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

There are also two anomalously late issues, January and February 1909. Lovecraft states that the journal ‘was printed in editions of 15 to 25 on the hectograph’.² At the moment I wish to study only the issues of 1903–04.

An average issue would contain a number of different columns, features, and charts, along with news notes, advertisements (for works by Lovecraft, for items from his collection, and for outside merchants or friends), and fillers. They make wholly entertaining reading. A number of serials ran successively over several issues.

The issue for 1 November 1903 makes an interesting announcement: ’The Ladd Observatory Visited by a Correspondent Last Night.’ The correspondent, of course, is Lovecraft. The Ladd Observatory, situated on Doyle Avenue off Hope Street, is a charming observatory operated by Brown University; the fact that a thirteenyear-old boy who was not even attending school at the time was allowed to use this facility is a testament to the degree of expertise Lovecraft had gained in astronomy, largely on his own. He states that ‘The late Prof. Upton of Brown, a friend of the family, gave me the freedom of the college observatory, (Ladd Observatory) & I came & went there at will on my bicycle’.³ Winslow Upton (1853– 1914) was a respected astronomer whose Star Atlas (1896), and probably other volumes, Lovecraft owned. One wonders whether he was a friend of Dr Franklin Chase Clark, who had married Lovecraft’s aunt Lillian in 1902.

Incredibly, while producing The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy every Sunday, issuing other occasional weekly or monthly magazines, and writing separate treatises, Lovecraft resumed his chemical journal, The Scientific Gazette. As I have mentioned, after the first issue (4 March 1899) we have no issue until 12 May 1902; after this there are no more issues for more than a year, but by the issue of 16 August 1903 Lovecraft was ready to resume this journal as a weekly, doing so quite regularly until 31 January 1904, with sundry extra issues. Counting the issues for 1899 and 1902, there are a total of thirty-two surviving numbers. No doubt this was printed on the hectograph like the Rhode Island Journal (the very earliest issues, of 1899 and following, were printed in an ‘edition’ of ‘one copy for family circulation’⁴). The journal strayed from its chemical focus pretty early on in the 1903 sequence, discussing such matters as Venus’s rotation, how to construct a camera obscura, perpetual motion, telescopes (a series taken over from the Rhode Island Journal and later to return there), microscopy, and the like.

These scientific interests also manifested themselves in fictional composition. Lovecraft admits to being a ‘Verne enthusiast’ and that ‘many of my tales showed the literary influence of the immortal Jules’. He goes on to say: ‘I wrote one story about that side of the moon which is forever turned away from us—using, for fictional purposes, the Hansen theory that air and water still exist there as the result of an abnormal centre of gravity in the moon.’⁵ This would presumably qualify, if it survived, as Lovecraft’s first authentic tale of science fiction.

I have mentioned that Lovecraft was writing most of these scientific treatises and journals while not in school. He attended the Slater Avenue school in 1898–99, but was then withdrawn; he resumed schooling there for the 1902–03 school year, and was withdrawn again. He adds that ‘In 1903–04 I had private tutors’.⁶ We know of one such tutor, A. P. May, although Lovecraft did not have a very high opinion of him. There is an unwontedly sarcastic ad for this person in the 3 January 1904 issue of the Rhode Island Journal, proclaiming May as a ‘10th rate Private Tutor’ who is offering ‘Low Grade Instruction at High Rates’; the ad concludes: ‘HIRE ME. I CAN’T DO THE WORK BUT I NEED THE MONEY.’ Perhaps May was teaching Lovecraft things he already knew. In any case, it is not surprising that the flood of scientific periodicals began during the summer of 1903, when he probably had much time to himself.

Lovecraft observes that, when he resumed school attendance in 1902, his attitude was very different from what it had been in 1898: he had learnt in the interim that childhood was customarily regarded as a sort of golden age, and so he resolutely set about ensuring that this would be the case. Actually, he did not need much encouragement; for it was in this year at Slater Avenue that he developed two of his earliest but strongest friendships—with Chester and Harold Munroe, who lived about four blocks away from him. Other friends were Ronald Upham, Stuart Coleman (who had known Lovecraft from his earlier Slater Avenue session), and Kenneth Tanner.