Hurrah, persistence pays off. Friday the 13th might be unlucky for some, but it’s lucky for Lovecraftians. Because here at last is a picture of Lovecraft’s favourite Jacques Lunch, and at the 9 Canal Street address too. Aka “Jake’s”.
From the budget bundle-o’-local-photos book Rhode Island: Unforgettable Vintage Images of the Ocean State, published 2000 and now long out of print. Here cleaned, rectified and colorised.
The date is uncertain. The caption has it that Hugues Jacques and Pierre ‘Leo’ Jacques are seen behind the counter, and we know from Ken Faig Jr. that they took over the former bar in 1923. So it is probably at about that date or a little later. One can see a docks-worker and probably at least one docks foreman or truck-driver eating at the counter. As well as several old gents who might be of limited means, perhaps the “Salvation Army derelicts” as Lovecraft once referred to them in a letter. A certain ‘Domingo’, not seen, also regularly served behind the counter…
Toward Domingo, an olive-skinned, behind-the-counter servitor at Jacques’, his favorite eating place in Providence, he was as affable as a courtier in a drawing room.” (Talman, on Lovecraft)
Lovecraft had discovered this cheap and abundantly sustaining eatery via Talman in 1926, and from then on he regularly enjoyed its man-sized portions of cheap food. He does not appear to have been a daily or even a weekly customer, but he dropped in and was well known to the place and its people — especially in the summer “visiting season”. The place seems to have slowly slid downmarket over the years. From late summer 1933, and as the Great Depression deepened, Jake’s began to tolerate what Lovecraft called “extremes in the matter of clientele”. He sought out other nearby options, and came to patronise a nearby Al’s Lunch. However, perhaps the “clientele” situation eased. Since Ken Faig Jr. has established he was still eating at Jake’s in August 1934 and March 1935. One day in mid September 1935 Lovecraft found Jacques abruptly closed, the business having failed at last. Lovecraft looked forlornly in the windows again at various times, but found it always “still vacant”.
Also newly discovered, as seen in my earlier post, the opening times as they stood in April 1933…
Congratulations on finding the photograph of Jake’s at 9 Canal Street.