The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe: Only This and Nothing More
The 150-Year-Old Coverup of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death
Truth was the only character in Edgar Allan Poe’s sad, uncertain denouement in need of rehabilitation.
’Tis some visitor tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more.”— The Raven
Part I
On Friday, September 28, 1849, the side-wheel steamer Pocahontas sailed into Baltimore Harbor as clouds of smoke ballooned into a clear sky. Toxic vapors were swept upwards through a funnel on the upper deck so passengers could enjoy the journey undisturbed. Similarly, the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s death was swept through a funnel of deceit and scandal so that his ex-friends could profit from the retelling.
“Some secrets do not permit themselves to be told — on account of the hideousness of the mystery.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, 1840
To know Edgar Allan Poe was a ticket to wealth and fame. To ridicule him was a philosophy degree. Poe was mined for literary gold by a gang of nobodies staking out their claim to his mysterious, inexplicable death. Lacking a suitable explanation, the culprits invented one. It was a dreadful lie, but it had the advantage of being quite entertaining.
Any passing acquaintance, including the most unscrupulous, could offer their services as careless narrators of his desperate story. By spreading sensational lies, books got sold, speeches got given, careers got promoted, and the Poe cognoscenti got prominence. Flimsy evidence met the public need for sensationalized detail. Innuendo became hard fact. With one exception that the master of crime fiction would not have overlooked, Poe’s final days are a mystery novel. The real cause would eventually be uncovered by science and common sense. The charlatans would eventually be exposed, but it would take 150 years. The quest for truth may have been a lot to ask at the time, but his case cried out for closer examination that never came. Not from his doctors, friends, or society.
That is why I am writing this now.
Five days after disembarking from his steamship, Poe’s life transformed from Camelot to Chaos as he bid farewell from the floor of a dingy saloon, appearing disheveled and incoherent, his odious reputation cast in amber, looking like someone in desperate need of rehab. But in Edgar Allan Poe’s sad, uncertain denouement, truth was the only character in need of rehabilitation.
“Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.” — The Raven.
Poe could vanish in a crowd of two. It may explain why no one saw where he went after leaving the ship. He was short with curly brown hair and deep-set brown eyes and bore a remarkable resemblance to an average fellow in all respects but one. Those who knew him well, and no one could ever be entirely sure, were unanimous: “He was what the ladies would call decidedly handsome,” according to flatmate and New York bookseller William Gowans.
Some said he was more distinguished than attractive. “His proud and beautiful head erect, his dark eyes flashing, a peculiar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur. . . .” — Frances S. Osgood. Nobody seemed to be quite sure what to make of this Greek god with elements of the devil and Rasputin. “I distinctly recall his face. It was a face to rivet one’s attention, yet a face that no one would feel safe in loving. . . .” — Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
Still, something commanded your gaze. He had an air of mystery and dark secrets. Dressing the part of a lady’s man, as the Baltimore Sun pointed out, “it’s likely he wore his trademark threadbare black suit with a boutonniere and black bow tie. He held a Malacca cane, which he was later found clutching.” The dark, formal attire backfired as it only contributed to an unsavory reputation. But the cane was a clue. It was the only constant, the true north of Poe’s story.
And it was overlooked.
Short Story
“Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning.” — The Raven
On October 12, 1849, Poe’s obituary in the Richmond Examiner ran over 1500 words. For someone who died as a vagrant, it was surprisingly long and derogatory. There is a suggestion the wordiness is intended to conceal something.
“EDGAR ALLAN POE died in Baltimore last Sunday, one of the very few original minds that this country has produced. By the public of the day he is regarded rather with curiosity than with admiration. Many will be startled, but few will be grieved.
Although Poe came from a very respectable family, his grandfather was a General in the Revolution and his great-grandfather married a daughter of a celebrated Admiral. Through him they are related to many of the most illustrious families in England.
Edgar Poe’s father was enamored with a beautiful young actress, he made up a runaway match with her. She was somewhat of a favorite more on account of her beauty than her acting. They both died and left their gifted but most miserable son.
He was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and kind-hearted merchant, had no children of his own, and took a natural fancy to the handsome, clever child and made him his heir. He was consequently brought up amidst luxury.
After Poe left home to attend the University of Virginia and then West Point (he dropped out of both), Mr. Allan had lost his first wife and married a lady his junior by a very great number of years. Poe ridiculed the match. The old gentleman wrote an angry letter. The breach was never healed. Mr. Allan died and left Poe nothing.”
— Poe’s eventual rise to fame was accidental or coincidental at best:
“At last, a newspaper in Baltimore offered two prizes — for the best poem and the best prose tale. A committee of distinguished literateurs was appointed to judge. But while chatting over wine, one of them was attracted by papers written in the most exquisitely beautiful calligraphy ever seen. — To the end of his life, Poe wrote this surpassingly perfect hand. — He read a page solely on that account, and being impressed with the power of the style, he proceeded to read aloud. The committee voted “the first of the geniuses that have written a legible hand.” The confidential envelope being broken, within it was found the unknown name — Edgar Allen Poe.”
Richmonders did not like him —
“For the last two years, Poe has been seen about Richmond, generally in a state very unbecoming to a man of genius. But during his last visit, he has been neatly dressed and exceedingly agreeable in his deportment. It was universally reported that he was engaged to be married. The lady was a widow, of wealth and beauty was an old flame of his, and whom he declared to be the ideal and original of his Lenore. Death cut him short. The newspapers say he died of congestion of the brain.”
Camelot to Chaos
“But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping .” — The Raven
It may help to see Poe’s story in a less skeptical light. His life had such indisputable promise. Unfortunately, his screenwriters from hell chose to disregard it.
Poe was, as the ladies tell us, exceedingly handsome. Highly educated at the University of Virginia and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and by this time was an accomplished man of letters, the 40-year-old widower had much to live for. His life was ahead of him. He was internationally known for poetry and Gothic fiction. He was planning to marry. He was in love. She was wealthy and a childhood sweetheart.
The steamship stopover in Baltimore was expected to be brief so that he could collect a fee before moving on and settling in Richmond. On his last night there, the classical scholar Basil C. Gildersleeve, who has dormitories named for him at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, recalled, “Poe was clad in black as was the fashion then — slender — erect — the subtle lines of his face fixed in meditation. I thought him wonderfully handsome.”
But there was trouble brewing.
In his poem, ‘A man of the World,’ Poe wrote that some secrets do not allow themselves to be told. This was true of his death. But new scientific evidence casts doubt on the testimonies and sheds light on a new reality. Poe died miserably and forlorn, but not intentionally, and certainly not as an addled brain drunk. Those were conjectures or fabrications. But truth didn’t matter when people wanted to be entertained.
And entertainment is what they got.
Rescue Team
“Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer.” — The Raven
Apart from their role in Edgar Allan Poe’s passing, Snodgrass and Griswold were men of little significance. Dr. Snodgrass was a former physician, now and then a newspaper editor and always a rabid teetotaler. His fortune came from the tavern his wife inherited which he tried to run without selling liquor. His causes, most of them laudable such as abolitionism, took second place to a desire to embellish his name. Running into Poe who seemed stark raving drunk was a godsend to his righteous plans. Griswold was a Salieri to Poe’s Mozart who resented the latter’s fame and talent. He would extort Poe’s reputation to repay old grievances for decades to come.
Both played a minor role in Poe’s life (and therefore death) and made the most of their good luck. A man’s reputation was small beer to the teetotaling Dr. Snodgrass and Griswold‘s star rose as long as he could convince the public his famous competitor was a drunken slob. It seemed the perfect roll of the dice. But they were hollow men who became reckless after realizing their big chance.
On the day Poe steamed into Baltimore Harbor, Wednesday, October 3, 1849, a chilly, rain-soaked city welcomed him to their local taverns, the logical meeting place for drinking, naturally, but also in those days for thinking. Fireplaces blazed, and smoky rooms gave hope to passersby for refreshment and other items high on the travelers to do list. It was Election Day for Congress and the state legislature, and local polling places were discreetly but helpfully located inside neighborhood saloons. Men ambled around until they found one.
Wednesday, October 3, 1849, a Baltimore Sun employee hunting down a news item entered Gunner’s Hall, a hotel and tavern on Lombard Street. Joseph W. Walker strode through the swinging doors packed with politicos and ward bosses discoursing and discussing the ups and downs of the election. He may have been the only good Samaritan in Poe’s story.
As hospital records showed, Poe was lying on the street in dire conditions, “in a state of beastly intoxication.” He was in front of Gunner’s Hall tavern, which led many to believe his drunkenness was apparent.
He gasped at the raggedly dressed man lying on the floor and, inquiring about his condition, dispatched a note to Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, a physician who lived nearby.
“Dear Sir: There is a gentleman, somewhat the worse for wear who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you. I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance.
“Yours in haste, — Jos. W. Walker.”
Cane Mutiny
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood wondering, fearing.” — The Raven
Once the editor of a local newspaper, Snodgrass was also a longtime friend of the poet and a physician, although how good there is reason to question. He was also an abolitionist and a rabid teetotaler, bent on lecturing more and listening to reason less. His market was sinful individuals of flawed morality. It may have colored what he saw, as Snodgrass later recalled, “Poe sat slumped in a chair with an aspect of vacant stupidity which made me shudder. On his head was a cheap palm-leaf hat; around his shoulders, a second-hand coat. He wore dingy and badly fitting pants and a rumpled, soiled shirt.” Then Snodgrass added ominously, “he carried a Malacca cane.”
Malacca is a species of rattan palm considered perfect for walking sticks, lightweight and strong with a satin-like bark that has a natural gloss. The wood comes from the coast of Sumatra and has a unique quality — no two are alike, and as they are imported, they are very expensive. In the mid-19th century, they would be unique, rare, and valuable. Therefore, the one Poe carried as he left the ship would very likely be the same one he was carrying in the tavern and the one found on his person when he was brought to the hospital.
How does a man’s entire wardrobe get lost, yet he clutches the expensive cane as if he never left the ship? What could have prevented the cane from being lost or stolen? That tells us something about the theories that pointed a menacing finger at drunkenness or a brutal beating. A man who holds a cane steadily is unlikely to be beaten without giving something in return. Or he loses the cane.
Snodgrass and the others carried him into a horse-drawn cab, which took him to the Washington Medical College, now Church Hospital — in East Baltimore. At the hospital, Poe’s symptoms prevented him from sounding coherent and he could not explain his state of affairs to Dr. John J. Moran, the young resident physician, on October 3, 1849. It is not even clear he knew what happened.
Room With a View
“Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before .” — The Raven
The events that transpired over the five days have mostly disappeared into the fog of history’s fading memory. There is no record of when he vanished into the city’s crowded, noisy and dangerous streets, according to The Baltimore Sun, until he was discovered by Walker muttering on the first floor of the saloon five days later.
Moran described his patient as “repulsive with unkempt hair, a haggard, unwashed face, and lusterless and vacant eyes.”
He placed Poe in a second-floor room with a view of the harbor, perhaps intended as a memory trick to enable recall. He also noticed that Poe mumbled incoherently and seemed almost paralyzed. That was odd for a drunk, Moran thought. And then, Poe passed out.
Moran’s last report described Poe as “Delirious, shaking, drenched in perspiration, he began to babble, talking with “spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.”
Then, on Friday afternoon, Poe briefly talked to Moran, although he was still confused: He said he had a wife in Richmond. To soothe his patient, Dr. Moran said Poe would soon be staying with friends. “At this, he broke out with much energy,” Moran reported in a letter written later, “and said the best thing his best friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol.”
Poe dozed after their meeting, “then lapsed into a violent delirium. At one point, he had to be held down by two nurses.” By Saturday evening, he began shouting “Reynolds” and kept it up for several hours. (Reynolds’ identity remains a mystery.)
“Exhausted. Finally, he grew silent.”
Shortly after 3 a.m. on Sunday, October 7, Poe turned his head towards the window after nearly four days in the hospital wrestling with invisible demons when before dawn on Sunday, Oct.7, the acclaimed writer’s final words were, “Lord, help my poor soul.”
The hospital listed the cause of death as uncertain but attributed it to drunkenness or syphilis.
It took 150 years to unravel the mystery, but his deathbed wish was finally granted. It may have come as a shock to learn later it was a case of rabies.
