Text: Penndenis, “Where Poe Wrote ‘The Raven’,” New York Times (New York, NY), August 20, 1905, p 27

[page 27:]

Where Poe Wrote ‘The Raven”

$100,000 Spent in Fordham on a Park Named After the Poet, While the House in Which He Lived Remains Private Property.

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Five Years of the Poet's Sad Life Were Spent in This Little Cottage, Whence His Wife Was Borne the Little Graveyard Near by — Mr. Dyson's Timely Appeal to National Sentiment.

THERE is going to be a National sentiment for art and literature in this country some day! It is not actively aroused yet. There is promise in the museums, the libraries, the historical societies, the art galleries, and that is why when one discovers that a legislative body has appropriated $100,000 to make a park in commemoration of a poet, the fact, though circumstantially inefficient. gives cause for enlightening investigation.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW of Aug. 12 last a letter mildly protesting against the refusal of the owners of Edgar Allan Poe's cottage at Fordham to allow visitors to cross the threshold of the famous poet's house was published. It was signed by Mr. Arthur Thomas Dyson, a resident of Bronx, and all honor to him for his appreciative intentions.

He said in his letter, among other things,

“A natural question confronts us. Why is this private property? What does it mean? Are we to believe that this house, once the habitation of an author of National — yes. International — reputation, has been allowed to pass into private hands? Has not public interest been stirred up sufficiently to keep this place free from restraint and opened to a respecting pubic?”

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Mr. Dyson appeals to a National sentiment, but neglects to address his inquiries to the very small control that is in this case at any rate, strictly commercial.

Between the point of view of a purely affectionate regard for artistic and literary things and the point of view of a business organization like a State Legislature about them, there is no possible understanding yet.

That is why the apple orchard and the old mill, with its tranquil millpond, that made a vision from the poet's window a definite home scene to him, has been filled and sodded, and graveled, and mowed an expense of $100,000, granted by the Legislature in Albany, that it might become memorable in name. it not in appearance, as a public park — Poe Park. And that is why said Legislature, with a fine spirit of commercial indifference, neglected to purchase the house in which Poe wrote “The Raven.” where Virginia Clemm. his wife, died, and which he left years later himself, to die in a public hospital in Baltimore.

For five years for this little cottage of five rooms (to which at the time Poe occupied it there belonged a little over two acres of ground) the poet paid a rental of $5 a month.

Less than half a century later the Legislature appropriates a hundred thousand dollars to buy adjacent land, not actual land that belonged to this cottage, and names it with a reason as inartistically vague as the appropriation was profligate. Poe Park.

There is no interest to any one in this very ordinary bit of lawn with a few graveled paths, three benches, and some trees. It cannot be compared successfully to any public park within the city limits. It is the least attractive of them all, the poorest example of landscape gardening under control of the Department of Parks in the City of New York. There not even a drinking fountain in it to purpose as an oasis to the thirsty and the dustworn.

Report says that Poe spent much of his time in the apple orchard beside the old mill that stood on the spot where this hundred-thousand-dollar, park now is. Nothing could have induced him to have found reverie or fancy in the place as the Legislature, has ordered it.

In the immediate neighborhood there is an impression that the Poe cottage once stood in this park, but according the deeds and transfer of titles that embarrass its humble yet sturdy career it has only been moved back twenty-five [column 2:] feet from its original foundation to room for a street that has been widened in front of it.

Even the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe would scarcely have conceived dramatic a contrast as, this expenditure of, a fortune of Monte Cristo at his very threshold, while his little home, in which his poem that has made the world acknowledge his genius was written, is squeezed and pinched into a corner almost out of sight of the passersby.

The home of an author and a poet whose memory has been marked for the honors that posterity alone confers, becomes a magnet for men and women world over, whose actual life currents are struggling standards of sentiment. The personal facts, the actual environment, the things he has touched and that have touched him are part of the great poet's wonder-work, and to distort them things neglect them is to destroy them entirely.

How much more appealing if that $100,000 had been spent to preserve the old mill and the tranquil pond and the apple orchard?

And not a dollar has been raised to perpetuate the actual intimate atmosphere of those last five years of Edgar Allan Poe's life in poverty and shadow, those closing scenes of a devotion to Virginia Clemm, the delicate invalid wife that had caused him such mental anguish; the little room where she sighed her last, with its one small window looking out toward the church on the hill beyond, and the cramped small graveyard, where she was laid to rest before her body was removed to Baltimore to be laid beside him.

What a weaving of dramatic threads there is in that little cottage at Fordham; what a fine suggestion toward a National sentiment for National feeling with literature?

Although Poe occupied this cottage only a short period of his life, from 1844 to 1849, still it was the mise en scene a nets of his life; it breathes the atmosphere that was about him; it is the vivid abiding place of a great American poet, and should be, as Mr. Dyson very properly desires it to be a little garden spot of tender reverence and regard, where a really existing National sentiment for literature can be stimulated and refreshed.

There is every reason to believe that “The Raven” was written here.

It was published in Colton's “Whig Review” in February, 1845, a few months only after the poet had moved to Fordham with his wife and his mother-in-law. A short time before that he lived in rooms in a building. now torn down, that stood at Eighty-second Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and some say that “The Raven” was actually planned and mapped out there. His wife was subject to fits of unconsciousness, and it was as he sat beside her thus one night, scarcely knowing whether she was alive or dead, that “The Raven” took literary shape. If it was conceived in New York it must have been in 1843, and it is scarcely probable that he could afford to withhold from publication any literary production for so long since he lived from hand to mount, or rather from pen to printing shop, without intermissions.

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We know that The Raven was published in February of 1845, and was probably written very close to its date of publication.

He moved to the cottage in Fordham in the Autumn of 1844. and the poem was probably written there, around Christmas time, perhaps, for he was satisfied to sell it for $10, which does not indicate the special valuation a poet, might expect of a composition he had held back for two years.

Circumstantially, there is every reason to believe that The Raven was written in this low ceilinged sombre, modest home of the poor man Poe always was.

According to map Greater New York the cottage stands on the corner of [column 3:] One Hundred and Ninety-fifth Street and King's Bridge Road. It is easy of to-day; there are four or five ways, by trolley, elevated railroad, by steam cars, to get within three blocks of it.

In Poe's day it was not so easy.

He probably would never have chosen this village home except for the suburban train service. In 1842 the New York Central extended the Harlem Railroad to William's Bridge, which is just beyond Fordham, so that in 1844 Poe was able to take the train at Fordham direct to Harlem Village, now One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and to retransfer from there on a special steam car that ran downtown through the Bowery.

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In 1845 he probably made a trip daily, just as other literary suburbanites do now, for he became owner and editor of The Broadway Magazine. The fact that it passed away on Jan. while under his management, indicates this as a strenuous period in Poe's very strenuous career.

Just what gave him the heroic courage to leave lodgings in the city and to embark upon a country gentleman's life is not biographically explained, but perhaps it was the fact that his story “The Gold Bug” won a prize of $100 in 1843. This may have inspired him with a promise of financial success commensurate with the luxury of suburban life. Or it may have been economy, though add railroad fares to the household expenses and it would seem a venturesome change from modest lodgings in town; but he had been living in New York since 1837, and probably felt the necessity of rural seclusion.

The Bronx train the Third Avenue elevated, the Mount Vernon trolley, the Harlem Branch of the New York Central all bring you within a few blocks of the cottage. A pleasant hill inds upward from the station to it. The original property is cut up, built over, and has been owned by various people. The cottage itself belongs to E. J. Chauvet, D. D. S. His name is on the shingle sign that hangs just over the window of what was probably the room in which “‘The Raven was written, printed in letters as large as Edgar Allan Poe's name is.

He lives in a pretentious house, towering above and spreading its roomy porches right up to the side of the cottage, completely blocking it, squeezing it into obscurity.

You can stand on Dr. Chauvet's piazza and touch the shingled roof of the cottage with your hand. It overshadows it, spreads out against it as a fat man spreads himself in the end seat of an open car, crushing some delicate, fragile, helpless passenger.

It is in excellent condition, with a new coat of white paint, its old-fashioned [column 4:] shutters. its small, square windows, its porch two feet from the ground, and its one door, are all clean, fresh, well cared for.

This is because it is still pursuing its industrious utility.

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It was built probably about 1797; its shingles are four feet, not two: its lathing is equally strong and wearable. Ever since it was built it has earned rental. That is why it is in such good condition; its present landlord is a business man. who understands the necessity of keeping it habitable, so that he can get rent out of it.

It is occupied now by Mr. Steward and his family. Mr. Steward is a coachman for Dr. Bradley, a resident of Fordham.

Mr. Poe the poet paid $5 a month for the house and two acres of land; Mr. Steward the coachman pays $18 a month for the house alone. I met Steward, a quiet young man, on the little two-foot porch where Mr. Poe used to be. He wasn’t occupied with same ideas that Mr. Poe might have been, nor was he particularly impressed with the literary lineage of his home.

He humbly referred me to Dr. Chauvet, his landlord, as every modern tenant would do.

I had noticed “Chauvet. D. D. S.” on the shingle in front of the cottage, with rather primitive sketch of a raven on a twig (that wouldn’t hold a normal sparrow) above it, and had wondered [column 5:] whether I had discovered a collaborator of Poe's.

The property has changed hands many times,” said the dentist. and it belongs to me now.”

He looked across the road at the Poe park. where an employe [[employee]] of the New York Park Department was pushing a lawn mower over the grass. They paid $100,000 for that over there,” he said quietly.

“And did not buy the cottage?”

“No, there have been all sorts of schemes to purchase it. The Shakespeare Society was here for three months, intending to raise a subscription to buy it; the Authors’ Guild was interested, but the price never materialized.”

“How much would you sell it for?”

“When any one is ready to talk business about it I’ll talk with him,” said the doctor amiably.

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“Your Interest as owner of the house is to make it pay?”

“Certainly. I bought the property. I have spent money to keep it in repair, and why shouldn’t 1 rent it?

Dr. Chauvet is commercially right; so long as he can get a tenant he is only asking what the world asked Poe to do with it — pay the rent monthly.

Why should we expect him to do what only a Carnegie can afford?

Over in Poe Park I was told by an old resident that the doctor had been offered $4,000 for the house, but that he stood out for $6.000. Just what his price is now nobody knows: He shrewdly recognizes the value of its association. for intrinsically it is not worth a hundred dollars.

There is nothing inside the rooms that belonged to Poe. Mr. Steward, the present tenant, naturally objects to exhibiting his hearthstone. It is his now, not Edgar Allan Poe's. Poe paid $5 a month; I am getting $18.” said Dr. Chauvet. with’ a shrewd business smile that would have, made it difficult for Poe to have been tenant.

I stood in the little room in which Virginia Clemm died. There was no furniture in it, and the paper on the wall was showy, new. But the window was there where Poe and his wife looked for the last time upon life together, and the door through which her body was taken out, across the road, through the apple orchard, by the old mill, to the stately Dutch Reformed Church on the hill beyond. I saw the graveyard. a tangle of weeds and broken headstones, where Poe stood and saw her lowered from the face of the earth forever.

Some day there will be a National sentiment that will treasure these personal facts of a poet's life, the things he has touched and that have touched him, that [column 6:] may do honor not merely to the memory of a man, but to the affection of a people for literary and artistic standards.

But just think of a hundred thousand dollars for a park has destroyed all semblance of a scene that was the familiar vision, the home vista of a great American poet, while that little cottage, that should be a landmark of National sentiment, is literally ignored.

PENDENNIS.