Edgar Allan Poe: The Women in His Life

Woman's favor is a lamp in the lives of the great... as though the lords of Olympus sent this protégée of theirs to none but the great, and as though the universe has never known a creature into whose depths this creating creature did not steal — one who thus never felt the warbling of a dawn or the hissing of a noonday.

Among the great for whom woman was a wine that intoxicates, and not a drug that destroys, is Edgar A. Poe. Poe is one of those poets known for the intensity of their attachment to woman and the dependence of their art upon her. How should he not be one of them — he who was forever enamored of beauty, sanctifying it and immortalizing it in his poetry? How not, when he was forever dreaming, and woman is dream more than waking, and whenever reality struck him, to her he returned? How not, when he believed that poetry has no goal but beauty, and beauty stripped of woman is an idea that never took flesh?

Poe loved woman because he needed her — this is the most important thing in the story of his relations with woman. All his life long he was like a small child, in need of someone to help him and hold him up. He was a minor who could not settle his affairs by himself, and had there not been women about him, tending him all his days, pitying him, inspiring him, and making him feel love and tenderness, he would not have lived the years he lived nor written what he wrote. The proof of that helplessness is that he never once dared to leave his house in the dark, and could not stay alone at night; so his wife's mother would stand guard, passing her hand again and again over his broad, smooth forehead while he strayed among his lost imaginings of the goddess of his dream — and if she drew her hand away, he would cry out to her like a child: don't go away!

Nor did Poe's need for woman spring only from his inability to manage his affairs by himself, but also from another factor of the soul: his loss of a mother's tenderness in childhood. His mother died when he was two years old, and he grew up not knowing the taste of that greatest of blessings, though knowing the worth of its taste; so his longing for it grew, his need of it deepened within him, and he came to search for it in every woman. Hence we do not wonder at his immense love for his wife's mother, and his love, all his days, for married women older than himself — indeed, at his attachment, when he was fifteen, to the mother of a friend of his, in whose smile he glimpsed the tenderness of a mother; he mourned her loss until his death, and she affected the whole course of his thought and his poetry, and years after her death he wrote of her his sweetest piece, "To Helen." We do not wonder at this from him who held that when one angel whispers to his companion in heaven, they find, among all the burning words of love, no word holier than "Mother"!

The reader of the story of Poe's life will glimpse that he was a lover from his earliest youth, and that his tie to woman was not cut for a single day until his death. That was because of his need of her, as we have said, and because his love was distinguished by this: it was a love for woman's love, not a love for woman herself. And this came of Poe's deep immersion in fancy and imagination, so that he would picture himself in love when he was no lover, but an admirer of the beloved for her poetry — and call it love; or grateful for her kindness — another love; or hopeful that she would scatter the clouds of sorrow that hemmed him in — a third love. We do not brand him with fickleness; we say, rather, that he was enamored of woman as woman, and loved every woman who lit up the black horizon of his life.

The women in Poe's life are many; the most famous of them:

His wife Virginia, who was his first beloved. He married her before she reached fourteen, and went on living with her, and with her mother, whom he called his mother, until her death. In the documents preserved to us there is much about the measure of his conjugal happiness and domestic bliss, for he found in his home a consolation for the misery he met with in his life. Poe composed more than one poem for Virginia, and his elegy for her in one of his masterpieces, "Annabel Lee," is famous.

2 — Elmira, a friend of his boyhood and school days. He kept writing to her until the girl's father discovered the attachment and married her off early, which stirred Poe's rancor and left its trace on his budding thought. No doubt the story of his love for Elmira, and of his love for Helen Stanard — the mother of his friend, whom we mentioned above — were both in the poet's memory when he wrote, describing his love: "I could not love except where death mingled with the breath of beauty, or where marriage, or time, or distance worked to part me from my beloved." Twenty-four years later he met Elmira again, a widow by the name of Mrs. Shelton, and — his wife having died — he was on the point of marrying her, on the very day he found himself in love with a new woman!

3 — Mrs. Osgood, a poet and critic whom Poe came to know by way of poetry. His description of their first meeting is delightful. The two exchanged a series of letters, and Mrs. Osgood described those Poe wrote as "beautiful and heavenly." They exchanged poems, and he wrote for her his piece "To F. S. O." — the letters of her name. Then a coolness arose between them, brought on by the ill will of certain women; yet Mrs. Osgood kept up her friendship for the poet, and the last of her poems, written on her deathbed, was about Poe, who had gone before her in departing. It opens: "The hand that played upon the ringing string with an art beyond what mortals can command, the flashing eye, the heart of fire, and the burning lips have fallen still. Its music will stir us no more, neither with rapture nor with pain — never, never."

4 — Mrs. Shew, a friend of Virginia's, for whom Poe wrote "To M. L. S.," and under whose influence he composed the magnificent "Bells." His letter to her, upon the estrangement that arose between them, is a gem that approaches his poetry in magic: "Was it necessary, O my good spirit, my guardian heart, that this desertion should come after all the benefits and blessings you showered upon me? Do you flee, like everything I love and long for, from my dark and straying soul?"

5 — Mrs. Whitman. The nearest of women to Poe's heart after his wife. He loved her before he saw her, and made her acquaintance after he had already written verse for her. She was a poet; Poe asked for her hand, and she refused because of his ill repute in polite society. He composed numerous poems for her, and wrote her some of the choicest love letters, such as the one he opens by saying: "Helen, my Helen, Helen of a thousand dreams, whom God ordained, and the Bestower of all good decreed, should be mine — mine alone — if not now, alas, then in the world to come, in heaven, and forever!" She has left us reminiscences of him of the utmost charm. Between these two also an estrangement arose; she tried to win his love back to her, and wrote him verses that she closes by saying: "He shall know whether I loved him or not; but he shall never know how much I loved him." He did not answer her.

6 — Annie: he wrote "To Annie" for her, and there were no particular incidents in his love for her.

7 — Stella: among the last women Poe came to know. She kept her love for him, and wrote two sweet poems about him thirty years after his death, describing "how much of heaven was in him" and the effect of his poetry upon her — so that she would follow him over Parnassus, until he seemed to her "not of human origin, but a lone spirit sent by heaven to earth."

Poe wrote to one of his women friends: "Oh, how evil is my fate! If a true, tender love does not save me — the pure love of a woman — I shall not live a single year more!" He knew more than one love; and so he lived, and wrote, and endures forever.