John Russell, a Lovecraft correspondent during the years 1913-1925.

The young Lovecraft once jousted, in the pages of Argosy magazine, with one John Russell of Florida. Russell later became a correspondent at a critical time in Lovecraft’s career, but he remains something of a mystery to Lovecraftians. We don’t even know his birth and death dates, it seems. Note that he is not to be confused with John Russell Fearn (1908-1960) who was also British, an early science fiction fan, a contributor to The Futurian and later a prolific SF author.

The story of the jousting in the Argosy is well documented over several pages in S.T. Joshi’s monumental Lovecraft biography I Am Providence. The public exchange was fateful, since it brought Lovecraft to the attention of a recruiter for the amateur journalism movement. Lovecraft later recalled this consequence in a letter…

    “John Russell, the Florida Scotchman who in 1913 conducted the Argosy controversy with me which led to my discovering amateur journalism!” (Selected Letters I).

One of the Lovecraft poems from this inky jousting, “Frustra Praemuntius”, a satire on Russell, was apparently not published at the time. It can now be found in the collections of Lovecraft’s poetry titled The Ancient Track, along with the other poems from the controversy.

Russell also joined the amateur journalism movement, although a year or so after Lovecraft. Russell was born at Penicuik, near Edinburgh, and his skill was said to have been Scots dialect poems in the Robbie Burns tradition. Lovecraft wrote of him in the short “Introducing Mr. John Russell” (1915)…

    “During the winter of 1913–14 The Conservative [Lovecraft] was engaged in an extremely heated controversy concerning the merits of a certain author whose work appeared in one of the popular magazines of the day. The letters of the disputants, both in prose and in verse, were printed in the magazine, and among them appeared both the formal heroics of The Conservative, and the neat octosyllabics of one John Russell, Esq., of Tampa, Florida. Mr. Russell and The Conservative, who were arrayed against each other in the metric fray, were each separately invited by Mr. Edward Daas to join the United, but while The Conservative responded eagerly and almost immediately, his opponent deferred action. Meanwhile a peace had been sealed betwixt the contending bards, and a correspondence established, in which The Conservative continued to urge what Don Eduardo had first mentioned; the result now appearing in Mr. Russell’s advent to the association.

    John Russell, whose present address is General Delivery, West Tampa, is a true-born Scotsman, being a native of Penicuik, near Edinburgh. The patriotism of his family is attested by the presence of his two nephews at the front in Belgium, one with the Gordon Highlanders and the other with a Canadian regiment. Mr. Russell’s poetry has appeared in the public press of Scotland, Canada, and the United States, and possesses a tersely epigrammatical and at times brilliant satirical style all its own. Though proficient in classic English, it is in the quaint speech of Caledonia that Mr. Russell chiefly excels. Of this delightful dialect he is a perfect master, and his well-constructed lines are redolent of the atmosphere of North Britain. Upon joining the United, one of Mr. Russell’s first acts was to dedicate a poem to the Blue-Stocking Club of Rocky Mount, whose study of Robert Burns at once aroused his interest.”

In the United Amateur Lovecraft later gave a shorter description of the new recruit…

    “John Russell, formerly of Scotland but now of Florida, is a satirist and dialect writer of enviable talent. His favorite measure is the octosyllabic couplet, and in his skilled hands this simple metre assumes a new and sparkling lustre.” (“Department of Public Criticism”, United Amateur, August 1916).

A little later Russell secured employment on a local newspaper, as Lovecraft’s own journal The Conservative noted in October 1916 that…

    “John Russell of Florida, whose satirical and other verses have formed such a piquant feature of amateur letters, has recently accepted a position with the “Tampa Breeze” [a weekly, under the editorship of former General W.W. Averill]. He will be in complete charge of the advertising department, besides having duties of an editorial nature…” (p.114 of the book reprint of The Conservative issues).

S.T. Joshi has also noted (I Am Providence, p.276) that the 1918 Lovecraft poem “The Volunteer” was published circa 1918 in the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, a Florida newspaper. Joshi speculated that Russell might have secured this publication for Lovecraft.

Russell had nephews fighting in the First World War, so I would hazard a guess that his age might have been about age 45 in 1916. This gives a likely birth date range of circa 1868-75.

Lovecraft almost met Russell in 1922 in New York…

    “…fancy who has just written, asking me to meet him if convenient in NY at the Victor Hotel, 37th St. & 5th Ave., on Saturday, Sept. 23, (one week from today) 1922? None other than that John Russell, the Florida Scotchman who in 1913 conducted the Argosy controversy with me which led to my discovering amateur journalism! I had never thought to see him in the flesh, although I have corresponded to some extent with him; & the present chance is wholly accidental — he has been home to Scotland & is returning by way of New York. The odd thing is, that he has no idea I am in NY — his suggestion is that I make the trip from Prov. especially to see him — which would be a bit expensive & unlikely. I should like to meet the man whose verses elicited the satires from which Daas recruited me, & I have half a mind to do it — I’ll let you know. It’s so darned congenial here that I hate to break away — but I am a philosopher, & accept with stoical imperturbability every circumstance & dispensation of fate. However — what I’d advise is your coming along here & mixing in the festivities!!! You’d find Belknap a little angel — he’s second only to the immortal Alfredus.” (Lovecraft in Letters from New York)

Sadly, when the appointed hour came around, it appears that Russell missed the appointment amid the hubbub of New York.

Letters from Russell to Lovecraft are listed in the Brown University collection. The dates of these suggest that Lovecraft struck up a more regular correspondence with Russell through the late summer of 1923…

1920 Jun 30
1923 Aug 4
1923 Aug 19
1923 Sep 22
1923 Oct 13
1923 Oct 27

I could be wrong, but I suspect these have not yet been published, since the corresponding letters by Lovecraft have been lost. S.T. Joshi remarks that Lovecraft’s… “letters to Russell have not come to light” (I Am Providence, p.228). There is almost no trace of Russell in the online record, although his name is one that is very difficult to trace.

Lovecraft’s relocation to New York in 1924 probably curtailed much of his contact with his outer circle of wider correspondents, including Russell. But then Russell finally met Lovecraft face-to-face in New York in early 1925. Russell might then have been about age 55, and this a markedly ‘older’ man according to the mindset and demographics of the time. S.T. Joshi remarks in I Am Providence that Lovecraft and Russell “spent several days in April” (p.602) together in New York. There seems to be no record of the meeting or their trips, but presumably Joshi had the basic details from an aside in one of the letters. One imagines that Russell, being a ‘oldster’ and a Scot, must surely have been taken to visit the similar Everett McNeil at one point during the visit. Possibly he met the fellow staunch British patriot Ernest La Touche Hancock, who was also in New York at that time.

Russell may have been passing through New York on his way to take ship for a summer tour of the British Isles, since in August or September he sent Lovecraft three postcards of ancient Tudor houses in Ipswich, England. Lovecraft noted these in a September 1925 letter, and he went on to say that he had completed a long letter to Russell in return. If Russell had sent the cards from England, then he obviously had the funds for a lengthy trip abroad. One wonders if there was perhaps a touch of jealousy on Lovecraft’s part, since it was a trip he had long desired for himself, and his own position in New York was quite pitiful in comparison. Evidently the 1925 New York visit had been an amicable one, but there is no further evidence of correspondence after September 1925.

The amateur journalism paper The Little Gem, Jan-Feb 1938, No.2, had an article titled “AMATEUR JOURNALISM CHATS: John Russell Foos”. The Little Gem is in one of the big amateur journalism collections due to be scanned and online relatively soon. But this seems unlikely to be an interview with ‘Lovecraft’s John Russell’, and is perhaps instead with the 18 year old John Russell Foos of Ohio.

My aunt is well acquainted with Mr. Champlin Burrage [1874-1951], an Oxford man, who is librarian of the John Carter Brown library at Brown. (I hope to meet him very soon.)” — Lovecraft letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, April 1917.

Burrage was a New England man of a good family, who had graduated from Brown University in the class of 1896.

Mr. Burrage spent two years [1899-1900] at the Universities of Berlin and Marburg [and there became] familiar with the book markets and booksellers of Europe” — Annual report of the president to the Corporation of Brown University, 1915.

He later published groundbreaking work on the history of early English puritan dissenters and he became the Librarian of Manchester College, Oxford. He had married while in England, so there can be no question of a circa 1917 romantic entanglement with Lovecraft’s aunt. Though an affection or expectation between them during the 1890s is not impossible.

An account of Burrage’s arrival as Librarian at Brown, specifically his giving an inuagural lecture to senior students in December 1915, suggests that he shared with Lovecraft a certain affinity for the idea of rare books lurking in the old libraries of Europe…

Dec. 16 [1915], in the John Carter Brown Library. The Librarian, Champlin Burrage, was the host of the evening and spoke on “Historical Libraries of Europe.” … He gave several anecdotes concerning mendicant librarians and their services in collecting rare and valuable books. In closing, he explained the methods by which rare books are discovered and obtained. His talk was out of the ordinary and roused an especial interest in those students of classical literature who were present. … After the speech Mr. Burrage conducted the members … to the basement, where he showed them the photophat [photostat], a machine used for producing copies of rare manuscripts and out of-print books.” — Brown Alumni Monthly, Jan 1916.

I seem to recall that there has been some scholarly discussion about Lovecraft’s knowledge of photostats, in relation to their appearance in Dexter Ward. The fact that Lovecraft might have had photostat copies of books made for him in the basement at Brown, possibly even while researching Dexter Ward, may be of interest to some in this respect.

Lovecraft was almost a little out-of-date in his mention of Champlin Burrage’s tenure at Brown, if the Lovecraft letter has been correctly dated to April 1917. Burrage was in post from 1915 to some time in the 1916-17 term. He then “retired” (Annual report of the president to the Corporation of Brown University, 1917) as Librarian at Brown, seemingly toward the end of the academic year 1916-17. If the dating of Lovecraft’s letter is correct, however, we might then surmise that Burrage only left his post in the spring of 1917. This dating is confirmed by the Encyclopedia Brunoniana…

Champlin Burrage, who had been librarian of Manchester College in Oxford was appointed to succeed Winship. Burrage remained only until 1917, and the library was under the care of Worthington C. Ford, until the appointment of Lawrence C. Wroth in 1923.”

In 1918 Burrage published the book John Pory’s Lost Description of Plymouth Colony in the Earliest Days of the Pilgrim Fathers, together with contemporary accounts of English colonization elsewhere in New England and in the Bermudas. A book which might have interested Lovecraft, as a collection of first-hand descriptions of very early New England townscapes.

There is then a gap in the historical record, in which Burrage seems to have completly switched his research track from puritans to pagans. His years after Brown appear to have been absorbed by a “complet[e] a study of the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Minoan Crete”, on which he first published in 1921. At that time the American Journal of Archaeology noted that his 1921 article, “recently appeared in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, gives but a hint of the mass of material on old Aegean scripts which he hopes soon to publish in book form.” Sadly his decade of work resulted only in a slim 42-page book in 1928, The Ithaca of the Odyssey : a New Attempt to Show that Thiáki is the Ithaca of Homer and to Discover the Lost Sites of the Hut of Eumaeus, the Spring of Ithacus Neritus and Polyctor, the Farm & House of Laertes the City and Port of Ithaca, and the Palace of Odysseus.

1929 saw Burrage listed as “Historian, Archaeologist” in Living honorary graduates of Brown University. He described himself as “Deliberately choosing the life of historical research, discovery of lost manuscripts, author” and was living with his wife at 5 Park Vale, Brookline, which is a suburb on the outskirts of central Boston. Burrage appears to have produced no further publications, in his last two decades from 1929 to 1951.

One wonders if Lovecraft might ever have visited Burrage on the outskirts of central Boston, as he made his summer travels in the region? Perhaps on behalf of his aunt? Or did Burrage ever come to tea with his aunt while Lovecraft was there, perhaps as a parting visit in the early summer of 1917? Burrage was an expert on early Puritans, early New England townscapes, rare books in European libraries, and later on the lost scripts of then-mysterious Minoan Crete. Given this, he and Lovecraft might have had a fair bit to talk about.