(2 of 3)
No modern literary figure combines Griswold's prominence, his position as a cultural master of ceremonies, and his un steady, enigmatic personal life. His second marriage was to a wealthy spinster of Charleston, S.C. He was 30. She was 13 years older, living with two spinster aunts. The women believed that Griswold and his two daughters had a fortune of $50,000. They did not. Griswold on his part dreamed of a winter home in the temperate South. "On his wedding night the bridegroom learned that . . . the woman who bore his name was, through some physical misfortune, incapable of being a wife. . . . Whether Charlotte or her aunts knew of her unfortunate condition before the marriage cannot be determined; but Griswold believed that they were aware of it, and he considered himself the victim of a vicious trick. He believed that these women deliberately set out to catch a husband for Charlotte in order to signify to the world that she was a normal woman." Griswold left one daughter with her in Charleston, returned to New York. He remained legally married to her for seven years.
Opium & Acrostics. Editing The Female Poets of America, Griswold was involved in circles so vindictive that modern gang wars seem gentle in comparison. One slighted poetess misused a key to his room, read his private papers each day, quizzed the wives of poets to get material for troublemaking among them. The one delightful and wise woman among the poetesses — Mrs. Frances Sargeant Osgood — was Griswold's friend. She wrote Griswold this acrostic:
For one, whose being is to mine a star,
Trembling I weave in lines of love and fun
What Fame before has echoed near and far
A sonnet if you like — I'll give you one To be cross-questioned ere its truth is solv'd.
Here veiled and hidden in a rhyming wreath
A name is turned with mine in cunning sheath
And unless by some marvel rare evolved Forever folded from all idler eyes Silent and secret still it treasured lies Whilst mine goes winding onward, as a
rill
Thro' a deep wood in unseen joyance dances
Calling in melody's bewildring thrill Whilst through dim leaves its partner dreams and glances.
Reading down one letter of each line (beginning with F and moving one letter in with each line down) makes up Frances S. Osgood. A roughly similar pattern at the end of the lines makes up Rufus W. Griswold. Readers may find other meanings in the poem. Griswold was in deeper waters than he knew. By the time he wrote the introduction to Female Poets, he had tasted opium and suffered an epileptic fit.