August 20

H.P. Lovecraft (1890)

It was on this date, August 20, 1890, that American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who wrote as H.P. Lovecraft, was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Fatherless from the age of three, Lovecraft was reared by his mother and grandparents, and it was his grandmother who held him spellbound with weird tales that inspired some of his own fantasy fiction. Lovecraft was also fascinated with the Tales of the Arabian Nights and Greek mythology. In his biography, L. Sprague De Camp says,

At five, [Lovecraft read] ... a junior edition of The Arabian Nights. He at once fell in love with the glories of medieval Islam and spent hours playing Arab. ... One effect of dabbling in non-Christian traditions was to make Lovecraft skeptical of the faith of his fathers. Before he reached his fifth birthday anniversary, young Lovecraft announced that he no longer believed in Santa Claus. Further private thought convinced him that arguments for the existence of God suffered the same weaknesses as those for Santa.

Writing of the experience himself, Lovecraft says,

The absurdity of the myths I was called upon to accept and the sombre greyness of the whole faith compared with the Eastern magnificence of Mahometanism, made me definitely an agnostic; and caused me to become so pestiferous a questioner that I was permitted to discontinue attendance. ... My grandfather had travelled observingly through Italy, and delighted me with long, first-hand accounts of its beauties and memorials of ancient grandeur. I mention this aesthetic tendency in detail only to lead up to its philosophical result — my last flickering of religious belief.

...His skeptical view of the supernatural — his nontheism — and his love of the Classical world were not the only lasting passions formed in his childhood. ... he embraced eighteenth-century rationalism, which confirmed him in his atheistic materialism.

* H.P. Lovecraft; A Biography, L. Sprague De Camp, 1996, pages 19-24.

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Bernardo O'Higgins (1778)

Also born on this date, August 20, 1778, was the Irish-Chilean soldier and statesman Bernardo O'Higgins. O'Higgins was born to an Irish engineer who refused to marry his mother, the daughter of an aristocratic Chilean family. His absent father at least saw that he was baptized a Catholic and educated, first in Chile and Peru, and then in England. It was in London that Bernardo met his mentor, Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez, a Venezuelan, and adopted Rationalist and republican views.

Although his father had been Governor of Chile for the Spaniards, Bernardo used his inherited wealth to fund an opposition force demanding complete independence from Spain. He became a general in the army of liberation and joined the anticlerical rebels, achieving victory at last in 1818. He was for a time a benevolent dictator of Chile and instituted reforms in the economic and social order, establishing colleges, libraries and hospitals. But he moved too rapidly and his political base was small, so that the church and the oligarchy combined against him and, in 1823, he agreed to resign and leave the country.

He died in Lima on 24 October 1842, and was buried there with great honor. Like his friend and mentor, Miranda, Bernardo O'Higgins was an Atheist.

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