Text: Appleton Morgan, “Poe and Mount Tom,” New York Herald (New York, NY), vol. LXXXVI, no. 305, July 1, 1922, p. 6, cols. 6-7

[page 6, column 6, continued:]

TO THE NEW YORK HERALD: In giving the late William Fearing Gill her recollections of Poe's residence for two summers in the old Brennen mansion that was pulled down to make room for the opening of West Eighty-fourth street thirty years or So ago Mrs. General O’Byrne said:

“He was a shy, solitary, taciturn sort of man, fond of rambling down in the woods between the house and the river, and sitting for hours on a certain stump on the edge of the bank of the river.”

So far as I am to conjecture from what data are available, the Brennen farm ran somewhat south as well as west of the mansion, so that Poe could have had a long river bank to wander Along, and this would have brought him to what : we know as the interesting bowlder or knoll we call Mount Tom. Can any readers of THE NEW YORK HERALD tell me whether in 1843-44 this Mount Tom was as prominent and accessible, rising above the surrounding landscape as at present?

I ask because with Poe's habitudes it would seem strange that he should have kept himself within the woods bordering the river on the Brennen farm and “sat on a certain stump for hours’ when n there was this natural viewpoint a few rods below on the very brink of the river at its noblest aspect. Possibly It was that the whole hill was obscured by dense woods 80 that Poe did not know that any Mount Tom was there!

I cannot forget that some years ago, when preparing for “Valentine's Manual” notes upon Poe vestiges New York city, my attention was directed to a statement of an elderly lady that the Poes-Poe, Virginia and Mrs. Clem — lived in a cottage at what was then called — from the little widening of the East River at that point — Turtle Bay. I at once asked THE SUN to help me verify that statement. The lady was succinct and circumstantial. She described the cottage the [column 7:] Poes occupied, told of a luncheon there where she was seated on a cracker box by reason of a dearth of furniture, of a conversation in the course of which the Poes spoke of their being about to remove to Fordham “where the pure air would do wonders Virginia.” (As if there could be purer Fordham than on the shores of the East River, which seventy-seven years ago was practically Long Island Sound.) As, however, with data before me proving that the Poes removed from their lodgings at .195 East Broadway in April, 1846, and arrived at the Fordham cottage later in that same month, leaving as little time for Poe to lease a cottage at Turtle Bay as there was chance of any cottage there to lease- -the lands thereabout being all private property and inaccessible from the city by any but private conveyances — I felt reasonably safe In rejecting her information.

But it was not until I was guaranteed by correspondents who were moved by “ THE SUN letter to write me that I was able to state that the worthy lady had confused in her memory her own early residence in the vicinity of Turtle Bay with a visit to the Poe cottage in Fordham, made also in very early childhood. addressing you this I am hoping that some of your readers may be able to communicate to me as much certitude of information about Mount Tom on the North River as THE SUN'S correspondents gave me about Turtle Bay on the East River.

And, even sans any Poe memorabilia, Mount Tom is a most interesting feature of upper West End New York city and deserves to be written about for itself alone.

APPLETON MORGAN.

SOUTH ORANGE, N. J., June 30.