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TELLTALE HEART STILL BEATS Poe Museum among Richmond haunts of mystery writer, poet

January 17, 2009 12:36 am

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

RICHMOND

But she won't.

"He belongs to the world," says the executive director of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond. "His literature is read and loved by a variety of people everywhere."

Indeed, though he is best known as a master of the macabre, Poe also is credited with being America's first lyrical poet, the inventor of the modern detective story and a pioneer science-fiction writer. He was a reporter, a literary critic and an editor of two journals.

Last year, says Spears, some 60 percent of the Richmond museum's 15,000 visitors were literature lovers from out of state, including people from 30 different countries.

"A majority specifically came to the city just to see the museum," the executive director says. "And when many of his fans who are visiting Washington learn that there is a Poe museum in Richmond, they drive down to see it."

This year should be a smorgasbord for Poe aficionados. Monday, Jan. 19, marks the 200th anniversary of the writer's birth, and plans have been made to celebrate the bicentennial at venues all over the commonwealth.

Events include a birthday bash at the museum, music dedicated to Poe at The National in Richmond, a symposium and lectures at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, an exhibit called "Poe: Man, Myth or Monster" at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, and more.

Even the U.S. Postal Service has gotten in on the act. Yesterday the agency released a new Edgar Allan Poe commemorative stamp in Richmond. The event drew philatelists and Poe fans to the city to purchase a stamp on the first day of its issue.

No doubt other celebrations will take place at the Poe museums in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Each of those cities claims a piece of the great writer. Each boasts a house in which he lived, and each would like a share of credit for the poet's success.

THE POE MUSEUM

Richmond has no such house. The Richmond homes in which Poe lived are long gone. But his spirit is strong in the city.

That is because the author lived 13 of his 40 years in Richmond, in as many as nine different homes. While none of those buildings still stands, the Richmond museum is in a home that Poe visited.

And the museum houses the world's largest collection of Poe artifacts and memorabilia, much of it from places the writer worked or visited.

For example there is the bed on which he slept as a teenager, and the fireplace mantel that was in his bedroom. There is the piano of his sister Rosalie Mackenzie Poe, plus photos, tintypes, first-edition books, original manuscripts and letters written by and to the author. There is even a lock of Poe's hair, as well as the vest he wore in the final days of his life.

The museum houses a 16-foot topographical model of the city at the time the author lived in Richmond. Built in the 1920s, the model provides a glimpse into life during Poe's time. It also includes notations for structures that were significant to the author.

"A visitor here can walk to a dozen locations that were important to Poe," says Spears. "He grew up here, lived and went to school right in this area."

The so-called Old Stone House that houses part of the Poe museum was built about 1750. It was home to the Samuel Ege family, which purchased one of the original lots in Richmond, according to a museum flier written by its curator, Christopher Semtner.

The flier says Ege served as a commissary to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who helped George Washington defeat the British.

"Almost five decades after that war began," Semtner writes, "Lafayette returned to America and visited this house to thank the Ege family for their help. At 15, Edgar Allan Poe was on the junior color guard that escorted the general to this house, and Poe would have waited outside while Lafayette visited the Eges."

In the museum's atrium is an "enchanted garden" that is a re-creation of one described in Poe's poem "To One in Paradise." Bricks and granite in the garden and in the Poe Shrine at its apex were salvaged from the offices of the Southern Literary Messenger, the Richmond magazine at which Poe began his journalistic career.

THE ALLAN CONNECTION

The son of an actor, Poe was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809. His father deserted the family and apparently died shortly after Edgar was born, and by the time the boy was 3, his mother was dead of tuberculosis.

So Poe was taken in by foster parents, John and Frances Valentine Allan. It is from the Allans that the writer got his middle name. Poe's siblings, William and Rosalie, were reared by other families.

Allan was a successful export merchant who became one of Virginia's wealthiest men when he inherited a fortune in 1825.

Thus he was able to send Poe to good schools in Virginia and in England.

By the time the boy had reached his rebellious teen-age years, Spears says, Poe had received a fine classical education--one that would serve him well as a writer--but had become something of a spoiled child of privilege.

"He and his foster father never really got along," she says. "And Allan never officially adopted the boy. And because he was not really a part of the Allan family, he was never a legal heir and not entirely accepted as part of Richmond society."

That fact would haunt Poe when in 1826 he became engaged to a Richmond debutante, Elmira Royster. Unfortunately, Royster's father "vehemently opposed the match," Semtner writes in his flier.

"After a secret engagement, Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia," he says. "But while Poe was gone, Elmira's father intercepted all of Poe's letters to Elmira in order to convince her that Poe had forgotten her.

"Returning home after his first term, Poe discovered that Elmira was engaged to another man, and he soon stormed out of the Allan home."

The following years would find Poe in various states of poverty and at various jobs. At the age of 18, in Boston, he published his first book of poetry, "Tamerlane." He then enlisted in the U.S. Army.

Two years later he learned that his foster mother, Frances Allan, was dying of tuberculosis. He returned to Richmond the day after she died and was, for a while, reconciled with John Allan.

But the reconciliation was short-lived. The men again had a falling-out, and Poe again left Richmond. This time he moved to Baltimore, where he was taken in by his mother's sister, Maria Clemm.

In time, Poe would fall in love with and marry Clemm's daughter--his first cousin--Virginia Clemm, who was 13 years old. Poe was 27.

In 1835, with his bride and mother-in-law in tow, Poe returned to Richmond to become editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.

"Within months, the publication was attracting national attention, and the circulation increased by seven times. Now Poe would turn from poetry to journalism. While he continued to spark controversy with his gruesome tales, it was his scathing literary reviews and inventive magazine articles that first brought him fame," Semtner writes.

They also made him some enemies, because, Semtner says, "He began to challenge the northern cities' dominance of American literature and became a champion of Southern letters."

One enemy was the anthologist Rufus Griswold, whose selection of writers for one of his anthologies was mocked by Poe in print and in letters. Griswold would have his revenge after Poe died.

POE'S LAST YEARS

Poe never made a lot of money from his writing. He earned $15 a month at the Messenger and never got a raise. Frustrated, he and his bride moved to New York.

Tragedy struck again. In 1842, Virginia Clemm Poe contracted tuberculosis, the same illness that had claimed his mother, sister and foster mother. She died that year.

It was 1849 before Poe returned to Richmond. By that time, he had published the wildly popular poem "The Raven," and was much sought after on the lecture circuit.

In Richmond he found that his first fiancee, Elmira Royster, had been widowed, so he began to court her again. He proposed. She accepted. Then he left to go to Philadelphia to edit a volume of poetry. Afterward he was to continue to New York City to bring his mother-in-law to Richmond.

He never made it. Five days later, the poet was found semiconscious in a Baltimore public house. He died at Washington College Hospital on Oct. 7, 1849, of unknown causes. He was 40 years old.

There has been much speculation about his death. Some say he drank himself to death, but there is little evidence to prove this. The speculation was fueled by a vindictive obituary written by Griswold, who said Poe "walked the streets, in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses." He also described Poe as a "depraved, drunk and drug-addled madman."

The truth of Poe's death may never be known. But his impact on American letters is indisputable, as is his imprint on Richmond, the city of his youth.

Tom Kazas of Richmond is a freelance writer. E-mail him in care of gwoolf@freelancestar .com.