The Poe Shadow

he did not deliver his words aloud. For now you cannot receive a full description of what it would have been like- the Baron marching back and forth on the stage as though it were his courtroom in his better days. Imagine the Baron, flashing his unmistakably shining teeth, spreading his hands wide and proclaiming the mystery solved:

29

POE HAD COME to Baltimore at the wrong time. It had not been his plan to visit Baltimore, for he was on his way to his New York cottage to fetch his poor mother-in-law and start his new life. But some ruffians on the ship from Richmond to Baltimore harassed the poet and probably stole his money, so Poe missed the train from Baltimore to travel north. This is shown by the fact that Poe had earned money lecturing in Richmond, but was not found with any just a few days later. Stranded in Baltimore, he noticed himself being followed by the thieves and attempted to take refuge in the house of a kind friend, the editor Dr. N. C. Brooks. However, Dr. Brooks was not home and these craven ruffians, not knowing this and worrying that Poe would report their actions to someone inside, recklessly started a fire that nearly burned down the Brooks home. Poe barely managed to escape with his life.

The poet had money enough left for a small room at the United States Hotel, but not yet enough to take another train to New York or to Philadelphia, where a lucrative literary task awaited him. His new literary magazine, to be called The Stylus, was about to trumpet a new era of genius in American letters-but his enemies wished to stop him from exposing the mediocrity of their own writings. Poe therefore had begun to assume a false name, E. S. T. Grey. He even directed his own sweet mother-in-law-his cherished protector-to write him by this name in Philadelphia 'for fear I should not get the letter,' for he worried that his adversaries would seek to intercept any letters of support or subscriptions to his daring enterprise. Nor did he wish them to know he was going to Philadelphia, certain that they would interfere with his task and destroy his attempt to raise money for his journal.

He found himself trapped in Baltimore during a heated election week. Poe was a literary man. He was above all this. He was above the petty and the grievous actions of politics and of ordinary man. But to the everyday rascal, the great genius is mere fodder.

Poe was easy prey. He had been traveling under his new alias, E. S. T. Grey. On the evening before election day, in the dismal weather that had plagued the city that week, he was snatched from the street. Here began the murder of Poe, perhaps one of the longest murders in history, certainly the longest and most pathetic in the history of literary men. The saddest since the poet Otway was strangled by a few crumbs of bread, the most iniquitous since Marlowe was stabbed through the head, into the very organ of his genius; and all of this turned Edgar Poe into the most slandered man since Lord Byron.

Worse still, Edgar Poe's family-those very people in the world who should have protected him-were among those to make him a target and a victim. One George Herring, who may be sitting among us today, oversaw the Fourth Ward Whigs-and it was at the very place Poe was found, Ryan's Fourth Ward hotel, that these Whigs met. George Herring was a relation to Poe [here the Baron was barking somewhat up the wrong tree, as Henry Herring was a cousin of Poe's by marriage, and it was Henry, not Poe, who was related to George Herring, but to let him continue…] and as a near relation knew Poe was vulnerable. It was not a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen protectors of the names of genius, that Henry Herring was one of the first men to approach Poe when it was announced he was stricken-that Dr. Snodgrass was surprised to find Henry Herring there even before he sent word to him! For the Herrings had selected Poe as a victim-they knew him; he was not to them 'E. S. T. Grey.' George Herring knew from Henry that Edgar Poe was unpredictable when forced to take alcohol or other intoxicants, and determined that he was a vulnerable person to join the wretched voting 'coop.' Knowing that Poe was likely to have severe side effects, George later sent for Henry to usher Poe away to the hospital in order to avoid trouble for the Fourth Ward Whigs. Henry Herring, we know, still resented Poe for having attempted to court his daughter, Elizabeth Herring, with love poems when the two cousins were young at the time Poe lived in Baltimore. Here was Henry Herring's small-minded revenge for an outpouring of pure-hearted playful affection from a young poet.

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. 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. This cane he had intentionally switched for his own cane with an old friend in Richmond; for inside was hidden a weapon-a sword-of the most ferocious cast, and he called to mind his many literary enemies who in the past had challenged him on occasion to duels or otherwise mishandled him. But by the time he knew his danger here in Baltimore, he was too weak even to open its blade-though he would not let go of it either. In fact, he would be found with this very cane clutched to his chest.

The political club had not cooped as many victims as they would have preferred, due to the inclement weather, which kept people out of the streets. They even carried one man to the coop who was a prominent official of the state of Pennsylvania, captured on his way from the theater to Barnum's Hotel, but he was allowed to escape when it was discovered he was a big-wig. So Poe was used again and again, more than usual-and by the time his captors brought him to the Fourth Ward, located at Ryan's tavern, to vote again, he had been abused too much. After being administered an oath by one of the ward election judges, a Henry Reynolds, Poe could not make it across the room and collapsed. He called for his friend Dr. Snodgrass, who arrived in disgust. Snodgrass, a leader of local temperance groups, was certain Poe had indulged himself in drink. The political ruffians, abandoning their captive, were glad to have their foul deed hidden by this assumption. Nor would stern-minded Snodgrass be the last to make this egregious error-the wide world would soon believe noble Poe's death to be the result of moral weakness.

Yet now we have Truth come back to us.

Poe, heavily drugged and deprived of sleep, was in no condition to explain anything; and in the still rational portion of his mind, no doubt the ailing poet was devastated to see that Snodgrass, his supposed friend, looked down at him with disapproval and something like disdain. Poe was carried to a hackney carriage and driven alone to the hospital. There, under the careful ministering of Dr. J. J. Moran and his nurses, he drifted in and out of consciousness. Remembering like some distant vision his attempt to hide his own genius from its attackers through the nondescript name E. S. T. Grey, Poe deliberately told the good doctor as little as he could about himself and the purposes of his travels. But his mind was weak. At one point, no doubt remembering Snodgrass's betrayal, Poe yelled out that the best thing his best friend could do to him would be to blow his brains out with a pistol.

Poe, thinking of the last man who might have noticed his dilemma in time to stop the actions of his murderers-that judge, Henry Reynolds, who'd perfunctorily given the oath to all the voters-called out desperately as though he could still ask for assistance. Reynolds! Reynolds! He repeated this for hours, but it was not truly a cry for help as much as a death knell. 'Oh the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells…Of despair!' Poe's time came to its restless end.

There. Now you alone have heard a speech that never occurred, have witnessed what the Baron Dupin would have said to electrify his audience that evening. It was a speech that, although I had eagerly reduced its pages to ashes, I'd soon be set to announce to the entire world.