Americans call the Edgar Allan Poe House Museum in the Bronx a cottage. In fact, the small white house looks more like a garden shed than the home of the great 19th-century American writer.
To say that the house is modest would be inaccurate—it is poor. Edgar Allan Poe was the first American writer to live solely from his literary work and earned very little (for example, he received nine dollars for the poem “The Raven,” which instantly became famous). Publishers preferred to reprint the works of British authors for free and not pay American authors, and if they did pay, it was much later than promised. However, in May 1846, Poe found the money to rent a cottage (one hundred dollars a year) — he hoped that the fresh air of the countryside would help his wife Virginia, who was suffering from tuberculosis.
The cottage, built in 1812 in the village of Fordham, was in fact a laborer’s cottage and consisted of a kitchen and two small rooms on the ground floor and a bedroom with a study in an unheated, low attic. Edgar, Virginia, and her mother Maria lived here with almost no furniture. Their friends later said that no one would have thought it was the home of respectable people, but inside everything exuded refinement and elegance. The family lived poorly, but neatly and quite happily. They loved their little house very much. Across the road was an apple orchard, there was a cage with songbirds on the porch, and the family cat loved to sit on Poe’s shoulder while he worked.
It was here that Poe wrote his famous poems “Annabel Lee” and “Ulalume,” which explore the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. He said that this theme was the most poetic in the world. The tragic poems were written after Virginia’s death. She did not even live a year in the little white cottage. Peaceful rural life (the family became friends with their neighbors, Poe communicated a lot with the Jesuits from the nearby St. John’s College) turned into a struggle with grief and despair.
Less than two years later, the writer himself died. His mysterious death in Baltimore, in the spirit of his stories that marked the birth of the detective genre, remains unsolved to this day. He was found on the street, delirious, and died in the hospital a few days later. Among the theories about Poe’s cause of death are alcohol poisoning, cholera, influenza, suicide, and kuping (a practice common in the United States at the time of rigging elections by stuffing ballot boxes, for which special gangs grabbed people on the street and forced them to vote several times by force, threats, or getting them drunk). Elections were being held in Baltimore on that day.
Po’s mother-in-law, Maria, only learned of his death two months later. She sold off the property and left the cottage.
In 1913, due to road expansion, the house was moved 135 meters. Now it is located in a small park named after Poe. The house has recently been renovated, but it has not changed much. In a tiny room stands the bed where Virginia died. The rocking chair in the small living room is also authentic. Poe probably sat in it by the fire and dreamed that Virginia would recover and everything would be fine.