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?
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.