EDGAR ALLAN POE THE

UNBELIEVABLE TRUE
STORY

Copyright © 2023
 INTRODUCTION

T he spirits of the dead, who stood in life before thee, are again in
death around thee,
and their will shall overshadow thee.
Edgar Allan Poe, the name alone conjures up images of ravens, beating
hearts,
disturbed graves, undead women, and bereaved lovers.
A key figure of dark Romanticism, Poe was a master of Gothic horror,
mystery and the
macabre, remembered for poems like “The Raven,” “The Bells,” and
“Annabel
Lee,” and short stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Pit and the
Pendulum.”
5But Poe is also considered the father of the modern detective story, his
fictional inspector C. August Dupin a predecessor of the likes of Sherlock
Holmes and Hercules Poirot. Tales like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
thrilled Victorian audiences through Poe’s
genius use of ratiocination. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock
Holmes, said, “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath
of life into it?”
 CHAPTER 1

B ut perhaps the greatest mystery America’s first mystery writer left

us, was the mystery surrounding his own death. On October 3,
1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore
outside a tavern, delirious and in great distress.
His trunk was missing, and he was apparently wearing someone else’s
clothes. He had left Richmond a week earlier for New York, but somehow
ended up on the streets of Baltimore, half frozen and out of his mind. There
are no surviving accounts of what happened during that ensuing week, and
Poe never regained
enough lucidity to explain his condition. He was taken to the hospital in a
stupor, becoming one day violently delirious, addressing spectral and
imaginary objects in the room, to gravely sedated the next.
He suffered four agonizing days until, according to his doctor, quietly
moving his head he said “Lord help my poor soul,” and expired. It was
October 7, 1849. Edgar Allan Poe was 40.
His death certificate has been lost, and no cause of death has ever been
determined, leading to wide speculation ranging from brain disease, to
alcoholism, even murder.
But contemporary poet, Charles Baudelaire remarked, “This death was
almost a suicide, a suicide prepared for a long time.” Despite being one of
the most well-known writers of his day, Poe died in poverty. There was
little ceremony at his funeral, attended by only about 8 people, and lasting
just a few minutes.
He was buried in a simple mahogany coffin near this spot in the
Westminster Burial Grounds here in Baltimore, close to his grandfather
David Poe, and brother Henry.
Eleven years after burial, a cousin paid for a monument, but in a freak
accident that could have sprung from one of Poe’s bizarre tales, a train
derailed and crashed into the stone yard where the stone was made,
destroying it before it could even be placed.
And so, Poe’s quiet grave remained unmarked.
But this was not the end of Edgar Allan Poe’s journey.
Decades later, in the 1870s, a local school teacher and students raised funds
to have a permanent monument to Poe created. In the fall of 1875, Edgar
Allan Poe was exhumed, risen from the grave like so many of his
characters.
To properly identify him, the coffin was opened, one witness noting, “The
skull was in excellent condition—the shape of the forehead, one of Poe's
striking features, was easily discerned.” Poe was removed from his original
burial place behind Westminster Hall to be relocated to
a place of prominence and honor in the graveyard, close to the front gate.
As the coffin was being moved, pieces of it broke off, and were quickly
snatched up by admirers who were present for the event.
Edgar Allan Poe’s journey ended here.
And this new tomb, Poe’s final resting place, was dedicated on November
17, 1875. Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy of dark tales featuring love and loss was
hard-earned. In this early Victorian era, there was a preoccupation with
death; mourning had become fashionable.
But for Poe it was not a fashion he simply wore - it was his reality. Perhaps
his best-known work is “The Raven,” the poem that would earn him both
critical
and popular acclaim worldwide, though very little money--just $9. Like a
rock star of today, when Poe would walk down the street, dressed all in
black, people would call him The Raven, shouting out the poem’s famous
refrain, “Nevermore!”
To hear Poe recite “The Raven” was said to be the experience of one’s life.
The audience seemed almost to hear the evil bird ominously croaking his
“Nevermore,” afraid to draw the next breath lest the enchanted spell be
broken.
But there was deep personal meaning behind the narrator’s lament for the
“lost Lenore.” A common thread throughout the writings of Poe is the death
of a beautiful woman, whose presence somehow remains.
In analyzing his own composition process for “The Raven,” he explains that
“the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic
in the world — and equally
is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a
bereaved lover.” Poe was, himself, all too often, that bereaved lover. He was
a man who loved too deeply for the tragedies that continually befell him.
Women were to him the greatest sources of beauty, of succor, of love, of
caring and tenderness, of goodness, and inspiration. They were pure
poetry… but they were fragile beings, too fragile.
And every new love for Poe brought with it the terrifying possibility of
another loss, of renewed heartbreak. And so we have poems and stories,
like “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
“Morella,” “Berenice,” “Lenore,” “Ligeia,” “The Oblong
Box,” and “Ulalume,” where a beautiful young woman dies, but whose
presence remains, haunting the bereaved with a need to remember, but a
wish to forget.
Literary scholars, and even Poe himself, attribute the inspiration of these
dead-alive women to multiple women in Poe’s own life, but it’s unclear
exactly who was the inspiration for which...
Who are you?
Eddy, my boy.
Eddy.
Mama.
Eddy.
MAMA!!
“To the humane heart, on this night, Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of
disease and surrounded
by her children, asks your assistance, and asks it perhaps for the last time.”
So read the plea for help that went out to theatergoers in November, 1811,
on behalf of Eliza Poe. Her husband had abandoned her and their three
children, and she lay on her deathbed.
The Mrs. Poe here was Edgar’s mother, known and beloved not only to
theatergoers in Richmond, but throughout the country. She was one of the
nation’s most popular actresses, admired for not just her acting,
but the sweetness of her singing voice, and grace of her dancing. “Mrs. Poe
is a brilliant gem in the theatric crown,” said one reviewer. She toured city
to city playing hundreds of roles, from comedic ingénues, to Shakespearean
roles.
But this was an age when acting was seen as just one step above
prostitution. Still, she was so beloved by the society ladies of Richmond,
that the call to the humane heart
was answered, and she and her children were looked after until her death
from tuberculosis at the age of 24. “By the death of this lady,” news articles
read, “the stage has been deprived of one of its chief ornaments.”
As a child, Poe saw his mother die on stage night after night, as Ophelia or
Juliet, but she always came back to life. Until that bleak December, when
little Eddie was not yet 3 years old, and she didn’t come back.
For a child that age, this would have been difficult to comprehend, to
reconcile, and for the rest of his life, his writings would reflect this inner
turmoil as to whether or not death was real, or permanent.
The young women who die in his stories, in one form or another, often
come back to life… “These are the full and the black and the wild eyes of
my lost love, of the Lady Ligeia”
Rising from the dead, just as Eliza had done so often on stage. Edgar was
proud to be Eliza’s son. He was proud of her work as an actress, and
attributed his creative gifts to her. And however dim his recollections may
have been of her, Eliza was an ever-present force
in his life and work. Edgar described her to be “as pure, as angelic and
altogether lovely, as any woman could be on earth.” And in a way she was
by his side for the rest of his life, in the form of a small oval portrait she left
him.
 CHAPTER 2

E liza’s grave here at St John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond,

Virginia remained unmarked until 1927, when this marker was
placed by various Edgar Allan Poe foundations -- a monument
to Eliza Poe, the mother of The Raven. Eliza?
Is that who you are?
Helen, thy beauty is to me, like those Nicean barks of yore…
This must be Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond.
One of Poe’s favorite haunting grounds, he was known to take frequent
Sunday evening
strolls here with his wife, Virginia.
But as a teenage boy, it was another love that drew him here.
And this is her grave.
Jane Stanard, whom he called Helen, after Helen of Troy, considered in
Greek mythology
as the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
Poe began writing as a teenager, the beginning of a career that biographer
Kenneth Silverman would describe as sort of prolonged mourning.
That mourning began as a child with his mother, but continued when a
teenager of about 14. Jane Stanard was the mother of one of his
schoolmates, a woman he knew for about a year, but grew to love deeply,
with all the affections of a devoted son.
One of his early poems titled, “To Helen,” was written for Jane Stanard. Poe
said that he wrote this poem in his passionate boyhood, to the first, purely
ideal love of my soul.” She was an angel to Poe’s forlorn and darkened
nature.
It was not a romantic love young Eddy had for Jane, but an ideal, the love
of a woman as a giver of care and affection. In 1824 Jane began suffering
from a death-like illness, and died insane at the age of 31.
Poe mourned her like she was his own mother, nightly visiting her grave
here at Shockoe Hill Cemetery, unable to “endure to think of her lying there
forsaken and forgotten.”
Edgar?
Wait!
Are you Jane Stanard?
Perhaps… but there was a real mother figure in young Edgar Poe’s life.
And here she is, so close to Jane – Frances Allan, known as Fanny. One of
the society ladies who had come to the aid of Eliza Poe after she was struck
ill was Frances Allan, wife of wealthy merchant, John Allan.
After Eliza’s death, her children each went to different foster homes. Little
Edgar Poe was taken in and fostered by the Allan family, and though never
formally adopted, was baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. In this comfortable
upbringing, Edgar was afforded the liberal education that would
prime his love of literature and reciting poetry. Fanny loved Edgar like her
own son, and is said to have resembled Eliza in many ways. Poe’s
affections were reciprocated, calling her Ma. But Fanny was often sick.
When Poe went off to the Army, letters home to John Allan always asked
after the health of Fanny, asking to send “my dearest love to Ma.” In 1829,
when Edgar was around 20, Fanny’s illness took a serious turn.
In her final hours she greatly desired to see Edgar. Frances Allan died on
February 28th at the age of 45. Edgar managed a military leave, but was
unable to arrive until the day after her burial here
at Shockoe Hill Cemetery. The grief of losing his foster mother was
magnified by the guilt of having left her in that condition, and not being
able to make it back to see her before her death and burial.
Grief, it seems, would be Edgar’s stock and store for the rest of his life.
With the death of his foster mother, and having never been formally
adopted, Edgar once again felt like a man without a familial foundation.
John Allan was usually kind to Edgar in his upbringing, but he never really
saw him as
a son, and their relationship, ever tumultuous in later years, would
eventually dissolve entirely without the unifying force of Fanny Allan. John
assisted adult Edgar on occasion, but Edgar would receive no inheritance,
leaving
the struggling author and poet to live out his life in a poverty much
contrasted against the comfort of his upbringing. By his 20s the house of
Allan had crumbled, just like the House of Usher in one of his
most famous Gothic tales. Eliza Poe was dead. Jane Stanard was dead.
And Fanny Allan was dead -- the death of each reopening and amplifying
the wounds of the previous.
[a knock at the door]
Lenore?
Lenore…
[a woman weeps and coughs]
Where are you?
Tell me... what is your name?
Nevermore.
I’ve been brought back to the Westminster burial ground... and for good
reason.
Two of the women most dear to Poe in his life are buried here on either side
of him.
Edgar Poe was a young man now, and his lifelong need for a stable family
seemed ever to elude
him.
“I have many occasional dealings with adversity,” he once said, “but the
want of parental
ffection has been the heaviest of my trials.” Around 1833 he moved in with
his aunt, Maria Clemm, and cousins, who would then on be a source of
familial affection for Edgar. Maria was the sister of Edgar’s father, David
Poe, who Edgar had hardly known as a
baby. The widowed Maria and her children were of his own blood, and for
the first time Edgar felt he was part of a real family unit. He would call her
Muddy, and soon she was not his aunt, she was for him, in every sense, his
mother.
She cared for and looked after Edgar like her own son throughout the rest of
his life. Not long before Poe died, he wrote a poem titled, “To My Mother,”
written for Muddy, which reads in part: Because I feel that, in the Heavens
above,
The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms
of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” After Edgar died suddenly
in Baltimore, Maria,
who was alone back at the Fordham cottage in New York, didn’t receive the
news until after his burial, depriving her the opportunity to say goodbye and
attend his funeral.
God have mercy on me, for he was the last I had to cling to and love. Maria
Clemm would outlive not only Edgar, but all of her children, and was laid
to rest here to the right of Poe, along with one of her daughters – a young
woman who would
become a key figure in the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Young,
with large violet eyes, raven hair, and a pearly white complexion that gave
her an unearthly look, almost like that of a disrobed spirit, possessing a
disposition of surpassing sweetness.
This description paints for us a picture of Virginia Clemm, Poe’s darling
little cousin. He grew very fond of Virginia in the years they lived together,
and soon, came to love her dearly.
And in 1836, with Maria’s blessing, they would marry. He 27, she just 13.
Their relationship in those early years was seen more as a brother and sister
relationship. Poe would affectionately refer to her as Sissy, saw to her
education, and for the first few
years of marriage they didn’t even share a room. Whatever the nature of
their relationship, they grew to be a happy and devoted couple. “His love
for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty.”
And Virginia idolized Edgar, sitting close to him while he wrote. She would
even channel what she learned from Edgar, writing an acrostic Valentine’s
Day poem to him in 1846. In an acrostic poem, the first letter of each line
spells out a word or phrase.
In the case of Virginia’s Valentine, it spelled out Edgar Allan Poe: Ever with
thee I wish to roam – Dearest my life is thine. Give me a cottage for my
home…
Love alone shall guide us when we are there, Love shall heal my weakened
lungs, And oh the tranquil hours… …to lend ourselves to the world and its
glee, Ever peaceful and blissful we’ll be.
 CHAPTER 3

V irginia was Poe’s greatest muse of this his most productive era,
for better or worse. Eddy and Sissy loved to play music and sing
together at the piano… but one episode at the piano in 1842
would haunt Poe for the rest of his life:
“Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured
a blood-vessel in singing.”
“The rose tint upon her cheek was too bright, too pure to be of the earth.
It was consumption’s color—that sadly beautiful light which beckons to an
early tomb.”
It was the deceptively beautiful rosy specter of the Romantic Disease,
tuberculosis, known then as consumption. Being young and otherwise
healthy, the disease did not quickly claim Virginia; she battled it for 5 long
years.
this period, she became mostly bed-ridden, oscillating between the brink of
death and recovery. Writing in the next room over, Virginia’s coughs were a
constant reminder in Poe’s ears that the grave beckoned his beloved.
Poe experienced the torment of Virginia’s death not once but countless
times. She would seemingly die, and be re-animated, only to die again, just
like the dead-alive
women in his stories... and just as his mother had done on stage. Poe’s own
words best describe this horrible oscillation between hope and despair:
“Each time I felt all the agonies of her death — and at each accession of the
disorder
I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate
pertinacity... [coughs]
I became insane,
with long intervals of horrible sanity. During the agony of Virginia’s
prolonged illness, much of Poe’s writings reflected
the specter of her impending death, like “Lenore,” “The Oblong Box,” “The
Mask of the Red Death,” “Eleanora,” and of course, “The Raven,” the
ghastly grim and ancient raven
emblematic of the mournful and never-ending remembrance of a lost love.
It was loss Poe had experienced many times in his life, and within a few
years, would experience again with his beloved wife.
Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, who not only physically resembled Eliza Poe,
but shared her name, died from tuberculosis in 1847 at the age of 24… the
same age, and from the same illness as Poe’s mother. He was reliving his
earliest trauma.
At Virginia’s funeral, Poe refused to look at her face, preferring to
remember her how she was. After the funeral, Poe took out a copy of his
1845 poem, Eulalie, which reads in part:
I dwelt alone, In a world of moan, And my soul was a stagnant tide, Till the
fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride — His blushing bride
now buried, he returned to that world of moan from which Virginia
had rescued him, scribbling into the margins of this manuscript: Deep in
earth my love is lying, And I must weep alone. After Virginia’s death came
works like “Ulalume,” in which a bereaved lover unknowingly wanders
to the door of his deceased love’s tomb, and “Annabel Lee,” which also
tells of a bereaved lover, who lies down by the side of his young bride in
her tomb by the sea. “Annabel Lee” was Poe’s very last poem, and Virginia
is believed to have been the
inspiration. The best-known image of Virginia Poe was this deathbed
portrait, painted hours after she died. “The life still there, upon her hair –
the death upon her eyes.”
Virginia was laid to rest in a cemetery near their Fordham cottage in New
York. Poe sunk into a deep depression, medicating his grief with alcohol,
not caring if he lived another minute.
The illness and death of his wife were to him “the greatest evil that could
befall a man.” It would be just over two years until Edgar would join her in
the grave. But he was laid to rest in Baltimore, 200 miles from his beloved.
Decades later, the cemetery where Virginia lay in New York had been all
but forgotten and destroyed. An early Poe biographer reportedly visited the
cemetery in 1883 at the exact moment the sexton was about to discard
Virginia’s bones as unclaimed.
He claimed them, and kept her bones in a box under his bed for two years
until they were finally able to be re-buried here alongside Edgar in 1885.
After the deaths of Edgar and Virginia, friend and poet Frances Osgood said
of Virginia,
“She was the only woman he ever truly loved.” Surely, this revenant who
haunts me is Poe’s beloved Virginia.
Are you Virginia?
Are you? Tell me who you are.
Tell me who you are!
TELL ME!
Where have you brought me now, Psyche?
Frances Sargent Osgood...
I’ll be damned.
She’s brought me to Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston. Fanny Osgood
very much resembled both Eliza and Virginia, her pallid complexion
showing early signs of the same disease Virginia was dying from when she
and Poe met.
And she shared the same name as Poe’s foster mother. Perhaps it was fated
that Edgar should find her. With the success of The Raven, Poe’s new found
rock-star status made him popular amongst
the Literary Ladies of the time… a regular figure at the literary salons.
Among those who frequented these soirees was one of the era’s most
renowned female poets, Frances Sargent Osgood. She was enthralled by
Poe’s readings of “The Raven.”
Poe too was most impressed by the talents of Frances Osgood, which he
described as “of no common order.” As editor of the Broadway Journal, Poe
would see to the publication of many of Osgood’s poems. After meeting in
1845, the two began a public poetic flirtation through the back-and-forth,
side-by-side publication of verse: I know a noble heart that beats For one it
loves how “wildly well!”
I only know for whom it beats; But I must never tell! Never tell! Beloved!
Amid the earnest woes That crowd around my earthly path— (Drear path,
alas! Where grows Not even one lonely rose)—
My soul at least a solace hath In dreams of thee, and therein knows An
Eden of bland repose. And ever the fan of puzzles and cryptography, Poe
published “A Valentine” in 1846, in
which each subsequent letter of each subsequent line reveals the name of
the poem’s subject: Frances Sargent Osgood. The love between Edgar and
Fanny was principally platonic, as dear friends and creative equals. He saw
her as the intellectual feminine ideal.
Even Virginia approved of the relationship, becoming herself friends with
Fanny. The grief over Virginia’s illness had driven Poe to drink and self-
destructive behavior, and Virginia believed that his friendship with Fanny
had a sobering effect on him.
But their relationship wouldn’t last. Poe didn’t lose Fanny to the grave, but
to the tattling of tongues. The gossip and scandal that erupted from their
public flirtations demanded, for both their sakes, that they stop seeing one
another.
Fanny Osgood died at the age of 38 from tuberculosis just months after Poe
died – her grief upon hearing of Poe’s death said to have hastened her own.
Her grave, like Poe’s, features a lyre, which was a symbol in that era of the
creative
wisdom and skills of a poet. The placement of the lyre here was inspired by
her final poem, “The Hand that Swept the Sounding Lyre,” which was
written as a Requiem to Edgar Allan Poe:
The hand that swept the sounding lyre With more than mortal skill, The
lightning eye, the heart of fire, The fervent lip are still!
No more, in rapture or in wo, With melody to thrill, Ah! nevermore! The
lyre here was designed with 5 strings, one for each member of the Osgood
Family.
Four strings were cut to symbolize the deaths of Fanny and her three
daughters. One daughter, Fanny Fay Osgood, was conceived during a
period in which Frances was estranged from her husband Samuel, and she
was involved with Poe. This has led some to speculate that little Fanny Fay
may have been the daughter of Poe,
and that her death in the lonesome October of 1847 at the age of 1, may
have been the real inspiration for Ulalume, published shortly thereafter.
The fifth string of the lyre was cut when Frances’s husband Samuel died.
Samuel Osgood was a painter, who painted a portrait not only of Frances,
but also the only known portrait of Poe painted from life.
Frances?
Is that you?
Virginia was dead, Frances Osgood was no longer in his life, and the ever-
gloomy Poe felt
he had very little to live for.
For the final two years of his life, he pursued several women, often
simultaneously, in an
attempt to fill the void that Virginia’s death had left. He felt a great desire to
re-marry, but also a hesitance.
 CHAPTER 4

W ould doing so betray the dead – the dead who, as they do in his
stories, may return in wrath?
Resting here in the North Burial Ground in Providence Rhode
Island is Sarah Helen Whitman, a sophisticated, albeit eccentric woman,
who was another of the great writers and essayists of the era.
She well knew of Poe’s work, once recounting, “I can never forget the
impressions I felt in reading a story of his for the first time... I experienced
a sensation of such intense horror that I dared neither look at anything he
had written nor even utter his name.
By degrees this terror took the character of fascination — I devoured with a
half-reluctant and fearful avidity every line that fell from his pen.”
In 1848 Helen was commissioned to write some poems for a Valentine’s
Day soiree. Believing Poe would be in attendance, she included one “To
Edgar A. Poe”: Oh, thou grim and ancient Raven.
From the Night’s Plutonian shore, Oft, in dreams, thy ghastly pinons Wave
and flutter ‘round my door— Oft thy shadow dims the moonlight
Sleeping on my chamber floor! Poe had not been in attendance, but later
learned of the poem. He responded immediately, sending her a copy of his
poem, “To Helen,” the one inspired by Jane Stanard, who you’ll recall
young Edgar called Helen.
Like Jane Stanard, Helen was an older woman who would soon command
Edgar’s deepest affections. In some ways she was, for Poe, the ghost of the
“Helen” of his youth returned from the dead “amid the entombing trees.”
The dead do not stay dead for Edgar Allan Poe. In May of that year, he
composed a new poem, also titled “To Helen,” this one written specifically
for Sarah Helen Whitman, leaving no doubt about the intensity of his
feelings,
and how his first sight of her had left him haunted. Clad all in white, upon a
violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell upon the upturn’d faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn’d—
alas, in sorrow! He found in Sarah Helen Whitman his mystical twin, a
kindred spirit. Around Providence where she lived, Helen was known not
just for her writing, but for her
pagan dress and interest in spiritualism and the occult. Poe and Helen found
harmony in topics such as death, sorrow, and the afterlife. She would keep
various memento mori, including a coffin pendant she wore around her
neck,
and flowers from the graves of Keats and Shelley, pressed in her scrapbook.
In the fall of 1848, the two began a romantic courtship, he wooing her with
readings of “Ulalume” at the Atheneum Library.
They would also stroll amongst the tombstones at Swan Point Cemetery in
Rhode Island. Cemeteries were popular destinations for romantic outings in
that era, so in true Poe form, it was there that he would propose marriage to
Helen.
In Poe Helen found an exciting younger man, but she dared not respond.
She was hesitant for a number of reasons. Her mother strongly disapproved
of the relationship, as did many of her New England acquaintances, who
looked down on Poe.
Furthermore, Helen had a heart condition, one she feared would
prematurely end her life. She believed that the very act of making love
would kill her. Were I to allow myself to love you, I could only enjoy a
bright, brief hour of rapture
and die. This once again presented Edgar with the real possibility of facing
another loss, of renewed mourning. Yet he pursued her all the same, almost
inviting the heartbreak, just as the bereaved narrator
did in his inquiries to the Raven, knowing the answer inevitably to be,
“Nevermore.” Poe repeatedly invoked that species of despair which delights
in self-torture. Their courtship would continue to undergo a series of
oscillations before Helen eventually
agreed to a conditional engagement – the conditions being that he
completely stop drinking, and that her mother approve. Neither condition
was met. The tumultuous engagement came to an end two days before
Christmas, their chosen wedding
date. The opposition of Helen’s mother, Poe’s broken promises of sobriety,
and the many admonitions of her friends against marrying Poe, finally wore
her down.
Poe pleaded with her, but feeling trapped, perhaps seeking a way out, Helen
drenched her handkerchief in ether, inhaled the vapors, and swooned on the
sofa. As the ether took effect, Poe begged her for but one word. I love you.
These were the last words she ever spoke to him. She did not die, but she
lay there before him, alive but lifeless, another specter of the lost women
who haunted Poe.
Helen left Poe in intense sorrow, and never stopped loving him. After his
death she would continue writing to keep Poe’s legacy alive. And with a
deep interest in spiritualism and the occult, Helen would also hold seances,
attempting to communicate with the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe.
Helen?
This is nothing but dreaming.
A dream within a dream...
or a nightmare.
WHO ARE YOU!? [eerie music accompanied by a heartbeat]
What is written on the door of this tomb?
Annie.
Poe’s mental and physical health deteriorated gravely in the years that
followed Virginia’s illness and death – “brain fever,” it was said.
He believed, as did those around him, that he was not long for this world…
believed, and perhaps wished, to be cured of the fever called “living.” He
needed, as very much a matter of life and death, that sustaining “love that
was more
than love” that he had had with Sissy. This he found in a young woman
named Nancy Richmond, whom he called Annie. At the same time that he
was courting Helen, Poe had developed a close relationship with
Annie, who lived in Lowell, Massachusetts and was married. Their
relationship threatened neither adultery nor divorce; it was childlike, as two
siblings. Annie was the ghost of his sweet Sissy, a caretaking angel.
Even if he married someone else, he had expressed a desire to live in
Lowell, to be close to Annie. And after the breakup with Helen, it was to
Annie that Poe returned. Distraught over losing Helen and his myriad career
woes, Poe attempted suicide by ingesting laudanum.
He had written a letter to Annie asking that in this event she should come to
his deathbed. Poe survived, and would later chronicle this event in his 1849
poem titled “For Annie,” which treats death as a return to infantile bliss.
But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it
sparkles with Annie— It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie--
With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.
His passion for Annie grew, telling Muddy, “I worship her beyond all
human love… Do not tell me anything about Annie, unless you can tell me
that Mr. Richmond is dead.” But the truth was, he could not have her – any
thoughts of marriage to Annie would be forever
out of reach, as both she and her husband outlived Poe. After the death of
her husband, Nancy Richmond officially changed her name to Annie, the
name Poe had given her.
Are you Annie?... No, I don’t believe you are.
There was another, wasn’t there?... A last, and a first love.
To understand Poe’s last love, we must go back to his first, because they are
one and
the same.
We’re back at Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond, where rest Jane
Stanard and the Allans.
Here too lies the woman known as the first and last romantic love of Edgar
Allan Poe.
Sarah Elmira Royster was 15 and Edgar Poe was 16 when their relationship
began. It was that, idyllic, fanciful kind of love only to be found in youth.
Before Edgar left for university the two secretly became engaged. They
wrote to each other while he was away, yet neither heard from the other,
and their engagement ended.
The tragedy of their love story is that each believed the other had
abandoned them. But what really happened was Elmira’s father had
intercepted Edgar’s letters to Elmira and destroyed them. Conversely, he
had discarded Elmira’s letters to Edgar.
Elmira’s father strongly disapproved of her relationship with Edgar. He was
an orphan, the son of an actress, disowned by his foster father, and an
aspiring writer
four strikes against him in this era of socio-economic high-mindedness.
Young Edgar faced heartbreak upon returning home from school when he
attended a party at Elmira’s home, only to discover it was her engagement
party to Alexander Shelton.
This would inspire one of his earliest poems, “Song” published in 1827. It
tells of a bride whose blush belies the hidden regret of a lost love, the
narrator. But this was not the end of their story.
More than 20 years later, Poe would re-enter Elmira’s life. By then, he was
a widower, she a widow. In 1849 Poe headed south to Richmond to give
lectures and continue his efforts to get his magazine, The Stylus, off the
ground.
He had a powerful sense of unease about this trip, telling Muddy he feared
it would be his last. But he went all the same. While there, Edgar sought out
his childhood love, his first fiancée, Elmira.
He showed up at her house here on Grace Street… a sort of full circle
moment for Edgar as Elmira lived right across the street from St John’s
Church, in view of the final resting place of Poe’s mother, Eliza.
And just as he had done as a teenager, Poe began courting Elmira once
again. They were each to the other a powerful connection to the past, to
young and innocent love. Poe would recite his poetry to her, assuring her
she was his lost Lenore, and Annabel Lee.
Poe gave her a ring with his name engraved in it, and they were, at least
tentatively, engaged to be married in October. But just like their first
engagement, this second engagement would go unfulfilled.
On September 27th Poe left Richmond for a short business trip north. The
evening before he left, Elmira recalled, “He was very sad, and complained
of being quite sick.” She would never see him again.
Poe was discovered a week later on the streets of Baltimore, half alive. He
was taken to the hospital, where he died under mysterious conditions four
days later. Shortly before passing he made a reference to his wife in
Richmond, likely referring to Elmira.
Poe was committed to the earth before Elmira even learned of his death,
depriving her, as Muddy, the opportunity to say goodbye. After receiving
the terrible news, Elmira wrote to Muddy, calling Edgar “the dearest object
to me on earth.”
In her later years, Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton was sometimes called
Poe’s Lost Lenore. Even her obituary bore the headline, “Poe’s first and last
love.” Elmira’s grave remained unmarked next to this tabletop marker of
her husband until
2012 when the Poe Museum here in Richmond facilitated the placement of
this marker. It features an excerpt from Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe’s
final poem, first published as part of his own obituary.
Elmira is considered one of the strong candidates for the inspiration of
Annabel Lee, especially this line, “she was a child and I was a child.” But
another line in the poem, “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side,
of
my darling -- my darling -- my life and my bride,” implies the only woman
who was his bride... Virginia... Virginia...
Annabel Lee.
It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden
there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee... Annabel...
Annie.
And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved
by me. She was a child and I was a child in this kingdom by the sea, Elmira.
But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee—
An idealized love. Jane, Fanny. With a love that the winged seraphs of
Heaven coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, in this
kingdom by the sea, a wind blew out of
a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee, so that her highborn kinsmen
came and bore her away from me, to shut her up in a sepulcher in this
kingdom by the sea. Virginia.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, went envying her and me-- A
spiritual love? Helen. Yes!-that was the reason (as all men know, in this
kingdom by the sea) That the wind
came out of the cloud by night, An airborne illness... tuberculosis. ...
chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far
than the love of those who were older than we -- of
many far wiser than we -- And neither the angels in Heaven above nor the
demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the
beautiful Annabel Lee;
I know who you are.
You’re not Elmira
You’re not Virginia, or Eliza. Or Annie or Frances or Helen or Jane, or any
one of them.
You’re all of them.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams, of the beautiful
Annabel Lee.
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust
of Pallas
just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a
demon’s
that is dreaming, and the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow
on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be
lifted-- Nevermore!
END