That I have been asked to appraise Lovecraft: A Biography by L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday), and Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side by Frank Belknap Long, is an honor which I value. That I know and have a high regard for each author makes this task a pleasure rather than an awkwardness. There is, however, built into my attempt, one problem which derives from the Lovecraft worshipers whose fanaticism HPL's good friend, the late W. Paul Cook, discussed as long ago as 1945, in the fan magazine The Ghost. His apprehensions have proved all too well justified. If, instead of wrangling at conventions and assailing each other in fan-magazine columns, they could set aside juvenile emotionality and permit themselves enrichment from the differences between the two books in question, they would profit.
Long's work is valuable because, with one possible exception, he knew HPL as does no other person. L. Sprague de Camp's work is valuable because he did not, repeat not, know HPL. The two writings complement each other; each is essential to the other.
I spent a total of five days in HPL's company. We met in New Orleans, June 1932, and again in Providence, July Fourth weekend, 1933. This brief experience of the man's charm and presence, his kindness, his good fellowship, his unique personality, has lived with me throughout the forty-three years since our final meeting. My awareness of HPL's unusual qualities was broadened by letter exchanges until the month before his death.
Compared to Harry K. Brobst, who lived in Providence and was HPL's close friend and neighbor from 1932 until the end, and Frank Belknap Long who met HPL five hundred times in the course of about twenty years, my exposure to the man was trifling, yet it enables me to appreciate the difference between a writing about HPL by one who knew him and a biography by one who never met the man.
An HPL worshiper who was not even born until after the Old Master's death reproached me for not having condemned de Camp's book. He could scarcely believe me when I declared that I'd written well of it. Since he had long known me as one who has a deep regard for HPL, he found it inconceivable that I had not petitioned to have de Camp hanged by the toes and flogged to death, at least in effigy, until devotees could seize and settle the culprit.
Long's Dreamer on the Night Side is at once a delight and a sadness in its evocation of that Lovecraft who, after hospitality I described in a memoir which appeared in the book Something About Cats (Arkham House), rode with me in my car "Great Juggernaut" to guide me to the city limits of Providence. He would enjoy the walk back to 66 College Street, he told me: yet this was a courtesy which gave me additional minutes of his company. I like also to believe that he wished to prolong my time as his guest.
I do not recall our words of parting. There lives with me only the final sight of him standing by the roadside, arm raised—good-bye, blessing, and bon voyage.
Each page of Long's book evokes an image of HPL. Long has created for me an image far greater in breadth and depth than memory, yet his splendid amplification has not altered any details. There is at once more Lovecraft, but it is still the same Lovecraft. As I turn the pages, browsing, pausing to savor again this glimpse or that: sometimes HPL face-to-face, or else some long-ago letter-exchange comes to memory, written words which were always an extension of the man himself. Even one who is not a Lovecraft fan would do well indeed to relish that human and affectionate presentation. In writing Dreamer, Long set a new high for himself—though his recent autobiographical sketches for a collection of his stories (The Early Long, Doubleday) are little short of this peak.
Yes, I am indeed biased in Long's favor. Thanks to HPL's having suggested that I ask Long to guide me to Paterson, New Jersey, where I intended to visit a friend, I met that fabulous member of the "Kalem" tong. (And if you want an explanation of what the Kalem Klub was, then I've trapped you: you'll have to read about it in Dreamer on the Night Side.) I remember Long's parents most fondly, and recall their gracious welcome. That friendly hour made me feel as though I had found a new home. And all this was overshadowed by Lovecraft.
Now let's get at L. Sprague de Camp's book, copies of which, it is whispered, have been polluted in unnamable ways, and after obscene and eldritch ritual, burned in the public square by slavering juveniles of all ages.
I value this book because the author, never having been exposed to HPL's charm and mind and presence, has given an objective and thoroughly researched biography such as Long states from the very beginning in Dreamer on the Night Side that he had not intended to write. And I know how earnestly de Camp searched records. Beginning early in 1970 he wrote me many a letter asking for information or asking me to comment on statements gleaned from other sources. These included queries on Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, writers so closely associated with HPL that, though neither ever met him, an understanding of the two was essential to a biographer of de Camp's thorough and conscientious character.
During this exchange, de Camp sent me, with his compliments, his The Ancient Engineers, a valuable reference work I found useful in working up the background for a novel about Lilith. His novels The Arrows of Hercules and The Golden Wind impressed me by their careful and evident research. Although I abstain from mentioning names, all too many fantasy writers are phony as three-dollar bills when they venture into antiquity. Some can't even present the contemporary scene convincingly. De Camp, a full-dress professional writer, considers that his first obligation to readers is to know what he is talking about.
Accordingly, I value de Camp's Lovecraft: A Biography. Yes, it does contain errors. He states that in 1934 I returned to Providence. The only time I was ever in that city was 1933. He states that I was a cavalry officer in World War I. This is not correct: I was a trooper of the 15th Horse in the Philippines and France. Only after the war was I an officer, and in the Coast Artillery Corps.
Despite his earnest efforts, de Camp let other errors intrude. He quotes, in part, from a letter HPL wrote to August Derleth (page 305) in which it appears that HPL had been informed by one of the "circle" that Farnsworth Wright, the long-time editor of Weird Tales Magazine, had "drinking spells." HPL wrote: . . . I feel tempted to unearth a local bootlegger to send Brother Farnsworth a case of synthetic brilliance . . .
I had heard from one of the Lovecraft Circle that Wright was an alcoholic. To that fellow, one who, as far as I know, never knew or even claimed to have met Wright, I gave a detailed history of my association with Wright. At each of the many social events at Wright's home, my home, and at the home of Otis Adelbert Kline, Farnsworth Wright was conspicuously abstemious. At the "victory dinner" when our friend Robert Spencer Carr sold his first novel, Wright was the only sober guest. If for no other reason his health forbade more than an occasional glass. HPL unfortunately taking the word of an uninformed member of the "Circle," wrote to Derleth as he did. De Camp, rightly impressed by HPL's integrity, had not thought of checking with someone who knew Farnsworth Wright.
De Camp is condemned for harping on what he deems HPL's faults, weaknesses, and deficiencies. How much is excessive? From Plutarch on, biographers have "interpreted" their subjects.
In 1940, researching for a historical novel about General Charles George ("Chinese") Gordon and the fall of Khartoun, I gutted two university libraries and the California State Library. One writer of high repute stated that Gordon was "the noblest man since Jesus Christ." Another of equally high stature declared that Gordon was a fanatic, a drunkard, erratic as a soldier, insubordinate, and, except for undeniable talent for commanding "native" troops, a mediocre officer. These were the opinions of contemporaries. I find no such irreconcilable clash between the affectionate presentation by Long and the objective one by de Camp. The latter could scarcely have written other than he did: he went with recorded facts as he found them. His interpretation could be only his own—certainly not mine, nor Long's, nor that of a "Circle" member.
De Camp included almost the entirety of my friendly presentation of HPL. The publishers demanded extensive cutting, probably between a quarter and a third of the final
draft. Only amateurs are permitted the luxury of going temperamental and refusing to delete a comma!
Uncompromisingly, I agree with de Camp in his views on HPL's notions on amateurism. I have never heard anyone assert that the amateur pianist, amateur violinist, amateur singer, amateur dancer, renders a performance superior to that of a professional. Wherefore, then, is the amateur writer any the less a bungler than are the other amateurs I've cited? No one denies HPL's right to his personal code, his personal acceptances—but nothing, I submit, would be sillier than to declare that HPL's views are a valid ideal for all writers.
De Camp's book baited me into reviewing HPL's writings: and this rereading was enlightening. My study extended to the letters which HPL had written to me, and to others. I began to appreciate the extent of the subjects which he and I had bypassed—matters which he had discussed at great length with many another friend. Ever considerate and gracious, he never addressed a word of racism to me—he knew that I had fraternized with Malays, Japanese, Chinese, and Syrians, as well as various non-Nordic French folks.
We ignored politics.
In one or two fine letters HPL outlined the essence of his view on fictioneering. He and I differed—but the difference was not worth debating. Neither had any urge to convert the other. It remained for one of the "Circle" many years later to parrot the Master and to assure me that one would do better by far to work in a filling station, than to make a living by writing. This pious devotee equated professionalism with "crass, mercenary hack." I said to that unrealistic oaf, "Sir, only a fool would twist a gas pump when he could earn three to five times as much by writing fiction! How is it that artistic integrity is the monopoly of those who can't make a living at writing?"
I've presented, in terms of my own experience, what I consider to be the essence of de Camp's analysis of HPL's own statements.
As an instance of the biographer's doing the best he could by his subject, de Camp quotes sufficiently from my memoir to establish the fact that HPL was devoid of the bigotry and abominable Puritanism imputed to him. On the other hand, de Camp's study of HPL's letters makes it clear that when an audience deferred to him, he was an all-out advocate of total abstinence from liquor and tobacco.
Only from the biography did I become aware of the extremes to which HPL went in his views on fictioneering. I cite page 405, wherein it is stated that HPL rather deplored the commercial success of certain authors, feeling that it would make cheap magazine hacks of them, as he thought it had of E. Hoffmann Price and C.L. Moore.
". . . And to think that they were once lit'ry guys . . ."
In this quip he poked his chin out a mile! I was, it seems, "a lit'ry guy" because of having sold some twenty grossly overwritten, adjective-riddled yarns, with stilted dialogue and wooden diction—all these to Weird Tales. These "lit'ry" things included a number of so-called orientales which moved an Armenian reader to write that I had an impossible mishmash of Persian, Arabic, Mongol, and Urdu phrases with a corresponding hash of "atmoshphere"—but no matter, since the readers were too ignorant to know the difference.
Once I succeeded in upgrading my work sufficiently to crash magazines which demanded better craftsmanship and higher order of authenticity, my work had become "hack." In applauding freshman composition, presumably because it was the work of an amateur who made his living working for Union carbide, and condemning fiction which was accepted by magazines much more exacting than Weird Tales (presumably because the stuff sold for sufficient rates to take the place of the salary I'd lost when I left the job), suggests that HPL was singularly devoid of objectivity—which is in effect what de Camp stated of the man.
De Camp is damned for making it clear that the Master could and did pontificate as readily out of error and ignorance as ever he did out of genuine erudition. He did both with equal sincerity!
Although HPL rightly damned mass mayhem and mechanized meat-cutting, he had nothing but good to say of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. He applauded Howard's African stuff which demonstrated, as nothing else could, how ignorant Howard was of Africa.
HPL never took himself as seriously as his worshipers take him. There was one who wrote declaring that L. Sprague de Camp was a debunker. In context, this was by no means applause. However, I replied, "Goddamn high time someone presents HPL and others as human beings, rather than as phony demigods."
In Frank Belknap Long's presentation, the living Lovecraft shines through. In L. Sprague de Camp's biography, there is an objectivity such that, for the first time, I am able to separate that living Lovecraft whose memory I cherish most affectionately, from Lovecraft the writer of diverse fantasies, of widely varying merit. Long and de Camp have given me, each in his own way, a more complete Lovecraft image. If these are to remain apart, then good; if for me they can merge into oneness, then better yet! In any event, I am grateful to my colleagues for their impressive productions.
A professional, i.e. not a cocktail-hour psychologist, said to me, "HPL was so complex, so paradoxical, that not even a competent psychologist who knew him well could hope to reduce the man to a logical formula, or to explain him—he was unique, and the remains inexplicable." So, instead of seeking to rationalize him, let us knock off this juvenile haggling and wrangling, and love HPL for the sake of his foibles and his blind spots, as well as for his merit and his impressive personality. Most of those who knew him are doing this. Newcomers could do as well, unless they prefer noisy ignorance to quiet appreciation.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
FOREVER STAND THE STONES by Joe Pumilia
AND DON'T FORGET THE ONE RED ROSE by Avram Davidson
CHRISTMAS PRESENT by Ramsey Campbell
A QUESTION OF GUILT by Hal Clement
THE HOUSE ON STILLCROFT STREET by Joseph Payne Brennan
THE RECRUDESCENCE OF GEOFFREY MARVELL by G. N. Gabbard
SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE by David Drake
COTTAGE TENANT by Frank Belknap Long
THE MAN WITH THE AURA by R. A. Lafferty
WHITE WOLF CALLING by C. L. Grant
LIFEGUARD by Arthur Byron Cover
THE BLACK CAPTAIN by H. Warner Munn
THE GLOVE by Fritz Leiber
NO WAY HOME by Brian Lumley
THE LOVECRAFT CONTROVERSY—WHY? by E. Hoffmann Price
The Year's Best Horror Stories 4 Page 24
