H.P. Lovecraft once had a ticket allowing him to freely access the lower “stacks” or “stack house” of the Providence Public Library, to browse among shelves inaccessible to the general public. If the public ever overheard librarians talking of “the stacks”, they probably vaguely imagined tottering towers of books stacked up in some mouldering basement. But by the time of Lovecraft’s youth the nation’s libraries employed more modern methods of bulk storage for their little-consulted items. The picture above shows what the Providence “stacks” looked like when first installed, before being filled with books and journals. They appear to have been of the usual tall sliding-case type, where the shelves are on sliders and can be compressed together to save space. The usual situation for access is that one then turns a knobbed and wheeled device at the end of certain cases, which then cracks open a walkway sufficiently large to allow entry for book or journal retrieval. One doesn’t linger, as one feels there could be another browser cranking a wheel elsewhere that could close the cases. Many such “stacks” must still exist behind the scenes, though I suspect that not many students encounter them today on the open library floors.

The young Lovecraft may well have had “behind the scenes access” to the public library, and a “stacks” card. He certainly became very fond of a Cataloguing Room Messenger & Stacks boy of about his own age, Arthur J. Fredlund. Arthur was a young and slight Swedish boy, the newly arrived Swedes then forming the largest immigrant group in Providence. Such a flood of blond beauty into the city, at such a formative time for Lovecraft, no doubt permanently influenced his conception of ‘the nordic’ in physical form. According to the Library Report Fredlund was a Messenger Boy in 1905, but Lovecraft talks of him working in the ‘stacks’ in 1906…

I came across a superficially bright Swedish boy in the Public Library. He worked in the ‘stack’ where the books were kept and I invited him to the house to broaden his mentality (I was fifteen and he was about the same, though he was smaller and seemed younger.) I thought I had uncovered a mute inglorious Milton (he professed a great interest in my work), and despite maternal protest entertained him frequently in my library. … But ere long he uncovered qualities which did not appeal to me … I never saw him more…” (21st August 1918, letter to Alfred Galpin)

Other data points for Lovecraft’s life show that their friendship lasted only from Spring to Autumn 1906, and had followed Lovecraft’s… “nervous breakdown (winter ’05-’06)” (Lord of a Visible World, page 32).

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By the mid 1920s we know that Lovecraft definitely carried not only a regular Public Library borrowing card, but also a further card that would allow him to access the ‘stacks’. This was probably due to the goodwill of the head librarian, “good old William E. Foster”.

The stacks, and perhaps others like them in New York, probably contributed to Lovecraft’s idea of the library in “The Shadow Out of Time”…

These cases were stored in tiers of rectangular vault — like closed, locked shelves — wrought of the same rustless metal and fastened by knobs with intricate turnings.

I thought of the locked metal shelves, and of the curious knob-twistings needed to open each one. My own came vividly into my consciousness. How often had I gone through that intricate routine of varied turns and pressures in the terrestrial vertebrate section on the lowest level! Every detail was fresh and familiar. If there were such a vault as I had dreamed of, I could open it in a moment.

My feelings toward these shelves cannot be described — so utter and insistent was the sense of old acquaintance. … My [human] fingers, half-numb from climbing, were very clumsy at first; but I soon saw that they were anatomically adequate. And the memory-rhythm was strong in them. Out of unknown gulfs of time the intricate secret motions had somehow reached my brain correctly in every detail — for after less than five minutes of trying there came a click whose familiarity was all the more startling because I had not consciously anticipated it. In another instant the metal door was slowly swinging open with only the faintest grating sound. Dazedly I looked over the row of greyish case-ends thus exposed, and felt a tremendous surge of some wholly inexplicable emotion. Just within reach of my right hand was a case whose curving hieroglyphs made me shake with a pang infinitely more complex than one of mere fright. Still shaking, I managed to dislodge it amidst a shower of gritty flakes, and ease it over toward myself…

The insistent need for silence in opening the cases in “Shadow” may reflect something of the need to prevent creaking and rumbling when using the stack cases of the Providence Public Library. Incorrect or fumbling openings and slamming closings might have caused annoying sounds to be heard by the patrons of the silent Library above. In those days public libraries were real libraries, not children’s centres with a computer circle and a few books in one corner. A hushed silence was strictly enforced.

Another point of comparison suggests itself. Look again at the picture above an notice these items…

The lower cone-like section appears to me to bear comparison with the cone body-shape of the alien Great Race of Yith, the librarians in “Shadow”. Literary critics seeking sources always make the mistake of assuming that inspiration can only come from other literature, and the more prestigious the better. Writers know that inspiration can come from anywhere, and the more obscure it is the better they like it.