MRS. SHEW.
With the death of his wife a great horror and gloom fell upon Poe. The
blow which he had for years dreaded had at length fallen. That which he
had feared and loathed above all things--the monster, Death--had entered
his home and made it desolate. As a poet, he could delight in writing
about the death of the young and lovely, but from the dread reality he
shrank with an almost superstitious horror and loathing. It was said, on
Mrs. Clemm's authority, that he refused to look upon the face of his
dead wife. He desired to have no remembrance of the features touched by
the transforming fingers of death.
Mrs. Shew still kindly ministered to him, endeavoring also to arouse him
from his gloom and encourage him to renewed effort. But it seemed at
first useless. He had no hope or cheering beyond the grave, and it was
at this time that he might appropriately have written:
"A voice from out of the future cries
'On! on!' but o'er the past--
Dim gulf--my spirit hovering lies,
Mute, motionless, aghast."
Mrs. Shew, a thoroughly practical woman of sound, good sense and
judgment, and with so little of the aesthetic that she confessed to Poe
that she had never read his poems, nevertheless took a friendly interest
in him and felt for him in his loneliness. To afford him the benefit of
a change, she took him as her patient to her own home and commissioned
him to furnish her dining-room and library according to his own taste.
She also encouraged him to write, placing pen and paper before him and
bidding him to try; and in this way, it is claimed by one account, "_The
Bells_" came to be written, or at least begun. Under the influence of
cheerful society, comfort and good cheer, Poe's health and spirits
improved, and on his return home he again commenced writing. Soon,
however, a relapse occurred, and his kind friend and physician found it
necessary to resume her visits to Fordham. For all this Poe was
grateful, but, unfortunately, he was more; and at length on a certain
day he so far betrayed his feelings that Mrs. Shew then and there
informed him that her visits to him must cease. On the day following she
wrote a farewell letter, in which she gave him advice and directions in
regard to his health, warning him of its precarious state, and of the
necessity of his abandoning the habits which were making a wreck of him
mentally and physically. She advised him as the only thing that could
save him to marry some good woman possessed of sufficient means to
support him in comfort, and who would love him well enough to spare him
the necessity of mental overwork, for which he was not now fitted.
It may be here remarked that of all the women that we know of to whom
Poe offered his platonic devotion, Mrs. Shew was the only one by whom it
was promptly and decidedly rejected.