Lovecraft's father a black sheep?
Al Smith
than from what is written, that Lovecraft's father was looked upon
by the Phillips family as a bit of a black sheep.
He worked for a time as a blacksmith. He was, when he married Suzie
Phillips, a traveling salesman ... not exactly professions likely to
have impressed the old industrialist Whipple Phillips. He was
married to Suzie at Boston, not at Providence. He immediately moved
his new family away from Providence, to Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Then there's the little fact of his dying of syphilis. We may
presume that he picked it up from a prostitute, and that she was not
the first prostitute he had had sex with (it would have been very
bad luck to pick up syphilis from the first prostitute he ever
knew). The obvious inference -- every time he left his wife for a
different town, he was whoring around.
It looks to me as if old Winfield Scott Lovecraft was a bad egg, in
spite of the high regard Lovecraft himself always had for his
father's English heritage.
-Al-
Evans
I recall there was a Crypt of Cthulhu article called "Did Lovecraft
have Syphilis" that might deal with those issuses in greater depth. I
haven't actualy seen the article so I can't comment futher.
Allso the Syphilis point all ways made me wonder about the state of
Lovecraft snr's relationship with his wife since we know that she
never contracted the disease.
Al Smith
Good point, maybe Susie Phillips was frigid. Maybe that drove
Lovecraft's father to seek out prostitutes. However, it seems not
unlikely that he got the disease before he married her. I was
glancing at a few pages about syphilis, and it takes anywhere from
one year to ten years for the onset of madness -- it is very
unpredictable, because the disease attacks different parts of the
body at different times.
My point was, though, that Susie Phillips was marrying down in class
when she married Lovecraft's father. A man who had worked as a
blacksmith in the 1970s, and then became a traveling salesman? Not
equal to the Phillips usual standards, I don't think. One of her
sisters married a doctor and scholar of classic poetry; the other
married the editor of several Cambridge newspapers. Both graduates
from Brown University. The Phillips family as a whole seems to have
almost been married to Brown, so close are the ties. When Lovecraft
was a kid, he was allowed to go up to Ladd Observatory and play with
the 12-inch refractor.
It's an interesting relationship that I'm just digging into. It's
surprising that more biographers on Lovecraft haven't treated the
Phillips family, and Lovecraft himself, from the perspective that
they were a bunch of snobs ... which they undoubtedly were. No
wonder it was such a shock to Lovecraft when the family mansion had
to be sold -- it forced him to descend to the level of the "little
people." No more money for private tutors, so he had to go to
school, which he hated, because he couldn't order the teachers and
other students around like servants.
It's a whole other side to Lovecraft and the Phillips clan that has
not even been touched, as far as I can see from my present research
(which is not that extensive yet, I admit).
-Al-
Evans
> surprising that more biographers on Lovecraft haven't treated the
> Phillips family, and Lovecraft himself, from the perspective that
> they were a bunch of snobs ... which they undoubtedly were. No
> wonder it was such a shock to Lovecraft when the family mansion had
> to be sold -- it forced him to descend to the level of the "little
> people." No more money for private tutors, so he had to go to
> school, which he hated, because he couldn't order the teachers and
> other students around like servants.
Sorry for the post cutting, it just makes it easyer to respond to
certain bits. In regards to the Syphilis issuse do you know how easy
it is to transmit? If Lovecraft snr had it before his marriage
wouldn't there have been quite a highlikely hood of him passing it on
to his wife?
As to the perceived snobbery of the Phillips family I agree but I
would have thought 1890s New England would have still been a very
class driven society. Like with the racism issuse I suspect it would
have been more unusual should they not have acted in that manner.
Al Smith
On the syphilis question, I'm not a doctor. From what I've read, it
has three stages or eruptions in the body, and can take many years
to kill a person. It attacks different parts of the body at
different times, so its symptoms can be unpredictable. Madness can
come (as I gather) from one to ten years after infection -- so good
luck any Lovecraft scholar ever pinning down when Lovecraft's father
was infected.
Lovecraft's mother lived for many years after her husband was
committed to Butler Hospital in Providence in 1893. She was herself
committed to the same hospital in 1919 suffering from a nervous
breakdown. That's a passage of 26 years -- that makes it seem less
likely that she contracted the disease from her husband. It probably
would have shown up sooner. It's a nasty disease.
Yes, I agree the snobbery of the Phillips does not seem to have been
excessive or unusual for the period. However, it's a side of
Lovecraft that seems to be overlooked in his biographies, and which
helps to explain a few things in his life.
Remember, we have Lovecraft's life history largely from his own
account, scattered through his letters, and he would not have seen
himself as a snob. Just the opposite, he saw himself (when a young
man) as a "social reformer" reaching down to help the unwashed
masses up from their squalor.
But here is a boy who is the only child in an enormous mansion, with
adults doting on him, and servants ready to do his every whim. He
decides he is too smart for his teachers and argues with them -- he
doesn't like the discipline they impose. Well, no wonder, since the
little wretch has been allowed to do whatever he wanted all his
life, and to get away with bloody murder. He decides he doesn't want
to go to school, or to Sunday school, largely as it seems to me
because he didn't like being told what to do. He can get away with
this because his grandfather is rich and can hire private tutors for
him.
Then, all of a sudden, his grandfather dies, and the Phillips family
find out they aren't so high and mighty after all. The old mansion
is too expensive, so they move to a smaller house. For most kids
this would be no big deal but Lovecraft is so used to getting his
own way in everything, it induces trauma in his psyche. He is forced
to go to school because private tutors cost too much and can no
longer be afforded. Naturally, the little egoist has a hard time --
he finds he can no longer tell his teachers and the other children
what to do. He isn't the rich kid in the mansion any more. So he has
another of his periodic nervous breakdowns,which gets him out of
school, allowing him to lie around the house sleeping all day, and
to pursue his own interests at night.
All this odd behavior is usually put down to peculiarities in
Lovecraft's character, but I'm starting to think from my researches
that some of it can be set down to Lovecraft having being a rich kid
who was spoiled rotten, and then found himself no longer rich. He
continued to give himself airs, but they were ridiculous
affectations, and people naturally laughed at him. This made him
self-conscious and caused him to withdraw.
Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
Anyway, I've rambled enough for one post.
-Al-
Evans
This is not meant as a criticism but you know that this may very well
descend into a “what was Lovecraft's sexuality thread” now don't you.
With the class issues its important to remember that money wasn't
everything – a large part yes but there was more too it than that.
Ii wasn't just a matter of the money but the history involved. Like
nobility and that sort of thing. I don't think Lovecraft would have
been alone in thinking (particularly in the pre war years) that a less
well off Philips should command more respect than a far, far richer
family of newcomers. Decayed gentry but still gentry.
I may be wrong in saying this but from the Letters I got the
impression that the family started losing money and had to let a
number of servants go. It was just Lovecraft and his family. (I really
ought to buy Joshi's biography)
Al Smith
>
> With the class issues its important to remember that money wasn't
> Ii wasn't just a matter of the money but the history involved. Like
> nobility and that sort of thing. I don't think Lovecraft would have
> been alone in thinking (particularly in the pre war years) that a less
> well off Philips should command more respect than a far, far richer
> family of newcomers. Decayed gentry but still gentry.
>
> I may be wrong in saying this but from the Letters I got the
> impression that the family started losing money and had to let a
> number of servants go. It was just Lovecraft and his family. (I really
> ought to buy Joshi's biography)
Yes, you are correct, the poverty didn't come on them all at once,
but began with the selling of the carriages and the closing of the
stables. Servants were let go. The death of old Whipple was just the
final nail in the coffin. Lovecraft and his mother got only a few
thousand dollars in the will.
Impoverished gentility could put on airs, but they were not given as
much deference or respect as rich gentility. Lovecraft quickly went
from being the pampered heir of a wealthy industrialist to being
just another relatively poor kid with no father.
However, he remained convinced that his heritage was more noble and
pure than that of his Jewish, Irish or Polish school friends. They
must have resented his pomposity and presumption of superiority -- I
can't see how anyone could not have resented it. Lovecraft's efforts
to condescend would have been accepted where advantageous, but would
not have gained him much other than contempt.
-Al-
Dan Clore
> On Jun 9, 10:04 pm, Al Smith <inva...@address.com> wrote:
> I recall there was a Crypt of Cthulhu article called "Did Lovecraft
> have Syphilis" that might deal with those issuses in greater depth. I
> haven't actualy seen the article so I can't comment futher.
The fact's are: we don't have the results of a test for syphilis, and
the term used "general paresis" was also used for some other medical
conditions.
Bottom line: We *don't know* whether HPL's father had syphilis or
another disease.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Dan Clore
> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
> mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
> to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
> school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
> that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
> habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
> were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
> which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
> Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
I've examined HPL's personal copy of the Necronomicon many times* and
judging from certain stains, I feel certain that we know what he used to
stimulate his erotic imagination--
*No, it is not available for examination by others.
Al Smith
> Al Smith wrote:
>
>> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
>> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
>> mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
>> to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
>> school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
>> that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
>> habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
>> were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night, which
>> he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course Lovecraft
>> never wrote about the practice.
>
> I've examined HPL's personal copy of the Necronomicon many times* and
> judging from certain stains, I feel certain that we know what he used to
> stimulate his erotic imagination--
>
> *No, it is not available for examination by others.
>
I suspect it was more likely the Sears catalog that Lovecraft used
to unlease his unbridled, hellish lusts. :-)
No, nobody can be certain Lovecraft's father had syphilis, but it
seems very likely. It was a common disease of the day, and the
symptoms and their duration correspond to what might be expected of
syphilis. I believe Joshi says it was syphilis, and since Joshi is
God, that pretty much closes the discussion.
"Lovecraft's father had died in 1898 of syphilis ..."
(The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, p. viii of the
Intro.)
-Al-
Evans
> Al Smith wrote:
> > Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
> > masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
> > mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
> > to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
> > school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
> > that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
> > habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
> > were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
> > which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
> > Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
>
> I've examined HPL's personal copy of the Necronomicon many times* and
> judging from certain stains, I feel certain that we know what he used to
> stimulate his erotic imagination--
>
> *No, it is not available for examination by others.
>
> --
> Dan Clore
>
> My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
> (Wait for the new edition:http://hplmythos.com/)
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
> immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
> -- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
This is going to sound a strange question but does syphilis leave an
evidance of itself on bone structure? I'm not actuely suggesting
exhuming the elder Lovecraft's remains (he may have been cremated for
all I know) but who long after death is it possible to tell?
Dan Clore
> On Jun 11, 2:00 am, Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
>> Al Smith wrote:
>>> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
>>> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
>>> mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical
>>> consequences to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated
>>> around among school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft
>>> convinced himself that he was suffering from some of the ill
>>> effects of that forbidden habit. The five years he spent lying
>>> around all day in his bathrobe were prime years for him to have
>>> been whacking off every night, which he no doubt did, since it is
>>> a universal practice. Of course Lovecraft never wrote about the
>>> practice.
>> I've examined HPL's personal copy of the Necronomicon many times*
>> and judging from certain stains, I feel certain that we know what
>> he used to stimulate his erotic imagination--
>>
>> *No, it is not available for examination by others.
> This is going to sound a strange question but does syphilis leave an
> evidance of itself on bone structure? I'm not actuely suggesting
> exhuming the elder Lovecraft's remains (he may have been cremated for
> all I know) but who long after death is it possible to tell?
I have no idea.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
icarp...@aol.com
phases. The acute chancre starts as a single painless bump, almost
always on the penis in heterosexual men. This can become ulcerated
with a catilaginous feeling base; there may be associated painless
swoleen lymph nodes in the groin. Usually it occurs 3-4 weeks after
exposure, and resolves without treatment in 1-2 months. 4-10 weeks
later, secondary syphilis manifests, which is when the causatuve
spirochete becomes a systemic infection. While it may have many
presentations, typically there are constitutional symptoms like fever,
malaiase, aches and pains and a rash. The rash lesions are initially
small clear vesicles but become flat and painless, distributed rather
symmetrically on the trunk and upper limbs. They are highly
contagious. In fact syphilis was known as the great pox (based on the
size of the macules) to distunguish it from small pox. Most often,
again in this phase, the signs remit with no treatment. After thhus
the unefection becomes latent. Not quite half of syphilis cases then
eventually develop signs of tertiary syphilis, which can be fatal. In
fact the manifestations of tertiary syphilis are so protean that when
it was more common, syphilis was known as the great imitator. While
two famous manifestations are aortitis and neurosyphilis (I think this
is what Al Capone died of), the syphilitic lesion that might be seen
in the bone is called the gumma. Gummas are local accumulations of
inflammatory tissue that can become quite large in the skin, bone or
soft tissues. These gummas can destroy the tissue they occur in. In
fact there is a literature on ancient skeletons with evidence of
destructive gummas, including a case of claimed gummas in a
Pleistocene bear (no comments about going bare please!). All this is
a round about way of saying that if the elder Lovecraft were exhumed,
based on complete radiographs of the skeleton and examination of the
skin by a knowledgable pathologist, you might be able to decide if he
had suffered from tertiary syphilis.
On the other hand I find such speculation about as enlightening as the
claims that Beethoven went deaf from Paget's disease, while an autopsy
would likely only show he was, ahem, decomposing.
Matt
Mark W
"Al Smith" <inv...@address.com> wrote in message
news:h0mfe3$35k$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> I'm getting the impression, more from what is not written about him than
> from what is written, that Lovecraft's father was looked upon by the
> Phillips family as a bit of a black sheep.
>
Ia! The Black Sheep of the Woods! That'll be Lovecraft's Daddy, then.
Al Smith
> On Jun 11, 2:00 am, Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
>> Al Smith wrote:
>>> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
>>> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
>>> mentioned. There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
>>> to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
>>> school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
>>> that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
>>> habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
>>> were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
>>> which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
>>> Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
>> I've examined HPL's personal copy of the Necronomicon many times* and
>> judging from certain stains, I feel certain that we know what he used to
>> stimulate his erotic imagination--
>>
>> *No, it is not available for examination by others.
>>
>> --
>> Dan Clore
>>
>> My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
>> (Wait for the new edition:http://hplmythos.com/)
>> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>>
>> Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
>> immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
>> -- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
>
> This is going to sound a strange question but does syphilis leave an
> evidance of itself on bone structure? I'm not actuely suggesting
> exhuming the elder Lovecraft's remains (he may have been cremated for
> all I know) but who long after death is it possible to tell?
It might be possible to tell, but then again it might not, so
exhuming the bones could prove conclusive, or inconclusive. I ran
across an image of a plaster cast made of a man's face who had
suffered from advanced syphilis, and it is seriously deformed. If
the elder Lovecraft suffered in a way such as that before the end,
his bones might have a story to tell.
It is suggestive that Lovecraft was never taken into the hospital to
see his father (so far as I know). One would think this would have
occurred, even if his father lay in a coma. But if the father was
raving and violent, as he might be were his brain damaged from
syphilis, no wonder the boy was kept from his presence.
-Al-
Al Smith
In the Phillips family, the standards for in-laws must have been
pretty exacting, and I doubt Winfield Lovecraft met those standards.
I can just hear Whipple talking to his daughter, Suzie: "You what?
You want to marry a blacksmith? Are you insane, girl?"
-Al-
Blackwingbear
> Allso the Syphilis point all ways made me wonder about the state of
> Lovecraft snr's relationship with his wife since we know that she
> never contracted the disease.
They only had sexual-relations ONCE.
Blackwingbear
> This is going to sound a strange question but does syphilis leave an
> evidance of itself on bone structure? I'm not actuely suggesting
> exhuming the elder Lovecraft's remains (he may have been cremated for
> all I know) but who long after death is it possible to tell?
The evidence can be found in brain tissue - of which we have none
Blackwingbear
> Ia! The Black Sheep of the Woods! That'll be Lovecraft's Daddy, then.
Errr, Black GOAT.
Blackwingbear
Plus, he was a repressed homosexual.
Evans
> The evidence can be found in brain tissue - of which we have none
Ahhh but if it got to a really advanced stage then there might be
evidence in the skeleton. Grave robbing trip anyone? (My only
knowledge of the pathology of syphilis comes from watching a series
of programs on the history of Venice so I vote I'm excused from
attending any exhumations)
Joking aside I wonder if Joshi's biography has any more information
regarding Lovecraft the elder and his death.
Yes the Ram with a Thousand Ewes.
On Jun 11, 8:38 pm, Blackwingbear <blackwingb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 9, 3:45 pm, Evans <dark.jira...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Allso the Syphilis point all ways made me wonder about the state of
> > Lovecraft snr's relationship with his wife since we know that she
> > never contracted the disease.
>
> They only had sexual-relations ONCE.
I shudder at the percentages required to successfully conceive a child
and avoiding catching the disease all in one outing.
Al Smith
How do you know this? Did Lovecraft's mother confide this to
someone? I haven't run across this reference yet.
-Al-
Blackwingbear
> How do you know this? Did Lovecraft's mother confide this to
> someone? I haven't run across this reference yet.
>
> -Al-
Lovecraft did not speak of it - and I doubt he told his aunts, or that
they would even comprehend it... (I have to assume that you understand
he was indeed fully grown at this point and married ... and not living
with his mother). Rather, his ex-wife once revealed it, after calling
the interviewer crude for asking. She made a remark about it being a
bit tiresome and uncomfortable for both. She never had a bad word to
say about him, otherwise.
Al Smith
Interesting. But I see we're talking at cross purposes -- I thought
you were referring to Lovecraft's father.
I haven't yet read that interview with Soina Greene, but I'm eager
to read it, if it exists anywhere on the Internet.
-Al-
Magister
> I haven't yet read that interview with Soina Greene, but I'm eager
> to read it, if it exists anywhere on the Internet.
>
It doesn't.
Al Smith
Well rat-e-tat-tat. Now the entire "happy" of my day has turned to
"yppah."
-Al-
TJ
On Jun 10, 3:00 pm, Al Smith <inva...@address.com> wrote:
> On 6/10/2009 1:25 PM, Evans wrote:
>
>
> > On Jun 10, 4:31 am, Al Smith <inva...@address.com> wrote:
> >> On 6/9/2009 6:45 PM, Evans wrote:
>
> >>> On Jun 9, 10:04 pm, Al Smith <inva...@address.com> wrote:
> >>>> I'm getting the impression, more from what is not written about him
> >>>> than from what is written, that Lovecraft's father was looked upon
> >>>> by the Phillips family as a bit of a black sheep.
> >>>> He worked for a time as a blacksmith. He was, when he married Suzie
> >>>> Phillips, a traveling salesman ... not exactly professions likely to
> >>>> have impressed the old industrialist Whipple Phillips. He was
> >>>> married to Suzie at Boston, not at Providence. He immediately moved
> >>>> his new family away from Providence, to Auburndale, Massachusetts.
> >>>> Then there's the little fact of his dying of syphilis. We may
> >>>> presume that he picked it up from a prostitute, and that she was not
> >>>> the first prostitute he had had sex with (it would have been very
> >>>> bad luck to pick up syphilis from the first prostitute he ever
> >>>> knew). The obvious inference -- every time he left his wife for a
> >>>> different town, he was whoring around.
> >>>> It looks to me as if old Winfield Scott Lovecraft was a bad egg, in
> >>>> spite of the high regard Lovecraft himself always had for his
> >>>> father's English heritage.
> >>>> -Al-
Correct on the father - at least I've seen scholarship that said as
much a long time ago - probably from Everts. I never read Joshi's
book.
> >>> I recall there was a Crypt of Cthulhu article called "Did Lovecraft
> >>> have Syphilis" that might deal with those issuses in greater depth. I
> >>> haven't actualy seen the article so I can't comment futher.
> >>> Allso the Syphilis point all ways made me wonder about the state of
> >>> Lovecraft snr's relationship with his wife since we know that she
> >>> never contracted the disease.
If he had it and had sex with her - she'd have gotten it - and so
would any child she conceived.
http://www.cdc.gov/STD/Syphilis/STDFact-Syphilis.htm#symptoms
or
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/syphilis/article_em.htm
> >> Good point, maybe Susie Phillips was frigid. Maybe that drove
> >> Lovecraft's father to seek out prostitutes. However, it seems not
> >> unlikely that he got the disease before he married her. I was
> >> glancing at a few pages about syphilis, and it takes anywhere from
> >> one year to ten years for the onset of madness -- it is very
> >> unpredictable, because the disease attacks different parts of the
> >> body at different times.
See above info from CDC and other medical sources.
>
> >> It's an interesting relationship that I'm just digging into. It's
> >> surprising that more biographers on Lovecraft haven't treated the
> >> Phillips family, and Lovecraft himself, from the perspective that
> >> they were a bunch of snobs ... which they undoubtedly were.
Casey did in a "Cthulhu Cultus" issue where she pretty much trashed
HPL for writing some guffaw ending on what was a beauticul love poem -
Unda, Bride of the Sea. This is exactly how she saw him and his
family. I never really gave it much thought since I don't give a hang
about WHO wrote something. Same with music. If I like it - I like
it. I don't care who wrote it or who sings it. Same with actors.
eg, Captain Kirk is Kirk - I don't give a hang about Shatner or his
life - likewise Nimoy. I know that the actual person is NOT the
character. I'd rather not know a thing about the actual person.
No
> >> wonder it was such a shock to Lovecraft when the family mansion had
> >> to be sold -- it forced him to descend to the level of the "little
> >> people." No more money for private tutors, so he had to go to
> >> school, which he hated, because he couldn't order the teachers and
> >> other students around like servants.
> >> -Al-
Heh, well - YEAH. That's what Casey surmised loud and clear. Her
people were Scottish Highlanders with not much fondness for Brits or
wannabe Brits - or - Anglos. The only thing I ever noticed about such
people is that they don't seem to have a culture of any kind.
Nothing. No wonder THEY were the primary ones that went all nuts in
the 1960s and trashed their own families, their own mothers, their own
culture. I found it VERY strange. I did NOT find it strange that
others, like Jews, were critiqueing all of it. That seemed normal.
It's how OTHERS saw the wasp establishment. But people trashing their
OWN thing and now, pretty much laying down like beaten dogs - that was
and is imo, NUTS.
>
> > Sorry for the post cutting, it just makes it easyer to respond to
> > certain bits. In regards to the Syphilis issuse do you know how easy
> > it is to transmit? If Lovecraft snr had it before his marriage
> > wouldn't there have been quite a highlikely hood of him passing it on
> > to his wife?
YES - and it's very easy to transmit. There wasn't any penicillin
back then, I don't think.
>
> > As to the perceived snobbery of the Phillips family I agree but I
> > would have thought 1890s New England would have still been a very
> > class driven society. Like with the racism issuse I suspect it would
> > have been more unusual should they not have acted in that manner.
>
> On the syphilis question, I'm not a doctor. From what I've read, it
> has three stages or eruptions in the body, and can take many years
> to kill a person. It attacks different parts of the body at
> different times, so its symptoms can be unpredictable. Madness can
> come (as I gather) from one to ten years after infection -- so good
> luck any Lovecraft scholar ever pinning down when Lovecraft's father
> was infected.
That would be a good thing to know.
>
> Lovecraft's mother lived for many years after her husband was
> committed to Butler Hospital in Providence in 1893. She was herself
> committed to the same hospital in 1919 suffering from a nervous
> breakdown. That's a passage of 26 years -- that makes it seem less
> likely that she contracted the disease from her husband. It probably
> would have shown up sooner. It's a nasty disease.
>
> Yes, I agree the snobbery of the Phillips does not seem to have been
> excessive or unusual for the period. However, it's a side of
> Lovecraft that seems to be overlooked in his biographies, and which
> helps to explain a few things in his life.
Yup. I told you, imo, he was not some strange and hated kid. He was
priveleged in a sense. Even when he was POOR - compared to what was
out there int he USA - he was not hardly poor, Al. He ATE, had a roof
over his head - never really wanted for anything.
>
> Remember, we have Lovecraft's life history largely from his own
> account, scattered through his letters, and he would not have seen
> himself as a snob. Just the opposite, he saw himself (when a young
> man) as a "social reformer" reaching down to help the unwashed
> masses up from their squalor.
Except that at laest in his fiction (the non mythos and mythos) he
really kinda hated those Italians and other not-exactly-all-white
types (HI THERE). And? So what? He wrote that INTO the stories tho
- and it was sort of as-given that this was "the view" and it was
quite normal. Just as it was normal for the KKK to burn a cross in
front of my hubbie's grandad's house in the 30s or 40s.
>
> But here is a boy who is the only child in an enormous mansion, with
> adults doting on him, and servants ready to do his every whim. He
> decides he is too smart for his teachers and argues with them -- he
> doesn't like the discipline they impose. Well, no wonder, since the
> little wretch has been allowed to do whatever he wanted all his
> life, and to get away with bloody murder. He decides he doesn't want
> to go to school, or to Sunday school, largely as it seems to me
> because he didn't like being told what to do. He can get away with
> this because his grandfather is rich and can hire private tutors for
> him.
>
> Then, all of a sudden, his grandfather dies, and the Phillips family
> find out they aren't so high and mighty after all. The old mansion
> is too expensive, so they move to a smaller house. For most kids
> this would be no big deal but Lovecraft is so used to getting his
> own way in everything, it induces trauma in his psyche. He is forced
> to go to school because private tutors cost too much and can no
> longer be afforded. Naturally, the little egoist has a hard time --
> he finds he can no longer tell his teachers and the other children
> what to do. He isn't the rich kid in the mansion any more. So he has
> another of his periodic nervous breakdowns,which gets him out of
> school, allowing him to lie around the house sleeping all day, and
> to pursue his own interests at night.
>
> All this odd behavior is usually put down to peculiarities in
> Lovecraft's character,
Casey and Wayne (who was this himself and knew it openly) called it
Little Lord Fauntleroy. My my, you are the ONLY person who's not
ethnic (or hangs with only ethnics as Wayne did) that figured this all
out! Congrats.
but I'm starting to think from my researches
> that some of it can be set down to Lovecraft having being a rich kid
> who was spoiled rotten, and then found himself no longer rich. He
> continued to give himself airs, but they were ridiculous
> affectations, and people naturally laughed at him. This made him
> self-conscious and caused him to withdraw.
Well, part of the airs is that kind of super polite etiquette they do
- no matter what they really might feel about someone.
>
> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
> mentioned.
Uh, not mentioned amongst whom? OH - THEM :) Not anyone else anyone
I ever knew, knew was shy of mentioning that and a heap of other
stuff. Cultural differences.
There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
> to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
> school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
> that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
> habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
> were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
> which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
> Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
>
> Anyway, I've rambled enough for one post.
The thing is - the people writing about HPL want to make him into a
"great writer of the 20th century" and so forth. They have a mission
and are quite zealous about it. For me, the stories I like I like - I
could care less if the writer is a hack or not. I WILL say that I do
see a really big difference between HPL and well - Anne Rice? BIG
difference. Imo - she IS a great writer.
>
> -Al--
TJ
essay on HPL visiting his father in the hospital - and what HPL saw.
> -Al-- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
TJ
I doubt that. He may have had a very low sex drive.
TJ
Nobody knows how many times he has sex with his wife - come on! He
probably got the disease after he was married.
TJ
About HPL, not his father, Sonia said he was an adequate lover.
Period. I'll bet money he had a low sex drive.
> -Al-
Al Smith
I'm going to cut some stuff because the thread is getting long. I'll
respond selectively.
>>>> It's an interesting relationship that I'm just digging into. It's
>>>> surprising that more biographers on Lovecraft haven't treated the
>>>> Phillips family, and Lovecraft himself, from the perspective that
>>>> they were a bunch of snobs ... which they undoubtedly were.
>
> Casey did in a "Cthulhu Cultus" issue where she pretty much trashed
> HPL for writing some guffaw ending on what was a beauticul love poem -
> Unda, Bride of the Sea. This is exactly how she saw him and his
> family. I never really gave it much thought since I don't give a hang
> about WHO wrote something. Same with music. If I like it - I like
> it. I don't care who wrote it or who sings it. Same with actors.
> eg, Captain Kirk is Kirk - I don't give a hang about Shatner or his
> life - likewise Nimoy. I know that the actual person is NOT the
> character. I'd rather not know a thing about the actual person.
>
That's a healthy attitude -- I've never really understood why Jews
in Israel still refuse to listen to Wagner, merely because he
expressed anti-Jewish sentiments from time to time. Maybe they also
refuse to read Lovecraft, although his best friend was a Jews and he
married a Jewess, so how deep can his prejudice against Jews really
have been?
Anyway, I am interested in Lovecraft's life, and am trying to sort
out some of the puzzles that don't seem to have been well addressed,
such as his breakdowns, his five-year funk, his class attitude, his
sexual hangups. That's why I refer to this stuff -- it's on my mind.
> No
>>>> wonder it was such a shock to Lovecraft when the family mansion had
>>>> to be sold -- it forced him to descend to the level of the "little
>>>> people." No more money for private tutors, so he had to go to
>>>> school, which he hated, because he couldn't order the teachers and
>>>> other students around like servants.
>>>> -Al-
>
> Heh, well - YEAH. That's what Casey surmised loud and clear. Her
> people were Scottish Highlanders with not much fondness for Brits or
> wannabe Brits - or - Anglos. The only thing I ever noticed about such
> people is that they don't seem to have a culture of any kind.
> Nothing. No wonder THEY were the primary ones that went all nuts in
> the 1960s and trashed their own families, their own mothers, their own
> culture. I found it VERY strange. I did NOT find it strange that
> others, like Jews, were critiqueing all of it. That seemed normal.
> It's how OTHERS saw the wasp establishment. But people trashing their
> OWN thing and now, pretty much laying down like beaten dogs - that was
> and is imo, NUTS.
I know exactly what you refer to. The impulse of the British to
trash their own Empire, which was one of the greatest forces for
progress the world has ever seen, and the more general tendency of
white Europeans to denigrate and sneer at their own cultural
achievements and beliefs, is pathological, a kind of cultural
sickness. How much of it is driven by the Jewish control of the
Western media is interesting to ponder. But even leaving aside this
external factor, there seems to be some self-destructive urge in the
white European (I include the whites of the colonies, such as the
United States, Canada, Australia, and so on, since they are all of
European descent).
>>> Sorry for the post cutting, it just makes it easyer to respond to
>>> certain bits. In regards to the Syphilis issuse do you know how easy
>>> it is to transmit? If Lovecraft snr had it before his marriage
>>> wouldn't there have been quite a highlikely hood of him passing it on
>>> to his wife?
>
> YES - and it's very easy to transmit. There wasn't any penicillin
> back then, I don't think.
They had some kind of treatment involving mercury, which was
extremely dangerous, but could -- sometimes -- cure the disease, if
it didn't kill the patient first.
I've been mulling over Lovecraft as a child, and I cannot see how he
could possibly have avoided being mocked, derided and picked on by
other boys. He put on airs, he was funny-looking, he affected
antique verbal expressions, he was a dreamer -- how can such a boy
not have been bullied and picked on unmercifully, if he was placed
in an unsupervised environment with other children? I suspect that
was the reason for the breakdowns that forced his withdrawal from
school at various times. Lovecraft himself, however, makes no
serious references to being bullied, so it would be a difficult
speculation to prove.
> Except that at laest in his fiction (the non mythos and mythos) he
> really kinda hated those Italians and other not-exactly-all-white
> types (HI THERE). And? So what? He wrote that INTO the stories tho
> - and it was sort of as-given that this was "the view" and it was
> quite normal. Just as it was normal for the KKK to burn a cross in
> front of my hubbie's grandad's house in the 30s or 40s.
I don't believe Lovecraft hated anyone. He was just very sensitive,
and other, strange cultures were a harsh shock to him. He couldn't
assimilate them -- they were like sandpaper rubbing up and down his
exposed nerves. I think it would be more accurate to say that
Lovecraft loathed foreigners, rather than hated them. It was a
visceral revulsion for him that made him physically ill. Even so, on
an individual level he was able to overlook it, as when he married
his Jewish wife, and had close Jewish friends.
Thanks, I think. It's a good thing to be ethnic?
Something I wanted to mention about Lovecraft seeing himself as a
social reformer. There is an incident in which he tried to educate a
boy from a lower social strata by, if I remember correctly, taking
him into his house and giving him access to his library. After a
couple of weeks the boy did something that so shocked Lovecraft that
Lovecraft kicked him out of the house and told him never to come
back. Lovecraft said in one of his letters, that he should have
known better than to try to educate such a person, or words to that
effect. I don't know what the boy did -- Lovecraft never said. Do
you know anything about this incident? Was it theft? Or was it some
sort of sexual advance or sexual vulgarity that put Lovecraft off?
> but I'm starting to think from my researches
>> that some of it can be set down to Lovecraft having being a rich kid
>> who was spoiled rotten, and then found himself no longer rich. He
>> continued to give himself airs, but they were ridiculous
>> affectations, and people naturally laughed at him. This made him
>> self-conscious and caused him to withdraw.
>
> Well, part of the airs is that kind of super polite etiquette they do
> - no matter what they really might feel about someone.
>> Some of the withdrawal may have been due to his discovery of
>> masturbation. It was a great taboo in those times -- not even
>> mentioned.
>
> Uh, not mentioned amongst whom? OH - THEM :) Not anyone else anyone
> I ever knew, knew was shy of mentioning that and a heap of other
> stuff. Cultural differences.
Well, remember, we are talking about upperclass society in
Providence, Rhode Island, around the turn of the century. Nobody
talked about sex, not to their children, not to each other. It's a
wonder they even managed to breed more New Englanders.
>
> There were a whole list of horrible physical consequences
>> to masturbation (all of them false) that circulated around among
>> school boys. I wouldn't be surprised if Lovecraft convinced himself
>> that he was suffering from some of the ill effects of that forbidden
>> habit. The five years he spent lying around all day in his bathrobe
>> were prime years for him to have been whacking off every night,
>> which he no doubt did, since it is a universal practice. Of course
>> Lovecraft never wrote about the practice.
>>
>> Anyway, I've rambled enough for one post.
>
> The thing is - the people writing about HPL want to make him into a
> "great writer of the 20th century" and so forth. They have a mission
> and are quite zealous about it. For me, the stories I like I like - I
> could care less if the writer is a hack or not. I WILL say that I do
> see a really big difference between HPL and well - Anne Rice? BIG
> difference. Imo - she IS a great writer.
You think Anne Rice is a greater writer than Lovecraft? Wow. We
really have a difference of opinion on that matter. I've read one
book by Rice. I would have read more but one novel was all I could
stomach. She is trite, in my view, and really not worth reading. I
put her in the same category with Brian Lumley ... not worth the
effort to read. Lovecraft, on the other hand, achieved true
originality in his collective vision, and his work holds up
remarkably well over the span of a century. How many people do you
think will be reading Anne Rice in a hundred years? Not as many as
are reading Lovecraft, I'll bet.
-Al-
Al Smith
> I can't recall the author or article right now - but someone wrote an
> essay on HPL visiting his father in the hospital - and what HPL saw.
>
I wonder if it was a fiction scene, or did Lovecraft actually see
his father in the hospital? I was gathering from my reading that he
never entered the hospital, but I may just not have run across a
reference to this visit.
-Al-
Al Smith
Lovecraft's sex drive, at least as an adult, seems to have been
repressed, but I doubt it was homosexuality that was repressed --
more likely his hetrosexual drive was repressed.
-Al-
Al Smith
She said something that I find delightfully odd, because it is so
ambiguous. She said Lovecraft was an "adequately excellent lover."
Can you beat that? Adequately excellent. I laugh every time I read it.
Her own experience of sex cannot have been huge, but it was miles
ahead of Lovecraft's experience. Who knows what Mr. Greene did in
bed? It might have been a case of hop - humpa - humpa - humpa -
aaaarh! - zzzzzzzzzzzz. In which case, if Lovecraft was able to do
much of anything, he would have seemed in her eyes at least
adequate. Then again, she was writing about him after many years of
life, and a third marriage, so her basis for comparison had expanded
beyond what she possessed at the time of her marriage to Lovecraft.
But on the other hand, she was remembering him in the glow of hindsight.
-Al-
TJ
On Jun 18, 1:33 am, Al Smith <inva...@address.com> wrote:
> On 6/17/2009 10:05 PM, TJ wrote:
>
Re: knowing who wrote or sang something, who an actor really is,
etc.
I know that the actual person is NOT the
> > character. I'd rather not know a thing about the actual person.
>
> That's a healthy attitude -- I've never really understood why Jews
> in Israel still refuse to listen to Wagner, merely because he
> expressed anti-Jewish sentiments from time to time. Maybe they also
> refuse to read Lovecraft, although his best friend was a Jews and he
> married a Jewess, so how deep can his prejudice against Jews really
> have been?
Well, Jews screwed Wagner over major big time - which caused him to
DEVELOP an anti Jewish attitude. There is never just the effect.
Wagner or someone wrote an essay detailing that. I read it, but
forgot the title (sorry). There is also the cause. Theodor Herzl
himself said as much - and said it strongly - VERY strongly. From my
"outside it all" way of seeing it - the place was dominated by Anglos
who were always in cahoots with Power Jews. That's how we saw it.
Perhaps because that is the way it was? LOL. Yeah, they DID get
along, no matter what they felt about it. They dealt with each other
very profitably. At least Main St Jews didn't act like Power Jews -
but Main Street Angoos tried to act like aristocracy - and it was
worthy of mockery to most - but not to all. Somne ethnics tried to
get "in" with people like that.
>
> Anyway, I am interested in Lovecraft's life, and am trying to sort
> out some of the puzzles that don't seem to have been well addressed,
> such as his breakdowns, his five-year funk, his class attitude, his
> sexual hangups. That's why I refer to this stuff -- it's on my mind.
I think HPL was an older version of Wayne Hill. Heh, ooops, you'd
have to have known Wayne to know what I mean. We knew him. And he
was sort of an HPL dead ringer in appearance (and girls LIKED his
looks!) - except Wayne was platinum blond. Low sex drive too - very
very low - but when he did the deed - girls that talked said WOW - and
he was BIG. So. But very low drive. Sex was just not
"entertainment" for him (hmm, nor was it ever for us). From how we
all saw it - and how Wayne himself saw it - there was something
definitely wrong with him socially (NOT sexually) - he was unable to
speak from the heart - to express feelings - like alexithemia or even
anosognosia as Damasio called it (that's a neurologist). They seem to
have this "polite etiquitte" thing going. They seem to have like
"English butler" behavior - and Damasio called it that. There seems
to be something missing, like some kind of inner compass or balancing
factor. An example would be their view of Negroes. First they see
them as "OBVIOUSLY not human." Even the obsolete piece of paper they
worship has them as 3/5 a person. And next, they act as if Negroes
are the latest newest gods to be worshiped and bowed down to. They
never ever seem to grasp the affect this has on EVERYONE ELSE caught
outside these messes they make - if we happen to live in the same
place.
I see it right now. Heaps of them, Anglos - all evangelical loons woe
is meeing about the stock crash and such, OH it must be the end of the
world, end times - but unaware that due to their actions worldwide -
people have BEEN in "end times hell" for decades and never once did
they think the world was ending. They seem to worship shit that just
doesn't work - and it doesn't work over and over and over again! Of
course, they ALL see themselves as "socially correct" or reformers.
They go overboard - there is NEVER a medium or balance.
There's something wrong with them. They are NOT like everyone else!
That's the truth.
Class had nothing to do with money. It had to do with ANCESTRY.
Sure, HPL saw himself as he saw himself - and his biographers like him
- so? Figure it out. Read a biographer that does NOT like him - are
there any? You have it summed up pretty well.
>
> > Heh, well - YEAH. That's what Casey surmised loud and clear. Her
> > people were Scottish Highlanders with not much fondness for Brits or
> > wannabe Brits - or - Anglos. The only thing I ever noticed about such
> > people is that they don't seem to have a culture of any kind.
> > Nothing. No wonder THEY were the primary ones that went all nuts in
> > the 1960s and trashed their own families, their own mothers, their own
> > culture. I found it VERY strange. I did NOT find it strange that
> > others, like Jews, were critiqueing all of it. That seemed normal.
> > It's how OTHERS saw the wasp establishment. But people trashing their
> > OWN thing and now, pretty much laying down like beaten dogs - that was
> > and is imo, NUTS.
>
> I know exactly what you refer to. The impulse of the British to
> trash their own Empire, which was one of the greatest forces for
> progress the world has ever seen, and the more general tendency of
> white Europeans to denigrate and sneer at their own cultural
> achievements and beliefs, is pathological, a kind of cultural
> sickness.
The Europeans do not really do that. The Brits DO. The Europeans
don't really have much freedom of speech to say otherwise - except
face to face where nobody dangerous can hear them. There is another
way to see the Brit Empire as other than a force for progress. They
should have butt out of other people's cultures and business. The
world would have been a better place, had they done that. Read
"Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War" by Pat Buchanan. It's
excellent and accurate. There is a site up somewhere where people can
write in to get reparations from the Brits due to the damage they did
- and the damage that has resulted from things they did. Sorry,
didn't keep the url for it.
How much of it is driven by the Jewish control of the
> Western media is interesting to ponder.
Uh - nothing to ponder. ALL of it is driven by that. ALL. Every
single bit of it. The BNP, for example, is illegal! NO free speech
for them!
But even leaving aside this
> external factor, there seems to be some self-destructive urge in the
> white European (I include the whites of the colonies, such as the
> United States, Canada, Australia, and so on, since they are all of
> European descent).
I don't see that as all the same thing "European." Italians do not
have this tendency. E. Europeans don't have it. Germans don't either
if you ever TALK to one that trusts you (I do - to a great many of
them that vacation here). Also, people who have not experienced some
of the HELLS of certain types of diversity have no clue why people
might hate it - or why it harms children as even a liberal scientists
had to admit. One writer from India had no problem spelling it out,
and neither do I. Note - a writer from India and me - we're non-
whites. The Europeans are a thoroughly beaten people who no longer
have free speech in their own countries - and it's ALL due to the
Hitler thing. ALL of it.
>
> >>> Sorry for the post cutting, it just makes it easyer to respond to
> >>> certain bits. In regards to the Syphilis issuse do you know how easy
> >>> it is to transmit? If Lovecraft snr had it before his marriage
> >>> wouldn't there have been quite a highlikely hood of him passing it on
> >>> to his wife?
>
> > YES - and it's very easy to transmit. There wasn't any penicillin
> > back then, I don't think.
>
> They had some kind of treatment involving mercury, which was
> extremely dangerous, but could -- sometimes -- cure the disease, if
> it didn't kill the patient first.
I don't think it cured it. He probably got it after the marriage -
she'd never have had sex with a man with sores on his penis! HPL
would have been born with the disease if she did.
>
>
> > Yup. I told you, imo, he was not some strange and hated kid. He was
> > priveleged in a sense. Even when he was POOR - compared to what was
> > out there int he USA - he was not hardly poor, Al. He ATE, had a roof
> > over his head - never really wanted for anything.
> >> Remember, we have Lovecraft's life history largely from his own
> >> account, scattered through his letters, and he would not have seen
> >> himself as a snob. Just the opposite, he saw himself (when a young
> >> man) as a "social reformer" reaching down to help the unwashed
> >> masses up from their squalor.
>
> I've been mulling over Lovecraft as a child, and I cannot see how he
> could possibly have avoided being mocked, derided and picked on by
> other boys. He put on airs, he was funny-looking, he affected
> antique verbal expressions, he was a dreamer -- how can such a boy
> not have been bullied and picked on unmercifully, if he was placed
> in an unsupervised environment with other children?
He was not funny looking at all, not even a little! I have a picture
of a young HPL. He was a CUTE kid - even adorable. I remember buck
toothed kids, really fat kids, deformed kids, etc. - they didn't get
picked on. Picking/bullying was absolutely NOT tolerated even in the
50s. It would have been verbal mockery, face making, sticking tongue
out, perhaps, during lunch or playtime periods at most. He'd simply
look down on those acting that way. Yes, he put on aires - and that
pretty much seems to be WHAT the anglo "culture" was - and nothing
else. No food, no music. Nothing. Just aires. So he puts on a
tantrum and gets his way. Not much of a surprise! I remember kids
that did that - and it only worked just so far until they WERE yanked
from the school (or asked to get out).
I suspect that
> was the reason for the breakdowns that forced his withdrawal from
> school at various times. Lovecraft himself, however, makes no
> serious references to being bullied, so it would be a difficult
> speculation to prove.
He was not bullied. Names and someone making a face - at most -
during playtime or lunch when no teachers could see it. But then,
he'd have his OWN little clique - kids like that always did. No way
bullying. The bully would have been thrown into juvie - and back
then, "youth homes" were JAILS. I remember kids that got thrown into
them for a lot less than bullying someone like pushing a person.
NOBODY hit anyone. HELL no. I clearly remember the "tap dancer" in
school always having a tantrum if she didn't get her spoiled little
way - she'd throw a fit, get sick, wretch (but no vomit - it was all
faked)... His parents were either asked to withdraw him, or he kept
at it until he got his way - i.e., get out of school. It's not hard
to figure out. I might be older than you and remember school when NO
bullying was tolerated, not even talking in class, Al. Forget chewing
gum. YIKES.
>
> > Except that at laest in his fiction (the non mythos and mythos) he
> > really kinda hated those Italians and other not-exactly-all-white
> > types (HI THERE). And? So what? He wrote that INTO the stories tho
> > - and it was sort of as-given that this was "the view" and it was
> > quite normal. Just as it was normal for the KKK to burn a cross in
> > front of my hubbie's grandad's house in the 30s or 40s.
>
> I don't believe Lovecraft hated anyone. He was just very sensitive,
> and other, strange cultures were a harsh shock to him.
Well, hate is a strong word. Loathe is the same thing, just more pent
up. Heh. People like HPL "looked down their noses" at other races.
They all did it, Al. It was unusual even in the 50s to find Anglos
that were NOT like that, even toward Italians/Sicilians. It's the
"you know how THEY are" thing - only nowadays, we get to say "well,
you know how THEY are" and we mean the wasps LOL. Yes, we DO know how
THEY are. We really do.
He couldn't
> assimilate them -- they were like sandpaper rubbing up and down his
> exposed nerves.
That's exactly how HIS people are for us. They grate us the wrong way
- and they STILL grate me the wrong way - every single time. Not just
me. LOTS of ethnics feel the same way. I might say bad shit about
Negroes due to really horrible personal and family and neighborhood
experiences lasting over 20 years. Just like Jews will say really bad
shit about Nazis, even if there were some NICE Nazis. Same thing, Al.
I notice WHO is incapable of grasping that on here, btw. I notice.
I notice WHO is first to call me a name - whereas in person anyone
mocking my raped and beaten stepmother, mugged beloved grandmother,
etc etc etc ad infinitum would get decked out by me fast. THEY are
incapable of empathy - but of course, they have no clue that they are
incapable of it. None. Same old shit. But, big BUT here, the thing
is I do NOT feel that grating toward blacks at all. They do NOT grate
on me AT ALL, I mean one to one. They speak from the heart - like I
do. I know what they MEAN when they say things - and vice versa.
They are concrete, so am I. They say what they mean, mean what they
say. Me too. But the Wasps? They LIVE in a sea of lies! Even
little tiny stupid trivial meaningless lies. I can't freaking stand
them. STILL. People down here always bitch about those "dumb shit mid-
westerners that come here" and yeah, they are ALL wasps, every one of
them. There is just something about them that's very hard to pin
down. They GRATE. Italians called them "ah, merrigan" and others had
names for them too. Everyone knew who THEY were. It's the way it was
- and pretty much STILL IS. I wish to hell Wayne was online - he's
one of them and well, he can't stand his own people or stand the way
HE is so much of the time. He'd explain it - a real horse's mouth.
I think it would be more accurate to say that
> Lovecraft loathed foreigners, rather than hated them. It was a
> visceral revulsion for him that made him physically ill. Even so, on
> an individual level he was able to overlook it, as when he married
> his Jewish wife, and had close Jewish friends.
Al, people who are "ahem, ahem, reserved" their word for it - it means
literally that they are unable to speak from the heart openly (speak
the TRUTH on their own feelings) - they are usually shaken within by
people that are heart-spoken and very blunt, totally in the open. I
see that even today. Something as trivial as lying about "caring"
that someone thinks a bathingsuit is inappropriate. I come along:
"Don't ask me about a bathing suit, I'm the wrong person to ask. I
don't notice crap like that. But stop saying you don't care when you
obviously DO care and DO CARE A LOT. I really don't care - REALLY.
Wear what you want." Of course, she doesn't, not anymore. The
problem with lies like that is that when people that "really don't
care" speak the truth "about not caring" such a vain liar is incapable
of understanding that these people are NOTHING like she is - she DOES
care, a major great deal - but lies about it. It's a MAJOR
communication clash. And this is about something trivial beyond
reason. They are like that about everything. When they meet people
that really DO say what they mean and MEAN what they say - they are
shaken up inwardly. What they "are" is what is threatened with
exposure (they are plastic - nothings, empty), they care about
bullshit, they get flustered and upset by nothingness.
>
>
> >> But here is a boy who is the only child in an enormous mansion, with
> >> adults doting on him, and servants ready to do his every whim. He
> >> decides he is too smart for his teachers and argues with them -- he
> >> doesn't like the discipline they impose. Well, no wonder, since the
> >> little wretch has been allowed to do whatever he wanted all his
> >> life, and to get away with bloody murder. He decides he doesn't want
> >> to go to school, or to Sunday school, largely as it seems to me
> >> because he didn't like being told what to do. He can get away with
> >> this because his grandfather is rich and can hire private tutors for
> >> him.
Understand that this situation was expected, as-given, the natural
order of things :)
>
> >> Then, all of a sudden, his grandfather dies, and the Phillips family
> >> find out they aren't so high and mighty after all. The old mansion
> >> is too expensive, so they move to a smaller house. For most kids
> >> this would be no big deal but Lovecraft is so used to getting his
> >> own way in everything, it induces trauma in his psyche.
No. Resentment. Not trauma. Trauma is way too strong. It would be
resentment. I'm BETTER than this ptewy, look at this chair, ptewy,
etc. This dining area is not quite up to par, ptewy.
He is forced
> >> to go to school because private tutors cost too much and can no
> >> longer be afforded. Naturally, the little egoist has a hard time --
> >> he finds he can no longer tell his teachers and the other children
> >> what to do. He isn't the rich kid in the mansion any more. So he has
> >> another of his periodic nervous breakdowns,which gets him out of
> >> school, allowing him to lie around the house sleeping all day, and
> >> to pursue his own interests at night.
>
> >> All this odd behavior is usually put down to peculiarities in
> >> Lovecraft's character,
>
> > Casey and Wayne (who was this himself and knew it openly) called it
> > Little Lord Fauntleroy. My my, you are the ONLY person who's not
> > ethnic (or hangs with only ethnics as Wayne did) that figured this all
> > out! Congrats.
>
> Thanks, I think. It's a good thing to be ethnic?
? It's neither good nor bad - it's just that ethics DO and DID notice
this stuff BIG time - and ethnics had a very vibrant culture, for the
most part. When reading about the fortunes HPL's family - and
understand I've read probably one page worth in all my years, I kinda
came to the same conclusion you came to - it was like obvious. Like -
"OH, that."
>
> Something I wanted to mention about Lovecraft seeing himself as a
> social reformer. There is an incident in which he tried to educate a
> boy from a lower social strata by, if I remember correctly, taking
> him into his house and giving him access to his library. After a
> couple of weeks the boy did something that so shocked Lovecraft that
> Lovecraft kicked him out of the house and told him never to come
> back. Lovecraft said in one of his letters, that he should have
> known better than to try to educate such a person, or words to that
> effect. I don't know what the boy did -- Lovecraft never said. Do
> you know anything
>
What happened to the rest of your question? HPL may have himself been
educated by a boy from the "lower stata" like - how to hammer in a
nail? LOL. How to screw in a light bulb? LMAO!! I have no idea
what the boy might have done. Did the boy do it in HPL's house? See
tho - he tried to educate "such a person?" Exactly what did he THINK
he meant? I know what he meant :) Maybe the kid opened the
refrigerator and helped himself to a drink or something? People like
him always saw themselves as "social reformers" as like when they
tried to Anglicize the American Indians by destroying their culture
and cutting off their hair. Yup. It would be nice to LOCATE that boy
now - and ask! The bitcher is, Randy Everts did things exactly like
that, located everyone that ever knew HPL. Had talks with them. If
the kid was Italian - well, Italian history is a very RICH history
that the kid might have already known from family. What did he give
the kid to read? Too much is unknown here. But that's par for the
course, it's an EXAMPLE of what I mean! HPL was TOO SCANTY with
information about something 100% concrete. People like that are
always scanty on details where feelings are concerned. It's as if
they CANNOT speak in that way or convey things properly. Like "a
picture" so we'd know what happened.
You know, Phil and I were talking today about the reams of SHIT
stuffed into the heads of kids in "schools." Unnecessary garbage,
like shit about Henry the VIII or history of whatever whenever or
Richard the Lionhearted blah blah that doesn't DO anything real for
anyone. They need to learn to READ, SPELL, do basic arithmetic (not
learn set theory in 1st grade). They need to learn SKILLS, not that
people today ask me how to "jar" something. Or they throw out
perfectly fixable 50 dollar umbrellas that I take and fix and keep
for free - and they are NOT rich that they can afford to keep buying
these. Basic life skills. THAT is what people need to learn. I
mean, enough with PhDs that can't change a flat tire and don't know
how to jump a car with a dead battery. ENOUGH of that. What they
have in their heads is SHIT. Useless SHIT. Oh, and sure thing, a lot
of aires.
You know, I once told Prof. Burleson that for me, Shakespeare-English
was no different from black English. He UNDERSTOOD what I meant.
Viola!
TJ
I FOUND IT - mentioned in a letter Phil wrote. Here goes it all - and
more. Al - SAVE this!
There is an especially interesting essay from the Fantasy Commentator
that offers an intriguing psychological explanation of how HPL coined
Cthulhu. It is the only biographical article I have ever seen on HPL
that made me (and Tani and one other reader I know) actually weep
(even though Tani says and knows that she does not consider HPL
himself to be someone she would like as a person). It is a very
powerful piece, even if you do not agree with the author's thesis, as
I am not entirely sure I do, though the historical facts are
impressive. The interesting part for a psycholinguist is the author's
theory of HPL's unconscious derivation of Cthulhu from an archaic
Saxon legal term cuth. How HPL could have done this is supported in
the essay by arguments which depend on the theory that HPL was very
deeply and traumatically affected his entire life by having witnessed
- as a child - his father's fatal dementia paralytica or general
paralysis of the insane, a terrible chronic degeneration of the
nervous system resulting in aphasia, personality deterioration,
alternating phases of mania and paralysis, and eventual death. The
idea in the essay is that HPL modeled the entire "Call of Cthulhu" on
his sick father, especially his appearance, who was committed to
Butler Hospital by the Lovecraft family's physician, a Dr. George D.
Wilcox. The Louisiana cultists in the story represent the bouts of his
sick father's mania, which involved wild dancing; the Cthulhu figurine
is modeled on the paralytic posture such patients periodically assume;
the icthyic appearance of Cthulhu's cultists is modeled on a naso-
labial and epidermal condition this disease causes in the afflicted;
the "gibberish" of R'lyehian is modeled on the aphasia this dementia
produces, apparently affecting Wernicke's area of the brain, or other
speech centers; etc. How the name Cthulhu got derived from cuth is an
interesting, but necessarily speculative argument, involving how the
unconscious minds of traumatized people operate in their creative
processes. It has a lot of credence with me however, and the author
could have made even stronger arguments than he did. He did not do so
because he is apparently unaware of a number of theories of the brain
and speech which are coming out today which show that the unconscious
mind has a "ludic" or game-playing, sportive, toying function which
enables or even drives it to play word games in one's sleep, so to
speak, and it does so all the time, drawing upon words, memories,
feelings, etc. which are psychologically buried, i.e. drawing upon a
much vaster storehouse of information than is usually available to the
"conscious" mind. In other words. while few people notice or are
interested in acrostics, the dreaming mind universally is aware of
such things and uses them, even "coding" repressed experiences and
memories in acrostic formulations. In relating Cthulhu to the term
cuth, the author seems unaware, however, of an even more remarkable
term from archaic Anglo-Saxon law which contains a lot of the sounds,
when pronounced, that HPL indicated (in his Selected Letters) Cthulhu
should have: a little known word from the Glossarium Archaiologicum,
couthutlaugh, which means a person who willingly and knowingly
receives an outlaw, and cherishes or conceals him. How these archaic
legal terms could possibly be tied in with HPL's monster from R'lyeh
will only make any sense if you read the essay, which is not apt to be
popular with certain admirers of HPL, like Prof. Dirk Mosig and S. T.
Joshi, who regard HPL as an exemplar of rationality. The essay makes
HPL out to be quite a pathological personality, a theory I cannot
dismiss.
I mentioned Tani's little joke about HPL and the /ng/ phoneme (did he
love someone named Inga?) But more seriously, Tani has pointed out to
me, in the light of the enclosed essay's thesis that the derivation of
Cthulhu has everything to do with HPL's unresolved trauma over his
father's shocking and even disgusting death, that HPL's father's own
name, Wingate, contains the "dread phoneme" /ng/, depending on how it
is pronounced, of course. Also, she noticed that the name Wingate
contains the word wing, related to flying, and the words indicating
"winning" or going in a gate, which is what much of what HPL's fiction
is about. Also, she has indicated, the "Terrible Old Man" has the
notariqon (commonly called "acrostic") form TOM, a name frequently
used for a wayward type, such as Toms-of Bedlam, Tom Thumb, Tom-Tit-
Tot, Tom-Poker (a childhood bugbear or bogey-man), or one Tani
mentioned to me specifically, an "old Tom cat," etc. - representing,
once again, the important subconscious figuring of HPL's father as a
"Dionysian" symbol in his creative process. Like I said, this is a
proper area for psycholinguistics too, but is a difficult and
speculative one, even for someone well-versed in linguistics and
psychology, which I am not.
If you eliminate the 2nd and 3rd letters, the 7th letter, the 9th
letter, and the 11th letter, abd reverse the 10th and 12th letters in
the word COUTHUTLAUGH - it spells Cthulhu. It is a real word, by the
way. It's in Black's Law Dictionary, page 436 - it means "a person
who willingly and knowingly receives an outlaw and cherished or
concealed him. In common law, such a person undergoes the same
punishment as the outlaw (like aiding and abetting).
It's in the essay, "The Call of Cthulhu" : an Analysis, by John
McInnis; Fantasy Commentator, Vol. VII, No.4, Fall, 1992, p. 268-281
TJ
Seems to have been. People didn't usually discuss who they slept
with, Al. In fact, sex is not normally a subject of any convos I have
either. What's to talk about? I find people that talk a lot about it
either ain't getting any or have junk sex and don't really get off.
Anyway..
He may have had a naturally low sex drive. There is nothing wrong
with that. And if he was ill and in pain - well... that's not too
conducive to sex. Sonia said, when she finally DID say something,
that he was a good lover, or adequate. She may not have been used to
people asking questions like that either. I tend to turn convos that
someone might start with me about that into convos about what kind of
coffee they drink - and then I bore the shit out of them with 30
minute detailed convo on how I make my coffee. Some of them "get
it." Wayne's mother (same Wayne referenced above), when asked why she
left him and hated him, told him outright that his father was "shit in
bed." So.. Heh.
Back then, you could find proper etiquette types that NEVER talked
about such matters ahem ahem - that had 13 kids. So. Nobody knows
what HPL did with Sonia - OR how many times - or - WITH SOMEONE ELSE.
You know? Nobody knows. We DO know that HPL and most men back then
would NOT go talking about it in public. He didn't have "sex on the
brain" - which to us, is a BIG indicator that he was satisfied and not
horny for more.
OH - WAIT. If you take the letters LEFT OVER from COUTHUTLAUGH - you
end up with o,u,t,a,g left over - rearrange those letters. GAOTU.
HOLY SHIT - gotta get out the tin foil helmet NOW, LMAO.
TJ
> On 6/17/2009 10:16 PM, TJ wrote:
>
>
> > About HPL, not his father, Sonia said he was an adequate lover.
> > Period. I'll bet money he had a low sex drive.
>
> She said something that I find delightfully odd, because it is so
> ambiguous. She said Lovecraft was an "adequately excellent lover."
> Can you beat that? Adequately excellent. I laugh every time I read it.
Did you expect such a lady to say "HPL was a good fuck?" That's what
Inge said about Wayne, plus comments about his size. Truth to tell -
one would NEVER have expected it from Wayne. And he sure the hell
never wore ANYTHING, not even bathingsuits or underwear, that would
show the size. However, once I saw him when he stayed over - he was
in the tub. OMG. And SOFT - it was OMG. Porn star quality. yes.
But expect this? Nope. He seemed like a sexless person, an ascetic.
AH HA! Inge talked to us ladies - but that was in the 1970s era.
Sonia is not from that era. But this proves you can not tell - and
Wayne wasa a person we knew CLOSE, in person, saw in his pajamas or
undies and went swimming with. We hung out with him when he had date
- or was alone. You'd NEVER expect it. Women would say "he's a
gentleman" meaning - he did NOT take her home from the date and try to
get laid. THEY found it strange. But that was "the norm" for Wayne
and his culture, where he came from. You can't tell - and back then,
there is no way people would speak as I just spoke on here.
You are expecting too much. I know males today even, that would look
down on you for asking questions like that and think you were a cad.
Modern guys, too. There is nothing ambiguous about what Sonia said,
not to my ears. "He was a GOOD FUCK." That's what she said, to
paraphrase.
>
> Her own experience of sex cannot have been huge, but it was miles
> ahead of Lovecraft's experience.
How do you know this? The times?
Who knows what Mr. Greene did in
> bed? It might have been a case of hop - humpa - humpa - humpa -
> aaaarh! - zzzzzzzzzzzz. In which case, if Lovecraft was able to do
> much of anything, he would have seemed in her eyes at least
> adequate. Then again, she was writing about him after many years of
> life, and a third marriage, so her basis for comparison had expanded
> beyond what she possessed at the time of her marriage to Lovecraft.
> But on the other hand, she was remembering him in the glow of hindsight.
Wayne's mother had no problem remembering her ex husband in the glow
of hindsight: shit in bed. You are assuming WAY too much. To my
ears, Sonia said "HPL was a good fuck." Period. Again, I can't
emphasize how UN-sexual Wayne seemed - and we really knew him. The
two were of the same culture, btw. So - the comparison is not null.
Al Smith
Thanks for the reference. I'll read this essay if I can ever find
it. I have to say, though, that its thesis sounds a bit far-fetched
to me. Are we to assume that Lovecraft not only saw his father in
Butler Hospital, but sat and watched him go through all the various
paroxysms common to his affliction? That seems to me to be more than
unlikely. Given the tendency of the time to hide shameful illnesses
from everyone, but especially from children, I'd be surprised to
learn that Lovecraft ever visited his father in the hospital, and
amazed if he was taken to see him more than once, or even permitted
to see him when he was not in a passive condition.
-Al-
TJ
All it would have taken would be one visit - especially a short one -
5 minutes - to imprint the image on his mind. The essay is VERY
detailed with medical info - and how it would literally look. And it
brought me to tears. I posted a paraphrase Phil wrote to someone in a
letter (I saved a lot of those). But it's enough of a paraphrase. 5
minute visit would have been enough - in fact, the shorter the "SIGHT"
of it, the more it would have affected the young mind. Like a shock.
We have the essay somewhere in the house, I think. I'm not sure! But
the paraphrase - and it's now on a website (I emailed you the url) -
is good enough. Plus the info we proviced NOT provided or known to
the original author - about couthutlaugh. Imo - that really clinches
it. It's just TOO much of a coincidence. The mind works that way.
If a person (child) sees something like that in a flash - not long
enough to get accustomed and perhaps understand - it affects the mind
profoundly.
See here:
http://www.satanicreds.org/satanicreds/name-cthulhu.html
It's rewritten as "not a letter" but more an article now.
Sometimes you get skeptical about things where it's really clinched -
or you get doubtful about something that's no big deal, nothing TO
doubt. And please, HPL was a very very cute kid. I have a photo of
him! 100% normal kid - and CUTE. It's also a very good quality
picture.
Al Smith
Sorry, but I see nothing in the information you posted that I find
at all persuasive. Relating various parts of the "Call of Cthulhu"
to various symptoms of dementia paralytica seems to me to be a
pointless intellectual exercise. At best the similarities are random
and imperfect. I see no reason to suppose a connection between the
elder Lovecraft's sickness and the details of Lovecraft's story.
As for the similarities between "Cthulhu" and the word
"couthutlaugh," which is an uncommonly obscure word that I've never
encountered before, all I perceive is a coincidental similarity in
the sounds. There is no reason to suppose these two words are
connected in any way -- or at least, you haven't presented such a
reason. You know, the English language has a million words. If you
search long enough, you can find one that sounds like another.
The manipulation of letters of the word "couthutlaugh" means nothing
-- this kind of letter manipulation can produce whatever the person
doing it is determined to make it produce.
-Al-
Harksen
> See here:
>
> http://www.satanicreds.org/satanicreds/name-cthulhu.html
Seems like mumble-jumble dressed up in intellectual attire.
But perhaps that's just me...
-Henrik
ram...@ramsey-campbell.com
The BNP, for example, is illegal!
Really? Where?
David Riley
No, I don't think it's just you. I share the same impressions too.
David
ram...@ramsey-campbell.com
Wasn't the title "The Terrible Old Man" shown to contain the coded
message "Why Italians Spoil Providence"?
David Riley
Damned clever, that Lovecraft.
David Riley
Of course, I dread to think what coded message "The Doll that Ate His
Mother" contained.
Evans
Judging by some of the Amazon comments “If you still think the
antagonist is a Satanist please reread” would be a good one.
ram...@ramsey-campbell.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Actually, I didn't explain the decoding of the title, did I? TOM
("Terrible Old Man") gives tomtit. Tit leads to tit-willow (from THE
MIKADO). (Lovecraft enthused about Gilbert and Sullivan in a letter to
Cameron Thaddeus Nash, his British correspondent.) Willow leads to
will-o'-the-wisp, and wisp gives us "Why Italians Spoil Providence".
TJ
I heard that in England, the leader can't even speak certain things -
things that everyone here can speak freely. You know - Dave Mitchell
(you probably know him) is also in the UK - tho he moved out of
Londonistan. His experience there seems to be greatly at odds with
things you say - unless perhaps you can't say these things.
TJ
You'd have to read the actual article, not a paraphrase. The
pronounciation of that word is what's curious. It SOUNDS like a
rendition of Cthulhu, when pronounced. Like I said - read the
essay.
HPL had dreams - lots and lots of dreams - and things DO happen in the
mind when a person is dreaming.
>
> -Henrik
David Riley
I would never, ever have got that, Ramsey. It passed, like a breeze,
straight above my head.
Very clever, though.
David
S
: I know exactly what you refer to. The impulse of the British to
: progress the world has ever seen, and the more general tendency of
: white Europeans to denigrate and sneer at their own cultural
: achievements and beliefs, is pathological, a kind of cultural
: sickness. How much of it is driven by the Jewish control of the
: Western media is interesting to ponder.
You're kidding, right?
ram...@ramsey-campbell.com
I believe we discussed Dave Mitchell before - see posting number 56 on
this thread:
I am of course notorious for supporting censorship and for letting
myself be prevented from speaking the truth as I see it.
Magister
No, I concur.
Yrs
Martin
Evans
I agree it sounds a little elaborate - the word couthutlaugh is an
interesting point but I don't think it can be brought up to suggest
anything further. I'm not a great fan of over trying to psychoanalyse
stories for hidden meanings regarding the author myself. (there was
some argument over doing that with M.R James's stories that turned
quite nasty.)
Puppet Master (the artist formerly known as Shrike)
> On Jun 26, 2:45 pm, TJ <t...@post.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 26, 2:56 am, ram...@ramsey-campbell.com wrote:
>
> > > On Jun 24, 11:20 pm, TJ <t...@post.com> wrote:
> > > The BNP, for example, is illegal!
>
> > > Really? Where?
>
> > I heard that in England, the leader can't even speak certain things -
> > things that everyone here can speak freely. You know - Dave Mitchell
> > (you probably know him) is also in the UK - tho he moved out of
> > Londonistan. His experience there seems to be greatly at odds with
> > things you say - unless perhaps you can't say these things.
>
> I believe we discussed Dave Mitchell before - see posting number 56 on
> this thread:
>
>
> I am of course notorious for supporting censorship and for letting
> myself be prevented from speaking the truth as I see it.
Presumably that's why your own message board isn't censored or
moderated.
No, hold on. It is.
CB