Text: William Fearing Gill, “Real Raven Came Tapping,” New York Herald (New York, NY), vol. LXXVI, no. 143, January 21, 1909, p. 7, col. 4

[page 7, col. 4:]

REAL RAVEN CAME TAPPING

Friendly Biographer of Poe, the Poet, Tells. Remarkable Story.

BOSTON, Jan. 20. — At the Poe memorial meeting in Boston the other evening William Fearing Gill of Paris, the friendly biographer. of the poetic genius, Edgar Allen Poe, deeply interested his audience by relating a strange incident which he said had never been published or told and which he had determined to reserve for the centennial anniversary of the poet's birth.

“I was living in New York at the time, and in my room I had in a box the bones of Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe, which I had rescued when the graveyard in which she was interred was leveled. It was a bleak morning in December. I was awakened by a rap, rap, rap. I went to the door. No one was there. Again came the rap, rap, rap. I went to the window and opened it. All was darkness, but I could distinguish some sort of small animal on the sill. ‘Come in,’ I said, and in walked the raven.

On my mantel I had an album of autograph letters, Poe, together with a poem called ‘The Demon of the Fire,’ which doubtless inspired his ‘Raven.’ This bird went to the book, perched on top of it and, fastening his talons. in it turned and looked at me. ‘Tell me what thy lordly name is.’ The raven flapped his wings and cried ‘Whoo-oo,’ probably as near ‘Nevermore’ as Poe's a raven ever got. The apparition of the raven I accepted as Hamlet accepted the apparition the ghost — as a rebuke because I had delayed so long In interring the remains of Mrs. Poe. While the bird sat there I wrote to Nelson Poe asking him to take the bones. He did so, and we interred them in Baltimore.”

Mr. Gill told how he happened to buy the Poe cottage at Fordham in 1889 and how some years later it was sold, with a provision in the deed that if it was ever changed in any particular the price of the estate should be forfeited to him.

He explained that it is desired to secure the cottage, as a permanent memorial and said, “Four weeks ago I met a prominent actor-manager, who without any solicitude on part, said he would finance the matter.”