Even in the 19th century, marrying a 13-year-old girl was considered unusual.
It was less unusual that Edgar Allan Poe and his wife, Virginia Clemm, were first cousins. Virginia was the daughter of Edgar’s aunt, Maria Poe Clemm, and had met Edgar when he lived with the family in Baltimore. At the time, Edgar was smitten with a neighbor, and Virginia used to deliver messages between the two.
By 1835, Poe had transferred his affections to his 13-year-old cousin, and the two were married the following year. Poe had had to act quickly: another cousin, Neilson Poe, was offering to take Virginia into his home and provide for her education, in order to give her an alternative to marrying the 27-year-old man. Poe had written to Maria, “blinded with tears while writing,” as he said, and begged her to allow Virginia to make up her own mind. Virginia chose Edgar.
The couple was married in 1836. According to friends, Poe did not attempt to consummate the marriage for at least the first two years they were together, and possibly not after that. They were absolutely devoted to each other.
Virginia was a delicate-looking girl, with dark hair and violet eyes, and skin so white it was almost translucent. She was described by many who knew her as having an almost unearthly look. Of course, much of this was due to her extended illness: Virginia had contracted tuberculosis by the time she was twenty.
Virginia never doubted Edgar’s devotion to her, although there were several scandals attributed to his relationships with women. One such friendship was with Frances Sargent Osgood, a married woman who was also a poet. It is likely that their friendship took on a somewhat flirtatious aspect. Virginia, however, knew of the relationship and encouraged it. She believed that Mrs. Osgood was a good influence on Edgar. For one thing, he was never drunk in her presence, and he had promised her that he would “give up the use of stimulants.” Frances’s husband, also, seemed to have no problem with their relationship.
The person who did have a problem with it was another poetess, Elizabeth F. Ellet. Ellet was attracted to Poe, and had written poems and letters to him. He printed several of her poems, in his role as editor of the Broadway Journal, but refused her personal attentions. When Ellet became aware of Poe’s friendship with Mrs. Osgood, she began causing a scandal. Before it was over, Poe had become involved with a fistfight with Ellet’s brother, and Mr. Osgood had threatened Ellet with a lawsuit if she did not retract her insinuations.
The chief effect of all this scandal-mongering was that it caused Virginia extreme distress. At the same time, Virginia was also receiving anonymous letters regarding Poe’s supposed indiscretions, and they were assumed to have been sent by Elizabeth Ellet. There is no doubt that the stress did much to harm Virginia’s already precarious health. On her deathbed, Virginia declared that “Mrs. E. had been her murderer.”
Virginia suffered about five years from tuberculosis before finally succumbing to it. The long ordeal undoubtedly had a bad effect on Poe’s mental condition. He told one friend, “Each time I felt all the agonies of her death — and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and 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.”
On January 29, 1847, Virginia died. Only a few hours after her death, Poe realized that he did not have a portrait of her, and he commissioned a water-color of her, the only picture of her that was made during Poe’s lifetime.
Virginia was buried in vault that belonged to the Valentine family, from whom the Poe’s were renting their current home. Poe regularly visited her grave, and, according to a friend, often sat late into the night, “beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow.” It is thought that many of his works were inspired by his wife, including Annabel Lee, Ulalume, Lenore, and Eleanora.
In a bizarre coincidence, William Gill, an early biographer of Poe, visited Fordham Cemetery in 1875, the year in which Poe’s own remains were being reinterred into a more acceptable location. The cemetery was being destroyed and Virginia’s bones, unclaimed, were about to be discarded. According to Gill, the sexton actually had her bones in his shovel when Gill arrived. Gill claimed the bones, and kept them in a box which he stored under his bed, where he apparently forgot about them for some years. It was 1885 before Virginia’s remains were buried in a small bronze casket at Poe’s left side. The couple was finally reunited.
Sources: Chase’s Calendar of Events, 2011 Edition: The Ultimate Go-To Guide for Special Days, Weeks, and Months, Editors of Chase’s Calendar of Events; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_22; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe; http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid;=33076902; http://www.poeforward.com/poe/virginia.html; http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php; http://www.eapoe.org/people/poevc.htm.
