As a follow-up to my recent “Lovecraft on a rollercoaster” post, I’ve come across an even more incongruous event, drawn from the man’s seemingly-bottomless life-story. Lovecraft once spent the evening at the Providence Jewish Community Center, in the company of his latest ‘grandson’ who appears to have been a boy-genius. Presumably he was surrounded by Jewish people. He was there to listen avidly to a lecture from a left-leaning Jewish psychiatrist. Amazing, when you consider Lovecraft’s rhetorical anti-Semitism, but true.

“I remember going with him one evening to some Jewish cultural center, to hear a talk by the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler … Lovecraft was intensely interested in hearing Adler…” (Kenneth Sterling in Lovecraft Remembered, p.379)

Kenneth Sterling was the boy-genius and he lived in Providence for about a year from early 1935, so their trip to see Adler is likely to have been sometime between about late March 1935 and early 1936. Here is Lovecraft describing meeting the fourteen year-old Sterling at Lovecraft’s home in early March 1935…

“the important visitor appeared … a little Jew boy about as high as my waist, with unchanged childish treble [i.e.: voice] & swarthy cheeks innocent of the Gillete’s [razor’s] harsh strokes. He did have long trousers — which somehow looked grotesque upon so tender an infant” (Lovecraft in S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, p.947)

The speaker that Sterling and Lovecraft went to hear was Alfred Adler. Adler was a leading psychiatrist of the early 1930s, at a time when the new Freudian psychiatry was struggling for acceptance in America. In the simplest terms: Adler tried to tone down the grotesqueries of Freud and the mysticism of Jung, and he was vilified for it by the Freudian faithful. Was Adler in Providence? Yes, very much so, and not simply as part of a whistle-stop national lecture tour…

“Adler assumed his duties in 1932 as visiting professor of medical psychology [at Long Island College of Medicine]”. [He] “gave lectures elsewhere in America from time to time” [… and his Marxist wife was found an appointment at Boston in 1934]. (Phyllis Bottome, Alfred Adler; a biography, pp.229-230).

“Dr. Dey and Miss Dey, the Principal of the Mary C. Wheeler School [on the East Side of] Providence, were among Adler’s special friends” […] “young and stimulating friends, and of great assistance to Adler, since they gave fortnightly meetings at their house to whomever they felt Adler would like to meet.” […and their school they] “gave him the opportunity he valued most of regular work among children” […] “he spoke of this school often to friends in Europe” (Phyllis Bottome, Alfred Adler; a portrait from life, p.203 and p.214).

It therefore seems quite likely that Adler would have accepted an invitation to speak at the city’s local Jewish cultural center. This Center was located just one mile from the Wheeler School in the East Side, where Alder did his work with children. It seems that he gave many talks in the city, from time to time…

“In Providence, Adler spoke at Brown University and the Providence Medical Association. He also addressed the parents and teachers of the Mary C. Wheeler School” (from introduction to Adler, Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings, 1965)

The Jewish Cultural Centre (JCC) had been located at 65 Benefit Street since 1914. It was named the Hebrew Education Institute from 1914-1925, then became known as the Jewish Community Center in 1925. This re-naming in 1925 marked a radical new mission — to appeal to any and all Jews in the city, secular or religious….

“It counted within its membership persons from all walks of life and every part of the city. […] it had over 100 organized activities catering to many human needs and desires. [One of its declarations was…] ‘NOT a partisan in discussion — BUT the home of discussion’.” (Horvitz, “The Jewish Community Center of R.I.”, Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes, Nov 1972, pp.157-158).

It’s also interesting to note that Lovecraft would perhaps have seen the Adler lecture introduced by one Jacob I. Cohen. J.I. Cohen was the Jewish Community Center’s Director from 1926 to 1948. Not only was Cohen a Jew, but — judging by Cohen’s photograph — Lovecraft’s horrified eyes may well have detected a partial black ancestry. One wonders quite how tightly Lovecraft was gripping his chair-arms at that point…

An interesting addendum to my recent dive into Orville Livingstone Leach. Parallel to Leach, and probably giving tacit credence to Leach’s quackery, there was another and more high-class purveyor of medical electricity in Providence. This was Dr. William F. Channing (1820-1901), a Providence doctor who was also a free-thinking scientist and inventor. He was the author of the book Notes on the Medical Application of Electricity (1849) which went through six editions. In the back of this book there is a fearsome list of electrical ‘medical’ apparatus for purchase…

Dr. Channing was also Sarah Helen Whitman’s literary executor, Whitman being of course well known to Lovecraft as a romantic interest of Poe.

What immediately struck me is the name Dr. William F. Channing. It is very similar to that of William Channing Webb, the anthropologist found in “The Call of Cthulhu”. Note that I don’t say that Lovecraft’s Webb was based on Dr. Channing. I’ve already established in Walking with Cthulhu what I think is a good case that William Channing Webb was based on the career and activities of the anthropologist Franz Boas.

There seem to have been several William Channings around at that time, seemingly from branches of the same family. Dr. William F.’s relation William Ellery Channing (1817–1901), for instance… “was a Transcendentalist poet and member of the Transcendental Club” and was a bosom friend of Henry David Thoreau. There was also a William Henry Channing (1810-1884) in the family, who was a Fourier socialist and emancipationist. But it is the scientific aspects of Dr. William F. Channing, and his role in Providence life, which mark him as the most likely member of the clan to have had his name borrowed by Lovecraft.

Dr. William F. Channing also had a Charlotte Perkins Gilman connection…

“Charlotte [of “The Yellow Wallpaper” fame] was a frequent visitor at the Providence home of the family of Dr. William F. Channing… [and became a lifelong closer-than-sisters friend of one of the daughters of the house]” (Ann J. Lane, To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, p.137).

Presumably her husband Charles Walter Stetson accompanied her on the Channing visits. Stetson was Providence’s pagan visionary artist, and co-designer with Burleigh of the Fleur de Lys building. I have previously suggested Stetson as the model for Wilcox in “The Call of Cthulhu”, the Providence pagan artist who Lovecraft describes as a… “thin, dark young man of neurotic and excited aspect”.

Like the quack doctor Leach, Dr. William F. Channing also tinkered with inventions as well as medical electricity. Like Leach, he also happened to strike it rich with one of these inventions. He was fascinated by the telegraph, and patented a telegraphic fire alarm which was taken up by a manufacturer and sold widely. At the time some called him the inventor of the fire alarm, although today there are half-a-dozen contenders for that title in the United States alone.

In the 1870s he corresponded with Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), who lived in Boston and who was the inventor of the telephone system. Popular Science Monthly (1877) wrote of…

“Dr. William F. Channing, of Providence, who, with other gentlemen of that city, have taken an active interest in the telephone from the outset, and contributed valuable aid to Prof. Bell in perfecting his invention.”

Channing later seems to have fallen out with Bell. Since he wrote a popular article in 1883 claiming another man had invented the telephone.

Given Lovecraft’s interest in electricity (“From Beyond”), and the telephone (“Randolph Carter”) in some of his stories, and his interest in the history of science and free-thinking in Providence, Dr. Channing seems to be of possible interest to Lovecraftians. There is also the previously mentioned residence in Providence, and connection with Poe.

Finally, I note that in 1869 Dr. Channing was Secretary and Treasurer of Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, and was the Secretary of their Fine Arts committee. Possibly he was also involved with Providence societies for the arts in later decades. One wonders if, in this and similar offices, he was known to some of Lovecraft’s older relatives?