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

Marblehead was—and, on the whole, today remains—one of the most charming little backwaters in Massachusetts, full of wellrestored colonial houses, crooked and narrow streets, and a spectral hilltop burying-ground from which one can derive a magnificent panoramic view of the city and the nearby harbour. In the old part of town the antiquity is strangely complete, and very little of the modern intrudes there. It was this that so captivated Lovecraft. More than seven years later Lovecraft was still attesting to the poignancy of his initial witnessing of the place:

God! Shall I ever forget my first stupefying glimpse of MARBLEHEAD’S huddled and archaick roofs under the snow in the delirious sunset glory of four p.m., Dec. 17, 1922!!! I did not know until an hour before that I should ever behold such a place as Marblehead, and I did not know until that moment itself the full extent of the wonder I was to behold. I account that instant—about 4:05 to 4:10 p.m., Dec. 17, 1922—the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence. In a flash all the past of New England—all the past of Old England—all the past of Anglo-Saxondom and the Western World—swept over me and identified me with the stupendous totality of all things in such a way as it never did before and never will again. That was the high tide of my life.²⁸

What exactly was it about Marblehead that so struck him? Lovecraft clarifies it himself: with his tremendous imaginative faculty—and with the visible tokens of the present almost totally banished for at least a short interval—Lovecraft felt himself united with his entire cultural and racial past. As he said in another context: ‘The past is real—it is all there is

.’²⁹

It would take Lovecraft nearly a year—and several more trips to Marblehead—to internalize his impressions and transmute them into fiction; but when he did so, in ‘The Festival’ (1923), he would be well on his way to revivifying New England in some of the most topographically and historically rooted weird fiction ever written. He had begun haltingly to head in this direction, with ‘The Picture in the House’; but New England was still relatively undiscovered territory to him, and it would take many more excursions for him to imbibe the essence of the area—not merely its antiquities and its history, but its people and their intimate and centuried relations with the soil—and render it fit for fictional use. And it would also take those two years away from New England to make him realize how much he really was moulded of its flesh, so that he could express both the terror and the beauty of this ancient land.

CHAPTER TEN

For My Own Amusement (1923–24)

At just the time when Lovecraft’s activity in the UAPA seemed on the wane, his involvement with the NAPA took on a sudden and wholly unforeseen turn: it was nothing less than his appointment, on 30 November, as interim President to replace William J. Dowdell, who was forced to resign. It is not clear what led to Dowdell’s decision: Lovecraft later commented that Dowdell ‘ran off with a chorus girl in 1922’.¹

Lovecraft made the first of five official reports (four ‘President’s Messages’ and a ‘President’s Annual Report’) for the issue of the National Amateur dated November 1922–January 1923. The report, written on 11 January 1923, is an eloquent plea for the resumption of activity in light of the confusion involving the official board and the general apathy apparently overtaking all amateurdom; Lovecraft himself promised to issue another number or two of his Conservative, and came through on the promise. Most incredible of all, given his chronic poverty, Lovecraft himself contributed $10 (the equivalent of a week’s rent in his New York period) to the official organ fund. Approaching the completion of his ninth year of amateur activity, Lovecraft found himself still drawn to the cause.

As early as February, Edward H. Cole was urging Lovecraft to run for President for the 1923–24 term. Lovecraft blanched at the idea, for he profoundly disliked the tedious administrative burdens that went with the office; in any event, his re-election as Official Editor of the UAPA in July 1923 compelled him to turn his attention back to his original amateur organization. It would be a decade before he would resume ties with the NAPA.