Her Letters To Lovecraft: Muriel E. Eddy

Muriel E. (Gammons) Eddy was born in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1896. She started to write poetry and fiction at a very early age. Muriel was educated in Attleboro Falls, Massachusetts; Redlands, California; and the Horace Mann School in San Jose, California, where she lived during her early teen years. Her father owned a movie theatre during that time, and it was there that she would spend many hours watching the motion picture shows, and writing stories and poems. Upon returning to Massachusetts, much of her poetry was published in her hometown newspaper, The Attleboro Sun.

Being the avid reader that she was, Muriel read all that she could, including the various magazines sold at the local newsstands. One of these held a letter to the editor from Clifford Eddy, Jr. Muriel wrote a letter to him and a correspondence ensued; they were both twenty-one. At the time, the two found they had many common interests: their love for writing, reading habits, their fertile imagination, and their almost twin birthdays (his, January 18, 1896; hers, January 19, 1896). They married the following year on February 10, 1918, eventually settling in Providence, Rhode Island.

Muriel continued writing, all the while raising three children. Her short stories in many different genres including romance, mystery, personal adventure, and suspense were published in the various magazines of the day such as Ghost Stories, Scarlet Adventuress, Complete Detective Novel Magazine, True Confessions, Midnight Magazine, and The Occult Digest. […]

Muriel and Clifford met H. P. Lovecraft and maintained a close friendship with him until his death in 1937.
—Jim Dyer, “Introduction” in In the Gray of the Dusk i-ii

A few letters from Lovecraft to Muriel, and to her husband C. M. Eddy, Jr., survive; so there is no doubt that they did correspond. Beyond that bald fact, the correspondence of Muriel E. Eddy and H. P. Lovecraft gets complicated.

The difficulty comes from the fact that Muriel, more than most of Lovecraft’s friends, memorialized her and her husband’s relationship with Lovecraft. While her major memoir is “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961), she also published “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945), “Message in Stone” in Fate Magazine (Oct 1956), “Memories of H. P. L.” in The Magazine of Horror (Winter 1965-1966), “Lovecraft’s Marriage and Divorce” in Haunted (Jun 1968), and H. P. L. “The Man and the Image” (1969) (also partially reprinted as “Lovecraft: Among the Demons”), not to mention miscellaneous letters, notes, and probably a few reprints under different titles.

While that sounds substantial, most of these are relatively minor pieces, largely repetitious or filled with Muriel’s own speculation. Digging into the minutiae of what Muriel wrote and when, and trying to cross-reference her statements made through several decades versus the facts given in Lovecraft’s letters and other sources, reveals a great deal of omission, correction, and even contradictions.

To give an example, take this snippet from one of her later, self-published memoirs:

One day he walked all the way up to the top of the First Baptist Metting House in Benefit Street to sign his name in the guest book. He wrote, “H. P. Lovecraft, Esq., Gentleman.” He signed many of his letters to my husband and me with that phrase, and also “your obedient servant.”

*********

Our friendship with Howard began with letter writing, although we also lived in Providence – because he hated to use the telephone or any other mechanical device such as the typewriter. He always wrote in longhand, and later I was to type many of his manuscripts.

We wanted very much to meet him in person, and he finally came to our house one afternoon in August, 1923.
—Muriel E. Eddy, H. P. L. “The Man and the Image” (1969) 3

There is no doubt that Lovecraft did often sign his letters in just this way; we have numerous surviving examples to attest to that. So far, so good. Several of Lovecraft’s letters also attest to how much he detested typing, and his penchant for writing longhand; this is also verified by surviving manuscripts in Lovecraft’s writing. How much Muriel E. Eddy did typing for Lovecraft is more debatable; we cannot point to a typescript and say “Yes, Muriel typed this for Lovecraft.” We do have letters from Lovecraft where he mentions that C. M. Eddy, Jr. typed for him:

I gotta new way to get all my old manuscripts retyped in double-spacing, too. It’s the new local boy Eddy, what I was tellin’ ya about. I revise his stuff; and for every story I jazz up, he types one for me.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 19 Oct 1924, Letters to Maurice W. Moe 139

Does this mean Muriel E. Eddy didn’t type Lovecraft’s manuscripts? No. But it also means that without supporting evidence, we’re left to take her word on the matter. This becomes important because some of the most interesting and critical points in Muriel Eddy’s memoirs of her friendship and correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft are less well supported by outside evidence.

All of Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs agree, for example, that Lovecraft first came to visit the Eddys—who lived in Providence, Rhode Island, just a couple of miles from Lovecraft’s front door—in 1923. However, according to Muriel, they actually came into contact years earlier.

Cliff and I met Howard Philips Lovecraft in 1923. We were introduced by their mothers, who were both active in the women’s suffrage movement.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “Introduction” in Exit to Eternity (1973) iii

The 19th amendment granting women’s suffrage in the United States passed in 1919, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft died in 1921, so this hypothetical first contact would have been c. 1918-1919. Yet there is no mention of the Eddys in Lovecraft’s correspondence before 1923, and the earliest surviving letters from Lovecraft to the Eddys dates to 1923. There is no reference in Lovecraft’s letters of his mother ever attending a suffragette meeting. However, Muriel expanded on this early contact:

Meeting Howard Phillips Lovecraft “in person” was the culmination of months of letter writing. Though we lived but a few miles apart, it had been necessary to contact H.P.L. (as we later learned to call him) by mail, during his mother’s lifetime. […] She said she preferred that we enter into correspondence with Howard, as generally speaking, he hated to talk over the ‘phone, not caring for modern-day inventions or mechanical instruments. […] So we wrote to H.P.L., and found him a willing and eager correspondent. Letters flew thick and fast between us, and he invited us to join the United Amateur Press Association, to which he belonged. He also sent us many copies of The Tryout, a small monthly booklet for amateur writers published by C. W. Smith up in New Hampshire, to which he was a faithful contributor, writing for it under various pen names, one of which was L. Theobald, Jr. We, too, were soon steady contributors to this small magazine.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 3, 4-5

While there are no letters from this period to attest to a “thick and fast” correspondence, Lovecraft was definitely keen to recruit fellow-writers to amateur journalism, and the United Amateur Press Association was his personal preference. That being said, The Tryout was associated with the rival National Amateur Press Association, and I’ve yet to find either of the Eddys on the rolls of the UAPA or NAPA. However, in 1918 Muriel E. Eddy did publish a few poems in The Tryout. That much, at least, seems to suggest that they may really have been in contact with Lovecraft as early as 1918.

August Derleth, who presumably got the data directly from C. M. Eddy, Jr. or Muriel Eddy, wrote a slightly more detailed account of Lovecraft coming into correspondence with the Eddys:

By one of those coincidences that are found so frequently in life, however much their incidence may be ridiculed in fiction, Mrs. Sarah Lovecraft and Mrs. Grace Eddy, two ladies of Providence, Rhode Island, who were allied in interest in the movement for women’s suffrage early in this century, had sons who were bending their efforts toward success at writing. Early in 1918, during a lull in a telephone conversation about the goal toward which both worked, the disclosure of their sons’ spare time activity was made, though Clifford M. Eddy Jr. was then courting and shortly married another writer, Muriel Gammons, and it was not until September of that year that Muriel Eddy sent H. P. Lovecraft a note, enclosing a poem of her own and one of her husband’s. Lovecraft responded out of his enthusiasm for fellow writers— and amateur pressdom— as he did in many other cases— with an application blank for each inviting them to join the United Amateur Press Association, and signed his note, “H. P. Lovecraft, Director.” The Eddys accepted Lovecraft’s invitation to join the association, but they did not actually meet one another until the summer of 1923.
— August Derleth, The Dark Brotherhood and other pieces (1966), 97

Muriel went on to write:

All of his letters were interesting and instructive and helped us a great deal. Then the letters became fewer and fewer, and it was evident that Howard was under some sort of stress about which he preferred not to talk. Finally, we knew the reason. His mother had become a patient at Butler Hospital, and his two aunts had taken over the running of the Lovecraft household. […] After her death, we began to hear from him again… and after over a year of intermittent writing back and forth, we had the temerity to invite him to visit us…never dreaming that he would accept the invitation!
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 5

Lovecraft’s letters after his mother’s death do show his great bereavement at her loss; at the same time, his involvement with amateur journalism and relationships with individuals like Winifred Virginia Jackson and Sonia H. Greene were undergoing a profound shift; it would not be unusual if a correspondence was allowed to lapse after a while, only to pick up again after things had settled for a period.

Two letters from H. P. Lovecraft to Muriel E. Eddy survive from this period, dated 5 September and 20 October 1923. Both of the Eddys were active writers during this period, though Muriel also had to keep house and watch the children (Clifford b. 1918, Fay b. 1920, and Ruth b. 1921—Muriel’s pregnancies might have been another reason the correspondence lapsed; it was a busy few years). C. M. Eddy, Jr. appears to have had at least occasional other employment as a theater promoter and other jobs. Still, money was obviously tight, and it was going to get tighter. There is evidence from city directories and other sources that the Eddys moved frequently in the 1920s.

The 5 September 1923 letter opens with Lovecraft enclosing several of his weird fiction manuscripts, and a discussion of the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales. This was obviously part of an ongoing discussion about pulps, because Lovecraft wrote:

I never saw The Thrill Book, & was distinctive tantalized by what you say of “The Sargasso Sea”.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Muriel E. Eddy, 5 Sep 1923, Miscellaneous Letters 156

Much of the letter is, unfortunately, not available; the partial transcription included in Miscellaneous Letters is taken from a dealer’s listing. The end of the letter, however, is a brief postscript that says simply: “P.S. Batch of new Tryouts just came—I’ll enclose a copy.” This would be another point in support of Muriel’s claim that Lovecraft had approached the Eddys about joining amateur journalism.

The 20 October 1923 letter opens “My dear Mrs. Eddy:—” and an enclosed story revision—”The Ghost-Eater” for C. M. Eddy, Jr. (which would be published in Weird Tales Apr 1924). The fact that Lovecraft is addressing this business matter through Muriel may suggest that she was the primary point of contact, at least at first, although as with the case of Fritz and Jonquil Leiber, perhaps Lovecraft alternated letters between the two, keeping up a parallel correspondence. The letter goes on to thank her for her comments related to The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag (1923), which Lovecraft had edited and written the critical preface to.

Taken together, these letters show an active and literary correspondence, mixed with a bit of revisory business. “The Ghost-Eater” is the earliest story of Eddy’s that Lovecraft is known to have touched-up, and might represent C. M. Eddy’s early attempt to crack Weird Tales as a market. Other stories Lovecraft had a greater or lesser hand in were “Ashes” (WT Mar 1924), “The Loved Dead” (WT May-Jun-Jul 1924), and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (WT Apr 1925).

There is a gap in the extant Lovecraft-Eddy correspondence; this is no doubt due in part to Lovecraft’s elopement with Sonia H. Greene to New York in March 1924. Muriel wrote that she saw the announcement in the paper where Lovecraft advertised for the typescript of “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” (for Harry Houdini), which he had lost on the trip:

I was so sorry for Lovecraft and so intrigued with the expected sight of the advertisement that, impetuously, I sat down, and clipping out the notice, I pasted it on a sheet of note-paper and drew a heavy black edge around it, writing underneath, “My deepest sympathy”.

In the very next mail came a printed announcement of Howard’s marriage to Sonia. They were married March 3, 1924, in St. Paul’s Church in New York City. Was my face red when that announcement arrived…after having just sent Lovecraft a note of sympathy! […]

[19] Lovecraft initially seemed overjoyed and exhilarated, sending us smiling snapshots of himself, also of Sonia, but not taken together. At first his letters were typical missives, then they dwindled, and finally, we did not hear from him at all.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 15-16, 19

The Eddys were definitely included on the list of those to be sent the engraved wedding announcement:

About the announcements—the engraved cards ought to come today, and the envelopes are already here and addressed. Of Providentians I have remembered Harold, Ronald, and Eddy—the only ones I think would be really interested.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 18 Mar 1924, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.113

The others mentioned are probably Harold Bateman Munroe and Ronald K. Upham.

We know that the correspondence with the Eddys continued during Lovecraft’s New York period (1924-1926), but also that there were gaps—understandable given Lovecraft’s often upset situation (and possibly the Eddys’ as well). For example, in his letters to his aunts, Lovecraft mentions:

I had a piquant note from Eddy today, and must answer it soon. My correspondence and amateur work, however, have had to be greatly neglected on account of this rush order for three chapters of a book of American superstition.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 30 Mar 1924, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.131

And in the opening of a letter to C. M. Eddy, Jr., Lovecraft apologizes:

Once more a prodigal adopted grandfather sues for pardon anent epistolary delinquencies!
— H. P. Lovecraft to C. M. Eddy, Jr., 21 Jul 1924, Miscellaneous Letters 158

It is clear from the surviving letters that Lovecraft continued to have a relationship with the Eddys; after he left Providence, the Eddys’ absorbed some of Lovecraft’s furniture from his aunts (as well as dozens of postcards from Sonia H. Greene, which were sadly destroyed). Lovecraft wrote a letter of introduction for C. M. Eddy to Harry Houdini, and C. M. Eddy apparently did some work for Houdini. Lovecraft certainly helped revise or amend some of C. M. Eddy’s fiction for Weird Tales, and they were to collaborate on The Cancer of Superstition for Houdini, a project cut off by the magician’s untimely demise.

There is some indication that Lovecraft may have had a falling-out with, or at least frustration with, the Eddys in late 1925/early 1926. A pair of letters suggests frustration:

Strange case—but as I just wrote A E P G on a card, I’m through with freaks & paupers & plebeians & odd fish at last. It took a long time to shew me how profitless they all are—Arthur Fredlund, Herbert Benson, Eddy, &c—but I now see how asinine it is to bother with them. They give no pleasure in the end, & become an intolerable nuisance & parasitic pest.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 22 Dec 1925, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.520

As for me, I’m sick of Bohemians, odds & ends, freaks, & plebeians—C. M. Eddys & satellites & miscellany &c. They amuse me for a while, but begin to after a time to get frightfully on one’s nerves. People get one one’s nerves when they harbour different kinds of memories & live by different kinds of standards& cherish different kinds of goals & ideas.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lilian D. Clark, 11 Jan 1926, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.536

Without the Eddys’ end of the correspondence, we don’t really have an idea of what the problem was, but given the general impression of poverty that surrounds the Eddys from Lovecraft’s other letters of the period, it probably has to do with the straitened circumstances of the little family.

One thing we don’t get from this period, or after, is a real sense of Lovecraft’s relationship or correspondence with Muriel E. Eddy. With three kids under ten years old, she certainly had her hands full, on top of whatever other efforts she made to support the family while C. M. Eddy, Jr. tried to alternately write and work odd jobs, so it would not be surprising if C. M. Eddy, Jr. took over the bulk of the correspondence chores. We get a picture of the Eddys as a couple in a few letters from Lovecraft:

Orton is now attempting some writing—though of a popular & low-grade sort, for the Macfadden publications. (the same ones which honest Eddy’s wife writes for.)
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 12 Apr 1929, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.747

He has so far managed to keep meagrely afloat—with a wife & three children—by undertaking outside work of various sorts; but recent economic conditions have left him jobless & reduced him to such depths of want & peril that nothing short of a miracle—or a flood of fairly lucrative literary chores—can keep him & his flock from actual freezing, starvation, & eviction during the interval before he can again secure some industrial affiliation.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, 16 Jan 1930, Letters to Woodburn Harris & Others 429

I say the “House of Eddy” because C.M.E. Jr. made it clear last night that his wife does most of the adaptive revision in cases of this kind. He takes care of the grammatical & rhetorical side, while Mrs. Eddy supplies the “human-interest” hokum & blah for which the Macfadden editors are so avid. She, it seems, has produced much of this material, & has helped many beginners to develop into steady sellers. Her help, Eddy says, generally amounts to actual collaboration—although in your case, as I have just warned, you must not let it approach the status of instruction lest the results of Belknap’s lessons be undone. The rates charged by the Eddys for this collaborative revision of Macfaddenistic material would be very reasonable, & they would be glad to discuss the matter of placement with you whenever you wish to write.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, 29 Jan 1930, Letters to Woodburn Harris & Others 436-437

The last letter from Lovecraft to C. M. Eddy, Jr. is c. 1930, and mentions “The Mound” (1940) by Zealia Bishop. A checklist among Lovecraft’s papers suggest he was still in touch with the Eddys at least as late as 1934, as he apparently sent them postcards from St. Augustine, Charleston, and Nantucket, but these are not known to survive (Collected Essays 5. 267).

There is a notable gap in the correspondence, near the end of Lovecraft’s life. Muriel Eddy claimed that she was responsible for putting Lovecraft in contact with Hazel Heald, Lovecraft’s last major revision client. If Muriel E. Eddy did this by letter, those epistles do not appear to have survived and are not in evidence from what other correspondence we have. Then again, why would they be? Lovecraft seldom mentioned such correspondence to others.

How do we square this evidence for correspondence—solid (in the form of two letters to Muriel E. Eddy and ten to C. M. Eddy, Jr.) and circumstantial (references to the Eddys in Lovecraft’s other letters)—with Muriel’s own memoirs? Whether or not Muriel was misremembering or deliberately glossing over a few details, it seems clear that Lovecraft’s relationship with the Eddys was not quite as tight as she liked to present, and the impression given is of a friendship occasionally strained by time, distance, and business or financial matters, albeit not a friendship that was ever completely abandoned on either side.

Because so much of the surviving correspondence is between Lovecraft and her husband, it is difficult to get a bead on Muriel E. Eddy’s relationship with Lovecraft. There is a strong impression that at the beginning (c.1918-1924), Lovecraft was writing mostly to Muriel, as he would to any of a number of amateur journalists. As Lovecraft’s business with C. M. Eddy, Jr. waxes—first with revising his work and getting stuff typed, then the Houdini-stuff, and finally the Bishop revising/typing—we see less and less of Muriel.

While there are a few contradictory points in Muriel’s memoirs of Lovecraft, it’s important to point out that she was not necessarily dishonest—memory can get vague and fuzzy, and by the time Muriel was weighing in Lovecraft had been dead for years. As she told the stories over and over, they became more fixed, as evidenced by comparing the earlier memoirs to later ones; repeating narratives makes them clearer in the mind, but it also means a person teaches themself how to tell a story, sometimes adding or removing details, being informed by what other people wrote, etc. Most of Muriel’s comments on Lovecraft’s marriage, for example, are pure hearsay and speculation, and quite often wrong.

It is unfortunate that more of the Lovecraft/Eddy correspondence is not available. Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs, even flawed, provide a fascinating insight into Lovecraft’s life and work, and also into her own life and that of her husband during this tumultuous but critical period. What drove a woman like Muriel E. Eddy to write to H. P. Lovecraft? What prompted him to write back? How long did they correspond, of and on? We do not have—will never have—all the pieces of the puzzle.

Imagine a young mother, bouncing a toddler on her knee, squinting at one of Lovecraft’s manuscripts and trying to type it out—or perhaps C. M. Eddy, Jr. was there, a rugrat at his foot, as he read aloud while she typed. Or that breathless expectation on a hot summer afternoon in Providence, as a tall man in a straw hat walked up to the door to introduce himself, with a name they had only read in letters up to that point…it’s easy to wax romantic about these relationships. Yet the whole point of tracing such correspondence and combing through these memoirs is to get a better sense of who these people were, and what their lives were like.

Thanks to Donovan Loucks for his help with this one.

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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Her Letters To Lovecraft: Laurie A. Sawyer

All this rivalry, however, was conducted with the utmost good humour, Mrs. Sawyer, for the National, insisted that her society was larger and older—that the United was merely a smaller, later society. To this I replied that the analogy of organic nature held good—the National was the crude, primitive, coarsely organised monster of prehistoric times—the dinosaur or pterodactyl of amaterudom; gigantic in size and anterior in date, but forced in the course of evolution to give way to the later-comer of smaller size but incomparably greater intelligence—the United, corresponding to mankind. This bit of biological repartee seemed well received, judging from the hilarity it caused.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 24 Feb 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.28

According to the 1880 Federal census, she was born Laura Anna Moody in Massachusetts in May 1865, the youngest of three children of Nathaniel D. Moody and Eliza M. Moody; her older brothers were Everett E. Moody and John T. Moody. The family history is a bit vague; her father served for a month in the Union army in 1864, and by the time Laurie was 15 in 1880 the federal census lists her parents as running an alms-house. Later census records indicate that Laurie A. Moody graduated highschool, and a marriage is recorded 25 November 1885 with Charles Millet Sawyer, a salesman; from that point on, she was known as Laurie A. Sawyer.

The 1900 Federal census lists a child: Marshall M. Sawyer, age 8 (born 18 Jul 1891). However, the census also lists that Laurie bore two children; Lovecraft refers in one letter to “the eldest of the now grown, wedded, and departed Sawyer boys” (LFF 1.33), so there was another son the census lists failed to capture. A little digging revealed birth, baptism, and death records, and gravestone for Gerald Francis Sawyer (b. 10 Nov 1889, d. 13 Jun 1897); such childhood mortalities were all too common.

Her profession in 1900 and 1920 Federal censuses is given as “housewife,” while the 1910 Federal census lists Laurie as a bookkeeper at an electrician’s office, and 1930 Federal census lists her doing clerical work at Symphony Hall. She was, at any rate, literate, good with numbers, and had some talent for organization.

Mrs. Sawyer, though widely read, makes less claim to literary achievements than the others; being noted chiefly for a scintillant and inimitable humour which is employed on all occasions both in speech and on paper. Such a perpetual fountain of wit is quite remarkable, and is much more acceptable to amateurdom than the dull and heavy effusions of less gifted but more ambitious scribblers. […34] Subjects tended to change according to audience—thus Mrs. Miniter seemed mainly interested in the past history of amateurdom, Mrs. Sawyer in present amateur controversies, and Miss Jackson in general literary and poetical matters.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 24 Feb 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.33, 34

It is not clear when Laurie A. Sawyer began in amateur journalism. She is listed in 1909 as the final President of the Interstate Amateur Press Association, and newspaper accounts in 1916 list her among the attendees of the National Amateur Press Association. By the time Lovecraft met her at an amateur gathering in Boston in 1920, Sawyer was a staunch member of the Hub Club, associated with the NAPA, and her house at 20 Imrie Road in Allston, a suburb of Boston, was a gathering place where she hosted dinners. Sawyer’s correspondence with Lovecraft appears to date from after this meeting, as there is a brief reference to it in Lovecraft’s letters:

I have not heard from the Hubited—save the mimeographed Sept. meeting card—for a month or so; not since I sent Mrs. Sawyer those anti-National verses I quoted you.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Winifred Virginia Jackson, 7 Oct 1921, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 335

Lack of further reference suggests that this correspondence was likely brief and impersonal, dealing with amateur affairs, submission and proofreading of poetry to be published in various amateur journals, etc. Which was apparently sufficient contact for her to be included among Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings. How much they kept in touch is purely speculative, although they met at occasional amateur gatherings in Boston, there would have been a long gap during Lovecraft’s marriage and move to New York.

After the 1930 NAPA convention that they both attended, Sawyer published the one-shot amateur periodical Mrs. Dooley Attends The Convention (Aug 1930). “Mrs. Dooley” was a parody of the popular Mr. Dooley article series that ran in Chicago about a stereotypical Irishman; Sawyer wrote her with a thick brogue, and Lovecraft commented once on her “Dooley papers” which indicates a semi-regular series of such humorous productios (CE 1.296). She describes several of the attendees, including Lovecraft:

Mr. Lovecraft came up from Providence, the same fine lad as iver. Wan thing he did that no wan else has iver done at the Dooley house—he tamed the wild baste we have there that answers fer a cat. Shure she is a baste, she scratches an bites ivery wan what comes near her but he petted her fer a good half hour, while I meself just held me breath ivery minit, I was that scared.

This is a bit of fun—on his 1921 visit, Lovecraft also spent quite some time petting the Sawyer’s cat, which was named ‘Tat’ at that time. In his own account of the July 1930 convention, Lovecraft noted that:

The gathering on this occasion assumed an aspect of happy reincarnation of the Old days, beginning with one of Mrs. Sawyer’s old-fashioned New England bean suppers […] It was symbolic of the spirit of reincarnation and propitious Renaissance that the 1921 convention napkins, properly surcharged for 1930 purposes, were provided for use at this function.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Convention” in The Tryout (Jul 1930), in Collected Essays 1.363

However, 1930 would not be a happy year overall for Laurie A. Sawyer. On 11 November 1930, her husband Charles M. Sawyer passed away, two weeks to the day to what would have been their 45th wedding anniversary.

The next indication of further epistolary contact is over a decade later, with the death of Edith Dowe Miniter and the disposal of her mother’s cremains:

Regarding the logical person to visit the libitinarius & secure the cinerary reliques—I don’t see why Mrs. Sawyer is so necessarily such. She has (vide suam epist.) merely notified amateurdom of a condition, & left it up to others what to do about it. The only thing necessary in connexion with her is to thank her (which Culinarius can do) & assure her that something will be done. That would constitute no slight—in fact, I fancy she’d even prefer it, since she has plainly stated her inability to get about much now in cold weather (& how I sympathise!). Of course, if some sort of credentials were required to claim the urn, she could be called up or written—but that might not be needed. […] From the tone of Mrs. Sawyer’s letter I see no ground for Cook’s fear that she will obtrusively butt in.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 11 Feb 1935, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 104

I enclose a letter received today from Laurie Sawyer. She acts very fine about the matter,—willing to help but no obtrusiveness. In fact, her idea is the same as yours and mine. If Cole will do this it will be a magnificent thing.

Hastily
Cook […]

The important thing, of course—as Mrs. Sawyer says—is to get the task performed . . . no matter how or by whom!—W. Paul Cook to H. P. Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 19 Feb 1935, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 105

The disposal of Mrs. Dowe’s ashes was a well-meant affair, probably made all the more difficult by having to arrange everything by letter and sorting out who had a sufficient family relationship to the deceased, geographic proximity, and willingness to take action. For more details, see Lovecraft’s correspondence with Mrs. C. H. Calkins. Laurie A. Sawyer is not known to be a relative, and appears to have merely brought the existence of the ashes and the question of their disposal to amateurdom’s attention. It is notable in the 1920 Federal census that there were several lodgers in the Sawyer house on Webster St., including the amateurs Winifred V. Jordan (living with her mother Myra Jackson) and Edith Miniter. That might have made it a convenient hub for amateur activities, and no doubt was a reason why Lovecraft visited Sawyer in 1920 and 1921, and such close proximity might explain how Sawyer knew of the ashes.

After this episode, there is no further mentions of Laurie A. Sawyer in Lovecraft’s letters, and no letters from her to Lovecraft (or vice versa) survive. Presumably, as Lovecraft’s involvement with the NAPA declined, so too did any reason for them to keep in touch.

The 1940 Federal census still lists Laurie A. Sawyer, now widowed, still alive at 74 and at her house on 20 Imrie Road where she had once entertained H. P. Lovecraft, Edith Miniter, and many other amateurs. A social security death index entry for Lauria A. Sawyer, born 3 May 1865, says she died in March 1965. We can only imagine what she might have thought of H. P. Lovecraft, her old associate in amateur journalism, whom she outlived by almost thirty years.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: S. Lilian McMullen

S. Lilian Middleton-McMullen, whose works are now distinguished by publication in poetry magazines all over the country, is a discovery of Winifred V. Jackson’s, and an added plume in the cap of that noted poetess. She is a native of Ireland, of a loyal British Unionist family, and inherits a trace of French blood through a great-grandmother. In her heredity there is a definitely artistic element, as shewn by the fact that both her mother and sister are poets of no mean skill.

Mrs. McMullen was educated in English private schools, and originally specialised in music; being a violoncellist and pianiste of great ability, and to some degree a composer. At an early age she was given to the writing of verse, but these older specimens are notable only for grace and correctness. Amateurdom has seen two of them—“Late Autumn” in The Tryout, and “The ‘Cellist” in The United Co-operative. They are, quite obviously, juvenalia; though of unusual merit for such work.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Poetry of Lilian Middleton” dated 14 January 1922, Collected Essays 2.51-52

Susan Lilian Smith was born in Ireland on 18 February 1886. According to the 1910 Federal census, she emigrated to the United States in 1909; as did Michael J. McMullen (b. 1883). The Massachusetts Marriage Index records a wedding in 1910 in Somerville; their first child, Kenneth Barry McMullen, was born on 16 March 1910. The young family are recorded in the Bronx, New York City, with Michael J. McMullen listed as overseer of a drug warehouse. A second son, Edwin Robinson “Robin” McMullen, followed on 10 July 1913.

By the time of the 1920 Federal census, the family was situated in Newton, Massachusetts, about 7 miles from downtown Boston, in their own home on Morton Street; Michael J. McMullen is listed as a broker. By this time, Susan Lilian McMullen and her sister had already been recruited for amateur journalism, and H. P. Lovecraft took notice of her.

The Silver Clarion for February is of ample size and ample merit. Opening the issue is an excellent poem in heroic couplets by Mrs. Stella L. Tully of Mountmellick, Ireland, a new member of the United. Mrs. Tully, whose best work is in a lyric and religious vein, is one endowed with heriditary or family genius; as the Association no doubt appreciated when reading the poetry of her gifted sister, Mrs. S. Lilian McMullen of Newton Centre, in the preceding issue of The United Amateur.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism” (Mar 1919), United Amateur, Collected Essays 1.225

One of the editors of The Silver Clarion was Winifred Virginia Jackson, and Mrs. McMullen and Mrs. Tully were apparently two of her recruits for the United Amateur Press Association. Lovecraft mentions her poetry a few times in his editorials, and it was generally positive. At this stage in his life, Lovecraft was getting out and meeting amateurs more often with occasional trips to Boston, and it was on one such trip he met S. Lilian McMullen in the flesh:

Mrs. McMullen was present, & prepared to argue over a criticism I had recently applied to one of her verses; but I quickly ended the argument by calling in as my ally the omniscient James Ferdinand [Morton], from whose decisions there is no appeal. (The question had to do with the use of “mirror” as an intransitive verb. Such usage is incorrect.)[…]The best feature was Mrs. McMullen’s pathetic poem “Desiree Logier”, which is to appear in the July United Amateur. (I tried to get that poem on the front page, but Mrs. Renshaw overruled me.)
—H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 10 Sep 1920, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner 172

While a full record of her amateur and on-amateur writing isn’t available, it seems at some point between 1920 and 1921 she began to sometimes use the pseudonym Lilian Middleton. Her interests ran strongly to poetry and music, and she wrote both; Lovecraft noted:

The United takes pride in the new laurels of its scintillant and versatile members, Mrs. S. Lilian McMullen (Lilian Middleton), who is now writing songs for professional publication with the music of Ernest Harry Adams. The latest of these to appear is “The Bumble Fairy”, a dreamily exquisite piece already sung by several vocalists of note. […]

The Boston Amateur Conference of February 22, held at the Quincy House, was successful from every point of view […] A musical programme featuring Mrs. McMullen’s “Bumble Fairy” proved a delightful interlude.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes” (Jan 1921), United Amateur, Collected Essays 1.269

Lovecraft would write at rather more length about the conference in a letter to his mother, which reads in part:

Samuel Loveman’s paper was very poetic—he had asked me to read it, but Mrs. Miniter (in charge of the programme) thought she had better assign it to Mrs. McMullen, who had not felt equal to preparing a paper of her own. Mrs. McM. read it with great success—but not without having to ask me beforehand how to pronounce the name of the neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus! […] Following this, a musical programme was rendered with great success, the chief ingredient being the McMullen-Adams song, “The Bumble Fairy”, which you played the other day. Mrs. McM was reluctant to sing it, not possessing a voice quite up to her own standard of excellence; but her scruples were entirely unnecessary, since the rendition proved phenomenally pleasing. I was immensely glad to hear the piece played properly, and found that in my own crude picking out I had not correctly interpreted the time. This Ernest H. Adams is certainly a composer of the greatest possible ability, and I think Mrs. McM is singularly fortunate in her opportunity to write words for his airs. Neither suffers by comparison with the other—it is an ideal “team.”

[27] Mrs. McMullen was very glad to hear that you liked “The Bumble Fairy”, and bade me thank you for your favourable opinion. It appears to me that she is destined for professional prominence at an early date—sooner perhaps than many amateurs of even greater genius, such as Winifred V. Jackson and Samuel Loveman. […] The overwhelming majority were adherents of the rival on National Association (which is, of course, now friendly with the United), but the Jackson–McMullen–Theobald group formed a compact minority of purely United enthusiasts.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 24 Feb 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.26, 27

Lovecraft and McMullen were, despite any disagreement over metrical regularities, apparently on friendly terms. It is difficult to say when exactly they began to correspond, what prompted the correspondence, how extensive it was or what subjects they covered. None of their letters survive, and we have fewer hints in Lovecraft’s essays and correspondence than usual. We know that Lovecraft included her among his Christmas greetings, and we know that her poem “The Crock of Gold” appeared in his own amateur journal The Conservative (Mar 1921), which suggests she mailed it to him, unless she handed it to him in person at one of the amateur gatherings.

Yet the relationship was probably cordial, not close.

In August 1921, Lovecraft attended an amateur gathering in Boston at the McMullen’s house on Morton St.; McMullen had won the poetry laureateship for 1921:

The Hub Club meeting was yesterday, but on account of the increasing political gap between the (Nationalite) Hub element & the United, [Edith Miniter] set Wednesday as the day for conferring at length with the United element—W. V. Jackson, Miss Hamlet, Mrs. McMullen, &c. […]

[39] After a short argument at this temporary halting-place, the expedition proceeded to 53 Morton St., which I have of course seen before. Here I met Mrs. McMullen, & had the honour of breaking to her the pleasing news that she has won the United’s 1921 Poet-Laureateship. […] After this non-esssential digression the evening assumed more of the aspect of an ordinary amateur gathering, the company being augmented by the arrival of W. V. J., Miss Crist, Mrs. Wurtz, & a neighbour of Mrs. McMullen’s whose name has slipped my memory but who ought to be remembered for the menagerie which she brought with her—two large collie dogs, & the most exquisite kitten I have beheld in aeons. Mrs. McMullen averred that the latter small gentleman was brought especially in my honour, my liking for the feline species being well known in amateurdom. […] Mrs. McMullen played & sang her “Bumble Fairy”, & Mrs. Renshaw sang two songs (of which she wrote the words) in an excellent contralto, with Miss Crist as accompanist. I inflexibly refused all requests for song, & categorically denied the accusation of W. V. J., Mrs. Miniter, & Mrs. McMullen that I could sing. […] So I let mesdames Renshaw & McMullen bear off all the honours. […] Pure literature, grammar, technique, ancient balladry, & the Irish situation (the McMullens are loyal British subjects & Protestants from Ireland) all received attention; & even D. V. Bush & remunerative endeavour were discussed.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Annie Gamwell, 19 Aug 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.38, 39, 40

The Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) was a point of contention for Lovecraft, who was a lifelong Anglophile and was in favor of the British in the conflict. This put him at odds with anti-British, pro-independence amateur journalists like the Irish immigrant John Dunn, and exacerbated anti-Irish (and in a general sense, anti-Celtic/Gaelic) and anti-Catholic sentiments in Lovecraft. That the McMullens were both loyalists and protestants were both definite points in their favor as far as Lovecraft (and presumably his aunts) were concerned.

A few more notes on S. Lilian McMullen/Lilian Middleton appear in Lovecraft’s editorials. Later in 1921 he noted:

The continued successes of our Poet-Laureate, Mrs. S. Lilian McMullen (Lilian Middleton), cast additional lustre on the United as amateurdom’s chief source of authentic creative artists. Poetry by Mrs. McMullen appeared on the editorial page of the New York Times for October 15; a distinction which can be appreciated by those familiar with the standards of that celebrated publication. […303] Honours come rapidly to our poets. On November 5 The Literary Digest reprinted a poem of Mrs. McMullens’ from the New York Times […]
—H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes,” Nov 1921, United Amateur, Collected Essays 1.302-303

The poem was reprinted in the Literary Digest and several other newspapers.

In late 1921 or early 1922, Lovecraft wrote “The Poetry of Lilian Middleton”, the draft is dated 14 Jan 1922. It is not clear where this was intended to be published, but an abbreviated version of it was published in “The Vivisector” column in March 1922 (CE 1.315-316). How much contact Lovecraft had with S. Lilian McMullen after that is doubtful, one of his last words on her from this period was:

A special word is due the excellent portraits of eminent amateurs, among which is the first likeness of our poet-laureate, Mrs. S. Lilian McMullen (Lilian Middleton) ever published in Amateur Journalism.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes” (May 1922), United Amateur, CE 1.317

This was in reference to The Rainbow Vol. II, No. 2 (May 1922), which was edited by Sonia H. Greene, and is the only photo of S. Lilian McMullen I’ve found. Readers who turn to read Lovecraft’s “Celephaïs” in that issue may have wondered who that woman was, whose portrait and poem graced the page immediately proceeding Lovecraft’s. Now they do. Her work in that journal suggests that she and Lovecraft may have been in contact at least briefly in early 1922…but after that their relationship seems to break off, or at least the references in editorial and letters dwindle to nothing.

We can only speculate as to the reasons. It seems likely that McMullen and Lovecraft’s friendship was largely based on their common friendship with Winifred Virginia Jackson, and his relationship with Jackson cooled off after Lovecraft met Sonia H. Greene (his future wife) at that August convention in 1921. So too, the McMullens may have experienced difficulties of their own that limited S Lilian McMullen’s further participation in amateur journalism.

Taken together, these two snippets paint a picture of strained finances, and perhaps a strained marriage. Michael J. McMullen’s business either failed or his debts grew too much; the wife and children were sent out of the country while he tried to settle affairs, which probably included the selling of or foreclosure on the house at 53 Morton St. What happened to Michael J. McMullen between 1925 and 1930 is unknown; in the 1930 Federal census, S. Lilian McMullen is listed as “widowed,” and she and her sons were renting at Crafts St. in Newton.

Despite this hardship, S. Lilian McMullen persevered. She was naturalized a citizen of the United States of America on 5 April 1954, and according to her obituary finally passed away in 1981 at the age of 95, with 4 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren, and interred in Chatham, Mass (Findagrave).

Who was H. P. Lovecraft to S. Lilian McMullen? Like so many women who interacted with Lovecraft, there is no record in their own words to guide us. Their paths crossed just a few times in the early 1920s, and she made enough of an impression that he wrote in praise of her poetry and songs. We have, for the most part, only Lovecraft’s own sparse comments to guide us. Their legacies are different: Lovecraft’s legacy was literary, and his heirs are his readers; hers was her children, and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren. It would be interesting to know if any of her family were aware of her connection with Lovecraft…or if they still have any or her songs and poetry to remember her by.

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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Her Letters To Lovecraft: Ida C. Haughton

The Woodbee for October is edited by Mrs. Ida C. Haughton, and though not of large size, does credit both to her and to the Columbus club.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur (Mar 1917), Collected Essays 1.145

Ida Clara Cochran was born 22 July 1860 in Ohio, the first child of Samuel and Caroline Cochran. She had, apparently, little formal education. On 11 April 1883 she married Edwin S. Haughton. On 14 October 1887, their only child, Edna M. Haughton, was born. She was born, lived, and died in Ohio; and if she had any profession other than housewife it is not denoted on the federal census. Yet Ida C. Haughton had a considerable involvement in amateur journalism, one that brought her into contact—and conflict—with H. P. Lovecraft.

Organized amateur journalism in the United States began during the 19th century, when industrialization made amateur printing more feasible for individuals. There were several levels of organization, from small local groups like the Blue Pencil Club in New York City to larger regional groups like the Eastern Amateur Press Association, the New England Amateur Journalists Association, etc., and finally the national-level organizations: the National Amateur Press Association and the United Amateur Press Association—the latter of which was especially prone to faction, and by the time Lovecraft joined in 1914, had effectively split into two groups (the United Amateur Press Association with Lovecraft and Haughton, and the United Amateur Press Association of America with Elsie Gidlow). Various levels of organization were combined; so that for example the Blue Pencil Club was largely aligned with the NAPA and shared considerable overlap in membership, and the Woodbees Club in Ohio was wholly affiliated with the UAPA.

Ida C. Haughton was a member of the Woodbees and the UAPA. While it isn’t clear exactly when she joined, Lovecraft begins to mention her in his review column in the United Amateur (official organ of the UAPA) in 1915. There is, at this early date, no sign of animosity; while Lovecraft criticizes her poetry somewhat for perceived technical irregularities, his criticism is always balanced with praise, e.g.:

“Dead Men Tell No Tales”, a short story by Ida Cochran Haughton, is a ghastly and gruesome anecdote of the untenanted clay; related by a village dressmaker. The author reveals much comprehension of rural psychology in her handling of the theme; an incident which might easily shake the reason of a sensitive and imaginative person, merely “unnerves” the two quaint and prim maiden ladies. Poe would have made of this tale a thing to gasp and tremble at; Mrs. Haughton, with the same material, constructs genuine though grim comedy!
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur (May 1917), Collected Essays 1.154

Photo from *Chronicles of the Cochrans* (1915)

Little of Haughton’s work has been reprinted (notably, a convention report from 1920), so we have largely only Lovecraft’s reviews to judge, but she seems to have been fairly prolific in poetry, short fiction, sketches, short essays, and involved with editing of the Woodbee and sometimes her own amateur journals. Ida C. Haughton was noted for her devotion to her family and genealogy, having published a book Chronicles of the Cochrans (1915), which includes an autobiographical portion, and was involved with family reunions and an organization of Cochran descendants. Her daughter Edna M. Haughton, a schoolteacher, was also a member of the UAPA and the Woodbees, and there are indications that Ida recruited other relatives for amateur journalism as well:

The Woodbee for October is a magazine of wonderful merit, reflecting the sound scholarship of its gifted editor, Mrs. Ida Cochran Haughton. Mrs. Haughton feels constrained to apologise because of the prevalence of material from the pens of members of her family, but she has no reason to do so, since it would be difficult to find better literature than that which she used. […] The editorial comment, news notes, and other miscellaneous matter are of that high standard which one naturally expects from a writer of Mrs. Haughton’s culture and attainments; and it is not too much for the impartial critic to say that her management of the Woodbee has set a new standard in correct and graceful editorship. The October number is an issue to which amateurdom may well point with pride as one of the most substantial achievements of the year.
—H. P. LovecraftL, “The Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur (Jan 1918), Collected Essays 1.183

Amateur journalism was a democratic institution, and the UAPA held annual elections for officers drawn from among the membership. This led to politics, and Sayre’s law applies. At the time he was recruited and ever afterward, Lovecraft was associated with a faction of the United which emphasized literary ability, high standards in printing and criticism. Haughton and the Woodbees were more focused on the social aspects of amateur journalism, with more emphasis on amateurism and less on high-minded literary ability. After Lovecraft’s presidency (1917-1918), he was succeeded by three presidents from his faction: Rheinhart Kleiner (1918-1919), Mary Faye Durr (1919-1920), and Alfred M. Galpin (1920-1921). During this period, the columns of the United Amateur were largely dominated by Lovecraft and his friends; and the official organ reflected their efforts to project a quasi-scholar, high-brow aesthetic.

Ida C. Haughton, and many others in the United, were critical of Lovecraft & friends’ management of the organization, which we get the occasional hint of in Lovecraft’s letters:

The very boorish and puerile attack on the critical department made last year by Mrs. Haughton, is yet echoing in the United.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 13 May 1918, LAGO 35

Since Lovecraft was the critics department, more or less, he apparently took this personally. Haughton was at this point also the head of the Western Manuscript Bureau of the United, and later Secretary, receiving new membership applications and handling recruitment, and Lovecraft was apparently not happy with how she handled her duities:

Record each application received; send the applicants their certificates, properly filled out, with suitable words of welcome; and send all credentials to one or both of the MS. Bureaux—preferably the Eastern, unless she can endure dealing with that utterly impossible Haughton creature.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 14 Nov 1918, LAGO 218

I was very pleased to receive your recent letter with interesting enclosures, & have duly forwarded the membership application to the new Secretary—Mrs. Ida C. Haughton, 1526 Summit St., Columbus, Ohio. I am glad to welcome you as a full-fledged member of the United, & hope that your affiliation may prove permanent.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Arthur Harris, 11 Sep 1919, LRKO 239

Your failure to hear from the association officially is due to the negligence of the new Secretary, a rather eccentric elderly woman who was given the post merely because she happens to live in the next convention city. […] Smith is not a member of the United, & I fear he does not know that Mrs. Haughton is our Secretary; but I will tell him, also writing Kilpatrick. I wish Mrs. H would get some blanks printed—I have typed them till I hate the sound of the machine!
—H. P. Lovecraft to James Larkin Pearson, 19 Sep 1919, LRKO 320

While never publicly insulting Haughton, it is clear that the criticism leveled against Lovecraft and his faction must have increased in fervor and volume, at least if Lovecraft’s reaction to it is anything to go by:

It is that filthy Cleveland sewer-rat [William Dowdell] and that disgusting Columbus hippopotamus-jellyfish [Ida C. Haughton] who have done all the malevolent work by their raucous howls, and I fervently wish them both a swift and rough passage to the abode of Beëlzebub.
—H. P. Lovecraft to the Gallomo, [Apr 1920], Miscellaneous Letters 83

At the 1921 convention, Ida C. Haughton won the vote for president.

*The Washington Herald,* 12 Jul 1921, p2

Lovecraft was still Official Editor of the United Amateur, but had to deal with Haughton’s directives and her control of the United’s finances, as the UAPA collected dues from members to cover the printing of membership forms, lareaute certificates, and the United Amateur journal itself.

Since they were both officers of the organization and had to work together, Ida Haughton appears to have written to Lovecraft for the first time in 1921:

Ida has just written me that she and her Columbus henchman expect next year’s UNITED AMATEUR to be conducted in a more commonplace and democratic manner; with less of the purely artistic and more of the chatty and plebian. Only on such conditions, she implies, will the Columbus purse strings be liberally open. I have been dreadfully polite in replying, and have courteously ladled out wish to the effect that I’ll see her in hell first.
—H. P. Lovecraft to the Gallomo, 12 Apr 1921, Miscellaneous Letters 122

Part of the animosity came from Haughton’s accusation that Lovecraft had mismanaged the official organ fund. This frustration reached its peak with Lovecraft composing the satiric poem “Medusa: A Portrait”; to make sure there was no doubt who the gorgon in the poem was supposed to be, Lovecraft wrote a mocking dedication to Haughton when he sent the poem around to his close friends:

TO THE HON. IDA COCHRAN HAUGHTON, VISCOUNTESS WOODBY—
MY LADY:—

I shou’d be but a Cheater, and unworthy of the poetick Art, were I not to acknowledge to you by this Dedication the Indebtedness I ebar you. For ‘tis plain that I may my self claim but partial Credit for a Picture which, without so illustrious a Model, wou’d never have been drawn with any Sort of Fidelity. Truly, the Satirist desiring to shew certain Traits of Mind, wou’d be hard put to it, had he not before him some sort of living Example; and I am in Candour forc’d to concede, that of the QUalities I here seek to pourtray, no human Being cou’d display so great and flourishing an Abundance as your self. I shall ever count it a Piece of the greatest good Fortune, if my Satire succeed, that your Hatred of me mov’d you to slander and vilify me behind my Back; for lacking that Provocation I shou’d have neither had the Temerity to expos,e your Failings, not possessed so compleat a Fund of Lies and Calumnies from which to draw a Picture of such Venom as I never thought before to exist upon Earth.

Conscious, therefore, of my Debt, I will commend this unrpetentious Effort to your well-known Graciousness, and beg leave to subscribe my self,

MY LADY,
Your Ladyship’s most obedient,
Most devoted, humble servant,

THEOBALDUS SENECTISSIMUS, ARMIGER.
—H. P. Lovecraft to the Gallomo, 29 Nov 1921, Miscellaneous Letters 130-132

This language was only used in private to close friends; how Lovecraft phrased his reply to Ida C. Haughton is not known, since none of their correspondence is known to survive. In public, in the pages of the United Amateur, Lovecraft kept things civil, although occasional signs of frission slipped through:

It is not in a spirit of affront to him that we give preference to the plan of President Haughton, as outlined in her opening message, for the re-restablishment of a special magazine for credentials. We should be glad to curtail the official organ in the interest of such a magazine, as indeed we offered to do at the beginning of the term.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Editorial,” United Amateur (Sep 1921), Collected Essays 1.298

A “credential” was a work which demonstrated literary ability, be it a poem, short story, or essay, and which formed part of a would-be amateur journalist’s application to national organizations like the UAPA and NAPA; it was often the first piece of theirs that would be published in an amateur journal. Having a separate magazine for publishing credentials was intended to encourage new recruits, and Lovecraft seems to have largely approved of this move:

Mrs. Haughton and other assemblers of the recent New Member deserve much credit for providing a sorely needed outlet for the work of the recruit. The United should have further numbers of this or an analogous publication, and it is to be hoped that such can be made feasible. The editorial note in the present issue would gain strength and pertinence is more closely connected with the subject-matter and less fertile in accidental misstatements.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes,” United Amateur (May 1922), Collected Essays 1.317

In 1922, the presidency of the UAPA went from Ida C. Haughton to Howard Conover, and Lovecraft and members of his faction were effectively outed from all positions of leadership. In 1923, Lovecraft’s faction returned as his wife Sonia H. Greene became president, but her presidency faced issues, both from her personal difficulties and because the treasurer of the former administration refused to turn over the funds. Despite efforts to carry on with recruitment and publication, the United Amateur Press Association was moribund, and would not survive many more years.

Ida C. Haughton’s later years in amateur journalism are opaque; references to her in Lovecraft’s editorials and letters drop off after her term as president, although there was still considerable animosity on his part into the mid-1920s:

I may be human, all right, but not quite human enough to be glad at the misfortune of Dowdell or of anybody else. I am rather sorry (not outwardly but genuinely so) when disaster befalls a person–sorry because it gives the filthy herd so much pleasure. To be a real hater, one must hate en masse. I hate animals like the Haughton rhinoceros mildly and temperately, but for mankind as mankind I have a most artistically fiery abhorrence and execration, I spit upon them!
—H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 8 Mar 1923, LJM 29

Shall be glad to see The Old Timer, & hope Old Medusa gets her unshielded by Adamic censorship. But don’t fancy the old rhino is really a human being—she simply ain’t! That cow-mountain is nothing but a festering tumour of ectopic tissue, produced by fatty degeneration & morbid cell-sprouting–a senile & purulent excrescence on the race, wholly acraniate or at best microcephalic, & with muscular reactions—which produce written articles–caused by neuro-ganglial maladjustments induced by a gall-bladder dislocated by malignant elephantiasis into a position corresponding to the seat of the rudimentary brain in that species of primitive organism of which she is a noisomely decadent variant. She—or it—is a mere octopus of ugliness, nightmare, stupidity, & snarling malevolence . . . . a pitiful object that ought to be buried.
—H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 23 Mar 1923, LJM 34-35

When it comes to real cause for serious offence, how the devil can you think this farce even half as grave as that other old Ohio slush-brain’s attack on me in 1921? Boy, there isn’t half the real poison in the whole damn carcass of Peg-Ass-Us, that there is in one ophidian strand of the false hair of that fat cow-hippopotamus in Columbus! Put that li’l ol’ memory to work, Kid! Whilst all Witless-Cut has done is to fume picturesquely under deserved criticism, that ‘Idra Hot-One monster ran the very gamut of abuse & positive insult—culminating even in an aspersion on my stewardship of the United funds!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 15 Jun 1925, LMM 140

With the dissipation and collapse of the UAPA, however, Lovecraft’s ire would cool. When, at last, a bit of sad news came to him, he regarded his old enemy a bit differently.

*The Cincinnati Enquirer, 10 Dec 1934, p.13*

By the way—did you notice in one of the Oakland amateur papers the news that savage old Ida C. Haughton, my deadly foe in the early 1920s, was burned to death a year ago through the igniting of her clothing at a fireplace? Poor old gal! I’m surely sorry to hear it! I wished her a lot of things, but nothing quite as drastic as that!
—H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 12 May 1936, LJM 385

As for the continuance of the history to the finish in 1927—I really can’t tell when I’ll be able to get around to it, but I surely would like to do it some time—since no other old United member seems disposed to tackle the job. I doubt whether I’d try to revive the animosities of 20 & 15 years ago—for those issues are long dead, as indeed are some who participated in them. Poor old Mrs. Haughton, my arch-foe of 1921-22, was burned to death a year or two ago when her clothing ignited at a fireplace.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Hyman Bradofsky, 24 Nov 1936, LHB 383

It is hard to judge, from this distance, the issues which were so critical as to spark animosity between Ida C. Haughton and H. P. Lovecraft in the early 1920s. So too, we really only have Lovecraft’s side of the argument; and none of their brief correspondence survives for us to judge either Haughton’s tone or the content of her letters to him. Lovecraft’s animus, and his pity, both seem genuine; he certainly did not celebrate her death. Their quarrel had ultimately died with the United itself, and survives only in dusty editorials and old letters.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).

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Her Letters To Lovecraft: Mary Faye Durr

Mary Faye Durr was born on 17 May 1893, the youngest of three children born to Abraham and Mary Durr. Like many women of the period, details of her early life are sketchy. Is it known that she graduated high school and then college, graduating from the University of Ohio in 1915.

Durr’s entry from the 1915 University of Ohio yearbook.

In the same year, the young woman first pops up in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, showing that she had at some point joined the ranks of amateur journalism, and in particular the United Amateur Press Association:

“A Best Book”, by Mary Faye Durr is a brief but delightful essay which reveals a just appreciation of the broader functions of literature.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur Dec 1915, Collected Essays 1.87

Durr continues to appear sporadically in Lovecraft’s reviews of amateur journals, and much of what he says is relatively positive, speaking to her technical skill and taste, if not exactly praising Durr’s creativity, and tracing her taking on positions within the UAPA:

“At the End of the Road”, by Mary Faye Durr, is graphic and touching description of a deserted schoolhouse. The atmosphere of pensive reminiscence is well sustained by the judiciously selected variety of images and allusions. […][120] “The Melody and Colour of ‘The Lady of Shalott'”, by Mary Faye Durr, is a striking Tennysonian critique, whose psychological features, involving a comparison of chromatic and poetic elements, are ingenious and unusual. Miss Durr i[s] obviously no careless student of poesy, for the minute analyses of various passages give evidence of thorough assimilation and intelligent comprehension.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur Jun 1916, Collected Essays 1.119, 120

“Beyond the Law”, by Mary Faye Durr, is a light short story of excellent idea and construction, whose only censurable point is the use of “simplified” spelling.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur May 1917, Collected Essays 1.153

Miss Mary Faye Durr of Mount Sterling, Ohio, has accepted appointment as Secretary, her occupancy of that important office ensuring an efficient and business-like handling of the records.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur Sep 1917, Collected Essays 1.172

“The Village”, a delightful study by our Secretary, Miss Durr, is replete with vividness of atmosphere and delicacy of touch; though it is closely rivalled by the masterly bit of psychology from the hand of the editor, entitled “An Interpretation”.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur Jan 1918, Collected Essays 1.183

Mary Faye Durr first appears in Lovecraft’s private letters in 1918, and it seems as if they were about to come into correspondence—through a typically Lovecraftian 22-page letter—if they had not already come into contact:

Ye Gods! For ‘Eaving’s sake abstain from sending my “mission in life” letter to Mistress Durr. I recall saying in it that I thought she was minding other people’s business! I have given her a 22-page broadside, calculated to demolish any pragmatical notions which may still becloud her mentality, but have not gone into personal excuses for idleness beyond saying that my constitution does not permit of systematic endeavour, else (of course) I should be doing something the same as any other rational human being. What does she think I am—a corner loafer? She might know better—for if I were, the “work or fight” law would have “got” me long ago, and I should be toiling in some munition factory or shovelling sewers at some content. I am not particularly anxious to discuss my affairs with relative strangers—my letter was for you, not her.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 21 Aug 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 202

Lovecraft says nothing of Durr’s personal life, and probably knew as little to nothing about her activities beyond amateurdom as she did about his. While Lovecraft was unemployed at this period, it appears that after graduating from university Mary Faye Durr became a schoolteacher; yearbooks and newspaper records track a long career in public education in Ohio that would last for decades. During the earliest part of her career (according to the Federal 1920 and 1930 census) she was apparently still living at home with her parents, a not-unusual situation for an unmarried young woman.

No letters survive from Lovecraft to Durr or Durr to Lovecraft, so the shape and extent of their correspondence is difficult to evaluate, but apparently Lovecraft lent one of her letters to James F. Morton:

I am glad Father Mo found Miss D’s epistle so interesting. She has a sort of pert, laconic humour or smartness, of which she is evidently fairly proud, & which she is not at all reluctant to employ.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 29 Aug 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 208

Speaking of clients—you & Miss Durr will be satisfied at last. I am a real labouring man! In other words, I have undertaken to make a thorough & exhaustive revision of Rev. D. V. Bush’s long prose book—now called “Pike’s Peak or Bust”, though part of my job is to find another name.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 14 Nov 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 222

Given Lovecraft’s correspondence with others, the start of their letter-exchange was probably fairly formal, slow to build a rapport.

Mary Faye Durr, 1919 Marietta (Ohio) Yearbook

Mary Faye Durr was secretary of the UAPA 1917-1918, elected treasurer for 1918-1919, and at the 1919 convention, was elected President of the United Amateur Press Association for the 1919-1920 term, only the third woman in that office. The popular history of amateur journalism marks this period as sort of the beginning of the end of the UAPA:

The poet Rheinhart Kleiner, of Brooklyn, N. Y., was chosen President in 1918, and another woman President in 1919, Miss Mary Faye Durr, of Marietta, Ohio. But its members began to relax, recruiting was not carried on, interest waned, and this branch of the United, though seeming to have the best claim to lineal descent from the original body, gradually ceased to function, and in 1926 it passed out of existence.
—Truman J. Spencer, The History of Amateur Journalism 92 (online edition)

The truth is a little more complicated. Early in the year, Durr apparently realized that the UAPA desperately needed new members and set up an amateur journal specifically to do so, The Recruiter. Lovecraft reviewed it with high praise:

The Recruiter for January marks the advent to amateurdom of a new paper, which easily takes its place among the very best of recent editorial enterprises. Edited by Misses Mary Faye Durr and L. Evelyn Schump in the interest of the United recruits whom they are securing, its thoroughly meritorious quality speaks well for the new members thus added to our circle. […]

“Winter”, a brief poem by Hettie Murdock, celebrates in a pleasant way an unpleasant season. The lines are notable for correctness, spontaneity, and vitality, though not in the least ambitious in scope. […]

“Shades of Adam”, by Mary Faye Durr, is an interesting and humorously written account of the social side of our 1918 convention. Miss Durr is exceptionally gifted in the field of apt, quiet, and laconic wit, and in this informal chronicle neglects no opportunity for dryly amusing comment on persons and events. […]

The Recruiter’s is brief and business-like, introducing the magazine as a whole, and its contributors individually, Amateurdom is deeply indebted to the publishers of this delightful newcomer, and it is to be hoped that they may continue their efforts; both toward seeking recruits as high in quality as those here represented, and toward issuing their admirable journal as frequently as is feasible.

—H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur Mar 1919, Collected Essays 1.224

Hettie Murdock was a fellow schoolteacher in Ohio; she and Durr would share a close friendship, to be detailed later, but Murdock’s involvement here may suggest that Durr recruited her for the UAPA around this time.

While no letters from Durr to Lovecraft (or vice versa) survive, one letter survives from Durr to Anne Tillery Renshaw among Lovecraft’s papers; Renshaw was at the time Official Editor for the UAPA under Durr. While the letter is only dated “Thursday, P.M.” it appears to have been during Durr’s period as president, and mentions that Halloween is the next day—and October 31st fell on a Friday in 1919. The letter deals in part with Durr’s correspondence with Lovecraft, and recruiting:

I supposed Recruiting committees were announced in Sept. no., but Lovecraft says not. If the two vice presidents have not notified their committees I will see what I can do about it.

I don’t remember if I told you about application blanks in my last, but this is the situation. Eddie told me in August that he was having Lovecraft look after them, and only last week I discovered that none had ever been ordered. Cook is getting them out now as fast as possible.
—Mary Faye Durr to Anne Tillery Renshaw, Thursday [30 Oct 1919], Brown Digital Repository

Renshaw presumably forwarded this letter to Lovecraft, who later used it to compose some Christmas greetings (let us all be thankful for parsimonious packrats!)

With this letter and The Recruiter, it is clear that Durr was conscious of difficulties in recruiting…but she was still a working woman, with limited time to devote to amateur affairs. It also shows she must have been in semi-regular contact with Lovecraft for various duties related to amateurdom, such as the hunt for a laureate judge which netted Lord Dunsany. Lovecraft for his point appeared to point potential recruits at Durr:

Your failure to hear from the association officially is due to the negligence of the new Secretary, a rather eccentric elderly woman who was given the post merely because she happens to live in the next convention city. You might speak about it to the President—Miss Mary F. Durr, 526 Third St., Marietta, Ohio.
—H. P. Lovecraft to James Larkin Pearson, 19 Sep 1919, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 320

The secretary was Ida C. Houghton, who would herself be president of the UAPA during the 1921-1922 term, where she would butt heads with Lovecraft, who had taken on the position of Official Editor. At the 1920 convention where she handed off the office of president to Alfred Galpin, Durr gave a memorable speech riffing on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (Fossil 341); her friend Hettie Murdock also attended the convention.

The last mention of Mary Faye Durr by Lovecraft is a brief review in 1921:

Miss Durr’s “As Ye Judge” is marked by distinguishable sanity and good sense—the ideal liberalism of a thoughtful mind—and lacks only originality of presentation to be remarkable. Not that it is in any sense unoriginal, but that it states in unornamented way truths which are universal among progressive students today.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Vivisector,” The Wolverine #10 (June 1921), Collected Essays 1.288

Without access to more amateur journals of the period, it is impossible to trace Mary Faye Durr’s career in that field much further; she never again seems to have sought or held office in the UAPA, and may have dropped out of amateurdom altogether after a time; at the very least, that would seem to be the end of any regular communication with Lovecraft, as there are no further mentions of her in his letters after this date.

A little bit more information is available about Mary Faye Durr’s personal life—and this is where Hettie Murdock comes back into the picture.

Mary Faye Durr’s parents both died in 1936; in the 1940 Federal census, she is listed as living with Hettie Barton Murdock as a boarder. In the 1950 Federal census, Durr and Murdock are both living together, and one transcriber has Murdock listed as “wife”—although a look at the actual record establishes this was probably an error that was scratched out.

1950 Federal Census

Newspaper accounts offer additional details. Both Durr and Murdock were single, never married, working as teachers at West High in Akron, Ohio, and may have both been members of the Unitarian Universalist Church. In 1943, they appear to have shared a vacation cottage in Cape Cod.

What happened to the Cape Cod cottage isn’t clear, but in 1956-1957, Mary and Hettie built a small home in Stuart, Florida in 1956 (St. Lucie News Tribune, 3 Oct 1956; The Palm Beach Post, 9 Feb 1957). The articles state that Murdock and Durr were “retired schoolteachers,” but Durr’s obituary claims she didn’t retire from teaching in Akron until 1965, so possibly only one of them was retired, or they were semi-retired but still teaching in some capacity. Murdock was still active in the Akron social scene as part of the Quota Club through the 1950s, with Durr sometimes involved as well, according to newspaper accounts, and it seems likely that the pair were snowbirds (cf. The Stuart News, 28 Nov 1957). Hettie B. Murdock would pass away in Florida on 28 Dece 1965 (The Stuart News, 30 Dec 1965).

Were they just housemates? Was this a Boston marriage? That they must have been great friends is undoubted; the women cohabited for at least 16 years, not just in Ohio but in Massachusetts and Florida as well, and were active in each other’s hobby-groups to some extent. But was there more? Were they actually lesbians?

The framing every same-sex relationship as necessarily heterosexual, chaste, and platonic is a form of queer erasure; a popular internet trope where archaeologists and historians look at any same-sex couple and declare they were roommates or were otherwise not evidence of homosexual relationships. Reality is a lot messier. We have only impersonal data to go by. We have no intimate documentation on Mary and Hettie’s relationship—no letters, diaries, poems, or stories that might give hints of lesbianism. We know Elsa Gidlow was a lesbian because she declared it, but such open announcements were rare.

What we do have is context. Mary and Hettie were public school teachers; one of the few occupations readily available to educated women. The job came with a degree of public scrutiny and high expectations for standards of behavior. Married women were often forced out of the workforce, so it wasn’t unusual for women teachers to remain single, and any sexual scandal or impropriety would also have seen their dismissal. Novalyne Price Ellis recalled the strictly regimented lifestyle expected of single women teachers when she was hired at Cross Plains, Texas in 1934 in One Who Walked Alone (1986), and while Akron isn’t small-town Texas, some of the same expectations were probably in place.

In the economic atmosphere of the early-to-mid 20th century, two women who shared the economic burden of a household together wouldn’t be too unusual. A pair of spinster teachers who lived together would be relatively inconspicuous, whether they were in a closeted romantic relationship or simply platonic life-partners. While a rare few LGBTQ+ folks were open about their sexuality, they were outliers; the majority of such people could not afford the social or legal discrimination that came from being “out.” Even if Mary and Hettie were in love, and shared their life together, they could not openly acknowledge such love without serious ramifications.

All of this speculation is far and away from Mary Faye Durr’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft—but that is in itself kind of the point. Neither Lovecraft or Durr revealed all of themselves to each other in their letters, based on what scanty evidence we have of their correspondence, and neither would be expected to. Amateur journalism was the crux and driving point of their relationship, but their lives outside that were closed books. We always have to remember that there is more to Mary Faye Durr than just the words on the page, more to the lives of Lovecraft and his correspondents than what is just in their letters to each other.

More than we will ever know.

Unusually for one of Lovecraft’s correspondents, because Mary Faye Durr was in so many school yearbooks, as a student or a teacher, we have many more photos of her publicly available than others, so here’s a little gallery showing her over the years. There are probably many more in yearbooks yet unscanned.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Hazel Pratt Adams

A visit was also made to Eglin’s book store where Sam Loveman delighted all who had the privilege of becoming better acquainted with his magnetic personality. He was one of the most pleasing surprizes of the convention, and like Howard Lovecraft, despite his profound poetical effusions, is really quite human and intensely interesting.
Hazel Pratt Adams, “The National Convention” in The Brooklynite July 1923

She was born Hazel Bosler Pratt on 10 January 1888 in New York City; the middle child of Abram E. Pratt and Jeannette (also spelled Genette or Jannett in various census rolls) Bosler Pratt. Her early life is somewhat vague; census data indicates she was still living with her family through 1910, and her obituary claims:

Financial reverses made it necessary for her to enter business life at an early age, and she was first employed in different financial institutions of Brooklyn, later becoming secretary to George McLaughlin, who afterward became State Superintendent of Banks and Police Commissioner. She also did considerable newspaper and magazine work, including contributions to Brooklyn Life, over a pariod of many years […]

The 1910 Federal census lists her profession as stenographer, and that she was then working as a private secretary; a 1915 criminal trial of banker Edward M. Grout brought Hazel in as a witness, as she had worked as a stenographer for him in 1908, and a 1911 list of those who passed civil service exam for stenographers lists Hazel Pratt. From all this, we can gather that she was literate, competent, and professional.

What this obituary does not mention is her amateur journalism activity. While it isn’t entirely clear when Hazel joined amateur journalism, she was elected the inaugural Official Editor of the Brooklyn Amateur Journalists Club in 1908—which in 1912 would change its name to the Blue Pencil Club. Pratt would serve various roles in the Brooklyn club, including Secretary/Treasurer (1910), and the editor/publisher of the amateur journal The Brooklynite. In 1912, she was elected president of the newly-labeled Blue Pencil Club, and various newspaper articles indicate the club frequently met in her home. Her involvement also spread to other organizations; in 1911 she was listed as Eastern manuscript manager for the United Amateur Press Association, and in that same year attended a convention of the Interstate Press Association.

Hazel was presumably working as a stenographer during this time, and helping to care for his mother; her other interests are unknown, although a 1912 letter to the editor on the subject of women’s suffrage suggests she was forward-looking and politically conscious.

In 1914, Albertus Milton (A. M.) Adams (1879-1952) was elected President of the Blue Pencil Club, with Hazel Pratt Adams as the secretary and treasurer. A. M. Adams was the editor of the National Hotel Review, and with Hazel’s work in newspapers and magazines as well as amateur journalism, they seem to have shared interests in literature. By the end of the year, they were married.

The Brooklyn Standard Union, 11 Oct 1914

So it was that when H. P. Lovecraft joined amateur journalism in 1914, he would likely have known her only as Hazel Pratt Adams. His first mention of her is from around this time:

Mrs. Adams’ essay on ghosts displays considerable literary knowledge, though the anecdote at the end is rather ancient for use today. We last heard it about ten years ago, with a Scotchman instead of a negro preacher as the narrator, and with the word “miracle” instead of “phenomena” as the subject.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism” (United Amateur Mar 1915), Collected Essays 1.23

Married life must have been interesting. In 1916, the Adamses bought the Tupper Lake Herald, a local newspaper for Tupper Lake, N.Y., and ran it for three years. Two sons were born to the marriage, Raymond Pratt Adams (5 Sep 1917-19 Dec 2010) and Charles LeRoy Adams (7 May 1920-9 Jan 1996), and Hazel continued her involvement in amateur journalism. In 1916, Hazel was named the Official Editor of the National Amateur Press Association.

In 1922, William B. Dowdell was elected as president of the National Amateur Press Association. Dowdell subsequently resigned, and H. P. Lovecraft filled out the remainder of his term. During his time in office, Hazel Pratt Adams impressed Lovecraft with her dedication to quality and leadership:

To stimulate more publishing, which we need so desperately, Mrs. Hazel Pratt Adams has unselfishly offered to assume complete charge of the issuance of any paper which any member may care to publish, attending in full to the arrangement, printing, addressing, and mailing, at a charge of only $20 for eight pages or $12.50 for four pages the size of the recent Brooklynite. This opportunity is so marvellously favourable, and so easy for even the newcomer, that we see no excuse for the lack of a striking revival of individual publishing.
H. P. Lovecraft, “President’s Message” (National Amateur Mar 1923), Collected Essays 1.325

When the next election loomed in 1923, Lovecraft wanted someone else—ideally someone ideologically in line with his vision for the organization, in terms of supporting high literary and print quality, even at the sacrifice of frequency—to lead the organization. The candidate settled on was Hazel Pratt Adams.

Concerning that other dark shadow, whose bat-wings flapped so menacingly above the bright lights of that elegant dining saloon where I was so mercilessly grilled, I am half convinced that the fates have saved me by giving to Mrs. A. an unalterable resolution to continue her candidacy. At least, I received from her an epistle wherein, besides a two-buck checque for the O.O. fund, was distinct mention of a campaign requiring money, & of a prospective Adams-and-Liberty journal to be intitul’d The Campaigner.

So, as Ya-know-me-Al would put it—that’s that! If Mme. Eve & Bro. Mortonius choose to alter their deep-laid designs, I suppose I can’t help myself; but just now it looks as though they were sailing ahead in fine shape, so that Fortuna will spare a victim whose (semi-)willingness to mount the scaffold hath been so conclusively demonstrated. But even so, I hardly look for utter chaos. Something’s been started, & if the ball is well rolling by the nones of Quintilis it will surely have enough momentum to keep on a while. It’ll take a full year to wipe Mike White off the map—& you can be sure Long & Galpin won’t still till that’s done! Still—me word is gave, & if the Adams-Morton move is changed, I stand ready for the axe.
H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 23 Feb [1923], Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 42-43

I find that J. Ferd. [Morton] is completely & finally committed to the Adams candidacy, & that any other move would now be a positive act of hostility toward him. He is too far committed to withdraw without seeming traitorous to the Adams cause; a cause which he embraced because he knew how abhorrent office-holding is to me. […] [45] However, as I said before, I believe that the Adams arrangement will agreeably surprise you. Mrs. A. is certainly a capable routine administrator, & Morton assures me that he stands firmly in the background as an inspiration & intellectual influence . . . . . not that he uses those words, which from him would be less becoming than from another! He will continue whatever policy is started this term—& Mrs. Adams is heartily ready to act as a sympathetic standard-bearer.
H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 24 Feb [1923], Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 44, 45

“Mme. Eve” was apparently Lovecraft’s nickname for Hazel—because she was the wife of Adam(s). As puns go, it isn’t very good, but a ticket with Hazel Pratt Adams and James F. Morton was a strong one. Cole, apparently, was not happy about this nomination, and had wanted Lovecraft to run.

About the Cole mess—I’d better curl up with a bottle of cyanide & get it over with before I do any more harm to myself and others. Bah. Probably I’ve incurred his undying coldness—he hasn’t answered that definitively declinatory epistle yet—and now Mrs. Adams writes that he’ll probably be peeved at her! Undertaker, put a good shot of embalming fluid in the old simp’s head—it’s been dead a long time. Tell Mrs. A.—though I’ll answer her myself in a day or two—that I’ll take all the Colic blame myself & exculpate her, & you, & everybody but poor me—in toto. He might as well be damn mad at one guy as half mat at several birds.
H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 1 Mar 1923, Letters to James F. Morton 26-27

“Her epistle” suggests that Lovecraft and Hazel Pratt Adams were in correspondence by this time; when and how this started it is not clear, but presumably came about through his NAPA presidency, if not before. As it happened, with the support of Lovecraft and Morton, Hazel Pratt Adams was elected almost unanimously as the 4th woman president of the National Amateur Press Association. From the convention, she sent Lovecraft a telegram:

It was apparently not an easy time for her:

President Adams labored under serious difficulties, personal and otherwise. Throughout her entire term illness in her family added to her burdens. But she set an excellent example of activity by publishing 15 papers, and although the institution was entering upon one of its periodical times of depression, she maintained the high standard of work established by her predecessor.
The Fossils: History of the National Amateur Press Association

Lovecraft, for his part, was busy with his other things. On 3 March 1924, Lovecraft married Sonia H. Greene in New York; the couple set up their household in Brooklyn. Among their first visitors was Hazel Pratt Adams:

We had our first callers yesterday—Mrs. Adams of Plainfield, N.J., and Mrs. Myers of Cambridge, who is visiting Mrs. Adams before sailing for Paris for six months. They seemed very favourably impressed with the new household, and S.H. assures me that I did not appear altogether ridiculous as a host.
H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 18 Mar 1924, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.115

Sonia had been a member of the Blue Pencil Club, and almost assuredly was already friends with Mrs. Adams; it isn’t clear if this is the first time Lovecraft met Adams in person, or if they had met at an earlier convention, or Lovecraft’s prior trip to New York. In any event, it was the newlywed’s first time receiving callers as a couple.

Lovecraft apparently continued to correspond with Hazel Pratt Adams through at least 1925, because “The Horror at Red Hook” was composed on the backs of a letter dated 13 November 1925 (Midnight Rambles 225n78). The text of this letter has not yet been printed, and no other letters from the Hazel Pratt Adams/H. P. Lovecraft correspondence are known to survive.

Hazler Bosler Pratt Adams died on 6 August 1927. The cause of her death was not recorded in her obituary.

The Blue Pencil Club arranged the publication of In Memoriam: Hazel Pratt Adams. Sonia and Howard Lovecraft both penned tributes to their friend:

Source: The Papers of Sonia H. Davis, by Monica Wasserman

With such scanty evidence, it is difficult to say anything for certain about the friendship and correspondence of Hazel Pratt Adams and H. P. Lovecraft, except that they did correspond, and they were friends. They shared friends and interests in common, and wrote well (if sparingly) of one another. What else they might have talked about, we may never know, unless some new cache of letters turns up.

Thanks and appreciation to Monica Wasserman for her help with this piece.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Verna McGeoch

Verna McGeoch was born on 25 May 1885 to Alexander and Ella A. (Bain) McGeoch of New York; her older sister Jennie E. McGeoch had been born in 1878. Information on Verna’s early life is scanty. The 1900 federal census lists her sister Jennie as employed as a school teacher, and Verna as attending school. By the 1910 federal census, Jennie had married (to Alexander Horton Barbur, 1868-1928), given birth to a child (Marion Jennie Barbur), and died (Marion’s date of birth is listed as 15 October 1909, and Jennie’s death is listed as 19 December 1909). The subsequent censuses list Marion living with her aunt and grandparents.

If Verna McGeoch attended college or held any employment, it is not reflected in the census data. Nor do we have extensive written records from McGeoch on any part of her life. Yet we know that at least by 1915, Verna McGeoch had joined the United Amateur Press Association, and come to the attention of H. P. Lovecraft, who had joined amateur journalism in 1914:

Misses Kline and McGeoch both exhibit marked poetical tendancies in prose, the latter writer having something of Mr. Fritter’s facility in the use of metaphor.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” Jan 1915, Collected Essays 1.21

McGeoch features rarely in Lovecraft’s articles and editorials in the United Amateur, but outline a rising profile in amateur journalism:

Mr. Hoag’s introduction to the United Amateur Press Association came through his gifted friend and fellow-resident of Greenwich, Miss Verna McGeoch, and through our indefatigable Second Vice-President, Mrs. Renshaw.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Among the Newcomers,” May 1916, Collected Essays 1.110

Jonathan Hoag was a prolific poet, and soon to be a good friend of H. P. Lovecraft, who would write an introduction to (and quietly edit) The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag (1923), which was Lovecraft’s first work published in hardcover.

Excelsior for March is in many respects the most notable of the season’s amateur magazines. Edited by our brilliant Laureate Recorder, Miss Verna McGeoch, it contains a surprisingly ample and impressive collection of prose and verse by our best writers; including the delectable lryicist Perrin Holmes Lowrey, whose work has hitherto been unrepresetened in the press of the United.
H. P. lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” May 1917, Collected Essays 1.149

Lovecraft’s rising star in amateur journalism led him to be elected President of the United Amateur Press Association in 1917—and Verna McGeoch was elected the Official Editor of the United Amateur. The two would, for the next two have to work hand-in-hand with respect to the management of the UAPA in their respective duties.

The election of Miss Verna McGeoch to the Official Editorship, perhaps the most important of our offices, forecasts the publication of The United Amateur on a very high plane; qualitatively if not quantitatively.
H. P. Lovecraft, “President’s Message,” Sep 1917, Collected Essays 1.172

There must have been letters between them, at least on official business, but very little of it survives. We know that Lovecraft wrote Christmas Greetings to Verna, and we know that Verna wrote to Lovecraft because one page of a letter survives among Lovecraft’s papers:

I started this Mondey evening but grew too tired to finish, and I doubt if you can read the wretched scrawl I perpetrated. Accomplished absolutely nothing on cop[y] yesterday. Intend to make a day of it to-day, if possible. I received the enclosures, excerpt & advertisement. I think I will reward myself. Cole of Bazine is certainly a longhaired fanatic. There is apparently a screw loose in his mentality. Galpineus’ letter very characteristic. No doubt you have his last will and testament ere this. His power is wholly worthy of professional notice. Why do you not try to place it, though I think some other one of your incogs would be preferable to Edward Softly. I am partial to “Ward Philips.” “Michael Ormond O’Reilly” is puttin’ on airs, and honestly, I can’t abide a Catholic Irishman and the O.Reillys are that of course. There are a lot of things perhaps I should write, but I need my strength elsewhere today. It isn’t much. I feel like a cent and a half.

Sincerely,

Verna McGeoch

“Cole of Bazine” is fellow amateur Ira Cole, who a 1916 UAPA membership list gives as living in Bazine, KS. “Galpineus” is Alfred Galpin, Lovecraft’s good friend. Edward Softly, Ward Phillips, and Michael Ormond O’Reilly were all pseudonyms that Lovecraft adopted for publishing various pieces in amateur journals between 1918 and 1923. Verna McGeoch, as Official Editor, was in on the joke, and wrote a fictional biography of one of Lovecraft’s pseudonyms, Lewis Theobald, Jr., which was published in 1918. Which all suggests that this was probably written c. 1918.

Lovecraft’s presidential announcements and unsigned editorials over the course of his presidency have nothing but praise for McGeoch:

The November Official Organ deserves praise of the highest sort and will remain as a lasting monument to the editorial ability of Miss McGeoch and the mechanical good taste of Mr. Cook. It has set a standard beneath which it should not fall, but to maintain which a well-supplied Official Organ Fund is absolutely necessary. If each member of the Association would send a dollar, or even less, to Custodian McGeoch, this Fund might be certain of continuance at a level which would ensure a large and regularly published United Amateur. […]

[175] A final word of commendation should be given to those more than generous teachers, professors, and scholars who are making “The Reading Table” so pleasing and successful a feature of the United’s literary life. The idea, originated by Miss McGeoch, has been ably developed by Messrs. Moe and Lowrey, and is likely to redeem many of the promises of real progress which have pervaded the Association during the past few years.
H. P. Lovecraft, “President’s Message,” Jan 1918, Collected Essays 1.174, 175

“The Reading Table,” an educational course introduced by Official Editor McGeoch, ia this month graced by a valuable contribution from Mauice Winter Moe. […]

[182] Miss McGeoch’s editorial is the most sensible summary yet made of the relations between the Untied and the National Associations. We believe, with her, that each has its own peculiar place, and that neither need attack or encorach upon the other. In the interests of harmony, belligents on either side should be promptly silenced.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” Jan 1918, Collected Essays 1.181-182

“An Appreciation”, by Verna McGeoch, is a prose-poetical tribute to Mr. Hoag, whose literary merit is of such a quality that we much needs lament the infrequency with this the author contributes to the amateur press. […]

[197] The editorial remarks in this issue of the United Amateur are worthy of close perusal on account of their graceful literary quality. Seldom has the critic seen the subject of the New Year so felicitously treated as in this brief study by Miss McGeoch. The author’s mastery of appropriate words, phrases, and images, and her intuitive perception of the most delicate elements of literary harmony, combine to make the reader wish she were more frequently before the Association as a writer, as well as in an editorial capacity.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” May 1918, Collected Essays 1.191, 197

The United Amateur has surpassed all standard hitherto known to amateur journalism, writing the names of Miss McGeoch and Mrs. Cook imperishably into the pages of our history. The lack of numerous publications has been more than atoned for by the quality of those which have appeared.
H. P. Lovecraft, “The United 1917-1918,” Jul 1918, Collected Essays 1.202

It is also during this period that Verna McGeoch begins to appear in Lovecraft’s private correspondence, usually with respect to her amateur duties, but with hints of familiarity that suggest of a correspondence:

The formation of next year’s ticket will be a matter of extreme difficulty. I would accept the presidency if absolutely no one else could be found—but I hope I discover someone at least half capable. Miss McGeoch suggests Mrs. Campbell, who is not only quite capable herself, but has Paul J. in the background as conselor & prime minister.
H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 4 Apr 1918, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 106-107

Kleiner would end up running and winning the presidency of the UAPA in 1918.

Miss McGeoch has sought to censor the reviews wherever she thought frankness got the better of amenity; and as a result of the discussion which ensured, Mr. [Maurice W.] Moe has decided that all amateur public criticism is vain, ineffective and superfluous.
H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 13 May 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 35

Both Miss McG and Cook are confirmed infinitive-splitters, though I have lectured both on the subject. […] [204] I wonder who will finance the new application blanks? There is no constitutional provision for them, and it is usually left to the Secretary, though for the past two years private individuals—Campbell and Miss McGeoch—have philanthropically come to the rescue.
H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 21 Aug 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 203, 204

This is the second reference to McGeoch’s generosity, which suggests she personally paid to have The United Amateur printed, above and beyond her annual membership fee to the UAPA. While we do not have letters from McGeoch to anyone else to say how she felt about Lovecraft, it was apparently a reciprocal appreciation, based on another passage in Lovecraft’s letters:

[Hoag’s] serious tribute sounded more comical than your semi-serious one—hence it is not remarkable that Miss McGeoch should fail to grasp the spirit at the bottom of your graceful lines. I agree that they are (considering the unworthy subject) scarce suitable for publication in the official organ. I am glad Miss McG speaks so well of me. It would be easy to say a great deal more in reciprocity, for I have seldom encountered her equal in kindly breadth of opinion, exalted ideals, high sense of duty, dependable efficiency, conscientious responsibility, & general nobility of character. This sounds like Theobaldian oleaginousness, but since nearly every other amateur can give a similar verdict, you may see that it has much foundation in fact. She is certainly one of the pillars of amateur journalism.
H. P. Lovecraft to Alfred Galpin, 29 Aug 1918, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 208

As a point of politics, it should be understood that Lovecraft and his “faction” of friends at the UAPA essentially controlled the organization from 1917-1922, and their particular approach—attempting to raise the aesthetic, scholarly, and literary standards of the organization, but also taking a very authoritarian tack—engendered backlash which led to the ousting of the faction and a certain amount of bitter deadlock. Sayre’s law applies very well to amateur journalism.

One example of this effort to raise literary standards was a series of surveys of historical literature that McGeoch began in September 1918. As Lovecraft put it:

“Greek Literature”, a brief essay by Verna McGeoch, gracefully and capably handles a theme of highest interest to all lovers of culture. Not only is the language well chosen and the development skillful; but the whole displays its author’s keen sympathy with the artistic spirit of classical antiquity.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Department of Public Criticism,” Nov 1918, Collected Essays 1.213

In the November 1918 issue of the United Amateur, Lovecraft published a corresponding piece, “The Literature of Rome.” He would continue to sing Verna McGeoch’s praises in print into 1919, as candidates were nominated and elections held. There are hints that she and Lovecraft were still in touch:

Future procedure is rather doubtful, because Miss McGeoch, in her anxiety lest a strain rest upon the present administration, favours the idea of a second election as demanded by Cleveland. Perhaps full reports from the convention will cause her to change her mind.
H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 16 Jul 1919, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 135

That this exchange involved more than just amateur business is clear:

My mother has just given me “The Gods of Pegana”, and as a token of gratitude for lending her the “Dreamers’ [sic] Tales”, Miss McGeoch has just ordered Little Brown & Co. to send me the Bierstadt biography—“Dunsany the Dramatist”! That wot I calls high int’rust for merely lendin’ a small book, believe muh!
H. P. Lovecraft to the Gallomo, [Apr 1920], Miscellaneous Letters 96

References in Lovecraft’s letters and amateur editorials sharply drop off, however. They must have been in touch, or news must have come to him from mutual friends, because occasionally news did reach him and it was duly printed. Fellow amateurs would read, for example, of the visit of some of their associates to visit McGeoch when she was wintering with her parents in their winter home in St. Petersburg, Florida:

Messrs. Edward F. Daas and Eugene C. Dietzler, last mentioned as sojourning in New Orleans, are continuing their southward progress. In January they reached St. Cloud, Fla., the winter home of the Campbells; and thereafter all four enjoyed a pleasing succession of automobile trips, embellished with the various diversions peculiar to Florida’s genial climate. Among their excursions was one to Orlando, another to St. Augustine, where they beheld America’s oldest house and drank from the fountain of youth, and one to St. Petersburg, where on March 5 they called at the home of our former Official Editor, Miss Verna McGeoch.
H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes,” Collected Essays 1.268

And, perhaps surprisingly:

An announcement of interest to amateurs is that of the engagement of Miss Verna McGeoch, former Official Editor, to James Chauncey Murch, Esq., of Chicago. Miss McGeoch has achieved amateur immortality as editor of the official organ for two years during the trying war period, and as the virtual regenerator of the paper from a qualitative point of view. Her double volume will in later years be eagerly sought as one of the finest achievements of amateur journalism. Mr. Murch is the son of Rev. F. B Murch, a prominent Presbyterian clergyman, and has won distinguished success in commercial endeavour. To the future Mr. and Mrs. Murch, the United extends its warmest and most widespread congratulations.
H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes,” Mar 1921, Collected Essays 1.274

J. C. Murch was a veteran of the first world war and linotype operator originally from New York. The wedding was a small affair:

Lovecraft dutifully noted the nuptials:

On October 12 our former Official Editor, Miss Verna McGeoch, was united in marriage with Mr. James Chuancey Murch of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Murch may be addressed after November 9 at 144 S. 4th St., Easton, Penn.
H. P. Lovecraft, “News Notes,” Nov 1921, Collected Essays 1.303

That is the last word from Lovecraft regarding Verna McGeoch.

Without access to a full archive of amateur journals it is impossible to say if Verna had dropped amateur journalism completely with her marriage, but I have so far found no further record of her involvement in amateurdom or amateurs after 1921. Verna’s later life can be sketched only briefly: her father Alexander McGeoch died in 1923, her mother Elle McGeoch passed away in 1925, and her niece Marion came to live with Verna and James in Pennsylvania, at least for a while. Verna and James had no children of their own. In 1949 she was hit by a taxicab and died. Her husband James never remarried and died in 1955.

What was Lovecraft and amateurdom to Verna McGeoch? Until and unless more of her own essays or letters come to light, we may never know. They were at least associated, perhaps friends, certainly peers. Then, their lives took different paths. Perhaps it was the political infighting, perhaps it was the pressing needs of family, or some other work of which little public trace remains. From Lovecraft’s words and one-half of a letter, all we have is the image and memory of a woman who was capable, literate, and generous, and who was a friend and ally to Lovecraft during a critical stage of his life.

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Her Letters To Lovecraft: Mrs. C. H. Calkins

One letter survives among the papers of the John Hay Library from a Mrs. C. H. Calkins to H. P. Lovecraft. From the content of that letter, we can infer that she was a local woman from in or around Wilbraham, Massachusetts, who attended to Evanore Beebe after the death of Edith Miniter on 5 June 1934, and apparently helped settle affairs. While only the one letter survives, there are passing references to her in Lovecraft’s letters to others that suggests other letters have been lost over time.

Exact identification is a little tricky; we can rule out Alice Haile Calkins (1865-3 April 1934), the wife of Cheney Hosmer Calkins (1860-1944), because Alice died before Miniter did (and in the ambiguous world of genealogy, it is nice to occasionally be able to rationally deduce such things with confidence). City directories for Springfield, Massachusetts list a Charles H. Calkins who worked at North Wilbraham and his wife is given as Lena M. Calkins—this would probably by Lena Maria Olds Calkins (1875-1955). Until a better candidate emerges, Lena seems to be the most likely to have written the letter to Lovecraft. As for the others mentioned in the letter, there are too many Farrs and McCarthys to identify them with any certainty from just this letter.

This letter is clearly in answer to one that Lovecraft sent, asking after something that had previously been sent to Mrs. Miniter before her passing—including, apparently, a story manuscript or typescript; it is vaguely possibly that Lovecraft might have sent her a copy of one of his recent stories, such as “The Thing on the Doorstep” (written August 1933), but no letters from Lovecraft include her among the circulation list, so it isn’t clear exactly what was in Mrs. Miniter’s possession at the time of her death.

Dear Sir:

I have looked over all that is left of Mrs. Miniter’s papers & found some of your letters & a story with your name at the top which is probably the one you refer to. We are very busy just now but I will mail them to you as soon as I can.

The last week Mrs. Miniter lived she got lots of letters & papers & looked them over & binned most of them. I could not let anyone go though the house as you spoke of it would not be right. We have to look after Miss Beebe she is not capable of telling what she wants & Mrs. Miniter & letters were all mixed in with Miss B’s. They have been looked over very carefully as we were trying to find a tax receipt. Mrs. Miniter told us & Miss B. did when she was better in her mind that the tax on a piece of property in Hampden was paid last year & Mrs. Farr said she heard them talk about it when we were not there but the bill came with a Demand this Fall. What they did with the money they said they sent to the tax collector no one knows. Mrs. M. was much worse off for a long time than you knew.

Mrs. Farr said she would sit in sort of a stupor all day but if some one came she would spruce up & seem real well. She went to the Memorial Exercises the Wed before she died at the Church[,] she went on grit & nerve.

I will mail the letters & papers as soon as I can get to it. Mr. McCarthy & wife called on their way back from Boston & Miss Beebe asked them if they saw Mrs. Miniter down there. [S]ome of the time she is fairly well in her head & again she thinks there are 3 or 4 small children there.

Yours resp.

Mrs. C. H. Calkins

The correspondence between Mrs. Calkins and Lovecraft went on longer than this; Lovecraft’s letters in the aftermath of Miniter’s death include several details about the confusion of her papers that suggest he was in contact with someone in Wilbraham for at least a few weeks. Mrs. Calkins was apparently Lovecraft’s point of contact; though it is notable that Lovecraft forwarded this letter to fellow amateur-journalist W. Paul Cook, who was a distant cousin of Miniter, so it is possible Cook became involved in that correspondence. Cook’s sister was Cora Charlina Cook Calkins (1883-1981), so it’s even possible that the Mrs. Calkins who wrote this letter was a relation of some sort.

In his correspondence to fellow-amatuer Edward H. Cole, who was also a friend of Edith Miniter, Lovecraft wrote to keep him abreast of developments:

But the purpose of this bulletin is to forward the enclosed epistle from the Wilbraham matron who is winding up the Miniter estate—which Culinarius [W. Paul Cook] has just sent me, & which he wishes me to relay to you. I will send, also, his own communication. The alleged wholesale mailing of Mrs. Miniter’s last days certainly sounds bizarre in the extreme—although a failing of faculties might account for it. Cook, as you see, professes scepticisml but it seems to me that the deliberate invention of such a tale would be even more unlikely than the actual occurrence of the thing. The only object of the survivors in misrepresenting the facts would be to conceal some loss or destruction of valuable papers. An active imagination might connect the matter with the local hostility to the Natupski novel—fancying some plot to destroy the unpublished sequel–but that sounds rather extravagant in the cold light of day. I am suggesting to Cook that he see whether the claim abotu Mrs. M’s failing mind tallies with the letters received from her. If he had lucid & capable-sounding letters during the period allegedly covered by the irresponsible mailing, then one may well suspect unreliability in the present report. Otherwise, the report itself sounds less extravagant than any alternative theory.

It will certainly be tragic & disastrous if nothing remains from the wealth of literary material in Mrs. Miniter’s possession. A complete loss at Wilbraham would be an even greater calamity than the Allston mishap—& would surely suggest the makings of a peculiarly malign fatality! I am suggesting to Cook that he get in touch with the dead-letter office regarding packages with a N. Wilbraham postmark.
H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 11 Oct 1934, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 91-92

De re Miniteria—I certainly agree that the account in Mrs. Calkin’s [for such is the name] letter contains no inherent improbabilities, & is (barring evidence whereof we know nothing) far less difficult to credit than any alternative theory could be. The matter is distasteful enough in any event, but it seems to me that an attempt to dispose of MSS. by mail to supposedly sitable persons would be a far from unnatural procedure for one with failing faculties & dark apprehensions, who had in palmier days been so dependent on the posts for contact with congenial colleagues.
H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 17 Oct 1934, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 93-94

Well—here’s some more Culinary light on the Miniter matter . . . & rather pessimistic light at that. It appears from Mrs. Calkins’ second letter that Mrs. M. did considerable paper-burning; while, as you see, Cook still thinks that the natives (in the person of the Tupper cousins) disposed of such documents as they thought injurious to them. I had not realised that any work of Mrs. M’s so ruthlessly reproduced the decadent ways of Wilbraham’s insidiously retrograding Yankees. It certainly makes one see red to think of two or three novels—& hads knows how many short stories—as deliberately destroyed . . . . but the situation speaks for itself, take it or leave it! I am again urging Cook to make enquiries at the dead letter office.
H. P. Lovecraft to Edward H. Cole, 24 Oct 1934, Letters to Alfred Galpin & Others 96

The “Natupskis” was a name for neighbors in Wilbraham that provided the raw material for Miniter’s novel Our Natupski Neighbors (1916). Lovecraft’s suspicions of foul play were probably unfounded, and at least some of Miniter’s papers were recovered (although not, as far as it known, the unfinished Natupski sequel), and half of those papers ended up in Lovecraft’s care.

This is the kind of incidental correspondence that crops up because of Lovecraft’s interaction with others; even after her death, Lovecraft’s connection with Edith Miniter was not severed, but became entangled in the threads of her past life and relationships.

The Springfield Daily Republican, 6 June 1934

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Her Letters To Lovecraft: Edith May Dowe Miniter

The details of Mrs. Miniter’s long career—a career inseparable from amateur journalism after her sixteenth year—will doubtless be covered by writers well qualified to treat of them. Reared in Worcester, taught by her poet-mother and at a private school, and given to solid reading and literary attempts from early childhood onward, the erstwhile Edith May Dowe entered amateurdom in 1883 and was almost immediately famous in our small world as a fictional realist. Controversies raged over her stories—so different from the saccharine froth of the period—but very few failed to recognize her importance. After 1890 she was engaged in newspaper and magazine work in the larger outside world, though her interest in amateur matters increased rather than diminished.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.380

She was born Edith May Dowe on 19 May 1867 to William H. Dowe (~1838-1875) and Jane “Jennie” E. T. Dowe (~1841-1919). Jennie Dowe was a noted poet who encouraged her daughter’s literary efforts; Edith became involved in amateur journalism around age 13. In 1887, she married newspaperman and fellow amateur journalist John T. Miniter (1867-1900), and became Edith Miniter. For more on John and their marriage see “The Other Miniter: In Search of John T. Miniter” by Dave Goudsward.

The Miniters became involved in the newspaper business, operating a small local newspaper. The paper, and the marriage, failed within a few years, though Edith Miniter’s profession was still listed as “editor” or “newspaper editor” on federal censuses in 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. Edith Miniter relocated to Boston, where she gained some success both as a writer (numerous poems, short stories, and articles appear from her in newspapers and magazines, and her novel Out Natupski Neighbors appeared in 1916) and as an amateur journalist. She became a central member of Boston’s Hub Club, and attained several offices of the National Amateur Press Association—including becoming NAPA’s first woman president in 1909.

By the time H. P. Lovecraft was recruited for amateur journalism in 1914, Edith Miniter was already a doyenne. They were no doubt aware of one another through publications in amateur journals before they ever met or crossed pens—Lovecraft first mentioned Miniter in an unsigned editorial in the United Amateur in 1918 (CE 1.180), and he first mentions her in his letters in 1920:

The occasion for this recent excursion, wich took place last Saturday, was the Hub Club picnic; to which Mrs. Miniter invited me, & at which I hoped to meet James F. Morton. […]

[170] Mrs. Dennis is a famous old-timer often referred to by C. W. Smith. As Harriet C. Cox she won four story laureateships in the National, in the ‘eighties. She was was entirely out of touch with amateurdom, except for Mrs. Miniter, but seems rather interested again. […] However, later on it cleared, so that Cook, Mrs. Miniter, Mrs. Dennis, Morton, & I took a stroll in the woodland. The Fells district reminds me of Quinsnicket Park, but it is even more beautiful in places. During the walk, Mrs. Miniter plucked some bays, & as the party rested on a rocky bluff overlooking a beautiful lake & valley, she formed them into a genuine Parnassian wreath–which she insisted on my wearing all the evening, even at the “convention banquet”, in honour of my triple laureateship. […] I told Mrs. Miniter that I did not deserve the chaplet of bays–that no brow less noble than that of our poet-laureate, Samples, was worthy of such adornment—& when the evening was over, I folded it carefully in a cageratte box which someone produced, & sent it to John Milton.
H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 12 Aug 1920, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 169, 170

One can just about imagine Miniter enjoying the sight of Lovecraft visibly uncomfortable wearing a laurel on his head all evening; she seems to have taken great delight in puncturing egos. In his letters, Lovecraft records several more meetings with Mrs. Miniter as he attended conventions or amateur gatherings in Boston. She was there when Lovecraft met Sonia H. Greene, who would become his wife; she was there when he read “The Moon-Bog,” which was written for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration; in a letter to his mother Lovecraft recalled:

The house was decorated with streamers of green paper in honour of the departed Celtic saint, and the presiding hostesses, Mesdames Miniter and Sawyer and W. V. Jackson, were attired in green habiliments with green paper ribbons incorporated in their coiffures.
H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 17 Mar 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.31

Lovecraft even managed to bring himself to wear a green tie for the occasion.

Miniter’s reaction to “The Moon-Bog” is not recorded, but she and Lovecraft had philosophically different approaches to subject matter. Her fiction is all of a realist cast, sometimes taking inspiration from real-life—H. P. Lovecraft himself would appear as a character in The Village Green (192?) by Edith Miniter, lightly disguised. Lovecraft would write about her:

Notwithstanding her saturation with the spectral lore of the countryside, Mrs. Miniter did not care for stories of a macabre or supernatural cast; regarding them as hopelessly extravagant and unrepresentative of life. Perhaps that is one reason why, in the early Boston days, she had declined a chance to revise a manuscript of this sort which later met with much fame—the vampire-novel “Dracula”, whose author was then touring America as manager for Sir Henry Irving.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.381

In his letters, Lovecraft would repeat the Dracula revision claim several times (discussed in further detail in Lovecraft, Miniter, Stoker: The Dracula Revision). The truth of his assertions that Miniter didn’t care for spectral stories might best be found in “Falco Ossifracus” (1921) by Edith Miniter—a parody of Lovecraft’s own style of macabre fiction, with Lovecraft himself nicknamed “Goodguile,” which would become her pet name for him.

It is not clear when precisely they began to correspond; it is likely no later than 1920, given their continued meetings no doubt involve communication of some sort. The difficulty of determining when things began is the paucity of evidence: no letters from Lovecraft to Miniter are known to survive, and only five letters from Miniter to Lovecraft are extant. One of the earliest of these, dated on “Friday the 13th” (prob. 13 May 1921) opens: “Dear ‘Goodguile.'” The letter deals in part with Miniter’s health; she notes that she took a fall and “had to learn to walk again.” A typed letter dated 4 July 1921 (possibly a draft, as it was torn in half), doesn’t mention the injury, but shows her characteristic wit:

By the war, Mr. McNamara had a good time the 18th, and wrote [W. Paul] Cook that were “real people” and not “Stuck up highbrow at all!” Now will you and James Morton stop quoting Hebrew.

Yours Truly, Edith Miniter

The last bit probably refers to some tendency of Lovecraft and Morton to go over the audience’s heads (i.e. quoting the scriptures in Hebrew sounds impressive, but doesn’t convey any information if the audience doesn’t understand Hebrew).

Lovecraft’s letter rarely mention correspondence with Miniter, but we know they had to still be in contact every once and a while, because some of Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings to Miniter and her cats are recorded, e.g.:

From distant churchyards hear a Yuletide groan

As ghoulish Goodguile heaves his heaps of bone;

Each ancient slab the festive holly wears,

And all the women disclaim their earthly cares:

Mayst thou, ‘neath sprightlier skies, no less rejoice,

And hail the season with exulting voice!
H. P. Lovecraft, The Ancient Track 320

Lovecraft noted to his aunt Lillian: “To Mrs. Miniter, who finds humour in my predilection for Colonial graveyards, I despatched these lines” (LFF 1.515), and several of Lovecraft’s letters record how Mrs. Miniter would accompany him on his trips through Boston’s various graveyards.

Diminishing finances and possibly ill-health eventually forced Edith Miniter to leave Boston. She lived for a time with the family of the amateur journalist Charles A. A. Parker in Malden, Mass. (1924-1925), and then moved in with her cousin Evanore Olds Beebe (1858-1935) in Wilbraham, Mass., in the house where Edith was born. Beebe had named the property Maplehurst, and it was a former tavern. Around 1928, Miniter wrote to Lovecraft to invite him to come visit, and he did so:

At the station I was met by Mrs. Miniter in a neighbour’s Ford, & taken at once up the beautiful shady road that winds around Wilbraham Mountain. (For a description of this country, see the Dowe Memorial booklet.) The scenery is lovely in the extreme, with just the right balance of hill & plain. It is not so vivid as Vermont, but so much richer & statelier; with larger trees & more luxuriant vegetation [706] generally. The houses are old, but not notable. The population is quite sharply divided–the good families maintaining their old standards whilst the common folk are going downhill. A Polish invasion further detracts from the atmosphere in many localities—the house of the “Natupskis” being visible from the Beebe front porch. The home of Mrs. Miniter’s cousin is a large rambling late-colonial structure built as a taven, & is stuffed utterly full of magnificent antiques, none of which are for sale. They occupy every inch of floor, wall, shelf, & table space, & 7 cats & 2 dogs perambulate & gambol through the lanes between. Miss Beebe, a woefully fat but highly intelligent & cultivated gentlewoman of 70 is the ‘big man’ of all the surrounding countryside; & decides the fortunes of the school committee, town council, & everything else fromher seat beside the telephone. She is a mine of local history & tradition, & a fountain of weird anecdote—& of course a past master & connoisseur of antique collection. She means to leave to leave her possessions to the Museum in Springfield upon her death. She drives about in a horse & buggy, though not scorning to accept a motor life to town from neighbours in bad weather. The house is set high near a curve of a road lined with magnificent maples. Southward the graceful rise of Wilbraham Mountain can be seen—this mountain & all the land for miles around belonging to Miſs Beebe. A curious abandoned road connects the house with the mountain—it is picturesque to see the tall grass growing between stone walls where chaises & farmers’ wains once ran. The whole region is full of odd rural lore, & ought to prove a mine of inspiration for any writer. I have already learned many things about old New England life previously unknown to me—such as the institution of cat-ladders inside the chimney of farmhouses, to enable the cats to climb from floor to floor when all the doors are shut. There is a fine system of cat ladders in the house—though only one ancient feline (Printer, aetat 17) knows how to use them. The place is very neat, though the only help is a boy named Chauncey, who sits at table with the family. He was taken from the poorhouse in Attleboro—but seems a delightfully gentlemanly person. My room is at the head of the stairs, & is furnished in the manner of about 1830. Lard-burning lamps are among the contents—these articles being formerly wholly unknown to me.

Mrs. Miniter does not appear to have aged at all in the 5 years since I last saw her, but is very active in literature & takes long rural walks. My diary so far is devoid of great events because of the showery weather. Friday I spent largely indoors inspecting antiques & watching cats—though in the vening I walked briefly down the road to imbibe a bit of the scenery. Saturday better weather enabled me to take a walk through some of the picturesque country to the north, Mrs. Miniter serving as guide whilst both dogs & one of the cats acted as a quadruped retinue. I never before saw a cat which followed persons over hill & dale like a dog. The country is very beautiful & traditional indeed, & undoubtedly represents the inland landscape of Western New England at its best. Upon returning I was shewn the extensive barn belonging to the place—Miſs [307] Beebe keeps 2 horses & several cows. The cats all have different & highly individualised personalities—2 are grey (including a patriarch 17 years old0 & five (including a very little kitten) are yellow. Of the dogs one is a mature & very well-bred collie, whilst the other, an Airedale puppy, is a trifle uncouth & over-demonstrative. Sunday—today—we attempted a walk up Wilbraham Mountain, but were overtaken by a thunderstorm & forced to accept a lift back from motorists—who stopped at the house & proved to be delightful persons quite prominent in Springfield educational circles. Tomorrow better outdoor luck is hoped for.
H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 1 Jul 1928, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.705-707

Wilbraham, Mass. was the inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich, and some of the folklore he picked up talking to the locals made its way into “The Dunwich Horror.” For more on Mrs. Miniter and Mrs. Beebe at Wilbraham, see “The Terribly Nice Old Ladies: Miniter and Beebe At Wilbraham” by David Haden in Lovecraft in Historical Context Fourth Collection.

The two friends must have kept in touch at least sporadically, based on references in correspondence to others:

The letter which Mrs. Miniter sent to me in your care had some choice portions intended for you, as well as directions to me which were not followed. Perhaps I should quote: “Remember me to Goodguile most strenuously and tell him whenever a cat misbehaves I wish he was here to look after it a while. Tell him Culinarius [W. Paul Cook] was here a few hours Saturday and we talked about him a vast deal. Also something about the lad from Indiana, of whom Cook first asked, ‘What relation is he to Ray Spink?’ If you knew what an insult this is you’d go to Athol instead of North Wilbraham and challenge [156] the traducer to single combat. But as he never knew Ray Spink and doesn’t know you perhaps he didn’t really go for to do it!”
Helm C. Spink to H. P. Lovecraft, 8 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 155-156

Ray Spink was another amateur journalist; while Miniter could no longer hold court in the Hub Club or attend conventions, amateur journalism was apparently still a major part of her social life. Lovecraft explained this, and revealed he was still very much in touch with Miniter:

I think I told you on a postcard how much I appreciated the Dogmatic Catalogue. In acknowledging it to Mrs. Miniter I prepared a kindred journal entitled Catastrophic Doggerel, (not[e] correct order of precedence for felidae & canidae) some of it not all of whose contents I will herewith quote. The first gem concerned an eminent young Indiana cryptographer—the Champollion of his age—who smoked out a rat from a piece of verse where its presence had never before been whiffed.
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 13 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 158

This was followed by several poems on Miniter’s cats.

Two letters from Miniter to Lovecraft from this period survive. A 1930 letter to “Dear Friend Goodguile,” opens with her admitting to bronchitis, details all the doings of the cats, and apparently read “The Dunwich Horror” when it appeared in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales:

We did enjoy that marvelous story in Weird Tales, tho’ never wrote you about it. When we meet again, E. O. B. is going to have it out with you about killing the birds. The tale has been lent about, some readers have enjoyed it, but most often it has been returned with shudders. Say, come up again, do, & get material for another yarn. There must be some yet attainable.

The other letter is probably from January 1931, and includes her thanks for Lovecraft’s poetic obituary of the ancient cat Printer, news of her cousin Evanore, and thanks for the postcards—Lovecraft having made it a point to send Miniter postcards from nearly every place he visited, to brighten her day with his travels, as he did for so many of his correspondents.

The fifth and final missive from Edith Miniter to Lovecraft is a very short note, undated, congratulating Lovecraft for something. “You certainly owe us another visit” suggests this is after the 1928 visit to Wilbraham, but other than that, we lack context. Possibly a congratulation for “The Dunwich Horror” appearing in print.

There must have been more letters because Lovecraft mentions her on occasion:

Mrs. Miniter is having a very hard time at Wilbraham, with her own asthma worse, & Miss Beebe’s health such as to demand constant care—plus a financial distress which grows more & more alarming.
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 2 Feb 1933, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 202

Another friend and fellow amateur remembered in a memoir that might give the flavor for some of Edith Miniter’s correspondence to Lovecraft after she moved to Wilbraham:

When Edith lived in Boston we met often, and it was a definite personal loss when she went to Wilbraham. For a time, she wrote long letters at fairly frequent intervals, and she always expressed a determination to return to us some day.

The last few years her letters were shorter and less frequent, and, although, she said little about it, it was evident that her health was far from satisfactory.

After an accident, she wrote jokingly of her “broken bones,” and gave a ludicrous description of her appearence in a borrowed wrapper, much too big for her, that she was obliged to wear because all her own dresses “went on over her head” and she couldn’t “get into them.”

She touched humorously, at another time, upon her experience with the hives, but she never complained or seemed to deserve pity.

In her last letter, written less than three weeks before she left us, she said, “I am about the same as usual,” and it was a decided shock to learn that the end had come.
Minna B. Noyes, “Bygone Days” in The Californian (Spring 1938)

It is a familiar story; old age with its illnesses and decrepitude come on, heightened by financial woes. Edith May Dowe Miniter passed away on 5 June 1934, at Wilbraham. Lovecraft learned of the death in the amateur journal The Wolverine, which ran a brief notice:

It pained me to learn, through a paragraph in one of them, that Mrs. Miniter is no more. I sent her cards from all along my route, & the later ones—alas—can have had no recipient!
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 17 Jul 1934, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 222

Lovecraft would apparently write to Wilbraham seeking more information, and possibly the return of materials he had lent to Miniter. A letter survives from a Mrs. C. H. Calkins to Lovecraft that gives a few more details on Miniter’s decline and the aftermath.

As one of her friends, Lovecraft worked to write memorials about Edith Miniter, and to encourage his friends to write memorials, although he would not live to see the publication of his lengthy “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections.” There was some confusion in the estate, and the disposition of Edith Miniter’s papers, which seems to have been compounded by the death of Evanore Beebe in 1935. By an odd quirk, Lovecraft himself ended up with a collection of Miniter’s personal and family papers, holding them in trust until the proper heir could be located. In accordance with what Lovecraft thought would be Miniter’s wishes, he allowed certain works to be published posthumously in the amateur press—such as “Dead Houses,” which appeared in Leaves #1 (Summer 1937) from R. H. Barlow’s Dragon-Fly Press.

Lovecraft had one more duty to perform on Edith Miniter’s behalf, back in the old Dunwich country: the ashes of Mrs. Jennie Dowe had never been dispersed in accordance with her wishes, but remained at the funeral home. At first there was concern that some unpaid bill was the cause, but as soon as it was cleared up that all was paid for, the ashes were secured and Lovecraft returned to Wilbraham with fellow amateur Edward H. Cole:

The trip to ancient “Dunwich” was pleasant despite our melancholy errand, & we enjoyed the marvellous mountain vistas to the full. Nothing had changed–the hills, the roads, the village, the dead houses–all the same. Most of the ashes were sprinkled in the Dell cemetery—on the graves of Mrs. Dowe’s parents & daughter. The rest we kept till we had wound over the narrow serpentine hill highway & reached the old Maplehurst estate “back o’ the mountain”. There—in the deserted rose garden—we completed the ceremony of union with ancestral soil . . . . carrying out, after 16 years, what Mrs. D. had always wished.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 26 Sep 1935, O Fortunate Floridian 293-294

Even late in life, as Lovecraft dealt with the disposition of her papers and the memorial that took so many years to go to press, he reflected:

Without question, Mrs. M. was the greatest fiction-writer ever connected with amateurdom. Not so notable as to form, but with a searching insight into human nature, & a keen ability to capture the essentials of character with some swift graphic stroke or some laconic touch of veiled, subtle irony. She had the substance—writing at first-hand about types of people she had actually seen & studied instead of merely following literary conventions & imitating what other authors had written before her.
H. P. Lovecraft to Hyman Bradofsky, 18 Oct 1936, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 374

It is unfortunate that we have so little record of the correspondence of Edith Miniter and H. P. Lovecraft; not because it would necessarily have shed more light on Lovecraft, but because Miniter is a subject of historical and literary interest in her own right. We have thousands of letters from Lovecraft, we have only a handful from Miniter. Yet she was in her day as important, or more so, as Lovecraft in amateur journalism. Reading between the lines, we might also wonder what humanizing influence Edith Miniter had on her friend.

One has to wonder if Lovecraft thought of that great old lady of amateur journalism breathing her last, the whippoorwills outside the window chirping, and then fading suddenly to silence—not that Miniter would have appreciated such a flight of fancy, but perhaps she would have appreciated the sentiment.

Anyone interested in learning more about Edith Miniter or reading some of the fiction that Lovecraft so acclaimed should check out Dead Houses and Other Works and The Village Green and Other Pieces, edited by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. and Sean Donnelly.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Christmas Greetings

H. P. Lovecraft spent most of his adult life in genteel poverty, slowly diminishing the modest inheritance that had come down to him from his parents and grandparents. He had no cash to spare on expensive gifts for his many friends and loved ones. So Lovecraft was generous with what he had—time, energy, and creativity. While not religious or given to mawkish displays, when it came to Christmas, Lovecraft poured his time and energies into writing small verses to his many correspondents, a body of poems collectively known as his “Christmas Greetings.”

Yesterday I wrote fifty Christmas cards—stamping & mailing them before midnight. Only a few, of course, had verses—& these were all brief and not brilliant.
H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 23 December 1925, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.511

Most of these verses do not survive. They would have been written on cheap Christmas cards, which were seldom preserved. Those that survive are mostly attested in drafts that survive among Lovecraft’s papers, or more rarely in a letter where he copied a few verses to share with someone else (LFF 1.511-515). Most of them are not pro forma verses, the same rhyme copied for each recipient, but are uniquely tailored for their recipient, a reflection of their shared history and correspondence with Lovecraft.

In looking at Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings to his women correspondents, we catch a glimpse at Lovecraft’s thoughtfulness. Their response, unfortunately, is often lost to us; though some few of them certainly responded in kind. We know Elizabeth Toldridge, for example, wrote her own Christmas poems to Lovecraft, because at least one survives.

To Lillian D. Clark

Enclos’d you’ll find, if nothing fly astray,

Cheer in profusion for your Christmas Day;

Yet will that cheer redound no less to me,

For where these greetings go, my heart shall be!
The Ancient Track 330

Six poems to Lovecraft’s elder aunt survive. Probably he began writing these to her as a child. Probably too this was one of the later verses, when an adult Lovecraft spent Christmases in New York, and his Christmas greetings would be sent by mail instead of delivered by hand. Though Lovecraft might travel as widely as his finances permitted, and visit friends far away, yet his heart was ever in Providence, Rhode Island—and his family there.

To Mary Faye Durr

Behold a wretch with scanty credit,—

An editor who does not edit—

But if thou seek’st a knave to hiss,

Change cars—he lives in Elroy, Wis.!
The Ancient Track 314-315

One poem survives to Mary Faye Durr, president of the United Amateur Press Association for the 1919-1920 term, and refers to amateur journalism affairs. The “knave” in this case was E.E. Ericson of Elroy, Wisconsin, who was the Official Printer for the United.

To Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Eddy, Jr.

Behold a pleasure and a guide

To light the letter’d path you’re treading;

Achievements with your own allied,

But each the beams of polish shedding.

Here masters rove with easy pace,

Open to all who care to spy them,

And if you copy well their grace,

I vow, you’ll catch up and go by them!
The Ancient Track 328

One poem survives to the Eddys. They were friends from Providence before Lovecraft eloped to New York in 1924, and Lovecraft would revise or collaborate with Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr., and his wife Muriel E. Eddy would write several memoirs of Lovecraft in later years, chiefly The Gentleman from Angell Street (2001). While it isn’t certain, this letter probably refers to C. M. Eddy, Jr.’s efforts to embark on a career as a writer (“the letter’d path”).

To Annie E. P. Gamwell

No false address is this with which I start,

Since the lines come directly from my heart.

Would that the rest of me were hov’ring night

That spot where my soul rose, and where ’twill die.

But since geography has scatter’d roung

That empty shell which still stalks on the ground,

To Brooklyn’s shores I’ll waft a firm command,

And lay a duty on the dull right hand:

“Hand,” I will broadcast, as my soul’s eyes look

O’er roofs of Maynard, Gowdy, Greene, and Cook,

Past Banigan’s toward Seekonk’s red-bridg’d brook,

“To daughter Anne a Yuletide greeting scrawl

Where’er her footsteps may have chanc’d to fall,

And bid her keep my blessings clear in view

In Providence, Daytona, or Peru!”
The Ancient Track 327

Five poems survive to Lovecraft’s younger aunt, of which this is the longest—a Christmas greeting sent from New York, because Lovecraft was not in Providence to spend Christmas with her. The reference to “Daytona” references Anne Gamwell’s own trips to Florida.

To Sonia H. Green

Once more the greens and holly grow

Against the (figurative) snow

To make the Yuletide cheer;

Whilst as of old the aged quill

Moves in connubial fondness still,

And quavers, “Yes, My Dear!”

May Santa, wheresoe’er he find

Thy roving footsteps now inclin’d,

His choicest boons impart;

Old Theobald, tho’ his purse be bare,

Makes haste to proffer, as his share,

Affection from the heart.
The Ancient Track 326-327

Four poems to Sonia H. Greene, who in 1924 became Lovecraft’s wife, survive. This one dates from after their marriage, but during a period when they were separated and unable to have Christmas together (“Thy roving footsteps now inclin’d”). Broke (“his purse be bare”), Lovecraft offers the only thing to Sonia he can: his love.

To Alice M. Hamlet

May Christmas bring such pleasing boons

As trolldom scarce can shew;

More potent than the Elf-King’s runes

Or Erl of long ago!

And sure, the least of Santa’s spells

Dwarfs all of poor Ziroonderel’s!
The Ancient Track 326

Three poems to Lovecraft’s fellow-amateur journalist Alice M. Hamlet survive. She is best-known for introducing H. P. Lovecraft to the works of Lord Dunsany, and this Christmas Greeting contains explicit references to Dunsany’s novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), such as the witch Ziroonderel and the land of Erl—and there is a slight joke comparing Santa in this context, as Clement Clarke Moore had famously described him as “a right jolly old elf” in “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823).

To Winifred Virginia Jackson

Inferior worth here hails with limping song

The new-crown’d Monarch of Aonia’s throng;

And sends in couplets weak and paralytick,

The Yuletide greetings of a crusty critick!
The Ancient Track 317

Two poems to Winifred Virginia Jackson, Lovecraft’s fellow amateur-journalism and literary collaborator, survive. The Aonian was an amateur journal, while Lovecraft was serving as head of the department of public criticism.

To Myrta Alice Little

Tho’ Christmas to the stupid pious throng,

These are the hours of Saturn’s pagan song;

When in the greens that hang on ev’ry door

We see the spring that lies so far before.
The Ancient Track 317

Not every Christmas Greeting was unique; in some cases Lovecraft sent identical (or near-identical) verses to multiple correspondents. So for Myrta Alice Little only one Christmas greeting survives, which was also sent to Winifred Virginia Jackson, Verna McGeoch, and Alfred Galpin—and the sentiments echo the opening to “The Festival,” where Lovecraft is less interested in the Christian ideology than the pagan roots of the holiday.

To Sarah Susan Lovecraft

May these dull verses for thy Christmastide

An added ray of cheerfulness provide,

For tho’ in art they take an humble place,

Their message is not measur’d by their grace.

As on this day of cold the turning sun

Hath in the sky his northward course begun,

So may this season’s trials hold for thee

The latent fount of bright futurity!
Yr aff. son & obt Servt., H.P. L., The Ancient Track 311

One Christmas poem to Lovecraft’s mother survives, though there are other examples of poetry he wrote to her on other occasions. These were likely some of his earliest Christmas Greetings, written during childhood and early adulthood, until his mother’s passing in 1921.

To Verna McGeoch

Tho’ late I vow’d no more to rhyme,

The Yuletide season wakes my quill;

So to a fairer, flowing clime

An ice-bound scribbler sends good will.
The Ancient Track 314

Two poems survive to Verna McGeoch, who was Official Editor of the United Amateur Press Association during Lovecraft’s term as president (1917-1918). The 1920 census shows McGeoch lived in St. Petersburg, Florida (“a fairer, flowing clime”), while Lovecraft froze in Providence. We know this poem was sent before 1921, because in the autumn of that year, Verna married James Chauncey Murch of Pennsylvania, and thus became Mrs. Murch and moved to that state.

To S. Lilian McMullen

To poetry’s home the bard would fain convey

The brightest wishes of a festal day;

Yet fears they’ll seem, so lowly is the giver,

Coals to Newcastle; water to the river!
The Ancient Track 318

One poem to Susan Lilian McMullen survives; she also published poetry under the pseudonym Lilian Middleton. A prominent poet in amateur journalism, Lovecraft wrote an essay praising her work, “The Poetry of Lilian Middleton” (CE 2.51-56), which would not be published during his lifetime. The two met at a gathering of amateurs in 1921. Their relations appear to have been cordial, though tempered by some of his criticisms of her poetry, and their correspondence was likely slight.

To Edith Miniter

From distant churchyards hear a Yuletide groan

As ghoulish Goodguile heaves his heaps of bone;

Each ancient slab the festive holly wears,

And all the worms disclaim their earthly cares:

Mayst thou, ‘neight sprightlier skies, no less rejoice,

And hail the season with exulting voice!
The Ancient Track 320

Five Christmas poems survive from Lovecraft to Edith Miniter, the grand dame of Boston’s amateur journalists. Miniter, among all of Lovecraft’s correspondents and fellow amateurs, was able and willing to take the piss a little with him, and wrote the first Lovecraftian parody, “Falco Ossifracus” (1921)—hence Lovecraft’s adoption of her nickname “Goodguile” for him.

To Anne Tillery Renshaw

Madam, accept a halting lay

That fain would cheer thy Christmas Day;

But fancy not the bard’s good will

Is as uncertain as his quill!
From the Copy-Reviser, The Ancient Track 311

Two poems survive to Anne Tillery Renshaw, teacher, editor, and amateur journalist. Lovecraft’s sign-off as “the Copy-Reviser” suggests their positions in amateur journalism at that time; Lovecraft had a tendency to correct metrical irregularities in poems of amateur journals he edited, and sometimes worked to revise the poetry of others. A Christmas card from Renshaw to Lovecraft survives.

To Laurie A. Sawyer

As Christmas snows (as yet a poet’s trope)

Call back one’s bygone days of youth and hope,

Four metrick lines I send—they’re quite enough—

Tho’ once I fancy’d I could write the stuff!
The Ancient Track 316

A single poem survives to amateur journalist Laurie A. Sawyer, whom Lovecraft described as “Amateurdom’s premier humourist” (CE 1.258). Sawyer was also president of the Interstate Amateur Press Association in 1909, and a leading figure of the Hub Club in Boston, moving in the same circles as Edith Miniter. She is known to have met Lovecraft at amateur conventions in Boston, and she helped issue the Edith Miniter memorial issue of The Tryout (Sep 1934).

To L. Evelyn Schump

May Yuletide bless the town of snow

Where Mormons lead their tangled lives;

And may the light of promise glow

On each grave cit and all his wives.
The Ancient Track 316

A single poem survives to amateur journalist and poet L. Evelyn Schump. She graduated from Ohio State University in 1915 and apparently took up the teaching profession in Ohio. The Church of Latter-Day Saints was established in Kirkland, Ohio during the 1830s until major schisms rent the church, whose members moved on to Missouri. Presumably there is some correspondence, now lost, behind this reference. Given how lightly Lovecraft touches on the issue of polygamy (officially rescinded in 1904), it isn’t likely she was a member of the congregation. As an amateur journalist, Lovecraft called her “a light essayist of unusual power and grace” (CE 1.224).

There are undoubtedly many Christmas Greetings that have been lost over the years, and what remains is little more than a sample of the whole. Yet it is clear that Lovecraft put his time and effort into crafting these verses, no matter how slight or silly, and even if he could afford no more than a card and a stamp, perhaps they spread a little cheer on long winter nights.

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

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.