Poe shadow (57 page)

“But stay! Back to the one drink on the train. Would not the friend,” I said indignantly, “whether Mr. Collins Lee or someone unknown to us, tend to Poe when he fell ill?”

“If, as we might envision, this friend knows nothing of Poe’s special circumstance in relation to drink; and if Poe, embarrassed by it, attempts as much as possible to suppress his mental and rational degradation for the sake of his personal dignity, then the friend may walk away, having little or no indication of leaving behind a person in distress. Though Poe may still feel abandoned by such an incident, that would be hardly noticeable to the innocent acquaintance. A man like Z. Collins Lee, a much-occupied attorney, might only discover something wrong days later, upon encountering his fellow attorney Neilson Poe and mentioning having seen Neilson’s cousin earlier. Recall for a moment how the poet responds, if you would, when Dr. Moran at the Baltimore hospital, thinking to soothe his distressed patient, promises to find Poe’s friends?”

“The best thing my best friend could do would be to blow out my brains with a pistol!”

“Yes! A friend, it seems to Poe at this late moment, can only harm him, Monsieur Clark. Can we not tell why? Can we not find the origin of these sentiments in the final footsteps of the poet? He ventures to find Dr. Brooks, and instead finds only homelessness. He meets an old friend on the train, only to feel obligated to partake in a dangerous temptation. He mentions his friend Dr. Snodgrass once he is at Ryan’s, only to be confronted with Snodgrass’s disapproving stares and obvious, if silent, accusations that Poe is a drunken sot. His own relative Henry Herring stands over him at Ryan’s, but rather than bringing him to his own house, sends him alone to a declining hospital.

“Do you believe, we should ask the temperance press as an aside, that Poe would have summoned Dr.
Snodgrass,
of all people on earth, were he indeed in the midst of this supposed spree? We shall not deny that Monsieur Poe confessed to excessive drinking during periods in his history, and also will readily admit that he established a pattern of reforming himself alternating with a return to excess. Yet it is because of this, as an experienced drinker and reformer, that we can intelligently interpret his specific mention of Snodgrass made to Monsieur Walker at Ryan’s—we can
read
this mention with proper spectacles. Were Poe in the middle of a binge, were he breaking his pledge, the last person he would name is a principal leader of the local temperance movement like Snodgrass. Moreover, Poe may have overheard in a conversation around Ryan’s, while there, that Monsieur Walker was attached in the capacity of a printer to the
Sun,
so that Walker would be a direct witness to his situation. Moreover again, had Poe read any numbers of the recent papers, he would see that Snodgrass had only one day earlier been forced to renounce his organization’s candidate, John Watchman, for drinking, and would be seeking to counterbalance this event as would any politician. No, Poe said
Snodgrass’s
name to
Walker
as a message, as if to remark in so many words: ‘I have not been in the cups; in fact, I have been so moderate, if not quite wholly abstemious, that the one name I shall single out to come to my aid will be an avid and strict temperance man, and I shall do so to a fellow who works for the press.’”

Duponte continued: “Back to our train. Poe has separated from his friend—who, let us suppose, leaves the train first, or merely returns to a different carriage. Distressed at his physical shakiness, Poe is observed by a solicitous railroad conductor, who determines that Poe has become ill—
how,
the conductor cannot know. This conductor for whatever reason presumes Poe is more likely to have some persons as caretakers back in Baltimore, or Poe perhaps mumbles something interpreted in this fashion by the conductor. The conductor, seeing this as an opportunity to be benevolent, places Poe in an opposite-moving train at the next
depot
(as I notice Americans always call your stations), perhaps at Havre de Grace.

“With this in mind, we may think of the facts at the hospital with more confidence. Poe replies to the doctor’s questions that he does not know
how
he has come to Baltimore or
why
—he cannot explain these facts. It is not because of successive days of bingeing. Nor is it because he has been given opiates by political fiends, as the Baron says. It is because Poe refers to his
second
arrival to Baltimore, after he had left, and had been in a cloud of confusion about how he ended up on a train back. We have thus countered the temperance press’s claims about Poe, as well as the Baron’s argument that Poe had to be
kidnapped
by a political club.”

I could see how we had demonstrated the temperance claims untrue, but had not related this to the Baron’s argument. I proposed the question to Duponte.

“Do you recall the Baron’s conclusion on this point, Monsieur Clark, as you wrote it down in your book?”

I did.

The political rogues of the Fourth Ward Whigs, who kept their headquarters in the den of the Vigilant Fire Company’s engine house across from Ryan’s, placed the helpless poet in a cellar with other unfortunates
—
vagrants, strangers, loafers (as Americans say), foreigners. This explains why Poe, a heartily well-known author, was not seen by anyone over the course of these few days.

“Do you see, touching the issue of recognition, the Baron’s misplaced logic? As a result of the Baron’s own actions in relation to the press of Baltimore and elsewhere, and because of the numerous biographical volumes and articles since Poe’s death, Poe’s portrait has been widely circulated among the masses and his visage becomes
known
even as his death has begun to be studied. But before this, when Poe was alive, he would have been recognized, as a rule, only by literary fellows and avid readers, who at the very least would have been somewhat less likely to be out in the street and more likely to spend their daylight hours indoors, in offices, libraries, and reading rooms. Thus, that Poe was not reported to be seen over the course of these days becomes far less surprising, if even at all notable. Moreover, as he was a visitor to Baltimore, in an unannounced stay, no one would have anticipated seeing Poe around the city, even among his relations. This, if we think of the way of the human mind and eye,
greatly reduces recognition.
Have you ever had occasion to notice how, when you unexpectedly happened upon a close friend in a locale where you did not expect to see him, some greater than usual amount of time was required to register the identity of this person in your brain—indeed, more time than if you had seen someone with whom you were far less intimate? For the latter’s status remains closer to the
stranger
on the street, and thus more easily identified among them.

“This is a general fault that the newspapers make, too, Monsieur Clark. Re-peruse the New York
Herald
extract and you will see.”

I opened my memorandum book, where I had written the testimony I had planned to give to the court that day. The relevant portion from the week of Poe’s death, written by their correspondent in Baltimore, read as follows:

On last Wednesday, election day, he was found near the Fourth Ward polls laboring under an attack of mania a potu, and in a most shocking condition. Being recognized by some of our citizens, he was placed in a carriage and conveyed to the Washington Hospital, where every attention has been bestowed on him.

“You notice the fault, don’t you, Monsieur Clark? The correspondent from Baltimore tries hard to maintain facts in their true form. For instance, it is quite accurate and specific that Poe was
placed
in a carriage by others who did not drive with him, as we shall witness shortly. And yet we know, on the other hand, that Poe was not recognized by citizens. This has been written down for us by a first-hand witness.”

“Do you mean the note from Walker to Dr. Snodgrass, which we found among Snodgrass’s papers?”

“I do. Walker writes, ‘There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan’s 4th Ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress’ and so on. To Walker, Poe is ‘a gentleman’; it is only through some communication by Poe of his proper name that Walker knows who to tell Snodgrass is in distress. Indeed, Walker’s language—‘who goes under the
cognomen
of Edgar A. Poe’—suggests he has some suspicions that the man is called something else entirely! As though it were an alias. Should he not write, ‘The gentleman Edgar A. Poe appears in great distress’ instead?”

At Duponte’s request, I continued reciting to him the Baron’s account of Poe’s last days.

“The miscreants probably drugged Poe with various opiates. When election day came, they took him around the city to various polling stations. They forced him to vote for their candidates at each polling venue and, to make the whole farce more convincing, the poet was made to wear different outfits each time. This explains why he was found in ragged, soiled clothes never meant to fit him. He was permitted by the rogues to keep his handsome Malacca cane, however, for he was in such a weakened state that even those ruffians recognized that the cane would be needed to prop him up…. In fact, he would be found with this very cane….”

Duponte, listening to this, pointed out with some satisfaction that the Baron’s argument, though clever, seeks to find a reason for Poe’s location at an election polling station and for Poe’s clothing, rather than to use reason to find the truth behind that location and appearance.

“Without a home, in a place where his family once lived, where some of his family lived still, the effect on Poe’s senses to be back in Baltimore, where he was once
most at home
—combined with the effects of his single indulgence in the company of Z. Collins Lee or another friend—is to make him now feel utterly alone. Without shelter he has no choice but to walk through the dreadful rain looking for it, thus soaking his clothing and exposing him to the onset of any number of additional maladies. You have already seen first-hand, I believe, the special quality of clothing most people fail to consider. When soaked, we say of our clothes, ‘My shirt is useless, it is ruined.’ Unlike any other ‘ruined’ article, its desolation, shall we say, like the great Sphinx, is temporary; you have seen that these special qualities allow Poe to trade his own outfit for dry clothes, which of course
do not fit him as does a usual tailored outfit.
This occurred likely near Ryan’s. We may note that of all the detailed descriptions of Poe’s clothes upon his discovery, for all the adjectives chosen to show his dejection, none call the dress
wet,
though this should be the first word otherwise used. The special cane with the expensively designed sword we know Poe did not sell or trade—for even in his state of mind he remembered that it did not belong to him. He had to take care to return it to its owner, Dr. Carter, in Richmond. It was his dignity, not his fear of violence, that kept his friend’s cane clutched to his chest.

“In considering Poe at Ryan’s hotel, we now reach the Baron’s suspicion of the Herring family, George and Henry. It will not do, as the Baron would have it, to confuse collateral events with the subject of our inquiry. As you have observed in your report to me after hearing the account of Dr. Snodgrass, when Dr. Snodgrass saw Poe’s condition, he walked upstairs to secure a room for Poe before sending for Poe’s relatives, whom he knew lived in the vicinity. Yet no sooner had Snodgrass done this than Henry Herring was standing at the foot of the stairs—
before
Snodgrass had sent for him. Snodgrass, occupied with his private concerns and with the state of Poe’s health, did not seem to think much of this startling fact when relating it in your presence. But we know better.

“George Herring, Henry’s uncle, has been identified as the president of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward, the group who used Ryan’s hotel on several occasions in the weeks before the election for a rally, including once two days before the election. The Baron makes the assumption that after such efforts, George Herring would have also certainly been at Ryan’s, this Whig fortress, on election day itself, the day Poe was found. In this his reasoning is sound. However, the Baron then determines that Henry and George Herring, knowing that Edgar Poe experienced bad effects from any intoxicant, conspired to chose him to ‘coop’ and thus become one of their voters to be brought throughout the city.”

“Still, it is remarkably coincidental, I would venture to say suspicious, Monsieur Duponte, if George and Henry Herring were both present at Ryan’s before Dr. Snodgrass even called for Poe’s relatives!”

“There is one coincidental event there, Monsieur Clark, and this one in fact is rather merely a coincidence, and renders the other occurrence quite natural. The coincidence I mean is George Herring’s presence in the same place that Poe is discovered. George Herring is here because he is the president of the Fourth Ward Whigs, and Ryan’s is the Fourth Ward polling station on that day. His presence is natural. Why Poe is present here we will address in a moment. Henry Herring is Poe’s cousin by marriage, to a woman who has now been deceased for some years; and whose decease was followed, very shortly after, by another marriage, contributing, we can presume, to Poe’s characterization of Monsieur Henry in a letter as a man of ‘unprincipled character.’ Generally speaking, then, Poe ends up in quite a threefold busy place—that is, a hotel, tavern, and polling station—with a man who is the uncle of a
former
cousin. I fear this is not in itself so much a coincidence as the Baron would like.

“At all events, the Baron proposes that George Herring selects Poe to be a member of this voting coop because Monsieur George possesses from his family knowledge of Poe’s vulnerability when under the influence of even normal intoxicants. A notorious idea! Because Monsieur George is likely to know of Poe’s unpredictability with intoxicants, that would be the precise reason not to choose Poe for a coop, where only men who could tolerate alcohol well would do!