Manor House School, Stoke Newington

The ability had often stood him in good stead during that very time of darkness and misery at prep school, exhibiting, in those early Stoke-Newington days, and long before he found he had a truly encyclopedic memory October Ferry to Gabriola

In October Ferry to Gabriola, the main character Ethan identifies himself with Edgar Poe because both attended Manor House school in Stoke Newington. Poe lurks in the background of October Ferry - you can read more on Poe's presence in Anthony Kilgallin's "The Long Voyage Home" in George Woodcock's Malcolm Lowry The Man And His Work. One possible source for the reference to the school was Lowry's visit to the Valentine Museum in Richmond which features in his short story 'Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession'.

You can read the details of Poe's time at the school in the excellent Poe Log:

On or about 11 December 1811 Poe’s father may have died. On the death of his mother, 8 December 1811, in Richmond, Virginia, Poe is taken into the home of John Allan, of the merchant firm of Ellis & Allan, and Allan is added to his name. Accompanying John Allan to Scotland, where are visited his family and friends, and to London, England, where in 1815 a branch of the Richmond firm is established, are his wife Frances Keeling Valentine Allan, his wife’s sister Ann Moore Valentine, and Poe. Poe is first tutored by the Misses Dubourg in London; later he attends the Manor House School of the Reverend John Bransby at Stoke Newington. Read more on Poe Log.

The above photograph is from Arthur Hobson Quinn's Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography 1941 in which he says of the school:

The Manor House School is of singular interest. In his story of “William Wilson” Poe described in terms of fiction not only the place, but also its master, to whom he gave his right name of Bransby, with the addition of a “Doctor” to which the reverend gentleman seems not to be entitled. Since our interest in the school lies entirely in Poe’s connection with it, William Wilson’s own words are better than any paraphrase:

My earliest recollections of a school-life are connected with a large, rambling, cottage-built, and somewhat decayed building in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient and inordinately tall. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep, hollow note of the church-bell, breaking each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the old, fretted, Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep. Read more

'Swinging the Maelstrom'

'Swinging the Maelstrom' was one of the titles of a novella written by Lowry which was eventually published as Lunar Caustic in 1961.

Where does the name "maelstrom" originate and where exactly is the whirlpool?



For many centuries, the Norwegian Sea was regarded as the edge of the known world. The disappearance of ships there, due to the natural disasters, induced legends of the monsters (kraken) which halt and sink ships. As late as in 1845, the Encyclopædia metropolitana contained a multi-page review by Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764) on ship-sinking sea monsters of half a mile in size.



Many legends might be based on the work Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus of 1539 by Olaus Magnus where he described the kraken and maelstroms of the Norwegian Sea. The kraken also appeared in Alfred Tennyson's poem of the same, in Herman Melville's Moby Dick and in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

Between the Lofoten islands of Moskenesøya and Værøy, at the tiny Mosken island, lies the Moskenstraumen – a system of tidal eddies and a whirlpool called a maelstrom. With the speed of the order of 15 km/h (the value strongly varies between the sources), it is one of the strongest maelstroms in the world.



It was described in the 13th century in the Old Norse poems Edda and remained an attractive subject for painters and writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Moers and Jules Verne. The term maelstrom originates from the combination of Dutch words malen (to grind) and strom (stream); it was introduced into English language by Poe in his story "A Descent into the Maelström" (1841) describing the Moskenstraumen.

The Moskenstraumen is created as a result of a combination of several factors, including the tides, position of the Lofoten and the underwater topography; unlike most others whirls, it is located in the open sea rather than in a channel or bay. With the diameter of 40–50 meters, it can endanger small fishing vessels even in modern time, which might be attracted by the abundant cod feeding on the microorganisms sucked by the whirl. Read more on Wikipedia

We can now see what the name of "maelstrom" could conjure up for Lowry - Norwegian connections in place and mythology, links to his favourite writers such as Poe and Melville and childhood links to reading Jules Verne. Malc may also have known about the Norse myth from his mentor E.E. Kellett who wrote The Northern Saga (1929) which refers to Edda. These links combined with the word's association with "violent or turbulent situation" become a perfect metaphor for Lowry's state of mind when he entered Bellvue Hospital in 1936 - the source for the novella.