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Edgar Allan Poe Again. — We are glad to be able to put before our readers the following correction of a statement made by our contributor “Searcy,” in the article upon Edgar Poe, contained in a previous issue of THE SUNNY SOUTH. The correction is entirely authentic, being from the pen of an intimate friend of Poe. Mrs. Weiss, of Richmond, better known to admiring readers as the gifted poetess, Susan Archer Talley. We are gratified to know that this lady, who saw Poe during the latter part of his life, intends shortly giving to the public an account in full of these last days, so clouded by misstatement and slander:
RICHMOND, Va., May 27, 1876.
Editor Sunny South, — Permit me to correct a statement made by “Searcy” in an article upon Edgar Allan Poe, contained in the last number of your paper. When Mr. Poe left Richmond, a few days before his death, it was not with any design connected with his marriage. It had been reported here (how truly I do not know) that he was engaged to a certain Mrs. S., a wealthy but by no means attractive lady, and his senior by some years. A misunderstanding occurred; Mrs. S. demanded of Poe that some old letters of hers should be returned, which he refused to do so long as she withheld hiw own. The relation thereupon existing between the parties was one of extreme bitterness, which continued up to the time of his death. Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith has recently asserted in the New York Home Journal that Mrs. S. caused Poe to be beaten in a cruel manner, and that this was the cause of his death! This account I saw copied into your won paper, THE SUNNY SOUTH, and I thereupon wrote to the New York Herald correcting the statement, Mr. Poe having spent his last evening in Richmond, at my mother's house. He left this city in better health and spirits than I had seen him in some weeks. His purpose in going to New York was connected with his projected plan of establishing a new paper, The Iris. He was cheerful and sanguine, and spoke definitely of returning to Richmond in a few weeks.
His mother-in-law, Mrs. Clem [[Clemm]] (not Clew), died in great poverty, a few years after his death. His sister, Miss Rosalie Poe, died last summer, an inmate of a charitable institute in Baltimore. So has ended the poet's family.
SUSAN ARCHER WEISS.
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Notes:
This text is taken from an undated clipping in the Ingram Collection, item 688. The catalog dates it as May 27, 1876, but that is date printed at the end of the letter, and thus more likely the date of its composition rather than its publication. Although it is necessarily somewhat speculative, it seems most likely that May 27, 1876 was the date of publication of the article by W. E. H. Searcy, the reading of which motivated Mrs. Weiss to write an immediate reply. Since the Sunny South was printed every Saturday. It was published from Atlanta, GA, while Mrs. Weiss lived in Richmond, VA. Thus she would have to have mailed her letter; it would have to be received and then set in type for publication, which could easily have occurred over the course of a week, particularly if we assume that the issue for May 27 was actually in print and in the mail in time to be received by the date of issue.
Mrs. Weiss’ article on “The Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe” appeared in Scribner's Magazine for March 1878.
In correction W. E. H. Searcy's article, Mrs. Weiss has put in print many errors of her own. Overlooking the minor typographical error of Clem for Clemm, Rosalie Poe was in the institution of the Sisters of the Epiphany in Washington, DC, not Baltimore. What she calls The Iris was actually to be named The Stylus. More seriously, in addressing the flaws she sees in the account of Mrs. E. O. Smith, Mrs. Weiss has herself conflated separate incidents in Poe's life, hopelessly mixing his late engagement with Mrs. Shelton with the misadventure of Mrs. Ellet and Poe's letters from Mrs. F. S. Osgood. She has further mixed elements of Poe's short-lived engagement to Mrs. Whitmas with that to Mrs. Shelton of the year afterward, as Mrs. Shelton was about Poe's own age, while Mrs. Whitman was indeed several years older. Other problems are more difficult to sort out easily. As a note, the article by Mrs. Smith first appeared in Beadle's Monthly, from which it was copied into the Home Journal, and again copied into the New York Herald.
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[S:0 - SSAGA, 1876] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Edgar Allan Poe (S. A. T. Weiss, 1876)