Virginia Clemm Poe; Thomas Sully

IN 1835, at the age of 27, Edgar Allan Poe, who was orphaned as a toddler, married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. The author was devoted to her. Seven years later, she became seriously ill with tuberculosis, and was ill for five more years before her death in 1847.

Poe, a heavy drinker, never found lasting love after his wife’s death but had many romantic friendships with women.

Barbara Wells Sarudy at It’s About Time tells the story of Poe’s love life with portrait paintings.

— Comments —

Sven writes:

It is my understanding that Poe was rather a better man than is portrayed nowadays, as his rival took control of his estate after his death and painted him variously as a drug addict, pervert and degenerate.

Stephen Ippolito writes:

Thank you for running your item on the boon companion of my love-struck, moody teenage years.  There was just something about Poe’s combination of haunting metre,  Gothic settings, and recurring theme of unrequited love and young love lost to early death that struck a chord with the moody 17 year old me. (I still, from time to time, draw from Annabel Lee and The Bells – but for different reasons now and with different emotions).

Your post reminded me of someone I haven’t thought of for a while. As an unreconstructed romantic I have followed with interest the mystery of “The Poe Toaster” of Baltimore for years. I wonder if you may have, too?

Rumour has it that we have our own version of the Poe Toaster in Australia. Rumour further has it that for the last ten years or so, at about midnight on the 17th June, someone, alone, has visited the grave of Australia’s national poet, Henry Lawson, on the anniversary of his birth. But unlike his Marylander counterpart absolutely no-one has noticed.

Some might think that the difference speaks something of the lack of sentimentality in the Australian character; others that the reason may lie in the remoteness of Lawson’s grave – fittingly, on a cliff: “in a tomb by the sounding sea” – but I suspect that the real reason is that the mysterious Lawson Toaster’s beverage and floral tribute are just too Australian and mundane.

Lawson was the poet of the working class and had all its tastes and vices. He was also a hopeless drunk. His toaster, like Lawson, therefore drinks from a humble bottle of beer at the grave and leaves a dried piece of our national flower, the wattle. (Or so I suspect).

No fancy cognac or roses for Henry! Just beer and a piece of undistinguished shrubbery. Far less pictureque than what goes on in Baltimore – but just as equally heart-felt. I think that Henry would approve.

Please follow and like us: