Last week’s ‘Picture Postal’ post on the Providence Art Club incidentally had Lovecraft mentioning that, on returning home to Providence from what he called ‘the pest zone’ of New York City, he visited the Art Club and…

In the evening a cinema show at the good old Strand in Washington Street completed a memorable and well-rounded day.” (Selected Letters II).

Here is a fine picture of the “good old Strand”, which I’ve lightly colorised…

Actually it was not so “old”, even by American standards. It had opened in summer 1915 as a dedicated movie theatre, with variety-theatre stage facilities that were also used for public talks (the Rhode Island National Guard gave a talk at the Strand Theatre in the early days of the war). Lovecraft had patronised it much in its first few years, enjoying the early silent films shown there. The house guaranteed that, once inside, its patrons would find a… “wonderful, big, beautiful place – and the shows presented will be fine always.” This was in an era of hand-cranking and movies were often shown at too great a speed, were jerky or the film mangled in the projector and bits had to be cut out. One could even find that the film was simply not the one that had been paid for. There were also the common problems of ventilation and heating. The Strand presumably did not tolerate such lapses.

What might Lovecraft have seen playing? The visit appears to have been on the very evening of his return to Providence. That was Saturday the 17th of April 1926.

One imagines that, after escaping the ‘pest zone’ of New York City, the Italian movie The Last Days of Pompeii might have been deemed suitable if a little heavy. Another possible foreign candidate is Lotte Reiniger’s debut The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the world’s first animated feature and made in silhouette animation. But neither had yet been released in America.

Several more 1926 movies likely to appeal to Lovecraft had not yet been released, such as Mary Pickford’s major swamp-horror Sparrows, Faust, The Sorrows of Satan, and the horror The Magician. Similarly the New England historical movie The Scarlet Letter was not released until August, and the grand failure Old Ironsides not until December.

There was no Chaplin movie that year, though The Gold Rush (June 1925) could still have been playing if fronted with a more recent comedy short.

Most likely are The Sea Beast (a Moby-dick adaptation) which had been an enormous hit in January and February, along with the lavish Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, but if either was still playing in a large main house several months later must be debatable. However, spring-summer 1926 seems an especially sparse time in terms of quality movies and my guess is that these two might have become a “double-bill” aiming to keep seats filled. The other possibility is the Douglas Fairbanks pirate-adventure vehicle The Black Pirate, released in early March, which de Camp later suggested as a R.E. Howard inspiration. This seems to me the most likely movie seen by Lovecraft, as he may have seen the other two while in New York City. Brisk and engaging, it’s now thought of as one of the most watchable surviving swashbucklers of the 1920s and can be had in a restored technicolour version as originally shown. The strong ‘love angle’ would also have had an appeal for his aunts.

Incidentally, search for this post revealed the supposedly mighty Google Search doing the dumbest word-substitution…

This week’s postcard is of the Art Club on Thomas Street, Providence.

Here we see the road-fronting section of the Club known as the “Brick Club House” building. The publication date is 1914, but I would guess the date of the picture is perhaps a few years after purchase of this house by the Club in 1906. Due to it being brick-built my colorising of it has imagined the building unpainted, with perhaps blue windows and shutters. It had been altered “sufficiently” for the purposes of a 100+ strong Club, but it was only leased and it was apparently under threat of being swept away by a planned railroad tunnel. Thus it lacks the love and polish it was given in the mid 1920s and later. Yet even here we can see the new large front door with its “resounding knocker”. Some years later the building’s “countless wooden shutters”, also seen here, were removed and served to panel a new Reading Room set to one side of the Entrance. By circa 1909 the Club had a Library and subscribed to about 30 art journals.

Here we see the Club in the snow circa 1909, perhaps a year or two after the above picture. Two sets of shutters have already been removed…

Inside, a floor had also been removed, thus forming the tall exhibition gallery that rose to the skylight…

In “the season”, there was an art show hung here every two weeks. Lovecraft once recalled that…

my eldest aunt is still more expert in this [artistic] direction, having had canvases hung in exhibition at the Providence Art Club

There were also evening ‘dinners’ for the men and ‘afternoons’ for the women, at which speakers were sometimes invited. Occasionally there were events to which members could invite guest non-members.

In 1919 the “Dodge” house, glimpsed on the far-left of the first picture, was purchased by the Club, and further money had been raised to provide an extensive exterior makeover. Part of the intended change was to sympathetically brick over the old cobbled lane of circa 1786, with a restored Georgian arch and walkway. This horse-way had led back to the old stables and coach house at the rear of the property.

This arch is marked on the map-plan as 1920, but it apparently took until 1924 to complete. Lovecraft might have seen the ‘new-look’ Club before he left for New York City, but equally he might have been delighted to return a few years later to find the Art Club looking distinctly more Georgian and restored. Indeed, the Club was one of the very first places he went when he returned home…

Then followed a resumption of real life as I had dropped it two years ago — the life of a settled American gentleman in his ancestral environment. 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 — I mean the fall of ’23) (circular enclosed [presumably a flyer for the Art Club]) 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).

Seen on the left of the first picture of the Art Club was the spot that Lovecraft sometimes met and conversed with the cat “Old Man”. The arch under which “Old Man” liked to sit is not itself a Georgian original, though was loving restored to that style by the Club President George Frederick Hall. The cobbled lane he arched and partly re-cobbled was of that age, as one can see from the above map-plan.

Here we see this arch and the cat “Old Man”, as finely drawn by Jason C. Eckhardt for The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book (2019). Here is Lovecraft recalling “Old Man”…

He was a great fellow. He belonged to a market at the foot of Thomas Street — the hill street mentioned in [The Call of] “Cthulhu” as the abode of the young artist — & could usually (in later life) be found asleep on the sill of a low window almost touching the ground. Occasionally he would stroll up the hill as far as the Art Club, seating himself at the entrance [to the alleyway]. At night, when the electric lights made the street bright, the space within the archway would remain pitch-black. So that it looked like the mouth of an illimitable abyss, or the gateway of some nameless dimension. And there, as if stationed as a guardian of the unfathomed mysteries beyond, would crouch the sphinxlike, jet-black, yellow-eyed, & incredibly ancient form of Old Man. […] I came to regard him as an indispensable acquaintance, and would often go considerably out of my way to pass his habitual territory, on the chance that I might find him visible. Good Old Man! In fancy I pictured him as an hierophant of the mysteries behind the black archway, and wondered if he would ever invite me through it some midnight … Wondered, too, if I could ever could back to earth alive after accepting such an invitation.

Lovecraft likely recalled his own lost cat of the same colour, Trigger-ban, who had run away when Lovecraft had lost his childhood home. Had this missing cat lived on, my guess is he would have been more or less be of the same age as “Old Man”. Lovecraft also likely knew that the line of the underground railroad tunnel ran along the back of the Art Club, going under the hill to emerge near the Seekonk River. The Art Club had been in danger of being swept away when the line was being planned. But in the end, the line of the new tunnel was usefully nudged a little on the map, so it ran at the back of the property. To one who was aware of such tunnels it might, poetically and in dreams, have provided an additional dark route into mystery. After the death of “Old Man” Lovecraft continued to meet and go with him in dreams…

Lovecraft dreamed of him even more than before — he would “gaze with aged yellow eyes that spoke secrets older than Aegyptus or Atlantis.” (S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, quoting Lovecraft).