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p10
 A discovery in the lining of a pie dish in the University of
Baltimore casts new light on Edgar Allen Poe's school days in Stoke Newington
(1815-1820)....1
There is no point, among the many curious anomalies of the human mind, more exciting than
the fact - never, I believe, remarked upon by the great thinkers of our time - that in our
endeavours to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves on the
very brink of remembrance without being able, in the end, quite to remember. Oh, that this
merciful loss of knowledge had poured its healing balm, over my troubled spirit! The task
before me was simple enough - to conjugate a little Latin for my dear cousin, Virginia,
surely the most exquisite of creatures to whose beauty a shrine will always dwell in my
heart. Yet in that simple act, with the suddenness of a meteor failing to the sea, there
came back to my imagination the sensation of sitting in my hateful school in London, an
ocean and a universe away. Distinctly, I could feel the rough wood of the bench which so
often pierced my nether part with cruel splinters. All my senses seemed heightened once
again with the terror of childhood, freezing me once more with the cold of that room
heated by a tiny fire like changeable star of fifth magnitude eternal eclipsed by the huge
bulk of our teacher, M Usher, flapping his dark and chalky robes like some species of
gigantic Raven.2
Man does not surrender his soul to dread without some extreme passion or tumultuous fear.
Of all the men I have known, it was he Mr Usher, the instiller of Latin into young boys
who more than any other fell prey to violent rage. He was a huge man like some demon or
misbegotten angel of retribution sent onto the surface of our world from the deepest part
of Hell. He loomed over the boys like a cliff, and from the folds of his black robes there
emanated a foul stench of chalk, sweat, dirt and gin. His eyes had all the seeming of
demon that was dreaming, as it he were gazing beyond us into some distant flame. Indeed he
loathed the material with which he worked and that material was us, the unfortunate
wretches from the parish of St Mary's, placed in his charge by their unknowing parents -
or guardian in my case - for the advancement of their prospects. Usher's will was to
transform us from the crude iron ore of the Earth into the finest tempered steel, and this
he did by beating - beating again and again to some magical melody of his own that ran
with fierce energy through his maddened brain. He would make us into fine-grained
creatures of his own creation though the heavens fall, and his hatred for the horror of
his own life found new and appalling expression every day in the imposition of rules
invented solely for the purpose of punishing their transgression. Usher's cane, Gerry the
Gerund, was always by his side and he could flick it out with the speed of a striking
cobra to chastise some tearful innocent who had forgotten in his abject terror the
difference between the ablative and the dative cases.3
We were a collection of lads as variable in our talents as nurturing Nature might randomly
contrive, but Usher wanted to make us perfect, and his passion for this impossible
sentiment was all the more intent after he had visited the Inn upon the corner of Church
Street, just next door to Mr Pendle's clock shop where those of larcenous leanings might
purchase for a trifle the handsome half-hunter stolen from a gentleman in the West End the
previous day. The public house was notorious throughout the parish for the fearsome
drunkenness and lewdness to be found in its cellar - and thus was known to all, despite
its formal title of Mr Tom's alehouse (for Mr Tom was the publican), as the Pit.
 From our school - though some
sixty yards away from the Pit - certain sounds would penetrate through the stout brick
walls and reach our senses that were exquisitely heightened by fear (as I have read that
those on the point of death can hear the E-string of a violin tortured to breaking point
so its song soars beyond the usual reach of the human ear). The ominous creak, creak of
the vault-like door of the Pit heralded the return of Mr Usher, whose choler and
selfloathing would be banked up by fire of Mr Tom's cheap gin. But worse by far than the
door and infallible in its power to pierce us to the quick with dread - was the screech of
Mr Tom's huge, vomitously green parrot which sat balefully upon a pallid bust of Pallas in
the saloon bar. This malevolent bird had been acquired in the landlord's travels as a
mariner. Seduced by its gift for mimicry, albeit in a grotesque parody of the melodious
music of the human voice, Mr Tom had taught it to speak. As an eternal reminder of the
folly of his single venture into the foreign realm of kindness - when he had extended
credit to a starving bootmaker who had died before he could repay the debt - it uttered
just the one word over and over again. 'Nevermore', it squawked. 'Nevermore'.
1 Professor Damphander, the famous fifty year-old Poe scholar who
maintains that it his choice to live with his mother, dates this fragment to 1828. Poe was nineteen and still
developing his intense and lyrical style that achieved such perfection in classics like
Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher.
2 Damphander observes that' The Raven' was not published until 1845, but
that the interesting early use of this image will be explored in his definitive account
E.A. Poe - Utilization of Avian Archetypes (3 volumes - University of Baltimore Press.
2004-7). In the meantime he refers the readers to his superb footnote 23 in his
magisterial Complete Works.
3 Damphander notes that in mitigation it should be remarked that a
solecism of this order is an abysmal slap across the face of scholarship.
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