The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1452]
Dear Muddy says she will write you a long letter in a day or two & tell you how good I am. She is in high spirits at my prospects and at our hopes of coon seeing Annie. We have told our landlord that we will not take the house next year. Do not let Mr. R., however, make any arrangements for us in Lowell, or Westford — for, being poor, we are so much the slaves of circumstances. At all events, we will both come & see you & spend a week with you in the early spring, or before — but we will let you know some time before we come. Muddy sends her dearest — dearest love to you & Sarah & to all. And now good bye, my dear, darling, beautiful Annie.
Your own Eddy.
Edgar Allan Poe to Annie L. Richmond — February 18, 1849
Fordham Feb. 19. (18) Sunday 1849
Dear — dearest Annie — my sweet friend & sister —
I fear that in this letter, which I write with a heavy heart, you will find much to disappoint & grieve you — for I must abandon my proposed visit to Lowell & God only knows when I shall see & clasp you by the hand. I have come to this determination to-day, after looking over some of your letters to me & my mother, written since I left you. You have not said it to me, but I have been enabled to glean from what you have said, that Mr Richmond has permitted himself (perhaps without knowing it) to be influenced against me, by the malignant misrepresentations of Mr & Mrs Locke. Now I frankly own to you dear Annie, that I am proud, although I have never shown myself proud to you or yours & never will — You know that I quarrelled with the Lockes solely on your account & Mr R’s — It was obviously my interest to keep in with them, & moreover they had rendered me some services which entitled them to my gratitude up to the time when I discovered they had been blazoning their favors to the world — Gratitude then, as well as interest, would have led me not to offend them; and the insults offered to me individually by Mrs Locke were not sufficient to make me break with them. It was only when I heard them declare that through their patronage alone, you were admitted into society — that your husband was everything despicable — that it would ruin my mother even to enter your doors — it was only when such insults were offered to you, whom I sincerely & most purely loved, & to Mr R. whom I had every reason to like & respect, that I arose & left their house & incurred the unrelenting vengeance of that worst of all fiends, “a woman scorned” — Now feeling all this, I cannot help thinking it unkind in Mr R. when I am absent & unable to defend myself, that he will persist in listening to what these people say to my discredit — I cannot help thinking it, moreover, the most unaccountable instance of weakness — of obtuseness — that ever I knew a man to be guilty of: — women are more easily misled in such matters. In the name of God, what else had I to anticipate, in return for the offence which I offered to Mrs Locke’s insane vanity & self-esteem, than that she would spend the rest of her days in ransacking the world for scandal against me, (& the falser the better for her purpose,) & in fabricating accusations where she could not find them ready made? I certainly anticipated no other line of conduct on her part — but, on the other hand, I certainly did not anticipate that any man in his senses, would ever listen to accusations, from so suspicious a source. That any man could be really influenced by them surpasses my belief, & the fact is, Annie, to come at once to the point — I cannot & do not believe it — The obvious prejudices of Mr