Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe
Encyclopedia
Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (née
Clemm; August 15, 1822 January 30, 1847) was the wife of American writer Edgar Allan Poe
. The couple were first cousins
and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they might have never consummated
their marriage. In January 1842 she contracted tuberculosis
and died of the disease in January 1847 at the age of 24 in the family's cottage
outside New York City
.
Along with other family members, Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment, living intermittently in Baltimore
, Philadelphia, and New York
. A few years after their wedding, Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood
and Elizabeth F. Ellet
. Rumors about amorous improprieties on her husband's part affected Virginia Poe so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband's in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
in Baltimore, Maryland
. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death.
The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee
", "The Raven
", and "Ligeia
".
Virginia Eliza Clemm was born on August 15, 1822 and named after an older sister who had died as an infant only ten days earlier. Her father William Clemm, Jr. was a hardware merchant in Baltimore. He had married Maria Poe, Virginia's mother, on July 12, 1817, after the death of his first wife, Maria's first cousin Harriet. Clemm had five children from his previous marriage and went on to have three more with Maria. After his death in 1826, he left very little to the family and relatives offered no financial support because they had opposed the marriage. Maria supported the family by sewing and taking in boarders, aided with an annual $240 pension granted to her mother Elizabeth Cairnes, who was paralyzed and bedridden. Elizabeth received this pension on behalf of her late husband, "General" David Poe, a former quartermaster
in Maryland who had loaned money to the state.
Edgar Poe first met his cousin Virginia in August 1829, four months after his discharge from the Army. She was seven at the time. In 1832, the family – made up of Elizabeth, Maria, Virginia, and Virginia's brother Henry – was able to use Elizabeth's pension to rent a home at what was then 3 North Amity Street
in Baltimore. Poe's older brother William Henry Leonard Poe
, who had been living with the family, had recently died on August 1, 1831. Poe joined the household in 1833 and was soon smitten by a neighbor named Mary Devereaux. The young Virginia served as a messenger between the two, at one point retrieving a lock of Devereaux's hair to give to Poe. Elizabeth Cairnes Poe died on July 7, 1835, effectively ending the family's income and making their financial situation even more difficult. Henry died around this time, sometime before 1836, leaving Virginia as Maria Clemm's only surviving child.
In August 1835, Poe left the destitute family behind and moved to Richmond, Virginia
to take a job at the Southern Literary Messenger
. While Poe was away from Baltimore, another cousin, Neilson Poe, the husband of Virginia's half-sister Josephine Clemm, heard that Edgar was considering marrying Virginia. Neilson offered to take her in and have her educated in an attempt to prevent the girl's marriage to Edgar at such a young age, though suggesting that the option could be reconsidered later. Edgar called Neilson, the owner of a newspaper in Baltimore
, Maryland
, his "bitterest enemy" and interpreted his cousin's actions as an attempt at breaking his connection with Virginia. On August 29, 1835, Edgar wrote an emotional letter to Maria, declaring that he was "blinded with tears while writing", and pleading that she allow Virginia to make her own decision. Encouraged by his employment at the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe offered to provide financially for Maria, Virginia and Henry if they moved to Richmond.
Marriage plans were confirmed and Poe returned to Baltimore to file for a marriage license
on September 22, 1835. The couple might have been quietly married as well, though accounts are unclear. Their only public ceremony was in Richmond on May 16, 1836, when they were married by a Presbyterian minister named Rev. Amasa Converse. Poe was 27 and Virginia was 13, though her age was listed as 21. This marriage bond was filed in Richmond and included an affidavit
from Thomas W. Cleland confirming the bride's alleged age. The ceremony was held in the evening at the home of a Mrs. James Yarrington, the owner of the boarding house
in which Poe, Virginia, and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm were staying. Yarrington helped Maria Clemm bake the wedding cake and prepared a wedding meal. The couple then had a short honeymoon
in Petersburg, Virginia
.
Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman
, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife. Some scholars, including Marie Bonaparte
, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin
because she and her husband never consummated their marriage. This interpretation often assumes that Virginia is represented by the title character in the poem "Annabel Lee
": a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee". Poe biographer Joseph Wood Krutch suggests that Poe did not need women "in the way that normal men need them", but only as a source of inspiration and care, and that Poe was never interested in women sexually. Friends of Poe suggested that the couple did not share a bed for at least the first two years of their marriage but that, from the time she turned 16, they had a "normal" married life until the onset of her illness.
Virginia and Poe were by all accounts a happy and devoted couple. Poe's one-time employer George Rex Graham
wrote of their relationship: "His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty." Poe once wrote to a friend, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife." She, in turn, by many contemporary accounts, nearly idolized her husband. She often sat close to him while he wrote, kept his pens in order, and folded and addressed his manuscripts. She showed her love for Poe in an acrostic
poem she composed when she was 23, dated February 14, 1846:
The "tattling of many tongues" in Virginia's Valentine poem was a reference to actual incidents. In 1845, Poe had begun a flirtation with Frances Sargent Osgood
, a married 34-year-old poet. Virginia was aware of the friendship and might even have encouraged it. She often invited Osgood to visit them at home, believing that the older woman had a "restraining" effect on Poe, who had made a promise to "give up the use of stimulants" and was never drunk in Osgood's presence.
At the same time, another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet
, became enamored of Poe and jealous of Osgood. Though, in a letter to Sarah Helen Whitman
, Poe called her love for him "loathsome" and wrote that he "could do nothing but repel [it] with scorn", he printed many of her poems to him in the Broadway Journal
while he was its editor. Ellet was known for being meddlesome and vindictive and, while visiting the Poe household in late January 1846, she saw one of Osgood's personal letters to Poe. According to Ellet, Virginia pointed out "fearful paragraphs" in Osgood's letter. Ellet contacted Osgood and suggested she should beware of her indiscretions and asked Poe to return her letters, motivated either by jealousy or by a desire to cause scandal. Osgood then sent Margaret Fuller
and Anne Lynch Botta
to ask Poe on her behalf to return the letters. Angered by their interference, Poe called them "Busy-bodies" and said that Ellet had better "look after her own letters", suggesting indiscretion on her part. He then gathered up these letters from Ellet and left them at her house.
Though these letters had already been returned to her, Ellet asked her brother "to demand of me the letters". Her brother, Colonel William Lummis, did not believe that Poe had already returned them and threatened to kill him. In order to defend himself, Poe requested a pistol from Thomas Dunn English
. English, Poe's friend and a minor writer who was also a trained doctor and lawyer, likewise did not believe that Poe had already returned the letters and even questioned their existence. The easiest way out of the predicament, he said, "was a retraction of unfounded charges". Angered at being called a liar, Poe pushed English into a fistfight. Poe later claimed he was triumphant in the fight, though English claimed otherwise, and Poe's face was badly cut by one of English's rings. In Poe's version, he said, "I gave E. a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death." Either way, the fight further sparked gossip over the Osgood affair.
Osgood's husband stepped in and threatened to sue Ellet unless she formally apologized for her insinuations. She retracted her statements in a letter to Osgood saying, "The letter shown me by Mrs Poe must have been a forgery" created by Poe himself. She put all the blame on Poe, suggesting the incident was because Poe was "intemperate and subject to acts of lunacy". Ellet spread the rumor of Poe's insanity, which was taken up by other enemies of Poe and reported in newspapers. The St. Louis Reveille reported: "A rumor is in circulation in New York, to the effect that Mr. Edgar A. Poe, the poet and author, has been deranged, and his friends are about to place him under the charge of Dr. Brigham
of the Insane Retreat
at Utica." The scandal eventually died down only when Osgood reunited with her husband. Virginia, however, had been very affected by the whole affair. She had received anonymous letters about her husband's alleged indiscretions as early as July 1845. It is presumed that Ellet was involved with these letters, and they so disturbed Virginia that she allegedly declared on her deathbed that "Mrs. E. had been her murderer."
, first seen sometime in the middle of January 1842. While singing and playing the piano, Virginia began to bleed from the mouth, though Poe said she merely "ruptured a blood-vessel". Her health declined and she became an invalid, which drove Poe into a deep depression, especially as she occasionally showed signs of improvement. In a letter to a friend, Poe described his resulting mental state: "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
Virginia's condition might have been what prompted the Poe family to move, in the hopes of finding a healthier environment for her. They moved several times within Philadelphia in the early 1840s and their last home in that city is now preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
in Spring Garden
. In this home, Virginia was well enough to tend the flower garden and entertain visitors by playing the harp or the piano and singing. The family then moved to New York sometime in early April 1844, traveling by train and steamboat. Virginia waited on board the ship while her husband secured space at a boarding house on Greenwich Street. By early 1846, family friend Elizabeth Oakes Smith said that Virginia admitted, "I know I shall die soon; I know I can't get well; but I want to be as happy as possible, and make Edgar happy." She promised her husband that after her death she would be his guardian angel.
in Fordham
, about fourteen miles outside the city, a home which is still standing today
. In what is the only surviving letter from Poe to Virginia, dated June 12, 1846, he urged her to remain optimistic: "Keep up your heart in all hopelessness, and trust yet a little longer." Of his recent loss of the Broadway Journal, the only magazine Poe ever owned, he said, "I should have lost my courage but for you—my darling little wife you are my greatest and only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life." But by November of that year, Virginia's condition was hopeless. Her symptoms included irregular appetite, flushed cheeks, unstable pulse, night sweats, high fever, sudden chills, shortness of breath, chest pains, coughing and spitting up blood.
Nathaniel Parker Willis
, a friend of Poe's and an influential editor, published an announcement on December 30, 1846, requesting help for the family, though his facts were not entirely correct:
Willis, who had not corresponded with Poe for two years and had since lost his own wife, was one of his greatest supporters in this period. He sent Poe and his wife an inspirational Christmas book, The Marriage Ring; or How to Make a Home Happy.
The announcement was similar to one made for Poe's mother, Eliza Poe
, during her last stages of tuberculosis. Other newspapers picked up on the story: "Great God!", said one, "is it possible, that the literary people of the Union, will let poor Poe perish by starvation and lean faced beggary in New York? For so we are led to believe, from frequent notices in the papers, stating that Poe and his wife are both down upon a bed of misery, death, and disease, with not a ducat in the world." The Saturday Evening Post asserted that Virginia was in a hopeless condition and that Poe was bereft: "It is said that Edgar A. Poe is lying dangerously with brain fever, and that his wife is in the last stages of consumption—they are without money and without friends." Even editor Hiram Fuller, whom Poe had previously sued for libel, attempted in the New York Mirror to garner support for Poe and his wife: "We, whom he has quarrelled with, will take the lead", he wrote.
Virginia was described as having dark hair and violet eyes, with skin so pale it was called "pure white", causing a "bad complexion that spoiled her looks". One visitor to the Poe family noted that "the rose-tint upon her cheek was too bright", possibly a symptom of her illness. Another visitor in Fordham wrote, "Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look." That unearthly look was mentioned by others who suggested it made her look not quite human. William Gowans, who once lodged with the family, described Virginia as a woman of "matchless beauty and loveliness, her eye could match that of any houri
, and her face defy the genius of a Canova
to imitate". She might have been a little plump. Many contemporary accounts as well as modern biographers remark on her child-like appearance even in the last years of her life.
While dying, Virginia asked her mother: "Darling... will you console and take care of my poor Eddy—you will never never leave him?" Her mother stayed with Poe until his own death in 1849. As Virginia was dying, the family received many visitors, including an old friend named Mary Starr. At one point Virginia put Starr's hand in Poe's and asked her to "be a friend to Eddy, and don't forsake him". Virginia was tended to by 25-year old Marie Louise Shew. Shew, who served as a nurse, knew medical care from her father and her husband, both doctors. She provided Virginia with a comforter
as her only other cover was Poe's old military cloak
, as well as bottles of wine, which the invalid drank "smiling, even when difficult to get it down". Virginia also showed Poe a letter from Louisa Patterson, second wife of Poe's foster-father John Allan, which she had kept for years and which suggested that Patterson had purposely caused the break between Allan and Poe.
Virginia died the following day, January 30, after five years of illness. Shew helped in organizing her funeral, even purchasing the coffin. Death notices appeared in several newspapers. On February 1, The New York Daily Tribune and the Herald carried the simple obituary: "On Saturday, the 30th ult., of pulmonary consumption, in the 25th year of her age, VIRGINIA ELIZA, wife of EDGAR A. POE." The funeral was February 2, 1847. Attendees included Nathaniel Parker Willis, Ann S. Stephens
, and publisher George Pope Morris
. Poe refused to look at his dead wife's face, saying he preferred to remember her living. Though now buried at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
, Virginia was originally buried in a vault
owned by the Valentine family, from whom the Poes rented their Fordham cottage.
Only one image of Virginia is known to exist, for which the painter had to take her corpse as model. A few hours after her death, Poe realized he had no image of Virginia and so commissioned a portrait in watercolor
. She is shown wearing "beautiful linen" that Shew said she had dressed her in; Shew might have been the portrait's artist, though this is uncertain. The image depicts her with a slight double chin and with hazel eyes. The image was passed down to the family of Virginia's half-sister Josephine, wife of Neilson Poe.
In 1875, the same year in which her husband's body was reburied, the cemetery in which she lay was destroyed and her remains were almost forgotten. An early Poe biographer, William Gill, gathered the bones and stored them in a box he hid under his bed. Gill's story was reported in the Boston Herald
twenty-seven years after the event: he says that he had visited the Fordham cemetery in 1883 at exactly the moment that the sexton
Dennis Valentine held Virginia's bones in his shovel, ready to throw them away as unclaimed. Poe himself had died in 1849, and so Gill took Virginia's remains and, after corresponding with Neilson Poe and John Prentiss Poe in Baltimore, arranged to bring the box down to be laid on Poe's left side in a small bronze casket. Virginia's remains were finally buried with her husband's on January 19, 1885—the seventy-sixth anniversary of her husband's birth and nearly ten years after his current monument was erected. The same man who served as sexton during Poe's original burial and his exhumations and reburials was also present at the rites which brought his body to rest with Virginia and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm.
Poe regularly visited Virginia's grave. As his friend Charles Chauncey Burr wrote, "Many times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow". Shortly after Virginia's death, Poe courted several other women, including Nancy Richmond of Lowell, Massachusetts
, Sarah Helen Whitman
of Providence, Rhode Island
, and childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster
in Richmond. Even so, Frances Sargent Osgood, whom Poe also attempted to woo, believed "that [Virginia] was the only woman whom he ever loved".
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Clemm; August 15, 1822 January 30, 1847) was the wife of American writer Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. The couple were first cousins
Cousin
In kinship terminology, a cousin is a relative with whom one shares one or more common ancestors. The term is rarely used when referring to a relative in one's immediate family where there is a more specific term . The term "blood relative" can be used synonymously and establishes the existence of...
and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they might have never consummated
Consummation
Consummation is the initial sexual act made within a marriage.Consummation can also refer to:* Consummation , 1970 recordingSee also:* Consummation of days, event predicted in Daniel Chapter 12, verses 1-4...
their marriage. In January 1842 she contracted tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
and died of the disease in January 1847 at the age of 24 in the family's cottage
Edgar Allan Poe Cottage
The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, sometimes called simply Poe Cottage, is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is located on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse in the The Bronx, New York, a short distance from its original location, and is now in the northern part of Poe Park.The...
outside New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Along with other family members, Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment, living intermittently in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Philadelphia, and New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. A few years after their wedding, Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood
Frances Sargent Osgood
Frances Sargent Osgood was an American poet and one of the most popular women writers during her time...
and Elizabeth F. Ellet
Elizabeth F. Ellet
Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War....
. Rumors about amorous improprieties on her husband's part affected Virginia Poe so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband's in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
The Westminster Hall and Burying Ground is a graveyard and former church located at 519 West Fayette Street in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Occupying the southeast corner of Fayette and Greene Street on the west side of downtown Baltimore, the site is probably most famous as the burial site...
in Baltimore, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death.
The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He...
", "The Raven
The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...
", and "Ligeia
Ligeia
"Ligeia" is an early short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She falls ill, composes "The Conqueror Worm", and quotes lines attributed to Joseph Glanvill ...
".
Early life
Quartermaster
Quartermaster refers to two different military occupations depending on if the assigned unit is land based or naval.In land armies, especially US units, it is a term referring to either an individual soldier or a unit who specializes in distributing supplies and provisions to troops. The senior...
in Maryland who had loaned money to the state.
Edgar Poe first met his cousin Virginia in August 1829, four months after his discharge from the Army. She was seven at the time. In 1832, the family – made up of Elizabeth, Maria, Virginia, and Virginia's brother Henry – was able to use Elizabeth's pension to rent a home at what was then 3 North Amity Street
Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum
The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, located at 203 Amity St. in Baltimore, Maryland, is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe in the 1830s. Now open as a museum, the small unassuming structure is a typical row home, and also houses the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. It was...
in Baltimore. Poe's older brother William Henry Leonard Poe
William Henry Leonard Poe
William Henry Leonard Poe, often referred to as Henry Poe , was a sailor, amateur poet and the older brother of Edgar Allan Poe and Rosalie Poe....
, who had been living with the family, had recently died on August 1, 1831. Poe joined the household in 1833 and was soon smitten by a neighbor named Mary Devereaux. The young Virginia served as a messenger between the two, at one point retrieving a lock of Devereaux's hair to give to Poe. Elizabeth Cairnes Poe died on July 7, 1835, effectively ending the family's income and making their financial situation even more difficult. Henry died around this time, sometime before 1836, leaving Virginia as Maria Clemm's only surviving child.
In August 1835, Poe left the destitute family behind and moved to Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
to take a job at the Southern Literary Messenger
Southern Literary Messenger
The Southern Literary Messenger was a periodical published in Richmond, Virginia, from 1834 until June 1864. Each issue carried a subtitle of "Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts" or some variation and included poetry, fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and historical notes...
. While Poe was away from Baltimore, another cousin, Neilson Poe, the husband of Virginia's half-sister Josephine Clemm, heard that Edgar was considering marrying Virginia. Neilson offered to take her in and have her educated in an attempt to prevent the girl's marriage to Edgar at such a young age, though suggesting that the option could be reconsidered later. Edgar called Neilson, the owner of a newspaper in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, his "bitterest enemy" and interpreted his cousin's actions as an attempt at breaking his connection with Virginia. On August 29, 1835, Edgar wrote an emotional letter to Maria, declaring that he was "blinded with tears while writing", and pleading that she allow Virginia to make her own decision. Encouraged by his employment at the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe offered to provide financially for Maria, Virginia and Henry if they moved to Richmond.
Marriage
Marriage license
A marriage license is a document issued, either by a church or state authority, authorizing a couple to marry. The procedure for obtaining a license varies between countries and has changed over time...
on September 22, 1835. The couple might have been quietly married as well, though accounts are unclear. Their only public ceremony was in Richmond on May 16, 1836, when they were married by a Presbyterian minister named Rev. Amasa Converse. Poe was 27 and Virginia was 13, though her age was listed as 21. This marriage bond was filed in Richmond and included an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
from Thomas W. Cleland confirming the bride's alleged age. The ceremony was held in the evening at the home of a Mrs. James Yarrington, the owner of the boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
in which Poe, Virginia, and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm were staying. Yarrington helped Maria Clemm bake the wedding cake and prepared a wedding meal. The couple then had a short honeymoon
Honeymoon
-History:One early reference to a honeymoon is in Deuteronomy 24:5 “When a man is newly wed, he need not go out on a military expedition, nor shall any public duty be imposed on him...
in Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg is an independent city in Virginia, United States located on the Appomattox River and south of the state capital city of Richmond. The city's population was 32,420 as of 2010, predominantly of African-American ethnicity...
.
Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman
Kenneth Silverman
Kenneth Silverman is a professor emeritus at New York University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. Silverman was born in Manhattan in 1936.-Books:* The Life and Times of Cotton Mather New York : Harper & Row, 1984...
, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife. Some scholars, including Marie Bonaparte
Princess Marie Bonaparte
Princess Marie Bonaparte was a French author and psychoanalyst, closely linked with Sigmund Freud. Her wealth contributed to the popularity of psychoanalysis, and enabled Freud's escape from Nazi Germany....
, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin
Virginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
because she and her husband never consummated their marriage. This interpretation often assumes that Virginia is represented by the title character in the poem "Annabel Lee
Annabel Lee
"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem composed by American author Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He...
": a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee". Poe biographer Joseph Wood Krutch suggests that Poe did not need women "in the way that normal men need them", but only as a source of inspiration and care, and that Poe was never interested in women sexually. Friends of Poe suggested that the couple did not share a bed for at least the first two years of their marriage but that, from the time she turned 16, they had a "normal" married life until the onset of her illness.
Virginia and Poe were by all accounts a happy and devoted couple. Poe's one-time employer George Rex Graham
George Rex Graham
George Rex Graham was a journalist, editor, and publishing entrepreneur from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He founded the journal Graham's Magazine at the age of 27 after buying Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and Atkinson's Casket...
wrote of their relationship: "His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty." Poe once wrote to a friend, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife." She, in turn, by many contemporary accounts, nearly idolized her husband. She often sat close to him while he wrote, kept his pens in order, and folded and addressed his manuscripts. She showed her love for Poe in an acrostic
Acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
poem she composed when she was 23, dated February 14, 1846:
- Ever with thee I wish to roam —
- Dearest my life is thine.
- Give me a cottage for my home
- And a rich old cypress vine,
- Removed from the world with its sin and care
- And the tattling of many tongues.
- Love alone shall guide us when we are there —
- Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
- And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
- Never wishing that others may see!
- Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend
- Ourselves to the world and its glee —
- Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.
Osgood/Ellet scandal
Frances Sargent Osgood
Frances Sargent Osgood was an American poet and one of the most popular women writers during her time...
, a married 34-year-old poet. Virginia was aware of the friendship and might even have encouraged it. She often invited Osgood to visit them at home, believing that the older woman had a "restraining" effect on Poe, who had made a promise to "give up the use of stimulants" and was never drunk in Osgood's presence.
At the same time, another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet
Elizabeth F. Ellet
Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War....
, became enamored of Poe and jealous of Osgood. Though, in a letter to Sarah Helen Whitman
Sarah Helen Whitman
Sarah Helen Power Whitman was a poet, essayist, transcendentalist, Spiritualist and a romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe.-Early life:...
, Poe called her love for him "loathsome" and wrote that he "could do nothing but repel [it] with scorn", he printed many of her poems to him in the Broadway Journal
Broadway Journal
The Broadway Journal was a short-lived New York City-based periodical founded by Charles Frederick Briggs and John Bisco in 1844. A year later, the publication was bought by Edgar Allan Poe, becoming the only magazine he ever owned, though it failed after only a few months under his...
while he was its editor. Ellet was known for being meddlesome and vindictive and, while visiting the Poe household in late January 1846, she saw one of Osgood's personal letters to Poe. According to Ellet, Virginia pointed out "fearful paragraphs" in Osgood's letter. Ellet contacted Osgood and suggested she should beware of her indiscretions and asked Poe to return her letters, motivated either by jealousy or by a desire to cause scandal. Osgood then sent Margaret Fuller
Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...
and Anne Lynch Botta
Anne Lynch Botta
Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta was an American poet, writer, teacher and socialite whose home was the central gathering place of the literary elite of her era.-Early life:...
to ask Poe on her behalf to return the letters. Angered by their interference, Poe called them "Busy-bodies" and said that Ellet had better "look after her own letters", suggesting indiscretion on her part. He then gathered up these letters from Ellet and left them at her house.
Though these letters had already been returned to her, Ellet asked her brother "to demand of me the letters". Her brother, Colonel William Lummis, did not believe that Poe had already returned them and threatened to kill him. In order to defend himself, Poe requested a pistol from Thomas Dunn English
Thomas Dunn English
Thomas Dunn English was an American Democratic Party politician from New Jersey who represented the state's 6th congressional district in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895. He was also a published author and songwriter, who had a bitter ongoing feud with Edgar Allan...
. English, Poe's friend and a minor writer who was also a trained doctor and lawyer, likewise did not believe that Poe had already returned the letters and even questioned their existence. The easiest way out of the predicament, he said, "was a retraction of unfounded charges". Angered at being called a liar, Poe pushed English into a fistfight. Poe later claimed he was triumphant in the fight, though English claimed otherwise, and Poe's face was badly cut by one of English's rings. In Poe's version, he said, "I gave E. a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death." Either way, the fight further sparked gossip over the Osgood affair.
Osgood's husband stepped in and threatened to sue Ellet unless she formally apologized for her insinuations. She retracted her statements in a letter to Osgood saying, "The letter shown me by Mrs Poe must have been a forgery" created by Poe himself. She put all the blame on Poe, suggesting the incident was because Poe was "intemperate and subject to acts of lunacy". Ellet spread the rumor of Poe's insanity, which was taken up by other enemies of Poe and reported in newspapers. The St. Louis Reveille reported: "A rumor is in circulation in New York, to the effect that Mr. Edgar A. Poe, the poet and author, has been deranged, and his friends are about to place him under the charge of Dr. Brigham
Amariah Brigham
Amariah Brigham was an American psychiatrist and one the founding members in 1844 of the The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, which eventually became The American Psychiatric Association...
of the Insane Retreat
Utica Psychiatric Center
The Utica Psychiatric Center, also known as Utica State Hospital, which opened in Utica in 1843, was New York's first state-run facility designed to care for the mentally ill and was one of the first such institutions in the United States, predating and perhaps influencing the Kirkbride Plan which...
at Utica." The scandal eventually died down only when Osgood reunited with her husband. Virginia, however, had been very affected by the whole affair. She had received anonymous letters about her husband's alleged indiscretions as early as July 1845. It is presumed that Ellet was involved with these letters, and they so disturbed Virginia that she allegedly declared on her deathbed that "Mrs. E. had been her murderer."
Illness
By this time, Virginia had developed tuberculosisTuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, first seen sometime in the middle of January 1842. While singing and playing the piano, Virginia began to bleed from the mouth, though Poe said she merely "ruptured a blood-vessel". Her health declined and she became an invalid, which drove Poe into a deep depression, especially as she occasionally showed signs of improvement. In a letter to a friend, Poe described his resulting mental state: "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
Virginia's condition might have been what prompted the Poe family to move, in the hopes of finding a healthier environment for her. They moved several times within Philadelphia in the early 1840s and their last home in that city is now preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site is a preserved home once rented by American author Edgar Allan Poe, located in the Spring Garden neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
in Spring Garden
Spring Garden District, Pennsylvania
Spring Garden District is a defunct district that was located in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. The district ceased to exist and was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia following the passage of the Act of Consolidation, 1854. It corresponds largely with today's Spring Garden neighborhood...
. In this home, Virginia was well enough to tend the flower garden and entertain visitors by playing the harp or the piano and singing. The family then moved to New York sometime in early April 1844, traveling by train and steamboat. Virginia waited on board the ship while her husband secured space at a boarding house on Greenwich Street. By early 1846, family friend Elizabeth Oakes Smith said that Virginia admitted, "I know I shall die soon; I know I can't get well; but I want to be as happy as possible, and make Edgar happy." She promised her husband that after her death she would be his guardian angel.
Move to Fordham
In May 1846, the family (Poe, Virginia, and her mother, Maria) moved to a small cottageCottage
__toc__In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all...
in Fordham
Fordham, Bronx
Fordham is a neighborhood of New York City, United States, located in the West Bronx. The neighborhood is part of Bronx Community Board 5. It is bordered by Fordham Road to the north, Webster Avenue to the east, East 183rd Street to the south, and Jerome Avenue to the west...
, about fourteen miles outside the city, a home which is still standing today
Edgar Allan Poe Cottage
The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, sometimes called simply Poe Cottage, is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is located on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse in the The Bronx, New York, a short distance from its original location, and is now in the northern part of Poe Park.The...
. In what is the only surviving letter from Poe to Virginia, dated June 12, 1846, he urged her to remain optimistic: "Keep up your heart in all hopelessness, and trust yet a little longer." Of his recent loss of the Broadway Journal, the only magazine Poe ever owned, he said, "I should have lost my courage but for you—my darling little wife you are my greatest and only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life." But by November of that year, Virginia's condition was hopeless. Her symptoms included irregular appetite, flushed cheeks, unstable pulse, night sweats, high fever, sudden chills, shortness of breath, chest pains, coughing and spitting up blood.
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis , also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former...
, a friend of Poe's and an influential editor, published an announcement on December 30, 1846, requesting help for the family, though his facts were not entirely correct:
The announcement was similar to one made for Poe's mother, Eliza Poe
Eliza Poe
Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe was an English-born American actress and the mother of the American author Edgar Allan Poe.-Life and career:...
, during her last stages of tuberculosis. Other newspapers picked up on the story: "Great God!", said one, "is it possible, that the literary people of the Union, will let poor Poe perish by starvation and lean faced beggary in New York? For so we are led to believe, from frequent notices in the papers, stating that Poe and his wife are both down upon a bed of misery, death, and disease, with not a ducat in the world." The Saturday Evening Post asserted that Virginia was in a hopeless condition and that Poe was bereft: "It is said that Edgar A. Poe is lying dangerously with brain fever, and that his wife is in the last stages of consumption—they are without money and without friends." Even editor Hiram Fuller, whom Poe had previously sued for libel, attempted in the New York Mirror to garner support for Poe and his wife: "We, whom he has quarrelled with, will take the lead", he wrote.
Virginia was described as having dark hair and violet eyes, with skin so pale it was called "pure white", causing a "bad complexion that spoiled her looks". One visitor to the Poe family noted that "the rose-tint upon her cheek was too bright", possibly a symptom of her illness. Another visitor in Fordham wrote, "Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look." That unearthly look was mentioned by others who suggested it made her look not quite human. William Gowans, who once lodged with the family, described Virginia as a woman of "matchless beauty and loveliness, her eye could match that of any houri
Houri
In Islam, the ḥūr or ḥūrīyah are commonly translated as " companions of equal age ", "lovely eyed", of "modest gaze", "pure beings" or "companions pure" of paradise, denoting humans and jinn who enter paradise after being recreated anew in the hereafter...
, and her face defy the genius of a Canova
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
to imitate". She might have been a little plump. Many contemporary accounts as well as modern biographers remark on her child-like appearance even in the last years of her life.
Comforter
A comforter is a type of blanket. Comforters are intended to keep the user warm, especially during sleep, although they can also be used as mattress pads. Comforters are generally large and rectangular in shape, filled with natural or synthetic insulative material and encased in a shell/covering....
as her only other cover was Poe's old military cloak
Cloak
A cloak is a type of loose garment that is worn over indoor clothing and serves the same purpose as an overcoat; it protects the wearer from the cold, rain or wind for example, or it may form part of a fashionable outfit or uniform. Cloaks are as old as human history; there has nearly always been...
, as well as bottles of wine, which the invalid drank "smiling, even when difficult to get it down". Virginia also showed Poe a letter from Louisa Patterson, second wife of Poe's foster-father John Allan, which she had kept for years and which suggested that Patterson had purposely caused the break between Allan and Poe.
Death
On January 29, 1847, Poe wrote to Marie Louise Shew: "My poor Virginia still lives, although failing fast and now suffering much pain."Virginia died the following day, January 30, after five years of illness. Shew helped in organizing her funeral, even purchasing the coffin. Death notices appeared in several newspapers. On February 1, The New York Daily Tribune and the Herald carried the simple obituary: "On Saturday, the 30th ult., of pulmonary consumption, in the 25th year of her age, VIRGINIA ELIZA, wife of EDGAR A. POE." The funeral was February 2, 1847. Attendees included Nathaniel Parker Willis, Ann S. Stephens
Ann S. Stephens
Ann Sophia Stephens was an American novelist and magazine editor. She was the author of dime novels and is credited as the progenitor of that genre.- Early life :...
, and publisher George Pope Morris
George Pope Morris
George Pope Morris was an American editor, poet, and songwriter.-Life and work:With Nathaniel Parker Willis, he co-founded the daily New York Evening Mirror by merging his fledgling weekly New York Mirror with Willis's American Monthly in August 1831...
. Poe refused to look at his dead wife's face, saying he preferred to remember her living. Though now buried at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
Westminster Hall and Burying Ground
The Westminster Hall and Burying Ground is a graveyard and former church located at 519 West Fayette Street in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Occupying the southeast corner of Fayette and Greene Street on the west side of downtown Baltimore, the site is probably most famous as the burial site...
, Virginia was originally buried in a vault
Burial vault
Burial vault may refer to:*Burial vault , protective coffin enclosure*Burial vault , underground tomb...
owned by the Valentine family, from whom the Poes rented their Fordham cottage.
Only one image of Virginia is known to exist, for which the painter had to take her corpse as model. A few hours after her death, Poe realized he had no image of Virginia and so commissioned a portrait in watercolor
Watercolor painting
Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...
. She is shown wearing "beautiful linen" that Shew said she had dressed her in; Shew might have been the portrait's artist, though this is uncertain. The image depicts her with a slight double chin and with hazel eyes. The image was passed down to the family of Virginia's half-sister Josephine, wife of Neilson Poe.
In 1875, the same year in which her husband's body was reburied, the cemetery in which she lay was destroyed and her remains were almost forgotten. An early Poe biographer, William Gill, gathered the bones and stored them in a box he hid under his bed. Gill's story was reported in the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
twenty-seven years after the event: he says that he had visited the Fordham cemetery in 1883 at exactly the moment that the sexton
Sexton (office)
A sexton is a church, congregation or synagogue officer charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard. In smaller places of worship, this office is often combined with that of verger...
Dennis Valentine held Virginia's bones in his shovel, ready to throw them away as unclaimed. Poe himself had died in 1849, and so Gill took Virginia's remains and, after corresponding with Neilson Poe and John Prentiss Poe in Baltimore, arranged to bring the box down to be laid on Poe's left side in a small bronze casket. Virginia's remains were finally buried with her husband's on January 19, 1885—the seventy-sixth anniversary of her husband's birth and nearly ten years after his current monument was erected. The same man who served as sexton during Poe's original burial and his exhumations and reburials was also present at the rites which brought his body to rest with Virginia and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm.
Effect and influence on Poe
Virginia's death had a significant effect on Poe. After her death, Poe was deeply saddened for several months. A friend said of him, "the loss of his wife was a sad blow to him. He did not seem to care, after she was gone, whether he lived an hour, a day, a week or a year; she was his all." A year after her death, he wrote to a friend that he had experienced the greatest evil a man can suffer when, he said, "a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before", had fallen ill. While Virginia was still struggling to recover, Poe turned to alcohol after abstaining for quite some time. How often and how much he drank is a controversial issue, debated in Poe's lifetime and also by modern biographers. Poe referred to his emotional response to his wife's sickness as his own illness, and that he found the cure to it "in the death of my wife. This I can & do endure as becomes a man—it was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope & despair which I could not longer have endured without the total loss of reason".Poe regularly visited Virginia's grave. As his friend Charles Chauncey Burr wrote, "Many times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow". Shortly after Virginia's death, Poe courted several other women, including Nancy Richmond of Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...
, Sarah Helen Whitman
Sarah Helen Whitman
Sarah Helen Power Whitman was a poet, essayist, transcendentalist, Spiritualist and a romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe.-Early life:...
of Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, and childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster
Sarah Elmira Royster
Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton was an adolescent sweetheart of Edgar Allan Poe who became engaged to him shortly before his death in 1849....
in Richmond. Even so, Frances Sargent Osgood, whom Poe also attempted to woo, believed "that [Virginia] was the only woman whom he ever loved".
External links
- Poe Family Tree at the Edgar Allan Poe Society online
- Virginia Poe at Findagrave