BALTIMORE — Like Baltimore’s old buildings sunken into their surrounding sidewalks, gravity grips the gravestones of the Westminster Burial Grounds, its miniature skyline sinking and tilting by turns.It is a black and white place even on the brightest days, hidden in the shadows of taller, more modern structures at the corner of Fayette and Greene Streets. Many of the marble headstones are so weathered and worn as to leave the souls beneath them eternally anonymous.
Yet by the cemetery’s gates stands a monument to one not easily forgotten — Edgar Allan Poe, poet, critic, essayist, creator of the modern short story and master of the darkest nooks and crannies of the human night, dead in Baltimore at 40 and interred here in 1849.
He is the burial grounds’ most celebrated citizen — one so revered that every year on his birthday of Jan. 19, an unidentified man in black makes his way over the closed gates of Westminster Burying Grounds in the early hours of the morning to leave three roses, a half-full bottle of cognac and a letter at Poe’s tombstone.
Almost lifted from the pages of a Poe story, the anonymous visitor — who has come to be known as the “Poe toaster” — sneaks in and out under cover of the night, remaining only long enough to raise a glass and offer a few soft-spoken words before disappearing as quietly as he came.
It is a ritual that, so far as anyone knows, began in 1949, the centennial of Poe’s death, and has been observed every Jan. 19th since at least 1976.
And every year since 1980, under the aegis of the Poe House and Museum and the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, on the weekend closest to the poet’s birthday, about 800 people come to Westminster Hall on the cemetery grounds for performances based on the author’s stories and poems. If the birth date happens to fall on or near the weekend, a choice handful stays on through the early hours of the 19th to catch a glimpse of the mysterious visitor.
So it will be this weekend and Monday, the 195th anniversary of Poe’s birthday.
“We’ll be watching just to see it happen,” says Poe House curator Jeff Jerome, who with a small and changing group, have kept vigil since 1977.
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Edgar Allan Poe was born on Jan. 19, 1809, in Boston and spent most of his life in Richmond, but Baltimore claims him as its own — both figuratively, as a favorite adopted son, and literally, where he lies in his own dark corner of the city.
Appropriately enough, it was in death that the master of macabre would have his final chapter written in Baltimore. Passing through town on the last drinking spree of his life, Poe was found lying on what is now Lombard Street in the Corn Beef Row neighborhood near a local tavern.
He was taken to the Washington Medical College, the current Church Hospital, at Broadway and Fairmount avenues, where he would die a few days later on Oct. 7, 1849.
The science of embalming not yet having been perfected, it was required that he be buried soon. And so his body was taken to the Westminster Burial Grounds, where he was placed in an unmarked grave alongside family members, including his grandparents and brother.
In the years to follow, the gravesite became increasingly unkempt and overgrown with weeds to the point that it became unrecognizable. Eventually a small sandstone marker was placed at the site, but 25 years after his original burial, Poe’s remains as well as those of his wife (and cousin) Virginia Clemm Poe and his mother-in-law (and aunt) Maria Clemm were moved to their current location beneath a monument at the cemetery’s most prominent corner.
One of the oldest cemeteries in Baltimore, dating back to 1787, Westminster was once regarded as the primary final resting place for many of Baltimore’s elite. Baltimore’s first mayor, James Calhoun, is buried there, as are five other early mayors of the city. Many veterans of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 also lie here; they include James McHenry, George Washington’s aide-de-camp, after whom Baltimore’s Fort McHenry is named.
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Poe’s family roots in Baltimore can be traced back to his great- grandparents John and Jane McBride Poe, who moved to the city in 1755 with their children, among them David Poe, Edgar’s grandfather, who was born in Ireland in the early 1740s.
Although Poe’s immediate family left Baltimore before he was born, a number of relatives remained. Poe visited Baltimore frequently in his youth and as a struggling young writer lived from 1832 to 1835 at 203 Amity St. in West Baltimore, in a building now known as the Edgar Allan Poe House. It was here that he lived with his aunt and soon to be mother-in-law Maria Clemm, where he also met and married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia.
Though his time as a resident of the city was brief, it was a pivotal period in Poe’s life. According to Mr. Jerome, before he came to Baltimore, Poe was primarily writing poetry.
“It was in Baltimore that Poe came to the decision to write short stories,” says Mr. Jerome, “And in Baltimore that he wrote his first horror story, ’Berenice,’ a gruesome tale of premature burial, grave desecration and mutilation.”
The horrific themes in Poe’s work may have been the result of the tough times and struggles he was enduring.
“There were a lot of things going on in his life at that time,” Mr. Jerome says. “He was starving. … He applied for a teaching position and as a bricklayer but did not get either job. He was a starving writer. He didn’t know what the public wanted so he experimented with a lot of things.”
Some of Poe’s best-known prose and poetry will be revisited during this weekend’s birthday celebration.
Saturday’s “Tales of Terror” program begins at 7 p.m. and kicks off with “The Haunted Concert,” a reading of Poe’s short story of the plague years, “The Masque of the Red Death,” read by actor John Astin as the Baltimore Bach Society conducted by Rob Zuber performs Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem.”
A 30-person chorus accompanied on Westminster Hall’s 1884 Johnson organ will represent the revelers in the story’s masque of the prince, Prospero, while conductor Zuber will personify the “Red Death.”
“This is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that this particular story has been put to that use,” says Mr. Jerome.
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Mr. Astin, most widely recognized as Gomez Addams on television’s original “Addams Family” sitcom, has been performing as Edgar Allan Poe in his own nationally touring one-man show since 1998 and has participated in the Baltimore birthday celebration for five years.
Currently a full-time visiting professor of theater arts in the writing seminars department at Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Astin was born in Baltimore and raised in the District. His interest in Poe began at a young age.
“I was 12 when I first read Poe. My mother gave me a copy of ’The Purloined Letter,’” he says. That story is one of the mysteries of the M. Dupin cycle, which is regarded as the precursor to Sherlock Holmes and the genesis of the detective story.
“It was a very powerful experience. I can remember to this day, putting the book down after I finished the story and looking for places where the purloined letter might have been. I can still remember the room where I was sitting, and so on,” says Mr. Astin.
This is not the first time Mr. Astin will read “The Masque of the Red Death” as part of the Poe birthday celebration.
“I have done it with the [Edgar Allan Poe] Society before, two years ago, but this is the first time with the Faure accompaniment. I think there is definitely a similarity in the two works,” Mr. Astin says.
“’The Masque of the Red Death’ makes a very interesting comment. It shows us a locale in which a number of citizens have certain arrogance about them and they don’t see the problems that are there until it’s too late. There are some allusions to the plague in this piece. It’s masterfully written, it’s a very powerful piece and the music is very powerful stuff.”
In addition, Mr. Astin will also read “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which Mr. Jerome describes as a “classic story of obsession and superstition,” as well “The Raven,” which Mr. Astin will be reading for the first time as part of the celebration.
“The Raven,” perhaps Poe’s most critically acclaimed piece, was written over a period of many years while he lived in numerous cities. Baltimore’s professional football team, the Ravens, is the first sports franchise named for a literary reference.
“It is considered one of the world’s most perfectly constructed poems, and it has to be one of the world’s most recognized poems,” says Mr. Jerome. “But he was never satisfied with it.”
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.”
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Westminster Hall will be haunted by a few of Poe’s characters during the seating on Saturday and Sunday. Making their way around the room will be: Madeline Usher, from “The Fall of the House of Usher;” Fortunato, the buried-alive, obnoxious drunk, made famous in “The Cask of Amontillado”; and the Red Death itself, which will be spreading its pestilence.
A lock of Edgar’s and his wife Virginia’s hair as well as an actual piece of his coffin will be part of an exhibit brought to the show by the Poe Society of Baltimore. Celtic singer Bonnie McKenna will perform a musical tribute to Poe in recognition of his Scottish-Irish ancestry, and the two-hour program will conclude with the traditional toast and reading of birthday wishes from around the world.
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And then begins the wait for the “Poe toaster.” But if Mr. Jerome has his way, this personage will forever remain anonymous.
“We make no attempt to identify the man but to bear witness,” Mr. Jerome says. “It is not our wish to interfere or hinder this man. We ask that anyone else standing outside the gates extend the same courtesy, and everyone has for all these years.”
Mr. Jerome has saved the visitor’s offerings.
“I have a collection of half-full bottles of Martel French Cognac and the notes. I like to think that he drinks a portion of it as a toast, but we’ve never seen him do it. My theory is he has a private ceremony at home or somewhere before coming here,” says Mr. Jerome.
One fact about the visitor was revealed in 1993, when the man whom Mr. Jerome described as a small, frail figure, explained in the form of a nearly illegible hand-written note that “The torch will be passed.” Five years later a second note informed Mr. Jerome that the original visitor had passed away but that the tradition had been handed down to a son or sons of the first darkly cloaked visitor.
“It is theatrical and dramatic in nature and obviously the man who invented it prefers to visit in the evening [somewhere between midnight and 6 a.m.]. He was thankful that we have not interfered,” says Mr. Jerome. “He would have to have known he was being watched.”
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Dogging the steps of Edgar Allan Poe — haunting the haunted, so to speak — can be time-consuming: The poet was born in Boston and lived all over the East Coast. Those who wish to try a Poe tour can visit these for starters:
Poe sites in Baltimore
• On the plaza of the University of Baltimore Law School at the northeast corner of Maryland and Mount Royal Avenues. This marvelous bronze casting was commissioned in 1907 and is the last piece constructed by famed sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, at a cost of $20,000, half of which was donated by the sculptor himself. The first model was destroyed in a fire and the second in an earthquake. When it was finally completed, it was placed in Bryant Park by the Baltimore Museum of Art and dedicated on Oct. 20, 1921. Time, weather and vandalism took their toll on the piece and at the recommendation of the Edgar Allan Poe Society it was moved to its current location in 1978.
• Poe House and Museum: 203 Amity St., West Baltimore. Run under the control of Baltimore City’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP). The house where Poe lived at 203 Amity St. in West Baltimore for three years with his aunt and soon-to-be mother-in-law Maria Clemm and 13-year-old cousin and soon-to-be wife Virginia. The Poe House is currently closed for renovations that are scheduled for completion in April. Call 410/396-7932 or see the Web site at www.eapoe.org.
• Westminster Hall and Burial Grounds: Fayette and Greene Streets. The property of the Law School of the University of Maryland and maintained by the Westminster Preservation Trust, this old Baltimore burial ground is the resting place of what was once a Who’s Who of the city’s elite. The monument at Poe’s grave is the cemetery’s most prominent feature. Cemetery gates open to the public 8 a.m. to dusk daily. Tours available for a fee on the first and third Fridays of each month from April to July. Call 410/706-2072 or see the Web site at www.eapoe. org/balt/poegrave.htm.
Other Poe sites
• Richmond: The Edgar Allan Poe Museum: 1914-16 E. Main St., Richmond, Va. 23223. Built in the late 1680s, this quaint cottage and its beautiful surrounding garden courtyard is where Poe spent the greater part of his life. It houses many historic artifacts, including a large collection of first edition copies of many of Poe’s books. The museum will celebrate Poe’s birthday with an open house from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Author Mary Alice Gunter will be reading from her new novel, “Murder in the Poe Room,” at 2:30 p.m. Call 804/648-5523 or 888-21E-APOE, e-mail at info@poemuseum.org or see the Web site at www.poemuseum.org.
• Philadelphia: The Poe House: 532 N. Seventh St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19123. A National Historic Site and part of the National Park Service, this house was Poe’s home for six years, from 1838 to 1844. Here he edited and provided critical reviews for very successful magazines, and invented the modern detective story. While in Philadelphia, Poe was at the height of his literary career and penned such classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” and poems like “The Haunted Palace” and “To Helen.”
In Philadelphia, Poe lived a life of extremes. He enjoyed some of the most critical acclaim of his career while also working for a while as a popular lecturer. It was also in Philadelphia that he learned that his wife Virginia was ill with tuberculosis. The brief and tragic life of the author, his times, and literary legacy are interpreted in this building that once sheltered Poe and his family. The Poe House in Philadelphia was designated by Congress as the only National Memorial to the literary legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. Call 215/597-8780 or see the Web sites at www.nps.gov/edal /index1.html and www.nps. gov/edal.
• New York City: The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in Poe Park: Grand Concourse at Kingsbridge Road, Bronx, N.Y. 10458. Built in 1812, now owned by the City of New York and administered by the Bronx County Historical Society, this was Edgar Allan Poe’s final home. Poe lived here with his wife and mother-in-law from 1846 to 1849. His wife Virginia died in the house on Jan. 30, 1847. The couple had moved to this bucolic site from New York City hoping the wide-open spaces, cleaner air and country living would do ailing Virginia some good. Poe also lived here until his own death. Legend has it he was heading back to New York from Richmond when he died in Baltimore. The house has been opened as a museum since 1913. Some items of interest include a rocking chair and the bed in which Virginia supposedly died. A tour of the house begins with a 20-minute film on life in rural New York in the 1840s and the time Poe spent in the house. Call 718/881-8900 or see the Web site at www.museum register.com/US/NewYork/Bronx/Fordham/PoeCottage.html.
Visiting sites associated with Poe
WHAT: The world’s largest Edgar Allan Poe birthday celebration
WHERE: Westminster Hall, Fayette and Greene streets, Baltimore
WHEN: Saturday: Doors open at 6 p.m., program begins at 7 p.m. Sunday: Doors open at 3:30 p.m., program begins at 4:30 p.m.
TICKETS: Saturday: $20 adults, $15 children up to 18, if bought in advance. $25 and $17 at the door. Sunday: $18 adults, $15 children up to 18, if bought in advance. $20 and $15 at the door.
INFORMATION: Call the Poe hot line at 410/396-7932, e-mail eapoe@baltimorecity.gov or see the Web site at https://poecelebration.tripod.com.
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