Petaja, Emil (1915–2000).
Science fiction fan and writer of Finnish ancestry residing in Montana, and correspondent of HPL. Petaja came in touch with HPL in late 1934. The next year he proposed teaming with Duane W.Rimel to form a fan magazine, The Fantaisiste’s Mirror,that would resume serializing HPL’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature” from the point it had left off in the defunct Fantasy Fan,but the magazine never materialized. He and HPL continued corresponding until the latter’s death. In later years Petaja contributed to Amazing Storiesand WT,and wrote several science fiction and fantasy novels, some based upon Finnish legendry.
Phillips, Edwin E[verett] (1864–1918).
HPL’s maternal uncle; the only son of Whipple V.Phillips and Robie A.Place Phillips. He was associated with Whipple in the Snake River Co. and the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Co. in the 1890s. He married Martha Helen Mathews on July 30, 1894, divorced her, and remarried her on March 23, 1903. He was variously employed as rent collector, real estate agent, operator of the Edwin E.Phillips Refrigeration Co., etc. According to HPL, he “lost a lot of dough for my mother and me in 1911” ( SL3.367). HPL never mentions his uncle’s death in any surviving correspondence, leading one to suspect that he was not close to him.
Phillips Family.
HPL was descended from Asaph Phillips (1764–1829) and his wife Esther Phillips (1767–1842). HPL visited the site of their homestead on Howard Hill in Foster, R.I., in 1929. Asaph’s descent from Michael Phillips (d. 1686), Newport freeman of 1668, is not proven but is given by Henry Byron Phillips in his Phillips genealogy at the California State Genealogical Society. HPL’s late claim that Michael was the youngest son of the Rev. George Phillips (d. 1644), a 1630 emigrant who became minister of Watertown, Mass., is unsupported by any authority and almost certainly specious. Asaph and Esther had eight children, the youngest of whom was Captain Jeremiah Phillips (1800–1848), who married Robie Rathbun (1797–1848) in 1823. During the 1820s Jeremiah served in the militia. His political persuasions can be inferred not only from his profession and background but from the fact that he gave his son Whipple (1833–1904) the middle name Van Buren in honor of Martin Van Buren, who had been inaugurated as Andrew Jackson’s vice president on March 4, 1833. Jeremiah purchased the Isaac Blanchard grist mill on the Moosup River in 1833 and was tragically crushed to death when his long coat accidentally got caught in its gearing. Their mother Robie having died the previous July, the four surviving children (two sons and two daughters) were left as orphans. One of these, Whipple V.Phillips,
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was HPL’s grandfather. HPL also had some contact with his grand-uncle, James Wheaton Phillips (1830–1901).
See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., Some of the Descendants of Asaph Phillips and Esther Whipple of Foster, Rhode Island(Glendale, Ill.: Moshassuck Press, 1993).
Phillips, James Wheaton (1830–1901).
HPL’s grand-uncle; elder brother of Whipple V.Phillips. He married Jane Ann Place on November 6, 1853. He owned a farm on Johnson Road in Foster, R.I., where HPL and his mother stayed for two weeks in 1896 and again in 1908. HPL and Annie Gamwell visited the site in October 1926. Phillips, Robie Alzada (1827–1896).
HPL’s maternal grandmother; wife of Whipple V.Phillips, whom she married on January 27, 1856. They had five children (see entry for Whipple Van Buren Phillips below). Her death and subsequent mourning by the family terrified young HPL and inspired dreams of “night-gaunts,” which he would much later use in fiction (e.g., The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath[1926–27], the “Night-Gaunts” sonnet of Fungi from Yuggoth[1929–30], etc.). Her collection of astronomy books served as the nucleus of HPL’s own collection after he became interested in the science in late 1902. HPL spells her name as “Rhoby,” but her tombstone (at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence) gives her name as “Robie.”
Phillips, Ward.
In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” an old man from Providence, R.I., and a correspondent of Randolph Carter who argues against the dispersal of Carter’s estate because he believes him to be still alive. Although not so identified in “The Silver Key,” he is the first-person narrator of that story. “Ward Phillips” was a pseudonym that HPL used for various of his poems as published in amateur journals.
Phillips, Whipple Van Buren (1833–1904).
HPL’s maternal grandfather; son of Capt. Jeremiah Phillips (1800–1848) and Robie Rathbun (1797– 1848). He was educated in Foster, R.I., and the East Greenwich Academy. He spent 1852–53 in Delavan, Ill. (a temperance town), on the farm of his uncle, James Phillips (1794–1878). He married Robie Alzada Place on January 27, 1856. They had five children: Lillian Delora (Phillips) Clark, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, Emeline Estella (1859–1866), Edwin Everett, and Annie Emeline (Phillips) Gamwell. Whipple moved the family to Coffin’s Corner, R.I., around 1859; he quickly made a fortune from real estate and other business and was able to purchase all the land in the town, which he named Greene after the Rhode Island Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene. He served as postmaster at Greene (1860–66) and as representative for Coventry in the Rhode Island General Assembly (1870–72). He joined the Masonic order and built a Masonic hall in Greene. Whipple suffered a financial collapse in 1870, but recovered sufficiently to move to Providence in 1874; after residing for some years at 276 Broadway on the West Side, he built a large house at 194 (later numbered 454) Angell Street in 1881. He went to the Paris Exposition in 1878 and traveled widely around the Continent, especially to Italy. In 1884 he
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formed the Snake River Company to pursue land interests in Idaho; he also named the town of Grand View, building a large Grand View hotel there. In 1889 he formed the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company. Its chief object was the building of a dam over the Bruneau River (not the Snake River, as HPL notes in his letters), but it was washed away in 1890; although later rebuilt, the expense of building and maintaining the dam and other properties contributed to the collapse of the company in 1901. An irrigation ditch was washed out in 1904; a few days later, Whipple suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on March 28. Subsequent mismanagement of his estate caused HPL and his mother to move from 454 Angell Street to 598 Angell Street. His estate was valued at $25,000, of which $5,000 went to Sarah Susan and $2,500 to HPL. Whipple Phillips wrote to HPL sporadically from Idaho and told him oral weird tales in the Gothic mode. He proved to be an admirable replacement for HPL’s stricken father. His death, and the removal from 454 Angell Street, impelled HPL to give serious consideration to suicide (see SL4.358–59).
See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “Whipple V.Phillips and the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company,” Owyhee OutpostNo. 19 (May 1988): 21–30.
Pickman, Richard Upton.
In “Pickman’s Model,” a painter, of Salem ancestry, whose paintings of outré subjects are assumed to be the fruits of a keen imagination, but are ultimately found to be from real life and from firsthand knowledge of forbidden subjects. He is compared to Gustave Doré, Sidney Sime, and Anthony Angarola. He disappears mysteriously, after emptying his pistol at an unseen monster lurking in the basement of his studio in the North End of Boston during a visit by the narrator of the story. In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,Pickman becomes a ghoul, like the subject of many of his paintings in “Pickman’s Model.”