Then an inspiration: “It Comes By Night”. This, he thought, could be right. He barely had time to write it down when there was a knock at the door.
He groaned.
The man from the Tribune was creating a bad impression. His manner verged on the offensive. “Have a care what you say to me. My readers are not to be deceived. I will insist upon the truth.”
The inference was not lost on Edgar Allan Poe.
“Do you take me for a deceiver, then?” he said, scarcely containing his annoyance. He had consented to this interview on the assumption that it would prop up his shaky reputation.
“You will not deny that you are a teller of tall tales, a purveyor of the fantastic.”
“That is my art, sir, not my character, and you had better make the distinction if you wish to detain me any longer. What did you say your name is?”
“Nolz. Rainer Nolz.”
“Ha — it sounds Prussian.”
“Is that objectionable to you?”
“It is if you are unable to temper your questions with courtesy.”
“My family have lived in Virginia for two generations,” Nolz said, as if that absolved him of Prussian tendencies. He seemed bent on establishing superiority. Overweight — fat, to put it bluntly — and dressed in a loud check suit stained with food, he was probably twenty years Poe’s senior — too old to be a hack, notebook in hand, interviewing a writer. A competent journalist his age should surely have occupied an editor’s chair by now.
He threw in another barbed remark. “Since you raised the matter of names, yours is an odd one. Poe — what’s the origin of that?”
“Irish. The Poes arrived in America about 1750.”
“And the Allans?”
“The family who took me in when I was orphaned. Do you really need to know this?”
“It’s not a question of what I need to know, but what my readers will expect to be informed about.”
“My writing,” Poe said, raising his generally quiet voice to fortissimo.
“On the contrary. They can pick up one of your books. Anything from me about your writing would be superfluous. The readers — my readers — are interested in your life. That’s my brief, Mr Poe. I’ve come prepared. I have an adequate knowledge of your curriculum vitae — or as much of it as you have put in the public domain. You aren’t honest about your age, subtracting years as if you were one of the fair sex.”
“Is that important?”
“To posterity it will be. You were born in 1809, not 1811.”
Poe smiled. “Now I understand. You’ve been talking to the unctuous Griswold.”
“And you’ve been lying to him.”
Rufus Griswold, self-appointed arbiter of national literary merit, had first come into Poe’s life probing for personal information for an anthology he was compiling ambitiously entitled The Poets and Poetry of America. At twenty-six, the man had been confident, plausible and sycophantic — a veritable toady. Poe had recognized as much, but failed to see the danger he presented. Writers with a genius for portraying malice do not always recognize it in real life. Griswold was a third-rate writer who fancied himself one of the literati, a parasite by now embedded in Poe’s life and repeatedly damaging him. Ultimately the odious creature would take possession of the writing itself. At the time of their first meeting there had seemed no conceivable harm in embellishing the truth.
Nolz was a horse of a different colour, making no pretension to charm. “But you’ll oblige me by answering my questions honestly.”
“Before I do,” Poe said, liking him less by the minute, “I’m curious to know how much of my work you have read.”
“Not much.”
“The poems?”
“A few.”
“The tales?”
“Fewer. I don’t care for the fantastic and horrific. I prefer something of intellectual appeal.”
“You think my work is not for the intellect?”
“Too sensational. At my age, Mr Poe, one has a care for one’s health.”
“Are you unwell?”
“My doctor tells me I have a heart murmur. Too much excitement aggravates the condition. But I am here to talk about you, not myself. You are fond of claiming that you could have emulated Byron and swum the Hellespont because as a youth in Richmond you once won a wager by swimming a stretch of the James River.”
Poe was pleased to confirm it. “Correct. At the mere age of fifteen I swam from Ludlam’s Wharf to Warwick against one of the strongest tides ever known.”
Nolz was shaking his head. “Unfortunately for you, I know Richmond. I have lived there. To have achieved such a feat you must have swum at least six miles.”
“As I did,” Poe answered on an angry rising note. “I assure you I did. In those conditions there is no question that my swim was the equal of Byron’s.”
“And I say it is impossible.”
“Mr Nolz, it happened, and others were there as witnesses. I was an athletic youth. Were I fifteen again and fit, I would not hesitate to duplicate the deed. Sadly, in recent months my health, like yours apparently, has suffered a decline. But I have achieved other things. Shall I tell you about The Raven?”
“I would rather you didn’t.”
The sauce of this fellow! “Your readers will expect to be told how it came to be written.”
“I know all that,” Nolz said and smiled in a way that was not friendly. “I have a copy of your essay, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, which purports to explain the genesis of the poem.”
“Purports?”
“The piece is self-congratulation, a paean to Mr Poe. You omit to mention how much you borrowed from other writers.”
“Name one.”
“Miss Elizabeth Barrett.”
“I am on the best of terms with Miss Barrett.”
“You are on the best of terms with any number of ladies. And I am sure you are on the best of terms with a poem of Miss Barrett’s entitled Lady Geraldine’s Courtship because in The Raven you aped the rhythm and rhyme and offered not a word of your debt to her in the essay.”
“She has not complained to me.”
“As a critic you are quick to accuse others of imitation and lifting ideas, but you seem blind to the same tendency in yourself. You are also indebted to Mr Charles Dickens. Allow me to remind you that you were planning to write a poem about a parrot until you read of the raven in Barnaby Rudge.”
Poe was silent. The man was right, damn him.
“I suggest to you” — Nolz gave the knife a twist — “that a parrot saying ‘Nevermore’ would not have impressed the public. It might well have made you a laughing stock.”
Poe said in his defence, “Whether or not the raven in the Dickens novel put the idea in my head is immaterial. I might as easily have seen one perched on a churchyard wall. The artist cannot choose the source of his inspiration.”
“But he ought to acknowledge it when he claims to be expounding his modus operandi. I recall the scene in the novel where Barnaby is imprisoned with Grip the raven for company and the sun through the bars casts the bird’s shadow upon the floor while its eyes gleam in the light of the fires set by the rioters outside. Somewhat reminiscent of your unforgettable final stanza, is it not? ‘And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor.’”
“Would you tax me with plagiarism?”
“No, sir. Forgetfulness.”
“How charitable! Is there anything else you hold against me?”
Nolz gave a nod, as if tempted to go on. Then he hesitated before saying, “Mr Poe, you may not appreciate this, but I am your best hope.”