 Another possible model is Alfred Galpin, a friend of Lovecraft's who was eleven years his junior, whom he described as being "immensely my superior" in intellect.In writing that Derby's "attempts to grow a moustache were discernible only with difficulty", Lovecraft evoked his protégé Frank Belknap Long, whom he frequently teased for the same reason.Derby's correspondence with "the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey" is an homage to the Robert E. Howard Cthulhu Mythos story "The Black Stone" (1931).