Stephen Hickman Illustrations

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Lovecraft: The First Cousin Issue

Here in Donlad Clarke's biographical notes, we see Clarke's idea that Lovecraft feared that his grandfather and grandmother were cousins and that it was a stem of madness.

Whipple left teaching to build a mill in the western Rhode Island village of Coffin Corner, which he renamed Greene, Rhode Island. He married his first cousin, Miss Rhoby Alzada Place ... Despite Lovecraft's love for his grandfather and grandmother, their close lineage would become a source of fear for Lovecraft, a fear of the dangers of inbreeding, perhaps sparking his response to Cotton Mather's epitaph for his maternal ancestor: "'Hic Jacet GEORGE PHILLIPPI, Vir Incomparabilis, nisi SAMUELUM genuisset'. It is a cantankering sorrow of my life, that I am descended through another son than the more than incomparable Samuel!"

Marriage of first cousins has been recently studied by a number of scholars probably prompted by trying to understand the marriage practices of the Middle East now that America has decided to become a new Imperial power there. A recent book (Forbidden Relatives, Martin Ottenheimer) on consanguinity by a sociologist indicates that these were a late nineteenth century enforcement. Cousin marriage was seen as step towards a "less developed" or "more barbarous" level of human society. States entering the Union prior to about 1860 did not have laws against cousin marriage. Those afterwards, did. Nancy Fix Anderson of Tulane University recently authored an article: Cousin marriage, a common practice among preindustrial propertied classes and usually arranged by the families for economic reasons, continued as a marriage pattern among middle-class Victorians, for whom individual choice based on romantic love was the appropriate criterion for the selection of a marriage partner.

Clearly this is incorrect. A famous example is Charles Darwin who married a first cousin with healthy and bright progeny. There seems little effect that marriage by cousins will cause an issue. It is a common practice in many areas where arranged marriages are critical to maintain tribal peace and political tranquility.

Still, we can read Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population byGeorge B. Louis Arner (1908) "The problems to be considered are not only those which relate primarily tothe individual and secondarily to the race, such as the supposedeffect of blood relationship in the parents upon the health andcondition of the offspring; but also the effect, if any, which such marriages have upon the birth-rate, upon the proportion of the sexes at birth, and the most fundamental problem of all, the relativefrequency with which consanguineous marriages take place in a givencommunity." For instance, Rhode Island which had a high incidence of consanguinity was stated to have a very high male predominance. If so, it didn't happen between Whipple and Rhoby who had three daughters and one son.

Despite all this, I find no evidence (yet) that Lovecraft was a bit concerned. I do continue to look, but I think too much is derived from the fiction in The Shunned House, specifically: The shunned house, it seems, was first inhabited by William Harris and his wife Rhoby Dexter ... the widowed Rhoby Harris never recovered from the shock of her husband's death, and the passing of her firstborn Elkanah two years later was the final blow to her reason. In 1768 she fell victim to a mild form of insanity, and was thereafter confined to the upper part of the house ...

Lovecraft certainly underwent a series of traumatic family tragedies which would affect anyone and in many possible ways. Still, I can find no hint of concern by Lovecraft for his grandparents marriage.

The significance of "weeds" in Lovecraft

In Lovecraft's fiction, weeds are important. I believe they signify decay and intrusion. In Lovecraft's fiction, the protagonist is usually a thinly described version of Lovecraft. That person is erudite, but contrasts with another character - a straw man to whom much mischief happens. In doing so, the watcher, the protagonist studies the straw man, as a scientist might a lab rat. Lovecraft is always scientific in approach, and the protagonist is often a Naturalist, Scientist, Folk Lorist, or other professional.

One of two things happens. The character either has the correct training and breeding, and transcends the madness. Richard Pickman, Kuranes, and Randolph Carter are in that vein. If the character is not well bred, no erudite, not prepared, then the madness consumes and destroys the victim. This happens in He, The Strange High House in the Mist, and many others.

I focus here on The Statement of Randoph Carter (1919), Nyarlathotep (Nov 1920), Celephais (Dec 1920), and The Picture in the House (Dec 1920)

A writer may choose any illustrative content, any metaphor, any cluster of words to convey a meaning. Lovecraft went to his well and his muse came up with a number of stereotypical formulae. Weeds were one of those.

Here are specific passages that breed eeriness and dread, decay and rot.

TSRC: ...an ancient cemetery ... overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds ... all crumbling, moss grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.

N: ... the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass ... a weed-choked subway entrance ...

C: ... In the streets were spears of long grass ... the stagnation of the reedy river ...

TPITH: ...the walks were indeed overgrown with weeds ... rough mossy rock ...

In each of these cases, overgrown grass, or reed-choked streams, moss, and "unhealthy vegetation" is used to heighten the mood. In semiotics the "signifier"is the form in which the "sign" takes. The "signified" is the concept.

In Celephais the term grass is used in a very different context, and does not fit this signified. : But this time he was not snatched away, and like a winged being settled gradually over a grassy hillside til finally his feet rested gently on the turf. He had indeed come back to the Valley of Ooth-Nargai and the splendid city of Celephais. Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers walked Kuranes, over the bubbling Naraxa on the small wooden bridge where he had carved his name so many years ago, and through the whispering grove to the great stone bridge by the city gate.

Here, the language of "grass" is used in a cultivated manner. It's controlled, it's refined, and it's beautiful. It's quite unusual for Lovecraft to speak in a non-decadent format, and the contrast between the two could not be stronger.

Here we easily see that Lovecraft has an axe to grind. The common population is unlearned, unrefined, and basically riff-raff. He clearly states in his unguarded moments that immigrants and unrepentant and unconverted individuals have no place in his world, his new order. They can't survive the transition through madness, and the rightfully are destroyed.

In the 21st century, we have grown to respect swamps as wet lands, frogs, insects, and crawfish as bilogical agents in a healthy biodiversity. Not so, Lovecraft. They are vermin to set traps for, to drain dry, to exterpiate and exterminate. So Lovecraft reaches for vermin and unkemptness as semiotic metaphors - perhaps subliminal - to get the point across.

In 1919-1921 he has not yet found a full expression of these concepts, but he reaches for a series of semiotic expressives, and we'll explore many of these soon. Some of them are the use of astronomical bodies, particularly the moon. Windows and window panes. Blackness, darkness, and particularly depths which I believe may stem from his Grandmother Rhoby's funeral and burial.