00:00:06:24 - 00:00:16:23 Sean Dear Mr. Barlow, I rather like Cthulhu myself, though Wright was very hesitant about accepting it in the beginning. Welcome to Voluminous. The letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:17:10 - 00:00:24:04 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:24:04 - 00:00:26:14 Sean And each episode will read and discuss one of them. 00:00:26:21 - 00:00:32:21 Andrew I'm Sean Branney and I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:33:11 - 00:00:36:16 Sean Which we tell people what that is, and we probably should. 00:00:37:08 - 00:00:42:10 Andrew The HPLHS is the world's largest organization for fans of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:42:11 - 00:00:46:20 Sean We actually surprise some people. We are a real society with members across the globe. 00:00:47:00 - 00:00:53:20 Andrew And since 1985 or thereabouts, we have produced all kinds of projects based on or inspired by the works of Lovecraft. 00:00:53:21 - 00:00:56:13 Sean We've done a motion pictures, audio dramas. 00:00:56:14 - 00:00:58:15 Andrew Audio books, music games. 00:00:58:15 - 00:01:06:13 Sean T-shirts, mugs, all kinds of fun stuff. In short, we've had a lot of fun with the works of Lovecraft and we try and share that fun with other people. 00:01:06:14 - 00:01:07:05 Andrew Absolutely. 00:01:07:10 - 00:01:17:22 Sean We've gotten to know Lovecraft through his fiction and his creations, and that's certainly only one side of the guy, because one of the other, he, of course, was a writer, but fiction was a minority of what he wrote. 00:01:17:23 - 00:01:36:12 Andrew Oh, yeah. He is one of the most, if not the most prolific, voluminous writer of letters in English. Estimates by ST Joshi and other people who are very smart about H.P. Lovecraft. They have said that he probably wrote something like 100,000 thousand letters in a lifetime. 00:01:36:13 - 00:01:38:07 Sean That's a big number to wrap your head around it. 00:01:38:07 - 00:01:39:10 Andrew Because that's. 00:01:39:18 - 00:01:42:19 Sean How many per day or I should be putting it. I think my adult life. 00:01:42:21 - 00:01:51:15 Andrew Did the math and that's if he started writing those letters the day he was born, he would have to write six every single day of his life to hit that number. 00:01:51:15 - 00:01:52:02 Sean Yeah, that's crazy. 00:01:52:02 - 00:01:59:04 Andrew That's crazy. I think he estimated it on his own that he wrote something like 12 to 15 letters every day of his adult life. 00:01:59:04 - 00:02:09:05 Sean Yeah. And that's all kinds of things from, you know, postcards, which were famously jammed full of text on every corner to some of the letters run 60, 70, double sided, tightly written. 00:02:09:05 - 00:02:21:09 Andrew When wrote a letter, he would he would lay his hands on any piece of paper he could get and he would fill it from top to bottom, from side to side. He there was no empty white space. You know, the letter from H.P. Lovecraft. 00:02:21:11 - 00:02:48:20 Sean So he documented his own life in a way that frankly, few other human beings ever had. And through his letters, you get a really interesting perspective on both him. The man and the times in which he lived. And we thought both of those were were worthy topics to share with an audience. One of the things that we wanted to take our approach to this, there are other scholars of Lovecraft's letters. 00:02:48:21 - 00:03:03:20 Sean Oh, there are folks like S.T. Joshi and David Schultz and Derrick Hussey who have spent their entire lifetimes studying the letters, transcribing the letters, publishing the letters, and we're not trying to step on those guys toes because they they are really the experts on the letters. 00:03:03:21 - 00:03:14:09 Andrew We've spoken to them about our little project here and they have been all of them, very encouraging and very kind about it. We got to mention August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. 00:03:14:10 - 00:03:15:06 Sean Yeah, I think we should. 00:03:15:09 - 00:03:21:15 Andrew The people who got letters from H.P. Lovecraft generally treasured those letters and kept them adding Lovecraft. 00:03:21:15 - 00:03:42:05 Sean Who was getting letters back from these people while he seemed to enjoy them. He didn't have he didn't have the real estate to be able to deal with these thousands of incoming letters. And he didn't keep the letters. He got. Right. But fortunately, the people he sent letters to usually found his letters so exceptional in their content that lots and lots of that 100,000 letters survived. 00:03:42:12 - 00:03:58:03 Andrew So after Lovecraft's death, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei said, We got to collect as many of these letters as we can get and publish them so that they found in Arkham House Publishing in order to publish Lovecraft's fiction and his letters. That was the plan. 00:03:58:04 - 00:04:05:08 Sean Well, and I think it's important to realize for anybody that doesn't know that. LOVECRAFT No books were published of Lovecraft's works during his own lifetime. 00:04:05:08 - 00:04:06:04 Andrew Almost never. 00:04:06:23 - 00:04:32:04 Sean No meaningful editions of books were published in my lifetime. Yeah. So his friends went, Well, that's an outrage. And somebody should do this. So. So, Derleth and Wandrei works hard to try and find a publisher for Lovecraft's fiction and failed. And so finally they said, Well, all right, then we'll form our own publishing company, which they did called Arkham House, with the intent to publish Lovecraft's fiction, his poetry and his letters. 00:04:32:06 - 00:04:45:21 Andrew And they were originally assuming that this would be, you know, one volume of letters, Derleth and Wandrei sent out the call, and they got so many letters back that they quickly realized there's no way this can just be one volume of letters. 00:04:45:21 - 00:05:07:20 Sean I want to say the I don't remember the exact quantity, but it was like 25 or 35 binders. Yeah, It took all of these manuscripts that would come in and then they would both retype and edit them. When somebody would say, Oh, here's a stack of letters I got from Howard. So they went through the laborious process of transcribing the letters, typing them, returning the letters to whoever had mailed them in to them. 00:05:07:20 - 00:05:25:11 Sean Right. And then they would go through and before publishing them, they would often excised personal things like, you know, Howard says, How's the weather today? Or something like that. They're taking those kind of things out of the letter. But in the end, they were left with five volumes worth of what they published as the selected letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:05:25:11 - 00:05:49:13 Andrew I think the the whole five volumes is not quite a thousand actual letters. So if you stop to think that the five volumes of selected letters, which occupies like a foot of shelf space, is only 1/10 1%, 1% of the letters that Lovecraft actually wrote, and only one what, 1/20 of the letters that survive. 00:05:49:21 - 00:05:51:03 Sean Something like that. Yeah, it's. 00:05:51:03 - 00:05:53:12 Andrew Crazy. There's a lot a lot of letters. 00:05:53:16 - 00:06:11:20 Sean Yeah. So there's a lot of content out there. And they cover as as you'll hear from listening to the show, they cover a wide range of topics and a wide set of perspectives. And they also, you know, cover Lovecraft over the course of his lifetime because the guy who's writing the letters and in, you know, 1918 is a very different man than the one who's writing them in 1936. 00:06:11:20 - 00:06:22:10 Andrew And that's one of the things we are planning to do in the show, is we're not going to read them in chronological order because if we started with the earliest letter and then just went in sequence, you know, we guys. 00:06:22:10 - 00:06:23:02 Sean Would stop listening. 00:06:23:02 - 00:06:27:18 Andrew Well, it would be a thousand years before we got to, you know, 1920. It would be ridiculous. 00:06:27:19 - 00:06:36:10 Sean Yeah. So we're gonna hop, skip and jump around, and Andrew and I will serve as editors. And each week, one of us will pick a letter and say, Hey, this week I want to talk about this letter. 00:06:36:14 - 00:07:14:21 Andrew We're going to talk about why we chose the letter that we chose. We have the selected letters by Arkham House here at headquarters, and we are sometimes going to read from that book. And sometimes those letters, like Sean was saying, have been edited and they have been abridged. And sometimes those are the very short versions. When we can, we're going to try to read from the unabridged versions of letters, which after Arkham House have been published and are continuing to be published in different collections, usually organized by the the person to whom Lovecraft was writing, although we're going to abridged some of them ourselves because, as Sean mentioned before, some of these letters run 70 00:07:14:21 - 00:07:18:24 Andrew pages long and they take hours and hours to read out loud. 00:07:19:01 - 00:07:37:13 Sean And sometimes a good editor is really your friend. Oh yeah. And highlighting certain sections out of particularly a longer letter is actually more interesting than some of the details, which, you know, there are times where Lovecraft will go off on a very long tangent that might not be the most compelling part of something that's otherwise a very interesting letter. 00:07:37:13 - 00:07:51:24 Andrew But our plan and our desire is to give a full reading of the letters where possible because the context helps understand it. And the context is to us, interesting. I mean, it reveals more about Lovecraft himself with. 00:07:51:24 - 00:08:00:05 Sean A full reading. Well, are we going to read about some Howard says some stuff that's, oh, well, famously objectionable. Are you going to go there, Andrew? 00:08:00:13 - 00:08:02:19 Andrew Oh, yes. In some cases we will. 00:08:02:20 - 00:08:03:10 Sean Absolutely. 00:08:03:15 - 00:08:23:13 Andrew There are going to be some of these letters that are upsetting. And frankly, when Sean and I started talking about doing this podcast, I was a little worried that it might make me like Lovecraft less because I'm afraid of being exposed to some of his more ugly thoughts and opinions. And I know they're out there and we're going to confront some of them head on. 00:08:23:13 - 00:08:27:18 Andrew And that's just we're going to accept him, warts and all, part and parcel. 00:08:27:18 - 00:08:44:19 Sean And yeah, don't don't be afraid is what I would say to you. And that's what we hope you as an audience will will take to it. Our goal is is neither to build up Lovecraft into somebody he wasn't, nor to strip him down into somebody he wasn't. But really to use his letters to come to understand the man better. 00:08:44:19 - 00:09:04:14 Sean And I think, you know, so far as we've been wandering down, digging deeper into the letter, too, than I ever have, I see both the qualities about him that I go, Wow, what an extraordinary guy. And I see qualities that go all, Howard, what am I going to do with you know, he's got a bunch of of traits that are not flattering. 00:09:04:20 - 00:09:30:08 Andrew We've been in the Lovecraft business for a long time, over 30 years now. Sean and I have been working with Lovecraftian material on an almost daily basis. And now that we've started reading these letters, there's still so much in them that I didn't know. That is new to me. That is fascinating. And that's part of the joy of this particular project so far, is finding some of that stuff. 00:09:30:09 - 00:09:37:23 Sean Absolutely. We we think it's going to be a fun adventure and we hope you'll join us for it and see where it where it ends up taking us. 00:09:38:01 - 00:09:43:23 Andrew So, Sean, what is what is the first letter that you've chosen for us to hear and discuss today? 00:09:44:04 - 00:10:11:01 Sean To start it off, I chose a letter that Lovecraft wrote to a young man named Robert H. Barlowe on June 25th, 1931. Let's see what he had to say. Charleston, South Carolina Home Address ten Bond Street. Providence, Rhode Island June 25, 1931. Dear Mr. Barlow. Through a process of double forwarding, I have just received yours at the 18th while on the trip, as coincidence would have it. 00:10:11:05 - 00:10:35:13 Sean I pass through Savannah in your state only the day before yesterday. I'm very glad to hear that you like my stuff in WT and hope. The whisper and darkness will not disappoint you. I wrote another long thing this spring, laid on the Antarctic continent. But according to reports from home, the editor has just rejected it. At least they tell me of a large manuscript with WT return address which recently arrived. 00:10:36:01 - 00:11:02:17 Sean I'm rather like Cthulhu myself, though Wright was very hesitant about accepting it in the beginning. My quote first story, absolutely speaking, was probably something written at the age of seven back in 1897. I was always interested in the weird and anxious to get new forms of it down on paper. The earliest story of mine that's any good, though not good enough for publication except with revision is The Beast in the Cave, written when I was 14. 00:11:03:04 - 00:11:24:05 Sean There was no market for this kind of thing until 1923 when it was founded. And in that year I spent a good deal of my old material. The first thing to appear was Dagon, which had been written in 1917. I wrote most of the stories around 1920. Latterly, I have had to do so much advisory work that I have had to cut down on original composition. 00:11:24:10 - 00:11:47:19 Sean There are too many rejections to make original writing profitable unless one has a really popular action and plot style, which I most emphatically haven't no regret to say. There is no such magazine as Whispers and never has been that like the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul al-Hazred, it is a bit of fictitious background used purely for decorative effect. 00:11:48:13 - 00:12:17:17 Sean It may interest you to know that a good part of my present trip has been spent in visiting the weird writer Henry Whitehead, whose colorful West Indian stories you doubtless have read and liked. He is a rector in the Church of the Good Shepherd, unnamed in Florida, but a magnificent good fellow for all that, if you have access to newsstands containing adventure, watch it for Whitehead's latest story, The Black Beast, which, in my opinion, beats anything he has had in WT except that incomparable passing of a God. 00:12:18:23 - 00:12:51:18 Sean As for an autograph, something of very little value indeed, as connected with an obscure nonentity like myself. If the following signature won't do, I'll be glad to sign any old thing except checks on my largely non-existent bank account and other documents prejudicial to my life, liberty and pursuit of tolerable contentment. The demand for autographs has not so far been such as to force me to procure multiple writing apparatus or use a rubber stamp with best wishes and appreciating the spirit which prompted you to write. 00:12:52:06 - 00:12:58:01 Sean I am most cordially and sincerely H.P. Lovecraft. 00:12:58:14 - 00:13:07:19 Andrew All right, Sean. So of all the hundred thousand letters to choose from, why did you pick that letter? As the first one we would discuss on this podcast? 00:13:07:20 - 00:13:26:07 Sean It's an, I thought, a kind of delightful view of Lovecraft answering a piece of fan mail. He's recently gotten a letter from a young man he doesn't know. He doesn't even know he's a young man. He just got this piece of piece of mail. Lovecraft was on vacation at the time, so the letters bouncing around chasing him, it finally catches up with him. 00:13:26:14 - 00:13:50:09 Sean Lovecraft's letter seems to be answering questions that are put to him in the letter he must have gotten from from Barlowe. And it's a nice and kindly answer. But I think what's what's even more delightful for those who know a little bit more about Lovecraft is this is the opening salvo on what becomes actually a really significant relationship during the last, what, the last six years of Lovecraft's life. 00:13:50:10 - 00:13:51:11 Andrew Yeah, very significant. 00:13:51:15 - 00:14:02:10 Sean Absolutely. And so this is really for them to do to both of them. Absolutely. So I thought it was it was interesting to see how he, you know, gently addresses a fan and how he sort of opens the door. 00:14:02:10 - 00:14:04:08 Andrew And this was his first letter to Barlow. 00:14:04:08 - 00:14:06:08 Sean Right? This is his first letter. Letter to Barlow. 00:14:06:09 - 00:14:07:05 Andrew Where did you find this? 00:14:07:05 - 00:14:16:05 Sean This I took out. There's a collection of the letters Lovecraft sent to Robert H. Barlow called Oh, Fortunate Floridian. And this is where this particular one. 00:14:16:05 - 00:14:19:03 Andrew Do we have the letters that Barlow wrote? Do we have the other side of this? 00:14:19:03 - 00:14:20:11 Sean Cause we don't have the other side. 00:14:20:11 - 00:14:38:17 Andrew Isn't it funny that even Barlow didn't save the letters that he wrote? Well, I guess it wasn't up to him. Lovecraft probably threw it away or recycled, and that was another. Another trick of Lovecraft was to recycle the letters that he got. He would often answer the letters on the back of the letter that he got or some other just random letter that he had sitting on his desk. 00:14:38:17 - 00:14:43:11 Andrew So that's where some of the letters to Lovecraft ended up. They ended up being recycled. 00:14:43:12 - 00:15:13:14 Sean Sure. Well, and I think it's important to realize, too, Lovecraft didn't know it at the time, but Robert H. Barlow was 13 years old when he wrote to Lovecraft. So this is is Lovecraft now in his forties, having correspondence with literally, you know, somebody who's just started high school. So and while Barlow is clearly already a fan of Lovecraft, he's not at this point in time, not aware that he's dealing with a person of the literary stature, which is that which is. 00:15:13:18 - 00:15:33:24 Andrew Which is funny when you stop to think that, you know, he's telling this 13 year old boy, these are this the first story I ever wrote was when I was a 13 year old boy, you know, So he's talking about Lovecraft and Barlowe are are so have similar trajectories. In many ways. They do. You know, they're both very clever boys who had a problem growing up. 00:15:34:06 - 00:16:00:09 Sean Yeah, well, they're both misfits and I think both myself and I think we see that in a lot of the people Lovecraft connected with the. Well, it's interesting because he there are people who are, you know, very sound and well-adjusted with whom Lovecraft corresponded. But there's also, yeah, people, I think, in which he sees himself. And while Lovecraft doesn't know Barlow particularly well at this point in time, within a couple of years from from now, Lovecraft and Barlow will be kind of weirdly close. 00:16:00:09 - 00:16:07:03 Andrew Yeah. Lovecraft eventually went down and Barlowe lived well, at the time he wrote this letter, he was still living in Georgia. 00:16:07:05 - 00:16:35:12 Sean I guess he's his his dad was in the military and he was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is over in western Georgia. So when Lovecraft talks about I pass through Savannah. Right. Lovecraft has just finished a vacation that's almost he's like seven weeks he's been on the road. Wow. Yeah. Which is for a guy who's as frugal as Howard as he is now, working as he's been all the way down Florida, visited some friends in Florida, went all the way down to the Keys, which get into the Keys in the 1920s is a lot harder than it is now. 00:16:35:12 - 00:16:41:24 Sean Yeah, he's working his way back up the coast and how this letter, which was double forwarded, got to him. It's kind of it meets. 00:16:42:00 - 00:16:59:21 Andrew The whole system of the postal infrastructure was vital to Lovecraft life and obviously you know his answer whoever was getting the mail at his home address in Providence was very careful about sending it on to wherever Howard actually was, because he had letters forwarded to him. 00:17:00:06 - 00:17:01:09 Sean Everywhere, everywhere he went. 00:17:01:09 - 00:17:08:01 Andrew Everywhere he went. And yeah, that's how this letter from the letter from Georgia ended up going to Florida by way of Providence, Rhode Island. 00:17:08:01 - 00:17:09:21 Sean Yeah, I assume that. Oh, no. 00:17:09:21 - 00:17:11:03 Andrew He's in Charleston, South Carolina. 00:17:11:03 - 00:17:28:15 Sean He's in Charleston at this point in time. And I assume that his aunt's probably forwarded it to Whitehead down in Florida, probably, who then forwarded it back to Charleston, which is where he got it. So right at this point in time, it's you know, it's fan mail from a kid living on a military base. Right, too. He reads weird tales, magazines, likes Mr. Lovecraft story, writes to him. 00:17:28:15 - 00:18:01:14 Sean And by God, Howard writes back. Yeah. So anyway, another quality I liked about the letters is is also sort of a micro biography of Lovecraft as he sort of walks through the origin of weird tales and the four stories that he sent into it. And there's a lot of self-deprecation. Yeah. Which ego is a really interesting thing in these letters because yeah, Lovecraft can simultaneously be really self-deprecating and can be so intensely opinionated and confident in his opinions that it's a it's, it's an interesting mix of them. 00:18:01:14 - 00:18:24:08 Sean But here we really get the gentler, self-deprecating Lovecraft. Henry Whitehead, who was one of his correspondents Lovecraft, refers to in this letter. And and it was later in this year that they they worked together on their collaboration story of the Trap. That's the one about the the mirror that he'd spew, which is, I think, the only collaboration he did with Henry Whitehead. 00:18:24:13 - 00:18:25:11 Sean Yeah. 00:18:25:11 - 00:18:39:11 Andrew Whitehead wasn't part of the challenge from beyond what we know. So yeah, I think and Lovecraft in Lovecraft really admired Whitehead. He thought he was a terrific guy and a good writer. And yeah, Lovecraft seemed to really respect Whitehead a lot. 00:18:39:13 - 00:18:50:15 Sean Yeah. One of the interesting tidbits I learned in looking at Lovecraft's visit to Whitehead is apparently while he was with him in Florida, I guess in addition to being a I would see a rector or. 00:18:51:09 - 00:18:51:23 Andrew Some kind of. 00:18:51:23 - 00:18:57:01 Sean Minister, he's his a rector. He also led a boys group, which I'm assuming was something akin to the Boy. 00:18:57:01 - 00:18:57:18 Andrew Scouts, something. 00:18:58:02 - 00:19:12:05 Sean Lovecraft came and visited with the boys and recited from memory. They essentially told the story of the cats of both are but not reading it off a script, just kind of reciting it, which I was like, Wow, that huh? That's a pretty cool weekend at Boy Scout camp. 00:19:13:00 - 00:19:25:04 Andrew They I have read that Lovecraft had a prodigious memory, that he remembered everything he read, which as we get more into these letters, you'll you'll discover that, yeah, He remembered everything you read. 00:19:25:04 - 00:19:30:16 Sean Yeah. For a guy without a computer and for a count of information at his disposal is mind blowing. 00:19:30:16 - 00:19:46:17 Andrew And in an age of, you know, carbon copies and stuff, you know, before there were Xerox machines, he literally had to write out some of his stories over and over again. So it's not terribly surprising to think that he could basically remember one, especially a reasonably short one. 00:19:46:18 - 00:20:01:11 Sean Oh, yeah. Not so much from his own works, but I'm thinking of some of the other letters, like the facility with which the Greek philosophers and things are seem to at least be at his fingertips. Maybe he's, he's got the the analog version of Wikipedia that he's thumbing through as he's writing that. 00:20:01:11 - 00:20:03:03 Andrew But I think I suspect. 00:20:03:03 - 00:20:20:03 Sean Brain Yeah, I think it's all in his brain too. So anyway, not to belabor this one, but I found it was a neat view. The origin of of the Lovecraft Barlow relationship. I'm sure we'll get back to other Barlow letters later and talk in more detail about the Barlow relationship because it's it is a head scratcher and. 00:20:20:09 - 00:20:34:03 Andrew And it is a significant one. Barlow You know, at the time of his death, Lovecraft named Barlow as his literary executor. So Barlow ended up being in charge of all of Lovecraft's letters and papers and manuscripts and everything. 00:20:34:04 - 00:20:41:10 Sean Yeah, and it didn't really cross my mind. Barlow was. He was like 17 when that happened. And he traveled maybe 18. But he's. He's young. 00:20:41:10 - 00:20:43:06 Andrew He's. Yeah, he's barely an adult. 00:20:43:12 - 00:20:47:19 Sean Yeah. Bartlett Yeah. Barlow was born in 1918, so. 00:20:47:19 - 00:20:48:08 Andrew So he would have been. 00:20:48:15 - 00:20:58:15 Sean He was 19 years old and he rushed up to Providence as soon as he heard that Lovecraft had died and and then learned that he was the literary executor, was starting to deal with the manuscripts. 00:20:58:15 - 00:21:16:01 Andrew And very sadly, apparently, he and Derleth and Wandrei, did not get along. That was Andrei in particular, apparently thought Barlowe was a thief and had stolen all of Lovecraft's papers. And, you know, maybe, maybe wandering just didn't understand the the deal that Lovecraft had made or the nature of their relationship. 00:21:16:01 - 00:21:19:01 Sean But I think maybe the Arkham House guys didn't want it to be true. 00:21:19:07 - 00:21:20:19 Andrew That's entirely possible as well. 00:21:20:20 - 00:21:41:00 Sean But yeah, I read a bit on Clark Ashton Smith, who of whom Barlow was a huge fan. Yeah. So, you know, never write to me again and really and clearly perceived Barlow as a villain, which I think you know history has exonerated that Barlow really did his best under the circumstances and didn't do anything wrong. And when I was a kid. 00:21:41:00 - 00:21:42:18 Sean Was a kid. Yeah, absolutely. 00:21:42:18 - 00:22:06:08 Andrew And that's another thing about Lovecraft and Barlow and other of his young correspondents like Willis Conover Lovecraft. Barlow was a little kid, but Lovecraft didn't think of him that way. He treated these kids as adults, and for some of them, Lovecraft was the only one who treated them as an adult. And it it it amazed them and shaped their lives in their own, you know, senses of self. 00:22:06:08 - 00:22:23:08 Sean Sure. And I think that may come from the fact that Howard himself was so incredibly precocious and in some ways, you know, was never a little boy. I mean, you know, we hear about some of his playful stuff in adventures, but he was clearly on his trajectory of development as a young man, was an uncommon one at best. 00:22:23:08 - 00:22:31:11 Sean And I think that allowed him to see, you know, learn that Barlow is 13 and still think no less of him and completely exciting. 00:22:31:11 - 00:22:36:03 Andrew It was a surprise, but it obviously didn't stop him from hanging out with Barlow. 00:22:36:03 - 00:22:53:04 Sean And there's something I think, in Lovecraft too, that really celebrated, maybe from not having had children of his own that he, I think, enjoyed being a paternal grand paternal figure, you know, of adopting the sort of persona of a much older man and certainly with. 00:22:53:15 - 00:22:54:06 Andrew A middle aged. 00:22:54:06 - 00:22:55:10 Sean Man. Yeah, absolutely. 00:22:55:16 - 00:23:00:12 Andrew That he styled himself, he he referred to his own aunts as my children. 00:23:00:12 - 00:23:12:17 Sean Yeah. It's it's pretty weird. Yeah. So but anyway, so this has been our first glimpse at one of Lovecraft's letters. And we appreciate your listening and hope, uh, I hope you'll come back and join us for more. 00:23:12:17 - 00:23:19:03 Andrew Absolutely. Will. We'll take turns picking letters and reading them, and we'll just see what happens next. 00:23:19:20 - 00:23:27:20 Sean We offer our thanks today to the University of Tampa Press, who published, Oh, Fortunate Floridian, which was edited by ST Joshi and David Schultz. 00:23:28:04 - 00:23:39:18 Andrew Oh, Fortunate Floridian is available wherever obscure books are sold. The music that you hear at the beginning and at the end of each episode is written by our dear friend Troy Sterling. Nies. 00:23:40:07 - 00:23:42:23 Sean Well, I am your obedient servant, Sean Brady. 00:23:42:23 - 00:23:45:08 Andrew And I am cordially in respectfully yours. 00:23:45:12 - 00:23:49:23 Sean Andrew Lehman You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:23:50:00 - 00:24:11:13 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org