Edgar Allan Poe T-shirt in Charlottesville, Va.

Think the Poe Toaster is wearing one of these under his cape?

At least as much as Baltimore, Charlottesville lays claim to Edgar Allan Poe, who attended the University of Virginia for all of 10 months. (U.Va. is home to a library of his papers.) He got in through his foster father’s string-pulling, but then the old man wouldn’t pony up the tuition money. Poe was a good student, though, like many an undergraduate, he saw some wild times (read down to the arm-biting). A handsome tour guide in Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda said Poe had been expelled; this shirt suggests otherwise. Either way you slice it, he wasn’t going to be welcomed back until someone anted up. And Poe, with his gambling problems, was in no position to do so.

Visiting Charlottesville over the weekend, I stopped by Poe’s room, Number 13 on the West Range. It’s arranged in the style of his day, though I doubt he had a large stuffed raven at the time (I could be wrong). You can mostly see it all (fireplace included) through the glass barrier doorway. There’s a doorbell-like button; I pushed it, and nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, a booming voice came out of nowhere and started reciting the facts of Poe’s life at U.Va. Appropriately creepy.

My brother-in-law, a U.Va. alum, tells the story of being acquainted with a couple who, one night, instead of studying, decided to go drunkenly prowling around campus. Somehow, the girl squeezed her way into the Poe room (no glass door then, I guess) and proceeded to panic when she couldn’t figure an easy way out. In desperation, she broke a pane of glass — a pane on which Poe had etched some college-era mutterings. This was a prized artifact for the campus (err, the “grounds,” as they prefer). The college spent an inordinate amount of money restoring the pane and preserving it in the Rotunda, I was told; the ne’er-do-wells were promptly drummed off the grounds.

I wanted to see the pane while I was there, but that Rotunda tour guide said he didn’t know of it. It wasn’t until I poked around the U.Va. Raven Society Web site that I confirmed that it’s housed within the Rotunda. Arrgh. Thanks, tour guide.

At any rate, young Poe left these words behind. Think they reflect his thoughts on the Shrine to Jefferson (who was still alive when Poe was a student and still completing his beloved Rotunda)?

O Thou timid one, do not let thy
Form slumber within these
Unhallowed walls,
For herein lies
The ghost of an awful crime.

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