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Judging by the number of literary landmarks dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe, including three former residences and the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, he’s one of the most-commemorated classic scribes. Even his dorm room (above) at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville is now a shrine to the infamous student, who was forced to drop out after his stepfather discovered he was gambling to pay tuition.
The Richmond museum has one of the largest collections of Poe memorabilia, with exhibits housed in four historic buildings surrounding an enclosed garden courtyard. Although he spent much of his life roaming the Eastern seaboard, living in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, Poe thought of himself as a Virginian. He grew up in Richmond with an adoptive family, and the museum explores his connection to the southern city.
On the day I visited the Poe Museum there were white chairs set up for a wedding taking place that evening in the “Enchanted Garden.” I’m not sure if it was the picturesque setting or the literary connection that was a draw for the bride and groom. Do they actually care that there was a bust of Edgar Allan Poe looking on as they said I do?
Toast the writer and have an early Halloween celebration this Thursday, October 28th, when the museum hosts its monthly Unhappy Hour. The theme is “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and there will be live music, a cash bar, and free admission. Costumes are encouraged.
Can’t make it to the soirée? Stop by the gift shop for a Poe-themed beer mug or shot glass and have your own unhappy hour. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
“You adopt the universal habit of the place, and call for a mint-julep, a whiskey-skin, a gin-cocktail, a brandy-smash, or a glass of pure Old Rye, for the conviviality of Washington sets in at an early hour,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Atlantic Monthly in 1862 while in the capital city to report on the Civil War. Two blocks from the White House, the Willard (now part of the InterContinental Hotels group) has played host to Mark Twain and other notables whose portraits line the walls.
After a stroll along the hotel’s “hall of history” — which documents its colorful past and features famous guests like Walt Whitman, who gave the establishment a nod in his essay “Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861″ — it was on to the Round Robin Bar. There was no deliberating what to order. I already knew I would be sampling one of the libations Hawthorne mentioned: the mint julep, introduced to Washington, D.C., by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in the 19th century and now the bar’s signature drink. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
I wasn’t expecting to stop in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State during the RV travels, but some needed fixes to the home-on-wheels led to a literary bonus. Our route to the RV repair place took us close to Saranac Lake, New York, where Robert Louis Stevenson spent the winter of 1887-88.
When you visit the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Cottage & Museum, be sure to follow the house around to the front from the parking lot. The back entrance, where I first knocked, leads to the live-in caretaker’s quarters. (The New York Times recently featured the couple-in-residence at the Ralph Waldo Emerson House in Concord, Massachusetts.)
The landscape around the cottage is now residential, vastly different from the open, snow-covered fields that Stevenson would have seen. At the time Stevenson took up residence, the Scottish scribe was on his second visit to America and famous for tales like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was drawn to Saranac Lake for its proximity to a specialist pioneering an open-air cure for tuberculosis.
After a brief history of Stevenson’s stay in Saranac Lake by the caretaker, Brian and I roamed around the cozy cottage on our own. The cottage contains the original furniture from Stevenson’s stay, including the desk where he worked on The Master of Ballantrae and a pair of ice skates he used.
Literary connection or not, winter in the Adirondacks isn’t something I’d like to experience. But I would like to follow in Stevenson’s footsteps after he left Saranac Lake: his next adventure was sailing the South Seas. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
The 20 Finalists for the 2010 National Book Awards will be announced for the first time at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia this Wednesday, October 13. The home was selected from among more than 75 venue suggestions for the announcements.
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1972 and was also voted the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction last fall. The author was born on March 25, 1925 and spent her first 13 years residing in the historic townhouse where the award finalists will be announced on Wednesday. Bordering Savannah’s Lafayette Square, the historic home contains some of the family’s original furnishings, including a crib and a child’s tea table located in O’Connor’s former bedroom. The two main floors of the home have been restored to their appearance at the the time the future scribe and her family occupied the residence.
O’Connor fans can also visit another of her former residences, known as Andalusia. Located in Milledgville, Georgia, ‘Andalusia’ was her mother’s ancestral farm and the place where the author spent the last of her 39 years writing and raising peacocks, swans, chickens and other birds before succumbing to complications from lupus.
A poetry extravaganza is taking place tomorrow, Sunday, October 10th, at 3:00 p.m. at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, as part of the nationwide celebrations for a brand new, literary-themed holiday — Dead Poets Remembrance Day. A dozen New Hampshire poets will read selections from the works of the state’s bygone bards like Frost, Jane Kenyon, Odgen Nash, Robert Lowell, and Celia Thaxter.
Click here for more information about Dead Poets Remembrance Day and other events, and visit National Geographic Traveler magazine’s Intelligent Travel blog for the back story on how Walter Skold (aka The Dead Poet Guy) came up with the idea for the unique holiday.
