34 BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



tlie end of June, 1849, Poe bade farewell to Mrs. Clemm, 

 whom, like the child he was, he still called " Muddie," and 

 left the Fordham home forever. Through the three and a 

 half months that brought him to his death, it is not my duty 

 tn lead you. His life in Fordham was ended. 



Let me in a word sum up the later history of the cottage. 

 The kind neighbors came in, and helped Mrs. Clemm to gather 

 her few effects, and leave the sad gray house. Two articles, 

 the Poe family Bible and the clock, are still in the Bronx in 

 the hands of Mr. W. H. Valentine and his brother. Mr. 

 Valentine told me recently that he was a child of four when 

 in 1850, he had his first Christmas-tree in the Poe cottage. 



Since 1866, when the Valentines sold it. the property has 

 belonged to Mr. John Berrian, Mr. Charles Carey, and finally 

 to the present owner. M. Chauvet. Mr. Carey once offered 

 the house to the Park Department on the condition that it be 

 set up in Bronx Park. The offer was refused. The obvious 

 course at the present time, for a city with real civic pride, 

 would be to buy the house and the plot adjoining, as a part 

 of Poe Park. Certainly no other house in this city can boast 

 of having sheltered a poet engaged in the composition of 

 poems of such haunting and melancholy beauty, and of such 

 enduring 1 worth. 



