I had little hope of ever finding a picture of Julia A. Maxfield’s ice-cream parlour, which was something of a repeating rural venue for the Lovecraft circle. But one has popped up at last. I’ve here colourised it. The card is still available, for a hefty price, on eBay.

Saturday morning all three of us went to Colonial Warren — down the east shore of the bay — and staged an ice-cream eating contest at the celebrated emporium of Mrs. Julia A. Maxfield — an aged matron of antient Warren lineage who has won fame by serving more flavours of ice cream than any other purveyor either living or dead. There are twenty-eight varieties this season, and we sampled them all within the course of an hour.

The game was, in the course of one hour…

Each would order a double portion — two kinds — and by dividing equally would ensure six flavours each round. Five rounds took us all through the twenty-eight and two to carry. Mortonius [Morton] and I each consumed two and one-half quarts, but Wandrei fell down toward the last. Now James Ferdinand and I will have to stage an elimination match to determine the champion!”

There were a number of visits and other contests…

Another time we visited the colonial seaport of Warren, down the East shore of the bay — incidentally stopping at a place (quite a rendezvous of our gang) where 28 varieties of ice cream are sold. We had six varieties apiece — my choices being grape, chocolate chip, macaroon, cherry, banana, and orange-pineapple.

Then back home via […] ancient Warren […] at which latter place we paused at the famous Maxfield’s (a rendezvous of Morton, Cook, & other visitors of mine) for a dinner consisting entirely of ice cream – a pint & a half each. HPL: chocolate, coffee, caramel, banana, lemon, strawberry.

After digesting Warren’s quiet lanes and doorways we went across the tracks to Aunt Julia’s, where we tanked up on twelve different kinds of ice cream — all they’re serving at this time of year [March]. The antient gentle-woman, of course, was not there – since (as I wish to gawd I could) she spends all her winters in Florida — but the bimbo in charge was very pleasant, and we got quick service since we were the only customers.

American Biography (1924) confirms the at-or-near 71 Federal Street location. At Warren…

is where ‘Elmhurst’, famous for Mrs. Maxfield’s ice cream, is located on Federal Street.

However the 1932 Providence Directory has it on Narragansett Av. There were likely several different ways of approaching it. Today Federal Street looks like a fine place, but seems too short in terms of numbering. Perhaps it once ran on, and would thus have given us a No. 71? Narragansett Av. also seems gone, but one wonders if it once ran along the shoreline and Federal Street ran on to meet it? But it would probably take a local sleuth to pinpoint the location and say if the building survives.

As for Lovecraft’s ice cream craving, it began early, if the evidence of its use in his seminal poetry is anything to go by. In his early comic/cosmic poem “The Poe-et’s Nightmare” (1916)…

Each eve he sought his bashful Muse to wake
With overdoses of ice cream and cake

The 1925 telegraphic diary has plentiful of mentions of ice cream in New York City.

By 1934 ice cream has become something of a staple meal on his travels south. June 1934, in Charleston…

Still on 20¢ a day for food, but off the canned stuff. Morning — 5¢ cup of ice cream. Evening, 10¢ bowl of Mexican chili and another 5¢ cup of ice cream.” […] I “frequently make a full meal of it (and nothing else) in summer.

December 1936. Ice-cream now a costly luxury, as poverty deepened. But still…

Occasionally, of course, extravagant additions [to one’s meagre diet] occur — such as […] a chocolate bar or ice cream at an odd hour [… and yet] the old man still lives — in a fairly hale & hearty state, at that! Oddly enough, I was a semi-invalid in the old days when I didn’t economise. Porridge? Not for Grandpa!

His ice cream cravings were such that in “The Exiles”, a Ray Bradbury ‘Mars’ story after Lovecraft’s death, Bradbury portrays the Martian Lovecraft as an ice cream-aholic…

Lovecraft hurried to a small icebox which somehow survived this red furnace and brought forth two quarts of ice-cream. Emptying these into a large dish he hurried back to his table and began alternately tasting the vanilla ice and scurrying his pen over crisp sheets of writing paper. As the ice-cream melted upon his tongue, a look of almost dreamful exultancy dissolved his face; then he sent his pen dashing. “Sorry. Really, I am awfully busy, gentlemen, Mr. Poe, Mr. Bierce. I have so many letters to write.” […] The writing man tried another delicate spoonful of the cold treasure. There were six empty vanilla ice-cream boxes piled neatly on the hearth from this day’s feasting. And the ice-box, in the quick flash they had seen of its interior, contained a good dozen quarts more.

When in Providence Lovecraft greatly enjoyed visiting nearby Newport, although the trip involved a long and sometimes chilly boat trip. One of the attractions of the place was its antiquities and perhaps its many grand mansions. Including a monstrous castle which could have come straight from one of Lovecraft’s tales…

The vast structure was however wryly called a “Cottage” by the inhabitants of this isolated shoreline castle. It was demolished in 1924, but Joshi has Lovecraft visiting Newport as early as 1915. He also went to Newport with Sonia just prior to the New York years, which gave rise to the joint tale “The Horror at Martin’s Beach”. The above mansion was still there at that time. In the tale such structures offer a key setting…

It was in the twilight, when grey sea-birds hovered low near the shore and a rising moon began to make a glittering path across the waters. The scene is important to remember, for every impression counts. On the beach were several strollers and a few late bathers; stragglers from the distant cottage colony that rose modestly on a green hill to the north, or from the adjacent cliff-perched [Wavecrest] Inn whose imposing towers proclaimed its allegiance to wealth and grandeur.

Now, Lovecraft’s “Inn” is hardly rustic, since it is described as having an ornate balcony and a “sumptuous ballroom” inside. It operates as a very upmarket “hotel”. The setting is then similar to that of the mansion on the postcard. More so when one knows that this real-world monstrous “Cottage” castle was apparently adjacent across the water to a far more alluring “cottage colony” of writers, as in the story. The name is also similar, the mansion being dubbed ‘Breakwater’ in reality, and ‘Wavecrest’ in the tale. All this suggests that the postcard shows the setting of a Lovecraft tale, albeit a joint tale.

There are two illustrated books on the topic, free on Archive.org, A Guidebook to Newport Mansions and Newport mansions: the Gilded Age, each giving views inside such structures as survived into the 1980s.

There’s a new and interesting scientific wrinkle on Lovecraft and ‘fear of the dark’. You’ll recall that Lovecraft had darkish hazel-brown eyes. A new pre-print research paper from Liverpool in the UK tested the “Effect of iris pigmentation of blue and brown eyed individuals” of European descent, in terms of their low-light vision. They found that…

Blue eyed individuals were identified to have significantly better ability to see in lower lighting

… after a short adaptation period. In other words, after a short time of ‘letting your eyes get used to the lowering light’. The authors suggest that the already-known susceptibility of blue eyes to ‘straylight'(*) is the likely cause, providing just…

enough luminance to provide blue-eyed individuals with a visual advantage to make out shapes

… with relative speed in lowering-light environments. Such as hunting at dusk. This seems plausible, though note that the study has a small sample size.

But the implications for Lovecraft is that as an adult he saw darkness as more of a ‘void’ than he might have done if he really had been a blue-eyed Nordic type. Although in 1923 he joshed with the Mediterranean-favouring Belknap Long in a letter that he was really a Nordic, and thus entitled to imagine himself…

a comrade of the wolves, and rider of nightmares — aye — I speak truly — for was I not born with yellow hair and blue eyes — the latter not turning dark till I was nearly two, and the former lasting till I was over five? Ho, for the hunting and fishing in Valhalla!

Thus, there may have been a ‘double impact’ here for Lovecraft in early childhood. An imaginative tot’s intense fear of the dark exacerbated by his blue eyes, until the age of two, due to good perception of subtle shapes in the dark. Then a strong and perhaps sudden lessening of this ability, leading to the increasingly imaginative child’s fear that the terribly phantasmal shapes were still there in the dusk, but were now dangerously unseen…

Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold.” (Necronomicon).

You’ll recall also Lovecraft’s early fear of the dark. Evidenced by the lengths his grandfather went to, to try to cure the boy of it. Also his love of cats, friendly creatures able to see relatively easily in the very low light.

* straylight — “light that enters the eye but does not reach the retina in a focused manner”

At the risk of boring regular readers of Tentaclii, here are four more glimpses of the ‘Uncle Eddy’ bookshop on Weybosset in Providence. Readers of the Lovecraft Annual 2022 will recall my detailed article which revealed the bookselling uncle of Eddy Jr., a firm “favorite” for the book collectors in Lovecraft’s circle whenever they visited Providence. The largest used bookshop in Providence, for many years. In the article I was only able to furnish a bit of a poor picture-postcard…

I’ve since found four more glimpses of the site. Though only glimpses, not a straight-on picture of the doorway to the cellar bookstore.

First, an early image of the site (here outlined in red) from the archives of the Providence Public Library. Two distinctive domes are clearly seen. The nearer one on the far-left, and in the distance the old Beneficent Congregational ‘Round Top’ Church. These provide useful orientation.

Next a detail from another Public Library picture. Here we look the other way, and see only the distinctive domed building on the corner. Again, the doorway is outlined in red.

Next we again look toward the Round Top church. The bookstore entrance, or what would later be a bookstore, is obscured by a street fountain.

Here we look toward the Crown Hotel, and can just see the same distinctive dome on the corner building. The entrance is again obscured, by what might be a short telegraph pole.

While looking for pictures I did however stumble on a rare good front-view of a Providence ‘news-stand’ store, and in what might be the early 1920s. The Narraganset Smoke Shop, probably in Dorrance Street since an adjacent/above sign (seen on the wider picture) for “T.H. D’Arcy, Engraver” leads me to 86 Dorrance Street. Just around the corner from Weybosset Street. This hole-in-the-wall magazine, tobacco and candy store looks a likely prospect for a fellow wanting to bag a copy of the curious new magazine called ‘Weird Tales’. Here newly colourised.

This week on ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’, a very fine glass-plate view of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown. This is an “other gate” on the university, the better known one being the Van Wickle Gates near Lovecraft’s last home at No. 66 and at which Lovecraft posed for photos.

No, it’s not a Library of Congress picture. This one came from spotting a stray eBay listing of a discarded print from some picture library. There was no watermark and it was a good scan at 1600px. I’ve here colourised, cleaned and enlarged x2.

I’d previously spotted that an ironwork Cthulhu-a-like was recorded in a 1965 book of b&w art-photographs of the Brown campus. This was located outside the John Carter Brown Library, but is not clearly seen on the above picture.

It formed part of the moulding at the foot of the lamp-posts outside the Library, and above we see one of what appears to have been three faces surrounding the base. The new colour picture now adds further context to this discovery. The lamp-posts can be seen, and these face(s) were not right down on the sidewalk/floor where they might be overlooked. Rather, they terminated in the elevated marble stair-posts and would thus have been visible to all who ascended the steps and then passed by. Including one Mr. H.P. Lovecraft.

Their elevation and original situation can also be seen here. That they were topped with ‘Moon’ globes might also have tickled Lovecraft’s fancy…