Susan Archer Talley Weiss - The Home Life of Poe

On the day following a small funeral procession wended its way up the steep ascent of Church Hill to the graveyard of St. John's church, 1 1 In this historical church it was that Patrick Henry thrilled the hearts of his hearers with the memorable words, "Give me liberty or give me death!" and sent them forever "ringing down the grooves of time." crowning its summit. At that day it was no easy matter to get one whose profession had been that of an actor buried in consecrated ground; yet Mr. Mackenzie succeeded in effecting this. The grave was in a then obscure part of the cemetery, "close against the eastern wall," and here, after the brief service, the mother of Edgar Poe was laid to rest.

Mrs. Tubbs remained with Mr. Placide's company, and doubtless returned with them to England and to her own family.

Six weeks after the death of Mrs. Poe occurred that awful tragedy and holocaust of the burning of the Richmond theatre, which shrouded the whole country in gloom. On that night a large and fashionable audience attended the performance of " The Bleeding Nun ," eighty of whom perished in the flames. Mrs. Allen had expressed a wish to attend, with her sister and little Edgar, but her husband objected and instead took them on a Christmas visit to the country; so they escaped the tragedy, as did also the members of Placide's company.

Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie, on taking charge of the Poe children, entered into a correspondence with their grandfather, Mr. David Poe, of Baltimore, in regard to them. He was by no means anxious to claim them. He represented that he and his wife were old and poor, and that already having the eldest child, William Henry, upon his hands, he could not afford to burden himself with the others. Finally he proposed that the children should be placed in an orphan asylum, where they would be properly cared for, on hearing of which Mrs. Mackenzie declared that she would never turn the baby, Rosalie, out of her home, but would bring her up with her own children; while Mrs. Allan, who was childless and had become much attached to Edgar, proposed to her husband to adopt him.

Mr. Allan demurred. His chief objection was that the boy was the child of actors, and that to have him brought up as his son would not be advisable for him or creditable to themselves. It required some special pleading on the part of the lady, and she so far prevailed as that her husband consented to keep and care for the boy as for a son, but refused to be bound by any terms of legal responsibility as either guardian or adoptive parent, preferring to remain free to act in the future as he might think proper. Mr. Mackenzie pursued the same course with regard to Rosalie, though each bestowed on his protege his own family name in baptism.

There has been much useless discussion among Poe's biographers in regard to the ages of the children at this time. Woodbury " calculates ," according to certain data obtained from a Boston newspaper regarding the appearance of Mrs. Poe on the stage. "At this time," he says, speaking of her prolonged absence in 1807, "William Henry may have been born;" and accordingly fixes Edgar's birth as having occurred two years later, in 1809.

Wishing to satisfy myself on this point, I some time since decided to go to the fountain-head for information, and wrote to Mrs. Byrd, a daughter of Mrs. Mackenzie, who had been brought up with Rosalie Poe. Her answer I have carefully preserved and here give verbatim :

"Dear S–.—You ask the ages of Rose and Edgar. He was born in 1808, Rose in 1810. A remark of his (in answer to an invitation to her wedding) was that if I had put off my marriage one week it would have been on his birthday. I was married on the 5th of October.... Their mother died on the 8th Dec., 1811; and on the 9th the children were taken to Mr. Allan's and our house.... Their mother was boarding at Mrs. Fipps', a milliner on Main street. She was Scotch and of good family; and my father and Mr. Allan had her put away decently at the old Church on the Hill.... Mr. Poe died first."

This account of the children's ages is entitled to more weight than those of his biographers, based upon mere calculation and " probabilities ." When the children were baptized as Edgar Allan and Rosalie Mackenzie, their ages were also recorded, though whether in church or family records is not known; and it is not likely that Mrs. Byrd, who was brought up with Rosalie Poe, could be mistaken on this point.

Were Woodbury correct in assuming that William Henry, the eldest child, " may have been born " in October, 1807, and Edgar, January 19, 1809, it would follow that the latter, when taken charge of by the Allans in December, 1811, was less than two years old; an impossibility, considering that his sister was then over one year old and running about playing with other children. As to Mr. Poe's claim to October 12 as his birthday, it is not likely that, howsoever often he may have given a false date to others, he would have ventured upon it to the daughter of Mrs. Mackenzie, the latter of whom would have detected the error.

It must be accepted as a final conclusion that, as Mrs. Byrd states, Edgar was born in 1808 and Rosalie in 1810. 2 2 The official date of Rosalie Poe's death, on June 14, 1874, represents her as 64 years of age. This would make her a year and a half old when adopted by the Mackenzies, in December, 1811. Her positive assertion is proof sufficient against all mere calculation and conjecture; and in this book I shall hold to these dates as authentic.

Mr. Allan was at this time thirty-one years of age—a plain, practical business man, or, as some one has described him, "an honest, hard-headed Scotchman, kindly, but stubborn and irascible." His wife, some years younger than himself, was a beautiful woman, warm-hearted, impulsive and fond of company and amusement. Both were charitable, and though not at this time in what is called "society," were in comfortable circumstances and fond of entertaining their friends.

There was yet another member of the family, Miss Ann Valentine, an elder sister of Mrs. Allan; a lady of a lovely disposition and almost as fond of Edgar as was his so-called "mother." She was always his "Aunt Nancy."

The Allans were at this time living in the business part of the town, occupying one of a row of dingy three-story brick houses still standing on Fourteenth street, between Main and Franklin. Mr. Allan had his store on the ground floor, the family apartments being above. This was at that time and until long afterward a usual mode of living with some of the down-town merchants; though a few had already built handsome residences on Shocko Hill.

Little Edgar, bright, gay and beautiful, soon became the pet and pride of the household. Even Mr. Allan grew fond of him, and his wife delighted in taking him about and showing him off among her acquaintances. In his baggy little trousers of yellow Nankin or silk pongee, with his dark ringlets flowing over an immense "tucker," red silk stockings and peaked purple velvet cap, with its heavy gold tassel falling gracefully on one shoulder, he was the admiration of all beholders. His disposition was affectionate and his temper sweet, though having been hitherto allowed to have his own way, he was self-willed and sometimes difficult to manage. To correct his faults and as a counter balance to his wife's undue indulgence, Mr. Allan conscientiously set about training the boy according to his own ideas of what was best. When Edgar was "good" he was petted and indulged, but an act of disobedience or wrong-doing was punished, as some said, with undue severity. To shield him from this was the aim of the family, even of the servants; and the boy soon learned to resort to various little tricks and artifices on his own account. An amusing instance of this was told by Mrs. Allan herself. Edgar one day would persist in running out in the rain, when Mr. Allan peremptorily called him in, with the threat of a whipping. He presently entered and, meekly walking up to his guardian, looked him in the face with his large, solemn gray eyes and held out a bunch of switches. "What are these for?" inquired the latter. "To whip me with," answered the little diplomat; and Mr. Allan had to turn aside to hide a smile, for the "switches" had been selected with a purpose, being only the long, tough leaf-stems of the alanthus tree.