by Joel Rose
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.”
66
Back in the Lair of the Green Turtle
With 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:
HE WHO HATH NO
BUSINES HERE
KEEP OUT!
BY
ORDER OF
THE GREEN TURTLE!
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 Di
an.’”
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:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks where the worm never dies—
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.”
Ten Months Later
MARCH 23, 1846
67
My Dreams Are of the Unknown
Olga Hays rushed into the parlor, stamping snow from her shoes. Her father had been dozing in front of the fire, stretched on Colt’s leather recliner, wrapped in a tartan wool blanket, but her return had awoken him.
“Papa, I was at the Jefferson Market, hoping to get home and out of the snow, when Annie Lynch approached me as I was haggling with the butcher. She took me aside and said, ‘Have you heard?’ to which I, of course, responded, ‘Heard what?’ and she proceeded to tell me Mrs. Osgood has separated from her husband. It is said she is with child, and not necessarily the child of Mr. Osgood.”
Olga continued in a rush. “There is more,” she said. “It is all coming out.”
Hays was by now wide awake.
“The prattlers are all saying how Fanny’s condition is only one in a series for Edgar. Popular talk is it was he who put Mary Rogers with child, and it was with him, none other, that Mary Rogers traveled to the inn of Nick Moore to secure her premature delivery; that he offered similar solution to Mrs. Osgood.”
Hays felt the weight of sadness and frustration descend. “The tongues of wagging women can be lethal as a dirk,” he sighed before inquiring of Olga if she knew Poe’s most current address.
“Eighty-five Amity Street,” she replied.
NEARLY A YEAR HAD PASSED since James Harper had suffered crushing defeat. Running for his second term as a Nativist, he had been voted out of office by nearly seven thousand votes of forty-nine thousand cast.
As mayor Mr. Harper had failed to foresee that the mayoralty might so quickly be done with him. He had portrayed himself nothing less than a staunch populist, an advocate of frugal government, supporter of low taxes, limited city service, and social control. But he never fathomed how his vituperative posture directed against the papists assured him only defeat. He had deluded himself, failed to recognize dismally the new face of the city, the force of the slums, most of all, the ever-increasing voting power of the poor and downtrodden.
Since the turn of the decade the city’s population had mushroom-grown from three hundred thousand souls to five hundred thousand, largely Irish and German immigrants.
And most, if not all, ably harnessed to Tammany.
Within days of taking office, the new mayor, William Havemeyer, a Democrat, dissolved his predecessor’s Star Police (those who had become known on the street as “coppers” or, for short, “cops”) if not their copper-star badges, bringing in a man of his own choosing, George Washington Matsell, to oversee a new, handpicked municipal force of eight hundred.
Summoned to City Hall the day after elections, Old Hays had taken the news stoically that he would be out of a job.
Truth be known, Mr. Jacob Hays himself had cast his ballot for Havemeyer, knowing exactly what his resulting fate would be when the wealthy sugar merchant took office.
Having reached his sevent
y-fifth year, the encroachment of age enjoyed a palpability not to be denied in the high constable. Aches and pains (a gumboil, an eye ache), Hays had not taken his sacking personally, and he was urged by the new mayor and new police commissioner, Matsell, to keep attached to his name for as long as he wished the rank and nomenclature of high constable.
Notwithstanding, since that day and before, his ire and frustration had not abated, his absorption with the name Mary Rogers had not desisted, but had lent his every day a source of remorse and inconsonance; yet indignation by itself had led him no closer to solution.
HAVING REACHED the address on Amity Street provided him by Olga, a small three-story structure off Sixth Avenue, Old Hays learned from the landlady, a thin woman manning a straw-bristled broom, the Poe family had moved yet again, and left no forwarding address.
Since he was only a few blocks from the residence of Annie Lynch, Old Hays decided to go there to inquire if she perhaps knew what had become of the Poes.
His knock found her in.
“What a surprise, Mr. Hays!” she exclaimed.
Made aware of his mission, without much encouragement she corroborated and, if anything, embellished the sordid tale circulating, told by Olga, in regard to Mr. Poe and Mrs. Osgood.
“Miss Lynch, do you know where I might find Mr. Poe?”
She did. “He is living on East Broadway. I have only yesterday been there to commiserate with his aunt and wife, if not with him. He claims the building once the residence of a wealthy merchant, but I think not. It is a common tenement. I must say he is living with his family in a sorry state on the third floor in the rear. If I am not wrong, let me see, yes”—she referred to her daybook— “here it is right here, the number is 195.”