"A PRETTY GIRL WITH AUBURN HAIR WHOM POE LOVED."
"The old lady commenced by saying that she had known Poe quite
intimately when she and her mother were residents of Baltimore, about
1832. She was then seventeen years of age and attending a finishing
school in that city. She confided to me, laughingly, that she was
considered a very pretty girl, with dark eyes and curling auburn hair.
"The first time she noticed Poe, she said, was once when she was
studying her lesson at the window of her room, which was in the rear of
the house. Looking up, she saw a very handsome young man standing at an
opposite back window on the next street looking directly at her. She
pretended to take no notice, but on the following evening the same thing
occurred. He appeared to be writing at his window, and each time that he
laid aside a sheet he would look over at her, and at length bowed. This
time a school friend was with her, who, in a spirit of fun, returned the
bow. That evening, as the two were seated on the veranda together, this
young man sauntered past and, deliberately ascending the steps of the
adjoining house, spoke to them, addressing them by name. He sat for some
time on the dividing rail of the two verandas, making himself very
agreeable, and the acquaintance thus commenced in a mere spirit of
school-girl fun, was kept up for several weeks, some story being
invented to satisfy the mother.
"'Of course, it was all wrong,' said the old lady, 'but it was fun,
nevertheless; and we girls could see no harm in it. But one evening,
when Mr. Poe and myself had been strolling up and down in the moonlight
until quite late, my mother desired him not to come again, as I was only
a school girl and the neighbors would talk. So our acquaintance ended
abruptly.' She added that, although they never again met, she always
felt the deepest interest in hearing of him, and had never forgotten her
fascinating boy-lover.
"Asked if she had ever seen Virginia, she replied: 'Yes, several times,
when she was with her cousin;' that 'she was a pretty child, but her
chalky-white complexion spoiled her.'"
Mr. Allan died in March, 1834, leaving three fine little boys to inherit
his fortune.
Some time before his death an absurd story was circulated, which we find
related in the Richmond _Standard_, of April, 1881, thirty-one years
after Poe's death, on the authority of Mr. T. H. Ellis, of Richmond. It
appears that a friend of Poe wrote to the latter that Mr. Allan had
spoken kindly of him, seeming to regret his harshness, and advising him
to come on to Richmond and call on him in his illness. Acting upon this
advice, he, one evening in February, presented himself at Mr. Allan's
door. The rest, as told by Ellis, is as follows:
"He was met at the door by Mrs. Allan, who, not recognizing him, said
that her husband had been forbidden by his physician to see visitors.
Thrusting her rudely aside, he rapidly made his way upstairs and into
the chamber where Mr. Allan sat in an arm-chair, who, on seeing him,
raised his cane, threatening to strike him if he approached nearer, and
ordered him to leave the house, which he did."
Woodbury asserts the truth of this story, because, as he says, "Mr.
Ellis had the very best means of knowing the truth." But Ellis was at
this time only a youth of 18 or 20, and had no more opportunity of
knowing the truth than the numerous acquaintances of the Allans' to whom
they related their version of the incident, with never a mention of the
cane. Poe, they said, accused the servant of having delivered his
message to Mrs. Allan and, creating some disturbance, the latter called
to the servant to "drive that drunken man away." Mr. Ellis should have
remembered that Mrs. Allan, to the day of her death, asserted that she
had never but once seen Poe; consequently, this story of the second
meeting between them and of Poe's "rudely thrusting her aside," and
being threatened with the cane, is simply a specimen of the gossip which
was continually being circulated concerning Poe by his enemies.