The Poe Shadow

F., if you please) Grey-Esquire-for you are no less Grey than Poe was-and received this letter.'

'Likely this was the last letter ever written to Edgar Poe,' I said sadly, looking again at the name of the addressee, and thinking it sadder still that this last, unseen, and now long-abandoned letter did not even have his name on it and, presumably, went unsigned with the name of that woman who loved him.

'Likely it was,' Duponte said, nodding.

'I would like to have seen it.'

'But you need not. I mean, not for our purposes. This listing in the newspaper demonstrates that, for the period reflected by the postmaster's advertisements, Edgar Poe was not in Philadelphia. For remember how strongly he insisted that Muddy write immediately so the letter would be there at the point of his arrival; if his arrival had occurred, we must not doubt, he would have called there with an eager heart.'

'Therefore we have another reason to confidently testify that Poe did not reach Philadelphia,' Duponte continued. 'But we have many reasons, as we already enumerated, to believe he would have tried, and we may believe him to have come close.'

'But if he tried and did not make it there, what happened?'

'You remember what we have said of Poe's drinking habits.'

'Yes. That Poe was not intemperate but constitutionally intolerant to a degree unknown to most people. The fact that Poe's entire nature could be reversed by a single glass of wine, as attested by numerous people who knew him well, indicated not that Poe was habitually intoxicated, but rather the opposite-that Poe carried a rare sensitivity. Too many persons, in disparate places and times, have testified to this fact for one to believe it is only a polite excuse by those friendly to him. One glass, we have learned, was enough to produce a frightful attack of insensibility which could lead him to other uncertain and uncontrolled behavior. Could this have happened before he arrived to Philadelphia?' I proposed.

'Let us see in a moment. We have now surmised, using all the information available, both that Poe would have in all likelihood attempted to travel to Philadelphia and yet, despite this, that he would not have arrived. The question remains how Poe returns to Baltimore. The Baron, if his reasoning had reached this far, would then proclaim a guess, no doubt, that once Poe was aboard the train to Philadelphia, a rogue accosted him and forced him, for some inconceivable malicious motive, to return on another train to Baltimore, where Poe was later found. The Baron is romantic in the same way the writers of love tales and sketches are. It would make no sense at all for an assailant of any stripe to put Poe back on a train to Baltimore.

'Yet this does not mean that someone else, someone with no malicious motives, did not do so. In fact, it is an activity that a railroad conductor engages in regularly for a variety of reasons, for persons who are unruly, unconscious, sickly, stowaways, and the like. Far more likely than meeting such an aggressor on the train for someone who, like Poe, has previously lived both in the point of origin, Baltimore, and in the destination, Philadelphia -is to meet an acquaintance that is traveling on the same route.

'It is not much more than a guess, you will say, but sometimes that is all that is there, Monsieur Clark, to make sense of events. We speak of the word as inferior to trained practices of reasoning-in fact, to guess is one of the most elevated and indestructible powers of the human mind, a far more interesting art than reasoning or demonstration because it comes to us directly from imagination.

'Now, we shall imagine Poe meeting an acquaintance, rather than an enemy; and that acquaintance, by nature someone who is acquainted with Poe but does not know Poe intimately, inviting him for a drink on the train, or in an intervening railway station. We can imagine Poe, perhaps hoping to procure further financial support for his magazine, accepting the invitation, the insistence from this potential benefactor, of one drink-presented, no doubt, by one unfamiliar enough with Poe as an adult not to know his problems with the intake of spirits. Perhaps, then, a childhood friend, or let us say a classmate from West Point since, more than any other institution, former members of the army are likely to be scattered throughout the different states. Or, perhaps, a classmate from earlier, in Poe's days at college. Perhaps we have heard the name of one of such school-friends already in the facts we have collected.'

'Z. Collins Lee!' I said. 'He was a classmate of Poe's from college and is now the district attorney, and he was the fourth man who attended Poe's funeral.'

'Monsieur Lee is an interesting possibility, a member of the funeral party we have overlooked for three others who have been more readily notable. Consider this. Besides the sexton, Mr. Spence; the undertaker; the grave digger; and the minister, there were exactly four mourners at Poe's small funeral ceremony.'

'Yes-Dr. Snodgrass, Neilson Poe, Henry Herring, and Mr. Z. Collins Lee. Those were all who came.'

'Think of what the first three mourners have in common, Monsieur Clark-that they knew Edgar Poe, of course. But this would be true for many people in Baltimore, certainly more than four individuals, since Poe lived in this city for several years. Former teachers, lovers, friends, other relatives. No. More notable is the common fact that each of the three was involved in some way with Poe's final days. Monsieur Herring was at Ryan's hotel, where Poe was discovered and where, afterward, Snodgrass was called to assist; and Neilson Poe was present at the hospital after being notified of his cousin's condition. The funeral was not announced in advance in the newspapers or by other means and, surely, these three gentlemen could have encouraged more people to attend if they wished.

'Should we not think it highly likely, then, noticing what is true of all three other mourners, that our Z. Collins Lee would also have seen Poe sometime in his last days before his death? Lee is a wealthy man, and indeed as good a candidate as any to have been on the train and, remembering college days, which are always rather debauched, taken a single drink with Poe. Poe, on his part, would know Monsieur Lee was a person of consequence in the field of law, and would seek to be convivial in order to solicit needed support for his magazine campaign. If true, this would instantly explain two facts: not only the incident on the train, but Monsieur Lee's presence at the funeral about which so few people knew. After their meeting, if we continue, Poe begins a bout of insensibility, as you term it, from this single indulgence. This is what our other temperance group, the Richmond Sons of Temperance, to which your Monsieur Benson belonged, did not wish to accept long enough to complete their inquiry. They wished Poe not to drink a drop as much as the other traders in temperance wished him to drink a barrel. Thus Monsieur Benson seemed to you to be hiding something. No doubt he had discovered, after arriving to Baltimore so soon after Poe's death, this small incident.'

'But stay! Back to the one drink on the train. Would not the friend,' I said indignantly, 'whether Mr. Collins Lee or someone unknown to us, tend to Poe when he fell ill?'

'If, as we might envision, this friend knows nothing of Poe's special circumstance in relation to drink; and if Poe, embarrassed by it, attempts as much as possible to suppress his mental and rational degradation for the sake of his personal dignity, then the friend may walk away, having little or no indication of leaving behind a person in distress. Though Poe may still feel abandoned by such an incident, that would be hardly noticeable to the innocent acquaintance. A man like Z. Collins Lee, a much-occupied attorney, might only discover something wrong days later, upon encountering his fellow attorney Neilson Poe and mentioning having seen Neilson's cousin earlier. Recall for a moment how the poet responds, if you would, when Dr. Moran at the Baltimore hospital, thinking to soothe his distressed patient, promises to find Poe's friends?'

'The best thing my best friend could do would be to blow out my brains with a pistol!'

'Yes! A friend, it seems to Poe at this late moment, can only harm him, Monsieur Clark. Can we not tell why? Can we not find the origin of these sentiments in the final footsteps of the poet? He ventures to find Dr. Brooks, and instead finds only homelessness. He meets an old friend on the train, only to feel obligated to partake in a dangerous temptation. He mentions his friend Dr. Snodgrass once he is at Ryan's, only to be confronted with Snodgrass's disapproving stares and obvious, if silent, accusations that Poe is a drunken sot. His own relative Henry Herring stands over him at Ryan's, but rather than bringing him to his own house, sends him alone to a declining hospital.

'Do you believe, we should ask the temperance press as an aside, that Poe would have summoned Dr. Snodgrass, of all people on earth, were he indeed in the midst of this supposed spree? We shall not deny that Monsieur Poe confessed to excessive drinking during periods in his history, and also will readily admit that he established a pattern of reforming himself alternating with a return to excess. Yet it is because of this, as an experienced drinker and reformer, that we can intelligently interpret his specific mention of