This is Lovecraft’s first explicit expression of the view he would later call ‘cosmicism’. Cosmicism is at once a metaphysical position (an awareness of the vastness of the universe in both space and time), an ethical position (an awareness of the insignificance of human beings within the realm of the universe), and an aesthetic position (a literary expression of this insignificance, to be effected by the minimizing of human character and the display of the titanic gulfs of space and time). The strange thing about it is that it was so late in being articulated, and also that it was so feebly exhibited in his weird fiction up to this time—indeed, really up to 1926. One interesting development in Lovecraft’s pure metaphysics occurred in May of 1923:
I have no opinions—I believe in nothing … My cynicism and scepticism are increasing, and from an entirely new cause— the Einstein theory. The latest eclipse observations seem to place this system among the facts which cannot be dismissed, and assumedly it removes the last hold which reality or the universe can have on the independent mind. All is chance, accident, and ephemeral illusion—a fly may be greater than Arcturus, and Durfee Hill may surpass Mount Everest—assuming them to be removed from the present planet and differently environed in the continuum of spacetime. There are no values in all infinity—the least idea that there are is the supreme mockery of all. All the cosmos is a jest, and fit to be treated only as a jest, and one thing is as true as another.25
The history of the acceptance of the theory of relativity would make an interesting study in itself. The theory was propounded by Einstein in 1905 but was the source of much scepticism on the part of philosophers and scientists; some merely ignored it, perhaps hoping it would go away. Lovecraft’s mentor Hugh Elliot dismisses Einstein in a nervous footnote in Modern Science and Materialism. The theory indeed remained largely deductive until the results of observations of a total solar eclipse on 21 September 1922 were finally reported in the New York Times on 12 April 1923, leading many scientists to accept relativity and inspiring Lovecraft’s comment.
It is hardly worth remarking that Lovecraft’s wild conclusions from Einstein, both metaphysical and ethical, are entirely unfounded; but his reaction is perhaps not atypical of that of many intellectuals—especially those who could not in fact understand the precise details and ramifications of relativity—at the time. We will see that Lovecraft fairly quickly snapped out of his naive views about Einstein and, by no later than 1929, actually welcomed him as another means to bolster a modified materialism that still outlawed teleology, theism, spirituality, and other tenets he rightly believed to be outmoded in light of nineteenth-century science. In so doing he evolved a metaphysical and ethical system not at all dissimilar to that of his two later philosophical mentors, Bertrand Russell and George Santayana.
Some words about Lovecraft’s political views might be in order. American entry into the world war had relieved him of the burden of fulminating against the ‘craven pacifism’ of Woodrow Wilson. I find little mention in Lovecraft’s letters of the aftermath of the war, especially in regard to the harsh penalties imposed upon Germany by the Allies: Lovecraft later came to believe the terms of the Versailles treaty unjust, although he thought them more of a tactical error than a matter of abstract ethics.
In the relative political tranquillity of a Republican-dominated decade, Lovecraft reflected more abstractly on the issues of government. ‘Nietzscheism and Realism’ contains a lot of cocksure aphorisms on the subject, largely derived from Nietzsche but with a sort of Schopenhauerian foundation. For example: ‘I believe in an aristocracy, because I deem it the only agency for the creation of those refinements which make life endurable for the human animal of high organization.’ Lovecraft naturally assumed that he was one of those animals of high organisation, and it was entirely logical for him, when speaking abstractly of the ideal government, to look for one that would suit his own requirements. What he seems to imagine is a society like that of Periclean Athens, Augustan Rome, or Augustan England, where the aristocracy both symbolized refinement and culture (if they did not always practise it) and provided enough patronage of artists to produce those ‘ornaments of life’ that result in a rich and thriving civilization. It is, certainly—at least in the abstract—an appealing system, but Lovecraft surely did not fancy that it could have much relevance to present-day concerns.
When he does address such concerns, it is in tones of magisterial condemnation. Democracy earns his wholesale scorn. Consider a letter of February 1923: ‘democracy … is a false idol—a mere catchword and illusion of inferior classes, visionaries, and dying civilisations’.26 This is manifestly Nietzschean: ‘I have … characterised modern democracy … as the decaying form of the state.’27 I do not know that Lovecraft ever espoused democracy, but certainly his reading of Nietzsche just after the war seems to have given him the intellectual backbone to support his view.
The letter in which the above comment is imbedded occurs in a discussion of Mussolini and fascism. No one should be surprised that Lovecraft supported Mussolini’s takeover of Italy (completed in late October 1922) and that he was attracted by the fascist ideology—or, at any rate, what he took it to be. I doubt that Lovecraft had any real understanding of the internal political forces that led to Mussolini’s rise. Fascism was, at its base, opposed both to conventional liberalism and to socialism; its popularity grew rapidly after the end of the war when the socialists, winning a majority in 1919, could accomplish little to restore Italian society. Mussolini’s takeover of the government was indeed supported, as Lovecraft would later remark, by a majority of the Italian populace; but each group wished different benefits from it, and, when after several years these benefits were not forthcoming, there was so much discontent that very repressive measures had to be adopted.
For the time being, however, Lovecraft could revel in the fact that here was a ‘strong’ ruler who scorned liberalism and could ‘get the sort of authoritative social and political control which alone produces things which make life worth living’.28 It cannot, certainly, be said that fascism produced any sort of artistic renaissance; but that was not of much concern to Lovecraft at the moment.
The end of 1923 saw still more small travels—to the new private museum of George L. Shepley on Benefit Street, and (in the company of C. M. Eddy and James F. Morton) to the exquisite First Baptist Church (1775) on North Main Street. Here Lovecraft ascended to the organ loft and attempted to play ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ but was foiled ‘since the machine is not a self-starter’.29
Weird Tales , meanwhile, was throwing a lot of work in Lovecraft’s direction, in particular a rush ghostwriting job for Harry Houdini. But in the midst of all this literary activity we find an anomalous change of personal circumstances. On 9 March 1924, Lovecraft writes a letter to his aunt Lillian from 259 Parkside Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Was this another visit of longer or shorter duration, as the two New York trips of 1922 had been? Not exactly. On 3 March, at St Paul’s Chapel at Broadway and Vesey Streets in lower Manhattan, H. P. Lovecraft had married Sonia Haft Greene.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ball and Chain (1924)
New York in 1924 was an extraordinary place. Far and away the largest city in the country, its five boroughs totalled (in 1926) 5,924,138 in population, of which Manhattan had 1,752,018 and Brooklyn (then and now the largest of the boroughs both in size and in population) had 2,308,631. A remarkable 1,700,000 were of Jewish origin, while the nearly 250,000 blacks were already concentrating in Harlem (extending from 125th to 151st Streets on the west side and 96th Street northward on the east side of Manhattan) because of the severe prejudice that prevented their occupying many other areas of the city. The subway system, begun in 1904, was allowing easy access to many regions of the metropolis, and was supplemented by the extensive above-ground or elevated lines, now nearly all eliminated. Lovecraft, on some of his more remote jaunts around the area in search of antiquarian oases, nevertheless found it necessary to take the more expensive trolleys rather than the 5-cent subways or elevateds. The Hudson Tubes (now called the PATH trains) were constructed in 1908–10 to link Manhattan with the commuter terminals in Hoboken and Jersey City, New Jersey; ferry service was also common between the two states. The remoter areas of the region—Long Island to the east, or Westchester County to the north of the Bronx—were less easy of access, although the N.Y.N.H.&H. (New York, New Haven, and Hartford) railway lines brought in commuters from Connecticut. The mayor of the city was John F. Hylan; but he was ousted in 1925, and James J. Walker was elected in 1926. The governor was the Democrat Alfred E. Smith (1923–28).