Griswold paying a tribute to the beauty of their home life:

"It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with him.

"His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly. He was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance, and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home.

"It was in a small house in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the centre of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius."

"The residence described," adds Gill,1 "was a small, brick tenement in North Seventh Street, in that part of the city then known as Spring Garden. The house was on the rear portion of the lot, leaving a large vacant space in front, affording Poe and his gentle invalid wife opportunity for indulging their penchant for plants and flowers."

Mr. C. W. Alexander, publisher of the "Gentleman's Magazine," and a founder of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post," wrote a year after Poe's death of his association with him on the magazine :

"I had long and familiar intercourse with him, and very cheerfully embrace the opportunity which you now offer of bearing testimony to the uniform gentleness of disposition [italics Mr. A.'s] and kindness of heart which distinguished Mr. Poe in all my inter

1 Life of Edgar A. Poe, p. 100; Chatto and Windus: 1878.

course with him. With all his faults, he was a gentleman; which is more than can be said of some who have undertaken the ungracious task of blacking the reputation which Mr. Poe, of all others, esteemed the 'precious jewel of his soul.'

"That Mr. Poe had faults," he continues, "" seriously detrimental to his own interests, none, of course, will deny. They were, unfortunately, too well known in the literary circles of Philadelphia, were there any disposition to conceal them. But he alone was the sufferer, and not those who received the benefit of his pre-eminent talents, however irregular his habits or uncertain his contributions may occasionally have been."

There is a continuous array of testimony of this kind, acknowledging indeed Poe's infirmities - though there is far from unanimity as to these, some absolutely denying them but almost universally emphasizing his essential goodness of heart. His continual necessities made him an incessant borrower, and his accounts occasionally became entangled; but no one familiar with his published and unpublished correspondence will deny his equally incessant anxiety to pay his whole indebtedness to the very last penny.

Another pleasing glimpse of the domestic life of the Poes at this time is given by one who knew them well:

"Their little garden in summer, and the house in winter, were overflowing with luxuriant grape and other vines, and liberally ornamented with choice flowers of the poet's selection. Poe was a pattern of social and domestic worth. It was our happiness to participate with them in the occasional enjoyment of the beauty of the flowers, and to watch the enthusiasm

floral taste. Here, too, in the hospitality which the home of his friends.

with which the fondly attached pair exhibited their we were wont to participate always rendered Poe's home We call to mind some incidents in the pleasantly remembered intercourse that existed between the ladies of our families, especially in the hours of sickness, which rendered so much of Virginia's life a source of painful anxiety to all who had the pleasure of knowing her, and of witnessing the gradual wasting away of her fragile frame.

"But she was an exquisite picture of patient loveliness, always wearing upon her beautiful countenance the smile of resignation, and the warm, ever-cheerful look with which she ever greeted her friends.

"How devotedly her husband loved the gentle being is touchingly illustrated in the Griswold description of his visit [quotation]. . . . This, coming from the malignant Griswold, is an eloquent tribute to the kindly and tender spirit of Poe, whose devotion no adversity, not even the fiend that haunted him in the fatal cup, could warp or lessen, and this attachment, intense as it was, was equally strong and enduring in the soul of his 'Annabel Lee,' his gentle mate, whose affection that poem so touchingly and sadly

commemorates:

"And this maiden, she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.'

"She was a child,' sings the poem; and, indeed, Poe himself was little else in the everyday perplexities and responsibilities of life. On leaving Philadelphia for New York, when breaking up their simple, fairylike home, we were favored with some of their pet flowers, which, preserved and framed, remain in our

household to this day as interesting relics of those happy days with Edgar and Virginia."

The author of this pretty pen-picture of the Poe home life was T. Cottrell Clarke, first editor of the famous Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," which had been founded in 1821 by Atkinson & Alexander and was published in the office once occupied by Benjamin Franklin, back of No. 53 Market Street.

In fact, no one ever came very near the Poes without being struck by the wholesomeness, sanity, beauty, and brightness of their surroundings. The direst poverty might reign as it did through lifein their immediate vicinity, yet there is none of the squalor or moral degradation, irresponsibility or seedy neglect which the health of both husband and wife and the frequent extremity of their needs might well have excused. The Imp of the Perverse ruled there rarely, only as the Imp of the Cup - the hereditary fiend which William Poe, his cousin, in a well-known letter to Edgar, declared to be " great enemy to our family":

"There is one thing I am anxious to caution you against, and which has been a great enemy to our family, I hope, however, in your case, it may prove unnecessary, a too free use of the bottle.' "' î

In Philadelphia it was Poe's singular fortune to fall in with the Good and the Evil Angel of his life— with George R. Graham and Rufus Wilmot Griswold

two persons whose influence on his career during critical periods was profound and far-reaching. The dead French Academician is usually eulogized by his successor; the dead man of letters is sometimes kicked by his expected eulogist.

1 Century Magazine, Sept., 1894, p. 737.