Dr. Le Roi Goddard (Roy) Crandon (1873 – 1939) was a tall, sophisticated Boston surgeon whom Mina took as her second husband in late 1918. Nearly 20 years Mina’s senior, Crandon was scholarly in appearance, slender, low-voiced, and graceful, entirely in keeping with his book-walled study. He had a dour personality and was not well-liked by his colleagues at the Harvard Medical School. He earned the name “Bellybutton Crandon” for his innovative technique of doing appendectomies through the belly button to avoid unseemly scars. Coldly self-sufficient, arrogant, and suave, Crandon became more convinced year by year that the nature of man was to be revealed by the scalpel. Religion became repugnant to him.
The Crandons seemed woefully mismatched, Mina being young and fun-loving while Dr. Crandon was somber and unpleasant. His pet name for her was “Psyche.” He believed in his wife’s manifestations at the same time as he participated in her trickery. Mina’s actual audience was her husband, whom she deluded in order to save their collapsing marriage.
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