The Linden Row Inn Keeps Edgar Allan Poe’s Love Alive

Edgar Allan Poe, the Goth bad boy of all time, has an allure that never fades. Fans of Poe include such diverse celebrities such as director Guillermo del Toro, Sylvester Stallone, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.

 “Although the row of houses that make up the Linden Row Inn was built over a portion of the garden, one can imagine that remaining walled garden has something of the atmosphere that attracted Poe to the place.”

As millions of Gothic literature fans around the world know, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) lived in many locales along the Eastern Coast of America during his short life but he spent his childhood and young adult years in the city of Richmond, Virginia.

Richmond was then a prosperous town of wide boulevards, elegant salons and the well-appointed homes of society leaders. Although young Edgar was born into poverty as the child of two itinerant actors, he was fostered on the death of his parents by tobacco baron, John Allan. The Allan family lived, for a time, in the home of his business partner Charles Ellis. Ellis’ home had an adjacent garden that was so fragrant, the perfume of its roses wafted down the street, luring children like young Edgar and his teenage sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster, into its thorny embrace.

If your image of Poe is purely the haunted daguerreotypes that show a pinched and pallid visage, think again about young Poe. Poe, in his youth, was sloe-eyed and strapping–he was a champion swimmer who had won a marathon race across Richmond’s James River. He could quote Byron and Shelley’s love poems and had courtly manners and great clothes–attributes of costume and performance he may have learned from his actress mother.

Poe’s real-life love story, as most of his fictional ones, has a tragic end. Elmira’s father did not approve of the match and conspired to end it, destroying Poe’s letters to Elmira. Elmira became engaged to another man, married him and became a widow when her husband died at only 37 years old. A widower, himself, Poe renewed his affections with Elmira only to die suddenly and mysteriously just before they could finally marry as planned (film fans can delve into the reasons behind his mysterious death with by watching 2011’s The Raven with John Cusack as Poe).

The Linden Row Inn’s row houses were built in 1847 and 1853 on the site of that garden and are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the garden is encompassed by The Linden Row Inn, a 70-room boutique hotel made up of seven existing exquisitely restored town antebellum row houses, saved from the wrecking ball by local antiquarian, Mary Wingfield Scott. The area that would have been Poe’s love nest, is now the interior garden of the hotel and the outdoor patio of its new restaurant, Parterre, (whose logo is, of course, a silhouetted raven).

Poe fans and travelers in love with Goth romance can dine here on comfort-centric traditional Southern fare (and equally comforting juleps and other drinks at the bar–Edgar would approve) and stay in the one of the hotel’s seven historically appointed parlor suites.

Lucky guests who stay in the Parlor Suites get to live, for a time, with antique furniture, chandeliers and with the uncanny feeling that the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe is dwelling just outside in the interior garden (often used for weddings, happier than the star-crossed one that never happened for Edgar).

The city around the Inn is also a must for Poe lovers. The famed Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond is a short Uber-drive away from the Linden Row Inn and includes treasures like Poe’s walking stick, the writer’s own bed, and other priceless treasures of Poe’s life and works.

Chris Semtner, the Museum’s passionate curator agrees that the Linden Row Inn has a unique appeal for Edgar Allan Poe fans.

“ The Linden Row Inn property was well-known to Poe throughout his early years because the site was covered by a prominent garden that belonged to his foster father’s business partner Charles Ellis,” says Semtner. “In fact, Poe paid tribute to Ellis and his garden in the short story “The Domain of Arnheim” in which a fabulously wealthy artist and poet named Ellison devotes his life and fortune to creating a beautiful garden. Poe once wrote a friend that this story “expresses my soul.”

 “According to contemporary sources, Ellis’s large walled garden became a popular meeting spot for young lovers, so this lends some credibility to accounts of Poe courting his first fiancée, Elmira Royster, there. Her father opposed their relationship, even going as far as intercepting Poe’s letters to her in order to break their engagement; so one can think of few better places for the young couple to steal away together than within the walls of Ellis’s garden. One contemporary, Samuel Mordecai, recalled being able to smell the fragrant roses of that garden from a block away.

“There is also a theory that Poe describes the garden in his poem “To One in Paradise,” which describes a perfect garden in which two lovers once met but to which the narrator can now never return.

 “Although the row of houses that make up the Linden Row Inn was built over a portion of the garden, one can imagine that remaining walled garden has something of the atmosphere that attracted Poe to the place.”

Ginger Warder, author of the Images of America book, The Linden Row Inn, adds, “If houses could talk, these would tell stories of Edgar Allan Poe playing among the linden trees on this site as a child and meeting his love, Elmira Royster Shelton, in the same garden. Thanks to the foresight and dedication of preservationist Mary Wingfield Scott, visitors today can experience Poe’s love story themselves.”