Category Archives: Historical context

A snippet of Goodenough

18 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

The local Brattleboro newspaper has a new appreciation of Arthur Goodenough. The newspaper doesn’t appear to block visitors from outside the USA.

Their new local history article focuses on Goodenough’s speaking out against the state-enforced sterilisation of 250 “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded or insane” in Vermont, to prevent them from having children. That was in 1931, and the Great Depression was beginning to grip. To many at that time, it must have seemed quite a sensible move.

But Goodenough rightly worried about what would now be called ‘mission creep’. Worried that, once such a thing was permitted, the public would come to accept it and doctors would treat it as routine. Then the apparently limited policies would slowly grow into a self-serving bureaucracy that could start to encompass anyone deemed ‘aberrant’…

He stated that it is unknown if physical or mental infirmaries might visit the lawmakers later in life; or find their way into the lives of friends, children or grandchildren. With passage of the law any of them could find themselves visited by the sterilization knife as well.

American Writers on Lovecraft’s 18th century

15 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Podcasts etc.

≈ Leave a comment

A new American Writers podcast looks at Lovecraft’s “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson”, and his love of the 18th century wits and satirists.

From the time-travel movie Berkeley Square (1933), one of Lovecraft’s favourite movies and set in the 18th century.

One of the best free public readings is “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson” by H. P. Lovecraft by HorrorBabble.

Friday the 13th: plague in Providence

12 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

Friday the 13th approaches. Here in the UK, the 13th is a key virus infection-point. According to the UK’s Chief Medical officer the start of the peak in symptoms should then begin here on 19th-23rd March, rising thereafter and possibly continuing high for three or four weeks. (Update: he’s now saying “the peak” might last 10-14 weeks).

Thus, tomorrow we face a very scary Friday the 13th. There’s also a full moon in the night sky, possibly giving hysterical toilet-roll chewers an added dose of lunacy.

What better reading then, for this moment, than my account of H.P. Lovecraft and the deadly influenza epidemic? Accordingly here is a free chapter from my book Lovecraft in Historical Context #3, “A Real Horror: on the 1918 flu epidemic in Providence”. The chapter has been slightly revised, and there’s a new picture of one of the armed guards on the gates of Brown University.

Download: real_horror_1918_flu_in_providence.pdf

Two Gentlemen Meet at Midnight

10 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, Night in Providence, Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

New on Archive.org, August Derleth’s Arkham Sampler #4 (Autumn 1948). The journal ran for eight issues. This issue’s highlight, today, is a ‘poem for voices’ by Derleth. Inspired by reading Lovecraft’s letters he imagines the shades of Lovecraft and Poe meeting at last, one night in Providence.

And here’s a picture to set the mood for a reading. It’s not been seen here before at Tentaclii, and is from my late summer 2019 haul of such pictures showing Lovecraft’s 66 College St and its surroundings. The two men are at the Van Wickle Gates at the top of College Street, only a moment’s walk from 66 College Street. In fact, given the timing in the 1940s, one wonders if the picture wasn’t inspired by Derleth’s 1948 poem.

I don’t know who holds Derleth’s copyrights these days, but if they’re sensible descendents then there may be potential here for a musical album. Of soundscape / found-sounds / low-key ‘night music’, combined into tracks evoking Providence at night in the 1930s/40s leading into a dramatised vocal performance of this poem with FX. Perhaps earlier in the album one might also have some of Poe’s more ‘cosmic’ lyrics and then Lovecraft’s churchyard letters/poem, both mentioned in the above poem, done in the same way.

New book: His Own Most Fantastic Creation

10 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

I don’t usually cover anthology slabs here at Tentaclii, but I’ll make an exception for a fun one that features Lovecraft as a character, edited by the venerable S.T. Joshi. His Own Most Fantastic Creation is a £25 (about $40) hardcover from PS Publishing, and is pre-ordering now for shipping in April 2020.

The blurb is usefully descriptive…

Darrell Schweitzer focuses on Lovecraft’s childhood, when he was plagued with dreams of “night-gaunts” and was left bereft by the early death of his father. John Shirley depicts Lovecraft as a gawky teenager evolving his notions of “cosmicism”, while Scott Wiley emphasises Lovecraft’s devotion to cats. Stephen Woodworth and Donald R. Burleson ring changes on the Lovecraftian theme of personality exchange. Lovecraft famously collaborated with Harry Houdini on a story. Donald Tyson and Jonathan Thomas write very different stories on the association of these two figures. Mark Samuels focuses on Lovecraft’s creation of imaginary tomes of forbidden lore, while the stories by Richard Gavin, David Hambling, Jason V. Brock, and S. T. Joshi supply broader ruminations on the origins of Lovecraft’s revolutionary motifs. While eschewing Lovecraft himself as a character, the tales by W. H. Pugmire and Simon Strantzas exhibit figures who reveal strikingly Lovecraftian elements while probing the psyche of the man from Providence.

Super. It’s perhaps a pity that there’s not also an essay comprehensively surveying the uses of Lovecraft-as-character and Lovecraft-alikes in fiction, comics and poetry up to about 1969. Perhaps also appending the 1970-2020 titles in a simple checklist form. But I guess that might belong in a companion volume collecting such early stories and poems. However, Joshi does mention just a few of them in his short introduction…

Lovecraft the man has served as an inspiration for fiction writers as early as Edith Miniter (“Falco Ossifracus’ 1921), Frank Belknap Long (“The Space-Eaters’ 1928), and Robert Bloch (“The Shambler from the Stars:’ 1935) in his own day”.

647 Manton Ave.

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Picture postals

≈ Leave a comment

I’ve found the actual street number of the quarry owned by Lovecraft…

DeMagistris, Mariano, Providence Crushed Stone & Sand Co., 647 Manton Ave.

“647” had eluded me in my post on Lovecraft’s Quarry, but doesn’t change my identification of the site…

Having the number may perhaps help someone locate a photo of the place, which was effectively ‘on the other side of Federal Hill’ from Lovecraft.

In the meantime here’s a postcard that’s Rhode Island but not of Lovecraft’s quarry, though it pretty much sums up how I imagine it would have looked…

Also found by chance, the ‘Colour out of Westerly’…

“The little imp!”

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context

≈ Leave a comment

As the spring arrives I’ve started dipping at random into Lovecraft’s letters to Barlow, O Fortunate Floridian. Immediately one finds important nuggets of fact such as, just ahead of their first meeting in Florida on 2nd May 1934…

I fancy I shall be able to recognise you from the clear-cut snap you sent” (10th April 1934, page 124)

“Snap” being slang for photograph. What does “clear-cut” mean, as an example of the photographic terminology of the period? A “bright and clear-cut picture”, properly exposed and free from damage and obscuring shadows, spots, scratches etc. Sharp and clean, with the subject matter clear. It was probably inherited from the slang of engravers.

This rather deflates the dramatic storyteller’s notion (sometimes encountered or implied in faulty biographies, hazy magazine articles, graphic novels, etc) that Lovecraft was utterly surprised at the boyish appearance of then fifteen year-old “splendid little chap”, when they first met in person after an epic cross-country bus trip. Lovecraft can’t have been that surprised, if he had seen a photo of Barlow beforehand and studied the “clear cut” photograph at leisure and with his excellent magnifiers. Although it is, I suppose, possible that Barlow had artfully framed and lit the photo so as to appear a little older. I’m not sure if we still have the exact photo that was sent, and proof that it is the one? Is it the cover of this new book? If so then it seems clear enough…

The “snap” arrived in Providence mid-October 1933, according to the letters in O Fortunate Floridian.

Also, in a letter of July 1933 he tell Barlow (shortly after a detailed discussion of Madchen in Uniform, of all things), that…

your youthfulness will not count against you [as a prospect for a long-distance face-to-face visit], for I like youth very much even though I have left that condition very far behind. I enjoy seeing a new generation spring up and blossom out…

Here the implication is that Lovecraft knew Barlow was a “youth”, because Barlow had told him. Although it seems that Barlow had not explicitly told Lovecraft his exact age during their initial correspondence, and Lovecraft had not asked. This is evidenced by a later letter to Sully…

As for my host [Lovecraft was then staying at the Barlow residence in Florida] … He always evaded statements regarding his age, but it now turns out that he only turned sixteen last Friday. The little imp!” (Lovecraft to Sully, 26th May 1934).

Thus there was an element of surprise for Lovecraft, most likely as the 18th May 1934 approached and preparations for Barlow’s 16th birthday became evident. But it was most likely not the dramatic “stepping off the bus” moment of shocked realisation, such as we may one day see pictured in the big-screen movie of Lovecraft’s life.

The Carrington House

01 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in Historical context, Picture postals

≈ Leave a comment

Some pictures of the Carrington House in Providence, which Lovecraft visited in 1936.

The frontage…

And what appears to have been effectively the back…

In the early life of the city the gardens were regarded as among the finest made in Providence…

I can’t get more than a snippet but he mentions the house, and visiting it, to Derleth in both volumes of the Lovecraft-Derleth letters…

… thrown open as public museums … The Carrington house (built 1809[-11]) is less classical in its symmetry, but is remarkably homelike. With its stables, courtyard, coach-houses, & extensive grounds, it forms one of the finest domestic units of the Early-Republic now on exhibition. The estate has been given to the R.I. School of Design …

A repository record of a late letter from Lovecraft to Elizabeth Toldridge, reveals that in 1936 he… “Gives his impressions of the Brown and Carrington mansions which have opened as public museums”. The House opened as a public museum in 1936.

The Office…

On the walls he would have peered into some faded mythic scenes…

This modern use of the same wallpaper shows the scenes…

The back gate on the street, circa the 1940s, where Lovecraft may have emerged after his tour…

It’s 1955, and L. Sprague de Camp is reviewing The Lord of the Rings…

28 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by in de Camp, Historical context

≈ 2 Comments

In August 1955 L. Sprague de Camp reviewed new Conan books and The Fellowship of the Ring, in Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1955.

Worth reading right across the spread, as it’s ‘all of a piece’. For those who have somehow not yet enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, note that his review has plot spoilers for the first volume. At that time the second of the three volumes was not yet published.

Camp must surely have here been the first to draw the comparison between the modus operandi of the ring in the Conan novelette “The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932) and The Lord of the Rings. Had he had the other two volumes, he might also have compared other aspects of LoTR with the Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon. But at that time de Camp was set for a tantalising wait to read the third volume, The Return of the King, which appeared in 1956.

Another interesting bit of historical trivia is that de Camp remarks that “Conan the Conquerer has been published by Boardman” in the UK in 1954, and of course the first volume of The Lord of the Rings appeared in July 1954. I can’t discover exactly when in 1954 the British Conan book was published, but it was obviously a good year to be a young British fantasy reader — if one was savvy enough to avoid the juvenile disaster of confusing 1954’s The Lord of the Flies with The Lord of the Rings.

Less than a year later de Camp went on to note the second volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, in the Science Fiction Quarterly for May 1956. Complete with what must have been a very annoying salvo of massive plot-spoilers for the unwary reader…

It appears that de Camp never similarly reviewed The Return of the King, and thus the entire epic. Which is curious. I can’t find even a brief mention of it from him, which one might have expected after all the build-up he’d given it. But according to The Lord of the Rings, 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (2006)…

L. Sprague de Camp, in Science Fiction Quarterly, reviewed only the first two volumes.

A dastardly plot by the commies of the time, to suppress the book? Something like that happened to some extent and informally over the following decade, but no… it’s more likely that de Camp just quit reviewing for the magazine circa 1957. Because the magazine’s distributor went bust in 1957, and less copies on the news-stands meant that the magazine was only able to struggle on until February 1958. There were no more issues after that.

L. Sprague de Camp does, however, mention the final volume of LoTR in his book Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: the Makers of Heroic Fantasy (1976), where he has a chapter on Tolkien. By then the mood of the times had changed very radically, and 1976 was certainly not 1956. A version of the book’s chapter appeared in Fantastic: Sword & Sorcery and Fantasy Stories for November 1976 (Vol. 25, No. 5), under the title “White Wizard in Tweeds”. This wastes about half the article, first in a tedious defence against the ever-tedious Edmund Wilson (he hated Tolkien, as well as Lovecraft — for him The Lord of the Rings was “juvenile trash”). Then in explaining hobbits to the Fantastic reader who had somehow not heard of them by that time, and giving creaky plot-summaries of each volume. After some potted biography and a too-short account of his one-off meeting with Tolkien, he picks like an antsy fanboy at apparent logic-holes in LoTR. We don’t get any real sense of the “lascivious” passion that de Camp had evidently felt 20 years earlier, on first reading most of LoTR. Perhaps his 1976 article’s comment that “one can find flaws on re-reading” explains his lack of personal sentiment, in all but his obligatory-laudatory final line of the essay (“Few have equalled…” etc). Personally I find that The Lord of the Rings improves and deepens like a coastal shelf on re-reading, if one is paying close attention, but I get the feeling that in his old age de Camp kept getting hung up on what he perceived as niggling surface “flaws”.

Venus in Westminster Street

21 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context, Picture postals

≈ Leave a comment

“The marvellous brilliancy of [the planet (that looks like a star)] Venus toward the close of the month will probably cause many persons ignorant of astronomy to mistake it for an artificial light; indeed, one evening about five years ago Westminster Street was lined with curious and excited watchers who pointed out the planet as the searchlight of an aëroplane.” — H.P. Lovecraft, “The September Sky” from his regular astronomy column.

Judging by the female fashions and the electric trams the picture might be the late 1900s, and thus about the time of the “about five years ago” Lovecraft refers to in his 1914 column. In the picture a sign for the Empire Theater can just about be discerned, in the distance on the right. Illiteracy is still a factor in everyday life — as evidenced by the visual shop signs such as a huge key for a locksmith and key-cutter, and an eye for an optician. Lovecraft’s College Hill is glimpsed, rising up as some smudges of green at the end of the street.