January 19 was the 205th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, the American suspense author, poet and cat lover who is best remembered for The Black Cat and The Raven. Poe was born in 1809 and died in 1849 at the still young age of 40. He was laid to rest at Baltimore’s Westminster Hall and Burying Ground.
For seven decades in the early morning on the anniversary of Poe’s birth, a mysterious man (or maybe a father and son team) paid tribute to the author. Carrying a silver-tipped cane, the black-clad gentleman always wore a wide-brimmed hat and scarf to hide his face.
The Poe Toaster was first noticed in 1949 (in year of the 100th anniversary of the poet’s death). The night of January 19 the stranger entered the cemetery and raised a toast of Martell cognac to Poe. At the grave he left the unfinished bottle along with three red roses placed in a distinctive pattern. The Poe Society of Baltimore admits that some details have been kept private so they’ll recognize the real Toaster from the copycats.
A cryptic note left behind in 1993 stated, “The torch will be passed.” That apparently happened. A message left in 1999 announced that the original Toaster had died the previous year and a son had taken over the tradition. Watchers agreed that the Toaster appeared younger. A 2001 note ranted about the Baltimore Ravens’ Super Bowl chances, and a note in 2004 included a diatribe about France’s opposition to the Iraq war. Obviously not the same dignified old Toaster. The Toaster last appeared in January 2009.
At the time of Poe’s passing, newspapers attributed his death to “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”. Today’s doctors speculate he could have succumbed to alcoholism, epilepsy, syphilis, cholera, rabies or even murder.
We have arrived at the end of an era. Hopefully the Toaster is now sharing Martell with Poe face-to-face. And in the poet’s own brilliant words, the Poe Toaster is “Quoth the Raven, “’Nevermore’.”
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