On Edgar Allan Poe's women
Just in time for the city's Edgar Allan Poe festivities, Barbara Wells Sarudy, former director of the Maryland Humanities Council, has provided a guest post about the women in his life -- and their impact on his work. Lost love was a common theme for Poe, as she notes. For pictures of the women, check out her post on the Women in American History blog. Here's Barbara:
I became interested in Poe and his strange relationship with women years ago as an undergrad lit major. When we moved to Baltimore, Poe kept popping up in my mind, sort of daring me to look at that question again. Poe's most recurring gothic themes deal with women and death. And even some of his literary criticism, which was usually merciless, seemed almost seductive, when he wrote of literary women. But by now I was a historian, looking for clues in his life, rather than in his work.
Both of Poe's parents were actors who died when Poe was just turning 3. Of his mother, Poe wrote in 1835, "I myself never knew her...the want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials." Taking pity on the toddler, tobacco exporter John Allan & his wife Frances raised Poe as a foster child in Richmond. But they did not adopt the young boy, who would always be known as the poor orphan of an itinerant actress.
When they sent him to the University of Virginia, he excelled academically but ran up so much gambling debt; that they forced him to drop out in less than a year. In 1828, Poe worried about losing his foster mother's love, "I hope she will not let my wayward disposition wear away the love she used to have for me"
He returned from the university to find that his longtime childhood sweetheart had married another in his absence. Now his foster parents & his first love had abandoned him; just as his birth parents had. In 1835, the 27-year-old Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin from Baltimore.
Poe was devoted to his child bride. He guided her education, personally tutoring her in the classics & math. She excelled at singing & piano lessons. But only seven years into the marriage, Poe found out that his bride was dying of tuberculosis. Virginia's diminishing health drove Poe into deep depression, to heavy drinking, & into romantic friendships with other women. Some of his female companions helped him deal with Virginia's approaching death, while others angrily turned on him.
Poe became editor of the New York Broadway Journal in the spring of 1845. Here he met "Fanny" Osgood, estranged wife of portrait painter, Samuel S. Osgood. Poe fell in love with the woman he described, "She is ardent, sensitive, impulsive...slender to fragility, graceful...complexion usually pale."
When the winter weather became too much for the frail Mrs. Osgood's health, she left New York for a season. Taking advantage of her absence, a younger author, Mrs. Elizabeth Ellet, began a relationship with the ever lonely, ever searching Poe. The jealousy between the two women led to Poe's dying wife Virginia finding out about his affairs. On January 30, 1847, Virginia died.
Poe wrote to a friend about a year later of how Virginia's 6 years of illness affected him. "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death...I loved her more dearly...But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous, in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity...During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, God only knows how often or how much."
Poe continued drinking, and he continued searching for a woman to love who would not die or leave him. He declared to author Sarah Helen Whitman, on October 1, 1848, "From that hour I loved you...that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit...you awoke in me a shuddering sixth sense, vaguely compounded of fear, ecstatic happiness, and a wild, inexplicable sentiment that resembled nothing so nearly as the consciousness of guilt."
Shortly after Miss Whitman rejected him, mostly because of his excessive drinking, Poe met & fell in love with Annie Richmond. Mrs. Richmond, wife of paper manufacturer Charles Richmond of Lowell, Massachusettes, lovingly consoled Poe. On November 16, 1848, he wrote to Annie, "Ah beloved...do I not love you Annie? do you not love me? Is not this all?...Can you, my Annie, bear to think I am another’s?"
After being dismissed by Whitman and finally realizing that the married Annie was unattainable, Poe sought out his first young love, Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, now a widow in Richmond. On September, 1849, Poe wrote his last letter to his mother-in-law, "Elmira...I think she loves me more devotedly than any one I ever knew & I cannot help loving her in return...if possible I will get married." But, on October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died alone after collapsing at a tavern in Baltimore, without ever achieving an ongoing, loving connection with a woman; just as the married narrators of his tales never are able to attain lasting relationships with their brides.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem... Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones...The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—-and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”
Comments
The truth about Poe's dealings with Frances Osgood makes for a long, strange story (I've gone into the whole business a number of times on my Poe blog,) but suffice to say that it's a myth that Poe was ever "in love" with Osgood, although she certainly made no secret of her infatuation with him. And he did not have "affairs" with her, Elizabeth Ellet, or anyone else during his marriage.
Whatever Poe's faults may have been, marital infidelity was definitely not among them.
Posted by: Undine | October 17, 2009 10:45 AM
I do not know that Poe had sexual relations with any of these women, including his wife, if that is what you are referring to in your commment. I have read your blogs and enjoyed them.
Posted by: Barbara Wells Sarudy | October 17, 2009 12:13 PM
Remember that Poe said that a good subject for art would be the death of a beautiful woman- which seems a bit sexist- why not any woman- a young woman- still...
His obsession with parts like eyes or teeth is quite another matter.
He seems in love with the idea of woman rather than any particular one.
Posted by: david eberhardt | October 17, 2009 4:44 PM
Mr. Eberhardt, as both a musician & a poet, I think you wrote,
"The lost love theme was not always so painful. It had its faintly pleasurable, addictive side. I always associated it with Brahms' first piano concerto, the lyric theme in the first movement: da, dee da, dee dee da, dee da, etc. It was Brahms that said, 'Life robs us of more than death does,' on the face of it a rather asinine statement, but I knew what he meant."
Perhaps Poe would understand that as well.
Posted by: Barbara Wells Sarudy | October 17, 2009 7:23 PM
ms wells-
i know u r write
i remember that quote! where did u get that-i need that back!!! please call me (email? me) AT ONCE
just kidding but seriously
dave e
mozela9@comcast.net
Posted by: david eberhardt | October 18, 2009 3:21 PM
Mr. Eberhardt,
The quote, which made me think of Poe, is from your "Yet More Personal" essay on your website,
http://davideberhardt.webs.com/
BWS
Posted by: Barbara Wells Sarudy | October 18, 2009 3:52 PM
For Undine,
In "Undine," one of Edgar Allan Poe's literary reviews--a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Undine, a water spirit marries a Knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul.
"Both we, and the beings I have mentioned as inhabiting the other elements, vanish into air at death, and go out of existence, spirit and body, so that no vestige of us remains; and when you hereafter awake to a purer state of being, we shall remain where sand, and sparks, and wind and waves remain. We of course have no souls. The element moves us, and, again, is obedient to our will, while we live, though it scatters us like dust when we die; and as we have nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as nightingales, little goldfishes, and other pretty children of nature. But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than they are. It was therefore the wish of my father, who is a powerful water-prince in the Mediterranean Sea, that his only daughter should become possessed of a soul; although she should have to endure many of the sufferings of those who share that gift. Now the race to which I belong have no other means of obtaining a soul, than by forming, with an individual of your own, the most intimate union of love."
In Teutonic folklore, undines are female water-spirits who like to associate with humans. An undine was created without a soul; but by marrying a mortal, she obtained a soul and with it all the pains and penalties of the human race.
In August, I saw "Ponyo" about a red goldfish desperate to become a little girl inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Mermaid” and surely this little girl was an undine. Her father was a powerful water-prince. This is a visually exquisite animated adventure from Hayao Miyazaki. Fine film. You might enjoy it.
BWS
Posted by: Barbara Wells Sarudy | October 18, 2009 5:07 PM
thanx to ms sarudy (have we met?)
"we shall remain where sand, and sparks, and wind and waves remain."
o how fabulous- utter fabulosity!! fabulousisssimus
as to the quote from my web site? i am getting old- i whall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled
Posted by: david eberhardt | October 19, 2009 3:37 PM
Mr. Eberhardt,
I did cherish that line from Undine, and as for the Eliot's trousers, another fine one.
I have a 33 1/3 recording of T. S. Eliot reading Poems and Choruses which includes J. Alfred Prufrock. It was recorded in London in 1955, sadly I have absolutely no way to play that record.
On the cover, it quotes someone nameless from the New York Times stating, "The voice, precise and angular, is tailor-made for these verses." I think that voice actually made those verses... Oh well.
Years ago, the MD Humanities Council, where I worked, sponsored the first several Baltimore Book Festivals, where you spoke.
By the way, the word undine is derived from the Latin word for wave - unda; to Greek - undine; to French - ondine. So the sand & sparks & winds & waves is just right.
BWS
Posted by: Barbara Wells Sarudy | October 19, 2009 4:51 PM
The post was fascinating but the exchange of comments between Ms. Sarudy and Mr. Eberhardt steals the show. I think you two should have a Rob Roy somewhere soon.
Posted by: Jeff Scott Olson | October 21, 2009 12:05 AM
Thanks so much for this post.. I teach about Poe in my 11th grade english class and am going to show them this.
Posted by: Condol Young | June 21, 2010 10:57 AM