I’ve finished reading the Cole letters, which front the new expanded volume of Lovecraft-Galpin letters. Here are some notes.

Galpin wrote a detective novel, now presumably lost (p. 19).

By the mid 1930s Lovecraft had access to the latest Encyclopedia Britannica at the Public Library (p. 34) and slightly later purchased a Modern Encyclopedia (p. 110) that brought him right up-to-date with entries that had… “all the dope on neutrons, Nazis and the N.R.A.”.

The cut-price Newport passenger / cattle-boat boat was the Sagamore (p. 62). No postcards are to be immediately found.

He describes the layout of No. 66 (p. 65).

The origin of his “andwhere” phrase is given (p. 67).

He bemoans the “new synthetick highway” from Providence-Boston, this presumably being some sort of early motorway inter-state road which the express passenger coaches soon used. (pp. 82, 132). This was fast, but very dull in terms of scenery and architecture. Lovecraft then discovered an old-school bus-line that was still taking the ‘through the towns’ route, and booked a ticket for Boston. Later he had Loveman bring him back from Boston by the old route.

Various friends and acquaintances were being injured or killed by the new fast cars. Munn’s father was killed, for instance (p. 87).

Cook was writing a werewolf novel, presumably either left unfinished or lost (p. 105).

Lovecraft reveals his talent for purring like a cat, loudly and well. He teaches several kittens to purr in this way (p. 122 and elsewhere).

The Red Rooster and New Times (Babcock) for May 1935 had two 1920s photos of Lovecraft and “numerous photos of other amateurs” (p. 127 and footnote). This doesn’t appear to be online.

Mrs Miniter very early depicted ‘Lovecraft as character’. Of her “novelette of 1923” titled The Village Green, Lovecraft stated “I am recognisably depicted!” (p. 143). In fact that was her second try. Her short “Falco Ossifracus” (1921) was a Lovecraft parody by her, published in her journal The Muffin Man and in which Lovecraft was the supposed first-person narrator of a “Statement of Randolph Carter”-like tale. So she beat Belknap Long to it by a decade. Lovecraft noted Long was writing a novel of the Kalems in 1931 (Letters to Wandrei, page 265) but it never appeared.