Baltimore's Favorite Weirdo

Given what I know about Edgar Allan Poe, I can think of a few places where he might hang out if he were still alive and living in contemporary Baltimore. Most of Mount Vernon would probably appeal to him, especially the spooky Methodist Church on the circle. I can easily picture him stalking around the cobblestoned section of Charles Street surrounding the Washington Monument, or ducking into the basement of Brewer’s Art for a Resurrection Ale. (He would no doubt approve of the name.) I can also see him strolling through the small, well-preserved graveyard on the corner of Fayette and Greene, where he is now buried alongside his wife, Virginia Clemm. Poe’s reputation as a drinker has apparently been distorted: the facts suggest that he may have been less a raging alcoholic than simply a lightweight. Still, I have the feeling he enjoyed a good drink – even if he couldn’t hold his liquor – and I think I’d be able to recommend him a few good bars. If dark and moody were his vibe (and I assume it would be) there’s Bookmaker’s Cocktail Lounge in Federal Hill, or the Wharf Rat in Fell’s Point. And obviously, there’s Annabel Lee Tavern, a veritable shrine to Poe, whose walls are hung with his portrait and emblazoned with some of his most quotable quips (especially ones that relate to alcohol). If he could ignore the undeniable weirdness of having to stare at his own likeness throughout the experience, he might enjoy a snifter of Brandy here. (His opinion of the pile of duck fat fries that have become the tavern’s trademark is anyone’s guess.)

As it happens, the internet has a strong supply of Poe memes.

One place where I have trouble imagining Poe is The Horse You Came in On Saloon in Fell’s Point, a loud, rowdy bar at the epicenter of one of Baltimore’s loudest, rowdiest neighborhoods. I don’t actually know much about Poe’s personality beyond what I can try to infer from his writing, but I still have the distinct impression that the Horse isn’t really his scene. It’s a really bro-ey place – meaning that it attracts a lot of well-dressed, finely coiffed young professionals who watch college football and order Jager shots or Red Bull and Vodka. Actually, Poe was purportedly a bit of a fashion plate, but I kind of doubt he’d be at home with the Bros. He’s too dark, too morose, too artsy. And that’s why it’s strange to me that this bar is so closely associated with his death.

To be completely accurate, it wasn’t this bar exactly. The bar where Poe most likely consumed his last drink was called Ryan’s Tavern, and on the day he showed up, it had been converted into a polling place for a local election. Still, on this day, Poe certainly spent at least some time on the inside of the cavernous expanse that is now the Horse, and later, in an incoherent stupor on the sidewalk outside: in the very spot where it is now common to see groups of young Morgan Stanley executives standing in a huddle, smoking cigarettes.

Would Poe's ghost stop here for a drink? I'm not sure it's his scene.

One compelling theory – and there are many versions of the story – suggests that Poe was given alcohol by political backers as a reward for casting his vote for their party. In the corrupt, scantly regulated world of mid-nineteenth century politics, it was not uncommon for parties to hire goons whose job was to ply prospective voters with alcohol and then to dress them up in disguises so they could cast their votes a second time – a practice called “cooping.” If Poe was cooped on the night he was found drunk in the street, which would turn out to be three nights before his death, it may also help to explain the story’s most peculiar idiosyncrasy: he was found wearing another man’s clothes. Normally a sharp dresser, Poe reportedly had on a dirty shirt, an old coat, a straw hat and (most scandalously) unpolished shoes. His hair was unkempt and his face unshaven. An acquaintance, who eventually showed up at Washington College Hospital to identify him, described his appearance as “repulsive.”

To further complicate matters, Poe, who was never to regain his lucidity, repeated one name again and again: “Reynolds.” An untold number of biographers and amateur sleuths have come up with theories about this odd detail without coming to any real consensus.  I wonder about it too sometimes – about all of it. Who was Reynolds? What was Poe doing in the polling place that day? (He lived in New York City at the time and evidently interrupted a trip home from Richmond, Virginia to make a pit stop in Baltimore that was, by all appearances, unnecessary.) For that matter, what did Poe actually die of? Alcohol poisoning? Some concealed illness like influenza or cholera? Or maybe something more nefarious? (Some have suggested the cause was syphilis or rabies.) The mysteries are many, and it’s hard for anyone familiar with Poe’s writing not to find the circumstances surrounding his death uncommonly fitting for a man fascinated with darkness, creepiness and unexplained phenomena.

But what haunts me even more than the story itself is how little it has to do with the festivity that occurs almost every night, oblivious to the disturbing demise of one of the most renowned American writers. Panhandlers are a fairly common sight in Fell’s Point. And on occasion, incapacitated men or women may be seen sitting or reclining on the curb outside some bar or other. (On the night of his last drink, Poe couldn’t have been wearing a shirt any dirtier than some I’ve seen worn by denizens of Fell’s Point.) Panhandlers are occasionally humored with a few cents and drunks are occasionally ridiculed, but more than anything else, people who occupy the curbs are ignored. They are understood by most to be part of the neighborhood’s wallpaper, irrelevant to the main storyline of young professionals enjoying a little time off from work.

What kind of a response, or lack of response, would a drunken Edgar Allan Poe provoke now, as he lay shivering in the gutter, wrapped in an ill-fitting coat, muttering “Reynolds… Reynolds”? I see a recent Hopkins grad, clad in a blue and white striped Brooks Brothers shirt, elbowing his buddy, gesturing discreetly towards the supine figure, and smirking, “Get it together, Dude.”

Here’s the ironic thing, though: Baltimore loves itself some Edgar Allan Poe. His former home, located in a rather dicey West Side neighborhood is a popular tourist attraction, and its docents are leaders in an endeavor to package Poe as a Baltimore Native Son, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually born there. Though he died in Baltimore, he was actually born in Boston during his parents’ brief sojourn there. Even Baltimore’s Poe House concedes, on its website, “Richmond is the place that Poe most considered home.” Frankly, even the work that Poe wrote during his residence in Baltimore is undeniably obscure: of the stories written in the house on North Amity Street, “MS. Found in a Bottle” is the only one anywhere close to a household name.

 In almost every way, the Poe Museum in Richmond is objectively superior to the house in Baltimore, boasting more artifacts, better hours, and Poe-themed ghost tours. Its attractive space and desirable location have even made it a popular, if unlikely, wedding venue. But regardless, Baltimore has fought hard to make Poe “their guy”: that is, to strengthen the bond between the city and the figure in popular imagination. Anyone who has spent a few weeks in Baltimore can attest to the success of this campaign: his visage appears everywhere – even in the most unlikely places.

Just a few doors down the street from The Horse You Came in On is a store called Nattybohgear, an emporium that specializes in merchandise featuring the iconic logo of National Bohemian Beer (“Natty Boh”): a smiling, mustachioed cartoon face, perhaps a cousin of the Pringles guy. One of the store’s hottest items is a t-shirt featuring a hybrid of Poe’s and Mr. Boh’s faces. The caption: “Natty Poe.”

Far weirder is the intentionally ironic mural on the side of a building in Station North, featuring Poe’s melancholy face on the body of an astronaut. The general tone of Poe’s writing, which tends toward deadly seriousness, conflicts with the irreverence of this image – but like Poe, the mural seems to take delight in their own self-conscious weirdness. This graffiti artist is at least close to Poe’s aesthetic ballpark, in other words.

But what would Poe think of the city’s most visible, and, simultaneously, most incongruous tribute to his legacy? The Baltimore Ravens, who relocated from Cleveland after the 1996 season, were undoubtedly the first football team to take their name from a poem, Poe’s most famous work, “The Raven.” Divorced from its context within the poem, the Raven is fine mascot: intimidating, aggressive and predatory. But the poem itself, the ruminations of a solitary man in his study, looking desperately for a supernatural message from his deceased lover, is light years away from M&T Bank Stadium on game day. And it isn’t like the team’s name is some esoteric in-joke contrived by the eggheads in the front office. Its poetic origin is widely known to fans, and with small touches, like cartoonish raven mascots whose names are Edgar, Allan and Poe, the franchise is fond of reminding them.

For its part, The Horse You Came in On is slightly understated in the way it deals with its connection to Poe. In a single sentence on the “history” section of its website, the saloon admits, “The Horse was the last destination before the mysterious death of the great American writer E.A. Poe.” Its décor, more country western than Gothic, also suggests that management may be attempting to distance itself from the Poe story and its accompanying unpleasantness.

Baltimore, more than most of its east coast neighbors (especially strait-laced D.C.), has always prided itself on its quirkiness. It boasts a strong element of artists, hipsters and literary enthusiasts whose familiarity with Poe’s work often stretches far beyond “The Raven” and commonly anthologized stories like “The Tell-tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” They appreciate the man and his work, as much as they appreciate the ideal union between a character and a city that both revel in their own eccentricity. But I’ll wager that the majority of Baltimoreans – the off-duty electrician wearing the Ravens helmet and the Ray Lewis jersey, the yuppie stock broker at happy hour in Fell’s Point, and everyone in between – know only a few elementary facts about the man himself: he wrote “The Raven, he had a mustache and a receding hairline, and (a half-truth) that he was hometown guy. They love Poe, though – just ask the man on the street in Canton or Charles Village or Highlandtown. An admission otherwise is a blasphemy on par with admitting a preference for lobster over crab, or The Sopranos over The Wire.

Baltimore loves Poe unconditionally, but not the Poe who was found passed out in the street on that night in 1849, and definitely not the Poe who married his much younger first cousin, and probably not even the Poe whose poetry and stories are still widely taught in schools and are still capable of capturing the imagination. They love Poe the icon, whose very face, around these parts, is as ubiquitous as the Orioles logo. Except in small academic circles, the details of his life and work only matter insofar as they add to his legend, which in turn, adds to the identity of a city.