My thanks to Gregory for letting me know that Meade and Penny Frierson’s HPL ‘zine (1972-74) is now free and public on Fanac.org. 144 pages, plus three supplements together totalling around 170 pages. Supp. #1 is letters, in response to HPL.

It’s rich stuff, with HPL #1 fronted with memoirs as well as having fiction in the back. There’s also “HPL and Films” by Shea. Here are just a few biographical highlights:

Interview with Frank Belknap Long:

SCHIFF: What was your impression of him when you met him?

LONG: Well, he was sitting on the stoop outside Son­ia’s apartment. He was very stout at that time. He became stout briefly for about 2 or 3 years. He looked much older than he was – he was only about 32 at that time, but he looked 40 or more. I knew it was Lovecraft as I approached and he was very glad to see me and we went inside and I met Sonia for the first time. As I recall, we spent a very pleasant afternoon. … But he was not much given to relaxing, and being casually human or jolly. Back-thumping and a bone­-crushing handclasp were alien to his nature he had a very good voice for reading supernatural horror stories. You see, a horror story could hardly be read by a Babbitt or a guy who’s a Rotarian. His voice was that of a cultivated New Englander and it went very well with the stories. [On viewing old towns and sites, such as in Newport and Providence in summer] what a wonderful guide Howard was [when] touring these ancient by-ways. [Impressions of HPL] Every individual has qualities that are lost forever when he dies. You can’t bring them back by just describing them. I don’t think I’d attempt to — I’d simply say you get to know him best by reading his letters and his stories. He had the qualities that you usually associate with a man of genius.

Long’s letter in Supp. #3 adds a little more…

I can no more picture him so much as bending and tracing a Cabbalistic circle on the floor with a piece of chalk, even whimsically and half in jest, than I can imagine him draped across a bar in the last stages of alcoholic stu­por.

[HPL]”Wasn’t as prudish as is commonly assumed. In fact, he wasn’t prudish at all. But he was puritanic, which in many ways is quite a different thing. The early New England Puritans were the opposite of prudes – could be candid, even coarse, in the realm of sex. Prudery as we know it today, largely, came in with the Victorians. It constituted a Victorian hang-up and Howard loathed everything Victorian.

I’m sure old Mrs. Brundage’s drawings [for the later covers of Weird Tales] merely caused him to chuckle with wry amusement. He thought them commercially shoddy and flamboyant, but he never would have dreamed of tearing off the covers of WT.

Price has a long “Astrological Analysis” which should not be overlooked due to its esoteric nature. In his earlier 1949 “Stars” version of this Price had slipped in many perceptive biographical observations of HPL, among with the astrological flummery.

Followed by “Reminiscences” of HPL by Price, as transcribed from a 1971 convention panel which was sadly cut very short. An earlier speaker had been allowed to over-run and the convention lunch was looming. Not in Lovecraft Remembered.

The Puritan [HPL] was as much at home with the Vieux Carre crowd as he was in his sedate native Providence. One would have thought that he had spent all his life with wine-bibbers and people addicted to riotous living. Some say that he was at ease because he drank spiked punch, not realizing that it was spiked. This is error! We never served punch in the Vieux Carre. HPL needed no grog. The guests gathered about HPL. He held them fascinated. It was beautiful to see how he was charming them. They did not know who he was. He didn’t bother to tell them. His presence was enough.

Price makes it clear that at that time the New Orleans district was a mix of long-time residents as well as artists and writers, and it was far from being gentrified and thus un-liveable for ordinary “every-day standard folk”. He also distinguishes his area from the neighbouring district of brothels.

Supp. #3 has a letter from Price, but nothing is added. #3 also has the long “A MEMOIR OF JACK GRILL By George T. Wetzel”, Grill being a key early Lovecraft collector.

Also of interest at Fanac.org, Howard Phillips Lovecraft – Memoirs, Critiques and Bibliographies (1955).