00:00:06:05 - 00:00:09:22 Sean Welcome to Voluminous, the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:10:02 - 00:00:15:01 Sean In addition to classic works of Gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:15:03 - 00:00:18:21 Andrew In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them. I'm Andrew Leman. 00:00:18:21 - 00:00:22:16 Sean And I'm Sean Branney. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:22:22 - 00:00:35:02 Andrew For today's letter, we're going to continue with the second half of Lovecraft's Letter to the Gallomo. This letter was written over the span of a few weeks, and this part is dated Friday, September 12th, 1921. 00:00:35:04 - 00:00:38:00 Sean Well, part one was pretty great. Let's dive in and hear part two. 00:00:38:01 - 00:01:05:10 Andrew Here comes Friday, September 12, 1921. Oh, boy. Gents, you ought to see Grandpa today. Am I a beauty? I'll tell the woild from underneath my hair to a point perilously close to my left eye. There stretches a beautiful and gory welt across my marble brow, adding to my classic features the one charm they lacked before the devilish scariness of the Pirate or Heidelberg Duelist. 00:01:05:23 - 00:01:29:04 Andrew What's the trouble? Some experience, boys. I'll have to write it up into a story Earthquakes, avalanches and all that sort of thing. At about 6 a.m. yesterday morning, as I was concluding an all night literary session at my desk, I stopped in the kitchen to secure my solitary second meal. Perhaps you know that I am a singularly light eater, taking but one full meal and one self prepared cracker and milk lunch each day. 00:01:29:09 - 00:01:50:04 Andrew Well, as I was saying, this was the late second meal. I had sat myself down at the table and was daintily toying with my epicurean repast when I seemed to hear a sort of crackling sound and saw a fine gray dust gathering on the board before me. Before I could rouse my sleepy head to connected thought something else happened to the aforementioned cranium. 00:01:50:09 - 00:02:22:20 Andrew For suddenly and without further warning, the roof of the cosmos busted up and fell on poor Grandpa. God, what a chaotic listen to spring out of nothing. Some last days of Pompeii. It knocked me flat down against the table, burying me, and the latter in one indistinguishable heap of lava and scoring chaos. Were I not possessed of a record breaking shock of hair, which just now needs cutting at that the moon would be laying pale lilies of light on dead grandpa, as it was, I sure was sanctified with dust, albeit not stardust. 00:02:23:08 - 00:02:42:11 Andrew To lay all mystery and symbolism aside, what really happened was this The plastering of the ceiling had perversely loosened and fallen from a point directly above the gray head of the lone diner. It was some wreck. Take it from me. The room looked like devastated Belgium as I surveyed it through the curtain of blood trickling from my injured dome. 00:02:42:24 - 00:03:01:14 Andrew But I managed to dig out, shake off the worst of the dust and debris, and finally free myself from the fine grains of plaster which had sifted all over me. Today, I am very comfortable. Relatively speaking, the wound is healing, but it sure is a thing of beauty. And soon a gang of plasterers will be at work. Not on me, but on the room. 00:03:02:14 - 00:03:23:01 Andrew The Hampstead have pictures are now done and I will enclose some for Gallomonistick inspection—Lo to Mo, Mo to Gal, Gal to Lo. They will, I think, bear out my narrative in convincing you of the scenic beauty of Southern New Hampshire. The upper story windows of the "ell" of the house, as shewn in the picture, are those of the antique room I occupied. 00:03:23:04 - 00:03:42:20 Andrew A room with not a fitting changed for 150 years. The vertical scenic view is that of the Willow fain forming the subject of Miss Little's poem in the recent tryout. In the next Gallomo, I shall probably enclose another set of pictures taken during the coming Greenevsky visit. Pictures of more interest to Galba because of his acquaintance with their subject. 00:03:43:03 - 00:04:07:04 Andrew I shall dodge the camera this time unless my gashed forehead returns to something more like normalcy. It would take a pirate's costume to give that scar an appropriate setting. But enough of Grandpa's social world! As to the Galpinian satire about the fanciful kingdom-goo to it, kid! You can make something of it if anyone could. I'm getting too damned cynical to appreciate satire lately. 00:04:07:11 - 00:04:32:13 Andrew I am so disillusioned about the institutions of mankind that the ridicule loses its point. Why the hell should anyone expect the shams of statecraft and society to be true? Is it not a trifle naive to ridicule pomposity and pretense when there is nothing else in the world? It becomes methinks only the outer gods to judge man. And then may not the outer gods as well be hypocrites and fools. 00:04:33:03 - 00:05:01:14 Andrew I dismiss life with one contemptuous "bah" and shrug of the shoulders. Let the fools stew in their own lies and pure realities. "It is good to be a cynic. It is better to be a contented cat. It is best not to exist at all." Boy, the cyanide. This leads me to subject, not the cyanide to consideration of our little friend's code of philosophy as outlined on the eight and a half by 13 Gallomo sheet. 00:05:02:01 - 00:05:24:04 Andrew I am asked to criticize it, but I can't for it expresses my own present views so closely that the difference is negligible. I can only endorse and express my pleasure that once more the Galban and Lollian orbits should intersect. One cannot get beyond these simple assumptions and preferences without leaving behind the solid data of fact and experience. 00:05:24:04 - 00:05:48:03 Andrew More elaborate and dogmatic systems may be beautiful, but they rest on thin ether. Like Galba, I have sympathy for reformers and indeed, in my youthful simplicity, I once had reforming tendencies myself. But lately I see the huge futility of it all and must needs mix pity with my admiration. The world is a beastly mess and will never be anything else. 00:05:48:21 - 00:06:19:21 Andrew All that one may do is to train down the worst cruelties for the sake of smoother existence. As to the relative value of love and contempt, I am undogmatic. In me, liking springs from two distinct sources. Admiration for intellect, which is personal admiration and admiration for picturesqueness, which is akin to aesthetic admiration. I like only great minds or minds which are beautiful, picturesque or individual in any way, even a comic way. 00:06:20:09 - 00:06:51:19 Andrew The two kinds of liking are very distinct. The first is intense and fixed and regards the object as a human being with dignity. I save this for a very few persons, most of them dead and famous, but a few living and acquainted with me as Galba and Mocrates. The second kind is whimsical and impersonal. I do not instinctively recognize these non great but picturesque minds as wholly human and do not take them seriously, but am fond of them in a pictorial way, as I am of a landscape or a cat. 00:06:52:08 - 00:07:18:01 Andrew My liking of this kind is variable and more or less mingled with tolerance and even kindly contempt. I think of such minds as toys to amuse my fancy. Still, such likings are sometimes strong. It is thus, for instance, that I cherish my old pal Smiffkins of the TRYOUT and poor Jawn Samples of the Austral backwoods. They are pleasingly quaint and I like them because they please me and add to my sense of importance. 00:07:18:11 - 00:07:40:17 Andrew They are like the grotesque vignettes in certain old books or the gargoyles upon some antique cathedral. But the real article in liking is that which I possess toward Galmo, in whom I perceive the evolved minds that spell superiority, which is the only absolute value in the cosmos. I perused with much interest the Galbanian "in memoriam" and allied phenomena. 00:07:41:02 - 00:08:02:15 Andrew Surely it is some hoax and I am strongly tempted to use it. Despite an undeniable lack of enthusiasm concerning the decline and fall of the college library. Not that I fail to appreciate the excellence of that masterpiece. But the author is so great that it is overshadowed by his other and more titanic performances. Give me more time to appreciate it, boy. 00:08:02:18 - 00:08:32:07 Andrew My taste may clarify and my point of view alter. I like the distinctly memorial part vastly and the pome as well. I'll hold on to it a while and do some deciding perhaps Gaal-Bah will find some Hastingian specimen even more clever than the "Decline". I have no cut appropriate for the thing. But if in his high school and college experience, Galba has acquired any freakish looking half tone from CLARION, LAWRENTIAN or some such publication, I would be glad to use it. 00:08:32:22 - 00:08:55:02 Andrew By the way, "the gods in the gutter" is rather good. I never read much of service but deemed him very capable in his chosen field of ostentatious virility. About the University of Wisconsin course. God, kid, do you want a lap up the whole damn college? I tykes off me at a to a bloke that can tackle a course like that! As to advice-who the deuce 00:08:55:02 - 00:09:22:04 Andrew am I a non collegian to pass judgment upon the studies of my betters? However, I should choose (in the order of the table) Jastrow's psychology to French Poetry, Divine Comedy and Contemporary Philosophy to General Survey of French Literature, English Philology to Contemporary Drama and Rise of Russia. Human traits to Abnormal Psych. And I guess this is all the two other points being the same in both second year semesters. 00:09:22:20 - 00:09:44:22 Andrew My main method of advising is to promote diversity and to minimize studies of a general literary nature, which a mind like Galba's's would hardly need in addition to his exhaustive as general reading. But since all this pertains to an intellectual world far in advance of my meager attainments, I would advise Galba to go ahead and do as he damn pleases without listening to Grandpa's senile twaddle. 00:09:45:11 - 00:10:13:14 Andrew And now, Maurice, my neighbor, I'm going to get after you for a hasty judgment. Hee haw! So Mocrates thought his grandpa wrote “The Eye Above the Mantel”!!!. Sage, The only thing I did to that thing was to straighten out one split infinitive and improve one fanciful name. Otherwise, the thing stands verbatim, as written by its real author, a genuine human being without a pseudonym, a real live boy of 19 about to enter his sophomore year at New York University. 00:10:13:20 - 00:10:39:22 Andrew Frank Belknap Long Jr. Son of Frank Belknap, Long. Esquire. A prosperous dentist of 823, West End Avenue, New York City. Young Frank is the latest of my adopted grandchildren and is some kid, albeit hardly in the exalted Galpinian sense-or even the Spoerrian sense. He is a true artist and a devotee of Poe and America's older literature, and I think he is about to become a leading amateur. 00:10:40:09 - 00:11:00:24 Andrew He is, moreover, our new first vice president. Yes, my son Frank is no empty cloak for his grandpa Theobald, but is a highly independent youth holy responsible for his own stories. I like the eye above the mantle very much. So much so that I snapped it up for the official organ the moment Long sent it to me. But pray do not fancy I wrote it. 00:11:01:10 - 00:11:23:10 Andrew There may be crudity. Even Mocrates objection may be partly valid, though that kind of sensibility belongs more to the languid effeminacy of Cowper than to the vigour of a Nietzschean. But the hall is certainly a good job. Yes, a damned good job for a kid of 19. And whilst I am in the mood for literary disavowals, let me chide Father Mocrates for a second Hasty 00:11:23:10 - 00:11:45:06 Andrew Guess that concerning "The crawling chaos". Brudder, although I had a hand in that job. I swear to God I didn't do more than half or three quarters of it. I thought I told you all about that composite piece work, but I must have been thinking of the earlier green meadow. It is true that I once used the pseudonym of Elizabeth Berkley in conjunction with its more rightful owner, W.V.J. 00:11:45:14 - 00:12:15:06 Andrew In 1916, the name covered certain verses by both authors in an effort to mystify the public by having widely dissimilar work from the same nominal hand. But that is past history. And today, Elizabeth ain't me at all, but exclusively my eldest daughter, Winifred. Since Loveman rates "the crawling chaos" ahead of all my strictly original stories, and since most friends thinks the author must be a real snowbird or hop hound, it may be worthwhile to clear up the constituent elements once for all. 00:12:15:12 - 00:12:41:01 Andrew So here goes with documentary evidence in everything. The enclosed fragment of a Jacksonian letter written late in 1918 or early in 1919, is the nucleus of the story, as you will perceive, the whole bizarre setting comes from an actual dream of the poetess whilst in the clutches of influenza. This element of illness may account for much of the fantastic coloring, though in actual truth, no drug was administered. 00:12:41:12 - 00:13:03:24 Andrew I have, I think, mentioned before that the genius of W.V.J can produce hideous conceptions far out doing any of mine and remaining ineffective solely because of their creator's singular helplessness in prose. This is one of them. Others you will see in the remarkable conservative I'm trying to get out. I kept this dream outline a long time without utilizing it for being basically egotistical. 00:13:03:24 - 00:13:27:00 Andrew I put my own work first. Finally, last December, the Authoress became impatient about it, so I threw the story together in a hurry. The coloring impressed me is opiate, so I supplies the dopey prolog. Then in analyzing the nature of the dream, I found that the dominant points were a hellish pounding and an encroachment of the sea upon the land using these two latter starters. 00:13:27:06 - 00:13:49:23 Andrew The denouement was fairly inevitable to me, so that although everything after the ninth line of page five in the printed version is my own, it is only broadly so the impulse having been supplied by the original data. When I sent the finished story to W.V.J, I was amused by her idea that I must have actually seen the same Sopranos sights that she saw in the dream. 00:13:50:13 - 00:14:23:09 Andrew Her overpowering imagination, conjoined to very scanty scientific attainments, makes her vaguely credulous of the supernatural, and she cannot get rid of the notion that there may be an actual region of dream and vision which can be independently and objectively seen by different individuals. In this case, she declared that I had described details of the strange interior and of the architecture of the dream house, which she had plainly noticed but had not described to me, which to her is proof that a common dream experience must underlie the work of both collaborators. 00:14:23:22 - 00:14:47:07 Andrew She does not realize that imagination can seize on new things and subconsciously project them backward into association with past things. Just as all prophecies are written after the occurrence of the things prophesied. In the case of the Green Meadow, I related to her a dream of mine, and she claimed to have had exactly the same dream with a subsequent development which mine lacked. 00:14:47:16 - 00:15:08:06 Andrew This was certainly her honest belief. Yet I could swear that she had no such dream till she had seen my account. Then doubtless she did have the dream in its amplified form, automatically putting it backward in time when later thinking of it and repeating it, I will send the epistolary extract to Mocrates, who seems most interested in the tale. 00:15:08:13 - 00:15:31:18 Andrew He can return it either directly to me or to me via Appleton. And by the way, don't mention to W. V. J. that I sent the thing. She has a fad for destruction and wishes all her epistles burnt without exhibition, though they are, in truth, far less slanderous than the presumably preserved GALLOMO. I usually comply with the wish, though in this case had to save this one sheet for the sake of the story. 00:15:32:06 - 00:15:53:04 Andrew One more point about that woshy paragraph which Mocrates cites. Here I plead guilty and have not the least excuse to offer. It is all in my own part of the story and was slung in purely for verbal effect. Tinsel ornament, pure and simple. I wanted something poetic and bizarre, and since the story wasn't mine neglected to be particular. 00:15:53:13 - 00:16:18:17 Andrew I am a damnably selfish cuss-don't ever expect me to be conscientious in a collaborated work! I'll write any old rot if I can escape responsibility for it, and frankly, I didn't think "the crawling chaos" was going to make such a hit that anyone would notice it. When I did that job, my egotism was at its height over Loveman's praise of my "Nyarlathotep", and I failed to see the real superiority in W. V. J.'s richly and exotically ornate dream nucleus. 00:16:19:05 - 00:16:43:20 Andrew I looked down upon something to which I should have looked up! But Loveman took down my pride in short order. I perused with much interest the account of Mocratic vacation activities and congratulate our Sage upon his native Tory exploits. Mocratesc could be me awright- Damn me, if I can swim a stroke. I always hated sea bathing and have not voluntarily indulged in it since the age of nine. 00:16:44:06 - 00:17:01:23 Andrew The only time I have been in bathing since is once when I was about 16 or 17, when I had to merge with the waters of a crystal lake in order to prove to the gang I was with that I was not afraid of the cold ripples. I leaves the beach to them as likes it-mine be the warmer billows of the bathtub! 00:17:02:02 - 00:17:22:24 Andrew I am very literally a poor fish. About them New united rates-forget the four bucks, Mocrates! If you are two years overdue, merely renew for one. It is just as well to have been technically a nonmember for one year. What the devil do you care? As long as you are paid up a year ahead. Call it a reinstatement and let Grandpa be your sponsor. 00:17:23:01 - 00:17:43:19 Andrew I'll send you a blank and get the credit for a splendid new recruit! But, oh, boy, maybe I ain't got a fight on my hands in the United. Ida has just written me that she and her Columbus henchman expect next year's United Amateur to be conducted in a more commonplace and democratic manner, with less of the purely artistic and more of the chatty and plebeian. 00:17:44:04 - 00:18:07:05 Andrew Only on such conditions, she implies, will the Columbus purse strings be liberally open. I have been dreadfully polite in replying and have courteously ladled out wosh to the effect that I'll see her in hell first. As long as I'm editor, the organ will be exactly as it is now. Exactly as good a thing as I can produce. If they don't like grandpa, they can get another boy. 00:18:07:08 - 00:18:28:20 Andrew And that will be some job just now. They can keep their money if they wish. I had rather edited a good four page leaflet than a 20 page mess of Columbus junk. But anyhow, I think hell is going to break loose somehow. Either they will try to starve me out and leave me to struggle on in my own way without support or they will fire me and set up some would be bonehead for editor. 00:18:29:07 - 00:18:53:05 Andrew If the latter, I shall get out a united co-operative as a rival official. Org and if I can scrape up the cash ridiculing the administration's bourgeois foibles and making them sorry they ever tried to monkey with the boss, if they expect to depend on me, they've got to take things as I hand them out. I have long been patient with Columbus, but now that I've made up with Cleveland, I simply must fight somebody or something else. 00:18:53:12 - 00:19:16:24 Andrew A pug gets stale if he doesn't get into a mill once in a while-me and Dempsey is looking for a brisk match! I look forward with eagerness to future apprentices, especially illustrated ones. Them's the stuff our mature team needs! The present one will certainly win vast favour - I have already heard it compliment in no uncertain terms. Let's have a contrib, O Sage, as soon as you get something non theological. 00:19:17:13 - 00:19:39:09 Andrew What we are looking for is less the didactic than the essay of Belle Lettre type. I noted with interest the Palestrina essay and the sundry jests and howlers. How Mocrates can remember speeches verbatim is beyond me! If I can carry all the ideas I feel proud enough-the words are too much for Grandpa in his old age! I will forward the items to Galba. 00:19:40:08 - 00:19:58:05 Andrew Well, I gotta quit. If you could see the hopeless mess of unanswered mail before me, you would realize what Gallomonistic devotion prompts these eleven pages just now. My bush work is going to the devil, and I am ashamed to write Mr. Hoag till I can shew him something in the way of accomplished work. My nerves are in a chaos this year. 00:19:58:08 - 00:20:21:20 Andrew I seem better and more active outwardly, but I am getting to be an old man, fonder of dozing by the fire than of exerting myself. Life is such a beastly bore. I shall have to get hold of that laudanum some day soon. But until then, I shall remain as ever, Gentleman, your most obliged and obedient servant. Henry Paget-Lowe. 00:20:21:20 - 00:20:46:01 Sean There's a I was delighted. Just some of the letters have really interesting slice of life anecdotes in them and the notion of Lovecraft sitting at his desk and having a hunk of plaster fall off the ceiling and whack him in the head. Yeah, I was like, Wow, that kind of thing doesn't happen here. And we start out here, you know, our places are built from drywall and not plaster on the whole, but it seemed like something out of a cartoon. 00:20:46:02 - 00:21:02:18 Sean Yeah. And then I was like, Well, maybe that's just because, you know, we build places differently and, you know, maybe if you were and not the greatest department ever, you know, hunk of plaster might fall off the ceiling and just want beyond that. But yeah, it was just an interesting little snapshot in a day of the Life. 00:21:03:14 - 00:21:21:14 Andrew He clearly had a camera and took a lot of photos when he went traveling because he refers to the Hampstead Haverhill Pictures are now done and I will enclose one. I really wish that we had access to the pictures that Lovecraft took. There's lots of pictures of Lovecraft. Right. But as far as I'm aware. 00:21:21:20 - 00:21:27:08 Sean Yeah, I don't know if anybody has ever tried to compile the ones where he was the photographer. Yeah, and. 00:21:27:08 - 00:21:50:00 Andrew It sure would be fun to see them because, you know, he describes he took photos of the places where he stayed and the beautiful scenic vistas that he saw. Yeah. And it would be I really wish we had access to those photos. Lovecraft had a couple passages in in this section of the letter, which I sure felt resonated with me personally anyway. 00:21:50:01 - 00:22:06:08 Andrew Yeah. Where he says, I'm getting too damn cynical to appreciate satire lately. I'm so disillusioned about the institutions of mankind that the ridicule loses its point. Why the hell should anyone expect the shams of statecraft and society to be true? It's like. 00:22:06:16 - 00:22:10:23 Sean Yeah, Howard, I really feel you. Nothing ever changes. Andrew Yeah. 00:22:12:16 - 00:22:18:09 Andrew The world is a beastly mess and will never be anything else. Yeah, yeah. I didn't used to feel that way as. 00:22:18:21 - 00:22:41:07 Sean Much as you do it. Yeah, It's hard to not feel that at the moment, that's for sure. So in here, he also had a description of his own likes, which I thought was really interesting and in me liking springs from two distinct sources admiration for intellect, which is personal admiration. An admiration for picturesque ness which is akin to esthetic admiration. 00:22:41:19 - 00:23:03:11 Sean I like only great minds or minds which are beautiful, picturesque or individual in any way, even a comic way. The two kinds of liking are very distinct, and the first is intense and fixed and regards the object as a human being with dignity. I save this for a very few persons, most of them dead and famous, but a few living and acquainted with me as Galba and Mocrates. 00:23:03:12 - 00:23:07:17 Sean I just thought, you know what a Yeah. Interesting way of describing. 00:23:07:20 - 00:23:08:17 Andrew And the other kind of. 00:23:08:17 - 00:23:09:15 Sean Like, yeah. 00:23:09:21 - 00:23:32:13 Andrew He, I do not instinctively recognize these non great but picturesque minds as wholly human. Yeah. I do not take them seriously but a fond but I'm fond of them in a pictorial way. Yeah. Yeah. That is, that's a weird way of categorizing people, the human ones and the non-human ones based on, on how superior he judges their minds to be. 00:23:32:19 - 00:23:35:20 Andrew Right. And maybe it says a lot about how Lovecraft looked at things. 00:23:35:20 - 00:23:52:08 Sean Well, there's some wicked snobbery, you know, in Howard, and we see that a lot of places and he doesn't tend to have a lot of a lot of affinity for, you know, the the uneducated and the those who aren't necessarily deep thinkers. You know, he tends to be pretty dismissive. 00:23:52:08 - 00:24:16:08 Andrew But there's there's this passage where he says, I perused with much interest the Galbanian in memoriam and allied phenomena. And I found that I found that paragraph rather confused until it occurred to me that he's talking about some piece that Galpin has written as a contribution to probably the Conservative or some other amateur journal that Lovecraft is involved with. 00:24:16:08 - 00:24:18:24 Sean Yeah, I had wondered if it was a college thing. 00:24:19:10 - 00:24:43:13 Andrew It seems to be about colleges anyway, because later on. Yeah, he talks about his opinions about what college courses Galpin should should take. So I think that this whole paragraph, it's one of those, you know, you kind of had to be there to really understand what they're talking about. But they I take it to mean that Galpin is seeking his opinion of some some article that he has written and Lovecraft is weighing in. 00:24:43:14 - 00:24:46:15 Sean That was what I made of it, too. But without having it there, it's hard to. 00:24:47:04 - 00:25:05:05 Andrew He says. I'll hold on to the while and do some deciding. Perhaps Galba will find some Hasting ian specimen even more clever than the decline. And this is weird because it's entirely self-referential. Galba and Hasting are the same person. They're both nicknames for Galpin. Hmm. So it's. 00:25:05:05 - 00:25:07:24 Sean I wonder if one is the more classical and one who knows. 00:25:07:24 - 00:25:18:13 Andrew Yes. One's the goofy college student and one's the rarified journalist. I don't know what it means, but it is a confusing paragraph. And if people are listening to this letter and wondering what the world is going on. 00:25:19:02 - 00:25:23:04 Sean That's I'm wondering why we're dopes and haven't figured it out more. Well, maybe. 00:25:25:13 - 00:25:30:02 Andrew It is interesting that he says his method of advising is to promote diversity. 00:25:30:09 - 00:25:37:03 Sean Yeah. Which is you keep using those words. I mean, what you think they mean. Yeah. 00:25:37:21 - 00:25:40:08 Andrew And then comes another great introduction. 00:25:41:00 - 00:25:42:10 Sean Drum roll and. 00:25:42:13 - 00:25:50:03 Andrew Frank Belknap Long. This is where he tells his older friends, Moe and Galpin, about his new best friend, Frank Belknap Long. 00:25:50:03 - 00:26:12:07 Sean Yeah, and what a great singer to have one single letter where we get an introduction of the future. Mrs. LOVECRAFT And the the the virtual grandson of HPL, Frank Belknap Long because probably in later in his life, Lovecraft was closer to Long than anybody else. He spent, you know, huge amounts of time traveling with him and visiting him in New York. 00:26:12:07 - 00:26:24:14 Sean Business partners, business partner and confidant. Yeah. They were really became quite chummy. So, yeah, it was great to see him introducing him like this. Apparent. I couldn't find anything on the eye above the mantel. Did you did you track it down? 00:26:25:11 - 00:26:34:08 Andrew I only know that it's the story that Frank Belknap Long first submitted to. It was his calling card, his introduction to amateur journalism. I haven't read the story. 00:26:34:08 - 00:26:35:19 Sean Yeah, I couldn't find the story. Yeah. 00:26:36:09 - 00:26:58:02 Andrew But it was. It was Long's first attempt to write and publish in the amateur press, and Lovecraft thought it was so good that he immediately snapped it up and took Long under his wing from that moment on. Yeah, yeah, he says. Young Frank is the latest of my adopted grandchildren and is some kid, albeit hardly in the exalted gal opinion sense or even the spoaryan sense. 00:26:58:10 - 00:27:10:14 Andrew And although we know who when you know he's talking about we says gal opinion spoaryan is a reference to another one of his proteges, a guy named Jay Fuller Spoari who we never hear about. 00:27:10:18 - 00:27:12:22 Sean He did not go on to do really great things. 00:27:12:22 - 00:27:24:16 Andrew Yeah, it's a name that I had never encountered before reading this letter. And I think, you know, S.T.'s footnote is probably the only place this poor guy is is ever mentioned. 00:27:24:16 - 00:27:26:13 Sean Well, at least he lives on in a footnote. Yeah. 00:27:26:22 - 00:27:51:00 Andrew And then he talks about he talks about the story, the crawling chaos. Yes. And how that came to be. And that's a story that he wrote with Winifred Jackson. Right. And he's at great pains to describe it because apparently Moe Moe thought that Lovecraft had written the eye above the mantle. Right. And he apparently also thought that Lovecraft wrote The Crawling Chaos, which Lovecraft mostly actually did. 00:27:51:00 - 00:27:57:00 Andrew But it's interesting how much credit Lovecraft is giving to Winifred. 00:27:57:09 - 00:28:15:21 Sean Yeah. And yet at the same time taking credit for, I think what you say wrote more half or more than half of that. So clearly a significant bit is his. But yeah, he's not, he's not it's not a land grab to take it all. He's really I think you know very keen on delineating exactly what his involvement was and what was hers. 00:28:15:21 - 00:28:19:10 Andrew And here's the exciting part where the Spanish flu finally comes into this letter. 00:28:19:10 - 00:28:21:21 Sean All right, All right. Make it topical and bring his own. 00:28:21:21 - 00:28:33:15 Andrew Because Winnie, apparently the idea for this story came when she was in the clutches of the flu in 1918. And whether it was the Spanish flu or just your run of the mill flu, I don't know. 00:28:33:15 - 00:28:35:01 Sean But it was the crawling chaos. 00:28:35:01 - 00:29:05:04 Andrew It was the crawling chaos was the result of that thing. And yeah, it's it's interesting how he he drops some more slang on us with snowbird and Hop Pound which are, you know, words for heroin and opium addicts and he you know describing exactly how it came about and how goofy she is that she believed that somehow they had actually had the exact same dream and they must have had some psychic communication. 00:29:05:04 - 00:29:07:18 Andrew And maybe that's because when he really wanted that to be true. 00:29:07:18 - 00:29:12:06 Sean Well, she was the one who had the scrapbook of she had a scrapbook on Howard that sort of unnerved. 00:29:12:12 - 00:29:16:23 Andrew There were first timers in the amateur press, Odom, that, you know, they were an item and. 00:29:17:01 - 00:29:19:20 Sean Well, well, Sonia's not letting that get in her way. 00:29:19:20 - 00:29:22:00 Andrew Yeah, no, she's not as clearly. 00:29:23:22 - 00:29:43:09 Sean As we come out of that section there, too. You know, I love things like, you know, when we saw the letter where Lovecraft rode on an airplane and talks about riding a bicycle and all that, and I loved him being in the bathtub when when Monroe showed up. I just, you know, it's it's the everyday ness, which, yeah, it makes him accessible to us. 00:29:43:09 - 00:30:01:05 Sean And I think that's a great quality to have. So. But he could not swim to save his life. Yeah. I also just thought was you know, see it at the, at the Howard at the beach or at a lake, you know and just man he, I am literally a poor fish. 00:30:01:05 - 00:30:24:22 Andrew And then he closes out with a little more amateur press business where he's anticipating with apparent relish the fight that he currently having with Ida Houghton, who was the president of the United. She was president, he was official editor. So they were, you know, locked in this battle between what what will the United to be like? What will the official organ be like? 00:30:24:22 - 00:30:25:24 Andrew And I love his you know. 00:30:25:24 - 00:30:27:11 Sean I'll see her in hell first. 00:30:28:01 - 00:30:46:08 Andrew Yeah. As long as I'm the editor, the organ will be exactly as it is now. Exactly as good a thing as I can produce. If they don't like grandpa, they can get another boy. I really love his pugnacious attitude and his. I'm going to do it the way I think it should be done until they kick me out. 00:30:46:08 - 00:30:48:21 Andrew And if they don't like it, they can lump it. 00:30:48:23 - 00:31:13:22 Sean Yeah. Yeah. No, he's not taking it all. Which, you know, that's a, that's a level of ego and confidence. That boy, just a couple of years before you would not have seen that from, from Howard And you know he really is coming into his own and it there's something I think also a little sad in that you know as he moves out of amateur journalism and works in the professional world and the professional world, you know, kind of kicks him and knocks him around. 00:31:13:22 - 00:31:33:01 Sean He has a hard time landing stories as hard time getting paid for the stories he lands, the stories it lands get butchered by an editorial, you know, and that confidence is really eroded so that, you know, once you get sort of after at the mountains of madness, you know, 1932 33, he's kind of not really doing much fiction anymore. 00:31:33:01 - 00:31:55:00 Sean You know, he does a couple of stories later in his life, but it's like his creative powers were really at a very high point. Yeah, in there. But his confidence in himself as an artist and then somebody who could succeed in a professional space is just just all but gone. And so that that the sort of trend that you see from him here, you know, a decade before, you know, it's really been flogged out of them. 00:31:55:12 - 00:32:30:11 Andrew The united itself sort of disintegrated been by 1926, the United Amateur Press Association had sort of collapsed on itself because of all these feuds and because between Lovecraft was was chronically late getting the official organ, the United Amateur published and subsequent editors also had a lot of trouble publishing on time. So because the because of all the feuds and because the publications were not coming on a regular, reliable basis, people just sort of started drifting away. 00:32:30:18 - 00:32:59:11 Andrew So by 1926, the United sort of ceased to exist. And in later years, when Lovecraft did want to get back into amateur journalism, the National was the only organization left standing, the one that Lovecraft had, you know, himself had kind of a long running feud with, but had joined just as a peacemaker in 1917. So when Lovecraft did want to get back into amateur time later in life, the national was the only the only organization available to him. 00:33:00:06 - 00:33:05:06 Andrew But he was a, you know, described himself as a loyal united man. All of his all of his life. Yeah. 00:33:05:07 - 00:33:13:04 Sean Yeah. This was a delightful letter. And I thank you for bringing it in, because there really was a lot to unpack and enjoy in it. So good times. 00:33:13:05 - 00:33:22:11 Andrew Very good. Our thanks today to Donovan Loucks of the H.P. Lovecraft Archive for compiling a list of letters that mention the Spanish flu. 00:33:22:12 - 00:33:27:14 Sean If you ever go over to H.P. Lovecraft dot com and wonder who's lurking behind the curtain, that's our man Donovan. 00:33:27:15 - 00:33:37:22 Andrew There's a great photo gallery of Lovecraft there that has a bunch of photos of him in 1921 where you can see a happy, smiling Lovecraft. There's a photo of him with his old friend Harold Bateman Monroe 00:33:37:22 - 00:33:46:13 Sean Yeah, all the stories are there. It really is a great asset to the community. So if you haven't been over there, it's it's well worth taking the time to check it out. 00:33:46:14 - 00:33:54:13 Andrew Our thanks also to our stalwart friends at Hippocampus Press for publishing this letter to the Gallomo in Letters to Alfred Galpin. 00:33:54:20 - 00:33:58:21 Sean They are an excellent online resource to over a hippocampuspress.com 00:33:58:21 - 00:34:01:10 Andrew I'm your obedient servant, Andrew Leman. 00:34:01:17 - 00:34:05:11 Sean And I am cordially and respectfully yours. Sean Branney, you've. 00:34:05:11 - 00:34:08:23 Andrew You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:34:08:23 - 00:34:17:16 Sean If you've enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it. If you take a moment to post a review or feel free to drop us an email to voluminous at HPLHS.org 00:34:18:04 - 00:34:31:16 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org