To be published at the start of April, the new 144-page local history book Lost Restaurants of Providence…

Not all of the eateries are from the Lovecraft period, but the book’s back cover blurb claims that…

“Harry Houdini supped at midnight with H.P. Lovecraft at the Waldorf Lunch”.

The new book has apparently been written by an assiduous expert on this aspect of Providence’s local history. The Waldorf Lunch chain gets two pages.

Lovecraft certainly mentioned the Waldorf Lunch a couple of times, once locally as a feed station on coming back from Pawtucket in the 1920s. Cook mentioned that when Lovecraft came back half-dead from Quebec in 1932, Cook immediately took him to a local Waldorf for an emergency meal. Despite the ‘Lunch’ name the chain’s restaurants were open 24 hours a day. Lovecraft later comments on the chain opening their first branch in New York circa 1933, although the business histories suggest they were there a few years earlier.

A Waldorf Lunch in Providence.

The photo seen above is likely to be a Westminster Street branch of the Waldorf Lunch Co. (because the 1915 Providence House Directory has an ad for the Robert L. Walker Co. in real estate etc at 171 Westminster Street, Providence. The New National Real Estate Journal has Walker still at that address in 1944).

It seems there were however multiple Waldorf Lunch branches on the long Westminster Street, possibly four according to a 1917 city inspection report. These Westminster Street branches were only a short walk from the Providence Opera House (115 Dorrance Street at Pine Street) where Houdini performed, so the branch shown above (or a very similar branch) was likely the one recalled by Eddy’s wife in her rather unreliable memoir The Gentleman From Angell Street. Here she recalls Lovecraft and Houdini at a Providence Waldorf…

“when Houdini played Providence for the last time Lovecraft went with her and her husband, making up a little “theatre party.” After the show Houdini took the group “to lunch at a Waldorf restaurant” around midnight. Beatrice, the wife of the famed performer, sat at table with her pet parrot, Lori, “perched demurely on her shoulder.” Mrs. Eddy writes that HPL “got quite a kick” watching the bird “sip tea from a spoon and nibble daintily at toast held” by Beatrice. She adds that Lovecraft “ordered half a cantaloupe filled with vanilla ice cream, and a cup of coffee.” “He [Lovecraft] was in great spirits and bubbled over with good humor, talking a blue streak about everything under the sun.” All this, Mrs. Eddy writes, while “Harry Houdini gazed at him admiringly.” (from Lovecraft at 125)

Chris Perridas dates this to 20th September 1925 and lightly grills the memories in “Testimony of Muriel Eddy (1961) Part 5”, but finds no reason to doubt the various core facts. The ‘midnight’ is not a disqualifier, as they were open 24 hours.

As one can see below, the local newspaper also has Houdini in Providence in late November of 1925? A return loop on the Fall 1925 tour? But the newspaper ad clearly states “Only appearance in Providence this year”?

The New Houdini Timeline also has him playing Providence in “Sept. ? 1924” and 4th-10th October 1926, though only part of the Timeline is online. Joshi also says October, and that Houdini then commissioned a ‘rush’ article on astrology from Lovecraft. One presumes they must have met in person in Providence for that.

Perhaps Muriel Eddy’s memory that the Waldorf after-show party was when Houdini “played Providence for the last time” means that the event was actually after the first-night opening, the 4th October 1926? Not 1925? Presumably the Houdini scholars have the tour dates and detailed biographies that could sort this tangle out (Sept 1925 or Oct 1926? / Sept 1925 or Nov 1925?), but I don’t have access to the relevant materials.

One wonders if the Lost Restaurants of Providence book will also have any names of the cheaper backstreet cafes that Lovecraft might have frequented in his growing poverty in the 1930s? The letters to Morton names two of these to which visiting friends could be taken, “Al’s lunch”, and “Jake’s” (Jacques according to Ken Faig, who has discovered it was on the riverfront). Jake or Jacques had been discovered by Lovecraft in 1926, but by 1933 was allowing “extremes in the matter of clientele” according to Lovecraft. This change pushed Lovecraft over to patronise Al’s instead. This which was “Al’s Lunch (Alphonse Scatto) 99 N Main, Providence”. Judging by its location Al’s was likely a cheap student cafe serving the RISD students at the height of the Great Depression. There would also have been cafes unfit to take visitors to, where Lovecraft would have had a meal alone, most likely down on the docks for sailors and near the long-distance passenger ferry terminals. His aunt once complained to a friend that he ate ‘all over’ the city, and at all hours of the day and night.