PART I
WAITING TO ESCAPE RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
— FEBRUARY 5, 1826 —
And so, being young and dipt in folly
I fell in love with melancholy . . .
—EDGAR ALLAN POE, “Introduction,” 1831
CHAPTER ONE
Edgar
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! I imagine myself saying from the pulpit in the pink sanctuary of our church. My name is Edgar Poe, and today, for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, I’m obsessed with the seventy-two bodies buried beneath us.
Don’t ever forget, my dear friends, I continue with this grim fancy, that a grisly collection of bones, and teeth, and soot sits below your very feet, even as you try not to think of such horrors. Even when your heart is giddy with evangelical glee this fine February morning, the victims of our infamous Richmond Theater fire still dwell among us down there—or at least what’s left of the poor souls—piled together in a moldering mass grave.
And then I envision myself tipping my silk hat with the coyest of grins and saying, A happy Sunday to you all!
Down below the floorboards creaking beneath my knees, deep in the belly of Monumental Church, stands a crypt built of bricks that, indeed, holds the remains of all seventy-two victims of the great Richmond Theater fire of 1811. I kneel beside my foster mother in the Allan family pew, my lips moving in prayer, my hands clasped beneath my chin, but my mind slips down between the cracks of the floor and steals into the depths of that underground tomb that still smells faintly of ashes.
The doomed Richmond Theater stood on this very site. The victims of the fire once breathed the same air I’m inhaling right now. I might have burned along with them if my mother, an actress, hadn’t died of illness eighteen days before the blaze—if, as a child not yet three, two strangers, the Allans, hadn’t taken me into their home and carried me off to the countryside for Christmas.
The back of my neck tingles with a prickling of dread. My eyes remain shut, but I feel someone watching from the shadows of the church’s salmon pink walls. Yes, she’s watching me—a raven-haired maiden in a gown spun from threads made of cinders and soot—a girl my own age, a mere seventeen—one of the dozens of young women whom the fire trapped in the narrow passageways, whom men crushed beneath their feet in the mad exodus from the box seats. The smell of smoke stings my nostrils, and accompanying it, the stench of the maiden’s hair burning.
There! There it is again! Singed hair . . . and smoke! Dear God! Black, blistering smoke that chokes, and strangles, and suffocates—
“Edgar!” snaps Ma in a whispered shout.
I give a start and discover that Ma and the rest of the congregation have returned to their seats. I’m panting, I realize. Every muscle in my body has clenched.
Ma pats the hard slab of the bench and whispers, “The prayer is over. Remove yourself from the floor, please.”
I push myself off my knees, the soles of my shoes squeaking with such a fuss that Judge Brockenbrough in front of me turns and frowns like an angry old trout. I slide back onto the bench just as the Right Reverend Bishop Moore embarks upon his sermon, preached from high in a pulpit shaped like a wineglass—a shape, I might add, that likely explains the bountiful quaffing of wine among his parishioners after church every Sunday.
“Renounce ‘the pomps and vanities of the wicked world,’” the bishop calls down to us, and his snowy white hair swings against his shoulders. “Silence your muses who linger in firelight and shadows, whispering words of secular inspiration, muddling minds with lewd and idle aspirations that detract from lives of charity, piety, and modesty.”
Ma gulps, and one of my former classmates, Nat Howard, a rival poet, turns his face my way from across the aisle with a lift of his eyebrows that seems to ask, Is he really giving this same damn sermon again?
I squeeze my hands together in my lap and gnash my teeth, bracing for yet another tirade against the arts.
“In the dawns of our childhoods”—the bishop’s voice softens; the broad expanse of his bald pate sparkles with sweat—“in the midst of nursery games and fairy stories, the sweet voices of muses coaxed every single one of us into joining them on fantastic flights of fancy. As naïve babes, we knew not to ignore them. Yet the strongest among us swiftly learned that to walk the path of righteousness, we must turn away from foolish temptations and imaginary realms before our passions grow unruly and wild—before the world views our extravagance. Silence your muses!”
I flinch, as does Ma.
“To live without sin,” continues the bishop, “we must reject the theater and other vulgar forms of entertainment—card playing, waltzing, bawdy music, lascivious literature penned by hell-dwelling hedonists such as the late Lord Byron . . .”
Dear God, this is too much! Not only do I consider insulting the memory of Byron a despicable sacrilege, but Pa yelled at me about stifling my poetic muse just last night. His fists, as a matter of fact, shook like they longed to beat the poetry out of me before I leave for college next week, and he pummeled me with insults.
“Pursuing the life of an artist,” says the bishop, “inevitably leads to promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, drunkenness, and other forms of debauchery. Fourteen years ago this past December, God witnessed the debauchery among us. He saw the gambling, the prostitution, the theatrical exhibitions, and the blasphemy among the theater players whom this city welcomed with open arms. Upon this very plot of land, in front of a house packed with adults and children of every stratum of Richmond society—rich and poor, black and white, Christian and Jew—the Placide & Green Company performed a pantomime entitled . . .” The bishop pats his brow with a handkerchief and winces before uttering the name of the show the actors performed when flames engulfed the theater: “The Bleeding Nun.”
Ma shakes her head in shame over that unfortunate title, as though she were the playwright who concocted it. Judge Brockenbrough’s large frame shudders in front of me. Bishop Moore casts a frown in my direction, and I fight against squirming, for I’m the grown, orphaned son of two Placide & Green theater players—as everyone here knows.
“The Lord punished this town’s depravity with fire and suffering,” he says, tears shining in his eyes. “He called for us to rise from the ashes and build this house of worship on the very site of the inferno, lest we forget the errors of our ways that wrought that terrible night of tragedy. If we stray from holiness once more, he will smite us down again. He. Will. Smite. Us. Down. Again.” The bishop rises to his full height and clutches the sides of his pulpit, as though steering a schooner across the Atlantic. He even looks a mite seasick, his lips pale and puckered, yet he musters the strength to bellow once more, “Silence your muses!”
Ma grabs my left hand, and a horrifying hush trembles across the congregation. Sniffles circulate among the parishioners, who dab liquid eyes with handkerchiefs fetched from coats and purses—the usual aftermath of a Bishop Moore sermon, even when he’s not preaching about the fire that killed so many loved ones in Richmond.
And yet, despite the window-rattling force of the bishop’s warnings, despite genuine fear for my own soul, despite Pa’s commands for me to cease writing my poetry, my mind drifts back down into that basement crypt, to the soot and the bones, and I ponder how many words I can rhyme with “gore.”