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

Lovecraft was unsure about the merits of the tale, so it is not surprising that he refused to submit it to any magazine and merely let it gather dust. A year or so later August Derleth, although thinking it a poor story, nevertheless surreptitiously submitted it to Farnsworth Wright, who accepted it readily and paid Lovecraft $140.00 for it. It appeared in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.

Around this time still more fans, colleagues, and writers were coming into Lovecraft’s horizon. One was a very strange individual from Buffalo, New York, named William Lumley. Lumley was one of several who had become intrigued with Lovecraft’s evolving pseudomythology; most of these correspondents drifted away after a few weeks or months, but Lumley persisted.

A rather more level-headed person was Harry Kern Brobst (b. 1909). He had become interested in weird and science fiction as a youth, being especially fond of the work of Poe, Verne, Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft. Writing to Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales, he acquired Lovecraft’s address and began a correspondence, probably in the autumn of 1931. Not long thereafter, however, a fortunate circumstance brought him into much closer touch with his new colleague.

After graduating from high school, Brobst decided to enter the field of psychiatric nursing, and he secured entry into the medical programme at Butler Hospital in Providence. Brobst arrived in Providence in February 1932. A few weeks later he came to visit Lovecraft, and his impressions both of the man and his humble residence at 10 Barnes Street are affecting:

He was a tall man, of sallow complexion, very animated … , with dark, sparkling eyes. I don’t know if this description makes much sense, but that was the impression he made—a very vital person. We were friends immediately…

Now at 10 Barnes Street I believe he was on the ground floor … when you went into the room that he occupied there were no windows—it was completely cut off, and he just lived by artificial light. I remember going in there one time and it was in the colder time of the year … The room was stuffy, very dusty (he wouldn’t allow anybody to dust it, especially the books); his bedding was quite (I hate to say this) dirty … And he had nothing to eat excepting a piece of cheese.⁹

How will Lovecraft ever live down the ignominy of dirty sheets! He who was so meticulous about his personal tidiness appears to have been less scrupulous about his surroundings.

Brobst would be in very close contact with Lovecraft for the next five years, visiting him several times a week, going with him to museums, having meals with him in restaurants, and welcoming Lovecraft’s out-of-town visitors as they came to visit him. Few knew Lovecraft better at this period, on a personal level, than Harry Brobst.

On 18 May Lovecraft left for New York, spending a week there in the usual flurry of social calls on the New York gang. He finally managed to pull away on 25 May, reaching Natchez, Mississippi, a few days later. In Natchez Lovecraft was stimulated both by the spectacular natural landscape (200-foot bluffs above the Mississippi, invigorating tropical climate and vegetation) and the antiquities of the two-hundred-year-old town itself. He then proceeded still further south to his ultimate destination—New Orleans. It did not take long for him to feel the charm of this distinctive city: having arrived in late May, he was ready to declare by 6 June that the three towns of Charleston, Quebec, and New Orleans ‘stand out as the most thoroughly ancient & exotic urban centres of North America’.¹⁰ Naturally the French Quarter—the Vieux Carré—with its unique conjoining of French and Spanish architectural styles appealed to him most, although he found even the newer parts with their long shady streets and stately homes appealing.

An interesting social call occurred toward the end of Lovecraft’s New Orleans stay. He had written of his trip to Robert E. Howard, who bitterly regretted his inability to travel there himself and meet his much-admired correspondent; but Howard telegraphed his friend E. Hoffmann Price, who had a room in the French Quarter, and told him of Lovecraft’s presence. Price accordingly met Lovecraft on Sunday, 12 June, conducting a call that lasted 25¹⁄₂ hours, till midnight on Monday.