Birth of Mark Twain

What a curious thing a "detective" story is. And was there ever one that the author needn't be ashamed of, except the "Murders in the Rue Morgue"?

So says Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens). Twain was born on November 30, 1835. He never knew Poe (he was 13 when Poe died) but both writers were pursuing a national identity in American literature. Twain, however, thought Poe had failed miserably (he thought so about many authors). A day before Poe's centennial in 1909, he wrote to William Dean Howells and told his fellow novelist his opinion of the master of the macabre: "To me his prose is unreadable—like Jane Austen's. No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's."

It's unclear what kind of salary Twain got for reading Poe or for writing an obscure short story called "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." Scholar Robert Comeau identified this story by Twain as borrowing themes from Poe's "William Wilson," a character from "Hop-Frog," and a device from "The Raven."

Poet-turned-Poeist Daniel Hoffman wrote: "In Poe's own country the only thing like 'William Wilson' is by that other demon-haunted genius, Mark Twain. But where Poe's tale is taut with demonic intensity, there is a wonderful hilarity in 'The Facts Concerning A [sic] Recent Carnival of Crime In Connecticut.'" In the story, a character is tortured by his Calvinist conscience, but outwits his tormentor (e.g. his conscience) by murdering him. Suddenly conscience-free, the character goes on murdering, cheating, and generally indulging in mischief.

For a time, the character's conscience is perched on a bookshelf. According to Comeau, this serves as the same symbolism as the bust of Pallas in Poe's "The Raven."

Happy birthday, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.

Poe's role in World War II

What does World War II have to do with Edgar Allan Poe? Well, that's easy: Poe helped win the war.

Even if you're a big Poe fan, you might not have heard of William F. Friedman, who died on November 12, 1969 (his headstone at Arlington National Cemetery reads "knowledge is power"). Friedman was one of Poe's many admirers. Born in 1891, Friedman was very young when introduced to Poe's short story "The Gold-Bug." Fascinated by the story's plot device of secret writing, Friedman was inspired to study cryptography and codes. As an adult, he wrote papers on Poe and cryptography, and often analyzed literature (Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, etc.) for coded messages. He eventually came to be known as one of America's greatest code-breakers.

During World War II, Japan was using a formidable form of code known as PURPLE. It was Friedman who went to work on deciphering this difficult, machine-made code. After months (and months) of studying, Friedman and his team were able to build a replica of Japan's PURPLE machine — without ever having seen the original. He named his machine MAGIC. The work was so intense he had a nervous breakdown after its completion. Nevertheless, Friedman and his team had succeeded, and now the American military had cracked Japan's code.

Years later, Friedman became the chief cryptologist for the National Security Agency and was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. And he owes it all to "The Gold-Bug" and Edgar Poe.

This shape was peculiar

Continuing the series of Poe works published in September issues, I realized I almost neglected one of the most interesting and spirited of Poe's tales. "The Oblong Box" was first published in the September 1844 issue of Godey's Lady's Book (and, part of a trend of concurrent publications, similar to "The Raven," it was also published in the August 28, 1844 issue of the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper).

"The Oblong Box" is a mixture of some of Poe's greatest story-telling elements. Set as a variation of the sea adventure tale, the story follows an unnamed narrator traveling by boat (the Independence) from Charleston, South Carolina to New York. On board, he bumps into his old friend Cornelius Wyatt, who is traveling with his wife and two sisters. The narrator is suspicious that his friend has rented three state-rooms, not to mention the cargo he brought aboard: an oblong box, ("this shape was peculiar," we are told) and a fairly large one at that — "about six feet in length by two and half in breadth." The box is made of pine and emits a slight odor. As a reader, you might already know what's in the box, but the narrator sure didn't.

Instead, he assumes (oddly) that the box housed a copy of The Last Supper that Wyatt recently acquired. He grows more suspicious, however, when he realizes how those three state-rooms are being used. One is for the two sisters, the other seems to be empty, and the third is for Wyatt, his wife, and the mysterious box. At night, however, Wyatt's wife leaves the room and spends the rest of the night in the empty room. After she leaves, the narrator hears the box being opened, followed by his friend's audible sobs. When the Independence is caught in a hurricane and breaks apart, Wyatt refuses to get in a lifeboat and leave the box behind. Instead, he goes down with the ship.

Some time later, the narrator meets the captain of the ship, who reveals what was in that box, why Wyatt refused to part with it, and why his "wife" left the state-room every night.

In addition to elements of the sea tale, the ending proves "The Oblong Box" is a horror story. The mystery behind the box, however, also implies it is a part of Poe's developing "ratiocination" method of tale-telling. More than all this, however, is the amazing symbolism in the story. Wyatt refuses to part with his precious cargo while aboard a ship named Independence, of all things. The voyage from South Carolina also echoes Poe's own trip from there via steamboat.

Oddly, Arthur Hobson Quinn notes that Poe offered the tale to Nathaniel Parker Willis, who suggested it be included in a new annual gift-book founded by Rufus Griswold. The Opal, which was edited first by Willis and later by Sarah Josepha Hale, was subtitled "A Pure Gift for the Holidays." Packed with religious or moral tales and poems for Christmas, "The Oblong Box" would have been an odd fit.

The Beautiful Cigar Girl

A shocking discovery was made in Hoboken, New Jersey on July 28, 1841: the body of Miss Mary Cecilia Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River. Rogers, a cigar salesgirl in Manhattan, had only gone missing a couple days prior. The discovery of her body confirmed suspicions that she was murdered.

Known for her good looks, she was nicknamed "The Beautiful Cigar Girl." Her boss, John Anderson, had hired her specifically because of that "skill" and asked her to exchange "teasing glances" with his customers. Likely because of this, she had many admirers — including some who published poems about her. She also likely met literary figures like James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Fitz-Greene Halleck.

On July 25, 1841, Rogers informed Daniel Payne, her fiancé, that she was going away to visit family; she immediately fell off the radar. When her murdered body was found three days later, she made national headlines. Her fiancé killed himself (using poison) as the investigation went on. The case remains unsolved but speculation includes gang violence and a failed abortion (or, the genteel euphemism, "premature delivery").

Edgar A. Poe, who might have met Rogers at Anderson's cigar store, picked up the mystery too. Reviving his character C. Auguste Dupin, introduced in 1841's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Poe fictionalized the Rogers case in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt," published partly in 1842 and partly in 1843 Now set in Paris, the murder victim worked in a perfume shop and the armchair detective Dupin uses newspaper reports to solve the case. Well, even in fiction, the case is never solved concretely.

"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" is often critically panned and, ultimately, is the least well-done of Poe's three main detective tales (the third being the fantastic story "The Purloined Letter"). One 20th-century critic called "Marie Rogêt" a "tedious exercise in reasoning" only interesting to "a professional student of analytics." Of course, this was not Poe's first attempt at fictionalizing a real-life tragedy. Much earlier — 1835, to be exact — Poe published the beginnings of his only play, Politian. The play remains unfinished but is based on the so-called "Kentucky Tragedy."

*The image above is taken from the very interesting section on Rogers/Rogêt at the Poe Forward web site.

Bitten by "The Gold-Bug"

On June 21, 1843, the Dollar Newspaper in Philadelphia published the first part of one of Poe's most important stories. That same day, the Public Newspaper reported:

"The Dollar Newspaper" for this week, this day published, contains the prize story of "THE GOLD BUG," written by Edgar A. Poe, Esq., which is pronounced, by every man of taste who has read it, a production of superior merit. For ourselves, we never read a fiction that in its plot runs more in the line of probability, and consequently never one that more closely revetted [sic] our attention from its opening to its close.

Must have been a slow news day, and the idea that the story was "probable" is somewhat laughable. Actually, the fuss was about the writing contest which the Dollar Newspaper sponsored, specifically because of its unusually-high grand prize: a whopping $100. When it was awarded to Poe, it became (and remained) the single largest sum of money Poe would ever receive for any work he ever published. In fact, jealous writers and suspicious readers (not to mention competitor publishers) suggested the contest was rigged. Philadelphia's Daily Forum called "The Gold-Bug" an "abortion" and "unmitigated trash" worth no more than $15. Those lines drew a libel suit from Poe, though the suit was soon dropped and the editor apologized.

The high pay-out and the controversy surrounding it helped build interest in an already exciting story. "The Gold-Bug" became the most widely-read of Poe's prose work during the author's lifetime, even inspiring a stage adaptation in Philadelphia. A year after its publication, it was claimed that the story sold 300,000 copies. Poe noted that "it made a great noise."

I'll briefly emphasize this: the prose work which earned Poe his largest paycheck and garnered his largest reading audience was not a horror story.

"The Gold-Bug" is a gripping adventure tale about the search for buried pirate treasure (set, incidentally, at Sullivan's Island near Charleston, South Carolina, where Poe had served in the Army). Poe keeps us guessing, not only with a narrator who is suspected to be insane, but also through secret-writing — the clues that lead to the treasure which is eventually deciphered. The story is considered an off-shoot of Poe's true detective stories (i.e. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"). Scholar of cryptography Shawn James Rosenheim (in his worthwhile book The Cryptographic Imagination) calls the story "a stimulus to future cryptographers," including William Friedman, who later broke the code used by the Japanese in World War II. "America's foremost cryptologist," as he was called, credited his interest in secret writing to Edgar Poe and childhood readings of "The Gold-Bug."

*The illustration above is by F. O. C. Darley, 1843. It accompanied the first appearance of "The Gold-Bug."

A Poe scandal in France

June 11, 1846 marked one of the earliest translations of Poe's work into French — without his permission. From June 11 to June 13, La Quotidienne published a serialized translation of the world's first modern detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Their title was "Un Meurtre sans exemple dans les Fastes de la Justice: Histoire trouvée dans les papiers d'un Américain." Poe did not grant permission for this, nor did the translation include his name in the byline.

Pirated international works are nothing too surprising in the 19th century but what makes this one different is what happens next.

Shortly after this translation, another French translation appeared. "Une sanglante énigme" was published in Le Commerce, listed by critic E. D. Forgues. Like the June 11 translation, this one did not mention Poe's name. A third newspaper, La Presse, noticed the similarity between the stories in Commerce and the Quotidienne and cried foul. In fact, this newspaper accused Forgues of plagiarism.

In the scandal that followed, Forgues revealed that both publications relied on a prior work, "les Contes d'E. Poe, littérateur américain." La Presse refused, however, to retract its accusation of plagiarism and Forgues sued for libel. The controversy became a national headline due to the strange court case — and "Poe," the American writer, became a household name in France. Forgues's libel suit was tossed out, but he ended up writing a 20-page critical review of Poe's Tales (1845) and gave ample praise to the writer that inspired his scandal-inducing translation.

Poe, of course, was still living at the time (and dealing with a libel suit of his own). It is unclear how much he knew about the controversy but a sudden burst in interest in his work in France led to many new translations in a short time, including "A Descent into the Maelstrom," "The Black Cat," and "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion." "The Gold-Bug" was translated from a recent translation to Russian. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Black Cat" in particular caught the attention of French poet Charles Baudelaire.

Soon, Poe became more appreciated in France than in his home country... a situation which arguably still is true today.

The chess-playing robot is debunked

People were astounded by the accomplishments of a robot which not only was capable of playing chess, but which frequently beat its human competitors. "The Turk," as the robot was called (pictured in an engraving at right), had been touted throughout Europe by Wolfgang von Kempelen before being brought to the United States by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel in 1825. On June 1, 1828, however, a writer for the Baltimore Gazette questioned the authenticity of this modern marvel in an essay titled "The Chess-Player Discovered."

Edgar Poe may have witnessed this same automaton in action while in Richmond circa 1835. Poe, however, was not easily fooled and, perhaps more importantly, often questioned the sort of wonders he witnessed. In April 1836, the Southern Literary Messenger published Poe's own take of the chess-playing robot. The essay, titled "Maelzel's Chess-Player," tried to be more specific than the previous articles which debunked the robot hoax. Viewing the mystery almost like a game of chess, Poe analyzes the possible explanation for this marvelous "technology." He knows intuitively that it isn't possible, that it must be a fake — "the only question is the I manner in which human agency is brought to bear," he writes. Ultimately, Poe concludes that a very small person is operating the contraption from within, hiding in concealed compartments.

The reality is that The Turk had already been exposed as a fraud at least as early as June 1, 1828 — eight years before Poe's essay. What's important about Poe's story is the analysis he does, the step-by-step process, the method of debunking as much as possible before reaching his final conclusion. "Maelzel's Chess-Player" is, ultimately, a precursor to the "ratiocination" process which Poe will create in his character C. Auguste Dupin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Yes, "Maelzel's Chess-Player" is another step towards Poe's invention of the modern detective story.

Poe, of course, was a hoaxster himself — among his most famous hoaxes is "The Balloon-Hoax," a story which suggested a gas balloon was able to cross the Atlantic Ocean in only three days. Poe would later borrow the name of the man who created The Turk in another hoax-like story about creating gold.

Doyle/Holmes and Poe/Dupin

Today celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was born May 22, 1859. The British author is today remembered as the creator of the well-known recurring character Sherlock Holmes. Holmes's first appearance was in the novel A Study in Scarlet (1887). The character was modeled after a former university professor under whom the author studied.

Nevertheless, the iconic fictional detective would not have existed but for Edgar A. Poe.

In 1841, Poe published "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," widely considered the first modern detective story. Poe's well-known recurring fictional "detective" character is C. August Dupin — a socially-awkward yet highly intelligent gentleman who relies on a combination of logic and imagination. With him, as always, is his nameless friend, who serves as both bumbling sidekick and the first-person narrator of Dupin's exploits.

Doyle, you might recall, introduced his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, as a socially-awkward yet highly intelligent gentleman as well, and all of his stories include his assistant Watson, who serves as both bumbling sidekick and the first-person narrator of Holmes's exploits. In other words, Poe created the model of fictional detectives which Doyle popularized (I won't say "perfected," as I'm not too familiar with his works).

Of course, Doyle does pay an homage of sorts to his source of inspiration. In the aforementioned A Study in Scarlet, the Watson character attempts to pay Holmes a "compliment" in chapter 2:

"It is simple enough as you explain it," I said, smiling. "You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories."

Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow... He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."

Holmes's snide remarks aside, it is now generally understood that Doyle's work owes more than a little to Poe's. Incidentally, there are detractors who suggest that Poe was not the first to write a mystery story. This is true enough, yet Poe's model allows the mystery to be solved by a specific individual who makes it his role to deduce the answer. At the time "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was published, there was not a single professional detective anywhere in the country — in fact, the word "detective" was not yet coined. Poe referred to the process Dupin uses not as "detection" but "ratiocination" — and it has part of the word "imagination" right there in it.

Oddly, Poe found writing these stories a little boring. As he wrote, "where is the ingenuity in unraveling a web which you yourself... have woven for the express purpose of unraveling?" Good question, coming from a guy who liked to play hoaxes on his audience. In fact, Poe even parodied the very genre he invented. The little-known tale "Thou Art the Man!" is Poe's burlesque of the modern detective story, before the genre was identified beyond "something in a new key."

Happy birthday to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes character is sure to entertain for generations to come.