Text: Alice M. Tyler, “Poe's Footsteps Around Richmond,” Times Dispatch (Richmond), January 17, 1909 (special Sunday section), p. 3, cols. 1-6

[page 3, column 1:]

The associations linking the work and memory of Edgar Allan Poe with Richmond extend from the date of his adoption into the family of Mr. John Allan, during December of 1811, and his baptism at that time by the Rev. John Buchanan, rector of the Allan family, up to October of 1849, when he bade a final good-by to the scenes of his boyhood and young manhood to the friends he left behind him, and to his sister Rosalie, a member of the household of Mrs. Jane MacKenzie, of Duncan Lodge, on Broad Street Road, near Richmond.

The thirty-eight years, between 1811 and 1849, were full of progress and change in Richmond. The theatre on the north side of Broad Street between Twelfth and College Streets, where Edgar Allan Poe's mother had played her last engagement in October, was burned on the night of December 28, 1811, and in May of 1814, Monumental Church, erected on its site, was opened. Poe's mother was buried in the churchyard of St. John's Episcopal Church, but her grave was unmarked, and its exact locality cannot now be identified. Of the three children, orphaned by her death, William Henry, the eldest, was sent to his grandparents in Baltimore, and Edgar and Rosalie, the baby girl, as have already been noted, were happily cared for by Mr. And Mrs. John Allan and Mrs. Jane MacKenzie.

Edgar Allan Poe was a most engaging child, and Mrs. John Allan, who before her marriage was Miss Frances Keeling Valentine, a cousin of the sculptor, Mr. Edward Virginias Valentine, became, became speedily devoted to him, and did everything to render his childhood bright and happy. When he was first taken into the Allan family they were living over a store, situated opposite the Exchange Hotel, at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tobacco Alley, where Mr. John Allan and Mr. Charles Ellis were carrying on general merchandise business. Mrs. MacKensie was at that time conducting a girls’ school in a frame building at the northwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets. As the Allans and the MacKenzies were intimate friends, the poet and his little sister had frequent opportunities of seeing and being near each other.

One of the most influential tobacco merchants in Richmond at that time was Mr. William Galt, the uncle of Mr. John Allan, whose place of business stood on Franklin Street, between Fourteenth and Fifteen Streets. Talking his cue from Mr. Galt, Mr. Allan directed his ambitions toward securing an exclusive leaf tobacco traded, and, following out his purpose, he went to England during the year 1814, taking with him his wife, her sister, Miss Anne Valentine, and his adopted son. The Fourteenth Street store was pulled down during Mr. Allan's absence. People then went abroad to spend some time, so Mr. Allan did not return until 1821.

At School in England.

He put his small lad to school at Stoke-Newington, England, and here, amid congenial surroundings, the happiest years of Edgar Allan Poe's short and troubled life were spent. In possession of Mr. Edward V. Valentine is a letter written by his father to Mr. John Allan, while the latter was in England, in which Mr. Valentine, senior, sends his love to “Cousin Fanny, Cousin Anne and little Edgar.” Mr. Valetnine, junior, remembers his Cousin Anne, and owns two pictures of Poe's foster-mother, one a portrait by Sully, that shows her to have been a woman of pre-eminent beauty and grace. Mr. Valentine says that her affection for the child of her adoption never wavered, and that it was warmly returned by Poe, who, whatever his faults and weaknesses of his after life might be, never ceased to recognize the purity and sweetness of the influence that was strongest for good during his infancy, childhood and boyhood.

When the Allans came back to Richmond, they spent a year in the home of Mr. Charles Ellis, on the south side of Franklin Street, between what is now First and Second Streets. At the expiration of the year, Mr. Allan Rented a cottage on North Fifth Street, near Clay. A brick residence now occupies the site of this house, and a livery stable covers a part of the yard in which Poe played with his comrades as a boy. Mr. Allan's place of business by this time had been established on the east side of Fifteenth Street, two doors south of Main. The site of this store was near the point where now ma be seen the printing establishment of John W. Fergusson.

An Amateur Actor.

Poe's education, begun at Stoke-Newington, England, continued after his return to Richmond in the school of Joseph H. Clarke, a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin. When Mr. Clarke retired from his profession of teacher in 1823, Poe was the pupil chosen to deliver a farewell ode to the esteemed instructor, and did it in a manner most creditable to himself and the school. Mr. Clarke's successor was Mr. William Burke. Dr. Creed Thomas, a well-known figure in Richmond, until his death in February of 1899, was Poe's deskmate at school, and is authority for the location of the school building at the southeast corner of Broad and Eleventh Streets, where the Powhatan Hotel was afterward erected.

Among Poe's contemporaries and school friends were a group who composed a Thespian Society and agave amateur theatricals in an old wooden building at the corner of Marshall and Sixth Streets. The group included Poe, Dr. Creed Thomas, Beverly Anderson and Mr. William P. Ritchie and their histrionic tastes and achievements forecasted their after prominence.

Meets Mrs. Stanard.

It was during his school days at Burke's that Poe formed an intimate and tender friendship for Mrs. Jane Stith Craig Stanard, the wife of Judge Robert Standard and the daughter of Adam Craig, who came to Richmond with the removal of the State capital to this city, as attorney for the district of Virginia. Monroe Standard, Mrs. Standard's son; was Poe's schoolmate, and a visit to young Standard's home was the beginning of what proved, as [column 2:] long as Mrs. Standard lived, a great happiness to Poe.

The Standards lived then in what is now a law building on Ninth Street, between Grace and Franklin. Where W. W. Foster's photograph gallery is at present, then stood a law office built for Bushrod Washington, Esq. afterward used by Judge Standard in connection with his residence, and for professional purposes. Mrs. Standard understood and sympathized with Poe as no one, Mrs. Allan excepted, had ever done. He became passionately attached to her, and she is the “Helen” in his poem of that name, in which her memory has been forever enshrined. The lines of the poem run thus:

Mrs. Stanard's early death overwhelmed Poe with a sense of irreparable loss and bereavement. She was buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery, and her grave became a shrine where grief offered the sincere homage of a boyish heart to departed beauty and worth.

Social Life.

In 1824 Lafayette came to Richmond, and, as Poe was a member of the Lafayette Guards ,one can easily imagine him thrilled with the enthusiasm with which the French hero of the American Revolution, was welcomed here. The social life of the Virginia capital was then most brilliant. Scholarship, chivalry and wit pervaded the atmosphere in which such men as Chief Justice Marshall, Robert Stanard, John Patton, George Wythe [column 4:] and John Wickham “lived and moved and had their being.”

Mrs. John Wickham called the “Marquise,” for her distinctive style in feature and dress, presided in the Wickham home on Clay Street, now the Valentine Museum, and was the hostess of dinner parties at which these choice spirits gathered for a frequent “feast of reason and a flow of soul.” Mistress Maria Mayo, before whom a hundred unsuccessful suppliants for her favor had knelt in vain had but recently been wedded at Belville, her suburban Richmond home, to General Winfield Scott, of the United States Army. The home of Chancellor Wythe, on Grace Street, now owned by Mr. Beverly B. Munford; the Adams home, on Church Hill, now spoken of as the Van Lew Mansion, and the Brockenbrough residence, the present home of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, were notable centres of hospitable entertainment, and, though Edgar Allan Poe was but seventeen when he matriculated as a student of the University of Virginia in 1826, his bias at the time and subsequently was affected and determined by every phrase of the life that went on around and about him here.

Meets Mrs. Shelton.

In 1825 Mr. Allan inherited a large fortune from his uncle, Mr. Galt, and at once purchased a commodious residence at the southeast corner of Fifth and Main Streets. Mrs. Allan fitted uo [[out]] a comfortable room for Poe, who began to make preparations for going to the university. It was about this time that tradition appoints the meeting of Poe with his first accredited Richmond sweetheart, Miss Sarah Elmira Royster, afterwards Mrs. Shelton, who lived between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Streets, in rear of St. John's Church.

Poe spent only one year at the University of Virginia. When he was brought back to Richmond Mr. Allan placed him in the counting house. But Poe could not stand the monotony of business routine, and ran away from it and his home. Grief over his waywardness is said to have hastened Mrs. Allan's death on February 28, 1829. Poe was then seeking a West Point appointment, and Mr. Allan, because of his wife's entreaties on her death bed, used his influence in Poe's behalf. It is interesting to note that Miss Anne Valentine, who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Allan, never revealed the story of the differences which caused the disruption of the little family circle. She was probably the only person who knew the truth of the whole story of Poe's life with the Allan's, but a promise or a point of honor sealed her lips, and, nothing of all she knew has ever been told. Mrs. Allan asked her to marry him within a year after her sister's death, but she refused his addresses. A feeling of intimacy continued, however, between the Valentine and Allan families, both of whom had, alike, wealth and position in the community of the city.

For five years Poe only came once to Richmond, and that was shortly before Mr. Allan's death, in March of 1834. In a letter written about this time, he refers to his adopted mother with affection, and says that “he believes if she had lived things might have been different.” Mrs. Allan's second [column 5:] wife was Miss Patterson, of New Jersey.

On Literary Messenger.

In 1835 Poe became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, published at the corner of Main and Fifteenth Streets. On May 18, 1836, his marriage to Virginia Clemm, in a house since burned, at the corner of Twelfth and Bank Streets, took place, the Rev. Amasa Converse officiating. Poe proved a brilliant editorial writer and critic during his association with the Messenger, and raised its standard to a high pitch He occupied its editorial chair for eighteen months, leaving Richmond in 1837.

He came back for the last time in the summer of 1849, when John Reuben Thompson had become the editor and owner of the Messenger. The two poets at once made friends and to Thompson Poe gave his beautiful poem, “Annabel Lee,” for publication in the Messenger. It was at this time that Poe met Miss Susan Archer Talley, a contributor to the Messenger, and a great admirer of Poe's writings. He visited frequently in the home of Miss Talley, who within the past few years has written her Personal Recollections of Poe,” and now lives as Mrs. Weiss, on West Main Street.

Poe had his lodgings, while in Richmond for his last residence, at the Swan Tavern, on Broad Street, but spent much of his time at the MacKenzie [column 6:] home. Duncan Lodge, with his sister, Rosalie. He gave a public reading of “The Raven” at the Exchange Hotel, and a very successful lecture on “The Poetic Principle,” which replenished his empty exchequer.

The evening but one before Poe's final departure from Richmond for Baltimore, was spent in the girlhood home of Mrs. Weiss. He went from there to Duncan Lodge, and the next night was a member of a convivial party at the Old Market Hotel. He was a passenger on the early Baltimore boat October 1, 1849, and Richmond never saw him again. To those he left behind came instead the news of his tragic death in Baltimore on October 7th , just one week after he had said good-by.

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Infallible Critic.

Professor Minot, in his account of Poe written for the Britannica, praises especially his conscientious thoroughness in work, and as an example of this cites the celebrated article wherein Poe anticipated the plot of “Barnaby Rudge” after but a few numbers had been published — a marvelous piece of literary analysis, to which Dickens himself bears testimony.

As a critic Poe was almost infallible. He was almost the first to rightly appraise Nathaniel Hawthorne, declaring him king of the short story. His valnations [[valuations]] of American poets in “The Literati” have, in the main, been confirmed by the best sense of later years.