Levi Lionel Leland’s love of Edgar Allan Poe began when he was 12, after a substitute teacher scrapped the day's lesson plan and introduced the class to one of Poe’s macabre works. “It was a Friday afternoon, the last period of the day, and she read us ’The Black Cat,’” Leland says. “It's really a gruesome tale of animal abuse and homicide, and it's really weird and scary. And for a 12-year-old kid, you're kind of like, ‘How is this teacher reading us this in school?’ It doesn't seem like it was something that could be read in school, but it was, because it's Poe. And so I think that's just what intrigued me about this writer, this storyteller, that he was so widely regarded and so famous, so respected – enough to be taught in schools – but it was unlike anything I was ever able to learn or hear in school.”
The young Levi Leland soon became obsessed with Poe, his poetry, his odd horror stories and his biography. He visited sites from Poe’s life up and down the East Coast: the Edgar Allan Poe house in Baltimore; the Poe Museum in Richmond, Va.; the Poe cottage in the Bronx; and another Poe house in Philadelphia. Now he’s 31 and works in special education as a transition coordinator. He felt that Rhode Island didn’t do enough to highlight Poe’s time here, so in 2021 he created this walking tour.
When the weather is good, you can find him on Saturdays leading groups of up to 20 people down Benefit Street to visit a few places that were key to Poe’s brief, but consequential time in Providence.
The tour starts at the John Reynolds House, built between 1783 and 1792. During his first visit to Providence in July 1845, Poe walked up Benefit toward Church Street. Levi Leland has reconstructed a description from Poe’s letters:
“It was a warm summer night and the moon was almost full. He glanced down the hill and in the rose garden, here was Sarah Helen Whitman, clad all in white, a white muslin dress, a white shawl, a white veil. And the moonlight illuminated these garments that floated in the warm, sultry evening breeze. And he was so taken back by the sight of her.”
They didn’t meet that evening, or at all, during Poe’s initial visit to Providence. But they did know about each other. Poe had recently published his famous poem, “The Raven.” It was a real hit, and he was becoming famous beyond literary circles. But in 1848, a year after Poe’s wife died, they were finally brought together. It starts when Sarah Helen Whitman wrote a valentine poem to Poe. She read it at a literary gathering in New York, and then had it published in the Home Journal. “Oh, thou grim and ancient raven from the night's Plutonian shore,” one stanza reads, “oft in dreams thy ghastly pinions wave and flutter around my door. Oft thy shadow dims the moonlight sleeping on my chamber floor. Romeo talks of white doves trooping amid crows athwart the night, but to see thy dark wings swooping were to me a nobler sight."
Whitman’s friend Francis Osgood did not approve of Whitman’s interest in Poe. "I see by the home journal that your beautiful invocation has reached the Raven in his eyrie,” Osgood wrote to Whitman. “And I suppose ‘ere this, he's swooped upon your little dove coat in Providence. May Providence protect you if he has. For his croaks, the most eloquent imaginable. He is, in truth, a glorious devil with a large heart and brain."
Leland says Whitman tried to get Poe’s attention by praising “The Raven.” And it worked. For the next three months, they exchanged letters and poems before finally meeting in September.
“And upon entering her house,” Leland says, “Poe found himself in the presence of the very woman who dwelled in his imagination, that luminous figure he'd glimpsed in the moonlight three years prior. And finally meeting her moved him quite profoundly.”
He later wrote to her: ‘In the most simple words at my command, let me paint to you the impression made upon me by your personal appearance as you entered the room pale, timid, hesitating, and evidently oppressed at heart. As your eyes rested appealingly, for one brief moment upon mine, I felt for the first time in my life and tremblingly acknowledged, the existence of spiritual influences altogether out of the reach of reason. I saw that you were Helen, my Helen, the Helen of a Thousand Dreams.’”
A whirlwind romance ensued between Poe and Whitman, and in December, they planned to marry. But it quickly fell apart, and Poe left Providence. Less than a year later, he died in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances.
While that substitute teacher kindled Leland’s interest in Poe, researching Poe’s biography gave him an appreciation for Sarah Helen Whitman.
“A lot of people don't know a lot about her,” he says. “She's kind of known today as just the brief muse of Edgar Allan Poe, but she really was an integral part of Providence's culture and heritage. She wrote the dedication poems for Swan Point Cemetery when it was consecrated and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in 1871. She was a part of the Women's Suffrage Association. And really, in the 19th century, Sarah Helen Whitman was one of the most beloved, most well-known citizens. So many friends and so many connections. And today, again, we just really know her as Poe's brief flame, as his one-time fiancée. It's kind of a sad injustice to Whitman, who is so gifted and so unique that she's only remembered for this. So her work really should be noted and celebrated in its own right.”
Levi’s “Walking Tour of Poe’s Providence” lets you walk in Poe and Whitman’s footsteps (literally) down Benefit Street with a few side excursions. You get to see the rose garden where Poe first saw Whitman in the moonlight. You'll visit the graveyard tucked behind the Cathedral of St. John, where Poe was known to walk. You'll also stop at the Providence Athenaeum, where Poe and Whitman met several times during their courtship. It’s easy to forget how much history is embedded in those few blocks on Providence’s East Side. Through Poe and Whitman’s letters, Leland brings their nearly 200-year-old romance to life, revealing the passion, poetry and sometimes extravagant declarations of love that defined their courtship.
Tour info:
Where: Various locations on Benefit Street, Providence
When: Oct. 31, 11:00 a.m.; Nov. 7, 1:00 p.m.; Nov. 14, 1:00 p.m.
Tickets available on Eventbrite
(Halloween tickets are limited; please email Levi Leland via his website for reservations.)
