The collaborative story “Poetry and the Gods”, by Anna Helen Crofts and H.P. Lovecraft, appeared The United Amateur in September 1920. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia states nothing is known about Croft other than her address at 343 West Main St., North Adams, Mass. and that she “appeared sporadically in the amateur press”. However Crofts was traced through the Adams city directories in The Fossil #341, July 2009, in Kenneth W. Faig, Jr.’s “The strange story of “Poetry and the Gods” by Anna Helen Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe”. Other details were also found. An obituary and further details were later unearthed and published in The Fossil #344, April 2010. Donovan K. Loucks in 2010 photographed her house and grave which shows her as Anna Helen Crofts McCuen (1889-1975), who married Joseph B. McCuen (1879-1963).

Given the biographical materials so far discovered on Crofts, Lovecraft presumably collaborated on “Poetry and the Gods” in the summer before Crofts took up a new salaried job in teaching. I have dug up the press notice of her appointment and salary, in the North Adams Transcript of 9th June 1920, with her appointment presumably being for the September 1920 term…

This appears to have been her first substantial teaching post, judging from the dates in the obituary. I have also found that Crofts published several articles in Vocational guidance magazine (organ of the National Vocational Guidance Association). One of her articles was titled “Guidance versus Knights of the Road” (1932).

More interestingly I have also found some of the titles of her other fiction or poetry, as listed in The FictionMags Index…

   “Le Silent”, (short story), The Tryout Feb 1918.
   “To Autumn”, (poem), The Vagrant Jun 1918.
   “War Literature”, (article), The Tryout Apr 1919.

I’ve encountered no mention of her story “Le Silent” online, but the title makes it sound as if it might have been of interest to Lovecraft. Faig wonders why Lovecraft collaborated with her, and suggests i) her election as an officer of the United amateur movement in July 1920 and ii) the striking blank verse extracts she borrowed (uncredited) from Elizabeth J. Coatsworth to adorn “Poetry and the Gods”. Lovecraft had two poems (“A Winter Wish” and “Laeta: A Lament”) in the same Feb 1918 Tryout issue, and so (if The FictionMags Index is correct, and they haven’t mis-labelled a poem as a story), he would have seen her earlier work. Perhaps “Le Silent” is why he collaborated with her? The story “Le Silent” doesn’t appear to be online, nor is it collected anywhere that I can find details for.

The article by Faig in The Fossil #341 reports one other story by her, but it is not “Le Silent”…

   “S.T. Joshi credits Miss Crofts with at least one further story in the amateur press, “Life” (United Amateur, June 1921)”.

I cannot find online details of that story either, and neither “Life” nor “Le Silent” appears to be available online or collected. Nor can I find any trace of them being described or dismissed by Lovecraftians.

I can add just a little more to the work on Crofts published in The Fossil, in the form of this school art worksheet by her, in The School Arts Magazine, Vol.20, Sept 1920 to June 1921…

It seems that the “25 West 57th Street” address — where Lovecraft’s wife Sonia opened her first hat shop, just off Fifth Avenue — had long been a location for upmarket hat retail, judging by these online snippets:

“Fresh with ideas from Paris and elsewhere, Herman Tappe opened up his own emporium in New York City in May of 1907. At first, he specialized in ladies’ hats” […] “He opened the House of Tappe’ at 25 West 57th Street” circa 1910.

Then in 1918…

“Doane-Evette, a new millinery concern, has leased the store formerly occupied by Tappe at 25 West 57th Street, New York, taking over the former Lewison mansion.”

After Tappe moved, the store had been advertised for rent as…

“This is an exceptional opportunity to lease a showroom 25 x 90 feet, also a workroom of the same size with executive offices. In the heart of the most exclusive millinery center to be found anywhere in America”.

Doane-Evette filed a notice of bankruptcy in the New York press in February 1919. That she failed so quickly may have been due to the disruption in supply lines from Paris in the aftermath of the Armistice. But it may also indicate that the expense of running such a store was considerable. Less than a decade later, Sonia’s hat shop at the same address would also collapse within months.

It seems surprising that Sonia’s store, opening there in the mid 1920s, has left no trace in the online record. Perhaps something of that size and location was thought not to need press advertising, or the relevant directories and trade publications have not yet been scanned and placed online? Perhaps the sheer speed of its collapse (a few months, it seems) meant that she had no chance to built up a wad of profits that could be spent on advertising?

Dudley Charles Newton (1864-1954) of New York and St. Augustine, Florida, was another mysterious friend of Lovecraft. His dates are from S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence, who states that almost nothing is known about Newton. Presumably Joshi had the dates from The Unknown Lovecraft by Kenneth W. Faig Jr. Newton was Lovecraft’s elderly guide to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1931. He doesn’t appear to have been a correspondent of Lovecraft, and is missing from the 1937 address list.

He first appears in the online record in Club Men of New York: Their Clubs, College Alumni Associations (1902), listed as “NEWTON, DUDLEY C, millinery, …” Millinery being the profession of making ladies’ hats.

A Charlotte Griffing Griswold married a Dudley Charles Newton on 12th October 1904, on Long Island, New York. She died, age 28, on 8th April 1907 — and is buried in Guilford, Connecticut. A “Dudley C. Newton”, of Georgetown in Connecticut, is recorded in the Connecticut Motor Vehicle Register as owning a vehicle in summer 1915. This location is about 30 miles NE of New York City, suggesting he may have motored in to work in New York City. It seems he did, since he was a senior millinery buyer on Fifth Avenue.

A Dudley C. Newton left New York on the transatlantic ship Caledonia, bound for Glasgow in Scotland, on 14th June 1913. Presumably this was a buying trip to the Scottish tweed industry.

There is a 52 year old Dudley C. Newton, listed as disembarking at Ellis Island in New York on the transatlantic ship Chicago, from Bordeaux in France, on 19th July 1917. His age on the ship’s passenger list is right, if he was born 1864. One has to assume that this is Newton returning from Europe because of the American entry into the First World War on 6th April 1917. This appears to have been so, since we known that he brought back with him a copy of the Paris edition of The New York Herald, suggesting he had been in Paris. This is evidenced by the Millinery Trade Review (Volume 42, 1917, p.106), a New York trade journal which noted…

Paris Takes Note of Arrivals: A copy of the Paris edition of The New York Herald of July 1st, brought back by Dudley C. Newton, contains the following: “The Autumn millinery season for foreign buyers is due to open this week, but the…”

The Paris supposition is confirmed elsewhere in the same issue, which has a short article on Newton’s experiences…

“Nevertheless [despite the war], men and women buyers from the large department and wholesale millinery stores have braved these [ocean] dangers repeatedly since the submarine became a menace and have lived to return with gratitude. Dudley C. Newton, of Scully Brothers and Co., accompanied by F.T. Bartlett of The Lafayette Importing Company, returned to an American port, July 18th, having sailed for this side from Bordeaux. Both men had bought extensively of flowers [presumably silk, presumably for hats? …] “Hope I won’t see Paris again, under its present conditions, for a long long time” [he said, and reported the ship attacked by u-boats on the return to New York]”.

Given Newton’s going to Paris to buy flowers (presumably silk ones for hats) might there then be some connection of Newton to the work of Sonia H. Greene in her New York dept. store employment? Or (more likely) with her ill-fated independent hat shop just off New York’s Fifth Avenue? Could Newton in 1931 have been a retired professional colleague of Sonia? Perhaps one of her key suppliers or senior industry contacts in the hat-trade? If so, then this would suggest how Lovecraft knew Dudley Charles Newton and also why he was not noted as a correspondent in the 1937 diary.

His employers Scully Brothers & Co.. Inc. of New York, do appear to have been heavily involved in the hat trade at the time Sonia and Lovecraft were in New York, and in a very upmarket way since they were sited on Fifth Avenue and in Paris. In 1919 the Millinery Trade Review records them as…

“Scully Brothers & Company 417 Fifth Ave. NEW YORK and PARIS, 42 Rue de Paradis, HATS OF QUALITY UNSUPPASSED”

Scully Bros. later moved to 32 West 47th Street around 1920 or 1921. They are recorded as having patented a number of “N.Y. Ladies’ trimmed hats.” in 1922. They also later made winter shoulder capes which included “all-wool tartan plaid” linings, perhaps suggesting why Newton would have embarked on his ship to Scotland rather than London in summer 1913, since he could then have visited the weavers of the Scottish tartan industry.

I also wonder if he may be the same Dudley C. Newton who wrote credited (and possibly syndicated?) crosswords for newspapers in the early 1940s? This is one from the Montreal Gazette…