A "GRIP-ING" STORY

"Quoth the Raven, Nevermore" is one of the most famous lines in all of literature. Ironically, many readers are unaware that the inspiration of this poem was a real raven. His name was Grip and he was owned by none other than Charles Dickens. Grip was a bit of a celebrity in the Dickens' household and was quite the chatterbox, being able to imitate speech among other things.

Unfortunately for Grip, he developed a taste for nipping at people's ankles and Dickens was forced to consign him to the property's horse stables. He seemed to have developed a taste for lead-based paint and not long after he died of apparent lead poisoning. Alas, poor Grip was literally, nevermore.

Not to be undone, however, Dickens owned two more ravens over the ensuing years, both of them named Grip. It was the original Grip that inspired Poe's prophetic "croaking" bird.

Dickens so loved Grip that he had him stuffed (after his demise, of course). The wily Raven ended up in storage at the Free Library of Philadelphia. At one point he was "resurrected" and put on display, much to the delight of visitors from around the world.

The following pair of articles discuss at greater length the odd and unlikely tale of the bird that (probably) inspired Poe.

The Secret History of Charles Dickens' Pet Raven
The elaborate and confused history of Philly's most famous bird
BY COLIN LODEWICK
March 14, 2017 at 2:07 am

A dead bird sits in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia: a massive, glossy–looking dead raven named Grip.

Grip was the beloved pet of Charles Dickens, author of David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. According to Karen Kirsheman, a librarian at the Free Library, Grip was “allowed to run around the house like a dog or cat would.” Before he was a pet, though, Grip served as a character study for a raven in Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, as Dickens wished to understand the bird’s movements and nature.

Grip enchanted Dickens and his family with his wily behavior and ability to imitate human speech (his favorite phrase was “Halloa old girl”). The bird was so comfortable that it eventually developed the habit of biting people’s ankles, a habit that banished Grip to the stables on Dickens’ property. The stables were in the process of being painted white at the time, though, and Grip is believed to have unwisely consumed paint. He shortly passed away, presumably due to lead poisoning.

“You will be greatly shocked and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more,” laments Dickens in a letter to the painter Daniel Maclise, dated March 12, 1841. The bird’s death affected him significantly, to the point that he ordered a postmortem examination to look into whether the death could be ruled a poisoning. “This is actually Grip number 1,” explained Kirsheman. Apparently, after Grip’s demise, Dickens had two more pet ravens, each also named Grip.

Grip’s influence goes beyond just Dickens, though. In 1841, Edgar Allan Poe, who was living in Philadelphia at the time, became an editor of Graham’s Ladies and Gentlemen’s Magazine, in which Barnaby Rudge was serialized. Poe reviewed the novel favorably, but felt that the raven’s, “...croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” Four years later, Poe developed his own prophetically croaking bird in “The Raven”—a poem that Grip likely (but not definitely) inspired.

And though Grip undoubtedly held a role in literary history, he languished for over twenty years in the Free Library’s storage space under a canvas marked “The Most Famous Bird in the World.” He ended up at the Library at the bequest of Col. Richard Gimbel (of the department store fortune) along with Gimbel’s extensive Poe collection, which included Poe’s Philadelphia house on what is now 7th and Spring Garden Streets (and is now a National Park Site and open to visitors). Grip was rescued from storage, cleaned up, and displayed lovingly again as he had been for years in the different homes of Charles Dickens.

“People come in just to see Grip—like a pilgrimage,” Kirsheman mentioned. And the bird, hidden away in the back corner of a massive and monumental library, does have an unexpected magnetism: a religious quality that’s almost funny.

Grip, whose 176th death anniversary will be coming up this March, will continue to peer out from his glassy eyes, tucked away in a corner of the Free Library—a strange and obscure altar to literature, memorialized with every utterance of the famous words "Quoth the Raven."

[SOURCE: www.34st.com.]

Grip the Raven
The taxidermied raven that inspired the Poe poem of the same name.

Perched on a log in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library stands a strange piece of history. Dead since 1841, but preserved with arsenic, and frozen inside a shadow box, this bird’s legacy is longer than most people’s. His name is Grip. Grip the Clever, Grip the Wicked, Grip the Knowing.

Once Charles Dickens’ pet raven, upon its death Dickens had it professionally taxidermied and mounted. Grip even makes an appearance in Dickens’ lesser-known story “Barnaby Rudge.”

That book was reviewed by then literary critic Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote that “[the raven’s] croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” It wasn’t long after this that Poe published his breakout work “The Raven.” The coincidence didn’t escape notice, and Poe was taunted with the refrain “Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge.”

Despite this, “The Raven” was a smash success and Poe enjoyed performing readings at fancy salon parties. He would turn down all the lights and recite the poem with great drama. Everyone referred to him as “the Raven,” but it would only be four years after publishing “The Raven” and gaining worldwide fame that Poe would be found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, dying shortly thereafter.

Today, Grip the Raven, who inspired both Dickens and Poe, can still be seen, proud as ever, in the Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Books Department, along with a great collection of both Poe and Dickens originals and other rare books.

[SOURCE: Atlas Obscura.]