By this time Whipple Phillips was clearly a man of substantial means, and, aside from building the house at 194 Angell Street in 1880–81, he undertook what was to be his most ambitious business enterprise: the establishment of the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company in Owyhee County in the southwest corner of Idaho, ‘which had for its object the damming of the Snake River & the irrigation of the surrounding farming & fruit-growing region’.4 Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, has performed a remarkable feat of excavation in supplying the details of his enterprise, and I can do no better than to summarize his findings.5
The company was incorporated in Providence as the Snake River Company as early as 1884, with Whipple as president and his nephew Jeremiah W. Phillips as secretary and treasurer. Initially the company dealt in land and livestock, but shortly thereafter Whipple shifted his attention to the building of a dam—not over the Snake River, as Lovecraft erroneously believed, but over its tributary, the Bruneau River.
Work on the dam began in the autumn of 1887 and was completed by early 1890. Whipple purchased a ferry in 1887 and established a town near the ferry on the Snake River, naming it Grand View. He also built a Grand View Hotel, to be managed by his son Edwin. At this point disaster struck. On 5 March 1890, the dam was completely washed out by high waters, and the $70,000 spent in constructing it was lost. A new dam was begun in the summer of 1891 and completed by February 1893.
Whipple was, of course, by no means permanently at the site; indeed, he appears to have visited it only occasionally. We shall see that, when he was not in Idaho, he was spending considerable time and effort (especially after April 1893) raising his then only grandchild, Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
The Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company suffered some sort of financial difficulties around 1900, and on 12 March 1901 the company was sold at a sheriff’s sale in Silver City. Whipple Phillips was one of five purchasers, but the total property value of the company had been assessed on 25 May 1900 at only $9430. The final blow came in early 1904, when the dam was wiped out again. Lovecraft states that this second disaster ‘virtually wiped the Phillips family out financially & hastened my grandfather’s death— age 70, of apoplexy’.6 Whipple Phillips died on 28 March 1904; after his death three other individuals bought out his interest in the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company and renamed it the Grand View Irrigation Company, Ltd.
It is clear that the Owyhee project was Whipple’s principal business concern during his later years, although no doubt he had other interests in Providence and elsewhere, as his wide travels suggest. He did, however, certainly lose a good deal of money in the Idaho venture. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges of Whipple Phillips is that of an abundantly capable businessman—bold, innovative, and perhaps a little reckless—but also a man of wide culture and one who took great concern in the financial, intellectual, and personal well-being of his extended family.
Lovecraft’s elder aunt, Lillian Delora Clark, attended the Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College) in Norton, Massachusetts, for at least the period 1871–73. Lovecraft states that she ‘also attended the State Normal School, and was for some time a teacher’,7 but her attendance at the Normal School has not been confirmed. Lovecraft was proud of the artistic skills of both his aunt and his mother, and claimed that Lillian has ‘had canvases hung in exhibitions at the Providence Art Club’.8
Lovecraft speaks little of his uncle, Edwin Everett Phillips, and does not seem to have been close to him. Edwin briefly assisted his father in his Idaho enterprise, but he returned to Providence in 1889 and attempted—not very successfully, it appears—to go into business for himself. In 1894 he married Martha Helen Mathews; at some point they were divorced, then remarried in 1903. Throughout his life Edwin held various odd jobs, and at some point established the Edwin E. Phillips Refrigeration Company. His one significant involvement with Lovecraft and his mother was, as we shall see, an unfortunate one.
Annie Emeline Phillips, Lovecraft’s younger aunt, was nine years younger than Susie. Lovecraft remarks that she ‘was yet a very young lady when I first began to observe events about me. She was rather a favourite in the younger social set, & brought the principal touch of gayety to a rather conservative household.’9 I know nothing about her education.
We can finally turn our attention to Sarah Susan Phillips, born on 17 October1857. Regrettably little is known about her early years. Lovecraft states that she, like Lillian, attended Wheaton Female Seminary, but her attendance can be confirmed only for the school year 1871–72. From this period up to the time of her marriage in 1889 the record is blank. Clara Hess, a friend of the Lovecrafts, gives a description of Susie, probably dating from the late 1890s: ‘She was very pretty and attractive, with a beautiful and unusually white complexion—got, it is said, by eating arsenic, although whether there was any truth to this story I do not know. She was an intensely nervous person.’10 Elsewhere Hess remarks: ‘She had a peculiarly shaped nose which rather fascinated me, as it gave her a very inquiring expression. Howard looked very much like her.’11
What little we know of Winfield Scott Lovecraft prior to his marriage derives from research recently conducted by Richard D. Squires of the Wallace Library at the Rochester Institute of Technology.12 Winfield was born on 26 October 1853, probably at the home of George and Helen Lovecraft at 42 Marshall Street in Rochester. George Lovecraft was at the time a ‘traveling agent’ for the Ellwanger & Barry Nursery, a major business in Rochester. The family attended services at the Grace Episcopal (now St Paul’s) Church. These facts may be of some relevance to Winfield, since he was himself a salesman and was married at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Boston, even though his bride was a Baptist.
From 1871 to 1873 Winfield was employed as a blacksmith for the James Cunningham & Son carriage factory, Rochester’s largest employer for many years. During this time he boarded with another uncle, John Full Lovecraft, in a home on Marshall Street. By 1874 all traces of Winfield Scott Lovecraft disappear from the records in Rochester.
Lovecraft stated on several occasions that his father was educated at a military school, but the location of this military school has not been traced; Winfield clearly did not attend West Point, as a check of its registry of graduates establishes. It is possible that it may not have been a formal military academy (of which there were very few at the time) but a school that emphasized military training. In any event, it is likely to have been local—somewhere in New York State, perhaps close to the Rochester area.
At some point Winfield moved to New York City, as this is given as his place of residence on his marriage certificate. He probably roomed there with his cousin, Frederick A. Lovecraft (1850–93). It is believed that he became employed by Gorham & Co., Silversmiths, of Providence, then one of the major business concerns in the city. The evidence for this employment does not derive from any statement by Lovecraft, but from a remark by Lovecraft’s wife Sonia in her 1948 memoir.13 It is not clear how and when Winfield began work for Gorham (assuming that he actually did so), and why, even if he was working as a travelling salesman, he was listed as a resident of New York City at the time of his marriage on 12 June 1889.
Equally a mystery is how he met Sarah Susan Phillips and how they fell in love. Susie certainly does not appear to have been a ‘society girl’ like her sister Annie, and Winfield was not a door-todoor salesman, so that he is not likely to have met her in this way; nor, if he had, would the social mores of the time have allowed them to fraternize. The Phillipses were, after all, part of the Providence aristocracy.