Category: The Poe Museum Blog

The Poe & Science Series

Post author By zakyoung
Post date December 11, 2017

Charles Babbage’s First Automated Chess Machine on Display in the London Science Museum

Poe Exposes Maelzel’s Automated Chess Player, Part II

Murray Ellison | Dec. 2nd, 2017

*Original Illustration Published in Poe’s “Automated Chess-Player”*

In 1836, Poe asks readers of the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger to ponder the implications for the future if a machine could calculate without human input. He writes, “There is no analogy, whatever, between the operations of the chess-player and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage,” Poe argues. If we chose to call the former a pure machine, we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond comparison, the most wonderful invention of mankind,” referring to the prototypes of the “Difference Engine,” which was introduced in London between 1789 and 1791 by mechanical engineer Charles Babbage. He has been credited with having been the first inventor of the mechanical computer. His machine could solve complex polynomial equations (Isaacson). Poe acknowledges that Babbage’s machine can compute when a programmer controls and anticipates the possible outcomes and solves for the expected results. He argues that the automated chess “Player” would have to be “the most wonderful invention of mankind” to counter the moves of a human opponent, and remains skeptical that the machine can do what Maelzel claimed.

Poe’s report begins with the historical background of the machine. The “chess-player” was invented in 1769 by Wolfgang von Kempelen, who took it to European cities beginning in 1804. It was later purchased by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who was also an early inventor of the automatic music player. Maelzel exhibited the chess-player in European cities and first demonstrated it in the “principal towns” of the United States in 1821. Poe writes: “Baron Kempelen had no scruple in declaring it to be a very ordinary piece of mechanism.” It was “a bagatelle whose effects appeared so marvelous only from the boldness of conception, and the fortunate choices of the methods adopted for promoting the illusion.”

Poe was most concerned that in the publicity about the machine, Maelzel made implicit claims that the “automaton” had the intelligence to regulate its moves. Instead, he proposes an alternative hypothesis: “It is quite certain that the operations of the Automaton are regulated by mind, and by nothing else.” He offers the central research issue for his investigation: “The only question then is of the manner in which human agency is brought to bear. He reasons that any machine created by man could act only in a mathematical or systematic way. The machine, he states, would need to respond to the data it had received within a given set of expected outcomes. Poe’s main argument is that he believes that it would be inconceivable for a machine to anticipate the almost infinite number of possible complex chess moves needed to counter a human opponent.

After reviewing the previous theories about the “automaton,” he concludes that none of them has revealed how the machine makes chess moves. Poe either has not see or has chosen to omit news reports in other cities where the automaton was exposed as a fraud. Nevertheless, to confirm his own conclusion, he makes several visits to the exhibit in Richmond and writes, “Maelzel displays the inside of the machine to prove his point. Its whole interior is crowded with wheels, pinions, levers, and other machinery so that the eyes cannot penetrate but a little distance into the mass.” He observes that Maelzel adds to the intrigue by opening only one of the three doors at a time, opening the front doors of the machine at one time and the back doors at another (see illustration from Poe’s published article on the automaton). Poe describes how the audience reacts to Maelzel’s deceptions:

“In general, every spectator is now thoroughly satisfied of having beheld and completely scrutinized, at one and the same time, every portion of the Automaton, and the idea of any person being concealed in the interior if ever entertained is immediately dismissed as preposterous in the extreme.”

Poe writes that Maelzel’s efforts to demonstrate that no one is inside of the console are designed to support the validity of his claim that the machine reasons according to its artificial intelligence or programming. He emphasizes that that he is not deceived by Maelzel’s illusions. He makes several additional visits to the exhibition to investigate how the machine operates. Poe derives the conclusion that Maelzel was not regulating the board because his back was always turned away from the machine when the machine was making its moves. Maelzel turned around and opened doors in the front and back of the machine in an attempt to give the illusion that no one could be inside of the machine. However, Poe observes that the interio is not fully visible when Maelzel opened any one of the doors. He also reveals that the machine employs concealed mirrors to aid in the deception. He describes Maelzel’s distractive tactics: A chess move is made by the mechanical manipulation of a small concealed man inside of the machine, who controls a “Turk” constructed as a robot. Poe adds: When asked, Maelzel declined to comment on how his automaton worked. Poe concludes that, “We do not believe that any reasonable objection can be urged against this solution of the Automaton Chess-Player.”

Poe’s investigative report demonstrated that he was, from the beginning of his career, interested in exploring technical challenges that required creativity and scientific inquiry. His exposé showed that he was also interested in exploring the boundaries between scientific news and fiction. In addition, he wanted to challenge unrealistic claims of those he was investigating and debunking their myths. The ways that he defined the issues and proposed solutions in “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” according to Pollin, foreshadowed the scientific methods he established in his later tales of ratiocination. Neil Harris argues that Poe “uncovered the secret of Maelzel’s automatic chess player, and so broke down an illusion with as much skill as he used to create one.” Poe also concluded that the public could be deceived by almost any spectacular false notion supported by circumstantial facts. What appeared to be certainly true, could also be untrue. This story also revealed that Poe had the insight to ask the important question concerning the future, such as: What would the future be like if machines could think? Would automation be an advantage or disadvantage in the future?

In the next Poe and Science, I plan to write about Poe’s published articles on Phrenology.

**This article is extracted from discussion of Poe’s 1836 journalistic investigation, “Maelzel’s Chess Player,” and is part of Murray Ellison’s VCU Master’s Thesis on Poe and the Nineteenth-Century © 2015.

Selected References – Print

Harris, Neil. Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Isaacson, Walter. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.

Kennedy, Gerald. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Margenau, Henry. The Scientist. New York: Life Science Library, 1964.

Poe, Edgar A. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume VIII: Early Criticism I. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

—. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume XIV: Essays and Miscellaneous. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

—. The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Eds. Burton R. Pollin, and Joseph V. Ridgeley. New York: Gordian Press, 1997.

Pollin, Burton R. “Creator of Words.” Baltimore: Lecture delivered at the Fifty-first Annual Commemoration of the Edgar A. Poe Society, July 7, 1973. Web. 1 March 2015.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998.

Selected References – Web

www.eapoe.org
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

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Tags history, science

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe Statue Takes a Ride

Post author By zakyoung
Post date November 25, 2017

SI Exif

Poe is on the move! After nearly six decades sitting across the street from the home of Poe’s first great love and muse, Richmond’s statue of Edgar Allan Poe has been displaced to make room for some newer sculptures. This is only the latest in many twists and turns in the life of Virginia’s first public Poe statue.

It all began in 1906, when a small band of writers, historians, and artists proposed the installation of a statue of Poe in the author’s hometown. Lack of funding—and a general lack of public enthusiasm—soon brought their efforts to an end. By then, Richmond was already lagging behind other cities in memorializing Poe. Baltimore had placed a Poe monument in Westminster Burying Grounds in 1875. The Actors’ Guild of New York had dedicated their own Poe monument in 1885. This was followed by the University of Virginia’s bronze bust honoring its most famous dropout in 1899. In the years after Richmond’s efforts to construct a statue stalled, Edmond Quinn sculpted a Poe bust for the Poe Cottage in Fordham (installed 1909) while Richmond’s Sir Moses Ezekiel made a statue of a seated Poe for Baltimore (installed 1922).

Fifty years later, in 1956, an eighty-seven-year-old retired Richmond physician and his wife were visiting the Poe Cottage. He stood in silence for several minutes in front of Quinn’s Poe bust before turning to tell his wife, “I shall devote the necessary time and money to have Poe recognized by a permanent memorial within the confines of the city he acclaimed as his home.”

Born in Charlotte County in 1869, Dr. George Edward Barksdale had long admired Poe’s works since wiling away hours of his boyhood reading poetry during his free time as a country store clerk. At the same time, he was studying Pharmacy and Chemistry in order to open his own pharmacy in Richmond. A few years later, he attended medical school and eventually became a surgeon and a professor at the Medical College of Virginia. The fortune earned over the course of a long and distinguished career made it possible for him to fund the construction of Richmond’s Poe statue.

*The Full-Size Plaster Model for Rudy’s Poe at the Poe Museum*

Upon his return from Fordham, Barksdale wrote Virginia Governor Thomas B. Stanley, “I will engage a recognized sculptor to reproduce in bronze a life-sized likeness of Edgar Allan Poe, provided the commonwealth of Virginia will provide a substantial base for the statue to rest upon.” Gov. Stanley forwarded the offer to the Art Commission, which had to select the site and material for the base. There must have been some disagreement over the base, since a rejected sandstone version turned up in a Richmond landfill in the 1970s. (You can now see it on display outside the Poe Museum.)

For his statue, Barksdale secured the services of award-winning Pennsylvania sculptor Charles Rudy. Having attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Edmond Quinn had also studied, Rudy went on to win a gold medal from the National Sculpture Society as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. His most famous commissions include Noah on the Bronx General Post Office, the Confederate War Memorial on Stone Mountain, and two bas-relief profiles of Benjamin Franklin on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Rudy’s Modernist style favored simplified forms over realistic or expressive detail. Critic Bern Ikeler found Rudy’s style “clean, simple, strong.” These terms aptly describe Rudy’s Poe. The seated bronze figure sits stock-straight with his hands on his lap. One holds a pen while the grasps a stack of papers. Underneath his simple, unadorned chair is a pile of books. The face is expressionless; the pose, static. Oddly, the head bears a little more of a resemblance to the aged Barksdale than to Poe.

The sculpture may have been ready by 1956, but Virginia was not. Rudy’s bronze sat in storage for two years before finding a home on Capitol Square, in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Capitol. While the square’s many other public sculptures stood in a row at the top of the hill, Poe occupied a quiet spot all by himself near the bottom. The Arts Commission, however, decided Poe would have liked it there. After all, Jane Stith Craig Stanard, the woman Poe called “the first, purely ideal love of my soul” lived in a house that once stood across the street. As a boy, he visited her there, and she encouraged his writing. After her illness and early death, he dedicated the poem “To Helen” to her. These early verses reference Capitol Square’s classical architecture, and the last stanza begins, “Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche/How statue-like I see thee stand!” It seemed appropriate to place the statue where he could see her in her window-niche—even if he was facing the opposite direction.

*Installing Rudy’s Poe in its New Location, 2017*

Months after it arrived on the square, the Poe statue was formally dedicated on October 7, 1959—the 110^th anniversary of Poe’s death. Virginia’s Attorney General, Albertis S. Harrison, Jr., presided over the ceremony. After an invocation by Dr. William B. Ward of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Mrs. Barksdale unveiled the statue, and University of Virginia professor James Southall Wilson delivered an address. Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr. accepted the gift on behalf of the General Assembly of Virginia. The program for the event includes the text of “To Helen” but does not indicate if the poem was recited at the time or who might have done so. One person not in attendance was Dr. Barksdale, who had not lived to see the dedication.

For a town that took a while to build its first Poe statue, Richmond has become a repository for Poe statuary. Among the many pieces now at the Poe Museum are the Actors’ Guild of New York’s previously mentioned Poe monument, a copy of the University of Virginia’s Poe bust, and the plaster version of the Edmond Quinn bust that inspired Barksdale to commission his statue. In 2014, the James Michener Museum of Art even donated the full-sized plaster model of Rudy’s Poe statue, making Richmond home to two different versions.

As for Rudy’s and Barksdale’s bronze Poe, on November 22, Fine Art Specialists, experts in moving large artworks, hauled the statue and its polished granite base up the hill to the northwest corner of Capitol Square. Rudy’s Poe now rests in the shadow of Thomas Crawford’s massive 1857 equestrian statue of George Washington, which is itself encircled by sculptures of famous Revolutionary Era Virginians from Thomas Jefferson to Patrick Henry. We like to think of this as the Commonwealth’s long overdue acknowledgement that Poe is one of our literary founding fathers. Poe’s new location also places it near the entrance to the General Assembly Building where he can keep an eye on Virginia’s legislators.

Tags collections, Richmond

The Poe Museum Blog

Edgar Allan Poe and the Culture of Mourning

Post author By zakyoung
Post date November 11, 2017
787 Comments on Edgar Allan Poe and the Culture of Mourning

Watercolor Death Portrait of Virginia Clemm Poe.

From train accidents, bridge collapses, and steamboat wrecks, to diseases such as the “White Plague,” or tuberculosis, it is undeniable that the nineteenth century was a witness of tragedy and deep mourning. Although the idea of mourning and mourning culture is not exclusive to the 1800s, it is safe to say the 1800s may have especially romanticized death and dying. Consider Poe, who wrote in The Philosophy of Composition, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world…” From post-mortem photography and paintings to mourning brooches and tear vials; from black-bordered stationery to requirements of attire and length of mourning time–all these things make mourning culture of the 1800s worth exploring.

In our collection, there are several objects and manuscripts relating to or similar to mourning objects, which will be examined in this article. Our first object is the death portrait of Virginia Clemm Poe, wife of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1842, Virginia Clemm Poe contracted tuberculosis, said to have been discovered while singing at the piano before her husband and mother Maria. The next five years were years of torment for Edgar, who strived to care for his wife. His faculties were in vain as, without proper medication, the disease claimed Virginia and she died on January 30, 1847. The painted portrait in our collection showcases Virginia just days after her death—her pale pallor and listless eyes display a stirring image. Not only were these haunting death portraits common during this era, but photographs of the deceased were also common during this time. With the introduction of the daguerreotype in the 1840’s, discovered by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in the 1830’s, meant customers could preserve themselves in a silver-tinted memento, which could then be used for display or to wear (which we will look at later on in this article). Because many potential customers could afford neither paintings nor photographs during their lifetime, the post-mortem photograph became a last resort for families in order to preserve the memories of their loved ones. Although we do not carry a post-mortem photograph in our collection—no, that “post-mortem” photograph of Edgar floating about the internet is not, in fact, of Poe—our Virginia death portrait still stands as a lovely example of capturing beauty in death. (Note: We would like to warn our readers that post-mortem photography is not for the faint of heart. Should you look examples of these up, Google may supply disturbing images.)

Just as preserving one’s image was important to the nineteenth-century, preserving other, physical mementos was important. Of course, material items such as clothing or books were held onto; but, in this case, we’re talking about hair. It may seem peculiar that hair was so precious during this era; however, it may not seem odd when compared to our modern culture’s custom of keeping baby teeth after they fall out.

Just as we sometimes tuck away teeth after they’ve done their Tooth Faerie duty, Victorians would snip a lock of hair, either from the living or, in our case, from the deceased, and also tuck it in a safe place. If cut from the deceased, it was most likely used for mourning and memorial purposes. Our museum has a few examples displaying the crafty ways hair was used, including our hair wreath and a lock of Poe’s hair. The former object, the hair wreath, serves as an example of how the living would save their hair, often in a hair receiver, and re-purpose it to create intricate hairy flowers and leaves. Often times as well, tiny, delicate decorations, such as colored pins and pearls were incorporated to enhance the artistic design of the memorial piece. The latter object mentioned, being a lock of Poe’s hair, serves as our example of a post-mortem memento. Not only does our museum own a lock of Poe’s hair, but other locks of hair remain floating about. In 1875, during the disinterment of Poe’s body, the coffin he was in gave way, exposing his corpse before the public. Those standing by proceeded to cut off pieces of Poe’s hair, perhaps to use for their own mournful ceremonies, or, perhaps, to say they owned a piece of Poe. Regardless of their intentions, these post-mortem mementos remain in circulation to this day, and we are especially proud to own a lock. On a side note, I wonder if Edgar woke up one day in his grave, only to discover he had received a bad haircut? A bad hair day makes for a bad day, period. (Read more about the disinterment of Poe here.)

But what would have been the significance of keeping Poe’s lock of hair, for example, except to prove that the man did, in fact, exist at some point, or if not to use in a decorative and complicated hair wreath? Mourning brooches were a fad that seemed to rise during the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, alongside other pieces of mourning jewelry. For example, according to Meredith Woerner in her article, “Love after Death: The Beautiful, Macabre World of Mourning Jewelry,” pocket watches, lockets, fobs (braided hair ropes with a locket, especially used for pocket watches), cufflinks, and rings were used for these purposes (source). Our museum just had a previous showcasing of both Edgar and Virginia’s hair, carefully preserved in lockets, which you can read more about here.

But why wear these lock-laden brooches during a period of mourning? It was socially acceptable, by all means. These brooches, or other various pieces of mourning jewelry, would perfectly accessorize black clothing worn by family members. Pauline Weston Thomas in her article, “Mourning Fashion, Fashion History” for Fashion-Era Online, provides an excellent explanation of the etiquette of mourning-wear by explaining:

“A widow would mourn for two and a half years, with the first year and a day in full mourning. During that time, pieces of the crape covered just about all of a garment at deepest mourning, but the crape was partially removed to reach the period of secondary mourning which lasted nine months. After that the crape was defunct and a widow could wear fancier lusher fabrics or fabric trims made from black velvet and silk and have them adorned with jet trimming, lace, fringe, and ribbons.

In the final six months, a period called half mourning began. Ordinary clothes could be worn in acceptable subdued shades of grey, white or purple, violet, pansy, heliotrope, soft mauve and of course black. Every change was subtle and gradual, beginning firstly with trims of these colors being added to the black dresses. These were the transitional mourning dresses from secondary mourning to the final stage of lesser ordinary half mourning where colors like purple and cream rosettes, bows, belts and streamers along with jet stones or buttons were introduced.

Similar rules applied for the wearing of hats or bonnets. As the mourning progressed, so the hats and bonnets became more trimmed and fancy, whilst veils became shorter until they were eventually removed altogether.” (Source)

It sounds complicated and like tremendous work to remember, amidst the sorrow and grieving, which clothes to and to not wear. However, fashion was an integral facet of the entire process of mourning during this time, and the previously mentioned mementos only catered to the road to healing.

Alongside photos, pendants, and black attire, certain other accessories were sufficient for the healing process. Tear vials also played their part in this somber culture. Lachrymatory predates Christ, as it is referenced in Psalm 56:8, “Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book?” (Lachrymatory Online). However, this tradition reappeared in the 1800’s, carried on through the Civil War, and there are even contemporary bottles still being made. But what was the purpose of this device in the Victorian era? These bottles simply collected tears during the stages of grief. Once the tears evaporated, this indicated an end to the mourning period. Perhaps Maria Clemm Poe would have used one of these vials at the graveside of her dear son-in-law Eddy, or Edgar, himself, use one to collect his woeful tears after the death of his Virginia. Although we do not have one in our collection, there is a high probability that these were relevant to Poe throughout his life. Or, perhaps parchments, such as his letters and manuscripts, collected his tears? We wouldn’t be surprised. Although we do not own one in our collection, there is a connection between Poe, these tear vials, and Richmond’s own Monumental Church, which is worth exploring. Monumental Church is known within the Poe community as having been the church that Edgar and his “foster” parents, John and Frances Allan, attended. To be exact, they maintained pew number 80. But how do these tear vials connect with this church, and thus with Poe? According to Mary Ann Sullivan, who has also provided a photo example of the side on which these can be seen, “The portico [of the church] serves as the memorial with unusual symbols–the lacrimals (tear vials) in the frieze” (Source). The significance of these tear vials carries greater weight, which we will reveal with more context. Not only was this church formerly a Richmond Theater where Edgar’s mother, Eliza, had performed; but, it serves as a memorial and as testimony for a tragic occurrence. On December 26, 1811, the Richmond Theater caught ablaze, engulfing the theater in flames and claiming several lives. Monumental Church was rebuilt in its place to honor these lost lives, and thus Edgar and the Allans would have been exposed to these lacrimal symbols—these symbols perpetually representing eternal mourning for the lives tragically lost.

This ties us into our last object of mourning, which we have a number of examples of at our museum. Mourning stationery, such as the letter seen below, was a custom practiced to indicate to those you were writing to whether or not you were still mourning. Considering the tubercular rage that swept the nation, it wouldn’t be shocking if these were being sold in surplus. What is markedly distinctive about this stationery, as compared to regular stationery, is the black bordering. In this example, Rufus Griswold is writing a letter dated May 1843, five months after the death of his wife, Caroline. This is an appropriate amount of time to still be using this stationery, for, according to Victorian Web online, Victorian mourning stationery was used up to a year after the loss of a loved one.

An example of mourning stationery, from the Poe Museum’s Rufus W. Griswold Collection.

Despite these material objects and mementos, nothing could truly heal a broken heart or replace the corporeal spirit of lost loved ones. However, the condolence these objects and customs brought must not have completely been in vain, for just as some of these customs were being used before Christ, so are other customs still being used today. Perhaps it is time we reincorporate these Victorian mourning customs? Dear reader, would you implement these customs into your personal life?

Tags history, Poe's life

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe’s Investigations of a 19th-Century Automated Chess Machine – Part I

Post author By zakyoung
Post date November 1, 2017

Charles Babbage’s First Automated Chess Machine on Display in the London Science Museum

Charles Babbage’s First Automated Chess Machine on Display in the London Science Museum

Written By Murray Ellison | November 1st, 2017

Literary Historian, Gerald Kennedy writes, “In Poe’s writing career he worked… as a proofreader, editor, reviewer” of newspapers in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York—the publishing centers of the United States” (64). These venues exposed his imaginative ideas to the largest possible audience available in the country in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Burton R. Pollin commented in 1973 at the Annual Convention of the Poe Society in Baltimore:

“Poe’s whole life was devoted to language-making. Early in his career as a poet, the niceties and refinements of words engaged his passionate devotion. He became a magazinist, as he honorifically called himself, in an age when the trend was ‘Magazine-ward,’ to use a Poe coinage; then he produced a stream of tales, reviews, essays, and lectures (www.eapoe.org) which belie the charges of sloth or negligence leveled at him by magazine proprietors…”

As a journalist, Poe’s attitude about science began to shift from an ambivalent position, as he expressed in his poetry, to a more supportive position. With a reporter’s access to the news, he often wrote enthusiastically about many of the exciting new developments or “treasures” of science. However, it is often hard to determine whether he wrote favorably about science because he was impressed, or if his editors expected him to write positive reports. However, by writing about science as a journalist, he could have it both ways: he could report positively about science, but still keep his personal convictions concealed.

Poe’s first job a journalist began in 1835, when Thomas H. White hired him as a writer for the Southern Literary Messenger (SLM) in Richmond, Virginia. Poe biographer, Arthur Quinn writes that beginning with the December 1835 issue, “Poe did all of the editorial work without credit or title” (251). Burton Polin notes that it was due to Poe’s ability to write attention-grabbing horror and science-fiction stories like, “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” (an imaginary balloon voyage to the moon) “that helped to increase the SLM readership from five hundred, when he started, to thirty-five hundred in 1837—the year he resigned” (Collected Writings 62).

Poe’s first science-based journalism article, published in 1836, is about an “automated” chess machine, “Maelzel’s Chess-Player.” Poe demonstrates that he could not support Maelzel’s claims that the “automaton” could reason. He exposed the hoax of the “automated” chess player with creativity, using the tools he would employ in his later detective stories, and classical scientific research to conduct his inquiry. According to Henry Margenau, Francis Bacon first defined the standards of experimental studies in the seventeenth century and they were closely followed by most professional scientists for several centuries. “Bacon offered scientist a fourfold rule of work: observe, measure, explain, and verify” (52). Although Poe often criticized Bacon and his followers, he was committed to the scientific inquiry methods proposed by Bacon in his journalistic reporting…

Poe observes and measures the machine’s capabilities. He rejects Maelzel’s implied claims that the “Player” was an “automaton.” He offers an alternative hypothesis. As Poe writes, “Perhaps no exhibition of the kind has ever elicited so general attention as the Chess-Player of Maelzel. Wherever seen it has been the object of intense curiosity, to all persons who think. The question of its modus operandi is still undetermined.” He is interested in launching an investigation because “we find everywhere men of mechanical genius…who make no scruple in pronouncing the Automaton a pure machine, unconnected with human agency in its movements” (Complete Works XIV 6). He asks readers to ponder the implications for the future if a machine could calculate without human input. He writes, “There is no analogy, whatever, between the operations of the chess-Player and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage. If we chose to call the former a pure machine, we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond comparison, the most wonderful invention of mankind”(9).

Poe is referring to the prototypes of the “Difference Engine.” The machine was introduced in London between 1791 and 1789 by mechanical engineer Charles Babbage, who has been credited with having been the first inventor of the mechanical computer. His machine could solve complex polynomial equations (Isaacson 18). The Difference Engine No. 2 is a working model that has been restored and re-energized by modern engineers. (The photograph of the machine seen in this article courtesy of www.wikimedia.org). It is currently displayed in The London Science Museum (sciencemuseum.org.uk). Poe acknowledges that Babbage’s machine can compute when a human programmer controls and anticipates the possible outcomes and solves for the expected results. Poe argues that the “Player” would have to be “the most wonderful invention of mankind” to counter the moves of a human opponent. However, he is skeptical that the machine can do what Maelzel claimed.

In the December Poe Blog, read how Poe investigates and exposes the Richmond, Virginia exhibition of “Maelzel Automated Chess Player.”

Selected References

Isaacson, Walter. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.

Kennedy, Gerald. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Margenau, Henry. The Scientist. New York: Life Science Library, 1964.

Poe, Edgar A. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume VIII: Early Criticism I. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

—. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume XIV: Essays and Miscellaneous. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

—. The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Eds. Burton R. Pollin, and Joseph V. Ridgeley. New York: Gordian Press, 1997.

Pollin, Burton R. “Creator of Words.” Baltimore: Lecture delivered at the Fifty-first Annual Commemoration of the Edgar A. Poe Society, July 7, 1973. Web. 1 March 2015.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998.

Websites:

www.eapoe.org Published by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Click here for more information on Babbage’s ‘Difference Engine’

*This article is extracted from a discussion of Poe’s 1835 journalistic investigation, “Maelzel’s Chess Player, and is part of Murray Ellison’s VCU Master’s Thesis on Poe and Nineteenth-Century © 2015.

Tags history, science

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe’s Early Schooling and Interest in Science

Post author By zakyoung
Post date October 5, 2017
3 Comments on Poe’s Early Schooling and Interest in Science

Drawing of Poe at Ft. Monroe http://bellybuzz.squarespace.com/storage/post-images/celebrity-veterans/Poe%20at%20Fort%20Monroe.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1306781820853

Written by Murray Ellison

Poe’s early schooling and military training inspire and shape his interest in science. According to Kenneth Silverman, Poe’s secondary education started after his foster parents moved from England to Richmond. In 1821, “Edgar attended the private academy of Joseph H. Clarke,” which served to prepare young gentlemen to obtain “an honorable entrance in any University in the United States.” One of Poe’s classmates wrote a testimonial that he was one of the top students in the class (23). In The Poe Log, Thomas and Jackson list the classes that students typically enrolled in while at the school, including English, Languages (French, Latin, and Greek), Arithmetic, Geometry, Trigonometry, Navigation (using celestial observations), Gunnery and Projectiles, Optics, Geography, Maps and Charts, and Astronomy (41, 48). Continuing a description of Poe’s education and experiences, Silverman writes, In February 1826, Edgar Allan Poe was among the first group of students enrolled at the University of Virginia. School records indicate that he was a bright and dedicated student. However, hefty financial and gambling debts to the University and his classmates left him hopelessly in debt. When his foster father refused to continue paying for Poe’s college expenses, he was forced him to drop out of college in March 1827 (Silverman 29-34).

Major William F. Hecker, the author of Private Perry and Mister Poe, writes that Poe enlisted in the United States Army on May 26, 1827, under the alias of Private Poe. He spent three years as an artilleryman stationed for the longest period at Fort Moultrie, in a coastal area of Sullivan’s Island outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Poe spent much of his Army service learning cannon drill and maintenance. This task needed to be performed by a soldier who had extraordinary expertise and skill in the areas of measurement, logistical planning, and design. Army records indicate that Poe was “the most technically competent artillerist in his battery.” He was assigned to “oversee the ammunition supply of the battery.” He was quickly advanced to an artificer, a technical job concerning the “weights and measures of iron and chemicals” (xxxiv). According to Army records, “Poe was the army’s expert bomb artisan, carefully designing, preparing and constructing inter-connected systems of iron and chemicals with the ultimate goal of explosively destroying his creation (xxxv- xxix). It was extraordinary for that time that Poe was promoted to a Sergeant Major in less than two years after he enlisted (xxix). Hecker concludes that Poe’s four years in the Army exposed him to many disparate subjects such as Cryptography, Geography, Oceanography, and Astronomy (xii). Also, he was able to employ many of his training and experiences in his journalistic and fictional works.

Nineteenth-century science and journalism were undergoing dramatic new advances during and after Poe’s military service during the same the time that he was also embarking on a writing career. These next essays will focus on the ways in which his subsequent journalistic news articles, columns, and essays reflected his and the public’s interest in the emerging scientific trends of the nineteenth century. Much scholarship has been dedicated to Poe’s poetry and fiction, but little to his science narratives written in the style of journalism.

George Daniels, in American Science in the Age of Jackson asserts that many of the most important theories and discoveries of the nineteenth century had already “been well-formulated and new subjects of controversy began to appear.” He argues, “Americans had contributed only minimally to the developing body of world science before the twentieth century” (3-4). This period was more important because it led to new ways for the “popularizers,” to explain science to the public (40). During the 1830’s, American journalism was beginning to reflect many of the significant social and technological changes of the nineteenth century. Improvements in printing technologies helped to produce and distribute newspapers and magazines more efficiently and less expensively to the public than had previously been possible. In Discovering the News, Michael Schudson reports, “The development of railroad transportation and telegraphic communications were the necessary preconditions for a cheap, mass-circulation, news-hungry, and independent press” (32). With these changes, newspapers and magazines suddenly were becoming more prevalent to the American public. Also, their ability to influence public attitudes about important issues, such as science, increased as their circulation rose. In 1830, the country had 650 weeklies and 64 dailies, with an average circulation of 78,000. By 1840, there were 1,141 weeklies and 138 dailies, with an average circulation of 300,000 (14). Schudson argues that early nineteenth-century penny newspapers and journals “invented the modern concept of the news.” In the “1830’s newspapers also began to reflect the activities of an increasingly varied, urban, and middle-class society” (22-23). The public’s interest in science also created the need for a new class of writers who could present scientific information in ways that the public could understand. At the same time, new print media sources, such as newspapers, journals, and encyclopedias offered these writers new powerful methods of communicating about science to the public.

It is, therefore, likely that the increased position of newspapers and magazines in the 1830’s influenced Poe’s decision to publish his works in these new powerful communication mediums. Gerald Kennedy writes, “In Poe’s writing career he worked… as a “proofreader, editor, reviewer” of newspapers in Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York—the publishing centers of the United States” (64). These venues also provided him with the “shelter in some happier star” to bring his imaginative ideas to the largest possible audience. Burton R. Pollin comments, in 1973, at the Annual Convention of the Poe Society in Baltimore, “Poe’s whole life was devoted to language-making. Early in his career as a poet, the niceties and refinements of words engaged his passionate devotion. He became a magazinist, as he honorifically called himself, in an age when the trend was “Magazine-ward.” To “use a Poe coinage; then he produced a stream of tales, reviews, essays, and lectures (www.eapoe.org). As a journalist, Poe’s attitude about science began to shift from an ambivalent to a more supportive position. With a reporter’s access to the news, he often wrote enthusiastically about many of the exciting new developments or “treasures” of science. It is hard to determine whether he wrote favorably about science because he was impressed about his topics, or if his editors expected him to write positive reports. By writing about science as a journalist, he could have it both ways: he could report about science, but still keep his personal convictions concealed. Works from this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, will cite from several volumes of the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by James Harrison. In the next column, I will discuss one of Poe’s first investigative reports for the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, “Maazel’s Chess-Player.”

Selected Sources

Daniels, George. American Science in the Age of Jackson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.

Hecker, William F. Private Perry and Mister Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

Kennedy, Gerald. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Poe. Edgar A. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume XIV: Essays and Miscellaneous. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

Pollin, Burton R. “Creator of Words.” Baltimore: Lecture delivered at the Fifty-first Annual Commemoration of the Edgar A. Poe Society, July 7, 1973. Web. 1 March 2015.

Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar Allan Poe: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Murray Ellison

About the Author

Dr. Murray Ellison received a Master’s in Education from Temple University (1973), a Master’s Degree of Arts in English Literature from Virginia Commonwealth University (2015), and a Doctorate in Education at Virginia Tech (1988). He is married and has three adult daughters. He retired as the Virginia Director of Community Corrections for the Department of Correctional Education in 2009. He is the founder and chief editor of this literary blog and is an editor for the International Correctional Education Journal. He is Co-Editor of the 2017 Poetry Book, Mystic Verses by Shambhushivananda. He also serves as a board member, volunteer tour guide, and the Facilities Planning Committee Coordinator at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA, and writes a monthly column for the Museum website, thepoeblog.org. He has taught literature classes on Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and F.Scott Fitzgerald (thus far) at the OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Richmond. He is the organizer and Coördinator of The First Fridays Classic Book Club, and is the co-organizer, along with Rebecca Elizabeth Jones, of the VCU Working Titles Book Club. Contact Murray at ellisonms2@vcu.edu, or leave a Comment at the bottom of any post.

Tags history, Poe's life, science

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe & Science with Murray Ellison

Post author By zakyoung
Post date September 1, 2017

Harry Clark’s Illustration of Poe’s Ship in a Whirlpool

“M.S. Found in a Bottle:” A Look at Poe’s Skepticism of 19th-Century Science, Part II

Murray Ellison | August 31, 2017

By being unobserved, the unnamed narrator of Poe’s, “M.S. Found in a Bottle” is looking at the relics of science on the ship he is standing on as an outsider. He concludes that much of nineteenth-century science is outdated and largely based on theories of misguided scientists like Francis Bacon and Symmes. He describes the ship as having a “severely simple bow and antiquated stern,” that reminds him of “an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago.” The captain’s “gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes are Sybils of the future. A Sybil is a witch or a harbinger of dark and dangerous times. The narrator observes that the “cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron clasped folios, moldering instruments of science and obsolete long-forgotten charts” (144). Poe believed that the tools of nineteenth-century science could not chart a course to the future and that the captain is sailing to an unknown destination and using outdated maps. The narrator’s assumptions about the inadequacies of the ship are confirmed as the journey reaches the frightening abyss Symmes imagined at the South Pole. Poe exploits and, perhaps satirizes Symmes’s theories and the fears that readers associated with such beliefs when the narrator encounters the Pole’s vortex:

Oh, horror upon horror!—the ice opens up to the right, and to the left, and suddenly we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round, the borders of a gigantic amphitheater, the summit of those walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny! The circles grow small—we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool—amid a roaring… and thundering of ocean and of the tempest, the ship is quivering—oh God! And—going down (146).

Poe uses the phrase, “whirling dizzily,” to show that those who believe in the systems of nineteenth-century science will soon be whirling around and too dizzy to understand what is happening when new technologies replace their antiquated belief systems. The dark and distant walls of the ship represent the barriers that are blocking progress to a more enlightened future. He regrets that, by associating with this ship and these antiquated ideas, he will have little time to “ponder about his destiny.”

Poe’s narrative flaunts the distinctions between the uncertainties and dangers of nineteenth-century discoveries, as well as his obsessions with death. He uses the term, “immense concentric circles” to mock the “Concentric Circles” theory. The antiquated approaches that scientists have thus far trusted, he suggests, will be inundated by the roaring, “bellowing, and thundering of the ocean and tempest.” The foundations that they have based their beliefs on are “quivering.” Poe’s use of the word, “God,” juxtaposed with “going down,” suggests that he believed that organized religion is also going down along with the antiquated beliefs of nineteenth-century science. However, this usage also indicates that Poe believed in a Supreme Being. The term “whirling dizzily” also indicates that he realized that the Universe is being controlled by a force greater than humans can ever control. As the ship is sucked into the Pole, the narrator thrusts his journal into the sea— hopefully for readers of the future to discover. Although this short story is Poe’s first published work, it foreshadows his most comprehensive views about science and the future of the Universe in his final work, Eureka: A Prose Poem.

About The Author

Dr. Murray Ellison received a Master’s in Education from Temple University (1973), a Master’s Degree of Arts in English Literature from Virginia Commonwealth University (2015), and a Doctorate in Education at Virginia Tech (1988). He is married and has three adult daughters. He retired as the Virginia Director of Community Corrections for the Department of Correctional Education in 2009. He is the founder and chief editor of this literary blog and is an editor for the International Correctional Education Journal. He is the Co-Editor of the 2016 book of poetry, Mystic Verses, by Shambhushivananda. He also serves as a board member, volunteer tour guide, poetry judge, and Facilities Planning Committee Coordinator at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond Virginia. He teaches literature classes at the OSHER, Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Richmond; is the organizer and coordinator of The First Fridays Classic Book Club; and is co-founder and organizer, along with Rebecca Elizabeth Jones, of the VCU English Alumni, Working Titles Book Club. Contact Murray at ellisonms2@vcu.edu.

Works Cited

Gewirtz, Isaac. Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul, Ed. New York: New York Public Library, 2013.

Levine, Stuart and Susan F. Edgar Allan Poe: Eureka. Eds. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2004.

Poe, Edgar A.. Tales and Sketches, 1831-1849. Ed. Thomas O. Mabbott. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

Poe, Harry Lee. Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012.

Pollin, Burton R. “Creator of Words.” Baltimore: Lecture delivered at the Fifty-first Annual Commemoration of the Edgar A. Poe Society, July 7, 1973.

Seaborn, Captain Adam (pseudonym Captain John Symmes). Symzonia-a Voyage of Discovery. New York: Printed by J. Seymour, 1820.

Thomas, Dwight and David Jackson, Ed. The Poe Log- A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849. Boston: G.B. Hall and Company, 1987.

Tags education, history, Poe's Works, science

The Poe Museum Blog

Interactive Mock Trial Used As Educational Resource

Post author By zakyoung
Post date August 8, 2017

For those unfamiliar with the Mock Trial, it’s our most popular offering for school groups and it works really well for adults, too! We take Poe’s great story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and treat it as though it were testimony from a murderer on trial in a courtroom. Before we read the story, we “cast” several roles: judge, prosecuting attorney, defense attorney and jury foreman. Everyone else is on the jury!

How Does It Work?

The judge calls the court to order and the defendant (a Poe staffer, typically the Education Coordinator) takes the stand. Poe’s story serves as his testimony. Then the lawyers take turns cross-examining the defendant–the prosecutor wants to show that the defendant is sane and thus responsible for his actions, so that he can be found guilty. The defense attorney wants to show that the defendant is insane and thus not responsible for his actions. Note that this means that the defendant is often at odds with his own lawyer, since the defendant has no doubt that he is perfectly sane!

The lawyers then present their closing arguments to the jury, which then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. The judge gets to decide what happens to the defendant based on the verdict!

Hittin’ The Road!

Our Education Coordinator will be taking the Mock Trial on the road to teachers from Henrico County at the end of the month–teachers from all over Henrico will gather at Varina High School to do the Mock Trial before school starts for the year.

Interested in bringing your group to the Poe Museum for a tour, Mock Trial, or more?

Contact our Education Coordinator, Dean Knight, at tours@poemuseum.org or 804-648-5523 Ext. 221.

Tags education, programs

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe’s Hair Sheds Light on Unsolved Mystery

Post author By zakyoung
Post date August 3, 2017

Portion of Poe's Hair from Collection of John Reznikoff.

Portion of Poe’s Hair from Collection of John Reznikoff.

From June 22 until September 17, 2017, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia will feature Investigating History: Testing Edgar Allan Poe’s Hair, a groundbreaking new exhibit examining the latest scientific testing of the nineteenth century author Edgar Allan Poe’s hair by University of Virginia scientist Stephen Macko. These tests provide valuable clues to the mystery surrounding Poe’s final days and sudden, unexplained death at the age of forty. The exhibit brings together more samples of Poe’s hair than have been seen in the same place since they were still on Poe’s head back in 1849. Other hair samples on display include a lock of Poe’s wife Virginia Clemm Poe’s hair as well as a lock of hair from Poe’s friend Eliza White, the subject of Poe’s poem “To Eliza.”

On Thursday, August 24 from 6-9 p.m. the Poe Museum will celebrate this important exhibit with an Unhappy Hour featuring “The Tell-Tale Hair,” a short talk by Stephen “The Hair Doctor” Macko, the University of Virginia scientist who performed the latest analysis of Poe’s hair.

Stephen Macko is a Professor of Isotope and Organic Geochemistry in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has authored over 300 refereed research papers and books including the singular work in the field, Organic Geochemistry. He was elected a Fellow of the Geochemical Society and of the European Association of Geochemistry and was a Corresponding Editor for EOS, the publication of the American Geophysical Union. He recently held the position of Program Officer for Geobiology and Low Temperature Geochemistry at the US National Science Foundation.

His research includes studies on chemosynthesis at cold seeps and hydrothermal vents using the Johnson Sea Link and Alvin submersibles; identifying geochemical biomarkers of climate change in high Arctic marine sediments and in soils of sub-Saharan Africa. He has been a scientist or chief scientist on numerous oceanographic expeditions, being involved in five legs of the Ocean Drilling Program including the Antarctic Legs 113 and 119 and the sub-Arctic Leg 105 and in dives to depths of over 500m in the submersible Johnson Sea Link. He was a principal research scientist on the High Arctic Canadian Ice Island during five field seasons. He has been long been involved with oil spill assessment. His laboratory has been featured on the Discovery and National Geographic television channels (The Moche Murder Mystery, Ultimate Guide to Mummies), the independent Peabody Award winning film, King Corn, as well internationally, including the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS, Korea), Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC, Yeosu, Korea), Ríkisútvarpið Public Television (RUV, Reykjavik, Iceland) and Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

Tags collections

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe’s First Published Story about a Shipwreck Foreshadows Eureka: A Prose Poem (Part I of II)

Post author By zakyoung
Post date July 31, 2017

By Murray Ellison

Poe’s first important tale, “MS. Found in a Bottle,” (1833) won the Baltimore Visiter’s first prize for fiction. Poe scholar, Thomas Mabbott calls it a “masterpiece,” contending that “winning the contest set the author on the way to lasting fame” (Tales and Sketches 131). The Visiter wrote that “Poe’s tales are eminently distinguished by a wild, vigorous and poetical imagination, a rich style and a various and curious learning” (Thomas and Jackson 137). “MS.” reveals Poe’s interest in a broad range of science-related topics, including secret writing, conundrums, scientific realism, and life after death. Carlson proposes that the story mocks the popular sea voyages of that period, specifically those of Captain Adam Seward’s (pseudonym for Captain John Symmes) 1820 Symzonia-a Voyage of Discovery. Symmes’ “Theory of Concentric Circles” proposed that the Earth was hollow at both Poles (119). It presumed that a ship approaching the Poles would be sucked into an abyss through the earth. Poe’s selection of the story’s setting indicates that he was aware of the public’s interest in this scientific topic.

Poe reports in the style of a science journalist who is intending to submit his story to a travel or nautical magazine: “Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. Isaac Gewirtz contends that, “Poe’s story was never meant to correspond with the world. The location was selected to flaunt transparent and geographic pretense” (23). Poe writes: “We also had on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium” (136), using both scientific and literary language to add to the realism of the story. “The hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which, without equaling the first violence of the Simoom, were still more terrific than any tempest I had ever before encountered” (138). As the ship advances, the boundaries between reality and imagination become blurred. The narrator’s invisibility to the crew suggests that the entire journey is taking place in his mind, i.e., he can see the crew and captain of the ship, but they cannot see him. He remarks, “About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew. They paid me no manner of attention, and, although I stood in the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence” (143). By being unobserved, the narrator is looking at the relics of science as an outsider. He concludes that much of nineteenth-century science is outdated and largely based on theories of misguided scientists like Francis Bacon and Symmes.

*This article, which is part of Murray Ellison’s 2015 Virginia Commonwealth University M.A. Thesis on Poe and 19th-Century Science, was first published in www.Litchatte.com on 3/16/2017.

In next month’s Poe Blog, I will discuss the horror of Poe’s tumultuous story as it is experienced by the narrator. I will also comment on how this early Poe story begins to connect his grand theories of the Universe with some of those found in his last published work – Eureka: A Prose Poem.

Works Cited
Gewirtz, Isaac. Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul, Ed. New York: New York Public Library, 2013.
Levine, Stuart and Susan F. Edgar Allan Poe: Eureka. Eds. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2004.
Poe, Edgar A.. Tales and Sketches, 1831-1849. Ed. Thomas O. Mabbott. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
Poe, Harry Lee. Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012.
Fifty-first Annual Commemoration of the Edgar A. Poe Society, July 7, 1973.
Seaborn, Captain Adam (pseudonym Captain John Symmes). Symzonia-a Voyage of Discovery. New York: Printed by J. Seymour, 1820.
Thomas, Dwight and David Jackson, Ed. The Poe Log- A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849. Boston: G.B. Hall and Company, 1987.

Murray Ellison

Tags horror, Poe's Works, science fiction

The Poe Museum Blog

Sonnet-to Science: Poe’s Early Ambivalence About 19th-Century Technologies

Post author By zakyoung
Post date November 22, 2016

By the time that Poe started writing professionally, the Industrial Revolution had already introduced many dramatic advancements that affected the lifestyles and culture of the nineteenth-century public. For example, the literacy rate had steadily increased in the United States, and many people were able to understand most articles written in the newspaper. They could also travel to many distant parts of the country by rail and communicate to almost anyone almost instantly via the telegraph. Through the development of the Daguerreotype (an early prototype of photography), family members could obtain realistic and long lasting images of their loved ones to remember for generations. The introduction of a new class of highly powerful telescopes demonstrated that the Universe is much larger than anyone had previously imagined. Even the most avid modern readers of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories may overlook that many of his works provide an informative account of many of these technological changes and how those events affected the public.

During this period, there was a need for a new class of writers who could write about emerging scientific information in a way the new consumers of science information could understand. The newly emerging professional scientists in the United States was neither equipped nor interested in communicating about science with the public. Lightman refers to those who did attempt to communicate to the public as the “popularizers of science,” and suggests that “Their success was partially due to their ability to present the huge mass of scientific fact in the form of compelling stories” (188). He contends that it is essential for our current understanding of nineteenth-century culture to explore writers like Edgar Allan Poe, who skillfully and prolifically commented on many of the significant popular scientific trends of his lifetime. Similarly, John Limon writes that Poe engaged in literary “negotiation with science,” asserting that his works both foreshadowed and critiqued several emerging scientific developments and trends of the future (19). Paul Faytor argues that “there was a two-way traffic between science and science writers in the nineteenth century. He notes that many of the inventions of professional scientists helped to shape science fiction and that many ideas imagined by science fiction writers found their way into actual inventions. (256). Many scholars (Gewirtz, Hoffman, Willis, and Tresch) acknowledge that Poe was one of the most important leaders in developing both the genres of science fiction and detective fiction. His works in those areas provide abundant examples that he anticipated forecasted future developments in technical areas such as exploration of the Poles, astronomy, physics, space travel, photography, electronic communications, and the forensic sciences. Limon argues that lay writers like Poe and Hawthorne, or those without “letters” who were interested in writing about science, struggled with professional scientists to establish their authority to speak about emerging scientific issues (19). Poe had not received much formal training as a scientist but had considerable exposure to scientific ideas in his education, technical experiences in the military, and in his exposure to science news as a journalist. He believed that an observant and skilled writer did not need professional science training or to be sanctioned by any official science accreditation organizations before he could write about science.

“Sonnet—To Science”

The issues discussed so far are best brought together in one of Poe’s earliest poems, “Sonnet—To Science, “in which he first demonstrates that he is interested in science, i.e., he is fascinated, but also cautious but the potential dangers of science. The poem was first included, but not titled, in a limited run volume of poems Poe wrote entitled Tamerlane (1829), which first “appeared in the Saturday Evening Post” on September 11, 1830 (Thomas and Jackson 1). “Sonnet” uses literary themes from ancient Greek literature. Such figures were also later utilized by several of the Romantic poets of the eighteenth century. Drawing an example from these discussions, William Wordsworth’s poem, “The Tables Turned” (1798) cautions that scientists ruin the value of nature when they tried to over-analyze it. The speaker suggests that we should reject traditional science and learn to experience and appreciate nature through our senses:

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:–

We murder to dissect.

Poe, like the Romantics, expressed opposition to seventeenth and eighteenth century Enlightenment Age philosophers and scientists, like Sir Francis Bacon, who held to a strong belief in the rational and empirical methods of science, and denigrated the value of emotion, imagination, and belief (Gewirtz 14). Literary critic Daniel Hoffman compares “Sonnet” to the Romantic poem, “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which notes that all inventions and creations built by men are impermanent. Hoffman views “Poe’s lone sonnet as an outcry against the antipoetic materialism of the modern scientific age…” (47). However, an alternative reading also considers that there are some verses in “Sonnet” indicating that Poe may have also believed that science could offer new inspiration and writing topics to the writers of the Industrial Age. In the opening quatrain of the sonnet, Poe personifies and addresses his question about Science as follows:

Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering heart

Why pryest thou thus upon the poet’s heart?

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? (1-4 )

The poet reminisces that “Science” was, at one time, valued by the ancient thinkers as the “True Daughter of Old Time.” Perhaps, in this case, the “True daughter” represents that science was once able to provide a source of inspiration and wisdom to artists and philosophers. In lines two and three, Poe laments the intrusion of scientific research (“peering heart”) “upon the poet’s heart.” He uses the “Vulture” as a metaphor, in line four, to represent the dark and destructive power of science. He believes that the vulture of Industrial Age science has caused the poet to take flight from his bright dreams and forced him to replace them with the dull realities of mundane existence.

As this inquiry continues, the narrator generates additional questions and insights he has gained by weighing the advantages and disadvantages of science:

How should he love thee? Or deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies?

Albiet he soared with an undaunted wing(5 – 8).

“Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering/To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies” could be interpreted in more than one way. Poe asks an important but ambiguously stated rhetorical question in these passages, but leaves it up to the reader to provide the answer. From the negative side, he could be pondering whether science will abandon the wandering and lost poet and relegate him to a life of isolation and extinction. On the positive side, he could be proposing that the artist in the new age of technology could reconcile with science and allow him to soar “with an undaunted wing.” During and before the nineteenth century, astronomers with powerful telescopes were learning important new facts about the solar system which greatly expanded conventional views of the known world. Perhaps Poe was paying respect to the astronomer Tycho Brahe, who significantly improved the power and the accuracy of the telescope in the sixteenth century. These advancements made it possible for him to discover a shining star in the constellation Cassiopeia that briefly appeared in 1574, but was never seen again (Thoren). Consequently, Poe may have been considering that nineteenth-century inventions might offer some new possibilities for discovering truths and “treasure in the jeweled skies,” and give him some new topics to write about. However, if Poe is alluding to Brahe’s fleeting planetary discovery in “Sonnet,” he may also be cautioning his readers, like Percy Bysshe Shelley did, about the uncertainties and impermanent nature of new inventions and discoveries. Poe addresses several significant questions about science:

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven Hamadryad from the wood

To seek shelter in some happier star? (9-11).

Lines nine and ten ask if the worldly vulture has disturbed the serenity and the creativity of the ancient mythological Greek goddess Diana and the wood nymph Hamadryad. The implied answer, of course is—yes. In verse eleven, he asks if these figures have been driven to seek “shelter in some happier star.” This line could be read as an indication that since their serenity has been disturbed, then they can no longer be creative. However, on the more positive side, these lines might also indicate that Poe believes that science could provide a shelter and some new opportunities for the nineteenth-century writer.

In final tercet, Poe returns to his original question about science: “Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood?” This idea advances a somewhat softer and more positive tone about science than Poe offered in the previous verses. It could be viewed as positive that science has rescued a water goodness from a flood. However, Poe does not address this question in the poem. By the end verses, Poe personally injects himself into the discussion by lamenting that science has snatched away “the summer dream beneath the tamarind tree” from “me.” Since the tamarind is the large pod of a tropical tree which also contains the juiciest pulp of the tree, Poe may be lamenting that science has deprived him of the inspirational juice needed for his writing. Poe’s earliest poem about science, “Sonnet” illustrates that he wrestled with some of the same opposing positions as Romantic writers. Shelley and Wordsworth viewed literature as a struggle between those who wrote about the world from an artistic or a scientific point of view. However, rather than staking a one-sided position against science, as many of the Romantic poets, Poe’s early poem shows that his attitudes about science were somewhat ambivalent, and still being formed at the beginning of his writing career.

Works Cited

Faytor, Paul. “Strange New Worlds of Space and Time: Late Victorian Science and Science Fiction.” Victorian Science in Context. Ed. Barnard A. Lightman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Gewirtz, Isaac. Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul, Ed. New York: New York Public Library, 2013.

Hoffman, Daniel. Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe. New York: Paragon House, 1972.

Limon, John. The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Lightman, Bernard. Victorian Science in Context. Ed. University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume VII: Poetry. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.

Tresch, John. The Romantic Machine. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Willis, Martin. Mesmerists, Monsters, and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth Century. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006

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Murray Ellison received a Master’s in Education at Temple University (1973), a Master’s of Arts in English Literature at VCU (2015), and a Doctorate in Education at Virginia Tech in 1987. He is married and has three adult employed daughters. He retired as the Virginia Director of Community Corrections for the Department of Correctional Education in 2009. He is the founder and chief editor of the literary blog, www.LitChatte.com. He is an editor for the “Correctional Education Magazine,” and editing a book of poetry, soon to be published written by Indian mystic, Shambhuvasanda. He also serves as a board member, volunteer tour guide, poetry judge, and all-around helper at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond Virginia. He will be teaching literature classes at the Osher Program at the University of Richmond in the beginning of 2017. You can write to Murray here or at ellisonms2@vcu.edu

Tags history, science

The Poe Museum Blog

Poe Museum Announces Loser of Its Latest Poll

Post author By zakyoung
Post date November 16, 2016
3 Comments on Poe Museum Announces Loser of Its Latest Poll

The votes are in, and the loser is…Daniel Payne.

During the Poe Museum’s recent exhibit CSI: Poe, we asked our guests to help solve the murder of Mary Rogers. Back in 1841, the case stumped the authorities, so Edgar Allan Poe tried his hand at solving it. Here is a little background on the case:

Mary Rogers

The Victim
Mary Cecelia Rogers
(1820-1841)
The lovely Mary Rogers made waves in New York when she took a job in Anderson’s Cigar Emporium. At a time when proper ladies did not work in public, Rogers became a public figure renowned for her beauty, and men from across the city came to visit Anderson’s store to flirt with her.

Timeline of Events

1837
Seventeen-year-old Mary Cecilia Rogers and her widowed mother Phoebe Rogers moved to New York City where Mary made waves by taking a job in Anderson’s Cigar Emporium. At a time when “proper ladies” did not work in public, Rogers became a public figure renowned for her beauty, and men from across the city came to visit Anderson’s store to flirt with her. One of these gentlemen said he spent an entire afternoon in the store just to exchange glances with her, and another dedicated a poem to her.

October 4, 1838
Mary Rogers disappeared, leaving a suicide note. Her fame as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” at Anderson’s Cigar Emporium caused the New York papers to report the event. Then, just as mysteriously as she departed, she returned the next day. The New York Sun reported that her supposed disappearance had merely been a hoax. Later that year, Mary quit working at Anderson’s Cigar Emporium and went to help her mother, who had purchased a boarding house.

1841
June
Mary Rogers’s Engagement
In June 1841, Mary Rogers engaged herself to the cork-cutter Daniel Payne. Alfred Crommelin, a rejected suitor who was living in Phoebe Rogers’s boardinghouse, quickly moved out of the house, telling Mary that she could contact him if she were ever in danger.

July 25
Early on Sunday morning, Daniel Payne walked his fiancée Mary Rogers to the omnibus. She told him she intended to ride across town to see relatives and would return later that day. Payne was to have met her at that time to walk her home. A summer storm drove him into a bar in which he spent the afternoon, missing his appointment.

July 28
The Discovery of the Body
When Mary did not return home, Alfred Crommelin led a search for her. After looking for her in Manhattan, he crossed the Hudson River to Hoboken, a popular resort town for New Yorkers escaping the heat of the crowded city. Shortly after his arrival in Hoboken on July 28, three men in a rowboat found a woman’s body floating offshore near Sybil’s Cave. They carried the body to the shore, where it lay decomposing in the hot sun for an hour before the magistrate arrived. The coroner performed a cursory examination of the body and determined that the victim had been strangled with a cord that was still tied around her throat.

Some newspaper reporters doubted that the badly decomposed corpse found in Hoboken was even Mary Rogers. After all, her face was unrecognizable by the time she was pulled from the river. They speculated that Mary had simply eloped and settled in some other part of the country. Her former suitor Alfred Crommelin had identified her by her arm hair and by her clothing.

1841-1842
The Investigation
At the time of Mary’s murder, New York City Police Department did not yet exist. Instead, the city of over 300,000 was protected by a system of a hundred city marshals, about thirty constables, and a volunteer night watch responsible for patrolling the city in order to prevent crime. Once a crime had been committed, the best available investigative technique consisted of interrogating as many suspects as necessary until a confession could be obtained. Since Mary was reported missing in New York while her body was found in Hoboken, both city’s magistrates fought over who had jurisdiction in the case. After the New Jersey coroner performed an autopsy and buried the remains in Hoboken, the New York coroner had her badly decomposed disinterred and carried across the Hudson for a second autopsy days later. Four years later, dogged both by its failure to identify Mary’s killer and by its inability to control increasingly rowdy Christmas celebrations, New York City replaced its volunteer patrol with a police force of 1,200 salaried officers.

August
About a month after the discovery of Mary’s body, two boys claimed to find some of her clothing in a nearby thicket. A sketch of the thicket appeared in the New York Tribune. The boys were later identified as the sons of Frederica Loss, the operator of a Hoboken roadhouse where vacationers came for drinks during their visit to the river-side resort. Although many believed the thicket to be the site of the murder, Poe thought the scene might have been staged. Suspicion fell of the Loss boys when it was discovered that it was in Mrs. Loss’s roadhouse that Mary was last seen alive.

October 7
Suicide of Daniel Payne
About three months after Mary’s death, her fiancé Daniel Payne visited Hoboken and committed suicide on the spot at which he believed Mary had been murdered. He left a note saying, “To the World – here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.”

1842

June 1842
Poe Tries to Find a Publisher for His Theory
While living in Philadelphia, Poe followed the Mary Rogers case in the newspapers and became increasingly frustrated with the magistrates’ inability to capture the killer. By June 1842, he had written his own solution in the form of the short story “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” in which he believed he had “indicated the assassin in a manner which will give renewed impetus to [the] investigation.” As he wrote editor Joseph Snodgrass, Poe envisioned his story would instruct police forces in the science of solving crimes by demonstrating “an analysis of the true principles which should direct inquiry in similar cases.” Magazines in Baltimore and Boston rejected the story before Poe finally found a publisher.

Weehawken, where the body was found

November 1842
Poe publishes the first installment of “The Mystery of Marie Roget”
William Snowden, editor of the New York-based Ladies’ Companion, had contributed to a reward to be offered to anyone who could identify Mary’s murderer. It was likely his personal interest in the case that led Snowden to publish Poe’s story “The Mystery of Marie Roget” to (in Poe’s words) “give renewed impetus to [the] investigation.”

Although he let everyone know his story was based on a true crime, Poe was certain to change the names and locations to protect the innocent—and possibly to protect himself from a libel suit. Here is a guide to which character in the story represents each person in the case:

Reality Fiction
Mary Rogers = Marie Roget
Phoebe Rogers = Madame Roget
Mr. Anderson = Monsieur Le Blanc
Alfred Crommelin = Monsieur Beauvais
Daniel Payne = Monsieur Jacques St. Eustache
Frederica Loss = Madame Deluc

The tale was so long that Snowden decided to publish it in three installments. The same month the first installment appeared Frederica Loss died, supposedly telling a magistrate that Mary had died during a botched abortion. The new evidence caused Poe to rewrite the second and third installments to avoid being proven wrong.

February 1843
Poe Publishes Final Installment of “The Mystery of Marie Roget”
Just as readers reached the final paragraphs of the last installment of “The Mystery of Marie Roget” in the February 1843 issue of Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion, expecting the revelation of the murderer’s identity, they instead saw the narrative interrupted by a note from the editor explaining why the killer’s name could not be printed. The note reads, “For reasons which we shall not specify but which to many readers will appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here omitting, from the MSS. placed in our hands, such portion as details the following up of the apparently slight clew obtained by Dupin. We feel it advisable only to state, in brief, that the result desired was brought to pass; and that an individual assassin was convicted, upon his own confession, of the murder of Marie Rogêt, and that the Prefect fulfilled punctually, although with reluctance, the terms of his compact with the Chevalier. Mr. Poe’s article concludes with the following words. — Eds.” The suggestion was that the name was being suppressed either to avoid a libel suit or to protect someone of influence.

Literary scholars, however, believe Poe wrote this fake note himself in order to allow him to claim he had solved the mystery without actually having to solve it. Five years later, Poe supposedly told his fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman that the killer was a Naval officer named Spencer.

The Suspects

Daniel Payne
Payne was a heavy drinking, violent cork cutter. Although Mary’s mother did not approve of him (or because of it), Mary accepted his marriage proposal. Daniel admitted that he went to a bar instead of walking Mary home after her visit to relatives, and police accepted his alibi. One month after her death, he visited Hoboken and committed suicide on the spot at which he believed Mary had been murdered.

Alfred Crommelin
Crommelin, who listed his profession as “gentleman,” was a tenant in Phoebe Rogers’s boardinghouse when he became infatuated with Mary. Although he stormed out of the house after seeing Mary and Daniel engaged in indiscreet behavior, he later told Mary she should contact him if she ever felt she was in danger. The week she disappeared, Mary left a rose in Crommelin’s office. He was out of his office when she left her gift, and he did not understand what it meant.

John Anderson
John Anderson owned a successful New York City cigar store, which eventually employed Mary Rogers. His bold decision to flaunt respectability by hiring a beautiful woman may have been controversial, but it was great for business. After the death of Mary Rogers, critics blamed him for exposing her to the temptations that led to her death, but police ruled him out as a suspect. Some critics theorized that Poe, who knew Anderson, wrote “The Mystery of Marie Roget” to protect Anderson from implication in the murder.

Later in life, Anderson achieved enormous wealth by selling chewing tobacco wrapped in tinfoil for freshness to prospectors on their way to California. When asked to run for mayor of New York, he declined because he thought his association with the Mary Rogers case would prevent him from being elected. Later in life, Anderson became a Spiritualist and believed Mary’s ghost followed him, acting as an advisor. He is said to have cried out to her from his deathbed.

A Gang of Hoodlums
The sons of Frederica Loss reported they had seen a gang of hoodlums in their mother’s roadhouse on the night of Mary’s visit. The boys also claimed to hear a woman’s scream coming from a nearby thicket later that evening. Lacking any other solid leads, the magistrate blamed her death on an unspecified gang of Irish immigrants, and this became the accepted explanation. This became the accepted theory of her death for over a year, but Poe ruled out the theory, instead speculating that a lone killer was responsible.

In 1842, the boys later accidentally shot their mother, who on her deathbed, is said to have blamed Mary’s death on a botched abortion that may have taken place in her house. The police, however, dismissed this “confession” as a hoax.

Madame Restell
When newspapers reported that the widow Loss, on her deathbed, implicated an abortionist in Mary’s death, the well-known New York City abortionist Madame Restell was blamed. She was arrested multiple times for performing illegal abortions but always paid her fines and was released. At one point, an angry mob surrounded her house shouting, “What happened to Mary Rogers?” It was later revealed that she was not even home because an informant on the police force had warned her in advance to flee. Despite public opinion, Restell was never really a suspect, and the magistrate to whom the Widow Loss had supposedly confessed later stated the confession had been a cruel hoax. In 1878, Restell returned home one afternoon, drew a bath, and slit her wrists.

Who do you think murdered Mary Rogers? Payne? Crommelin? Spencer? Somebody else? We asked visitors to the exhibit to cast their votes, and they decided that Daniel Payne was the winner (or loser). Here are the results:

Daniel Payne 31%
Alfred Crommelin 30%
A Gang of Hoodlums 9%
Madame Restell 9%
A Botched Abortion 6%
Fredericka Loss’s Sons 6%
John Anderson 4%
It wasn’t Mary’s body! 4%
Poe Museum Curator Chris Semtner 1%

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