Edgar Allan Poe Romance | Nevermore

It all started at a Valentine’s Day party in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1848. Miss Lynch, a local socialite had invited literary guests to read valentines aloud. This was an exciting prospect to Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet of some esteem, for, she presumed, Edgar Allan Poe would be there. Helen had just read “The Raven,” the poem that propelled Poe to fame, and she greatly admired it. Thus she addressed her valentine, “To Edgar Allan Poe,” and began, “Oh! Thou grim and ancient Raven, From the Night’s Plutonic shore…” Poe, unfortunately, had not been invited, being out of favor due to rumors regarding his social habits. The month after the party, however, Helen’s valentine was published in the Home Journal. Poe read it and must have swooned, for just the summer before he had seen Miss Whitman sitting “among the moonlight and roses” and had vowed to meet her. Finally, he presented himself at her doorstep. The romance quickly took hold, and Providence legend says that most of the courtship was accomplished among the stacks and alcoves of the Providence Athanaeum, just down the street from Miss Whitman’s house. They talked of poetry, of course, and Helen asked Edgar if he had read the newest poem, called “Ulalume,” published anonymously in The American Review. He revealed to her that he had written it! He signed the Athanaeum’s copy to prove it. Helen, then 46, had a heart condition and feared the force of Poe’s passion would kill her. He declared he would refrain from the vigors of physical love and vowed to abstain from alcohol. Helen agreed to marry him. But Helen’s mother, who lived with her, somehow persuaded Helen to reject him. “In a fit of violent chills,” wrote Providence scholar Anna Mikkinen, “Helen breathed in some ether to help her relax…and rejected Poe…’I love you,’ she said to Poe and fell into a fever that would last several weeks.” Within a year Poe had died of alcoholism. Helen went on to write a book in his defense. Their “valentine” and Poe’s autographed “Ulalume” still reside at the Athanaeum on Benefit Street. Excerpt from “’Quoth the Mother-in-Law, Nevermore,” Yankee Magazine, February 1994.