Bush, David Van

   (1882–1959).

   Itinerant lecturer, would-be poet, and popular psychologist; revision client of HPL. He joined the UAPA in 1916; he first came in touch with HPL through the Symphony Literary Service (a revision service operated by HPL, Anne Tillery Renshaw, and others) in early 1917. Bush was at the time the author of several poetry volumes (not revised by HPL), including Peace Poems and Sausages(1915) and Soul Poems and Love Lyrics(1916). HPL revised many poetry volumes and psychology manuals during the period 1920–25, including Grit and Gumption(1921), Inspirational Poems(1921), Applied Psychology and Scientific Living(1922; HPL admits to writing two or three chapters; other chapters were written by Bush’s staff), Poems of Mastery and Love Verse(1922), Practical Psychology and Sex Life(1922), etc. HPL met Bush in Boston in the summer of 1922 (see SL1.185–88); he wrote the essay “East and West Harvard Conservatism” (an account of Bush’s lecture in Cambridge) for Bush’s magazine Mind Power Plus(c. 1922). (No issues are known to exist; only a clipping of HPL’s essay survives in JHL.) Bush provided HPL with a steady income through the mid-1920s, as HPL charged $1 for 8 lines of poetry revised.