0:00:02 > 0:00:07Born in Boston in 1809, died in Baltimore in 1849,
0:00:07 > 0:00:08American writer Edgar Allan Poe
0:00:08 > 0:00:12is one of the world's greatest crime and horror authors.
0:00:12 > 0:00:16His influence on literature extends far beyond the grave,
0:00:16 > 0:00:19and he's credited with inventing the detective and science fiction genres.
0:00:19 > 0:00:25Poe's gruesome and tormented stories reflect an equally tormented life.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29One of the first Victorians to try and earn a living as a writer,
0:00:29 > 0:00:32his daring career choice ruined his relationships.
0:00:32 > 0:00:36He died destitute, despite literary acclaim.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40His most significant works include The Pit And The Pendulum, The Fall Of The House Of Usher,
0:00:40 > 0:00:45Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Raven.
0:00:45 > 0:00:48Poe created some of the most distinctive female characters
0:00:48 > 0:00:53in the history of fiction, and is famously quoted as saying that the most melancholy
0:00:53 > 0:00:57and poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman.
0:01:00 > 0:01:05Poe's women, either they're already dead or they're going to die,
0:01:05 > 0:01:08or they know they're going to die and then they do.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11The woman has to die for there to be story.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15I tried at one point to figure out the kinds of women that he was looking for in his life
0:01:15 > 0:01:19and it seemed as though about half of them were motherly types.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22And then the other half seem to be the sisterly types.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26I think Poe rather fears women, because they die so easily.
0:01:26 > 0:01:32He is drawn and also repelled by the this idea that he's going to be abandoned yet again.
0:01:32 > 0:01:36As a crime writer, I'm greatly influenced by Poe
0:01:36 > 0:01:40and fascinated by how his private life fed into his work.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44Both were pitted by the loss of all the women he loved.
0:01:44 > 0:01:46Throughout his life, Poe was embroiled with
0:01:46 > 0:01:50at least a dozen women, but I'm particularly interested in
0:01:50 > 0:01:54his tormented relationships with four key women. Virginia, his young wife.
0:01:54 > 0:01:56Eliza, his dead mother.
0:01:56 > 0:01:59Sarah Helen, a spiritualist poet he nearly married.
0:01:59 > 0:02:04And Frances, the darling of New York's 1840s literary scene.
0:02:04 > 0:02:09As if cursed, Poe was rejected, or bereaved, by all of them.
0:02:09 > 0:02:10SHE COUGHS
0:02:10 > 0:02:12For me, reading Poe's work, it's so obvious
0:02:12 > 0:02:15he's trying to reanimate these women,
0:02:15 > 0:02:19constantly exploring the hinterland between life and death,
0:02:19 > 0:02:21striving to keep these women alive.
0:02:21 > 0:02:26In the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud upon her name during the silence
0:02:26 > 0:02:30of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if,
0:02:30 > 0:02:36through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardour of my longing for the departed,
0:02:36 > 0:02:39I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned.
0:02:39 > 0:02:41Ah, could it be forever?
0:02:41 > 0:02:43Upon the earth.
0:02:57 > 0:03:01When Edgar Allan Poe was writing in the early 19th century,
0:03:01 > 0:03:06America was gripped by puritan ethics, slavery, rampant disease and poverty.
0:03:06 > 0:03:13These turbulent times would erupt into civil war, accompanied by another revolution - in literature.
0:03:14 > 0:03:20Poe was a pioneer in America's Romantic Movement, which rejected religious fanaticism.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24He reinterpreted the horror and romance of Gothic literature
0:03:24 > 0:03:29with his psychological exploration of death and madness.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34He satisfied a public which craved his gory and macabre stories.
0:03:34 > 0:03:38Poe got inside his reader's heads like no-one else, and produced work
0:03:38 > 0:03:42which ensured his posthumous fame in media he couldn't have envisaged.
0:03:42 > 0:03:47Yes, I've actually built several of those torture and horror devices
0:03:47 > 0:03:52that Poe described in his tales. The Pit And The Pendulum.
0:03:52 > 0:03:54That's a thriller, isn't it?
0:03:54 > 0:03:58Well, I certainly look forward to seeing them.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01Imagine building those things.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04A very curious hobby.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07It's more...than a hobby.
0:04:10 > 0:04:14I first read Poe when I was about 12, and I loved the goriness and the darkness of him,
0:04:14 > 0:04:18but I write in a form that he invented, and reading him now as a writer technically,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22if you want to know how to send shivers up the spine of a reader
0:04:22 > 0:04:25or make them afraid to fall asleep, then Poe's your man.
0:04:25 > 0:04:29Poe's horror stories terrified his readers, and his detective fiction
0:04:29 > 0:04:33was so gripping that people assumed he must have criminal tendencies.
0:04:33 > 0:04:37A visionary thinker, Poe pushed the boundaries of fiction
0:04:37 > 0:04:40in a way that has influenced writers ever since.
0:04:40 > 0:04:43Agatha Christie, influenced by Poe.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47Charles Dickens, influenced by Poe.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49Walt Whitman, influenced by Poe.
0:04:49 > 0:04:53Herman Melville, totally influenced by Poe.
0:04:53 > 0:04:58Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, everything he wrote was Poe.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02Jules Verne, total rip-off of Poe.
0:05:03 > 0:05:07Like most giants of Victorian-era literature, Poe was a man.
0:05:07 > 0:05:14But he was surrounded by a coterie of women who exerted powerful influences on his storytelling.
0:05:14 > 0:05:21By delving into letters, journals, poetry and prose written by Poe and his women, I want to uncover how they
0:05:21 > 0:05:26became female archetypes that repeatedly occur in his writing.
0:05:26 > 0:05:30The mother figure, the unobtainable icon, and the virginal maiden.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35And, because all great mysteries begin with finding a corpse,
0:05:35 > 0:05:39I shall begin Poe's story in the final days before his bizarre death.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51It's 1849, and Poe is 40 years old.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54He's just had a failed suicide attempt,
0:05:54 > 0:05:56and his reputation is in the gutter.
0:05:56 > 0:05:58His health is failing,
0:05:58 > 0:06:02he's not looking after himself and he looks terrible.
0:06:03 > 0:06:08On a trip to find work, Poe ends up in Baltimore's rough docklands.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12It's a city in the midst of social upheaval, a magnet for runaway slaves
0:06:12 > 0:06:15and impoverished European immigrants.
0:06:15 > 0:06:16It's a wild town,
0:06:16 > 0:06:20and the last place Poe is seen alive is at this saloon,
0:06:20 > 0:06:22where he goes on his final drinking binge.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26When he came in, he had a drink.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29I think there was more to it than just a drink.
0:06:29 > 0:06:31It was an opium and heroin bar.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34- Cos it's right next to the docks, isn't it?- It was.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38They did do drugs out of here, they did Shanghai men for the clipper ships.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41I don't think I would've liked to live here back then.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Would you have drunk here back then?
0:06:44 > 0:06:48Well, I probably would've had to be a prostitute.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52He'd actually been missing for a couple of days when he was found here.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56How do you think a drunk would've fared on the streets of Baltimore at that time?
0:06:56 > 0:07:00Probably he would've just been mugged for money, kicked around and just left.
0:07:00 > 0:07:03But if he was that drunk and if he was a stone cold alcoholic
0:07:03 > 0:07:08and had blackouts, God knows where he would've wound up.
0:07:09 > 0:07:14On October 3rd 1849, Poe is found in the streets of Baltimore.
0:07:14 > 0:07:19He's delirious, he's in great distress and in immediate need of assistance.
0:07:19 > 0:07:23Poe will never be coherent again long enough to explain how he came to be
0:07:23 > 0:07:27in this dire condition, and, bizarrely, is wearing someone else's clothes.
0:07:28 > 0:07:34Poe is taken to hospital, where he dies four days later on October 7th 1849.
0:07:34 > 0:07:36He's just 40 years old.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40He's said to have died from 'congestion of the brain',
0:07:40 > 0:07:42a common euphemism for alcohol abuse.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45The actual cause of his death is never confirmed.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51Thank heaven! The crisis, the danger is past,
0:07:51 > 0:07:55and the lingering illness is over at last.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59And the fever called living is conquered at last.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02The sickness, the nausea, the pitiless pain,
0:08:02 > 0:08:07have ceased with the fever that maddened my brain.
0:08:07 > 0:08:10With the fever called living that burned in my brain.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Despite his many loves and literary admirers,
0:08:17 > 0:08:21Poe dies penniless, childless, alone and desperate.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25What could've happened in his life to make death so welcome?
0:08:25 > 0:08:29To find out why he passes away in such pitiful circumstances,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32I'm going to look back at his tragic life,
0:08:32 > 0:08:38exhuming his most significant relationships to see why his heart and his fiction grew so dark.
0:08:40 > 0:08:44I'm going right back to his youth, two decades earlier,
0:08:44 > 0:08:47to the prime of his life, when he should've had everything to live for.
0:08:51 > 0:08:57It's 1828, and Edgar Allan Poe is 19 years old.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01He's already suffered a lot of misery and heartache.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05Orphaned as a toddler, he's fostered by John and Frances Allan.
0:09:05 > 0:09:09During his childhood, they spend time in Britain, where Poe was taught Latin and French
0:09:09 > 0:09:12and read the classics of European literature.
0:09:12 > 0:09:17As a young man, his relationship with his foster father, John Allan, is fractious.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22Poe is insecure, he picks fights, drinks and gambles.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25But he adores his foster mother, Frances.
0:09:25 > 0:09:30After she dies, John Allan cuts him off without a penny.
0:09:30 > 0:09:34At the time, he's enrolled at West Point military academy in New York,
0:09:34 > 0:09:37where his talent for poetry exceeds his talent as an officer.
0:09:37 > 0:09:43He's discharged within a year, and leaves with massive debts.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46Homeless and destitute, he ends up at this house in Baltimore
0:09:46 > 0:09:51with his only blood relatives, his aunt, Maria Clemm, and his two cousins.
0:09:51 > 0:09:57For the first time since being orphaned, Poe experiences a real sense of belonging.
0:09:57 > 0:10:02And he becomes particularly attached to his young cousin, Virginia Clemm.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06We grew up together, yet differently we grew.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09I, ill of health and buried in gloom,
0:10:09 > 0:10:13she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16Hers the ramble on the hillside,
0:10:16 > 0:10:19mine the studies of the cloister.
0:10:19 > 0:10:21I, living within my own heart,
0:10:21 > 0:10:26and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation.
0:10:26 > 0:10:29She, roaming carelessly through life,
0:10:29 > 0:10:32with no thought of the shadows in her path,
0:10:32 > 0:10:36or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours.
0:10:36 > 0:10:41Virginia was apparently a very charming young lady.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45Everyone that met her was just enthralled with her beauty,
0:10:45 > 0:10:49with her manners, and they said you couldn't help
0:10:49 > 0:10:51but to fall in love with her.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56Virginia's considerable charms have the same effect on her cousin, Edgar.
0:10:56 > 0:11:02But he doesn't realise the depth of his feelings for her until he nearly loses her.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05While away from the family home to find work,
0:11:05 > 0:11:10Poe receives a letter which makes him confront his feelings.
0:11:10 > 0:11:16A cousin, Neilson Poe, is offering to take Virginia into his home
0:11:16 > 0:11:18and raise her as a proper lady.
0:11:18 > 0:11:24So Maria Clemm writes this letter to Edgar asking, "What should I do?"
0:11:24 > 0:11:31And this is the first time that Poe expresses affection for Virginia.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34Poe writes a desperate letter to Maria Clemm,
0:11:34 > 0:11:38telling her that if Neilson Poe takes over guardianship of Virginia
0:11:38 > 0:11:41and the household is split up, he will kill himself.
0:11:42 > 0:11:44My dearest Aunty,
0:11:46 > 0:11:50I am blinded with tears while writing this letter.
0:11:50 > 0:11:52I have no wish to live another hour.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56You well know how little I am able to bear up
0:11:56 > 0:11:57under the pressure of grief.
0:11:57 > 0:12:03I love, you know I love Virginia passionately, devotedly.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06I cannot express in words the fervent devotion
0:12:06 > 0:12:09I feel towards my dear little cousin, my own darling.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12All my thoughts are occupied with the supposition
0:12:12 > 0:12:16that both you and she will prefer to go with Neilson Poe.
0:12:18 > 0:12:23Poe's plea to his Aunt Clemm works, and she declines Neilson Poe's generous offer.
0:12:23 > 0:12:26Poe gets to keep his precious family together.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32In 1836, he marries Virginia.
0:12:32 > 0:12:35He is 27, and she is 13.
0:12:37 > 0:12:42From a modern perspective, it's easy to suspect Poe of the ultimate taboo,
0:12:42 > 0:12:46but in the 1830s marriage between cousins is perfectly legal,
0:12:46 > 0:12:48and because the life expectancy
0:12:48 > 0:12:53of women is only 40, 13 is considered old enough.
0:12:53 > 0:12:59I think in many ways he married her to stop her from marrying somebody else, to stop her from growing up.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03He wanted to keep her just as she was. And he did.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06There's no reason to think their union was at all consummated.
0:13:06 > 0:13:09I don't think that Poe's relationship with Virginia
0:13:09 > 0:13:10was like that.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13We do know that they went to Petersburg on their honeymoon,
0:13:13 > 0:13:16and their bedroom suite only had one bed,
0:13:16 > 0:13:17so they were at least in the same bed there,
0:13:17 > 0:13:19but we don't have absolute proof
0:13:19 > 0:13:21when or if they consummated their marriage.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24But if we look to stories like Eleonora,
0:13:24 > 0:13:27it seems to indicate that they did had a passionate love affair.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35We sat, locked in each other's embrace,
0:13:35 > 0:13:37beneath the serpent-like trees,
0:13:37 > 0:13:43and looked down within the water of the River of Silence at our images therein.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46We had drawn the God Eros from that wave.
0:13:48 > 0:13:51Ever with thee I wish to roam.
0:13:51 > 0:13:53Dearest, my life is thine.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58Give me a cottage for my home, and a rich old cypress vine.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02And, oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
0:14:02 > 0:14:04never wishing that others may see!
0:14:04 > 0:14:06Perfect ease we'll enjoy,
0:14:06 > 0:14:12without thinking to lend ourselves to the world and its glee.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.
0:14:16 > 0:14:19She just idolised and adored him.
0:14:19 > 0:14:23And Edgar and his wife and mother-in-law
0:14:23 > 0:14:26just formed this little trio that escaped the whole world.
0:14:26 > 0:14:29They focused on each other and each other's cares.
0:14:29 > 0:14:33And even when Edgar was poor, and could barely afford to feed himself,
0:14:33 > 0:14:35he made sure she had a piano and sometimes a harp to play.
0:14:35 > 0:14:37He loved to hear her sing and make music.
0:14:37 > 0:14:39He would play the flute along with her.
0:14:39 > 0:14:41The mother-in-law would sing along.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44They had little concerts together at night.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49But the newlyweds' situation is far from idyllic.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54To support his family, Poe searches for any kind of paid work,
0:14:54 > 0:15:00from teaching to bricklaying, but jobs are scarce in 1830s Baltimore,
0:15:00 > 0:15:02and he's knocked back every time.
0:15:02 > 0:15:08The Poe family, in this time period, they were starving.
0:15:08 > 0:15:13Sometimes Maria Clemm and Virginia would go out with a basket
0:15:13 > 0:15:16and ask for donations.
0:15:16 > 0:15:18Many people did that.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22Edgar applied for several positions.
0:15:22 > 0:15:24Nothing ever came of that.
0:15:24 > 0:15:26They were starving. They were starving.
0:15:26 > 0:15:31Poe was writing poetry and not making any money.
0:15:31 > 0:15:36But yet, despite this poverty,
0:15:36 > 0:15:41Poe began his literary career here, as a short story writer.
0:15:45 > 0:15:51This was Poe's bedroom, and it was here that he began to write.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54My baptismal name is Egaeus.
0:15:54 > 0:15:57That of my family I will not mention.
0:15:57 > 0:16:00Yet there are no towers in the land more time honoured
0:16:00 > 0:16:02than my gloomy grey hereditary halls.
0:16:02 > 0:16:05The recollections of my earliest years
0:16:05 > 0:16:09are connected with that chamber and with its volumes.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12Herein was I born.
0:16:12 > 0:16:17Poe's first short story, Berenice, from 1835, is a surreal tale of love,
0:16:17 > 0:16:21death and madness, about a man's obsession with his cousin.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25When she returns from the dead after a prolonged illness, he rips out her teeth.
0:16:25 > 0:16:30It's a daring and original tale, flouting all the conventions of the day.
0:16:30 > 0:16:35Poe's decision to become a professional writer was unheard of at the time.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38Fiction just wasn't a money-making proposition.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41Rich people would pay a publisher to publish their book,
0:16:41 > 0:16:45or all their family and friends would have to promise to buy a copy before it came out.
0:16:45 > 0:16:48But here is Poe with no money, no means of support,
0:16:48 > 0:16:53deciding to do this full time, and that's suddenly possible because of magazines.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56Suddenly there is a market for fiction
0:16:56 > 0:17:00and the whole process becomes democratised and professionalised.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08One of Poe's aesthetic principles was that the ideal length of time
0:17:08 > 0:17:11to have a reader read something he had written
0:17:11 > 0:17:14would be like maybe 20 minutes, or half an hour,
0:17:14 > 0:17:18because you could have the reader completely under your control,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21the reader wouldn't be thinking about anything else,
0:17:21 > 0:17:24wouldn't be putting a novel down to go take a walk
0:17:24 > 0:17:28or eat a meal or something, would just be completely absorbed.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31He's such an deeply interesting psychological writer,
0:17:31 > 0:17:36and so much of what he writes exposes his own thought processes.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40That, I think, was a bit of a turning point in the evolution
0:17:40 > 0:17:44of the short story, that people saw all kinds of possibilities not just for telling a tale,
0:17:44 > 0:17:48but actually going into the interpretation of the human psyche
0:17:48 > 0:17:51and finding out what makes us do the things we do.
0:17:53 > 0:17:57Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled,
0:17:57 > 0:18:01whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence,
0:18:01 > 0:18:03whether much that is glorious,
0:18:03 > 0:18:07whether all that is profound, does not spring from disease of thought.
0:18:07 > 0:18:11They who dream by day are cognisant of many things
0:18:11 > 0:18:14which escape those who dream only by night.
0:18:16 > 0:18:22For a writer as sensitive as Poe, the 1830s are fruitful years to delve into the mind.
0:18:22 > 0:18:26Victorian scientists are making discoveries that cast doubt on
0:18:26 > 0:18:30the claims of the Bible, and its reassuring notion of an afterlife.
0:18:30 > 0:18:35As the promise of paradise fades, the moment of death becomes terrifying.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38Death's inevitability is made even more frightening by
0:18:38 > 0:18:44the indiscriminate spread of wasting diseases like cholera and tuberculosis.
0:18:44 > 0:18:49Medicine is not yet advanced enough to explain or treat symptoms of lingering illnesses
0:18:49 > 0:18:54which could be mistaken for death, and sometimes are.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57The shallowest breathing of tubercular lungs,
0:18:57 > 0:19:04the comatose sleep of typhus, or the suspension of movement by stroke and paralysis.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08Expressing the most common fears of his precarious times,
0:19:08 > 0:19:11Poe's stories find a receptive audience.
0:19:11 > 0:19:17He taps into primal human phobias, including the ancient fear of being buried alive.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22To be buried while alive is, beyond question,
0:19:22 > 0:19:26the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen
0:19:26 > 0:19:27to the lot of mere mortality.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31That it has frequently, very frequently,
0:19:31 > 0:19:35so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think.
0:19:35 > 0:19:39The boundaries which divide life from death
0:19:39 > 0:19:41are at best shadowy and vague.
0:19:41 > 0:19:45Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?
0:19:48 > 0:19:54For Poe, I think the end point is often a recognition
0:19:54 > 0:20:00that one can't fully understand intellectually the circumstances of death.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04So rather than heave some vision of an afterlife,
0:20:04 > 0:20:07Poe really views the end of life
0:20:07 > 0:20:11as the extinction of consciousness, the end of all things.
0:20:11 > 0:20:13And that's probably what scared him more than anything.
0:20:13 > 0:20:16I once again struggled to cry aloud.
0:20:16 > 0:20:18A long, wild, and continuous shriek
0:20:18 > 0:20:21resounded through the realms of the subterranean night.
0:20:21 > 0:20:26As he whispered me of a violated grave, of a disfigured body
0:20:26 > 0:20:31enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
0:20:31 > 0:20:35His audience was interested in gore and sensation,
0:20:35 > 0:20:39and so if he wrote about those things he would make a hit,
0:20:39 > 0:20:46make a sensation, become more popular, become more successful, make a name for himself.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49And to some extent, I think that might be what he believed.
0:20:49 > 0:20:55But I think he was also haunted by disease and death.
0:20:57 > 0:20:59It was a topic he couldn't let alone.
0:20:59 > 0:21:03She had seen that the finger of death was upon her bosom.
0:21:03 > 0:21:05She had been made perfect in loveliness only to die...
0:21:05 > 0:21:08On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood.
0:21:08 > 0:21:10On the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses
0:21:10 > 0:21:12of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood,
0:21:12 > 0:21:15and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots...
0:21:15 > 0:21:17Upon the bed there lay a nearly liquid mass
0:21:17 > 0:21:19of loathsome, detestable putrescence.
0:21:19 > 0:21:26He doesn't pull any punches when it comes to death, suffering, torture. And it wasn't just for titillation.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29Poe's object was less frightening people
0:21:29 > 0:21:33than getting the fear out of himself and somewhere else.
0:21:33 > 0:21:36It's very much the equivalent of whistling past a graveyard.
0:21:36 > 0:21:38He is there to be as scary as possible to prove that
0:21:38 > 0:21:42he is not scared, and of course it proves nothing of the sort.
0:21:43 > 0:21:49Poe's magazine stories receive no literary praise, but they are enjoyed by the public.
0:21:49 > 0:21:55With no copyright laws yet in place for this new profession, he earns little money.
0:21:55 > 0:21:57But this doesn't deter him.
0:21:57 > 0:22:01He tries to earn cash and recognition by entering writing competitions.
0:22:01 > 0:22:06Eventually he secures a job as the editor of a New York journal,
0:22:06 > 0:22:10where he busies himself with reviews of other people's work.
0:22:10 > 0:22:16But Poe drinks on the job and publishes spiteful criticism of his contemporaries' writing.
0:22:16 > 0:22:17A flashy succession of ill-conceived
0:22:17 > 0:22:19and miserably executed literary productions,
0:22:19 > 0:22:21each more silly than its predecessor...
0:22:21 > 0:22:25The only thing noticeable was the peevishness of the writer, the only thing...
0:22:25 > 0:22:29..left an absolute and irreparable mental leprosy, rendering it a question whether
0:22:29 > 0:22:31he ever would or could again accomplish anything
0:22:31 > 0:22:35which should be worthy the attention of people not positively rabid.
0:22:36 > 0:22:39It's an incredibly stupid thing to do.
0:22:39 > 0:22:43The publishing world is small and incestuous and Poe soon makes enemies.
0:22:43 > 0:22:44SHE COUGHS
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Life has also taken a turn for the worst at home.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50Poe and Virginia have been married for six years
0:22:50 > 0:22:54and Virginia is in the front parlour playing the piano and singing,
0:22:54 > 0:22:58and suddenly she's wracked by violent coughing and she brings up blood.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01It's the first sign of the TB that will kill her.
0:23:01 > 0:23:06They move to this small country cottage, partly for the good air,
0:23:06 > 0:23:11in what is ironically now one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole of the Bronx.
0:23:15 > 0:23:18Wow, it's very small.
0:23:18 > 0:23:21Yes, this was the parlour where the Poe family spent their time.
0:23:21 > 0:23:26Virginia spent a lot of time in bed because she was sick throughout the whole time.
0:23:26 > 0:23:31It's very warm downstairs, rather than upstairs. This is why Virginia was moved downstairs.
0:23:31 > 0:23:36But she was still cold, so when Edgar Allan Poe was at West Point,
0:23:36 > 0:23:38he kept the cloak they give you,
0:23:38 > 0:23:42and this was the same cloak he wrapped Virginia in to keep her warm.
0:23:42 > 0:23:46They also had a cat which they named Catterina, because it was a girl.
0:23:46 > 0:23:49And she would also snuggle with the cat.
0:23:49 > 0:23:54It's very sad, but this is when Edgar Allan Poe's works started getting more emotional.
0:23:54 > 0:24:00This is how he wrote Annabel Lee, Ulalume, it brought out the most emotional part of him.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06We loved with a love that was more than love,
0:24:06 > 0:24:08I and my Annabel Lee.
0:24:08 > 0:24:12With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.
0:24:14 > 0:24:19And this was the reason that, long ago, in this kingdom by the sea,
0:24:19 > 0:24:25a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee.
0:24:27 > 0:24:33In that time period if you had tuberculosis, that was a death sentence. You did not survive that.
0:24:34 > 0:24:41It was a disease of the lungs, and many times people would just choke and drown in their own blood.
0:24:41 > 0:24:45Sometimes it would be very sudden, sometimes it would linger.
0:24:45 > 0:24:51Because Virginia was so young she didn't just die.
0:24:51 > 0:24:57She was sort of young enough to sort of fight the disease for five years.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01Sometimes she'd get worse, and it felt she was about to die.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06He said he prepared for her funeral, he was prepared for her death, and then she'd get better.
0:25:06 > 0:25:10So he thought that she was cured, and he became optimistic
0:25:10 > 0:25:14and looked forward to a happy life together, then she got worse, then she got better.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17He said it felt like she was dying over and over again.
0:25:19 > 0:25:22Each time I felt all the agonies of her death,
0:25:22 > 0:25:26and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly
0:25:26 > 0:25:27and clung to her.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
0:25:33 > 0:25:35Poe is living a double life.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38By day he's the editor of a popular journal,
0:25:38 > 0:25:41but as darkness falls he becomes the night nurse of a sick wife,
0:25:41 > 0:25:45as Virginia battles her painful illness.
0:25:45 > 0:25:50For three long years, he listens to Virginia's cough, or her silence.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54Alcohol and writing are the only outlets for his suffering.
0:25:54 > 0:25:59He writes compulsively, channeling his emotional turmoil into his work.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03These are his most productive and creative years, in which he composes
0:26:03 > 0:26:08works that will later be lauded as the most quintessentially Poe.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15A very singular figure riveted my whole attention.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20It was the painted figure of Time, save that in lieu of a scythe
0:26:20 > 0:26:24he held a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor,
0:26:29 > 0:26:32I saw several enormous rats traversing it.
0:26:32 > 0:26:36They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my right.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39While I gazed, they came up in troops,
0:26:39 > 0:26:44hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52I heard all things in heaven and in the earth.
0:26:52 > 0:26:56I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
0:26:56 > 0:27:00You will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took
0:27:00 > 0:27:02for the concealment of the body.
0:27:02 > 0:27:08First of all I dismembered the corpse, I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13In 1845, Poe writes and publishes his masterpiece, The Raven.
0:27:13 > 0:27:18It's filled with detail, metaphor and reference to Virginia's decline.
0:27:18 > 0:27:22It's a cruel twist of fate that the greatest turmoil of his adult life
0:27:22 > 0:27:26is also the catalyst for his greatest achievement.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29Once upon a midnight dreary
0:27:29 > 0:27:32While I pondered, weak and weary
0:27:32 > 0:27:35Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
0:27:35 > 0:27:40While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
0:27:40 > 0:27:43As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
0:27:43 > 0:27:47"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door
0:27:47 > 0:27:50"Only this, and nothing more."
0:27:50 > 0:27:57This fashionably melancholy poem finally earns Poe the critical recognition he craves.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01But with Virginia perpetually reanimating from the brink of death,
0:28:01 > 0:28:05his success couldn't be more ill-timed, or more welcome.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08He is propelled into overnight stardom.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12A sensation among New York's literati.
0:28:12 > 0:28:14He finds himself in great demand to recite.
0:28:14 > 0:28:18Women love him. They attend his readings in droves.
0:28:18 > 0:28:22Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
0:28:22 > 0:28:24fearing, doubting,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.
0:28:28 > 0:28:33But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
0:28:33 > 0:28:38and the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore".
0:28:38 > 0:28:44I think Poe was seen as this incredibly entertaining and dark,
0:28:44 > 0:28:49brooding, but also very original talent by this very elite,
0:28:49 > 0:28:52almost untouchable group of literary personages.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56Among his swooning admirers, the most influential
0:28:56 > 0:29:01is the glittering socialite and poet, Frances Sargeant Osgood.
0:29:01 > 0:29:06Nearly the same age as Poe, she has two children and an unhappy marriage.
0:29:06 > 0:29:12She is a successful writer, earning a good living from her highly respected poetry.
0:29:12 > 0:29:16Osgood is one of those rare poets who really understood
0:29:16 > 0:29:21the medium of print, and recognised that she could appeal to people
0:29:21 > 0:29:24by developing a kind of coquettish persona,
0:29:24 > 0:29:26where she would give as much as she wanted,
0:29:26 > 0:29:33but then take away and appear to be somewhat childlike, fairy-like,
0:29:33 > 0:29:39evasive, in a way that would have appealed to men in particular.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42Thou should'st be a beauteous bird
0:29:42 > 0:29:45Flying at her lightest word
0:29:45 > 0:29:49Nestling near her silken zone,
0:29:49 > 0:29:53Like a gem on beauty's throne.
0:29:53 > 0:29:57In one anecdote, while she was listening to Poe recite,
0:29:57 > 0:30:01she was looking up at him adoringly with her dark eyes
0:30:01 > 0:30:05and clearly was enthralled,
0:30:05 > 0:30:11and appeared to everyone in the room also to be absolutely taken with Poe's demeanour.
0:30:11 > 0:30:16And finally when she did meet him, she said, "I liked him very much."
0:30:16 > 0:30:19With his proud and beautiful head erect,
0:30:19 > 0:30:23his dark eyes flashing with the electric light
0:30:23 > 0:30:25of feeling and of thought,
0:30:25 > 0:30:29a peculiar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur
0:30:29 > 0:30:33in his expression and manner, he greeted me,
0:30:33 > 0:30:37calmly, gravely, almost coldly,
0:30:37 > 0:30:41yet with so marked an earnestness
0:30:41 > 0:30:44I could not hope being deeply impressed by it.
0:30:47 > 0:30:49My soul from our first meeting,
0:30:49 > 0:30:52burned with fires it had never before known.
0:30:52 > 0:30:56As I hope to live, her talents were of no common order,
0:30:56 > 0:30:58her powers of mind were gigantic.
0:30:58 > 0:31:03I felt this, and in many matters became her pupil.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09At this point Poe is the editor of the newly created Broadway Journal.
0:31:11 > 0:31:15Poe and Osgood court each other through its pages.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18He publishes their poems side by side.
0:31:18 > 0:31:23Osgood may sign her poems Violet Vane, but everyone knows it's her.
0:31:25 > 0:31:31I know a noble heart that beats for one it loves how "wildly well!"
0:31:31 > 0:31:34I only know for whom it beats
0:31:34 > 0:31:37but I must never tell!
0:31:37 > 0:31:39Never tell!
0:31:39 > 0:31:41Hush! Hark!
0:31:41 > 0:31:44How echo soft repeats
0:31:44 > 0:31:46Ah! Never tell!
0:31:46 > 0:31:51Beloved! Amid the earnest woes that crowd around my earthly path
0:31:51 > 0:31:55Drear path, alas, where grows not even one lonely rose
0:31:55 > 0:31:57My soul at least a solace hath
0:31:57 > 0:32:02In dreams of thee, and therein knows an Eden of bland repose.
0:32:03 > 0:32:09The evidence is actually rather thin that Poe and Osgood had a physical relationship.
0:32:09 > 0:32:15But they both had reputations that could be ratcheted up based on their relationship to one another.
0:32:15 > 0:32:20Poe, who had only published really a couple of thin volumes of poetry,
0:32:20 > 0:32:27recognised that she had a kind of literary cache that he would like to feed into.
0:32:27 > 0:32:30It's quite possible they had a sexual relationship.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33Certainly the scandal mongers said so.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36It's difficult to know whether or not they did.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39My thinking is probably they didn't,
0:32:39 > 0:32:45because Poe like to hear himself talk a lot more than he liked anything else,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48and so I suspect that the sexuality was mostly verbal.
0:32:48 > 0:32:54Back at home, Poe's wife, Virginia, is still struggling with tuberculosis.
0:32:54 > 0:32:58Virginia knows about her husband's correspondence with Frances Osgood
0:32:58 > 0:33:03and tolerates their relationship, believing it to be platonic.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07She considers Osgood a family friend and a sobering influence for Poe,
0:33:07 > 0:33:11personally and professionally.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14There were various points at which Poe,
0:33:14 > 0:33:17who had gone on benders, of course, throughout his career,
0:33:17 > 0:33:21tried to dry out, and this was probably one of those times.
0:33:21 > 0:33:24During that period, Poe wasn't drinking,
0:33:24 > 0:33:31so my guess is that he felt the need to maintain a certain air of propriety around Osgood.
0:33:31 > 0:33:38And that was one of the reasons why Virginia actually approved of this relationship.
0:33:38 > 0:33:42You have to credit Virginia, because she put up with a lot of nonsense.
0:33:42 > 0:33:49Poe was gone a lot, he would try to sell his stories, and then there was the vicious gossip
0:33:49 > 0:33:55that Virginia would hear about Poe having an affair with this person, Poe flirting with this lady,
0:33:55 > 0:33:59Poe spending time with this person over here.
0:33:59 > 0:34:05Poe's reputation as a drunk has already been exacerbated by his mean-spirited literary criticism.
0:34:05 > 0:34:10His enemies are now only too happy also to brand him a scandalous philanderer.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15At the height of their entanglement, when Osgood is supposed to be
0:34:15 > 0:34:19estranged from her husband, she gives birth to a baby girl.
0:34:19 > 0:34:23And a malicious rumour circulates that Poe is the father.
0:34:23 > 0:34:28The baby dies within a few months and Osgood never confirms who the father is.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32The damage to herself and Poe is already done.
0:34:32 > 0:34:38Angry at the wagging tongues, Osgood publishes a scathing retort in the form of a poem.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42A whisper woke the air
0:34:42 > 0:34:45A soft light tone and low
0:34:45 > 0:34:48Yet barbed with shame and woe
0:34:48 > 0:34:52Yet might it perish there nor further go?
0:34:52 > 0:34:57Ah, me! A quick and eager ear caught up the little meaning sound
0:34:57 > 0:35:00Another voice had breathed it clear
0:35:00 > 0:35:02And so it wanders round
0:35:02 > 0:35:05From ear to lip, from lip to ear.
0:35:06 > 0:35:12Poe and Osgood are in the sights of New York's most vicious gossip monger, Elizabeth Ellet.
0:35:12 > 0:35:20A published playwright and historian, she's a jealous rival of Osgood both professionally and romantically.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23She also starts to court Poe through her poetry.
0:35:23 > 0:35:28But Poe dismisses out of hand publicly, and then, goadingly,
0:35:28 > 0:35:33he prints her poems next to Osgood's for comparison. It's a massive blunder.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36Slighted, Ellet seeks revenge.
0:35:37 > 0:35:42She sends poison pen letters to the now gravely ill Virginia,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45accusing Poe and Osgood of all sorts of debauchery.
0:35:45 > 0:35:50Already extremely fragile, Virginia is traumatised.
0:35:52 > 0:35:56In a society where reputation is everything, there is only one
0:35:56 > 0:36:01possible outcome - Poe and Osgood stop seeing each other.
0:36:02 > 0:36:07They decided that the relationship was going to be damaging to both of them.
0:36:07 > 0:36:11It had reached a kind of tipping point in terms of
0:36:11 > 0:36:17the mores of 19th century readers and even their own contemporaries.
0:36:17 > 0:36:22After that point, around 1846, they no longer saw one another.
0:36:22 > 0:36:28Poe loses the woman who represents the type of intellectual recognition he craves.
0:36:28 > 0:36:34Frances Sargent Osgood is his unobtainable icon and she has gone.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38He's also on the threshold of the shattering loss of his virginal maiden.
0:36:38 > 0:36:43Poe leaves his job at the Broadway Journal to care for Virginia in her terminal months.
0:36:43 > 0:36:50He says that on her deathbed, Virginia blames the Osgood-Ellet scandal for hastening her death.
0:36:52 > 0:36:55Remove from the world with it's sin and care
0:36:55 > 0:36:58And the tattling of many tongues
0:36:58 > 0:37:03Love alone shall heal my weakened lungs.
0:37:03 > 0:37:07After fighting tuberculosis for five long years,
0:37:07 > 0:37:10Virginia dies in the freezing winter of 1847.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13She is just 24.
0:37:18 > 0:37:21How shall the burial rite be read?
0:37:21 > 0:37:24The solemn song be sung?
0:37:24 > 0:37:27The requiem for the lovliest dead That ever died so young?
0:37:29 > 0:37:33But she is gone above With young hope at her side
0:37:33 > 0:37:37And I am drunk with love of the dead, who is my bride.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44Coming here and seeing how small and modest the house is,
0:37:44 > 0:37:50you have a real sense of what an intimate family they must have been, and how Maria Clemm and Virginia
0:37:50 > 0:37:57really gave him that stability and intimacy and sense of belonging that he'd craved all his life.
0:37:57 > 0:38:03So it must have been devastating to lose Virginia,
0:38:03 > 0:38:07and how fundamentally that must have shifted his entire world.
0:38:09 > 0:38:12After her death he said he just couldn't live another year without her.
0:38:12 > 0:38:15He was just having a breakdown.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19The newspapers reported that he would be dead soon, too.
0:38:19 > 0:38:23In the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud
0:38:23 > 0:38:25upon her name during the silence of the night,
0:38:25 > 0:38:28or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if,
0:38:28 > 0:38:32through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardour
0:38:32 > 0:38:34of my longing for the departed,
0:38:34 > 0:38:37I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned.
0:38:37 > 0:38:41Ah, could it be forever? Upon the earth.
0:38:43 > 0:38:47Virginia's death sends Poe spiralling out of control.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51He's back on the drink and starts taking the powerful opiate drug laudanum.
0:38:53 > 0:38:56I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain,
0:38:56 > 0:38:58and I must trust the perfect sanity of the record.
0:39:00 > 0:39:06After Virginia's death, he had gone into a real bad physical and mental decline.
0:39:06 > 0:39:08One of the care givers who took care of him said to him,
0:39:08 > 0:39:13"Unless you find a woman who's strong and will help guide your life,
0:39:13 > 0:39:15I'm afraid you're going to have a sudden death."
0:39:15 > 0:39:20So, in 1848, a year after Virginia died,
0:39:20 > 0:39:22he kind of set out to find the strong woman.
0:39:26 > 0:39:31In his drug-addled grief, Poe pursues several women,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34but the most receptive to his frantic advances
0:39:34 > 0:39:37is the eccentric poet Sarah Helen Whitman.
0:39:37 > 0:39:41He's caught a glimpse of her outside her house in Providence, Rhode Island,
0:39:41 > 0:39:44as his carriage passes by.
0:39:44 > 0:39:49In his desperate need for a new wife, he hounds Whitman with romantic verse.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52I saw thee once
0:39:52 > 0:39:53Once only
0:39:53 > 0:39:55It was a July midnight
0:39:55 > 0:39:58And from out a full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul
0:39:58 > 0:40:03Soaring, sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven
0:40:03 > 0:40:07There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, clad all in white
0:40:07 > 0:40:09Upon a violet bank
0:40:09 > 0:40:12I saw thee half reclining.
0:40:16 > 0:40:18Whitman and Poe have a lot in common.
0:40:18 > 0:40:22She's widowed, childless, an established writer,
0:40:22 > 0:40:28and she's interested in the same themes as Poe - death, the afterlife, the gothic.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31He had heard that she was a lady of eccentricity
0:40:31 > 0:40:35and sorrows and he thought, "Aha! That's my thing - eccentricity and sorrows."
0:40:37 > 0:40:44She is six years older than Poe, unusual for the times, when men were expected to be with younger women.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49Well known around town as a clairvoyant, Whitman holds weekly seances.
0:40:49 > 0:40:54She studies mesmerism and healing, and claims she can cure headaches with her hands.
0:40:54 > 0:40:59She wore what was considered pagan dress, you know, in this Victorian time.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02She liked to wear a lot of scarves and shawls.
0:41:02 > 0:41:06They would fall off as she walked down the sidewalk.
0:41:06 > 0:41:10It was the joke that her friends had to walk behind her and pick up her scarves and her veils
0:41:10 > 0:41:15that she was always dropping. She wasn't the most conventional person, shall we say.
0:41:19 > 0:41:21SHE SIGHS
0:41:21 > 0:41:25Suddenly a chill wind leapt through its woven harmonies
0:41:25 > 0:41:31All its silver chords were snapt like a wind-harp's by the breeze.
0:41:35 > 0:41:39Graves closed round my path of life
0:41:39 > 0:41:41The beautiful had fled
0:41:42 > 0:41:47Pale shadows wandered by my side
0:41:47 > 0:41:49And whispered of the dead.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57She was using ether and they said a faint odour of ether
0:41:57 > 0:42:01would waft behind her as she went down the street with her scarves and veils.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04But this wasn't unheard of at that time.
0:42:04 > 0:42:07Ether was considered to have medicinal value.
0:42:10 > 0:42:12She wore a little coffin around her neck.
0:42:12 > 0:42:15I don't know if she had that as a memento mori,
0:42:15 > 0:42:20because she felt as though she herself had only a short period of time to live.
0:42:20 > 0:42:25She had a heart condition - at least she believed it - and so she was always kind of reminding herself of
0:42:25 > 0:42:28the shortness of life, and I think the coffin fit that.
0:42:31 > 0:42:34Poe courts Whitman here at the Athenaeum library,
0:42:34 > 0:42:40an acceptable public place to meet for this rather unconventional couple.
0:42:40 > 0:42:45From the very start, this relationship is characterised by conflicting hopes and motives.
0:42:45 > 0:42:49Poe is looking for a substitute mother, someone who can tether him
0:42:49 > 0:42:55and look after him, and Whitman is involved in a mad romantic adventure with a charismatic younger man.
0:42:58 > 0:43:01The magic of a lovely form in woman
0:43:01 > 0:43:03The necromancy of female gracefulness
0:43:03 > 0:43:08Was always a power which I had found it impossible to resist
0:43:08 > 0:43:12But here was grace personified, incarnate
0:43:12 > 0:43:16The beau ideal of my wildest and most enthusiastic visions
0:43:16 > 0:43:20I resolved in my mind a thousand schemes
0:43:20 > 0:43:23By which I might obtain the elder lady.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32Poe came to Providence five or six times to visit her,
0:43:32 > 0:43:37and each time he came he urged her and urged her very strongly to marry him.
0:43:37 > 0:43:41He wouldn't accept no for an answer, which she'd already told him after the first time.
0:43:41 > 0:43:44And the second thing he would do quite often
0:43:44 > 0:43:47is to appear at her house after drinking, which was the one thing,
0:43:47 > 0:43:50that she said she could not marry him if he kept drinking.
0:43:50 > 0:43:55And I have read that she thought that sleeping with him would kill her.
0:43:57 > 0:43:58Had I youth
0:43:58 > 0:44:03And health and beauty
0:44:03 > 0:44:07I would live for you and die with you
0:44:10 > 0:44:14Now, were I to allow myself to love you
0:44:14 > 0:44:20I could only enjoy a bright, brief hour of rapture
0:44:20 > 0:44:22And then die.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28She was afraid that because of her heart condition
0:44:28 > 0:44:31that having normal sexual relations would probably do her in.
0:44:31 > 0:44:35And he said, "Don't worry, I won't make demands on you."
0:44:39 > 0:44:43At your feet, if you so willed it, I would cast from me forever
0:44:43 > 0:44:46All merely human desire
0:44:46 > 0:44:52And clothe myself in the glory of a pure calm and unexacting affection
0:44:52 > 0:44:56I would comfort you, sooth you, tranquilise you, my love.
0:44:59 > 0:45:05The courtship went on for three months, and it seems longer than that because it was so dramatic.
0:45:05 > 0:45:10There were scenes. There was much weeping and begging
0:45:10 > 0:45:13and misunderstandings and some drunkenness.
0:45:13 > 0:45:15But he somehow, after all that,
0:45:15 > 0:45:19managed to convince her to accept a conditional engagement,
0:45:19 > 0:45:22and she said, "All right, if you will stop drinking
0:45:22 > 0:45:26"and if my mother will approve of it, I will marry you."
0:45:26 > 0:45:30So how they became engaged was that he kind of wore her down, I think.
0:45:30 > 0:45:33But Whitman's mother doesn't approve.
0:45:33 > 0:45:36She is aware of Poe's reputation as a drunken philanderer.
0:45:36 > 0:45:40She forces her daughter and Poe to sign a contract.
0:45:40 > 0:45:44If they marry, Whitman will be cut off from the family estate for good.
0:45:46 > 0:45:51She said she would rather see her daughter dead than married to Poe, and she said it in front of Poe.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54He called her the old devil, by the way.
0:45:54 > 0:45:58If only he hadn't wanted to marry her they would have been very good friends, I think.
0:45:58 > 0:46:03She said he had given charm to her lonely existence.
0:46:03 > 0:46:09I knew from the first that our engagement was a most imprudent one.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12I clearly foresaw all the perils and penalties
0:46:12 > 0:46:15to which it would expose us.
0:46:15 > 0:46:20The union was prevented by circumstances over which I had no control!
0:46:22 > 0:46:25Whitman loves Poe, but the threat of being cut off
0:46:25 > 0:46:30is compounded by the fact that he won't stop drinking, despite her ultimatum.
0:46:30 > 0:46:36Reluctantly, she breaks off the engagement and ends their relationship.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39Poe, meanwhile, is distraught.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42His sense of loss is wildly disproportionate.
0:46:42 > 0:46:48He barely knows this woman, and this is a theme that comes up again and again in his correspondence.
0:46:48 > 0:46:53He attempts suicide, he gets incredibly depressed, and it's always to do with the loss of a woman.
0:46:57 > 0:47:03After Whitman's rejection, Poe tumbles into a pit of despair from which he never recovers.
0:47:05 > 0:47:07I was but a child groping, benighted.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11How had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved?
0:47:11 > 0:47:17I saw, I felt, I knew that I was deeply, madly, irrevocably in love,
0:47:17 > 0:47:19but, ere long,
0:47:19 > 0:47:22the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom,
0:47:22 > 0:47:27and horror, and grief, swept over it in clouds.
0:47:28 > 0:47:32Throughout his life, what Poe sought from women was unconditional love,
0:47:32 > 0:47:36acceptance and recognition, but they always slipped from his grasp.
0:47:36 > 0:47:40Sarah Helen, the mother figure he hoped would save him.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44Frances, the unobtainable icon he pined for.
0:47:44 > 0:47:47Virginia, the pure maiden he adored.
0:47:47 > 0:47:53All these women embody the single most inspiring and absent influence
0:47:53 > 0:47:56on Poe's life, the woman who died at the same age
0:47:56 > 0:48:00and of the same disease as his wife Virginia,
0:48:00 > 0:48:06the woman who represents all his archetypes in one - his mother, Eliza Poe.
0:48:07 > 0:48:11To understand how deeply the loss of his mother affected Poe,
0:48:11 > 0:48:16I'm going right back to the beginning, nearly 40 years, to his infancy.
0:48:21 > 0:48:24It's 1811. Poe is two years old and living in Richmond
0:48:24 > 0:48:28with his mother, Eliza, his brother, Henry, and his sister, Rosalie.
0:48:28 > 0:48:31His mother is a 24-year-old actress.
0:48:31 > 0:48:37She's successful and popular, but acting is still seen as an unsavoury profession.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40It's regarded as just one step away from prostitution.
0:48:41 > 0:48:44Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't...
0:48:44 > 0:48:48At this time, not even performing Shakespeare is acceptable.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51Young men will do't, if they come to't;
0:48:51 > 0:48:53By cock, they are to blame.
0:48:53 > 0:48:56Eliza has never known anything else except acting,
0:48:56 > 0:49:00and stands firm against the slurs of treading the boards.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03She becomes a leading actress, so much in demand
0:49:03 > 0:49:07that during her short life she plays over 200 different roles.
0:49:07 > 0:49:13This is the last place standing in Richmond, Virginia, where Eliza is known to have performed.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17Once a theatre, it's now a masons' Lodge.
0:49:17 > 0:49:20To please has been my never ceasing aim,
0:49:20 > 0:49:22and to effect this end,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26to me you find what various character has been assigned.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30A miss just in her teens, a rigid nurse.
0:49:30 > 0:49:35A boy to please old maids. O lud! 'Tis worse!
0:49:35 > 0:49:39Sometimes I have appeared a ghost, 'tis true.
0:49:39 > 0:49:44But yet I'm flesh and blood as well as you.
0:49:49 > 0:49:54The first imprinting of a female figure in Poe's mind is his mother.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57He must have perceived her as a kind of fairy-like figure
0:49:57 > 0:50:03on stage surrounded by bright lights, this wonderful vision.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09Eliza was described as being very beautiful and charming,
0:50:09 > 0:50:16and one reviewer in Norfolk, Virginia, said she was the handsomest women he'd ever seen.
0:50:16 > 0:50:20Eliza was born in England and when she came to the States
0:50:20 > 0:50:25she was performing in cities where acting had only been legal for a few years.
0:50:26 > 0:50:31Edgar is born into a moralistic society that shuns him for most of his early life.
0:50:31 > 0:50:36He doesn't just have one parent who's on the stage, but two.
0:50:36 > 0:50:43His father, David Poe, is also an actor, but unlike Edgar's mother, not a very good one.
0:50:43 > 0:50:45Poe's father has a reputation for being an actor
0:50:45 > 0:50:50who erupts at bad reviews, threatening critics with violence.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54He's touchy and perverse. Time and again he bites the hand that feeds him.
0:50:54 > 0:50:58He's known to have just completely forgotten his lines on stage.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01He suffered from a paralysing case of stage fright.
0:51:01 > 0:51:03He was so bad he got hissed off the stage.
0:51:03 > 0:51:06he got booed so badly he threatened the audience from the stage.
0:51:06 > 0:51:11It's partly because he considers himself too good to be an actor, and partly because he drinks.
0:51:13 > 0:51:19David Poe disappears for good not long after baby Edgar is born.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24And Eliza is left to raise her young children on her own.
0:51:24 > 0:51:28On my word, tis the father's son.
0:51:28 > 0:51:32I'll swear 'tis a very pretty boy.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36She manages to look after the infants and continues to work.
0:51:36 > 0:51:41I saw him run after a gilded butterfly, and when he caught it...
0:51:41 > 0:51:45But in Edgar's second year, she catches the killer disease TB.
0:51:45 > 0:51:49She was continuing to act until within a few months of her death.
0:51:49 > 0:51:53But then she was unable to perform any more, to bring in money to support her family.
0:51:53 > 0:52:01But because she was such a beloved actress, local families started volunteering their time.
0:52:01 > 0:52:06Society ladies, even, who wouldn't be caught dead associating with an actress, started visiting her,
0:52:06 > 0:52:08bringing her meals, caring for her.
0:52:08 > 0:52:13It was said to be quite the fashion of the day for society ladies to care for Mrs Poe.
0:52:13 > 0:52:15SHE COUGHS
0:52:15 > 0:52:20Knowing that her death is imminent, Eliza cuts off a lock of her hair
0:52:20 > 0:52:23as a keepsake for little Edgar.
0:52:25 > 0:52:28She dies in December 1811.
0:52:29 > 0:52:34After her burial, Edgar is separated from his siblings
0:52:34 > 0:52:37and fostered by the wealthy John and Frances Allan.
0:52:39 > 0:52:45Frances Allan is one of the society ladies who had cared for Eliza Poe in her last days.
0:52:45 > 0:52:47Edgar grows to love his foster mother,
0:52:47 > 0:52:54but John Allan never officially adopts him, insisting that he keep the name Poe.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58Poe sort of had a chip on his shoulder.
0:52:58 > 0:52:59Other kids looked down upon him,
0:52:59 > 0:53:03they mocked him because he was an orphan and because he was the son of an actress,
0:53:03 > 0:53:07which was not much better than being the son of a prostitute. So Poe had to work extra hard.
0:53:07 > 0:53:10He went all out to prove that he was better than everyone around him.
0:53:10 > 0:53:16When there was a big competition, he was 15 years old, and the students in his academy
0:53:16 > 0:53:19set out to see who could swim the farthest in the James River.
0:53:19 > 0:53:22He outlasted them all, he went six miles against the tidal currents.
0:53:22 > 0:53:26So Poe always wanted to place himself at the top of the class,
0:53:26 > 0:53:28do best in his studies, be the best athlete.
0:53:28 > 0:53:35He represented his academy in boxing and track, but he also developed a bit of a temper and a hostility
0:53:35 > 0:53:37to people who were looking down upon him,
0:53:37 > 0:53:41and there are descriptions of him getting into fights with other children.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45But as an adult, he sort of defiantly said that "no earl was ever more proud of his earldom
0:53:45 > 0:53:49- "than I was to be the son of an actress." And he attributed his talents to her.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55To my mother, because I feel that, in the heavens above, the angels,
0:53:55 > 0:53:59whispering to one another, can find, among their burning terms of love,
0:53:59 > 0:54:04none so devotional as that of Mother.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07All his adult life, wherever Poe goes,
0:54:07 > 0:54:12to each new town or city, the first thing he does is visit the library.
0:54:12 > 0:54:17He's searching for any articles or reviews that mention his mother.
0:54:19 > 0:54:22One of the theories about Poe's recurring motif
0:54:22 > 0:54:24of the beautiful young woman dying,
0:54:24 > 0:54:31is that his mother died so early in his life that he never really understood that she was dead,
0:54:31 > 0:54:36that he never got past that death. That he always had that feeling that she would come back to him.
0:54:39 > 0:54:43Poe writes quite a lot about reanimation and the idea of reanimation.
0:54:43 > 0:54:48And I think that perhaps on some level it is because he saw his mother die so often on stage.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51She was always playing Juliet and Ophelia,
0:54:51 > 0:54:54and to a child who is not even three years old,
0:54:54 > 0:54:57the idea that she can be dead and then she will come back again
0:54:57 > 0:55:01and then she can die again, it must have made it very difficult
0:55:01 > 0:55:03to understand that she was never coming back.
0:55:08 > 0:55:13His mother is the most powerful inspiration possible for Poe. It's the inciting incident,
0:55:13 > 0:55:16the death he fears, after which all great stories can start.
0:55:16 > 0:55:22But nothing in Poe stays dead for long. He yearns for his mother to haunt him.
0:55:24 > 0:55:28Throughout his life, Poe searches for women to fill the void his mother left,
0:55:28 > 0:55:33and in his work he reanimates elements of the mother he never knew,
0:55:33 > 0:55:37bringing her back from the dead again and again.
0:55:39 > 0:55:42She who had been dead once again stirred,
0:55:42 > 0:55:46and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together,
0:55:46 > 0:55:49and that the bandages and draperies of the grave
0:55:49 > 0:55:53still imparted their charnel character to the figure,
0:55:53 > 0:55:57I might have dreamed that she had indeed shaken off, utterly,
0:55:57 > 0:56:00the fetters of death.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!
0:56:06 > 0:56:11By a cry, at first muffled and broken,
0:56:11 > 0:56:13like the sobbing of a child,
0:56:13 > 0:56:17and then swiftly rising into one long, loud, and continuous scream,
0:56:17 > 0:56:22utterly anomalous and inhuman.
0:56:26 > 0:56:29Many people were orphaned at a young age in the 19th century.
0:56:29 > 0:56:32What happened to Poe is not unique.
0:56:32 > 0:56:36What is unique is how Poe channelled his experience.
0:56:37 > 0:56:40The death of a beautiful woman was his greatest fear
0:56:40 > 0:56:43and one he knew was shared by a lot of people at the time.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46And if you're writing about the things that haunt you,
0:56:46 > 0:56:50then those are the things that are going to be genuinely haunting to a reader.
0:56:50 > 0:56:53Poe was terrified of losing the women close to him.
0:56:53 > 0:56:57It was a cataclysmic grief he lived through time and time again,
0:56:57 > 0:57:00but his artistry and skill is in writing about those terrors
0:57:00 > 0:57:05so resonantly that we still feel them when we read his work today.
0:57:07 > 0:57:11And then, then all is mystery and terror,
0:57:11 > 0:57:15and a tale which should not be told. Disease.
0:57:15 > 0:57:18A fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame,
0:57:18 > 0:57:24and even while I gazed upon her the spirit of change swept over her,
0:57:24 > 0:57:27pervading her mind, her habits and her character,
0:57:27 > 0:57:31and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34disturbing even the identity of her person!
0:57:34 > 0:57:36Alas!
0:57:36 > 0:57:39The destroyer came and went, and the victim...
0:57:39 > 0:57:43Where was she? I knew her not.
0:57:43 > 0:57:47Or knew her no longer as Berenice!
0:57:49 > 0:57:52My love, she sleeps
0:57:52 > 0:57:56Oh, may her sleep, as it is lasting, so be deep
0:57:56 > 0:58:00Soft may the worms about her creep
0:58:01 > 0:58:03Some tomb from out whose sounding door
0:58:03 > 0:58:06She ne'er shall force an echo more,
0:58:06 > 0:58:08Thrilling to think, poor child of sin
0:58:08 > 0:58:11It was the dead who groaned within.
0:58:21 > 0:58:24Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:24 > 0:58:27E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk