Edgar Allan Pоe: a pilgrimage in three parts

Our most recent trip, to Philadelphia and then Baltimore in late August, centered on two writers whom Jessica and I admire: the first being Aaron Weiss, lyricist and lead vocalist for the band mewithoutYou. We saw them at Summit in Denver back in January on their twice-delayed Brother, Sister anniversary tour, and were determined to attend the final concert of their farewell tour, held at the Fillmore Philadelphia. And since we would be in Philly and Baltimore, why not visit another poet in Edgar Allan Pоe? 

I will attempt here neither a full biography nor a literary appreciation of Poe—having, after two and a half years of caution and good luck, finally contracted COVID-19 on our trip, I haven't the energy to do justice to either. Instead, I'll offer thoughts on the specific locations we visited along the way.

* * *

Poe, an affectionate aunt, and a fair cousin in Baltimore 

Although he was born in Boston, Poe had family roots in Baltimore, considered it his hometown, and sometimes (unreliable narrator that he was) claimed it as his place of birth. His grandfather, David Poe, Sr., had emigrated to Baltimore from Co. Cavan, Ireland, just prior to the American Revolution; David served both as a major in the Continental Army and as an assistant quartermaster for the City of Baltimore. In the latter role, he was occasionally known to pay for uniforms and other materiel out of his own pocket; he became a close personal friend of the Marquis de Lafayette, and was  accorded the honorary title of "General" as one of Baltimore's foremost patriots.

Edgar Allan Pоe himself first came to Charm City in the midst of his own (checkered) military career: having dropped out of the University of Virginia, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1827 under a pseudonym. Well-educated, personable, and competent, "Edgar A. Perry" rose from private soldier to sergeant major in just two years; Poe then revealed his real name to his commanding officer and announced his intention to end his enlistment early, for the purpose of enrolling at the U.S. Military Academy. After some negotiation, he was able to buy his way out by hiring another man to complete his term of service. Upon securing his release from the Army in 1829, Poe lodged with a succession of relatives in Baltimore before matriculating at West Point in 1830. Within a year, however, Poe had given up on soldiering altogether in favour of a literary career, and contrived to have himself thrown out of the Academy, returning to Baltimore in 1831.

Now, however, Edgar had found a permanent home with a core family. Upon his return, he stayed with his widowed aunt, Maria Poe Clemm. Maria—pronounced with a long "i", as in "Mariah", and known within the family as "Muddy"—lived in a rented house in Mechanics Row on Wilks Street (later Eastern Avenue) in Fells Point. Also present were Muddy's mother (Edgar's grandmother, and widow of David Poe, Sr.), Elizabeth Cairnes Poe; Muddy's daughter (Edgar's cousin), Virginia Eliza Clemm; possibly Virginia's brother Henry Clemm; and Edgar's brother, also named Henry. Henry Poe died in 1831, a few months after his brother's arrival.

In 1832, with a cholera epidemic raging in Fells Point, Muddy and her extended family moved to a house on Amity Street, in what was then the countryside. (The household may or may not have included Henry Clemm; Virginia's brother disappears from the historical record sometime in the early 1830s, with some speculation that he may have been lost at sea.) Edgar lived here until, in 1835, he took a job with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. About that same time, Elizabeth Cairnes Poe passed away at the age of 79. With the loss of Elizabeth's pension (awarded for David Poe, Sr.'s services in the Revolution), Muddy found herself unable to maintain the house on Amity Street. Edgar returned to Baltimore long enough to obtain a marriage license for himself and Virginia (family history holds that they married in a private ceremony in Baltimore) and then moved Virginia and Muddy to Richmond (where a documented wedding ceremony was held in 1836).

(It should be noted, in deference to modern sensibilities, that neither the disparity in the ages of the bride and groom—Virginia was 13 and Edgar 26 in 1835—nor their standing as cousins would have been prohibitive at the time, and the marriage had Muddy's blessing.)

The country house at 3 Amity Street (later 203) was eventually overtaken by the expanding city, and in the 1930s was saved from the wrecking ball by the Edgar Allan Pоe Society of Baltimore. The only remaining Poe residence in Charm City, it now operates as the Edgar Allan Pоe House & Museum. We saw no ravens here—football team notwithstanding, they can be found no closer to Baltimore than the mountains of western Maryland—but did spot a female Cooper's hawk making her morning rounds while we waited for the house to open.

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Poe and his family in Philadelphia 

After several years at the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe moved from Richmond to New York in 1837 and then Philadelphia in 1838, bringing Virginia and Muddy with him. His time in the City of Brotherly Love was productive; during the period from 1838 to 1844 he edited first Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and then Graham's Magazine, and published his only novel, as well as several of his best-known short stories and poems. From 1843 to 1844, the family resided at this house at 532 7th Street in the Spring Garden neighbourhood, now managed by the National Park Service as the Edgar Allan Pоe National Historic Site. 

With its low ceilings, brick floors, and brick and stone walls hinting at the immurement of "The Cask of Amontillado"—not to mention its enormously long-legged spiders—the basement of the house in Spring Garden is bound to appeal to fans of the macabre. But the macabre is only a part of Poe's repertoire, and even the basement offers a garden view; Virginia tended flowers here.

What struck me about both the Baltimore and Philadelphia houses, and what attracted Jessa's camera, was the ordinary domesticity, the very human scale of these middle-class nineteenth-century homes. (Particularly the lath-and-plaster construction, so like the kitchen Jessa is currently renovating.)

* * *

Poe and his family at rest

Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe suffered from consumption (tuberculosis) by 1842—the National Park Service has identified her bedroom in the Spring Garden house based on evidence of a stove in one of the upstairs rooms—and she passed away in 1847, a year after the Poe/Clemm family moved from Philadelphia to New York. Edgar grieved all through her illness, and again when she died. The loss of a beautiful and beloved woman was already a theme in his work ("To One in Paradise", "Lenore", "The Raven", to cite just a few examples)—small wonder for a writer orphaned at the age of two, who then lost his foster mother at twenty—but culminated after Virginia's death in his final poem, "Annabel Lee".

On 3 October 1849, while on his way from Richmond to New York—and a week after his departure from Richmond—the normally well-dressed Edgar turned up disheveled and disoriented outside a public house on Lombard Street in downtown Baltimore. Poe was sensitive to alcohol—a lightweight, in modern parlance—and it was assumed that, despite a recent commitment to abstinence from drinking, he had fallen off the temperance wagon. However, the public house in question was also a polling place, with a hotly contested election taking place that same day, and it seems likely that Poe had been "cooped"—that is to say, physically beaten, drugged, and/or forcibly intoxicated so that he could be used as a fraudulent voter. Poe himself was in no condition to explain what had happened to him; he was, however, able to give the name of a local acquaintance, Dr. Joseph Evans Snodgrass, who in turn contacted Poe's uncle, Henry Herring. Poe was taken to Washington University Hospital (later known as Church Hospital), but died on the 7th, never regaining enough lucidity to give an account of the events of the 3rd. 

Poe was buried the next day in an unmarked (at the time) grave at Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore, near the grave of David Poe, Sr., his illustrious grandfather. Edgar's uncle Henry Herring provided the coffin, and a cousin, Neilson Poe, the hearse. A brief funeral was presided over by the Reverend William T.D. Clemm, a cousin of Virginia's. 

After our visit to the Poe House & Museum, Jessa and I walked to Westminster Hall and Burying Ground. The Hall, a Presbyterian chapel built in 1855, is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture executed in brick, and the cemetery a Who's Who of early Baltimore's Scots-Irish civic, military, and business elite. Its vaults and crypts are also an excellent place to find ferns growing wild in an otherwise urban environment, and on the day of our visit a kestrel perched high atop Westminster Hall. 

In 1875, Edgar Allan Pоe's remains were re-interred (along with those of Maria Poe Clemm) in a more prominent location at Westminster, near the corner of Fayette and Greene Streets. Virginia Clemm Poe's remains were relocated here ten years later, reuniting the family, and the monument dedicated in 1875 bears all three of their names.

It's fitting, I think, that these three should lie together. Poe, who cultivated a bad-boy image and would have been the nineteenth-century version of a rock star, certainly had his share of female admirers, and was at various times close to women other than Virginia, but it's clear that she was the love of his life. Biographers have often speculated on the nature of their relationship, with some suggesting an asexual or even brotherly-sisterly context, but there is in my view no evidence to support such claims. Friends of the couple indicated that, at least from the time she turned 16, "Eddy" and Virginia's relationship was that of a normal married couple—if anything, closer and happier than most.

She was a child and I was a child, 

     In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

     I and my Annabel Lee—

With the love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

     Coveted her and me.

As for Muddy, no better evidence of Edgar's affection exists than his penultimate poem, "Sonnet—To My Mother" (the only one, incidentally, in which he explicitly names Virginia):

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,"

Therefore by that dear name I have long called you—

     You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you

     In setting my Virginia's spirit free.

My mother—my own mother, who died early, 

     Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

     And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

     Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.