The Tragedy of Elizabeth Poe

Poet's Mother Trod Richmond's Boards

By Margaret Leah Johnson

Dressed in the best of her paste jewels, she lay in state in the attic of the millinery shop. A few kinds ladies of Richmond had helped her, and the members of her company, the Virginia Players, had given their pitiful earnings to keep her and her two children warm through the winter.

Elizabeth Poe had kindness around her then, but the happiness she had known during the 24 years was small, trouping in England as a baby, arriving in this country as a child, trouping again. Enduring cold days and nights in drafty theatres from Maine to South Carolina, playing all the big cities and small towns up and down the coast, it was small wonder that she had developed tuberculosis.

Did the almost forgotten words of "The Market Lass," her first childish song success, struggle to her lips as she lay dying in Richmond that winter of 1811? Did scraps of popular roles that had brought her applause try to form themselves in her tired mind? Did she wonder what would become of Edgar and the baby as they played quietly around the room?

She had tried. Yet she had failed and at 24 was dead.

She was quiet now. Worries could no longer bite deep. Of the handful who came to look at her, fellow troupers and wealthy women who had helped her, how many understood the courage that had made her take that last long trip from Norfolk to fill this engagement at the Richmond Theatre? They knew that superficial details, but nothing of the daily forcing of a strength that failed with the hours.

David, her husband, dead, with three children to support, she had not been able to relax the will that drove her to act, sing, dance and make her black eyes sparkle, when she was crying to rest. She couldn't falter. Every step had to be as light as when she played Biddy Bellairs, in "The Belle's Stratagem" at 19. The she had had applause. Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond and Charleston had swayed to her gaiety. David had been with her, tall, dark, handsome David. He couldn't act, but the theatre, the footlights, the odor that is the theatre's own meant more to him, with Elizabeth, than a lawyer's career.

Then David had died. Not even a notice in the papers recalled his name. Who cared about actors? They were good for a few hours' amusement, but they were a profession that nice people didn't recognize otherwise than as an amusement.

No work in Norfolk, with her children to feed, the uncertainty of her position weakened further her already exhausted strength.

Then a letter had come. Work, and the chance to start again, revived her. Richmond had always been kind, laughed and sung with her. They would now, too. She would get strong. Mr. Placide needed her, wanted her for his company right away and was willing to pay her expenses and those of the children to Richmond. Already she could see the dirty theatre, smell the dust, see the flickering footlights and the bright crowds outside.

As the coach pulled to a noisy stop before the Indian Queen Tavern on Main Street, the players crowded around the door. She stepped out, cheeks bright, forcing the well-known sparkle to her eyes, tossing her black curls. The Tavern was crowded with actors, so Mrs. Phillips next door gave her lodging.

Rehearsals, chatter with old friends about the plays, kept her up for a while. Richmond audiences didn't suspect that their favorite was ill. They did later, however, when her appearances were spaced at increasing intervals. They knew when Mr. Placide advertised a benefit performance for his leading lady. They knew, too, because certain sympathetic ladies who bought their stylish hats from Mrs. Phillips' shop had seen and heard. They had talked with her and played with the dark young Edgar.

She came back, each time after a longer absence, until she could no longer leave her room. Then it was that for the last time Mr. Placide made his appeal in the papers "To the Humane Heart." A few days later, she was dead. Now she lay in state in the attic, her paste jewels flashing fitfully in the subdued light.

Slowly the small procession climbed the hill to St. John's. Who had prevailed on the authorities to let her be buried there? As an actress, and, therefore, as an outcast, she was not entitled to a church grave. Some one, however, had broken the law of centuries for her.

Tobacco warehouses, Negro Lunchrooms and second-hand shops fill the street where she walked. Dust and wide sense of desolation that poverty can give to the narrowest alley have added their color to a once sedate neighborhood. Yet Elizabeth Poe lives on--in her son, and in the traditions of a theatre and of a city.