Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter IV.III,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 412-422 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 412, continued:]

The devil as he appears in some of Poe's stories and in much of literature of the time is such a human and thoroughly respectable kind of gentleman [page 413:] that the word “grotesque” hardly seems to fit him. But he was created in connection with that spirit in literature which gave birth to the elements which contrasted with the beautiful and good. Victor Hugo “c’est lui ... qui donne à Satan les cornes, les pieds de bouc, les ailes de chauve-souris,” but he added also, ‘c’est lui ... qui ... jette ... log peuple de ces formes ridicules au milieu desquelles se jouera Callôt, le Michel-Ange burlesque.” And according to him, this grotesque becomes in turn the Falstaffs, Scapins, and Figaros of literature as well as the Iagos, Tartuffes, Harpagons. It will be of interest, therefore, in estimating Poe's general indebtedness to the doctrine of the grotesque in literature and in tracing the resemblance of his work to other productions of the time to examine with some care his conceptions of the rôle played by the devil in human society.

His first characterization of the devil occurs in “The Duke De L,Omelette,” published in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832. The duke had perished of an ortolan served “sans papier.” On the third day after his decease he found himself in a perilous position, ordered by his Satanic host to [page 414:] strip. He extricated himself from an imminent toasting by cheating in a game of cards which he played with the devil. The superb apartment of the host was furnished with such taste as his grace, the duke, approved enthusiastically. As the duke spied out the “forbidden beauties” of his statuary and paintings, the devil blushed. He sat upon an ottoman as if carved in marble and smiled at the duke discomfiture. He was polite, polished, courteous. Indeed, the duke assured him at the end of their card game, ‘cue sit n’etait pas De L’Omelette il n’aurait point d’objection d’etre le Diable.’

We meet this same charming gentleman again in “The Bagain Lost,” also published in the Saturday Courier in 1832. Upon this occasion he left his luxurious apartment and made a business call to the little studio of Pedro Garcia, the Venetian metaphysician. Pedro was a kindred soul, occupied in studies of a dark and mysterious nature, and he had inadvertently invited the devil to call by resting his left palm upon “a volume in sable binding,” an act which he had failed to notice, though he had caused “blue lightning to flutter among its leaves with most portentous [page 415:] velocity.”(60) The devil introduced himself quietly and modestly:

Pedro scrutinized the stranger's dress and appearance. He was much above the common height, but “the outlines of his figure were blurred and rendered indefinite by the huge folds or a black Roman toga”; he carried a luminous crimson bag on his left arm, and wore above his ear a stylus. To Pedro's mystification his visitor displayed above his toga the neatly folded cravat and starched shirt collar of 1832. His sandals were of a pattern worn before the flood. He [page 416:] talked philosophy knowingly with Pedro. Pedro suspected the identity of his guest and prepared to entertain hire as befitted his reputation. Placing a flask and the sable-bound volume upon the alabaster stand, he wheeled it before his visitor. He was gratified at having “a visit from a gentleman whom he so highly respected.” The devil discussed appreciatively the quality of various souls, the difficulty of keeping them fresh, the advantage of purchasing them vivente corpore, and the necessity of shelling them carefully from the body. He sneezed when his hand fell upon the sable volume, wagged his tail when pleased, though Pedro pretended not to notice this breach of good manners, and showed himself too gentlemanly to take advantage of Pedro's drunkenness by purchasing his soul at a bargain. He protested vigorously any swearing on Pedro's part, an act accompanied each time by a violent swinging of the arabesque lamp.

In the transition from Venice to Rouen and the transformation of the metaphysician Pedro into the French restauranteur which Poe effected between 1832 and 1835 when “The Bargain Lost” appeared as “non-Bon,” his Satanic Majesty also underwent a change --- more in dress and appearance than in manners. [page 417:]

He wore a dirty white cravat tied with extreme precision and suggestive of the style of an ecclesiastic. In his breast pocket he carried a small black volume fastened with clasps of steel and on which the while letters of the words Rituel Catholique changed occasionally into characters of red in the Regître des Condamnés. “His entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnine- — even cadaverously pale.” His forehead gave evidence of contemplation; his expression was submissively humble; and his air of utter sanctity most prepossessing. Certain peculiarities of his physique indicated the demon hidden beneath the cloak of dignity — a remarkable conformation of his feet, a tremulous swelling about the hinder part of his breeches, and the palpable vibration of his [page 418:] coat tail. Most remarkable of all, when he removed his glasses, there was only a dead level of flesh where eyes should naturally have been. Bon-Bon's devil was more sinister, more diabolical than Pedro's. He laughed uproariously, showing “a set of jagged and fang-like teeth.” He took it for granted that Pedro knew his identity and made himself perfectly at home in the apartment. Pedro's guest had politely termed his host's drunkenness, a “peculiar situation”; Bon-Bon’ visitor called it plainly a “disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.” By 1835 Poe had apparently learned a good deal more of the popular conception of the devi1 in his own day than he knew in 1831. He had been reading, no doubt, with an eye for details many of the devil sketches current at that time.

Upon his next appearance in a Poe story the devil has undergone another remarkable transformation, but one fully justified by the conventions of the time. In “The Devil in the Belfry” he capered merrily into the staid Dutch village of Vondervotteimittiss as a very “diminutive foreign-looking young man.” “His countenance was of a dark snuff-colour, and he had a long hooked nose, pea eyes, a wide mouth, and an excellent set of teeth,” which he displayed [page 419:] by “grinning from ear to ear.” Mustachios and whiskers hid the rest of his face; he wore no hat and his hair was done up in curl papers. “His dress was a tight-fitting swallow-tailed black coat (from one of whose pockets dangled a vast length of white handkerchief), black kerseymere knee-breeches, black stockings, and stumpy-looking pumps, with huge bunches of black satin ribbon for bows.” He carried a huge hat and a fiddle five times his own size, took snuff incessantly from his gold snuff-box, and danced fantastically. He was mischief-bound that day when he descended upon the Dutch village and vented his pent-up spirits upon the amazed belfry-man by pulling his nose, clapping his big hat over his head, and beating him soundly with his huge fiddle. Perhaps he could not resist his desire to upset the staid burghers by dancing and fiddling “out of all time and tune.”

Only upon one other occasion did the devil present himself, in his own person at any rate, in a Poe story, — as the evil fate of Toby Dammit in “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” In the same fashion as in “Bon-Bon,” he appeared unobtrusively, when Toby [page 420:] Dammit offered to bet the devil his head he could jump over the stile. He came as “a little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect.” His whole appearance was reverend; “for, he not only had on a full suit of black, but his shirt was perfectly clean, and the collar turned down over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a girl's. His hands were clasped pensively together over his stomach, and his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head.” Oddly enough, he wore a black silk apron over his small clothes and announced himself gently with “ahem!” When Dammit notice him and greeting him with an answering “ahem!” he graciously shook Dammit by the hand and regarded him with “unadulterated benignity.” He told Dammit frankly, “I feel sure you will win it ... but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the mere sake of form.” As a point of conscience, the old gentleman insisted on a good running start for Toby's jump. In spite of his show of fairness, the ecclesiastical stranger had neglected to warn Toby of the bar of iron in the shadows above the stile; consequently, he won his bet and went off quickly with Toby's head wrapped up in his queer apron. [page 421:]

In accordance with the popular belief that the devil might change his form at will, Poe and his contemporaries portrayed him in varying shapes and as possessing diverse characteristics. A comparison of Poe's characterizations of the devil with those of his predecessors indicates that none of the details with which Poe endowed him, however, are particularly critical except, perhaps, the strange conception of him in “Bon-Bon,” as eyeless. In the stories of the period, he appeared varyingly as tall, thin, little, fat; jolly, audacious, sanctified, and reverend; bald, hairy, clean-shaven, bewhiskered; dressed in the mode of the moment or in antique dress; and both with and without physical traces of his diabolical nature. One of his favorite modes of introducing himself appears to have been by coughing. He was practically always courteous, inclined to unobtrusiveness, and given to speaking in a soft, faint, or whining voice. In other words, the devil had become in the nineteenth century an entertaining, companionable creature instead of the sinister figure conjured up by theologians in earlier ages. We must remember, however, that a few brave souls had seen him in this rôle in former times, for did not Shakespeare [page 422:] represent Edgar in “King Lear” as saying, “The prince of demons is a gentleman”?

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 415:]

60.  Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers contains a passage on Agrippa, told by Delrio in his “Disquisition on Magic,” relating how a young man unwittingly summoned the demon in the same fashion by turning over a book of incantations. (See review of Godwin's book, Edinburgh Review, IX (Oct., 1834, 23.)