Edgar Allan Poe was originally buried without a headstone at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore.
When wandering among the obelisks, grieving angels, worn headstones and elaborate tombs in Richmond’s historic cemeteries, visitors can encounter Edgar Allan Poe’s mother and the two women who became his ostensible stepmothers, his first older-woman crush, a trio of women who claimed his youthful affections, the publisher under whose guidance he transformed into a professional writer, the editor with whom he threatened to duel, and the profoundly deaf fangirl who later claimed to have helped him compose “The Raven.”
You will not, however, find the man himself.
His absence is conspicuous, especially with the number of Poe’s personal acquaintances assembled here in Richmond. This layers further mystery onto his Oct. 7, 1849, death. Yes, Baltimore has Poe’s corporeal remains (along with those of his grandfather, older brother and wife), but Richmond may also boast of harboring his soul.
Poe spent collectively almost half of his 40 years in Richmond and, in his better moods, he characterized the city as home. During his lifetime, Richmond’s population grew from the size of a capacity crowd at The Diamond to a figure that could fill the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. The upper social class of John and Frances Keeling Valentine Allan, who became Poe’s guardians following his mother’s death, made Poe’s circle of intimates smaller. Then, traveling along the East Coast like an indie troubadour taking gigs where he could find them, his acquaintances widened.
A recent book by Richmond historian and Gallaudet University English professor Sharon Pajka, “The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe: Graves of His Family, Friends and Foes,” collects an assortment of these figures from Poe’s life.
As Pajka observes in the introduction, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore calculates that the writer corresponded with some 200 people, and, with 400 surviving letters, there are plenty from which to choose. She selected 37 sites located throughout Virginia and in Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.
The book resembles a gathering in appreciation or a memorial service during which the speakers offer a pastiche of the individual’s life and character in a way that may reveal several surprises. Pajka observes, “There is something unique about visiting the graves of those who were one degree of separation away from an author.”
Each entry in the book includes a “Life Before the Stone” section in which Pajka gives a brief biography, describes the grave and marker (or lack thereof), and closes with reflections about the sites within the cemeteries. She has previous experience with this subject through her first book, also from the History Press, titled “Women Writers Buried in Virginia.”
Located within Richmond’s cemeteries of St. John’s Episcopal in Church Hill and at Shockoe Hill are the final resting places of no fewer than 14 people who knew Poe in his formative years.
At St. John’s is the writer’s English-born mother, stage performer Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, whose death of tuberculosis at age 23 on Dec. 8, 1811, was witnessed by her three young children: the eldest at 5 years, William Henry Leonard, as well as 3-year-old Edgar and 1-year-old Rosalie.
A memorial marker at St. John’s Episcopal Church honors Poe’s mother, Eliza.
Her monument on the eastern side of the cemetery wall was installed in 1927 after 16 years of effort by the University of Virginia’s Raven Society with the assistance of the Actor’s Equity Association and the Poe Shrine/Museum. Poe publicly wrote in 1845 of his theater heritage and attested — in the face of general disapproval of showpeople — that “no earl was prouder of his earldom” than he, the son of an actress.
Not far from Eliza Poe at St. John’s is Thomas Willis White, the founder of the Southern Literary Messenger, whose employment of Poe made a writer out of him. His portrait in Pajka’s book makes him seem a merry fellow. Under White’s editorship, Poe penned a remarkable assortment of essays, reviews and stories that increased the journal’s readership. But Poe’s difficulties with drinking caused White, with heartfelt regret, to let him go.
A few steps from White is Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, Poe’s childhood sweetheart, whose parents didn’t want her affections wasted on a nobody orphan son of actors. When the widowed 40-year-old Poe returned to Richmond in the summer of 1849, he sought the also 40 and widowed Elmira’s hand in marriage.
The only images of Elmira come from later in life, after children, deaths and widowhood when her wealthy canal freight entrepreneur husband died, though in her youth she was said to be tall, dark-haired and quick to smile and laugh. This was the Elmira that Poe seems to have carried in his memories — and that she was rich, this fact sparking, at least in part, his motivation to marry her.
The house where Poe attempted to reignite the romance, 2407 E. Grace St., stands today, as does 604 S. Center St. in Ashland where Poe’s “Lost Lenore” resided for a time after the Civil War.
Elmira told artist and historian Edward Valentine that she and Poe weren’t engaged, though she apparently confided to others the opposite. Yet, she retained until her death a brooch with Poe’s hair and a daguerreotype. She is buried alongside her husband, Alexander Shelton, in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
Jane Stith Craig Stanard is buried at Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
There, too, among assorted Allans and others of association to Poe, is Jane Stith Craig Stanard, mother of Poe’s boyhood friend Robert Craig Stanard (also in Shockoe). Poe found sympathy for his adolescent woes in his best friend’s mom. According to Sarah Helen Whitman, a later love interest of Poe’s, he confided that when he first met Jane, the combination of her gracious character and physical attractiveness brought him close to fainting.
Jane suffered from some form of depression and an unidentified illness. When she died at age 31 on April 28, 1825, the impressionable 15-year-old Poe suffered with her passing. He often visited the grave, sometimes alongside Robert, and later even with his wife, Virginia. He dedicated in her name the renowned 1831 poem “To Helen.” The verses enshrine idyllic love, exalting:
“Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome.”
Sharon Pajka hosts a book signing for “The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe” (History Press, $23.99) at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 11, at the Hanover Book Expo.
