Text: Anonymous, “True to Poe's Memory,” Chicago Herald (Chicago, IL), (no volume number), whole no. 1585, January 27, 1883, p. 5, cols. 1-2

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On West Monroe street, at the residence of her daughter Mrs. R. H. Moulton lives a lady whose privilege it once was to know Edgar Allen [[Allan]] Poe intimately. The lady referred to is Mrs. Major Andre. She is a lady whose beauty has not forsaken her as she has grown old, and her hair has become white. Now, though she is nearly seventy years of age, her features are animated and intelligent, her eyes bright, and her disposition even and genial. A Herald reporter called upon her to ascertain if her reminiscences of her early days — those in which she knew personally the poet, in whom, perhaps, more than any other, Americans feel an interest would not, afford the material for an interesting sketch.

Upon being informed of the object of her visitor's call Mrs. Andre's countenance lighted up with a pleased smile and she began at once to comply with the request that she should recount any incidents which she could remember relating to the poet Poe. The subject was evidently one upon which she liked to think and talk. She was pardonably proud of having known Poe. This she showed in her manner and in what she said. Interrupted by an occasional question, she narrated the following facts substantially as given:

“Oh, yes. I knew him,” she said at the start. “Eddie, as we all called him. His mother was a very intimate friend of mine. I say his mother, for he always regarded her as such. She was his aunt in reality; Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]], that was her name. Eddie used to ‘call her “muddy” — a sort of a pet name — and he thought the world of her. She was just like mother to him. She brought him up, and her brother, Eddie's uncle — I don’t recall his name, my memory is so poor — had him educated. We, my husband, Major Andre, and I, were living in Fordham when we knew Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] and Eddie. That is just out of New York, about six miles beyond Harlem. It's almost a part of the city now, but then it was clear out in the country. Mrs. Clem [[Clemm] and Eddie lived right in the same neighborhood, close by us. This was in 1843 or 1844, think. One day a gentleman called at our house and left his card; the girl went to the door and took it, of course; the gentleman asked if Major Andre lived there, and said that he was living in the same neighborhood and would be pleased to He become went acquainted with the family, then right away, We saw by the card that it was Edger Allen Poe who bad called, and the girl said he looked like a very nice gentleman. Of course we were very glad to become acquainted with such a noted poet, and my husband called on him. They got to be very intimate, and were a great deal together. My husband used to call upon him very often in the evening, and he would spend a good deal of time at our house, too. That is the way we became acquainted. Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] and I got to be great friends. She was very fond of her Eddie, she called him, and told me a great deal about him before I became well acquainted with him. She told me all about Eddie's marriage. never knew his wife. Her name was Lenore. you know. She was Mrs. Clem's niece, and so a cousin of Eddie's. They had known each other since they were children. Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] told me that Eddie nearly grieved himself to death after his wife died. For a long time they thought he would die. There was a chair that his wife wanted used to sit in a great deal and Eddie it taken away, He said, Muddy, I cannot bear to see it and think that she will never use it again.

“His wife was a splendid singer. Well, one night she was out to a tea party and they urged her to sing. She said she had a very bad cold, almost too bad to attempt to sing, but she did sing, ;they urged her so hard. She must have strained her lungs, for she got to coughing in the night and burst a blood-vessel. That was the cause of her death. Mrs. Clem said that sometimes she thought she had more than a cold — it hung on her so long and that perhaps she had consumption, but she did not know. She was a beautiful girl, so they all said, and very accomplished. I did not know her. I don’t think Eddie ever got over grieving over her. He was going to marry another lady, you know, when he died. They say that when be was picked up in the streets of Baltimore that he had been drunk. That was not so. My husband and I were so interested in him that we looked into the matter carefully, Eddie had known this lady well before he was married and after his wife died — it must have been some years after they met again. He spoke about her nos having married, and she in fun said that she had been waiting for him. Perhaps the remark was not all in fun. don’t know: but anyway were to be married. He left his mother Clem, his aunt, I mean, you understand, telling her that he was going to marry this lady. He stopped a short time with some friends in Baltimore before going where she lived that was in Virginia. He finally left there, and the people with whom he had been stopping said he was feeling perfectly well and in excellent spirits, and trad not touched a drop of liquor. About an. hour afterward he was found dying in the street. He must have died of apoplexy or heart disease. Mrs. Clem used often to tell me that she was afraid Eddie had something the matter with his heart. She thought he died of heart disease. He has been misrepresented. He was not a dissipated man. In those days it was the custom, you know, in the best society to offer wine or some liquor whenever you were entertaining persons. Well, Mrs. Clem [[Clemm] told me that she did not want Eddie to get a taste for drinking, and warned me against offering him anything when he was at our house. I posted my husband, and we never did offer him any. Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] said that he had been in liquor once, and that he had taken treatment for it and was entirely cured.

“I remember one night, while we were all living in Fordham, that Eddie was missing. Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] began to worry, and sent over to our house to know if Eddie was there. Well, about 9 o’clock he came to our house. He had two or three companions with him. He had told them to drive to Major. Andre's house and to leave him there. He did not want them to know where he lived, and did not want to go home in the condition he was in. He knew Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] would feel terribly, and he thought it would be better to come to our house, My husband brought in, and sent word immediately by man to Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] that Eddie was at our house all safe, but that she had better come over. She was afraid that something was wrong and came at once. My Husband and I were very much surprised and sorry about him. We had never known him to drink before. It seems that he had met some of his old friends and they were drinking each other health. They urged him to drink, and be thought it would not seem courteous to refuse. He took a glass of wine, it may have been sherry, and that, you know. affects a person almost as quick brandy. Of course it went right to hie head. He was very delicately organized, and a very liquor would affect him. When Mr. Clem [[Clemm]] came be was asleep. We told her chat she bad better let him stay all night, and that she should stay too. There was bed-room opening off of the room he was in, and she staid there. ‘The next morning Eddie out all right again, and he felt very [column 4:] cheap, you may believe. How cheap he felt I shall never forget it. I would not go in to see him the night before He always seemed to me to be such a perfect gentleman in ever way that I did not want my impressions of him affected by the sight of him in liquor. Of course I knew all about it, but I did not want to keep the remembrance of how he looked. Well, that is the only time I knew of his drinking during the time knew him. He was not a drinking man. He just went on one or two sprees, and no more — slight sprees, you know, such as men will go on once in a while.

“Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] was an enthusiastic Episcopalian, and I said to Eddie one day, “Eddie, why don’t you join the church?” He said, “Mrs. Andre, I would give anything in the world if I could think as you do or as Muddy does, and join the church. I have talked with Dr. —— time and time again the hour about it, but somehow it does not come to me.’ Dr. — — was the president of the college at Fordham. That was a Catholic school, and a wondered very good one, Eddie My husband and I really had done as he said, or whether be simply joking, After that my asked the president of the college about it, and he said it was so. Eddie did not belong to the church, but his life was a very exemplary one. He was one of the most charitable persons I ever know, and Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] the same. They liberally to every one who was needy. No one in want came to their door who did not get something, and who was not invited in and given something to eat from the best there was there. After a while they got in reduced circumstance and Mrs. Clem would often sit up a good part of the night copying for Eddie while he was writing. When he felt like writing he went at it with such a will he often made large sums of money in a short time. His social qualities were beyond anything you ever saw. Every one liked to have him in any company they were in. He was so genial and gentlemanly in every way. He never used any coarse or vulgar language that I ever heard of. He was too high-toned for that. He was handsome, always dressed well, and had such a fine appearance. Just as soon as his clothes would get the least seedy be would say: “There, Muddy, give these clothes to the first needy. person who comes: along.’ He never had harsh word for any one. When I have read some of the things that have been written about him I have felt like resenting them in some way, for I knew them to be false.

“When Eddie died Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]], who was then in Baltimore I believe, wrote to me and said that since Eddie was dead and had, she hoped, gone to heaven, she felt so very lonesome she knew not how to endure it. She said she had some business matters relating to Eddie's writings to arrange in New York, and she wanted to know if she could come and stop with me while she was attending to them. Well,, the letter reached me almost at the instant that my husband died. My surroundings then were, of course, such that I paid almost no attention to anything else, and afterward I did not answer it, for did not know where to write. She said she was going to leave the place from which she wrote very soon. I heard long after that that she died in some charitable institution. I was so sorry, I would have liked so much to have had her come and stay with me. She could have come just as well as not, and she would have been a great comfort to me: had number of letters from Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] and Eddie, but they were burned up in New York. Eddie gave one of my daughters a beautiful rosewood box, full of bon bons, on her eighth birthday. She kept this box for a good many years and used it to keep her jewelry in. That was burned too, with the jewelry in it. We did not have time to save it. My daughter barely got out with her life. My son-in-law, Professor Blume, of Seaton [[Seton]] Hall college, has some of Eddie's letters and manuscript poems. He knew him very intimately. Eddie was godfather and Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] was godmother to my youngest son. He was born on St. Albert's day and we christened him Albert Edgar. He calls himself Edgar Albert now and is proud of his name. He lives in West Virginia. My oldest, son is in Washington in the government service. My husband is a descendant of the same family to which Major Andre, of revolutionary war fame, belonged!”

Upon being questioned Mrs. Andre admitted that at the time in which she was acquainted with Poe it was said that her appearance bore ‘a striking resemblance to that of Poe's wife the lost Lenore.” She said Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] had often spoken of it to her, and that Poe himself assigned it as one of the reasons why he liked her so well.