Text: Anonymous, “She was the Friend of Poe and a Playmate of Patti,” Newport Courier (Newport, NY), vol. XLII, no. 49, July 19, 1900, p. 2, col. 5

Mrs. Mary Andre Phelps has a more than unusually interesting entourage for the public as a friend and playmate of Edgar Allan Poe, one of the brightest lights in the history of American Literature, and of Adelina Patti, the greatest opera singer of the age. Mrs. Phelps distinctly remembers the personality of Poe, his erratic ways and the pleasure she took in being his friend, of romping with him and dancing while his sister, Rosalie Poe, played waltzes and polkas, and the poet was as joyous as a child, although this was after the death of his girl wife, his “lost Lenore.” Mrs. Phelps was permitted to roll up the smooth, daintily written foolscap sheets of his manuscript after his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, had stitched them end to tend for her “deal Eddie,” who was her son-in-law as well as nephew, he having married his cousin, Virginia Clemm.

MRS. MARY ANDRE PHELPS.

“It all comes back as if it had happened yesterday,” said Mrs. Phelps, a gracious and attractive matron of southern birth and French descent, living in a home she owns at 344 West Monroe street.

“Mrs. Clemm, his aunt, was my mother's dearest friend. She was born in Baltimore in 1790, where I was born, and her family was one of the most distinguished in Maryland. Her father, David Poe, was quartermaster general of the old Maryland line during the Revolution and the intimate friend of Washington, Lafayette and the leading men of that day. Edgar Allan Poe loved her as a son. She was his father's sister, and in 1836, while editing The Southern Literary Messenger, he married her daughter, Virginia. I know something about that, having heard my mother and Mrs. Clemm discuss it. He did not love his cousin — except as a dear cousin — when he married her, but she was very fondly attached to him and was frail and consumptive. While she lived he devoted himself to her with all the ardor of a lover, and she is his lost Lenore in “The Raven.”“

”And you played with Adelina Patti?”

“Oh, that is so different! Adelina was such an ordinary child, romping and eating candy and going to market whenever she could get a chance. She would call for me in a torn pinafore and say: ‘Let us go to the market.’ She was just full of music. The notes seemed to her like words to other children. It was born in her nature. Her mother sang ‘Norma’ in grand opera the night before Adelina was born. When Adelina was 7 years old, she sung at my eleventh birthday party, and at 8 years she started her first tour with hr brother-in-law, Maurice Strakosch. Such a time as he had with her, bribing her with dolls and candy.’ If there was not a box of the kind of candy she wanted, she would stand up before an audience and not sing a note. Then Strakosch would hurry out to the nearest candy store, at the risk of finding them all closed, and buy the capricious child her coveted sweets. I hear that she is very happy and does not grow old and only remembers the pleasant things of life.”

Mrs. Phelps is a musician and teacher of instrumental music. Her father, Major Andre, was one of those far famed Andres of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and she has in her possession an medal given to Major Andre by the great Napoleon. But above all personal souvenirs she values the gentle memories of her childish intercourse with the author of “The Raven.” — Chicago Times-Herald.