Even within the pre¬ cincts of his own much-touted genealogy, Lovecraft was an outsi¬ der, and the delight which he took in linking his name with the first families of Providence was in some measure a fanciful com¬ pensation for his own very real obscurity and unimportance in the cosmic scheme of things. «I thank the powers of the cosmos that I am a Rhode Island Englishman of the old tradition ! » he often exclai¬ med in his letters to younger friends, even though the fact is that Lovecraft was rejected by his more prosperous and prominent Yankee relatives, who thought of him as «queer », «crazy as a bed-bug », and an inveterate ne’er-do-well. The popular conception of Lovecraft, and the image which HPL himself consciously projected in his later years, is that of the staunch New England gentleman, a gentleman of decidedly Puri¬ tan extraction.
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