The Blackest Bird (41 page)

Mr. Bennett sauntered back, two brimming goblets in hand, excused himself for the delay, said something innocuous to Poe, nodded to Hays, and pressed Mrs. Osgood away.

Upon her departure, Hays had the opportunity to take Poe aside. He shook hands and asked how was his health and state of mind, and how was his wife?

“Frankly, for all my popular success, the devil himself was never so poor,” Poe confided bitterly. “I have made nothing but twenty dollars from this infernal black bird, and for the first time in my life I am having trouble writing. As for my wife,” he paused in his proclamation, “she remains sick, and surely shall die.”

Hays was somewhat taken aback by such ardor engendered by such response, straightforward as it was, but before he could react, Annie Lynch stepped forward, come to ask the poet if he was ready to begin his recitation, but having overheard Poe’s torment, and most eager to express her own sympathy and concern in regard to his despondency, she told him certainly whatever demons he saw, they were probably
only a chimera of his imagination. “All success and adulation due you,” she assured, “will surely come your way in time.”

Kindly, by Hays’ estimate, she offered her services to come to his apartment to sit and talk with the ailing Sissy, keep her company. “If you think it will help, I shall be glad to,” she said.

Surprising Hays, his own daughter offered likewise.

After thanking these ladies for their consideration, Poe took a place in front of the fireplace. From his inside breast pocket he withdrew the familiar, although decidedly more battered than Old Hays remembered, scrolled manuscript on which was written his raven poem. But instead of taking the scroll up himself, he handed it to his companion, the actor Booth.

“I’ll have it read,” he announced, “by one whose voice is like the chime of silver bells.”

But the starry sisterhood, and some of the more drunken male revelers, would not have it. They wanted Poe, and by shouts, hisses, and huzzahs, expressed their want for only him. Hays could see he was pleased, although he made a play to relent reluctantly. The room immediately became quiet. Those who had been standing on the landing or sitting on the stair came to the door and tried to push through. The parlor could only hold so many. Those who could not gain admittance remained at the threshold, straining to see but content to listen.

Hays was taken how Poe’s style of public expression had changed from that Sunday afternoon at the Brennan farm. Olga had commented after hearing him recite at the New York University, “His voice has become quiet,” she had said, “almost like a knife falling through water.”

Indeed, in its quietude his instrument had taken on an ominous, stirring quality.

Afterwards, as Hays watched, the poet accepted congratulations from the men, and adoration from the women.

Some called to him for comment, and he accommodated, addressing the crowd
tout ensemble
. “The day I published ‘The Raven’ and
sold away the rights was the blackest day, blacker than the bird,” he declared. “As we all know too well, New York is the most overstocked market for writers. Only yesterday, Mr. Greeley, of whose company I see we have the pleasure tonight, said to me, and I quote this gentleman, ‘You write fair verse, my friend Poe, but not such as the public will buy with any regularity!’”

The crowd laughed.

Poe waved them off. “Dear friends,” he said, “we live emphatically in a thinking age. Indeed, it may very well be questioned whether mankind ever substantially thought before. How many times have I been admonished: An American author should confine himself to American themes, or even prefer them. I return to Mr. Greeley, and our conversation of last night. ‘Do you not realize, Poe,’ he said to me, ‘how little the mere talent of writing well has to do with success or usefulness? There are a thousand at least in this city who can write very good prose or verse, while there are not fifty who can earn their daily bread by it. Haven’t you realized, my dear Poe, what it is that is wanted of men who live by literary labor here, at what dreadful cost any distinction must be purchased!’

“Unfortunately for all of us, my friends, I do realize, and it is to the magazines we must go. And although a magnet, I am sorry to say, this institution can only represent a degeneration of taste. Yet we are all forced there to make a living because of one thing, and one thing only—the lack of an international copyright law. We who are writers have all been forced to embrace this true magazine spirit at the expense of the more expansive novel. The fact cannot be argued that the work of American authors can be copyrighted, but not the work of our counterpart Europeans. This reality is what drives we native scribblers to the short form of the magazines. But here in this quaint realm we find it even worse, because publishers, some of them, right here in this room—Mr. Harper, I address you, sir—pirate not only English writers but we American writers as well.”

The cited James Harper rose rapidly to answer back. “Mr. Poe,
publishers oppose copyright laws for good reason. Cheap literature is an essential to our nation, sir. The absence of copyright law makes it possible to provide literature affordable to your average countryman.”

“I remind you, Mr. Harper, young America is a young nation,” shouted back Poe. “And we young Americans continue within aim to free American literature from English influence. That an American writer should confine himself to American themes, or even prefer them, is a political rather than a literary idea—and at best, sir, a questionable point.”

“Then why do you malign Henry Longfellow so?” a woman’s voice rang out. “Who is more American than he?”

Before answering, Poe drained his third glass of port. “If you truly want to know, Miss Fuller,” he addressed the voice, “your good friend Mr. Longfellow’s poetry is exceedingly feeble. I find it singularly silly, utterly worthless, scarcely worth the page it occupies. I myself have never seen a more sickening thing in a book!”

“Yet you opine yourself beyond brilliant?” Margaret Fuller had heard enough. She shook her head. “Perhaps to your own thinking, sir, but, I assure you, to few if anyone else’s.”

“As I have said before, madam, the effect of analytic brilliance is illusory. I bow to you and all those like you.”

Meanwhile, as the mood in the room degenerated, the waiflike Mrs. Osgood had risen, having abandoned Bennett, and was now at Poe’s elbow, her face upturned, sparkling tears of admiration in her eyes. It was not much longer before she took up his hand in her own. Many eyes noticed them begin to leave. This couple said good night to few, but Poe did approach Hays, and led him aside near the doorway out.

“I am not who all these people think I am,” he said.

“No? Then who are you?” asked Hays. “Are you worse, sir?”

“I am better,” he whispered, glancing at Mrs. Osgood, waiting patiently for him in the hall. “Have pity on me, Mr. Hays. I am in the damnedest amour you’ll ever find a fellow to be in in all your life.”

W
ith hope held for the success of his black bird (he contended the raven would supplant the eagle as America’s national emblem), Poe moved his family back from the Brennan farm to the city, taking up residence in a small two-story building below Washington Square on Amity Street, he said, to be closer to his work, but some meddlers claimed it only to be closer to Mrs. Osgood; that summer they had been espied by gossips together not only in upstate Saratoga Springs, but also in the cities of Providence and Boston.

A street urchin knocked at the front door of the Amity Street dwelling, and when Poe answered asked if he were the Raven. The boy then handed over an envelope bearing Poe’s name but no postmark.

When opened, the envelope contained a letter, unsigned, but in precise pen, begging him to appear at the establishment known as the Green Turtle on Prince Street, and there to retrieve a sealed package left waiting.

By late afternoon Poe had found his way beneath the arch on Prince Street to said realm. A sign, recently nailed to the door outside, poorly written, painted, and spelled, warned:

Inside, down the long, dark hall, the front room stood empty, the air stale. Poe found his way to a table and slumped there, staring at the black walls. In front of him on the much-scarred wood tabletop lay that day’s newspaper, in this case the morning
Sun
, containing a list of New York’s wealthiest citizens. In order to make it into this rarefied air, the criteria employed, each individual must have self-worth exceeding $100,000. Number one, no surprise there, stood John Jacob Astor at $2,500,000. He was followed by his son, William B. Astor, his personal fortune estimated at one-fifth that of his father’s. Peter Goelet, the merchant, was third at a not-paltry $400,000; Cornelius Vanderbilt, the self-made steamboat magnate, followed in fourth place at $250,000; and bringing up the rear was ex-mayor the Honorable Philip Hone, at the not-so-shabby cutoff of $100,000.

Poe was contemplating the astronomy of these numbers, not entirely without envy, when that immense woman known to him indelibly from a past visit (it was here John Colt had sent him to procure opium) entered from the back room, passing through a thick curtain.

Mistress of the inn, her accustomed two blue Colt revolving guns in her waistband and this day a jeweled dagger in a sheath between her ample breasts, she made her way a few feet into the room, where
she stood in front of a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, a hole torn in the canvas beneath his eye.

Poe made feeble request from her of a glass of spirits. His eyes were clouded. Much white showing beneath the iris, to some, with a knowledge of the ways of folk medicine, a certain sign of failing health. She looked upon him with scorn (or was it pity?) before moving slowly behind the zinc bar and pouring him his drink, served in a bowl.

He shot the cloudy liquid down and felt an immediate increase in pulsation to his magnetic system inspired by this elixir, quickly quaffed. He asked to borrow a piece of brown butcher paper from the proprietress, digging a nub of lead pencil from his pocket, mumbling to himself the cryptic phrase, “She’s warmer than Dian,” watching her. He then took note of his words, recording them in studied hand on the butcher paper before reiterating:

“And I said— ‘She’s warmer than Dian.’”

After another swallow of demon rhum, he again took the stub, continuing up from where he had left off:

“She rolls through an ether of sighs—”

Then, “She revels in a region of sighs,” before again putting down the pencil.

But not for long.

He murmured again to himself, took another draught from the bowl’s dregs, picked up the lead nub, and once more hurriedly began to scribble.

Seemingly exhausted by this exercise, the poet turned away from the table and signaled the mammoth, so black as to be almost green in hue, still standing her post behind the hammered flat zinc-surfaced bar, her arms akimbo, the dagger nearly rising to her chin on the sea tide of her bosom.

“More spirits,” Poe commanded in a mind-sick tone, strangely coated.

The writer, fearing death by thirst, it seemed, became sorely concerned
and agitated when the huge woman gave no indication whatsoever of movement.

He almost said something more, but then, taken on by the muse, a spirit otherworldly, picked up his pencil to add additional sentiment to his effort:

As a gentleman from Virginia, he bowed slightly to her, the vast presence that was the colored proprietress, tippled what little was left in his rhum dish, licked his chops, and reapologized for his thirst.

He shifted his blurred vision to face some formless apparition across the room’s sawdust floor, then, again shifting, addressing the Green Turtle once more, implored, “My good woman, could you see it in your heart … please.”

From beneath her black hat and drooped black feathers, she stared before pouring a fresh portion of rhum into a fresh cracked bowl and bringing it to his table.

Poe said, “Thank you, my good lady. Thank you. This city, if not the world, is a corrupt place. Justice and politics are available within her confines for a price. Pettifoggery is at no premium.”

“Suh,” she responded, “my philosophy, after many years of observation, go somethin’ like this:
All men is dogs
, colored or white, but mostly tipplers. I don’t see you as no exception.” She set the swill down with a bang while sneaking a surreptitious look at what the tired-looking gent was writing, although she could read hardly anything more than her name.

“I have received notice you hold something for me.”

She now looked at him somewhat more carefully.

“Indeed I do,” she said finally, “if you are the fellow known about town as ‘the Raven.’”

“Rest assured, dear lady, I am he.”

“In that case, I’ll have to see to it, won’t I?”

She smiled tightly, showing strong teeth between her meaty lips and round, prodigious cheeks before exiting the room through the back curtain.

Poe now became sure he heard voices emanating from the back room. He deciphered the name “Ossian,” shouted, followed by someone rebutting in return something to the effect, “Screw you, boyo, do it yourself.”

After a few minutes the curtain rustled, but it was not the Turtle who slipped back into the room. Rather it was a stringy-haired youth, quite drawn and misshapen, hampered by one withered leg and one withered arm. He limped his way to the metal-planked bar, where he sucked a quick draught of swill straight from the holding vat through a much-chewed red rubber tube, all the while his sharp eyes never leaving Poe.

“Do I know you?” Poe asked, uncomfortable with the lame boy’s stare. “Because, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem somewhat familiar to me.”

“I don’t think so,” the stringy-haired youth answered. “Don’t reside in this burg, do I. I make my home in Baltimore, I do. I’m only on a mission here in the old Frog and Toe.”

“Baltimore!” Poe exclaimed. “Then that’s it. I hail from that city myself. I still have family there.”

“Don’t you say.”

“I do say. Where do you live, friend? Whiskey to crab cakes, I know the place.”

“The Fourth Ward it is then, sir.”

“Fourth Ward! Gunner’s Hall. Ryan’s Tavern.”

“There you have it,” the boy grinned. “Good for you. Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, I’d watch myself. This likker served here by the mistress works as well as embalming fluid as it does beverage.”

At this point the curtains parted once more, and the Turtle, having retrieved said sealed parcel, reappeared. “Away, vast Tweeter,” she
ordered, her voice now harsher than before, “I need a word with this jack cove.”

She shooed the lame boy off and for his part he retreated dutifully.

“Now,” she said to Poe, stepping close and slamming the parcel on the table in front of him, “this has arrived to me to be delivered to you the Raven.”

“What is it, dear lady?” he asked, lifting the package off the table, checking its heft. “Do you know?”

“Some kind of book,” she replied, glaring at him. “Been tole on good authority worth nothing.”