Lovecraft has frequently been criticized for failing to take up this opportunity just at the time when, as a new husband, he needed a steady income; the thinking is that he should have overcome his purely aesthetic distaste of the modern architecture of Chicago and accepted the offer. But the matter is more complicated than this scenario suggests. First, although Sonia was in favour of the move, it would have meant either Sonia’s search for uncertain job prospects in Chicago or the couple’s having to live a thousand miles away from each other merely for the sake of employment. Second, Lovecraft knew that Henneberger was deeply in debt: Henneberger had lost $51,000 on his two magazines, Weird Tales and Detective Tales, and there was no guarantee that either enterprise would continue in operation much longer. If Lovecraft had therefore left for Chicago, he might after a few months have been stranded there with no job and with little prospect of getting one. Lovecraft was, in my view, wise to decline the offer. In any case, even in the most ideal financial circumstances, he might not have made the best editor of a magazine such as Weird Tales. His fastidious taste would have rejected much that was actually published in its pages: there was simply not enough artistically polished weird fiction to fill what was really nothing more than a cheap pulp magazine paying a penny a word.
What actually happened to Weird Tales in this crisis was that Henneberger sold off his share of Detective Tales to the co-founder of Rural Publications, J. M. Lansinger (who retained Baird as editor of that magazine), appointed Farnsworth Wright as permanent editor of Weird Tales (he would retain that position until 1940), and then—as the only way to make up the $40,000 debt he had accrued—came to an agreement with B. Cornelius, the printer of the magazine, as follows: ‘Cornelius became chief stockholder with an agreement that if the $40,000 owed him was ever repaid by profits from the magazine, Henneberger would be returned the stock.’12 A new company, the Popular Fiction Publishing Co., was formed to issue the magazine, with the stockholders being Cornelius, Farnsworth Wright, and William Sprenger (Weird Tales’ business manager); after a several-month hiatus Weird Tales resumed publication with the November 1924 issue. Although Henneberger retained a minor interest in the new company, Weird Tales never made sufficient profits for him to buy it back; in any case, he seems to have lost interest in the venture after a few years and finally drifted entirely out of the picture.
Farnsworth Wright (1888–1940) deserves some mention, as Lovecraft would eventually develop a very curious relationship with him. He had been the magazine’s first reader from the very beginning, and had several undistinguished stories in early issues. He had served in the First World War and afterwards was music critic for the Chicago Herald and Examiner, continuing in this latter activity for a time even after he took over the editorship of Weird Tales. By early 1921 he had contracted Parkinson’s disease, and the illness worsened throughout the rest of his life, so that by the end of the decade he could not sign his name.
It is difficult to gauge Wright’s success as editor of Weird Tales, especially since very different yardsticks can be used to measure ‘success’ in something of this kind. It is, certainly, something in his favour that he managed to keep the magazine going even during the worst years of the Depression; but there can similarly be no denying that he published an appalling amount of trite, hackneyed, and simply bad fiction that would never have appeared elsewhere and should never have been published in the first place. Lovecraft felt that Wright was erratic, capricious, and even a little hypocritical, at least as regards his handling of Lovecraft’s own work; and, in spite of those who have come to Wright’s defence on this score, this view seems plausible. Lovecraft may have had excessively high expectations of his success with Wright, so that rejections came with added bitterness. In some senses his irritation stemmed from what he eventually realized was a naive view that aesthetically meritorious work should be rewarded commensurately. It would be years before he learned that writing for the pulps was simply a business, and that Wright looked upon the matter in that light. If most of Weird Tales’ readership wanted cheap, formularidden hackwork, Wright would make sure to give it to them.
In the short term, however, Lovecraft and Sonia had a household to set in order. The first thing to do was to persuade aunt Lillian (and perhaps Annie as well) to come to New York to live with them. This seems to have been an entirely sincere desire on the part of both Lovecraft and Sonia. Lillian was, however, at this time almost sixty-six years old and probably in declining health; it is clear that she herself had no desire to move—especially after her nephew failed to take her into his confidence regarding the most dramatic change in his personal circumstances.
One occupant the couple would not have to worry about was Sonia’s daughter. Florence Carol Greene appears to have had a falling out with her mother a few years previously: she had fallen in love with her half-uncle Sydney (only five years her elder), and Sonia, enraged, had adamantly refused to allow her to marry him. (Such a marriage would, in any event, have been prohibited by the tenets of Orthodox Judaism.) This dispute led to a schism which, unfortunately, lasted the duration of both women’s lives. Florence left Sonia’s apartment some time after she came of age (19 March 1923), although continuing to remain in New York. There are reports that she herself did not care for Lovecraft and did not approve of her mother’s marrying him. Florence’s later life is both distinguished and tragic: she married a newspaperman named John Weld in 1927 but divorced him in 1932; she herself went to Europe and became a reporter, attaining celebrity as the first reporter to cover the romance of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) and Mrs Wallis Simpson. Returning to America, she worked for newspapers in New York, later moving to Florida and becoming a film publicist. She died on 31 March 1979. But in all that time she refused to speak to her mother. And aside from a passing reference in her memoir, Sonia never speaks of her. Lovecraft too alludes to her only twice in all the correspondence I have seen.
In the meantime, however, Lovecraft had to think of work. Sonia had been making $10,000 per year at Ferle Heller’s—a princely sum considering that the ‘minimum health and decency’ wages for a family of four in the 1920s was $2000—but had already lost this position, evidently, by February 1924. Nevertheless, she had savings in five figures,13 so perhaps there was no immediate need to replenish the coffers.
A likely prospect seemed in the offing in something called ‘The Reading Lamp’. So far as I can tell, this was a magazine (although no file of it exists in any library in the world) as well as a literary agency that would generate commissioned articles or books on behalf of its clients; it was run by one Gertrude E. Tucker. Edwin Baird had recommended Lovecraft to Tucker in January 1924; Sonia, learning of this, took it upon herself to see Tucker and bring a sheaf of Lovecraft’s manuscripts to her. On 10 March Lovecraft interviewed at the Reading Lamp office, with the following result:
Miss T. thinks a book of my antiquarian & other essays would be quite practicable, & urges me to prepare at least three as samples at once. Also, she thinks she can get me a contract with a chain of magazines to write minor matter to order. And more—as soon as my MSS. arrive, she wants to see all of them, with a view to a weird book … What Miss T. wants in the way of essays is quaint stuff with a flavour of the supernatural.14