June 13, 2012 • 31 mins
In 1849, Edgar Allan Poe disappeared for five days before he was found semi-conscious outside of a saloon. He died four days later, presumably from alcohol abuse. Over the years, many alternate cause-of-death theories have emerged. Which is most likely?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to blame a truck reboarding and I'm fair out. And
we usually save our spookier subjects for the fall and Halloween,
(00:20):
of course, but summer is also a great time to
curl up with a good mystery, and today's subject Edgar
Allan Poe definitely offers that. A famous nineteenth century writer, poet, critic,
and editor known for dabbling in Moody and maccabb topics,
po almost really needs no introduction, but of course we're
going to give you one anyway. Can't just skip skip
(00:42):
this whole part, now, that's what we do. So chances
are you've at least heard of po and if you've
taken any sort of post grade school level literature class,
you've probably read his work too, or at least The
Eerie the Raven, which is his most famous piece, or
even grade school. I think I memorized they even sometime
in elementary school. Well you're very advanced Thereah, I don't
(01:04):
know about that. I was. I did it dramatically, That's
why I chose it. But um Pol is also often
credited with creating the first modern detective story with his
murders of the Room Morgue. And ironically, some of the
aspects of his own life, particularly the end of his life,
are really worthy of the type of fiction he wrote. Yeah, Basically,
(01:27):
in the fall of eighteen forty nine, po disappeared for
a few days, and when he reappeared, he was in
really bad shape. He was delirious, and he appeared to
a lot of people to be severely intoxicated, and he
died just a few days later. Because of that, initially
many people assumed alcoholism is what ultimately killed Poe, But
(01:47):
it really didn't take long for others to start stepping
up with alternate theories, some of which seemed just as
if not more plausible, than the alcoholism one. And these
theories are still debated today. And I should go back
and say I mean that, you know, I mentioned that
it didn't take long for you will come up with theories.
It took a few years. I mean, it really wasn't
investigated at the time. Alcoholism was really the prevailing thought.
(02:11):
So today, though, we're going to take a look closer
look at pose mysterious disappearance and his death and discussed
some of those theories about what ultimately led to his demise.
But before we can really talk about pose death, you know,
we said we had to do this introduction, We've got
to do more than that. Really, we we really need
to tell you at least a little bit about his life,
(02:33):
because it's pretty interesting too. It is. He was born
Edgar Poe January eighteen o nine in Boston, Massachusetts, to
too struggling actor parents, David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. Ecker
was actually the second of their children. His older brother,
William Henry Leonard, ended up living with their grandparents because
of their parents constant financial struggles, and Poe also had
(02:56):
a sister, Rosalie, who was a year younger than him,
and Poe had to face hardship and a lot of
sadness really early on. His father abandoned the family around
the time of, or even before his sister's birth, at
which point Poe, his sister, and his mom all moved
to Virginia, and his mom got ill and died the
year after his sister was born. So that happened when
(03:16):
Poe was only about two years old. So po and Rosalie,
now basically orphans, were taken in by family friends in Richmond,
and Po ended up living with the merchant John Allen
and his wife Francis, who didn't have any kids, while
Rosalie went on to live with a neighboring family called
the Mackenzie's, and Allen's basically treated Poe as their own child.
(03:38):
They never legally adopted him, but they educated him and
treated him like their son. He started his education in Richmond,
and then at age six, he was taken abroad for
a bit and continued studying in England and Scotland for
about five years before he returned to Virginia with the Allens,
where he continued his cooling and let's start thinking of
(04:01):
a little adolescent strange Poe. He seemed like a pretty
normal kid. He made friends, was doing all right in
school and everything. However, by his mid teens or so,
Po discovered that his foster father wasn't exactly being faithful
to his foster mother, and this really upset Poe and
it kicked off a very strange relationship between Poe and
(04:21):
John Allen, and they argued a lot about that topic.
Around this time, Poe also fell in love with a
local girl named Sarah Elmira Royster, and she was in
love with him too, but in Po went off to
the University of Virginia. So Pose only at the University
of Virginia for about eleven months, though, and according to
a biography of Edgar Allan Poe by Veronica Loveday, Alan
(04:45):
wouldn't give Poe the money he needed to buy school
basics like book so Post started gambling, ended up racking
up a lot of debt, and he also started drinking
while he was there, and unfortunately for him, he had
a very low tolerance for alcohol. So Alan ultimately refused
to let Poe continue spending time at the university. In
(05:06):
the meantime, realizing that post future was really uncertain because
of this contentious relationship with his foster father, Royster's parents
decided to put a stop to her relationship with Poe.
They made sure, for example, that she never received post
letters from school, and by the time Poe returned to Richmond,
his beloved Sarah was engaged to someone else. So Poe
(05:28):
was understandably devastated by this turn of events, and he
decided to go to Boston in the spring of eighteen seven,
where he tried tried his hand at making a living
as a writer, and he did publish some stuff. He
published his first volume of poetry, tamer Lane and Other Poems,
and this was fairly well received, but he could only
(05:48):
print a few copies and at the end of the
day he was still destitute. So he's published, but it
didn't bring in the money with hoping. So to solve
his money issues, he joined the army and he really
actually thrived in the military, doing a desk job for
a couple of years. He was even promoted from private
to the rank of sergeant major and Poe decided that
(06:08):
he wanted to attend West Point, and after a while,
Alan agreed to help him fund this. He saw, Okay,
my my foster son is actually doing well. Yes, maybe
I should support this. So Poe was released from the
army and he applied to the Military Academy, and while
he was waiting to be accepted to West Point, he
spent a little time in Baltimore getting to know his
(06:30):
Poe family again, his grandmother, his brother, and his father's sister,
who was his aunt, Mariah Clem. Mariah Clem also had
a very young daughter, Virginia, and Poe also published another
collection of poems during this time. Soon he was accepted
to West Point though in eighteen thirty, so he had
to put down the pen for a little while. But
he didn't stay at West Point long either. Again, according
(06:52):
to Loveday's article, he learned that John Allen had had
a pair of twins as a result of one of
his affairs, and even though his Austro mother was dead
by this time, Pope pretty much realized there was no
future between him and his foster father. And in fact,
and just as an aside, Alan did ultimately leave everything,
the whole inheritance to these twins that he had. That
(07:13):
might have been a good intuition he had there so
set on pursuing a writing career, you know, deciding that
this was gonna have to be how he'd make his
his future and his career. Poe took measures to get
himself expelled from West Point. He wasn't just going to
drop out, and he couldn't just walk away, no, no, So,
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he just didn't show up at
(07:35):
any classes or any drills for a week, and he
even tried to spread a rumor that he was the
grandson of Benedict Arnold. Probably not something that's going to
make you too popular at your military school. And in
the end he did finally get his wish and he
was dismissed, so he was freed up to pursue this
writing career that he was hoping to So Poe moved
(07:56):
to New York in February of eight thirty one, and
he published a third collection called Poems from there. He
moved around between New York City, Baltimore, Richmond, and Philadelphia
for the next few years in pursuit of his writing career,
and for purposes here, we're just going to cover some
of the highlights of what he did during that time.
By March of eighteen thirty one, Poe returned to Baltimore
(08:18):
to live with his aunt, Maria Clem and his little
cousin Virginia, and while there he still struggled to earn
a living, but he started to write stories as well pros. Yeah,
and things did start to look up a little bit
in eighteen thirty three when his story manuscript found in
a bottle one of fifty dollar prize from a Baltimore
weekly newspaper, and that finally started to get him noticed,
(08:41):
and he also started writing reviews and stories for the
Southern Literary Messenger, and by eighteen thirty five he even
took a position as an editor there and made even
more of a name for himself. In the meantime, his
brother and his foster father died, so a little more
tragedy in his life, and his foster father, as we mentioned,
left him nothing, so he realized that he was really
(09:03):
going to have to make a living on his own.
And on September eighteen thirty five, another life milestone, he
married his first cousin, Virginia Clem and as you'll remember,
we mentioned she was very young. Well, at the time
of their marriage she was only thirteen and the marriage
certificate listed her as twenty one, but that was incorrect.
(09:24):
According to Loveday's article, Poe did wait for more than
two years before consummating their marriage, So yeah, Poe would
have been in his in his late twenties by then.
It's always one of those facts that sticks with you
about about Edgar Allen Poe, big age difference, um. But
moving on to his career again, It's unclear whether it
was voluntary or not, but Poe left his job at
(09:46):
the Southern Literary Messenger, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he
was fired probably because of his drinking. Um. Drinking really
seemed to become sort of a means of escape for him.
But as we mentioned, he also had a very low
taller it's for alcohol his entire life, so it didn't
really take that much to make him appear very intoxicated,
(10:06):
and even though he wasn't very intoxicated that often. Again
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he was unfortunately usually somewhere in
public when he was drunk, so he got this reputation
as being a public drunk. But after this, after leaving
the Southern Southern Literary Messenger or being fired, he and
(10:27):
Virginia moved to New York City, where he reviewed articles
for the New York Review while still pursuing his own
projects too. By eighteen thirty nine, the couple had moved
to Philadelphia, where he published Tales of the Grotesque in
the Arabesque Short Story Collection. He also started working as
an editor for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and by the fall
of eighteen forty one he started working for kind of
(10:50):
a successor to that magazine, Graham's Ladies and Gentlemen's magazine,
and this afforded him study income finally, and it's where
he published The Murders in the Room Morgue. So at
this point Poe's notoriety is really starting to grow. But
like most of his jobs, the Graham's gig was short lived.
He quit by the middle of eighteen forty two to
(11:10):
work as a freelance writer and to also try to
start his own publication, which was something that he would
try to do here and there throughout the rest of
his life, but he was never really successful with that
part of it. With starting his own publication, couldn't follow
the Dickens model. In eighteen forty four, he returned to
New York, where he continued writing, and it was while
there in eighteen forty five that his poem The Raven
(11:33):
was published, and it was instantly successful, making Poe very famous.
But despite his successes in the literary world that we're
happening around this time, this was still a very rough
period for Poe. For one thing, Virginia became very ill.
She had contracted tuberculosis at some point in the early
eighteen forties and her health never really got better after that.
(11:55):
And for his part, Poe wasn't doing so great either.
His drinking continued to get worth and this exacerbated his
own health issues, and according to Loveday's article, he almost
died in eighteen forty four from heart failure. So not
not so great for Mr and Mrs Poe at this point.
With the fame the Raven brought him, Post started doing
(12:17):
lecture tours in the northeastern United States, and though he
still struggled financially, he had quite a lot of social
attention paid to him during this time. In eighteen forty five,
for example, he received the attentions of the poet Francis
Sergeant Locke Osgood, and they had an affair, which was
scandalous because she wrote poems about him, and so everybody
(12:37):
knew what was going on between them because it was
out there in print. Kind of like writing about him
on her blog or something these days, yeah, kind of. Actually,
that's a pretty good comparison, I think. But according to
Encyclopedia Britannica, Poe's wife, for whatever reason, did not object
to this relationship with Osgood, so people were scandalized by it,
but she was kind of okay with it, and her
(12:59):
health continued to deteriorate, and she finally died in January
of eighteen forty seven at the age of twenty four.
So after his wife's death, Poe did publish a few things,
including a lecture called Eureka, some poems, including The Bells
and Anna Bell Lee. He also tried to start a
magazine again, but once again that didn't work. He did
not succeed at running a magazine, but his final years
(13:22):
are also marked by some serious relationships that he had
with a couple of women. First, there was the Providence,
Rhode Island based poet named Sarah Helen Whitman. They actually
became engaged in eighteen forty eight, but she only agreed
to marry him on the condition that he quit drinking.
According to Loveday's article, Poe just couldn't control his feelings
(13:43):
for her, and he tried to commit suicide by taking
laudanum in November of eighteen forty eight. After that he relapsed,
he started drinking again, and so Whitman broke off the engagement.
In eighteen forty nine, continuing his lectures, he returned to
Richmond for a while, and while he was there he
ran into his old flame from his teenage years Elmira Royster,
(14:07):
who just happened to be a widow by this point,
by the name of Mrs a by Shelton, and they
rekindled their old romance. Well. Elmira was a teetotaler too,
and much like Sarah Whitman, she would not have approved
of Poe drinking. Luckily, though, Poe decided to completely give
up alcohol and may have been successful at this for
(14:27):
several months. According to an article by Robert Hopkins in
the Southern Quarterly, Poe even took a public oath on
August nine at a Sons of Temperance meeting in which
he swore that he'd never touch another drop of liquor,
and he signed a document to that effect as well.
So I guess old Elmira was convinced by this display,
(14:47):
and so they became engaged and set their wedding date
for October seventeenth. This is where things start to get
a little weird in the story, though before the marriage
was supposed to take place, was set off on a
business trip to Philadelphia in New York, and while he
was in New York, it's possible he was going to
pick up his aunt, Maria Clem to and bring her
(15:09):
down to Richmond for the wedding. I guess his his
former mother in law as well. Um, he probably set
off for this trip from Richmond around September nine, and
what happened after that is what's really uncertain. Yeah, some
say that he went straight to Baltimore and called on
a friend, Dr. Nathan C. Brooks, but Brooks wasn't at home.
(15:33):
And if Baltimore is the only stop that Poe made,
then that still leaves several days unaccounted for, because there
doesn't seem to be any information on what he was
up to in town after that for the following days
after that, however, according to the ed Girl in Post
Society of Baltimore, a Philadelphia friend of Poes, Thomas H. Lane,
who had worked for the Broadway Journal, later said that
(15:54):
he believed Poe had come to Philadelphia and seen mutual
friends of theirs while he was in town. Lane said
that Poe also fell ill while he was in Philadelphia,
but instead of he still insisted on getting on a
train to New York after his brief visit. He had
business to do there. He was going to see Aunt Maria,
so he was going to head out, so Lane's theory
(16:14):
is that Poe must have gotten on the wrong train
and ended up back in Baltimore. But even if this
Philadelphia visit did happen, and it's not clear whether it
did or not, the exact dates aren't known, so there's
a lot that's still very sketchy about this possibility in
the story. A letter from Poe to aunt Maria Clem
also confirms that he at least had intentions of heading
(16:37):
to Philadelphia to meet another poet and edit her poems there,
and he'd also told Aunt Maria to write him directly
in Philadelphia, as if he'd be there to receive it,
but he did tell her to address her correspondence instead
of just addressing it to Edgar Allan, Poe address it
to E. S. T. Gray Esquire. So kind of a
shady aspect to the story, yeah, for sure, so what
(17:02):
is known though. What is known for sure is that
on October three, Poe is found in a very very
bad way, lying outside of Ryan's fourth Ward Polls, Baltimore,
which was basically a saloon, but voting also would take
place there too, and an election was going on the
city at the same time. For hard to imagine, Bars
(17:22):
doubling is his polling stations today. But a man named J. W.
Walker found Po outside of this bar slash polling station,
nearly unconscious and delirious, and strangely wearing somebody else's cheap, dirty,
ill fitting clothes. And according to Hopkins article, Walker immediately
(17:43):
sent a note to a doctor J. E. Snodgrass, who
was an acquaintance of Pose, at Poe's own request. And
this is what the note said, Dear sir, there's a
gentleman rather worse for wear at Ryan's fourth ward polls
who goes under the name of Edgar A. Poe, and
who appear years in great distress. And he says he's
acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in
(18:05):
need of immediate assistant. Snodgrass and Henry Herring at that point,
and Henry Herring was someone who had married one of
Poe's aunts, showed up and took Po to Washington College
Hospital at about five pm that day, and while there
he was attended to by a resident named doctor John
Joseph Moran. So Poe was pretty much unconscious until the
next day. But even when he was a little more coherent,
(18:26):
he wasn't able to exactly tell the doctor how he
came to be in his present state. After that, he
became delirious on and off for a few days, and
according to the Post Society of Baltimore, at one point
cried out the name Reynolds. But no one's been able
to figure out who he was referring to by that.
It's just an interesting little detail we wanted to throw
in interesting indeed, But on Sunday, October seven, four days
(18:50):
after he was found outside of the saloon, po finally
passed away, and that morning his last words were God
bless my poor soul. He was only forty years old.
So this brings us to our our big question, what
happened to Poe before he died and what really caused
his death. Of course, most people at the time, as
(19:12):
we already indicated, and even many people today, have believed
that drinking was what ultimately killed him. This theory was
actually sort of promoted at the time, even by pose
acquaintance who helped him out, Dr Snodgrass. According to Hopkins,
though we should take Snodgrass's perspective with a little grain
of salt. He was apparently super religious and kind of
(19:33):
used pose fate to illustrate what could happen to you
if you indulged in the sin of drinking, almost as
a cautionary tale of sorts. As Hopkins put it, Snodgrass
went to quote great lengths to support his temperance cause
at pose expense, and a lot of the other people
who spread the alcohol abuse theory were either coming from
similar perspective as the Snodgrass or getting their information second hand.
(19:59):
But Hopkin and some other sources say that it's unlikely
that alcohol abuse is ultimately what killed Edgar Allan Poe.
So Dr Moran, for instance, who attended to Poe in
his final days, actually published a book thirty years after
the death called A Defense of Edgar Allan Poe, in
which he said quote, I have stated to you the
fact that Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the
(20:21):
effect of an intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor
upon his breath or person. Although we have to say
to a lot of people discount Miran's opinions here, because
apparently he changed his story quite significantly from what he
said right after Poe's death, and Hopkins even points out
that Moran changed his opinion only after certain key temperance
(20:43):
promoters who were very closely involved in the situation passed away,
so there might have been some sort of conspiracy involved
there too. Yeah, it makes you wonder was he just
telling the truth later in life, waiting for certain people
to to no longer be there, or whether he just
changed his story for something a new interesting angle right.
(21:04):
There are, however, some other more straightforward signs that alcohol
may not have been the cause of death. For example,
while in the hospital, Poe got better before he then
again got worse and died, which according to the University
of Maryland Medical Center, isn't consistent with alcohol withdrawal. So
I think that's the medical background. Interesting little science background.
(21:28):
So still though, if drinking too much didn't kill Poe,
what might have killed him? You don't usually just wind
up dead outside of a saloon, So some people believe
that he was the victim of a type of political
sabotage known as cooping. And as we mentioned, there was
an election going on at the time, and the saloon
did double as a place to go vote. So cooping
(21:49):
supposedly involved political gangs kidnapping bystanders and then holding them
for a while in a room called a coup and
then forcing them after they had gotten them kind of
liquored up or drugged up, to illegally vote in multiple
polling locations. And sometimes these gangs would even have their
victims changed clothing so that they wouldn't be recognized when
(22:10):
they were voting multiple times in the same area. This
whole thing sounds kind of terrifying to me, the idea
of cooping. Some people, though, discount this theory for a
few different reasons. For one, Poe is a celebrity of
his day, almost he was pretty well known, and he
probably would have been recognized even if he were wearing
these different ratty sort of clothes. Also, some say that
(22:33):
there is a lack of evidence that the practice of
cooping really existed in the first bow. I don't need
to be too worried. Maybe maybe not, I'm not sure.
I mean, there definitely was a lot of applying with
alcohol going on in general, I mean, having polling places
and bars, which was often the case, kind of encouraged that.
But there were accounts in contemporary publications that were citizens
(22:55):
were warned about the very real possibility of cooping in
the days right before are leading up to the election,
So people at the time at least believe that cooping
was going on and was a real possibility. So go
vote with your friends, vote in a group. Yeah, I
would be careful, So go ahead and be scared. Sarah
could have happened, all right, next time I go vote.
But also Hopkins point without a cryptic statement that was
(23:18):
made by J. H. Morrison after post death and in
a letter to John Ingram, Morrison suggests post cousin Nelson
might have known something about the circumstances surrounding post death,
and he said, quote, the story of post death has
never been told. Nelson Poe has all the facts, but
I am afraid may not be willing to tell them.
(23:39):
I do not see why Poe came to the city
in the midst of an election, and that election was
the cause of his death. So one interesting point to
make here about the involvement of cousin Nelson is that
Nelson was in fact elected a judge in that eighteen
forty nine election. Also, Nelson and Poe did not get
along well at all. Some say that Nelson had had
(24:02):
his own designs on marrying Virginia Clem, but of course
she ended up with Poe. So um those are some
of the political type of conspiracy theories, but several diseases
have also been suggested as the causes of post death,
and some of the possibilities that folks have thrown out
over the years include brain tumors, heart disease, cholera, stroke,
(24:25):
and diabetes. And then in nineteen eighty four, a biohistorian
named Arnold Carlin came out with the theory that Poe
had this rare type of enzyme disorder called alcohol dehydrogenase
deficiency syndrome, and he had that perhaps in combination with
a brain tumor. So Hawkins says that the syndrome is
an interesting theory because it could perhaps explain pose lifelong
(24:49):
low tolerance of alcohol as well as some of his
mental issues, and of course it's death too. One of
the more recent and popular medical malady theories though as rabies.
According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, Dr R
Michael Benitez reviewed post case and in n he proposed
that post symptoms in the final days of his life
(25:11):
were in fact consistent with the progression of rabies. This
could be possible even though there weren't any apparent animal
bites on Poe. At the time, Poe was known to
be an animal lover. He loved cats in particular, and
he did keep pets, and people can sometimes, according to
the source, can have rabies up to a year without
showing symptoms, which I actually didn't know before. Another disturbing
(25:34):
factors from the podcast. One of the symptoms Benitez was
including in his assessment, though, was hydrophobia, a fear of
water that Post supposedly exhibited when he had trouble drinking
in the hospital. However, that account of Po not drinking
came from one of our friend Dr Moran's many accounts
of the situation, and he contradicted it in another later account.
(25:57):
So some discountless Raby's theory because of at does make
a good headline, though, you've got to give it that.
But finally, a lot of people think Poe died as
the result of some kind of conspiracy. And of course
it already sounds like we've discussed these conspiracy theories because
there's a touch of conspiracy mixed in with some of
the earlier theories, like the alcohol line, conspiracy by temperance
(26:19):
movement folks to get their agenda across, and the cooping.
You know, the possible conspiracy involving Poe's cousin who was
running for office, but some think pose romantic entanglements might
have led to a plot against him as well, and
for instance, Almira Rooster Shelton's brothers might not have been
too happy about that impending marriage to their sister, and
(26:42):
some authors have tossed that out there as a possibility.
Hopkins actually points to an account of Joseph's Oar Train's
as potential evidence that something like this was in fact
going on. Joseph's oar Train had worked with Poe at
Graham's magazine, and after Poe's death, he had come out
with kind of a shocking account of his last encounter
(27:02):
with Poe. According to star Train's account, he saw Poe
in Philadelphia in nine and Poe was afraid for his
life at this time, asking for star Train's protection and
saying that he had overheard some men on the train
plotting to kill him. When star Train asked why would
someone want to kill you, Poe said, quote it was
for revenge for quote a woman trouble. So another intriguing possibility,
(27:29):
but many people, though, believe that the most likely conspirator
against Poe with Rufus debut. Griswold and Grizzwold had aspired
to be a fiction writer but didn't really have the
talent ended up becoming an editor instead, and he and
Poe brushed paths professionally on many occasions, and the two
men just didn't really like each other, and Hopkins suggests
(27:51):
that Griswold may have been perhaps jealous of pose talent,
though Grizzold apparently claimed upon Poe's death that Poe had
made a pro miss that he wanted Griswold to be
his literary executor, but according to Hopkins, no legal proof
of this agreement exists. Still, though Griswold did become pose
(28:11):
executor and his first biographer and likely got the opportunity
to print them in accuracies about Po and profit at
the same time. Yeah, he also printed a kind this
note after pose death in a New York paper, and
it was kind of scathing about Po. It just wasn't
very flattering at all. So he got a couple of
(28:32):
opportunities after post death to kind of get in a
couple of hit. So there are a number of theories
and sub theories out there, as you can see about
why and how Poe really died. But unfortunately, no one
knows for sure what the real story is. And as
you can tell by what we've recounted so far, there
are just too many personalities and possible hidden agendas involved
(28:54):
to really get to the heart of what happened. It's
just a bunch of possibilities that we can sort of
mall over all over for a while and debate about that.
We can't really get a definitive answer. But in the end,
despite his fame, Poe was buried hurriedly in Westminster Presbyterian
Churchyard in Baltimore, with only a handful of people present.
(29:17):
In two thousand nine, though, which was about one hundred
sixty years after his death, Baltimore's Poe House and Museum
through Poe another larger funeral to In fact, I think
that had something like seven people in attendance. So so yeah,
people do continue, of course to celebrate the author, to
look into his life and his death. I mean, I
have to say, one of my favorite Pope things is
(29:39):
the Simpsons Tree House Support. It's a classic, but um,
you know, on on whatever level, whether it's a cartoon
like that or whether it's a serious study of his work.
People still clearly appreciate his writing today and it still
resonates with people. So true. And I mean when it
comes to this mystery, it's fun to talk about into
(30:00):
explore all these possibilities, but I have to wonder do
we really want to know the answer? I mean, isn't
it sort of fitting in a way that Poe's own
story has this element of mystery to it. It's po like,
it is very pol and with that, I think that
we are going to close out this episode about Poe,
but it's been really fun to talk about them. If
(30:21):
you have any favorite po stories or poems that we
didn't mention that that or theories, yes, I mean we
talked about a few of them here, but we know
that there are many that we didn't touch on in
many aspects, even of the ones that we did touch
on that we didn't didn't really have time to include
in this flesh out completely. Yes, and this fairly sustinct
(30:42):
but not so sustinct podcast, I think we've rambled on
for a little while, But definitely share those with us
and let us know. If there's anything else about the
story you'd like us to look into. You can find
us at History podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also
on Facebook and you can also find us on Twitter.
This in history and if you want to learn a
little bit more about rare books, we do have an
(31:05):
article called ten rare Books And um, didn't you say
one of his works is included in that? Artist tamer
Lane and Other Poems is number eight on that list,
and go go read about it, and to do that
good to our homepage and search for ten rare books.
If that www dot how stuff works dot com for
(31:28):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from hot
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
to blame a truck reboarding and I'm fair out. And
we usually save our spookier subjects for the fall and Halloween,
(00:20):
of course, but summer is also a great time to
curl up with a good mystery, and today's subject Edgar
Allan Poe definitely offers that. A famous nineteenth century writer, poet, critic,
and editor known for dabbling in Moody and maccabb topics,
po almost really needs no introduction, but of course we're
going to give you one anyway. Can't just skip skip
(00:42):
this whole part, now, that's what we do. So chances
are you've at least heard of po and if you've
taken any sort of post grade school level literature class,
you've probably read his work too, or at least The
Eerie the Raven, which is his most famous piece, or
even grade school. I think I memorized they even sometime
in elementary school. Well you're very advanced Thereah, I don't
(01:04):
know about that. I was. I did it dramatically, That's
why I chose it. But um Pol is also often
credited with creating the first modern detective story with his
murders of the Room Morgue. And ironically, some of the
aspects of his own life, particularly the end of his life,
are really worthy of the type of fiction he wrote. Yeah, Basically,
(01:27):
in the fall of eighteen forty nine, po disappeared for
a few days, and when he reappeared, he was in
really bad shape. He was delirious, and he appeared to
a lot of people to be severely intoxicated, and he
died just a few days later. Because of that, initially
many people assumed alcoholism is what ultimately killed Poe, But
(01:47):
it really didn't take long for others to start stepping
up with alternate theories, some of which seemed just as
if not more plausible, than the alcoholism one. And these
theories are still debated today. And I should go back
and say I mean that, you know, I mentioned that
it didn't take long for you will come up with theories.
It took a few years. I mean, it really wasn't
investigated at the time. Alcoholism was really the prevailing thought.
(02:11):
So today, though, we're going to take a look closer
look at pose mysterious disappearance and his death and discussed
some of those theories about what ultimately led to his demise.
But before we can really talk about pose death, you know,
we said we had to do this introduction, We've got
to do more than that. Really, we we really need
to tell you at least a little bit about his life,
(02:33):
because it's pretty interesting too. It is. He was born
Edgar Poe January eighteen o nine in Boston, Massachusetts, to
too struggling actor parents, David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. Ecker
was actually the second of their children. His older brother,
William Henry Leonard, ended up living with their grandparents because
of their parents constant financial struggles, and Poe also had
(02:56):
a sister, Rosalie, who was a year younger than him,
and Poe had to face hardship and a lot of
sadness really early on. His father abandoned the family around
the time of, or even before his sister's birth, at
which point Poe, his sister, and his mom all moved
to Virginia, and his mom got ill and died the
year after his sister was born. So that happened when
(03:16):
Poe was only about two years old. So po and Rosalie,
now basically orphans, were taken in by family friends in Richmond,
and Po ended up living with the merchant John Allen
and his wife Francis, who didn't have any kids, while
Rosalie went on to live with a neighboring family called
the Mackenzie's, and Allen's basically treated Poe as their own child.
(03:38):
They never legally adopted him, but they educated him and
treated him like their son. He started his education in Richmond,
and then at age six, he was taken abroad for
a bit and continued studying in England and Scotland for
about five years before he returned to Virginia with the Allens,
where he continued his cooling and let's start thinking of
(04:01):
a little adolescent strange Poe. He seemed like a pretty
normal kid. He made friends, was doing all right in
school and everything. However, by his mid teens or so,
Po discovered that his foster father wasn't exactly being faithful
to his foster mother, and this really upset Poe and
it kicked off a very strange relationship between Poe and
(04:21):
John Allen, and they argued a lot about that topic.
Around this time, Poe also fell in love with a
local girl named Sarah Elmira Royster, and she was in
love with him too, but in Po went off to
the University of Virginia. So Pose only at the University
of Virginia for about eleven months, though, and according to
a biography of Edgar Allan Poe by Veronica Loveday, Alan
(04:45):
wouldn't give Poe the money he needed to buy school
basics like book so Post started gambling, ended up racking
up a lot of debt, and he also started drinking
while he was there, and unfortunately for him, he had
a very low tolerance for alcohol. So Alan ultimately refused
to let Poe continue spending time at the university. In
(05:06):
the meantime, realizing that post future was really uncertain because
of this contentious relationship with his foster father, Royster's parents
decided to put a stop to her relationship with Poe.
They made sure, for example, that she never received post
letters from school, and by the time Poe returned to Richmond,
his beloved Sarah was engaged to someone else. So Poe
(05:28):
was understandably devastated by this turn of events, and he
decided to go to Boston in the spring of eighteen seven,
where he tried tried his hand at making a living
as a writer, and he did publish some stuff. He
published his first volume of poetry, tamer Lane and Other Poems,
and this was fairly well received, but he could only
(05:48):
print a few copies and at the end of the
day he was still destitute. So he's published, but it
didn't bring in the money with hoping. So to solve
his money issues, he joined the army and he really
actually thrived in the military, doing a desk job for
a couple of years. He was even promoted from private
to the rank of sergeant major and Poe decided that
(06:08):
he wanted to attend West Point, and after a while,
Alan agreed to help him fund this. He saw, Okay,
my my foster son is actually doing well. Yes, maybe
I should support this. So Poe was released from the
army and he applied to the Military Academy, and while
he was waiting to be accepted to West Point, he
spent a little time in Baltimore getting to know his
(06:30):
Poe family again, his grandmother, his brother, and his father's sister,
who was his aunt, Mariah Clem. Mariah Clem also had
a very young daughter, Virginia, and Poe also published another
collection of poems during this time. Soon he was accepted
to West Point though in eighteen thirty, so he had
to put down the pen for a little while. But
he didn't stay at West Point long either. Again, according
(06:52):
to Loveday's article, he learned that John Allen had had
a pair of twins as a result of one of
his affairs, and even though his Austro mother was dead
by this time, Pope pretty much realized there was no
future between him and his foster father. And in fact,
and just as an aside, Alan did ultimately leave everything,
the whole inheritance to these twins that he had. That
(07:13):
might have been a good intuition he had there so
set on pursuing a writing career, you know, deciding that
this was gonna have to be how he'd make his
his future and his career. Poe took measures to get
himself expelled from West Point. He wasn't just going to
drop out, and he couldn't just walk away, no, no, So,
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he just didn't show up at
(07:35):
any classes or any drills for a week, and he
even tried to spread a rumor that he was the
grandson of Benedict Arnold. Probably not something that's going to
make you too popular at your military school. And in
the end he did finally get his wish and he
was dismissed, so he was freed up to pursue this
writing career that he was hoping to So Poe moved
(07:56):
to New York in February of eight thirty one, and
he published a third collection called Poems from there. He
moved around between New York City, Baltimore, Richmond, and Philadelphia
for the next few years in pursuit of his writing career,
and for purposes here, we're just going to cover some
of the highlights of what he did during that time.
By March of eighteen thirty one, Poe returned to Baltimore
(08:18):
to live with his aunt, Maria Clem and his little
cousin Virginia, and while there he still struggled to earn
a living, but he started to write stories as well pros. Yeah,
and things did start to look up a little bit
in eighteen thirty three when his story manuscript found in
a bottle one of fifty dollar prize from a Baltimore
weekly newspaper, and that finally started to get him noticed,
(08:41):
and he also started writing reviews and stories for the
Southern Literary Messenger, and by eighteen thirty five he even
took a position as an editor there and made even
more of a name for himself. In the meantime, his
brother and his foster father died, so a little more
tragedy in his life, and his foster father, as we mentioned,
left him nothing, so he realized that he was really
(09:03):
going to have to make a living on his own.
And on September eighteen thirty five, another life milestone, he
married his first cousin, Virginia Clem and as you'll remember,
we mentioned she was very young. Well, at the time
of their marriage she was only thirteen and the marriage
certificate listed her as twenty one, but that was incorrect.
(09:24):
According to Loveday's article, Poe did wait for more than
two years before consummating their marriage, So yeah, Poe would
have been in his in his late twenties by then.
It's always one of those facts that sticks with you
about about Edgar Allen Poe, big age difference, um. But
moving on to his career again, It's unclear whether it
was voluntary or not, but Poe left his job at
(09:46):
the Southern Literary Messenger, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he
was fired probably because of his drinking. Um. Drinking really
seemed to become sort of a means of escape for him.
But as we mentioned, he also had a very low
taller it's for alcohol his entire life, so it didn't
really take that much to make him appear very intoxicated,
(10:06):
and even though he wasn't very intoxicated that often. Again
according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he was unfortunately usually somewhere in
public when he was drunk, so he got this reputation
as being a public drunk. But after this, after leaving
the Southern Southern Literary Messenger or being fired, he and
(10:27):
Virginia moved to New York City, where he reviewed articles
for the New York Review while still pursuing his own
projects too. By eighteen thirty nine, the couple had moved
to Philadelphia, where he published Tales of the Grotesque in
the Arabesque Short Story Collection. He also started working as
an editor for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and by the fall
of eighteen forty one he started working for kind of
(10:50):
a successor to that magazine, Graham's Ladies and Gentlemen's magazine,
and this afforded him study income finally, and it's where
he published The Murders in the Room Morgue. So at
this point Poe's notoriety is really starting to grow. But
like most of his jobs, the Graham's gig was short lived.
He quit by the middle of eighteen forty two to
(11:10):
work as a freelance writer and to also try to
start his own publication, which was something that he would
try to do here and there throughout the rest of
his life, but he was never really successful with that
part of it. With starting his own publication, couldn't follow
the Dickens model. In eighteen forty four, he returned to
New York, where he continued writing, and it was while
there in eighteen forty five that his poem The Raven
(11:33):
was published, and it was instantly successful, making Poe very famous.
But despite his successes in the literary world that we're
happening around this time, this was still a very rough
period for Poe. For one thing, Virginia became very ill.
She had contracted tuberculosis at some point in the early
eighteen forties and her health never really got better after that.
(11:55):
And for his part, Poe wasn't doing so great either.
His drinking continued to get worth and this exacerbated his
own health issues, and according to Loveday's article, he almost
died in eighteen forty four from heart failure. So not
not so great for Mr and Mrs Poe at this point.
With the fame the Raven brought him, Post started doing
(12:17):
lecture tours in the northeastern United States, and though he
still struggled financially, he had quite a lot of social
attention paid to him during this time. In eighteen forty five,
for example, he received the attentions of the poet Francis
Sergeant Locke Osgood, and they had an affair, which was
scandalous because she wrote poems about him, and so everybody
(12:37):
knew what was going on between them because it was
out there in print. Kind of like writing about him
on her blog or something these days, yeah, kind of. Actually,
that's a pretty good comparison, I think. But according to
Encyclopedia Britannica, Poe's wife, for whatever reason, did not object
to this relationship with Osgood, so people were scandalized by it,
but she was kind of okay with it, and her
(12:59):
health continued to deteriorate, and she finally died in January
of eighteen forty seven at the age of twenty four.
So after his wife's death, Poe did publish a few things,
including a lecture called Eureka, some poems, including The Bells
and Anna Bell Lee. He also tried to start a
magazine again, but once again that didn't work. He did
not succeed at running a magazine, but his final years
(13:22):
are also marked by some serious relationships that he had
with a couple of women. First, there was the Providence,
Rhode Island based poet named Sarah Helen Whitman. They actually
became engaged in eighteen forty eight, but she only agreed
to marry him on the condition that he quit drinking.
According to Loveday's article, Poe just couldn't control his feelings
(13:43):
for her, and he tried to commit suicide by taking
laudanum in November of eighteen forty eight. After that he relapsed,
he started drinking again, and so Whitman broke off the engagement.
In eighteen forty nine, continuing his lectures, he returned to
Richmond for a while, and while he was there he
ran into his old flame from his teenage years Elmira Royster,
(14:07):
who just happened to be a widow by this point,
by the name of Mrs a by Shelton, and they
rekindled their old romance. Well. Elmira was a teetotaler too,
and much like Sarah Whitman, she would not have approved
of Poe drinking. Luckily, though, Poe decided to completely give
up alcohol and may have been successful at this for
(14:27):
several months. According to an article by Robert Hopkins in
the Southern Quarterly, Poe even took a public oath on
August nine at a Sons of Temperance meeting in which
he swore that he'd never touch another drop of liquor,
and he signed a document to that effect as well.
So I guess old Elmira was convinced by this display,
(14:47):
and so they became engaged and set their wedding date
for October seventeenth. This is where things start to get
a little weird in the story, though before the marriage
was supposed to take place, was set off on a
business trip to Philadelphia in New York, and while he
was in New York, it's possible he was going to
pick up his aunt, Maria Clem to and bring her
(15:09):
down to Richmond for the wedding. I guess his his
former mother in law as well. Um, he probably set
off for this trip from Richmond around September nine, and
what happened after that is what's really uncertain. Yeah, some
say that he went straight to Baltimore and called on
a friend, Dr. Nathan C. Brooks, but Brooks wasn't at home.
(15:33):
And if Baltimore is the only stop that Poe made,
then that still leaves several days unaccounted for, because there
doesn't seem to be any information on what he was
up to in town after that for the following days
after that, however, according to the ed Girl in Post
Society of Baltimore, a Philadelphia friend of Poes, Thomas H. Lane,
who had worked for the Broadway Journal, later said that
(15:54):
he believed Poe had come to Philadelphia and seen mutual
friends of theirs while he was in town. Lane said
that Poe also fell ill while he was in Philadelphia,
but instead of he still insisted on getting on a
train to New York after his brief visit. He had
business to do there. He was going to see Aunt Maria,
so he was going to head out, so Lane's theory
(16:14):
is that Poe must have gotten on the wrong train
and ended up back in Baltimore. But even if this
Philadelphia visit did happen, and it's not clear whether it
did or not, the exact dates aren't known, so there's
a lot that's still very sketchy about this possibility in
the story. A letter from Poe to aunt Maria Clem
also confirms that he at least had intentions of heading
(16:37):
to Philadelphia to meet another poet and edit her poems there,
and he'd also told Aunt Maria to write him directly
in Philadelphia, as if he'd be there to receive it,
but he did tell her to address her correspondence instead
of just addressing it to Edgar Allan, Poe address it
to E. S. T. Gray Esquire. So kind of a
shady aspect to the story, yeah, for sure, so what
(17:02):
is known though. What is known for sure is that
on October three, Poe is found in a very very
bad way, lying outside of Ryan's fourth Ward Polls, Baltimore,
which was basically a saloon, but voting also would take
place there too, and an election was going on the
city at the same time. For hard to imagine, Bars
(17:22):
doubling is his polling stations today. But a man named J. W.
Walker found Po outside of this bar slash polling station,
nearly unconscious and delirious, and strangely wearing somebody else's cheap, dirty,
ill fitting clothes. And according to Hopkins article, Walker immediately
(17:43):
sent a note to a doctor J. E. Snodgrass, who
was an acquaintance of Pose, at Poe's own request. And
this is what the note said, Dear sir, there's a
gentleman rather worse for wear at Ryan's fourth ward polls
who goes under the name of Edgar A. Poe, and
who appear years in great distress. And he says he's
acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in
(18:05):
need of immediate assistant. Snodgrass and Henry Herring at that point,
and Henry Herring was someone who had married one of
Poe's aunts, showed up and took Po to Washington College
Hospital at about five pm that day, and while there
he was attended to by a resident named doctor John
Joseph Moran. So Poe was pretty much unconscious until the
next day. But even when he was a little more coherent,
(18:26):
he wasn't able to exactly tell the doctor how he
came to be in his present state. After that, he
became delirious on and off for a few days, and
according to the Post Society of Baltimore, at one point
cried out the name Reynolds. But no one's been able
to figure out who he was referring to by that.
It's just an interesting little detail we wanted to throw
in interesting indeed, But on Sunday, October seven, four days
(18:50):
after he was found outside of the saloon, po finally
passed away, and that morning his last words were God
bless my poor soul. He was only forty years old.
So this brings us to our our big question, what
happened to Poe before he died and what really caused
his death. Of course, most people at the time, as
(19:12):
we already indicated, and even many people today, have believed
that drinking was what ultimately killed him. This theory was
actually sort of promoted at the time, even by pose
acquaintance who helped him out, Dr Snodgrass. According to Hopkins,
though we should take Snodgrass's perspective with a little grain
of salt. He was apparently super religious and kind of
(19:33):
used pose fate to illustrate what could happen to you
if you indulged in the sin of drinking, almost as
a cautionary tale of sorts. As Hopkins put it, Snodgrass
went to quote great lengths to support his temperance cause
at pose expense, and a lot of the other people
who spread the alcohol abuse theory were either coming from
similar perspective as the Snodgrass or getting their information second hand.
(19:59):
But Hopkin and some other sources say that it's unlikely
that alcohol abuse is ultimately what killed Edgar Allan Poe.
So Dr Moran, for instance, who attended to Poe in
his final days, actually published a book thirty years after
the death called A Defense of Edgar Allan Poe, in
which he said quote, I have stated to you the
fact that Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the
(20:21):
effect of an intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor
upon his breath or person. Although we have to say
to a lot of people discount Miran's opinions here, because
apparently he changed his story quite significantly from what he
said right after Poe's death, and Hopkins even points out
that Moran changed his opinion only after certain key temperance
(20:43):
promoters who were very closely involved in the situation passed away,
so there might have been some sort of conspiracy involved
there too. Yeah, it makes you wonder was he just
telling the truth later in life, waiting for certain people
to to no longer be there, or whether he just
changed his story for something a new interesting angle right.
(21:04):
There are, however, some other more straightforward signs that alcohol
may not have been the cause of death. For example,
while in the hospital, Poe got better before he then
again got worse and died, which according to the University
of Maryland Medical Center, isn't consistent with alcohol withdrawal. So
I think that's the medical background. Interesting little science background.
(21:28):
So still though, if drinking too much didn't kill Poe,
what might have killed him? You don't usually just wind
up dead outside of a saloon, So some people believe
that he was the victim of a type of political
sabotage known as cooping. And as we mentioned, there was
an election going on at the time, and the saloon
did double as a place to go vote. So cooping
(21:49):
supposedly involved political gangs kidnapping bystanders and then holding them
for a while in a room called a coup and
then forcing them after they had gotten them kind of
liquored up or drugged up, to illegally vote in multiple
polling locations. And sometimes these gangs would even have their
victims changed clothing so that they wouldn't be recognized when
(22:10):
they were voting multiple times in the same area. This
whole thing sounds kind of terrifying to me, the idea
of cooping. Some people, though, discount this theory for a
few different reasons. For one, Poe is a celebrity of
his day, almost he was pretty well known, and he
probably would have been recognized even if he were wearing
these different ratty sort of clothes. Also, some say that
(22:33):
there is a lack of evidence that the practice of
cooping really existed in the first bow. I don't need
to be too worried. Maybe maybe not, I'm not sure.
I mean, there definitely was a lot of applying with
alcohol going on in general, I mean, having polling places
and bars, which was often the case, kind of encouraged that.
But there were accounts in contemporary publications that were citizens
(22:55):
were warned about the very real possibility of cooping in
the days right before are leading up to the election,
So people at the time at least believe that cooping
was going on and was a real possibility. So go
vote with your friends, vote in a group. Yeah, I
would be careful, So go ahead and be scared. Sarah
could have happened, all right, next time I go vote.
But also Hopkins point without a cryptic statement that was
(23:18):
made by J. H. Morrison after post death and in
a letter to John Ingram, Morrison suggests post cousin Nelson
might have known something about the circumstances surrounding post death,
and he said, quote, the story of post death has
never been told. Nelson Poe has all the facts, but
I am afraid may not be willing to tell them.
(23:39):
I do not see why Poe came to the city
in the midst of an election, and that election was
the cause of his death. So one interesting point to
make here about the involvement of cousin Nelson is that
Nelson was in fact elected a judge in that eighteen
forty nine election. Also, Nelson and Poe did not get
along well at all. Some say that Nelson had had
(24:02):
his own designs on marrying Virginia Clem, but of course
she ended up with Poe. So um those are some
of the political type of conspiracy theories, but several diseases
have also been suggested as the causes of post death,
and some of the possibilities that folks have thrown out
over the years include brain tumors, heart disease, cholera, stroke,
(24:25):
and diabetes. And then in nineteen eighty four, a biohistorian
named Arnold Carlin came out with the theory that Poe
had this rare type of enzyme disorder called alcohol dehydrogenase
deficiency syndrome, and he had that perhaps in combination with
a brain tumor. So Hawkins says that the syndrome is
an interesting theory because it could perhaps explain pose lifelong
(24:49):
low tolerance of alcohol as well as some of his
mental issues, and of course it's death too. One of
the more recent and popular medical malady theories though as rabies.
According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, Dr R
Michael Benitez reviewed post case and in n he proposed
that post symptoms in the final days of his life
(25:11):
were in fact consistent with the progression of rabies. This
could be possible even though there weren't any apparent animal
bites on Poe. At the time, Poe was known to
be an animal lover. He loved cats in particular, and
he did keep pets, and people can sometimes, according to
the source, can have rabies up to a year without
showing symptoms, which I actually didn't know before. Another disturbing
(25:34):
factors from the podcast. One of the symptoms Benitez was
including in his assessment, though, was hydrophobia, a fear of
water that Post supposedly exhibited when he had trouble drinking
in the hospital. However, that account of Po not drinking
came from one of our friend Dr Moran's many accounts
of the situation, and he contradicted it in another later account.
(25:57):
So some discountless Raby's theory because of at does make
a good headline, though, you've got to give it that.
But finally, a lot of people think Poe died as
the result of some kind of conspiracy. And of course
it already sounds like we've discussed these conspiracy theories because
there's a touch of conspiracy mixed in with some of
the earlier theories, like the alcohol line, conspiracy by temperance
(26:19):
movement folks to get their agenda across, and the cooping.
You know, the possible conspiracy involving Poe's cousin who was
running for office, but some think pose romantic entanglements might
have led to a plot against him as well, and
for instance, Almira Rooster Shelton's brothers might not have been
too happy about that impending marriage to their sister, and
(26:42):
some authors have tossed that out there as a possibility.
Hopkins actually points to an account of Joseph's Oar Train's
as potential evidence that something like this was in fact
going on. Joseph's oar Train had worked with Poe at
Graham's magazine, and after Poe's death, he had come out
with kind of a shocking account of his last encounter
(27:02):
with Poe. According to star Train's account, he saw Poe
in Philadelphia in nine and Poe was afraid for his
life at this time, asking for star Train's protection and
saying that he had overheard some men on the train
plotting to kill him. When star Train asked why would
someone want to kill you, Poe said, quote it was
for revenge for quote a woman trouble. So another intriguing possibility,
(27:29):
but many people, though, believe that the most likely conspirator
against Poe with Rufus debut. Griswold and Grizzwold had aspired
to be a fiction writer but didn't really have the
talent ended up becoming an editor instead, and he and
Poe brushed paths professionally on many occasions, and the two
men just didn't really like each other, and Hopkins suggests
(27:51):
that Griswold may have been perhaps jealous of pose talent,
though Grizzold apparently claimed upon Poe's death that Poe had
made a pro miss that he wanted Griswold to be
his literary executor, but according to Hopkins, no legal proof
of this agreement exists. Still, though Griswold did become pose
(28:11):
executor and his first biographer and likely got the opportunity
to print them in accuracies about Po and profit at
the same time. Yeah, he also printed a kind this
note after pose death in a New York paper, and
it was kind of scathing about Po. It just wasn't
very flattering at all. So he got a couple of
(28:32):
opportunities after post death to kind of get in a
couple of hit. So there are a number of theories
and sub theories out there, as you can see about
why and how Poe really died. But unfortunately, no one
knows for sure what the real story is. And as
you can tell by what we've recounted so far, there
are just too many personalities and possible hidden agendas involved
(28:54):
to really get to the heart of what happened. It's
just a bunch of possibilities that we can sort of
mall over all over for a while and debate about that.
We can't really get a definitive answer. But in the end,
despite his fame, Poe was buried hurriedly in Westminster Presbyterian
Churchyard in Baltimore, with only a handful of people present.
(29:17):
In two thousand nine, though, which was about one hundred
sixty years after his death, Baltimore's Poe House and Museum
through Poe another larger funeral to In fact, I think
that had something like seven people in attendance. So so yeah,
people do continue, of course to celebrate the author, to
look into his life and his death. I mean, I
have to say, one of my favorite Pope things is
(29:39):
the Simpsons Tree House Support. It's a classic, but um,
you know, on on whatever level, whether it's a cartoon
like that or whether it's a serious study of his work.
People still clearly appreciate his writing today and it still
resonates with people. So true. And I mean when it
comes to this mystery, it's fun to talk about into
(30:00):
explore all these possibilities, but I have to wonder do
we really want to know the answer? I mean, isn't
it sort of fitting in a way that Poe's own
story has this element of mystery to it. It's po like,
it is very pol and with that, I think that
we are going to close out this episode about Poe,
but it's been really fun to talk about them. If
(30:21):
you have any favorite po stories or poems that we
didn't mention that that or theories, yes, I mean we
talked about a few of them here, but we know
that there are many that we didn't touch on in
many aspects, even of the ones that we did touch
on that we didn't didn't really have time to include
in this flesh out completely. Yes, and this fairly sustinct
(30:42):
but not so sustinct podcast, I think we've rambled on
for a little while, But definitely share those with us
and let us know. If there's anything else about the
story you'd like us to look into. You can find
us at History podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also
on Facebook and you can also find us on Twitter.
This in history and if you want to learn a
little bit more about rare books, we do have an
(31:05):
article called ten rare Books And um, didn't you say
one of his works is included in that? Artist tamer
Lane and Other Poems is number eight on that list,
and go go read about it, and to do that
good to our homepage and search for ten rare books.
If that www dot how stuff works dot com for
(31:28):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.