Now I said absently, “What, Lizzie? Am I sure? Yes—just one moment.”
I jotted down phrases, some images, key words, so I would not forget, then put down the pen. Thinking twice, I snatched it up and scratched out at the top of the page: Fanny’s First Smile.
The baby’s calls grew louder. I dropped the pen and, with my still-tender heart swelling with gratitude, flew upstairs.
I found her standing unsteadily in her crib, holding on to the rails. When she saw me, she rattled the bars and crowed with excitement.
I lifted her to my breast, inhaling deeply her dear infant’s scent. There was the sweetness of a meadow in it, of unfurling flowers, of pure human joy. It is the smell, I realized, of hope.
“Hush now,” I murmured into her rosebud ear, “hush now. Mamma’s here. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. You’re mine, forevermore.”
And the child, gazing at me with dark-lashed eyes, laughed.
Author’s Note
In his better moments he had in an eminent degree that air of gentlemanliness which men of a lower order seldom succeed in acquiring
—R
UFUS
W. G
RISWOLD
,
Memoir of the Author,
1850
When I set out to write
Mrs. Poe,
my intention was not to write a “shivery” tale. I was interested to know how Frances Osgood might have come to be the lover of Edgar Poe—a notion some Poe scholars still deny. The plan was to let recorded events and letters, and Frances’s and Edgar’s own writings, show me the way. I was also ready to fall in love with the Edgar Poe, known to be sexual catnip to the ladies in his time. But I didn’t know that I was writing a dark story.
Maybe I was naïve to think that a novel about Poe would not end up being heartbreaking. As every American high school student knows, E. A. Poe’s work contains some pretty black material. But the more I researched, the more I found that Poe didn’t just write frightening stories, he lived them. The horrific aspects of his childhood described in my book are all true. He endured deep personal loss and grinding poverty his whole life. In fact, I was careful to try to stick to the facts about the lives of Edgar Poe and Frances Osgood as closely as possible throughout the book. To my mind, the action that I made up could have actually happened. The vast array of materials at the New-York Historical Society, the jaw-droppingly detailed
Gotham
by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, the meticulous documentation of Poe’s daily life in
The Poe Log
by Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson, and simply tramping up and down the streets of lower
Manhattan, chasing down historical leads, served as my guide into the world of Frances and Edgar. I came to be awed by how they both kept going in the face of constant adversity.
As tragically as I imagine Frances and Edgar’s affair had ended, what happened in real life after they parted is even more relentlessly devastating. Life could be cruel and short in the mid-nineteenth century, and the people in our story serve as a sad illustration.
Virginia Poe died on January 30, 1847, of tuberculosis, or consumption, as it was known then. She was twenty-four years old. In the years after Virginia died, Edgar Poe wrote some of his greatest poems, including “Ulalume,” one of my inspirations for this book. In that poem, the narrator and the woman who is my soul, Psyche, come upon a star of great beauty. They have been in despair—the narrator described his heart as being “volcanic”—so at first such a glorious sight brings them much needed relief and joy. Then they come to realize that the star is none other than their lost loved one, Ulalume. Once again they are plunged into grief when they realize that Ulalume is unreachable. It was, to me, Poe’s most emotionally honest poem. I felt as if I could understand his relationship with Frances—and the utter anguish he felt at their parting—once I began to study the lines. Was Poe the narrator? Was Psyche actually Frances, and Ulalume their daughter, Fanny Fay? I like to think so.
Two years after Virginia died, on October 7, 1849, Edgar Poe followed her to the grave at the age of forty, his original mind quieted forever. Seven months after Poe’s passing, Frances Osgood died, on May 12, 1850, of tuberculosis. She was thirty-eight years old. Upon her death, her husband, Samuel, ever the entrepreneur, collected her poems, including those to Edgar Poe, into a volume. It sold well. Samuel himself long outlived everyone in his family, finally joining them on the other side in 1885.
Frances’s child Fanny Fay died at sixteen months of age on October 15, 1847, cause unknown. Tellingly, in “Ulalume,” written in December 1847, the narrator and his soulmate mourn the death of their beloved Ulalume in the month of October, in his “most immemorial year.” I theorize that Poe was referring to 1847, when he lost both Virginia and Fanny Fay, and had his final parting with Frances. He was to live for only two years after that and Frances just a little longer. Could it be
possible that their rift, and then the death of their child, had shattered their health?
Frances’s other daughters, May Vincent and Ellen, died on June 26, 1851, and August 31, 1851, respectively, perhaps to tuberculosis, losses I found particularly hard to take. “Vinnie” was not yet twelve and Ellen had just turned fifteen.
Maria Clemm served as Edgar Poe’s executor. Although Rufus Griswold’s hatred toward Poe was widely known, she turned over all of her nephew’s works to Griswold upon Poe’s death. Questioning why Maria Clemm would leave Poe’s legacy in the hands of someone who was determined to destroy him ultimately shaped my story. “Muddy” died, destitute and alone, in 1871, in the Church Home in Baltimore, Maryland. The Church Home was a charitable Episcopalian institution that had formerly been the Washington Medical College—the place where Poe had died under mysterious circumstances nearly twenty years earlier.
Griswold would go on to commit the most vicious character assassination in the history of American literature. It began two days after Poe’s death. Griswold, under a pen name to which he soon confessed, wrote a eulogy in Horace Greeley’s
New York Tribune
that began, “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.” Griswold continued to ruthlessly smear Poe until his own death, spreading countless fabrications about Poe’s drug addiction and madness. Among other falsehoods, he recounted seeing Poe flailing his arms and shouting at the wind and rain, or throwing curses at imaginary foes as he walked down the street. He doctored Poe’s letters to make them look more hostile. He claimed Poe had deserted the army. He even went so far as to insist that Poe seduced Muddy. One begins to wonder who was actually the unhinged character in this scenario.
Griswold’s biased biography of Poe was the only one widely available until 1875, by which time Poe’s reputation was stained irrevocably. Yet from these ruins arose the public’s enduring fascination with the dark and dangerous Poe. Unwittingly, Griswold had created and then amplified the legend of the very man he wished to destroy.
In spite of his great efforts, Griswold never got the girl who
provoked his campaign to crush his rival. He died in 1857 of tuberculosis, alone in a room he had decorated with pictures of himself, Frances Osgood, and Edgar Poe.
Now, of the three, only Poe has gone on to immortality, thanks in part to Griswold. But to rediscover Frances Sargent Osgood, one need only read her poetry. There, between the pages, her wit and passion gleams, as does her everlasting love for Edgar Allan Poe.
Fanny’s First Smile
By Frances S. Osgood
It came to my heart—like the first gleam of morning,
To one who has watched through a long, dreary night
It flew to my heart—without prelude or warning,
And wakened at once there a wordless delight.
That sweet pleading mouth, and those eyes of deep azure,
That gazed into mine so imploringly sad,
How faint o’er them floated the light of that pleasure,
Like sunshine o’er flowers, that the night-mist has clad!
Until that golden moment, her soft, fairy features
Had seemed like a suffering seraph’s to me
A stray child of Heaven’s, amid earth’s coarser creatures.
Looking back for her lost home, that still she could see!
But now, in that first smile, resigning the vision,
The soul of my loved one replies to mine own:
Thank God for that moment of sweet recognition,
That over my heart like the Morning light shone!
—
Graham’s Magazine,
Thirtieth Volume, January 1847 to June 1847, page 262
Acknowledgments
While need might be the mother of creation, the mother of this book could be said to be my agent, Emma Sweeney. The moment I proposed the idea for it, she took me and Frances under her wing and helped us to grow, offering wise suggestions during the many drafts, cheering us on, and, most important, bringing the manuscript under Karen Kosztolnyik’s exquisite editorial care at Gallery Books. Karen’s steadfast (and to me, heartwarming!) belief in this novel and me from the start, and her patient, steady hand in helping me to develop the story to the fullest, are the stuff of a writer’s dreams.
In addition, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the entire Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster team for their generous support and hard work in the making of this book. I am touched and profoundly thankful for the vocal enthusiasm for this project so kindly given by Carolyn Reidy, Louise Burke, and Jennifer Bergstrom. Thank you to Stephanie DeLuca, Liz Psaltis, Natalie Ebel, and Ellen Chan for the many miracles they have wrought. And thank you, too, to Alexandra Lewis and Heather Hunt, for their tireless editorial assistance. I am so lucky to be a Gallery gal!
The research for
Mrs. Poe
has been particularly fascinating and fun, thanks to those who have taken the time to instruct me as I visited the places critical to the scenes in the book. Thank you most warmly to Tony Furnivall for taking me on a tour of the Trinity Church bell tower, and allowing me to poke my head out the rosette window. Besides giving me a bird’s-eye view of lower Manhattan, it was a thrill of a lifetime. Thank you to Angel Hernandez at the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, New York, for allowing me to join in his school tour and giving me my first glimpse of Virginia Poe’s deathbed, and to P. Neil
Ralley, who supplied additional information there. A big thanks goes to Joseph Ditta at the New-York Historical Society for lugging out all sorts of old maps and books which proved to be invaluable in retracing the steps of Frances and Edgar. I am grateful, too, to Roberta Belulovich and Margaret Halsey Gardiner and the rest of the staff of The Merchant’s House Museum in Greenwich Village, for helping me to re-create what life would have been like in 1845 at the Bartletts’ home just a few blocks away.
I am fortunate to have great support on the homefront as well. Thank you to my local core team of friends/boosters, Ruth and Steve Berberich, Karen Torghele, Jan Johnstone, Sue Edmonds, and Thiery Goodman, as well as to my large and lusty neighborhood book club of twenty-plus years. Thank you to my dear neighbors, Diane Prucino and Tom Heyse, for the use of their mountain home for when I needed to hunker down and get things done. A hearty thank you to the friends from afar who have so kindly spurred me on: Stephanie Cowell, Rudi van Poele, and Marie-Paule Rombauts. Thank you, too, to Steve Levy and Marilyn Herleth and the editorial board of JAPA for their kind support, as well. Many thanks to my sisters and brothers, Margaret Edison, Jeanne Wensits, Carolyn Browning, Howard Doughty, Arlene Eifrid, and last but definitely not least, David Doughty, for standing behind me and occasionally feeding me. And thank you, most deeply, to my husband and daughters and their families, for their constant nurturing, care, and laughter.
All of you have made writing this book, in Poe’s words, “a dream within a dream.” Thank you.
READING GROUP GUIDE
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
This reading group guide for
Mrs. Poe
includes
an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Lynn Cullen. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
INTRODUCTION
Set in the fascinating world of New York’s literati scene of the 1840s,
Mrs. Poe
tells the story of Frances Osgood, a poet desperately trying to make a living as a writer in New York, a difficult task for a woman—particularly one with two children and a philandering husband.
When Frances meets Edgar Allan Poe at a literary salon, he seems dismissive of her work. However, a few days later, she learns that Poe has given a lecture praising her poems and then asks to speak with her about poetry, striking up an unlikely friendship. Although both Frances and Edgar try to deny their feelings, they become increasingly obsessed with each other, leading to a passionate affair and endangering Frances’s reputation. During this time, Frances has also become the confidante of Virginia Poe, Edgar’s much younger wife, who, despite her appearance of innocence, seems to be subtly threatening Frances. As the stakes escalate, Frances must decide whether she can walk away before it’s too late.