I’ve found another two appearances of Lovecraft’s elegy for his adored cousin Phillips Gamwell, who died young. Lovecraftian sources have the poem appearing in the Providence Evening News on 5th January 1917. But here it is in The Cambridge Chronicle, 6th January 1917, possibly with new biographical details in the introduction…
The same poem appeared again in The Cambridge Tribune on 13th January 1917, under the simple title “Phillips Gamwell”, this time with a fine photograph of cousin Phillips…
… and the following week there was also an addendum on the photographer.
We’re also informed by The Cambridge Tribune of 2nd January 1904 that Phillips Gamwell was visiting Providence. Lovecraft then age 13, Phillips aged around 6. Here is Phillips Gamwell aged six in 1904 in The Cambridge Chronicle…
Resembles the young Lovecraft, wouldn’t you say?
Some wonderful discoveries relating to Lovecraft’s cousin Phillips Gamwell.
Thanks, Ken. You can probably tell me – were these photographs previously published in Lovecraft books or articles? Or are they new discoveries?
I’ve not seen your photographs of Gamwell before. R. Alain Everts contributed some Phillips family photographs to my essay on Lovecraft’s early life in a long-ago issue of Harry Morris’s Nyctalops. These photographs included one of Phillips Gamwell, different from either of your photographs.
Annie Gamwell’s strong Baptist church affiliation stands out in the material you discovered. I think her husband Edward F. Gamwell also came from a Baptist family. (His father was an educator). I wonder if Mrs. Gamwell continued to attend services at Providence’s First Baptist Church, when she lived at 66 College Street.
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