FOR SO many young people West Point was a crucial moment in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Twenty-one years old when he entered West Point, Poe had already studied at the University of Virginia and served two years in the Army; his first published poems were attracting the kind of shocked and amazed attention that has pursued them ever since. His appointment to West Point was a last-ditch effort to please his rich and distant guardian-to choose a respectable, manly career over the contemptible perversions of poetry. The effort was an all-around disaster. It must have seemed promising at first. Poe had certain romantic aspirations toward a military life: he was a boy in 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette toured America to widespread acclaim, and when the old hero came to Richmond, Poe and a friend formed a volunteer company to greet him, marching up and down in uniforms with gilt braid, flourishing guns and swords. Later, when he enlisted, Poe had done well enough, his clerical skills winning him promotion, and allowing him to avoid a lot of tedious marching and guard duty. Arriving in June, 1830, at West Point, he passed the entrance examinations with no trouble. The other cadets looked on him with some awe, because he was older, and because Poe surrounded himself with an aura of mystery. He told stories of travels and adventures in Arabia and the Mediterranean, tales so full of color and detail his classmates soaked up every word as truth. Legends and rumors collected around him. For a while the notion circulated that he was the grandson of Benedict Arnold (Poe’s mother’s maiden name was Arnold), a story Poe refused to confirm or deny. He hardly studied, although he read constantly. He wrote just as constantly, spinning outlandish and romantic visions. He spent a lot of time at Benny Havens’ tavern, trading everything he could find, his candles, his clothes, for drink. The story (almost certainly false) persists that, ordered to turn out for drill armed and in crossbelts, he appeared in the belts and carrying his rifle and wearing not a stitch otherwise. But his guardian gave him no money--Poe had run deep into debt already--and the harsh life of the plebe, the endless marching, the miserable food, and the hazing by upperclassmen, broke down his health, at the same time convincing him that he could only live as a poet. By January of 1831, he claimed he was too sick to continue as a cadet. He left West Point that February 19, with his life set implacably on its tragic and extraordinary creative course."
--C. H. The photograph of Cadet Poe that appears in the book with the text, above, is from: The Bicentennial Book of the United States Military Academy WEST POINT Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition, with an Introduction by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, published by Warner Books, Inc, New York, ISBN 0-446-53018-2, in 2002, the year Derek Kenmotsu entered West Point, himself. The book is available from Boarders Books, among the many retail book stores. Owing to my ignorance of the program that creates these web pages, I cannot use appropriate fonts and size to correctly punctuate the title of the book.
The book from which the page above was scanned has several pages dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. This sample was at page 39. At pages 42 and 43, the off-limits Pub, Benny Havens', in Poe's time was located just outside the Academy Gates in, "...Buttermilk Falls, on the bank of the Hudson [River]," popularized by Poe during his residency at the Academy. Benny Havens was celebrated in the song style made famous by his cousin, Scots poet Robert Burns, "Benny Havens, Oh!" For what ever reasons that the song was selected, it was sung at the musical production by the Cadet Choral Group during Graduation Week of the Class of 2006. Few would be the Graduating Cadets who knew the connection of Robert Burns' songs, and the song above to the infamous Cadet Poe, who voluntarily violated Academy rules so as to extricate himself from the program in 1831.
Professor Bill Hecker had stated that there had been an Edgar Allan Poe Society at the Academy until just before the Second World War. After the War, the dedication of time and energy to the Society had been diverted to other, more pressing activities of the staff and Corps of Cadets. Those with access to the Library Archives will find materials on this subject in Poe's "Vertical File."
Professor Hecker was in the process of re-establishing the Poe Society, but was sent to the War in Iraq, from which he never returned.
For additional information of the dominant presence of Cadets with what is now called Ulster-Scots-American cultural and racial heritage, contact The Ulster-American Historical Society of the United States, The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, or The Ulster-Scots Agency, Belfast, Ireland.
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The painting of Edgar Perry, Regimental Sergeant Major, Fort Monroe,Virginia, is courtesy of Mr. Paul Morando, Arichives Director, Morando, of the Casemate Museum, Fort Monroe, Virginia. I have never seen this representation in any Poe materials before, and Mr. Morando stated that the water color had long been in the museum's vaults of stored relics. It was brought out for display for a special exposition program celeberating the history of Fort Monroe, and is graciously used by permission in our pages for the first time as well.
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