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

Lovecraft, in ‘In a Major Key’ ( Conservative, July 1915), makes the astounding claim that ‘Mr. Isaacson’s views on racial prejudice … are too subjective to be impartial’. In regard to The Birth of a Nation, Lovecraft states that he has not yet seen the film (he would do so later¹⁴), but says that he has read both the novel (The Clansman, 1905) by Thomas Dixon, Jr, and the dramatic adaptation of the novel on which the film was based. He then launches into a predictable paean to the Ku Klux Klan, ‘that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who saved half of our country from destruction at the close of the Civil War’. It is certainly odd that Lovecraft’s remarks were made at exactly the time when the Klan was being revived in the South by William J. Simmons, although it was not a force to be reckoned with until the 1920s. It can be pointed out here that Lovecraft is strangely silent on the thousands of lynchings of blacks throughout the early decades of the century; but he never mentions the KKK again until very late in life, and then he repudiates it.

As, however, with the pestiferous astrologer J. F. Hartmann, Lovecraft underestimated his opponent. The responses by both Isaacson and James Ferdinand Morton in the second issue of In a Minor Key (undated, but published in late 1915) are devastating, particularly Morton’s. James Ferdinand Morton (1870–1941) was a remarkable individual. He had gained a simultaneous B.A. and M.A. from Harvard in 1892, and became a vigorous advocate of black equality, free speech, the single tax, and secularism. He wrote many pamphlets on these subjects, most of them published either by himself or by The Truth Seeker Co. He had been President of the NAPA in 1896–97, and would later become President of the Thomas Paine Natural History Association and Vice President of the Esperanto Association of North America. He would end his career (1925–41) as Curator of the Paterson (New Jersey) Museum.

In ‘“Conservatism” Gone Mad’ Morton begins by stating presciently that ‘I presume that Mr. H. P. Lovecraft … is a rather young man, who will at some future day smile at the amusing dogmatism with which he now assumes to lay down the law.’ There then follows a broadside attacking Lovecraft’s racism, and a concluding prediction:

From the sample afforded in the paper under discussion it is evident that Mr. Lovecraft needs to serve a long and humble apprenticeship before he will become qualified to sit in the master’s seat and to thunder forth ex cathedra judgments. The one thing in his favor is his evident sincerity. Let him once come to realize the value of appreciating the many points of view shared by persons as sincere as he, and better informed in certain particulars, and he will become less narrow and intolerant. His vigor of style, when wedded to clearer conceptions based on a wider comprehension, will make him a writer of power.¹⁵ It is passages like this that led Lovecraft ultimately to make peace with Morton, who would then become one of his closest friends.

But that was several years in the future. At the moment Lovecraft had in mind no thought but a towering rebuttal. But the interesting thing is that no genuine rebuttal ever appeared. Lovecraft did write a magnificent satirical poem, ‘The IsaacsonioMortoniad’, around September 1915; but he did not allow it to be published, and there is no evidence that he even showed it to anyone. It is a splendid verse satire, as scintillating as some of the ‘Ad Criticos’ pieces.

Lovecraft did more than merely write about the war. On 16 May 1917, he himself applied for enlistment with the Rhode Island National Guard. What has not been observed by commentators is that this entire episode with the R.I.N.G. occurred before President Wilson’s signing of the draft bill (18 May 1917), and well before the institution of the draft itself. Lovecraft must have felt that, with the declaration of war in April, it was now appropriate for him to attempt to enter the hostilities himself as a matter of patriotic duty.

It is difficult to conceive of Lovecraft making this decision. He had been saying repeatedly since at least 1915 that he was an ‘invalid’ who could scarcely muster enough strength to get out of the house. But consider his most detailed account of his attempt at enlistment in the R.I.N.G.: