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Tentaclii

~ News and scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: April 2013

A glimpse into the Providence of Lovecraft’s boyhood

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

≈ 2 Comments

Stacy Tolman of Providence (1860-1935):

Stacy-Tolman-ProvidencePortrait of Tolman.

From 1889 Tolman was a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, head of the dept. of drawing and painting there until 1905, thereafter teaching the anatomy class. He had his studio in the Fleur de Lys building in Providence from 1895.

The Etcher (c.1887-90), Stacy Tolman of Providence. The man depicted is the printmaker William Henry Warren Bicknell, friend and fellow student:

Stacy Tolman

The Musicale (c.1887), Stacy Tolman of Providence:

Stacy Tolman-334277

Yard View, Providence (undated), Stacy Tolman of Providence:

Stacy Tolman of Providence

The Interlude (1890), Stacy Tolman of Providence:

interlude-tolman

This evokes several Lovecraft stories such as “The Terrible Old Man”, “The Music of Erich Zann”, and “Hypnos”.

His late work, presumably in the 1920s, apparently showed the evidence of impressionism. One presumes that toward the end of his life Providence gave Tolman a major retrospective exhibition, which Lovecraft would have likely seen (unless he was away in New York at that point). I can’t find one, but there was a 1935 list catalogue for a Memorial Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Etchings by Stacy Tolman.

It is quite probable he was a teacher of Lovecraft’s Providence correspondent (and probable local friend) Frederick Allen Wesley, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design as evidenced by the 1903 yearbook (and probably also studied there in later years)…

wesley

There is an ink drawing of Wesley by Tolman, not yet available online…

   Rhode Island Historical Society–Graphics Dept.:
   ACCESS RESTRICTED. APPOINTMENT REQUIRED
   1. Ink drawing, “Frederick Allen Wesley” (call# Graphics XXB Painting T652 1)

Given this, one wonders if Lovecraft’s friend Wesley was the model for the 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 Building near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius but great eccentricity”

Note that the last “A.W.” initials of Henry Anthony Wilcox are the same as those of Frederick A. Wesley, and that Lovecraft has a tendency to slip his friends into his stories.

One wonders if the Tolman portrait of Wesley will show something of Lovecraft’s description of Wilcox in “The Call of Cthulhu” as a…

   “thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect”

Articles:

Ralph Davol, “An Appreciation of Stacey Tolman“, Brush and Pencil, an illustrated magazine of the arts today, Vol.7, Dec. 1900, pp. 163-172.

John. I.H. Baur, “A Painter of Painters: Stacy Tolman”, American Art Journal, Jan 1979, pp.37-48. 14 illustrations.

Portrait of Frederick Allen Wesley

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

≈ 1 Comment

There appears to be an extant portrait picture of the obscure Lovecraft correspondent from Providence, Frederick Allen Wesley of 6 Hammond Street….

   Rhode Island Historical Society–Graphics Dept.:
   ACCESS RESTRICTED. APPOINTMENT REQUIRED
   1. Ink drawing, “Frederick Allen Wesley” (call# Graphics XXB Painting T652 1) [ink drawing by Stacy Tolman]

Source: 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, by Elinor L. Nacheman. (2007).

Stacy Tolman. (1860-1935) [portrait]. “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 Gertrude Parmelee (Cady). Tolman traveled to Europe and the Middle East to paint, and exhibited at the National Academy of Design, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.”

This would seem to link Wesley in some way with the Providence Art Club? And/or to the art scene of the Fleur-de-Lys Studios building (a building which also features in “The Call of Cthulhu”).

Possibly Wesley was an artist or designer himself. I have found a “Wesley, Fred A.” in Rhode Island School of Design Year Book 1903 – Volumes 25-28 – Page 69, taking a course there…

wesley

He appears to be taking the first and presumably foundational course, and so was presumably a junior student. If he had been born 1885 (as Ken Faig has found) then in 1903 he would have been of the right age to be an 18 year old freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design. Tolman was then a leading teacher there. One wonders if Wesley might in time have become an assistant apprenticed to Stacy Tolman or one of the other artists in the Fleur-de-Lys Studios?

The fannish activity of Louis C. Smith, 1928-1944/6

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

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Lovecraft correspondent Fred Anger planned an index to Weird Tales and an edition of Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yoggoth, both with Louis C. Smith. It seems that Smith has long been a minor and almost total mystery to Lovecraftians. But he can now be fairly easily traced through his fannish activities, although his birth and death dates, and his post-war occupation, remain elusive.

John Cheng’s book 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 Smith’s 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.”

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 bibliographic undertakings.

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 although prepared 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 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 published 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 Smith’s 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.”

index

The cover of this work actually gives us an address: “1620 Chestnut Street, Berkley-2- California”

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.”

Tellus is in the Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries… “Tellus. Nos. 1, 2 (1941), 3 (1942), 4 (1943), 5 (1944), 6 (1945)”

This fanzine 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.

Smith’s home was also a venue for weekly fannish SF meetings in his city, 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 goes rather quiet on the Louis C. Smith front after this. 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 a academic or more likely an academic librarian, since he obviously had the bibliographic bug in him.

A note on Fred Anger (1920-1997)

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

≈ 3 Comments

Lovecraft correspondent Fred Anger (William Frederick Anger, probably b. 15th Sept 1920) 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, neither of which appeared. He contributed an interview to The Fantasy Fan fanzine.

Here are two fragments of Anger’s youthful letters to pulps…

   “Fred Anger, of Berkeley, California, writes: “Weird Tales is certainly improving steadily. Every new copy gets better and better; evidently there is no end to your progress. The first installment of The Trail of the Cloven Hoof is as good a piece of weird fiction as it is possible to find. Mr. Eadie has given us nothing but the best in all the years he has been writing. The Trail of the Cloven Hoof equals if not excels The World-Wrecker of several years ago. Congratulations, Mr. Eadie. Through the Gates [of the Silver Key?… his letter is incomplete, at least in the digital source I have access to]” — “By Air Mail,” a letter to Weird Tales, September 1934, Vol.24, No.3.

John Cheng’s book Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) quotes Anger on page 62, as being representative of writers to the pulp letters pages…

   “Readers were not naive about letters columns. Some readers questioned the validity and representative character of published exchanges. “I hardly think that the small cross-section of the Science Fiction readers as represented by your Discussions is quite a fair example of the readers as a whole,” wrote Fred Anger, 2700 Webster Street, Berkeley, California. “It is inclined to be prejudiced and it is not a customary editorial policy to print letters which really express opinions.”

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.

Anger appears to have been very antagonistic to Robert Bloch, then of about the same age…

   “Another fellow named Fred Anger never missed a chance to criticize Bloch” (Gary Romeo, “Stars of the Pulps”, Sand Roughs #5, Winter Solstice, 2002).

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…

“H.P. Lovecraft Correspondence: Minneapolis, University of 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.”

I have found a further note (.xls file) that this was an…

“Acquisition Donated to the Archives by William F. Anger in 1973”

One assumes that the letter from August Derleth (April 21, 1968) was to alert Anger of the importance of his old Lovecraft letters and items? If so it would likely have Anger’s home address in 1968. Has anyone ever checked this archive, other than perhaps Derleth? Its presence at Minneapolis might suggest that Anger was around Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 1970s? Or perhaps was an alumnus of the university?

Generally lacking in the older Lovecraftian printed literature is a death date for Anger, although I Am Providence states 1920-1997. I have found a Polish listing of correspondents which states “1997”, and interestingly this also notes that Anger personally knew Clark Ashton Smith.

Presumably this 1997 death date was drawn either from Joshi or from 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.”

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.” Another database usefully states…

   “William F Anger, died 09/02/1997 buried at Bath National Cemetery in Bath, NY.”

This has enabled me to find a picture of his 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…

anger

Presumably the U.S. Navy archives may have more details of his war service. YN3 indicates he was a “Petty officer third class” in the Navy.

None of this proves that the East Coast Anger is the same as as the West Coast Anger. But my hypothesis would be that after California fandom in the 1930s, where he apparently knew Clark Ashton Smith personally, Anger served in the Navy in the 1940s. He then possibly (my guess) took advantage of the post-war G.I. Bill to get an university education, and went to live in the East Coast. Given that he was a Lovecraft fan I wonder if he may have tried for Brown University? 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. There seems to be not a whit of him in the fannish record that’s available online.

Lovecraft’s correspondent C. L. Stuart

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

≈ 3 Comments

I’ve been taking a quick look at the possible candidates for another elusive Lovecraft correspondent: C. L. Stuart of 17 Brockett St, E Milton, Mass.

It seems here we have another Barlow error. The address should read “Brackett St.” The location is four miles south of the centre of Boston, near the coast.

I have found a rather likely personage in the form of the East Coast author and encyclopedia editor Charles Leonard Stuart (aka Leonard Stuart).

He first shows up in the online record as a magazine editor in the 1890s, then as Assistant Editor of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900). In 1910 he edited Current Cyclopedia, and by 1911 he is 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 must have been a success, since two years later he was the chief editor of the People’s Cyclopedia (1914)…

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 book in 1922 (cranky 1920s racialist stuff, with lots of worries about Papist influence and a chapter on Eugenics) which might have caught Lovecraft’s attention…

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 available online at archive.org as by “Stuart, Leonard, [b.] 1868”. A short biography in this volume calls him an…

   “…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 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], Residence Glencliff, N.Y.

After 1922 he becomes quiescent in terms of publication. One assumes he might have retired to Brackett St. in the early-mid 1920s, aged about 65. But I can find no proof of this, other than it certainly looks like a nice retirement spot on Google Street View.

There are number of items in his Age of Understanding biography 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. 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. 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. Possibly it needed revision work, and if so the topic 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 either, under those titles.

Lovecraft Studies 79-89

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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L.W. Currey has a decade long run (18 issues) of Lovecraft Studies journals for sale, at $400.

Sound the Bell: another ‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent found

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New discoveries

≈ 2 Comments

Further to my article yesterday on Geo. FitPatrick, I can now clear up the other ‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent. Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the Lovecraft Annual 2012, 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. Died 13th Jan 1964, at Old Orchard Beach, age 75. Presumably he passed Lovecraft’s letters to Edith Bell at 22 Pine Ave.?

Since Bell was under 21 until 1935, my guess would be that 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.

22pine22 Pine Avenue, sadly recently emptied and put up for sale. It appears her relative Peter Bell lived there until recently. If he had a big pile of Lovecraft letters, they might have been worth more than the house!

____

Bell is not to be confused with the person who they named the local library after: that was one “Edith Belle Libby“, although it’s commonly mis-named in documents as the Edith Bell Library.

Geo. Fitzpatrick of Sydney – Lovecraft’s Australian correspondent

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Scholarly works

≈ 6 Comments

I was looking through the introduction by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. to the list of Lovecraft’s correspondents, to be found in the 2012 Lovecraft Annual [“Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary”, by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr.]. The list was originally transcribed by Robert Barlow for Derleth. In concluding his introduction Faig notes he was unable to identify anyone for sure who was the Geo. Fitzpatrick of Sydney, Australia.

This 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 book includes Fitzpatrick’s magnificent woodcut bookplate depicting Circular Quay, with ferry wharves prominent and a Sydney ferry in the foreground.”

George Fitzpatrick 1920George William Sydney Fitzpatrick (1884 – 1st Aug 1948). Seen here circa 1920s.

bookplAbove: George Fitzpatrick’s bookplate, copper engraving, 1932. Artist: Gayfield Shaw (1885–1961).

In the 1920s Fitzpatrick collected bookplates, and ended up with a collection of 840 of them. Lovecraft had a notable example of a personal bookplate designed in late summer 1927.

Lovecraft

One wonders if 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 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 18 1929 p.6, ‘Book plates wanted’…”

He was later a PR man so I imagine he also savvy enough to post similar notices in the press across the USA. Indeed, I have also found a 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”

His life and work:

Fitzpatrick 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. By 1920 he was involved in many charitable and boosterist campaigns for his state. An academic journal article on Fitzpatrick has just been published…

Damian John Gleeson, “George William Sydney Fitzpatrick (1884 – 1948): An Australian Public Relations ‘pioneer'”, Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 2013, Volume 13, No. 2. [free online]

“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.”

He appears to have visited America in the 1930s, and was a “very genial friend” of American capitalism…

“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.”

The journal article hardly mentions his wartime activities, but it seems 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 (Ross Fitzgerald, Stephen Holt, Alan “The Red Fox” Reid: Pressman Par Excellence, NewSouth, 2010, p.35.)

Like Lovecraft Fitzpatrick was a British patriot…

“From his father, Fitzpatrick inherited strong patriotic sentiment towards the British Empire.”

He might even have had some Theosophical connections, since he corresponded with the Theosophical Club of Lomaland, sending them a letter on the weird curiosities of the Australian fauna and flora, as printed in Lucifer Magazine (1930). He had been a Mason since the 1910s, being reported in the press in 1920 as being a Director of the Freemason Magazine.

He was also a campaigner against the then-common practice of wearing hats indoor and out, something which Lovecraft also seems to have disavowed.

His business partner:

His 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 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.”

valentionThe Scarlet PowerValentino in The Hooded Falcon, the only surviving still.

“One of the biggest projects ever” in Valentino’s own words, he would have played a “Saracen nobleman” at the time of the Spanish Moors, playing 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 1920. Fitzpatrick was also the Director (perhaps meaning also editor?) of McIntosh’s Sydney Sunday Times. McIntosh owned the Sydney Sunday Times and its sporting papers, but sold it in 1929 after his finances collapsed. If Fitzpatrick remained as a Director of the paper after 1929, then perhaps a local Lovecraftian might look in the Sydney Sunday Times archives circa late 1929— for any Lovecraft poems or letters published there?

Smith’s Weekly:

In regard to the cultural scene in Sydney in the 1920s, it’s interesting to note that Fitzpatrick may have told Lovecraft of a rather suitable Sydney publication for his work…

“Smith’s Weekly (Sydney) was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. An independent weekly 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. They were later reprinted as, Three Macabre Tales (US: Typographeum Press, 1996).”

Scare chair

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

≈ 1 Comment

gothchair

Pulp Fiction of the 1920s and 1930s

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books

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New book, due next month in the Critical Insights series (seemingly aimed at reference libraries), Critical Insights: Pulp Fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. Edited by Gary Hoppenstand, and published by Salem Press…

pulp_fictionofthe1920-1930s

Making the news

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

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A very thorough step-by-step tutorial on creating a faux Lovecraftian newspaper prop…

haunting1835-prop6

The talk in Innsmouth…

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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New S.T. Joshi interview at the Innsmouth Free Press blog.

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