 |
| Edgar Allan Poe (Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1872) |
Edgar Allan Poe knew how to make a room
feel unsafe.
A
man hears a heartbeat under the floorboards. Another walls up a body and
figures he’s gotten away with murder. A house seems to rot along with the
family inside it.
Poe
didn’t need a monster at the door. He could leave a man alone with his thoughts
and wait for him to come apart.
Poe’s
life gave him plenty to work with.
His
father left, and his mother died when he was two. John and Frances Allan took
him in, but never adopted him. They fought over money.
He
did well in the Army. But West Point was another matter. Poe did well in French
and mathematics, but he wanted out. John Allan wouldn’t agree to his
resignation, so he stopped showing up for classes and duties. A court-martial
dismissed him in 1831, seven months after he entered the academy.
Writing was another thing.
Poe
knew what he was doing on the page. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a killer comes
undone because he can’t stop hearing a heartbeat. In “The Black Cat,” a man
describes one ugly act after another while insisting he’s perfectly reasonable.
Poe lets them talk until they give themselves away.
In
“The Masque of the Red Death,” rich people lock themselves in a castle while
disease spreads beyond the walls. They throw a party. The disease gets in
anyway. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the family is sick, the house is
falling apart, and nobody inside seems likely to get out.
Reviewers
noticed how much control went into the horror.
In
1845, Graham’s Magazine called Poe “an anatomist of the
horrible and ghastly.” A London reviewer said he could hold readers’ attention
and send them trembling to bed, though he used too many words getting
there.
Margaret
Fuller praised his stories as original and sharp. She also caught mistakes in
his wording and pointed them out. Poe had done the same to plenty of other
writers.
 |
| Fordham Cottage (Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1872) |
Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836. She was thirteen; he was twenty-seven. Years later, she developed tuberculosis and was ill for a long time before she died in 1847. Poe had spent much of that time writing about fear and death while both were close at hand.
He
also wrote poems. “The Raven” appeared in 1845 and made him famous. A grieving
man asks a bird about the woman he has lost. The bird answers: “Nevermore.” The
man keeps asking anyway.
Readers
loved it. Poe’s name traveled far beyond the magazines that published his work.
But fame didn’t pay his bills.
The
reviews were mixed. Fuller called “The Raven” a finished piece of work, but
thought his other poems fell short of what he could do. Poe’s criticism didn’t
help him make friends among writers. He could be exacting and mean on the page.
People who knew him could see another side: a man who talked easily, read
widely, and cared deeply about Virginia.
His
poems kept returning to people who were gone. In “Annabel Lee,” a man speaks of
the young woman he loved after her death. Poe never said it was
about his wife ,but—the implication is there.
Then
there was the inquisitive side of Poe. In 1841, he published “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue,” widely considered the first modern detective story.
Detective
C. Auguste Dupin takes on a killing that has stumped the police. He listens,
looks closely, and follows the evidence where they haven’t. Later detectives
would borrow that trick, along with the pleasure of showing the police where
they went wrong.
For
his last years, Poe lived with Virginia and her mother in a small cottage near
Fordham College in the Bronx. After Virginia died, he walked the grounds,
visited the Jesuit priests, and spent time in their library.
The
priests liked his company. One remembered him as well informed and a gentleman.
Poe could sit in their library late into the night. The man who wrote about
those terrible rooms had found one he wanted to spend time in.
In
the fall of 1849, Poe disappeared from the record for several days. On October
3, someone found him in distress in Baltimore, at a tavern used as an election
polling place. He was wearing clothes that weren’t his. A doctor was called,
and Poe was taken to a hospital. He died four days later.
The
usual story says he was found drunk in a gutter. There’s no solid evidence for
the gutter, and nobody knows for certain what killed him. People have been
trying to fill in those missing days ever since.
Poe
gave Dupin the clues he needed. Baltimore left the rest of us with a few scraps
and no answers.
It’s
too bad Dupin isn’t around to solve the case.
Before you go...
If you’ve ever stayed up way too late watching a true crime
documentary, gone down a rabbit hole reading about an unsolved murder, or found
yourself saying, “How have I never heard this case before?”—you’re
in the right place.
I dig into murders, disappearances, serial killers, cold
cases, small-town mysteries, forgotten crimes, and the strange, unsettling
stories that time almost erased. No sensationalized headlines. No made-up
drama. Just well-researched stories built from newspaper archives, court
records, police reports, and historical documents.
If you enjoy what you read and would like to help keep the
lights on, consider buying me a Big Gulp.
Every little bit helps pay for old newspapers, research
materials, public records, travel, and the countless hours spent piecing
together stories that deserve to be remembered.
Buy Me a Big Gulp / NickVulich.com
If true crime is your thing, you might also enjoy these
books...
No comments:
Post a Comment