Stoke Newington is found in one of his powerful short stories, “ William Wilson :”—

66

My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with a large, rambling Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town.

“At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep, hollow note of the church bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay cmbedded and asleep.

“It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am— misery, alas! only too real—I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and locality when and where I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.

"The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. The prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week-once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields—and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how

deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance-so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!

"At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plentitude of mystery-a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation.

"The extensive inclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the playground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar, within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or, perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays.

"But the house !-how quaint an old building was this!to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings-to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable-inconceivable-and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in

regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity.

"During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars. The school-room was the largest in the house—I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows, and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square inclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum,' during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe.

"One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and timeworn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.

"Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon-even much of the outre. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is

grey shadow-a weak and irregular remembrance—an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals. Yet the fact-in the fact of the world's view-how little was there to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. O, le bon temps, que ce siècle de fer !'"

Poe, in this description of the school-house at Stoke Newington, as in most of his pictures from life, drew upon his imagination somewhat, for the purposes of his tale, especially so in stating the number of years that he was there.

The actual house was identified a few years ago by the late Mr. John Camden Hotten. By a fortunate circumstance, Mr. Hotten stumbled upon an abstract of the leases granted by the Lord of the Manor, sixty years since, and amongst the entries was found the following :

:

Yearly rent.

The Rev. John Bransby, of the school in Church street, and ground in Edwards lane, 21 years lease, with 10 additional, expires March, 1837.

£55.00

"As Bransby was the name mentioned in the story, this gave a clue, and the house was soon identified, but not as having ‘Elizabethan gables.'

"The actual house," says Mr. Gill, "is a roomy old structure, of Queen Anne's time, and remains internally in very nearly the same state as when Poe went to school there. It is a school at present, under the care of a Mr. Dod, and

the thirteen acres of playground, which existed in Poe's time, have long since been parcelled out to other tenements, or have been built upon."

When the Allans (who had passed part of the two years Poe was at school on the Continent) returned to America, Poe was placed at school in Richmond for a short time, under Professor Joseph Clarke, who is still living, at Balti

more.

According to Mrs. Whitman, one of the most accurate as well as one of the most accomplished of Poe's biographers, Poe was at this time nine years of age.

Professor Clarke has furnished the following interesting account of Poe during the school days spent at his Academy

PROFESSOR CLARKE'S ACCOUNT OF POE'S SCHOOL DAYS.

"In September, 1818, Mr. John Allan, a wealthy Scotch merchant, residing in Richmond, brought to my school a little boy between eight and nine years old, a handsome lad with bright eyes and a face full of expression. Mr. Allan seemed proud of him, and said, 'This is my adopted son, Edgar Poe; he has recently returned from. a residence of two years abroad, where he has been studying English and Latin. I wish to place him under your instruction.' I asked Edgar about his Latin. He said he had studied the grammar as far as the regular verbs. He declined penna, domus, fructus, and res. I then asked him whether he could decline the adjective bonus. I was struck by the way in which he did it; he said 'bonus, a good man; bona, a good woman; bonum, a good thing.' Edgar Poe was five years in my school. During that time he read Ovid, Cæsar, Virgil, Cicero, and Horace in Latin, and Xenophon and Homer in Greck. He showed a much stronger taste for classic poetry than he did for classic prose. He had no love for mathematics, but his poetical compositions were universally ad