Stormier, Wilder, and More Weird



This alcoved bust of Poe lures me


Whenever the cobwebs get tangled in my brain, I go to the Poe Museum to set them straight.  Each time I find something new and beguiling to pique my interest and hone my understanding of this native Richmond author. Less and less do I think of him as the world thinks of him – in terms of “the macabre” or the paranormal – and more and more do I think of him as a very normal person who saw reality a little too clearly – and much too loudly (i.e. beating hearts).

I had read that an earlier version of Poe’s famous poem, “To Helen,” was discovered by happenstance only weeks ago when the local curator was going through boxes of manuscripts to create a new exhibit. It was found in a journal belonging to Poe’s cousin in Baltimore, and kept in storage for nearly a century. It is handwritten by Poe, signed, and dated.  Only . . . it is different . . . that’s what the curator must have thought when he read and re-read the finely penciled scrawl.  The thing has yet to be “authenticated” by those who spend much time and earn sums of money doing so, but common sense dictated it be put on display at the museum – posthaste.  Nearby is a lock of his hair – only it is hair taken from his notably long eyebrows at the time of his death.  That was a hard thing to look at, mostly in wonder at the thought processes of the person who snatched it from the dead body and glued it to an envelope flap.

The 'mind' of this script . . .

I find handwriting to be as personal as a lock of hair, almost transporting in the intimacy it brings with its creator. I spent much time standing in wonder at the miniscule, curlicued, and faded markings done in fine pencil (his favorite medium), wondering at the state of mind as Poe wrapped a curved line under certain words or put spirals in the capital letters of his initials.  A good many of his letters are an entreaty for money – giving us no doubt as to how normal and human he really was. One letter to his stepmother’s Uncle Valentine outlines “the bitter struggle with poverty and the thousand evils which attend it . . . “ A few pages later, having expostulated on the singular kindnesses which he remembered the uncle had shown him in boyhood (very flattering), the amount and reason for his solicitation is finally announced – $200 to start up a new literary journal to be called “The Stylus.”  Uncle Valentine refuses the money – and “The Stylus” was never begun.  Poe was to die within the year.

The young street artist, James Carling

Next, I saw a small sign pointing to a back building near the gardener’s tool shed which read, “Stormier, Wilder, and More Weird.” Trekking inside, around a corner, and through a narrow doorway (this is a self guided tour, and I am almost always the only person there), I saw a room encircled by original sketches meant to illustrate “The Raven.” What makes them so unusual is that they had never been published in the lifetime of the struggling Liverpool “artist” who did them.  His name was James Carling, also called “The Little Chalker,” a young street urchin who had lived on his own since age five and earned his pittance on the streets of Liverpool through recitations of poetry and a bag of chalk for his art. He was arrested at age seven for drawing on the streets, and put in a type of jail/school for seven years. Upon his release he traveled to the United States where he resumed his street art and also came upon the poetry of Poe.  That’s when he set out to illustrate “The Raven” in 43 frames.  His work was rejected by publishers and hailed as being too provoking; after all, it was nothing like the celebrated Poe illustrator of the day, Gustave Dore.  But Carling believed that Dore had failed Poe:

Stormier . . .


“Our ideas are as wide as poles . . . mine are stormier, wilder, and more weird; they are horrible; I have reproduced mentality and phantasm. Not one of the ideas were ever drawn before. I feel that Poe would have said that I have been faithful to his idea of the ‘Raven,’ for I have followed his meaning so close as to be merged into his individuality.”

Carling died at age 29 and was buried in a pauper’s grave, as penniless as Poe – and virtually unknown.  The drawings remained in storage for generations until the Poe Museum purchased them from a Carling relative. Because of the fragility of the materials, they have been on display only once before now – and that was in the early 1970s.  They will remain on display throughout 2012 in honor of the 90th anniversary of the museum.

I spent much time in this small room, alone, taking in the essence of James Carling’s work and thinking about the storminess of the mind that created them – and what Poe might have thought about all this.  I concluded: Poe would have much preferred this hand (and mind) to illustrate his famous ‘Raven.’

Always there are new and odd happenings such as these at the Poe Museum – always little fanfare given to them – always solitude to observe them privately – and always they are capable of renewing my wonder.