The Balloon That Never Flew

A Poetry Tale about Edgar Allan Poe, told by Hello Doggo.

April, eighteen forty-four. Edgar Allan Poe has been in New York for less than a week. He’s broke, his wife is ill, and he needs money. So he sells the city a balloon.

On the thirteenth, the New York Sun rushes out a special edition. Astounding news, it cries. The Atlantic crossed in three days. A flying machine called the Victoria, carrying the famous balloonist Monck Mason, has drifted from Wales to Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, in seventy-five hours.

It’s beautifully done. Diaries from the passengers. Technical details about the gas, the propeller, the rudder. Some of the engineering, Poe borrowed from Mason’s own writing. The voyage, he invented.

And it worked. Poe later wrote that the square around the Sun building was literally besieged, from soon after sunrise until about two in the afternoon. He’d never witnessed more intense excitement, he said, to get possession of a newspaper. He saw a half-dollar paid for a single copy.

There’s even a story that Poe stood on the Sun’s steps that very day, telling the crowd it was all a hoax. Lovely if true — but I can’t find anyone who actually saw him do it.

Two days later, the Sun admitted it was inclined to believe the intelligence was erroneous. Which is one way of putting it.

And the best part? Poe said he tried, in vain, all day, to get his hands on a copy. He couldn’t buy his own lie.