Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow
A Sharp-witted “Incubus”?
A Sharp-witted “Incubus”?
Fewer than half a dozen stories have endured about American Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow (1829-89). They portray a woman unaware of social niceties who caused her husband’s deservedly stellar diplomatic career to stall. Apparently she used her fists in chastising a “dear widow” who emerged from Charles Dickens’s New York hotel room; she offended the German imperial court by allowing servants into the Emperor’s opera box; she was probably Wilkie Collins’s lover if not that of Dickens; and she upstaged the novelist Ouida.
Fewer than half a dozen stories have endured about American Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow (1829-89). They portray a woman unaware of social niceties who caused her husband’s deservedly stellar diplomatic career to stall. Apparently she used her fists in chastising a “dear widow” who emerged from Charles Dickens’s New York hotel room; she offended the German imperial court by allowing servants into the Emperor’s opera box; she was probably Wilkie Collins’s lover if not that of Dickens; and she upstaged the novelist Ouida.
Can we be sure that we have got the right picture?
Can we be sure that we have got the right picture?
