 Chapter XXVIII of the Home Life of Poe by Susan Archer Weiss. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Morning with Poe and the Raven. A Leaf from a Journal. One pleasant, though slightly drizzly morning in the latter part of September, I sat in our parlor at Talavera at a table on which were some new magazines and a vase of tea roses freshly gathered. Opposite me sat Mr. Poe. A basket of grapes, his favourite fruit, had been placed between us, and as we leisurely partook of them we chatted lightly. He inquired at length what method I pursued in my writing. The idea was new to me, and on my replying that I wrote only on the impulse of a newly conceived idea, he proceeded to give me some needed advice. I must make a study of my poem, he said, line by line and word by word, and revise and correct it, until it was as perfect as it could be made. It was in this way that he himself wrote. And then he spoke of the Raven. He had before told me of the difficulties which he had experienced in writing this poem, and of how it had lain for more than ten years in his desk, unfinished, while he would at long intervals work on it, adding a few words or lines, altering, omitting, and even changing the plan or idea of the poem, in the endeavour to make of it something which would satisfy himself. His first intention, he said, had been to write a short poem only, based upon the incident of an owl, a nightbird, the bird of wisdom, with its ghostly presence and inscrutable gaze entering the window of a vault or chamber, where he sat beside the beer of the lost Lenore. Then he had exchanged the owl for the Raven, for the sake of the latter's nevermore, and the poem, despite himself, had grown beyond the length originally intended. Does this not explain why the Raven, though not like the owl a nightbird, should be represented as attracted by the lighted window, and perching upon the bust of palace, which would be more appropriate to the original owl, Minerva's bird? Also we recognise the latter in the lines, by the grave and stern decorum of the countenance at war. Poe, in adopting the Raven, evidently did not obliterate all traces of the owl. Of these troubles with the poem he had before informed me, and now, in answer to a remark of mine, he said, in effect, the Raven was never completed. It was published before I had given the final touches. There were in it certain naughty points and tangles, which I had never been able to overcome, and I let it go as it was. He told how, toward the last, he had become heartily tired of and disgusted with the poem, of which he had so poor an opinion that he was many times on the point of destroying it. I believe that his having published it under the known deplume of quarrels was owing to this lack of confidence in it, and that, had it proven a failure, he would never have acknowledged himself the author. He feared to risk his literary reputation on what appeared to him of such uncertain merit. He now, in speaking of the poem, regretted that he had not fully completed before publishing it. If I had a copy of it here, he said, I could show you those naughty points of which I spoke, and which I have found it impossible to do away with. Adding, Perhaps you will help me. I am sure that you can, if you will. I did not feel particularly flattered by this proposal, knowing that, since his coming to Richmond, he had made a similar request of at least two other persons. However, I cleared the table of the fruit and the flowers, and placed before him several sheets of generous fool-scap, on which I had copied for a friend the raven as it was first published. He requested me to read it aloud, and as I did so, slowly and carefully, he sat, pencil in hand, ready to mark the difficult passages of which he had spoken. I paused at the third line. Had I not myself often noted the incongruity of representing the poet as pondering over many a volume, instead of a single one, I glanced inquiringly at Poe, and, noting his unconscious look, proceeded. When I reached the line, an each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. He gave a slight shiver or shrug of the shoulders, an expressive motion habitual to him, and the pencil came down with an emphatic stroke beneath the six last words. This was one of the hardest knots, he said, nor could he find a way of getting over it. Ember was the only word rhyming with the two preceding lines, but in no way could he dispose of it except as he had done, thus producing the worst line in the poem. He pondered over it for a while and finally gave it up. But I may hear mention that I have since in studying the poem made a discovery, which, strangely enough, seems never to have occurred to the author. This was that in this particular stanza he had unconsciously reversed the order or arrangement of the lines, placing those of the triple rhymes first and the rhyming couplet last. Thus all his long years of worry over that unfortunate ember had been unnecessary, since the construction of the verse required not only the omission of the word as a rhyme, but of the whole line of, and each separate dying ember, when the succeeding objectionable words wrought its ghost upon the floor, could have been easily altered, and the addition of a third line to the succeeding couplet would have made the stanza correct. Our next pause was at the word beast, through which he ran his pencil. Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above my chamber door. I must get rid of that word, he said, for of course no beast could be expected to occupy such a position. Oh yes, a mouse, for instance, I suggested, at which he gave me one of his rare humorous smiles. Leaving this point for future consideration, we passed on to a more serious difficulty. This and more I sat divining, with my head in ease reclining, on the cushion's velvet lining with the lamplight gloated oar. The naughty point here was in the word lining, a blunder obvious to every reader. Poe said that the only way he could see of getting over the difficulty was by omitting the whole stanza, but he was unwilling to give up that violet velvet chair, which with the purple silken curtain he considered a picturesque adjunct to the scene, imparting to it a character of luxury which served as a relief to the more somber surroundings. I had so often heard this impossible lining criticized that when he inquired, shall I omit or retain the stanza? I ventured to suggest that it might be better to give up the stanza than have the poem marred by a defect so conspicuous. For a moment he held the pencil poise, as if in doubt, and I have since wondered what would have been his decision. But just here we were interrupted by the tumultuous entrance of my little dog, Pink, in hot pursuit of the family cat. The latter took refuge beneath the table at which we were seated, and there ensued a brisk exchange of dualistic passes, while I called off Pink and Mr. Poe took up the cat, and placing her on his knee stroked her soothingly, inquiring if she were my pet. Upon my disclaiming any partiality for felines, he said, I like them, and continued his gentle caressing. Was he thinking of Catalina, his wife's pet-cat, which he had left at home in Fordham, and which, after her death, had sat upon his shoulder as he wrote far into the night? Recalling his grave and softened expression, I think that it must have been so, but at that time I had never heard of Catalina. But now came the final and most difficult tangle of all, the blunder apparent to the world, the defect which marrs the whole poem, and yet is contained in but a single line. And the lamplight or him streaming casts his shadow on the floor. Poe declared this to be hopeless, and that it was, in fact, the chief cause of his dissatisfaction with the poem. Indeed, it may well excite surprise that he, so careful and fastidious as to the completeness of his work, should have allowed the raven to go from his hands, marred by a defect so glaring. But this is proof that he did indeed regard it as hopeless. When Mr. Poe left us on this September morning he took with him this manuscript copy of the raven, which, however, he, on the following day, handed to me, begging that I would keep it until his return from New York. I found that he had marked several minor defects in the poem, one of which was his objection to the word shutter as being too commonplace and not agreeing with the word lattice previously used. He remarked, before leaving for New York, that he intended having the raven, after some further work upon it, published in an early number of the stylus. I do not doubt, but that, had he lived, he would have made it much more perfect than it now is. After his death his friend, Mr. Robert Sully, the Richmond artist, was desirous of making a picture of the raven, but explained to me why it could not be done, all on account of that impossible shadow on the floor. Of course, said he, to produce such an effect the lamplight must come from above and behind the bust and the bird. No, it was impracticable. This set me to thinking, and the result was that I, some time after, went to Mr. Sully's studio and said to him, How would it do to have a glass transom above the door, one of those large fan-shaped transoms which we sometimes find in old colonial mansions, opening on a lofty, galleried hall? It would do, he said, indeed, with such an arrangement and the lamp supposed to be suspended from the hall-ceiling, as in those old mansions, there would be no difficulty with either the poem or the picture. And we were both delighted at our discovery, and thought, how pleased Poe would have been with the idea, so effective in explaining that mysterious shadow on the floor. Mr. Sully commenced upon his picture, but died before completing it. This manuscript copy of the raven, with all its pencil-marks, as made by Mr. Poe on that September morning, remained in my possession for many years. It is yet photographed upon my memory, with all the details here given from an odd leaf of a journal which I kept about that time. The quiet parlor, the outside drizzle, the books, the roses, the face and figure of Mr. Poe as he gravely bent over that manuscript copy of his immortal poem of the raven. Had he no premonition that even then a darker shadow than that of the raven was hovering over him? It was one of the last occasions on which I ever saw him. CHAPTER XXIX Poe's first visits on his arrival in Richmond had been to Mrs. Shelton, and it soon became known that an engagement existed between them, although they were never seen together in public, and Poe, on all occasions, denied the engagement. Yet morning after morning the curious neighbors were treated to a sight of the poet ascending the steps of the tall, plain, substantial-looking brick house on the corner of Grace Street, facing the rear of St. John's Church. And had they watched more closely, they might, at times, have seen another figure following in its footsteps. Mrs. was Rosalie Poe, who, delighted at her brother's engagement and being utterly without tact or judgment, would present herself at Mrs. Shelton's door shortly after his own arrival, as she said, for the pleasure of seeing the couple together. Once she surprised them at a tettetet luncheon at which corn beef and mustard figured. But on another occasion Mrs. Shelton met and informed her that Mr. Poe had a headache from his long walk, and was resting on the parlor sofa where she herself would attend to him, and so dismissed her to her great indignation. Not alone to Mrs. Shelton's were these shadowings of her brother confined, but if she at any time knew of his intention to call at some house where she herself was acquainted, she was as likely as not to make her own appearance during his visit, or, in promenading Broad Street, he would unexpectedly find himself way-laid and introduced to some prosy acquaintance of his sister. It required Mrs. McKenzie's authority to relieve him from these annoyances. There was, however, something pathetic in the sister's pride in, an affection for, a brother from whom she received but little manifestation of regard. He treated her indulgently, but, as she herself often said in her homely way, Edgar could never love me as I do him, because he is so far above me. About the middle of August Mrs. Shelton's interested neighbors observed that the poet's visits to her suddenly ceased, and then followed a report that the engagement was broken and that a bitter estrangement existed between the two. Mr. Woodbury, Poe's biographer, doubts this, and declares that we have no evidence that such was the case. But we, who were on the spot, as it were, and had opportunity of judging, knew that the report was true. Miss Van Loo, the famous War Postmistress of Richmond, once said to me as, standing on the porch of her house, she pointed out Mrs. Shelton's residence. I used it first to often see Mr. Poe enter there, but never during the latter part of his stay in Richmond. It seemed to be known about here that the engagement was off. Gossop had it that Mrs. Shelton discarded him because persuaded by friends that he was after her money. All her relatives are said to be opposed to the match. From Poe's own confidential statement to Mr. John McKenzie, who had first suggested the match with Mrs. Shelton, it appears that money considerations was really the cause of the trouble. Mrs. Shelton had the reputation of being a thorough businesswoman and very careful and cautious with regard to her money. Poe was at this time canvassing in the interests of the stylus, in which he received great encouragement from his friends. But when he applied to Mrs. Shelton, it is certain that she failed to respond as he desired. She had no faith in the success of his plan, neither any sympathy with its purpose. Also, in discussing arrangements for their marriage, she announced her intention of keeping entire control of her property. Poe himself broke their engagement. Next there arose a difficulty concerning certain letters which the lady desired to have returned to her, and which he declined to give up, except on condition of receiving his own. Possibly each feared that these letters might sometime fall into the hands of Poe's biographers. If they were written during his courtship of Mrs. Whitman, and when still uncertain of the result, he appears to have been keeping Mrs. Shelton in reserve. Mrs. Shelton, during a few days absence of Poe at the country-home of Mr. John McKenzie, came to Duncan Lodge and appealed to Mrs. McKenzie to influence Poe in returning her letters. I saw her on this occasion, a tall, rather masculine-looking woman, who drew her veil over her face as she passed us on the porch, though I caught a glimpse of large, shadowy, light-blue eyes which must once have been handsome. We heard no more of her until some time about the middle of September when suddenly Poe's visits to her were resumed, though in a very quiet manner. It seems certain that the engagement was then renewed, and that Mrs. Shelton must have promised to assist Poe in his literary enterprise, for from that time he was enthusiastic in regard to the stylus and what he termed its assured success. He even commenced arranging a table of contents for the first number of the magazine, and Mrs. McKenzie told me how he one morning spent an hour in her room taking from her information, notes, and data for an article which he intended to appear in one of its earliest numbers. He was in high spirits, and declared that he had never felt in better health. This was after an attack of serious illness due to his association with dissipated companions. Tempted as he was on every side and wherever he went in the city, it was not strange that he had not always the strength of will to resist, and twice during this visit to Richmond he was subject to attacks somewhat similar to those which he had known at Fordham, and through which he was now kindly nursed by his friends at Duncan Lodge. Poe gave but one public lecture on this visit to Richmond, that on the poetic principle, and of this most exaggerated accounts have been given by several writers, even to the present day. They representing it to have been a great financial success. One recent lecturer remarks upon the strangeness of the fate when, just as the hitherto impicunious poet, was about returning home with five thousand and five hundred dollars in his pocket, he should have been robbed of it all. The truth of the matter is that but two hundred and fifty tickets were printed, the prize being fifty cents each. And, as Dr. William Gibbon Carter informed me, there were by actual count not more than one hundred persons present at the lecture, some being holders of complimentary tickets. Another account says there were but sixty present, but that they were of the very elite of the city. Considering that from the proceeds of the lecture all expenses of haul rent had to be paid, we cannot wonder at Poe's writing to Mrs. Clem, my poor poor muddy, I am yet unable to send you a single dollar. I was present at this lecture, with my mother and sister, and Rose Poe, who, as we took seats reserved for us, left her party and joined us. I noticed that Poe had no manuscript, and that, though he stood like a statue, he held his audience as motionless as himself, fascinated by his voice and expression. Rose pointed out to me Mrs. Shelton, seated conspicuously in front of the platform, facing the lecturer. This position gave me a good view of her, with her large, deep set, light blue eyes, and sunken cheeks, her straight features, high forehead, and cold expression of countenance. Doubtless she had been handsome in her youth, but the impression which she produced upon me was that of a sensible, practical woman, the reverse of a Poe's ideal. And yet, she says, Poe often told her that she was the original of his lost Lenore. When Poe had concluded his lecture, he lightly and quickly descended the platform, and, passing Mrs. Shelton without notice, came to where we were seated, greeting us in his usual graceful manner. He looked pleased, smiling, and handsome. The audience arose, but made no motion to retire, watching him as he talked, and evidently waiting to speak to him, but he never glanced in their direction. Rose, radiantly happy, stood drawn up to her full height, and observed, Edgar, only see how the people are staring at the poet and his sister. I believe it to have been the proudest moment of her life, and one which she ever delighted to recall. This occurred during the period of estrangement between Poe and Mrs. Shelton. Quite suddenly, in the latter part of September, Poe decided to go to New York. His object was, as he himself declared, to make some arrangements in regard to the stylus, though gossip said to bring Mrs. Clemont to his marriage. It is difficult to get a clear idea of the relation between Poe and Mrs. Shelton, owing to the counter-dictory statements of the two. Undoubtedly they must have met during Poe's first visit to Richmond, and he tells Mrs. Whitman that he was about to address the lady when her own letters caused him to change his mind. And yet Mrs. Shelton speaks of their meeting on his last visit as though it had been the first since their youthful acquaintance. As she entered the parlor, she says, on his first call, I knew him at once, and, as the pious and practical woman that she was, she adds, I told him that I was on my way to church, and that I allowed nothing to interfere with this duty. She says also in her reminiscences, I was never engaged to him but there was an understanding, and yet, on his death, she appeared in public attired in deep widow's-weeds. That she was devoted to him appears from her own letter to Dr. Moran when informed by him of Poe's death. He was dearer to me than any other living creature. Poe himself, writing to Mrs. Clem, says, Elmira has just returned from the country. I believe that she loves me more devotedly than any one I ever knew. He adds, apparently, an allusion to his marriage. Everything has yet been arranged, and it will not do to hurry matters, concluding with, if possible, I will get married before leaving Richmond. On his deathbed in Washington, he said to Dr. Moran, Sir, I was to have been married in ten days, and requested him to write to Mrs. Shelton. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 of The Home-Life of Poe by Susan Archer Weiss This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Mystery of Fate One evening, it was Sunday the 2nd of October, Dr. John Carter was seated alone in his office when Poe entered, having just paid a farewell visit to Mrs. Shelton before leaving in the morning for New York. He remarked to Dr. Carter that he would probably stop for one day in Baltimore, and perhaps also in Philadelphia, on business, would like to remain longer, but had written to Mrs. Clem to expect him at Fordham some time this week. He would be back in Richmond in about a fortnight. While talking, he took up a handsome Malacca sword-cane belonging to Dr. Carter, and absently played with it. He looked grave and preoccupied. Several times inquired the hour, and at length, rising suddenly, remarked that he would step over to Sadler's Restaurant and get supper. He took the cane with him, Dr. Carter understanding from this circumstance and his not taking leave that he would presently return on his way to the swan, where he had left his baggage. He did not, however, reappear, and on the next morning Dr. Carter inquired about him at Sadler's. The proprietor said that Poe and two friends had remained to a late hour, talking and drinking moderately, and had then left together to go aboard the boat, which would start at four o'clock for Baltimore. He said that Poe, when he left, was in good spirits and quite sober, though this last may be doubted, since he not only forgot to return Dr. Carter's cane, but to send for his own baggage at the swan. Some persons have insisted that Poe must have been drugged by these men, who were strangers to Mr. Sadler, and there was even a sensational story published in a northern magazine, to the effect that Poe had been followed to Baltimore by two of Mrs. Shelton's brothers, and there, after having certain letters taken from him, beaten so severely that he was found dying in an obscure alley. This story was first started by Mrs. Elizabeth Oakesmith in one of the New York journals, though it does not appear from what source she derived her information. No denial was made or noticed taken of it by Mrs. Shelton's friends, and the story gradually died out. For over forty years, the mystery of the tragic death of the poet remained a mystery, strangely and persistently, defying all attempts at elucidation. But within the last few years there has appeared in a St. Louis paper a communication which professes to give a truthful account of the circumstances connected with the poet's death, and which wears such an appearance of probability that it is at least worth considering. This letter, which is addressed to the editor of the paper, is from a certain Dr. Snodgrass, who represents himself to have been for many years a resident of Dakota. He says that on the evening of October 2nd, 1849, being in Baltimore, he stepped into a plain but respectable eating-house or restaurant, kept by an Irish widow, where, to his surprise, he met with Poe, whom he had once been accustomed to meet here, but had not seen for some years. After taking some refreshment, they left the place together, but had not proceeded far when they were seized upon by two men, who hurried them off to some place where they were, with several others, kept close prisoners through the night and following day, though otherwise well-treated. It was the eve of a great municipal election, and the city was wild with excitement. Next evening the kidnappers, having drugged their captives, hurried them to the polls, where they, in a half-conscious condition, were made to vote over and over again. The doctor, it appears, was only partially affected, but Poe succumbed utterly, and at length one of the men said, What is the use of dragging around a dead man? With that they called a hack, put Poe within it, and ordered the driver to take him to the Washington hospital. Dr. Snodgrass says positively, I myself saw Poe thrust into the hack, heard the order given, and saw the vehicle drive off with its unconscious burden. Thus, if this account may be relied upon, ended the strange, sad tragedy of the poet's life. None stranger, none sadder, in all the annals of modern literature. Dr. Snodgrass intimates that his reason for so long a delay in making this story known was his unwillingness to have his own part in the affair exposed, and with the notoriety which its connection with the poet would render unavoidable. But now, he says, in his old age, and having outlived all who knew him at the time, this consideration is of little worth to him. If the story not be true, we cannot see why it should have been invented. At least it cannot, at the present day, be disproved, and it certainly appears to be the most probable and natural explanation of the poet's death that has been given. He agrees also with Dr. Moran's account of Poe's condition when he was received at the hospital, and with the latter's earnest assurance that he himself was not responsible for that condition, and also with his requesting that Dr. Snodgrass be sent for. The kidnappers had probably exchanged his garments for others as a means of disguise, intending to restore them eventually. They at least did not take from him the handsome Malica Cain, which was in his grasp when he reached the hospital, and which would tend to prove that he was not then altogether unconscious. This Cain was, at Dr. Carter's request, returned to him by Mrs. Clem, to whom Dr. Moran sent it. His baggage, left at the swan, was sent by Mr. McKenzie to Mrs. Clem, disproving the story that had been stolen from him in Baltimore. In addition to the above, we find another and very similar account, apparently by the same Dr. Snodgrass, in the San Francisco Chronicle of August 31st, the date of the year not appearing on the clipping from which I make the following extracts. "'You say that Poe did not die from the effects of deliberate dissipation?' asked the Chronicle reporter. "'That is just what I do mean, and I say further that he died from the effects of deliberate murder.' The author of this assertion was a well-known member of this city's advanced and inveterate Bohemia, a gentleman who has long since retired from the active pursuits of his profession, and spends his old age in dreamy meditation, frequenting one of the popular resorts of the craft, but mingling little in their society. When joining in their conversation it is generally to correct some errors from his inexhaustible mind of reminiscences, and on these occasions his words are few and precise. "'Then you knew something of the poet, doctor?' I was his intimate associate for years, much that biographers have said of him as false, especially regarding his death. Poe was not an habitual drunkard, but he was a steady drinker when his means admitted of it. His habitual resort, when in Baltimore, was the widow Meegar's place, on the city front, inexpensive but respectable, having an oyster and liquor stand, and corresponding in some respects with the coffee-shops of San Francisco. Here I frequently met him. But about his death? The mystery of the poet's death had remained a mystery for more than forty years when there appeared in a Texas paper an article from the pen of the editor, in which he gave a letter from a Dr. Snodgrass professing to reveal the truth of the matter. About the time that this article was published there appeared one in the San Francisco Chronicle by a reporter of that paper, telling of an interview which he had had with the same Dr. Snodgrass, of whom he says, "'He was a well-known literary bohemian of this city, who long ago gave up his profession, and is spending his old age in a state of dreamy existence, from which he has seldom aroused, except to correct some error concerning people and things of past times, of which he possesses a mind of reminiscences.' The doctor, denying that Poe had died from dissipation, gave an account of the manner of his death as he knew it, corresponding in all particulars with that given by him to the Texas editor. In conclusion, he said, Poe did not die of dissipation. I say that he was deliberately murdered. He died of laudanum or some other drug forced upon him by his kidnappers. When one said, "'What is the use of carrying around a dying man?' they put him in a cab and sent him to the hospital. I was there and saw it myself. Poe had been shifting about between Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York for some years. Once he had been away for several months in Richmond, and one evening turned up at the widows. I was there when he came in. Then it was drinks all round, and at length we were real jolly. It was the eve of an election, and we started uptown. There were four of us, and we had not gone half a dozen squares when we were nabbed by policemen, who were looking up voters to coop. It was the practice in those days to seize people, whether drunk or sober, and keep them locked up until the polls were opened, and then march them to every precinct in control of the party having the coop. This coop was in the rear of an engine house on Calvert Street. It was part of the plan to stupify the prisoners with drugged liquor. Next day we were voted at thirty different places, it being as much as one's life was worth to rebel. Poe was so badly drugged that he had to be carried on two or three rounds, and then the gang said it was no use trying any longer to vote a dead man, and must get rid of him, and with that they shoved him into a cab and sent him away. Then he died from dissipation after all. Nothing of the kind. He died from the effects of laudanum or some other poison, forced on him in the coop. He was in a dying condition when being voted twenty or thirty times. The story told by Griswold and others of his being picked up in the street is a lie. I saw him thrust into the cab myself. And Mrs. Clem, when she received Poe's letter bidding her to expect him at Fordham that week, she hastened thither to set her house in order for his reception. Day after day she watched and waited, but he did not come. Then at length, when the week had passed, she one evening sat alone in the little cottage, around which, and through the naked branches of the cherry-tree, the October wind was sighing, and an anguish of spirit wrote to Annie. Eddie is dead. Dead. End of Chapter 30 CHAPTER XXXI. In the fall of 1865, the year which saw the conclusion of the unhappy war, I returned to Richmond in my old home of Talavera, which I had not seen in four years. What a shock to me was the first sight of it. In place of the pleasant, smiling home, there stood a bare and lonely house in the midst of encircling fortifications, still bristling with dismantled gun carriages. Every outbuilding had disappeared. All the beautiful trees which had made it so attractive, even the young cedar of Lebanon, which had been our pride, were gone. Clean houses, orchard, vineyard—everything had been swept away, leaving only a dead level overgrown with broom-straw, amidst which were scattered rusted bayonets and a few hardy plants struggling through the trampled ground. The place was no longer Talavera, but Battery X. In this desolate abode I remained for some time, awaiting the arrival of our scattered family, and with no protectors save a faithful old negro-couple. Each evening we would barricade, as well as we could, the entrance to the fort, as some slight protection against the hordes of newly freed negroes who roamed the country, living on whatever they could pick up. One evening when we had taken this precaution, someone was heard calling without, and mounting the ramparts, I beheld a forlorn-looking figure in black, standing upon the outer edge of the trej. It proved to be Rosalie Poe, and when I had brought her into the light and warmth of the fire I saw how changed and ill she appeared. She told me of the Mackenzie's. Mrs. Mackenzie was dead. Matt—Mrs. Byrd—was a widow with a beautiful young daughter, and her brother Mr. Richard was in wretched health. Miss Jane Mackenzie had died in England, leaving her fortune to her brother residing there, and the destruction of the war had completed the poverty of the family. They lived on a little place in the country, with a cow and a garden as their chief means of support. They have to work for a living now, Rose said for Lornely, but I am not strong enough to work. I am going to Baltimore to my relations there, and see what they can do for me. I inquired after young Dr. Mackenzie, gay, handsome, genial Tom, whom everyone loved. Tom is dead, said Rose sadly. He died of camp fever and bad food. When he came home he had only the clothes which he wore, and a neighbor gave us something to bury him in. With a pang I thought of the gay wedding at Duncan Lodge, and the happy faces that had been there assembled. When Rose left me I could but hope that she would be kindly received by her relatives in Baltimore. But some months thereafter, being in New York, I received from her a number of photographs of her brother, which she begged of me to dispose of for her benefit, at one dollar each. Mrs. M. A. Kitter of Boston kindly interested herself in the matter, but wrote me that she met with but poor success, even at the reduced price of twenty-five cents, people saying that they had not sufficient respect for Poe's character to care to possess his portrait. I found it to be nearly the same in New York. In mean time Rose wrote me every few days. Dear S., haven't you got anything for me yet? Do try and do something for me, for I am more soft now than ever. I walk about the streets all day, trying to dispose of her brother's pictures, and at night have to look for a place to sleep. I feel like a lost sheep. Thus the sister of Edgar A. Poe, in the year 1868, wandered homeless and friendless through the streets of Baltimore, as more than thirty years previous her brother had done. We heard long afterward that through some kind northern lady she applied for admittance to the Louise Home in Washington, which Mr. Corcoran was willing to grant, but that certain of his guests, ladies who had formerly occupied high social positions, were of opinion that, considering Miss Poe's eccentricities, she would be better suited and better satisfied in a less pretentious establishment. Finally she was received into the Epiphany Church Home in Washington, where she seems to have enjoyed a good deal of liberty, being often seen riding on the street-cars and visiting the offices of wealthy businessmen, who, if they did not care to possess a photograph of Poe, were yet willing to assist his penniless sister. It was never known what she did with the money so collected, but from a letter to Mrs. Bird it would appear that her intention was to purchase a grave for herself near that of her brother. Mrs. Bird wrote to me, I think Poe's friends might lay Rose in a grave beside him. It has always been her dearest wish. Rosalie Poe died suddenly, with a letter in her hand but that moment received, and which, when opened, proved to be for Mr. George W. Childs, in closing a check for fifty dollars, doubtless in answer to an application for aid. They gave her a pauper's grave in the cemetery of the Epiphany Church Home. The record of her death by the board is Rosalie Poe, died June 14, 1874, aged sixty-four. Some years after the death of Rose Poe, I received a visit from Mrs. Bird, whom I had not seen since the war, and we talked over times past and present. It had been Rosalie's own choice, she said, to go to Baltimore. She did not like the country or the hard life which they were leading. She must have collected considerable money, but never told where she kept it, nor was it ever found. She told me about her family. Her pretty daughter had married a poor man in preference to a rich one who had offered, and they had two beautiful babies and were very happy. Her brother Richard was in firm, and able to do but little work. They had a little place in the country where they raised their own vegetables and sent poultry and eggs to market. She and her son-in-law did all the hard work about the place. I wash and cook for six persons, said she cheerily. Yes, she continued, in her old quaint way. We are poor, but respectable, and I am more content than ever I was at Duncan Lodge. I feel that I have something to live for, and the working life suits me. Yes, we are happy, although there are not two tea-cups in the house of the same pattern. She spoke of Poe, whom she considered to have always been unjustly treated. Everybody could see what his faults were, but few gave him credit for his good qualities, his generous nature and kindly and affectionate disposition, especially as exemplified in the harmony always existing between himself and his wife and mother-in-law. While giving the latter full credit for her devotion to Edgar, her impression was that, except in the matter of his dissipation, her influence over him had not been for good. Her mother and brother John believed that the marriage with Virginia had been the greatest misfortune of his life, and that he himself, while patiently resigning himself to his lot, had come to regard it as such. Some ten years after the death of Poe, I received from Mrs. Clam a letter, giving a pathetic account of her homelessness in poverty. But, she added, she had been offered a home with her relatives at the south, and she appealed to me, as a friend of her Eddie, to assist her in raising the money necessary to pay her expenses thither. A similar appeal she made to other of Poe's former friends, but we heard of her afterward as an inmate of the church-home infirmary in Baltimore, where she died in 1871, having outlived her son-in-law some twenty-two years. It is a curious coincidence that the building in which she died was the same in which, as the Washington hospital, Poe had breathed his last. Her grave is in Westminster Cemetery, and in sight of Poe's monument. CHAPTER XXXII. In order thoroughly to understand Poe, it is necessary that one should recognize the dominant trait of his character, a trait which affected and in a measure overruled all the rest, in a word, darkness of will. Unstable as water is written upon Poe's every visage in characters which all might read, in the weak falling away of the outline of the jaw, the narrow receding chin, and the sensitive, irresolute mouth. Above the soul-lighted eyes and the magnificent temple of intellect overshadowing them we look in vain for the rising dome of firmness, which, like the keystone of the arch, should strengthen and bind together the rest. Lacking this the arch must be ever tottering to a fall. To this weakness of will we may trace nearly every other defect in Poe's character, together with most of the disappointments and failures in whatsoever he undertook. He lacked the resolution and persistence necessary to battle against obstacles, to persevere to the end against opposition and discouragement, and to resist temptations and influences which he knew would lead him astray from the object which he had at heart. In this way he lost many a coveted prize when it seemed almost within his grasp. The accepted opinion is that Poe's dissipation was his chief fault, as it was that to which was owing his ruin in the end. But even this was the effect chiefly of weakness of will. He was not by nature inclined to evil, but the contrary, and we have seen that when left to himself and not exposed to temptation he was from all accounts sober, industrious, and exemplary in his conduct. But he lacked firmness to resist the temptation which, more than in the case of most men, assailed him on every side. Dr. William Gibbon Carter has told me how, when Poe was in Richmond on his last visit, and doing his best to remain sober, he would in his visits and strolls about the city be constantly greeted by friends and acquaintances with invitations to take a julep. It was the custom of the time. Poe, said Dr. Carter, in one morning declined twenty-four such invitations, but finally yielded, and the consequence was the severe illness which threatened his life whilst in the city. The effect of one glass on him, said the doctor, was that of several on any other man. Often he was tempted to drink from an amiable reluctance to decline the offered hospitality. A marked peculiarity of Poe's character was the restless discontent which from his sixteenth year took possession of and clung to him through life, and was to him a source of much unhappiness. It was not the discontent of poverty or of ungratified worldly ambition, but the dissatisfaction of a genius which knows itself capable of higher things from which it is disbarred, the desire of the caged eagle for the windswept sky in the distant eerie. He was not satisfied with being a mere writer of stories. He believed that with a broader scope he could wield a powerful influence over the literary world and make a record for strength, brilliancy, and originality of thought which would render his name famous in other countries as in this. His desire was to set established rules and conventionalities at defiance and to be fearless, independent, dominant in his assertion of himself and his ideas and convictions. As an editor writing for other editors he found himself trampled by what he called their narrowness and timidity. He must be his own master, his own editor, and hence his lifelong dream and desire took form in the conception of the stylus, that ignis fatuous which he pursued to the last day of his life, uncertain, elusive, yet ever eagerly sought, and always ending in disappointment and bitterness of soul. Time and again it seemed within his grasp and, as he exultantly proclaimed, his prospects glorious, when by his own weakness of will it was lost to him. Undoubtedly one of the chief factors in the non-success of Poe's life and its consequent unhappiness was his marriage. Setting aside the poetic imaginings which have been and doubtless will continue to be written concerning this marriage as one of idyllic, mutual love and idolatry, the story, in the light of established facts, resolves itself into a very prosaic one. After John McKenzie, Poe's lifelong and only intimate and confidential friend never hesitated to say that had Poe been left to himself, the idea would never have occurred to him of marrying his little child cousin. In no transaction of his life was his pitiable weakness more manifest than in this feeble yielding of himself to the dominant will of a mother-in-law. Poe remained single, or have married another than Virginia. His regard for her would have continued just what it had been in the beginning and what it remained to the end, the affection of a brother or cousin for a sweet and lovable child. But no one can believe that Poe's nature could have found it satisfying in such a marriage, and, in fact, whatsoever sentimental things he may have written concerning it, his whole conduct goes to prove its insincerity. Poe was of all men one who most craved and needed the love and sympathy of a woman of a nature kindred to his own, a woman of talent and qualities of mind and heart to appreciate his genius and all that was best in him, one who would be to him not only a congenial companion but a help-meet as well. But he married one of Mrs. Osgood's tender sensibilities in feminine charm, or Mrs. Whitman, with her talent and strong character, or even a woman of the practical good sense and judgment of Mrs. Shoe, who knew so well how to care for him mentally and physically. Poe would have been a different man. But his imprudent and, as it has been called, unnatural marriage cut him off from what would probably have been the highest happiness of his life, with its accompanying worldly and social advantages, and bound him down to a life of unceasing toil, penury, and helplessness. It deprived him of a social position and social enjoyment, for his poverty-stricken home was never one to which he could invite his friends, and he himself seems never to have found in it any real pleasure, but to have regarded it merely as a haven of refuge and seasons of distress. But as the years went by, and despite his incessant toil, his life and his home grew more cheerless and poverty-stricken, he became hopeless and in a measure reckless. It is to be noted that it was only after the death of his wife that he appeared to recover anything like hope or energy. Then his prospect suddenly brightened in the love of a good and talented woman, who could have made his life happy and prosperous, when owing to his miserable weakness of will in yielding to temptation, for which there was no excuse, it was all at once swept from his grasp. Mr. John Mackenzie might well have said, as he did, that Poe's marriage was the greatest misfortune of his life, and as a millstone around his neck, holding him down against every effort to rise. But perhaps not even this close friend knew how keenly the Poe must have felt the narrowness of his life, the sordidness of his home, and the humiliation of his poverty. Patiently and uncomplainingly he bore his unhappy lot, and it is to be noted to his credit that, howsoever he might at times go astray, no word or act of unkindness toward the wife and mother who loved him was ever known to escape from him. It will be seen, from all that has here been written, in the light of prosaic truth, that Poe's real character was one very different from that which it has pleased the world in general to ascribe to him, judging him, as it does, by the character of his writings as a poet. The folly of such judgment, and the extent to which it was until recently carried, is simply surprising. It is true that he appeared to have but one ideal, the death of a woman young, lovely, and beloved, and that ideal in the imagining of the world resolved itself into the personality of his wife. She, they concluded, was the original of all the Lenors, and Annabelle Lise, and Ulla Looms, which inspired his melancholy and despairing liar, and in its gloom and hopelessness they could see nothing but the expression of the poet's own nature, as well have accused Rembrandt of being gloomy and morose, because he painted in dark colors. Like the artist, Poe loved obscure and somber ideas and conceptions, and he delighted in embodying these in his poems as much as Rembrandt did in transferring his own to canvas.