Page 39 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

In June, 1815, when Edgar was about six years old, his adoptive father and
mother, with an aunt, went to England to stay several years. Before starting,

Mr. Allan bought a Murray’s reader, two Murray’s spelling books, and
another book to keep the little fellow busy on the long sailing voyage

across the Atlantic; for at that time a trip to England occupied several
weeks instead of a few days as now. When the family reached London and
were settled down, Edgar was sent to a famous English school.

This school was at Stoke Newington, a quiet, old-fashioned country town,

only a few miles out from London. Here was the house of Leicester, the
favorite of Queen Elizabeth, whose story you may read in Scott’s
"Kenilworth"; and here too was the house of Anne Boleyn’s ill-fated lover,

Earl Percy.

The Manor House School, as it was called, was in a quaint and very old
building, with high walls about the grounds, and great spiked, iron-studded
gates. Here the boys lived and studied, seldom returning home, and seldom

going outside the grounds, except when they went with a teacher.

In this strange school, Edgar Allan lived and studied for five years. The
schoolroom was long, narrow, and low; it was ceiled with dark oak, and
had Gothic windows. The desks were black and irregular, covered with the

names and initials which the boys had cut with their jackknives. In the
corners were what might be called boxes, where sat the masters--one of

them Eugene Aram, the criminal made famous in one of Bulwer’s
romances. Back of the schoolroom, reached by winding, narrow passages,
were the bedrooms, one of which Poe occupied. When the boys went out to

walk they passed under the giant elms, amid which once lived
Shakespeare’s friend Essex, and they gazed up at the thick walls, deep

windows, and doors massive with locks and bars, behind which the author
of Robinson Crusoe wrote some of his famous works.

Within the walls of this school a large number of boys had a little world all
to themselves; they had their societies and their games and their tricks,

along with hard work in Latin and French and mathematics; and though
such work may seem monotonous and dreary, they managed to enjoy it.