Free Poe by Peter Ackroyd Page A

difference between an inchoate wail and a threnody.
    • • •
    In the spring of 1836 Poe married Virginia in a formal ceremony; presumably he made no reference to a former secret marriage, if such a union ever in fact took place. A witness to the formal marriage, Thomas W. Cleland, declared on oath that the girl was “of the full age of twenty one years.” Since Cleland was a pious Presbyterian, he is hardly likely to have sullied the marriage service with an outright fabrication. So Poe lied to him about Virginia's age. Maria Clemm, the mother, must also have lied. Virginia was seven years younger than her stated age, and was in any case regarded as being small for her years. It was a most unlikely union. It was not exactly illegal, but it was unusual.
    The newly married Poes seem to have ventured on a short honeymoon, in Petersburg, Virginia, although it is unlikely that their marriage was consummated at the time. He characteristically regarded his relationships with his chosen women as ideal or spiritual in temper. As a result ithas been surmised that he was averse to sexual relations of any kind, and even that he was impotent. We can only speculate that physical intimacy with his child bride, if it occurred at all, came at a subsequent date. Some years later, he declared that “I married for another's happiness, when I knew that no possibility of my own existed.” This, however, was the self-pity of hindsight.
    • • •
    In this relatively peaceful period, he grew ever more ambitious for his writing. He dispatched a manuscript of
Tales of the Folio Club
to a New York publisher, but then was advised by a literary friend “to undertake a Tale in a couple of volumes, for that is the magical number.” And that is what Poe promptly decided to do. If there was a market, he would address it. He began writing a novel,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,
the first instalment of which was published in the
Southern Literary Messenger
for January 1837. Even before it appeared, however, he had been removed from the staff of the periodical. The problem once more arose from his drinking. In September 1836, White had given him notice but was persuaded to reemploy him on certain “conditions”—which conditions, in December, “he has again forfeited.” A contemporary in Richmond reported that “when occasionally drinking (the habit was not constant) he was incapacitated for work.” He went on “binges,” in other words, in the course of which he became incapable. On his own admissionhe would then be obliged to spend several days in bed, recovering from what was inevitably described as an indisposition.
    So Poe “retired” at the beginning of 1837. Three weeks later White wrote to a friend that the
Messenger
“shall outlive all the injury it has sustained from Mr. Poe's management.” But it had not sustained any injury at all. Under Poe's direction the magazine attracted more notice, and more praise, than at any time in its subsequent history. Under his management, too, its circulation had risen from 700 to 3,500 subscribers. In addition it had published some of the finest American stories ever written. Poe was already the greatest prose writer in the country. But only a few critics noticed at the time.
    Poe remained in Richmond for the rest of January, and wearied White with his importunity. “He is continually after me for money,” White wrote. “I am as sick of his writings, as I am of him.” And so, at the end of February, Poe and his little household left for New York. He had spent a few months in that city, six years before, but his experience of poverty and misery there had not dissuaded him from returning. It should have done. The opening of “Siope” is suggestive. “ ‘Listen to
me
,’ said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head.”

The Editor
    T he Poes and Maria Clemm went first to a lodging house at Waverly Place, in Greenwich Village, and then later in 1837 moved a few blocks to