Hart Crane

Thumbing through the Library of America volume of the poet Hart Crane this morning, I find a couple of amusing things (there are lots of amusing things about him, but these are especially so).

First, the biography section says that his father invented Life Savers candy in 1914, only to sell the rights for a mere $2,900 to the person who turned it into a multi-million dollar international business.

Then there’s the selection of letters, which contains the following mention of Lovecraft. I knew they were loosely acquainted through mutual friends, and also knew that, on the whole, Lovecraft liked Crane better than the reverse (though the puritanical Lovecraft wasn’t entirely thrilled with Crane’s love of the sordid).

This letter is from 1924, before Lovecraft had written any of his most important stories:

“…Miss Sonia Greene and her piping-voiced husband, Howard Lovecraft, (the man who visited Sam in Cleveland one summer when Galpin also was there) kept Sam traipsing around the slums and wharf streets [of New York] until four in the morning looking for Colonial specimens of architecture, and until Sam tells me he groaned with fatigue and begged for the subway!”

The forced Colonial architectural tour is typical Lovecraft; many others report the same obsession and their difficulties with being sucked into it.

But “piping-voiced?” What does that mean– that he had a loud voice? I don’t think I’d ever heard that before.