Edgar Allan Poe was the master of the macabre — so it seems obvious that his own life
would be filled with tragedy and heartbreak. Still, it might surprise you how tough he
had it. This is the tragic real-life story of Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1809, a boy named Edgar Poe was born to two traveling stage actors. Edgar's father
was David Poe, Jr., who hailed from a military family so hardcore that David had to refer
to his dad as "General."
Needless to say, those folks weren't exactly happy when Junior fell in love with the talented
thespian Eliza Arnold — nor when he followed her onto the stage himself. After marrying,
the couple had two sons: William and Edgar. The latter boy was named after a character
in Shakespeare's King Lear, which the couple was performing at the time.
Sadly, David wasn't a very good father. His struggles with heavy drinking, fighting, and
financial hardship were stressful enough for the family, but he also resented Eliza's far
more successful acting career. Eventually, he deserted his family, leaving Eliza alone
to raise the children. Worse still, when young Edgar was just 3-years-old, Eliza came down
sick and died. Apparently, David died soon afterward, though the circumstances of his
demise are hitherto unknown. Regardless, this left the young children with no parents and
no safe place to go.
Edgar Poe was soon adopted by the Allan family — hence the "Allan" part of his name. But
while he got along well with his adoptive mother Frances, the same can't be said for
his father. Poe's relationship with his new father John Allan proved to be a source of
conflict, misery, and heartbreak for much of his young life.
Allan was a wealthy tobacco merchant, and wanted Poe to follow him into the family business.
As a result, he wasn't exactly over the moon about Poe's love of the literary. Naturally,
Poe rebelled — mostly by writing poems on the back of Allan's business papers. The relationship
further soured as Poe grew older, when Allan repeatedly refused to lend Poe money, leading
to his gradual descent into destitution.
For his part, Allan seems to have been remarkably dismissive of the boy's concerns. He once
wrote Poe off as "quite miserable, sulky & ill-tempered," for example. He also liked to boast about
his own generosity in paying for Poe's education — while refusing to actually pay for it
at the same time. Not the kind of guy you'd want as a dad, that's for sure.
When Poe was drowning in debt, starving, and receiving basically nothing from his so-called
father, he turned to a truly last-ditch solution.
"Let me see your war face!" "Sir?"
"You got a war face?”
“Aaaaah!”
“That's a war face! Now let me see your war face!"
"Aaaaaah!"
Yeah, that's right — Poe took the false identity of Edgar A. Perry, claimed to be
a 22-year-old clerk from Boston, and signed up for a five-year stint with the U.S. Army.
Oddly enough, Poe excelled in the military… but he hated it, too. Before long, he was
desperate for a way out, and confessed his true story to his commanding officer. Miraculously,
the officer was basically fine with letting Poe out early — on the condition that he
make amends with his obnoxious adoptive father.
Unfortunately for Poe, Allan wouldn't respond to his letters, and it wasn't until Frances
Allan died that the two men reconciled. Allan then finally agreed to let Poe leave the service
early — so long as he enrolled at West Point, the United States Military Academy. Which
doesn't exactly feel like a win for poor Edgar.
Still, Poe did what was asked, and actually excelled in his studies. When Allan remarried,
however, he went dark again, and Poe decided he wanted out of the military for real this
time. But he still needed Allan's express permission to leave, and Allan just wouldn't
give it. So Poe solved the problem by flunking his studies, being as insubordinate as he
possibly could, and purposely getting himself kicked out of West Point. Right on.
Sarah Elmira Royster was Poe's first and final love. Unfortunately, the two never married,
and their relationship hit more than a few snags along the way.
Sarah and Edgar were childhood friends and neighbors, and became engaged as teenagers.
When Poe left to attend the University of Virginia, the two star-crossed lovers went
long-distance, but everything came crashing down when Royster's father caught wind. He
simply didn't want an orphan like Poe as a son-in-law, so he intercepted their letters
and left both kids thinking the other was ignoring them. When Poe returned home, he
found that she had married a wealthier man in his place. Based on this sad tale, many
have speculated that Sarah may be the long lost Lenore mentioned in "The Raven."
"Shall I ever hold again that radiant maiden who the angels call Lenore?"
"How the hell should I know? What am I, a fortune teller?"
Maybe that's not quite how it goes. Either way, their romance didn't end there. When
Sarah's husband died in 1848, Poe reached out to her again, and they rekindled their
romance. His initial proposal was rebuffed, but a few months later, she accepted. Those
wedding bells never rang out, however — because Poe died just 10 days before the wedding.
Despite Poe's magnificent talent and fierce desire for success, he spent much of his life
in poverty, and his work was consistently undervalued. His first poetry collection,
Tamerlane, was a financial disaster, which probably wasn't helped by his unwise decision
to use the obvious pseudonym "A. Bostonian."
His second book, the imaginatively-titled Poems, only got off the ground when Poe convinced
his fellow army cadets to lend him money to get it running. Even when he was shopping
for a publisher for his landmark poem, "The Raven," one magazine not only rejected it,
but actually gave Poe $15 in sympathy cash. When he finally sold the poem to The American
Review, it netted him just $9.
Fortunately, "The Raven" garnered Poe enough mainstream attention to eke out a living as
a professional writer. In fact, he became something of a household name, gave lectures,
and even ran his own magazine. But his personal life was a mess at the time, his wife Virginia
was ill, and his finances weren't particularly sturdy. Even at the peak of his career, his
annual salary totaled just $624 — around 20 grand in today's money.
As Poe struggled through his life, he increasingly began to rely on alcohol to support him. This
problem only worsened during social situations, which often required Poe to keep up a good
mood, and therefore caused him no small amount of stress. The death of Poe's wife Virginia,
in 1847, didn't exactly help things, either. While it's impossible to properly diagnose
someone who lived over a hundred years ago, it does seem likely that Poe was an alcoholic.
But that's not really the whole story. The reality of Poe's very genuine suffering is
often clouded by the false stories told by those who disliked him. His enemies often
tried to paint him as a town drunk and a drug addict, neither of which was true. As far
as drugs go, Poe only seems to have occasionally used opium for medical purposes, which was
fairly common at the time. He certainly wasn't the inebriated ne'er-do-well that some people
considered him, either. In fact, we don't have much real evidence that he deserved the
reputation he was given — which makes it so unfortunate that it lasts even to this
day.
Edgar Allan Poe was just 40 years old when he passed away, and although the premature
nature of his passing is obviously tragic, the truth is we don't actually know how or
why he died.
A week beforehand, his fiancée had expressed concerns about his health, and his doctor
told him not to travel. But he did anyway. A number of strange lapses in Poe's behavior
then took place, such as him being totally unable to find his luggage. He was later found
sprawled in the gutter, wearing someone else's clothes, unable to move, and screaming out
for somebody named "Reynolds." He died four days later.
So what happened? Well, many at the time were quick to blame alcohol, but his attending
physician disputed this notion. Various diseases have been suggested too, such as tuberculosis
and brain lesions. But one of the most prevalent theories comes down to the fact that he was
found outside a voting booth. The idea goes that Poe was the victim of "cooping," a horrifying
voter fraud scam from the time. Cooping occurred when corrupt politicians paid criminals to
drug innocent bystanders, particularly the homeless, and then forced them to vote at
location after location — until some of them finally dropped dead.
Sadly, the mistreatment of Edgar Allan Poe didn't let up after his death. His funeral
was hastily conducted only a day after he died, resulting in just seven people attending,
one of whom had nothing but harsh words to say about him. But we'll come onto that whole
mess in just a minute.
Initially buried in an unmarked grave, it took 11 years for Poe's cousin to purchase
a real monument for him. Before the monument could be mounted, however, it was destroyed
when, uh, a speeding train came off its rails and crashed directly into the stone carver's
place of business. Which… okay. Sure.
In the end, it took nearly three decades before an assembly of students and teachers collected
the funds to give Poe the monument he deserved. Except that wasn't the end, because his coffin
then accidentally shattered to pieces during the transfer.
Oh, come on.
"No God! No God please no! No! No! Noooo-"
It was around this same time that Poe's wife, Virginia, was finally interred beside him.
Until that point, her remains had been placed in their landlord's family cemetery, which
had subsequently been built over by developers. Since then both of them have thankfully remained
in their rightful place.
Many of the darker Edgar Allan Poe myths that circulate today stem not from the writer's
life, but his obituary, which was penned by the Reverend Rufus Griswold. This not-so-holy
man wrote the obituary under the pen name Ludwig, and he used it as a chance to portray
Poe as being the drunken, drug-addicted, unsavory character that many still see him as today.
As you might imagine, Griswold had a personal reason for besmirching Poe's legacy. Over
the years, the two men had gone back and forth between being friends, enemies, and literary
rivals, and Poe's public critiques of Griswold's work did not go forgotten. Now, these days
writers are generally advised to not get too antsy about bad reviews and criticism. But
Griswold was such a bitter little man that he followed up his nasty, deceptive obituary
with an equally nasty, deceptive book about Poe's entire life.
Ironically, Griswold's portrait of Poe as a dark, disturbed figure ended up making his
old enemy even more famous, while Griswold himself has become a mere footnote in literary
history. Kinda feels like karma, don't you think?
In life, Edgar Allan Poe never received the recognition he deserved. In death, however,
he has been hailed as America's Shakespeare, and many of the lies that "Ludwig" spread
about him have been publicly dismissed. There are whole museums and societies dedicated
to Poe's life, and works like "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Raven" are routinely
studied in high schools across the western world.
Perhaps the most impressive tribute to Poe's legacy, however, was the example set by an
anonymous person identified only as "the Poe Toaster." From 1948 until 2009, this masked
figure rose from the shadows every year, on the anniversary of Poe's birthday, to leave
a bottle of cognac and three red roses on the author's original grave. And who was the
Poe Toaster? Nobody knows. They never sought fame or attention, even as an increasingly
large crowd of onlookers began appearing to watch the annual ritual. It is now believed
that the original Toaster may have actually retired in 1999, passing the mantle down to
their child.
It's speculated that the end of this tradition, in 2009, may have been due to an increasing
amount of media attention on the Toaster, whomever they may have been. Luckily, their
work is today continued by the Maryland Historical Society, who, every year, send their own Poe
Toaster to pay their respects to one of dark literature's greatest champions.
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