Poe in Richmond: Poe's Tell-Tale Hair at the Poe Museum

What did Poe have for dinner? While this might not be the first of the many unanswered questions about Edgar Allan Poe's life that comes to mind, it is just the kind of mystery the University of Virginia's professor of isotope and organic chemistry Stephen Macko is dedicated to solving.

Dr. Macko has pioneered the use of measuring the amounts of isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotopes in hair to find the signatures of certain foods or to identify environments where the person lived. To find these signatures, Macko burns the hair samples at 1,000 degrees Celsius in order to convert it to a gas. The resulting gases are purified with a gas chromatograph. The amount of each isotope is then quantified with a mass spectrometer. These readings can be compared with readings taken from other people, from foods, and from animals that ate those foods. The results of these comparisons can help researchers reconstruct the daily lives of historical figures, prehistoric animals, and anything else that has left us hair, feathers, or bones for analysis.

Fig. 1.

Dr. Stephen Macko.

Courtesy of Stephen Macko.

Affectionately known to his students as the "Hair Doctor," Macko maintains an extensive hair collection featuring such rarities as strands from George Washington, a wooly mammoth, and Ötzi the caveman. Additionally, he owns samples from Poe and his wife, Virginia. It was the latter samples, and the testing Macko has conducted on them, that attracted the Edgar Allan Poe Museum's attention and inspired its new exhibit.

The show, Investigating History: Testing Edgar Allan Poe's Hair, has brought together as much of Edgar Allan Poe's hair as has been in one place since it was still on the author's head. In addition to the museum's own strands, once owned by editor and temperance advocate Joseph Snodgrass, the exhibit showcased locks from the collections of Susan Jaffe Tane and John Reznikoff (see figures 2, 3, and 4). With the help of strategically placed magnifying lenses, guests could examine the tiny samples of dark brown hair, tinged with the occasional strand of gray.

Also on display are the museum's large bun of the pale blonde hair of Eliza White, daughter of Poe's boss Thomas White, and a delicately braided lock of the soft brown tresses of Virginia, Poe's wife. A nearby piece of Victorian hair art, in the form of a large framed flower arrangement, places the preservation of hair in a historical context.

With this installation, the museum sought to demonstrate the ways scientific testing can aid historians and biographers in their research. In this case, the question was as simple as determining what Poe ate. Until now, information about Poe's diet has been restricted to a few contemporary documents. They provide conflicting information on the subject, suggesting that his diet changed dramatically over the course of his life. While trying to establish himself in New York in early 1838, Poe is described by his friend James Pedder as "literally suffering for want of food" and surviving "on bread and molasses for weeks together."

In contrast, in an April 7, 1844, letter to his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, Poe describes in great detail the meals he enjoys at a New York boarding house with "the nicest tea you ever drank, strong & hot—wheat bread & rye bread—cheese—tea-cakes (elegant) a great dish (2 dishes) of elegant ham, and 2 of cold veal piled up like a mountain and large slices—3 dishes of the cakes and, and every thing in the greatest profusion." While the letter may help identify some of Poe's favorite foods, the enthusiastic enumeration of each item suggests he had gone a long time since dining so well.

During his childhood in the home of the wealthy Richmond merchant John Allan, Poe must have eaten considerably better and more abundant foods. Mary Randolph, who resided in the mansion Moldavia before Poe and the Allans lived there, provided a glimpse into the dining...