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

The lingering belief that Frank Belknap Long had some hand in the writing of the story—derived from Zealia Bishop’s declaration that ‘Long … advised and worked with me on that short novel’¹⁹— has presumably been squelched by Long’s own declaration in 1975 that ‘I had nothing whatever to do with the writing of The Mound. That brooding, somber, and magnificently atmospheric story is Lovecraftian from the first page to the last.’

²⁰ Long was at this time acting as Bishop’s agent, and had in fact prepared the typescript of the tale. After its rejection by Weird Tales, Long proceeded to abridge it by merely omitting some sheets from the typescript and scratching out portions of others with a pen. But this version also did not sell, so the story was put aside. It was finally first published only in Weird Tales

for November 1940, and then in a severely abridged form.

Lovecraft’s travels for the spring–summer of 1930 began in late April. Charleston, South Carolina, was his goal, and he seems to have shot down to the South with scarcely a stop along the route. He reports being in Richmond on the afternoon of 27 April and spending a night in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; 28 April found him in Columbia, South Carolina. Later that day Lovecraft caught a bus that took him directly to Charleston. A postcard written to Derleth on 29 April may give some inkling of Lovecraft’s sentiments:

Revelling in the most marvellously fascinating environment —scenically, architecturally, historically, & climatically—that I’ve ever encountered in my life! I can’t begin to convey any idea of it except by exclamation points—I’d move here in a second if my sentimental attachment to New England were less strong … Will stay here as long as my cash holds out, even if I have to cut all the rest of my contemplated trip.²¹

Lovecraft remained in Charleston until 9 May, seeing everything there was to see; and there certainly was much to see. Charleston remains today one of the most well-preserved colonial oases on the eastern seaboard—thanks, of course, to a very vigorous restoration and preservation movement that makes it today even more attractive than it was in Lovecraft’s day, when some of the colonial remains were in a state of dilapidation. Everything that Lovecraft describes in his lengthy travelogue, ‘An Account of Charleston’ (1930), survives, with rare exceptions.

In his travelogue Lovecraft, aside from supplying a very detailed history of the town, lays down a systematic walking tour—which he optimistically states can be covered in a single day (I did so, although it took me about seven hours and several rest-stops)— which covers all the prominent antiquities of Charleston with a minimum of backtracking. The tour leaves out some fairly picturesque sections that are not colonial (the western end of South Battery, for example), as well as outlying areas such as Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, the Citadel, and the like, although Lovecraft probably explored these himself. He recognizes that the heart of colonial Charleston is the relatively small area south of Broad Street between Legare and East Bay, including such exquisite thoroughfares as Tradd, Church, Water, and the like; the alleys in this section—Bedon’s Alley, Stolls Alley, Longitude Lane, St Michael’s Alley—are worth a study all their own. Progressing northward, the section between Broad and Calhoun becomes increasingly post-Revolutionary and antebellum in architecture, although the town’s centre of government and business still remains the critical intersection of Broad and Meeting. North of Calhoun there is scarcely anything of antiquarian interest.

On 9 May Lovecraft reluctantly left Charleston and proceeded to Richmond, where he remained for about ten days. On the 13th he took an excursion to Petersburg, a town about fifteen miles south of Richmond full of colonial antiquities.

Lovecraft was learning to cut expenses on the road. Wandrei tells us how he saved on cleaning bills away from home: ‘He neatly laid out his trousers between the mattresses of his bed in order to renew the crease and press overnight. He detached the collar from his shirt, washed it, smoothed it between the folds of a hand towel, and weighted it with the Gideon Bible, thus preparing a fresh collar for the morning.’²² So the Gideon Bible had some use for Lovecraft after all! He was now becoming an amateur self-barber, using a ‘patent hair-cutter’²³ he had picked up—no doubt a sort of trimmer.