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

Things were not always entirely harmonious between Lovecraft and his teachers, however. He notes several occasions in which he had various academic disputes, the most celebrated of which was with a ‘fat old lady English teacher’ named Mrs Blake. On one occasion she felt that a paper handed in by Lovecraft sounded like something she had read in a newspaper or magazine, and pointedly questioned its originality. Lovecraft boldly admitted that he had copied it directly from a newspaper, and—’as the good soul’s bewilderment became almost apoplectic’¹⁸—pulled out a clipping, ‘Can the Moon Be Reached by Man? By H. P. Lovecraft’—an article he had published in the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner for 12 October 1906. As in several of his Slater Avenue antics, Lovecraft gives the impression of a show-off and smart-alec, and it is perhaps not surprising that his teachers—unsuccessfully, at least as he recounts it—attempted now and again to put him in his place.

It is worth studying what courses Lovecraft actually took during his three years at Hope Street. His transcript survives, and it is full of interesting and suggestive information. The school year lasted for thirty-nine weeks, and most of the courses Lovecraft took covered an entire year; occasionally he took courses lasting only one term, either nineteen or twenty weeks. (In the following enumeration, classes are for thirty-nine weeks save where listed.) Numerical grades were issued; an 80 represented a Certificate grade, 70 a passing grade. During the 1904–05 year, Lovecraft received the following grades: Elementary Algebra (74), Botany (85), English (77), Ancient History (82), and Latin (87). There is not much that is unusual here, except the surprisingly low grade Lovecraft received in English.

Lovecraft returned to Hope High in September 1905, but his transcript states that he left on 7 November of that year, not returning until 10 September 1906 (presumably the beginning of the 1906–07 school year). This is no doubt the period of his ‘nearbreakdown’ of 1906. There is not much evidence as to the nature of this illness. It is surely peculiar that Lovecraft does not admit to a ‘near-breakdown’ in 1904; the 1906 breakdown does not appear to have been as serious as its two predecessors (1898 and 1900), even if it did mean his withdrawal from high school for nearly a year.

When Lovecraft returned for the 1906–07 school year he received high marks in English (90), Plane Geometry (92), and Physics (95), and good marks in several other subjects, including Drawing, Latin, and Greek. The ominous thing here is the continuing low marks for Algebra (75).

In his final year at Hope High (1907–08) Lovecraft took only the following: Intermediate Algebra (ten weeks) (85); Chemistry (95); Physics (95). Here the interesting thing is his retaking Algebra. Lovecraft himself remarks: ‘The first year I barely passed in algebra, but was so little satisfied with what I had accomplished, that I voluntarily repeated the last half of the term.’¹⁹ There is a slight inaccuracy here, since it was not the Elementary Algebra of his first year that he retook but the Intermediate Algebra of the second year; and he does seem to have finally achieved a better grade this time.

The transcript states that Lovecraft left on 10 June 1908, presumably at the end of the term, since he is recorded as having attended the full thirty-nine weeks of chemistry and physics. But he clearly did not receive a diploma, and indeed it is evident that he has only finished the eleventh grade—or perhaps not even that, since he anomalously took only two full courses during this third year. He would surely have required at least another full year of schooling to qualify for graduation.

Lovecraft, aside from finding the teachers more or less congenial, had the usual scrapes with his classmates. He had been called ‘Lovey’ at Slater Avenue, but by the time he became wellestablished at Hope Street he was nicknamed ‘Professor’ because of his published astronomical articles. He admits to having an ‘ungovernable temper’ and being ‘decidedly pugnacious’: ‘Any affront—especially any reflection on my truthfulness or honour as an 18th century gentleman—roused in me a tremendous fury, & I would always start a fight if an immediate retraction were not furnished. Being of scant physical strength, I did not fare well in these encounters; though I would never ask for their termination.’²⁰

The sense of foreboding Lovecraft mentions as preceding his grandfather’s death is evident in his juvenile scientific work—or, rather, in the absence of such work. Both The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy and The Scientific Gazette come to an abrupt end with the issues of 31 January 1904. Lovecraft states that both journals resumed as monthlies, the first in May 1904 and the second in August 1904, but that they were stopped after a few weeks;²¹ these issues do not survive.