So to the start of the alternative curriculum and a weekly encounter with things not far from here.
Today is was Edgar Allen Poe. Of whom I knew little, though perhaps absorbed a bit thanks to Benedict's Sherlock and a dash of Stephen King. The horror starts with a tiny boy of theatrical roots, adopted into a Richmond family with big issues and ends with this tiny museum, that is not even one of the 10 homes he lived in. However he once stood outside the entrance stone cottage as a young cadet showing a French General the town and bricks from his first place of work help build this shrine at the end of the magical courtyard garden, with a pair of black cats observing.There was so little directly of him, at most his 'death' stockings and scraps of handwriting and after-death busts, but in it's atmospheric handling, plentiful labels and characterful setting, the museum conjures him up brilliantly and there was even an echo of Lord Byron at Newstead Abbey, hanging in the air.
I consumed two short stories in the Library later - The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. Dark, dark tales.
