Stone Wings blog has walked and traced the route of the Lovecraft/Eddy Sunday 4th November 1923 expedition to find the notorious Dark Swamp in western Rhode Island, and reports with fine photographs. Dark Swamp was never actually reached by Lovecraft that day, although he and his “newly adoped son” C.M. Eddy hoped for another trip in summer 1924 that seemingly never happened…

“We now know how to reach the swamp most expeditiously, and will not again lose time in devious inquiries. It will be a pleasing day’s trip, and even tho’ we discover no unsuspected horror, we shall surely behold enough of the darkly picturesque to furnish out a dozen tales apiece.” (Selected Letters I, pp.264-67).

Their not reaching the swamp was probably just as well. Since it reputedly had many snakes, sump pools, and morasses, and was probably filled to brimming by the heavy October rains of that year.

Back in 2001 The Cthulhu Prayer Society (Newsletter, 11th Nov 2001) also followed the route of the walk to Dark Swamp. Jarett Kobek actually made it into part of the Dark Swamp and has online photos of White’s Pond and also part of the swamp.

The swamp had been penetrated by several naturalists early in the 20th century…

“Howard W. Preston, whose Botanical Notebook for the years 1877-1919 awaits and deserves publication, recorded his search for rhododendron in Dark Swamp, Glocester, Rhode Island by the Willie Woodhead Road.” (The Bulletin of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, 1966).

“As early as 1911, Fred Barnes served as a guide into the Dark Swamp in West Glocester for a research group from Brown University” (Glocester, the way up country: a history, guide and directory, 1976).

The swamp was/is not far from Chepachet, the north part of the road from Chepachet to Pascoag being of course the setting for the opening of Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”. That was where Malone recoils in horror at reaching the junction and unexpectedly seeing buildings not unlike New York tenements in style. Such buildings can still be seen at that Pascoag junction, using Google StreetView, although they are on the right rather than the left turn. Lovecraft had been for another ramble in this area with Morton, a little earlier in 1923, in search of Durfee Hill (one miles east of the swamp, and Rhode Island’s second highest point), and so it’s possible he may have walked the same stretch of road that appears in “The Horror at Red Hook”.

According to S.T. Joshi’s I Am Providence, the visit to Dark Swamp was also recorded by Lovecraft in a letter to Edwin Baird. But I’m not sure where that’s been published, if it has been.

L. Sprague de Camp wrote in Lovecraft: A Biography that part of the Dark Swamp was submerged by the Ponaganset Reservoir a few years after the Lovecraft/Eddy trip — but judging by the modern satellite photography, trail maps, and the fact that Ponaganset Reservoir was completed in 1865, this cannot be correct.

Similarly shaky on certain points of fact may be Eddy’s recollections of his walks with Lovecraft. They can be found in The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (Arkham House 1966) and reprinted in Lovecraft Remembered. The date of 1966 implies that Eddy was recalling events in the mid 1920s from the viewpoint of the mid 1960s? As I understand it some of these distant recollections of Lovecraft by Eddy, and especially by Eddy’s wife, should not be taken at face value.

Map of parks and green spaces in Providence that Lovecraft could have known in his boyhood. Providence magazine. v.28, 1916. Map showing situation on City ownership of parks in 1903. Omits the unofficial spaces such as the remains of Cat Swamp.

Here’s a hi-res composited version of the map sheets from Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918, which I’ve centered on 66 College Street, Lovecraft’s last address. 66 is set back from College St., and actually sits halfway between College St and Waterman St. S.T. Joshi says in I Am Providence that the tiny alley leading back to 66 from College St. was once called Ely’s Lane. The “Paxton” just north on Waterman was the boarding house where Lovecraft sometimes had his meals.

Update: The Paxton was the ‘Arsdale’ by Lovecraft’s time. Later the “old Arsdale” at 53-55 Waterman Street became the “Hopkins House” dormitory for boys in 1946, when there was a sudden and pressing need to accommodate vast numbers of students returning from the Second World War. My thanks to Schultz and Faig for the additional information.

Above: (No.66 detail from Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918)

Lovecraft’s desk window looked west from the upper floor, and in the other corner he had a seat looking through two paired windows (one facing west and another south). So his desk would have been looking at the back parts of the Alpha Delta Phi (Brunonian chapter) fraternity house at Brown. This appears in “The Haunter of the Dark” as: “Students in the Psi Delta house, whose upper rear windows looked into Blake’s study, noticed the blurred white face…”

Missing picture
Above: Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. You can see how the curved frontage section corresponds with the map. Lovecraft’s home out of sight directly behind the fraternity house. In the left of his view from his two west windows he would have seen the NE upper windows of the short wing at the back of the fraternity house.

The house has now been moved. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling for the photo (below) of the site of 66 College Street, as it is now. The western view from about 15 ft. above the roof of that little extension of the List Art Building (seen here) would give an approximate indication of the main view from Lovecraft’s study desk. One would need to point the camera so that the Psi Delta house windows are on the far left of the picture being taken and the roof of their little low square building is in the left quarter of the picture.

You can see the location in relation to the road in this picture by Will Hart…

Sadly it now appears there are trees in the way of Lovecraft’s old view, as you can see in this picture by Will Hart …

Remote-controlled hover-drone with HD camera needed, I’d say, to hover just to the left of the top of the central bright green tree in the above photo Alternatively one of the building windows might do it. Keep in mind you’re facing west, so avoid late afternoons and sunsets or you might have difficulties with photographing straight into the sun. A clear bright winter morning might be best, when the leaves are off the trees.

Very large scale public-domain boundary maps of Providence, scanned from the Plat Book of the City of Providence Rhode Island, 1918. There’s an Overview of sections…

…and hi-res scans of the plates of each section. 160ft to the inch, giving incredible amounts of detail (and also the names of the owner of each house plot) of the streets of Providence.

Presumably surveyed during the First World War, Lovecraft then about age 26 or 27. Compare with the 1891 Survey map to see how the area north of Lovecraft’s home was built up from the 1890s to 1918.

One of the most interesting-sounding fantasy movies of 2012, Wes Anderson’s underage love whimsy Moonrise Kingdom, was partly filmed in Lovecraft’s beloved Lincoln Woods (Lincoln Woods State Park)…

“the Quinsnicket or Lincoln Woods region which I have haunted all my life.” — letter from Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 1933.

The Cthulhu Prayer Society newsletter #13 (PDF link) has a good account of Lovecraft’s rambles in the Lincoln Woods, in preparation for their own ramble event.

Incidentally, I hadn’t realised that there are a lot of giant glacial boulders to be found in the Park (handy boulder map)…

Photo: Miles Crawford.

Although sadly some of the boulders appear to have been scrawled on with crude graffiti in modern times. The Park appears to have been started as a reserve in 1907, and a detailed history is the book Lincoln Park remembered: 1894-1987. I’m not sure if the Lovecraft letters appear in this book, or not.