Evermore: The Persistence of Poe

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GALLERY REVIEW

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E D G A R   E V E R M O R E :
A Quaint & Curious Collection
of Poe Paraphernalia

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by

GILBERT COLON

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“It is not altogether a breach of confidence to admit that his interest in Poe did reach the point of an obsession, and perhaps eventually of an absolute mania.”  

—“The Man Who Collected Poe” by ROBERT BLOCH

In 1951, Psycho author Robert Bloch authored the short story “The Man Who Collected Poe,” which appeared in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (vol. 12, no. 6).  The autumn exhibition at New York’s Grolier Club, “Evermore: The Persistence of Poe; The Edgar Allan Poe Collection of Susan Jaffe Tane,” might easily be called “The Woman Who Collected Poe.”  

Enter, stage right – a manuscript of certificate, First General Meeting of Edgar Allan Poe Club in Philadelphia, 1930, with signatures including Poe collector Richard Gimbel …

The Grolier Club (47 East 60^th Street, New York, NY 10065) is a private Manhattan gentleman’s fellowship, open to the public, with a mandate to promote the book arts, and the treasury on recent display came courtesy of Susan Jaffe Tane, a Poeist collector for a quarter of a century who lives for the “thrill of the hunt and pride of ownership” of original manuscripts, letters, popular merchandise, and anything else pertaining to America’s Master of Mystery and the Macabre.

The only complete manuscript of “Epimanes” …

First editions of Poe’s major works …

Two daguerreotypes of Poe …

A fragment of his coffin …

One of only two privately-held copies of Tamerlane and Other Poems …

“…Once a truly unique collection has been assembled,” Ms. Tane explains, “there comes an opportunity for an even greater kind of thrill: that of sharing one’s collection with the world.”  And for free – there is no admission to any Grolier Club exhibit, including “Evermore: The Persistence of Poe” which ran from September 17^th to November 22^nd.  Ms. Tane, brimming with philanthropic enthusiasm for her obsession, has been known to personally conduct guided tours from time to time, one at the club for a senior citizen group.  Another event was a Library of America-sponsored screening of The Masque of the Red Death, starring Vincent Price, on Oct. 22^nd, all in time for Halloween.  (The prestigious Library of America publishes a two-volume Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe which includes Poetry and Tales and Essays and Reviews.)  Inaugurating the collection’s premiere was an October lecture delivered by Poe scholar Richard Kopley, Professor of English at Penn State, editor of Poe’s Pym: Critical Explorations, and author of Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries.  

On prominent public view was the only known manuscript copy of “The Conqueror Worm,” never before shown and thought lost until last year’s rediscovery, and that was not the only first.  Also newly discovered a year ago, and making its debut appearance, was a previously unknown Poe cut-paper silhouette, the work of artist William James Hubard, and an autograph letter from Poe submitting “The Tell-Tale Heart” to author and editor of Boston’s The Pioneer, James Russell Lowell.  An engraved engagement ring given by Poe to childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster, unknown to scholars until 2012, could be viewed in a curio table (“Case 11: Women in Poe’s Life”) along with letters and artifacts pertaining to the many loves of Poe, several of whom were convinced they were his “Annabel Lee.”  One relic displayed was a locket of hair of Poe’s mingled with that of his wife Virginia’s.

How to explain Poe’s enduring popularity and legacy across the varied media is best summed up in Tane’s own words: “No other author of the 19^th century is so fascinating or complex, and the materials in this room show why Poe has persisted so strongly over two hundred years after his birth.”  

Poe persists.  And not only in Providence where he was a frequent visitor, or Richmond which, as the city of his childhood, claims him as its own, or Boston, his birth city, or Baltimore, his death city, but here in New York, where he spent more than a decade of the happiest and saddest years of his life with his wife and lifelong love Virginia Clemm.  (All this, despite the fact that, as pointed out in this exhibit, “a physical altercation with Thomas Dunn English, editor of the Aristedean, ended with Poe’s virtual expulsion from the New York literary scene.”)  

New York City can call itself home to at least two Poe attractions.  In the Bronx there is the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, recently renovated and expanded.  Its location – 2640 Grand Concourse – is in the northward part of what is known as Poe Park. (Every Christmas, a tree bark-roofed model of Poe Cottage, constructed of tendrily twigs, leaves, and other plant material, can be viewed at the New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show on 2900 Southern Blvd. in the Bronx.)  Further south, in Manhattan, is the Edgar Allan Poe Room at New York University (245 Sullivan St., near to Poe’s original 85 West Third Street residence) which hosts Poe events and “houses artifacts of the time period of Poe and a comprehensive, illustrated timeline of his life.”  There are, of course, the many walking tours, particularly in the Greenwich Village area.  And, briefly, there was the Grolier Club’s expansive one-room gallery space, a very manageable but dense affair that catered to the highbrow…

An autograph score of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s choral symphony The Bells, Op. 35, based on the Poe poem of the same name, which in turn was inspired by, according to Fordham University itself, “The bell in the [Fordham University Church] tower, known since as Old Edgar Allan…” 

Poe art, for those who pore over illustrated Dover books like Tales of Mystery and Imagination and The Raven, from masters Harry Clarke, Édouard Manet, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and Aubrey Beardsley …

…and the populist…

“Case 9: Poe in Comics”: First-run issues and even original illustrations – splash page artwork, pen and ink on art board – of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Gold Bug,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Raven,” “Berenice,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” adapted by Paul Laikin, Rich Margopoulos in Classics Illustrated, Creepy, even Mad magazine from Jim Wilcox, Rudy Palais, Mort Drucker, Maxon Crumb (brother of R. Crumb), Isidro Montes, Richard Corben …

“Case 10: From Poe to Pop”: Poe-related novels, books, playbills, stamps, a skateboard, bandages, bookends, a pillow, dolls, tumblers, statues, figurines, toys, t-shirts, bookbags, puppets, Mont Blanc pen sets, playing cards, a desk calendar, a latex mask of the man himself …

…and everything between: 

Fantastic, vol. 2, no. 1. New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, Jan.–Feb. 1953. Containing the first printing of Poe’s posthumous fragment “The Lighthouse,” completed by Robert Bloch at the behest of Poe scholar Dr. Thomas Ollive Mabbott who had been duly impressed with his “The Man Who Collected Poe” ... 

With title cards like “Case 5: Poe’s Growing Fame,” “Case 6: The Death of a Poet,” and “Case 7: Illustrations of Poe’s Works,” the collection neatly divided its displays according to subjects and categories to give an overview of Poe’s life and legacy.  

A silent Poe biopic plays on one monitor, and PDFs of various Poe-themed art can be navigated by museum-goers on another ... 

Poe’s legacy extends extensively to the silver screen, as evidenced by “Case 8: Poe in Music and Film.”  Framed for display are a Belgian lobby card and an American poster (and sheet music) for the The Raven, starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff, only one of many Roger Corman filmizations from the 1960s, invariably penned by famed author Richard Matheson, the story of whose work on those Poe classics has been detailed in the largely definitive Richard Matheson on Screen: A History of the Filmed Works by Matthew R. Bradley.

For those who missed this treasure horde, a handsome 208-page exhibit catalog, titled Evermore: The Persistence of Poe by Susan Jaffe Tane and Gabriel McKee, from Oak Knoll Press, can be obtained for $40, not much more than the price of round-trip train tickets, and certainly less than a night in a hotel that the out-of-towner would inevitably pay.  

A past Grolier Club exhibit, “Murder by the Book,” put on show “manuscripts and first editions of the novel of crime and detection,” and it is a straight line from there to this exhibit dedicated to the man regarded as the Father of the Detective Novel.  

A 1952 Hand-painted ceramic Edgar Award statuette from The Mystery Writers of America …

A first printing of Classics Illustrated #40, containing adaptations of three “Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe” …

A 1935 Arthur Rackham-illustrated Tales of Mystery & Imagination …  

An 1843 first edition of The Prose Romances containing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” … 

The logical next step for the Grolier Club would be to mount an exhibition of pulp covers, manuscripts, and correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft, the weird fiction writer often hailed as Poe’s heir who briefly made his home in Brooklyn during a short marriage in the 1920s, along with other pulp material from authors in his orbit as chronicled by Mara Kirk Hart and S.T. Joshi in Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924–1927.  However the Grolier Club could afford to cast an even wider net than that since it does not confine its exhibition to New York-themed literature.  (Other past club exhibits included “Voyages: A Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition,” whose “Journeys of the Imagination” section included art and manuscripts pertaining to Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1874), and “Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists” which featured figures such as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Aubrey Beardsley.)

There is no underestimating the legacy of the man who signed his letters and manuscripts “Edgar A. Poe.”  Even at press time, a film is playing in theaters: Stonehearst Asylum, starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine and Kate Beckinsale and based on his “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether.”  

Poe persists.  Surely there must be a brick leftover from that asylum set, or the “hydrotherapy chair,” for Ms. Tane to bid on.  In 1967, Bloch adapted his short story “The Man Who Collected Poe” for an Amicus anthology film titled Torture Garden.  At the close of that segment, Peter Cushing’s character tells Jack Palance’s: 

“My grandfather made money by selling cadavers to medical students ... One of the graves he opened was the last resting place of Edgar Allan Poe.  The body, of course, had crumbled to dust.  But he gathered that dust and kept it...in this box.  So you see he really was the greatest collector.  He even collected Edgar Allan Poe himself.”  

The narrator in Bloch’s short story reels at this revelation: 

That the body of Edgar Allan Poe had been stolen—that this mansion had been built to house it—that it was indeed enshrined in a crypt below...—was beyond sane belief.  

Perhaps it is wise that Ms. Tane not read this Bloch tale lest she get any ideas.  Though if she does, we could someday be in for an even grander treat than her “Evermore.”  

“What prompted a retired merchant to devote himself so fanatically to the pursuit of a hobby, I cannot say.  Let it suffice that he virtually withdrew from the world and from all other normal interests.  He conducted a voluminous and lengthy correspondence with aging men and women who had known Poe in their lifetime—made pilgrimages to Fordham, sent his agents to West Point, to England and Scotland, to virtually every locale in which Poe had set foot during his lifetime.  He acquired letters and souvenirs as gifts, he bought them, and—I fear—stole them, if no other means of acquisition proved feasible.”  

—“The Man Who Collected Poe” by ROBERT BLOCH.

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GILBERT COLON has written for publications ranging from Filmfax to Cinema Retro to Crimespree Magazine. His interview with Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral) for Mystery Scene’s Ed Gorman appeared in the anthology book They’re Here, and he will soon contribute to the author site Bradley on Film. Read him at Gilbert Street and send comments to gcolon777@gmail.com.