Page:Lovecraft letter to Henneberger 1924-02-02.pdf/6

 below his usual pictorial halting average. But "The Lurking Fear" never satisfied me, because I unwisely tried to follow Houtain's wish for perfectly equal instalments—irrespective of dramatic values—and for a smashing sub-climax at the end of each instalment. The result of all this was a certain artificiality and straining, and a redundancy of incident in many of the instalments. I still feel that I have half-wasted a good plot idea, and often believe I would like to rewrite the thing for my own artistic satisfaction and let some magazine publish the new version free after securing the necessary permission from Houtain! I don't think it ought to be a serial at all—it's short enough to be complete without a break or chapter-division, especially with the redundant matter cut out. But it taught me one thing—never to try to suit the other fellow or let my original instincts of form get overridden! Now I'm fully resolved to let all my work stay unpublished unless somebody will print it without a comma or semicolon changed! The old-fashioned touch in my work is the result of my natural temperament and reading. I grew up with a large family library in a big house, and browsed at random because I was too ill to attend school or even follow a tutor's course with any regularity. Somehow I acquired a fondness for the past as compared with the present—a fondness which had plenty of chance to reign because my semi-invalidism continued and kept me from college and business despite the most extravagant ambitions of boyhood. Nothing modern had any permanent power to fascinate me—and until my WEIRD TALES venture my only acquaintance with modern magazines was a spell of ALL-STORY and ARGOSY reading ten or fifteen years ago, undertaken for the purpose of capturing the occasional weird yarns in these periodicals—especially the former. The classics were my diet, and I have never found anything else half so good! My style, of course, is fundamentally and immutably antique—complacently antique, I might add—and most of my tastes correspond. A new interest which has grown as my health has grown during the past three years, is that of Colonial architecture—the visual re-creation of the 18th century by study of its surviving landmarks—and most of my new-born strength has been utilised in the exploration of the antique towns which abound in my native New-England. So really, I don't think you could have paid me a handsomer unconscious compliment than when you suspected my "Lurking Fear" of being a re-written antique. I hope you didn't think it was very extensively re-written! Only a charge of verbatim plagiarism from an 18th century master could have pleased me more!

I shall watch the modified future of WEIRD TALES with keen interest, looking with especial avidity for your own work, since you so emphatically share my aversion for the insipid rubber-stamp popular magazine atmosphere. The acquisition of Houdini ought to be a great selling asset, for his fame and ability in his spectacular line are vast and indisputable. I am not much of a vaudeville follower, but it happens that I saw him at the old Keith's Theatre here nearly a quarter of a century ago it must have been at the very outset of his career, for he was not then especially well known. Since then it interested me to hear that he comes from Appleton, Wisconsin, the home town of my learned young friend Alfred Galpin, whom I mentioned earlier in this epistle. I did not know that he