Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard

Todd B. Vick has just launched a new blog series, “The Literary Influences of Robert E. Howard”, with James Branch Cabell as the opener.

In his review, Howard calls Cabell the ablest writer of the present age. Along with many other readers back then, Howard was seized by Cabell’s command of the English language.

Carl van Vechten’s portrait of Cabell, 1935. B&W from the Library of Congress, but here newly up-rezzed, tweaked and colourised by me. View on a dark background and good monitor, to see the wooden cane in the lower half. Feel free to use for worthy projects.

DMR also recently had a short post Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: James Branch Cabell which noted others influenced by Cabell…

Neil Gaiman counts JBC as his favorite author.

What of Lovecraft? In 1920 he called Cabell a “real thinker”. But while judging most of Cabell’s fiction “sound and admirable”, and often with an enjoyable “light, witty, & sophisticated manner”, Lovecraft very much preferred Dunsany for his “genuine magic & freshness”.

New book: Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom

The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom: Volume One: A Tour of the 1930s is a lavishly illustrated 516-page new book. The $150 first edition is said to have sold out already, but there’s an ebook at a still-hefty $40.

Some have called it a “sumptuous scrapbook”. John Locke (The Thing’s Incredible! The Secret Origins of Weird Tales) has called the book…

“A much more detailed portrait of First Fandom than previously available”

There’s also the interesting addition of… “Original narrative comics, that bring to life key events”.

I can’t immediately find scholarly or otherwise weighty reviews. I’m thus uncertain if it offers a few nods toward less public and less photogenic networks, such as Lovecraft and his circles. Ideally one would want a whole chapter on the influence of that on early science fiction, but it might be tough to find quality archival pictures.

A revision of “The Strange High House in the Mist”?

Re-reading Barlow’s memoir of Lovecraft, in O Fortunate Floridian, I was struck by the implication of the comment by Barlow that…

Of “The Strange High House in the Mist” (1926) I have a much-interlined and revised typescript; the rhythms (he said) became too obvious in his story and had to be toned down.

Barlow’s reference to “rhythms” is ambiguous. Does it refer to the poetic play of words in lines, or to the larger structure which repeatedly pounds like ocean waves through the last part of the story?

But the clear implication here is that Lovecraft once made a heavily revised version of this typed story. Did Barlow have the early typescript of a revised version, which had then been cleanly re-typed and submitted to Weird Tales in summer 1931? It would seem a natural moment to make some changes. If so, then the further implication of Barlow’s comment is that the November 1926 original (rejected by Weird Tales and due to appear in The Recluse, but never printed there) was markedly different from the 1931 version?

The Lovecraft Encyclopedia makes no mention of any revision in either 1931 or 1934, or of a lost 1926 original which had been typed but then heavily revised. Nor, so far as I can see, is there mention of such on the survey of Lovecraft’s ‘lost’ material in “Locked Dimension Out of Reach” (Lovecraft Annual 2011), or in Joshi’s I Am Providence or his notes for Penguin Modern Classics.

But we can assume Barlow is accurate, and that there was a detailed revision. One then wonders when this was done. If in Florida in 1934 during his visit with Barlow, then the following item from Barlow’s memoir of Lovecraft may have some bearing, perhaps arising from the work in the revision…

At breakfast he told us his dreams; once of how he was a magician standing on a cliff over the ocean sending balls out into space and guiding them back, some of them returning with the scars and mosses of seas and spaces unknown.

A slightly different version of the dream is given on page 402 of O Fortunate Floridian, adding winds and wetness… a “high cliff by the ocean, where winds were blowing” and the balls “would have encrustations of odd growths, or be slimy wet.”

Readers will remember that the setting of “The Strange High House in the Mist” is a tall sea-cliff above the ocean, the original 1926 story being most likely written for a boy who lived on a sea-cliff at the ocean’s edge near Marblehead. Thus this dream, and Barlow’s comment, might hint that Lovecraft revised the story while staying with Barlow in Florida?

The Brown Repository has the story as scans, presumably deposited there by Barlow, and the notes on the record-page suggests a solution to the mystery. Although the item is…

Dated at the end: “Novr. 9, 1926.” This combination of manuscript (pages 1-7 and 10) and typescript (pages 8 and 9) was heavily revised by HPL. He apparently continued to make revisions even after the story was first published in Weird Tales, 18, No. 3 (Oct 1931).

Thus, by the look of it, it seems there was indeed some sort of composite assemblage and accretion on top of the original handwritten story of 1926, consisting of many inserted typed pages among the handwritten leaves and very heavy revision throughout. I imagine that access to Joshi’s Collected Fiction, A Variorum Edition, Volume 2: 1926–1930 would help further unlock the sequencing of this item, since the book has “High House” and it offers…

“all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story — manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications.”

Though I’m unsure if it also pares back to what sits underneath all Lovecraft’s crossings out, and attempts a forensic reconstruction of the 1926 original. Unfortunately this book is too expensive for me, even at its current reduction from $180 to $99.

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The Marvellous A. Merritt

Who was “The Marvellous A. Merritt”? And why was he quite so popular among the cognoscenti in Lovecraft’s time? Sam Moskovitz investigated in 1960, in a detailed survey and appraisal which found its way into a British magazine…

Lovecraft met the famous author in January 1934 in New York, and proffered a copy of his “The Rats in The Walls” for consideration. In a letter to Barlow of 10th? February 1934, Lovecraft told Barlow he had found Merritt “genial and interesting … sincerely and deeply interested in the weirdness he portrays”. He later wrote to Galpin…

Among other new people I met was the fairly famous fantastic magazine writer A. Merritt, whose “Moon Pool” I have admired ever since its appearance in 1918.” — letter to Galpin, 28th April 1934.

The February letter to Barlow reveals that he had not yet read Merritt’s novel The Metal Monster (first version, 1920), since Lovecraft mentions it and implies he had not yet read it. At that point Barlow was offering to send him either The Metal Monster or the later version The Metal Emperor.

The Metal Monster had been left unread until that time, because Lovecraft had been told in 1920 that it was dull…

… The Metal Monster, which I had never read before because Eddy told me it was dull. The damn’d fool! (nephew — not our late bibliophilick friend [‘Uncle’ Eddy, the Providence bookseller]). Actually, the book contains the most remarkable presentation of the utterly alien and non-human that I have ever seen. I don’t wonder that Merritt calls it his “best and worst” production. The human characters are commonplace and wooden – just pulp hokum – but the scenes and phaenomena… oh, boy!” — letter to Morton, 6th March 1934.

Incidentally, Lovecraft’s mention above of “our late bibliophilick friend” is another confirmation for Uncle Eddy of Providence, and faintly implies Uncle Eddy was not just a sour dealer in but also a lover of books.

Comparing the dating of this and the Barlow letter suggests that Lovecraft probably read the novel around the end of February 1934. Which version did Lovecraft read? He could have been sent the yellowing 1920 magazine pages by Barlow, but there was also a 1927-28 version that might have arrived instead…

“The Metal Monster” was serialized a second time in a Gernsback magazine, Science and Invention, from October 1927 to August 1928. (There were eleven parts in all.) The story was revised somewhat and re-titled “The Metal Emperor.”

This matters because “the first two chapters [are] missing in later prints”. Thus if one doesn’t have the 1920 magazine version, it’s a different beast. A very different beast, since…

“for [1927-28] Science & Invention magazine, Merritt really tore into the body of text, creating an entirely new version … This version focused on the sciency stuff, with Merritt backing-off the purple prose for which he is renowned.”

This strongly suggests that Barlow would have sent Lovecraft the original 1920 version, probably as tear-sheets. Barlow was likely savvy enough about such things to prefer The Metal Monster over The Metal Emperor. [Update: Yes, a 1934 postcard from Lovecraft reveals “The Metal Monster” was sent and read February 1934].

The original 1920 magazines containing “The Metal Monster” are not on Archive.org, but you may be pleased to learn that the original can now be had for $15 from Hippocampus Press.

Later in 1934, an August letter to Barlow reveals that Merritt had been given up as “hopeless”, in terms of a Lovecraft-Merritt correspondence. At the January meeting Lovecraft had given Merritt a copy of his “The Rats in the Walls”, but in August was still waiting for the tale to spark a letter and thus a possible correspondence between the two masters.

Lovecraft and Haggard

The International Walter Pater Society has announced Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism No. 4, which was due to be published November 2019…

The issue includes a cluster of articles on ‘Decadence and the Weird’, guest edited by Dustin Friedman and Neil Hultgren. Friedman questions gay identity in Teleny. Hultgren turns to proto-modernist form in Arthur Machen’s prose. Jessica Straley traces the threat and promise of anthropomorphized flora as depicted in Algernon Blackwood’s stories. Molly Youngkin argues that the women populating Rider Haggard’s tales inspired the later weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.

On Haggard, Lovecraft did at least try to dip into the famous author but may have succeeded only in reading She. He wrote to Kleiner in early February 1920 that…

Cook has also been kind, outlining a reading course in Haggard. I shall not tackle the gentleman in question till I am through with Algernon Blackwood, whose rather mediocre fantasies I am absorbing one after another. When I do read She, I will report my critical impressions in detail.

However, it appears he did not go on to assemble and then peruse Cook’s course. Since Joshi notes that Haggard’s most famous work was left unread for many years…

HPL did not read the novel [She] until 1926, and obtained his personal copy of the book still later.

Specifically he had to read She, probably at some speed and along with many others, to prepare his Supernatural Literature survey essay. A letter to Derleth, 31st October 1926, further illuminates…

I’ve recently begun reading the work of Sir H. Rider Haggard for the first time. ‘She’ is very good, & if the others are at all commensurate, I have quite a treat ahead”.

Yet, with the resources available to me, I can find no evidence that he read anything of Haggard other than She. Certainly Joshi’s Lovecraft’s Library lists only She, thus I assume there is no other evidence of Haggard to be found anywhere else in Lovecraft’s letters. If Lovecraft had read some of Haggard’s other books, one would have thought he would have mentioned them to at least one correspondent.

But if he did read some after She, what might they have been?

Obvious candidates are the She sequel Ayesha, the Return of She; and the well-known adventure King Solomon’s Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain. The vivid Ancient Egyptian settings of Morning Star and (in part) The Wanderer’s Necklace might have appealed, and their publication dates would have put them on Cook’s 1920 “reading course”. The other possibility that Cook would surely have noted is Doctor Therne (1898), a ‘tormented scientist’ confessional about a plague that sweeps England. It might have been hard to obtain by circa 1926, but Cook was reputed to have a vast library until 1930 and would probably have lent it. It may interest some to know that Therne is told from Dunchester, a name which evokes the similar-sounding Dunwich.

Plot Points on Lovecraft and gaming

A new one-hour Plot Points podcast asks…

How did H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space’ influence gaming? Academic Scott Bruner, Chaosium stalwart Jim Lowder, and host Ben Riggs (Encounter Theory) gather to discuss!

A snippet of Goodenough

The local Brattleboro newspaper has a new appreciation of Arthur Goodenough. The newspaper doesn’t appear to block visitors from outside the USA.

Their new local history article focuses on Goodenough’s speaking out against the state-enforced sterilisation of 250 “idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded or insane” in Vermont, to prevent them from having children. That was in 1931, and the Great Depression was beginning to grip. To many at that time, it must have seemed quite a sensible move.

But Goodenough rightly worried about what would now be called ‘mission creep’. Worried that, once such a thing was permitted, the public would come to accept it and doctors would treat it as routine. Then the apparently limited policies would slowly grow into a self-serving bureaucracy that could start to encompass anyone deemed ‘aberrant’…

He stated that it is unknown if physical or mental infirmaries might visit the lawmakers later in life; or find their way into the lives of friends, children or grandchildren. With passage of the law any of them could find themselves visited by the sterilization knife as well.

American Writers on Lovecraft’s 18th century

A new American Writers podcast looks at Lovecraft’s “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson”, and his love of the 18th century wits and satirists.

From the time-travel movie Berkeley Square (1933), one of Lovecraft’s favourite movies and set in the 18th century.

Friday the 13th: plague in Providence

Friday the 13th approaches. Here in the UK, the 13th is a key virus infection-point. According to the UK’s Chief Medical officer the start of the peak in symptoms should then begin here on 19th-23rd March, rising thereafter and possibly continuing high for three or four weeks. (Update: he’s now saying “the peak” might last 10-14 weeks).

Thus, tomorrow we face a very scary Friday the 13th. There’s also a full moon in the night sky, possibly giving hysterical toilet-roll chewers an added dose of lunacy.

What better reading then, for this moment, than my account of H.P. Lovecraft and the deadly influenza epidemic? Accordingly here is a free chapter from my book Lovecraft in Historical Context #3, “A Real Horror: on the 1918 flu epidemic in Providence”. The chapter has been slightly revised, and there’s a new picture of one of the armed guards on the gates of Brown University.

Download: real_horror_1918_flu_in_providence.pdf

Two Gentlemen Meet at Midnight

New on Archive.org, August Derleth’s Arkham Sampler #4 (Autumn 1948). The journal ran for eight issues. This issue’s highlight, today, is a ‘poem for voices’ by Derleth. Inspired by reading Lovecraft’s letters he imagines the shades of Lovecraft and Poe meeting at last, one night in Providence.

And here’s a picture to set the mood for a reading. It’s not been seen here before at Tentaclii, and is from my late summer 2019 haul of such pictures showing Lovecraft’s 66 College St and its surroundings. The two men are at the Van Wickle Gates at the top of College Street, only a moment’s walk from 66 College Street. In fact, given the timing in the 1940s, one wonders if the picture wasn’t inspired by Derleth’s 1948 poem.

I don’t know who holds Derleth’s copyrights these days, but if they’re sensible descendents then there may be potential here for a musical album. Of soundscape / found-sounds / low-key ‘night music’, combined into tracks evoking Providence at night in the 1930s/40s leading into a dramatised vocal performance of this poem with FX. Perhaps earlier in the album one might also have some of Poe’s more ‘cosmic’ lyrics and then Lovecraft’s churchyard letters/poem, both mentioned in the above poem, done in the same way.

New book: His Own Most Fantastic Creation

I don’t usually cover anthology slabs here at Tentaclii, but I’ll make an exception for a fun one that features Lovecraft as a character, edited by the venerable S.T. Joshi. His Own Most Fantastic Creation is a £25 (about $40) hardcover from PS Publishing, and is pre-ordering now for shipping in April 2020.

The blurb is usefully descriptive…

Darrell Schweitzer focuses on Lovecraft’s childhood, when he was plagued with dreams of “night-gaunts” and was left bereft by the early death of his father. John Shirley depicts Lovecraft as a gawky teenager evolving his notions of “cosmicism”, while Scott Wiley emphasises Lovecraft’s devotion to cats. Stephen Woodworth and Donald R. Burleson ring changes on the Lovecraftian theme of personality exchange. Lovecraft famously collaborated with Harry Houdini on a story. Donald Tyson and Jonathan Thomas write very different stories on the association of these two figures. Mark Samuels focuses on Lovecraft’s creation of imaginary tomes of forbidden lore, while the stories by Richard Gavin, David Hambling, Jason V. Brock, and S. T. Joshi supply broader ruminations on the origins of Lovecraft’s revolutionary motifs. While eschewing Lovecraft himself as a character, the tales by W. H. Pugmire and Simon Strantzas exhibit figures who reveal strikingly Lovecraftian elements while probing the psyche of the man from Providence.

Super. It’s perhaps a pity that there’s not also an essay comprehensively surveying the uses of Lovecraft-as-character and Lovecraft-alikes in fiction, comics and poetry up to about 1969. Perhaps also appending the 1970-2020 titles in a simple checklist form. But I guess that might belong in a companion volume collecting such early stories and poems. However, Joshi does mention just a few of them in his short introduction…

Lovecraft the man has served as an inspiration for fiction writers as early as Edith Miniter (“Falco Ossifracus’ 1921), Frank Belknap Long (“The Space-Eaters’ 1928), and Robert Bloch (“The Shambler from the Stars:’ 1935) in his own day”.