by Jim Musgrave
Chapter 6: A Walking Tour
I was almost back to the beginning of my investigation following the questioning of my suspects about where they were when Poe died in Baltimore. Of course, common sense told me that the killer did not have to be one of them. Instead, just as someone had hired a professional to kill me, one of the suspects could have hired somebody to kill Poe.
Judging from his demeanor, Henry Longfellow seemed to be the person who had the most antipathy toward Poe. I will look into that area of their relationship, especially as concerns their rivalry for Mary Cecilia Rogers’ affection. However, I needed a lead onto someone who might have known about this kind of flirtation existing in the Anderson Tobacco Emporium. I realized that John Anderson was no help in this area, as he had obviously been deeply affected psychologically by many factors. No, I needed to find someone who was in the shop when Mary Rogers worked there and who had access to the comings and goings of the patrons who shopped there. I know Walter McKenzie often visited the shop, so I made a note to inquire of him as to what kinds of conversations and intimacies were happening just before her murder.
Of course, William Wallace might also know about any intrigues Poe might have had with the cigar store girl. He was quite honest about being privy to the most confidential areas of Poe’s life, so this was another possible lead.
As for Poe being the murderer of Rogers, as Anderson believed, I should be able to prove this theory false as well. However, Poe’s beloved Virginia had died in 1847, so it is conceivable that the author might have been mesmerized by the obviously magnetic female attraction of Mary Rogers. However, why would Poe write that note I found behind Virginia’s bed that said he wanted to avenge the death of the cigar store girl? It would seem he already knew who killed the girl. I certainly needed to find out the exact relationship between Poe and Mary Rogers before negating Anderson’s theory altogether.
I suppose it’s my family’s total ignorance of anything literary that makes me so attracted to Poe and to the literary world in general. I found it quite an exquisite escape to be able to visit a library in New York City, where a friendly librarian on duty would open up worlds to me that I never realized existed. Of course, I would also follow the writings of my greatest idol, Edgar Allan Poe, when he wrote and worked for Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. I still remember buying a copy when I was sixteen and reading the story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and becoming immediately fixated on the science of detection and the deductive logic of solving murders. This, to me, was not fiction. It was a way to arrive at the heart of everything that was important to me.
I wanted to do everything I could to gain the favor of this dark and mysterious man, Edgar Allan Poe. I would sit in the audience at his readings where the majority of the listeners were female. I read every scrap of poetry and criticism he wrote, and it was my ability to quote Poe that landed me the job with his publisher as Poe’s official manuscript messenger.
As a young man, I would follow Poe when he would make the rounds on Publishers’ Row in New York City. Therefore, today, while I go over the facts of my case, I want, in my memory, to walk those same steps my former employer and I walked in 1844 and 1845, perhaps to make some real sense out of all this.
When Poe returned to New York, at the age of 35, he was destitute and searching for new employment. He was also not averse to asking for loans from friends and relatives to keep the wolves at bay, as he had done during the year 1837, when the banks were in crisis and he wrote his only novel. His sole ambition was to reestablish himself as a magazinist of the same excellent caliber he had been while working in Philadelphia at Graham’s Magazine and earlier in Virginia at the Southern Literary Messenger. He would often tell me about his “dream magazine,” The Stylus, as he sat at his table working on a draft of an article.
Poe was a man who cared about other writers and about the lack of respect and monetary remuneration paid to writers. I remember him sitting in a café, before he had shown me around the New York publishing industry. I was in awe of this man, although he was not a big fellow. He was somewhat slender, about five feet eight inches in height, but he was well proportioned. His complexion was fair, his eyes gray and restless, always looking about, and his hair was black and curling. He was an athlete and long-distance swimmer in college. And that day in the café, he was honest about his lot in life.
“Patrick,” he said, as he always addressed me by my first name and not by some lesser title given by a superior elder to his younger servant, “the business of being a writer of poetry and fiction in this country has become one of drudgery and little pay.”
When Poe talked to me, I felt like an equal, and even at 18 years of age, I was fascinated by his vast knowledge of the world around him. “Did you know, for example, that my best-selling book is The Conchologist's First Book, a textbook on shells, for which I was paid the handsome sum of fifty dollars? Why is this, you might ask? Well, the reality is that this country values profit over ideals and substance over philosophy. There are, of course, those wealthy gentlemen of the North who are men of leisure, and they receive large sums for their literary pursuits. I will give just one example. Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of Harvard received the sum of three thousand dollars for a single poem! Alas, we devil writers in the trenches, especially we writers from the South, have become slaves to the machinery of capitalism in the North. As an editor, I have increased the revenue of magazines by writing stories that have sold-out issues, and I did not receive any more compensation than if I had written about sea shells! Art has no value to these owners in the North, and all they understand is the profit that they receive. I understand this, but I do not like it! I would rather go to my grave a true artist and pauper than be puffed-up by the literati who care not about the inherent quality of the work they publish and admire.”
Poe continued to tell me about his adversary, Mister Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of The Knickerbocker Magazine. In the 1840s there was no commercial book advertising as there is today, so magazines like Clark’s would “puff up” a new book by reviewing it favorably, for which he would receive a large fee, and the coterie Whig newspapers would follow suit around the country, making the book a bestselling work, even though it might be a horrendously written tome of no literary worth. Clark could make or break any author simply by using this commercial practice of “puffery.”
“Come, my boy, let me take you on a grand tour of our literary elite, our bastions of capitalistic profiteering. You deserve to know about such things. Who knows? Perhaps one day you will thank me for it,” said Edgar, and off we went on what I like to believe was an honest portrait of a struggling artist and his personal war with the literary establishment of New York City.
When we arrived at the famous triangle formed by the convergence of Maiden Lane with Liberty and William Streets, Poe immediately pointed to a small walk-up at Cedar and Greenwich Streets, which was almost directly west of Nevelson Square in the publishing quarter. “That was the first room Virginia and I lived in. The house looks old and buggy, but the landlady gave us a back room on the third floor--night and day attendance--for seven dollars--the cheapest board I ever knew. Now, let me take you down here to Liberty and Nassau Streets to Gowan’s Antiquarian Bookstore,” said Poe, moving down the sidewalk in his usual quickstep.
Inside the establishment, Mister Gowan, the owner, told me about when he had lived with Poe and his wife in that same boarding house. Poe listened intently to the old man, nodding appreciatively from time to time as Gowan spoke. “For eight months or more, that one house contained us all. One table fed us. During that time I saw much of Eddie, and I had the chance to chat with him and his beautiful wife, Virginia. And, I must say, I never saw him the least affected with liquor. He was one of the most courteous, gentlemanly, and intelligent companions I have ever met.”
“Oh, Bill, you know you just enjoyed hearing my theory of the universe. I told William about my creation idea whereby the univ
erse began because of a gigantic explosion which sent out the elements of creation into the cosmos, where they reassembled in a fantastic array and grew out of the oceans and developed upon the lands. William is certainly an excellent antiquarian, but he may not be the best judge of character,” said Poe, and he patted the elderly gentleman on the back before we left his store to return to the noise of the city.
Looking westward toward Broadway and Liberty Streets, we saw a row of four-story brick-and-frame buildings with shops on the ground floor and offices above. At 161 Broadway was the white and black shingle of Wiley & Putnam, a cornerstone of New York publishing. In 1845 Wiley & Putnam brought out two volumes of Poe’s works, for which Edgar received only copies and no money. “This is the world of big publishing,” he told me, as we turned right onto Nassau Street.
When we arrived at 107 Nassau, Poe pointed to the building and remarked, “I found my first job here when I arrived in April, 1844. This is the Sunday Times and Weekly Newspaper, owned and run by Major Mordecai Noah. He gave me the non-literary position as a mechanical paragraphist. In other words, I set type,” Poe laughed, and we continued up Nassau Street toward Fulton.
At 124 Fulton Street, Poe stopped and looked up at the great building. He seemed mesmerized for a moment before he spoke. “In 1844, I needed cash. Virginia’s consumption was worsening, she was spitting up blood, so I concocted a piece of news for this largest penny daily in New York. You see, Patrick, The Sun would print or invent any kind of news to keep up its circulation, and they eagerly bought my fictitious report of a trans-Atlantic balloon flight. I can still picture it on that day. The whole square surrounding this building was besieged, blocked-up--ingress and egress being alike impossible--and I never witnessed more intense excitement to get possession of a newspaper.” Poe informed me that he got a job as a result of this scam, as Mister Charles Briggs, a humorist, asked Poe to become his co-editor at The Broadway Journal.
We turned left on Fulton, and headed to Broadway, where we once more turned right. We walked down to Ann Street and turned right to stop at 4 Ann Street, Mrs. Foster’s boarding house.
“We lived here in 1844, and the amount of general annoyance wrought by street noises was incalculable. The din of vehicles, however, was even more thoroughly and intolerably a nuisance.” Poe pointed down to the cobblestone pavement of the road in front of the house, “Are we never to have done with these unmeaning round stones? Is there a more ingenious contrivance invented for driving men mad through sheer noise?”
I could also smell the odors borne upon the updrafts from this street--a street in which garbage and effluvia mingled within openings in the gutters, fed upon by free roaming pigs. Fresh piles of manure were steaming in the center of the road, pushed there from the livery stables for the traffic to beat down. It was disgusting.
At 26 Ann Street, the headquarters of The New World, where Poe’s arch-nemesis, Rufus Griswold was editor, Poe stopped dead in his tracks. “In 1839, Rufus Griswold joined in crime with publisher Park Benjamin of this business to steal and then publish foreign authors without paying them a cent in royalties! Griswold and Benjamin rushed new English novels into print in cheap, gigantic formats and had newsboys peddle them on the streets for ten cents each. These demonic scoundrels, almost single-handedly, ruined book publishing in New York City because reputable publishers charged one dollar per book and were slower at printing them. Of course, these reputable publishing houses also paid their authors!” said Poe. “The want of an international copy-right law renders it impossible for our men of genius to obtain remuneration for their labors,” said Poe, his voice filled with indignant rage. “Now since, as a body, the want of the international law represses their efforts altogether.”
As we proceeded up Ann Street, we stopped at the corner of Ann and Nassau. Poe pointed to the sign of The Evening Mirror at 105 Nassau. “I worked here from October, 1844 until February, 1845. As a sub-editor and critic, I earned twenty dollars per week. Of course, the co-owner, Nat Willis, made $1,500 per year writing fluff pieces, while I was paid $5 per page, and Willis was paid $11 per page in addition to his yearly salary.”
However, Poe then sighed deeply and said, “But Mister Willis did publish my poem ‘The Raven,’ after I had left his publication, and it made me famous. I owe him that. I was then able to receive $50 per poem, the same as that egotist and Harvard elitist, Longfellow was then receiving!”
This was the second mention I had heard from Poe about the rival poet. This was one of the main reasons why I was still centered upon Longfellow as my prime suspect in the murder of Poe. He was close friends with Griswold and his ilk, and the stories about Poe amongst the “Northern Literati” were often scandalous and incriminating, which, ironically perhaps, contributed to the power of Poe’s mystique as a poet.
It was while employed on the Mirror that Poe began his “little war” against Longfellow. He had accused Longfellow, the popular idol, of misusing his talent by imitating foreign poems instead of creating original work. Any scandal touching Longfellow excited the public, and the Mirror’s circulation rose. Nassau Street was alerted to Poe as a new source of copy.
We ended the tour that day at his Bronx Cottage, where Poe showed me his office and writing workroom. As he sat down to go over more articles that were being published, I could not help but wish I were inside that brain to hear what was happening. What were the leaps of imagination that took him to those strange and wondrous worlds where anything was possible? Despite his past and his fixation upon the darkness, I enjoyed being around Edgar Allan Poe, and I now wanted to prove his reputation as a man to be clear of any chicanery or deceit.
* * *
I wanted to interview Wallace once more to find out about Poe’s relationship with the Rogers girl. He was, not unusually, at his Sons of Liberty watering hole, the Fraunces, in a back booth. He had paper and pen, and was busily jotting down something as I approached him. He casually looked up. “Aha, O’Malley! Please, sit down. I was just going over this list of editors I must approach to solicit my new batch of writings. Life goes on in the big city, does it not?”
“Listen, Wallace,” I said, sitting down inside the leather confines of the booth, “did you ever know of any intimacies that your friend Poe might have had with Mary Rogers?”
Wallace stopped writing and looked over at me. “Poe and that little wench? Oh, no. We might have speculated as to the shape of her figure beneath that lovely dress, but no more than any of the other young roosters were doing inside the emporium.”
“So, you never once saw him alone with her? Even after his wife died?”
“No! Never. Poe was a lot of things, but one thing he was not was a womanizer. Now Anderson, the owner? He was a man who gazed lecherously after this girl. It is not a wonder that his wife, Amanda, would often watch him prowling about the store, following the crowds of men as they pursued the young clerk.”
Wallace was indignant about this, and I doubted he was lying. “What about Longfellow? Did you see him around the woman?”
“Longfellow? No, he was busy lecturing. He spent little time around the tobacco shop. Now, Fennimore Cooper. He bought the little lady all kinds of trinkets and was often seen whispering to her in the corner of the shop. Although, I never saw him approach her outside of the store,” Wallace said.
“Thank you, William, you’ve been very informative. I must go on now to my day,” I said, and he waved at me before he returned to his listing.
I had not been able to establish the connection between Longfellow and the Rogers girl or that there was any kind of jealous rivalry about the girl between Poe and my prime suspect. It was horrible to think that Poe was murdered because of his relationship with a woman--especially one who was so steeped in controversy as Mary Cecilia Rogers. What could have happened to cause this person who wanted me dead to erupt in such fury? What had I stumbled upon to make me a character in one of Poe’s murder stories? I was waiting for the killer to make the next move, and it
was difficult to be in this position. I am a man of action, and I have always been this way. However, there was no solution to this conundrum, and I was at an impasse in my investigation.
I was still interested in Longfellow and his motives, so I wanted to pay him another visit. This time, I was going to probe him about his secret hatred of Poe and dark fiction. If a man like John Anderson, who was obviously demented, hated Poe to the point of blaming him for Rogers’ murder, then what about intelligent and sane men who believed the same thing? Longfellow, despite his lack of a personal relationship with Mary Rogers, was still a prime suspect.
Chapter 7: Reynolds
As one might have ascertained, my travels around the city were being curtailed quite a bit because of the threat on my life. I am not a coward, but suffice it to say, there are prudent ways to do things, and my not becoming a moving target was one of these. I needed to investigate Longfellow’s motives once again, and I also wanted to interview perhaps the one man who could probably give me some information about who this mysterious Reynolds might be. Granted, I had heretofore accepted the theory about him being the Antarctic explorer, whose journals Poe used for his only novel. This is now doubtful because without an identifiable person at the scene in Baltimore, I really had no case. It was a fact that Poe screamed out “Reynolds” several times, and this made me believe this was a person Poe recognized from his past and that this Reynolds had done him a grievous injury.
I made certain my Colt .44 caliber service revolver was in good working order before I set out for Longfellow’s residence. However, I now kept another weapon on my person, a .42 caliber LaMat revolver. About 2,000 of these weapons were made for the Confederacy. It was developed in New Orleans in 1856 by Dr. Jean Alexander Le Mat, and I was able to take one of these pistols from a Confederate officer, whom I met by chance one day rounding a corner on his horse at the Battle of Vicksburg. He was so close to me I could make out the wax on his mustache--a most inferior brand--because the ends were drooping like a shamrock in the rain.