Snapshot : A Murder of Crows
In a scene that might have sprung from the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe , a murder of crows erupts into the night over Benefit Street in Providence . The famous writer , as it turns out , was familiar with the neighborhood , once courting its resident poet , Sarah Helen Whitman . The two were often seen at the Provi- dence Athenaeum , where — like the raven in his famous poem — Poe ’ s bust presides from a perch above the door . “ Her mother and friends were against the match , so it took some convincing for her to agree to marry him ,” says Robin Wetherill , the library ’ s director of membership and external relations , adding a condition of the engagement was that Poe stop drinking . Two days before their scheduled Christmas wedding , a messenger delivered a note to Whitman in the library revealing her fiance had failed to keep his promise . Heartbroken , she called off the nuptials . The pair never saw each other again — Poe died ten months later under mysterious circumstances — but his ghost is said to still roam the library stacks . He ’ s also rumored to have cursed the fountain outside so those who drink from it are bound to return to Providence . ( Wetherill insists Poe , who died before its construction , could not have cursed the fountain , though no one would argue Rhode Islanders are loath to leave their state .) “ I love to think that if there was a ghost of Poe out there , that
he would occasionally stop by ,” she says . To browse , perhaps . But to set foot where two lovers once wandered ... arm in arm ? Nevermore . — LAUREN CLEM
144 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l OCTOBER 2022