Poe shadow (60 page)

A small funeral for Poe was conducted by Reverend William T. D. Clemm at the Westminster Presbyterian burial yard on October 8. There were four mourners in attendance: Poe’s relatives Neilson Poe and Henry Herring, his colleague Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, and his former classmate Z. Collins Lee. Reports about the circumstances and causes of his death were hazy and conflicting and were further confused by the publication of a memoir by Rufus Griswold, in which facts and even quotes were fabricated. As the decades passed, theories and rumors about Poe’s demise multiplied, told by those who had known Poe and those who had not.

The Poe Shadow
features the details about Poe’s death determined to be the most authentic, combined with original discoveries that have never before been published. All of the theories and analysis related to Poe’s death in this text use the historical facts and leading evidence. Original research through numerous resources, including archives and depositories in six different states, has aimed to endow the novel with a definitive examination of the subject. Some of the new additions to the knowledge of Poe’s death appearing here for the first time include: the fire at N. C. Brooks’s house around the time of Poe’s Baltimore arrival
and attempted visit;
^*3
the role of George Herring as president of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward and his presence at Ryan’s at the period of the election, and the probable connection between this and Henry Herring’s previously unexplained arrival at Ryan’s on October 3; Joseph Snodgrass’s prominence in the temperance committees for the Sunday-law issue and his prime role in repairing the damage of candidate John Watchman’s disgrace immediately before the October 3 election; the existence of Philadelphia writer Marguerite St. Leon Loud’s 1851 poem “The Stranger’s Doom”—possibly the first poem published on the death of Poe, which this novel for the first time identifies as related to Poe, analyzes, and reprints; and the never-before-discovered existence of a letter to “Grey, E. S. F.” waiting at the Philadelphia post office in the last weeks of Poe’s life (in all likelihood the last letter written to Poe), as well as the original analysis introduced here of the reasons for Poe’s strange use of the “Grey” pseudonym.

Other rare details referred to are: the specifics of Poe’s interaction with and initiation into the Shockoe Hill Sons of Temperance, the gesture of Baltimore
Patriot
employees to raise money for Poe’s grave site, the preparation of a longer oration by Reverend Clemm for Poe’s funeral than was used, the physical description of the Walker note, and the little-known poem about Poe’s death by Dr. Snodgrass partially reprinted here.

Even as it incorporates as much original research as possible to clarify the events, the novel attempts whenever possible to remain historically faithful to what the characters would have known about Poe around the year 1850, which sometimes differs from what we know now. (Good examples include the year and place of Poe’s birth and the status of his adoption by the Allan family, which remained under dispute for decades after Poe’s death, in part because Poe himself shaded the details of his biography.) All quotes from newspapers about Poe’s death and its surrounding features are from actual nineteenth-century articles, and all quotes attributed to Poe were written or spoken by him. Edgar Allan Poe at age twenty did indeed act as an agent for his future mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, in selling a twenty-year-old slave named Edwin for forty
dollars to a black family in Baltimore, one way of removing a slave from the slave trade.

Baltimore and Paris as they would have been around 1850 have been reconstructed from many memoirs, guidebooks, maps, and literary texts of the time. The Baltimore and Paris police departments, Louis-Napoleon in Paris, and Hope H. Slatter and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte in Baltimore are situated within the fictional events of the novel, using the interests and motives history shows them possessing.

Quentin Clark is a fictional character, but in him live some of the viewpoints and words of a few readers who were devotees at a time when Poe’s literary output was undervalued and his morals and character frequently vilified. The main sources for Quentin and his relationship with Poe are George Eveleth and Phillip Pendleton Cooke, both of whom exchanged letters with Poe. Many of the characters connected here with Poe and his death, including the sexton George Spence, Neilson Poe, Henry Herring, Henry Reynolds, Dr. John Moran, Benson of the Shockoe Hill Sons of Temperance, and Dr. Snodgrass, are real, and their depictions based on the historical figures. They reflect the different moral and literary agendas that frame the events of Poe’s death even to this day.

For more than a century, there have indeed been attempts to identify the “real” Dupin who inspired Poe’s mystery tales. Auguste Duponte and the Baron Dupin are fictional but take their forms from the wide range of “Dupin” candidates who have been uncovered. This long list includes a French tutor named C. Auguste Dubouchet and a preeminent lawyer, André-Marie-Jean-Jacques Dupin.

Though many people have obsessively combed through the death of Poe in attempts to solve its mysteries, Quentin’s quest is fictional. Still, his actions and some specific discoveries channel the earliest amateur investigators, who preceded by decades the scholars and theorists who later took up the subject. Maria Clemm, Neilson Poe, and Mr. Benson were quietly endeavoring to collect information immediately after Poe’s death, when traces of his final days might still turn up anywhere.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book owes so much to four people: first, to my literary agent and friend, Suzanne Gluck, brilliant and inspirational at every step; and to Gina Centrello of Random House and my editors, Jon Karp and Jennifer Hershey, for their vision, their passion, and their faith.

Superb publishing professionals at my literary agency and publishing houses contributed to all facets of the process. At William Morris Agency, Jon Baker, Georgia Cool, Raffaella De Angelis, Alice Ellerby, Michelle Feehan, Tracy Fisher, Candace Finn, Eugenie Furniss, Alicia Gordon, Yael Katz, Shana Kelly, Rowan Lawton, Erin Malone, Andy McNicol, Emily Nurkin, and Bari Zibrack. At Random House, Avideh Bashirrad, Kate Blum, Sanyu Dillon, Benjamin Dreyer, Richard Elman, Megan Fishmann, Laura Ford, Jonathan Jao, Jennifer Jones, Vincent La Scala, Libby McGuire, Gene Mydlowski, Grant Neumann, Jack Perry, Tom Perry, Jillian Quint, Carol Schneider, Judy Sternlight (at Modern Library), Beck Stvan, Simon Sullivan, Bonnie Thompson, and Jane von Mehren. I have also received support and insight from Chris Lynch at Simon & Schuster Audio, Stuart Williams and Jason Arthur at Harvill Secker UK, Elena Ramirez at Seix Barral, and Francesca Cristoffanini at Rizzoli.

Thanks to those who have helped this book progress through reading and reinforcing. This includes, as always, my family; my parents, Susan and Warren Pearl, and my brother, Ian Pearl; as well as Benjamin Cavell, Joseph Gangemi, Julia Green, Anna Guillemin, Gene Koo, Julie Park, Cynthia Posillico, Gustavo Turner, and Scott Weinger; and Tobey Wiggins, who lent amazing encouragement and supportiveness.

Additional thanks: the archivists and librarians at Boston Public Library, Harvard University, Iowa University, Duke University, Maryland Historical Society, Enoch Pratt Public Library of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, New York Public Library, the Library of Virginia and the University of Virginia. Also, for generous input related to Poe and specific areas of nineteenth-century life and culture: Ralph Clayton, Dr. John Emsley, Allan Holtzman, Jeffrey Meyers, Scott Peeples, Edward Papenfuse, Jeff Savoye, Kenneth Silverman, and Dr. Katherine Watson.

Further appreciation to the generations of scholars who have assembled our current knowledge about Poe’s life, including the exceptional Burton Pollin (who first noticed the appearance, mentioned in this novel, of the initials “E. S. T. G.” in the
Broadway Journal
). A note of praise for the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website (eapoe.org), created by Jeff Savoye, which should set the standard for all online literary resources. Finally, thanks to the staffs and supporters of the Poe homes and museums in Baltimore, Fordham, Philadelphia, and Richmond, as well as the Westminster burial yard in Baltimore, for sustaining the story of Poe as a living experience and allowing all of us a chance to visit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
ATTHEW
P
EARL
is the author of
The Dante Club,
a
New York Times
and international bestseller, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s
Inferno
(translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. The Dante Club
has been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries around the world. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He can be reached via his website,
www.matthewpearl.com.

ALSO BY MATTHEW PEARL

The Dante Club

The Poe Shadow
is a work of fiction. Many of the characters are inspired by historical figures; others are entirely imaginary creations of the author’s. Apart from the historical figures, any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Matthew Pearl

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN-13: 978-1-58836-517-0

eISBN-10: 1-58836-517-4

www.atrandom.com

v1.0

FOOTNOTES

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^*1
Since the above was in type, a scholar’s preliminary comparison of Rufus W. Griswold’s memoir with surviving manuscripts of Poe’s letters has determined that this sentence, along with dozens of others, had been invented by the biographer as part of an effort to depict his subject as ungenerous to friends. Unfortunately, I had no means of acquiring this knowledge at the time I discovered the reference during my stay in the Maryland penitentiary.
Return to text.

^*2
I implored Duponte to expand on this ill-omened statement in full; he relented only under the condition that I never write of it publicly. If I am at a future date able to relate Duponte’s revelations touching this point, it must be at a site far more private.
Return to text.

^*3
The notion that Poe tried to visit Dr. Brooks’s house has been under dispute. Poe’s unsuccessful attempt to visit Brooks was first reported by nineteenth-century biographer George Woodberry. Later scholars objected on the grounds that Woodberry did not name a source. In addition to the fire, I have been able to uncover Woodberry’s unmentioned source as Brooks’s son.
Return to text.