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

In the relative political tranquillity of a Republican-dominated decade, Lovecraft reflected more abstractly on the issues of government. ‘Nietzscheism and Realism’ contains a lot of cocksure aphorisms on the subject, largely derived from Nietzsche but with a sort of Schopenhauerian foundation. For example: ‘I believe in an aristocracy, because I deem it the only agency for the creation of those refinements which make life endurable for the human animal of high organization.’ Lovecraft naturally assumed that he was one of those animals of high organisation, and it was entirely logical for him, when speaking abstractly of the ideal government, to look for one that would suit his own requirements. What he seems to imagine is a society like that of Periclean Athens, Augustan Rome, or Augustan England, where the aristocracy both symbolized refinement and culture (if they did not always practise it) and provided enough patronage of artists to produce those ‘ornaments of life’ that result in a rich and thriving civilization. It is, certainly—at least in the abstract—an appealing system, but Lovecraft surely did not fancy that it could have much relevance to present-day concerns.

When he does address such concerns, it is in tones of magisterial condemnation. Democracy earns his wholesale scorn. Consider a letter of February 1923: ‘democracy … is a false idol—a mere catchword and illusion of inferior classes, visionaries, and dying civilisations’.²⁶

This is manifestly Nietzschean: ‘I have … characterised modern democracy … as the decaying form of the state.’²⁷

I do not know that Lovecraft ever espoused democracy, but certainly his reading of Nietzsche just after the war seems to have given him the intellectual backbone to support his view.

The letter in which the above comment is imbedded occurs in a discussion of Mussolini and fascism. No one should be surprised that Lovecraft supported Mussolini’s takeover of Italy (completed in late October 1922) and that he was attracted by the fascist ideology—or, at any rate, what he took it to be. I doubt that Lovecraft had any real understanding of the internal political forces that led to Mussolini’s rise. Fascism was, at its base, opposed both to conventional liberalism and to socialism; its popularity grew rapidly after the end of the war when the socialists, winning a majority in 1919, could accomplish little to restore Italian society. Mussolini’s takeover of the government was indeed supported, as Lovecraft would later remark, by a majority of the Italian populace; but each group wished different benefits from it, and, when after several years these benefits were not forthcoming, there was so much discontent that very repressive measures had to be adopted.

For the time being, however, Lovecraft could revel in the fact that here was a ‘strong’ ruler who scorned liberalism and could ‘get the sort of authoritative social and political control which alone produces things which make life worth living’.²⁸

It cannot, certainly, be said that fascism produced any sort of artistic renaissance; but that was not of much concern to Lovecraft at the moment.

The end of 1923 saw still more small travels—to the new private museum of George L. Shepley on Benefit Street, and (in the company of C. M. Eddy and James F. Morton) to the exquisite First Baptist Church (1775) on North Main Street. Here Lovecraft ascended to the organ loft and attempted to play ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ but was foiled ‘since the machine is not a self-starter’.²⁹

Weird Tales

, meanwhile, was throwing a lot of work in Lovecraft’s direction, in particular a rush ghostwriting job for Harry Houdini. But in the midst of all this literary activity we find an anomalous change of personal circumstances. On 9 March 1924, Lovecraft writes a letter to his aunt Lillian from 259 Parkside Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Was this another visit of longer or shorter duration, as the two New York trips of 1922 had been? Not exactly. On 3 March, at St Paul’s Chapel at Broadway and Vesey Streets in lower Manhattan, H. P. Lovecraft had married Sonia Haft Greene.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ball and Chain (1924)