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

Is, then, ‘The Outsider’ a symbol for Lovecraft’s own self-image, particularly the image of one who always thought himself ugly and whose mother told at least one individual about her son’s ‘hideous’ face? I find this interpretation rather superficial, and it would have the effect of rendering the story maudlin and self-pitying. I think it is more profitable not to read too much autobiographical significance in ‘The Outsider’: its large number of apparent literary influences seem to make it more an experiment in pastiche than some deeply felt expression of psychological wounds.

It is difficult to characterise the non-Dunsanian stories of this period. Lovecraft was still experimenting in different tones, styles, moods, and themes in an effort to find out what might work the best. Perhaps the fact that so many of these tales were inspired by dreams is the most important thing about them. Lovecraft’s letters of 1920 are full of accounts of incredibly bizarre dreams, some of which served as the nuclei for tales written years later. It would be a facile and inexpert psychoanalysis to maintain that Lovecraft’s worries over Susie’s health were the principal cause of these disturbances in his subconscious; as a matter of fact, it appears that Susie’s health had, after a fashion, stabilized and that there was no suspicion of any impending collapse until only a few days before her death. Suffice it to say that the dozen or more stories Lovecraft wrote in 1920—more than he wrote in any other year of his life— point to a definitive shift in his aesthetic horizons. Lovecraft still did not know it yet, but he had come upon his life-work.

CHAPTER NINE

The High Tide of My Life (1921–22)

Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft died on 24 May 1921, at Butler Hospital. Her death, however, was not a result of her nervous breakdown but rather of a gall bladder operation from which she did not recover. Winfield Townley Scott, who had access to Susie’s now destroyed medical records, tells the story laconically: ‘She underwent a gall-bladder operation which was thought to be successful. Five days later her nurse noted that the patient expressed a wish to die because “I will only live to suffer.” She died the next day.’¹

Lovecraft’s reaction was pretty much what one might expect: ‘The death of my mother on May 24 gave me an extreme nervous shock, and I find concentration and continuous endeavour quite impossible … I cannot sleep much, or labour with any particular spirit or success.’² Later on in this letter, written nine days after the event, Lovecraft adds disturbingly:

For my part, I do not think I shall wait for a natural death; since there is no longer any particular reason why I should exist. During my mother’s life-time I was aware that voluntary euthanasia on my part would cause her distress, but it is now possible for me to regulate the term of my existence with the assurance that my end would cause no one more than a passing annoyance. Evidently his aunts did not figure much in this equation. But it was a passing phase, as we shall shortly see.

What, in the end, are we to make of Lovecraft’s relations with his mother? Susie Lovecraft has not fared well at the hands of Lovecraft’s biographers, and her flaws are readily discernible: she was overly possessive, clearly neurotic, failed (as Lovecraft himself and the rest of his family did) to foresee the need for training her son in some sort of remunerative occupation, and psychologically damaged Lovecraft at least to the point of declaring him physically hideous and perhaps in other ways that are now irrecoverable.

But the verdict on Susie should not be entirely negative. Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, correctly remarks: ‘Lovecraft’s finely honed aesthetic sensibilities and seasoned artistic judgment undoubtedly owed something to the early influence of his mother … The wonderful home which Susie and her young son shared with her parents and sisters at 454 Angell Street during the 1890s must have been truly a delight.’³ Her indulging Lovecraft in many of his early whims—the Arabian Nights, chemistry, astronomy—may seem excessive, but it allowed him fully to develop these intellectual and aesthetic interests, and so to lay the groundwork for both the intellect and the creativity he displayed in later years.