Yes he was poor. He had gone hungry to feed his wife, to give her medicines and still she had died and there would be no forgiving God for having taken away dearest Virginia, dearest Sissy. To be appreciated you must be read and in his lifetime, Poe had not been read, let us be most precise about that. His poems, his criticism, his short stories, his journalistic endeavors all drew a response best described as negligible. Oh, there was praise but a stomach cannot fill itself on that; hosannas from Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne and Dickens put neither logs on the fire nor tea in the cup.
Yes he was poor and he lived in fear of debtors’ prison. He’d received as little as $4.94 for a piece of written work and been excessively grateful, for at the time it had been the difference between hunger and survival. Never had he earned more than $800 in a year and even that glorious occasion had occured only twice in his life. Twice in thirty-nine years. He was poor, and therefore limited in everything he wanted to do.
Poverty, rejection. Defeat breeding defeat and always there was his pride, a most fierce pride. Many called him egomaniac, for had he not said that he could not conceive of any being superior to himself and did he not believe this to be so even now? Poe didn’t regard this observation as mere authorial vanity, for his power to create had been proven by the criticism, poems and short works flowing from his pen in fifteen hour working days, works which had not been equalled or excelled in this most ignorant land.
America the abominable, rich in stupidity and ruled by the tyrant called Mob. American democracy, “The most odious and unsupportable despotism … upon the face of the earth.” What can one say of a nation whose national anthem is the same tune as the English drinking song “Anacreon in Heaven.” Poe firmly believed that there was neither education nor culture in America. Here all think for themselves and they cannot think.
And Poe had told them so. Told them of their ignorance and in turn, they called him “Tomahawk,” the man who cuts his rivals to shreds with his bitter pen. A destructive man you are, Eddy. Yes, but only to the aspirations of those untalented and pretentious dolts, who with the intelligence of a squash, reach for heights forever beyond them.
Then you are an honest man, Eddy. Yes, and I have paid dearly for being so. Aristotle, I beg you to say of me as you said of yourself-I think I have sufficient witness that I speak the truth, namely, my poverty.
Rachel stood up, turning her back to him and drawing her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The shawl was lavender, as was her gown and satin high-heeled shoes, shoes which a servant cleaned daily with white wine and a piece of muslin. She was an inch taller than Poe, with long hair that held all of the brown and gold of autumn, hair combining fire and sun and reaching to her waist. Poe, with his tremendous capacity for happiness and unhappiness, had met and loved Rachel a year ago and she had given him both. At that time she was alone, waiting for her husband to return from somewhere in the world and Poe’s wife was just recently beneath the earth and he needed to love again.
Their love had not been of the flesh, for Rachel’s attachment to her husband had been firm, deep, unyielding. So Poe, who worshipped beauty, had worshipped Rachel for it eased the hurt of losing Virginia.
He had fame and was imaginative and because women had warned Rachel against him (“morbid, dangerous, a drunkard, bitter”), Rachel had found him attractive, as did other women. They delighted in each other and Poe had drunk deep of her beauty and lived on hope, that agony of desire.
Then her husband had returned and Rachel left his life. What remained was pain, something he knew quite well. Now she was in his life again, in need of his help.
She wanted him to use his contacts as a journalist, as a man of despair, as a man who knew too much about the underbelly and dark side of Manhattan and make contact with the grave robbers who had stolen her husband’s body.
But what was Rachel hiding from him?
She gazed into the fire with eyes that did not blink. On the other side of the closed door, a maid’s laughter faded as she climbed a staircase. “Eddy?” Rachel turned to face him. “Do you ever wish to see your dearest wife alive, even for one brief moment?”
He twisted his thin mouth into a sad smile. “I loved her totally, some would say incoherently. I weep for her not with my tears but with my heart’s blood. My few remaining friends would prefer her to be alive, for I would drink less and therefore, quarrel less. Were Virginia alive, I would also spend less time in that land which exists between life and death.”
Rachel took one step toward him and stopped. Her eyes locked with his. “Would it not be worth anything to feel her arms around you once more?”
Poe closed his eyes and shivered. The sickness that now threatened to overtake him was not that caused by drink or ill health. It was an even more cruel sickness, one rooted deep in personal despair. “Six years ago, a wife whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. It was thought she would not live and so I took leave of her forever, undergoing each and every agony of her death. Then she achieved partial recovery and again I clutched at hope.”
Poe opened his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Once more the vessel broke. And healed. One year later, it happened again and again I had no choice but to suffer with her. Partial recovery again until, until… ” He blinked tears from his eyes.
It broke again and again and again, crushing me with unspeakable torment as I watched her die and yes, I died with her. Her pain only made me love her more dearly and with all my strength, I desperately clung to her life. I am, perhaps, too sensitive and all that concerns me I view with total and extreme seriousness, but this has made me a poet which I would not change.”
Poe collapsed onto a dark green velvet sofa and spoke to the ceiling high above him. “I became insane, alternating that hideous state of mind with unfortunate intervals of the most horrible sanity. I drank, God knows how much or how often and I continued to exist, for one cannot call what I endured living. I existed on a pendulum ruthlessly swinging back and forth between despair and hope. Would my dearest one live, would she die. No man, let alone myself, could continue living that way without total loss of reason and when the deliverance for which I prayed finally came I was no happier. For what cured me of living between despair and hope was the death of my wife. The solution became the problem.”
Poe leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “My only life died and let me tell you that the one I received in its stead I hurl back at God and curse him for giving it to me.”
He felt Rachel come up behind him and place her hands on his shoulders. “Eddy, it can be done.”
Poe turned to look at her.
“Eddy, it is possible for the dead to live again.”
He stared at her for long seconds, then said, “I was correct.”
The tone in his voice made her withdraw her hands.
Poe stood up to face her. He was correct. Oversensitive Poe, with his mind buried in tales of terror, revenge and murder, with his soul consumed by death, fantasy, mystery and ratiocination, Poe who never guessed but who analyzed carefully and accurately. Poe who was admired, derided, feared, scorned. Poe knew.
“Rachel?”
She backed away from him.