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The Players Club Daguerreotype

This often-reproduced daguerreotype (fig. 75) is a reversed copy of the “Thompson” daguerreotype of 1849, now owned by Columbia University. The copy was made five years after Poe's death, at the request of a St. Louis journalist named Thomas Dimmock. In a reminiscence published in 1895, Dimmock explained:

Dimmock, who admitted being “deeply interested in everything pertaining to Poe,” kept the copy until 1895, when he presented it as a gift to the Players Club in New York City. A short time later Dimmock was asked by a reporter why he had chosen to present the daguerreotype to the Players, an organization devoted to the theatrical arts. He replied: “While, of course, it is a fact, that all truly literary people appreciate Poe, and that any club of such people would have been glad to have the picture, and prized it, still I felt that the Players’ would perhaps value it a little more than any other, for the reason Poe's mother was an actress and his memory has always been dear to members of that profession.”(32) Except for a recent and highly noticeable abrasion across the face of the image, the daguerreotype is in superb condition, handsomely preserved in a gilt-edged case lined with amber-colored velvet.

Addendum

Sometime between 1981 and 2003 Dimmock's daguerreotype of Poe vanished from The Players Club's collection, where it had been housed for almost a century, the victim of an apparent theft. The precise date of its disappearance is unknown. All that can be said with certainty is that by 2003 the plate was in the possession of a daguerreotype collector named Sally Guest, who stated that she had purchased the plate in an antiques store in Walnut, Iowa, for $96. In July 2004 Mrs. Guest displayed the daguerreotype, its covers now broken at the hinge, on the PBS television program “Antiques Roadshow.” There the image was appraised by noted auctioneer Wes Cowan with an estimated value of $30,000 to $50,000. (For a video and transcript, see http://­www.­pbs.­org/­wgbh/­roadshow/­archive/­200402A06.­html.) Mrs. Guest later consigned the daguerreotype for potential auction with Mr. Cowan.

At the request of the present writer, however, the FBI's Stolen Art Division, led by Special Agent Johanna Loonie, intervened in the matter and subsequently took possession of the daguerreotype, eventually returning it to its original owners, The Players Club, in November 2005. (For details about the apparent theft and its aftermath, see http://­www.­pbs.­org/­wgbh/­roadshow/­fts/­omaha_­200402A06.­html.) Less than a year later The Players consigned the daguerreotype for auction to raise funds for the Hampden-Booth Theatre Library. It was sold at Sotheby's, New York, on October 17, 2006, where it fetched $150,000. The daguerreotype is currently in the Edgar Allan Poe Collection of Susan Jaffe Tane. — MJD (02/01/2011)