May 04, 2017 - Sale 2446

Sale 2446 - Lot 382

Price Realized: $ 1,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 2,000
"OUT OF A MONGREL KENNEL OF ICONOCLASTS ONLY BASTARD CHAOS CAN ISSUE" LOVECRAFT, H.P. Autograph Letter Signed, "Grandpa," to "Young Man," sending a letter from [Donald] Wandrei [not present], returning a piece of writing [not present], discussing illustrations for [Samuel] Loveman's The Sphinx [1926] and other works, noting recent discoveries arising from his study of Coleridge, expounding upon the importance of history to culture, explaining how this shows his agreement with critic Stuart Sherman, and announcing that his "daughter" Anne Gamwell would soon visit Wandrei's mother. With a postscript in upper margin of first page: "Here's a letter of young Wandrei's which you may enjoy. The boy is certainly a genuine artist in his response to the universe . . . ." 2 pages, folio, written on the recto and verso of a single sheet; minor loss at upper left and lower right corners, short separation at fold repaired verso with cello tape, faint paperclip staining and moderate abrasion at upper edge, folds. (MRS) Np, "Thursday" [1927?]
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". . . The Coleridge investigation seems to be quite an important affair, & certainly displays the bard as a reader of unparalleled breadth & scope. It must be marvelous to have a mind capable of enjoying such voluminous researches--of our gang, only Mortonius can qualify for competition in this direction. I was vastly interested in the tracing of that allusion to the star within the horned moon's nether tip, & am proud to think it arose in my own New-England colonies! Of course, Dr. Mather was no friend to Rhode-Island, but in these days all good Yankees have to hang together. I have seen that allusion seriously cited as proof of Coleridge's astronomical ignorance. . . . Coleridge represented a fine balance betwixt mind & fancy, & I like him all the better for not having an excess of sloppy emotion. The fact that his experience came through books rather than life does not militate against him, because he had the rare faculty of accepting the contents of books in an abstract way, as if the material came directly from life without literary filtration. Bookishness becomes tepid & artificial only when one looks at the books instead of through them. So long as they are utilized only as telescopes, & not worshipped for their mechanical selves, they form very acceptable substitutes for vital experience. I was likewise interested in the notice of good old Stuart P. Sherman--who had a good deal of soundness behind him despite some exaggerated social & ethical notions. He was wrong, I believe, in considering that the artist as such has social responsibility; but he was undoubtedly right in maintaining that the artist has social bearings; i.e., that except in a few cases where virtually universal emotions are involved to the exclusion of all others, a work of art has no significance apart from the social or cultural fabric out of which it grew. Only the very flabbiest of idealists can fail to see that all our notions & perspectives & standards are formed from a compound of our inherited instincts & early environmental associations; so that our feelings toward any given object or type of expression depend largely on the blood we bear & the legacy of traditions & habits & sentiments & points of view which has been bequeathed to us. . . . As for the oft-asserted birth of a neo-American cosmopolitan tradition--that would be sheer nonsense if it were not dismal tragedy. There is no culture without roots, & out of a mongrel kennel of iconoclasts only bastard chaos can issue. If we have any cultural stream at all, it is our own hereditary Anglo-colonial stream. We are at liberty to choose betwixt that and nothing. And so, cynick tho' I be, I lay a wreath upon the Sherman tomb. . . ."