Edgar Allan Poe finally gets proper funeral

Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum looks over a replica of the body of Edgar Allan Poe, in Baltimore.

For Edgar Allan Poe, 2009 has been a better year than 1849. After dozens of events in several cities to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, he got the grand funeral that a writer of his stature should have received when he died.
One hundred sixty years ago, the beleaguered, impoverished Poe was found, delirious and in distress outside a Baltimore tavern. He was never coherent enough to explain what had befallen him since leaving Richmond, Virginia, a week earlier. He spent four days in a hospital before he died at age 40.
Poe's cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced his death publicly. Fewer than 10 people attended the hasty funeral for one of the 19th century's greatest writers. And the injustices piled on. Poe's tombstone was destroyed before it could be installed, when a train derailed and crashed into a stonecutter's yard. Rufus Griswold, a Poe enemy, published a libellous obituary that damaged Poe's reputation for decades.
But last Sunday, Poe's funeral got an elaborate do-over, with two services. Actors portraying Poe's contemporaries and other long-dead writers and artists paid their respects, reading eulogies adapted from their writings about Poe.
"We are following the proper etiquette for funerals. We want to make it as realistic as possible," said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum.
Advance tickets were sold out, although Jerome did make some seats available at the door to ensure packed houses. Fans travelled from as far away as Vietnam.
The funeral was arguably the splashiest of a year's worth of events honouring the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth. Along with Baltimore -- where he spent some of his leanest years in the mid-1830s -- Poe lived in or has strong connections to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Richmond.
With the funeral angle covered, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond staged a re-enactment last weekend of his death. Those with a more academic interest in Poe attended the Poe Studies Association's annual conference from Thursday through Sunday in Philadelphia.
Visitors in Baltimore for the funeral could also enjoy a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art, "Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon," which includes chilling illustrations to "The Raven" by Edouard Manet.
Jerome said he's gotten calls from people who thought he was going to exhume Poe's remains and rebury them.
"When they dug up Poe's body in 1875 to move it, it was mostly skeletal remains," Jerome said. "I've seen remains of people who've been in the ground since that time period, and there's hardly anything left."
Instead, Jerome commissioned local special-effects artist Eric Supensky to create an eerily lifelike -- or deathlike -- mock-up of Poe's corpse.
"I got chills," Jerome said upon seeing the body for the first time. "This is going to freak people out.”