There came so long a train
Of people, that I never would have believed
That Death ever had undone so many.

The shades here are not good enough for Heaven, nor bad enough for Hell proper, like the angels who sided with neither God nor Lucifer in the great rebellion that shook heaven. Dante singles out only one human shade, referring to him as 'the shade of him who through cowardice made the great refusal.' Dante does not name this shade, nor does Virgil allow his apprentice to stop and speak to him. Their ignoring him in the world of the dead befits a sinner who has ignored all others in the world of the living. As we've noted in our translation session on this canto, this unnamed sinner had been generally supposed by Italian scholars to be Pope Celestine V, who refused the papal office when he was needed. Norton, can you recite for us the Neutrals' contrapasso, the punishment as Dante witnesses it?"

"I believe I recall the translation we settled on in our meeting, Longfellow:

These miscreants, who never were alive,
Were naked, and were stung exceedingly
By gadflies and by hornets that were there.
These did their faces irrigate with blood,
Which, commingled with their tears, at their feet,
By the disgusting worms, was gathered up."

"Well said, my dear Charles! Although I would still beg you, Longfellow, to translate vespe as 'wasps,' a harsher word than 'hornets.' In any event, at this point Dante realizes why these Neutrals are punished. As Revelations says of the church of Laodicea: 'I know thy works; thou art neither cold nor hot. Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.' If you have a Bible handy I can show you the line."

"I'm sure you have it right, Lowell."

"Right, Lowell. That is not my belief, but Professor Ticknor's notes support it, as do Greene and several Italian scholars. Chief Justice Healey, in the Sims Case, was asked to deal a grave blow to the Fugitive Slave Act, but instead did nothing at all. He sent the poor boy who had sipped so briefly from the fount of freedom, Thomas Sims, away to the Boston Harbor; from there he was returned to Savannah, where the seventeen year-old was whipped until he bled, paraded with his wounds before the town, and forced back into slavery. Justice Healey explained that it was not his place to overturn law legitimately passed by the Congress. What a shame that we, the refuge of the oppressed, should stoop so low as to become a hunter of slaves. Dirty work for a city that cries so loud about freedom."

"Perhaps Dante does refer to Pilate, Longfellow. In any case, consider its similarity here. Healey washed his hands of Sims and the horrid Fugitive Slave Act, as Pilate washes his hands of Christ."

"It does correspond nicely, my dear Norton."

A high-pitched sneeze came from the corner of the study.

"Bless you. Was that you, Fields?"

"No. Me."

"Ah, beg your pardon, Holmes. Would you like to shut the windows? Perhaps I've let a draft in."

"No, no. It's quite alright, Longfellow. Please, continue."

"Well, I submit we have discovered several important items. First, we learn our killer devoted close attention to the Sims case, and therefore probably generally to the issues of slavery and our city's abolition movement."

"As did all of -" another sneeze, "pardon me, all of Boston."

"Bless you. I did not mean to suggest otherwise, my dear Holmes. But to understand the mind of this perpetrator we must obtain a sense of how he chooses the sinners for punishment."

"Let us move on to review Talbot's murd - ha-choooooo - Oh, pardon me (perhaps I shall close one of the windows, if I can find it... Yes, that's much better). Talbot's murder."

"Very well, Holmes. The Simonites in Inferno have been turned upside down, head first in their eternal graves, their feet flaming. Lowell, you were at work on a quite eloquent note on the history of this punishment."

"Well thank you, my dear Longfellow. These clerics have inverted the purpose of the church by using their offices for profit, like their namesake, Simon Magus, who tried to purchase with gold (imagine!) a conference with the Holy Ghost. So in Hell these sinners are themselves inverted - bodily. Burying alive with the head downward and the feet in the air was also the preferred punishment of hired assassins in Dante's time, according to municipal law in Florence. Propagginare: to plant in the manner of vine-stocks. A way of branding, dehumanizing. Dante added to this the idea that the Simonite's purse of money would be buried below them."

"I question that interpretation of the text."

"Yes, yes, I know you do, Longfellow. The pilgrim may simply be displaying some of his not uncommon sarcasm as he taunts the buried wretch: 'Stay here, for thou art justly punished. And keep safe guard over your ill-gotten loot!' I tend to believe that Dante meant 'loot' literally."

"I agree with Wendell that all Boston could see Chief Justice Healey's role in the Sims case when it was happening. How many abolitionist books, pamphlets, tracts, and essays were submitted to my house for publication in those combustible '50s, condemning Healey's cowardly refusal to overturn the Fugitive Slave Law! But Talbot seems a different story. His sins, if he had any, must have been of a more discrete nature. Or none at all!"

"It is possible, Fields," came Longfellow's voice. "Still, we must assume - unless proven wrong - that our Lucifer had reasons in choosing Talbot for this manner of punishment."

Although Longfellow could not be seen by the others in the pitch darkness of his study, his posture remained as impeccable as if he were on display for a dinner party in his honor. Longfellow could hear Lowell stirring in his seat and fidgeting with the writing table. Upon his friends' arrival an hour earlier, Longfellow had suggested they turn out all the lamps to aid in their contemplation. This recommendation came to him via the stories of Chevalier Dupin. The darkness left the disembodied voices to float freely through the room; only the idiomatic speech habits of the five friends identified them. Lowell, making plain his continuing distaste for Poe's detective tales, breathed louder than necessary, as if to interrupt the dark.

Longfellow took minutely written notes on Talbot, Healey, and Lucifer (as Lowell had tagged their perpetrator) on a pad of paper resting upon his knee. During a period of vision problems years earlier, Longfellow had sometimes dictated his poems to Fanny, whom he would call his better pair of eyes. He scrawled the first version of Evangeline himself in front of the fire, without looking down at his pad. Long after his eyes recovered from this frightening stretch, the poet had retained the ability to compose in the dark; the gift was useful if Longfellow wished to scribble a quote during a theater performance. Even when drafting in the dark, Longfellow's hand was nicely vertical and rounded, sloping neither to the left nor the right, with the exact space of half an inch between lines. Those who knew him best, however, might have noticed that the size of Longfellow's script dwindled considerably in times of great tension.

The five men's eyes were starting to adjust, able to make out the lines and contours of their friends' familiar features.

"I remember a Calvinist preacher, a friend of my father's," Holmes said, "like all his Calvinist friends he had a twist in his mouth that could knock a benediction out of shape. He proved afterwards to have a twist in his morals of a still more formidable character. It would not surprise me to find Talbot's history rather shady."

"If our Lucifero knew of Talbot violating the spirit of the ministry, he could not have discovered it simply from the newspapers. This may be an important clue. Perhaps we can manage to produce a list of all the parishioners at Old Presbyterian with whom Talbot would have come into contact," Lowell said.

"It is worth a try," Longfellow agreed. " Lowell, are we any closer to finding our dear Ser Bachi?"

"Ah, yes, good tidings! I managed to secure the address where Harvard's severance note had been sent to him," Lowell announced. "And I discovered it to be a blast furnace. I called at their office and found he had been in their employment shortly after his dismissal from the College, but was no longer there. Still, Lady Fortune smiled down on me. For while I was waiting in their offices, I picked up a month-old issue of the Reporter and happened upon an ad for a tutor in the Italian and Spanish languages, directing letters of inquiry to a Mr. P. Bachi, Ann Street! Then I remembered it was I who suggested to Bachi that he engage in private language tutoring after his dismissal from the College. I shall beg at his door tomorrow. Are not the stars on our side, Longfellow?"

"Splendid! We shall learn of Bachi's whereabouts as of late, and at the least he may assist us in locating other Italians in our city whom we should acquaint ourselves with. Fields, has Mr. Howells traced our list of Dante students?"

"Yes, after three days work, for which he is now quite behind on his duties at the Atlantic, I should add, on top of having just recovered from a sick week. I can't see my list in this blasted dark, but I believe I remember the numbers if you wish to hear them."

"Do your best. I have taken the advice of Monsieur Dupin that the dark aids in the processing of complex facts. It eliminates the diversion of the physical from our thoughts."

"Yes, well, I myself quite enjoy the physical, Longfellow, with all respect to Mr. Poe." Fields paused a moment, but Longfellow seemed determined not to change his mind regarding the light.

"The jingle-man," Lowell said under his breath at the mention of Poe's name.

"Fine, then," Fields emitted a rough, gargling sound as preamble to his presentation. "Of the eighty-one Harvard men who have studied in Dante classes given by you, Professor Longfellow, and then by you, Professor Lowell, Howells has found that fifteen are no longer New Englanders. Thirty died in the war. Six others passed peacefully of disease. Ten of the students, you say, were not scholars enough to continue on with their Dante. That leaves about twenty young men for us to consider further."

"What did you tell Howells?" asked Norton.

"I implied simply that we needed to know of all fellow Dantephiles for our book campaign in the Spring."

"I do not like lying to such a dear friend."

"And it is most important, Norton," said Longfellow, "that we not bring more of our dear friends into this trouble than in good conscience we feel we must. I hope we shall never have to bother Mr. Greene nor Mr. Howells with the grim reality of these matters."

"I fear, by and by, we shall have no choice but to get help from other quarters. We are little closer today to the murderer than a fortnight ago, and if we do this in too higgledy-piggledy a fashion..."

A strip of faint candle light broke the still darkness of the room and illuminated Lowell's face as he spoke. In the fracture of light between the study door and the hall, little Annie Allegra clutched a large envelope protectively to her chest.

"Papa? Beg your pardon. A messenger has brought this note and said it should be read without delay."

Longfellow rose from the chair and took the letter from his daughter. As he thanked her, she curtsied to the invisible occupants of the room and departed.

Longfellow strained to read the envelope.

"What does it say, Longfellow?" Lowell said.

"I'm afraid for this," Longfellow conceded, "we shall require light."

"I'll light a lamp!" Fields jumped from his chair, feeling around Longfellow's desk but managing to find only a candle. He tried several times to enkindle it. "This wick is no good," he mumbled into his wiry spade of a beard. Finally the publisher succeeded, but the candle's flimsy light was hardly sufficient for Longfellow's reading.

"A note from Professor Ticknor. He says that being reminded of our request for any information on readers of Dante, he felt he must share the enclosed."

"What is it?" Fields asked.

"A telegram, from Professor Lorenzo DaPonte of New York," Longfellow continued, leaning into the light.

"DaPonte of Columbia College? The librettist?" Norton asked. "He died thirty years ago, what good is it to us now?"

"The telegram reads: 'Professor Ticknor, it has been brought to my attention that Cambridge has not recognized the role of Lorenzo DaPonte as the one, only, and first American resident to bring Dante to this country. Please correct. Lorenzo DaPonte.'"

"Well, I should say he thinks highly of himself," Norton commented.

"Ticknor must have remembered this after we left him," Longfellow said. "That is it for the telegram. There is a letter attached as well, it also appears to be from DaPonte."

Holmes and Norton joined Longfellow, Lowell, and Fields in a huddle around the wavering light. The men read to themselves, but the letter, written in scratchy Italian, proved difficult to decipher, helped little by the meager candlelight.

"Look here," Lowell exclaimed as he plucked the letter from Longfellow, "he claims to be the first man in America ever to read Dante, and suggests a petition be circulated for a statue of Dante to be erected in Central Park - with a plaque beside it dedicated to DaPonte! The man was cracked!"

"And he has been long gone," Norton repeated. "What interest could he be to us?"

"Perhaps old Ticknor is confused," Lowell said.

"Or perhaps we have not thought everything through," said their publisher. "Let's have the letter here, gentlemen. Isn't there any more light?"

"Norton, can you find the other lamp?" Longfellow asked.

"I'm searching for it now."

"I'm afraid someone will have to fill me in on this Signor DaPonte," Holmes said. "Did he teach Dante at Columbia?"

"Italian, some," Longfellow said. "Dante, no. The administration would allow no literature taught without advance approval. He wrote one or two essays on Dante, but did not publish them."

"Yes, I happened upon one years ago in an archive in New York," Lowell replied. "All froth and cream. As void of insight as Bentley on Milton."

"Perhaps DaPonte made an attempt to teach Dante outside the college?" Fields suggested.

"Yes. You may have hit on something Fields!" Lowell exclaimed, his nose nearly resting against the letter. "There is something here about it… By St. Paul! Can't we have more light here, Charles!"

"Fields," Norton said, "can you feel for the lamp right above the table?"

Finally, Norton lit Longfellow's moderator lamp.

"Longfellow!" Fields said, holding the telegram while the others examined the handwritten letter. "Look here! How this is dated!"

The men all returned their attention to the telegram.

"Thirty October," Longfellow said, "1865."

With both the door to the study and a window now opened, a cross-wind arose and extinguished the tenuous lights. Norton stumbled across the study, colliding with the bookcase as he fumbled the lamp he had found.

"Papa?" repeated Annie's voice from the hall.

"Pansie, darling," Longfellow said gently, "please wait in the nursery and I shall be up to say good-night."

"Longfellow, but could DaPonte still be alive?" Lowell said in as soft a whisper as he could manage. "Someone shall have to start for New York at once to look into this! Fields, you and I should leave for the city first thing in the morning!"

"Papa, pray listen," Annie continued from the doorway. "There is another caller to see you."

"Who is it?" Longfellow asked. "Annie Allegra?"

"Gentlemen," a new voice interrupted. "Thank you kindly, young lady, you are a most gracious hostess. If I may?"

Longfellow turned to the erect, narrow silhouette.

"I may be able to spare you a trip to New York if you permit it, my dear Mr. Lowell. May I sit?" Ralph Waldo Emerson smiled warmly, stripping off his gleaming stovepipe hat.

Back to Lost Chapters archive.

All original materials © Matthew Pearl.
Website designed by Chris Costello www.costelloart.com