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Category: The Poe Museum Blog

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The Poe Museum Blog

The Mysterious Disappearing Poe Bust

1909 photograph of Edmond Quinn’s bust of Poe

One crisp Sunday afternoon in October 1987, tour guide Tom Rowe led a group of students across the Poe Museum’s garden to show them the treasure sitting on the pedestal in the Poe Shrine. Pointing toward the shadow recesses of the brick pergola, he announced, “And here’s the bust of Poe made by Edmond T. Quinn.”

Only after a couple kids asked, “What bust?” did Tom take a second look at the empty pedestal. The Poe Museum’s priceless sculpture was missing.

Quinn Bust in the Poe Shrine

Sculpted in 1908 by Edmond Thomas Quinn (1868-1929), the white plaster bust was the original model for a bronze copy unveiled in New York on Poe’s 100th birthday, January 19, 1909 and commissioned by the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences. Quinn was a perfect choice for the commission. He had studied at the nation’s most prestigious art school the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under one of the nation’s most important artists, Thomas Eakins who believed only the close scrutiny of the live model as well as the dissection of cadavers could properly prepare artists to depict the subtle nuances of human faces and anatomy in their paintings. After Eakins was fired for corrupting his female students by having them paint nude male models, Quinn followed his teacher from the Academy to continue his studies at the newly formed Art Students League of Philadelphia, where he served as curator.

Unveiling Quinn’s bronze Poe bust on January 19, 1909

The training he received under Eakins instilled in Quinn such a devotion to creating such realistic portraits that a New York Times art critic in a 1919 marveled at his mastery of “recording subtleties of expression that play like rippling water over the rock structure of the human head.” Quinn excelled at both painting and sculpture, exhibiting several works in both media at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the course of a distinguished career, he produced portraits of playwright Eugene O’Neill, poet Edwin Markham, and many other leading cultural figures of his day. His best known work is a full-length statue of the actor Edwin Booth in Gramercy Park in New York.

The Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences hired Quinn to sculpt its Poe bust and organized a grand unveiling across the street from Poe’s former cottage in Poe Park in The Bronx that would mark the occasion of the author’s centennial. About two hundred people stood in the snow to witness the ceremony in the snow. The Society also decorated the Poe Cottage with flags and built a platform next to the bust’s marble pedestal. After the firing of a salute by the Second Battery Field Artillery, the presenters pulled the cover off the bust and presented it to the city of New York. Afterwards, the celebrants moved the event indoors at New York University where Poe biographer George E. Woodberry presided over the day’s presentations and readings of Poe’s best-known poems. In a photo taken at this ceremony, what would one day be the Poe Museum’s plaster bust can be seen on a flag-draped pedestal on the edge of the stage.

Quinn’s plaster bust of Poe takes the stage at the unveiling ceremony

Shortly after the excitement of the formal unveiling and dedication died down, someone vandalized the bronze bust, which was moved into the Poe Cottage for its protection. Edmond Quinn went on to achieve his greatest success with commissions for more public sculptures over the next two decades. Then, in May 1929, he swallowed poison in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Four months later, he drowned himself off Governor’s Island in New York.

Quinn’s bronze Poe bust on display in Poe Park in 1909 Quinn’s bronze Poe bust in its present location in the Poe Cottage

Two years later, the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences donated the plaster version of Quinn’s bust to the new Poe Museum in Richmond. Over the next half-century, the bust moved from one part of the museum to another before it finally found a more permanent home in the Poe Shrine at the north end of the museum’s garden. Although it was protected from rain, the water soluble plaster was not well suited for display outdoors, so humid Virginia summers and air pollution gradually eroded the bust’s surface.

Quinn’s plaster Poe bust in the Poe Museum’s Raven Room in 1937

In the 1970s, the Poe Museum the eccentric former physicist (who supposedly worked on the Manhattan Project) Dr. Bruce English took over as the museum’s director and president. For the more than twenty years he ran the museum Dr. English oversaw a renovation of the museum’s Old Stone House, acquired adjacent property to make a parking lot, and reinterpreted a room of the Old Stone House as a Colonial Era exhibit. This period also saw the acquisition of several important artifacts, including two daguerreotypes of Poe’s last fiancée Elmira Royster Shelton.

Bruce and Virginia English in the 1970s

By October 1987, the museum was flooded with groups of visiting students from area middle schools. Dr. English discouraged the celebration of Halloween because he feared any association with the horror genre would distract from Poe’s contributions to other literary genres like detective fiction and science fiction, but teachers loved sharing Poe’s horror stories with their classes during the Halloween season. That is why, just as today, October was the busiest month for student group tours at the museum. It was during one such tour that Tom discovered the theft of the Quinn bust.

Apparently, no one had ever considered the possibility that someone might actually take the eighty pound, twenty-two inch bust over the garden’s tall brick walls, which were topped with shards of broken glass embedded in the mortar. At the very least, the thief would have needed an accomplice, if not a crane, to get it out of the garden. “They had to carry it over an eight foot wall,” English told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “They had to carry it back over an eight-foot wall. It had to be somebody very strong.”

The staff told the police that they last recalled seeing the bust on Saturday morning, October 18, around 10:40 a.m. but that nobody had noticed it was missing until 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 19. One can only imagine how many times over the weekend the guides had pointed out the empty pedestal on their hourly museum tours while the tourists played along, not bothering to point out the mistake.

By Monday, October 20, Dr. English alerted the media and announced that he would ask no questions if the culprit would simply return the bust undamaged. He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “This is a major crime in the art world. I’m very disturbed.”

Around midnight on Tuesday he was awakened by a telephone call. The anonymous caller claimed to know the bust’s location but would only reveal it if English read him Poe’s poem “The Spirits of the Dead.” When English had looked up the early verse in a volume of Poe’s poetry and complied with the caller’s request, voice said, “It’s at the Raven Inn” and hung up the phone.

Meanwhile, across the James River in Chesterfield County, a man in a cowboy hat arrived at a biker joint called the Raven Inn and carried the sculpture up to the bar, ordering a mixed drink for himself and a beer for Poe. By the time the police arrived, the stranger was gone. Poe was sitting on the bar with his beer and a paper bag on which was written the poem “The Spirits of the Dead.”

Quinn’s plaster Poe on display in the Raven Room around 2005

Quinn’s bust returned to the museum, but, for its safety, English kept it indoors and displayed a replica in the Poe Shrine where it remains securely bolted to its pedestal. On occasion, visitors leave the replica notes and gifts. Some admirers place flowers, and others kiss it on the cheek. Many more pose next to it for photos.

Replica bust in the Poe Shrine in 2016

In 2008, the Poe Museum authorized the creation of more plaster copies of the bust. These soon sold, and one is even on display at the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore. More recently, in 2016, Dr. Bernard Means of the Virginia Commonwealth University Virtual Curation Laboratory brought his class to the museum to scan the bust in order to make a reduced-size 3-D print of it.

Striking a pose with the Poe bust in the Poe Shrine

Now that his days of traveling to local bars are over, the original plaster bust is currently on display in the museum’s Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building with no plans for future travel. After he retired from teaching Tom returned for a couple years to his old tour guide job the Poe Museum where he enjoyed telling the story of how he discovered the purloined Poe bust. No arrest was ever made in the case, and nobody every confessed to the crime. Earlier this year, a man taking a tour of the museum admitted he had known the thief and that his motivation had been the protection of the bust from further deterioration caused by its display outdoors. The Raven Inn has long since closed and was replaced by a used car dealership. When the bartender on duty that night back in 1987 passed away several years ago, his friends asked the Poe Museum it would send the bust to attend his funeral.

Replica bust in the Poe Shrine

In honor of the twenty-ninth anniversary its trip to the Raven Inn, the Poe Museum has named Edmond Quinn’s plaster bust of Poe its Object of the Month. Click here to learn about other Objects of the Month.

Quinn’s 1908 plaster Poe bust on display at the Poe Museum Animation of Edmond Quinn’s bust of Poe courtesy of VCU Virtual Curation Laboratory
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Madwomen in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature has often used themes of women held back or locked up in rooms and attics while attempting to make valiant stands and statements in support of their rights to artistic and intellectual expression, and social equality. These ideas are thoroughly supported and explored in Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s book, The Madwoman in the Attic (Yale University P, 1979), as well as in many other literary discussions of fictional works written during this period. Mary Shelly’s, Frankenstein, was one of the first examples in literature expressing this theme. In 1818, she published her first book anonymously because she believed that society would not accept the idea that women could be important authors. It was widely assumed that her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelly, wrote the novel. It was first published under the real author’s name in 1823. In the novel, Viktor Frankenstein creates a monster in his laboratory but has no control over the terror it unleashes in the surrounding villages. In one interpretation of Frankenstein, the monster was the author’s representation of how society was threatened by the idea of a successful women writer.

www.horrortalk.com
Madeline Kills Her Brother in “The Fall of the House of Usher: Photo credit by Horrortalk.com

Edgar Allan Poe’s 1829 short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” takes Frankenstein to the next level. Roderick Usher keeps his sister Madeline confined to a dark room upstairs where he reports that she is suffering from a strange mental illness. The sister’s name strongly suggests to readers that she is mad about something. The brother paints and plays music to his pleasure but the sister is not permitted to have the same privileges of self-expression. The brother is certain that restraining his sister in her best interest .The brother, who is afraid of sunlight and nature, won’t go outside the house and won’t allow his sister to go out or have any meaningful interaction or dialogue with the unnamed narrator, a friend who visits the house. During his stay as a house guest, the visitor views Madeline roaming through the house as if she is a ghostly spirit. In one way of looking at Madeline, her mental illness could be caused by her forced confinement and by being restricted artistically and socially by her brother. As Madeline’s madness gets more and more out of control, Roderick attempts to bury his sister while she is still alive, believing this is necessary to save her soul. Poe’s unnamed narrator graphically describes her terrifying screams and the rumblings of the House of Usher. As Madeline escapes from her premature burial, she kills her brother in an act of defiant anger and revenge. The narrator flees, saving his life as the ancient house crumbles to the ground. It can be argued that this story supports the view that Poe was sympathetic to the cause of lifting the artistic limitations imposed by society on women.

In Jane Eyre, the narrator as a ten-year-old orphan girl is taken in, but not loved by the Reed family. She is denied the right to read a book by her teenage cousin. When she questions him about this denial, he punishes her by throwing the hard bound book at her and bloodied her head. When Aunt Reed, her caretaker, hears the commotion, she takes her son’s side and admonishes Jane for talking back to her son. When Jane, also questions her Aunt for always siding with her son and for not caring about her, she is locked upstairs in the Red Room. That room was last used as the dying setting for Jane’s uncle and Aunt Reed’s husband. The aunt justifies locking Jane up because she believes she is mad. However, Jane’s uncle’s dying wish, which Aunt Reed had said she would agree to, was that Jane would be adopted and loved in the Reed household. The uncle’s wish is never granted because the Aunt never loves or accepts her niece as part of her family. Instead, she and her children give Jane steady doses of cruelty and neglect. As if the spirit and anger of the dead are being channeled through her uncle, Jane becomes outraged by her confinement and maltreatment. In an uncontrollable fit, she informs her aunt that the spirits of the dead are planning to seek revenge on her for breaking her promise to her dying husband. The Aunt banishes Jane from her home, disowns her, and sends her to an orphan school for girls (see earlier Litchatte.com discussion). After Jane matures to a young woman, she is summoned by Aunt Reed to her deathbed. Although she informs her Aunt that she has forgiven her, Mrs. Reed dies in anger, saying she has never forgiven Jane for her impertinence.

However, the most important question and tension of the Jane Eyre novel is: Who is the woman being confined in the attic in Master Rochester’s House? Jane is first hired by Rochester as a governess to instruct his “charge.” During Jane’s employment at Thornfield, a mysterious woman, living in the attic, roams the house at night to look in on, and frighten Jane, and later to try to set Mr. Rochester’s room on fire and kill him. As the story develops, Rochester is willing to break through socio-economic and caste restrictions and marry Jane. But, before the wedding vows are exchanged, Mr. Mason, the brother of the mysterious women in the attic, reveals that there can’t be a marriage that day because Rochester is already married to that woman— his sister Bertha. Rochester tries to justify his deception by explaining that his wife appeared sane when they were first married in Jamaica, but gradually deteriorated when Rochester brought her back to England. After she had started going mad, he explains that he confined her to an attic room and hired a servant, Grace Poole, to be her caretaker. He then takes the clergymAN, wedding witnesses, and Jane up to the attic to see the madwoman. As soon as Bertha sees her husband, she tries to attack him violently. Her behavior and the descriptions by the narrator seem to support the idea that she is a mad woman. However, there are questions about whether Bertha has always been mad or whether she has become mad because she couldn’t be controlled by her husband. These unresolvable mysteries become even clearer after Rochester explains how Bertha defied his expectations and seemed so different from him after their marriage. However, readers are only told that Bertha is mad by Mr. Rochester and, perhaps, we are not entirely convinced that he is a reliable narrator. We are never able to hear Bertha’s point of view about why she has become so angry and vindictive. Could she have been justified to reacting so strongly against such confinement and for losing her rights as a wife? We may think back to Jane’s anger about her involuntary confinement in the Red Room and for wishing to stand up for her rights of intellectual pursuits and free expression. If we can accept the idea that Jane was falsely accused of being mad, perhaps, we can also consider Bertha’s point of view. Bertha had just as much reason to be angry and vindictive toward her husband as Jane had toward Aunt Reed. Since Rochester could not marry Jane while Bertha was still alive, he proposes that Jane overlook society’s requirement of marriage and become his mistress. She rejects this suggestion because it goes against her moral compass (see first Litchatte, Jane Eyre discussion) and because she is concerned that she might end up as another  victim in Rochester’s attic.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the female narrator, like Bertha Mason and Madeline Usher in Poe’s story, is confined to stay in an upstairs room, because her husband is a medical doctor,  and believes she is suffering from a temporary mental disorder. She, instead, is convinced that she needs to write to relieve her anxieties. However, her husband rejects such thinking. He prescribes a treatment of complete rest for her. As a doctor, he thinks he is prescribing the most proper treatment for her. But she is confused by the conflicting roles he plays between being a medical authority and a caring husband; consequently, she attempts to obey him. The woman, not having any other creative task to occupy her mind, identifies with the crawling woman. She perceives that the women she perceives is trying to escape from the restrictions of being confined in the wallpaper and of not being allowed to express herself. Her confinement causes her to become obsessed with what seems to be a woman living and moving about in patterns of the yellow wallpaper. In her mind, the patterns of the wallpaper and the woman she sees soothe her, and free her from the feeling of confinement. But when her husband returns from work, he observes his wife crawling madly around the room and trying to peel the wallpaper off. No doubt, he considers his wife as incurable at that point. However, she rebels against him, locks the door, and refuses to leave the room. Nineteenth-century readers often interpreted these stories of women going insane as unhealthy representations of their reactions against the expectations of society. However, many modern readers understand them as demonstrating that women, in that era, were just beginning their struggle for the freedom of artistic and intellectual expression.

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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

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Private Perry is Mr. Poe

Poe in uniform -Google Images

John Limon argues that Poe was one of the first American writers who was important both to the fields of literature and science because he engaged in literary mediation, or “negotiation with science.” Limon notes that Poe’s works provide abundant examples that he anticipated forecasted several future developments in technology, e.g., exploration of the Poles, astronomy, physics, space travel, photography, electronic communications, and the forensic sciences. He wrote about these technical subjects in imaginative ways that captured the public’s interest and concludes that lay writers like Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, or those who wrote “without “letters,” also struggled with the professional class to establish their authority to speak on emerging scientific issues “(19).

Poe had not received any formal training as a scientist. However, he had considerable exposure to scientific ideas in his education, in his training, and in his investigations of science. He believed that an interested, observant, and skilled writer did not need credentials from any official accreditation organization before he was qualified to write about scientific topics. Therefore, in the present column, I will discuss Poe’s early technical preparation, activities, and some of his experiences that likely inspired his interest in writing about science as a poet, journalist, fiction, and non-fiction writer.

Poe’s early schooling and military training inspired and shaped 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 his classmates wrote a testimonial that Poe was one of the top students in the class (23).  Thomas and Jackson list the classes that students typically enrolled in while at that school. They included 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 that in February 1826, Edgar Allan Poe was among the first group of students enrolled at the University of Virginia. School records there indicate that he was a bright and dedicated student. Despite not being able to afford to pay for his college textbooks, he was one of the top students in several  of his classes. However, hefty financial and gambling debts to the University and to his classmates left him hopelessly in debt. When his foster father refused to continue paying for Poe’s college expenses, he was forced to drop out near the end of his first term (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 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), and then enrolled in the United States Army Officer’s School at West Point. At the military academy, he took some classes in French, astronomy, math and navigation, but decided to get himself expelled in 1831 so he could pursue his interests in being a writer. Once again, lacking the necessary financial support from his foster father, Poe wrote: “The army does not suit a poor man—so I left abruptly,” and “threw myself upon literature as a resource” (Poe).

Hecker concludes that Poe’s four years in the Army did not detract in the least from his future career as a writer. On the contrary, it exposed him to many disparate subjects to write about, such as Cryptography, Geography, Oceanography, and Astronomy (xii). Also, he was able to incorporate many of his experiences relating to science into the themes of his poetry, journalism, fiction and non-fiction works. In the next column, I will explore Poe’s earliest published writing on science, a poem entitled, “Sonnet—To Science.”

 

Sources:

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Memorandum in Poe Manuscript, May 29, 1841. The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. www.eapoe.org/works/misc/poeautobiogrpahy.

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

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

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

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.

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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.”He also serves as a board member, volunteer, tour guide, poetry judge, and all-around helper at the Poe Museum in Richmond. See picture blow:

 

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The Imp of the Poeverse

Which story does Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott deem as one of Poe’s “great stories, although not one of the most popular?” There may be many obscure stories coming to mind; however, this particular story falls under the category of Horror and may give us insight into the development of the psychological thriller sub-genre, as well as allow us to further study the psychology of Poe’s mind, if even briefly.

“Imp” as it appeared in Graham’s Magazine.

In July of 1845, Poe’s horrific tale, “The Imp of the Perverse,” was published in Graham’s Magazine. According to American critic Benjamin De Casseres, “We’ve all got that ‘imp’ in us…What or who is this Imp of the Perverse? Poe doesn’t tell us for he cannot…Why should Nature, which does everything to cause us to fight for self-survival, put a voice-or an imp-in our soul that deliberately advises us to destroy ourselves?…You-and I-know that imp” (Mabbott 1217).

If we draw context from Poe’s story, the imp represents a lingering conscious of doubt and guilt, which ultimately brings the narrator to his psychological demise. The imp also represents contradiction, which Mabbott compares with an inscription in Poe’s early album of verses for “Elizabeth,” stating, “he wrote of his ‘innate love of contradiction'” (1217). Not only was this an early primary source representing this contradiction and the rearing of Poe’s own imp’s head; but there are examples in “The Black Cat” that represent the psychological stress the narrator carries, showing how he contradicts his actions and ultimately indirectly leads the police to the spot of his own crime. This is also comparable to “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which also consequently ends with the narrator revealing his crimes.

According to Christopher Benfey in his article, “Poe and the Unreadable: ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, “‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ ‘The Black Cat,’ and ‘The Imp’ all record a confession-a perverse confession since the crimes would otherwise have been undetected…These killers need to confess to the perverse act of having confessed. The fear of the criminals is not the fear of being caught, it is the fear of being cut off, of being misunderstood” (Silverman 37). This is further exemplified by a passage in “Imp”: “Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad.”

According to Benfey, “Poe’s fascination with the idea of a crime without a clear motive has proved to be one of his richest bequests to later writers,” including Fyodor Dostoevsky with his novel, Crime and Punishment. Benfey concludes his article with a prominent statement, “Poe’s narratives can be read as cautionary tales…These fears are always with us-the fear of love and the fear of isolation. Taken to extremes, they both lead to disaster…To declare oneself safe-as the imp of the perverse tempts us to do-is to be lost” (43).

Perhaps when Poe was writing this “cautionary tale,” he was cautioning not only the reader, but also himself. Drawing perspective from his life in 1845, his career was starting to look up with the success of his poem, “The Raven”; he was attending prominent literary salons; he was described by James Russell Lowell as being “…at once the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America”; and Poe joined the editorial staff of Charles Briggs’ The Broadway Journal (The Poe Log, Thomas, Jackson, 490, 505). This half of the year did not lack hardships for Poe, however, with harsh critics and satirists cracking down on and mocking “The Raven,” Poe’s direct involvement with the infamous Poe/Longfellow/”Outis” scandal; and, without doubt, Virginia’s unsteady health affected Poe psychologically. Although Poe may not have had an “imp” on his shoulder or a “voice” in his head, to our knowledge, the contradicting thoughts he may have had, such as seeing his arguably greatest work be both praised and slandered, as well as seeing the rise and fall of his wife’s health, may have thrown Edgar psychologically off-balance; thus presenting to the public examples of the contradictions he referred to even a decade or so prior with “Elizabeth.”

Over all, what is unique about “The Imp of the Perverse” is the seeming lack of acknowledgment of the story, despite being published just three years after “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The themes of guilt and contradiction appearing in the story were undoubtedly carried over from “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” thus showing the evolvement of Poe’s psychological approach between the inner voice and conscious breaking down a wrongful character, consuming the character with contradiction, and ultimately driving the character to unwillingly reveal their torturous actions to a higher authority. Based on evaluating Poe’s psychological approach in “Imp”, we may thus be able to evaluate Poe’s mind, as we discussed earlier regarding his personal life. These significant evaluations of the story and linking it to Poe, as well as the fact that the literary devices Poe used in his story influenced later writers, again, such as Dostoevsky, makes “The Imp of the Perverse” a significant short story in the Poe canon.

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Unique Portrait Reveals Young Edgar Allan Poe

He had just made the greatest discovery in his long career of Poe collecting. This was the kind of find that could change the face of Poe studies and instantly transform the popular image of Edgar Allan Poe. By the end of the nineteenth century, Richmond historian Robert Lee Traylor (1864-1907) had been fortunate enough to acquire some truly important artifacts for his collection. Among these was the very last photograph ever taken of the author, a priceless daguerreotype once owned by none other than Poe’s last fiancée Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton. But Traylor’s latest discovery topped even that. In 1905, he announced to George E. Woodberry that he was now the owner of “the earliest known portrait of Poe,” a long-lost miniature on ivory mentioned as a “lost portrait” of a young Poe in Woodberry’s recent edition of Poe’s works.

Traylor’s Miniature of Poe

Even more than a century ago, Poe’s face was best known through the few daguerreotypes taken in the last two years of his life when he was frequently in ill-health, struggling against poverty, and close to despair. The most popular of these photographs shows the haggard poet just four days after a suicide attempt. Such portraits seemed to support the public’s caricatured image of Poe as a melancholy, haunted artist. But those who met him describe Poe as a handsome, elegant gentleman who was both a gifted athlete and a witty, amusing companion. Surely, scholars hoped, the author must have sat for his portrait before his final illness and the death of his beloved wife. Such a picture would show the young, healthy Poe—the promising young editor in the prime of his life. Locating this missing artifact would represent a major addition to Poe studies. Biographers would include it in their books. Students would analyze it. The public would finally have a chance to see Poe as his friends knew him.

That is exactly what happened with Traylor’s new portrait. Within a few years, it appeared in Benjamin Blake Minor’s book History of the Southern Literary Messenger, and James Harrison reproduced it in Last Letters of Edgar Allan Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman. Harrison declared the miniature “the earliest known portrait of [Poe].” The Valentine Museum included the portrait in it 1949 exhibit and catalog Richmond Portraits in an Exhibition of Makers of Richmond 1737-1860. In the 1926 booklet Facts About Poe: Portraits & Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe with a Sketch of the Life of Poe, Amanda Pogue Schulte writes that the miniature “represents the poet at twenty-six years of age and is evidently the earliest known portrait of him.”

The tiny painting on an ivory oval shows a youthful, clean-shaven Poe with the faintest hint of a smile. He is dressed in a grey coat with a black vest and cravat. Although the portrait is finely detailed, the expression appears slightly vacant. The piece is unsigned, and there is no indication of when or where it was painted. What is obvious from the portrait’s resemblance to authentic portraits of the author is that the subject was intended to be Poe, but it is not known whether this is truly a portrait painted of the author while he sat in a room with the artist or later copy or forgery.

James H. Whitty

It did not take long for doubts to arise about the portrait’s authenticity. In 1914, Poe collector James H. Whitty wrote Poe biographer Mary Phillips, “I was well acquainted with Mr. Traylor, and often met him during his lifetime. One day he showed me a miniature of Poe enclosed in an old time case. He told me that he had obtained it from a lady in Baltimore . . . that she was a friend of the Poe family and that the miniature had been owned by Poe himself. It was unsigned, had an unusual new appearance to me and looked like it might have been made up from two portraits of Poe I knew.”

Whitty thought Traylor’s account of the piece’s history sounded a little too good to be true, so he conducted his own investigation. One of his first discoveries was that Traylor had bought an antique case after purchasing the picture, suggesting the piece could have been installed in an old case to make it look older than it really was. Whitty later told Phillips, “I first wrote and asked Mr. Traylor for the history of the miniature in writing and have his response declining to do so.”

Traylor died just two years after announcing the discovery, so Whitty would have to continue his investigation with his help. Whitty’s account continues,

I discovered that the bare miniature was offered for sale here by an art salesman from Baltimore to Mr. English of Bell Book & Staty. Co. Mr. English told me that he knew Traylor was interested in Poe and showed him the painting and afterwards purchased it for him for $50. The art establishment wrote me that they sold the miniature but knew nothing of its history. The salesman was not then with them, but in Europe. I have a letter from the salesman in which he states that the painting came from Annapolis, Md., but that was all he knew.

The same J. T. English of the Bell Book and Stationery Company wrote, in a slightly different account, that “a Mr. W.E. Jones, representing Bendan Brothers of Baltimore, Md. Came to Bell Book and Stationery Company…making his annual visit…Mr. Jones showed the writer a medallion portrait of Poe that he wished to sell, stating that the Bendan Brothers bought it of a person said to be a representative or connection of the Poe family.”

It is unknown which Poe relative (or friend of the Poe family) in either Baltimore or Annapolis might have once owned this portrait, and there is no evidence that Edgar Allan Poe ever did. In fact, there is a good possibility that it did not even exist during Poe’s lifetime since the portrait bears a striking resemblance to a mezzotint engraving of Poe published a year after his death. This print, produced by Poe’s friend John Sartain, is based on an 1846 oil painting of Poe by Samuel Osgood. As early as the 1920s, James Southall Wilson deemed the Traylor miniature a “synthetic” portrait rather than an authentic one made from a live sitter. In The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Deas points out that, although the facial hair has been removed and the clothing has been changed in the Traylor miniature, the shadow under the nose and the curl of hair on the forehead are identical to those in the Sartain print. Having been dismissed as a forgery, the Traylor miniature gradually declined in popularity.

Detail of John Sartain’s 1850 mezzotint of Poe Detail of John Sartain’s 1885 mezzotint of Poe showing strong resemblance to Traylor’s miniature

Meanwhile, James Whitty, who had been one of the first and most vocal critics of the Traylor portrait’s authenticity, announced in 1909 his own discovery of “the earliest authentic portrait” of Poe, which he believed had once belonged to Poe’s sister Rosalie Mackenzie Poe. Anticipating the high demand for reproductions of the piece, Whitty quickly copyrighted the image that same year. He then published it in an edition of Poe’s poems that he edited. When the Poe Museum opened, he made a copy of his important image for the new institution to display with the caption, “This crayon portrait of Poe is from a miniature in oil painted by the Virginia artist Hubard, about 1836. It was in the possession of Rosalie Poe, the poet’s sister and copied by Davies, the old-time Richmond photographer. This picture was reproduced from Davies original negative, owned by J. H. Whitty of Richmond.”

Whitty’s Portrait of Poe

Whitty’s portrait, however, turned out to be an even more blatant forgery than Traylor’s had been. The Whitty portrait, it seems, is merely a copy of a wood engraving of Poe made about six years after the author’s death. Once of Whitty’s acquaintances, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, later wrote that he was not certain Whitty had had ever seen anything more than a photographic negative of the portrait before (or after) authenticating it.

1855 wood engraving of Poe on which Whitty’s portrait was based

This would not be the last forged Poe portrait to appear over the past century. Scores of silhouettes, watercolors, pencil sketches, and daguerreotypes have fooled some of the best Poe scholars. Today only two watercolors, one oil painting, and eight photographs of Poe are widely accepted as genuine; and the original plates of five of those daguerreotypes are missing. While it is possible there are more portraits of Poe in existence, we never when one of them might resurface. Collectors occasionally show the Poe Museum portraits and daguerreotypes they have inherited and wish to have examined, and a few of these long lost images prove very interesting. About a year ago, a lady appeared at the museum with a hand-painted photograph of Poe that had been missing for decades. Believing such an important piece should be shared with the public for the benefit of this and future generations, she said she might consider donating it to the museum but would need to consult her children on the matter. Later this week it will sell at a major auction house for far more than the museum can hope to pay.

Luckily, the Traylor miniature did not suffer the same fate. After Robert Traylor’s death in 1907, his daguerreotype of Poe (long-since ruined during a cleaning attempt) disappeared, and ownership of his miniature of Poe passed to his daughter Anne Traylor Larus, wife of Lewis G. Larus, vice-president of a tobacco manufacturing company that also founded WRVA, a radio station still serving Richmond to this day. The Laruses lived in beautiful estate called Stony Point, situated outside Richmond on a bluff so high they could supposedly see the Blue Ridge Mountains from their bedroom window.

Anne Larus’s sister Mary Gavin Traylor was a Richmond newspaper columnist as well as the secretary, curator, librarian, hostess, and tour guide at the Poe Museum during the 1930s. Mary G. Traylor devoted her time and energy to keeping the museum in business during the darkest days of the Great Depression while still making major acquisitions for the institution including a rare daguerreotype of Poe and a complete set of original illustrations for Poe’s poem “The Raven” drawn by James Carling. She must have had little difficulty convincing her sister to donate the Traylor miniature (authentic or not) to the Poe Museum, where it remains today. By the time of its acquisition, the portrait was no longer considered a life portrait of the author, but it has never been determined whether it was a forgery intended to deceive a potential buyer or if it was simply painted as a later tribute to Poe to be sold to someone who knew it had been produced after the subject’s death. It was not uncommon for portraitists well into the twentieth century to produce hand-painted replicas of earlier portraits to sell to those who cannot acquire the originals. Through no fault of the artist, such a portrait might later be mistaken for an original long after the artist and the person who commissioned the artwork have died. It is also fairly common for artists to paint pictures of Poe–like ones available today in the Poe Museum’s gift shop.

A 2016 portrait of Poe that a century from now might be mistaken for a much older picture.

Although the museum cannot claim the Traylor miniature is an authentic life portrait, it is still on display in the Model Building—not as a historical artifact from Poe’s lifetime but as an approximate illustration of Poe’s appearance as a young man. It is also an artifact related to the turn-of-the-century surge in Poe collecting and the competition to make the next great discovery at a time when the supposed missing portrait of a young Poe was the Poe researcher’s “Holy Grail.”

Since Poe is most often remembered as the caricature of the melancholy poet depicted in the museum’s late daguerreotype (above), it is important to show a more complete view of Poe’s personality by also showing the Traylor miniature as a representation of how Poe many have looked for most of his life—before that final, difficult year leading up to his early death. One might wonder if the people who knew Poe best would choose the Traylor miniature or the below daguerreotype as the best representation of how they remember the poet.

Thanks to Traylor’s devotion to collecting and researching Poe, to Mary Gavin Traylor’s dedication to building the Poe Museum’s collection, and to Anne Traylor Larus’s generosity, this stunning Poe portrait will be preserved and displayed for all to see. That is why it is the Poe Museum’s Object of the Month. Click here to read about more Objects of the Month.

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Poe Museum’s Artifacts Honored

The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia is proud to announce that the Virginia Association of Museums has named the museum’s newly acquired portraits of Rufus and Caroline Griswold to 2016’s list of Virginia’s Top Ten Endangered Artifacts. The program is designed to create awareness of the conservation needs of artifacts in the care of collecting institutions such as museums, historical societies, libraries, and archives throughout Virginia.

The Poe Museum recently purchased these important portraits of Edgar Allan Poe’s enemy and biographer Rufus Griswold and Griswold’s first wife Caroline with the help of a Gofundme campaign. Thirty-seven donors from across the country contributed to the fund because they believed these artifacts and the set of related letters that came with them will contribute greatly to the public’s understanding of Poe’s life. It was Griswold who wrote Poe’s first biography and fabricated many of the accounts of Poe’s addiction and madness that have since become widely accepted as facts. Only by identifying and discrediting the source of these fabrications can the Poe Museum hope to uncover the truth about Poe’s life and literary contributions. Click here to learn more about these artifacts.

Rufus Griswold portrait before conservation

The designation of the portraits as Virginia’s Top Ten Most Endangered Artifacts acknowledges both the historical significance of the objects and their critical need for conservation. Since the portraits arrived at the museum in July 2016, they have been examined by conservators who assessed their condition and recommended plans for treatment. Click here to learn more about the condition of these portraits. Click here to see detail photographs of the portraits’ condition. The portrait of Rufus Griswold is now on display in the Poe Museum’s Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building until October 16 when it will undergo a months-long conservation treatment.

Detail of damage to Caroline Griswold portrait as seen under raking light

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts is a project of the Virginia Association of Museums. This public outreach campaign for collections care was launched in 2011 with support from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts program is in its fifth year of building awareness for the important role that museums and cultural organization play in caring for our historic and cultural treasures. It has inspired numerous positive outcomes such as pairing donors with artifacts in need of conservation support, helping participating museums learn more about the provenance of their artifacts, and supporting successful grant applications for conservation care.

While the results of public voting was a factor in the final decision, the “Top 10” honorees were selected by an independent review panel of collections and conservation experts from the Library of Virginia, Preservation Virginia, Virginia Conservation Association, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, as well as an independent conservator. The panel gives particular weight to the historical or cultural significance of the item, its conservation needs, whether it has been assessed, as well as future plans and continued preservation.

Damage to Rufus Griswold portrait as seen under UV illumination

THANKS TO GRISWOLD FUND DONORS
To raise the money for the acquisition of the Griswold portraits, the museum launched a Gofundme campaign which quickly raised the money thanks to generous gifts from Susan Jaffe Tane, Stephan Loewentheil, Abbe Ancell, Michael Brazda, Teresa Carter, Christine Clements, Christopher Davalos, Escape Room Live DC, Katrina Fontenla, Mary Lee Haase, Sarah Huffman, Magdalena Karol, L. L. Leland, Aimée Mahathy, Lizzie O., Neca Rocco, Robert Rosen, Jennifer and Joe Rougeau, Justin and Elizabeth Schauer, Ernst Schnell, John Spitzer, Wayne and Pat Stith, Kurt Strom, Amy H. Sturgis, Sara Tantlinger, Patrick Tsao, Ashleigh Williams, and Seven Anonymous Donors.

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Poe Museum Sheds New Light on Endangered Portraits

What in the world happened to Caroline Griswold’s face? Rest assured, she still looks the same as she did last week. We just photographed her under different lighting conditions. By lighting the portrait from an angle, the conservator is better able to see the surface cracks that need to be repaired. Below is the portrait under normal illumination. The cracks are not quite as easy to see this time.

Now look at this photograph taken under ultraviolet illumination.

This lighting causes organic substances to fluoresce while inorganic substances absorb the light and look black. The organic resin varnish added as a protective layer over the finished painting is fluorescing, but there are also dark splotches that show the presence of paint applied on top of the varnish. This is the result of restorers covering up areas of missing or damaged paint with matching paint. The only problem is that, because they didn’t clean the painting before adding the patches, the patches match the color of the dirty paint. These means that, when the painting is cleaned, the patches will no longer match the painting. Figuring out which parts of the painting are original and which are not helps our conservator get a better understanding of how the painting originally appeared. This provides him a kind of road map to follow during the conservation process.

Notice that some of the patches are lighter than others. These are likely older patches painted by a previous restorer. The light spots on the painting appear to be another organic residue, maybe splattered food or mold.

This detail of the lower edge of the portrait shows the presence of organic residue that dripped down the paint surface.

Now let’s take a look at some of the conservator’s photos of the Rufus Griswold portrait. This is a photograph under normal illumination. Under this light, one can already see how dirty the painting is, but looking at it with different lighting will show us even more.

Here is one taken with raking light to show the cracks. Especially evident is a bulge on the lower edge of the canvas caused by the accumulation of dust and debris between the back of the canvas and the stretcher. This will have to be repaired by removing the canvas from the stretcher and flattening it before restretching it.

Here is one taken under ultraviolet illumination. (Notice the varnish on the easel is also fluorescing.) You can see some large areas where missing paint was restored.

A detail of the lower left corner of the portrait taken under raking light shows the bulge, a vertical crack with missing paint, and a major hole in the canvas.

The same area shown under ultraviolet illumination reveals extensive repairs made by a past restorer.

By taking multiple photographs using different kinds of light, our conservator will determine which parts of the painting are original and which are not as well as which parts should be cleaned and which should be removed. This guided him when he performed a test cleaning on Rufus Griswold’s face.

These kinds of tests will help the conservator get a better idea of how the portraits underneath 176 years of grime and dirty varnish should look after a successful cleaning. Only after careful study, planning, and testing, will the conservator be able to begin the treatment process, which may take months to complete.

Since the portraits of Rufus and Caroline Griswold arrived at the Poe Museum a couple months ago, we have had several visitors ask about them. If you would like to see the portrait of Rufus Griswold in its current state, please visit the Poe Museum’s Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building where it is hanging above Edgar Allan Poe’s trunk.

If you are interested in helping out with the conservation process, please vote for the Rufus Griswold portrait to be Virginia’s Most Endangered Artifact for 2016. Just click here to vote.

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H.P. Lovecraft Visits the Poe Museum

HP Lovecraft by Semtner

Last Saturday, August 20, would have been the 126th birthday of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), author of such influential horror, science fiction, and fantasy tales as The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness (which was inspired by Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym). Lovecraft’s influence on both horror fiction and popular culture has been vast. Several of his works have been adapted to film, music, and even games. In his tales of cosmic horror he created a shared fictional universe known as the Cthulhu Mythos, which continues to live on in the works of legions of later authors.

Lovecraft was also a great admirer of Poe’s works and devoted an entire chapter of his 1935 book Supernatural Horror in Literature to him. In that chapter, Lovecraft writes,

Before Poe the bulk of weird writers had worked largely in the dark; without an understanding of the psychological basis of the horror appeal, and hampered by more or legs of conformity to certain empty literary conventions such as the happy ending, virtue rewarded, and in general a hollow moral didacticism, acceptance of popular standards and values, and striving of the author to obtrude his own emotions into the story and take sides with the partisans of the majority’s artificial ideas. Poe, on the other hand, perceived the essential impersonality of the real artist; and knew that the function of creative fiction is merely to express and interpret events and sensations as they are, regardless of how they tend or what they prove — good or evil, attractive or repulsive, stimulating or depressing, with the author always acting as a vivid and detached chronicler rather than as a teacher, sympathizer, or vendor of opinion. He saw clearly that all phases of life and thought are equally eligible as a subject matter for the artist, and being inclined by temperament to strangeness and gloom, decided to be the interpreter of those powerful feelings and frequent happenings which attend pain rather than pleasure, decay rather than growth, terror rather than tranquility, and which are fundamentally either adverse or indifferent to the tastes and traditional outward sentiments of mankind, and to the health, sanity, and normal expansive welfare of the species.

Never a terribly famous writer during his lifetime, Lovecraft would likely not have been recognized by the staff when he visited the Poe Museum in Richmond in May 1929. On May 4, he wrote Elizabeth Toldridge, “In Richmond the chief object of interest for me is the Poe Shrine—an old stone house with two adjoining houses connected as wings & used as a storehouse of Poe reliques. Here I have spent much time examining the objects associated with my supreme literary favourite—to say nothing of the marvelous model of Richmond in 1820, housed in one of the wings.”

The Poe Museum’s Old Stone House, Enchanted Garden, and model of Richmond remain much as they were in 1929, so today’s guests can still feel much of the atmosphere that must have inspired Lovecraft during his visit. The following photographs date to about that time.

The Poe Museum in June 1929. The Enchanted Garden in early spring of 1929. Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building in about 1928

Lovecraft was not the only famous cultural figure to make a trip to the Poe Museum. Vincent Price, Salvador Dali, and Gertrude Stein also visited. Click their names to read about their Poe Museum experiences.

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Poe’s “Oval Portrait: and The Picture of Dorian Gray: the Artist, the Subject, and the Audience*

Poe’s Bride in ” The Oval Portrait” (www.Goodreads.com)

After reading Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), I was struck by how much his theme about the value of art resembled the one found in Poe’s 1842 short fictional work, “The Oval Portrait.” Both stories focus on the relationship between the artist, his subject, and the viewer, or, in the case of literature, the reader.  In Poe’s story, the young artist is driven to paint the ultimate portrait of his beautiful new wife. His goal was to produce a masterpiece that would portray a symbol of youth and vitality that would last an eternity. Poe writes, “As a thing of art, nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself.” The artist writes about the bride (the subject of his art): “She’s  a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.” However, she wanted to satisfy her husband and sat idly for days, while the artist was engrossed in his creation. He “turned his eyes from the canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife.” After his last brush stroke, “the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought.” Instead of joy, “he grew tremulous, very pallid, and aghast crying with a loud voice, ‘This is Life itself!’ [and] turned suddenly to regard his beloved—She was dead!” Poe’s story shocks readers and forces them to make a judgment on the artist’s values, as well as their own values. Some  might conclude that the story demonstrates that the value of even the most beautiful art is diminished when an artist lives without compassion and positive connection with humanity. Others might conclude that the value of art exceeds the human sacrifice it took to produce it. “The Oval Portrait” also foreshadows the idealistic relationship that modern artists have with their work, as they splash images of their creations across social media and urge people to “Like” them. In many cases, they value their work more than they try to establish and maintain positive human interactions.

Wilde writes, in his Preface of the Picture of Dorian Gray, “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.” Wilde, like Poe, focuses on the relationship between the artist, his subject, and the reader: In the opening pages, he writes, “As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face.” The artist was deeply satisfied and even “riveted” by the profundity and beauty shown in his painting. The viewer of the painting, Lord Henry, who also symbolizes the reader, or the critic of art, remarks, “It is your best work, Basil, you must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor.” The painter remarks that he cannot send it the exhibition, because “I have put too much of myself into it.” Lord Henry, acting as the art critic remarks, “What odd chaps you painters are. You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away.” Although Basil is still interested in having his art recognized, he cannot risk showing Dorian’s portrait because he fears that it will expose the darkness of his soul. The artist believes that he has become too emotionally connected to his subject to allow the purveyors of art to view his creation. Basil was once as scornful of his painting as Poe’s young bride was. However, he becomes enthralled with it after it is finished, and wants to keep it as a symbol of his youth. He makes a Faustian-like request: He wishes to remain eternally young and beautiful, and in his steed, his portrait would age with time. As this a Wilde novel, he is granted his wish. As he ages, he decides that he must hide his painting in the attic for fear that someone might discover that he has found the secret formula to eternal youth. Poe was also consumed with writing about the secret of longevity and eternal life and developed this theme throughout his career in several fictional works, including “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” and “Some Words with a Mummy,” and in his final science treatise, Eureka: A Prose Poem.

Since he is granted long-lasting youth, Basil’s youthful appearance does not change after several decades. However, his life becomes increasingly decadent and even more violent than any character in a Poe story! He heartlessly scorns his lover, Sybil Vane, because she proposes to love Dorian rather than to continue as being a famous Shakespearean actress. In her final stage role, she portrays Juliet, who died an unnecessary death in Shakespeare’s tragedy. When she ceases to be an idealistic object of worship for Dorian Gray, she becomes totally undesirable to him. Dorian’s heartless rejection of her also causes her to commit suicide in real life. Afterward, Dorian and his mentor, Lord Henry, coldly justify that her dramatic death was even more profound than her life would have been as a faded actress and wife of an artist. The scenario with Sybil reminds readers of the wife, in Poe’s story, who was more dedicated to her husband than to his art, and of her the husband, who was more dedicated to his art than to his loving wife. The tragic suicide of Sybil, a word meaning an auspicious omen, foreshadows the tragic downfall of Dorian and, by psychic connection, of Basil, the artist who painted him. Due to Dorian’s decadent human activities, his portrait increasingly begins to mirror his corrupted soul. In the final scenes of the book, he must decide what he is going to do to relieve the guilt he feels when he looks at his hideous portrait. He tries to resolve his tormented soul by killing the artist who painted the work and by destroying the picture. But, does he succeed? Not all that we see in Gray is certain. Readers are as shocked about the conclusion of Wilde’s book as they were about The Oval Portrait. But,  they are not certain if Dorian Gray was conveyed realistically or whether it was entirely imagined in the mind of both the artist and his subject. The creator of the novel, Oscar Wilde, provides little to no clues to help unravel the mysteries of his well-constructed story. Instead, he challenges us to draw our own conclusions. There are several unanswered questions. For example, Did Dorian’s immoral behavior cause the painting to deteriorate? Was there a psychic connection established between the artist and the subject which caused both of them to see the painting in the same way?

Oscar Wilde’s book, Dorian Gray, was also continuing a trend that was pioneered by Poe, which introduced indeterminate endings. In this type of literature, readers had to use their own resources to unravel the loose ends of a story. For example, we do not anything about the relationship between Poe’s artist and his wife before he created his painting. We also don’t know if or how the artist changed after his wife’s death. Readers and literary critics are uncertain whether Gray’s actions caused the portrait to revert back to its former youthful vibrancy, or whether the changes seen in the portrait were only in the minds of Dorian and the artist who created the painting. Wilde wrote that art imitated life and that life imitated art, concluding that readers could understand much about themselves by the ways that they interpreted literature and art. If they thought that the lack of morals caused the tragic destruction of Dorian Gray,then that would be one conclusion about the over-arching theme of the story. However, if they concluded that Dorian lived a full and productive life of hedonistic pursuits, then they might consider that his death could be considered as noble. After all, he did try to reach for eternity. I have stopped a bit short of fully describing the final ending so that readers might explore it and draw their own conclusions about The Portrait of Dorian Gray! However, if you do like that book, I suggest that you also read any of Poe’s stories—many of which had a strong influence on Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece!

*This article was originally posted on Murray Ellison’s, www.Litchatte.com Website.

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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. Currently, he serves as a literature teacher, board member, and curriculum advisor for the Lifelong Learning Institute in Chesterfield, Virginia, and 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 written by an Indian mystic. 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. You can write to Murray by leaving a Comment or at ellisonms2@vcu.edu

Murray  at the Poe Museum
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Poe Museum Launches International Poe Film Festival

From September 22-24, the Poe Museum, in partnership with the Byrd Theater, will host the Poe Film Festival to showcase the best in Edgar Allan Poe movies of the past ninety years from around the world.

There have been hundreds of cinematic adaptations of Poe’s works and biopics of his life. These films, featuring Hollywood stars like Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson, and Sir Christopher Lee, have become part of our cultural heritage. Yet, so far, there has never been a film festival devoted entirely to Poe movies. By bringing the first Poe Film Festival to Richmond, the Poe Museum, along with special guests such as Victoria Price and Raul Garcia, invites fans to explore Poe’s legacy and influence through iconic American cinema.

The three-day event will begin at the Poe Museum on Thursday, September 22 from 6-9 p.m. with a special “Poe Goes to the Movies” Unhappy Hour, with special guest Victoria Price, daughter of screen legend Vincent Price. The Unhappy Hour will also showcase a new exhibit of Poe-inspired art in partnership with Ohio’s Good Goat Gallery.

On Friday the 23rd, from 7:00-10:30 p.m. the Byrd Theatre will show two feature-length adaptations of Poe’s most beloved works, Stonehearst Asylum (2014) and House of Usher (1960) hosted by Victoria Price. On Saturday from 10:00 a.m.—5:00 p.m., the Byrd will screen a series of short films, followed by panel discussions with film experts such as Raul Garcia, director of Extraordinary Tales; Scott Peeples of the College of Charleston; John LaTier, director of The Tell-Tale Heart; Sean Kotz of Radford University; and many more.

On Saturday evening from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m the Poe Museum will host a special “Evening with Victoria Price.” This ticketed event will allow attendees to meet and mingle with Victoria Price and to celebrate the artistic legacy of Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe.

Richmond’s landmark movie palace the Byrd Theatre will host the Poe Film Festival.

Admission for each film or panel is $8. Admission to the Saturday evening reception is $75. Unhappy Hour admission on Thursday night is $5. Tickets are available at the Poe Museum or by visiting bit.ly/poefilmfest. Here is the tentative schedule:

I. Thursday, September 22 (Poe Museum)
A. Unhappy Hour at the Poe Museum
B. Opening of Good Goat Gallery Exhibit “A Poe-tic Tribute”
C. Screening of 1928 silent film “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Jean Epstein in the Poe Museum Garden with live music

II. Friday, September 23 (Byrd Theatre)
A. 7 p.m. Screening of “House of Usher” (1960) introduced by Victoria Price
B. 9 p.m. Screening of “Stonehearst Asylum” (2014)

III. Saturday, September 24 (Byrd Theatre)
A. 10:00-12:00 Poe in Black-and-White Panel
1. Panelists Scott Peeples and Sean Kotz
2. Moderator Chris Semtner
3. Screening of “The Black Cat” (1934) “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Watson, 1928)
B. 1:00-2:45 Animated Poe Panel
1. Panelists Raul Garcia and TBA
2. Moderator Chris Semtner
3. Screening of “Extraordinary Tales” (2014)
C. Adapting Poe Panel
1. Panelists John LaTier, Poe Movies, and Victoria Price
2. Moderator Scott Peeples, University of Charleston
3. Films: “The Cask of Amontillado” (2015) by Poe Movies and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (2016) by John LaTier

IV. Saturday Evening, September 24 (Cultural Art Center at Glen Allen)
A. 6:30-9:30 p.m. Reception at the Cultural Art Center at Glen Allen with talk by Victoria Price, screening of “Tales of Terror,” and meet and greet with panelists

More details will be coming soon. Click here to purchase tickets. For more information, please contact the Poe Museum at info@poemuseum.org or 804-648-5523.

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What Ever Happened to Poe’s Hat?

The other day someone brought me a top hat supposed to have once belonged to Edgar Allan Poe. I had never doubted that Poe would have worn a hat. Fashion plates from Graham’s Magazine (which Poe edited) and other popular magazines of the day showed men in top hats, and, as seen in the below illustration from an 1842 almanac, even a lawless gang wore top hats while murdering people.

In fact, the surviving photographs of Poe often show the tell-tale signs of “hat head” in which the hair is flattened down on top and sticks out, mullet-like, in the back. Of course, he took his hat off for his photos and portraits, and only one photo even shows what appears to be the edge of a hat. That does not provide a very clear picture of the kind of hat he would have worn, but we can probably make some educated guesses based on the fashions of Poe’s day.

Graham’s Magazine fashion plate from 1841 Another Graham’s Magazine fashion plate from 1841

A gentleman’s hat at the time might have been made of beaver fur or silk, which was gradually growing in popularity by the 1840s. During the 1840s and 1850s, hats were getting especially tall, as can be seen in the photo below.

Men in hats from 1857 photo via Wikipedia

Using a reproduction of one of William Abbott Pratt’s daguerreotypes, taken in Richmond in September 1849, I have envisioned how Poe may have looked in his top hat.

Top hats were not the only gentlemen’s hats available at the time. This illustration from the first printing of Poe’s story “The Gold-Bug” (1842) shows a man on the left wearing a broad-brimmed hat.

Some people who saw Poe on his summer 1849 visit to Richmond describe him wearing just such a hat to shield his eyes from the bright summer sun. A Richmonder at the time later wrote, “I was in Richmond in 1849, and remember Mr. Poe, with his white linen coat and trousers, black velvet vest, and broad Panama hat.” Here is a photograph showing how he would have looked wearing it.

I regret I cannot tell if Poe ever used the hat shown to me. The owner could tell me nothing of its provenance, so I had no evidence tying it to Poe. Although someone had written the name “Poe” on the inside of the hat, there are several people with than name. To make matters worse, someone wrote the date “1850” in the hat, and, if the date is correct, the piece dates to a year after Edgar Allan Poe’s death. Of course, we do not know who wrote that in the hat or why they wrote it. Maybe more evidence will become available to help us determine just whose hat this was.

There is no telling what ever happened to Poe’s hat. When he was found at a Baltimore polling place four days before his death, someone had already stolen it and replaced it with a cheaper one. As a witness, Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, later wrote, Poe’s “hat, or rather the hat of somebody else, for he had evidently been robbed of his clothing, or cheated in an exchange, was a cheap palm leaf one, without a band, and soiled.” It appears someone may have purloined Poe’s hat and likely disposed of it at some point without ever realizing (or caring) that it had once belonged to a famous poet.

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The Poe Museum Blog

Third Anniversary of the Positively Poe Conference at the University of Virginia

 

Poe was in the second class of students who attended the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. According to the UVA Website(aig.alumni.virginia.edu), “Edgar Allan Poe enrolled at the University on February 14, 1826, the 136th of 177 students registering for the second session. He attended classes in the Schools of Ancient and Modern Languages, under Professors Long and Blaetterman respectively. Although not known for spending long hours at his lessons, Poe was already remarkable for his brooding, lonely genius. His excellent memory allowed him to read ahead in class and recite correctly even when utterly unprepared. In his final examinations, he took top honors in French and Latin and was cited for excellence by both professors.” Chris Semtner, Poe Richmond Museum Curator, noted that Poe often watched the construction of Jefferson’s Rotunda as it was being built and that he attended Jefferson’s funeral. Although Poe’s stay at the college was short, it is still notably marked around campus with a bust in the library and the preservation and public display of his college dorm room. During my three days of attendance at the Positively Poe Conference at the University, in July 2013, Poe’s Room, right across the street from where the conference was held, appeared to be the most visited site on campus.

Poe attended UVa in 1826.

As July is nearing an end this year, I fondly remember back to my first immersion at a major Poe conference with many of the top Poe scholars of the world. It was organized by the Richmond Poe Museum and it’s Board President Harry Lee (Hal) Poe and by Gorky Institute of Moscow Professor, Alexandra Urakova. As I was beginning my Master’s Thesis on Poe’s book, Eureka: A Prose Poem, I was accepted to deliver a workshop proposal on that topic. It was a most inspiring immersion experienced for me, as it initiated me into the modern world Poe community.

The program began on Monday evening, July 24, 2013, in the Rotunda Room, which was undergoing extensive renovation. The main speaker was the scholar, Ben Fisher, and a “Poe Performance” of the “Imp of the Perverse,” by Rob Velella.  I offer a summary of the program that was offered below. In my subsequent Blog, I will discuss what I presented during my electrifying workshop.

From the Positively Poe Program Brochure:

About the Conference

Over the last few years, we have seen several notable additions to the number of film and television adaptations of Poe and his works. They are notable for having large enough budgets to have no excuse for doing such a bad job of treating Poe. In this dreary cultural context, the idea for this conference grew. We wondered what would happen if scholars were invited to reflect on the positive aspects of Poe and his work. Poe’s reputation as a tortured, tragic figure, melancholic poet and the “master of the macabre” has fueled his popularity for over a century and a half, while debunking stereotypes and myths associated with that reputation has always been an essential part of Poe criticism. Going beyond the debunking of the popular caricature, we would like to discover the “positive” side of Poe’s life and work. Just as his life had its ups and downs, his writing, too, reflects a wide range of experience, not exclusively the dark and dismal. We have been gratified by the response to this little boutique gathering set at Poe’s university at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains he so loved. In planning this conference, we considered the setting to be of major importance, and we hope the conferees can find the time to enjoy Mr. Jefferson’s university and the mountains around it.

The Poe Museum

For over ninety years the Poe Museum has strived to preserve and advance the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. Located in the Old Stone House, the oldest residence in Richmond, the museum stands in the midst of the neighborhood where Poe lived as a child before his foster father came into his fortune. The museum preserves the largest collection of Poe artifacts and memorabilia in the world which includes such items as Poe’s childhood bed, the walking stick he left behind in Richmond on his last fatal trip, the chair he used at The Southern Literary Messenger, his trunk, and many items from his boyhood home. In addition to a collection of first editions of Poe’s books and first appearances of his stories, poems, and articles, the museum also has a large collection of rare and unique images related to Poe, as well as a large library of secondary works on Poe. The museum hopes that Poe scholars will find its holdings useful to scholars as they continue to explore the body of his work in the third century since his birth.

Workshops Offered

Tuesday, July 25, 2013

9:00    a.m.       Session One – Poe Makes Friends

Chair – Stephen Railton, University of Virginia

Richard Kopley

 “Edgar Makes a Friend”

Chris Semtner

“A Young Girl’s Recollections of Edgar Allan Poe”

Philip Phillips

“Yankee Neal and Edgar Poe: The Fruits of a Literary Friendship”

John Gruesser

“Poe, Whitman, and Melville in New York and Beyond”

11:15  a.m.        Session Two – POEtic Effect

                  Chair – Jerome McGann, University of Virginia

Jerome McGann,

“Poe’s ‘The Bells’ as a Musical Mirror of a Discordant Age”

Stephen Rachman

“From “Al Aaraaf” to the Universe of Stars: Poe, the Arabesque, and Cosmology”

Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato

“‘Excellent system(s) of positive translation(s)’: Why Poe’s Translators Have Neither Been Invisible nor Ephemeral”

1:45   p.m.       Session Three – Poe and Art

                  Chair – Bonnie Shannon McMullen,  Independent Scholar, Oxford (UK)

Scott Peeples

“Poe in Love”

Sonya Isaak

“‘When Music Affects Us to Tears’:  Poe’s Silent Music – Divine Aspiration and Lasting Inspiration”

Anne Margaret Daniel

“Bob Dylan: ‘like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story’”

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 (cont.)

3:30  p.m.         Session Four: Collecting Poe

Susan Jaffe Tane and Harry Lee Poe

6:00 p.m.      Picnic – The Ragged Mountain

Beth Sweeney: Readers’ Theatre Boston:

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

All paper sessions in the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library auditorium

9:00   a.m.        Session One – The Comic Side of Poe

                  Chair – Richard Kopley, Penn State University

  1. Barbara Cantalupo

“‘A little China man having a large stomach’:  Poe’s Homely Details in ‘The Devil in the Belfry’”

  1. Alexandra Urakova

“‘Shreds and patches’: Poe, Fashion, and Godey’s Lady’s Book”

  1. Elina Absalyamova

“A Comic Poe: European Success Story”

11:00  a.m.       Session Two – Tales: Rethinking the Gothic

Chair – Margarida Vale de Gato, University of Lisbon

Bonnie Shannon McMullen

“The ‘Sob from the ebony bed’: The Reanimation of the Gothic Tale in ‘Ligeia’”

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

“Positive Images: Poe and the Daguerreotype”

William E. Engel

“Jaunty dialogs with the non-human: a Closer Look at Dogs in the Works of E.A. Poe”

1:30 p.m.           Session Three – Poe and Ethics

                        Chair – Bill Engel, University of the South

Gero Guttzeit

“‘Constructive Power’: Poe’s Mythology and Ethics of Authorship”

Katherine Rose Keenan,

“You Can’t Escape Yourself”: Poe’s Use of Moral Doppelgangers”

Shawn McAvoy and

Heather Myrick Stocker

“Selective Symbolism: Poe’s Romantic Theology”

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 (cont.)

3.30 p.m.     Session Four – Poetry, Science, and Eureka

Panel Chair – Harry Lee Poe, Union University

René van Slooten

“The Facts in the Case of Eureka”

Murray Ellison

“Judging Edgar Allan Poe’s Eureka after the Author’s Death”

Diffusion Diagram from Eureka: A Prose Poem

Ironically, as I began my final presentation of the conference on Poe’s strangest and most enigmatic work, Eureka: A Prose Poem, the lights in the University of Virginia’s Special Collections Library began to flicker. This show from Nature was followed by some of the most powerful lightning and thunderclaps I ever remember experiencing. Not surprisingly after these impressive  events, our lights were lost and flickered to the minimum backup generator dim-strength. Our Power, which was to illuminate my elaborate Power Point presentation on the difficulties of evaluating Poe’s, Eureka, left the building! If scientists at the University of Virginia would have argued that the power failure was caused by the energy of the Poe enthusiasts in the room, I would not have disagreed with them! I will explain how I handled the situation and what I said about what I thought would be needed to conduct a proper evaluation of Eureka in my next Blog.

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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. Currently, he serves as a literature teacher, board member, and curriculum advisor for the Lifelong Learning Institute in Chesterfield, Virginia, and 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 written by an Indian mystic. 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. You can write to Murray by leaving a Comment or at ellisonms2@vcu.edu

Murray  at the Poe Museum