Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe

by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann

  “Good morning, Sir.”

  The soft, melodious voice was like a shot fired in the silence of my study. I started and brushed the orchid table with my arm. My Minton china cup clattered on its saucer. Looking up quickly, my eyes found Scipio standing but three feet from my chair and looking down at me. I immediately jumped to my feet.

  “Scipio, must you…” I may have sputtered a bit in anger. I am prone to sudden outbursts when confronted with the disrespect of those beneath me, but I think that morning, due to my disquiet, I may have been less than commanding in my bearing.

  “Excuse me, Sir. There is a Mrs. Whitman here to see you.”

  “Mrs. Whitman? At this hour?”

  I did not expect an answer from Scipio, and he did not offer one. He stood there with his eyes averted towards his feet. I detest changes in my routines. In the morning I read my Bible, peruse the latest magazines and papers looking for references to my work or my interests, complete the previous day’s correspondence, and set myself an agenda for the remainder of the day. I never take visitations in the forenoon. And certainly, for a woman to arrive at my door unannounced, unscheduled – well, my mood was not receptive.

  “Why?” I mused aloud. Scipio remained, perfectly still, awaiting what decision I would make.

  Sarah Helen Power Whitman was a poetess of some note. I, in fact, had made her so with my championing of her verse in an anthology. She possessed a talent such as befits those of her sex who strive to add their filigreed musings to the edge of the noble tapestry of poets. But even granting her peripheral standing in the world of letters, it was an unwonted imposition for her to merely assume my availability for some idle chat on a day of labor.

  “She is unescorted?” I inquired of Scipio.

  “Yes, Sir,” my silver-haired servant replied – concise, to the point -- as trained. I had done well in my husbandry of the boy.

  “Unacceptable.” Again I spoke to myself. A Tuesday morning in New York City and a solitary woman stood in my entry hall. “Unacceptable.”

  “Yet here I am, Rufus.”

  Again startled by a sudden interruption, I may have lost my composure for a moment, or perhaps it was just that my foot caught in the fringe of the carpet. I almost fell, but caught myself on the back of my wife’s chair. Sarah Whitman walked boldly into my parlor, proffering her soft white hand as if it were a lodestone guiding her in my direction. Inexorably, she advanced. I resigned myself to the reality of the situation.

  Taking her hand ever so lightly, I gave a small bow. “Good morning, Mrs. Whitman. What a pleasant surprise.”

  She nodded to my bow. “It is no surprise, my dear Griswold. It is fate.”

  “Fate?” I was puzzled. Mrs. Whitman was well known for her strange and abrupt ways. However, even with that reputation, her forward manner and brilliant stare seemed almost a physical threat.

  She was wearing a simple and proper Visiting dress, an appropriate Toilette de Visite, modest in all its design. But Mrs. Whitman had accented her appearance with diaphanous scarves that trailed behind her like smoke as she moved towards my recently vacated chair. She looked down at my Bible, open to my morning psalm. Then, raising her gaze, her intense eyes met mine.

  “Where monsters grim, gorgons, and hydras rise, and gods and heroes blaze along the skies, thus nature’s music, various as the hour, solemn or sweet has ever mystic power still to preserve the unperverted heart.”

  I did not know quite how to respond to her strange recitation. There was a silence. Mrs. Whitman was motionless, staring at me. I noticed that around her neck was a gold chain, and hanging from the chain was a black oblong locket. It was a tiny coffin. I found my hands gripping my dear wife’s shawl, stirring her perfume – helping me to compose myself.

  Of a sudden the spell was broken. Mrs. Whitman’s hand, clutching a small silk kerchief, rose to her chest. Her bosom was rising and falling in a quickened rhythm. “Oh,” she sighed and sank into my chair.

  It might have been gallant for me to approach her. The woman was obviously in some slight distress. But, as I mentioned, it was a Tuesday morning and not a proper time or place for such contrived courtly manners.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Whitman?”

  “Oh,” she sighed again.

  “Scipio.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Get some tea for Mrs. Whitman. Would you like some tea, Mrs. Whitman? Scipio, the tea.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Scipio left the room as silently as he had entered.

  “Mrs. Whitman?” I was growing more concerned.

  She took a small vial from her black wrist-bag, removed the stopper, and applied the vial to her kerchief. Upon replacing the stopper and returning the vial to her bag, she lifted the piece of silk to her mouth and nose and took two deep, shuddering breaths. The odor of ether was overpowering. Her demeanor settled. Her eyes wandered for a moment, then she gathered herself and straightened her posture in the chair.

  “Mrs. Whitman?” I inquired yet again.

  In response, her voice low, she recited, “Oh balmy incense burdening all the air, from flowers that at the sunny garden wall bloomed at your side, nursed into beauty there by dews and silent showers. For me a charm sleeps in each honeyed cell, whose power can call back hours of rapture flown, to the sad heart sweet memories restore, tones, looks, and words of love that may return no more.” Again, there was an awkward pause. She wafted the ether-laden silk back and forth beneath her nose.

  “Is it your heart, Mrs. Whitman?” I asked. There was no usefulness in asking her about her poetic discourse. Her weak condition was no secret. A wealthy widow’s health is always news of interest in society.

  “Yes, my heart, Mr. Griswold. But I do not suffer from physical weakness so much as…” Her sentence disappeared in another inhalation of the etherous fumes.

  “The business with Poe? He wronged you, dear lady. Rest assured that you need not explain. The news of the recent collapse of your engagement to the drunkard is well known to me. May I express my heartfelt concern and even, if I may, tell you that it is a happy chance that you avoided any entanglement with him.”

  At that she began to cry softly. “Mr. Griswold, I am grateful for your kind, though misguided, concern.”

  “Misguided?”

  “The Raven is misunderstood, Mr. Griswold. I hoped that you, a man of letters, would see past the petty scandals and realize that his genius transcends such petty concerns as public morality.”

  “I apologize, Mrs. Whitman. I will speak no ill of Poe.”

  “In my presence, at least.” She smiled.

  “As you say.”

  “That Poe and I are not to wed is of no consequence.” She fingered the coffin locket at her neck. “We have had a deeper communion than mere marriage.”

  At that moment -- another pause -- Scipio returned with a cup of tea for my guest. I welcomed his attendance. I felt cornered by the woman. That she was flighty and had an unhealthy interest in occult matters was of course worrisome. That I would be alone with her in my own house, in such a private situation, was bait for the telltales of the city.

  I endeavored to get to the purpose of her visit.

  “You come to me to speak of Mr. Poe?”

  “No.” Again the kerchief fluttered at her nose.

  “Then…?”

  “I come to beg you to save him.”

  “What? Save Poe? What is it that you mean?”

  “He is dying.”

  Yet once more I did not know how to respond. Poe had been a friend, a colleague of sorts, certainly I had paid the man for some of his poems and stories from time to time, but he had repaid me with gall and scorn.

  “I beg your pardon. Poe is dying?”

  “He is dying.”

  “You’ve had news?”

  Mrs. Whitman stood up. She was a bit unsteady, but again I restrained myself from offering her any support. “I’ve had visions.”

  “Visions?”

  “Go to him, Mr.
Griswold. He needs you. You are a man of God.”

  The woman had crossed from eccentric to insane. To think that I would lift a finger for Poe on the basis of a vaporous female delusion was absurd.

  “Shall I call you a carriage, Mrs. Whitman?”

  She sat down again. With a deep inhalation of ether she settled her gaze on me. “And shall I tell New York about the preacher, Mr. Griswold?”

  “You said you would never…”

  Mrs. Whitman’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Death would be denied. You made an unholy decision to defeat his reach.”

  Was it the ether making my head spin? “I… I don’t know what…”

  “And after your wife was entombed. Was it three days later that you went to the vault and opened the coffin? What did you see, Mr. Griswold? Was her forehead cold against your cheek?”

  I could not speak. My head slumped to the high back of my wife’s chair. My nose was buried in her scent. I may have gasped. I could not reply for the moment.

  “And your dear new wife, what of her, Mr. Griswold? How fares the Jewess? Does she make a pleasant veil for you to hide behind?” Mrs. Whitman pointed a long finger at me. “A shame that she lives so far away, a shame that you cast so many stones, Mr. Griswold. The preacher? Shall I tell all about the preacher and the bargain?”

  I wanted her to leave. I looked at Scipio. I had only to pronounce the word, and I could have him remove her. But the black man looked at his feet and not at me. I could not speak.

  “Will you go to him? Will you go to Poe?”

  “How could you know?” I could barely ask the question. My voice was merely a whisper.

  “Visions, Mr. Griswold. Visions.” She stood and approached me. Her hand reached out towards me. She had removed her glove, and her flesh was as pale as blank paper. “My vision. I have seen him. Poe lies wounded. A dark hand saves him. All is in the balance.”

  “Mrs. Whitman I can do nothing based on visions.” I backed away from her hand as it came closer, ever closer. “Surely you realize that such phantoms, such heretical and unholy delusions as may exist in your mind cannot…” Her hand touched my wrist.

  “That hand that saves him may be yours. Did you not have this vision?” Her eyes were black. Her eyes were green. Her fingers were on my skin like needles.

  Her eyes, her touch stunned me. My voice was pinched off. Air would not come to my lungs. A paralysis took me of a sudden. There was no breath in me to speak.

  “Mr. Griswold, are you ill?” The woman caught me before I could fall. She held me around the waist and guided me as my trembling legs began to fail. “Sit down. Sit down.”

  I collapsed into my wife’s chair. I threw my head back and forced dead perfume into my chest. I was more swallowing air than breathing. Then, in an instant the spasms eased, and with a gasp that shook me, I began to cough.

  “The consumption?” Mrs. Whitman backed away from me.

  “Do not touch me again.” I had felt her hands on my body, even through my clothing, substantial as befitted the chill of the season. The sensation lingered, and the sensation of warmth communicated from her hands lingered. “Do not touch me again,” I said. My breathing, through conscious effort, found its natural pace.

  “You must save him.”

  “I cannot save Poe. If he is dying, I cannot…. I am not a physician.”

  “I am not sending you to save his life. Poe’s life is beyond saving.”

  I felt my mind swirling in a maelstrom. The colors faded in the room. A spiral of light and darkness pulled at me. My words were barely a whisper. “But, what then?”

  “I am sending you to save his soul.”

  Mrs. Whitman’s eyes were too intense to look at. I turned my head and saw Poe’s letter crumpled on my reading desk. The fear I had felt in my dream returned. Scipio still stood near the door. He looked up at me. It was the first time I ever remember seeing the black man smile.

  Such a sharp-toothed smile.

  Chapter 5

  September 28, 1849 1:30 p.m. - An Innate and Primitive Principle of Human Action -

  There are a thousand paths that lead to death. In fact, it is undeniable that every small step a man takes leads inexorably towards that unavoidable ending. We might endeavor to delay that destiny by prudence and caution. We might delay our destiny with the intercession of He who rules the universe. Even then, though He may grant us respite from our fate, even the Almighty cannot give full pardon. The law is immutable. The grave awaits, and even the saints must plunge into that abyss. Still, it is certain that there are choices made, turns taken, that hasten that appointment.

  How many ill-guided decisions did I make that week in Baltimore? No doubt there were many. Had I stayed in New York, ignoring the summons, would the ending have been less tragic?

  Whatever the curiosities of fate, I stood there on the Lee Street Wharf of Baltimore. The ramshackle construction creaked its way out over shallow water and mud with the pilings and the warped planks running parallel to the street. Traffic was building in the early afternoon as the steamer, Pocahontas, was already hours overdue from Richmond when it finally moored. Low clouds bubbled over the three and four story frame and brick buildings on the waterfront. The air was thick with the smells of dead fish, live pigs, the stench of human sweat, and the noisome miasma of a crowd’s breath by the time the last lines were secured. I attempted to stay back – unnoticed – away from the push and shove of the mob.

  The first person off the steamer was wrapped in a canvas shroud and carried down the gangplank by four ill-colored crewmen. Anxious to get the corpse off the steamer, they moved quickly. Judging from their efforts, for they bore it as a trifle between them, their burden was light. There was a soft thud, as without ceremony, the men dropped the pallet no more than six steps from the bottom of the way.

  The crowd on the dock had stepped back to let the men deposit the sad baggage. One man even momentarily removed his hat. But when the sailors turned and retraced their steps up the way and back onto the ship, the people closed in again at the foot of the plank. Death was just one more piece of baggage on the wharf. The scudding clouds chose that moment to release their rain.

  I scanned the faces of the passengers as they began to disembark. A woman in a soiled bonnet, carrying one child with two other coughing children at her skirts, hurried down and away from the mooring. Two or three gentlemen of moderate means, judging from their hats and vests, hurried along behind her clutching their valises. Then a group of laborers, white men of course, wearing dungarees and plain-stitched shirts under long mud-splattered greatcoats, scurried off the boat pulling up their collars and adjusting the brims of their ill sorted, wide-brimmed hats as it began to rain. A few chattering Negro men scampered off the ship’s stern down the quay.

  Stepping back under the shelter of a tattered sail awning set near the wharf master’s shed, I watched the remainder of the steamer’s patrons descend into the thinning crowd. An old man with a hacking cough, then two hooded women – just a hint of them there, then gone, one in white the other in black, their faces obscured – a man with an injured arm – all moved with dispatch, eager to be off the smoke-stained ship and out of the soaking rain. I observed the reunions, handshakes, and a shouted greeting or two as the people made brief salutations and scurried off down the short dock and into the city. There was no sign of Poe. Mrs. Whitman’s visions had sent me here, and now I felt the fool for having been swept up into her hallucinations.

  “He will arrive on the Richmond steamer on the twenty-eighth,” she had chanted. “Save his soul.”

  Had I ever believed her, or had I only acted out of fear? I still denied my own dream. Trusting in the superstition of her occult affectations, addled by the ether, disoriented by her touch, and made vulnerable by my failing faith in God, I stood there under the rude awning as water streamed off the canvas over my head, splashing off the pavement onto my dull boots. I cursed my weakness. I had journeyed from New York to Baltimore on a fool
’s errand. There was no Poe aboard.

  At that moment, a lone figure emerged from the cabin door aboard the steamer. Dark against the peeling white paint of the boat, he moved through the rain slowly, like a final tendril of smoke from a banked firebox. He wore a faded black coat and a cravat, filthy but precisely tied in the current fashion. There was the air of an ecclesiastic about him as he moved to the gangway and on towards me.

  “Poe!” I shouted.

  He looked up, and I realized my mistake. The man was too tall, his trousers too short, the sleeves of his jacket of a length for a shorter man. He wore green-tinted spectacles with side glasses. He stopped at the bottom of the gangway and stared at me. I felt my tongue frozen as if by a spell. All time seemed in abeyance, even the sound of the cold rain faded. His skin was pale. I remember well the whiteness of his skin, like fog stretched over bone.

  “Poe?” His voice was soft yet clear over the staccato rhythm of the rain. It carried strangely.

  For a moment I was unable to answer him. My eyes broke from his, and I noticed his shoes. Though he was dressed in old but fastidiously repaired clothing of an earlier year’s fashion, his shoes were of the finest quality, shiny and black, with brilliant large gold buckles. They spoke of wealth and taste.

  “Do you seek Poe?” The man walked towards me. Looking up, I saw that his hair was very long and pulled into a long Chinese style braid that ran behind his left ear, then out of sight down his back. There was a feeling of wrongness, ill defined, yet pervasive. As he drew closer, I caught the scent of tar about him. Yet his face assumed an expression that could only be defined as humble and familiar. His hands were clasped around a leather-bound book with clasps of steel. In my mute state, I read the title of the book gilded on its spine, “Rituel Catholique.”

  “Poe?” He stood within three feet of me, directly under the runoff of the rain streaming off the wharf master’s tent. He gave no notice to the water splashing off his tall hat and cascading off the brim onto the shoulders of his careworn coat. “Poe? Sir, do you seek Poe?”