Back in Richmond!--The Richmond he loved best--Richmond full of sunshine
and flowers and the sweet southern social life out of doors, in gardens
and porches; Richmond in summertime!
In spite of the changes his observant eye marked as he rattled over the
cobblestones toward the "Swan Tavern," on Broad and Ninth Streets, he
almost felt that he was back in boyhood. It was just such a day, just
this time of year, that--as a lad of eleven--he had seen Richmond first
after his five years absence in England.
How good it was to be back upon the sacred soil! How sweet the air was,
and how beautiful were the roses! When before, had he seen a magnolia
tree in bloom?--with its dense shade, its dark green shining foliage,
and its snow-white blossoms. Was there anything in the world so sweet as
its odor, combined with that of the roses and the other flowers that
filled the gardens? It was worth coming all the way from New York just
to see and to smell them.
He caught glimpses of one or two familiar figures as he drove along. How
impatient he was to see his old friends--everybody--white and colored,
old and young, masculine and feminine. He could hardly wait to get to
the tavern, remove the dust of travel and sally forth upon the round of
visits he intended to make. His spirits went up--and up, and finally it
was Edgar Goodfellow in the flesh who stepped jauntily from the door of
"Swan Tavern," arrayed for hot-weather calling. In spite of the summer
temperature, he looked the personification of coolness and comfort. The
taste of prosperity his lectures had brought him was evident in his
modest but spruce apparel. He had discarded the habitual black cloth for
a coat and trousers of white linen (exquisitely laundered by Mother
Clemm's capable and loving hands) which he wore with a black velvet vest
for which he had also to thank the Mother and her skilled needle. A
broad-brimmed Panama hat shaded his pale features and the grey eyes,
which glowed with happiness. As with proudly carried head and quick,
easy gait, he bore westward up Broad Street, no single person passed him
that did not turn to look with admiration upon the handsome,
distinguished stranger, and to mentally ask "Who is he?"
It so happened that Jack Mackenzie was the first acquaintance he met.
"Edgar," he said, as their hands joined in affectionate grasp, "Do you
remember once, years ago, I met you in the street and you said you were
going to look for the end of the rainbow? Well, you look as if you had
found it!"
"I have," was the reply. "An hour ago. It was here in Richmond all the
time and I didn't know it, and like a poor fool, have been wandering the
world over in a vain search for it. The trouble is, I was looking for
the wrong thing. I was looking for fame and fortune, thought of which
blinded my eyes to something far better--scenes and friendships of _lang
syne_. Jack--" he continued, as--arm in arm--the two friends made their
way up the street. "Jack, life is a great schoolmaster, but why does it
take so long to drub any sense into these blockheads of ours?"
"Damned if I know," replied his companion, who was more truthful always
than either poetic or philosophic, "but if you mean that you've decided
to come back to Richmond to live, I'm mighty glad to hear it."
"That's what I mean. I came only for a visit and to lecture, but made up
my mind on the way from the depot to come for good as soon as I can
arrange to do so. I think it was a magnolia tree in bloom--the first I
had seen in many a year--that decided me."
"Well, all of your old friends will be glad to have you back; there's
one in particular that I might mention. Do you remember Elmira Royster?
She's a comely widow now, with a comfortable fortune, and she's always
had a lingering fondness for you. I advise you to hunt her up."
The Dreamer's face clouded.
"Women are angels, Jack," he said. "They are the salt that will save
this world, if it is to be saved, and for poor sinners like me there
would be simply no hope in either this world or the next but for them;
but they will have no more part in my life, save as friends. A true
friend of mine, however, I believe Myra is. I saw her during my brief
visit here last fall.--Ah, Rob! my boy! Howdy!"
The two friends had turned into Sixth Street and as they drew near the
corner of Sixth and Grace, almost ran into Rob Stanard--now a prominent
lawyer and one of the leading gentlemen of the town.
"Eddie Poe, as I'm alive!" he exclaimed, with a hearty hand-clasp. "My,
my, what a pleasure! I'm on my way home to dinner, boys. Come in, both
of you and take pot-luck with us. My wife will be delighted to see you!"
The invitation was accepted as naturally as it was given, and the three
mounted together the steps of the beautiful house and were received in
the charmingly homelike drawing-room opening from the wide hall, by
Rob's wife, a Kentucky belle who had stepped gracefully into her place
as mistress of one of the notable homes in Virginia's capital. As she
gave her jewelled hand to Edgar Poe her handsome black eyes sparkled
with pleasure. She was not only sincerely glad to receive the friend of
her husband's boyhood, but keen appreciation of intellectual gifts made
her feel that to know him was a distinction. Some of the servants who
had known "Marse Eddie" in the old days were still of the
household--having come to Robert Stanard as part of his father's
estate--and they were to their intense gratification, pleasantly greeted
by the visitor.
That evening--and many subsequent evenings--The Dreamer spent at "Duncan
Lodge" with the Mackenzies and their friends. A series of sunlit days
followed--days of lingering in Rob Sully's studio or in the familiar
office of _The Southern Literary Messenger_ where the editor, Mr. John
R. Thompson--himself a poet--gave him a warm welcome always, and gladly
accepted and published in _The Messenger_ anything the famous former
editor would let him have; days of wandering in the woods or by the
tumbling river he had loved as a lad; days of searching out old haunts
and making new ones.
And everywhere he found welcome. Delightful little parties were given in
his honor, when in return for the courtesies paid him he charmed the
company by reciting "The Raven" as he alone could recite it. His
lectures upon "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of
Composition," and his readings in the assembly rooms of the Exchange
Hotel, drew the elite of the city, who sat spellbound while he, erect
and still and pale as a statue, filled their ears with the music of his
voice, and their souls with wonder at the brilliancy of his thought and
words. Subscriptions to _The Stylus_ poured in. At last, this dream of
his life seemed an assured fact.
One door--one only in all the town did not swing wide to receive him.
The closed portal of the mansion of which he had been the proud young
master, still said to him "Nevermore"--and he always had a creepy
sensation when he passed it, which even the sight of the flower-garden
he had loved, in fullest bloom, did not overcome.
The golden days ran into golden weeks and the weeks into months, and
still Edgar Poe was making holiday in Richmond--the first holiday he had
had since, as a youth of seventeen he had quarrelled with John Allan and
gone forth to the battle of life. In the long, long battle since then
there had been more of joy than they knew who looking on had seen the
toil and the defeat and the despair, but from whose eyes the exaltation
he had felt in the act of creation or in the contemplation of the works
of nature, and the happiness he found in his frugal home, were hidden.
But, as has been said, there had been no holiday, until now when he had
come back to Richmond an older and a sadder and a more experienced Edgar
Poe--an Edgar Poe upon whom the Silence and the Solitude had fallen and
had left shaken--broken.
Yet that personal identity upon the mystery of which he liked to
ponder--the unquenchable, immortal _ego_ was there; and it was, for all
the outward and inward changes, the same Edgar Poe, with his two
natures--Dreamer and Goodfellow--alternately dominating him, who had
come back to find the real end of the rainbow in revisiting old scenes,
renewing old friendships, awakening old memories--and had paused to make
holiday.
Even in these golden days there were occasional falls, for the cup of
kindness was everywhere and in his blood was the same old strain which
made madness for him in the single glass--the single drop, almost; and
in spite of all the great schoolmaster, Life, had taught him, there was
in his will the same old element of weakness. Had it been otherwise he
had not been Edgar Poe. At times, too, the blue devils raised their
heads. Had it been otherwise he had not been Edgar Poe.
But on the whole the holiday was a bright dream of Paradise regained at
a time when more than ever before his feet had seemed to march only to
the cadence of the old, sad word, Nevermore.
Two sacred pilgrimages he made early in this holiday--to the two shrines
of his romantic boyhood--to Shockoe Cemetery, where he not only visited
"Helen's" tomb, but laid a wreath upon the grave of Frances Allan--his
little foster mother, and to the churchyard on the hill. The white
steeple still slept serenely in the blue atmosphere above the church
and, as of yore, the bell called in deep, sweet tones to prayer. But how
the churchyard had filled since he saw it last! Graves, graves
everywhere. It was appalling! He stepped between the graves, old and
new, stooping to read the inscriptions upon the slabs. So many that he
remembered as merry boys and girls and hale men and women still in their
prime--could they really be dead?--gone forever from the scenes which
had known them and of which they seemed an integral part? Oh, mystery of
mysteries, how was it possible?--Yet here were their names plainly
written upon the marbles! The church builded by men's hands, the trees
planted by men's hands, the monuments fashioned by men's hands remained,
but the living, breathing men, where were they? Could it be that God's
highest creation was a more perishable thing than the lifeless work of
its own hand? His spirit cried out within him against such a thought.
No, it could not be! Gone from earth, or holden from mortal vision they
assuredly were--departed--but dead? No!
Finally he came to the grave beside the wall. No marble tomb told the
passer-by that there lay the body of Elizabeth Poe. Yet, what
matter?--Was her sleep the less peaceful? Was her tired spirit the less
free?--If in its flight it should visit this spot where it had laid the
burden of the body down, surely it would find, for all there was no
carven stone to mark it, a most sweet spot. The greenest of grass, and
clover with blossoms white and red, waved over it--the summer breeze
rippling through them with pleasant sound,--and the tall trees hung a
green canopy between it and the midday sun.
As he laid his offering of roses among the clover blooms and turned to
go away the bell in the steeple began to toll. How the past came
back!--He stood with uncovered and bowed head and counted the strokes.
Suddenly, there was a sound of horses tramping in the street below the
wall. Then through the gate and down the walk it came--the solemn
procession.
He waited until the last of the mourners had passed into the church,
then followed, and as the bell stopped tolling and the organ began to
play the familiar, moving chant, he passed in and took a seat near the
door. Whose funeral service he was attending he knew not--but he was
back in childhood, and it was beautiful to him to hear once more, in
this very church, the words of spoken music and the old familiar hymns
he had heard that day when his infant heart had been filled with a
beautiful sorrow that was not pain.
More than one pair of eyes turned to see the owner of the fine tenor
voice that joined in the singing of the hymns, and resting for a moment
upon the dark, uplifted eyes of Edgar Poe, caught a glimpse of something
not of this earth.
As he left the church and churchyard, he noted many changes in its
immediate neighborhood but the only one upon which his eye lingered was
a smug brick house of commodious proportions and genteel aspect. A
pleasant green yard afforded space for a few trees and flowers. A
dignified and prosperous, but not in the least romantic house it was. A
house with no rambling wings giving opportunities for winding
passageways and odd nooks and corners; no unexpected closets where
skeletons might be in hiding, or dusky stairways to creak in the dead of
night, or upon which, even by day, one was almost certain he caught a
glimpse of a shadowy figure flying before him as he groped his way up or
down them. A house with no mysteries--just the house in which one might
have expected to find Elmira Royster who, as the Widow Shelton, the
prudent housewife and good manager of a prosperous estate, was simply
the frank, clear-eyed girl he had known, grown older.
He would call upon Elmira sometime, but not now little son, so that she
could only use the income, was duly signed and sealed. The wedding ring
was bought.
With visions of a new start in life, of which there were many happy
years in store for him (why not?--He was only forty!) The Dreamer set
out on his way back to Fordham to settle up his affairs and bring Mother
Clemm to Richmond to witness his marriage and to take up her abode with
him and his bride, in the brick house on the hill. He had been upon a
holiday, but he carried with him a goodly sum of money realized from his
lectures, and a long list of subscribers to _The Stylus_. Surely,
Fortune had never shown him a more smiling face!
* * * * *
Baltimore!--
Why did his way lie through Baltimore? Baltimore, with its memories of
Virginia--Baltimore where he had come up out of the grave to the heaven
of her love, and where had been first constructed the most beautiful of
all his dreams--the dream of the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, in
which he and she and the Mother had lived for each other only!
In Baltimore again he found his way stopped by the vision of "a legended
tomb." It was paralyzing! He could go no further upon his journey, but
lingered in Baltimore, wandering the streets like one bereft.
The words--the prophetic words--of his own poem "To One in Paradise,"
haunted him:
"A voice from out the future cries,
'On! on!' But o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!"
And again, the words of his "Bridal Ballad"--more prophetic still:
"Would to God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how;
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken,--
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now."
And that merciless other self, his accusing Conscience, arose, and with
whisper louder and more terrible than ever before, upbraided
him--reminding him of the vow he had made his wife upon her bed of
death.
Alas, the vow!--that solemn, sacred vow! How could he have so utterly
forgotten it? How plainly he could see her lying upon the snowy
pillow--her face not much less white--her trustful eyes on his eyes as
he knelt by her side and swore that he would never bind himself in
marriage to another--invoking from Heaven a terrible curse upon his soul
if he should ever prove traitorous to his oath.
Alas, where had been his will that he had so soon forgotten his vow? How
he despised himself for his weakness--he that had boasted in the words
of old Joseph Glanvil, until he had almost made them his own words:
"'Man doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly, save
only through the weakness of his will.'"
* * * * *
Hours on hours he wandered the streets of the city whose every paving
stone seemed to speak to him of his Virginia--the city where he had
walked with her--where he had first spoken of love to her and heard her
sweet confession--where, in the holy church, the beautiful words of the
old, old rite had made them one.
All day he wandered, and all night--driven, cruelly driven--by the
upbraiding whisper in his ear, while before him still he saw her white
face with the soft eyes looking out--it seemed to him in reproach.
Finally the longing which had come upon him in Providence--the longing
for the peace of the grave and reunion, in death, with Virginia, was
strong upon him again--pressed him hard--mastered him.
It was sometime in the early morning that he swallowed the draught--the
draught that would free his spirit, that would enable him to lay down
the burden of his body and to fly from the steps that dogged _his_
steps--from the voice that whispered upbraidings. He would lay his body
down by the side of her body in the "legended tomb" while his spirit
would fly to join her spirit in that far Aidenn where they would be
happy together forever.
As he fell asleep he murmured (again quoting himself):
"And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."
When he opened his wondering eyes upon the white walls of the hospital
he was feeble and weak in his limbs as an infant, but his brain was
unclouded. Gentle hands ministered to him and a woman's voice read him
spirit-soothing words from the Gospel of St. John. But the draught had
done its work. He lingered some days and then, on Sunday morning, the
seventh day of October of the year 1849, his spirit took its flight. His
last words were a prayer:
"Lord, have mercy on my poor soul!"
Many were the friends who rose up to comfort the stricken mother and who
hastened to bring rosemary to the poet's grave. But there was one whom
he had believed to be his friend--a big man whose big brain he had
admired--in whose furtive eye was an unholy glee, about whose thick lips
played a smile which slightly revealed his fang-like teeth. To him was
entrusted the part of literary executor--it had been The Dreamer's own
request. In his power it would lie to give to the world his own account
of this man who had said he was no poet and had distanced him in the
race for a woman's favor.
The day was at hand when Rufus Griswold would have his full revenge upon
the fair fame of Edgar the Dreamer.
* * * * *
"Out--out are the lights--out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm;
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,'
And its hero the Conqueror Worm."
* * * * *
Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected.