Text: Burton R. Pollin, “Poe's Some Words with a Mummy Reconsidered,” New Approaches on Poe, 1970, pp. 60-67

[page 60, continued:]

One of Poe's most ingeniously presented criticisms of contemporary society is comprised in the tale, “Some Words with a Mummy,” published twice by him in 1845, first in April and again in November.(1) It has always seemed a clear example of Poe's hostility to democracy and to aspects of modern art and culture, since he half-seriously awards the palm for scientific achievement and for superior refinement to the ancient era of the revived Egyptian mummy's entombment. His time machine, in this instance, is sent backward toward a lost Eden instead of forward, as in the later “Mellonta Tauta.” The story line itself is direct and farcical and the tale is in no need of exegesis. Whatever the reason for its lack of popularity, it fails to appear in the anthologies of Poe's work and has, therefore, received relatively little attention from commentators.(2) Hence, there are many questions untouched about its sources and its references, as I discovered when I found it necessary to gloss the proper names at one time.(3) As far as I know, there is no paper of any extent devoted solely to the tale, although it receives passing mention in any discussion of Poe's social attitudes. Characteristic, for example, is the terse comment by Woodberry: “a grotesque on the old theme that ‘there is nothing new under the sun,’ with some unusual satire on politics.”(4) I intend to indicate the importance to the work — partly as source material — of the lectures and publications of two persons named by Poe himself, George Robins Gliddon and James Silk Buckingham, of a contemporary play called The Mummy, and of contemporary exhibits of mummies in museums, including Barnum's. Also, I shall indicate the nature, function, and quality of a few incidental allusions in the tale.

The popularity of the exhibition of mummies was a consequence in the second quarter of the nineteenth century of Champollion's deciphering of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone, of the opening up of the Egyptian area to travelers, explorers, and archeologists in the post-Napoleonic period, and of the subsequent publication of numerous accounts such as that of Stephens, whose Arabia Petraea [page 61:] Poe had lengthily reviewed in 1835. Significantly, John Gliddon and his son, in the Cairo consulate, had been helpful to Stephens in innumerable ways detailed by Stephens.(5) The colossal buildings of Egypt had always been renowned, but there was a much greater interest in gazing upon the inhabitants, even though embalmed, whose lives and customs were being revealed through the hieroglyphics. The curious were eager to see not only the inscribed sarcophagi and the colorful beaded wrappings, but also the bodies within. There must have been a certain grim satisfaction in discovering the state of decomposition in which each would be found — whether a dust-filled skeleton or a shriveled figurine or a good “counterfeit presentment,” with artificial eyeballs and gilded nails. Moreover, since artistically carved amulets might be found on the body itself, there was even the charm of a buried treasure at the end of the linen swathings, never shorter than thirty yards — a kind of gruesome strip-tease, may one say? Hence public examinations of mummies, before paying audiences, were held, often conducted by austere scientific men or organizations.(6)

It is this psuedo- as well as real scientific curiosity that Poe is exploiting throughout his tale of the Egyptian mummy. He himself, with his almost obsessive interest in metempsychosis and in rituals of death could easily fix his attention upon the death-centered culture of Egypt. There are traces of this interest in Egypt in other creative writings by Poe. “Shadow,” for example, concerning death by plague, is set in the city of Ptolemais (2.148-150). “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” is conducted by two characters homophonously named after those in Cleopatra's entourage (4.1-8).(7) In “Ligeia” is a reference to “idolatorous Egypt” (2.250), in “Eleonora” to the “Nubian geographer” (4.240), in “Scheherazade” to an “Egyptian donkey” (6.89), in “The Assignation” to the “huge carvings of untutored Egypt” (2.116), and in “The Coliseum” to “Memnon's statue” (7.57). Other references might be cited, including those to the tangential field of metempsychosis.

Ancient Egypt itself by contrast with modern New York City is the primary focus throughout this tale. The unnamed narrator has been unnerved by a previously attended “symposium” and is now awakened by an invitation from Dr. Ponnonner to unswathe the “mummy” at the “City Museum” at 11 p.m., along with Mr. Gliddon and “Silk Buckingham.” The mummy is uncased from its third containing coffin and is found to be in a painted papier mâché covering. The gripped body appears so fresh that they all decide literally to galvanize it into life. Count “Allamistakeo,” having been embalmed whole, while in a cataleptic trance — a favorite Poe plot device —, awakes and argues, via Gliddon and Buckingham, that the culture and learning of contemporary America are grievously inferior to those of the Egyptians, who were accomplished in astronomy, glassmaking, architecture, engineering, and even in government, then happily free from democratic “Mob” rule. The narrator is ashamed when modern clothing and patent medicines are cited for their excellence by the company and he leaves the museum.

The story has received little attention from three source-hunters. Killis Campbell, in 1910, felt that the origin of the tale lay in an episode of R. M. Bird's novel, Sheppard Lee, in which the hero's spirit enters the body of a hanged Negro insurrectionist and finally reenters its own body, which was about to be used for galvanic battery experiments.(8) This is indeed suggestive, but it does not face the issue that Poe's review appeared in 1836, his tale in 1845. His mind could, of course, retain a germ-idea, but something closer to publication date would be needed as a second stimulus (The impecunious Poe never let any period lapse between the writing and the publication). Let me here assert my strong belief in multiple sources for most of Poe's writings. I am inclined to doubt Poe's awareness of an 1820 medical magazine, one-paragraph write-up of an experimental application of an electric battery to the body of an executed murderer.(9) Similarly unlikely is Lucile King's attribution of the basic idea to a January 21, 1832, New York Evening Mirror account of the revival of the one hundred year old mummy of an English soldier, chiefly because Poe's work on the Mirror, 1844-1845, could scarcely guarantee his familiarity with their twelve-year-old file.(10) But Dr. King's more positive ascription of details in Poe's tale to two articles in the 1831 Encyclopaedia Americana is entirely tenable. Her parallel columns certainly prove that Poe freely took details concerning the tombs and the embalmment of the mummies from two articles, on “Mummies” and “Embalming.”(11) She might even have added his use of the article on Thebes (12.213), from which Poe took details, with changes, for the buildings at Carnac (6.134). Unquestionably, Poe supplied “facts” for his tale from an encyclopedia, just as he did for “The Descent into the Maelström” [page 62:] and other tales.

Yet there are many other sources for facts, ideas, and details of plot and setting which are not given in these three studies, and two of them Poe very clearly points out himself; I refer to Gliddon, and Buckingham, the latter of whom appears several times in Poe's writings, always in a puzzlingly pejorative context, which I shall explain. After discussing these two figures plus an important theatrical source, I intend to handle several smaller allusions. George Robins Gliddon (1809-1857), although prominent in his day for studies in Egyptology, seems to have fallen between two stools of biography, being an English man whose work and career were conducted almost entirely under the American aegis, one might almost say eagle, in view of a celebrated controversy concerning whether the American insignia were being hung below Great Britain's in the consulate.(12) Having lived as a child and youth in Egypt, he became part of the American governmental office, established at Cairo in 1832, under his father, John Gliddon. The son took the post over a few years later and continued until it was discontinued in 1840; he spent much of his time in satisfying his avid curiosity about ancient Egypt and accumulated artifacts which he brought with him. He apparently projected his speaking career well for a public that frequented illustrated lectures, furnishing himself, for example, with large color transparencies from the only copy in America of the beautifully detailed and engraved book by Professor Rosselini, I monumenti dell-Egitto e della Nubia.(13) Some of the lecture notes and publicity materials used by Gliddon have been preserved in the New York Historical Society archives.(14) There is weighty evidence that in America he was judged a world authority on Egypt, who made palatable, even inviting, some of the most arcane information, including much about mummies. Apparently he spent most of 1842 preparing his winter series of 1842-1843; these lectures were repeated, 1843-1844 and 1844-1845, in the major centers of culture, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. After a year in Europe, he returned with augmented collections for his illustrated lectures, especially indicating his enrichment of the “mummification and funeral ceremonies” aspects of his talks.(15) Poe's reference at the beginning of “Some Words with a Mummy” may well have referred to Gliddon's 1844-1845 series: “The symposium of the preceding evening had been a little too much for my nerves” (6.116). “Symposium” then as now could mean “a meeting or conference for discussion of some subject.”(16) While I have not found any advertisements for Gliddon dating from 1845, the collection in the New York Historical Society includes a throwaway of 1849 with relevant data: “Transparent Panorama of the Nile / 1,720 miles, with Oral Descriptions ... Ancient Monuments / Its Modern Science ... / Illustrated by a Gallery of / Egyptian Antiquities, Mummies, etc.” To profit doubly from his lectures, Gliddon enriched the lecture material with information from European Egyptologists and published the whole as Ancient Egypt in the New York New World, as “Extra Series, 68-69,” for April, 1843 — sixty-four double-columned stereotyped pages with many hieroglyphic illustrations, including several that may have suggested the scarab origin for the family name [sic] of Count Allamistakeo. Poe may have known about and envied the unbelievable popularity of this often reprinted feuilleton, sold at lectures and separately to the Egypt-hungry public. For example, the twelfth edition of 1848 speaks of 25,000 copies as having been sold in six years. Gliddon managed to elicit testimonials to the interest of his lectures from prominent citizens of Philadelphia and Boston which were inserted into newspapers and then printed as part of his lecture notes as sold. Poe may even have met Gliddon at the home of his friend, Charles Anthon, to whose knowledge and large library Gliddon pays tribute in the prefatory material added to the 1847 edition of Ancient Egypt. Gliddon was also the author of other books on Egypt; when Poe calls him “a firm friend of the mummies” (6.123), he is undoubtedly making a covert allusion to his Appeal to the Antiquaries of Europe on the Destruction of the Monuments of Egypt, (London, 1841), although in reality this work was directed against the ruling Pasha, Mohammed Ali, who was ravaging the ancient buildings for materials for modern constructions.

Throughout Poe's tale Gliddon is featured as the expert who, together with Buckingham, serves as interpreter because of his “very capital Egyptian” and who delivers to the unveiling company a “discourse” which turns “chiefly upon the vast benefits accruing to science from the unrolling and disembowelling of mummies.” Pursuing this theme in his lectures, undoubtedly, the real Gliddon published in 1849 Otia aegyptical. Discourses on Egyptian archeology and hieroglyphical discoveries, which made “a contribution to mummification.”(17) Gliddon's Ancient Egypt, I think, supplied both a primary story-germ and details for Poe's story which are not in the Encyclopaedia Americana. Remember that the tale proves the superiority [page 63:] of Egypt for all time and over all countries in the arts and the sciences. The Americana deprecates many of Egypt's developments, but Gliddon is bold in his tribute: “Men of knowledge and arts must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing — of the calendar and solar motion — of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel and of giving elasticity to a copper sword — of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow — of moving single blocks of polished syenite, 900 tons in weight, for any distance, by land and water, etc.” (Ancient Egypt, p. 34). Poe has Allamistakeo boast about “the manufacture of glass,” the cutting of cameos, “the sharp carved work seen on the obelisks ... wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper (pp. 133 and 135), the “vast, level, direct, iron-grooved [sic] causeways,” used to convey “entire temples and solid obelisks” (p. 135). In discussing advanced Egyptian religious notions, Gliddon prominently prints Hebrew characters for “Adam (Adme)” or “Red earth or clay” along with the corresponding hieroglyphics (top of p. 29, column 1); Poe discusses the theme similarly, giving us “Adam, (or Red Earth)” — the only locus in his many references to Adam in his writings in which he glosses it thus. When Gliddon is praising Champollion's bravely defended interpretation of hieroglyphics, he writes: “How much more convenient would it have been if the living antecedent of the mummy had talked in Latin, or in Greek, or at least in Hebrew?” In addition, he dwells on the phonetic origin of the hieroglyphic signs (p. 6), which may well lead to Poe's saying of Gliddon: “He had no difficulty in translating the letters, which were simply phonetic, and represented the word, Allamistakeo” (p. 118). Omitting many other correspondences of ideas, I must mention only the space Poe gives to the scarabaeus, which is an amulet image on the mummy then ingeniously used to explain that members of the “Scarabaeus tribe” were embalmed whole, and in this case while still alive (p. 129). Gliddon first tells us that “under the guise of mystic attributes and through the medium of symbols the Egyptian gods ... are patriarchal ... generations” (p. 48). Later, near the end, he shows a cartouche of one of the Pharaohs, Osortasen I, of the 16th Dynasty of Thebes, displaying a prominent scarab representing “the sun offered to the world,” and he incidentally tells about a memorial near “Eilethyas,” mentioned by Poe as “Eleithias, in the Lybian Mountains, a considerable distance above Thebes on the Nile.” Both the spelling and the somewhat incorrectly stated geographical location Poe could have derived from one of the Americana articles, although the conjunction of other elements in both Poe and Gliddon is significant.

Gliddon himself refers to Mr. Buckingham's lectures on Egypt noncommittally (p. 11), but Poe is much more definite about this “character” in his tale. He is a little less expert than Gliddon, but is presented as fluent in ancient Egyptian and very knowing about the country itself. More puzzling is Poe's entirely scornful picture of Buckingham's crawling under the table when the mummy awakes, his sucking his thumbs instead of replying to the mummy's complaint about their rough treatment, and finally his vain refusal to take off his wig to show its construction to the count. In other writings Poe mentions Buckingham; in his October, 1837 review of Stephens's Arabia Petraea he is merely an author of oriental travels which “are extensively known” (10.2). After this early date something had happened to sour Poe on James Silk Buckingham, for in an 1844 (and 1845) review of Elizabeth Barrett's Drama of Exile Poe deprecates elements of her work as being “as convincing as the Egyptian Lectures of Mr. Silk Buckingham” (12.5). In 1849, a July “Marginalia” item deprecates Buckingham's travels as demonstrating gullibility. He would not merely think that he had found a snake in a pyramid but even a “pyramid in a snake” (16.175). Also in 1849, in “Mellonta Tauta” Poe speaks of the covering of the balloon of 2428 as being called “silk-buckingham, on account of its superior durability” (6.199). This last, I believe, is a reference to Bucking ham's telling about his narrow escape from death by exposure when he was left in the desert by Bedouin marauders, while he was ascending the Nile to Nubia in 1813.(18) Buckingham could scarcely qualify as explorer, as Lucile King calls him in the only mention of his name that I have found in Poe commentary. He certainly was an indefatigable traveler, a journalist who founded many papers, including the Athenaeum of London, a sponsor of many types of social and political reform, a noteworthy lecturer, a tireless temperance worker, and a prolific writer of about twenty books and forty pamphlets.(19) Having exploited his early travels in Africa and Asia, as four large books of the 1820's indicate, he turned his attention to America both for lecturing and for descriptive writing, in 1837, producing a three-volume study of the Northern States in 1841, of the Eastern and Western States in 1842, and of Canada in 1843, The book which, I am convinced, Poe had noticed with hostility, was The Slave States of America, (1842). The two volumes developed fully his prefatory remark: “I expect my full share of censure ... for daring to speak, as truth [page 64:] compels me to do, of the wretched condition of the great body of the African race throughout the South, and of the reckless indifference to human life, and human obligations of every kind, which the very system of Slavery engenders in nearly all the white population who live beneath its influence.”(20) Poe would obviously know the ideas and work of a man eloquent against every kind of drink (his son publicly took the pledge) and against slavery; he might also have envied the spectacular success of his two courses of six appearances each, the first on Egypt and the second on Palestine. Indeed Poe's remark about the snake in the pyramid seems to be an allusion to the material in his lectures.(21) Buckingham reported that his Charleston lectures were attended by the “largest audiences ... ever known ... in that city,” and the account of his first trip through the country in 1837-1838 lists 3,504 lectures in 300 different places, in several of which Poe could have attended the talks and read the accounts.(22)

Americans, of course, did not wait for the lectures of travelers to indulge their curiosity about ancient Egypt. Local displays were set up, and we find mummy exhibitions and “unwrappings” listed in Odell's Annals of the New York Stage, which date from 1823.(23) Scudder's Museum of New York showed a mummy in its sarcophagus for a year, 1824-1825. Two mummies were being shown at Peale's Museum, with a partial unwrapping on March 3, 1826. A new mummy from Thebes, “the finest ever brought to this country! was advertised by Peale, February 24, 1832, while its rival, the American Museum, advertised the public dissection of a new mummy in March, 1832, with preference for seats going to “medical men,” as avid as Dr. Ponnonner, we assume. Odell pointedly suggests that Barnum was present at this exhibition (3.593). In 1835 Peale was advertising his mummy again. Gliddon's mummy, obviously, was joining a long procession. The contents of Peale's Museum fell into Barnum's hands through a rather shrewd piece of manipulation, after a competition in mesmerism between the museum lecture halls, won by Barnum “hands down.”(24) In 1842 Barnum began exhibiting the contents of Peale's Museum; in the printed catalogue I have found a description of this mummy “from Thebes,” like that of Poe, which is used for a paragraph of “sermonic harangue” to use a Poe phrase (2. 291). One biographer of Barnum is very positive in saying that in 1843 or 1844 “Edgar Allan Poe visited the museum, which was as fantastic as his weird tales.”(25) The proximity of Barnum's museum and Poe's places of work would almost guarantee that entrance, not to mention Poe's undoubted interest in another hoaker who could teach him a few tricks for another tale of “The Business Man.” I believe that Poe's inserted “letter from Ponnonner” about the “Directors of the City Museum” indirectly refers to Barnum's New York Museum; Poe's title had no reality in New York.

Against this background of mummy-interest, a play was bound to turn up, replete with sarcophagus and resuscitation. Surely enough, the English playwright (although born in America) named William Bayle Bernard, author of many light comedies and prominent in the theatre, produced in London, in 1833, The Mummy; or, The Liquor of Life! A Farce, in one act.” The subtitle is a pun on the elixir vitae, which enters into the plot. Almost at once the play became a standby, sure to attract audiences. Sometimes under the name of The Sarcophagus or, with some changes, The Virginia Mummy,(26) this play was perennially popular into the 1850's. Toby Tramp, the farcical hero, became one of the popular roles of T. D. Rice for over a decade and, for almost two decades, of William Evans Burton, Poe's employer and senior editor on the Gentleman's Magazine of Philadelphia in 1838-1839. So close was Burton's identification with the play that Arthur H. Wilson in his History of the Philadelphia Theatre makes Burton the author of a play which is listed for sixty-eight performances in that city, excluding nineteen more under an alternate title. By following the three forms of the title in Odell's Annals one can find many more performances given in New York, many of them while Poe was there. It may be assumed that Burton would have made Poe familiar with one of his favorite roles and, indeed, I have fairly conclusive proof — to be offered — that Poe did see at least one performance, perhaps on February 27, 1845, at the Olympic Theatre.(27)

A summary of the plot will show the relevance to Poe's tale. Toby Tramp, an impecunious actor in the provinces, meets his old London friend, Captain Canter. The latter, in pursuit of Fanny Mandragon, whose father conducts a private museum in the town, is in need of a mummy to occupy the empty sarcophagus in the display and wishes Toby to impersonate one so that he can ingratiate himself with the father and court the girl. For a sum Toby agrees. Mr. Mandragon also thinks that he has discovered the elixir vitae and plans to test it by restoring this apparently [page 65:] whole mummy to life, either by pouring it over him or by injecting it into the body. In pursuit of his rapscallion son, Mr. Tramp senior comes to town with a real mummy to sell to Mandragon. The byplay includes Toby's discussing with Susan the maid a verse melodrama of his own writing, entitled “The Demon Bug.” In the same scene he expresses his fear to Susan of a “showdown” between the two mummies and says: “The Dead 'un will beat me hollow.” Meanwhile a minor character, employed to paint advertising pictures of the curios, enters and declares: “Ah! could life reanimate these stiffened limbs. Great Pharaoh, could I but see that eyeball lighted — those muscles move!” (Poe's mummy first moves its eye and then the ‘abductor muscle,” [6.121-122].) The plot is soon resolved happily, after Toby deliberately lifts up his legs when “animated” for the deceived Mandragon. There is no need for me to underscore the similarities to Poe's tale of the three sarcophagi and the revived mummy.

As for the indication that Poe may have seen the play — I cite a letter to Frederick W. Thomas of May 4, 1845, alluding to a reprint of “The Raven” in the Broadway Journal of February 8, 1845, and to the publication of “The Gold Bug” In the Dollar Newspaper, June 21 and 28, 1843. The last paragraph of his letter says: I send you an early number of the ‘Broadway Journal” containing my ‘Raven.” It was copied by Briggs, my associate, before I joined the paper. “The Raven” has had a great ‘run,’ Thomas — but I wrote it for the express purpose of running — just as I did the ‘Gold-Bug,’ you know. The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow.”(28) Compare this with the play's sentence, right after the discussion of “The Demon Bug:” “The Dead 'un will beat me hollow,” and we feel that we can follow the turns and jumps of Poe's memory and wit, in applying one of Toby Tramp's effective lines in the farce to his own situation.

Finally, there are references and details in Poe's “Some Words with a Mummy” that require passing mention, seriatim, especially as instances of Poe's inventive ness and also of his carelessness or indifference to the reader's knowledge or attention. Gorging immoderately on Welsh rarebit (a wish fulfillment for Poe during those starveling days at Fordham!), Poe's narrator speaks of the bottles of Brown Stout appropriate to the food. Since this tale is definitely set in New York, this “superior kind of porter,” as the Oxford English Dictionary (which insists upon lower case letters for brown stout) belongs in England rather than in New York.(29) Dr. Ponnonner's name seems to originate in a patent medicine, called “Ponnonner's lozenges,” linked with “Brandreth's Pills.” Since the latter was a widely advertised nostrum in the 1840's, I feel certain that Ponnonner was at least suggested by a real name, as yet unfound; I can suggest, for the time being, only a pun on “upon my honor.” Similarly, his “cousin,” Captain Arthur Sabretash, who brought the mummy from Eleithias, sounds more like a Poe coinage than a real person. When Poe decided to specify the material of the first coffin by scientific name and picked up the notion of the sycamore from the Americana (9.90), he went astray, for he inserts in a parenthesis “platanus;” this refers to the American variety, whereas properly, in Egypt, it would refer to the fig mulberry or “ficus sycomorus,” often called the sycamore fig, as in Scripture.

His medical lore is rather more accurate, as when he speaks of the incision that they make for the “got at the root of the abductor muscle’ (6.122). Poe is correct about the use of “asphaltum” for embalming “some” mummies, but in borrowing from the Encyclopaedia Americana “corrosive sublimate” or “bichloride of mercury” as the count's medium, he went astray on two accounts: it was the least likely of fluids to leave the count fit for revival; moreover, the encyclopedia article on embalming fails to mention the date of its first use. Actually it was a discovery in the late eighteenth century of François Chaussier — a process, one may add, that turns the animal flesh rigid, hard, and grayish.(30) Poe was either unaware of this or too mindful of his article on “Street-Paving,” published also in April, in the Broadway Journal (I, 240) where corrosive sublimate is recommended for preserving wooden blocks in the Kyanizing process. One does not object, of course, to this license by Poe any more than to his probable invention of the “city of Aznac” of which Carnac (sic for Karnak) was a “kind of suburb” (6.134), or to his attributing “Artesian wells” to the ancient Egyptians, or to the assumption that the Old Kingdom count could have known of the steam generator in vented by Hero, who actually lived as recently as 150 B.C. (6.137). Poe displayed ingenuity in elaborating the mere fact of the mummification of sacred animals, including the beetle, into the noble family of the Scarabaeus. I cannot refrain from underscoring Poe's sensitive taste, verified through two sequential references to [page 66:] the ugliness of the “Bowling Green Fountain in New York,” ironically presented as an architectural gem, which the count tries to match with the splendors of Karnak. Poe had already spoken of this public atrocity in Doings in Gotham.(31) A few months later, Poe and Briggs featured an article in the Broadway Journal of June 7, 1845, which begins by deriding “the hideous and distasteful” fountain of Bowling Green and commenting that the artist who designed the rock work went “raving mad” after he had completed the drawings (1.353).

There is no question that these and many other elements constitute a pot-pourri of sources and of references that reads as a delightful satire. Poe mocks modern pretensions of dress and social advancement, of esthetic taste and of rationalism in medicine and in science. By the time that he takes his leave of the count, he decides: “I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. ... I shall ... get embalmed for a couple of years” (6.138) — a clever anticipation of cryogenics. We may even be ready to agree that “progress” may be “allamistakeo,” at least from the viewpoint of the sensitive, poverty- stricken artist, barely existing in the tasteless and crude New York of 1845.

Bronx Community College of
The City University of the City of New York

[page 66, continued:]

[[Notes]]

1 American Review, I, (April, 1845), 363-370 and Broadway Journal, II, (Nov. 1, 1845), 251-256, printed in the latter with minor changes. See James A. Harrison, Complete Works of ... Poe (N.Y., 1902), 6.116-138, to which edition for the text of this and other writings of Poe my paper will refer through parenthetical reference.

2 It is omitted, for example, from the selected works published by Margaret Alterton and Hardin Craig, Eric Carlson, Edward H. Davidson, and Thomas O. Mabbott.

3 For my Dictionary of Names and Titles in Poe's Collected Works, (N.Y., 1968). I must correct my error, p. 37, in listing Gliddon's name for 10.19 as George Robins instead of John Gliddon, q.v. below.

4 George E. Woodberry, The Life of ... Poe, (Boston, 1909), 2.161; see also Edward Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe,(N.Y., 1963), p. 84.

5 John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land, (N.Y., 1837), 1.15-16, 37, 45, 216, 219, 224, 300; 2.50.

6 For example, see the articles in Paris and Boston journals mentioned by the New York Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, IV, (April, 1920).

7. See also the early chapters of Thomas J. Pettigrew, A History of Egyptian Mummies (London, 1834); see also the reference in Politian, 7.63.

8 Campbell, “The Source of Poe's ‘Some Words with a Mummy,’ ” Nation, XC, (June 23, 1910), 625-262.

9 Robert Lee Rhea, “Some Observations on Poe's Origins,” Texas Studies in English, No. 10, (1930), 145-146.

10 Lucile King, ‘Notes on Poe's Sources,” Texas Studies in English, No. 10, (1930), 128-134, specifically, 130.

11 See Poe's tale, 6.117-120 and the Encyclopaedia Americana, (Philadelphia, 1831) 4.487 and 9.89-90.

12 See Gliddon's response to a journalistic attack on him, which was called “Appendix to The American in Egypt, (Philadelphia, 1842), pp. 24-26. For a list of laudatory references to Gliddon, see pp. 9-10.

13 See his tribute to Richard K. Haight of the New York Historical Society for his aid, expressed in Ancient Egypt, (N.Y., 1843), p. 31.

14 These are available through the Manuscript Room and were used as the basis for the best account of Gliddon's activities on behalf of mummy lore in the New York Historical Quarterly Bulletin article (n. 6 above).

15 See his vended lecture notes, New Series of Archeological Lectures on Ancient Egypt, illustrated by Copious and Splendid Pictorial Diagrams, and Genuine Antiquities, (Philadelphia, 1846), unpaged, and also his Hand-book to the Ancient Panorama of the Nile, (London, 1849), p. 25, both being in the New York Historical Society.

16 OED. Poe may have either been ignoring the idea of the presence of more than one speaker or considering the oral questioning as part of the total affair. To close my own record of Gliddon and the mummy, I must report that in 1850 Gliddon publicly translated a mummy case inscription and then opened one of his mummies, which turned out to be of the wrong sex. For a derisive poem see the Boston Olive Branch, XV, (June 29, 1850), 4, and for an exoneration in terms of its being a frequent embalmer's mixup see William C. Prime, Boat Life in Egypt, (N.Y., 1968), p. 365. [page 67:]

17 Warren R. Dawson, Who Was Who in Egyptology, (London, 1951), pp. 62-63.

18 Buckingham, Slanders of  “Punch,” (3rd ed., London, 1851), pp. 1-9.

19 See the list in The DNB article on Buckingham and also [James Hildreth], Outline Sketch of the Voyages, Travels, Writings, and Public Labours of James Silk Buckingham, (London, 18—), pp. 27-30.

20 Buckingham, The Slave States of America, (London, 1842), preface, unpaged; see also 1.134 for his statement that “all the negroes” that he saw were wretched and maltreated.

21 See Ralph E. Turner, J. S. Buckingham, (London, 1934), p. 354.

22 Outline Sketch, pp. 17 and 154.

23 See George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, (N.Y., 1930-1932), III, IV, and V; see the indices of these for subsequent details in my text.

24 Phineas Taylor Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, (N.Y., 1927), 1.194 and 234.

25 Helen Wells, Barnum: Showman of America, (N.Y., 1957), p. 68; she does not give her evidence.

26 I note the following editions of The Mummy with varied subtitles: Duncombe's Edition (used for the Readex reprint), London [1836]; Turner's Dramatic Library, Philadelphia, n.d.; Spencer's Boston Theatre, XI, no. 81, Boston, [1856?]; Lacy's Acting Edition, London, [1862]; and Samuel French's ed., no. 210, (N.Y., [1854]), this being the edition I chiefly used.

27 Odell, 5.212. See also Poe's use of “Ollapod,” the name of a favorite role identified with William E. Burton, discussed in my study of the matter in American Literature, May, 1970.

28 John Ward Ostrom, The Letters of ... Poe, (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 1.287.

29 See Alexis Lichine, Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits, (N.Y., 1957), 129-130 and 509, which speaks of the stout of Great Britain and Eire but not of the U.S.A.

30 See Chambers's Encyclopaedia, (Philadelphia, 1895), 4.313.

31 Cited by Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe, (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 133.