THE SHADOW AT THE DOOR.
During the winter and succeeding summer matters did not improve at the cottage. Poe, with health completely shattered and spirits horribly depressed, remained at home with his sick wife for the most part, only occasionally arousing himself to write. A lady, who was at this time a little girl and one of Virginia's visitors, afterward told a reporter of how she would sometimes see Mr. Poe writing at his table in the upstairs room, and how as each sheet was finished he would paste it on to the last one, until it was long enough to reach across the floor. Then she would venture to roll it up for him in a neat cylinder, taking care not to disturb him. Sometimes, when he was not employed, he would tell the children blood-curdling stories of ghouls and goblins, when his eyes would light up in a wonderful manner. "I lost my heart to those beautiful eyes," she said.
Mrs. Clemm continued to make the rounds of the editors' offices with these manuscripts, but met with little success. Poe's mind was not at its brightest. He was not in a writing mood; and, as has been since observed, he was reduced to the expedient of rewriting and altering certain smaller articles and offering them to the more obscure papers and journals. Mrs. Clemm, in the midst of her manifold duties, could do but little with her sewing in the way of support for the family. So her furniture went, piece by piece, the furniture which Miss Poe had so often described—the parlor box-lounge upon which she slept; the dining-table, which stood in the midst of the room, ready for the meal which was so seldom placed upon it; the large engraving above the mantelpiece, and the collection of sea-shells—all disappeared, until the once cosey little apartment presented a bare and poverty-stricken appearance. Mrs. Gove, one of the literary women of the day, described it as being furnished with only a checked matting, a small corner-stand, a hanging-shelf of books and four chairs.
Years afterward, when strangers would visit the cottage at Fordham, they would hear from the neighbors pathetic accounts of the family during this summer of 1846.
"We knew that they were poor," said one, "but they tried to keep it to themselves. Many a time I have wanted to send them things from my garden, but was afraid to do so."
One old dame said to a New York reporter: "I've known when they were out of provisions, for then Mrs. Clemm, who always seemed cheerful, would come out with a basket and a shining case-knife and go 'round digging greens (dandelions). Once I said to her, says I, 'Greens may be took too frequent.' 'Oh, no,' says she, smiling, 'they cool the blood, and Eddie likes them.'"
Thus poor Mrs. Clemm, with her assumed cheerfulness, would seek to produce the impression that their dinner of wild herbs was a matter of choice instead of necessity.
Another neighbor said to a visitor: "I never saw checked matting last as theirs did. There was nothing upstairs but an old cot in a little hall-room or closet, where Mrs. Clemm slept, and an old table and chair and bed in the next room, where Mr. Poe wrote. But you could eat your dinner off the two floors."
The testimony of still another was: "In the kitchen she had only a little stove, a pine table and a chair; but the floor was as white as the table, and the tins as bright as silver. I don't think that she had more than a dozen pieces of crockery, all on a little shelf in the kitchen. The only meat I've ever known them to have was a five-cent bone for soup or a few butcher's trimmings for a stew; but it seemed Mrs. Clemm could make a little of anything go twice as far as other people could."
In the early part of this summer Virginia's health appeared better than usual. A neighbor who lived nearest them said to a visitor to Poe's old home: "In fine weather that summer—the summer before she died—we could sometimes see her sitting at her front door, wrapped up, with her husband or mother beside her, Mr. Poe reading a paper and Mrs. Clemm knitting. Most times there would be one or two children along, and Mr. Poe would play ball with them while his wife laughingly looked on. She looked like a child herself, hardly taller than they were. Well—no; she wasn't exactly pretty. She looked too spooky, with her white face and big, black eyes; but she was interesting looking, and we felt sorry for her—and for them all, for that matter. You could see they had known better days."