00:00:06:00 - 00:00:09:06 Andrew Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:07 - 00:00:14:10 Sean In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:10 - 00:00:16:21 Andrew In each episode, we'll read and discuss one of them.I'm Andrew Leman. 00:00:16:24 - 00:00:21:23 Sean and I'm Sean Branney. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:22:01 - 00:00:28:22 Andrew For this month's episode, we're going to cover a letter from Lovecraft to his young friend Robert Barlow. 00:00:29:04 - 00:00:30:04 Sean Robert Barlow. 00:00:30:04 - 00:00:33:20 Andrew Written on April 10th of 1934. 00:00:33:21 - 00:00:35:16 Sean We haven't heard a letter to Barlow in a while. 00:00:35:16 - 00:00:44:16 Andrew No, we haven't. And there's we've been looking at a few of them lately, and this is one that has lots of stuff, so we're going to read it and talk about it. 00:00:44:18 - 00:00:48:09 Sean Well, let it rip. Okay. 00:00:48:09 - 00:01:22:24 Andrew Koshtra Pivrarcha, April ten, 1934. Dear Ar-Ech-Bei As Yours of 26th Ultimo and Onward Lies before me, I find travel prospects so bright is almost a guarantee my presence in De Land on May Day or thereabouts, provided everything is absolutely convenient at your end. However, you must let me know whether any later or earlier date would be more convenient, since it will be perfectly possible for me to delay or accelerate my advent even after starting on the long and pleasant southward March. 00:01:23:13 - 00:01:50:15 Andrew At the moment it looks as if I'd be starting out next Saturday night for a week sojourn at Long's in Manhattan. Hence, your quasi final message had better be addressed to me Care of FB Long Junior 230 West 97th Street, New York, New York. You'll get this epistle on Friday the 13th with three day headway betwixt the north and land and can get a reply back to me at Long's on the following Tuesday, April 17 or so. 00:01:51:03 - 00:02:14:03 Andrew I expect to leave New York on the real main trip at midnight of the 22nd 23rd, with Charleston as the only stop when on this final stage of the journey I'll write you again and I could probably be caught by a letter reaching the Charleston YMCA, George Street, Charleston, South Carolina on the 24th, or for three or four days thereafter. 00:02:14:14 - 00:02:38:16 Andrew At least that's where I expect to stop if any cheap room is vacant. Mail service betwixt DeLand and Charleston ought not to exceed one day, since it will be hard to get the latest Florida Motor Lines timetables north of Charleston or perhaps Savannah I probably can't tell you the exact bus I'll blow in on. Then again, it all depends on whether my journey from Charleston is continuous or broken by a savannah stop. 00:02:39:00 - 00:03:02:19 Andrew All my traveling is by bus, far and away the cheapest no method round trip. Time limits are very liberal, far exceeding the length of any normal sojourn 60 days or so, and I believe one can get renewals if any unexpected things turn up. For instance, if any unexpected check reached me in Florida and permitted me to get to Havana, I fancy I could patch things up at the Jacksonville or Miami bus station. 00:03:03:02 - 00:03:30:14 Andrew In 1931, I overstayed my 60 days, but the Greyhound man straighten things out at Savannah and I lost nothing. However, I doubt if a one day dash would be possible. In any case, since there appears to be no DeLand Coach from Jacksonville in the evening and no start from Charleston could get me to Jacksonville before evening. In 1931, the only DeLand busses were at 8:30 a.m., arriving at noon and at noon arriving 3:15 p.m.. 00:03:31:05 - 00:04:00:19 Andrew With this schedule, I'd have to stop a night either in Savannah or Jacksonville. Probably I'd choose Savannah in order to get an afternoon there for I like the place tremendously, though not as much as I love Charleston. Thus, according to the 1931 timetables, the final leg of my journey would probably be something like this. Leave Charleston, April 30th 1140 5 a.m. arrive Savannah, April 30 3:15 p.m. Leave Savannah, May 1st 7:30 a.m.. 00:04:00:19 - 00:04:25:00 Andrew Leave Jacksonville, May 1st 1201 noon Arrive DeLand, May 1st, 3:15 p.m. or whatever. Two days are agreed upon. The exact date, as I say, depends upon convenience. One thing occurs to me if the Charleston Y gave me a cheaper rate for a whole week, I might want to push the above schedule a day onward starting May 1st, and reaching to DeLand May 2nd. 00:04:25:06 - 00:04:59:24 Andrew For it looks as if I'd hit Charleston April 24th. Thus leave New York April 23rd, 12:01 a.m. Leave Washington, April 23rd 9 a.m.. Leave Richmond, April 23rd 2 p.m.. Leave Winston-Salem, April 23rd, 11:15 p.m.. Leave Columbia, April 24th, 7:15 a.m.. Arrive Charleston, April 24th 11:45 a.m.. Still, this is tentative since the details of the New York stop are not settled, I'll drop you a more conclusive line as soon as I hear from Belknap on the subject. 00:05:00:08 - 00:05:20:06 Andrew Put your own convenience first. As you see, I can easily time my arrival on or slightly before or slightly after May 1st. And I shall expect you to let me know what suits you best. In turn, I shall keep you supplied with bulletins from each stage of the journey, telling what I discover of the bus service and when I am likely to reach DeLand. 00:05:21:04 - 00:05:43:03 Andrew Since my sole acquaintance with DeLand is confined to the main street where I got that super cheese sandwich I told you about. I assume that it isn't asking too much to suggest that you meet the coach at its regular stop. I fancy I shall be able to recognize you from the clear cut snap you sent. And you can expect to see the old gentleman in a cheap blue suit. 00:05:43:03 - 00:06:05:08 Andrew And with so small of a lease that you would think I'd come from no farther away than Palatka or Daytona. My economical system of light travel represents the cumulative of fruits of a decade of planning. I carry no suit, save the one on my aged carcass and do a good deal of primitive linen washing myself. Not very stylish, but I don't travel for style. 00:06:06:05 - 00:06:35:10 Andrew Financially, this will be a damn tight squeak and I may yet have to cut out most of the stops. I never before planned so long a trip on so little cash. The round trip from Providence is about $36 and I may not have more than $30 more than that for all expenses. Fortunately, I have reduced the matter of frugal eating to a science so that I can get by on as little as a dollar 75 per week by purchasing beans or spaghetti in cans and cookies or crackers in packages. 00:06:35:18 - 00:06:59:21 Andrew I shall carry a knife, fork, spoon and can opener and remain largely independent of restaurants. Hotel expenses average a dollar or more a night, but one can sometimes beat that on a weekly basis. In Charleston, for example, the Y might put me up a week for $5 so that I could remain fully fed for about $7. In 1931, I got a really splendid room in Saint Augustine for $4 a week. 00:07:00:09 - 00:07:18:11 Andrew Which reminds me, if you're all fed up on Old St Hog and don't care to blow in anything on a trip there, I might particularly if you'd rather have my advent later than May 1st stop there before reaching the land. In that case, I'd be coming on the Bailey bus line, connecting with the regular coach from Jacksonville at Palatka. 00:07:18:18 - 00:07:39:00 Andrew But I fancy this shuttle service still connects as it used to do with both daily coaches. In your final bulletin, you might say whether you'd rather I arrived at noon or in mid-afternoon or at whatever other times the present service may provide for. And be sure to tell me what date approximately would suit your own schedule best I can meet it. 00:07:40:01 - 00:08:01:05 Andrew I surely am sorry that your father remains under the weather. Psychologically, these depressed states may be troublesome to others and may seem exasperating when coupled with good physical health. If they are really every inch as painful and unavoidable as any other form of illness, the victim can't help himself any more than a victim of indigestion or cardiac trouble can. 00:08:01:05 - 00:08:35:20 Andrew The more we know of psychology, the less distinction we are able to make betwixt the functional disorders known as mental and those known as physical. Nothing is more unfortunate than a neurotic temperament, and I am just enough inclined that way myself to sympathize deeply with anyone else who suffers from shadowy depressions. Many times in my youth, I was so exhausted by the sheer burden of consciousness and mental and physical activity that I had to drop out of school for a greater or lesser period and take a complete rest free from all responsibilities. 00:08:36:09 - 00:09:00:06 Andrew And when I was 18, I suffered such a breakdown that I had to forego college. In those days, I could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone and like to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades and using artificial light. I never had any delusions about approaching death or about the attitude of those around me, but my hypersensitive nerves reacted on my bodily functions to such a degree. 00:09:00:06 - 00:09:28:05 Andrew is to give the appearance of many different physical illnesses. Thus, I had a very irregular heart action, badly affected by physical exertion and such acute kidney trouble that a local practitioner would have operated for stone in the bladder had not a Boston specialist given a sounder diagnosis and traced it to the nervous system. That was when I was nine and reduced to a very irritable state by the pressure of violin lessons. On the specialists advice 00:09:28:06 - 00:09:55:14 Andrew those lessons were stopped. But to this very day, I have not been able to appreciate classical music. Psychologists would probably find something significant in the astonishing speed with which I forgot how to play the violin and even how to read music. I can't read music today. Then, too, I had frightful digestive trouble. Probably caused by malfunctioning nerves besides atrocious sick headaches that kept me flat three or four days out of every week. 00:09:56:03 - 00:10:21:06 Andrew I still have bad headaches now and then of the unexplained sorts known as migraine, they don't compare with what I used to have. It is also possible that some aspects of my abnormal sensitivities to the cold are neurotic, though there must be some physical basis since nerves would scarcely explain my corresponding state of active and physical well-being amidst the tropical heat which frustrates others. 00:10:21:22 - 00:10:48:09 Andrew Doctors never did me a damn bit of good, but when I got on the borders of middle age around 1921 or 1922, I began to pick up in health without any apparent reason. I developed more endurance than I ever had before and lost a great part of the physical ills which had so tormented me. It is only in the cold when I am exposed to temperatures around and under 20 that any of the old cardiac or renal or digestive symptoms return. 00:10:48:24 - 00:11:16:16 Andrew But nerves undoubtedly lie the basis of the whole thing, all my organs being essentially sound despite the clear performances into which bad controlling nerves have led them. There, incidentally, lies the secret of such things as Christian science. Faith cures miracles of lords and st and double prayer, etc. The people apparently cured of physical ills by such agencies are really unconscious neurotics who never had any organic trouble to start with. 00:11:17:05 - 00:11:41:01 Andrew Undoubtedly, if anyone had known just what psychological shock or exaltation or stimulus to apply to one in youth. Unfortunately, there is no certain knowledge in this field that one can depend on for results. Virtually all of my semi invalid ism might have been sloughed off like a snake's old skin. Perhaps, though, the tendency toward neurotic weakness is not so easily comparable. 00:11:41:10 - 00:12:06:12 Andrew That's what a young friend of mine studying in a mental hospital says The best modern authorities believe. I am probably one who, in order to keep a good nervous equilibrium, ought to avoid over strain as much as possible, Sometimes even now, when ill paid work piles up and bad weather keeps me confined to the house. I feel the old wish to shake off the external world and vegetate in a dark room. 00:12:07:03 - 00:12:36:12 Andrew Several of my ancestors have been nervously hypersensitive, and I fancy I am not much to brag about as an example of biological soundness. It is just as well that my line ends with me. Fortunately, I have certain individual temperamental factors a mind which is objective, cosmic, curious, impersonal, logical, skeptical, capricious and intense, which makes me less susceptible to the effects of a bum nervous system than some other persons might be. 00:12:37:00 - 00:12:59:10 Andrew That is, I am not much governed by my emotions since my whole scientific bias has always led me to dismiss the significance of emotion. Therefore, the bases of my cerebral life are of a sort which nerves cannot get at. I am never either greatly depressed aside from such old time wishes for retirement, as I have mentioned, and even they were free from the true element of melancholy. 00:12:59:10 - 00:13:29:11 Andrew I was not sad but simply wanted to rest or greatly exalted. I have laughed out loud only once in the last 20 years or so and have not cried since I was ten or 11. My last laugh was in 1928 at an incident which struck me with peculiar humorous ness when a fussy little man to sustain his austere classical dislike of light music hurried out of the room where a bunch of us were assembled because the radio was playing The Mikado. 00:13:29:20 - 00:13:52:13 Andrew He asked to be called back when it was over, in a word. My philosophy is so skeptical and iconoclastic. I place so little value on life and its events and regard man and his acts and feelings are so wholly a matter of deterministic mechanism that I have very little to be sad about. No matter how much weak nerves might incline me to melancholy. 00:13:53:06 - 00:14:13:05 Andrew All I want is peace, freedom to read and write and cash enough to hang on to the books, pictures, furniture and other objects which mean home to me, plus a bit extra to travel on once in a while. All worry with me is boiled down strictly to the financial. As to my health, I simply don't give a goddamn about it. 00:14:14:11 - 00:14:38:04 Andrew It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether I shuffle off to oblivion tomorrow or live to be 100. Provided in the latter case that I can have enough cash to keep my possessions around me. If I ever speed up the Grim Reaper, it will be simply from lack of money to live decently. Well Pardon the digression, but mention of your father reminded me how narrowly escaped suffering exactly as he does. 00:14:38:15 - 00:15:07:09 Andrew I certainly hope he can find some assuaging distraction to palliate his present melancholy and let me again urge you not to hesitate to cancel my visit altogether or postpone it to any extent if the event would in any way increase the existing strain on him or on you and your mother. For example, if he can't arrange the trip he wants to take, it might disturb him and increase his depression to have a stranger and too far from breezy and exuberant stranger at that butting in on him. 00:15:08:01 - 00:15:30:15 Andrew I recall how I hated the advent of company in the days of my nerve wracked youth, so feel perfectly free to juggle the dates or know the whole business if common sense dictates such a course. In the event of cancellation, I'd probably take some sort of southern trip anyhow. Perhaps just to Charleston, saving the unspent cash for another trip, or using it for side trips or perhaps to Saint Augustine. 00:15:31:02 - 00:15:59:22 Andrew In the latter case, you might be able to get over there so that we could have a few discussions after all. At any rate, you can see that you won't have to use any tact or formality with me. I know what nervous breakdowns are and that goes for other contingencies too. For instance, if I did get to the DE Land and you saw that the presence of company was making your father more nervous, I'd want you to let me know at once so that I could adjourn our sessions to Saint Augustine or otherwise do my part toward relieving the tension. 00:16:00:10 - 00:16:23:04 Andrew There's no such thing as being offended or even slightly irritated where illness is concerned. And so it goes. I certainly hope that your father's chances for recovery are brighter than you at present assume and trust that events around him may be shaped in whatever way most conducive toward equilibrium and good spirits on his part. So Ray Cummings is also in Florida! 00:16:23:14 - 00:16:43:05 Andrew As a matter of fact, as time goes on, nearly everybody seems to head thither in winter if work and finances permit. Hope I can see Hamilton and Williamson, though of course it won't kill me if I don't. Your idea for a literary colony certain sounds alluring, and what you say of the terrain is all in its favor. I wish you could put it over. 00:16:43:08 - 00:17:04:22 Andrew And there's no fixed reason why an energetic young chap with enthusiasm, good sense and a modicum of business or executive acumen couldn't. My own complete lack of a business sense and inability to command cash would probably make me a total loss as advisor and cooperator, though I can certainly help you boost the idea with those who might be able to get in on it. 00:17:05:06 - 00:17:29:04 Andrew As you know, I am already a premier Florida fan! If you had any idea of founding a publishing colony, the guy you would want to rope in is W. Paul Cook, who is not only an expert professional printer with publishing experience, but is more than ordinarily unattached and disposed toward radical migrations. As you know, he is now helping Coates with the Driftwind Press in a sort of two-man literary colony. 00:17:29:15 - 00:17:52:16 Andrew He doesn't like heat, but probably understands that 90 degrees in Florida doesn't mean what the same figure means in Boston or Athol. Indeed, he spent a couple of years in Jamaica in his youth! He is now 52-- god, how the years roll! At the moment he's fed up with Vermont and wants to get back to Boston. Too much ruralism gets on his nerves after a while-- 00:17:52:19 - 00:18:16:23 Andrew Indeed, he's a neurotic case in a way, having suffered a very disastrous breakdown in 1930. Well-- we can talk about colonies later on. But it surely would be idyllic if a select bunch of weirdist, printers, and bibliophiles could be rounded up under the live-oaks and palmetto of His Hispanic Majesty's ancient province of Florida Orienta. Be careful of your eyes! How far north will your autumnal oculist pilgrimage take you? If you get as far as New York, you certainly must look up the gang -- Long and Talman and Wandrei and Leeds and others who can keep you busy talking about books in general and weird fiction in particular. It certainly is too cursedly Bad that so many of your cherished activities are hampered. 00:18:37:06 - 00:19:07:20 Andrew But don't carry your rebellions too far, since caution now may give you extensive liberty later on. I especially sympathize with your drawing and painting aspirations, since I have always had similar ones without the slightest trace of talent -- or even of common ability to back them up. You certainly have the talent. Which reminds me to thank you most sincerely and profusely for the two specimens enclosed, both of which go into my permanent files of Barloviana, Blociana, Clericashtoniana. 00:19:07:20 - 00:19:35:12 Andrew That fungoid corpse-entity or mandragoric monstrosity is enough to haunt one's dreams, while the convincing aura of the sinister and the not quite human clings about the bullnecked, quasi-Neronic gentleman on the other sheet. Congratulations on both achievements! I can sympathize with your dissatisfied attitude toward fictional experiments. I still feel that way about my stuff, and in youth was widely given to holocausts. 00:19:35:22 - 00:19:55:08 Andrew When I was 18, I destroyed all but two of the tales I had been writing for five years. That's the way to carve out a real command of a literary medium-- to attempt endlessly and never to be satisfied. Of course, it hasn't gotten me very far, but if I'd been less critical and persistent, I'd have gotten a damn sight less far than I have. 00:19:56:04 - 00:20:23:20 Andrew Hope you'll get your Merrit and other manuscript. I'll tell Derleth the service you have done his novel. Perhaps it will be in De Land that I shall read about the Murder stalks the Wakely family! As for the lost Shunned House galleys, the dead letter office could probably offer no help, since the envelope was not lost. A curious case-- the package went through (to Baldwin of Asotin) with all its contents intact except the heavy bulk of the long, folded galleys. 00:20:24:10 - 00:20:47:20 Andrew Perhaps the latter fell out through a wrench, which was later repaired by officially sealed stickers. But in any case, there was no identifying address on them. They might not even have been associated with mail matter, and their loss probably occurred in such a way that no one ever picked them up or knew they were gone. However, let us hope that no similar fate awaits the edition shipped or to be shipped from Sunapee. 00:20:48:07 - 00:21:06:21 Andrew The delay is probably due to the negligence of Cook's sister. He says he is repeatedly prodding her by mail. When you do get the sheets, I shall certainly be vastly grateful for a few set. Wandrei, as well as Loveman, is asking to be supplied. No hurry about shipping Dunsany to Rimel-- soak up all you want of it first. 00:21:06:21 - 00:21:32:22 Andrew "Wing Death" was nothing to run a temperature over, though Belknap has taken an unaccountable fancy to it. My share in it is something like 90 to 95%. The recent weird tales is distinctly above the average-- "Black Thirst", perhaps leading because of the utter originality of its conception, the vividness of its unfolding, and the ever brooding air of hidden, transcendent horror just beyond one's sight. 00:21:33:06 - 00:21:54:19 Andrew A little less conventionality of the popular romance setting and mood would increase the power of the jail. Burks's "Bells of Oceana" is a classic, and it holds up well under revival. Two-Gun bob's Conan tale gains distinction from those moon-waked eidola and that pre-human rune in the mouth of a parrot. Klarkash-Ton's Malygris is a first-rater, 00:21:55:01 - 00:22:19:17 Andrew even though the drawing has a certain stiffness. Jacobi and Clark yarns mediocre-- Price opus cheap and hackish, and Hamilton's efforts (tell it not in Key West) stale and puerile. Long's sonnet was good except for the defective first and third lines. Speaking of magazines-- the outrageous misprinting of my letter on page 105 of the March Fantasy Fan is making me see red. 00:22:20:01 - 00:22:47:04 Andrew The phrase meant to be "NO especial morbidity" was rendered "An especial morbidity" with an effect on the visible meaning which can will be imagined! Also, the word "perspective" was given the impossible form "prospection". I am asking a Hornig to correct these things in his next issue, and if he doesn't, I shall feel tempted to invade ancient Elizabethtown with a birchen switch in one hand and a wooden paddle in the other! 00:22:47:15 - 00:23:12:16 Andrew As the letter stands, I couldn't blame any reader for concluding that I am crazy or have a deceased mind. The improved typeface, though, is a relief. Many readers were driven to exasperation by the old one. Biologically-- and in every way but nomenclaturally-- you are surely just as closely linked with the bygone Osmer as if your descent were a continuous father to son one. 00:23:13:08 - 00:23:36:24 Andrew Yes-- I suppose future science will have a good deal to show about heredity. Watson and the behaviourists consider its effect on personality almost negligible-- but they are just as bad extremists as the opposite faction who try to trace every detail of a given individual's character to some specific ancestor. I don't think the celebrated William Morris was of the Clasemont stock-- 00:23:37:04 - 00:24:00:23 Andrew At least I know of no such linkage. As you can realize, the name is a common one with no single common source. Nor is any Gerald Musgrave on any chart in my possession… though Phillips, Thomases, Richards and Christophers abound. If the Eden Hall reference you saw was in Uhland or Longfellow, it was wrong. Other versions vary slightly, one or two appearing in books of British folklore. 00:24:01:08 - 00:24:25:18 Andrew As for the Salem witchcraft, there is a baffling and fascinating problem for any historian or anthropologist! Expert opinion is still divided. Professor Kittredge thinking it all a delusion, Miss Murray believing most of the victims actual cult members and Summers believing that the cult was involved, but that some of the victims were unjustly accused. I myself guess it was about half and half. 00:24:26:06 - 00:24:47:04 Andrew The evidence at the trials followed the usual European pattern pretty closely and with much detail that would seem to point to a cult branch on this side of the water. On the other hand, the general nature of witch trials and accusations was so well known, that the attribution of the usual details to the colonial cases without actual basis would have been far from impossible. 00:24:47:18 - 00:25:13:00 Andrew And it is certain that many accusations were the result of mere spiteful vindictiveness. If any trials seemed to indicate the real membership of the accused in some subterraneous society of degenerates and pretended wonder workers, they are those of Bridget Bishop, Martha Carrier and the Reverend George Burroughs. Both Summers and Ms Murray believe that Burroughs was the official black man or leader of the Salem Coven. 00:25:13:22 - 00:25:36:09 Andrew I don't think that Loveman ever knew Garrett P Serviss-- at least beyond the nodding stage. Eight Middagh can't be more than half a block from 17-- but Loveman didn't live in Middagh Street till November 1932. He did live not far away in Columbia Heights, the famous street at the edge of Brooklyn Heights whece such magnificent views of the harbour and the Manhattan skyline were obtained. 00:25:36:20 - 00:26:00:03 Andrew But in the New York region, geographical propinquity doesn't necessarily mean personal acquaintance. In Columbia Heights, Loveman was almost just across the street from the Hotel Margaret, where Joseph Pennell lived during his last years, and where I believe his widow still lives. I suppose I'll get to "Smirt" in the course of time, though as I've said, I'm no Cabell specialist. 00:26:00:11 - 00:26:26:20 Andrew Loveman used to be quite a Cabell fan and was associate editor of the symposium called "A Round Table in Poictesme", issued in 1924 by the Colophon Club of Cleveland.... of which, thanks to SL, I possess number 299 of the 774 numbered copies. Loveman is a native of Cleveland and lived there till September 24th. The chief editor of the venture, Don Bregenzer, died a mad man in later years. 00:26:27:09 - 00:26:48:03 Andrew No, I don't believe Anthony Adverse would have been worth risking your sight on. I don't regret my perusal, but I would if it had tax a vision I needed to conserve. I must see the cinemas you mention-- haven't attended a show since Belknap dragged me to several last January. No doubt he'll drag me to more next week. 00:26:48:03 - 00:27:14:24 Andrew Malik Taus, The Peacock Sultan, is about to hit the road again, having found the garage business among the proud Osages unprofitable. Juggernaut has been nobly groomed and supplied with new parts and stands ready to roll over the plains to the Cimerian Stronghold of Conan, the Reaver, and later to the Black Temple of Tsathoggua in Aubhun. I sincerely envy our peripatetic colleague his personal glimpses of the Western fantasy lords! 00:27:15:08 - 00:27:37:13 Andrew His first place of quasi settlement, I fancy, will be San Francisco. Well, the future is with the gods. Keep me posted on all the latest conditions and address your next bulletin in care of Long. Even if my stop there falls through for any reason, he'll promptly forward the epistle here. At least I hope he has that much energy left in his blasé young carcass! 00:27:38:00 - 00:27:59:04 Andrew In turn, I will drop you bulletins with any new data I may have to impart. As I've said, consult the convenience of yourself and family in setting a or no date for my advent. I needn't reiterate how honored I feel by the hospitable invitation. We'll pray to Yog-Sothoth and hope for the best. Yours for the Elder Sign Ech-Pi-El 00:27:59:22 - 00:28:06:11 Andrew P.S. Thanks again for the pictures. Don't overdo hurrying with the Caneviniana! 00:28:07:06 - 00:28:12:22 Sean Oh, right. Andrew. Tell us, why did you select this particular letter? 00:28:12:23 - 00:28:37:13 Andrew Well, this letter is from a series of letters that Lovecraft was writing in the spring of 1934 when he was planning another one of his trips. He was going to go visit Barlow in DeLand, Florida. And they had never met before. They had been corresponding for a couple of years by this point. But Barlow had still not revealed to Lovecraft that he was only 15 years old. 00:28:37:13 - 00:28:45:00 Sean So yeah, he was 13 years old when they started corresponding and setting up a whole field trip to go and visit him and his 00:28:45:00 - 00:28:51:21 Intervenant 3 Family Stay a while. Lovecraft had. There's just one thing. One thing I didn't mention that Lovecraft. 00:28:51:21 - 00:29:20:08 Andrew Was apparently under the impression because Barlow's earlier letters had come from Fort Benning, Georgia, where his father was stationed. Apparently, Lovecraft just more or less assumed that Barlow was in the Army. He knew he was a young man, but he didn't realize he was an adolescent boy. Barlow had invited him to come down to Florida for a visit, and Lovecraft got a surprise payday because August Derleth unbeknownst to Lovecraft, had submitted the Dreams in the Witch House to weird Tales. 00:29:20:16 - 00:29:27:03 Andrew And Wright accepted it. And all of a sudden Lovecraft had a 140 bucks that he was not expecting to have. 00:29:27:03 - 00:29:28:18 Sean So swimming in the door. 00:29:28:19 - 00:29:41:03 Andrew So he decided he would he would spend some of that money on this trip to Florida, not knowing that that Barlow was, you know, at the time, still a 15 year old boy living with his parents out in the middle of nowhere. 00:29:42:00 - 00:29:47:20 Sean Florida, 15 miles west of DeLand, is is nowhere is known as a swamp. 00:29:47:22 - 00:30:02:21 Andrew Anyway, it was a cabin sort of house on the edge of one of many lakes in the region. And DeLand, Their post office box, their mailing address was DeLand. But the house, like you said, was actually 14 miles west in the middle of a swamp. 00:30:03:01 - 00:30:18:19 Sean Yeah. And the house itself was never even actually quite finished. It had been built, but the interior wasn't quite done. The exterior they had planned to put in gardens and a whole variety of things because the Barlow's hadn't actually been in the very long at all. 00:30:18:20 - 00:30:37:19 Andrew Yeah, Barlow's father was in the Army, but he was. He was retired and he was experiencing a lot of medical issues. I don't know if we know exactly what was up with him, but it was one of those traumatic psychological issues. I think it was post-traumatic stress and or some other kind of unspecified psychological. 00:30:37:19 - 00:30:58:04 Sean Yeah, I think that's the hitch is that it's all yeah, it's a psychological thing, not a physiological thing. Right. And, you know, Barlow also has a medical conditions that he's got. His eyesight is apparently spectacularly lousy. Yeah. And you see pictures of young Mr. Barlow and he's got, you know, the thick coke bottle glasses on as part of it. 00:30:58:04 - 00:31:06:11 Sean And he asked to travel as far as, you know, going all the way from Florida up to the northeast in order to seek treatment for his eyes. 00:31:06:11 - 00:31:30:06 Andrew So so Barlow felt very isolated out there in Florida. He was used to living in, you know, as a kid. He had lived on military bases and they had lived in Washington, D.C. and he was used to that kind of activity. And he apparently really, really hated living in rural Florida. Even DeLand, There's a university in DeLand called Stetson University. 00:31:30:06 - 00:31:34:02 Andrew But it's it's even DeLand itself was a backwater. 00:31:34:22 - 00:31:35:11 Sean Absolutely. 00:31:35:11 - 00:31:55:15 Andrew Compared to what Barlow was used to. So he was feeling terribly lonely in the thought of having his idol slash mentor, H.P. Lovecraft come visit him was super exciting. So but apparently he didn't reveal his age because he didn't want to risk that Lovecraft would change his mind. So Barlow kind of lured Lovecraft there. 00:31:55:15 - 00:32:18:10 Sean Under false pretense a little bit. Well, and one of the you know, the interesting things about young Mr. Barlow is, you know, you're absolutely right. He's he's living in the middle of, you know, west of nowhere, very isolated. And he's got this interest in weird literature. And Barlow is an avid collector. Yeah. So he's, he's interested in, you know, starts out, you know. 00:32:18:11 - 00:32:38:16 Sean Oh, do you have a manuscript you can send me? He wins Lovecraft over by offering to type a lot of Lovecraft manuscripts, which Lovecraft hated typing. Right. But Barlow was corresponding then with all members of the the Lovecraft circle, sort of the whole weird tales gang. Yeah. And it struck me that it's sort of like his collection branched out from its like, Oh, okay. 00:32:38:19 - 00:32:56:09 Sean I get to start out with getting a copy of Weird Tales and reading a story and then liking it. Then I'm going to try and get a hold of the manuscript of it. Then I'm going to try and get a hold of the author of it, you know, and bring in Lovecraft down there. I don't think he brought anybody else to him besides Lovecraft. 00:32:56:09 - 00:33:22:08 Sean Yeah. And, you know, Lovecraft did have a love for the tropics and the the Deep South. And I think we talked about, you know, it was interesting coming back to Barlow because the very first letter we did for this show was a Barlow letter, and we haven't really talked about him that extensively since. There there is still the fundamentally weird issue of a man in his forties going hang out for weeks. 00:33:22:21 - 00:33:39:00 Sean Well, Lovecraft, whom he did not know at this point. It's one thing to hang out with Frank Belknap Long and his family, who they all know each other and have spent time together. And then and then just just do this, you know, spend well, well within a half. 00:33:39:00 - 00:33:49:10 Andrew Apparently, I mean, I don't think Lovecraft intended to spend that long. He went there thinking I think it was going to be three or four days, and then he was going to turn around and go back. But yeah, he ended up staying there till. 00:33:50:13 - 00:33:52:16 Andrew The Middle late June 00:33:52:16 - 00:33:53:14 Sean I believe it was seven weeks. 00:33:53:14 - 00:34:03:24 Andrew Yeah, he was there for like two months. Yeah. And I think it's partly because Barlow's dad, as you can hear in this letter, I mean, this trip was planned and planned and planned and worried about and. 00:34:04:03 - 00:34:07:20 Sean Sure. Well, finances were really yeah, were initially essential. 00:34:07:20 - 00:34:20:07 Andrew But also an issue was Barlow's father's like, I don't love crofters I don't want to go if it's going to get in your dad's way. I was really impressed by the tremendous amount of empathy that Lovecraft shows in this letter for. Barlow's dad and. 00:34:20:07 - 00:34:48:12 Sean Well, yeah, and it did strike me, though, you know, when he's got a there's this interesting paternal quality that we see from Lovecraft towards some of the younger men. And I think Lovecraft for whom psychological malady is were such a big part of his own life, his mother's life, his father's life, everybody's life around him, that it really does open up a compassionate side of him to go, look, I don't want to mess this up in any way. 00:34:48:12 - 00:34:52:04 Sean If it's going to bug, you know, your father or bother your mom or whatever, it's all off. 00:34:52:04 - 00:35:10:13 Andrew But and really an enlightened, you know, like just saying, you know, when it comes to mental mental illness is an illness just like physical. You can't nobody should be blamed for it. It is you know, it is what it is. And I sympathize. And if my presence would in any way be a drag to your father, I won't come. 00:35:10:13 - 00:35:27:24 Andrew But because Barlow's dad went to Washington DC for treatment for his problems and wasn't going to be there, that's sort of what cleared the way for Lovecraft to go ahead and go visit Barlow. And once he was there, it was just Barlow and Lovecraft and and Barlow's mother. 00:35:28:05 - 00:35:32:07 Sean Well there and, and the Barlow's housekeeper and their adult son. 00:35:32:13 - 00:35:36:21 Andrew So was the adult son there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I thought he was off at West Point during this. 00:35:37:01 - 00:35:49:09 Sean Oh, I do. I don't know. My impression was that was that, that because he Yeah, he talks about him as a painting with him and all his great many accomplishments. So the impression I had was that he's there but. 00:35:49:20 - 00:35:52:06 Andrew But he's painting with Barlow not as, not Barlow's brother. 00:35:53:03 - 00:35:57:17 Sean Yeah. Sorry. I'm nothing about Barrow's brother. I'm talking about. Sorry. The son of the housekeeper. 00:35:57:23 - 00:35:59:01 Andrew Oh, the son of the housekeeper. 00:35:59:01 - 00:36:13:08 Sean Got it. He's there. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Sorry, but you're absolutely right. Barlow's brother is not there. I was talking about, though. It's not just Mrs. Barlow, but I think Bobby and Howard. But there's also. Yeah, housekeeper and her own. 00:36:13:09 - 00:36:43:06 Andrew People don't count. But I think the reason Lovecraft's trip got extended for so long was because Bernice Barlow's mother saw how much Bobby was enjoying having this visitor. And since her husband wasn't around, it's like he might as well stay. Robert is having a wonderful time. This weird old man from Providence seems to be enjoying himself, too. So just go ahead and stay. 00:36:43:09 - 00:36:47:08 Sean Yeah, I guess my my point is a simple one, and it remains. It's weird. 00:36:47:14 - 00:36:48:11 Intervenant 3 It's just it's. 00:36:48:11 - 00:37:07:23 Sean Just kind of weird. And, you know, I think for a modern reader, the gut instinct tends to be that there's something untoward about it. And yet the more time I spend with how Lovecraft documents it and thinks there doesn't seem to be anything untoward about it, it's just. 00:37:08:01 - 00:37:09:03 Andrew I think it seems much more. 00:37:09:09 - 00:37:10:10 Sean Paternal. 00:37:10:17 - 00:37:11:22 Andrew Or grand paternal. 00:37:11:22 - 00:37:20:16 Sean Yeah. You know, and, and that they are all, you know, having fun. And Lovecraft's reliving his boyhood out, paddling on the lake and watching. 00:37:20:20 - 00:37:21:10 Andrew Since. 00:37:21:10 - 00:37:22:19 Sean Bobby shoot snakes and. 00:37:22:19 - 00:37:31:05 Andrew Yeah since Barlow's father was literally gone, Lovecraft was literally a substitute for his father during the time that he spent there in DeLand. 00:37:31:05 - 00:37:42:12 Sean So and there's no implication in any way of any interest towards Barlow's mother or anything. You know, it really is about Howard having fun with Robert and knowing the weather and the scenery and. 00:37:42:12 - 00:37:45:24 Andrew Yeah, yeah. And it was free. That was the other thing is that. 00:37:45:24 - 00:37:46:13 Sean Sure, yeah. 00:37:46:14 - 00:37:56:10 Andrew Barlow's were lodging him and feeding him and he didn't have to spend any money so it was a totally free vacation to Florida. So yeah, it's no wonder Lovecraft took him, took him up on it. 00:37:58:05 - 00:38:07:21 Sean So this is yet another of the the mounting pile of evidence that we have about how much Lovecraft loved to travel. Yeah. And you know this and. 00:38:07:21 - 00:38:08:22 Andrew I'm sure he was at it. 00:38:09:00 - 00:38:09:23 Sean Yeah sure. I mean. 00:38:09:23 - 00:38:17:13 Andrew He really figured out that busses I mean, comparing the schedules of three different bus lines, Greyhound, Bailey and Florida motor lines. 00:38:17:13 - 00:38:27:04 Sean Absolutely. And where and where he's going to stay and how much food is going to cost. And you go to the lunchroom for this and that's not working out. You go and get some canned goods and you live on that. 00:38:27:04 - 00:38:31:05 Andrew Pick a bus that goes overnight. You save on a hotel room. You just sleep on the bus. 00:38:31:08 - 00:38:41:13 Sean Yeah, he he really has it down to a science. Yeah. I thought it was interesting. He brought up in the first page of this Havana as a destination. 00:38:41:13 - 00:38:46:17 Andrew Yeah. That he. If only he had the money, he would have gone to Havana. That is a very interesting idea. 00:38:46:20 - 00:39:12:04 Sean So that got me thinking. I was like, I wonder where the allure from that. And then I went. My mind leaped to Hemingway in Cuba, and then it got me thinking that I just never really compared the two. But they are. They were born a year apart. Hemingway and Lovecraft are exactly the same generation. And yet what divergent lives as as writers and as men? 00:39:12:04 - 00:39:35:00 Sean Sure. But I had never sort of thought of them as being on the on the same path chronologically. So and that the Havana thing, the same cohort ended up taking me there. Yeah yeah. So in addition to working the bus schedules and the timing of everything and the mechanic of travel, he really, you know, he really could bring everything out of every penny he possibly had. 00:39:35:09 - 00:40:01:08 Sean I had to bust out a converter for inflation, right. Because I was interested to see how, you know, you go the roundtrip bus ticket from Providence is about $36. And I had a hard time contextualizing what you know what how big a dent is that in his budget? But adjusted for 20 $21. Yeah, that's a $734 ticket. 00:40:01:08 - 00:40:02:08 Andrew Really? That's more than I would. 00:40:02:14 - 00:40:10:17 Sean That's a lot more than I would have thought, too. Yeah. That the rate of inflation is about twentyfold. And so. 00:40:10:17 - 00:40:11:13 Andrew Like seven I'm. 00:40:11:13 - 00:40:17:19 Sean Surprised. Yeah, I did too. I had always sort of used seven as my internal calculator, but yeah, that's what we made it. 00:40:17:20 - 00:40:21:08 Andrew That's like, that's like you were me deciding to fly to Australia. 00:40:21:08 - 00:40:30:14 Sean Yeah, exactly. It's, it's a much bigger bite than I had quite realized. And so in his getting by on as little as. 00:40:30:17 - 00:40:32:12 Andrew $1.75 a week or something. Yeah. 00:40:32:12 - 00:40:37:13 Sean Dollars 75 a week that ends up being you know, 20, $25 a week. Yeah. 00:40:37:21 - 00:40:39:21 Andrew Well like you said, I don't travel for style. 00:40:40:05 - 00:40:56:08 Sean Sure. Yeah. No he's, he, he definitely has. Again, it's a highly, highly practical thing, but yeah, you know, he really is. For a guy who has no money, he's laying out quite a bit more cash than I really understood it to be. So. 00:40:56:08 - 00:41:04:00 Andrew So that is a pretty big commitment then. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see him taking advantage of the opportunity to milk it by staying longer. Yeah. 00:41:04:00 - 00:41:31:08 Sean And one more thing. You know, the there had to be a generous hospitality on the Barlow's part to say, you know, oh please stay and will, you know, we're buying food anyway. What's it add one more plate at the table, you know, kind of thing because there never is any suggestion anywhere in his documentation of this of having worn out his welcome or feeling put out or, you know, feeling bad about eating their food or that that just doesn't appear here. 00:41:31:09 - 00:41:55:21 Andrew I was struck by the lengthy passage about, you know, how he sympathizes with Mr. Barlow and the the psychological pain that he's going through. Yeah, a couple of things in this section jumped out at me as one of the reasons I found this letter particularly interesting was where he says, I've laughed out loud only once in the last 20 years or so and have not cried since I was ten or 11. 00:41:55:23 - 00:42:09:20 Andrew Yeah. And then he says he he a little bit later on, he says, As to my health, I simply don't give a goddamn about it. And he another line that just struck me as sad was it is just as well that my line ends with me. 00:42:09:21 - 00:42:10:07 Sean Sure. 00:42:10:12 - 00:42:29:11 Andrew And this whole section just struck me as sad because he's so matter of fact about it. You know, we've we've observed before that he never uses the word love in describing his personal relationships with Sonia or anyone else. As far as I know. Yeah. And, you know, he says in this letter how, you know, it's just I'm not I'm not an emotional guy. 00:42:29:11 - 00:42:43:10 Andrew I'm not governed by my emotions. It's not that I'm sad. It's just that I don't have anything to be sad about. It's always seem to me this seems more like rationalization or justification or something like he's in denial or something he must have. 00:42:43:14 - 00:42:48:06 Sean Or self-protective rush shielding or emotional armor. 00:42:48:06 - 00:42:57:19 Andrew So this is what I started. This is the rabbit hole I went down with this particular letter and I learned a word that I had never encountered before. And maybe you have: alexithymia 00:42:58:05 - 00:43:03:01 Sean Alexithymia. I wish I could play it in words with friends, but I don't know it. 00:43:03:01 - 00:43:08:19 Andrew It is a word that you shouldn't say out loud in a room with an Amazon device. I'll tell you that. I made that mistake. 00:43:09:20 - 00:43:12:11 Intervenant 3 Oh, yeah. We've. We've been trained by. 00:43:12:11 - 00:43:19:04 Sean Our our elections Just to stay away from any word that starts with or otherwise contains Alexa. So tell me about alexithymia. 00:43:19:04 - 00:43:50:03 Andrew I'm here is when Lovecraft wrote this letter in 1934, this word did not exist. He did not have a vocabulary with which to describe his own situation. And so alexithymia Thymic is a word coined in 1973 by a pair of psychologists called named John Case, Nehemiah and Peter Syphilis. And it is it's a complicated thing. It's been studied since the seventies, but it is the inability to put words to your emotions. 00:43:50:13 - 00:44:18:11 Andrew And it's also, however, the inability to feel the emotions. It's people who are there's a French psychologist named Joyce McDougall, who alexithymia, as conceived by these two psychologists, is a sort of neurological condition. It's a it's a physical thing. And this French psychologist, Joyce McDougall, says there's also a psychological version of the same basic thing that she calls this affectation. 00:44:18:19 - 00:44:30:09 Andrew But both of them in the end, sort of come down to this just an inability to feel emotions or if you feel them, you don't have the ability to put words to them. 00:44:30:20 - 00:44:32:09 Sean You lacks a language, lack. 00:44:32:09 - 00:44:52:17 Andrew The language with which to describe your own emotions. Right. And I had never heard of this before, but apparently it affects 10% of the people in the world. It's a thing it's a it's a thing that has been studied since the seventies. And it takes it's it's it's not autism, but it's often seen in people who are on the spectrum now. 00:44:52:23 - 00:44:59:07 Andrew And it just leads to people who have that sort of flat, emotionless affect. And it seems. 00:44:59:07 - 00:45:27:20 Sean Big with serial killers. Well, no, I mean, I'm not being facetious that that, you know, a lot of those those people are lacking in empathy or what you'd call it. You know, traditionally emotionally responsive reaction system that elicits emotional states like compassion. Which tends to be what drives us away wanton killing and imposing wanton killing and suffering on others because we because of how it makes us feel. 00:45:27:20 - 00:45:28:07 Sean Right. 00:45:28:16 - 00:45:36:24 Andrew It also but I hasten to add that, yes, that's true. But most people with alexithymia time are not, in fact, serial killers. 00:45:36:24 - 00:45:38:01 Sean Of course not. Right, right, right. 00:45:39:01 - 00:45:55:06 Andrew Alexithymia finally is also linked with physical symptoms, like the ones Lovecraft describes himself as having extreme hypersensitivity to temperature. Gastric trouble. As I was reading this letter and then learning about alexithymia, I wonder if I. 00:45:55:08 - 00:45:56:07 Sean Have a diagnosis. 00:45:56:07 - 00:46:21:20 Andrew Here is, you know, is alexithymia because it is. There are few pieces that don't match up. People with alexithymia are often very low in imagination. They they they just don't have vivid imaginations and they don't particularly have dreams. And obviously, Lovecraft had a vast imagination and, you know, dreams were fundamental to him. So that piece of the puzzle doesn't quite match. 00:46:21:20 - 00:46:58:10 Andrew But alexithymia is a complicated thing. It's not a disorder, it's a personality trait, kind of a stable personality trait. It's not recognized as any kind of disease or anything. But it is it is a a thing that that psychiatry at least, is very much aware of and apparently affects a lot of people. And it was a fascinating it led me to a couple of interesting blogs, other firsthand accounts of people who, you know, a man who describes how because he has alexithymia, but he's married and has a child, it's like I felt nothing the day my child was born. 00:46:58:10 - 00:47:18:06 Andrew To me, my wedding day was just a a ritual that I went through because it was something I had to go through. But I didn't feel happy. I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel anything. And my wife, you know, you know, my wife has to have tremendous patience and understand that I just don't feel things the way she does. 00:47:18:06 - 00:47:37:13 Andrew But the benefit, if you can call it that, is that she knows that I'm in this marriage because I choose to be in this marriage. I don't do things because feel strongly about them. I do them because they're the right thing to do. It makes him, he says. It makes him a much more thoughtful, deliberate say. 00:47:37:14 - 00:47:42:00 Sean It's an makes it all an intellectual exercise, not an emotional response. Right. 00:47:42:12 - 00:48:08:04 Andrew It also led me to this really interesting article, which I'll post a link to called Lovecraft in Trauma, which also tied to, for me at least back a little bit to Barlow's father, because, you know, Barlow's father was clearly suffering from mental problems and they may have been trauma related because of his military career. And this guy, his name is Murray Ewing, he's British and he has this blog called Musings. 00:48:08:04 - 00:48:17:10 Andrew And he wrote this really interesting article on Lovecraft in Trauma, where he he observes that, you know, a lot of Lovecraftian characters are horribly traumatized people. 00:48:17:10 - 00:48:20:15 Sean Or they become horribly traumatized through the experience of the story. 00:48:20:15 - 00:48:36:00 Andrew And the process. You know, the characters are trying to tell their story as a way of processing the trauma that they've experienced and make sense of it. And this goes back to the alexithymia finally thing where, you know, the issue is you don't have the words to express how you feel or what you've seen. 00:48:36:01 - 00:48:37:11 Sean Unnamable, Unspeakable. 00:48:37:11 - 00:49:00:21 Andrew Unnamable, unspeakable things. And I just want to read, if you'll indulge me, with, of course, a little bit of this article, Lovecraft in trauma, Trauma, he says elsewhere he's talking about a book about PTSD written by a guy named Bessel Van der Cult Trauma. He says elsewhere comprises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. 00:49:01:01 - 00:49:35:17 Andrew Lovecraft's fiction is full of people who are neither dead nor alive, the most notable being the narrator of the outsider whose horror, when he confronts a walking corpse, is topped by the realization that the walking corpses himself something he can only have been unaware of by thoroughly dissociating himself from his own body. Horror of or alienation from one's body is another part of this aspect of PTSD, and can be found in other Lovecraft stories where narrators, for instance, find their minds transported to other bodies that they only gradually become aware of as being alien as in the shadow out of time, a story which to me feels like a summation of so many aspects of 00:49:35:17 - 00:49:57:03 Andrew trauma in Lovecraft's fiction that it might be a good way to mop up a few topics I haven't yet covered. Because the conscious mind has had no chance to analyze the traumatic memory, the memories themselves feel like a welter of confusing, disparate seeming elements sights, sounds, smells, not in any logical order or making any sense. A chaos of sensations, not irrational experience. 00:49:57:03 - 00:50:27:17 Andrew In many early Lovecraft stories up to and including the horror at Red Hook when the protagonist encountered the supernatural, It's often is a chaotic welter of darkness, demonic figures and overpowering winds all mixed together in one overwhelming and confusing experience. Lovecraft clearly had his finger on this trauma thing, and one wonders if there's some trauma lurking in Lovecraft's own past that gives him such an instinctual, because I don't think Lovecraft was deliberately trying to, you know, do this. 00:50:27:18 - 00:50:59:19 Sean Yeah, I don't I don't think it's yeah it's writer make exploiting Yeah psychology I think I think it's all unconscious psychology at work in him and you know I think that's a terrific essay because it really does sound spot on about so much of it and you know people spoof Lovecraft and things because of the unnamable and unspeakable and yet you know take that take a victim of actual psychological trauma and sit them down and say, tell me what about what happened then. 00:51:00:00 - 00:51:11:23 Sean It's literally difficult to find the words and make sense of it. And that's why therapists need a lot of time and work to help people make sense of trauma. 00:51:11:23 - 00:51:18:24 Andrew So and when you have alexithymia where you're just literally incapable of putting words to your emotions, it's like. 00:51:19:17 - 00:51:20:16 Intervenant 3 It's. 00:51:21:00 - 00:51:48:15 Andrew It was why I was so glad to have this word now in my vocabulary of alexithymia. It's like, of course you can't understand a thing if you don't have the vocabulary with which to process it. Yeah, and it's one reason why, you know, Lovecraft is often, you know, mocked or criticized because his characters faint. So often it's like, well, fainting is someone in one of these articles pointed out is is the you got your fight and you got your flight or you've got your just curl up like a possum and play dead. 00:51:48:15 - 00:51:49:07 Andrew And that's what. 00:51:49:14 - 00:51:52:08 Sean It's a psychological flight. Absolutely. Shut the. 00:51:52:08 - 00:51:54:09 Andrew Machine machine off and hope that. 00:51:54:12 - 00:51:58:01 Intervenant 3 Whatever this thing does isn't hungry. Right. So, you. 00:51:58:01 - 00:52:16:11 Andrew Know, it's like, you know, on the one hand, it's easy to make fun of it until you discover that there's a thing in the world called alexithymia. Then it's like, Oh, yeah, all of a sudden a lot of Lovecraft's stories and characters and things that happen make some new kind of sense that they didn't make before. 00:52:16:12 - 00:52:42:18 Sean Sure. And I honestly, you know, the people who can't imagine, you know, Cthulhu rising up out of L.A. and driving you insane, that's a failure of imagination in the part of the reader. You know, you're you're thinking about the Cthulhu slippers and not what it would really be like to see a mountain that walks or stumbles and can blow your mind because people get their minds blown. 00:52:42:18 - 00:52:49:08 Sean It's just because yours are being blown. It's because there's a lack of imagination on your part, not on Lovecraft's part. 00:52:49:08 - 00:53:09:15 Andrew And one of the points that this guy Murray Jung makes in this article about Lovecraftian trauma is that when you have PTSD and you're triggered, it's like the traumatic event is actually happening again right now to you. So he uses, I think, the example of the end of day gone where, you know, the. 00:53:09:15 - 00:53:10:01 Sean Window. 00:53:10:04 - 00:53:26:04 Andrew The window, the hand, it's not there's really a hand coming in through the window. It's that this guy's PTSD has been triggered. And as far as he's concerned, in his mind, it's happening again right now. Yeah, it isn't really happening. Yeah, but it's happening to him. 00:53:26:04 - 00:53:28:16 Sean Sure. Which makes it completely real. Right to. 00:53:28:16 - 00:53:34:13 Andrew Him. To him. And also to the guy walking by in the street. You wouldn't notice that anything was happening at all. 00:53:34:14 - 00:53:37:18 Sean Right, Except for a man up there. Right. And the window. 00:53:37:18 - 00:53:46:13 Andrew So when you if you understand it in those terms, then some of those some of those things make it different. A new kind of sense. And I was really interested to know that. 00:53:46:13 - 00:54:10:07 Sean Down there that that's a terrific, terrific departure. Well, you had brought up just a minute ago of Dreams. Yeah. I was looking at some of the other letters Lovecraft wrote while he was staying with Barlow. And so this is this one. Another one he wrote to Duane Rimel. This he wrote on the 17th of June in 1934. So it's near the end of the trip, but it deals with dreams. 00:54:10:07 - 00:54:44:24 Sean And I thought, that's an interesting articulation of Lovecraft's thoughts on Dream. So says: My dear Rimal, Your recent recurrent dream of vast wheels and spheres is certainly extraordinary and I hope you can eventually make literary use of it. The extended cup is surely a tantalizing phenomenon. No, I never had any of the fever dreams of the turning and rolling of vast box which you mention, though I often dream things in the most bizarre and vivid sort, some of which I've already incorporated into tales and verses. The only well-defined delirium I ever had was in 1903 when I was 12 years old and suffering from an exaggerated cold. 00:54:45:04 - 00:55:23:09 Sean I then my mother said afterwards, mumbled things about flying to Mars and Saturn. Now, as for the nature of dreams, I think there's no question but that they consist of dissociated scraps of previous impressions, some utterly forgotten and ordinarily deeply buried in the subconscious, regrouped by the undisciplined sleeping fancy into new and sometimes utterly unfamiliar forms. Their surface aspect is strange, yet every basic ingredient is something that the mind has picked up at one time or another from books, pictures, experiences, etc. I don't believe in hereditary memory at all. 00:55:23:13 - 00:55:50:08 Sean Acquired characteristics are not ordinarily inherited, and even if they were, they would be merely general tendencies. Certainly not the special individualized impressions involved in that curious sense of unaccountable familiarity, which some seems from dreams awaken us. Yes, I have often had the sense of previous knowledge of things that are absolutely new to me, but in most cases I have been able to trace it to very early and largely forgotten impressions. 00:55:50:21 - 00:56:18:18 Sean For example, a certain village landscape at sunset looked familiar when I first saw it, and I eventually traced it to a picture I had seen in virtual infancy. Vaguer dreams of pseudo memory of a sort involving strange Shakopee, and cities usually refer back to forgotten bits of reading or pictures, more or less combined in a new way. However, for fictionalized purposes, it's quite alright to adopt such false but attractive explanations as reincarnation 00:56:18:18 - 00:56:24:04 Sean hereditary memory and so on. I do myself yours most cordially. hpl. 00:56:24:10 - 00:56:25:12 Intervenant 3 He does himself. 00:56:25:14 - 00:56:32:07 Sean He sure does himself, but at least it's a conscious artistic decision. And I thought that was interesting to see him breaking that down. 00:56:32:19 - 00:56:50:01 Andrew Yeah. Because he even in this letter to Barlow, he, he pooh poohed the idea of the idea of heredity. You know, it's ridiculous to think that you have inherited characteristics from someone that long ago. You're just as which, you know. Then you go and read the case of Charles Dexter Ward and go, Now, wait a minute. 00:56:50:17 - 00:56:50:24 Intervenant 3 Yeah. 00:56:51:12 - 00:57:20:05 Sean Well, you know, and that's. I think it's good to see that. Sure. Art is at work, you know. Right. And making decisions to tell a better story. Not necessarily that they're they're true. One other thing in in that sort of psychology section that struck me, you know, he was talking about how his own health really switched. Yeah. He says, you know, around 1921 or 1922, maybe around May 1921, the death of my mom, you know, it was so specific, the way he articulated. 00:57:20:05 - 00:57:40:03 Sean Now it's like, that's right. When I left, I was like, Yeah, that's right. When, you know, such a life changing event for him, even if and he never seems to perceive it that way. You never hear him say, you know, Boy, once my mother died, I started to get out more and I felt a lot better. But it seems hard to buy that as a in any way coincidental. 00:57:40:03 - 00:57:40:21 Sean Yeah, it. 00:57:41:06 - 00:58:00:10 Andrew You know who who knows? Of course, we can't diagnose him and we don't. Sure, we don't know. We don't know. One of these articles about alexithymia, that I read, you know, said nobody knows exactly what causes it. There may be multiple different reasons, but one of them may be, you know, when you're an infant and you are unable speak or form words, all infants are, by definition, alexithymic. 00:58:00:10 - 00:58:20:06 Andrew They cannot put words to their emotions. Sure, all they can do is make faces. And if your parents don't respond to those faces that you make in a way that reinforces the emotions you feel, it may be that you never figure out how to connect your emotions to words. And if if there were ever any two parents who who.we can 00:58:21:06 - 00:58:46:00 Andrew imagine didn't give Lovecraft that vital feedback, it's it's his parents. If Lovecraft was alexithymic, it's easy to imagine that it it may have been because he just never learned how to properly express emotions from his own parents. And that just his brain never got wired to do emotions the way most people's brains get wired. Yeah. No. 00:58:46:16 - 00:59:08:20 Sean Interesting. The I was also like you. I was touched or interested by his his articulation that it's just as well that my line ends with me. And it made me, you know, think of his admiration for Poe's story, the fall of the House of Usher, which is, you know, the collapse of a family line in a catastrophic final generation. 00:59:09:00 - 00:59:35:22 Sean And then his own the rats in the walls, which is the same thing, the implosion of the poor line, right. Coming to a spectacular finish on his own. And then, you know, I guess it's maybe not the family line because Barlow had a brother. But, you know, Barlow is the end of the road for her, right. For his own, you know, genetics because because of his suicide that comes on. 00:59:35:22 - 00:59:52:01 Sean And he was so young. That was also really stood out to me this time of, you know, Barlow is 32. You know, just in the beginning of what appeared to be almost every lover, a really thriving career as a as an anthropologist and in a our. 00:59:52:03 - 00:59:57:06 Andrew Shelter corner of anthropology where he could have made and he already had made a big difference. 00:59:57:06 - 01:00:00:19 Sean Yeah, he was one of the world's leading experts in the Nahuatl language. 01:00:00:19 - 01:00:05:19 Andrew And he could have, if had he not died, he could have gone so much further, one imagines. 01:00:05:24 - 01:00:10:04 Sean Yeah, it certainly seems that was the trajectory that got that got interrupted. 01:00:10:04 - 01:00:39:00 Andrew So I just want to bring in one passage from there's another the letter that Lovecraft wrote immediately prior to this one in March, where there are also Barlow and Lovecraft are also discussing this upcoming trip and what they're going to do. And apparently Barlow had suggested, oh, we could play tennis, we could play bridge, we could play all these things that Lovecraft writes in the previous letter, and I only bring it up because it goes back to this how much not fun Lovecraft is. 01:00:39:00 - 01:00:40:09 Intervenant 3 Going to be on this trip. 01:00:40:21 - 01:01:07:02 Andrew Lovecraft says regarding chess, tennis and contract bridge. I'm forced to admit that I have not the slightest scintilla of interest in any of the three or in any other game sport or puzzle known to mankind. It is curious, but I lack altogether the psychological trait which compels interest in the process of competition. And so far as the intellectual side goes, I have no interest in any sort of problem which is artificial, prearranged or conducted according to artificial rules. 01:01:07:18 - 01:01:27:21 Andrew I have never played tennis or bridge and have no idea of the rules governing them. Chess. I have learned and completely forgotten three distinct times, and I was a rotten player during each of the periods when always under external pressure, I attempted the game. I had not the least interest in the damn thing and didn't care whether I won or lost. 01:01:28:09 - 01:01:46:02 Andrew I suppose my dislike of games is due in part to the dullness and mediocrity of my intellect, since I have no excess of cerebral energy to work off. I begrudge such quotas of it as are used in any needless or artificial way. That seems a little painfully pompous. 01:01:46:02 - 01:01:48:02 Intervenant 3 Yeah, a little bit. But it. 01:01:48:02 - 01:01:58:00 Andrew Is interesting. It goes along with that. I haven't laughed in, you know, ten years and I haven't cried since I was ten. And I don't like games. And you're going to find out when I come visit you for two months that I am no. 01:01:58:00 - 01:01:59:16 Intervenant 3 Fun to be around. And yet. 01:02:01:02 - 01:02:08:19 Sean You know, he's a fun stirrer. He and Barlow are running around doing fun like boy games in the woods sorts of things. 01:02:08:19 - 01:02:11:10 Andrew And and it is I mean, we know he has a sense of humor. 01:02:11:10 - 01:02:15:23 Sean We know he we say, oh, you know, when he was up in Vermont with Forrest Orton is playing around. 01:02:15:23 - 01:02:19:12 Andrew So it is it is it is interesting I do and I don't there's a. 01:02:19:12 - 01:02:26:14 Sean Place where he draws the line and I think it goes, you know, this is fun. And yet chess is somehow frivolous or. 01:02:26:14 - 01:02:30:12 Andrew Too or just too hard to remember how it works. It's too artificial. It's too it's. 01:02:30:12 - 01:02:36:14 Sean Hard to imagine, though, somebody of his intellect going, chess is too hard. Yeah. You know. All right, well, play some checkers, Howard. 01:02:36:14 - 01:02:39:10 Intervenant 3 So you can play chess. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I can do it. 01:02:39:17 - 01:02:57:02 Sean He can clearly do it. Well, I. There is in the appendices of oh, Fortunate Floridian, which is the collection of Barlow letters. There's a great Barlow took a bunch of notes about Lovecraft's visit. Oh. So in addition to collecting Lovecraft's letters. 01:02:57:02 - 01:03:12:10 Andrew In in S.T. Joshi's biography, he laments that we don't know much about the visit because the main correspondence that Lovecraft had at this time was Barlow, and he obviously wasn't writing to Barlow about Barlow. So what happened during the trip? What's what happened? 01:03:12:10 - 01:03:17:21 Sean Well, this is an anecdote I would like to share because I, again, it paints a picture of Lovecraft that. 01:03:18:12 - 01:03:19:09 Intervenant 3 That Lovecraft. 01:03:20:00 - 01:03:44:22 Sean That's one of the other interesting things is through his letters, he is conducting this autobiography. And in some ways you go, Oh, an autobiography. This is the most truthful picture of the events of somebody's life. And on the flipside, it's like, what a lie. You know, it's somebody who's writing extensively about his own life, but only sharing, of course, what he wants to share and only sharing it in the manner in which he wants it shared. 01:03:45:00 - 01:04:08:04 Sean So anyway, this is this is a little note from Barlow: We been in the habit of gathering blueberries beyond a shallow creek running between the swamp. Now, HPL was no woodsman, as may be seen, and it was always perilous to trust his poor eyesight and lack of horse sense. However, he often went along insistently against our polite discouragement. 01:04:08:15 - 01:04:43:23 Sean One time since he had nothing but his every day suit. He arrayed himself in comical castoff garments. Old mountaineer Mrs. Johnston had loaned him a Janaki sick trousers and various other contributions, and he set out with us. A series of recent rains had rendered the land very muddy, and the Creek channel had far overflowed, leaving a wide spread thin puddle through which we had no choice but to wade at the deeper creek had been placed aboard to serve as a bridge, and this was crossed without mishap. 01:04:44:09 - 01:05:05:09 Sean We spent some time gathering berries, but we were long through before his demise had attained even half a basket. So we helped him fill it. And then we all started for home. Lovecraft and myself. He lingered for possible other berries and fearing that just such a mishap, I stood upon the makeshift bridge and called out its location to HPL. 01:05:05:16 - 01:05:34:02 Sean He replied that he saw it. So we continued the quarter mile to the house and deposited our berries in the Common Pie fund, going to change our splash clothes. We were quite tidied up and still no HPL wondering at his delay. A series of confusions downstairs attracted me, and although I miss the scene myself, meeting him upstairs later. Mother said that he came in soaking wet with most of his berries gone in the God awful rig. 01:05:34:02 - 01:05:58:20 Sean He must have appeared very comical, although it also had a tragic air about it. Promptly, he said to Mother, I really must apologize. She was amazed by this vision of a thoroughly wet hpl and said in surprise, What for? He went on to explain that he had been homeward bound when he came to the creek. Not seeing the board, he was abruptly pitched up to his neck in cold water. 01:05:58:20 - 01:06:31:08 Sean The barriers were flung and upset, most of them going down in the slight current, quite unable to swim. I think he must have expected promptly to drown. This, however, did not happen and he modestly and contrite Lee returned For the sake of decency, I should omit this. But the tragicomedy of Lovecraft in that condition is amusing beyond conception, and to think he apologized for losing the berries so he may not want to partake in games and tennis and chess and such. 01:06:32:07 - 01:06:45:08 Sean But dressed and some neighboring ladies castoff clothes falling into the creek, blueberry picking. That's a side of Howard that he did not write to rhyme all about. He did not write to Helen Sully about that. Oh, no. 01:06:45:14 - 01:07:08:07 Andrew So mishaps and blueberries aside, he had a grand time and spent months, almost two full months in Florida with Barlow. And they you know, they clearly they bonded because, you know, in the end, Love Lovecraft named Barlow as his literary executor. And they became, you know, I mean, it was a important relationship for both of them. 01:07:08:07 - 01:07:13:20 Sean Well, and that literary executor ship became a big thorn in everybody's side. 01:07:14:01 - 01:07:15:01 Andrew Including Barlow. 01:07:15:06 - 01:07:41:16 Sean Including Barlow's. Yeah. Barlow. I guess it really comes down to the fact that Derleth sort of assumed it would be him and was gravely offended that he and Wandrei were not named literary executor or and then they spread the word among the, the Lovecraft circle that apparently Barlow was on some sort of power grab, which does not seem to be the case in any way, shape or form. 01:07:41:16 - 01:08:09:10 Sean And so Clark Ashton Smith is writing to Barlow, saying, I'd never write to me again. I never want to hear from you, you know, And Barlow ends up with all of this undeserved, you know, woe on him. And I think it really did cost him personally to have that. I was reading an essay by Ken Faig on Barlow and the Executor ship, and he was saying he was really shocked that it wasn't W. Paul Cooke who was named as a literary executor. 01:08:09:10 - 01:08:29:14 Sean And it certainly, you know, at least threw up to about 1930. He would seem to be a prime candidate. And while Derleth was sort of more of a mover and shaker in terms of the publishing business. You know, Cooke was actually a printer and had a more established relationship and a more collegial relationship with Lovecraft. 01:08:29:15 - 01:08:38:07 Andrew Derleth and Lovecraft have never actually met each other. Yeah, Like it. I mean, I can understand Derleth assuming it would be him because, I mean, he was the guy who 01:08:38:17 - 01:08:39:19 Sean made a lot of assumptions. 01:08:39:21 - 01:09:00:05 Andrew He made a lot of assumptions, but he also. But not without foundation. I mean, it was because Derleth placed dreams in the witch house that Lovecraft could afford to go to Florida. I mean, Derleth was in the trenches too, and it's easy to see him thinking it ought to be me. But at the same time, Lovecraft didn't really like him that much and they had never met personally. 01:09:00:05 - 01:09:05:22 Andrew And, and, and he had this bond with Barlow, who clearly loved everything. 01:09:05:23 - 01:09:36:11 Sean Yeah, well, and I think one of the other points that fake make is and I think it's one that's well taken is back to this issue of a paternal relationship. And there is something of of you know Lovecraft willing making a literary gift for the next generation and Barlow cared deeply about these things and in some ways it seemed like, you know, Derleth was eager to see it all get published and not get lost. 01:09:36:11 - 01:09:54:23 Sean But but I think the personal sense of ownership that Barlow had and the project he was undertaking on behalf of Lovecraft might have seemed and felt more personal in nature and made it more of a personal bequest rather than a commercial transaction. 01:09:54:23 - 01:09:58:02 Andrew Lovecraft and Barlow collaborated while Lovecraft was alive. When Lovecraft and Derleth only collaborated after Lovecraft die. 01:10:03:14 - 01:10:30:12 Sean You know, we end up with sort of a love hate relationship with Derleth because he's absolutely, you know, he's absolutely important and, you know, an essential figure in the survival of Lovecraft's literary tradition. And on the other hand, you know, really in many ways seems to have not understood or just wanted to remake Lovecraft's work into something that Lovecraft was not after in the first place. 01:10:30:12 - 01:10:30:21 Sean Anyway. 01:10:30:21 - 01:10:52:17 Andrew So Lovecraft mentions Derleth in this letter. Derleth had just published his first novel called Murder Stalks the Wakely Family, and it was mentioned in a very favorable review in the Providence Journal just a few weeks before this letter was written. And Lovecraft in this letter says, I'll tell Derleth of your service to his novel. I don't know what that service was. 01:10:52:17 - 01:11:06:09 Andrew Maybe, you know, Barlow bought a copy. I have no idea. Or wrote a review himself that appeared somewhere else. But I asked our dear friend Rebecca Paiva, who lives in Providence, to see if she could find that review for me in the in the Providence Journal. And she did. 01:11:06:11 - 01:11:07:15 Sean Oh, she's good. 01:11:08:23 - 01:11:30:14 Andrew It's really short. It appeared in the March 18th issue on page page four of Section E Murder stalks the Wakely Family by August Derleth murder on Main Street perhaps would be a more apt title for this. For at last, somebody is doing a detective novel about a small Midwestern town, as was done about a New England village a couple of years ago in his home in SAC Prairie, Wisconsin. 01:11:30:18 - 01:11:49:04 Andrew Eccentric old Satterlee Wakely is found dead, stabbed to death when his physician, his attorney and a few others, he is summoned to a strange midnight conference arrive at his house. Definitely not of the thriller type, although it holds a few gasps. The tale is well written and ingeniously contrived, even though it will not keep you awake nights. Hmm. 01:11:49:20 - 01:11:59:18 Andrew It goes on for another couple of paragraphs, but it was a very favorable review and August was, you know, making a splash in in the straight up novel game. 01:11:59:19 - 01:12:06:03 Sean Yeah, Well, and, you know, this letter ends up being a lot of literary review itself. 01:12:06:18 - 01:12:07:02 Intervenant 3 It's like. 01:12:08:01 - 01:12:22:10 Sean Let's break down weird tales and everything that's in there and what I what I thought of it or not. I think, you know, that was part of the regular game for these guys as writers and things is to make as candid an assessment they can of whatever whatever's come out recently. 01:12:22:10 - 01:12:37:07 Andrew So yeah he drops the names of a few other of the weird tales gang who are in Florida at the time. He talks about Ray Cummings, right. Who was a major foundational science fiction author. He was Edison's assistant for a while around World War One. 01:12:37:07 - 01:12:44:18 Sean Yeah, I thought that there was a pretty good perch from which to to start to write sci fi has. You're going to work in Edison's and he's the. 01:12:44:18 - 01:12:49:05 Andrew Guy who gave us the famous quote. Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening all at once. 01:12:50:19 - 01:12:54:18 Sean Which, considering still nobody really understands time. But well, that's just as. 01:12:54:18 - 01:12:55:18 Andrew Good a description is. 01:12:55:21 - 01:12:57:20 Intervenant 3 Not a bad explanation. 01:12:57:24 - 01:13:18:06 Andrew And then he talks about hope I can see Hamilton and Williamson, although it won't kill me if I don't. And that's Edmund Hamilton and Jack Williamson, both of whom appeared in Weird Tales and later in went on to write for the comics, DC Comics and various other things, both of them pretty substantial figures in genre fiction at the time. 01:13:18:06 - 01:13:45:05 Andrew Yep. Then he goes on. Yeah, they, they go down to break down. What's in the current issue of Weird Tales Wing deaths that Lovecraft wrote for and with Hazel Heald was written in was had appeared in the previous month's issue. But the issue that they're talking about is the April weird tales from 1934 and and Lovecraft says black thirst leading because of the utter originality of its conception, the vividness of its unfolding in the ever brooding air of hidden, transcendent or just beyond one sight. 01:13:45:05 - 01:13:52:21 Andrew That was a seal more story. it was a Northwest Smith. It was the second Northwest Smith story, the first one she wrote after Shambala. 01:13:52:23 - 01:13:53:18 Sean Oh, there we go. 01:13:53:18 - 01:14:06:13 Andrew So and it was another it was set on Venus and Northwest. Smith gets hired by this incredibly beautiful woman to well, what he doesn't know when he when she hires him is that she's actually hiring him to get murdered. 01:14:06:13 - 01:14:07:09 Intervenant 3 On her behalf. 01:14:07:24 - 01:14:15:15 Andrew There's it's it's interesting. It's an interesting sort of vampire slave girl on Venus, kind of a story. 01:14:16:12 - 01:14:17:19 Sean Pulpy through and through. 01:14:18:09 - 01:14:20:00 Andrew But good. I started to read it last night. 01:14:20:01 - 01:14:32:09 Sean I thought with the the wing death thing, it was interesting to see Lovecraft take credit for writing 90 to 95 of it. I wrote the margin like, why isn't it better. 01:14:35:07 - 01:14:36:03 Intervenant 3 That that. 01:14:36:03 - 01:14:55:02 Sean Usually, you know, some of the weaker collaborations, it's like he dipped a toe in or didn't do very much. And some of the better ones, like some of the the Zulu bishop ones you know, the mound of things he did 95% of the writing and it feels like a Lovecraft story wing death to me does not particularly feel like much of a Lovecraft story. 01:14:55:02 - 01:15:01:05 Sean So it sort of made me wonder, was he taking more credit? Did he do less to it? I don't know. It just. 01:15:01:20 - 01:15:03:08 Andrew was his heart just not in. 01:15:03:08 - 01:15:17:16 Sean It. Yeah. The feeling of his hand in a desperate is weaker than in many of his collaborations. So thought I thought you'd be pleased in the section where he was happy that the there changed the typeface because Lovecraft cares about fonts. 01:15:17:16 - 01:15:41:04 Andrew I circled typeface I was at. I tried to find I went online to see if I could find a before and after comparison of the how it used to look and what, in his opinion was better. And all of the all of the pictures I could find were so low resolution that they all looked terrible stories I can tell, but I believe him when he says it was better because from what I could see, yeah, before they made this switch, it looked terrible. 01:15:41:15 - 01:15:43:06 Sean Do you know what font they were using in the end? 01:15:43:12 - 01:15:54:21 Andrew I don't know. I know. Yeah. And he's so upset about this. The misprints in his letter to Fantasy Fan, and he threatens to go paddleboarding if he doesn't correct. Which you can all relax Hornig corrected it. 01:15:57:07 - 01:16:14:01 Andrew Yeah. And then he he makes this very glancing mention of if the Eden Hall reference you saw was in Newland or Longfellow, it was wrong. That comes from the previous letter, the one that I quoted where he talks about how much he doesn't like games. There's a much longer discussion of this thing called the Luck of Eden Hall. 01:16:14:02 - 01:16:40:22 Andrew Hmm. And that really piqued my attention, too. And it turns out indefatigable researcher Dan Pratt, I asked him if he could find out anything about the luck of Eden Hall. It man, did he deliver in spades? The luck of Eden Hall is a drinking glass, a beautiful Venetian 15th century drinking beaker. It's kind of a tulip shaped thing that belonged to this this British aristocratic family. 01:16:40:22 - 01:16:59:03 Andrew And there was the legend was that it had been stolen from the fairies. And that's why it was called the Luck of Eden. All apparently a luck in British legend is a physical that's stolen from the fairies. So there's all kinds of locks and they take, you know, some of them are glasses, some of them are fancy silver bowls. 01:16:59:03 - 01:17:01:09 Andrew There's don't steal shit from fairies. 01:17:01:09 - 01:17:02:16 Sean It always ends badly. 01:17:02:16 - 01:17:03:24 Andrew It always ends badly. It's true. 01:17:04:12 - 01:17:06:07 Sean But they're very patient, The fairies. 01:17:06:07 - 01:17:11:20 Intervenant 3 They will. They will wait. They will let you out. And if you break their silverware, you are in deep trouble. 01:17:12:23 - 01:17:38:22 Andrew But the luck of Eden Hall was this gorgeous Venetian glass beaker, which is now at the Victorian Albert in this amazing custom made leather case. And the legend is, you know, if if the glass ever breaks, then the Musgrove family will be destroyed. So don't break the glass if the luck of Eden Hall. So that's what that references to in a We'll post pictures of the luck of Eden Hall and and yeah. 01:17:38:22 - 01:17:39:22 Sean It is spectacular it. 01:17:39:22 - 01:17:53:13 Andrew Is expected circular piece and made more spectacular by fairies by the fairy legendary that's attached to it and the the well where they you know got it's a total holy grail kind of situation where if you break the glass. 01:17:53:18 - 01:17:56:08 Intervenant 3 It's made of glass. Yeah. It's a really. 01:17:56:08 - 01:18:17:04 Andrew Cool thing and we'll post pictures because it's fun. Lovecraft says: I don't think Loveman ever knew Garrett P service at least beyond the nodding stage, because he didn't live on the same street till 1932. And of course, Garrett P Service was a famous astronomer who had died in 1929. So yeah, if, if, if Loveman didn't move in until three years later, there's no way he would have make Garrett P service. 01:18:17:20 - 01:18:48:17 Sean Just before that. I found it really interesting. And he's got a quick discussion of the the Salem Witch trials and all that and, you know, trying to break down was it delusion or is an actual witch cult. And those were two rival theory is at the time and Lovecraft goes for the half and half verdict which you know in more recent you know more recent times the witch cult theory has tend to fallen into disfavor. 01:18:48:17 - 01:18:59:13 Sean So it was interresting to see him going with sort of Margaret Murray and believing that there might have actually been a practicing. Yeah. Which in among the Puritans of Salem at the time. 01:18:59:21 - 01:19:20:24 Andrew You having done The Crucible have done a lot more of your homework on Salem witchcraft than I have. So I always defer to you when it comes to that discussion. But it is interesting that that he could entertain even a 50-50 possibility that oh yeah, there were actually yeah. And you know, to say there were witches and to say there was a witch cult is not necessarily the same thing, right? 01:19:20:24 - 01:19:37:23 Sean No, it's not. But it's a belief in witchcraft and anti puritanical, something that's the antithesis of the commonly held beliefs that are dominant. Anyway that just stood out to me. And Howard, how interesting And. 01:19:37:23 - 01:20:11:19 Andrew Then he talks about he says, I suppose I'll get to Smoot in the course of time, though as I've said, I'm no capable specialist. SMIRT was a book by this guy, James Branch Cabell, who was very popular and relatively famous in the 1920s and thirties. He was he wrote fantasy fiction in some ways. You could kind of say he was kind of Lord Dunsany, except he ran in that fancy literary circles that had people like H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain and, you know, much more respected mainstream authors. 01:20:11:19 - 01:20:22:16 Andrew So he wrote fantasy fiction that was taken seriously. And it's interesting, you know, Lovecraft wrote fantasy fiction, too, but it never appeared anywhere but the pulps, and not even in his lifetime. 01:20:22:16 - 01:20:31:04 Sean They never even got taped for the longer pieces, except for he by young Barlow, who was the the one who first typed Dream Quest got it from a man. 01:20:31:04 - 01:20:44:17 Andrew Branch Cabell. This this rich guy from Virginia. You know who he had the right friends and his fantasy fiction written at exactly the same time was taken much more seriously. And he became, you know, rich and famous. 01:20:44:17 - 01:20:45:18 Sean It was a bestseller. Yeah. 01:20:45:18 - 01:21:06:11 Andrew Yeah. His most famous work was written in 1919 called Jurgen. And it was I think this may have had something to do with why he was rich and famous and beloved of people like H.L. Mencken at the time, because that book, Jurgen, was the subject of an obscenity lawsuit brought by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Hmm. 01:21:06:14 - 01:21:17:07 Andrew And of course, like all such suits, it totally backfired on the Society for the Suppression of this cabal won the lawsuit. The judge said, I don't think. He says you Don't have to worry about the obscenity in this because the way it's written, very few people. 01:21:23:00 - 01:21:25:21 Intervenant 3 Will ever read it in the first place. 01:21:25:21 - 01:21:30:16 Sean No one will. You understand how naughty it is. It's like like Shakespeare, right, people. So the dirty So. 01:21:30:16 - 01:21:35:22 Andrew He won the lawsuit, but it became this cause celeb among the intellectual types. 01:21:36:00 - 01:21:37:13 Sean Who were grateful for its existence. 01:21:37:23 - 01:21:41:12 Andrew So, you know, because of the sort of Streisand effect, you know, when. 01:21:41:12 - 01:21:42:09 Intervenant 3 You sue people. 01:21:42:19 - 01:22:05:13 Andrew It just brings more publicity. The thing you're trying to hush up. So that's one of the ways that Cabell became the literary darling among other authors like that and that was in 1919. So he was set for the 1920s. Unfortunately, he never apparently he never really he never really moved on after World War after the war in the Depression, he didn't. 01:22:05:19 - 01:22:09:14 Andrew He just kept writing the same kind of fantasy. And all of a sudden it seemed. 01:22:09:14 - 01:22:10:20 Sean Day had passed. Yeah. 01:22:10:20 - 01:22:16:17 Andrew And so, you know, Campbell didn't sort of change with the times and has since been pretty much forgotten. 01:22:16:20 - 01:22:20:19 Sean Let's say he's not a particularly memorable name in 20th century American literature. 01:22:20:22 - 01:22:29:21 Andrew So smart was was at the time had been written in 19 thought it was Cabell's most recent book and Lovecraft had never particularly liked Cabell anyway and. 01:22:30:19 - 01:22:33:03 Sean So he hasn't gotten around to it and probably won't anytime. Probably won't. And then at the at the very. 01:22:35:23 - 01:22:53:07 Andrew End of this letter, he he does drop a reference to Malik House, the Peacock Sultan, who was he often price our friend from a couple of months ago and talking about how he's he spent his time in posh Oklahoma trying to work in a garage and has decided it's not for him after all. And he's going to head west. 01:22:53:07 - 01:23:13:13 Andrew I love that. I surely envy our peripatetic colleague his personal glimpses of the Western fantasy lords, because Hoffman, E Hoffman Price is going to go back over to California, in Texas, and visit Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, and just describing them as the Western Fantasy Lords is so fantastic. 01:23:13:21 - 01:23:37:15 Sean Yeah, it's it's interesting too that he's Price had gone out to live among the Osages, which seems like an odd place to go into the automobile business. But at that point in time, the per capita income of the Osage tribe was the highest per capita income of any group of citizens in the United States of America. Why? Why oil, oil, oil. 01:23:37:15 - 01:24:02:07 Sean So it's like we're going to chase all the Indians off all the land that we think any good whatsoever. We're going to give them the worst possible land. And then, you know, 20 years later, we're going to discover we left the mountaintop in the oil fields. And they are a mint off oilfields. So it was the car ownership among the majors was way higher than was among regular citizens. 01:24:02:07 - 01:24:04:05 Sean So for him to go out and be a mechanic. 01:24:04:05 - 01:24:05:24 Andrew Regular citizens, other citizens. 01:24:06:13 - 01:24:22:05 Sean Oh, you're not a non Native American citizens. I mean. Yeah, but it seemed like, you know, another way to exploit them because, oh, the the Native Americans have money, so let's go make sure we get some of it. And apparently his his experience out there didn't didn't work out as planned. 01:24:22:06 - 01:24:28:23 Andrew Well, unfortunately for the Osages, as a lot of them, a lot of that oil money led to all kinds of horrors. 01:24:28:23 - 01:24:30:16 Sean Oh, absolutely. You know, you know. 01:24:31:05 - 01:24:32:02 Andrew A lot of people were murdered. 01:24:32:08 - 01:25:01:08 Sean It seems seems like they had the upper hand through their own wealth. And, you know, as the history of America tends to go, let's find a way to, you know, exploit any minority population, take their wealth and anyway, well, before I've got one, I thought we might wrap up with one more little bit of Barlow , like a great almost all of Lovecraft's best correspondence. 01:25:01:08 - 01:25:40:11 Sean And the people he was closest with. Barlow also wrote a memoir of Lovecraft. And it's a it's a lovely piece. You know, it was written well after the fact, and I just wanted to share the final paragraph from it with you: It is not possible in the couple of days allotted to me by the exigencies of the press to write a real memoir of the man who virtually molded my intellectual life and many of my tastes and habits and evaluation of that striking personality, which is only partly shown in his stories,would be difficult in any case, because of the handicap of close perspective. 01:25:41:02 - 01:26:13:21 Sean The fantasy is, he wrote, have become models as an unobtrusive guide treads knowingly the stair to an Etruscan tomb or a Zapotec chamber. Lovecraft conducts us by means of his dexterous prose to doorways of awe and wonder and flings them suddenly wide to us. But he was much more than a story writer. Barring certain accidents such as his connection with the amateur press, he might never have gone back to writing stories at all after his adolescence. He is more important as a man who had an integrity to ignore the machine age and its frenzied leveling out to rubble of life's rich irregularities. Who had the courage to study and think and converse and write, and to stimulate others to study and think and converse and write in accordance with the deeper tradition of a more orderly age. 01:26:39:02 - 01:27:10:05 Sean He was the twin of the last Puritan, except that he knew what he wanted and frankly admired that character. His intimate acquaintance with astronomy, history and literature, as well as a host of other interests, made him civilize her among barbarians. A closet Quetzalcoatl, a cloistered Akhenaten whose impact may be felt now only in the volume of his letters, since, alas, the wind that is in the grass cannot be taken into the house. 01:27:11:16 - 01:27:24:21 Sean Wow. Yeah. And that's a memoir called The Wind that is in the Grass. So it was a great way of summing up the relationship from somebody who, you know, actually knew him and possibly was as emotionally close. 01:27:24:22 - 01:27:26:00 Andrew Yeah. 01:27:26:00 - 01:27:29:10 Sean As anyone out there to H.P. Lovecraft at the end of his life. 01:27:30:01 - 01:27:35:16 Andrew Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That is a that is a beautiful, beautiful description. 01:27:36:05 - 01:27:40:20 Sean Hey, speaking of sharing things, we should let these people know about what's coming. 01:27:40:20 - 01:27:50:10 Andrew Oh, yes. We chose this letter. Not necessarily for this episode. We actually chose it months and months ago to be part of another project. 01:27:50:14 - 01:28:04:14 Sean We're excited to let everybody know that we are about to do our first Kickstarter order. Yes. And our Kickstarter is going to be for a series of books called Miskatomic Missives, which is very closely tied to this very. 01:28:05:03 - 01:28:12:21 Andrew In fact, each volume in this three volume series is kind of going to be like an episode of this podcast. But in book form. 01:28:13:02 - 01:28:39:18 Sean We take a letter from Lovecraft, we present the letter in its entirety, and then where here in the show you hear Andrew and I and the different things we've researched and found to share with you to help illuminate the letter here in print form, we bring all kinds of visuals and essays from other writers or things referred to in the letter, original artworks, all kinds of different material that inform the understanding and appreciation of each of the letters we've commissioned 01:28:39:18 - 01:29:00:17 Andrew Original scholarship, original art. We've scoured archives hither and yon for original materials. It's going to be a really fun thing because in the podcast, which of course is all audio we can bring you, like the music Lovecraft heard, but in the book form we can show you the pictures and even go a step further into the tactile dimension. 01:29:00:23 - 01:29:12:08 Andrew And each volume in the series is going to come with a postcard, a newspaper clipping, some physical document that is going to be kind of like the experience of getting a letter from H.P. Lovecraft. 01:29:12:08 - 01:29:14:09 Sean Feelings, feelings. 01:29:14:09 - 01:29:24:06 Andrew So we're super excited about it. We're doing it in conjunction with our friends at Helios House Press. They have done numerous wonderful book projects as Kickstarters before. They've had tremendous success that way. 01:29:24:07 - 01:29:28:03 Sean It's nice high end quality products. So this is not, you know, just a. 01:29:28:03 - 01:29:29:09 Andrew Not just me and Sean 01:29:30:07 - 01:29:34:12 Intervenant 3 are waiting something out in the backroom. No, no, no. It should be. 01:29:34:12 - 01:29:57:05 Sean Quite a bit nicer than that. So we'll have all the details about the Kickstarter will be coming on our website, right. It'll be here on the voluminous page. Really just site. Yes. Helios House will have it there and we'll be bugging you through every every means by which we can to see if we can bring people on board, because we really do think it'll be a terrific addition to the other great books of Lovecraft letters that are out there. 01:29:57:06 - 01:30:11:01 Sean Yes, It's not at all the same as what, say, our friends over at hippocampus do. So it's a nice companion and a different way to look at a handful of letters, but in a great level of detail at each of them. 01:30:11:05 - 01:30:34:12 Andrew We're excited. The Kickstarter is going to launch in a couple of weeks from the time you hear this episode sometime in October. So stay tuned and we can't wait to bring it to you. Our thanks today, to our friends ST Joshi and David Schulz. They provided wonderful footnotes in the book: Oh, Fortunate Floridian, which is the letters of Lovecraft to R.H. Barlow. 01:30:34:20 - 01:30:37:11 Andrew But it's not published by Hippocampus Press. It's published by the. 01:30:37:14 - 01:30:38:20 Sean University of Tampa Press 01:30:38:20 - 01:30:41:16 Andrew So our thanks to them all. 01:30:41:16 - 01:31:07:13 Sean But there's more. Oh, yeah. So want to offer our thanks for Abe at Waverly Reminiscences of H.P. Lovecraft, also edited by S.T. Joshi and David Schultz from Necronomicon Press. It's a great collection of memoirs about Lovecraft I may use this week of volume number 60 of Crypt of Cthulhu, which dates back to 1988. Delighted to say the HPLHS just library had it on the show. 01:31:07:13 - 01:31:16:00 Andrew And Personal Thanks to Dan Pratt and Rebecca Paiva for Boots on the Ground Research on the Luck of Eden Hall and that review of August Derleth novel. 01:31:16:09 - 01:31:27:24 Sean And while still at it, I'd also like to thank the lovely folks at Arkham House for their selected letters. This is read from Volume four for the letters of Duane Rimal. 01:31:28:06 - 01:31:33:03 Andrew You can find links in posts to all those things on the web page for this episode. 01:31:33:07 - 01:31:39:16 Sean If you've enjoyed today's episode, we'd be glad to hear from you via email. At Voluminous@hplhs.org , just call and. 01:31:39:16 - 01:31:45:18 Andrew Tell your friends. Post a review or a rating. Follow our Kickstarter. Send them a good old fashioned letter. 01:31:45:21 - 01:31:47:16 Sean I'm your obedient servant, Sean Branney 01:31:47:16 - 01:31:50:17 Andrew and I am cordially and respectfully yours. Andrew Leman. 01:31:50:17 - 01:31:55:14 Sean You've been listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 01:31:55:14 - 01:32:34:08 Andrew Brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org