I'm back...

...Temporarily, at least. And not here. Today I'm guest-posting over at that lethally interesting blog, Executed Today. I'm exploring a sordid little mystery from 1876: Was Mary Stanley's death the result of natural causes, criminal neglect...or murder? (And, yes, there is a Poe connection.)

Hope you like it.

Two Questionable Poe Poems [Updated]

Over the years, many works that have either disappeared or that were published anonymously have been "attributed" to Poe. Some of these attributions are credible, but far too many writings have been attached to his name due to sheer reckless disregard for any standards of normal scholarship. Two of the best-known examples of the latter category are two "lost" poems, "Lines on Ale," and "The Beloved Physician."

The responsibility for anointing "Lines on Ale" as a Poe composition rests upon Thomas O. Mabbott. In 1939, he published in the journal "Notes and Queries" the claim that on one of Poe's visits to Lowell, Massachusetts, he visited a local tavern and was inspired to pen the following lines:

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain--
Quaintest thoughts--queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

This so-called poem was quoted to Mabbott by a man who claimed to be a former bartender at this establishment. Supposedly, the manuscript hung on the wall of the tavern for some years, but this Poe relic disappeared, as Mabbott vaguely put it, "before 1920." Despite the lack of any sort of corroboration of this man's story, as well as the inherent implausibility that Poe would have written such puerile doggerel, Mabbott--as was his habit in many matters--fell for it with a gullibility that almost defies belief. Simply because he chose to give this poem his official seal of approval, it is widely accepted as a genuine Poe work. However, it is far more likely that this bartender was enjoying a good joke at Mabbott's--and Poe's--expense.

"The Beloved Physician" may be an even more astonishing attribution. In 1875, Marie Louise Shew Houghton wrote Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that the late poet had written a ten-stanza poem in her honor. She was, as usual with her, unable to provide any proof of this assertion--as was the case with "Lines on Ale," the manuscript of the poem was conveniently "lost"--but she supplied Ingram with some stray lines that she claimed to remember from the composition:

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God nerve the soul that ne'er forgets
In calm or storm, by night or day,
Its steady toil, its loyalty.

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God shield the soul that ne'er forgets.

The pulse beats ten and intermits;
God guide the soul that ne'er forgets.

...so tired, so weary,
The soft head bows, the sweet eyes close,
The faithful heart yields to repose.

If Poe wrote these lines, I'm Rufus Griswold's grandma.

It's hard to even know what else to say about these poems. You might say they speak for themselves. It has long been a marvel to me how Poe specialists, even more than most other historians, seem utterly incapable of judging evidence. As Josephine Tey observed in "The Daughter of Time," historians "have no talent for the likeliness of any situation." What is worse, they usually appear indifferent to the fact that the need for such scrutiny even exists. And poor old Edgar has certainly paid the price for this indifference.

Update: Vindication!

Poe's Perplexing Parents: Elizabeth Arnold Poe

In regards to Edgar Poe's mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, her mystery lies not in her death, but her life. It is a curious fact that the mother of one of literature's best-known and most-scrutinized figures is virtually an enigma to us. She was born in England, possibly in 1787. Her mother was also an actress named Elizabeth Arnold, who came with her daughter to America in 1796. We do not know the identity of her father. Edgar's biographer Mary E. Phillips discovered a 1784 London marriage record for a Henry Arnold and Elizabeth Smith, and, in her usual highly fanciful fashion, imagined she had located documentation of her subject's maternal grandparents. "Arnold" and "Elizabeth," are, however, among the most common British names imaginable, so it is impossible to know if Phillips was correct. Historians discount Edgar's own assertion that his mother was an illegitimate daughter of Benedict Arnold, although it would be interesting to know if he himself believed the story.

Elizabeth Arnold, senior, disappeared from the historical record in May of 1798, and it is presumed she died around that time. In 1802, young Elizabeth married another actor named Charles Hopkins. Her husband died in October of 1805, and five or six months later, she and David Poe Jr. entered into their brief union--a marriage she probably heartily regretted by the time she died on December 8, 1811.

Those are the only facts about Eliza Poe's life that can be stated with any certainty. She was by all accounts a performer possessing beauty and charisma, with a particular talent for comedic and musical roles, but we have little idea of what she was like off the stage. The only personal relic we have of her is a very brief, unimportant, poorly-written note thanking a Mrs. Tazewell "for her great kindness." Her posthumous reputation has always been haunted by allegations that her youngest child Rosalie was illegitimate (according to more than one source, her sister-in-law Maria Clemm asserted that Rosalie was not the child of either David or Eliza,) but we cannot know if there was a firm basis for the legend. Many years later, Mrs. Clemm described Edgar's mother as "a lovely little creature and highly talented. I loved her most devotedly." However, she admitted that the Poe family had violently disapproved of David's marriage, only unbending somewhat when the couple's children were born. Unfortunately, Mrs. Clemm volunteered little other information about a woman she evidently barely knew.

Our main source of personal information about Eliza is Marie Louise Shew Houghton, of all people. She often mentioned Edgar's mother in the long, incoherent, bizarre letters she sent to John H. Ingram in the 1870s, but unfortunately her information is largely uncorroborated and usually unbelievable. (In truth, it is nearly impossible to think of anything she wrote that can be verified.) Mrs. Houghton told Ingram that Edgar had had a bundle of his mother's letters, and two sketches she had made, including one of Boston Harbor that contained the inscription "For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends." Houghton claimed that Mrs. Clemm resented any mention of Eliza and disparaged these mementos.

We have no other evidence of any of this. These letters and sketches are not extant, and there is no record of anyone else seeing, or even mentioning, these items, leading one to doubt they ever existed. There is also no other testimony that Mrs. Clemm had any negative attitudes towards Edgar's mother. (It must always be remembered that although Ingram--very inexplicably and irresponsibly--used Mrs. Houghton as a major source for his biography of Poe, he privately admitted that he found her mentally unstable and "imaginative.") We can also credit Mrs. Houghton for the well-known miniature painting that we have of Eliza, but even that comes with a decided question mark. Houghton admitted that the portrait had been painted by herself, using as a model a miniature once owned by Edgar. This alleged original portrait, like the other artifacts mentioned by Mrs. Houghton, has never been found, making it impossible to verify if it is an authentic likeness. (Art historian Michael Deas dismissed the Houghton picture as "questionable.")

It is unfortunate that we know little about one crucial question involving David and Eliza Poe--their son Edgar's true opinion of them. It can be taken for granted that he keenly felt his orphaned status, but everyone who ever knew him--save the verbose and imaginative Nurse Marie Louise--agreed that he very seldom, if ever, even mentioned his parents. Mrs. Houghton quoted him as declaring that he owed to his mother "every good gift of his intellect, & his heart," and that Eliza was "as pure, as angelic and altogether lovely, as any woman could be on earth." Poe may have uttered words of the sort--even though he evidently had no personal memories of his mother--but, again, we only have Mrs. Houghton's ever-unreliable word for it. (Marie Louise was, let us not forget, the same source who also insisted to Ingram that Richard Henry Stoddard--who we know met Poe on only two very brief and ultimately very unpleasant occasions in 1845--had not only attended Virginia Poe's funeral, but helped her arrange flowers and sprinkle cologne about the house. "With green goggles over his eyes.")

The most revealing remark we have from Poe about his parents comes from a letter he wrote in December of 1835 to Beverley Tucker, a friend of Poe's then-employer Thomas W. White. Tucker had written White a letter mentioning his memories of seeing the beautiful Eliza Poe on stage, a statement which White passed on to Edgar. Poe responded with some of the most touching words he ever wrote, telling Tucker that, "In speaking of my mother you have touched a string to which my heart fully responds. To have known her is to be an object of great interest in my eyes. I myself never knew her--and never knew the affection of a father. Both died (as you may remember) within a few weeks of each other. I have many occasional dealings with Adversity--but the want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials."

Ten years later, he wrote in the "Broadway Journal" a spirited defense of the acting profession, concluding that "The writer of this article is himself the son of an actress--has invariably made it his boast--and no earl was ever prouder of his earldom than he of his descent from a woman who, although well born, hesitated not to consecrate to the drama her brief career of genius and of beauty." (We have no idea if his claim that his mother was "well born" came from any genuine information or--much more likely--simply his habitual fondness for fictionalizing his background.)

With David and Eliza Poe, we are faced with the common themes of Edgar's history--rumor, speculation, hearsay, contradiction, and facts that are all too few and far between.

The Grotesque and Arabesque Stella Lewis (Part One of Two)

In an earlier post, I touched briefly on the odd and rather slimy role Sarah Anna Lewis played in the last two years of Poe's life. I realized that this woman was just deranged, destructive, and creepy enough to earn her very own post. Happy reading.

We do not know exactly how and when Lewis made Poe's acquaintance, but it was possibly during the period he lived in New York City in 1845. However, her real involvement in his history did not commence until late in 1846. The twenty-two year old woman was the wife of a wealthy lawyer named Sylvanus D. Lewis. Mrs. Lewis (who made several increasingly colorful changes to her Christian name until she finally settled on "Stella,") had, like so many members of the 19th century literati, both the money and leisure to pursue an interest in poetry. The question of whether or not they had the talent for it was considered irrelevant. She was a theatrical, narcissistic, flashily-dressed woman who imagined herself to be not only a profound artist, but a fascinating siren and muse. (Alas, no one else seemed to concur in this.) Mrs. Lewis was, in short, a living, breathing embodiment of the worst caricatures of the female literary dilettante, with a touch of a Hogarth engraving thrown in.

She insinuated herself into Poe's life when he was at the lowest point he would see until he turned up at that Baltimore tavern in October 1849. His wife Virginia was dying, and he himself was sick, persecuted, increasingly broken in spirit, and virtually penniless. His misery was widely--and, by his enemies, gleefully--advertised in the press. Although we--probably mercifully--do not know the details, the Lewises took full advantage of his public vulnerability, and provided the Poe family with money and other assistance. In exchange, there was said to be an unabashed extortion that Poe would do what polishing he could to Stella's clumsy verses and write laudatory notices of her for the magazines.

As I have said before, if this latter tale is true (and it mostly relies upon the ever-questionable testimony of Marie Louise Shew Houghton, who was infuriated about Mrs. Lewis' desire to present herself as the official Poe Family Protector--a role Houghton herself coveted--and thus wished to demean the woman's role in Poe's life as much as possible,) one must feel sadness and pity, rather than the scorn Poe and Mrs. Clemm have garnered. At that time, the Poes were virtually helpless, and if Stella Lewis took the opportunity to exploit this helplessness for her own ends, the odium belongs entirely on her own head. As later events would show, it was an odium she thoroughly deserved for more reason than one.

As it happened, it was not until after Poe died that Mrs. Lewis' talents for crude self-aggrandizement reached their full flower. At some point, she reputedly began circulating the story that she was the model for "Annabel Lee." When this reached the ears of Poe's erstwhile quasi-fiancee Sarah Helen Whitman, she was indignant. How dare this woman poach on her own claims to have inspired Poe's most romantic poem? Mrs. Whitman informed everyone within earshot that Mary Hewitt (another gossipy "literary lady") had written her that Mrs. Clemm told Mrs. Lewis that she was Poe's heroine as mere flattery, a way of paying back favors granted--the implication being that there was not a word of truth to Lewis' boasts. Quite cleverly, Whitman added that Hewitt also told her that Frances S. Osgood had written that the poem was a tribute to Virginia Poe only to spite Mrs. Lewis. Thus, her account achieved a neat double play, by simultaneously discrediting Whitman's two rival "claimants" to "Annabel Lee," Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Poe. (Not to mention discrediting Osgood's declaration that Virginia had been Poe's one true love, a statement Whitman took as a deliberate insult to herself.) Sarah H. Whitman was an absurd woman in many ways, but stupid she was not.

We have no other evidence Hewitt actually made this statement about the poem, (Whitman, quite suspiciously, did not preserve these letters she allegedly received from her,) and it seems like an implausible thing for Mrs. Clemm to have done, no matter how indebted to Mrs. Lewis she may have felt. (For what it's worth, Annie Richmond wrote Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that Mrs. Clemm maintained that "Annabel Lee" was about Virginia, and was always somewhat affronted whenever anyone did not seem to grasp that fact on their own. If Mrs. Richmond spoke accurately--which, admittedly, would be something of a novelty for her--that would settle the "who was Annabel Lee" debate once and for all.) It seems most likely that Mrs. Lewis herself, always eager for publicity and indifferent about how she got it, simply invented her connection to Poe's poem.Mrs. Lewis--when she was not asserting that Poe had asked her to write his biography--also played a key, if still-mysterious role in Rufus W. Griswold obtaining the job of acting as Poe's literary executor. From what both she and Griswold said afterwards, it appears that she was the one to actually enlist him for the task. She claimed this is what Poe had instructed her to do, but she never offered any proof of this. Why she would so interest herself in the matter is also unclear, but her involvement only adds to the dark, unfragrant cloud that hangs around the whole issue of Griswold's appointment.

The Lewises divorced in 1858. The breakup of their marriage seems to have also permanently estranged her from Mrs. Clemm--reputedly, Poe's aunt took Mr. Lewis' side in their dispute. However, there was never any real friendship between the two women--all that ever bound them was hunger on one side, and hunger for glory on the other. In any case, thereafter Maria Clemm became one of Mrs. Lewis' favorite targets for vilification.

In Part Two: The return of Elizabeth Ellet!

In Defense of Maria Clemm (Part Three)

4. Mrs. Clemm's fourth and final affront against the sensibilities of the biographers is the fact that she allowed Rufus W. Griswold to serve as Poe's literary executor. We will never know how Griswold got that fatal task--as so often happens in Poe's history, everyone involved offered completely different and utterly incompatible explanations, leaving the truth hopelessly buried. The Lewises, however--"Stella" was already angling for Griswold to become her next literary patron--clearly played a central, and quite sinister, role in it all. (Mr. Lewis acted as Mrs. Clemm's legal advisor, and Mrs. Lewis proudly took "credit" for enlisting Griswold on the dead poet's behalf.) Mrs. Clemm stated afterwards that Poe had not intended that Griswold be his executor, but she never made it clear what, if any, plans he had made in that respect.

What often gets overlooked is that Griswold's appointment as executor was disastrous only in retrospect. At the time of Poe's death, he and Griswold had been on outwardly amicable terms for some time. Griswold, in his usual oily fashion, had managed to bamboozle Mrs. Clemm (and other people as well) into thinking he was not unfriendly towards her son. And Griswold may have been a shameless and mediocre literary hack, but he was a highly successful and influential one. All in all, he must have seemed to Mrs. Clemm as good a choice to handle Poe's literary estate as anyone.

While the poor woman must gone on to blame herself every day of her life for allowing Griswold anywhere near Poe's legacy, the fact that she did so is completely understandable.

There have been several minor accusations made against Maria Clemm, as well--largely from Annie Richmond and Marie Louise Houghton. These personal resentments were vague and often illogical. We have a letter "Annie" wrote in the early 1850s to Mrs. Houghton--who appears from this document to have been a close personal friend, although oddly neither woman, in their dealings with Poe biographer John H. Ingram, gave any other mention of their relationship. In this letter, "Annie" complains cryptically of Mrs. Clemm having betrayed some sort of secrets or confidences of hers. What these could have been is anybody's guess.

Mrs. Richmond also told Ingram that certain of Poe's letters to her had disappeared, and accused Mrs. Clemm of having stolen them. (When Ingram's bitter biographical rival William Gill published quotes from one of her Poe letters, "Annie" sensed that Ingram resented her collaboration with his enemy. She shiftily excused herself to him by stating that Gill also must have obtained those letters through thievery.) She never made it clear why Poe's aunt would have done such a thing, and her credibility is not enhanced by the fact that, during Mrs. Clemm's lifetime, she wrote to her wailing that a daguerreotype of Poe she owned had disappeared. She declared that someone must have stolen it, and (rather tactlessly) begged Mrs. Clemm to see to it that she (Mrs. Richmond) got Mrs. Clemm's own Poe daguerreotype after she (Mrs. C.) died. As we know Mrs. Richmond had this "stolen" daguerreotype in her possession some years later, her story smacks of either extreme carelessness or suspicious craftiness. At any rate, for all her fondness for back-stabbing Mrs. Clemm, Mrs. Richmond fooled her into thinking she was her warm friend to the end. ("Annie" had hoped to obtain Mrs. Clemm's papers after she died, and grumbled to Ingram about how her husband's illness at the time Poe's aunt passed on prevented her from marching to Baltimore and insisting upon her "claim" to them.)

As for Mrs. Houghton, her bitterness appears to have stemmed from resentment that Mrs. Clemm had not expressed sufficient "gratitude" for all her alleged services to the Poe family. Mrs. Houghton--from what little can be deciphered from her rambling, hysterical and incredibly incoherent letters to Ingram--was indignant that the world was unaware what a Godsend she had been to the Poes, as (she obviously believed) Mrs. Clemm should have told one and all of how much Poe "owed" to her. (At the time Mrs. Houghton was writing to Ingram, she and Mrs. Lewis were locked in a fierce, and most unseemly competition. Each lady was desperate to convince Poe's biographer that she herself--and not the other woman--had been Poe's chief "benefactress.") Mrs. Houghton also made some disparaging remarks about Mrs. Clemm's "worldly wisdom." Rather perversely, she went on to imply that Poe's aunt was to blame for their indigence because she had too much pride to admit to anyone the family was in need of charity, which hardly seems to indicate "worldliness."

Sarah Helen Whitman once said that Frances S. Osgood had told her that Mrs. Clemm was nothing but a thorn in Poe's side, and was always getting him into difficulties. Whether Osgood actually said such a thing is unknown, but if she did it shows that her claims of being so friendly with the Poe family were self-serving lies. Whitman herself made it clear she was dubious about the truth of this remark. She stated that to her, Poe had always spoken of his aunt with the greatest love and gratitude for the devoted care she had given him and Virginia. Indeed, everyone else who knew Poe unanimously agreed this was his attitude--an attitude they also agreed was entirely justified, as the poor man would not have lasted five minutes in the world without her mothering. In spite of all the poverty and discord of Poe's life, Mrs. Clemm always managed somehow to provide him with a stable, affectionate, comforting home life that was his one refuge from the world. Without her and Virginia, Poe would undoubtedly have met a far earlier, and even worse end than he did.

All in all, Mrs. Clemm's accusers wind up looking far worse than their target.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, Mrs. Clemm had her flaws. In her long battles with the world, she could be insincere, manipulative, even exploitative towards anyone who could provide aid and comfort to her family. In the long "lonesome latter years" after Poe's death, she usually comes off as self-pitying and lugubrious--although God knows she had justification. However, I know of no instance where she was proven to be deliberately harmful or hurtful to anyone--no matter how they may have deserved it. While Edgar and Virginia lived, Mrs. Clemm was invariably described as a cheerful, dignified, remarkably capable, very motherly woman whose devotion to her "children" was completely unselfish and virtually limitless. Everything she did, however questionable, was done for her loved ones, and given the odds against her, she managed to do an impressive amount. The woman was a survivor if ever there was one. As Edward Wagenknecht said, "she was as immovable as the hills and as tireless as the sea; no human being was ever more faithful to those who put their trust in her."

It's rather a pity that when the Civil War broke out, neither side thought to make her a General. If they had, whichever army she served would have won the conflict within a week.

(Image: NYPL Digital Gallery)

Quote of the Day

"I do like Mrs. H[oughton] so much for herself & not only for her goodness to Poe, but your suggestion as to that copy of a letter upset me greatly--yet it was right, & I am so grateful to you for pointing it out, not but what later on, when I came to weigh matters for publication, I must come to the conclusion I see you have. In fact, I wrote, & asked Mrs. H. whether she had not made some mistakes--which I pointed out--in her copy, & her answer confirms my & your views. Fear not--I print nothing that I am not sure about & trust that I shall have the joy of seeing you, & talking over all things, before I commence the biography for publication. Mrs. H. I'm sure loved Poe as a friend & would & will firmly stand for him & for me & she is a woman it would be difficult to put down, but she--I'm sure--is under a cloud. I fear, however, that having told me all she can remember of Poe she is drifting into the genus imaginative. Her reminiscences are so startling & so apt to satisfy one's needs that I cannot help being sceptical."
-Poe biographer John H. Ingram, writing to Sarah Helen Whitman about Marie Louise Shew Houghton, letter dated June 2, 1875

A word of explanation: Mrs. Houghton--who had been anxious to impress upon Ingram what a benefactress she had been to the Poe household from 1847-48--sent him what she claimed were copies of letters she had received from Poe. Ingram passed these copies on to Mrs. Whitman, who emphatically warned him that they sounded nothing like Poe, and that Ingram would be making a serious mistake if he published them as verbatim transcripts. (She pointed in particular to this nightmarish wail.)

Ingram, as the above quote showed, fully agreed that the letters were untrustworthy--as, indeed, they were--but, unaccountably, he nonetheless later incorporated them in his biography of Poe.

In short, these words of Ingram's prove that he knew Mrs. Houghton was passing bogus Poe letters to him, that she was "under a cloud" (i.e. barking mad,) and that, having exhausted the little Poe information that she had, she was now resorting to wild fantasy in her recollections of the poet. He claimed to have grown to like her through her letters (Ingram, who lived in England, never met Mrs. Houghton--or, indeed, most of his sources--in person,) but still had to acknowledge her utter lack of credibility.

But yet, Ingram not only published this obviously disturbed woman's ravings as authentic history, but all Poe biographers ever since have copied these same fraudulent and patently bizarre materials furnished by Mrs. Houghton--without the slightest hesitation! Why? Even John Carl Miller, the editor of Ingram's correspondence, described Houghton's reminiscences as "shot through with inaccuracies, myths, half-remembered facts mixed with hearsay and caution," and added that "There is just enough truth in some of these stories to make them acceptable, but not enough to allow proof to back them up." The question is this: If so much of what Mrs. Houghton said about Poe must be distrusted or simply discarded, why should we accept anything she said, particularly since the letters themselves are--as Ingram had to concede--the work of someone who, by that time of her life at least, was far from rational? Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus--"False in one, false in all."

Soon after I began researching Poe's life, I became increasingly puzzled, then exasperated, and finally dumbfounded as I constantly stumbled upon bits of information that utterly contradicted the "conventional wisdom" of his history, and I realized that Poe "scholars" have overlooked, distorted, or simply buried these biographical anomalies. This quote of Ingram's is a fine example, but there are countless others--many of which I have (no doubt futilely) written about on this ultra-obscure little blog over the past year. Poe's biographers appear to be so fixated on the revelation that Rufus Griswold lied about Poe, that they are blinded to the fact that very many other people did, as well.

Surely I cannot be the only one ever to notice all these things? How and why have they been burked?

There are times when studying Poe biography puts me in mind of the Harlan Ellison story: "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream."

The Dark Side of Marie Shew Houghton

This link includes a biographical article on Marie Louise Shew Houghton, (the woman who is always extravagantly described as the Poe family's nurse/financial supporter/all-around savior,) that is quite an eye-opener. I had always pegged Mrs. Houghton as a kook of the first water. As I knew she was one of the water-cure cranks Edgar Allan Poe ridiculed, and a Fourierist to boot, (a group he also scorned,) I always questioned her true value to the Poes. However, jaded character though I am, I never guessed she was involved in what sound like extremely dodgy financial and property transactions. Or that she was likely a (rather inept) abortionist. Or that in 1849, she gave birth to a son whose father could have been one of three men, all of whom were living under the same roof with her at the time--her current husband, her future husband, and a wealthy older man who appears to have "kept" the whole lot of them. (Calm down--our Edgar wasn't in the running.) Or that, just to round things out, she was arrested for murder in 1876. The victim was a Mary Stanley, the mistress of the boy Houghton had in '49. (That son, Henry, by the way, had previously served time in Denver for being a swindler, an adulterer, and a mule thief.)

I looked up the newspaper articles dealing with the inquest into Stanley's death. All I can say is, that if the accounts of the inquest testimony are accurate, Houghton might--and let me just say might--not have been a murderer. (Stanley's death was finally ruled to have been from natural causes, but it sounds like Houghton had a strong motive to wish her dead, and it's clear that Marie Louise was guilty, at the very least, of some suspiciously incompetent nursing. Also, there was abundant testimony--which does not appear to have been disproved by the defense--showing that before her demise, Stanley told everyone within earshot that Mrs. Houghton was an evil woman who abused her and wanted her dead because Stanley "knew too much" about her family.) The inquest also revealed that Houghton expressed relief when Stanley died, as the pregnant woman was threatening to "swear her child"--that is, slap Houghton's son with the nineteenth-century version of a paternity suit. Whatever else Houghton may have been, she was indisputably the matriarch of one deeply creepy crowd. She comes off as a ministering angel with the bedside manner of Charles Manson.

I have always instinctively found something deeply unsettling about all we've been told about Houghton's dealings with the Poe household, (despite the fact that all his biographers paint her as virtually a saint) and I'm now beginning to see why. I'm quite serious: If it is true--and I pray it is not--that in her final days, Virginia Poe had this woman as her nurse, that is enough to chill my blood.


(Image: Chestofbooks.com)