00:00:05:19 - 00:00:09:04 Andrew Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:05 - 00:00:14:14 Sean In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:15 - 00:00:19:02 Andrew In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them. I'm Andrew Leman. 00:00:19:07 - 00:00:21:24 Sean and I'm Sean Branney. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:22:12 - 00:00:30:21 Andrew For today's letter, I chose one to his old friend Maurice Winter Moe. That was written on the 2nd of July in 1929. 00:00:31:00 - 00:00:33:03 Sean Oh, excellent. Well, let's give it a listen. 00:00:33:03 - 00:01:19:23 Andrew Here it comes. Visitation. BVM 1929 To Athenagoras Kosmokrates, All Hail! As for domesticity—I'm no dealer in dogmatisms and blanket generalities. Some things suit some temperaments, others others. I haven't a doubt but that matrimony can become a very helpful and pleasing permanent arrangement when both parties happen to harbour the potentialities of parallel mental and imaginative lives—similar or at least mutually comprehensible reactions to the same salient points in environment, reading, historic and philosophic reflection, and so on; and corresponding needs and aspirations in geographic, social, and intellectual milieu—but I must add that I don't see how the hell any couple outside of professional psychiatrists can ever tell whether or not they possess this genuine parallelism until the actual test of two or three years of joint family life has brushed aside all the transient and superficial reactions due to novelty and rashly assumed adaptability, and revealed the basic, rock-bottom motivating mental and imaginative influences on each side—the influences actually constituting the inmost respective personalities involved, and forming inviolable nuclei of identity whose safeguarding is the inevitable and fundamental aim of every human being's intellectual-emotional mechanism. It is all a matter of chance—in greater or less degree as the parties have or lack a lifelong acquaintanceship, or are naturally good or poor judges of human temperament—whether a given marriage will develop into a true and lasting domestic harmony, or become an intolerable mental irritant until cancelled by a sane and benign court action. Fortunately people are beginning to realise this as time passes and philosophic outlooks broaden, so that in most enlightened states like Rhode Island the divorce laws are such as to allow rational readjustments when no other solution is wholly adequate. If other kinds of states—such as New York or South Carolina, with their mediaeval lack of liberal statutes—were equally intelligent in their solicitude for the half-moribund institution of monogamy, they would hasten to follow suit in legislation; for certainly, the disillusioned future generations will never tolerate a blind trap which offers ten chances of disaster to one of success. If the divorce laws of a region be not sufficiently intelligent to provide for the necessary readjustment of lives misplaced in good faith, then the result will be a gradual disuse of legal marriage and an almost complete reign of that type of semi-clandestine extra-legal relationship which has indeed already displaced the older system to some extent, yet which is infinitely less desirable from a social, political, economic, and aesthetic point of view. To my mind, any acceleration of this “new morality” is an unwise thing, even though the new system may be the normal rule in the remote future. Too quick a transition tends to uproot some of the deepest emotional anchorages of the Anglo-Saxon race—and the loss of the well-known values of domestic tranquility seems very likely to outweigh the corresponding gain in erotic normality to such an extent that the net result will be an impoverishment rather than an enrichment of life as a whole. No—I am in favour of the established order; old-fashioned marriage with its Roman regularity of registration and its wholesome absence of the element of furtiveness. But if it is to survive, it must clean house—must purge itself of primitive superstition and Victorian hypocrisy, and reorganise itself as a rational institution adapted to human needs rather than remain an impossible Procrustean bed to which all human temperaments must be fitted through crippling and torture. It must allow for the mistakes and false starts which all but savants and clairvoyants are certain to make now and then, and must not pose as a romantic ideal when in truth it is at best merely a social compromise. The very intelligent and conscientious Judge Lindsey has about the right idea. Marriage should aim at permanence, but should not be bound to it—especially in the case of the young and the inexperienced—with superstitious rigidity. And if any shudder at the possible abuses of such a liberalised system, let him reflect that an occasionally abused system is vastly better than a system contemptuously discarded in favour of no system at all. Nothing is abuse-proof, and the true conservative would prefer to see an intelligently historic background, possibilities of family harmony, and favourable conditions for offspring, even if it did lead to occasional cases of premeditated consecutive polygamy; rather than witness the total collapse and repudiation of lawful wedlock, and the adoption of an unregulated type of companionship perilous to posterity and to the state. Under a rational regime, a very fair number of persons would—according to the laws of chance—need only one plunge in order to hit the target of a passable permanent marriage. More, perhaps, would succeed at the second plunge—having learned much of their orientation-possibilities from the first. Others, like Paul J. Campbell, would ring the bell only on their third shot. And anybody that tried more than three shots would be the sort of person to experiment anyway—under any system, or outside all systems! A good way to cut down the percentages of abuse would be to make divorces for purely temperamental reasons (i.e., for reasons other than those specific and acute ones already recognised by the Laws of most states) available only for couples married long enough (say two or three years) to have truly demonstrated their essential incompatibility. The one kind of divorce which sometimes strikes me as a bit fishy and premature is where the marriage date itself is only a year or less in the past. Weed these out, and there is not the least modicum of sense in denying divorce to any couple who mutually desire it—custody of offspring to be determined by the court if not decided by the joint petitioners. And alimony is a relique of obsolescent economies and a source of ridiculous extortion which ought to be laughed off the statutes in favour of a very restricted programme of financial responsibility to he applied by the court when called for in a few individual cases. Ho, hum —it’s easy to be a Lycurgus on paper! Descending to the merely concrete—I've no fault to find with the institution, but think the chances of success for a strongly individualised, opinionated, and imaginative person are damn slender. It’s a hundred to one shot that any four or five consecutive plunges he might make would turn out to be flivvers equally oppressive to himself and to his fellow-victim, so if he's a wise guy he "lays off" after the collapse of venture # 1 or if he's very wise he avoids even that! Matrimony may be more or less normal, and socially essential in the abstract, and all that—but nothing in heaven or earth is so important to the man of spirit and imagination as the inviolate integrity of his cerebral life—his sense of utter integration and defiant independence as a proud, lone entity face to face with the illimitable cosmos. And if he has the general temperament that usually goes with such a mental makeup, he will not be apt to consider a haughty celibacy any great price to pay for this ethereal inviolateness. Independence, and perfect seclusion from the futile herd, are things so necessary to a certain type of mind that all other issues become subordinate when brought into comparison with them. Probably this is so with me. And yet I didn't find matrimony such a bugbear as one might imagine. With a wife of the same temperament as my mother and aunts, I would probably have been able to reconstruct a type of domestic life not unlike that of Angell St. days, even though I would have had a different status in the household hierarchy. But years brought out basic and essential diversities in reactions to the various landmarks of the time-stream, and antipodal ambitions and conceptions of value in planning a fixed joint milieu. It was the clash of the abstract-traditional-individual-retrospectiveApollonian aesthetic with the concrete—emotional-present-dwelling—social—ethical—Dionysian aesthetic; and amidst this, the originally fancied congeniality, based on a shared disillusion, philosophic bent, and sensitiveness to beauty, waged a losing struggle. It was a struggle unaccompanied by any lessening of mutual esteem or respect or appreciation, but it nevertheless meant the constant attrition and ultimate impairment of two personalities revealed by time to be antipodal in the minor overtones and deep hidden currents that count. I could not exist except in a slow-moving and historically-grounded New England backwater—and the hapless sharer of the voyage found such a prospect, complicated as it was by economic stress, nothing short of asphyxiation! Trying to exist in N. Y. drove me close to madness, and trying to think of living in Rhode Island drove the late missus equally close to despair. Each, obviously, formed an integral and inextricable part of a radically different scene and life-cycle—so the distaff side of the outfit, for whom the initiative in such matters is traditionally reserved, proffered increasingly forcible arguments in favour of a rational and amicable dissolution. Without wishing to retreat from any historic responsibility of an English gentleman, I could not for ever be deaf to such logic; hence last winter agreed to do what I could to further a liberation and a fresh start all around. Rhode Island, as a really civilised commonwealth, did its duty—so oil returns to oil and water to water! And I would, despite my profound theoretical regard for the custom of wedlock, be rather a Nilotic saurian if I used peeled onions to register my emotions at getting back to the comfortable old Rhode Island basis of contemplative independence with congenial blood-kinsfolk hovering benignly by! After all, when a guy has been a secluded and sot-in-his-ways bachelor for thirty-three-and-one-half years, as I had been when I risked the plunge in 1924, the chances are that he won't take kindly to any radical domestic change. A bird as old as that is past the age of weaving new kinds of nests, and had better not try it. Be a Benedick before twenty-five or not at all, is my grandpaternal advice to conservative youth. I do not try to advise the flaming kind because I don't understand them. By the way, our fellow amateur Edward Lloyd Secrets of Washington also emerged from a sadly ill assorted union last winter, and union which he had endured for nearly a quarter of a century for the sake of providing his three children with a settled home until the adulthood of the youngest. 00:11:38:23 - 00:12:10:10 Andrew One anecdote is enough to indicate what he, an enlightened and sensitive esthete had to put up with. His prim and assiduous spouse chancing to read the fall of the House of Usher in his library, considered it so morbid and horrible that she burnt his entire set of Poe, or rather made him burn it to avoid a scene. Secrets truly was a gentleman down to the inmost fiber to stand a life like that for two decades and more, and no one begrudged him the waning residue of his life. 00:12:10:11 - 00:12:37:20 Andrew For he is over 50 now. When upon the maturity of all his children, he decided to come up for Air. Nevada fixed him up. But alas, there's nay fu like an old fool. And last month, the poor devil took a second plunge at over 50. But in all seriousness, I don't think he's made so bad a mistake this time for the new Mrs. Seacrest is a gentle woman of taste and intelligence from Richmond and appears to understand him pretty well. 00:12:38:08 - 00:12:47:19 Andrew I hope he has a happy and peaceful afternoon of life. He's a real white man and God knows he's earned it. Your obedient servant. LO 00:12:48:03 - 00:12:57:19 Sean Superb. Well, this is a very topical letter. So what led you specifically to pick this one? 00:12:57:19 - 00:13:21:01 Andrew Well I actually stumbled on it while I was doing research for the letter that he wrote to Zelia, because this letter was written just shortly after. So as I was thumbing through selected letters, this one just caught my eye because it was on the next page. And once I started reading it, I thought, Oh, well, here we go. We've we've talked about Lovecraft's relationship to Sonia before and their marriage, and it's disintegration. 00:13:21:06 - 00:13:35:03 Andrew And this letter is, like you said, very single topic oriented. It is about marriage and divorce. And it mentions Lovecraft's feelings on those topics in general and some specifics about his marriage to Sonia. So that's why I picked it. 00:13:35:04 - 00:13:54:11 Sean Yeah, it's a pretty interesting one. I was glad you brought it in because it does shine. It shines an interesting light on terms of both what he does and doesn't say and how he articulates the issues that are at work and something that's clearly very personal to him. But yet it's tricky for him to discuss. 00:13:54:16 - 00:14:08:20 Andrew And it also helps me put his specific situation into a bigger context because it forced me to think about, Oh yeah, getting a divorce in 1929 was a very different proposition than getting a divorce today. 00:14:08:21 - 00:14:17:21 Sean Oh, absolutely. And very different, apparently, depending on where you live, which is one of the fundamental elements of this letter, is this being married in a jurisdiction where it's difficult to get a divorce. 00:14:17:22 - 00:14:34:06 Andrew You know, we have I think we've been a little bit glib about his divorce in previous discussions because at least I, for one, wasn't thinking about, oh, yeah, it would have been hard because in 1929 somebody had to take the blame. If there was going to be a divorce. There was no such thing as no fault divorce anywhere. 00:14:34:11 - 00:15:05:16 Andrew In 1929. Somebody had to be declared at fault. And for Lovecraft to have signed a piece of paper declaring either Sonia or himself to be at fault would be to lie about himself in a in a you know, to turn a lie into a legal truth. And I think that may be why he could never bring himself to sign the papers, because it would be to lie about himself in writing in a legally binding way. 00:15:05:20 - 00:15:09:20 Andrew And it's I can imagine him just plain not wanting to do that. 00:15:09:21 - 00:15:26:16 Sean Well, he just plain didn't. He just plain didn't. That's that's worth seeing. So this this letter was written in the summer of 29. And this is coming on the heels of when finally, although they had separated back in 20. 00:15:27:00 - 00:15:27:08 Andrew 27 00:15:27:08 - 00:15:29:07 Sean I think. Yeah. 00:15:29:23 - 00:15:31:10 Andrew Not long after they got married. 00:15:31:11 - 00:15:51:19 Sean Yeah, it was a short period of time. So and then, you know, the divorce papers come through and I think there is a I don't know, there's kind of a I felt a heat behind this letter that I could imagine him, you know, having just gotten the envelope the day before. And these thoughts are really. Yeah. Burning pretty bright in him, how he feels about it. 00:15:51:19 - 00:16:21:09 Sean And when you bring up the topic of, you know, blame, it's very clear that his feeling is is there is this is a mutual incompatibility. While he paints Sonia as being unlike him, he doesn't blame her for being there. It is a no fault kind of thing. And I was kind of glad to see that because everything else I've read about, you know, she seems like having tried to be a very decent partner in the marriage and really, you know, took care and did a lot for him. 00:16:21:09 - 00:16:35:01 Sean So I was just kind of glad to see that there was no oh, it fell apart because not because she didn't do X or something. It's all because of incompatibility. I am this kind of person and she is that kind of person. And such kinds of people don't coexist. 00:16:35:01 - 00:16:40:02 Andrew Seems like their whole marriage was well-intentioned from from both sides and. 00:16:40:02 - 00:16:41:05 Sean Well-Intended disaster. 00:16:41:05 - 00:17:02:08 Andrew A well intended disaster. And it's sad. And clearly a lot of their friends knew it would be a disaster going in. And, you know, when everybody found out they got married, it was like, oh, no, that's not going to work out. And didn't. And it is interesting to to finally hear some more detailed thoughts on the subject from Lovecraft himself. 00:17:02:13 - 00:17:12:11 Andrew Yeah, I just I was looking at some statistics in 1890 when Lovecraft was born, there were three divorces out of every 1000 people. Wow. In the United States. 00:17:12:12 - 00:17:13:22 Sean Point 3%. 00:17:14:07 - 00:17:29:18 Andrew When in 1920, which is the last year, for which there are statistics. Prior to this letter, that number had risen to eight in 1000 people. And that's not per thousand marriages. That's per thousand people. The number of divorces was very much on the rise. 00:17:29:19 - 00:17:30:06 Sean Right, right, right. 00:17:30:08 - 00:17:39:11 Andrew During Lovecraft's lifetime and marriage and divorce are both matters of state law. There is no federal law governing marriage or divorce. Right. And in the. 00:17:39:11 - 00:17:39:23 Sean United States. 00:17:39:23 - 00:18:01:17 Andrew In the United States. And who can get married and when they can get divorces determined by local laws. So different laws pertain. Lovecraft's marriage was in New York and in Rhode Island. And so those were the laws that govern his ability to get a divorce. You could get a divorce in another state, but you had to live in that state. 00:18:01:17 - 00:18:12:14 Andrew And since Lovecraft and Sonia were living in different places when they got divorced, I'm not entirely clear on which jurisdiction had they. They filed for divorce in Rhode Island. 00:18:12:20 - 00:18:28:04 Sean Hmm. Okay. Because it seems to be, you know, he particularly laments the the way divorce is handled in New York and South Carolina. Yeah. So I had assumed that it was because the divorce had to be filed in New York because they were married in, you know, at St Paul's Chapel in Manhattan. 00:18:28:04 - 00:18:51:13 Andrew So and in New York in 1929, there were only two legal grounds for divorce. Mm hmm. One was adultery. Right. And the other was someone was in prison for life. Hmm. Those were the only legal grounds for divorce in New York. So you either there were lawyers apparently in the Tony's in New York. There were lawyers who specialize in divorce who would sell you a package that included a prostitute and a Photographer so that you could so you. 00:18:55:22 - 00:19:00:21 Andrew Could claim and prove that there had been adultery. Right. So that you could then proceed to get a divorce. 00:19:00:22 - 00:19:01:06 Sean Wow. 00:19:01:13 - 00:19:02:17 Andrew And, of course, Lovecraft Wasn't going to have anything to do with any of that. 00:19:02:17 - 00:19:05:16 Sean Not so much. 00:19:05:23 - 00:19:28:06 Andrew When they filed for divorce, it was in Rhode Island. And they had to they had to come up with a reason for the divorce because we just don't get along. It's not a valid reason. So they had to claim that Sonia had deserted Lovecraft. Hmm. That was the legal grounds for their divorce. And it wasn't true, but they had to come up with something. 00:19:28:06 - 00:19:30:12 Andrew And that was the best way. Because it's come up with it's. 00:19:30:12 - 00:19:32:22 Sean A multiple choice question. And that's that's the best of. 00:19:33:01 - 00:19:51:19 Andrew The best one they can come up with was. But clearly, it really bugged Lovecraft to have to sign a piece of paper that claimed that Sonia had deserted him either because it wounded his pride as a man to have been deserted by his wife or just because it wasn't true. You know, it's like I won't sign a piece of paper that says you deserted me because it's not right. 00:19:52:08 - 00:20:15:09 Sean He would have used a great many more words to describe the circumstance, if that was complicated. Sure, it was complicated. Another quality of this is we hear some sort of Lovecraft's thoughts on morality and the The Times They Are A-Changin, you know, and how he feels about that. And he, as you know, particularly being a can conservative kind of worldview in his youth. 00:20:15:09 - 00:20:37:03 Sean And then as he clings to the sort of idyllic view of 18th century life. And, you know, those were when we had foundations that were, you know, good and solid. So these sort of social progressions of making divorce easier are all happening too fast for him. And that then made me think of the question. You know, a lot of people are, you know, oh, well, we can't give gay marriage. 00:20:37:03 - 00:20:55:04 Sean We're just not ready for that. It's too fast. We can't give guns, you know, we can't take away we're putting gun controls because that's just too fast. We're not ready for that. So it made me think of for Lovecraft going, what would be the right speed for that? A hundred years, you know, 200 years, three, you know, acknowledging a need for social change. 00:20:55:11 - 00:21:17:19 Sean But still, I think really personally feeling threatened by these changes shake the very fundamental structures of the society. And I cherish those structures, even though I hated it. My own personal life. Yeah, I thought it was an interesting bind and just wondered at what rate society could really move that he'd approve of. 00:21:17:19 - 00:21:18:20 Andrew Yeah, I don't know. 00:21:18:20 - 00:21:19:11 Sean I don't know either. 00:21:19:11 - 00:21:42:06 Andrew So the reason Reno became the Reno in Nevada in general became the divorce capital of the time was because in order to file for divorce in any jurisdiction, you have to live in that jurisdiction. And how long you live there changes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But in Nevada, it was six weeks, so you only had to live in Nevada for six weeks before you could legally file for divorce there. 00:21:42:11 - 00:21:49:03 Sean So you can you can go to Vegas, get married in a day. But if you want to get a divorce, go to Reno. You only have to live there six weeks and to. 00:21:49:03 - 00:21:54:21 Andrew Live there six weeks. So. So, you know, there were whole tourism industries that catered to. 00:21:54:21 - 00:21:55:23 Sean Come for a six week. 00:21:56:04 - 00:22:12:22 Andrew Six week stay at our dude ranch. And at the end of the stay in the dude ranch, you can get a divorce. I mean, and so a lot of people did. And it it just fed right into the whole Nevada gambling and tourism thing that was happening at the same time. That's why, you know, Nevada is this vacation state. 00:22:12:22 - 00:22:16:17 Andrew It's because people had to stay six weeks so they could file for divorce. 00:22:16:18 - 00:22:19:00 Sean Wow. That is yeah, that's that's bizarre. 00:22:19:05 - 00:22:46:10 Andrew He mentions the very intelligent and conscientious Judge Lindsey as being someone who has a good idea about how divorce should work. That was a guy named Benjamin Bar Lindsey, who was a judge in Denver. And he, in 1927, wrote, co-wrote a book called The Companionate Marriage, which suggested that young couples should be permitted to live together as though married for up to two years. 00:22:46:13 - 00:22:47:10 Sean Oh, the training period. 00:22:47:10 - 00:23:07:23 Andrew to establish whether, just like Lovecraft suggests, whether they are truly compatible enough to stay married. And the only hitch was you're not allowed to have children in that two year period. Right. But if you if after the end of two years, you still think you want to get married, then it becomes a real legally sanctioned marriage. And then, of course, you're just off to the races. 00:23:07:23 - 00:23:33:03 Andrew And if at the end of two years, you decide, no, we should split up, then you can split up. No fault, no foul. Everybody's fine. Just go back to being single because you were never really married in the first place. And Judge Lindsey, who was a pioneer of the juvenile court system and ballot reform and tried to abolish child labor and was a respected judge, was so reviled for having published this book about companion marriage, he was kicked off the bench. 00:23:33:04 - 00:23:33:19 Sean Wow. 00:23:33:20 - 00:23:50:01 Andrew He was. Yeah, he was. He became a pariah because he wrote this progressive book about how marriage could be made better. And it's like, No, thank you. Society in general was along with Lovecraft's, saying no too fast. We cannot cope with your progressive ideas about marriage. 00:23:50:01 - 00:24:00:04 Sean Well, I mean, it made me think of Victoria Woodhull, too. You know, sure. Things like, you know, for free love. Absolutely. Women's suffrage and all these, you know, the reformers. Shocking, shocking rights. You know, the. 00:24:00:19 - 00:24:04:04 Andrew You know, the divorce law was part of the women's suffrage movement. 00:24:04:04 - 00:24:05:17 Sean Right. The right to get a divorce. 00:24:05:17 - 00:24:22:23 Andrew Right. Because so many women were just basically held hostage by horrible, horrible men because women were themselves considered property at some level. And, you know, it was not up to them to choose their own lives. Right. And it's also funny how he then goes on about alimony. Yeah. 00:24:23:16 - 00:24:24:20 Sean Doesn't like that one bit. 00:24:24:21 - 00:24:34:24 Andrew Yeah. Well, I didn't know this, but alimony. Apparently. The first laws about alimony date from the Code of Hammurabi from 1754 B.C.. 00:24:34:24 - 00:24:36:09 Sean Before the Romans. Yes, There. 00:24:36:09 - 00:24:39:12 Andrew Was alimony was on everybody's mind from a very long time ago. 00:24:40:13 - 00:24:54:17 Sean Well, that probably ties into, you know, in the days when it was a contractual thing with a dowry. And it's like we have we have financed this wedlock. And if you are undoing it, we will want a refund. You know, I mean, that's kind of what it ends up being. 00:24:54:18 - 00:25:06:05 Andrew Right. And the other thing about alimony is that it presumes that someone is at fault. Right. The whole justification for paying alimony is that it was your fault. This didn't work out. So you owe me. 00:25:06:08 - 00:25:06:15 Sean Right. 00:25:06:18 - 00:25:15:17 Andrew Or and since Lovecraft didn't see his own marriage, at least as being anybody's fault, the thought of anybody having to pay anybody alimony was. That's ridiculous. 00:25:15:18 - 00:25:34:20 Sean His assertion that there is nothing in heaven or earth is so important to the man of spirit and imagination as the inviolate integrity of his cerebral life. Man. Isn't that him all over at his? Him all over? Because there's another word that does not show up in this long discussion of of marriage. And it's the L word. 00:25:34:20 - 00:25:35:02 Andrew The L word 00:25:35:02 - 00:26:04:11 Sean Yeah. It is. There have been times where I'm like, you know, I wonder, is he just ducking it or whatever? Does he does he just not feel? Does it really not part of his emotional vocabulary. And boy, he just sure doesn't go there. It's love is just does come up in this entire discussion of marriage. So after that, too, he makes another telling insight into his his nature with a wife of the same temperament as my mother and aunts. 00:26:04:16 - 00:26:52:14 Sean I would probably have been able to reconstruct a type of domestic life, not unlike that of the Angel Street days, even though I would have had a different status in the household hierarchy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was what I made of. It was like. So drives home how I think. I think we can't overstate the intensity of the impressions made on young Howard by those, you know, glorious days and when Grandpa Whipple's first house and that and how idyllic that, you know, Homestead was to him and the experience and the relationships was in some ways just right there or in some ways, I guess he he never got over it and never moved on to 00:26:52:20 - 00:27:10:13 Sean wanting other things emotionally. He always wanted to go back to that instead of go forward to, oh, a new house, you know, where I you know, I am a father and have my wife and have a, you know, something new. It's always about, you know, looking back to to those glorious days. 00:27:10:13 - 00:27:20:05 Andrew It also makes me I mean, he says even though I would have had a different status in the household hierarchy, I wonder whether his status would have been an upgrade or a downgrade. You know, it's like, yeah. 00:27:20:06 - 00:27:22:19 Sean If he was the Golden Prince before us. 00:27:22:19 - 00:27:27:21 Andrew Yeah, but, you know, it was he was the Golden Prince and it was their problem to deal with the household. 00:27:27:23 - 00:27:28:07 Sean Right. 00:27:28:07 - 00:27:32:23 Andrew If he had been married, would it then have become all his problem or. 00:27:33:06 - 00:27:33:17 Sean Sure. 00:27:33:17 - 00:27:37:21 Andrew It's I just wonder what he means by his status in the household hierarchy. 00:27:37:21 - 00:27:53:21 Sean Yeah, it's an interesting thing because I think part of the in those golden days, you know, he he didn't have to worry about where the money came from. He didn't have to worry about paying the groceries or the rent or anything. He'd just got to be in this idyllic world of thought and creation and imagination and and. 00:27:53:21 - 00:27:54:07 Andrew Get taken. 00:27:54:07 - 00:27:58:20 Sean Care of and play and get pampered by, you know, these adoring women. 00:27:58:20 - 00:28:03:06 Andrew Maybe even more than pampered, unhealthily pampered, You could argue. 00:28:03:09 - 00:28:12:03 Sean Covered. Yeah, I don't think I don't think I've ever read anything that would really say that's an unfair description of the early life of Howard. 00:28:12:03 - 00:28:17:04 Andrew So I thought it was interesting to hear him quote the Apollonian Dionysian. 00:28:18:11 - 00:28:19:16 Sean Always split split. 00:28:19:19 - 00:28:30:12 Andrew Which you have, you know, described yourself in previous episodes like, Oh yeah, here's Lovecraft's saying it. That's the terms, the exactly the terms in which he puts it, apparently making himself the Apollonian partner. 00:28:30:12 - 00:28:52:11 Sean And yes, I had never seen one. I would have never thought of that as a good adjective for her, just because I think of a certain, you know, wildness with of the and easy acting. But clearly from his perspective of being the ultra rational, ultra intellectual, anything that's not that would probably feel, you know, like a crazed Dionysian. 00:28:52:24 - 00:29:00:16 Sean Let's go out for a grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. No, stop. You've gone wild. Shut her down and grab a can of beans. 00:29:01:11 - 00:29:13:22 Andrew He does have to rather overdo it when he says I would be rather analytic. Sorry. And if I used peeled onions to register my emotions at getting back to the comfortable old Rhode Island basis, he just can't say crocodile tears. 00:29:13:24 - 00:29:39:21 Sean He sure can't. Yeah. I should hire Frank Belknap Long time to improvise, revise this thing. And and right at the end of that sentence, too, he wants to get back to contemplative independence with congenial blood kinfolk hovering benignly nearby. And again, to me, it's just my personality. But I just go, yuck. I don't want benign kinfolk hovering nearby, you know? 00:29:39:23 - 00:30:02:15 Sean But. But, you know, that's me and that's that's him. And maybe that really is that sort of that's part of that notion of getting back to that idyllic childhood experiences when, again, you've got, you know, people who are your kin, they are like you. They are, you know, they share your worldview and they are right there at your beck and call if you need them. 00:30:02:16 - 00:30:08:17 Sean Yeah. And if you don't, then you can go off in your imaginative realm, but you scrape your knee, you know. Well, Mama's right there and say, There, there. 00:30:09:00 - 00:30:23:02 Andrew He does make a little reference at the end of that paragraph to I don't try to advise the flaming kind of youth because I don't understand. I mean, flaming youth. I've heard that phrase many a time, but I didn't really know where it came from. So I took this opportunity to look it up and it was the title of a book written in 1923. 00:30:23:23 - 00:30:33:10 Andrew By a guy named Samuel Hopkins Adams And it was about, you know, women finding sexual liberation and freedom. And it was turned into a sensational movie the very same year. 00:30:33:10 - 00:30:38:18 Sean But the implication is those who are breaking through, breaking away from the traditional molds and models. 00:30:38:22 - 00:30:46:17 Andrew Are, you know, these young kids today with their petting parties in their yeah, their rouge Denise and their beast on lips and all that jazz. 00:30:46:18 - 00:30:52:06 Sean All right. Rouge Denise that is going too far. I am with Lovecraft. We have got to put a stop to that. 00:30:52:13 - 00:30:55:11 Andrew Okay. Well, that took care of itself, I think. 00:30:56:09 - 00:30:56:24 Sean By God. 00:30:57:18 - 00:31:02:06 Andrew And then. And then. Yeah. Telling the story of secrets. Marriage. 00:31:02:13 - 00:31:04:19 Sean Yeah. Spore. Yeah. Or Mr. Seacrest. 00:31:04:23 - 00:31:15:06 Andrew Having stuck it out for 25 years for the sake of the children. When when your wife burns your entire set of Poe because she didn't like the fall of the House of Usher. It's like that does sound like an unhappy situation. 00:31:15:06 - 00:31:18:15 Sean Yeah, that's that's an outrage. And he's going to be happier without her. So and so. 00:31:18:15 - 00:31:20:16 Andrew He then went to Nevada to get himself fixed up. 00:31:20:22 - 00:31:27:00 Sean He was an accomplished beekeeper and an expert on honey production. So I didn't just. 00:31:27:00 - 00:31:29:08 Andrew Well, I'm glad he had hobbies. It sounds like he needed them. 00:31:29:08 - 00:31:30:04 Sean Yeah, exactly. 00:31:30:21 - 00:31:55:16 Andrew I was glad to get a chance to get some more detailed insight into Lovecraft's thoughts on marriage in general and his marriage in particular. That, you know, it's been sort of an open question that we've wrestled with a couple of times. And it's clearly it was a difficult situation. And although Sonia may regret the way Howard chose to not handle it in the end, because it left her technically still married when she got remarried later on. 00:31:55:22 - 00:32:02:19 Sean But nobody ever seemed to care. I mean, that's a paperwork thing, right? I mean, it never came up as an issue. She got her new wedding license. 00:32:02:19 - 00:32:14:04 Andrew Yeah, she did get married again. And. And I don't think anybody checked at the time. I mean, she only found out about it much, much later that. Oh, my God, I've been. I've been a bigamist all this time and. Yeah, no, but, but again that's a. 00:32:14:04 - 00:32:16:05 Sean Technical so that's accidental bigamy. 00:32:16:05 - 00:32:38:12 Andrew That's and by then, you know, divorce laws had become even more liberal. Even in New York, it was, I think in 1933, even New York changed its laws. But it wasn't until like I think 1969 or so that no fault divorce was invented anywhere. And that was in California. It was somebody had to take the blame for a divorce until 1969. 00:32:38:14 - 00:32:41:16 Andrew Anyway. So I was I found that letter interesting. 00:32:41:22 - 00:32:51:24 Sean Why? For bringing it in. I quite enjoyed it and fun to look in depth at a single topic. So many of the letters are so broad and what they cover that this is really just the divorce letter and I enjoyed it. 00:32:51:24 - 00:33:02:13 Andrew Good. Well, our thanks today to Hippocampus Press for publishing this letter along with some helpful annotations in their collection of letters to Maurice W. Moe. 00:33:02:20 - 00:33:06:13 Sean You can learn more about them over at hippocampuspress.com. 00:33:06:13 - 00:33:08:19 Andrew I'm your obedient servant, Andrew Leman. 00:33:08:19 - 00:33:10:21 Sean And I am cordially and respectfully yours Sean Branney. 00:33:11:01 - 00:33:15:07 Andrew You've been listening to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:33:15:08 - 00:33:19:06 Sean If you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate it. If you take a moment to post a review or. 00:33:19:06 - 00:33:22:14 Andrew Or send us a postcard to Voluminous at HPLHS.org 00:33:22:16 - 00:33:50:13 Sean Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org