Yesterday when I went out walking, I was gazing at the
houses and thinking about how I always want to live here in this small town. Ashland
isn’t very big but it is close enough to Richmond and the combined history keeps
me connected. I like to imagine walking the same paths as those before me.
While meandering, I am always drawn to the house. One of my favorite houses isn’t because of the architecture
but because of its history.
Erected in 1858, one of the home’s former owners was
Elmira Royster Shelton who just so happens to have been Edgar A. Poe's
"Lost Lenore." In one of Poe’s last letters, he writes of Elmira and
his longing to marry her. Elmira Shelton, who was Elmira Royster at the time,
and Edgar A. Poe were engaged decades before when they were practically
children. Ah, young love. (Dreamy sigh). Elmira was 15 years old and young
Edgar was 16. They spoke of marriage but Elmira’s father tried to put a stop to
it. When Poe headed off to UVa (my old stomping ground) the two were secretly
engaged but Royster’s father seized and destroyed all of Poe's letters to his
daughter before she even knew they existed. Assuming she had been forgotten, Royster
married another man. (Wasn’t there a Nicholas Sparks movie about that? :p ) This
was in the late 1820s.
TWENTY YEARS later… Poe returns. Again there is talk
about marriage since by this time Poe’s wife has passed as has Shelton’s
husband. She has children who disapprove but nothing can stop true love, right?
Well, they never married. Poe headed to Baltimore and surrounding his
mysterious death he mentions a wife he had in Richmond. Was he referring to
Shelton?
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| "Grief" by Valentine |
Shelton never spoke of Poe again until 1875 when she
was interviewed by Edward Valentine who was a Richmond sculptor and a family
member of *my employers* aka The Valentine Museum. I’ll add this picture of one
of his beautiful sculptures that Valentine created. It is in Hollywood Cemetery
and is entitled “Grief”. Although it isn’t actually part of this story, I think
it’s quite fitting. At the time she spoke with Valentine, she denied being
engaged but then nearly a decade later she admitted that she was. When she died
in 1888, her obituary in the Richmond Whig had the headline, “Poe’s First and
Last Love.”
Yesterday when I walked by the house, there was an
elderly woman sitting on a swing on her porch. She probably came out because I
had taken a few pictures of her house. Ooops! But I prefer to think of her as
someone who was sitting on the swing remembering being 15 and falling in love
for the first time with the boy who had eyes like the sea after a storm (or
whatever Buttercup said) and the softest Ministry t-shirt that he would give to
her to sleep in (yeah, well that was me).
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| My first love... I was 15. |
Last year I woke from a dream that
was very much a memory of being a teen with my first love. I recall one of the first lines from one of his letters, "Run away with me and be my love". My first husband burned all of the letters that I had kept. I also remembering screaming that they were being burned into my soul. (An ex is an ex for a reason y'all). Back to the dream... I cried because I always
remember how he saved me. My friend had just shot himself, all my friends
were a mess, and he, who had just met me a few months before, drove
two hours from Washington, D.C. (I had no idea that I would end up working there) for a visit... He hardly knew me but I guess young people don't
care. I think we went to the mall. I don't recall much around that
time but he was there and somehow it clicked that there was more to the world
than all the death in my tiny hometown. We used to write these long handwritten
letters but in contemporary times, I sent him an email to say thank you. “I
will always think of your 18-year-old self as the most magical part of my
adolescence” and briefly recounted the dream. And I promise you that my heart
skipped a beat (it still does) when he responded:
I did not save you sweetie, I just reminded you that
you didn't need saving.
Elmira Shelton lived for nearly forty years after
Poe died. One day I hope to live in that house and sit on the swing while
remembering.
