Her Letters To Lovecraft: Edith May Dowe Miniter

The details of Mrs. Miniter’s long career—a career inseparable from amateur journalism after her sixteenth year—will doubtless be covered by writers well qualified to treat of them. Reared in Worcester, taught by her poet-mother and at a private school, and given to solid reading and literary attempts from early childhood onward, the erstwhile Edith May Dowe entered amateurdom in 1883 and was almost immediately famous in our small world as a fictional realist. Controversies raged over her stories—so different from the saccharine froth of the period—but very few failed to recognize her importance. After 1890 she was engaged in newspaper and magazine work in the larger outside world, though her interest in amateur matters increased rather than diminished.

H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.380

She was born Edith May Dowe on 19 May 1867 to William H. Dowe (~1838-1875) and Jane “Jennie” E. T. Dowe (~1841-1919). Jennie Dowe was a noted poet who encouraged her daughter’s literary efforts; Edith became involved in amateur journalism around age 13. In 1887, she married newspaperman and fellow amateur journalist John T. Miniter (1867-1900), and became Edith Miniter. For more on John and their marriage see “The Other Miniter: In Search of John T. Miniter” by Dave Goudsward.

The Miniters became involved in the newspaper business, operating a small local newspaper. The paper, and the marriage, failed within a few years, though Edith Miniter’s profession was still listed as “editor” or “newspaper editor” on federal censuses in 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. Edith Miniter relocated to Boston, where she gained some success both as a writer (numerous poems, short stories, and articles appear from her in newspapers and magazines, and her novel Out Natupski Neighbors appeared in 1916) and as an amateur journalist. She became a central member of Boston’s Hub Club, and attained several offices of the National Amateur Press Association—including becoming NAPA’s first woman president in 1909.

By the time H. P. Lovecraft was recruited for amateur journalism in 1914, Edith Miniter was already a doyenne. They were no doubt aware of one another through publications in amateur journals before they ever met or crossed pens—Lovecraft first mentioned Miniter in an unsigned editorial in the United Amateur in 1918 (CE 1.180), and he first mentions her in his letters in 1920:

The occasion for this recent excursion, wich took place last Saturday, was the Hub Club picnic; to which Mrs. Miniter invited me, & at which I hoped to meet James F. Morton. […]

[170] Mrs. Dennis is a famous old-timer often referred to by C. W. Smith. As Harriet C. Cox she won four story laureateships in the National, in the ‘eighties. She was was entirely out of touch with amateurdom, except for Mrs. Miniter, but seems rather interested again. […] However, later on it cleared, so that Cook, Mrs. Miniter, Mrs. Dennis, Morton, & I took a stroll in the woodland. The Fells district reminds me of Quinsnicket Park, but it is even more beautiful in places. During the walk, Mrs. Miniter plucked some bays, & as the party rested on a rocky bluff overlooking a beautiful lake & valley, she formed them into a genuine Parnassian wreath–which she insisted on my wearing all the evening, even at the “convention banquet”, in honour of my triple laureateship. […] I told Mrs. Miniter that I did not deserve the chaplet of bays–that no brow less noble than that of our poet-laureate, Samples, was worthy of such adornment—& when the evening was over, I folded it carefully in a cageratte box which someone produced, & sent it to John Milton.

H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 12 Aug 1920, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 169, 170

One can just about imagine Miniter enjoying the sight of Lovecraft visibly uncomfortable wearing a laurel on his head all evening; she seems to have taken great delight in puncturing egos. In his letters, Lovecraft records several more meetings with Mrs. Miniter as he attended conventions or amateur gatherings in Boston. She was there when Lovecraft met Sonia H. Greene, who would become his wife; she was there when he read “The Moon-Bog,” which was written for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration; in a letter to his mother Lovecraft recalled:

The house was decorated with streamers of green paper in honour of the departed Celtic saint, and the presiding hostesses, Mesdames Miniter and Sawyer and W. V. Jackson, were attired in green habiliments with green paper ribbons incorporated in their coiffures.

H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 17 Mar 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.31

Lovecraft even managed to bring himself to wear a green tie for the occasion.

Miniter’s reaction to “The Moon-Bog” is not recorded, but she and Lovecraft had philosophically different approaches to subject matter. Her fiction is all of a realist cast, sometimes taking inspiration from real-life—H. P. Lovecraft himself would appear as a character in The Village Green (192?) by Edith Miniter, lightly disguised. Lovecraft would write about her:

Notwithstanding her saturation with the spectral lore of the countryside, Mrs. Miniter did not care for stories of a macabre or supernatural cast; regarding them as hopelessly extravagant and unrepresentative of life. Perhaps that is one reason why, in the early Boston days, she had declined a chance to revise a manuscript of this sort which later met with much fame—the vampire-novel “Dracula”, whose author was then touring America as manager for Sir Henry Irving.

H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.381

In his letters, Lovecraft would repeat the Dracula revision claim several times (discussed in further detail in Lovecraft, Miniter, Stoker: The Dracula Revision). The truth of his assertions that Miniter didn’t care for spectral stories might best be found in “Falco Ossifracus” (1921) by Edith Miniter—a parody of Lovecraft’s own style of macabre fiction, with Lovecraft himself nicknamed “Goodguile,” which would become her pet name for him.

It is not clear when precisely they began to correspond; it is likely no later than 1920, given their continued meetings no doubt involve communication of some sort. The difficulty of determining when things began is the paucity of evidence: no letters from Lovecraft to Miniter are known to survive, and only five letters from Miniter to Lovecraft are extant. One of the earliest of these, dated on “Friday the 13th” (prob. 13 May 1921) opens: “Dear ‘Goodguile.'” The letter deals in part with Miniter’s health; she notes that she took a fall and “had to learn to walk again.” A typed letter dated 4 July 1921 (possibly a draft, as it was torn in half), doesn’t mention the injury, but shows her characteristic wit:

By the war, Mr. McNamara had a good time the 18th, and wrote [W. Paul] Cook that were “real people” and not “Stuck up highbrow at all!” Now will you and James Morton stop quoting Hebrew.

Yours Truly, Edith Miniter

The last bit probably refers to some tendency of Lovecraft and Morton to go over the audience’s heads (i.e. quoting the scriptures in Hebrew sounds impressive, but doesn’t convey any information if the audience doesn’t understand Hebrew).

Lovecraft’s letter rarely mention correspondence with Miniter, but we know they had to still be in contact every once and a while, because some of Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings to Miniter and her cats are recorded, e.g.:

From distant churchyards hear a Yuletide groan

As ghoulish Goodguile heaves his heaps of bone;

Each ancient slab the festive holly wears,

And all the women disclaim their earthly cares:

Mayst thou, ‘neath sprightlier skies, no less rejoice,

And hail the season with exulting voice!

H. P. Lovecraft, The Ancient Track 320

Lovecraft noted to his aunt Lillian: “To Mrs. Miniter, who finds humour in my predilection for Colonial graveyards, I despatched these lines” (LFF 1.515), and several of Lovecraft’s letters record how Mrs. Miniter would accompany him on his trips through Boston’s various graveyards.

Diminishing finances and possibly ill-health eventually forced Edith Miniter to leave Boston. She lived for a time with the family of the amateur journalist Charles A. A. Parker in Malden, Mass. (1924-1925), and then moved in with her cousin Evanore Olds Beebe (1858-1935) in Wilbraham, Mass., in the house where Edith was born. Beebe had named the property Maplehurst, and it was a former tavern. Around 1928, Miniter wrote to Lovecraft to invite him to come visit, and he did so:

At the station I was met by Mrs. Miniter in a neighbour’s Ford, & taken at once up the beautiful shady road that winds around Wilbraham Mountain. (For a description of this country, see the Dowe Memorial booklet.) The scenery is lovely in the extreme, with just the right balance of hill & plain. It is not so vivid as Vermont, but so much richer & statelier; with larger trees & more luxuriant vegetation [706] generally. The houses are old, but not notable. The population is quite sharply divided–the good families maintaining their old standards whilst the common folk are going downhill. A Polish invasion further detracts from the atmosphere in many localities—the house of the “Natupskis” being visible from the Beebe front porch. The home of Mrs. Miniter’s cousin is a large rambling late-colonial structure built as a taven, & is stuffed utterly full of magnificent antiques, none of which are for sale. They occupy every inch of floor, wall, shelf, & table space, & 7 cats & 2 dogs perambulate & gambol through the lanes between. Miss Beebe, a woefully fat but highly intelligent & cultivated gentlewoman of 70 is the ‘big man’ of all the surrounding countryside; & decides the fortunes of the school committee, town council, & everything else fromher seat beside the telephone. She is a mine of local history & tradition, & a fountain of weird anecdote—& of course a past master & connoisseur of antique collection. She means to leave to leave her possessions to the Museum in Springfield upon her death. She drives about in a horse & buggy, though not scorning to accept a motor life to town from neighbours in bad weather. The house is set high near a curve of a road lined with magnificent maples. Southward the graceful rise of Wilbraham Mountain can be seen—this mountain & all the land for miles around belonging to Miſs Beebe. A curious abandoned road connects the house with the mountain—it is picturesque to see the tall grass growing between stone walls where chaises & farmers’ wains once ran. The whole region is full of odd rural lore, & ought to prove a mine of inspiration for any writer. I have already learned many things about old New England life previously unknown to me—such as the institution of cat-ladders inside the chimney of farmhouses, to enable the cats to climb from floor to floor when all the doors are shut. There is a fine system of cat ladders in the house—though only one ancient feline (Printer, aetat 17) knows how to use them. The place is very neat, though the only help is a boy named Chauncey, who sits at table with the family. He was taken from the poorhouse in Attleboro—but seems a delightfully gentlemanly person. My room is at the head of the stairs, & is furnished in the manner of about 1830. Lard-burning lamps are among the contents—these articles being formerly wholly unknown to me.

Mrs. Miniter does not appear to have aged at all in the 5 years since I last saw her, but is very active in literature & takes long rural walks. My diary so far is devoid of great events because of the showery weather. Friday I spent largely indoors inspecting antiques & watching cats—though in the vening I walked briefly down the road to imbibe a bit of the scenery. Saturday better weather enabled me to take a walk through some of the picturesque country to the north, Mrs. Miniter serving as guide whilst both dogs & one of the cats acted as a quadruped retinue. I never before saw a cat which followed persons over hill & dale like a dog. The country is very beautiful & traditional indeed, & undoubtedly represents the inland landscape of Western New England at its best. Upon returning I was shewn the extensive barn belonging to the place—Miſs [307] Beebe keeps 2 horses & several cows. The cats all have different & highly individualised personalities—2 are grey (including a patriarch 17 years old0 & five (including a very little kitten) are yellow. Of the dogs one is a mature & very well-bred collie, whilst the other, an Airedale puppy, is a trifle uncouth & over-demonstrative. Sunday—today—we attempted a walk up Wilbraham Mountain, but were overtaken by a thunderstorm & forced to accept a lift back from motorists—who stopped at the house & proved to be delightful persons quite prominent in Springfield educational circles. Tomorrow better outdoor luck is hoped for.

 H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 1 Jul 1928, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.705-707

Wilbraham, Mass. was the inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich, and some of the folklore he picked up talking to the locals made its way into “The Dunwich Horror.” For more on Mrs. Miniter and Mrs. Beebe at Wilbraham, see “The Terribly Nice Old Ladies: Miniter and Beebe At Wilbraham” by David Haden in Lovecraft in Historical Context Fourth Collection.

The two friends must have kept in touch at least sporadically, based on references in correspondence to others:

The letter which Mrs. Miniter sent to me in your care had some choice portions intended for you, as well as directions to me which were not followed. Perhaps I should quote: “Remember me to Goodguile most strenuously and tell him whenever a cat misbehaves I wish he was here to look after it a while. Tell him Culinarius [W. Paul Cook] was here a few hours Saturday and we talked about him a vast deal. Also something about the lad from Indiana, of whom Cook first asked, ‘What relation is he to Ray Spink?’ If you knew what an insult this is you’d go to Athol instead of North Wilbraham and challenge [156] the traducer to single combat. But as he never knew Ray Spink and doesn’t know you perhaps he didn’t really go for to do it!”

Helm C. Spink to H. P. Lovecraft, 8 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 155-156

Ray Spink was another amateur journalist; while Miniter could no longer hold court in the Hub Club or attend conventions, amateur journalism was apparently still a major part of her social life. Lovecraft explained this, and revealed he was still very much in touch with Miniter:

I think I told you on a postcard how much I appreciated the Dogmatic Catalogue. In acknowledging it to Mrs. Miniter I prepared a kindred journal entitled Catastrophic Doggerel, (not[e] correct order of precedence for felidae & canidae) some of it not all of whose contents I will herewith quote. The first gem concerned an eminent young Indiana cryptographer—the Champollion of his age—who smoked out a rat from a piece of verse where its presence had never before been whiffed.

H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 13 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 158

This was followed by several poems on Miniter’s cats.

Two letters from Miniter to Lovecraft from this period survive. A 1930 letter to “Dear Friend Goodguile,” opens with her admitting to bronchitis, details all the doings of the cats, and apparently read “The Dunwich Horror” when it appeared in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales:

We did enjoy that marvelous story in Weird Tales, tho’ never wrote you about it. When we meet again, E. O. B. is going to have it out with you about killing the birds. The tale has been lent about, some readers have enjoyed it, but most often it has been returned with shudders. Say, come up again, do, & get material for another yarn. There must be some yet attainable.

The other letter is probably from January 1931, and includes her thanks for Lovecraft’s poetic obituary of the ancient cat Printer, news of her cousin Evanore, and thanks for the postcards—Lovecraft having made it a point to send Miniter postcards from nearly every place he visited, to brighten her day with his travels, as he did for so many of his correspondents.

The fifth and final missive from Edith Miniter to Lovecraft is a very short note, undated, congratulating Lovecraft for something. “You certainly owe us another visit” suggests this is after the 1928 visit to Wilbraham, but other than that, we lack context. Possibly a congratulation for “The Dunwich Horror” appearing in print.

There must have been more letters because Lovecraft mentions her on occasion:

Mrs. Miniter is having a very hard time at Wilbraham, with her own asthma worse, & Miss Beebe’s health such as to demand constant care—plus a financial distress which grows more & more alarming.

H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 2 Feb 1933, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 202

Another friend and fellow amateur remembered in a memoir that might give the flavor for some of Edith Miniter’s correspondence to Lovecraft after she moved to Wilbraham:

When Edith lived in Boston we met often, and it was a definite personal loss when she went to Wilbraham. For a time, she wrote long letters at fairly frequent intervals, and she always expressed a determination to return to us some day.

The last few years her letters were shorter and less frequent, and, although, she said little about it, it was evident that her health was far from satisfactory.

After an accident, she wrote jokingly of her “broken bones,” and gave a ludicrous description of her appearence in a borrowed wrapper, much too big for her, that she was obliged to wear because all her own dresses “went on over her head” and she couldn’t “get into them.”

She touched humorously, at another time, upon her experience with the hives, but she never complained or seemed to deserve pity.

In her last letter, written less than three weeks before she left us, she said, “I am about the same as usual,” and it was a decided shock to learn that the end had come.

Minna B. Noyes, “Bygone Days” in The Californian (Spring 1938)

It is a familiar story; old age with its illnesses and decrepitude come on, heightened by financial woes. Edith May Dowe Miniter passed away on 5 June 1934, at Wilbraham. Lovecraft learned of the death in the amateur journal The Wolverine, which ran a brief notice:

It pained me to learn, through a paragraph in one of them, that Mrs. Miniter is no more. I sent her cards from all along my route, & the later ones—alas—can have had no recipient!

H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 17 Jul 1934, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 222

Lovecraft would apparently write to Wilbraham seeking more information, and possibly the return of materials he had lent to Miniter. A letter survives from a Mrs. C. H. Calkins to Lovecraft that gives a few more details on Miniter’s decline and the aftermath.

As one of her friends, Lovecraft worked to write memorials about Edith Miniter, and to encourage his friends to write memorials, although he would not live to see the publication of his lengthy “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections.” There was some confusion in the estate, and the disposition of Edith Miniter’s papers, which seems to have been compounded by the death of Evanore Beebe in 1935. By an odd quirk, Lovecraft himself ended up with a collection of Miniter’s personal and family papers, holding them in trust until the proper heir could be located. In accordance with what Lovecraft thought would be Miniter’s wishes, he allowed certain works to be published posthumously in the amateur press—such as “Dead Houses,” which appeared in Leaves #1 (Summer 1937) from R. H. Barlow’s Dragon-Fly Press.

Lovecraft had one more duty to perform on Edith Miniter’s behalf, back in the old Dunwich country: the ashes of Mrs. Jennie Dowe had never been dispersed in accordance with her wishes, but remained at the funeral home. At first there was concern that some unpaid bill was the cause, but as soon as it was cleared up that all was paid for, the ashes were secured and Lovecraft returned to Wilbraham with fellow amateur Edward H. Cole:

The trip to ancient “Dunwich” was pleasant despite our melancholy errand, & we enjoyed the marvellous mountain vistas to the full. Nothing had changed–the hills, the roads, the village, the dead houses–all the same. Most of the ashes were sprinkled in the Dell cemetery—on the graves of Mrs. Dowe’s parents & daughter. The rest we kept till we had wound over the narrow serpentine hill highway & reached the old Maplehurst estate “back o’ the mountain”. There—in the deserted rose garden—we completed the ceremony of union with ancestral soil . . . . carrying out, after 16 years, what Mrs. D. had always wished.

H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 26 Sep 1935, O Fortunate Floridian 293-294

Even late in life, as Lovecraft dealt with the disposition of her papers and the memorial that took so many years to go to press, he reflected:

Without question, Mrs. M. was the greatest fiction-writer ever connected with amateurdom. Not so notable as to form, but with a searching insight into human nature, & a keen ability to capture the essentials of character with some swift graphic stroke or some laconic touch of veiled, subtle irony. She had the substance—writing at first-hand about types of people she had actually seen & studied instead of merely following literary conventions & imitating what other authors had written before her.

H. P. Lovecraft to Hyman Bradofsky, 18 Oct 1936, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 374

It is unfortunate that we have so little record of the correspondence of Edith Miniter and H. P. Lovecraft; not because it would necessarily have shed more light on Lovecraft, but because Miniter is a subject of historical and literary interest in her own right. We have thousands of letters from Lovecraft, we have only a handful from Miniter. Yet she was in her day as important, or more so, as Lovecraft in amateur journalism. Reading between the lines, we might also wonder what humanizing influence Edith Miniter had on her friend.

One has to wonder if Lovecraft thought of that great old lady of amateur journalism breathing her last, the whippoorwills outside the window chirping, and then fading suddenly to silence—not that Miniter would have appreciated such a flight of fancy, but perhaps she would have appreciated the sentiment.

Anyone interested in learning more about Edith Miniter or reading some of the fiction that Lovecraft so acclaimed should check out Dead Houses and Other Works and The Village Green and Other Pieces, edited by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. and Sean Donnelly.

---

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.