Text: Wightman F. Melton. “Some Autobiographical References in Poe's Poetry,” South Atlantic Quarterly (Durham, NC), vol. XI, no. 2, April 1912, pp. 175-179

[page 175, unnumbered:]

In the study of any literary production, the student is interested in the author, in the specific work in hand, and in the attitude of the public towards that particular piece of prose or poetry. Interest in the author: his times, life, education, general activities, views and beliefs, concerns especially the biographer and the historian. Interest in the attitude of the public towards the production, may concern the critic, or the reviewer, and it may appeal only to the curious. Interest in the work itself (story, essay, or poem) is the most important consideration, and the author's biography, or history, — always of secondary importance, — becomes interesting only in so far as his imagination has been influenced by ancestry and environment.

Now and then, however, an author's works are more or less autobiographical, aside from his philosophy of life, which used to be addressed to the “Gentle Reader,” and which, nowadays, is put into the mouth of some character in the story, or is expressed impersonally in essay or poem.

While Poe was being denied a place in America's Hall of Fame, Father Tabb became righteously indignant, and said, in his own terse, epigrammatic way:

Now, that Poe has come, even though tardily, to his own, we are still interested in the question raised by the committee: “Was Poe's verse from the heart?”

One who has made any study of Poe's “Philosophy of Composition,” must have received the impression that “The Raven” was both heart-made and head-made. The theme, the germ of it, came out of a heart, hungering and thirsting for some knowledge of the future — a hunger and thirst as old as Doctor Faustus, as old as Adam. The mechanical side of the poem: the mode of expression, [page 176:] the tone, rhythm, and rime, is largely the work of the intellect. An analysis of ‘The Bells” will convince one that it is about as cold and mechanical as a mathematical proposition.

It happens, however, that Poe is the author of a lyric poem, “Annabel Lee,” and a poetic tale, “Eleonora,” both of which contain unmistakable autobiographical references, and both of which are, in the main, spontaneous.

Professor Trent, who, by the way, comments upon the “deep sincerity” of “Annabel Lee,”* suggests that “Eleonora” should be read in connection with “Ligeia” its sombre counterpart.† This is a wise suggestion, but, at the same time, one should not neglect to read “Eleonora” in connection with “Annabel Lee,” and both of them in connection with that part of Poe's biography in which Virginia Clemm (Poe) is the most important character.

Mrs. S. A. Weiss,‡ speaking of Poe and Virginia, says, “From the time when as a youth of nineteen he became a tutor to his sweet and gentle little cousin of six years old, he loved her with the tender and protective fondness of an elder brother. As years passed he became the subject of successive fancies or passions for various charming women; but she, gradually budding into early womanhood, experienced but one attachment — an absorbing devotion to her handsome, talented, and fascinating cousin. So intense was this passion that her health and spirits became seriously affected, and her mother, aroused to painful solicitude, spoke to Edgar about it. This was just as he was preparing to leave her house, which had been for some years his home, and enter the world of business. The idea of this separation was insupportable to Virginia. The result was that Poe, at that time a young man of twenty-eight, married his little, penniless, and delicate childcousin of fourteen or fifteen, and thus unselfishly secured her own and her mother's happiness.”

When Virginia was ten years old, Poe was living with her and her mother in Baltimore, and the view of the Chesapeake, from the residential section of the city, was not, as now, obstructed by tall buildings:

When Virginia was twelve and Poe twenty-five, a marriage license was procured, but, because of opposition, principally on account of Virginia's age, they were not married until two years later, in Richmond, Virginia, where a second license was secured.

“Eleonora” was the sole daughter of the only sister of the author's mother, long departed. The three characters in the story “dwelled” together as did Poe, his aunt, and his cousin. When “Eleonora” had finished the third lustrum of her life,and the author his fourth, “Love entered within’”’ their hearts. This, in the story, was their marriage. At marriage, then, “Eleonora” and Virginia Clemm were both fifteen. Poe, however, had passed the third lustum of his own life, instead of the fourth, as the story makes it.

“Eleonora” died early, at the end of the first epoch of her husband's life; “Annabel Lee” died while yet a child; Virginia Poe died in her twenty-sixth year.

“Eleonora” promised her husband that if it were not permitted souls in Paradise to return visibly to their loved ones in the watches of the night, she would, at least, give him frequent indications of her presence, sighing upon him in the evening wind, or filling the air which he breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels. Her promises were not forgotten: he heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers by the angels, streams of holy perfume floated ever about him, and, when he was lonely, the winds that bathed his brow were laden with soft sighs, indistinct murmurs often filled the night air, and once, only once! he was awakened from a death-like slumber, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon his own:

There is a tradition in Baltimore, which seems to be authentic, for I was told the story by one who got it direct from the churchyard sexton, that he (the sexton) several times saw Poe in the neighborhood of Virginia's tomb by night. The statement of W. F. Gill* corroborates this story: “Deprived of the companionship [page 178:] and sympathy of his child-wife, the poet [Poe] suffered what to him was the exquisite agony of utter loneliness. Night after night he would arise from his sleepless pillow, and, dressing himself, wander to the grave of his lost one, and throwing himself down upon the cold ground, weep bitterly for hours at a time.”

“Eleonora's” husband solemnly promised her, in accordance with her dying request, that, after her death, he would never bind himself in marriage with any other daughter of the earth; but at length, he wedded “Ermengarde,” and found consolation in fancying that he heard, in the silence of the night, through his lattice, the sweet, familiar voice of “Eleonora,” sighing, “Thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto “Eleonora.”

There is no record of Poe's having promised Virginia that he would never marry again, but he does say that nothing in heaven or hell

which we may easily and well understand to be his attitude towards the memory of his child-wife.

It is a known fact, however, that Mrs. Shelton put on widow's weeds, for the conventional period, after the death of Poe, indicating that she, at least, believed that, if Poe had lived, he would have married her.

It is known, furthermore, that Poe contemplated making an “Ermengarde” of Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, a few months before his death, and that the “ballad called Annabel Lee,” first published two days after the author's death, was said to have been written, but was more probably only put in final form, after the engagement with Mrs. Whitman was broken.

Mrs. Whitman, herself a poet, addressed “Our Island of Dreams” to Poe, concluding with the lines,

and Ingram asserts* that Mrs. Whitman “firmly believed that Poe wrote ‘Annabel Lee’ in response to this poem.” [page 179:]

The very idea! Why, Mrs. Whitman was then forty-five years old, and had been a widow fifteen years. Poe was then thirty-nine. He might have written:

but never:

Professor Charles W. Kent, in the introduction to the volume of Poe's Poems, “Virginia Edition,” p. xxi, says of “Annabel Lee,” “It is well-nigh sacrilege to connect [this poem] with any one but his lost Virginia.”“ Professor Kent is here questioning the statement of Mrs. S. A. Weiss* to the effect that Poe told her the poem does not refer to his wife.

Mrs. Whitman was still living. “The highborn kinsman” of “Annabel Lee,” “Eleonora,” and Virginia, had long before borne them away from Poe, and shut them up in a sepulchre, — a “tomb by the sounding sea.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 176:]

* Riverside Literature Series, Houghton Mifflin & Company, No. 119, p. 20.

† Riverside Literature Series, Houghton Mifflin & Company, No. 120, p. 86.

‡ Scribner's Monthly, Vol. XV, (1878), p. 710.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 177:]

* Quoted by Professor James A. Harrison, Poe's Works, “Virginia Edition,” vol. I, p. 266.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 178:]

* Poe's Works, “Virginia Edition,” vol. I, p. 292.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 179:]

* The Independent, Vol. 56, p. 1012