Text: James B. Reece, “Frances S. Osgood,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

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Frances Sargent Osgood (1811-1850) was born in Boston, the [page 150:] daughter of Joseph Locke, a merchant of that city, but she spent most of her childhood years in Hingham, Massachusetts. The children of the Locke family were encouraged by their parents in their efforts at authorship, and four of them, Frances, a brother, a sister, and a half-sister, became contributors to the periodicals of the day. While yet in her teens Frances saw her verses, under her pen name “Florence,” published in Lydia Maria Child's Juvenile Miscellany; later, others of her productions Sarah J. Hale's Ladies’ Magazine.

In 1835 she married the artist Samuel S. Osgood, and within a few months the couple sailed for London, where they remained for four years. Here, while her husband achieved success as a painter, Mrs. Osgood, under the sponsorship of Mrs. Norton, won popularity through contributions to English magazines and established friendships in literary society.

During the decade following their return to America in 1839, the Osgoods lived chiefly in New York, though Mrs. Osgood's ill health band her husband's profession frequently called them elsewhere, Mrs. Osgood's prolific pen soon established her as one of the leading female authors of the time, her poems and tales going especially to Graham's, the Ladies’ Companion, and the Columbian Magazine. She became a prominent member of the literary group that centered around Miss Lynch's drawing room. She tuberculosis, which, during her final years, had reduced her to semi-invalidism.

Mrs. Osgood's first volume of verse, A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England (1838), was published in London during her [page 151:] residence abroad. Her most important later volumes were Poems (1845) a larger collection of Poems (1850). Her other works include such juvenile volumes and gift books as The Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry (1841), The Snowdrop; a New Year Gift for Children (1842), and The Flower Alphabet (1845?).

The petite Mrs. Osgood was a woman of much personal beauty, and her attractiveness was enhanced by a childlike grace and gentleness of manner. Richard Henry Stoddard, who met her at Miss soirees, echoed the almost unanimous testimony of her many acquaintances when he wrote that she was “loved of all men who knew her” and “hated by no woman who ever felt the charm of her presence.”(1)

Mrs. Osgood had begun to contribute to Graham's during Poe's editorship of that magazine, but they did not meet until three years later. Their personal association, brief but tumultuous, began early in 1845, not long after the publication of “The Raven” had markedly increased Poe's fame as a poet. Mrs. Osgood had planned to attend Poe's lecture on the “Poets and Poetry of America,” which he delivered in New York on February 28, 1845, but had missed it because the person with whom she expected to [page 152:] go did not appear. Poe was informed of these facts on the morning following the lecture in a note from William M. Gillespie, a friend of Mrs. Osgood. Gillespie requested permission to copy from Poe's manuscript of the address certain flattering comments on Mrs. Osgood.(2) Apparently Poe granted this request, for by the time of of Mrs. Osgood's first meeting with the poet, which occurred soon afterward, she had learned of Poe's tribute to her. In an account written shortly before her death, she described her introduction to Poe:

My first meeting with the poet was at the Astor House. A few days previous, Mr. Willis had handed me, at the table d’hote, that strange and thrilling poem entitled “The Raven,” saying that the author wanted my opinion of it. Its effect upon me was so singular, so like that of “wierd [sic] unearthly music,” that it was with a feeling almost of dread, I heard he desired an introduction. Yet I could not refuse without seeming ungrateful, because I had just heard of his enthusiastic and partial eulogy of my writings, in his lecture on American Literature. I shall never forget the morning when I was summoned to the drawing-room by Mr. Willis to receive him. With his proud and beautiful head erect, his dark eyes flashing with the elective [sic] light of feeling and of thought, a peculiar, an inimitable blending of sweetness and hauteur in his expression and manner, he greeted me calmly, gravely, almost coldly; yet with so marked an earnestness that I could not help being deeply impressed by it. From that moment until his death we were friends; although we met only during the first year of our acquaintance.(3)

Mrs. Osgood's account of their association following this meeting makes it apparent that the relationship quickly became a close and personal one. She admitted that she had felt an [page 153:] affectionate interest” in Poe, a fact which she frankly acknowledged “to all who had a claim upon my confidence.”(4) Poe, she wrote, came to her “for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs.”(5) She recalled listening to Poe's conversation “for hours ... entranced by strains of such pure and almost celestial eloquence as I have never read or heard elsewhere.”(6) She returned Poe's visits, and described in some detail the call she made upon the Poe family early in 1846:

I recollect, one morning, towards the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them; and I, who never could resist her affectionate summons, and who enjoyed his society far more in his own home than elsewhere, hastened to Amity-street. I found him just completing his series of papers entitled “The Literati of New-York.” “See,” said he, displaying, in laughing triumph, several little rolls of narrow paper, (he always wrote thus for the press,) “I am going to show you, by the difference of length in these, the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary pie. In each of these, one of you is rolled up and fully discussed. Come, Virginia, help me!” And one by one they unfolded At last they came to one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. “And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?” said I. “Hear her!” he cried, “just as if her little vain heart didn't tell her it's herself!”(7)

During the period of her acquaintance with Poe, Mrs. Osgood was sometimes absent from the city, and at such times she and Poe exchanged letters. The correspondence, Mrs. Osgood stated, [page 154:] was “in accordance with the earnest entreaties of his wife, who imagined that my influence over him had a restraining and beneficial effect.(8) Poe no doubt saw Mrs. Osgood frequently at the homes of friends when literary entertainments were in progress; indeed, it may have been she who introduced him to the group at Miss Lynch's. She wrote that following her introduction to Poe, Miss Lynch begged me to bring him there.”(9)

While exchanging letters with Mrs. Osgood Poe was praising her poetry in his Broadway Journal notices of periodicals in which her productions were appearing. In some of these brief moments, such as his characterization of Mrs. Osgood as “the most truly graceful, delicate, and yet impassioned of American poetesses,”(10) he set the tone of the forthcoming “Literati” sketch of her. In December, 1845, and March, 1846, he published length and highly laudatory reviews of her chief volumes, A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England, and Poems. In these [page 155:] criticisms Poe set forth the thesis that grace is the distinctive quality of her verse and illustrated his point with copious quotations from her poems.(11) Upon these reviews he drew heavily in writing the “Literati” sketch of Mrs. Osgood, the longest and perhaps the most saccharine paper of the series. “Not to write poetry —,” stated Poe, “not to think it, dream it, act it and be it, is entirely out of her power.” He confessed himself unable “without a strong propensity to ring the changes upon the indefinite word ‘grace,’” in which charm Mrs. Osgood excels all other female poets. In prose, he observed, Mrs. Osgood “does far more ... than in poetry, but then her prose is merely poetry in disguise.” Here and there in the sketch appear brief passages of censure directed toward deficient meter and certain allegorical poems.(12)

Some of the poems which Mrs. Osgood published in the Broadway Journal, and Poe's responses to them, reflect the sentimental interest which the two had in each other in the months that followed their introduction. This literary courtship began with the appearance of Mrs. Osgood's “So Let It Be: To ——”;

A few weeks later Poe, under a new title, “To F ——,” republished his poem which begins:

in the same issue of the Journal appeared another compliment in verse to Mrs. Osgood, an unsigned “Impromptu: To Kate Carol”:

Mrs. Osgood's adoption of a phrase from “Israfel” in the first stanza of a later poem, “Echo Song,” indicates with some certainty that Poe inspired the piece:

In the following issue Poe responded with a portion of another previously published poem, which he retitled “To F——” for the occasion:

Poe's last known poetic compliment to Mrs. Osgood was his “A Valentine,” an acrostic in which her name is concealed. The poem apparently was written for the valentine party Miss Lynch gave on February 14, 1846, and was published a week later in the Mirror.(18)

Mrs. Osgood's feeling for Poe seems also to have colored her tale “Ida Grey,” which appeared in Graham's for August, 1845.(19) The personality of the heroine of the story, a coquette endowed with childlike grace, appears to have much in common with Mrs. Osgood's. And the description of Ida's meeting with the man who wins her heart, and who, like Poe, had sought an introduction, reminds one of Mrs. Osgood's account of her own meeting with Poe:

Only a few, formal words passed between Ida and her new acquaintance; but I remarked that his keen gray eyes were bent with singular earnestness upon her face, and though his manner and expression were merely and coldly courteous, there was a peculiar depth in his tone, which only some strong emotion could have given it.(20) [page 159:] when Ida learns that her new acquaintance is married, she renounces her earthly hopes in anticipation of joys in eternity. Of course it would not be difficult to overemphasize the autobiographical significance of the tale, but some validity seems to be given to such an interpretation by the fact that Poe, three years after the piece had appeared, noted in a letter to Mrs. Whitman that “Mrs O's ‘Ida Grey’ is in ‘Graham’ for August — 45.”(21) From this it is possible to infer that the piece was of some particular interest to Poe end his friends.

During the brief period of her personal association with Poe, Mrs. Osgood became involved in at least two of the episodes which, in the hands of his enemies, were made to reflect to his dishonor. One of these, the scandal which grew out of her correspondence with Poe, and from which her own reputation did not emerge unsullied, has been noted.(22) Also, it was to Mrs. Osgood that Edward J. Thomas, in an effort to win her affections at the expense of his rival, made the charge that Poe was guilty of forgery.(23) When English published the accusation in the Mirror, and Poe brought suit for libel against that periodical, there was the unpleasant likelihood that Mrs. Osgood's name would be linked with the case. English did, in fact, mention her in his deposition, but her name was omitted when his testimony was [page 160:] read, and she escaped publicity in the affair.(24)

According to Griswold, Mrs. Osgood, in the autumn of 1845, had also been drawn into the fringe of the fiasco that Poe made of his appearance in Boston, where he read his early poem “Al Aaraaf” before an audience which had assembled in the expectation of hearing a new production.(25) Griswold's account of that unhappy chapter in the poet's life states that Poe intended to write an original poem for the occasion —

... but cares, anxieties, and feebleness of will, prevented; and a week before the appointed night he wrote to a friend, imploring assistance. “You compose with such astonishing facility,” he urged in his letter, “that you can easily furnish me, quite soon enough, a poem that shall be equal to my reputation. For the love of God I beseech you to help me in this extremity.” The lady wrote him kindly, advising him judiciously, but promising to attempt the fulfilment of his wishes. She was, however, an invalid, and so failed.(26)

In a footnote Griswold identified the lady as Mrs. Osgood.(27)

The Poe-Osgood correspondence, were it available, would undoubtedly do much, to clarify the nature of the association between the two; but enough evidence exists to indicate that, on [page 161:] Poe's part at least, the relationship was not merely a “Platonic friendship,” as it has been termed.(28) In a letter meant only for Griswold's private perusal Mrs. Osgood cast Poe in the role of a rather ardent pursuer. “I never thought of him,” she wrote, “till he sent me his Raven and asked Willis to introduce him to me, and immediately after I went to Albany, and afterwards to Boston and Providence to avoid him, and he followed me to each of those place and wrote to me, imploring me to love him .... ”(29) The statement that Poe was in Providence with Mrs. Osgood is confirmed by Poe's letter to Mrs. Whitman of October 1, 1848.(30) Farther light on a visit Poe made to Providence to see Mrs. Osgood is found in Thomas Holley Chivers's account of his meetings with Poe in the summer of 1845. Poe admitted to Chivers that he was involved in an “amour” with a woman then in Providence, and had just received a letter from her asking him to come there. Poe's assertion that the husband of the woman was a painter, together with the fact that Poe did see Mrs. Osgood in Providence, almost conclusively identifies the woman as Mrs. Osgood.(31) Chivers went on to say that Poe borrowed ten dollars [page 162:] from him and made the trip to Providence.(32)

When in Albany, Mrs. Osgood was the guest of her younger sister, the wife of H. F. Harrington. The only account of Poe's call upon Mrs. Osgood there was given by Harrington, who stated that on one occasion he returned from New York to be told by Mrs. Osgood that during his absence —

... Poe had sought an interview with her alone in my parlor, and in passionate terms had besought her to elope with him. She described his attitudes as well as reported his words — how he went down on his knees and clasped his hands, and pleaded for her consent; how she met him with mingled ridicule and reproof, appealing to his better nature, and striving to stimulate a resolution to abandon his vicious courses; and how finally he took leave, baffled and humiliated, if not ashamed.(33)

The personal association of Poe and Mrs. Osgood seems to have ended early in 1846 with her demand for the return of her letters.(34) [page 163:]

The disagreeable results of the personal association of Poe and Mrs. Osgood did not end their friendship. In a letter to Mrs. Whitman Poe wrote that the only thing he could not forgive Mrs. Osgood for “was her reception of Mrs. E[llet].,” who had persuaded Mrs. Osgood to request the return of her letters. Even in this matter, however, Poe excused Mrs. Osgood on the ground that she had been blinded by the malicious arts of Mrs. Ellet.(35) He continued to praise Mrs. Osgood's poetical powers in private conversation and from the lecture platform.(36) “She is [page 164:] the only one of my friends who understands me,”(37) he remarked of her to an acquaintance in Richmond a few months before his death. An installment of “Marginalia” which appeared in April, 1849, included a paragraph in which Poe praised the grace of her poetry named her “the first of American poetesses.”(38) He revised and lengthened the “Literati” sketch of Mrs. Osgood, apparently for “Literary America,” and published the result in the Southern Literary Messenger for August, 1849.(39) Shortly before her death Osgood wrote that “in his [Poe's] last words, ere reason had forever left her imperial throne in that overtasked brain, I have a touching memento of his undying faith and friendship.”(40) . Her allusion, however, is obscure.

Mrs. Osgood's continued regard for Poe is reflected in some of her later poems. In her A Letter About the Lions (1849), which seems to have been suggested by Lowell's A Fable for Critics, she asked: [page 165:]

In January, 1849, Mrs. Osgood, under her own name, published in the American Metropolitan Magazine a poem containing the following ardent lines:

The poem contains no definite indication that it was addressed to Poe; however, Poe believed that it held personal meaning for him and apparently was emotionally stirred by it. “Did you see the lines to Eddy in ... the Metropolitan? They are by Mrs. [page 166:] Osgood, and very beautiful ...”(43), wrote Mrs. Clemm to Annie Richmond on January 11. It was, Mrs. Whitman believed, Poe's reaction to these verses which led him to express to Mrs. Hewitt his doubt that his plans for marriage to Mrs. Whitman would be carried out.(44) Of Poe's unfortunate remark, Mrs. Whitman wrote to Mrs. Hewitt on October 4, 1850:

He had a few days before his interview with you, spoken to me lines which were to appear in the Metropolitan for February 1849. He had seen them in ms (at the publisher's, I think) and believed them to be addressed to himself. With his impressible & impulsive temperament I can see that they must have deeply affected him & have revived remembrances which, for the moment, prevailed over every other feeling.(45)

Mrs. Osgood wrote in an elegy prompted by Poe's death:

In her defense of Poe, written, as Griswold said, “to be placed beside my harsher judgments,”(47) Mrs. Osgood expressed her contempt for “the few unwomanly and slander-loving gossips” who, accepting Poe's society at times when he was intoxicated, “have injured him and themselves only by repeating his ravings.”(48) But her private letter to Griswold reveals her awareness that she too had been injured by the gossip arising from association with Poe; her reminiscences, she wrote, would enable Griswold to “put down at once my envious calumniators.”(49)

One final aspect of the Poe-Osgood relationship calls for comment. Mrs. Osgood has been charged, unjustly it appears, with using her influence against Poe in the matter of his courtship of Mrs. Whitman. Griswold's biographer states that Mrs. Osgood Mrs. Whitman “in Providence during the winter [of 1848-1849] to advise her not to marry Edgar Poe,”(50) citing as evidence Mrs. Whitman's letter of October 10, 1850, to Mrs. Hewitt. The [page 168:] letter, however, contains nothing from which such an inference justly be drawn:

You perhaps know [wrote Mrs. Whitman] that Mrs. Osgood came to Providence purposely to see me soon after she heard of my engagement to Mr. Poe. She at that time manifested so much affectionate interest in me that I was deeply grieved to recieve [sic] no answer to the many letters which I wrote her after my seperation [sic] from him. I have sought in vain for some satisfactory solution of this apparent change of feeling. At her request I repeated to him many things which she said to me during that interview although I knew well that the tendency of these communications would be to increase her influence over him & consequently to weaken my own. The consciousness of having made this sacrifice and of having acted towards her with an almost quixotic generosity made her subsequent silence & coldness more painful to me.(51)

A similar charge has been made on other evidence The valentine addressed to Poe by Mrs. Whitman was published in the Home Journal for March 18, 1848. Shortly thereafter Mrs. Osgood wrote to Mrs. Whitman: “I see by the Home Journal that your beautiful invocation has reached ‘The Raven’ in his eyrie and I suppose, ere this, he has swooped upon your little dove-cot in Providence. May Providence protect you if he has! for his croak is the most eloquent imaginable. He is in truth, “A glorious devil, with large heart and brain.’”(52) Quinn sees in this a “warning,”(53) but [page 169:] it seems likely that it is only Innocuous word play. Allen offers the unsupported assertion that Mrs. Whitman had been warned probably by the Osgoods and others, of the difficulties which might follow an entanglement with ‘The Raven.’”(54) But proof that Mrs. Osgood warned Mrs. Whitman against Poe awaits more cogent evidence.

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