Text: Appleton Morgan, “Poe's Home to Live,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), vol. XXIV, no. 184, September 24, 1895, p. 5, col. 3

[page 5, column 3:]

New York, Sept. 23. — Special Telegram — Edgar Allan Poo's cottage on Kingsbridge road, Fordham, which for so many years has been deserted, and where almost all of the best work of the poet was done, where he lived and suffered and made his name immortal, was the scene of a most interesting meeting of the Shakespeare Society today. Some of those present were President Appleton Morgan, Secretary Albert R. Frey, Nelson Wheateroft, J. Henry Magonigle, Wallace Bruce, Frederick H. Paine, David H. Chapman, D. Fuller Appleton, N. Archibald Shaw, Robert E. Downing, and Nugent Robinson. President Morgan had called together those who were interested in preserving this home of America's greatest poet and teller of weird tales, to tell them what was necessary to be done to save from destruction, and how to do the cottage it. He said in part:

Although Edgar Allan Poe has been dead almost fifty years, this is the first time that here, this spot, where he lived and suffered unmerciful disaster, a demonstration of his admirers has been made in his honor. We have utterly neglected and ignored the grandest of our poets. The New York Shakespeare Society us and has invited you here today to consult with see how we can at last right this wrong.

There, in that room, the wife of his youth, in the depth of winter, lay sick, with no covering, relying for what warmth she could get by holding a pet cat to her bosom, and Poe saw her fade away and die without a friendly hand raised to aid him.

Today those who are editing his immortal works often write deprecatory biographies and patronizing notices and apologies for what Edgar they call his “misspent life.’ Gentlemen, if Allan Poe, while writing his immortal prose and poetry upon an empty stomach, kept body and soul together with a glass of brandy, I am tempted to say I thank God for that glass of brandy.

The difficulty of purchasing the property is that the city is about to widen the Kingsbridge road, and that will cut this cottage just in halt. So we must buy it. if we wish to preserve it. Your committee has been assured by expert house-movers that they will guarantee to move It 100 feet in any direction, but not a foot more. A fund has been started the object of which is to purchase and preserve this cottage, if not upon the ground where it now stands, at least somewhere in the near vicinity, Thomas W. Keene has given us $100; Augustin Daly sent from Europe a subscription of $50 and a promise of more. Three prominent actors have agreed to give benefit performances at city theaters for the fund. An offer from San Francisco to aid in erecting a monument to the poet, to stand facing this cottage on its new site when obtained. has reached us. Another from Baltimore to aid in getting replica of the bronze raven over his cenotaph in that city, to crown our gateway. Two leading newspapers have promised that at the proper time they will call, and continue to call, public attention to our efforts.

If it is asked why the New York Shakespeare Society has undertaken this work, I answer: First. because it is a New York society: and second, because it is a Shakespeare society, and because Edgar Allan Poe was our American Shakespeare. might add, third, because there is no Poe society, and nobody else has come forward to do this work.

After Mr. Morgan's address luncheon was served, during which the plan was discussed and heartily approved. The meeting then adjourned, and Mr. Morgan showed the party over the cottage and the grounds. Except repapering, there has been nothing done to the building since Poe lived there, in 1846, 1847, and 1848. The dining-room, in which he wrote, with its old-fashioned fireplace and crane, the cupboard, in which were thrown those manuscripts that would be priceless now, the tiny room in which his wife spent the last hours of her life while the poet strove: against his fate with breaking heart, all is now as it was then, and nothing could be in stronger contrast to the grandeur pictured in Dore's illustration of “The Raven” than this lowly cottage, the walls of which are now scrawled over with names of visitors to the shrine of Edgar Allan Poe.