have been simply a plan of Mrs. Clemm to bring matters to the
satisfactory conclusion which she desired. She possessed over her nephew
then and always the influence and authority of a strong and determined
will over a very weak one; and we here see that in less than two months
after Poe's leaving her house she had carried her point and married him
to her daughter. Having thus secured him, she was content to wait a more
propitious time for making the marriage public.

There is yet a little episode which may have influenced this affair and
may serve further to explain it.

When Poe first went to Richmond, Mr. White, as a safeguard from the
temptation to evil habits, received him as an inmate of his own home,
where he immediately fell in love with the editor's youngest daughter,
"little Eliza," a lovely girl of eighteen. It was said that the father,
who idolized his daughter, and was also very fond of Poe, did not forbid
the match, but made his consent conditional upon the young man's
remaining perfectly sober for a certain length of time. All was going
well, and the couple were looked upon as engaged, when Mrs. Clemm, who
kept a watchful eye upon her nephew, may have received information of
the affair, and we have seen the result.

Does this throw any light upon Poe's pitiful appeal, "Urge me to do what
is right"? Was this why the marriage was kept secret--to give time for a
proper breaking off of the match with Elizabeth White? And it is
certain, from all accounts, that Poe now, at once, plunged into the
dissipation which was, according to general report, the occasion of Mr.
White's prohibition of his attentions to his daughter. It was she to
whom the lines, "_To Eliza_," now included in Poe's poems, were
addressed.

When I was a girl I more than once heard of Eliza White and her love
affair with Edgar Poe. "She was the sweetest girl that I ever knew,"
said a lady who had been her schoolmate; "a slender, graceful blonde,
with deep blue eyes, who reminded you of the Watteau Shepherdesses upon
fans. She was a great student, and very bright and intelligent. She was
said to be engaged to Poe, but they never appeared anywhere together. It
was soon broken off on account of his dissipation. I don't think she
ever got over it. She had many admirers, but is still unmarried."

Recently I read an article written by Mrs. Holmes Cumming, of
Louisville, Kentucky, in which she spoke of persons and places that she
had seen in Rich