In the latest University Bookman, Stephen Schmalhofer takes a trip “From New York to Chartres with La Farge” and examines this macabre Providence artist’s later stained-glass work and his influence on other creatives of his time.

Adams came to understand that gothic architecture was not gloomy. “The necessity for light was the motive of the gothic architects,” he writes of Chartres. “They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common-sense in trying to get it.” Cortissoz observes that La Farge’s art contained “little knots of form, meant to hold color in solution; cunningly wrought webs in which to imprison light” and his windows were “curtains of jewels hung between us and the light, pieces of some new kind of luminous poetry.”

I’d previously noted the early print illustration work of this Providence artist, in my post on “A macabre Providence artist”. There I observed that Lovecraft’s discovery of him had coincided with the writing of “The Rats in the Walls”.

Newly up for sale, a short letter / postcard from Lovecraft in his Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath period. The description is from bookseller James Cummins, and states…

The first paragraph of this note was published in the Arkham House collected correspondence and in Joshi & Schultz [i.e. the Letters books]; the second paragraph has remained unpublished until now.

From this second “unpublished” paragraph we learn that writing a work of Kadath‘s length proved to be slow-going, and was not (as some might have assumed) the rapid and enjoyable dashing-off of a free-wheeling draft. We also see how Lovecraft preferred to work on one tale at a time, and felt he had to get Kadath out of the way in order to do something else. Lovecraft finishes by mentioning that he’s discovered a new artist of the weird, but doesn’t name him. Though there appears to be some miniscule writing inserted above, which might be the name?

I also like Lovecraft’s description of a story as a “hair-raiser deluxe!”

Perhaps just as interesting is what appears to be Lovecraft’s fingerprint in blood, which raises the possibility of chemical analysis of Lovecraft’s blood. I assume that advanced 21st century forensics could achieve something with it, even at this great distance in time. Though perhaps not as much as some would like — such as resurrection via a cloned baby Lovecraft, etc.