Text: Drew Sweet, “The Old Allan Mansion,” Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), vol. XII, no. 137, August 12, 1883, p. 11, cols. 5-6

[page 11, column 5:]

Special Correspondence of The Inter Ocean.

RICHMOND, Va., July 25. — Not many minutes’ walk from the Capitol Park, so interesting to the stranger from its wealth of statuary, its enchanting old State House, grateful shade, and hospitable seats, plentifully distributed at every turn in the winding pathways, the street runs east and west. This beautiful morning I was about to realize a long-cherished desire, namely, to search out the Richmond home the brilliant but erratic poet, Edgar Allan Poe.

I was told at the counting-room of one the Richmond papers that the house stood on the southeast corner of Fifth and Main streets, and thitherward I turned my eager feet. Arriving in the vicinity, I applied for definite direction to a cordial-looking old gentleman who stood in his doorway.

“Ah, yes,” he responded, “you mean the old Allan mansion,” which he designated, adding: “I do not know if any one lives there now. I remember the last time it was brought into notice was during the Centennial, when the doors of the old house were thrown wide open and a grand ball was given there.”

I soon found, however, that the house was tenanted by a most agreeable family, who were by no means ignorant of the interest attaching to the place or the points most likely to attract the attention of visitors.

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE

readily and graciously acceded to my wishes, and gave permission to wander at my own sweet will through the deserted rooms, while she apologized where no apology was needed.

“We are but tenting here, and do not know what moment we may be deprived of our shelter. Some wealthy gentlemen have bought the place, intending to transform it into a large and elegant hotel, to be kept by a lady at one time a leader of the bon ton in this city. We occupy only the lower story,” said Mrs. James, “and pray do not hold us guilty for the condition of things up-stairs.”

When I asked to be directed to Poe's particular room, I was told to ascend a broad flight of stairs. “You cannot well|miss the apartment, which is the one with the old-fashioned mirrors in it, and which opens onto the balcony.”

The dust of years had lodged upon everything. Cobwebs depended from the ceiling and clung to the walls in somber yet picturesque festoons The stairs creaked beneath my feet as if long unused to human tread, and when I reached the landing and slowly guessed out my way through the dimly lighted corridors, there seemed ghostly echo to every profane sound my footsteeps [[footsteps]] made upon the long-unpressed floor. Doors stood ajar in all directions, affording glimpses into dark or half-lighted, tenantless rooms, bewildering to an unaccustomed beholder, but at length pushing wide open door, I entered an octagon-shaped apartment, where there seemed to be windows on either side of the fireplace opening from it into other similar apartments Like Richard III, I mentally ejaculated:

But, advancing more closely toward one of the supposed transparencies, my momentary delusion soon vanished. There were mirrorpanes in the window-sash instead of transparent glass. “There, then,’, thought I, “are old-fashioned mirrors of which the lady spoke.”

The room was large, spacious, and papered in the florid style of a by-gone age. Two large windows looked to the southward, giving egress to a wide, covered balcony, with sanded floor. That part of the James River thickly obstructed with little green islands is visible from, here, while beyond lies the pretty city of Manchester. But within the room all was emptiness, desolation, and

THE SPIRIT OF DESPAIR.

Empty, desolate, did I say? Yes, to material vision it was; but the psychological sense is oppressed with the presence of phantom shapes gliding here, there, and all around — ghosts of the characters evoked by the poet's fertile fancy. Here it was, when in Richmond, that Edgar Allan Poe read, studied, thought, and wrote, producing many of those wonderful creations of genius which challenged the admiration of the world. Could it have been here that he wrote that weird, gloomy masterpiece, which more than anything else gave him his fame, “The Raven?” Was it over the door whose threshold I had just crossed, that once stood

on whose hand defiantly perched the bird of evil omen?

I raised one of the high windows, pushed open a shutter, which resisted creakingly my effort to make it perform a function for which it had long been unused. and stood upon the long, wide balcony. Gazing down over the railing, saw an inclosure which gave evidence of having once been one of Flora's favorite nooks. It was laid out in labyrinthian paths, bordered with the evergreen box which is so plentiful and luxuriant. But now, large fig-trees, crape myrtles, jessamines, and boxtrees, in other days so tenderly cared for, and doubtedless fondly looked upon by the poet's beauty-loving eyes, are trying to conquer an existence in an unequal strife with wild unfriendly weeds as tall as themselves. I descended a flight of rickety stairs leading into this forsaken garden, to gather a few mementoes of my visit from this once blooming and fragrant parterre, and then, retracing my steps, toiled up into the garret to see if perchance I could find anything more closely identified with the personality of the poet. Here, again, I was impressed with the truth that “dust we are and unto dust we shall return,” and likewise that the world was formed out of chaos. There before me

ON THE GARRET FLOOR,

in piles and scattered hither and thither in promiscuous disorder, was a mass of rubbish that must have been ages in accumulating. Fragments of books I picked up, one after another, searching the pages to see if any of them bore his name. Here was part of an old Iliad: could it have been his? Did his delicate fingers ever touch these moldy, dogeared leaves the luminous eyes ever scan the glowing words of the grand old epic? All was mute. There were dainty envelopes with daintier waxen seals, such as were fashionable in those days, indorsed in delicate writing. There were bills from Richmond, New York, and Baltimore merchants, in the name of foster-father Allan. Here was a copy of the Columbia Magazine, and very likely Poe wrote for that, but his name does not appear in this copy. There, lying carelessly across an old trunk, is a bodice wonderfully wrought in satin, blonde, and lace. It had environed the daintiest of waists in its day, and hidden heart bounding with the nappy emotions of youth and love. Where is that fair maiden, and for which of the many gay and glad assemblies in that beautiful Southern city was the now cast-off garment made? Shares the gentle wearer the fate of him whose association with this home alone makes its interesting, or does she live to sorrow over the wreck of one whose name I sought, and sought in vain, among all that vast collection of castaway articles? We may not know. “The place which knew him once so well, knows him now no more forever.” Poe's own exquisite lines, “‘The Ruined [[Haunted]] Palace,” wherein occurs the verse:

although metaphorically, typifying a ruined intellect, are no less applicable to this ruined home which was so vibrant with life, hope, joy, “long ago,” and unwittingly prophetic of his own wreck.

In the library of William and Mary College at Williamsburg I fairly reveled in a complete set of the Southern Literary Messenger, of which Poe was editor for some time. Published in Richmond, its chief being

THAT BRILLIANT SOUTHERNER,

John R. Thompson, it, perhaps, ranked highest under Poe's administration as an intensely literary periodical, which in many respects has not had its equal before or since. Edgar Poe's contributions to the Messenger were chiefly prose, but his tales, essays, [column 6:]

views, and critiques were as remarkable for their elegant, compact rhetoric and originality as his poems were for boldness and delicacy of conception, exquisite imagery, symphony, and dramatic movement. He was a blazing star, outshining better yet less brilliant luminaries in the then galaxy of American By far the most original of American poets (not excepting Walt Whitman), he lacked the warmth of Willis, the tender grace of Longfellow, the loving, loyal heart of Whittier. Poe was without heart — he was essentially intellectual, artistically cold and statuesqe [[statuesque]], and purely selfish — selfish even in his sorrow. With all his gift of mind and person, fondled, petted, and caressed by women and men, he was still selfish to the last; and his fall, his ruin, was all the greater it meant the wreck of a mind which, properly balanced and controlled, might have acheved [[achieved]] for its possessor

A name which before him no mortal had won.

Outside, the fine old Allan Mansion bears the perceptible tokens of neglect and decay. The window-glass in many places is shattered, and shutters are tumbling from their fastenings, the fence is. falling down piecemeal, the gate drags heavily on a single binge, paths are overgrown with grass and sounds of love and merriment are alien to the weeds, flower-beds are obliterated, while place. The kind old foster-parents are dead and gone, and the prodigal so often welcomed there with joy and pride, and yearned for with broken hearts, crosses it threshold “nevermore.”

I gathered an ivy leaf from a little vine toiling up the trunk of a gnarled old locust tree, and, passing out through the neglected lawn, bade the home of Edgar Allan Poe a long adieu, for something in my heart told me I should enter the gateway again “nevermore.”

DREW SWEET.