Mrs. Poe Read Online Free PDF

with the umber color of the iodine he used in developing his daguerreotypes, a kind of portrait done by exposing chemicals to light, a fad that my husband felt sure would soon fall out of favor.
    “No surprise.” Mr. Greeley swallowed his mouthful while dusting off the crumbs that had fallen upon his long gray coat. “I hear he’s got a weakness for the bottle.”
    “Be that as it may,” said Miss Fuller, “I find his poetry touching if a bit elementary, although his stories are entirely too preoccupied with the dead.”
    “Is it a wonder?” said Miss Fiske, her yellow ringlets nearly trembling. “I’ve heard that he lost his mother as a tiny child.”
    Miss Fuller frowned. “Poor Poe.”
    Behind the prisms of his glasses, Mr. Brady’s eyes grew even bigger. “Why do all you ladies say that? You rush at him like you are his long-lost mothers.”
    A quiet fell over the room. A slim, immaculately dressed man stepped into the parlor with Miss Lynch, whose heart-shaped elfin face was tilted at him in adoration. His broad forehead, cleared of the unruly waves of his hair, emphasized the dark-lashed gray eyes from which he now stared with a cold intelligence. His mouth, beneath a silky mustache, was delicate in its cut yet hard and disdainful. Erect as a soldier, he held himself so tightly that he seemed ready to either lash out at whoever approached him or to stalk from the room. I didn’t know whether to run to or from him.
    “I don’t think being his mother is what the ladies have in mind,” Mr. Greeley said under his breath.
    “Everyone,” Miss Lynch exclaimed, “may I present Mr. Poe!”
    No one moved. Into the wake of silence, a slight young woman with robin’s-egg-blue-colored ribbons fluttering from her hair, neck, and sleeves swept through the parlor door on the arm of Mr. Nathaniel Willis, Mr. Morris’s partner on the Mirror . She was beautiful in a fragile way, thin and pale, and with hair so black as to have undertones of blue. Her features were much like Mr. Poe’s—wide forehead, shapely mouth, dark-rimmed eyes. They appeared to be brother and sister, with he the elder sibling and she the adorable baby of a notably handsome family.
    Miss Lynch reached back and put her arm around the young woman’s delicate shoulders, bringing her into the room. “And this, my dears, is Mrs. Poe!”
    The woman-child smiled sweetly. From his little wife’s side, Mr. Poe glared at our gathering as if to eat us.
    The elderly Mr. Audubon stepped forward and put out his hand to Mrs. Poe, the fringe of his buckskin dangling. “My dear lovely lady, where were you when I was young?”
    Mr. Poe stared at him as if deciding whether to take offense.
    Shielded from fear by age and self-preoccupation, Mr. Audubon pursued Poe’s wife further. “From where do you hail, dear? I know you’re not from New York. You are much too sweet.”
    “Baltimore.” Mrs. Poe’s voice was as silvery as a little bell. She sounded like a young girl, although if Miss Fuller was correct, Mrs. Poe was twenty-three years of age.
    “Baltimore—ah, a name I adore. You are familiar with the Baltimore oriole?”
    “No, sir.”
    “No? Well, I shouldn’t expect such an innocent young thing to know everything . They are birds, madame, birds.” Mr. Audubon folded her hand onto his arm. “I saw my first oriole in Louisiana, in 1822. I paint birds. Did I tell you that?”
    They strolled off, the aged illegitimate son of an aristocrat, dressed like a frontiersman, and the wife of the toast of New York, as pretty in her ribbons as a child’s doll. At any other soiree, such a pair would be remarkable. At Miss Lynch’s party, which she preferred to call a conversazione, they were just part of the colorful crowd.
    Seeing an opening, Miss Fuller detained Mr. Poe. Reluctantly,conversations renewed around me. I pretended to listen to Mr. Greeley and Mr. Brady as I observed Mr. Poe and then his wife. It was uncanny how much they looked alike. I