Not Quite Dead (12 page)

“Of course. Of course. It all comes back to me now. On the Irish question. Ripping title, grabs the American reader by the throat and simply demands to be read—is that not true, Mr. Bailey?”

“Quite so,” replied Mr. Bailey. “It is an arresting argument as well, and quite well put, with some reservations.”

I assure you, gentlemen,” said Devlin, who was, like any man in his position, ready to snap at any morsel of encouragement, “that the
speeches upon which the text is based have been received most enthusiastically by the public.”

“I have no doubt of that, Mr. Devlin. No doubt. None at all.” Topham flipped through the pages as though to refresh his memory. “An extraordinary piece of work, really. It directs public attention to a most lamentable situation in America, in a style positively throbbing with manly energy. An indictment of racialism in all its myriad forms. Your central thesis reaches to the heart of the rot infecting America today. A remarkable effort, sir, a stunning piece of work and I congratulate you for it.”

“That is high praise indeed, sor, coming from a man such as yourself. I am very grateful.”

“And you well deserve it. Alas, I fear that
White Niggers of America
is not for us.” Topham said this with an air of sad helplessness, as though someone other than himself had made the decision.

“I am confused as to why, sor, given your recent praise.”

“Bad timing, I am afraid. The market for racial issues has passed its peak. The American reader is sick of doom and gloom on the subject of race. The reader is looking for something more positive.”

“Positive? What could possibly be positive about the situation?”

“You raise a serious question, sir, and it deserves a serious answer. Americans are well aware of the plight of the Irish and the brutal treatment you people have been subjected to. However, that being said, it is time to ask ourselves: What about the
other
Irishman—the Irishman who picks himself up by his bootstraps and makes a go of it, without resorting to beggary and drunkenness and crime? Indeed, I can see a title now:
The Other Irish
. How does that strike you, Mr. Devlin?”

“It matters little how it strikes me, sor, for it is a completely different book from the one you have in your hands. In fact, the book you describe sounds as though it could be written by Mr. Dickens or someone like him.”

“Very perceptive, Mr. Devlin. I see that you are a man who keeps in touch with current trends on the ground. From what I have read here, I believe you are capable of telling Americans about the other Irish. I believe that, with proper guidance, you can make the public care about the Irish in the way that Mr. Dickens inspires us to care about the poor.”

“Do you not publish Mr. Dickens already, sor?”

“That is true, my friend. Yet at the same time Topham and Lea is searching for an
American
Dickens—don’t you see? A Charles Dickens, not of London, but of Philadelphia.”

“I do not know if that would suit my style, sor,” replied Devlin.

“I understand your hesitation, young man. It is a challenge, that is certain. Perhaps you might wish to discuss the matter with me at another time, over drinks. I think there is much we could accomplish together.”

“That would be most welcome, sor,” said Devlin. “I have long had a strong feeling for Mr. Dickens.”

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Baltimore

I
stood at the main gates of the stately old Burial Ground, the city’s preferred garden in which to be planted for eternity. Within it slept three generations of Poes, including Eddie’s grandfather, Major David Poe, quartermaster general for the city and a hero of the Revolution.

The morning was suitably bleak. A chill mist smelling of coal smoke clung to the cobbles of La Fayette Street as in the distance I beheld the funeral procession—if it could be called a procession, for it consisted of a lone hack containing the Reverend Clemm and Neilson Poe, and a lone hearse containing the deceased. Where were the relatives? Where was the generous uncle who had funded the casket? Where were the grieving cousins who had contributed to the burial, not to mention his literary colleagues—Hawthorne, Melville, Holmes? Where, for that matter, were the young women who thronged the hospital, eager for a lock of his hair?

Given his historic ancestors, not to mention that the deceased was one of the most celebrated—rather, notorious—writers in America, the ensuing ceremony seemed downright secretive.

The Poe family plot lay to the southeast of the Burial Ground, a favored location providing a view of the rising sun on Judgment Day. Even better, it sat as far as possible from the north side, home to stillborn infants, bastards, and suicides, who did not enter through the gates but were passed over the fence.

The site of Eddie’s grave pit contained not a single flower, let alone a wreath. Reverend Clemm, wearing what did not appear to be his best frock, took a position at one end of the elongated hole alongside second cousin Neilson, suitably attired in a beaver hat and mourning ribbon.

Two gravediggers lifted the long wooden box from the hearse and set it down, with its lid open to reveal the closed mahogany casket
within, courtesy of the absent uncle. Then Mr. Clemm began the service, and I noticed that the funeral party had acquired two additional members.

One was, oddly, the supervisor of the burial ground—a tidy Negro in a shabby suit that was once black, but now appeared almost silver when the light hit it in a certain way. Rather than retire to his quarters in the usual fashion, he remained at the graveside, hat in hand, head bowed, reciting the Lord’s Prayer like a fellow mourner.

The second previously unnoticed figure stood by a mausoleum several plots away, the cost of whose construction would easily have paid for a comfortable house and garden.

She was dressed in full mourning: all silk and crepe, with a cameo broach at her throat and a spoon bonnet that concealed the top part of her face, revealing only an oval chin and a delicately formed mouth. The fingers of one gloved hand held a red rose; the other hand grasped a tear bottle, with which she collected the precious liquid, drop by drop. Otherwise, she remained as still as the infant statue by her side.

The burial service was as brief as a Methodist can manage, and the prayers took little time at all. Protestants do not pray for the welfare of the dead but to comfort the living, and on this occasion there were few that needed comforting.

As Reverend Clemm began the benediction and my fellow mourners closed their eyes in communion with their Maker, the woman by the mausoleum chose this moment to approach the grave, slowly and calmly, seemingly for the purpose of placing the rose upon the coffin. Mysterious, to be certain, but readily explicable—no doubt one of his many female admirers had got wind of the ceremony, and had chosen to honor the occasion in suitably, almost laughably, Poe-like fashion.

Meanwhile, at a sign from the burial supervisor, the two grave diggers approached the pit, each with a heavy rope over one shoulder and the lid of the coffin under the other arm.

As they reached the gravesite, Eddie’s female mourner moved quickly and smoothly ahead of the gravediggers, extending the rose at arm’s length as though about to drop it into the grave.

Then an astonishing thing happened. Rather than drop the flower, she reached down with both hands—and lifted the lid of the casket!

Reverend Clemm stopped in mid-sentence. Neilson Poe appeared understandably alarmed, given Eddie’s supposedly severed jugular. As for me, who had the most to lose of anyone, I nearly succumbed to incontinence over the exposure to come: not only was it the wrong corpse, but I had failed to cut the throat as promised—and had collected my fee. I was not only a fraud, I was a common thief!

Nobody stirred or spoke as she stared into the open coffin. For an empty eternity, my heart like a fist against my ribs with each fevered beat, I awaited the screams of horror and denunciation, and my ruin.

The screams did not come.

She turned and looked calmly in my direction—or so it seemed, though I could not see her eyes beneath the veil. Then she spoke, in a Virginia accent with its liquid vowels and Old English character. “He appears as though he were sleeping,” she said. “I have never seen him more natural.” Then she turned back to the coffin, dropped the flower inside, and gently closed the lid.

Only then did I realize that I had seen this woman before, in the dining room of the Exchange Hotel.

As for my fellow mourners, I do not think the appearance of a dancing skeleton could have produced a deeper chill in the atmosphere. Though it was easy to scoff at Eddie’s female following, the appearance of one of them served as a reminder that not one soul in attendance liked Eddie Poe, much less loved him. On the contrary, from the tone of the ceremony it seemed as though every man present had a reason to be glad that he was dead.

Using their ropes as slings, the attendants lowered the box into the grave pit, fetched shovels, and had barely begun to fill the pit when the preacher snapped shut his Bible and the funeral party dispersed.

I alone remained, for I wished to introduce myself to the burial supervisor—whose name was Mr. Spence—to inquire as to his interest in the deceased.

He was eager to comply. “Yes, sah. Mr. Poe used to now and then wander into the Burial Ground,” he said. “I recollect plainly his looks and manners, hunting in and out among the plots. He would stand looking at the graves of the Poes, then wander about the others, examining dates and inscriptions with great interest.”

Mr. Spence gestured in the general vicinity and we began to trace Poe’s steps on his solitary visits: past the Masonic emblems, the
death’s heads, symbols of the I.O.O.F, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Ancient Order of Knights of Mystic Chain; past rows of white marble, followed by older stones of black slate, like a mouthful of bad teeth.

As you are now so once was I
As I am now, so you must be
Prepare for death & follow me.

“He was always very courteous to me, sah, very gentlemanly he was,” continued Mr. Spence. “That is why I stayed for the service.”

“The mysterious lady—had you seen her before?”

“Only once, sah, and it was not more than one week ago. Fine, fine lady, by her clothes and carriage. He showed her the family plot, and they talked quietlike for a considerable time. When she spoke I thought I heard a accent from somewhere round Norfolk.”

The lady was Elmira Royster. There could be no doubt about it.

Eddie had taken a fancy to Elmira Royster about a year before he left for college, and in his usual overdone style. As his second in all things, I was apprised of his relations with her in detail, with an emphasis on her physical charms, which he portrayed in typical hyperbole, as he had done with my poor dead mother. While I fully agreed with him, it seemed tasteless to say the least.

By the age of sixteen, unlike his junior crony, Eddie had become a public figure in Richmond who cut an impressive jib at school— Jefferson Debating Club champion, medals in Latin and French, and with a pleasing singing voice; indeed it is impossible to imagine a more favored young man—and what a splendid couple they made!

During their courtship, or whatever it was, I often saw Eddie and Elmira together. He once showed me a pencil portrait of her, languid and apparently asleep. Later he revealed to me that the association had climaxed, if that is the correct word, in some sort of eternal vow.

Perpetually tongue-tied, champion of nothing, who was I to tell Elmira Royster that her Eddie was a duplicitous humbug, with his best qualities spread out on the surface like berries in a market?

Unsurprisingly and sensibly, Miss Royster’s father objected to the union, if only on the basis of her age—after all, his daughter was
only fifteen. Consequently, Eddie spent his first year at college writing letters proclaiming his love, which were promptly intercepted by Mr. Royster, never received, and never answered.

Two years later, Elmira married into the Shelton family. Her husband subsequently made a fortune in the business of transporting people and things up and down the James, then as the owner of a tobacco plantation a few miles south of the city.

You can imagine what a fuss Eddie made of that early romantic disappointment. I do not know for certain which pained him more— the loss of his true love or the loss of his signed letters. In any case, I soon lost count of the number of times I had sat through that lachrymose tale of woe; it brought my friend many a free dinner and, I suspect, many a paramour as well.

Elmira Royster, his first true love, who wept over his open coffin, yet failed to identify the impostor inside.

Currently at the Exchange Hotel.

ON THE DEATH OF EDGAR
ALLAN POE, 1809—1849
by Ludwig,
The New Tork Tribune
[Evening Edition] October 9,1849

Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. Poe was well known personally and by reputation. He had readers in England and in several states of Continental Europe. He had few or no friends. The character of Mr. Poe we cannot attempt to describe in this hastily written article. We can but allude to some of the more striking phases.

His conversation was at times almost supernatural in its eloquence. His voice was modulated with astonishing skill, and his large and variably expressive eyes shot fiery tumult into those who listened.

Outside the public eye he walked the streets in madness or melancholy, with lips moving in indistinct curses. He seemed always to bear the memory of some controlling sorrow.

The social world was for him an imposture. This conviction gave direction to his naturally unamiable character. You could not contradiet
him, but you raised quick choler. You could not speak of wealth, but his cheek paled with envy. His astonishing natural advantage, his beauty and daring spirit, had raised his self-confidence into an arrogance that turned admiration into prejudice against him. Irascible, envious, these salient angles were varnished over with a cold repellant cynicism while his passions vented themselves in sneers.