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Excerpt from the article The Wives of Poets, by William M. Rossetti, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1881.
No poet of our time has been more persistently or mercilessly vilified than Edgar A. Poe; but of late years, partly through the laudable exertions of Mr. Ingram, a fairer view of his character begins to prevail. His real defects appear to have been a certain want of sturdy, downright solidity of character, an inclination to plunge into literary broils, and in his later years, when beset with sorrows and embarrassments, the culpable weakness of resorting to stimulants and narcotics, both alcohol and laudanum. Against these faults we must set honorable and ceaseless industry, frugality (for after his adolescence he was always poor), refinement, a high-minded superiority to gross material interests in life, and, what is chiefly to our present purpose, the most tender and devoted marital affection. In fact, Poe would have been, in whatever condition of life, something not far short of a model husband. In 1836, when he was twenty-seven years of age, he married his paternal cousin, Virginia Clemm, a most sweet and loving young creature, not quite fifteen years old, marked out by consumption for an early death. One account speaks of her personal attractions in rapturous terms, her "matchless beauty and loveliness; her eyes could match those of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate." Her eyes were large and dark, her complexion very white, her hair intensely black. Poe also was markedly handsome, in early youth quite exceptionally so. Virginia died in January, 1847; and we have the testimony of a lady who acted like a guardian angel in her last days that "actual want and hunger and cold were borne by the heroic husband, in order to supply food, medicine, and comforts to his dying wife." His exceeding attachment to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, who lived with the young couple, and survived both, was hardly less amiable than his love for Virginia, whose death threw him into a melancholy stupor lasting some weeks, and even dangerous to life. After this loss Poe formed two projects of remarriage; the first was with the poetess, Mrs. Whitman,--the "Helen" of certain verses of his. In September, 1848, they were engaged; but this match was broken off in the ensuing December, from causes which have been cruelly misrepresented to the poet's disadvantage, but of which no detailed account has yet been published. In the summer of 1849, he called on a widow lady of fortune in Richmond, Mrs. Elmira Shelton, who had, in fact, at the very early age of fifteen, been engaged to him; but that engagement fell through, and she married Mr. Shelton, who was now dead. The lady favored his renewed suit, and an early day for the wedding was to be looked forward to, when a sudden death put a stop to this and every other project on Poe's part. Traveling by rail from Richmond on October 4, 1849, he got out at Baltimore, and was soon afterwards found in the street insensible. He was taken to a hospital, and died there on the third following day. Congestion or inflammation of the brain appears to have been the cause, arising from excitement,--his detractors said, from drink; it appears also that he suffered from heart disease. Thus dolefully perished, in his fortieth year, one of the most marked poetical geniuses of our century.