Howard Haycraft

Murder for Pleasure - Chapter 1 Page 5

Time 1841 - Place America

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Almost inescapably these brief personal histories will have- reminded the informed Poe-student of the Minister D———^ the talented villain of "The Purloined Letter." D———, it will be recalled, was not only an accomplished and unscrupulous political intriguant, but, as Poe made a special point of saying, a man-of-letters as well—both "poet and mathematician." Moreover, he possessed a brother who had also a "reputation in letters." The parallel is by no means exact, and one would not wish to place too much emphasis on what after all may have been only a coincidence. Yet, in the dual circumstance of Poe's appropriation of the name and his adaptation of the characteristics of the real brothers Dupin, the veriest psychological tyro will be quick to scent a highly logical, if possibly unconscious, "transference." It is, at the least, a fascinating subject for speculation. Perhaps some scholar of the future will uncover more specific evidence: academic hoods have been awarded for contributions less notable!
Of Poe's indebtedness to Vidocq much has been written and more assumed. There can be no doubt that he was closely familiar with that worthy's exploits and memoirs, and that he drew on them for numerous details. But to identify DUPTN, the ageless symbol of amateurism, with Vidocq, the professional—as some critics have done—is to commit a most uncritical error and to miss the whole point and purpose of Poe's ratiocinative stories. For throughout the tales Poe hammers ceaselessly to drive home his acutely personalized thesis of the superiority of the talented amateur mind—meaning, of course, his own. Nowhere is this more graphically brought out than in the patronizing words he places in DUPIN'S mouth near the conclusion of "The Rue Morgue." (This, incidentally, is Foe's sole reference to Vidocq in print.)
The Parisian police [ DUPIN is made to say], so much extolled for their acumen, are cunning, but no more. Vidocq, for example, was a good guesser, and a persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound.
That the entire passage is a virtual ad hoc rendering of the quotation from Seneca which Poe later chose as the motto of "The Purloined Letter" (Nil sapientice odiosius acumine nimio) only shows how emphatic at all times was the distinction in his mind between amateur and professional, between DUPIN and Vidocq.
If an identification must be made: a good deal of Vidocq (or of Poe's opinion of him) will be found in the unflattering portrait of the Prefect G——— in the, tales. As for DUPIN, he can clearly be no one but Poe— as Poe so obviously considered, himself to be DUPIN.*
VI
"The Purloined Letter" was Poe's last detective story, although he lived five more years, to the age of forty.
* In a late issue of The Pleasures of Publishing (Columbia University Press, April 14, 1941) the eminent Poe scholar, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, is quoted as saying: "He [Dupm] is Poe—plus an eccentric French historian I've recently nan to earth, who turned day into night. I've been looking for such a character, found him last August." Dr. Mabbott's fuller revelation is anticipated with relish.
Too many historians have argued carelessly that he dropped the genre because it failed to arouse sufficient interest. This is not supported by the facts. While it is true that much of Foe's work was relatively unappreciated in his lifetime, there is no reason to believe that his detective stories suffered more than his fantasies or his poetry. In point of fact, the weight of evidence clearly indicates the opposite situation. Poe not only complained several times in personal correspondence that the public seemed to prefer his ratiocinative tales to what he chose to consider his worthier efforts—he also frequently traded on their popularity in his dealings with editors and publishers. Further, two of the three stories were accounted important enough to be reprinted abroad, in an era when American literature was held in such low esteem that very little of it crossed the water. One of them, even, was the first of his tales to be translated into French, and appeared in no less than three separate versions in that language before his death. And at home, barely a decade after Poe died, young William Dean Howells thought it significant praise to assert of a nominee for President of the United States:
The bent of his mind is mathematical and metaphysical, and he is therefore pleased with the absolute and logical method of Poe's tales and sketches, in which the problem of mystery is given, and wrought out into everyday facts by processes of cunning analysis. It is said that he suffers no year to pass without a perusal pf this author.
Abraham Lincoln subsequently confirmed the statement, which appeared in his little known "campaign biography" by Howells in 1860 and has escaped later attention almost entirely. The instance is chiefly notable, of course, for its revelation of a little suspected affinity between two great Americans—utterly dissimilar save that they shared the same birth year, and that each died tragically before his time. And it serves to establish Lincoln as the first of the countless eminent men who have turned to the detective story for stimulation and solace: a circumstance which also seems, curiously, to have eluded previous mention. At its least, the incident is striking evidence how broadly and powerfully Poe's detective sorcery had captured the popular imagination.
The true reasons for Poe's desertion of the form he created are found in his own life. After 1843 the poet's circumstances, uncertain enough at any time, became increasingly distressing. Little Virginia died. His own end (as he must have suspected) was near. He wrote progressively less, and that little showed a pronounced return to his early morbidity. The last years were a nightmare of poverty, disease, drink, and delusion. In such waking dread there simply was "no room for a "perfect reasoner."
The final, shameful curtain fell on the tragedy in October, 1849.
To-day Poe's position in literature is-more than secure. He is universally recognized as one of the few poets of consummate genius America has produced, and its finest writer (if not, indeed, the inventor) of the short story. Yet, had he published nothing but the three DUPIN tales, posterity would still award him an eminent and merited niche in Fame's corridors—as The Father of the Detective Story.

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