Weird Island

43. WRITERS: Edgar Allan Poe in Providence

Episode Summary

While he never lived in Rhode Island, Edgar Allan Poe famously spent time here at the end of his life. He courted a Providence writer, Sarah Helen Whitman, and spent time at her East Side home, Swan Point Cemetery and the Athenaeum.

Episode Notes

Episode Description:

Episode Source Material:

Virginia Clemm | History of American Women

Episode Transcription

Throughout my childhood, I had three recurring nightmares. The first was a nightmare in which I was being pecked by a very large chicken. Inspired, no doubt, by the time when - at maybe four years old - I was pecked by a chicken. The second was a nightmare in which I was presented with three small boxes. But when I reached out to touch them, they felt much larger than they appeared, and that feeling freaked me out. I never opened the boxes in any occurrence of that dream. No idea what it meant.
And then the third. The third was this dream in which I knew that I had committed a murder and I was terrified and certain that I would be caught. The whole dream was just guilt and paranoia and regret, because I knew there was no possible way to get away with murder. Dark, right? Well, I have to imagine that third dream was inspired by a story that, for some reason, many kids seem to read very early on in their education. One that opens with the lines:
“True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”
And that story is The Tell-Tale Heart, but Edgar Allan Poe, about a man who describes a murder he has committed, perhaps the perfect murder and one that he might have gotten away with if it weren’t for his guilt - which causes him to hear a terrible ticking noise, which gets louder and louder until he bursts out, confessing to the police – “Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous writers out there, best known for his poetry and short stories. You can probably even picture what Poe looks like, and you can’t say that about all famous writers. You frequently see him on shirts and socks and quotes on Pinterest. And because his works are often required reading at the middle school or high school level, most people have probably read something by Poe. I especially remember The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death and The Tell Tale Heart (which is a very short story, so even if you’re one of those people who didn’t always do your required reading, you probably read this one).
Clearly it stuck with me, hence the nightmare. And while I’ve never had to get away with murder, I will say, my real-life Tell-Tale Heart story has to do with required reading. I read every book assigned to me except one - “Things Fall Apart,” by Chinua Achebe. I ran out of time, didn’t finish the book, and then had to write a paper on it. And I swear my professor could see the guilt in my eyes and hear my heart beating when I handed that paper in. Yeah, I was kind of a nerd.
Poe’s stories and poems cover a variety of genres. He influenced the genres of Detective fiction and science fiction, but when most people think of Poe, they think of his Gothic horror, dealing with themes of death and mourning. And a lot of Poe’s works were influenced by the various women in his life. One of those women lived here, in Providence, and while their relationship was short, it had an impact on Poe and possibly a greater impact on his legacy.
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about Edgar Allan Poe’s visits to Providence, his relationship with Sarah Helen Whitman, and his time spent in places like the Providence Athenaeum and Swan Point Cemetery.
I assumed this episode would be easy to research, because there are so many Edgar Allan Poe experts out there. But I was surprised to learn how complicated his life was. There are a lot of mysteries and controversies over details in his story, and I can imagine he’d probably be pleased to know that’s the case. But know I’ll be glossing over some of these controversies and speculations for the sake of time.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, to two traveling actors. When he was very young, his father left and his mother died of Tuberculosis. This would begin a string of women in Poe’s life who would die of TB, and it would have a significant impact on his outlook and his writing. Poe was taken in by a couple in Richmond, VA named John and Frances Allan. Though they never formally adopted him, they raised him, and that’s where the Allan comes from in Edgar Allan Poe. The Allan’s were wealthy, and offered Poe some good opportunities early in life. The family spent five years during his childhood in England, where he attended school and did pretty well. He was close with his adopted mother, but his adopted father was tough on him and emotionally distant.
After the family moved back to Richmond, Poe fell in love with a neighbor named Sarah Elmira Royster. He proposed, but her father didn’t approve. When Poe went away to the University of Virginia to continue his education, Royster promised to wait for him - and the two were possibly engaged. But while he was away, Royster’s father intercepted Poe’s letters, and steered her in the direction of another more promising young man.
Poe wasn’t away long. He quickly racked up gambling debts and within a year he left the University. But when he arrived home, he found that his young love was engaged to someone else. Feeling the loss of yet another woman in his life, he left for Boston. It was there that he published his first book of poetry, though very few people read it.
At age 18, he joined the army under the pseudonym Edgar Perry, and quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant Major. It was during his enlistment that he, for the second time, lost his mother, this time his adopted mother Frances Allan, to tuberculosis. After her death, he went to West Point to attempt to commission, and while it sounds like he was doing well academically, there were other challenges. He ran into financial challenges and issues with his adopted father (who, after years of disagreements, officially disowned him). And he purposely got court-martialed and left the academy.
From West Point, Poe moved into his Aunt’s house in Baltimore, where he lived with her and her young daughter Virginia. This is one of those controversial pieces of his life that I mentioned earlier, because Poe would go on to marry his first cousin Virginia when she was just 13 years old and he was 27. Even at the time, she was considered too young. Historians think all kinds of different things about the nature of their relationship. Some think it was familial, others think it was romantic. But regardless of the reality of it, the two were married for 11 years and she had a profound impact on Poe and his work.
In the years after West Point, not only did he get married, but those were the years when Poe's writing career really got going, and today he’s remembered as the first well known American writer to earn a living through writing alone. But before you’re like, “Hey–good for him!” you should know that this really meant that Poe lived a financially difficult life. He was constantly struggling with money.
He switched from primarily writing poetry to writing a lot of prose, and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals as an editor and critic and publishing his own work, and this work had him making frequent moves from Baltimore to Richmond, VA to Philadelphia to Boston to NY. It was during his Philadelphia years that he wrote some of his most famous pieces: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But it was also during this time that Virginia started to show signs of illness. It was tuberculosis, yet again. She would spend five years sick - going through periods of severe illness and periods where she seemed better, and the constant oscillation between life and near death inspired one of Poe’s most famous quotes, written not in a story or a poem, but in a letter sent after her death. He said, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
By 1845, Poe and Virginia and her mother Maria had moved to New York, where Poe published The Raven. This poem turned Poe from a celebrity in literary circles to an overnight success and household name. Suddenly, he was being invited to literary salons–where the “In” writers of the day would gather. And Poe started to get himself into some trouble with the ladies.
One of the most prominent literary salons was that of Anne Lynch, and she held both weekly soirees and this annual Valentine’s Day party where writers would exchange poetic valentines. A contemporary of Poe wrote: “To be invited to the reception of Miss Lynch was an evidence of distinction... Perhaps no one received any more marked attention than Edgar A. Poe. His slender form, pale, intellectual face and weird expression of eye never failed to arrest the attention of even the least observant…women fell under his fascination and listened in silence.”
So, while Poe’s wife Virginia was at home, growing sicker with tuberculosis, he was getting some attention from literary women. One of those women was well-known poet Frances Sargent Osgood. The two had a kind of attraction, which they played out in these flirtatious poems written to one another and published in the Broadway Journal, where Poe was an editor. But this wasn’t the only admirer Poe had.
There was another poet, Elizabeth Ellet, who also wrote him flirtatious letters. Unfortunately for her, he described her advances as “loathsome” and didn’t respond. Ellet then waged war against Poe, ensuring his reputation was tainted. In 1846, Poe was removed from the guest list of the annual Valentine’s Day party because of the controversy with Mrs. Ellet, but he sent a poem to be read anyway. It was written for Osgood, and had her name hidden in the lines of the poem.
On that same day, Poe’s wife, who was patiently aware of his indiscretions, wrote a poem with his name hidden in it, asking that he take her away from the world and its “tattling of many tongues” and give her a cottage for her home. And he did. He didn’t talk to Osgood again after that, and he and Virginia and her mother moved out of the city to a cottage in what was then the countryside, (and today is the Bronx). Virginia died less than a year later, at the age of 24–the same age his mother was when she died of TB.
Poe was devastated by the loss. The theme of the death of a beautiful young woman, which he called “the most poetical topic in the world,” can be found running throughout many of Poe’s works, including his last poem, Annabel Lee, which many think is written about his love for his young wife. But a year after her death, he wrote that letter with the famous quote I mentioned earlier.
Just weeks later, the literary elite were again preparing to attend Anne Lynch’s annual Valentine’s Day party, and Lynch requested a poem be submitted by a Providence writer, Sarah Helen Whitman. So, here we are finally at the Rhode Island connection!
Whitman was born Sarah Helen Power in Providence, and later married John Whitman, a lawyer and editor of a Boston magazine. She moved to Boston after their marriage. It was here that she began publishing her poetry in her husband’s magazine, under the name Helen, and she met literary society, befriending Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller among others. When her husband died, she moved back to Providence to live with her mother and sister, and she established herself as an active player in the intellectual life of Providence.
Whitman was a fan of Poe, and when Lynch asked for a Valentine, she wrote addressed to him, just as he had written a Valentine to Osgood two years before. The Valentine was a playful riff on The Raven, and she expected it would be read in front of Poe. But, he was still not on the guest list. Lynch explained in a letter to Whitman, “The [poem] to Poe I admired exceedingly & would like to have published with your consent with the others, but he is in such bad odour with most persons who visit me that if I were to receive him, I should lose the company of many whom I value more.”
When the poem was published, Poe heard about it, and was flattered. He returned her Valentine by anonymously sending one of his earliest poems, titled “To Helen” to her. It’s possible Whitman didn’t know the anonymous letter was from Poe, and she didn’t respond. So a few months later, Poe wrote a new version of “To Helen.” But this one was written just for her.
It turns out Poe had seen Whitman once before, though the two hadn’t actually met. It had been on a visit to Providence attending a lecture by none other than Frances Sargent Osgood, back in 1845. And he recalled the moment he saw her in the poem. Whitman lived with her mother and sister in a red house on Benefit Street, and Poe and Osgood had walked the east side on a hot and humid night in July. Suddenly, Poe saw a veiled Whitman, dressed in all white, in her rose garden in the back yard of her east side home. Osgood had offered to introduce him to Whitman, but he declined. Actually, he was so stubborn about it, it caused an argument with Osgood. Poe would later explain his refusal by saying he thought Whitman was married (but let me remind you that he was married at that time.)
This exchange of poetry kickstarted their relationship, and they began writing to one another. They were two of a kind, in a way. In a strange coincidence, or twist of fate, the two were born on the same day, January 19th, though 6 years apart (Whitman was older). Poe is known for his horror and macabre writing, and Whitman was also kind of a dark, intellectual figure. She was interested in spiritualism and the occult - and she often wore black clothes and a coffin-shaped charm around her neck. Poe described his feeling of connection with her in one of their letters, remembering the first time he heard Anne Lynch describe Whitman. “She alluded to what she called your “eccentricities” and hinted at your sorrows…” he said, “She had referred to thoughts, sentiments, traits, moods which I knew to be my own, but which, until that moment, I had believed to be my own solely — unshared by any human being.”
So the two had a real connection, but it wasn’t necessarily one that others approved of. Whitman’s mother, especially, was not a fan of Poe, and she discouraged the relationship.
But still the two would write and meet, sometimes in cemeteries, other times in the Athenaeum, where Whitman spent a lot of time reading. During one visit to Providence, Poe and Whitman were tucked away in one of the Athenaeum’s alcoves, when Whitman asked if Poe had heard of this newish poem that she really liked. It was published anonymously, but something about the imagery captured her attention, and she had been asking everyone if they had heard of it. To her surprise, Poe said that he had not only read the poem. He had written it. And turning to a bound volume of the American Whig Review, which was in the alcove where they sat, he opened to the poem and signed his name at the bottom in pencil. Years later, Whitman would go back and find that signed poem, and today it’s part of the Athenaeum’s Special Collections.
But it wasn’t all happy coincidences. Perhaps her mother’s disapproval did get through, just a little. Because you can hear her doubts in some of her letters. In one she wrote, “How often I have heard men and even women say of you — “He has great intellectual power, but no principle — no moral sense.” Early on in their relationship, Poe proposed to Whitman. But at first she refused.
It’s possible this refusal led to what some think was a suicide attempt. One day, before boarding a train in Lowell, MA, Poe took a strong dose of laudanum. He arrived in Boston close to death. Whitman took care of him as he recovered in Providence.
Just four days after that, Poe sat to have an image taken of him. Not a photo, but a daguerreotype. I mentioned earlier that most people know what Poe looked like, and it’s this image that most picture. He’s got kind of a sad look on his face and bags under his eyes, which are kind of looking up, almost like a gloomy english bulldog. And his mouth is turned down at one side with one eyebrow is sloping in the other direction. He’s not quite disheveled, but he doesn’t look great. And that’s because this image was taken after a night of heavy drinking. Whitman remembers Poe coming to her house just after the image was taken, and he called on her to save him from some impending doom. He was so distraught he clung to her, almost ripping her dress, and her mother advised she prepare a cup of hot coffee to calm him. A doctor was called, and he was taken away to stay with a friend.
A few days after that, he would have another image taken, possibly as a gift for Whitman, and he thought that one was the best image that had been taken of him. But Whitman disagreed, thinking the other represented him better.
Eventually Poe’s insistent proposals won out. On December 20th, 1848 Poe lectured before a crowd of 1800 people in Providence. Whitman sat in the front row, and friends who were there remembered that the two exchanged flirtatious and knowing looks. The next day, Whitman agreed to an immediate marriage. They planned to get married at St. John’s Cathedral, beside her home, on Christmas day, just days later. But there was one condition. Whitman asked Poe to stop drinking, at least until they were married.
But according to stories, on December 23rd, Poe and Whitman were again sitting in an alcove in the Athenaeum when an unnamed messenger handed her a note saying Poe had already broken his vow. Whitman called off the wedding, rushed home, and held an ether soaked rag to her nose before fainting on her sofa. Poe tried to wake her, but she just murmured, “I love you” before fading into unconsciousness. The two never saw each other again.
Poe died less than a year after their proposed wedding date, under mysterious circumstances. They still don’t know exactly what happened today, and there are something like 26 published theories about his death, ranging from alcoholism to rabies to cholera to murder.
After his death, Poe’s reputation wasn’t great. His obituary was written by this guy who was actually Poe’s rival, and he characterized Poe as a drunk and madman. This man would go on to write the very first biography of Poe.
Years later, Sarah Helen Whitman became a staunch defender of Poe’s reputation. She worked with a new generation of biographers, sharing details of their relationship, letters, and memories in order to rescue Poe’s image. And it’s because of her that we have a more nuanced and likely more accurate understanding of Poe today.
Whitman lived for almost thirty more years, and she spent a lot of her time at the Athenaeum, where you can almost still feel the ghost of their love today.
On December 21, just days before their intended wedding, Poe checked a book out of the Athenaeum using a friend’s membership. Whitman checked that same book out just two months after their relationship ended. Their signatures are both there in the charging book, evidence maybe of that kind of sad longing you have for someone you love but know you can never have.
Thanks for listening to this excessively long episode! I got a little carried away. If you want to know more about Poe and Whitman, you can visit the home where Sarah Helen Whitman lived with her Mother and sister, where Poe saw her for the first time. Or you can check out the beautiful Athenaeum, sit in an alcove and imagine them whispering to one another. And there is also this awesome resource, Edgar Allan Poe RI . com, where you can learn more or book a walking tour of Poe’s Providence.
Thank you so much to Eric for suggesting this week’s episode! If you liked it, I’d love it if you could share it with your family and friends. Or you can send me an email at Weird Rhode Island @ gmail.com.