Howard Phillips LOVECRAFT
The Life of a Gentleman of Providence by S.T. Joshi
This brief biography first appeared in the H.P. Lovecraft Centennial Guidebook and here with S.T. Joshi's permission.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born at 9 am on August 20, 1890
at his family home at 454 (then numbered 194) Angell Street in
Providence, Rhode Island. His mother was Sarah Susan Phillips
Lovecraft, who could trace her ancestry to the arrival of George
Phillips to Massachusetts in 1630. His father was Winfield Scott
Lovecraft, a traveling salesman for Gorham Co., Silversmiths, of
Providence. When Lovecraft was three his father suffered a nervous
breakdown in a hotel room in Chicago and was brought back to
Butler Hospital, where he remained for five years before dying on
July 19, 1898. Lovecraft was apparently informed that his father
was paralyzed and comatose during this period, but the surviving
evidence suggests that this was not the case; it is nearly certain
that Lovecraft's father died of paresis, a form of neurosyphilis.
With the death of Lovecraft's father, the upbringing of the
boy fell to his mother, his 2 aunts and especially his grandfather
the prominent industrialist Whipple Van Buren Phillips. Lovecraft
was a precocious youth: he was reciting poetry at age two, reading
at age three, and writing at age 6 or 7. His earliest enthusiasm
was for the Arabian Nights, which he read by the age of 5 ; it was
at this time that he adapted the pseudonym of "Abdul Alhazred" who
later became the author of the mythical Necronomicon. The next
year, however, his Arabian interests were eclipsed by the
discovery of Greek mythology, gleaned through Bulfinch's Age of
Fable and through children's versions of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Indeed his earliest surviving literary work, "The Poem of Ulysses"
(1897), is a paraphrase of the Odyssey in 88 lines of internally
rhyming verse. But Lovecraft had by this time already discovered
weird fiction, and his first story, the non-extant "The Noble
Eavesdropper," may date to as early as 1896. His interest in the
weird was fostered by his grandfather, who entertained Lovecraft
with off-the-cuff weird tales in the Gothic mode.
As a boy Lovecraft was somewhat lonely and suffered from
frequent illnesses, many of them apparently psychological. His
attendance at the Slater Avenue School was sporadic, but Lovecraft
was soaking up much information through independent reading. At
about the age of eight he discovered science, first chemistry,
then astronomy. He began to produce hectographed journals, The
Scientific Gazette (1899-1907) and The Rhode Island Journal of
Astronomy (1903-07), for distribution amongst his friends. When he
entered Hope Street High School, he found both his teachers and
peers congenial and encouraging, and he developed a number of
long-lasting friendships with boys of his age. Lovecraft's first
appearance in print occurred in 1906, when he wrote a letter on an
astronomical matter to The Providence Sunday Journal. Shortly
thereafter he began writing a monthly astronomy column for The
Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner, a rural paper; he later wrote columns for
The Providence Tribune (1906-08) and The Providence Evening News
(1914-18), as well as The Asheville (N.C.) Gazette-News (1915).
In 1904 the death of his grandfather, and the subsequent
mismanagement of his property and affairs, plunged Lovecraft's
family into severe financial difficulties. Lovecraft and his
mother were forced to move out of their lavish Victorian home into
cramped quarters at 598 Angell Street. Lovecraft was devastated by
the loss of his birthplace, and apparently contemplated suicide,
as he took long bicycle rides and looked wistfully at the watery
depths of the Barrington River but the thrill of learning banished
those thoughts. In 1908, however, just prior to his graduation
from high school, he suffered a nervous breakdown that compelled
him to leave school without a diploma ; this fact, and his
consequent failure to enter Brown University, were sources of
great shame to Lovecraft in later years, in spite of the fact that
he was one of the most formidable autodidacts of his time. From
1908 to 1913 Lovecraft was a virtual hermit, doing little save
pursuing his astronomical interests and his poetry writing. During
this whole period Lovecraft was thrown into an unheathily close
relationship with his mother, who was still suffering from the
trauma of her husband's illness and death, and who developed a
pathological love-hate relationship with her son.
Lovecraft emerged from his hermitry in a very peculiar way.
Having taken to reading the early "pulp" magazines of the day, he
became so incensed at the insipid love stories of one Fred Jackson
in The Argosy that he wrote a letter, in verse, attacking Jackson.
This letter was published in 1913, and evoked a storm of protest
from Jackson's defenders. Lovecraft engaged in a heated debate in
the letter column of The Argosy and its associated magazines,
Lovecraft's responses being almost always in rollicking heroic
couplets reminiscent of Dryden and Pope. This controversy was
noted by Edward F. Daas, President of the United Amateur Press
Association (UAPA), a group of amateur writers from around the
country who wrote and published their own magazines. Daas invited
Lovecraft to join the UAPA, and Lovecraft did so in early 1914.
Lovecraft published thirteen issues of his own paper : The
Conservative (1915-23), as well as contributing poetry and essays
voluminously to other journals. Later Lovecraft became President
and Official Editor of the UAPA, and also served briefly as
President of the rival National Amateur Press Association (NAPA).
This entire experience may well have saved Lovecraft from a life
of unproductive reclusiveness; as he himself once said: "In 1914,
when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended to me, I was
as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can
be...With the advent of the United I obtained a renewal to live; a
renewed sense of existence as other than a superfluous weight; and
found a sphere in which I could feel that my efforts were not
wholly futile. For the first time I could imagine that my clumsy
gropings after art were a little more than faint cries lost in the
unlistening world."
It was in the amateur world that Lovecraft recommenced the
writing of fiction, which he had abandoned in 1908. W. Paul Cook
and others, noting the promise shown in such early tales as "The
Beast in the Cave" (1905) and "The Alchemist" (1908), urged
Lovecraft to pick up his fictional pen again. This Lovecraft did,
writing "The Tomb" and "Dagon" in quick succession in the summer
of 1917. Thereafter Lovecraft kept up a steady if sparse flow of
fiction, although until at least 1922 poetry and essays were still
his dominant mode of literary expression. Lovecraft also became
involved in an ever-increasing network of correspondence with
friends and associates, and he eventually became one of the
greatest and most prolific letter-writers of the century.
Lovecraft's mother, both her mental and physical condition
deteriorating, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919 and she was
admitted to Butler Hospital, whence, like her husband, she would
never emerge. Her death on May 24, 1921, however was the result of
a bungled gall bladder operation. Lovecraft was shattered by the
loss of his mother, but in a few weeks had recovered enough to
attend an amateur journalism convention in Boston on July 4, 1921.
It was on this occasion that he first met the woman who would
become his wife. Sonia Haft Greene was a Russian Jew seven years
Lovecraft's senior, but the two seemed, at least initially, to
find themselves very congenial. Lovecraft visited Sonia in her
Brooklyn apartment in 1922, and the news of their marriage on
March 3, 1924, was not entirely a surprise to their friends ; but
it may have been to Lovecraft's two aunts : Lillian D. Clark and
Annie E. Phillips Gamwell, who were notified only by letter after
the ceremony had taken place. Then Lovecraft moved into Sonia's
apartment in Brooklyn, and initial prospects for the couple seemed
good: Lovecraft had gained a foothold as a professional writer by
the acceptance of several of his early stories by Weird Tales, the
celebrated pulp magazine founded in 1923; Sonia had a successful
hat shop on Fifth Avenue in New York.
But troubles descended upon the couple almost immediately; the
hat shop went bankrupt, Lovecraft turned down the chance to edit a
companion magazine to Weird Tales (which would have necessitated
his move to Chicago), and Sonia's health gave way, forcing her to
spend time in a New Jersey sanitarium. Lovecraft attempted to
secure work, but few were willing to hire a thirty-four-year-old
man with no job experience. On January 1, 1925, Sonia went to
Cleveland to take up a job there, and Lovecraft moved into a
single apartment near the seedy Brooklyn area called Red Hook.
Although Lovecraft had many friends in New York--Frank Belknap
Long, Rheinhart Kleiner, Samuel Loveman-- he became increasingly
depressed by his isolation and the masses of "foreigners" in the
city. His fiction turned from the nostalgic ("The Shunned House"
(1924) is set in Providence) to the bleak and misanthropic ("The
Horror at Red Hook" and "He" (both 1924) lay bare his feelings for
New York). Finally, in early 1926, plans were made for Lovecraft
to return to the Providence he missed so keenly. But where did
Sonia fit into these plans ? No one seemed to know, least of all
Lovecraft. Although he continued to profess his affection for her,
he acquiesced when his aunts barred her from coming to Providence
to start a business; their nephew could not be tainted by the
stigma of a tradeswoman wife. The marriage was essentially over,
and a divorce in 1929 was inevitable.
When Lovecraft returned to Providence on April 17, 1926,
settling at 10 Barnes Street north of Brown University, it was not
to bury himself away as he had done in the 1908-13 period; rather,
the last ten years of his life were the time of his greatest
flowering, both as a writer and as a human being. His life was
relatively uneventful-- he traveled widely to various antiquarian
sites around the eastern seaboard (Quebec, New England, Charleston
and Philadelphia, St. Augustine); he wrote his greatest fiction,
from "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) to "At the Mountains of Madness"
(1931) to "The Shadow out of Time" (1934-35); and he continued his
prodigiously vast correspondence -- but Lovecraft had found his
niche as a New England writer of weird fiction and as a general
man of letters. He nurtured the careers of many young writers
(August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber) ; he
became concerned with political and economic issues, as the Great
Depression led him to support Roosevelt and become a moderate
socialist; and he continued absorbing knowledge on a wide array of
subjects from philosophy to literature to history to architecture.
The last two or three years of his life, however, were filled
with hardship. In 1932 his beloved aunt, Mrs. Clark, died, and he
moved into quarters at 66 College Street, right behind the John
Hay Library, with his other aunt Mrs.Gamwell in 1933. (This house
has now been moved to 65 Prospect Street.) His later stories,
increasingly lengthy and complex, became difficult to sell, and he
was forced to support himself largely through the "revision" or
ghost-writing of stories, poetry, and nonfictions works. In 1936
the suicide of Robert Howard, one of his closest correspondents,
left him confused and saddened. By this time the illness that
would cause his own death (cancer of the intestine) had already
progressed so far that little could be done to treat it. Lovecraft
attempted to carry on in increasing pain through the winter of
1936-37, but was finally compelled to enter Jane Brown Memorial
Hospital on March 10, 1937, where he died five days later. He was
buried on March 18 at the Phillips family plot at Swan Point
Cemetery.
It is likely that, as he saw death approaching, Lovecraft
envisioned the ultimate oblivion of his work: he had never had a
true book published in his lifetime (aside, perhaps, from the
crudely issued The Shadow over Innsmouth [1936]), and his stories,
essays, and poems were scattered in a bewildering number of
amateur or pulp magazines. But the friendships that he had forged
merely by correspondence held him in good stead : August Derleth
and Donald Wandrei were determined to preserve Lovecraft's stories
in the dignity of a hardcover book, and formed the publishing firm
of Arkham House initially to publish Lovecraft's work; they issued
The Outsider and Others in 1939. Many other volumes followed from
Arkham House, and eventually Lovecraft's work became available in
paperback and was translated into a dozen languages. Today, at the
centennial of his birth, his stories are available in textually
corrected editions, his essays, poems, and letters are widely
available and many scholars have probed the depth and complexities
of his work and thought. Much remains to be done in the study of
Lovecraft, but it is safe to say that, thanks to the intrinsic
merit of his own work and to the diligence of his associates and
supporters, Lovecraft has gained a small but unassailable niche in
the canon of American and world literature.
The Truth About The Necronomicon
I've become quite tired of those who believe the Necronomicon is a real book. So I have put together some excerpts from Lovecraft's letters in which he states that the Necronomicon was entirely his invention... Unfortunately, those who are foolish enough to believe in the book's actual existence are as likely to discount these comments by Lovecraft himself as unimportant.
At one time I formed a juvenile collection of Oriental pottery and objects d'art, announcing myself as a devout Mohammedan and assuming the pseudonym of "Abdul Alhazred" -- which you will recognise as the author of that mythical Necronomicon which I drag into various of my tales.
Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc., etc.--let me confess that this is all a synthetic concotion of my own, like the populous and varied pantheon of Lord Dunsany's Pegana. The reason for its echoes in Dr. de Castro's work is that the latter gentleman is a revision-client of mine--into whose tales I have stuck these glancing references for sheer fun. If any other clients of mine get work placed in W.T., you will perhaps find a still-wider spread of the cult of Azathoth, Cthulhu, and the Great Old Ones! The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is likewise something which must yet be written in order to possess objective reality. Abdul is a favourite "dream" character of mine -- indeed that is what I used to call myself when I was five years old and a transported devotee of Andrew Lang's version of the Arabian Nights. A few years ago I prepared a mock-erudite synopsis of Abdul's life, and of the posthumous vicissitudes and translations of his hideous and unmentionable work Al Azif...-- a synopsis which I shall follow in future references to the dark and accursed thing. Long has alluded to the Necronomicon in some things of his -- in fact, I think it is rather good fun to have this artificial mythology given an air of verisimilitude by wide citation. I ought, though, to write Mr. O'Neail and disabuse him of the idea that there is a large blind spot in his mythological erudition!
As for writing the Necronomicon --I wish I had the energy and ingenuity to do it! I fear it would be quite a job in view of the very diverse passages and intimations which I have in the course of time attributed to it ! I might, though, issue an abridged Necronomicon--containing such parts as are considered at least reasonably safe for the perusal of mankind! When von Juntz's Black Book and the poems of Justin Geoffrey are on the market, I shall certainly have to think about the immortalisation of old Abdul!
Regarding the Necronomicon--I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own imagination ! Inventing horrible books is quite a pastime among devotees of the weird, many of the regular W.T. contributors have such things to their credit -- or discredit. It rather amuses the different writers to use one another's synthetic demons maginary books in their stories--so that Clark Ashton Smith often speaks of my Necronomicon while I refer to his Book of Eibon . . o on. This pooling of resources tends to build up quite a pseudo- convincing background of dark mythology, legendry-ibliography -- though of course none of us has the least wish actually to mislead readers.
Regarding the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred--I must confess that both te evil volume & the accursed author are fictitious creatures of my own--as are the malign entities of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath. Tsathoggua & the Book of Eibon are inventions of Clark Ashton Smith, while Friedrich von Junzt is monstrous Unaussprechlichen Kulten originated in the fertile brain of Robert E. Howard. For the fun of building up a convincing cycle of synthetic folklore, all of our gang frequently allude to the pet daemons of the others -- thus Smith uses my Yog-Sothoth, while I use his Tsathoggua. Also, I sometimes insert a devil or two of my own in the tales I revise or ghost-write for professional clients. Thus our black pantheon acquires an extensive publicity & pseudo- authoritativeness it would not otherwise get. We never, however, try to put it across as an actual hoax; but always carefully explain to enquirers that it is 100% fiction. In order to avoid ambiguity in my references to the Necronomicon I have drawn up a brief synopsis of its 'history'... All this gives it a sort of air of verisimilitude.
Now about the "terrible and forbidden books"--I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself. Robert Bloch devised the idea of Ludvig Prinn and his De Vermis Mysteriis, while the Book of Eibon is an invention of Clark Ashton Smith's. The late Robert E. Howard is responsible for Friedrich von Junzt and his Unaussprechlichen Kulten....
As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes--in all truth they don't amount to much. That is why it's more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon and Book of Eibon.
The name "Abdul Alhazred" is one which some adult (I can't recall who) devised for me when I was 5 years old ager to be an Arab after reading the Arabian Nights. Years later I thought it would be fun to use it as the name of a forbidden-book author. The name Necronomicon...occurred to me in the course of a dream.
As further proof, consider this : why are Lovecraft's quotes from the Necronomicon not found in any of the commercial versions? Perhaps because they're copyrighted by Lovecraft's estate.
H.P. Lovecraft Misconceptions
Many misconceptions have arisen about Lovecraft due primarily to two reasons. The first is that many people have been introduced to Lovecraft's works through the "Call of Cthulhu" roleplaying game. This in itself is not a bad thing, yet many people take the information disseminated by the Chaosium as canon. Secondly, some people first encounter Lovecraft through the Necronomicons that are available. These are even worse sources of information since their success depends on the believability of their hoax.
"I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connexions -- Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L'mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum- and was drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder, outer entity at which the crazed author of the Necronomicon had only guessed in the vaguest way."
Whew ! Note that the last item, "the Magnum Innominandum", is Latin for "The Great Not-to-Be Named". (to be continued)
Hastur was borrowed by Lovecraft from Robert W. Chambers, who had, in turn, borrowed it from Ambrose Bierce.
"The pattern of the Mythos is a pattern that is basic in the history of mankind, representing as it does the primal struggle between good and evil; in this, it is essentially similar to the Christian Mythos, especially relating to the expulsion of Satan from Eden and Satan's lasting power of evil. 'All my stories, unconnected as they may be,' wrote Lovecraft, 'are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again.'"
In fact, this quote did not come from Lovecraft, but from Harold Farnese, a brief correspondent of Lovecraft. After Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote Farnese, asking if he could borrow the letters from Lovecraft. Farnese gladly agreed, and mailed the letters to Derleth. In letters Farnese then wrote to Derleth, he often "quoted" Lovecraft -- these quotes appear to be, at best, paraphrases. In one, Farnese writes :
"Upon congratulating HPL upon his work, he answered: 'You will, of course, realize that all my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on one fundamental lore or legend: that this world was inhabited at one time by another race, who in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.'"
Derleth took this "quote" as fact and used it on several occasions, but investigation into Lovecraft's letters does not reveal this "quote". In several other letters to Derleth, Farnese quotes the letters he sent to Derleth, yet comparison to the letters themselves reveals that Farnese was not quoting, but merely recalling. Farnese at one point refers to a writer for Weird Tales by the name of "Bellknap Jones" -- an obvious misreference to Frank Belknap Long.
For a fuller discussion of this long-standing misconception, see David E. Schultz' "The Origin of Lovecraft's 'Black Magic' Quote" in Crypt of Cthulhu, issue 48.
"Again thanking you in Tsathoggua's name for the recent shipment, oping to see more items from your pen ere long, I append the Elder Sign he Seal of N'gah, given in the Dark Cycle of Y'hu."
Following this Lovecraft signed his name ("Ec'h-Pi-El") and drew two peculiar figures. The latter, the Seal of N'gah, looks something like a stag beetle, having six legs and three horns. The former, the Elder Sign, looks something like the branch of a pine or fir tree, and is shown on the button at the bottom of this page.
The misconception that the Elder Sign is a pentagram with a flaming eye in the center is probably due to August Derleth's description of it in his The Lurker at the Threshold.
LONGUE ET LABORIEUSE MISE EN PAGE PAR ST SURVIVOR 8-(