Tynan Portillo presents a series about Edgar Allan Poe, the 19th century, and all manners of horror with music and narration by Tynan Portillo. Today's episode, Unscripted, Edgar Allan Poe's Daddy Issues. Hello, and welcome back to the Poe Show. 

I'm your host, Tynan Portillo, and today I will be talking about the birth father, or maybe more appropriately, sperm donor of Edgar Allan Poe, David Poe Jr., and his foster father, although I hesitate to call him a father as well, the pretty well-known John Allan. And I promise you, by the end of this episode, you will hate these two men. I will also be discussing his mother figures, specifically Eliza Poe and Frances Allan, but I'll mainly be focusing on what terrible male role models Poe had in his life. 

And I'll also be covering the years that certain events happened in order to create such disdainful relationships. The sources for my research are available in this description. Mainly, they come from the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore at eapo.org, the Poe Museum at poemuseum.org, and the biography, Edgar Allan Poe, A Life by Richard Cobley.

And as always, I reiterate that Poe did not hate his middle name. He signed his letters and some of his works as Edgar Allan Poe as late as the year that he died. He just usually preferred his pen name, Edgar A. Poe. 

That source is also in the description. And please do keep in mind that for this episode, I will be discussing matters of death, alcoholism, and abuse. Let's start off light with Edgar Allan Poe's birth mother, Eliza Poe. 

Eliza was a celebrated actress in a traveling acting troupe, and she was known for her beauty and grace on stage, as well as her maturity and very heavy roles despite her young age. She actually played in a production of Romeo and Juliet as Juliet, and she was known for having the weight of Juliet, along with the innocence that is needed for that part. So she was very, very well celebrated in that acting troupe.

But before that, she had been performing since she was nine years old, all the way back in 1796. During that time, her original name was Elizabeth Arnold. Now, Eliza's father died sometime in 1790, and her and her mother traveled from England to Boston in 1796. 

That's where Eliza would immediately start to make her career. And funnily enough, the manager who helped Eliza and her mother form a theater troupe called the Charleston Comedians was named Mr. Edgar. That's an interesting name, isn't it? Now, Eliza's mother died, but she would go on to stay with the theater troupe for years, and supposedly, she played over 300 roles in her very short career. 

When she was 15, Eliza was married to a man named Charles Hopkins, but he did die three years later. Now, I couldn't find any other information on that. If you have any, then please share it, you know, leave a comment or let me know where I can find it, because Eliza was cared for mainly by the members of the acting troupe. 

I know that, but none of them were paid enough to have livable wages by most means, and the troupe was always traveling in order to perform at many different cities, different venues. So, other than the social pressures of her day, I don't know why else she married Charles Hopkins or how old he was, but definitely, he was probably quite a bit older than her. Now, that being said, Eliza was suddenly an 18-year-old widow, but she was still performing with the acting troupe, and that's when David Poe, Jr. Okay, so this guy, he was a student in law. 

He saw a performance of hers, and he joined the acting troupe to be with her. I mean, he definitely didn't join because he was a good actor. He was regularly steamrolled by theater critics. 

One critic, I love this one, he wrote about David Poe, Jr., quote, we expected little satisfaction, and of course, we're not disappointed. Shots fired. I love that, and don't worry, he deserves this. 

Trust me, we'll get to it, but maybe some resentment built between them because Eliza was just a better actress than he was. He did seem very defensive when people criticized Eliza's acting, even going so far as to threaten to beat someone up. Now, while traveling with the acting troupe, they did have three children, and that would be William, Rosalie, and Edgar. 

Some accounts of David Poe, Jr. and his last performances seem to infer, according to the biography by Richard Copley, that David had been growing resentful and began heavily drinking. Some sources say he was a full-blown alcoholic, but then he just disappears. He left. 

No one knows where. No one knows why. He just left. 

He left his wife and three children to fend for themselves with no money, traveling with an acting troupe. Now, I did see some websites that state that he left looking for work to provide for his family, but I feel like we would know that for a fact if that were the case, like someone would have mentioned it when he disappeared. By most accounts, people just didn't know where he went, and later on, David Poe, Jr. would die from tuberculosis, according to the biography, which I think is darkly poetic justice. 

I mean, he just left, and then he dies of tuberculosis, which is a very common disease during the 19th century. Now, Eliza would go on to raise her three children on her own with also the aid of other members of the acting troupe. So, she would go on to perform. 

Other performers backstage would take care of the kids, and then they would kind of switch roles as need be, and she would just get back to them whenever she was off stage. I don't know how she balanced that, especially being a performer, being an actor. I don't know how she would have even taken care of that. 

But she also involved her children with her on stage sometimes, and Richard Copley suggests that Poe himself could have played a cherub, a little baby angel, in one of their productions. And I love that idea, just a little baby Poe, you know, just like in a diaper with the little cupid arrows or something like that. I don't know. 

That's definitely not how they would have done it back then. But him being a little baby angel is such a cute little idea. But eventually, Eliza contracted tuberculosis. 

Just a reminder, tuberculosis is the disease that infects your lungs, and it makes you cough up blood, you lose a lot of energy, you become very weak, and it very, very slowly kills you. Tuberculosis, for most people during this time, would spend years of life. In fact, Edgar Allan Poe's wife and cousin, Virginia Eliza Clem Poe, would have the disease for about five whole years, just slowly dying. 

Now, before the end, Eliza worked out sending her three children to their different homes. And some people do ask why one home didn't just take on all three children. And I don't really have an answer to that, other than you would need a lot more money for three kids. 

And it might have been awkward for Eliza to impose all three children on another household at once. And it might be that, you know, households that could have done it weren't willing to take on all three at once anyways. And it was definitely going to be better circumstances for the children to send them to actual homes with families, rather than put them into an orphanage or anything like that. 

I mean, we already have many problems in the orphanage and foster home world of, at least America, I know that much. There's too many places for corruption and abuse to happen to children. And it was even worse during this time. 

So Eliza had kind of set out where the children were going to go. And then she died on December 8, 1811, at just 24 years old. Edgar Allan Poe, during that time, was just two years old.

And he has written about having some memories of Eliza, although they are faint and dreamlike, and he would regularly rely on his brother William's accounts of who their mother was. Strangely, Edgar Allan Poe's own wife and cousin, like I said, Virginia Eliza Clampo, also died when she was 24 years old of tuberculosis. That's the same exact thing.

It seems like such a mysterious coincidence. Now, Edgar would be unofficially adopted and fostered by John and Frances Allan. So legally, he was never adopted by the Allans, but they did take care of him for the rest of his life, getting into his teenage years. 

And let it be known that John Allan did not want this to happen. That's it for the section on David Poe Jr. Yeah, pretty quick, I know. So say goodbye to that asshole.

Now let's talk about the second motherly figure to Edgar Allan Poe, Frances Allan. Frances Allan saw Eliza perform in the theater. That's how the two saw each other and first met. 

And Frances never had any children of her own. She treated Edgar as if he was her own child and loved him unconditionally, encouraging him to recite poetry and follow his artistic dreams. She was also very sick very often. 

And eventually she did die when Poe was 20 years old. I don't think that was tuberculosis from my research, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. After her death, Poe did write to John Allan saying, if she, Frances Allan, had not have died while I was away, there would have been nothing for me to regret. 

She, I believe, loved me as her own child. And you will see that not only is this a touching sentiment, but it's a bit of a backhanded slap in the face to John Allan. Again, he deserves this. 

Now, after Frances's death, Poe wrote to John Allan about wanting to leave West Point Military Academy and instead becoming a poet and a writer. That makes sense. Frances Allan constantly encouraged him to pursue his dreams, get into poetry, literature. 

She supported his ideas going to college. But John Allan, his response to this decision hasn't survived in letter form. But it is heavily assumed that John didn't like that idea. 

He was very big on sustaining the honor of the Allan name, which is kind of ironic. But he wanted Poe to go into the military. And during this time, Poe was at West Point Military Academy and him abandoning that to become a writer or a poet wasn't as honorable.

This is why Edgar Allan Poe intentionally got himself court-martialed and got a discharge from the army. There's very little that I could find on John Allan's second wife, because he did remarry after Frances's death. But what I could find shows that John Allan's second wife also resented Edgar, which didn't help their relationship at all. 

And reportedly, soon after Frances Allan's death and John Allan's continued rejection of Poe's desires, Poe had told a friend named Sergeant Samuel Graves that John Allan was not very often sober. This information somehow got back to John Allan, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, as you will come to see. All right, let's get into it. 

John Allan. John Allan was the only other father figure in Edgar's life, the one that was meant to raise him to be a man and care for him like his own child. And he even gave him his, uh, Edgar his middle name, Allan. 

But again, I promise you will hate him before this episode is done. John Allan was a very successful tobacco merchant and frequently took Edgar in his younger years to country clubs, to live in England for a period of years for his work and to very lavish schools. At first, John played with Edgar, played with him as a child, talked to many people about his admiration for Edgar's imagination and his free spirit and his various interests in sports. 

Poe really loved swimming and boxing and even track and field like running, and I think it was sprinting that he was very involved in. And he even appreciated his creative mind in writing. He acknowledged that Poe was a good student in school. 

And in letters written to John Allan, Edgar has recounted memories of bouncing on John's knee and calling him father. So they started out pretty good, but then bitter resentment grew through the years. In 1824, when Edgar was about 15 years old, John Allan wrote to Edgar's brother, William Henry Poe. 

He wrote, quote, The boy, Edgar, possesses not a spark of affection for us, not a particle of gratitude for all my care and kindness towards him. Close quote. And that's peculiar because Poe very proudly talked often of his admiration for Francis Allan. 

Plus, Edgar was never whipped at school. He was known as a very well-behaved child with great respect for his teachers and classmates. So that account is kind of odd, isn't it? Now, maybe this was Edgar being a rebellious teenager, but keep in mind John's own behavior in that household. 

Through Edgar's life, John was known to threaten to give and actually give Edgar whippings and beatings. It was always associated with some kind of punishment for a bad behavior. And not surprisingly, as John's business had some major failings through the years, his bitterness and his severity in punishment towards Edgar only grew. 

One of those things was the act prohibiting the importation of slaves that stopped the international slave trade in America in 1808. And John Allan did benefit from slavery. He, or I should say his firm, the Ellison-Allan firm, did participate in slave trade and oversaw the selling of slaves in auctions and the buying of properties because that is how slaves were seen. 

They were assets. So you could go to an auction or land could be being sold off along with the slaves who worked on it. And John Allan himself had many slaves who worked in his household through the years. 

There was one plantation in Moldavia, I'm pretty sure, that had over 100 enslaved people working on it. So yes, John Allan benefited from the trading of slaves, the buying and selling of slaves, the slave labor on his households and plantations. So overall, again, just an absolute dickwad.

On that note, I'll just say here, I need to do more research about Edgar Allan Poe's possible racism. There's a lot of symbolism in his stories that show inherent racist ideology and iconography showed in a positive light, which is evidence to me that he was racist or did not see a lot of trouble with that. But it's up for debate. 

I can make a completely different episode on that actually. But from what I see in his stories and from the context of his life, he had a black nanny, he played with black children, he had a black barber, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't racist. It's like having the argument of, I've got black friends. 

It's like, you can still be racist because racism is not liking somebody because of their race. It's thinking that they're below you because of their race. Of course, people who had slaves working in their homes, working alongside them, even caring for their children could still say, these people don't deserve to vote. 

They're not people. In fact, they're subhuman. That is how slaves were treated. 

That is racism. So that's not up for debate, but it is up for debate on whether or not Edgar Allen Poe himself was racist. He seems to keep a lot of his views on that matter personal and quiet. 

And I'm going to do more research on that before making any other huge claims. The Panic of 1819 was a financial crisis, the first big one in America that rocked John Allen's tobacco business as well. So following that, he got into a lot of debt and he even got arrested for it because debtor's prison was a huge thing back then. 

This made John Allen more of a miser who hated Poe for living off of his money. He got very stingy and wouldn't spend a lot in any regard, even if he could afford it. And let's not forget that John Allen had quite a few bastard children that he failed to take care of during their lives.

Children of affairs. John Allen had multiple affairs while he was married to Francis Allen and to his future wife. To top it all off, in 1825, John Allen's uncle died and left him three estates and all their associated slaves, their stocks, their properties. 

So here he was struggling with his tobacco business. He went to prison for it. But suddenly he's back on top of the world, not because he deserved it. 

He didn't work for it, but because he had a rich uncle who died. So, Edgar's literally sitting here saying, look at this guy. He's threatened me. 

He's beaten me. He's cheated on my mother. He married another woman who hates me. 

He never adopted me as his own. He's stingy with his wealth. He doesn't want me to follow my dreams of being a writer.

F**k this guy. So for John Allen to have the gall to write about Edgar, just not appreciating him enough, seems like a ludicrous, like a completely insane complaint. And as if John wanted everyone to hate him after he died, John chose to refuse to pay for Edgar's college tuition. 

Are you kidding me? You sent your kid off to school. You want him to do well. You want him to make his own and you won't even help him pay to just take a freaking class. 

He had the role of a villain and he said, by God, I'm playing the villain till I die. So during this time, Poe would go around talking to people, kind of insulting John Allen. And I think he was pretty justified in all of that. 

He's at college and people are asking, hey, how's it going? How are things? And he had said to one Sergeant Samuel Graves that John Allen was not very often sober. I think that's a very mild insult considering everything that John Allen's put Poe through so far. But John Allen heard that and got extremely offended and wrote to Poe about it. 

Now, this is Poe's response, Poe's response to John Allen's reaction to the rumors. And it says, quote, as regards Sergeant Graves, I did write him that letter. As to the truth of its contents, I leave it to God and your conscience. 

The time in which I wrote it was within a half hour after you had embittered every feeling of my heart against you by your abuse of my family and myself under your own roof and at a time when you know that my heart was almost breaking. Close quote. Boom. 

Like shut up, John Allen. What are you talking about? You haven't, he has no affection for me. Literally, dude, take a freaking second. 

Take that beam out of your own eye, but buckle your seat belts up, people, because if you don't hate John Allen yet, you are about to. Poe had been writing letters to John Allen after that, and it was usually asking for money since he had none. And John was literally filthy rich. 

So Poe rarely got a response from John, and John was essentially cutting off all communication. Poe has written, quote, I know that I've offended you past all forgiveness, and I know that I have no longer any hopes of being again received into your favor. But for the sake of Christ, do not let me perish for a sum of money on which you would never miss. 

Close quote. So Poe is literally kind of on his knees now, and he's like, dude, I'm like dying, please. I've got to have some money. 

I've got to survive. And John Allen is just not answering. But this one especially shows, I think, the desperation that Poe is in because Poe lived in squalor most of like before his marriage to Virginia and afterwards, even though he was working, and even though he got some editing jobs and was publishing poetry and writing.

He was not wealthy. He started to gain a little bit of popularity toward the end of his life, especially with the publication of The Raven, but none of it was giving him royalties. Royalties weren't exactly a thing back then, and even if they were, the author would be getting cents per every cent. 

I don't know. It was terrible. It was near nothing. 

So during this time, once again, the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore shows that, quote, on April 12th, 1833, Poe had written to Allen, quote, it has now been more than two years since you have assisted me and more than three since you have spoken to me. I am perishing, absolutely perishing for want of aid, and yet I am not idle nor addicted to any vice, nor have I committed any offense against society which would render me deserving of so hard a fate. For God's sake, pity me and save me from destruction. 

Close quote. I just don't see how any father who cares about their child, reading that from their kid, a plea for help and begging for aid, could completely ignore their child. There is a small theory, too, that the second Mrs. Allen, who did not like Poe, was stealing the mail and getting rid of those letters so the two would never talk again.

But honestly, who knows? Who knows? We're never going to find those letters. We're never going to know that. If we could invent a time machine and go back, then we could probably know. 

And if we did invent a time machine to go back and know that, I'm the first person stepping into that because holy crap, that'd be awesome. Can you imagine having a conversation with Edgar Allen Poe? What would you ask him? Like, oh gosh, I don't know if I would want to know his philosophy on life, but what else was he going to write? What other ideas are in that vault of a mind of yours? Anyway, a little side tangent, but if anyone invents a time machine, let me know. But during the time that John Allen and Edgar Allen Poe had that falling out, John Allen would have a son, a legal heir to inherit his fortune.

And rightfully so, this might have frightened Poe about his own inheritance. I think it would frighten nearly anybody, especially if you realize, hey, this guy who is a stingy miser is not going to share anything with me. And now this is his excuse not to. 

So in 1834, John Allen was growing ill. So Poe went to see him. Maybe it was a selfish desire to get back into the will. 

Maybe it was he wanted to see his foster father before the man died. In any case, he went to see him. And the second Mrs. Allen tried to prevent this, according to Thomas Ellis, who had also been there and is a friend of Poe, he had to literally push past Mrs. Allen to get to John Allen's room to see him before he died. 

So she was like blocking the door. And this is also part of Thomas Ellis's account of what went down when the two met. Upon seeing Poe, John, quote, raised his cane and threatened to strike him if he came within his reach, ordered him out, upon which Poe withdrew. 

And that was the last time they ever met. Oh, my gosh, John. I like you're just an absolute scumbag. 

You're just a filthy piece of shit. Holy shit, dude. Like he's he's still your son. 

Maybe not by blood, but you raised the damn kid. And here you are turning him away, literally raising a cane. You know, it shows that John Allen didn't see Poe as more than that boy that he first adopted.

Where he would raise the cane for whippings and beatings and the immediate reaction he has upon seeing Poe is raising his cane and ordering him out or I'm going to strike you. What an absolute duck. What an absolute scumbag. 

He's he's a villain. No land, no money, no properties, no inheritance at all. Even though, keep in mind, he kept some of his bastard children in the will. 

Children of affairs got more than from from John Allen than Edgar Allen Poe did when he died. John Allen was a bitter old f***. I'm glad he's dead.

Anyway, I got to get I got to lose some of that venom that I have for this man. Holy shit. Okay, so let's ask a worthwhile question. 

How did Edgar's knowledge of his birth father and influence from his foster father shape his character? David Poe Jr. was an alcoholic who abandoned him and his family and then disappeared. Maybe there was so little to know that Edgar never really paid any attention to him anyways. He rarely even mentions him in any case. 

But did that influence Edgar Allen Poe's idea of what an ideal man or what an evil man is? John Allen, who is an ill-tempered miser, always disappointed with Poe despite his best efforts and continuously refusing to help Poe in any times of need. Did that influence what Poe thought a father should be, could be or what a villain really is?

You know, like were stories inspired by these guys? Was the wealthy old man in The Tell-Tale Heart getting smothered in his sleep and, you know, getting cut up and put underneath the floorboards, is that like a John Allan? Is David Poe Jr. like the man in The Black Cat who turns away his eye to the evil of his actions and gouges out the eye of the cat, and knows what he's doing is terrible but still does it anyway?

It makes sense why Poe had a stronger relationship to his mothers rather than to his fathers, and even to women in general more than to men. He's written many stores that explore the dark recesses of the mind, but a man is always the subject of that examination. Unless it's ambiguous like in the Tell-Tale Heart. In The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator could be a man, woman, servant, kin, old, young, we really don't know.

And many beautiful innocent women die in his stories, but are always subject of admiration, sometimes worship, sometimes leadership and often tragedy. Morella, Ligeia, Eleonora, Berenice. He places women on a higher pedestal than he places men, at least in his stories. It's usually men dragging down the women and leading to their demise through some sort of selfish or greedy purpose. Unless it's something like The Fall of the House of Usher because then the woman who has been wrongfully buried alive comes back to drag Usher down and kill him. Right? So, again showing that the monomania of Usher is what clouded his mind and ended up making his sister suffer and then she came back to torment him.

So perhaps the roles that Poe's fathers played in his life not only shaped him into the man he was, but also shaped his writing to become as introspective as it became. After all, studies show that when a child grows up in a world where they feel their parents love and protect them, no matter what dangers they learn of the world, they grow up believing that they are worthy of love. That they are worth caring for and that someone is looking out for them. They have greater confidence.

One thing is clear: David Poe Jr. and John Allan were BAD fathers and they messed Edgar up.

But we still know more about Edgar than we do either of them. And most people know Edgar more than they know either of them. In fact, we mostly know Poe as the father of American horror.

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