Mountains of maddening handwriting

SP Books (‘Editions des Saint Peres’) has spotted a niche for high-quality reproductions of author manuscripts. One of their latest is “At The Mountains of Madness” in an edition of 1,000. With an introduction by S.T. Joshi.

February 1931. During a cold winter night that brings a hush to Providence, Rhode Island, one man is wide awake. Leaning over his desk, he covers page after page with writing – sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil for revisions – as the pile of sheets stacks up. Shadows dance around him from the glow of his candle, which flickers with the slightest breath.

He had nearly finished it by the end of April, and then typed it himself. Possibly because no-one else would be able to decipher the maddening scrawl.

If you don’t have the £170 for the hardback, you can also view the same pages free at the Brown Digital Repository.

Welcome to Arkham

Welcome to Arkham

is a complete guide to the city of Arkham and the neighboring towns of Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport, detailing 115 fabled locations and featuring more than 500 illustrations.

Appears to be new and a companion to the Arkham Horror board-game, but may also be of interest to Mythos writers. There no hint that it’s a politically-tweaked and polished-up reprint of an older book, as often appears to be the case with Chaosium. I assume there must be maps, but they’re not specified in the description.

Free to read online as a flipbook, so you can see what it looks like inside. Though… my browser couldn’t get past the flipbook’s cookies blocking-notice.

Dark ‘n deep

You wait ages for new Lovecraft-ish LORAs to come along, then two come along on the same day. As usual these are for local generation of AI images with SD 1.5, and are free.

* Classic Film Noir (Concept) – v1.0. “This LORA is designed to reproduce the feeling of classic noir aesthetics. The clothing, the people, the lighting, the camera work and the time period.” And it’s not censored for the ubiquitous smoking of the era, either.

* Marine Biology v1.0 LORA.

* Also a most useful helper today, Vertical View Angle Slider LECO – v1.0. A LECO just goes in the LORA folder and acts the same. Use with From_Above or From_Below or (from below) placed early in the prompt, and then tweak the slider a bit for precise and reliable camera-angle control.

Lovecraft and religion

Voegelin has a new review of the relatively new book Theology and Lovecraft (2022)…

to say that Lovecraft was a man of his times is an understatement and deflection. He was more a man out of time, living firmly in a romanticized past and fantasizing about a dangerous future. This was a religious endeavor – which is to say, a mission of devotion and worship – even for a staunch atheist like Lovecraft.

See also the 2020 open-access article Altar Call of Cthulhu: Religion and Millennialism in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Which, incidentally, is under full Creative Commons Attribution.

This article offers a close analysis of millennialism within Lovecraft’s thought” as seen in three tales.

And in the latest Aeon magazine, H.P. Lovecraft, philosopher.

“Switch On The Light” anthology

New on Archive.org, a good clean scan of the British hardback anthology Switch On The Light (1931). This was one of a series bundled the better Weird Tales stories for the British market, and the volume gave Lovecraft a hardcover wrapping for “The Rats in the Walls” and also his ghost-written tale “The Curse of Yig”.

Incidentally, I see that facsimile dustjackets are available for the series.

Also new on Archive.org, a scan of The hermaphrodite; a poem by Loveman.

On Benefit Street

A fine picture of 257-267 Benefit Street, Providence, perhaps 1940s or 50s? Here I’ve newly colourised the picture. It gives a flavour of the street as Lovecraft knew it. With the NecronomiCon convention and Henry Armitage Symposium set to visit Providence again later this year, I thought a few posts on the sights (such as they can be seen on Google StreetView and old pictures) would be in order,

This was perhaps Lovecraft’s most cherished street, after his birthplace. We see here a better section, just past the Athenaeum and the College Street ‘crossroads’ with Benefit Street. The homes are still there today, although the street is marred by parked cars (sadly the AI that removes parked cars from street photos has not yet been invented)…

The pillared porches are now a painted a dull brown, presumably to hide the staining from the vehicle pollution. The once-fashionable cladding of living vines has been torn down from the brickwork.

By the look of it on the map, this would be the way that Lovecraft would have taken to walk from No. 66 down to the passenger-docks. There to meet Loveman or Morton — or anyone else who preferred to visit by the New York boat rather than by the railway.

A large part of the north section of Benefit Street was becoming slum-like in his time, with weedy and refuse-strewn gardens around rented houses, and tight shutters on un-let houses. Lovecraft would remark on…

northern Benefit street, whose appealing old houses and romantic topography merit a better fate than the slumdom now overtaking them.

This half of the street having been allowed to decay, in 1959 the city and Brown swooped in with plans to bulldoze the top of the hill, including Benefit Street. In favour of grim 1960s modernist tower-blocks. Thankfully the scheme failed. Thus some Lovecraft sites remain.

F.E. Seagrave had kept a substantial astronomical observatory at 119 Benefit Street in Lovecraft’s youth…

Mr. Seagrave, who is connected with the astronomical department of Harvard University, and who is one of the foremost astronomers of the present time, formerly had an observatory on Benefit Street in this city.” (Lovecraft, 1914)

And this was where Lovecraft would have moved into, later in his life. Had the opportunity to rent 66 College Street not arisen, he would have spent his last years alone in a rented room in…

the old Seagrave mansion where the noted astronomer F.E. Seagrave dwelt & had his private observatory until 1914

Instead, from his window at 66 College Street, the treetops of Benefit Street rimmed the sunset views of his city with the darkening cosmos above it.

Possibly Lovecraft had the worrying decline of this northern section of Benefit Street in mind when writing the political fairy-tale “The Street” in 1919. At 135 Benefit Street was “The Shunned House”, also the inspiration for his poem “The House”.

The decline continued, after his death. By the early 1940s the real-life street harboured a “vice palace”, raided by the FBI. A depressing novel of the time, set in a seedy boarding-house in the northern part of the street, provoked While Benefit street was young (1943) and The pageant of Benefit street down through the years (1945), publications which defended the street against the impression that all of its mile length was now a slum. By the 1960s restoration work on the supposedly ‘beyond repair’ houses in the northern section had begun, brick sidewalks were renewed by craftsmen along with the addition of more in-keeping lamp-posts.

Further along the street again, Ken Faig Jr. has Lovecraft’s uncle living and working as a doctor at 186 Benefit Street. Lovecraft’s funeral service was held opposite, at 187 Benefit Street. The grim irony of a funeral parlour facing a doctor’s house would not have escaped the young Lovecraft. What appears to be the city Armoury would have been alongside the doctor’s house, adding another layer of irony.

Judging by Google Street View, 186 Benefit Street is now a car-park, but 187 remains…

The Poe-haunted St. John’s Churchyard could be accessed off Benefit Street. His beloved Pendleton House (‘Colonial House’) and the neighbouring RISD Museum were at 224 Benefit Street (on which more next week).

Under the hammer

The Brooklyn Museum is selling off its four period rooms (Neoclassical, Greek Revival, Southern USA, Gilded Age). The rooms in the Museum are said to have recreated the original dimensions and orientation, as well as the furnishings and fittings. The news and disposal are quite sudden and it’s reported the contents are to be auctioned by Brunk Auctions later in March 2024.

These were presumably the rooms were once admired by Lovecraft. We know he did the Museum solo in May 1930, seeing the new ‘Colonial furniture and interiors’ wing which newly offered complete rooms arranged for Lovecraft’s lingering delight. I imagine that the politically incorrect “Colonial” word of the 1930s now = the more innocuous “Neoclassical” and “Greek Revival”, but I’m certainly no expert on American architectural periods and I could be wrong. He likely visited the rooms several times over the years, and in one letter he also enjoyed the “new dutch rooms”.