Mattie Landor

Mattie Landor is Augustus Landor’s deceased daughter, whose vivid presence emerges through his memories rather than through direct action in the narrative. As Augustus Landor speaks to Edgar Allan Poe, details of her childhood, mannerisms, and private enthusiasms make remembrance an act of intimacy: he cannot tell her story in order, but he can recover the singular person within it.

A Daughter Held in Memory

When Edgar Allan Poe admires a well-thumbed volume of Byron, Augustus Landor asks him to put it down because it belongs to his daughter. A brass chain slips from between the pages and strikes the wooden floor; Poe retrieves it and offers it back. The moment exposes how closely the book is bound to Mattie Landor’s memory, though the account does not identify the chain or explain its history.

Later, at Poe’s gentle prompting, Augustus Landor begins speaking about his daughter. He recalls her in no fixed chronology, moving between years and places as one memory brings another within reach. Sundays are when she feels nearest to him, and the uneven movement of his recollection gives the portrait its shape: Mattie is not presented as a sequence of milestones but as a person repeatedly returning to his mind.

Childhood and Character

Among the scenes Augustus Landor remembers is Mattie falling from an elm tree in Green-Wood Cemetery. In another, she sits in Fulton Market as a child, content to wait because she trusts that someone will come back for her. He also remembers her thirteenth birthday, when she buys a dress at Arnold Constable, and smaller encounters: eating ice cream at Contoit’s and hugging Jerry Thomas, the bartender at the Metropolitan Hotel.

Her habits make the recollection unusually physical and specific. The sound of her petticoats brings to Augustus Landor’s mind a stream churning against a weir. She walks with her head slightly lowered, as though checking her bootlaces, and holds a pen in her closed fist as if preparing to spear a fish. Her family cannot persuade her to change that grip, even when her hand cramps.

Mattie is inward, but not unobservant. Only poets can make her cry; ordinary people almost never do. When someone speaks crossly to her, she looks directly at him as if trying to understand how he has changed. She can perform Irish and Italian dialects and at least three varieties of German, skills Augustus Landor guesses she acquired on the streets of New York. He imagines that she might have had a career in the theater, while recognizing that her inwardness sets her apart from that public life.

The Telling and Its Aftermath

Augustus Landor’s memories reach Poe in fragments rather than as a polished account. When Poe asks her name, Landor answers that it is Mattie, then repeats it as his voice falters. Naming her makes the narration momentarily harder to sustain: the recollections have been personal throughout, but the spoken name brings the loss unmistakably into the room.

Poe accepts the account without pressing Landor to continue. His response carries a sweetness Landor experiences as absolution, although Landor does not stop to ask what, exactly, he is being absolved of. The embarrassment that accompanied the disclosure begins to recede, and he thanks Poe before rising to look for snuff. Mattie’s importance in the episode lies both in the remembered particulars of her life and in the change her name produces: for a moment, grief can be spoken and received.