00:00:05:13 - 00:00:08:16 Sean Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:08:22 - 00:00:15:00 Andrew In addition to classic works of Gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:15:00 - 00:00:19:05 Sean In each episode of the show will read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney. 00:00:19:06 - 00:00:24:08 Sean And I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:24:09 - 00:00:54:09 Sean For today's letter, I chose a letter that Lovecraft wrote to August Derleth On November 7th, 1926. Derleths is one of Lovecraft's most important correspondence and this is very early in their time. Corresponding together. So let's hear it first and then we'll talk about it. 10 Bond Street. Providence, Rhode Island. November seven, 1926. My dear Mr. Derleth, glad you found the new tale worth reading. I'll try it on Wright the next batch and see what he thinks. Your verdict on the current WT seems to me very just for I must say that nothing except the metal giant struck me as thoroughly worth reading of that verse of mine was part of our personal greeting to write on a Christmas card last year, but with the omission of the final stanza of the original, it became available for publication. 00:01:17:20 - 00:01:47:08 Sean I shall be interested to see your tale, the Black Powder and Trust that when completed, it may win editorial approval. John Vero was certainly rather for handed in ordering books without your authorization. I asked a mailman. Of course it drags and places like all the interminable novels of its time, but it seems to me to hold a certain convincing kinship with horrors beyond the veil which we find lacking in its predecessors, such as Rudolfo the Monk, etc.. 00:01:48:03 - 00:02:07:12 Sean Glad you read Morrow. Frank B Long Jr started it when he was eight years old, but his mother thought it was bad for his nerves and wouldn't let him finish it. In later years he could not find a copy and only just now, at the age of 24 has the reprint in amazing stories enabled him to gratify the excited curiosity of this tendency. 00:02:08:12 - 00:02:46:02 Sean My expectations of Haggard are not so high that any disillusion will be very painful. I can see that he is essentially a best seller hack, but fancy he is fairly good as hacks go. I'll keep your recommendations in mind. Enclosed are beyond the wall of sleep in a carbon most inexcusably but economic written on the backs of old letters as Pope wrote his Iliad translation and the lurking fear has published in a positively beastly but now happily defunct magazine called Home Brew in January to April 1923. 00:02:47:02 - 00:03:11:09 Sean This tale was molded in conformity with the demands of the magazine and has melodramatic climaxes at the ends of the installments, which did not meet my artistic approval. I shall someday rewrite it as a single, continuous tale. I'll pardon the misprint. Always give me the benefit of the doubt when confronted with evidence of apparent incoherence or illiteracy. Unfortunately I haven't any copy whatsoever of the shunned house. The last one having gone to W Paul Cooke, who means to print it in his coming magazine, The Recluse. As to a book of my stuff. The idea has been broached to me and one of the business backers of W.T. says he's going to show certain things of mine to a publisher, but I don't really think anything will come of it. 00:03:31:21 - 00:04:03:05 Sean My natural style is not a popular one, and when I try artificially to meet popular demands, I invariably trail off into utter inanity and dullness of my own stuff. I have no favorite tale, though. I think The Hound 1922. The Tree 1920 From Beyond 1920. The Moon Bog 1921. The Unnamable 1923. He 1925 And In the Vault 1925 are the poorest. 00:04:04:03 - 00:04:33:03 Sean The enclosed wall of sleep is pretty bad and was written in 1919. I noticed that I wrote most stories in 1920. As for autograph likenesses. Like many, another lover of the Beautiful who is personally as homely as hell, I detest having formal photographs taken. I haven't had one since 1915 when I was 25. But here's a wretched postcard snapshot which I was wheeled into having taken last year at Coney Island. 00:04:33:12 - 00:04:55:23 Sean It looks like me for at my stage of middle life, a year doesn't extensively change one, although I don't think my actual expression is quite as savagely determined as this wide eyed presentiment would seem to imply. By the way, I wouldn't mind seeing a few of you if you have such a thing to spare. Sincerely and cordially. H.P. Lovecraft. 00:04:56:10 - 00:04:59:19 Andrew So, Sean, what made you choose this particular letter? 00:04:59:20 - 00:05:17:05 Sean Derleth is an essential figure in Lovecraft's life. He plays a love him, hate him, make what you will of him. But he is an important, important guy. There are more letters from Lovecraft to August Derleth than anyone else that Lovecraft wrote to. Really? Yeah. 00:05:17:18 - 00:05:18:03 Andrew Three. 00:05:18:07 - 00:05:19:11 Sean 380. 00:05:19:12 - 00:05:20:06 Andrew 380. 00:05:20:06 - 00:05:22:23 Sean 380 Lovecraft letters to Derleth are extant. 00:05:22:23 - 00:05:25:23 Andrew Wow. I thought he wrote a lot of letters to Barlow, but three. Yeah. 00:05:26:06 - 00:05:58:16 Sean But here's the. Here's the interesting thing. The letters, the correspondence with Derleth also tend to be really brief. They tend to be one and two page letters and not these write, you know, 30, 40, 50 page things that they wrote. I was was reading some of David Schultz and S.T. Joshi did a great collection of the Derleth letters and they made the observation that Derleth kind of couldn't keep up with Lovecraft and Lovecraft sort of gave as well as he got in his correspondence. 00:05:58:16 - 00:06:17:15 Sean And if somebody writes a ten page letter back to Howard, they'll get a 15 page one back. But if they only write 1 pager, then he'll give them a one pager back and that the intellectual depth and the breadth of topics that he engages in with a lot of his other correspondence doesn't tend to be really extant in the Derleth Things. 00:06:17:15 - 00:06:24:09 Sean So you get more letters of sort of weak mental, weaker content or less breadth of content. 00:06:24:13 - 00:06:37:06 Andrew Do you think that there are so many of the Derleth letters surviving because Derleth is the guy who spearheaded the original collection of the letters? It's easy to imagine that he wrote just as many letters to other people. They just haven't survived. 00:06:37:11 - 00:07:01:22 Sean It's, you know, it's entirely possible. Obviously, the vast majority, I think we're thinking like 80% of Lovecraft's letters are no longer extant. Right. And clearly, I suspect Derleth kept, you know, all or virtually all of his correspondence with Lovecraft. But it does seem that their correspondence was pretty regular over a long period of time. And again, they tended to be these brief little quick exchanges which racked up more. 00:07:01:22 - 00:07:19:19 Sean You know, you can only write even if you're Lovecraft, you can only write so many 50 page letters in a week. So one of the other things that really struck me about this, we talked in an earlier episode about a letter with young Mr. Barlow. Right. This is young Mr. Derleth. Right. August Derleth is a whopping 17 years old. 00:07:19:19 - 00:07:36:24 Sean Really? Yeah. So. And one of the qualities of all the Derleth correspondent is it tends to be a little more formal and a little more author to author. You know, Lovecraft response to that Barlow letter was really a bit of fan mail. 00:07:37:00 - 00:07:38:02 Andrew Right. It was personal. 00:07:38:04 - 00:07:59:05 Sean Right. And and in most respects, the Derleth letters don't tend to be as personal as his correspondence is with a lot of things. So they talk about they talk about each other's stories and they talk about other writers and their work. And that that tends to be largely a lack of they don't tend to go as philosophical or as personal as a lot of the other correspondence. 00:07:59:05 - 00:08:01:20 Sean But yeah, this young Mr. Douglas is 17 years old. 00:08:01:21 - 00:08:15:20 Andrew Well, and I know because we're going to get to it at some point probably pretty soon that Lovecraft mentions Derleth in his letters to other people. Sure. So Derleth must have also been corresponding with some of the people that Lovecraft was corresponding with. 00:08:15:23 - 00:08:26:16 Sean Yeah. Lovecraft made made introductions to, you know, shared his circle of friends and correspondence. And of course, in a lot of ways they were the weird tales gang. Yeah. And that's Derleth began. 00:08:26:16 - 00:08:28:08 Andrew Or the amateur press gang. Right. 00:08:28:13 - 00:08:41:10 Sean And Derleth began writing to Lovecraft, basically in the same manner that Barlow did, except for the tone wasn't, you know. Oh, gosh, Can I get your autograph? You're really swell. It's. I'm looking for this book. Can you send it to me? 00:08:41:19 - 00:08:46:19 Andrew Had Derleth been published at the age of 17, Was Derleth already a published author? 00:08:47:01 - 00:08:47:19 Sean He because he. 00:08:47:19 - 00:08:49:22 Andrew Wasn't part of the amateur press movement? 00:08:49:22 - 00:09:03:20 Sean No, he wasn't. I don't know if at this point in time he's sold anything professionally, but he is he certainly perceives himself as a writer. And, you know, again, love him or hate him, Derleth is a driven guy. 00:09:03:21 - 00:09:04:05 Andrew Oh, yeah. 00:09:04:16 - 00:09:27:03 Sean He's very nose to the grindstone. And his, you know, his literary output over his life just dwarfs anything that Lovecraft was able to do. Getting back to this letter in particular, a couple other things I thought were kind of interesting about it here. In the the second paragraph, he makes references to the Island of Dr. Moreau and Rudolfo the Monk and Mal Moth. 00:09:27:06 - 00:09:35:08 Sean Right. And I was like, Hmm, those names seem familiar. Why do those names seem familiar? It's like, Oh, we recorded supernatural horror and. 00:09:35:21 - 00:09:37:08 Andrew Classics of supernatural horror. 00:09:37:11 - 00:09:43:21 Sean Well, right. But this this letter is sat right smack in the middle of when Lovecraft is writing supernatural horror and literature. 00:09:43:23 - 00:09:45:17 Andrew So, yeah. Lovecraft fresh in his mind. 00:09:45:18 - 00:10:05:22 Sean Exactly. He's. He's working on it between 1925 and 27 and boom, right in the middle, 1926. So these stories are very fresh in his mind, what to what to refer to him. I also I don't know, I just found the something kind of delightful in the personal reference, too, to Frank Belknap Long's mom saying, Oh, you shouldn't be reading Dr. Moreau. 00:10:05:22 - 00:10:06:24 Sean That's too much for you. 00:10:07:00 - 00:10:12:09 Andrew It sounds vaguely familiar to me. Yeah. Through what family members have told me that I shouldn't read Lovecraft. 00:10:13:03 - 00:10:15:04 Sean Or hang out with those creepy friends of yours. 00:10:15:07 - 00:10:18:08 Andrew Banning is bad for my nerves. Horrible, horrible. 00:10:18:08 - 00:10:41:04 Sean Influence. Also, the this the new tale that's referred to right in the beginning to ask you, but it's Pickman's model that he had recently sent to him. And two weeks prior to this letter, Lovecraft had also sent or lost a copy of the Call of Cthulhu, which was a brand new thing that in his early correspondence he doesn't seem very confident about because, of course, you know, Farnsworth, Wright? 00:10:41:04 - 00:10:43:17 Sean Didn't like it or didn't think it was suitable for publication. 00:10:43:17 - 00:10:54:09 Andrew And do we happen to know what he mentions this letter that this story that Derleth was writing, the black powder. Do we know if do we? I didn't find any subsequent reference to it. 00:10:54:21 - 00:11:00:12 Sean I didn't find it, but I didn't in I'll understand and put a ton of time into trying to track it down. So. 00:11:01:13 - 00:11:04:07 Andrew And who is this John? John, Vero the mentions. 00:11:04:07 - 00:11:25:03 Sean Is the hippocampus version of of the Derleth letters has a but it does have a bunch of double letters to Lovecraft. Yeah but it doesn't have a novel one that immediately proceeds as I don't know who John Vieira is and it sounds like he took Derleth credit card and went on a book buying spree. I'm not sure what the full story was there, but it's interesting. 00:11:25:11 - 00:11:48:23 Sean Lovecraft we kind of touched on before his his ego and how sometimes he's he's very full of himself in his own opinions. And then he's often so self-deprecating about his own work. Right. And and I thought particularly the construction of this list of his story is it's written as if he is going to extoll the virtues. And then he's like this story, this story, this story and this story, they're all pretty bad. 00:11:48:23 - 00:12:00:06 Sean Yeah. When in actuality, you know, those are those are not all his worst ones. And there's there's a couple in there that are pretty respectable. Yeah, Howard's not bad. Howard's not coming from beyond like. 00:12:00:06 - 00:12:02:22 Andrew The same token, he's right that he is. Well, you know. 00:12:03:02 - 00:12:07:13 Sean He's got to go, you know. And why is the street not on this list? That's a good question too. 00:12:08:10 - 00:12:18:03 Andrew Yeah. I was interested in his take on H Rider Haggard, who he mentions, you know, describing him as a as a hack, I think is a little harsh, but. 00:12:18:09 - 00:12:19:17 Sean But pretty good as hacks go. 00:12:19:23 - 00:12:22:14 Andrew It's nice that he says as hacks go, he's pretty good. 00:12:22:14 - 00:12:24:02 Sean But throw him a bone here. 00:12:24:02 - 00:12:38:15 Andrew It brings up an interesting concept because you know what? What then constitutes a hack from? Because to me, a hack is is inherently cynical. Someone who writes something that he personally thinks is terrible, but he's doing it for the money. 00:12:38:16 - 00:12:45:12 Sean Well, that's and I think that's what Lovecraft really had contempt for are these guys who who are not driven as artists, but they're driven commercially. 00:12:45:13 - 00:12:48:21 Andrew Right. But I don't know that that applies to a writer. 00:12:48:21 - 00:12:51:18 Sean HAGGARD Well, I haven't read any writer. 00:12:51:18 - 00:13:00:17 Andrew Haggard I've read very little and not lately. But, you know, Henry Rider Haggard was the guy who wrote King Solomon's Mines and She. 00:13:00:17 - 00:13:01:13 Sean Hits at the time, big. 00:13:01:13 - 00:13:08:14 Andrew Hits of the time. And today, I mean, he is just as influential in many ways as Lovecraft himself. I mean. 00:13:08:19 - 00:13:10:00 Sean The. Wow. Come on. 00:13:10:00 - 00:13:12:20 Andrew Now. No, he was a pioneer of adventure fiction. 00:13:12:20 - 00:13:15:01 Sean Is there a podcast about his letters? 00:13:15:01 - 00:13:16:17 Andrew I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. 00:13:16:18 - 00:13:17:07 Sean Well, maybe. 00:13:17:07 - 00:13:37:20 Andrew All right. But the point is that I'm not an expert on any Henry Rider Haggard either, that's for sure. But I don't get the impression that Haggard was cynical. I mean, he he wrote popular fiction. It's true. He wrote bestsellers, but not cynically. And so for love, you know, and it's not like Lovecraft never wrote anything just for the money. 00:13:37:20 - 00:13:39:23 Andrew He was sure he wrote stuff just for the money. 00:13:39:23 - 00:13:44:10 Sean Too, although he really bags on himself when he has done that as as when he's talking. 00:13:44:10 - 00:13:54:17 Andrew And maybe we'd have Haggard's letters full of regret and have how ashamed he was of King Solomon's Mines. If you saw the movie version, maybe in particular, he'd regret it. 00:13:54:20 - 00:14:00:12 Sean Or maybe you'd have him bragging about Lovecraft being hacked, writing the lurking fear maybe Herbert West or Animist. 00:14:00:15 - 00:14:08:01 Andrew It just struck me as as harsh for H.P. Lovecraft did, describing writer Haggard as a hack. 00:14:09:06 - 00:14:11:10 Sean Yeah, I guess, you know, there's something about. 00:14:11:16 - 00:14:11:23 Andrew Because. 00:14:12:07 - 00:14:23:16 Sean My motive is if your motives are impure, does that imply you know, it's not about he doesn't seem to be impugning the quality of the writing. It seems to be about right. And it wasn't just written. 00:14:23:17 - 00:14:31:22 Andrew Does Lovecraft know what Haggard's motive was? I mean, the fact is just the fact that he made money is that presume his motive was to make money. 00:14:31:23 - 00:14:39:09 Sean Well, and, you know, it's possible that you're reading something into Hack that is not necessarily maybe that's maybe that's cynical. 00:14:39:12 - 00:14:45:08 Andrew Maybe that's not what Lovecraft means by the word hack, but that's certainly what made me pick up my ears. 00:14:45:08 - 00:14:53:22 Sean Sure. Well, it could just be that he didn't care for the writing or thought, you know, he was awfully disdainful for anything he thought was written for sort of the lowest common denominator of readers. 00:14:54:02 - 00:15:18:06 Andrew Yes, that's absolutely true. He was. But I think I think the problem with that is if the if the person who's, you know, perpetrating that writing is doing it in a calculating, right acquisitive way instead of I mean, if Writer Haggard genuinely loved adventure fiction literature, which I think at the beginning at least I think he did, because like his main character, Alan Quatermain, was not a made up thing. 00:15:18:06 - 00:15:39:14 Andrew It was based on real British adventurers in colonial Africa that that angered New personally. So, sure, he was writing what he knew. Yeah. And those characters were based on, you know, real people that had real adventures. Now, maybe once he had a bestseller and realized , the sequel, maybe the sequel was cynical, but the first. 00:15:39:14 - 00:15:41:12 Sean One, King Solomon's other might be. 00:15:41:13 - 00:16:05:00 Andrew Exactly. Maybe that one was cynical, but but, but the first one, I don't have any reason to think that Writer Haggard was just in it for the money. And it bugs me to hear well, to hear him described as a hack, I like a writer. Haggard where he says, Oh, he is an awesome story. And the 1937 or whatever, I forget exactly what year, but there's a black and white adaptation of She Is Dynamite. 00:16:05:00 - 00:16:08:10 Andrew It was produced by the same guys who produced King Kong. It's great. 00:16:08:11 - 00:16:26:10 Sean Well, I had taken a look at King Solomon's mine because they had given me a copy of it a few years back. Yeah. As as possible dark adventure material and went, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't do that. No. Why? Well, there are, you know, the world has changed since the time of Haggard, and amen to that. 00:16:26:10 - 00:16:46:12 Sean Yeah, the whole colonial Africa thing is so colonial, ugly, and just the worst possible way is that you'd have to really rework the the fundamental relationships in the story to do it. So the only last thing I want to do, I thought we might touch on in this letter, it was sort of the interesting discussion of the photographs. 00:16:46:18 - 00:17:16:01 Sean Lovecraft We hear at many times through his writing, has this self conceit of himself as a sort of, you know, hideous monstrosity, possibly reinforced by his mother. But clearly it's so consistent that it does seem to be that's how he conceives himself as that. You know, he he looks he looks ridiculous. And it's interesting because I can't think of any contemporary writing with him where anybody else is like, you know, the unfortunate looking Mr. Lovecraft or whatever. 00:17:16:01 - 00:17:19:07 Sean And some of the ladies seem to find him, you know, pleasant enough. 00:17:19:07 - 00:17:23:10 Andrew In any of the photos where he's standing posed next to all of his friends. He doesn't look anywhere. 00:17:23:11 - 00:17:44:17 Sean Yeah, exactly. He really he really doesn't. So it then becomes, I think, a manifestation of this internal self-image that, you know, it's like everybody hates the sound of their recorded voice. And lots of people hate, you know, photos of themself. And that's clearly haunting Lovecraft. And some of them like his formal portraiture for the that united amateur shot that he he's referring to from What's that 1915. 00:17:44:17 - 00:17:47:22 Sean I think you know he's a handsome young guy with his glasses on. He looks pretty. 00:17:48:00 - 00:17:49:14 Andrew Tall with white tie. He looks. 00:17:49:14 - 00:18:08:02 Sean Good. He he's got a prognostic jaw. Okay. But, you know, that's that's hardly the worst of his problems. And, you know, also people make references to I don't I can't think of Lovecraft himself talking about his teeth not being good. You know, that that he doesn't smile in the photos because he doesn't want to show his teeth. 00:18:08:02 - 00:18:26:04 Sean And I don't I don't really think that's what it's about. And I think, you know, I think in the whole if you look at portraiture from that time, just not in fashion to be as toothy as we are today, and maybe it's because we overall have orthodontia and, you know, the people of the late 20th century tend to have nicer looking teeth than people. 00:18:26:08 - 00:18:26:16 Sean You know. 00:18:26:16 - 00:18:33:09 Andrew I think toothy smiles are not necessarily natural. Well, I. I have to deliberately try to show my teeth. 00:18:33:09 - 00:18:40:05 Sean Yeah. No, I'm the same kind of thing. I just I just tend to be a grin or not a not a tooth bear, you know? So anyway, whatever. 00:18:40:11 - 00:18:59:11 Andrew So just one last thing that he talks about here is, you know, the lurking fear and how it was written to order for Home Brew, a magazine that he didn't like for an editor. Yeah, exactly. Hacking him in his Lovecraft, using someone else for being a hack. He wrote that to order, right. And didn't like it. 00:18:59:13 - 00:19:18:09 Andrew Right. Because he didn't approve of having the little fake climaxes at the end of each installment. And. Right. He says here, one of these days I'll rewrite it to be all one. In many ways I, I wish we had read this letter before. We did it for Dark Adventure Radio Theater. I wonder if we would have tackled the adaptation any differently. 00:19:18:22 - 00:19:22:13 Sean I don't know. How. How how do you think you might have based on this? Just just. 00:19:22:13 - 00:19:27:05 Andrew Knowing that Lovecraft himself would have reworked the structure of the. 00:19:27:05 - 00:19:32:24 Sean Story? Oh, it's true. I mean, those little fake climaxes, as each chapter goes through their lame. 00:19:32:24 - 00:19:51:24 Andrew They're lame and they're hard to work into a continuous right if you're doing it all as one long story. Yeah. You know, we couldn't really do them. When we do an adaptation, it's like we're trying to be faithful, but we're trying to make it work better for drama. And it's like, if I had known then that Lovecraft himself would have redone it. 00:19:51:24 - 00:19:56:07 Andrew If he could have, then I would have I would have probably been more aggressive. 00:19:56:15 - 00:20:03:05 Sean Oh, you you'd have missed this great moment of the lightning flash of the thing against the fire finding. 00:20:03:05 - 00:20:03:18 Andrew Of something. 00:20:03:21 - 00:20:05:16 Sean So, so frightening. Yeah. 00:20:05:19 - 00:20:12:11 Andrew Yeah. Anyway, that was just one more thing. Live and learn. And I think next time we'll read every letter before we do another adaptation. 00:20:12:11 - 00:20:18:20 Sean There we go. Well, we got a fair number of letters to read, but anyway, this is dipping our toe in the world of August Derleth. 00:20:19:17 - 00:20:23:17 Andrew And I'm sure we'll get a lot wetter in that pool before we're done with this podcast. 00:20:23:17 - 00:20:35:14 Sean Downright soggy. All right. Our thanks today to Hippocampus Press for use of their book, Eternal Solitude, which is a two volume collection of the letters between H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. 00:20:36:02 - 00:20:39:05 Andrew You can learn more about them at Hippocampuspress@.com. 00:20:39:18 - 00:20:42:09 Sean I am your obedient servant, Sean Branney. 00:20:42:09 - 00:20:45:03 Andrew And I'm sincerely and respectfully yours Andrew Leman 00:20:45:08 - 00:20:50:16 Sean You've been listening to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:20:50:17 - 00:20:57:24 Andrew If you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to post a review or a rating or write a letter to a friend of yours about it. 00:20:58:08 - 00:21:00:15 Sean Absolutely. Tell a friend or two about voluminous. 00:21:00:15 - 00:21:27:11 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org