00:00:05:04 - 00:00:08:08 Andrew Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:08:09 - 00:00:14:10 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:14:10 - 00:00:17:16 Sean Each week will read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney. 00:00:17:16 - 00:00:22:21 Andrew And I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:23:09 - 00:00:28:01 Sean This week I chose a letter that Lovecraft wrote to the Gallomo in 1920. 00:00:28:01 - 00:00:33:03 Andrew The Gallamo in 1920. Let's hear it. Okay. 00:00:33:18 - 00:01:00:22 Sean January 1920. Speaking of the Carter story, I have lately had another odd dream, especially singular, in that I possessed another personality, a personality just as definite and vivid as the Lovecraft personality, which characterizes my waking hours. My name was Dr. Eben Spencer, and I was dressing before a mirror in my own room in the house where I was born, in a small village (named missing) of northern New York State. 00:01:01:09 - 00:01:25:00 Sean It was the first time I had donned civilian clothes in three years, for I was an army surgeon with the rank of first lieutenant. I seem to be home on a furlough. Slightly wounded. On the wall was a calendar reading. Friday, January eight, 1864. I was very glad to be in my regular attire again, though my suit was not a new one, but one left over from 1861. 00:01:25:15 - 00:01:46:16 Sean After carefully tying my stock, I donned my coat and hat, took a cane from the rack downstairs and salad forth upon the village street. Soon, a very young man of my acquaintance came up to me with an aura of anxiety and began to speak in guarded accents. He wished me to go with him to his brother. My professional colleague, Dr. Chester, whose actions were greatly alarming him. 00:01:47:00 - 00:02:10:14 Sean I, having been his best friend, might have some influence in getting him to speak freely for surely he had much to tell. The doctor had, for the past two years been conducting secret experiments in the laboratory in the attic of his home. And beyond that locked door, he would admit no one but himself. Sickening odors were often detected near that door, and odd sounds were at times not absent. 00:02:11:00 - 00:02:37:17 Sean The doctor was aging rapidly. Lines of care and of something else were creeping into his dark, thin face, and his hair was rapidly going gray. He would remain in that locked room for dangerously long intervals without food and seemed uncannily saturnine. All questioning from the younger brother was met with scorn or rage, with perhaps a little uneasiness. So the brother was much worried and stopped me on the street for advice and aid. 00:02:38:04 - 00:03:02:01 Sean I went with him to the Chester House, a white structure of two stories and attic in a pretty yard with a picket fence. It was in a quiet side street where peace seemed to abide despite the trying nature of the time. In the darkened parlor where I waited for some time was a marble topped table, much hair, cloth, furniture and several pleasing whatnots covered with pebbles, curios and bric a brac. 00:03:02:12 - 00:03:25:07 Sean Soon Dr. Chester came down and he had aged. He greeted me with a saturnine smile and I began to question him as tactfully as I could about his strange actions. At first he was rather defiant and insulting, he said, with a sort of leer. Better not ask Spencer. Better not ask. Then when I grew persistent, for by this time I was interested in my own account. 00:03:25:17 - 00:03:40:08 Sean He changed abruptly and snapped out. Well, if you must know, Come up, up two flights of stairs we plotted and stood there before the locked door. Dr. Chester opened it and there was an odor. I entered after him. Young Chester, bringing up the rear. 00:03:41:13 - 00:04:08:24 Sean The room was low, but spacious, and area had been divided into two parts by an ugly and incongruous red plush porter. In the next, after the door was a dissecting table, many bookcases and several imposing cabinets of chemical and surgical implements. Young Chester and I remained here whilst the doctor went behind the curtain. Soon he emerged bearing on the large glass slab, what appeared to be a human arm neatly severed just below the elbow. 00:04:09:11 - 00:04:32:09 Sean It was damp, gelatinous and bluish white, and the fingers were without nails. Well, Spencer, said Dr. Chester, sneering away. I suppose you've had a good deal of amputation practice in the Army. What do you think professionally, of this job? I had seen clearly that this was not a human arm and said sarcastically. You're a better sculptor than Dr. Chester. 00:04:32:15 - 00:04:59:24 Sean This is not the arm of any living thing. And Chester replied in the tone that made my blood congeal. Not yet, Spencer. Not yet. Then he disappeared again behind the Portier and emerged once more, bringing another slightly larger arm. Both were left arm's. I felt sure that I was on the brink of a great revelation and waited with patience for the tantalizingly deliberate motions of my sinister colleague. 00:05:00:19 - 00:05:29:22 Sean This is only the beginning, Spencer, he said as he went behind the curtain for a third time. Watch the curtain. And now ended the fictionally available part of my dream for the residue, his grotesque anti-climax. As I have said that I was in civilian clothes for the first time since 61. And naturally I was rather self-conscious. As I waited for the final revelation, I caught sight of my reflection in the glass door of an instrument case and discovered that my very carefully tied stock was awry. 00:05:30:12 - 00:05:53:06 Sean Moving to a long mirror I sought to adjust it, but the black bow proved hard to fashion artistically, and then the whole scene began to fade and damn the luck. I await in the distressful year of 1920 with the personality of H.P. Lovecraft restored. I have never seen Dr. Chester or his younger brother or that village since. I do not know what the village was. 00:05:53:07 - 00:06:16:19 Sean I never even heard the name of Spencer before or since. Some dream. If that had happened to Co, he would be duly seeking a supernatural explanation. But I prefer actual analysis. The cause of the hole is clear. I had a few days before laid out Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein for rereading. As to details, Ambrose Bierce supplied the Civil War atmosphere. 00:06:16:19 - 00:06:38:02 Sean No doubt whilst it was easy to trace in Dr. Chester and his brother. Facially. I mean the likenesses of my boyhood friends, Chester and Harold Monroe. Those brothers of whom I spoke in one of my ancient Kleicomoloes. I am not sleeping much this week, but last night I had a promising fragment of a dream that was cut short by premature awakening. 00:06:38:11 - 00:07:05:11 Sean I was alone in the black space when suddenly ahead of me there arose out of some hidden pit,a huge white robed man with a bald head and snowy beard across his shoulders was slung the corpse of a younger man, clean shaven and grizzled of hair and clad in a similar robe. A sound as of rushing wind or a roaring furnace, accompanied the spectacular scent and a scent which seemed accomplished by some occult species of levitation. 00:07:05:22 - 00:07:30:12 Sean When I awaked, I had the idea for a story, but clearly enough, the idea had nothing to do with the dream. Critics expecting so much, sadly exaggerate the awkwardness of Dunsany. In absolute fact, he is a very tall, thin man with just a touch of awkwardness. And it is an engaging, boyish sort of awkwardness which does not offend the eye at all. 00:07:30:16 - 00:07:54:21 Sean His voice is not of the mush in mouth sort, but is merely a bit mellow and throaty after the British pattern rather than thin and nasal after the Yankee style. Perhaps there is a slight lisp, but it appears only at rare intervals. Obviously he has been at pains to correct it. The only trouble with Dunson, he is a public speaker, is that he makes no pretense of stage presence as a successful dramatist. 00:07:54:21 - 00:08:15:16 Sean one expects him to have a bit of the actor about him, but he is essentially of a non dramatic type. His striving for dramatic effect is an intellectual one. Exercise eased when he writes, not when he reads his plays. He addresses his audience not as a performer, declaiming to a crowded pit, but as a gentleman, entertaining friends in his own drawing room. 00:08:16:01 - 00:08:37:05 Sean He is at home with his audience. He mingles with them in spirit, as it were, and is not conscious of the platform and the golf it is supposed to create between the reader and auditor. He makes no effort at bodily pose. He is merely himself. Accordingly, he seats himself and crosses his long legs when he chooses and occasionally resorts to the water pitcher. 00:08:37:13 - 00:08:59:13 Sean But he does not do this in an absurd or ungraceful way. There is not a trace of the clown in his act. As to that dumping of a pitcher of ice water over his head, I rebel at the callous remark of a half baked spectator who probably knows nothing of headaches. When he lectured in Boston, I heard him remark after the address in speaking to a friend, I have a fearful headache. 00:08:59:15 - 00:09:19:15 Sean Now I know all about headaches. All there is to be known. Some of mine seem impossible to live through. And I know if Edward JMD Plunkett's are anything like mine, he must put water to his head when they are near their climax. He did not do so the night I saw him. In fact, he did not even rub his brow until after he had descended from the platform. 00:09:20:02 - 00:09:46:04 Sean But it takes no great amount of deduction to infer that in Chicago he was more sharply afflicted whilst on the platform. Instead of descending, he stuck it out like a stoic to please his audience and in return, a writer jests about his antics with the water pitcher. I am eloquent about headaches tonight because I have just emerged from a veritable killer contracted by working half before noon and all the afternoon on Bush junk. 00:09:46:17 - 00:10:09:21 Sean I have been using water on my forehead and give not a river regular on what any critic or reporter says of me. I wonder that some of these journalists do not speak of Dunsany face and expression, but they are obviously concerned only with things about which they can find fault. Dunsany is really handsome and has one of the most kindly winning and wholesome expressions I have ever beheld. 00:10:10:11 - 00:10:31:03 Sean Whether a serious or physically humorous, his blue eyes are alight with indefinable quality, which makes one sure that he is a very good and very generous man. Dunsany left in my mind an exceedingly favorable impression, an impression which made me wish that he were a personal friend of mine. He is, I think, a trifle unworldly. 00:10:31:03 - 00:11:03:03 Sean If such may be said, of a man who has traveled all over the globe and served through two wars. When I was very small, my kingdom was the lock next to my birth place 454 Angel Street. Here were trees, shrubs and grasses and here when I was between four and five, the coachman built me an immense summerhouse, all mine, a somewhat crude yet vastly pleasing affair with the staircase leading to a flat roof, from which in later years, I surveyed the skies with my telescope. 00:11:03:18 - 00:11:25:08 Sean The floor was Mother Earth herself For at the time the edifice was constructed, I had a definite purpose for it. I was then a railway man with a vast system of express carts, wheelbarrows and the like, plus some immensely ingenious cars made out of packing cases. I had a splendid engine made by mounting a sort of queer boiler on a tiny express wagon. 00:11:25:20 - 00:11:46:02 Sean The new building, therefore, must needs be my ground terminal and round house combined, a mighty shed under which my puffing trains could run even as the big trains of the outside world rammed under the sheds at the old depots in Providence and Boston. Depots long since razed to the ground to make way for the Union Back Bay and south stations of today. 00:11:46:19 - 00:12:09:09 Sean So the building became in familiar household parlance, the engine house and how I loved this. From the gate of our yard to the engine house, I had a nice track or path made and leveled for me, a continuation of the great railway system formed by the concrete walks in the yard and here in supreme bliss were idled away the days of my youth. 00:12:09:18 - 00:12:30:06 Sean As I grew older, I took the road and its buildings more and more under my personal management. I began to make repairs myself and when I was six, I constructed many branch lines. Once I carefully laid a track with wooden rails and sleepers, forgetting the trivial detail that I had nothing to run on it. But it looks nice anyway. 00:12:30:06 - 00:13:01:16 Sean And then there came changes. One day there was not any coachman to help me. Later on I had compensation. The horses and carriages were sold too, so that I had a gorgeous, glorious Titanic, an unbelievable new playhouse. The whole great stable with its immense carriage room, its neat looking offices, its vast upstairs with the colossal, almost skeletal expanse of the grain loaf and the little three room apartment where the coachman and his wife had lived. 00:13:01:24 - 00:13:24:21 Sean All this magnificence was my very own to do with as I liked. Many were the uses to which I put that staple. The carriage room was now the main terminal of my railway, whilst the other parts were my office theater and other institutions. But the call of the pastoral could not be resisted. Despite my new possession, my interest in the vacant lot and the engine house was unflagging. 00:13:25:08 - 00:13:50:03 Sean One day I decided to alter my scheme and instead of a railway system, my domain became a pastoral countryside. I invited all the boys in the neighborhood to cooperate in the building of a little village under the lea of the high board fence, which was, in due time accomplished. Many new roads and garden spots were made and the whole was protected from the Indians who dwelt somewhere to the north by a large and impregnable fort with massive earthworks. 00:13:50:13 - 00:14:19:08 Sean The boy who suggested that fort and supervise its construction was deeply interested in military things and followed up his hobby. Today he is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, having attended West Point and served brilliantly as a captain and major through the World War being twice wounded. My new village was called New Anvic after the Alaskan Village of Anvic, which about that time became known to me through the boy's book Snow Shoes and Sledges by Kirk Munroe. 00:14:19:23 - 00:14:42:06 Sean As you see, I then read Juvenile Matter as well as the classics and liked it. As the years stolen, my play became more and more dignified. But I could not give up new Anvik. When the Great Disaster came and we moved to this inferior abode, I made a second and more ambitious New Anvic in the vacant lots here. 00:14:42:15 - 00:15:10:24 Sean This was my esthetic masterpiece. Besides a little village of painted huts erected by myself and Chester and Herald Monroe. There was a landscape gardening all of my own handiwork. I chopped down certain trees and preserved others lead paths and gardens and sat at the proper points, shrubbery and ornamental urns taken from the old home. My paths were of gravel, bordered with stones, and here and there, a bit of stone wall or an impressive cairn of my own making. 00:15:11:02 - 00:15:36:05 Sean added to the picture. Between two trees I made a rustic bench later, duplicating it betwixt two other trees. A large grassy space side leveled and transformed into a Georgian lawn with a sundial in the center. Other parts were uneven and I sought to catch certain Sylvan or Bower like effects. The whole was drained by a system of channels terminating in a cesspool of my own excavation. 00:15:36:19 - 00:16:05:11 Sean Such was the paradise of my adolescent years, and amid such scenes were many of my early works written. Though by nature indolent, I was never too tired to labor about my estate attending to the vegetation in summer and shoveling neat paths in the obvious winter. Then I perceived with horror that I was growing too old for pleasure. Ruthless time had set its foul claws upon me and I was 17. 00:16:06:15 - 00:16:34:06 Sean Big boys do not play and toy houses and mock gardens. So I was obliged to turn over my world in sorrow to another younger boy who dwelt across the lot from me. And since that time, I have not delved in the earth or laid out paths and roads. There is too much wistful memory in such procedure, for the fleeting joy of childhood may never be recaptured. 00:16:35:10 - 00:16:41:01 Sean Adulthood is hell. Valete. Lo. 00:16:43:01 - 00:16:49:09 Andrew All rights Sean the GALLOMO January 1920. Do we? Do we know the details How did the GALLOMO thing work? 00:16:49:17 - 00:17:17:24 Sean So the GAllOMO was a circuit of story ideas. I mean their correspondence, I guess. But a lot of times the content included the story ideas that were being passed back and forth between Lovecraft's friends Alfred Galpin and Maurice Moe and Lovecraft. So Gal for Galpin Lo is for Lovecraft and Mo for Maurice Moe and Lovecraft had a couple of these different sort of clubs or circuits of things. 00:17:17:24 - 00:17:28:18 Sean There's the KLAKEMOLO where we bring in a few extra people. There is the the KLM club. There's he was apparently very keen on abbreviated social organizations. Yeah. 00:17:28:18 - 00:17:34:17 Andrew And as he discusses in this letter, even from his youth, he made a lot of clubs formed little societies. 00:17:34:17 - 00:17:43:23 Sean Yeah imagine this is I thought it was a really interesting and really telling letter about who he is and what is and what his bag is. 00:17:43:23 - 00:17:53:11 Andrew So this is one very specific club and they, they would write these were like round robin things. Each guy would add to the letter and then send it on to the next guy. 00:17:53:11 - 00:18:19:23 Sean Right. And so in December, December 11th of 1919, Lovecraft had written to the GALLOMO and he recounted one of his dreams, which those of us who were Lovecraft fans, know ever quite famously was his story, the statement of Randolph Carter. Right. And it's one in which, according to Lovecraft, it was almost verbatim what he dreamed. He woke up and went, Oh, that's a short story and wrote it down. 00:18:19:24 - 00:18:21:11 Andrew He changed the names of the characters. 00:18:21:16 - 00:18:42:07 Sean He did. And yeah, Harley Warren in the story was in the dream was his friend Samuel Loveman, and Lovecraft himself was Randolph Carter. Yeah. So there are a few instances of this. We saw it in The Donald Wandrei letter where he had his Roman dream and oh yeah, he adapted it and had this, this interesting not not quite at story dream. 00:18:42:07 - 00:18:43:19 Andrew He didn't get quite to the end but. 00:18:44:01 - 00:19:09:24 Sean This one but he was well on his way. It was it was feeling like a bit of fiction until he got to the end. So yeah, he has this interesting dream about the Civil War. Dr. Eamon Spenser So I went looking for even Spenser's because I was just curious if even he didn't know where it came from. When I did finally find one that I went, Oh, there's a gravestone for an even Spenser who was buried in 1893 in West Warwick, Rhode Island. 00:19:09:24 - 00:19:25:00 Sean Oh, really? Yeah. And it just made me wonder, you know, as a guy who hung out in a lot of graveyards, what he possibly. B ut, you know, it made an imprint in his memory without him even in the back being conscious of it. Yeah, I didn't pay much mind to it until I noticed that the cemetery was in West Warwick, so. 00:19:25:02 - 00:19:41:01 Andrew I'll be darned. Well, the name even Spenser rang a bell with me because we've recently been working with the commonplace book, and one of the entries in the commonplace book is the Even Spenser Dream. And I didn't know what it meant until I read this letter. I went, Oh, that's the even Spenser dream. 00:19:41:01 - 00:19:42:14 Sean Voluminous. It's illuminating. 00:19:42:18 - 00:19:53:10 Andrew It is indeed. So, yeah, when we when you read the commonplace book one of these days, you'll you'll see that even Spenser notation and it will make all the sense in the world to you. 00:19:53:10 - 00:19:57:06 Sean And it is a pretty good springboard for a story. Obviously, it if he. 00:19:57:09 - 00:20:00:03 Andrew Hadn't gotten distracted with his bow tie, it might have ended much more. 00:20:00:03 - 00:20:29:09 Sean Interesting. It is. It is a shame that that's the dramatic highlight of the entire story. So actually, speaking of the bow ties and dramatic highlights, I did want to mention this because in his own theories of what his own fiction and the fiction he enjoys, Lovecraft is so such a proponent of of mood and atmosphere and speaks so dismissively of tedious constructions like plot. 00:20:29:09 - 00:20:49:20 Sean And yet I noticed immediately what aggravates him about the dream is, of course it doesn't. It has no climax. The story is all atmosphere, it's all set up and there's no there there and it bugs him. And I'm like, you know, he often says that that sort of thing about disdaining plot and that he he uses them. 00:20:50:00 - 00:21:07:19 Andrew Sure. I think one of the things he objected to about plot was when it was too coincidental and manufactured. Obviously a story has to something has to happen or it's not what you think, then it's you know, it's words, it's a prose poem or it's a it's something, but it's not a story. If nothing happens, it's not a story. 00:21:07:19 - 00:21:29:03 Sean No, I agree. But I'm just going for for Mr.. You know, atmosphere is all I need. we really need something to happen in that story. So. Yeah. And I did also I really enjoyed his like a weight to the distressful year of 1920 with the personality of H.P. Lovecraft restored What a good and agonizing nightmare it did every. 00:21:29:03 - 00:21:31:14 Andrew Day and works out that way for him. It must be terrible. 00:21:31:15 - 00:21:49:03 Sean Yeah. And then he walks through the sort of self dream analysis of filling in the Ambrose Bierce and Frankenstein and his boyhood friends. The Monroe's. Yeah. Which was interesting to see that sort of analytical side of him working on himself in his own unconscious. 00:21:49:03 - 00:22:11:21 Andrew So he clearly, you know, I barely ever remember any dreams that I have, you know, if I remember them at all. It it's all gone within five or 10 minutes of waking up and they're just vanished. And clearly, he was a practiced dreamer. And I don't know if he kept a, you know, one of those journals by the bed where he wrote stuff down the minute he woke up, or if he was able to just remember them part part of the time. 00:22:11:21 - 00:22:15:21 Andrew I envy him and people like him who can remember their dreams. 00:22:15:21 - 00:22:38:13 Sean He often goes with that, that fascinating notion of, you know, is our dream life, the real life, and is our what we call the real life is that the the dream life? And I'm with you. I've never been a particularly vivid dreamer. And so my dreams never have the richness or detail to ever even begin to be given the idea of being of a real life. 00:22:38:13 - 00:22:40:10 Sean And this is just some passing. 00:22:40:10 - 00:23:00:13 Andrew Oh, yeah, I never occasionally, not infrequently, actually realize I'm dreaming when I'm dreaming. And sometimes I in the dream I go, Oh, this is a good dream. Let's see where it goes. And sometimes I, I wake up with the impression that, oh, I had a really good dream last night. I just can't remember what it was. 00:23:00:13 - 00:23:02:07 Andrew But, man, it was a humdinger. 00:23:02:07 - 00:23:04:03 Sean So you break the fourth wall in your own dreams. 00:23:04:03 - 00:23:11:24 Andrew My own dreams? I do break the fourth wall and enjoy it. You go, Oh, now that I know it's a dream, I can just ride this roller coaster without getting worried about. 00:23:11:24 - 00:23:14:19 Sean That's it. She doesn't wake you up to be self-aware. And. 00:23:14:19 - 00:23:25:20 Andrew No, but I also. It also never leaves me with It never leaves me wondering which is a dream in which is reality. I can always tell or not always, but I can often tell the one where. 00:23:25:20 - 00:23:27:06 Sean You're wearing a jetpack. Yeah. 00:23:27:15 - 00:23:29:22 Andrew Yeah. The one where I'm wearing a jetpack is a dream. 00:23:29:23 - 00:23:40:16 Sean All right, well, moving beyond the dreams, we turn to a theme of that Certainly begin around that 19, 19, 1920 era, which is Dunsany mania. Oh, well. 00:23:40:19 - 00:24:03:12 Andrew Before we get to Dunsany. I did just want to he does talk about his boyhood friends that the Monroe brothers and just looking them up. I mean, the high jinks that Lovecraft and the Monroe Boys got up to with the Providence Detective Agency. And the East Side History Club. And they were they were the terrors of their school, that's for sure. 00:24:03:12 - 00:24:21:21 Sean Yeah. And I think it undermines anybody who who clings to this notion of, you know, Lovecraft is some, you know, shut in little boy reading up in the attic, reading, you know, the lives of Plutarch or something in Greek. You know, he's he's a neighborhood kid. Yeah. Living life and doing stuff, raising. 00:24:21:21 - 00:24:24:15 Andrew Hell and building forts and clubhouses. 00:24:24:15 - 00:24:25:16 Sean Cities and yeah. 00:24:25:16 - 00:24:32:19 Andrew He they carried around, you know, he had a gun, he had a real gun and he carried around and a fake badge. 00:24:32:19 - 00:24:34:02 Sean And those were the days. Yeah. 00:24:34:05 - 00:24:47:07 Andrew And they when they played cops and robbers, they were armed. I mean they were, they were a formidable crew. Lovecraft and his friends. It's just really funny to think of them, you know, playing games the way we played games and Yeah, absolutely. 00:24:47:07 - 00:25:01:18 Sean And that he's a again, he's a lively social guy. He is not some kind of childhood weirdo wearing a dress shoved into a closet thing that's just not that's just not borne out by any of the way he relates his own life. Yeah. 00:25:01:18 - 00:25:09:02 Andrew Okay. So after we get through all these childhood friends and stuff, yes, we get on Dunsanymania because. 00:25:09:02 - 00:25:16:07 Sean Yeah. Sure, sure. Scratched is it? You know, there was there was finally found some native spark he finally. 00:25:16:07 - 00:25:19:20 Andrew Found another writer who wrote the way he wished he was right. Yeah. 00:25:19:20 - 00:25:33:24 Sean And I think accomplished in his literature what Lovecraft aspired to accomplish in his own. And I think seeing it really awakened in him the possibility of what could be done with with fiction more than Dunsany is a pretty interesting guy in his own right. 00:25:33:24 - 00:25:39:18 Andrew So so he's describing in this letter he's he's is this the whole letter or has something been kind of. 00:25:40:01 - 00:25:41:10 Sean This is this is all we've got. 00:25:41:10 - 00:25:46:13 Andrew So because he seems to just jump right into the middle of the Dunsany section. Yeah. 00:25:46:14 - 00:25:56:10 Sean I think because of the round robin thing that may have been a topic that was going on in the previous letter and it was like, well let's get back to Dunsany. Any on those the critics of Dunsany. 00:25:56:12 - 00:26:12:00 Andrew And this was written in early 1920. Yeah. When Dunsany had just finished or was just finishing up a tour of the United States. Dunsany had been doing this lecture in various cities throughout mostly the eastern United States, starting in October of 1919. Right. 00:26:12:00 - 00:26:17:15 Sean And and October 20th. Lovecraft was there 8:20 p.m. at the Plaza Hotel. 00:26:17:16 - 00:26:23:19 Andrew I was looking through old newspapers and I have some of the ads, the actual lecture that Lovecraft and his friends at. 00:26:23:19 - 00:26:46:04 Sean Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Front row seats. Oh, well, before we get into Lovecraft and him just introducing Dunsany, Edward John Morton Drax Plunk. There we go I'm looking my handwriting going. It looks like Drax. That was his name. Yeah, it was John Morton Drax Plunkett. The 18th baron of Dunsany, known by his friends as Eddie. 00:26:46:04 - 00:26:47:01 Sean Eddie Dunsany 00:26:47:01 - 00:26:47:22 Andrew Eddie Dunsany 00:26:48:10 - 00:27:01:12 Sean But he was born a little bit before Lovecraft. He lived from 1878 to 1957. He's Irish, kind of in the same sort of way that George Bernard Shaw is really. 00:27:01:13 - 00:27:04:01 Andrew He was born in London, but he has an Irish title. 00:27:04:02 - 00:27:27:24 Sean And an Irish castle and a lot of Irish castles. He spent his childhood in London. So for the extremely affluent in the landed gentry of Ireland, it was not at all unusual to grow up or spend huge amounts of time in the civilized world of London at that time. So but he's a soldier. He's a crack shot with a pistol. 00:27:27:24 - 00:27:30:12 Sean He's a chess champion. He's a writer. 00:27:30:12 - 00:27:33:00 Andrew He invented his own his own variation on chess. 00:27:33:00 - 00:27:40:08 Sean He did invent his own variation on chess, which is fairly interesting. Yeah, he's he's writing fiction. He's writing poetry. Is dramatist. 00:27:41:00 - 00:27:46:14 Andrew Handsome, tall. He's a he's a dreamy dreamboat of a man's man. He is. 00:27:46:17 - 00:27:58:14 Sean He certainly is. So as you were just saying, three months before this letter is written, Dunsany goes on an American tour doing readings of his own works, and Lovecraft is there for one of them. 00:27:58:14 - 00:28:23:21 Andrew Well, the title of his lecture was "My Own Lands". I know this because I was looking at all the ads so the title was My Own Lands. And apparently, I mean, he went he I forget exactly where the tour started, but it was in New York and Boston and Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. He went to a bunch of different cities, often sponsored by the local arts club or something of the cities where he was going. 00:28:23:21 - 00:28:36:21 Andrew And because he was Anglo Irish and because the title of the lecture was My Own Lands, apparently some people went to these lectures, assuming he was going to be talking about the current state of Anglo Irish politics. 00:28:37:05 - 00:28:38:13 Sean Which is fairly lively. 00:28:38:13 - 00:28:49:06 Andrew Which in 1919 was the was a guerrilla war between the IRA and the British government for the independence of Ireland. And these people who showed up thinking that's was that was going to be the topic of the lecture were apparently. 00:28:49:06 - 00:28:50:19 Sean Very disappointed. 00:28:50:19 - 00:29:04:05 Andrew Very disappointed customers and and told him so afterwards. So his lecture tour was abundantly covered in the in the press in all of these cities that he went to. And Lovecraft is apparently reacting to some bad press that Dunsany got. 00:29:04:09 - 00:29:26:09 Sean Well I thought if you're game for it, we might do a little bit of letter within the letter because I also have Lovecraft's explicit description of his own attendance. Oh, I'd love of that. So let me share that with you. He was invited, apparently by Alice a Hamlet and went with her aunt and some young person called Leith, who I wasn't able to figure out who Lee is, but somebody's got to leave anyway, Lovecraft says. 00:29:26:09 - 00:29:47:19 Sean Arriving early at the Plaza, we obtained front seats so that during the address I sat directly opposite the speaker, not ten feet from him don't, Dunsany entered late, accompanied and introduced by Professor George Baker of Harvard. He is, of our opinion, build six foot, two inches in height and very slender. His face is fair and pleasing, though marred by a slight mustache. 00:29:47:19 - 00:30:02:19 Sean In manner He is a boyish and a trifle awkward, and his smile is winning an infectious. His hair is somebody scan this because it reads his hair is light brain. I'm pretty sure his hair was brown and if his. 00:30:02:19 - 00:30:04:22 Andrew Hair was brained at all, it was all brains. 00:30:04:24 - 00:30:24:08 Sean Yes, but it was a light brain, not that dark pinky brain. Anyway, I digress. His voice is mellow and cultivated very clearly. British, he pronounces were as where, etc. Dunsany first touched upon his ideals and methods, and then hitched a chair up to his reading table, seated himself, crossed his long legs and commenced reading his short play. 00:30:24:12 - 00:30:46:11 Sean "The Queen's enemies". Later Dunsany read selections from his other works, including a mastery burlesque in his own style: "Why the milkman shudders when he sees the dawn", which is just a fascinating title and one that needs to be adapted for dark adventure Radio theater immediately. As he read this, he could not repress his own smiles and incipient chuckles. 00:30:46:17 - 00:31:07:05 Sean Come on, Dunsany keep a straight face. The audience was large, select and appreciative. And after the lecture Dunsany was encircled by autograph seekers, egged on by her aunt, Ms.. Hamlet almost mustered up the courage to ask for an autograph, but weakened at the last moment. For my own part, I did not seek a signature for I detest fawning upon the great. 00:31:08:14 - 00:31:24:10 Sean So anyway, I found a fondness to see his own reaction to actually being there in person. And it really was one of the most influential events I can think of Lovecraft going to that. You know, Dunsany really did. 00:31:24:15 - 00:31:45:16 Andrew Well Dunsany was also at the time, Dunsany was world famous. He was a beloved and prolific writer. And in that period of time, he was very famous. In the press all the time. So it would have been a big deal to go see Dunsany in person for not just Lovecraft, but for a lot of people. 00:31:45:18 - 00:32:12:24 Sean Right. But I'm just saying the impact that Dunsany was his creative works, but clearly had on Lovecraft. It was was absolutely enormous and really I think can't be understated Lovecraft did around this time, just moved from writing essays and was returning to fiction again and Dunsany really goosed him in the direction of the the Dream lands and you know, the stories like the White Ship and and those types of. 00:32:12:24 - 00:32:23:02 Andrew Definitely, Oh yeah. Right after the return, Lovecraft wrote some of those pieces. Absolutely. So he talks about this dumping of the water pitcher and his headaches and stuff. 00:32:23:02 - 00:32:24:03 Sean Is terribly, terribly. 00:32:24:05 - 00:32:32:08 Andrew Apparently that that water pitcher incident did happen at at Bryn Ma. It was clear that it was covered in some of these newspaper articles I was reading about how. 00:32:32:17 - 00:32:38:06 Sean They did just find him uncouth in how he applied water. Do I think he did it? That pitcher actually spell? 00:32:39:00 - 00:32:56:21 Andrew I'm sure it was overblown. I very much doubt that Dunsany actually dumped a pitcher of water over his own head. I think the idea what it said in these articles is just that particular lecture hall brimah was very, very hot and just he was overheating. So he probably, you know, just dabbed some cold water from the pitcher on his head. 00:32:56:21 - 00:33:06:16 Andrew And some chauvinistic American journalists. Exactly. Tried to make it make him sound like a dope. But but I'm I'm pretty sure that's not actually what happened. 00:33:06:16 - 00:33:27:24 Sean And speaking of critics for Howard, who I think second to his feelings about dressed, Orton has a waxes almost dreamy about you know Dunsany here clearly is stricken by his physical appearance and his manner. You know, he sounds downright enchanted by this. Yeah. And then he comes out with this. It just struck me as bizarre. 00:33:28:19 - 00:33:51:09 Sean He is, I think, a trifle unworldly, if such can be said, of a man who's traveled all over the world. All over the world, and fought in two wars that I just thought that was really interesting adjective for Lovecraft to choose when Lovecraft himself is like the unworldly dude ever at this point in his life. He's I think actually, I think well. 00:33:51:09 - 00:34:08:11 Andrew I think he's I think he thinks that's an admirable quality. He says, I wish he were a personal friend of mine. He is, I think, a trifle unworldly. He's no So he's unscathed. Yeah, he's he hasn't succumb to commercialism. He writes what he wants the way he thinks it should be written. And, you know, I think he's deeply envious. 00:34:08:11 - 00:34:19:10 Andrew He's gotten away with it and he's famous and incredibly rich and he's tall and handsome, and he is the guy I wish I was. Well, that's my take on. I don't think he's criticizing him for being unworldly. 00:34:19:14 - 00:34:33:09 Sean So maybe, maybe, maybe I took it in a manner it wasn't intended because it just struck me as yeah, Lovecraft, the most unworldly guy ever. And it's actually this trip to Boston is his first time staying away from his own home or staying outside of Providence. 00:34:33:09 - 00:34:35:01 Andrew And yeah, in a long yes. 00:34:35:19 - 00:34:56:11 Sean Since he was a little little boy. Yeah. Since he moved to the house. Yeah. You know, the big house with this guy part. So crazy. Yeah. And then we get this great description of of we Lovecraft's the boy, which I thought was great fun and what life was like at 454 Angel Street. So I think anybody who knows the basic facts of his life, you know, he's this incredibly precocious. 00:34:56:14 - 00:35:16:10 Sean Yeah, kid. But, you know, seeing him as this builder of worlds and, you know, starting at a quite a young age, building his own railway system and moving on to it, I'm thinking of Versailles as I picture these manicured gardens being made in a vacant lot next to it and putting out urns and. Yeah, I'm sure. 00:35:16:16 - 00:35:43:07 Andrew I'm sure to him it was Versailles. Yeah, sure. It made me think when I was a kid, we lived in a house that had like a whole acre of backyard. It was supposed to be an orchard that we just never attended. So it was just an enormous field. And we, we, we built there was a little turn. It was sort of a natural pond that filled when it rained and we built and there was this grove of bamboo that we hollowed out the middle of and put down a wood floor. 00:35:43:07 - 00:35:46:10 Andrew And it was like our jungle headquarters. And we had. 00:35:46:10 - 00:35:47:04 Sean Bamboo and color 00:35:47:04 - 00:36:05:09 Andrew I know it was just bizarre. Yeah, it was. It was bizarre, but it was there. And we we put in a wood floor and we we brought in, you know, packing crates to be furniture. And I, we had an old Dictaphone machine from Leman Publications that was like the radio set. And there was a big old sycamore tree that we put planks in. 00:36:05:09 - 00:36:15:03 Andrew It was the worst tree house in the world. But at the time, through our eyes, it was an awesome fort and a tree house and all that stuff. And I'm, you know, to look at it now, it would be pathetic. 00:36:15:08 - 00:36:16:00 Sean Even disappointing to. 00:36:16:04 - 00:36:23:22 Andrew Drive a bulldozer over it. But at the time it was amazing. And I suspect that Lovecraft's Kingdom in his backyard was a Yeah, very similar. 00:36:23:22 - 00:36:55:12 Sean At the end of the day, it's a vacant lot next door, but to him it's Versailles. And that's, you know, that's the that's the beauty of childhood right there. And, you know, clearly he adored the time he lived in, you know, the great house with the servants and his grandfather and. Yeah. And and I think, you know, fundamental to his work is this sense of decay and something wonderful falling away and traditions being broken down and collapse of civilization. 00:36:55:13 - 00:37:11:16 Sean Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of his xenophobia is triggered by that because I think the underpinnings of his psychology are all it was really great and it's really just nothing but a lot of fall from him in terms of his his fortunes and the satisfaction he takes from his own environment. 00:37:11:16 - 00:37:34:19 Andrew And what is especially sad about that to me is that he let it all go. You know, it's like he says, big boys do not play in toy houses, in mock gardens, but sure they do, they can, right? And if you choose not to, you know, that's unfortunate for you, but you chose not to. I mean, you and I are over 50 and we still play with toy houses in mock gardens and absolutely. 00:37:34:20 - 00:37:43:24 Andrew You know what? I think we're the happier for it. And sure, you know, it's like you don't have to give up all those things, right. But you can choose to. And he sure did. 00:37:43:24 - 00:38:15:10 Sean Well, he was really bound in by his conception of what an aristocrat gentleman should be And I think that's what killed the joy. And those boyish pleasures were that they should be interesting. They're undignified. They're not becoming of my situation in life. And I think, you know, had he not felt so keenly those social pressures to be that that that New England gentleman, I think he could have led a very different life and I think would have, you know, enjoyed it a lot more. 00:38:16:00 - 00:38:36:23 Sean He was there's also, you know, the financial side, too. It's like the house goes to ruin, you know. Howard, what did you do to try and save the family fortunes? You know, man, apart from a few miserable jobs of, you know, trying to try to help self-help gurus write, you know, they're marketing pros and things, you know. Lovecraft's Yeah. 00:38:37:04 - 00:38:58:20 Sean Then, you know, maybe he little he couldn't or maybe again, it was part of that social construct of he he wouldn't as a, yeah, as a gentleman. But it seems like his grandfather worked hard, You know, he was a businessman and his father was a businessman and you know, worked. So, yeah, it is it is interesting how he attached to those ideals. 00:38:58:20 - 00:39:22:02 Sean And in a lot of ways, those were his on his undoing. So, yeah the I did like the references to the his building New Anvik I thought was what implausible thing to call his boyhood village and that you know it's inspired by this this Jack London esque sort of book. It was a sequel to the Fur seals tooth, which is another excellent another dark adventure. 00:39:22:02 - 00:39:27:08 Andrew The future episode waiting to happen. Yeah, exactly. One of those ones that we promote but never actually. 00:39:27:08 - 00:39:46:15 Sean Produced the fur seal's tooth is clearly very pointy. Looking up Kirk Monroe because I didn't know him as an author anything about him. He wrote quite a number of these sort of, you know, young we call these young adult now. Yeah, action adventure stories. A number of them took place in the north or, you know, exciting tropical locations. 00:39:46:15 - 00:40:06:08 Sean But he was also the first man to build a tennis court in Miami-Dade county. So so he served we working from all kinds of different angles. So our thanks go out this week to the lovely folks over at Arkham House for publishing this letter in selected letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:40:06:08 - 00:40:12:08 Andrew You can find out more about them at Arkham House.com Where did you get that letter? Within the letter that you read? 00:40:12:09 - 00:40:31:10 Sean The letter within the letter is also in selected letters. I actually stumbled onto it through doing an Internet search on the looking for stuff on the Dunsany lecture, but it's published in Selected Letters Volume one pages 91 to 92. I'm your obedient servant, Sean Branney. 00:40:31:10 - 00:40:33:15 Andrew And I'm cordially and respectfully yours Andrew Leman. 00:40:33:18 - 00:40:37:20 Sean You've been listening to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:40:37:21 - 00:40:45:19 Andrew If you've enjoyed the show, please tell all your childhood friends. Build a fort to spread the word all about voluminous. 00:40:45:20 - 00:40:47:01 Sean Brought to you by the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:40:47:01 - 00:41:19:01 Sean Come check out all the wonderful things we have to offer at HPLHS.org