Mrs. Poe (22 page)

A shout came from downstairs, followed by a thud and the sound of hurried footsteps. I heard the back door being flung open and banged closed.

The second girl, Martha, struggled up the stairs with a bucket.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

She put the bucket on the floor with little splash. “A rat, ma’am. We got it.”

“That must be a relief.”

“Croton bugs is the real devil, ma’am. The cupboards is crawlin’ with them. We put saucers of water under the legs of the pie safe to keep ’em from crawlin’ up, but it don’t do much good.”

“A nuisance,” I murmured.

“We never seen them before there was pipes, ma’am. Persons was never meant to have water flowin’ into their houses from nowhere. ’Tisn’t natural.”

While most New Yorkers were delighted with the convenience of having water pumped into their homes from the recently completed Croton River Aqueduct, others were uneasy about the idea of their
water coming from far away. They believed that the half-inch brown insects that were suddenly infesting kitchens across the city had traveled through the pipes. If “cockroaches,” as Croton bugs were known by authorities, could invade homes through water pipes, what other undesirable agents could, too?

Mr. Bartlett appeared upon the stairs, tucking some papers into his coat. Martha snatched up the bucket.

“You should be glad of Croton water,” he said, having overheard her. He came down toward us. “You would have had to pump that bucket you have there, instead of just turning a tap in the kitchen.”

Martha scooted past him, head down, as if afraid of him.

“Skittish,” he said to me.

A knock sounded on the front door. We stepped out of view into the front parlor and waited for Catherine to come up from downstairs to answer.

“Mrs. Bartlett is not taking company,” Mr. Bartlett told her. “Little Johnny is ill and she refuses to leave his side.”

Catherine returned in a moment, then offered the calling card tray to me. “The visitor is for you, ma’am.”

I found myself fearing the sight of black feathers wafting over its silver edge.

But it was a simple card, in black and white:

MARGARET FULLER

“This time I made her stay at the door, ma’am.”

“Have fun,” Mr. Bartlett told me.

I drew in a breath. “Send her in.”

I heard Mr. Bartlett greet her on his way out. Miss Fuller marched into the parlor wearing a large battered black rain calash even though it was sunny outside.

“I’ve come to talk sense into you,” she announced.

“Oh dear.”

“I want you to reconsider the Poe story.”

I felt the smile recede from my face. Just hearing his name was painful. “I’m not the right one for it.”

“I think you are.”

“Mr. Poe will not talk to me.”

She scowled.

“We’ve had a falling out.”

“Over what?”

When she saw that I wouldn’t answer, she said, “Never mind. It’s Poe we’re talking about. Sooner or later, everyone falls out with him.”

I rose. “I need to give you back your money.”

She smiled. “Has your husband returned from his commission?”

She knew the answer to that. I wouldn’t be living at the Bartletts’ if he had.

“Let me go upstairs to fetch my purse.” It was cruel even for Samuel to not have at least written to me by now. Could some calamity have befallen him? More likely he had sniffed his way across the ocean after a buxom heiress.

“Wait!”

My gown scraped the floor as I turned around.

“I have another assignment that might interest you.”

I paused, knowing it couldn’t be good.

She took off her hat. “Phew—that thing smells! I am writing a series of articles on the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island. The conditions are deplorable there—I hope to shame the authorities into providing a more wholesome facility. Unfortunately, I had a row with the doctor in charge during my last visit. I’m afraid that he will have me escorted from the premises if I show my face. Hence this hat. I bought it for a penny from a ragpicker.” She shook it with a frown. “Not much of a disguise.”

She turned her hawk’s gaze to me. “It occurs to me that there is another way to skin this cat. How would you like to go and be my ears and eyes?”

“Go? To the lunatic asylum?”

She nodded cheerfully.

“I’d be no good at it.”

“Doesn’t matter. All you have to do is go in, look around, then come back and record your impressions.”

“I have no experience in this kind of reporting.”

“I didn’t mention it last night, but I saw Mr. Poe there.”

I blinked.

She cocked a brow when she saw that she had my attention. “He said he was there while researching a tale he was writing. Something about the inmates taking over the asylum. I couldn’t get much out of him about it. He was less communicative than usual, if you can imagine that.”

“I have a difficult time imagining anything to do with Mr. Poe.”

“Do you?” The corners of her long upper lip curved up knowingly.

When I did not answer, she said, “Go for me, Frances. It’ll be easy. You can stick with the story I’d concocted when I was arranging for transport there—that you are concerned for your dear unbalanced mother and wish to know about the facility. But you’ll have to dress much more plainly. No one with money would dream of putting a relative in there.”

“Such a sorrowful place. I really can’t do it.”

“Think of the service you’ll be doing for your helpless sisters. It’s the female patients who are the most vulnerable. Any male member of their family can just dump them there for any reason, no matter the woman’s state of mind. Essentially, they are buried alive.”

She noted my look of horror with satisfaction. “Never mind. I think I want to do it after all. These are just the kind of heinous conditions that I excel in exposing—I do love stirring a rotten pot. Somehow I will get past that warden. How I shall relish making him squirm for all the harm he has wreaked on those defenseless women.” She plunked back on her battered hat as I started toward the stairs to get her money. “But don’t say that I didn’t give you a chance to make something of yourself, Frances. Too bad.
Beneath that pretty society-girl surface, you strike me as the striving sort.”

Nineteen

Eliza did not accompany her husband and me to Miss Lynch’s conversazione the next evening, a Saturday. She insisted upon staying at home with Johnny, whose cough still lingered although he was getting better. Having lost two children to disease, she was not about to leave his side until he was completely well. But I was free to go, and with my girls in their nightgowns and under Mary’s spell as she told an Irish tale, could think of no excuse not to.

Pink-faced and immaculate, Reverend Griswold was hovering in the hall when I entered Miss Lynch’s home. “There you are!” he exclaimed to me. “I had hoped you would come.”

“You are too kind.” I gave my hat and coat to Miss Lynch’s maid while looking for an escape.

“Do you know if Poe is coming?” He pretended not to watch for my response.

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “I am not privy to his whereabouts.”

He smiled slightly.

I heard someone playing the scales on Miss Lynch’s piano. “Who is going to play tonight?”

“Shall we go see?” He clamped my hand over his arm, then smoothed it with one of his mauve-clad own. The man had more pairs of gloves than the Hydra had heads.

“An important poet is to come here tonight from Boston,” he said as he led me into the parlor. “A very dear friend of mine—Ralph Waldo Emerson. Perhaps you know him, being from Boston yourself?” He grinned when he saw my frown. “Yes, I have been checking up on you. I learned that you are from Boston and that you have also spent some time in London.”

“Yes,” I said. “With my husband.”

He squeezed my hand, trapped on his arm. “I’m sorry to hear that your husband has been absent these past several months.”

“Thank you for your concern. You’ll be happy to hear that he should be returning soon.”

He slid me a sly look. “I hope so, although he seems quite . . . busy . . . in Cincinnati.”

My stomach knotted. So that is where Samuel had fetched up. Even I did not know that. Where did Reverend Griswold get his information?

In the front parlor, guests were forming conversational clusters, the closest of which were the companionable trio of Mr. Brady, Mr. Greeley, and Miss Fuller. To my dismay, I saw that the pianist, still intent upon the scales, was none other than the voluminously coifed connoisseur of horror stories, Mr. Morris, the editor of the
Mirror
.

Reluctantly, Reverend Griswold allowed me to pull him toward Mr. Brady’s threesome, where I casually turned my back toward Mr. Morris. I was embarrassed that I had not the creative power of late to come up with a frightening story for him. Mr. Poe had consumed my mind.

Mr. Brady broke off his conversation when he saw me. “Ah, Mrs. Osgood. I see that you have your head.” He grinned as if waiting for me to laugh.

“I don’t get it,” said Miss Fuller. “What’s the joke?”

Mr. Brady’s enlarged eyes brimmed with good will. “Mrs. Osgood had the misfortune of moving when the photographic plate was being exposed. When are you going to come in for me to re-make it?” he asked me.

“When are you going to make my portrait, Mathew?” said Miss Fuller.

I was aware of Mr. Morris looking our way. “I shall take my unsuccessful sitting as a sign that I’m not meant to be photographed,” I said lightly.

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Brady, “although it was pretty disconcerting. Here’s this beautiful woman,” he said to the others, “with a perfect figure, in an exquisite dress—with no head! It would be enough to
scare Ichabod Crane. She was every bit as headless as Mr. Irving’s horseman.”

“Too bad Mr. Irving is in Spain and can’t get a glimpse of it,” said Reverend Griswold. “Who knows what new story it would inspire? The man’s talent is outstanding. Do you realize that he wrote ‘Rip Van Winkle’ in one night? He told me that a couple of years ago, at lunch.”

“Every generation has its own genius,” said Mr. Greeley. “Mr. Irving was our father’s. I’d say ours is Mr. Poe.”

“True,” said Mr. Brady. “Masterpieces seem to fall from his fingertips.”

Reverend Griswold sniffed. “The only thing to fall from Poe’s fingertips is his glass.”

“I hope not,” said Mr. Greeley. “I hope he’s straightened up since his Philadelphia days. I hate to see genius wasted.”

Reverend Griswold stroked my hand as if it were a pet rabbit. “You mean, wasted on him.”

Just inside the arch to the back parlor, Mr. Morris bent into his playing, his gummy curl bobbing on his forehead.

“That’s a Liszt piece, isn’t it?” said Mr. Brady.

Mr. Greeley grinned. “Beware of Lisztomania. Cover your ears, Margaret, Mrs. Osgood.”

We all had heard of the phenomenon that was sweeping across Europe wherever the pianist, Franz Liszt, played. Just the sight of him was thought to put women into hysterical ecstasy; his performances turned them into wild beasts. Women clawed their way to be near him and for the chance to snatch up anything that he’d touched—handkerchief, gloves, broken piano strings—which they would fashion into jewelry and bind to their bodies as if to possess a piece of the man. His coffee dregs were confiscated and worn in little vials. One woman was even said to wear his discarded cigar butt encased in a locket studded with
F.L.
in diamonds. Most troubling, at least to the men who reported it, was that it was not maids or shopgirls who were succumbing to Liszt fever but respectable wives and daughters, well-trained women who should have known better.

“She need not fear hearing the music,” Mr. Brady said over Mr.
Morris’s plinking, “it’s Liszt himself who is the catalyst for the mania, not his songs. Wish I had
his
charisma.”

Reverend Griswold pulled back in affront, his mauve-covered hand still clamped over mine. “You would want women behaving badly in your presence?”

Mr. Brady laughed. “Well, when you put it that way—yes.”

A rise in feminine voices drew our attention to the parlor doorway. Mr. Poe entered, elegant and composed, with Miss Lynch upon his arm. Miss Fiske and her friend visiting from Massachusetts, Miss Alcott, made a dash for him with swishing skirts. A hot wave of yearning turned my knees to jelly.

“I think we might have our own Mr. Liszt,” said Miss Fuller.

“The man’s a drunk,” muttered Reverend Griswold.

“Doesn’t factor in, old man,” said Mr. Greeley. “Liszt could be a dope fiend. Women don’t care.”

“Women do care,” I said.

The group regarded me.

“What is it about Mr. Poe that women find so attractive?” asked Mr. Brady. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Miss Fuller toyed with her bone necklace. “He’s cool and hard and smart, with a river of passion running underneath. Women just want to dig down to that wild river. Wouldn’t you agree, Frances?”

Reverend Griswold rubbed my hand. “You insult Mrs. Osgood by asking her such a thing. Ask some moral reprobate instead.”

Miss Fuller let an appraising look come to rest upon him. “Why is it, Rufus, that you find a woman’s attraction to a man to be so dirty?”

Beads of perspiration formed on the gray mask of his shaved upper lip. “Well! I needn’t tell you! Within a marriage, a woman worshipping her man is a beautiful thing. But if unchecked, and outside of marriage, you get your Lisztomania. You can make light of it all you wish, Miss Fuller, but if left unfettered, female desire can exacerbate a dangerous medical condition that affects both the sufferer and society at large.”

“What about men?” said Miss Fuller. “Shouldn’t they control themselves as well?”

A tall gentleman cradling a glass of water in his spindly fingers
stepped over to our group. His long, withered head, with its fibrous tuft on top, reminded me of a yam.