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

Sonia was taken with Lovecraft from the start. She bluntly confesses that, when first meeting Lovecraft, ‘I admired his personality but frankly, at first, not his person’⁸—a clear reference to Lovecraft’s very plain looks (tall, gaunt frame, lantern jaw, possible problems with facial hair and skin) and perhaps also his stiff, formal conduct and (particularly annoying to one in the fashion industry) the archaic cut of his clothes.

But a correspondence promptly ensued. Lovecraft heard from Sonia as early as mid- to late July of 1921, by which time she had already read some of Lovecraft’s stories that had appeared in the amateur press. Lovecraft professed to be taken with her, at least as an intellect.

It was Sonia who took things into her own hands. She visited Lovecraft in Providence on 4–5 September, staying at the Crown Hotel. Lovecraft, as had already become customary with his out-oftown visitors, showed her the antiquarian treasures of Providence, took her back to 598 and introduced her to aunt Lillian. The next day Sonia invited Lovecraft and his aunt to come to the Crown for a noon meal.

In the meantime Sonia contributed to the amateur cause in other than monetary ways. In October 1921 the first of two issues of her Rainbow appeared; both would be forums for the poetic, fictional, essayistic, and polemical outpourings of Lovecraft and his inner circle of amateur colleagues. Lovecraft contributed a piece entitled ‘Nietzscheism and Realism’, which he declares was a series of extracts made from two letters to Sonia.⁹

This compendium of philosophical bon mots comprises, sadly enough, almost the sole remnant (aside from a handful of postcards and one other item to be discussed later) of what must have been an extensive and exceptionally fascinating correspondence—one which we would, from a biographical perspective, wish to have perhaps more than any other of Lovecraft’s. But Sonia is clear on its fate: ‘I had a trunkful of his letters which he had written me throughout the years but before leaving New York for California [around 1935] I took them to a field and set a match to them.’¹⁰ No doubt Sonia, after all she had been through, was within her rights to do this, but all students of Lovecraft must groan when reading this terse utterance.

Being a professional amateur was perfectly suited to Lovecraft’s aristocratic temperament, but, as time went on and the family inheritance increasingly dwindled, some thought had to be paid to making money. Lovecraft was surely aware of the principal reason for his mother’s nervous collapse—her worries about the financial future of herself and her son. Perhaps it was this that finally led him to make some effort at earning an income; for it is at this time that David Van Bush appears on the scene.

Bush had joined the UAPA in 1916. Lovecraft first mentions him, to my knowledge, in the summer of 1918. From 1915 into the late 1920s Bush wrote an appalling number of poetry volumes and pop psychology manuals, most of them self-published. It is a dreary possibility that Lovecraft revised the bulk of these books, both prose and verse.

The fact is that Bush did become quite popular as a writer and lecturer on popular psychology. Lovecraft did not begin working in earnest for Bush until around 1920, and it is no accident that Bush’s titles begin appearing at a rapid rate thereafter. Lovecraft regarded Bush with a mixture of annoyance and lofty condescension. He met Bush in the summer of 1922, when the latter was lecturing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and paints a vivid portrait of him:

David V. Bush is a short, plump fellow of about forty-five, with a bland face, bald head, and very fair taste in attire. He is actually an immensely good sort—kindly, affable, winning, and smiling. Probably he has to be in order to induce people to let him live after they have read his verse. His keynote is a hearty good-fellowship, and I almost think he is rather sincere about it. His ‘success-in-life’ stuff is no joke so far as finance is concerned; for with his present ‘psychological’ mountebank outfit, his Theobaldised books of doggerel, and his newly-founded magazine, Mind Power Plus, he actually shovels in the coin at a very gratifying rate. Otherwise he’d never have a suite at the Copley-Plaza.¹¹

The letter goes on at some length, touching on Bush’s rural upbringing, his wife, his odd jobs (trick cyclist in a circus, ‘ham’ actor, clergyman), and his ‘new gospel of dynamic pychology’ (‘which has all the virtues of “New Thought” plus a saving vagueness which prevents its absurdity from being exposed before the credulous public amongst whom his missionary labours lie’).