u/Important_Pick3371

Quick Bio: Childhood -

Until he was 6, Suzie dressed Lovecraft in frocks & curled his long blond hair.

This was a normal Victorian custom that was slowly becoming obsolete.

But, Howard was becoming tired of being treated like a daughter & threw a major tantrum!!

Suzie was forced to get his hair cut & HPL could finally dress in breechers/trousers.

It's also at 6, that Lovecraft wrote his 1st known story - "The Little Glass Bottle."

These (& other) tales are called Howard's "Juvenilia" &, sadly, few of them survive.

When he was 18, HPL reevaluated all of his earliest works - & found them to be terrible.

So, not wanting to be ridiculed, he ripped up many & threw them away...

At 7, Lovecraft was inspired by Alexander Pope's "Odyssey" translation to write his 1st bit of poesy, "The Poem of Ulysses."

This is also the year that he 1st read the works of Edgar Allan Poe...

Location -

200 University Avenue - the Slater Primary & Grammar School was actually an older & smaller wooden building.

Howard 1st went there during 1898-1899, when he was 8.

He found the lessons repetitive - as he had already learned most of the material from his grandma's library.

But, HPL did make 2 friends there: Chester & Harold Munroe!

However, sickness soon had him leaving school.

Also, Lovecraft didn't get along with his teacher...

Yet, he returned (at 12 years old) to the same school during 1902-1903.

Sickness soon had him returning to private tutors & his own voracious reading.

This school was abandoned in 1917 & soon demolished.

The site was later used by other schools, like the St. Dunstan's Preparatory School that's pictured above, in the 2nd pic.

Quick Bios -

Robie, Lovecraft's grandma, had a passion for collecting books & ended up with 2,000+ volumes kept up in her attic - some of them being centuries old!

Her death, when he was 5 years old, set off a year's vigil that affected Howard emotionally.

Yet, Lovecraft ended up educating himself - mostly by reading thru her private library.

At around 8 years old, Howard found his grandma's out-of-date astronomy & became enamored with the subject.

Lovecraft's mom bought him a telescope - but, it wasn't enough!

So, an astronomer & family friend allowed Howard to visit Ladd Observatory during late evenings.

HPL got his mom to buy him a bicycle to travel there & back...

He then wrote about astronomy for some newspapers & claimed that he wanted to become an astronomer.

Sadly(?), Lovecraft would find out - in high school - that there were limits to his learning skills...

Unfortunately, i've not been able to find any pix of Robie.

Whipple, Howard's grandad, was a busy & successful businessman who owned real estate, had industrial & mining investments - even a dam project out in Idaho!

After Winfield's death, the grandad stepped up as a father figure - encouraging HPL to read Classical Literature, English Poetry & Ancient Mythology.

Whipple also entertained young Lovecraft with Gothic Horror tales that are thought to have been influenced by writers like Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis & Charles Maturin.

Further, while out on long business trips, the grandad would write letters to Howard - that later became a sort of an artform for HPL.

This is where Lovecraft's long letters came from! As he's guessed to have written some 100,000 of them - a lot of them being 10 or more pages long!!

Location - The large home on 194 Angell Street, was built in the mid-1870s by grandpa Whipple.

Howard was born here in 1890 (his dad's real home being in Dorchester, Massachusetts) & would live here (with his mom & aunties) from 1893-1904, when Whipple passed.

Lovecraft hoped to make enough money to buy it back - but, unfortunately, never could.

The place was torn down in 1961, long after HPL had died...

Location - Butler Hospital, on 345 Blackstone Boulevard, opened in 1847.

Strangely enough, both of Howard's parents died here - at different times.

Winfield passed from neurosyphilis.

And, Suzie from a botched gall-bladder operation...

The hospital still exists, as Butler Behavioral Health & still provides mental health services - while facing cuts & labor problems.

Quick Bios: Lovecraft's Father & Mother -

Winfield was a womanizer & philanderer. He was pompous & considered to be tyrannical!

He worked for Gorham & Co. (a renowned silversmith & silverware manufacturer) as a traveling salesman - so, he hardly spent time with his only son nor with his wife...

Yet, things seemed to be fine.

Then, on a sales trip to Chicago - he suffered a major, psychotic meltdown! Among his rantings were aggressive outbursts & mad delusions that "strange men" were harming his wife - back home, at that moment, in Providence, R.I.!!

Supposedly, his medical records say that Winfield had actually been "doing & saying strange things at times" - for a whole year B4 his institutionization!

His diagnosis was neurological damage from his untreated syphilis, which is still a sexually transmitted disease.

Lovecraft was supposedly told that his dad was paralyzed due to overwork!!

Might this be the source of Howard never working a real job in his life?

There's also the question of how much young Lovecraft (then 3 years old) actually knew about his father's true condition...

By the time he was 8, HPL had read thru anatomical books that explained human sexuality - & it "killed my interest in the subject."

Howard was a smart kid & he could have figured out what truly happened to his dad.

This early scrape with madness might mean that Lovecraft feared falling prey to the same fate.

Add in his psychosomatic(?) illnesses plus, HPL's all too vivid dreams &, as a reaction, it could help explain why he became an atheist & a materialist.

"Suzie" was attractive, Puritanical, neurotic, possessive, ill-equipped for real life & full of prejudices due to ancestors who sailed to the colonies on the Mayflower.

Due to her father, Whipple, she enjoyed some wealth & certain connections - which she didn't mind leaning on for her own sake...

Originally, she was overprotective - needing to know where her Howard was - at all times. But, this is understandable as kidnappings of rich kids did occur.

But, she doted on him constantly - buying him anything that he wanted: like a train set, Arabian doodads, magic set, bicycle, garden tools, a telescope, a Jellygram printing set & etc...

It seems that she's to blame for downloading her class concerns, dissatisfactions, even her mistrust of others onto Lovecraft's shoulders.

As when Howard brought home a kid from school, intending to teach him some lessons &, afterwards, she roundly told him that such outsiders couldn't ever be trusted...

But, Lovecraft could be a handful.

As he soon returned with the only 2 kids who were his friends & she was forced to display her best behavior.

Sadly, Winfield's hospitalization & death only made things worse - as she transferred her feelings about her husband's womanizing to her son - becoming bitter & verbally abusive.

To Be Continued, sometime in the future...

Lovecraft's Childhood

Howard was a precocious¹ but sickly child, coddled by his mom (Suzie) & his aunts, who allowed him to set his own sleep schedule & to eat whatever he liked.²

But, his happy youth was rendered tragic by his grandma Robie's sudden death³ & his dad Winfield's 5 year hospitalization⁴...

The events of his father's decline might have led Lovecraft to fear the same thing would happen to him.⁵

His mom, who was already overprotective⁶ - now began her own, slower decline...

Luckily, his grandad Whipple, stepped into a more fatherly role, focusing HPL on reading classic literature⁷, mythology⁸ & English poems.⁹

And, though he would have help from tutors, Howard basically taught himself.

Among the authors/books that he read were: Jules Verne, the Brothers Grimm, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Metamorphoses, Age of Fable, Edgar Allan Poe, etc...

Sadly, though Lovecraft was usually happy, things were not well with him either.

At home, he went thru intense nightmares about "nightgaunts"...¹⁰

And, when he finally went to school, he would suffer psychosomatic(?) illnesses, nervous anxieties & clashes with his teacher!¹¹

Around 6 or 7 years old, he began to write his first stories...¹²

Footnotes/Sources to follow.