The Great Dupin

The inspiration for Dupin. This is awesome, this is what made me decide to do this master's in the first place.

Auguste Dupin was the first of the literary mastermind detectives, before even Sherlock Holmes. Dupin was only in three stories of Poe's - The Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery Of Marie Roget - and then Ellery Queen wrote some more stories about Dupin that I read as a kid. But still he was Poe's, and to Paris as Holmes was to London. Even though Conan Doyle made Holmes pretty snippy about him in 'A Study In Scarlet' -

"It is simple enough as you explain it," I said, smiling. "You remind me of Edgar Allen 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. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."

But the inspiration in turn for Dupin was a real historical person, Eugene Vidocq. (Arguably the most famous person ever to have the letters O C Q consecutively in their name.) Vidocq was a thief who turned police informer and then into policeman. He introduced many of the techniques of modern police investigation. And there is a members' club, the Vidocq Society, of detectives and forensics who still meet every month and discuss unsolved cases brought to them.

How. Cool. Is. That?

Poe made Dupin snippy about him in Rue Morgue -

"We must not judge of the means," said Dupin, "by this shell of an examination. The Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but, not unfrequently, these are so ill adapted to the objects proposed, as to put us in mind of Monsieur Jourdain's calling for his robe-de-chambre - pour mieux entendre la musique. The results attained by them are not unfrequently surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by simple diligence and activity. When these qualities are unavailing, their schemes fail. 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. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To look at a star by glances—to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly—is to have the best appreciation of its lustre—a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmanent by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.

But every literary detective is snippy about his rivals, especially if they are an inspiration. That's the argument in my thesis.

in the family

There's something else I never told them at LAP when I was applying for my master's, in case they think I'm a crazy. I think I've got a weird family connection to Poe. Almost like I was fated to fall under his spell. When my dad retired he - like most parents - got obsessed with tracing his family history (cheaper than buying a Chevy). And pretty conclusively, I'm related to this poet called Frances Osgood. (Mr Wiki also says that there was a famous Peter Osgood who played soccer in the UK, I'm not related to him. I suck at sport. I like books.) Now Fanny had married a painter Samuel Osgood, and as wiki says, the engraving was based on a portrait he did of her. And I guess I'm sprung somewhere from that union. But - as wiki says - she'd separated from him and she met Poe who - although he was also married to his sickly wife Virginia- became obsessed with her. And wrote her this riddling valentine. But he wasn't the only one interested in her. The infamous Rufus Griswold, renowned in Poe circles at least as a character assassin - check out the obituary he published under the pseudonym Ludwig. Like most, I think his enmity was spurred if not started by his rivalry for the fair hand of ... my great-great-great-grandmother (however many greats it was).

Edgar Allan Poe

He's had a fittingly gothic stranglehold on my imagination ever since I got a battered paperback of horror stories as a kid. I was too scared to open it for about a week because of the shock of the lurid face screaming on the cover, a face that still floats gaping in my nightmares. Not that the illustration had anything to do with the stories. When I finally read them, something more shadowy wormed its way into my mind's corner. Something itchy and flitting.