Mrs. Poe

Winter 1845

One

When given bad news, most women of my station can afford to slump onto their divans, their china cups slipping from their fingers to the carpet, their hair falling prettily from its pins, their fourteen starched petticoats compacting with a plush crunch. I am not one of them. As a lady whose husband is so busy painting portraits of wealthy patrons—most of whom happen to be women—that he forgets that he has a family, I have more in common with the girls who troll the muddy streets of Corlear’s Hook, looking to part sailors from their dollars, than I do with the ladies of my class, in spite of my appearance.

This thought bolted into my mind like a horse stung by a wasp that afternoon at the office of The Evening Mirror. I was in the midst of listening to a joke about two backward Hoosiers being told by the editor Mr. George Pope Morris. I knew that the news Mr. Morris was obviously putting off giving me must not be good. Still, I laughed delightedly at his infantile joke, even while choking on the miasma created by his excess of perfumed hair pomade, the open glue pot sitting upon his desk, and the parrot cage to my left, which was in dire need of changing. I hoped to soften him, just as a Hooker softens potential customers by lifting a corner of her skirt.

I struck when Mr. Morris was still chuckling from his own joke. Showing teeth brushed with particular care before I had set off to confront him after a silence of twenty-two days, I said, About the poem I sent you in January. . . . I trailed off, widening my eyes with hopefulness, my equivalent of petticoat lifting. If I was to become independent, I needed the income.

No sailor considering a pair of ankles looked more wary than Mr. George Pope Morris did at that moment, although few sailors managed to achieve the success he had at toilet, particularly with his hair. Never before had such a lofty loaf of curls arisen from a human head without the aid of padding. It was as if he had used his top hat for a mold. Whether by design or accident, one large curl had escaped the mass and now dangled upon his forehead like a gelatinous fishhook.

Might you have misplaced it? I asked lightly. Maybe he would appreciate putting the blame on his partner. Or perhaps Mr. Willis has it.

His gaze slid down to my bosom, registered the disappointment of seeing only cloak, then snapped back to my face. I’m sorry, Mrs. Osgood. To be quite frank, it is not what we are looking for.

I’m certain that your female readership would enjoy my allusions to love in my descriptions of flowers. Mr. Rufus Griswold has been so kind to include some of my poems in his recent collection. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

I know Griswold’s collection. Everyone does—he’s made sure of it. How that little bully got to be such an authority on poetry, I’ll never know.

Threats of death?

Mr. Morris laughed, then waggled his finger at me. Mrs. Osgood!

Quickly before I lost him: "My own book, published by Mr. Harper, The Poetry of Flowers and the Flowers of Poetry, sold quite well."

When was that? he asked distractedly.

Two years ago. Actually it was four.

As I thought. Flowers are not what is selling of late. What everyone is interested in these days are shivery tales. Stories of the macabre.

Like Mr. Poe’s bird poem?

He nodded, causing the great greased curl to bounce. As a matter of fact, yes. Our sales soared when we brought out the ‘The Raven’ at the end of January. Same thing happened when we reprinted it last week. I suspect we could reprint it ten times and it wouldn’t be enough. Readers have gone Raven-mad.

I see. I didn’t see. Yes, I had read the poem. Everyone in New York had since it had first been published the previous month. Even the German man who sold newspapers in the Village knew of it. Just this morning, when I asked him if he had the current issue of the Mirror, he’d said with an accent and a grin, Nefermore.

My dearest friend, Mrs. John Russell Bartlett, part of the inner circle of the New York literati, thanks to her husband, a bookseller and publisher of a small press, would not be quiet about him. She had been angling to meet him ever since The Raven had come out. In truth, I had thought I might get a glimpse of the wondrous Mr. Poe in the office that morning. He was an editor at the Mirror as well as a contributor.

Mr. Morris seemed to read my mind. Evidently, our dear Mr. Poe is feeling his success. He is threatening to leave the magazine. Wherever he goes, I wish them luck in dealing with his moods.

Is he so very moody? I still hoped to cajole Mr. Morris into friendship and, therefore, into indebtedness.

Mr. Morris gestured as if tipping a glass to his mouth.

Oh. I made a conspiratorial grimace.

He’s really quite unbalanced, you know. I suspect he’s more than half mad, and it’s not just the drink.

A shame.

He smiled. Look, Mrs. Osgood, you are an intelligent woman. You’ve had some luck with your story collections for children. My own little ones loved ‘Puss in Boots.’ Why don’t you go back to that?

I could not tell him the real reason: money. Writing children’s stories did not pay.

I feel that it’s important for me to expand my writing, I said. I have things I would like to say. Which was also true. Why must a woman be confined to writing children’s tales?

He chuckled. Like which color brings out the roses in one’s complexion, or how to decorate at Christmas?

I laughed, good Hooker that I am. Still smiling, I said, I think you might be surprised at what I am capable of.

His parrot squawked. He fed it a cracker from his pocket, then wiped his hands on his pantaloons, his sights making their habitual rounds from my eyes to my bust and back again. I forced myself to keep a cheerful gaze, although I wished to slap the curl off his forehead.

He frowned. A beautiful woman like you shouldn’t have to trouble your head with this sort of thing, but what if you came up with something as fresh and exciting as ‘The Raven,’ only from a lady’s point of view?

Do you mean something dark?

Yes, he said, warming to the idea. Yes. Exactly so—dark. Very dark. I think there might be a market for that. Shivery tales for ladies.

You’d like me to be a sort of Mrs. Poe?

Ha! Yes. That’s the ticket.

Will I be paid the same as Mr. Poe? I asked brazenly. Desperate times call for uncouth measures.

He marked the inappropriateness of my question with a pause before answering. I paid Poe nothing, since he was on staff. I should think you’d want to do better than that.

Although already envious of Mr. Poe for his recent success, I felt a twinge of sympathy for the man. Perhaps he was independently wealthy, as was Mr. Longfellow or Mr. Bryant, and did not need the money or my compassion. In any case, he was not wed to a philandering portrait painter.

Mr. Morris led me to the door. "The Mirror is a popular magazine, Mrs. Osgood. We’re not interested in literature for scholars. Bring me something fresh and entertaining. Something dark that will make the lady readers afraid to snuff their candles at night. You do that, and I’ll see what I can do for you. Just don’t turn your back on us when you’ve reached the top, as did our Mr. Poe."

I wouldn’t. I promise.

Poe’s his own worst enemy—he no sooner makes a friend than he turns him into a foe.

I wonder what has made him such a difficult character.

He shrugged. Why do wolves bite? They just do. He held open the door, letting in a cool draft. Give my regards to Mr. Osgood.

Thank you, I said. I will. If he ever tired of his current heiress and came home.

•  •  •

I soon found myself on the sidewalk of Nassau Street and, it being a mild day for February, ankle-deep in slush. Gentlemen passed, encased in buttoned overcoats and plugged with top hats. They flicked curious gazes in my direction, not sure whether I was a lady to whom they should tip their hat or a Hooker who had wandered into their inner sanctum. Few females of any sort ventured into the hallowed business precincts of New York—the engine room of what was becoming the greatest money factory in the world.

I bent into the biting wind, ever present in winter in this island city, and rounded the corner onto Ann Street. A landau clattered by, its wheels flinging melted snow. Across the way, a hog rooted in refuse, one of the thousands of pigs who plied the streets, be it rich district or poor. The wet had brought out the smell of the smoke rising from the forest of rooftop chimneys as well as the stink of horse manure, rotting garbage, and urine. It is said that sailors can smell New York City six miles out at sea. I had no doubt of it.

Two short blocks later, across Ann Street from Barnum’s American Museum, with its banners advertising such humbuggery in residence as President Washington’s childhood nurse and the Feejee Mermaid, I arrived upon the shoveled promenade of Broadway. Vehicles poured down the thoroughfare before me as if a vein in the city had been opened and it was bleeding conveyances down the bumpy cobblestones. The din they made was deafening. The massive hooves of shaggy draft horses clashed against the street as they pulled rumbling wagons bulging with barrels. Stately carriages creaked by behind clopping bays. Hackneys for hire rattled alongside omnibuses with windows filled with staring faces. Whips cracked; drivers shouted; dogs barked. In the midst of it all, on a balcony on the Barnum’s building, a brass band tootled. It was enough to test one’s sanity.

Clutching my skirts, I hurried through a gap in the thundering traffic. I landed breathless on the other side of the street, where the Astor House hotel, six stories of solid granite gentility, sat frowning down its noble pillars at me. It seemed aware that I had only two pennies in the expensive reticule on my arm.

Just a month previously I had been one of its pampered residents. I had been among the privileged to bathe in its hot-running-water baths. I, too, had enjoyed reading by the gaslights and dining with the rich and beautiful at the table d’hôte. Samuel had insisted that we take rooms at the Astor House when we had moved to New York from London, to make a good impression.

Had I known of the ruinous state of our ledgers, I would have never agreed to it. But Samuel thought that as the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, I expected no less of him. He could never get over the inequality of our backgrounds, no matter how much I assured him that it didn’t matter to me. I, on the other hand, had gotten over it the moment he first kissed me. I had no care if we took up housekeeping in a soddy, as long as I spent the night in Samuel Osgood’s arms. Samuel, though, could never quite believe this. There is no more prideful creature than a man born poor.

Now, hunched against the icy wind and feeling the pinch of my thin pointed boots and the stabbing of my corset stays, I marched up the assault on the senses that is called Broadway. The loud swirl of striving people and their beasts dazzled the eyes, as did the brightly painted establishments bristling with signs that bragged LIFE-LIKE DAGUERREOTYPES! WORLD’S FRESHEST OYSTERS! MOUTH-WATERING ICE CREAM! FINEST QUALITY LADIES’ FANS! The stench of rotting sea creatures commingled with the sweet scent of perfumes, as did the spicy odor of unwashed human flesh and the aroma of baking pies.

Soon the flapping awnings of tobacconists, haberdashers, and dry-goods emporiums gave way to mansions with ornate iron fences that fringed their foundations like chin whiskers. Although the richest man of them all, Mr. Astor, refused to budge from his stone pile at Broadway and Prince, the fashion was to show off one’s newly minted money by constructing a castle in the neighborhoods north of Houston Street. It was in this vaunted district that I turned westward on Bleecker. In boots made to stroll across a manicured square, not march up a mile and a half of flagstones, I minced painfully past ranks of stately brick houses at LeRoy Place, in many of which I’d had tea. Near the writer James Fenimore Cooper’s ostentatiously large former home on Carroll Place, about which his wife liked to complain often and loudly that it was too magnificent for our simple French tastes, I veered right onto Laurens Street.

With an end in sight, I picked up my pace as much as my cursed corset and destroyed feet would allow. I hobbled elegantly by a tumbledown row of stables, smithies, and small wooden dwellings meant for those who served the denizens of the palaces around them, until at last, a block short of Washington Square, I came to Amity Place, yet another enclave of new four-story Greek Revival town houses caged in by black ironwork fences. From a third-story window, through an oval that had been cleared in the frost by the sun, peered two young girls.

My heart warmed. I opened the wrought iron gate, climbed the steep flight of six stone steps, and pushed open the door.

Five-and-half-year-old Vinnie was running down the narrow staircase as I entered the hall. Mamma, did he buy your poem?

Hold on to the railing! I exclaimed. Behind her, my elder daughter, Ellen, three years older than her sister and worlds more cautious, took the stairs at a more judicious rate.

Vinnie threw herself against me. A loud crash descended from an upstairs room, followed by a wail and the exasperated voice of my friend Eliza.

Ellen made a safe landing and held out her arms to take my mantle and hat. Henry is being bad.

I glanced above her. Yes, I can hear him.

Mamma, Vinnie demanded, did the man buy your poem?

He didn’t buy that one. But he did ask to see more. I opened my gloved palm, upon which lay two peppermint drops. I had taken them from a dish on Mr. Morris’s desk when I had waited for him to arrive.

Vinnie’s grin revealed a newly naked arch in her upper gums. She popped in the candy.

Ellen shifted my things in her arms, then took her piece. Not yet seven and she was as somber as a Temperance lady on Christmas. You should write more stories for children, she said as I peeled off my gloves. They always buy your children’s stories.

I’m trying to spread my wings. What do I say about birds who don’t spread their wings?

The candy rattled against Vinnie’s remaining teeth as she moved it to her cheek to speak. They never learn to fly.

You don’t need to fly, Mother, Ellen said. You need to make money.

How did she know these things? At her age, I was dressing paper dolls. Blast you, Samuel Osgood, for stunting her with worry and spoiling her childhood. I could spin all manner of tales about his care and concern for us and she always saw right through them.

What I need to do now is to help Mrs. Bartlett, I said cheerfully. Vinnie, how is your ear?

She gingerly touched the ear with the tuft of cotton sprouting from it. Hurts.

Just then, a young boy in a rumpled tunic trampled down the stairs, followed closely by a plain but kindly looking gentlewoman of my age, who was in turn followed by a pretty red-cheeked Irish maid carrying a toddler.

Fanny! cried Eliza. Thank goodness you’re back. I have news!

Although I had lived with Eliza Bartlett and her family for several months, my heart still swelled with gratitude at the sight of her. She and her husband had taken me in when the Astor House had turned me out. It seemed that prior to decamping for lusher pastures in November, Samuel had not paid the bill for the previous three months. After I showed up on Eliza’s doorstep with my shameful story, she made no verbal judgment, just said, You’re staying with us. Nor did she speak up when our other friends inquired about Samuel, but silently sat back and let me lie about his imminent return. She thus saved me from the pity that our circle would have rained upon me for being the abandoned wife of a ne’er-do-well. I would have gained their sympathy but lost my place and my pride.

She took little Johnny from her maid. "Mary, please take Mrs. Osgood’s things downstairs to dry and Henry along with you. Henry: be good. To me she exclaimed, Goodness, you look frozen. Why didn’t you take a hackney home?"

What is this news?

She removed little Johnny’s hand from inside her blouse. Mr. Poe is coming!

Here?

She laughed. No. Not unless he wishes to change a diaper. He’s going to appear at the home of a young woman named Anne Lynch—this Saturday! And we, my dear, are invited.

I found my excitement to meet the renowned writer was tempered by the fact that I had just been encouraged to be his competitor. Wonderful! Do we know this Miss Lynch?

Eliza gave little Johnny to Vinnie, who’d been silently begging for him with open arms. She’s new to this city from Providence—she’s a friend of Russell’s family. She stopped in his shop and told him she was attempting to start a salon—not just for the usual bon ton but for artists of all kinds, rich or poor. I daresay she might have a chance at success after having snagged Poe.

I wonder how she lured him in.

"She might come to regret it. He’s sure to be horribly ruthless. Poe doesn’t like anything."

It was true. I had seen his reviews in The Evening Mirror. Prior to The Raven, he was best known in literary circles for his poisoned pen. For good reason he was called the Tomahawker, happy as he was to chop up his fellow writers. He regularly tore in to gentle, gentlemanly Mr. Longfellow with a savagery that made no sense. In truth, I had wondered about his sanity even before Mr. Morris’s accusation, or at least his motives for such abuse.

The gathering is to be at seven. Say that you’ll come with me. I told her about you— She saw my wince. That you are a poet.

Bless you, Eliza. I’ll go, if the girls are well by then.

Vinnie jogged little Johnny on her hip. I will be!

There you have it, I said with a nonchalance that I did not feel. If I became his competition, I, too, might soon be on the wrong side of the dangerous Mr. Poe.

Two

I woke up the next morning shivering from the cold. Leaving the girls curled up together under the quilts in our bed, I went to the window and cleared a spot in the frost. Snow was coming down, muffling sidewalks and streets, blanketing rooftops, capping the ornate iron railings of the stoops across the way. The milkman passed in a sleigh, the mane of his horse thick with icy crystals, as was his own hat and shoulders.

Wrapping my robe more closely around me, I went to the fireplace, uncovered the banked embers, and gave them a poke. One of Eliza’s Irish maids, the second girl, Martha, the cook’s and parlor maid’s helper, slipped into the room with a bucket of coal and a can of water, then whispered her apology when she saw me crouching there. As she took over tending to the fire, I wondered once more how I would have survived without the generosity of her employers and where I would go once my welcome wore out. There was no question of returning to my mother. She had never gotten over the disappointment of my marriage to Samuel. Father’s death the following year had further turned her against me; she blamed the blow of losing me for weakening his health. The doors to my sisters’ and brothers’ homes were equally closed, nor could I find shelter in the arms of another man, at least not a decent one, if I divorced Samuel for abandonment. No one wanted a divorcée as a wife. I did not even have the luxury of conducting an affair. Should I fall for a man while still married, Samuel had legal right to take the children. Only the Bartletts stood between me and deepest poverty and isolation.

As Martha finished stoking the fire and began pouring water into my pitcher, I thought of the ragged children I had seen outside the neighborhood coal yard, scrambling to pick up nuggets that spilled from the wagons as they left to make deliveries. Even as I imagined myself among them, scurrying to beat a waif out of a lump in my destitution, I saw the image of my husband before a cheerfully crackling fire, helping himself to marmalade for his toasted bread, his current mistress, young, blond, and very rich, smiling as he ate his egg. Was there a man ever born who was more supremely selfish than Samuel Stillman Osgood?

I was twenty-three when I met him, ten years ago. He was twenty-six, tall, and handsome in a rough, raw-boned way. He had hair and eyes the brown of fresh-turned earth, the high cheekbones of a Mohawk, and a strong, straight nose. I had come upon him in the paintings gallery of the Athenæum in my native Boston, where I had gone to write some poetry, hoping the art would inspire me. Little did I know that this confident young man with the fistful of paintbrushes would forever disrupt my comfortable life.

He was working at an easel set up before the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. I walked by quietly as to not disturb him, noting the nearly finished copy of the portrait upon his easel. I had just passed him when my pencil slipped from my notebook and clattered on the marble floor.

He looked up.

Sorry, I whispered.

He retrieved my pencil and held it out to me with a gallant flourish. Madame.

I could feel the heat rising up my neck. He was much too handsome. Thank you. Sorry to disturb you. I turned to go.

Don’t leave.

I stopped.

He smiled. Please. I could use your opinion.

Mine?

Does Mr. Washington seem to be holding a secret?

I peered at the portrait that I had seen so often as to ignore it. The eyes did seem wary. Only the slightest trace of a smile animated the president’s sealed lips. It was the face of a man under strictest self-control. With a start, I wondered how well we knew this most famous of men. Is he?

Yes. Do you know what it is? He leaned forward. When I stepped closer, he whispered, His teeth are bad.

I stifled a laugh. No! I whispered back.

Shhh. He pretended to scan the room for eavesdroppers. They say that even in his youth, he was so conscious of his teeth that he rarely smiled, even though he was quite the ladies’ man, believe it or not.

Old Martha’s husband?

He put hands on hips in mock protest. I’ll have you know that ‘Old Martha’s husband’ kept a lady love across the Potomac from Mount Vernon when they were young. His best friend’s wife.

Maybe it’s Martha who didn’t feel like smiling.

He chuckled, making me feel witty. You’d think so, but as it happens, Old Martha was wild about him. All the women were. They fought to be his partner at dances and elbowed their way to shake hands with him in reception lines.

Even though he didn’t smile?

Maybe because of it. Women do love a mysterious, brooding man.

I don’t.

He laughed. Good for you. Then maybe you won’t be disappointed to know that the reason Dashing George was sullen at the time of this picture was because he hadn’t a tooth left in his head.

Poor George.

Poor George, indeed. His new dentures were a fright. It seems his dentist never could get the springs on the hinges to fit.

Ouch. I put out my hand. You are quite the authority on Mr. Washington and his dentistry, Mister—?

He gave my gloved fingers a genial tug. Osgood. Samuel. And you are—?

Frances Locke.

Nice to meet you, Miss Locke. In all seriousness, I’m not really an expert on either Mr. Washington or his teeth or even his lady friends. I just did a little research because I had to know why his jaw looked so misshapen in Stuart’s portrait. He gave the original portrait a loving glance. Stuart wouldn’t have painted such an awkward smile on Washington’s face unless it truly was awkward. In case you can’t tell, Gilbert Stuart is my hero.

I studied his reproduction of the Stuart. Your copy of his painting is perfect.

You are probably wondering if I can paint originals as well as copy from masters.

No, I protested with a laugh, although that was precisely what I was thinking.

May I borrow your notebook and pencil, please?

I gave them to him. He studied my face as if I were a statue or a painting, not a living woman, then, as I winced under his scrutiny, he held up my pencil, took a measure of my features, and made a few markings before setting to drawing rapidly. In the time it takes to brush out and braid one’s hair for bed, he finished his sketch and turned my notebook toward me. It was a perfect quick likeness in pencil, down to the skeptical look in my eye.

Do I really look this doubtful?

He only smiled.

"I must show this to my family. They accuse me of being outrageously impetuous but it’s not impetuous to bring home a stray dog or to feed the cats roaming in the alley or to give one’s allowance to orphans, it’s reasonable and practical. Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question."

You must have trouble in church.

I met his grin. And then there are times, Mr. Osgood, when one must just let go.

His gaze softened. I believe, he said after a moment, that those are the happiest of times.

We smiled at each other.

He bowed. Would you allow me to paint you, Miss Locke? It would be a great honor. I must have looked leery of his intentions because he added, I would do it right here. The librarians could serve as chaperones.

I trust you.

The great doubter? I’m flattered.

We both laughed. We made arrangements to meet there the next day. Before my portrait was completed, he had proposed to me. We were married within a month, in spite of my parents’ strenuous objections. I thought they would come around to see his true worth in spite of his negative ledger, but they never did. Love was not everything to them, as it was to me. My father cut me out of his will. My mother refused to see me. I was so drunk with love that I didn’t care. Before our honeymoon ended, I was with child.

It had been in the eighth month of this first pregnancy, while we were in England so that Samuel could paint the cream of British society, that I had learned the reason why he was so popular with his female sitters: he bedded them with the same enthusiasm that he painted them. I found that I was just one of many, although, as far as I know, and for my daughters’ sakes I hope, I was the only one that he married. He claimed that I was so beautiful that he had to possess me—a dubious honor.

Now the girls were awake. After a quick washing at the basin, they were dressed, swathed in shawls, and settled at Eliza’s basement family room table with their books after breakfast—no school for them that day, as Vinnie’s ear was still draining and Ellen’s cold had not improved.

Eliza had gone out to pay a call upon an ill friend; the younger Bartlett children were upstairs being tended by the maid. Mr. Bartlett was at the little bookshop he ran in the Astor House to satiate his own mania for the written word. My girls and I had the cozy, low-ceilinged room to ourselves, with the homey sound of banging pans murmuring through the wall shared with the kitchen. With a glance out cellar windows so frosted over that they revealed only a shadowy glimpse of the trouser legs and skirts of the passersby on the sidewalk, I took out a copy of The American Review and spread it open to my own lesson for the day: The Raven. Tapping my finger in time with the rhythm, I silently recited the verses.

Barely into the poem, I muttered, What trickery. It’s just a word game. Out loud I read:

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Quoth the raven, Nevermore.

Wondering at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

Doubtless, said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster—so, when Hope he would adjure,

Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure—

That sad answer, Nevermore!

I stopped when I saw that the girls were listening.

Are you writing a new poem? asked Vinnie.

No. This is one by a Mr. Edgar Poe.

Read us all of it!

Shouldn’t you be working on one of your own? said Ellen.

Yes, I said. I should. Go back to work. If you’re able to go to school tomorrow, you won’t want to be behind.

I started again at the beginning, with the hope of understanding how this silly piece captured the imagination of the reading public. I came to the next verse.

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door;

Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking Nevermore.

That’s it! I dropped the magazine.

What, Mamma? asked Vinnie.

This silly alliteration—it’s clinking, clattering claptrap.

Ellen’s face was as straight as a judge’s on court day. You mean it’s terrible, trifling trash?

I nodded. Jumbling, jarring junk.

Vinnie jumped up, trailing shawls like a mummy trails bandages. No! It’s piggily wiggily poop!

Don’t be rude, Vinnie, I said.

The girls glanced at each other.

I frowned. It’s exasperating, excruciating excrement.

Mamma! breathed Ellen.

What’s that mean? Vinnie cried.

Ellen told her. And thus a torrent of alliterative abuse was unleashed on Mr. Poe’s poem. The girls were still trading outrageous insults as I got out paper and pen and opened an inkpot. Banter does not fill a pocketbook.

Something fresh, Mr. Morris had asked for. Something entertaining. Something dark that will make the lady readers afraid to snuff their candles at night.

But try as I might, with two little girls giggling at my table, no