

E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Josephine Paolucci, and
the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)



THE DREAMER

A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe

by

MARY NEWTON STANARD
(Author of "The Story of Bacon's Rebellion")







     "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which
     escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions
     they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to
     find they have been upon the verge of the great secret."

     --_Edgar Allan Poe, in "Eleanora"_




Richmond, Virginia
The Bell Book and Stationery Company
1909
Copyright 1909
By Mary Newton Stanard



[Illustration: THE HERMITAGE PRESS
Bindery of L.H. Jenkins
Richmond, Va.]




    In the Sacred Memory
          of
    My Father and Mother





TO THE READER


This study of Edgar Allan Poe, poet and man, is simply an attempt to
make something like a finished picture of the shadowy sketch the
biographers, hampered by the limitations of proved fact, must, at best,
give us.

To this end I have used the story-teller's license to present the facts
in picturesque form. Yet I believe I have told a true story--true to the
spirit if not to the letter--for I think I have made Poe and the other
persons of the drama do nothing they may not have done, say nothing they
may not have said, feel nothing they may not have felt. In many
instances the opinions, and even the words I have placed in Poe's mouth
are his own--found in his published works or his letters.

I owe much, of course, to the writers of Poe books before and up to my
time. Among these, I would make especial and grateful acknowledgment to
Mr. J.H. Ingram, Professor George E. Woodberry, Professor James A.
Harrison and Mrs. Susan Archer Weiss.

But more than to any one of his biographers, I am indebted to Poe
himself for the revelations of his personality which appear in his own
stories and poems, the most part of which are clearly autobiographic.

M.N.S.




THE DREAMER




CHAPTER I.


The last roses of the year 1811 were in bloom in the Richmond gardens
and their petals would soon be scattered broadcast by the winds which
had already stripped the trees and left them standing naked against the
cold sky.

Cold indeed, it looked, through the small, smoky window, to the eyes of
the young and beautiful woman who lay dying of hectic fever in a dark,
musty room back of the shop of Mrs. Fipps, the milliner, in lower Main
Street--cold and friendless and drear.

She was still beautiful, though the sparkle in the great eyes fixed upon
the bleak sky had given place to deep melancholy and her face was
pinched and wan.

She knew that she was dying. Meanwhile, her appearance as leading lady
of Mr. Placide's company of high class players was flauntingly announced
by newspaper and bill-board.

The advertisement had put society in a flutter; for Elizabeth Arnold Poe
was a favorite with the public not only for her graces of person and
personality, her charming acting, singing and dancing, but she had that
incalculable advantage for an actress--an appealing life-story. It was
known that she had lately lost a dearly loved and loving husband whom
she had tenderly nursed through a distressing illness. It was also known
that the husband had been a descendant of a proud old family and that
the same high spirit which had led his grandfather, General Poe,
passionately denouncing British tyranny, to join the Revolutionary Army,
had, taking a different turn with the grandson, made him for the sake of
the gifted daughter of old England who had captured his heart--actress
though she was--sever home ties, abandon the career chosen for him by
his parents, and devote himself to the profession of which she was a
chief ornament. A brief five years of idylic happiness the pair had
spent together--happiness in spite of much work and some tears;--then
David Poe had succumbed to consumption, leaving a penniless widow with
three children to support. The eldest, a boy, was adopted by his
father's relatives in Baltimore. The other two--a boy of three years in
whom were blended the spirit, the beauty, the talent and the ardent
nature of both parents, and a soft-eyed, cooing baby girl--were clinging
about their mother whenever she was seen off