the manuscripts

To see the actual manuscripts, you need an appointment with one of the archivists who is on vacation until next week, and it’s a one-hour maximum. I’d planned to do that, but since I’m not doing philological work that would require examination of the original paper, it seems pointless to damage the originals, however slightly, just for curiosity’s sake.

What I did spend quite a bit of time with today was the facsimiles of the manuscripts– obviously much easier to access, but still monitored rather closely, involving an official sign-in procedure, presentation of ID, and loose personal observation by a staffer at all times. (They took shifts, since I spent a fair amount of time with them.)

The handwritten ms. I saw was for “At the Mountains of Madness.” Lovcraft’s handwriting per se is not bad, but there is so much crossing-out and interpolation that it would take serious effort to read them in that form. The pages are long, and I would guess they were something like a legal pad, except that several pages seem to be upside-down church stationery from Milwaukee. No idea how Lovecraft came into possession of that sort of paper. At the end he lists the start and finish dates, which I believe were February 24-March 22, 1931. It was 26 days, at any rate. For an 80-page handwritten manuscript (115 pages in typed format).

As for typed manuscripts, I looked at “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour Out of Space,” and “At the Mountains of Madness.” Cthulhu is headed with Lovecraft’s name and 66 College Street, and at least one of the others at 10 Barnes Street. (I’ve not seen the College Street place yet, though judging from the other buildings I’ve found in Providence, the street numbering will probably have changed a bit.) “At the Mountains of Madness” has a front page with a humorous chain of distribution by which one friend is supposed to send it to the next, all of them described by comical nicknames, including Lovecraft himself (the famous self-applied monniker “Grandpa Theobald”).

It’s quite moving to look at these documents. The typewriter is of the old, low-tech variety, with some of the letters striking rather faintly. The crossed-out portions (not so common anyway) are difficult to read, since Lovecraft blots the mistaken words out so completely.

His rare added text to the typescripts is always printed in very clear fashion (unlike the rather sloppily handwritten ms. of “At the Mountains of Madness”).

The two details that stick in mind:

*on the opening page of “Cthulhu,” when he says that the sciences “have hitherto harmed us little,” the “hitherto” is added by hand. Good addition there.

*when he refers to “grandams” early in “The Colour Out of Space,” he makes a special printed note to keep that spelling, obviously from fear that the editor would change it to “grandmas,” which wouldn’t be quite Lovecraft’s style.

I also noticed some minor differences in wording, presumably changed at the proofs stage.

If anything, “At the Mountains of Madness” is even scarier when read in early 1930’s typescript form. I got through nearly the whole of it, just for the pleasure of reading it in that format.

Edmund Wilson really missed the boat this time; Lovecraft is a phenomenal stylist. Of course, Wilson also viewed Kafka as a somewhat minor writer, which is at least as questionable a verdict (though oddly enough, his reasoning in that case if not implausible; it’s simply overwhelmed, for me at least, by the actual reading of Kafka).