|
Crypt #28 and #29 were fantastic
as always. Will Murray's "In Pickman's Footsteps" (#28) was great! It
was like being with the "ghoul gang" on your nocturnal Boston outing!
Wish I had been with you --- a truly fantastic tour.
I have just obtained a copy of the
reprint of Crypt #2, the only issue I was missing. My set is now
complete! Thanks from me and, I know, from others, for reprinting these.
I look forward to Crypt #30! I
can't believe how fine they are; every issue is great! How do you do it?
--- Dan Gobbett
Riverdale, MD
You must still be doing something
right, because I once more found myself trapped into reading Crypt (#29)
right through at one sitting. But with this issue it's hard to figure out what
kept me going. Lin Carter continues to cement
together bits of Mythos lore --- entertainingly, I think, and with a degree of
novelty. But I found the Gary Myers piece lacking
in almost everything except mood. Stories as monochrome as this (full of dark
mood) have to be deeper, I think. They have to have something to chew on.
Similarly, Eddy Berlin's story is good old Weird Tales stuff, but it
would have been better if it didn't read so much like a rough draft.
I'm not sure I quite know what to make
of the CAS piece; in places it's as down-to-earth as R. E. Howard. Except it
hasn't got his fire. The idea is so good! --- but the treatment? . . .
Unfortunately Duane Rimel's story has been done to death: a very
conventional ghost, this. Personally, I found the Tierney/Rahman
piece the only substantial, thing in the issue. Simon of Gitta grows on you.
(No, not like a wart!)
Artwork: well, the cover's a Fabian ---
Fabulous Fabian --- but the interiors? . . . With the exception of the drawing
on p. 41, which I found nicely macabre, they are merely mundane. But God knows
the poor artist didn't have much to work on!
Then there's your letters
column, which is somewhat better. Here's Fritz Leiber pointing a very
accurate finger at a Lovecraft source (can't think why all the Lovecraft
scholars haven't spotted this before now. Or have they?). And the invariably
interesting and amusing Darrell Schweitzer (Aunt Gemima Gibber, indeed!). And
here's Ramsey Campbell, still determined to draw my fire, failing to see
that I just can't find any value in his comments or take them seriously. But
good for a giggle anyway. Overall, while I did read the whole thing, I have to
say it isn't one of your best. I tried hard but for me it just didn't lurk.
Maybe it'll be better next time. . . .
--- Brian Lumley
Devon, England
P.S. Hey, don't take it too much to
heart. Remember what Jean Sibelius said: "Pay no attention to what the
critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic. . . ." OK?
Your excellent publication gets better
and better with every issue, due to your hard work and excellent scholarship.
--- Raymond T. Funamoto
Honolulu, HI
Good issue, Crypt #30.
Especially liked Chester Malon's and Edward P.
Berglund's articles, though Joel Lane's necrophiliac piece was probably the
best.
--- Charles Garofalo
Wayne, NJ
Crypt #30 was terrific, as per
our expectations. Tierney's article was
especially fun, as was his "Has Kadath Been Sighted" awhile back. Both
of these address what Ralph Vaughan discussed in his article: Tierney
shows that some of us enjoy "filtering" the world through Lovecraftian
glasses. While I've never tried to summon a night-gaunt (I'm not
self-destructive, after all!), every time I see dark hills in the distance, or
thick forest, or a sudden thunderstorm, I tend to playfully throw in some Mythos
allusions. "Investing the world with wonder" is part of the
Lovecraftian allure!
Schultz's article, as usual, was very
good and very informative, but I'm not sure it's as well organized as some of
his others.
Well, there's stuff for a scholarly
dispute in #30, too. What Berglund listed
as HPL's "final revision" of that "Yith" stanza, Ashes
and Others [Crypt #10] listed as Rimel's original! Ahem!
I think the only article that left me
cold was "Charnel Knowledge" by Joel Lane. I could honestly not figure
out what he was saying (and just to fly-speck him, Smith's original title
for that story was "The Epiphany of Death", later changed by WT
to "Who are the Living". Smith hated that change!).
--- Steve Behrends
Ithaca, NY
I just wanted to let you know that I
really enjoy Crypt of Cthulhu. I've got every issue from #1 thru 29 now,
and this past year I've especially enjoyed the issues on Clark Ashton Smith, and
the all-fiction issues.
I hope you'll be publishing Crypt of
Cthulhu for a long time, and I'll be looking forward to receiving it again
this year.
--- Kathy Corcoran
Chicago, IL
I enjoyed Crypt #30 --- chock
full of interesting material, as usual.
Anent "To the Members of the Men's
Club of the First Universalist Church" --- I don't think the association
which this poem implies necessarily means that Lovecraft was a member of this
church. We do need, however, to know far more about the religious associations
of his immediate family than we presently do. The womenfolk are all accounted
for --- the 1908 Historical Catalogue of the Members of the First Baptist
Church in Providence, Rhode Island, indicates that Robie A. Phillips (nee
Place), wife of HPL's grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips, and her three
surviving daughters Sarah Susan, Lillie Delores, and Annie Emeline all became
members of the First Baptist Church in 1883. All three daughters were still on
the rolls of the church when the catalogue was published in 1908, and Lovecraft
indicates in his letters that Lillie, who became Mrs. Franklin C. Clark in 1902,
was still a member at the time of her death in 1932.
It is the male members of the Phillips
family for whom we seem to have no information --- particularly, Whipple Van
Buren Phillips himself and his son Edwin E. Phillips. Whipple and his family
came to Providence in 1873 or 1874; and whether over all these years he did not
choose to sever a church relationship he had formed in western Rhode Island,
where he made his fortune, or whether he joined a church different from the one
his wife and daughters joined in 1883, I do not know. (My recollection from
reading several items in the Rhode Island Historical Society Library was that
Whipple and his wife Robie were associated with a Baptist church in western
Rhode Island.)
I think we may take HPL for his
epistolary word that he was last in the First Baptist Church auditorium in 1895
and in the vestry, for a lecture before the Boys' Club, in 1907, prior to his
revisit with James Ferdinand Morton, Jr., at the end of 1923. The only theory
which I can form about this is that the death of Robie A. Phillips in 1896 may
have occasioned a break in the church-going patterns by the Phillips family.
Despite his precocity, it is difficult to imagine Lovecraft himself, then five,
declining to attend church with his family. Perhaps the family began after the
death of Robie A. Phillips to attend another church; or perhaps they simply
ceased church-going altogether. (The loss of the mother must have been extremely
traumatic to this tight-knit family. Only one child, Emeline, had died before
adulthood, and all three daughters still lived at home, Lillie and Annie as yet
unmarried and Susie and her young son returned to the paternal homestead after a
disastrous marriage. Sometimes such a traumatic loss will cause a family to shed
most of its previous associations.) For his own part, Whipple Phillips, in
addition to being very active in business affairs, was also a high-ranking
Mason, so his perception of the need for a formal church affiliation may not
have been high.
While the First Universalist Church,
still located at Washington and Greene Streets in downtown Providence, is at a
farther remove from HPL's erstwhile East Side residences than the First Baptist
Church, it is certainly not beyond the limits of imagination that he attended,
if not services, at least men's club meetings, there for a time during his young
adult years. The years between 1908 and 1914 --- marked on the one side by his
nervous breakdown and failure to complete high school and on the other by his
discovery of amateur journalism --- are among the least well known of all of
Lovecraft's lifetime, but they must surely have been a time of conflicting
pressures for the young man. The facts we have are few indeed:
-
a. the destruction of most of the
juvenile fiction around the time of the breakdown, also the cessation of
astronomical articles in the local press about the same time;
-
b. correspondence study during part
of the period, composition of a Course in Inorganic Chemistry (now
lost), the keeping of an astronomical journal (once part of the Keller and
Grill collections), and redirection toward literary (i.e., poetic)
composition around 1911-12;
-
c. the execution of a last will and
testament in 1912;
-
d. a twenty-first birthday spent
riding all the streetcar lines and occasional outings with boyhood friends,
the Munroes and others, to their country clubhouse near Rehoboth;
-
e. appearances in the letter
columns of the pulp magazines in 1912-13, leading to his final discovery by
amateur journalism, and poetry in the local press beginning in 1912.
If more is known of these hermit years
at 598 Angell Street, it has not been published to my knowledge. Reading the Selected
Letters, one gets the impression that Dr. Clark was Lovecraft's principal
mentor during these difficult years. Aunt Lillie and Dr. Clark were certainly
the figures, it is obvious, whom Lovecraft later remembered with the greatest
affection from this hothouse period, during which he undoubtedly soaked up so
much of the erudition for which he was famous. In reality, however, there must
have been tremendous tensions within the family over HPL. According to R. Alain
Everts, Whipple and his son Edwin Phillips had quarreled before the death of the
former; and Edwin did receive a smaller share than the three surviving daughters
under Whipple's will executed in 1903 ($5,000 to each daughter, if I recall
correctly). However, as late as 1911, he was evidently managing Susie's finances
for her, since Lovecraft remarks somewhere in a letter that he and his mother
suffered a financial loss through Uncle Edwin at this time. Clearly, HPL does
not seem to have remembered Uncle Edwin with much affection --- although a
relative by blood, he is far eclipsed in HPL's letters by the husbands of his
three sisters --- Winfield Lovecraft, Franklin Clark, and Edward Gamwell. The
1911 Providence Directory shows Edwin living at 63 East Manning Street (Mrs.
Jennie Mathews, evidently the mother of his wife Helen Mathews, boarding at the
same address) and conducting a refrigeration business from Room 1035 of the
Banigan building at Weybosset and Custom House Streets in downtown Providence.
At this time, Dr. Clark aad his wife Lillie were living at 38 Barnes Street, at
a significantly farther remove from 598 Angell Street, and Dr. Clark was
apparently retired from practice, not being listed among the physicians in the
directory. It is hard to believe that Dr. Clark, nearly sixty-five, took
principal or sole responsibility for the Lovecrafts. One must surely imagine
Uncle Edwin --- if in fact he had responsibility for the finances --- pushing
for Howard to earn a living. If any counsel was sought from family friends, the
input would surely have been to push the young man toward a resumption of normal
adult associations. If Howard was still the toast of his boyhood associations,
albeit less frequently, one cannot imagine that it was without the blessing of
friends and family. A renewed period of church attendance at this time, whether
by personal choice or at the urging of the family, is certainly not beyond the
realm of possibility. It would be most interesting to learn whether any of the
male Phillipses were associated with the First Universalist Church. Perhaps the
point will bear investigation by a local Lovecraftian. All statements regarding
the early development of his skepticism aside, I still do not believe it to be
impossible that Lovecraft himself tried church-going during these tension-laden
years. I tend to doubt, however, that he would have formally associated himself
with the Universalist Church, despite the attraction which its emphasis on
individual freedom might have had. All of his published statements seem to cast
his aesthetic allegiance --- mind, not intellectual adherence --- with the
Episcopal faith of his father Winfield Lovecraft. When the time came for his
marriage in 1924, he chose to be married in an Episcopal church, St. Paul's, a
church with the same patron as the one in which his parents were married in
Boston in 1889. The Reverend Alfred Johnson, an Episcopal priest and family
friend, spoke at the funeral services for both Aunt Lillie and Susie, despite
their formal allegiance with the First Baptist Church. With his strong
anglophilism, Lovecraft, it seems to me, would have been hard pressed to join
any church other than the Episcopalian. One might further ask, if, in fact, he
was a member of this church from shortly after birth. In distinction to the
Baptists, who baptize only upon attainment of the age of reason, the Episcopal
Church, like the Catholic, will baptize infants. Given Winfield Lovecraft's
allegiance to things British --- virtually the only thing remembered of him by
history --- I am led to wonder whether his young son was not in fact baptized
after his birth, either in the diocese of Providence or of Boston. (While Susie
delivered in Providence, at her father's home, I believe she and her husband
were residing in Dorchester, Massachusetts, at the time.)
More could probably be gleaned about
the religious affiliations of the Phillipses, more particularly the Phillips
males, from the obituaries of Whipple (1904), Dr. Clark (1915), and Edwin
(1918). It is difficult for me to believe that both Dr. Clark and Edwin did not
have major roles in the development of the events of HPL's life in 1908-1914. I
tend to believe that Lovecraft himself may have later understated the role of
Uncle Edwin in those years, perhaps because of tension or lack of sympathy.
Edwin's wife Helen Mathews did not long survive this period, dying in 1916; the
couple left no children. In my mind, Edwin, struggling to keep afloat in
business and evidently involved in Susie's financial affairs, cannot but have
had a major say in what happened in these years. With all due respect for her
intelligence and the genius she and Winfield Lovecraft left us in their son ---
what a handsome couple they make in the Grill photograph (lately offered for
sale by a California bookseller)! --- one cannot help but wondering whether the
passing of the last male Phillipses (Dr. Clark in 1915 and Edwin in 1918),
coupled with HPL's 1917 enlistment attempts, were not the final blows which sent
Susie to Butler Hospital in 1919. (Edward Gamwell and Annie Phillips separated
at some point early in their marriage, which occurred in 1897; I do not know
when Annie resumed residence in Providence. She had certainly returned by the
time of Susie's hospitalization in 1919, her only son Phillips Gamwell, having
died as a youth in 1916.)
This matter of Lovecraft's possible
association with a church, then, I would find entirely understandable in view of
the inevitable pressures of these "lost" years. I tend to doubt
whether his later skepticism was fully formed at this period. While I would be
very much surprised to find that Lovecraft actually joined the First
Universalist Church, I think that participation in a men's club --- whether
urged by family member, friend, or neighbor --- would be entirely in character
for this period. Then, in 1914, came the discovery by amateur journalism and the
resumption of his astronomical articles in the local press --- a whole new
dawning for the career of promise cut short in 1908. There is much we shall
never know of the "lost" years, but I think that assiduous research
may yet reveal further bits and pieces which give us a clue.
--- Kenneth W. Faig, Jr.
Evanston, IL
It's taken me a while to get through
that gibbering mass of Crypt back issues, but I can finally say that I
loved every one of them. Whether you feed us stories or throw us articles, we
always seem to learn something new and intriguing. Your cover art has also come
a long way from "Cthulhu vs. Godzilla!" to those beauties on #s 22 and
23 (no offense there).
A few comments on past issues: Praise
to our esteemed editor for sockin' it to Brian Lumley
in #19! The annoying mutations perpetrated by this "author" on the
Mythos have piled up to my eyebrows; I only wish you had brought up some of his
time discrepancies such as that surrounding the death of his Gordon Walmsley.
According to Beneath the Moors, Walmsley is dead by 1958; in In the
Vaults Beneath, Walmsley is a character who remembers back when he did some
translating for a disturbed man, chronicled in Rising with Surtsey, in
1963! These aren't typos, as the dates are mentioned over and over again in
those same stories. After Lumley's tirade in the interview
with him in #19 and the name-calling "Comments"
article by him in #22, he has completely fallen off my Look for Stuff by This
Guy list. In #30, Ralph Vaughan's article "Believers in Lovecraft"
mentions that roleplayers take their games seriously. As a moderator, or one who
creates the adventures for the characters, for the Call of Cthulhu game and one
who lives splat-dab in the middle of a high games-density community, I must say
that most of the gamers do not take these games seriously. I have a hard time
keeping the players from jeering or thumbing their noses at Nyarlathotep and
others, although I do usually obliterate the lily-livered blasphemers for such
actions. Nearly all the gamers consider playing sessions to be merely a chance
to get together, and they certainly don't believe one bit in the idea that
Cthulhu is real (although one did think that the Necronomicon existed). I
live just 25 miles from Big Bear Lake and, though I didn't participate in the
get-together mentioned, I can tell you that the majority of roleplayers would
look askance at people in 1920s costumes running around chanting incantations. .
. .
And why wasn't there any "Truth is
Stranger than Lovecraft" in #30? Not to go against what I just said about
not believing, but they're fun to use for scaring the hell out of relatives and
religious groups who say we're worshipping the Devil.
--- Chris Beekman
Lake Arrowhead, CA
A note on some cinematic Lovecraftia.
Empire International Pictures has completed H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator
based on HPL' s "Herbert West --- Reanimator". Unfortunately, I missed
the promo reel at AFM at the beginning of March, but hope to check put the
advanced screening this month.
The March 6, 1985, issue of the weekly Variety
(containing the American Film Market Section) has a full page ad on p. 99. The
byline reads "Since the beginning of time, man has searched for the secret
of immortality. This is H. P. Lovecraft's classic story of one man who found
it."
Empire's previous releases include Ghoulies,
The Dungeonmaster and Trancers as well as schlock horror such as Zombie
Lake, etc. I hope they at least do HPL justice.
--- Armando D. Marini, Jr.
Studio City, CA
[See page 6 of this issue. --- Ed.]
I have just had the opportunity and
great pleasure of looking over two issues --- #24 and #28 --- of your very fine
publication, Crypt of CthuIhu. I am stunned at the thought of not having
been aware of your efforts for all this time and at the thought of possibly
having missed out altogether. With definitive articles, scholarly criticisms,
lively letters, and associational items of things Lovecraftian in general, you
are performing a wonderful service to those of us Lovecraft-oriented
aficionados. Thank you for a publication that fills a much needed niche.
--- Richard M. Jefts
Orange, CA
Death herself could not drag 16 bucks
out of my pocket as quickly as Crypt does. Keep up the good work.
More Donna Death! How about a
centerfold!
--- Kenneth M. Humphreys
Stratford, CT
I was pleased to see Chester Malon
["Yet More Lovecraft in the Cinema", Crypt #30] drawing
attention to Caltiki as a Lovecraftian movie; indeed, I made many of the
same points in my article on Lovecraft on film in the Arkham Collector
back in 1968, an article reprinted recently by the British Fantasy Society. May
I supply some footnotes to the Malon piece? Caltiki isn't a Mexican film,
but Italian (though shot in Spain). The pseudonymous director was Riccardo
Freda, best known for the two Doctor Hitchcock films with Barbara Steele (the
first of which, incidentally, is now available uncensored in Britain on
videocassette). The film Seven Doors of Death isn't American; it's the
1981 Lucio Fulci film --- E Tu Vivrai nel Terrore! L'Aldila (released in
Britain, and now banned there on videocassette, as The Beyond). Gate
of Hell, which Mr. Malon cites as an imitation of it, is in fact the same
director's 1980 film Paura nella Citta dei Morti Viventi (City of the
Living Dead in Britain). It's difficult to know how similar the British and
American versions of these films are; in City of the Living Dead the
setting is explicitly Dunwich, but I don't know if this is so in the States,
where I gather they enjoy changing things about. Oddly, the original running
time of L'Aldila was 88 minutes, and so the 94-minute version Mr. Malon
quotes presumably has scenes shot for American release. I have to tell you that
like most of Fulci's plots (and indeed, most of those of Italian horror films in
general), the film seems never to have been designed to make logical sense.
--- Ramsey Campbell
Merseyside, England
|