Winfield Lovecraft's term in Butler Hospital.
Al Smith
(without actually explicitly saying) that Lovecraft's father was not
kept in Butler Hospital continuously after his initial placement
there in April, 1893, but was readmitted on April 25, 1908, shortly
before his death, which de Camp says took place on July 19, 1898
(see de Camp, p. 15).
The double appearance of the month of April in de Camp's bio, for
1893 and also for 1898, suggests to me that he got his dates confused.
All other sources I've examined say that Winfield Lovecraft was kept
in Butler Hospital without ever being released after his admission
on April 25, 1893, until his death on July 19, 1898.
Does anyone have reason to believe, other than the de Camp bio, that
Lovecraft's father ever got day passes from Butler Hospital, or that
he had periods of sanity during which he was allowed to live at
home, away from the hospital?
-Al-
Magister
To answer that final question: No. As you say yourself, everybody else
agrees that WSL stayed at Butler Hospital until he died, and that HPL
never saw him again after 1893. But I'm away from home and don't have
access to my collection right now.
Yrs
Martin
Al Smith
Thanks, Martin. Makes me wonder how de Camp could have made so
glaring an error.
-Al-
W. Hopfrog Pugmire, Esq.
The feeling now is that de Camp's biography is extremely unreliable --
but I wonder how true that is. He did a lot of research and
interviewed a lot of HPL's friends who were still living at that time,
and his was the first full biography of Lovecraft. I believe he
discovered much, but that his book was highly criticised because of
his attitude that Lovecraft was an unprofessional loser who wasted his
time writing letters when he "should" have been writing new tales --
an opinion that Sprague (with whom I used to correspond) shared with
Lin Carter. It's been a long long time since I've read de Camp's book.
Al Smith
De Camp's biography of Lovecraft was the first one I read. It's a
very readable and entertaining book, for those coming at it with an
interest in Lovecraft but no knowledge of Lovecraft's life. Since it
was the first biography, I'm sure de Camp was forced to do a lot of
primary research, and much of it is probably still valid.
For example, he discovered that Lovecraft's statement about when and
hold long his parents had boarded with the poet Miss Louise Imogen
Guiney was incorrect -- Lovecraft thought they had stayed for six
months, over the winter of 1892-3, but her letters proved that the
Lovecrafts had only boarded through June and July (see de Camp, pp.
13-4).
Lovecraft remembered her as a family friend, but her letters show
that she actually despised the Lovecrafts (apart from little Howard,
who she seems to have regarded as a kind of baby performing seal).
But first researchers are also prone to making mistakes, since they
are right out there, alone in the wilderness with no one to depend
on, so I would accept the view that there are many inaccuracies in
de Camp's book.
There are all sorts of little inconsistencies floating around. For
example, Joshi gives the first name of Lovecraft's grandmother as
Robie (and de Camp agrees with him), but elsewhere it is spelled
Rhoby. How is one to know which is correct, without the advantage of
examining primary documents such as birth records? I'm inclined to
give Joshi's authority a great deal of weight in these matters, but
when it comes right down to it, it is impossible to be sure who is
correct.
-Al-
Magister
Actually, it has now been proven that the people Guiney are referring
to are not the Lovecrafts but some German visitors (cf. the afterword
to the 2004 edition of H. P. LOVECRAFT: A LIFE), so the question of
how long the Lovecrafts stayed there is again up in the air.
> But first researchers are also prone to making mistakes, since they
> are right out there, alone in the wilderness with no one to depend
> on, so I would accept the view that there are many inaccuracies in
> de Camp's book.
Among the more annoying mistakes De Camp makes is his claim that HPL
habitually tore off the covers on his copies of WT. Most if not all of
HPL's own copies of WT are at the John Hay, and are in excellent
condition, I've been told. Since De Camp was doing much of his
research there, one wonders however he made that mistake.
>
> There are all sorts of little inconsistencies floating around. For
> example, Joshi gives the first name of Lovecraft's grandmother as
> Robie (and de Camp agrees with him), but elsewhere it is spelled
> Rhoby. How is one to know which is correct, without the advantage of
> examining primary documents such as birth records? I'm inclined to
> give Joshi's authority a great deal of weight in these matters, but
> when it comes right down to it, it is impossible to be sure who is
> correct.
Joshi has cited the spelling on her tombstone as his reason for going
with "Robie", even though HPL himself used the other spelling.
Yrs
Martin
Magister
wrote:
Yes, that's the problem with De Camp's biography. You learn more of
his attitudes to life than you learn about HPL's.
The problem with his interviews was that he often ignored what HPL's
friends told him in order to put his own spin on HPL as a crazy,
miserable, suicidal loner (much the same as he did with Robert E.
Howard, to the point that people in Cross Plains who had known Howard
refused to speak to subsequent scholars, thereby ruining later
biographical research). Frank Belknap Long's DREAMER ON THE NIGHTSIDE
was written as a reaction to De Camp's book, which Long felt
misrepresented Lovecraft.
And I'm both amused and annoyed by the way he omitted Alfred Galpin's
name in a quotation to hide Galpin's passing Nazi sympathies -- while
at the same time leaving enough information to make a pretty
definitive identification possible.
On the other hand, there's a lot of fun trivia in the book too -- such
as Lovecraft being immune to poison ivy, and having size 8 shoes.
Yrs
Martin
Evans
both Lovecraft and Howard and was invovled with futher Conan stories.
From what's been said here he sounds like a disagreeable fellow.
Magister
Oh no -- he was just a businessman foremost and an author second. He
wrote to make money (hence his Conan stories) and had no sympathies
for people like Lovecraft who wrote because they had something to
express. But from what I've heard he was a likable man personally.
Al Smith
Interesting. Now I'm torn as to which spelling of the name would be
more appropriate. Lovecraft undoubtedly learned to spell his
grandmother's name as a child -- it's hard to believe that he would
spell it incorrectly. On the other hand, why would an incorrect
spelling be on her grave marker? It's a puzzler.
-Al-
Al Smith
He wasn't a bad editor of anthologies. I've never been impressed by
de Camp's own writings, however. In spite of its errors, his
biography of Lovecraft is pretty good, as a literary construction.
-Al-
Magister
I can agree with that. (Except for the formatting of the notes which
is just confusing.)
Schrodingers Hat
wrote:
My grandfathers brother has an incorrect spelling of his name on his
tomb stone. There was a mistake somewhere between instructions and
carving of the stone. The story is that stone masonry can be costly
and although his family got a small refund it would have cost more
money to have it redone in some way. They went with the mistake.
Also there were other names on the stone and no one wanted to redo the
whole lot of them.
Al Smith
Sort of like getting a bad tattoo. Once the mistake is in the skin,
it's a lot of trouble to try to fix. Still, I would think the
tombstone carver would take responsibility for the mistake -- unless
he was given faulty information by the relatives, in which case it
wouldn't be his fault. But knowing Whipple Van Buren Phillips (as I
feel I do after studying up on him), if his wife's stone had a
mistake on it, he would have gotten it fixed.
-Al-