Although amateur journalism was still the focal point of Lovecraft’s world, he was slowly—probably from his mother’s urging—making tentative forays at professional employment. His scorn of commercial writing prevented him from submitting his work to paying magazines, and the small number of his poems that were reprinted in the National Magazine all saw prior publication in amateur journals, and moreover were presumably not sent in by Lovecraft but were selected by the editors of the magazine itself from an examination of amateur papers. But if Lovecraft was not at the moment inclined to make money by writing, in what way could he earn an income? Whipple Phillips’s inheritance, some of it already squandered by bad investments, was slowly but inexorably diminishing; even Lovecraft probably saw that he could not indulge himself as a gentleman-author forever.
The first sign we have that Lovecraft was actually attempting to earn an income occurs in a letter to John T. Dunn in October 1916. In explaining why he is unable to participate as thoroughly in amateur affairs as he would like, Lovecraft states: ‘Many of my present duties are outside the association, in connexion with the Symphony Literary Service, which is now handling a goodly amount of verse.’18 This was a revisory or ghostwriting service featuring Lovecraft, Anne Tillery Renshaw (who edited the amateur journal The Symphony), and Mrs J. G. Smith, a colleague of Renshaw’s (although not in the UAPA), both of whom lived at this time in Coffeeville, Mississippi. It does not appear that this service, as such, was in business for very long.
This is the first indication that Lovecraft had commenced what would become his only true remunerative occupation: revising and ghostwriting. He never managed to turn this occupation into anything like a regular source of income, as he generally took on jobs only from colleagues and very sporadically placed advertisements for his services. In many senses it was exactly the wrong job for him in terms of his creative work: first, it was too similar in nature to his fiction-writing, so that it frequently left him too physically and mentally drained to attempt work of his own; and second, the very low rates he charged, and the unusual amount of effort he would put into some jobs, netted him far less money than a comparable amount of work in some other profession would have done.
What of Lovecraft and his family at this time? We have seen that aunt Lillian, upon the death of her husband Franklin Chase Clark in 1915, lived in various rented quarters in the city. W. Paul Cook’s account of his visit in 1917 makes it clear that she spent considerable time with her sister and nephew. Aunt Annie, upon her separation from Edward F. Gamwell (whenever that might have been) and the death of her son Phillips at the end of 1916, returned from Cambridge and probably lived with her brother Edwin in Providence. The death of Edwin E. Phillips on 14 November 1918 passes entirely unnoticed in the surviving correspondence by Lovecraft that I have seen. Letters from this period are admittedly few, but the silence is none the less significant.
Meanwhile Lovecraft himself, as he had been doing since 1904, continued to live alone with his mother at 598 Angell Street. The nature of their relations for much of the period 1904–19 is a mystery. All in all, they could not have been very wholesome. Lovecraft was still doing almost no travelling outside the city, and the lack of a regular office job must have kept him at home nearly all day, week after week. And yet, Clara Hess, their neighbour of twenty-five years, remarks disturbingly: ‘In looking back, I cannot ever remember to have seen Mrs. Lovecraft and her son together. I never heard one speak to the other. It probably just happened that way, but it does seem rather strange.’19
Then, in May 1917, came Lovecraft’s attempt at enlistment in the R.I.N.G. and, later, in the regular army. We have seen how Susie put a stop to the first of these efforts by pulling strings. Lovecraft’s comment that ‘If I had realised to the full how much she would suffer through my enlistment, I should have been less eager to attempt it’20 reveals a staggering failure of communication and empathy between mother and son. Susie must have been aware of Lovecraft’s militarism and his eagerness to see the United States enter the war on England’s side; but she must genuinely have been caught off guard at this attempt at enlistment—which, let us recall, came before President Wilson’s announcement of the resumption of the draft.
Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, is surely correct in noting that ‘Susie’s sharp decline … seems to have begun at about the time of her brother’s death’21 in November 1918. Edwin was the closest surviving male member of Susie’s generation. From now on, Susie, Lillian, and Annie were all wholly reliant on Whipple Phillips’s and (in the case of Lillian) Franklin C. Clark’s estates for their income. (Since Annie never formally divorced her husband, Edward F. Gamwell, it is not clear whether she received any financial support from him; I think it unlikely.) Lovecraft was the only viable wage-earner in the family, and he was clearly not doing much to support himself, let alone his mother and aunts.
The result, for Susie, was perhaps inevitable. In the winter of 1918–19 she finally cracked under the strain of financial worries. On 18 January 1919 Lovecraft writes to Kleiner: ‘My mother, feeling no better here, has gone on a visit to my elder aunt for purposes of complete rest; leaving my younger aunt as autocrat of this dwelling.’22 On 13 March, Susie, ‘showing no signs of recovery’,23 was admitted to Butler Hospital, where her husband had died more than twenty years before and where she herself would remain until her death two years later.
Lovecraft notes in his January letter to Kleiner that ‘such infirmity & absence on her part is so unprecedented’, but one wonders whether this was really the case. Once again Clara Hess provides some very disturbing testimony:
I remember that Mrs. Lovecraft spoke to me about weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark, and that she shivered and looked about apprehensively as she told her story.
The last time I saw Mrs. Lovecraft we were both going ‘down street’ on the Butler Avenue car. She was excited and apparently did not know where she was. She attracted the attention of everyone. I was greatly embarrassed, as I was the object of all her attention.24
I believe that these incidents occurred just before Susie’s breakdown. Again, if Lovecraft was oblivious of Susie’s gradual decline, he must have had very little close or meaningful contact with his mother. And yet, Lovecraft himself was profoundly shaken by Susie’s nervous collapse. In the January letter to Kleiner he writes:
you above all others can imagine the effect of maternal illness & absence. I cannot eat, nor can I stay up long at a time. Penwriting or typewriting nearly drives me insane. My nervous system seems to find its vent in feverish & incessant scribbling with a pencil … She writes optimistic letters each day, & I try to make my replies equally optimistic; though I do not find it possible to ‘cheer up’, eat, & go out, as she encourages me to do.