In Which I Manage to Milk an Entire Post Out of Virtually Nothing

Like everyone else who blogs, I find myself intrigued by the search terms people have used to get here. Just to keep the public informed, here are a few of the most recent phrases that have popped up in the stats:

1. Rosalie Poe

This is--by a vast margin--the most popular search term that has brought visitors to this blog. A post I did about her last year has gotten more hits than anything else at World of Poe put together, I think. This amazes me, as poor old Rose had hardly any relationship with Edgar--and what relationship there was appears to have been pretty bad. So, what's with the fascination with her? Is there some sort of secret Cult of Rosalie out there of which I know nothing?

2. Poe Ellet Osgood scandal

One of my favorite topics. I've done more posts on the subject than any sane person would even imagine doing. Hope you found whatever it was you were looking for.

3. weird facts about poe

I think I can safely say you've come to the right place.

4. who is undine blogger

You know, in my more philosophical moments, I've wondered about that myself.

5. undine blog hunter

Does this mean I officially have my first stalker?

6. "John Tomlin" poet

Tomlin was postmaster of Jackson, TN from 1841-47. He was a minor poet and author who corresponded with various literary celebrities, including Poe. He published many of the letters he received from the literati in a series of articles called "The Autobiography of a Monomaniac" that appeared in "Holden's Dollar Magazine" in 1848 and 1849. He was an agent for the "Broadway Journal" in 1845.

Tomlin also played a major role in the termination of Poe's friendship with Lambert A. Wilmer. In 1843, for no reason that I can see other than a desire to stir up trouble, Tomlin told Poe that he had received a letter from Wilmer containing negative remarks about Poe. Poe then insisted that Tomlin send him Wilmer's letter. Wilmer's remarks were actually very mild--he merely expressed his concern over the current reports of Poe's drinking habits--but it was apparently enough to cause Poe to break off relations with him. (It must be said, however, that both Wilmer and his daughter Margaret published strong defenses of Poe after his death.)

Hope that helps.

7. edgar allan poe weird quotes

There are plenty of them, aren't there?

8. edgar allan poe attract modern day audiences

If he didn't, you and I wouldn't be here, would we?

9. were thomas dunn english and edgar allan poe friends

In a word, no.

10. heraldic display spider

I'd love to know what inspired this search, how it led this seeker after knowledge to my blog (neither heraldry nor spiders are a big topic with me,) and if he/she ever found what they wanted.

11. barnaby castle on broadway providence ri

Here you go. I have no idea what this has to do with Poe, though.

12. poe goes to providence osgood 1845

Try this post.

13. Starr Ingram Is Weird

No doubt.

14. edgar allan poe in new york

Whenever I think of Poe's New York sojourns, I'm reminded of one of my all-time favorite songs, Harry Nilsson's "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City."

"I'll say goodbye to all my sorrows
And by tomorrow, I'll be on my way
I guess the Lord must be in New York City..."

A note about that song: Nilsson wrote it to be the theme for the movie "Midnight Cowboy." The movie's producers, however, rejected it and had him record Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" instead. The Neil song was a huge hit, but I still find the producers' decision crazy, as Nilsson's own tune was much the better of the two. People are incomprehensible to me sometimes.

15. poe drug crazed or madman

Neither.

16. the world as will and ida

You know, I'm really, really rooting for Zenyatta to win the Breeders' Cup Classic (for the second year in a row!) I don't care what anyone says, it was an outrage when Rachel Alexandra beat her out for Horse of the Year in 2009. Personally, I suspect vote fraud on a massive scale.



Now, that's what I call Girl Power.

17. olivia helen mares

If Zenny does win, I'll have to try to craft a blog post featuring both her and Rosalie Poe. One million hits or bust, baby!

The Brother of Edgar Poe

Perhaps the most notable thing about Edgar Allan Poe's only brother is how little is known about him. William Henry Leonard (who usually went by the name, "Henry,") is believed to have been born in Boston on January 30, 1807. After the death of his mother, Eliza, in 1811, he was raised by his paternal grandparents in Baltimore. (The question of why the Poe family did not also take custody of Henry's two siblings is an intriguing puzzle.) As he reached young manhood, Henry became a sailor for a brief period. Upon his return to Baltimore, he published in local newspapers accounts of his travels, as well as (largely commonplace) fiction and poetry. This included, most curiously, poems published by his brother Edgar, which Henry reprinted under his own initials. It has been suggested (although never proven) that Edgar, in his turn, later appropriated tales of Henry's adventures abroad as part of his own life story. (This mutual borrowing of literary and biographical elements inspired some of George W. Eveleth's more interesting speculations. In 1875, in reference to a daguerreotype of Edgar Poe taken soon before his death, Eveleth wrote to Poe's biographer John H. Ingram "Whether it was not the image of the spirit of Henry Poe, which was caught upon that plate in Richmond, on Thursday, Sept. 27, 1849--whether, indeed, it was not that same spirit, 'materialized,' that got into all the scrapes and cut all the curious capers put to the account of Edgar A.?")

Among Henry's published writings is a short story called "The Pirate," which is generally described as having been inspired by Edgar's failed relationship with Sarah Elmira Royster. That assumption is extremely puzzling, as there is nothing in the story that shows any obvious connection to the Edgar/Sarah legend. This attribution is, if anything, even more baseless than the popular, if utterly fallacious, idea that Lambert A. Wilmer's "Merlin" was inspired by this same reputed romance.

Sometime in the late 1820s, Henry joined the household of his aunt Maria Clemm. About this time, Edgar paid them a visit, afterwards reporting to his foster father John Allan that his brother was "entirely given up to drink & unable to help himself." Henry died on August 1,1831 of unknown causes, possibly tuberculosis, cholera, alcoholism, or some combination of the three. His death, like his brief life, attracted little notice. One Baltimore paper, in its announcement of his death, even gave his surname as "Pope."

Little is known about Henry's personality. There are accounts, of highly questionable authenticity and presented many years after his death, describing him as a moody, rather neurasthenic young man--an impression, it must be said, that one also gains from his writings. Conversely, the ever-unreliable Marie Louise Shew Houghton wrote Ingram that Edgar described his brother as a "dashing gay cavalier," with a nature "coarser rougher" than himself. Any clear sense of who and what he was remains elusive.

We also have little idea of what relationship, if any, Henry had with siblings Edgar and Rosalie. He evidently made at least one visit to Richmond during the 1820s. Sarah Royster, some fifty years later, recalled seeing Henry in Richmond sometime in 1825, but she gave no details of this visit. We do know, however, that Henry is indirectly responsible for one of the stranger items of Poeana we have. It is a letter Edgar's foster father John Allan apparently wrote to him in November of 1824, when Henry was seventeen and Edgar fifteen. The letter we have is only a copy, so we do not know if it is identical to any letter Allan may have actually sent the youth. We also have no idea why Allan would carefully preserve such a document.

The letter is full of contempt for Allan's foster son, who is described as "miserable, sulky & ill-tempered," adding that Edgar "possesses not a Spark of affection for us not a particle of gratitude for all my care and kindness towards him." In contrast, the letter is full of a bizarrely sycophantic regard for Henry, saying that "I feel proudly the difference between your principles & his & have my desire to Stand as I ought to do in your Estimation," and "Beleive [sic] me Dear Henry we take an affectionate interest in your destinies and our United Prayers will be that the God of Heaven will bless & protect you rely on him my Brave & excellent Boy who is willing & ready to save to the uttermost."

Certainly, this is an exceedingly peculiar way for an adult man to address an penniless teenager whom he must have scarcely known!

The part of this letter that has aroused the most controversy is the reference to Henry's "poor Sister Rosalie." The missive told Henry that "At least She is half your Sister & God forbid my dear Henry that We should visit upon the living the Errors & frailties of the dead."

In discussing this singularly unpleasant epistle, Edgar Poe's biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn noted--perhaps without fully realizing the significance of his words--the "artificial" quality of the letter, which he said was obviously written "for some purpose not apparent on the surface." Indeed. We have no idea why Allan would write and then keep such a letter--if he truly was the actual writer--but it definitely has the air of something someone wanted as part of the historical record. The letter's eagerness to blacken both Edgar and his mother, and the even more baffling panegyrics for brother Henry, all mark it as one of the many disquieting mysteries that infest Poe biography.

The Strange Case of Rosalie Poe

There is a tradition that Edgar Allan Poe's sister Rosalie was born on December 20, 1810, but there is no solid documentary evidence for this claim. All we know is that she was born long enough after the mysterious disappearance of her mother Eliza's husband, David Poe, for questions to arise about the child's paternity. It has even been claimed that David's sister, Maria Poe Clemm, maintained that Rosalie was not the true child of either David or Eliza Poe. Intriguingly, when Rosalie was a child, a wealthy resident of Richmond, Virginia, Joseph Gallego, died and left a will bequeathing the then enormous sum of 2,000 dollars for Rosalie's maintenance. She was the only charity bequest in his will to be so favored, leaving one to speculate whether the young orphan was more to him than just an object of sympathy.

After Eliza Poe's death in 1811, Rosalie was given a home by the Mackenzies, a prominent Richmond family, but there are conflicting accounts about whether she was treated as a member of the family or merely as a ward. All reports, however, agree that she grew into a "hopelessly dull" woman with a strange, rather off-putting manner, making her a peculiar contrast to her famous brother.

Rosalie and Edgar had a distant relationship. She herself wrote John Ingram that she was "a good size girl" before she even knew she had siblings--a remarkable statement considering they were raised in the same city. Her letter to Ingram made it clear that she could tell him very little about her brother, which is highly significant in light of the fact that Susan Talley Weiss claimed to have learned practically everything she wrote about Poe from Rosalie and the Mackenzies. Sarah Helen Whitman stated that Edgar told her his relationship with Rosalie was characterized by "a coolness or estrangement of long standing." This is substantiated by a rather startling letter Maria Clemm wrote to her Baltimore relative Neilson Poe soon after Edgar's death. She expressed her desire to have "my darling's trunk" sent to her, and also made clear her indignation at Rosalie's attempts to secure what little estate he left. "What right," Mrs. Clemm cried, "has Rose to anything belonging to him--he has not even written to her for more than two years, and she never has done anything for him except to speak ill of him..."

Rosalie led a comfortable and stable existence in the Mackenzie home until the Civil War left the family destitute. Thereafter, her story becomes pure pitable tragedy. The surviving members of her foster family having scattered, Rosalie, unable to cope with the loss of her happy pre-war life, made her way to her Poe relatives in Baltimore. They evidently soon grew tired of being burdened with her, and she was left on her own resources--a fate her intelligence, character, and upbringing left her completely unable to handle. She made attempts to find work as a housekeeper, and was said to walk the streets trying to sell pictures of Edgar to passerby. (She also made money selling ordinary household items as "Poe artifacts" once owned by her brother--items that, in truth, had no connection to him at all. Poe scholar John Carl Miller cautioned, "Any Poe-association artifact must now be suspect" if Rosalie ever any connection to it.) Her main source of support, however, was "the kindness of strangers," motivated to assist her by admiration for her celebrated sibling.

Rosalie was eventually placed in a charity home in Washington, D.C., where she died in 1874, of what was described as "inflammation of the stomach." Curiously, her tombstone gives her year of birth as 1812--the year after Eliza Poe's death.