Mrs. Poe (7 page)

Again all gazes were on me. I felt a heady surge of power. “Mr. Poe told me that he taught her himself.”

“Really,” said Mr. Greeley.

We were joined by a young dandy wearing jeweled rings over
his gloves. From the marble dome of his forehead, laid bare by the retreat of his hair, to the almost pretty curve of his lips and flare of his nose, his pinkly shaven face was the picture of elegance, as graceful as Michelangelo’s
David
. Only the severe cleft between his brows marred his manicured surface, giving him a quarreler’s scowl.

“Poe?” he said. “Did I hear you say Poe? Never believe a word that madman says.”

“Mrs. Osgood,” said Miss Fuller, “surely you have met the Reverend Rufus Griswold? He is visiting from Philadelphia. Rufus, you know Mrs. Osgood.”

“We’ve corresponded by mail.” He pressed shapely lips to my hand. “You are much more beautiful than I pictured. I find women poets as a whole to be prettier on the page than in person.”

Mr. Greeley reached over to the table for a cookie. “Always winning hearts,” he said drily.

I held back a smile. Getting on the wrong side of Rufus Griswold was suicide for a poet. Somehow this prickly young man had become the arbiter of taste for American poetry while still in his mid-twenties. Inclusion in his annual editions of
The Poets and Poetry of America
could make or break a writer, as could his reviews or lack of them. No one’s reviews were followed as closely by the reading public—except for, recently, Mr. Poe’s.

“How nice to meet you in person at last, Reverend Griswold,” I said. “I hope this edition is selling well for you.”

“It was,” he said bitterly, “until Poe ripped it to shreds a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, pooh, Rufus,” said Miss Fuller. “I should think that your audience has increased. Poe devoted a whole evening to your book.”

“To slashing it!”

Miss Fuller shrugged. “Free promotion.”

“He publicly humiliated me!”

“Margaret’s right, Griswold,” said Mr. Greeley. “The literary papers were filled with it for weeks. Controversy sells. He’s making you a pretty penny.”

“Whose side are you on?” cried Reverend Griswold. He saw the frowns of the others. “Just don’t imagine that he’s not promoting
himself. He thinks he’s so clever, being the Tomahawker. I wonder how he’d feel on the other end of the hatchet.”

Mr. Greeley brushed at his chin whiskers. “No doubt about it, Poe is a clever one when it comes to self-promotion. I wouldn’t put it past him to have written the owl parody of his raven poem himself.”

Miss Fuller took my arm, causing me to start. “Frances has been invited to the Poes’ house, Rufus.”

“Going into the lion’s den, are you?” Reverend Griswold studied my face with a shrewdness that made me squirm. “You’d better be careful. He’ll eat up a pretty little thing like you.”

“I suspect that this ‘pretty little thing’ might wend her way into Poe’s confidence faster than you could bludgeon your way in,” said Miss Fuller.

Mr. Greeley stretched his lips in a grin. “Bring us back a report.”

“While you’re at it,” said Mr. Brady, “convince him to come sit for me.”

Miss Fuller rubbed my arm companionably. “Rufus, get her some tea. You will tell us all about it, won’t you, Frances?”

I accepted the cup that Reverend Griswold frowningly poured. I would have liked milk in my tea, but it was so unusual to be served by a man instead of serving one that I kept my peace.

“So you’ll give us a report?” said Miss Fuller.

I looked into the brown liquid in my cup and then up at the group silently waiting for my answer. At Eliza’s house, two little girls depended on me to make a life for them. It was not as if I would learn anything that would harm Mr. Poe by its revelation.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“Good,” said Miss Fuller. Then pushing back her headband, she speculated whether the new president’s wife might indeed be with child, when it had long since been thought that an operation for kidney stones had left Mr. Polk as sterile as a jug of boiled water.

Seven

I walked down lower Greenwich Street, giving wide berth to the hog feasting on a rotting pumpkin shell. Across the way, a well-dressed Temperance lady handed out tracts to the men emerging from one of the saloons that dotted the neighborhood like the dark kernels on an ear of Indian corn. A peddler trudged by, leaving a trail in the refuse-strewn pavement with the wheel of his barrow. The block, now fallen upon hard times, had once housed merchants and bankers in plain sturdy homes built of brick. But when yellow fever had swept through the city twenty-some years ago, many of those wealthy enough to flee had departed for the village of Greenwich or the countryside surrounding it, and have continued to settle northward ever since, making it passé to live downtown. In the dwellings they left behind, now four families crammed instead of one—families from foreign shores, most often Germany and Ireland.

Now I passed a German man carrying a pile of white cloth followed by his kerchiefed wife, who would be turning the heap into collars or cuffs at their kitchen table. Worn clothing flapped from lines strung above an alley down which a pack of Irish children kicked an empty patent-medicine bottle; a baby in rags toddled after them. At the end of the street several blocks away, the masts of sailing ships could be seen cruising behind the naked treetops of Battery Park, where the island gave way to the sea.

I came to the address that Poe had given me, Number 154. I had to be mistaken.

It had been a long while since a merchant had taken pride in this home. A fist-size hole in the glass of the window nearest the door had been stuffed with rags. Nearly slatless shutters sagged at the upper
story windows and the door was shaggy with peeling paint. Even the doorknob, hanging by its stem, was in an advanced stage of neglect. Surely the poet who had captured the imagination of the city lived in a more comfortable situation than this.

Reluctantly, I climbed up the steps and tapped on the battered door, cringing at the thought of the lout who I might be disturbing in error. When no one answered, I turned away in relief. At that moment, a handsome private carriage pulled up to the building several doors down. I watched as a heavily veiled figure left the vehicle. Before she could enter the building, the driver whipped the horses and the carriage rumbled off, not waiting for its passenger.

The door of Number 154 opened behind me, sending the knob rolling to my feet. With a gasp, I picked it up and turned around. Mr. Poe, dressed in a spotless black frock coat and holding a large tortoiseshell cat, stared at me as if I should speak.

“Hello,” I said stupidly.

He held out his palm. I placed the knob upon it.

He stood aside so that I could enter the dismal dwelling.

My fear flamed into anger as I did so. Why should he be so cool? I would not have come if he’d not invited me.

Just inside, quivering next to the stove that served for both cooking and heat, was a woman who looked to be what Mr. Poe might become in a few years had he been a woman and in a constant state of worry. She had Mr. Poe’s high forehead and dark lashes but her square-jawed lined face and rounded eyes bristled with an anxiety completely foreign to him.

“Mrs. Osgood,” said Poe, stroking his cat, “this is my aunt, Mrs. Clemm.”

She bustled forward to shake hands, the long lappets of her white widow’s bonnet flapping. Was it her daughter who had married Poe? She glanced between us, obviously bursting to speak.

“You might tell Virginia that she has a visitor,” Mr. Poe said mildly.

Her bolster-like breast lifted in a sigh before she trundled into a back room.

I kept my gaze trained forward, pretending that I did not see the contents of the grim chamber: a threadbare sofa; a table set with a
linen cloth browned at the edges from too much ironing; three lyre-backed chairs; the stove. Books lined the walls without the benefit of shelves. Besides a service of bone china on the table, the only fine piece in the room was a small, polished desk. It looked lost in its position beneath the rag-stuffed window.

“I hope you had no trouble in finding your way here,” said Mr. Poe.

I could hear whispers and scuffling sounds coming from the back room. “None at all.”

He put down the cat, who waddled over to the sofa, then jumped up and took a spot on it. “May I take your coat?”

Framing and discarding excuses to flee, I let him help me remove my wraps. His closeness discomfited me. I was trying to shake off my awkwardness when Mrs. Poe appeared in a schoolgirl’s gray wool dress, her face as bright as a child’s in a candy store.

“Mrs. Osgood! Thank you so much for coming! I have been dying to meet you ever since I read ‘Puss in Boots!’ ” She glanced at her husband. “I love your poems on flowers as well.”

Before I could thank her, she cried, “Please excuse our temporary lodging! Eddie had to find something close to his work, and this was all that was available at short notice. At least we don’t have to share it with filthy strangers.”

Mrs. Clemm grimaced. Mrs. Poe seemed not to notice. “You have heard that Eddie’s the owner of
The Broadway Journal
?”

“Congratulations,” I said to Mr. Poe. “So you have left the
Mirror
?”

“That monster Morris cheated him out of payment for his poems!” exclaimed Mrs. Poe. “Did he really think he could get away with that?” Her angelic voice dripped with vindictiveness. “Just wait—you’ll see. Eddie will get his revenge.”

Taken aback, I said, “Your husband’s talents will be much more appreciated at the
Journal,
I should think, with its more literary leanings.”

Mr. Poe’s expression remained rigid. “I fear my position at the
Journal
is not as lofty as it might seem. As one of three owners, I put in sixteen-hour days. I seem to be the partner elected to supply the elbow grease.”

“I should not take up your time then.” I started to rise.

“Oh, please stay!” said Mrs. Poe, all sweetness again. “You only just got here.”

Mrs. Clemm, hovering in the background, cried, “Would you like some coffee?”

Mr. Poe’s face remained neutral.

“Mother just made it,” Mrs. Poe added as further enticement. “We can’t possibly drink it all by ourselves. Please!”

I lowered myself, cringing. There seemed to be no polite way out. “Maybe just a cup.”

I soon found myself on the sofa with Mrs. Poe and the tortoiseshell cat perched on either side of me, the table moved to our knees. Mrs. Clemm poured the coffee into the china cups and then after passing them out, sat on one of the spindly chairs, her hand poised on the coffeepot, ready to replace my smallest sip. Mr. Poe, erect as a soldier, stood next to the sofa, quietly paging through a book.

Mrs. Poe smiled at me over the rim of her cup, her eyes a remarkable clear violet within the familial frame of dark lashes. Her skin, I noticed, was nearly as translucent and white as the cup itself. One could just make out the tracery of blue veins beneath it, giving one the odd sense that another creature altogether lurked just inside her flesh.

She put down her cup as carefully as a child playing at tea. In an overly serious voice, she asked, “Tell me how you came to write ‘Puss in Boots.’ ”

“It was a few years ago,” I said. “I was reading the stories of Charles Perrault to my children—”

“Oh, you have children! How old? Boys or girls? How many?”

“Girls. Ellen is going on nine and May Vincent, whom we call Vinnie, is nearly six.”

“Oh, how lovely! Eddie and I are dying to have children! I want to fill a house with them.”

“First we must get the house,” said Mr. Poe, turning the pages.

“I do like the countryside!” said Mrs. Poe. “We just moved from the prettiest farm overlooking the North River. It had orchards and cows and chickens, but we had to be closer to Eddie’s office. I do miss the lovely fresh air. Do you find the city air agreeable for your daughters?”

I raced to keep up with her train of thought. “More agreeable than in London.”

“You’ve lived in London!”

“My girls were born there.”

“I want to live in London! I want to live in Paris!” She pushed out her lower lip. “But Eddie won’t let us.” She changed the subject before I had to. “Where are you from?”

“Boston.”

Mr. Poe looked up.

Mrs. Poe glanced between us. “Eddie? Did you know that? That’s where Eddie’s from. No wonder he likes you.”

Mr. Poe “liked” me?

“I was merely born there,” he said coolly. “I have no memory of the place.”

“More coffee?” asked Mrs. Clemm. When she flew forward with the pot, I saw that her bonnet bore the same singe marks from ironing as the tablecloth.

“It’s so wonderful that you write stories for children,” said Mrs. Poe. “I want Eddie to write them when our children come. I won’t let him read them his scary stories. They would frighten our poor babies to death. You must think Eddie is terrifying, but he’s not. Are you, Eddie?”

He did not respond.

“Do you read much French, Mrs. Osgood?” asked Mrs. Poe.

I scrambled to connect the loose ends of the conversation—oh, the Perrault. “At times. ‘Puss in Boots’ is my translation—with my own twists, of course.”

“Eddie does likewise.” A hint of boastfulness crept into Mrs. Poe’s voice. “He takes German and French stories and makes them into his own.”

“Actually,” said Mr. Poe, “they are more like inspirations.”

“His stories are better than anyone’s.” She gave me a challenging look.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure that’s true.”

Mr. Poe scowled.

“A little more coffee?” cried Mrs. Clemm.

“Eddie has taught me French,” Mrs. Poe announced. “He says I
speak it like a Parisian. Might you have any books you can recommend to me in that tongue?”

She was smiling expectantly at me when she started to cough. I sat back, sipping coffee politely as she coughed first into her fist, then into the handkerchief Mr. Poe produced from inside his coat. The cat fled from the sofa. Mrs. Clemm urged her daughter to drink the hot coffee, and when Mrs. Poe could not down that, she jumped up, retrieved a bottle of medicine from the back room, and poured Mrs. Poe a spoonful. Mrs. Poe could not stop coughing long enough to take it. On she barked as Mr. Poe rubbed her narrow back, each paroxysm wringing her lungs tighter until the flesh around her nose and lips were blue.