The Magnifying Glass: Spectacular Distance in Poe’s “Man of the Crowd” and Beyond

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney The Magnifylng Glass: SDectacular Distance in Poe’s “Manof the Crowd”and Beyond The less the MagnifyingPower of the Glass, the less the Eye will be fatigued by it,-the less distressing the position of the Body in workingwith it, and the larger and more uniformlydistinct the field of view. -William Kitchiner, TheEconomy o f theEyes So safer-guess-with just my soul Upon the Windowpane- -Emily Dickinson,“BeforeI got my eye put out” The magnlfylng glass first appeared in detective fictionasaninvestigativetoolin 1887,whenArthur Conan Doyle introduced London consultingdetective Sherlock Holmes in the novel A Study in Scarlet. Confronting an incomprehensible word written in blood upon a dirty wall, Holmes takes “a large round magnifjmgglass from his pocket” and examinesthe word closely, “goingover every letter of it with the most minute exactness.”The glassnot only enlargesthe image but also enables him tocalculateitssize,proportion,and position.’ From that moment on, the hand lens,just like the deerstalker cap and the meerschaum pipe, has been associated with Conan Doyle’s hero in the popular imagination? The fact that Holmes-and not C. Auguste Dupin-was the first literary detective to wield a magnifylng glass represents a remarkable oversighton Poe’spart. Afterall,Poewasfamiliarwith magnifyinglenses,which originatedin the “burning glasses”used since antiquity to concentrate the sun’srays.3In “SomeWordswith a Mummy,” Poe’s narrator, attempting to assess the ancients’ scientific knowledge, asks the mummy “about burning-glassesand lenses,and,in general,about the manufacture of glas~”;~ in “The Spectacles,” Poedemonstratesa graspof optometry,comically elaborating on ways in which ground lenses can improvevi~ion;~ in “ThePhilosophyof Furniture,” he complains about senseless images generated by the kaleidoscope, a popular nineteenthcentury toy featuring coloredglassand optical reflections (HE,384);in “TheThousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade,”he notes recent advances in microscopy,telescopy,spectrometry,and photography ;and in “ThePurloined Letter,”he even gives the Parispolice force “‘amost powerful microscope ,’” which they use without sagacity or success (FTE, 685).It is surprising,then, that Poe provides none of his sleuths with a hand lensespecially in light of his fascination with ocular organs and optical effects, as well as his association of analysiswith ”peeringeyes”(in “SonnetTo Science,”PTE,38), perceptive reading, and what he calls, in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”a superior “qualityof. ..observation” (mE, 399). Nevertheless, Poe’s detectives almost always employajprutiaemagnifyingglassof some kind. The tales usually represent enigmasand their solutions in visual terms; therefore, in order to elucidate a mystery, Poe’s rudimentary investigating protagonists and brilliant detective heroes must rely on various techniques, devices,or mechanical aids to enhance their eyesight. In “TheFall of the House of Usher,”for example, the narrator gazesat a reflection of the house’sfacadein a vain effort to perceive it more accurately;in “William Wilson,”the protagonist tries again and again,in one small, dimly lit room after another, to idenan antagonist who may simply be his mirror image. But Poe would soon replace such myopic investigators with detective heroes who are not only acutely observant but also able to augment 4 Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism their vision with special optical instruments. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin sums up his own superior analysiswith the boast “that most men, in respect to himself, w[ear] windows in their bosoms” (PTE,401). This unsettling notion -that the detective’s gaze could even penetrate a shuttered window-reappears in the story’scentral motif of a locked room which can neverthelessbe entered, Dupin discovers,through a casement that seems hermetically sealed.6 Poe describes his hero’s piercing glance more fully in “The Purloined Letter”: Dupin finds the missing document, despite the fact that it is disguisedand hidden, after donning “‘a pair of green spectacles ,’”behind which he scrutinizesthe Minister’s entire apartment without being noticed (PTE, 695). These, no doubt, are the identical “green glasses” that allow him to sleep undetected during the Prefect’s visit in “The Mystery of Marie Rog&t”(PTE, 511)-and they evoke, as well, the “greenspectacles”that hide the devil’svacant eye sockets in “Bon-Bon”(PTE, 170) and the “darkened glasses” that protect “weak human eye[s]” from directly viewing the afterworld in “DreamLand ” (PTE, 80).’ Poe’s other detective hero...