• About
  • Directory
  • Free stuff
  • Lovecraft for beginners
  • My Books
  • Open Lovecraft
  • Reviews
  • Travel Posters
  • SALTES

Tentaclii

~ News and scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

Tentaclii

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Guest post: “John Edwards of the Ladd Observatory at Brown – Cockney or Cornishman?”

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Astronomy, Guest posts, Historical context, Scholarly works

≈ 1 Comment

Horace Smith had kindly posted the following as a comment on this blog. But I think I’d rather present it as a Guest post, which does his work justice. So, here is his investigation…


John Edwards of the Ladd Observatory at Brown — Cockney or Cornishman?

By Horace Smith.

I’ve been researching H.P. Lovecraft’s early astronomical interests. Tentaclii had at one point briefly puzzled over Lovecraft’s calling the Ladd Observatory assistant, John Edwards, a Cockney in one letter and a Cornishman in another. If what I have found is right, he was neither by birth.

Picture: the Ladd Observatory as it appeared in the mid to late 1930s. Newly shadow-lifted and colourised.

Of the three staff members of the Ladd Observatory, whom Lovecraft “pestered half-to-death” in his youth, the observatory assistant John Edwards provided the greatest practical aid to Lovecraft’s astronomical endeavours. Whether it was offering a diagonal eyepiece for his telescope, lantern slides for a lecture, or a lens for a camera, Edwards was there to help. But, aside from being an assistant at the Ladd Observatory, who was John Edwards? In different letters, Lovecraft alternatively referred to him as a cockney, a term traditionally applied to someone from East London, and a Cornishman from Cornwall. Could I pin down which, if either, was correct?

Tracing genealogical connections can be tricky, and not everything you read online can be trusted. I knew when I began only that Edwards had worked at the Ladd Observatory in the late 1890s and early 1900s, but I didn’t know his middle name, nor when he was born, nor where, except that England was a good bet for his birthplace. I turned to Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org to progress further.

The federal census for 1910 gave me a middle initial, W, and a spouse, Mary A. It also provided a birth date of around 1858 and an immigration date of 1887. In 1915, Edwards accepted his former colleague Frederick Slocum’s offer of a position at Wesleyan University’s new Van Vleck Observatory in Middletown, Connecticut. When Edwards took up that position, the Wesleyan University Bulletin printed his full name: John William Edwards. Alas, his stay at Wesleyan was not long, for he died of heart disease three years later, on 24th April 1918.

Picture: Wesleyan University Bulletin for May 1918.

The Hartford Courant newspaper for 28th April 1918, informed me that, after Edwards’s death, his body was taken to Attleboro, Massachusetts, for burial. Why Attleboro?

‘Find a Grave’ led me to a photograph of the tombstone of John and Mary in Attleboro. It carried their birth and death years (1858-1918 for John and 1856-1917 for Mary) and those of two of their children, Joseph (1882-1901) and May (1891-1891). The 1910 census had already told me that, by 1910, two of their three children had died, and the gravestone and census were thus consistent. The son still living in 1910 was Alban Edwards, born in Lonsdale, Rhode Island, in 1888. His First World War draft card showed that it was he who resided in Attleboro. Massachusetts death records confirmed that Mary Ann Edwards had died in North Attleboro in 1917, the year before her husband’s passing. Now the burial of John and his wife in Attleboro made sense. The gravestone also gave me Robinson as Mary’s maiden name.

With that information, could I trace the family back to England? I checked immigration records, finding one likely match: the arrival from Liverpool of a John Edwards with Mary A. Edwards and Joseph Edwards, all of the right ages, at the port of Boston aboard the Catalonia on the 1st of October 1887. They were lower steerage passengers, and John was labelled a labourer. I next came up with a marriage record for a John Edwards and a Mary Ann Robinson on 12th April 1879, at Christ Church in Preston, Lancashire, with the birth years of 1858 for John and 1857 for Mary. That seemed quite close and, if correct, gave me Peter Edwards as John’s father and an association with Lancashire. Was there additional evidence for a Lancashire connection? A John William Edwards was christened on 4th April 1858, at Saint John Church in Preston, Lancashire. John William Edwards was also listed as having been born in Preston sometime in the first quarter of 1858. If not a certainty, there is at least some likelihood that he was the future assistant at the Ladd Observatory.

Everything was hanging together, so far. But John Edwards is a common name. Could I find any evidence that contradicted the above? I did find one document that didn’t fit. The 1900 U.S. Census showed a John Edwards who was an astronomer’s assistant, who lived on Doyle Avenue, near the Ladd Observatory, who was the right age, and who arrived in the United States 12 years earlier in 1888 — not far off the late 1887 date found above. The census’s March, 1858, birth date is consistent with an early April christening. However, the 1900 census stated that John was single! Where were Mary and Alban? Was that just a mistake? Or did it indicate some sort of otherwise hidden family problem?

I checked the 1900 census for a Mary A. Edwards. Mary Edwards is a common name, but I couldn’t find a Mary Edwards that seemed to fit the bill in terms of age, birthplace, spouse, etc. Nor was there any mention of an Alban Edwards. To try to straighten things out, I turned to the Providence city directories. The 1901 and 1903 directories showed John living at two different Doyle Avenue addresses. They also showed that a Mrs. Mary A Edwards worked as a nurse and lived at 67 Manton Avenue in Providence, but later directories show that she was not the Mary Edwards for whom I was looking. Many women who were not heads of a household or employees do not appear to be listed within the directories, so the absence of Mary is not necessarily telling. For example, John W. Edward’s address in the 1910 city directory is consistent with his 1910 census address, However, the 1910 directory makes no mention of Mary, while the 1910 census indicates she was living with John at that address.

Fortunately, Rhode Island carried out state censuses in between the federal ones. I discovered a 1905 Rhode Island state census for a John W. Edwards, living on Doyle Avenue, of the right age — his birth date is given as 4th March 1858 — and working at the Ladd Observatory, with a mother and father born in England. Those last items are incorrectly indexed on the transcribed version of the census, but are clear in the original. However, in that census, Edwards is listed as married not single, with four in the household. There is also a census entry for Mary A. Edwards at the same address — her birth date is indexed as 18th April, 1856, but the original pencilled entry is hard to read. Mary was then a mother of three, only one of whom was still living, and with a household again containing four people.

My conclusion is that the weight of the evidence indicates that it is the 1900 census entry which is in error. Perhaps the circumstance of their son Joseph having died the following year somehow temporarily disrupted living arrangements? Or perhaps “the census-taker’s knock” awakened John after a night of observing and he just wanted to get back to bed as quickly as possible! If all this is indeed correct, we conclude that John Edwards was English, but neither a cockney nor a Cornishman.


New book: Strange Country: Sir Gawain in the moorlands of North Staffordshire

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Scholarly works

≈ Leave a comment

The revised and expanded ebook of my Strange Country: Sir Gawain in the moorlands of North Staffordshire, an investigation is now available on Amazon. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ll recall, is one of the most famous supernatural tales in English literature.

This book offers a concise overview of the existing Gawain research relating to North Staffordshire, and then adds a wealth of new detail and facts drawn largely from previously overlooked sources. The case is clearly made that one of the most famous works of English literature belongs to North Staffordshire. Obvious new candidates for both the Gawain-poet’s patron and the Gawain castle are suggested, and these are found to fit naturally and almost exactly when compared with the expected dates, castle features, dialect location, social status and life-story. A wealth of surrounding detail is also explored, such as: the history and role of the King’s Champion; English contacts with full-blooded paganism during the Prussian crusades; the two lavish courts at Tutbury; and the history of the Manifold Valley. This ebook is well illustrated and copiously referenced with linked round-trip footnotes.

This should now be considered the definitive edition of my book, which until now it has been available in paper from Lulu. It’s had a number of additions and yet another round of close proof-reading.

The book follows my equally successful sleuthing on the trail of the real identity of the Time Traveller from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, arising from a study of Wells’s formative time spent in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. I hope to also have an ebook edition of my ‘young H.G. Wells’ book available sometime later in 2019. Having cracked, to my satisfaction, both the Time Traveller and the Gawain-castle, the next book will be a far larger one that explores the young Tolkien and Earendel in intellectual and historical context. This will also have something to say about the local connections, but mostly Birmingham, since for Tolkien the Staffordshire topography came a little later and was more incidental to his intellectual development.

H.S. Wells

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

Waverly Rare Books Auction, 6th June 2019. A non-mint first edition of The Lord of the Rings, and a first-edition first-printing of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. On the latter, I never knew that the publisher managed to get Wells’s name wrong in the book. “H.S. Wells” appears on the title page. One for the trivia-quiz! Or perhaps a new time-travel story, to explain the apparent slip.

Friday Picture Postals from Lovecraft: early silent cinema in Providence

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Picture postals

≈ Leave a comment

Here we see a fine example of an early silent cinema in Providence, The Star Theatre, with its staff and there is even a glimpse of an adjacent fortune-telling caravan.

Local trade journals state this cinema was established 1899, and the cinema history book Silent Film Sound (2007) states that in 1915 the Star in Providence advertised a “New York two dollar show” at “local prices” and that this advert also promised a full orchestral accompaniment for the big movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) — which we know Lovecraft saw in Providence. One wonders if the lads in the centre of the picture served as the orchestra members, and presumably the children worked part-time as ushers, ticket-booth girls, sweepers, bill-posters and the like. There then being little prohibition on child-labour. What appears to be a fortune-telling caravan at the side is also rather remarkable, and media archaeologists may note it as another example of the close association of early cinema with the superstitious and uncanny.

The picture is undated but might be the early years of the 1910s. At this time Lovecraft was in his early 20s and still an avid cinema-goer. Lovecraft said in 1919, in a letter to Galpin…

“I formerly attended the cinema quite frequently, but it is beginning to bore me.”

He would thus have been familiar with this sort of cinema in the 1910s, if not with the Star especially (so far as I know). But, given the information above, there is a possibility that it was here he saw The Birth of a Nation.

The silver screens were not always flickering with Chaplin-esque comedians and melodramatic waifs and thundering cavalry, as nearby Pawtucket had long had a Governor-sponsored programme of educational cinema, on which Lovecraft’s friend and associate Dench commented favourably in his book Motion Picture Education (1917). Interpreters presented a five-minute summary of the scenario and inter-titles, before each silent picture, for audience members who did not yet read English. This was at the grander baroque 1,500-seat Pawtucket Star Theater, which seems to have been involved from the start in the push for educative cinema in Rhode Island. It’s not to be confused with the Providence Star.

The Star’s “Nov 2nd” posters, seen in the picture, proclaim that a “Japanese Troupe” was the vaudeville act during that week. Their name is difficult to read but appears twice and must be Azuma, implying they were Kabuki dancers and performers. Incidentally, a Japanese star was one of Lovecraft’s two favourite actors on the silent screen, the young Sessue Hayakawa. This raises the slightly surreal vision of the staunch Anglophile editor of The Conservative sitting in his seat waiting for a Sessue Hayakawa movie to start, being first entertained by a lively Japanese Kabuki troupe in full costume…

He was after all “prodigiously keen” on such things, as he wrote in a letter…

My admiration of Japanese art — dating from the days when my infant eyes rested upon various screens, fans, & bits of pottery at the old home – has always been prodigiously keen, & this stationery embodies some of its most attractive characteristics. The combination of utter simplicity, perfect harmony, & civilised repose is quite irresistible – & forms something which could never be duplicated [by cultures] outside Japan. The Japanese carry the spirit of art into the smallest details of life more fully than any other people since the Greeks – & it will be an irreparable loss if their newer generations lose the old spirit in an effort to assimilate western traditions.


Here’s the original picture scan without colorisation…

The card’s “early divided back” apparently dates it to 1907-1915. It’s currently for sale on eBay at an exorbitant price and will probably be re-listed after failing to sell.

May on Tentaclii

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Odd scratchings

≈ Leave a comment

Another month has flown past on Tentaclii. A lush English springtime has been freshly unfurling below Tentaclii Towers, although it’s often been sunk in rain over the last few days. The migrating swifts arrived right on time, in terms of matching the timings of an old and authoritative local Natural Kalender from the 1850s, and the rest of nature has been swooping and chirping in delight under blue skies and generally ignoring the overheated doom-mongers. Of course I’m in inner-city Stoke-on-Trent, but you’d be surprised how rural it can get once you stray off the main roads and onto the canals, cycle-paths and all the ‘little ways through’ that weave through the urban grot-spots. Despite my occasional strolls through this alluring backdrop, 17,000 words were posted here during May 2019 for Tentaclii readers.

There have been some changes at Tentaclii, as you’ve likely noticed. As regular readers will know, I had made this blog wholly “Private”, for a few months. Then I was recently told that it would be better to switch the blog back to “Public”, but to make certain posts “Private” and seen only by my blog’s Followers/Viewers. That seemed a better all-round solution than a wholly “Private” blog, and a good halfway-house between “Public” and “Private”. Accordingly, I switched the blog back to “Public” a couple of weeks ago.

Sadly, it didn’t quite work as had been suggested. After a week back in the “Public” mode I found I had been a little mis-informed. After setting up some scheduled “Private” posts, I discovered these are only visible to a blog’s Admins and Editors. Not to my Followers/Viewers.

The fallback option was then to password-protect these posts, which a blogger is generously allowed to do in a free WordPress.com blog.

Thus, I’ve decided I’m keeping the blog generally “Public”, but each month some of my posts will now be password-protected and Patreon-only. I’ve contacted my Patreon Patrons accordingly, and they can get access to these special posts. (It should theoretically be a one-time entry of your password at Tentaclii, if you allow it to be stored locally in your Web browser). Tentaclii‘s general Followers/Viewers will see that there’s been a password-protected post — but won’t be able to access it without their password. Expect about eight to ten such posts per month. I’m not sure if the wider public and search-engines also get to see the headline for the password posts, but I suspect not.

This password option is not ideal, as it’s a bit clunky and may not always be seamless for my Patrons. But it’s better than placing the special posts over on Patreon, because that would break Tentaclii‘s searchability by keyword.

I’ll try to post a list of password-only posts, in my usual end-of-month round-up of Tentaclii activity. This month there were only a few Patreon-only posts…

(27th May) Neutaconkanut – site of Lovecraft’s last important summer walk. (new-found pictures).

(26th May) “Two pictures of places poignant to Lovecraft” (new-found photographs of Providence).

(23rd May) “Lincoln Woods explored” (700 words, map, many newly-found 1920s pictures of Lovecraft’s other favourite outdoor place in the city inc. his sitting-rock and the Druid stones as they were before the 1930s road works).

(20th May) “Inside the Providence Art Club” (a newly-found 1910s picture of the interior).


In terms of my other daily posts, the month of May has seen the usual Web links posted to art, music and audiobooks. A very pleasing small pen-and-ink portrait of Lovecraft was snagged from eBay, in an old fanzine. Several music-related posts were either substantial, or discovered artists currently doing serious work in Lovecraftian music. This has spurred me to re-install and update my old music software, so there may be more music-related posts over the summer and autumn. I’m pleased to find that it’s all a lot easier than it used to be, with VirtualMIDISynth for which I was very pleased to find a free soundfont emulator for my old Turtle Beach Montego II sound-card.

Picture-based tours relating to Lovecraft were taken to: the Salem Pioneer Village; Providence’s Italian Quarter; into Lovecraft’s boyhood railway worlds; and around the Providence of the sketch artist Whitman Bailey (1884-1954).

In keeping with the springtime mood, Providence’s parklands and verdant shorelines were surveyed and an extensive picture-based exploration of Lovecraft’s Seekonk was undertaken, building on my previous work on this. For my Patreon patrons this focus then ran on, being able to read new password-protected posts on the Lincoln Woods, Neutaconkanut and other leafy places Lovecraft knew, complete with many new photos recently found.

About a dozen relevant new and mostly scholarly books were noted, briefly evaluated where possible, and linked. My ‘Open Lovecraft’ page also saw a number of new additions of links to scholarly works.

Several possible new discoveries were made, including a possible picture of a 25 year-old Lovecraft in the Providence Public Library, and a new Lovecraft-era picture of the Providence Art Club interior. I also made the plausible surmise that “Dagon” partly originated in Lovecraft’s experience on the islands of the Seekonk, which expands and deepens the conclusion I had already reached on my earlier book essay (“In the hollows of memory : H.P. Lovecraft’s Seekonk and Cat Swamp”, in my Historical Context #4).

As a pop-cult bonus, I posted a long and annotated ‘view and skip’ viewing guide for ‘the Tennant years’ of the British TV show Doctor Who.

More daily posts, next month. Remember, a mere $1 a month as a Patreon supporter gives you access to the password-protected posts here!

NecronomiCon Providence 2019 – new poster

30 Thursday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ 1 Comment

Another new poster for the NecronomiCon Providence H.P. Lovecraft convention, in August 2019. The artist is not credited on the page, though there’s some lettering too small to read on the right of the picture. (Update: thanks to ‘The Joey Zone’ for telling that the artist is named Brandon Kawashima).

At the Biltmore Hotel…

DeviantArt Delights

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

Some new Lovecraftian work on DeviantArt, since last I looked through the ‘Newest’ results.

CA-Yogsothoth-F-BKM-PROG234567 by BKMcDevitt

Project: OSIRIS by SkoldArt

H. P. Lovecraft Statue by HaoZhiWei

Howard Lovecraft bust sculpture v.4 by tot-art

Howard Lovecraft by Malospal

The Silent Singer by FatherStone

Misc Longharbor concept art by nashotobi

RPG SvenskaKulter by IanBaggley (cover for a Swedish Lovecraftian RPG)

Deathning by Emerbend

Mr Nibblesworth by Dont-Trust-Dolls

Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos – interior previews

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, New books

≈ 1 Comment

New interor preview pages from Kenneth Hite’s forthcoming for-gamers book Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos.

As I noted here back in October 2018 the book draws on Derleth and others, and despite its table-trembling size it’s not a completist illustrated encyclopaedia.

Xavier de Palau

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

Xavier de Palau : tales of emerging music. This Italian musician is doing interesting work, with cosmic-focussed projects such as generatively converting the influence of space bodies (e.g. moonlight, the spectra of Mars) to music. One of his projects, Oradura, was inspired by Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s Music

28 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts

≈ Leave a comment

* As a young child H.P. Lovecraft… “sat rapt with childish adoration at the strains of Beethoven”.

* In his early boyhood he greatly enjoyed… “in youth listening to the [bandstand] concerts of Reeves’ American Band at Roger Williams Park with my grandfather.” and “I was forever whistling & humming in defiance of convention & good breeding.” He also enjoyed hearing Beethoven.

* After two years of lessons in classical violin playing… “I played a solo from Mozart before an audience of considerable size” in 1899, age 9. S. T. Joshi (also a music expert, compared to most ordinary folks) has carefully evaluated the possibilities for the pieced played. Joshi concludes… “it may be that Lovecraft played one movement (probably the slow movement or the minuet, since even the allegros of the early sonatas are demanding to a very inexperienced player) of the sonata in C, K. 6, in D, K. 7, or in B-flat, K. 8. Lovecraft’s description of a “solo from Mozart” implies only part of a work rather than a complete work.” But Lovecraft was pushed too fast and too far, and thus reacted strongly against the possibility of further lessons. All classical music seems to have been thrown overboard, along with his violin.

* By middle-childhood he was instead excelling at a more boyish instrument. He… “was also a star zobo soloist … the “zobo” — a brass horn with a membrane at one end, which would transform humming to a delightfully brassy impressiveness!”

* The popular tunes of his boyhood stayed with him, and… “even now I relish the old-time inanities when they are revived on the radio” (1934). He refers here to ‘tin-pan alley’ songs, old barber-shop tunes, and jaunty marching ditties. S.T. Joshi notes that in 1933 letter Lovecraft could still rattle off the names of “the hit songs of 1906″… ““When the Whip-Poor-Will Sings, Marguerite,” “When the Mocking-Bird Is Singing in the Wildwood,” “I’ll Be Waiting in the Gloaming, Genevieve,” “In the Golden Autumn Time, My Sweet Elaine””. These being the songs he had belted out as a boy of about age 12, in the company of his ‘Blackstone Military Band’ — made up of young friends playing their buzzing zobos and the like.

* He had a phonograph and discs as a boy of about 16-18… “memories of the days of a decade ago [c. 1907], when my phonograph was in constant use. I remember one record — a song called “Starlight”, which was truly Western in its cadences: “Good Nity, my Starrrrlight, hearrrt of my hearrt” … etc. etc.” Presumably he means Western as in ‘the wild west’.

* He appears to have also attained and retained some small facility with a musical keyboard, probably first acquired in childhood. For instance, at the main Baptist Church in Providence… “Lovecraft ascended to the organ loft and attempted to play ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas'”, a jaunty and highly popular tune. Which implies he could handle a keyboard. He would also sing tunes when called upon, in circumstances requiring parlour piano singing, with one letter vividly recording such a time in the Little household. There were probably also various social calls with his aunts where a song was a requirement.

* He was a tenor singer… “I once owned an Edison machine of the primitive type, with recorder and blanks; and I made many vocal records in imitation of the renowned vocalists of the wax cylinder. My colleagues would smile to hear some of the plaintive tenor solos which I perpetrated in the days of my youth!!”

* As for recorded and stage music, he wrote… “I am a frank barbarian, with Victor Herbert as about the upper limit of my real appreciation.” Victor Herbert (1859-1924) was the USA’s first accomplished composer for musical theatre. Mostly known now for a few enduring songs such as “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” (1910). Some of his operetta work is interesting re: Lovecraft, such as his… “wonderful and terrifying children’s operatic dreamscape”, Babes in Toyland (1903, music only). Though regrettably Babes has never been filmed in any form resembling the 1903 stage original (“Alan and Jane are abandoned in the Forest of No Return. In the Spider’s Den, they are protected by the Moth Queen. [In Toyland] the Master Toymaker is an evil genius who creates toys that kill and maim.”). After the First World War, Herbert swung behind the nation’s changing tastes and wrote straight musical comedies with simpler songs and tunes. I imagine Lovecraft liked both phases of Herbert’s work, but his use of the phrase “upper limit” might appear to indicate that he had enjoyed Herbert’s rather more complex operettas of the pre-war period. Yet he mentions Babes in Toyland as a youthful memory, in a letter to Morton of 1932.

* Lovecraft valued patriotic British songs, and for him… “”Tipperary” or “Rule Britannia” has infinitely more emotional appeal than [classical music]”. He refers here to the famous “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary / Pack Up Your Troubles…” song.

* He heard and enjoyed singing in the context of a seasonal townscape, for instance attending Christmas carol-singing… “at the old Truman Beckwith mansion” on College Hill in Providence.

* He apparently approved of Chopin, or at least he expressed murmurs of approval when the enthusiastic music student Gaplin played him some on a gramophone. He also saw light opera on the stage (or, as ‘light’ as opera gets) in the form of Katinka (1915). I imagine that was probably attended in the company of his aunts. There were doubtless many other such visits, to other local popular shows.

* Although he had at first disliked it passing, during his early boyhood, when older Lovecraft was genuinely stirred by the sweeping music of Wagner. He had an excellent opportunity to hear Wagner in New York City when he saw Fritz Lang’s Siegfried in 1925. Though this was seen in a cinema specially-equipped for the lush Wagnerian sound, Lovecraft felt he wasn’t able to appreciate the music fully due to his lack of training in understanding its subtleties and meanings. “The conventional grand opera goes over okay with Grandpa [i.e. Lovecraft], & Dick Wagner (whose Ride of the Valkyries I was privileg’d to hear) is just about my idea of emotion as derivable from sound.”

* He would, of course, have heard a great deal of incidental stage and feature film music over the years. The most memorable of which was likely pointing up some aspect of the macabre, mysterious or fantastical as it flickered across the silver screen.

* He would hum and whistle on walks, which was once a very common and accepted practice. He wrote… “It is impossible for me to whistle out of tune, or to miss notes by sharping or battening them. Whatever I do hum, I hum with the mathematical precision of a well-tuned piano. Rhythm, also.” And, writing to Kleiner… “today I hum & whistle the stuff you despise so much as played on your relative’s phonograph”. The once-common practice of outright singing while walking appears to have totally passed away in the Anglosphere by the 1920s, at least for lone walkers. Even humming and whistling is not ‘done’ today, and strikes us as eccentric and a sign of likely madness. But humming and whistling would have been acceptable in the 1920s, and probably even welcomed on the sleepy back-roads of New England. It would have rather politely served to alert people of his imminent arrival, while coming toward them along a track or lane.

* He also valued simple music that was integral to landscapes, such as… “sleepy churches whose chimes weave music and magic on Sunday mornings”, and faint music heard from ineffably far-off in an intriguingly indistinct and un-placeable form.

As S.T. Joshi has pointed out, Lovecraft never seems to have become familiar with the music of his beloved 18th century.


Thus, an imaginary “Lovecraft’s Music” 12-track album might look something like:

1. Strange “Zobo” noises, the sliding and zip of bicycle tyres on asphalt, merging into a New England parkland ambiance with the oompah playing of a distant bandstand, then a merry-go-round whirrs up to manic intensity, before a tumble of scraping violins chases away all the outdoor sounds.

2. Fade to indoors ambience. Faint scratchings. A single violin starts, initially halting and hesitant, and sometimes “rats clawing in the walls”-like. Yet it becomes ever more proficient and leads up into the fine if not very professional Mozart solo. This is played in a manner that expresses something of the boy Lovecraft’s loneliness. There is no applause from an audience.

3. Climbing old wooden stairs, a creaking door opens. Something from Babes in Toyland is heard, perhaps the “Toymaker’s Workshop” with its medley of weird workshop noises, suggesting Lovecraft’s time spent in the attic and the whirring of his mind as it comes alive.

4. The uncertainty of the previous track becomes the certainty of a jaunty boyish marching song, this then turning into a wartime “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, which in turn merges into a stirring “Rule Britannia”.

5. Fade into distant carol-singing, the noises of College Hill, the mew of cats, but increasingly echo-y as if in dark tunnels. The echo of the Boston subway, the ding and rumble of trolley-cars. The rumbling becomes more and more ominous and is mixed with anxious “Nyarlathotep”-like crowd-shouts from the disturbed Boston of 1919, then…

6. Siegfried music, and on into the “Ride of the Valkyries”.

7-10. A blended selection from the film music Lovecraft would have heard in the 1920s and 30s.

11. A modern electro-ambient / low-key plaintive interpretation of Victor Herbert’s “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” (1910), evoking his fallow years. Delightfully mewing kitties pad softly into and around the music.

12. … fading to a Virginia Astley (From Gardens Where We Feel Secure) -like soundscape of New England summer lanes, the sound of a man humming precisely a lively marching tune as he crunches down a path, against the call of distant bells and ever more indistinct far-off sounds as the man walks into the distance. Sounds of night coming on, a cosmic whisper of stars, distant whip-poor-wills call, and then the distant meowrrr-ing of a grimalkin Ulthar-cat is heard.

Protected: Neutaconkanut photos – site of Lovecraft’s last summer walk

27 Monday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context

≈ Enter your password to view comments.

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

New R.E. Howard letter

27 Monday May 2019

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Odd scratchings, REH

≈ Leave a comment

Found, a new Robert E. Howard letter. After painstaking initial sorting through seven new boxes of archival material…

we now have a new, verified Howard letter for the correspondence collection.

Including a delightful potted biography from Howard himself. Click the link to see the letter in full.

← Older posts

 

Please become my patron at www.patreon.com/davehaden to help this blog survive and thrive.

Or donate via PayPal — any amount is welcome! Donations total at Summer 2022, since 2015: $340.

Archives

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010

Categories

  • 3D (13)
  • Astronomy (57)
  • Censorship (13)
  • de Camp (6)
  • Doyle (7)
  • Films & trailers (89)
  • Fonts (8)
  • Guest posts (2)
  • Historical context (1,068)
  • Housekeeping (83)
  • Kipling (10)
  • Kittee Tuesday (74)
  • Lovecraft as character (38)
  • Lovecraftian arts (1,383)
  • Lovecraftian places (19)
  • Maps (58)
  • NecronomiCon 2013 (40)
  • NecronomiCon 2015 (22)
  • New books (864)
  • New discoveries (158)
  • Night in Providence (17)
  • Odd scratchings (851)
  • Picture postals (208)
  • Podcasts etc. (375)
  • REH (148)
  • Scholarly works (1,234)
  • Summer School (31)
  • Uncategorized (2)
  • Unnamable (85)

Get this blog in your newsreader:
 
RSS Feed — Posts
RSS Feed — Comments

H.P. Lovecraft's Poster Collection - 17 retro travel posters for $18. Print ready, and available to buy — the proceeds help to support the work of Tentaclii.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.