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Women: Eliza Muddy Virginia

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Poe to George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848

"Six years ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same scene. Again in about a year afterward. Then again--again--again and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive--nervous, in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the leash of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man--it was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have endured with the total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I receive a new but--oh God! how melancholy an existence."

Women: Eliza Muddy Virginia

POE: Influences Friends Enemies Women