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September. He then travelled thirty miles north to Baltimore. He wanted to be reunited with his older brother, Henry, who had been living with General Poe and his family since infancy; this visit would also allow Poe to become acquainted with his paternal relatives. Now that his substitute family had been fragmented, he was happy to be embraced by what might be called his true relations. It was also possible that some erstwhile colleague of General Poe might help his enlistment at West Point.
    Baltimore was the third largest city in the United States, but still at the very beginning of its fortunes. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had just been completed. The Patapsco river-front was lined with warehouses. Baltimore was becoming a centre for manufacturing as well as for shipping, an energetic and serious city with broad streets and a skyline made memorable by buildings and churches. Two years before, John Quincy Adams had called it “Monument City.” The earliest photographs depict the busy area of the port, behind which, in the distance, can be seen the Basilica of the Assumption, the steeples of Saint Paul's Episcopal church and the German Reformed Church, and the Washington Monument. It was also the first city of slavery for those travelling south. In that sense, at least, Poe felt at home.
    Poe had a further purpose in coming to Baltimore. He was eager to publish another volume of poetry. He had the abiding dream of literary success but, in addition, he possessed an almost visceral need to be seen by the eyes ofthe world. He yearned for distinction. Soon after his arrival he took the steamboat to Philadelphia and presented his manuscript of poems to a likely publisher, Carey, Lea & Carey. Mr. Lea seemed to be interested in the volatile and no doubt voluble young poet, and promised to study the manuscript carefully with a view to publication. Much encouraged, Poe returned to Baltimore. A few weeks later Lea sent him a standard and disheartening letter. The poems might be published if the publishers were guaranteed against loss.
    Poe had very little money of his own. So he wrote to Allan, asking him to furnish the financial subsidy for the book. This was a surprising and perhaps foolish action. Nothing was more calculated to arouse Allan's anger. He had considered Poe to be on the way to a distinguished military career—but here the young man was, pursuing an insecure and even reprehensible destiny. Poetry was not at a premium in early-nineteenth-century America. Allan scribbled at the end of Poe's letter that he had replied, “strongly censuring his conduct & refusing any aid.”
    Allan had meanwhile been supporting Poe at the least possible cost. He sent his young charge a further fifty dollars in the summer of 1829, upon which sum he was supposed to live for the next three months. It amounted to a daily allowance of some fifty-three cents. Poe decided to move out of lodging houses and into the home of his relatives, situated in the business district, “down-town” from the wealthier and more fashionable quarter.
    General Poe was dead, survived by his widow; in herlittle house in Mechanics Row, Milk Street, was also Maria Clemm, Poe's aunt, together with her small daughter, Virginia. And here lived Poe's brother, Henry. It was not necessarily a happy family: old Mrs. Poe was paralysed, and Mrs. Clemm also in a poor state of health; Henry was dying of tuberculosis, and according to Poe, “entirely given up to drink & unable to help himself, much less me.” There was real poverty in Mechanics Row, where Poe experienced a life very different from that of the Allan household in Richmond. Yet his entrance into the family marked a decisive change in his life. He became attached to Maria Clemm, and to her young daughter. In succeeding years these two women would become the lodestones of his life, the harbour into which he crept from the wild waves of the world.
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    Poe's poetic ambitions left everything in