One question that has interested critics is, what was the source of those mysterious ladies in his stories, the Ligeias, the Morellas, the Eleonoras? What made him so preoccupied with the subject of the death of beautiful women long before his own wife died? All this brings us to a little emphasised chapter in Poe's life, the history of one of his love affairs before he married Virginia Clemm. Its influence on his work has hardly ever been noted by critics, and yet the effect was of great importance.
Poe lost his parents when he was an infant, and he was adopted by Mr. Allan. He loved the mother of a friend of his, Mrs. Stannard, and when she died (he was 15 at the time), he was inconsolable. But the history of this boyish love is not fully known to us. As a boy of sixteen he loved Sarah Elmira Royster, whom he again met later in life and to whom he became engaged shortly before his death. At about the age of twenty or thereafter he loved his cousin, Miss Elizabeth Herring, and wrote several poems to her.
The real clue to Poe's life and work is furnished in an article, "Poe's Mary," that appeared in Harper's Magazine for March, 1889, by Augustus Van Cleef. It reports a conversation with a woman who was Poe's sweetheart and who rejected him. Her name is now known to us as Mary Devereaux. The main facts of the article have not been questioned by his biographers. The substance of the interview is this: Mary Devereaux met Poe through a flirtation. Her memory did not serve her as to the date, which she put in 1835. But since Poe was betrothed to Virginia that year, and had been betrothed to her for some time, the date was probably 1832, as the author of the article surmises, though Killis Campbell believes the year was 1831. Mary returned the poet's love, and he called on her almost every evening for a year. She jilted him, and Poe horsewhipped a relation of hers as being responsible for his loss. He wrote for a Baltimore paper a poem of six or eight verses expressing his indignant sentiments. This passion continued with Poe, buried in his unconscious, even after he married Virginia Clemm. The day before Virginia died, in 1847, Mary was at the Poe household, and Virginia said to her: "Be a friend to Eddie, and don't forsake him; he always loved you—didn't you, Eddie?"
There is an account in the article of a scene that occurred in the spring of 1842. Poe tried at the time to see Mary, who was then a married woman, at her home in Jersey City. He reproached her and shouted that she did not love her husband, and he tried to force her to corroborate his words. He had been inquiring for her, and made up his mind he would see her even "if he had to go to hell" to do it. When he saw her, he was somewhat soothed, and she sang to him his favourite song, "Come Rest in This Bosom." She had sung this for him in the early days, and also at a visit she paid him in Philadelphia not long before his Jersey City visit. After this episode at her home the poet was found in the woods wandering about like one crazy.
Mary Devereaux scoffed at the idea that the poet's child wife was the great passion of his life. It was always known, in spite of Poe's tenderness for Virginia, that he never found intellectual companionship in her. Poe married Virginia in May, 1836, when he was 27 and she 14 years old. He was living in 1833 with the Clemms in Baltimore, and had taken out a marriage license on September 22, 1835, but Virginia was then too young for marriage.
The relation of Mary to his work will soon appear. I wish to show first that the splendid love poem, To One in Paradise, appearing in the tale The Assignation, was, with the story, inspired by Mary. Visionary, the original title of The Assignation, appeared with the poem in January, 1834, in Godey's Lady's Book, and hence was written in 1833, or before. It was among the tales submitted in the prize contest that year in which Poe was successful with one of his stories. When Poe later obtained employment on The Southern Literary Messenger, he reprinted here some of his tales; this tale was reprinted in July, 1835. The clue comes now. In the same number of the Messenger there is a poem entitled To Mary, by Poe, beginning, "Mary amid the cares—the woes," which in sentiments and ideas is but another version of To One in Paradise in the Visionary. This poem To Mary appears in Poe's poetical works under the title To F——. He reprinted this poem, which was originally written to his love Mary, in Graham's Magazine for March, 1842, and changed the first line and called the poem no longer To Mary, but To One Departed, very suggestive of the To One in Paradise. Poe, who would make a poem written to one lady serve, by a few changes in its text, for another later woman friend, gave this poem its present title, To F——, when he reprinted it in the 1845 Broadway Journal in honour of the poet Frances S. Osgood, whom he met that year.[H]
If we compare To One in Paradise with To F—— there will be no doubt that they were inspired by the same person and written at the same time, 1833, when the affair with Mary was over. In both poems references are made to his sweetheart being an isle in the sea and covered with flowers over which the sun smiles. In each poem mention is made of the desolate condition of the poet who derives happiness from living in dreams connected with her. To F—— is not as perfect as the other, but the idea underlying each poem is the same. The sonnet To Zante also has the same imagery, and was written, no doubt, at the same time to Mary.
To One in Paradise is supposed to be written by the lover in the story Assignation, in which it appears. It will be recalled that the lover of Marchesa Aphrodite in that tale had written the poem in a volume of Politian's tragedy, a page of which was blotted with tears. Poe is that lover and Marchesa Aphrodite is Mary. But we know also that Poe is the author of the poem Scenes from Politian, which was written about the time he loved Mary. It was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in December, 1835. In these scenes Poe identified himself with Politian, who loves Lalage and asks her to fly to America. "Wilt thou fly to that Paradise?" he asks her. The reference to Politian in Assignation is then significant, and the tears on the leaf of the play shed by the lover of Marchesa Aphrodite, the dreamer, were Poe's own for his lost Mary. The poet looked upon her as dead to him, and hence in a later version of the poem to her, To F——, he changes the title to To One Departed; when he wrote To One in Paradise he looked upon her as dead. Mary was, by the way, a name that haunted him, and in his Marginalia he advances his belief in the correct theory that Byron's only real love affair was with Mary Chaworth.
I am not so dogmatic as to maintain that in writing the Assignation and the three poems I mentioned, and the Politian scenes, his other earlier loves did not unconsciously make themselves felt. Killis Campbell thinks To One in Paradise and the sonnet To Zante were written to Miss Royster. Poe may also have been thinking of the mother of his friend who died, in the poem To One in Paradise. But it is most likely that his love for Mary chiefly inspired these poems. They were certainly not written to Virginia, for in 1833 she was only 11 years old.
The poem to Mary Devereaux, supposed to have been written for a Baltimore paper, may, as Woodberry surmises, be the To F—— poem, although it is not so severe as Mary said the poem he wrote against her was. Either her memory failed her as to the alleged severity of the poem, or the poem has not been discovered. A poem by Poe was only recently unearthed by Prof. J. C. French, of Johns Hopkins University, and printed in the Dial for January 31, 1918. It was called Serenade, and was published in the Baltimore Visiter, April 20, 1833. The girl addressed is given a fictitious name, Adeline. Whether she is Mary or not I cannot venture to say with certainty, but most likely she is. It was published when the affair was probably over, and may have been written at the height of his love a year previously. Here are some lines from it: