Walled the Monster (1923) – Harry Clarke | Poe's Black Cat

Walled the Monster (1923) – Harry Clarke | Poe's Black CatHe murdered his wife and walled her body inside the cellar. He was proud of the workmanship. When detectives came to search the house, he rapped confidently on the very wall that hid her. Then came a sound from inside first muffled, like a child sobbing, then a long, loud, continuous wail, half horror and half triumph. The wall came down. The corpse stood upright. On its head, with open red mouth and one eye of fire, sat the cat. Clarke drew the

He murdered his wife and walled her body inside the cellar. He was proud of the workmanship. When detectives came to search the house, he rapped confidently on the very wall that hid her. Then came a sound from inside — first muffled, like a child sobbing, then a long, loud, continuous wail, half horror and half triumph. The wall came down. The corpse stood upright. On its head, with open red mouth and one eye of fire, sat the cat.

Clarke drew the moment of discovery: the murdered wife's decaying, cat-headed corpse riddled with stippled patterns that bleed into the detectives' garments, as if cat, spouse, and state conspire together against the alcoholic narrator — his own body nearly dissolving into the dark, pulled down into the blackness that frames her monstrous form. It is the most viscerally disturbing image in the entire Poe commission, and one of the most technically accomplished.

About Harry Clarke (1889–1931)

Dublin-born and trained in the Arts and Crafts tradition, Clarke brought the intensity of stained-glass design into illustration — intricate patterning, dramatic chiaroscuro, and a darkness drawn from medieval craft and Symbolist literature. The 1923 Poe commission made his international reputation. He died of tuberculosis at 41.

He hid the body in the wall. He was proud of the workmanship. The cat gave him away.

The Black Cat

From Poe's The Black Cat — the moment the wall comes down and the corpse stands upright, the cat shrieking on its head. Clarke's illustration is the most viscerally disturbing image in his entire Poe commission: the cat-headed figure, the stippled decay, the narrator dissolving into the surrounding darkness. A story about guilt that cannot be contained.

About Harry Clarke (1889–1931)

Dublin-born, trained in the Arts and Crafts tradition, dead at 41. Ireland's finest stained-glass artist and one of its most original illustrators. The 1923 Poe commission made his name.

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