The Blackest Bird (43 page)
Authors: Joel Rose
“I want you to know there is no way in the world I would have endured even as long as I have without my mother,” Poe said to Hays, once outside in the fresh air. “The trials and tribulations brought to
bear on me, on our Sissy, our longtime suffering. She of all of us, our dearest Muddie, she is the truest sufferer. My own mother, who died early, was but the mother of myself; but she, Muddie, is mother to the one I love so dearly, and thus is dearer than the mother I knew. What can it mean, High Constable,” Poe asked, “that my grandfather, father to my beloved, and his fellows fought the Revolution some seventy years ago with the queerest idea conceivable, that all men are created free and equal?”
“That book on your desk,” Hays said, “it is from John Colt, is it not?”
Hays momentarily saw lucidity in his eye. Then the veil dropped again.
“What do you mean?”
“I recognize the penmanship on the frontispiece. John Colt’s hand. Where did you get it? Do not think of lying! Need I remind you once more: Good citizens tell the truth, Mr. Poe, and despite all that I see and have heard, I want you to know I count you, sir, as a good citizen of our city.”
“I received notice that a package awaited me at an address on Prince Street,” Poe said. “Nothing more sinister is involved. I went there. A package was indeed waiting. I was told it was a book worth nothing. I picked it up, and it was the manuscript. I too recognized the hand. The poems inside as well.”
“How was the package postmarked?”
“It was not. It was simply addressed to ‘the Raven.’ To be hand-delivered, as it was.”
“What did you think?”
“At first nothing. Occurrences of this stripe have become common in the course of practicing my profession. Everyone thinks they can write. Everyone wants to be published. I dismissed any notion until I had had a look at the hand.”
“And then?”
“Then I thought, John Colt should never have left such trace. Here is proof that he is alive.”
“Indeed, just so. What establishment was it on Prince Street?”
“That of the Green Turtle.”
“The Green Turtle?” Hays considered a moment. “Are you aware of who Tommy Coleman is, Mr. Poe?”
“Certainly. He occupied the cell across from John Colt on death row in your Tombs.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”
“By all newspaper accounts, he is dead.”
“As dead as we would have John Colt.
Would you recognize him if you
saw him, Mr. Poe?
”
“Stepping up from the grave, I’m not sure. Perhaps.”
“Was anyone there in the groggery you recognized?”
“The Turtle herself. She is quite unforgettable.”
“Was it she who gave you the manuscript?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anyone else?”
“As you mention, another member of the Tommy Coleman gang, the lame boy with the withered arm and leg. I have not seen him for so many years. He is no longer a boy, but it was he.”
“Tweeter Toohey?”
“Is that how he is called?”
“His sobriquet in the underworld.”
“There were others there as well. I heard voices. Another name called. I don’t remember what.” He snapped his fingers. “Ossian! That is what it was.”
“Ossian?” Hays considered. “Mr. Poe, could you fetch the Colt manuscript, please?”
From the Plumed Pen of One Who
Must Remain Unnamed
Even peering through those bothering magnifying spectacles at the title page, Hays found himself needful to squint in order to fully decipher. There was no doubt: here was the same poetic effort in regard to
Samuel Adams he had puzzled over in Colt’s cell at the Tombs that day following his escape.
The deed was done, but one ugly fear
Came over me now to touch this thing.
There was nothing to struggle against me here
In this lifeless heap. I wished it would spring
And grasp me, and strike at me, as it did
Only a moment or two before.
I lifted the head, but it dropped, and slid
From my grasp to its bed of gore.
What will you do with this horrible thing?
Down—shove, push it in a crate!
Push! Push down hard! If you choose you may sing
That song of his. Don’t start and look round!
Push! How terribly inept you are!
The dawn in the East begins to grow;
The birds are all chirping; push there, shove there
That body at once, and for God’s sake go!
The world will be up in less than an hour,
And rattle and ring along the road.
Away! Away! Away for your life!
Ah, well, that o’er,
And he lies sepulchred in his last abode!
When Hays returned to his barouche, Balboa was sitting on the warm spring ground beneath a swamp maple tree finishing his own lunch, brought from home, of cold suckling pig and equally cold roasted potatoes, the greasy newsprint in which he has carried his meal spread on his lap.
“One last thing, Mr. Poe.” Hays turned back to Poe, who had only taken a few staps toward the house. “What concerns me are certain similarities between the circumstances of Mary Rogers and Mrs. Osgood. I do not want to believe you guilty of heinous acts, Mr. Poe. Your name has been associated with both women, Miss Rogers and Mrs. Osgood. I would ask Mrs. Osgood herself, but she has apparently fled the city, and as of yet I have not made inquiry to ascertain her present whereabouts. But if I were to pose this question to her, ‘Did Edgar Poe suggest to you the idea of a premature delivery to put an end to your difficulty?’ what would her answer be?”
“I would never, sir, make such recommendation to Fanny. Even if I had mentioned such action, she is already the mother of two small girls, and the idea of putting an end to the life of an innocent child before it has had opportunity to draw first breath would certainly be anathema to her, and I did not push it.”
“Listen to me, Mr. Poe, because this is very serious. I never had opportunity to pose questions to John Colt in this regard: When you befriended Mary Rogers, or after, did you ever consider, did you ever have a clue, there might have been some clandestine bond between her and John Colt?”
Poe hesitated. “I did not. How so?”
“Sir, could it in any way have been possible it was John Colt to whom you lost the affections of Mary Rogers? Please, do not answer just yet. I want you to consider the possibility that it might have been him, John Colt, none other, who arranged this criminal action. If he had been the lover of Mary Rogers, it would follow. If he had been the laggard who put her with child, he might have seen it as a necessity to arrange the premature delivery that ultimately led to her death, given his own personal circumstances with Caroline Henshaw. Let us for a moment imagine: following the tragedy, the loss of this girl, whom he may or may not have loved, the confusing matrix of emotion enjoined in his own home. Under this tragic scenario, Mr. Colt finds himself out of grief, mind you, or immense displeasure with himself, in a state
of flux that he cannot control. His humours have brewed, simmered, and raged, now to escalate until they have erupted, leading to the otherwise unwarranted, unrelated, senseless murder of Samuel Adams.”
Poe peered at Hays.
“I am asking you as a professional, Poe. Your acumen and your insight are called upon. My daughter scolds me continually that instincts are the precinct of an old world, that logic rules the modern day. She calls you master of ratiocination. I am asking you to ratiocionate, man. In your opinion, could John Colt be guilty of the murder of Mary Rogers as well as Samuel Adams?”
Again Poe hesitated, stammered. “I-it is possible. I don’t know. It is possible.”
“You had lost her, sir. Lost her undoubtedly to her murderer. Do you have any inkling to whom?”
Poe began to cry. “I do not.”
“Could it have been John Colt?”
“Truly, I cannot say,” Hays studying him as he turned away, stumbling back to his mother-in-law and ailing wife, his family.
69
N
otice first appeared in Bennett’s
Herald
. “Edgar Poe has lost his sanity,” stated the dispatch. “He has become deranged. His friends, with little choice else, have seen fit to have him confined to the Insane Retreat in Utica, New York.”
“Can this be true?” inquired Olga Hays of her father, her concern in evidence.
Old Hays said he did not know. The last he was aware, he said, Poe was still living in Turtle Bay. At the time of his visit he had seemed sane enough.
Olga took it upon herself to travel immediately to that last known locale on the East River, only to find the Poe family departed, the small white farmhouse empty once more, and the farming family, the Millers, even if they had knowledge, refusing to divulge their whereabouts.
A day later a second disturbing announcement appeared, this in the
New York Evening Mirror:
We regret to learn that the gentleman Edgar A. Poe and his wife are both dangerously ill with the consumption and that the hand of misfortune lies heavy upon their temporal affairs.
We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the necessaries of life.
And then, not a day more gone, a third mention, an alarming chastisement, this emanating from Greeley, printed in his
Tribune:
Great God! Is it possible that the literary people of the Union will let poor Poe perish by starvation and lean-faced beggary?
Upon reading this, without delay, Olga traveled south from her home to Publishers’ Row in order to seek Horace Greeley out at his offices.
“From what I hear from Bennett,” he told her, “the three of them are all currently dying under the most strident and tragic circumstance. Apparently no proper medical care is attainable due to their state. Poe himself is said to be entirely compromised, in the throes of utter and desperate insanity.”
“Do you know where they are?” asked Olga.
“I have heard Fordham Village.”
“Fordham Village?”
“In the Bronks.”
Said village was situated sixteen miles from the city heart proper. There were stagecoaches, and a new line of the Haarlem Railroad had recently been opened.
Without returning home to Lispenard Street, neglecting to inform her father of her plans, Olga rushed to catch the caravan north from Canal.
R
ENT WAS ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS
for the year. The house was small, and again white, situated atop a gentle hill. Twenty-five years old, it featured a tiny upstairs attic, divided into three minuscule rooms. Downstairs there was a sitting room, small kitchen, and an additional functioning bedroom. No more than a bungalow, Olga found it
tucked away in a dingle of woods in the far reaches of the Bronks borough.
The cottage itself was very humble, but Olga noted an air of refinement.
She found Poe certainly ill, suffering delirium. Muddie told her he had been demanding morphine, but she said she had scoffed at his desire. She had no morphine and there was no way to get it.
Once more, as he had in his youth, he called himself “Israfel.”
Israfel, the angel who will sound the trumpet announcing the end of the world.
“The moon never beams without bringing me dreams,” Poe told her. “And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes…”
Virginia was quarantined to a neat, scantly furnished room, lying on a straw mattress with snow white sheets, shivering with the cold and final primal fevers caused by bronchial consumption. Against the chill Olga found her covered by Poe’s old military cloak, the cat, Caterina, on her chest for added warmth.
“I have not endured suffering beyond my limits,” Poe assured Olga. “I have any number of friends to whom I might turn. I still have a future, dear lady, and I have resolved myself not to die until it is done.”
He took her hand in his and added, “To just disappear into the countryside, to stand on the cliffs of this rural village and peer across the Sound to the blue-hued land of Long Island, hoping, praying in some way the fresh clean air will revive my Sissy, bring her back.”
In a loud, crazed voice he clamored that the French boasted in their reviews of him that there is only one faculty of inspiration in his work—reason—and only one muse—logic.
“I see too well,” he said, “that the world regards wretchedness as a crime.”
From there on in, Olga traveled to Fordham almost every day. When Hays objected, she said to her father, “I cannot let them suffer so. I cannot find it in my heart.”
Old Hays thought to protest further, but did not.
She took over the family, ministering to all. She brought a goose-down comforter and a box of wine, which Virginia never failed to drink, smiling even when having difficulty getting it down.
“Surely, dearest Olga, you must possess a heart for loving all the world,” Sissy whispered.
As the end grew nearer, and each knew, Virginia kept a picture of her husband under her pillow. She expressed deep concern for him.
On the penultimate day of her life, she took Olga’s hand.
“Olga,” she said in a small voice, “always be a friend to Eddie. And don’t forsake him; he loves you so—don’t you, Eddie?”
Poe, sitting nearby, looked from his wife to Olga Hays. Tears brimmed in his eyes. He wept heavy tears. “I will be calm,” he proclaimed.
Virginia Poe died on the afternoon of January 30, 1847. In the twenty-fifth year of her life, she had been twelve years married.
Following her death, Olga sprinkled Sissy’s room with perfume before going out to Fordham Village to buy her proper linen grave clothes and a coffin. She also purchased Edgar a new black suit, suitable for mourning.
Returning home to Lispenard Street for her own mourning clothes, Olga confided to her father that at her passing the dear girl died painfully, unable to speak, with much expression in her eyes.
At the funeral, held on February 2, three days following Sissy’s death, Muddie approached Olga and Old Hays and took Olga by the hand in front of her father. “Forgive me, but if it wasn’t for you, dear lady,” she said, “my darling Virginia would have been laid in her grave in cotton. I can never tell my gratitude that my darling was entombed in lovely linen.”
Women of a fashionable sort, detritus of the starry sisterhood, streamed to Fordham for the interment. They were, for the most part, done up in bonnet and dress and tight-bodiced jackets suited for a day of rough travel and unknown adventure. After all, Olga observed to her father, with little tolerance, these autumn-cacklers were here to see
for themselves the straits of the great Raven, to see just how downtrodden such a man might be, and in the process enjoy fresh air and proper amusement for a day’s outing while at the same time giving service to their civic, charitable, and Christian duty.
Over his new suit, Poe wrapped himself (as if in swaddling) in his old West Point greatcoat, the very same that he had worn all these years, and most recently had been utilized to shield Sissy from the cold while she lay on her deathbed.
Olga gently objected to this cloak, calling it both unsuitable and inappropriate, but Poe shunned her opinion and wore it all the same, having rooted out the worn garment from where Olga had hidden it from him.
Prior to the burial, Virginia lay on Poe’s writing table in front of the window in the little parlor of their cottage.
Poe followed the body of his beloved cousin and wife through the aisle of trees to the burial vault at the Dutch Reformed Church, one-half mile through the wood from their bungalow.
Upon returning from the service, Poe gave evidence of having entered a state of numbed collapse. Later that night after everyone in the little house had gone to sleep, he snuck out in his stocking feet and tramped through the freshly falling snow to visit his wife’s grave.
In the morning Olga, who had spent the night, saw he was suffering from a raging fever and outright delirium. At her own expense she retained a carriage and driver, rushing the ill Poe to see Dr. Francis in Greenwich Village.
The physician took immediate alarm, diagnosing brain fever. A midwife (in lieu of a nurse) who had administered to Poe in Fordham had expressed fear he might have a lesion on the left side of his brain, and Dr. Francis conceded it might be so.
He prescribed a cure, but emphasized without qualification Mr. Poe’s strict cooperation was needed to effect it.
“Edgar,” Dr. Francis ruefully instructed, “you must sit away from the stove with a soapstone by your feet. In addition, it is all-important
that you replenish the phosphates lost by your mental exertions. In order to facilitate this end, you must eat fish, clams, and oysters every day. I would also urge you eat exclusively bread made from Hosfords yeast so that the phosphates in the wheat might be preserved.”
Taking Olga aside, the physician (the very man who had delivered her and her late brothers) instructed sedatives were to be administered to the patient, but carefully lest the remedy excite the ill one to madness.
Olga took to Poe’s care as a dedicated volunteer.
Hays worried at the influence such close quarters with Poe might have over her. He considered saying to his daughter,
You are forbidden
, but the sentiment of it sounded too ridiculous, and he knew even if he uttered such phrase, she would not obey, and he would not blame her.
At the cottage in Fordham, she took Poe’s pulse continually, waiting for a moment when he would calm so that she could administer the sedative. Under her careful ministration he not only rallied, but was also able to work again.
She came often to him at his refuge in the village, and when she didn’t come she sent flowers by train. He was deeply grateful to her.
He called her “my sacred sun.”
Muddie confided tearfully to Olga she did not know whatever they would have done without her.
“So here I am,” he told her one day in an unaccustomed fit of the loquacious, “and this is what has become of me. It is the beginning of time for me, the end of time. When I was fifteen I fell in love with a local girl in Richmond, Virginia, where I lived with my stepparents. She, too, was fifteen years old, a neighbor, Sarah Elmira Royster, the daughter of a man from whom my stepfather, John Allan, had borrowed money on his personal account for his business. I called her Myra.
“How can I describe her? She had a trim little figure, an appealing mouth, large black eyes, and long chestnut hair that fell in a gaggle of dark curls. At one time she lived directly across the street from my school. I loved to take walks with her along the quiet streets of old Richmond or in the woods and fields nearby, and I loved to sing to her.
“Our favorite spot was an enchanted garden tended by a trusted
slave of my father’s business partner. Within its leafy and hedged confines, I would quote to her Giles Fletcher the Elder: ‘The lawn stretched away in a green and flowered vista of slumbered delight. The myrtle and azure leaves, sparkled with dew, and shown like twinkling stars in the evening blue.’” He smiled, the pleasure of remembrance of the poem. “We were entranced with each other,” he continued. “In love. We planned to marry.
“When I was seventeen I was sent off to university. At the time, my naïveté boundless, I had every expectation to return to my stepfather’s home in Richmond, marry my Myra, and work hand in hand in my stepfather’s concern, eventually to take my place in the countinghouse, to assume all entitled wealth, privilege, and responsibility of daily life as heir.
“How sadly mistaken I was.
“In my studies I achieved highest honors in Latin and French. I was an able debater and an outstanding athlete, leaping downhill, twenty feet in the running broad jump.
“Still I became increasingly morose. I wrote frequently to Myra, but received no reply. I had no clue back in Richmond her father, in collusion with my stepfather, was intercepting my letters to her and destroying them. I never imagined John Allan had merely waited his advantage. His pecuniary pettiness proved stultifying. He gave me not even enough money to subsist. He would send me thirty-nine dollars to cover forty dollars in debts. I began to drink mint slings and play high-stakes whist in hope of financing my education.