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Updated: May 8, 2025
It was her opinion he had seen better days she confided to the three other lodgers who were just then renting the three straw beds in the three other corners of the same dark, squalid and evil-smelling room. He was "so soft-spoken and elegant-like, if he was poor as a church mouse. Pity he had no folks nor nobody to keer nothin' about 'im." It was not at once that Mrs. Clemm found him.
Indeed the poem in the making cast a spell upon him and he passed his days and his nights as though in a trance. Virginia and Mother Clemm knew that he was in the throes of creation, and they respected his brown-study mood stepping softly and talking little; but often by a silent pressure of his hand or a light kiss upon his brow, saying that they understood.
Not for a moment, he vowed to Mother Clemm and Virginia, was this separation to be looked upon as permanent. Just so soon as he should be able to provide a home for them in Richmond he would have them with him again, and there they would reconstruct their dream-valley. But for the present . The present, in spite of the new prosperity, was unbearable!
Clemm, and touched lightly upon the sad after-happenings. He had at one time been a frequent guest. There was even yet a deep interest in him, though opinion was sharply divided. And Mrs. Osgood had known the beautiful Virginia, whose sad fate even then was hardly realised. They talked a little about "Annabel Lee" and the "high-born kinsman;" and Hanny thought she had a delightful time.
Yet the most that he could afford in the way of a home was up two flights of stairs two rooms in the third story of a dingy old house in East Broadway. Mother Clemm and Virginia kept them bright and spotless and "Catalina" dosing on the hearth gave a final touch of comfort, and they were far above the noise and dust of the streets, with windows opening upon a goodly view of the sky.
Yet his own declaration to an intimate friend of his youth was that his marriage "had not been a congenial one;" and I repeatedly heard the match ascribed to Mrs. Clemm, by those who were well acquainted with the family and the circumstances.
In fair weather and foul the stately figure and sorrowful eyes of Mother Clemm were to be seen upon the streets of New York as she went about offering the narrow rolls of manuscript for sale as fast as they were finished, or trying to collect the little, over-due checks from those already sold and published.
After giving him up altogether for lost, we put seals on his private effects, and Peter Jones took charge of the government, advised by Stanley and me. It showed the splendid influence Mr. Clemm had had that Peter had become quite a model, and instead of breaking loose was all on the side of law and order.
Through the dimly-lit streets, slippery with ice, and wind-swept, they made their way to the two rooms up two flights of stairs, where the Widow Clemm mended the fire with a few coals at a time and sewed by a single candle, as she waited for them the lion of the most distinguished circle in America and his beautiful wife!
He did not believe, he said with a laugh, that his cousin, when found, would be doing anything half so energetic or useful as carrying bricks he would have more hope of him if he could believe it. The laborer's real, or fancied, likeness to Edgar was but a case of chance resemblance, that was all. But that was not enough for Maria Clemm.
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