I found an interesting snippet about the post-Lovecraft activity of Winifred Virginia Jackson (1876-1959), a Lovecraft collaborator and amateur journalism colleague from 1918-21. In 1924 Jackson was…

[William Stanley] Braithwaite’s partner and treasurer in the [publishing] house of Brimmer” (George Hutchinson, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, Harvard University Press, p.359).

Braithwaite was… “a self educated black man” (Hutchinson, page 360) and editor-in-chief and founder of his publishing imprint of B. J. Brimmer (c. 1922-1927). One early Brimmer book that Lovecraft may have especially noted was Arthur H. Hayward’s Colonial Lighting (spring 1923), since Lovecraft was fascinated by the history of the lamps of the Colonial era. However, Lovecraft may not have had his attention drawn to the book by Jackson herself, as An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia states… “there is no evidence HPL met or corresponded with her after July 1921”.

The Brimmer book-list appears to have been rather uncommercial. Braithwaite was apparently persuaded or obliged to include books by Virginia herself, her sister-in-law Elizabeth Rhodes Jackson (who had “married a Boston architect”, presumably Winifred’s brother), and other now long-forgotten Boston authors and poets. After about 1925 Brimmer appears to have struggled to keep going. Hutchinson’s claim that the Brimmer imprint lasted until “1927” may be stretching it a bit, since the book The William Stanley Braithwaite Reader states the firm folded by spring 1925. The formal filing for bankruptcy may have been in 1927, but the company was effectively defunct long before that.

If Lovecraft had been romantically involved with the older and glamorous Winifred Virginia Jackson (as some rather fancifully surmise) and had followed through, it’s amusing to think that he could have ended up having his first book published by a black man. Who was, so the surmises claim, also Winifred’s lover.

However, it’s been pointed out that Braithwaite had “white” on his birth certificate, and a newspaper photograph has him looking indistinguishable from white, but the matter is apparently still debatable in certain circles. Evidently Lovecraft at first understood him to be black, on his reading in the newspaper of an award Braithwaite had been given as a “negro poet”. Most likely Braithwaite technically was so, if judged according to the very strict colour-lines of the era. But today he would obviously not be considered so, and presumably the two young men had never met in person at that time. A 1921 letter from Lovecraft states clearly that he had no further contact from Winifred’s partner Braithwaite “after 1919”, and presumably thus he never met him. Some modern academics also claim Jackson herself was black, because she had a few poems published in a black journal of the 1920s, but photos and other records well known to Lovecraftians show she was very obviously white. Nor did Lovecraft see the publications of either Jackson or Braithwaite after circa 1920 — so all-in-all there can be no question that ‘he should have known’ about the Harlem Renaissance that way.

I also found some possible evidence of Jackson’s activity during the time she knew Lovecraft. An advert in Printer’s Ink for 14th Oct 1920 suggests that Jackson may, if the same Winifred Jackson, have been involved in a New York copywriting agency some years before Lovecraft arrived in the city. If so then evidently her radical sympathies did not mean that she could not work for a New York ad agency…

Lovecraft and Braithwaite came into a brief literary contact in February 1930. Braithwaite then produced an annual Anthology Of Magazine Verse. A letter shows that Braithwaite had evidently expressed an anthologist’s interest in an F.B. Long poem that had appeared in Weird Tales. Long had been sent a letter via Weird Tales asking if there were others of that quality to be found in the back-issues. Long had passed the enquiry to his friend Lovecraft who had a complete set of the magazine and an expert’s knowledge of the poetry in it. Lovecraft politely declined to put his own name and poetry forward and could only suggest Clark Ashton Smith — but he recalled that Braithwaite had already recently anthologised Smith. Lovecraft also added a kicker by slyly recommending Moe’s Doorways to Poetry (a cherished Moe-Lovecraft project), and he remarked… “There is no doubt but that you will receive a copy upon its issuance”. Was there then a review or note on this in the Anthology? Probably not, since CORE states of the Anthology… “Publication suspended 1930”, suggesting that Long’s poem may never have made it to the Anthology and that any review or notice of Doorways to Poetry would never have appeared there.

I had another look at Albert A. Sandusky, a rather mysterious friend of Lovecraft. We don’t have a birth date, and only have a c.1934? death date for him. He lived in Cambridge, Mass., and this cutting from the Cambridge Chronicle, 7th May 1910, has him performing in a ninth-grade school play…

It seems that, in America, “ninth grade” in May is likely to mean most of the class will have recently hit 15 years of age? If so then that would put his birth date at c.1895. Update: thanks to Miss Allen in the States for pointing out that it’s more like 14. So c.1896.

The same newspaper has him in the city’s school graduation lists in June 1915, where he is named as Albert August Sandusky (which I think is the first time that Lovecraftians have known his middle name?). Sadly this new middle name doesn’t lead anywhere in the online archives, but it might prove useful to those who have access to commercial geneaological databases.

So when the amateur journal The Torpedo (Sept 1913) called him the “youthful editor and publisher” of his Boys’ World magazine, he would have been aged around 17.

There was a Bertha Sandusky who made her way through the Cambridge school system some years ahead of Albert. She is recorded, on her marriage in June 1913, as “of Elm Street” and the daughter of August Sandusky of Cambridge. I’d suspect — given the name, and the fact that Elm Street was also where the school play (see above) was being performed — that August Sandusky may also have been the father of Albert August Sandusky. If so, then the father has left no other trace online.

Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the Books at Brown Lovecraft special issue, mentions (p.56) that Sandusky became a policeman.

Imagine H.P. Lovecraft trying all the fairground rides at the beach, and then as a finale hurtling down the biggest roller-coaster. It happened, perhaps several times. In November 1921 his fellow amateur Mrs. Miniter wrote up a report of the Boston Convention of amateur journalists of July 1921. This had taken the amateurs to Boston’s Revere Beach amusements park, Boston’s equivalent of Coney Island…

… he [Lovecraft] tried all the soporific stunts at Revere” … “…to Revere Beach, where Mr. Lovecraft dropped eighty-five feet and was all over.” (Lovecraft Remembered, p.83).

George Houtain expanded on a Revere Beach visit, in a memoir of Lovecraft…

… we all journeyed to Revere Beach. Here Howard Lovecraft and Albert Sandusky did the eighty-five-foot-drop switchback three times in succession and complained bitterly of the tameness of it all. The greatest fun was with [the ride] “Over The Falls” [possibly this was earlier “Neptune’s Frolic”? — see picture below]. After passing through various chambers of trick floors, we were escorted singly and in pairs to a little elevator, where sitting down we expectantly waited either for the elevator to drop or a curtain to go up and the show to commence. Before we could adjust our thoughts, the whole front suddenly gave way, the seat propelled us forward , and in a second we were bounding down the most billowy waves one could imagine. Picture, if you will, the philosophical form of one Henry Padget-Lowe, Edward Softly, Theobald Jr., H.P.L., popping out and coming bouncing toward us. It was a screaming scream.” (Lovecraft Remembered, p.88-89).

His rollercoaster companion Albert Sandusky was the editor of Boys’ World, about six or seven years younger than Lovecraft and so much given to slang that Lovecraft called him “Wisecrack Sandusky” on paper. “Lovecraft met him frequently during trips to the Boston area”, apparently, although little else seems to be known about him other than his early involvement as a boy printer for Lovecraft 1915-1916, and his editing of the Quill magazine for the Hub Journalist Club c. 1923.

Here are some of the other attractions Lovecraft could have enjoyed, including a palmist, Hell Gate, Neptune’s Frolic, Dragons Gorge, Japanese Ping-Pong, a “Fatal Wedding” theatre show (a grand guignol?), an animal show with monkeys, the Virginia Reel, The Whirlpool, and more.

It’s also known that Lovecraft visited Coney Island, the world-famous set of amusements, at least twice while living in New York. We also know he enjoyed several attractions there, including the $100,000 Fun House called “The Pit” which had opened in 1923.

Additional information, including addresses, for Edward Harold Cole (1892-1966), a long-time amateur journalism friend of Lovecraft, who… “frequently visited Cole in the Boston area in the 1920s and 1930s” (An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia). Cole and Lovecraft corresponded from 1914 onwards, and the letters survive but don’t appear to have been yet collected in a single volume book form.

Cole was born in Boston. Harvard notes he lived at 36 Tower St., Somerville, a suburb of Boston in the early/mid 1910s. He was a Harvard freshman in the class of 1915, where he won a scholarship. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia has details of his brief marriage — his wife died in 1919, the year after she gave birth to their son E. Sherman Cole. Cole became administrative assistant at Chauncy Hall School, Boston, and was later Head of Department of English there, with some sources also having him as head of History. He published his Lovecraft edition of The Olympian (Autumn 1940) from Wollaston, Massachusetts. The book Harvard Class of 1915 (1935) lists him as living at 53 Freeman St., Wollaston, Massachusetts — confirming the same address in Lovecraft’s 1937 address list.