A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

Lovecraft accordingly returned to answering the want ads, although by this time the strain was becoming severe for someone who had no particular business sense and may perhaps have felt the whole activity somewhat beneath his dignity. He writes to Lillian in late September: ‘That day [Sunday] was one of gloom and nerves—more advertisement answering, which has become such a psychological strain that I almost fall unconscious over it!’²² Anyone who has been out of work for any length of time has felt this way.

Meanwhile Lovecraft’s friends were trying to lend a hand. Houdini was impressed with ‘Under the Pyramids’, and in late September put Lovecraft in touch with one Brett Page, the head of a newspaper syndicate; but Page had no actual position to offer. In mid-November Samuel Loveman attempted to set up Lovecraft with the head of the cataloguing department of a bookshop on 59th Street, but this too proved fruitless.

Sonia was not, to be sure, unemployed during this entire period; no doubt she was also answering want ads, and she had been employed in either a milliner’s or a department store for a few weeks in September. But she felt that this position was insecure and was looking around for something better. But then things took a turn very much for the worse. On the evening of 20 October Sonia was stricken with ‘sudden gastric spasms … whilst resting in bed after a day of general ill-feeling’.²³

Lovecraft took her in a taxicab to Brooklyn Hospital, only a few blocks away. She would spend the next eleven days there, finally being released on the 31st.

There can hardly be any question but that Sonia’s illness was in large part nervous or psychological in origin. She must have been acutely worried over the many disasters, financial and otherwise, that had overtaken the couple, and no doubt sensed Lovecraft’s increasing discouragement at his failed job-hunting efforts and perhaps his belief that his entire life had taken a wrong turn. Lovecraft never makes any such statement in his letters of the period, but I have trouble believing that something of the sort was not going through his mind.

Lovecraft was unusually solicitous to Sonia in the hospital: he visited her every day (this representing his first time he had actually set foot in a hospital), bringing her books, stationery, and— what must have been a great sacrifice in the name of married bliss—relearned the game of chess so that he could play it with Sonia. She beat him every time. In turn he began learning to be more independent in the running of a household: he made coffee, a twenty-minute egg, and even spaghetti from Sonia’s written instructions, and showed obvious pride in keeping the place well cleaned and dusted for her return. These remarks on cooking suggest that he had never made a meal for himself up to this time.

One of Sonia’s doctors, Dr Westbrook, actually recommended an operation for the removal of her gall bladder; but Lovecraft—quite consciously remembering that his mother had died of just such an operation—strongly urged Sonia to get a second opinion, and another doctor advised against surgery; either this doctor or Dr Kingman, a nerve specialist, then recommended six weeks’ rest in the country before Sonia resumed work. Accordingly, she checked into a private rest home in New Jersey on 9 November, planning to stay for six days. This was actually a farm run by a Mrs R. A. Craig and her two sons near Somerville, New Jersey, in the central part of the state. Lovecraft himself stayed overnight at the farm, then left the next morning to spend the rest of the week in Philadelphia examining colonial antiquities. Returning on the 15th, he was surprised to find that Sonia had come home the day before, one day early; evidently she had not found the place entirely to her liking. She felt, however, good enough after only six days to resume jobhunting efforts.

Almost immediately after Sonia’s return, a dramatic decision was made: Sonia would leave for a job in the Midwest while Lovecraft would relocate to a smaller apartment in the city. The couple planned to move out of 259 Parkside as early as the end of November, but as it happened the dispersal did not occur until the end of December. Lovecraft’s first choice for a place to settle was Elizabeth, New Jersey, which he had visited earlier in the year and found a delightful haven of colonial antiquity. If this could not be managed, then Lovecraft would opt for Brooklyn Heights, where Loveman and Hart Crane lived.

Lillian came to New York around 1 December to help in the transition. The month of December is a blank, since Lillian stayed the entire month and into early January, so naturally Lovecraft wrote no letters to her; no letters to others have come to light either. The one thing that remains unclear is exactly when or how Sonia secured her job in the Midwest. Neither she nor Lovecraft has anything of consequence to say on the subject.