The Beautiful Cigar Girl

by Daniel Stashower

  As Poe’s renown spread, a new forum became available to him. In January of 1845, just as “The Raven” was being readied for publication, Poe accepted a position as assistant editor of a new magazine called the Broadway Journal. The following month he received a promotion to coeditor, with the additional responsibility of contributing a full page of original material to each issue. In return, Poe was to receive one-third of the magazine’s revenues. After his experiences at the Southern Literary Messenger, Burton’s, and Graham’s, Poe was gratified to have a chance to share in the profits of his labors. Not surprisingly, however, his tenure at the Broadway Journal was marked by controversy. In March of 1845 he accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was fast becoming the most distinguished poet in the country, of gross plagiarism, launching a protracted episode that came to be known as the “Longfellow War.” Although Poe had cultivated a friendly correspondence with Longfellow over the years, and praised him in print as “unquestionably the best poet in America,” he now felt moved to charge Longfellow with the theft—“too palpable to be mistaken”—of a poem by Tennyson. The dispute brought no esteem upon Poe, who was in turn roundly attacked by Longfellow’s many advocates. Longfellow himself would not be drawn into the fray. Unlike other writers with whom Poe quarreled, Longfellow would later offer a magnanimous reflection: “The harshness of his criticisms I have never attributed to anything but the irritation of a sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong.”

  In June of 1845, seeking to capitalize on the success of “The Raven,” Wiley & Putnam published a collection of twelve of Poe’s short stories under the title of Tales. The stories were selected by Poe’s editor, Evert Duyckinck, a man Poe described as having an “almost Quixotic fidelity to his friends.” Duyckinck’s story selection was also quixotic. Of the more than seventy stories Poe had published at that stage, Duyckinck omitted several of his best—including “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death”—in favor of some notably inferior efforts such as “Lionizing,” a rather pallid literary satire. Poe appears to have had no influence on the choices.

  Significantly, Duyckinck saw fit to include “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” The decision is not difficult to understand; the editor had also selected “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” two stories of undisputed merit that had enjoyed previous success. Together with “Marie Rogêt” they formed a natural grouping of all three of the Dupin tales. “Marie Rogêt” would also have retained some of its topical appeal, bolstered by the success of J. H. Ingraham’s novel the previous year.

  Only five months elapsed between the appearance of “The Raven” and the publication of Tales, suggesting that Poe had to work quickly to prepare his stories for publication. He was in the habit of revising and improving his work over the course of his career, and had already made alterations to some of the stories in hopes of publication elsewhere. With “Marie Rogêt,” however, he faced a unique challenge. His initial revision of the story for the Ladies’ Companion had been carried out with untoward haste, and Poe had been severely limited by the fact that the first two sections of the story had already passed out of his hands. For the new revision, he would be able to make changes to the entire manuscript. By the same token, in his earlier effort he had been content simply to soften some of his earlier conclusions about the case, such as his insistence that the murder thicket had not been the scene of the crime. Although there had been no subsequent revelations to confirm or contradict the suspicions surrounding Mrs. Loss and the goings-on in her tavern, the general public had now come to believe that Mary Rogers had died during a bungled abortion. In revising his story for the second time, Poe faced the challenge of further refining his earlier efforts, so as to reflect what had now become the prevailing view of the case.

  In order to mold the story into a true depiction of the Mary Rogers saga, however, Poe would have been obliged to rewrite a major portion of his text. Given the time constraints of readying his stories for the Tales collection, he could not undertake a wholesale revision. Poe may also have feared that making changes on a large scale would be taken as an admission that his initial theory had been wrong. In order to preserve the impression that his story had anticipated and even influenced the New York investigation, Poe’s changes would have to be almost invisible.

  Seen in that light, Poe’s second revision of “Marie Rogêt” proved to be an audacious piece of editorial manipulation. By means of a series of small but cunning alterations to the manuscript, Poe managed to scale back his earlier emphasis on the swarthy naval officer while allowing for the possibility of Marie’s death at the hands of an abortionist. Unfortunately, as with his first set of revisions, many of these changes only served to add a layer of confusion. Poe’s discussion of whether or not the “murder thicket” had been the actual scene of the crime, for example, was now all but submerged in a tide of qualifiers and evasions. At almost every mention of the thicket he added an extra line—such as “if the thicket it was,” or “whether from the thicket or elsewhere”—designed to back away from committing himself one way or the other. This wavering reached its height when a definitive statement—“That it was the scene, I believe…”—was changed to its opposite: “That it was the scene, I may or I may not believe…” At the same time, Dupin’s earlier declaration that “I admit the thicket as the scene of the outrage” was omitted altogether.

  Poe also worked his editorial wiles on his portrait of Mme. Deluc, the stand-in for Mrs. Loss, who was no longer presented as the “honest and scrupulous old lady” she had been in the previous version. Her testimony to the police, which had previously been described only as “somewhat tardy,” was now found to be “somewhat tardy and very suspicious.” Readers were also told that there “might have been…an accident at Madame Deluc’s.” Although he could not make a more definitive accusation without unsettling the other elements of the theory, Dupin’s summing up the “meager yet certain fruits” of his analysis was modified to include the notion of “a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc.”

  Even Marie’s private thoughts, as imagined by Dupin, were tailored accordingly. Previously, Dupin had said, “We may imagine her thinking thus—‘I am to meet a certain person for the purpose of elopement.’” Now, an alternative was appended: “or for certain other purposes known only to myself.” Similarly, where Dupin declared that Marie had left the boardinghouse “never to return,” he now added a counterbalance: “—or not for some weeks—or not until certain concealments are effected—”

  Perhaps the most blatant manipulation surrounded Dupin’s earlier insistence that only one villain, the swarthy naval officer, had been responsible for the crime. Previously, Dupin had reached a dramatic crescendo with these words: “The horrors of this dark deed are known only to one living human being, and to God.” With a stroke of Poe’s pen, these horrors became “known only to one, or two, living human beings, and to God.” Poe’s modifications even extended to the clumsy editorial passage originally attributed to the editor of the Ladies’ Companion. There, Poe had written “that an individual assassin was convicted, upon his own confession, of the murder of Marie Rogêt.” For the republication in Tales, this line was struck out.

  Even more audaciously, Poe added a scattering of footnotes in which he stepped out from behind the mask of Dupin and commented directly on the actual investigation in New York, using the names of the people and places associated with the case. As with “The Great Balloon Hoax” and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the inclusion of concrete and recognizable details appeared to bolster the credibility of the enterprise, and allowed Poe to maintain the illusion that his deductions had been correct from the beginning.

  In the first of Poe’s footnotes, he offered a calculated summary of the story’s inspiration, aimed at convincing his readers of the truth of what followed:

  Upon the original publication of “Marie Rogêt,” the foot-notes now appended were considered unneces
sary; but the lapse of several years since the tragedy upon which the tale is based, renders it expedient to give them, and also to say a few words in explanation of the general design. A young girl, Mary Cecilia Rogers, was murdered in the vicinity of New York; and although her death occasioned an intense and long-enduring excitement, the mystery attending it had remained unsolved at the period when the present paper was written and published (November, 1842). Herein, under pretence of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, the author has followed, in minute detail, the essential, while merely paralleling the inessential, facts of the real murder of Mary Rogers. Thus all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth: and the investigation of the truth was the object.

  This was an astonishing display of bravado. Poe’s unequivocal claim that “all argument founded upon the fiction is applicable to the truth” clearly invites the reader to believe that every word of the story is drawn from fact. This marks a strange contrast to his equally forceful statement in the concluding passages of the story that “I speak of coincidence and no more…let it not for a moment be supposed that…it is my covert design to hint at an extension of the parallel, or even to suggest that the measures adopted in Paris…or measures founded in any similar ratiocination, would produce any similar result.”

  But Poe wasn’t finished. His introductory footnote continued:

  The “Mystery of Marie Rogêt” was composed at a distance from the scene of the atrocity, and with no other means of investigation than the newspapers afforded. Thus much escaped the writer of which he could have availed himself had he been upon the spot and visited the localities. It may not be improper to record, nevertheless, that the confessions of two persons (one of them the Madame Deluc of the narrative), made, at different periods, long subsequent to the publication, confirmed, in full, not only the general conclusion, but absolutely all the chief hypothetical details by which that conclusion was attained.

  This, to most readers, would have been a bombshell. Although his tone appeared self-effacing, he now stated unambiguously that he had been right all along, and had a pair of confessions to back up his theory.

  Poe was bluffing with a very weak hand. In making specific reference to the confession of “Madame Deluc in the narrative,” Poe would have stirred the memories of his contemporary readers with regard to the rumored confession of Mrs. Loss—a widely circulated story that was never officially confirmed. The reference to Mrs. Loss would have lent some measure of credence to his assertion that there had been a second, corroborating confession. If there was a second confession, however, it has been lost to posterity. But Poe presents both confessions as a fait accompli, creating the impression that the facts of the New York investigation eventually caught up with and confirmed the innovative theory advanced by Dupin. Poe’s concluding statement that “all the chief hypothetical details” were confirmed is calculated to hammer the point home, leaving no doubt in the reader’s mind.

  Yet it is clear that not all of Dupin’s speculations could have been verified, since not all of them were based on actual fact. In the later stages of the story, Dupin spent much of his time contemplating the problem of the barge found drifting in the Seine—as described in the sixth of his crucial newspaper extracts—and had confidently asserted that the “boat shall guide us, with a rapidity which will surprise even ourselves, to him who employed it in the midnight of the fatal Sabbath.” Since this detail had been fabricated for the occasion of the story, it is unlikely that this “chief hypothetical detail” could have found confirmation in New York.

  As a noted Poe scholar would later remark, the extraordinary latticework of revisions and shortcuts through which he achieved his effect “deserves some measure of admiration—even if grudgingly given—for its nonchalant audacity.” For the moment, Poe’s bold assertions about the case would pass unchallenged, and the Tales collection sold well on publication in the summer of 1845. Poe would claim that sales climbed to some 1,500 copies, at fifty cents apiece, bringing him a royalty of about $120. The reviews were generally kind. Even Rufus Griswold, who had been the target of Poe’s criticism from the lecture platform, gave it a glowing notice, ranking Poe among “the first class of tale writers who have appeared since the marvel-loving Arabian first attempted fabulous history.” Many of the critics made special mention of “Marie Rogêt,” with the London Spectator praising Poe’s “great analytical skill in seizing upon the points of circumstantial evidence and connecting them together.”

  Poe must have felt considerable satisfaction. He had managed to stave off a disaster, absorbing the late-breaking news and theories about the Mary Rogers case into his own fictional design, and transforming the potentially ruinous Weehawken findings into an artistic success. At the same time, the ambiguities and outright deceptions of “Marie Rogêt” illustrated the degree to which Poe felt free to indulge himself, unapologetically, in poetic exaggeration. It is perhaps significant that in the interval between the two revisions of “Marie Rogêt,” Poe published a mock scientific treatise entitled “Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences.” “A crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man diddles,” Poe observed. “To diddle is his destiny…Diddling, rightly considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin.”

  Others, like the poet James Russell Lowell, had a different word for it. After a falling-out with Poe, Lowell offered a cutting portrait in “A Fable for Critics,” a poem that lampooned many of the writers of the day:

  There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge;

  Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.

  XX

  The Imp of the Perverse

  BY THE CLOSE OF 1845, Poe’s moment in the sun was fading. With the peculiar instinct for self-destruction that had continually stunted his career, Poe now sabotaged the opportunities presented by the success of “The Raven.”

  In a story published that year titled “The Imp of the Perverse,” Poe commented at length on this seemingly preordained impulse toward self-immolation. “With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible,” he wrote. “I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse—elementary.”

  Perched behind his desk at the Broadway Journal, Poe once again descended into the cycle of alcohol and argumentation that had soured his chances of success at the Southern Literary Messenger, Burton’s, and Graham’s. Soon his health began to suffer, and his work habits became erratic. He grew fixated on the subject of plagiarism and hurled accusations at writers and critics who might otherwise have become his allies. “It is too absurd for belief,” wrote Charles Briggs, his coeditor, “but he really thinks that Longfellow owes his fame mainly to ideas which he borrowed from Poe’s writings in the Southern Literary Messenger.” Later, Briggs would add a perceptive assessment of his colleague’s temperament: “One of the strange parts of his strange nature was to entertain a spirit of revenge towards all who did him service.”

  By June of 1845, only six months after signing on with the Broadway Journal, Poe had reached a crisis. Briggs wrote to James Russell Lowell that Poe “has latterly got into his old habits and I fear he will injure himself irretrievably.” Aware that he was about to be fired, Poe sought help from Evert Duyckinck, his editor at Wiley & Putnam. Pleading ill health, Poe asked Duyckinck to buy out his share of the magazine. “I am still dreadfully unwell and fear that I shall be very seriously ill,” he wrote. “I have resolved to give up the B. Journal and retire to the country for six months, or perhaps a year, as the sole means of recruiting my health and spirits.”

  Matters took an unexpected turn wh
en Briggs attempted to force Poe out by buying up control of the magazine. Finding the price too high, Briggs was forced to withdraw at the last minute. By this time the magazine was barely solvent, and publication temporarily ceased. Unwilling to risk further losses, the publisher, John Bisco, decided to sell the journal outright to Poe for the sum of fifty dollars. This was a bargain price and an extraordinary opportunity, but Poe had trouble raising the money. Desperate, he even sought a loan from Rufus Griswold, whom he had regularly mocked in print and from the lecture platform. “Lend me $50 and you shall never have cause to regret it,” Poe wrote, adding that the magazine “will be a fortune to me if I can hold it—which I can easily do with a very trifling aid from my friends. May I count you as one?” Griswold, along with numerous others, felt unable to comply. Finally Poe secured the funds through a note endorsed by Horace Greeley. At the end of October, Poe found that he had suddenly and unexpectedly achieved his lifelong ambition of owning a magazine. He was determined to make a success of it, but soon found that he needed additional money to fund the operation. He resumed his pleadings to his friends, claiming that his very existence was bound up in the fate of the journal. “I will make a fortune of it yet,” he wrote. “If I live until next month I shall be beyond the need of aid.”