The Poe Shadow

Friend,' 'On Seeing a Monument,' 'The First Day of Summer,' and, of course, 'The Last Day of Summer.' The contents list alone went on for pages. Duponte explained that he had ordered this book from one of the local booksellers.

'We know Monsieur Poe never arrived at Philadelphia to edit Madame Loud's poems,' said Duponte.

'How, monsieur?'

'Because it is quite clear nobody has edited these poems, judging from the terrific numbers of them here included. If somebody had edited them, heaven forgive them, it was not a poet of experience and strong principles regarding the brevity and unity of verse, as we know Monsieur Poe to have been.'

This did seem a fact. I saw now the practical gains that Duponte had made by spending hours in the parlor with Poe's poetry.

I had a doubt about his conclusions, however. 'What if, Monsieur Duponte, Poe did go to Philadelphia and begin to edit the poems, and simply had a disagreement with the poetess, or balked at the quality of her work, and returned to Baltimore?'

'An intelligent question, if also an unobservant one. It would be possible that Poe arrived at the Louds' estate in order to fulfill his obligation, and once there could not agree on some final term of compensation or other fine point of the arrangement. However, we need only consider this possibility briefly before discarding it.'

'I do not see why, monsieur.'

'Search again through the book's contents. I am confident this time you will know where to stop.'

By this point we had taken a table at a restaurant. Duponte leaned over and looked at the title where my finger was pointing. 'Very good, monsieur. Now, read the verses from those pages, if you would.'

The poem was entitled 'The Stranger's Doom.' It began:

They gathered round his dying bed,-
His failing eye was glazed and dim;
But 'mong the many gazers, there
Were none who wept or cared for him.

Oh! 'tis a sad, a fearful thing,
To die with none but strangers near;
To see within the darkened room
No face, no form, to memory dear!

'It sounds rather like the scene, as we know it, at the college hospital when Poe was dying!'

'As our romancer imagines it, yes. Continue, please. I rather like your recitation. Spirited.'

'Thank you, monsieur.' The next verses spoke of the man's lonely demise with 'no clasping hand, no farewell kiss.' It continued with the scene of death:

Yet thus he died-afar from all
Who might have mourned his early doom!
Strange hands his drooping eyelids closed,
And bore him to his nameless tomb.

They laid him where tall forest trees
Cast their dark shadows o'er his bed,
And hurriedly, in silence, heaped
The wild-grass turf above his head.

None prayed, none wept, when all was o'er,
Nor lingered near the sacred spot;
But turned them to the world again,
And soon his very name forgot.

'His nameless tomb… the wild-grass turf of the grave that should be sacred… the quick burial, in which none lingered… surely this is Poe's funeral at the Westminster burial yard! Described very much as I saw it!'

'We have already surmised that Madame Loud is a traveler of some frequency, a probability supported by the subjects of several of her poems, and so we now assume from the details here that she has visited Baltimore sometime in the last two years since Poe's death. Taking a natural interest in the death of a man she had been set to meet right around his demise, she has gathered this description of the funeral-so close to your own remembrance-by visiting the burial yard and questioning its sexton or grave digger, and perhaps individuals at the hospital, as well.'

'Outstanding,' I said.

'We may read closely and come to several conclusions. We may say she shares your own perspective, Monsieur Clark, faulting those who failed to honor him. The poem speaks with no special knowledge of Poe's whereabouts or demeanor prior to his death. We know, then, that Madame Loud followed the tidings of Poe's death from afar, not as one who had only just been separated from Poe with the privilege of hearing any of his plans. Moreover, his doom is that of a stranger, as declared in the poem's title, not of one whom she has known. So we obtain even greater certainty that he did not meet Madame Loud, as he hoped to do, in Philadelphia. This shall only be our first document of proof of Poe's failure to reach that city.'

'Our first, Monsieur Duponte?'