In studies I was not bad—except for mathematics, which repelled and exhausted me. I passed in these subjects—but just about that. Or rather, it was algebra which formed the bugbear. Geometry was not so bad. But the whole thing disappointed me bitterly, for I was then intending to pursue astronomy as a career, and of course advanced astronomy is simply a mass of mathematics. That was the first major setback I ever received—the first time I was ever brought up short against a consciousness of my own limitations. It was clear to me that I hadn’t brains enough to be an astronomer— and that was a pill I couldn’t swallow with equanimity.7
Again, Lovecraft does not connect this with his breakdown of 1908, but I think the implication of a connection is strong. I repeat that this is a conjecture, but, until further evidence is forthcoming, it may be the best we have.
One more small piece of evidence comes from Lovecraft’s wife, who reports that Lovecraft told her that his sexual instincts were at their greatest at the age of nineteen.8 It is conceivable that sex frustration—for I do not imagine Lovecraft acted upon his urges at this time—may have been a contributory cause of his breakdown; but, for one whose sexuality was, in general, so sluggish as Lovecraft’s, I am not convinced that this was a significant factor.
As a result of this breakdown, Lovecraft virtually withdrew from the world, so that the period 1908–13 is a virtual blank in his life. It is the only time in his life when we do not have a significant amount of information on what he was doing from day to day, who his friends and associates were, and what he was writing. It is also the only time of his life when the term ‘eccentric recluse’—which many have used with careless ignorance—can rightly be applied to him.
Lovecraft doggedly attempted to maintain his scientific interests, although it seems a little pathetic that he revived his juvenile periodicals, The Scientific Gazette and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, in early 1909, the latter after two years’, the former after four years’ hiatus (not counting the apparently brief revival by Arthur Fredlund). The sole issue of the Gazette for this period (January 1909) has an interesting ad for the ‘International Correspondence Schoolsespoh܀ in Scranton, Pennsylvania, offering a complete course for $161.00. This is no doubt the correspondence course in chemistry that Lovecraft admits to taking ‘for a time’.9 As to where he learned of this organisation, I shall have more to say a little later. That Lovecraft’s mother was willing to pay out the money for such a thing suggests that she was still allowing him freedom to pursue his interests; perhaps she thought this course might lead to a job, although that likelihood was surely remote. Once again, however, it was the more technical or tedious parts of the science that caused him difficulty: ‘I found myself so wretched bored that I positively could not study for more than fifteen minutes without acquiring an excruciating headache which prostrated me completely for the rest of the day.’10 One significant work did come out of this, however: A Brief Course in Inorganic Chemistry, written in 1910 and deemed by Lovecraft a ‘bulky manuscript’.11 This work, so far as I know, does not survive, and we know nothing of its contents.
Lovecraft did attempt a more ambitious astronomical project, but it was not designed for publication. This is an astronomical notebook, once in the possession of David H. Keller and later in the Grill-Binkin collection of Lovecraftiana. It bears the title ‘Astronomical Observations Made by H. P. Lovecraft, 598 Angell St., Providence, R.I., U.S.A., Years 1909 / 1910 / 1911 / 1912 / 1913 / 1914 / 1915’. Keller12 reports that the book contains at least one hundred pages of writing; page 99 has the following: Principal Astronomical Work
1. To keep track of all celestial phenomena month by month, as positions of planets, phases of the moon, Sign of Sun, occultations, Meteor Showers, unusual phenomena (record) also new discoveries.
2. To keep up a working knowledge of the constellations and their seasons.
3. To observe all planets, etc. with a large telescope when they are favourably situated (at 7 h 30” in winter, abt. 9 h in summer, supplemented by morning observations)
4. To observe opera or field glass objects among the stars with a low power instruments, recording results.
5. To keep a careful record of each night’s work.
6. To contribute a monthly astronomical article of about 7p. Ms. or 4p. Type to the Providence Evening News13 (begun Jan. 1, 1914.)
This sounds like an impressive agenda, but Lovecraft did not maintain it consistently; in fact, Keller reports that for the years 1911 and 1913 there are no observations at all. Otherwise what we have are things like an eclipse of the moon on 3 June 1909, a ‘lengthy description’ of Halley’s Comet on 26 May 1910, a partial eclipse of the moon on 11–12 March 1914, and a long discussion of Delavan’s Comet on 16–17 September 1914. I have not been able to consult this document myself and am reliant on Keller’s account of it; but it does not seem to offer much evidence that Lovecraft was doing anything either to relieve his reclusiveness or to find a useful position in the outside world.
Later in life Lovecraft knew that, in spite of his lack of university education, he should have received training in some sort of clerical or other white-collar position that would at least have allowed him to secure employment rather than moping about at home:
I made the mistake in youth of not realising that literary endeavour does not always mean an income. I ought to have trained myself for some routine clerical work (like Charles Lamb’s or Hawthorne’s) affording a dependable stipend yet leaving my mind free enough for a certain amount of creative activity—but in the absence of immediate need I was too damned a fool to look ahead. I seemed to think that sufficient money for ordinary needs was something which everyone had as a matter of course—and if I ran short, I ‘could always sell a story or poem or something’. Well—my calculations were inaccurate!14 And so Lovecraft condemned himself to a life of ever-increasing poverty.
What was his mother doing in this entire situation? It is a little hard to say. Recall her own medical record at Butler Hospital (now destroyed) as quoted by Winfield Townley Scott: ‘a woman of narrow interests who received, with a traumatic psychosis, an awareness of approaching bankruptcy’.15 This assessment was made in 1919, but the condition must have been developing for years, at the very least since the death of Susie’s own father, Whipple Phillips. Although she had high praise for her son (‘a poet of the highest order’), Scott rightly conjectures: ‘However she adored him, there may have been a subconscious criticism of Howard, so brilliant but so economically useless.’ No doubt her disappointment with her son’s inability to finish high school, go to college, and support himself did not help this situation any.