Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"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!

"But, leaving behind the Baron's tales of the coop, we return to our so-called coincidences. Given that George Herring would have some knowledge and perhaps acquaintance with Poe through Henry Herring, upon seeing Poe in distress, Monsieur George would almost certainly send for Monsieur Henry Herring. Our mere coincidence, the presence of George Herring and Edgar Poe in the same tri-purpose building, gives rise very naturally to our second incident, the odd arrival of Henry Herring before Snodgrass has called for him.