Edgar Poe. I wrote this story in careful hand in memorandum books-it took up more than one of these books, for I was forever adding to the impressions; and I then would wait and write more.
Sometimes I'd remove the Malacca cane from its place to feel its weight in my hands, and when alone unsheathe the shimmering blade, and I'd laugh with a start and think of Poe, dressed handsomely on his arrival to Baltimore, the Malacca confidently securing his steps.
Hattie wished to know more about Duponte. She even expressed envy of her aunt for having had a few encounters, though that subject was forbidden from being discussed with Auntie Blum even in the old woman's advanced years. Hattie often asked for my final assessment of him and his character. I could not say. I could formulate nothing close enough. I kept the portrait that had been painted so many years earlier, but what had seemed an exact replica before looked nothing like Duponte to me now or, for that matter, like the Baron. Or, rather, it resembled nowhere near as well Duponte as the images preserved in my mind.
Still, it remained in the library of Glen Eliza, where he had sat. When told of him, supper guests might marvel that there was such a rare man. Here Hattie's interest in the subject of Duponte would diminish. 'It was you there also, dear Quentin, who did it,' Hattie would say; and then to see my stern look at the proposition, she would lightly admonish me: 'Yes, it was, it was you.'
Historical Note
Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty in a Baltimore hospital on October 7, 1849, four days after being found in distress at Ryan's inn and tavern. On September 26 or 27 Poe had left Richmond, Virginia, by steamer on his way to his cottage in New York, with an itinerary that included a stop at Philadelphia to edit a book of poems by a writer named Marguerite St. Leon Loud. Poe asked his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, to send him a letter in Philadelphia addressed to the pseudonym E. S. T. Grey. But Poe, from what we know, never reached Philadelphia or made it home to New York; instead he came on an unannounced and final visit to Baltimore. The details of his whereabouts for the next five days-from his arrival by ship to his appearance at Ryan's on an election day-have been almost entirely lost. This remains one of literary history's most persistent gaps.
A small funeral for Poe was conducted by Reverend William T. D. Clemm at the Westminster Presbyterian burial yard on October 8. There were four mourners in attendance: Poe's relatives Neilson Poe and Henry Herring, his colleague Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, and his former classmate Z. Collins Lee. Reports about the circumstances and causes of his death were hazy and conflicting and were further confused by the publication of a memoir by Rufus Griswold, in which facts and even quotes were fabricated. As the decades passed, theories and rumors about Poe's demise multiplied, told by those who had known Poe and those who had not.
Other rare details referred to are: the specifics of Poe's interaction with and initiation into the Shockoe Hill Sons of Temperance, the gesture of Baltimore
Even as it incorporates as much original research as possible to clarify the events, the novel attempts whenever possible to remain historically faithful to what the characters would have known about Poe around the year 1850, which sometimes differs from what we know now. (Good examples include the year and place of Poe's birth and the status of his adoption by the Allan family, which remained under dispute for decades after Poe's death, in part because Poe himself shaded the details of his biography.) All quotes from newspapers about Poe's death and its surrounding features are from actual nineteenth-century articles, and all quotes attributed to Poe were written or spoken by him. Edgar Allan Poe at age twenty did indeed act as an agent for his future mother-in- law, Maria Clemm, in selling a twenty-year-old slave named Edwin for forty dollars to a black family in Baltimore, one way of removing a slave from the slave trade.
Baltimore and Paris as they would have been around 1850 have been reconstructed from many memoirs, guidebooks, maps, and literary texts of the time. The Baltimore and Paris police departments, Louis-Napoleon in Paris, and Hope H. Slatter and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte in Baltimore are situated within the fictional events of the novel, using the interests and motives history shows them possessing.
Quentin Clark is a fictional character, but in him live some of the viewpoints and words of a few readers who were devotees at a time when Poe's literary output was undervalued and his morals and character frequently vilified. The main sources for Quentin and his relationship with Poe are George Eveleth and Phillip Pendleton Cooke, both of whom exchanged letters with Poe. Many of the characters connected here with Poe and his death, including the sexton George Spence, Neilson Poe, Henry Herring, Henry Reynolds, Dr. John Moran, Benson of the Shockoe Hill Sons of Temperance, and Dr. Snodgrass, are real, and their depictions based on the historical figures. They reflect the different moral and literary agendas that frame the events of Poe's death even to this day.
For more than a century, there have indeed been attempts to identify the 'real' Dupin who inspired Poe's mystery tales. Auguste Duponte and the Baron Dupin are fictional but take their forms from the wide range of 'Dupin' candidates who have been uncovered. This long list includes a French tutor named C. Auguste Dubouchet and a preeminent lawyer, Andre-Marie-Jean-Jacques Dupin.
Though many people have obsessively combed through the death of Poe in attempts to solve its mysteries, Quentin's quest is fictional. Still, his actions and some specific discoveries channel the earliest amateur investigators, who preceded by decades the scholars and theorists who later took up the subject. Maria Clemm, Neilson Poe, and Mr. Benson were quietly endeavoring to collect information immediately after Poe's death, when traces of his final days might still turn up anywhere.
Acknowledgments
This book owes so much to four people: first, to my literary agent and friend, Suzanne Gluck, brilliant and inspirational at every step; and to Gina Centrello of Random House and my editors, Jon Karp and Jennifer Hershey, for their vision, their passion, and their faith.
Superb publishing professionals at my literary agency and publishing houses contributed to all facets of the process. At William Morris Agency, Jon Baker, Georgia Cool, Raffaella De Angelis, Alice Ellerby, Michelle Feehan, Tracy Fisher, Candace Finn, Eugenie Furniss, Alicia Gordon, Yael Katz, Shana Kelly, Rowan Lawton, Erin Malone, Andy McNicol, Emily Nurkin, and Bari Zibrack. At Random House, Avideh Bashirrad, Kate Blum, Sanyu Dillon,
