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Providence Stories

By Elisabeth Herschbach

Providence earns a place on the literary map for being the hometown of early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. But for a brief spell almost half a century before Lovecraft’s birth, Providence was also the haunt of another master of the macabre: the great poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose dark tales served as an inspiration for Lovecraft.

Poe came to Providence to court Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet and critic well-known in the literary circles of her day. The two exchanged poems and impassioned letters; Poe proposed to Whitman three days after their first meeting. “That our souls are one, every line of which you have written asserts,” Poe rhapsodized in an October 1848 letter. But the romance was short-lived. In December 1848, three months after their first meeting, the engagement was broken. Less than a year later, on October 7, 1849, Poe died in Baltimore at the age of 40.

A First Encounter on Benefit Street
Though Poe and Whitman did not meet until 1848, Poe claimed to have caught his first glimpse of the Providence poetess three years earlier, an occasion he later commemorated in a poem sent to Whitman at the beginning of their courtship. “I saw thee once– once only– years ago,” Poe wrote of that night in July 1845 when, in town for a speaking engagement, he embarked on a midnight stroll and chanced upon the woman who would become his fiancée.

By her own account, Whitman was standing either on the sidewalk or in the doorway of her house on the corner of Benefit and Church Streets, but in his poem Poe evoked a more romantic setting, picturing her in a moonlit garden:

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon

Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses

Already an admirer of her published verses, Poe recognized Whitman and identified the house as hers from the descriptions of a mutual friend. Convinced that Whitman was happily married, Poe avoided meeting her, even provoking a quarrel the next day by refusing to accompany a friend to Whitman’s house. “I dared not speak of you– much less see you,” Poe explained in an 1848 letter. “For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.”

At the time of Poe’s midnight sighting, Whitman was not a married woman, but a widow of over ten years. In 1828, she had married lawyer and writer John Winslow Whitman and moved with him to Boston, where she published her first poems — under the signature “Helen,” the name by which Poe would later call her. Upon her husband’s death in 1833, Whitman returned to Providence to live with her mother and sister, where she continued her literary output, cultivated an interest in spiritualism and transcendentalism, and participated in various progressive causes of the day, including the universal suffrage movement. She also became an avid fan of Poe, who by 1845 had reached worldwide literary fame with the publication of his poem “The Raven.”

Three years later, Whitman’s enthusiasm for Poe’s work would be the catalyst for their love affair — a brief but intense romance that would begin with an exchange of verses.

Helen of a Thousand Dreams
On February 14, 1848, Anne Lynch, a wealthy New York socialite active in literary circles, held a Valentine’s soiree at her residence and invited Whitman to contribute a poem to be read at the gathering. Whitman’s offered an admiring tribute to Poe, addressing him as the “grim and ancient Raven” from his famous poem. Her last stanza ends on an intimate note:

Wilt thou to my heart and ear

Be a Raven true as ever

Flapped his wings and croaked “Despair”?

Not a bird that roams the forest

Shall our lofty eyrie share.

Recently widowed (and presumably better informed about Whitman’s marital status), Poe reciprocated with verses of his own, first sending her a copy of one of his earliest poems, 1831’s “To Helen,” written for an idealized boyhood love, and then composing his second “To Helen” immortalizing his midnight glimpse of Whitman three years earlier.

In September 1848, Poe secured a formal letter of introduction from a mutual acquaintance and visited Whitman in her Providence home for the first time. “Your hand rested in mine, and my whole soul shook with a tremulous ecstasy,” Poe wrote of their first meeting. “I saw that you were Helen– my Helen– the Helen of a thousand dreams.”

During Poe’s first visit, he and Whitman spent three days together, passing much of their time at the Providence Athenaeum, an independent lending library founded in 1753 and housed since 1838 in an elegant Greek Revival building on Benefit Street. The Athenaeum still has in its collection a December 1847 edition of the “American Review” in which Poe, on one of his visits with Whitman, signed his initials next to his anonymously published poem “Ulalume.” Before leaving town, Poe proposed to Whitman at Swan Point Cemetery on Providence’s East Side — the cemetery where, almost a century later, Lovecraft would be buried.

A Broken Promise and a Broken Engagement
Whitman initially declined Poe’s marriage proposal, citing her age and poor health. (She and Poe shared the same birthday — January 19 — but at 45 years old, she was six years his senior.) “Had I youth and beauty, I would live for you and die with you,” she wrote to him. “Now were I to allow myself to love you, I would only enjoy a bright, brief hour of rapture and die.” But Whitman also had another reason for hesitation; furnished with reports from acquaintances of his erratic behavior and abuse of alcohol, Whitman was under pressure from both family and friends to keep him at a distance.

In the ensuing weeks, Poe wrote ardent letters urging her to reconsider his proposal, made several trips to Providence to plead his love, and apparently attempted to commit suicide by taking a heavy dose of laudanum, an opium-based painkiller. But by November, Whitman had agreed to a marriage — on condition that Poe would abstain from alcohol.

Subsequent events unfolded quickly. By December 15, realizing that her daughter was intent on marrying Poe, Whitman’s mother signed legal documents to ensure that her prospective son-in-law would not have
access to the funds of her modest estate. On December 21, the day after Poe delivered a highly successful lecture on “The Poetic Principle” before 1,800 people at the Providence Lyceum, Whitman agreed to an immediate marriage. And on December 23, Poe sent word to the minister of St. John’s Episcopal Church on North Main Street to publish their banns of matrimony. But before the day was out, Whitman received an anonymous note informing her that Poe had already broken his promise to stop drinking. The engagement was off.

Two years later, Whitman described her final hours with Poe in a letter to a friend. “I felt utterly helpless of being able to exercise any permanent influence over his life,” she wrote of her reaction to learning of Poe’s broken promise. “He earnestly endeavored to persuade me that I had been misinformed … and … to win from me an assurance that our parting should not be a final one,” she explained in her 1850 letter. But Whitman’s mother — on whom she was both financially and emotionally dependent — took matters into her own hands, “insisting upon the immediate termination of the interview.” Complaining bitterly of the “intolerable insults” of her family, Poe left Providence on a 6:00 p.m. train, never again to see his Helen of a thousand dreams.

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