Mrs. Poe (3 page)

Eliza gave little Johnny to Vinnie, who’d been silently begging for him with open arms. “She’s new to this city from Providence—she’s a
friend of Russell’s family. She stopped in his shop and told him she was attempting to start a salon—not just for the usual bon ton but for artists of all kinds, rich or poor. I daresay she might have a chance at success after having snagged Poe.”

“I wonder how she lured him in.”

“She might come to regret it. He’s sure to be horribly ruthless. Poe doesn’t like
anything
.”

It was true. I had seen his reviews in
The Evening Mirror
. Prior to “The Raven,” he was best known in literary circles for his poisoned pen. For good reason he was called the Tomahawker, happy as he was to chop up his fellow writers. He regularly tore in to gentle, gentlemanly Mr. Longfellow with a savagery that made no sense. In truth, I had wondered about his sanity even before Mr. Morris’s accusation, or at least his motives for such abuse.

“The gathering is to be at seven. Say that you’ll come with me. I told her about you—” She saw my wince. “That you are a poet.”

Bless you, Eliza.
“I’ll go, if the girls are well by then.”

Vinnie jogged little Johnny on her hip. “I will be!”

“There you have it,” I said with a nonchalance that I did not feel. If I became his competition, I, too, might soon be on the wrong side of the dangerous Mr. Poe.

Two

I woke up the next morning shivering from the cold. Leaving the girls curled up together under the quilts in our bed, I went to the window and cleared a spot in the frost. Snow was coming down, muffling sidewalks and streets, blanketing rooftops, capping the ornate iron railings of the stoops across the way. The milkman passed in a sleigh, the mane of his horse thick with icy crystals, as was his own hat and shoulders.

Wrapping my robe more closely around me, I went to the fireplace, uncovered the banked embers, and gave them a poke. One of Eliza’s Irish maids, the “second girl,” Martha, the cook’s and parlor maid’s helper, slipped into the room with a bucket of coal and a can of water, then whispered her apology when she saw me crouching there. As she took over tending to the fire, I wondered once more how I would have survived without the generosity of her employers and where I would go once my welcome wore out. There was no question of returning to my mother. She had never gotten over the disappointment of my marriage to Samuel. Father’s death the following year had further turned her against me; she blamed the blow of losing me for weakening his health. The doors to my sisters’ and brothers’ homes were equally closed, nor could I find shelter in the arms of another man, at least not a decent one, if I divorced Samuel for abandonment. No one wanted a divorcée as a wife. I did not even have the luxury of conducting an affair. Should I fall for a man while still married, Samuel had legal right to take the children. Only the Bartletts stood between me and deepest poverty and isolation.

As Martha finished stoking the fire and began pouring water into my pitcher, I thought of the ragged children I had seen outside the
neighborhood coal yard, scrambling to pick up nuggets that spilled from the wagons as they left to make deliveries. Even as I imagined myself among them, scurrying to beat a waif out of a lump in my destitution, I saw the image of my husband before a cheerfully crackling fire, helping himself to marmalade for his toasted bread, his current mistress, young, blond, and very rich, smiling as he ate his egg. Was there a man ever born who was more supremely selfish than Samuel Stillman Osgood?

I was twenty-three when I met him, ten years ago. He was twenty-six, tall, and handsome in a rough, raw-boned way. He had hair and eyes the brown of fresh-turned earth, the high cheekbones of a Mohawk, and a strong, straight nose. I had come upon him in the paintings gallery of the Athenæum in my native Boston, where I had gone to write some poetry, hoping the art would inspire me. Little did I know that this confident young man with the fistful of paintbrushes would forever disrupt my comfortable life.

He was working at an easel set up before the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. I walked by quietly as to not disturb him, noting the nearly finished copy of the portrait upon his easel. I had just passed him when my pencil slipped from my notebook and clattered on the marble floor.

He looked up.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

He retrieved my pencil and held it out to me with a gallant flourish. “Madame.”

I could feel the heat rising up my neck. He was much too handsome. “Thank you. Sorry to disturb you.” I turned to go.

“Don’t leave.”

I stopped.

He smiled. “Please. I could use your opinion.”

“Mine?”

“Does Mr. Washington seem to be holding a secret?”

I peered at the portrait that I had seen so often as to ignore it. The eyes did seem wary. Only the slightest trace of a smile animated the president’s sealed lips. It was the face of a man under strictest self-control. With a start, I wondered how well we knew this most famous of men. “Is he?”

“Yes. Do you know what it is?” He leaned forward. When I stepped closer, he whispered, “His teeth are bad.”

I stifled a laugh. “No!” I whispered back.

“Shhh.” He pretended to scan the room for eavesdroppers. “They say that even in his youth, he was so conscious of his teeth that he rarely smiled, even though he was quite the ladies’ man, believe it or not.”

“Old Martha’s husband?”

He put hands on hips in mock protest. “I’ll have you know that ‘Old Martha’s husband’ kept a lady love across the Potomac from Mount Vernon when they were young. His best friend’s wife.”

“Maybe it’s Martha who didn’t feel like smiling.”

He chuckled, making me feel witty. “You’d think so, but as it happens, Old Martha was wild about him. All the women were. They fought to be his partner at dances and elbowed their way to shake hands with him in reception lines.”

“Even though he didn’t smile?”

“Maybe because of it. Women do love a mysterious, brooding man.”

“I don’t.”

He laughed. “Good for you. Then maybe you won’t be disappointed to know that the reason Dashing George was sullen at the time of this picture was because he hadn’t a tooth left in his head.”

“Poor George.”

“Poor George, indeed. His new dentures were a fright. It seems his dentist never could get the springs on the hinges to fit.”

“Ouch.” I put out my hand. “You are quite the authority on Mr. Washington and his dentistry, Mister—?”

He gave my gloved fingers a genial tug. “Osgood. Samuel. And you are—?”

“Frances Locke.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Locke. In all seriousness, I’m not really an expert on either Mr. Washington or his teeth or even his lady friends. I just did a little research because I had to know why his jaw looked so misshapen in Stuart’s portrait.” He gave the original portrait a loving glance. “Stuart wouldn’t have painted such an awkward smile on Washington’s face unless it truly was awkward. In case you can’t tell, Gilbert Stuart is my hero.”

I studied his reproduction of the Stuart. “Your copy of his painting is perfect.”

“You are probably wondering if I can paint originals as well as copy from masters.”

“No,” I protested with a laugh, although that was precisely what I was thinking.

“May I borrow your notebook and pencil, please?”

I gave them to him. He studied my face as if I were a statue or a painting, not a living woman, then, as I winced under his scrutiny, he held up my pencil, took a measure of my features, and made a few markings before setting to drawing rapidly. In the time it takes to brush out and braid one’s hair for bed, he finished his sketch and turned my notebook toward me. It was a perfect quick likeness in pencil, down to the skeptical look in my eye.

“Do I really look this doubtful?”

He only smiled.

“I must show this to my family. They accuse me of being outrageously impetuous but it’s
not
impetuous to bring home a stray dog or to feed the cats roaming in the alley or to give one’s allowance to orphans, it’s reasonable and practical. Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.”

“You must have trouble in church.”

I met his grin. “And then there are times, Mr. Osgood, when one must just let go.”

His gaze softened. “I believe,” he said after a moment, “that those are the happiest of times.”

We smiled at each other.

He bowed. “Would you allow me to paint you, Miss Locke? It would be a great honor.” I must have looked leery of his intentions because he added, “I would do it right here. The librarians could serve as chaperones.”

“I trust you.”

“The great doubter? I’m flattered.”

We both laughed. We made arrangements to meet there the next day. Before my portrait was completed, he had proposed to me. We were married within a month, in spite of my parents’ strenuous
objections. I thought they would come around to see his true worth in spite of his negative ledger, but they never did. Love was not everything to them, as it was to me. My father cut me out of his will. My mother refused to see me. I was so drunk with love that I didn’t care. Before our honeymoon ended, I was with child.

It had been in the eighth month of this first pregnancy, while we were in England so that Samuel could paint the cream of British society, that I had learned the reason why he was so popular with his female sitters: he bedded them with the same enthusiasm that he painted them. I found that I was just one of many, although, as far as I know, and for my daughters’ sakes I hope, I was the only one that he married. He claimed that I was so beautiful that he had to possess me—a dubious honor.

Now the girls were awake. After a quick washing at the basin, they were dressed, swathed in shawls, and settled at Eliza’s basement family room table with their books after breakfast—no school for them that day, as Vinnie’s ear was still draining and Ellen’s cold had not improved.

Eliza had gone out to pay a call upon an ill friend; the younger Bartlett children were upstairs being tended by the maid. Mr. Bartlett was at the little bookshop he ran in the Astor House to satiate his own mania for the written word. My girls and I had the cozy, low-ceilinged room to ourselves, with the homey sound of banging pans murmuring through the wall shared with the kitchen. With a glance out cellar windows so frosted over that they revealed only a shadowy glimpse of the trouser legs and skirts of the passersby on the sidewalk, I took out a copy of
The American Review
and spread it open to my own lesson for the day: “The Raven.” Tapping my finger in time with the rhythm, I silently recited the verses.

Barely into the poem, I muttered,
“What trickery. It’s just a word game.” Out loud I read:

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow
he
will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

Wondering at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster—so, when Hope he would adjure,

Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure—

That sad answer, “Nevermore!”

I stopped when I saw that the girls were listening.

“Are you writing a new poem?” asked Vinnie.

“No. This is one by a Mr. Edgar Poe.”

“Read us all of it!”

“Shouldn’t you be working on one of your own?” said Ellen.

“Yes,” I said. “I should. Go back to work. If you’re able to go to school tomorrow, you won’t want to be behind.”

I started again at the beginning, with the hope of understanding how this silly piece captured the imagination of the reading public. I came to the next verse.

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door;

Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

“That’s it!” I dropped the magazine.

“What, Mamma?” asked Vinnie.

“This silly alliteration—it’s clinking, clattering claptrap.”

Ellen’s face was as straight as a judge’s on court day. “You mean it’s terrible, trifling trash?”

I nodded. “Jumbling, jarring junk.”

Vinnie jumped up, trailing shawls like a mummy trails bandages. “No! It’s piggily wiggily poop!”

“Don’t be rude, Vinnie,” I said.

The girls glanced at each other.

I frowned. “It’s exasperating, excruciating excrement.”

“Mamma!” breathed Ellen.

“What’s that mean?” Vinnie cried.

Ellen told her. And thus a torrent of alliterative abuse was unleashed on Mr. Poe’s poem. The girls were still trading outrageous insults as I got out paper and pen and opened an inkpot. Banter does not fill a pocketbook.