“Gold-bugging” with Edgar Allan Poe

Dear Reader:

I mentioned to you in yesterday’s post that I was reading SKIRT magazine while in the waiting room at the Charleston Oncology Center Monday morning and found my beautiful niece Vikki in it….I also saw the name of a shop called Goldbugs on Sullivan Island. I googled the shop and instantly wanted to just drive over and get me a pair of “Goldbug” earrings or a pendant. Ashley Reid Martin, the owner, makes all the beautiful  jewelry on the island.

I smiled and thought to myself…’What would old Edgar Allan Poe think about all the places and streets named for him now on Sullivan’s Island?’ (including Goldbug Island, right off Sullivans) Little did he know by using Sullivan’s Island as the setting for one of his most popular mystery stories…that he would become a ‘favorite son’ of Charleston.

Much research and stories have been written about Poe’s stay on Sullivans’ Island as a teenage soldier….apparently the sights of this barrier island/fort ignited his imagination and he used it for several settings in later books…including The Goldbug.

“Sullivan’s Island became home to a soldier who had not yet reached his 19th birthday when the Army assigned him to Fort Moultrie in November 1827 and had, for whatever reason, signed up for military duty under an assumed name.

Edgar Allan Poe, America’s master of the macabre, had already published his first book of poetry when he enlisted as Edgar A. Perry. Poe’s formal education was interrupted when he was booted from the University of Virginia, apparently after running up heavy gambling debts. He spent 13 months at Fort Moultrie before cutting short his five-year enlistment and enrolling at the United States Military Academy. A year or so later, he was dishonorably discharged from West Point.

Though Poe spent only a year and a month in the Lowcountry, he left his mark on Sullivan’s Island – and the island apparently had quite an effect on him, as well, providing the setting for at least three of his stories: “The Gold Bug,” “The Balloon Hoax” and “The Oblong Box.” This is how he described Sullivan’s Island in “The Gold Bug”:

“This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant or at least dwarfish.

No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point and a line of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle. …”  ( Resource: Master of Mystery/Sullivan’s Island Was Once Home To Enigmatic Writer- Brian Sherman)