She turned to Miss Pinckney. “Did you ever read a story called ‘The Gold Bug’ by Edgar Allan Poe?” she asked. “It is 111 about a place near here—Sullivan’s Island—that’s it—I remember now.” 111 “Why, I knew him,” said Miss Pinckney. “Knew Edgar Allan Poe!” said Phyl. “I knew him when I was a child and I have sat on his knee and I can see his face—what a face it was! and the coat he wore—it had a velvet collar—his teeth were beautiful, and his hair—beautiful glossy hair it was, but he was not handsome as people use that expression, he was extraordinary, such eyes—and the most wonderful voice in the world. I’m seventy-five years of age and he died in October ’49, and I met him three years before he died, so you see I was a pretty small child. It was at Fordham. He’d just taken a cottage there for his wife, who was ailing with consumption, and my aunt, Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods, took me there. It must have been summer for I remember a bird hanging in a cage in the sunshine, a bob-o’-link it was, he had caught it in the woods. “Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer day’s gone to, and the bob-o’-link—’pears to me we aren’t even memories, for memories live and we don’t.” They were walking along, Abraham slowly following with the carriage, and Miss Pinckney was walking in an exultant manner as though she saw nothing about her, as though she were treading air. Phyl had unconsciously set free a train of thought in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened and what she said. 112 112 “But his memory will live. Look right round you, do you see his statue?” “No,” said Phyl, sweeping the view. “Where is it?” “Just so, where is it? It’s not here, it’s not in N’York, it’s not in Baltimore, it’s not in Philadelphia, it’s not in Boston. The one real splendid writing man that America has produced she’s ashamed to put up a statue to. Why? Because he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank. No, it wasn’t drink, it was Griswold. The man who hated him, the man who crucified his
Prev.
Back
Top