On the Dangers of Corresponding With Mrs. Ellet

"What chance--what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate."
-"William Wilson"

It is well known that a particularly lively section of Hell was stirred up early in 1846 when Poe accused Elizabeth F. Ellet of having written to him certain never-described but evidently highly discreditable letters. Unfortunately, we know virtually nothing of their acquaintance before that fateful moment when Virginia Poe--for reasons hidden from us--displayed to Ellet a letter (contents also unknown) written by Frances S. Osgood. Whatever happened during this meeting, it left Ellet with a vengeful hatred of Poe, Osgood, and--a highly pertinent fact that is universally ignored--Virginia herself.

Our lack of knowledge makes it highly difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the truth about Ellet's prior dealings with Poe. We know he had published some of her poems in the "Broadway Journal," along with effusive words of praise about her work (praise he naturally bestowed upon all the contributors to the "Journal," whether their writings were good, bad, or indifferent.) There are hints from Charles F. Briggs, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Poe himself that the attractive young Mrs. Ellet had made some sort of unreciprocated amorous advances towards him. Otherwise, we are left groping in the dark--not an unusual position when studying the World of Poe.

We do not even know exactly what Ellet did to prompt Poe to make this inflammatory revelation about her letters. Rufus W. Griswold's "Memoir" claimed Poe borrowed money from Ellet, and then "threatened to exhibit a correspondence" which "would make the woman infamous" if she did not drop the matter. (Griswold, in order to make Poe look as black as possible, claimed that, "of course" these letters never existed. He never bothered to explain how Poe could blackmail Ellet with letters she would have known were nonexistent.) Sarah Helen Whitman said that Poe, indignant that Ellet had instigated a demand that he return Frances S. Osgood's letters, impulsively blurted that Ellet had better look out for her own correspondence. (It must be noted that she is the only source to give anything like this version of the brouhaha.) Charles F. Briggs, who satirized the scandal in his novel "The Trippings of Tom Pepper," depicted Poe as actually displaying Ellet's letters to his acquaintances, as proof that she had tried to seduce him. Elizabeth Oakes Smith wrote Whitman a letter in the mid-1870s saying nothing about immodest correspondence, but suggesting that certain ladies who had greatly admired Poe fell into a jealous feud as a result. Smith was said to have spread another story indicating that Ellet's ire was aroused when she caught Virginia Poe and Mrs. Osgood laughing together over a love letter Ellet had written Virginia's husband. Margaret Fuller, in a letter written to Elizabeth Barrett Browning soon after Poe's death, indicated that several women imagined themselves infatuated with him, but their emotions were no more than a "romantic illusion" which merely amused him. (It should be emphasized that none of these nosy little chatterboxes depicted Poe as returning the affections of these ladies, who were obviously Ellet and Osgood.)

In regard to the fate of these letters, we again are given multiple conflicting accounts. A letter Poe allegedly wrote Whitman in 1848 claimed that he returned Ellet's letters to her--whereupon she sent her brother to demand he produce these missives. Thomas Dunn English described Poe as telling him that he still had Ellet's letters in his possession, but that he refused to produce them under duress. (English, anxious to whitewash his friend Mrs. Ellet, claimed that Poe simply lied about possessing any letters from her--as if he would know.) Rufus Griswold, despite what he wrote in his Poe memoir, stated privately that he obtained these legendary documents after Poe's death--letters which he said were indeed highly indecent--and returned them to that indiscreet lady. It is anyone's guess what the truth may have been.

Ellet herself, naturally, asserted that no such letters ever existed. In fact, she claimed Poe had written her a note of apology acknowledging that he had lied about receiving letters from her. There is no record of anyone else having actually seen this alleged note, and Poe himself certainly never admitted making such a humiliating confession. Despite the absence of any confirmation for Ellet's claims, many of Poe's biographers accept them. Largely ignored, however, is the fact that two brief notes of hers to him survive, and one of them is strange enough to suggest that Poe's accusations against her were all too true.

The notes--which came into the hands of Griswold after Poe's death--were written in mid-December of 1845. The first one (which is signed simply, "E,") is largely businesslike, even curt, dealing with some article about a certain college that was to be published in the "Broadway Journal." Then, on the second page, she writes in German that she had a letter for him, and that he should send for it or pick it up himself after seven o'clock that evening. Under that--still in German--is a quotation from Schiller which translates as:

"O, what a rent you have made in my heart
The senses are still in your bonds
Though the bleeding soul has freed itself."

The second note, evidently written a day or two later, is unaddressed and unsigned, and says only: "Do not use in any way the memorandum about the So. Ca. College. Excuse the repeated injunction--but as you would not decipher my German manuscript--I am fearful of some other mistake."

These notes raise some intriguing questions. The message about the letter she asked him to pick up was obviously something she wanted kept a secret between them, as she wrote it out in a foreign language. She also obviously did not trust this mysterious letter to the postal service, as she was so specific about how he should obtain it. Whether she herself was the author of that letter or not, it was clearly something she wanted kept very private. The rather startling lines from Schiller hint that she may indeed have been guilty of some impropriety. And what did Ellet mean by her complaint that Poe "would not"--as opposed to "could not"--pay heed to what she had previously written? Did that mean he had chosen to ignore her message?

Most unfortunately, we know nothing more about their correspondence. These two notes, however, possibly hint at why Mrs. Ellet was later so desperate to convince the world that this correspondence never existed.

A footnote: It is universally assumed that Mrs. Ellet spent the rest of her life (which came to an end in 1877) spreading vicious reports about Poe. However, aside from Ellet's assertion that Poe admitted he had lied about her letters, I know of only one other extant first-hand comment from her about the poet. It is a letter she wrote George W. Eveleth in 1856, in response to what was evidently his request that she give her opinion about her old antagonist. (Eveleth was in the habit of writing interrogatory letters about Poe to complete strangers--and oddly enough, they generally answered him.)

Ellet disclaimed any real personal knowledge about Poe, saying only that "I always understood that Mr. E.A. Poe, though a man of genius, was intemperate, and subject to attacks of lunacy. He was frequently in the asylum..."

There is a little epilogue to their acquaintance which is even more curious. In the 1850s and '60s, Mrs. Ellet frequently raised money for various charities by giving public readings of poems and other dramatic works. She often closed these performances with a well-regarded recitation of..."The Bells."

Make of that what you will.

(Image courtesy New York Public Library.)

The Facts in the Case of Mrs. Osgood and Mrs. Ellet

"'The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether.'
'Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which put you at fault,' said my friend."
-"The Purloined Letter"

As I have noted before, all of Poe's biographers accept as fact Sarah Helen Whitman's story (which she only began relating in the 1870s,) that a great scandal erupted when, while visiting the Poe household, Elizabeth Ellet happened to see--Whitman was never clear how--a letter written by Frances S. Osgood. Whitman never claimed to know, even in general terms, what this letter said, but she said it inspired Ellet to persuade Osgood to allow other ladies--Whitman thought they were Margaret Fuller and Anne Lynch--to call on Poe and insist that all Osgood's letters to him be placed in their hands.

It is deeply frustrating how no one questions this illogical and completely undocumented story. If this absurd scenario had actually happened, why would Osgood, in her "Reminiscences of Poe," make such a point of informing her readers that she and Poe kept up a correspondence during the year of their acquaintance? Wouldn't she be anxious that this correspondence--which, according to Whitman, had such embarrassing and scandalous consequences--be utterly forgotten? Osgood's eagerness to convince the world that she and Poe had at least written contact (she admitted that she was away from New York during most of the period that Poe lived there,) proves there was no contemporary scandal involving their letters--or anything else about their relationship.

And why would Osgood agree to make a public spectacle out of the issue of her private correspondence? If her letters to Poe were innocent, why make herself look guilty by demanding their return? If she did write something indiscreet, why would she agree to involve outside parties in the matter--parties who would undoubtedly spread the degrading details all over town?

What little evidence we have directly contradicts Whitman's account, and certainly none of the women supposedly involved ever hinted such a confrontation took place. Arthur Quinn and John Carl Miller have noted that when Lynch herself (whom Whitman cited as her source for the story) was asked about the scandal in the 1870s, she denied ever even having heard of such an episode. Lynch also wrote George W. Eveleth that aside from "a wide difference of opinion between us in reference to his treatment of another lady"--it is not clear if this was Mrs. Osgood or Mrs. Ellet--she knew nothing of Poe "that was discreditable or unworthy of his remarkable genius."

It is all too reminiscent of the Anna Blackwell saga. Whitman somehow learned some of the truth--that trouble ensued from Ellet seeing a particular letter written by Osgood, and that this somehow led to Poe revealing to the world that he possessed some sort of incriminating letters from Mrs. E--and, in her usual eccentric fashion, she built upon these facts to present the world with a completely erroneous scenario.

Our major clue to what really happened is a letter (now in the Boston Public Library's Griswold collection) Ellet wrote in July of 1846, in response to a (now lost) communication from Osgood. As it describes a version of events that renders Whitman's story an impossibility, it is worth scrutinizing in detail--a task Poe's biographers have yet to attempt. They tend to mention this letter only briefly--when they mention it at all--and it is invariably misinterpreted.

The letter indicated that Osgood had written to Ellet complaining of being "misrepresented and traduced." She apparently denied having even written the letter that had started the whole controversy, as Ellet responded to her self-defense by eagerly agreeing that "The letter shown me by Mrs. Poe must have been a forgery, and any man capable of offering to show notes he never possessed, would not, I think, hesitate at such a crime." In other words, Osgood was now claiming that the letter Virginia Poe had shown Ellet, and which had caused Ellet to express hostility towards Osgood, was a fraud devised by the Poes themselves. Fanny Osgood, as even her partisan biographer Mary De Jong admitted, was a woman who "generally set about having her own way." She was certainly having it now--at the direct expense of Edgar Poe and his wife.

It is amazing how the significance of this has been completely ignored. Osgood, after both the Poes were dead, portrayed herself as their devoted friend. While they lived, however, she deliberately led a mutual enemy to pretend they were forgers in an effort to disengage from a dispute she herself had instigated. That alone says all one needs to know about the real Frances Sargent Osgood--and her true feelings for the Poes. It also proves that the letter Ellet was deliberately shown--not, as Whitman claimed, "just happened" to see lying about the Poe house--was no love-letter. If it had been, Virginia would have been the last person in the world to display it to anyone. And Ellet, a sophisticated married woman whose own morals were hardly irreproachable, would not describe a mere love-letter as containing "fearful paragraphs" that "haunted me day and night like a terrifying spectre." She could only be describing a letter that was some sort of attack or exposure--one which Virginia used to confront her. (Incidentally, considering that Virginia Poe was the one to reveal the contents of this letter, Osgood may well have addressed it to her. There is nothing in Ellet's letter that reveals whether this troublesome document was sent to Mr. or Mrs. Poe.)

Ellet would not have been so ready to go along with Osgood's witless efforts to disown the letter if it had not affected her personally. Also, she would certainly not be in a position to agree that the letter's contents were false unless they directly concerned herself. And, of course, in regard to Whitman's version of events, Osgood could hardly have agreed to request the return of letters she was now claiming never to have written.

Ellet assured Osgood that Poe would not now "dare to work further mischief with the letter," and that he was so personally disgraced that any "verbal calumnies" he made against either of them would be discredited. That statement is further proof that Osgood's letter was an assault upon Ellet. The reference to "verbal calumnies" clearly implies that this letter consisted of "written calumnies" of some sort. (Ellet's letter also contradicts another element of Whitman's story by indicating that whatever letter or letters Osgood had written were still in the possession of the Poes.)

It is also interesting that Ellet referred to Poe as speaking disparagingly not just of herself, but of Osgood as well. Whatever the exact content may have been of the vicious stories Ellet was circulating against Osgood and Poe, if she had helped spread gossip about a romance, she would hardly describe Poe as uttering "calumnies" against both of them. (And here, for once, she was speaking the truth. Two months before Ellet wrote this letter, Horace Greeley commented, in an obvious reference to these two women, that Poe had recently "scandalized"--i.e. insulted--a pair of well-known literary ladies.)

Ellet wrote that she will "preserve utter silence in future on the subject"--she avoided saying precisely what "the subject" was--only saying, should others mention Osgood's name "in connection with it" that Osgood had been "traduced, wrongfully." This, again, disproves the idea that some sexual scandal involving Osgood and Poe was making the rounds. Ellet assumed that discussion of "the subject"--obviously, Ellet's feud with Poe, which broke into open warfare when he declared that she had written him some sort of compromising letters--would not necessarily involve references to Osgood. Ellet went on to decry "the falsehoods told by the Poes" about her--again, she is clearly not describing any love letters written by another woman. (And if Poe had possessed any embarrassing letters from Ellet, would she, as Whitman alleged, seek to make an issue about another lady's correspondence?)

Ellet assured Osgood that she had "no unkind feeling toward Mr. Osgood for what he said under mistaken impressions against me. Some of the things that reached me were too terrible to repeat, but even at the time I felt sure he was not willfully wronging me, and I rest in your assurance that he will not do so, now that he knows the truth."

This is another key statement. Samuel Osgood had clearly been repeating his wife's denunciations of Ellet, and she presumed now that "he knows the truth"--that the letter Virginia Poe displayed was a "forgery"--he will hold his peace. Surely, if the letter Mrs. Poe revealed was a mere indiscreet note from Mrs. Osgood, Frances' husband would hardly have cause for denouncing Ellet in the matter. He would be angry at his wife--or Poe--or Poe's wife and her bizarre desire to publicize her husband's flirtations--not some innocent bystander.

Ellet sighed that it was "most unfortunate both for you and me that we ever had any acquaintance with such people as the Poes--but I trust the evil is now at an end. Heaven sends such trials as merciful warnings--let us accept and profit by them." (This statement showed that Osgood obviously shared her anger towards Poe and his wife.) She closed in this same somewhat menacing vein with the pious hope that God will guard Osgood from future "danger."

Their collusion in blaming Mr. and Mrs. Poe for all their difficulties produced only a temporary truce. In January of 1849, Rufus Griswold wrote a friend that Ellet had quarrelled with, and been "cut" by many people in New York, including Mrs. Osgood. What caused the resumption of hostilities is not clear, but the New York literati--a crowd that would have made the Borgias blush--needed little reason to slash at each other. As Poe was long out of both those women's lives by that point, it seems unlikely that he was a factor in their later disputes. Be that as it may, in a sense, it was a great pity that the friendship between Mesdames Ellet and Osgood failed to last. The two certainly deserved each other.

***A footnote: Among Rufus Griswold's papers in the Boston Public Library is a very curious memorandum he wrote sometime in the 1850s, detailing his own ongoing war with Elizabeth Ellet. It is unknown to whom this memo was written, and his purpose in writing it is also unclear. This memo described a showdown he allegedly had with Ellet either in 1849 or 1850--his dating of the meeting is inconsistent--about "calumnies" (unspecified, but evidently concerning the 1846 fracas involving Poe) she was spreading about Frances Osgood. (This claim, incidentally, smacks of "cover story." An 1849 letter of Osgood's to her mother proves that in actuality, damaging gossip was then circulating about Osgood and Griswold himself--not Poe. Not even Elizabeth Ellet would bother to recycle old tittle-tattle everyone had already heard featuring a man Osgood had not even seen for years.) According to Griswold, he threatened to publish Ellet's letter to Osgood if she did not cease her smear campaign.

Although many of Poe's biographers repeat his account without question, there are--as usual with Griswold--problems with his story. First of all, he characterized Ellet's letter as one of "apology" and "confession," that she wrote only after Samuel Osgood threatened to sue her on his wife's behalf. Ellet's letter itself indicated that she only wrote in response to an olive branch from Mrs. Osgood, where she repudiated the letter shown to Ellet by Virginia Poe. Ellet's tone is self-justifying, not apologetic, (she even wrote that if Frances herself could have seen the letter Virginia displayed, "you would not wonder I regarded you as I did.") There would be no reason for Ellet to fear the publication of a letter where she painted herself as innocent victim of the scheming, evil Mr. and Mrs. Poe. There is no other indication that Mr. Osgood threatened any lawsuit, and it is impossible to believe that he would compound scandal and do incalculable additional damage to his wife's reputation by dragging everyone's dirty laundry out into a public court. Ellet's letter itself showed that Samuel was indeed saying "terrible" things about her, but it also revealed that Ellet assumed that Frances' husband now felt he had "wronged" her. (And, in any case, as Sidney P. Moss noted in another context, the mores of the time forbade a gentleman from suing a lady--even as equivocal a lady as Elizabeth Ellet.)

As I say, we do not know Griswold's reason for recording this story (which he never made public,) unless it was simply the fact that at the time he wrote this memo, he and Ellet were in a lively competition to see who could make the most venomous accusations against the other. (Their feud always reminds me of Henry Kissinger's famous remark about the 1980s Iran/Iraq war: "It's a pity they can't both lose.") Whatever his motivation, this anecdote involving the Ellet letter can only be taken as yet another example of his strange and nebulous relationship with reality.



(Images: New York Public Library.)

Marginalia

Elizabeth Oakes Smith may have been a successful poet, magazinist, lecturer and essayist, but where Edgar Allan Poe was concerned, she is best known as an irresponsible fantasist. (Although, God knows, she was hardly unusual in that respect.) She was fond of publishing colorful and subtly malicious reminiscences about her literary brethren. Unfortunately for her quest for "copy," she did not know Poe well--if she actually knew him personally at all. Undeterred, she spread stories about him anyway, mixing together stray scraps of gossip, putting her own finishing touches on them, and generally coming up with a very strange brew indeed. (Poe's biographer John H. Ingram wound up contemptuously dismissing her as "imaginative.")

Her most notorious Poe anecdote was her lunatic claim that the poet died in 1849 as a result of a beating commissioned by a woman (Elizabeth F. Ellet, although Smith never named her publicly) whose letters Poe had refused to return. In other words, she gave a version of the 1846 dispute between Poe and Ellet, as narrated by Rod Serling.

A lesser-known tale of Smith's is equally unbelievable, but very interesting in its broader implications. It is told to us by a man named J.C. Derby, in his 1884 memoir, "Fifty Years Among Authors and Publishers." (Derby, it must be said, is not the world's most reliable source himself. Elsewhere in this same book, when discussing the Griswold edition of Poe's collected works, he made the astonishing statement that "The copyright was paid at first to Mr. Poe, and after his death to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm...")

According to Derby, Smith told him an anecdote concerning Poe and a unnamed woman, who was obviously Elizabeth F. Ellet. He quoted Smith as saying:

"A certain lady of my acquaintance fell in love with Poe and wrote a love-letter to him. Every letter he received he showed to his little wife." [Note: This intriguing detail about Virginia reading all his correspondence was actually confirmed elsewhere by Mrs. Clemm.]

"This lady went to his house one day; she heard Fanny Osgood and Mrs. Poe having a hearty laugh, they were fairly shouting, as they read over a letter. The lady listened, and found it was hers, when she walked into the room and snatched it from their hands. There would have been a scene with any other woman, but they were both very sweet and gentle, and there the matter ended."

Now, this is a patently absurd little fable. Not only do we not have any other source--including Smith herself--that confirms Derby's story, but it flatly contradicts the little we do know. All the evidence we have indicates that the feud involving the three women started when Virginia Poe confronted Mrs. Ellet with a letter written by Mrs. Osgood. In any case, it seems far too conveniently coincidental that, after sending Poe this mash note, Ellet should just happen to enter the Poe house (unannounced, presumably,) at the precise time that the other two ladies are reading her effusions aloud. As the old saying goes, the story doesn't pass the smell test.

What is significant about this anecdote is what it does not say. It is an indirect piece of evidence that, contrary to what is assumed by modern-day Poe biographers, there were no salacious contemporary rumors involving Poe and Osgood's relationship. If there had been, surely the gossipy Mrs. Smith would have incorporated them in her various Poe stories. She never--publicly or privately--hinted at any improper or scandalous allegations about the pair. In fact, her one recorded comment on the Poe/Osgood relationship suggested just the opposite. She once told Sarah H. Whitman that certain of Poe's female admirers--obviously, Mrs. Osgood and Mrs. Ellet--got into a jealous catfight with each other, and Poe wound up being caught in the crossfire. Smith emphasized, however, that she believed him to have been blameless in the matter. Mrs. Smith once wrote that many people had had some very ugly things to say about Mrs. Osgood, but she never connected these calumnies to Osgood's dealings with Poe. In fact, despite whatever negative remarks Smith made about the late poet--and, in her rather condescending way, she made plenty--she described him as a faithful and loving husband. (According to Smith's close friend Mrs. Whitman, Smith and Osgood disliked each other, so she would hardly have a motive to protect the other woman's name.)

Instead of describing any sort of scandal involving the Poe/Osgood relationship, Smith depicted Mrs. Osgood and Poe's wife laughing together about another woman's advances to him. All the recorded contemporary commentary on Poe's controversial dealings with women in 1845-46 focused on the dispute involving Elizabeth Ellet and her reputed letters to him--Osgood is practically ignored. In fact, we have statements (from Hiram Fuller and Horace Greeley in particular) suggesting that relations between Poe and Osgood were believed to have turned hostile. In early 1849, Greeley even saw Mrs. Osgood as someone who could be sent to advise Sarah Helen Whitman not to have anything to do with Poe!

Mrs. Ellet's Letters (Part Three)

"And if, in one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth, sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be put down, then, forthwith, were private chicaneries set in motion; then was had resort, on the part of those who considered themselves injured by the severity of criticism (and who were so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man is injury) resort to arts of the most virulent indignity, to untraceable slanders, to ruthless assassination in the dark."
-Edgar Allan Poe, "Graham's Magazine," 1841

The letter Elizabeth Ellet wrote to Frances S. Osgood in July of 1846 was a reply to one she received from Osgood the previous month. (That letter, most unfortunately, is lost.) Ellet's comments regarding this letter make it clear that Osgood, awash in her habitual self-pity and desperate to pacify Ellet--who obviously terrified her--was throwing both Edgar and Virginia Poe well and truly under the bus. Evidently, Virginia had first described to and then shown Ellet a letter she said had come from Osgood. This letter--obviously the catalyst for the public feuding--Osgood now claimed was a forgery designed by the Poes themselves.

Here, incidentally, is proof that Osgood's letter--which, for all we know, was addressed to either or both the Poes--could not have been, as is assumed, a love note. Aside from the fact that Virginia would hardly share such a thing with her callers, I doubt even a woman as silly as Frances Osgood would be stupid enough to try peddling the notion of Poe forging billet-doux to himself and then displaying them to his wife. Another piece of evidence that the letter was not romantic in nature is the Valentine poem Poe's wife wrote for him not long after this incident. The poem, with its references to Virginia's desire to live with him in a remote cottage away from the evil of the world, to find a refuge where "love shall heal my weakened lungs," showed that, while she was well aware there was a bad moon rising, she did not blame her husband for their troubles.

And Ellet could not have read a purely "innocent" letter that she somehow miraculously managed to spin into something insidious. Not only would Virginia have equally little reason to show Ellet--who was hardly her friend--an innocuous letter, but if Ellet had tried such a tactic, all anyone she attacked would have to do is produce the letter to prove that Osgood was innocent and Ellet a liar. Instead, Osgood frantically repudiated it. The letter shown by Virginia was obviously an attack on Ellet--Osgood, as Horace Rumpole would say, grassed on her rival.

That is the only thing that explains why Virginia confronted Ellet with this document--she was demanding a response to Osgood's charges. That is the only thing that explains Ellet's reference to the letter's "fearful paragraphs" that "haunted me night and day like a terrifying spectre." That is the only thing that explains Ellet's reference to Samuel Osgood saying "things...too terrible to repeat" about her--"things" that she knows Frances can assure her he will no longer say, "now that he knows the truth" (i.e., that the letter Virginia said was written by his wife was a "forgery.") If Samuel had heard that Frances had written other men love letters, that would hardly lead him to openly insult Mrs. Ellet--rather, he obviously was repeating statements contained in his wife's letter. Finally, the idea that Osgood had written highly damaging revelations about Ellet is the only thing that explains the bitter hatred Ellet expressed not only towards Poe, but his wife as well. (In her letter to Osgood, she referred to "the falsehoods told by the Poes," and added that "it is most unfortunate both for you and me that we ever had any acquaintance with such people as the Poes." Obviously, whatever Virginia said to Ellet when she showed Osgood's letter had left a mark.

Ellet, of course, was only too willing to play along with Osgood's idiotic claim that her letter was forged. Agreeing that "any man capable of offering to show notes he never possessed would not, I think, hesitate at such a crime," she noted how now that Osgood had disowned the letter, the "wretch" Poe will not dare to work "further mischief" with it, and that neither woman need fear any more "verbal calumnies" from the poet, as "steeped in infamy" as he was by then. (Again, here is evidence that Poe was believed to have a grudge against both Ellet and Osgood.)

Ellet's letter also proved that Mrs. Whitman's story about a posse of literary women being sent out to retrieve Osgood's letters from Poe was a complete fable. Ellet's comment about Poe's inability to foment "further mischief" with Osgood's letter showed that the Poes still had this troublesome document, and she said nothing about any efforts to retrieve it.

All this obviously still leaves major questions unanswered. What did Poe discover about Osgood that caused him to avoid her completely for the rest of his life, and cause Greeley, Ellet, Edward Thomas, and who knows who else, to assume the two were enemies? What were Osgood's charges against Ellet, that she so cravenly later tried to take back? Poe later made public reference to Virginia being the target of vicious anonymous letters. Other evidence indicates he believed these letters were Ellet's handiwork. Did Osgood provide the Poes with this information? And are these poison-pen letters somehow linked to these mysterious, undefined, but extremely damning letters of Ellet's that both Poe and Griswold claimed existed? (If Poe was threatening to reveal them to the world, they could hardly have been love letters to him. Such letters would, naturally, embarrass him as well.)

Alluding to a particular sixteenth-century Scottish historical mystery, someone once expressed the pious belief that "at the Day of Judgement, we shall know the solution to the Gowrie Conspiracy at last!" In the case of the Poe Conspiracy, let us hope a less extreme method of enlightenment still might be found.

"O, that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
I never shall know here."
-John Webster, "The Duchess of Malfi"

Mrs. Ellet's Letters (Part Two)

The little evidence left to us does indicate that, sometime late in January of 1846, there was a dispute involving Edgar Allan Poe and letters he claimed Elizabeth Ellet had written. Ellet's friend Thomas Dunn English took her part, echoing her hysterical denials of writing Poe so much as a line. (As if English could know one way or another.) This caused Poe's relations with English--never exactly affectionate even in the best of times--to blossom into open, bloody warfare, which culminated in Poe suing a newspaper that had published a libelous column English wrote about him.

English claimed--although proof was never produced--that Poe had "vilified a certain well-known and esteemed authoress of the South, then on a visit to New York; that he had accused her of having written letters to him which compromised her reputation..." Ellet then allegedly sent her brother, William Lummis, to demand that Poe produce these letters--letters Poe (depending on which story you prefer) either refused to produce, or had already returned to her. According to Ellet and English, Poe--fearing Lummis would kill him--then extricated himself by writing Ellet a letter retracting his claim about her letters. This Poe letter, incidentally, was never made public, then or ever, which is odd if his worst enemies had a statement so damaging to him in their hands.

Griswold, of course, later gave his own version of the event in his Poe memoir, claiming that Poe had borrowed money from this "distinguished literary woman of South Carolina," and, in order to get out of repaying the debt, "denied all knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondence which he said would make the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject. Of course there had never been any such correspondence..." How Poe thought he could carry off an effective blackmail with letters his victim knew never existed is not explained. Also "infamous" seems too strong a word to use in reference to mere love letters. And, of course, in private, Griswold evidently insisted to various people that Ellet had written Poe letters of some unspecified, but scandalous variety. Interestingly, he hinted they were anonymous.

Osgood's exact role in all this is never made clear, only that her actions caused Poe to never speak or write to her again. And the literati rose as one to go after Poe with bell, book, and candle. The bulk of the literary world set out to destroy him personally and professionally, and destroy him they did, in a manner that would disgrace the most savage pack of piranhas. As Sidney P. Moss wrote, "Poe as a person was reduced to ruin by the New York literati and their sponsors, who used the occasion while he was defenseless to work out old grudges or new ones. What the record fails to show clearly enough is that Poe, up to the time he had written 'The Literati' sketches, had achieved an unparalleled national reputation as a critic, whatever notoriety he earned in gaining that reputation; that on the strength of 'The Raven,' he became famous as a poet...his narratives, widely, if not invariably accepted as brilliant at home, were beginning to be acclaimed in England and France...His encounters with English, Fuller, and company, however, brought his career to a grinding halt, for his personal reputation, smeared beyond recovery by his enemies, soured his literary reputation, so that his manuscripts often went begging for publication..."

Here is what we know of the situation:

In a letter of May of 1846, Horace Greeley made a vague reference to Poe having "scandalized two eminent literary ladies" (presumably Mrs. Ellet and--interesting to note--Mrs. Osgood.)

In January 1848, Anne Lynch, in response to Sarah Helen Whitman's inquiries about Poe, wrote her an equally vague letter describing "a great war in bluestockingdom some time ago and Poe did not behave very honorably in it."

In 1875, Elizabeth Oakes Smith commented to Whitman that "Mr. Poe was the last person to whom I should ever have attributed any grossness...I saw women jealous in their admiration of him. I think he often found himself entangled by their plots and rivalries. I do not for a moment think he was false in his relations to them."

Shortly after Poe's death, Margaret Fuller wrote these words about him to Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "...several women loved him, but it seemed more with passionate illusion which he amused himself by inducing than with sympathy; I think he really had no friend."

Greeley, in a January 1849 letter to Rufus W. Griswold discussing rumors of Poe's engagement to Mrs. Whitman, thought Mrs. Osgood would make a good envoy to dissuade the widow from having anything to do with the author of "The Raven."

In the wake of Poe's successful libel suit against the "Mirror," the paper that had published English's actionable column, sinister anonymous items began appearing in that newspaper, predicting that Poe would now turn his attention to hauling certain literary ladies (note the plural) into the dock as well.

At the end of 1845, just before matters came to a head, Osgood sent the "Broadway Journal" a bitter, angry poem entitled "To the Lady Geraldine," which describes how a woman who posed as her friend had caused certain other people to turn against her. (A February 1846 letter to Osgood from another friend indicates that Frances had made similar complaints to her.)

In March 1847, Edward Thomas, a friend of the Osgood family, wrote Frances a letter discussing Poe's recent lawsuit. Thomas had testified on Poe's behalf, recanting accusations he had helped spread that Poe was a forger. (Incidentally, English claimed that Poe told him that Thomas--a man Poe had never even met--spread these charges in the hopes of eclipsing Poe in Mrs. Osgood's affections. This claim seems hardly supported by the known facts, including Thomas' own letters to her. In any case, considering that English had just been established in a New York courthouse as a libeler--not the last time he would face such charges--one should be wary of accepting his word on anything--most particularly his word on people he hated. Besides, if Thomas was jealous of anyone around Osgood, surely it would have been her husband.) In Thomas' letter to Mrs. Osgood, he noted that he was not surprised that Poe won his suit, as he himself had always thought English's column "a libel in reality," apologized to her for being unable to give "Sam" the loan Mr. Osgood had recently sought from him, and then commented: "Poor Poe--he has lost his wife--his home--may the folly of the past make him contrite for the future--may he live to be what he can be if he has but the will. He is now alone and his good or evil will not so much afflict others." Thomas' words indicate not only that he never regarded Poe as a romantic rival, but that he assumed his friend Mrs. Osgood did not know--or approve of--the troubled writer any more than he himself did.

Finally, there is a most curious quote from Poe himself. In 1846, he published a review of Osgood's poetry, where he discusses at length a verse drama of hers called "Elfrida." Referring to the title character--a heartless, treacherous woman who cold-bloodedly plots the murder of her innocent husband so that she may marry a king--he notes, "In the depicting the impassioned ambition of Elfrida, the authoress seems especially at home, and upon this character she has evidently put forth her strength." What in the world was he trying to insinuate about Mrs. Osgood?

What do all these fragmentary clues tell us? That certain "literary ladies"--obviously Ellet and Osgood, as theirs are the only names to surface--got into a jealous catfight over their mutual admiration of Poe. Ellet did or said something to Poe that caused him to think badly of Osgood. That "bluestocking," in revenge, fed Poe some even more damaging information about Ellet. (The proof that she did so will be described later.) Poe, now weary of both these ladies--or, to be more accurate, "women"--invited them both to go straight to the devil, and left town to bury himself in the country at Fordham, leaving no forwarding address, and telling no one--particularly his erstwhile female fan club--where he had gone. Which brings us to the most detailed and revealing piece of hard evidence we have regarding the whole deranged business: A letter Mrs. Ellet wrote Mrs. Osgood in July, 1846.

To be continued...

Mrs. Ellet's Letters; Or, Poe Poe Pitiful Me (Part One)

One of the landmark events in Edgar Poe's life--the famous January 1846 "letters scandal" involving Elizabeth F. Ellet and Frances S. Osgood--is remarkably undocumented and unfathomable. Anyone making an examination of the business immediately becomes lost in a maze of plot and sub-plot, accusation and counter-accusation, like something out of Jacobean drama (John Webster in particular would have adored this story.) Biographers struggling to understand how Poe so suddenly went from literary lion to social pariah as a result of the episode have unfortunately relied almost exclusively on Sarah Helen Whitman. In the 1870s, she began providing a version of the dispute (which she claimed to have heard thirty years earlier from literary socialite Anne Lynch,) and after a close study of the few known facts of the case, I am convinced that her story came straight out of her ether bottle. (Speaking of Mrs. Whitman, can anyone explain to me why Poe biographers all place such confidence in the accuracy of the reminiscences of an admitted habitual drug user?)

According to Whitman, "some ladies" visiting the Poe household (she quite erroneously claimed this was after Poe had moved to Fordham,) chanced to see a letter written by Frances S. Osgood, that had been left openly lying about the house. Something about this letter so agitated these callers that they went straight to Osgood and urged her to demand the return of her entire correspondence from Poe. (Whitman claimed that Elizabeth F. Ellet was the instigator and leader of all this, but she failed to explain Ellet's precise actions, her motivation, or why all these other women passively did her bidding.) Two women (Whitman vaguely thought they may have been Lynch and Margaret Fuller) were deputized to go to Poe and order him to hand over Osgood's letters. He, insulted and angry, asserted that Mrs. Ellet should be concerned about her own letters. And with those words, all hell proceeded to break loose.

All one has to do is consider the details of this story to realize its absurdity. Would anyone in Poe's family leave what everyone presumes was an indiscreet love letter to him lying about as a conversation piece? If Osgood, for whatever reason, desired the return of her letters, why not quietly ask Poe herself, rather than allowing the request to become a public performance for the entertainment of all? Why should any of these other women give two hoots about what Osgood wrote to whom? If Ellet (as the story suggests) had written compromising letters to Poe as well, why would she draw attention to Osgood's letters, thus leaving herself wide open to the same criticism? Poe's biographers all assume that Ellet's actions were motivated by jealousy over Osgood's friendship with him. If that was the case, what satisfaction could she have derived from revealing proof of his partiality to all the world? Why, in Whitman's story, is Poe described as expressing outraged fury towards only Ellet, and not Osgood, who did, after all, allow them both to be put in this humiliating position? And, most importantly, why is there no contemporary corroboration for any of this? Whatever truly happened, this obviously ain't it.

There is a letter, said to be from Poe to Mrs. Whitman, which seems to allude to the Ellet fracas, but unfortunately it is extremely vague and downright incoherent. The letter indicates only that Poe, angered by an unspecified insult Ellet delivered "upon both families," said something--we are not told exactly what--that he immediately regretted. He then, to compensate, gathered up some letters--presumably Ellet's--and delivered them to her doorstep. That lady responded by sending her brother to order Poe to...return her letters.

If you can make any sense of all that, I salute you.

More to come...

(Image: NYPL Digital Gallery)

Fanny Osgood Writes Home to Mom

Deposited in Providence R.I.'s Brown University is a very intriguing letter written by Frances S. Osgood to her mother, Mary Ingersoll Locke. (Incidentally, the name of her mother has been erroneously given as Martha J. Locke, which was actually the name of one of Osgood's sisters.)

The letter, dated April 23, 1849, is extremely mutilated. Someone (when this was done is unknown) tore most of the first page away, leaving us with only a fragmentary story. What remains, however, hints at dark doings. Although Poe is not a subject in the letter, it gives a peep into the ugly and Byzantine maneuverings of the literary circles surrounding him.

The surviving portions of the letter feature Osgood's railings against "the Whelpleys." (Evidently James D. Whelpley, the editor of the "American Whig Review," and his wife Anna--who happened to be Osgood's niece.) According to Osgood, her niece and her husband had been spreading "wicked calumnies" about her. The exact nature of the "calumnies" is not clear, but they clearly had to do with Osgood's very close relationship with Rufus W. Griswold, as at one point Osgood complained that she had intended to buy or rent a house and have Griswold board with her to share the expenses, "but after all this talk I could not of course take him." (Her husband, Samuel, was then seeking his fortune in the California gold rush.) I suspect Osgood's motives in selecting Griswold, of all people, as a housemate were basically innocent. She would hardly have revealed her plans to her own mother if they were not, and, in any case, Osgood was too childishly self-absorbed and too fond of living in her own fairyland fantasy-world to be likely to take a great interest in sex. However, Osgood's obvious obliviousness to how this would look to the world speaks volumes about her lack of sense.

Osgood also had bitter words about her youngest sister Elizabeth and her husband, Henry Harrington. She indicated that they had expressed skepticism about her version of "the Whelpley affair," and stated that she will never visit them again until they agree to believe "implicitly every word I have said" about the scandal. (The idea that her own sister and brother-in-law expressed "a doubt about my veracity" regarding what were obviously ugly charges made against her by her niece and her husband gives a curious picture of Osgood's family life.)

The main missing portion of the letter deals with Osgood's discussion of a certain man. His name--except for a portion of the first letter of it--has been torn away from the letter, but from the context of the letter's previous lines--more about the Whelpleys and how "shamefully" they had behaved, while she herself had acted with "perfect [word missing] throughout," the man was probably Griswold. She said that "they" (whose identities are not revealed in the surviving parts of the letter) "know all about poor [name missing here] and smile as all sensible and pure-minded people do--at the false reports to which his fits of insanity have given currency--not only about me but every woman who has been kind..."

And there her story ends, for our phantom editor who mutilated the letter clearly did not want us to know the rest. All that is clear is that, in a scandal having nothing to do with her famous association with Poe, Osgood's own relations were spreading--and believing--some sort of unsavory stories involving her and Griswold, who was very likely the man Osgood casually described as subject to "fits of insanity," and who evidently had many unpleasant stories told about his relations with other women, as well. (According to Elizabeth F. Ellet, Griswold was in the habit of boasting about his supposed romantic conquests among the ladies of his acquaintance.) The Roman Emperors depicted in "I, Claudius" had nothing on the nineteenth-century New York Literati.

I would dearly like to know what the rest of this document contained. I would also be pleased to discover who bowdlerized this missive, and why. And for that matter, who wanted this letter--the only letter from Osgood to her mother extant--available for public study?

The Fluttery Frances S. Osgood

In the 1830s and 1840s, Frances Sargent "Fanny" Osgood was a prolific and well-known magazine poet, but she is mainly remembered today for her controversial and debatable relationship with Edgar Allan Poe.

Osgood, a married woman of thirty-four with two young daughters, met Poe in March of 1845. (She later claimed he sought out the introduction, but a letter she wrote soon after their meeting seems to cast doubt on this story.) Osgood, an impetuous, rather infantile personality, who was--as Poe later ungallantly observed in print--"in no respect" beautiful--became immediately fascinated with Poe, who was then at the peak of his literary and social popularity. (It has been suggested--not unfairly--that Osgood's interest in promoting her own writing career had something to do with her very public infatuation with the influential writer and critic.) She soon commenced writing a series of gushy poems for Poe's magazine, the "Broadway Journal," that modern-day writers assume were addressed to him. (This is, however, purely supposition.) Poe responded to this alleged "literary courtship" by re-dedicating to her two rather bland poems he had published years earlier (a curious variation of "re-gifting,") and writing a Valentine poem to her where her middle name is misspelled and she is called "a dunce." (More on this odd poem later.)

It has often been claimed that Osgood was separated from her husband, a well-known portrait painter named Samuel Stillman Osgood, at the time she knew Poe. There is absolutely nothing to support this belief. Poe scholar Thomas O. Mabbott was the first to suggest they were separated during 1845, solely on the basis of a poem Mrs. Osgood published in late 1844, "Lower To the Level," where she chided a nameless "you" for neglecting her in favor of others. Since Mabbott's theory was published, other writers have repeated this claim as fact, evidently without bothering to examine whether there is any truth to the statement. The nature of Samuel Osgood's work led him to travel frequently to execute commissions, but not so much as a hint exists--even among the letters and memoirs of their gossipy and catty literary set--that the couple was ever estranged. Many letters written to Mrs. Osgood during this period indicate that she and her husband were often together. There is even a note of Fanny's to Samuel that is believed to have been written in May 1845--exactly when her presumed infatuation with Poe was at its height--where she addresses him as "my darling love," and goes on to say, "I have only a few minutes to say how dearly and fondly I love you." (This letter shows that either Fanny's assumed love for Poe was a complete fraud, or she was the biggest hypocrite and liar on two feet. In any case, it is clear evidence against an estrangement in her marriage.) Osgood's modern biographer, Mary De Jong, wound up admitting--with obvious reluctance, as she was eager to make as much hay out of Mrs. Osgood's relationship with Poe as possible--that there is no reason to believe that the Osgoods were ever estranged, or that either partner had been unfaithful.

It is not clear how much of a personal friendship she and Poe had. They evidently saw each other occasionally at New York's literary "salons," but Osgood spent much of 1845 away from New York City, and she herself later admitted that whatever relationship they had was largely through correspondence. (Her claim--made only after Poe's death--that his wife Virginia encouraged her to befriend him so that her influence would help keep him sober should be treated with the scorn it deserves.) The only letter between Poe and Osgood still in existence is a brief note believed to have been written by Poe to her in October 1845. It is a courtly, but extremely formal letter, addressing her as "My Dear Madam." He thanks her for the "sweet poem" she sent him for the "Broadway Journal," as well as the words of "flattery" which accompanied it, and says that the demands of his work compel him to turn down a social invitation from her until later. Poe biographer Sidney P. Moss commented that Poe addressed Osgood "gingerly" in this note. It certainly does not indicate Poe felt any real personal warmth towards her.

A still-mysterious scandal erupted around the two early in 1846. All we know for certain is that, in January of that year, Virginia Poe confronted Elizabeth Ellet (another "literary lady" with designs on Poe) with a letter written by Osgood. This letter (the contents of which are unknown) evidently contained some damaging information about Ellet (that lady later described the letter as containing "fearful paragraphs" that "haunted me day and night like a terrifying spectre.") This led to Ellet feuding with the Poes and Osgood, with Poe himself claiming to possess letters Ellet had written of an unspecified but clearly damaging nature. (The version of the scandal that Sarah Helen Whitman later claimed to have heard--that Osgood had used Ellet as a go-between to retrieve presumably indiscreet letters she had written to Poe--is universally accepted by historians, but there is no evidence whatsoever for this in contemporary references to the feud.) Both Anne Lynch and Elizabeth Oakes Smith--two other members of New York literary circles--later implied that Ellet and Osgood had gotten into a jealous rivalry for Poe's attentions, and their mutual plotting against each other caused Poe himself to unwittingly get caught in the crossfire. That seems as much as we'll ever learn for certain about the whole ugly business.

Whatever the truth was about the incident, Poe permanently broke off all contact with Osgood afterwards (a letter he later allegedly wrote to Sarah Helen Whitman commented enigmatically that the "one thing he could not forgive Mrs. Osgood was her reception of Mrs. Ellet.") She, however, continued to publish yearning, if ambiguous, poems that have been thought to have been directed to him, rather in the manner of a modern-day "obsessed fan." (In actuality, these poems follow the same trite lost-love themes she used throughout her entire career. Kenneth Silverman was even fooled into assuming a poem she had published long before she met Poe was one she wrote about the end of their relationship!) Osgood also tried to extricate herself from the uproar by trying to persuade Ellet that the letter Virginia had shown her was a forgery devised by Poe himself. (This can be seen as a sign of how insincere her loyalty and devotion to Poe truly was.)

Her third daughter, Fanny Fay, was born soon afterwards, in June 1846. A writer named John Evangelist Walsh published a very strange book in 1980, "Plumes in the Dust," arguing that Poe was this child's father. He presented no evidence whatsoever for this startling theory, and no serious Poe scholar gives the idea any credibility. Indeed, Walsh ignores (I can only assume deliberately) a letter written to Mrs. Osgood in late September 1845--just at the time that Fanny Fay would have been conceived. This letter suggested that Frances was then in Providence, R.I.--with her husband.

Soon after the Ellet controversy, Osgood's health, which was always poor, began to decline further, and she died of tuberculosis less than a year after Poe's demise. Eerily, her two surviving daughters (Fanny Fay died in 1847) both followed her to the grave the year after her death.

Osgood's letters and published writings reveal her to have been a deeply unhappy, neurotic character who hid her private torments under a histrionic, almost hysterical, show of outer childlike gaiety. Her best poetry showed a certain melodic talent, and occasional flashes of wit, but her prose works are poorly-written, psychologically peculiar, and uninteresting, and all are cliche-ridden and superficial. It is an irony she would not have appreciated that if it was not for her literary pursuit of Poe--a pursuit that brought her nothing but personal trouble--she would be almost forgotten today.

(Image via New York Public Library)