L'Affaire Barlow: H.P. Lovecraft and the Battle for His Literary Legacy

How authors' estates are managed (or not) has long interested me. This book, L’Affaire Barlow, by Marcos Legaria, details the quarrels and back-stabbing among the friends of H.P. Lovecraft who sought to control Lovecraft’s literary estate. Lovecraft himself had chosen for this role R.H. Barlow, who would turn 19 a few months after Lovecraft’s death in March 1937. Some of Lovecraft’s friends resented this appointment and disliked Barlow. In particular, the Wandrei brothers, Donald and Howard, along with poet and bookseller Sam Loveman, launched a very mean-spirited campaign against Barlow, and Derleth aided and abetted them on the one hand, while duplicitously pretending to be Barlow’s friend on the other. It’s a sad story of how they basically pushed Barlow out of the field of fantastic literature, as Derleth set up his own small empire known as Arkham House.

It's all spelled out in letters quoted in this book. Donald Wandrei wrote about his campaign against Barlow, two years after it had begun, to Derleth in April 1939:  “I shall continue to assail and attack him wherever and whenever possible,” and Wandrei did so long after Barlow’s suicide in 1951, and up through Wandrei’s own death in 1987.

Derleth also admitted what he was doing:  “For my part I am keeping up surface relations with Barlow deeming it best for one half of this combination to keep an eye on the doings of Barlow” (5 January 1939).  And then, prophetically: “Of course we can be proprietors of HPL’s work, and we are, even though we don’t get royalties. Those go to Mrs. Gamwell [HPL’s surviving aunt] in any event—BUT once she is dead, all income from the Lovecraft material is to come to us. Savvy?” (10 January 1939). Mrs. Gamwell died in January 1941. But here, two years earlier, is the seed of what Derleth did for the next thirty-some years, until his own death in 1971.

Ken Faig, Jr., contributes a Foreword to this book, with much sense and much of interest, yet he tries to minimize these events as a “long-ago feud” that “deserves to be forgotten.” Well, no. It is all highly significant to the development of the popularity and acclaim for Lovecraft, and in the publishing history of his writings. Anyone interested in how a modern literary estate was usurped can learn from the vitriol and scheming profusely detailed in this book.

I note one small detail not mentioned by Legaria. Barlow always used as his byline “R.H. Barlow”—doubtless following the rhythm of the name of his mentor “H.P. Lovecraft”. Barlow always signed his name in letters as “Bob.”  But Derleth in letters repeatedly referred to him as “Bobby Barlow” or “little Bobby Barlow” (and later as “Robert H. Barlow”--another form of his name that Barlow did not use)—as a way to emphasize his youth and evident insignificance. Despite the huge amount of help Barlow gave Derleth on the first two Arkham Lovecraft volumes, The Outsider and Others (1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943), Derleth gave no public acknowledgement at all to Barlow, and even made Barlow pay for his own copy of the first book (the first copy, if actually sent, was supposedly lost in the mail, and the second copy also took an extended amount of time to reach Barlow). Derleth comes across as scheming, duplicitous, and extremely petty. The evidence is all here.

NB:  I note that the photograph on page 36 of the book is said to be of Barlow, but it is not. It is Duane W. Rimel, another of Lovecraft’s young correspondents. It was added to the book by the publisher, not the author. This photo also appears on the web as supposedly being of Barlow.

Lovecraft in the UK: 90 years ago today

On Monday, 24 October 1932, an H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Music of Erich Zann," received wide circulation in England as no. 91 of a series "Great Short Stories" published in the newspaper The Evening Standard. Interestingly, it is illustrated by "Mendoza"--Philip Mendoza (1898-1973), who has a nice write-up here, and another here.

The illustration I reproduce next, and below it, the full pages of the story itself.  (I didn't compare the text to the original versions, in The National Amateur, March 1922 and Weird Tales, May 1925, to see whether it has been edited or not.) Clicking on the scans will make them larger.

Catching Up with Le Visage Vert

The recent publication of issue 30 (a milestone!) of Le Visage Vert has reminded me that I need to cover it and their other recent publications.

Here's the new issue, which contains (among other things) two stories by Stefan Grabinski, and two studies of Grabinski, by Pierre van Cutsem (biographical and bibliographical, with nice color illustrations) and by Michel Meurger.  For the full contents see here. And for ordering information, see here.

Issue 29 came out about a year ago, and it has two pieces by Marcel Schwob, and two articles about him, along with the fourth installment of Michel Meurger's historical study  of werewolves (the third installment appeared in issue no. 27), among other intriguing items. For the full contents see here. And for ordering information, see here.

Recent publications in the Librairie du Visage Vert include the first of three planned volumes of stories by Maurice Level, Les Oiseaux de nuit [Night Birds], with a long Preface by Philippe Gontier and a long afterword and extensive bibliography by Jean Luc Buard. Such extensive coverage of Level is long overdue and very welcome. For ordering information, see here.

And there is a recent collection of essays on Lovecraft, edited by Christophe Gelly and Gilles Menegaldo, Lovecraft au prisme de l'image: Littérature, cinéma et arts graphiques [Lovecraft in the prism of the image: literature, cinema, and graphic arts]. For ordering information, see here. 

As usual, these LVV publications are elegantly and tastefully produced.  Have a look around at their main page here, and scroll down a bit to find their list of publications, with the most recent nearer to the top.  

Lovecraft's Lost "Cancer of Superstition" Typescript?

On April 9th, 2016, the Chicago auction house Potter & Potter will be selling a typescript which they claim is by H.P. Lovecraft, ghost-writing for Harry Houdini, entitled "The Cancer of Superstition."  The web has been flooded with news of a lost Lovecraft manuscript being found. Alas, on closer look, the claim of Lovecraft's authorship is certainly debatable, and is to some extent demonstrably dubious.  (See the news stories dated 3/9/2016 and 3/16/2016 at the Potter & Potter website here.)

It has long been known that Houdini employed Lovecraft to ghost-write a story for Weird Tales, published as "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (May-June-July 1924), and that Lovecraft's friend C.M. Eddy, Jr., based like Lovecraft in Providence, also worked for Houdini as a scout as well as a ghost-writer.  And some of the story behind Houdini hiring Eddy, with assistance from Lovecraft, to ghost-write "The Cancer of Superstition" is known from The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (1966) by H.P. Lovecraft & Divers Hands, edited by August Derleth, which also published the outline and first chapter of "The Cancer of Superstition." Derleth clearly had first-hand information from Eddy when putting this together, and more about that will be found below, but here is what Derleth says in his headnote to the publication:

[Houdini] enlisted the talents of C.M. Eddy, Jr., and in the course of their work together Houdini outlined sketchily a book he thought ought to be done on the origins, growth and fallacy of superstition. He suggested that Eddy might prepare the book, and furnished him with voluminous notes and ideas that he wanted incorporated in the book; he suggested also that perhaps H.P. Lovecraft could put the notes into shape so that Eddy could work from the outline Lovecraft prepared. Lovecraft was not averse to the idea and duly prepared the following outline under the title, The Cancer of Superstition.

There follows a 1,500 word outline for the book in twelve numbered sections.  And just before printing the first chapter, Derleth gives another headnote: 

With this outline in hand, Eddy went to work and began to write The Cancer of Superstition, showing his pages to Lovecraft as he went along. The manuscript, with Lovecraft's interlinear emendations and additions, began to evolve.

Next follows what is apparently the first chapter, labelled  I. "The Genesis of Superstition", comprising nearly 4,100 words.

At the end of this chapter, Derleth gives another note, saying Houdini had approved Lovecraft's outline and Eddy's initial work, but after he died on October 31, 1926:

his widow did not elect to go on with the book he had visualized. Eddy nevertheless pushed forward, and Lovecraft made slight interlinear corrections and additions, but the project, insofar as it had gone--through three chapters--basically lacked body and authority, and it was presently abandoned, though not before the three chapters were recast into an article--of which the above is the initial part, for which no publisher was ever found.

Now, turning to what Potter & Potter are auctioning, it is a typescript of some 31 leaves, numbered 1-10, [11-13 missing] and 14-34, the final two leaves being a bibliography.  The typescript is divided into three sections, "The Genesis of Superstition" [as above], "The Expansion of Superstition", and "The Fallacy of Superstition."  From the first page of the typescript, visible in the auction catalog and in the illustration below, the text appear to match closely that published in The Dark Brotherhood.  

The Cancer of Superstition typescript

Considering "The Cancer of Superstition" typescript as if the three missing pages were present, it should contain about 32 pages of text (not counting the bibliography), or, estimating 300 words a page, around 9,600 words.  Thus, it appears that over half of the typescript (5,500 words) is unpublished; and (huzzah!) the missing text from pages 11-13 should be present near the end of the version published in The Dark Brotherhood.

Apparently, what versions exist of "The Cancer of Superstition" comprise:

1) the outline, by H.P. Lovecraft, apparently handwritten, published in The Dark Brotherhood

2) the manuscript, apparently handwritten by Eddy, with (as Derleth noted) "Lovecraft's interlinear emendations and additions"--the first chapter of this is also published in The Dark Brotherhood

and 3) the typescript, as offered for sale by Potter & Potter.  This typescript was likely prepared by Eddy's wife. She is known to have prepared typescripts for her husband and for Lovecraft, as he hating typing.

What is currently unknown is the location of items one and two (above), including the manuscript continuation that is represented by the latter half of the Potter & Potter typescript.

It is clear that Derleth and Eddy were in touch in the 1960s, not only over the matter of "The Cancer of Superstition" manuscripts, but also concerning the use of Eddy's three stories that also appear in The Dark Brotherhood. And Derleth must have had access to the further two chapters of Eddy's manuscript (with "slight interlinear corrections and additions" by Lovecraft) but chose not to publish them. Unfortunately the surviving letters from Eddy to Derleth, held at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, are incomplete, but some facts can be gleaned from the surviving letters.

First, Eddy discussed "The Cancer of Superstition" with Derleth as early as 1944, and wrote on 23 October 1944:

Sorry that I wasn't absolutely clear. THE CANCER OF SUPERSTITION was mine. Completely revised, deleted and annotated by H.P.L."  

In April 1962, Eddy sold to a Lovecraft collector "for his own collection" the "4 1/2 page outline" made by Lovecraft "that I could use as a guide-post to base various chapters of the book on."  After he sold this outline, Eddy was digging through a hitherto buried box of old manuscripts and came across the "manuscript"--i.e., the "collaboration between H.P.L. and myself.  Except for the fact that the basic subject matter is the same, this has no connection whatsoever with the notes that I sold." Derleth was able to publish both the outline and the first chapter in The Dark Brotherhood, which appeared four years later in 1966.

So, what we have here for sale is more precisely a lost Eddy typescript, which includes some subsumed revisions by Lovecraft, from a previous manuscript. Thus, Eddy was the primary author, with Lovecraft in more of an advisorial role.

One hopes that the entire typescript can eventually be published.  Meanwhile, one wonders whether the typescript as it survives might have been the complete book--or rather, booklet, owing to its short size.  It covers, in its three sections, what Derleth notes as Houdini's remit of  "the origins, growth and fallacy of superstition." Perhaps the talk of a "book" referred only to a small book, of about ten thousand words, and the typescript recently discovered, including its bibliography in the final two pages, is actually complete. One hopes also that some further documentation might turn up that provides more context, one way or another. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to compare Lovecraft's outline with the content of the unpublished second and third chapters.

H. P. Lovecraft: A Master of the Uncanny, by Stanley Larnach

This article, the first on H.P. Lovecraft published in Australia, appeared in two parts in the September and October 1948 issues of Biblionews, the monthly newsletter of the Book Collectors’ Society of Australia. Stanley Lorin Larnach (1900-1978) was a well-known book collector, especially of nineteenth century Penny Bloods, and an academic at Sydney University. 

In a famous essay, "A Free Man's Worship", Bertrand Russell pointed out that Man and all "his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but accidental collocations of atoms"; that all man has ever created or cherished is doomed to perish in the vast death of the solar system; and that nothing he can do can preserve his life beyond the grave. If these things, says Russell, are not quite beyond dispute, no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. "Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow sure doom falls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts which ennoble his little day .... Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

In an autobiographical fragment HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT described himself as a "mechanistic materialist". Whether he felt the "impending slow sure doom which falls pitiless and dark", and whether this evoked his almost morbid preoccupation with time we may never know. He did regard Time as the most horrible thing in the Universe. In this twentieth century world of science we find it increasingly difficult to reach a medieval attitude to stories of ghosts, demons, werewolves, vampires and such like "things". Perhaps if we actually experienced something utterly alien to our universe yet somehow acting on it we might not be so easy in our minds. Lovecraft subtly creates such an "atmosphere" in his stories. But perhaps no terror his creative imagination produced is as convincing as his attitude to time.

H. P. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., on 20th August, 1890. Owing to ill-health, he rarely attended school, but spent long hours reading 18th century books in the attic. In his autobiographical fragment he said that the effect of this reading was to make him feel subtly out of place in the modern period. From the age of eight he took a strong interest in the sciences, particularly in chemistry and astronomy. At sixteen he contributed articles on astronomy to a local paper.

Lovecraft's first story, "The Alchemist", was published in the United Amateur. "Dagon'' appeared in The Vagrant in November, 1919. Pearl Merritt said: "I recall one night I let the moon shine in my eyes because I was afraid to get up and pull the shades down after reading "Dagon"".

The Vagrant, an amateur journal which published some of his stories, had a varied career. At least two issues were printed and destroyed. On one occasion the sheets, left lying on a table near an open window, were wet by rain. They were dumped in the basement where Lovecraft rescued the few copies which survived.

Most of his stories were published in "Weird Tales" Magazine. Attempts to publish in book form were less fortunate. In 1928 "The Shunned House" was all printed and the sheets were in the bindery. W. Paul Cook tells how he cancelled binding orders, withdrew the sheets from the binder and stowed them away. "Sometime later," he says, "a young friend of Lovecraft wanted very much to have the sheets, promised to bind them adequately and send the books out at once." But there is great mystery about the fate of the prints. The only book of Lovecraft's which appeared during his lifetime was a slim volume containing "The Shadow over Innsmouth", and which was privately printed.

Many of Lovecraft's friends have commented on his amazing erudition. He could carry on a conversation on equal terms with specialists on a wide range of subjects ‑‑ from the architecture of Colonial America to the mythology of Mexico: he frequently made the calculations necessary for astronomical predictions. His editors humoured him also in an idiosyncracy, for he always insisted that his English be spelt according to British usage. This caused interminable controversies with compositors and proof-readers. He wrote his stories to satisfy his own artistic judgment and refused to alter a story to suit an editor, although it would then have been accepted.

In his stories he did not draw on the conventional Christian demonology or witchcraft but from "darker and more furtively whispered cycles of subterranean legend." Someone indiscreetly probing in certain forbidden regions of knowledge might stir up indescribable things which are not good even for Man to think about. Only in such blasphemous and forbidden books, such as the "Necronomicon" are such things hinted at.

It is interesting for a book-collector to read in so many of Lovecraft's stories about the curious libraries of strange and rare books which are discovered in old and crumbling houses. Of all the rare, forbidden books, none so arouses our interest as the "Necronomicon". This work was written by the Arab Abdul Alhazred and its dark secrets reveal and reflect a curious light on his blasphemous researches on things best left alone.

Originally known as "Al Azif", it was first translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetus of Constantinople; and a Latin translation was made in 1228. In spite of vigorous efforts by both Church and secular authorities utterly to destroy this work, there are five known copies today. There is a fifteenth century edition in the British Museum. Seventeenth century editions are to be found in the Widner Library at Harvard University, in the Library of the Miskatonic University at Arkham, in Buenos Ayres University, and in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. There is also a persistent rumour that there is a copy in the collection of a well known American millionaire.

Yet perhaps it is no worse than Von Junzt's "Unausprechlichen Kulten", which was originally published in Dusseldorf in 1837 but is better known in the drastically expurgated Golden Goblin Press edition of 1909. Other dark and infamous books found in these libraries are the "Book of Eibon", the "Pnakotic Manuscripts", Ludwig Prinn's "De Vermis Mysteriis", the Comte d'Erlette's ''Cultes des Goules", and the even more obscure "R'lyeh Text" and the "Dhol Chants".

On the 15th March, 1937, Lovecraft died. Two fellow authors, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, undertook the task of collecting and publishing his complete works. Ardent admirers of Lovecraft, they named their publishing firm Arkham House after the fabled town of Arkham which was the scene of many of his stories.

Their first publication was "The Outsider and Others", sold at five dollars and limited to 1200 copies. Already copies on the used book market have reached 75 dollars. It was from the date of publication of this book that we may date the beginning of the "Lovecraft Cult" which is becoming world-wide. A French edition of his works is announced from Paris. Since the appearance of "The Outsider" in 1939 Arkham House has become a successful publishing venture. A number of books have been published and among them most of Lovecraft's work has appeared or will shortly appear. Arkham House books are tastefully produced in black cloth bindings and are usually retailed at three or five dollars. They have not stopped with American authors but have anthologised Coppard, and published such writers as Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson. Lovecraft is truly in the tradition of the masters of the uncanny and his books should appeal to literate collectors.

Works of H. P. Lovecraft

i. 1928. "THE SHUNNED HOUSE" was ready for binding but not actually issued. It has been reported that about a dozen copies have since been privately distributed in bindings of different colours.

ii. 1936. "THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH by H. P. Lovecraft. Illustrated by Frank A. Utpatel. Visionary Publishing Co., Everett., Pennsylvania. Pp. 158 plus 16 blank pages. Black cloth covers. 7" x 5".

iii. 1939. "THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS" by H. P. Lovecraft. Collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. Pp.xxx plus 553. Black cloth, 9¼" x 6¼". $5.

iv. 1943. "BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP" by H. P. Lovecraft. Collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, Arkham, House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. Pp. xxx plus 458. Black cloth, 9¼" x 6¼". $5.

v. 1944. "MARGINALIA" by H. P. Lovecraft. Collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, Arkham. House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. Pp. x plus 378. Black cloth, 7½" x 5¼". $3.

vi. 1945. "THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD" by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. Pp. 196. Black Cloth. 7½" x 5¼". $2.50. (Although this novel is concerned with the Lovecraft mythos, there is little of Lovecraft's actual work in it.)

Two further publications have been announced by Arkham House, viz., "SOMETHING ABOUT CATS" and an omnibus of "SELECTED LETTERS". There have been a number of cheap editions of some of Lovecraft's stories, including "THE BEST SUPERNATURAL STORIES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT" (World Publishing Co), "THE LURKING FEAR" (Avon Publishing Co.), etc. 

Del Toro's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

A few years ago, there was a significant buzz that Guillermo Del Toro was going to direct a big budget version of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".  It seemed like a good match of director and subject, and it was apparently one of Del Toro's dream projects that he'd tried unsuccessfully to do before. Del Toro himself scripted the film with Matthew Robbins. But sometime afterwards, interest seemed to dry up, and Del Toro moved on to other things. 

Recently Del Toro and Robbins's script began circulating on the web.  I understand this is an early version, but at least we now get to experience as a brain movie something of Del Toro's vision.  Alas, I found it second-rate---much more of an expansion of John Carpenter's The Thing (itself excellent) along Lovecraftian lines, than something truly Lovecraftian.  Dole in a heap of movie cliches, and a heavy reliance upon special effects, and I can see why no studio would want to fund this project.  (Of course, compared to what studios want to and do fund, this script should have seemed like a real box-office winner.)  But don't trust me.  Read it for yourself.  Currently I found it online at The Lovecraft eZine.  Direct link here. 

Lovecraft on Le Fanu

Many have wondered why H. P. Lovecraft held such a low opinion of the work of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose work merits barely a nod in Lovecraft’s seminal essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” [W. Paul Cook (ed.) The Recluse, 1927. Revised 1933-4]:

“The romantic, semi-Gothic, quasi-moral tradition here represented was carried far down the nineteenth century by such authors as Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Wilkie Collins, the late Sir H. Rider Haggard (whose She is really remarkably good), Sir A. Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Robert Louis Stevenson . . .”

How could one of the most influential writers of weird fiction in the 20th century fail to appreciate one of the masters of the prior century, an author whose work was extolled as exemplary by M. R. James, whose work received an entire chapter in the same essay?

We may ascribe part of the answer to Lovecraft’s atheism, which would have taken issue with the trappings of Christianity in Le Fanu’s work, though the view of Christianity displayed in Le Fanu’s fiction is considerably less orthodox than one finds in either James of Machen. An examination of Lovecraft’s correspondence with Donald Wandrei, Clark Ashton Smith, and August Derleth suggests that the nature of the works to which Lovecraft had been exposed were probably equally to blame.

After reading a reference to “Le Fanu’s anthology 'A Stable for Nightmares' ” in a letter from Donald Wandrei dated 5 January 1927 [Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei. Ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Night Shade Books, 2002, p. 11], Lovecraft remarked, “I wish I could get hold of Polidori’s ‘Vampyre’ & something by Le Fanu. The latter has long been a familiar name to me, yet I have seen absolutely nothing of his.” [Mysteries of Time and Spirit, p. 14]. By 13 March 1927, Lovecraft had received Wandrei’s copies of A Stable for Nightmares and one of Le Fanu’s novels:

“As soon as I have read 'All in the Dark' I’ll return that and 'A Stable for Nightmares'.” [Mysteries of Time and Spirit, p. 54]

These are unfortunate choices for several reasons. A Stable for Nightmares was a gathering of eleven anonymous and unremarkable supernatural stories published by Trusley Brothers of London for the Christmas market in 1867. Seven of those stories reappeared in an American edition in 1896, with “Le Fanu” stamped on the spine, “J. Sheridan Le Fanu . . . Sir Charles Young, Bart. and Others” on the full-title page, and no author’s names supplied for any of the stories within. One of the stories new to this edition is Le Fanu’s “Dickon the Devil”, the second is “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien, and the third, “A Debt of Honor”, is attributed to Sir Charles Young by default. No evidence has been put forward to establish that Le Fanu had anything to do with the first edition, and the author had been dead for 23 years by the time the American edition appeared, yet various anthologists and critics have assumed that at least some of these anonymous tales were written by Le Fanu ever since.

Lovecraft had some suspicions concerning the authorship of these stories from the beginning:

“I see that Le Fanu collection has Fitz-James O’Brien’s ‘What Was It?’—have you been able to identify others?” [Mysteries of Time and Spirit, p. 40].

Nonetheless, this first encounter with work he had first assumed to be by Le Fanu cannot have been an auspicious one.

Unfortunately, his second, more prolonged exposure was not much better. As a double-decker novel before a triple-decker demanding public, All in the Dark (1866) did not fare well with Le Fanu’s contemporaries, and in surviving notes for a lecture he delivered on Le Fanu on 16 March 1923, even the otherwise sympathetic M. R. James states, “Weakest of all the novels is All in the Dark—a domestic story with a sham ghost: an offence hard to forgive in any writer but much harder in Le Fanu’s case, seeing that he could deal so magnificently with realness without incurring any more expense.” [“The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu”, in M. R. James, A Pleasing Terror. Ash-Tree Press, 2001, p. 494. The first printing of this article in Ghosts and Scholars 7 omits this passage.]

Lovecraft admitted to August Derleth that he was not impressed with the book when he first approached it on 26 March 1927— “I’ll tell you about Le Fanu when I’ve read 'All in the Dark'—but I don’t think he’ll prove anything marvelous.” [Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, Hippocampus Press, 2008, p. 75]—then went on to pan the book to the same correspondent in a letter dated 26 July 1927, even though he admits that he has perhaps not read the best examples of Le Fanu’s work: “What I have read of Sheridan Le Fanu was a great disappointment as compared with what I heard of him in advance—but it may be that I haven’t seen his best stuff. I don’t know 'Uncle Silas', but the thing I read (I can’t even recall the name) was abominably insipid and Victorian.” [Essential Solitude, p. 100]

A few years later, Lovecraft was given the opportunity to read one of Le Fanu’s best novels, but again it was a work almost guaranteed to frustrate him. Although long touted as a supernatural novel based on the two early chapters devoted to “Ghost Stories of the Tiled House”, Le Fanu’s The House by the Churchyard (1861-2) is a sprawling portrait of life across class levels in 18th century Dublin that more often resembles the darker specimens of Jacobean and Restoration comedy than it does the Gothic novel. Derleth must have belatedly realized this when he decided not to publish the edition he had announced during the early years of Arkham House.

That he was misled concerning the book’s content is made clear by Lovecraft’s letter to Derleth on 26 September 1929:

“Just now I am making a bold effort to keep awake over an old Victorian novel which some damn’d misguided oaf recommended to me as ‘weird’—J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 'House by the Churchyard'. I had been disillusioned before by Le Fanu specimens, & this one just about clinches my opinion that poor Sherry was a false alarm as a fear monger, & I shall cut him out of any possible 2nd edition of my historical sketch [i.e. “Supernatural Horror in Literature”].” [Essential Solitude, p. 216]

Lovecraft seems to have given up attempting to read Le Fanu’s novels, but continued to express a desire to read “Green Tea”, “though”, he confessed to August Derleth on 20 November 1931, “I can scarcely imagine a really weird tale by the author of 'The House by the Churchyard' & other Victorian products which I have seen.” [Essential Solitude, p. 415]. He finally received an anthology containing the story in January 1932— “Cook has just presented me with 'The Omnibus of Crime', & I think the first thing I shall read will be the much-discussed ‘Green Tea’ by Le Fanu.” [Essential Solitude, p. 435]—but was initially put off by its length— “Well—I guess I’m too sleepy tonight to read ‘Green Tea' after all! It’s longer than I anticipated.” [Essential Solitude, p. 438].

This is the point at which we can assume that a combination of repeated disappointments, expectations too exalted to fulfil, continued difficulty in locating the author's work, impatience with Victorian manners, and distaste for Christian mysticism finally took their toll. After reading sham Le Fanu in an anthology, sham supernaturalism in one of Le Fanu’s own novels, and genuine supernaturalism diluted by the hundreds of pages of societal melodrama in which they appear, “Green Tea” may have appeared to be too little too late. To Clark Ashton Smith on 16 January 1932, Lovecraft wrote, “I at last . . . have read ‘Green Tea.’ It is definitely better than anything else of Le Fanu’s that I have ever seen, though I’d hardly put it in the Poe-Blackwood-Machen class” [quoted in an annotation to Mysteries of Time and Spirit, p. 15].

When August Derleth sent Lovecraft an article on Le Fanu in April 1935, Lovecraft remembered not “Green Tea” but his disappointment in the novels, “Thanks abundantly for the article on Le Fanu. I have 'The House by the Churchyard'—thought it is an insufferably dull & Victorian specimen. In reading it, it was all I could do to keep awake!” [Essential Solitude, p. 693]

If only Lovecraft had gained access to a volume of Le Fanu in full supernatural regalia his assessment may have been different, or perhaps with the aid of the critical apparatus M. R. James supplied in Madam Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery—published in 1923, a mere four years prior to Lovecraft's first surviving reference of Le Fanu to Donald Wandrei—he may have seen a kindred spirit beneath those ostensibly Christian trappings. On the other hand, Heaven and Hell may have remained parochial to the cosmic materialist in Lovecraft no matter how creatively they had been couched by Le Fanu.