35.

7. Something in His Soul

 New York--Philadelphia, 1837-1840

 

They were living on little more than bread and molasses. And yet they were relatively happy then. Eddy was in one of his sober cycles, Sissy looked her loveliest and sang her sweetest. Having lost his editing job in Richmond, Eddy had just moved his odd little family to New York, where he thought he could best make a mark. They were living in Greenwich Village, on Carmine Street. That was where Circe first appeared.

Out of nowhere she seemed to come that rainy April day, scratching at the front door, soaked and scraggly, black as a cave haunted by two yellow eyes. She scurried in and begged Eddy with a plaintive meow to let her stay. Sissy dried her off with a rag while her mother, Muddy, frowned. "Last thing we need is another mouth to feed."

"We have mice, Mother. She will be well-fed."

 When she was dry, hours later, they saw what a long-haired beauty she was. Even Muddy grudgingly came around with caresses, at first tentative then in earnest. She was the first to notice the little horseshoe scar on Circe's nose. "I hope you won the fight," Muddy said.

"She's all black," said Eddy. Not even a tuft of white on her collar, not a splash on her toes. "Black as Pluto, aren't you my sweet?" He scratched her back as she purred and wound herself around his legs.

"You know what they say about black cats," said Sissy grinning. She was a beautiful dark-haired young woman with big bright eyes and an overbite that only made her more attractive. "They are all of them witches."

The perfect name suddenly came to him. "Then let us call her Circe. Can't call her Pluto, she's a girl."

"Perhaps she is a cat of good omen. She is so obviously a good witch." Sissy was hugging Circe to her bosom.

"I believe none of that superstitious nonsense," said Eddy.

She laughed. "Well, those people do in your stories!"

"They're just stories, Sissy," he assured her, if not himself. "I write them to put bread on our table."

"And molasses?" said Muddy. She was rarely sarcastic like that, but she was getting worried Eddy would not be able to support them here. She had tried running a boarding house on Waverly Place, but it hadn't been sustainable.

"I know, I know. I'm between jobs, don't rub it in. I have many contacts here. Remember that booksellers' dinner I attended a few weeks ago, all the literati of New York were there. I toasted the magazinists. One of them will call on me, I am sure of it. I am not unknown here, Muddy. Washington Irving himself admires my work. Even if he himself is overrated."

"Admiration is a start," Muddy admitted. "I have confidence in you, Eddy dear, I truly do, as long as you avoid the bottle. Which you have so far. That is very good. For we are under your protection, as you once put it so well." She placed her palm lightly on his cheek.

"And I will provide for you both."

But for now they lived on borrowed money and borrowed time. To make matters worse, Eddy was suffering from writer's block. Sissy claimed it was all because of that weird piece, the last thing he'd written, called "Siope." The one that opened with Listen to me, said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. "You can't be touched by a demon and not be cursed," she said.

He explained to her that it was a fable. A fable about the fear of nothingness, of spiritless existence. "When the spirit has fled, the demon comes to fill the gap. But you, my sweet Virginia, you keep my spirit alive, the demon at bay."

36.

And Circe too, seemed more sprite than demon at first. Eddy quickly came to love the demure and sanctified demeanor she carried as she walked with her tail erect. She followed him everywhere around the house, often appearing under his feet. And she was very smart. She could open doors. The back door had a thumb-latch; a bit of dexterity was needed to force it down. One day the three of them were in the kitchen when Circe suddenly came swinging through the door, which she had managed to unlatch with her forepaw and her weight. She hung from it, stretched to twice her size, and she leapt away from it with all her strength. Landing on the floor with a plop, she strutted over to them with both ears and tail erect.

"What she did took forethought," said Eddy. "I'll work up an article on this!"

"Good puss," said Sissy, stroking the cat. "You'll get Eddy writing again, won't you?"

"An article pointing out how thin the boundary is between man and brute. Between reason and instinct. Pointing out," he said as he scratched Circe's furry head, "that even little things with little heads can think."

But while Circe did indeed inspire Eddy to write again, he couldn't seem to finish anything he started--with the notable exception of the essay "Instinct vs. Reason: A Black Cat," which appeared in the Weekly Messenger and earned him a few dollars. Sitting at his writing desk with Circe attached to his shoulder, he started two more essays, three tales and two poems in a couple of weeks. "I swear to God," he said to Sissy and Muddy during one of their meager meals, "every time she darts off my shoulder, no doubt bored with dictating my fancies, I lose my train of thought."

"Now who's superstitious?" said Muddy. "She's merely distracting you."

"But I can't get it back. For a fleeting moment I feel the fury of inspiration, but then it becomes no more than drudgery. I need another line of work."

"Not lithography again," said Muddy.

"Cryptography perhaps!" said Sissy. "You're ever so clever at solving those puzzles. And creating them too."

37.

Gowans dropped by occasionally to make sure they were all right. He would sometimes bring literary men with him, but none of them seemed to know the right people in New York. One of them, however, Jim Pedder, was visiting from Philadelphia, and he knew someone who might need an assistant editor. Eddy put off writing the man for months, thinking he should stay in New York at least until Harpers got Pym out. But they were in no apparent hurry during these hard times.

. . . in what brilliant window-niche
                    How statue-like I see thee stand,
                    The agate lamp within thy hand!
                    Ahhh--

            Her soprano went tremolo, and then she coughed. It was a dry heaving cough that lasted an agonizing half minute. Then she composed herself, smiled the adorable overbite smile, and finished the song . . .  Psyche, from the regions which / Are Holy-Land!

Gowans was moved. "You're a lucky man, Mr. Poe."

"Are you all right, Virginia?" asked Muddy.

"I'm fine, mother. I just caught a chill." She rose from the piano and picked up Circe, who had been sitting in a ball very close to the stove. It was odd how such a longhaired cat loved to sit in the sun and near the fire. "Here is my heater." She hugged Circe to her as she sat next to Eddy on the crooked sofa.

"What was that you were singing, Mrs. Poe?" Gowans asked.

"My poem 'To Helen'," Eddy replied. "I wrote it for the mother of a friend of mine, she was very kind to me, loved me like her own. And died too young. I wanted to make her immortal."

"Her name was Helen?" Gowans asked.

"No. Jane Stanard. But Jane won't do for a goddess."

"Shall we heat some of that cider I brought?" asked Pedder.

"Is it hard or soft?" Eddy needed to know.

"Quite soft, I assure you."

Muddy went to the kitchen to find a pot for the cider. As they waited for it, Pedder said, "The boarding house in Philadelphia that Gowans told you about--the landlady is a friend of mine. There's nothing for you in New York, Mr. Poe. I'm giving you an opportunity. Did you write to The Gentleman’s editor? Billy Burton?"

"Not yet, no. I made inquiries and now I hesitate."

"Inquiries? Oh, not his divorce?"

"I heard he didn't actually divorce his first wife, he just abandoned her and their daughter in England, his marriage here making him a bigamist. But it isn't only his reputation, Mr. Pedder. His enthusiasm is split between the theater and his magazine. His real love is acting."

"I still see it as an opportunity for you. But I have several other leads. Just say the word, and I'll make all the arrangements."

            "Nothing for me here? Perhaps you're right, Pedder."

          As they sipped their hot cider, Edgar Poe announced to his aunt/mother and his cousin/wife that they were moving yet again, this time to Philadelphia.

38.

While they were packing a few weeks after the new year, Circe disappeared. She went out one cold sunny day and did not come back. By the time they were ready to move, she was still missing. Sissy made Eddy search the same alleys and ask the same neighbors over and over again, but no one had seen her. They had to leave without her. Sissy was so distraught she started coughing again, often for agonizing minutes.

It was partly to escape from his own disintegrating world that Edgar Poe started at this time to think about the cosmos. He had been reading Kepler, LaPlace, Herschel and others, and now, on the train to Philadelphia, all their ideas came rushing at him like the trees along the railroad. He was not a scientist, but something in his soul compelled him to inhabit their universe, and while he looked out the window, nodding off, the drab countryside faded into black. He thought how insignificant his problems were when the problem of the universe was before him. He saw in the blackness a speck of white light suddenly break up into brightly showering myriads, fireworks in his head.

Muddy, sitting across from him, shook him awake. "Eddy, are you all right?"

"I guess I nodded out there for a moment."

"Your head hit the window."  In that sleep-waking instant a vision was knocked into his head of the primordial particle exploding into stars and nebulae.

"I know what I must do before I die."

"You had a bad dream, Eddy," said Sissy next to him, taking his hands. "Why talk of dying? We have a new beginning."

Thanks to the kindness of Jim Pedder, they were soon settled in the boarding house--and soon in debt to the landlady. Eddy was slow coming back to terra firma from his rhapsodic daydreaming of the cosmological magnum opus he now felt destined to write that would change the direction of science back from its bondage to Reason. Forced by penury to put the cosmos aside for the nonce, he finally decided to swallow his pride and write to Burton, but Burton was out of town, no doubt on an acting tour. 

Muddy was out of money, Sissy was often sick with sorrow for having lost her beautiful black cat, and Eddy was struggling to stay focused. Pym had to come out soon; he was bound to make enough money to save them from destitution. They were living on bread and molasses again when Pedder sent his daughters Anna and Bessie down from Twelfth Street with food and the sweet milk of human kindness. Having read some of Eddy's poems in Godey's Lady's Book, the girls adored him and just knew that fame and fortune would come to him in their city of sisterly love, as they preferred to call Philly.

Eddy wrote letters begging to borrow from his second cousin Neilson, who repeatedly turned him down. Neilson resented his marriage, thought it incestuous. He also had no confidence in Eddy's ability to avoid "sipping the juice," as he put it. And he resented Muddy—he called her Maria—for refusing the offer he had made to her in Richmond, to take her in and become Virginia's guardian, giving her a chance for a comfortable life and an entrance into polite society. In response, Eddy begged her to marry him, professing his love and devotion. Neilson tried to convince her mother that Eddy always eventually back-slid, he could not help himself; it was as inevitable as the flow of his drunken father's blood in his veins, he would even drink before breakfast, which would prevent him from keeping a proper job. Fortunately, he was hired as editor of The Southern Literary Messenger and assured Muddy he would easily be able to support them both. O Aunty, he wrote to Muddy, you know I love Virginia passionately, devotedly. . . . I would take pride in making you both comfortable—and in calling her my wife. Are you sure she would be more happy with Neilson? Do you think anyone could love her more dearly than I? They threw their fate into his hands.

Now, as he went further into debt to Mrs. Jones and to Pedder, he folded under the stress and proved Neilson right: he bought a bottle of gin. He was drinking even as he wrote a letter to James Kirk Paulding claiming that he'd abandoned the vice altogether, and without a struggle. It was necessary that I should assure you of this before mentioning the request which is the object of this letter—that you should procure me a clerkship in your Department. Anything at all that may be available, anything to relieve me from this life of literary drudgery. Paulding, one of the New York literati who had always admired Eddy's genius, was now Secretary of the Navy. He had no job for Eddy.

So he wrote hackwork for magazines, trying desperately to feed his family. And he composed acid reviews for catharsis, floggings he administered to mediocre writers more successful than he. Pym finally came out in the summer, but made him little money. It was praised by some, decried as a shameless hoax by others, and totally panned by none other than Billy Burton, who was obviously back in town. Pym sold better in England, where it was of course pirated so that Eddy would not see a penny from those sales. He made barely enough from the American edition to pay half his debt to Mrs. Jones. The novel did nearly nothing to relieve them of their desperate poverty. After only eight months, in the fall of 1838, they had to move again; Eddy found much cheaper lodging in the outskirts of the city.

Her uncanny reappearance just about coincided with Eddy's finally getting a job. The day before her arrival, Billy Burton, in spite of his distaste for Pym, offered Eddy ten dollars a week as assistant editor of The Gentleman's Magazine. He was also to contribute articles and reviews, but Burton would allow no floggings. So Eddy suddenly had no outlet through which to vent his manifold frustrations. At first, the wonder of Circe's having somehow found her people after all this time was enough to ward off depression.

The day after Circe's return, Eddy had to detach her from his left calf to get out the door. "I am glad for your love and devotion, my puss," he said, handing her to Sissy. "But I must go downtown. My new employer wants to give me a pep talk. He thinks I am too melancholy, too sour."

"Tell him to pay you more," said Muddy. "That will make you less sour."

"No sour grapes, I trust," said Burton in his office. "Forget my review, Mr. Poe."

"I already have, Mr. Burton. Pym is a silly book, I know this."

"You are a man of genius; surely you should be able to take the sort of thing you dish out."

"Ah but you won't let me—"

"I won't let you be unfair."

"I was not unfair to Rufus Dawes," said Eddy, the f coming out as spit. "No American poet has been more shamefully overestimated."

"And none perhaps more underestimated than you. But I will sell no sour grapes."

"Pedder told me of your troubles. But don't let them make you morbid. I want no morbidity in my magazine. I have been as ill-used by the world as you, Mr. Poe. Some think me a monster for leaving my first wife, little knowing that she insisted on the divorce. My sufferings have not tinged my brain with a melancholy hue."

"I am not melancholic, I assure you. My wife is feeling better. My prospects are good. I have some fame, just no fortune."

"Rouse your energies, my man. Conquer the insidious attacks of the foul fiend, care. And for pity's sake get out and walk. You need exercise. Do you have a dog?"

"No, a cat. A singularly resourceful cat."

"Not black, I trust."

Eddy changed the subject. "All I ask is that my name be right beside yours on the cover of the magazine. That will go some way toward cheering me up."

Amazingly enough, Burton granted him that, but paid him no more than the paltry ten dollars. Still, seeing his name on equal footing with the publisher of the magazine inspired him. He would tinge the thing with his own hue, not melancholy but grotesque, morbidity concealed by comedy. Humor and horror together. So while he hacked out another hoax purporting to be the adventures of the first white man to cross the Rocky Mountains, he began day-dreaming a sickly decadent melancholy aristocrat who got no exercise as he strummed his guitar and obsessed over his ailing twin sister in their crumbling mansion.