Lovecraft postcard on offer on the Spanish eBay.

Mailed Providence, 10.30pm, 11th Aug 1933. To Charles D. Hornig, on the subject of reprinting a long (“would make a small book”) article formerly published by Paul W. Cook, presumably Supernatural Horror in Literature. Lovecraft is suggesting he might revise it for its second publication in a new fanzine. The postcard ends with congraulations on Hornig’s new “congenial” job as a staffer with Gernsback.

Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (p.599) mentions the same address…

“The new weird magazine — Fantasy Fan, 137 W. Grand St., Elizabeth, N.J. — offers an 18 months’ subscription for a dollar. Klarkash-Ton & I are contributing old stuff — no pay, but good way to get…”

So this must be the then seventeen year old Charles D[erwin] Hornig (1916-1999). He was a hard-left socialist who edited the Fantasy Fan magazine (it had an 18 month run, to sixty subscribers, Sept 1933-Feb 1935). His magazine contained a column called “The Boiling Point”, which published heated disputes between Lovecraft and others. Fantasy Fan also published a revised version of Supernatural Horror in Literature, Oct 1933-Feb 1935, although the zine closed before the serialisation was complete. FF also provided an outlet for four of the Fungi from Yuggoth poems.

Hornig was also on the Gernsback staff as editor of Wonder Stories from circa summer 1933 until circa May 1936. Later Silberkliet’s Science Fiction magazine was “edited rather stodgily by Charles D. Hornig” (Damon Knight, The Futurians, p.10). Hornig was known for being heavy-handed with his rejection letters… “Apparently Hornig got a real charge out of rejecting stories” (Heavy Planet and Other Science Fiction Stories, Milton A. Rothman and ‎Darrell Schweitzer, p.305).

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?

In Lovecraft Remembered Kleiner mentions a New York friend of Lovecraft, Ernest La Touche Hancock (b. Shanghai, 1857 — d. NYC 1926). Lovecraft knew Hancock in New York, and liked him enough to lend him his own books. But then Hancock died suddenly in 1926. The address at which the precious books were kept was not known to the Lovecraft circle, so Kleiner surmises that they were probably never returned to Lovecraft.

Hancock was an accomplished and long-standing commercial light comic versifier, at a time when one could actually make a living in that manner through syndication in newspapers. He once even managed to land a comic poem in the Hog Fancier’s Gazette. He was also sometimes a humorous lyric writer for musical theatre, and an occasional light music critic.

Lovecraft may not have initially known Hancock’s verse from various popular magazines such as Judge’s Library: a monthly magazine of fun, Harper’s, Lippincott’s, and Puck etc. — since Lovecraft didn’t confess to reading such magazines in his youth. But on meeting Hancock he may have recalled the name and poetry from his old copies of Railroad Man’s Magazine (1906-), a Munsey magazine of which he had once been an avid cover-to-cover reader and subscriber. Hancock had also published in Munsey magazines such as The Cavalier, and Argosy All-Story Weekly.

Hancock would have greatly interested Lovecraft because he was uncompromisingly British and Imperialist. He was a member of the St. George Society around 1921. A flavour of their Anglo-American fervour was once given by the New York Times…

ST. GEORGE SOCIETY ANNUAL BANQUET; Three Hundred Guests Gather at Anglo-American Love Feast. Patriotic Songs of Both Nations Sung and Cheers Given for King Edward and President McKinley. (New York Times c.1900)

One wonders if Hancock may have invited Lovecraft along as a guest, circa 1924-5?

Hancock had been born in British Shanghai, China, the son of Herbert Matthews who was an attache to the British Embassy there. Hancock schooled at a public school in England, and was later to be found in British India as the editor of The Rangoon Times 1879-c.1880. Hancock had traveled extensively in Egypt, perhaps shortly after leaving The Rangoon Times, and one wonders if this experience meant that he might have been consulted by Lovecraft on the accuracy of the local colour used in “Under the Pyramids”?

Around that time he wrote a book for boys, A Mesmeric Ordeal (c.1880), now incredibly obscure but seemingly published under the name “E.L.H.” Mermerism means hypnotism, so one wonders if he had once had an interest in the subject?

He then returned to England and lived in Marylebone, central London, during the mid-late Victorian period. There he was editor of The Windsor Gazette 1882—?. So he would have been able to vividly describe to Lovecraft the great London fogs of the 1880s, and probably many details of London high-society and the literary/artistic life of that time.

In 1877 he married a Jersey City socialite’s daughter, Charlotte Youlin, against his family’s wishes. They settled in New York City in 1890 or 1891, thus missing the decadent “Yellow ’90s” period in English literary life. Hancock settled down in NYC as a journalist and newspaper editor, living at West 133th Street, Manhattan. He would have been able to tell Lovecraft many tales of the poets of New York in the 1890s.

Hancock was also something of an early historian of the comic arts around that time, publishing in 1902 a multi-part history “American Caricature and Comic Art”. Those were the days of The Yellow Kid, and Krazy Kat, and the pungent satirical editorial cartoon. Hancock could have no doubt given Lovecraft a decent ten-minute history lesson on the American proto-comics, if he had so wished.

Hancock had moved to the “Bronx Assembly District 34” by 1910, having been divorced with public bitterness in January 1903 (unfaithfulness with unspecified others was given by newspapers as the cause). In the 1909 Who’s Who in New York Hancock was recorded at 134 West, 37th St., New York City, about a mile south of Central Park. He appears to have known Brooklyn well, and perhaps before 1910. He was a key member, from the early years of the twentieth century, of the Brooklyn Press Club and the Blue Pencil Club of New York (not to be confused with the later amateur journalism club of the same name, of Brooklyn). The latter was a well equipped private gentleman’s club just along the street from the Brooklyn Citizen offices. His catch phrase at the Brooklyn Press Club was a roaring call to the Club’s head assistant, George: “More typewriter paper, George!” He later had an office above 5 Willoughby Street, the Brooklyn Press Club premises.

By 1916 he was recorded at 170 Nassau St, NYC, a half-mile NW of the Brooklyn Bridge — although that was also the address of New York Sun, so it was probably simply a convenient mailing address. At around this time his two sons were in the silent movie newsreel business in New York City, being key founders of Fox News (1919–1930).

Hancock was certainly living in the Kings/Flatbush section of Brooklyn when Lovecraft knew him, c.1925-6. At that time he was in his 60s, and was probably semi-retired. But the exact address still remains unknown.

Back in the spring of 1911 he had been made the Editor of the new society weekly The Sandpiper, which covered the summer season on “the Rockaway peninsula” (Rockaway, Queens, a ten mile strip of resort coast more popularly known as The Rockaways). The Sandpiper was published from there, at Arverne. One might suspect that he was chosen as Editor because that was where he chose to holiday in the summer. One of his poems runs…

You will find that it will pay
To invest down Arverne way

A Brooklyn almanac of 1912 confirms an Arverne address for Hancock, though does not specify the street and number. Possibly Lovecraft’s lost books were left in one of the summer cottages there, some time in 1926?

This appears to be the only online image of him…

It appears that only the Harvard University scan of Desultory Verse has this front picture (there are two other scans online, from other libraries), but it is currently locked down by Google Books and is unavailable except as a thumbnail.