I’ve now finished reading the first volume of Letters to Family. Here are the final notes for this volume.

* Arthur Leeds let Lovecraft borrow a volume of Blackwood stories, presumably tales he had not yet read. The book is unidentified. Lovecraft read it through in one night in December 1925. A short while later he did much the same with a volume of the ghost stories of M.R. James, making no comment on them.

* In December 1925 Long had a story suited to Frontier magazine. This must be the successor to Hunter’s Frontier Magazine, Frontier Times, which appeared in October 1923 and then ran until 1985. A Web page for collectors states… “this monthly was dedicated to frontier history, border tragedies, and pioneer achievements. … Rich in first-hand accounts of formative pioneer events [and these] tell it like it was — bold, bloody and accurate.”

* Lovecraft had never seen the North Burial Ground in Providence, by late 1925.

* He refers to an astronomy slide-show he once gave in Providence, with the aid of “my lantern” (page 506). Implying that he had once owned a relatively powerful ‘magic lantern’ in his youth, and had the astronomical slides for it.

* He recalls the colours and cut of the overcoats (page 506) that he had owned since young manhood, thus potentially aiding identification in early photos (should any new ones be discovered).

* He gives the first-names of the cooks and kitchen help, recalled from his youth at 454 (page 515). Evidently the kitchen help was not all Irish, as there was a “Svea” — which is a Swedish female name. In Lovecraft’s youth the newly arriving Swedes were the largest immigrant group in Providence.

* With Sechrist paying for the tickets Lovecraft sees the Russian Yiddish stage play The Dybbuk, early in its run at “the off-Broadway Neighbourhood Playhouse”. It opened in English translation in New York City on 15th December 1925. The play draws on Yiddish folklore, namely the belief that a spirit of a dead person (which refuses to be at rest) can cling to and ‘take over’ a living person, and thus displace the living personality. Lovecraft had already explored similar ideas in fiction, so this is not a source — though the staging may have revealed to him new wrinkles in the idea. It ends with dramatic exorcism according to a summary… “The holy man then conducts a dramatic exorcism, summoning various mystical entities and using ram horns’ blasts and black candles.” The contemporary occult idea of connecting the dybbuk to a wooden box (in which it is trapped) is apparently a wholly modern confabulation with no basis in the folklore. Thus there is no connection with a mention, a few pages later, of Lovecraft’s own little cedar box.

* In short succession in December 1925 Lovecraft hears long first-hand accounts of exploring then-mysterious ancient ruins, from Sechrist (Zimbabwe) and Orton (Mexico).

* Evidently the smoky New York air, during the coal strike, also induced bronchial problems with the visiting Orton. As it had done for Long. Lovecraft states that the strike caused the city to lift the outright ban on burning bituminous (smoky) coal. Thus the atmosphere, in which Lovecraft was exploring colonial sections of the city at night, would have been especially atmospheric in Autumn/Winter 1925.

* Lovecraft indicates he had cut connections with the Eddys in Providence (page 520) by December 1925. He even seems to go so far as to suggest the reason, stating of Eddy that… “his financial laxity is something much more deserving of legal & judicial attention”. This must refer to Eddy’s slick begging letters, of which Lovecraft had suffered a number while in New York. Lovecraft appears to subtly warn his aunt that these begging letters were not restricted to himself, and they might soon receive the attention of the law.