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

But reading books was clearly not enough. One of the most remarkable passages in Lovecraft’s letters to his aunts is on the subject of personal possessions, and it is an accurate gauge of his temper during the worst of his New York period. Lillian had made the comment (perhaps as a consequence of Lovecraft’s long-winded account of purchasing his best suit) that ‘possessions are a burden’; Lovecraft, in August 1925, flung this remark back in her face:

It so happens that I am unable to take pleasure or interest in anything but a mental re-creation of other & better days— for in sooth, I see no possibility of ever encountering a really congenial milieu or living among civilised people with old Yankee historic memories again—so in order to avoid the madness which leads to violence & suicide I must cling to the few shreds of old days & old ways which are left to me. Therefore no one need expect me to discard the ponderous furniture & paintings & clocks & books which help to keep 454 always in my dreams. When they go, I shall go, for they are all that make it possible for me to open my eyes in the morning or look forward to another day of consciousness without screaming in sheer desperation & pounding the walls & floor in a frenzied clamour to be waked up out of the nightmare of ‘reality’ & my own room in Providence. Yes— such sensitivenesses of temperament are very inconvenient when one has no money—but it’s easier to criticise than to cure them. When a poor fool possessing them allows himself to get exiled & sidetracked through temporarily false perspective & ignorance of the world, the only thing to do is to let him cling to his pathetic scraps as long as he can hold them. They are life for him.³

A treatise could be written on this poignant passage. How Lillian reacted to her only nephew speaking with apparent seriousness— or, at least, with extreme bitterness—about suicide and screaming and pounding the walls, it is not possible to say.

There is a very curious sidelight to this entire matter. Winfield Townley Scott claims that, according to Samuel Loveman, Lovecraft during the latter part of his New York period ‘carried a phial of poison with him’ (Loveman’s words) so as to be able to put an end to his existence if things became too unbearable.⁴ In all honesty, I find this notion preposterous. I flatly believe that Loveman has invented this story. Loveman turned against Lovecraft’s memory later in life, largely on the belief that Lovecraft’s anti-Semitism (about which he learned from Sonia as early as 1948) made him a hypocrite. It is also possible that Loveman simply misunderstood something that Lovecraft had said—perhaps something meant as a sardonic joke. There is certainly no independent confirmation of this anecdote, and no mention of it by any other friend or correspondent; and one suspects that Lovecraft would have confided in Long more than in Loveman on a matter of such delicacy. I think it is quite out of character for Lovecraft to have come so close to suicide even during this difficult period; indeed, the general tenor of his letters to his aunts, even taking into consideration such passages as I have quoted above, is by no means uniformly depressed or lugubrious.

The subject of Lovecraft’s return was broached again in December. At this time he says that ‘S H fully endorses my design of an ultimate return to New England, & herself intends to seek industrial openings in the Boston district after a time’, then proceeds to sing Sonia’s praises in a very touching way in spite of its almost bathetic tone:

S H’s attitude on all such matters is so kindly & magnanimous that any design of permanent isolation on my part would seem little short of barbaric, & wholly contrary to the principles of taste which impel one to recognise & revere a devotion of the most unselfish quality & uncommon intensity. I have never beheld a more admirable attitude of disinterested & solicitous regard; in which each financial shortcoming of mine is accepted & condoned as soon as it is proved inevitable, & in which acquiescence is extended even to my statements … that the one essential ingredient of my life is a certain amount of quiet & freedom for creative literary composition … A devotion which can accept this combination of incompetence & aesthetic selfishness without a murmur, contrary tho’ it must be to all expectations originally entertained; is assuredly a phenomenon so rare, & so akin to the historic quality of saintliness, that no one with the least sense of artistic proportion could possibly meet it with other than the keenest reciprocal esteem, respect, admiration, & affection.⁵

What I believe has inspired this long-winded passage is a suggestion by Lillian that Lovecraft simply come home and forget about Sonia, leading Lovecraft to counter that he cannot countenance ‘any design of permanent isolation’ from her given her boundlessly patient and understanding attitude.