Tim Prasil's Blog, page 33

A Halloween Harvest–and It’s Not Even Noon!

On this Halloween morning, I emptied the dishwasher, started a second load of laundry, and added a full and entire 15 seconds to how long I can hold a “plank.”

If that’s not scary enough, I also just completed the introduction for the next anthology from Brom Bones Books: Echoing Ghost Stories: Literary Reflections of Oral Tradition.

This anthology will be the second volume in the Phantom Traditions Library, which resurrects “forgotten” genres or sub-genres of fiction from the 1800s and early 1900s. The first volume, Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery, spotlights stories about the evil that emerges from dabbling in hypnotism. The upcoming volume explores a sub-genre of ghost stories: those in which the author tries to capture something of the centuries-old oral tradition of telling ghost stories. My introduction looks at the history of sharing ghost stories out loud (often by the fireside), at the shift from that tradition to reading ghost stories, and at how some authors tried to reflect the oral tradition on the page.

[image error]An illustration from the original publication of “Mr. Rangle’s Ghost Story,” a work that’s reminiscent of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and that will be found in Echoing Ghost Stories.

The authors in Echoing Ghost Stories include names not immediately associated with ghost stories: Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; L.M. Montgomery, who wrote the Anne of Green Gables books; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; and Edith Wharton. On the other hand, some of the authors will be recognized by fans of Victorian and Edwardian supernatural fiction: Mary Louisa Molesworth, E. Nesbit, Ambrose Bierce, M.R. James, and E.F. Benson. There are twenty stories in all–along with an essay in the Appendix that’s titled “The Passing of the Christmas Ghost Story,” by Stephen Leacock, who was an internationally loved humorist once upon a time.

Echoing Ghost Stories should be out in December, which is fitting because winter–and, starting around the 1830s, Christmas specifically–were frequently associated with that oral tradition of fireside ghost stories. I still have to add some footnotes and, of course, proofread, proofread, proofread.

For now, though, it’s fun be spending my Halloween bringing new life to old ghosts, the unofficial motto of Brom Bones Books. And I certainly wish you a Halloween just as ghostly!

A Book Report on Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (Penguin Press, 2006), by Pulizer-Prize winning author Deborah Blum, might disappoint readers looking for true stories of actual ghost hunts in haunted houses and the like. Instead, the book focuses on scientists from the late 1800s and early 1900s who investigated spiritualist mediums, clairvoyants, and the like. William James, brother of the fiction (and ghost story) writer Henry James, was among those scientists, and he serves as the hub of Blum’s book.

However, this isn’t exactly a biography of James, either. Rather the book spans the interest in psychical research of many scientists and scholars — William Crookes, Edmund Gurney, Oliver Lodge, Nora and Henry Sidgwick, et al. — so many, in fact, keeping some of the names straight can become a challenge. Nonetheless, readers get a good sense of the opposition facing these intellectuals from both Europe and the U.S. Blum also explores the internal tensions felt between these figures, who became the key players in forming the Society for Psychical Research and its American branch.

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Less challenging to sort out and more interesting to me personally are the specific mediums Blum covers, including Madame Blavasky, D.D. Home, Leonora Piper, and Eusapia Palladino. Those who’ve read my Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries know that Van Slyke met her “Dr. Watson” by exposing the young woman as a fake medium. Learning how those other mediums were similarly debunked — or tenaciously defied being debunked — is a story rich in the long-lived struggle between belief and skepticism. The spotlight on Leonora Piper, whom James saw as the best evidence that seances are not always fraudulent, makes for gripping history.

Blum’s work is thoroughly researched, relying quite a bit on the letters of James and others. Her language is accessible, I think, to most adult readers. It’s certainly an engaging book for those with an interest in the spiritualist movement and how the psychical research that depended so much upon it emerged and ruffled academic feathers.

As I say, though, don’t let the title mislead you. There are few accounts of ghosts or ghost hunters as those terms are used on this website and elsewhere.

Prepping for National Ghost Hunting Day

Today, September 30, is National Ghost Hunting Day. This day has been around for a few years, and it’s intended to encourage ghost-hunting awareness and solidarity. Current methods of this paranormal pursuit are, say I shall, “beyond my EMF meter.” However, the long history of ghost hunting is something I’ve been charting for much longer than National Ghost Hunting Day has been a thing.

For instance, my Ghost Hunter Hall of Fame page provides an overview — and links to more information — regarding ghost hunters as far back as ancient Greece. I’m especially interested in Victorian ghost hunters, and this is a topic for a book that’s so far in the future I probably shouldn’t even mention it. All I’ll say is that it’ll be somewhat similar to Spectral Edition: Ghost Reports in U.S. Newspapers, 1865-1917 in that it’ll be an anthology of non-fiction.

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Fictional ghost hunters have a long history, too, and I’ve compiled a long list of these characters. It’s called The Legacy of Ghost Hunter Fiction: A Chronological Bibliography. Again, the Victorian period is my main focus there.

This interest blossomed when I set out to chronicle the cases of  my own fictional ghost hunter, Vera Van Slyke. I’m pleased to announce that I’m over 100 pages into the first traditional novel featuring this character: Guilt Is a Ghost. I call this a traditional novel because my previous book, Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries, is what’s called a “composite novel” (a.k.a. a short story cycle). In other words, each chapter spotlights a discreet paranormal investigation, but the characters and their relationships evolve as the book moves forward. So read it “in order.”

Even though the novel I’m working on now delves deeper into the first meeting of Vera and her “Dr. Watson,” Lida Prášilová — who also happens to be my great-grandaunt — I still recommend that readers begin with Help for the Haunted.  And, hey, it’s already available!

Enjoy National Ghost Hunting Day! I hope I’ve contributed to the greater ghostly good in my own way.

Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism & Mystery Is Now Available!

Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery is now available! It features suspenseful explorations of hypnotism’s extreme possibilities by authors of weird fiction E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ambrose Bierce; authors of mystery fiction Arthur Conan Doyle and L.T. Meade; authors of ghost stories Rhoda Boughton and Mary Elizabeth Braddon; and founders of science fiction Fitz-James O’Brien and Percy Greg. Even Louisa May Alcott appears!

My introduction looks at the history of Mesmerism/hypnotism and the body of fiction it inspired. Here’s a section of that:

       Trilby and similar novels became labeled “Hypnotic Fiction” in an 1895 piece of literary criticism by Arthur Quiller-Couch. He was not a fan of this body of literature largely because of the response it stirs in readers. Instead of the “ordinary human terror” one feels from a work such as Macbeth—which, by negative example, reinforces the idea that virtue leads to happiness—“the terror of these hypnotic stories resembles that of a child in a dark room.” The typical plot involves a villain hypnotizing a victim, most often “a good and beautiful woman,” thereby making her “commit any excesses that his beastliness may suggest.” Quiller-Couch complains that this leaves readers asking, “What avail native innocence, truthfulness, chastity, when all these can be changed into guile and uncleanliness at the mere suggestion of a dirty mesmerist?” In other words, Quiller-Couch prefers a character’s bad behavior and consequent downfall to result from that character’s own bad motives. It is an interesting point, but as interesting is the fact that a critic recognized that a nameable genre of fiction had emerged, and this genre included novels as well as shorter works such as those anthologized in this book.

Whether the genre should be categorized under supernatural or science fiction is difficult to decide. In a sense, the history of mesmerism/hypnotism has been a struggle to yank the phenomenon out of the supernatural realm and confine it to the natural. Under “Animal Magnetism,” an 1883 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica explains that widespread and centuries-old reports of disease being cured “by the touch of the hand of certain persons,” inducing “deep sleeps . . . during which the sleeper sometimes had prophetic dreams,” and producing other “effects like those now referred to animal magnetism” were attributed to supernatural agencies. Moving to Mesmer, the entry explains that his theory was directly shaped by his experience with Johann Joseph Gassner (1727-1779), a priest who performed exorcisms and miracle cures, leading Mesmer “to suppose that some kind of occult force resided in himself by which he could influence others.” Certainly, Mesmer’s claims of channeling animal magnetism—a force he said pervades the universe—implied a power that was mystical and transcendent, if not outright supernatural.

There’s also an Appendix that recounts the first criminal trial in which an accused murderer was defended with the claim that she was not guilty — by reason of HYPNOSIS! And here’s another passage from that:

       For many, that education began with a court case that had occurred in 1890. The trial sparked an international debate on whether or not a murderer should be found not guilty if she had been hypnotized and commanded to commit that crime. (“My Hypnotic Patient” explores the same question!) Here are the facts of the crime. In August of 1889, the decaying body of Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé was found near Lyon, France, apparently a victim of strangulation. After the corpse was identified, detectives determined that Gouffé had associated with a pair of shady swindlers named Michel Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard, and that couple had conspicuously vamoosed to North America. Bompard returned to France in January of 1890, though, at which time she confessed all. She had lured Gouffé to a private spot, where she and Eyraud strangled him for his money. Eyraud was finally arrested in Havana and brought back to France to stand trial with Bompard.

That trial happened in December. Eyraud’s sentencing apparently went without incident: he was found guilty and put to death by guillotine. Bompard’s court case, though, took a twist when it was announced that her defense would be that she was under Eyraud’s hypnotic influence when playing her part in the murder. This claim had risen in public opinion and in the press even before her attorney came on the scene to make that argument official. Once the sensationalistic trial began, experts on hypnosis voiced their views. As discussed in my Introduction, France had two competing centers studying hypnotism: the Paris School—also called Salpêtrière school—and the Nancy School.  Siding with the Paris School, two doctors testified that, because Bompard was not a “grand hysteric,” she was not prone to hypnotism. Even if she were, hypnosis cannot overrule a person’s intrinsic morality. On the other hand, in keeping with the Nancy School, law professor Jules Liégeois refuted the claim that only grand hysterics could be hypnotized and asserted that, yes, a person can be hypnotized to commit a crime.

Visit the Entranced by Eyes of Evil page for a description and for purchasing options.

My Visit to Sleepy Hollow

At the start of this month, I spent a couple of days in Sleepy Hollow, New York. It and neighboring Tarrytown are very pretty. For a guy like me, the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was the main attraction, partly because it’s where Washington Irving, the author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” lies buried. I paid my respects to the great American writer and told him that I had named my publishing “cottage” after his character, Brom Bones. He made no objections.

One reason I went to Sleepy Hollow was to have a picturesque setting to make a video announcement of the next Brom Bones Books release: Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery. The book features stories about evil hypnotists–or characters who suffer the consequences of dabbling in hypnosis. There are 18 tales, the most recognizable authors being Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ambrose Bierce.

Entranced by Eyes of Evil should be available in just a few days now, and here’s the video I had made in Sleepy Hollow to announce its arrival. Below that are some pictures I took there.

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I’ll let you know when Entranced by Eyes of Evil is available for purchase.

The Bully-ization of Brom Bones, Part 1

I’m planning to visit Sleepy Hollow, New York, in about a week, and it’s got me thinking of an issue that my wife and I recently debated: Is Brom Bones, the character in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a bully? She says he is. Ever eager to pick nits, I say he’s much more a rascal than a bully. Something like Tom Sawyer using his wits to trick other boys into whitewashing a fence, Brom perceptively targets Icabod Crane’s gullibility when duping him into leaving town. Though he’s described as burly, even Herculean, Brom never uses physical force. And he’s far more clever than cruel, far more mischievous than malicious.

Of course, all of this hinges on the idea that Brom masquerades as the Headless Horseman at the tale’s denouement, and Irving leaves the door slightly open in regard to who or what chased the terrified Icabod on that fateful night. But I see Irving’s 1820 tale as fundamentally similar to other ghost stories from the early 1800s in that it provides a rational explanation for the ghostly encounter.  There’s “The Barber’s Ghost,” for example, or the literary legend of Antoinette du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières. Like the protagonists in these narratives, Brom is the skeptic who knows the ghost isn’t real, though Irving makes his cautionary tale about the folly of superstition a lot more memorable.

[image error]Brom Bones, as illustrated by George H. Boughton

I began to wonder what gave Brom the reputation of being a bully, and movies came to mind. The film versions of Frankenstein appear to have convinced many people that electricity is central to bringing the creature to life in Mary Shelley’s novel, even though it’s not mentioned there. (There’s the important young-Victor-observes-a-tree-struck-by-lightening scene, but that’s electricity bringing death. Otherwise, Victor is adamant about not explaining how his experiment succeeded for fear that others might reproduce its monstrous results.) Assuming that a movie titled Headless Horseman, from 1922, is one of the very first cinema adaptations of Irving’s story, I gave it a look.

First, it’s not a great movie. Yeah, it’s interesting to see Will Rogers play Icabod Crane, though it’s not clear why he was cast other than his star power. There are only fleeting scraps in the script for him to be funny, and he doesn’t fit Irving’s description of the teacher: “He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.” Much better casting came when Jeff Goldblum took the part in a 1980 television movie.

Brom Bones, on the other hand, is played by an actor named Ben Hendricks Jr. He’s more in keeping with Irving’s portrait of the “burly, roaring, roystering blade,” “the hero of the country round,” with his  “bluff but not unpleasant countenance [and] mingled air of fun and arrogance.” With a “Herculean frame and great powers of limb,” Brom is well-known as a skilled horseman and as an “umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom.” In other words, Irving’s Brom might be intimidating physically, but there’s really no need to worry. Sure, he taunts Icabod with pranks, but remember that Icabod keeps order in his classroom with the constant threat of “a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice[, which] reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers.” In other words, while one pulls pranks, the other threatens with physical pain. Who’s the bully now, buster?

[image error]This is the best screen capture I could get of Ben Hendricks Jr. as Brom Bones. I’m unable to find a good quality print of the film online.

Unfortunately, the 1922 film adds a scene to the original story that changes all of this.  It involves a boy claiming that Icabod bewitched him, the gullible townspeople coming very close to tar-and-feathering Icabod, and at the pivotal point, the boy confessing that Brom paid him to pretend to be bewitched. The boy even says that Brom made him drink something that made him sick! As I say, this act of cruelty toward the boy and toward Icabod is nowhere in Irving’s story, which is curious because otherwise the script is reasonably faithful. Confusingly, screenwriter Carl Stearns Clancy makes Icabod, Brom, and even Katrina Van Tassel — the three corners in the love triangle — downright unlikable characters. As I say, it’s not a very enjoyable film.

I have to watch more movies to be sure, but I suspect that this film was the first step in portraying Brom Bones as a bully. I’ll be watching and blogging about subsequent movies — both cartoons and live action — to see if there was a trend toward adding bullying to Brom’s character. Until then, this is the best quality copy of the 1922 movie that I can find online, and be aware that there’s a scene involving actual cockfighting. Here’s a smart review of it, too.

In addition, reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in its original form is never a bad idea.

Take a Look at BBB’s Next Release: Entranced by Eyes of Evil

Ditty to Science

I once wrote a sonnet to Science.

My tone was of headstrong defiance.

If Mesmer can verify

That Death need not terrify,

Perhaps I will form an alliance.

In The Lost Limericks of Edgar Allan Poe, the “ditty” above is footnoted with this bit of historical context:

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) pioneered the phenomena of “animal magnetism,” which quickly became known as Mesmerism and evolved into hypnotism. The scientific and spiritual possibilities that might be uncovered by Mesmer’s practices—including communication with the dead—held widespread fascination in Poe’s era, as seen in his “Mesmeric Revelation” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

That second story by Poe will appear Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery, to be released by Brom Bones Books come August. This is an anthology of short stories about evil hypnotists. Well, most of the hypnotists are evil; some just open the Pandora’s box of mesmerism and suffer the consequences. Along with Poe, there are works by Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ambrose Bierce. There are fourteen other authors who might not have sustained their luster quite as well, but who were important writers in their day. Entranced by Eyes of Evil comes with an Introduction and footnotes, and it ends with an Appendix dealing with a real-life court case that made international headlines because the woman charged with murder hoped to be found innocent by reason of hypnotism!

[image error]Franz Anton Mesmer

There are, of course, many challenges and frustrations with putting together a book such as this. Not only do I have to transfer the stories from their original format to one that will go to my printer, I have to correct mistakes that go with that process. And any mistakes that were in the original publications. And I’m modernizing the texts a bit by breaking up especially long paragraphs, turning once-hyphenated words such as “to-day” to “today,” and minimizing the commas. Good golly, Victorian writers sure were crazy for commas! This should make the stories more appealing to a new generation of readers.

At the same time, I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds some pleasure in the language styles of the 1800s. So it becomes a balancing act, and I try to tread lightly when modernizing such works. The ultimate goal, of course, is to help the authors connect well with their readers, the duty of any editor — including those who tinkered with the authors’ words when they were first published. A “pure” text, one that reflects exactly what the author presented to their publisher, would be nearly impossible to find — and, in some cases, we’re probably better off without it.

[image error]Ambrose Bierce

Along the way, I made some interesting discoveries. For instance, I found a slight disagreement over the exact date when Ambrose Bierce’s “The Realm of the Unreal” made its debut in the San Francisco Examiner. All of my sources agree that it was in July of 1890, but was it the 20th, the 27th, or the 29th? With help from a colleague, I found that — unless the Examiner published the tale more than once in a matter of days — the correct date is the 27th. And here’s the pudding that proves it: this is a copy of it from that date. It’s sorting out details such as this that makes editing this kind of anthology a touch maddening but, ultimately, very rewarding.

Finally, though the book won’t be available until next month, I’m pleased to unveil the cover:

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It’s Baaaaaaack! Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries Is Now Available — Again

With a touch of whimsy, the history of Help for the Haunted — which is as much a work of serious historical fiction as it is of fun occult detection — is slightly complicated. I began by posting the supernatural investigations of Vera Van Slyke and Lida Prasilova on a blog that no longer exists. The tales were liked well enough that “something that never happens” happened. A publisher contacted me with the hope of releasing the entire collection. That publisher is Emby Press, and you can probably still find a copy of the first edition of Help for the Haunted somewhere. (The different cover is an good way to spot it.)

[image error]This is the new cover of Help for the Haunted. Look for the candle and violet ghost!

However, after a couple of years, Emby Press did what many small presses do: reconsidered its strategies. With the rise of easy self-publishing, the press realized that its authors were better off publishing their own material, and this is when I began to think about launching Brom Bones Books. My rights were returned to me, and the first edition of Help for the Haunted went out-of-print.

But I had a couple of other books almost completed: Spectral Edition and The Lost Limericks of Edgar Allan Poe. So Brom Bones Books started with those as I polished a few spots here and there in Help for the Haunted. However, it’s time for the next step.

I’m very pleased to report that Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries is again available for purchase. It’s out in paperback (and a Kindle version of it is planned. I’m still learning self-publication. Timmy needs time, you see.)

Please visit my new page describing the book. There, you’ll find ordering information and handy links to online bookstores. Vera and Lida have future adventures coming, too! In fact, the next book in the series is titled Guilt Is a Ghost. I’m aiming to release that in 2019.

The Cover for the New Edition of Help for the Haunted!

In a matter of weeks, Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries will be re-released by Brom Bones Books.

Though I might tinker with it slightly, here’s the cover. The violet glow around the lettering will make sense to those who’ve read the previous edition (published by Emby Press) or will come to make sense to those who read the Brom Bones Books edition!

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I’m still proofreading and tweaking the stories — and I have a Maine vacation planned in about a week — so exactly when the book will be available for sale is uncertain. But it shouldn’t be any later than the middle of June.

The Poe Uncertainties: His Birthplace

Let Them Eat Crow

There once was a chef born in Boston

Whose stews were composed in a sauce-tin.

Great measures of thyme

With spices that rhyme

Made tasty that raven he tossed in.

I had hoped this poem might inch me toward settling the mystery of exactly who authored The Lost Limericks of Edgar Allan Poe. In my research on Poe, I came across an interesting debate over his birthplace. Some claim that, yes, he was born in Boston, and that has now become the consensus view. However, for about a century following Poe’s death, others countered this claim by insisting that Baltimore is the correct city.

Here’s a dateline of the debate.

1827

Tamerlane and Other Poems is considered Poe’s first publication. The cover identifies the author only as “a Bostonian.” Is this a clue of Poe’s roots, or was the author or publisher hoping to add a bit of gravitas to the pamphlet by suggesting it came from the city that was becoming the literary center of the U.S.? Or both?

1845

In late October of 1845, Poe had accepted an invitation to recite one of his poems at the Boston Lyceum. There was a less-than-flattering review of the recitation, and Poe wrote a rebuttal in The Broadway Journal, where he was editor. He clarifies his views of Boston, which are equally less than flattering. Using “we” to mean himself (a custom of the era), Poe writes:

We like Boston. We were born there — and perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we are heartily ashamed of the fact. The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their common is no common thing — and the duck-pond might answer — if its answer could be heard for the frogs.

It’s hard to know exactly how snarky he’s being here. Poe could be very snarky. But his confessing to having been born in Boston seems fairly straightforward.

It’s looking pretty much like, according to Poe himself, he was born in Boston, right? Well, at least one Poe website mentions that Poe also proclaimed that Baltimore was his birthplace. Unfortunately, when and where he did that is not noted, and I’m too new to researching the issue to have found a source that confirms it.

[image error]The masthead of the The Broadway Journal, where Poe reluctantly admits to having been born in Boston.
1850

Poe died in 1849, and his first noteworthy biography was written by his literary rival Rufus Griswold, a man who held a grudge. The biography is notorious for painting Poe as a friendless moral degenerate, and it also says that “Edgar Poe . . . was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811 . . .” (xxiii). Both the place and the year became points of contention.

What led Griswold to make this statement? It’s probably impossible to say, but one theory is he trusted a self-profile Poe had once written for him. Along with far more flagrant self-aggrandizing, Poe puts 1811 as the year of his birth. He doesn’t actually state a birthplace, but he points out that his family was from Baltimore — which is true. Maybe Griswold assumed that, since earlier Poes had settled in Baltimore, that’s where Edgar was born (even though he points out that Edgar’s parents were traveling actors).

1874

John H. Ingram then attempted to outshine Griswold’s vindictive, error-ridden biography of Poe with one much more fair and factual. Unfortunately, he introduced new errors and repeated some of the old ones in his own memoir of the author. Ingram states, “Edgar Allan Poe was born in Baltimore, on the 19th of February of 1809” (xiii). Well, he got the year right.

1876

Ingram was determined to get the facts straightened out, and a subsequent version of his memoir says Poe was born in Boston (xi). About the same year, Eugene L. Didier was telling readers: “Edgar Poe, the second son of David Poe, Jr., was born in Boston on the 19th of January, 1809, while his parents were fulfilling a theatrical engagement in that city.”

1880

This origin story appears to have stuck. It’s retold in E.C. Stedman’s 1880 book-length biography titled Edgar Allan Poe. The same year, the ever-diligent Ingram released his own titled Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions. Based on my initial research, this is one of the first sources, if not the first, to introduce an anecdote about Poe inheriting a painting done by his talented mother. Boston Harbor: Morning, 1808 was its title, and on the back, Elizabeth Poe had written: “For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.” Certainly, this is the smoking gun — if it’s true.

But is it true? Let’s come back to that in a moment.

[image error]Alas, this painting titled Boston Harbor (1854) is by Fitz Henry Lane, not by Elizabeth Poe.
1885

George E. Woodberry wrote yet another biography of Poe, and it follows the narrative of Poe’s birth that Ingram and Didier had established in 1876. However, this work refers to an important newspaper notice that had originally appeared on February 9, 1809, in the Boston Gazette. That notice congratulates theater goers “on the recovery of Mrs. Poe from her recent confinement” and announces her return to the stage. In other words, here was substantial evidence that 1) Elizabeth Poe was in Boston during the first months of 1809 and 2) in January, she had been “confined” from acting for a while. Presumably, giving birth to Edgar was the reason why.

1909

Once the 19th century had turned into the 20th, the claim that Poe had been born in 1809, not 1811, carried enough weight that his centennial was celebrated in 1909. But not everyone was convinced that his birth had occurred in Boston. In February of that year, Elizabeth Ellicott Poe revitalized the thesis that Baltimore was Edgar’s birthplace. She did it in an article for Cosmopolitan magazine that shouldered this hefty title: “Poe, the Weird Genius: An Authentic and Intimate Account of the Personality and Life of the Most Tragic Figure in American Literary History, Written by a Member of His Own Family.”

There, with fancified syntax, the writer proclaims, “To Baltimore belongs the right to call him son.” Knowing the point was debatable, she devotes a paragraph to the evidence:

Briefly summarized, the proofs of Poe’s Baltimore birth are as follows: The evidence of relatives; the fact that he was in Baltimore when two days old when Boston was a week’s coach-journey distant; the testimony of Mrs. Beard; his own statements in memoranda prepared for Mr. Griswold and verbally given to other witnesses; the Encyclopedia Britannica, Allibone’s “Dictionary of Authors,” and all English biographers and school-records; the better-informed American biographers; the Baltimore Sun notice of his death; and the traditional record of his birthplace kept in the family.

It’s easy to spot holes in this list of proofs. The memoranda prepared for Griswold was probably that exaggerated self-profile Poe wrote, which only says his family is from Baltimore. Griswold’s mistakes were repeated by others, accounting for the encyclopedia and dictionary statements. Ingram was prominent among those English biographers, and he had converted to Team Boston decades earlier. The family records that begin and end the list appear to have been contradicted by a relative who probably new Edgar better than almost anyone: his aunt and later mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. In The Poe Cult — also published in 1909 — Didier reports that Clemm informed him personally that Edgar had been born in Boston.

The Literary Digest must have pounced on Cosmopolitan’s February article because, in their January 30 issue, they offer a summary of that article. Beside it, they report that an antiquarian named Walter Kendall Watkins had recently supported the Boston claim with reference to the Gazette theatrical notices that Woodberry had nodded to back in 1885. We’re given more specifics about those notices, though, and the case they make was convincing enough that a 1909 publication called Edgar Allan Poe: A Centenary Tribute includes them.

This really seems to confirm that Poe was born in Boston. That Centenary Tribute leaves us with another uncertainty, though. It might be a comparatively minor one. Right after discussing the reports on Elizabeth Poe’s return to the stage, readers are told the anecdote about Edgar inheriting a piece of art from his mother. On the back is his mother’s request that he “love Boston, the place of his birth.” However, now — instead of a painting of Boston Harbor — the artwork is a “miniature of herself.” This version of the anecdote also appears on the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

So it goes. Poe research leads from one uncertainty to another. And I’ve gotten no further in my quest to determine if Poe is the actual author of The Lost Limericks of Edgar Allan Poe. All I know is that the author of those 100 limericks was someone who agreed that Poe had been born in Boston. And that’s an awful lot of people.

I suspect that, somewhere, Edgar is snickering at me.

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