The Dreamer

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The Dreamer

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Title: The Dreamer A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar
Allan Poe
Author: Mary Newton Stanard

Release Date: December 25, 2005 [eBook #17389]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DREAMER***
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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.