Dudley Charles Newton (1864-1954) of New York and St. Augustine, Florida, was another mysterious friend of Lovecraft. His dates are from S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence, who states that almost nothing is known about Newton. Presumably Joshi had the dates from The Unknown Lovecraft by Kenneth W. Faig Jr. Newton was Lovecraft’s elderly guide to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1931. He doesn’t appear to have been a correspondent of Lovecraft, and is missing from the 1937 address list.
He first appears in the online record in Club Men of New York: Their Clubs, College Alumni Associations (1902), listed as “NEWTON, DUDLEY C, millinery, …” Millinery being the profession of making ladies’ hats.
A Charlotte Griffing Griswold married a Dudley Charles Newton on 12th October 1904, on Long Island, New York. She died, age 28, on 8th April 1907 — and is buried in Guilford, Connecticut. A “Dudley C. Newton”, of Georgetown in Connecticut, is recorded in the Connecticut Motor Vehicle Register as owning a vehicle in summer 1915. This location is about 30 miles NE of New York City, suggesting he may have motored in to work in New York City. It seems he did, since he was a senior millinery buyer on Fifth Avenue.
A Dudley C. Newton left New York on the transatlantic ship Caledonia, bound for Glasgow in Scotland, on 14th June 1913. Presumably this was a buying trip to the Scottish tweed industry.
There is a 52 year old Dudley C. Newton, listed as disembarking at Ellis Island in New York on the transatlantic ship Chicago, from Bordeaux in France, on 19th July 1917. His age on the ship’s passenger list is right, if he was born 1864. One has to assume that this is Newton returning from Europe because of the American entry into the First World War on 6th April 1917. This appears to have been so, since we known that he brought back with him a copy of the Paris edition of The New York Herald, suggesting he had been in Paris. This is evidenced by the Millinery Trade Review (Volume 42, 1917, p.106), a New York trade journal which noted…
Paris Takes Note of Arrivals: A copy of the Paris edition of The New York Herald of July 1st, brought back by Dudley C. Newton, contains the following: “The Autumn millinery season for foreign buyers is due to open this week, but the…”
The Paris supposition is confirmed elsewhere in the same issue, which has a short article on Newton’s experiences…
“Nevertheless [despite the war], men and women buyers from the large department and wholesale millinery stores have braved these [ocean] dangers repeatedly since the submarine became a menace and have lived to return with gratitude. Dudley C. Newton, of Scully Brothers and Co., accompanied by F.T. Bartlett of The Lafayette Importing Company, returned to an American port, July 18th, having sailed for this side from Bordeaux. Both men had bought extensively of flowers [presumably silk, presumably for hats? …] “Hope I won’t see Paris again, under its present conditions, for a long long time” [he said, and reported the ship attacked by u-boats on the return to New York]”.
Given Newton’s going to Paris to buy flowers (presumably silk ones for hats) might there then be some connection of Newton to the work of Sonia H. Greene in her New York dept. store employment? Or (more likely) with her ill-fated independent hat shop just off New York’s Fifth Avenue? Could Newton in 1931 have been a retired professional colleague of Sonia? Perhaps one of her key suppliers or senior industry contacts in the hat-trade? If so, then this would suggest how Lovecraft knew Dudley Charles Newton and also why he was not noted as a correspondent in the 1937 diary.
His employers Scully Brothers & Co.. Inc. of New York, do appear to have been heavily involved in the hat trade at the time Sonia and Lovecraft were in New York, and in a very upmarket way since they were sited on Fifth Avenue and in Paris. In 1919 the Millinery Trade Review records them as…
“Scully Brothers & Company 417 Fifth Ave. NEW YORK and PARIS, 42 Rue de Paradis, HATS OF QUALITY UNSUPPASSED”
Scully Bros. later moved to 32 West 47th Street around 1920 or 1921. They are recorded as having patented a number of “N.Y. Ladies’ trimmed hats.” in 1922. They also later made winter shoulder capes which included “all-wool tartan plaid” linings, perhaps suggesting why Newton would have embarked on his ship to Scotland rather than London in summer 1913, since he could then have visited the weavers of the Scottish tartan industry.
I also wonder if he may be the same Dudley C. Newton who wrote credited (and possibly syndicated?) crosswords for newspapers in the early 1940s? This is one from the Montreal Gazette…
Interestingly Hartford, Connecticut, was where Lovecraft met Sonia for the last time in March 1933. Why Hartford? One wonders if Sonia was staying with Newton on her return from Europe. Newton would have been 25 miles away from Hartford, if still at his 1915 location?
Congratulations on your new discoveries relating to Dudley C. Newton. The discovery of a marriage for him is certainly a significant new biographical fact. When working on Newton, one has to watch out for the Newport RI architect (1845-1907) of the same name; he (the Newport RI architect) had grandsons Dudley C. Newton II and III who ended up in California. My bet would be that Lovecraft’s Dudley C. Newton contributed the 1940 crossword–his two surviving letters to Lovecraft (at Brown) bespeak a strong interest in literary matters and a longtime Saint Augustine FL librarian recalled him as a frequent library patron.
Thanks, Ken. I wasn’t aware that he had been a correspondent too. I haven’t been able to see your essay on Newton in The Unknown Lovecraft. There was also a younger Dudley C. Newton who was an athlete, who I had to watch out for too.
Glad Ken Faig responded: I sent him the copy of the letter from the St. Augustine librarian who wrote me in response to my long ago inquiry to the library about HPL correspondent Dudley C. Newton. Newton died so long ago that it is impossible anything re: HPL survived. However, Lucius B. Truesdell (1873-1974) was alive when I was researching, but after his death, thousands of his photographic negatives (at least 6 of HPL) where offered to a local Museum, which turned down the offer and the negatives were tossed into the trash. [Similarly] Henry Hasse told me when I interviewed him in 1968 that a lady he knew in 1935 in Seattle, who had all of Hodgson’s books, must be dead. Because she was at least 50 years old then. Years later I ordered her death certificate, to discover she died at age 100 in 1985.
–Randy Everts
There’s a full 1914-1922 run of Millinery Trade Review on Hathi http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008603921 if anyone wants to search it for details of Sonia’s dept. store or perhaps her early involvement in the hat trade. It may also have more details of Newton’s business activities. Some of the issues are still being indexed by Hathi and don’t have keyword search available. Presumably there would be notices of her independent hat shops, in later issues of Millinery Trade Review, but these are not online due to copyright.
I should have written that Dudley C. Newton II and III were son and grandson (not grandsons) of the Newport architect Dudley C. Newton (1845-1907). The anecdote concerning Lovecraft’s Dudley C. Newton and the St. Augustine Public Library is due to Randy Everts; I ought to have credited him. Perhaps there are still living a few nonagenarians who traded letters with Lovecraft and a few people who met him when they were children. But basically the living memory of Lovecraft, more than seventy-five years after his death, is nearly extinct. The great emergence of data in the electronic domain will be a big component of how we will continue to learn about Lovecraft now that he “belongs to the ages.” Tentaclii is a great example of this flourishing of information in the electronic domain.
There was a Charles Newton Dudley who did marry a Charlotte Griffing Griswold, of Guilford, Connecticut in The First Cogregational Church in Guilford, CT. I have the invitation. Of note, the year of their marriage was not engraved on their invitation. Charlotte was born to Clarrisa Hart Fowler and George L. Griswold on Sept 5, 1878.
Is Newton Charles Dudley, Charles Newton Duduley?
Enclosed in the invitation was an “At Home” card dated “After December first. 75 Kimberly Avenue, New Haven Conn.”
Mystery continues.
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