Howard Phillips Lovecraft - Dreamer on the Nightside. Frank Belknap Long

the macabre paintings and drawings of Goya, not because of their realism, but because they conjured up horrific visions.

      Yet as early as 1943, there appeared in the American surrealist journal VVV the following tribute:

      “Lovecraft recalls Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and Poe. He frees himself from the conventions of fiction in its standardized forms, and presents an uncensored testimony of his inner adventures.” (Robert Allerton Parker, “Such Pulp as Dreams Are Made On,” VVV, Nos. 2-3 [March 1943], p. 64.)

      It is an “uncensored testimony” of that nature which forms the foundation upon which present day surrealism has built much of its structural cohesiveness, and though many of its tenets would doubtlessly have been rejected by HPL, this aspect of surrealism is certainly in accord with what he most wanted to achieve.

      The Chilean surrealistic painter Roberto Matta appears to have been directly influenced by Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, notably in such chilling masterpieces of the macabre as Rghuin monstrous triumphs and Icrogy fecundated, (Sarane Alexandrian, Surrealistic Art [New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1970], p. 168.) while the American surrealist poet, artist, and critic, Franklin Rosemont (a long-time admirer of both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith) has found similar Cthulhu Mythos motifs in the even more brilliant paintings of Jorge Camacho, including one of my “Hounds of Tindalos” coming in through angles.

      HPL has also received many tributes from writers whose views are of an entirely non-surrealistic nature and who believe that only experimental laboratory science is capable of forging a key that can unlock the portals which guard the major mysteries. And this is as it should be. An author who totally lacks the capacity to set diametrically opposing schools into conflict can never be other than minor, for there are contradictions in every aspect of human experience with which the significant writer must struggle. Unless he has been whirled about by a few maelstroms of the inner mind, his guidance on a mountain-scaling expedition is unlikely to prove of much value, particularly in the realm of the unknown.

      HPL was never a narrow, rigidly unyielding positivist, but he did have a great deal of respect for what is commonly thought of as “sound science” and refused to abandon what he believed might well be the truth about the universe: that it was wholly mechanistic, some vast, unknowable kind of rhythmic pulsation that had always existed and always would exist, and that this rhythm creates for us everything we perceive as reality—the whole of nature, animate and inanimate, on this planet and throughout the universe of stars.

      I have always been willing to concede that such a possibility might well be the answer, but I have also been willing to believe that it might not. At times HPL himself questioned that possibility to some extent, although my questioning went just a bit further than he was willing to countenance without a protest. And he may well have been justified, who knows? I could be totally in error for believing that the universe may be even more mysterious than is remotely suggested by the cosmic rhythm hypothesis.

      Just one concluding tribute to the variegated nature of HPL’s appeal must be mentioned. A brilliant mathematician of my acquaintance, Donald R. Burleson, has recently dedicated to HPL a college textbook that is filled from cover to cover with—to me—rather awe-inspiring equations. This is undoubtedly the first time that a mathematical textbook has ever been dedicated to Lovecraft. But I doubt if it will be the last.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Much of the statistical material in the preceding chapter might have been somewhat abbreviated if all readers of this volume possessed the specialized knowledge of Lovecraftian lore that has become more widespread today than is commonly supposed, making him almost unique in that respect among literary figures of the past half-century. But, as I have previously stressed, a few readers might possibly have purchased this volume out of sheer fascination with his very name (which the author of the surrealistic article just quoted describes as “slightly incredible, but not a nom de plume”), while a larger number would feel grievously and quite justifiably resentful if I failed to include such basic biographical details as the date of his birth, his parentage, the dates of his arrival in New York and return to Providence, and a generalized summary of the stories as well. All this material will be elaborated upon later, as my personal memories unfold, but at least some attention must be given to it here, before I embark upon that kind of voyage.

      Lovecraft was born at 454 Angell Street, the home of his maternal grandfather, on August 20, 1890. It was a stately house and he often referred to it in his letters as the old Phillips mansion on the Ancient Hill. The early years of his childhood were spent for the most part in the Phillips residence, although he and his parents sometimes stayed a few weeks with close friends, and he mentioned one visit to Fall River which seems to have occurred before he was five.

      His parents—Sarah Phillips Lovecraft and Winfield Scott Lovecraft—had no other children. His father was a traveling salesman of English ancestry, and the family saw him seldom. It has been said that he never renounced his British citizenship, but I doubt if there is any way by which this could be verified. Winfield Lovecraft died when his son was very small, and thus HPL’s formative years were influenced far more by his grandfather, for whom he always had the highest admiration and respect.

      Although Lovecraft’s mother was not a vain or self-centered woman and was held in high esteem by her friends, she had a tendency to be over-protective, and there can be no question that she made her son feel like an invalid from an early age. Actually he was not an invalid at all, although at a certain period in his boyhood or early adolescence, he appears to have suffered from ill-health which necessitated his removal from school. But any evidence that he differed greatly from the most robust of youngsters is far from conclusive, apart from the fact that “robust” would have been meaningless in relation to HPL, for he was of the wiry, resilient type, with no outward appearance of possessing exceptionally good health.

      Though it may be a departure from anything in Freud, I have often thought that an over-solicitous parent, for whom a child has the kind of respect which goes with the way HPL felt about family traditions, is in a position to exercise more influence on a child’s view of himself than an ordinary parent under ordinary circumstances. So sensitive was Lovecraft to such traditions almost from birth, that I doubt whether the parental dominance factor entered into the matter at all.

      HPL’s mother died during the first year of my correspondence with him, when his adolescent years were quite far in the past. Not until we met in person did he discuss his childhood years with me, and extensive as our talks became, he never depicted himself as having been the “sickly,” nervously high-strung child or youth that more than one recent biographical sketch has seemingly taken for granted. He did confess to having been a kind of “semi-invalid” during one period of his boyhood and occasionally would use that term in relation to all the years which had preceded his arrival in New York. But as soon as I met him, I think he knew that I would dismiss the extension of that term to include his present self as an absurdity, and much as that whimsical pretension may have pleased a particular side of his nature (which I shall discuss later at some length), he quickly abandoned it.

      After the death of his mother, her place at the 598 Angell Street residence to which they had moved was taken by his two aunts, Lillian P. Clark and Annie E. Phillips Gamwell. Mrs. Clark was several years older than her sister and perhaps a bit more matronly in aspect, although that quality is difficult to associate with a woman who was extremely quick in her movements and quite fragile physically. Mrs. Gamwell was much more social-minded, and perhaps was more outgoing in general, although both women possessed in common the quality of great kindliness. They were perhaps just a trifle over-protective (if one must use that term), but this was chiefly toward providing their nephew with every possible comfort and freedom from strain which they had the wisdom to realize is necessary to any writer if he is to do his best creative work without becoming sidetracked or tormented by distractions. I am quite certain they never actually “coddled” him or were as neurotically over-solicitous as his mother had been, or indeed that they did anything whatsoever to make him feel a “semi-invalid.”

      His decision to marry in March 1924 was incredibly impulsive, totally unexpected by his friends and correspondents, and it occurred after the briefest of courtships. He always insisted that he had been persuaded