THE SHADOW AT THE DOOR.
During the winter and succeeding summer matters did not improve at the
cottage. Poe, with health completely shattered and spirits horribly
depressed, remained at home with his sick wife for the most part, only
occasionally arousing himself to write. A lady, who was at this time a
little girl and one of Virginia's visitors, afterward told a reporter of
how she would sometimes see Mr. Poe writing at his table in the upstairs
room, and how as each sheet was finished he would paste it on to the
last one, until it was long enough to reach across the floor. Then she
would venture to roll it up for him in a neat cylinder, taking care not
to disturb him. Sometimes, when he was not employed, he would tell the
children blood-curdling stories of ghouls and goblins, when his eyes
would light up in a wonderful manner. "I lost my heart to those
beautiful eyes," she said.
Mrs. Clemm continued to make the rounds of the editors' offices with
these manuscripts, but met with little success. Poe's mind was not at
its brightest. He was not in a writing mood; and, as has been since
observed, he was reduced to the expedient of rewriting and altering
certain smaller articles and offering them to the more obscure papers
and journals. Mrs. Clemm, in the midst of her manifold duties, could do
but little with her sewing in the way of support for the family. So her
furniture went, piece by piece, the furniture which Miss Poe had so
often described--the parlor box-lounge upon which she slept; the
dining-table, which stood in the midst of the room, ready for the meal
which was so seldom placed upon it; the large engraving above the
mantelpiece, and the collection of sea-shells--all disappeared, until
the once cosey little apartment presented a bare and poverty-stricken
appearance. Mrs. Gove, one of the literary women of the day, described
it as being furnished with only a checked matting, a small corner-stand,
a hanging-shelf of books and four chairs.
Years afterward, when strangers would visit the cottage at Fordham, they
would hear from the neighbors pathetic accounts of the family during
this summer of 1846.
"We knew that they were poor," said one, "but they tried to keep it to
themselves. Many a time I have wanted to send them things from my
garden, but was afraid to do so."
One old dame said to a New York reporter: "I've known when they were out
of provisions, for then Mrs. Clemm, who always seemed cheerful, would
come out with a basket and a shining case-knife and go 'round digging
greens (dandelions). Once I said to her, says I, 'Greens may be took too
frequent.' 'Oh, no,' says she, smiling, 'they cool the blood, and Eddie
likes them.'"
Thus poor Mrs. Clemm, with her assumed cheerfulness, would seek to
produce the impression that their dinner of wild herbs was a matter of
choice instead of necessity.
Another neighbor said to a visitor: "I never saw checked matting last as
theirs did. There was nothing upstairs but an old cot in a little
hall-room or closet, where Mrs. Clemm slept, and an old table and chair
and bed in the next room, where Mr. Poe wrote. But you could eat your
dinner off the two floors."
The testimony of still another was: "In the kitchen she had only a
little stove, a pine table and a chair; but the floor was as white as
the table, and the tins as bright as silver. I don't think that she had
more than a dozen pieces of crockery, all on a little shelf in the
kitchen. The only meat I've ever known them to have was a five-cent bone
for soup or a few butcher's trimmings for a stew; but it seemed Mrs.
Clemm could make a little of anything go twice as far as other people
could."
In the early part of this summer Virginia's health appeared better than
usual. A neighbor who lived nearest them said to a visitor to Poe's old
home: "In fine weather that summer--the summer before she died--we could
sometimes see her sitting at her front door, wrapped up, with her
husband or mother beside her, Mr. Poe reading a paper and Mrs. Clemm
knitting. Most times there would be one or two children along, and Mr.
Poe would play ball with them while his wife laughingly looked on. She
looked like a child herself, hardly taller than they were. Well--no; she
wasn't exactly pretty. She looked _too spooky_, with her white face and
big, black eyes; but she was interesting looking, and we felt sorry for
her--and for them all, for that matter. You could see they had known
better days."
As the summer wore on, and the first autumn breezes shook the leaves
from the cherry tree, a change came over Virginia. Mrs. Clemm wrote to
Miss Poe that unless she could go to her relations at the South--a thing
not to be thought of--she would not live through the winter. Eddie's
health was completely broken, and unless she herself remained strong
enough to take care of them both, all would have to go to the
poor-house. These letters were generally indirect appeals for pecuniary
aid. Through similar pathetic accounts given by Mrs. Clemm to editors to
whom she offered manuscripts, the condition of the poet and his family
became known and was commented upon by the public papers, to Poe's great
indignation, who took occasion in an anonymous communication to deny its
truth. But that it was no time for pride to stand in the way of dire
necessity is evident from the account of Mrs. Gove on her first visit to
the cottage late in that fall. One can hardly realize a condition of
things such as she described--the bare and fireless room, the bed with
its thin, white covering and the military cloak--a relic of the West
Point days--spread over it, and the sick woman, "whose only means of
warmth was as her husband held her hands and her mother her feet, while
she herself hugged a large tortoise-shell cat to her bosom." And the
thin, haggard man, suffering like his wife from cold and the lack of
nourishing food, but who yet received his visitor with such courtly
elegance of manner, was the author of _The Raven_, with which the world
was even then being thrilled!
It was a blessed day for the distressed family that on which, about the
last of October, Mrs. Shew came to the now bleak little cottage on the
hill and, like a ministering angel, devoted herself to caring for and
comforting them--not only as regarded their material wants but with kind
and encouraging words as well. With a sufficient competence and the
medical education given her by her father, she was enabled thus to
devote herself to the service of those who could not afford the
attendance of a regular physician.
Not only did she supply them with medicine, but with careful nursing and
proper food prepared by her own hands in Mrs. Clemm's little kitchen.
Mrs. Gove collected sixty dollars, with which their other wants were
supplied; so that during the months of November and December the family
were more comfortably situated than was usual with them. But meantime
Virginia rapidly declined, until it became evident that her frail life
was very near its close.
On the day before her death Poe, in mortal dread of that awful _shadow_
which had been so long in its approach and now stood upon their
threshold, wrote urgently to Mrs. Shew to come and pass the night with
them. "My poor Virginia still lives, though failing fast." She came, in
time to take leave of the dying wife.
One of Poe's biographers[7] has stated that on the day previous to Mrs.
Poe's death she requested Mrs. Shew to read two letters from the second
Mrs. Allen exonerating Poe from having ever caused a difficulty in her
house. To those who knew Mrs. Allan and had heard from herself and her
family the frequent accounts of that occurrence--accounts never
retracted by her to her dying day--this statement is not worth a
moment's consideration. The only question is, Who wrote those letters,
and how is it that they were never made public or again heard of? And
who could have imposed upon the dying woman a task such as this, instead
of themselves taking the responsibility?
[7] Ingraham.
From this incident, if the account be true, it would appear that
Virginia was gentle, obedient and submissive to the last. On the day
following--January 3, 1847--her innocent, childlike spirit passed away
from earth.
She was in the twenty-sixth year of her age.