This is the 37thissue of The Criticaster (July 2003, mailing 123) by Walker. Eventually published on the Net as a The Limbonaut (no.8). 

 

     The OE has decreed that this mailing recognize the thirtieth anniversary of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. So be it. I have caught up on all responses to previous mailings of others that I have omitted in the last issues. I have even re-answered one mailing.

 

Redux Mailing 118 (February 2002)

     Having responded below to almost all of mailing 118, I then discovered that a few issues ago I had already done this, but I find that in most cases I am not repeating myself, so with a little trimming I will let what I say remain.

 

     Scott: Thanks for the excellent Smith essay. Without examples, some of your evaluation is disputable. You state Smith “was the first to attempt to create convincing nonhuman environments,” but you should have given names of stories and dates when you printed this; part of the problem I have, too, is the suggestion there is a specific point when this happened, without a transition, though this may be what you mean. Similarly, I would have liked something concrete when you state Bradbury’s Mars stories were influenced by “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” and “The Dweller in Martian Depth,” neither of which exactly shouts Ray Bradbury. Is Smith “the most consistent literate writer in the 1930’s”? There’s HPL, C.L. Moore, and Raymond Chandler as pulp contenders. *** I wish you had included the provenance of “Such Pulp as Dreams Are Made on,” which is supplied (VVV, March, 1943), along with the same text at “The Eldritch Dark.” *** Wandrei’s very cosmic mood piece “A Legend of Yesterday” does seem a part of “The Red Brain,” which at last I have finally, definitely read (i.e., I might have read it years ago, but cannot recollect it). *** The Algernon Blackwood essay is on the theme of what Keats called “unweaving the rainbow” by science, which is opposed to magic. I was delighted by that quote from John Masefield, “It was a long way between churches.” *** I was curious about paleontologist John Long’s Mountains of Madness and Peter’s review was very welcome.

 

     Ken: Thanks for the enjoyable book reviews.

 

     David D.: In the letter you reprinted by Ben Indick, he refers to a magazine by the initials FN—with hunting I discovered it stands for Fantastic Novels.

 

     Ben: Nelson Bond was a name I was leery about, since decades ago I had read one of his stories in a magazine (Fantastic?) and not liked it. When I approached his story in Arkham’s Masters of Horror (reviewed in a previous issue of mine) I was doubtful, but to my pleasure it turned out to be the best story in that collection, and I have gotten the book you rave over, but have not yet taken the time to read it. *** Ligotti ‘s work, based on your review, sounds quite Poesque with some of Lovecraft’s “Nyarlathotep” thrown in. There’s a strong sense of nightmare premises in your description, so The Nightmare Factory is a perfectly suitable title. One problem with nightmares is that they can be anti-literary or indifferent to story values, as I have found in the vagueness of the plot you gave. As one of the general I feel no inclination for Ligotti’s “caviary” fiction. He is interviewed in Space and Time (#97, Spring 2003), according to Locus.

 

     John G.: Your reprint of Lovecraft in the comics (by Jack Abramowitz) is also on the web. In the 1960’s Mad magazine had a parody in which it supposed that horror movies were based on everyday life. One panel was called, in dripping letters, “Things from the Mailbox,” and the name on the box was “H. P. Lovecraft.” This was drawn by Jack Davis.

 

     John H.: No, I wouldn’t quite describe S.T.’s Lovecraft editions, however admirable, as “error free.” There may be no such thing. Years ago I read that a miracle is to have a book without any typographic or other mistakes, and the Lovecraft editions are unlikely miracles. As I have noted in separate past issues, there is probably an incorrect word in “The Haunter of the Dark,” and in “The Shadow Out of Time.” Moreover, how do you know that the Lovecraft texts are error free? Has somebody other than S.T. compared the printed text with the manuscripts? Have marks of punctuation been silently added or subtracted? Concerning The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Donald Wandrei speaks of “inserts put on the back of the sheet where they got tangled up with the letters from his correspondents, and the inserts themselves rewritten with additional paragraphs to be put in the insert” (quoted from The Weird Tales Story, p. 129). In his letter to R. Michael, HPL states “nobody can read my Mss. in their scrawled, interlined, and repeatedly corrected state. Sometimes I can't decipher them myself!”*** I continue to appreciate that Ballantine “Chamber of Horror” series list of 1958-1962. Could you explain why the decision was made to create the series and distribute this material by Ian Ballantine, or whoever? Are you familiar with a 1976 book called A Preliminary Checklist of Science Fiction and Fantasy Published by Ballantine Books (1953-1974) by Dick Spelman?

 

     Frank: You state it is “always HPL’s preference to end in a couplet.” This must be due to his imitation of the eighteenth-century poets such as Alexander Pope. “The Dweller” an influence of the King Tut curse? It would be interesting to see how the theme or concept of Egypt was contextualized in HPL’s mind.

 

     Derrick: You refer to M.P. Shiel’s “literary excesses.” Perhaps The Purple Cloud should be retitled The Purple Prose. *** Thanks for the Wandering Star clue, but where is the Lovecraft-Howard correspondence of which you spoke?*** The Lovecraft who wrote to the Scientific American in 1906 appears at one with the Lovecraft of fiction. I was very pleased to read the letter.

 

     Henrik: There’s meat for discussion, though most is too academic for me. You state that HPL was “dead long ago and as such we do not have access to him anymore, nor will we ever.” Apparently, you have never read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. J

 

     A. Langley: With its pedigree and contents, Fantasy Commentator is a non-pareil. *** Articles on David H. Keller are most welcome. *** Several poets you have presented in FC show up in “House of Moonlight.” *** E.F. Bleiler’s bi-location of Tarzan was intriguing and answers something that has been in the back of many of our minds. It is good that Bleiler continues to publish where I can read him. *** The article on the so-called prejudice against women writers in science fiction is of a landmark stature and should steamroll the belief that such prejudice existed. But as Mark Twain said, the difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. False beliefs will linger despite the massive documentation. *** As with a few other readers, to me the name “Ray Russell” brings to mind the writer of “Mr. Sardonicus” and other stories, rather than the Tartarus Press editor, with whom I was unfamiliar. *** Sam Moskowitz seems to remember everything, but judicious forgetting does have its uses; though for a historian every small piece is a nugget, and in the case of Gernsback, only Moskowitz himself has done a book biography, and that was a short one. Of most interest to me were the anecdotes concerning Clifford D. Simak, a favorite. I am sorry to see that SaM’s history will be concluded with the next issue. *** The University of Nebraska Press's science fiction series you refer to is Bison Frontiers of Imagination and is online at I note it is especially rich in Edgar Rice Burroughs. But there is also Wells, Doyle, E.E. Smith, etc. You also might be interested that there is a web presence for several other small presses you reference: Gothic Press; Miniature Sun Press; and Midnight House.

 

Mailing 119

 

     Ben: Though I haven’t read him for years, I retain a fondness for David H. Keller. I think the first of his yarns that I read was “The Ivy War” in a Conklin anthology. Then there was “The Revolt of the Pedestrians” reprinted in Amazing Stories. Add to this my acquisition of Tales from Underwood from Arkham House, in which I found some masterful stories. On the other hand, I ho-hummed his Cornwall tales as printed in The Magazine of Horror. *** Not sure why, but there was something in your review of Neil Gaiman’s The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch that reminded me of that Thomas Ligotti book you reviewed. A similar imagination?

 

     Ken: I have not yet looked at The Lurker in the Lobby, but one day I hope to. *** Lovecraft’s racism has taken on a life of its own. It does, like other elements of his outlook, help one to understand his writing, but it has been overplayed.

 

     David G.: Not to worry about not getting comments on your mailing; I am not getting them all the time, even when everybody but me receives responses to his mailing (sob). *** You quote Grant about “a sinister buzzing sound” which “pervaded” HPL’s “astro-audible sphere” and reckon it was HPL “quoting a note to Beckford’s Vathek.” On the other hand, I thought of a note in his Commonplace Book about insects penetrating the victim’s brain; and there is a matter of the onomatopoeic origin of the title Al Azif. *** I don’t know what is meant by (your quoting Loveman) “’hypocritical’ anti-Semitism” and its basis as Lovecraft’s divorce from Sonia. She knew of her husband’s attitude, and I am unfamiliar with any unbiased person who states that this is the major cause—perhaps even minor cause—for the divorce.

 

     John G.: In speaking of Lovecraft-influenced tales, you cocked an eye at the use of closing italics for effect. In the master’s stories how is one supposed to read the italics at the climax? Loudly? Quietly? Melodramatically? Quickly? Slowly? Moreover, there are few works that follow this technique, but this is one really jumped on by critics and imitators. Italics punch the climax in a way loudness is equivalently increased at the ends of many romantic symphonies. *** Your reasoning about the need for bridges to keep Arkham a single entity is ingenious (“For a town to exist on both sides of a river, there have to be bridges”). However, could there not have been ferries previous to the bridges, thereby unifying the two sides? Also, it would be interesting to see how Salem would fit the Arkham profile. *** Your intriguing point about Keziah victimizing the children of foreign immigrants is something I had not considered before. Perhaps the foreigners were poor, and so vulnerable, or Keziah operated in a circumscribed territory where the foreigners happened to live—the oldest part of Arkham. That “the old white stone stands in a place queerly void of all plant-life” reminds me of advice HPL gave to Wilfred Blanch Talman (?) when he was helping him write a marketable story. He said that some ground should be described as barren or odd in a way to suggest there was more to it than met the eye. *** Yes, as you and others have remarked, Arkham is inconsistent, but in a letter HPL admitted he had concocted “a dream New England,” which if accepted in the instance of Arkham allows for the factual contradictions and inconsistencies. Perhaps as the Necronomicon is an archetypal book of supernatural evil, Arkham represents an archetypal witch-haunted town. *** As I said in issue 35 (written after your offering but before I read it), Charles M. Skinner referred to “witch-haunted Salem,” a likely source for HPL’s Arkham. *** Your contrast of the superstitions of Arkham with the science of Miskatonic University is at least intriguing. You should expand on this, for it is worth a paper. I don’t recall if you mentioned that HPL drew a map of Arkham, but no matter. In sum, your three-part article was excellent. *** In reading your reply about the thing on Meadow Hill and the thing on the hill in “The Dunwich Horror” I recalled your comment about the relation of hills to Arkham and remembered “Zaman’s Hill,” Long’s The Horror from the Hills, and Derleth’s “The Whippoorwills in the Hills.” Is there something of particular scariness about hills—“sinister hills,” as Doyle called them in The Hound of the Baskervilles?

 

     David D.: It would be fun to track down the film starring Wallace Beery that had Manly Wade Wellman with a line of dialogue. Did you mean dialogue as in title cards, or as in sound? Anyway, thanks for the Wellman memories.

 

     Henrik: Stephen King describes HPL’s style as “Byzantine.” It probably should be “byzantine,” which means “intricate” or “complicated” rather than a descendant of the Byzantine culture. That S.T. calls it an “Asianic style” is likewise unclear and probably inaccurate. As near as I can tell this somewhat rare term, linked with Greece, is defined as “oratory of a rich, exuberant, and declamatory kind” in The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, which also uses it as a synonym for “florid.” For my taste there is too much of the pejorative about this. What do you think? As a replacement, use HPL’s own description of his writing, “Johnsonese”; and if that is too unfavorable, also, perhaps “Johnsonian.” *** As to King’s criticism of the dialogue in (his example) “The Colour Out of Space”—I can think of lots of retorts. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Melville wrote bad dialogue, because “folks, people just don’t talk like this.” For that matter, Raymond Chandler and maybe even Ring Lardner would fail on this account. Absolutely photographic dialogue could hurt a story, if only because so many of us interject “oh’s,” “uh’s,” etc. in what we say, and perhaps stutter or slur words. King’s reasons for HPL’s dialogue problems have truths that are three-quarters accurate—e.g., he was a “loner” who nonetheless spent a lot of time in the company of his friends, as you recognized. Many people derive the majority of their social contacts through their family, their church, and their work. Since the atheistical HPL he was very limited in family, and his work was of a nature that did not provide him with co-workers, he lacked things that others had. Finally (and this is not a rebuttal), I wish I knew how King determined that Lovecraft’s words of dialogue were “fewer than five thousand”?

 

     S.T.: I have found that among H. L. Mencken’s correspondents were Lord Dunsany and Aleister Crowley.

 

     John H.: Wow! You’ve given Ken something approaching a Pulitzer (deserved). I didn’t understand how you chose to include or exclude items in the “Precis of Works.” I particularly liked your annotation of what the issue contained. Even though I know I have read some of the works you list, depressingly it make me aware how much of the mailings from everyone I have forgotten over the years. L

 

     Derrick: The sample of the Madden artwork for “He” was very good and appropriate. The Creatures of Clay cover also at the artist’s site is an unacknowledged(?) homage to or pastiche of The Magazine of Horror (and ilk). *** Ever since joining EOD I have been procrastinating on publishing the Lovecraft sex store photo I took in London. Toronto also has its Lovecraft sex store, which looks nothing like the merchandise would suggest. I have been unable to discover the origin of its name, so far. *** Had the desire been there, you could have put the George Sterling marginalia in footnotes. *** Belsom Bond? Fame is fleeting (or flame is feeting). *** I thought I had read an update at the redoubtable Unfilmable.com, that Beyond the Wall of Sleep movie was not to be, but I can’t verify it. *** Thanks for passing on my comments to Dr. Anderson. *** John C. Snider is right about that Metal Monster passage being very Lovecraftian. Interesting that both Merritt (in this case) and HPL (in every case) have been criticized for their characterization. Although neither review you provided is very positive, they do whet my appetite to read this item. But I have such a queue of the unread (not undead), and the novel is available free from Project Gutenberg.

 

Mailing 120

     Answered in the previous issue.

 

Mailing 121

     Scott: Years ago a Seabury Quinn story impressed me about its favorable depiction of a minority, but I would question that Weird Tales was relatively “enlightened on racial matters.” For example, blacks fulfilled their quota of stereotypes and were demonized. Were other pulps (Black Mask, Amazing Stories, etc.) considerably worse? *** Much of HPL’s anti-Semitism was a result of Judaism’s destruction of pagan values? This sounds somewhat as the reason given for Voltaire’s anti-Semitism. Cause and effect are ever debatable, and I don’t follow your conclusion. I suspect that the answer has less to do with HPL’s philosophy and more to do with his emotional reaction, a dislike of the alien instilled in childhood, unless one believes that some are born with prejudice. A look at his letters frequently does not place his subject in philosophical terms, but rather he does a lot of name-calling.

 

     Ben: You discovered the sex store “Lovecraft” several years before I did, circa 1983. A little off London’s Leicester Square I was caught unawares by what at the time seemed enormous letters on a shop, “LOVECRAFT.” On a return trip to London I photographed it, as you did, though without the extra personal dramatizing (lots of people would almost pay blackmail not to be seen going into this sex shop, but you are a refreshing change—why not run the photos of you and “Lovecraft”?) Almost ever since I’ve been a member I have thought about including my photo of this store. A “Lovecraft” I come across too frequently on the web is a sex shop in Toronto. *** Although The Silmarillion lacks the narrative supremacy and cozy world of The Lord of the Rings, it has for me a mythic grandeur and impressive cosmic view of history. I feel so little when I think about its scope.

 

     David D.: It was a mystery to me what conference you were relating until you at last revealed: Fortfest, which a little background research shows shares its name with an Anne McCaffrey gathering. (Some trivia: this year the “Fortean Times Online” was nominated for a Webby, an award honoring the best website.) In matters of belief, as I recall somebody saying, the wise follow the foolish. I don’t know how much merit there is in the various presenters’ theses, but part of their evidence appears to rely on belief or faith. Also, there’s their tactic of giving only one side of an argument, which is more likely to make for persuasion, however shaky the premise. I think that Fort’s views have been altered from, say, a critic of science to a supporter of pseudoscience. *** In my opinion, there is the heretofore unexplained unknown, where there are limitless possibilities, if not probabilities, and so things that would warm Fort’s heart. The phenomena may be true, but when presented in a tendentious manner or codified as if it were totally accepted, there’s a problem. Beyond the acknowledged unknown is the unknowable, the something that cannot be described, conceived, imagined. It is beyond dreams, beyond categorization. Even calling it “unknown” is incorrect, but I only have words. *** Your description of the attitude of one Fortfest presenter reminded me of what you had to say about Robert E. Howard’s own darkness.

 

     John G.: Thanks for nailing down the Cthulhu book in which Howard appeared, and for the “Hello Cthulhu” site.

 

     S.T.: You believe that credulity is not stretched by the emergence of a shoggoth, but it is by the miscegenation between Lavinia and Yog-Sothoth? That in itself seems a stretch of logic, and I judge either concept equally acceptable.

 

     John H.: You suggest that in 1971 Derleth helped debunk the eccentric recluse image, but before this, in 1958, he had published the Bloch essay which in effect did the same. You question if Derleth had a stranglehold (my colored word) on HPL studies. Well, as L. Sprague de Camp says in his introduction to Lovecraft, Derleth was planning a biography, but when he died, de Camp decided to write one; and how many others then felt free to write about HPL? Let’s put it this way: Derleth stopped C. Hall Thompson from writing more Lovecraft-inspired work, threatened legal action when HPL was reprinted, “browbeat” (de Camp’s word) J. Warren Thomas from turning his thesis into a biography; and in general his strong personality—as I understand it was—naturally backed his interpretation of HPL. Some would not run the risk of going against Derleth, who perhaps created an atmosphere of orthodoxy, and possibly a sense of threat. In a way, Derleth is being blamed for being eminent without having judgments that have weathered. However, I don’t think the case can be proven either way. *** As plain from his essay, Edmund Wilson also read “The Colour Out of Space,” so he wasn’t reading only Lovecraft’s “tainted” works in addition to “The Shadow Out of Time.” *** A pedantic interruption. You point out the ambiguity in Scott’s quote, “Derleth’s influence upon Lovecraft’s posthumous reputation was not entirely malignant.” His is an example of a litotes, a use of irony through a negative. *** Yes, it is unfortunate that Derleth did not get his monetary due, making him somewhat of an accidental philanthropist. He was a prime mover and shaker in the Lovecraft area, with positives that smothered whatever negatives he brought, and if others prefer to think otherwise—well, let ‘em. Anyway, I suspect you are mostly preaching to the choir. Good essay, and you said things that ought to have been said. *** I am enjoying the new edition of Lovecraft’s Library. As I go through its listings I am struck by the number of books that Derleth gave to HPL. Another quality in his favor was his generosity.

 

Mailing 122

     Scott: The oft-repeated statement that Smith was self-educated by reading the completeEncyclopedia Britannica (and now I learn the complete holdings of the local library) has more than a touch of mythologizing. *** Beyond praising Smith, Edwin Markham also appeared as a guest at the Amateur Press Association, so is there a connection? The Sentinel news article had such creative entries as “H. C.” Lovecraft naming a fictional country, Astonia. The reference to Smith as a “creep” reminds me that the one-eyed man in the country of the blind need not be a king, but he is a target.

 

     Ken: I wonder how that J. Lovecraft “howel” made its way to the seller on E-Bay? J.F. Lovecraft appears to have been an inventor. Scientific American (13 May 1854, p.276) reported that he was securing “a patent for an improvement in the feed motion of buzz and panel saws in mills.” I’ve seen two illustrations from the patent itself on a fee-based Internet database. It is a circular sawing machine, whose patent no. 12,065 was given 12 Dec 1854. *** I wish you and your dad the best.

 

     Ben: As you know, the obituary was for Harry Warner (and not the mistyped “Walker”), Jr. Me Walker, him Warner. His poverty (or reduced circumstances) and isolation are tragic, sad. The suffering for one’s correspondence has Lovecraftian coloration. *** Your isolated 3 word loc (“Ook? Splurk? Cleek?”) to Don and Mollie suggests something that persons like myself commit—responding to an item in a mailing but not supplying the context, and so mystifying all readers, including me when I re-read it. Your comment makes sense at the time because you can see what prompted you to speak on the prior mailing’s page, but making this clear in your response is something else. (Digression: “Cleek” was a character known as “the Man of the Forty Faces.”)*** Peter’s perceptive and detailed review of a play based on HPL makes me sorry I missed something that relied on suggestion; and I will miss the Seattle production. It’d be a treat to find the first ever adaptation into a play. It seems reasonable that this could be traced back to, let’s say the sixties, to some parody at a con. It was also lagniappe to have a second Lovecrafter’s review, however short. *** One of the stories I thought of while reading your review of American Gods—Classical entities who have to make do in a modern world—was Lester del Rey’s “The Pipes of Pan” (Unknown, May 1940), which shares similarities. *** Though I would eventually like to read A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories, I am not $26 motivated—and I also have such a long list of unread items. Perhaps when it shrinks to trade paperback. You are going to have to stop reviewing so many books that interest me. I will throw in that I recently went looking through a collection of John W. Campbell letters and discovered a handful of references to HPL, all insignificant.

 

     Don and Mollie: Don: When you say you wish Saddam’s entire family had their throats cut, including “grandchildren, nieces and nephews, etc.” I trust that this is rhetorical overkill. You would have this for first cousins, second cousins, and so on, which would eventually encompass a large percentage of the world’s population. I think you display a certain cavalier disregard about the significance of your remark. Why should a person be punished because of relations he or she did not choose? *** Yours (i.e., Don and Mollie) is the most laudatory review of Dagon that I have read. I hope one day to get the opportunity to judge it for myself.

 

     John H.: If that puffery you reproduced (I have an original) on de Camp’s Lovecraft were limited to facts, there might be just a few words left, and that would not be bait for the new fish that might come to the Ofian web page. *** Thanks in particular for the 2nd article (of two) about Mencken, though I thought the author did some soft-pedaling about his subject.

 

     R. Alain: I had composed the information about Robert Barbour Johnson before your mailing arrived and already grown quite interested in him and his work. His account is the most fascinating, and poignant, entry in the biographical section of The Weird Tales Story, which I presume he composed thanks to the book’s author and compiler, Robert Weinberg. I found your detective work very interesting and instructive for those of us who would like to do something similar. It has the drama of the chase and suggests your own admirable persistence, and resistance to discouragement. But how did you find the article in Blue Book? Magus Peter H. Gilmore states Anton La Vey befriended Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Barbour Johnson, and George Haas. 

 

     Benjamin: I never trust an eye that is all-seeing, for what might it find out about me? *** Mis-communication may be the chief culprit in your off relation with Stan Sargent. I don’t know, of course. *** Thanks for the Leiber letter.

 

     S.T.: I am sorry that the list of your forthcoming works does not include an update of your very useful, but matured, Lovecraft bibliography. I hope you plan on doing something. *** Reading your intriguing comments on literary canons has caused me to reflect that academia is in the canon business. When a work appeals to a majority of academics and a significant number of readers it becomes canon fodder. *** You set up a strawman argument in contrasting popularity against literary quality—brute popularity does not insure a place for posterity, but the writers who have made it were popular, though there may be a very few Emily Dickinson-like exceptions. So “literary democracy” is not the bugaboo you make it out to be. Beware of absolutes, and of self-assured dogmatism. Curious that you imply the popular and the canonical are antagonistic. *** You scout “the aesthetic tastes of the mass public,” but was it they who museumed the Andy Warhols? Despite your claim, neither Herman Melville (known as the man who lived among the cannibals, as a result of his successful Typee) nor Walt Whitman were in “utter obscurity” for fifty years after their deaths, 1891 and 1892, respectively. Over 300 books in various languages bore Melville’s name in this period (1891-1941), while Whitman had over 700. You mention the “casual” reader in contrast to critics and scholars, but what about the serious reader? *** Noting that you are assembling an Encyclopedia of Supernatural Literature, I suggest that the canonical recognition for supernatural fiction writers is different than for mainstream, for while a mainstream work can be supernatural, it is conclusive that the other must be. Perhaps, then, the standards are … lower. Also, within fiction dealing with the supernatural there are castes based on what readers expect (genre), “The Turn of the Screw” vs. “The Rats in the Walls.” *** Richard Matheson did not flourish in the pulps, though he has described himself as a pulp writer. His first story, “Born of Man and Woman,” appeared in the non-pulp The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. In fairness, I find that the word “pulp” has crossed from describing a format to that depicting a genre whose center is sensationalism. *** When it comes to Stephen King, you are blind, and your comments are so hyperbolically negative that anyone should distrust them as they should positive ones of that ilk. *** There have been critics a-plenty who have written for an intelligent readership—but The New York Times Book Review may not be what you consider eligible.

 

     Henrik: ‘Tis curious how much we are captivated by both materialism and a consumer culture, as witness the popularity of e-Bay. Possessing a thing is of such prime importance, as with the Lovecraft items, aka the relics of secular saints. *** I notice that you finish your essay on the concept of time with a reference to “The Shadow Out of Mind.” Was this on purpose? As you know, Out of Mind is a film about HPL and his work. However, the new title that you supply has an aptness. *** The balance of humor to horror in various stories is a ticklish question, for it can suggest a lack of earnestness or sincerity in such a work as “The Haunter of the Dark.” While the Blake character may be an in-joke, the same cannot be said for the haunter or other aliens. The popularity of “The Lurking Fear” may be attested in part through it illustrating a cover for Cry Horror! It’s a story I continue to enjoy, perhaps even because of its excesses. *** The Two Towers was too war-like and action-oriented to make it as satisfying as The Fellowship of the Ring. *** Alas, I fail to grasp your explanation about your statement “my suggestion is more sound than Airaksinen’s …” Suffice it that you handled my objection.

 

     Derrick: Your praise of “simple ideas” used for Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite has caused me to reflect that plays are more likely to catch the Lovecraft spirit than movies, and radio more than plays; for it is the degree that the imagination is given freedom that contributes to the success of a story based on his work. Movies are so earth-gazing, so literal. *** Unfortunately, the link does not go to the Berruti article. *** I agree with you about the likelihood of Christian hope in HPL’s writing, but then I haven’t read the thesis that has this subject. *** You might consider reviewing in Amethystine Hippocampus the Charles Williams novels you’ve been enjoying.

 

Fans

     There’s a listing of HPL fans, but it is difficult to use. There are links to their websites.

 

Folklore

     Watch out for Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors by David D Gilmore (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).

 

Education

     Among the various departments of Miskatonic University, the Dept. of Literature includes a link to a 20 July 1929 letter to an R. Michael (quoted earlier), which originally appeared in The Arkham Advertiser. Originating from the same source is a detailed biography of HPL’s younger years by Donald Clarke. 

 

Music

     The Miskatonic: Symphonic Poem after H.P. Lovecraft by Guy James Vollen is a 1998 thesis in the form of a music score, while another thesis, Symphony for Brass Choir and Percussion by Kurt Johann Heinrich Ellenberger, mentions him (1990). *** Shadow Out of Time: Nightmare for Orchestra is the title of a 1942 orchestral composition by Harry Hewitt. According to notes on the cataloging record (to which I have added italics) it was “inspired by the short horror tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937). Composed 1942. This and Dwellers in the Mirage are two parts of a larger work, Music for the Neocronomicon. Dedicated to Howard Phillips Lovecraft.” Born in 1921, Hewitt was an “unimaginably fecund American composer” and “completely autodidact in music.” Nor was he “ashamed to admit the authorship of a Hymn to Mickey Mouse or an Hommage to Bugs Bunny” (Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed., Schirmer Books, 1992, p. 768).

 

Art & Comics

     The website (www.gahanwilson.com) for Gahan Wilson is no longer there (11/03), but there is a bibliography elsewhere. *** Architecture in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft by Gregg Nelson is a 2002 thesis. *** The dedication in The Weird Tales Story is “To Margaret Brundage, whose covers might not have reflected the contents of Weird Tales but surely sold a lot of copies.”Author of this and other works, Robert Weinberg gives a 1999 interview. *** Watch out, plush Cthulhu. Plush Nyarlathotep has arrived. *** “H. P. Lovecraft in the Comics” has not been updated since January 2002. *** “From Beyond” is adapted by P. Craig Russell in Isolation and Illusion: Collected Short Stories, 1977-1997 (Dark Horse, 2003). *** For those whose classical education was through comic books, there is available Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations by William B Jones (McFarland, 2001).

 

Theatre

     The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the Open Circle Theater's new artistic director, Ron Sandahl, has announced the company's 2003-04 lineup of plays. The season begins 3 Oct. with "The Horror in the Theatre," adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories, which run through Nov. 1. I wonder if this was inspired by the New York production that Peter reviewed. And since I’m wondering, is it just coincidence that S.T. lives in Seattle?

 

Movies and Television

     Although there is no direct evidence that HPL saw the first movie of Frankenstein (1910), it is now possible, perhaps, to get this rarity on DVD. *** Lovecraft reviewed The Image Maker, a silent film whose company has its own site. *** There are few HPL episodes among the many of Terror Television: American Series, 1970-1999 by John Kenneth Muir (McFarland, 2001).

 

Quotations

     Subterranea Miscellania is a collection of quotations from the Bible, Weird Tales writers, and others about what lies below or within.

 

Writings

     Read the introduction to the Tales of H.P. Lovecraft collection by Joyce Carol Oates. Ignore the blurb. Regrettably, Oates is melodramatic, uses his fiction as biography, and at times has funny opinions: “The Dreams in the Witch-House” shows that Lovecraft “seems to have taken for granted that Salem "witches" existed...” Yet I also find some of her remarks thought-food, such as what she says about time and about obsessive artists (“who ceaselessly work and rework a small nuclei of scenarios, as if to force a mastery over the unconscious compulsions that guide them”). Or her surprising insight that “The Colour Out of Space” ends “elegiacally.” She also finds in the worship of the Great Old Ones a Nietzschean “slave-morality,” that “there exists that lust for power by the powerless.” As an “introduction” it fails, unless you like story endings revealed, which she constantly, and perhaps needlessly does. *** The complete table of contents for the first two volumes of Selected Letters is online.

 

Criticism

     Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film by Jack Morgan (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002) includes a look at both “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and Supernatural Horror in Literature. *** Among the things at Cthulhu Coffee are knowledgeable annotations of Lovecraft’s stories, accompanied by some well-chosen paintings or photos. See and look at “HPL Reference: A Road Map Through Lovecraft Territory.” *** To be released in the fall, The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature (University of Wisconsin Press) by Brian J. Frost examines pulp magazines, scholarly treatises, etc. *** HPL is gaining scholarly respectability, according to “The Monster Within: Pulp Magazine Horror Writer H.P. Lovecraft Is Getting the Full Academic Monte,” which quotes S.T., Don, Timo Airaksinen, and Robert Waugh (National Post, 3 Feb 2000, p. A20). *** A sizable article on this genre, “Toward an Organic Theory of the Gothic:Conceptualizing Horror,” has a few nods to “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”(Journal of Popular Culture, 32:3 (1998)).

 

Paleontology

     John Long is most recently the author of Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea: One Hundred Million Years of Evolution. His Mountains of Madness is a free read online. If you search for the name “Lovecraft” you will be told that the name appears in two sections.

 

Magazines

     With a title change Lovecraft's Mystery Magazine has become Lovecraft's Weird Mysteries. This is a different publication from the debuting H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror of Wildside Press, with an impressive Cthulhuoid cover by Bob Eggleton. There is a table of contents, and if you snoop enough you will find some thoughtful remarks by Gavin.

 

Amateur Press and Publishing

     Ken’s “Supplement to the National Amateur” led me to discover that this organization was frequently mentioned in The New York Times. What follows are some of the more relevant examples. So far as I know, the only time Lovecraft’s name appeared in this newspaper while he was alive was on 8 July 1935, p.8 where, listed among the executive judges, his address is Brooklyn, presumably a factual holdover from living there during his marriage with Sonia. The name of James F. Morton appears on 4 Jul 1933, p.16 and elsewhere, including an article where he is mentioned with Rheinhart Kleiner (5 Jul 1922, p.16); Dorothy Houtain, “editor of Home Brew, a monthly magazine,” presides as the second woman to head the association (3 Jul 1922, p.23) and weds George Julian Houtain (3 Sep 1921, p.7); Edith Miniter is elected president, and among those attending are Edward H. Cole and Morton, “whose grandfather wrote “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (7 Jul 1909, p.2). *** A summer 2003 search for “lovecraft” at Livejournal produces over 700 links for those who write online journals and have declared an interest in him. This is misleading, as a random visit to several have nothing to do with the subject. *** A 12 July article, online, of Malaysia’s newspaper, New Straits Times tells of a visit years ago to an erstwhile Greenwich Village bookstore and its now deceased manager, a petite Jewish man who called himself “H.P. Lovecraft” because “his father was a fanatical admirer of” the writer.

 

Bibliography

     Usually lacking full citations, there’s a bibliography with many desperate and foreign sources by Philippe Ward (pseudonym?).

 

Brooklyn’s Red Hook

     Suydam was evidently a leader in extensive man-smuggling operations, for the canal to his house was but one of several subterranean channels and tunnels in the neighbourhood.-- “The Horror at Red Hook”

     The background for the worshipper of forbidden gods, Robert Suydam, and his colonial Brooklyn mansion may have sprung from the following 1899 Brooklyn Eagle newspaper article (p.3), or the story may have been reproduced in other newspapers. The headline reads “Razing the Suydam House” and follows with the subheadings, “Brooklyn Building that Antedated the Revolution Will Soon Be No More; Weird Tale About a Tunnel; Underground Passage, However, Proves to Be Purely Imaginary—Ponderous Construction of Colonial Days.” The report notes that when any building as old as “the old Suydam homestead” is demolished, it “usually brings to the front one or more weird, if not true, tales about hitherto unknown and consequently mysterious passages, chambers of horror or something equally uncanny.” The gossip was of a tunnel “concealed by a hidden trap door.” Like the adventuring “Edwin M. Lillibridge” of another Lovecraft tale, the real-life Eagle reporter poked about, and he found that the talk of a tunnel was exaggerated. A gravestone “in memory of Jacob Suydam” stood in the front yard of the house until a few days before the story, though the body had been removed many years before. Appropriately the publication was on 30 October.

 

“The Music of Erich Zann”

     The short story was read in June by Zack Morgan on Stream of Consciousness, station WTIP’s prose and poetry show. Unrelated to this is a compilation recording, Zann, “dedicated to scaring monsters away.” “Erich Zann also appears to be the name of a band. The story (or its title) has inspired a number of compositions. Mekong Delta has an album with this name. There’s a piece for guitar, “The Music of Erick Zann”; the German “Die Musik des Erich Zann”; the presenter Zann Erich (in The Great Night of Rumi Poems and Stories of Jelaluddin Rumi); separate works performances by Jon Baade and Stephen Dickman (the later noted in an earlier issue of mine); La Musique d'Erich Zann: Nocturne en Hommage à Giacinto Scelsi d'après H.P. Lovecraft: Op. 21 by Nicolas Bacri; La Musique d'Erich Zann; the 1975 Suite for Woodwind Quintet: On a Theme from The Music of Erich Zann; and "The Music of Erich Zann": Six Miniatures for Violin, Mandolin, Viola & Cello by Larry Sitsky.

 

“The Thing on the Doorstep”

     In the 1890’s one of the detective story writers for Nick Carter Library, Nick Carter Weekly, and others read by HPL was E[ugene] C[hanning] Derby. Could this have influenced Lovecraft’s choice of “Derby” for the surname of the character?

 

Influence

     The writings of Caitlin R. Kiernan include Mythos fiction. *** In People Weekly, May 12, 2003, editor of McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Michael Chabon, says of his favorite Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness: “With its epic sweep and controlled tone of cosmic hysteria, this was among the inspirations for my Antarctic sequence in Kavalier & Clay.” This novel, favorably reviewed by Ben, won the Pulitzer Prize. *** In her “Two Early Readings of Lovecraft and their Consequences” Esther Rochon supplies much autobiography in an article that originally appeared in Lovecraft Studies 35 (Fall 1996, pp. 1-8). She is a multiple winner of the Grand Prix De La Science-Fiction et Du Fantastique Québécois. Unfortunately, the sfcanada website has disappeared. *** Author Jeffrey Thomas invites you to “Read Some VERY Unusual Books!” at Amazon.com, whose address is too long. The list is for those who might enjoy the outré.

 

Contemporaries

     With an introduction by Forrest J Ackerman, an “unofficial” version of The Blind Spot is online at Gutenberg. *** Also, several Burroughs Venus novels are available online in Australia; and so too Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams. *** The University of Michigan library has a collection of correspondence between J. Vernon Shea and John Ciardi, poet, etymologist, and anthologist. *** If you are interested in Lovecraft client Adolphe Danziger (aka de Castro) there is a short biography, with a link to an annotated bibliography, which appeared first in Western States Jewish History Quarterly (July, 1996). There is also a link to a revision of a Lovecraft Studies article. *** What is the relation of King Kong to Lovecraft? Kong’s leading lady, Fay Wray, had a sister, Willow, who collected Lord Dunsany material, and gave it to Von der Ahe Library (Los Angeles). There’s a list of the Willow Wray Collection of the Writings of Lord Dunsany as well as an addendum. *** Mike Ashley’s Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life received a five-page review in English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 (Spring 2003). George Johnson states the book is “a fascinating and readable account of a fascinating man” and “will prove essential in reassessing his work.” *** The originality and source for Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen” is the subject of “Rumours of Angels: A Legend of the First World War” by David Clarke (Folklore, Oct 2002). The story is also discussed in Fay Weldon’s 2002 autobiography, Auto Da Fay. *** Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Walter de la Mare, and Marjorie Bowen were Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction analyzed by Edward Wagenknecht in 1991. *** Ghosts & Scholars is dedicated to M.R. James and has plenty of material, including up-to-date news. Way to go, Rosemary Pardoe.

 

Robert Barbour Johnson

     As a result of his story “Lead Soldiers” (Weird Tales, December, 1935), which used a character based on Mussolini, Johnson received a praising letter from Lovecraft, who told him that they shared views of dictators. A short correspondence appeared to have ensued (The Weird Tales Story, p. 58).

 

Richard Matheson

     An interview with Richard Matheson will appear in the 2003 fall Mizzou. He continues to write, as witness his bibliography. His latest novel is Come Fygures, Come Shadowes (2003).

 

UFOs

     Captivated by the Lovecraftian quality of the title, The Demon-Haunted World, and by its subject of the confusion betwixt belief and science, I read this book by the late Carl Sagan. One sentence of his that arrested me was “In an age when traditional religions have been under withering fire from science, is it not natural to wrap up the old gods and demons in scientific raiment and call them aliens?”(p. 115). Sagan later quoted folklorist Thomas E. Bullard, "Science may have evicted ghosts and witches from our beliefs, but it just as quickly filled the vacancy with aliens having the same functions." I wrote to Dr. Bullard, stating “This is approximately what in 1949 Fritz Leiber said of Lovecraft's contribution to horror literature, replacing the fear of the devil with aliens.” I quoted

 

With the rise of scientific materialism and the decline of at least naive belief in Christian theology, the Devil's dreadfulness quickly paled. Man's supernatural fear was left without a definite object... When [Lovecraft] completed the body of his writings, he had firmly attached the emotion of spectral dread to such concepts as outer space, the rim of the cosmos, alien beings, unsuspected dimensions, and the conceivable universes lying outside our own space-time continuum."A Literary Copernicus" in H.P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, p. 50-51. 

 

I continued, “Were you aware of the Leiber comment prior to your own quote--or are you acquainted with Lovecraft's writings, and do you see in them any prefigurations or influence on your own studies?”

 

     Before I give Dr. Bullard’s response, I will supply him a small introduction. His 1982 doctoral thesis was Mysteries in the Eye of the Beholder: UFOs and Their Correlates as a Folkloric Theme Past and Present. The UFO Encyclopedia calls him “one of the most highly regarded scholars specializing in ufology, [and] is best known for his studies of the abduction phenomenon.” It further points out that he is the compiler of The Airship File, “a comprehensive collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century newspaper articles reporting apparent UFO sightings” (Omnigraphics, (1998); 2nd ed.; vol.1, p.172). This compilation has recently been referenced in Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns, and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusionby Robert E Bartholomew (McFarland, 2001). Other biographical information is available.

 

     To my inquiry Dr. Bullard replied, “I was not aware of Leiber's comments.The idea of aliens taking over as modern ghosts and demons has become conventional wisdom, but the idea has a pedigree that seems to have gotten lost, and I am grateful for your help in recovering it.

 

     “I have read and enjoyed Lovecraft for many years, and could not help but notice that his fiction matured some of the ideas that continue to turn up in UFO lore.His visitors from the outer darkness has returned in Zechariah Sitchen's "12th planet" that swings in and out of the solar system over thousands of years and brings alien visitors to earth.Lovecraft's age-old aliens leaving a lost city At the Mountains of Madness have an epic grandeur diminished in the fevered ancient astronaut speculations of the last few decades, but these efforts to find alien handiwork in the Pyramids or the statues of Easter Island are at least poor relations to Lovecraft's ideas.The grotesque citizenry of Innsmouth also prefigures theories that UFO abductions happen for the purpose of creating a hybrid race to take over the earth.The reemergence of Cthulhu from the depths of the sea also finds parallels in apocalyptic prophecies connected with UFOs, and ideas of other dimensions that appealed to Lovecraft also find favor with ufologists looking to escape the confines of rigid nuts-and-bolts spaceships and to make some sense of the paraphysical aspects of UFO reports.Much of UFO lore is grassroots and not particularly learned.

 

     “The people reporting various quite bizarre experiences may well be reinventing both old-fashioned demonology and the modernized version exemplified by Lovecraft, rather than borrowing from readings or mass culture.The same fears and ways of grappling with them may recur to generation after generation, sometimes to find expression in sophisticated literature and sometimes to emerge in inarticulate but heartfelt accounts of personal experience.

 

     “By the way, I ran across a letter from Lovecraft to [the Providence Journal] around Christmas, 1909, a time when thousands of people in New England saw a bright light in the sky and thought a pilot was testing a wonderful new airplane. Lovecraft wrote that this light was nothing other than Venus and behaved as no airplane could.In the days of ‘prehistoric’ UFO lore, Lovecraft sided with the skeptics.”

 

     I was excited upon hearing of the Lovecraft letter as well as Dr. Bullard’s information. I therefore did some searching in the online New York Times for that period. As I responded to him, “The Leiber essay I quoted from originally appeared a few years before its 1949 publication in a fanzine, but I don't know if the quote was in the original text. In another essay he discussed the aliens (in "The Whisperer in Darkness") who are associated with Yuggoth (Pluto) traveling through space, and that there was no reason that such creatures could not be as tough as a spaceship (I'm paraphrasing). As you know, the narrator is a literature professor with an interest in folklore.” I also asked him for a citation of the letter, but he went me one better and sent a copy.

 

     And before I received the Lovecraft letter copy (reprinted on the last page), I told him what I had presciently found (somewhat edited): “To get more on what you told me about the sighting of lights, I did a search in the New York Times database for Dec 1909 and discovered the article, ‘Airship Flies High Above Worchester’ which is followed in smaller letters, ‘Flashes a Searchlight for More Than Two Hours, Circling about 2,000 Feet Up.’ Then in other block letters, ‘IS PROBABLY TILLINGHAST'S’. Wallace E. Tillinghast was an aviator from Worcester ‘who recently claimed to have invented a marvelous aeroplane’ (23 Dec 1909, p.1). In a related article, a mysterious lights event was reported to be a ‘fire-balloon’ (this is datelined Worcester, MA, 23 Dec. in the Times for 24 Dec 1909, p. 2).

 

     “In a 25 Dec article (p. 6), ‘Seeing Things at Night,’ the newspaper reporter suggests ‘Perhaps, at last, Mars is signaling to us.’ He also states ‘Mr. TILLINGHAST of Worcester has been telling strange tales of long voyages he has made with his flying machine. An aeroplane or dirigible balloon with two huge searchlights would have to carry a powerful dynamo.’ The report also notes about a Massachusetts town (coincidentally the home of the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy): ‘Lynn's inhabitants have seen the dark object with the two bright, flashing eyes traveling swiftly toward Salem. Once there were witches in Salem. What conspiracy is this to agitate the good New Englanders?’ (A fuller article from the same date (p. 3) is headlined ‘Lights Fly at Night as Witches’. And there are other articles.)

 

     “You could certainly speak to this in a way I could not, but in my view, here is the parallel between UFO's and the sinister supernatural. Equally important, perhaps, is the sense that there is a ‘conspiracy’ afoot. However, the author suggests that those behind it may be witches or advertisers.

 

     “Incidentally, the crazed inventor in Lovecraft's early 1920's story ‘From Beyond’ bears the last name of ‘Tillinghast,’ and the name appears elsewhere in other stories.” [An addendum. According to S.T.’s H.P. Lovecraft: A Life (where Ken is credited as the source) the inventor’s name, Crawford Tillinghast, comes from two established New England families, and in Providence two families with this name were across the street from one another.]

 

     Having been sent by Dr. Bullard a copy of the 1909 letter to the Providence Journal, I received the following comments from him:

 

     “As you've probably seen from Lovecraft's letter, he maintained his keen interest in astronomy and promoted a rational view of the ‘airship’ then exciting so many New Englanders.The period from 1908 to 1917 was a sort of golden age for ‘UFO’ sightings as people somewhere in the world were seeing phantom airships or airplanes almost constantly.The airplane became a matter of public interest only in 1908 when the Wright brothers began trials for the Army, and by the next year with public exhibitions in France, the world went air-crazy.A report of an airplane with a searchlight near New York in September 1909 led to several other sightings in the Northeast before the mid-December claim of Wallace E. Tillinghast that he had invented an airplane that could hover for hours and fly what was, for the time, incredible distances.He got much publicity--and apparently, much enjoyment--out of his claim, and in the days leading up to Christmas thousands of people were reporting lighted airplanes.Venus and fire balloons accounted for the sightings, but Tillinghast remained the center of speculation.

 

     “He seems to have been something of a local ‘character’ in Worchester, a businessman and even a legitimate inventor as well as a practical joker ready to make extravagant claims.Of course it was an era when no social penalty attached to such claims, though the Worchester city council seems to have called on him to put up or shut up about his airplane.He promised to display it in February (and if memory serves, set another date in June), but of course never showed anything.His name may well have stuck with Lovecraft as synonymous with crazy inventors.

 

     “As for the wonderful flying machines, they turned sinister as the Great War approached and people came to expect flying spies and saboteurs.”

 

     I asked him about the discovery of the letter. He said: “I ran across the Lovecraft letter as part of a project of looking for phantom airship reports in newspapers all across the country, mostly the 1896-97 wave but also at any other period of time when reports seemed to be numerous.I have gone through several thousand titles page by page for the 1890s wave and a considerable, though far less, number for 1908-1917 sightings.The Providence Journal was one prominent title I was able to search, and lo and behold, there was Lovecraft's letter.It stuck in memory out of the hundreds of other items I found because of the name.I knew he had to be quite young at the time and I was struck by his level-headed recourse to an astronomical solution when everyone else wanted to see airships.”

 

     Thanks again, Dr. Bullard. For those interested in this phenomena, there is a discussion in The UFO Encyclopedia under the heading “Airship Sightings in the Nineteenth Century” (p.44-63), which pays particular attention to the year of 1897, when Lovecraft turned seven. One of the authors in the article’s good bibliography is the prolific Andrew E. Rothovius, who has written about HPL and the New England megaliths in The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces.

 

     I have provided a last page copy of the Lovecraft letter, “Venus and the Public Eye,” (and note that the handwritten emendation is not mine), and I will make some observations about how it reveals its nineteen-year-old writer. He begins by lamenting “the general ignorance of the public” to astronomy, a love of his as much, perhaps, as the uninformed masses were a dislike of his. Adding credibility to his skeptical view, he also gives a smack of erudition through his allusion to another authority, Astronomy with an Opera-Glass by Garrett P. Serviss, first published 1888, with the 1906 (8th ed.) owned by HPL (see the revised edition of Lovecraft’s Library).

 

     It is exciting to find HPL, during his so-called recluse period, at a certain time and place, i.e., around 6 p.m., Christmas eve, 1909, in the Providence business district, and conversing with others. Moreover, note that he immediately wrote the experience down and sent it off to the newspaper, which suggests the ease and readiness with which he handled the pen, and possibly his passion for the subject. In the letter he refers to himself in the third person, a convention that may have been common at the time, at least in formal writing.

 

     There’s a note of sarcasm (“this great apparent concern in astronomy seemed encouraging, to say the least”) which he later wielded with greater art in his stories. He is more plain in describing “apparently well-educated men.”

 

     I have already touched upon Tillinghast, which name I found independently. The presentation of conversation snatches Lovecraft relays seems a bit un-Lovecraftian. Likewise, that he would, apparently without shyness, correct the impressions of these men (implied in the phrase, “when apprised of their error”). He doesn’t say that it is he who corrected them, as though he wanted to go beyond even referring to himself in the third person. He is dismayed that, upon being enlightened, they evince “only mild surprise.” They lack his intellectual curiosity, his zest for truth (which could be a form of misanthropy), and perhaps they prefer the picturesque or illusory to the prosaic. Or perhaps it is simply a matter that HPL resents their “ignorance”?

 

     He continues in a vein that I imagine he had used for his Providence Tribuneastronomy articles (1906-08) and would later use for The Providence Evening News (1914-18). His closing mentions “Prof. Upton’s excellent articles in the Journal.” (Seven years later, in a 16 Nov 1916 letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, he wrote “the late Prof. Upton of Brown, a friend of the family, gave me the freedom of the college observatory, (Ladd Observatory) & I came & went there at will on my bicycle.”) The recommendation for “suitable free lectures” designed to impart astronomical knowledge seems to be written with a Chautauqua spirit as well as a suggestion of self-advertisement, for he did give illustrated lectures to clubs. (See hplovecraft.com for the information used in this final paragraph.)

 

Just When You Thought It Was Safe

     A free online archive of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1821-1902, has brought me more material about Frederick A. Lovecraft and the Lovecraft name. First I’ll deal with the stuff not related to FAL. Under 18 Sep 1873, p.3, a short article states Mrs. J.E. Lovecraft along with a couple from Rochester were drowned on Lake Ontario “while crossing from Sodus to Charlotte in an open sail boat.” From this sober topic we go to a page of boxed advertisements for 27 Jul 1902, p.4. Under the heading “Music, Special, 12c+”-- presumably, 12 cents--is a list of 9 titles, which include “If You’ll Be M-I-N-E, Mine” and “Sleep, My Kinky Headed Coon.” Between “Maid of the Mist” and “Twigs and Branches” is the single word title, “Lovecraft.” It is possible that someone set to music the Thomas Hardy poem that has this word, but maybe not (cf. my article about the poem in The Criticaster #1). Another search I did, treating “love” and “craft” as separate words next to each other, discloses a similar music ad that appeared two weeks earlier (13 July 1902, p.4) and helps clear up the mystery, for it publicizes “Love Craft, waltz.”

 

     I will pass by the articles that mention Frederick A.’s association with the Jockey Club, previously chronicled in my run through the New York Times of that period. Under “Life in New York City” (25 Apr 1886, p.15) a character sketch of him has much of the novel about it. He is introduced (name at first withheld) as having “a general aspect of plaintive and gentle melancholy” and gazes “with a reminiscent and childlike air of retrospection.” He “bears the pleasing and euphonious name of Lovecraft.” The story involves his skill in luring an audience to the Cosmopolitan Concert Hall to see a horse trainer. There is some biography given here that is missing from the New York Times articles. An article about a Thomson-Degener wedding (20 Apr 1889, p.5) briefly notes he gave a “set of silver spoons” as a gift.

 

     The Lovecraft death is headlined “Another Turfman’s Suicide” (26 Oct 1893, p.1). The article describes him as a “taciturn man” who spoke “in a low tone.” He was also “extremely dark complexioned, with heavy black mustache and eyebrows and he generally dressed in black.” That does sound like a character out of HPL. Moreover, he “had the manner of a nervous man.” The suicide came hard on the heels of that by a Nathan Strauss. Of late Lovecraft’s desire to acquire wealth had become a “monomania.” Perhaps this was setoff by his recent reverses. “It is estimated that he was, when he died, over $1,000,000 poorer than he had been six months ago.” It seems HPL had a distant relation who was a millionaire. The Eagle goes on that FAL was a widower with no children, though according to the NYT he had a daughter who had pre-deceased him.

 

     His fiancée who committed suicide upon FAL’s death is here named May Brooklyn (out of loyalty to the neighborhood?) rather than May Brookyn, as in the NYT. This small account speaks of what her estate contained. Her only heirs are a brother and niece who have the last name of “Croker,” and oddly there is a draft held by the bank of Croker-Woolworth. (“May Brooklyn’s Estate,” 12 Jul 1895, p.2). Through further searching I discovered that this was a misprint—it’s the “Crocker-Woolworth” bank. When I looked at the NYT for “May Brooklyn” (rather than “May Brookyn”) I discovered a very brief account of her 1894 funeral and a mention of her among the players of A.M. Palmer’s company (1891). When a member of Richard Mansfield’s company she was called “a very promising actress” (12 Dec 1883, p.4).

 

Fear and Trembling

     I mentioned in my ‘aster 25 (1998) that The Southern Review (Winter 1941, v. VI, no.3) allusion to The Outsider and Others had eluded the indefatigable S.T. in H.P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism (1981), for which discovery Ken congratulated me. But I am the one who was wrong, for it was in the bibliography, as I discovered a year or so later. It has taken me a while to fess up, as you see. It is with some trepidation that I therefore suggest two titles that so far as I have investigated, really, really are not either in the 1981 work or the 1984 supplement. I may have found others, but they are in non-English languages, and I will save them for another time.

 

     Rimel, Duane W. “H. P. Lovecraft on Story Construction,” Author and Journalist 33:8 (1948:Aug.). Rimel, a correspondent, has several entries in the Bibliography, but not this one.

 

     Wood, Peter. Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, and Howard Lovecraft: Three Attitudes to the Spiritual World. (Privately circulated). Wood has appeared in videos and written essays and at least one story about Holmes.