whilst conversing with natives there [in the witch-town of Salem], I had learnt of the neighbouring fishing port of Marblehead, whose antique quaintness was particularly recommended to me. Taking a stage-coach thither, I was presently borne into the most marvellous region I had ever dream’d of, & furnish’d with the most powerful single aesthetic impression I have receiv’d in years. Even now it is difficult for me to believe that Marblehead exists, save in some phantasticall dream.” — letter from H.P. Lovecraft.
Marblehead thereafter became one of Lovecraft’s favourite places as a New England antiquarian. His first visit to the town was at dusk and relatively brief, and its atmosphere permeates his story “The Festival”. He did not visit the harbour area at that time, but walked upward and onto the headland for sunset views over it, then returned down the winding streets in the gathering dusk (as in “The Festival”).
Did he ever visit the harbour and step down to the shore? I can find no evidence he did. But he returned to the ancient town again and again and must surely have, at some point, closely surveyed the shorelines and jetties, if only from a distance. His July 1923 visit for instance, ‘did’ a newly discovered built-up section which he found went right down to the harbour…
Verily, here alone survives the maritime New-England of yesterday, with the glamour of ships and the salt winds of eighteenth-century voyages.
However, at Marblehead many of the lobster shanties appear to have been over on the Little Harbour, on the east side of the town. This was termed at that time a “cove at the lower end of the settlement”. Below is a map for orientation.
It may be objected that Lovecraft would have steered clear of going too close to an actual waterfront. Since, although a ship-captain’s sea-tang in the air seems to have been not unwelcome to him, he disliked the actual smell of fish. Yet here he is at Gloucester in 1927, exploring the still-working waterfront of the “really unchanged New England fishing port”…
one may actually get a lingering taste of old New England’s maritime past, along a waterfront filled with sail-lofts, ship-chandleries, and seamen’s missions.
Again, this doesn’t quite have him tromping down rough cobbled-stone slipways and then out along a sandy strand of loose grit and crushed lobster-claws. Which he might have encountered if he had walked over to Fort Sewall and down into Little Cove (or Little Harbour) in Marblehead. From the shacks at such places the fishermen worked as they always had. Lobstermen, in particular, still worked from shoreline structures such as those shown below, with their wooden lobster pots stacked up against the sides.
One could also see at Marblehead examples of houses which are basically fishing sheds, such as the ancient Gardner House (aka ‘Gardner Cottage’) now at 7 Gregory Street and “facing the quiet water of the tidal bay”…
A possible inspiration for Lovecraft? Well, there are many ‘Gardners’ in New England and, unless someone can dig up a “Nahum Gardner” here, there seems no reason to claim this place for “The Colour out of Space”.
What of other possible inspirations? Well, again one comes up empty. “The Lurking Fear” was written a year before Lovecraft discovered Marblehead. Thus it can’t be suggested that those particular shore shanties may have played into “Fear” settings such as…
The ground under one of the squatters’ villages had caved in after a lightning stroke, destroying several of the malodorous shanties; but upon this property damage was superimposed an organic devastation which paled it to insignificance. … The disordered earth was covered with blood and human debris bespeaking too vividly the ravages of daemon teeth and talon…
Nevertheless, there is a slim chance that there was some other shoreline encounter with “malodorous” shanties, likely surrounded by sun-bleached lobster detritus such as big claws (resembling “daemon teeth and talon”). That might be one possible real-life memory on which Lovecraft drew for this element in “Fear”, though there were doubtless others. It seems that lobstering was a craft practised pretty much all along the New England shoreline in suitable bays and coves, and that such big sun-bleached claws must have been a feature of shore-life. Such remains would have been a macabre if once-removed encounter with real-life deep ones.
What do the history books say? Well, they state that there had been a steady decline in lobster catches from the 1890s onward, probably due to over-fishing for the visitor trade. Then there were three prolonged cold snaps in a row, in the early 1920s, which soon made things quite tough for New England lobstermen by 1923. Worse times were coming, as tourist demand boomed in the hot summers of the mid 1920s and yet catches plummeted into the 1930s… just as the Great Depression really hit. Had Lovecraft actually met any old lobstermen on his travels in the 1920s and 30s, they would likely not have been very cheery people — in manner and sentiment probably much like old Zadok Allen of Innsmouth.
Thus, there seem to be no obvious aha! inspirations in the shanties at Marblehead. Oh well… one can’t expect to haul up new discoveries on every pictorial dive into Lovecraft’s places. But, those Lovecraftians looking for lobster and clam shacks in future will now at least be aware they were not only encountered by Lovecraft at the Joppa clam shanties at Newburyport (his main model for Innsmouth).
