edgar allan poe: street paving

5/21/2018 Edgar Allan Poe: Street Paving

1/9

"We write this article with no books before us": Poe on the Art of Street PavingAuthor(s): John E. ReillySource: The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 17-24Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41506262.

Accessed: 23/03/2014 17:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Penn State University Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The EdgarAllan Poe Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.79.13.20 on Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:46:41 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psuphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/41506262?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/41506262?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=psup


2/9

We write this article with no books before us :Poe on the Art of Street PavingJohnE. ReillyEarly inApril of 1844, Edgar andVirginiaPoe moved fromPhiladelphia toNew York to be joined shortly hereafter y Maria Clemm. Having livedin New York foreighteenmonthsor so some six yearsearlier,Poe now feltsufficiently amiliarwithhis adopted city and its environs to take on therole of New Yorkcorrespondent o theSpy,a weekly newspaper publishedin the small southeasternPennsylvania communityof Columbia. Poe'scollaborations, as he preferred o call this sort ofthing, eached a total ofseven installments arried n theSpybetween 14 May and 6 Julyof 1844.1Thoughneither o familiarnor so arch as the celebratedcorrespondenceofhis friendNathaniel ParkerWillis, Poe's letters re informative,nformal,loosely organized,oftenwitty nd acerbic. His topics rangefrom, s mightbe expected, observations on the current iterary cene to a reporton theoutcome of a ten-milefootrace, which Poe dismisses as a feat thatnotonlyhe but at least one thousandmen, in our western districts could haveequaled withease (47-48). He devotes a delightful aragraph oTiffany's,then n its seventhyear, describingthatemporiumas a greatraree-showamountingto one immenseknicknackatory fvirtu 48); he belittlesthecelebratedsquarishstone fountain tBowling-Green, designed to appear aswaterflowingnaturally ver rocks,as possessing instead muchthe air of asmallcountryail ina hard thunder hower 26); and he is especially causticindescribingwhathe calls the absoluteatrocity f thetypical Brooklynite'villa,' likely equipped,he tellsus,with a fountain, ivingouta pintof realwaterperhour, hrough he mouthof a leaden catfish tanding n thetip-endof his tail, and surroundedby a circle of admiring conchs' (59-60).Many ournalistsof thetimedenigrated hewretched ondition fNew York'sstreets, nd Poe was no exception. In his second letter, ated 21 May, hecomplains that, side from theupper,moreretired, nd more fashionablequarters, he streets re insufferably irty s a resultof shamefulneglectand/or olitical chicanery; and that entiredistricts .. are left,forweeks,in outerdarkness, at night;the lamp-lightingfunctionariesflatly efusingto light up; preferring, e continues, to appropriatethe oil to theirownprivate and personal emolument (31-32). As disturbed as Poe was bydirt and darkness,he was, however,even more disturbedby noise. Theamount of general annoyances wrought by street-noises, he complains

17

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/9

on 12 June, is incalculable; and the matter s worthy f our veryseriousattention 60-61). One source ofnoise, he tellsus, is theleathern hroatsof thefisherwomen,hecharcoal-men, .. themonkey-exhibitors, nd theclam-and-cat-fish endors. These werenot,however,the worstoffenders:The din of the vehicles ... is even more thoroughly,nd more intolerablya nuisance. But even here the culpritsare not horses and wagons butthese unmeaninground [paving] stones ... than which a more ingeniouscontrivance ordrivingmen madthroughheernoise,was undoubtedly everinvented. We should have some change, he warns, and thatforthwith,or we musthave new and moreplentiful emedies forheadaches. Poe thenconsidersseveral alternatives o theoffending oundstones. One alternativeis to pave with twelve-inchcubes of stone (square, with theuppersurfaceroughened). Thoughthese flat tones makeperhaps, hemostdurable, nd,inmany respectsthebestroad, Poe concedes, they re both expensive,andthe noise they mit s objectionable, although n a much ess degreethantheround stones. Another lternative e considers s blocks ofuntreatedwood.Butthese,he admits,have been tried nd have failedbecause untreatedwoodwears anddecaysrapidly.The alternative oe advocates s pavingwithblocksof wood treatedwith a preservative n a process known as Kyanizing, aprocess he describes in specificdetail. The wood, he tells us, is immersedin a solution of corrosive sublimate (i.e., bi-chloride of Mercury ) atthe rate of one pound to fifteen r sixteengallons of waterfor forty-eighthours more or less. At the end of thistime, he assures us, the woodcannot be rotted. It has assumed a metallic hardness and texture, s muchincreased in weight,and will last as long as granite. Poe not only spellsout the specificratios of ingredients n the solution of preservativebut heestimates their urrent ost andprojectsthe reductions npriceas thesupplyincreases in keeping with the anticipatedwide adoption of this method ofpaving. In pointofcheapness, Poe concludes, freedomfromnoise, easeof cleaning, pleasantness to the hoof, and, finally n point of durability,there s no causeway equal to thatof theKyanized wood. Nonetheless,heconcludes with bitterresignation, it will take [the authorities], s usual,fullytenyears to make thisdiscovery (61-63).Poe returnedo the ubjectofpavingwithKyanizedwood nine months ater nan unsignededitorial n theNew-YorkMirrorfor8 February1845.2 EntitledTrya MineralizedPavement, theeditorialwas a responseto thesuggestionby JamesHarper, our worthyMayor of New York, thatBroadway berepairedwithgraniteupon a bed ofconcrete. Though considerably onger

18



4/9

thanhis single paragraph n the Columbia Spy,thisMirror editorialrepeatsessentiallywhat Poe had written inemonths arlier aboutpreservingwood,departing only to the extentof advocating that wood to be Kyanized beimmersed n thepreservative olutionfor eventy-two ours nstead offorty-eightand adding that n unsuccessful effort tpaving with untreatedwoodhad been made in Paris, that successful test at preservingwood had beenconducted in thefunguspit [in thedock-yards]at Woolwich in England,and that the BritishAdmiraltyreportedthat sailors in ships constructed fpreservedwood had suffered o ill effectsfrom hepreservative.Poe's final forayinto streetpaving is a three-column,full-fledged ssayon the subject published in theBroadway Journal on 19 April 1845, twomonthsafterhis editorial n the Mirror 3 Entitledsimply Street-Paving,theessay takes the long view, opening withPoe's declaration thatduringthe last two thousandyears, the world has been able to make no essentialimprovements n road-making. There are, he informsus, streets inPompeii to-dayconstructed n thevery principlewhich is considered bestbythe moderns: oriftherebe any especial variation, tcertainly s not to thecredit of modern ngenuity. This declaration launches Poe into a lengthyparagraph ayingout in specificdetail thecompositionand construction fancient Roman roads, including the precise dimensions of roadbeds, theidentity f each of several layersof constructionmaterials, he thickness ninches of each layeras well as the methodbywhich each was installed,andthe differences n construction echniquesdictatedby variations n terrain.It is an impressive performance, nd Poe renders t even more impressiveby furnishinghe Latin equivalents ofEnglishtermsforthe several featuresofroad construction: sulci fortrenches, istucationesforpilings,grmiumforbasis, statumen for initial layer, rudus for rubble work, nucleus forbrokenearthenware, avimentumfor the final ayer,and silex for stones ofbasaltic lava. Impressiveas thisperformances, however,Poe concludes byapologizing forhaving venture[d]to place before our readers this veryschool-boyishinformation.Poe follows thisdisquisitionon Roman road buildingby repeatinghere inhis essay essentiallywhat he had alreadywritten n theSpyand the Mirrorfirst is criticismof stone pavementfor ts noisiness, then his rejectionofuntreatedwood as an alternative, nd finallyhis recommendation hatroadsbe constructedof blocks of wood treated n what he had up to thispointcalled theKaynizing process that he once again describes in detail. In this

19



5/9

instanceonly,however,he adds that heprocess is very mproperly alledKyanizing because, he informsus withoutexplanation,that Kyan [i.e.,JohnHoward Kyan] has not the slightest laim to the nvention.Having described in specificdetail thetechniquesof Roman road buildingand spelled out,for the third ime,a method ofpreservingwood for use inmodern streetpaving, Poe draws his essay in the Broadway Journal to aclose with a disclaimer. We are, he announces in the editorialplural, byno means positive about theaccuracy of ourdetails because, he explains,[w]e write this article with no books before us. Now, for those of usfamiliar withPoe, familiarespecially with his penchantforhoaxing, or,ifyou will, fordiddlinghis reader,a disclaimer of thisnature,redolent as itis withself-promotion,mountsto nothing hortof a challenge to identifyjust what, n fact,were the sources Poe claimed not to have before him andjust how closely he followed them.Since Poe had been living in New York only six or eightweeks when heinitially aid out his proposal forpaving withpreservedwood in his letterto theColumbia Spy, it seems safe to assume thathe carried what he knewof theKyanizing process withhimfromPhiladelphia,where t so happenedinterest n the subject of streetpaving was especially lively. Indeed, Poecould have drawn most of the informationhe furnished bout Kyanizingfromust one source. It was a lengthy ocument ntitled Reporton thebestmodes ofPavingHighways prepared t thebehest ofthe CommonCouncilsof theCityofPhiladelphia in 1842 and published in several installments ntheJournaloftheFranklin nstitute n the autumnof 1843, not ong beforePoe leftPhiladelphia forNew York.4What littlePoe wrote aboutKyanizingthat he could not have drawn from this Franklin Institute Report wasavailable to him nnumerous tems on thesubjectofstreet avingcarried nthepages of thePublic Ledger and theUnitedStatesGazette throughouthehalf-dozenyears of his residence in Philadelphia, itemsincludingarticles,reprints, ditorials,and letters o theeditorexplaining, urging, riticizing,and debatingmethods of paving with a wide range of materialsincludingwood preserved by several methods.What Poe wrote boutKyanizing,then,he apparently arneredfrom everalsourcesreadily vailable to himback inPhiladelphia. In doingso, itshould benoted,hepracticedwhathehimselfhad, nthe ntroductiono his Pinakidiaseries, ridiculed as piecemeal cullings at second hand, from a varietyof

20



6/9

sources hidden or supposed to be hidden. 5 His use of sources forwhat hewrote about ancientRoman road building,however,belongs to a distinctlymoreegregiousorder ofculling. It amountsto what he roundlydenounced,also in Pinakidia, as more audacious pilferings; 6 or Poe lifted all theinformation e used on the subject of ancient Roman road buildingfromsingle unacknowledged source. It was the entry ntitled Viae on pages1041 to 1045 of William Smith'sDictionary ofGreek nd RomanAntiquities,the firstAmerican edition of which was edited by Poe's friendProfessorCharles Anthonof Columbia College andpublished by Harperand Brothersin 1843. Wherever t lay when Poe composed his essay whether n factbeforehim,beside him,behindhim,or on a shelf cross theroom there anbe no doubt thatPoe had access to a copy of thebook because he happenedto have reviewed it, also in the Broadway Journal,on 12 April, ust oneweek before the appearance of his essay on StreetPaving, reviewed itvery favorably,pronouncing t [i]n every respect ... the most valuable ofits class- or rather t is a class by itself. 7 What is more,Poe liftednot ustthe factsfrom heDictionary he liftedwhole phrasesandexpressions n thesequence in which they appeared in theoriginaltext, nd notonly phrasesand expressions laying out materials and specificmeasurementsbut alsothose impressive Latin equivalents of terms for road building in English.He liftedthem n a manner and to an extentthathad he uncovered them nthework of someone else, he surelywould have pilloriedtheperpetratorsa plagiarist. What is even more,he compoundedthisaudacious pilfering ycasually relegatingwhat he had so blatantly ppropriated o veryschool-boyish information withwhich he just happened to be familiar i.e., Wewritethisarticle with no books beforeus.Though there s, let's admit t,no small satisfaction n catchingred-handedthevery scourge of plagiarizers, it should be noted in fairnessto Poe thatthe editorial demands upon him at thatmoment,the demands to furnishsufficientopy fortheweekly appearance of theBroadway Journal,couldhave pushedhimbeyondwhat we might uphemize as the imitsof creativeintegrity.Therewas, nonetheless,no need forPoe to boast thathe had nobooks before him when he composed his surveyof ancient Roman roadbuilding. Doing so was a gratuitousgesture, gesture n a class with whatW. C. Brownellyears ago labeled thefripperyf earning hat bedizenedmuch of Poe's writing, r, n otherwords,what Michael Allen morerecentlyattributes o Poe's determination o play the expert, to his neverhavingconceive d] of himself s anything ther han nfinitelyuperior o themass-

21



7/9

audience. 8 There is, ofcourse,a delicious ironyhere thatPoe himselfmusthave appreciated: he pretendedto easy familiaritywith the technicalitiesof wood preservation and with the intricacies of ancient Roman roadbuilding, knowledge of which he made a pointof denigrating o the levelof school-boyish information. Without the aid of his unacknowledgedsources, however,Poe would have been as ignorant s the readershe soughtto impress. Though thismaynot risequite tothe evel of anotherPoe hoax,it surelycomes precious close to doing so.Poe' s essayin TheBroadwayJournalof 19Aprilwas not, nfact,his last wordon thesubjectof street aving. In thecourse of a paragraph fmiscellaneoustopicson 26 July, e reports hat wooden pavement s entirely ut of favorin London because it has been foundto be unsuitable;and he concludes thatNothingseems to 'do' like McAdam. The ease with which Poe abandonshis advocacy of treated wood indicates, perhaps, that he somehow hadbecome genuinely onvinced of ts nferiority,ut t s more ikelyhe simplyfeltthathe had,withhis essay of 19April,so exhausted his and his readers'interest n a subject thathe wished to exploit it no longer.Entirely nrelated o Poe' s use, orabuse, ofsources, s the ssue of noise thatprompted im to broach thesubjectof street aving nthefirst lace. ThoughNew York newspapers carriedanynumberof complaintsabout deplorablestreet onditions, yfarmostof thecomplaintswere not about noise but aboutuncleanliness which s quiteunderstandablewhen we consider, or xample,that each of the upwards of 200,000 live horses in the cityat mid-centurydepositedan average oftwenty-fouroundsofmanureand severalquartsofurineeach dayon streetswherefly-riddenorpsesof abandoned workhorseslay undisturbed. t was not so muchresidents f New York as it was visitorsto thecitywho took note of its noise. As far back as the second decade ofthecentury, orexample, TimothyDwight, n his Travels; In New-Englandand New York, ited the bustle in the streets;theperpetualactivityof thecarts;the noise and hurry t the docks as evidence thatNew York was aslivelya specimenof thebusyhumofpopulous cities,' as can be imagined. 9Similarly,as he approached New Yorkby boat earlyin the 1840s, SamuelGoodrich's PeterParley could distinguish roaring ound,occasioned bythe thousandcarts, oaches, and carriages,whichwererumbling hroughhestreets. 10 nd at about the same time,FrederickL. G. vonRaumer, visitorfromGermany,reportedthat the number of omnibuses in Broadway, thegreatthoroughfare,s greater n proportion han n London; and thenoiseis louder. 11 Unlike these and othercommentators,however,Poe did not

22



8/9

just take note of the streetnoise. He complained about it. And he didn'tjust complain. He protestedwhat he called the vast inconvenience, andoften atal njury esulting o invalids caused bythe insufferable uisanceof streetnoise. To Poe's ears streetnoise was, in effect, serious publichealthproblem.The unusual agitationwith which Poe complained of streetnoise raises aquestion about Poe's own hearing. Was itunusuallyacute? Unfortunately,just about theonly testimony o this effect s a reportby Poe's friendJohnSartainthatPoe appeared unexpectedly t Sartain'sPhiladelphiahome in thesummer f 1849 with a wild and frightened xpression n his eyes seekingrefugefromwhat he insistedwere some men who sat a few seats behindhim plotting o kill him on the trainfromNew York. He said they spokeso low that twould have been impossible for him to hear and understandthemeaningof theirwords, but he managed to overhear them and escapebecause his sense of hearingwas so wonderfully cute. 12 Given Poe'sapparent paranoidal and hystericalcondition on thatoccasion, theepisodehardly erves as conclusive evidence of Poe's hearing. Nevertheless,on thebasis of hiscomplaintsabout streetnoise as well as the evidence of Sartain'sreport,whatever tmaybe worth,we mightwonder f there s any relationshipbetween Poe's ownhearing nd the roleacuteness ofhearingplays in severalof his prominent ales. In The Fall of theHouse of Usher, Roderick'sacuteness of the enses includes a morbid ondition f theauditory ervethat enabled him to hear formanyminutes,manyhours,many days thefeeble movements of Madeline stirringn her coffin nclosed in a vaultat greatdepth beneath the house ofUsher. Similarly, n The Colloquy ofMonos and Una, Monos reports hat n thesynesthetic ondition n whichhe foundhimself mmediately ollowinghisdeath, The hearing .., althoughexcited in degree,was notirregular n action estimating eal sounds withan extravaganceofprecision. And, mostnotably,of course, theprincipalaction in The Tell-Tale Heart hinges upon the narrator's acuteness ofhearing. As I arguedin an essay published a numberofyears ago, it is thenarrator'shyperacusisthat nabled himto hear the faint tridulatoryickingof an insectthat,n hisderangement,henarratormistookfor heposthumousbeatingof his victim's heart.13

23



9/9

Notes1. JacobE. Spannuthnd ThomasOlliveMabbott, ds.,Doings ofGotham:Poe' sContributionso The Columbia py (Pottsville, A: JacobE. Spannuth,929,repr. olcroft ibrary ditions, 974). Referredoparentheticallyn the ext.2. Try Mineralized avement, he New-York irror 15February 845: 296.3. EdgarAllanPoe, Street aving, nWritingsn theBroadwayJournaln TheCollectedWritingsfEdgarAllan Poe ed. Burton . Pollin NewYork: GordianPress,1986),3:94-96.4. Committee n Science and theArts, Reporton the Best Modes of PavingHighways, JournaloftheFranklin nstituteSeptember nd October,1843):[1451-168, 2171-233.5. EdgarAllanPoe, The Brevities Pinakidia,Marginalia,FiftyuggestionsandOtherWorksn TheCollectedWritingsfEdgarAllan Poe ed. BurtonR. Pollin(NewYork: Gordian ress,1985),2:1.6. Poe, 2:1.7. Poe, Writingsn theBroadwayJournal 3:81.8. W. C. Brownell,AmericanProse Masters (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 909), 249. MichaelAllen,Poe and the BritishMagazine TraditionNewYork: OxfordUniversityress,1969),87, 186.9.Timothywight, ravels; nNew-EnglandndNew-YorkNewHaven,1821-22),3:470.10. SamuelGoodrich,eter arley'sVisit otheCity fNew-YorkNewYork, 841),10.11 Frederick . G. vonRaumer, merica,nd theAmerican eople trans.WilliamW. TurnerNewYork,1846),468.12. John artain,TheReminiscencesfa Very ld Man, 1808-1897 New York,1899,repr.New York nd London: BenjaminBlom,1969),206.13. JohnE. Reilly, The Lesser Death-Watch nd The Tell-TaleHeart,' TheAmerican ranscendentaluarterly2nduarter,1969): 3-9.

24


edgar allan poe: street paving

Documents