Mrs. Poe (4 page)

Something fresh,
Mr. Morris had asked for.
Something entertaining
.
Something dark that will make the lady readers afraid to snuff their candles at night.

But try as I might, with two little girls giggling at my table, no frightening subject would come to me, although the precariousness of our well-being was truly terrifying in itself. From Samuel’s abandonment I knew the fear of want. I knew firsthand anguish and despair and how they soon blackened into fury. But I had not yet come face-to-face with sheer malevolence, with the dark and ill side of humanity that is inured to the suffering of others. To know such is a necessity if one is to write something truly chilling. That would come for me later.

Three

Gaslight flickered in the sconces of Miss Anne Charlotte Lynch’s Waverly Place double parlor, bathing the intelligent faces of the guests in pale orange. I recognized many of the usual members of the New York literary crowd, but there were others: a Bohemian poetess in her gypsy hoop earrings and loose vest; the elderly Mr. Audubon in his buckskin costume; one Mr. Walter Whitman, who belligerently wore the long-tailed frock coat and ruffles from an earlier era. In contrast to the elaborate offerings at the table that were the usual part of salons, Miss Lynch fed this mixed group simply: butter cookies and little dishes of Italian ice, washed down with cups of tea. There were no maids to serve us—everyone was on equal standing here. Nor was there planned entertainment. All that was offered was discussion and encouragement to read short clips from one’s recent work or to play one’s newest composition. Ideas were the centerpiece, Miss Lynch insisted. She herself dressed as if ready to teach class, which she did by day at the Brooklyn Academy for Young Ladies. Indeed, this humble scene of intellectual earnestness untainted by the crass influence of money would have been completely believable had it not been for the row of handsome carriages waiting outside in a queue that reached to Washington Square. But the illusion was nice.

Now, an hour into the event, I sipped my tea, turning whenever a newcomer entered the orange-lit room. Like everyone else there, I anticipated the imminent arrival of Mr. Poe. He had the New York literati under his thrall. While the discussions that I listened in on that night may have
started
on the inhumanely crowded tenements of Five Points, where Irish immigrants were being packed three
families to a filthy windowless room, or on the growing problem of slavers who seized free black men from the streets of New York and sold them into bondage in the markets of Baltimore or Richmond, or on the continuing removal of the Plains Indians from their lands by the War Department, sooner or later, the conversation returned to Poe.

“Do you know that he married his thirteen-year-old first cousin?” said Margaret Fuller, addressing the group next to whom I cruised. “I understand that they’ve been married ten years now.” Besides being the literary critic for Mr. Greeley’s
New York Tribune,
the best-read female in New England, and one of the few women in America to support herself by her writing, Miss Fuller was an expert on the Great Lake Indians. This evening she wore a Potawatomi bib of bones over her wool serge bodice. Indeed, with her hawklike nose and piercing black eyes, her face resembled an Indian war club.

Helen Fiske, who herself was but fifteen years of age, butter-haired, and as soft as Miss Fuller was hard, said, “Perhaps all Southerners marry young.”

Miss Fiske was quickly attacked all around for being ignorant of Southerners, who were just like us if not a tad more old-fashioned. The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad—well, more than a tad, a lot more than a tad—old-fashioned, compared with themselves.

Mr. Greeley, who was also present, lifted his teacup. The nails of his thick fingers were permanently stained with printer’s ink, although as publisher of the
Tribune,
his days of setting type had long since passed. “I’ll tell you a new fashion that I find ludicrous: this notion of Free Love. Claiming that ‘spiritual holy love’ is more important than a legal marriage—I wish them luck with that.”

“Hush,” said Miss Fuller. “Mr. Andrews can hear you.”

The little group glanced toward the fireplace, where the founder of the Free Love movement, Mr. Stephen Pearl Andrews, was speaking earnestly to Miss Lynch.

“Besides,” Miss Fuller said, “I’m not sure that Andrews is all wrong.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those Free Lovers, Margaret,” said Mr. Greeley with a rubbery-faced grin.

“No, but I do agree with him that marital relations without the consent of the wife amounts to rape.”

Mr. Greeley seemed not to hear her. “We ought to ask Poe what he thinks of the Free Lovers. He seems to have an opinion on everything.”

“I have heard that he was court-martialed from the army,” said the daguerreotypist Mathew Brady. Although a young man, he wore spectacles with thick round lenses that magnified his eyes to thrice their size, giving him the appearance of someone much older. When he sipped his tea, I saw that his hands were tinged with the umber color of the iodine he used in developing his daguerreotypes, a kind of portrait done by exposing chemicals to light, a fad that my husband felt sure would soon fall out of favor.

“No surprise.” Mr. Greeley swallowed his mouthful while dusting off the crumbs that had fallen upon his long gray coat. “I hear he’s got a weakness for the bottle.”

“Be that as it may,” said Miss Fuller, “I find his poetry touching if a bit elementary, although his stories are entirely too preoccupied with the dead.”

“Is it a wonder?” said Miss Fiske, her yellow ringlets nearly trembling. “I’ve heard that he lost his mother as a tiny child.”

Miss Fuller frowned. “Poor Poe.”

Behind the prisms of his glasses, Mr. Brady’s eyes grew even bigger. “Why do all you ladies say that? You rush at him like you are his long-lost mothers.”

A quiet fell over the room. A slim, immaculately dressed man stepped into the parlor with Miss Lynch, whose heart-shaped elfin face was tilted at him in adoration. His broad forehead, cleared of the unruly waves of his hair, emphasized the dark-lashed gray eyes from which he now stared with a cold intelligence. His mouth, beneath a silky mustache, was delicate in its cut yet hard and disdainful. Erect as a soldier, he held himself so tightly that he seemed ready to either lash out at whoever approached him or to stalk from the room. I didn’t know whether to run to or from him.

“I don’t think being his mother is what the ladies have in mind,” Mr. Greeley said under his breath.

“Everyone,” Miss Lynch exclaimed, “may I present Mr. Poe!”

No one moved. Into the wake of silence, a slight young woman with robin’s-egg-blue-colored ribbons fluttering from her hair, neck, and sleeves swept through the parlor door on the arm of Mr. Nathaniel Willis, Mr. Morris’s partner on the
Mirror
. She was beautiful in a fragile way, thin and pale, and with hair so black as to have undertones of blue. Her features were much like Mr. Poe’s—wide forehead, shapely mouth, dark-rimmed eyes. They appeared to be brother and sister, with he the elder sibling and she the adorable baby of a notably handsome family.

Miss Lynch reached back and put her arm around the young woman’s delicate shoulders, bringing her into the room. “And this, my dears, is Mrs. Poe!”

The woman-child smiled sweetly. From his little wife’s side, Mr. Poe glared at our gathering as if to eat us.

The elderly Mr. Audubon stepped forward and put out his hand to Mrs. Poe, the fringe of his buckskin dangling. “My dear lovely lady, where were you when I was young?”

Mr. Poe stared at him as if deciding whether to take offense.

Shielded from fear by age and self-preoccupation, Mr. Audubon pursued Poe’s wife further. “From where do you hail, dear? I know you’re not from New York. You are much too sweet.”

“Baltimore.” Mrs. Poe’s voice was as silvery as a little bell. She sounded like a young girl, although if Miss Fuller was correct, Mrs. Poe was twenty-three years of age.

“Baltimore—ah, a name I adore. You are familiar with the Baltimore oriole?”

“No, sir.”

“No? Well, I shouldn’t expect such an innocent young thing to know
everything
. They are birds, madame, birds.” Mr. Audubon folded her hand onto his arm. “I saw my first oriole in Louisiana, in 1822. I paint birds. Did I tell you that?”

They strolled off, the aged illegitimate son of an aristocrat, dressed like a frontiersman, and the wife of the toast of New York, as pretty in her ribbons as a child’s doll. At any other soiree, such a pair would be remarkable. At Miss Lynch’s party, which she preferred to call a conversazione, they were just part of the colorful crowd.

Seeing an opening, Miss Fuller detained Mr. Poe. Reluctantly,
conversations renewed around me. I pretended to listen to Mr. Greeley and Mr. Brady as I observed Mr. Poe and then his wife. It was uncanny how much they looked alike. I wondered if they had grown up together and, if so, when they knew that they were more to each other than blood kin.

“Fanny.”

I started.

Eliza laughed. “I scared you.”

“You didn’t.”

She edged in closer. “Does Mr. Poe?” she whispered.

I drew in a breath. “Frankly, yes.”

She chuckled. “I know what you mean. But I believe he might be a gentleman once you get to know him.”

“Tell that to poor Mr. Longfellow and the scores of other poets he has shredded.”

Eliza peered over the crowd. “Quick—Poe looks bored. Now’s our chance to meet him.”

She pulled me across the room redolent with the smell of hair pomade, butter cookies, and perfumed flesh. We stopped before Mr. Poe, who was listening coldly as Miss Fiske related how her mother had died in the previous year and how her mother’s passing had only deepened her poetry and enabled her to truly
feel.

“I believe she is with me still, Mr. Poe.” Miss Fiske peered up into his face with earnestness. “Whenever I see a fallen feather, I know she has sent it. I collect them. See the one she has sent me today?” She pulled a brown feather from her reticule.

He glanced at the feather and then at Miss Fiske. “Not resting comfortably in heaven, is she?”

Miss Fiske flinched as if poked.

Eliza chose this moment to interrupt. “Mr. Poe?”

He turned his baleful gaze upon her. I nearly winced at the pain and fury in his dark-lashed eyes. What had happened to this man to make him such a wounded beast?

Dismay flitted across Eliza’s face. She recovered her equilibrium with the speed of an experienced socialite. “I believe you have met my husband, John Russell Bartlett.”

“The publisher? He has a bookshop in the Astor House.”

“That’s correct,” she said, delighted. “I am his wife, Eliza. I would like you to meet my dear friend.”

Mr. Poe cut me a doubtful glance.

“Mr. Poe, this is Mrs. Samuel Osgood—Fanny, as her many friends and admirers call her. She’s well known for her poetry.”

He let his beautiful, terrible gaze fall upon me. As discomfiting as it was, I refused to look away. I would not let this second-rate poet, as popular as he was, frighten me. He put one leg in his pantaloons at a time, just like every other man.

Although his expression remained cool, his eyes registered surprise, then amusement. Did he find me that ridiculous?

Eliza glanced between us. “Fanny has written several collections for children. ‘The Snow-drop,’ ‘The Marquis of Carabas, and Puss in Boots,’ and ‘The Flower Alphabet.’ We are so proud of her.”

I must sound as childish as my tales. “I also write poems for adults.”

“She does!” cried Eliza. “She has written about flowers for them, too.”

“Flowers,” he said flatly.

I was saved from melting into the carpet in shame by the vigorous approach of the English actress, Mrs. Fanny Butler née Kemble, who was advancing upon us with a swish of pumpkin-colored skirts. With her chestnut curls, milk-and-roses complexion, and soulful brown eyes, she was even prettier in person than in the hoardings that were still plastered around London when I had lived there, several years after she’d left the stage for marriage.

“Mister Poe!” she said in her plummy stage voice. “I have been dying to talk with you!”

He glanced at me as if he thought to say more, then regarded her coolly. “You look fairly alive just yet.”

She laughed. “Thank you, you are quite correct,” she said, her voice less affected. “We must be mindful of our words. We do get lazy; at least I do.”

She held out her hand to me as one would to a man. “And you are?”

I shook with her. “Frances Osgood.”

“So very nice to meet you.”

I caught a glimmer of sorrow behind her brave smile. Even though she had just taken up residence in the city, everyone knew of her recent estrangement from her American husband over the issue of slavery, he being one of the largest slaveholders in the nation. After living on their plantation when newly married, she had grown to despise human bondage and her husband in equal measures and had publicly denounced both. Now that she had left him, she was thought of by many to be an unnatural woman, not just for breaking with her husband over a principle, even one as important as this, but for abandoning their children, to whom she had no legal claim upon leaving her husband. Now that Mrs. Butler was so vilified, Miss Lynch had been every bit as brave to invite her as to have invited Mr. Andrews and his Free Lovers. At other, less intellectual, more “respectable” gatherings, “decent” women would have left the room had Mrs. Butler entered. It was astonishing how rapidly she had gone from being the cosseted darling of the stage to a much-despised pariah.

“I’m glad for this chance to speak to you,” she said to Mr. Poe. “I have wanted to ask if you would be interested in staging ‘The Raven’ as a short play for charity.”