The Doctor Remembers More

On 3 October 1849 a printer sent word that Edgar Allan Poe was at a Baltimore polling place, "rather the worse for wear". He died four days later in Washington College Hospital. Almost everything we know about those days comes from one man, the resident physician John J. Moran. His story survives in versions from 1849, 1875 and 1885. I put them side by side.

The story gets longer as it gets older

In 1849 Moran's patient is in a delirium most of the time and says five words at the end. Twenty-six years later he is lucid, at the hospital for fourteen hours instead of three and a half days, and makes speeches. By 1885 he answers "Nevermore", which in 1875 had been "Evermore!".

Whose last words?

The highlighted lines in the 1885 scene are not new. They are stanza 23 of Poe's own Tamerlane, as printed in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829) and again in Poems (1831). Moran introduces them as "his own deathless words", and his next sentence is the death. He even misquotes them: Poe wrote "his iron gate ajar", Moran prints "iron gates".

Three dates that do not fit

• When did Moran write to Mrs. Clemm? In 1885 he says the ladies Poe named "to whom he requested me to write" answered "my letters after his death" speedily. His own 1849 letter begins: "I take the earliest opportunity of responding to yours of the 9th Inst." He wrote on 15 November, after she asked.
• When was Poe in Baltimore? In 1885 Moran dismisses the story that Poe was made drunk and voted on election day: "That election was held October 3d, the day before POE left Richmond, and he was not in Baltimore until October 5th." But Poe left Richmond on 27 September, and Joseph Walker's note finding him at "Ryan's 4th ward polls" is from 3 October (Wikipedia, Death of Edgar Allan Poe). Moran's own 1849 letter has him admitted on Wednesday 3 October at 5 in the afternoon.
• Who was Reynolds? In 1849 Poe calls "for one 'Reynolds'" from Saturday evening until three on Sunday morning, a name nobody has identified since. In 1875 the Reynolds family lives near the hospital, and its women come to visit. In 1885 they have become "a Mr. Herring and family", and the Misses Herring come instead.

Wikipedia's article already notes that Moran's dates and details drift and that his credibility is doubted. What the side-by-side adds is the direction. Compared with 1849, both later versions have far more speech, a stay of hours instead of days, and a patient who is sober and eloquent.

What stands on what