Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen Page A

well.”
    My fellow conversationalists grew silent, waiting for me to continue. I found that their interest felt good.
    “She’s had bronchitis,” I said.
    “She did have a terrible cough when she was here last,” said Miss Fuller.
    “Mr. Poe said that going out had set back her recovery,” I said.
    “I could see that he was worried,” said Mr. Brady. “One cough and he whisked her right out of here.”
    “I had wondered if it wasn’t because he was ashamed of her,” said Miss Fuller. When the others frowned, she said, “Well, she is just a child. Don’t tell me I am the only one who finds that it’s strange that he married his adolescent cousin.”
    “She may have been thirteen when they married,” said Mr. Greeley, “but you told me yourself that they’ve been together ten years now. Show me a man who wouldn’t want a pretty twenty-three-year-old wife.”
    “Mrs. Poe is well educated,” I found myself saying. “She’s familiar with all the classics.”
    “Oh?” said Miss Fuller.
    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 overhis 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 promotinghimself. 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’