The Port-Wine Stain Read Online Free Page B

do.”
    I was used to the sight of odd gentlemen ogling the exhibits.
    â€œEdgar Poe.” I must have given him a blank look, for he went on impatiently. “Haven’t you ever read one of his tales? ‘William Wilson’ . . . ‘The Gold-Bug’ . . . ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ He is our most celebrated author of the macabre; there’s nothing to match him for the horrific effect rendered in the most accomplished style. His fame had already jumped the Atlantic when I was studying in Paris. You must get hold of his work, Edward. If I think of it tonight, I’ll bring you my copy of Lowell’s magazine, The Pioneer . It contains Poe’s excellent story, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’”
    â€œThank you, Dr. Mütter, I’d like that.”
    â€œYou’ll have a chance to see him for yourself. He’s fascinated by our collection. It was the reason for his visit today. He said he would like very much to return, and I agreed he should. You’ll give him every assistance when he does visit us again, Edward.”
    â€œI’ll be happy to do what I can, Dr. Mütter.”
    T HE FOLLOWING WEEK , Poe did return, and I escorted him amid the cabinets, answering his many questions. He, too, was someone whose stomach could not be easily turned. His dark eyes were bright, but without the flashing intensity I had seen in them on his first visit. His black sack coat and hat were shabby, if carefully brushed. He appeared to be a gentleman who had suffered a reversal of fortune. A man of less than average height, he nonetheless carried himselfwith the dignity of the sergeant major and, later, the West Point cadet he had been in his youth. He was only thirty-five when I knew him, but his youth was already far behind him. He looked used up. He’d been living with Virginia and Mrs. Clemm, his aunt and mother-in-law, in poverty that can only be described as abject, and, in five years’ time, he would die of it. The Baltimore Clipper would report his demise, in that city, as the result of “congestion of the brain.” But it was poverty that killed him, Moran, and not insanity, opium, or drink, as his critics proclaimed and the world has been happy to believe. Ordinary people relish a scandal and delight in the fall of those greater than themselves.
    Poe could be, at times, a drunkard and an abuser of ether and laudanum. I doubt any man in his circumstances and with his nervous temperament—he was an uncommonly nervous man—could have behaved otherwise. During the months I knew him, I took ether and laudanum and soused myself with rum and gin. Happily for me, my temperament does not favor addiction; I seldom drink now and use laudanum only for toothache. In truth, I sometimes stood at the brink with Poe, although I was sensible of the danger and drew back in time.
    Did he find the view beautiful? Did he find life as it is lived by the majority of us deadening?
    Yes.
    Edgar saw a strange beauty in suffering. His imagination thrilled to the burlesque of existence. He seldom smiled when I knew him. I’ve seen the daguerreotype called “Annie,” taken in his final year. His face shows the gigantic strain I mentioned, as though it were about to comeasunder. He’s cockeyed in the picture—the right orb oddly swiveled. His thin lips come together in a grimace. One sees such faces in the asylum. But I tell you, Moran, he was not mad—not when he set pen to paper. A madman could not have written as he did. Nor could a dope fiend or a chronic alcoholic. His faculties were concentrated, his mind clear, his hand steady.
    Once, I saw it for myself, Moran: how he wrote—with what extraordinary application. He believed me to be asleep in a chair in the corner of his room. Bent over the foolscap, his hand seemed a thing apart, so still he was except for it. The fingertips of its fellow rested on his forehead—that lofty brow