I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft

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by S. T. Joshi


  84. “The Conservative and His Critics,” Conservative (July 1915).

  85. HPL to John T. Dunn, 4 July 1916; Books at Brown, 187–88.

  86. HPL to FBL, 3 May 1922 (SL 1.170).

  87. “The Kleicomolo,” United Amateur 18, No. 4 (March 1919): 75–76.

  88. Andrew F. Lockhart, “Little Journeys to the Homes of Prominent Amateurs,” United Amateur 15, No. 2 (September 1915): 27–28, 34.

  89. SL 3.370 (note 7).

  90. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916 (SL 1.30).

  91. HPL to LDC, 24–27 October 1925 (ms., JHL).

  92. HPL to JFM, 24 June 1923 (SL 1.236).

  93. Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Age of the Titans (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 323–24.

  94. HPL to JVS, 4 February 1934 (SL 4.355).

  95. HPL to RK, 6 December 1915 (SL 1.18).

  96. HPL to RK, 30 September 1915 (SL 1.14).

  97. See note 95.

  98. HPL to RK, 14 October 1917 (SL 1.51).

  99. HPL to RK, 31 January 1917 (SL 1.42–43).

  100. F. T., Review of The Image Maker, New York Dramatic Mirror (20 January 1917): 26.

  101. HPL to John T. Dunn, 19 February 1917; Books at Brown, 212.

  102. HPL to Sarah S. Lovecraft, 17 March 1921 (SL 1.127).

  103. “Extracts from the Letters to G. W. Macauley” (1938), LS 1, No. 3 (Fall 1980): 14.

  Chapter 8: Dreamers and Visionaries

  1. For more on Cook, see Sean Donnelly, W. Paul Cook: The Wandering Life of a Yankee Printer (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2007).

  2. HPL to RK, 24 September 1917 (SL 1.49–50).

  3. HPL to Richard Ely Morse, 30 August [1932] (ms., JHL).

  4. HPL to CAS, 11 January 1923 (SL 1.202).

  5. E’ch-Pi-El Speaks: An Autobiographical Sketch (Saddle River, NJ: Gerry de la Ree, 1972), 9. This is a letter of July 1929 to an unidentified correspondent.

  6. W. Paul Cook, “Howard Lovecraft’s Fiction” (Vagrant, November 1919), cited in Cook’s In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1941), in Lovecraft Remembered, 147–48.

  7. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. T. O. Mabbott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 2.209.

  8. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 4 November 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 66.

  9. HPL to CAS, 18 November 1930 (SL 3.219).

  10. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 8 March 1929 (SL 2.315). The printed text errs in reading “my ‘Lovecraft’ pieces?”

  11. Edmund Wilson, “Tales of the Marvellous and the Ridiculous” (1945), in H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, ed. S. T. Joshi (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980), 48.

  12. Poe, Collected Works, 2.579.

  13. Henry Seidel Canby, Frederick Erastus Pierce, and W. H. Durham, Facts, Thought, and Imagination: A Book on Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 56.

  14. J. Berg Esenwein, Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing, and Sale of the Modern Short-Story (New York: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, 1909; rev. ed. Springfield, MA: Home Correspondence School, 1928). I have not had access to the 1918 edition.

  15. Ibid., 30.

  16. I am grateful to Sam Moskowitz for some of this information.

  17. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 81.

  18. Poe, Collected Works, 2.209.

  19. T. O. Mabbott, “H. Lovecraft: An Appreciation” (1944), in H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, 43.

  20. Will Murray, “A Probable Source for the Drinking Song from ‘The Tomb,’” LS No. 15 (Fall 1987): 77–80.

  21. Sheridan, Plays (London & New York: Dent/Dutton [Everyman’s Library], 1906), 263. This suggestion was made to me by T. G. Cockcroft.

  22. William Fulwiler, “‘The Tomb’ and ‘Dagon’: A Double Dissection,” CoC No. 38 (Eastertide 1986): 8–14.

  23. HPL to MWM, 15 May 1918 (SL 1.65).

  24. “The Lord of R’lyeh” (1945), rpt. LS No. 7 (Fall 1982): 14.

  25. HPL to RK, 27 August 1917; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 114.

  26. HPL to CAS, 7 November 1930 (SL 3.213).

  27. See note 22.

  28. HPL to RK, 17 July 1917; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 112.

  29. HPL to the Gallomo 11 December 1919 (SL 1.94).

  30. See note 25.

  31. HPL to Edwin Baird, c. June 1923; Uncollected Letters (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1986), 6.

  32. Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, rev. J. D. Fleeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 1074.

  33. HPL to AD, 9 September 1931 (SL 3.407).

  34. HPL to Bernard Austin Dwyer, 26 March 1927 (SL 2.120).

  35. Lord Dunsany, Patches of Sunlight (London: William Heinemann, 1938), 32.

  36. HPL to MWM, 15 May 1918 (SL 1.62).

  37. HPL to RK, 27 June 1918 (SL 1.68).

  38. HPL to FBL, 4 June 1921 (SL 1.135–36).

  39. “I am still struggling with the typing of Hesperia.” HPL to Alfred Galpin, 21 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 33.

  40. Interesting Items No. 511 (February 1921): [1–2].

  41. HPL to Arthur Harris, 13 December 1918 (ms., JHL).

  42. HPL to RK, 21 May 1920 (SL 1.116).

  43. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 82.

  44. See note 42.

  45. SL 1.136 (note 38).

  46. Ibid.

  47. Ibid.

  48. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 83.

  49. Garrett Serviss, Astronomy with the Naked Eye (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1908), 152.

  50. Charles A. Whitney, The Discovery of Our Galaxy (New York: Knopf, 1971), 21.

  51. Matthew H. Onderdonk, “The Lord of R’lyeh” (1945), LS No. 7 (Fall 1982): 10.

  52. HPL to Vincent Starrett, 10 January 1927 (SL 2.222).

  53. Jack London, Before Adam (New York: Ace, n.d.), 3.

  54. Ibid., 4–5.

  55. See Poe, Collected Works, 1.191.

  56. Lance Arney, “The Extinction of Mankind in the Prose Poem ‘Memory,’” LS No. 21 (Spring 1990): 38–39.

  57. HPL to Duane W. Rimel, 30 October 1934 (ms., JHL).

  58. William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 38.

  59. Steven J. Mariconda, “Realism in Lovecraft’s Early Work,” Ultimate Chaos 2, No. 4 (December 1984): 1–11.

  60. See HPL to RK, 4 April 1918 (SL 1.59).

  61. R. Boerem, “A Lovecraftian Nightmare,” in H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, 218.

  62. HPL to the Kleicomolo, 8 August 1916 (SL 1.24).

  63. HPL to RHB, 13 June 1936; O Fortunate Floridian, 342.

  64. HPL to the Gallomo, 12 September 1921; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 108.

  65. HPL to CAS, 30 July 1923 (ms.).

  66. HPL to RK, 8 November 1917 (SL 1.51).

  67. Ibid.

  68. Winfield Townley Scott, “A Parenthesis on Lovecraft as Poet” (1945), in H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, 215.

  69. Poe, Collected Works, 1.343.

  70. HPL to RK, 16 July 1919 (SL 1.83).

  71. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 82. HPL to RK, 5 June 1918; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 143.

  Chapter 9: Feverish and Incessant Scribbling

  1. See HPL to RK, 4 April 1918 (SL 1.59).

  2. HPL to RK, 23 December 1917 (SL 1.52).

  3. HPL to JFM, 10 February 1923 (SL 1.209).

  4. HPL to Woodburn Harris, 25 February–1 March 1929 (SL 2.290).

  5. Samuel Eliot Morison et al., The Growth of the American Republic, 2.112.

  6. “President’s Message,” United Amateur (September 1917; November 1917).

  7. “President’s Message,” United Amateur (January 1918).

  8. “This latest trip [to Boston] was in response to an invitation to deliver an address on amateurdom’s future before the Hub Club C
onference of Sept. 5th . . .” HPL to RK, 10 September 1920; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 197.

  9. Cook, In Memoriam, in Lovecraft Remembered, 110–11.

  10. HPL to RK, 24 September 1917 (SL 1.49).

  11. RK, “A Memoir of Lovecraft,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 195.

  12. HPL to Winifred Virginia Jackson, 7 June 1921 (SL 1.138).

  13. HPL to RK, 21 September 1921 (SL 1.152–33).

  14. HPL to RK, 9 November 1919 (SL 1.91).

  15. Samuel Loveman, The Hermaphrodite and Other Poems (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1936), 27. For as complete an edition of Loveman’s poetry (including a selection of his other work) as we are likely to have, see Out of the Immortal Night: Selected Works of Samuel Loveman (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004).

  16. Twenty one Letters of Ambrose Bierce, ed. Samuel Loveman (1922; rpt. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991), 19.

  17. HPL to DW, 27 March 1927 (SL 2.121).

  18. HPL to RK, 8 November 1917 (SL 1.51).

  19. Samuel Loveman, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 204.

  20. Robert H. Waugh, “Landscapes, Selves, and Others in Lovecraft,” in An Epicure in the Terrible, 234.

  21. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 24 August 1918 (SL 1.71).

  22. HPL to RK, 23 April 1921 (SL 1.128).

  23. Alfred Galpin, “Memories of a Friendship,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 165.

  24. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 21 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 30.

  25. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 27 May 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 16.

  26. HPL to Alfred Galpin, [October 1918]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 51.

  27. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 27 May 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 23.

  28. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 29 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 37.

  29. See note 26.

  30. L. Sprague de Camp, “Young Man Lovecraft,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 174.

  31. See note 25.

  32. HPL to John T. Dunn, 14 October 1916; Books at Brown, 198–99.

  33. HPL to John T. Dunn, 10 June 1916; Books at Brown, 179.

  34. HPL to John T. Dunn, 6 July 1917; Books at Brown, 222.

  35. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920] (SL 1.103).

  36. Ms., JHL.

  37. HPL to RK, 12 August 1919 (SL 1.84–85).

  38. HPL to LDC, 17 November 1924 (ms., JHL).

  39. Clara Hess, letter to AD, 9 October 1948 (ms., JHL); quoted in Faig, Parents, 33.

  40. HPL to RK, 23 May 1917 (SL 1.46).

  41. Faig, Parents, 29.

  42. See Faig, Some of the Descendants, 122–26.

  43. HPL to RK, 18 January 1919 (SL 1.78).

  44. Faig, Some of the Descendants, 131.

  45. HPL to RK, 19 March 1919 (SL 1.80).

  46. The date of admission is supplied by Winfield Townley Scott; see “His Own Most Fantastic Creation,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 15.

  47. See note 39.

  48. HPL to Arthur Harris, 23 August 1915 (ms., JHL).

  49. HPL to John T. Dunn, 10 June 1916; Books at Brown, 179.

  50. See note 34.

  51. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 27 May 1918 (SL 1.67).

  52. George Julian Houtain, “Lovecraft” (Zenith, January 1921), in Lovecraft Remembered, 87.

  53. HPL to FBL, 26 January 1921 (SL 1.122).

  Chapter 10: Cynical Materialist

  1. HPL to RK, 30 March 1919 (SL 1.81).

  2. HPL to RK, 19 March 1919 (SL 1.81).

  3. HPL to RK, 16 April 1919 (SL 1.82).

  4. HPL to RK, 17 June 1919 (SL 1.82).

  5. Winfield Townley Scott, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 16.

  6. HPL to LDC, 13 August 1925 (ms., JHL); HPL to JFM, 19 May 1927 (SL 2.128).

  7. HPL to RK, 25 June 1920; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 194.

  8. HPL to Edwin Baird, 3 February 1924 (SL 1.298).

  9. Epgephi (September 1920): 6, 21.

  10. “Falco Ossifracus” can be found in Miniter’s Dead Houses and Other Works, ed. Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, and Sean Donnelly (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008).

  11. HPL to RK, 12 August 1920; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 196.

  12. HPL to RK, 10 September 1920; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 197.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Long’s date of birth has long been a source of debate: Lovecraft believed it to be 1902 (hence his writing a poem, “To Endymion,” on his coming of age in 1923), and in later years Long himself stated that it was 1903; but a search by Peter Cannon in New York City birth records establishes conclusively that it was 1901. See Cannon, “FBL: When Was He Born and Why Was Lovecraft Wrong?” Studies in Weird Fiction No. 17 (Summer 1995): 33–34.

  15. See Long’s introduction to The Early Long (1975). He appears in the UAPA membership list no later than November 1919.

  16. HPL to RK, 23 January 1920 (SL 1.107).

  17. HPL to RK, 27 September 1919 (SL 1.88).

  18. HPL to RK, 23 January 1920 (SL 1.106–7).

  19. See George T. Wetzel and R. Alain Everts, Winifred Virginia Jackson—Lovecraft’s Lost Romance [Madison, WI: R. Alain Everts, 1976].

  20. HPL, “Winifred Virginia Jordan: Associate Editor,” Silver Clarion (April 1919).

  21. See note 19.

  22. See note 19.

  23. See note 20.

  24. HPL to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 17 March 1921 (ms., JHL). The poem in question was “The River of Life,” which was printed as a wall card.

  25. See note 19.

  26. See headnote by Edwin Hadley Smith to “What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other,” Boys’ Herald 46, No. 1 (August 1937): 6, who reports having secured the manuscript and noting that it is dated February 21.

  27. HPL to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 24 February 1921 (ms., JHL).

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Cf. HPL to RK, 23 April 1921 (SL 1.128). The principal letter recording this trip—HPL to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 17 March 1921—is misdated 24 March in SL 1.125 because Derleth thought that the gathering was actually on St Patrick’s Day (March 17) and that therefore the mention of “My trip of a week ago” dated the letter to March 24.

  32. Ibid.

  33. HPL to RK, 12 June 1921 (SL 1.139).

  34. Published in LS No. 26 (Spring 1992): 26–30.

  35. Hugh Elliot, Modern Science and Materialism (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 138–41. Hereafter cited in the text.

  36. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 24 April 1930 (SL 3.146).

  37. HPL to RK, 23 February 1918 (SL 1.56–57).

  38. Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, tr. Joseph McCabe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), 263–64. Hereafter cited in the text.

  39. HPL to the Kleicomolo, 8 August 1916 (SL 1.24).

  40. HPL to MWM, 15 May 1918 (SL 1.63–64).

  41. HPL to REH, 16 August 1932 (SL 4.57).

  42. See Cook, In Memoriam, in Lovecraft Remembered, 148–49.

  43. John Fiske, Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902), 23–24.

  44. HPL to the Kleicomolo, April 1917 (SL 1.44).

  45. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 1 June 1921 (SL 1.134).

  46. HPL to Woodburn Harris, 25 February–1 March 1929 (SL 2.310).

  47. James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 171–73.

  48. HPL to RK, 14 September 1919 (SL 1.87).

  49. HPL to RK, 7 March 1920 (SL 1.112).

  50. Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, in Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer, tr. T. Bailey Saunders (New York: Willey Book Co., [191–]), 2.

  51. HPL to RK, 23 April 1921 (SL 1.130).

  52. HPL to JFM, 1 March 1923 (SL 1.211).

  53. HPL to RK, 14 September 1919 (SL 1.86).

  54. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 1 June 1921 (SL 1.134).

>   55. HPL to RK, 13 May 1921 (SL 1.132).

  56. HPL to FBL, 17 July 1921 (SL 1.142).

  Chapter 11: Dunsanian Studies

  1. The Gods of Pegana (Boston: John W. Luce, n.d.), 1.

  2. Patches of Sunlight (London: William Heinemann, 1938), 29–30.

  3. Oscar Wilde, “Preface” to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

  4. Patches of Sunlight, 9.

  5. Ibid., 135.

  6. HPL to Fritz Leiber, 15 November 1936 (SL 5.354).

  7. HPL to CAS, 14 April 1929 (SL 2.328).

  8. HPL to Richard Ely Morse, 28 July 1932 (ms.).

  9. See note 7.

  10. HPL to CAS, 11 January 1923 (SL 1.203).

  11. HPL to RK, 9 November 1919 (SL 1.91).

  12. While the Sirens Slept (London: Jarrolds, 1944), 21.

  13. Quoted by HPL in SL 1.93 (see note 11).

  14. Lord Dunsany, Letter to Mary Faye Durr (10 July 1920), United Amateur 20, No. 2 (November 1920): 22–23.

  15. Tryout 5, No. 12 (December 1919): 12.

  16. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 83.

  17. HPL to FBL, 3 June 1923 (SL 1.234).

  18. C. L. Moore to HPL, 30 January 1936 (ms., JHL).

  19. HPL to RK, 3 December 1919 (SL 1.93).

  20. Lord Dunsany, A Dreamer’s Tales (Boston: John W. Luce, n.d.), 60.

  21. Alfred Galpin, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur 19, No. 4 (March 1920): 84.

  22. Cf. the chronology of tales included in his letter to FBL, 8 November 1923 (AHT), where “The Street” is placed between “The White Ship” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.”

  23. HPL to FBL, 19 November 1920 (AHT).

  24. “I echo your wish that ‘The Street’ might be professionally published and widely read . . .” Ibid.

  25. A Dreamer’s Tales, 78.

  26. “In the Land of Time” (from Time and the Gods), The Book of Wonder (New York: Modern Library, 1918), 176.

  27. The Book of Wonder, 16.

  28. Carl Buchanan, “‘The Terrible Old Man’: A Myth of the Devouring Father,” LS No. 29 (Fall 1993): 19–31.

  29. HPL to FBL, 19 November 1920 (SL 1.121).

  30. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 29 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 35.

 

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