An Evening with Edgar
"We keep good company, you and me. Shakespeare, Face of Boe, Teddy Roosevelt . . . Edgar Allan Poe . . ."
"He was a real downer."
"Excellent taste in cognac, though."
--"The 1969 Diaries"
"Well, that was weird."
The Doctor turned to look at Martha as the TARDIS spun in space. "Weird? After all that, all you've got to say is 'that was weird'?"
She was slumped on the sofa, her normally immaculate hair down across her shoulders in disarray, scratch marks dotting her face and her forearms. He was at the console, looking as though any moment he was going to pounce on it. His face was scratched, too, though he was wearing his glasses so it was hard to tell. "You're the one who doesn't like cats," she snapped, flicking her hair irritably back and into a severe plait. "Even you couldn't say you enjoyed being mauled to death by a black behemoth of a cat!"
"We weren't mauled to death," countered the Doctor petulantly, even though his hand automatically went to the scratches.
"Not for lack of trying."
"It was a misunderstanding."
Martha had crossed her arms over her chest and looking up, noticed the Doctor had done the same. She allowed herself a small smile. The last adventure, with the semi-domesticated giant cats of Pescatonia, had left them both irritable. But she couldn't deny her own amusement at the furrowed brow underneath the boxy pair of glasses. Sometimes he was cute when he was angry. Sometimes . . . just scary. "I thought crossing a black cat's path was bad luck. I had no idea."
The Doctor had opened his mouth to argue, but when he looked at her and saw she was joking, he cracked a smile, too. "You know who all of this would appeal to, don't you?"
Martha knew the Doctor was feeling better if he couldn't pass up the opportunity to name-drop shamelessly. "Edgar Allan Poe?" she suggested.
The Doctor's eyebrows shot up and then flattened. "I was going to say Mikhail Bulgakov, but blimey—you're right!" He smacked the console as a look of pure enjoyment blossomed on his face. Martha could feel her inner squee fighting with her better and much more mature judgment. He was on a roll, pulling levers and jamming buttons. Martha got off the sofa, barely able to catch her breath before the central column gave off a bright, dazzling light and fizzed into its ordinary state, casting its pale green glow over the room.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Think about it, Martha," he said, removing his glasses and putting them into his coat pocket. "What if he meet ol' Edgar, let a bit of our last adventure slip into conversation, and poof! We've inspired one of the greatest horror stories ever written."
Martha knew the Doctor liked hanging out with literary types and even dropping modicums of inspiration into his daily conversation, but . . . "Don't you have any confidence that he had the imagination to come up with it himself?" She shrugged. "I haven't actually read it."
"Ohhh, Martha," he cried, pulling a paperback out of his pocket and throwing it at her. She caught it, recognizing a concise compendium of Poe poems and stories. "He invented the modern detective story."
"I thought that was Arthur Conan Doyle," she said, idly flipping through the book. "And more to the point, why do you carry a paperback of Edgar Allan Poe around in your pocket?!"
"For melancholy periods," he said with a cheerful smile, though Martha could see his eyes didn't share in the mirth. "Now read up, read up. We've almost arrived."
"Where? Where have we arrived?"
"New York City, April 6th, 1844."
"But minus the Empire State Building, Hooverville, and the Daleks—right?" Despite herself, Martha was finding the Doctor's enthusiasm infectious. She always did. She pursed a frown, wondering about her compulsion to follow him anywhere. Surely absence made the heart grow fonder . . .? Or at least familiarity bred contempt . . .? Yes and no. Whatever she did, whatever she tried to induce forgetfulness, indifference, or full-on dislike, it never worked. There was no fail-proof recipe for unrequited love.
He was looking at her questioningly, and she was aware of her long silence. "I don't like Daleks," she said slowly, avoiding his eyes.
"Nor do I," he returned, his voice for once catching her tone of sadness. "But I don't think we're going to find any."
Martha stood, staring at her feet awkwardly. "Does this mean I have to put on fancy dress again?" The memory of all she had endured as Martha Jones the maid in 1913 was still fresh and far more traumatic than she let on.
"It would make things easier," said the Doctor, rubbing his chin. Martha put the book down on the sofa, grumbling all the way to the wardrobe room that the Doctor never had to dress for the occasion, not even in 1599 . . . She laced herself into the stays and petticoats of a dark blue patterned gingham, shuddering with loathing, and adding all the paraphernalia—gloves, stockings, boots, bonnet—with weariness. Why didn't she just say no? She had stuck up for herself on plenty of occasions over issues much more serious than not wanting to meet Edgar Allan Poe and not wanting to tramp around in huge crinolines. Perhaps something in her still yearned sorely for the Doctor's approval.
She entered the console room and cleared her throat. "Well . . ." He turned and looked—really looked—and smiled. "Why are you laughing?" she snapped, marching down the metal gantry, determined to wipe the smirk off his face—somehow.
"I'm not laughing, I'm remembering." He looked down, still smiling.
"Rose?" He looked up guiltily with a start, and Martha's heart sank. "You're unbelievable," she said, moving past him with as much dignity as the heavy skirts would allow, beating him to the door and walking onto a New York street.
"Is that him?" asked Martha. After she'd gotten a few steps ahead of the Doctor and lost herself completely to the busy streets, stuffed with carriages and teeming with activity, she'd lost all her sense of combat. She realized she was hungry and even a little cold, despite an optimistic April sun. Her pride had prevented her from turning around, for though she knew the Doctor wasn't cruel enough to let her get lost in 1844, she knew he wasn't above a fit of petty pique.
There was no way of determining who was more at fault. She knew she required an objective viewpoint, and that she just didn't have that at the moment. So she asked herself, what would Edgar Allan Poe be doing in New York City? What little she knew of him amounted to a few American place names like Baltimore. She waited on the curb as an elegant carriage drove by. Without a word of preamble, the Doctor came up behind her and said, "He's just moved to New York, looking for work."
For once she was grateful for his didactic arrogance and let him lead her through the streets of nineteenth century New York until, after some inquiry, they had found Mrs Bertram's Boarding Rooms where, at suppertime, they were enjoined by the landlady to meet the other guests in the dining room.
Across the crowded table, where the Doctor and Martha had joined some ten other boarders, about three of them ladies, Martha had popped the question once plates of cold liver, ham, bread, butter, a profusion of tea cakes and tea—almost good enough to be English—had been served. "Is that him?" She was looking without trying to stare at the thin, threadbare man of around thirty buttering heaps of breads for his lady companion.
"Yes, that's him," replied the Doctor, between sips of tea he was enjoying with an almost indecorous pleasure. "The Imp of the Perverse himself."
Martha blinked and whispered back, "But it can't be. He's quite fit."
The Doctor registered a look of blank shock before he smiled and handed her a tea cake. "He's happy. At least as happy as he'll ever be." He nudged her, and she took a closer look at the frail young thing beside the American man of letters. She was tiny, more of a girl than a woman, yet dressed in a womanly pink gown, looking somewhat worn. Edgar Allan Poe had beautiful dark eyes, Martha reflected, and if he was thin and a little untidy, there was a sort of poetic charm about him. Martha had already been propositioned by William Shakespeare; she had no intention of having anything but a platonic relationship with Edgar Allan Poe. Wasn't he supposed to be some kind of miserable drunk? As the meal wore on, though, he and the Doctor were the only ones who had declined even a drop of alcohol.
Once the meal was over, the boarders had begun to separate and return to their rooms. To Martha and the Doctor's relief, though, Poe and the girl had remained in the dining room, the writer drawing a chaise-longue next to the fire and seating the frail girl next to it. Poking broodingly at the fire, Poe could not have presented a better picture for a man about to tell a ghost story. Which is clearly a notion the Doctor shared.
"So! Mr Poe! How about a tale or two?"
Poe turned around to look at the Doctor. They had all been briefly introduced earlier in the evening, with Poe asking if the Doctor was English—"sort of"—and noting he had been to school in England. "A tale, sir?"
Martha hadn't known what to expect, really, but had been unprepared for the indolent southern drawl that nevertheless had some elements in common with the harsher New York accent she had heard in Manhattan of 1930. "Oh, you know," the Doctor went on, grinning maniacally. "Something grotesque, something frightening, with . . . er . . . gold bugs in it, or tombs, or . . ."
Poe smiled indulgently, put down the fire poker and dipped his hands into his waistcoat pockets. "I am cognizant of the honor you do me, Doctor, in referring to some of my published works. I am working on something new, though, and would hardly find it fitting to rework my old material."
"Oh, then I've got a story for you," blazed the Doctor. "It's about," and he paused dramatically, "a black cat."
The fire crackled, and Poe's companion coughed softly. Poe's face, which had until then held a look of bemused interest, darkened into something approaching annoyance. "I forgive you, sir, for your little joke, but I think I have quite exhausted that theme."
The Doctor shrugged at Martha, until Poe reached into his coat and withdrew a Philadelphia magazine, which he handed to the dumbfounded Doctor. The Doctor scowled and passed it to Martha. " 'The Black Cat,' by E A Poe," she said. Poe sat down next to the girl, completely ignoring the Doctor, who moved back beside Martha and muttered, sotto voce, "I must have gotten the year wrong." Martha rolled her eyes.
"Eddy," said the girl softly from the chaise-longue, "maybe you could tell them about the new poem you're working on?" She turned to Martha. "He's been ever so busy lately."
"Is that right?" asked the Doctor.
"I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious, by fits."
"It's true," said the girl. "Even if you were to write to him that he'd won a very great sum of money, or gained a very great inheritance, I declare he would not stir to reply to your letter, if he were not in the letter-writing mood."
Poe deepened in color, looking slightly embarrassed. "Come, now, Sis, you'll make these good people believe all those rumors they spread about my insolvency."
"Oh, Edgar, not us," said the Doctor.
"Quoth the raven, nevermore?" suggested Martha.
Poe looked right at her, big black eyes glowing in reflection of the fire. "What did you say, Miss Jones?"
It was Martha's turn to color. "Oh, nothing."
"Are you of a poetical temperament?" he pursued, leaning forward in his chair as the Doctor smiled, amused at Martha's accidental slip. "That sounded very pretty. 'Quoth the raven, nevermore . . . .' A lady poet perhaps?"
"What, me?" laughed Martha. From her experience in 1913 she had learned not to tell just anybody that her chosen profession was medicine. "No, I just enjoy a good story."
"Well, so do we all," Poe resumed. "But to me, it is the effect, the theme, that trumps the plot every time. The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world—"
"And undoubtedly the least welcome in present company," added the Doctor, smiling.
Poe did not return his smile. He lent over and squeezed the girl's hand, but he looked back at the Doctor grimly. "I make no pretensions over my ability to shock, Doctor. To be appreciated, one must be read."
"Oh, absolutely."
"You seem to have read a good deal of my work. What is your opinion, as a man of the Old World, of 'Ligeia' for example? Or 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'?"
"Very ingenious. All that detective work that Dupin did, without a cool head and a superior sense of intelligence—"
"Excuse me, sir," said Poe, getting out of his chair, "but I fail to see the ingenuity involved."
"Well, so do I frankly," the Doctor muttered, "but surely the public at large recognize it for the mystery, for the triumph of scientific deduction? Agatha Christie—"
"Where is the ingenuity of unraveling a web which you yourself have woven for the express purpose of unraveling?" Though Martha felt he could not have asked a better person, still she revolted at this strange combination of umbrage and arrogance that the sad-eyed writer possessed. She could tell, too, that it was making the young girl uncomfortable, her coughing coming at more frequent intervals.
"Well, having met Charles Dickens, I don't think he would agree with you there," said the Doctor loudly. Martha hid her smile. It was clearly war now that the Doctor was dropping names again.
"I, too, have met that gentleman," said Poe laconically. "I interviewed him in Philadelphia not five years ago."
"He's great, isn't he, Dickens?" the Doctor gushed.
Poe was about to launch into a bitter diatribe, Martha could tell, but Sis' hand on his arm restrained him. Instead, he faced the Doctor and said, "Doctor, I would be grateful if you would take a breath of fresh air with me outside for a moment. Sis, I hope it will not tax you to stay here a moment more and enjoy the fire with Miss Jones before we retire."
The Doctor gave Martha a strangled and somewhat apprehensive look before he and Poe left the room. Martha moved closer to the young lady. "Eddy has his opinions," she confided. "He has, ever since West Point."
"Oh . . . what's that?" asked Martha.
"I suppose you, being foreign, wouldn't know . . . it's a military academy."
"He was a soldier!" Martha shrugged. "I have no idea your brother had such diverse talents."
"Brother?" The girl blushed deeply. "You mistake me. He calls me Sis—or Sissy—for my name is Virginia."
"Well, mine's Martha."
"We are married."
Martha could not prevent her shock from showing. "Excuse me, but how old are you?"
"I'm twenty-one," Virginia countered evenly, though Martha could tell they must have married when she was very young indeed. She had to control her impulse to shout "nasty old perve!" "Is the Doctor your husband?" Virginia asked. "You never said."
Martha kept her tone even. "No, and not likely to be. Ever. We're friends."
"A friend of your family, then?"
"You could say that," murmured Martha, remembering the savage slap her mother had given the Doctor the last time they'd met.
"He's a well-educated man, at any rate. Are your travels in the United States extensive?"
"Yes, I suppose so," Martha said. Whatever line of questioning Virginia was pursuing was drowned out by the sound of her consumptive coughing, worse than it had been all evening. Martha had watched all the BBC dramas of people dying of consumption, but it was much worse to witness in the flesh—and know exactly how debilitating TB was likely to be. She reached over and felt Virginia's forehead.
"How long have you been like this?" she asked urgently. She reached beside her for a stethoscope, as she would have carried in Royal Hope, but of course finding none, she touched Virginia's wrist to feel her pulse.
"What . . . what are you doing?" Virginia panted, pulling weakly away from Martha.
"Don't worry, I'm a doctor," Martha muttered, going to the dining room table for a carafe of water. She took a handkerchief from Virginia's hand and bathed it in water, exhorting the girl to drink from the carafe.
"Please . . . don't," Virginia said weakly. "Don't . . . touch me . . ."
"But I said . . ." Martha slumped. No one had played the slave card with her the entire time in New York, but then again, the Poes were southerners. Angrily she turned away. "I'm trying to help you!"
"Please," said Virginia again, motioning to a vial she wore around her throat. "Muddy's smelling salts . . ." Trembling with anger, Martha opened the smelling salts and held them under Virginia's nose. Gradually her cough subsided, and she rested, prone, in the chaise-longue.
"I'll get your husband," Martha said angrily.
Despite everything, Martha was amused by the notion that Edgar Allan Poe may have called the Doctor out on a duel. If what she had just learned and witnessed was any indication, Poe was combative, aggressive, and insecure—obviously not the best combination for debating with the Doctor. "Doctor!" she called into the dark street. "Mr Poe!"
"What can I say, Doctor? I am a man of contradiction."
"Ah, yes, 'very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.'"
"I like that."
"You can't have it."
"Why not?"
"It doesn't belong to you. It's Walt Whitman's."
Rolling her eyes again, Martha cleared her throat emphatically. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but Virginia isn't feeling well. I'm sure—"
"Thank you, Miss Jones," Poe said, his manner changing instantly; he took Martha's arm in involuntary sympathy before rushing into the boarding house.
When she was sure they were alone, she glared at the Doctor. "He's disgusting."
"What? No. Dead cats buried in walls may not be everyone's thing, but isn't that a little harsh?" The light from the street lamps was dingy and grey; Martha was certain it was not electric light and could only imagine it was whale-grease or wick-oil. It cast a certain gloom that fitted the restless, cool-ish night.
"No, I mean him and her. She's half his age! I don't care if he's a literary genius, that's just not appropriate."
"In your century, perhaps." Martha rounded her shoulders, stung by his superior attitude. "I think she loves him. And I'm certain that he loves her."
Martha almost laughed. "You, talking about love!"
She could feel his voice grow fierce even before he spoke. "And why not?"
She dropped it. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. "I think he's unpleasant and very full of himself."
"So was Shakespeare." There was a sadness in the Doctor's voice that Martha couldn't understand.
"She's going to die, isn't she? She wouldn't let me examine her, but her lungs aren't going to be emptied of fluid on their own. In fact, I'd say . . . she hasn't got long."
"It's so sad, too," said the Doctor. "1844 was his most productive year. He wrote dozens of short stories and dozens more poems. When he publishes 'The Raven' next year, he'll become a celebrity. But when she dies, the drinking will start again."
"And that," said Martha slowly, "will kill him." The Doctor nodded, his profile just visible in the half-light. "Then I don't understand. Why did we come? For all of your efforts I don't think you made a very good impression on him—"
"He called me a graceful trifler," said the Doctor, with a rueful laugh.
"—and whatever I do, I can't save her." A thought struck her. "What would have happened, if she hadn't died? Do you think he would have stayed happier longer? Would he have written more?"
"I don't know," said the Doctor.
Martha's excitement faded. "Well, then I still don't know why we came here."
"Come here," he said suddenly, holding out his arm. Martha hesitated. It looked like he wanted to hug her, and despite her deep yearning to feel him close, she didn't trust herself in his arms. "Did you leave anything in the boarding house? It's time to go."
"Time to go?" Martha snapped. "Without a goodbye?"
"I want to show you something."
Baltimore, Maryland, 1949
Though the Doctor had assured Martha that Maryland did not get very chilly, even in January, she still pulled her coat tightly around her. It was just after midnight, and even though she knew she had nothing to fear from a deserted cemetery, the small plots with memorials touched only by moonlight unnerved her slightly. She and the Doctor stood in the shadow of a particularly large mausoleum in the corner of the churchyard, the TARDIS parked somewhere nearby but outside the gates of the cemetery itself. It had been a tricky climb over the fence, especially with the Doctor continuing to exhort her to be quiet.
It hadn't taken her long to make out the inscription on the tomb they were watching; it was difficult to miss, even in a graveyard full of Victorian monuments. Edgar Allan Poe's full name and a rather fanciful cameo of the man himself were on the side of the monument facing them, while the names of his wife and cousin surrounded him on all sides. The Doctor had, of course, neglected to mention what they were waiting for, and Martha felt creepy, watching a grave: he wasn't meant to pop up out of the grave more than one hundred years after his death, was he?! Was the Doctor insinuating that resurrection and the occult played more of a part in Poe's life than she had assumed?
Just when she was about to whisper these misgivings to the Doctor, she saw a figure enter from the gate of the cemetery and walk deliberately toward the grave. He—although it could have been a she—was wrapped in a long coat, and the shadows made it impossible to see the face. "Who is it?" she whispered, her hand involuntarily gripping the Doctor's forearm. She felt his arm go rigid, every sinew taut, and shivers danced up and down her spine. He did not turn around, and when he answered, she could barely hear him.
"It's the Poe Toaster."
"What?" Martha ignored his motion for her to quiet, staring at the figure as it placed two objects on the grave. Martha squinted. One was a bundle of three white roses. The other was a bottle of something. "Who is it?" she hissed.
"It's me," said the Doctor.
"What?" Martha clung to him for support, and the figure tilted its head toward them. They both ducked down behind the monument. Martha was amazed to feel the Doctor's hearts racing as they clutched each other so as not to be seen. In other circumstances, her heart might be racing, too. He was pale and silent until they both heard the retreating steps of the Poe Toaster. "Explain," said Martha.
"I met Poe before. A very long time ago," he said. He got up and dusted the knees of his trousers off and, incredibly, began walking back to the TARDIS. Martha followed him, incredulous, looking over her shoulder at the grave to maintain that the roses and bottle were still there.
"That doesn't explain at all!"
"It's a mark of respect," the Doctor said. "I—well, a past incarnation of me—visits every year on this date."
"I don't understand." He said nothing. "What's in the bottle?" she persisted.
There was a mysterious smile on his face. "It's a half-bottle of cognac."
Martha made a face. "Why cognac?"
"He had excellent taste."
THE END (for now)
A/N: I must have read my first Poe story or poem when I was twelve or thirteen. As a Gothic horror junkie, he has never been far from my thoughts, and I enjoyed reading and teaching his stories ("The Black Cat," "Ligeia," and "Murders of the Rue Morgue" among them) in Gothic Horror in the UNM Honors Program. I read about the Poe Toaster so long ago I forgot when it was, and someday I will go to Baltimore on Poe's birthday to try to catch a glimpse of him (or her). As a little footnote to history that has always fascinated me, I thought it only fitting that the Doctor himself be responsible for this mysterious tradition. Who knows, maybe I'll write a First Doctor story about it one of these days.
Sources: The Portable Edgar Allan Poe edited by J. Gerald Kennedy (with great selections from his letters)
"Poe's Grave" by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.