Sonia H. and Nathaniel A. Davis papers (MS.2012.003)

Biographical note

Sonia H. Davis

Sonia Haft Davis, of Jewish ancestry, was born on March 16th, 1883 in Ichnya in the Ukraine. In 1892 she emigrated to the United States from England where she had lived since 1890. For several years she lived in New York, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1932 while in residence there. She eventually settled in Los Angeles, California in 1933, living there for the rest of her life.

At the age of 16, Mrs. Davis married Samuel Greene (whose original surname may have been Seckendorff). They had two children: a son who was born in 1900, but died shortly after his birth; and a daughter, Florence Carol, who was born on March 19, 1902. Greene died in 1916, thus ending their marriage of seventeen years. In 1921, she met H.P. Lovecraft at a Boston convention of the Amateur Journalists held shortly after the death of Lovecraft's mother. They eventually got married on March 3, 1924 at St. Paul's Cathedral in Manhattan and took up residence in New York. Their marriage ended two years later. In 1933, Mrs. Davis moved to California, where, in 1936, she married Nathaniel A. Davis, by then a resident in Los Angeles. Their marriage ended ten years later when Mr. Davis passed away.

In additional to being a single mother, Mrs. Davis' professional life included work as an executive in a women's wear department store. She was also an entrepreneur, milliner, writer, journalist, and publisher. She created and published a lavish, but short-lived magazine called The Rainbow which included writings by both Mrs. Davis and Lovecraft. The Rainbow only had two issues: October, 1921 and May, 1922. Her best-known story, "The Invisible Monster" (a.k.a., The Horror at Martin's Beach), was revised and edited by Lovecraft, and published in Weird Tales in November of 1923. She penned the story "Four O'Clock" (not revised by Lovecraft) which was first printed in Something About Cats and Other Pieces, a collection which also includes "The Invisible Monster" and her Lovecraft memoir "Lovecraft as I Knew Him". From May of 1924 to July of 1925 she was also President of the United Amateur Press Association (along with Lovecraft, who was one of the editors).

Sonia Davis died on December 26th, 1972.

Nathaniel A. Davis

Nathaniel Abraham Davis, of Portuguese and Jewish ancestry, was born in Brazil on October 30, 1866 where his father, Dr. Henry L. Davis owned and operated gold and diamond mines. As a child, Davis was sent to Bermuda to live with relatives where he began his early education and learned to speak both English and Hebrew.

Obituaries, correspondence and other materials indicate Davis graduated from the University of Coimbra in Portugal with an M.D.; did postgraduate work at Westminster Polytechnic in London; and earned his PhD from Yale. He was also a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. After completing his education, he traveled extensively, exploring various countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the Far East and the Canadian Arctic. He eventually settled in California, obtaining United States citizenship in 1919. After a previous marriage, Davis married Sonia Haft Greene Lovecraft in 1924.

In his early professional years Davis was a director of the Pacific Chamber of Commerce and of the Pacific Coast Lecture Club. He was also managing director of the San Francisco Foreign Trades Club and editor of the magazine Pacific Ports. He was trade correspondent of the New York Commercial and the Manchester Guardian. Davis taught economics at the Armstrong School in Berkeley, a branch of the University of California, and at the Western States University School of Law in Los Angeles. He was also a general manager for the Frank Waterhouse Company in San Francisco. He owned and edited the Pan Pacific Magazine, Scenic America, and the World Trade Weekly. He was a member of the Sojourner Truth Club and the World Race Research Historical Society, and an honorary member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was also a member of the Haym Salomon Day Committee and executive chairperson of the American Committee to Aid Korean Refugees.

Davis founded the non-profit humanitarian organization, Planetaryan and its affiliate, American Defense Society of the United States. Both were designed to promote peace, justice, liberty, and understanding across ethnic, racial and religious lines, and to uphold the underlying principles of the Constitution of the United States. It is uncertain how successful they were, but the documentation from this collection suggest that both were short-lived -- members enrolled appear to be few in number and affiliated periodicals short in duration.

Davis wrote poetry and prose, as well as polemical tracts on a range of topics including anti-Semitism, racism, and world politics. He edited a number of periodicals, including California Welfare Journal and World Trade and published two periodicals affiliated with Planetaryan called One Nation, and The Torch, neither of which appear to have survived beyond the first issue.

Nathaniel Davis died in Los Angeles, April 6, 1945.

Sources:

Davis, Sonia H. "Howard Phillips Lovecraft as His Wife Remembers Him." Books at Brown. 11 (nos.1-2, Feb 1949) : 1-13.

Joshi, S. T. and David E. Schultz. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2001.

"Sonia Greene," last modified 2 March 2013 at 07:18, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Greene