Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
→‎Early life: Another word choice problem
OS2Warp (talk | contribs)
2,054 edits
Line 89: Line 89:
[[Category:Deaths by tuberculosis]]
[[Category:Deaths by tuberculosis]]
[[Category:Edgar Allan Poe]]
[[Category:Edgar Allan Poe]]

[[pt:Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe]]

Revision as of 22:57, 9 January 2008

Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe
Virginia Poe, image created after her death.
BornAugust 22, 1822
Maryland Baltimore, Maryland
DiedJanuary 30, 1847
New York (state) Fordham, New York
SpouseEdgar Allan Poe

Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (August 22, 1822 – January 30, 1847), born Virginia Eliza Clemm, was the wife of Edgar Allan Poe. She was the daughter of William Clemm, Jr. (1779-1826) and Maria Poe Clemm, the sister of Edgar's father David Poe Jr.

A man named William Gowans described Virginia as a woman of "matchless beauty and loveliness" with "a temper and disposition of surpassing sweetness"[1]

Life

Early life

Virginia Eliza Clemm was born on August 22, 1822[2] and named after an older sister who died as an infant[3] only ten days earlier.[2] Her father William Clemm, Jr. was a hardware merchant in Baltimore[4] He had married Maria Poe, Virginia's mother, as a second wife in July 12, 1817[5] after the death of his first wife, Maria's first cousin Harriet.[6] He had five children from his previous marriage and had three with Maria.[4] After his death in 1826, he left very little to the family[7] and relatives offered no financial support, having opposed the marriage.[4] Maria supported the family as best she could by sewing, taking in borders, and with an annual $240 pension granted to her mother Elizabeth, who was paralyzed and bedridden.[7] According to Poe, Elizabeth received a pension on behalf of her late husband, "General" David Poe, a former quarter-master in Maryland who had loaned money to the state.[8]

Marriage

Virginia and Edgar's marriage certificate

Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe, who were first cousins, were married by a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Amasa Converse, on May 16, 1836.[9] The ceremony was held in the evening at the home of a Mrs. James Yarrington,[10] the owner of the boarding house in which Edgar, Virginia, and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm were staying.[11] They had a short honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia.[10] Edgar was 27 and Virginia was 13, though the two listed her age as 21.[9] Their marriage bond was filed in Richmond, Virginia and included an affidavit from Thomas W. Cleland confirming her alleged age.[12]

Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was; noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn says the arrangement was not particularly unusual, nor was Edgar's nickname of "Sis" or "Sissy".[13] Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, says very clearly that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was.[14] It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a brother–sister relationship.[15] Scholars, including Marie Bonaparte, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin[16] because she and her husband never consummated their marriage,[17] especially if assuming Virginia is the title character in the poem "Annabel Lee," a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee."[16]

Their marriage may have been expedited by cousin Neilson Poe. He had offered to take in Virginia, have her educated, and prevent her marriage to Edgar at such a young age, suggesting the option be reconsidered later.[18] Edgar called Neilson, the owner of a newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland, his "bitterest enemy" and interpreted his cousin's actions as an attempt to breaking his connection with Virginia.[19] Edgar wrote an emotional letter to Maria, saying he was "blinded with tears while writing",[20] pleading that she allow Virginia to make her own decision.[21] Neilson, incidentally, was married to Virginia's half-sister Josephine Clemm.[20]

Virginia and Edgar 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."[22] She, in turn, showed her love in an acrostic poem she composed, 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.[23]

Illness and death

Virginia Poe's bedroom at the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, New York, where she died.

However, Virginia developed tuberculosis, first seen in an incident some time in the middle of January 1842. While singing and playing the piano, Virginia began to bleed from the mouth, "ruptured a blood-vessel," as Edgar described.[24] Her health declined and she became an invalid, which drove Edgar into a deep depression, especially as she occasionally showed signs of improvement. In a letter to friend John Ingram, Edgar described his resulting mental state: "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."[25]

When the family (Edgar, Virginia, and her mother, Maria) moved to a cottage in Fordham, New York, Virginia was tended to by 25-year old Marie Louise Shew. Shew knew medical care from her father, a doctor. She actually provided Virginia with a comforter as her only other cover was Edgar's old military cloak.[26]

Memorial marker to Virginia Clemm, Maria Clemm, and Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore, MD.

Virginia died on January 30, 1847 after five years of illness. Shew helped in organizing her funeral, even purchasing her coffin. Shew may have also painted the only image of Virginia, a water color done after her death.[27] Though now buried at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, Virginia was originally buried in a vault owned by the Valentine family, owners of the Fordham cottage,[27] on February 2, 1847.[28]

In 1875, the same year Edgar was reburied, the cemetery in which she lay was destroyed and her remains were almost forgotten. An early Poe biographer, William Gill, gathered her bones and stored them in a box he hid under his bed.[29] Gill's story was reported in the Boston Herald twenty-seven years after the event. Gill 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. Gill took the remains and corresponded with Neilson Poe and John Prentiss Poe in Baltimore, and arranged to bring the box down to be laid on Edgar's left side in a small bronze casket. Virginia's remains were finally buried with her husband's in 1885 on January 19 - 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 Edgar'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.[30]

References in literature

Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" is often assumed to have been inspired by Virginia's illness and death, though other women in Poe's life are potential candidates including Frances Sargent Osgood[31] and Sarah Helen Whitman.[32] The short story "Eleonora" may also reference Virginia's illness, though it was published before her death.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Meyers, 93
  2. ^ a b Quinn, 17
  3. ^ Silverman, 82
  4. ^ a b c Silverman 81
  5. ^ Quinn, 726
  6. ^ Meyers, 59
  7. ^ a b Meyers, 60
  8. ^ Quinn, 256
  9. ^ a b Meyers, 85
  10. ^ a b Quinn, 254
  11. ^ Quinn, 230
  12. ^ Quinn, 252
  13. ^ Hoffman, 26
  14. ^ Silverman, 107
  15. ^ Krutch, 52
  16. ^ a b Hoffman, 27
  17. ^ Richard, Claude and Jean-Marie Bonnet, "Raising the Wind; or, French Editions of the Works of Edgar Allan Poe," Poe Newsletter, vol. I, No. 1, April 1968, p. 12.
  18. ^ Silverman, 104
  19. ^ Meyers, 72
  20. ^ a b Quinn, 219
  21. ^ Silverman, 105
  22. ^ Oberholtzer, 299
  23. ^ Quinn, 497
  24. ^ Silverman, 179
  25. ^ "Poe to George W. Eveleth, 1/4/1848". Archived from the original on 2006-11-27.
  26. ^ Silverman, 326
  27. ^ a b Silverman, 327
  28. ^ Meyers, 206
  29. ^ Meyers, 263
  30. ^ Miller, John C. "The Exhumations and Reburials of Edgar and Virginia Poe and Mrs. Clemm," from Poe Studies, vol. VII, no. 2, December 1974, p. 47
  31. ^ Meyers, 244
  32. ^ Sova, 12

References

  • Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0684193701.
  • Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0684193701.
  • Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906. ISBN 1932109455.
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biobraphy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309
  • Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318.


Template:Persondata

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe&oldid=183274200"