I\u2019m now further into reading the Gaplin letters, in the new expanded volume. Here is my second batch of notes.<\/p>\n
* In early 1917 Lovecraft states that he likes the travel films of Burton Holmes (p. 176), seen at the Strand in Providence. Homes shot artful travel documentaries on 35mm, and appears to have made about thirty shorts a year. Here is a small selection of his travel films which could have been seen around this time, fronting the main movie…<\/p>\n
1916:<\/p>\n
The Cliff Dwellers Of America.
\nAmong the Head Hunters.
\nPicturesque Prague.
\nMotoring In England.
\nBritish Egypt.
\nThe Real Streets Of Cairo.
\nThe Lower Nile.
\nThee Upper Nile.<\/p>\n1917:<\/p>\n
Quaint Quebec.
\nOn the Great Glacier.
\nFruitful Florida.
\nKyoto, the Ancient Capital.<\/p>\n1918:<\/p>\n
Fire Walkers Of Bega.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Some readers may also be interested in his 1947 \u201cHistoric New England\u201d colour documentary, 21 minutes, if it survives.<\/p>\n
* When Lovecraft registered for military duty he gave his occupation as \u201cwriter\u201d. He tells Galpin that he was reassured that he might therefore still be of use\u2026 even if he failed the physical. (p. 182)<\/p>\n
* He assumed he had read all of Sherlock Holmes by 1918, but a footnote itemises what he had read by 1927: three collections (Adventures, Memoirs, Return), three novels (Scarlet, Four, Hound) and two unnamed \u201cmediocre\u201d stories appearing circa 1908. I assume these were the 1908 tales \u201cThe Adventure of Wisteria Lodge\u201d and \u201cThe Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans\u201d. This shows he would have been up-to-date to summer 1908, but after that lost touch. He would have missed the rest of the tales included in the book collections His Last Bow<\/em> (1917) and all of the tales in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes<\/em> (1927). Thus it would be a mistake for scholars to assume Lovecraft had read\u2026 \u201cThe Adventure of the Devil\u2019s Foot\u201d; \u201cThe Valley of Fear\u201d; \u201cThe Adventure of the Sussex Vampire\u201d or any other of the Case-Book tales. A pity, as if he\u2019d have stuck with Holmes just a bit longer he would likely have enjoyed \u201cThe Adventure of the Devil\u2019s Foot\u201d with its macabre plot and Cornwall\/Africa combination.<\/p>\n
* He owned all of Prof. Appleton\u2019s chemistry instruction books (p. 211) as a boy. Relevant to his later work because of how the pictures line up so nicely with the themes of his later stories.<\/p>\n
* \u201cI tried to write a comic opera when about ten years old\u201d (p. 214).<\/p>\n
* He mentions the \u201cSpanish Influenza\u201d explicitly (p. 216). He realises around 18th November 1918, that\u2026 \u201cThis influenza is nothing light\u201d, which seems a bit of an understatement and perhaps suggest he was behind with his reading of the newspapers. Statistics show that peak deaths in Providence occurred 13th- 14th October, and Boston had seen 3,700 deaths by the 16th October 1918.<\/p>\n
* He had seen and strongly approved of the movie Hearts of the World<\/em> (p. 219). This was a big-budget D.W. Griffith \/ Lillian Gish movie, partly filmed on location and depicting German brutality and atrocities against civilians during the invasions early in the First World War. Gish and Griffith later thought the movie was too anti-German, though that was at a time when the atrocities had been very assiduously \u2018written out of history\u2019 \u2014 seemingly by those who instead preferred to show the Allies (British and Americans) in a negative light. But the very widespread atrocities did happen and they were later unearthed by post- 1990 historians and are now copiously documented. If anything, the movie now appears to have underplayed the matter.<\/p>\n
* Lovecraft lists three humorous spoofs he wrote in early summer 1923, \u201cThe Wonderful Hills\u201d, \u201cA Day in the Country\u201d, and \u201cUncle John\u2019s Legacy\u201d. (p. 225). These may have been published in an amateur journal, but are now lost. They \u201cconvulsed\u201d Lovecraft\u2019s future wife with \u201cmirth\u201d.<\/p>\n
* Lovecraft states that his uncle Dr. Clark had made a deep study of \u201c\u2018descent of fire\u2019 and legends pertaining thereto\u201d. (p. 226). This is the idea of \u2018the descent of fire from the heavens\u2019 and its study appears to have involved examining various legends and lore for traces of early attempts to explain storm lightning, ball- lightning, \u2018St. Elmo\u2019s Fire\u2019 and suchlike. I would guess probably also the apparent \u2018trapping\u2019 of sparks (rubbed amber, flints, static electricity, etc). Such things were seen, circa the middle of the 19th century, to be an ancient current in human belief that was different from ancient sun worship and sun-lore. This stems from Muller and others in Germany who saw the philosophy of the ancients as centred around the Dawn-time, and thus the coming Sun. But by the 1870 the scatter-gun followers of his idea were seeing ‘sun-gods’ in every fairy-tale and local old-wives tale, and a basically sensible theory was made to seem ridiculous. Being someone more interested in ‘descent of fire’ would by the 1880s have made one something of a heretic against ‘the consensus’. Lovecraft does not state that he had read his uncle’s work or the notes for it, but it might be assumed that he had at least talked with his uncle on the topic.<\/p>\n
* Lovecraft talks of the sinister odour of old Puritan houses (p. 232), a significant factor in their macabre allure for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m now further into reading the Gaplin letters, in the new expanded volume. Here is my second batch of notes. …<\/p>\n