Edgar Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions — John H. Ingram, 1880, volume II — reading text

remarked, ‘I always find pictures, flowers, delightful music and conversation, and a kindness more refreshing than all.’ ” Robert Sully, the well-known American artist, and Edgar Poe had been schoolfellows, and the artist remarked of his old friend, that he “was one of the most warm-hearted and generous of men. In his youth and prosperity, when admired and looked up to by all his companions, he invariably stood by me and took my part. I was a dull boy at learning, and Edgar never grudged time or pains in assisting me. It was Mr. Allan’s cruelty in casting him upon the world, a beggar, which ruined Poe. Some who had envied him took advantage of his change of fortune to slight and insult him. He was sensitive and proud, and felt the change keenly. It was this which embittered him. By nature no person was less inclined to reserve or bitterness, and as a boy he was frank and generous to a fault.” Amid old friends, who not only remembered the past, but who could think of him, and act towards him, so sympathetically in the present, Poe naturally felt happier than he had done for a long time, but that he, constituted as he was, should frequently suffer from recurring fits of melancholia, seemed unavoidable. His letters at this time were inexpressibly sorrowful in tone, but Mrs. Weiss, in her Recollections, says: — “The only occasion on which I saw Poe really sad or depressed, was on a walk to the I Hermitage,’ the old deserted seat of the Mayo family, where he had, in his youth, been a frequent visitor. On reaching the place, our party separated, and Poe and myself strolled slowly about the grounds. I observed that he was unusually silent and preoccupied, and, attributing it to the influence of memories associated with the place, forbore to interrupt him. He passed slowly by the mossy bench called the ‘Lovers’ Seat,’ beneath two aged trees, and remarked, as we turned towards the garden, ‘There used to be white violets here.’ Searching amid the tangled wilderness of shrubs, we found a few late blossoms, some of which he placed carefully between the leaves of a note-book. Entering the deserted house, he passed from room to room with a grave, abstracted look, and removed his hat, as if involuntarily, on entering the saloon where in old times many a brilliant company had assembled. Seated in one of the deep windows, over which now grew masses of ivy, his memory must have borne him back to former scenes, for he repeated the familiar lines of Moore: “ ‘I feel like one who treads alone, Some banquet-hall deserted’ — and paused, with the first expression of real sadness that I had ever seen on his face.” Poe now having to visit New York, in connection with the editing and publication of a lady’s forthcoming volume of verse, wrote to Mrs. Clemm to inform her of his anticipated marriage to Mrs. Shelton, and also desired her to be prepared to return with him to Richmond, to reside there permanently. Notwithstanding his projected marriage, Poe’s two last letters to Mrs. Clemm were very, very sad, and seemed to have been written with a foreboding that they would be his last. They were replete with anxious expressions for his relative’s future happiness, and contained words of tender remembrance for “Annie.” Although Mrs. Shelton does not appear to have definitely engaged herself to Poe, there was, undoubtedly, an understanding between them sufficient to warrant the poet in his belief that he was once more an accepted suitor of his boyhood’s love. Previous to leaving Virginia on his journey north, be called on the lady and told her that he was going to New York to wind up some business matters, but that he would return to Richmond as soon as he had accomplished i it, although, at the same time, says Mrs. Shelton, he said he had a presentiment he should never see me any more. And in this he was right, for they never met again. “The evening of the day previous to that appointed for his departure from Richmond,” says Mrs. Weiss, “Poe spent at my mother’s. He declined to enter the parlours, where a number of visitors were assembled, saying he preferred the more quiet sitting-room; and here I had a long and almost uninterrupted conversation with him. He spoke of his future, seeming to anticipate it with an eager delight, like that of youth. He declared that the last few weeks in the society of his old and new friends had been the happiest that he had known for many years, and that when he again left New York he should there leave behind all the trouble and vexation of his past life. On no occasion had I seen him so cheerful and hopeful as on this evening. Do you know,’ he inquired, ‘how I spent most of this morning? In writing a critique of your poems, to be accompanied by a biographical sketch. I intend it to be one of my best, and that it shall appear in the second number of the Stylus,’ — so confident was he in regard to this magazine. Poe expressed great regret in being compelled to leave Richmond, on even so brief an absence. He would certainly, he acid, be back in two weeks,. He thanked my mother with graceful courtesy and warmth for her kindness and hospitality, and begged that we would write to him in New York, saying it would do him good. “He was the last of the party to leave the house. We were standing on the portico, and after going a few steps he paused, turned, and again lifted his hat, in a last adieu. At the moment, a brilliant meteor appeared in the sky directly over his head, and vanished in the east. We commented laughingly upon the incident; but I remembered it sadly afterward. “That night he spent at Duncan’s Lodge; and, as his friend said, sat late at his window, meditatively smoking, and seemingly disinclined for conversation. On the following morning he went into the city, accompanied by his friends, Dr. Gibbon Carter and Dr. Mackenzie. The day was passed with them and others of his intimate friends. Late in the evening he entered the office of Dr. John Carter, and spent an hour in looking over the day’s papers; then taking Dr. Carter’s cane he went out, remarking that he would step across to Saddler’s (a fashionable restaurant) and get supper. From the circumstance of his taking the cane, leaving his own in its place, it is probable that he had intended to return; but at the restaurant he met with some acquaintances who detained him until late, and then accompanied him to the Baltimore boat. According to their account he was quite sober and cheerful to the last, remarking, as he took leave of them, that he would soon be in Richmond again.” Early in October, on the 2nd apparently, Poe left Richmond for New York. He proceeded by boat to Baltimore, which city he reached safely on the morning following his departure. Upon his arrival he gave his trunk to a porter to convey it, it is stated, to the cars which were timed to leave in an hour or so for Philadelphia, whilst he sought some refreshment. What now happened is still shrouded in mystery before leaving Richmond the poet had complained of indisposition; of chilliness, and of exhaustion, and it is just possible that the increase of these symptoms may have enticed him into breaking his pledge, or into resorting to some deleterious drug. Be the cause whatever it may, it now appears to have become the fixed belief of the Baltimoreans, that the unfortunate poet, while in a state of temporary mania or stupor, fell into the hands of a gang of ruffians who were scouring the streets in search of victims. Wednesday, the 3rd of October, was election day for Members of Congress, in the State of Maryland, and it is the general supposition that Poe was captured by an electioneering band, “cooped,”*. drugged, dragged to the polls, and then, after having voted the ticket placed in his hand, was ruthlessly left in the street to die. For the truth of this terrible tale there appears to be too great a probability. According to the account furnished by Dr. Moran, resident physician of the Washington University Hospital, Baltimore, the unfortunate poet was brought to that institution, on the 7th of October, in a state of insensibility. He had been discovered in that condition, lying on a bench by a wharf, and having been recognised by a passer-by, had been put into a conveyance and taken to the hospital. “I had meantime learned from him,” says Dr. Moran, and afterward from the porter at the hotel on Pratt Street, then Bradshaw’s, now called the Maltby House, that he arrived there on the evening of the 5th; was seen to go to the depôt to take the cars for Philadelphia, and that the conductor, on going through the care for tickets, found him lying in the baggage car insensible. He took him as far as Havre de Grace, where the cars then passed each other, or as far as Wilmington, I forget which, and placed him in the train coming to Baltimore. He had left his trunk at the hotel in Baltimore. Arriving on the evening train he was not seen by any person about the hotel when he returned to the city. The presumption is he wandered about during the night, and found a bench sometime before morning to sleep upon on Light Street Wharf, where he was seen and taken from about nine o’clock the next morning.” His cousin, Mr. (now Judge) Neilson Poe, was sent for, and had everything done for the patient’s comfort, but in vain. When he recovered his consciousness, the horror and misery of his condition, combined with the effects of exposure, produced such a shock to the nervous system that he never recovered, and about midnight, on the 7th of October 1849, his poor tortured spirit passed away. On the 9th of the month — on the anniversary of “the lonesome October of his most immemorial year” — the earthly remains of Edgar Allan Poe were consigned to their resting-place in the grave of his ancestors in Westminster Churchyard, Baltimore, in the presence of a few relatives and friends. Mr. Neilson Poe had a stone prepared to mark his unfortunate kinsman’s tomb, but, by a strange fatality, the monument was destroyed before it could be erected, and, in consequence, for upwards of a quarter of a century the spot remained unnoted and almost unknown.. At last, public attention having been strongly drawn to the neglected condition of the poet’s grave, a public committee was formed to collect subscriptions towards the erection of a suitable memorial, and, through the exertions of Miss Rice, Mr. Paul Hayne, and others, a marble monument was procured, and, on the 17th of November 1875, unveiled in the presence of a large concourse of people.* Poe’s story, his faults and misfortunes, cannot be better summarised than in these words of Byron’s “Manfred”: — “Look on me! there is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Old in their youth and die ere middle age, Without the violence of warlike death; Some perishing of pleasure — some of study — Some worn with toil — some of mere weariness — Some of disease — and some insanity — And some of withered or of broken hearts; For this last is a malady which slays More than are numbered in the lists of Fate, Taking all shapes, and bearing many names. Look upon me! for even of all these things Have I partaken — and of all these things One were enough; then wonder not that I Am what I am.” It is impossible to conceive the horror and heartrending grief of Mrs. Clemm, when the intelligence of Poe’s death was conveyed to her. She was awaiting his arrival, to bear her away to her native South, and instead of welcoming an affectionate son — happy in the prospect of anticipated marriage and a prosperous future — she received the tidings of his terrible and mysterious death. In the first moments of her loneliness and anguish she wrote to her best friend, for sympathy, in these terms: — “Oct. 8. 1849. “ANNIE, my Eddy is dead. He died in Baltimore yesterday. Annie! pray for me, your desolate friend. My senses will leave me. I will write the moment I hear the particulars. I have written to Baltimore.