Barlow House

History of the Barlow House

R. H. Barlow, author, publisher, and anthropologist

The Barlow House sits along a dry lakebed, once the home of author Robert Hayward Barlow, who spent his later years as an anthropologist and historian of early Mexico, and was an expert in the Nahuatl language.

Born on May 18, 1918, in Leavenworth, Kansas, Barlow was the son of Lieutenant Colonel Everett Darius Barlow. Because his father was serving with the American Forces in France during World War I and was later stationed at various posts like Fort Benning, Georgia, Barlow’s childhood was spent moving from base to base.

This transient lifestyle meant he received very little formal schooling. However, Barlow was described as a “brilliant youth” who took his education into his own hands, becoming a voracious reader and self-taught scholar. In 1932, his father received a medical discharge, and the family settled in Cassia, near DeLand, Florida, where they built a lakeside homestead. His parents named it “Dunrovin”, a traditional name given by couples to their final home or seaside bungalow.

Correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft

At just 13 years old, Barlow began corresponding with the masters of “weird fiction,” including H. P. Lovecraft and pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard. On June 18, 1931, Barlow mailed a letter to Lovecraft, having been a fan of his work, which appeared regularly in the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales. He wanted to know when Lovecraft began writing, what he was currently working on, and whether the Necromicon, a tome of forbidden knowledge that appears regularly in Lovecraft’s stories, was real. Lovecraft wrote back, as he always did, having written more than fifty thousand letters in his lifetime.

Isolated in rural Florida and lacking local peers who shared his eccentric hobbies, which ranged from classical piano to shooting snakes and binding books with their skin, Barlow found his community through the postal service. As he later reflected in his 1944 memoir, his entire social and intellectual world existed within “a sphere bound together by the U.S. mails.”

Through persistent correspondence, Barlow cultivated a deep connection with H.P. Lovecraft, offering to type the author’s manuscripts and sharing details of his daily life and stories. During this period, Lovecraft’s mental and physical state was in decline, as the negative reception to his stories eventually led to the end of his career. Shortly after having written his last original short story, The Haunter of the Dark, he stated that the hostile reception of At the Mountains of Madness had done “more than anything to end my effective fictional career.”

Collaboration and Lovecraft’s Visits to Florida

Their bond culminated in a 1934 invitation for Lovecraft to visit the Barlow homestead. Having intentionally obscured his age and avoided sending photos under the guise of a persistent “boil,” the sixteen-year-old Barlow finally met his forty-three-year-old mentor when Lovecraft stepped off a bus in DeLand, much to the older writer’s surprise. According to him, Lovecraft stood there in a rumpled suit and with a face “not unlike Dante.”

Lovecraft stayed with the Barlow family at their homestead for seven weeks. They spent their days gathering berries in the woods, rowing on the lake behind “Dunrovin”, and visiting the neighboring towns. Lovecraft was a known recluse and rarely took photographs, but had his most well-known portraits taken during this trip by Lucius B. Truesdell at the L. B. Truesdell Studio in Deland and by Barlow himself. Lovecraft enjoyed the Florida climate, writing to a friend, “I feel like a new person—as spry as a youth. I go hatless & coatless.” About Barlow, we wrote, “Never before in the course of a long lifetime have I seen such a versatile child,” he wrote.

In the summer of 1935, Lovecraft returned to Florida for a stay of over two months, during which he and Barlow immersed themselves in the local landscape. They spent their days exploring the nearby cypress forests and set up a tiny backyard press that Barlow used to publish several important works under the imprint of the Dragon-Fly Press (Cassia, Florida). These included The Goblin Tower and The Cats of Ulthar, a story by H. P. Lovecraft.

They collaborated on at least six stories: The Slaying of the Monster (1933); The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast (1933); The Battle That Ended the Century (1934); Till A’ the Seas (1935); Collapsing Cosmoses (1935); and The Night Ocean (1936).

Lovecraft’s Literary Executor

After returning to Providence, Lovecraft’s physical health was deterioting and due to his fear of doctors, it wasn’t until a month before his death that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the small intestine. He was hospitalized and lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937.

After being notified of H. P. Lovecraft’s death by his aunt, Annie Gamwell, Barlow traveled to Providence to assume his role as literary executor. Although Lovecraft’s “Instructions in Case of Decease” was never officially probated, Gamwell solidified the arrangement through a formal contract. This agreement granted Barlow control over Lovecraft’s manuscripts and notebooks for publication, providing him a 3% commission while the remaining earnings went to Gamwell. Barlow eventually donated the bulk of these materials to Brown University’s John Hay Library.

Barlow assisted with the first Lovecraft bibliography in 1943 and published a memoir of the author, The Wind That is in the Grass, in the Arkham House collection Marginalia (1944).

Move to Mexico and Death

Around 1943, Barlow switched careers and moved to Mexico, eventually becoming a renowned Mesoamerican anthropologist and the head of the anthropology department at Mexico City College in 1948. As early as 1944, though, Barlow had written that he had “a subtle feeling that my curious and uneasy life is not destined to prolong itself.”

He died by suicide at his home in Azcapotzalco, Mexico, in early January 1951. His death was reportedly driven by the fear that a disgruntled student intended to expose his homosexuality. After locking himself in his room, he took a fatal dose of 26 Seconal capsules. He left a final message pinned to his door, written in Mayan pictographs, which translated to: “Do not disturb me. I want to sleep a long time.”

Famed writer William S. Burroughs, who was then studying Mayan under Barlow at Mexico City College, provided a stark description of the suicide in a January 11 letter to Allen Ginsberg: “A queer Professor from K.C., Mo., head of the Anthropology dept. here at M.C.C. where I collect my $75 per month, knocked himself off a few days ago with overdose of goof balls. Vomit all over the bed. I can’t see this suicide kick.“

Barlow’s body was cremated and returned to his mother, and it is thought that his ashes were scattered on the lake at “Dunrovin”, the family home in Cassia.

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