Not So Fast, Philly

Baltimore's most famous living mystery writer makes a case for keeping her city's most famous dead one.

by Laura Lippman

Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and this fact is indisputable: We have the body.

Well, actually, even that fact is fodder for the Poe cognoscenti, who are famously contentious. There are a few conspiracy theorists who would have you believe that grave robbers made off with Poe's body, taking it to the nearby medical school because corpses were in short supply. I have trouble with this theory, in part because I cannot imagine a time in Baltimore when corpses were in short supply.

We don't know how or why Poe died, although many theories have been offered up. We don't even know why Poe was in Baltimore in October 1849. But he was here and he died in Washington College Hospital, as it was then known. True, we've torn it down, but his house is still standing on Amity Street. It's tricky to find, so look for the patrol car that's parked outside when the museum is open. (Tourism officials here live in dread that some European tourist is going to meet a grisly fate en route to the Poe House.)

Most of the East Coast can claim a piece of Poe. He was born in Boston; attended West Point; and lived in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York. And while it's true that the work he produced in Baltimore is not particularly distinctive, it was in Baltimore that Poe won a literary contest that was pivotal to his sense of himself as a real writer.

What have you done for Poe lately, Philadelphia? We named our football team the Ravens. (Unfortunately, some illiterate named the snack bars in the stadium the "Craven.") We have a Poe room in our Central Library. We even have a housing project called the Poe Homes, no small tribute in Baltimore. And it is here, every Jan. 19, that the Poe Toaster comes to pay his respects. Granted, the memorial to Poe gets his birthday wrong, but it was the 19th century, before Google made fact-checking so much easier.

Look, Philly, Baltimore didn't back down when Virginia tried to make Poe its official poet, and we're not going to fold just because you say he belongs to you. What's next, a crab cake hoagie? FYI, the best crab cakes — those would be here — don't need no stinkin' bread. We've got the body. We've got two graves. Paraphrased the Raven: Nevermore pick this fight, Philadelphia, nevermore.

P.S. Mike Schmidt is a fine ballplayer, but he's no Brooks Robinson.

Laura Lippman is the multiple-award-winning author of What the Dead Know.