The pocket watch owned by Edgar Allan Poe while he was writing his famous short story The Tell-Tale Heart, in which the murderous narrator compares the thumping of his victim’s heart to the tick of a clock, has been donated to the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia.
Literary collector Susan Jaffe Tane gave the watch along with almost 60 other artefacts, including letters and rare first editions. Curator Chris Semtner said Poe’s timepiece was “especially important” because the author owned it while writing the story.
“This might just be the very watch Poe was envisioning when he described the old man’s heartbeat as ‘a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton’,” said Semtner. Poe’s narrator is speaking to the police when he hears the sound, and it quickly drives him mad – and to a confession: “I felt that I must scream or die! – and now – again! – hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! – ‘Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! – it is the beating of his hideous heart!’”
Aptly for an author known for his tales and poems of the macabre, the donation also includes a fragment from the original coffin in which Poe was buried in 1849. His body was exhumed and moved across the cemetery in 1875, but the coffin broke – and the author fell out. “Poe wrote so many stories about being buried alive that it seems only fitting that we have a piece of the very coffin in which he was buried,” said Semtner.
The engagement ring given by Poe to Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton has also been donated to the museum by Jaffe Tane. The pair were engaged as teenagers, but her father broke their engagement. They later became engaged for a second time, in the last month’s of Poe’s life, and he gave her the ring engraved with the name Edgar. He died 10 days before they would have been married.
According to the Poe Museum, Shelton later claimed that Poe told her she inspired his final poem Annabel Lee. “I was a child and she was a child, / In this kingdom by the sea, / But we loved with a love that was more than love – / I and my Annabel Lee,” wrote Poe in the 1849 poem. “Her highborn kinsmen came / And bore her away from me, / To shut her up in a sepulchre / In this kingdom by the sea.” The Encyclopaedia Britannica cites Poe’s young wife and cousin Virginia – who died in 1847 – as another potential inspiration for the poem. The two married when Virginia was 13.
“The Poe Museum is honoured to provide a permanent home for this transformative addition to its collection. Ms Tane’s generous gift furthers our mission to illuminate Poe for everyone, evermore,” said the Poe Museum’s executive director Maeve Jones, with a nod to Poe’s poem The Raven. “The Poe Museum looks forward to unveiling these incredible artefacts over the course of its centennial anniversary in 2022.” The items will be on show to the public from 28 April.