Here is the latest issue of the Poe Museum’s newsletter Evermore. With updates on recent acquisitions, new Poe Foundation officers, and the Poe Birthday Bash. PoeMuseum-winter2013newsletter
Author: zakyoung
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Holidays in Poe’s Day
Enjoying lots of delicious food, gift giving and getting, sleeping late, and catching up with family and friends is pretty much traditional fare for our 21st century holiday celebrations. We hope you are enjoying your holidays wherever you are, and whatever your traditions.
But what was this time of year like in Poe’s time? We get asked that a lot, so our staff got busy researching and found some choice tidbits. For starters, his mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe was originally from England, so she might have introduced the young family to traditions from her own English Christmas traditions. We know from primary sources that Poe’s foster parents, John and Frances Allan enjoyed visiting friends at the holiday. In fact, the first Christmas they had the two year old Poe, they took him on holiday to a friend’s plantation at Turkey Island. When they lived in England for five years from 1815 to 1820, the Allans no doubt celebrated as the locals did, with natural greenery sprucing up their rooms, and festive feasts shared with friends and family.
In Richmond during Poe’s lifetime, Christmas was a somber, simple affair, far from the hubbub of today. Children might expect small gifts of gloves or scarves, and church service would be expected – in Poe’s case, in a pew at Monumental Church that Allan bought. It is generally believed that Frances Allan was a faithful Episcopalian, while her spouse John, as a native Scot, was perhaps a Presbyterian or a free thinker. Richmonders much preferred the holiday of New Year’s and there were lots of balls once the General Assembly commenced and legislators came to town.
The following is a recollection by Poe’s nurse, Marie Louise Shew of a Christmas side of Poe you might not have expected. On Christmas Eve 1847, Poe attended a church service with his nurse – she had been Virginia’s nurse also, before Mrs. Poe’s death in January of that year. The Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg conducted the midnight service.
“[Poe] went with us, followed the service like a ‘churchman,’ looking directly towards the chancel, and holding one side of my prayer book. sang the psalms with us, and to my astonishment struck up a tenor to our sopranos and, got along nicely during the first part of the sermon, which was on the subject of the sympathies of our Lord, to our wants. The passage being often repeated, ‘He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ He begged me to stay quiet that he would wait for me outside, and he rushed out, too excited to stay. I knew he would not leave us to return home alone, (altho’ my friend thought it doubtful), and so after the sermon as I began to feel anxious (as we were in a strange church) I looked back and saw his pale face, and as the congregation rose to sing the Hymn, ‘Jesus Saviour of my soul,’ he appeared at my side, and sang the Hymn, without looking at the book, in a fine, clear tenor… I did not dare to ask him why he left, but he mentioned after we got home, that the subject ‘was marvelously handled, and ought to have melted many hard hearts’ and ever after this he never passed Doctor Muhlenberg’s 20th St. Free Church without going in.” [Source: letter to J.H. Ingram, ca. 15 April 1875, Miller {1977}, pp. 132-33.].
On January 18, 2014 from noon to midnight, the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia will celebrate Edgar Allan Poe’s 205th birthday with twelve straight hours of Poe-themed fun for the whole family. Included in the day will be dramatic readings, living history, a mock trial of the murderer from Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and even interpretive dance inspired by Poe’s stories and poems. Authors Jeff Abugel (Edgar Allan Poe’s Petersburg), Trish Foxwell (A Visitor’s Guide to the Literary South), and contributors to the new anthology Virginia is For Mysteries will be here to sign and discuss their latest books. There will also be live music and appearances by Poe impersonators as well as walking tours of Poe sites in the neighborhood. Don’t forget about the birthday cake. Guests get all this for just $5 for the day.
The day kicks off with Edgar Allan Poe and his friend Frances Osgood reading their flirtatious love poetry to each other. In the Museum’s Exhibit Building, you’ll get to see a new exhibit about Poe’s love poetry including the original manuscript for his essay about Frances Osgood and a letter by Osgood herself. Here is a tentative schedule for the day:
Noon: Event Begins, Edgar Poe and Frances Osgood mingle with guests
12:00 (Ongoing until 8:00) Abigail Larson Trunk Show
12:30 Poetry Reading: Edgar Allan Poe and Frances Osgood read their love poetry to each other
1:00 Tour: Walking Tour of Poe’s Shockoe Bottom
1:30 Dance: “Poe in Motion”
2:00 Live Music by Classical Revolutions
2:30 “The Tell-Tale Heart” with Jamie Ebersole
3:00 Performance of “Hop-Frog”
Tour: Tour of Poe Museum
Book Signing: Virginia is for Mysteries (until 6 P.M.)
(CASH BAR OPENS)
3:30 Live Music
5:00 Tour: Poe’s Church Hill
5:30 Dance: “Poe in Motion”
6:00 Cake Cutting
Silent Auction Ends
Jeffrey Abugel speaks about Poe’s Petersburg
6:30 “The Tell-Tale Heart” with Jamie Ebersole
7:00 Tour of Poe Museum
7:30 Live Music
9:00 Performance: “The Conqueror Worm” by Amber Edens
9:15 – 11:45pm Live Entertainment
Midnight: Toast to Poe in the Poe Shrine
The members of the Poe Museum recently took a trip to the building in which Poe is said to have spent his honeymoon in May 1836. The owner of the house, Jeff Abugel, author the recent book Edgar Allan Poe’s Petersburg, provided our group a private tour of the house. He has spent the last few years restoring the house and researching its history. In Poe’s day, the house would have belonged to his friend, the Petersburg, Virginia poet and magazine editor Hiram Haines. Poe, who grew up thirty miles to the north in Richmond, was a close childhood friend of Mary Ann Philpotts, who would eventually marry Haines.
The relationship between Hiram Haines is documented by two letters in the collection of the Poe Museum. These are the only remaining correspondence between the two editors. In the first, from August 19, 1836, Poe asks Haines to consider reviewing the Southern Literary Messenger (the Richmond magazine Poe was editing at the time) in Haines’s magazine The Constellation. In the next letter, dated April 24, 1840, Poe politely turns down Haines’s offer to send Poe’s wife a pet fawn. Poe writes that he cannot find a way to transport the animal from Petersburg to Philadelphia, where Poe was living at the time. Shortly before writing the letter, Poe praised Haines’s magazine The Virginia Star in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, and, in the note, Poe extends his “very best wishes” to the Star. Poe closes the letter by suggesting he might visit Petersburg in “a month of two hence.” There is no evidence this trip ever took place, and Haines died the following year.
There has long been a tradition that Poe spent his honeymoon at Haines’s house in Petersburg, but Abugel believes Poe would have stayed next door at Haines’s coffee house, which was also a hotel. A description of Poe’s wedding by one of those present, also describes Poe and his bride leaving Richmond by train to their honeymoon in Petersburg, but Abugel states on page 103 of Edgar Allan Poe’s Petersburg that, though the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad was chartered in 1836, it did not begin service until 1838, so Poe and his wife could not have taken the train from Richmond to Petersburg in 1836. Some accounts say Poe spent as long as two weeks in Petersburg, but there exists a letter written by Poe in Richmond on May 23, 1836 — just one week after his wedding on May 16.
We do not have much verifiable information about Poe’s honeymoon. James Whitty states in Mary Phillips’s Edgar Allan Poe: The Man (pp. 532-33) that there once existed several letters between Poe and Haines concerning the subject but that Haines’s grandson had only saved the two mentioned above. Whitty also relates that Poe was entertained in Petersburg by the Haines family as well as by the editor Edward V. Sparhawk and the writer Dr. W.M. Robinson.
Haines operated his coffee house and hotel out of this house, which was adjacent to his own home (on the right in the above photo).
The first stop on our tour was the coffee house on the first floor. The mantel in this photo was one of the original mantels taken from the second floor rooms in which Poe would have stayed.
Now indoors, this wall once overlooked the alley behind the house, and Poe and his bride would have entered through this second floor door, which was connected to the alley by an exterior staircase. Now there is a roof covering this area, which is part of the present day coffee and ale house.
The door from the alley opened onto this landing. The room in which Abugel believes Poe would have stayed is at the end of the hall.
This is the room in which Poe would have slept. Very few changes were made to these rooms since Poe’s time, so Abugel believes this would have been the paint on the walls when the poet was there. The view out the window would have been different, because there would have been an empty lot across the street.
Here is the next room, which is connected to the last one. That is not a ghost by the window.
Our tour ended back downstairs in the coffee house where some of us purchased Hiram Haines Coffee and Ale House T-shirts with Poe’s face on them. Abugel informed us that the first floor is open not only for coffee but also the occasional concert or special event. You can find out more about the place on Facebook. Many thanks to Jeffrey Abugel for the great tour.
After the tour of the house, Poe Museum docent Alyson Taylor-White took the group on a walking tour of historic Petersburg.
The next program for Poe Museum members will be a tour of Monumental Church on Saturday, November 23 at noon.
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Poe Museum Thanks Its Members
The Poe Museum greatly appreciates the support of its many members, so, as a way of saying thanks, the museum will host a weekend of activities for its members only. On November 16 and 17, Poe Museum members can take special tours of Poe sites that are not regularly open to the public, and they will have a chance to search for evidence of paranormal activity in the Poe Museum.
The weekend kicks off Saturday, November 16 at noon with a tour of Monumental Church (pictured above), the church Poe attended as a boy with his foster parents John and Frances Allan. Members will have the opportunity to sit in the Allan family pew where Poe would have sat, and they will learn about the dark origins of this memorial built on the site of the 1811 Richmond Theater Fire.
Then, on November 16 from 8 P.M. until midnight, Poe Museum members can participate in a special members-only paranormal investigation of the Poe Museum, where the apparition of a young boy is said to appear in the garden. Investigators Spirited History will lead the investigation and provide the equipment. They have investigated the site before and claim to have collected a great deal of evidence that something paranormal occupies the garden.
Finally, on Sunday, November 17 at 1 P.M., members are invited to attend a special tour of the Hiram Haines Coffee House (pictured above) in Petersburg, where Poe is said to have spent his honeymoon. The owner, Jeff Abugel (author of Edgar Allan Poe’s Petersburg), will take the group on a special tour of the rooms Poe and his wife would have occupied during their stay. Afterwards, Poe Museum docent Alyson Taylor-White will provide a walking tour of Petersburg historic sites Poe would have seen during his visit.
**UPDATE**
The tour of Monumental Church has been rescheduled for Saturday, November 23 at noon.
If you are interested in attending any of these events, please RSVP to Amber Edens by emailing amber@poemuseum.org or by calling 888-21-EAPOE. Space is limited, so please reserve your spot today.
If you are not a member or have not renewed your membership, you join today on our website.
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Poe: Science Fiction Pioneer
Most people know Edgar Allan Poe for his chilling tales of terror and his melancholy poetry. A few even know his for his groundbreaking detective stories, but most people have no idea he pioneered the science fiction story. That is why the Poe Museum’s new temporary exhibit Poe: Science Fiction Pioneer (running from October 17 until December 31, 2013) will highlight the author’s contributions to one of today’s most popular genres.
Poe wrote early accounts of cyborgs, space travel, and the distant future. Some of his tales about the marvels of modern science were so realistic some of his readers thought they were true. Explore the exhibit to discover such little known works as “The Man That Was Used Up,” “Some Words with a Mummy,” and “The Balloon Hoax.”
After ninety-one years occupying the Old Stone House, the Poe Foundation finally owns the building. On Saturday, October 5, 2013, Anne Geddy Cross (pictured above), President of President of Preservation Virginia, signed the Deed of Gift transferring the house and garden from Preservation Virginia to the Poe Foundation. The Poe Foundation’s Past President Harry Lee Poe and its new President Annemarie Weathers Beebe gratefully accepted the gift. Preservation Virginia’s Director of Preservation Services Louis Malon and the Poe Museum’s Curator Chris Semtner, who have both been coordinating the transfer process over the past few years, were in attendance to witness the event. Before the transfer could take place, an easement was registered with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to protect the house from significant changes that would alter its historic character.
Representing the Ege family, who owned the property from at least 1748 until 1911, Tina Egge, fifth great niece of Jacob Ege (different branches of the family spelled the name differently), the builder of the house, attended the event. Rose Marie Mitchell, who has written a new book about the history of the Old Stone House, spoke and signed copies of her book in the Exhibits Building, which featured a temporary exhibit documenting the history of the house.
The Poe Foundation has owned the rest of the Poe Museum buildings and grounds since the 1920s, so it is fitting that the Old Stone House should finally come under its ownership. Although the enormous gift and the new easement are significant developments for the Poe Foundation, the museum’s visitors will not see a dramatic change in the way the museum operates. They will, however, see some dramatic changes next spring when the major Enchanted Garden restoration project sponsored by the Garden Club of Virginia is underway.
Here is the latest installment of the Poe Museum’s newsletter Evermore. Inside you will find updates on the museum’s fall events and exhibits as well as some members-only programs.
POEMuseum-Fall2013newsletter
Kickstarter project has goal of $60,000 in 45 days
Richmond, Va. – Today the Edgar Allan Poe Museum launched a campaign to raise $60,000 through Kickstarter to preserve, prepare and publish a book of James Carlings’ original illustrations for “The Raven.” Dating to the 1880s, these original illustrations were named one of “Virginia’s Top 10 Most Endangered Artifacts” by the Virginia Association of Museums. Donations will be received until November 15 through the Kickstarter website (bit.ly/jcarling). If the entire $60,000 is not raised, the Poe Museum will receive no funding from the campaign.
“The Carling illustrations are a true piece of Poe history and have been an important part of the museum since the 1930s,” said Chris Semtner, curator, Edgar Allan Poe Museum. “For 40 years these illustrations were a fixture in the museum’s Raven Room and now due to their deteriorating condition, we are unable to display them.”
If the goal is met, the funds will be used to prepare and publish a book containing all 43 of Carlings’ original illustrations. In addition, a portion of the funds will be used to carefully conserve each illustration and create a traveling exhibit. Semtner explained that the existing paper on which the illustrations were drawn is glued to acidic cardboard causing it to darken and deteriorate.
The artist, James Carling, is the earliest and first “pavement artist” whose life has been fully documented. His illustrations for “The Raven” are his largest body of work and only known set of illustrations. Carling billed himself as the “fastest drawer in the world” and the “lightning caricaturist.”
“The Poe Museum has been given the responsibility to preserve, promote and publish Carlings’ masterpiece,” says Semtner. “We have reached out through Kickstarter to raise the money to publish these pieces in full color, promote them by creating exhibits to travel to museums and to preserve them for the enjoyment of future generations.”
For more information, visit bit.ly/jcarling PoeMuseum.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Anyone can celebrate a birthday, but the Poe Museum also celebrates a death day. On October 3, 2013, the Poe Museum in Richmond will observe the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death (October 7, 1849), with a tribute from Elmira Shelton, the woman to whom Poe was engaged when he died. Debbie Phillips, who has also performed for the museum as Poe’s mother Eliza Poe, returns for a historical interpretation based on years of research into Poe’s last love. After the performance, “Elmira” will stay to mingle with guests. Tours of the museum will explore the themes of death and mourning in Poe’s time. The event will last from 6P.M. until 9 P.M. Refreshments will be available.
On October 5 at 1 P.M., the Poe Museum will receive the largest gift in its history, a house. The house just happens to be the oldest in Richmond, the Old Stone House. Though we are not exactly certain when it was built, dendrochronology (testing of the tree rings in wood) dates the floorboards to 1754. For over ninety years, the Poe Museum has occupied the house, which remains the property of Preservation Virginia, formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, while the other three buildings in the Poe Museum complex belong to the Poe Foundation.
The history of the Old Stone House is a colorful one. From the 1740s until 1911, the property was owned by the Ege family, who were among the first residents of the city. In 1781, one of the residents, Elizabeth Ege Welsh, supposedly saw Benedict Arnold invade and set fire to Richmond from the house. By the 1840s, the house appears in guide books for visitors to the city. Around 1881, the house was rented to R. L. Potter, “The Wheelbarrow Man,” who used it to exhibit an assortment of unusual objects he had collected while pushing a wheelbarrow from New York to California and back. One account says he even displayed a live bear in one of the rooms. In 1894, the house was known as Washington’s Headquarters Antiquarium and Relic Museum, which published a guide book to perpetuate some tall tales about how the house had been built by Powhatan, used as a courthouse by Patrick Henry, and used as George Washington’s headquarters during the American Revolution (though Washington never actually set foot in the city during that war). Some old postcards show the house with a large “Washington’s Headquarters” sign hanging next to the front door.
In 1913, the Ege family lost the property, and Granville Valentine purchased the building to save it from destruction. Valentine, in turn, donated it to the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, who tried to find someone to rent it. A renter who had intended to use it as an antique store left because the property was being vandalized. Then Archer Jones, owner of the Duplex Envelope Company, approached the APVA with the idea of using the house as a museum of Colonial history. Jones and his wife soon met the Poe collector James Whitty, who wanted to reconstruct the recently demolished office of the Southern Literary Messenger in the junk yard behind the house. In 1921, that idea evolved into using the Messenger bricks and granite to make a Poe Memorial garden in the yard and using the locks, lumber, and hinges from the Messenger building to restore the Old Stone House. The House was then furnished with furniture from Richmond buildings in which Poe lived or worked. In the early years, the APVA charged the Poe Foundation rent for the property, but it eventually allowed the museum to use the house rent-free.
Ninety-one years after the Poe Museum opened, the Old Stone House is still visited by guests from around the world, and the exterior of the house remains virtually unchanged from its appearance recorded in nineteenth century photos. Thanks to Preservation Virginia, this beautiful remnant of Richmond’s Colonial past will finally become a true part of the Poe Museum. The museum has no plans for changes to the structure, which will be protected from significant alterations by an easement with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
To learn more about the Old Stone House, please visit the Poe Museum or read the forthcoming book about the house by Rosemarie Mitchell.
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The Unseen Poe Museum
Most the Poe Museum’s holdings never go on display. In addition to its museum collection of Edgar Allan Poe artifacts and memorabilia, the Poe Museum also holds an extensive group of objects in its reference library. This study collection features thousands of books, articles, videos, and audio recordings exploring Poe’s life and influence. Accessible by appointment, the reference library is a rich source of information compiled over the past nine decades for the benefit of students and researchers. As would be expected, the collection contains several volumes of scholarly works of biography and criticism, but there are also numerous photographs, drawings, and prints of Poe, the people he knew, and the places he lived, worked, and visited. There are also manuscripts, letters, illustrations, advertisements, facsimiles, and rare documents.
While the Poe Museum’s library is a great place to look for scholarly works and materials on Poe and his oeuvre, it also documents the evolution of other authors’ and artists’ responses to Poe. That is why one will find several works of fiction inspired by Poe here. These vary from novels featuring Poe as a character (like The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard and An Unpardonable Crime by Andrew Taylor) to ones with Poe-inspired elements (like Kelly Creagh’s teen romance Nevermore and Linda Fairstein’s mystery thriller Entombed). There are even historical novels focusing on Poe’s life. Among these are John May’s Poe and Fanny and Barbara Moore’s The Fever Called Living.
Other novels focus on the lives of those he knew. Harriet Davis’s Elmira tells the story of Poe’s first fiancée Elmira Royster Shelton while Lenore Hart’s The Raven’s Bride gives Poe’s wife’s perspective. Poe’s mysterious death is the subject of novels including Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow and Frank Lovelock’s Lenore. The Poe Museum is featured in the short story “Murder at the Poe Shrine” by Nedra Tyre. Obsessive Poe collecting is the theme of Robert Bloch’s “The Man who Collected Poe.” Poe has inspired other authors to write sequels to his works. In 1897, Jules Verne wrote The Sphinx of the Ice Fields (also known as An Antarctic Mystery) as a sequel to Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. More recently, Clive Barker wrote “New Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a sequel to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Poe’s works have also been reimagined in music, plays, and an opera. Then there are the comics. Richard Corben’s masterful interpretations of Poe’s stories and poems into comics are among the best to date, but Berni Wrightson, Michael Golden, and others have also produced great adaptations. Let us not forget to mention MAD Magazine’s parody of “The Raven” and the Scooby Doo mystery “Cravin’ the Raven.” Then there are entire series like Jason Asala’s Poe and Dwight Macpherson’s The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo. In the 2003 series Batman Nevermore, Poe joins forces with the Dark Knight to fight crime, but Poe had already battled evildoers alongside the “World’s Smallest Superhero” The Atom back in 1950.
The study collection abounds in illustrated editions of Poe’s works by artists including Dore, Dulac, Clarke, and Robinson. More recent illustrated editions have been produced by artists including Mark Summers (this edition has a preface by Neil Gaiman), Greg Hildebrandt, and Gris Grimly.
If you would like to visit the study collection for research purposes, simply contact the curator to schedule an appointment.