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

Lovecraft doggedly attempted to maintain his scientific interests, although it seems a little pathetic that he revived his juvenile periodicals, The Scientific Gazette and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, in early 1909, the latter after two years’, the former after four years’ hiatus (not counting the apparently brief revival by Arthur Fredlund). The sole issue of the Gazette for this period (January 1909) has an interesting ad for the ‘International Correspondence Schoolsespoh܀ in Scranton, Pennsylvania, offering a complete course for $161.00. This is no doubt the correspondence course in chemistry that Lovecraft admits to taking ‘for a time’.⁹ As to where he learned of this organisation, I shall have more to say a little later. That Lovecraft’s mother was willing to pay out the money for such a thing suggests that she was still allowing him freedom to pursue his interests; perhaps she thought this course might lead to a job, although that likelihood was surely remote. Once again, however, it was the more technical or tedious parts of the science that caused him difficulty: ‘I found myself so wretched bored that I positively could not study for more than fifteen minutes without acquiring an excruciating headache which prostrated me completely for the rest of the day.’¹⁰ One significant work did come out of this, however: A Brief Course in Inorganic Chemistry, written in 1910 and deemed by Lovecraft a ‘bulky manuscript’.¹¹ This work, so far as I know, does not survive, and we know nothing of its contents.

Lovecraft did attempt a more ambitious astronomical project, but it was not designed for publication. This is an astronomical notebook, once in the possession of David H. Keller and later in the Grill-Binkin collection of Lovecraftiana. It bears the title ‘Astronomical Observations Made by H. P. Lovecraft, 598 Angell St., Providence, R.I., U.S.A., Years 1909 / 1910 / 1911 / 1912 / 1913 / 1914 / 1915’. Keller¹² reports that the book contains at least one hundred pages of writing; page 99 has the following: Principal Astronomical Work

1. To keep track of all celestial phenomena month by month, as positions of planets, phases of the moon, Sign of Sun, occultations, Meteor Showers, unusual phenomena (record) also new discoveries.

2. To keep up a working knowledge of the constellations and their seasons.

3. To observe all planets, etc. with a large telescope when they are favourably situated (at 7 h 30” in winter, abt. 9 h in summer, supplemented by morning observations)

4. To observe opera or field glass objects among the stars with a low power instruments, recording results.

5. To keep a careful record of each night’s work.

6. To contribute a monthly astronomical article of about 7p. Ms. or 4p. Type to the Providence Evening News¹³ (begun Jan. 1, 1914.)

This sounds like an impressive agenda, but Lovecraft did not maintain it consistently; in fact, Keller reports that for the years 1911 and 1913 there are no observations at all. Otherwise what we have are things like an eclipse of the moon on 3 June 1909, a ‘lengthy description’ of Halley’s Comet on 26 May 1910, a partial eclipse of the moon on 11–12 March 1914, and a long discussion of Delavan’s Comet on 16–17 September 1914. I have not been able to consult this document myself and am reliant on Keller’s account of it; but it does not seem to offer much evidence that Lovecraft was doing anything either to relieve his reclusiveness or to find a useful position in the outside world.

Later in life Lovecraft knew that, in spite of his lack of university education, he should have received training in some sort of clerical or other white-collar position that would at least have allowed him to secure employment rather than moping about at home:

I made the mistake in youth of not realising that literary endeavour does not always mean an income. I ought to have trained myself for some routine clerical work (like Charles Lamb’s or Hawthorne’s) affording a dependable stipend yet leaving my mind free enough for a certain amount of creative activity—but in the absence of immediate need I was too damned a fool to look ahead. I seemed to think that sufficient money for ordinary needs was something which everyone had as a matter of course—and if I ran short, I ‘could always sell a story or poem or something’. Well—my calculations were inaccurate!¹⁴ And so Lovecraft condemned himself to a life of ever-increasing poverty.