Of Poe's reading, Mrs. Clark spoke with enthusiasm. "It was altogether peculiar and indescribable," she said. "I have heard The Raven read by his friend, John R. Thompson, and others, but it sounded so strange and affected, compared with his own delivery. Poe had a wonderful voice—rich, mellow and sweet. I cannot give you any idea of it. Edwin Booth sometimes reminds me of him in his eyes and expression, but Poe's voice was peculiar to himself. I have never heard anything like it. He often read from Shelley and other poets. One day he pointed out to me in one of Shelley's poems what he considered the truest characteristic of hopeless love that he knew of:
"'The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow.'
"I enjoyed a good deal of his society during that visit in 1847. On his last visit I saw less of him. He was then said to be engaged to a Mrs. Shelton. Some said he was marrying her for her money. There was a good deal of gossip at that time concerning Poe. His intemperate habits especially were exaggerated and made the most of by those who did not like him, while his companions in dissipation escaped unnoticed. When he was in company at a party for instance—you might see a little of him in the earlier part of the evening, but he would presently be off somewhere. Then his eccentricities; I think that when a very young man he imitated Byron."
Mrs. Clarke said she had seldom seen a good likeness of Poe. The best she had cut from an old magazine. "This engraving," she said, showing it, reflects at once the fastidiousness and the virility characteristic of his temperament. All the others have an expression pitiably weak. His worst calumniators could hardly desire for him a harder fate than the continual reproduction of that feeble visage. When he had money he was lavish and over-generous with it. 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 in the least intoxicated. I have seen him when he had had enough wine to make him talk with even more than his usual brilliancy. Indeed, to talk in a large general company, some little stimulant was necessary to him. Dr. Griswold says he was arrogant, dogmatic and impatient of contradiction. I have heard him engage in discussions frequently; oftenest with diffidence, always with consideration for others. In a large company it was only when exhilarated with wine that he spoke out his views and ideas with any degree of self-assertion."
Mrs. Clarke said that his sister, Rosalie, was rather pretty and resembled himself somewhat in appearance, but "was as different as possible in mental capacity. She was amiable, patient and sweet-tempered, but as a companion wholly tiresome and monotonous. She seemed to have had little or no individuality or force of character. She thought a great deal of her brother, but during the greater part of their lives they had seen nothing of each other. The family of Mr. Mackenzie treated her affectionately and kindly, and until the breaking up of the household she remained with them, and then went to Baltimore to her relatives, the Poes. I don't know what became of her afterwards."
Mrs. Clarke speaks of Poe's reading and lectures during his first visit to Richmond; but these were mere small social entertainments at the houses of various acquaintances. He really gave but one public lecture during this visit to Richmond. One evening at Mrs. Mackenzie's she said to him: "Edgar, since people appear so eager to hear you repeat The Raven, why not give a public recital, which might benefit you financially?" Being further urged, he finally yielded. One hundred tickets were advertised, at fifty cents each, and the music hall of the fashionable Exchange Hotel engaged for the occasion. On the appointed evening Poe stepped upon the platform to face an audience of thirteen persons, including the janitor and several to whom complimentary tickets had been presented. Of these was Mrs. Shelton, who occupied a seat directly in front of the platform. Poe was cool and selfpossessed, but his delivery mechanical and rather hurried, and on concluding he bowed and abruptly retired. One of the audience remarked upon the unlucky number of thirteen; and Mrs. Julia Mayo Cabell commented indignantly upon the indifference of the Richmond people to "their own great poet." Poe was undoubtedly in a degree mortified, not at the indifference manifested, but at the picture presented by the large and brilliantly lighted hall and himself addressing the group of thirteen which constituted the audience. But his failure may be explained by the fact that in this month of August the elite and educated people of the city were mostly absent in the mountains and by the sea-shore; and the weather being extremely sultry, few were inclined to exchange the cool breezes of the "city of the seven hills" for a crowded and heated lecture room, even to hear The Raven read by its author.
During this visit of Poe to Richmond, I, with my mother and sister, was away from home, in the mountains, and we thus missed seeing him. On our return shortly after his departure, we heard various anecdotes concerning him, one or two of which I subjoin as illustrative of his natural disposition.
One evening, quite late, an alarm of fire was raised, and all the young men of Duncan Lodge, accompanied by Poe, hastened to the scene of disaster, about a mile further in the country. Finding a great crowd collected, and that their services were not required, they sat on a fence looking on, and it was past midnight when they thought of returning home. Gay young Dr. "Tom" Mackenzie remarked that it would never do to return in their immaculate white linen suits, as they would be sure to get a "wigging" from the old ladies for not having helped to put out the fire, and, besides, they were all hungry, and he knew how they could get a good supper. With that he seized a piece of charred wood and commenced besmirching their white garments and their hands and faces, including Poe's. Arriving at home in an apparently exhausted condition, they were treated by Mrs. Mackenzie herself, who would not disturb her servants, to the best that the pantry afforded, nor was the trick discovered until the following day. Mrs. Mackenzie laughed, but from Mrs. Carter, the mother of two of the culprits, and who was gifted with eloquence, they got the "wigging" which they had been anxious to avoid. And from accounts, Poe enjoyed it all immensely.
A lady told me that one evening, going over to Duncan Lodge, her attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the garden, where she beheld all the young men in the broad central alley engaged in the classic game of "leapfrog." When it came to Mr. Poe's turn, she said, "he took a swift run and skimmed over their backs like a bird, seeming hardly to touch the ground. I never saw the like." Mr. Jones, Mrs. Mackenzie's son-in-law, who was rather large and heavy, came to grief in his performance, and no one laughed more heartily than did Poe.
Was this the melancholy, morbid, "weird and wholly incomprehensible being" that the world has pictured the author of The Raven? Among these youthful spirits and his old friends, the depressing influences of his late life and home—the poverty, the friendlessness—seemed to vanish, and his real disposition reasserted itself. Pity that it could not have been always so. I am convinced that a great deal of Poe's unhappiness and apparent reserve and solitariness was owing to his obscure home life, which kept him apart from all genial social influences. At the North, wherever seen out of his business hours, he appears to have been "alone and solitary, proud and melancholy looking," says one, who had no idea of the loneliness of spirit, the lack of genial companionship, which made him so. With a few he was on friendly terms, but of intimate friends or associates he had not one so far as is known.