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

Let us first examine the precise degree to which, in the year 1925, Lovecraft was alone. Sonia’s job at Mabley & Carew’s, the Cincinnati department store, evidently allowed her to make monthly trips of a few days to New York. But as early as late February Sonia had either lost or had resigned from this position. She also spent a short time on two separate occasions in a private hospital in Cincinnati. Accordingly, Sonia returned to Brooklyn for an extended period in February and March, deciding belatedly to take the six weeks’ rest recommended by her doctors. She spent most of the period from late March to early June in the home of a woman physician in Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York.

Sonia spent another extended period in June and July in Brooklyn. In mid-July she secured some sort of position with a hat shop or department store in Cleveland, leaving on the 24th. By mid-October, however, she had again either lost or given up this position (which was on a commission basis). By mid-November at the latest, and probably somewhat earlier, Sonia had secured a new position, this time with Halle’s, then (and, up to about a decade ago, when it went out of business) the leading department store in Cleveland. This position appears to have lasted well into 1926.

The upshot of all this is that Sonia was at 169 Clinton Street for a total of only 89 days in 1925, on nine different occasions as follows: 11–16 January; 3–6 February; 23 February–19 March; 8–11 April ; 2–5 May; 9 June–24 July; 15–20 August; 16–17 September; 16–18 October. She had wanted to come during the Christmas holidays, but work at Halle’s was too heavy to permit it. In the three and a half months that Lovecraft spent in Brooklyn in 1926, Sonia was there for a period of about three weeks, from roughly 15 January to 5 February. In other words, for the fifteen and a half months of Lovecraft’s stay at 169 Clinton Street in 1925–26, Sonia was present for a net total of just over three months at widely scattered intervals; the six weeks in June and July constituted the longest single visit.

If Sonia’s record of employment during this period was chequered, Lovecraft’s was completely hopeless. There are, in the 160,000 words of correspondence to Lillian for 1925–26, only three references to looking through the Sunday Times

want ads for work; none of these came to anything. It is evident that, with Sonia out of the way, Lovecraft simply stopped looking very hard for work. I am not sure there is anything to criticize in this: many individuals who suffer prolonged unemployment become discouraged, and, in spite of the clumsiness and inexperience with which Lovecraft attempted to find work in 1924, he did make the attempt with determination and zeal.

Lovecraft’s job attempts in 1925 were largely a product of various tips he received from his friends. The one that seemed most promising was freelance work on a trade journal in which Arthur Leeds was involved with another man named Yesley. This does not exactly sound like work for which Lovecraft would be suited, but all it really took is facility at writing, which he certainly had. Difficult as it may be to imagine Lovecraft writing advertising copy, we have the evidence in front of us in the form of five such pieces found among his effects (evidently unpublished). R. H. Barlow bestowed upon them the generic title of ‘Commercial Blurbs’. Sadly, the venture did not pan out, and through no fault of Lovecraft’s. In February Morton secured his position with the Paterson Museum; it would last the rest of his life. By mid-July Lovecraft was talking about the possibility that Morton might hire him as an assistant, and this rather dim prospect continued to be bruited about sporadically all the way up to Lovecraft’s departure from New York in April 1926.

There was, of course, money trickling in from Weird Tales. Lovecraft had five stories published in the magazine in 1925. We know the amounts received for three of these: $35 for ‘The Festival’ (January), $25 for ‘The Unnamable’ (July), and $50 for ‘The Temple’ (September); we do not know the amounts for the other two (‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’ (February) and ‘The Music of Erich Zann’ (May)), but they each probably averaged in the $30 range. These five sales make a rough total of $170 for the year—barely equivalent to four months’ rent.