Some ten years after the death of Poe I received from Mrs. Clemm a letter giving a pathetic account of her homelessness and poverty. But, she added, she had been offered a home with her relatives at the South; and she appealed to me, as a friend of her "Eddie," to assist her in raising the money necessary to pay her expenses thither. A similar appeal she made to other of Poe's former friends; but we heard of her afterward as an inmate of the Church Home Infirmary in Baltimore, where she died in 1871, having outlived her son-in-law some twenty-two years. It is a curious coincidence that the building in which she died was the same in which, as the Washington Hospital, Poe had breathed his last.
Her grave is in Westminster cemetery, and in sight of Poe's monument.
In order thoroughly to understand Poe, it is necessary that one should recognize the dominant trait of his character--a trait which affected and in a measure overruled all the rest--in a word, _weakness of will_.
"Unstable as water," is written upon Poe's every visage in characters which all might read; in the weak falling away of the outline of the jaw, the narrow, receding chin, and the sensitive, irresolute mouth. Above the soul-lighted eyes and the magnificent temple of intellect overshadowing them, we look in vain for the rising dome of _Firmness_, which, like the keystone of the arch, should strengthen and bind together the rest. Lacking this, the arch must be ever tottering to a fall.
To this weakness of will we may trace nearly every other defect in Poe's character, together with most of the disappointments and failures in whatsoever he undertook. He lacked the resolution and persistence necessary to battle against obstacles, to persevere to the end against opposition and discouragement, and to resist temptations and influences which he knew would lead him astray from the object which he had at heart. In this way he lost many a coveted prize when it seemed almost within his grasp.
The accepted opinion is that Poe's dissipation was his chief fault, as it was that to which was owing his ruin in the end. But even this was the effect chiefly of weakness of will. He was not by nature inclined to evil, but the contrary; and we have seen that, when left to himself and not exposed to temptation, he was, from all accounts, "sober, industrious and exemplary in his conduct." But he lacked firmness to resist the temptation which, more than in the case of most men, assailed him on every side.
