I’ve now reached 1925 in Letters to Family. Bringing the notes up to date…

* In summer 1924 Arthur Leeds was at the Cort on 49th Street, New York City, but moved across the road to the Ray in September. The Cort appears to have been a theatre, not a hotel?

* Loveman was working at Stone’s rare bookshop in the autumn of 1924, on 4th Ave. & 13th St. Publishers Weekly of the period has this as “Stone’s Book Store”, and it had been long established. There are no photos to be had at 1940s.nyc.

* Lovecraft saw Poe’s Planters’ Hotel twice (at least) in 1924, and he and his circle explored Greenwich Village extensively. Colonial districts of the city tended to abound with cats, adding to their appeal to Lovecraft.

* Lovecraft remarks that African “Congo masks” were in vogue among New York’s modernist artists in summer 1924.

* Lovecraft usually approached Morton’s place in Harlem “from downtown”. Several Kalem Club meetings were held there, and Lovecraft was not averse to walking through Harlem in the early hours of the morning.

* Sechrist appears to have had a book of the Polynesian tales he collected and translated while living with a storytelling clan, for which he was seeking a publisher. Evidently it never appeared.

* A month prior to Lovecraft’s move to Red Hook, Long rather cheekily gave him a book in praise of the monastic life, which Lovecraft enjoyed and devoured avidly. We also get more detail about the famous The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, read by Lovecraft in November 1924. It was a library copy, borrowed for Lovecraft by Long, and thus did not come from the Wandrei collection of early science fiction. Lovecraft thought it gripping from start to finish.

* We learn the price of Loveman’s radio (later stolen from Lovecraft’s room on the edge of Red Hook). It was very expensive, a powerful “$100” radio set and evidently portable as it made an appearance at several Kalem meetings.

* Lovecraft comments on getting some 10 and 5 cent scrapbooks for his press and magazine cuttings collection. [This did not happen, it seems].

* Trigger-ban’s eyes were green, not the common yellow.