Text: Anonymous, “Reminiscences of E. A. Poe,” Buffalo Courier (Buffalo, NY), vol. XLIII, no. 78, March 19, 1878, p. 1, col. 6

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Louisville, March 2, Cor. N. Y. World.

The writer chanced not long ago to meet lady who was some thirty years back a dear friend of Edgar Allen [[Allan]] Poe. She is Mrs. Jane Clark, a native of Richmond, Va., but for the last twenty years has lived in Louisville, and it was at her house, in a quiet, shady street of this city, that she talked with me of the old time when the Southern Literary Messenger was an oracle below Mason and Dixon's line, and matters now become history were subjects of an evening's gossip. I was ushered into a pleasant little parlor, cheerfully appointed, with scattered music lying on an open piano, light wall-paper and comfortable, modern furniture. Mrs. Clark presently entered, took up from the etagere a large scrap-book containing clippings from newspapers concerning Poe or his poems when they first made a vagrant appearance in this or that newspaper, specimens of his handwriting, obituary notices and various “vindications” of his memory that have appeared. Indeed, the good lady is deeply interested that the world may think well of Poe, and grows warm over the subject of his wrongs. It did one good to see her espouse the cause of her dead friend. She has known a great many of the prominent people of her time, south and east — she attended school in Boston and Cambridge — and has the easy manners of one who has mixed much with the world. She is still youthful in her movements, in vivacity of conversation and of interest in things of the present, and it was pleasant to listen while she glided lightly and easily from the old times to the topics of the city and of the day. Like most Virginians, she is very proud of her state, and like most Virginians of her generation, she knows a great many Virginia family names, and what has become of this or that scion of this house and that. Speaking of the McKenzies, who adopted Rosalie Poe, she said that she thought, they were all dead. Indeed, nearly all the

NEAR FRIENDS OF POE

were gone except herself. She wondered how Mr. Gill — whose heralded book she has not seen — had gotten the material for his vindication. Mr. [[Mrs.]] Clark's acquaintance with Poe extended over several years. She had first met him at the McKenzies’. He afterwards boarded at the same hotel in Richmond — the Wynoke house — 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 said three times a day. “He came there,” said Mrs. Clark, “as he said, to rest.”

If there happened to be friends present he was often obliging enough to read, and if in the humor he would read some of his own poems, but he would never read “The Raven” unless he was in just the humor. When he was in Richmond he generally stayed with the McKenzies at their place, near the city. Driving in to town he often stopped by her hotel.

“I lived [[then]] opposite the capital [[Capitol]] square,” said she. “I am told the old place, the park house, has been torn down and a fine new hotel built near its site. One day he came in with his sister and one or two of the McKenzies and stopped by. He read ‘The Raven’ for us — there were some other people present, but I forget their names. He shut out the daylight, and read by an astral lamp that was on the table. When he was through, all of us that had any tact whatever spared our comments and let our thanks be brief, for he was hardly more patient of them than he was of interruption.”

Of Poe's reading, Mrs. Clark spoke with affectionate recollection. “It was something altogether peculiar and indescribable,” she said, “I have heard ‘The Raven’ read by his friend, John R. Thompson, and by others, but it always sounded so different, so strange and affected. Poe had a wonderful voice, rich, mellow and sweet. He read that piece in a sort of rapt monotone. I cannot give you any idea of it. He had little of the flourish of a popular elocutionist. Edwin Booth sometimes reminds me of Poe in his eyes and facial expression, but Poe's voice was peculiar to himself. I have never heard any like it. In his public readings he gave selections frequently from Shelley, but his selections embraced a great many poets. I often accompanied him to his readings, and went with him to his lecture on ‘The Poetic Principle.” One day he pointed out to me in one of Shelley's shorter poems what he considered the truest characterization of love that he knew:

Poe used to

READ AND LECTURE

at the old Exchange hotel, which at that time contained the best hall in the city for the purpose. Mrs. Clark said that she was thought to have been very much like Poe's first wife, Virginia Clem [[Clemm]]. “It may have that,” said she, “that first made him my friend; however, I enjoyed a great deal of his society during the visit to Richmond of which I speak — the one previous to his second contemplated marriage. On his last visit, when he was making arrangements for this marriage, I saw less of him. He was to have married a wealthy widow — Mrs. Shelton. Some said that he loved her, and others that he was marrying for money. Richmond had a good deal to found upon then regarding Poe. His intemperate habits, which, on account of his being a poet, were thought to be greater than they really were, found willful exaggeration at the hands of many who were his companions in dissipation. When he was in company — at a party, for instance — you might see a little of him in the earlier part of the evening, then he would be off with a crowd, and his friends would not see him or hear of him for days. Then his eccentricities and the ups and downs of his life — I think when a very young man he imitated Byron — made him a figure for compassion and interest. Thus he became the centre of number of absurd stories, as well as of no little local pride. People are quick to turn a thing into a wonder, and Poe got his angel-devil brevet from the gossips long before he died. The kind of pride that they took in him was of a characteristic sort. The prophet was not honored in own country as he was abroad, but when he read, all the fashion of the city turned out to hear him. I have often seen these ovations. But he was more the show-child of the town than the master with an appreciative and sympathetic following.”

Mrs. Clark spoke of the Allans who adopted Poe. They used to live on the corner of Main and Fifth, were one of the oldest families in the state, and Mrs. Allan, the second wife of the gentleman who adopted Poe, she believed, was still alive. 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, “reflects at once the fastidiousness and virility characteristic of his temperament more nearly than any that I have seen. All the others have an expression pitiably weak. His worst calumniators could hardly desire a harder fate for his memory than the continual reproduction of that feeble visage. He always dressed neatly, but shabbily enough when he was out of pocket. When he had money he was lavish and overgenerous with it; he had very little idea of taking care of money. He was always refined. You 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 INTOXICATED.

I have seen him when he had had enough wine to make him talk with even more than usual brilliancy. Indeed, to talk in large general company, some little stimulant was almost necessary to him. Dr. Griswold says that he was arrogant, dogmatic and impatient of contradiction in conversation; that cannot be verified by me. I have heard him engage in discussion frequently, oftenest with diffidence, always with consideration for others; it was only when exhilarated with wine in a large company that he spoke out his views and ideas with any degree of self-assertion. They say he was morbid and conceited. I don’t know. Why do they quarrel with a man's nature? If he was morbid, he hurt mostly himself, and himself suffered most. I do not think his conceit, if conceit it was, had in it contempt of his kind. It was more a defiant effort to be something — a justification of himself to his inner self — and a consciousness of weakness. The bias of his mind was melancholy, and it would have been a rare adjustment of circumstances that could have given him happy life. Wounded vanity and disappointed ambitions not the only causes that can make miserable such extreme sensibility as his. He was the least fitted of all men bear the struggle he was engaged in or to endure the strain of the contrast between the actual and the ideal, both of which pressed upon him so keenly.”

Edgar Poe seemed to have inherited all of his parents’ intellectual powers. Mrs. Clark said that his sister, who was rather pretty and resembled him somewhat in appearance, was as different as possible in mental capacity. And yet she was his full sister. She was amiable, patient and sweet-tempered, but utterly uninteresting and monotonous as a companion. She seems to have little or no individuality or force of character. She thought a great deal of her brother and he was fond of her, but he had not been reared with her, and during the greater part of his life had seen nothing of her. There could never have been much intellectual sympathy between them. The family of Dr. McKenzie treated, her affectionately and kindly, and until the breaking up of the household she remained with them; she then went to Baltimore, where she died.