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.

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.