Re: George Lippard's best friend Edgar Allan Poe.

[Ric]

IN AGES PAST

Edgar Allan Poe and the Jesuits
On the eve of All Soul's Day, remembering a tortured soul who found
consolation and companionship from a surprising quarter.

By Pat McNamara, October 31, 2011


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Hear the tolling of the bells...
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
-- Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells

Literary scholars still debate exactly whose bells are featured in
Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem. Some say it was Grace Church in
Manhattan. Others claim another Manhattan site, the Church of the
Ascension. Another claim was made by Fordham University in the Bronx,
not far from the three-room cottage where the ailing poet lived during
his final years. Fordham alumni of a certain age once liked to argue
that the university church's bell, now housed in the archives, was the
poem's inspiration.
None of these have ever been definitively proven, but Poe certainly
did visit Fordham (founded in 1841 as St. John's College) during his
Bronx sojourn, and he came to know the Jesuits there fairly well. He
liked them, he wrote friend, because they were "highly cultivated
gentlemen and scholars, they smoked and they drank and they played
cards, and they never said a word about religion." In his visits to
the campus, the depressive Poe found some comfort and consolation in
his loneliness.
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In the summer of 1846, Poe, along with his young wife Virginia and her
mother, had rented a home in what is now the Kingsbridge section of
the Bronx. The area was still predominantly rural, numbering a handful
of farms at most, offering some hope of comfort and stability. But
within a few months Virginia, whom locals remembered as frail and
beautiful, died. The grief-stricken widower found some solace in
visiting her grave and in long walks.

Sometimes these walks took him by the Jesuit's St. John's College.
Between Poe's home and the college (formerly a colonial manor) were
nothing but woods. One early twentieth century author commented:
Fordham is still so charming and rural a locality that we can imagine
it to have been a poet's true home before the first encroachments of a
rapidly advancing city had broken its quiet.

An early Fordham Jesuit remembered Poe as a "familiar figure at the
college . . . It seemed to soothe his mind to wander at will about the
lawn and the beautiful grounds back of the college buildings." Another
wrote: "It was one of Poe's greatest gifts that he could make friends
wherever he went. To know him was to love him... It was a pleasure to
see him and still more to listen to him."

More than scenery, however, a recent biographer notes that Poe "found
intellectual and spiritual companionship" with the Jesuits at the
college. In this sparsely populated community, there weren't many
people with whom Poe could discuss literature. The Jesuits, who
sympathized with this starving artist, invited him to dinner many an
evening, and gave him the use of their library. After dinner, he would
peruse the library or play cards with the Jesuits (the majority of
whom were French-born).
Usually he went home feeling better, but sometimes he couldn't bear
going back. On those occasions, when his grief was too palpable, one
of the Jesuits would walk him home. Occasionally he stayed overnight
at the college. One young Jesuit, the Canadian-born Edward Doucet,
became quite close to Poe. Later the college president, Doucet was
known and respected for his "discretion . . . straightforward manner,
and enormous sympathy."

For his part, Doucet recalled the poet as "extremely refined . . . a
gentleman by nature and by instinct." He became almost a confessor to
the troubled artist. On their walks around the campus, Poe poured out
his numerous troubles to the young priest as they conversed in French.
Poe may never have converted to Catholicism, but he did find a great
deal of comfort in his association with Doucet and the other priests
stationed at this little college in the far wilds of the Bronx.

Sadly, Poe died under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore in 1849.
Although it's doubtful that his poetic bells rang from the Fordham
University Church (then known as Our Lady of Mercy), the Jesuits did
play a significant if minor role in his later years. They provided him
a literary audience, a willing ear, dinner, and companionship.

To an extent largely ignored, they also provided pastoral care to a
troubled, unhappy soul in need of friendship and compassion. It didn't
matter whether Poe was Catholic or not. Although a minor footnote in
Poe's life, as well as Fordham's history, the Poe-Fordham connection
illustrates the way Jesuits have lived out their charism of being "all
things to all people."

Dr. Pat McNamara is an Archival Manager for the Archdiocese of New
York and a Professor of Church History at St. Joseph's Seminary,
Dunwoodie. He blogs about American Catholic History at McNamara's
Blog.

McNamara's column, "In Ages Past," is published every Tuesday on the
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