 CHAPTER XVII. OF THE HOME-LIFE OF POE, by Susan Archer Weiss. Poe, disappointed in his hopes of success in New York, left that city, and in the summer of 1839 removed to Philadelphia, then the literary center of the United States. Of his business experiences while here, his successes and disappointments, his quarrels with certain editors and literary men, and his friendly relations with others, his biographers have informed us. But it is in his home and private life that we are interested. Their financial circumstances at this time must have been deplorable, for they had to borrow money to enable them to remove to Philadelphia. Under the circumstances to take board was impracticable, and it appears from the reminiscences of certain neighbors that they for some time occupied very poor lodgings in an obscure street in the vicinity of a market. But Poe was much more successful here than in New York, and we find them, in the following spring, established in a home of their own, in a locality known as Spring Garden, a quiet suburb far from the dust and noise of the city. Poe has recently taken pains to hunt out, with infinite patience and perseverance, this house which the Poe's occupied for nearly five years. It was an ordinary framed Dutch-roofed building, with but three rooms on the ground floor, and under the eaves little horizontal strips of windows on a level with the floor, which could scarcely have admitted light and air. But there was, when they took possession, a bit of grassy side-yard which had once been part of a garden, and a porch over which grew a straggling rose-bush. This latter, Mrs. Clem's skillful hands carefully pruned and trained, thus winning for the humble abode, the title still applied to it of The Poe's Rosenbowered Cottage, to which some enthusiast has added, where Poe and his idolized Virginia dreamed their divine dream of love. To a lady who was at this time a resident of Spring Garden we are indebted for a glimpse of the Poe's in this their quiet and half-rural abode. Twice a day, on my way to and from school, she said, I had to pass their house, and in summer time often saw them. In the mornings Mrs. Clem and her daughter would be generally watering the flowers which they had in a bed under the windows. They seemed always cheerful and happy, and I could hear Mrs. Poe's laugh before I turned the corner. Mrs. Clem was always busy. I have seen her of mornings clearing the front-yard, washing the windows in the stoop, and even white-washing the palings. You wouldn't notice how clean and orderly everything looked. She rented out her front-room to lodgers, and used the middle-room next to the kitchen for their own living-room or parlor. They must have slept under the roof. We never heard that they were poor, and they kept pretty much to themselves in the two years we lived near them. I don't think that in that time I saw Mr. Poe half a dozen times. We heard that he was dissipated, but he always appeared like a gentleman, though thin and sickly looking. His wife was the picture of health. It was after we moved away that she became an invalid. Mrs. Clem, she added, was a dress and cloak-maker, and she thinks that Mrs. Poe assisted her, as she would sometimes see the latter seated on the stoop engaged in sewing. She was pretty, but not noticeably so. She was too fleshy. This account refers to a time when Poe was assistant editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, and the family were enjoying a degree of peace and prosperity such as they never subsequently knew. Poe lost this position, according to Mr. Burton, the editor-in-chief, by indulgence in dissipated habits. In replying to this charge he wrote to a friend, Mr. Snodgrass, that on the honour of a gentleman he had not since leaving Richmond, tasted anything stronger than cider, and that upon one occasion only. In this he was borne out by the testimony of Mrs. Clem, who asserted, I know that for years he never tasted even a glass of wine. Mr. Burton, in making the charge, adds, I believe that for eighteen months previous to this time he had not drank. Still, the severity in, one might say, almost cruelty of his personal criticisms continued, and nothing could exceed the bitterness of his vituperation against those by whom, as he conceived, he had been wronged or unjustly treated. Mr. Burton, in replying, in a forbearing and even kindly manner, to a very abusive letter from him, advised him to lay aside his ill feeling against his fellow writers, and to cultivate a more tolerant and kindly spirit. He even proposed that Poe should resume his place upon the magazine, but this he proudly declined, and continued to contribute his brilliant stories to other periodicals. These attracted the attention of Mr. Clem, who had just established the magazine which bore his name, and who offered him the editorship, which Poe accepted, and gave to it his best work. Under his management it prospered wonderfully, and soon became the leading periodical of the country. Still, with a good salary and a brilliant literary reputation, Poe was dissatisfied. The old restlessness and discontent returned. What he desired was a magazine of his own, for which he might be at liberty to write according to his own will. His independent and ambitious spirit revolted at being limited to certain bounds, and controlled by what he considered the narrow views of editors. We find him as early as June 26, 1841, writing to Mr. Snodgrass, Notwithstanding Graham's unceasing civility and real kindness, I am more and more disgusted with my situation. It ended at length in his resigning the editorship of Graham's, and devoting himself to writing for other publications, a step which was the beginning of a long period of financial and other troubles. From Colonel DeSole, editor of NOAA's New York Sunday Times, who as a resident of Philadelphia about that time knew Poe well, I gained some information concerning him. His dissipation, the Colonel said, was too notorious to be denied, and that for days and even weeks at a time he would be sharing the bachelor life and quarters of his associates who were not aware that he was a married man. He would on some evenings, when sober, come to the rooms occupied by himself and some other writers for the press, and, producing the manuscript of the raven, read to them the last editions to it, asking their opinion and suggestions. He seemed to be having difficulty with it, said Colonel DeSole, and to be very doubtful as to its merits as a poem. The general opinion of these critics was against it. The irregular habits of this summer resulted in the fall, 1839, in a severe illness, the first of the peculiar attacks to which Poe, during the rest of his life, was an interval subject. On recovering, he devoted himself to the realization of a plan for establishing a magazine of his own, to be called the Penn Magazine, and wrote to Mr. Snodgrass that his prospects were glorious, and that he intended to give it the reputation of using no article except from the best writers, and that in criticism it was to be sternly, absolutely just, with both friends and foe, independent of the medium of a publisher's will. In these last words we read the whole secret of his past dissatisfaction and of his future aspiration as an editor. The Penn Magazine was advertised to appear on January 1st, 1841, but this scheme was bulked by a financial depression which at that time occurred throughout the country. But who will not sympathize with Poe, and admit that, considering the disappointments to which he was continually subject, and the constant humiliation and drawback of the poverty which met him on every hand, bulking each movement and design, together with the ill health from which he was now destined to be a constant sufferer, his faults and failures should not be treated with every possible allowance. If he were naturally weak, and lacking, in the strength and firmness of will, to determinately resist obstacles and discouragements, we see it in the effect of the heredity, apparent in his sister. And consequently so much greater is his claim to be leniently judged. CHAPTER XVIII. In all this time of which we have spoken, embracing a period of several years, Mrs. Clem and her daughter continued their quiet life at the cottage, the former doing what she could toward the support and comfort of the family. But a great affliction was to befall them. In the dangerous illness of Virginia, now in her twenty-first year, who had the misfortune, while singing, to break a small blood vessel, she had already developed signs of consumption, and from this time forth remained more or less an invalid, subject to occasional hemorrhages but, from all accounts, losing none of her characteristic cheerfulness and light-heartedness. Poe was, at this time, still engaged in the editorship of Graham's magazine, and it is now that we begin to hear of him in the character of a devoted husband, watching beside the sick bed of an idolized wife, with which the world is familiar. Certainly the condition of the helpless creature who so clung to him, and the real danger which threatened her, was calculated to awaken all the tenderness of his nature. She could not bear the slightest exposure, wrote Mr. Harris in Harthan Home, all needed the utmost care, and all those conveniences as to apartment and surroundings which are so important in the case of an invalid. And yet the room where she lay for weeks, hardly able to breathe except as she was fanned, was a little place, with the ceilings so low over the narrow bed that her head almost touched it. Mr. Graham tells how he saw Poe, hovering around his wife's couch with fond fear and tender anxiety, shuddering visibly at her slightest cough, and mentions his driving out with them one summer day, and of the husband's watchful eyes eagerly bent on the slightest change in that beloved face. Another literary friend of Poe's who visited the family in this time of trial, Mr. Clark, tells of his once taking his little daughter with him, knowing Virginia to be fond of the companionship of children, and as a proof of the latter's light heartedness relates how the little girl was induced to sing a comic song which Virginia received with peel after peel of merry laughter. The reminiscences of these kindly gentlemen, who at Poe's own request called upon him, regarding the Poe and his family, are of the most flattering character. Poe in his own home was the perfection of graceful courtesy, and Mrs. Clem amably dignified, with accountants when speaking of her children, almost saint-like in its expression of patience and motherly devotion. Of Virginia, Mr. Harris says, she looked hardly more than fourteen, with soft, fair, and girlish. He says furthermore that Mrs. Poe, whom he had not known previous to her misfortune, had, up to that time, possessed a voice of marvellous sweetness and a harp and piano, which leads an English writer to represent the Poe's wife as an accomplished musician, with the voice of a saint Cecilia. This is a specimen of the exaggeration to which biographers sometimes lend themselves, to be taken up by those who follow and received by the public as a fact. Poe now again interested himself in getting up a magazine, to which she gave the name of The Stylus, and there seemed an even more brilliant prospect than before of its success. He wrote a prospectus, and went to Washington to obtain subscriptions from President Tyler and the Cabinet, but was taken ill. The result, it was said, of his meeting with a convivial acquaintance, and Mrs. Clem being notified thereof, on his return to Philadelphia met him at the railroad station and took him home in safety from further possible temptation. Owing partly to this indiscretion, The Stylus was again a failure, and the matter being known throughout the city did not add to Poe's personal reputation. Now also, just as for the first time Poe began to be mentioned in the character of a devoted husband, there arose a widespread scandal concerning a handsome and wealthy woman whom, it was said, he accompanied to Saratoga, and who was paying his expenses there. But while the story appears to have been so far true, it certainly admits of a different construction from that given by the Gossips. Poe was at this time in wretched health, hardly able to attend to his literary work, and in consequence the financial condition of himself and his family was deplorable. What more probable than that some kind friend of his, seen the absolute necessity to him of a change, should have invited him to be her guest at the quiet summer resort near Saratoga to which she was going. It was a more delicate, and for him, a safer way than to have supplied him with money on his own account. The lady, it was said, had her own little turnout in which they daily drove into Saratoga, and this exercise with the mineral waters, the nourishing food, and other advantages of the place doubtless secured to him the benefits which his friend desired. It is impossible to believe that Poe could have so defied public opinion as to have voluntarily given cause for a scandal of this nature, for which the gossip of a public watering-place should alone be held responsible. Poe now again applied himself to his writing, but for some reason, with but little success, in desperation he hastily finished the manuscript of the raven, and offered it to Graham, who not satisfied as to its merits as a poem declined it, but expressed a willingness to abide by the decision of a number of the office employees, clerks, and others, who, being called in, sat solemnly attentive and critical, while Poe read to them the poem. Their decision was against it, but on learning of the poet's penniless condition, and that, as he confessed, he had not money to buy medicine for his sick wife, they made up a subscription of fifteen dollars, which was given not to Poe himself, but to Mrs. Clem, for the use of the sick lady. This account, given in a New York paper by one of the Office Committee many years after the poet's death, has been denied by a Mr. William Johnston, who was, at that time, an office boy in Graham's employ. He says that he was present at the reading of the poem, and that no subscription was taken up. This may have been done subsequently without his knowledge. Of Poe, he spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of admiration and affection, as the kindest and most courteous gentleman that he had ever met with, prompt and industrious at his work, and having always a pleasant word and smile for himself. He never, in the course of Poe's engagement with Graham, saw him otherwise than perfectly sober. CHAPTER XIX April 1844 He started with Virginia for New York, leaving Mrs. Clem to settle their affairs in general. Just fortunately for Poe's memory there remains to us a letter, written by him to Mrs. Clem, in which he gives her an account of their journey. It is of so private and confidential a nature, and speaks so frankly and freely of such small domestic matters as most persons do not care to have exposed to strangers, that in reading it one feels almost as if violating the sacredness of domestic privacy. But I here refer to it as showing Poe's domestic character in a most attractive light. NEW YORK SUNDAY MORNING APRIL SEVEN JUST AFTER BREAKFAST My dear Muddy, we have just at this moment done breakfast, and I now sit down to write you about everything. In the first place we arrived safe at Walnut Street Wharf. The driver wanted me to pay him a dollar, but I wouldn't. Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the baggage-car. In the meantime I took Sis into the depot hotel. It was only a quarter past six and we had to wait until seven. We started in good spirits, but did not get here until nearly three o'clock. Sissy coughed, none at all. When we got to the wharf it was raining hard. I left her on board the boat, after putting the trunks in the ladies' cabin, and set off to buy an umbrella and look for a boarding-house. I met a man selling umbrellas and bought one for twenty-five cents. Then I went up Greenwich Street and soon found a boarding-house. It has brownstone steps and a porch with brown pillars. Morrison is the name on the door. I made a bargain in a few minutes and then got a hack and went for Sis. I was not gone more than half an hour, and she was quite astonished to see me back so soon. She didn't expect me for an hour. There were two other ladies on board, so she wasn't very lonely. When we got to the house we had to wait about half an hour till the room was ready. The cheapest board that I ever knew, taking into consideration the central situation and the living. I wish Kate, Virginia's pet cat, Catalina, could see it. She would faint. Last night for supper we had the nicest tea you ever drank, strong and hot, wheat bread and rye bread, cheese, teacakes, elegant, a good dish, two dishes of elegant ham, and two of cold veal, piled up like a mountain in large slices, three dishes of the cakes, and everything in the greatest profusion. No fear of our starving here. The landlady seemed as if she could not press us enough. And we were at home directly. Her husband is living with her, a fat, good-natured old soul. There are eight or ten boarders, two or three of them ladies, two servants. For breakfast we had excellent flavored coffee, hot and strong, not too clear and no great deal of cream, veal cutlets, elegant ham and eggs, and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs and the great dishes of meat. I ate the first hearty breakfast I have eaten since we left our little home. Sis is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any, and had to-night no night sweat. She is now mending my pants which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. Tomorrow I am going to try and borrow three dollars, so that I might have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in excellent spirits and have not drank a drop, so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant that I scrape together enough money I will send it on. You can't imagine how much we both miss you. See had a hearty cry last night, because you and Catalina weren't there. We are resolved to get two rooms the first moment we can. In the meantime it is impossible that we can be more comfortable or more at home than we are. Be sure to go to the P.O. and have my letters forwarded. It looks as if it were going to clear up now. As soon as I can write the article for Lowell I will send it to you and get you to get the money from Graham. Give our best love to Catalina. Signature cut out here. In this letter, written as simply and as unreservedly as that of a child to its mother, we see P.O. himself, P.O. in his real nature. Not the poet, with his studied affectation of gloom and sadness. Not the critic, severe in his judgment of all that did not agree with his standard of literary excellence, and not even the society-man, wearing the mask of cold and proud reserve. But P.O. himself, P.O. the man, shut in from the eye of the world in the privacy of his home life and the companionship of his own family. Who would recognize in this gentle, kindly and tender man, with his playful mood and his affectionate consideration for those whom he loved, even for Catalina, the morbid and enigmatical being that the world chooses to imagine him, the gloomy wanderer amid the ghoul-haunted regions of Weir, the despairing soul forever brooding over the memory of his lost Lenore, and how readily he yields himself to the enjoyment of the moment, how cheerful he is in a situation which would depress any other man, a stranger in a strange city, just making a new start in life, with four dollars and a half to begin with. Surely there is something most pathetic in all this, as we see it from P.O.'s own unconscious pen, with the purchase of the twenty-five cent umbrella to shield Sissy from the rain, the two buttons in the skein of thread, and, ever mindful of Sissy's comfort, the tin pan for the stove. The picture is invaluable as enabling us to understand the true characters of P.O. and his wife, and the peculiar relations existing between them. Virginia, trusting, loving, and happy, and P.O., all kindness and protective tenderness for his little Sissy. We look upon it as a lifelike photograph, clear and distinct in every line. P.O., with the traces of care and anxiety for the time swept away from his face, and Virginia, as she has described at this time, a woman grown but looking not more than fourteen, plump and smiling, with her bright black eyes and full pouty lips. It is P.O. himself who reveals her character as no other has done, when he says that, though delighted with her new experience and situation, she yet had a hearty cry, childlike, missing her mother and her cat. It would have been well for them could they have remained at this model, cheap boarding-house, where they were so well provided for. But it was beyond their means, with bored for three persons, and so they look about for two rooms, and when ready, send for Mrs. Clem and Catalina. Two rooms for the three, in one of which Mrs. Clem must perform all her domestic operations of cooking and laundering. Four, as we afterwards learn, P.O. was indebted to his mother-in-law for that immaculate linen in which, however shabby the outer garments he invariably appeared. And despite the thread-bear suit, he was always, it was said, as well groomed and scrupulously neat as the most fastidious gentlemen could be. That in New York P.O. did not at first succeed according to his expectations is rendered evident by the fact that in the following October, he being ill, Mrs. Clem applied to N. P. Willis, for some employment for him, who gave him a place in his office as assistant editor. Willis says that Mrs. Clem's countenance, as she pleaded for her son-in-law, was beautiful and saintly by reason of an evident complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness to those whom she loved. Of P.O. he says that he was a quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the utmost respect and good feeling of everyone. He also says, in speaking of a lecture which he delivered about this time before the New York Lyceum, in which was attended by several hundred persons, he becomes a desk, his beautiful head showing like a statuary embodiment of discrimination, his accent like a knife through water. It was now, in January, 1845, that the raven was published in the Evening Mirror, taking the world by storm. Probably no one was more surprised at its immediate success than was P.O. himself, who, as he afterwards stated to a friend, had never had much opinion of the poem. He now found himself elevated to the highest rank of American literary fame, and with this his worldly fortune should also have risen, yet we find him going on in the same rut as before, writing but little for the magazine, and for that being poorly paid, too poorly to enable the family to live in any degree of comfort. From one cheap lodging to another they removed, with such frequency as to suggest to us the suspicion that their rent was not always ready when due. But after some time the old discontent returned upon P.O. Willis in the Mirror were too narrow for him, and he sought, and was fortunate enough to obtain, a place on the Broadway Journal, at that time the leading journal of the day, and of which he was soon appointed assistant editor. With a good salary the family were now unable to live in more comfort. They rented a front and back room on the third story of an old house on East Broadway, which had once been the residence of a prosperous merchant, but had long ago been given over to the use of poor but respectable tenants. It was musty and mouldy, but here they were elevated somewhat above the noise and dust of the street, and had sunlight and a good view from the narrow windows. It was here that late one evening Mr. R. H. Stoddard, whose sarcastic pen is so well known, called on P.O. instead of at his office, to inquire the fate of a certain Ode which he had sent to the Broadway Journal for publication. Necessarily he was received in the front room, which was Virginia's. The following is his account of the visit. P.O. received me with the courtesy habitual with him when he was himself, and gave me to understand that my Ode would be published in the next number of his paper. What did he look like? He was dressed in black from head to foot, except, of course, that his linen was spotlessly white. The most noticeable things about him were his high forehead, dark hair, and sharp black eye. His cousin wife, always an invalid, was lying on a bed between himself and me. She never stirred, but her mother came out of the back parlor and was introduced to me by her courtly nephew. Stoddard is here mistaken in his description of P.O.'s eyes. They were neither sharp nor black, but large, soft, dreamy eyes of a fine steel gray, clearest crystal, and with a jet-black pupil, which would, in certain lights, expand until the eyes appeared to be all black. Stoddard continues, I saw P.O. once again and for the last time. It was a rainy afternoon, such as we have in our November, and he was standing under an awning waiting for the shower to pass over. My conviction was that I ought to offer him my umbrella and go home with him, but I left him standing there, and there I see him still and shall always, poor and penniless, but proud, reliant, dominant. May the gods forgive me. I can never forgive myself. In April, five months after this time, P.O.'s old habits unfortunately returned upon him. Mr. Lowell one day, in passing through New York, called to see him, when Mrs. Clem excused his strange actions, by frankly stating that Edgar was not himself that day. She afterward made the same statement to Mr. Briggs, whose assistant editor P.O. was, and who writes, June, 1845, to Lowell, I believe he had not drank anything for more than eighteen months, until the last three months, and concludes that he would have to dispense with his services. The matter was settled, however, by P.O.'s proposing to buy the Broadway Journal, hoping to make of it in a measure what he had desired for the stylus. The prospect seemed to promise fair enough for its success, and Mr. Greely and Mr. Griswold, each generously contributed a sum of fifty dollars, but the plan finally failed for want of sufficient funds. George P.O., to whom Edgar applied, remembering his former unpaid loan, making no response to his appeal. This was another great disappointment to P.O., just as, on former occasions, his hope seemed on the point of realization. Thus, in whatever direction he turned, grim poverty faced and frowned him down. Surely it was enough to discourage him, and yet to the end of his life he eagerly followed this elusive hope. Mrs. Clem, too, who had in this time been trying to support the family by keeping a boarding-house, also met with her disappointments. For some reason her borders never remained long with her, and the family, who had removed to obscure lodgings on Amity Street, now found themselves in one of their frequent seasons of poverty and distress. CHAPTER XXXI It was a fortunate day when Mrs. Clem, hunting about the suburbs of the great city for a cheap place of abode, discovered the little cottage at Fordham, a country railroad station some miles from New York. It was but a humble place at best, an old cottage of four rooms in ill repair, but the rent was low, the situation, on the summit of a rocky knoll, pleasant, affording fine views of the Harlem River, and there was pure air, plenty of outdoor space, and that famous cherry-tree, now, in the month of May, in full and fragrant bloom. A few repairs were made, and Mrs. Clem's vigorous hands, with the assistance of soap and water and whitewash, soon transformed the neglected abode into a miracle of neatness and order. Checked matting hid the worn parlor floor, and the cheap furniture which they had brought with them looked better here than ever it had done in the cramped and stuffy rooms of the city. Outside a neglected rose-bush was trained against the wall, supplying Virginia with roses in its season. Her room was above the parlor, at the head of a narrow staircase, a low-ceiling department, with sloping walls and small square windows, and it was here, at a desk or table near his wife's sick bed, that most of Poe's writing was now done. In the preceding winter Virginia's health had apparently greatly improved, and her illness was not of so serious a nature as to confine her entirely to the house, or to interfere with the social or literary engagements of her husband, who was, as poet, lecturer, editor, and critic, at the zenith of his fame. In this time he had attended the soirees of Miss Lynch and others of the literary class, once or twice accompanied by his wife. At these he made the acquaintance of Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Elizabeth Oak Smith, and Mrs. E. F. Ellett, with others of the starry sisterhood of Poetesses, as they were called by some Poetaster of the day, with each of whom he, in succession, formed one of the sentimental Platonic friendships to which he was given. All these, however, were destined to yield to the superior attractions of a sister Poetess, Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood, wife of the artist of that name. Mrs. Osgood, at this time about thirty years of age, is described by R. H. Stoddard as, a paragon, not only loved by men, but liked by women as well. Attractive in person, bright, witty, and sweet-natured, she won even the splinatic Thomas Dunn English and the stoical Greeley, whose approval of her was as frankly expressed as was his denunciation of the ugliness, self-conceit, and disagreeableness of her friend, the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. Poe, who had written a very flattery notice of Mrs. Osgood's poems, in return for which she addressed him some lines in the character of Israfel, obtained an introduction and visited her frequently. Also at his request she called upon his wife, and friendly relations were soon established between them. To her, after Poe's death, we are indebted for a characteristic picture of the Poet and his wife in their home in Amity Street, and which, the almost too well-known for repetition, I will give here as a specimen of his home life. It was in his own simple yet poetical home that the character of Edgar Poe appeared to me in his most beautiful light, playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child. For his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of the most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath a romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, patient, assiduous, uncomplaining, tracing in an exquisitely clear choreography, and with almost superhuman swiftness the lightning thoughts, the rare and radiant fancies as they flowed through his wonderful brain. For hours I have listened entranced to his strains of almost celestial eloquence. I recollect one morning toward the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them, and I, who never could resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity Street. I found him just completing his series of papers called The Literati of New York. Now, said he, displaying in a laughing triumph several little roles of narrow paper, he always wrote thus for the press, I am going to show you by the difference in length in these the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these one of you was rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, and help me. And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband went to the opposite with the other. And whose linked sweetness long drawn out is that, said I. Hear her, he cried, just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself. From this account, the exaggerated phrases of which will be noted, it would appear that a great degree of intimacy existed between Poe and his fair visitor, when he could in his own home, the two tiny rooms in Amity Street, write hour after hour undisturbed by her presence. Virginia was delighted with her new friend, but Mrs. Clem, noting these frequent and lengthy visits, regarded her with a suspicious eye. Too well she knew of the platonic friendships of her Eddie, but there appeared something in this affair beyond what was usual, and in fact Gossip had already begun to link together their names. Mrs. Osgood herself seems to have relied upon Mrs. Poe's frequent invitations and fondness for her society as a shield against meddlesome tongues, but in vain, for not only were the jealous and vigilant eyes of Poe's mother-in-law bent upon her, but those of the starry sisterhood as well. There was a flutter and a chatter in the literary dove-coat, and at length one of the starry ones, Mrs. Ellett, concluded it to be her bounden duty to inquire into the matter. Calling it Fordham one day, in Poe's absence, she and Mrs. Clem, who had probably never before met, engaged in a confidential discussion, in the course of which the irate mother-in-law showed the visitor a letter from Mrs. Osgood to Poe. One wonders how she got possession of that letter, the contents of which were so opposed to all the latter's ideas of propriety that it was clear that something would have to be done. Eventually two of the starry ones, of whom one was Margaret Fuller, waited upon Mrs. Osgood, whom they advised to commission them to demand of Poe the return of her letters, which, strangely enough, she did, though probably only as a conciliatory measure. Poe, in his exasperation at this unwarrantable intermeddling, remarked significantly that Mrs. Ellett had better come and look after her own letters, upon which she sent to demand them. But he, meantime, had cut her acquaintance by leaving them at her own door without either written word or message. Very much, we may imagine, as Dean Swift strode into Vanessa's presence and threw at her feet her letter to Stella. This was either in May or early June, shortly after their removal to Fordham. Poe had no idea of allowing this episode to interfere with his visits to Mrs. Osgood, and the gossip continued, until, to avoid further annoyance, she left New York and went to Albany on a visit to her brother-in-law, Dr. Harrington. On the 12th of June we find Poe writing an affectionate note to his wife, explaining why he stays away from her that night, and concluding with, sleep well, and God grant you a peaceful summer with your devoted Edgar. A few days after this, toward the end of June, he was in Albany, making passionate love to Mrs. Osgood. In dismay she left that city and went to Boston, with her he followed her, and again to Lowell and Providence, giving rise to a widespread scandal, which caused the lady infinite trouble and distress. But Mrs. Osgood, brilliant, talented, and virtuous, was also kind-hearted to a fault, and where her feelings and sympathies were appealed to amably weak. Instead of indignantly and determinately rejecting Poe's in passionate love-making, she says she pitied him, argued with him, appealed to his reason and better feelings, and, in special, affected him of his sick wife, who lay dying at home and longing for his presence. Finally she returned to Albany, and Poe, ill at a hotel, wrote urgently to Mrs. Clem for money to pay his board-bill and take him back to Fordham. CHAPTER XXI On her return home, and for years thereafter, she was accustomed to speak of this visit, and it was a curious picture which she gave of the life of the Poet and his family in the humble little cottage on Fordham Hill. Poe was away when she arrived, presumably in his insane pursuit of Mrs. Osgood. Miss Poe told of Aunt Clem's distress and anxiety on his account, and of how she scraped together every penny and borrowed money from herself to send to Edgar, who, she said, had been taken ill while on a business trip. There were no provisions in the house scarcely, and she herself, both then and at various other times, would purchase supplies from the market and grocer's wagons which passed, for there were no stores at the little country station of Fordham. Miss Poe told of her brother's arrival at home, and of how she overheard Mrs. Clem administering to him a severe scolding. He was so ill that he had to be put to bed by Mrs. Clem, who sat up with him all night while he talked out of his head and begged for morphine. After some days he was better, and walked about the house and sat under the pine trees, crowning a rocky knoll, within calling distance of the house, ever a constant and favourite retreat of his, offering fine views of the river and neighbouring country. One day, still weak and ill, he sat at his desk and looked over his papers. Mrs. Clem then took his place and wrote at his dictation. Aunt Clem, said Rosalie, could exactly imitate Edgar's writing. On the following day she filled her satchel with some of these papers, and went to the city, whence she returned late in the evening, quite after dark, with a hamper of provisions and medicines, to Virginia's great delight, who had feared some mishap to her mother and cried accordingly. Mrs. Poe believed that this hamper was a present from someone, but Aunt Clem was very reserved toward her in regard to her affairs. She knew, she said, that Mrs. Clem had never liked her, but Edgar and Virginia were kind. From this time Poe wrote industriously, seldom going to town, but sending his mother-in-law instead. Several times Mrs. Clem gave her niece some copying to do, but this was not to her a very gratifying task, and when, on her return home, she was asked what it was about, had not the least idea. She always insisted that Annabelle Lee was written at this time, as she repeatedly heard Edgar read it to Mrs. Clem, and also to himself, and recognized it when it was published two years afterward. A curious picture was that which she gave of the Poe's reading his manuscript to his mother-in-law, while the latter sat beside his desk, inking the worn seams of his and her own garments, or of Poe seated on a settle outside the kitchen door, also reading to her some of his rare and radiant fancies, while she presided over the family laundry. He seems to have been constantly appealing to her sympathy with his writing, but never to Virginia. According to Miss Poe, Mrs. Clem was at this time dependent for her own earnings on her sewing and fancy knitting, with pretty knickknacks, which she disposed of at a certain Notion store. Virginia, too, went well enough, liked this kind of work. They had few visitors, for Mrs. Clem, too busy for gossip, made a point of discouraging calls from the neighbors, with the exception of two or three families of better class than most of those surrounding them. This latter were a half-rural people, keeping dairies and cultivating market gardens. Miss Poe spoke of Virginia's cheerfulness. Nothing ever disturbed her. She was always laughing. She liked to have children about her, and they came every day, bringing their dolls and playthings, with little offerings of fruit and flowers from their home gardens. She taught them to cut out and make their doll's dresses, and would sometimes be very merry with them. She did not appear to suffer, said Miss Poe, did not lose flesh, and had always a hearty appetite, eating what the others ate, though very fond of nice things, especially candy. Her mother and Edgar petted her like a baby. Aunt Clem and Virginia, declared Miss Poe with conviction, cared for nobody but themselves and Edgar. Virginia was, at this time, twenty-four years of age. It was not to be wondered at that, as Miss Poe said, her brother, immediately after his return, remained at home, seldom going into town, but sending his mother to dispose of his manuscripts. It has been said that, when he did make his appearance in the city, and among his usual business haunts, he found himself everywhere coldly received, in consequence of the notorious episode with Mrs. Osgood, for whom it was known he had left his sick wife. His literary enemies, of whom he had made many by his keen criticisms, made the most of this charge against him, in addition to that of dissipated habits, to which he now gave himself up with a recklessness which he had never before shown. Poe afterward attempted to defend himself against this reproach, and the whole scandal of this season, by attributing its excesses to his grief and anxiety on account of his wife, whom, he says, he loved as man never loved before, a phrase the extravagance of which betrays its insincerity. He describes how, through the years of her illness, he loved her more and more dearly, and clung to her with the most desperate pertinacity, until he became insane, with intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, and thus he endeavours to explain away his pursuit of Mrs. Osgood. It cannot but be noted that in all Poe's accounts of himself, and especially of his feelings, is a palpable affectation in exaggeration, with an extravagance of expression bordering on the tragic and melodramatic, a style which is exemplified in some of his writings, and may be equally imaginative in both cases. Mrs. Osgood also, in her reminiscences, after Poe's death, sought to clear both him and herself from the scandal of that summer by writing of the affection and confidence existing between himself and his wife, his idolized Virginia, as she saw them in their home, and declares her belief that his wife was the only woman whom he had ever really loved. In this we do not feel disposed to question her sincerity. Touching the slander against herself, she wrote to a friend, You have proof in Mrs. Poe's letters to me, and Poe's to Mrs. Ellet, either of which would fully establish my innocence. Neither of them, as you know, were persons likely to take much trouble to prove a woman's innocence, and it was only because she felt that I had been cruelly wronged by her mother and Mrs. Ellet that she impulsively rendered me this justice. Of course, the letter of Mrs. Poe here referred to was written at the suggestion of her husband, but it is curious to observe how frankly and naively Mrs. Osgood, not now writing for the public, expresses her real opinion of Poe and his wife. Mrs. Osgood goes on to say, Oh, it is too cruel that I, the only one of all those women who did not seek his acquaintance, should be sought out after his death as the only victim to suffer from the slanders of his mother. From this it would appear that after Poe's death the old scandal was revived, and by Mrs. Clem herself. About this time she was having frequent interviews with Dr. Griswold in regard to Poe's papers, which she had handed over to him for use in the memoirs upon which he was engaged. Naturally, Mrs. Clem, who never seems to have forgiven Mrs. Osgood for the troubles of that unfortunate first summer at Fordham, would express herself freely to Griswold, who was a warm friend and admirer of Mrs. Osgood. Was it on account of such utterances that Griswold wrote to Mrs. Whitman? Be very careful what you say to Mrs. Clem. She is not your friend or anybody's friend, and has no element of goodness or kindness in her nature, but whose heart is full of wickedness and malice. Mrs. Osgood was a lovely and estimable woman, and if she did allow her admiration of Poe, and her warm-hearted sympathy with one of a kindred poetic nature, to impulsively carry her beyond the bounds of a strictly platonic friendship, it was in all innocence on her part, and did not lose her the good opinion of those who knew her. The blame was all for Poe, and the feeling against him intense. Undoubtedly, the impression which she made on Poe was something beyond what he ordinarily experienced toward women. In my own acquaintance with him he several times spoke of her, and always with a sort of grave and reverential tenderness, as one may speak of the dead, or as he might have spoken of the lost friend of his boyhood, Mrs. Stannard. Although, as Mrs. Osgood says, Poe and herself never met in the few remaining years of their lives, yet several of his poems, without any real attempt at disguise, express his remembrance of her. It was to her that the lines Too-F were addressed after their parting. Beloved amid the earnest woes that crowd around my earthly path, dear path alas, where grows, nodding one thornless rose, my soul at last a solace hath, in dreams of thee, and therein knows an Eden of calm repose, and thus thy memory is to me like some enchanted far-off isle, in some tumultuous sea, some ocean throbbing far and free, with storms, but where, meanwhile, serenest skies continually just o'er that one bright island smile. In a dream he thus again alludes to her. That holy dream, that holy dream, when all the world was chiding, hath cheered me like a lovely beam, a lonely spirit guiding. What though that light, through storm and night, still trembles from afar, what could there be more purely bright than Truth's day-star? About the same time he wrote the lines To my mother, the only one of his poems in which he alluded to his wife, concluding with the couplet, by that infinitude which made my wife dearer unto my soul than its own life. It will be observed that the sentimental things, in both prose and verse, which Poe has written concerning his love for his wife, and there but two or three at most, were written immediately after his affair with Mrs. Osgood, and the universal charge against him that he had deserted a dying wife for her sake. It is impossible at this remote period of time it could be understood how seriously, from all contemporaneous accounts, Poe's reputation was affected by this unfortunate episode, especially at the north where it was best known. When Miss Poe left Fordham in July, she carried with her a letter for Mrs. Clem to Mr. John McKenzie, soliciting pecuniary aid for Edgar, on plea of his wretched health. Mr. McKenzie was at this time married and with a family of his own, but he never lost his interest in his old friend, or ceased to assist him so far as was in his power. THE SHADOW AT THE DOOR During the winter and succeeding summer matters did not improve at the cottage. Poe, with health completely shattered and spirits horribly depressed, remained at home with his sick wife for the most part, only occasionally arousing himself to write. A lady, who was at this time a little girl and one of Virginia's visitors, afterward, told a reporter of how she would sometimes see Mr. Poe writing at his table in the upstairs room, and how, as each sheet was finished, he would paste it on to the last one, until it was long enough to reach across the floor. Then she would venture to roll it up for him in a neat cylinder, taking care not to disturb him. Since when he was not employed he would tell the children blood-curdling stories of ghouls and goblins when his eyes would light up in a wonderful manner. I lost my heart to those beautiful eyes, she said. Mrs. Clem continued to make the rounds of the editor's offices with these manuscripts, but met with little success. Poe's mind was not at its brightest. He was not in a writing mood, and, as has been since observed, he was reduced to the expedient of rewriting and altering certain smaller articles and offering them to the more obscure papers and journals. Mrs. Clem, in the midst of her manifold duties, could do but little with her sewing in the way of support for the family. So her furniture went, piece by piece, the furniture which Miss Poe had so often described, the parlor box lounge upon which she slept, the dining table which stood in the midst of the room, for the meal which was so seldom placed upon it, the large engraving above the mantelpiece, and the collection of seashells. All disappeared until the once cozy little apartment presented a barren poverty-stricken appearance. Mrs. Gove, one of the literary women of the day, described it as being furnished with only a checked matting, a small corner-stand, a hanging shelf of books, and four chairs. Use afterward, when strangers would visit the cottage at Fordham, they would hear from the neighbor's pathetic accounts of the family during this summer of 1846. We knew that they were poor, said one, but they tried to keep it to themselves. Many a time I have wanted to send them things from my garden, but was afraid to do so. One old dame said to a New York reporter, I've known when they were out of provisions, for then Mrs. Clem, who always seemed cheerful, would come out with a basket and a shining case-knife, and go round digging greens, dandelions. Once I said to her, says I, greens may be took too frequent. Oh, no, says she, smiling. They cool the blood, and Eddie likes them. Thus poor Mrs. Clem, with her assumed cheerfulness, would seek to produce the impression that their dinner of wild herbs was a matter of choice instead of necessity. Another neighbor said to a visitor, I never saw checked matting last as theirs did. There was nothing upstairs but an old cot in a little hall-room or closet where Mrs. Clem slept, and an old table and chair and bed in the next room, where Mr. Poe wrote, but you could eat your dinner off the two floors. The testimony of still another was, in the kitchen she had only a little stove, a pine table, and a chair, but the floor was as white as the table, and the tins as bright as silver. I don't think that she had more than a dozen pieces of crockery, all on a little shelf in the kitchen. The only meat I've ever known them to have was a five-cent bone for soup or a few butcher's trimmings for a stew, but it seemed Mrs. Clem could make a little of anything go twice as far as other people could. In the early part of this summer Virginia's health appeared better than usual. A neighbor who lived nearest them said to a visitor to Poe's old home, in fine weather that summer, the summer before she died, we could sometimes see her sitting at her front door, wrapped up with her husband or mother beside her, Mr. Poe reading a newspaper, and Mrs. Clem knitting. Most times there would be one or two children along, and Mr. Poe would play ball with them while his wife laughingly looked on. She looked like a child herself, hardly taller than they were. Well, no, she wasn't exactly pretty. She looked too spooky, with her white face and big black eyes, but she was interesting looking, and we felt sorry for her, and for them all for that matter. You could see they'd known better days. As the summer wore on and the first autumn breezes shook the leaves from the cherry tree, a change came over Virginia. Mrs. Clem wrote to Mrs. Poe that unless she could go to her relations in the south, a thing not to be thought of, she would not live through the winter. Eddie's health was completely broken, and unless she herself remained strong enough to take care of them both, all would have to go to the poor house. These letters were generally indirect appeals for pecuniary aid. Through similar pathetic accounts given by Mrs. Clem to editors to whom she offered manuscripts, the condition of the poet and his family became known, and was commented upon by the public papers to pose great indignation, who took occasion in an anonymous communication to deny its truth. But that it was no time for pride to stand in the way of dire necessity is evident from the account of Mrs. Gove on her first visit to the cottage late in that fall. One can hardly realize a condition of things such as she described, the bare and fireless room, the bed with its thin white covering and the military cloak, a relic of the West Point days spread over it, and the sick woman, whose only means of warmth was as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet, while she herself hugged a large tortoiseshell cat to her bosom. And the thin haggard man, suffering like his wife from cold and the lack of nourishing food, but who yet received his visitor with such courtly elegance of manner, was the author of the Raven, with which the world was even then being thrilled. It was a blessed day for the distressed family, that on which, about the last of October, Mrs. Shoe came to the now bleak little cottage on the hill, and, like a ministering angel, devoted herself to caring for and comforting them, not only as regarded their material wants, but with kind and encouraging words as well. With a sufficient competence, and the medical education given her by her father, she was enabled thus to devote herself to the service of those who could not afford the attendance of a regular physician. Not only did she supply them with medicine, but with careful nursing and proper food, prepared by her own hands in Mrs. Clem's little kitchen. Mrs. Gove collected sixty dollars, with which their other wants were supplied, so that during the month of November and December the family were more comfortably situated than was usual with them. But meantime Virginia rapidly declined, until it became evident that her frail life was very near its close. On the day before her death, Poe, in mortal dread of that awful shadow which had been so long in its approach, and now stood upon their threshold, wrote urgently to Mrs. Shoe to come and pass the night with them. My poor Virginia still lives, though failing fast. She came in time to take leave of the dying wife. One of Poe's biographers has stated that on the day previous to Mrs. Poe's death she requested Mrs. Shoe to read two letters from the second Mrs. Allen, exonerating Poe from having ever caused a difficulty in her house. To those who knew Mrs. Allen and had heard from herself and her family the frequent accounts of that occurrence, accounts never retracted by her to her dying day, this statement is not worth a moment's consideration. The only question is, who wrote those letters, and how is it that they were never made public or again heard of? And who could have imposed upon the dying woman a task such as this, instead of themselves taking the responsibility? From this incident, if the account be true, it would appear that Virginia was gentle, obedient, and submissive to the last. On the day following, January 3, 1847, her innocent, childlike spirit passed away from earth. She was in the twenty-sixth year of her age. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of the Home Life of Poe by Susan Archer Weiss Mrs. Shoe With the death of his wife a great horror and gloom fell upon Poe. The blow which he had for years dreaded had at length fallen. That which he had feared and loathed above all things, the future, death, had entered his home and made it desolate. As a poet he could delight in writing about the death of the young and lovely, but from the dread reality he shrank with an almost superstitious horror and loathing. It was said, on Mrs. Clem's authority, that he refused to look upon the face of his dead wife. He desired to have no remembrance of the features touched by the transforming fingers of death. Mrs. Shoe still kindly ministered to him, endeavouring also to arouse him from his gloom and encourage him to renewed effort. But it seemed at first useless. He had no hope or cheering beyond the grave, and it was at this time that he might appropriately have written. A voice from out of the future cries, on, on, but or the past, him gulf my spirit hovering lies, mute, motionless, aghast. Mrs. Shoe, a thoroughly practical woman of sound, good sense, and judgment, and with so little of the aesthetic that she confessed to Poe that she had never read his poems, nevertheless took a friendly interest in him, and felt for him in his loneliness. To afford him the benefit of a change she took him as her patient to her own home, and commissioned him to furnish her dining-room and library according to his own taste. She also encouraged him to write, placing pen and paper before him, and bidding him to try. And in this way, it is claimed by one account, the bells came to be written, or at least begun. Under the influence of cheerful society, comfort and good cheer, Poe's health and spirits improved, and on his return home he again commenced writing. Soon however a relapse occurred, and his kind friend and physician found it necessary to resume her visits to Fordham. For all this Poe was grateful, but, unfortunately, he was more, and at length, on a certain day, he so far betrayed his feelings that Mrs. Shoe then and there informed him that her visits to him must cease. On the day following she wrote a farewell letter, in which she gave him advice and directions in regard to his health, warning him of its precarious state, and of the necessity of abandoning the habits which were making a wreck of him mentally and physically. She advised him, as the only thing that could save him, to marry some good woman possessed of sufficient means to support him in comfort, and who would love him well enough to spare him the necessity of mental overwork, for which he was not now fitted. It may be here remarked that, of all the women we know of to whom Poe offered his platonic devotion, Mrs. Shoe was the only one by whom it was promptly and decidedly rejected. CHAPTER XXIV The beginning of this year was a dreary time at the cottage at Fordham. The resources of the family, which had been generously contributed to, mostly by strangers and anonymously, were now exhausted, and Poe ill and in wretched spirits, was not capable of the exertion necessary to replenish them. In the preceding summer he had, by a severe criticism of Thomas Dunn English, aroused the ire of that gentleman, who revenged himself in an article for which Poe brought a suit of libel, recovering damages to the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars, a welcome boon in a time of need. He remained at home applying himself to his writing, and, mindful of Mrs. Shoe's advice, abstained from stimulants, and took regular exercise on the country roads about Fordham. His frequent companion in these walks was a priest of St. John's College, near Fordham, who, being an educated and intellectual man, must have proven a most congenial and welcome acquaintance. This priest, who seems to have known Poe well, declares that he made a superhuman struggle against starvation, and speaks of him as a gentle and amiable man, easily influenced by a kind word or act. Most of his time, said Mrs. Clem, was passed out of doors. He did not like the loneliness of the house, and would not remain alone in the room in which Virginia had died. When he chose to write at night, as was sometimes the case, and was particularly absorbed in his subject, he would have his devoted mother-in-law sit beside him, dozing in her chair, and at intervals supplying him with hot coffee, or Catalina, his wife's old pet, perched upon his knee or shoulder, cheering him with her gentle purring. Virginia's death seems to have drawn these three more closely together. They could thenceforth often be seen walking up and down the garden walk. Poe and his mother, arm in arm, or with their arms about each other's wastes, and Catalina stately keeping pace with them, rubbing and purring. Mrs. Clem told Stoddard how, when Poe was about this time writing Eureka, he would walk at night, up and down the veranda, explaining his views and dragging her along with him, until her teeth shattered and she was nearly frozen. It is to be feared that he was not always sufficiently considerate of his indulgent mother-in-law. Poe soon experienced the benefits of his restful and temperate life. Health and spirits improved, and he began to take an interest in the everyday things about him. As spring advanced, he and Mrs. Clem laid out some flower-beds in the front garden, and planted them with flowers and vines given by the neighbors, until, when in May the cherry tree again blossomed, the little abode assumed quite an attractive appearance. When an old settle, left by a former tenant, and which Mrs. Clem's skillful hands had mended and scrubbed and stained into respectability and placed beneath the cherry tree as a garden seat, Poe might now often be seen reclining, gazing up into the branches, where birds and bees flitted in and out, or talking and whistling to his own pets, a parrot and bobble-ink, whose cages hung in the branches. A passer-by was impressed by the picture presented quite early one summer morning, of the poet and his mother standing together on the green turf, smilingly looking up and talking to these pets. Here, on the convenient settle, on returning from one of his long sunrise rambles, he would rest until summoned by his mother to his frugal breakfast. I have at various times heard persons remark that in reading the life of a distinguished man they have desired to know some of the lesser details of his daily life. As how did he dress? What did he eat? We have all been interested in learning that George Washington liked cornbread and fried bacon for breakfast, that Sir Walter Scott was fond of oat and gills with milk, and that Wordsworth's favorite lunch was bread and raisins. As regards Poe, we must go back to his sister's account of what his morning-meal consisted of while she was at Fordham. A pretzel and two cups of strong coffee, or, when there was no pretzel, the crusty part of a loaf with a bit of salt herring is a relish. Poe had the reputation of being a very moderate eater and of preferring simple vines, even at the luxurious tables of his friends. He was fond of fruit and his sister said of buttermilk and curds, which they obtained from their rural neighbors. But we recall his enjoyment of the elegant tea-cakes at the moriscans on Greenwich Street and the fried eggs for breakfast. A lady who was a little girl knew Poe and his mother at this time said to a correspondent of the New York Commercial Advertiser, We lived so near them that we saw them every day. They lived miserably and in abject poverty. He was naturally in provident, and but for the neighbors they must have starved. My mother sent many a thing from her storeroom to their table. He was not a man who drank in the common acceptation of the term, but those were days when wine ran like water, and not to serve it would seem niggerly. I remember that one day, Muddy, as Mr. Poe called Mrs. Clem, came to our house and asked us not to offer wine to Edgar, as his head was weak, but that he did not like to refuse it. It's an illustration of the fascination which Poe possessed, even for strangers, is the following letter from Mr. John de Galliford of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to this same New York correspondent. I am drawn to you by your defense of Edgar A. Poe. I love him, though I met him but once. It was in September, 1845. I was sitting on a pile watching our bark that was moored to the pile. A quiet, neatly dressed gentleman came up to me and asked me numberless questions in regard to our seafaring life. He was so lovable in his conversation that I never forgot him, and I prized the memory of those few hours of his sweet talk with me, and hold it sacred to his memory. He could not have been a drinking man, for his looks did not show it. On my telling that I was a runaway boy from Kentucky, he took some scraps of paper from his pocket and took notes, saying that he could make a nice story of what I had told him. I took him aboard the bark and showed him a pet monkey I had brought from Natal. He ate a piece of biscuit and drank some cold coffee, and said he would come again and see me and get acquainted with my captain. This was years ago, and I am now an old man, seventy-three years old, but I can remember word for word all that passed. CHAPTER XXV. It must be admitted that Poe, after his affair with Mrs. Osgood and the severe illness which followed, was never again what he had been. With health and spirits impaired, his intellect had, in a great measure, lost its brilliant creative power, its inspirations, as we may call it, and thenceforth his writings were no longer the spontaneous and irrepressible impulse of genius, but the product of mental effort and labor. In special had his poetic talent in a measure deserted him, as is evident in his latest poems with one or two exceptions. Recognizing this condition, and with what a pang we may imagine, he recalled Mrs. Schu's advice in regard to a second marriage, and admitting its wisdom began to look about for a suitable matrimonial partner. Finally, his choice fell upon Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman of Providence Rhode Island, one of the poetesses of the time, and the most brilliant of them all. A consideration which doubtless chiefly influenced him in this choice was that Mrs. Whitman, being a lady of literary taste and independent means, would be likely to take an interest in the stylus, the hope of establishing which he had never abandoned, and would assist him in carrying out his plans in regard to it. Of Mrs. Whitman, at this time about forty-five years of age, I have the following account from a lady, Miss F. H. Kellogg, whose mother was an intimate friend and near neighbor of hers in Providence. She was considered very eccentric, impulsive and regardless of conventionalities. She dressed always in white, and on the coldest winter evenings with snow on the ground would cross over to our house in thin slippers and with nothing on her head but a thin, gauzy, white scarf. She probably thought this aesthetic, and perhaps it was. There was one thing which I must not omit to mention, because it was a part of herself, ether, the scent accompanied her everywhere. It was said she could not ride except under its influence, but of this I do not know. As an illustration of her impulsive ways, Mrs. Kellogg says, I was one evening, when a little girl, sitting on the front steps, when she and her sister Miss Powers crossed over to our house. They went into the parlor, and I heard Mrs. Whitman ask my sister to sing for her the mockingbird. She appreciated my sister's beautiful singing, but on this occasion, while she was in the very midst of listen to the mockingbird, suddenly a cloud of white rushed past me like a tornado, and I heard Mrs. Whitman's voice exclaiming excitedly, I have it, I have it! Of course we were all astonished and could not understand it at all until Miss Powers afterward explained it to us. It seems that the beautiful music and singing had excited in her some poetic thought or idea, and regardless or forgetful of conventionalities, she had impulsively rushed home to put it in writing, or perhaps in poetry, before it should vanish away. Miss Sarah Jacobs, one of Griswold's female poets, and a friend of Mrs. Whitman, describes her as small and dark, with deep set, dreamy eyes that looked above and beyond but never at you, quick birdlike motions, and as being a believer in occult influences, as Poe himself professed to be. For all the sweet poetic fragrance of her nature she took an interest in common things. She was wise, she was witty, and no one could be long in her presence without becoming aware of the sweet and generous sympathy of her nature. Up to this time Poe and Mrs. Whitman had never met, though Mrs. Osgood says that the lady had written to him and sent him a Valentine, of which he had taken no notice. This was against him in his present venture, but he was not discouraged. He said about his courtship in his usual manner, by addressing to Mrs. Whitman, June 10, some lines, to Helen, commencing, I saw thee once, once only. Suppose to commemorate his first sight of her as, passing her garden one July midnight, he beheld her robed in white, reclining on a bank of violets, with her eyes raised heavenward. No footstep stirred, the hated world all slept, save only thee and me. O heaven, O God, how my heart beats in coupling those two words, save only thee and me! So he continues he gazed entranced, until, the hour being passed midnight in a storm-cloud threatening, the lady very properly arose and disappeared from his sight, all but her eyes. These remained and followed him home, and had followed him ever since, to sweetly scintillant venuses, unextinguished by the sun. All this must have been very gratifying to Mrs. Whitman, if she believed in it. But remembering her neglected Valentine, she was in no haste to acknowledge the poetic offering, and Poe, after waiting some weeks, had his attention drawn in another direction. He had written to his friend Mr. McKenzie, concerning his matrimonial aspirations, and he now received an answer, suggesting that he come to Richmond, and try his fortune with an old-time schoolgirl sweetheart, Mrs. Sarah Elmyra Royster. Now a rich widow Shelton, who had several times of late inquired after him, and sent her remembrances. Animated by this new hope, he, late in the summer of 1847, proceeded to Richmond, where he visited among his friends, and called upon Mrs. Shelton, but especially paid attention to a pretty widow, a Mrs. Clark. This lady, when a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, many years after Poe's death, gave to the editor of a paper some reminiscences of him at this time. The good lady was deeply interested that the world might think well of Poe, and grew warm on the subject of his wrongs. She claimed that the poet was a Virginian, and, like most Virginians, she is very proud of her state. She wondered where Gil had gotten the material for Poe's vindication. She had first met Poe at the McKenzie's, when he was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, and he afterward boarded at the same hotel as herself, but she saw most of him on his visit to Richmond previous to his last. He was then at her house daily, and sometimes two or three times a day. He came there, as he said, to rest. If there happened to be friends present, he was often obliging enough to read, and would sometimes read some of his own poems, but he would never read the raven unless he felt in the mood for it. When in Richmond he generally stayed with the McKenzie's at Duncan Lodge, and would drive in with them at any time. One day he came in with his sister and two of the McKenzie's, and stopped with me. There were some other people present, and he read the raven for us. He shut out the daylight and read by an astral lamp on the table. When he was through, all of us that had any tacked whatever spared our comments, and let our thanks be brief, for he was most impatient of both. Of Poe's reading Mrs. Clark spoke with enthusiasm. It was altogether peculiar and indescribable, she said. I have heard the raven read by his friend John R. Thompson and others, but it sounded so strange and affected compared with his own delivery. Poe had a wonderful voice, rich, mellow, and sweet. I cannot give you any idea of it. Edwin Booth sometimes reminds me of him in his eyes and expression, but Poe's voice was peculiar to himself. I have never heard anything like it. He often read from Shelley and other poets. One day he pointed out to me in one of Shelley's poems what he considered the truest characteristic of hopeless love that he knew of. The Desire of the Moth for the Star, of the Night for the Morrow. I enjoyed a good deal of his society during that visit in 1847. On his last visit I saw less of him. He was then said to be engaged to a Mrs. Shelton. Some said he was marrying her for her money. There was a good deal of gossip at that time concerning Poe. His intemperate habits especially were exaggerated and made the most of by those who did not like him, while his companions in dissipation escaped unnoticed. When he was in company at a party, for instance, you might see a little of him in the earlier part of the evening, but he would presently be off somewhere. Then his eccentricities. I think that when a very young man he imitated Byron. Mrs. Clark said she had seldom seen a good likeness of Poe. The best she had cut from an old magazine. This engraving, she said, showing it, reflects at once the fastidiousness and the virility characteristic of his temperament. All the others have an expression pitiably weak. His worst columniaters could hardly desire for him a harder fate than the continual reproduction of that feeble visage. When he had money he was lavish and over-generous with it. He was always refined. He felt it in his very presence. And as long as I knew him and as much as I was with him, I never saw him in the least intoxicated. I have seen him when he had had enough wine to make him talk with even more than his usual brilliancy. Indeed, to talk in a large general company some little stimulant was necessary to him. Dr. Griswold says he was arrogant, dogmatic, and impatient of contradiction. I have heard him engage in discussions frequently, oftenest with diffidence, always with consideration for others. In a large company it was only when exhilarated with wine that he spoke out his views and ideas with any degree of self-assertion. Mrs. Clark said that his sister, Rosalie, was rather pretty and resembled himself somewhat in appearance, but was as different as possible in mental capacity. She was amiable, patient, and sweet-tempered, but as a companion wholly tiresome and monotonous. She seemed to have had little or no individuality or force of character. She thought a great deal of her brother, but during the greater part of their lives they had seen nothing of each other. The family of Mr. McKenzie treated her affectionately and kindly, and until the breaking up of the household she remained with them, and then went to Baltimore with her relatives, the Poes. I don't know what became of her afterwards. Mrs. Clark speaks of Poes reading and lectures during his first visit to Richmond, but these were mere small social entertainments at the houses of various acquaintances. He really gave but one public lecture during this visit to Richmond. One evening at Mrs. McKenzie's she said to him, Edgar, since people appear so eager to hear you repeat the raven, why not give a public recital, which might benefit you financially? Being further urged he finally yielded. One hundred tickets were advertised at fifty cents each, and the music hall of the fashionable exchange hotel engaged for the occasion. On the appointed evening Poes stepped upon the platform to face an audience of thirteen persons, including the janitor and several to whom complimentary tickets had been presented. Of these was Mrs. Shelton, who occupied a seat directly in front of the platform. Poe was cool and self-possessed, but his delivery mechanical and rather hurried, and on concluding he bowed and abruptly retired. One of the audience remarked upon the unlucky number of thirteen, and Mrs. Julia Mayo Cabell commented indignantly upon the indifference of the Richmond people to their own great poet. Poe was undoubtedly in a degree mortified, not at the indifference manifested, but at the picture presented by the large and brilliantly lighted hall, and himself addressing the group of thirteen, which constituted the audience. But his failure may be explained by the fact that in this month of August the elite and educated people of the city were mostly absent in the mountains and by the seashore, and the weather being extremely sultry few were inclined to exchange the cool breezes of the city of the Seven Hills for a crowded and heated lecture-room, even to hear the raven read by its author. During this visit of Poe to Richmond, I, with my mother and sister, was away from home in the mountains, and we thus missed seeing him. On our return shortly after his departure we heard various anecdotes concerning him, one or two of which I subjoin as illustrative of his natural disposition. One evening, quite late, an alarm of fire was raised, and all the young men of Duncan Lodge, accompanied by Poe, hastened to the scene of disaster, about a mile further in the country. Finding a great crowd collected, and that their services were not required, they sat on a fence looking on, and it was past midnight when they thought of returning home. Gay young Dr. Tom Mackenzie remarked that it would never do to return in their immaculate white linen suits as they would be sure to get a wicking from the old ladies for not having help to put out the fire, and besides they were all hungry, and he knew how they could get a good supper. With that he seized a piece of charred wood, and commenced besmerging their white garments in their hands and faces, including pose. Arriving at home in an apparently exhausted condition, they were treated by Mrs. Mackenzie herself, who would not disturb her servants to the best that the pantry afforded, nor was the trick discovered until the following day. Mrs. Mackenzie laughed, but for Mrs. Carter, the mother of two of the culprits, and who was gifted with eloquence, they got the wicking which they had been anxious to avoid. And from all accounts Poe enjoyed it all immensely. A lady told me that one evening, going over to Duncan Lodge, her attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the garden, where she beheld all the young men in the broad central alley engaged in the classic game of leapfrog. When it came to Mr. Poe's turn, she said, he took a swift run and skimmed over their backs like a bird, seeming hardly to touch the ground. I never saw the like. Mr. Jones, Mrs. Mackenzie's son-in-law, who was rather large and heavy, came to grief in his performance, and no one laughed more heartily than did Poe. Was this the melancholy, morbid, weird and wholly incomprehensible being that the world has pictured the author of the raven? Among these youthful spirits and his old friends, the depressing influences of his late life and home, the poverty, the friendlessness, seemed to vanish, and his real disposition asserted itself. I am convinced that a great deal of Poe's unhappiness and apparent reserve and solitariness was owing to his obscure home life which kept him apart from all genial social influences. At the north, wherever seen out of his business hours, he appears to have been alone and solitary, proud and melancholy looking, says one, who had no idea of the loneliness of spirit, the lack of genial companionship, which made him so. With a few he was on friendly terms, but of intimate friends or associates he had not one, so far as is known. Of the Mackenzie's, so closely associated with Poe during his lifetime, I may be allowed to say that a more attractive family group I have rarely known. Beside those I have mentioned were the two youngest members, Mr. Dick and Matty or Matt, wayward, generous, warm-hearted Matt, indifferent to people's opinion and heedless of conventionalities. She cared for nothing so much as her horse and dog, and spent an hour each day in the stables while her aunt, Miss Jane, would exclaim in despair. I don't know what to do with Martha. I cannot make a lady of her, to which she would answer with a satisfied assurance that nature had never intended her to be a lady. But about this time, in October, Matt was married. There were ladies living who have heard from their mothers, at that time young girls, accounts of this famous wedding. The festivities were kept up for full two weeks, with ever-changing house parties, and each evening music and dancing, with unbounded hospitality. Miss Jane Mackenzie, upon whom the family chiefly depended, and whose fortune they expected to inherit, was gone on a visit to her brother in London, but she had given Matt a liberal sum wherewith to celebrate her wedding. Finally my thoughts pass, from this gay time, over the next ten years or so, to the time of the war, and the changes which it brought to this family and to us all. CHAPTER XXVI of the home life of Poe by Susan Archer Weiss Mrs. Whitman. Poe was still in Richmond, presumably courting the widow Shumpton, though in so quiet a manner that it attracted little or no attention, when he unexpectedly received from Mrs. Whitman, who seems to have repented of her silence a letter or poem of so encouraging a nature that he immediately left Richmond and proceeded to New York. Here he obtained a letter of introduction to Mrs. Whitman, which he, on the following day, presented to that lady at her home in Providence. The next evening he spent in her company, and on the succeeding day asked her to marry him. Receiving no definite answer, he, on his return to New York, sent her a letter, in which, alluding to his previous intention of addressing Mrs. Shelton, he says, Your letter reached me on the very day on which I was about to enter upon a course which would have borne me far away from you, sweet, sweet Helen, and the divine dream of your love. A few weeks later, when he had obtained from her a conditional promise of marriage, he again wrote, a letter in which he clearly alludes to his still cherished design of establishing the stylus, from which he anticipates such brilliant results. Thus he artfully, and apparently for the first time, seeks to interest her in the scheme. Am I right, dearest Helen, in the impression that you are ambitious? If so, and if you will have faith in me, I can and will satisfy your wildest desires. It would be a glorious triumph for us, darling, for you and me, to establish in America the sole unquestionable aristocracy, that of the intellect, to secure its supremacy, to lead and control it. All this I can do, Helen, and will, if you bid me and aid me. Aware of her belief in occult and spiritual influences, he tells her that once, on hearing a lady repeat certain utterances of hers, which appeared but the secret reflex of his own spirit, his soul seemed suddenly to become one with hers. From that hour I loved you. I have never seen or heard your name, without a shiver, half of delight, half of anxiety. The impression left upon my mind was that you were still a wife. No such scruple had disturbed him in the case of Mrs. Osgood and others. He goes on thus artfully to explain the incident of his declining Mrs. Osgood's offer of an introduction to Mrs. Whitman while in Providence. For this reason I shunned your presence. You may remember that once, when I passed through Providence with Mrs. Osgood, I positively refused to accompany her to your house. I dared neither go or say why I could not. I dared not speak of you, much less see you. For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in with a delirious thirst all that was uttered in my presence respecting you. It will be observed that he is here speaking of a time when his wife, whom he loved as man never before loved, was yet living, and also when he was giving himself up to his unreasoning passion for Mrs. Osgood, whom he had followed to Providence. After this who shall undertake to defend Poe from the charge of insincerity and dissimulation? Mrs. Osgood calls Poe's letters divinely beautiful. We cannot tell how Mrs. Whitman was affected by them, but certainly her whole course exhibits her in a constant struggle between her own inclination and the influence of friends who desire to save her from the match with Poe. As early as January 21st, 1848, it was known to the public that an engagement existed between the two. And I have the authority of Mrs. Kellogg for the statement that during the summer of that year Mrs. Whitman three times renewed this engagement and was as often compelled to break it, owing to his unfortunate habits. The last engagement was made on his solemnly vowing reformation, on which a day was fixed for the marriage and the services of a clergyman bespoken by Poe himself, who thereupon wrote to Mrs. Clem, desiring her to be ready to receive himself and his bride, at Fordham. One may imagine the dismay of poor Mrs. Clem when she read this letter and looked around the humble home with its low-sealed upstairs room, which had been Virginia's, the pine-kitchen table, and her dozen pieces of crockery. For once her strong mind and resourceful talent must have failed her. How was she to accommodate the fastidious bride of her most inconsiderate son-in-law? How even provide a wedding repast against their arrival? But happily she was spared the horror of such an experience, for on the appointed day Poe arrived at Fordham alone, though in a state of nervous excitement, which necessitated days and even weeks of careful nursing on the part of his patient and long-suffering mother-in-law. This final separation between the two, for they never again met, was caused by Poe's intemperance at his hotel in Providence, on the day previous to that appointed for his marriage. He had delivered a lecture which was enthusiastically applauded, and on his return to the hotel he found himself surrounded by an admiring crowd, whose hospitalities he at first resolutely climbed, but with his usual weakness of will, finally yielded to. Of the stormy scene when, on the following day, Mrs. Whitman finally and decisively refused to marry him, she herself has given an account, representing Poe as alternately pleading and raving in his unwillingness to accept her decision. But there can be no question, but that he was, at this time, either in some degree mentally unbalanced, or in such a state physically, as that the least excess would serve to excite his mind beyond its normal condition and render him partly irresponsible. Of this we have proof in the fact of his intention of taking his proposed bride to Fordham. That Mrs. Whitman was really interested in her gifted and eccentric suitor is evident, and in her heart she was loyal to him, as is shown by her defense of him after his death, and also by the lines which she addressed to him some months after their separation, entitled The Isle of Dreams. Most of her poems written after this time had some reference to him, and it is worthy of note that no woman whom Poe professed to love ever lost her interest in him. The fascination which he exerted over them must have been something extraordinary. As regards Poe's feelings towards Mrs. Whitman, it is evident from the beginning that there was no real love on his part. He expressed no regret at the ending of his divine dream of love, but seems rather to have experienced toward her a degree of resentment, which thus found expression in a letter to a friend. From this day forth I shun the pestilential society of literary women. They are a heartless, unnatural, venomous, dishonorable set, with no guiding principle but inordinate self-esteem. Mrs. Osgood is the only exception I know of. This tirade was doubtless excited partly by a scandal just now started by one of the literary set in question concerning Poe and a young married lady of Lowell. While delivering a lecture in that city he had been hospitably entertained at her home, where he spent several days, with the usual result of contracting a sentimental friendship with the charming hostess, whom he calls Annie. During the latter part of his engagement to Mrs. Whitman, his visits and attentions to this lady did not escape the notice of the literary set, and a scandal was at once started by one of them, who drew the attention of Annie's husband to the matter. He accepted Poe's explanation, and his proposal rather to give up the society of these friends than to be the cause of trouble to them, saying, I cannot and will not have it upon my conscience that I have interfered with the domestic happiness of the only being on earth whom I have loved at the same time with purity and with truth. Certainly an extraordinary avowal to be made to the lady's husband, and we ask ourselves to how many women had he made a similar declaration. We have seen that when Poe for the last time left Mrs. Whitman's, he went direct to Fordham, where, said Mrs. Clem, he raved about Annie, and even sent to her, reminding her of the holy promise which he had exacted from her in their hour of parting, that she would come to him on his bed of death, and now claiming the fulfillment of that promise. Whether or not she complied does not appear, but it is more than likely that the lines for Annie were suggested by his fevered dreams of her presence, first written while still half delirious and subsequently slightly altered to their present form. This piece, with the lines to my mother, after being declined by all the more prominent magazines, finally appeared in the cheap Boston weekly, and must have been a surprise to Annie and her husband. But there was one woman of the literary set who showed that she at least was not deserving of the sweeping condemnation wherewith the irate poet had visited them. This was Mrs. Anna Estelle Lewis, a young poetess who, with her husband, was on friendly terms with Poe, and whose poems he had favorably noticed. Poe was still, mentally and physically, in a state which rendered him incapable of writing, and the condition at Fordham was deplorable. Suspecting this state of things, Mrs. Lewis and her husband invited Poe to visit them at their home in Brooklyn, and Mrs. Lewis says that thenceforth they frequently had both himself and Mrs. Clem to stay with them. It was this kindly couple that R. H. Stoddard so sharply satirizes in his reminiscences of Poe, while accepting an evening's hospitality at their home after the poet's death. On this occasion he met with Mrs. Clem, of whom he has given a pen picture of which we instinctively recognize the life likeness. We can see the good lady seated serenely among the company, in her black bombazine and conventional widow's cap, lightly fingering her eyeglasses, as was her company habit, and with her strongly marked features wearing that benevolent smile which was characteristic of her most amiable moods. She assured me, says Stoddard, that she had often heard her Eddie speak of me, which I doubted, and that she believed she had also heard him speak of the stripling by my side, which was an impossibility. She regretted that she had no more autographs to dispose of, but hinted that she could manufacture them, since she could exactly imitate her Eddie's handwriting, and this she told as though it had been to her credit. When they chagrined at the ending of his affair with Mrs. Whitman and consequent disappointment in regard to the stylus, Poe now, encouraged by his mother-in-law, again turned his thoughts to Mrs. Shelton. It was in July that he and Mrs. Clem left Fordham, he to proceed to Richmond, and she, having let their rooms until his return, to stay with the Louises. Mr. Louis says that it was at his front door that Poe took an affectionately of them all, Mrs. Clem, ever watchful and careful against possible temptation or pitfalls by the way, accompanying him to the boat to see him off. Imparting from her he spoke cheeringly and affectionately. God bless you, my own darling Muddy. Do not fear for Eddie. See how good I will be while away, and I will come back to love and comfort you. And so, smiling and hopeful, the devoted mother stood upon the pier and watched to the last the receding form which she was never again to behold. CHAPTER XXVII. When Poe came to Richmond on this visit he went first to Duncan Lodge, but afterward for the sake of the convenience of being in the city, took board at the old Swan Tavern on Broad Street, once a fashionable hostelry, but at this time little more than a cheap, though respectable boarding-house for businessmen. Broad Street, so named from its unusual width, extended several miles in a straight line from Chinborazo Heights and Church Hill on the east, where Mrs. Shelton had her residence, to the western suburbs, where Duncan Lodge and our own home of Talavera were situated. This was the route which Poe traversed in his visits to Mrs. Shelton. There were no streetcars in those days, hacks were expensive, and the walk from the Swan to Church Hill was long and fatiguing. Poe would break his journey by stopping to rest at the office of Dr. John Carter, a young physician who had recently hung out his sign, about half way between those two points. During the three months of his stay in Richmond we saw a good deal of Poe. He appeared at first to be in not very good health or spirits, but soon brightened up and was invariably cheerful, seeming to be enjoying himself. I did not know to what it was to be attributed, unless to his increased fame as a poet, but certainly his reception in Richmond at this time was very different from what it had been two years previously. He became the fashion and was fettered in society and discussed in the papers. His friend, Mrs. Julia Mayo Cabell, a first cousin of Mrs. Allen, inaugurated the evening entertainments to which people were invited to meet Mr. Poe. It was generally expected that at these gatherings he would recite the raven, and this he was often obliging enough to do, though we knew that it was to him an unwelcome task. In our own home, no matter who were the visitors, we would never allow this request to be made of him after he had on one occasion gratified us by a recital. I remember on this occasion being disappointed in his manner of delivery. I had expected some little graceful and expressive action, but he sat motionless as a statue, except that at the line, "'Prophet,' cried I, thing of evil!' He slightly erected his head, and again in repeating, "'Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore!' He turned his face suddenly, though slightly, toward the outer darkness of the open window near which he sat, each time raising his voice. He explained his own idea to be that any action served to attract the attention of the audience from the poem to the speaker, thus detracting from the effect of the former. I was told how at one of these entertainments Poe was embarrassed by the persistent attentions of a moth or beetle, until a sympathetic old lady took a seat beside him, and with wild wavings of a huge fan kept the trepelsome insect at a distance. This mingling of the comic with the tragic element rather spoiled the effect of the latter, and though Poe preserved his dignity he was perceptibly annoyed. I never saw Mr. Poe in a large company, but was told that on such occasions he invariably assumed his mask of cold and proud reserve, not untouched by an expression of sadness, which was natural to his features when in repose. It was then that he looked every inch a poet. In general companies he disliked any attempt to draw him out, never expressing himself freely, and at times manifesting a shyness amounting almost to an appearance of diffidence, which was very noticeable. A marked peculiarity was that he never, while in Richmond, either in society or elsewhere, made any advance to acquaintance or sought an introduction, even to a lady. Of the estimation in which his character was held by some persons he stood aloof in proud independence, though responding with ready courtesy to any advance from others. Ladies who desired Mr. Poe's acquaintance would be compelled to privately seek an introduction from some friend, since he himself never requested it, and it was observed that he preferred the society of mature women to that of the youthful bells, who were enthusiastic over the author of Lenore and the Raven. Mr. Poe spent his mornings in town, but in the evenings would generally drive out to Duncan Lodge with some of the Mackenzie's. He liked the half-country neighborhood, and would sometimes join us in our sunset rambles in the romantic old hermitage grounds. Those were pleasant evenings at Duncan Lodge and Talavera, but there was no lack of company at either place. End of Chapter 27