The Graves of Edgar Allan Poe & The Women Who Haunted Him (2022) Movie Script
The 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."
But 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?"
But 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 ingnues, 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.
Eliza'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.
Lenore?
Lenore...
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
affection 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 the tranquil hours...
...to lend ourselves to the world and its
glee,
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.
Virginia 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.
During 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...
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,
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.
Would 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":
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!?
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 fiance, 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!
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."
But 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?"
But 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 ingnues, 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.
Eliza'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.
Lenore?
Lenore...
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
affection 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 the tranquil hours...
...to lend ourselves to the world and its
glee,
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.
Virginia 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.
During 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...
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,
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.
Would 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":
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!?
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 fiance, 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!