Lovecraft admits that ‘My array of toys, books, and other youthful pleasures was virtually unlimited’17 at this time; whatever he wanted, he seems to have got.
At this point it may be well to mention a remarkable bit of testimony provided by Lovecraft’s wife. In her 1948 memoir Sonia H. Davis states the following:
It was … at that time the fashion for mothers to start ‘hopechests’ for their daughters even before they were born, so that when Mrs. Winfield Scott Lovecraft was expecting her first child she had hoped it would be a girl; nor was this curtailed at the birth of her boy. So this hope-chest was gradually growing; some day to be given to Howard’s wife … As a baby Howard looked like a beautiful little girl. He had, at the tender age of three years, a head of flaxen curls of which any girl would have been proud … These he wore until he was about six. When at last he protested and wanted them cut off, his mother had taken him to the barber’s and cried bitterly as the ‘cruel’ shears separated them from his head.18
I suppose one must accept this statement for the most part, although I think rather too much has been made of it—and also of the apparent fact that Susie dressed her son in frocks at an early age. The celebrated 1892 photograph of Lovecraft and his parents shows him with the curls and the frock, as does another picture probably taken around the same time.19 Lovecraft remarks on the curls himself, saying that it was this ‘golden mane’ that partly led Louise Imogen Guiney to name him ‘Little Sunshine’.20 But another photograph of Lovecraft, probably taken at the age of seven or eight,21 shows him as a perfectly normal boy with short hair and boy’s attire. In fact, it cannot be ascertained when Susie ceased to dress Lovecraft in frocks; but even if she had persisted up to the age of four, it would not have been especially unusual.
There are two other pieces of evidence one can adduce here, although their purport is not entirely clear. R. H. Barlow, in his jottings about Lovecraft (mostly taken down in 1934 but some made evidently later), writes: ‘Mrs. Gamwell’s stories of how HPL for a while insisted “I’m a little girl.”’22 Annie Gamwell could not have made this observation later than early 1897, as that was when she married and moved out of 454 Angell Street; and the context of Barlow’s remark (he adds the detail of how Lovecraft would spout Tennyson from the table-top) could date the event to as early as 1893. Then there is a letter from Whipple Phillips to Lovecraft, dated 19 June 1894: ‘I will tell you more about what I have seen when I get home if you are a good boy and wear trousers.’23 Whipple has underscored the last two words. The implication is, I suppose, that Lovecraft at this time was not fond of wearing trousers.
In spite of the above, I see little evidence of gender confusion in Lovecraft’s later life; if anything, he displayed quick and unwavering prejudice against ‘sissies’ and homosexuals. Susie may have wanted a girl, and may have attempted to preserve the illusion for a few years, but Lovecraft even in youth was headstrong and made it evident that he was a boy with a boy’s normal interests. It was, after all, he who wanted his flowing curls cut off at the age of six.
In addition to being oversolicitous of her son, Susie also attempted to mould him in ways which he found either irritating or repugnant. Around 1898 she tried to enrol him in a children’s dancing class; Lovecraft ‘abhorred the thought’ and, fresh from an initial study of Latin, responded with a line from Cicero: ’Nemo fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit!’ (‘Scarcely any sober person dances, unless by chance he is insane’).24 Evidently Lovecraft had developed a certain skill in getting his own way, for—like his initial Sunday school attendance (probably the previous year), which he was allowed to forgo—he evidently escaped the dancing lessons. But what he did not escape were violin lessons, which lasted a full two years, between the ages of seven and nine. These lessons were, however, initially at his own insistence:
My rhythmic tendencies led me into a love of melody, and I was forever whistling & humming in defiance of convention & good breeding. I was so exact in time & tune, & showed such a semi-professional precision & flourish in my crude attempts, that my plea for a violin was granted when I was seven years of age, & I was placed under the instruction of the best violin teacher for children in the city—Mrs. Wilhelm Nauck. For two years I made such progress that Mrs. Nauck was enthusiastic, & declared that I should adopt music as a career—BUT, all this time the tedium of practising had been wearing shockingly on my always sensitive nervous system. My ‘career’ extended until 1899, its summit being a public recital at which I played a solo from Mozart before an audience of considerable size. Soon after that, my ambition & taste alike collapsed like a house of cards … I began to detest classical music, because it had meant so much painful labour to me; & I positively loathed the violin! Our physician, knowing my temperament, advised an immediate discontinuance of music lessons, which speedily ensued.25
One would like to date Lovecraft’s second ‘near-breakdown’ to the termination of these lessons, but he clearly asserts that the first occurred in 1898 and the second in 1900. In any event, Lovecraft manifestly continued to be under considerable nervous strain—a situation in part relieved and in part augmented by his first attempt at school attendance, from which he was withdrawn after a year’s term (1898–99). Indeed, his casual remark in 1929 that ‘I spent the summer of 1899 with my mother’26 in Westminster, Massachusetts, must lead one to speculate on the purpose of such a trip, and to wonder whether health reasons were a factor. I am inclined to connect the trip with the trauma of his first year of school and also of his violin lessons, which probably ended in the summer of 1899.
From all that has gone before it will be evident that Lovecraft led a comparatively solitary young childhood, with only his adult family members as his companions. Many of his childhood activities— reading, writing, scientific work, practising music, even attending the theatre—are primarily or exclusively solitary, and we do not hear much about any boyhood friends until his entrance into grade school. All his letters discussing his childhood stress his relative isolation and loneliness:
You will notice that I have made no reference to childish friends & playmates—I had none! The children I knew disliked me, & I disliked them. I was used to adult company & conversation, & despite the fact that I felt shamefully dull beside my elders, I had nothing in common with the infant train. Their romping & shouting puzzled me. I hated mere play & dancing about—in my relaxations I always desired plot.27
One confirmation of this comes from the recollections of Lovecraft’s second cousin Ethel M. Phillips (1888–1987), later Mrs Ethel Phillips Morrish. Ethel, two years older than Lovecraft, was living with her parents Jeremiah W. Phillips (the son of Whipple’s brother James Wheaton Phillips) and his wife Abby in various suburbs of Providence during the 1890s, and was sent over to play with young Howard. She confessed in an interview conducted in 1977 that she did not much care for her cousin, finding him eccentric and aloof. She was particularly vexed because Lovecraft did not know how a swing worked. But she does have a delightful image of Lovecraft, at about the age of four, turning the pages of some monstrously huge book in a very solemn and adult manner.28 Lovecraft provides one remarkable glimpse of some of the solitary games he played as a young boy: