Her Letters To Lovecraft: Edna “Vondy” Hyde McDonald

She was born Edna Freida von der Heide in Manhattan on 15 September 1891, to Edward and Freida (Schler) von der Heide; her sister Eleanor came along two years later. By the time of the 1900 Federal census, her father was dead. By 1910, the small family had moved in with their uncle and aunt, William and Caroline Sprouls. It is not clear if Edna completed high school (later census records indicate only three years of high school), and at 18 she was already working as a “typewriter” (later census records gave her profession as typographer or stenographer) and she began what would be a decades-long career as an amateur journalist, publishing her own amateur journals such as Inspiration.

Edna von der Heide could write. She appears to have been recruited for amateur journalism in 1909, and for the next five decades won a bouquet of laureateships and held most of the offices at the National Amateur Press Association. In 1914 she was appointed as Official Editor for NAPA, only the third woman to hold that office, and was elected to that office in 1915; although she resigned almost immediately, details unclear as to why—amateur politics tend to be opaque from a distance of years.

In 1917, the United States declared war against Germany; a wave of anti-German sentiment swept the United States. Perhaps prudently, Edna and Eleanor changed their names from von der Heide to a more English-sounding “Hyde.” Friends in amateur journalism, however, continued to refer to Edna affectionately as “Vondy” until the end of her days.

By the way–I haven’t any feud with her, as you seem to have gathered. Whatever strafing there is, is all on her side—she cherishes a subtle dislike based on antipathetical temperament. I ceased hostilities when political expediency forced her to apologise for the nasty digs in Giddy Gazette & Inspiration. Her verse is, as you say, very good—though it isn’t the sort that interests me.

H. P. Lovecraft to Samuel Loveman, 29 Apr 1923, Letters to Maurice W. Moe and Others 497

In 1921, Edna Hyde ran for President of the National Amateur Press Association against Elsie Dorothy Grant, Lovecraft’s preferred candidate; Edna and her faction lost. To Lovecraft, Edna was his “literary enemy” (LFF 1.139), but in all of his mentions of Vondy in his letters or editorials in amateur journals, there tended to be a great deal more respect than there was animosity.

Incidentally—the work of “Vondy” is of vastly greater merit; many of the lyrics in her book being as close to poetry as anything published in amateurdom. The trouble with her in old amateur days was that she published so much casual & mediocre verse in addition to the solid body of poignant specimens. Many critics—including myself—saw so much of these trivial items that they tended to underestimate her general output.

H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 19 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky and Others 171-172

Miss Hyde’s reputation as a poet has caused her few stories to receive less attention than they deserve. In point of fact, they are among the best in the amateur press—the supply never being abundant. In this particular story the realism is the salient thing.

H. P. Lovecraft, “The Vivisector” in Wolverine #9 (March 1921), Collected Essays 1.275

On Hallowe’en 1924, Edna married fellow amateur Philip B. McDonald, and was known thereafter as Edna Hyde McDonald. They lived in the Bronx, at first on their own, and then later Eleanor joined them. Lovecraft and his wife Sonia may have seen them socially during the brief few years that they lived in New York together, at amateur gatherings or Blue Pencil Club meetings, but the evidence is a bit scanty.

In fact, there is relatively little information about Lovecraft and Vondy corresponding directly with one another, though we know they must have, either in public capacity when each held offices at NAPA, or conducting private amateur business like arranging memorial issues for fallen amateur journalists. However, there are two bits of data that support there was a correspondence.

The first is a quote from a letter from Lovecraft to Edna Hyde, undated but probably circa 1924:

Albert [Sandusky] has taken the trouble to dig out Lovecraft. And he has made me jealous of his findings. And to have Howard Lovecraft write me and say ‘Bless the child. He wields a curious influence over me, for who else could have taught me to chant with jocose abandon, the contemporary shortage of the noble banana’, is to have an admission of the feat that Albert has achieved with natural-selfness, what the rest of us have never taken trouble to attempt.

Miscellaneous Letters 497

Lovecraft was referring to the popular song “Yes! We Have No Bananas” (1922), which he famously tried to play on the pipe organ at the First Baptist Church of America in Providence. So that is one instance where Vondy claimed Lovecraft wrote to her, but later on she would add that they carried on an entire correspondence.

This was one of several notes from the amateur journal Belette, where Vondy quipped and ruminated on memorials for her dead frenemy. This and much more on Vondy’s life, as well as some of her laureate-winning poetry and fiction, can be read in The Fossil #333, a special issue dedicated to her memory and with considerable research by Ken Faig, Jr. into her life and work. You can really see why Lovecraft was taken by some of her work, even if her poetry wasn’t always in his line.

That is, unfortunately, “it” as far as the Lovecraft-Vondy correspondence is concerned. No actual letters between the two are known to survive, there are almost no direct references to letters to Edna in Lovecraft’s published letters, and her address is not listed in Lovecraft’s 1937 diary. So we are left with Vondy’s own insistence that they did write to one another…and there’s not really any reason to doubt her word on the matter. As much as we may wish it, Lovecraft didn’t keep every scrap of paper that came his way, and rarely spoke of his correspondence with amateurs to his pulp friends, and vice versa, except in the rare instances when someone showed an interest. Edna herself fell into that category once…

I duly received the envelope which you forwarded from Mrs. McDonald, & which contained a cutting from the N. Y. World  in which teh celebrated William Bolitho, discussing the cheap “pulp” magazines, chanced to allude to my W.T. effusions in not too patronising a manner. It was kind of Mrs. M. to send the thing—but I can’t resist enclosing the note which accompanied it, & which wound up with the perfect Hydeian touch of brooding hostility!

H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 14 Jan 1930, Letters to James F. Morton 218-219

The piece was “Pulp Magazines” in the New York World (4 January 1930); Edna had recognized Lovecraft’s name and forwarded it on through Morton because she lacked Lovecraft’s address in Providence, but apparently couldn’t resist a witty note to go along with it. This might encapsulate the nature of their correspondence as it probably was: intermittent over the years, a combination of mutual respect and good-natured ribbing. Whatever else she was in her life, Edna was one of Lovecraft’s peers in amateur journalism—and they both knew it.

Addendum: Sean Donnelly, with access to Edna’s surviving correspondence, has uncovered more about her correspondence and relationship with Lovecraft: Edna Hyde McDonald: Her last letter to Lovecraft.

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Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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