Honey-Moon with Houdini

Sonia Greene had come into his life in the weeks after his mother passing.  Was she, therefore, no more than a replacement for his mother.  Nonetheless, they were married and life was hectic.  He was engaged on a strange ghostwriting job.  It was to write a story for the great escape artist, Harry Houdini to be published in Weird Tales.  When he discovered that there was not a shred of truth to the story, he asked the Weird Tales owner, J.C. Henneberger, to let him embellish it.  He finished it at the end of February 1924, but lost the manuscript on March 2, in Union Station in Providence when taking the train to New York the day before his wedding.  Fortunately, he had another copy and on the morning of his wedding, he was furiously re-typing it.  He had only typed half of it when it was time to head to the church.

The plan had been to go to Philadelphia after the wedding, but he and his wife were too tired and returned to her apartment.  Of course, there was still the manuscript to be finished.  On arriving in Philadelphia the following day, she read out from the copy while he banged away on a borrowed typewriter.  That was how they spent the first day and a half of their married life. ‘When that manuscript was finished, ‘she wrote, ‘we were too tired and exhausted for honey-mooning or anything else.’ The story was sent off and later that month he was paid $100 for it, the most money he had earned to-date for a story.

Of course we are talking about HP Lovecraft and “Imprisoned With The Pharaohs” which was first published in the May-June-July 1924 issue of Weird Tales magazine, the story tells of Houdini’s adventures trapped in a Egyptian tomb.

Source: HP Lovecraft  The Mysterious Man Behind The Darkness