H. P. Lovecraft’s coat of arms & bookplate

Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s personal arms drawn in 1927, described in a letter to Frank Belknap Long:“Young man: — Well, Sir, if you are of a curiously analytical turn of mind, you will discern in the above display of heraldick art the influence of a younger & more actively genealogical mind upon your aged & indolent grandpa. It is even so—for know ye, that our fair city is once again an host to that supreme master of heraldry, Wilfred Blanch Talman, gent.; who has transmitted enough of his enthusiasm to cause the old gentleman to dig up some half dozen ancestral blazonings at the publick library, & who has (by virtue of his knowledge of the knightly art) drawn out pictorially several coats which your grandpa knew by directions, but did not know how to depict. The above menagerie is a quartering of the four main streams of blood in your grandpa Theobald. The upper two, left to right, are Lovecraft & Phillips, which I have always known. The lower left is Allgood—family of my father’s mother—of which side I had the verbal description, but which I never saw drawn out till Talman interpreted the language with his facile pen. The lower right is Place—family of my mother’s mother—which I had never seen in my life until yesterday afternoon when we looked it up at the library. I may have drawn this last one wrong, for Talman has not yet prepared a sketch, but it’ll do for decorative purposes until he corrects it. The crest & motto are Lovecraft. I have also copied the arms of many other ancestors—Field, Tyler, Perkins, Rathbone, &c.—I will get Talman to interpret them later on. When I get the other genealogical tables from my aunt I shall look up all the arms at the library—if any enthusiasm for the subject lasts that long. It is an admirably gentlemanly pastime – but takes too much research, I fear, for a feeble & increasingly childish old man. …I made one amazingly gratifying discovery, and that is that the present British representative of my Phillips branch (who spells his name Philipps. Our common ancestors used Philips, but each sub-branch made a different modification in later years) is a Baronet—Sir James Philipps! God Save the King!”— HPL to FBL, 24 September 1927 – the letter is in jest dated 1727, printed in part in SL II, page 171, & also availible on the Brown University Digital Repository The motto Qᴠᴀᴇ ᴀᴍᴀᴍᴠs ᴛᴠᴇᴍᴠʀ / Quae amamus tuemur translates into We Defend the Things We Love. In a letter to James F. Morton, dated Lud’s Day 1927, HPL has included the arms of the Rathbone family twice, but leaves out the crest he included in his drawing to Frank Belknap Long. The crest, which he ascribes to the Lovecraft family arms, along with the motto, depicts a gold tower. “Well — I s’pose ya got the card from herabouts proclaiming the sojourn of that supreme artist & heraldick authority, Wilfred Blanch Talman of Spring Valley, New–Netherlands. He blowed in Friday morning, & has since been engaged in the noble task of getting grandpa interested in heraldry. Never before was I so conscious of any humiliating ignorance of a subject of which every armigerous gentleman ought to possess at least a smattering; & I have now resolved to make a study of the subject, employing the favours & standard treatise of Fox-Davies. Friday afternoon Talman took me to the genealogical department of the publick library & shewed me how to look up the arms of various lines which converge in one; & he also was kind enough to draw several different coats of which I have possessed verbal descriptions only. This is a late date at which to rectify any ignorance, but better late than never. My god! To think that I never before saw the coat-of-arms of the Allgods (my father’s mother’s family) blazoned, (though I’ve always had the description, which I was too ignorant to interpret) & never had even an accurate description of the Place & Rathbone arms, notwithstanding that the former are of my mother’s mother’s family, & the latter of that family—one generation farther back—of which I have a double strain because my two maternal grandparents were first cousins—the children of the sisters Sarah & Rhoby Rathbone, who married a Place & a Phillips, respectively. And, oh, boy! what a wallop of a kick I got out of the Philips data. It seems that the British branch of the same line—the line of Rev. George Philips, who came to Salem & Watertown in 1630 on the slip Lion—now sports a baronetcy! Hot dog! My present British cousin is Sir James Philipps, & he has a couple of suitable supporters to set off the familiar azure shield with the sable lion.* The way the spelling has changed is queer. It was originally PHILIPS—one l & one P—& the Rev. George so spelt it. But George’s son Samuel put in an extra l, & all the American branch have done so ever since. Meanwhile back home somebody stuck in an extra P instead, creating an amasingly wide divergence betwixt the consobrine patronymicks — PHILIPS < PHILLIPS (Am.)                                                                                                   [<] PHILIPPS (Br.) Well — here’s my quarterings to date—as far as Talman has interpreted the various verbal directions in my records. And to think that of the whole lot I had only the Lovecraft & Phillips ones blazoned out before! But Cato learn’d Greek at 80! Now for Tyler, Perkins, Wilcox, Whipple, Hazard, Howard, Hill, Fuller, Morris, Field, Matherson, Carey, [not a Mick! He was a Protestant & his name was Samuel. Came to Newport—probably from Ulster—1680] Stanton, Garton, Tillinghast.… help! help! My god, here is a lifetime’s work ahead of me! I guess I’ll get Talman to do the work, & pay him in revision! Incidentally, he’s gonna make me a swell bookplate with the 1st Baptist steeple in it! […] (Note the fasces in the Rathbone arms. Viva Mussolini!) * this colour-on-colour arrangement is bad heraldry, Talman says; but the Philips grant is an ancient one, & can’t be complained of at this late date. Scott describes a similar combination in “The Lords of the Lake.” Of all my arms I think the Place one is the most artistic—simple & effective, with good contrast of colours.” — HPL to James F. Morton, Jr., Lud’s Day 1927 After visiting relatives in 1929 HPL expands on his ancestry & draws several arms of his ancestors in a letter to Maurice W. Moe dated 1 September 1929: “There are lovely orchards, picturesque old barns & byres, rambling stone walls, noble groves, & magnificent prospects on every hand; so that, recalling that my grandfather (Whipple V.) & great-grandfather (Capt. Jeremiah) were both born here, & that the seat of my Place ancestors down the slope toward Moosup Valley is equally beautiful, (cf. travelogue of Oct. 26, 1926) I again assur’d myself that I come naturally & honestly by my pastoral predilections & love of fine bucolick landscapes. The old Phillips graveyard, which I have long’d to see for years, is situate[d] on the crest of a meadow hill which drops abruptly to an exquisite wooded valley with a brook. It is girdled by a low stone wall, & commands a splendid vista of meads & groves—one particularly impressive cluster of trees lying shortly westward. On its hillward side it drops to a lower terrace which juts boldly out from the slope & ends in a high bank wall—a terrace devoted to the newer interments, & maintain’d in as elegant & sophisticated a state as the smartest urban cemetery; with close-shav’d lawn, trim beds of gay flowers, tasteful urns, & polished granite monument In this lower terrace area are interr’d many Providence Phillipses who cherish a wish to lie on ancestral soil despite their lifetime separation from the ancestral scene. It is very lovely in its way, but forms a rather incongruous note in the agrestick Foster landship. Naturally, may chief interest lay in the upper & older burying-ground with its Georgian slate slabs bearing weeping-willows, cinerary urns, & neatly rhym’d epitaphs, & its white marble slabs of the 1840’s with their brief, pious