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

Most of the time, however, Lovecraft struck out on lone trips of exploration. On the 13th he climbed Governor’s Mountain (1823 feet above sea level). The next day he called on his old amateur friend Arthur Goodenough and then went across the Connecticut River into New Hampshire to climb Mount Wantastiquet. On the 18th he went to Deerfield and Greenfield in Massachusetts by bus. On the 17th Lovecraft, Orton, and Walter J. Coates went to Arthur Goodenough’s home in Brattleboro for a literary conclave with several other local writers—a gathering that was written up in the Brattleboro Reformer.

⁵ Another newspaper item was an article on Lovecraft by Vrest Orton entitled ‘A Weird Writer Is In Our Midst’, published in the Brattleboro Reformer

for 16 June. It appeared in a column called ‘The Pendrifter’, conducted by Charles Crane. On the afternoon of the 21st a neighbour, Charley Lee, took Lovecraft to meet an eccentric farmer named Bert G. Akley, a self-taught painter and photographer of much native skill. Lovecraft was captivated with this ‘veritable jack-of-all-trades’ who none the less ‘retains the primitiveness of the agrestic yeoman’.⁶

On Friday, 29 June, Lovecraft moved on to another leg of his journey as distinctive as his Vermont stay; for Edith Miniter, the old-time amateur, almost demanded that Lovecraft pay her a visit in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where she was residing with her cousin, Evanore Beebe. He stayed for eight days, and was charmed by the vast array of antiques collected by Beebe, the seven cats and two dogs who had the run of the place, and especially by the spectral local folklore Miniter told him. In ‘Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections’ (1934) Lovecraft writes:

I saw the ruinous, deserted old Randolph Beebe house where the whippoorwills cluster abnormally, and learned that these birds are feared by the rustics as evil psychopomps. It is whispered that they linger and flutter around houses where death is approaching, hoping to catch the soul of the departed as it leaves. If the soul eludes them, they disperse in quiet disappointment; but sometimes they set up a chorused clamour of excited, triumphant chattering which makes the watchers turn pale and mutter—with that air of hushed, awestruck portentousness which only a backwoods Yankee can assume—’They got ‘im!’

Finally, in mid-July, Lovecraft prepared for his southern jaunt. Catching trains to New York and then to Philadephia, he reached Baltimore on 11 July. Although the bulk of the town was unmistakably Victorian, he found one poignant landmark—Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in the Westminster Presbyterian Churchyard. He was planning to go directly from Baltimore to Washington, but the colonial relics of Annapolis proved a fatal temptation; and they were no disappointment. That evening Lovecraft left for Washington, spending the next three days there. At this point yet another temptation proved alluring—an excursion to the Endless Caverns in New Market, Virginia. This was a good four hours by bus from Washington, but the rate was so cheap ($2.50) that Lovecraft could ill resist. Having written about caves from boyhood, he found that the chance actually to visit one was not to be denied. As with his entire trip, this proved highly stimulating to his imagination.

Shortly after returning to Providence Lovecraft wrote a lengthy account of his spring travels, ‘Observations on Several Parts of America’. It is the first of several lengthy travelogues—some of the others are ‘Travels in the Provinces of America’ (1929), ‘An Account of Charleston’ (1930), and A Description of the Town of Quebeck (1930–31)—and it is among the best. Its flawless capturing of eighteenth-century diction is matched by the deftness with which it weaves travel impressions, history, and personal asides into a smoothly flowing narrative.

Certain practical souls have shed bitter tears at Lovecraft’s ‘wasting’ his time writing these lengthy accounts, which were manifestly produced with no idea of publication and—in the cases of the latter two documents mentioned above—with not even the prospect of meeting any other eye than their author’s. Here is one of many occasions in which later commentators have tried to live Lovecraft’s life for him. The only ‘purpose’ of these items is to afford pleasure to Lovecraft and to some of his friends, and that is enough. The ‘Observations’ and the ‘Travels’ are single-spaced typescripts, and in effect are open letters, the first written to Maurice W. Moe although surely circulated to other close associates. A volume of Lovecraft’s travelogues would be very welcome.