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

The critical issue is whether Lovecraft knew and acknowledged— at least to himself—the ways in which his mother affected him, both positively and adversely. In letters both early and late he speaks of her with nothing but praise and respect. In many letters of the 1930s, when recalling his early years, he makes statements such as: ‘My health improved vastly and rapidly, though without any ascertainable cause, about 1920–21’;⁴ which gives—or appears to give—not the slightest hint that Susie’s death might actually have been a liberating factor of some kind. But was Lovecraft really so lacking in self-awareness on this issue? I have already cited Sonia’s noting that Lovecraft once admitted to her that Susie’s influence upon him had been ‘devastating’. Another very interesting piece of evidence comes not from a letter or an essay, or from a memoir by a friend, but from a story.

‘The Thing on the Doorstep’ (1933) tells the tale of Edward Derby, who was an only child and ‘had organic weaknesses which startled his doting parents and caused them to keep him closely chained to their side. He was never allowed out without his nurse, and seldom had a chance to play unconstrainedly with other children.’ A little later the narrator remarks: ‘Edward’s mother died when he was thirty-four, and for months he was incapacitated by some odd psychological malady. His father took him to Europe, however, and he managed to pull out of his trouble without visible effects. Afterward he seemed to feel a sort of grotesque exhilaration, as if of partial escape from some unseen bondage.’ That last sentence is all the evidence we need: it makes it abundantly clear that Lovecraft knew (by 1933, at any rate) that Susie’s death had in a sense made the rest of his own life possible. It is telling that, in his litany of ‘near-breakdowns’ beginning in 1898, he lists no breakdown of 1921.

In the short term Lovecraft did the most sensible thing he could have done: continue the normal course of his existence. He may not, like Derby, have travelled to Europe, but there was always New Hampshire. He went ahead with his visit to Myrta Alice Little on 8–9 June, also seeing ‘Tryout’ Smith in Haverhill. He repeated the trip in August. Later that month he went with his old school chum Harold Munroe to their old clubhouse in Rehoboth (which Lovecraft was delighted to find nearly intact), and still later he took in another amateur meeting in Boston.

Meanwhile events in the amateur world were heating up. Lovecraft had easily been elected Official Editor for the 1920–21 and 1921–22 terms, and his ‘literary’ faction was in both political and editorial control of the association: Alfred Galpin was President in 1920–21 (serving, anomalously, also as Chairman of the Department of Public Criticism), and Ida C. Haughton of Columbus, Ohio, was President in 1921–22; other associates of Lovecraft such as Paul J. Campbell, Frank Belknap Long, and Alice Hamlet all held official positions.

But the picture was by no means rosy. Lovecraft had considerable disagreements with President Haughton, and years later he claimed that she ‘ran the very gamut of abuse & positive insult— culminating even in an aspersion on my stewardship of the United funds!’⁵ In response, Lovecraft wrote ‘Medusa: A Portrait’ in late 1921. This is the most vicious and unrestrained of his poetic satires, and in it he mercilessly flays Haughton for her large bulk and her supposed foulness of temper. The poem was published in the Tryout

for December 1921.

There was trouble on other fronts also. In the Woodbee for January 1922 Fritter continued his attacks on Lovecraft and his literary coterie. Although Lovecraft responded tartly in his ‘Editorial’ in the January 1922 United Amateur, in this case he was not to prevail. In the UAPA election in July 1922, the ‘literature’ side lost out to its opponents. Lovecraft himself lost to Fritter for Official Editor by a vote of 44 to 29. It was, no doubt, a staggering blow, and may have gone a long way in showing Lovecraft that this phase of his amateur career was coming to an end.