Poe in Richmond: Poe's Appeal to Edward Valentine

On February 8, 1924, Russell B. Devine, secretary of the newly opened Poe Museum in Richmond, wrote the Reverend Edmund Ruffin Jones (1878–1953) of Williamsburg to inquire about an Edgar Allan Poe letter in his possession.

Fig 1.

The first page of Poe's November 20, 1848, letter shows the missing portion of text on the top right corner. Courtesy of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia.

The museum was prepared to offer fifty dollars for the piece. This important letter from Edgar Allan Poe to his foster uncle Edward Valentine would become one of the most important documents in the museum's collection—eighty-five years later.

The letter's recipient, Edward Valentine, Jr. (1794–1878), of Buchanan, Virginia, was a first cousin of Poe's foster mother Frances Valentine Allan (1785–1829), although he is sometimes mistakenly referred to as her brother. Born in Norfolk, Edward Valentine relocated to Buchanan to be near his daughter Mary Eliza Valentine Jones (1818–1853). During Poe's childhood, Edward Valentine saw much of his cousin and her foster son, either on his business trips to Richmond or during their visits to him on their way to annual vacation at the White Sulfur Springs in what is now West Virginia. Valentine took the boy on carriage rides through the country. On one such excursion, Edgar is said to have leaped out of the carriage and run away rather than pass a cemetery. Other accounts say that Valentine had the precocious young Edgar read the newspaper to astonished locals or that Valentine arranged bareknuckle boxing matches between Edgar and local children. Although the latter might today qualify as child abuse, Poe later recalled that Valentine was "very fond" of him (CL 2:725).

While there is no evidence that Poe and Valentine remained in contact after Poe's departure from the Allan household in 1830, Poe considered Valentine a friend and potential financial backer for a proposed magazine to be called The Stylus. As such, Valentine's name appears on a list, now housed in the Enoch Pratt Library, of potential subscribers Poe compiled between 1840 and 1848.

By June 1848, with his growing debts weighing heavily on him, an increasingly desperate Poe devised a plan to travel to Richmond to make a personal request to Valentine for financial assistance. In hopes of securing funding for that trip, Poe wrote on June 7 to Charles Astor Bristed, "My last hope of extricating myself from the difficulties which are pressing me to death, is in going personally to a distant connexion [sic] near Richmond, Va, and endeavoring to interest him in my behalf" (CL 2:669).

Raising those funds proved difficult enough that Poe did not embark for Richmond until July 17. Despite making the acquaintance of editors John Moncure Daniel and John Ruben Thompson during his stay in Richmond, Poe was unable to meet Valentine. Fortunately, his sister Rosalie Mackenzie Poe's neighbor was Valentine's niece Susan Archer Talley. Since she was a poet with an avowed interest in Poe's works, Talley would, Poe thought, be able to help him contact and appeal to Valentine.

Fig 2.

This daguerreotype of Poe was taken seven days before he composed the letter to Edward Valentine, Jr. Courtesy of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia.

Poe's plan was interrupted when he learned of Providence, Rhode Island, poet Sarah Helen Whitman's interest in him and returned to New York in early September. During their brief, turbulent relationship, he proposed to Whitman, but she declined. On November 5, he attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on laudanum. About a week later, Whitman agreed to a conditional engagement, and the following week, on November 20, Poe wrote, on the back of a prospectus for The Stylus, the present letter to Edward Valentine, enclosing it in a message to Susan Talley, whom Poe still had not met, to read the note, "seal it and forward it to...