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

When Rheinhart Kleiner wrote ‘To Mary of the Movies’ in the Piper for September 1915, Lovecraft immediately responded with ‘To Charlie of the Comics’ (Providence Amateur, February 1916). It is no surprise that the two poets chose to pay tribute to Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, as they were the first true ‘stars’ of the film industry. Lovecraft’s undistinguished poem is notable only for its relative modernity of subject and style and its use of octosyllabic quatrains. Lovecraft clearly had a fondness for Chaplin, remarking: ‘Chaplin is infinitely amusing—too good for the rather vulgar films he used to appear in—and I hope he will in future be an exponent of more refined comedy.’²⁸

For three years Lovecraft had written reams of essays, poems, and reviews of amateur papers. Would he ever resume the fiction writing that had showed such promise up to 1908? In 1915 Lovecraft wrote to G. W. Macauley: ‘I wish that I could write fiction, but it seems almost an impossibility.’²⁹ Macauley claims that he ‘violently disagreed’—not because he had actually seen any of Lovecraft’s fiction but because, having sent a story to Lovecraft for comment, he had received such an acute and elaborate analysis that he became convinced that Lovecraft had the short-story writing faculty within him. Criticism of fiction and fiction-writing are, of course, two different things, but in Lovecraft’s case one cannot help feeling that the frequency with which he remarks on the failings of stories published in the amateur press points to a growing urge to prove that he can do better. Fiction was, of course, always the weakest point in the amateur press, not only because it is generally harder to master than prose nonfiction but because the space limitations in amateur papers did not allow the publication of much beyond sketches or vignettes.

Lovecraft finally allowed ‘The Alchemist’ to be printed in the United Amateur for November 1916. It was to be expected that he would himself attack it in the ‘Department of Public Criticism’ (United Amateur, May 1917), saying that ‘we must needs beg all the charitable indulgence the Association can extend to an humble though ambitious tyro’. The single word ‘ambitious’ may suggest Lovecraft’s desire to write more fiction if this one specimen, however much he may deprecate it himself, receives favourable notice. It appears to have done just that, but even so it would still be more than half a year before Lovecraft would break his selfimposed nine-year ban on fiction-writing. That he finally did so, writing ‘The Tomb’ and ‘Dagon’ in quick succession in the summer of 1917, can be attributed in large part to the encouragement of a new associate, W. Paul Cook of Athol, Massachusetts, who would be a significant presence throughout the rest of Lovecraft’s life.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Feverish and Incessant Scribbling (1917–19)

W. Paul Cook (1881–1948) had long been a giant in the amateur world. Cook was unmistakably a New Englander: he had been born in Vermont; he was a direct descendant of the colonial governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire; and he resided for much of his adult life in Athol, Massachusetts. For years he was the head of the printing department of the Athol Transcript, and his access to printing equipment and his devotion to the amateur cause permitted him to be a remarkable philanthropist in printing amateur journals virtually at cost. He began printing The Conservative in 1917. During his term as President of the UAPA Lovecraft appointed Cook Official Printer, a position he held for three consecutive years (1917–20) and again for three more years in 1922–25. Curiously, at the same time he served as Official Editor of the NAPA (1918–19) and its President (1919–20).

Cook was one of the few amateurs who had a strong taste in weird fiction; Lovecraft would later admit that Cook’s ‘library was the most remarkable collection of fantastic & other material that I have ever seen assembled in one place’,¹ and he would frequently borrow many rare books to which he himself did not have access. It is scarcely to be doubted that Cook, during his visit with Lovecraft in September 1917 (for which see further below), discussed this topic of mutual interest. Whether at this time he convinced Lovecraft to let him print his other juvenile tale, ‘The Beast in the Cave’, is not clear; at any rate, that story appeared in Cook’s Vagrant (a NAPA paper) for June 1918.