The Poe Shadow

world who knew me as she did. The law practice that my father's good name helped build was sinking into extinction. My friendship with Peter was no more. At least I'd not made a horrible mistake with Duponte, too. I felt, returning home from Benson's, as if I had just awoken from a deep sleep.

How much trust, how much confidence, how much time I had placed in Duponte and his own confluences with Poe's tales! If he were but more confrontational against the Baron Dupin's activities; if he but provided more reason to think he progressed as well as the Baron Dupin; if only he did not stand idly by while the Baron Dupin spouted his own claims; if he were to take these measures upon himself, I would naturally be able to eject these dangerous revolutions in my thoughts!

I watched Duponte as he sat in my living room. I looked directly at him and questioned him as to his ongoing submission to the Baron Dupin's aggressiveness. I asked him why he stood by as the Baron Dupin all but claimed victory in our contest. I had begun to recount this conversation prematurely at an earlier chapter. You remember. You'll recall I suggested boxing the Baron's ears, to which Duponte noted that it might not assist our cause.

'Just so,' said I. 'It would remind him, I should think, that he is not alone playing this game. He believes, in the infinite deception of his brain, that he has already won, Monsieur Duponte!'

'He has subscribed to a mistaken belief, then. The situation is quite reversed. The Baron, I'm afraid for him, has already lost. He has come to the end, as have I.'

That is when my other fears suspended themselves. 'What do you mean?'

'Poe drank,' said Duponte. 'But he was not a drinking man. In fact, he was quite the opposite. On average, we can be confident he took less stimulus than any common man on the street.'

'Yes?'

'He was not intemperate, but he was intolerant, constitutionally, to spirits, to an extreme degree never witnessed by most ordinary persons.'

I sat upright. 'How do you know this, Monsieur Duponte?'

'If only people would see, rather than just look. You will no doubt remember one of the few obituaries written by an acquaintance, rather than by a reporter. Therein was a report that, with a single glass of wine, Monsieur Poe's ‘whole nature was reversed.' Many would understand this to mean that Poe was habitually intoxicated, a reckless and constant drunkard. In fact, it is just opposite. The detractors have proved too much in this arena, and therefore prove nothing. It is likely-nay, almost certain-that Poe possessed a rare sensitivity to drink that would almost at an instant change and paralyze him. In a state of mental disarray, and in the company of low fellows, no doubt Poe sometimes followed this with further drinking, especially when in the midst of your aggressive southern conviviality, which requires that one not refuse such offers. But this last fact is irrelevant to us. It was the first drink, almost the first sip, that would send him into an attack of insensibility. Not madness from excessive drinking, but temporary madness from not being able to drink as does the next fellow.'

'So, on the day he was discovered at Ryan's, monsieur, you believe he had taken some drink?'

'Perhaps one glass of indulgence. Not as the temperance writers would have it, who look upon human actions for their morality. I shall show you how they operate-indeed how they were operating at the very time that interests us.'

Duponte rummaged through one of his incomprehensibly organized piles of newspapers and brought out an issue of the Sun from October 2, 1849, the day before Poe was found.

'Do you know the name John Watchman, Monsieur Clark?'

At first I responded that I knew no one by that name. A vague memory recurred, and I corrected myself. The day I had been chasing after the Phantom-Mr. Benson of the Richmond Sons of Temperance-I had looked for him under the street in one of the city's popular rum-holes. 'Yes, I thought this Watchman was the Phantom because of a similar coat. Watchman was pointed out to me by another patron as one dangerously deep in the cups.'

'Not surprising. Monsieur Watchman's hopes, his ambitions, for notoriety had been dashed not long before that. Here: a notice that would have interested you little two years ago, but may be of great value now.'

Duponte pointed to an article in the October 2 newspaper. The temperance Sunday law had been a prominent issue in that state election, though, as Duponte had surmised, I'd had no particular feeling about it at the time. I had seen examples enough of the effects of drinking to sympathize with the ideas of the temperance cause. But it seemed hard to squeeze together one's energies into a single issue like temperance, to the exclusion of all other moral principles.

The Friends of the Sunday Law, an organization comprising the Baltimore temperance leaders of most consequence, had announced their own candidate for the House of Delegates to support their push for a Sunday law restricting the sale of alcohol: Mr. John Watchman. But Watchman was soon seen drinking at various taverns around town, and on October 2 the Friends withdrew their support of Watchman. Most interesting was the man who spoke in this column for the Friends of the Sunday Law committee: Dr. Joseph Snodgrass!

'This was only one day before Snodgrass would be called to Poe's side at Ryan's!' I said.

'Now you see the state of mind Snodgrass would possess. As a leader of this temperance faction, he had just been personally humiliated by his own candidate. Monsieur Watchman had been weak, no doubt. However, there is little doubt that the Friends of the Sunday Law suspected that Watchman had been purposely tempted by enemies of their political endeavor. Now, I should ask you also to look at the American and Commercial Advertiser from one week earlier to get a better view of Ryan's inn and tavern in the days before Snodgrass and Edgar Poe met there.'

The first cutting Duponte pointed out to me spoke of

a large and enthusiastic meeting of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward of the city, held at Ryan's Hotel.

'Then Ryan's was not only a polling station,' I said, 'it was also a place for Whigs of that ward to gather. And the place,' I sighed, 'fated to be Poe's last passage outside a hospital bed.' I thought of the group of Fourth Ward Whigs Duponte and I had observed at the den above the Vigilant engine house, near Ryan's. That was their private place; Ryan's, it appeared, their room for more public gatherings.

'Let us step backward even further,' said Duponte, 'looking at several days before…when this meeting by the Fourth Ward Whigs was advertised. Read aloud. And note most of all how it is signed below.'

I did.

A Mass Meeting of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward will take place at Ryan's Hotel, Lombard Street, opposite the Vigilant Engine House, on Tuesday. Geo. W. Herring, Pres.

Another extract advertised a meeting for October 1, two days before the election, at 7 1/2 o'clock, again at Ryan's Hotel, across from the Engine House, with Full attendance earnestly requested; this one was also signed Geo. W. Herring, Pres.

'George Herring, president,' I read again. I remembered Tindley, the burly doorkeeper, obsequiously answering his superior at the Whig club: Mr. George…Mr. George. 'The man we saw, that president, it was his Christian name that was George, not his surname…George Herring. Surely he is a relation to Henry Herring, Poe's cousin by marriage! Henry Herring, who was the very man who came first to Poe's side after Snodgrass and refused to board him in his own home.'

'Now you see that whatever Poe drank was a small part only of what transpired in his final days, but still is of importance to us to place all else in order. It helps now that we are able to comprehend the whole sequence of events.'

'Monsieur Duponte,' I said, putting down the newspaper, 'do you mean that you do comprehend the whole now? That we are ready to share it with the world before the Baron Dupin speaks out?'

Duponte rose from his chair and walked to the window. 'Soon,' he said.

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