"If there happened to be friends present he was often obliging enough to read, and would sometimes read some of his own poems; but he would never read _The Raven_ unless he felt in the mood for it. When in Richmond he generally stayed with the Mackenzies at _Duncan Lodge_, and would drive in with them at any time. One day he came in with his sister and two of the Mackenzies and stopped with me. There were some other people present, and he read _The Raven_ for us. He shut out the daylight and read by an astral lamp on the table. When he was through all of us that had any tact whatever spared our comments and let our thanks be brief; for he was most impatient of both."
Of Poe's reading, Mrs. Clark spoke with enthusiasm. "It was altogether peculiar and indescribable," she said. "I have heard _The Raven_ read by his friend, John R. Thompson, and others, but it sounded so strange and affected, compared with his own delivery. Poe had a wonderful voice--rich, mellow and sweet. I cannot give you any idea of it. Edwin Booth sometimes reminds me of him in his eyes and expression, but Poe's voice was peculiar to himself. I have never heard anything like it. He often read from Shelley and other poets. One day he pointed out to me in one of Shelley's poems what he considered the truest characteristic of hopeless love that he knew of:
"'The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow.'
"I enjoyed a good deal of his society during that visit in 1847. On his last visit I saw less of him. He was then said to be engaged to a Mrs. Shelton. Some said he was marrying her for her money. There was a good deal of gossip at that time concerning Poe. His intemperate habits especially were exaggerated and made the most of by those who did not like him, while his companions in dissipation escaped unnoticed. When he was in company at a party for instance--you might see a little of him in the earlier part of the evening, but he would presently be off somewhere. Then his eccentricities; I think that when a very young man he imitated Byron."
Mrs. Clarke said she had seldom seen a good likeness of Poe. The best she had cut from an old magazine. "This engraving," she said, showing it, reflects at once the fastidiousness and the virility characteristic of his temperament. All the others have an expression pitiably weak. His worst calumniators could hardly desire for him a harder fate than the continual reproduction of that feeble visage. When he had money he was lavish and over-generous with it. He was always refined. You felt it in his very presence. And as long as I knew him, and as much as I was with him, I never saw him in the least intoxicated. I have seen him when he had had enough wine to make him talk with even more than his usual brilliancy. Indeed, to talk in a large general company, some little stimulant was necessary to him. Dr. Griswold says he was arrogant, dogmatic and impatient of contradiction. I have heard him engage in discussions frequently; oftenest with diffidence, always with consideration for others. In a large company it was only when exhilarated with wine that he spoke out his views and ideas with any degree of self-assertion."