Monthly Archives: April 2022

Housekeeping

11 Monday Apr 2022

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The Free Stuff and Reviews pages at Tentaclii have had links repaired and fixed and tested by hand. All working as far as I can see. I’ve also fixed the map link on the Free Stuff page. It seems the new server does not like scr links to raw .JPGs without an initial embed + html in a blog post. It’s fine with .PDFs though. It is possible to block hot-linking to images by file-type, in the dashboard, but .JPG is not blocked in that way. So I assume it’s a server thing. It shouldn’t affect other maps, as they’ve not linked in that way.

The blog is still a bit ‘rough around the edges’, but will be patched up further in the coming weeks. One worry at present is that the vital ‘domain confirmation’ email is not being sent. I’ve tried three times so far, and nothing comes through from the naming authority. But I’ll see if I can try to feed it another email address. But… please do pass the blog’s new Web address around, in anticipation of it sticking.

Tentaclii returns at jurn.link

11 Monday Apr 2022

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Hi all, my apologies for the absence of my Tentaclii blog for the last four days or so, and also the lack of the JURN search-engine. There’s had to be another website move, but hopefully a more permanent one this time.

Tentaclii is now at: https://www.jurn.link/tentaclii/

JURN is now at: https://www.jurn.link/

Thanks for your patience, and your continuing patronage. My Poser and DAZ 3D artistry MyClone blog will also be returning in due course.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the foot of College Street

08 Friday Apr 2022

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This week’s ‘Picture Postal’ shows the foot of College Street. This circa early 1920s card was about as close as one might have got, before now, on a postcard…

However a new card has surfaced, seen below. This zooms the viewer closer in.

It seems to be circa 1905, which means that Lovecraft was then aged 15. About the same age as a lad looking back at the camera. The lad was likely a resident, since the convention was than the residents went up and down the street on his side. The opposite side was for the use of Brown university students and staff. We see an Interior Decorator’s yard being advertised as available on stepping through the painters-wagon entrance. But presumably Lovecraft had no need of either an interior decorator or spurs, so may never have stepped inside. A sign suggests the boot-maker there would still have been happy to fit riding-boots with spurs, had a man been heading out to the Wild West or Canada. Sundry other practical trades doubtless carried on here. One sign advertises time-worn ‘furnished rooms to let’ at the back. The Colonial archway / horse-yard entrance is actually further down, and appears to be the dark area just to the right of the boy.

On the opposite side of the street one can glimpse signs for a lawyer and a tailor, and what might be a ‘Fruits’ shop on the bottom corner. Which would make sense, as the city’s weekly fruit market was held just around the corner. A fruit or two might be useful while climbing the steep hill. Note the hand-rail on that side, which at first I thought might be damage on the picture. In the following picture the same view is seen after the changes had swept away the old traders and yards and rented rooms.

A gleaming and recognisably modern American city has emerged from the horse-spur and paint-your-wagon days that had evidently still lingered in Lovecraft’s time. The Industrial Trust skyscraper building now rears it winking head. Actually Lovecraft didn’t mind the Trust Building too much, and he was also sanguine about the loss of the foot of College Street, as I’ve noted here before.

That side of the street was replaced by the castle-like new School of Design extension, which at least had its archway in about the same position and style as the old colonial one. Here we look up College Street, rather than down.

Have a seat

04 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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Possibly of interest to readers is my new flip-stick with seat, which is collapsible and almost self-assembling. You take it out, give it a shake, and the stick-sections lock together. Then you flip the handle over to make it a seat and it auto-locks. You then balance on it, as if a tripod, with legs slightly out, and the stick behind at a 75 degree angle. Possibly these are common in the USA, but they’re new to me.

I now have one via a kind Amazon Gift Voucher gift, and it works fine and is quite comfy for a ten minute breather. Such a thing may be just what you need for exploring places without many seats, such as large museums or parks… or any place which seeks to force visitors into their over-priced tea-rooms in order to sit down. Possibly also useful for stand-up gallery launches and many situations at conventions. Fancier countryman-type seat-sticks in leather and wood are also available, but after some research this was found to be the the best in everyday urban situations. Easily packed away, and being wholly black doesn’t show grubbiness from frequent use. In the UK, Amazon thinks it’s the best too and is now selling them direct and thus can send to an Amazon locker.

I also had another brilliant suggestion from someone, re: a way to enable one to jot down the gist of those ‘eureka!’ ideas that can come when in the bath. And which are so easily forgotten once out of the bath. I discovered that toddlers now have the luxury of “bath crayons” that can write with relative ease on damp or even wet ceramic tiles. Apparently they don’t stain. They’ve very cheap and quite common, and bathing writers and scholars may find that they’re worth a try.

March on Tentaclii

03 Sunday Apr 2022

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My thanks again to my Patreon and other patrons. Your continuing support in these difficult times is much appreciated.

This month in ‘Picture Postals’, the Providence farmers’ market at the foot of College Hill, a post which became a discovery and colorising of two new pictures of the Old Brick Row that was so beloved of Lovecraft; a tour of Lovecraft’s Public Library again with newly colorised pictures; I finally got around to looking at the Shepley Library in Providence, and found a good photo of Mr. Shepley along the way. For one of my Patreon patrons’ I looked again at the Brooklyn Museum and Lovecraft. My April Fools Day ‘Picture Postal’ sadly appears to have fallen completely flat, but can now be seen as a screenshot on the 1st April post.

Also found in the new-found cache of pictures from Boston Public Library, a new vintage picture looking up College Street, and two good pictures of Blackstone Park though not Lovecraft’s favourite York Pond section. I still have one more, but can’t re-find the letter to go with it — at the end of his life Lovecraft boards and tours a super-deluxe new modern train. If anyone can point me to the location of this I’d be grateful please.

I managed to recover a picture of Lovecraft’s Hope Street High School, which I thought I had lost. Also coming due course, a photo on the interior of the Opera House (a “second home” for the young Lovecraft, and from whose boards he once slung great slabs of Shakespeare at the audience). And an excellent vintage photo of the foot of College Street which I’ve never seen before.

I started on the new and enlarged book of Lovecraft-Galpin letters and, though I had perused it many years ago in early form, found much new data and useful snippets of information. In my ‘Ripped and torn’ post I moved a little closer to solving the mystery of the ‘torn off pulp covers’ in Lovecraft’s magazine collection.

The TOCs appeared for the third book in The Robert H. Waugh Library of Lovecraftian Criticism along with a review; S.T. Joshi’s Miscellaneous Writings and his 1980s Journals have been published. Several useful reviews appeared online in March, not least for Fungi From Yuggoth — An Annotated Edition. A review of the latest book in the Robert H. Waugh Library led me to take a look at Lovecraft and Ulysses (the modernist novel) which raises the interesting possibility that Dream-quest was partly inspired by occult ideas.

In journals I noted the Italian journals Studi Lovecraftiani #20, and Zothique #9 and #10, and discovered something about what’s in them. Lovecraftian Proceedings #4 was published, and there were also TOCs online for that. An essay of my own was accepted for the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual, and another for Joshi’s Penumbra.

In comics and illustration, I noted a Blue Fox comics adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and got samples of the art. In France, the Lovecraft paperbacks edition from Points had pleasing new BD-style Moebius-alike covers. Eerie Magazine scans arrived, or at least were collected as a collection, on Archive.org. The HPLHS released a massive prop set for RPG gamers, including much printed material.

In podcasts I spotted a new podcast interview with John L. Steadman (H.P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition: the master of horror’s influence on modern occultism); and of course noted the latest Voluminous reading of a letter from Lovecraft. SSFAudio’s podcast pampered “The Cats Of Ulthar”. Librivox had a bumper Lovecraft month and threw in tales from his friends Whitehead and Eddy for good measure.

Lovecraftian Proceedings #4

03 Sunday Apr 2022

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Hippocampus Press are now listing Lovecraftian Proceedings #4 (February 2022). A paperback of 300 pages of papers delivered at the ’emerging scholars’ event which flanked the NecronomiCon Providence 2019 convention. Looks like it has four historical/topographical articles of possible interest to me…

* The Influence of The Great Game on the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft: The Opening of Tibet and the Creation of Leng.

* The Necronomicon Yalensis and Lovecraft in Connecticut.

* A Lover of Past Phantoms: Lovecraftian Reflections in R. H. Barlow’s Life and Work.

* Neo-Gothic Decadence as a Pervasive Challenge in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, and Alexander Blok.

The full table of contents is here at Hippocampus. The volume can also be found on Amazon already, in paper. Issues #1 through #3 have appeared as budget £1 ebooks on Amazon UK, and I assume that #4 will also do so in due course.

Q: Did HPL ever visit the Brooklyn Museum?

02 Saturday Apr 2022

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One of my Patreon patrons, J. Miller, asks:

Did HPL ever visit the Brooklyn Museum? What did he like to see there? I may go next week, so I’m seeking tips.

Yes, he did see the Museum, which was also once known as the Brooklyn Institute. He first saw it in 1922, as a ‘visiting NYC’ tourist in the company of “Morton, Kleiner, Belnap” (see Letters from New York). A big attraction of the place was the cost. Entry was free on most days, and the place was also open into the evening on Thursdays. This is how it would have looked from the “crossing the street” view.

This first visit seems to have been a brisk look at the ‘highlights’. Since we know that then ‘did it’ more systematically and thoroughly later in the same year (see Letters to Family). I think we can assume the fine sculpture from antiquity would have been enjoyed, and would have reminded him of the sculpture hall in Providence in which he had lingered as a lad.

But there was also the Invertebrates Hall and Insect Hall in the eastern galleries, on the “second floor” until 1927. There he may well have seen the hanging giant octopus, which is known to have been there and accompanied by a giant squid, pre-Cthulhu.

I had better pictures than this, but sadly they’ve been lost. I’m not sure if this is still there to be seen today. A catalogue search for “octopus” did not reveal it, though perhaps the natural history section (if it still exists there) has another catalogue? This same Hall also had… “The marine animals of the coast of Long Island and New England, from high tide to a depth of 7,200 feet” as a long cased display. It’s possible he missed these sea-creatures on the first visit, but must surely have seen them on the second.

Lovecraft ‘did’ the Museum again solo in May 1930, seeing the new ‘Colonial furniture and interiors’ wing which was then newly offering complete rooms arranged for his antiquarian delight.

In 1933 he “…did the Brooklyn Museum with Sonny” (Lovecraft letter to Morton, 12th January 1933) when they focused on the “Dutch” section. I would suspect that this section may also have been new and have featured old Dutch furniture and interiors, but I suppose it may also have been flanked by rooms with other Dutch items such as paintings.

Equally important to Lovecraft was… “my erstwhile favourite Japanese Garden beside the Brooklyn Museum” which had been designed in 1914/15 by the young self-taught Takeo Shiota. This was likewise free, and Shiota’s initial hill and pond planting was after a decade maturing nicely by the mid 1920s. His planting was also being sensitively added to. Lovecraft found the place “always lovely”, whatever the season. This garden now appears to be part of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and may no longer be free (at a guess). Here we see it under one of the heavy snowstorms of New York City, possibly even the very same “worst in living memory” snowstorm that Lovecraft very narrowly missed when he moved into Red Hook…

There was also evidently once a pleasant sunset walk to be had after the Museum had closed, and if the leaves were off the trees. In early November 1924 he and Loveman walked at sunset from the Brooklyn Museum to Brooklyn Heights, to call on the poet Hart Crane…

The walk was very lovely — downhill from the heights on which the Brooklyn Museum stands, & with many sunset vistas of old houses and far spires. We reached the heights in the deep twilight…” (Letters from New York, p. 82)

At first glance then, the ‘Lovecraft’ version of the museum would be:

Egyptian and Roman antiquities and statuary.
British historical items, non-ecclesiastical.
Long Island and New England natural history, inc. toads, coastal marine animals,
deep sea-horrors, giant octopus.
Any colonial portraits, New England landscape painting especially Providence.
Any colonial / old Dutch rooms, doorways.
The Japanese Garden.