Author: Eduardo Freire Canosa
(University of Toronto Alumnus)
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, Nameless here for evermore. |
Index |
1. Who Really Was Guy de Vere?
2. Julian the Apostate, a dramatic Poem 3. The Duke of Mercia, an historical Drama. The Lamentation of Ireland, and other Poems 4. A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets 5. Lenore 6. Afterword |
A second misgiving, linked to Poe's childhood, was laid to rest. The child Poe moved with his foster family to Great Britain in 1815 and did not return to the United States until 1820. Overseas the Allan family stayed in London but unaccountably sent 6-year-old Poe away to grammar school in Irvine, a village near Glasgow on the south foreshore of the Firth of Clyde. The 1816-17 school year saw the 7-year-old child lodged at a boarding school in the affluent Chelsea district of London. From the autumn of 1817 onward he studied at Reverend John Bransby's Manor House School in Stoke Newington, another borough of London. These frequent changes of learning institution together with the school-year-long estrangement from his foster family in the very country that a mere forty years earlier had attempted to vanquish the American rebels—a fact that his classmates were probably more than willing to remind him of privately and publicly—must have filled the adopted child with a profound sense of insecurity and alienation and must have made it difficult for him to work and play with the native pupils.
Alone |
From childhood's hour I have not been |
In the year 1820 the child Poe sailed with his foster family back to Richmond, VA.
Since the surname "De Vere" calls up the prestigious ancestry of the Earl of Oxford, the possibility arises that, partly as a reminiscence of his years spent in Britain, Poe might have referenced an actual "Guy de Vere" from that distinguished lineage. A perusal of the De Vere genealogy yielded the following list of male forenames, alphabetically ordered,
In the absence of any more hypotheses it is time to inspect the poem Lenore itself for clues about "Guy de Vere." The first impression gleaned is that the personage quoted on stanzas 2 and 4 is an educated gentleman of social rank above the "wretches" who can hardly conceal their glee at Lenore's passing (2.3-5).
Lenore |
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
"Wretches! Ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
"Avaunt! Tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise, |
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! (1.1): Pointer to Ecclesiastes 12:6-7.
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore! (1.3): The Shakespearean-sounding pronoun "thou" and the archaic present tense 2nd singular "hast" point to a British gentleman. This manner of speech continues on 1.4 ("yon" and "thy") and 3.4 ("thee" and "thy").
Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride (2.1): Lenore is linked to wealth and pride and so must Guy de Vere be: the British gentleman is a member of the nobility.
Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong (3.1-2): Peccavimus is Latin for "We sinned." The British nobleman thus addressed is a religious Roman Catholic.
Avaunt! Tonight my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise, but waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days! (4.1-2): Guy de Vere finally complies with the request to compose a poetic song for Lenore (1.5-7, 3:1-2) but he will upraise a paean instead of a dirge. The Roman-Catholic British nobleman must be a composer of religious anthems (1.6) Sabbath songs (3.1) dirges and songs of praise (paeans) of some renown.
Armed with these clues, and being a priori satisfied with a 75% match, a historical search was made for a contemporary of Poe who would fit the depiction of "Guy de Vere." The search yielded an unexpected success.
The child Aubrey Hunt was first educated at home by private tuition. His profound love of Nature prompted him to write descriptive poetry from a very early age.
In his boyhood he was sent away to Ambleside in the Lake District of Cumbria, Northwest England, under the care of a private tutor, the Rev. John Dawes. He was captivated by the natural beauty of the area and returned to it for visits as an adult. One of his boyhood hobbies was the thorough study of ancient and modern military campaigns with the aid of maps and books.
Thereafter he was enrolled in the prestigious Harrow School of London where he and Lord Byron became childhood friends. After graduation he returned to Ireland and pursued higher education at Trinity College of Dublin.
In 1807 he married Mary Spring-Rice of Mount Trenchard, eldest daughter of Stephen Edward Rice and sister of Lord Monteagle.5 The young couple had five sons and three daughters. The firstborn son was Sir Vere Edmund de Vere (b. 1808, d. 1880) who succeeded to the title upon his father's death. The second son was William Edward de Vere (b. 1811, d. 1904). His younger brother Stephen Edward de Vere (b. 1812, d. 1904) was an outstanding poet and a convert to Roman Catholicism. Aubrey Thomas Hunt de Vere (b. 1814, d. 1902) was another outstanding poet, and he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1857. Major Francis Horatio de Vere (b. 1828, d. 1865) joined the Royal Military Engineers and was shot dead by a sapper during a parade at Brompton Barracks in Chatham, Kent, Southeast England.
Aubrey Hunt wrote the following sonnet about family life in 1816 and published it in 1823. It is evident from the poem that Mary Spring-Rice was expecting their second daughter (lines 1-2). The children who appear in these verses can be guessed at: Stephen Edward (v. 3) Vere Edmund (v. 4) their first daughter (v. 5) and William Edward (vs. 7-8). One boy is missing, he may have been baby Aubrey Thomas, perhaps sleeping indoors under a nurse's care.
The Family Picture |
WITH work in hand, perchance some fairy cap (The Duke of Mercia. Sonnets, #8, p. 282) |
Aubrey Hunt served one term as High Sheriff of county Limerick in 1811.
He succeeded to his father's title in 1818, becoming 2nd Baronet.
He made a mild attempt to enter politics, and for a time was Sheriff of the County Limerick, but, on being defeated in an attempt to represent the county in Parliament, he desisted and devoted his life to travel and poetry, as well as to the care of his large estates at Curraghchase and at Glangoole, County Tipperary. He rebuilt the family house at the former place and made it one of the county's glories by employing John Flaxman, the celebrated sculptor, to work a frieze in the main hall.(http://www.limerickcity.ie/library/ [7 Dec 2016]. Limerick City Library)
The estate initially known to Englishmen as "Currah" (modern spelling: Curragh, a Gaelic word meaning "bog") was a land grant by Cromwell in 1657 to one of his officers, Vere Hunt. The property is located twenty kilometers away from the city of Limerick. The 2nd Baronet rebuilt the original manor house built by Hunt, adorned the family residence "with the eye of a painter," and assembled a good collection of military, poetry and history books in the library; he is probably also responsible for the small family-pet cemetery near the mansion. He changed the name of the estate to "Currah Chase" in 1833 (modern spelling: Curraghchase).
The 2nd Baronet undertook a vast tree-planting project in Curraghchase and created the three hundred hectares of forest land that still stand today. The woods are a mixture of broadleaf and evergreen trees: sycamores mingle with hornbeam, Scots Pine, beech, ash, hazel and several kinds of oak trees.
Fire gutted Curraghchase House in 1941, leaving only the exterior walls standing. The Forestry Division of the Irish government purchased the property in 1957 and turned the land into a national forest and park with eight kilometers of marked trails. A protected species of bat nests in the burnt-out cellars today.
"A Poet's Home" which appeared in the Poems section of The Duke of Mercia (1823) expounds the baronet's vision of the ideal home, some of whose features doubtlessly applied to Curraghchase House: a cottage closed with trees of every flower and leaf, airy yet sheltered, roses and flowers climbing over the white walls, a patch of blooming, aromatic shrubs before the porch, a spacious library with a deep bow window sunlit through green leaves, "our bright-faced infant throng," faithful friends who gather round the household fire in the evening to recite poetry, dance or listen to music; and gathered round his door "a busy, cheerful, virtuous poor, homely in speech and pure from art, Truth and the Bible in their heart."
The 2nd Baronet changed his surname by royal licence to "Sir Aubrey de Vere" in 1833 to flaunt the family's ties to the House of the 1st Earl of Oxford. House De Vere's motto is Vero Nihil Verius (Nothing is truer than the truth). Its French epigram is Verité Vient (Comes Truth).
Sir Aubrey de Vere's early works were historical dramas: Julian the Apostate, a dramatic Poem (1822) and The Duke of Mercia, an historical Drama. The Lamentation of Ireland, and other Poems (1823). The author's name printed for both books is "Sir Aubrey de Vere Hunt."
"Julian the Apostate" found an admiring and enthusiastic audience and received unstinted praise from the critics. One wrote, "Lord Byron has produced nothing equal to it," and another, "Scott has nothing so intellectual or so elevated among his exquisite sketches."(C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917)
Julian the Apostate, a dramatic Poem (London: Warren, 1822) is a play by any other name. The following excerpt illustrates the work's narrative style. The setting is the interior of the Temple of Mars. Emperor Julian, standing on the steps of the altar, speaks to the Roman populace. He is attended by Maximus the Chief Priest, who stands before the altar, by lesser priests and by military officers.
The people shout:
Long live the Emperor! JULIAN comes forward slowly.
The people shout: Kind master, generous friend! God save thee, Julian! JULIAN
My friends, I thank you: yes, my friends ye are, (People shout)
Draw then your swords, bold youth—to arms, to arms— The people shout:
Lead on, lead on (Julian the Apostate, pp. 116-18) |
Sir Aubrey de Vere dedicated The Duke of Mercia, an historical Drama. The Lamentation of Ireland, and other Poems (London: Hurst and Robinson, 1823) to his father-in-law "as a memorial of gratitude for an inestimable gift." The following excerpt from The Duke of Mercia illustrates the work's narrative style. The setting is the Danish camp. Canute the king of the Danes converses with two earls, Turkill and Gothmund, on the eve of battle against Edmund, surnamed Ironside, king of England.
CANUTE
Roll'd in her shadows, the wan spirit of night GOTHMUND The road is open to retreat. CANUTE
Not so. (Enter BULLOIGN, introduced) CANUTE
The Earl of Bulloign? BULLOIGN
Royal sir, my errand CANUTE
My lord! my heart leaps to requite your challenge BULLOIGN
On ours,
We shall depute Lords Frithegist and Morcar, CANUTE
Bulloign, your hand? I know none worthier. (Exit Bulloign)
The time, my lords, 'twixt heaven and me (Exeunt Turkill, Gothmund, and company) CANUTE (after pacing apart for some time, with hurried step)
I thank ye, spirits of my ancestors! (Exit into his tent) (The Duke of Mercia, pp. 171-75) |
The Lamentation of Ireland opens the book's section titled "Poems." It is dedicated to the Right Honourable Maurice Fitzgerald, knight of Kerry.6 The setting is the delta of the Shannon River on a calm, soothing summer evening. The author strolls absent-minded along the river's bank and lays down on a wave-worn rock. A blind old man, guided by a boy, approaches the seashore with faltering steps, drooping form and low, dejected head, "to pour a requiem to the dead, at the still close of day"; the aged bard blurts out a lament for Ireland. A brief excerpt follows.
The Lamentation of Ireland(fragment) |
"And why unstrung, unheeded, lies the lute?
"It cannot now restore lost liberty!
"Oh! say not weaker fires glow’d in each breast
"No—we might boast in our long lineage,
"Alas! dim shadows of immortal mind, (The Duke of Mercia, pp. 223-24) |
The Poems section contains fifteen poems and eighteen sonnets. The following honours his wife.
To M. |
YOU ask, for what I love thee, dearest!
'Tis not the sober claim of duty,
And yet thou art as fair a creature
But, oh! thou hast a richer treasure— (The Duke of Mercia, pp. 252-53) |
Sir Aubrey de Vere would not write another historical drama until 1844. It was published posthumously.
In the year 1844 De Vere was confined to bed with a painful disease and while here composed his greatest work, Mary Tudor: An Historical Drama. He completed it in September of the same year and Cardinal Manning wrote: "Perhaps my feeling may be tinged with a sympathy, but Gladstone's is not, and we agree in considering Mary Tudor the finest drama since Shakespeare's time."(Limerick City Library)
The second baronet devoted the remainder of his life to family, travel, poetry and the management of Curraghchase and the estate at Glangoole. He refrained from writing anything major until nineteen years after The Duke of Mercia. Then, four years before his death, he published the volume of poetry titled "A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets" (London: William Pickering, 1842).7
A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets is the work that Edgar A. Poe would have read. He reacted to the lecture by refurbishing his short poem A Paean (1831) into the significantly different Lenore (1843) thereafter penning the short story Eleonora (1844) and subsequently his most renowned poem The Raven (1845).8
Sir Aubrey de Vere dedicated A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets to William Wordsworth,
To know that you have perused many of the following Poems with pleasure, and did not hesitate to reward them with your praise, has been to me a cause of unmingled happiness. In accepting the Dedication of this Volume, you permit me to link my name—which I have hitherto done so little to illustrate—with yours, the noblest of modern literature. I may at least hope to be named hereafter as one among the friends of WORDSWORTH.
In the preface the author explains that he should be taken as a layman, not as an ecclesiastical authority, and perhaps in an oblique retort to Poe's criticism of religious poets, he adds that he writes religious poems because "our noblest impulses and purest emotions partake of poetry." 9
The Holy Spirit(fragment) |
THE Sadducee hath said there is no Soul, (A Song of Faith, #8, p. 57) |
The Church Catholic(fragment) |
THE supernatural Truths revealed in Christ, (A Song of Faith, #9, p. 65) |
The Praise of God(fragment) |
HONOUR, and Glory, and Dominion, (Devout Exercises, #11, p. 128) |
Sacred And Profane Writers |
LET those who will hang rapturously o'er (Sonnets. I. Religious and Moral, #11, p. 145) |
Waterloo10 |
WHY have the mighty lived—why have they died? (Sonnets. II. On Character and Events, #2, p. 171) |
The Rock of Cashel |
ROYAL and saintly Cashel! I would gaze (Sonnets. III. Descriptive, #4, p. 193) |
On the Funeral of A Lady And Her Son |
THERE I beheld them last—nay, still behold— (Sonnets. IV. Personal. Miscellaneous, #10, p. 227) |
Henry the Eighth |
A REFORMATION needful, it was good (Sonnets. V. Historical, #13, p. 249) |
"Thy Kingdom Come." 1. |
THY diadem is Grace, Thy sceptre Power, (Sonnets. VI. On the Lord's Prayer, #8, p. 271) |
Edgar A. Poe acknowledged the high calibre of De Vere's poetry by donning his "Guy de Vere" with lofty poetic flush and flourish on the two stanzas of Lenore where the baronet is "quoted."
Incidentally the name "Aubrey de Vere" fits like a glove on line 1.3 of Lenore the poem,
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore! ⇓ Aubrey de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore! |
Although some sources state that Sir Aubrey de Vere converted to Roman Catholicism, the Catholic Encyclopedia does not support the claim. The first line of De Vere's historical sonnet titled "Henry the Eighth" (reproduced above) shows where his religious sympathies lay. Still the Church of England is known as the "Anglican Catholic Church" for its similitude with the Roman Catholic Church,
The Church of England consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice. The way that this is often expressed is by saying that the Church of England is both "catholic and reformed."(http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/history.aspx [7 Dec 2016]. The Church of England)
Dr. John Jebb wrote about him,11
How deeply subservient he made his highly-gifted intellect to the best purposes of morality and Christianity; and this pious inclination increased with his years. His surely was a happy life in the best sense of the word.(Limerick City Library)
Lenore is both the love of this pious poet and the lost love of the soliloquist of The Raven. She must then represent a spiritual gift, grace, quality or virtue that De Vere is blessed with and which Edgar A. Poe no longer has. The pertinent clue is given on verses 3.3-4 of Lenore the poem,
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside, |
The sweet Lenore is ascending to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven accompanied by Hope and by the baronet's love. Therefore she must be a personification of faith, the third member of the famous triad spelled out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:13.
The first poem delivered to her by Poe arrived unexpectedly. "The influence of Poe was neither pleasant nor easy," she relates, "I can only describe it as a species of mental intoxication, I was tortured with a feeling of great restlessness and irritability, and strange, incongruous images crowded my brain." Some images were dazzling, others dark and repulsive. The experience of giving one of his poems on the stage would leave her feeling "quite ill for several days."
The lengthy poem "Farewell To Earth," a fragment of which is reproduced below, purports to have been given under the influence of Edgar A. Poe. "It was given in the city of New York, Monday evening, Nov. 2, 1863." 12 Doten describes her own verbal relay on stage as "the faintest possible echo of that most musical and majestic lyric which thrilled the harp-strings of my being."
"Farewell To Earth" is Poe's final communication to humans, Doten maintains, and is also the culmination "in the higher life" of Poe's transformation into a hero, the victorious overcomer of "every barrier that impeded the free out-growth and manifestation of his diviner self." "As he last appeared to me," she continues, "he was full of majesty and strength, self-poised and calm"; he had a radiant countenance and wore an olive wreath around his brow "whose leaves glowed like fire"; he stood on a mountainside "white and glittering like crystal."
One line of this poem employs Paul's triad of faith, hope and love. The verse is highlighted yellow.
Farewell To Earth. [Poe.](fragment) |
Farewell! Farewell!
There, through all the vast Empyrean, (Poems from the Inner Life, p. 162) |
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