Lovecraft in Historical Context: fourth collection

Transcription

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“So little is known of what went on beneath the surface— so
little, yet such a ghastly festering as it bubbles up putrescently in
occasional ghoulish glimpses”
— H.P. Lovecraft, “The Unnamable”.
IMAGE CREDITS. Front cover: my combination of “Come Little Children”
(main illustration) by Cotton Valent, and (background) “Tentacles Rex” by Apolonis
Aphrodisia. Both licensed as Creative Commons Attribution. Back Cover: detail
from “Tentacles Rex” by Apolonis Aphrodisia. Other images are in the public
domain due to their age, Creative Commons, or are used here under a ‘fair use’
principle for the purpose of scholarly criticism and historical record. The author
does not claim copyright over images so used.
Text © David Haden, 2013. 76,000 words inc. footnotes, not inc. the Leeds story.
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LOVECRAFT IN
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
the fourth collection of essays and notes
by David Haden
2013
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CONTENTS
PART ONE: General essays
1. Typhon as a source for Cthulhu.
2. Arthur Leeds : the early biography, photographic portraits, and a story
3. The terribly nice old ladies : Miniter and Beebe at Wilbraham.
4. A source for Rev. Abijah Hoadley in “The Dunwich Horror”.
5. An unknown H.P. Lovecraft correspondent?
6. Shards from H.P. Lovecraft’s quarry.
7. Of Rats and Legions : H.P. Lovecraft in Northumbria.
8. Looking into the Shining Trapezohedron.
9. Notes made after reading R.E. Howard’s key ‘Lovecraftian’ stories.
10. H.P. Lovecraft’s cinema ticket booth job, circa 1930.
11. Garrett P. Serviss (1851—1929) : a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft
12. John Howard Appleton (1844—1930).
13. Tsan-Chan in Tibet : Tibetan Bon devils and Lovecraft’s future empire.
14. The locations of Sonia’s two hat shops.
15. In the hollows of memory : H.P. Lovecraft’s Seekonk and Cat Swamp.
16. A note on “The Paxton”.
17. Rabid! A note on H.P. Lovecraft and the disease rabies.
18. Pictures of some members of the Providence Amateur Press Club.
19. H.P. Lovecraft and his Young Men’s Club.
20. A few additions for Anna Helen Crofts (1889-1975).
21. An annotated “The History of the Necronomicon”.
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PART TWO: Finding Lovecraft’s most elusive correspondents
1. Wesley and Stetson : Providence models for Wilcox in “Cthulhu”?
2. Geo. FitzPatrick of Sydney : the Australian correspondent.
3. A likely candidate for the H.P. Lovecraft correspondent C.L. Stuart.
4. Curtis F. Myers (1897-?)
5. Sounding the Bell : finding a long ‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent.
6. The fannish activity of Louis C. Smith.
7. Fred Anger after H.P. Lovecraft.
8. Reds and pinks : the politics of Woodburn Prescott Harris.
9. A note on H.P. Lovecraft’s British correspondent, Arthur Harris.
10. On Poe : Horatio Elwin Smith (1886-1946).
11. Gardens of delight? Thomas Stuart Evans (1885-1940).
12. The Hatter : Dudley Charles Newton (1864-1954).
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PART ONE
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TYPHON AS A SOURCE FOR CTHULHU
“From the thighs upwards his parts formed a huge manly mass, so as to
raise him above all the mountains; many times did his head approximate the
stars; hands too he had, one verging upon the west, and another on the east;
and from these stood forth a hundred dragon heads. But the parts from the
thighs down had serpentine windings to an immense degree, whose trails,
stretching to the very summit, emitted much rumbling; all his body was
furnished with wings; the tangled covering of his head and jaws was shaken
by the wind; and fire darted from his eyes. A being of such nature was
Typhaon...” 1
T
his essay presents evidence for the idea that the primordial
Ancient Greek monster Typhon, also known as Typhaon,2
was one possible source for the visual size and some of key
physical characteristics of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous monster Cthulhu. This
idea is wholly new to Lovecraftian scholarship, so far as I can tell. The key
ancient sources3 for Typhon are Hesiod toward the end of the Theogony
(820-880 B.C.), and The Homeric Hymns.
1 James A. Fitz Simon and Vincent A. Fitz Simon. Gods of Old, and the stories they tell. Fisher
Unwin, 1899, p.441.
2 Bell’s New Pantheon Or Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi Gods, Heroes, 1790, p.299. Other
older spellings are Typhonis or Typhosus or Typhoeus.
Harry M. Hine (in Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture, Oxford University Press,
2002, p.59) draws on earlier scholarship to suggest that the Greek Typhon myth came from the
East. In 1989 Neil Forsyth (The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth, Princeton University Press,
p.67) suggested the Typhon story as possibly arising from a storyteller’s amalgamation of the
Babylonian Tiamat (a monstrous primordial sea-goddess) and the Hurrian-Hittite Ullikummi (a
giant stone mountain-monster, fathered like Typhon to defeat the Gods). I am informed that this
same thought had, however, already occurred to many German scholars in the 1930s – such as
Schmidt, Dorsieff, and Guterbock – and was later presented in English by Burkert some years
before Forsyth.
3
The idea of a Semitic linguistic origin for the name Typhon is also noted by modern
scholarship… “the very name of Typhon might have a Semitic origin. It has hypothetically but
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H.P. Lovecraft could read Latin from age eight and could read it fluently.4
He had read deeply in classical sources in his youth and early manhood,
albeit seemingly mostly in English translation. In the years directly before he
wrote “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) he continued to have a deep interest in
classical antiquity, especially the monstrous and mysterious aspects of the
myth and art of Ancient Egypt and Imperial Rome. In those same years he
was part of a circle of intellectual men some of whom were quite well versed
in the Greek classics, such as his close friend Samuel Loveman. He also had
easy access to the major public libraries and museums of New York City, and
even when in Providence and Boston he had access to high-quality public
libraries.
I shall now list the various characteristics of Typhon, drawn from a number
of sources, and compare these to Cthulhu:
1. Typhon is of the right size to be directly comparable with Cthulhu: he
is… “a grisly monster” taller than a mountain. “His head reached the stars”5
and “with one hand he touched the east, with the other the west.”6 Lovecraft
quite convincingly been associated with the Semitic name Zaphon” — from Carolina Lopez-Ruiz,
When the Gods Were Born: Greek cosmogonies and the Near East, Harvard University Press, 2010, p.111.
Zaphon (later ‘Zion’, on translation from Aramaic to Hebrew) was the name for the Canaanite
version of Olympus, the endlessly high mountain on whose lookouts it was deemed the gods met
or abided and/or where the storm god Baal had his misty palace. See my essay in this volume
“Looking into the Shining Trapezohedron” for evidence Lovecraft knew of Baal.
Another possibility might be that while the myth came from the east, the name came from
Egypt, from the sphinx-god and master of demons Tutu...
“We know, since U. Wilcken’s article of 1903 that the name Tutu had the Greek
equivalent Tithoes, which was confirmed by W. Spiegelberg in 1929” — from Olaf E.
Kaper, The Egyptian God Tutu: A Study of the Sphinx-God and Master of Demons, Peeters,
2003, p.24.
4 S.T. Joshi, The Weird Tale, Wildside Press, 2003, p.168. Lovecraft also had a little Greek,
although that was apparently not very good and he read in English translations, some of which
are still held up as classics, such as Chapman’s Hymns of Homer. See also S.T. Joshi, Primal Sources,
Hippocampus Press, 2003. p.49.
5
The Popular Encyclopedia, volume 6 (1841).
6
Bell’s New Pantheon Or Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi Gods, Heroes, 1790, p.299.
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has the dreamers describe Cthulhu as immensely tall, most famously and
distinctively as… “A mountain walked or stumbled”.7 In the dreams
recounted by the sensitive, Cthulhu is said to be in appearance… “a gigantic
thing that is “miles high” and which walked or lumbered about”.
2. Typhon was depicted as semi-tentacular in aspect, at least in parts. He
was described as having… “dragons’ heads on his hands instead of fingers”
and “coiled serpents” for legs.8 Hesiod portrayed Typhon as having 100
dragon’s heads on his hands.9
10
3. Typhon has scales… “the scales which covered his body”.11 In one
account he appears to have some kind of tangle on his jaws which is not
specified as being hair… “the tangled covering of his head and jaws was
shaken by the wind”.12 On this point, see also the several illustrations which
accompany this essay.
4. Typhon has wings, at least in a 2nd century description of him by
Nicander in which… “he is also described with wings”.13 The popular
account of 1899 which opens this essay also states that… “all his body was
furnished with wings”.14
5. In ‘death’ he lies buried but alive and seeking escape, like Cthulhu.
According to various sources Typhon was buried or sunken, after defeat by
7
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926).
“His thighs and legs were of a serpentine form”. Bell’s New Pantheon or Historical Dictionary of
the Gods, Demi Gods, Heroes, 1790, p.299.
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9
Bell’s New Pantheon or Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi Gods, Heroes, 1790, p.299.
10 It should be noted that while he may have been dragon like, Typhon was not actually a
dragon, as is often wrongly stated in a number of modern tourist guidebooks.
11
Bell’s New Pantheon or Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi Gods, Heroes, 1790, p.299.
12 James A. Fitz Simon and Vincent A. Fitz Simon. Gods of Old, and the stories they tell. Fisher
Unwin, 1899. p.441.
13 The Popular Encyclopedia, volume 6 (1841). Also given in The Routledge Handbook of Greek
Mythology (2004).
14 James A. Fitz Simon and Vincent A. Fitz Simon, Gods of Old, and the stories they tell, Fisher
Unwin, 1899. p.441.
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the Gods: in the Serbonian Lake (according to Apollonius of Rhodes,15 and
also Herodotus); by being cast into Tartarus16 (according to Hesiod); or by
being buried under the active volcano of Mount Etna (according to Virgil,
perhaps mis-interpreting Homer). Typhon’s attempts at escape were in later
antiquity deemed to be earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In one of the dream accounts in Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”,
Cthulhu is likewise described… “an escaped denizen of Hell”.
6. By the English Elizabethan period Typhon was imagined to have the
power to reach out from underground and thereby to touch the minds of
men. This is shown when Typhon’s early life underground is evoked in
Edmund Spenser’s famous classic The Faerie Queen (1590). What follows is
part of Spenser’s description involving the monster Echidna in Canto VI, a
loathsome female creature with whom the poets of classical antiquity deemed
Typhon had fathered monsters,17 while growing strong enough to emerge
from underground and challenge heaven…
15 W. Preston, Apollonius (Rhodius), The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius Translated: With Notes,
Book II, 1811, p.148.
16 Tartarus is… “is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and
suffering that resides beneath the underworld.” (John Day, God’s Conflict With the Dragon and the
Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament, Cambridge University Press, 1985, p.37.
Lovecraft refers to Tartarus in works such as his short “Descent to Avernus”, a vivid account of
his first visit to a vast cave complex, and in a number of other works.
One might even see an aspect of the myth of Tartarus used in Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains
of Madness”. I am indebted to the anonymous author of the essay “Hell: Into everlasting fire”
(The Economist, Xmas issue 2012, 22nd Dec 2012) for this altering passage…
“The Trojan hero Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid toured Hades [Hell], with difficulty enough,
and [while there] he merely glanced towards Tartarus [the prison of the defeated gods],
glimpsing a high cliff with a castle below it surrounded by a torrent of flame. That
single sighting fixed him to the spot in terror.”
This might appear similar to Danforth’s final backward glance (in which he presumably
glimpses Kadath) at the end of “Mountains”, a key plot point I explored briefly in a note in my
previous volume of Lovecraft in Historical Context. So far as I can tell, no-one has spotted this
possible source before. It suggests there may be further links between the Aeneid and
“Mountains”?
17 Apollodorus stated that the Sphinx was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna. The
Sphinx was a mythical creature that Lovecraft was always especially interested in, and this
paternity claim obviously persisted into the popular encyclopaedias of Lovecraft’s beloved 18th
century...
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“Echidna is a monster direfully dread [because a half-human, half
dragon, and so the gods banished her to] “lie in hideous horror and
obscurity, wasting the strength of her immortal age: There did
Typhaon with her [keep] company; cruel Typhaon [who] pours his
poisonous gall forth to infest the noblest wights18 with notable
defame [by which] he them spotted with reproach or secret shame.”
Typhon’s miasmic and invisible ‘reaching out’ from an entombed
imprisonment, in order to touch and alter people’s thoughts, would seem to
“Sphinx (Greek, to perplex or puzzle) was, according to the poets, a monster, the
daughter of Echidna and Typhon” — entry in the Dictionarium Britannicum, 1736.
Typhon was also, inadvertently, said to have brought about the sacredness of cats. When
Typhon attacked the gods, the Greeks (needing to explain to themselves the animal gods of the
Egyptians) had it that the gods turned themselves into animals in order to flee and hide
themselves. The goddess Diana of Egypt, turned herself into a cat (Ovid, via: John Lemprièr, A
Classical Dictionary, 1823, p. 21). Lovecraft was, of course, inordinately fond of cats and was
fascinated by their lore and history.
Note also that Lovecraft uses a Charles Lamb quote to open “The Dunwich Horror”, which lists
the offspring of Typhon... “Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras - dire stories of Celaeno and the
Harpies - may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition - but they were there before.”
18 ‘Wights’ appears to be a regional dialect word that means ‘a strong or powerful persons’ or
‘upright personages’ rather than peasants or servants…
“The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] gives the first meaning of ‘wight’ as ‘strong
and courageous, esp. in warfare’” — Andreia: studies in manliness and courage in classical
antiquity, 2003, p.40.
At around the same time Spenser was writing, the Scottish King James refers to victims of
demonic possession as having a manic strength exceeding six of the “wightest and wodest” men.
This was Scots dialect meaning ‘strong and savage’ men, implying warriors. The same meaning of
a warrior occurs in the Scots dialect poem The Bruce. “Wicht” in Scots dialect thus appears to
have meant ‘active’ or ‘powerful’ or sometimes ‘quick’, which leads to the English renaissance’s
written use of ‘wight’. The word was not limited to men, at least in the Elizabethan period. For
example: “There met he these wight yonge men.” (Adam Bel); but also “She was a wight,— if ever
such wight were” (Shakespeare, Desdemona).
‘Wight’ may also have had a secondary contextually implied meaning of ‘wizard’ in Scotland and
Ireland, and possibly elsewhere – which would help explain the seemingly supernatural use in
Chaucer: “I crouche thee from elves and from wights” (Miller’s Tale). Tolkien used the word for
his modern coinage of ‘barrow-wights’ for his fiction, although it had already been used in a
similar context in the 19th century by William Morris in his fantasy novel The Roots of the Mountain
(1889): “trolls and wood-wights”.
The Old Saxon meaning of wiht might also be mentioned, for clarification – it survives in the
still-understood saying “not a whit”, meaning “not at all, nothing there”, which one might use in
making a verbal report after searching for something in vain. The Saxon “wiht” appears to have
meant a person or animal (implied, one not worth naming or referring to more fully).
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have a strong resonance with Cthulhu ‘reaching out’ to entangle the dreams
of sensitive dreamers around the world in “The Call of Cthulhu”.19
7. In the Roman world Typhon was associated with volcanic activity...
“In other accounts, he is confined [in] volcanic regions, where he is
the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the personification of volcanic
forces.” 20
Newly formed lands at sea — such as those which are key to Lovecraft’s
stories of “Dagon” and “The Call of Cthulhu” — are usually brought to the
sea’s surface by volcanic action. In “The Call of Cthulhu” the initial dreams
are accompanied by “a slight earthquake tremor”. Later there is mention of a
“storm and earth tremors” that cause the Alert to set sail. Later still, the
narrator learns more fully of the… “earthquake-born tempest which must
have heaved up from the sea-bottom the horrors that filled men’s dreams.”
8. Typhon speaks an unfathomable and monstrously ‘unspeakable’
language… “In all his dreadful heads there were voices that sent forth every
kind of unspeakable sound” wrote Hesiod in Theogony. His voice also had
immense reach… “Whatever his form of utterance, his voice made the
mountains echo.”21 Unspeakability is of course at the heart of Lovecraft’s
work, although admittedly its use in his work occurs well before the
conception of Cthulhu.22 But note that in the story’s dream descriptions,
Cthulhu’s voice is not quite unspeakable. It is rather called “uninscribable
19 Donald R. Burleson’s H.P. Lovecraft, a critical study (p.94) also suggests The Faerie Queen as the
possible inspiration from Lovecraft’s Shub-Niggurath (‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a
Thousand Young’). He cites a depiction of a monster...“Half like a serpent horribly displayed,
But the other half did woman’s shape retain” (clearly this is inspired by Echidna, although implied
to be one of her descendants met in a cave in the medieval period) in “The Red-Crossed Knight’s
encounter with Errour” section. Burleson notes the description of this monster as having… “a
thousand young ones”.
20
21
The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911.
Gods, Goddesses, And Mythology, Volume 11 (2005).
For a detailed study of the exact order in which the idea of the monster in “The Call of
Cthulhu” came to Lovecraft, see my earlier essay in the book Walking with Cthulhu (2011).
22
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save as gibberish”, which is not the same as unspeakable. Some approximate
human phrases can be made of it and spoken in a rough imitation.
9. Like Cthulhu, Typhon is alien. Typhon is… “like neither gods nor
humans” wrote Homer, in “Hymn to Apollo”. He was… “a being who
resembled neither gods nor mortal men…” wrote Apollodorus.23 He is… “a
being that violates every category and almost defies imagination”.24
10. Typhon is noted in many works in words which imply a cosmic aspect,
implying that his action reached beyond Earth. “Typhon terrorized the
universe…”25 “Typhoeus, whom Hesiod depicts as an incarnation of cosmic
evil”.26 He is…“a symbol of cosmic disorder”.27 He is… “a cosmic rebel”.28
The appears to allude to stories in which, since he is deemed as tall as the
stars, he attacks cosmic bodies in the heavens as well as the gods.29
11. Typhon is completely evil. He was deemed to be… “the murderous
enemy of gods and men, the personification of physical evil, of death and
destruction”.30 31 Indeed, he is compared by Milton to Satan. Typhon is
mentioned in Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost as an analogue for the
fallen angel Satan... “Milton is clearly creating another analogue for Satan”.32
This usage was also noted on the 18th century…
23
The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, 7th Ed. (2003), p.84.
24
Kathryn Stoddard, The Narrative Voice in the Theogony Of Hesiod, BRILL, 2004, p.58.
25
Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology Volume 11, Marshall Cavendish, 2005.
Stephen L. Harris & Gloria Platzner, Classical Mythology: images and insights, Mayfield, 1998,
p.665.
26
27
Katharina Volk, Vergil's Georgics, Oxford University Press, 2008, p.117.
28 Carolina Ĺopez-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek cosmogonies and the Near East, Harvard
University Press, 2010, p.111.
29 It should be noted that the ancient understand of the heavens did not involve the vast
distances we now take for granted, but was imagined as if a sort of dome or roof comprising of
various higher and lower layers and interlocking spheres.
30
Bibliotheca Classica: or, a classical dictionary (1833).
In his Egyptian (Set) form, in the 18th Century it was understood that... “Typhon was the evil
genius, or devil of the Egyptians” — Encyclopædia Britannica, 1797.
31
32
William B. Hunter, “Giants” in A Milton Encyclopedia, Bucknell University Press, 1978.
13
“Typhon, or Typheus: ... A monstrous Giant, half Man, half
Serpent. His head (they say) reached to Heaven, his Hands from
one End of the Earth to the other ... Milton compares Satan to these
Monsters”33
12. In the works of the 1800s to the 1920s on the subject of Egyptian
history and mythology, Lovecraft the Egyptomaniac would have commonly
found references in the literature linking the evil Egyptian god Set / Seth
with Typhon. For instance…
“the worship of Typhon (Set or Sutech), who was the chief god of
the Semites in Egypt [… where there are sacrificed] holocausts of
living men34 to Typhon mentioned by Manetho.”35
“Set (the later Semitic Typhon)”36
Admittedly this was the Ancient Egyptian manlike version of Typhon,
usually referred to by scholars as Set-Typhon. But even in classical times this
figure was conflated with the gigantic monstrous Typhon,37 possibly as early
as Pindar in the 5th Century B.C…
“The Egyptian god Set was conflated with the Greek Typhon, a
hundred-headed serpent”38
33 A Complete Commentary, with Etymological, Explanatory, Critical and Classical Notes on Milton’s
Paradise Lost, 1744.
34 Usually red-haired. “Diodorus reported that men of red color were sacrificed to Typhon”
Journal of Jewish Art, Center for Jewish Art of The Hebrew University, 1982. The form of death appears
to have been mass burning alive. Presumably fire was said to be used because it was somehow
emblematic of Typhon or of his form of imprisonment. Afterward the ashes were said by
Manetho to be winnowed by the cultists and flung up to the winds.
35 William Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 1894, p. 468. There might seem to be an
echo of this in “The Call of Cthulhu”, in the line... “Then the liberated Old Ones would teach
them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame
with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom”.
36 J.G.R. Forlong, Encyclopedia of Religions Or Faiths of Man (part 3), 1906. p.53. It appears that
the Egyptians associated Set-Typhon with the sea.
37 Joseph Eddy Fontenrose, Python: A Study of the Delphic Myth and Its Origin, University of
California Press, 1992, p.177.
38 From a scholarly note explicating Milton, in The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse
and Prose, Broadview Press, 2000, p.510.
14
“Imago Typhonis” (image of Typhon), Juxta Apollodorum (1652-1654).
Note the tentacle-like / snake/tail -like flames around the mouth, and that he appears to have
come from the sea.
In his reading on Egypt, and in 18th century literature, Lovecraft could thus
have repeatedly encountered the long-standing anti-Semitic tradition which
developed from this conflation, and which actually presented…
15
“Seth-Typhon as ancestor of the Jews.” … “The equation of
Judaism and Typhonianism appears to have been a well known thesis
in Egyptian priestly circles as early39 as the time of Manetho.”40
Amazingly, this libellous Seth-Typhon ‘origin’ myth was still being
recounted about the Jews in English in the 1880s. For example it was noted
in a popular book review of 1881 of the Book of Beginnings by the Christian
Socialist Gerald Massey...
“The author maintains the Egyptian origin of the Jews, and argues
that they were Set-Typhonians, expelled on account of their
adherence to that earliest cult.” 41
It seems that at some point in the dark years before the early medieval period
the association of Typhon with red hair (because fiery and volcanic, etc), and
with the allegedly red-haired victims42 of the Egyptian Typhonianist cultists,
‘flips over’ in western culture. In some bizarre ‘blame the victims’ manner,
the red hair colour of their alleged victims appears to actually transfer itself to
the cultural portrayal of the Jews themselves…
“Ancient bias against red hair, manifest in the [believed] flaming
hair of Seth-Typhon … persists in medieval and Renaissance drama
and visual arts, as well as in European folklore, where red hair
symbolizes the fires of hell and the demons stoking them. As a
result, English, German, French, Polish, and east Slavic popular
cultures designate red hair and freckles as peculiar to Judas and “the
jews.” The same association runs in high culture, from the Spanish
Inquisition’s view of red hair as “jewish” by default [… further details
39
Meaning, from at least the 3rd century B.C.
40
Russell E. Gmirkin, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus, T&T Clark, p.282.
Book review in The Modern Review, 1881. The reviewer refers to the chapter “The Egyptian
Origin of the Jews Traced From the Monuments”.
41
42
See footnote 31.
16
are then given of how this tradition runs through to Charles Dickens
in modern English literature.]” 43
Typhon in the alchemical Della tramutatione metallica, by Giovanni Battista Nazari, 1589.
“my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus,
a dragon, and a human caricature” — from “The Call of Cthulhu”.
43 Leonid Livak, The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination, Stanford University Press, 2012,
p.89.
17
The historic conflation of Set-Typhon with the Jews might be discerned in a
noted alchemical engraving of 1589 (seen on the previous page). If so, then
this suggests that the medieval Christian conflation ‘red hair = color of Hell’
was perhaps paralleled by a more ‘learned’ discourse related to Set-Typhon.
Note the engraving’s use of the stereotypical Jewish hooked nose and straggly
beard, but used to depict the face of Typhon. While the idea of such a
Typhonian linkage and origin for the Jews was an obvious libel,44 in various
ways this preposterous belief obviously persisted into modern times — and
thus it could have been encountered by Lovecraft in various forms, including
in his extensive reading of occult histories45 and Egyptian history, and 18th
century literary and political/philosophical works. Given Lovecraft’s nearlifelong distaste for unassimilated Jews,46 this background knowledge may
perhaps give an added cultural dimension to the possibility of Typhon being
a key source for Cthulhu.
Finally, there is also a faint hint of an Ancient Egyptian source, in a detail
of the very early genesis of a key part of the “Cthulhu” story. A letter by
Lovecraft to his key correspondents Galpin and Moe said that the sculpture
in the sculptor’s dream in “The Call of Cthulhu” was originally conceived as
being Egyptian…
“Then the curator bade me shew him my product, which I did. It
was of old Egyptian design, apparently portraying priests of Ra in
procession....”47
44 For a complete scholarly discussion of the Typhon stories in relation to the apparently
murderous Typhon cult as the original of the infamous ‘blood libel’ against the Jews, see Bezalel
Bar-Kochva, The image of the Jews in Greek literature, University of California Press , 2010, p.276-279.
45 Lovecraft had been researching heavily on the historical occult and on superstitions in the
New York libraries, during his extended stay there in the mid 1920s, as he worked on the book
The Cancer of Superstition for Houdini. It should go without saying that he was also an expert on
the use of the occult in fiction.
It should be noted that H.P. Lovecraft mentored a young obviously-Jewish boy face to face
at his home, late in his life. See S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, p.947.
46
47
In Steven J. Mariconda, “The Emergence of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft Studies 15 (Fall 1987), p.54.
18
Ra was the Ancient Egyptian sun god, King of the Gods. If Lovecraft were
to have considered how to transform his dream to make it fit for a horror
story, the obvious choice would have been to ‘invert’ the god by making him
into Set, the Ancient Egyptian god of evil. By this very simple route
Lovecraft could have easily arrived at Set-Typhon as a basis for the central
monster in “The Call of Cthulhu”, and then read up on the physical nature of
Typhon.
13) What of any further internal evidence in “The Call of Cthulhu”? It is
notable that at the very height of his story, Lovecraft makes several deliberate
and repeated references to classical antiquity…
“the titan Thing from the stars [Cthulhu] slavered and gibbered
like Polypheme [who was a blinded Cyclops] cursing the fleeing ship
of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops…”
“…hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the
moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of
the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged
mocking imps of Tartarus.”
In the latter paragraph we have three elements of Hesiod’s Typhon story,
albeit co-mingled in a nightmare vision: i) emergence from the underworld
to the reach the heavens, and then a return underground; ii) the elder gods
(whom Typhon is bred to challenge); and iii) the pit of Tartarus.48
To sum up, the classical myth of Typhon presents us with at least five key
and rather plausible elements which match Cthulhu: he is the size of a
mountain, yet can walk; he is scaly and tentacular, at least in significant parts;
he is deemed to be very alien and also utterly evil; he is thought of as cosmic
in nature and also in terms of the scale of his threat; he is buried or
submerged underground yet is still alive and seeking escape. The later
48
See footnote 16 in this essay for an explication of Tartarus.
19
addition by Edmund Spenser also attributes to Typhon the ability to reach
into the minds of men while remaining underground, just as Cthulhu does in
Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Lovecraft would have needed no more than access to Hesiod,49 to The
Faerie Queen, and a few details of Set-Typhon from his books on Ancient
Egypt, in order to gain the key elements he needed for Cthulhu.50
49 Lovecraft had The Works of Hesiod in his library at his death. See: S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s
Library: a catalogue (second edition), Hippocampus Press, 2002, p.79. Also Chapman’s version of
The Hymns of Homer. See: S.T. Joshi, Primal Sources, Hippocampus Press, 2003. p.49.
There is of course another depiction of a somewhat similar creature, in Lovecraft’s “The
Picture in the House” (1920) in which an old book of engravings is described and plate XII is
seen in passing by the narrator on the way more salient horrors. The plate is described as... “Here
he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with
the head of an alligator.” The book was attributed by Lovecraft to Filippo Pigafetta (1533-1604),
the book being Lovecraft’s fictional use of the real Relatione del reame di Congo et delle cironvicine
contrade (1591, republished in the 1880s in both England and France, both omitting the
illustrations). It appears from the researches of S.T. Joshi and others that Lovecraft did not see
this book, but only heard about its African cannibal illustrations in either the Select Works of
Thomas H. Huxley (1886) or Huxley’s Man’s place in nature, and other anthropological essays (1894).
Huxley remarks... “It may be that these [man] apes are as much figments of the imagination of the
ingenious brothers as the winged, two-legged, crocodile-headed dragon which adorns the same
plate”. Only the ape fragment of the plate is reproduced by Huxley, leaving Lovecraft’s
imagination and classical learning to work on what the dragon might have looked like. The
original plate shows a very conventional dragon...
50
Popular articles on dragons gave more detail on Pigafette’s textual observations of the dragons.
An unillustrated article on “Dragons, Griffins and Salamanders” in Charles Dickens’s Household
Words (2nd May 1857, p.428) talks of... “Father Pigafette, a great authority in unnatural history,
[who] tells us that “In Congo is a kind of dragons like in bignesse to rammes [rams], with wings,
having long tayles and chaps, and divers jawes of teeth of blue and greene colour, painted like
scales, with two feet, and feed on rawe fleshe. The pagan negros pray to them as gods.”
20
ARTHUR LEEDS : THE EARLY BIOGRAPHY,
photographic portraits, and a story
J
ohn Arthur Leeds was born 13th September 1882 at Port Arthur1
in Ontario, Canada, according to the Staff Directory at the
Essanay Studios where he later worked.2 Ancestry.ca has birth
details for Leeds that are a little different: “John Arthur Leeds. Born on
Friday, October 13, 1882 in Algoma, Ontario.” This location is some 140
miles from Port Arthur, but Port Arthur was then the most accessible nearest
large city for Algoma — easily reached by steamboat across Lake Superior. I
would presume that the birth was first registered in Port Arthur, and then
one month later — once little John Arthur was thriving — in his home town
of Algoma, a place known until 1882 by the Indian name of Ahnapee.
In Leeds’s early boyhood the remote town of Algoma would have been
somewhat enlivened by the arrival of the railroad, and the growth of some
regional banking business based on fur-trapping, logging and lake trade. But
there seems to have been little else there to retain a hold on a boy who felt
some early talent and ambition. Family life3 in Algoma can’t have had much
1 Port Arthur was later incorporated with Fort William and is now known as the city of
Thunder Bay.
2 From the Essanay Studios Staff Directory, compiled by David Kiehn, Historian at the Niles
Essanay Silent Film Museum. Online at 2013 at www.essanaystudios.org The list… “based on
information in newspapers, trade magazines, films, photographs and from the families of Essanay
personnel.” Exact reference is:
“Arthur Leeds (John Arthur Leeds) 13 September 1882 Port Arthur, Canada – A stage
actor, whose first film work was at the Chicago Essanay studio, and a writer with Selig
for 8 years.”
3 Kirk’s diary mentions the Leeds family was English. Kirk’s diary is in Lovecraft’s New York
Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927. I have been unable to determine the names of his parents.
Kirk’s diary in Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927.
21
to recommend it, since at some point Leeds appears to have run away with
the circus. Frank Belknap Long remembered…
“Arthur Leeds joined a traveling circus as a boy, and did not settle
down to free-lancing [writing] until he was thirty. [i.e: 1913] (He
often discussed those carefree carnival days and even wrote a story,
which he was never able to sell [about the circus]…” 4
Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” came through Ontario in July
1895, a major world-class circus which put on 13 stops in the province.5
Leeds was then aged 13. Possibly after a period with this circus he found
himself in the city of Toronto, and began to work there. There he was a…
“model scene painter and scene maker with the Cummings Stock
Company in Toronto, Canada”, in which company he later became
an actor.” 6
It seems Leeds was aiming high, even at such a young age. The Cummings
Stock Company was based at Toronto’s Princess Theatre…
“The Cummings Stock Company, where Murphy worked, was the
tenant at Toronto’s Princess Theatre. This dignified building, on
King Street near modern Toronto’s theater district, was the first
public structure in the city with electric lights. It also housed an art
gallery banquet hall, reception rooms, drawing room, and ballroom.
Two balconies circled the auditorium, which sat over fifteen hundred
people. A few watched the stage from the hush of boxes,
dramatically trussed and draped with curtains.
The company in residence was somewhat more ragtag. For several
seasons, Cummings actors had flooded the city with melodrama, the
most popular type of drama on the continent, alongside adventure
4
Frank Belknap Long, Howard Phillips Lovecraft: dreamer on the nightside, 1975, p.62.
5
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey 1945 Route Book.
6 “Edison’s New Editor”, The Photoplay Author magazine, April 1915. The Henocksburg
Cummings Stock Company was a joint venture between R. Cummings and theatre owner John
Henocksberg. It appears to have begun in 1897.
22
(The Prisoner of Zenda), sentimental fantasies (Little Lord Fauntleroy),
musicals, and an occasional assault on Shakespeare. To create a stock
company such as this, an actor/manager (here, Robert Cummings)
would rent a theater for a season and choose the cast, almost always
Americans. Cummings not only produced and directed but starred
in the hiss-the-villain roles. Actors, who were hardy and selfsufficient, created their own costumes, wigs, and makeup ... Most
were happy to have the work, which was fairly secure throughout the
season and, most important, stationary. Most acting jobs involved
touring the country. A resident company, in which actors bought
stock, offered forty weeks in one location and a sense of permanence,
which they treasured.”
7
In 1900 one of lead child actors on the stage for the Cummings Stock
Company was one Mary Pickford, later the pint-sized superstar of the silver
screen. Pickford opened her career with Cummings’s production of The
Silver King in 1900, age eight, and learned the craft of tear-jerking
melodrama with the company, a genre representative of their stock repertoire
and of the times. She…
“did melodrama, in spades. Aimed at the working class, the form
filled the theater with characters still known today, if only through
parody. These included dead, alcoholic, or absent fathers, wolves
and landlords at the door, virtuous wives, and angelic children. The
plays spilled over with toddlers suffering life-threatening illnesses.
Often a child was torn from his mother’s arms and thrown into the
poorhouse. But other children were stiff-upper-lip types who
cooked, and cleaned, and spouted wisdom, all the while shivering in
their threadbare clothes.” 8
Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, University Press of Kentucky,
1997, pp. 21-22.
7
8
Ibid, p.23.
23
Presumably these were roles the young Leeds found himself playing, on
becoming more than a scene and model painter. Possibly he even dragged
up, which would make him among the last in a long tradition of boy actors in
drag that stretched back to Elizabethan times…
“Mary [Pickford] played the touching role of Ned, the hero’s dying
son. Little girls often played little boys, and sometimes little boys
played girls.” 9
At one point Mr. Cummings ran off with the huge box office takings10 from
the highly successful productions. The company appears to have survived his
departure11 and they transferred sometime around 1904 to the United States,
at Louisville, Kentucky.12 There is slim chance that the twenty-two year old
Leeds went with them for a time, but he clearly states that he was working in
Canada in 1905…
“Leaving [Cummings] he spent the summer of 1905 in stock
travelling throughout Canada and two seasons in repertoire” 13
It was at this point he had a fateful encounter with the first cinema…
“He then came upon … the Edison Great Train Robbery14” [and]
“became part of a middle western15 company with which he travelled
lecturing on the then marvelous new method and the story itself
while it was being pictured”16
9 Ibid, p.25. Pay for a juvenile lead actor at the Cummings Stock Company was, in 1900, a not
inconsiderable $10 a week. One can see why a boy might want to become a stage actor.
10 Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, University Press of Kentucky,
1997, p.23.
11 After the tremendous run their reputation was such that the other local theatre complained
in the press that their business had been soured.
12 New York Times, 15th February 1904, p.10. They had an existing connection there, with
another company and could find richer audiences.
13
“Edison’s New Editor”, The Photoplay Author magazine, April 1915.
14
Seminal early silent cinema
15 By “middle western” Leeds presumably means Southwestern Ontario, also known as middle
western Canada, and not the middle west of the United States.
16
24
Arthur Leeds, from The Photoplay Author magazine, Sept 1914.
Leeds then aged 32. The photograph possibly from a few years earlier?
At the time of the Kalem Club in the mid 1920s he wore a moustache.
25
The 12-minute Great Train Robbery was a December 1903 release, the
world’s first cowboy western and the movie which educated audiences on the
new storytelling potential of the movies. His encounter with it was
presumably summer 1906, since that was when a touring movie circuit
quickly developed in Canada after the successful establishment of the
Theatorium cinema, the first cinema in the territory,17 and also when the
weather would permit such a circuit. One record of such a summer show
recalls, of Almonte, Ontario…
“The curious packed the small grand stand at the fair grounds at
night to see The Great Train Robbery, the first of the new films to tell
a story as it went along” 18
This certainly suggests that Leeds was back in a type of circus work,
working one of the lesser ‘big top’ tents of a travelling fair, perhaps as a sort
of combined barker and movie narrator.
Leeds then…
“went back into repertoire for two years [Autumn 1906 to 1908?]
acting also as stage manager”19
Like his movie exhibition company, Leeds also leaves this theatre unnamed.20
He then made the leap to the United States circa 1908…
“He returned to the motion pictures as a lecturer and manager of a
motion pictures house in Titusville, Penn[sylvania]”21
Titusville was then a well-established oil ‘boom town’, and the movie house
there was almost certainly the Magnolia, which was the first in the area…
17 Peter Morris, Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939, p.21. Lovecaft’s
Providence saw its first proper cinema show in March 1906 (Selected Letters IV, p.355).
18
Habitat magazine, 1969. I can find no further details of the date.
19
Robert Morris Seiler’s Reel Time: Movie Exhibitors and Movie Audiences in Prairie Canada, 1896 to
1986 (2013) is unable to provide details of the touring showmen for the film in question.
20
21
26
“301 Julia Street. Built in 1905, the east building originally was a
hotel and saloon. Remodeled as Titusville’s first silent movie house,
the tickets cost 5 cents for children and 10 cents for adults.”22
My guess would be that a letter with a full-time job offer was a good way for
Leeds to enter the United States legally from Canada. He doesn’t appear to
have stayed with the Magnolia long, moving back into theatre…
“He again returned to the stage, in musical comedy, with the
Mittenthal productions” [while] “devoting his spare time to writing
for the stage and cinema”23
This would have been Aubrey Mittenthal’s Attractions (the Mittenthal
company formed for its stock theatre productions), under Aubrey Mittenthal
as creative lead with his brothers as company administrators. In the years
before cinema and radio, musical theatre was booming. The 1906-7 season
had been the most active the American theatre had ever known.24 Leeds may
22
23
24
Titusville Historic Walking Tour Description, 1998. Archived at www.nbbd.com.
Herbert G. Goldman, Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl, p.23.
27
have started with Mittenthal for the September 1908 season,25 at which time
the Company were based out of the Knickerbocker Building, 114-18 West
39th St., New York City.26 This ran a huge theatrical touring operation...
“By 1907, the Mittenthal Brothers had nine different productions
on the road, including seven melodramas and two musical comedies,
encompassing 250 employees and an annual payroll of $400,000
(nearly $9.6 million today).”27
Aubrey Mittenthal, theatre impresario.
Leeds was later known as a serious buff of recorded-music,28 and one
wonders if he may once have had some role in selling the sheet-music that
25 The theatrical world, like that of education, followed the old English agricultural manner of
dividing the annual calendar, with the main ‘season’ starting in September.
26
Billboard magazine, 1908.
Keith Howard, “The Famous Mittenthal Brothers: Theatrical Producers and Managers”,
Kalamazoo Public Library website, accessed 2013.
27
28
See his column in The Music Trades magazine, December 1921.
28
formed a lucrative business sideline run by the Mittenthal brothers. Possibly
after-the-show sheet music sales were one of the ways an actor might boost
his income with some sales commission? Or, as he travelled from city to city,
did he perhaps start to judiciously buy and sell recorded music disks here and
there to make a little extra money?
Leeds then entered the new world of movie making as a writer / actor29…
“he entered the motion pictures as an actor with the Essanay and
Selig, also writing plays for them”30
Essanay was based in Chicago. Selig Polyscope were also in Chicago, but in
something of a cartel with Edison’s moving pictures division in Bronx district
of the New York — although it seems some Selig westerns were even then
being filmed in California rather than New York.31 The Essanay and Selig
connection in Chicago may suggest why Leeds had a wife and daughter32 in
Chicago, but — as he grew too old for the physical demands of continual
acting — later looked for writing work in New York. That Leeds knew
Chicago well by 1913 is also evidenced by Moving Picture World magazine,
which in 1913 noted...
“Arthur Leeds contributes a readable story on the Chicago
manufacturers. [in the fellow trade Magazine Maker magazine of
February-March 1913]” 33
His daughter Aline Dorothy Leeds (1914-1986) was born 1914. This seems
to suggest a 1912 or 1913 marriage for Leeds, when his wife Helen Halloran
(1894-1977) would have been aged about 18 or 19. I have been unable to
find any marriage record for them, though. The Lovecraft circle knew that
29 Probably not by the offshoot Mittenthal Film Company, which only produced their first
wild west comedy movies in 1913.
30
31
Most of the earliest western movies were made in New York, on Staten Island.
His wife was Helen Halloran (1894-1977), his daughter Aline Dorothy Leeds (1914-1986).
Source: Ancestry.com database.
32
33 Moving Picture Magazine, Apr-Jun 1913. When seen in context, it seems this comment means
movie manufacturers.
29
Leeds also had a son, someone whom I have been unable to get dates for —
it appears the son was still living when the genealogical data was submitted.
Below is a flyer for a July 1913 Selig film which gives Leeds a writing
credit…
Another of his movie credits was as writer for “Don’t Let Mother Know”,
also from Selig.
30
Sometime around 1912 or 1913 a Leeds…
“article on the evolution of the motion picture attracted Dr.
Esenwein, then editor of Lippincott’s Magazine”
Esenwein put Leeds on to the idea of offering mail-order correspondence
courses in the writing of screenplays, then called ‘photoplays’. At that time
there seems to have been something of a ‘gold rush’ among aspiring authors
to ‘get rich’ by selling photoplays to the new film studios. Judging by various
comments made in the trade press, there was obviously room in the market
for a mail-order course with integrity. Esenwein and Leeds first undertook a
long series of articles on the craft in The Photoplay Author magazine (in which
Leeds would shortly have a multi-page trade-insight column). Their detailed
how-to articles were then collected in an expanded book Writing the
Photoplay (Home Correspondence School, 1913), and a new correspondence
course was launched on the back of the book.
Various ads like this appeared in 1914 in The Photoplay Author and other magazines,
although only The Photoplay Author ads have the Leeds portrait.
31
Two movies might seem a slim basis on which to launch a career as a
correspondence course teacher, but there must have been more which have
now been lost. We know from two sources that there were more. The first
tells that Leeds was a Selig studio writer for eight years…
“Arthur Leeds (John Arthur Leeds) 13 September 1882
Port Arthur, Canada – A stage actor, whose first film work was at
the Chicago Essanay studio, and a writer with Selig for 8 years.”34
This implies that he had been sending photoplays to Selig, and seeing them
produced, since about 1905 when he had first arrived in the USA at
Titusville. This starting date can be calculated back from the date he appears
to have left Essanay.35 He left Essanay in early 1913 to freelance, and to start
his correspondence course. We know this because The Moving Picture World
of April 1913 commented on his departure, and did so with a bit of an
edge…
“Arthur Leeds writes that he is not “with Essanay,” as we stated,
though he has done much work for that company. The mistake is
due to a statement from T. E. Letendre, the hesitant editor of the
Photoplay Author. Mr. Leeds is a free lancer and the associate of J.
Berg Eisenwein in the latter’s photoplay course that will be a real
correspondence course if it lives up to the other Eisewein
propositions along short story lines. If the course is what we think it
is, we shall be glad to welcome a real mail course that will be
conducted by persons whose credit and establishment is too high to
permit them to engage in a swindling scheme.”
The second evidence for the length of his career in photoplay writing comes
from the details of the exclusive screenwriters’ club. This Leeds co-launched
in New York in 1913, called the Ed-Au Club and which later became The
34 From “Essanay Studios Staff Directory”, compiled by David Kiehn, Historian at the Niles
Essanay Silent Film Museum. Online at 2013 at www.essanaystudios.org
35 More details on his photoplay career might be found in the article by E.N. Bagg, “Arthur
Leeds - Ideal Preparator”, in Photoplay Author 1913, but I have been unable to see a copy of this.
32
Photodramatists.36 To gain membership one had to have had ten photoplays
produced as credited films. As feature films emerged, two features would
also allow membership. Since Leeds was a founder member and vicepresident, he must have had the requisite ten film credits to his name. The
Club appears from reports to have been very upmarket and ‘thrusting’,
offering fine dinners in Manhattan with cigars, movie studio preview
screenings, and plenty of opportunity to hob-nob with industry figures.
Around this time Leeds also shows up in the record as publishing a
number of his own short stories. More may yet remain to be found. Those I
have found from this period include:
“Over the great divide”, The Black Cat, June 1914, pp. 1-8.
“The sweetness of the light”, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine,
September 1914, pp. 373-379.
“The man who shunned the light”, The Black Cat, February 1915,
pp. 25-30. (A clear inspiration for Lovecraft’s “Cool Air”. It is
included at end of this essay).
On the back of his how-to book, short stories, and his professional Ed-Au
club activities, Leeds landed a plum role as the lead Editor of Scripts at the
Edison movie division. This was located in the Bronx in New York City,
where Leeds headed the scripts department between April 1915 to
December 1915. He claimed in the trade press that he would read all
submitted photoplays. After nine months in the post he resigned.37
During his time there Edison made a photoplay written by Everett McNeil
— then a veteran photoplay writer and later a key Kalem Club member38 —
into the Edison/Paramount feature film The Martyrdom of Philip Strong.39
36 Full details of the club can be found in Torey Liepa, Figures of Silent Speech: Silent Film Dialogue
and the American Vernacular, pp.197-200. I can find no trace of the club after summer 1916.
37
His rise and fall is detailed in The Writer’s Monthly during this period.
See my forthcoming book on McNeil, Good Old Mac, for full details of his own career in the
movies.
38
39
Made in 1915, released by Paramount 1916.
33
For some reason the credit for Everett McNeil was removed from the film’s
titles. This event caused Arthur Leeds to publically praise McNeil’s
craftsmanship on The Martyrdom of Philip Strong, in his regular column in
The Writer’s Monthly magazine of Jan 1916 — and to reveal the name of the
man who actually wrote the photoplay for this substantial film.40 One
wonders if the studio’s barefaced removal of McNeil from the credits may
have triggered Leeds’s resignation from Edison?
The movie industry was fast waning in New York, as it was enticed to
California by cheap studio lots and all-year sun. By around 1917 the
industry appears to have essentially left New York. Edison formally wrapped
up its Bronx movie division in 1918. The departure of such a vibrant and
well-paying industry appears to have left various future members of the
Lovecraft circle rather financially stranded: such as Leeds; McNeil; and also
Ernest A. Dench.41 At age 35 Leeds no doubt felt too old to face again the
physical demands of stock repertory or cinema acting, and perhaps also too
tied to the East — since he had a young wife and children in Chicago. He
does appear to have initially tried to develop a regular industry column,
similar to that which he had in The Writer’s Monthly, this time in The Music
Trades magazine. He can be found in the latter magazine in December
1921,42 writing a column with a very similar formula, and making known his
qualifications as a connoisseur of recorded music and as an industry insider.
Kirk’s diary also confirms that Leeds was interested in recorded music. It
seems this work, if work it was, had dried up by the time of the Kalem Club
— but it may simply be that the archives for the New York music industry
press of the mid 1920s are not yet online, due to copyright. S.T. Joshi also
40 Leeds’s statement is confirmed by the sale of the original film script on eBay in 2010, the
script having the name Everett McNeil on it. See my forthcoming book on McNeil Good Old Mac.
See my forthcoming book on McNeil Good Old Mac, for details on Dench and his
involvement with the movies in New York at this time.
41
42
I have been unable to determine when this column began and ended.
34
mentions the Leeds wrote a column for Reader’s Digest at the time of the
Kalem Club.43 I am uncertain if this was the Reader’s Digest, or a namesake.
Leeds found himself following McNeil to the cheap rooms available in the
Irish slum of Hell’s Kitchen, while he tried to write and find paying work.44
Leeds has of course been well documented during the Kalem Club years,
and so I need not detail his activities during this time.45 I will only note that
he was badly underemployed, and had poor luck in placing his writing.
Possibly he had some debts, perhaps back-rent — Lovecraft noted afterwards
that… “he used to be pushed from lodging to lodging for non-payment of
rent”.46 To have had to borrow $8 from the seemingly desperately poor
Everett McNeil of all people — the famous cause of the ‘split meetings’ of
the Kalem Club — suggest Leeds was in dire financial straits by the mid
1920s. Yet Lovecraft states that Leeds always kept immaculately dressed and
shaven at this time, despite his poverty. See the Kirk diary for the details of
Leeds at this time, and the account of his rather sad stint of work in Kirk’s
bookshop. Kirk reports that Leeds returned to Chicago in late summer
1926.
He does not appear to have written quality short stories at this time,
although he landed one pulp shocker in Weird Tales in 192547 and another in
Adventure.48 Lovecraft himself stated in 1931 that… “Leeds has come on
slightly better times, through his side-line of the drama”.49 Possibly this
means he had found occasional roles as an older male actor in Chicago or as a
43
S.T. Joshi in Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927, p.141.
He went through a wide variety of addresses. See Lovecraft in Lord of a Visible World, p.279.
This seems to be reflected in the opening of Lovecraft’s story “Cool Air”.
44
45 I refer interested readers to the primary sources of the letters in The Lovecraft Letters Volume 2:
Letters from New York, and Kirk’s diary in Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927, as
well as to the Selected Letters, and S.T. Joshi’s various biographical works on Lovecraft.
46
47
Lovecraft in Lord of a Visible World, p.279. Something reflected in the opening of “Cool Air”
“Return of the Undead”, Weird Tales, November 1925.
48
S.T. Joshi in Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927, p.141.
49
Lovecraft in Lord of a Visible World, p.279.
35
playwright, but I have found no online evidence of either. By June 1932 S.T.
Joshi notes that Leeds was back in Brooklyn, New York City.50
There is a hint from Robert Barlow which suggests Leeds may have been
selling correspondence courses in the mid 1930s.51 In February 1935, in the
depths of the great depression, Leeds was reduced to selling self-help
booklets in the ad pages of Popular Mechanics magazine and Popular Science
Monthly. These adverts give an address for him in early 1935: 2736 W 16th
St., Brooklyn. This was an Italian section, presumably with cheap rooms.
Leeds attended the Second Eastern States Science Fiction Convention in
New York (February 21st 1937). His name appeared in the Novae Terrae
fanzine which listed those attending the convention, and the editor noted…
“These names were all quite well known in those days, and to find
so many of them grouped together at one meeting must have been a
terrific thrill for ordinary fans.” 52
I can find no other online record of his involvement in early SF fandom, such
as fannish articles or a fanzine. But such items may yet turn up, as the
fannish record is only partly available online.
Maria Kirk Hart mentions53 that Leeds found writing work the same year
with one of the sprawling catalogue of guidebooks published by the Federal
Writers’ Project. This was a depression-era works assistance project which
gave work to unemployed writers, and quickly developed The American
Guide Series and The American Life Series. It ran 1935-1941, and
thereafter appears to have run on as a reprint imprint into the 1960s. The
50
S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927, p.141
Barlow’s dig at Leeds in the opening of the Lovecraft-Barlow story “The Battle that Ended
the Century” (1934)... “The Wolf was fresh from his correspondence course in physical training,
sold to him by Mr. Arthur Leeds.”
51
52 Novae Terrae #11 (April 1937). Fanzine. The reference to “in those days” is due to a
whimsical style employed in the report, in which the author pretends to write as someone in the
future.
53
Maria Kirk Hart, introduction to Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924-1927, p.15.
36
evidence for Leeds’s involvement with the FWP is shown by several articles
or letters from him published in the New York Times:
“by ARTHUR LEEDS, Editor History and Landmarks, Federal
Writers’ Project” 54
“ARTHUR LEEDS, Editor History and Landmarks, New York
City Guide” 55
The Guide was later defended by Leeds in another New York Times article…
“THE NEW YORK CITY GUIDE; One of Its Editors Defends Work of
Federal Writers Project”…
“It rather amused me, in reading L. Effingham De Forest’s letter in
The Times recently, to note that he begins his comment by offering
the opinion that a new and revised chronology of important events in
New York City’s history “is rather unnecessary,” and then, about ten
lines further down, states that “in the last twenty years the history of
this city has been largely rewritten,” while much new material has
been added.” 56
The WPA Guide to New York City: The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s
New York: a Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis was
published in 1939, and is now online in digital facsimile in the 1939 Random
House New York City Guide edition.57 The Leeds name is not on the page
listing the Editorial Staff of the Guide. Indeed, there is no credit in it
anywhere for Arthur Leeds, and the same is true of the companion 1938
volume New York Panorama: a Companion to the WPA Guide to New York City:
a Comprehensive View of the Metropolis Presented in a Series of Articles. While
researching the Guide its team had uncovered various errors introduced by
54
New York Times. 04/17/1936, “Marking Historical Spots”.
New York Times, “NEW YORK LANDMARKS; New York City Guide Editors Eager
for...”, May 5, 1936.
55
56
New York Times, 15th November 1936.
57 archive.org/details/newyorkcityguide00federich This is not the first edition World Fair
special with large-fold-out map, but the Random House edition of the same year.
37
historians into the historical record. Did the public controversy Leeds stirred
over this matter in The New York Times mean he was later overlooked in the
credits? Leftist politics may also have played a part in such an erasure, if it
was such. The New York’s Federal Writers division is said to have been
infested with bickering socialists belonging to various competing grouplets
and political sects, and as a result it was…
“Plagued by internal dissension, external political pressures and
other problems, it took a couple of years before the New York
FWP’s work appeared, garnering skepticism and ridicule.” 58
After 1937 Arthur Leeds appears to vanish from the online record,
although I have found that a naturalization petition was filed by an “Arthur
Leeds” in New York Southern District, 7th January 1946.59
There is not yet a sure death date for Leeds, despite the best efforts of
Lovecraft scholars to discover one. A possible death date of 1952 has been
mooted, and Kenneth W. Faig Jr. has kindly informed me that the
dedication page of the Arkham House book The Shuttered Room (1959)
indicates that Leeds was by then deceased.
Overleaf: a Leeds short story that was obviously one of the several inspirations for
Lovecraft’s story “Cool Air”. One thus wonders if “Cool Air” arose from a session of
the Kalem Club in which they discussed how Leeds’s “The Man Who Shunned The
Light” might be improved and developed, followed by Lovecraft writing up the ideas
with a view to landing it in Weird Tales and giving the desperately poor Leeds half
the pay-cheque? Sadly it was rejected by Weird Tales, and one wonders if this was
because the editor Wright recognized the origin in a previously published story?
58 Barbara Cohen, “The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP)”, 14th July 2012, at
www.newyorkboundbooks.com The entire manuscript records of the WPA writer’s Project have
been microfilmed and are held at the Municipal Archives of New York City.
59
Located on ancestry.com
38
The Man Who Shunned the Light
BY ARTHUR LEEDS
RECOGNIZED Langhorn’s handwriting the moment I glanced at the
envelope; and to say that I was surprised at hearing from him, after so long a
silence, was putting it mildly. But my astonishment and curiosity were
tripled at the message which the envelope contained.
“Do not be alarmed, my dear Marden,” it read, “at the contents of this
letter, my first to you in so long a time. But above all, I beg of you, if ever
friendship bound us together, do not fail in doing just what I am about to
ask of you. If you do this for me you will see me once more; but you will
never talk with me again. Yet, I have another and a very important message
for you. There is something that you, if not the whole world, should know,
and which will be communicated to you when next you see me. I have been
living for the past two years and a half at number 108 West 57th Street—
the old Partington residence— and for the past six or seven months I have
been entirely alone. Now, Marden, I want you to come to me at this
address, any time this afternoon after two o’clock. The experiment upon
which I am now engaged will have been fully completed by that time; and I
do not wish to have anyone— not even you— disturb me before I have
quite finished. You will find the front door unlocked. Admit yourself, and
come: straight into my workroom, the door of which faces the front
entrance. Do not fail me, old friend; there is much that you should learn
concerning me and my work.”
In spite of Langhorn’s admonition not to be alarmed, there were two
things in his note which puzzled and even startled me considerably. What
did he mean by saying that if I complied with his wishes I might see him
once more? And above all, what did he mean by saying that though I should
see him again, I might never talk with him thereafter? Surely my old friend
had not, in some strange way, been stricken dumb? Yet, what else could
prevent him from conversing with me?
39
It was then eleven in the forenoon, and I spent the best part of the time
until two o’clock making wild guesses as to what Langhorne could possibly
mean, and what it was that he so earnestly desired to communicate to me.
The taxicab which I engaged took me to the address mentioned in the note
in less than half-an-hour; and as I dismissed the driver and mounted the
steps, I remembered thinking that, in this great city of New York, a man
might very easily become as far removed from his former associates, if he so
desired, as if he were to journey to St. Petersburg or Yokohama.
As I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, I noticed that the
accumulated dust of many months covered everything. I suppose I am
somewhat of a crank on that subject, for on discovering nothing anywhere
that resembled a hat-rack or hall-tree, I continued to hold my hat in my
hand in preference to laying it on the heavily coated chair standing against
the wall on my left. It did not need my old friend’s letter to convince me that
he had been living alone for a long time. And what in the name of common
sense was the man doing with the whole house— as it seemed to me, if one
could judge by the heaviness of the air— sealed up on a stifling August
afternoon? The place was as musty and close-smelling as a department store
on a Monday morning; I held the street-door open for a moment or two,
allowing the bright sunlight and what little breeze was stiring to enter, before
I advanced farther into the hall.
At the end of this hallway, and facing the front entrance, was another door
covered with a heavy damask curtain. I closed the street-door quietly, and
advancing toward the rear door, laid my hand on the knob. I cannot explain
what it was that made me hesitate to turn it. I can only compare the
sensation to that which one experiences when, having laid a hand on one side
of an electric knife-switch, he hesitates to complete the circuit by touching
the other side, not knowing the severity of the shock which he may receive.
A moment’s pause, and then the curiosity to know all that my old friend’s
letter had meant, urged me on. I swung open the door and advanced into the
room.
40
The stuffiness of the hallway was nothing compared with the odorsome
closeness of this apartment. I glanced about, wondering if it were possible
that the room was without a window. As my eyes turned to the left however,
I saw that a window was there; but it, like the door by which I had entered,
was heavily curtained. Observing this, I seemed to become conscious, for the
first time, of the fact that the room was lighted solely by the electrolier that
blazed down from the center of the ceiling— at half past two on a bright
autumn afternoon! If Langhorne had recently been at work or reading in this
room, why did he choose the electric light instead of the illumination
provided by nature?
The intense curiosity, mingled with a vague alarm, that had filled my mind
since reading his note, was growing momentarily greater. Where was he
now? Why was he not here to receive me?
A second glance around the room showed me almost exactly what I had
expected to find there. In the corner to the right of the curtained window,
stood a roll-top desk, before which was placed a three-fold, tapestry-covered
screen, in such a way as to hide the greater part of the desk from my view.
Shelves, reaching to the ceiling, lined that side of the room opposite the
window; these were partly filled with books, portfolios and scientific
magazines.
There were, however, several things in the room from which I deduced the
fact that Langhorne had been living, practically, in this one large apartment,
for some time, at least. In one corner stood a rather short Davenport-bed.
Not far from it, and connected by a rubber tube with an iron pipe rising a few
inches from the floor, was a small gas-stove standing on a little table. It was
evident that Langhorne had not only been sleeping in this room of late, but
had also prepared his own meals there. I remembered having noticed a firstclass restaurant only a block down the street, and my surprise increased
accordingly. My friend’s epicurean tastes in the past had more than once
caused me to warn him against dire results of eating and drinking too well.
41
Everywhere about were distributed the tools, so to speak, of his trade— a
professor of chemistry. Langhorne, wild as he had been in his student days,
was always an enthusiast, loving his work as a part of himself. His lapses into
dissipation served only to emphasize more strongly the true nature of the
man—his determination, his originality of thought and ideas, his firmness in
the face of argument, even of ridicule, when he put forward a theory too
startlingly original to be passed over in mere controversy, and his absolute
devotion to his life work.
I was aware of the fact that up to the time when I had completely lost track
of him, about three years before, he had contributed regularly to various
medical and scientific journals; of late, however, I had not seen his name
mentioned in any of the reviews, nor, so far as I was aware, had any of his
articles been published. But I knew Langhorne was the kind of a man who,
having his work to carry on, could readily adapt himself to any part of the
world; and for some time it had been my belief that he had gone abroad,
without advising any of his old friends, and was now, probably, conducting
his experiments and researches in one of the European capitals.
It suddenly occured to me that the professor might have stepped out to
make a purchase at one of the nearby stores; that that was his reason for
telling me in his note to admit myself upon my arrival. Concluding that this
must be the case, I prepared to sit down and await his return. No chair was
to be seen, however; the only seat was the Davenport in the corner. But a
glance in the direction of the screen caused me to conclude that there would
naturally be an office-chair before the desk which, as I have said, the screen
almost hid from view.
Advancing, I took hold of it by both sides and drew the folds together,
preparatory to putting it to one side. As it closed up, it almost fell from my
hands as I stepped back in startled bewilderment.
A chair was there, as I had expected. But in it sat Randall Langhorne,
head and shoulders bent over the desk. His face the color of the cigar ash
that lay on a little tray at his side. The left arm hung straight down over the
42
side of the chair; the hand was tightly clenched. His right arm was sprawling
across the desk, and the hand, which gripped a graduate-glass, was resting
against the drawers at the back. There still remained on the inside of the
glass perhaps a teaspoonful of dark, purplish liquid, and the fingers which
grasped it, as well as the white blotter beneath, were stained a deep brown,
recalling the discoloration left by a solution of potassium permanganate.
After the first shock, I had involuntarily reached out to grasp Langhorne’s
shoulder. But even as I did so, I paused and drew back my arm.
His face was turned to the right; his eyes, wide open, seemed fixed with
staring fascination at the glass in his hand. And in the corner, close at the
hand, an envelope stood upright against the drawer. On it I read the one
word—“Marden.” In front of this, flat on the desk, lay a sheet of typewriter
bond paper, upon which, in large letters, had been written the startling
request:
“Do not touch me, Marden! Do not lay a finger upon me until you have
read this letter!”
In spite of myself, I shuddered as I read the admonition. There was
something terrifying, some sinister suggestion in the words. Not that it was
necessary to touch the man to tell that he was dead. The ashen face, the
wide, staring eyes, the blackened lips, stained with the same brown color
which disfigured the hand from all these signs I judged that at least an hour
must have passed since life had fled from this pitiable heap before me. It was
the note that I dreaded; some unknown horror seemed to be lurking in its
message.
In spite of myself, I felt that I would give almost anything if I could only
avoid opening it at all. But Langhorne’s last wish, his dying request, in fact,
had been that I read this message and share his secret, whatever it was, with
him. With a trembling hand I picked up the envelope and tore it open, and
read:
"My dear old friend, in this, my last hour, I can turn only to you. Not for
43
pity, though, Marden; pity and sympathy are not for such as I. I seek only
your assistance in what will be my final experiment. I have met with
considerable success in the past, as you know, I have proved my theories
correct, as a rule; only once or twice have my experiments failed. My
heartfelt prayer to God, now is, that this last test of my knowledge will be
successful also. First, however, I must tell you my miserable story.
“You will remember the night when, just after you had returned from the
Pacific coast, we met at the bar of the Cadillac. Kenyon was with me when
you came in, and so was young Ludlow—the fellow some of the boys used
to call ‘the Lucios diamond kid.’ You will remember, also, that while you
were with us, Ludlow behaved himself extremely well—for Ludlow.
“About ten o’clock, you left us, saying; that you were going home. After
you had gone, we drifted over to Churchill’s; and it was shortly after one
o’clock when Ludlow and I (Kenyon went off about midnight) were
requested to leave the back room of a saloon in the neighborhood of
Columbus Circle. I can remember passing the monument as we started
home. I hadn’t told you where I was living Marden—in fact, I hadn’t told
anyone. Knowing me as you did in the old days, you know why. When I
worked, I worked with all there was in me to labor with. I didn’t want to be
disturbed; I didn’t want to be tempted away when my work called me. I
knew my weakness; so I cut myself off from everyone. I met you three
fellows that night by the merest chance.
“But it was the devil in the form of Ludlow who walked with me that
night, Marden. As we staggered along, he kept up a running fire of
sneering remarks. First I was a ‘would-be-famous scientist.’ Then I was ‘the
greatest bluff that ever graduated.’ Finally he declared that I was a ‘hermit, a
recluse merely for the sake of being called eccentric, but clever’.
“The liquor, I suppose, must have made me good-natured, rather than
otherwise, for I simply laughed at his insults; and we went on together.
Then, two blocks away from here, I said good-night and tried to leave him;
but it was of no avail.
“Again and again, he asked me to take him to where I was living. At last
he dared me to take him home with me. Mad, drunken fool that I must
have been, I did.
44
“What followed, I must write down quickly. Even now my hand
trembles, and I need all my strength for what is to come. Ludlow threw
himself into this very chair where I now sit, one leg over the arm, swinging
himself in a half-circle. At once he recommenced his drunken abuses, and
I, as before, laughed at him. Suddenly, he took from his pocket a flask of
brandy—I had no idea that he had any liquor upon him—and, after
swallowing nearly half of it, he tossed it over to me. With drunken
recklessness, I drained the flask; and just then Ludlow swung around and
faced the desk.
“Marden, —you remember the woman in my case? The one woman? I
know you do; so I won’t disgrace her fair name by putting it into this
horrible confession. But her photograph was there, on top of the desk; and
as Ludlow saw it he snatched it down. With a laugh that seemed to me like
the cry of a beast, he swung around and faced me again.
“I won’t—I could not repeat his words, old friend; they were unutterably
vile. And he meant that of her, Marden, the woman upon whose grave,
every Sunday since God took her from me, I had placed the white roses. I
heard only his first sentence or two; from that moment, as God is soon to
judge me, I forgot what really happened. I can dimly remember that
Ludlow, very suddenly, became silent.
Then, like one under the influence of an anesthetic, I lost consciousness of
everything.
“And, now, Marden, the end, but briefly. It must have been the morning
sun, falling across my face as it entered this window which you see now
darkly curtained, which at last awakened me. The moment I sat up I saw
Ludlow; and in that moment I knew that he was dead. Then, in a flash, all
came back to me, dimly—all, that is, up to the time he spoke those words.
Weakly, I got up and went to him. As I leaned over the body, I saw, with
horror, the deep cut in his left temple, and then the empty flask lying on the
rug at his feet. That flask had been in my hand as he started to speak of
her-the last words he had ever spoken! But he had driven me to it — he, the
beast, the loose-tongued idler! Then the greatest horror of all came home
to me. No one had seen Ludlow entering the house with me. I could easily
tell Kenyon that he had left me and started for his home. I could just as
45
easily dispose of Ludlow’s body— which, Marden, I finally did—in such a
way that it would never be found. But could I, could I ever again be happy,
care-free, unhampered by the guilty chain that I had bound myself with on
that accursed night of folly and dissipation? Would not the accusing
sunlight, God’s sunlight, which now flooded the room, forever cry out and
mock me? Would I not hear forever in my ears the words, ‘At the setting of
one sun you were an innocent man. Life was yours to make what you would
of; Fame was yours to win; Honor was yours, and Happiness— the memory
of Love, sweeter, often, than the realization, belonged to you. But the night
came in between; and at the rising of another sun you were a murderer, a
useless thing, an outcast until life shall be over for you. Only then will come
peace!’
“Marden, from that day to this, I have never seen the light — God’s light.
I could not; the horror of the past would only have been intensified. Up to
about six months ago, I kept one servant, a combined valet and assistant.
He was a good fellow and faithful, but I let him go. Since then I have been
quite alone. The telephone brought to me all that I required; but
everything was left in the hallway; I never saw the front door open. I have
contributed to the scientific journals frequently — you may have read
something by ‘Franklin Mathison.’
“But, now, Marden, it must end. ‘Only then will come peace! Now, I ask
your aid — it will be easily given. For two months I have been working
continuously on something which, had I lived an innocent man, might have
brought me fame. Years ago, I conceived the idea of a liquid which, when
injected into a dead body as we now inject embalming fluid, would have a
directly opposite effect to that produced by the latter preparation. In other
words, instead of preserving the body, it would destroy it utterly, bone and
tissue alike. My theory was that the liquid would be entirely absorbed by
every portion of the body, so that, having finished its subtle work of
destruction, it would leave the corpse literally a mass of clay in the form of a
man or woman-clay that could be almost instantly converted into an
unrecognizable heap of dust. The idea was originally suggested by the
remarks of a cousin of mine, who had a horror of being buried alive, and
who, nevertheless, dreaded the idea of cremation. Again, I thought would
not this be the easiest and most practical way of disposing of the bodies of
46
executed criminals? There would also be a dozen different uses to which it
could be successfully put in surgical work of different kinds.
“Well, old friend, I have at last completed my work. I believe I have
succeeded; but it will be for you to prove that. The failure or success of this,
my last experiment, will never be known to me. But, I pray, you know not,
Marden, how earnestly I pray, that it may be as I have hoped. By the
addition of one other ingredient I have prepared a special fluid which, when
I drink it, as I shall do after signing this, will, I believe produce in my body
the changes of which I have spoken. Thus will I efface myself from the
world of men—and of sunlight. Thus, in this death-chair, will I give my
life to atone for the taking of his life, unworthy though he was. You will
keep my secret, I know. God grant that the keeping of it may not weigh too
heavily upon you! And now for the final test, and may God have mercy
upon me! May happiness and peace be yours. Marden. Farewell!"
Tears filled my eyes as I concluded this terrible letter. The laying bare of a
man’s innermost soul. I knew Langhorne’s sensitive nature; I realized how
the constant brooding upon his crime had so preyed upon him, that the poor,
broken, prematurely gray-haired wreck of a man that now sprawled in the
office-chair was the result. As for his “experiment” poor Langhorne. I
understood, now, that toward the end, his mind had given away, and that the
swallowing of the draught in the graduate-glass had produced no other result
than he might have brought about with a well-aimed revolver bullet.
Something seemed to bedim the brightness of the electrolier, and a gloom
which penetrated to the depths of my soul filled me as I laid the letter back
on the desk and looked around. The Davenport caught my eye; I would lay
the remains of my poor friend there, while I went out to notify the proper
authorities. That part of the letter referring to his crime, I would destroy; and
his secret, as he had said, would be safe with me. The other parts of his note
would make plain the manner in which he had ended his own life. I could,
of course, have made use of the telephone to get in communication with
those who must now be called in, but I longed to get a breath of fresh air,
47
and to escape into the very sunlight that poor Langhome had apparently
dreaded so deeply.
I had laid my hat down on the Davenport; now I picked it up and put it on
the table. Then, crossing again to the chair-truly as he had said, a death
chair-I stopped and placed my left hand upon the man’s shoulder — while at
the same time I grasped his right hand in an attempt to detach the glass from
the cramped fingers.
As I did so, that part of what sat there in the chair, crumpled under my
touch and fell away, like the sand falling through an hour-glass, and as I
reeled back in unutterable dismay and horror, I saw the right sleeve flatten
out limply upon the desk, while in place of the hand which held the graduate
was a small heap of gray-black dust!
I closed my eyes. As I opened them again, I saw in the chair only a
disordered pile of clothing, with a great deal more of the gray-black dust on
the floor and the arms of the chair. Scattered about were little bunches of
prematurely gray hair, and I knew, as I gazed, that Randall Langhorne’s last
experiment had been crowned with success!
from The Black Cat, February 1915.
48
THE TERRIBLY NICE OLD LADIES : MINITER
AND BEEBE AT WILBRAHAM
M
rs. Edith May Dowe Miniter (1867-1934)1 is well
documented in Lovecraftian scholarship as H.P.
Lovecraft’s friend, as a leading light of the amateur press
scene, and as an author in her own right.2 In the early 20th century Miniter
was a central figure at amateur press conventions, publishing The Amateur
and the post-convention report journal The Aftermath (1907-1921, possibly
not annually) with Helen M. Small. Lovecraft wrote Miniter a number of
poems, including one for her cat titled To Tat (Edith Miniter’s Cat). Miniter
and Lovecraft wrote affectionate parodies of each other’s work.
A longtime resident of Boston, when she was older Mrs Miniter went to
live in retirement with her cousin Evanore Olds Beebe (1858-1935)3 east of
Wilbraham in a rural part of Western Massachusetts.4 Lovecraft later visited
the house. I have discovered that Evanore Beebe was an interesting
personage in her own right, and this essay largely serves to excavate facts
about Beebe and her locality from the accessible historical record.
1 1867 is correct. In public Mrs Miniter habitually took two years off her actual age. My
thanks to Kenneth W. Faig Jr. for this information.
2 See Kenneth W. Faig Jr.’s edited collections The coast of Bohemia and other writings by Edith
Miniter, Moshassuck Press, 2000; Dead Houses and Other Works by Edith Miniter, Hippocampus
Press, 1998; Going home and other amateur writings by Edith Miniter, Moshassuck Press, 1995; and also
her novel Our Natupski Neighbors, Henry Holt & Co., 1916. Miniter’s papers passed to Lovecraft
and are now held in the library of Brown University.
3 According to one Web account by Lovecraftian tourist Donovan K. Loucks, who wrote of
his rather unfruitful visit to the area in “New England Odyssey”, Beebe was pronounced “beebee”. Miss Beebe died at home on 29th May 1935, and she was buried at Glendale Cemetery.
4 Before which the aging Mrs Miniter was briefly given a home by amateur press publisher
Charles A.A. Parker: “The Parkers did make a home for Edith Miniter in their Malden home in
1924-25, before Edith returned to her birthplace of Wilbraham, Massachusetts to spend her final
years.” – Kenneth Faig, Jr., “Charles A.A. Parker (1878-1965)”, in The Fossil #347, January 2011.
49
Some of the facts I have uncovered further the understanding of the
sources of Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror”, now one of the best
known horror stories of the 20th century.
Maplehurst exterior, pictured in The History of Wilbraham (1913).
50
On the Beebe house:
I have located a circa 1913 photograph (see previous page) of the east
Wilbraham house in which these two venerable ladies resided together.
Beebe lived in this house from 1879 to 1935. Initially she was a nursemaid
there for a sick relative, then inherited the house and the accompanying farm
from her uncle Marcus Daniels…
“Upon the death of the uncle she inherited a farm of some four
hundred acres and this extensive farm acreage she has continued to
successfully manage”.5
A letter by Lovecraft indicates the rather large extent of her land holdings…
“Southward [from the front of the Beebe house] the graceful rise of
Wilbraham Mountain can be seen— this mountain & all the land for
miles around belonging to Miss Beebe.”6
The farm had been valued at $1,5007 in 1860. On inheriting Miss Beebe
called the farmhouse on the land “Maplehurst”, after the maples trees near it.
Lovecraft noted in a later essay that what he called this “large, rambling”
farmhouse was “once an inn”8. The book The History of Wilbraham (1913)
states that Maplehurst was originally named the Mixter Tavern. The Tavern
was built for George Mixter in 1832, and sited at 782 Monson Road.9 The
house appears to have operated as a tavern for only a few years after
construction.
5 Entry on Beebe in Encyclopedia of Massachusetts, Volume 10. (1916). Her uncle was Marcus
Daniels, and Beebe had cared for his ailing wife for many years.
6
From a letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
7
Untitled online official document at www.wilbraham-ma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/177
H.P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter — Estimates and Recollections”, in Miscellaneous Writings,
Arkham House, 1995. Despite a superficial initial resemblance the Beebe house was not the same
as the ‘Auto Inn’ once located in North Wilbraham, views of which are available in a number of
antique postcards — since the back porch of the Auto Inn directly looked out over Nine Mile
Pond (Manchonis Lake), meaning that the places cannot be the same.
8
9 Chauncey E. Peck (Ed.), The History of Wilbraham Massachusetts Prepared in Connection With the
Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, June 15 (1913).
51
Vintage postcard of North Wilbraham railroad station. If Lovecraft was arriving on the Athol
line then he might have arrived at the adjacent Collins Depot and had to cross the tracks.
The sort of Ford farm truck that might have greeted Lovecraft at North Wilbraham rail
depot: a Ford 1929 Model AA Stake Truck. Photo: Karen Schwallie.
52
Lovecraft’s first visit to the Beebe house:
Here is Lovecraft recalling his visit to Miniter and Beebe at Maplehurst in
his “Observations on Several Parts of America”10…
“Meanwhile I was receiving urgent invitations from the learned
Mrs. Miniter, now residing with a cousin on her ancestral rural soil
of Wilbraham, to extend my round of visiting to her part of the
Province; which is but a little south of Athol, across that lovely Swift
River Valley now doom’d to extinction for reservoir purposes.11
Accepting without reluctance, I proceeded thither on [the early
morning of] Friday the 29th of June [1928]; going by rail-road [from
Athol to North Wilbraham depot] and being met by the chaise [a
Ford vehicle] of Mrs. Miniter’s next-door neighbour.12
I found Mrs. Miniter not in the least aged by the five intervening
years since I last beheld her; her defiance of time being somewhat
akin to that of Tryout Smith, whom I last year found unchang’d after
a similar stretch of time.
Wilbraham is a very lovely country— in the rich, gentle way of
Massachusetts as opposed to the bold, dramatick quality of Vermont
scenery. The vegetation is thicker and greener; and the hills, tho’
high and numerous, are more widely spread. Mrs. Miniter’s cousin,
a stout, important gentlewoman of 73, resides on an antient farm just
10 H.P. Lovecraft, “Observations on Several Parts of America”, in Lovecraft’s Collected Essays,
Volume 4: Travel, Hippocampus Press, 2004.
11 Lovecraft alludes to the immense Quabbin reservoir, which broke ground in 1928, and about
which there has been much debate among Lovecraftians regarding its possible inspiration for
Lovecraft’s story “The Colour out of Space”.
12 While “chaise” implies a horse and buggy, the word is a Lovecraft archaism. Mrs Miniter
had actually borrowed a Ford vehicle, and she drove Lovecraft straight to the house. “At the
station I was met by Mrs. Miniter in a neighbour’s Ford” and went by the... “road that winds
around Wilbraham Mountain” (rather than over the mountain, implying he did not see the town
on the first day of the visit). He noted the “larger trees & more luxuriant vegetation” compared
to Vermont, a feature described in “The Dunwich Horror” — all quotes from an unpublished
letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
53
across the marsh-meadows from Wilbraham Mountain;13 at a bend
and dip of the road where giant maples form a green, mystical
arcade. She is head of the local school committee,14 a member of the
taown caouncil, and several other important official things;15 and is
one of the Beebes ancestrally domiciled there.
Curiously enough, she herself [Beebe] happened to be born in
Wisconsin, during a pioneering venture which did not prove
permanent in her family’s case. Miss Beebe is one of the foremost
private collectors of antiques in the country, and has her house
packed with antient material of the most valuable sort; with only
narrow lanes remaining to accommodate the seven cats, two dogs,
and incidental human beings who sometimes traverse the rooms.16
Her farm also contains several poultry, two kine [cows], two aged
horses, and one hired boy.17 18 Her collection will be left to the
museum in Springfield (the nearest city) upon her death.19
13 One of Lovecraft’s poems is: “Edith Miniter: Born on Wilbraham Mountain, Massachusetts
May 5, 1869. Died at North Wilbraham, Massachusetts, June 8, 1934” (in ‘Tryout’ Smith’s
September 1934 issue of Tryout.) Her born name was Edith M. Dowe. Beebe’s house is actually
east of Wilbraham, not in North Wilbraham (which was the railroad depot and presumably also
the receiving Post Office, hence the address). The “Mountain” named is actually the many-peaked
“Wilbraham Mountains”: see the map at the end of this essay.
14
Beebe was a schoolteacher for 18 years, according to Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1918.
When in her late 50s Beebe was also appointed head of the local Historical Committee, a
body which produced the first history book on the area, The History of Wilbraham (1913).
15
16 Lovecraft otherwise noted of the house that... “The place is very neat” — from a letter to
his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
17 The lack of paid labourers might suggest that her farm fields were let or contracted to
neighbouring farmers?
Lovecraft noted that... “the only help is a boy named Chauncey, who sits at table with the
family. He was taken from the poorhouse in Attleboro — but seems a delightfully gentlemanly
person.” — from a letter to Lovecraft’s aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by
David Shultz. Chauncey is given a bit-part in “The Dunwich Horror”. An orphan, he was
presumably named by Beebe after the local poet Chauncey Edwin Peck, suggesting Beebe
remained on good terms with Peck after the publication of their 1913 book.
18
19 A Bulletin of the National Research Council report of 1923 suggests the then Springfield
Ethnological and Natural History Museum may have been unsuitable for her collection in the
1920s: being reported as being cramped in “extremely inadequate” quarters and badly
underfunded even before the Great Depression, and used for exhibitions only. Larger premises
were secured in the mid 1920s.
54
Mrs Edith Miniter. With entry from Woman’s Who’s Who, 1914-15.
My enquiries with the local Director’s Office of the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum were
kindly and swiftly answered. I am grateful for their search of computerised and paper records.
They found an accession record for Miss Beebe relating only to one “harness maker’s bench and
one additional numbered, but unnamed object”, but they no longer have the bench. Margaret
Humberston, the head of Library and Archives at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of
Springfield History, then kindly undertook a newspaper search. She found an... “article in August
1935 in which it is noted that Miss Beebe’s collection was instead sold at auction.” One has to
assume that either there was no space or funds for housing the collection in a local museum, or
that — in the midst of the Great Depression — her relatives had to realise the collection’s cash
value. The press article on the auction is “Extensive collection of antiques of late Evanore O.
Beebe is sold”. It gives extensive details and the names of the major purchasers. It states that
“note books and old ledgers” were sold in the hayloft of the barn, that Miss Beebe kept a visitor’s
book in which was noted the names of all her visitors (if Lovecraft had signed it, it might now be
worth four figures), and that the sale brought in $1,500 on the first of three days. By comparison,
in 1935 Lovecraft’s story “At the Mountains of Madness” was sold to Astounding for $350.
55
Miss Beebe aged about 61, planting a First World War ‘victory tree’ at a school in Wilbraham
in 1918 or 1919. From: Wilbraham by Coralie M. Gray, Arcadia Publishing, 2001.
56
A 20th century view of the Beebe house, painted up and sans covered porch. Possibly circa
1960s, judging by the sharpness of the lens, and the phone wires? Photo: Wilbraham Library.
Interior of Miss Beebe’s house, pictured in The History of Wilbraham (1913).
57
I tarried eight days in Wilbraham, picking up many strange
legends of great interest to me, since both Mrs. Miniter and Miss
Beebe are expert in the curious folklore of that archaick region. I am
at this very moment introducing one, as subsidiary colour, into a
weird novelette I am writing. The peasantry hereabouts are
somewhat decadent, and their odd beliefs and doings would fill
volumes. Of the encroaching Polish element, Mrs. Miniter’s novel
of a decade ago20 treats very fully and cleverly. Old witchcraft
whispers are remembered, and people nowadays wonder why so
many people in a certain part of the neighbouring village of Monson
go mad or kill themselves. I visited all the churchyards and burying
places, and inspected the pleasing village of Wilbraham proper,
where still flourishes the old academy founded in 1825. I was taken
to Monson in a chaise, and walk’d myself to Hampden — a
delightful old town at the bend of a stream, where all the houses are
strung at length along a road winding up the side of a mountain from
the valley. I also visited the other side of Wilbraham Mountain,
where the vistas are vary’d and exquisite, and where a strangely
blasted slope, supporting no living vegetation, is found.”21
At the time of Lovecraft’s visit in summer 1928 he found Beebe…
“now unfortunately an invalid22 — was then virtually the leading
spirit of Wilbraham; a kind of feminine village Pooh-Bah”23
20 Our Natupski Neighbors, published 1916, with an apparently still-unpublished sequel — the
outline and fragments of which are presumably now in the Brown University Library? A scanned
digital facsimile of the published novel of 1916 is available free online at archive.org. Apparently
the Natupski family were near neighbours of Miniter and Beebe at Wilbraham. Kenneth W. Faig
Jr. informs me they did not object to their depiction in fiction, but that the local story was that the
novel was kept “once lock and key at the Wilbraham public library” because so many local people
saw themselves in its characters.
21 H.P. Lovecraft, “Observations on Several Parts of America”, in Lovecraft’s Collected Essays,
Volume 4: Travel. This last point will of course interest researchers on the topography of “The
Colour out of Space” — but note that the visit to the mountain occurs in 1928, over a year after
“Colour” was written in March 1927 (published September 1927). It is possible, however, that
the barren area was mentioned to him by Mrs Miniter prior to his writing the story.
22 A local newspaper obituary of May 1935 states that Miss Beebe had by that date been
publically known to have been ill for four years, i.e. since 1931.
58
Although an “invalid” at the time of the visit Miss Beebe was evidently not
housebound, since Lovecraft noted of her that…
“She drives about in a horse & buggy”24
On the visit Miss Beebe and Mrs Miniter evidently related to Lovecraft
much local antiquarian knowledge and folklore, and the whippoorwill folk
beliefs in particular have been widely noted as entered his fiction in “The
Dunwich Horror”.
He notes that Beebe was a “fountain of weird anecdote”,25 and that…
“The region [of Wilbraham], being very old and remote, is full of the
most extraordinary folklore; some of which will certainly find
lodgment in my future stories if I ever live to write any more.”26
Despite her known abiding interest in the local superstitions and folklore,
Mrs. Miniter (and presumably also the “highly intelligent & cultivated” Miss
Beebe) shared Lovecraft’s outright skepticism on the actual existence of the
supernatural. Lovecraft wrote…
“Notwithstanding her saturation with the spectral lore of the
countryside, Mrs. Miniter did not care for stories of a macabre or
supernatural cast; regarding them as hopelessly extravagant and
unrepresentative of life.” [He also notes that Miniter also wrote, and
probably published] “antiquarian articles”.27
23 Lovecraft refers to Pooh-Bah, the ‘Lord High- Everything-Else’ of the famous Mikado.
Lovecraft notes that by 1928 the house had “the telephone” by which Beebe communicated with
and dominated various local committees — from a letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly
supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
24 From a Lovecraft letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by
David Shultz. Presumably she could not walk any substantial distance.
25
26
Ibid.
Lovecraft to Zelia Bishop, 28th July 1928, Selected Letters II, p.244.
From H.P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter — Estimates and Recollections”, in Miscellaneous
Writings, Arkham House, 1995. The essay originally appeared in The Californian, Vol.5, No.4
(Spring 1938), pp.47-55. Sadly I have not been able to acquire this essay in full due to cost, only
being able to see the Miniter parts of it given in Lovecraft’s posthumous autobiography Lord of a
Visible World.
27
59
Miss Beebe as a collector and antiquarian:
It appears that all the known Miniter writings have been collected in modern
editions,28 but one wonders if any Beebe writings on folklore have been
collected and then surveyed for their possible re-working in Lovecraft’s
fiction?29 But possibly such articles resided in pamphlets and local
newspapers which have since crumbled. Perhaps Beebe never wrote articles.
There is certainly no mention of any Beebe articles in the local newspaper
article on the auction30 or in her local newspaper obituary. Other than her
role in the very substantial local history book of 1913, it appears to me that
Beebe was someone who operated in the performative oral tradition, caring
for her collection not for what it was worth in money — but for what is
symbolised in relation to the locality, and could be made to evoke in her oral
stories told to her many visitors, and for the connections it gave her to a
network of local contacts.
Ella Shannon Bowles (1929)31 wrote that Beebe was then the town’s
leading antiquarian and folklorist…
“Her ancestors lived for a couple of centuries in Massachusetts,
settling early in Ludlow, a Connecticut Valley town. In 1842, her
father32 and was seized with that pioneering spirit which opened up
the middle west, and, with his wife and several small children,
including a babe in arms, he journeyed to Wisconsin by the Erie
I have however been able to see in full an unpublished letter from Lovecraft to his aunt, written
from the Beebe house to his aunt Lillian D. Clark, dated 1st July 1928. The manuscript of the
letter is held at the John Hopkins Library at Brown University. My thanks for this to Mary
Krawczak Wilson, S.T. Joshi, and David E. Schultz. Part of the letter is given by S.T. Joshi in The
Thing on the Doorstep (Penguin Classics, 2001) on p.410. S.T. Joshi also quotes briefly from the
same letter again on p.411 of the Penguin Classics edition, giving Lovecraft’s view of the state and
social division of the local population: this is something he clearly reflects in the social structure
that is described in the story “The Dunwich Horror”.
28
See footnote one. Her novel is also available free in digital facsimile on Archive.org.
29
Due to cost I have not been able to see the Miniter books referred to in footnote one.
30
“Extensive collection of antiques of late Evanore O. Beebe is sold”, The Springfield Republican.
31
Ella Shannon Bowles, About Antiques, J.B. Lippincott, 1929. p.255 onwards.
32
William Hubbard Beebe, whose wife was Rebekah (Olds) Beebe.
60
Canal and covered wagon.33 When Evanore, his youngest child was
born, the log cabin had been abandoned for a comfortable frame
house in the coming city of Fond du Lac. Here the future
antiquarian began her life-work of collecting by saving every bit of
pretty china or glass to be found in the home. In 1879 she returned
to the East, and went to live in the house in Wilbraham,34
Massachusetts which she still occupies. In this way, you see, the
family circle was completed, as Wilbraham is the next town to
Ludlow. The house is called Maplehurst, since huge maple trees
march up and down the road as far as the eye can see. The only
alteration in the hundred-year-old mansion is the removal of the
partitions,35 making a few large rooms of many small ones, in order
that Miss Beebe’s collection may show to the best advantage.
It is interesting to learn how she started it. A gift of pink
Staffordshire36 from her uncle37 was the pivot, and the work of
completing the set occupied many happy hours. Her “dishes” now
cover walls in rows! She began saving [glass] bottles when they were
the despised of amateurs, and her method of hanging them in
windows, known for years as “Beebe style” is now generally
adopted.38 The collecting of glass came along with china, and her
33 See the restored version of the epic feature film “How the West Was Won” (1962) for an
evocative and faithful recreation of those times and that exact trip.
34
Then aged 20, to live with her uncle Marcus Daniels and to care for his ailing wife.
35
Note that partitions are also removed in Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”.
Meaning glazed ceramic china made in North Staffordshire in the English Midlands. It
seems the Beebe family traced their origins to Staffordshire/Warwickshire in the English
Midlands, since it is stated elsewhere that her ancient family records were reputed to be held in
Aston Hall in north Birmingham, in the English Midlands.
36
37 The uncle’s name was Marcus Daniels. An article from the Springfield Weekly Republican,
“Evanore Beebe’s Collection Goes to Historical Society” (4th Aug 1927), noted of Beebe that in
her early years of building the collection... “she started attending auctions when it wasn’t quite the
proper thing for a woman to do.” The same article notes that she estimated that 75% of her
collection had been inherited by her.
38 One wonders if Lovecraft was thus put in mind of his depiction of the mysterious bottles in
his earlier story “The Terrible Old Man” (1920)? One even wonders if a version of this aspect of
her cousin’s collection, related orally or by letter by Miniter to Lovecraft, may have helped shaped
this minor but vivid element of his story.
61
glass-closet, made from the former entrance to the wine cellar of the
house, contains over a thousand small pieces. And the best part of
the collection is the fact that Miss Beebe lives with it! At
Maplehurst you sit on a three-legged stool, or a Hitchcock or
Windsor chair, eat from a tip-table, stir your tea with a rat-tail
spoon, and sleep on feathers in a corded bed!
Cats, numbering from seven to fourteen, wander at will over
sideboards loaded with Sandwich glass, and at least two dogs sleep in
Boston rockers or on settee cradles!39
The house has many visitors, as you may well guess, and they come
all the way from the Pacific coast to Maine. Since nothing is ever
sold at Maplehurst, it has been possible for Miss Beebe to specialize
on articles of all occurrences of importance in her locality. People are
willing to give or sell her valuable objects because they know their
heirlooms will be cherished by one who loves them. She has never
spared time nor effort in the work of preserving matters of local
history. An instance of this are her investigations in regard to the
Ludlow Glass Factory of which I have told you.40
Miss Beebe is a fascinating conversationalist, and is constantly
being consulted for the truth in regard to local historical occurrences.
The town histories of Wilbraham and Ludlow owe more to her than
to anyone else.41 And, best of all, she loves to tell the stories quaint,
39
For more details on Beebe’s cats, see the following section.
Beebe had heard tell of an old pre-war glass factory at Ludlow, questioned every adult in the
locality on it, and was laughed at by the farmers for her quest. But she eventually found one very
old woman who remembered where the factory was. From that lead a fellow historian was able
to comb the official land records and confirm the details of a very early glass factory on the site.
Beebe’s collection of Ludlow bottles 1812-30 is listed in the book Early American Glass (1948).
40
Possibly Beebe’s story of the failure of this glass factory was what Lovecraft alludes to in “The
Dunwich Horror”, when he writes of the locality that… “Industry did not flourish here, and the
nineteenth-century factory movement proved short-lived”.
41 Chauncey E. Peck (Ed.), The History of Wilbraham Massachusetts Prepared in Connection With the
Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, June 15 (1913).
Local poet Chauncey E. Peck was officially editor, Beebe being appointed his secretary. Sadly the
book contains no section on superstitions or folklore, indeed no mention of it that I can find, by
which Lovecraftians might have learned more of the local folklore told to Lovecraft on his visit.
62
tragic, or comic of her platters and tea caddies, pine desks and bird’seye maple tables, the Bennington cow, the hound pitcher, and the
unique cup-plate upon which a lover presents his lady-love with a
pig!
Every paper on old-time lore written by a conscientious club
woman assists in preserving the traditions of New England or of any
part of the country about which she chooses to tell.”42
Beebe was also known to have also collected or inherited early women’s
needle and fabric works, and antique clothes…
“[not only] garments of “ye olden times,” but rare antique linen
spreads and covers of exquisite workmanship”43
An article from the Springfield Weekly, circa 1920s,44 states many of the
spreads had been made by Beebe’s grandmother, an “Anne Gardiner of
Gardiner’s Island”...
“When she was weaving the spreads, the witches got so thick in the
spinning room that she had to move across a brook to banish them.
[and Miss Beebe told the reporter of this, that she did this because]
“Witches can’t cross running water”.”
Presumably this Anne Gardiner is the “grandmother” Lovecraft referred to,
when he wrote to Robert E. Howard...
“I know an old lady in Wilbraham whose grandmother, about a
century ago, was said to be able to raise a wind by muttering at the
sky.”45
By such connections...
42
Ella Shannon Bowles, About Antiques, J. B. Lippincott, 1929. p.255.
43
Entry on Beebe in Encyclopedia of Massachusetts, Volume 10.
Springfield Weekly Republican, “Evanore Beebe’s Collection Goes to Historical Society”, 4th
Aug 1927.
44
45
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters III. p.183.
63
“my knowledge of old New England lore was virtually trebled
during my stay”46
The antiquarian Lovecraft is also known to have visited “Glendale and its
ancient church and churchyard” and the unremarkable Wilbraham village
and its “moss-grown” graveyards.47
Beebe also shared something with Lovecraft, other than his general
antiquarianism and interest in folklore and folk beliefs, since she was a
collector of antique almanacs. She had… “a fine rare collection of old
almanacs and anti-slavery documents”48 Lovecraft also had a prized
collection of antique farmer’s almanacs.49 Indeed, one wonders if he may
have acquired some of them as a gift via Beebe’s collection.
A further detailed account of Miss Beebe’s collection circa the early 1910s
is to be found in The History of Wilbraham (1913)…
“The collection bears the name of the Beebe collection, named for
Miss E. O. Beebe [In a special public exhibition…] One room was
filled with rare old china, another with needle craft, while in a
chamber upstairs was displayed articles in use in a home of the year
1830. The articles on the veranda all came from the attic. In the
first or china room stood a long table on which was arranged old
china in the order of its date or years of service. Here were seen old
wooden utensils used in Wilbraham, stag horn sets, specimens of
wedding dishes, such as the wedding china of John and Lucia
Calkins. The collection of Ludlow bottles is probably the best in the
state. In the typical living room of 75 years ago there could scarcely
46
Lovecraft, Lord of a Visible World, p.240.
47
The History of Wilbraham (1913), p.358. I have found an online transcript of “Rev. [Noah]
Atwater's 1787 Diary”, a Wilbraham diary made in an old farmer’s almanac. Interestingly it gives
the name of “Hoadly” as being a local man known to Atwater and from whom he purchased
cows. A fictitious Rev. Abijah Hoadley appears in Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”, based on
Wilbraham. On a more likely source for Hoadley, see the note that follows this essay.
48
49
S.T. Joshi, in Lovecraft’s Library, states his collection was then one of the finest in the country.
64
be found anything that was modem. The fireplace with its ancient
foot stoves and warming pans, was decidedly unique, and scattered
about the room were the Beebe coat of arms worked here and there,
an old sampler of 1793, a Hancock’s Bible sent in by a gentleman
living at a distance, a replica of a lady’s sewing table, charts dating
long ago, and more china. In an old closet was glassware of every
description; this was fitted up with furnishings from an old
Wilbraham house. In one of the upstairs rooms was a fine rare
collection of old almanacs and anti-slavery documents. A chair
nearby contained a full gentleman’s costume of the old time, with tall
hat, vest, gloves, necktie and collar. On a large, curious bed was
arranged a young woman’s costume of 75 years ago. The replica of a
room of 1830 contained an old-fashioned high bed, rag carpet, wax
flowers, and on the bed referred to, the entire costume of an old-time
lady. The tables here and all through the house were draped in
homespun and old-time fabrics used as backgrounds. The piazza was
perhaps the most interesting of all, and here were arranged various
curiosities, many hardly understood by the present generation, such
as a bee smoker for driving out bees, queer reels and wheels, strange
appearing cradles, a pedler’s trunk50, a picture painted by Miss
Brewer, second preceptress [head teacher] of the academy, a large
bread trough in which children could be rocked in case of
emergency, queer lanterns, ladies’ caps and slippers, baskets and
unique examples of the photographer’s art. The Mixter tavern,
where the exhibit was held and in which Miss Beebe makes her
home, is nearly as ancient as the treasures that it holds and admirably
adapted for the purpose. Miss Beebe was assisted in her explanation
of the antiques by Mrs. Edith Miniter of Boston.”
50
A “jocose fish-pedlar” features in “The Dunwich Horror”.
65
Creatures of fire and fur:
Lovecraft saw in the fields across from the Beebe house an…
“absolutely marvellous firefly display ... All agree that it was
unprecedented, even for Wilbraham. Level fields & woodland aisles
were alive with dancing lights, till all the night seemed one restless
constellation of nervous witch-fire. They leaped in the meadows, &
under the spectral old oaks at the bend of the road. They danced
tumultuously in the swampy hollow, & held witches’ sabbaths
beneath the gnarled, ancient trees of the orchard”.51 [Lovecraft went
to bed afterwards to dream the fireflies into…] “spectral torches, &
about the lean brown marsh-things (invisible to mortal eyes) who
wave & brandish them in the gloaming when the unseen nether
world awakes.”52
I note there is a pond at the first field junction of the private unpaved road
directly opposite the Beebe house. This, and the tremendous rain from a
thunderstorm earlier in the day,53 probably served as a spur for the fireflies.
There were other, more familiar, creatures to observe. Lovecraft the cat
lover was charmed by the Beebe house cats…
“The hours spent at Maplehurst among the old books and
antiques, with [the cats] Pettie and Tardee and the Prince weaving
dexterously through the narrow lanes of navigation and venerable
Printer often drowsing, purring, or sneezing in my lap, will not soon
51 Unpublished letter from Lovecraft to his aunt, written from the Beebe house to his aunt
Lillian D. Clark, dated 1st July 1928. The manuscript of the letter is held at the John Hopkins
Library at Brown University. My thanks for this to Mary Krawczak Wilson, S.T. Joshi, and David
E. Schultz. Part of the letter is given by S.T. Joshi in The Thing on the Doorstep (Penguin Classics,
2001) on p.410. There had been a thunderstorm on the Sunday, in which Lovecraft was caught
while attempting the visit the mountain (probably Wigwam Hill, the nearest peak to the Beebe
house), which had presumably provoked the fine display of fireflies on Sunday evening.
52
Lovecraft letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
53 He and Miniter had tried to reach the mountain, but were forced back by the heavy rain.
That he later achieved it is noted in a letter to Zelia Bishop (Selected Letters II, 28th July 1928,
p.244), when he writes of his... “walk around the mountain and almost over its crest.”
66
be forgotten. Mrs Miniter and Miss Beebe formed unsurpassable
hosts.” 54
He was especially delighted to note one old New England custom, which
was actually embodied within the very fabric of the Beebe house…
“[the] cat-ladders inside the chimney of farmhouses, to enable the
cats to climb from floor to floor when all the doors are shut. There is
a fine system of cat ladders in this house”.55
An article from the Springfield Weekly Republican,56 states that the cats were
to be kept on at the Beebe property after her death, and that they would
continue to luxuriate in “beds of catnip”.57 Presumably this meant outdoors
plant beds, implying the farmer58 who purchased ‘Maplehurst’ and the farm
kept on Beebe’s cats to deal with mice. This implies a swift purchase, and so
the house would likely not have been empty on Lovecraft’s second visit.
Lovecraft’s second visit to the Beebe house:
H.P. Lovecraft is known to have made one further visit to Wilbraham, in the
company of Edward H. Cole, on 20th-23rd September 1935. He wrote…
“I was the guest of Mrs. M[initer] and her cousin Miss Beebe in
1928. [On the later 1935 visit…] A spectral aura seemed to hang
over the immemorial hills — though there were no outward
evidences of change since I was there before.”59
54 From H.P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter — Estimates and Recollections”, in Miscellaneous
Writings, Arkham House, 1995.
David Shultz. Printer was the only cat who knew how to use these, though.
56 Springfield Weekly Republican, “Evanore Beebe’s Collection Goes to Historical Society”, 4th
August 1927. I am grateful to Margaret Humberston, head of Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum
of Springfield History, for sending me this article.
57
Lovecraft carried catnip with him, to attract local cats while on his various travels.
58
Denny Smith and family.
59
Letter to Galpin, dated 17th January 1936, quoted online by Chris Perridas.
67
The object of this 1935 visit was to fulfill a long-delayed promise to scatter
the ashes of Mrs. Miniter’s mother, Mrs. Dowe — who had died in 1919.60
Presumably this was Mrs. Miniter’s last wish, Miniter herself having died 8th
June 1934. S.T. Joshi states that half of Mrs. Dowe’s ashes went into a local
burying ground called the Dell cemetery, and the other half scattered in the
rose garden at Beebe’s Maplehurst house.61 If Chris Perridas is correct that
this rose garden was… “once beloved by Dowe”62, then this last gesture
might imply that Mrs. Dowe had also once shared the Maplehurst house
with a then-younger Miss Beebe, prior to her death in 1919?
At the time of the scattering of the Dowe ashes Miss Beebe was no longer
at her house, having died there some four months earlier on 29th May 1935.
Presumably the public auction of Miss Beebe’s collections and effects was
over by the latter part of September 1935, and the house was by then cleared
by her relatives. Perhaps Maplehurst was still empty, it then being the
middle of the Great Depression and many local houses empty.63 But the
local newspaper assured readers that Beebe’s cats would still be able to
luxuriate in their accustomed “beds of catnip”64 after her death, suggesting
that the house was set to be swiftly sold to Denny Smith and his family, and
that he had agreed to keep the cats on as farm mousers.
60 On Mrs. Dowe I note that... “Mrs. Miniter furnished a magnificent tribute in the form of a
biographical sketch of her mother” in the amateur press, according to H.P. Lovecraft in the essay
“Mrs. Miniter — Estimates and Recollections”, in Miscellaneous Writings, Arkham House, 1995, p.
472. Jennie Elizabeth Tupper Dowe (d.1919) was an amateur journalist and songwriter in her
own right. On her life and work see the essay in: In Memoriam, Jennie E.T. Dowe, W.P. Cook, 1921.
On her poems see Kenneth W. Faig Jr., “When Grandma Went A-Courting: Ancestral Romance
in the Poetry of Jennie E.T. Dowe and Edith Miniter”, a limited edition pamphlet circa 1999.
61
S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, Hippocampus Press, 2010, p.955.
62
According to Chris Perridas. H P. Lovecraft And His Legacy blog, “Whippoorwills II”.
There had been depopulation in some rural areas of the New England in the 1930s. Even
before the times of hardship, Lovecraft implied that many Wilbraham houses were empty...
63
“Nothing had changed — the hills, the road, the dead houses, the village — all the
same” letter in O Fortunate Floridian, p.293. Quoted by S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence.
64
Springfield Weekly Republican, “Evanore Beebe’s Collection Goes to Historical Society”.
68
Quite what occurred on the other two days of the 1935 Wilbraham area
visit I have not been able to discover. S.T. Joshi gives the trip dates as “20th23rd September 1935”, so one imagines it was perhaps a three-day visit.
Possibly it was only an “arrive afternoon – spend one day – leave the next
morning” three-day trip. There may be a few more details to be found in the
collected volumes of Lovecraft letters to Galpin and to Barlow which
mention the visit, but to which I do not currently have access.65
Conclusion:
To conclude the body of this essay, it may be useful for me to now briefly list
the fiction by H.P. Lovecraft which, it has been variously suggested, may
have been influenced by his 1928 visit:—
1. “The Dreams in the Witch-House” (1932): possibly influenced by the
Polish folklore in Miniter’s novel Our Natupski Neighbors. Perhaps
there was even an influence from this novel’s (still) unpublished sequel,
since one wonders if Lovecraft may have read the sequel in typescript
during his stay in 1928?66
2. “The Dunwich Horror” (1928):
i. the commonly cited and central incorporation of the folklore of the
‘whip-poor-wills’ or whippoorwills.67 The local Wilbraham boy from
65 The letter is in O Fortunate Floridian: H.P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R.H. Barlow, University of
Tampa Press, 2007. Sadly I do not have access to this book. The Galpin letter is 17th January
1936, as quoted by Chris Perridas.
66 Possibly not, since Lovecraft might have noted this in his letter to his aunt dated 1ts July
1928. In this letter he does note that he read another novel while there, A Mirror for Witches, by
Esther Forbes.
67 Timothy H. Evans in Journal of Folklore Research (2005, vols.42-43, p.117) cites Faye Ringel’s
book New England’s Gothic literature (1995) to claim Lovecraft learned of this lore from Hazard’s
Recollections of olden times (1879), a book wrongly claimed by both Evans and Ringel to be a
“collection of Rhode Island folklore” (it is actually simply half recollections, and half genealogies,
and the whippoorwill belief is incidental and attributed to a madwoman). But evidently they are
both wrong. Lovecraft learned this folklore from Miniter or Beebe, since he writes of it that... “I
heard [it] only last month during my sojourn in Wilbraham” (Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P.
Lovecraft and August Derleth, p.151).
69
Beebe Road, Michael D. Strahan, noted in an article that Lovecraft
wrote of Wilbraham… “I saw the ruinous, deserted old Randolph
Beebe house where the whippoorwills cluster abnormally”.68
ii. S.T. Joshi suggests in several books and essays the strong and
obvious basis of the story in the topography of Wilbraham, and he also
suggests Sentinel Hill as being inspired by Wilbraham Mountain.69
iii. Lovecraft describes the “Devil’s Hop Yard” area of blasted lifeless
heath on Sentinel Hill — “a bleak, blasted hillside where no tree,
shrub, or grass-blade will grow” — which is similar to a real barren
area somewhere on Wilbraham Mountains (described below in item 5).
iv. the 28th June 1928 visit by Lovecraft and H. Warner Munn to the
nearby topographic feature of the Bear’s Den, at North New Salem
near Athol, is a commonly cited influence on the story.
v. one also has to wonder what part the barns and smells of the Beebe
farm might have played in Lovecraft’s depiction of the Whateley
farm?70 Note that Lovecraft also describes internal partitions being
removed by Whateley to create larger and larger spaces to house the
ever-growing monster — “the youth and his grandfather had knocked
68 Michael D. Strahan, “Western Massachusetts may harbor many untold stories!”, in The
Republican, 25th February 2009.
69 S.T. Joshi and David E. Shultz, entry on “Dunwich” in The Lovecraft Encylopedia,
Hippocampus Press, 2001. S.T. Joshi, The annotated H.P. Lovecraft , Dell, 1997, p. 114. There is
actually a chain of peaks, Mount Vision (formerly Rattlesnake Peak) and Wigwam Hill, at approx.
800ft each, and the main peak now called Mt. Chapin at 937ft (see map at the end of this essay).
I fully agree with Joshi’s assessment. The story’s setting is an artful combination of the real:
“too rounded and symmetrical” Wilbraham Mountains; the blasted lifeless spot on the Mountains;
east Wilbraham and the road with rickety covered bridges (one collapsed in 1938) that Lovecraft
took to get to the house from North Wilbraham rail depot; possibly a farmhouse known to
Lovecraft at Athol, perhaps combined with aspects of the old Randolph Beebe house; Beebe’s
huge barn; and of course the Bear’s Den. Where Lovecraft had the “the great rings of roughhewn stone columns on the hilltops” from is likely to remain unknown, since this gothic flourish
could have been inspired by any one of the large numbers of glacial boulders and stone structures
to be found on many New England hilltops. The ‘Moodus Noises’ supplied the earth noises.
70 The Whateley farm is described as... “a large and partly inhabited farmhouse set against a
hillside four miles from the village”. The Beebe house is some two miles from Wilbraham, over
the Mountains.
70
out all the partitions” — just as Ella Shannon Bowles (1929) says
Beebe had done in order to house her ever-growing collection.
vi. I note elsewhere in this essay that several points of local history
seem to be incorporated into the story: the failed glass factory, the
“1747” date (see appendix four), the locale’s unusual social hierarchy.
vii. while at the Beebe house in 1928 Lovecraft read the novel A
Mirror for Witches, by Esther Forbes.71 Forbes’s 1928 novel of Salem
witchcraft has a heroine bearing a resemblance to the girl of “The
Dunwich Horror”. Doll Bilby72 is a small and wild-eyed ‘outsider’ girl
who loves nature, but who is accused of witchcraft. Her accusers
establish the facts of this at every stage of her life, and thus ‘prove’ that
she was growing up as a demon from the earliest age. The double
source here for the basis of Lavina and Wilbur Whateley seems
obvious. The name of “Wilbur” seems to be Lovecraft’s obvious nod to
the place name of “Wilbraham”.
3. “The Unnamable” (1923): has a passing mention of Miniter’s local
folklore about windows, heard prior to his 1928 visit.
4. “The Trap” (1931): has, I argue, a more central use of Miniter’s local
folklore about windows.73
71 Stated in a Lovecraft letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by
David Shultz.
72 The story based on the real Moll Pitcher of Marblehead, witch daughter of wizard Edward
Dimond, some of the facts of which were also known to Lovecraft.
73 With Henry S. Whitehead. See my detailed exploration of this in my essay on the story, to be
found in my book Lovecraft in Historical Context: a third collection (2012), on pages 85-88. Of a 1923
visit to Mrs. Miniter Lovecraft wrote…
“Mrs. Miniter supplied many [Wilbraham] legends and particulars which no
guidebook could furnish — it was on this occasion [1923] that I first heard of the rustic
superstition which asserts that window-panes slowly absorb and retain the likeness of
those who habitually sit by them, year after year.”
For more on this folklore see also Barbara Allen, “The ‘image on the glass’: technology, tradition,
and the emergence of folklore”, Western Folklore Vol.41, No.2., April 1982, pp.85-103. The same
essay is also to be found in Contemporary Legend: a reader (1996).
71
5. “The Colour out of Space” (1927): some Lovecraftian researchers have
surmised that Lovecraft’s visit to a real spot on the Wilbraham
Mountains, a… “strangely blasted slope, supporting no living
vegetation”, as being an inspiration for the blasted heath.74 Also the
nearby planned reservoir of Quabbin (1926-1946, soil first broken
1928), a location to the north of Wilbraham still debated and even
visited by some Lovecraftians.75
So it is clear that the visit to the Beebe / Miniter household, although
relatively brief,76 was very fruitful for Lovecraft, and found its way into his
fiction. One wonders if there might be a few more such influences on his
work, waiting to be discovered.
74 But this cannot be the source, unless Lovecraft had perhaps heard of it earlier from Mrs.
Miniter. Since “Colour” had been written and published by the time of his actual visit to the
mountain. A Miniter source is possible, though, since she was apparently born on the mountain.
75 Lovecraft did see a little of the area to be flooded by Quabbin, since he travelled to the
North Wilbraham depot on...
“a line which is doomed to go out of existence when the beautiful Swift River Valley
is flooded to make a reservoir for Boston. The scenery was very fine, though of course
I did not get so good a sight of it [as would have been possible by car]” — unpublished
letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by David Shultz.
76 Lovecraft was apparently invited for up to two weeks, but he recalled staying for only eight
days (S.T. Joshi states 29th June—7th July 1928), as the stay was part of a summer tour of New
England sights and people.
72
A topographical map of 1892 marked with the exact location of the house, shown in relation
to Wilbraham and North Wilbraham and the Wilbraham Mountains. Four Corners is just off
my map, possibly an inspiration for the fictional Dean’s Corners in “The Dunwich Horror”.
73
Appendix One, the exact location of the Beebe house:
The “rounded” Wilbraham Mountains, seen from Glendale Cemetery, 1983. Picture: Joe
Roberts. This is the only online colour photograph I have been able to find of the mountains,
and the land seems remarkably unphotographed for a locality of which Lovecraft says: “The
country is very beautiful & traditional indeed, & undoubtedly represents the inland landscape
of Western New England at its best.” In this mystery one is reminded of what Lovecraft
wrote of Dunwich: “all the signboards pointing towards it have been taken down” and that
despite its beauty there was “no influx of artists” to depict it.
here amid these long mountains was the Beebe house? Learning
W the answer to this will be of special interest to Lovecraftian tourists.
My online-only quest to find the exact location of the Beebe house led first
to Google Street View. This service proved to be badly awry in pinpointing
the address of the Beebe house. But with the aid of a page of a local housesales agent and their link to Microsoft’s alternative map service, I discovered
that the house is actually about two miles east of Wilbraham, on the other
side of the mountains from the town, and is just south of the Edson Drive
turning on the Wilbraham / Monson Rd. The true Google Maps location
for 782 Monson Rd. is: http://goo.gl/maps/la8lb and the Google Street
View there shows the house is indeed at a bend and just before a dip of the
road, as Lovecraft had described it. A “Beebe Road” starts at the bottom of
this short dip, and I wonder if this was posthumously named in memory of
Evanore Beebe?
74
The Beebe house today, on Google Street View, sans porch.
Above: the Beebe house after her death, as a working farmhouse circa the 1940s.
“The Denny Smith residence on Monson Road... At one time the home was owned by
Evanore Beebe […] Because of the many large maple trees, she called the home Maplehurst.”
From: Wilbraham by Coralie M. Gray, Arcadia Publishing, 2001.
75
The Beebe house and barns, seen today on the satellite photography of Google Maps.
Unpaved avenue of trees from the Beebe house, seemingly running to the Glendale Road.
The “giant maples [which] form a green, mystical arcade” mentioned by
Lovecraft do not appear to overly over-bower the road today (judging from
Google Street View). While observing the fireflies in the fields he wrote of
the “spectral old oaks at the bend of the road” on which the Beebe house
stood, rather than maples. So one wonders if the avenue of trees seen in the
photo above, seemingly serving as a continuation of the Beebe house’s
driveway, may have been her private avenue of maples leading across her farm
fields to the Glendale Road? Indeed, it seems this lane of trees must be the
very…
76
“curious abandoned road [that] connects the [Beebe] house with
the mountain—it is picturesque to see the tall grass growing between
stone walls where chaises & farmers’ wains once ran.”77
Appendix Two, Whale Rock:
ncidentally, there is one notable local ancient ‘monstrous’ antiquity
I which Lovecraft may have visited, although if he did it is not recorded
in his formal memoir of Mrs. Miniter.78 On taking a walk of some three
miles directly north of the Beebe farmhouse, visitors can find the monstrous
Whale Rock, discovered and known to locals since circa 190079…
Photo: Joe Roberts. Whale Rock seen in a deep snowdrift.
77 Lovecraft letter to his aunt Lillian, 1st July 1928, kindly supplied in transcript by David
Shultz.
78 Lovecraft does not mention such a visit in the texts to which I have access. But it would
have been unseemly of him to have digressed on this matter in his memoir of Mrs Miniter, if she
had not actually accompanied him on a visit to the Whale Rock.
79
Chauncey E. Peck (Ed.), The History of Wilbraham (1913).
77
Whale Rock in spring. Photo: Wilbraham Open Space and Recreation Plan Committee.
Size comparison. Photo: Wilbraham Open Space and Recreation Plan Committee.
This appears to be the same rock illustrated as the “Soapstone Boulder” on
page 23 of The History of Wilbraham (1913), where it is very briefly surmised
that the local Indian carvers (one of whom is elsewhere named as Wal-no78
kim) may have carved Indian soapstone bowl dishes from fragments of the
rock. This is possible, as there was a (then unexcavated) traditional Indian
stone bowl quarry in the north of the mountains, a little way north from the
Whale Rock across the valley stream.80 Since the Whale Rock is illustrated
in The History of Wilbraham, and as it was only a few miles north from their
home, the ladies would likely have known of it. Indeed Mrs Miniter, then
aged 59, could evidently still hike trails, since Lovecraft wrote that she …
“takes long rural walks” [and that] “…one day Mrs. Miniter
shewed me a deep, mute ravine beyond the Randolph Beebe house,
along whose far-off wooded floor an unseen stream trickles in eternal
shadow.”
Miniter also took Lovecraft on a delightful Saturday morning walking trip
“to the north” of the house, and one wonders if this was possibly in search of
the Whale Rock? The retinue included an adventurous cat, Old Fats …
“Saturday better weather enabled me to take a walk through some
of the picturesque country to the north, Mrs. Miniter serving as
guide whilst both dogs & one of the cats acted as a quadrupedal
retinue. I never before saw a cat which followed persons over hill &
dale like a dog.” 81
There are of course numerous such giant glacial boulders in New England,
any one of which may put the Lovecraftian scholar in mind of the “tablelike” and “sinister altar-like stone on the summit” of Sentinel Hill in
Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror”. However, S.T. Joshi clearly gives
Wilbraham Mountain as the likely inspiration for Sentinel Hill.82
80 William S. Fowler, “The Wilbraham stone bowl quarry”, Massachusetts Archaeological Society
Bulletin Vol.30, No.3-4, pp.9-21, 1972. W.J. Howes, “Indian Soapstone Quarries of Western
Massachusetts” (Westfield and Wilbraham), Mass. Archeological Society Bulletin, Vol.5, No.4,
July 1944.
David Shultz. Other letters also indicate she and Lovecraft took long hikes during the visit.
82 S.T. Joshi, The annotated H.P. Lovecraft , Dell, 1997, p.114. I agree with Joshi, but have also
found that there is another hill in Wilbraham that has or had a notable boulder on top. In 1864
Rufus Phineas Stebbins noted two fine paintings of key Wilbraham scenes, and in a description of
79
Appendix Three, the Blasted Slope:
The blasted slope can be located, to some extent, and it is perhaps important
to do so because some may be chasing it as a likely inspiration for “The
Colour Out of Space”. But scholars should note that the visit to the
mountain occurred in 1928, over a year after “Colour” was written in March
1927 (published September 1927). It is just possible, however, that this
strange barren area was mentioned to Lovecraft by Mrs Miniter in a letter
prior to his writing the story. Lovecraft reports83 that on one outing on foot
he and Mrs Miniter took a woodland trail behind the private prep school
called the Wilbraham & Monson Academy (1825), a route which then led
over rustic roads on the “mountain side” — this must have been Ridge Rd —
to the house where Mrs Miniter was born, with their route ending back at
the Beebe house. It seems to me that the blasted slope may thus be the bare
patch of mountain seen at this location: http://goo.gl/maps/i5CHD
Lovecraft described the area of the blasted slope in a letter…
“A strangely basted slope where grey, dead trees claw at the sky
with leafless boughs amidst the abomination of desolation.
Vegetation will grow here no longer — why, no one can tell.”84
Appendix Four, Wilbraham in weird fiction other than by Lovecraft:
s a minor note for those interested in the conjunction of Wilbraham
A and weird fiction, I should mention that August Derleth wrote a
weird fiction story set outside of Wilbraham. It is set in a house which,
while imagined as far grander and statelier than that of Beebe, has much the
same situation as the Beebe house. To me this suggests Derleth may have
the second painting he refers tantalizingly to… “The boulder perched upon the hill back of the
house of J. Wesley Bliss Esq.” See: Rufus Phineas Stebbins, An Historical Address delivered at the
Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Wilbraham, Jan. 15, 1863. With an Appendix,
Boston, 1864. I have not been able to discover the name of the hill Stebbins refers to.
83
84
Ibid.
80
actually located and visited the Beebe house in search of lost Lovecraft
letters. His story was the horror tale “The Peabody Heritage” (1957), one of
Derleth’s lesser ‘posthumous collaborations’ with Lovecraft. S.T. Joshi states
it is almost entirely Derleth’s own work. An online video critique by Wilum
Pugmire states the story to be based on Entry 142 in Lovecraft’s
Commonplace Book, merged together with many elements directly borrowed
from Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”.85 “The Peabody
Heritage” was widely read during the Lovecraft revival of the 1960s and 70s,
in the popular paperback titled The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror.
The Peabody Heritage, story header by David Arshawsky.
Wilbraham also features briefly but pointedly in Robert M. Price’s
Lovecraftian horror story “Acute Spiritual Fear” (2003),86 a sequel to “The
Dunwich Horror”. There are a number of other sequels to “The Dunwich
Horror”87 but I have not been able to discover any further authors who have
explicitly named the town or its mountains in their weird or supernatural
fiction. Most authors are content to simply make “Dunwich” their setting,
and only those who have actually visited east Wilbraham seem likely to
include it as a named place in their stories.
85
Wilum Pugmire, YouTube video, book critique, posted online 20th March 2011.
86 To be found online and in Robert M. Price, Tales out of Dunwich, Hippocampus Press, 2004.
It has been called... “perhaps his best story” and it is certainly memorable.
Stanley C. Sargent’s “The Black Brat of Dunwich”, August Derleth’s “The Watchers Out of
Time” (based on a Lovecraft fragment), and Wilum Pugmire’s “Sinless Infancy”, among others.
87
81
Appendix Five, Wigwam Hill:
igwam Hill88 is the 860ft Wilbraham Mountains peak, one of
W three, visible directly across from the Beebe house (see the
topographical map with this essay). Like Sentinel Hill in “The Dunwich
Horror” the Wigwam Hill peak played a major religious role in the locality,
due to the building there of the town’s church meeting house. This project
was organized in 1741 and, after years of tedious debate, the church was
finally built at the top of the peak. The first meeting was held there 25th Dec
1747.89 Note that “1747” is the same date that is given by Lovecraft in “The
Dunwich Horror” for the preaching of the warning sermon…
“In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the
Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable
sermon…”
This “1747” date and the phrase “newly come” suggest that Wilbraham’s
history, as well as its folklore and topography, was precisely incorporated into
the story. Lovecraft had probably heard such exact historical details from
Miss Beebe, or had read them in her personal local history library.
All this might seem to indicate Wigwam Hill as being the peak among the
three high peaks of the Wilbraham Mountains most likely to approximate to
the inspiration for Lovecraft’s fictional “Sentinel Hill”.
88 Wigwam Hill is so named because an American Indian woman of the area, We-sha-u-gan of
the Nipmuc tribe, lived there alone in a wigwam for many years… “after the white man came”
(History of Wilbraham, 1863). We-sha-u-gan appears to have been the last surviving Indian of the
region, and possibly chose the spot because it had been a traditional campground for her people.
For a history of the local Indian people see the exhibition notes for “Old Meeting House Native
American Exhibit” which are freely available online at
www.wilbrahamatheneum.org/pdf/NipmucIndians.pdf
A fatal case of rattlesnake bite in 1761 on the next-door Rattlesnake Peak (later given the more
enticing name of Mount Vision) in the Wilbraham Mountains gave rise to the ballad “Springfield
Mountain”. This is said to be one of the first noted down folk ballads... “of which both words
and melody are believed to be indigenous to America”. Lovecraft mentioned it in his letters from
Wilbraham, so knew of it.
These two facing peaks of the Wilbraham Mountains thus offer to each other a poignant
historical mirror, reflecting two ways of life — the old one dying and the new one being born.
89
The building was later removed and taken down to the town in 1794.
82
A letter from Lovecraft also recalls the view from roads near the top…
“The road winds mystically aloft into a region of hushed skiedmeadow-land, seemingly half apart from time and change, and
abounding in breath-taking vistas. Through the haze of distance
other mountains loom purple and mysterious. A line of fog marks
the great Connecticut, and the smoke of Springfield clouds the
southwestern horizon. Sometimes even the gold dome of the
Hartford state house, far to the south, can be discerned.”90
There is a vivid 1864 description of the view from the top of Wigwam Hill,
which indicates its importance to the local people. It is a view which
Lovecraft and Mrs. Miniter could still have enjoyed in the summer of 1928...
“As they went up to worship [i.e.: the village going to the meeting
house on top of Wigwam Hill], the land lay spread out before them.
From its door the whole valley of the “Great River,” from the
mountains on the north, Holyoke and Tom, to below Hartford on
the south, was visible. The open fields of the first settlers — of Burt
and Hitchcock and Brewer and Warriner and Merrick — were under
their feet; and on to the west, over forests and meadows, could be
seen the blue line of vapor, signalizing the homes of the old settlers
in Springfield Street; or the white cloud of fog, lying low along the
tree-tops, indicating the course of the river from its gateway between
the mountains to the settlement at Middletown. And beyond, more
than twenty miles away, rose the blue ridges of the Green
Mountains, tipped with gold in the morning, veiled in purple in the
evening; and when the frosts touched the forest in autumn, how the
red maple flamed among the trees; and the green of the pines and
the yellow of the walnut caused the whole vast landscape to appear
like a gorgeous carpet woven in the loom of the gods.”91
90
Rufus Phineas Stebbins, An Historical Address delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the
Incorporation of the Town of Wilbraham, Jan. 15, 1863. With an Appendix, Boston, 1864. pp.55-56.
91
83
Appendix Six, a two-part museum exhibition proposal:
Exhibition One
On the women writers and folklorists of Wilbraham: Miniter / Beebe /
Dowe and any others known locally:
1. Photos of Beebe and Miniter and the house and her collection. With
maps, and illustrated information boards for the kids about the Beebe house’s
curious “cats-ladders”.
2. The local folklore which fascinated Miniter and Beebe (and later
Lovecraft). Perhaps accompanied by photographs of the local fireflies noted
so vividly by Lovecraft. A poetic comparison might be made between the
fleeting nature of the fireflies and the fleeting fragility of folklore / the
historical details of the fabric of women’s lives. I note that the acclaimed
American photographer Gregory Crewsdon published a marvelously gothic
book of his photographs of fireflies at night. These and the folklore noted in
my essay would serve to link the first part of the exhibition to the mood of
the second part on H.P. Lovecraft and his use of Wilbraham in fiction.
3. A push-button audio reading of Lovecraft’s fine essay on his memories
of Mrs Miniter, voiced by a local actor.
4. Copies of the 1913 history book of Wilbraham for which Beebe was the
secretary (and which Bowles suggests she more than half wrote).
5. Miniter’s local novel and its unpublished sequel (outline and fragments).
Also her other two unpublished novels (Lydia ‘n Gerald, and The Village
Green),92 and some of her best poetry.
6. Information boards about Miniter and about what the amateur
journalism movement was, and the publishing outlets open to intelligent
women circa 1890s-1920s. Photographs of Lovecraft etc.
92
I am indebted to Kenneth W. Faig Jr. for telling me of the existence of these.
84
7. Works by Miniter’s mother, the Wilbraham poet and amateur journalist
Jennie Elizabeth Tupper Dowe. Also the memoirs of Dowe, by Cook and
Miniter.
8. Any fragments of Beebe’s Americana collection which may still be
traceable locally, especially the more ‘weird’ or beautiful items. I imagine the
Ludlow bottles might be the most easily traced and could be attractively
displayed against a light box, accompanied by a push-button audio of
Bowles’s story of Beebe’s search for the glass factory.
9. Additionally, any other notable local women writers and tale-tellers.
One might have an actor in to tell the imagined ‘lost’ story of the ‘last squaw’
We-sha-u-gan of the Nipmuc tribe. Chauncey’s still-readable epic poem of
the Wilbraham Indians might well provide stories of Indian women to work
from.
Exhibition Two
Following the first: Lovecraft and Wilbraham and “The Dunwich Horror”:
1. The handwritten manuscript (if extant) or typescript of “The Dunwich
Horror” (or a partial facsimile, if the insurance cost would be too high) from
Brown University.
2. An infographic showing visually how Lovecraft’s various sources came
together to make the story.
3. A facsimile of Lovecaft’s 1st July 1927 letter from Wilbraham (ms. at
Brown University). Maybe together with extracts with the Lovecraft letters
to Galpin and Barlow which mention the second visit.
4. A copy of the novel A Mirror for Witches, by Esther Forbes, which
Lovecraft read during his Wilbraham visit and which partly inspired “The
Dunwich Horror”. The novel is set in New England, and being relevant to
the role of women in society it links to the first part of the exhibition.
85
5. Selected pages from Alan Moore’s forthcoming major graphic novel (due
2014), representing the later works inspired by the settings in Lovecraft’s
works. Alan Moore, the world-famous graphic novelist, has announced that
he is to set his very substantial forthcoming Lovecraftian work Providence,
1919 substantially at Athol circa 1919. I would guess also at the Quabbin
reservoir area between Athol and Wilbraham, well known as the inspiration
and likely setting for Lovecraft’s masterpiece “The Colour Out of Space”.
Moore says in the interview...
“I’ve been accumulating a huge wedge of reference material relating
to the town of Athol in Massachusetts. I know more about Athol
than probably people living there do. We’ve got the entire history of
the town, its current situation, maps from different periods – I am
doing my best to make this absolutely authentic.”
Perhaps these graphic novel pages could be accompanied by some of the
many illustrations and comic book art that depict “The Dunwich Horror” of which Santiago Caruso’s work is the most accomplished I’ve seen.
6. Newly commissioned gothic-style b&w art photos of local places which
served to inspire Lovecraft’s famous story: the Bear’s Den at Athol; Wigwam
Hill in the Wilbraham Mountains; the abandoned avenue of trees opposite
the Beebe house; the huge barn at the back of the Beebe house; the site of
the ruined Randolph Beebe house if still existing; the whippoorwills of the
story; the Whale Rock near the Beebe house; the “Devil’s Hop Yard” barren
‘blasted’ area of Wilbraham Mountains (if it can still be found); any spooky
long covered bridges in the area still existing. Perhaps a local university
might set second-year photography students this task, as an assessed
assignment in “Visualising the American Gothic” or some such? And then
this could be paired with an open local photography competition.
7. A local supernatural story-telling competition inspired by the newly
commissioned photography, etc.
8. Photographs of Lovecraft etc. An audio reading of the story.
86
A SOURCE FOR REV. ABIJAH HOADLEY
fictitious Rev. Abijah Hoadley appears briefly but thunderously in
A Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror” (1928)…
“In 1747 the Reverend Abijah1 Hoadley, newly come to the
Congregational Church at Dunwich Village, preached a memorable
sermon on the close presence of Satan and his imps”
I suggest that this Hoadley was not named after any local Wilbraham man,
but rather after the famously thunderous British writer and politician Bishop
Benjamin Hoadley (1676-1761)2 who was a key spark for the American
Revolution in New England…
“1709: Publication of Bishop Benjamin Hoadley’s The Origin and
Institute of Civil Government helps popularize John Locke’s thinking
and helps make [religious] ministers in America a major conduit for
Locke’s ideas.”3
By this means Hoadley was the spark which lit the flame for the armed
revolution in America, a flame carried by the Congregationalist minister
Jonathan Mayhew of Boston …
“The groundwork for [Jonathan] Mayhew’s political theory was
laid in his extensive reading of the British Whigs — especially
1 Abijah is Hebrew and means “my father is God” or “the will of the Lord”. It was a common
early name in New England.
2 A prominent writer of Lovecraft’s beloved eighteenth century, whom Pope could praise as a
stylist in the same breath as he praised Swift. Although in other respects Pope opposed
Hoadley... “The deliberate, unimpassioned hostility of Pope, and the misanthropic virulence of
Swift, against Bishop Hoadley...” (The works of Alexander Pope, 1847). Hoadley is now remembered
online via old encyclopaedias for his role in the tedious and long-running theological ‘Bangorian
Controversy’ — but the first scholarly modern book on him appeared in 2004 and positioned him
as a key Enlightenment figure. Not to be confused with his playwright son of the same name.
3
Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era. Vol.1 (1730-1788), 1991.
87
Benjamin Hoadley” and thereby Mayhew… “had unparalleled
success in setting forth a theology and ideology of resistance that all
New England could endorse.” In his writings… “Mayhew cast in
print what John Adams would later term the “catechism”4 of armed
resistance in the American Revolution”.5
Lovecraft, who since childhood had made himself both a devoutly loyal
Anglophile ‘subject of the British King’6 and a very keen and learned student
of New England history, would then have had a very gleeful reason to invent
a thunderous Congregationalist “Hoadley” — and then to have him suddenly
spirited away by foul beings for unspeakable torments…
“Hoadley disappeared soon after delivering this sermon”.
It appears that Lovecraft was already thinking strongly along these lines. A
year before writing “The Dunwich Horror” Lovecraft had made a more
direct fictional link between the devil and the start of the American
Revolution...
“Lovecraft performs a fascinating trick with the rich residue of local
legend and tradition [in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, written
early 1927] — the threat of Curwen and his unholy alliance with the
devil becomes, according to Lovecraft’s retelling, the first spark of
the American Revolution”7
4 Catechism: meaning a series of fixed questions and answers which are learned, and by which
others can be swiftly argued into a new belief.
5 Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul : Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England,
Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.240-241. Second Edition.
6 “Lovecraft’s lifelong affection for and allegiance to all things English, which astounded his
grandfather and aunts when he denounced the American Revolution as early as 1896.” — from
Books At Brown special Lovecraft edition, 1991. In the year or so prior to summer 1928, Lovecraft
had been conducting a detailed study of the history of London.
7 In S.T. Joshi (Ed.), H.P. Lovecraft, four decades of criticism, Ohio State University Press, 1980,
p.177.
88
AN UNKNOWN H.P. LOVECRAFT
CORRESPONDENT?
T
here was an interesting literary scene in Sydney, Australia,
in the 1920s and 30s, which has so far been under
searched in regard to possible Lovecraft materials and
influences. I came across some of the details of this while researching the
‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent George FitzPatrick,1 who was a resident of
Australia. I wondered if FitzPatrick could have told Lovecraft of a rather
suitable Sydney publication for placing his work or for gaining revision
clients…
“Smith’s Weekly (Sydney) was an Australian tabloid newspaper
published from 1919 to 1950. An independent weekly [weekend]
published in Sydney, but read all over Australia, Smith’s Weekly was
one of Australia’s most patriotic newspaper-style magazines. [...]
Mainly directed at the male market, it mixed sensationalism, satire
and controversial opinions with sporting and finance news. It also
included short stories [...] It was a launching pad for two generations
of outstanding Australian journalists and cartoonists. Three rare
Lovecraftian stories were originally published by the well-known
“Witch of the Cross” in Sydney, Rosaleen Norton in Smith’s Weekly.”
(My emphasis).
1 See the essay elsewhere in this book, “Geo. FitzPatrick of Sydney: Lovecraft’s ‘lost’ Australian
correspondent”.
89
In 1995 these three stories were republished as Three Macabre Stories by R.T.
Risk in the form of a pamphlet of only 150 copies,2 and this item may have
escaped the notice of Lovecraftians — since the original 1934 date of
publication for the stories was omitted in the blurb, and no reviews of it
appeared online. It was later republished as Three Macabre Stories in an
expanded hardcover edition of 666 hardcover copies by the occultist Teitan
Press in 2010,3 when it went similarly unremarked by Lovecraftians.
These three stories were written when Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979)4 was
aged only 15, 5 and they were all published in short order in 1934. They
undoubtedly show a strong Lovecraft influence. It thus occurred to me: was
Rosaleen Norton a previously unrecognised correspondent of Lovecraft circa
1933/4? Did she even perhaps have some revision suggestions or plot
prompts from Lovecraft? It does seem curious that such a young girl could
have enough budding literary talent to have three paid stories published in a
row, acclaimed by local editors and of near-professional standard, but then
did not publish anything more in the line of fiction during her entire life —
even shortly after 1934 when she very badly needed the money.6 Other
2 Rosaleen Norton, Three Macabre Stories, R.T. Risk 1995. Again under the same publisher’s
Typographeum imprint, 1996.
3
Rosaleen Norton, Three Macabre Stories, The Teitan Press.
For scholarly work on Norton see: Nevill Stuart Drury, “Rosaleen Norton’s Contribution to
the Western Esoteric Tradition”, thesis for University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia,
2008 (her fiction being covered on pages 19-20, mostly drawing heavily on previous writing on
the stories). The thesis was later published in Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies
No.5, 2009-11. A fuller biography of Norton was published in 2013: Nevill Drury’s Pan's
Daughter: The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton. The latter presumably draws heavily on his thesis,
and might be similar to his book of 2010 title Homage to Pan: The Life, Art and Sex-magic of Rosaleen
Norton. There are also books on Norton which concentrate on her later highly accomplished
macabre occult art. She left an unfinished autobiography, Thorn in the Flesh, but only as fragments.
Since this autobiography has been published, it presumably did not mention Lovecraft or else we
would have heard about it by now.
4
5
According to the Bibliography of Australian Literature, University of Queensland Press, p.551.
Norton apparently shortly afterwards started making a bare living as a teenage art model for
life drawing, with sidelines as a kitchen maid and waitress.
6
90
aspects of her circumstances in 1934 allow me to argue that she may have
written to Lovecraft seeking advice as a writer. Judging by her stories she
was a Lovecraft fan, and Lovecraft was keen to help the young and female
with serious revision work. In the last years of his life he gathered many
young aspiring correspondents, many of them budding weird fiction writers.
Smith’s Weekly banner. The magazine might be looked at (probably after April 1926)
over an approx. ten year period, during which there might have been small-ads or
short letters notifying readers of Lovecraft’s revision services? 7
Rosaleen Norton’s short stories for Smith’s Weekly are, in order of their
publication: “The Story of the Waxworks” (haunted museum); “The Painted
Horror” (demonic portrait); and “Moon Madness” (vampire murderess).
In this regard I note that, following a 1939 ban on American pulps, the domestic market for
stories boomed...
“most Australians do not realise the extent of the Australian pulp fiction industry
during the 1940s and 1950s” — Toni Johnson-Woods, Pulp: A Collector's Book of
Australian Pulp Fiction Covers, 2004.
It thus seems strange that Norton did not take advantage of this captive domestic market.
James Doig’s Australian Gothic: An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction (2007, 2013) was able
to unearth a vibrant past market from the 1930s to the 1950s containing…
“a rare and compelling collection of Australian horror classics that have remained
largely undisturbed in the pages of old books and periodicals”
7 For the benefit of those following up these leads, I note that there was a substantial 258-page
history of Smith’s Weekly published by G. Blaikie in 1966.7 The State Library of New South Wales
holds the complete microfilm archives of Smith’s Weekly from 1919-1950, a microfilm which does
not seem to be available commercially or as online scans. The Oxford Companion to Australian
Literature called the title…
“an uninhibited Sydney newspaper which won an overseas reputation for its raciness
and for the quality of its black-and-white art”
It was regrettably also notable for its constantly anti-Jewish attitudes before 1945. Yet both its
raciness and its racism might however have endeared the title to Lovecraft as a possible source of
revision clients, especially as their attitudes would have sat well with his own pro-British and racist
worldview.
91
Nevill Stuart Drury’s academic thesis “Rosaleen Norton’s Contribution to the
Western Esoteric Tradition”8 is very useful in giving details of their
publication order. He touches on her fiction over several pages in his thesis
and, while otherwise uninterested in the fiction, he does give representative
examples. Here is his sample of the first story “The Story of the
Waxworks”…
“A witch-like woman took his sixpence ‘in a grey talon’ and led
him up rickety, worm-eaten steps… The young man ultimately
found himself in a vast room lit by candles as black as pitch. Leering,
misshapen forms were all around him, throwing criss-cross shadows
on the floor. It was like a picture painted by a decadent genius. Were
they only waiting for a signal from their master, the devil, to descend
from their wooden pedestals and sport in a hellish saturnalia?
Terrified of the atmosphere, the young man sought to flee, but
found that he had been locked in.
Somewhere, a clock struck midnight. A low, clear note of music
sounded in the room and that music came from the pipes of a waxen
satyr. Carl’s brain reeled in an ecstasy of horror. The pieces of the
waxworks were descending from their pedestals… the lights snuffed
out…
Next morning two policemen on patrol heard a shriek. Entering an
empty, deserted old place that had once held a waxworks, they found
the pitiful remains of what had once been a young man… his eyes
8 Nevill Stuart Drury, “Rosaleen Norton’s Contribution to the Western Esoteric Tradition”,
thesis for University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, 2008. Drury has no current
interest in her early fiction.
92
had the look of one who had seen things mortals should not see.”
(from “The Story of the Waxworks”)9
This is competent but seems somewhat flat. But Norton was then invited by
Smith’s Weekly to submit more work…
“After receiving her first submission Marien invited Norton to
submit another short story, and she sent in a piece titled The Painted
Horror, a tale even more disturbing than the first.”10
I have read her second story, “The Painted Horror” (published 27th Jan
1934), and it appears to show a stronger influence from Lovecraft both in its
title, theme, and style. Drury11 noted that it features…
“a young artist who, while painting in his garret, noticed his hand
being mysteriously guided into painting…
“a gigantic, sickening mass of purplish, bloated flesh,
looking as if it had risen from a sea of corruption, topped by
a squat, leering, half-human head, and great, thick, bloodbedabbled fingers like writhing worms… The vast hulk
crouched on the canvas ready to spring.” (from “The Painted
Horror”).
This mysterious force fed upon the artist’s mind and soul and then,
one morning, he was discovered on his studio floor ‘torn to pieces
and chewed’. A policeman who found the bizarre death impossible
9 It may be better than it sounds here, since it was included in James Doig (Ed.), Australian
Nightmares: More Australian Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Equilibrium Books, 2008. Also in the
budget Wordsworth anthology Australian Ghost Stories (2010). Judging by the comprehensive
listing of anthology contents on the Australian Horror Writer’s Association website, this is the
only story Norton has had included in Australian themed anthologies.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
93
to solve noted: ‘Funny the way a big canvas in his studio had a great
hole in it, as if something had jumped right out of it, or through it.’12
The sophistication of style, and the use of the likes of “blood-bedabbled”,
certainly intrigued me, and the extract certainly sounds as if Lovecraft could
have written it. Indeed it even reminded me strongly of Lovecraft’s lost
juvenile tale called “The Picture” (1907)13…
“Of [the story] “The Picture” (1907) HPL [Lovecraft] remarks: “I
had a man in a Paris garret paint a mysterious canvas embodying the
quintessential essence of all horror. He is found clawed & mangled
one morning before his easel. The picture is destroyed, as in a titanic
struggle—but in one corner of the frame a bit of canvas remains &
on it the coroner finds to his horror the painted counterpart of the
sort of claw which evidently killed the artist” (Letters to Robert Bloch,
Necronomicon Press, 1993, p.15). The [lost] story seems to
anticipate “Pickmans Model” (1926).”14
So a key question here about her story “The Painted Horror” is: how could a
15 year old girl in Australia in 1934 know about a destroyed Lovecraft story
from 1907? A tale now only known to Lovecraftians today through a single
substantial source, the Bloch letter. A letter not published until 1975.15
12
Ibid.
13 I have since found that this source was actually noted in passing by Kirsti Sarmiala-Berger in
2001, but she does not appear to have realised that the Lovecraft story was lost...
“The idea for one of these stories, 'The Painted Horror', was directly taken from ‘The
Picture’ (1907)” — from Kirsti Sarmiala-Berger , “Rosaleen Norton: A Painter of
Occult and Mystical Pictures”, Overland magazine, Autumn 2001, pp. 59-63.
Sarmiala-Berger also apparently did not realise that Norton was very unlikely to have been able to
know about “The Picture” (1907) in 1934.
14 S.T. Joshi and David E. Shultz, The Lovecraft Encyclopaedia, Hippocampus 2001, p.133.
Elsewhere in this volume the date of the letter is given: 1st June 1933. Bloch promptly wrote a
version of the story himself.
15 As far as I can tell the Lovecraft letter to Bloch mentioning “The Picture” was first
published in L. Sprague De Camp’s groundbreaking Lovecraft: A Biography in 1975.
94
There are several logical possibilities for how she might have known:
i.
She didn’t. It was pure co-incidence, perhaps intuited from
reading Lovecraft’s broadly similar “Pickman’s Model”. If
so, then it was a rather good intuition.
ii.
Some might suggest that Norton somehow had access to
details from Lovecraft’s unpublished Commonplace Book.16
But even if that were possible, the juvenile story of 1907 is
only flatly described there as: “a painting of ultimate horror”.
iii.
Bloch was corresponding with her, and sent her the details
of “The Picture” which he had from Lovecraft in the letter of
1st June 1933.17 Unlikely. Bloch was almost exactly the same
age as Norton, but even then he was an ambitious
professional and he might have felt he was betraying
Lovecraft’s creative and professional confidence by casually
divulging details of an early story to another youth. Besides
it appears that he had almost immediately written up a
version of the story himself (presumably with Lovecraft’s
permission) as “The Madness of Lucian Grey”, for
publication.18 He is unlikely to have shared a finished
16
So far as I know this was first published in 1938 by The Futile Press.
17 Bloch would likely have mentioned it to someone after Lovecraft’s death, and Norton would
later have recalled corresponding with Bloch after he became a famous name with Psycho.
18 The story is now lost. Bloch’s circa June 1933 story “The Madness of Lucian Grey” was
written, revised by Lovecraft and accepted by Marvel Tales, but was apparently never published
under his name (although I read that he sometimes used pseudonyms, such as ‘Tarleton Fiske’)
and S.T. Joshi gives it as lost...
“A blurb in Marvel Tales described it as “a weird-fantasy story of an artist who was
forced to paint a picture... and the frightful thing that came from it” — from S.T. Joshi,
I Am Providence, Hippocampus, 2010, p.874.
Even if Norton had seen this blurb, it hardly seems enough to have given her the idea for her
own story.
95
typescript with Norton, either, even if he had been
corresponding with her.
iv.
She had written to Lovecraft as a fan circa 193319 20 and
Lovecraft had kindly sent her a synopsis of one of his old
juvenile stories drawn from memory, as a plot example to
work up. He had already done this with Bloch. One
wonders if the 1907 “The Picture” plot was one that
Lovecraft ‘gave away’ to more than one of his more
promising young correspondents, during his last years?
19 How might Norton have known of his work? Presumably by reading imports of Weird Tales?
Did Weird Tales reach Australia in 1933-34? Leigh Blackmore has an unpublished draft on “Weird
Tales in Australia” (1992) in his bibliography, but it is not available online. It appears, judging
from his summary of it, to focus on the post-war period...
“Brief history of wartime shortages and bans, which made the pulp magazine difficult
to obtain here. Unfinished; need to track down older SF fans to discuss their memories
(Graham Stone etc).”
This implies that the magazine may have been easier to obtain in the 1930s in Australia. The
American pulps were banned in Australia, via the Customs (Literature Censorship) Regulations
1937, but only from 1939 or 1940 (sources differ on the date it came into effect)...
“In 1939 the Australian government had established tariffs on American imports that
effectively banned American pulps” — from Tony Johnson-Woods, “The Mysterious
Case of Carter Brown”, in Who’s Who?: Hoaxes, Imposture and Identity Crises in Australian
Literature, University of Queensland Press, p.74.
Such a banning implies that the import trade in American pulps was a flourishing one in the
Australia of the 1930s. Since Sydney was the capital city, copies might not have been difficult for
Norton to purchase or swop for.
The other alternative was that she read Lovecraft in the Not at Night anthology book series. But
by 1934 this had only carried “The Rats in the Walls”, “Pickman's Model", and “The Horror at
Red Hook”, and would not have provided an address to write fan letters to.
20 Her name and address are not on his list of correspondents. Lovecraft had a number of
youthful admirers late in his life…
“in the last four years of his life he attracted a substantial number of young people
(mostly boys) who looked upon him as a living legend” — from S.T. Joshi, I Am
Providence, Hippocampus, 2010, p.866.
Not all of these got into the address book that we have via the Robert Barlow transcription of it.
Helen V. Sully is missing from it, for instance.
96
v.
Lovecraft was actually her revisionist for a period in
1933/4,21 and for her second story he worked with her to
help her work up his own ‘lost’ 1907 story for publication.
This would be a publication under her name, something he
permitted with many of his female revision clients, in the
hope that she really did have a suitable paying market in her
local Smith’s Weekly. If so then my guess would be that he
thought the story would be published in a weekly newspaper
in distant Australia, so he would not have to worry overly
about the similarity to his own earlier “Pickman’s Model” or
to Bloch’s (lost) “The Madness of Lucian Grey” (1933).
Having read the story in question I suspect that hypothesis IV is the most
likely.
Her story “The Painted Horror” has several long sections in italics,
something not at all required by the nature of the story, almost as if Norton
was covering herself by identifying sections that were not written by her or
had been heavily revised by someone else. These odd italicised sections are:
One winter evening a few years ago, a man was to be seen walking
slowly up the main street of a Sydney suburb. With suspicious
regularity, every person that he passed turned round and stared at
him. And small wonder, for the man was like a walking corpse. His
face was ghastly pale and haggard; his bloodless lips twitched
nervously as he walked, and his hands kept up a similar trembling
until he could scarcely hold his walking stick. But his eyes! They
21 At that time she was still living at home, and could have had the money to pay Lovecraft
from her mother. More likely is that Lovecraft did not expect any payment until after publication
when dealing with revisions and guidance for young people of raw talent, as was his usual
approach.
97
were the eyes of one who has passed through hell, and is almost
crazed by the memory of the things he has seen or heard.
[…]
The flabby, drooling lips, half-open in a grin of demoniac glee,
disclosing four blunt decaying tusks, and the little abnormal twisted
ears set well back on the travesty of a head. And the malignant way
the last bulk of it crouched on the canvas, ready to spring at its prey.
God! The whole impression was one of slimy living rottenness. It
was like one of those pale things that scuttle away when you lift up a
stone that has been embedded ill the earth; only magnified many
thousands of times.
[…]
At night, I try to keep awake, but it is useless. I fall asleep and
wake with that unearthly fear. It haunts me. Wherever I go I feel its
evil soul following me, whispering unthinkable horrors in my ear,
until I imagine I am going mad.
Of course there is no real proof of any contact between Norton and
Lovecraft. But the circumstantial evidence is intriguing.
98
SHARDS FROM H.P. LOVECRAFT’S QUARRY
“Trust the dull public not to ask what quarry the queer stone came from!”
— from “The Man of Stone” (1932), H.P. Lovecraft with Hazel Heald.
A
small working quarry at Manton, Dyerville, three miles
west of Providence, was owned by H.P. Lovecraft. The
book Report on the Geology of Rhode Island (1887) gives its
mineral deposits as being located on “Manton Road, N. of Elm Farm”. The
presence of a farm suggests this was possibly quite a rural location at the time
the Lovecraft family had invested in it. In time, H.P Lovecraft inherited it
from his family.
By the 1920s this family investment gave Lovecraft a peppercorn rent
cheque of around $37, twice a year. L. Sprague de Camp quotes a 1927
letter in which Lovecraft perhaps implies that the cheques may have
bounced…
“Every Feb. & Aug. the guy sends in a small cheque, but never
pays up — so I’ve come to regard him as something of an institution,
and feel a very proprietary interest in his rocky freehold. … I’d stand
a good chance of losing my modest thou. [$1,000] if I ever had to
foreclose [the mortgage].”
But perhaps this simply meant that only the mortgage interest, and not the
principal amount, was being repaid?
The quarry was indeed declining, as Lovecraft’s complaint about
foreclosure suggests. At Lovecraft’s death, L. Sprague De Camp stated that
the quarry was valued at only $500. 1 In the 1971 Preface to Lovecraft’s
1 L. Sprague De Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: the makers of heroic fantasy, 1976, p.86.
The figure confirmed in Kenneth W. Faig, Some of the descendants of Asaph Phillips and Esther Whipple,
1993, p.129.
99
Selected Letters III, 1929-1931, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei wrote
of that period …
“The old family-owned stone quarry in East Providence became
exhausted and the income from it came to an end.”
An article in the Books at Brown special Lovecraft issue (1991) noted that
Lovecraft visited in 1927 when he…
“delighted in showing his friends over the small Providence quarry
operated by the De Magistris”
The quarry was run by an Italian manager Mariano de Magistris, and his
Americanized son who owned a roadster car. The name of their business
was the Providence Crushed Stone & Sand Co., located at Violet Hill,
Manton Ave.
C.E. Miller’s book Rhode Island Minerals and Their Locations (1971)2
describes the quarry thus…
“Providence: Manton or Violet Hill Quarry. This quarry, formerly
operated by the Providence Crushed Stone and Sand Company, is
one of Rhode Island’s famous mineral hunting grounds of the
past…”
This “is” might appear to imply it was still accessible to mineralogists in the
1970s, but another book by Miller suggests it was then long closed as a
working quarry.
C.E. Miller’s book Minerals of Rhode Island (1972)3 lists the Manton quarry
as…
“A ‘bluestone’ quarry located at Manton near Providence. Closed
1941. George English described the foliated talc from here as the
best in the USA.”
2
Miller, C.E., Rhode Island Minerals and Their Locations, University of Rhode Island, 1971.
Miller, C.E. (ed. O. Don Hermes), Minerals of Rhode Island, University of Rhode Island, 1972.
(This appears to be an edited or abridged or handbook version of Miller’s 1971 book?)
3
100
Vintage talc box label, showing the Providence origin.
Other names for the place appear, found during my online searches, to
have been: Manton Quarry; Manton Avenue Quarry; and Violet Hill
Quarry.
The American Mineralogist journal described it as being a pit quarry and…
“geologically speaking, of a very complex nature. At Manton a
quarry is located the rock of which is used for road material.
Inasmuch as quarrying operations have produced a pit the geological
and mineralogical problems can therefore be studied in considerable
detail. [...] With the continuance of the [quarry] operations minerals
new to the area have been uncovered”.4
In 1926 the American Mineralogist journal gave5 a complete list of the rocks
and minerals found there, to which I have appended a slightly later published
list of new finds6 made as the quarry was dug deeper…
4
5
6
The American Mineralogist, volume 15, 1930, p.496.
American Mineralogist, Volume 11, 1926, pp. 334-340.
American Mineralogist, Volume 13, 1930, pp. 496-498
101
102
For Titanite the quarry was said to be… “Excellent — world class for
species…”7 The quarry certainly seems to have been a fine mineral resource
all round, many of them quite unusual or attractive — one wonders if today it
might have given Lovecraft an income in the mail-order sale of small
polished samples sold to superstitious devotees of crystals.
Lovecraft’s friend James F. Morton certainly used the quarry to get some of
the fine mineral samples, which were displayed at his outstanding Paterson
Museum collection.8 One sample taken was an unknown “extra-heavy”
mineral, which Morton promised to try to identify for the curious de
Magistris (and which one of Lovecraft’s letters later reminded Morton
about)…
“Did you ever find out what that extra-heavy substance was that
you got off the quarry of my vassal, goodman Mariano de
Magistris?”9
In relation to the quarry one might also note the geological and
mineralogical knowledge Lovecraft uses at the start of “At The Mountains of
Madness” (1931)…
“we made considerable use of the small melting apparatus and sunk
bores and performed dynamiting at many places where no previous
explorer had ever thought of securing mineral specimens. The preCambrian granites and beacon sandstones thus obtained confirmed
our belief that this plateau was homogeneous with the great bulk of
the continent to the west […] In certain of the sandstones,
dynamited and chiselled after boring revealed their nature, we found
some highly interesting fossil markings and fragments—notably
7
Mindat online minerals and quarries database.
8 Books at Brown journal, Lovecraft special issue, 1991. Morton, of the Paterson Museum in
New Jersey, is noted as a mineralogist in “The Call of Cthulhu”…
“I had largely given over my inquiries into what Professor Angell called the “Cthulhu
Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local
museum and a mineralogist of note.”
9
Lovecraft to Morton, Selected Letters II, p.254.
103
ferns, seaweeds, trilobites, crinoids, and such molluscs as lingulae and
gasteropods—all of which seemed of real significance in connexion
with the region’s primordial history. There was also a queer
triangular, striated marking about a foot in greatest diameter which
Lake pieced together from three fragments of slate brought up from
a deep-blasted aperture. These fragments came from a point to the
westward, near the Queen Alexandra Range; and Lake, as a
biologist, seemed to find their curious marking unusually puzzling
and provocative, though to my geological eye it looked not unlike
some of the ripple effects reasonably common in the sedimentary
rocks. Since slate is no more than a metamorphic formation into
which a sedimentary stratum is pressed, and since the pressure itself
produces odd distorting effects on any markings which may exist, I
saw no reason for extreme wonder over the striated depression.” —
from “At The Mountains of Madness”.
One might also wonder if Lovecraft had once seen some crystals like the
“soapstone fragments” in the quarry, or suchlike removed from his quarry by
Morton for the hall of minerals10 at Paterson…
“curiously rounded and configured soapstone fragments smaller than
one previously found — star-shaped, but no marks of breakage
except at some of the points.” — from “At The Mountains of
Madness”.
Lovecraft had almost certainly seen soapstone Indian carvings at
Wilbraham, while staying with Mrs. Minister and Miss Beebe in summer
1927, although admittedly he probably also encountered these at any number
of other provincial museums in New England.11
10 “the entire upstairs floor being given over to his hall of minerals” — S.T. Joshi, H.P.
Lovecraft: a life, p.443.
11 See my other essay in this volume, “The Terribly Nice Old Ladies: Miniter and Beebe at
Wilbraham”.
104
In respect of “At The Mountains of Madness”, one should also note the
sound knowledge of geology which Lovecraft displays in this story.
Lovecraft had several books on minerals in his library at his death.
There were certainly some curious types of minerals to be found at his
quarry and others in the state. This is Stilbite, for instance (not on the above
list, but to be found at Manton)…
Stilbite.
Lovecraft did visit other quarries in the state, albeit not regularly…
“I took a day off Tuesday to accompany James F. Morton (whose
name you’ve doubtless seen in amateur papers) on a geological trip
around this state — collecting minerals for his museum in
Paterson.”12
12
Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Hippocampus Press , 2008,
p.94
105
A likely schedule of places he and Morton might have visited that day, if in
and around Providence, is perhaps indicated by a 1936 account of a trip to
Providence by the New England Intercollegiate Geologic Excursion…
“The twentieth annual New England Intercollegiate Geologic
Excursion was held in the vicinity of Providence, October 10 and 11
[…] McCormick’s quarry where fossil ferns and calamites occur in
the Seekonk sandstones and conglomerates. […] Lime Rock, a
locality famous for its contact metamorphic minerals […] a graphite
mine at Rocky hill […] A study was made of the cuspate bar and
folded clays near a submerged cedar swamp excited considerable
discussion […] an ancient Indian soapstone quarry at Ochee spring
was studied […] at the North Burial Ground where an esker of
problematic relations was of interest to all.”
There were certainly curious sights to be had on such visits. Here is a rather
evocatively weird stone “egg” photographed before 1908 at another quarry on
Rhode Island…
106
Lovecraft’s quarry was… “easily reached by the Manton Ave. trolley car”,
noted the American Mineralogist journal in 1920, giving its exact location on
“Cortez St. and Manton Ave.”. The vital and unique mention of “Cortez
St.” makes it easy to locate on the Google Maps service. It appears that the
quarry has today been land filled, and new apartments or office recently built
on it…
Are there any connections with Lovecraft’s fiction? There is a “Joel
Manton” in Lovecraft’s story “The Unnamable” (1923). Possibly this was a
name Lovecraft chose because of his family-tree linkages with Manton —
where there was also a Lovecraft “ancestral shrine” in the form of “the
Thomas Clemence house beyond the village of Manton”, which Lovecraft
had always heard about but which he only visited in 1933.13 Interestingly,
though, when the fictional Manton is called upon to describe “the
unnameable” in the story he describes it as a “pit”…
“It was the pit — the maelstrom — the ultimate abomination.”
13
H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters IV, page 288.
107
One might also note the imagined form of a quarry in The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath (1927), and further note that the tale was written in the
same year as his own quarry visits...
“there was an unused quarry greater than all the rest; from which
had been hewn in forgotten times such prodigious lumps and blocks
that the sight of their chiselled vacancies struck terror to all who
beheld. Who had mined those incredible blocks, and whither they
had been transported, no man might say; but it was thought best not
to trouble that quarry, around which such inhuman memories might
conceivably cling. So it was left all alone in the twilight, with only
the raven and the rumoured Shantak-bird to brood on its
immensities”
[Carter visits the quarry] “The path indeed led straight ahead and
slightly down, with the same lines of high natural walls as before; but
on the left hand there opened out a monstrous space, vast acres in
extent, where some archaic power had riven and rent the native cliffs
of onyx in the form of a giant’s quarry. Far back into the solid
precipice ran that Cyclopean gouge, and deep down within earth’s
bowels its lower delvings yawned. It was no quarry of man, and the
concave sides were scarred with great squares, yards wide, which told
of the size of the blocks once hewn by nameless hands and chisels.
High over its jagged rim huge ravens flapped and croaked, and vague
whirrings in the unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less
mentionable presences haunting the endless blackness.” — The
Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
108
OF RATS AND LEGIONS : H.P. LOVECRAFT IN
NORTHUMBRIA
W
hy did H.P. Lovecraft depict the third Augustan legion1 as
a garrison of Roman Britain? When the third Augustan
was always based in North Africa,2 and when Lovecraft
should have known that the key garrison of Britain was the second Augustan
legion?3 The investigation of this seemingly small problem in Lovecraft’s
work has actually been rather fruitful. It has led me to strong and clear
evidence for a new key source for “The Rats in the Walls”.4 It has also
enabled me to place the location of the story’s inspiration in Northumbria.
The third Augustan legion in “The Rats in the Walls” (1923):
Lovecraft first referred to the third Augustan legion in his story “The Rats in
the Walls” (1923)…
“Anchester had been the camp of the third Augustan legion, as
many remains attest, and it was said that the temple of Cybele5 was
1 The Legio III Augusta, or Third Augusta. Drawing its recruits largely from North Africa and
Spain. A core legion of the Empire. Forcibly disbanded by Gordianus in 218.
2 At Lambaesis, in Numidia, now modern Libya in North Africa. The region was not then the
total desert it is today.
3 Legio II Augusta, or Second Augusta. Based at Caerleon-on-Usk in South Wales, and
drawing its recruits largely from the British Isles. Lovecraft had an abiding lifelong interesting in
both the Roman Empire and in the British Isles, and often modelled himself on the ideal of a
Roman patrician.
4
See the end section of this essay for a full tallying of this new source.
Cybele was a matriarch mother figure and probably the first of the non-Roman mystery cults
to be introduced into the Roman world. Closely associated with the Phrygian sacred mountain
called Dindymon, which was personified as a daemon. Historically, the date of the introduction
5
109
splendid and thronged with worshippers who performed nameless
ceremonies at the bidding of a Phrygian priest.”
There is no real place in the British Isles called Anchester.6 One explanation
for the choice of name seems obvious. If we know that the British place
name of -chester meant a castrum7 — i.e.: the name for a standard Roman
army encampment — then we might assume that Lovecraft intended the
classically educated reader to see in the name of Anchester a mere generic
name, simply meaning: ‘an’ encampment. However, there is also a clear
etymological link between castrum and castration.8 I will explain later the
probable relevance of this to the cult of Atys, which features in “Rats”.
By using the North African-based third Augustan legion, rather than the
British second, Lovecraft could more plausibly link the legion with the
Eastern cult of Cybele. He could also avoid the accusation of purloining a
key topographic location from Arthur Machen’s horror fiction.9
In the story’s early mention of Cybele, Lovecraft implies that the
Phrygian10 priest has been perverted from the worship of Cybele to that of
more “nameless” deities and “hideous rites”, which had become “mixed with
of Cybele into Britain was the early 200s, a date also congruent with the forced disbanding of the
Third Augustan Legion by Gordianus in 218. Lovecraft’s mention in “Rats” that: “seventeen
centuries had eaten winding tunnels…” makes it clear that the Roman period implied in “Rats” is
to be dated to around the 210s.
6 S.T. Joshi could find nothing in the British Isles with this specific name (see S. T. Joshi, The
annotated H.P. Lovecraft, 1997, Dell, p.25), and neither can I. Joshi speculates that Lovecraft may
have intended one of two similarly-named sites in southern England. But this idea seems
tenuous, given that Lovecraft’s Allgood family line came from near to Hexham.
7
Nikolas Davies, et al (2008), Dictionary of Architecture and Building Construction, Routledge, p. 64.
Castrum means “a cutting off” or “a severance”, hence a Roman station that is “cut off”
from the surrounding land and peoples. Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of
Modern English, 1977, Routledge, p.436.
8
9 Lovecraft had discovered Machen in the Spring of 1923, according to S.T. Joshi’s Lovecraft
Encyclopaedia. Key Machen fictional works are based around Caerleon-on-Usk in South Wales,
which in Roman times was the main British headquarters of the second Augustan legion. The
Hadrian’s Wall area, on the opposite side of the British Isles, would have been a natural and
equally ‘haunted’ alternative choice for Lovecraft. I note that J.M. Rajala has already mentioned
this possible explanation of avoiding Machen’s settings, given in passing in his essay “Locked
Dimensions Out of Reach: The Lost Stories of H.P. Lovecraft”, in the Lovecraft Annual 2011.
10
i.e.: from Anatolia, in modern Turkey.
110
that of Cybele”. Later in the story he reveals that the rites had become
infected with those of Atys or Attis.11 In Classical literature Atys was a
mythical beautiful young adolescent12 swineherd,13 strongly associated with
madness and self-castration…
“The reference to Atys made me shiver, for I had read Catullus14
and knew something of the hideous rites of the Eastern god, whose
worship was so mixed with that of Cybele.” — from “Rats”.
This reference to the perverted mixing of the two cults, and his hints at the
horrific nature of their rites, were both historically correct — and at a later
point in the story this allows Lovecraft to plausibly ‘switch the tracks’ from
the real history to his hints at…
“the antediluvian15 cult which the priests of Cybele found and
mingled with their own” — from “Rats”.
His earlier reference to the mythic swineherd also allows Lovecraft to
plausibly evoke the nightmare dream-vision of the grotto, and then the
allusion…
“No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit
grotto!” — from “Rats”.
Perhaps there is even an intended link between Atys and the final reference
to the mysterious “flute-players” in the deep earth. Since the swineherds and
11
Not to be confused with Croesus’s son, also called Atys.
12
After his self-castration he dressed and behaved as a female, according to Catullus:
Catullus 63: “I am now a female; I was an adolescent, a stripling, I was a boy.”
13 The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology states that: “In works of art he is
represented as a shepherd with flute and staff”, but the fact that pork was not eaten by worshipers
of Atys/Attis suggests a swineherd (pigs) rather than a shepherd (sheep or goats).
Famous Roman poet. See: Catullus 63, the ‘Attis of Catullus’. This is the first reference to
Attis in classical literature.
14
15
The word ‘antediluvian’ meaning, from before the time of Noah’s Flood.
111
shepherds of classical antiquity were generally depicted as playing flutes to
their animals.16
Finally, the link with the orgiastic and self-castrating cultists of Cybele17
provides a more general thematic foundation for the idea of perverted
heredity that is inherent in “The Rats in the Walls”.18
So I think I have now established that, if Lovecraft had named one of the
more stolid British or Germanic Roman garrisons, he could not have
plausibly offered the reader the exotic Eastern link to a Cybele cult. Nor
could he have offered the idea of her cult’s perverted mingling with the cult
of Atys, which is his springboard for his later evocation of even greater and
invented horrors.
By using the Third rather than the Second Legion, Lovecraft can far more
plausibly have the reader surmise that exotic Moors and North African Arabs
could have been present in the mists of Roman Britain, and that they had
brought with them the cult of Cybele…
“the Cybele-worship which the Romans had introduced.” — from
“Rats”.
Actually, Lovecraft did not have to imagine such a presence. There are
good pre-1923 scholarly sources for an assumption that Cybele / Aytsworshiping non-British soldiers were in northern England in the 200s.
16 “A swineherd knew how to make his pigs dance by playing a flute”, from D.L. Ashliman
(2004), Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook, p.53. Herodotus (c.484 – 425 B.C.) also records of
Ancient Egypt that: “Swineherds, though they may be native Egyptians, unlike all others, do not
enter any of the temples in Egypt”, except on one day when... “a flute goes before [a giant pig
phallus, held aloft] and they [the mothers of the place] follow singing the praises of Dionysos.”
17 The Atys or Attis cult’s weird non-Roman rites were much commented on by disdainful
Roman writers. Possibly these rites also included mother incest: the mother serving as a ritual
‘proxy’ for Cybele, as a feature of its pre-castration orgiastic rites. They certainly included public
processions, followed by orgies, followed by self-castration. Perhaps there was also some form of
self-cannibalism after self-castration, perhaps implied by Lovecraft when he writes in “Rats”:
“There was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter.”
18 Admittedly, orgies and self-castration are never explicitly detailed by Lovecraft in the story.
But any reader with access to the 1911 Britannica could have quickly learned of such matters. This
would perhaps make “The Rats in The Walls” an interesting early case of intended fan-oriented
intertextuality. The story’s unexplained references to Petronius and Catullus require similar work.
112
Firstly, A History of Northumberland (1840) and other 1800s sources record,
that part of Hadrian’s Wall was… “garrisoned by the second wing of the
Astures, a regiment of Spanish cavalry”.19 This is based directly on a stone
inscription found at the Wall.
Secondly, Hexham in Northumbria is supposed by S.T. Joshi to be the
inspiration for Exham Priory in “Rats”,20 although he places the story in
“southern England”. I agree with him on the first point, and have presented
detailed evidence for Hexham in Footnote 5 and Footnote 20 of this essay.
This location of Hexham then leads us to other sources of evidence on the
ethnic makeup of the Roman legions. Such as the Spanish elements among
the Romans of the locality. An 1823 history of Hexham21, in discussing
19 A History of Northumberland (1840). The exact inscription is: “The soldiers of the 2nd
Cavalry Regiment of Asturians restored this temple”. They were from mountainous eastern
Asturia, and thus were deemed suitable for the damp and cold British climate. The Varduli from
a similarly mountainous part of Spain, namely the Basque country, were also present at the Wall.
These facts were known to English scholars from at least 1853, see: The Roman Wall: an historical
and topographical description (1853); and John McCaul, Britanno-Roman inscriptions (1863).
20 See the end of this essay for my summation and elaboration of the evidence. For Joshi’s
supposition, see S.T. Joshi (1997), The annotated H.P. Lovecraft, Dell, p.25. I might also note as
evidence for Hexham, this from Lovecraft’s later “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (early
1927)...
“the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of
Caerleon [in Wales] and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian’s crumbling wall”
There is also further evidence making Hexham a likely choice, from Lovecaft’s letters...
“My father’s parents - George Lovecraft of the line of Minster-Hall, near NewtonAbbot, Devon, and Helen Allgood, of the line of Nunwick, near Hexham,
Northumberland.” [my emphasis] — from Selected Letters II, p. 179. Lovecraft is here
recalling copying out his family-tree chart, circa 1905. Evidently, one of the roots of his
family tree was very near Hexham.
So his grandfather had married an Allgood, whose family came from very near Hexham.
Lovecraft was obsessed with his family-tree, especially the maternal lines. Therefore any material
such as a book chapter on Hexham (see Footnote 5) would have interested him. His great-aunt
(d. 1908, also an Allgood) collected material on the family tree, and there were: “separate Allgood
notes” (Selected Letters II, p.213) along with her paternal notes. He knew enough about the
Allgoods to note in his letters that: “the head of the Allgood house in Northumberland seems
always to be High-Sheriff of the County, even to this day; a sort of hereditary manorial
appurtenance” (Selected Letters II, p.99).
21 The name Hexham clearly given as “Exham Priory, Northumberland” in the Rev. John
Curtis (1831), A Topographical History of the County of Leicester…
113
Roman stones in the crypt and fabric of the Priory, states that an even earlier
history of Hexham had wrongly supposed…
“the Verones of Vettones, a people of Spain, as the [Roman]
garrison of Hexham, and [the earlier historian, Hutchinson in 1778,
misleadingly] calls Camden to his aid, who says “that a cohort of
Spaniards was stationed at Hexham”.22
Outline map of the Hexham area.
22 Arthur Biggs Wright (1823), “Roman Remains”, in An Essay Towards a History of Hexham,
p.125.
114
This point of antiquarian confusion is usefully unknotted by the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica,23 in the light of actual excavations that took place
about 2 miles west of Hexham from 1906-1914. It turns out that the Roman
stones of Hexham’s ancient crypt actually came from near the adjacent village
of Corbridge, a place which once had a very significant Roman station and
military city named Corstopitum 24 located just to the north-west of
Corbridge’s current fringes.25 Hexham Priory is about three miles west of
Corbridge (see my map for orientation), and this fact is matched by
Lovecraft’s description of Exham Priory in “Rats” as... “three miles west of
the village of Anchester”.
The large Ancient Roman city of Corstopitum was a key strategic element
of the Hadrian’s Wall fortification system, as discovered in major excavations
from 1906-1914. In the entry for ‘Corbridge’, the 1911 Britannica says that
rolls of Roman gold coins carefully wrapped in lead were found hidden in the
walls of Corstopitum. Among the other items discovered there were part of a
seated Cybele figure, and an altar figure of Atys wearing a Phrygian cap.26
(my emphasis). There was also a… “higher percentage of cattle bones at
Corstopitum” than at other Roman forts.27 The several points of connection
here to the various facts of “Rats” seem obvious.28
23
The 1911 Britannica was of course much used by Lovecraft, as S.T. Joshi has shown.
24 It seems the ruined city was a quarry for many local crypts and foundations, as a Roman
gravestone also turns up in the crypt of nearby Dilston Castle. On this, see Footnote 6.
25
26
Corstopitum was excavated 1906-1914, then on and off to 1958.
Maarten Jozef Vermasere, Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque, 1977, p.170. Found 1909.
27 Archaeologia aeliana: or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquities, Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Possibly this was due to Corstopitum being a major market for the sheep
and cattle drovers coming down from what is now Scotland. Again, this is perhaps of relevance
to the themes of bones and feeding in “Rats”.
28 Of incidental note in relation “Rats” is that Stockton, in Northumbria, was the last retreat in
England of the native black rat, the likely carrier of the black death plague. Stockton is about 40
miles from the Hexham area. The world’s only mine for barium carbonate, a common rat poison,
is based in Northumbria according to The rat: a world menace (1929), operations ending at the mine
in 1969. Also of possible import: “Rats were not a late, post-[Norman] Conquest introduction
into Britain, as was once thought. Archaeology has shown that they were active in Roman towns”
— from Plague and the End of Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, p.186. See also Footnote 6
for the interesting details of the name Ratcliffe, in relation to Dilston.
115
So if Lovecraft had known of these muddled antiquarian speculations about
a Spanish legion at Hexham, and/or the actual proven Spanish Astures
regiment that was stationed on Hadrian’s Wall, then he could have
reasonably surmised that these men would likely have been Moors of the
third Augustan legion — given the position of Spain relative to the
headquarters of the third Augustan in North Africa. Lovecraft could of
course not have used the famous ‘lost’ Ninth legion (also from Spain, the
‘Ninth Legion Hispana’), since they had been destroyed in Scotland
sometime circa 117, and internal evidence in the story shows that “Rats”
refers to Roman times as being circa the early 200s.29 Had Lovecraft then
also read of the excavations of the station and city at Corstopitum, he could
have even linked these Spanish soldiers with the relics of the weird Eastern
cults of Cybele and Atys.30
Possibly some in-depth (and as yet undiscovered)31 scholarly article on
Corstopitum, perhaps in the archaeological journals of the early 1920s, could
have given Lovecraft all the required facts — and could even have given him
the names of the several nearby crypts made with Roman stones and
sculptures taken from Corstopitum.32
29 Lovecraft’s mention in “Rats” that: “seventeen centuries had eaten winding tunnels…”
makes it clear that the Roman period implied in “Rats” is to be dated to around the 210s.
30 Highways and byways in Northumbria (1921) also speculates briefly on the possible Eastern
makeup of the Roman forces on the nearby Hadrian’s Wall, linking them to hideous “human
sacrifices” in rites to Mithras. Charles Roach Smith’s Illustrations of Roman London (1859) notes a
“clear affinity” between Mithras and Atys.
31 R.H. Forster had published a paper in 1920 or 1921 on “Corstopitum: a Roman City in
Northumberland”, but I am unable to trace this further. Lovecraft could also have encountered
Atys again while intensively researching the history of London in 1927, for “The Descendent”
(see: S.T. Joshi, Primal Sources, p.182). Since a limestone “hermaphroditic” figure of Atys had been
found in London, wearing a Phrygian cap. There is an extensive and clear discussion of this
sculpture in Charles Roach Smith’s Illustrations of Roman London (1859). Smith gives us the
interesting facts, seemingly omitted by all other summarising authorities, that after his selfcastration Atys... “adoped the dress and manners of the female sex” (p.69), noting the clothes of
the statue and quoting the line from Catullus 63: “I am now a female; I was an adolescent, a
stripling, I was a boy.”
32 The final objection to this essay will be that Lovecraft specified a “South British locale” for
“Rats” (Selected Letters V, 5th July 1936). But this was said in the context of a debate among his
circle over the geographic division between the areas of the ancient Gaelic or Cymric languages in
Roman Britain. So I do not think that Lovecraft meant: ‘the most southerly part of the British
116
Dilston Castle ruins, circa 1900 (Northumberland County Collections).
Isles’. Gaelic was spoken only in the far north, i.e. north of Hadrian’s Wall, while Cymric was at
that time spoken in all of the rest of the main island. A ‘Briton’ thus described a speaker of
Cymric, i.e: those who lived anywhere to the south of Hadrian’s Wall...
“There can be no doubt that the inhabitants of both this kingdom [Wales], and that of
the tambriana to the south of Hadrian’s Wall, spoke Welsh [i.e. Cymric]” — from
George Perkins Marsh, Lectures on the English language, Murray, 1880, p.43.
It seems clear that ‘southern Britain’, in the context of Roman Britain in the 200s (and in the
context of Lovecraft’s historical knowledge in the 1920s), meant anywhere south of Hadrian’s
Wall. The Romans never retreated south of the Wall until they finally left Britain.
117
“Dilston Castle [in ruins], with the Bridge over the Devil’s Water, Formerly the
seat of the unfortunate James [Ratcliffe] Earl of Derwentwater”.
118
The third Augustan legion in “The Descendant” (1927?)
I
n his fragment “The Descendant” (possibly written 1927) Lovecraft
again ‘wrongly’ gives the third, rather than the second, Augustan legion
as being stationed in Roman Britain…
“there were family tales of a descent from pre-Saxon times, when a
certain Lunaeus Gabinius Capito, military tribune in the Third
Augustan Legion then stationed at Lindum in Roman Britain, had
been summarily expelled from his command for participation in
certain rites unconnected with any known religion.”
Lovecraft was broadly correct on Lindum. This was Lindum Colonia, now
the modern town of Lincoln in Lincolnshire — although it was believed to
have started life as an encampment of the 9th Legion Hispania (from Spain),
later replaced by the British second Augustan legion.33
It is just possible to read this part of “The Descendant” as implying that it
is only “Lunaeus Gabinius Capito, military tribune in the Third Augustan
Legion” who is at Lindum, perhaps on a secondment to the second Augustan
legion, from the third. As suggested in the first part of this essay, there were
certainly a good many Spanish soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall.34 There is also
some slim published justification from Lovecraft’s time, for the idea of
secondments…
“The Third Augustan Legion was sent to Africa and for three
centuries Africa was its home. In times of stress it was reinforced by
drafts from other legions, including even the legions stationed in
Britain; or it would send out drafts to remote parts of the Empire. It
is recorded that there were Moors35 serving in the garrison along the
33 “Lind, or Lincoln, which is named Lindum in the Itinerary, Lindum Colonia, in the
Chorographia Anonymi Ravennatis, and Lindicolinum in Bede.” — Chronicles of the ancient British church
(1847), p.59.
If perhaps not many actual Arabs, due to their being generally unsuited to the harsh
northern British climate, although Lovecraft might not have known that in the 1920s.
34
35
i.e.: North African Arabs, although probably the author means the Spanish Astures.
119
line of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain.” — from Alexander Maccallum
Scott, Barbary, the romance of the nearest East, 1921.36
“The Descendant” mentions Hadrian’s Wall, suggesting that the location of
the story would once again have been Northumberland. His mention of
“Picts” again implies Northumbria and Hadrian’s Wall. The probable
inspirations for “The Rats In The Walls” — i.e.: an amalgam of the details
of Dilston Castle, the name and crypt of Hexham Abbey, a fragment of
detail about the remains of Aryton Castle, and the excavated finds at Roman
Corstopitum — were also located in the immediate hinterland of Hadrian’s
Wall in Northumbria. As I have already mentioned in a footnote, one major
branch of Lovecraft’s family had come from near Hexham,37 so it is likely
that he had at some time made at least a cursory study of the Wall area there.
So in “The Descendant” when Lovecraft’s uses the third legion again, this
allows him a vital pivot from which he can plausibly swing the reader’s mind
toward notions of… “rites unconnected with any known religion”. Had he
stuck with being ploddingly historically-correct, and thus used the second
Augustan legion,38 then he would have had to grope blindly back for some
vague details of a Druidical pre-Roman Celtic religion — about which we
still know very little.39 In a novel have might also have had to steer too close
to Arthur Machen’s home territory of South Wales. One does wonder,
though — following Machen — if Lovecraft’s plan for “The Descendant”
might have been to imaginatively develop the details of a strongly British
background, via his fragment’s ‘survivors of Atlantis’ notion.
36 This book seems just the sort of brisk and vividly evocative factual book that Lovecraft
would have liked, it shares his worldview, and it even has a chapter on the “Old Gods” such as
Baal.
37 This was... “The Allgood line, from Northumberland”, Selected Letters IV, p.339. See my
map, for the location in context.
38 As previously stated, this legion was stationed in south Wales, and drew its recruits largely
from the British Isles.
39 This is true despite the many fabulations and pseudo-scholarly gyrations of modern pagans.
For the best rigorously level-headed and fair scholarly account of what we do really know, see:
Ronald Hutton (1993), The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy.
120
G
iven this the many facts presented earlier in this essay, I can
firmly place “The Rats in the Walls” in northern England.
Specifically, in Northumbria. The fells of Northumbria
certainly seem more congruent with the sense of wild landscape surrounding
Exham Priory: “the solid limestone of the precipice from whose brink the
priory overlooked a desolate valley” and the “barren, windswept valley
beneath the limestone cliff”.
I have found six points of correspondence between “Rats” and the facts
given in the chapter “Hexham And Its Neighbourhood”, from the book
Highways and byways in Northumbria (1921). This chapter appears to be the
key source for “Rats”. Here are the points:
i. On the existence of cliffs like the “precipice” and “cliff” of the story, the
chapter states...
“Nearer Hexham is the romantic reach of the river, flowing
between lofty cliffs called Swallowship.”
ii. A precipice and large cave is detailed in a report of the Battle of
Hexham, while describing a place near the battlefield...
“Deepdene [at Swallowship] a huge ravine, the banks of which fall
precipitously to the West Dipton burn [a ‘burn’ is a fast upland
steam] which flows between them on its way to join the Devil’s
Water. [...] The cave on the West Dipton burn is said to be the place
where Margaret and Prince Edward were temporarily lodged by their
protector. It is 31 feet long and 14 feet broad, but scarcely high
enough to allow of a person standing upright. In the middle is a
massive pillar of rude masonry...” (my emphasis)
Note the similarity to “the large stone altar in the centre” of the vault,
depicted in “Rats”.
iii. The same chapter also interestingly notes that one of the last extant
remnants of Aryton Castle, a fortified mansion of the fourteenth century
[now Aydon Castle], are...“stone mangers to protect the dumb animals”.
121
Again, note the similarity with the description in “Rats” of: “stone pens”, and
“stone [food] bins”, for the “quadruped things”.
iv. Of the neighbouring Dilston Castle, the article notes... “the last Earl
[James Ratcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater] rode forth in 1715” and that... “His
doom was written at his birth”.
v. On the night the last Earl was executed...
“over Dilston’s melancholy tower, the red fingers of the Aurora
Borealis shot across the sky” [after which] “the castle was allowed to
go to ruin”.
Lovecraft’s use of the aurora in “Rats” is ‘the clincher’ for this source, in my
mind, since in the story he describes twice... “the faint auroral glow” and
the... “suspicion of aurora in the sky”. The aurora (aka the Northern Lights)
was notable enough in the sky to be recorded in the literature of
Northumbria in 793, 1716, 1848, and 1869. It only very rarely appears in the
south of England.
Other sources tell that the actual name of this “last Earl” was James
Ratcliffe, of the family of Ratcliffe, which held Dilston. See the name’s
usage, for instance: in William Berr’s Encyclopaedia Heraldic or complete
dictionary of heraldry, Volume 2 (1828); Stephen Whatley’s England’s Gazetteer
(1751); and Thomas Rose’s Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham, and
Northumberland (1832). From the latter...
A name like Ratcliffe (rat / cliff) has an obvious relevance to “The Rats in the
Walls”. Note also that the Ratcliffe family later changed their name to the
prettier Radcliffe, which is not unlike the name change which Delapore
makes for himself in “Rats”.
vi. The book chapter also suggests a clear model for the idea of the later
restoration of the Dilston tower by a gentleman...
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“John Grey, a fine type of the Northumbrian gentleman [...] was
appointed in 1833 to take charge [...] and he cleared away from the
[Dilston] castle the unsightly débris of years of neglect. Later
removals disclosed the foundations of the old castle of the D’Eivilles.
Below the ivy-clad ruins, which stand on a steep bank, runs the
lovely, flashing Devil’s Water...”
One could also note here the interesting folk-derivation of Devil’s Water,
from the name of the D’Eivilles family — also known as the Devilstones —
which had long inhabited the ancient castle above the river before the
Ratcliffes came there. And that the ruins of Dilston (the name coming from
the D’Eivilles or Devilstones family) “stand on a steep bank” above the
Water, just as Exham Priory is said to stand at “the precipice from whose
brink the priory overlooked a desolate valley”.
I have also found a tantalising note from Notes and Queries of 1914, relevant
to the idea of some lost descendant coming to claim Exham Priory, but I am
unable to get more of it...
“the following extracts from The Times and contemporary
journals:— “Great excitement was caused at Hexham and the
western parts of Northumberland on Tuesday by a lady who claims
to be a descendant of Ratcliffe ... The lady first appeared upon the
scene ... in 1865, and a year or so later took possession of Dilston
more or ... to be a descendant of Ratcliffe, the last Earl of
Derwentwater, taking possession of Dilston Castle, about three miles
from Hexham, and claiming all the estates once belonging to that
unfortunate [Earl]”
In one final and perhaps rather minor point of evidence in favour of
Dilston Castle, although possibly relevant to the matriarchal Roman cult of
Cybele, the modern website for the Friends of Dilston40 reports that...
40
www.friendsofhistoricdilston.org
123
“A Roman gravestone, carved with the standing figure of a woman,
is one of several ancient stones built into the walls of the [Dilston]
chapel”.
Discounting the minor points, there still remain six clear correspondences
between the 1921 book chapter and the 1923 story “The Rats in the Walls”.
The details of the aurora borealis and the stone pens, especially, seem to
place beyond doubt that this chapter in Highways and byways in Northumbria
was Lovecraft’s source.
To summarise a complicated argument, a reading of this slim chapter
“Hexham and Its Neighbourhood”, from the book Highways and byways in
Northumbria (1921) would have offered Lovecraft:
* a large cellar-like cave with a central pillar
* ruined stone pens for animals
* a tragic and doomed-at-birth Earl (surnamed Ratcliffe!)
* the aurora borealis, showing up at the moment of doom for the said Earl
* ... and the ruin thereafter of the tower
* the position of the ancient tower on the edge of a precipice
* the later restoration of the ruined tower by a gentleman
* the gentleman uncovers ancient foundations of an earlier building
* the ancient tower sited atop a major Roman ruin (Corstopitum)
Lovecraft was interested in Hexham, and read up on its history, because his
family tree led him there.41
41
On this, see footnote 20 earlier in this essay.
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LOOKING INTO THE SHINING
TRAPEZOHEDRON
I
n his story “The Haunter of the Dark” (Nov 1935) Lovecraft
has the character Robert Harrison Blake discover the note, in a
reporter’s notebook…
“Prof. Enoch Bowen home from Egypt May 1844 — buys old
Free-Will Church in July — his archaeological work & studies in
occult well known.”
This implies 1843 as the date for the discovery in Egypt of the story’s
Shining Trapezohedron. Lovecraft’s invention of a native Rhode Island
Egyptologist, and use of the date of 1843 seem, upon some research, to
indicate a typical conflation by Lovecraft of two real people into one fictional
character. I can suggest that the first real person was Carl Richard Lepsius
(1810-1884, the father of modern Egyptology), and that the second was
Rhode Island Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-1896).
Researching these men had led me to other important insights into the
sources of “The Haunter of the Dark”.
Charles Edwin Wilbour:
Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-1896) was a Rhode Island man, who
graduated from Brown University. After being a press reporter for many
years and a translator of Victor Hugo, he went to Egypt. There he became a
major scholar of Ancient Egypt. In 1916 his library of 2,500 volumes was
shipped to the Brooklyn Museum, where it was donated and became The
Charles Edwin Wilbour Memorial Library Room1 in the Brooklyn Museum.
1
Now the Wilbour Library of Egyptology.
125
Many of his books and papers had previously been in the library of Carl
Richard Lepsius, the father of modern Egyptology. So here we have was a
Rhode Island Egyptologist who could have inspired Lovecraft’s fictional
Enoch Bowen. Yet Wilbour did not, so far as I can tell, engage in “studies in
[the] occult” as well as in Egyptology.2
It seems Wilbour’s legacy had faded from sight by the late 1920s / early
1930s, even among scholars on the East Coast. A learned article on him in
19323 felt it necessary to…
“bring to the fore the name of an American Egyptologist who
seems to be generally forgotten, I mean Charles Edwin Wilbour”
But Lovecraft could have learned of him via a series of public lectures given
on Wilbour at The Brooklyn Museum in 1935, the final lecture being heavily
illustrated with projected slides. It was at the end of 1935 Lovecraft wrote
“The Haunter of the Dark”. The lecture series on Wilbour was printed in
The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, and these lectures were reported elsewhere.
So I speculate that one or other report of these lectures could have been how
Lovecraft learned that his beloved Rhode Island had once fathered a major
Egyptologist.
Of course, Lovecraft may also have visited The Charles Edwin Wilbour
Memorial Library Room in the Brooklyn Museum, while living in Brooklyn
in the mid 1920s, and may have read there a biographical information plaque
or similar.
I am also indebted to Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. for pointing out another
manner in which Lovecraft could have known of Wilbour. Brown University
has a Wilbour Hall,4 seen above, endowed by the wealthy Wilbour family in
2 In 1936 (which was after the writing of “The Haunter of the Dark”) the Museum also
published 600 pages of Wilbour’s letters, in two volumes. I wonder if a perusal of the index to
these might turn up some references to interest in the occult?
3
Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, Vol.19, 1932, pp.45–49.
4 Formerly the Dorrance mansion; then the Delta Phi house at Brown; from 1939 a famous
mathematics research centre under Otto Neugebauer; and since 1949 the home of the
126
memory of Charles Edwin Wilbour. From this lead I have found that the
building was a fraternity house at the time Lovecraft was writing the story…
“[Fraternity] Delta Phi at Brown was first located in North Slater
dormitory and later moved to Wilbour Hall, which now houses
Brown’s Egyptology department.”5
Carl Richard Lepsius:
In Carl Richard Lepsius, the father of modern Egyptology, we have a strong
connection to Lovecraft’s date of 1843 for the discovery of the Shining
Trapezohedron. Carl Richard Lepsius was excavating and recording in
Egypt in 1843, before moving on to explore other areas of the Near East. A
full record of the trip was written up in Lepsius’s highly readable first-hand
account, published in 1852 under the offputtingly dull title of Discoveries in
Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai, in the years 1842-45. As the father
of modern Egyptology, Lepsius would have been well known to an
Egyptomaniac like Lovecraft.
So are there any likely tombs that Lepsius excavated in 1843, places which
Lovecraft might have used as models for the discovery of the Shining
Trapezohedron? Yes, and there appear to be two likely choices:
1. Amenemhet III. In 1843 Lepsius recorded the heavily eroded and
plundered pyramid of Amenemhet III (c. 1860 – c.1814 BC). The classical
authors Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Pliny all reference the
enormous labyrinth there, and Diodorus states that the Amenemhet
labyrinth was the model for the famous labyrinth of King Minos in Crete
(i.e.: for the Minotaur legend) some three centuries later.6 But Amenemhet
Department of Egyptology. Lovecraft lived on a fraternity row at Brown, and so it seems that
Wilbour Hall was in view from one of Lovecraft’s own study windows?
5
The Oracle: The Reference Manual of the Delta Phi Fraternity, p.45.
6 It seems that Amenemhet III’s maze did indeed come before the Cretan Labyrinth in terms
of the chronology known in Lovecraft’s time. The chapter on “The Cretan Labyrinth” in W. H.
Matthews’s Mazes and Labyrinths (1922) states of the famous maze...
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III’s labyrinth is vast, and not the closed “windowless crypt” of an (implied
smaller?) temple, as stated in “The Haunter of the Dark”.
Pyramid of Amenemhet III and its maze. Computer reconstruction.
Lovecraft does mention that the Shining Trapezohedron was first recovered
from Atlantis by a Minoan fisherman (“a Minoan fisher meshed it in his
net”) which might imply some possible connection with the Cretan labyrinth,
very tangentially implying that the monster in “The Haunter of the Dark”
was once the same as the monster7 at the centre of the Cretan maze.
2. Maya. In 1843 Lepsius also recorded the very important temple and
tomb of Tutankhamun’s treasurer Maya (c. 1332 – 1323 BC).8 The tomb
“it was possible to date the upper remains, say from 1580 B.C. onwards, fairly nearly.
The dating of the older remains is much more difficult, chiefly because, although they
can often be equated with certain periods of Egyptian culture, the chronology of the
latter admits of widely different views, but it seems safe to say that the earliest traces of
the Minoan civilisation date from quite 3000 years B.C., and possibly many centuries
before that.”
7 Characterised as a half-human bull monster, The Minotaur. Storm gods of the time were
commonly characterised or symbolised as a bull.
8 Right at the very end of the Bronze Age. The essay “Some Facts about Maya’s Tomb”, in
Discussions in Egyptology 4 (1986), pp.17-25 (reprinted in Amarna Studies) is a useful short account of
the straight scholarly facts about Maya’s tomb, stripped of the masses of confusion about it
generated by Tutankhamun-chasing Egyptomaniacs since 1986. The best illustrations of Maya’s
tomb are in the definitive scholarly book by Geoffrey T. Martin, The Tomb of Maya and Meryt I.
“Some Facts about Maya’s Tomb” (1986) states...
128
was in Saqara,9 the royal necropolis of the ancient city of Memphis. The
tombs of the vast city of Memphis are, of course, where Lovecraft’s fiction
has it that all sorts of horrors and arcane secrets are to be found. See
especially the mention of “that Darke Thing belowe Memphis” in the story
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1927) and “the subterranean secrets of
Memphis” delved into by Abdul Alhazred in “The History of the
Necronomicon” (1927). After Lepsius’s recording of Maya’s tomb in 1843 the
location of it was lost, until rediscovery by Geoffrey Martin in 1986.
Anubis, from the tomb of Maya.
Given that Maya’s tomb decoration puts him “face to face and of equal size
with the gods” themselves, and that he wished to ascend to the stars and thus
become immortal, might there be a possibility of a loose link between Maya
and Lovecraft’s “Starry Wisdom sect”? Indeed, the Egyptian star beliefs10 are
evidenced in Maya’s donation to Tutankhamun’s tomb of his own
remembrance item inscribed…
“The designation “Temple” for the upper part of this tomb is justified byA.J.
Spencer, Death in Ancient Egypt, (1982), pp.238-39.”
9
Modern archaeological usage: Saqqara.
G.A. Wainwright, The Sky-Religion in Egypt: Its Antiquity and Effects, Cambridge University
Press, 1938.
10
129
“O Mother Nut [i.e., the night sky], spread thy wings over me as
[you do over] the Imperishable Stars” [implied: so that I may be
placed among those Imperishable circumpolar stars and thus may
never die] 11
Here is Howard Carter’s actual 1922 on-site transcription of this phrase,
from Tutankhamun’s tomb…
So on balance then I’d say that Maya’s tomb was the implied model for the
discovery place of the Shining Trapezohedron. That the tomb had been ‘lost’
after 1843 may have made it seem especially alluring to Lovecraft. Lovecraft
also seems to very tangentially imply that, before it found its way to Maya’s
tomb, the Shining Trapezohedron and thus the ‘Haunter of the the Dark’
monster had been at the centre of the famous Cretan Labyrinth.
11
“Some Facts about Maya's Tomb”, in Discussions in Egyptology 4 (1986), pp.17-25.
130
Hadoth and Nephren-Ka:
Are there any additional clues in what Lovecraft tells us about the finding
place of the Shining Trapezohedron? “The Haunter of the Dark” does say a
little more of the place excavated by “Enoch Bowen” in 1843…
“The Pharaoh Nephren-Ka built around it a temple with a
windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken
from all monuments and records.”
Lovecraft’s story “The Outsider” (Mar-Aug 1921) tells us more of this
temple’s location…
“the catacombs of Nephren-Ka12 in the sealed and unknown valley
of Hadoth by the Nile.” (“The Outsider”)
The place is also mentioned in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1927) as
“Nephren—Ka nai Hadoth”13, possibly in connection with finding… “that
Darke Thing belowe Memphis” (although the convoluted story requires a lot
of digging to discover what item is supposed to be coming from where).
12 My guess is that the name Nephren-Ka was derived from the gemstone jade, scientific
named Lapis Nephriticus. Nephren then being Lovecraft’s simple Egyptian version of the latin
Nephriticus. Lovecraft was interested in minerals, owned a quarry, and his friend Morton was an
expert mineralogist. He owned several books on mineralogy, found in his library at his death.
Some summaries of the history of jade draw attention to Pliny’s famous The Natural History, where
Pliny gives a list of famous gemstones including the “Adadu-nephros”. This stone was one of
three sacred gemstones used to worship the Syrian god Adad — the Syrians’ ubiquitous storm
god. In the famous primal Gilgamesh Epic (initial reception 1884–1935), Adad thunders inside a
black cloud “turning to blackness all that is light” (line trans. Speiser, in the book Ancient Near
Eastern Texts, 1950). There seems a close correspondence here with key elements of “The
Haunter of the Dark”. Yet the name Nephren-Ka was coined by Lovecraft years before, in 1921.
How to explain this? One possibility is this: having invented Nephren-Ka for “The Outsider”
simply as casual derivative of the scientific name for jade, in 1927 the more mature Lovecraft
investigated how the story of Nephren-Ka might be deepened by linking it with real myth. He
read up on the history of jade, and he was pleased to discover or be reminded of a link with a
sacred gem used to worship an ancient storm god of absolute blackness. At that time there were
several books that could inform an interested layman on the history and myths associated with
jade, such as: Charles William King, The natural history of gems or decorative stones, 1867; Edwin
William Streeter, Precious stones and gems: their history, sources and characteristics, 1898; and Charles
William King, Antique gems: their origin, uses, and value as interpreters of ancient history, 1866; alongside
the more obvious encyclopedia entries and suchlike.
13 “Nephreu-Ka” is a textual error in some versions of “Dexter Ward”. Thanks to Martin A.
for pointing this out to me.
131
What of “Hadoth”? In his Penguin Classics annotations of the Lovecraft
stories S.T. Joshi suggests “Hadoth” was an invention by Lovecraft, but it
was not. Hadoth does not refer to any real place, but it was allegedly a
Hebrew name used by the Jewish Essene sect.14 It meant “a place of secret
meeting” for an initiation ritual…
Hebrew scholars may correct me on this, but I suspect that “Hadoth” was a
19th century Masonic confabulation. Since my online searches suggest that
Lovecraft could only really have had “Hadoth” with this meaning from
knowing the wording of the rites of certain Masonic orders on the East
Coast of America in the late 19th century.15 The visual quote above is from
the book of Masonic ritual Ecce Orienti! An Epitome of the History of the
Ancient Essenes (1870).16 This book went through several editions, because of
14 One of the three main Jewish sects active at the time of Jesus. See the 1906 Jewish
Encyclopedia for a clear account, including the accusations that they were semi-pagan. The
scholarship on them was later greatly expanded following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
15 Unless he knew the Magyar language, from when it presumably gave the surname of the
obscure 16th century salt merchant Stephan Hadoth and the Eastern European rabbi Machzikei
Hadoth of Lemberg. It seems far more likely he had come across its use among U.S. Masons.
16 Wolcott Reddin, Ecce Orienti! An Epitome of the History of the Ancient Essenes, (third ed., 1870),
New York.
132
a modern Masonic order on the East Coast of the USA which modeled
themselves on the ancient Essenes and their rituals. The book is largely
cloaked in a basic abbreviation code, but the code was easily cracked and a
plain English version was also published.17 Possibly this esoteric Masonic
order, one seeking to resurrect a long-dead cult, also served as a rough
template for Lovecraft’s “Starry Wisdom sect”?18 There are certainly obvious
parallels with the coded Masonic text and the coded nature of the cult’s book
found by Blake in “The Haunter of the Dark”…
“a crumbling volume of wholly unidentifiable characters yet with
certain symbols and diagrams shuddering recognizable to the occult
student. […]The manuscript writing consisted of the common
traditional symbols used today in astronomy and anciently in
alchemy, astrology, and other dubious arts— the devices of the sun,
moon, planets, aspects, and zodiacal signs— here massed in solid
pages of text, with divisions and paragraphings suggesting that each
symbol answered to some alphabetical letter.”
So “Hadoth” is obviously a dead end, in terms of suggesting or confirming an
actual geographic location. Lovecraft’s vague “by the Nile” is as close as we
get. But chasing “Hadoth” has inadvertently led me to a possible inspiration
for the “Starry Wisdom” sect.
17 Anon., The Ritual of Pennsylvania: Ancient York Masonry. Possibly this was after Lovecraft’s
time. I can find no date for it.
18 I am certainly no expert of Masonic lore and history, and have no wish to delve into the vast
nest of misinformation and invention woven around the Masons.
133
SOME NOTES MADE AFTER READING R.E.
HOWARD’S KEY ‘LOVECRAFTIAN’ STORIES
F
or Halloween 2012, I read six of R.E. Howard’s most allegedly
‘Lovecraft influenced’ stories. These are the two major tales:
“The Black Stone”; “The Children of the Night”; the lesser
stories “The Cairn on the Headland” and “The Thing on the Roof”, and the
tangentially Lovecraftian but classic Bran Mak Morn story “Worms of the
Earth”.
I found that all six to be available in the audio book form in the collection
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, read by veteran audio-book reader
Robertson Dean. That was how I read the stories, so I was forced by the
nature of the medium to consider each word and I didn’t skip or skim.
It had been rather a long time since I read and enjoyed Howard’s Conan
and other books. I encountered R.E. Howard as a boy, shortly after I first
read Lovecraft, via the UK Panther paperback story collections: Skull-face;
The Valley of the Worm; and The Shadow Kingdom. From there I went to the
UK Sphere King Kull collection, then dug through the numerous UK Sphere
Conan paperbacks (one or two of which were quite rare at that time, and I
remember it was difficult to gather a full set). Then the excellent Solomon
Kane stories, possibly via a tatty used import copy of the U.S. Centaur Books
paperback.
“The Black Stone” (1931) I found to be somewhat predictable, and it felt
rather clichéd. But the writing style was vivid, brisk, and overall the story was
quite fun. I felt the best parts of the story to be: the bibliophiliac preamble;
the beautifully described and hair-raising walk through the night woods; the
very deft storytelling stagecraft used to present a number of minor and off134
stage characters; and the neat linkage with supposed historical ‘facts’ toward
the end.
“The Children of the Night” (1931) has another deliciously bibliophilic
opening. Howard appears to have used the story to ‘split’ Lovecraft’s
personality between John Conrad the occult book collector/savant, and
Ketrick. Like Lovecraft, Ketrick is described as having a facial birth defect
along with…
“a slight and occasional lisping of speech. He is highly intellectual
and a good companion except for a slight aloofness and a rather
callous indifference which may serve to mask an extremely sensitive
nature.”
Some learned discussion between the characters brings up a mention of
Franz Boaz’s skull plasticity surveys. Howard has a character state…
“Boaz has demonstrated, for instance, that in the case of
immigrants to America, skull formations often change in one
generation”
…which suggests that Lovecraft would — by reading “The Children of the
Night” — have been at least nominally made aware of this aspect of Boas’s
work, even if he didn’t also hear of it in detail during the first year of the
Howard-Lovecraft correspondence. For more on this real historical topic,
see my lengthy essay on Boaz in my earlier book Walking with Cthulhu.
The atmosphere of the gentlemanly study in “The Children of the Night”
evaporates immediately on the story entering a Conan-like flashback episode.
The vigorous swordplay that follows is quite gripping, but the adversaries fail
to convince. For that reason they also failed to evoke any real frisson of
horror. A section shortly before the end of the story becomes rather
convoluted, since Howard uses it to expound a hazy race migration theory.
Yet Howard has left himself only one narrator for this speech, and has long
since thrown overboard the learned study setting which might have made it
more palatable to the reader. Overall, this was enjoyable but not memorable
135
story — but I wished that the deliciously Lovecraftian opening had been far
more fully sustained.
“The Cairn on the Headland” (1933) I found to be rather poor. Set in
Ireland, the opening throws the reader straight into another tedious rant on
Howard’s racialist theories. Howard does manage to eventually set the scene,
but he does so in a manner which telegraphs a hint of the ending. I found
the story to be Lovecraftian only in the sense that it borrows an idea or two
from “The Hound”, and that the ending might be said to vaguely resemble
“The Call of Cthulhu”. I imagine Lovecraft would have handled and
structured such a tale very differently. It seems hard to believe that this story
was written a year after the classic “Worms of the Earth”. One suspects that,
on this story at least, Howard must have just been gunning the typewriter for
the money.
“The Thing on the Roof” (1932) I found quite Lovecraftian, and one
could almost imagine that this brisk and short work to be a lesser Lovecraft
story. I again enjoyed another bibliophiliac opening which, in contrast to
“The Children of the Night”, is then eased naturally into the body of the
story. There are several enjoyable little links made to Howard’s earlier story
“The Black Stone”. But as with “Children of the Night”, the unconvincing
nature of the central creature disappoints, and so fails to horrify. I also
cringed at large chunks of the surprisingly creaky dialogue, something which
reduced my enjoyment of the first half of the story.
“Worms of the Earth” (1932) is the last and the best Bran Mak Morn
story. It is very finely written, and beautifully constructed. Although it is
linked tangentially to both “The Black Stone” and “The Children of the
Night”, and the creatures of the latter story make a far more convincing
appearance here. The Lovecraftian elements are incredibly slight: a curse
that refers to “Black gods of R’lyeh”; the name Dagon’s Mere [a lake]; and
the name Dagon’s Barrow [a mound, covered with “fungoid” grass]. Despite
these slim pickings, this is a story well worth hearing.
136
H.P. LOVECRAFT’S CINEMA TICKET BOOTH
JOB, CIRCA 1930
L
ovecraft once briefly held the job of a movie-house ticket
seller, in a cinema in downtown Providence…
“Brobst has confirmed that HPL [Lovecraft] worked
briefly as a ticket agent in a movie theater in downtown Providence”1
“I asked Harry K. Brobst2 about the story, and he confirmed it,
stating that Lovecraft admitted to him that he held such a job and
saying that he actually liked it at the start but that it did not last very
long [this was] in the early days of the [Great] depression, perhaps
1929-30.”3
The Great Depression had started 29th October 1929, and Lovecraft was not
inclined to commit himself to venture out regularly in the cold weather of a
November-to-March New England winter. He loathed the cold and felt
faint when outside in cold weather. So March-April 1930 seems the likely
date for his cinema job. It cannot have been later, because he left on a major
tourist trip to Charleston, S.C. on 28th April 1930…
“Lovecraft’s travels for the spring-summer of 1930 began in late
April.”4
1 S.T. Joshi and David Shultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, pp.24-25. I have also read
elsewhere that this was apparently also confirmed by “Brown University Prof. Robert Kenny”.
Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. usefully clarifies my telling me that… “Brown Professor Robert Webb “Pat”
Kenny (1902-1983) seems to have been the original source” of Brobst’s information. Faig also
notes that the article on Kenny “in ‘Gentlemen under the elms’ (1982) has some information
about Brown [university] students and “The Sink” in the 1920s.” The Sink venue in Providence
is identified later in this article.
2 Harry K. Brobst (1909-2010) was a good and close friend of Lovecraft from 1932 to 1937.
He was then a psychiatric nurse at the Butler Hospital in Providence.
3
S.T. Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary, Liverpool University Press , 2001, p.317.
4
Ibid., p.285. See Lovecraft’s essay “Account of a Visit to Charleston, S.C.”.
137
One then wonders if the cinema job of a few weeks in the early spring of
1930 would have given him the funds, toward the end of the month, to pay
for his ticket on the long Charleston trip?
Thereafter he was writing the revision collaboration “The Medusa’s Coil”,
among other activities.
But which cinema was it? We shall probably never know, although the
subject of theatrical and cinema history in Providence is surprisingly well
documented,5 and is being actively researched and discussed online at 2013 in
quite some depth. I am indebted to those who have freely shared their
knowledge online. There are a goodly number of possible candidate theaters,
because…
“In this era [1900-1929] Providence was a great show town, and
vaudeville, burlesque, summer stock [theater], and movies rivaled
sports for the attention of the populace. […] In addition to [the
major entertainment houses], there were a half-dozen smaller, less
glamorous entertainment houses in the central city.”6
I examined two modern and substantial online directories of the historical
theaters of Providence, compiled with some care by stage and cinema history
enthusiasts. I discounted theatres that were not operating 1929/30, or which
were in immigrant areas such as Federal Hill not likely to have appealed to
Lovecraft. The names, details and addresses of the theatres I considered are
available online at my blog. I also here note that the upmarket Albee cinema
was attended frequently by one of Lovecraft’s aunts in the early/mid 1920s.
The BIJOU theater (EMPIRE7 cinema from March 1930) on 368
Westminster Street was my final hunch for the cinema that Lovecraft
5 The key foundational work is by Roger Brett, Temples of Illusion: The Golden Age of Theaters in an
American City, Brett Theatrical, 1976. This is a… “detailed history of all the old downtown area
theatres of Providence from 1871 to 1950” in 309 pages. There is also the pamphlet by Carmen
Maiocco, Downcity: Downtown Providence in the 1950s, Rhode Island Historical Society, 1997.
6
“The Age of Optimism: 1900-1929”, article on the Providence City Archives website.
Not to be confused with the VICTORY aka Keith’s / Empire movie theater, then nearby at
260 Westminster Street.
7
138
worked at, although there were another eight perfectly possible candidates.
The BIJOU, until early 1930, might not initially seem a promising candidate.
It seems to have been a seedy dive of dubious morals…
“In a 1996 Providence Journal article on old Providence theatres,
writer Michael Janusonis wrote that “…the hoity toities referred to it
as ‘the sinkhole of depravity’ or just ‘The Sink’”.
It appears to have staged scantily-clad and risqué “musical revues” in the
1920s, and one assumes that the girls also had other lines of business after
the shows. 8 An unlikely home for Lovecraft. But sometime in Spring 1930
it ceased offering the girls and instead became…
“a second-run [movie] house and changed the name to the
EMPIRE.” (my thanks to Gerald A. DeLuca for this lead).
This is confirmed by Boxoffice magazine…
“Cheri was one of the last musical revues to play the BIJOU. That
was in March 1930. Shortly after that Spitz [the owner] converted it
into a second-run [movie] house and changed the name to the
EMPIRE. It was under this title that the theatre operated until
about six months ago [1949] when it was shuttered for good.”9
So the EMPIRE would have been likely hiring staff at the right time for
Lovecraft to take a job there, around March/April 1930, after its rename and
makeover. There are a number of reasons, beyond the date, that this might
have been the cinema Lovecraft worked it:
8 The original name was apparently “The Sink”, according to the contemporary Melvin Ballou
Gilbert, in The Director, Volume 1, p.69. He recounts the genesis of the theatre as a private venue
set up by a group of men as a “midnight smoker”, in which the prettiest of the chorus and ballet
girls were brought over in cabs after the shows without changing out of their scanty costumes...
“This [another membership organisation] is the one fashionable organization of its
kind in Providence where ladies are admitted to membership. ... The younger male
members of this flourishing club have set up a little theatre which they call “The
Sink,”...”
9
Boxoffice magazine, 7th January 1950, via Providence early cinema expert Gerald A. DeLuca.
139
i.
The venue’s previous very seedy reputation might have meant it
needed a brand-new staff of ticket-takers, but also a certain level
of sober “class” selling tickets behind the glass. Seeing a
gentleman like Lovecraft in the ticket booth would instantly
indicate the new tone of the place, to any of the previous
clientele who stumbled in expecting the old “ra-ra! n’ girls!”
atmosphere.
ii. The timing of the job vacancies meant that Lovecraft would have
been tempted, due to the spring weather, to venture forth on a
regular basis after his usual winter hermitage. He does not seem
to have liked walking in cold weather, so is unlikely to have
committed himself to a Winter 1929/30 job.
iii. On a map the EMPIRE looks like it was a fairly short walk from his
home, a walk of perhaps a mile and half.
This is all a bit tenous, of course, but at this stage of the Lovecraftian
excavation project scholars are going to have to start developing grounded
hypotheses about Lovecraftian lacunae as well as doing core scholarship, if
we are to eventually find overlaps between such hypotheses that can perhaps
fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Lovecraft.
140
GARRETT PUTNAM SERVISS (1851— 1929) :
A MAJOR EARLY INFLUENCE ON H.P.
LOVECRAFT :
“I have read every published work of Garrett P. Serviss, own most
of them, and await his future writings with eagerness”
— H.P. Lovecraft, letter to All-Story Weekly, 7th March 1914.1
L
ovecraft had had what he termed “a reaction toward
literature” … “about 1911”2 and he started looking with a
new eye at the significant amount of weird fiction published
by the three proto-pulp Munsey magazines Argosy, The All-Story, and The
Cavalier. Will Murray states of Lovecraft that… “He appears to have read
them [the Munsey magazines] from cover to cover”.3 Lovecraft seems to
have stopped reading All-Story Cavalier only in late 1914,4 presumably as he
improved his literary tastes. Certainly he was reading All-Story in the first
half of the 1910s, since he had a letter published in the 8th February 1913
issue. This letter praised Irvin S. Cobb’s story “Fishhead”5 which he had read
in 1913.6 He had another letter published there in March 1914 and in the
14th August 1914 edition, the latter praising George Allen England who
1 Annotation by S.T. Joshi, in H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories,
Penguin Classics, 2001, p.373. This was just three years before the writing of “Dagon” (1917),
which began the Lovecraft Mythos.
2
Will Murray, “Lovecraft and the Pulp Magazine Tradition”, IN: An Epicure in the terrible: a
centennial anthology of essays in honor of H.P. Lovecraft, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991,
p.104.
3
4 By May 1914 it was the combined All-Story Cavalier Weekly, and it may have lost some of its
previous character by the end of 1914. See: S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, Hippocampus Press,
2010, p.140.
5
6 Cobb’s “Fishhead” seems relevant as a source for “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, and is an
interesting indication of the way Lovecraft could reach back to his Munsey magazine reading as
inspiration.
141
wrote the post-apocalyptic The Vacant World novel.7 But his favorite author
was Garrett P. Serviss (1851-1929).8 Lovecraft’s library contained three of
Serviss’s non-fiction works9, and Lovecraft used a section from one of them
verbatim in his “Beyond The Wall of Sleep” (1919).10
Who was Serviss?
By the 1920s Serviss appears to have made himself into sort of a forerunner
and combined equivalent of our Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan. Serviss
was a major early science fiction writer, but was also a well-known and
respected science populariser, and was Secretary and co-founder with S.V.
White of the American Astronomical Society. He was interested in
astronomy from a young age, and became the author of a string of practical
astronomy non-fiction works.11 He graduated from Cornell and entered
Columbia College Law School, but never practiced law and instead entered
newspaper work in New York. He wrote the first ever U.S. syndicated
newspaper columns on astronomy 12 and wrote for Popular Science Monthly in
the 1880s. His work was widely syndicated via the King Features Syndicate,
Inc. until his death. He seems to have edited or been closely connected with
an astronomy journal called the Monthly Evening Sky Map. With Leon
Barritt he was the inventor of the patented The Barritt-Serviss Star and Planet
Finder. Always a New York man, in 1910 he was recorded as being on the
Executive Committee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and
appears to have there been the head of the Astronomy Dept. Serviss
7
8
H.P. Lovecraft, letter to All-Story Weekly, 7th March 1914
9
S.T. Joshi, Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue (2nd revised edition), Hippocampus Press, 2002.
10
S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p.19.
Among there are Pleasures of the Telescope (1901); Other Worlds: Their Nature, Possibilities and
Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries (1901); The Moon (1907); Astronomy With The Naked Eye
(1908); Curiosities of the Sky (1909); Round the Year with the Stars (1910); and Astronomy in a Nutshell
(1912). These and others are freely available in digital facsimile at Archive.org
11
12 For more on Serviss’s astronomy activities, see the front-page obituary “One Who Loved the
Stars” in Popular Astronomy, Aug-Sept 1929. This is freely available online.
142
married13 circa the late 1870s, and his son Garrett Serviss (1881–1907)
became the Silver Medalist high jumper at the 1904 Olympic Games.
Garrett P. Serviss.
13
I can find no record of who he married.
143
Serviss as ‘cosmic’ showman and film-maker:
In 1892 Serviss quit being a newspaper editor and took up public lecturing as
a full-time occupation. He had earlier tried his hand at stereopticon lectures
in 1888 with “The Wonders of the Star Depths”. But his new venture was
under the banner of ‘The Urania Lectures’ (1892-94), and it was no little
affair. In fact it was a grand 100-performance Nyarlathotep-like lecture tour
that opened at the Carnegie Music Hall then showed in New York,
Pittsburgh, and Boston, using wagon-loads of the most advanced theatrical
presentational devices of his day. Serviss was greatly aided in this by Dale
Carnegie’s financial backing. He took off along the East Coast of America
accompanied by the theatrical wagons of the Morris Reno Music Hall
Company of New York. Here is a first-hand newspaper report on his lecture
show...
“A Style of Educational Show”:
Astronomical science is now finding a presentment on the stage in the
shape of what are called “scientific spectacles,” or “Urania” entertainments.
The lecturer on extra mundane matters carries the sun, moon and stars
around with him from city to city, together with as much scenery as a grand
opera company is ordinarily equipped with. This style of educational show
was originated in Berlin [Meyer and ‘The Scientific Theatre’ of the Urania
Society], and it has been introduced on a larger scale in this country by
Garrett P. Serviss, the well known astronomer. Instead of merely throwing
magic lantern pictures upon a screen, scenes on the moon and other planets
are actually exhibited by elaborate stage settings assisted by the finest kind
of scene painting and most ingenious mechanical contrivances. For instance,
views on the moon place the audience seemingly on the very surface of that
orb, from which the spectator looks off and beholds the earth and other
worlds shining at brightest mid-day in a sky of inky blackness. This [black
sky] is because the moon has no atmosphere, the bright blue of the heavens
as seen from the earth being due to its surrounding envelope of air. Eclipses
of the sun and moon, as well as many other phenomena of nature, are
shown. Astonishingly realistic effects of light, such as sunrises and sunsets,
are produced by means of rows of electric-light bulbs above and below the
144
stage. Some of the bulbs are red, some blue, and some white, and all are
controlled by a single instrument in such a manner that a lunar or other
landscape can be illuminated by ever so many changing hues. The sun is an
arc light of 18,000 candle-power, enclosed in an iron box and projected
through lenses upon the back “drop” from behind the latter. An eclipse is
made by passing an opaque disc across the lens. For the moon an arc light
of only 2,000 candlepower is employed. Many other phenomena are
illustrated by various devices. Volcanoes seem to throw up streams of lava,
while steam ascends in clouds from a perforated pipe running across the
front of the stage; lightning lag flashes vividly, and the scene is rendered
more realistically appalling by peals and crashes of thunder, which a small
boy creates by banging a sheepskin stretched on a wooden frame with balls
of wood hanging against it causing it to vibrate with awesome noise.14
The Evening Post of 14th April 1892 claimed that the show exceeded in
effects even that of the famous Wagner operas at Bayreuth, now a touchstone
of research into early multimedia performance …
“No operatic performances in America or Europe not even at
Bayreuth, have ever had the benefit of such brilliant and thoroughly
artistic scenic effects as these.”
Advert for the Carnegie Music Hall show, Science, 25th March 1892.
14 Rene Bache, Pittsburg Dispatch, 20th November 1892. There may also be an extant Scientific
American report with illustrations although I cannot trace the article…
“In a recent issue of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN we fully illustrated a scientific
lecture entitled “A Trip to the Moon,” […] delivered by Mr. Garrett P. Serviss”
145
His electrical designer for the projectors and other lighting was the Electrical
Stage Lighting Co. of J. C. Mayrhofer...
“Most of the wonderful effects of light and color in Professor
Garrett Serviss’ clever lecture on Urania, were designed by Mr. J. C.
Mayrhofer, who has since then made remarkable strides in the new
art in which he has done such excellent pioneer service.”15
‘The Urania Lectures’ show is known to have visited the Tremont Theatre in
Boston in 1892, and Lovecraft’s family may have seen it there. One wonders
if they even took the two year old Lovecraft, or if the show later came to
Providence in 1893 or 1894? Could a very early childhood memory of this
special ‘cosmic’ show be the genesis of Lovecraft’s “Nyarlathotep”, or even
have sparked his infant feeling of cosmicism before his involvement in
astronomy?16 Or might he have been able to see a printed illustrated
programme of the show,17 and been told memories of the show by his
relatives, while growing up?
One also wonders if the Urania show was revived in 1905-7? There is a
mention of Garrett P. Serviss integrating slides and other aids in his lectures
in the “1906-7 season”18 and an ad for his lectures appeared in the Yearbook
and Official Roster of the YMCA (1905). But these lectures were perhaps part
of his general lecturing activities, undertaken without the support of a full
theatre staff and lighting engineers that he had had for ‘Urania’.
In the 1920s Serviss worked in cinema production, on the 4-reel animated
explanatory film The Einstein Theory of Relativity (Red Seal, 1923)...
15
Electrical engineer, Volume 19, 1895, p. 426.
16 For more on this method of lecture presentation see: Fred Nadis, Wonder Shows: performing
science, magic, and religion In America, Rutgers University Press, 2005.
17 It appears a pamphlet, programme or article of 10 pages has survived: Urania: Introduced in
America and Conducted by the Music Hall Company of New York, Morris Reno, President : Comprising the
Wonderful Stage Spectacles “A Trip to the Moon”, and “The Seven Ages of Our World (from Chaos to Man)”
... Explanatory Discourse by Garrett P. Serviss. I have been unable to see this, but it is listed as from
the Tremont Theatre, Boston, Mass., dated 1892.
18
Richard Abe (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, p. 442.
146
One imagines that Lovecraft might have seen this film when it was released.
Although S.T. Joshi has shown that Lovecraft does not appear to have
properly grasped Einstein until 1929, until which time he drew...
“wild conclusions from Einstein, both metaphysical and ethical,
[that] are entirely unfounded”19
Thus Serviss could almost have been describing Lovecraft when he wrote of
the nature of the public misunderstandings generated around Einstein’s
ideas…
“As concerns the intellect of the average person, he is responsible
for having let loose from their caves a bevy of blind bats whose wild
19 S.T. Joshi, A Dreamer and a Visionary: H.P. Lovecraft in his time, Liverpool University Press,
2001, p.183.
147
circling in the limelight of publicity draws dreary gleams around the
moorland of everyday commonsense.”
On his death the Serviss slide collection was sold…
“A Rare Opportunity to Acquire a Splendid Collection of Slides in
Perfect Condition: Astronomical, Travel, Historical and
Biographical used by the Late Garrett P. Serviss, one of America’s
Most Popular Lecturers.”20
I can find no trace of any institutional buyer, and presumably they were
dispersed to sideshows and elderly touring lanternists and then lost.
Life on Mars?
Serviss supported Percival Lowell’s famously wrong claims of life on Mars...
“Percival Lowell from Flagstaff, Ariz., stating that a large
projection of Mars has been discovered, leads Prof. Garrett P. Serviss
to declare that the planet is undoubtedly inhabited”.
Serviss also addressed this topic in popular fiction. His early SF ‘Edisonade’
Edison’s Conquest of Mars (1898) anticipated Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John
20
The Review of Popular Astronomy, 1929.
148
Carter of Mars (Carter first appearing “Under the Moons of Mars” in The
All-Story Magazine in 1912). Edison’s Conquest of Mars has been noted and
discussed by literary historians because of its pivotal place in the science
fiction of Mars between Wells and Burroughs, and a few political literary
academics have also scored a few easy points by scorning the work’s strongly
pro- Anglo-Saxon and pro- Imperial attitudes.
The fiction of Serviss:
Some of Serviss‘s major fiction works21 seem to have certain parallels with
Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”. His major The Second Deluge was first
serialized in The Cavalier 22 from July 1911 to July 1912. In it we have four
major Lovecraft approaches in one novel: a sunken city presided over by
horrific octopi; unspeakability; alien geometry; the story allegedly pieced
together from fragmentary narratives. I have explored this possible influence
on Lovecraft in details in my earlier book Walking with Cthulhu.23
Serviss’s novel The Moon Metal (published 1900 as a book)24 is a globespanning work that opens in Antarctica, one of the places which most
fascinated Lovecraft. It has a second half featuring a lot of astronomy, which
would no doubt have delighted Lovecraft. Interestingly, its central figure Dr.
Syx is just once described as a…
“devil-fish [i.e., an octopus] sucking the veins of the planet and
holding it helpless in the grasp of his tentacular billions”
Serviss‘s A Columbus of Space was serialised January to June 1909 in The AllStory, revised 1911; then serialized again in Amazing Stories with the opening
chapters appearing in the August 1926 edition25 is a fairly conventional but
21 For a full list and plot details see the excellent and completist reference work by Everett F.
Bleiler Science Fiction: The Early Years, Kent State University Press, 1990.
22
Internet Speculative Fiction Database online at www.isfdb.org
23
David Haden, Walking with Cthulhu: H.P. Lovecraft as psychogeographer, New York City 1924-26
24
The Moon Metal was also published in 1900, as a now-lost newspaper syndication.
25
Mike Ashley, The Gernsback Days, Wildside, 2006, p.86.
149
well-done adventure-trip to Venus, but interestingly it opens with the same
sort of disturbed ‘cosmic’ dreams that would later feature in “The Call of
Cthulhu”…
“I finally got to sleep, but I had horrible dreams.” [ and the next
night ] “My dreams were disturbed by visions of the grinning
nondescripts at the foot of the wall, which transformed themselves
into winged dragons, and remorselessly pursued me through the
measureless abysses of space.”
Admittedly these dreams are mentioned only very briefly. They seem
anticipatory of the events to come in the novel, but they are not linked to any
specific deity who may be ‘sending’ them as in “Cthulhu”.
Amazing Stories, September 1926, reprinting Garrett P. Serviss.
150
Are there other works by Serviss which might have appealed to Lovecraft?
Serviss was a mountain climber even into his 40s and he had published
articles such as “Climbing Mont Blanc in a Blizzard” (1896). Around 19051908 Serviss also researched and wrote on the work of the plant hybridizer
Luther Burbank (1849-1926),26 which resulted in two important
Cosmopolitan Magazine articles, the first being “Transforming the world of
plants; the wonder-work of Luther Burbank which shows how man can
govern evolution” (1905). Perhaps there were reprinted in the popular
science magazines of the 1920s, where Lovecraft might have read them?27
Lovecraft was notable in his use of plant-animal hybrids in his fiction.
Serviss appears to have been a devotee of the Swedish philosopher and
scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Further research on this facet
of Serviss might trace elements of Swedenborgian belief being expressed in
his works, and then perhaps detect consequent influences on Lovecraft. In
this respect is it perhaps interesting to note that Serviss’s non-fiction Other
Worlds: Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest
Discoveries (1901), although a conventionally brisk and vivid survey of the
Solar System, opens with the follow remarkable quotation. The sentiment of
the lines seem almost a precursor or Lovecraft’s cosmic indifferentism…
“Shall we measure the councils of heaven by the narrow impotence
of human faculties, or conceive that silence and solitude reign
throughout the mighty empire of nature?” — Dr. Thomas Chalmers
(1780-1847).28
26 Expert practical plant hybridizer, who gave the world over 800 strains and varieties of useful
plants. See: William Harwood, New Creations in Plant Life: An Authoritative Account of the Life and
Work of Luther Burbank, Macmillan, 1907.
27 I know of no comprehensive Serviss bibliography covering his entire output of fiction and
non-fiction. He would seem to be an interesting candidate for a PhD thesis, if anyone cares to
write it.
28 The leading Scottish intellectual of his time, then world famous, but now almost totally
forgotten.
151
JOHN HOWARD APPLETON (1844-1930)
J
ohn Howard Appleton (1844—1930) was a friend of the family in
Lovecraft’s childhood, and a Brown University professor in
Chemistry. He also appears to have taught Geology at Brown and
later in his life he shows up a member of learned societies in archaeology and
botany. Like the Lovecraft family he had a strong interest in his family
genealogy, which led him to issue a book of his researches in 1896 called
Sketches of the Ancestry of William Hyde Appleton, John Howard Appleton etc.
Appleton lived on Angell St. from around the 1880s until around 1921.
His exact address appears uncertain. A modern Providence Preservation
Society document has it that he lived at 100(?) Angell St. from 1887 to 1912.
However, the address for “Prof. John Howard Appleton” in the annual
Brown University Address book of the living graduates (1894) is given as “85
Angell St”. In the 1899 edition of this book his address is “209 Angell St.”
Appleton retired summer 1914 (according to both Science 9th Oct 1914 and
the Encyclopedia Brunoniana). He is listed in Who’s Who in New England, and
is noted there as being President of the Providence Art Club. This latter
point can be explained by noting that one of his career specialisations was in
the chemistry of art materials, “Chemistry Applied to the Arts”. He had
helped write Providence Art Club catalogues as early as 1885. He also
lectured to the Art Club at least once…
“John Howard Appleton lectured before the Providence Art Club
on “Sugar and its Refining,” Nov 23, 1900.” (Brown alumni monthly)
Appleton was also a consulting industrial chemistry specialist on the
chemical contamination of water, something which might bear on
152
Lovecraft’s famous story “The Colour Out of Space” — advising on the
presence of zinc in drinks ice; the condition of Pawtuxet’s water supply;
warning committees of water contamination by sewage; and in 1899 advising
on the usefulness or otherwise of mechanical water filters for New York.
Toward the end of his teaching career he worked on vat dyes (Men of Mark
in Textile Chemistry 1922-1926) presumably with a view to examining the
health impacts, perhaps by contamination of watercourses with dyes. This
latter in particular is close to the idea of deadly unknown colours being
present in the water supply. One wonders if he impressed some of his
concerns on the young Lovecraft when they talked on chemistry.
Since Lovecraft’s grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips was involved at
that time in irrigation and dams, perhaps he may have come to know
Appleton as someone whom he called on to undertake independent
commercial analysis, to establish the purity of the irrigation and dam waters?
With the boy Lovecraft, Professor Appleton no doubt confined his talk to
less weighty matters. But I wonder if he might have weighed in with the
family on Lovecraft’s nervousness, suggesting the idea that it might be due to
diet. I have already mentioned Appleton’s concern with water contamination
and here is Appleton in the popular press (18th March 1899) on the dangers
of Alum in bread…
153
Clearly Appleton had a deep concern with about invisible contamination of
things like bread and water, possibly a fear well justified at the time.
What appearance did Appleton present to the boy Lovecraft? Here is
LeRoy Davis evoking Appleton in his book A Clashing of the Soul: John Hope
(p.65)…
“The chairman of the [Brown] committee was the stern Professor
John H. Appleton, whose icy glare through horn-rimmed spectacles
was as foreboding as it had been in chemistry class, where Hope had
not done well. Appleton wore an unusually long handlebar mustache
with an equally thick full beard that together revealed little of his
mouth. According to Owens, when Appleton spoke, he emitted a
muffled sound that seemed to be coming from someone else.”
One can seen these features on a photo of him located by Chris Perridas…
Despite the apparent indirection of his voice via the beard, his former student
Faunce remembered at Brown in 1922 Appleton’s clarity of diction…
“No student ever had to ask him to put a question a second time.
No listener ever questioned as to what he meant. He speaks as he
stands — upright, downright and forthright.” (Encyclopedia
Brunoniana)
154
Lovecraft remembered Appleton, in a letter, as having gifted the aspiring
chemist a copy of his The Young Chemist: A Book of Laboratory Work for
Beginners when his first chemistry lab was set up for him in 1899. By that
year the trusty little volume had gone through eight editions.
“In 1899 a new interest of mine [chemistry] began to gain
ascendancy … a friend of ours is Prof. John Howard Appleton, the
venerable professor of chemistry at Brown & author of many books
on the subject.” (Selected Letters I, p.71).
Although one wonders if this gift of a book was not also accompanied by at
least a viewing of the very remarkable pictures in Appleton’s first and more
foundational book The Beginner’s Hand-book of Chemistry, if only for the
imaginative spark to be found in its fourteen illustrations. Lovecraft might
also have seen these by consulting the book via the local public library.
Here are the remarkable engravings from Appleton’s slightly earlier and first
work in his “series”, the Beginner’s Hand-book of Chemistry. It’s fascinating to
imagine that these could have almost formed a rough template for Lovecraft’s
later works of fiction…
155
At the Mountains of Madness:
The Colour Out of Space:
156
Nyarlathotep:
The Statement of Randolph Carter:
157
The Nameless City:
158
The dreamlands:
Cool Air:
159
TSAN-CHAN IN TIBET: Tibetan Bon devils and
Lovecraft’s future empire
L
ovecraft mentions the far-future character Tsan-Chan twice
in his fiction, but he never developed either the setting or
the character. These uses occur in two stories…
“Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient,
or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand
years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the
red Arcturus…” — “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919).
“I talked with the mind of Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel
empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in 5,000 A.D…” — “The
Shadow Out of Time” (1934-35).
It appears this name originates in Tibetan, not Chinese. In Tibetan it has a
more congruent meaning than Chinese, being commonly appended to words
to imply “possessing”1…
Thus its finds its way into the formal names of the earliest Tibetan Buddhist
kings (King Srong-tsan, founder of the capital at Lhasa, etc). It takes this
meaning from ancient tsan deities of pre-Buddhist Tibet. Ethnographer
Karma Ura tells more of the archaic thinking behind this kingly
appellation…2
1
Stephan V. Beyer ,The Classical Tibetan Language, 1992, p.121.
2
Karma Ura, Deities, archers, and planners in the era of decentralisation, 2010.
160
“Human relations with the spirits, especially the lha or tsan, are
cited as instances of inducing superior clan lineages. Reinvigoration
of the human genetic pool, it is said, took place when a tsan begot a
child…”
Ura also vividly tells more about the ways one variety of these tsan spirits
were focused as genius loci for human uses…
“cliffs associated with brag tsan deities also harbour old fungi and
lichens. The citadels of deities, in the form of sacred groves, often
perform the function of a wind blockade, standing as protective
gateways to inhabited valleys.”3
These are the beliefs and practices of the ancient Bon-pas, the aboriginal
pre-Buddhist inhabitants of the Tibet region, now almost eradicated by
Buddhism. Bon practice… “an animistic and devil-dancing or Shamanist
religion”4 “The first [historical] stage of Bon shamans was known as “the
black sect”.5
These Bon animists lead, through the online resources, to details of the
historic use of tsan as a prefix name in Tibet, as it is used by Lovecraft. In
this prefix form it refers directly to one of the… “Tsan: group of mountain
deities”6 and as such can also prefix the everyday names of various rivers and
mountains. The historical ethnography book Bon in the Himalaya gives more
details…
“Tsan: These deities are present in rocks, gorges, trees and all
mountains. They are in armour and on horseback. Their bodies are
painted red.”7
3
Karma Ura, Deities, archers, and planners in the era of decentralisation, Karma Ura, 2004.
See the chapter “Pre-Lamist Tibet” in Tibetan Buddhism: with Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and
Mythology, 1895 (reprinted 1934). Available free online in digital facsimile.
4
5 Christina Pratt, An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, Volume 1, Rosen, 2007, p.65. Although it strikes
me that this name may arise from anti-Bon Buddhist propaganda.
6
Hugo E. Kreijger, Tibetan Painting: The Jucker Collection, Serindia Publications, 2001, p.189.
7
B.C. Gurung, Bon in the Himalaya, Uma Gurung, 2003.
161
In more modern times of Buddhist hegemony, the tsan sacred grove had by
then shrunk into the diminutive form8 of a small horned model-house made
of wood. This was called a tsan-kang, and was placed on a roof of a dwelling
house…
“[a priest]…performs a purificatory fumigation of the entire
household, from the stables to the altar-room and finally to the roof,
by carrying around a large pan with coals and juniper branches. He
finally leaves the pan on the roof, next to the tsan-kang (btsan khang,
‘house of the tsän deity’), which is the support or dwelling-place of
the domestic deity, the p’o-lha. The tsan-kang and the pair of horns
that often surmounts it are given a fresh coat of paint (they are
generally red or white, sometimes both), and the juniper branches,
small prayer-flags […] that crown the tsan-kang are renewed.
The tsan-kang is presumably horned because imagined by the Bon as angry
and red-faced. Red-faced representations of the tsan are also made, and kept
in secret inner shrines open only to adepts. One modern ethnographer
talked of seeing, in a replica of an authentic inner shine, representations of…
“wrathful protector deities [and recognising] “one a zhidak or
mountain deity, the other a red-faced tsan” depicted with “ferocious
faces, popping eyes, and bared white fangs”.9
Thus a tsan is effectively the equivalent of a western devil, at least in terms
of the angry visage, horns, and the red face/body, although they appear to
protect places rather than entice people to wickedness. I can find no
reference to any particular “Tsan-chan” type of tsan deity.
Given all this, one thus wonders if Lovecraft had the name “Tsan-Chan”
from reading or hearing a public talk from the Theosophist Nicholas
8 For more on the domestication of mountain deities see: Kleeman, Terry, F., “Mountain
Deities in China: the domestication of the Mountain God and the subjugation of the margins”,
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 111, 2 (1994), pp.226-238.
9 Charlene Makley, in Tim Oakes (Ed.), Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State,
Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, p.138.
162
Roerich, one of their leading experts on Tibet. Roerich was a Russian-born
New York artist who mounted major expeditions to locate the mythical
mountain paradise of ‘Shangri La’ in the Himalayas (1923-28). As such he
had an interest in pre-Buddhist Bon beliefs and texts. Indeed many of his
vivid paintings are not of Buddhist monasteries, but of Bon-po monasteries.
Roerich wrote of…
“the Black Faith, inimical to Buddha. … the Bon-po or Black
Faith is also spread considerably in Tibet. … We saw [and entered
the inner sanctums of] a great many monasteries of the Bon-po in
different parts of Tibet.” 10
It seems unlikely that Roerich would have refrained from writing that he
had seen devil-like red tsan deity representations and tsan-house red horn
customs in Tibet. I have not read through Roerich’s accounts of his travels,
or delved into articles he published prior to his trips, but I imagine that a
Theosophist westerner of the 1920s might easily have understood the tsan as
being a sort of primal Devil-King deity of the ancient Tibetans.
Yet Lovecraft first uses “Tsan Chan” in 1919 in “Beyond the Wall of
Sleep”. How to explain this early use, perhaps before his encounter with
Theosophy11 and its concern with early Tibet? It seems Tibet had been open
to westerners for around 15 years by that time, and interest was intensified by
the start of the First World War. By 1919 there were plenty of book-length
travel accounts in print, in English. Possibly there is an account of Bon tsan
beliefs in one of those, and I hope the reader will forgive me for not pursuing
the arduous task of finding it in the works of Roerich or elsewhere. I
welcome any help from Tibetan specialists, who may be able to point out
likely passages in English books or articles from circa 1890-1919.
Possibly Lovecraft had simply read an encyclopedia article on Tibet, which
would give him the names of the early Tibetan kings, and thus he meant his
10
Nicholas Roerich, Heart of Asia: Memoirs from the Himalayas, Inner Traditions, 1990.
I have as yet been unable to pinpoint the date of Lovecraft’s first serious readings in
Theosophy.
11
163
Tsan to indicate a Tibetan “King” (and thus to very obliquely hint at the
Plateau of Leng).
But if he did know of the Tibetan devil-like tsan deities then perhaps
Lovecraft impishly strengthened the tsan’s similarity with the western Devil
— by making up a “Tsan-Chan” name that was just a little more similar to
“Sa-tan”.
164
THE LOCATIONS OF SONIA’S TWO HAT SHOPS
L
ovecraft’s wife Sonia Greene lived in an upmarket
apartment at 259 Parkside Avenue, Brooklyn. This fact is
very well known, but it seems that Lovecraftian scholars
have not been able to determine exactly which apartment was hers.1 We do
know that it was a comfortable but not a huge size, and possibly expensive,
since Sonia was then earning a huge annual salary in the New York millinery
trade. Below are 2013 rental agent pictures of #2C in the block, which are
indicative of the likely interior modeling and staircase layout of her
apartment. There was probably a small chandelier where that ugly bare
fluorescent light is now…
1 Looking at a view of the frontage, it appears there were either six or eight in the block. But
judging by the number of letterboxes seen above, there could be sixteen apartments.
165
166
The First Hat Shop
It was while living at this apartment that Sonia briefly launched her own hat
shop at 25 West 57th Street address,2 just off Fifth Avenue. This retail
address had long been a location for upmarket hat shops, judging by these
snippets from the online record…
“Fresh with ideas from Paris and elsewhere, Herman Tappe
opened up his own emporium in New York City in May of 1907. At
first, he specialized in ladies’ hats” [...] “He opened the House of
Tappe’ at 25 West 57th Street” [circa 1910].3
Then in 1918…
“Doane-Evette, a new millinery concern, has leased the store
formerly occupied by Tappe at 25 West 57th Street, New York,
taking over the former Lewison mansion.”4
After Tappe moved, the 25 West 57th Street store had been advertised for
rent as…
“This is an exceptional opportunity to lease a showroom 25 x 90
feet, also a workroom of the same size with executive offices. In the
heart of the most exclusive millinery center to be found anywhere in
America”.5
Doane-Evette filed a notice of bankruptcy in the New York press in February
1919. That she failed so quickly may have been due to the disruption in
supply lines from Paris in the aftermath of the Armistice in the First World
War. But it may also indicate that the expense of running such an upmarket
store in such a position was considerable. Less than a decade later, Sonia’s
2 The address for this first shop is evidenced by an embroidered hat label with her shop’s name
and address on it, found inside her 1932 passport, as listed in the lwcurrey.com sale page for the
passport in 2013.
3
Shelby County Historical Society.
4
Millinery Trade Review, 1918.
5
Millinery Trade Review, 1917.
167
hat shop at the same address would also collapse. Also within months of
opening, it seems. One wonders why she was so foolish to invest her savings
in such a risky venture.
I have been unable to find any details of the store’s use from 1919 to the
time Sonia had it, or any photograph or drawing of it. It seems surprising
that Sonia’s first hat store has left no trace in the online record. Perhaps
something of that size and location was thought not to need press
advertising, or the relevant directories and trade publications have not yet
been scanned and placed online? Perhaps the sheer speed of the collapse (a
few months, it seems) meant that Sonia had no chance to build up a wad of
profits that could be spent on advertising?
The Second Hat Shop
Sonia had moved to another apartment by early 1928, the year that she was
in the throes of setting up a second hat shop at 368 East 17th St. in Brooklyn.
Lovecraft reluctantly stayed with his wife in her new apartment at 370 East
17th St. in Brooklyn, quite literally located within a stone’s throw from her
new shop,6 for about six weeks in early summer 1928. Lovecraft was
supposed to be there to help with the opening, but he quite often found
other interests to occupy him.7
We also know the address of Sonia’s second hat shop’s from its actual
letterhead and initial publicity letter, which was auctioned in 2008 and which
was archived online by Chris Perridas. This publicity letter indicates that
Sonia offered a made-to-measure while-you-wait fitting service.
I’ve now found some press cuttings from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1928,
which also gives the same exact 368 E. 17th St. Cortelyou Rd address plus the
information that Sonia offered to repair or remodel women’s hats…
6
See Google StreetView at http://goo.gl/maps/pBgbr
7
The details of the visit are in S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, page 707 onwards.
168
From the “Shopping With Susan” column, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York,
Sunday 27th May 1928, page 6A.
This item might suggest that the shop’s launch was not a success in terms of
selling full-price hats, but then again it may just be clever marketing to entice
the ‘new summer hat’ buyers of late May. Perhaps both at the same time.
The shop was still trading in September…
Sunday 16th September 1928, page 9A
Sunday 23rd September 1928, page ?A
169
Below is an Oct 1962 picture of the run of shops on Cortelyou Rd (south
side) at 386 East between 16th and 17th St. The Brooklyn Historical
Society gives the entire run of shops here in three pictures, but since the rest
of the pictures run toward 16th St. I will not give those sections here. Sonia’s
shop was at the 17th St. end of the row. Given her shop’s description as
“little” in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, it was probably one of the three smaller
ones on the right in this building’s row…
Photograph by John D., Morrell (1921-1988). Brooklyn Historical Society.
Google StreetView also shows similar period shops on the opposite side of
Cortelyou Road, although without such a wide pavement. You can just
170
about see Sonia’s apartment building at the back of this picture, on the
extreme left of this picture.
Whether the hat shop was to be seen in this picture, or was opposite on the
other side of the street, may be debatable until new evidence arises. But
either way it obviously still exists and is in retail use. Yet S.T. Joshi states in
I Am Providence (p.707) that 368 E. 17th St. no longer exists, and that…
“there is no longer any address with this number”. This is clearly not the
case, once we are able to follow up the additional ‘on Cortelyou Rd’
information. Judging by Joshi’s comment about the shop now being replaced
by a “small garage” (which is clearly and obviously visible on Google Street
View, at the apartment location of 370 East 17th St.), it seems clear to me
that S.T. Joshi has inadvertently confused the vanished apartment location
with the still-existing shop location.
171
IN THE HOLLOWS OF MEMORY: ON THE
SEEKONK AND CAT SWAMP
L
ovecraft’s boyhood was spent close to the farmland, swamp
woodland, parkland, and shore land which ran north from
Angell Street, more or less along and parallel to the west
bank of the Seekonk River. He had a total bicycle range of sometimes up to
15 miles radius from home, according to his letters. But he probably had a
more everyday range of three miles, at least in his increasingly adventurous
middle boyhood from age 10 to 12 (1900-1902)…
“My home was not far from what was then the edge of the settled
residence district, so that I was just as used to the rolling fields, stone
walls, giant elms, squat farmhouses, and deep woods of rural New
England as to the ancient urban scene. This brooding, primitive
landscape seemed to me to hold some vast but unknown significance,
and certain dark wooded hollows near the Seekonk River took on an
aura of strangeness not unmixed with vague horror. They figured in
my dreams — especially those nightmares containing the black,
winged rubbery entities which I called “night-gaunts”
— from “Some Notes on a Nonentity”.1
The map overleaf shows what I judge to be Lovecraft’s approximate everyday
territory as a “veritable bicycle centaur”2 in his boyhood — seen on the Rhode
Island No.3. of the U.S. Geological Survey 1891 — showing the rural nature
of the land north of his home…
1
In Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy; Autobiography & Miscellany.
2
Selected Letters V, p.104
172
Rhode Island No.3. map of the U.S. Geological Survey 1891.
173
The shores of the Seekonk:
Those “dark wooded hollows near the Seekonk River”? Where were they?
The most likely place was in the comparatively new Blackstone Park, which
ran alongside the river north from Dexter Asylum to the southern parts of
Butler Hospital grounds. The park has had much filling and work since the
1890s, but judging by a very detailed topographical contour map3 the Park
doesn’t today appear to have a noticeable cluster of small hollows likely to
attract young boys.
3 BlackstoneParkTrailMap.pdf available online. Formal title: “BLACKSTONE PARK
CONSERVATION DISTRICT PLANNING WORKSHEET - August 21, 2012 Approximate
scale: 1”=200’.”
174
Blackstone Park ran on north into the extensive wooded and partly
landscaped grounds of Butler Hospital, and then beyond these grounds was
the Swan Point Cemetery (laid out in 1875).
Here’s a 1947 map of the
west bank of the Seekonk River, clearly showing the sequence of progression
along the shoreline from Blackstone — Butler — to Swan Point…
We can probably discount “The Grotto” marked in the Butler Hospital
grounds on an 1870 map, as a candidate for the “dark wooded hollows” —
since that feature took its name from the original Grotto Farm there. There
was a tiny stream on the farm, but it was private in 1895 and the stream went
through flat watermeadows.4 It does not seem to have been a sunken and
wild woodland dell accessible to small boys in Lovecraft’s time.5
4
See Among Rhode Island Wild Flowers, 1895, p.51.
As judged by the detailed description of the grounds and the Grotto in the National Register
of Historic Places Nomination Form for Butler Hospital, 30th April 1986. Available online.
There was a small wooded and ferny stream valley in the hospital grounds, the upper part of the
stream leading through the grounds to the Seekonk, but it would have been i) inaccessible to
bands of small boys in Lovecraft’s time, and ii) still exists.
5
175
The broad-brush topographical contour lines on the U.S. Geological
Survey map of 1891 (seen heading this essay) don’t appear to show any
special pit or sharp depression in the landscape near the west bank of the
Seekonk River. But viewing the area via Google Earth suggests the difficulty
of accurately surveying the wooded terrain contours for maps in the late
1880s. It also suggests that the southmost bluffs in the extensive wooded
grounds of Butler Hospital, directly above a cove where a stream flows into
the Seekonk, were the most likely spot for “certain dark wooded hollows”
accessible to young boys near the bank of the Seekonk.
It seems likely the “hollows” were only a short distance from the Seekonk
shore. Lovecraft himself says they were “near the Seekonk River”. In 1963
August Derleth noted in the Arkham House volume The Dunwich Horror
and others that… “On the banks of the Seekonk as a child he [Lovecraft]
acted out Greek and Roman legends”. Presumably Derleth had this fact
from perusing a Lovecraft letter, or from interviewing childhood friends of
Lovecraft. But it suggests Lovecraft was actually on or very near the banks of
the river and not substantially inland. And with his friends, since it would be
unusual for a young boy to play-act in that manner alone.
The banks of the Seekonk still haunted Lovecraft’s dreams in 1919, as
evidenced by this entry in his Commonplace Book…
“29. Dream of Seekonk — ebbing tide — bolt from sky — exodus
from Providence — fall of Congregational dome.”
The same dream is also recounted at length by Lovecraft in a letter included
in the book Lord of a Visible World 6, where it begins…
“I was standing on the East Providence [western] shore of the
Seekonk River, about three quarters of a mile south of the foot of
Angell Street, at some unearthly nocturnal hour…”
The Seekonk also featured in one of his best poems, “The Messenger”…
6 H.P. Lovecraft, Lord of a visible world: an autobiography in letters, Ohio University Press, 2000,
p.78.
176
… still I lit
Another lamp as starry Leo climbed
Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed
Three – and the firelight faded, bit by bit.
…
Lovecraft was still visiting the bank of the Seekonk in 1930, as evidenced
by letters such as that addressed from… “Seekonk River bank August 1930”7,
and his comments in a later letter that he would often seek out the Seekonk
shore on summer days.
Blackstone Park in 1916, looking toward the Seekonk.
7 Essential Solitude: the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Hippocampus Press, 2008,
p.275.
177
The stroll along the Seekonk would have had special meaning for
Lovecraft, had he known that Poe had walked the same walk.8 Poe wrote
that he and Sarah Helen Whitman … “walked to the wilderness” from
Providence on a fateful walk, and Whitman later remembered and named the
exact setting in a poem… “that autumnal day when by the Seekonk’s lonely
wave we stood…”
Incidentally, it seems that one could reach the Seekonk River (after 1908)
through the one-mile tunnel that went under College Hill. As seen here in
this Library of Congress picture, titled “East Side Railroad Tunnel, Benefit
Street to Seekonk River, Providence”…
8 Robert A. Geake, A History of the Providence River, The History Press, 2013, p.123. Possibly he
did not know if the Poe walk, as if he did then he probably would have mentioned it in his letters.
178
In the Cat Swamp:
So far my identification of Lovecraft’s “dark wooded hollows” has been
tenuous. Possibly the hollows in question are at the wooded steam outlet
into the Seekonk below Butler Hospital, or a little south of there. But could
the boyhood haunt have actually been in the nearby Cat Swamp, quite a way
back from the river? The Cat Swamp or Catt Swampe (1668) was very near
to Lovecraft’s childhood home, although we don’t actually know if he visited.
Where exactly was Cat Swamp?
“Conspicuous in the development of the east slope of the Hill was
that of the so-called Cat Swamp district, a low-lying marsh covered
with water the greater part of the year, and long considered the most
unpromising part of Providence.” (Providence Magazine, 1926).
The earliest road on Blackstone on the East Side when through it or to it…
“The earliest road, Cat Swamp Lane (1684), followed high ground
and is the original path of today’s Olney Street”
(www.providenceri.com)
“1882: Atlas of Providence shows little or no development and little
platting [laying out of plots] had taken place in this area called Cat
Swamp” (PPS Gowdey Database)
The introduction to the second edition of the botany book Among Rhode
Island Wild Flowers (1896) regretted that Cat Swamp (which it calls a
“region”) was… “rapidly yielding to vandal inroads”. The swamp evidently
had walking paths through it which were passable in summer, it then being
possible to take a cable-car over College Hill and then back via Cat
Swamp…
It was also used for ice skating parties around Lovecraft’s time, enjoyed by
the pupils of the adjacent Moses Brown School… “There were skating
179
parties at Cat Swamp” (Centennial history of Moses Brown school, 1819-1919).
Since Cat Swamp was abundant in wildflowers, insects and wildlife, one also
expects his school used it to teach botany and etymology during the warmer
months.
In January 1901, Lovecraft then age 10 and a half, the city Mayor nobly
declared the City would acquire the swamp…
“Within the past few months movements have arisen looking
towards the acquisition by the City for public purposes of [...] Cat
Swamp, long a favorite resort for lovers of nature and for children in
the Second Ward. I believe it to be eminently desirable that the City
should acquire such places [...] before they are built upon [...] that
they may be kept open in the natural condition, affording to our
children the playgrounds much needed”
But a few years later, in the mid 1900s, the noble ambition was forgotten and
the swamp was drained by a housing developer…
“SITE OF “CAT SWAMP”: This swamp, now drained [through
diverting to springs to feed into the local sewers], in the northerly
part of the Moses Brown farm, east of the Moses Brown School, and
extending further north, was formerly much noted for the variety and
beauty of its wild flowers.” (Points of Historical Interest in the State of
Rhode Island, 1908)
The swamp had been partly filled in and built on with 200 house lots by
1919, when the Providence magazine reported that the temptation for the
City to build houses had been irresistible…
“While there is yet quite an area in the “Cat Swamp” district, socalled, now the best residential part of Providence, upon which
houses could be built, the number would not begin to measure up to
the demands for housings [in the city]
The northern reaches of Cat Swamp were later taken for the sports needs
of Brown University…
180
“With the advent of the sports-crazed Roaring Twenties, Brown
undertook one of the most ambitious facility initiatives in the
country. Under the leadership of Athletic Director “Doc” Marvel
1894, the university acquired two 15-acre parcels flanking Elmgrove
Avenue. Cat Swamp gave way to three major structures in just two
years: Aldrich Field and Baseball Field (1925), Brown Field (1925)
and the Brown Gymnasium (1925)”. (“A History of Brown Athletic
Facilities”, 2010, at http://www.brownbears.com).
Above: Brown team who cleared the northerly part of Cat Swamp in the mid 1920s.
Today the eastern area of…
“Cat Swamp [can be located on maps] east of Arlington Avenue,
between Everett Avenue and Freeman Parkway.” (The civic and
architectural development of Providence, 1957).
Today the Brown Campus maintains a semblance of open land in their
sports fields located on the parts of the swamp that originally were…
“extending further north”. You can just about trace the swamp through the
very faint swamp “tufts of grass” symbols that extend north of Angell Street
on the Rhode Island map of the U.S. Geological Survey 1887, and then see it
more clearly on a 1936 map of Providence circa 1750…
181
182
So all this puts Cat Swamp starting about a third of a mile north of Angell
Street, and ending about a mile north of Angell Street in the form of the
‘Great Swamp’.
But does Lovecraft ever talk of it? Lovecraft doesn’t mention Cat Swamp
by name, at least in any source I can find. The filling in of the southern parts
for housing is very suggestive, but one suspects he would have used such an
evocative name in his letters when referring to the “hollows” and made some
passing jollity about the place name and kitty cats. But he did not. He did
write more generally, of the open area just to the north and east of his home
(see the quote given on the first page in this essay) but without naming Cat
Swamp. All this is very suggestive that his “hollows” were not in the swamp
area.9
So, having examined all the known facts on Cat Swamp, it does not appear
likely to have had any remarkable wooden hollows in it, especially since the
nature of swamp land and its drainage would have meant that such hollows
would have quickly become leveled-out swamp sumps.
Into the ravines:
So what is the solution to the riddle of the location of Lovecraft’s “dark
wooded hollows” — site of his first primal connection of thrilling fear with
an evocatively eerie landscape? It seems the search must now move a little
eastward from Cat Swamp, returning along the stream that drains it down to
the shoreline of the Seekonk River. I was aided here by a late discovery of a
passage in Lovecraft’s letters in the book Lord of a Visible World. In this
passage, recalling his childhood, Lovecraft appears to somewhat more
precisely describe and locate these “dark wooded hollows near the Seekonk
River”. He notes the site was in a “tributary ravine” of the Seekonk.
9 The only surviving clear image of the swamp appears to be “Cat Swamp” (oil painting, 1896)
by the notable George William Whitaker (1840-1916, a founder of the Providence Art Club),
which is held at the Rhode Island Historical Society. Not online, except for a tiny thumbnail
which suggests either an eerie nocturne or a truly bad auctioneer photograph.
183
“One marvellous wooded ravine — whose effect on my infant
imagination was tremendous — has been wholly filled and
obliterated. One section [of the countryside near his first home],
however — the wooded banks of the Seekonk River, with a tributary
ravine like the filled-up one — has remained just as it was. ” (Lord of
a Visible World, p.21)10
A very careful search of all available maps suggests there can there are only
two possible sites for a “tributary ravine” flowing into the Seekonk on the
East Side. There was never any third cove on this stretch. One exists today
in a natural state, the other has been subject to heavy changes and is no
longer a proper cove (but is still a fairly natural pond). These sites can be
seen on this aerial photograph in the bottom right quarter of the picture.
1985 aerial photograph (north, looking south) showing the two stream coves along
the Seekonk river.
The site on the right is the river outlet for the stream that drains the
northern part of what was north Cat Swamp, and the one on the left (with
10
Lovecraft also mentions “ravines” in other letter in 1934…
“[the old wild and farmland area of Providence is now] built up with residential
streets; although a small strip of it — the high wooded bluff along the Seekonk River
& an adjacent series of ravines — has been preserved in its primitive state as a park
reservation.”, Selected Letters IV, p.348. A “series” of ravines implies more than two.
184
the pond) drains what used to be south Cat Swamp.11 The U.S. Geological
Survey 1891 map clearly shows these two “tributary ravine”s, one at the south
tip of the Butler Hospital grounds and the other at what is now York Pond.
The remark that the childhood “tributary ravine” had been “wholly filled and
obliterated” is curious. One does not fill in a tributary ravine in a major city,
as they all serve key drainage purposes within any riverside terrain. One
would have to pipe the stream through the ravine, and bury the pipe, or else
wholly divert the stream. One wonders if Lovecraft actually meant the eerie
ravine that formed one of his first childhood memories, formed in 1892
while either on holiday or at the Guiney house? If so, then we may be being
misled, if we go looking for a “filled and obliterated” tributary ravine on the
Seekonk.
11 Originally called Bailey’s Upper Cove (north) and Bailey’s Lower Cove (south). The lower
cove being beds of reed for thatching houses in the 1700s, now York Pond.
185
Here is a picture of the York Pond “tributary ravine” seen from above by
satellite photography. One can see a faint spread of sediment into the river,
from the channel that still takes the stream along the south edge of the pond
and into the Seekonk.
Above: York Pond in Blackstone Park, River Rd. curving around it into Irving
Avenue. Seekonk River on the right. Presumably this is the… “5 acre wooded
ravine given to city for a park” in 1866, 12 the ravine leading to what was formerly
Bailey’s Lower Cove. The stream unnamed, but draining from Cat Swamp.
The following map, for a proposed but never-built turn of the century
scheme on the site, shows how house plots were once mapped and ravine
walks planned for the cove/corner in question.
12 Nina Ridhibhinyo, “Land-Use History & Forest Dynamics in an Urban Natural Area:
Blackstone Park, Providence, R.I.”, 6th December 2007. This was the Park’s first plot.
186
The shorefront road now runs as a barrier between the pond and the river,
to join up the River Rd with Irving Avenue.13 14 Above is an undated
postcard of this corner, looking south-east, after the grading of the Irving
Avenue extension and the connection of the two roads (possibly circa 1900).
One can still see road surveying stakes in the foreground. My feeling is that
the height of the bluffs on the north side of York Pond were lowered by
earth-moving at this time.
The grand housing scheme here never happened, but it seems to have been
an excuse for the City to totally cease park maintenance spending until 1908.
I have found one item suggesting that the Park was in almost complete
disuse, as if the City was deliberately avoiding spending money on it ahead of
a possible home building scheme…
“By 1908, Blackstone Park had fallen into almost complete disuse;
in fact, according to a Providence Journal article published in 1912,
13 The connection appears to have been left unconnected, at least in 1896... “BLACKSTONE
PARK: The River Road (so called) at this park has been practically completed from Hamilton
Avenue to Irving Avenue, a distance of 3,000 feet.” (Report of the Park Commissioners, 1896). I have
been unable to pin a precise date on the final link-up of the River Road with Irving Avenue.
Presumably that would also be the date at which the cove was flooded back into its ravine and
formed the freshwater York Pond.
14 We do know that there was also a new path in around York Pond, accompanying the new
steps, since in 1911 Brown University students included a circuit of the pond in a cross-country
run route.
187
the only benefit the park provided residents of the area during the
first decade of the twentieth century was to provide illegally obtained
natural resources such as lumber, shrubs, and sand. In the early
spring of 1908, over 50 residents of the Blackstone Park Plat whose
property abutted the park submitted a petition to the Board of Park
Commissioners asking for a number of improvements to be made to
the park, including a general clean-up of the park…”15
Presumably the aim of the City was the run down the park so much that
houses could be built on its entirety. Indeed, the City Report noted in 1901
that... “Contour lines at intervals of two feet have been run over the whole
park and the field notes are ready for platting” i.e. for the laying out of future
home plots. The official neglect of the park from c.1896-1908 and resulting
wildness would certainly have attracted adventurous young boys from the
neighborhood.
We may only learn the truth of the site when we can know the exact
topographic contours around York Pond between 1896 (the date when we
know the River Rd construction was nearing this spot) and 1906-8 (when we
know stone extraction and the grading of the Irving Avenue bluffs took
place). Was there a small rocky spur ravine here, quarried out and then filled
in? Perhaps just to the north of Irving Avenue? That we may never know.
But perhaps new old maps may come to light.
After the public uproar over the park’s neglect in 1908, the housing scheme
seems to have been put aside for good. Perhaps importantly, major grading
works were undertaken on the steep rock bluffs on the York Pond cove in
1908…
“[after the period of neglect] In 1908 the city improved the park
under the stewardship of Parks Superintendent Greene.
Improvements included the creation of a bridle path for horseback
15 From the history in National Register of Historic Places: Blackstone Park Historic District, p.56.
Referencing “Blackstone Park - An Unspoiled Beauty Spot”, Providence Journal, August 4, 1912,
sec.5, p.3.
188
riding and grading the bluffs fronting on Irving Avenue. The
stairway was built to York Pond from the bluffs.”16 (my emphasis)
Steps to the pond down the northern bluff, steps made in 1908. Pillars and bottom
wall added 1930s by the WPA employment scheme. Photo: Dan Mahr.
There had been gravel and stone extraction from the bluffs before the 1908
works…
“[the City is taking] cross sections of north slope of Irving Avenue
at Blackstone Grades for [use as] granolithic pavement [i.e.: the best
quality of paving stones]…” (Annual Report of the City Engineer,
1906)
I can find no more about “Blackstone Grades”. Serious stone extraction from
the bluffs around York Pond and the end of Irving Avenue would certainly
be the sort of City venture which could have “obliterated” one of Lovecraft’s
childhood haunts, perhaps sited just north of York Pond.
But the case for this location is still not certain, other than to simply say
there is and never was any other likely ravine outlet to the Seekonk on the
16
Official history of the park, online at www.blackstoneparksconservancy.org
189
East Side. Perhaps the site was inland? But I have already looked in detail at
Cat Swamp, and the location sought is clearly “dark wooded hollows near the
Seekonk River” in a ravine. The topographical maps of the 1890s show no
other possible ravine inland, with or without a pond or a steam.
York Pond and road seen today in winter, from the south side. Photo: Dan Mahr
Looking down on the road from the south bluff, pond in the left corner. Indicating
likely original height of the northern bluff before road grading. Photo: Dan Mahr.
190
One might suspect there was a pond at the site because of Lovecraft’s long
semi-autobiographical poem “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916). In the poem
he draws strongly on his memories of the “dark wooded hollows” in the
“ravine”, then some sixteen years before. The poem, albeit giving the site a
more poetiky supernatural setting of a “moor”, depicts an...
[...] insomnious grove
Whose black recesses never saw the sun.
Within that grove a hideous hollow lies,
Half bare of trees; a pool in centre lurks
That none dares sound; a tarn of murky face
(Tho’ naught can prove its hue, since light of day,
Affrighted, shuns the forest-shadow’d banks).
Hard by, a yawning hillside grotto breathes,
From deeps unvisited, a dull, dank air
That sears the leaves on certain stunted trees
Which stand about, clawing the spectral gloom
With evil boughs. To this accursed dell
Come woodland creatures, seldom to depart:
Once I beheld, upon a crumbling stone
Set altar-like before the cave, a thing
I saw not clearly, yet from glimpsing, fled.
The poem’s setting is clearly associated with Lovecraft’s famous nightgaunts, when the narrator of the poem sleeps in the cave and experiences an
unbodied version of these gaunts...
Then flicker’d low the light, and all dissolv’d,
Leaving me floating in the hellish grasp
Of body’d blackness, from whose beating wings
Came ghoulish blasts of charnel-scented mist.
Things vague, unseen, unfashion’d, and unnam’d
191
Jostled each other in the seething void
That gap’d, chaotic, downward to a sea
Of speechless horror, foul with writhing thoughts
Note that I have already shown that Lovecraft linked the hollows and the
gaunts together in his childhood…
“[the] dark wooded hollows […] figured in my dreams —
especially those nightmares containing the black, winged rubbery
entities which I called “night-gaunts”” — from “Some Notes on a
Nonentity”.17
The narrator of the poem then looks down on the phosphorescent effulgence
of the pond and its marshy rim...
Now glow’d the ground, and tarn, and cave, and trees,
And moving forms, and things not spoken of,
With such a phosphorescence as men glimpse
In the putrescent thickets of the swamp
Where logs decaying lie, and rankness reigns.
Methought a fire-mist drap’d with lucent fold
The well-remember’d features of the grove
Note here the phrase “well-remember’d features of the grove”. This indicates
to me that this is an autobiographical poem.18
The grove is described as situated in “the dale” which is a northern British
word for a valley, usually wide and with steep sides. In the spot described by
the poem the valley bottom is opened out to be large enough for a substantial
small pool in its centre, fringed with swampy thickets. This is congruent
with the valley’s stream opening out to find a larger body of water, as at York
Pond — rather than the natural shore cove of the other “tributary ravine” at
17
In Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy; Autobiography & Miscellany.
Also evidenced by an opening section that describes the little garden Lovecraft made in his
early teenage years, in an overgrown vacant lot next to his home.
18
192
the south tip of the Butler Hospital grounds. No island is mentioned.19 The
tall trees around the poem’s pond mean that direct sunlight rarely reaches the
water’s surface due to the “forest-shadow’d banks” of the valley. Very close by
the pond is a cliff cave in the rock, from the entrance of which one can look
directly down onto the pond’s surface. There is also the poem’s hint of…
“downward to a sea”, which very subtly and glancingly seems to incorporate
Lovecraft’s memory of the Seekonk River.
Now, one has to be careful here. One clear and strong possibility is that in
this poem Lovecraft is doing what he often did in his later work: conflating
two real places together to create a powerful fictional setting. So I suspect he
may have been conflating the “wholly filled and obliterated” ravine(s?) of his
childhood, with the still existing York Pond. In the highly precise language
of a long poem, Lovecraft has obviously been able to supply us with a
memorable and precise topographic description of York Pond and its
surroundings. Perhaps there was once a boyhood cave scrabbled into the
bluffs overlooking York Pond, now obliterated by road grading or stone
quarrying. But this does not mean the poem is necessarily a description of
the original “wholly filled and obliterated” “ravine”, which (if it was not the
Guiney ravine, of age two) I suspect was actually a little north of York Pond.
Yet at least York Pond can now be clearly identified as the site of the early
weird poem “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916), in which “Dagon” (horrific
creature on an “altar-like” stone) and R’lyeh (water that “none dares sound”,
and from which the unspeakable arises) are rehearsed for the first time,
leading into a long exposition of cosmicism. It seems fitting that the ur-site
of Lovecraft’s first successful evocation of landscape-fear and cosmicism
should now be — like R’lyeh — sunken under a depth of water.
19 We know that the central island at York Pond is a modern addition (or perhaps a product of
a building up an existing underwater mound) since a local man remembers that it was not there in
the 1950s. He also remembers York Pond was “deeper” in the 1950s. One wonders if, along
with the island, the pond was also made shallower. Or possibly it has just silted up over the
decades. It seems the latter is the case. A small restoration project was funded to dredge the
pond in the early 2000s, but failed for lack of planning. The pond has also seemed to get
“smaller” as invasive plants have grown in around the edges. Sarah Gleason interviewing,
“Blackstone Park Then and Now”, 8th December 2012, www.blackstoneparksconservancy.org
193
The Google StreetView, on River Rd., looking over the York Pond, indicating the
wooded ravine nature of the land from which the pond emerges.
A clearer pop-up picture of the York Pond in summer via Google Earth, again seen
from the River Rd. The current Irving Trail and Ravine Trail skirt the pond.
“At the present moment I am seated on a wooded bluff above the
shining river which my earliest gaze knew & loved—which my infant
imagination peopled with fauns & satyrs & dryads—. Whenever
possible, I take my writing out in the open in a black leatherette
case—.” 20 — H.P. Lovecraft, summer 1929.
20 Lovecraft’s 16-page letter to an unknown young boy at summer camp. “My dear Mr.
Michael”, 8th July 1929, from 10 Barnes St. Quoted and for sale on the L.W. Currey auction
website, 2013.
194
Map of parks and green spaces in Providence that Lovecraft could have known in his
boyhood. From Providence magazine vol.28, 1916. Map showing situation on City
ownership of parks in 1903. Omits unofficial spaces such as remains of Cat Swamp.
195
A NOTE ON “THE PAXTON”
L
ovecraft’s late home at 66 College St. had a large boarding
house immediately north of it. From the description in
S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence is appears that the courtyard
garden of “The Paxton” essentially ran into that of No.66 and that it was easy
to move between the two.
Above: detail from Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918.
“The Paxton” at 53 Waterman Street seems to have been where Lovecraft’s
aunts, and sometimes Lovecraft himself, would eat meals rather than cook. It
seems Lovecraft would also put up guests there occasionally. Here is “The
Paxton” in a 1910 newspaper ad…
196
“The Paxton” was possibly originally home to older people of artistic,
literary and university backgrounds. An elderly lady journalist Ellen
Hathaway (former war correspondent of the Providence Journal!) was living
there in 1893. There are also several records of that address for artists
entering in the 1890s art shows. An Assistant Cataloger at Brown
University, Madge Tooker, was listed as living there in a Brown directory of
1920. My guess is that up until the 1920s at least the Paxton appears to have
been an old folk’s home for artistic, creative and academic types? Its fortunes
after 1929 and the Great Depression are unknown, but evidently it was later
still a genteel place which Lovecraft and his aunts could eat in. Lovecraft
also often “borrowed” some of the many cats that sunned themselves on the
shed roof of the Paxton.
An important resident — from the point of view of Lovecraftians — was
Sarah Bartlett Bullock (1840-1921) who lived there with her friend George
Burroughs (1851-1918). Sarah Bartlett Bullock is potentially important to
Lovecraft scholars because she kept a diary to 1921, now at the R.I.
Historical Society…
“52 diaries kept by Sarah Bartlett Bullock from January 1, 1864
through June 9, 1921″ [ms. microfilmed as part of UPA New
England Women Series HQ 1438 .R45 pt.1 Reels 18 - 26. Not yet
published.]
Possibly there will be incidental information about the 66 College St
surroundings to be gleaned from Sarah’s diary, at least up to 1921? A good
description of the courtyard garden, at least, seems likely.
Encyclopedia Brunoniana refers to “53 Waterman Street” as being pressed
into service as a women’s dormitory by Brown University during the Second
World War, although judging from some other details given the Encyclopedia
appears to be confusing the building with another in Providence.
Lovecraft’s desk window did not look over The Paxton garden. He looked
west from the upper floor, and in the other corner he had a seat looking
197
through two paired windows (one facing west and another south). So his
desk would have been looking at the back parts of the Alpha Delta Phi
(Brunonian chapter) fraternity house at Brown. This appears in the
Lovecraft story “The Haunter of the Dark” as…
“Students in the Psi Delta house, whose upper rear windows looked
into Blake’s study, noticed the blurred white face…”
Above: Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. Lovecraft’s last home out of sight, directly
behind the fraternity house in this view. In the left of his view from his two west
windows he would have seen the NE upper windows of the short wing at the back of
the fraternity house.
198
A NOTE ON LOVECRAFT AND RABIES
I
nsanity was one of the very real horrors of the early years of the
20th century. One of its many forms was a contagious
insanity-causing disease that was literally stalking through the
back lanes of New England. Just as with the disease syphilis,1 the fearsome
animal-borne disease of rabies caused insanity, via a mechanism known
medically as ‘hydrophobia’. The insanity-causing aspect of the disease might
make rabies of special interest to Lovecraftian researchers. Just how
prevalent was rabies? It was certainly a real fear by the middle of the 18th
century…
“By 1768 rabies had been distributed throughout New England.”2
An epidemic of it appears to have hit Rhode Island in 1797, occurring in all
sorts of animals. It had alarmed the doctors enough for them to set up a
reporting system by 1849…
“the increase of rabies of late in New England renders it obligatory
on those physicians, who may meet with it, to give an account of
their cases as soon as convenient”3
This did not prevent severe outbreaks in the 1890s…
“[the] hydrophobia scare prevails in Eastern Connecticut and
Western Rhode Island. ... this terror has been steadily augmented
since last Autumn by an extraordinary series of incidents... [the more
rural population] especially at night they dare not venture abroad lest
1 The fear of which might explain something of Lovecraft’s lifelong aversion to sex, since it
had apparently caused both of his parents to die insane.
2
New Jersey municipalities: Volumes 25-26, 1948.
3
Boston medical and surgical journal, Volume 40, 1849.
199
a mad dog, running at large and foaming at the mouth, may leap
upon them out of the darkness. ... [in one place] the whole village
armed itself with shotguns, stones, and staves, and hunted the
furious animal ... the mad dog scare continued [throughout the area
stated] in intermittent outbreaks all winter...”4
On 13th Dec 1906, when Lovecraft would have been age 16, the Lewiston
Saturday Journal reported a continuation of an epidemic that had already
lasted months…
In 1911 U.S. Farmer’s Bulletin5 report on rabies stated 32 Rhode Island
deaths in 1908 diagnosed as being by rabies, and for evidence pointed to the
post-mortem tests done at the Brown University laboratories in Providence.
In 1911 the New York Times talked of the common sight of seeing people
running scared of loose dogs in the street, and of such dogs commonly being
pursued by armed mobs.
4
“Mad Dogs Running Amuk”, New York Times, 28th June 1890.
5
John R. Mohler, U.S. Dept of Agriculture, Rabies or Hydrophobia, 2011.
200
So the boy Lovecraft was growing up at time when a fear of rabid dogs
must have been prevalent among children and youths. I wonder if this might
partly help explain Lovecraft’s general dislike of dogs?
By the 1910s Rhode Island had rabies basically under control in terms of
deaths, although the disease may have been naturally quiescent since it moves
through times of peaks and troughs. Rhode Island only had four human
deaths from rabies between 1911 and 1917, one in Providence in 1913.6 It
dipped in the deadly Influenza epidemic year…
“During the year 1918 rabies has been far less common among
animals than in the past few years”7
And yet the fear caused by rabies would not only be in the probability of a
raving death, but rather in the uncertainty invoked in a victim after any dog
bite. It would have caused intense anxiousness on encountering any aroused
dog, not least because it was then known by medical men that dogs could
convey rabies even without showing symptoms. The incubation period for
rabies can be up to 285 days. Anyone having a dog bite from any aroused
dog would have to fear going mad at some point in the next nine months.
Many U.S. doctors expressed skepticism about the efficacy of the Pasteur
treatment for rabies. Among ordinary people it was known to involve 16
very painful injections.
But by the late 1920s the incidence of death from rabies had about doubled
in a decade, although possibly this was a statistical artifact caused by the low
incidence in the 1910s and the swelling of the U.S. population.8 By the late
1920s there were about 100 human deaths per year from the disease in the
USA, but there were some hot-spots around New York…
6
Mortality Statistics, United States Bureau of the Census 1919, p.44.
7
Reports Presented to the General Assembly [of Rhode Island], 1920.
8
Mass immigration only began to be curtailed somewhat in 1919.
201
“In the earlier part of this [20th] century, New Jersey had a large
problem with canine rabies. In 1939, the worst year for recorded
cases of dog rabies, 675 dogs and four humans died of rabies.”9
So the fear of rabid dogs was there to be exploited in fiction. However there
only appears to be one instance in which Lovecraft has a dog directly
associated with terror, despite his known distaste for dogs and his love of
cats. This instance is of course in the “The Hound” (1922), a story which
was possibly intended only as a flamboyant self-satire for his friends…
“The baying was loud that evening, and in the morning I read of a
nameless deed in the vilest quarter of the city. The rabble were in
terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the
foulest previous crime of the neighborhood. In a squalid thieves’ den
an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which
left no trace, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep,
insistent note as of a gigantic hound.” — “The Hound”.
Rabies was eradicated in Britain in 1902, and then again most famously in
1922 — after a four-year outbreak caused by dogs smuggled past the
quarantine in 1918. One wonders if the good news in 1922 from his beloved
British Isles might have set Lovecraft to thinking on threatening dogs?
Although personal experience, the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and the 1921
movie version of The Hound of the Baskervilles might seem more obvious
inspirations for “The Hound”. Possibly it was the very success of the famous
“The Hound of the Baskervilles” and its film versions which prevented the
general use of more dogs in horror in the early 20th century.10
Lovecraft the veteran walker was probably naturally wary of dogs, especially
on his more rural walks when the dogs encountered might be fiercer and
larger, and appear in groups. One wonders if he may have taken a cane or
9
The History of Rabies, New Jersey Department of Health.
Although see my anthology Demon Dogs for a choice selection of the few horror and
supernatural stories that did escape the dog-catcher.
10
202
umbrella on such walks, as a defensive tool. It would not necessarily have
been a great hulking club, since Lovecraft looked back to a time when…
“walking sticks and canes weren’t just associated with the aged, but
with young dandies and others of dapper inclination.”11
Some of these canes even included “system canes”, of special interest to
writers today since they can serve as pivots for a plot in a story with a
historical or steampunk setting. These could conceal and deploy anything
from…
“a picnic utensil set, opera glasses, an ear trumpet, a perfume
bottle, a detachable baby rattle, a blow gun, a winemaker’s
thermometer, a folding fan, a telescope, a flask with cork top, a
pocket watch, a sewing kit, a compact and mirror, a full-length saw
blade, a microscope, a pennywhistle, a set of watercolors and
paintbrush, a whistle for hailing a cab, and gauges for measuring the
height of a horse.”12
On Lovecraft’s main cane, here is Kirk on the Kalem Klub establishing their
Sunday “dandy walk” promenade, in which they strolled in their best suits
down Clinton St…
“The occasion required the “wearing” of a cane, but the acquisition
of this adjunct to our Sunday splendour proved no great problem.
Lovecraft produced an heirloom [a walking cane] from Providence
which was undeniably authentic, and at once chastely severe and
unobtrusively classical.”13
This cane was presumably Winfield’s “silver-headed walking stick”,14 which
Lovecraft had inherited, and which Lovecraft must have taken to New York.
de Camp says that Lovecraft came to wear Winfield’s sartorial garb on
11
Wayne Curtis, “Pimp My Walk”, The Smart Set, Drexel University, 2013.
12
Ibid
13
Letter from Kirk, in Lovecraft’s New York Circle, Hippocampus Press, 2006, p.225.
14
from L. Sprague de Camp.
203
special occasions. A dandy cane was certainly part of Lovecraft’s dream
vision of himself as a young man…
“After carefully tying my stock, I donned my coat and hat, took a
cane from a rack downstairs, and sallied forth upon the village
street”15
In a letter to Frank Belnap Long in 1927 Lovecraft wrote…
“be sure to depict me16 in my new Puritan frock coat. I think I shall
adopt an umbrella also — as a constant companion…”17
There may be more on Lovecraft’s ownership of walking sticks and
umbrellas, and use of them on special occasions, in the collection Lovecraft
Remembered, but I don’t yet have access to that. It seems than fancy canes, at
least until 1927, were generally used only by Lovecraft on special occasions.
But one does wonder if he took a defensive cane or sturdy umbrella on some
of his more insalubrious New York night-walks and his deeper rural rambles,
if only to defend himself from dog attack. As I have shown, rabid dogs were
then a real concern.
15
Recalling a dream he had, in Selected Letters I, p.100.
16
He refers to Long’s new novelette, presumably “The Space Eaters”.
17
Selected Letters II, p.172.
204
SOME MEMBERS OF THE PROVIDENCE
AMATEUR PRESS CLUB
T
his short note serves as an addendum to the excellent and
deeply researched book by Kenneth W. Faig Jr.1 Through
Internet researches in 2013 I have been able to add certain
very minor details to the biographies of those involved in the Providence
Amateur Press Club, 1914-1916, of which H.P. Lovecraft was a member. I
have also found new photographs.2
Victor L. Basinet appears in Who’s who in American Art (1935), as…
“BASINET, Victor Hugo, 2600 So. Hoover St.; h. 1008 West
Adams St., Los Angeles; summer, Monterey, Calif. Mural P. Des.
Dec — Born Providence, R.I., March 14”
On his father, the book Printers and printing in Providence, 1762-1907 (R.I.:
Typographical Union No. 33, 1907) gives biographical details…
“LOUIS A. BASINET Born Durham, Quebec, Can., May 18,
1860; learned printing at Cowensville, Quebec, beginning in 1877 ;
worked in Providence since 1882, with the exception of five years,
1884-89 ; initiated into No. 33 Oct. 31, 1897 ; at present conducting
a printing office at 35 Cranston Street, this city.”
Victor L. Basinet’s book-plate is listed in the book American bookplates
(2000). But I have been unable to inspect the complete volume, and I
suspect the plate is not actually shown as an illustration.
1
Kenneth W. Faig Jr, The Providence Amateur Press Club, 1914-1916, Moshassuck Press, 2008.
Credit for photographs: the yearbook The Comrade, published April 1912, scanned for
“Southern New England Irish” by Susan Clement & Linda Rogers at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com
2
205
Frederick A. Byland is noted in the official document Proposed Department
of Education. Joint Hearings (1926) as… “Frederick A. Byland, president St.
John’s Parish, 1 Ericsson Place, Providence, R.I.”
John T. Dunn, was the Editor-In-Chief, of the Providence R.I. Evening
High School Yearbook, The Comrade, published in April 1912. He appears
to have been the de facto leader of the year and Faig finds that he later
became a Roman Catholic priest.
Edmund L. Shehan has his address noted in The Standard (1932, Volume
110, page 351), as “Edmund L. Shehan, 111 Westminster St., Providence.”
William A. Henry was later, according to the Providence Magazine (1922,
Volume 34, page 161) one of the Town Criers publicists…
“The Town Criers by William F. Baker, William A. Henry,
Edward Sartorius, Samuel Burchiel, and H. Harold Price.”
The group appears in the online record as early as 1912. The book Music,
Sound, and Technology in America (2012) tells us more of this group, in respect
of the experience of a musician in March 1924…
“The first intimation of the widespread interest in this trip was the
receipt by Mr. Rothafel of hundreds and hundreds of postal cards
from an organization known as the Town Criers welcoming him to
Providence…”
The book Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth (2004) notes the group as…
“the Town Criers, a Providence ‘booster’ club”. The contemporary journal
Gas Age-Record is a tad more specific, noting the group as…
“The Town Criers of Rhode Island, the advertising club of
Providence R.I., is one of the livest clubs of its kind in the United
States. It has a large membership and holds weekly noon-day
luncheons at the largest hotel in the city.”3
3
Gas-Age Record, Volume 53, page 22, 1924.
206
One wonders if Lovecraft was a fellow-traveller of this ‘booster’ group, if
perhaps not actually a member. Any publications they may have produced
might be usefully perused in search of his verse or name.
Guy H. Kelso appears to have briefly tried his hand at songwriting for the
music halls in the years after the First World War. The Catalog of Copyright
Entries 1922 records the song “Kissing is the soul of love”, with music by A.
Leopold Richard, and words by Guy H. Kelso. Keslo died 1950, according
to a family tree enquiry I found at genforum.genealogy.com.
Here are class pictures from the Providence R.I. Evening High School of
1912, which show some who would later be participants in the Providence
Amateur Press Club of 1914-1916…
Class of Providence R.I. Evening High School 1912. Here are Miller (top row), and
Byland (middle row) and Kern (front row).
207
Caroline Miller
Frederick A. Byland
Eugenie M. Kern
208
John T. Dunn.
209
The Editorial Board of Providence R.I. Evening High School Yearbook, The
Comrade, published in April 1912. Dunn (centre) Editor-in-Chief, flanked by
Miller and with Basinet behind him.
Caroline Miller
210
Victor L. Basinet in 1912
211
H.P. LOVECRAFT AND THE YOUNG MEN’S CLUB
L
ovecraft’s teenage years are mostly a mystery. But we know,
from the title of a poem written by him — “The Members
of the Men’s Club of the First Universalist Church of
Providence, R.I., to Its President, About to Leave for Florida on Account of
His Health” — that he probably attended or was a formal member of the
Men’s Club of the First Universalist Church, at 250 Washington Street in
Providence. This is a gothic revival church building of 1872 by Edwin L.
Howland. Doubtless he was allowed into a number of church towers on his
antiquarian walks. But one wonders if the youthful experience of a visit to
the particular gothic belfry here, with other lads from the Men’s Club, may
have much later played into the descriptions in “The Haunter of the Dark”?
“In openings still further above — where, by chamfering, the
dimensions of the tower are reduced — are paired Gothic louvered
belfry openings with a roundel. Above these windows a band of stone
bosses runs around the base of a steep, slate-covered “extinguisher”
spire pierced by four narrow, hooded dormers [windows]…”
(description from National Register of Historic Places).
Sadly neither the club nor its adjacent Providence YWCA seems to have
left much trace in the online record. If anyone cares to investigate the First
Universalist Church of Providence Records 1905—1992 are held at the
Rhode Island Historical Society Manuscripts Division. A 93-page book
called The centennial book of the First Universalist Society in Providence, R.I.
April 10, 1921 may have a few details of the Men’s Club in its opening
“Outline of History” section, but the book is not yet available online.
212
Postcard of the church and its adjacent new YWCA building.
In 1919 Judge Fred B. Perkins was President of the First Universalist
Church of Providence. He was a Brown University graduate and Perkins
Hall at Brown is now named after him. I have not been able to discover who
was President in the possible Lovecraft years of 1906 — circa 1914.
What was the exact name of the club? The Universalist Register (volumes
for 1907-1912) names all its few Men’s Clubs as “Young Men’s Club”, so I at
suspect that this is the proper name for what Lovecraft was a member of. I
also found some further illuminating details in a newspaper article from 1922
(Cambridge Chronicle, 4th March 1922) in the fourth paragraph of which a
visitor from the Providence men’s club visits the Cambridge equivalent, and
reminds the laymen members there of their founding aims (the press report
not actually going into detail on these, sadly)…
213
Following up the group’s name, it seems “The Order of Universalist
Comrades” would be the title of such Clubs by the early 1920s. I have found
another reference to a branch of the “Universalist Comrades” in The Lewiston
Daily Sun (17th Feb 1922). Yet The Universalist Register (available online to
1918) contains no mention of any Comrades. So it seems likely that the
name was changed after Lovecraft’s likely years with the organisation (his
involvement being perhaps sometime between 1906-1914), with the name
change perhaps around 1921 or 1922? It strikes me that, in the radical
political times after 1919, renaming the Men’s Club as “The Order of
214
Universalist Comrades” might have been meant to appeal to naive youth
looking for clubs of either the right or the far-left. But the Comrades seem
to have vanished as an organisation during the years of the Great
Depression…
“[Fred Colwell Carr, 1873-1936] was a native of Rhode Island
and most of his life was passed in Providence” “He was national
secretary of the now defunct organization, the Universalist
Comrades.” “For the past eighteen years he has been secretary of the
Universalist Convention of Rhode Island.” (The Christian Leader aka
The Universalist Leader, Volume 39, Issue 4, 1936, p. 125) My
emphasis.
This Carr name is interesting, and he must be the same Carr who spoke at
the Cambridge meeting in 1922 (see final paragraph of the 4th March press
cutting previously shown). Carr may thus give us the name of someone
connected to the Providence Men’s Club in Lovecraft’s time, when Carr
would have been in his 40s and a possible leader of the Men’s Club. His
name leads to me a list of its officers in Providence in 1922…
“The Universalist Comrades: President, Mr. E. S. Burlingham, 11
Progress Ave., Providence; Vice-President, Mr. Anson Wheelock,
Woonsocket; Treasurer; Mr. Daniel E. Peckham, 30 Gurney St.,
East Providence; Secretary, Mr. Fred C. Carr, …” (Universalist
Biennial Reports and Directory, 1922)
But there the trail goes dead. Sadly his 1936 obituaries are inaccessible
online, due to copyright. They might have told us if he led the Men’s Club
in Providence before the First World War, and something of the nature of
the youth work then done in Providence. Future researchers should note he
also shows up in the record as Frederick Colwell “Freddie” Carr (18731936).
As a final point, one wonders what Christian tracts Lovecraft might have
been encouraged to imbibe during his time with the Club? I found some
such in following up the involvement of Helen Mason Grose (1880-1960)
who was a member of the Providence Art Club and a local book illustrator
215
who worked for national publishers. She was married to Howard B. Grose
(b. 1851), who wrote ‘slum missionaries’ books on immigration such as Aliens
or Americans? (1906) and The Incoming Millions (1906 Second Edition) both
of which are now available online as digital facsimiles. Meant as primers for
junior missionaries into the immigrant areas of America, taken together these
two books appear to form virtually a complete high-school primer and study
course on Lovecraft’s race fears. Complete with study questions at the end of
each chapter, in Aliens or Americans? One wonders if this was the sort of
Christian race literature the teenage Lovecraft encountered during his
mysterious teen years with the Men’s Club of the First Universalist Church
of Providence? Aliens or Americans? is introduced with this poem from
Thomas Bailey Aldrich — an example of how Lovecraft was certainly not
alone in his fear of the Eastern hordes and what gods they might bring to
America…
UNGUARDED GATES
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild, motley throng—
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav,
Flying the old world’s poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
…
216
A FEW ADDITIONS FOR ANNA HELEN CROFTS
(1889-1975)
T
he collaborative story “Poetry and the Gods”, by Anna
Helen Crofts and H.P. Lovecraft, appeared The United
Amateur in September 1920. The H.P. Lovecraft
Encyclopedia states nothing is known about Croft other than her address at
343 West Main St., North Adams, Mass. and that she… “appeared
sporadically in the amateur press”. However Crofts was traced through the
Adams city directories in The Fossil #341, July 2009, in Kenneth W. Faig,
Jr.’s article “The strange story of “Poetry and the Gods” by Anna Helen
Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe”. Other details were also found. An obituary
and further details were later unearthed and published in The Fossil #344,
April 2010. Donovan K. Loucks in 2010 photographed her house and grave
which shows her as Anna Helen Crofts McCuen (1889-1975), who married
Joseph B. McCuen (1879-1963).
Given the biographical materials so far discovered on Crofts, Lovecraft
presumably collaborated on “Poetry and the Gods” in the summer before
Crofts took up a new salaried job in teaching. I have dug up the press notice
of her appointment and salary, in the North Adams Transcript of 9th June
1920, with her appointment presumably being for the Sept 1920 term…
217
This appears to have been her first substantial teaching post, judging from
the dates in the obituary. I have also found that Crofts published several
articles in Vocational Guidance magazine (organ of the National Vocational
Guidance Association). One of her articles was titled “Guidance versus
Knights of the Road” (1932).
More interestingly, I have also found some of the titles of her other fiction
or poetry, as listed in The FictionMags Index…
“Le Silent”, (short story), The Tryout Feb 1918.
”To Autumn”, (poem), The Vagrant Jun 1918.
“War Literature”, (article), The Tryout Apr 1919.
I’ve encountered no mention of her story “Le Silent” online, but the title
makes it sound as if it might have been of interest to Lovecraft. Faig
wonders why Lovecraft collaborated with her, and suggests i) her election as
an officer of the United amateur movement in July 1920 and ii) the striking
blank verse extracts she borrowed (uncredited) from Elizabeth J. Coatsworth
to adorn “Poetry and the Gods”. Lovecraft had two poems (“A Winter
Wish” and “Laeta: A Lament”) in the same Feb 1918 Tryout issue, and so (if
The FictionMags Index is correct, and they haven’t mis-labelled a poem as a
story), he would have seen her earlier work. Perhaps “Le Silent” is why he
collaborated with her? The story “Le Silent” doesn’t appear to be online, nor
is it collected anywhere that I can find details for.
The article by Faig in The Fossil #341 reports one other story by her, but it
is not “Le Silent”…
“S.T. Joshi credits Miss Crofts with at least one further story in the
amateur press, “Life” (United Amateur, June 1921)”.
I cannot find online details of that story either, and neither “Life” nor “Le
Silent” appears to be available online or collected. Nor can I find any trace of
them being described or dismissed by Lovecraftians.
218
PHILLIPS GAMWELL (1898-1916) : two photographs
L
ovecraft wrote an poetic elegy for his cousin Phillips Gamwell,
who died young. S.T. Joshi’s Lovecraft bibliography notes this
poem appeared in the Providence Evening News on 5th January
1917. But I have found two further appearances. The first was in the
Cambridge Chronicle of 6th January 1917, possibly with new biographical
details in the introduction…
219
Photograph by the Byrd Studio.
220
The same poem appeared again in The Cambridge Tribune on 13th January
1917, under the simple title “Phillips Gamwell”, this time with a fine
photograph of cousin Phillips pictured by the Byrd Studio photographers.
221
I then looked back through the digital archives of the Cambridge newspapers
for more on Phillips Gamwell, finding an instance in The Cambridge Tribune
of 2nd January 1904. The newspaper informs readers that Phillips Gamwell
was then visiting Providence — Lovecraft was then age 13, Phillips aged
around 6. We might picture the older Lovecraft showing the younger boy
the spooky darkened attic, full of old 18th century books. I also found a
picture of Gamwell in the 7th May 1904 issue (previous page): in this picture
Phillips Gamwell rather resembles the young Lovecraft, seen below…
Lovecraft in 1895
222
AN ANNOTATED “The History of the Necronomicon”
Prepared for Mr. H.P. Lovecraft’s 122nd birthday, 20th August 2012.
T
he short text “The History of the Necronomicon” was written
by H.P. Lovecraft as an aid-to-memory or synopsis,
sometime in the Autumn of 1927. Certainly the “History”
was written before late November 1927— since at that time Lovecraft
commented on the apparently completed text, in a letter that he wrote
to Clark Ashton Smith.1
The “History” was first 2 published circa 1937, as a pamphlet from
Wilson H. Shepherd’s Rebel Press.3 Arkham House reprinted it in
their second major Lovecraft book collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep
(1943). Then they printed it again, seemingly with additional
1
Lovecraft in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, 27th November 1927:
“I have drawn up some data on the celebrated & unmentionable Necronomicon” — H.P.
Lovecraft, Selected Letters II, p.201.
2 The Chaosium collection The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous
Tome of the Mad Arab (2002) notes that duplicate holograph typescripts of the text were: “privately
circulated among his writer friends by HPL soon after he wrote it in 1927”. I regret that I have
been unable to see more from this book.
3 H.P. Lovecraft and Wilson H. Shepherd (1937). “History and Chronology of the
Necronomicon”, The Rebel Press, 1937. S.T. Joshi states that this was a “Limited Memorial”
edition, and so must have appeared shortly after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, although it is
commonly listed in bibliographies as appearing in 1936. Such small fannish publishing ventures
were notorious for appearing late.
223
commentary, in 1948 4 as part of the first issue of the Arkham Sampler
— a magazine which had a good print-run of 1,200 copies,5 and so
was presumably seen by many Lovecraft readers of the late 1940s.
After the cultural interregnum of the 1950s a wider interest in
Lovecraft grew up from the mid 1960s onwards, chiefly among the
adherents of the counterculture. One small item produced in this new
atmosphere was a new printing of the “History”, included in The
Necronomicon: a study (1967)6 along with a detailed account of uses of
the Necronomicon in later Mythos fiction. This pamphlet was
professionally typeset and printed, but was also apparently
“underprinted”,7 and thus presumably sold its print-run fairly rapidly.
In the mid 1970s the “History” appeared in the book Lovecraft at
Last (1975, reprinted 2002), and the Greenwood Press book H.P.
Lovecraft Companion (1977). In the 1990s it was included in the
Arkham House book Miscellaneous Writings (1995).8 At 2012 these
three fine volumes appear to be out-of-print. More popular paperback
books that include the “History” are: the Chaosium gamers’ collection
The Necronomicon: Stories and Essays (1996); and the occultistdebunking book The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind The Legend
4 “History and Chronology of the Necronomicon, Together with some Pertinent Paragraphs”,
Arkham Sampler, Winter 1948.
5 Sheldon Jaffery (1982), Horrors and unpleasantries: a bibliographical history & collectors’ price guide to
Arkham House. Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
6
Mark Owings (1967), The Necronomicon: a study, Mirage Associates.
I also have a memory of reading the “History” when I was a youth. The UK Panther Books fan
website has contents lists suggesting that my Panther paperbacks would not have contained the
“History”, so possibly it was a book had from a local library? Perhaps I was lucky enough to
consult a library copy of the Greenwood Press book H.P. Lovecraft Companion (1977).
7 The word is used in Robert Reginald, et al. (1979), Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: a
checklist, volume 2, p.848. Reginald’s source is a first-hand memoir by the owner of Mirage. I’m
told that a limit of 600 copies was placed on the press by August Derleth at Arkham House.
8
S.T. Joshi (Ed.)(1995), Miscellaneous Writings: H. P. Lovecraft. Arkham House.
224
(2003) which has an annotated version of the “History”,9 but — like all
of the above reprintings — I am currently unable to consult the Files
book due to the cost involved.
More recently the “History” was published in translation, along with
scholarly notes in Italian, in a 2007 book by Sebastiano Fusco.10 This
is available in print only, and has not yet been translated into English.
I have not seen this book, and I can’t read Italian.
T
he Arab author Abdul Alhazred 11 was first introduced into
Lovecraft’s stories in the “The Nameless City” (1921),12
and the first mention of the Necronomicon13 was in “The
Hound” (1922).14 Both name and book reappear again in “The
Festival” (1923).15 The author and his dreaded book were then most
9
Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III (2003), The Necronomicon Files: the Truth Behind
The Legend, Red Wheel/Weiser.
10
Sebastiano Fusco (2007), La storia del Necronomicon di H. P. Lovecraft, Venexia, Italy.
Lovecraft states that this name was invented and given to him as a boy – either by his family
lawyer or by himself. It was meant as a commentary on the young Lovecraft’s love of Andrew
Lang’s version of the Arabian Nights tales, and Lovecaft’s all-round voracious appetite for reading
— the idea of ‘all –has –read’ becoming transmuted into ‘Alhazred’. See: S.T. Joshi, David E.
Schultz (2001), An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, p.186. This explains why the name Abdul Alhazred
or Al’Hazred makes no sense in terms of known Arab naming conventions. S.T. Joshi suggests a
more meaningful version of the name would be Abd-el-Hazred.
11
12 “In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of
daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab...” — from “The Nameless City” (1921).
“I fell to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who
dreamed of the nameless city: That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons
even death may die.” — from “The Nameless City” (1921).
13 On the origin and etymology of the word, see my text “A note on the origin and derivation
of ‘Necronomicon’”, in the book Lovecraft in Historical Context (2010).
14 “The jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our museum, and sometimes we burned a
strangely scented candle before it. We read much in Alhazred’s Necronomicon about its properties,
and about the relation of ghosts’ souls to the objects it symbolised; and were disturbed by what
we read.” — from “The Hound” (1922). Elsewhere in the same story Alhazred is described as
“the old Arab daemonologist”. A daemonologist is someone who studies beliefs about demons,
or who (in fiction) studies the actual demons themselves.
15 “when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, [...] worst of all, the
unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin
225
famously brought together by Lovecraft in “The Call of Cthulhu”
(1926),16 a major story which also repeats the famous couplet from the
Necronomicon which Lovecraft had earlier given in his “The Nameless
City” (1921).17 Lovecraft made substantial use of The Necronomicon in
“The Dunwich Horror” (1928), and passing mentions of the book
occur in various Lovecraft stories written between 1927 and 1935.
For details of the subsequent uses of Abdul Alhazred and the
Necronomicon in non-Lovecraft Mythos fiction, see books such as S.T.
Joshi’s The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008),18 and Daniel
Harms’s The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia (2008).19 The latter also
covers various appearances in role-playing games and popular media
culture.
translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered
[...] I tried to read [it], and soon became tremblingly absorbed by something I found in that
accursed Necronomicon; a thought and a legend too hideous for sanity or consciousness.” — from
“The Festival” (1923).
16 “Of the [Cthulhu] cult, he said that he thought the centre lay amid the pathless desert of
Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched. It was not allied to the
European witch-cult, and was virtually unknown beyond its members. No book had ever really
hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the
Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose...” —
from “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926).
17
For this famous couplet, see footnote 12.
I believe the information in this was somewhat updated by the last sections of S.T. Joshi’s I
Am Providence (2011).
18
19
There are several editions of this. At 2012 the latest edition is the 2008 third edition.
226
The History of the Necronomicon, by H.P. Lovecraft
O
riginal title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to
designate that nocturnal sound 20 (made by insects) 21
suppos’d to be the howling of daemons 22
20 The Arabic word Ma’azif refers to an ensemble of open stringed musical instruments, such as
a group of barbiton (i.e.: an ancient type of small and somewhat phallic-shaped upright lute,
closely associated with wine drinking and wine poetry) — see: E.J. Brill’s First Encyclopaedia of Islam,
1913-1936. The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (1976) also gives azif as a name for a
player or performer of Arabian stringed musical instruments. In Arabic the ‘-azf’ of something
refers to its particular implied-musical sound, and is broadly related to the idea of a sound being
distracting (like insects) or pleasurable (like music). Today, Arab society tends... “to equate the
Arabic word ma’azif with [any] musical instruments” — from the Arab News, 14th July 2003. The
ancient use is confirmed in an article by Abu Bilal Mustafa Al-Kanadi:
“As-sihaah [i.e.: the first dependable ancient dictionary, written by al-Jawhari (d. circa
1002)], asserts that ma’azif signifies musical instruments, al-aazif indicates one who sings
— from the article “Music and Singing in the Light of the Quran and Sunnah”, Islam
World, January 2008.
Al Azif, in the ancient desert Arabic of Alhazred’s time, thus appears to mean something like ‘The
Performer’ or ‘The Singer’.
However I can find no mention of specific Arabian folk beliefs related to the sounds of insects.
Specifically, no nomadic Arab association of desert insect sounds with howling jinn (powerful
genie-like deamons); or with the afriit (also called afreet or ifrit — a mischievous solo creature,
similar but far less powerful than a jinn, and probably best likened to ‘the imps of the jinn’); or
with the wider cultural belief in ghouls or ghūls. These categories of spirit are often confused and
even chaotically jumbled in Arabic culture. They have also been subject to wild elaboration over
time by the highly superstitious settled populations, and they appear to have been variously
confused in western translations of the literature and in the many first-hand reports that arose
from the western experiences of Empire. On the ghūls, which may interest Lovecraft readers the
most, see: Ahmed Al-Rawi, “The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture”, Cultural Analysis, Vol. 8,
2009. Ethnologists suggest that the modern Bedouin appear to understand ghūls as being
confined to graveyards and ruins. But none of these types of spirit seem to have any relevance to
night-time insect noises.
There is nothing relevant to be found, on insect folklore, in comprehensive modern books such
as Folk Traditions of the Arab World: a Guide to Motif Classification (1995). Nor is there anything much
in the readily available historical literature, except for some possibly-relevant folklore concerning
locusts — although I regret I have not been able to examine Edward Westermarck’s book The
Belief in Spirits in Morocco (1920) or his Pagan Survivals in Mohammedan civilization (1933). But the
following is given in ‘Natural History of Arabia: Insects”, by Andrew Crichton in his The History of
Arabia: ancient and modern (1843):
“The noise they [a swarm of locusts] make in flying is like the rush of a waterfall, and
is stuns the inhabitants with fear and astonishment” [...]
The medieval Arabian word for swarming locusts was ‘arbeh. There appears to have been no
specific Arabian word for the actual noise made by swarming locusts, although their sound is said
227
to be able to be heard from great distances as the locust swarm rides the night wind. The sound
of a mass of flying locusts is likened in ancient literature to cavalry chariots moving in secret, and
Arab folk traditions were said to liken the physical form of locusts to that of “little horses”. It
thus appears to me rather unlikely that there is any connection of azif to locusts, or any
connection between locusts and a theoretical folk tradition about “howling daemons”. The
Arabian understanding of locusts clearly seems to have drawn on martial themes, rather than on
supernatural conceptions.
There is however, one interesting connection of locusts with pre-Islamic cult beliefs, which is
also given in Crichton (1843):
“They [locusts] arrive toward the end of May, when the Pleiades [a star constellation]
are setting, which leads the natives to suppose that the insects entertain a dread of that
constellation” [...]
The above information on locusts and the Pleiades appears to have come to Crichton via John
Lewis Burckhardt’s Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys (1830), which would place the folklore
directly in the traditions of nomadic Arabs rather than settled city Arabs. According to Joseph
Henninger’s Studies on Islam: pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion (1981), there was once a pre-Islamic cult of
the Pleiades among the nomads of Arabia. The lore based around the positions and intersections
of the Pleiades (a constellation deemed beneficent by the nomadic Arabs) is reportedly still
exercised among the modern Bedouin, where it is a proven form of natural weather calendar
during the colder seasons.
The Pleiades star cluster is also known in the West as the ‘Seven Sisters’. In H.P. Lovecraft’s
“The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930) he has cultists appear to allude to the ‘Seven Sisters’ as an
abode or location of Nyarlathotep:
“To Nyarlathotep, mighty messenger must all things be told. And he shall put on the
semblance of men, the waxen mask and the robe that hides and come down from the
world of seven suns to mock...” — from “The Whisperer in Darkness”.
The star Aldebaran (from the Arabic: Al Dabaran, meaning “the follower”) appears to follow
the Pleiades in the night sky, and this star was later given a role in the Lovecraft mythos by
Lovecraft’s acolytes. For instance, Derleth refers to Celaeno, a planet around a star in the
Pleiades cluster, which in Derleth’s fiction contains a library of stolen knowledge. Aldebaran also
has a central place in The King in Yellow, mentioned by Lovecraft at the very end of “The History
of the Necronomicon”.
21 There is or was a very fearsome — although apparently soundless — insect of the desert
night:
“another venomous insect, resembling a spider, which infests the desert, is that to
which the Bedouins give the name abou hanekein [...] it makes its appearance only at
night, and is attracted by fire. The Arabs entertain the greatest dread of them” — from
‘Natural History of Arabia: Insects’, by Andrew Crichton, in his The History of Arabia:
ancient and modern (1843).
Crichton’s source here is Johann Ludwig Burckhard’s first-hand account of encountering the
creature, given in his Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (1822), p.598 — although Burckhard calls it
a “reptile like a spider” and identifies it as ‘Galeode phalangiste’ based on illustrations seen in
Travels in the Ottoman Empire (1801). Burckhard notes no sound or folklore associated with the
creature.
22 This overall notion clearly originates in Western orientalist fantasy literature, specifically with
William Beckford’s The History of Caliph Vathek (1784), in the Henley edition which was well
known to Lovecraft:
228
Composed by Abdul Alhazred,23 a mad 24 poet of Sanaá, in
Yemen,25 who is said to have flourished during the period of the
“The good Mussulmans [i.e.: Moslems] fancied that they heard the sullen hum of
those nocturnal insects which presage evil, and importuned Vathek to beware how he
ventured his sacred person.” — from Vathek.
An explanatory footnote to this is given by Samuel Henley, who suggests that:
“the nocturnal sound called by the Arabians azif was believed to be the howling of
demons”.
This note was given by Lovecraft as being his source, in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith of 27th
November 1927:
“Azif is a real word. I cribbed it out of Henley’s learned notes to Vathek”
I have only found one print source that could account for Henley’s notion: John Richardson’s
A New Vocabulary Persian, Arabic and English (1810) lists azif as: “Howling in the desert. The noise
of thunder” (p.390). Possibly this was an early western misunderstanding of al-aazif, meaning the
desert singer or the performer. But more likely it was a confused western rendering of irziz (the
sound of thunder) and azis (rolling or bubbling thunder) as azif. Although perhaps there was even
a pre-Islamic shamanic conflation, in which a good campfire singer was deemed one who was
able to summon up and control the ‘voice’ of the thunder and the desert winds? I also wonder if
the devout orthodox Muslims of Henley’s time understood the music of the Sufi mystics, or even
music in general, as being “the howling of demons”? Yet I can find no evidence for either idea, at
least in the western sources.
Incidentally, the alternative Grimditch Vathek gives a similar rendering to that of Henley:
“Many good Mussulmans, thinking that these sounds proceeded from those
nocturnal insects which presage evil, besought Vathek to beware lest harm should befall
his sacred person.” — from the Grimditch translation of Vathek.
There were a long line of inspirations for Vathek, as has been pointed out in Darrell Schweitzer
in his “Some Ancestors of Vathek” (Crypt of Cthulhu, No.30, April 1985). Rather than the
beginning of a tradition:
“Vathek comes at the end of a long tradition, that of the pseudo-Oriental moralistic
tale” [and Beckford] “transcended what was by his time an already long-established and
moribund genre.”
This raises the further possibility there may be some source, in these earlier western literary texts,
for Henley’s specific claim about azif and insects and daemons? Perhaps there was even some
western literary confabulation that was based on the howling to the Rifaiyah sufi mystics —
known in the West as “howling dervishes” — and who were outlawed in 1925. Western travellers
of the 19th century reported that the fearsome howling of these crazed sufi dervishes could rival
that of wolves. They were, however, a lesser sect confined largely to Syria and modern Turkey.
23
See footnote 11.
In early medieval Arabian culture, to be mad was to be jinn-possessed. Lovecraft has
Alhazred living at a period before Arab medicine developed a classification and treatment scheme
for the mad. A scheme which, when it came, was based on that of Galen (129-200). For a
comprehensive and acclaimed study of the subject, see: Michael W. Dols (1992), Majnun: the
Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, Clarendon Press.
24
229
Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D.26 He visited the ruins of Babylon27
and the subterranean secrets of Memphis 28 and spent ten years alone
in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh29 or
25 In the 19th century Sanaá was described in a standard western gazetteer as a small city, the
chief settlement in the Yemen, and the population was then a mix of Arabs and Jews. There was
then still a special writers’ market there, where books were copied and young scholars instructed
in the art of writing and copying.
26 According to the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica there was a brief period of... “real internal
tranquillity” from about 705 A.D. onwards in Arabia. This was under Hejjaj, a military general of
the Ommiade (also called Umayyad or Omayyad) Dynasty. This is the time period in which
Lovecraft has Alhazred travelling and researching the Necronomicon.
27 Babylon was at its height around 1,300 B.C., but the city had become a ruin by about 475
B.C. It became a ‘lost’ city from about circa 120 A.D., until rediscovery in the 18th century.
Lovecraft thus implies that Abdul Alhazred discovered its location about a thousand years before
its actual rediscovery.
28 Memphis was the Ancient Greek name for an Ancient Egyptian city sited strategically near
the confluence of the upper reaches of the Nile delta. It was founded by Menes, who presumably
lent his name to the boy in Lovecraft’s story “The Cats of Ulthar” (1920). It was the centre of the
god-cult of Ptah, and the Greeks derived the name ‘Aegyptos’ from the name of Ptah’s temple in
the centre of the city — this name later became ‘Egypt’. Interestingly, in relation to Lovecraft’s
own mythology, Ptah is the deification of the archaic ‘primordial mound’ god of ‘risen land’, i.e.
the god of submerged land that has risen from the sea or the Nile delta — this might remind one
of the setting in Lovecraft’s “Dagon” and of R’lyeh.
At the time Alhazred is said to have visited Memphis, it was a ruin like Babylon. In the 7th
century the Arabs took possession and plundered the ruins of Memphis, to obtain building
material for a new city nearby. The city was vast, however, and many “subterranean secrets” must
have long remained there and probably still remain today. An Arab visitor of the 13th century
wrote after visiting the ruined city:
[even after] “all that more than four thousand years have done in addition to man,
these ruins still offer to the eye of the beholder a mass of marvels which bewilder the
senses and which the most skillful pens must fail to describe. The more deeply we
contemplate this city the more our admiration rises, and every fresh glance at the ruins
is a fresh source of delight [...] The ruins of Memphis hold a half-day’s journey in every
direction.” — Abd-ul-Latif, given in: Emile Isambert, Itinéraire descriptif, historique et
archéologique de l’Orient (1881), p.1009.
Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1927) has a mention of… “that Darke Thing
belowe Memphis”.
29 A 250,000 square-mile and largely unexplored desert region, now called the Rub’ al Khali —
although Donald Cole points out in his book Bedouins of the Empty Quarter (2010) that this is not a
name known to the modern Bedouin there. It was first explored by two small-scale British
explorations in the early 1930s. During one of these Harry St. John Bridger Philby (1886-1960)
inadvertently documented a strange sonic phenomenon of the desert in the Rub’ al Khali, namely
the “singing sands”, which may have some bearing on the idea of “the howling of daemons”:
“Quite suddenly the great amphitheatre [containing a rare desert well] began to boom
and drone with a sound not unlike that of a siren or perhaps an aeroplane engine—
quite a musical pleasing rhythmic sound of astonishing depth. Only once before, near
Medina, had Philby heard singing sands, and then far off. Now they were near at hand,
and were, of course, attributed by his [Arab] companions to jinns [powerful daemons];
230
“Empty Space” of the ancients—and “Dahna” 30 or “Crimson” 31 desert
of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil
spirits and monsters of death.32 Of this desert many strange and
unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated
it.33 In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus,34 where the
Philby soon saw that they were caused by a sand-slide set off by one of the men who
had climbed the slope. This deduction he confirmed by manipulating the orchestra;
while doing so, he plunged downhill and knelt on the singing mass; here he noticed a
deep, sucking sound as he pulled hand or knee out of the slope, and felt a ‘curious but
unmistakable sensation of a pulsing and throbbing below the surface, as in a mild
earthquake.’ ” — from “Across the Rub ‘Al-Khali”, Saudi Aramco Magazine,
November/December 1973. For a full account of the journey see Philby’s 1933 book
The Empty Quarter: being a description of the great south desert of Arabia known as Rub ‘al Khali.
Only in 2006 was a proper large-scale scientific survey of this immense region finally undertaken.
30 Actually the name for a narrow strip of rolling sand hills that form the boundary between
central and eastern Arabia. See: Donald Cole (2010), Bedouins of the Empty Quarter .
31 Possibly so called because the women of the tribes living in parts of it, who used (and
possibly still use) local dyes to create a vivid crimson ‘dami’ cloth. See: James P. Mandaville’s
Bedouin Ethnobotany: Plant Concepts and Uses in a Desert Pastoral World (2011), p.142.
32 This passage appears to be a borrowing by Lovecraft, from the 1902 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Brittanica...
“Arab fancy has attributed the additional protection of evil spirits and monsters of
death. This greater desert, the “Roba el Khaliyeh” or “Empty Space” of geographers
— the “Dahna” or “Crimson” of modern Arabs [...] “little or no credit can be attached
to the relations of those who pretend to have explored it, and to have found wonders
in its recesses.” — from the entry for “Arabia: Great Southern Desert”, in the 1902
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
33 Again, this passage was basically borrowed from the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Of this
vast desert, the Britannica states...
“it is never traversed in its full width, not even by Bedouins; and little or no credit can
be attached to the relations of those who pretend to have explored it, and to have
found wonders in its recesses.” — from the entry for “Arabia: Great Southern Desert”,
in the 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
This desert was deemed impenetrable and intensely hostile by Alhazred’s time, even without the
presence of the alleged “monsters of death”. To spend ten years alone there, as Lovecraft
suggests that Alhazred did, implies that by that time Alhazred had gained considerable occult
powers, or else was treated as some kind of holy hermit and therefore looked after by local tribes.
It is true that some frankincense trade routes were once able to completely cross this desert, but
that was only until about the 300s (although it may have been the sharp and sudden decline in the
frankincense trade due to changing fashions among consumers, rather than desertification, which
actually caused these routes to become disused).
At the heart of the Rub’ al Khali was said to lie the fabled city of Irem, a sort of Arabian
equivalent to Atlantis or the Garden of the Hesperides. In “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926),
Lovecraft has Castro speculate that this lost city may be the centre of the Cthulhu cult:
231
Necronomicon (Al Azif ) was written, and of his final death or
disappearance35 (738 A.D.)36 many terrible and conflicting things are
told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer)37 to have
been seized by an invisible38 monster39 in broad daylight and devoured
horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his
madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous
Irem, or City of Pillars,40 and to have found beneath the ruins of a
“Of the [Cthulhu] cult, he said that he thought the centre lay amid the pathless desert
of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched.”
34 Major Arabian city, and the capital of the Ommiade caliphs under whom Alhazred lived.
Muslims were in the minority in the city both during and after the Ommiade Dynasty. Christian
Arabs appear to have predominated there at that time, and Jews also lived and worked there.
“Authority based on learning” was apparently widespread in the city at that time.
35 Lovecraft, by adding “or disappearance” and “conflicting”, appears to hold open the future
possibility of new fictional appearances by Alhazred at a later date. An explanation would
presumably have been along the lines that Alhazred had acquired long life in some manner, or
been whisked into another dimension. For a full discussion on this point, see: Robert. M. Price,
“Is Alhazred Still Alive?” in Crypt of Cthulhu, No.7, Lammas 1982.
36 This was near to the time that Damascus definitively lost its independence, to conquest by
Tiglath-pileser III. A little later there was a further radical shift for the city’s scholars — in
manuscript and book production, as paper-making was introduced. Baghdad had a major papermaking factory by 794. A factory in Damascus later produced nearly all the paper used in
Europe, seemingly from the 800s onwards.
37 Lovecraft appears to mean Ibn Khallikan (1211–1282), but he has pushed Khallikan back in
time by about a century. The real Ibn Khallikan wrote a Biographical Dictionary (‘The Obituaries of
Eminent Men’) which was translated into English and published in 1843 in volumes that ran to
over 2,700 pages. His Dictionary makes substantial use of the sort of vivid informal anecdote (he
does this because there were already more formal biographical dictionaries available in his time)
that Lovecraft attributes to him for the fictional entry on Alhazred.
In the beliefs of Arabian nomads the jinn and their lesser variants are “invisible or hidden
creatures” ... “resembling humans but free from physical limitations” and they can thus shapeshift. They are especially threatening to men... “when they [men] are entirely absorbed in singing
at the [camp] fire during the long Saharan nights, since they bring them to ecstasy and cause them
to fall to the ground frothing at the mouth” — all quotes from a summary of the historic beliefs
that draws on Arabic sources, given by Ewa Machut-Mendecka, “Witchcraft and sorcery in the
prose of Ibrahim al-Kuni” IN: Studies in Arabic and Islam: Proceedings of the 19th Congress, 2002,
p.236. Possibly the high prevalence of epilepsy, caused by consanguinity, is a scientific
explanation for this phenomenon — since the musical beat and flickering flames of the campfire
may induce an epileptic fit.
38
39 The possible implication here is that one of the “monsters of death” of the Rub’ al Khali has
followed Alhazred, or perhaps been summoned, from out of the empty desert.
40
The 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica can inform us of this city...
“Very gorgeous are the descriptions given of ‘Irem’, the ‘city of pillars’, as the Koran
styles it [which] after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say,
232
certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race
older than mankind.41 He was only an indifferent Moslem,42
invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally, and at rare intervals, revealed to some
heaven-favoured traveler.” — from the ‘Arabia’ entry, 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The Arab Sufi belief was that Irem (Irem, Zhat al Imad) was a magical garden-city constructed in
the immense desert by the powers of the jinn (i.e.: Arabian ‘genies’, daemons with superhuman
powers) under human direction. The human rulers of the city dared to believe themselves to be
divine, and so before they could reach it their garden-city was erased from sight by a ‘noise’ from
God. But the city still stands invisible and untouched in the desert, where God sometimes
permits a traveller to catch a glimpse of it and so be reminded of the perils of hubris. The story
and belief has been given or mentioned in the West a number of times: notably by The Thousand
and One Nights; Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat; Washington Irving in Tales of the Alhambra (1851,
revised); and vividly and at length in Henry Iliowizi’s The Weird Orient (1900). The tales of Irem
appears to have inspired Lovecraft’s story “The Nameless City” (1921), although he is careful in
his story to show that the city being explored is even older than Irem: “one terrible final scene
shewed a primitive-looking man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem”.
There may perhaps have been some Sufi traditions of ‘dream travel’ to the city of Irem and its
fabulous gardens, but I can find no mention of this in the western scholarly literature. One
western sufist claims that Irem is ‘very important’ to Sufi beliefs, but this may be a modern
confabulation.
The notion of a mysterious ‘lost’ place which is simultaneously half in and half out of the real
world is one that seems relevant to Lovecraft’s conception of the Dreamlands and also of Kadath.
The notion of travelling to an exotic city created by daemons, but never arriving there, also seems
relevant to Lovecraft’s projected novel “Azathoth” (1922). Also relevant to the idea of
Lovecraft’s shape-shifting Shoggoths is that jinn and their variants are credited with the same
abilities. Avicenna (d. 1037) defined the jinn as...
“Airy animals capable of changing themselves into different forms” –quote by
Avicenna, given in Duncan Black Macdonald’s undated online scholarly essay:
“Intercourse Through the Jinn; Spirits, Demons, and Ghosts in Islam”.
There are also lesser deamons of the desert night which are called afriit or afreet (numerous
spellings are used). In modern Bedouin belief these impish creatures mischievously taunt men
with owl-like calls, and take on the appearance of animals or humans in order to lead men into
lonely places, whereupon the afriit impishly vanishes. See: Joseph J. Hobbs (1992), Bedouin Life in
the Egyptian Wilderness, University of Texas Press, p.60. In the western historical literature these
beings are said to be more fantastical: to be larger; to dwell underground; to have wings; and to be
made of fire like the jiin. The source for these over-heated descriptions might appear to be the
more superstitious settled Arab populations, who have an absolute dread of the desert and its
beings, since the Bedouin who actually live in the desert are significantly less credulous. Note that
the name afriit does not appear to be the root of the modern ‘affright’, which is claimed to have its
root in the ancient Northumbrian (the far north of modern England) ‘fyrhtu’.
41 Very possibly a reference to Lovecraft’s own story “The Nameless City” (1921), in which
the lost desert ruin conceals just such remains in its lower reaches.
42 Sufi mystical asceticism had its very early and rather misty origins at about this time, and it
may be that an Abdul Alhazred would have been able to take advantage of what appears to have
been a period of relative intellectual ferment in Arabia.
233
worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and
Cthulhu.43
In A.D. 95044 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’
surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age,45 was
secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas 46 of
Constantinople 47 under the title Necronomicon. For a century it
impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts,48 when it was
43
These two references should need no explanation for Lovecraft readers.
950 A.D. appears to be generally deemed by Christian scholars to be the moment when the
long persecution and decline of the Christians began to end, and their rise to hegemony ushered
in the Middle Ages.
44
45 Prominent philosophers of the period from the 740s to the 950s included the famous AlKindi. The north of the British Isles also produced Bede of Northumbria, and Alcuin of York.
46 A common first name, seen in various ancient histories. Perhaps the most superficially
obvious possibility as a source is the Ancient Greek bucolic poet Theocritus, who was the student
of Philetas. He would however, be a strange choice for Lovecraft, since Theocritus wrote very
conventional poetic works and, in Theocritus’s own words: “I never sought after a strange muse”.
I can find no mention of any “Theodorus” or “Philetas” in connection with Constantinople or
Byzantium during the 900s. But Phileta was a Byzantine name for what was then the outlying
pirate port of Phaselis, a port that had briefly housed the Byzantine fleet in the 8th century and
which had afterwards become a regional market for pirated booty and plunder. On this point see:
Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (1895), The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia: pt. I., p.19. In this context
Lovecraft’s seemingly-invented name would have meant simply: ‘Theodorus, who comes from the
nearby place called Phileta’.
Or might the name Theodorus Philetas have some loose anagram-like resemblance to
Lovecraft’s own sometime-pseudonym “Lewis Theobald Jr.”? Perhaps: Theodr Bilejas?
47 This was the opulent capital of Byzantium, effectively a re-location and continuation of
ancient Rome. After periods of intolerance, the city was thriving in 950 A.D. It appears to have
produced various great scholars and magicians, and in the 900s it was the only place where the old
Greek classics were still read, copied and taught. To survive Byzantium developed extremely
devious and subtle forms of diplomacy, hence the modern use of the word ‘byzantine’ in educated
political rhetoric. It was from this city that the learning of the Ancient Greeks was carried (quite
literally) to Spain and renaissance Italy — although much was also preserved by the Arab, Jewish,
and Christian scholars who translated many Greek works into Arabic under the patronage of the
Abbasid caliphs.
48 Magic was common in Constantinople at that time, although not unregulated by law. In the
1910s, and perhaps before, there was a belief that... “from Constantinople magic was
disseminated throughout Europe, along with other sciences.” — quote from Lewis Spence’s An
Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920). Only relatively recently has Byzantine magic received attention
from mainstream scholars, as part of the strong up swelling of academic interest in Byzantium. It
now appears that superstition and magic saturated Byzantine society. The key early and
groundbreaking mainstream academic work is Henry Maguire’s book Byzantine magic (2009). See
also: Paul Magdalino’s The Occult Sciences in Byzantium (2006); and Richard P.H. Greenfield’s
234
suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael.49 After this it is only
heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius50 made a Latin
translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed
twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in
Germany)51 and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)52 —both
editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and
place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin
and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX53 in 1232, shortly after its
Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (1988). ‘Late’ in Byzantine Studies means after the
year 1204.
49 Patriarch Michael I, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch at Constantinople from 1043 to 1059.
He is known to have conduced séances (Arcana Mundi, John Hopkins University Press, 2006,
p.474), and commissioned works on alchemy (The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, La Pomme D’Or,
2006, p.18). Of Michael’s séances, from a first-hand account left by Psellus:
“We hear about singing, monotonous movements of the limbs, blinking of eyelids,
ingesting narcotics or hallucinogenics, and rubbing them in and inhaling them as well.
After a while the prophetess Dosithea (the medium) began to speak softly; then she
trembled; then she levitated. She spoke of cosmic subjects.” — from George Luck
(2000), Ancient Pathways and Hidden Pursuits: Religion, Morals, and Magic in the Ancient World,
University of Michigan Press, p.134.
50 Celebrated Danish doctor and antiquary, Olaus Wormius (1588–1655). Lovecraft here
shunts him back in time by well over 300 years. For a detailed explanation of the likely reason for
this move, see S.T. Joshi (2011), I Am Providence, pp.698-699.
51 The ‘black letter’ style of printing type apparently originated among English typesetters, so
the automatic assumption of Germany as the origin is perhaps not so clear cut as it might seem.
52
Said to be a hotbed of occultism, although Lovecraft may not have known it in the 1920s...
“Spanish historians used to argue that Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries was commendably free from magic and the occult, that what little there was
proceeded from rural ignorance [...] This rosy view has since been invalidated by
historians such as Caro Baroja, who has demonstrated the widespread participation of
Spaniards in occult practices, well-intentioned and otherwise. Early modern Spain was
no different in this respect from France, Italy or Germany...” — from David C.
Goodman, Power and Penury: Government, Technology and Science in Philip II’s Spain,
Cambridge University Press, p.3.
53 Pope Gregory IX (c. 1145/70-1241) seems to have been keen on banning things in the
1230s. He banned the Jewish Talmud, for instance. His papal ‘Vox in Rama’ decree of 1233 —
banning and damning black cats as satanic beings — was long believed to have been a trigger for
wholesale cat massacres by Catholics across Europe. Lovecraft, an atheist, a devout cat lover and
a student of strange lore, can hardly have failed to note this historical nugget for future use.
A letter from Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith (27th November 1927) elaborates the point
slightly: Lovecraft states that Gregory placed the Necronomicon on the Catholic Index Expurgatorius.
The Index Expurgatorius was a list of corrections issued to update the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or
list of forbidden books. But the Pope’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum was not issued until 1559.
235
Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was
lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and
no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy54 between
1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain
Salem man’s library in 1692.55 An English translation made by Dr.
Dee56 was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from
the original manuscript.57 Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th
cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key,58
while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.59
Probably as a consequence of Lovecraft discovering this fact, mention of the Index Expurgatorius
was omitted from the circulated version of the “History”.
54 The early printing revolution is generally demarcated as having happened in Europe from
1455 to 1550. By 1500 Italy had over 70 printers, although not all of these might have been
printers of books.
55 1692 was the year of the height of the Salem witchcraft trials. I can find no record of any
occult libraries being burned in New England at exactly this time. But later many of the books
that were in Cotton Mather’s library were burned in Boston — see Alice Morse Earle’s book
Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1893), p.145. Mather had had a minor role in the Salem
witch trials.
56 Doctor John Dee (1527-1608) was a real personage of early modern England, in the time of
Shakespeare. He served as Queen Elizabeth I’s ‘divine’ and her scientist-astrologer. He has been
widely thought to be the model for the magician Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (c.1610).
His occult library was extensive and renowned. His library was ransacked and dispersed by a
superstitious mob while he was in Europe. For more on Dee and Lovecraft, see my detailed essay
on the subject in my book Lovecraft in Historical Context: a third collection of essays and notes (2012).
57 This line on Dee was added to the “History” manuscript a little later than the body of the
text. This was done by Lovecraft so as to accommodate the use of a “quote” from Dee’s
Necronomicon, which formed the epigraph of Frank Belknap Long’s story “The Space Eaters”
(1927), which at that time had yet to see print. “The Space Eaters” story was also the first to
include Lovecraft as a character. See: S.T. Joshi (2011), I Am Providence, for the details on this.
Lovecraft later used Long’s Dee edition in his “The Dunwich Horror” (1928).
58 Lovecraft was probably thinking here of reports of the notorious locked “Private Case” in
which were held the forbidden books of the British Museum Library. The “Private Case” was
established around 1856, although there was a prior existing tradition of ‘setting aside’ certain
forbidden books on their acquisition. For details on the Case, see Patrick J. Kearney’s book The
Private Case: an annotated bibliography of the Private Case, 1981. The Museum’s Library formed as a
merger of the Camden, Harleian, Old Royal, and Sloan libraries in 1753, and it opened in 1759.
After enduring a period of neglect, by the 19th century it had become the finest library in the
world. It later merged with other British libraries to become the British Library (the equivalent
of the Library of Congress).
59 A real library. The national library of France, like the British Library or the Library of
Congress.
236
A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard,60
and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham.61 Also in the
library of the University of Buenos Ayres.62 Numerous other copies
probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently
rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American
millionaire.63 A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a
sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family64 of Pickman; but if
it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman,65 who
60 A real library. In 1995 the F.B.I. arrested a man for stealing several hundred rare books
about the occult from this library.
61 Neither this fictional University or the fictional town should need any introduction to
Lovecraft readers.
62 A real library. The spelling Lovecraft uses is the old one, seen in use in magazines and
books of the mid 1920s. The same spelling is used again in “The Dunwich Horror” (1927):
Wilbur writes to... “the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the
British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library of Miskatonic University at
Arkham” to try to obtain copies of certain pages from the Necronomicon. But why choose Buenos
Ayres? Lovecraft hardly ever mentions South America, and appears to have never mentioned
Argentina. Air tourism from America does not appear to have started at that time (see the history
book: Flying Down to Rio: Hollywood, Tourists, and Yankee Clippers). Buenos Ayres in the 1920s was
claimed to be the most culturally avant-garde city in South America — Poe was popular there in
the 1900s, the writer Borges was emerging there in the mid 1920s, and the first Surrealist group
outside France was founded in the city in 1926. There was also a darker side to the city:
Lovecraft’s attention might well have been drawn by reviews of the well-promoted book “The
road to Buenos Ayres” (1927) a campaigning account of the real-life ‘white slave’ trade by which
Jewish pimps filled the brothels of the city. Perhaps there was a Machen reference to the city?
Or an occult connection which Lovecraft knew about through his Theosophist contacts...
“Séances, consultations with psychic mediums, the study of theosophy and the
Kabbalah were all popular activities in Buenos Aires at the turn of the [20th] century.”
David William Foster et al (1998), in Culture and Customs of Argentina, p.105.
63 Possibly this mention is related to Clark Ashton Smith’s story “The Return of the Sorcerer”
(pub. 1931), in which scholarly American recluse John Carnby has a copy of the Necronomicon.
Perhaps Smith had communicated this notion to Lovecraft, as one he might use in a future story?
Carby is depicted by Smith as an aged scholar living in the suburbs of Oakland, who is rich
enough to employ a secretary, and he has… “a singularly comprehensive collection of ancient and
modern works on demonology and the black arts”.
64 Richard Upton Pickman, depicted in Lovecraft’s story “Pickman’s Model” (1926), came of a
Salem family. This fact is not a new addition to Pickman’s back-story, since it is given in
“Pickman’s Model” thus: “you know Pickman comes of old Salem stock”. Salem was, of course,
the site of the notorious witch-trials, and there are indeed many Pickman names to be noted in
Salem’s historical record.
65
Again, see H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Pickman’s Model” (1926).
237
disappeared early in 1926.66 The book is rigidly suppressed67 by the
authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised
ecclesiasticism.68 Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from
rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public
know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early
novel The King in Yellow.69
Chronology
Al Azif written circa 730 A.D. at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred
Tr. to Greek 950 A.D. as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas
Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e., Greek text). Arabic text now lost.
Olaus translates Gr. to Latin 1228
1232 Latin ed. (and Gr.) suppr. by Pope Gregory IX
14... Black-letter printed edition (Germany)
15... Gr. text printed in Italy
16... Spanish reprint of Latin text
66
The ‘early 1926’ date for the setting is not given in “Pickman’s Model”.
Lovecraft was among the first generation of human beings who were able to write and
publish in a fully open manner on religion and ideas.
67
68 “Ecclesiasticism” refers to those groups who adhere to mainstream religious church-based
practices.
69 Robert.W. Chambers (1865-1933). New York artist who became an early author of the
weird. The success of his early tales, when issued in book form, led him to take up full-time
writing as a career. He later turned to turning out commercial romance-adventures in order to
earn money, although some of these have science-fiction elements. He thereby became a bestselling author and quite wealthy. The first part of his book The King in Yellow (1895) contains a
collection of linked weird horror stories, which centre on a fictional evil book, said to contain a
stage play, called The King in Yellow. Reading this fictional book brings misfortune and madness.
Lovecraft had read Chambers’s story “The Harbour Master” (1904) in 1926, and he first
borrowed a copy of Chambers’s The King in Yellow in April 1927 (S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, p.677)
while he was researching the long essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”.
238
239
PART TWO
Finding Lovecraft’s most elusive correspondents
My great thanks to Kenneth W. Faig Jr., without whom the essays in this
section would not have been possible.
240
WESLEY AND STETSON : TWO PROVIDENCE
MODELS FOR WILCOX IN “THE CALL OF
CTHULHU”?
L
ovecraft’s 1937 diary address list, as transcribed by Robert
Barlow, has an entry for a Frederick A. Wesley of 6
Hammond Street, Providence. Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the
Lovecraft Annual 2012,1 has published some deep genealogical research in
pursuit of a suitable Wesley, which has served to usefully establish a 14th
October 1885 birth date2 for a Frederick Allen Wesley of Providence.3
I have found a “Wesley, Fred A.” in the Rhode Island School of Design Year
Book 19034, taking a course “I” there…
Wesley thus appears to be taking the first and presumably foundational
course (of five or more levels?), and so he was presumably a junior student.
1
Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., “Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, Lovecraft Annual 2012. p.162.
2 The parents are also given by Faig in the 2012 Lovecraft Annual. I have found that The life and
times of Samuel Gorton (1904) has a genealogic entry noting that a Martha A. Allen (b.1861) married
a Warren B. Wesley, and had a “son Fred’k.”. This finding confirms Faig’s details of Allen’s
parents. The father Warren B. Wesley was probably born circa 1854.
3 There is a record of a burial of a Frederick Allen Wesley at the Grace Church Cemetery,
Providence (Elmwood Ave. at Broad St.) but no dates or transcription of the stone, if any is
available, online. Kenneth W. Faig Jr.suggests a 20th April 1948 death date.
4
Rhode Island School of Design Year Book, 1903, Vols 25-28, page 69.
241
If Wesley had been born 1885 then it follows that in 1903 he would have
been of the right age to have been an 18 year old student at the Rhode Island
School of Design (RISD).
One of his key teachers would have been Stacy Tolman of Providence
(1860-1935). Tolman had been head of the dept. of drawing and painting at
the Rhode Island School of Design since 1889. Tolman remained as such
until 1905, thereafter teaching the anatomy class. His presence there is very
interesting because he made an ink drawing5 of Wesley, which is still extant
though not yet inspected by Lovecraftians…
Rhode Island Historical Society–Graphics Dept.:
ACCESS RESTRICTED. APPOINTMENT REQUIRED
1. Ink drawing, “Frederick Allen Wesley” (call# Graphics XXB Painting T652 1)
One thus wonders if Wesley was a favorite student of Tolman? Perhaps
Wesley might in time have become an assistant apprenticed to Tolman, or
one of the other artists then based in the Fleur-de-Lys Studios in
Providence? 6 Wesley’s name does not show up in later editions of the Year
Book, but Tolman is known to have taken private pupils. Obviously there
was some connection between them. Tolman had his studio with other artists
in the Fleur de Lys building in Providence from 1895.7 Tolman’s brief
online biography shows that he…
“was an early member of the Providence Art Club, and Providence
Watercolor Club. His studio, previously used by Charles Walter
Stetson, was in the Fleur de Lis Building, in Providence with Sidney
Burleigh, George Whitaker, Chester Dodge, Frank Mathewson, and
5 Listed in Elinor L. Nacheman, Unveiled: a directory and guide to 19th century born artists active in
Rhode Island, and where to find their work in publicly accessible Rhode Island collections, self published 2007.
6 The place seems to have served as a rooming house for creative types, as well as artists’
studios. It seems to have been what would now be termed a ‘creative hub’. Lovecraft once had an
amusing and productive run-in with the literary editor of the Providence Journal Bertrand K. Hart,
over Hart’s having once lived at that address. See the entry on Hart in the Lovecraft Encylopedia.
7 This, of course, is the building which famously features in Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Also called ‘- - Lis’ in the art history literature.
242
Gertrude Parmelee (Cady). Tolman [trained in Paris8 and] traveled
to Europe and the Middle East to paint, and exhibited at the
National Academy of Design, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts.”
Given these vital clues one then has to wonder if Lovecraft’s Providence
friend Frederick Allen Wesley (1885-1948?) was the model for the young
artist in “The Call of Cthulhu”…
“…who had latterly been studying sculpture at the Rhode Island
School of Design and living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys Building9 near
that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but
great eccentricity…”10
Note that the last “A.W.” initials of Henry Anthony Wilcox are the same as
the A.W. of Frederick A. Wesley. Also note Lovecraft’s penchant for
8 “The Call of Cthulhu” memorably mentions a Paris art salon and the shocking painting
shown there. In this respect it is interesting that...
“Last year [2006] the Boston Museum of Fine Arts documented the exodus of artists
to Paris ateliers in the exhibit Americans in Paris, 1860 - 1900. [...] many Rhode Island
19th artists did their art training abroad [in Paris] at the Julian Academy and the Ecole
des Beaux Arts working hard to gain acceptance into Paris Salon exhibits” — Catherine
Little Bert, from the description of the exhibition “Rhode Island Artists in 19th
Century Paris Salons” at the Bert Gallery in Providence, 2007.
9 “7 Thomas Street”, formerly Angell’s Lane, the building still standing today. Designed by
Charles Walter Stetson and Sydney Richmond Burleigh in collaboration with architects Stone,
Carpenter, and Willson. One of its two designers Stetson referred to the building as a “... unique
and mysterious domain of art ... a building misunderstood by the people, disliked by the perfectly
modern and neat, and beloved by us who harbour there” — from “The Studio”, Charles Walter
Stetson, unidentified Providence press cutting quoted in the book Charles Walter Stetson: color and
fantasy (1982). For a history of Thomas Street see the free online book Angell’s Lane, The History of
a Little Street in Providence (1948).
10
“The Call of Cthulhu” also describes him as...
“The youngest son of an excellent family [...] a precocious youth of known genius but
great eccentricity, and had from childhood excited attention through the strange stories
and odd dreams he was in the habit of relating. He called himself ‘psychically
hypersensitive’, but the staid folk of the ancient commercial city dismissed him as
merely ‘queer’.”
If this reflects something of Frederick Allen Wesley then he might seem a suitable Providence
friend for Lovecraft. The lack of any letters between them might be explained by the fact that
they met face-to-face.
243
putting his friends into his stories.11 One wonders if the extant Tolman
portrait of Wesley will, when unearthed, show something of Lovecraft’s
description of Wilcox as a…
“thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect”
However, it also may be that Wilcox’s physical appearance was modeled
more after a photograph of a real “pagan” artist from Providence. One who
was rejected by the Providence art world, in the same manner as Wilcox is
rejected in Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”…
T
his artist was Charles Walter Stetson (1858-1911)12…
“[Charles Walter] Stetson continued to develop his imaginative
work in the Fleur de Lys, a new Arts and Crafts studio building [in
Providence, which he had helped design] Stetson’s substitution of
painterly, colouristic effects [clashed with the] conventional spirit of
Providence art appreciation, and he began also to distance himself
from his associates at the Art Club [...] Stetson’s more private and
often quite pagan visions set him outside the more conventional
spirit of Providence art”13 (my emphasis)
There is a published diary by Stetson which appeared in print in 198514 but
one wonders if Lovecraft may have been able to read this, or extracts from it,
before that time? It may have been one means by which he learned of a
historical model for Wilcox, in terms of knowing the facts of how Stetson
11 Lovecraft slips into the story his “learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey”, James F. Morton.
I have also argued in my Walking With Cthulhu book that Lovecraft closed modelled the William
Channing Webb character of the story on the real Franz Boas.
12 Stetson worked in partnership with Burleigh to design the Fleur de Lys building, which
features in “The Call of Cthulhu”. His role is often forgotten today by architectural histories, and
his name does not crop up in the Lovecraftian literature in connection with the building. See:
Charles C. Eldredge, Charles Walter Stetson: color and fantasy, Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of
Art, 1982. Also the RISD book Infinite Radius: Founding Rhode Island School of Design, 2009.
13
William H. Gerdts, Art across America: two centuries of regional painting, 1710-1920, Vol.1, p.97.
14
Mary Armfield Hill (Ed.), Endure: the diaries of Charles Walter Stetson, Temple University Press,
1985.
244
had been rejected by Providence’s art world. Or Lovecraft may have heard of
Stetson via Providence’s systems of oral memory, into which his educated
aunts were no doubt closely integrated.
Charles Walter Stetson (1858-1911)
245
Given the evidence presented, I suspect that the Wilcox in “The Call of
Cthulhu” was broadly modeled on Stetson’s pagan vision in art, but was
covertly named for Lovecraft’s Providence friend Frederick A. Wesley.15
Stetson, in his later life, fits with Lovecraft’s description of Wilcox as…
“Never mingling much with his kind, he had dropped gradually
from social visibility, and was now known only to a small group of
esthetes from other towns. Even the Providence Art Club, anxious to
preserve its conservatism, had found him quite hopeless.” (“The Call
of Cthulhu”).
In later life Stetson, indeed shunned by others due to his deafness as well as
his approach to art, was befriend by Elihu Vedder (1836-1923), the major
mystical symbolist painter.16 There was a memorial exhibition for Stetson in
1912 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,17 at which the 22 year old
Lovecraft could have seen weird works by Stetson such as these:
Charles Walter Stetson, Twilight-Moonlight (original in colour)
15 And just perhaps also after a Wilcox very far back in Lovecraft’s family tree, as has been
suggested by S.T. Joshi in the footnotes of the 3 vol. Penguin Classics edition of Lovecraft.
16
Art across America: two centuries of regional painting, 1710-1920, Volume 1, p.97.
There appears to be no review of this show available online, but its description in Eldredge,
Charles Walter Stetson: color and fantasy makes it sound quite impressive. Stetson’s concern for
atmosphere and foreboding eerie landscapes much have touched something in Lovecraft, had he
seen the exhibition.
17
246
Charles Walter Stetson, “After the bath” (1910).
247
Charles Walter Stetson, “Misericordia Crossing” (1907).
Charles Walter Stetson, “Easter Offering” (1896?)
A field of lilies under weird moonlight.
248
Charles Walter Stetson, “Moonlight Procession”, (1900).
In respect of the above painting, it is perhaps interesting to note that
Lovecraft’s original ‘dream’ which inspired “The Call of Cthulhu” was of a
procession…
“Then the curator bade me shew him my product, which I did. It
was of old Egyptian design, apparently portraying priests of Ra in
procession....”18
One can quite see how these various strange paintings might have stirred
Lovecraft, had he seen them hung. Of course there is no proof Lovecraft saw
the paintings, or had heard about them or the outline of the artist’s life. But
Lovecraft’s letters did once mention Stetson, in connection with Stetson’s exwife Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in a letter to August Derleth…
18 Given in Steven J. Mariconda, “The Emergence of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft Studies 15 (Fall 1987),
p.54.
249
“…her first husband was the Providence artist Stetson. She always
had an affected, eccentric streak of self-conscious intellectuality”19
Stetson had asked the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) to
marry him, which she did in 1884 and it seems that she promptly went mad.
She recovered and her later story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) is a classic
gothic tale of madness, and this was a tale known and strongly admired by
Lovecraft.
Stacy Tolman
inally, I should return to Stacey Tolman, a more conventional
FProvidence artist. Tolman also deserves to be briefly considered in his
own right, in the hope of in future spooking up further clues about links
19
Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, p.708.
250
between Lovecraft and the Providence art world. Tolman’s interesting early
works of the late 1880s show a lost Providence of artists and musicians in
rooftop rooms and studios. Below is Tolman’s “The Etcher” (c.1887-90),
which has a rather Lovecraftian atmosphere about it…
The man depicted is the printmaker William Henry Warren Bicknell, Tolman’s
friend and fellow student.
251
And here is Tolman’s interesting “The Interlude” (1890). It immediately
evokes several Lovecraft stories such as “The Terrible Old Man”, “The Music
of Erich Zann”, and even “Hypnos”…
Sadly it appears that this b&w image is the only public copy of “The
Interlude”. One wonders if it hung somewhere public in Providence during
Lovecraft’s time, and that he saw it?
252
Tolman’s late work, presumably made in the 1920s, apparently showed the
evidence of impressionism.20
Finally, here is a picture of a typical studio in the Fleur de Lys building,
showing another artist (Wilfred Israel Duphiney, painting Commodore John
Barry) but evocative of the likely nature of Tolman’s studio…
Key works on Stacy Tolman are:
Ralph Davol, “An Appreciation of Stacey Tolman“, Brush and Pencil, an illustrated magazine
of the arts today, Vol.7, Dec. 1900, pp. 163-172. (Available free online at Archive.org)
John. I.H. Baur, “A Painter of Painters: Stacy Tolman”, American Art Journal, Jan 1979,
pp.37-48. (14 illustrations).
Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Etchings by Stacy Tolman. 1935. (Catalogue,
77 works are listed).
Doreen Bolger Burke (Ed.), American paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Princeton University Press, 1994, pp.383385.
20 Doreen Bolger Burke (Ed.), American paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, in association with Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 383-385. There is a late
painting of a vegetable patch available online at small size, which seems to bear this claim out, but
no other online evidence for the claim.
253
GEO. FITZPATRICK OF SYDNEY: LOVECRAFT’S
‘LOST’ AUSTRALIAN CORRESPONDENT
I
n the 2012 scholarly journal the Lovecraft Annual Kenneth W.
Faig, Jr. gives a fascinating introduction to the list of the names
and addresses of Lovecraft’s correspondents, followed by the
annotated list itself.1 In concluding his introduction, Faig notes he was
unable to identify anyone through his genealogical databases whom he can
confirm as being the Geo. Fitzpatrick of Sydney, Australia…
“For Bell c/o Dixon of Nebraska, and Geo. FitzPatrick of Sydney,
Australia, I have not even identified a specific individual as
Lovecraft’s correspondent.” 2
My own Web researches have led me to believe that the following Fitzpatrick
seems a highly likely personage of the time…
“George Fitzpatrick was a Sydney book collector and literary
character of the 1920’s and 1930’s. He formed associations via mail
with many writers of his day, both in Australia and overseas — this
1
Originally transcribed by Robert Barlow for August Derleth in 1937.
Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., “Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, Lovecraft Annual 2012. p.162. Lovecraft had
another ‘down under’ correspondent, probably briefly, one Robert George Barr of New Zealand,
an amateur journalist who included Lovecraft’s Yoggoth poem “Harbour Whistles” in his The
Silver Fern (May 1930). Barr does not appear in the H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, but is mentioned as a
correspondent in Leigh Blackmore’s “Leon Stone: Amateur Journalist and Pioneer Lovecraft
Collector”, The Fossil, Volume 105, Number 3.
2
254
book includes Fitzpatrick’s magnificent woodcut bookplate depicting
Circular Quay, with ferry wharves prominent and a Sydney ferry in
the foreground.”3
This is George William Sydney Fitzpatrick (1884 – 1st Aug 1948)…
George Fitzpatrick circa 1920s.
3 Book dealer’s listing of various books originally from Fitzpatrick’s library on
www.biblioz.com. It appears he had a taste for exotic adventure stories, owning titles such as A
Forlorn Hope: a sea saga of the sixties; and Harold the Webbed, or The Young Vykings.
255
George Fitzpatrick’s bookplate, copper engraving, 1932.
Artist: Gayfield Shaw (1885–1961).
In the 1920s Fitzpatrick collected bookplates, and at the end of his life had
a collection of 840 of them.4 Lovecraft had a notable example of a personal
bookplate designed in late summer 1927…
4 Presented to the State Library of New South Wales, by Mrs G. Fitzpatrick, 1949, where it
held today. The collection is titled “Australian bookplates, pre 1949”, but given his calls to
America it likely also contains many from America.
256
One thus suspects that Lovecraft sent Fitzpatrick a few samples of his new
bookplate for his collection, thus sparking a correspondence. Perhaps a
researcher would find Lovecraft’s bookplate if they went looking in the
Fitzpatrick collection?
Fitzpatrick was indeed reaching out to America at exactly the right time to
encounter Lovecraft and his new bookplate…
“The collection [of bookplates] probably belonged to George
Fitzpatrick, editor [actually possibly only a Director] of the Sydney
Sunday Times. Fitzpatrick made a request for copies of book plates
of prominent people in The Milwaukee Journal May 18th 1929 p.6,
‘Book plates wanted’…”5
The Milwaukee Journal, 18th May 1928
Fitzpatrick was later a PR man,6 so I imagine he was also savvy enough to
have similar notices in the press across the USA. Indeed, I have also found a
5
State Library of New South Wales, notes on the collection.
Damian John Gleeson, “George William Sydney Fitzpatrick (1884 – 1948): An Australian
Public Relations ‘pioneer’”, Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 2013, Volume 13, No. 2.
6
257
similar notice from him in Plain Talk (1929), and another in Time magazine
(13th May 1929) in which he notes…
“Already I am obligated by able assistance so graciously given by
such fine [then famous literary] folk as Mencken, Theodore Dreiser,
Fannie Hurst, Frank O’Brien”
Fitzpatrick’s life and work:
F
itzpatrick started work as a telegraph boy in New South Wales, and
was inspired to succeed by the real-life example of the Prime
Minister of New Zealand, who had worked himself up to that position from
being a humble telegraph boy. He married in 1910.7 By 1920 he was
involved in many charitable and boosterist campaigns for his state. An
academic journal article on Fitzpatrick as a PR man, by Damian John
Gleeson, was published in 2013. Gleeson notes that…
“He was a member of the Australian Journalists’ Association, and
became editor and also part-owner of newspapers, including being
deputy governor of the Sunday Times and director of the [sports
paper] Referee.”
“His [post 1929] PR campaigns, grounded in research trips to
America and Europe in the 1930s, reflected considerable
understanding of the ‘science of persuasion’ to influence public
opinion.”
He does appear to have visited America in the 1930s,8 and was reportedly a
“very genial friend”9 of American capitalism. The journal article by Gleeson
7 Probably to a Jessie J. Browne. See Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., “Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, Lovecraft
Annual 2012. p.167.
8 Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. notes a September 1934 ship disembarkation record for him at San
Francisco. It’s not known if he made it to the East Coast of the USA.
258
hardly mentions his wartime activities, but I have found evidence that
Fitzpatrick later used his American contacts to become a key conduit of
digests of American commercial news to the Australian government and
other members of the press during the Second World War.10 This news may
have been especially important because…
“Australian import licence restrictions [were] applied in 1940,
effectively banning United States publications from our shores”11
Like Lovecraft Fitzpatrick was a strong British patriot…
“From his father, Fitzpatrick inherited strong patriotic sentiment
towards the British Empire.”12
He might even have had some Theosophical connections, since I have
found that he corresponded with the William Quan Judge Theosophical
9
The Mailbag, 1924, Vol.8, p.104.
10 Ross Fitzgerald, Stephen Holt, Alan “The Red Fox” Reid: Pressman Par Excellence, NewSouth,
2010, p.35.
11 The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Melbourne University Press, 1988.
p.46. Leigh Blackmore has an unpublished 500 word draft on “Weird Tales in Australia” (1992)
in his bibliography, but it is not available online. It appears, judging from his summary of it, to
focus on the post-war period…
“Brief history of wartime shortages and bans, which made the pulp magazine difficult
to obtain here. Unfinished; need to track down older SF fans to discuss their memories
(Graham Stone etc).”
This implies that the magazine Weird Tales may have been easier to obtain in the 1930s in
Australia. The American pulps were banned in Australia, via the Customs (Literature Censorship)
Regulations 1937, but only from 1939 or 1940 (sources differ on the date it came into effect)…
“In 1939 the Australian government had established tariffs on American imports that
effectively banned American pulps” — from Tony Johnson-Woods, “The Mysterious
Case of Carter Brown”, in Who’s Who?: Hoaxes, Imposture and Identity Crises in Australian
Literature, University of Queensland Press, p.74.
Such a banning implies that the import trade in American pulps was a flourishing one in the
Australia of the 1930s. I also read elsewhere that American business magazines and journals were
also banned (or de facto?) during wartime, I would guess perhaps because of a fear they could be
smuggled to Japan? Possibly it was simply a protectionist measure meant to protect the domestic
publishing industry. However, such restrictions imply an added usefulness for FitzPatrick’s
summaries of U.S. commercial news during wartime.
12
Damian John Gleeson, Ibid.
259
Club of Lomaland, sending them a letter on the weird curiosities of the
Australian topography and flora, a letter later reprinted in Lucifer Magazine
(1930)…
“I’ve been in Australia all my life, but until I went to the far and
very sparsely populated North, I did not realize the wonderful things
we have here. For instance, in the North I saw lakes not at the foot
of the hills, but at the top of the mountains in the craters of extinct
volcanoes. I saw rivers underneath the earth and not on top. I saw
palms that grew downward and not upward; trees that strangle and
kill one another; other trees whose roots grow on top of the ground
and not underneath the ground…”
Fitzpatrick had been a member of a Masonic Lodge since the 1910s, and was
reported in the press in 1920 as being a Director of the Freemason
Magazine.13 He was also a campaigner against the then-common practice of
wearing hats indoors and out, something which Lovecraft also seems to have
disavowed.
Fitzpatrick’s business partner and the Sunday Times:
H
is 1920s business partner and manager was Hugh D. McIntosh, a
prominent and flamboyant businessman and then member of the
Upper House of New South Wales. Hugh D. McIntosh had made his name
and fortune in theatres with “lavish revues, plays and musicals”, and
McIntosh later dabbled in exotic ‘spiritual’ cinema…
“With colourful Canadian entrepreneur J.D. Williams he
contracted with Rudolph Valentino to star in the film The Hooded
13 “From Messenger to Director: a successful Australian”, Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 152,
24th December 1920, p.2.
260
Falcon [originally The Scarlet Power]. He claimed to have clinched
the deal by giving Valentino’s wife a mysterious ring that Lord
Carnarvon had taken from Tutankhamen’s tomb, but the film was
never completed.”14
“One of the biggest projects ever” in Valentino’s own words, Valentino
would have played a “Saracen nobleman” at the time of the Spanish Moors,
playing a spiritual riff off the El Cid story. But the film was apparently
scuppered, partly because of… “the overspending of Rudy and Natacha’s trip
overseas to obtain authentic antiques and clothing for the film”.
Fitzpatrick was a Director of the McIntosh’s Tivoli Theatres of Australia at
the end of 1920.15 Fitzpatrick, as I have previously been established here,
was also the Director of McIntosh’s Sydney Sunday Times. McIntosh owned
the Sydney Sunday Times and its sporting paper, but sold out in 1929 after
his finances collapsed.16 Fitzpatrick does not appear to have been an editor,
but if he remained as a Director of this paper after 1929, then perhaps a local
Lovecraftian might usefully skim through the Sydney Sunday Times archives
from about 1929 to the early 1930s looking for any Lovecraft poems or
letters that might have been published there?
14
“Hugh D. McIntosh 1876-1942”, entry in the Live Performance Australia online encyclopaedia.
“From Messenger to Director: a successful Australian”, Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 152,
24th December 1920, p.2.
15
16
“Hugh D. McIntosh 1876-1942”, entry in the Live Performance Australia online encyclopaedia.
261
A LIKELY CANDIDATE FOR THE LOVECRAFT
CORRESPONDENT C. L. STUART
K
1
Annual 2012.
enneth W. Faig Jr. suggests some candidates for a very
elusive Lovecraft correspondent, in his very useful article on
the Lovecraft address book and 1937 diary in Lovecraft
I suspect that there is an error in the 1937 transcription of
the address book by Robert Barlow, since he gives this Lovecraft
correspondent as:
C. L. Stuart of 17 Brockett St, E Milton, Mass.
The address should read “Brackett St.” not Brockett. The location is four
miles south of the centre of Boston, in a pleasant village-like atmosphere
among trees and quite near the coast.
What of the man there? I have found a rather likely personage in the form
of the East Coast author and encyclopedia editor Charles Leonard Stuart
(also publishing under the name of Leonard Stuart), who states that he was
born 1860 (or perhaps 1868, according to a later unreliable source2). In the
early 1920s this man had an interest in Lyonesse, the Cornish/Arthurian folk
story of the lost land under the sea and was writing a book on it. He appears
to have once written a work titled The Great God Pan. He had Cornish
ancestors, which may have co-incided with Lovecraft’s genealogical
researches.
Charles Leonard Stuart first shows up in the online record as a magazine
editor in the 1890s, then as Assistant Editor of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary
1
2
The record for his 1922 book on Archive.org.
262
of Musicians (1900). In 1910 he edited the Current Cyclopedia, and by 1911
he is jointly credited with the revising and editing of Webster’s New
Illustrated dictionary. He then tackled the editorship of the Everybody’s
Cyclopedia (1912), a complete reference library condensing the world’s
knowledge in plain English) with George J. Hagar. This multi-volume work
must have been a success, since two years later he was the chief editor of its
successor the People’s Cyclopedia (1914) 3…
“Prepared by more than two hundred of the most eminent editors,
educators, scholars, scientists, inventors and explorers under the chief
editorship of Charles Leonard Stuart”
A “Charles Leonard Stuart” has a 1922 copyright registry entry for a
nationalist political/racial book in 1922. This is freely available in digital
facsimile on archive.org and appears from the summary in Chapter X to be
cranky 1920s racialist stuff, with lots of worries about ‘Roman’ (Catholic
Church) influence on civilization, and with an early chapter on Eugenics. It
seems the sort of book that might have caught Lovecraft’s attention in the
early or mid 1920s. The copyright registry entry gives it as…
The Age of Understanding; or, Americanism and the standard of world
nationalism: a true outline of history and science. Boston, R.G. Badger,
1922.
The book is now available online at archive.org as by “Stuart, Leonard, [b.]
1868”. A very useful short biography of him in this volume runs thus…
“…encyclopedist and author of French-American ancestry; b. near
Coutances, France, 12 February 1860; s. of Sara Stuart-Johns of
Cornwall, England, and of Philippe Le Sueur, grandson of Pierre Le
Sueur (d. 1792), the founder of French Methodism” [...] settled in
New York City in 1897 [...] since has been continuously associated
with international encyclopedic and educational book publishing
3 Now widely and freely available in digital form online. Lovecraft had the five volume set in
his personal library.
263
work. Contributor to leading encyclopedias and periodical literature.
Editor of the New Century Reference Library (1907); Current
Cyclopedia of Ready Reference (1910); People’s Cyclopedia (1914); etc.;
author of The Story of Human Flight (1907); A Misunderstood Scientist
(1907) ; The Passaic and Its Falls (1910); The Great God Pan (1913);
Unity, Life’s Ideal (1914); The Tycoon and the Suffragette (lyrical
comedy; 1914); The Cosmic Comedy or the Kaiser’s Dream (1919)
[possibly a wartime update of his 1901 The Cosmic Comedy; or, The
vital urge]; The Age of Understanding or Americanism the Standard of
World Nationalism (1922); A Roamer in Lyonesse (1922); The Eon or
The Quest of the Lotus (MS.) [given as The Eonic Quest on the title
page of the book]. Residence Glencliff, N.Y.
After 1922 he becomes quiescent in terms of publication, at least in terms
of what the online record is able to show regarding books and major
magazines. One assumes he might have retired to the pleasant seaside
location of Brackett St. in the early-mid 1920s, then aged about 65. But I
can find no proof of this, other than that it certainly looks like a nice
retirement spot on Google Street View. I can find no death record for him,
which might have occurred around the mid or late 1930s when he would
have been in his 70s. I can find no record of him on the 1940 census. It will
now be for others, who have the paid access to American databases of
directories and genealogical records which I do not, to pin him down to 17
Brackett St,. or not.
There are certainly number of items in his Age of Understanding short
biography, given at the front of the book, which would have interested
Lovecraft and might have prompted him to write offering revision services:
1. The Great God Pan: an All-time Story (1913, Tudor Society, 35 pages). A
copy is in Harvard Library, digitised but not yet placed online to view. This
suggests it may have been a scholarly monograph.
2. The Cornwall and Lyonesse connections might have intersected with
Lovecraft’s quest after his own ancestors in the lines of “Carew, Edgecome,
264
Treftisis”.4 I can find no trace of any title called A Roamer in Lyonesse, nor
any work on Lyonesse from 1922 to 1935 under any likely name. Possibly
the book was anticipated for 1922, but never appeared. Perhaps it was
turned into a series of articles, and a search of Theosophist magazines and
the like might turn up something? Possibly it needed revision work, and if so
then the topic and setting would have been directly in Lovecraft’s line of
interest. Lyonesse is, of course, the Cornish/Arthurian folk story of the lost
land under the sea.
3. The manuscript of his esoteric-sounding The Eon or The Quest of the Lotus
(aka The Eonic Quest) might also have been revision work for Lovecraft. I
can find no trace of this work, under either those titles. I have found a
reference to “the eonic character of the Lotus Sermon” in Buddhism, so
presumably his text was one that referenced Buddhist belief.
4
Lovecraft wrote to Fritz Leiber of Cornwall...
“All told, I believe that Cornwall must form the most picturesque & fascinating spot
in England, with its plenteous reliques of the past, its bold topography, its ancient
villages, its tenacious folkways, its suggestions of subtropical vegetation (this in the
latitude of northern Newfoundland so potent are the subtler elements of climateformation!), & its legends of dim yesterdays & of the sunken land of Lyonesse. I have
several ancestral lines which remotely extend back to Cornwall — Carew, Edgecome,
Treftisis — hence feel that it is no alien soil. It is in ancient Damnonia, [Devon]
however, that Lovecrafts are chiefly scattered largely in the valley of the Teign near
Newton-Abbot. Historically, Cornwall & Devon are pretty much a unit.” — from
Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark, Wildside Press, 2003, p.61.
265
CURTIS F. MYERS (1897-?)
C
urtis F. Myers is an incredibly tough Lovecraft
correspondent to crack. What follows is the best I can come
up with. What we have to work with is this from 1937…
“Curtis F. Myers, 70 Clifton Ave, Clifton NJ”
There is a 70 Clifton Ave. in Clifton, but no online record for it at all except
some OCR false-positives for the small startup firm Electronic Mechanics,
Inc. The firm was actually a mile away at “70 Clifton Blvd.”, located there
from 1935 when it started up and remaining there until around 1945/6. One
interesting possibility is that Barlow may have mistranscribed “Ave” from
Lovecraft’s “Blv”. That’s a faint line of enquiry, but one worth pursuing.
A small startup electronics company was at that address, developing new
types of radio components using the mineral mica: “Electronic Mechanics,
Inc., 70 Clifton Blvd, Clifton, N.J.” Delbert E. Replogle1 was founder and
president of Electronic Mechanics Inc. The journal Communications (Vol.25,
p.98) reported in 1945…
“Electronic Mechanics, Inc., Clifton Blvd., Clifton, New Jersey, is
now celebrating its tenth anniversary.”
This would mean the firm was established 1935. Official U.S. documents
confirm formation on 20th September 1935. So it was a small radio
components startup, and it was…
1 We also get Replogle’s name from a Quaker journal: “Delbert E. Replogle, Ridgewood, N.J.,
President of Electronic Mechanics, Inc.” is listed in the Friends Journal, 15th Feb 1961.
266
“engaged in manufacturing and machining insulating materials
composed of mica and glass.” [...] “Early in 1938 it became apparent
that the New York company required expanded working quarters”
In 1938 the firm moved its operation to a factory into Paterson, although it
seems to have kept its offices at 70 Clifton Blvd. until the mid/late 1940s.
The firm made a bundle of money on Second World War contracts, but
didn’t pay enough tax, and so was pursued by the government for back taxes
in 1950. It had made some key buyout purchases of other firms in the late
1940s, and became Molecular Dielectrics in a merger in the early 1960s.
The firm was working with bonding mica to glass. This was to make glassbonded mica ceramic insulation for radio and radar units, branded as
Mycalite until 1942 and then renamed Mykroy. So one wonders if they drew
on the learned expertise of James F. Morton, Lovecraft’s friend and
mineralogist expert. Morton only a few miles away from their offices, at the
Paterson Museum.
267
The American Institute of Electrical Engineers Yearbook of 1944 has one
“Shima, Rindgh” giving the “70 Clifton Blvd” address as his address “for
mail” while he lived at an address elsewhere. So Replogle was obviously
happy for his workers to get mail there.
Electronic Mechanics, Inc., radio components circa 1947.
So, do we have any likely candidates who could have been working for
Electronic Mechanics, Inc.? Yes, we do. Kenneth W. Faig Jr. suggests in
the Lovecraft Annual 2012 a Curtis F. Myers (b. 1897) as the likely candidate
Lovecraft correspondent. He is recorded on the 1930 census at 31 Harrison
Place, Clifton N.J. (one block from Clifton Av., one mile from 70 Clifton
Blvd.), working as a machinist in a woolen mill. It’s perhaps not too much of
a long shot to suggest that this Myers may have made a move to being a
machinist in a new local radio2 startup in 1935, working with mineral/glass
fibres. Working with animal fibres and working with mineral/glass fibres
apparently requires similar skills.
If so, then quite how he came to know Lovecraft is still a mystery.
Electronic Mechanics, Inc. were manufacturers not retailers, so it’s unlikely
Lovecraft was writing to them to get radio spares (even he could have
afforded them in 1936/7, when he could barely afford food). My hunch
would be that Myers was simply a fan of weird fiction who had written to
2
Radio was incredibly cool, attracting the same enthusiasm as the PCs/Web industry of today.
268
Lovecraft, and that Lovecraft had kindly written back. There is no online
trace of this Myers as any kind of author or fan writer.
Inside the Paterson factory of Electronic Mechanics, Inc., circa 1947.
269
SOUNDING THE BELL : FINDING A LONG ‘LOST’
H.P. LOVECRAFT CORRESPONDENT
F
ollowing on from my earlier research essay on Geo.
FitPatrick in this book,1 I can now clear up the other long
‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent. Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the
Lovecraft Annual 2012,2 could find no-one certain for this entry in Lovecraft’s
address book…
Bell — 15 Pine Ave., Old Orchard, Ne. c/o E. Dixon, Box 292
This address was a mistranscription by Robert Barlow. What the address was
is…
Bell — 15 Pine Ave., Old Orchard Be[ach], c/o E. Dixon, Box 292
This address is some 60 miles north along the coast from Providence.
There was an Edith Bell (b. 19th July 1914) who died in 2002 age 88 at Old
Orchard Beach. There is a record of her living at 22 Pine Ave.
There is an Edwin E. Dixon living at 15 Pine Ave., Old Orchard Beach, in
the 1940 Census. He died 13th Jan 1964, at Old Orchard Beach, age 75.
Presumably Edwin E. Dixon passed Lovecraft’s letters to Edith Bell at 22
Pine Ave.? Since Bell was under 21 until 1935, my guess would be that
See the previous essay in this book, “Geo. FitzPatrick of Sydney: Lovecraft’s ‘lost’ Australian
correspondent”.
1
2
270
perhaps her parents didn’t approve of her interest in weird literature? Hence
the need to pass letters via the fictitious(?) “Box 292” of near neighbour E.
Dixon. An absolute need for discreetness would also suggest why Lovecraft
listed her simply as “Bell” rather than giving her full name in his address
book.
So far as I can tell from my research, neither Edith Bell or Edwin E. Dixon
ever made a mark in art, literature, or collecting that went beyond Old
Orchard Beach, at least not one that shows up online.
22 Pine Avenue has, at April 2013, recently been emptied and put up for sale. It
appears that Edith Bell’s relative Peter Bell had lived there until recently. If he had a
big pile of Lovecraft letters in a tin box in the basement, they might have been worth
more than the house!
Note that Edith Bell (1914-2002) is not to be confused with the person
who the local Old Orchard Beach community named their local library after:
that was one “Edith Belle Libby“, although it’s sometimes mis-named in
online documents as the Edith Bell Library.
271
I have also found an Edith Bell Love, who published a few pulp mysteryromance stories during the period 1928-1933…
“Heights”, All-Story Love Stories, 1st Feb 1933.
“Love and Mystery at Melrose”, All-Story Love Stories, 15th Nov
1932.
“A Tale of Two Women”, Prize Story Magazine, Apr 1929.
“The Mystery of the Stairs”, Everygirl’s Magazine, date? 1928.
But I rather suspect that she was the same as the Edith Bell Love who later
became the Augusta, South Carolina, newspaper reporter in the 1930s or 40s
going through to around 1960 (when she was described as the “veteran”
reporter on The Augusta Chronicle). I have been unable to find an address for
her, but — although Lovecraft had travelled to South Carolina and she does
appear to have had an interest in writing about local history — she obviously
needed no help with revision work and was more than capable of writing for
herself.
272
FRED ANGER AFTER LOVECRAFT
L
ovecraft correspondent Fred Anger (William Frederick
Anger, probably b. 15th Sept 1920, possibly d. 1997)1 was a
young Lovecraft fan and letter writer to the pulps. The
Lovecraft Encyclopedia states he planned an index to Weird Tales and an
edition of Fungi from Yoggoth, both with Louis C. Smith,2 neither of which
appeared. He contributed an interview to The Fantasy Fan fanzine, also with
Louis C. Smith. (For more on Smith see the essay which follows this one).
Anger had letters published in Weird Tales (September 1934, Vol.24, No.3)
and Amazing Tales in 1935.3 Anger appears to have been very antagonistic
toward Robert Bloch, who was then of about the same age…
“Another fellow named Fred Anger never missed a chance to
criticize Bloch”.4
This was apparently because Bloch didn’t like Conan, and had called R.E.
Howard’s character “Conan the Cluck” in print.
The Lovecraft correspondence with Anger seems accounted for, and safely
in the Selected Letters and held in a public collection.5 The collection is at the
1
The Lovecraft Encyclopaedia gives 1921, but this is corrected to 1920 in I Am Providence.
2 Louis C. Smith. S.T. Joshi states in I Am Providence (Hippocampus, 2010) that nothing is
known about Smith. See the following essay on Smith in this volume.
3 John Cheng, Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America, University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, p.62. Cheng does not say to which pulp Anger was writing here,
nor does he footnote the quote. It was not Weird Tales, but rather an SF pulp with letters pages
titled “Discussions”. Presumably this must have been Amazing Stories. This might suggest Anger
was a hard SF as well as a fantasy-horror fan. I have found an online indication that his letter was
published in a 1935 issue of Amazing Stories.
4
Gary Romeo, “Stars of the Pulps”, Sand Roughs #5, Winter Solstice, 2002.
273
Literary Manuscripts Collections at the Elmer L. Andersen Library,
University of Minnesota. The collection record states…
“Acquisition Donated to the Archives by William F. Anger in 1973”
One assumes in that case that the collection’s letter from August Derleth
(April 21, 1968) was written to alert Anger of the importance of his old
Lovecraft letters and items? If so the letter would likely have Anger’s home
address in 1968. I wonder if anyone ever checked this archive, other than
perhaps Derleth (probably via transcription copies)? Its presence at
Minneapolis might suggest that Anger was then based in Minnesota in the
1970s? Or perhaps was he an alumnus of the university there?
Generally lacking in the Lovecraftian printed literature, until recently, is a
death date for Anger. I found a Polish listing of Lovecraft correspondents
online which states “1997”, and this also notes that Anger personally knew
Clark Ashton Smith.6 Presumably this 1997 death date is drawn from either
I Am Providence or Ken Hill’s information given on the alt.horror.cthulhu
discussion group in 2008…
“William Frederick Anger, born in 1921, according to An H.P.
Lovecraft Encyclopedia [...] I don’t find any references to him after the
1930’s. The Social Security Death Index lists a William F. Anger,
born 15 September 1920, died 2 September 1997; last known
residence, Buffalo, N.Y.; social security number issued in New York
State.”7
5 “H.P. Lovecraft Correspondence: Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The collection
consists of 5 holograph postcards (Aug. 31, 1934 to Sept. 2, 1926), 10 holograph letters (Aug. 14,
1934 to Aug. 14, 1935), 1 typescript letter (Jan. 16, 1936), one chain letter (typescript and
holograph, undated), one typescript letter signed by August Derleth (April 21, 1968). The letters
and postcards are written to Fred Anger from Lovecraft, mostly from his home in Providence,
Rhode Island. They relate to their common interests in writing weird fiction and issues relating to
publishing their work. Transcriptions of the materials have been made and are available in the
archives.” University of Minnesota.
6 I have not been able to confirm this via another source, except one that causuall mentions
that Anger “visited” Clark Ashton Smith.
7 This is the only mention of Anger on that alt.horror.cthulhu thread. An open genealogy
website confirms that “William F Anger’s last known residence is at Buffalo, Erie County, NY
(New York) 14203.”
274
An open online database usefully adds the burial place…
“William F Anger, died 09/02/1997 buried at Bath National
Cemetery in Bath, NY.”
This has enabled me to find a picture of the relevant gravestone at Bath
National Cemetery (Plot: R, 0, 53), the inscription of which tells us that he
served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. Presumably the
U.S. Navy archives may have more details of his war service and where he
was stationed and if he decommissioned on the East Coast of the USA.
“YN3” on the gravestone indicates he was a “Petty officer third class” in the
Navy.
Of course none of the above proves that the East Coast Anger is the same
as the West Coast Anger. But given the absolute disappearance of Anger
from records on the West Coast, my hypothesis would be this: that after
California fandom in the 1930s, where he apparently knew Clark Ashton
Smith personally(?), Anger served in the Navy in the 1940s. He later took
275
advantage of the post-war G.I. Bill to get a trade or university education
(Minnesota?), and went to try for a career on the East Coast. What he did
on the East Coast for fifty years, if indeed he was living around New York
from circa 1947 to 1997, I have as yet been unable to discover. He has left
no trace there in the online record, under his own name. There seems to be
not a whit of him in the fannish record that is accessible online. Yet
someone (Derleth, via the letter of “April 21, 1968” in the University of
Minnesota archive?) obviously made him aware of the importance of his old
Lovecraft letters and items. In which case, why do we not have any further
details about him?
Of interest to future searchers after Anger will be the mention of his name in
The Typographical Journal for 1946. This lists “William F. Anger” in a list of
either contributions or expenditures, having against his name “$300”. But
this is likely to be the same as the man noted in The Typographical Journal in
a 1935 issue as…
“William F. Anger, age 27; at trade twelve years; worked in
Denver, Colo.; Chicago, 111., and San Jose, Cal.; never a member.”
The mention of San Jose is interesting. But the age given for the man would
mean that he was born circa 1908, meaning that he cannot be Lovecraft’s
Anger — who in 1934/5 was in Berkley writing boyish letters to the pulps.
276
THE FANNISH ACTIVITY OF LOUIS C. SMITH,
CIRCA 1928 to 1944/6
F
red Anger planned an index to Weird Tales and an edition
of Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yoggoth, both with Louis C.
Smith. This is well documented in Lovecraftian
scholarship. But it seems that Smith has long been a minor mystery to
Lovecraftians. But he can now be fairly easily traced through his fannish
activities.
John Cheng’s Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in
Interwar America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) names Smith as…
“Louis C. Smith on the Berkeley-Oakland side of San Francisco” and details
on page 217 some of his early fannish involvement…
“In 1928 Aubrey MacDermott, Clifton Amsbury, Lester
Anderson, and Louis C. Smith on the Berkeley-Oakland side of San
Francisco Bay began meeting monthly as the Eastbay Science
Correspondence Club (ESCC). Raymond Palmer, originally a
Chicago SCC member, suggested a national merger [with his own
organisation and they became the] Eastbay Scientific Association,
merged into one club under a constitution drafted by Dennis,
Clements, and A. B. Maloire of Chehalis, Washington.”
277
Cheng appears to be drawing here on Joseph L. Sanders’s Science Fiction
Fandom (1994), although I am unable to access his footnotes.
Harry Warner Jr.’s book All our yesterdays: an informal history of science fiction
fandom (1969) noted on page 59 and 67 respectively that...
“Louis C. Smith had dozens of custom-bound volumes that he
entitled ‘Fantastic Fiction....’ and that “Louis C. Smith kept a card
index in the thirties that contain facts on more than a thousand
books” ... but that is all I have been able to access online.
Evidently Lovecraft was not dealing with a couple of vapid star-gazing
schoolboys. Smith was serious about his bibliographic cataloguing.
Smith also contributed letters to the Jerome Siegel (1914-1996) fanzine
Science Fiction, and had a letter in the very first issue in November 1932.
Smith had an article or letter in the August 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan,
in which he noted that “A.Merritt is of French Huguenot ancestry”. Smith
and his friend Fred Anger provided “An Interview with E. Hoffman Price”
published in The Fantasy Fan, December 1934.
Smith contributed an article on “Phillip M. Fisher, Jr.” to Fantasy
Magazine, August 1935. In 2011 this was due to be reprinted as an
introduction to the book Strange Ocean Vistas of Philip M. Fisher (George A.
Vanderburgh’s Lost Treasures from the Pulps #12) but this is a volume that
seems to have been delayed.
An article “Phantasy’s Trend” by Louis C. Smith appeared in The
Phantagraph fanzine of February 1936.
The Futile Press’s The Science Fiction Critic (December 1936/January 1937,
“Volume One, Number Six”) contained work by a “Frederik and Louis C.
Smith”, the Smith item titled “Fantasiana”. One wonders if the “Frederik”
was Smith’s friend Fred Anger. It seems likely he was. The Science Fiction
278
Critic fanzine was edited by Claire P. Beck, and that particular edition was
the first issued from her new address at Lakeport, California.
Smith had a column titled “Fantastica” in the fanzine Helios (Oct-Nov-Dec
1937).
According to the online The FictionMags Index Smith had letters in Weird
Tales: “Feb, Dec 1933, Dec 1934, Aug 1935, Nov 1936”.
Smith had a column published in the Tesseract fanzine: December 1936;
and January 1937 (titled “Authorsophy”, stated as being… “a column by
Louis C. Smith which quotes Edmond Hamilton, E. E. Smith and others”);
and March 1937; and October 1937 (titled “Science in Fiction”). Tesseract
was apparently the product of The Science Fiction Advancement Association
of San Francisco, with which Smith was presumably involved since he was
evidently living in the city. In 1941 Smith was noted in a SF fanzine as
living in San Francisco…
“recent news from America is that that eternal infernal
bibliography-in-preparation bug has now bitten old-time fan Louis
C. Smith and Fantasia-editor Louis Goldstone, both of San
Francisco.” (Futurian War Digest, 1941, No.14).
This quip probably refers to his venture with co-editor Jack Riggs, on a 28
page index of SF pulp stories: Unknown Index: Fantasy Fiction in Three
Sections, Table of Contents, Index of Titles, Alphabetical List of Authors,
Berkeley, Calif., 1944 or 1946. A book record at Worldcat describes this
work as an… “Index to the 39 issues of Unknown and Unknown Worlds.”
The cover of this work actually gives us an address:
“1620 Chestnut Street, Berkley-2- California”
279
However, this may have been Jack Riggs rather than Smith’s address, since
the 1941 Fanzine Yearbook in section two of Le Zombie (January, 1942)
gives the title and address of Smith’s own fanzine:
“TELLUS
Louis C. Smith, 1845 Prince Street, Berkeley,
California. Mimeographed; monthly; two; 16 pages; 10 cents.”
280
The “monthly” was an aspiration at the fanzine’s inception, it seems, rather
than a reality. Tellus is held in the Special Collections Department,
University of Iowa Libraries…
Tellus. Nos. 1, 2 (1941), 3 (1942), 4 (1943), 5 (1944), 6 (1945)
This run might be usefully inspected for any article by Smith remembering
his contact with Lovecraft or his circle. It might also give biographical
details for his friend Fred Anger, and details of Smith’s post-1945 plans.
The address tells us that Smith’s home was also a venue for weekly fannish
SF meetings, according to a footnote to an article in Astounding Science
Fiction in 1942 (Volume 28, Issue 6, page 110)…
“Every single member is an Astounding SF fan, which isn’t as
astounding as it may seem. We meet every Friday evening at 1845
Prince Street in Berkeley with Louis Smith as director.”
All then goes rather quiet on the Louis C. Smith front after around 1945/6.
But in 1971 a paper was presented to the first Popular Culture Association
National Conference (East Lansing, MI, April 8-10, 1971) by a Louis C.
Smith, titled “John Clark Ridpath and Popular History - Neglected and
Forgotten”. Ridpath was a popular historian 1869-85. It might suggest that
Louis C. Smith became an academic or more likely an academic librarian,
since he obviously had the bibliographic bug in him. If there was a printed
programme for the 1st PCA Conference, it may have some biographical
material on Smith. However, one would expect a librarian to show up
somewhere in the online record for 1945-1970.
Much more on Smith’s early fannish bibliographic activities may be
uncovered by those with access to large archives of original SF fanzines,
especially those produced from the West Coast between about 1923 and
1946.
281
REDS AND PINKS : THE POLITICS OF
WOODBURN PRESCOTT HARRIS
W
oodburn Prescott Harris (1888-1988) was a Lovecraft
correspondent in Vermont circa 1929, of whom little is
known. Only three Lovecraft letters to Woodburn
Harris survive, but one is a gargantuan 70 pages.1 Harris was a graduate of
Middlebury College, who became an English and Drama teacher and
seemingly a Shakespeare specialist. He served in the First World War, was
profoundly deafened in the war, then married in the 1920s, and thereabouts
quit teaching to become a farmer at Vergennes, Vermont. How Harris came
to know Lovecraft is uncertain, but it seems that it was only later that he
took up Lovecraft’s revision services. Lovecraft wrote of Harris…
“Our intelligent rustick friend Woodburn Harris has suddenly
blossom’d into a prolifick professional [revision and ghost writing]
client — being intent on saving the country [by publishing on the
prohibition of liquor]”2
In the list of the addresses of Lovecraft correspondents sent by Barlow to
Derleth, Barlow has added a very curious note3 which has provoked this
essay. Barlow noted for Derleth of Harris that he… “should have many pink
1 9th November 1929. An abridged version is in the Selected Letters III. S.T. Joshi gives a short
summary of a few of the notable topics covered in the letter, on page 244 of his A Subtler Magick:
The Writings and Philosophy of H.P. Lovecraft, Wildside, 1996. So far as I know the three surviving
letters to Harris still await a single-volume book publication. Harris also appears to have had
letters published in the Springfield Republican and in magazines. A letter to Lovecraft, possibly by
Harris, is listed in the Lovecraft collection on the Rhode Island Archives website.
2
Selected Letters III, p.130.
3
Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. gives the list in full in the Lovecraft Annual 2012.
282
discussions”. The meaning of this word “pink” seems uncertain. Barlow was
gay and Derleth (so I’m told) was bisexual, and the book Selected Papers on
Lovecraft tantalisingly noted in passing4 the… “the incredibly erroneous views
on sex of Woodburn Harris”. This small constellation of hints might lead
some to consider that “pink” could be a code for gay.
But “pink” was far more likely to imply the Lovecraft - Harris
correspondence was politically communist in tone. I have found one
contemporary reference online, with a similar usage… “I was a member of
this parlor pink discussion group back in 1942”, referring to membership of a
group with... “communistic overtones”.5 I also found a mention of
detecting… “well-organized pink discussion groups” in the context of anticommunism.6 So it would be tempting to presume that Barlow’s meaning of
pink was the same as “pinko”: a once-common term in the 1940s and 50s,
meaning someone who was a communist sympathiser or a fellow traveler
with socialism. The Oxford English Dictionary dates “pinko” to as early as
1936, and Barlow’s notes on Lovecraft’s address list were written after that
date.
This seems the most plausible explanation, yet it is one which appears to be
directly contradicted by Lovecraft himself…
“As for our young communist [Weiss] — I have just set Farmer
Woodburn Harris of Vermont on to him, and expect some brilliant
fireworks. Harris is a political conservative of the traditional Yankee
mould, and his keen wit and horse-sense will form a delightful foil to
young Weiss’s bolshevism…”7
Harris had been an Acting Sergeant Major in the First World War, was
the son of a minister and had been a school principal, then became a farmer
4
S.T. Joshi (Ed.), Selected Papers on Lovecraft, Necronomicon Press, 1989, p.69.
5
Investigation of Communist activities in the Chicago area, 1954.
6
U.S.A. journal, 1956.
7
Selected Letters III, p.187.
283
after being deafened in the First World War.8 By 1930 Harris was a reader
of Joseph McCabe’s (apparently sober and balanced) pamphlets concerning
the facts of the historical reality of Jesus.9 His conservative background, and
the Lovecraft comment above, suggests that Harris was certainly not at that
time a communist “red” or even a “pink” sympathiser.
Possibly the solution to the riddle is that Barlow knew of Weiss’s
correspondence with Harris, thus of the “pink” nature of the letters that
Harris might have in his possession? But against Weiss’s name on the list
Barlow notes that Weiss was an outright “Red”. So why might he use “Pink”
elsewhere on the list, when “Red” would have served if he was referring to
Weiss’s correspondence with Harris?
The solution would appear to be that perhaps Barlow himself (apparently a
communist sympathiser at one time) might have had some correspondence
with Harris on politics? Or that he knew of an abrupt political conversion on
the part of Harris? The latter is not as unlikely as it would seem from
reading the published scholarship. I have been kindly informed by Randy
Everts that he interviewed Woodburn Harris at his home in 1968, and that
at that time…
“he was in fact a communist, with his bedroom bookcase filled
with communist literature which he proudly displayed to me. He
told me that he was in despair and near suicide after being deafened
in WWI [the First World War] (his double hearing aids restored
some of his hearing when I interviewed him) and a letter from
Lovecraft (Harris was friends with Lovecraft’s Vermont friends who
might have been the intermediaries) he told me “saved his life.” He
was a thoroughly fascinating person on par with the more creative Ira
A. Cole, and swam every day in the river behind his home (he
8 Randy Everts interviewed Harris. I thank Everts for his kindly supplying me with the
additional information of the deafness of Harris.
9 Harris defended McCabe from shoddy criticism in a letter to the editor in The Outlook, July 9,
1930, p.398.
284
showed me the site) which he ascribed to contributing to his
excellent health.”10
So by triangulating between Lovecraft’s letter / Barlow’s appellation of ‘pink’
/ and Everts’s memories I surmise that Harris must have had a total political
conversion sometime in the mid 1930s. This conversion was apparently from
being what Lovecraft called a hardline “political conservative”, to being a
communist fellow-traveler. Perhaps the hard times of the Great Depression,
and even the arguments arising from “Weiss’s bolshevism”, did in fact
convert Harris to communism.
Woodburn Prescott Harris, c.1916.
10
Comment on http://tentaclii.wordpress.com/ 19th May 2013.
285
A NOTE ON H.P. LOVECRAFT’S BRITISH
CORRESPONDENT, ARTHUR HARRIS
A
rthur Harris (1893-1966) was a professional printer in North
Wales, and a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft. Harris’s
long-running monthly amateur publication was titled
Interesting Items, sized approx 7.4” x 4.4” and well printed. He discovered
amateurdom in 19121 was one of the longest running amateur publications,
and the oldest of the British amateur publications.
1
Kenneth W. Faig Jr., “Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, Lovecraft Annual, No.6, 2012, p.167.
286
Harris also appears to have printed amateur publications for others…
“the late George W. Macauley recalled printing an issue of his
journal The Hay Field with Arthur Harris’s press in Wales”.2
Harris also printed small pamphlets. In a four-page pamphlet edition of the
poem “The Crime of Crimes: Lusitania, 1915”,3 he gave H.P. Lovecraft his
first standalone publication. The poem was Lovecraft’s polemical response, in
the context of the early years of the First World War, to the notorious
German U-boat sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania off the coast of
Ireland.
S.T. Joshi notes in Harris’s entry in The Lovecraft Encyclopedia (2001) that
Lovecraft usually corresponded by letter about once or twice a year with
Harris. In the mid 1990s the Library of Brown University…
“acquired a collection of 52 letters and 5 postcards written by
Lovecraft to Arthur Harris of Llandudno, Wales, between June,
1915 and January, 1937. This cache of previously unpublished
correspondence is important…”4
I am not sure if these have yet been transcribed and published. It seems not,
at April 2013. I’m guessing that these letters are perhaps related to, or
essentially the same as, the set of photocopies of the Harris—Lovecraft
correspondence which was sold on eBay in February 2013, described on the
sale page as…
2
The Fossil, #352, Jan 2012, p.7
Published by “A. Harris, Selwyn House, Clifton Road, Llandudno, Wales, England” an
address which shows that Harris probably regarded himself as English rather than Welsh. I know
Llandudno quite well and there is indeed a division there, with those on the coast mostly
regarding themselves as English, while those in the mountains behind the town stridently regard
themselves as Welsh.
3
4
Brown University Library, Annual Report of the University Librarian, 1995, p.20.
287
“58 letters from Lovecraft to Arthur Harris an amateur publisher
from North Wales who published some very early Lovecraft pieces,
the letters begin from 1915 and they maintained a correspondence
the last letter being dated 1936. The majority of the letters are from
the earlier period. There are a few other pieces (again all
photocopies) articles and poems. Plus some letters relating to the
original collection.”5
A print fanzine called World of H.P. Lovecraft issued a #7 issue in 2010,
edited and compiled by Les Thomas, and this may have carried some extracts
from the letters…
5 Kenneth W. Fiag kindly informs me these copies were purchased by Juha-Matti Rajala of
Finland.
288
“The latest issue of The World of H.P. Lovecraft featuring Arthur
Harris Collection listing unpublished letters and H.P. Lovecraft
literary references”.
Thomas’s description of his fanzine issue is a little vague, and so it’s difficult
to learn if the actual contents of the letters are given — or just a listing, or a
listing and selected extracts.
An undated edition of the trade publication The Small Printer6 partly
available online, ran an obituary titled “Arthur Harris of Llandudno”. This
was presumably run in a 1966 issue, since the obituary opens…
“Arthur Harris died during March. Although he was a professional
printer from 1909 until his retirement he was better known by his
activity in the world of amateur publishing…”
Sadly, no more of this obituary is available online. It seems probable that the
local Llandudno press would also have carried an obituary for Harris in the
first half of 1966, and someone with access to the local North Wales archives
might usefully look it up and place it online.
The Library Association Record journal of 1966 ran a survey of originality in
printing among the little and private presses in Britain, noting of Harris
his…
“Interesting Items, which he started printing [as a schoolboy] with
rubber type, and pushing under neighbours’ doors, in [5th Mar]
1904. Mr. Harris, who has a collection of 13,500 amateur
magazines… [up from 8,000 in the mid 1940s]”
6
Volumes 1-2, p.42.
289
S.T. Joshi notes in An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia that the original title for
Interesting Items was Llandudno’s Weekly. It would be eight years after 1904
before Harris would encounter the amateur press.
Kenneth W. Faig notes7 that by the late 1970s or very early 1980s, Harris’s
large collection of amateur material had by then passed to a “Roy Heaven”.
Presumably Harris’s comics collection was also recognized as valuable, and
thus saved from any wish for expediency in clearing his house after his death.
In his later life I have found that Harris was a member of the British
Fantasy Society in the 1940s, and is noted in a publication8 as attending at
least one convention.
It appears that by the post-war period Harris was also being noted as a
major collector of early British comics…
“Arthur Harris of Penrhyn Bay, Llandudno, owner of that unique
collection of nearly 3,000 comics (needless to say the decent British
variety), has recently given three talks concerning them [in
Llandudno in 1952/3]”.9
His home at Penrhyn Bay was and still is actually quite detached from
Llandudno town, being in the bay on the far side of the huge and rocky
Little Orme’s Headland. Before modern development, the place was very
small and remote.
7
Kenneth W. Faig Jr., “Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, Lovecraft Annual, No.6, 2012, p.167.
8
British Fantasy Society Bulletin, 1945.
9
The Collector’s Digest, Vol. 7, No. 75, March 1953, p. 67.
290
Although in true British fashion, the tiny size of the place didn’t stop the
place having a museum devoted to weird and wonderful relics…
291
ON POE : HORATIO ELWIN SMITH (1886-1946)
I
think that “Horatio L. Smith” is another Barlow
mistranscription of a name on the 1937 correspondence
addresses of H.P. Lovecraft…
“Horatio L. Smith, 36 Dodd St, Montclair NJ.”
This is likely to be Horatio E[lwin] Smith (1886-1946) of Columbia
University. Montclair is a leafy suburb some 15 miles from the Columbia
campus. Smith wrote on Poe, and was a literary academic at Brown
University 1925-c.1929.
Horatio E. Smith
Horatio E. Smith studied under John Erskine1 at John Hopkins, where he
took a LL. D. [Doctor of Laws in English]. He was the author of the
scholarly article “Poe’s Extension of His Theory of the Tale”2 in the August
John Erskine, A Memory of Certain Persons, p.141, (name noted in passing, as one of his better
students).
1
2
Freely available online.
292
1918 edition of Modern Philology. This is possibly how his name first came
to the attention of H.P. Lovecraft. If so, Lovecraft would have no doubt
remarked on a name so strikingly similar to a major writer of Poe’s time…
“During Poe’s lifetime, one of the most popular English writers of
poetry, essays, novels and tales was Horace or Horatio Smith (17791849).”3
The history of the French dept. at Amherst College supplies a useful
academic biography confirming my initial research…
“Horatio Elwin Smith, a 1908 graduate of the College, was hired
to teach French literature [circa 1919, their footnote: “Smith held a
doctorate from Johns Hopkins that was awarded in 1912”] He had
taught at Yale for the previous six years [living at 837 Orange St] and
specialized in the analysis of nineteenth-century texts. He wrote
articles on Stendhal, Balzac, Sainte-Beuve and Poe, as well as a book
on the literary criticism of Pierre Beyle [his thesis]. In addition, he
wrote a textbook on advanced French Composition. Under Smith
the curriculum in French would see its first course in “Modern
French Criticism,” which was dedicated to the writings of SainteBeuve, Taine, and Renan. Smith would leave Amherst in 1926 to
become Chair of Romance Languages at Brown University
[Providence], before assuming the same title a few years later
[probably 1934] at Columbia University, where he became the editor
of [the academic journal] Romanic Review [the Columbia University
journal for the study of Romance literatures, seemingly serving as
editor for the 1937-1947 issues].
The Amherst College French dept. history also notes he was… “named
‘Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur’ by the French government.”4
3
Burton R. Pollin, “Figs, Bells, Poe, and Horace Smith”, Poe Newsletter, June 1970.
4 This appears to have been for his service in the French Branch of the “Y” or YMCA service,
servicing the entertainment and recreation needs of the American troops in France during the
293
The move to Brown University in 1926 suggests that, if Lovecraft had not
noted Smith’s 1918 Poe article in 1918 or 1919, he could have learned of
Smith later via a newspaper or journal profile of the incoming professor.
Smith also published a paper in French La fortune d’une oeuvre de jeunesse de
Stendhal en Amerique (1927, ‘The American reception of an early work by
Stendhal’) in Editions du Stendhal-Club. This was followed by Masters of
French literature (Scribner, 1937).
Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly reported… “Horatio E. Smith and Miss
Ernestine Failing were married at Portland, Ore., July 3, 1911”.5 The name
of his wife is confirmed by the Smith Alumnae Quarterly magazine of 1934
which notes that… “Ernestine Failing’s husband, Horatio E. Smith” has
been appointed at Columbia. This leads us to his Providence address: in
1926 the Smith Alumnae Quarterly gave his wife’s address as “168 Irving Av.,
Providence, R.I.” 6 The Smith Alumni Quarterly of July 1931 states a “new
address” had become available for Ernestine at “89 University Av.,
Providence, R.I.” I suggest that these two pieces of evidence give us a more
precise date for Smith at Brown than the Amherst College biography was
able to supply: it seems Smith was at Brown until around 1934. This is
confirmed by a listing of “Professor Horatio E. Smith, Brown University” as
Chairman of Modern Languages in the College Entrance Examination Board
report, 1933.
I have not been able to pin him to any home address, but the 1934 Who’s
Who In American Education may have details.
By 1942 Smith was noted in online sources as… “Prof. Horatio E. Smith,
chairman of the Columbia department of Romance languages”, and he was
on the Modern Language Association’s Commission on Trends in
First World War. In this effort, “directing the work in about 1500 huts, were: Professor Horatio
E. Smith...” from George H. Nettleton, Yale in the World War, p.422.
5
The couple had a daughter, Mary, who went into business in New York in 1936.
She is still listed at this address in the 1932 edition of the Annual Register of the Alumnae
Association of Smith College, suggesting she did not inform Smith of her change of address in 1929.
6
294
Education. His widely-cited major reference work the Columbia Dictionary
of Modern European Literature appeared after his death, in 1947. It had
notable early research summaries on the writers of Dada and Surrealism.
One wonders what happened to Smith’s papers and correspondence in
1946? Still preserved in some dusty boxes at Columbia, perhaps?
295
GARDENS OF DELIGHT?
THOMAS STUART EVANS (1885-1940)
A
s for “Thomas S. Evans, 145 Medway St., Providence” I can
really only speculate based on the slimmest of evidence. He
appears in the 1937 Lovecraft correspondence book
transcribed by Barlow. Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the Lovecraft Annual 2012,1
states he was an actor, sometime in New York, from 1910 to c.1930? If
Evans was an actor for that long in the New York theatre world, then might
he have given himself a more distinctive and less Welsh stage name? That
would explain why he has left no online record, although searches of
commercial databases of the New York newspapers may yet turn up the
name. My other suspicion would be that that there was a link between one
of Lovecraft’s aunts and Thomas S. Evans’s flower-growing elderly late-60s
female relative Anna L. Evans (1868-1949).2 Anna does show up in the
online record, listed a number of times as a member of national iris and rose
growing societies of the 1930s and 40s. If Lovecraft accompanied his aunt
on trips to visit with Anna L. Evans and her garden (probably very delightful,
perhaps even with cats for Lovecraft to pet?), he would have been thrown
into company with her 50-ish actor son Thomas. Thomas may have brought
Anna L. Evans to visit with one of Lovecraft’s aunts, and then Lovecraft
entertained or went for a walk with Thomas while the ladies chatted. My
guess is bolstered a little by the three Lovecraft letters quoted by Kenneth W.
1
2 Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., on reading a draft of this note, kindly suggested the possibility that
Annie (Phillips) Gamwell (1866-1941), the aunt closest in age to Anna L. Evans, might have once
been at school with Evans at Miss Wheeler’s School in Providence.
296
Faig Jr. In these Lovecraft does sound a little tepid about Evans, calling him
“aimiable but not excessively profund”3 as if he were someone that his aunts
had thrown him together with. Lovecraft’s letter does tell us that Evans had
“playwriting predilections”, but I can find no online trace of him as a
playwright or anything else.4 Likewise, the area of 145 Medway has seen
much redevelopment and the fabric of it has vanished. A Google Street
View (based on a more accurate Bing Maps pinpointing of the address)
suggests that the site of the house and garden is now a car park. There are
still imposing houses a little further up the road though, which indicate what
the Evans house would once have looked like.
3
Ibid, p.157.
4
Ibid, p.157.
297
THE HATTER : DUDLEY CHARLES NEWTON
(1864-1954)
D
udley Charles Newton (1864-1954) of New York,
Connecticut(?), and St. Augustine, Florida, was another
mysterious friend of Lovecraft. His dates are from S.T.
Joshi’s I Am Providence,1 who states that almost nothing is known about
Newton. He was Lovecraft’s elderly guide to St. Augustine, Florida, in
1931. He doesn’t appear to have been a regular correspondent of Lovecraft,
and his name and address are missing from the 1937 address list.
He first appears in the online record in Club Men of New York: Their Clubs,
College Alumni Associations (1902), listed as: “NEWTON, DUDLEY C,
millinery, …” Millinery being the profession of making ladies’ hats.
Lovecraftians will remember that Lovecraft’s wife Sonia was working at a
high level in the retail hat trade.
Newton appears to have been married, but only briefly. A Charlotte
Griffing Griswold married a Dudley Charles Newton on 12th October 1904,
on Long Island, New York. He would have been age 40, she 25. His young
wife died, age 28, on 8th April 1907 — and is buried in Guilford,
Connecticut.
A Dudley C. Newton, of Georgetown in Connecticut, is recorded in the
Connecticut Motor Vehicle Register as owning a vehicle in summer 1915. This
location is about 30 miles NE of New York City, suggesting he may have
motored in to work in New York City. These two locations — his wife’s
1 S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, Hippocampus Press, 2010, p.810. Presumably Joshi had the birthdeath dates from Kenneth W. Faig Jr., The Unknown Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press, 2009.
298
resting place, and the site of his car ownership — point to Georgetown in
Connecticut as his home location at that time. Further evidence I have
found suggests he did indeed work in New York, on the famous Fifth
Avenue, where he was a senior buyer in the ladies’ hat trade. He is recorded
on a passenger manifest as leaving New York on the transatlantic ship
Caledonia, bound for Glasgow in Scotland, on 14th June 1913, presumably
on a buying trip to the Scottish tweed cloth market.
The main evidence for his involvement at a senior level in the millinery
trade arises from his return from a trip to Paris in summer 1917. There is a
52 year old Dudley C. Newton, listed on the passenger manifest as
disembarking at Ellis Island in New York on the transatlantic ship Chicago,
from Bordeaux in France, on 19th July 1917. His age on the ship’s passenger
list is right, if he was the Dudley Charles Newton born 1864. One has to
assume that he was returning from Europe because of the American entry
into the First World War on 6th April 1917. This appears to have been so,
since Millinery Trade Review,2 a New York trade journal noted this of him…
Paris Takes Note of Arrivals: A copy of the Paris edition of The
New York Herald of July 1st, brought back by Dudley C. Newton,
contains the following: “The Autumn millinery season for foreign
buyers is due to open this week, but the…”
My supposition from this was that he had been in Paris. This was then
confirmed elsewhere in the same issue of Millinery Trade Review. I found
there a short article on Newton’s experiences…
“Nevertheless [despite the war], men and women buyers from the
large department and wholesale millinery stores have braved these
2 Millinery Trade Review, volume 42, 1917, p.106. One wonders if this journal might be perused
for details of Lovecraft’s wife Sonia and her business ventures in the hat trade? There’s a full
1914-1922 run of Millinery Trade Review on Hathi at catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008603921 if
anyone wants to search it for details of Sonia’s dept. store or perhaps her early involvement in the
hat trade. It may also have more details of Newton’s pre-1922 business activities. Some of the
issues are still being indexed by Hathi and at May 2013 don’t yet have keyword search available.
Presumably there would be notices of her independent hat shops, in later issues of Millinery Trade
Review, but these are not online due to copyright.
299
[ocean] dangers repeatedly since the submarine became a menace
and have lived to return with gratitude. Dudley C. Newton, of
Scully Brothers and Co., accompanied by F.T. Bartlett of The
Lafayette Importing Company, returned to an American port, July
18th, having sailed for this side from Bordeaux. Both men had
bought extensively of flowers [presumably silk, presumably for hats?
...] “Hope I won’t see Paris again, under its present conditions, for a
long long time” [he said, and reported the passenger ship attacked by
German u-boat submarines on the return trip to New York]”.
Given Newton’s going to Paris to buy flowers (presumably silk ones for hats)
might there then be some connection of Newton to the work of Sonia H.
Greene in her New York dept. store employment? Or (more likely) with her
ill-fated independent hat shop on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and another
she later opened in Brooklyn? Could Newton in 1931 have been a retired or
semi-retired professional colleague of Sonia? Perhaps one of her key
suppliers or senior industry contacts in the hat-trade? If so, then this would
suggest how Lovecraft knew Dudley Charles Newton, and also why Newton
was not a Lovecraft correspondent listed in the 1937 diary.3
His employers Scully Brothers & Co.. Inc. of New York, do indeed appear
to have been heavily involved in the hat trade at the time Sonia and Lovecraft
were in New York, and in a very upmarket way — since they were sited on
Fifth Avenue and in Paris. In 1919 the Millinery Trade Review records them
as…
“Scully Brothers & Company 417 Fifth Ave. New York and
PARIS, 42 Rue de Paradis, HATS OF QUALITY
UNSUPPASSED”
3 Kenneth W. Faig Jr. kindly informs me that there are two surviving letters from Newton to
Lovecraft, at Brown University. I do not know the contents of these. I have also discovered that
Kenneth W. Faig Jr. has a short essay on Newton, “Lovecraft’s Unknown Friend: Dudley Charles
Newton”, in his book The Unknown Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press, 2009, but have as yet been
unable to see this essay.
300
Scully Bros. later moved to larger premises at 32 West 47th Street around
1920 or 1921.4 They are recorded as having patented a number of “N.Y.
Ladies’ trimmed hats” in 1922. In the Second World War they appear to
have been relocated or to have started a branch on the West Coast, where
they made large numbers of airmen’s leather flying helmets. They are also
recorded in the online record as making winter shoulder capes for women
which included “all-wool tartan plaid” linings, perhaps suggesting why
Newton would have embarked on his ship to Scotland rather than London in
summer 1913, since he could then have more easily visited the weavers of the
Scottish tartan industry.
Interestingly the location of Hartford, in Connecticut, was where Lovecraft
met Sonia for the last time in March 1933. Why was she staying in or near
Hartford, and not a more central hotel in New York or Brooklyn? One
wonders if Sonia was perhaps staying with Newton on her return from
Europe? Since Newton would have been living 25 miles away from
Hartford, if he was then still at his 1915 location of Georgetown in
Connecticut. Perhaps as he aged and moved into semi-retirement he divided
his time between Connecticut near New York and St. Augustine in Florida?5
I also wonder if he may be the same Dudley C. Newton who in his old age
wrote credited crosswords for newspapers? This is one from the Montreal
Gazette in the early 1940s…
4
New York Tribune, 19th April 1920, p.17.
5 Randy Everts notes in a comment on my blog that he once had a… “letter from the St.
Augustine librarian who wrote me in response to my long ago inquiry to the library about HPL
correspondent Dudley C. Newton.”. Kenneth W. Faig Jr. states of this letter that the Librarian
there “recalled him [Newton] as a frequent library patron”.
301
302
Also available from the same author:
Lovecraft:
Walking with Cthulhu : H.P. Lovecraft as psychogeographer, New York City 1924-26.
Ice Cores : essays on Lovecraft’s novella ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.
Lovecraft in Historical Context : A Third Collection of Essays and Notes.
Lovecraft in Historical Context : Further Essays and Notes.
Lovecraft in Historical Context : Essays.
Good Old Mac: Henry Everett McNeil, 1862-1929. A collection and biographical essay.
Posthumous collaborations:
The Time Machine : A Sequel.
Crusoe : the Macabre Later Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
Tales of Lovecraftian Cats.
Original novel:
The Spyders of Burslem.
303
304

Lovecraft in Historical Context: fourth collection

Transcription

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