The Poe Shadow

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.

The Poe Shadow features the details about Poe's death determined to be the most authentic, combined with original discoveries that have never before been published. All of the theories and analysis related to Poe's death in this text use the historical facts and leading evidence. Original research through numerous resources, including archives and depositories in six different states, has aimed to endow the novel with a definitive examination of the subject. Some of the new additions to the knowledge of Poe's death appearing here for the first time include: the fire at N. C. Brooks's house around the time of Poe's Baltimore arrival and attempted visit [3]; the role of George Herring as president of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward and his presence at Ryan's at the period of the election, and the probable connection between this and Henry Herring's previously unexplained arrival at Ryan's on October 3; Joseph Snodgrass's prominence in the temperance committees for the Sunday-law issue and his prime role in repairing the damage of candidate John Watchman's disgrace immediately before the October 3 election; the existence of Philadelphia writer Marguerite St. Leon Loud's 1851 poem "The Stranger's Doom"-possibly the first poem published on the death of Poe, which this novel for the first time identifies as related to Poe, analyzes, and reprints; and the never-before-discovered existence of a letter to "Grey, E. S. F." waiting at the Philadelphia post office in the last weeks of Poe's life (in all likelihood the last letter written to Poe), as well as the original analysis introduced here of the reasons for Poe's strange use of the "Grey" pseudonym.

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 Patriot employees to raise money for Poe's grave site, the preparation of a longer oration by Reverend Clemm for Poe's funeral than was used, the physical description of the Walker note, and the little-known poem about Poe's death by Dr. Snodgrass partially reprinted here.

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, André-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.