Edgar Allan Poe, author of “The Masque the Red Death”, makes a bizarrely timely appearance as today’s #stampoftheday. Poe, who is known today for his chilling tales of horror and haunting poems, was featured on a 3-cent stamp issued on October 7, 1949, which was the 100th anniversary of his death.
This choice presents two immediately problem. To begin with, I don’t have a copy of the stamp, which should mean I can’t use it today. But, just as I was about to give up (and write about Miles Standish, who died on October 3), I discovered that have the mailing label from the package used to mail Poe stamps when they were issued. (For some reason my late father collected some of these labels.)
There’s also the small problem that today is not October 7. However, Poe was last seen in public on October 3, 1849 when he was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, not wearing his own clothes and “in great distress, and…in need of immediate assistance”, according to the man who found him. He was taken to a hospital where he died four days later. Poe, who was not coherent enough to explain his situation supposedly called out the name “Reynolds” several times the night before he died. And his last words reportedly were “Lord help my poor soul!”
No one knows what killed him. All medical records have been lost, including Poe’s death certificate. Newspapers reported that Poe died from “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”, common euphemisms for death from diseases like alcoholism. Others have speculated that that he died of delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera, and rabies.
While all of this is troubling, the story gets weirder because of an obituary written (under a pseudonym) by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor, critic, and anthologist who had been friendly with Poe, who also was a well-known editor and critic. However, the two had a falling out in 1841, when Griswold, asked Poe for help on a planned poetry anthology. Poe gave him several poems and recommended other poets for inclusion. Griswold ignored Poe’s suggestions. While Poe wrote a generally favorable review of the anthology, he noted that some of the poets chosen by Griswold were “too mediocre to entitle them to particular notice.” The feud apparently deepened in 1842, when Poe attacked Griswold during a lecture tour.
Griswold (writing as “Ludwig”) got his revenge in the obituary, which initially appeared the New York Tribune and was reprinted by many other US papers, “Edgar Allan Poe is dead,” he wrote. “…This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation,” in the US and Europe “but he had few or no friends.”
Making this story even weirder is the fact that in an earlier, presumably friendlier time, Poe had made Griswold the literary executor of his estate. In that role, Griswold published three volumes of Poe’s works. He also wrote a biography of Poe, which, using letters later shown to be forgeries, inaccurately depicted him as a depraved, drunken, drug-addled madman. While Poe did have a drinking problem, many contemporaries took issue with Griswold’s depiction. John Neal, another leading critic, attacked Griswold as “a Rhadamanthus, who is not to be bilked of his fee, a thimble-full of newspaper notoriety.” Nevertheless, Griswold’s book became a popularly accepted biographical source about Poe’s life.
If this all this isn’t weird enough, now add in the parallels between today’s news about President Trump and other leading Republicans and “The Masque of the Red Death,” a story Poe published in 1842.
Here’s how it opens: “‘The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous….But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends…and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys….The abbey was amply provisioned [so] the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the ‘Red Death.'”
About six months later, the prince decided to entertain his friends at a “masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.” Just as the clock struck 12, as revelers became aware of an unusual masked guest, dressed as the Red Death, “there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust,” wrote Poe.
When prince saw “this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage….’Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!'”
The crowd however shied away from the masked figure; the prince attacked him with a dagger but died as he approached the masked figure; and the revelers, who tried to attack him after the prince had fallen, all died as well. “He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers,” Poe concludes, adding. “…And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
Hopefully, the “revelers” who attended last weekend’s White House festivities and/or travelled with the President last week won’t suffer the same fate. And, hopefully, their brush with our version of the Red Death will cause them to be safe but in ways that don’t just wall them off from the horrific devastation the disease is causing in the outside world. And “Lord help our poor souls” as we continue to try and navigate these troubling times.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.