“By whom?”
“The editor of the New York Daily Tribune. You, as a journalist, will know that obituaries of eminent men are prepared in advance, sometimes years in advance. One cannot write an adequate account of a life on the morning a death is announced.”
“My obituary! I am forty years old!”
“Ars longa, vita brevis.”
“I don’t want this,” Poe said, panicking. “I wish I had never spoken to you. How can you compose my death notice when I am still of this earth? It’s ghoulish. You’ve put the mark of death on me.”
Nolz looked shamefaced. “I have committed an unprofessional act. I should never have told you.”
“I’m still creative. God knows, I still have the talent.”
The journalist cleared his throat. “With due respect, Edgar, you have not produced much of significance this year.”
“I have not suffered a day to pass without writing.”
“What manner of writing?”
“I revise my earlier work.”
“Previously published work. All this tinkering with things that appeared in print ten years ago is the symptom of an exhausted talent.”
“And poems. I wrote a new poem longer than The Raven.”
Nolz lifted his eyebrows, leaving the last four words to resonate. “I doubt if anything you have written in the last six months is worthy of mention in the obituary.”
“Cruel!”
“But true. I told you I must be honest.” Nolz closed his notebook and pushed his chair back from the table. “I shall take my leave of you now. Take heart, Edgar. Your place in the Pantheon is assured. In your short life you have written more masterpieces than Longfellow, Hawthorne and Emerson between them.”
Poe’s next words were uttered in a forlorn cry of despair. “I am not finished.”
“I think my hat is hanging in the passage.”
“Damn you to kingdom come, I am not finished!”
Nolz crossed the room.
Poe got up and followed him, grabbing at his sleeve. “Wait. There is something you haven’t seen, a work of monumental significance. I’ve been working on it for five years, the best thing I have ever done.”
Nolz paused and turned halfway, his face creased in disbelief. “Unpublished?”
“You must read it,” Poe said, nodding. “It’s a work of genius.”
“A poem?”
“A tale. It will stand with ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’.”
“One of your tales of horror? I told you how I feel about them.”
“Not merely one of my tales of horror, Ray, but the ultimate tale. If you neglect to read it, you will undervalue my reputation, whatever you write in that obituary.”
“What is the title?”
He had to think. “It Comes By Night”. He rushed to his desk in the corner of the room and started riffling through the sheets of paper spread across it, scattering anything unwanted to the floor. “Here!” He snatched up a pen and inscribed the title on the top sheet. “If I die tomorrow, this is my legacy. I beg you, Ray. If you have a shred of pity for a desperate man, give it your attention.” He thrust the manuscript into Nolz’s hands. “Take it with you. I swear it is the best I have ever done, or will do.”
Shaking his head, Nolz pocketed the handwritten sheets, retrieved his hat and left.
Two days later, the script of “It Comes By Night” was returned to Poe by special messenger. With it was a note:
Dear Sir,
I understand that you are the author and owner of these pages discovered in the rooms of Mr Raymond Nolz, deceased. I regret to inform you that he was found dead in bed yesterday morning. The physician who attended was of the opinion that Mr Nolz suffered some spasm of panic in the night which induced a fatal heart attack. He was known to have an irregular heart rhythm. In these sad circumstances it may be of some consolation to you that your story was the last thing he ever read, for it was found on his deathbed. I return it herewith.
Sincerely,
J. C. Sneddon, Coroner
Poe threw the script into the fire and wept.
Edgar Allan Poe himself died the next month in Washington College Hospital, Baltimore. The mystery surrounding his last days has baffled generations of biographers. He had been found in a drunken stupor in a gutter. Dr John Moran, who attended him in hospital, reported that even when he regained consciousness the writer was confused and incoherent. “When I returned I found him in a violent delirium, resisting the efforts of two nurses to keep him in bed. This state continued until Saturday evening (he was admitted on Wednesday) when he commenced calling for one ‘Reynolds’ which he did through the night up to three on Sunday morning. At this time a very decided change began to affect him. Having become enfeebled from exertion he became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time, then gently moving his head he said, ‘Lord help my poor Soul’ and expired.”
The identity of “Reynolds” has never been satisfactorily explained. Poe had no known friend of that name. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe, his biographer, the poet, critic and mystery writer, Julian Symons, wrote: “...this last cry, like so much else in his life, remains a riddle unsolved”.
Just as the sudden death of Ray Nolz was never explained.
On the day of Poe’s funeral, the New York Daily Tribune published an obituary announcing the death and stating “few will be grieved by it” because “he had no friends”. Poe had been worthless as a critic, always biased, and “little better than a carping grammarian”. This savage piece was balanced with praise of the stories and the poetry, but the impression of the man was devastating. He was likened to a character in a Bulwer-Lytton noveclass="underline" “Irascible, envious, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellent cynicism while his passions vented themselves in sneers... He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species.”
The obituary had been prepared by Rufus Griswold.
And the damage didn’t end there. The appalling Griswold approached Poe’s mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, and by some undisclosed arrangement obtained a power of attorney to collect and edit the writings. The first two volumes were in print within three months of Poe’s death, with a preface announcing that they were published as an act of charity to benefit Mrs Clemm. She received no money, just six sets of the books. Griswold’s Memoir of the Author, published in 1850, became for many years the accepted biography. It contained all the old distortions and lies and added more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Rainer Nolz and “It Comes By Night” are inventions. Everything about Rufus Griswold has been checked for the truth.
The Best Small Country in the World
Louise Welsh
Henryk couldn’t understand what the old man was trying to say to him.
“Are you all right, son?”
The man’s lips were pulled back into what might have been a grin, but his harsh tone matched the flint greyness of the world beneath the railway bridge.
“It’s just that you look a wee bit out of sorts, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Henryk wanted to walk away. He hadn’t eaten since the night before and he was cold. Of course it was colder at home, but the Glasgow chill had a damp quality that had seeped through his trainers, stiffened his feet and crept into his bones.
He couldn’t go. If he left the spot now he might miss Tomasz, and there was still an outside chance that it had all been a misunderstanding and Jerzy might yet come back.