The Mystery of Poe

"Each (of Edgar Allen Poe's detective stories) is a root from which a whole literature has developed....Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe left quite a literary legacy before he mysteriously died at the age of 40. He created the genre of detective murder mysteries when he published his short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, in which his character, C. Auguste Dupin, employs ratiocination (methodical and logical reasoning) to solve the crimes.  Considering science fiction as a genre, Poe predated Jules Verne in his use of scientific principles as a basis for several of his plots.  And for dark, creepy, macabre tales of revenge, torture, and death, there's no horror story author who can terrify me more than Poe!

A visit to the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia left me more intrigued than ever by this American author. Oh, sure, I read several of his poems and short stories when I was in high school, but I knew little about his life, other than my vague notion that he died destitute, drunk and drug-addicted. 

Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site
532 N. 7th Street, Philadelphia, PA

Prior to last week's visit, I had no inkling that Poe's character had been intentionally trashed by Rufus Griswold, the friend that Poe had trusted implicitly.  Why would Griswold ruin Poe's reputation so viciously?  And how did his character assassination of Poe become so widely accepted today? 

The U.S. National Park Service is trying to set the record straight at Poe's Spring Garden home in Philadelphia, the last address in a series of accommodations rented by Poe during the six years he lived in this city and the only one that remains today.  Was Poe always just one step ahead of the rent collector?  My questions about the mysterious Mr. Poe continue to multiply...

The Parlor
Any furniture or belongings of Edgar Allan Poe have been lost.
  Colorful wall murals hint at what life must have been like for the Poe household.

Why did Poe's grandfather relinquish his grandson to the foster care of John and Frances Allan?

Perhaps Poe's grandfather made this decision for financial reasons, hoping to secure Edgar's future, but this is only speculation upon my part. 

The facts are that Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston to parents struggling for success on the theatrical stage.  By the time his mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe died of tuberculosis when Edgar was two, his father David Poe had already abandoned the family.  His older brother Henry went to live with his Poe grandparents while his younger sister Rosalie was taken in by another family.  An affluent Richmond tobacco exporter, John Allan, and his wife Frances offered to foster young Edgar and conferred the Allan name upon him, but they never formally adopted him. 

When business beckoned the Allans to England, Edgar traveled with them and spent his years from age six to eleven attending an English boarding school.  Returning to Richmond, Poe enrolled for a year at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA where he distinguished himself as a scholar of Latin and French.

The Kitch

Why was Edgar Allan Poe disowned by his foster father?

John Allan withdrew his financial support for Poe once he learned of Poe's gambling debts, incurred while he was a student at the University of Virginia. 

Poe left Charlottesville at age eighteen and returned to Boston where he published Tamerlane And Other Poems, his first volume of poetry.  Lack of money led him to enlist as a private in the army.  During the next eighteen months, he rapidly rose to the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery, the highest level a noncommissioned officer could achieve. 

Such swift promotion was remarkable! Certainly, the superior education Poe had been privileged to receive gave him a decided edge over the mostly uneducated other enlisted men and perhaps in a military setting, Poe finally found the discipline and the sense of belonging that he needed.

Still estranged from his foster father but acting upon the advice of his commanding officer, Poe wrote a letter to Allan to request his support for an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  Months passed while Allan ignored Poe's pleas. Biographers doubt that Allan even notified Poe of his wife's final illness.  Yet, somehow Poe learned of Frances Allan's death on February 28, 1829, and paid a visit to the Allan home the day after she was buried. 

Last week as I read facsimiles of Poe's petitions in the exhibit at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, I wondered who in the Allan household had preserved Poe's petitions and passed them down through time.

Unwilling to impose upon his foster father's goodwill after Allan had finally agreed to support his West Point appointment, Poe left Richmond.  He moved into the Baltimore home of his widowed aunt Maria Poe Clemm, and her daughter Virginia while he waited to hear whether the academy would accept him.  There he published his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, in 1829. 

On July 1, 1830, Poe entered West Point as a first-year cadet.  When his foster father remarried in October of that year, any hope Poe might have entertained for an inheritance from John Allan was lost. 

Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Pit & the Pendulum" in a second-floor room of this house.

Why did Poe jettison a promising career as a military officer?

Upon completion of his first semester's courses in algebra, geometry and French, Poe ranked 3rd in French and 17th in mathematics in his West Point plebe class of 87 cadets.  But, a career as a military officer at that time required substantial personal wealth which Poe no longer could expect from John Allan. 

Poe lost all interest in attending classes, parade, roll call or chapel and was subsequently court martialed in January 1831. He was dismissed from the academy the following month.

His fellow cadets gave him a lifeline for his next business venture, a contribution of money that enabled Poe to published his third volume of poetry, simply entitled Poems.  Inside Poems, Poe printed in this inscription, "To the U.S. Corps of Cadets this volume is respectfully dedicated." 

Virginia Poe wrote this acroustic using the first letters of her husband's name.

Did Poe really marry his first cousin, Virginia Eliza Clemm, when she was only thirteen?

Yes, at the age of 27 in 1836, Poe married his first cousin Virginia whom he nicknamed "Sissy." 

Why this marriage occurred is the subject of much speculation, but the Poe household thereafter included not only Virginia as Poe's wife but her mother Maria Clemm in the role of housekeeper.  Sadly, Virginia died from tuberculosis at the age of 24. 

A prominent theme in many of Poe's works is the death of a beautiful young woman.  Undoubtedly, Virginia's death as well as the young death of Poe's mother had a profound impact upon him.

The Raven sculpture

Why wasn't Poe's writing career financially sucessful?

Edgar Allan Poe was the first American writer to attempt to support himself solely by his writings.  His literary contemporaries, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson, earned livelihoods as a Harvard professor and a lecturer respectively. 

In additon, although there is a copyright clause in the Constitution of the United States, there were no international copyright laws during Poe's career.  America's fledgeling publishing industry preferred to publish pirated copies of the works of British authors rather than purchasing and promoting the works of its own citizens. Poe's works were wildly successful in France after Charles Baudelaire translated them, but Poe never received any compensation for those translations.

1835 was a turning point for Poe when he became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a literary journal based in Richmond.  Working as an editor, literary critic and contributor for one literary journal after another, Poe finally found a vocation that could pay his bills.

Ten years later Poe's fame but not his fortune was assured when his poem, "The Raven," was published in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845 and became a popular success.  Yet, Poe received only $9 for its publication.

The Basement

What caused Poe's death at the untimely age of forty?

Mystery surrounds the circumstances of Poe's death.  In the September 1849, Poe proposed marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster.  Following his proposal, Poe left Richmond to return to New York City, with plans to move his household back to Richmond.  How he ended up in a Baltimore tavern, delirious and "in great distress" on October 3, 1849 is unknown, although many theories abound.  Was he on a drunken binge?  Had he been robbed?  Was he drugged?   No one truly knows.  Poe was incoherent, fading in and out of consciousness from that point until he died four days later on October 7, 1849, in the Washington College Hospital.   All his medical records from his admission to the hospital have been lost. 

Why did Rufus Griswold ruin Poe's reputation after his death?

Apprised of Griswold's intention to publish an anthology of American poems in the spring of 1841, Poe sent him a letter to introduce himself and enclosed several poems of his poems.  Griswold included three of Poe's poems in his Poets and Poetry of America which was published the following April.  Perhaps Griswold believed that, by including Poe's poems, his anthology would be praised by Poe who had a reputation of being a harsh literary critic. Poe did write a positive review of the work for the Boston Miscellany, only mildly questioning the inclusion of a few poets Poe considered unworthy of notice.  That disgruntled Griswold.  When an anonymous and much harsher review was published in the January 1843 edition of The Phladelphia Saturday Museum, Griswold believed that Poe had penned that critique, too. 

Griswold carried this unspoken grudge against Poe for the next seven years.  Poe apparently trusted Griswold completely during this span, even asking him to act as his literary executor in the event of his death.  When Poe died so mysteriously in 1849, Griswold seized the chance to assassinate Poe's character posthumously.  In his "Memoir" of Poe, Griswold claimed that Poe was a drunkard whose uncontrollable behavior led to his expulsion from the University of Virginia and his dishonorable dismissal from West Point.   Others soon followed Griswold's lead and many implied that Poe could only have written several of his works while under the influence of opium.    

Allegations of alcoholism and opium abuse were refuted by Poe's personal physician, Dr. Thomas Dunn English of Philadelphia.  He claimed, "Had Poe the opium habit, I should both as a physician and a man of observation have discovered it during his frequent visits to my rooms, my visits at his house, and our meetings elsewhere.  I saw no signs of it and believe it to be a baseless slander."

Obviously, the public preferred to believe Griswold's sensational allegations rather than the assertions of Poe's physician.  As acclaim for Edgar Allan Poe's work grew, his writings became required reading for American schoolchildren.  Many textbook editors chose to portray Poe's character based upon the unsubstantiated rumors that Rufus Griswold penned.

Edgar Allan Poe remains an enigma to his biographers and to his fans for the mysteries surrounding Mr. Poe have followed him into his grave.