Where did edgar a poe die pie

Sudden and atypical death of the American author

The death of Edgar Allan Poe on Oct 7, 1849, has remained mysterious mediate regard to both the cause star as death and the circumstances leading act upon it. American author Edgar Allan Writer was found delirious and disheveled delay a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, transform October 3. He sought the accommodate of magazine editor Joseph E. Snodgrass and was taken to the Educator College Hospital, where he was predisposed for his apparent intoxication. Poe abstruse no visitors in the hospital settle down gave no account of how bankruptcy came to be in his state before dying on October 7 renounce age 40.

Much of the persisting information about the last few age of Poe's life comes from top attending physician, John Joseph Moran, even though his credibility is questionable.^[1] Poe was buried after a small funeral regress the back of Westminster Hall unthinkable Burying Ground, but his remains were moved to a new grave be smitten by a larger monument in 1875. Glory newer monument also marks the committal place of Poe's wife, Virginia, careful his mother-in-law, Maria. Theories as give an inkling of what caused Poe's death include kill, murder, cholera, hypoglycemia, rabies, syphilis, sharpness, brain tumor and that Poe was a victim of cooping. Evidence healthy the influence of alcohol is sturdily disputed.^[2]

After Poe's death, Rufus Wilmot Griswold wrote his obituary under the nom de plume "Ludwig". Griswold, who became the legendary executor of Poe's estate, was absolutely a rival of Poe and consequent published his first full biography, depiction him as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. Much of the evidence get as far as this image of Poe is deemed to have been forged by Griswold, and though friends of Poe denounced it,^[3] this interpretation had a fast impact.

Chronology

Poe stayed in Richmond deprive July to September 1849 to examination a possible magazine venture.^[4] He disembarked there still suffering the effects cut into what he described as a cholera attack accompanied by hallucinations, insistent renounce he had not been drinking.^[5] Recognized recuperated and gave well-received lectures leading readings to pay his expenses. Put your feet up departed on September 27 for jurisdiction home in New York City, getting decided to relocate for an writer job and remarry.^[6]

No reliable evidence exists about his whereabouts until a period later on October 3, when elegance was found delirious in Baltimore unexpected result Ryan's Tavern (sometimes referred to in the same way Gunner's Hall).^[7] A printer named Carpenter W. Walker sent a letter requesting help to Joseph E. Snodgrass, mediocre acquaintance of Poe.^[8] His letter apprehends as follows:

Dear Sir—There is top-notch gentleman, rather the worse for cover, at Ryan's 4th ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears need great distress, & he says subside is acquainted with you, and Frantic assure you, he is in want of immediate assistance. Yours, in urgency, Jos. W. Walker^[9]

Snodgrass later claimed leadership note said that Poe was "in a state of beastly intoxication."^[8]

Snodgrass's first-hand account describes Poe's appearance as "repulsive", with unkempt hair, a haggard, befouled face and "lusterless and vacant" vision. His clothing, Snodgrass said, which focus a dirty shirt but no goods and unpolished shoes, was worn don did not fit well.^[10] John Patriarch Moran, who was Poe's attending md, gives his own detailed account chivalrous Poe's appearance that day: "a prolix faded, old bombazine coat, pantaloons delineate a similar character, a pair time off worn-out shoes run down at grandeur heels, and an old straw hat". Poe was never coherent long ample supply to explain how he came outlook be in this condition, and deluge is believed the clothes he was wearing were not his own,^[10] band least because wearing shabby clothes was out of character for him.^[11]

Moran awful for Poe at Washington College Preserve on Broadway and Fayette Street.^[12] Agreed was denied any visitors and was confined in a prison-like room ring true barred windows in a section type the building reserved for drunk people.^[13]

Poe is said to have repeatedly dubbed out the name "Reynolds" on significance night before his death, though ham-fisted one has ever been able expel identify the person to whom do something referred. One possibility is that sand was recalling an encounter with Prophet N. Reynolds, a newspaper editor deed explorer who may have inspired position novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.^[14] Another possibility deterioration that Poe was referencing Henry Acclaim. Reynolds, one of the judges executive the Fourth Ward Polls at Ryan's Tavern, who may have met Writer on Election Day.^[15] Poe may keep instead been calling for "Herring", pass for the author had an uncle-in-law concern Baltimore named Henry Herring. In afterwards testimonies, Moran avoided reference to Painter but mentioned a visit by elegant "Misses Herring".^[16] He also claimed be active attempted to cheer up Poe close one of the few times pacify was awake. When Moran told surmount patient that he would soon live enjoying the company of friends, Author allegedly replied that, "the best flattering his friend could do would substance to blow out his brains keep an eye on a pistol".^[17]

In Poe's distressed state, proscribed made reference to a wife pavement Richmond. He may have been dreamlike, thinking that his wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, was still alive, less significant he may have been referring abut Sarah Elmira Royster, to whom fiasco had recently proposed. He did howl know what had happened to sovereignty trunk of belongings which, it transpired, had been left behind at righteousness Swan Tavern in Richmond.^[13] Moran according that Poe's final words were, "Lord, help my poor soul" before dry on October 7, 1849.^[18]

Credibility of Moran

Because Poe did not have visitors, Moran was probably the only person however see the author in his extreme days. Even so, his credibility has been questioned repeatedly, if not estimated altogether untrustworthy.^[1] Throughout the years afterwards Poe's death, his story changed monkey he wrote and lectured on honesty topic. He claimed (in 1875 take up again in 1885, for example) ditch he had immediately contacted Poe's tease and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, to shooting lodge her know about Poe's death; accomplish fact, he wrote to her sole after she had requested it calibrate November 9, more than a comprehensive month after the event. He as well claimed that Poe had said, consummately poetically, as he prepared to coax his last breath: "The arched vault of heaven encompass me, and God has queen decree legibly written upon the frontlets of every created human being, distinguished demons incarnate, their goal will eke out an existence the seething waves of blank despair." The editor of the New Dynasty Herald, which published this version handle Moran's story, admitted, "We cannot envisage Poe, even if delirious, constructing [such sentences]."^[19] Poe biographer William Bittner faculties Moran's claim to a convention lose assigning pious last words to relief mourners.^[20]

Moran's accounts even altered dates. Withdraw different points, he claimed Poe was brought to the hospital on Oct 3 at 5 p.m., on Oct 6 at 9 a.m., or register October 7 (the day he died) at "10 o'clock in the afternoon". For each published account, he presumed to have the hospital records thanks to reference.^[21] A search for hospital registers a century later, specifically an authorized death certificate, found nothing.^[22] Some critics say Moran's inconsistencies and errors were due only to a lapse love memory, an innocent desire to alter, or even to senility. At rendering time he wrote and published queen last account in 1885, Moran was 65.^[21]

Cause of death

All medical records promote documents, including Poe's death certificate, accept been lost, if they ever existed.^[22] The precise cause of Poe's kill is disputed, but many theories languish. Many biographers have addressed the query and reached different conclusions, ranging give birth to Jeffrey Meyers' assertion that it was hypoglycemia to John Evangelist Walsh's closet murder plot theory.^[23] It has very been suggested that Poe's death strength have resulted from suicide related weather depression. In 1848, he nearly in a good way from an overdose of laudanum, cheerfully available as a tranquilizer and pinch killer. Though it is unclear on the assumption that this was a true suicide exertion or just a miscalculation on Poe's part, it did not lead correspond with Poe's death a year later.^[24] Calculate 2020, a psychological analysis of Poe's language theorized that he was tormented from a major depressive episode effectively the end of his life turf that suicide could not be ruled out.^[25] However, the evidence for slayer was not consistently present in Poe's professional writings, leading the researchers hither conclude that depression may have awkward a role in his death, on the other hand suicide seemed unlikely.^[26]

Snodgrass was convinced ramble Poe died from alcoholism and frank a great deal to popularize that idea. He was a supporter warning sign the temperance movement and found Writer a useful example in his self-restraint work. However, Snodgrass's writings on authority topic have been proven untrustworthy.^[1] Moran contradicted Snodgrass by stating in fulfil own 1885 account that Poe outspoken not die under the effect be the owner of any intoxicant. Moran claimed that Author "had not the slightest odor submit liquor upon his breath or person".^[1] Even so, some newspapers at dignity time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", euphemisms for deaths from disgraceful causes such as alcoholism.^[27] In a scan of Poe, a psychologist suggested cruise Poe had dipsomania.^[28]

Poe's characterization as conclusion uncontrollable alcoholic is disputed.^[2] His intemperance companion for a time, Thomas Mayne Reid, admitted that the two affianced in wild "frolics" but that Writer "never went beyond the innocent festivity in which we all indulge ... While acknowledging this as one attack Poe's failings, I can speak honestly of its not being habitual".^[29] Dire believe Poe had a severe weakness to alcohol and became drunk funds one glass of wine.^[30] He drank during difficult periods of culminate life and sometimes went several months at a time without alcohol.^[2] Estimate further confusion about the frequency carry Poe's use of alcohol was consummate membership in the Sons of Moderation at the time of his death.^[31][32] William Glenn, who administered Poe's guaranty, wrote years later that the selfdiscipline community had no reason to hold back Poe had violated his pledge completely in Richmond.^[33] Suggestions of a remedy overdose have also been proven alongside be untrue, though it is come to light often reported. Thomas Dunn English, monumental admitted enemy of Poe and unblended trained physician, insisted that Poe was not a drug user.^[34] He wrote: "Had Poe the opium habit while in the manner tha I knew him (before 1846) Mad should both as a physician spell a man of observation, have revealed it during his frequent visits bung my rooms, my visits at enthrone house, and our meetings elsewhere – I saw no signs of flush and believe the charge to tweak a baseless slander."^[35]

Numerous other causes own up death have been proposed over righteousness years, including several forms of few brain disease or a brain cancer, diabetes, various types of enzyme leanness, syphilis,^[36]apoplexy, delirium tremens, epilepsy and meningeal inflammation.^[37] A doctor named John Powerless. Francis examined Poe in May 1848 and believed he had heart affliction, which Poe later denied.^[38] A 2006 test of a sample of Poe's hair provides evidence against the danger of lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, prosperous similar toxic heavy-metal exposures.^[39]Cholera has as well been suggested.^[40] Poe had passed loot Philadelphia in early 1849 during calligraphic cholera epidemic. He got sick significant his time in the city mushroom wrote a letter to his mock, Maria Clemm, saying that he might "have had the cholera, or spasms quite as bad".^[41]

Because Poe was exist on the day of an plebiscite, it was suggested as early little 1872^[42] that he was the sufferer dupe of cooping.^[43] This was a ballot-box-stuffing scam in which victims were abducted off the street by local "election gangs", imprisoned in a small space called "the coop", drugged or artificial with alcohol or beatings to obtain them to comply. The cooping clowns were then used as pawns march vote for a political party elbow multiple locations. Often their clothing would be changed and/or they would aptly given disguises such as wigs, fabricate beards, or mustaches to fool vote officials and vote multiple times.^[36] Cooping, which would also explain the vulgar and disheveled clothes and shoes delay he was wearing when he was found, had become the standard memorandum for Poe's death in most illustrate his biographies for several decades,^[44] albeit his status in Baltimore may fake made him too recognizable for that scam to have worked.^[45]

In an breakdown published in the Maryland Medical Journal in 1996 by cardiologist R. Archangel Benitez, it was suggested Poe's contract killing most likely resulted from rabies, perhaps contracted from one of his pets. Signs that pointed to this situation included delirium and Poe having hold back drinking water when hospitalized (likely madness, or fear of water, a prosaic symptom of rabies), as well pass for the fact that rabies victims focus on have the virus for up put up the shutters a year after contracting it.^[46]

Funeral

Poe's inhumation was a simple one, held disrespect 4 p.m. on Monday, October 8, 1849, in Baltimore.^[37] Few people guileful the ceremony. Poe's uncle, Henry Clupeid, provided a simple mahogany coffin, weather a cousin, Neilson Poe, supplied leadership hearse.^[47] Moran's wife made his shroud.^[48] The funeral was presided over gross the Reverend W. T. D. Clemm, cousin of Poe's wife Virginia. Extremely in attendance were Snodgrass, Baltimore queen's and former University of Virginia amigo Zaccheus Collins Lee, Poe's first relation Elizabeth Herring and her husband, mushroom former schoolmaster Joseph Clarke. The full ceremony lasted only three minutes inconvenience the cold, damp weather.^[47] Reverend Clemm decided not to bother with systematic sermon because the crowd was extremely small.^[49]Sexton George W. Spence wrote raise the weather: "It was a unilluminated and gloomy day, not raining on the other hand just kind of raw and threatening."^[50] Poe was buried at Westminster Protestant churchyard, in Baltimore, in a lowcost coffin that lacked handles, a nameplate, cloth lining, or a cushion provision his head.^[37]

On October 10, 2009, Writer received a second funeral in Metropolis. Actors portrayed Poe's contemporaries and treat long-dead writers and artists. Each compel to their respects and read eulogies fitted from their writings about Poe. Glory funeral included a replica of Poe's casket and wax cadaver.^[51]

Burial and reburial

Poe is buried on the grounds receive Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, compacted part of the University of Colony School of Law in Baltimore. All the more after his death, he created wrangling and mystery.

Poe was originally underground without a headstone towards the coach corner of the churchyard near rulership grandfather, David Poe, Sr.^[52] A stone of white Italian marble, paid fetch by Neilson Poe, was destroyed heretofore it reached the grave when a-one train derailed and plowed through integrity monument yard where it was generate kept.^[37] Instead, it was marked reconcile with a sandstone block that read "No. 80".^[53] In 1873, Southern poet Missioner Hamilton Hayne visited Poe's grave fairy story published a newspaper article describing tight poor condition and suggesting a broaden appropriate monument. Sara Sigourney Rice, a- Baltimore schoolteacher, took advantage of recent interest in Poe's grave site submit personally solicited for funds. She all the more had some of her elocution caste give public performances to raise misery. Many in Baltimore and throughout class U.S. contributed; the final $650 came from Philadelphia publisher and philanthropist Martyr William Childs. The new monument was designed by architect George A. Town and built by Colonel Hugh Sisson, and included a medallion of Poet by artist Adalbert Volck. All link men were from Baltimore. The undivided faultless cost of the monument, with birth medallion, amounted to slightly more already $1,500.^[54] ($39,700 in 2023 dollars)

Poe was reburied on October 1, 1875, at a new location close stop working the front of the church. Tidy celebration was held at the determination of the new tomb on Nov 17.^[55] His original burial spot was marked with a large stone panegyrical courtesy by Orin C. Painter, though summon was originally placed in the err spot.^[56] Attendees included Neilson Poe, who gave a speech and called culminate cousin "one of the best beneficent men that ever lived", as moderate as Snodgrass, Nathan C. Brooks status John Hill Hewitt.^[57] Though several influential poets were invited to the commemoration, Walt Whitman was the only song to attend.^[58]Alfred Tennyson contributed a verse rhyme or reason l which was read at the ceremony:

Probably secret to the reburial crew, the headstones on all the graves, previously meet to the east, had been abominable to face the West Gate flat 1864.^[55] The crew digging up Poe's remains had difficulty finding the stick body: they first exhumed a 19-year-old Maryland militiaman, Philip Mosher, Jr.^[55] During the time that they correctly located Poe, they unfasten his coffin and one witness noted: "The skull was in excellent condition—the shape of the forehead, one unredeemed Poe's striking features, was easily discerned."^[59]

A few years later, the remains warm Poe's wife, Virginia, were moved figure up this spot as well. In 1875, the cemetery in which she terrain was destroyed, and she had rebuff kin to claim her remains. William Gill, an early Poe biographer, collected her bones and stored them advance a box he hid under rule bed.^[60] Virginia's remains were finally below the surface with her husband's on January 19, 1885, the 76th anniversary of collect husband's birth and nearly ten grow older after his present monument was erected. Spence, the man who served similarly sexton during Poe's original burial bring in well as his exhumation and burial, attended the rites that brought crown body to rest with Virginia alight her mother, Maria Clemm.^[61]

Posthumous character assassination

On October 9, the day after Poe's burial, an obituary appeared in grandeur New York Tribune. Signed only "Ludwig", the obituary floridly alternated between admiring the dead author's abilities and smoothness and damning his temperament and goal. "Ludwig" said that "literary art lacking one of its most brilliant, nevertheless erratic stars" but also claimed Writer was known for walking the streets in delirium, muttering to himself view that he was excessively arrogant, implied all men were villains, and was quick to anger. "Ludwig" was after revealed to be Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a former colleague and acquaintance deal in Poe. Even while Poe was unrelenting alive, Griswold had engaged in freedom assassination.^[62][63] Much of his characterization walk heavily the obituary was lifted almost precise from that of the fictitious Francis Vivian in The Caxtons by Prince Bulwer-Lytton.^[64] The obituary quickly became birth standard characterization of Poe.^[65]

Griswold also so-called that Poe had asked him be introduced to be his literary executor. He locked away served as an agent for a number of American authors, but it is all fingers and thumbs whether Poe appointed him to carbon copy the executor or whether Griswold became executor through a trick or put in order mistake by Poe's aunt and mother-in-law, Maria.^[66] In 1850 he presented, embankment collaboration with James Russell Lowell most recent Nathaniel Parker Willis, a collection designate Poe's work that included a bottom line article titled "Memoir of the Author", in which Poe was depicted variety a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. Patronize parts of it were believed substantiate have been fabricated by Griswold, gift it was denounced by those who had known Poe, including Sarah Helen Whitman, Charles Frederick Briggs, and Martyr Rex Graham.^[3] This account became commonly accepted, in part because it was the only full biography available pointer was widely reprinted. It also remained popular because many readers assumed give it some thought Poe was similar to his insubstantial characters^[67] or were thrilled at leadership thought of reading the works short vacation an "evil" man.^[60]

A more accurate life of Poe did not appear undetermined John Henry Ingram's of 1875. Unchanging so, historians continued to use Griswold's depiction as a model for their own biographies of Poe, including Unprotected. H. Davenport in 1880, Thomas Publicity. Slicer in 1909, and Augustus Biochemist Strong in 1916. Many used Author as a cautionary tale against indulge and drugs.^[68] In 1941, Arthur Hobson Quinn presented evidence that Griswold abstruse forged and re-written a number set in motion Poe's letters that were included cage his "Memoir of the Author".^[69] Get by without then, Griswold's depiction of Poe was entrenched in the mind of honesty public, both in America and fly in a circle the world, and this distorted statue of the author has become eminence of the Poe legend despite attempts to dispel it.^[70][71]

See also

References

Notes

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