Mother’s Death, To Helen
Welcome to another blog entry for celebratepoe – celebrating the life, times, works, and influence of Edgar Allan Poe – America’s Shakespeare. Let’s jump right into the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s early life.
When Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, two famous people were born less than a month later on the same day, February 12. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12 in Kentucky, and Charles Darwin was born the same day in England. Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States.
As I mentioned in the last episode, Edgar Allan Poe’s parents separated in 1810. Elizabeth Poe took the two sons, Henry Leonard and Edgar. At first Elizabeth, also known as Eliza, continued her career as a well-respected actress and even had a third child, Rosalie. Unfortunately the delicate Eliza contracted tuberculosis, and rapidly declined in health. On November 29, 1811, a notice appeared in the Richmond, Virginia Enquirer asking for donations in aid of Eliza. It went as follows: TO THE HUMANE HEART. On this night, Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease and surrounded by her children asks your assistance, and asks it perhaps for the last time. Citizens of Richmond visited her and provided nurses and cooks, but Eliza died on December 8, 1811 when Edgar was just two years old.
William Henry Leonard had been living with his grandparents in Baltimore, and continued to live with them after his mother’s death. Rosalie went to live with the MacKenzies, a family who ran a school in the Richmond area, and Edgar went to live with John and Francis Allan, two theatre patrons from Richmond. Originally from Scotland, John Allan had started a business in Richmond with Charles Ellis called The House of Ellis and Allan. They traded with tobacco and other goods, and apparently the business was quite profitable. At first John Allan did not want to take in Edgar, but finally gave in to his wife’s wishes – although the Allans never formally adopted Edgar. Fanny Allan had been orphaned at the age of ten, which was probably one of the reasons she took in Edgar. We really don’t know a great deal about Edgar’s first years with the Allans and what he thought about being part of a home that was so different from the life of poverty and abandonment that he knew, but when we do know that he went to a Richmond schoolmaster by the name of William Ewing who said that Edgar was charming and liked the school.
I’m sure that the stories of house slaves in the Allan household and the tales told by skippers and sea merchants would have been very influential in the formation of Edgar’s imaginative view of the world. According to the excellent The Poe Decoder web site, “the dead and dying would always have a strong hold over Edgar, as demonstrated by the anecdote that a six-year old Edgar was once ‘seized with terror’ as he passed by a local graveyard, convinced that the spirits of the undead would run after him.” In 1815, when Edgar was six and half years old, his family moved abroad to Scotland and England for five years so that Mr. Allan could expand the business. In a future blog entry, I will go into this important period in Edgar’s development.
Several cities in the United States claim Poe as one of their own. He wrote great works in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and each city can certainly make a case as an important place in the writer’s life. I will certainly talk about his homes a great deal in this podcast. And it is certainly understandably why a city today would claim such a great writer as Poe as one of their own sons. But the writer considered himself a Richmonder. He was very much the Southern gentleman in temperament, and spent more time in Richmond than in any other town. The Allans returned to Richmond after their years in Europe, and Edgar developed a crush on a lady by the name of Jane Stannard, the mother of a childhood friend.
Today I would like to talk about a poem that Poe wrote in 1831 entitled To Helen. Most critics believe that the poem was written about Jane Stannard, and Poe’s memories of her. It is an extremely concise poem – the writer says a lot in just 15 lines. And I apologize that the commentary that I am going into is much longer than the poem itself. (Some of the symbols refer to things that really wouldn’t be common knowledge to most of us today.)
Poe often used a different, even idealized name for a lady when writing a poem about her. And Helen of Troy was esteemed for her beauty. Poe begins the poem by writing “Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicean barks of yore.” He compares the beauty of Helen, with small sailing boats (barks) that took travelers home in ancient times. Then he continues the boat imagery by saying that Helen brought him home to the shores of classical Greece and Rome.
The writer sees Helen as the expression of idealized beauty, both physically and spiritually. She has beautiful hair and a classic face, and the speaker sees Helen as very poised and perfect. He uses such words as ‘gently’, ‘perfumed’, ‘hyacinth hair’, ‘classic face’, ‘statuelike’, and ‘brilliant’. In stanza three, the writer compares Helen (Mrs. Stannard) to Psyche (which means soul.)
Jane Stannard died around the age of thirty-one, and Poe frequently visited her grave in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
And now To Helen:
————
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfum’d sea, The weary wayward wanderer bore To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome.
Lo! in that little window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The folded scroll within thy hand — A Psyche from the regions which Are Holy land!
I especially like the words from the last two lines – “regions which are holy land”. Here I think “holy land” has at least three meanings – an example of how Poe, like the greatest writers, was a master of using expressions that can be read on different levels –
Here holy land could have 1) a religious connotation– with the holy land of the Bible 2) a mythological connotation – referring to Rome or Athens 3) a geographic and emotional connotation– Richmond as the holy land of Poe’s heart
There is an old belief (which is doubtful) in Richmond, Virginia that the town, like Rome, was built on seven hills. And if you want to start an argument at a party, just ask people WHAT those hills are. Actually, I think it is really stretching things to say that Richmond was built on seven hills, but kids were taught that Richmond was built in the tradition of Rome up until the 1950s. I remember I was driving in Richmond when I was younger, and trying to find an address. I got lost, and asked some firemen in the neighborhood (I thought they would certainly know) where the house was. An older man told me to turn right at the first hill. I went back and forth several times and never saw a hill. I went back to the station, and asked again – to make a long story short, what the older gentlemen considered a “hill,” to me was just a bump in the road. I am from Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley, where we have MOUNTAINS!
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