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Old Point Comfort, Va: Sep. 10. Monday Evening.
My own darling Muddy,
I wrote you from Richmond more than 10 days ago,. [[approximately three words scratched out beyond readability]] and telling you a great deal of news. I cannot tell you how anxious I have been at not getting an answer. If you have not written, for god's sake write immediately and tell me what is the matter. Direct, as usual, to Richmond, where I will be in about a week or
[pro]poses for me to go, immediately after the marriage, to one of her houses — the one she is in now — and send for you to join us at once — there we will remain, only for the present, until we can make what other arrangements we please. So hold yourself in readiness as well as you can, my own darling mother — but do not sell off or anything of that kind yet, if you can avoid it — for “there is many a slip between the cup & the lip” — & I confess that my heart sinks at the idea of this marriage. I think, however, that it will certainly take place & that immediately. [[rest of page cut off, including the signature]]
[[separate fragment, possibly the close of this letter]]
God bless you, my dear “Muddy” Your own Eddy.
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Notes:
This letter is printed here, with permission, from the manuscript in the Robins collection of the Fales Library of the University of New York.
This letter was discovered in 1985 by Frank Walker, curator of the Fales Library of New York University. The envelope, long since separated from the letter itself, is postmarked from Old Point Comfort, September 11.
The separate fragment is noted from an auction, in England, Nov. 12, 1986, item 974. The fragment is quoted in American Book Prices Current (1986). It seems reasonable that it belongs with this letter as the signature has been cut from this manuscript and the close of Poe's other letters to Mrs. Clemm about the same time are very similar.
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[S:0 - MS, 18xx] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Letters - Poe to M. Clemm (LTR331a/RCL823)