Years
before the black raven was engrained into the minds of Americans as a reminder
of lost love, another sable animal gained Poe fame. “The Black Cat” ranks as
one of Poe’s best tales. He actually owned a black cat in 1840 when he
published a short article entitled “Instinct vs. Reason.” Here is a snippet: The
writer of this article is the owner of one of the most remarkable black cats in
the world – and this is saying much; for it will be remembered that black cats
are all of them witches. The one in question has not a white hair about her,
and is of a demure and sanctified demeanor.
Poe was a lover of cats to be sure. Besides his black cat, he owned a tabby cat
with his wife, Virginia, named Catterina. Like many of his tales, there are
other autobiographical elements here. As a child Poe killed a pet bird owned by
his foster mother, Frances Allan, and later felt guilt and remorse. Here is a photo of Poe's house in Philadelphia where he penned "The Black Cat."
The Black Cat
(Works, 1850)
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen,
I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a
case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not —and
very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen
my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly,
succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their
consequences, these events have terrified —have tortured —have destroyed me.
Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but
Horror —to many they will seem less terrible than barroques.
Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm
to the common-place —some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less
excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with
awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My
tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my
companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents
with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was
so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiar of character grew
with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal
sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful
and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at
the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a
brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to
test the paltry friendship and gossamer
fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my
wife a disposition not uncongenial with my
own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of
procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine
dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and
beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In
speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured
with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which
regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point —and I mention
the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be
remembered.
Pluto
—this was the cat’s name —was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him,
and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty
that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for
several years, during which my general temperament and character —through the
instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance —had (I blush to confess it)
experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody,
more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to
use intemperate language to my At length, I even offered her personal violence.
My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only
neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient
regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating
the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through
affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me —for what disease
is like Alcohol! —and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and
consequently somewhat peevish —even Pluto began to experience the effects of my
ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated,
from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I
seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound
upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew
myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my
body; and a more than fiendish malevolence,
gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket
a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately
cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen
the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning —when I
had slept off the fumes of the night’s debauch —I experienced a sentiment half
of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it
was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.
I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The
socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no
longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as
might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my
old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part
of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to
irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the
spirit of perversness. Of this spirit
philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I
am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart —one
of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to
the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a
vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual
inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to
be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was
this unfathomable longing of the soul to
vex itself —to offer violence to its own nature —to do wrong for the
wrong’s sake only —that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the
injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood,
I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; —hung it
with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my
heart; —hung it because I knew that
it had loved me, and because I felt
it had given me no reason of offence; —hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin —a deadly
sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it —if such a thing
were possible —even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful
and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel
deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my
bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty
that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire
worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to
despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to
establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the
atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts —and wish not to leave even a
possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins.
The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a
compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house,
and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in
great measure, resisted the action of the fire —a fact which I attributed to
its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected,
and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with every
minute and eager attention. The words “strange!” “singular!” and other similar
expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief
upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous.
There was a rope about the animal’s neck.
When I first beheld this apparition —for I
could scarcely regard it as less —my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at
length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a
garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been
immediately filled by the crowd —by some one of whom the animal must have been
cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had
probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of
other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the
freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, had then with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, accomplished
the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my
reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact ‘just
detailed, it did not the less fall to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For
months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this
period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was
not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look
about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another
pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to
supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den
of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object,
reposing upon the head of one of
the immense hogsheads of
Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had
been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what
now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object
thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat —a
very large one —fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every
respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but
this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the
whole region of the breast.
Upon my touching him, he immediately arose,
purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice.
This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered
to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it —knew
nothing of it —had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared
to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to
do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the
house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite
with my wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it
arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but I
know not how or why it was —its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted
and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into
the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and
the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically
abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use
it; but gradually —very gradually —I came to look upon it with unutterable
loathing, and to flee silently from its odious
presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the
beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like
Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance,
however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed,
in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing
trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its
partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a
pertinacity which it would be
difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch
beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome
caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw
me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this
manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a
blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly it at by a memory of my former
crime, but chiefly —let me confess it at once —by absolute dread of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical
evil-and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost
ashamed to own —yes, even in this felon’s cell, I am almost ashamed to own
—that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been
heightened by one of the merest chimaeras
it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than
once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and
which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the
one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large,
had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees —degrees nearly
imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject as
fanciful —it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was
now the representation of an object that I shudder to name —and for this, above
all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared —it was now, I say, the
image of a hideous —of a ghastly thing —of the GALLOWS! —oh, mournful and
terrible engine of Horror and of Crime —of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the
wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a
brute beast —whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed —a brute beast to work out for me —for me a man, fashioned in the image
of the High God —so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night
knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no
moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable
fear, to find the hot breath of the thing
upon my face, and its vast weight —an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no
power to shake off —incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as
these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became
my sole intimates —the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my
usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from
the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now
blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and
the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some
household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty
compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly
throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand,
I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly
fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of
my wife. Goaded, by the interference,
into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried
the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself
forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I
knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night,
without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my
mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and
destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the
floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the
yard —about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual
arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit
upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I
determined to wall it up in the cellar —as the monks of the middle ages are
recorded to have walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well
adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered
throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had
prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection,
caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to
resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace
the at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that
no eye could detect anything suspicious.
And in this calculation I was not deceived. By
means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully
deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position,
while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally
stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution,
I prepared a plaster could not every poss be distinguished from the old, and
with this I very carefully went over the new brick-work. When I had finished, I
felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest
appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up
with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself —
“Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain.”
My next step was to look for the beast which
had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly
resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment,
there could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty
animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to
present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine,
the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested
creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the
night —and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house,
I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept
even with the burden of murder upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still
my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a free-man. The monster, in
terror, had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness
was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few
inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had
been instituted —but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my
future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a
party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded
again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the
inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever.
The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or
corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into
the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who
slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon
my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied
and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I
burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure
their assurance of my guiltlessness.
“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the party
ascended the steps, “I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all
health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this —this is a very
well constructed house.” (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I
scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) —”I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls —are you going,
gentlemen? —these walls are solidly put together”; and here, through the mere
phrenzy of bravado, I rapped
heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the
brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the
fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into
silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! —by a cry, at
first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly
swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman —a howl —a wailing shriek,
half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell,
conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that
exult in the damnation.
Of
my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite
wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through
extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were tolling at
the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with
gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red
extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the
hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!
