I took the advice of Madame Scorpion from the other day, and I am slowing down here on the blog. It is busy season at the day job, I am researching for at least two non-fiction books, and I have a mountain of reading, correspondence, and obligations. I also have articles I am trying to write up. I've even stepped away from Dark Recesses - but don't stop supporting Bailey over there!
There is plenty of startling new things I could post on the blog, but some of it I am trying to judge whether to publish on the blog, or publish in other formats. Thanks to Mr. Faig and others for releasing some of it through the EOD or other avenues.
For those of you who actually read and enjoy my horror fiction, I have an archive of dozens of stories, and I have numerous unfinished stories. One of these days I'll restart a serial for you. From time to time, since a blog is supposed to be a "personal web log", I'll ask Mr. Lovecraft to step aside and put up a poem or two of mine.
I also have promised a Chester Munroe week, as much new information has appeared recently on his life.
I could almost do a Manton Campbell Mitchell month, I have recently discovered so much material, and a possible and exciting new connection of MCM and his family to Lovecraft.
I suppose from your perspective this is a bit of a tease, but it is intended as an explanation. I think a few people were addicted to a daily post on Lovecraft. I'm nto saying I won't get back to that next year, either. Yet, I only have so much time.
There are right now a few dozen Lovecraft blogs on blogger, facebook, and other places. Will Hart has done a service to the community by continuing to post old records, and new artistic works of his own. Please support him, and the rest of the Lovecraft community.
As the world has changed in a brief 3 years - the death of MySpace, the coming of Twitter and Facebook, the collapse of horror as a genre - so too this blog needs to change.
Chrispy has done thousands of posts, all accessible and searchable, on every aspect of Lovecraft and his Legacy. Go forth and read it!
I am turning more and more to historical research, which is very time consuming, and which it seems few others are doing these days. (Kudos to Dave G, Vance, and others.) I have a little time, the inclination, and if you permit the immodesty, the ability to do this and explain it.
We are in a period of western history that media insists upon controversy to survive. There is plenty in the Lovecraft world to be controversial about should I wish to have "ratings", and it is tempting to indulge, but esentially that's not where I am right now. I do notice that major Lovecraft authors have started to do this in their afterwards and forwards. Be careful those who throw stones in glass houses.
It is a shame that major biographies have about 150 pages or less on Lovecraft's first 20 years, and the reason is so little was previously known. Lovecraft did not spring up, as Athena from Zeus' brow, a weird tale writer. No more that Teddy Roosevelt was born a bull moose. Those first 20 years are tantalizing, and the hidden years are not so hidden as one first suspects. The digital age of information is rapidly falling upon us, and much good stuff is appearing.
Don't try to get rich on this digital wave. Do what you enjoy, and the money will come - someday.
It is annoying for a dedicated and obsessed fan of Lovecraft to have to spend literally thousands (like Chrispy has) of dollars to learn about HPL in depth. Not everyone can. I am fortunate and blessed, that I can. Some people in this world make dimes a day, and thus this avenue is closed to them. I hope the blog helps those who can't afford, or have some limited ability to access rare items on Lovecraft.
It's all very exciting, and our understanding of Lovecraft and his family is about to be upgraded. Hmm. Lovecraft 2.0?
Stay tuned, as this year closes, another dawns.
Thanks to all the readers of the blog! You make this a daily pleasure for Chrispy.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Lovecraft and High School
As loyal readers of the HPLblog know, Chrispy does research without a net. Sometimes errors are made as theses are created, but so much more the excitement.
A long running thesis is that Lovecraft was so sickly he could not attend school. Chrispy, for right or wrong, has denied this. Yes, young Howard got sick, sometimes very sick, but in the fin de siecle days and those years before antibiotics this happened in all families.
One persevered.
Another long standing theory is that Susan coddled HPL. Maybe shed did a little, as he was "spoiled", but for every indulgence she gave, grandfather was there to temper it. WVP had been orphaned at 14, and built and lost fortunes. His eye was on a grandson who would most likely inherit his mantle (certainly not Edwin).
Lovecraft attended school precisely twice (before late 1904). It is not a coincidence that these were precisely the years Lovecraft needed to "graduate" from both primary and grammar school.
Previously it was discussed that the Providence school system went from a 1A/B 5 yr old to 9A/B 13 yr old system, to a 1A/B 6 yr old to 8A/B 13 yr old system in 1902, whereby preparing continuity from grammar school to High School. This essentially created a "graded school" all the way from 1 to 12, a very familar system today.
The Providence school system was the premier and model system for virtually all other Eastern and many Midwestern systems. The educators went on the road giving seminars, and New York and Boston ofen followed the lead of Providence. The system believed strongly in co-educational environments and in social ethnic integration (but not necessarily black students, just sometimes).
The system was not at all lenient with truancy, and battled manufacturers who wanted children to work instead of going to school, and bristled when said that they did not educate to train for industry. If Lovecraft was simply dodging school, or Susan fearful of him mingling, then the school system would have went after them. There are many reports of this very issue in the historical record.
There was one major exception. Elites.
While the school system wished all students to associate for th e greater good of society and America, they understood that a classroom education for brilliant and elite pupils was lackluster, and gave great leeway for private education.
Thus enters Whipple - and perhaps for a time, Lillian. Whipple was not only a powerful man in Providence business society, with long established (at least back to the late 1850's) roots in Providence, but also was a recognized and established educator in his own right. His name appears on several state school documents from the 1870's. He was close friends with masons, bankers (brother-in-law Raymond G Place, for instance), Brown professors, legislators, aldermen, and the Foster mafia ran strong in Rhode Island politics - all the way to his best freind, Clarke Johnson being supreme court justice one day.
When Lovecraft said he was the grandson of Whipple Phillips, people raised an eyebrow and understood.
My thesis continues to be that the Providence school system compromised. That Howard Lovcraft could be educated at home as long as he "graduated" from primary and grammar school. Coincidently, the 4 room primary Slater Elementary school expanded to be a grammar school in 1902. This is why its senior administrator (Principal) "Abbie" Hathaway knew HPL so well.
Now, what about High School?
Lovecraft graduated late June 1903 from grammar school and should have immediately attended a high school the second Monday of Septmeber 1903. He was 13 after all. He would have clearly been eligible to be a Freshman.
He didn't.
Why? Too sickly? Me thinks not.
Whipple continued his private education. WVP brought in at least one tutor by the name of A. P. May for Fall 1903. He was a Brown University student studying for the ministry (if memory serves), and Lovecraft immediately recoiled and by January 1904 HPL was probably at war, openly mocking him - or at least he does in his science newsletter circulated to family members.
So what happened?
Sadly, on Monday, 28 March 1904, WVP passed on.
The Lovecrafts moved in June 1904 to 598 Angell Street next door to the Metcalf family (long residents at 600 Angell), and Susan entered Howard into Hope Street High School on the 2nd Monday of September.
There is debate about whether HPL accumulated enough credits for Brown University to accept him. No real way to answer this precisely after all these years, except that had HPL taken the entrance exams and passed algebra, I think he could easily have entered in 1909.
He didn't pass.
The other courses might have caused him to take some remedial work, but the senior staff at Hope Street High School knew him and probably backed him. Lovecraft says "they understood" him. They may have given his a few passes due to his several maladies. There is no hint otherwise.
Winslow Upton was still quite influential at Brown (once senior Dean), and while we can debate whether he backed Howard, we know from all accounts he was a kind and sympathetic man who loved his students, and his students adored him. It's hard to say that Upton groomed Lovecraft, for if he did, he would have been more insistent that he concentrate on math, but there is no doubt he knew Lovecraft - as did the entire staff at Ladd Observatory. I believe him when he says he had the keys.
I certainly believe that HPL got a personal introduction to Percival Lowell on January 1907. Many in Providence read HPL's astronomy newspaper features - a competition not so much with Upton's Providence Journal series, but with other sysndicated astonomy features of the time.
Howard had inherited some of Whipple's charisma, and people seemed to automatically believe "the Little Professor" was inevitable to be an astronomer or meteorologist.
If HPL had taken the August college exams and passed, he would have gotten into Brown, I believe.
He didn't.
He was in shock.
He had no immediate fall back plan, and must have been beyond devastated.
He had worked eevry day from late 1902 to become an astonomer, and at that point no one could help him further.
A long running thesis is that Lovecraft was so sickly he could not attend school. Chrispy, for right or wrong, has denied this. Yes, young Howard got sick, sometimes very sick, but in the fin de siecle days and those years before antibiotics this happened in all families.
One persevered.
Another long standing theory is that Susan coddled HPL. Maybe shed did a little, as he was "spoiled", but for every indulgence she gave, grandfather was there to temper it. WVP had been orphaned at 14, and built and lost fortunes. His eye was on a grandson who would most likely inherit his mantle (certainly not Edwin).
Lovecraft attended school precisely twice (before late 1904). It is not a coincidence that these were precisely the years Lovecraft needed to "graduate" from both primary and grammar school.
Previously it was discussed that the Providence school system went from a 1A/B 5 yr old to 9A/B 13 yr old system, to a 1A/B 6 yr old to 8A/B 13 yr old system in 1902, whereby preparing continuity from grammar school to High School. This essentially created a "graded school" all the way from 1 to 12, a very familar system today.
The Providence school system was the premier and model system for virtually all other Eastern and many Midwestern systems. The educators went on the road giving seminars, and New York and Boston ofen followed the lead of Providence. The system believed strongly in co-educational environments and in social ethnic integration (but not necessarily black students, just sometimes).
The system was not at all lenient with truancy, and battled manufacturers who wanted children to work instead of going to school, and bristled when said that they did not educate to train for industry. If Lovecraft was simply dodging school, or Susan fearful of him mingling, then the school system would have went after them. There are many reports of this very issue in the historical record.
There was one major exception. Elites.
While the school system wished all students to associate for th e greater good of society and America, they understood that a classroom education for brilliant and elite pupils was lackluster, and gave great leeway for private education.
Thus enters Whipple - and perhaps for a time, Lillian. Whipple was not only a powerful man in Providence business society, with long established (at least back to the late 1850's) roots in Providence, but also was a recognized and established educator in his own right. His name appears on several state school documents from the 1870's. He was close friends with masons, bankers (brother-in-law Raymond G Place, for instance), Brown professors, legislators, aldermen, and the Foster mafia ran strong in Rhode Island politics - all the way to his best freind, Clarke Johnson being supreme court justice one day.
When Lovecraft said he was the grandson of Whipple Phillips, people raised an eyebrow and understood.
My thesis continues to be that the Providence school system compromised. That Howard Lovcraft could be educated at home as long as he "graduated" from primary and grammar school. Coincidently, the 4 room primary Slater Elementary school expanded to be a grammar school in 1902. This is why its senior administrator (Principal) "Abbie" Hathaway knew HPL so well.
Now, what about High School?
Lovecraft graduated late June 1903 from grammar school and should have immediately attended a high school the second Monday of Septmeber 1903. He was 13 after all. He would have clearly been eligible to be a Freshman.
He didn't.
Why? Too sickly? Me thinks not.
Whipple continued his private education. WVP brought in at least one tutor by the name of A. P. May for Fall 1903. He was a Brown University student studying for the ministry (if memory serves), and Lovecraft immediately recoiled and by January 1904 HPL was probably at war, openly mocking him - or at least he does in his science newsletter circulated to family members.
So what happened?
Sadly, on Monday, 28 March 1904, WVP passed on.
The Lovecrafts moved in June 1904 to 598 Angell Street next door to the Metcalf family (long residents at 600 Angell), and Susan entered Howard into Hope Street High School on the 2nd Monday of September.
There is debate about whether HPL accumulated enough credits for Brown University to accept him. No real way to answer this precisely after all these years, except that had HPL taken the entrance exams and passed algebra, I think he could easily have entered in 1909.
He didn't pass.
The other courses might have caused him to take some remedial work, but the senior staff at Hope Street High School knew him and probably backed him. Lovecraft says "they understood" him. They may have given his a few passes due to his several maladies. There is no hint otherwise.
Winslow Upton was still quite influential at Brown (once senior Dean), and while we can debate whether he backed Howard, we know from all accounts he was a kind and sympathetic man who loved his students, and his students adored him. It's hard to say that Upton groomed Lovecraft, for if he did, he would have been more insistent that he concentrate on math, but there is no doubt he knew Lovecraft - as did the entire staff at Ladd Observatory. I believe him when he says he had the keys.
I certainly believe that HPL got a personal introduction to Percival Lowell on January 1907. Many in Providence read HPL's astronomy newspaper features - a competition not so much with Upton's Providence Journal series, but with other sysndicated astonomy features of the time.
Howard had inherited some of Whipple's charisma, and people seemed to automatically believe "the Little Professor" was inevitable to be an astronomer or meteorologist.
If HPL had taken the August college exams and passed, he would have gotten into Brown, I believe.
He didn't.
He was in shock.
He had no immediate fall back plan, and must have been beyond devastated.
He had worked eevry day from late 1902 to become an astonomer, and at that point no one could help him further.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving !!!
It is only "Thanksgiving" in the U.S., but despite the mountain top experiences, and the valley endurances, we try to be thankful everyday.
In 1911 Lovecraft wrote a poem to his mother, and I'm sure he was thankful for his bowl of "puffed wheat" she left for him.
I'm thankful for many, many things, though I am deeply sorry Thanksgiving Day is only a speedbump between Halloween pumpkins and Christmas buying. We need more time to reflect on the good things of life, though sometimes we have to try very hard to find the silver lining in that grey cloud.
Thanks for reading the HPL blog.
In 1911 Lovecraft wrote a poem to his mother, and I'm sure he was thankful for his bowl of "puffed wheat" she left for him.
I'm thankful for many, many things, though I am deeply sorry Thanksgiving Day is only a speedbump between Halloween pumpkins and Christmas buying. We need more time to reflect on the good things of life, though sometimes we have to try very hard to find the silver lining in that grey cloud.
Thanks for reading the HPL blog.
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