Another picture from Lovecraft’s momentous homecoming-day from New York City, which I presume I am soon to encounter again on starting the second volume of Letters to Family. I had already looked at the Art Club and the Strand cinema. Now there’s a newly found picture of the interior of “Shepard’s (neo-) Colonial Restaurant”, also mentioned as a place visited in celebration. Not great, as postcards go, but there are two pictures and it gives an indication. I suspect the blank space may have once held a miniature paper year-calendar. The picture on the right is faintly marked “Club Parlor”.

We went out to an exhibition of paintings at the Art Club, (the colonial house in hilly Thomas Street, in front of which I snap-shotted Mortonius last fall [1923] and had dinner downtown at Shepard’s (neo-) Colonial Restaurant. In the evening a cinema show at the good old Strand in Washington Street completed a memorable and well-rounded day. (Selected Letters II)

Presumably one of his aunts was a member, and could invite family guests. Not the same as his favourite and more affordable Shepard Cafeteria in Providence. Here we see a boy waiter (his face made somewhat animalistic by the chairs seen through the pen-work) bearing a second tray of do-nuts to feed Lovecraft as he dines at the Shepard Cafeteria.

Different version…