However, the date and place of David Poe’s death have never been documented. Edgar and his older brother Henry always claimed that their father died several days after their mother. The fate of Poe’s father is the first of the many mysteries of Poe’s life. His last stage appearance was in October 1809, when Edgar was nine months old. It galled David Poe that his wife was more in demand for theatrical roles than he was. Born in England to a family of actors, she had acted since childhood. In contrast to her husband, Elizabeth was a compelling performer, equally gifted in comedy and tragedy, with a charming voice and graceful figure. David Poe’s acting talent was not equal to his ambition his performances received negative notices, and he developed a drinking problem. Not only Elizabeth’s husband, but also her mother had died, and she was alone, eighteen years old, and in need of protection. There he met and married the young widowed actress, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins. Poe’s father, David Poe, Jr., disappointed his family when he abandoned his legal studies at the age of nineteen to pursue the theater. But the fame of the “General,” as Poe’s paternal grandfather was known, eclipsed his fortune, and after his death in 1816, his paralytic, bedridden widow had to subsist on his small military pension, cared for by her daughter Maria. Commissioned Assistant Deputy Quartermaster General for Baltimore in 1779, he used his own funds to purchase uniforms for hundreds of troops under Lafayette’s command, earning the lifelong gratitude of the French general. In the Revolutionary War and again in the War of 1812, he proved himself an ardent patriot. Poe’s father’s father, David Poe, Sr., emigrated from Ireland as a child and established a shop in Baltimore that manufactured wheels for clocks and spinning wheels. They had both been orphaned in childhood, awakening their sympathy to the children’s plight.Įdgar’s family in Baltimore were living in straitened circumstances, and they were relieved when Edgar and Rosalie were taken in by well-to-do families. When Frances and John Allan became Edgar’s foster parents, they had been married for eight years and had no children of their own. The two women were cousins, and their husbands were business colleagues. Mackenzie, were Richmond matrons who had come to the aid of Elizabeth Poe. The surviving actors in the company that had employed Elizabeth were left without means of livelihood and fled the city, abandoning her two small children, half-naked and half-dead from hunger. On the day after Christmas, 1811, just weeks after her death, the Richmond theater burned to the ground, burying sixty victims in its ruins. Her jewelry, clothes, furniture, and all of her possessions had been pawned. She had nothing to leave her children but an empty jewel box for one-year-old daughter Rosalie, commemorative locks of hair in a pocketbook for Henry, and her portrait in miniature for Edgar. During their mother’s illness, Edgar and Rosalie were looked after by an old woman who had come from England with Elizabeth, and who had resorted to feeding the children dried bread crusts dipped in gin “to keep them quiet.” When Elizabeth died on December 8, 1811, she was only twenty-four years old. Her son, William Henry, two years older than Edgar, had lived with his father’s family in Baltimore since he was a few months old. His mother, English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe, once celebrated for her grace, charm, and talent, had been abandoned by her husband, actor David Poe, Jr., and was living with Edgar and his infant sister Rosalie in desperate straits in a wretched rented room in the back of a dressmaker’s shop in a working-class section of Richmond, when she came down with pneumonia. Precocious, intelligent, and adorable, the young Edgar had been doted on by both Allans when they had taken him in after his mother’s death. Things had not always been thus between Edgar and John Allan. The poem was written during a low period in Poe’s life, only three months after the death of his doting foster mother, Frances Valentine Allan, when there was growing conflict, ill will, and distrust between Poe and his foster father, John Allan. Poe was already an accomplished poet at the age of twenty when, in May 1829, he inscribed this poem in the autograph album of Lucy Holmes, a young lady of his own age whom he had befriended while he was living with his relatives in Baltimore.
Person riding the devil by unknown creator
#IMP OF THE PERVERSE FASHION SERIES#
Edgar Allan Poe’s Misplaced Youth Also available as part of the 2020 O:JA&L Chapbook Series through Buttonhook Press.
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