My interest in Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his aversion towards alcohol began in the autumn of 2017 when I one evening stumbled across a letter he had written to Zealia Brown Reed back in 1928. It was a fascinating read partly because of his extreme and passionate wording and partly because I realised that here was a part of Lovecraft’s life that I practically speaking did not know anything about.
I began researching the matter during the small hours of the morning that autumn and it proved a rather amusing study mainly because of Lovecraft’s hardline attitude but also because of the new words and phrases I encountered. It is difficult to forget concepts and expressions like ‘teetotalism, ‘Hydra-monster Rum’ ‘and ‘chain lightning’. An additional delight was that I came to read works of Lovecraft that I had never read before. This included some of the dramatic philosophical contributions to his own amateur magazine the Conservative and overlooked works of fiction such as “Old Bugs” and “Sweet Ermengarde”, the latter written under the pseudonym of Percy Simple.
In 2019 I published the fruits of my labour in Lovecraft Annual no. 13 in the form of the essay “Now Will You Be Good?”: Lovecraft, Teetotalism, and Philosophy”. The essay focuses on Lovecraft’s teetotalism, the lengths to which he went to incorporate his views and how he sought to influence the people around him via his various writing.
It opens with brief sketch of the historical background from which his dry outlook emerged. The essay continues by providing evidence for Lovecraft’s advocacy of abstinence and Prohibition from a variety of sources, including biographical material, philosophical essays, letters, poetry, and fiction, with a view to showing how he communicated his dry philosophy and how it softened as he advanced into middle age. It ends by arguing that although there can be no doubt that Lovecraft was a teetotaler par excellence; his later softened position is more balanced and rooted partly in the realization of his own idiosyncrasy and anachronism.
SECTIONS:
Introduction
Against a Drunken Background: England
Bacchus in America
In Vino Veritas: The Early Lovecraft (1890-1925)
In Aqua Sanitas: The Later Lovecraft (1925-1937)
Summery
ORDER THE ESSAY
ELECTRONIC COPY