Howard Davison, Box 186, Columbus, Ohio. Who was he? I don't know much about this man, but what I have just learned and the way I learned it (boy!) has me in a dither, or, as the saying goes, agog.
Of course we all know about another man named Howard. The rest of this guy's name was Phillips Lovecraft. In an earlier incarnation, I subscribed myself a sincere acolyte (whatever that means) of this other Howard.
Amazingly, though, there evidently was far more of a connection between these two "howards" than a chance coincidence of given names. They knew each other. Well, maybe not personally, but they corresponded.
"Xavier, the Werewolf". Does that convey any meaning to you? Did you ever hear of such a story? Neither did I, but imagine the sock in the puss I got when I picked up this rather tattered manuscript out of the tray of the trunk because the handwriting, crabbed and minute, yet clear, looked vaguely familiar. And there, in the upper right hand corner, was the address: "H. P. Lovecraft, 598 Angell Street, Providence, R. I.".
Yes. Yes, indeed. An unpublished, yes, an unheard of, Lovecraft weird short story, and I found it right here in Alhambra. Well, not quite. I guess this fellow's garage was over in San Gabriel.
That ought to be enough reader hook; let me fill you in on the background.
Until early last year, one of my favorite haunts was Louis' New and Used Books, an establishment on Alhambra's Main Street near First. It wasn't a very big place, but he did have an incredible number of desirable books at very reasonable prices. Judging from the stuff this man had in stock, he was too much off the beaten track of book collectors. I made so many strikes in this place that I felt a trip uptown was wasted if I didn't drop in and browse for a few minutes.
And then he moved out on me. I failed to go uptown for a couple of weeks, and when I headed to Louis' the whole front end was out of the store and a crew of men was remodeling it. I griped to Cele at the time, and someone or other at school told her this guy had moved his stock out to his house and was still in business. I meant to look into this, but you know what happens to a lot of good intentions.
Saturday, July 29th, I was uptown and happened to think about my boy Louis. So I went in the stationary and magazine store in the next block to the ex-Louis shop, and asked them if they knew anything about the guy. They did. It seems that if I were to drive out Valley Blvd., and turn left at the first street past the old airport, or maybe it was the second, and then turn -- either left or right, they weren't quite sure -- I'd come to this guy's place. 415 Newby Ave. The lady obligingly copied the address off a note she had stuck on a spike by her cash register.
So I buzzed out there. I almost got cold feet as I started up to the house, but then I spotted a small faded sign "BOOKS" in the front window.
Quite a place. Louis (I still don't know his last name) and his wife live in two rooms of this six room house, and have the rest of it stuffed with books. Four rooms, crowded with ceiling-high stacks so closely spaced you can hardly get through them. I found a Mixie and a couple of navy items, and while paying Louis the 60¢ for the three I asked him if he ever came across any old files of ARGOSY or WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE or others with Max Brand.
Oh yes. His garage was full of magazines, he said, so we went out there. It was, too. Nothing I wanted, but it was as full as the house.
I was about to leave, and I saw this old-fashioned, rounded-top trunk half buried under a precariously teetering mound of old ESQUIRES. What's in the trunk, I asked idly.
Oh, that's just a bunch of old letters and manuscripts and junk. I'm going to cart it out to the dump if I ever get around to it.
How old? I asked, my long dormant philatelic yen stirring faintly in its grave.
Look at it if you want to. But it's just junk.
Well, how about those letters? Any old stamps on them?
Well, I guess maybe there are. I don't think they're any good though. Still, they're pretty old.
That did it. I had on my work clothes; didn't care if I got dirty. "Let me move those magazines and look inside," I said. "I'll pile everything back."
"No," he said, "when you get done looking in it, maybe I could get you to help me put it on my truck so I can take it down to the dump."
Well, dammit, I had asked for it. So what if I was stuck. I suddenly had a terrific yen to look inside that trunk and see for myself that these "old" letters dated back to 1925 and didn't even have any commemoratives on them.
Ten minutes later I had the lid open. "Here, let's drag it out in the drive where you can see," said Louis.
It was a battle to get it past and over the stacks of magazines. The garage was like a furnace anyway, and I had to wipe runnels of sweat off my glasses before I could resume exploring.
XAVIER, THE WEREWOLF. H. P. Lovecraft, 598 Angell Street, Providence, R. I."
That's just an old manuscript," said Louis superfluously.
I set it down in the lid, and rummaged through some more stuff. Loose sheets of manuscripts -- some typed, others handwritten -- nothing by anyone I'd ever heard of.
I lifted out the tray. The bottom of the trunk was crammed with letters, more mss., a few old magazines and newspapers -- an incredible amount of stuff.
"Look," I said, "It's getting late, but I'd really enjoy pawing through this junk. What would you take to haul it over to my house instead of to the dump?"
"None of it's any good; I've been through it all myself."
"Sure, sure, but there ought to be some funny lines in some of these old stories. I could easy get five bucks worth of fun looking through them for a couple of evenings."
He looked undecided.
"Besides, it will cost you a $1 fee to dump them if you take them to the Alhambra dump, and that's the nearest place to get rid of them.
"Where do you live?"
So I gave the man a fin, helped him put the trunk on his Model A pickup, and led the way over here.
I've not had the time to go through this stuff like I ought to. A quick once-over has culled out a few very choice items, but I'm not at all sure but what there are more.
Run your eye over this list, and see what you think:
In addition to XAVIER, THE WEREWOLF, there is a handwritten ms. entitled HERBERT WEST -- REANIMATOR. I've compared it sketchily with the version in BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, and it evidently is an early, lovecraft-rejected draft. This version contains roughly the same material as in the published first portion of HERBERT WEST, but is not sub-titled, nor does it contain any allusion to Arkham -- the scene being laid in Providence. It is much more pro-lix than the published version, considerably longer, and is a thorough going stinker except as a collector's item. (I might add that it is written on the backs of vari-sized bills, letters, and advertising leaflets, runs six pages of mss., and at the bottom is a note: "Burn this atrocity when you've read it. HPL.")
So far, I've found no other Lovecraft stories, but there are several poems. One of them is "To Mistress Sophia Simple, Queen of the Cinema" which appears on page 373 of BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP. The others, of varying lengths, are: "Moonrise Over Christ Church Yard", "Demologus", "New England Mood", and "Appolonius".
There may be other poems enclosed in some of the Lovecraft letters, of which there are 23, all addressed to "Howard Davison, Esq., Box 186, Columbus, Ohio" and written at various times between August 2, 1915 and October 18, 1917.
Of less interest to fans, but of considerable worth, perhaps, to ayjays, are a number of letters to Davison from such people as Edward F. Daas, E. H. Cole, "Tryout" Smith, and other big and little wigs from the ayjay world of 30 years ago.
There are also a number of rejection slips and letters which no doubt concern the four-foot high stack of story mss and typescripts written by Davison. If the rest of the stories are as bad as the one I sampled, the rejections are more than justified.
There are also a couple of dozen assorted ayjay magazines.
Well, there are the high points. There was a time in my life when I would have scarcely slept until I'd been through this entire trunk minutely -- as it is, I've spent the bulk of two evenings browsing in it.
I still don't have a very clear idea of the why and wherefore of this agglomeration of material. I wanted to ask Louis, but was afraid to show too much interest for fear of giving myself away.
But as nearly as I can figure out so far, Howard Davison was a young man who wanted to write professionally (this was a tough decision to make!) and who was active in the United Amateur Press Association and National Amateur Press Association immediately prior to WW-1. Judging from some remarks in one of the last HPL letters to Davison (needless to say, I've read only four or five of the letters -- that crabbed handwriting is slow going) the boy was expecting to go in the army. I take it (and mind, this is only a guess -- I may know by the time I've waded through all this stuff) that Howard Davison was drafted, and died in service. Maybe he was killed in action, or maybe the flu epidemic got him while he was still in a training camp. I don't know. But I surmise that his folks gathered his papers together in this trunk and kept them for sentimental reasons. Presumably they are now dead, or they wouldn't have let the trunk get away from them.
For my own satisfaction, I'm going to do a bit of detective work, if the Alhambra Post-Advocate will let me look at their old files.
And if anyone is interested, I think it would be a good idea to publish some of this stuff, particularly some excerpts from the letters.
Eventually, I intend to sell the whole works. It is highly ironic that I should find this bonanza after I have ceased to care for HPL. Like the rest of HPL's -uh- disciples, my interest in the old boy is purely selfish and mercenary.
Boy! It makes my head swim to think how much good jazz I'll be able to buy with the profit from this trunk. Interested parties had better write me and get their bids in early. If the entire lot is not worth at least a hundred bucks to you, don't bother. Everybody else is making money off Lovecraft; why shouldn't I?
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I did NOT set fire to my tent!
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Text versions and page scans Judy Bemis
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated June 19, 2015. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.