Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster

by Karen Lee Street

  EPILOGUE

  PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER 1840

  Home. I closed my eyes and took in the sounds and smells of Philadelphia as the Grampus sailed into port. Sleep had not been my friend during the six weeks it took to traverse the Atlantic. By day I worried about my wife’s health, while darkness took me back to the catacombs and my final encounter with George Williams that had so nearly culminated in my demise rather than his. But when at last I arrived at our faithful brick house on the first day of September and crossed the threshold to embrace my wife and her dear mother, all that had happened in London that summer seemed to evaporate like shadow exposed to sunlight. I was home and with those I loved; surely the past did not matter if I left it locked up with those infernal letters?

  Sissy’s health had improved since Muddy had written of her decline. To set her further to rights and to improve my own compromised state, we returned to our routine of walking along the river. The Delaware Indians named it the Ganshohawanee, which means roaring waters; the Dutch called it the Schuylkill—hidden creek. It was a river of contradictions, full of bold energy and secret dark pools that drowned the unwary. It was a contradiction that reminded me of myself, the side I showed to my family and the dark twin I concealed from them.

  We enjoyed an Indian summer that lasted until the middle of October. Sissy would sit and do needlework or read while I swam to rebuild my strength, and Muddy collected wild greens for our supper. For my wife’s sake, I tried to shake off the melancholia that had gripped me since that evening in the catacombs when Death had chosen my nemesis over me. Attuned to my moods, she had invited me to unburden myself on more than one occasion, but I had retreated into silence. Why worry her with what might have happened? And, in truth, I could not help but fear that the actions of my forebears would taint her view of me. Would she have pledged herself to the grandson of a common criminal and a murderess? I did not think so.

  The late October winds scattered orange and red leaves through the air like sparks until the trees rattled bony fingers, and when the river shallows thickened to ice, our idyll along the Schuylkill came to a close. As darkness increasingly outweighed daylight, I wrote with a fury to unburden my very soul, transforming the memories that haunted me into tales that I hoped to sell. With this thought in mind, I accepted the invitation of artist John Sartain to join him at the Artists’ Fund Hall for an exhibition on the eighteenth of November. Sartain had recently been hired to do some embellishments for the first edition of George Graham’s new magazine, and I had ambitions to place some tales there.

  The exhibition proved a pleasant diversion for Sissy, and Mr. Sartain did his best to charm. It was an impressive collection and I thoroughly enjoyed the tour until the very end when I spied a familiar countenance. My heart stilled. No! It could not be! Violet eyes stared boldly into mine—her violet eyes. I could not be mistaken for I gazed daily into their counterfeit, the gem kept hidden in my waistcoat pocket, the talisman that had protected me from Williams’s blade down in the catacombs. I stepped forward, her name upon my lips—Mrs. Fontaine. And then I shook my head to wake from the half-slumber that had overtaken me and saw that it was but a painting before me, a portrait in a gilded oval frame done in a vignette manner—the arms, the bosom, the hair melted into the shadowy background, which added to the image’s veracity, as if the lady were a radiant specter emerging from the gloom. The portrait transfixed me, its features and expression so life-like that it seemed Mrs. Rowena Fontaine was right there before me, as though she had followed me from that wretched house in Camden Town to the Artists’ Fund Hall in Philadelphia.

  “A most extraordinary subject. It was difficult to do her justice in paint.”

  I turned to see a dark-haired fellow staring at me. Sartain and my wife were with him.

  “Allow me to introduce the artist, Mr. Robert Street,” Sartain said.

  “Most impressive, sir. A very fine collection of paintings.” I shook the hand of Sartain’s friend, who studied me intently, too intently, which made my nerves jangle all the more. Mr. Street turned back to the painting I had been examining.

  “Yes, a fine collection, thank you, although many say that no other painting here is so fine as this one.”

  “It is wonderful, indeed. Who is the subject?” I hoped against all hope Mrs. Fontaine had a doppelganger in Philadelphia, and she remained in the country of her birth.

  The artist frowned, tilted his head this way and that, and then waved his hand dismissively. “An actress, I believe, from London.”

  The chill that had enveloped me deepened. “When did you paint the portrait of Mrs. Fontaine?” My words turned to dust in my mouth when I saw my wife knit her brows, wondering how I knew the name of the woman in the portrait.

  “Mrs. Fontaine?” The eccentric painter frowned and then smiled broadly. “Ah, yes. You are quite right. I painted the portrait in early October soon ater she arrived in Philadelphia.”

  Mrs. Fontaine in Philadelphia, recently arrived. It could not be coincidence. What business had she in this city other than revenge for the death of her beloved George Williams?

  “But really you must be painted, Mrs. Poe.” The artist was smiling brightly at my wife. “I hope you will not be offended if I say that your beauty is extraordinary. I would be honored to paint your portrait.”

  My wife smiled. “Thank you for your kind offer. Perhaps in future.”

  “Oh, but you must allow it now. Beauty fades, time diminishes us.”

  She shook her head again, and he turned his attentions to me. “Then I must paint you, sir. One must never underestimate the power of posterity.” He indicated the portraits that hung from the walls surrounding us. “These men will never be forgotten.”

  “No doubt you are correct, but I am afraid I must decline,” I told the artist. And I knew that some things should be forgotten. How I wished that I could forget Mrs. Fontaine and George Williams and all that connected us. And yet how could I if Mrs. Fontaine were now truly in Philadelphia?

  Sissy and I made our way home in a haze of unease, my wife watching me carefully as if for signs of fever and me peppering the air with words of no consequence to keep the truth from spilling out. The wind taunted us as we walked and there was a smell of snow in the air—I said as much as I pushed my quaking hands deep into the pockets of my coat. When the fingers of my left hand met with a folded square of paper, a gasp of pure fear escaped me. I knew that the pocket had been empty before we attended the exhibition, I was more than certain. How? How had she done it? I wanted to shout the words but swallowed them back as Sissy’s hand touched my arm.

  “What is it, Eddie? Are you hurt?”

  What could I tell her? That the woman whose portrait she had admired had been there, at the Artist’s Fund Hall, watching me—watching us. Somehow she had slipped the paper into my pocket as if she were a phantom or a demon from Hell itself. How could I tell my beloved wife that the woman who wished harm to me and to all those I loved had traveled to Philadelphia to watch and wait for her moment?

  “I am quite all right,” I lied. “Truly I am.” A flickering light appeared in the darkness like an apparition—candlelight dancing behind window glass. “Look, we are almost home. Come, let us get into the warm.” I took my wife’s arm and led her to our house, my fingers still clutching that venomous square of paper.

  I did not take it from my pocket until later that night. We ate the meal Muddy cooked for us. We discussed the paintings and the peculiar Mr. Street. I talked about my plans for a new magazine. And when Sissy and Muddy retired to bed, I at last removed the letter and unfolded it.

  Philadelphia, 18 November 1840

  Dear Mr. Poe,

  Our few meetings in London did not culminate as I had planned, but we will meet again, you have my word. Nemo me impune lacessit. My arrival will be unexpected. You will think it is nothing—the wind in the chimney, a mouse crossing the floor, a cricket which has made a single chirp. But you will comfort yourself with these d
elusions in vain. When the time comes for our final meeting, you will know the terror felt by my father when he stood trial, the anguish he suffered in Newgate, the sorrow of his family when he was taken from them. Your only solace will be a swift retribution and when I have taken that, my father’s business will, at last, be finished.

  Make sure you leave your mark, Mr. Poe. Time will not wait for you.

  I remain respectfully yours,

  George Rhynwick Williams

  Williams! How could it be? It was not possible, but the note was most assuredly in Williams’s handwriting. In my mind’s eye, I could clearly see the man sprawled across the chapel floor, blood pooling around him. It was he—Williams—the desk clerk from Brown’s Genteel Inn, the man who had smiled to my face when delivering my messages, but had spied upon me and plotted my murder. But how? He had been dead, no heart beat, no breath, Dupin’s rapier had cut through him as if he were a wax effigy, but this time his victim truly had been flesh.

  And then, suddenly, it came to me. Autography suggests that Courvoisier’s lament was penned by a left-handed person, as was the case with the handbill for Brown’s Genteel Inn. Dupin’s words, the science of autography. And yet we both had forgotten that crucial clue. I recalled when the desk clerk—the taciturn, darkhaired, dark-eyed man—had drawn me an impromptu map to Southampton Way and how his left hand had curved in such an awkward fashion so it would not smear the ink as he wrote. That desk clerk normally worked at night, and we saw him less frequently, but I was certain he was of a similar height and build as the scrivener, the professor, Dr. Wallis—all in disguise, all one and the same. My nemesis. The dead man was his colleague, who worked during the mornings. Whether he had been paid to help Williams in his plan or had been duped into assisting him, he had died for his complicity. I thought back to the morning of my departure from London, when the night desk clerk had bade me a kind farewell. Our family is all that matters. I shivered to think how a seemingly innocent platitude might truly be a threat.

  I did not sleep well that night. Every creak, every rustle sent me bolt upright in bed. And it was the same the next night and the next after that. I tried to put Williams’s threatening letter from my mind, but it haunted me. And the more I tried to hide my unease from Sissy, the more afflicted I was. Daily my mood grew blacker. Nemo me impune lacessit—the threat tormented me. And yet I went back to those accursed letters day after day until I knew I had to rid myself of them. But could I burn them? Throw them into the Schuylkill? Bury them in the forest? I could not.

  So I left the letters interred in their casket and put the violet eye in with them. I took up three planks from the flooring of our bed chamber and deposited all between the scantlings, then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that my accursed inheritance would remain safe from prying eyes and safe from me.

  * * *

  As I have said before, I am lucid, I am calm. There is a certain over-acuteness of my senses that makes everything too sharp—the glistering of sunlight, the bang and clatter of teacups in saucers, of spoons and knives and forks upon the plate, but truly there is no madness within me. Every night I take great care to protect us from the inevitable. I make certain the shutters are fastened against the thick darkness of night itself and as I lay in bed, I watch for skulking shadows across the walls and listen intently for any sound of evil worming its way into our good, little house.

  And when morning comes I mutter “I am safe” and try to forget that which haunts me. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told, and I have sworn to the ghosts of those who precede me that what is written down in these pages will go to my tomb with me. And I am more than certain that this is the wisest decision I have ever made.

  FURTHER RESOURCES AND READING

  I thoroughly enjoyed the research required to write this novel, and especially appreciated the enthusiastic expertise of staff at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia; the catacombs of All Souls Cemetery, Kensal Green; and the Philadelphia Free Library, which holds the Colonel Richard A. Gimbel collection of Edgar Allan Poe materials, including Dickens’s pet raven, Grip.

  Some non-fiction works and resources on Poe and the Monster that might be of further interest to readers are:

  Peter Ackroyd, Poe: A Life Cut Short (London: Chatto & Windus, 2008)

  John Ashton, Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1885)

  Jan Bondeson, The London Monster: A Sanguinary Tale (London: Free Association Books, 2000)

  The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Comprehensive Collection of E-texts. (www.eapoe.org)

  Jeffrey Meyers, Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (London: John Murray, 1992)

  The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org) [See: Old Bailey Proceedings, 8 July 1790 and 13 December 1790.]

  EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE LONDON MONSTER

  Pegasus Books Ltd

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  Copyright 2016 © by Karen Lee Street

  First Pegasus Books hardcover edition October 2016

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  ISBN: 978-1-68177-220-2

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