Tuesday, December 2, 2014

... Poe's love, my first love, and "Grief"...


It’s December! I’m drinking S'mores hot coco with peppermint marshmallows. Seemed strange but turned out to be delicious! Of course, yesterday it was 73ºF (23ish ºC) and tomorrow it’s supposed to be warm again…just a little heat wave and then it will probably snow. That’s what it’s like here in Virginia.

Yesterday when I went out walking, I was gazing at the houses and thinking about how I always want to live here in this small town. Ashland isn’t very big but it is close enough to Richmond and the combined history keeps me connected. I like to imagine walking the same paths as those before me. While meandering, I am always drawn to the house. One of my favorite houses isn’t because of the architecture but because of its history.

Erected in 1858, one of the home’s former owners was Elmira Royster Shelton who just so happens to have been Edgar A. Poe's "Lost Lenore." In one of Poe’s last letters, he writes of Elmira and his longing to marry her. Elmira Shelton, who was Elmira Royster at the time, and Edgar A. Poe were engaged decades before when they were practically children. Ah, young love. (Dreamy sigh). Elmira was 15 years old and young Edgar was 16. They spoke of marriage but Elmira’s father tried to put a stop to it. When Poe headed off to UVa (my old stomping ground) the two were secretly engaged but Royster’s father seized and destroyed all of Poe's letters to his daughter before she even knew they existed. Assuming she had been forgotten, Royster married another man. (Wasn’t there a Nicholas Sparks movie about that? :p ) This was in the late 1820s.

TWENTY YEARS later… Poe returns. Again there is talk about marriage since by this time Poe’s wife has passed as has Shelton’s husband. She has children who disapprove but nothing can stop true love, right? Well, they never married. Poe headed to Baltimore and surrounding his mysterious death he mentions a wife he had in Richmond. Was he referring to Shelton? 

"Grief" by Valentine
Shelton never spoke of Poe again until 1875 when she was interviewed by Edward Valentine who was a Richmond sculptor and a family member of *my employers* aka The Valentine Museum. I’ll add this picture of one of his beautiful sculptures that Valentine created. It is in Hollywood Cemetery and is entitled “Grief”. Although it isn’t actually part of this story, I think it’s quite fitting. At the time she spoke with Valentine, she denied being engaged but then nearly a decade later she admitted that she was. When she died in 1888, her obituary in the Richmond Whig had the headline, “Poe’s First and Last Love.”
 
Yesterday when I walked by the house, there was an elderly woman sitting on a swing on her porch. She probably came out because I had taken a few pictures of her house. Ooops! But I prefer to think of her as someone who was sitting on the swing remembering being 15 and falling in love for the first time with the boy who had eyes like the sea after a storm (or whatever Buttercup said) and the softest Ministry t-shirt that he would give to her to sleep in (yeah, well that was me).


My first love... I was 15.
Last year I woke from a dream that was very much a memory of being a teen with my first love. I recall one of the first lines from one of his letters, "Run away with me and be my love". My first husband burned all of the letters that I had kept. I also remembering screaming that they were being burned into my soul. (An ex is an ex for a reason y'all). Back to the dream... I cried because I always remember how he saved me. My friend had just shot himself, all my friends were a mess, and he, who had just met me a few months before, drove two hours from Washington, D.C. (I had no idea that I would end up working there) for a visit... He hardly knew me but I guess young people don't care. I think we went to the mall. I don't recall much around that time but he was there and somehow it clicked that there was more to the world than all the death in my tiny hometown. We used to write these long handwritten letters but in contemporary times, I sent him an email to say thank you.  “I will always think of your 18-year-old self as the most magical part of my adolescence” and briefly recounted the dream. And I promise you that my heart skipped a beat (it still does) when he responded:

I did not save you sweetie, I just reminded you that you didn't need saving.

Elmira Shelton lived for nearly forty years after Poe died. One day I hope to live in that house and sit on the swing while remembering. 

15 comments:

  1. We were all a mess weren't we! *hugs* I think all of that brought us together closer as adults. We understand each other. We may not talk every day, but when we do its as if time stands still and we are right back where we were 25 years ago. Love you lots :) XOXO

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  2. That's such a heartbreaking love story about Poe, her obituary sounds so sad. I never knew this. Thank you for sharing! And I'm envious that your first boyfriend was so nice to you. I had to go through six abusive and mostly closeted homosexual boyfriends before I found a man who treats me like a human being.

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    1. Oh my word! I'm glad that's all behind you. I had my share of bad boyfriends and I do have two ex-husbands so it isn't like I have historically been the best picker. I credit meeting my first love-of-my-life by sitting in the wrong seat at a Cure concert in D.C. After, he asked for my address and when the pen ran out of ink he wrote my address on his arm in eyeliner *little girl swoon*. He could have been such a bad influence but he wasn't. And when he worried that I wouldn't go to the college of my choice, he broke up with me. Decades later, I learned the truth :) He was good as gold. He would tell everyone that I'm making it up and that he was a bad seed but that's not how I remember it.

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    2. He sounds like he was a great guy. :) You were lucky to have at least one good ex lol. My last ex always told me to go off to college, but it wasn't as positive as your experience, he did it manipulatively. He would guilt trip me for wanting to go. He told me that "it's my life and I should do what's right for me, it's okay" then he'd flip and would start to whine about me leaving and how lonely he'd be. He was a creep.

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    3. Ugh! An ex is an ex for a reason. Sounds like he's an ex for several reasons!

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  3. How sad for Poe and Shelton... and how much sadder for the people they DID marry. I wonder how they felt about being in second place to someone else. I definitely would NOT appreciate it! The old song, "Love the One You're With" never cut any ice with me.

    You're lucky to have had such an awesome boyfriend, and to have kept him as a friend for so long after that.

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    1. Poe and Shelton... I think their love story may have included more drama than I eluded to or even that is written in the biographies. And while Poe did marry his young cousin, that could have been more a keep-the-family-together scenario. And Elmira married into money which was certainly encouraged back then since ladies didn't work.

      He was an awesome first boyfriend. These things never last but it's nice to see him every now and then, receive an email or two, and know that he's happy.

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  4. Wow, what a sad story! And I love your story too! :)

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  5. I've been a longtime fan of Poe, as was my Dad, but didn't know that the woman he was engaged to at the time of his death had also been his first love. I'd like to think of them now as together eternally, at last.

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