EHB and Adah Isaacs Menken

Adah Isaacs Menken was larger than life during hers, which was brief. She is almost certainly the original for Irene Adler in the Sherlock Holmes story -- Holmes referring to her, throughout the Canon, as "The Woman".

Menken was also -- depending on who one believes -- Swinburne's only female lover, or merely his close friend and versifying competitor.

Among spiritualists -- or historians of spiritualism anyway -- Menken is known as one of Daniel Dunglas Home's controls: a fairly risky one for him to channel, I'd have thought, even in the company of the Adare and Lindsay.

Menken and EHB met in California in late 1863 or 1864; Emma conducted a test seance for Menken, which apparently had a profound effect on Menken, who the next day sent Emma a hand-written inscribed copy of one of the poems that would later grace Menken's Swinburnian collection Infelicia: "Dreams of Beauty".

The autograph poem was in the collection of Frederick J. French for some years, apparently, and was auctioned around the turn of the century -- it now seems to have disappeared.

Menken was aggressively bi-sexual; like Emma, an actress of some experience; already through two or three husbands by the time she met Emma. I am really intrigued by their meeting.

And herewith, the Menken poem "Dreams of Beauty", which may well have be inspired by Emma herself -- either as a medium, or as a woman. The poem itself is, I think, ambivalent on that score.