Genesis of The Raven

   

Ed Poe did not seek artistic company. The literati of Boston, though, found his work amusing. His short stories read like nothing ever before experienced. Crime, detection, and grisly tales of horror sprang from his fertile imagination. Ed was a bit odd: taciturn and darkly pre-occupied. He didn't go to church. Rumor had it that Ed Poe occupied himself with the occult. In 1840 Boston society, not that many years from burning witches at the stake, Ed Poe presented a formidable, almost frightening, persona.



    And so Ed became more-or-less sought after as a guest at the smart Boston parties. At first his wife, Virginia, came with him. Pale, thin, thirteen years younger than Ed, she had the vulnerable beauty of the consumptive. She coughed into a lace handkerchief, excusing herself with embarrassment. Virginia tired easily and refrained from smoking and drinking. She did not follow the gossipy, witty, and artistic conversations of the Boston party set. Virginia attended only a few of these Boston affairs and began claiming fatigue, but urged her older husband to "go on alone."



    She told him, "It's you they want, anyway. You and your stories."



    Ed met Lenore Avion in the autumn of 1840 at one of the Boston parties. She was the guest of Adam Dinsdale, a wealthy, blocky, married man. Dinsdale owned the Dinsdale Publishing House, though Ed thought he lacked all literary sense. Lady Dinsdale happened to be "taking a holiday on the continent" and Adam felt rather immune from the constraints of his marriage. Lenore captivated all of the party guests with her beauty, grace, and charm. She retained a bit of French accent and laced her speech with an occasional "oui" or other Frenchism. She had blue-black shiny hair, lively blue eyes, and a tiny waist which emphasized her nicely endowed figure.



    Dinsdale squired Lenore around the ballroom, shamelessly introducing her as his "escort of the evening." Dinsdale came to Ed and said, "Poe, meet Lenore, my escort of the evening. Lenore, Poe here has written some stories for me. Catching on pretty well, he is, hey Poe?"



    Ed took Lenore's soft, well-formed hand, with its exquisite nails, and, surprising himself, planted a soft kiss. He managed, "Pleased to meet you, I'm sure, Miss Lenore."



    "Allors. The pleasure is my own. Your work is taking Paris by storm." Lenore pronounced it Pa-REE. 



    Lenore captivated  Ed Poe from the beginning. He made none too discrete inquiries as to where she would party, or dance or dine and made his own arrangements to be there also. The economic depression that seized the nation did nothing to deter Ed's extravagance of gifts and entertainment bestowed on his new interest.  So acute was his obsession that Ed experienced rather more distress than pleasure in her company. Yet he felt he could not bear to be away from her.



    Virginia made no mention of Lenore, nor did she voice any complaint as to Ed's increasingly excessive time away from their home. If she suffered, she did so in silence, keeping her own counsel. On Virginia's rare forays into the public scene, Virginia maintained her own dignity, displaying only open affection and attendance to Ed's every need. Some Poe acquaintances may have expressed private criticisms of Virginia for tolerating Ed's obsession with Lenore. But in the end, Virginia's loyalty and carriage won over her critics.



    Nor was Adam Dinsdale immune to the obvious attraction Lenore held for Ed Poe. Dinsdale, committed to Lady Dinsdale for her considerable wealth and social position, regarded Lenore as little more than a dalliance, albeit a pleasant dalliance, indeed. His observations of the spectacle of Ed and Lenore waffled between annoyance and amusement. Lenore, however, found Dinsdale rather more pleasant a companion than the dark, moody, and enigmatic Edgar Allen Poe. So in the competition for her affections Dinsdale found himself more often than not the winner, all the more so because he chose not to compete. Dinsdale simply took that which Lenore offered. Acutely aware of all of this, Ed burned with a consuming jealousy.



  In the winter of 1840-41 President William H. Harrison, whom the nation desperately hoped would lead it into better economic times, died of pneumonia only 32 days after his inauguration. This death deeply impacted Ed Poe, who was naturally inclined toward the morbid in any event. Ed turned ever more into his study of the occult. And dear Virginia missed none of this.



    Ed wrote a series of essays on the occult. Unlike his poetry and fiction, these essays waxed pedantic and formulaic. Dinsdale perceived they would have little appeal and would only tarnish the growing reputation of Poe, one of his best-read authors.



    "I just can't use these, Poe. No one would read them. Give me some more murder mysteries," Dinsdale told Ed, looking at his watch.



    That rejection and the fact that Lenore had been with Dinsdale several recent nights, provoked Ed to a state of jealous indignation. When he spoke at all, it was only of Dinsdale's weaknesses as an editor, as a friend, and as a man. Ed saw less of Lenore. With a twinge of mixed emotion, Lenore began to discourage Ed's attention. Ed placed the sole blame on Dinsdale for his failing relationship with Lenore.



    As the nation slowly climbed out of economic depression, Edgar Allen Poe gradually sunk more deeply into a psychic depression of his own. His obsession with Lenore grew with his lengthier absences from her presence. His writing suffered. His acrimony toward Dinsdale occupied ever more of this thoughts. Ed's studies of the occult began to suggest responses targeting his arch-enemy Adam Dinsdale. Ed read prescriptions for various maladies: aches and pains, infections and fevers, disabilities and missing limbs. Then he happened upon a series of incantations to accomplish the transformation of the targeted victim into some other form of life. There were  recipes to turn children into toads or adults into frogs. There were formulae to change women into butterflies or roses. Then Ed found a procedure to convert a person into a Raven.



    "I have it," mumbled Ed. "Dinsdale will make a fine Raven."



    Listening at the door, Virgina gasped and came to a resolution of her own. "If Dinsdale is gone, Lenore must go with him. I cannot allow her to turn to Edgar in her grief."



    Edgar Allen Poe diligently assembled the odd charms, totems, and artifacts needed to execute the spell. He  lost his footing and almost fell while obtaining Raven feathers from a nest high in the belfry of a deserted church. He practiced intoning the chant until he could say the whole thing without glancing at the text. Virginia watched, learning.



    When the time was right Ed put the charms and totems in order, started a small fire in the fireplace, and began the spell. He said it three times, as specified, and he was sure he got it right. The whole incantation took less than twenty minutes, but Ed was bone tired when he was finished. Exhausted, but confidant, Ed lay down to sleep.



    Virginia emerged from the closet where she had observed the Devilish act of her husband. She quickly assembled the materials, added fuel to the small fire, and began the incantations anew. She cast a spell identical to Ed's, except for the name of her victim: Lenore Avion. She finished, coughed into her handkerchief, and retreated to bed with a sigh.



    For some time Boston society preoccupied itself with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of Adam Dinsdale and Lenore Avion. There was some gossip that the dark hand of Ed Poe somehow contributed to Dinsdale's absence. Similarly, there was unsubstantiated gossip that Lady Dinsdale was instrumental in Lenore's unexplained disappearance. The consensus, however, held that Lenore and Dinsdale made off, together, for parts unknown, but quite possibly France. The police made a cursory investigation. After all, there was no corpus delicti  and the disappearance of this de facto couple may well be, if not innocent, at least non-criminal. The police closed the case as a "no crime established."



    Lady Dinsdale took to wearing black, as was proper for mourning. She publicly clung to the position that Dinsdale's disappearance was innocent and he would return with a suitable explanation. She instructed her formidable battery of lawyers, however, to "Establish the death of the cad so I may move on."



    As for Ed, he was disappointed to take little satisfaction in the disappearance of his adversary, Dinsdale. He had a suspicion that he was somehow responsible for the disappearance of Lenore. Had she been in the zone of the chant when he cast the spell on Dinsdale? Had she witnessed Dinsdale's transformation and been frightened enough to leave the country? At any rate, Ed began to feel a great remorse and heaviness of spirit. He began to seek surcease in his old volumes of sorcery and witchcraft. He began to explore the feasibility of reversing the spell. He would willingly tolerate the return of Dinsdale if only it meant that Lenore would also come back.



    On a bleak and cold December night in 1845, in Boston, Massachusetts, Edgar Allen Poe sat with his volumes, pondering what to do and how to do it. Perhaps he dozed. Perhaps he dreamed. Or perhaps he heard a strange tapping, tapping, some stranger rapping, rapping at his chamber door. Whether in a dream, or merely in a dreamlike state, he rose to investigate the uninvited visitor.



    And thus was born "The Raven," one of America’s most recognized and best loved poems.