Eddy, Muriel E[lizabeth] (Gammons)

   (1896–1978)

   Wife of C.M.Eddy and friend of HPL. In A Gentleman from Angell Street(1961; rpt. LR), Mrs. Eddy maintains that her husband’s mother (Mrs. Grace Eddy) had come to know HPL’s mother at a woman suffrage meeting in 1918 and that at this time the two discovered that their sons were both enthusiasts of the weird. HPL purportedly invited the Eddys to join the UAPA, and Mrs. Eddy also claims that she and her husband contributed to C.W.Smith’s amateur magazine, The Tryout . Then there was a hiatus in relations, but HPL got back in touch shortly after the death of his mother in May 1921. This entire account is, however, missing from Mrs. Eddy’s first memoir, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (in Rhode Island on Lovecraft,ed. Donald M.Grant and Thomas P.Hadley [1945]), and it appears to be a late fabrication intended to magnify the Eddys’ role in HPL’s life. The Eddys do not appear on any membership lists of the UAPA; none of their work appeared in the Tryout;and there is no evidence that Mrs. Lovecraft was interested in woman suffrage. It appears that HPL came to know the Eddys only in the fall of 1923. Mrs. Eddy wrote numerous memoirs of HPL, all saying much the same things as her 1945 account; among them are “Memories of H.P.L.” ( Magazine of Horror, Winter 1965–66), “Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Marriage and Divorce” ( Haunted, June 1968), Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Man and the Image (1969), “H.P.Lovecraft among the Demons” ( The Rhode Islander[ Providence Sunday JournalMagazine], March 8, 1970), H.P.Lovecraft Esquire: Gentleman (n.d.), and The Howard Phillips Lovecraft We Knew (n.d.). She had two daughters, Ruth Eddy and Faye (Eddy) Dyer; the former wrote a brief memoir of HPL, “The Man Who Came at Midnight” ( Fantasy Commentator,Summer–Fall 1949).