The Home Life of Poe

In considering this book, will the reader especially note that it is not a Life or a Biography of Poe, of which too many already exist and to which nothing can be added after the exhaustive works of Woodbury and Prof. Harrison. I have not treated Poe in his character of poet or author, but confined myself to his private home-life, domestic and social, as I have heard it described by Poe's most intimate friends who knew him from infancy—some of them my own relatives—and from my own brief knowledge of him in the last three months of his life. The book may therefore be considered as a supplement to the more complete Lives and Biographies, showing Poe in a character as yet wholly unknown to the public, but which should be known in order to enable us to form a correct judgment of his character. I have corrected various misstatements of writers which, repeated by one from another, have come to be received as truth.
I have made no attempt at producing an artistic work, but have treated the subject as it demands, in a plain and practical manner with regard to facts apart from idealism of any kind.
The Author.

It may be regarded as a somewhat curious coincidence that the first glimpse afforded us of Edgar Poe is on the authority of my own mother.
This is the story, as she told it to me:
In the summer of 1811 there was a fine company of players in Norfolk, and we children were as a special treat taken to see them. I remember the names of Mr. Placide, Mr. Green, Mr. Young and Mr. Poe, with their wives. I can recall Mrs. Young as a large, fair woman with golden hair; but my most distinct recollection is of Mrs. Poe. She was rather small, with a round, rosy, laughing face, short dark curls and beautiful large blue eyes. Her manner was gay and saucy, and the audience was continually applauding her. She ap peared to me a young girl, but was past thirty, and had been twice married.
At this time, continued my mother, we were living on Main street, and my uncle, Dr. Robert Butt, of the House of Burgesses, lived close by, on Burmuda street. The large, bright garret-room of his house was used by our little cousins as a play-room, and was separated from that of the adjoining house by only a wooden partition. One day, when we were playing here, we heard voices on the other side of the partition, and, peeping through a small knothole, saw two pretty children, with whom we soon made acquaintance. Mr. and Mrs. Poe had taken lodgings in this garret with a little boy and girl and an old Welsh nurse. Sometimes this woman would say to us, 'Hush, hush, dumplings, don't make a noise,' and we knew that some one was sick in that room. Most of the time she had the children out of doors, and in the evenings we would play with them on the sidewalk. The boy was a merry, romping little fellow, but hard to manage. One day, when he would persist in playing in the middle of the street, a runaway horse came dashing around a corner, and I remember how the nurse rushed toward him, screaming: 'Ho! Hedgar! Hedgar!' snatching him away at the risk of her own life.