Historical Fact

Historical fact, as discussed in class on the 8th are facts based on sources.  Its actions are based on the location, date, and time of the event.  Written and described by individuals who were involved in the matters.  Interpretation or subsequent theories are rightly based on facts.
As a history major I need to rightly choose a period of time in history that I like and then study it.  I have a hard time with that because I'm not so much of a "one period in time" kind of gal.  I like to study the people in the era, because they are so much more interesting than the events that took place.  It's interesting to study individuals interpretation of historical fact.
I recently read a historical fiction novel called Mrs. Poe, by Lynn Cullen.  The title is misleading, the book focuses around Frances Osgood, a prominent poetess and children's stories author, set in the year 1845, the plot line follows Mrs. Osgood's fall from polite, good society as her husband leaves her for other women and she in turn falls in love, with tragic consequences with the infamous Edgar Allen Poe.  Whether in real life the two actually became lovers in somewhat debatable.  The author herself writes that she was interested to know how Frances Osgood might have come to be the lover of Edgar Poe and to bear his love child, a notion that some Poe scholars still deny to this day.
The book seemed to be based off of pure speculation.  So was this love affair historical fact or pure speculation?  I found myself asking that question.
Both were tortured souls to begin with, but the background of Edgar Allen Poe was particularly bleak having been orphaned and abandoned at so young an age and living in continual poverty despite his success as a poet and author.  Frances Osgood likewise struggled emotionally and financially after her husband left.
And Poe never sustained much of a good reputation while he was living and especially garnered extreme criticism after his death.  Mostly the later was contrived by the Reverend Rufus Griswold who venomously slandered Poe's name spreading countless fabrications about Poe's drug addiction and madness until generations after Poe's death came to imagine him as a madman.
But was he a madman?
The author writes, "madness is like a drop of ink in a pool of water it tendrils slowly spread to others," (310).
Another topic discussed in class was Phrenology.  This topic also popped up in the book Mrs. Poe.  The Bartlett's, the couple that housed Frances Osgood after her separation from her husband commented on the Phrenology of Poe's head.  "It's all written upon his skull.  Those swellings at the sides of his frontal bone, just above his temples, combine the severe moral confusion indicated by those bumps with the superior intelligence implied by the extreme breadth and height of his forehead, and you have a very dangerous individual indeed," (111-112).  How popular was Phrenology and could it explain Poe's violent poetry?  Probably not, after all his mother died when Poe was around 2 years old, his father abandoned the family long before that, his only 2 siblings a younger sister and older brother died within his lifetime, his young wife died when she was 24 years old in 1847.  It seems that what he most greatly sought in his lifetime (love) was continually out of his reach.
Frances Osgood, likewise suffered a terrible fate, 7 months after Poe's death in 1849 Osgood died in 1850 of tuberculosis, her love child with Edgar Allen Poe died at 16 months of age in 1847, and Osgood's other 2 children died, respectively, in June and August of 1851 being just 11 and 15 years of age.
Historical fact cannot always account for the psychological reasoning behind the facts.  The world might never know the exact nature of the relationship between Edgar Allen Poe and Frances Osgood but historical fact allows us to use journals, newspapers, place, and dates, coupled with our own interpretation of events to as accurately as possible tell the story that is history.