‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: a mixed bag from Brookyn

24 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Maps, New discoveries, Picture postals

This week in my ‘Picture Postals’ series of posts, more follow-on from my recent successful search for Lovecraft’s “John’s” in Brooklyn.

1) Here are two Photoshop-combined sections of Sanborn’s 1904 Brooklyn Atlas, showing 7 Willoughby Street (John’s) in plan and context.

We can see here that No. 7 (“John’s”) had a large isolated yard and sheds out back. This is possibly of relevance re: it being a suitable-looking site for prohibition hooch-brewing in the back yard, something which we know went on regularly at the main branch of John’s. Note the adjacent cigar making, carpet cleaning and gas-fitting. Alcohol fumes from the stills might have been well cloaked by the neighbouring pongs. Possibly there was also a back-entrance to the yard, for small trucks using the insalubrious Union Lane. Looks to me like a perfect site for prohibition brewers in 1925.

2) In my recent search for Lovecraft’s Clinton St. grocery, I can now discount the store on the ‘bank’ corner of Atlantic Avenue – Clinton Street. You’ll recall there was a savings bank on one of the four possible corners, a bank that had departed the area in 1922. A 1927 picture shows that a corner store there, visible on that corner in the early 1940s, was not yet in existence at 1927. This discovery further confirms that Lovecraft’s grocery store was at 156 Atlantic Avenue, on the corner with Clinton.

In the same set of pictures there is a 1935 picture of 156 Atlantic Avenue. This is in one of the same set of Sperr pictures, Brooklyn: Clinton Street – State Street. But this picture has been confusingly titled. Its title implies that it shows State Street but it does not, as the label on the back indicates. It is merely “south from State Street”, i.e. made at a point south ‘on the map’, but with State St. behind the cameraman. To someone who knows what they’re looking at, this April 1935 picture shows Lovecraft’s Clinton – Atlantic Avenue corner, as seen from the waste-ground of the demolished Fougera apartments. Thus Lovecraft’s grocery is partly visible behind parked cars, on the very far right of the picture…

Regrettably this is one of the Sperr pictures that the NYPL hold hostage for their expensive “fine art prints” racket.

3) Also in the Sperr pictures, I found a better angle in a picture that looks down Clinton Street. Brooklyn: Clinton Street – Atlantic Avenue, early June 1927. A date which was little more than a year after Lovecraft had returned to Providence. The druggist (chemist) is on the corner with its awnings up against the sun, and Lovecraft’s Clinton St. is falling away at the left of the picture, as seen below. Lovecraft’s room at No. 169 is on the far corner, slightly obscured by a nearer lamp-post. Sperr’s label on the back has a description and the “June 1927” date. I think this may be the first time this particular picture has been identified with No. 169, and it’s very close in time.

Sadly it’s another of the Sperr pictures that the NYPL hold hostage for their “fine art prints”. Online it is very low-res, but apparently the NYPL do have larger as a very expensive “art print” — and seemingly with no actual guarantee that the image quality will be any better. You might end up with a $150 blur.

However, discovering that the corner building had once been the “Brooklyn Atheneum” aka “Athenaeum” opened doors to new data, and I found more or less the same view on a Brooklyn Eagle postcard…

Late 1890s. The Brooklyn Historical Society hold the plate.

We can see “Heyder[eich?]” the druggist was there on the corner in the late 1890s, as he was in the 1935 and 1940 pictures of the same corner. He appears to have been there all the way through, circa 1890s-1940.

What of the Atheneum? The Atheneum had once been a large concert hall, assembly rooms and then a private mercantile subscription library, and there was indeed a druggist on the corner (a chemist shop, as I had suspected). Its heyday as a modern venue was the 1850s-70s, and later as a theatre and lantern-projectionist forum in the 1880s. Nothing is heard of it after that as a regular cultural venue. But there was an attempted mass-meeting of East Coast anarchists there in 1901, as a result of which… “police closed down the Athenaeum”. The building was then swiftly leased by the New York Court of Special Sessions (of the Second Division, meaning Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond). “The Second Division the Court of Special Sessions is now held at the corner of Atlantic avenue and Clinton street” at “171 Atlantic Avenue”. Rather too swiftly occupied, since the officers complained for several years about the badly leaking roof, until the place was eventually refurbished. The Court’s lease was renewed in 1922, the year when the building was sold to a new owner by what a real-estate trade-paper called the “old” Athenaeum. The new owner appears to have been making a long-term investment on the corner site rather than the creaky old building — it was listed for demolition as part of “slum clearance” and abruptly demolished in 1942.

When Lovecraft was living at No. 169 this corner of Clinton and Atlantic was thus a court for the trying of petty crimes. Crime that merited either a fine, or some days in jail or a youth reformatory. It may not have sat as a court every day, but its presence would often have ‘flavoured’ the surrounding sidewalks with a seedy and anxious atmosphere.

The Athenaeum’s final days are seen here, photographed circa 1941-42 by Irving Kaufman, with the demolition placard on the front…

Old Brooklyn Athenaeum / Second Division of the Court of Special Sessions, before demolition. Also Clinton Street and No. 169. Photo by Irving Kaufman (1910–1982). Kaufman’s son Phil Kaufman was until a few years ago able to provide prints. But Phil Kaufman’s website has now gone, and at the time he posted these prints he did not know where they had been photographed. Just that they showed large Brooklyn buildings that were declared for demolition.

Here the old corner druggist has gone at last and the store has become an opportunistic grocer, “American **st Grocers(?)”, for a year or so before demolition. But this is long after Lovecraft’s time there. Still, it gives us another new picture looking down toward No. 169 Clinton St. and we get a feel for Lovecraft’s walk up to his Syrian tailor’s and to the corner, before crossing Atlantic to reach his usual grocery store.

In a further Irving Kaufman picture we can also see the immense ‘Fouguera’ apartments building that loomed opposite Lovecraft in Clinton St. This picture shows the other side of the street, and a distinctive corner of the druggist’s frontage can be seen in the bottom-right (it has a ‘pig snout’ moulding that can’t be mistaken). Comparing the styling of this frontage, just visible enough, with the 1935 and circa 1940 pictures to show that it it not yet the grocer’s seen in the circa 1941 picture. In that latter picture the grocer has re-tooled the signage boards somewhat. This ‘Fouguera’ photo must be earlier than circa 1941. Indeed, it must be circa 1934-35 because 1934 was when the ‘slum clearance’ demolition boards went up on the building, as noted by the Brooklyn Eagle. These boards can be clearly seen on the building.

We can also more clearly see the nature of the corner shop at the ‘Fouguera’. It was a furniture store with what seems to be an antique bric-a-brac wing with a show-window on the corner.

To summarise, my search for Lovecraft’s grocery has found the store, and has also established several other useful facts along the way. Lovecraft would have walked toward the grocers on Clinton/Atlantic through a ‘canyon’ like street, with the immense ‘Fouguera’ on one side, and the old Brooklyn Athenaeum on the other. If he walked from his room into this canyon during the day he might have encountered many people going to or from the Second Division the Court of Special Sessions, Brooklyn’s court for petty crime that was held in that building. Such anxious or hard faces cannot have raised his general assessment of the immediate area. Culture and thrift was fading away. The old Athenaeum had gone, the Saving Bank on its opposite corner across Atlantic had departed in 1922 (and seemingly also the artists who had some sort of informal studio colony above it). The once proud ‘Fouguera’ was (in the eyes of the city) now becoming the slum that would condemn it in 1934 and with a seedy-looking furniture store and a seedy cafe below. The old druggist on the Athenaeum corner, “Heyder[eich?]”, kept up the tone. The grocery at No. 156 Atlantic Avenue was worth patronising and affordable, and presumably friendly. But the area was obviously going downhill despite a superficial aura of fading quality, as Lovecraft’s letters also evidence.

Map showing Lovecraft’s room at 169 and the four corners of Clinton/Atlantic. Clockwise: ‘Fouguera’ and bric-a-brac shop; Athenaeum (now the petty-crimes court for Brooklyn) and Druggist; the old Savings Bank (lower part not a store until after 1927); and then the grocery at 156 Atlantic.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Looking down Clinton Street

10 Friday Jun 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

Following on from yesterday’s notes, the final post for Selected Letters II.

Page 259: Here Lovecraft is giving advice to young Talman, who by January 1929 had moved to Red Hook. Lovecraft recalls that when living at Clinton Street he had patronised… “the grocer on the corner of Atlantic” as he put it. Thus Clinton Street and Atlantic Aveneue, very near his room. He seems to imply there was only one such possible corner with a grocer on it.

Now it can’t be the “Atlantic Food Centre” seen on 1940s.nyc, because that corner was gone by 1934 and the “Food Center” only appeared there after Lovecraft’s time. Before that it was the Fougera apartments. They had stores beneath the apartments, but the larger of these appears to have been a liquor store.

Although on 1940s.nyc the lower picture may be earlier, as the “Druggist” corner on the right of the picture was also demolished in 1942.

We know what the Fougera corner looked like in 1922, before demolition and the later “Atlantic Food Centre”, thanks to pictures in an article on The Fougera by New York historian Brownstoner. It does not look like a grocery store…

The picture of the demolished Fougera site does however give us a peep down the street to Lovecraft’s famous No. 169 Clinton address, albeit in 1935 and thus ten years after his time there…

Lovecraft says elsewhere that he patronised the Syrian “tailor in the same block”, and here we can indeed see a large sign for “Tailor”. Also a glimpse of the corner store on the right (“Heyd…” something). We know from Lovecraft’s “Red Hook” story that there were relic Norwegians in the area, so my guess on the name would be Scandinavian. There are plenty of Heyde and Heyder surnames in Norway. A later picture shows a drugstore/chemists there, and this earlier incarnation does have the visual feel of a chemists’ shop. Not a grocery then.

But what of Lovecraft’s grocer? It’s not the Fougera corner and it’s not the drugstore corner. So it should be one of two possibilities that are behind the above-seen cameraman.

Ok, the 1940s.nyc site now lets me ‘turn the camera around’ and give readers a look at those two possible grocery stores.

The bottom and slicker-looking one was built as a savings bank, which moved out in 1922. Google Street View has the building’s Clinton side as “191 Clinton” and the shorter Atlantic side of the same building is “160 Atlantic Avenue”. The same numbering applied in the 1920s. In 1922 American Art News announces…

Nicolas Macsoud [a painter of the Orient and miniaturist, 1884-1972] has returned to his studio, 191 Clinton Street, Brooklyn.

Although that may indicate the rooms above. The large apartments above the bank were home to several artists circa 1890s-1910s, and circa the 1900s-1910s the address pops up frequently on art show catalogues now on Archive.org. In 1921 it was still the address of the Brooklyn Society of Miniature Painters, though that may be because of the miniaturist Nicolas Macsoud. Nothing much is heard of art there after 1922. That may be due to the copyright cut-off. Or it could be that the artists departed with the bank in 1922, as the area went rapidly downhill.

But my feeling is that a lush marble-lined savings bank of 1922 would not suddenly become home to a cheap grocers the very next year. This reinforces my feeling that 160 Atlantic Avenue / 191 Clinton Street was not Lovecraft’s corner grocery, if it even was a grocery circa 1923-27. To me it feels, peering through the fuzz, like a fancy bread and cakes shop. Or perhaps a fruitier.

Update: I can now discount the store on this ‘bank’ corner of Atlantic Avenue – Clinton Street. A 1927 picture shows that a corner store was not yet there at that time.

That leaves one option. The top of the two pictures is the final possible corner, at 156 Atlantic Avenue. In this circa 1940 picture the address feels the cheaper of the two possible stores. It has what might be ‘delicatessen’ sign-writing on the windows. On the balance of probabilities, I’d say that Lovecraft’s Red Hook grocery store was at No. 156.

Today the area has obviously gentrified and 156 is the affluent hipster’s ‘Swallow Cafe’, though its facade still keeps the old name ‘Tripoli’ (the well-reviewed middle-eastern and “seafood specialities” restaurant that was there 1982-2010s). Pictures of the side of the building today show it goes quite far back, far enough to allow for a large grocery store in the 1920s, and this is confirmed by a similar early 1940s view of the place…

Mythos writers may then be interested to learn that No. 156 also goes down quite deep…

156 Atlantic Avenue: this particular building has three sub-basements, the lowest of which lines up with track level inside the [subway] tunnel. (The World’s Oldest Subway, 2015, page 22)

Thus Lovecraft’s Red Hook corner grocery had deep basements that went down and down until they reached the level of the city’s oldest subway. And was later home to a “seafood specialities” restaurant. Hmmm….

SFFaudio Podcast #684

05 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Podcasts etc.

≈ Leave a comment

As some people’s thoughts turn toward the usual beach-front summer vacation, the new SFFaudio Podcast #684 has an unabridged Gordon Gould reading for “The Strange High House In The Mist” by H.P. Lovecraft followed by discussion.

Lovecraft claimed the story was inspired by the “titan cliffs of Magnolia” (Mass.). Yet I find that the postcard and glass-plate makers have singularly failed to capture any “titan” cliffs, and the candidates of “Rafe’s Chasm” and “Mother Ann” seem to lack the necessary attributes.

Yet it appears he was not being ironic…

I ended up with the titan cliffs of Magnolia — memories of which prompted “The Strange High House in the Mist” — and found their charm undiminished. [He had seen them in 1923]. You can’t imagine their majesty unless you’ve seen them — primal rock and sea and sky …. and the bells of the buoys tolling free in the aether of faery!

In 1933 he recalls…

the striking sea-cliffs of Magnolia — with the yawning abyss of Rafe’s Chasm.

Well then… maybe they just never had the right photographer? Perhaps at low tide one could walk around below them on the beach, and that way they looked more impressive?

However, the search of Magnolia does yield me the required Father Neptune…

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Bickford’s, Brooklyn

27 Friday May 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

This week, another try at finding H.P. Lovecraft’s New York City cafes and eateries. Today Bickford’s, tomorrow… John’s.

H.P. Lovecraft mentions that a favoured eatery in Brooklyn was “Bickford’s” near Borough Hall. The place was found early during his New York City sojourn. He had abandoned the Tiffany, whose wood-panelled decor he favoured, after he discovered that the clients just could not be ignored in favour of the decor…

the clientele was past enduring … young toughs and gangsters … I got all my stomach could stand after three or four months and thereafter switched to Bickford’s – near Borough Hall.” (Selected Letters II, page 259).

The early switch is confirmed by his 1925 Diary, which notes “Bickford’s”.

In the early 1920s Bickford’s was part of a small but growing chain, with the owner Samuel L. Bickford known for his work with and fund-raising for the Boys Club in Brooklyn. He had also run the New England Waldorf’s Lunch chain in the 1910s, and since these were one of Lovecraft’s favourites he could have been familiar with Bickford’s name in that way. In New York Mr. Bickford offered the unbeatable combination of good cheap food, fast service, and long hours. His chain was a success and in the 1920s branched out into even faster service with self-service automats, it seems, if the New York City branches listed in directories as ‘Bickford’s Lunch System’ are anything to go by. He ended up with a large successful chain.

The Chain Store Age trade magazine tells us that a Bickford’s branch wasn’t located at 425 Fulton Street until 1927. Thus the 58 Court Street branch must have been Lovecraft’s haunt in the Red Hook years, and it is indeed very “near Borough Hall” being just a few steps away down Court St. He calls this branch of Bickford’s a “one-arm”, meaning both cheap and that it had ‘side-arm’ tables just wide enough to hold your plate of food.

In its better days 58 Court Street had been the home to Mr. Edward Greaf, first-class dealer and importer of wines and also the Curator of Entomology at the Brooklyn Institute. But by the 1940s it was the Concord Cafeteria, with a Chop Suey hall above…

As can be seen here in the late 1930s. The former Bickford’s is now the Concord cafeteria and is partly seen on the left. The 25-cent Chop Suey restaurant is above…

Today Street View shows the site as a seedy “Dunkin’ Donuts” hole-in-the-wall next to a failed “General Nutrition” health-food store. However, most of the pleasing stonework and a classic Brooklyn metal fire-escape remain above, evoking a touch of the past.

The above 1940s picture is the nearest in time and place to the 1920s I can get. Not quite as Lovecraft would have known it some 15 years earlier, but I note that since 1917 Bickford’s branches all had the same classy architect and designer, one F. Russell Stuckert. Thus the Court Street branch would probably not be too different from the following frontage in design and logo and perhaps also the use of stained glass. Here we see his design work in the post-1927 frontage for the nearby 425 Fulton Street branch, located a little to the west of Borough Hall…

“Hot Turkey” on the menu. The frontage is deceptive as to the size, since inside it was vast and went back and back and back again — as I’ll explain in another post. The smartness of this 1927 branch, seen here in the late 1930s, may not quite reflect that of the earlier and more worn Court Street branch circa 1925.

David W. Dunlap wrote about the cultural aura of the Bickford’s chain in 2000 in The New York Times, then a reputable newspaper of record. He noted that in the 1950s Ginsberg’s Howl beat generation… “sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s” (Howl, Ginsberg), and that the great Woody Allen later revered the chain… “I got no money. I’ll go sit in Bickford’s.” (Getting Even, 1971, his breakthrough book collection). Other New York creatives also mentioned it over the years. But Dunlap didn’t pick up on the fact that one H.P. Lovecraft had, as usual, got there first.

Notes on Selected Letters II – part one

23 Monday May 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Astronomy, Historical context, Lovecraft as character, New discoveries

≈ 4 Comments

Over the summer I’m re-reading H.P. Lovecraft’s five volumes of Selected Letters and this time I’m making notes. Here is part one of my notes on Selected Letters Vol. II.

* Lovecraft mentions Chase’s Drug Store located at the central “bridge” area of Pawtuxet, stating that this store offered all the best available postcards of local scenes (page 58). The Providence Public Library has a picture of Chase’s frontage, with a chap appearing to carry away a packet of drugs that could equally be a set of postcards. I’ve here rectified and faintly colourised it (this kind of picture doesn’t take colour very well). The picture was made by Mr. Chase, so it is his store.

* Lovecraft states that he had his cuttings on Rhode Island and antiquarian matters well-sorted and assembled into scrapbooks by October 1926. These having been in mounded up in piles on his desk, when living in one room at Red Hook (page 77). His scrapbooks, antiquarian or otherwise, do not appear to have survived.

* In April 1926 he was back in Providence and exploring his own city. Though obviously inspired by Eddy’s recent introduction to the reality of an ‘unexplored Providence’, he appears to be alone in the following exploration. He was also presumably using the secrets he had learned about the layout of colonial Providence during the fateful visit to the Shepley Library. He thus begins to visit on foot parts of Providence he had not previously visited…

I discovered one of the most hellish slums ever imagined by mankind. it was a place whose existence I had not before realised — the end of Chalkstone Ave. near Randall Sq. and the railway — and its dark hilly courts approach the very ultimates of blasphemous horror.” (page 43)

It appears to be a dangerous area even today, just to warn any local Lovecraftians who might be thinking of photographing there. The 2022 news reports two shootings in Chalkstone Ave.

* In May 1926, Lovecraft was still exploring previously unexplored “seedy” by-ways, but this time perhaps less squalid ones. As he was in the company of his aunt…

Mrs. Gamwell and I took a walk thro’ a section of the town in which I had never set foot before — an antient and now seedy district east of the river and just south of the good residential area. Colonial houses abounded, and I was astonisht at some of the gorgeously antique effects obtainable here and there. […] It is call’d Dove Street, and has neither pavement nor sidewalk, but consists of irregular rows of simple Colonial cottages with rough stone doorsteps, and here and there a flagstone or two.” (page 54)

Dove Street is one of the parallel side streets that run alongside the main Hope Street at Fox Point, and head down toward the waterfront rail-yards at India Point. Dove Street still exists, though the map hints it may have been truncated in modern times. Today the Rhode Island Historical Society’s Mary Elizabeth Robinson Research Center is located about 160 yards to the north, which means that researchers might also fit a visit to nearby Dove Street in when visiting. The top part of Dove Street appears, from Street View, to be on its way to being gentrified.

* In February 1927 he writes of the Providence waterfront and names four “dark alleys” there…

the vivid, glamorous waterfront with its rotting wharves & colonial warehouses & archaic lines of gambrel roofs & dark alleys with romantic names (Doubloon, Sovereign, Guilder, Bullion, etc) & wondrous ship-chandleries & mysterious marine boarding houses in ancient, lamplit, cobblestoned courts”.

Today “Doubloon Street” etc. One of which might have partly inspired “The Call of Cthulhu” setting…

one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside [of Providence] which formed a short cut from the [dock used by the Newport boat on the] waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams Street.

* In October 1926 he travelled, seemingly by motor-coach, from Providence and…

the Eddy Street coach terminal over the antient Plainfield Pike […] and later on the region devastated to create the new Scituate reservoir” (page 81)

In March 1927, five months later, he wrote “The Colour Out of Space” with its soon-to-be reservoir setting.

* He cleaned his old telescope in October 1926…

I cleaned the brass of my telescope yesterday for the first time in twenty years. Gehenna, what a green mess! And I couldn’t get it very brilliant even in the end. That’s what neglect does!

So this tells us two things. That he still had his old telescope, but that he had not used it for a long time.

“Gehenna” is a word used in the King James Bible in the final parts of Isiah, and refers to a beautiful garden place, a garden-grove for refined dancing and singing that was near to Jerusalem. An insidious and intractable Moloch worship [i.e. ritual sacrifice of young children by burning alive] came to replace the dancing and song. Lovecraft thus alludes to the later form of the valley when, after being utterly despoiled by the Moloch worship and sacrifice, the later and more respectable kings of the city sought to blot out the memory of the despoliation with further despoliation of their own — they buried Gehenna under a giant tip used for the fire-ashes and waste and unwanted dead bodies of Jerusalem. Thus “Gehenna” became a byword for ashes and filth.

In April 1927 (page 126) Lovecraft gives the vaguest hint that he may have made some winter or early spring 1927 observations through the newly-cleaned telescope…

As in your case, the skies exert the utmost fascination upon me; nor is the weaving of wild dreams about their unplumbed deeps & suns & worlds in the least hampered by the precise astronomical data which my scientific side demands.

* By June 1927 (page 140) Lovecraft had noticed how at least one critic had made the connection of the more fanatical aspects of the Puritan era with “the horror-element in American literature”…

It is easy to see how the critic Paul Elmer More traces the horror-element in American literature to the remote New England countryside with its solitude-warped religious fanaticism.

* Eddy Jr. pops up again in July 1927 (page 156) when he is “hunted up” to join a gathering of visitors at Barnes Street of Morton, the Longs and others. The implication of the wording is that Lovecraft has not seen Eddy Jr. for a while, had not invited him to the gathering, and was not quite sure how to get in touch with him when someone (likely Morton) suggested Eddy Jr. should join them at Barnes Street.

* His birthplace and childhood home at 454 had an “ebony and gold” decorative scheme for the “front hall”, and then a rich “old gold and rose” for the “front parlour”, in which he used to read The Arabian Nights.

* A letter offers us some implied details of Long’s proposed “novelette”, which would have made characters out of Lovecraft and others in the New York City ‘gang’. He chides Long (page 172)…

As for your new novelette — look here, young man, you’d better be mighty careful how you treat your aged and dignified Grandpa as here! You mustn’t make me do anything cheerful or wholesome, and remember that only the direst of damnations can befit so inveterate a daemon of the cosmick abysses. And, young man, don’t forget that I am prodigiously lean. I am lean — LEAN, I tell you! Lean! And if you’re afraid that my leanness will make the horror get you instead, why just reduce [diet] like your Grandpa and escape as well! And be sure to depict me in my new Puritan frock coat. I think I shall adopt an umbrella also.

Evidently the proposed novel had by September 1927 become a “novelette” and was in the planning stage. Lovecraft by then expected it to be in the weird monster-horror vein and likely to feature mysterious demise or else “damnation” for the gang. Presumably it was to be set in the mid 1920s in New York City. That’s about all that can be gleaned here. His use of “LEAN” refers to Long’s humorously ribbing of Lovecraft about the early part of his New York sojourn, during which the master had grown distinctly plump under the influence of Sonia’s cooking and also her largesse in paying cake-shop and restaurant-bills.

* In late September 1927 Lovecraft lists his recent notable reading likely to be of interest to Ashton Smith (page 174)…

– Goat Song by Werfel. (a printed play)

– Atlantideer by Beniot.

– New Lands by Charles Fort (only “skimmed”)

– The World’s Desire by Rider Haggard and Long (a mis-transcription for Lang) (planning to read)

The latter was not a new book, and had first appeared in 1889. Lang was the famous late Victorian scholar and folklorist, compiler of numerous useful popular anthologies of fairy and Northern epic stories, and translator of ancient classical texts. Haggard was the florid and fantastical adventure writer, famous for She. Their novel apparently… “continues the story of Odysseus, who returns to Ithaca to find his home destroyed”. He then leaves for a new quest, seeking his former love Helen of Troy. Lovecraft likely did read the still-rather-readable novel, since it spurred entry #141 in his Commonplace Book. Incidentally, the novel’s Wikipedia page has obviously had a severe and politically rebarbative mauling by leftists.

New Lands was a 1923 book by the modern confabulator Charles Fort, in which he focused on apparent “astronomical anomalies” that fall or float down from the sky. Fort used the book to loosely… “pull together examples of falls of stones, gelatinous substances, anomalous earthquakes, fireballs … bright stars, luminescent gas, mirages, ball lightning”, in pursuit of his barmy notion of ‘sky islands’ — actual land floating all unseen in our upper atmosphere. This theme of sky-falls has obvious relevance to Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space”, written March 1927. Since I assume that Fort’s book was “skimmed” before and not after the writing of the famous story. I’ve not seen any other suggestions that New Lands inspired “Colour”, or rebuttals of the notion. Thus this may be my new discovery — if the dates align.

“Atlantideer” is a mis-transcription for Atlantida. This 1919 novel appeared in English in 1920 and was serialised in Adventure. It appears to be a romantic Sahara desert ‘lost race’ adventure with strong similarity to Haggard’s famous She. Indeed so strong that there was a legal case over it.

Goat Song appears to be a romantic coming-of-age tragedy-adventure involving a Spartan boy-warrior and his beloved.

It’s interesting that The World’s Desire, Atlantida and Goat Song could all be construed as having strong female themes which would have allowed Lovecraft to ‘think through’ his relations with the departed Sonia.

* With the visiting Talman’s help he discovered apparent Welsh elements in his family ancestry. Although striking an amused pose, he appears rather peeved and not a little un-nerved by this (page 180). Several slightly later letters see him diving headlong into Ancient Roman history and imagining (and indeed dreaming) himself as a Roman. I intuited that this may have been in reaction to the Celtic discoveries, or as he phrased it “this shocking revelation of hybridism”. This discovery has obvious implications for the development of the later “Innsmouth” and its idea of tainted heredity. The Welsh discovery was not the only shock from his family tree. Later, as Ken Faig Jr. has recently discovered, Lovecraft found an American side of the family line who had been rather lowly fish dealers. Thus offering us another possible inspiration for “Innsmouth”.

Actually the Welsh link in his core line of descent, as I’ve pointed out, may not have been really Welsh by lineage and blood. It may have simply been by residence. Although admittedly his letters do report him discovering one seemingly true-blooded Welsh lady had married into the family. Sadly his Northumbrian / Welsh(?) family line never seem to have been followed by a modern genealogist, and indeed I’m not sure if the relevant data now exists.

* He notes with some pleasure the first appearance of his fiction in hardback, when “The Horror at Red Hook” was re-printed as the concluding story in “Not at Night”. This was actually titled You’ll Need a Night Light, the third of what had only just become the ‘Not at Night’ series. These books contained Weird Tales reprints, selected for the British market by the magazine’s London agent Charles Lovell and then passed to Selwyn & Blount’s anthologist Christine Campbell Thomson for final choice and arrangement.

Despite this being a “third edition” cover the publisher apparently went bust shortly after publication, and the book’s UK rights were promptly purchased by Hutchinson. Which led to a legal tangle with Weird Tales, as a later Lovecraft letter recounts.

* And finally, a line written while joshing with Long (page 202) sounds like an entry in the Commonplace Book, but wasn’t…

… certain queerly-dimensioned cities of windowless onxy towers on a planet circling around Antares

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft, 9 Canal St., Providence

13 Friday May 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

Hurrah, persistence pays off. Friday the 13th might be unlucky for some, but it’s lucky for Lovecraftians. Because here at last is a picture of Lovecraft’s favourite Jacques Lunch, and at the 9 Canal Street address too. Aka “Jake’s”.

From the budget bundle-o’-local-photos book Rhode Island: Unforgettable Vintage Images of the Ocean State, published 2000 and now long out of print. Here cleaned, rectified and colorised.

The date is uncertain. The caption has it that Hugues Jacques and Pierre ‘Leo’ Jacques are seen behind the counter, and we know from Ken Faig Jr. that they took over the former bar in 1923. So it is probably at about that date or a little later. One can see a docks-worker and probably at least one docks foreman or truck-driver eating at the counter. As well as several old gents who might be of limited means, perhaps the “Salvation Army derelicts” as Lovecraft once referred to them in a letter. A certain ‘Domingo’, not seen, also regularly served behind the counter…

Toward Domingo, an olive-skinned, behind-the-counter servitor at Jacques’, his favorite eating place in Providence, he was as affable as a courtier in a drawing room.” (Talman, on Lovecraft)

Lovecraft had discovered this cheap and abundantly sustaining eatery via Talman in 1926, and from then on he regularly enjoyed its man-sized portions of cheap food. He does not appear to have been a daily or even a weekly customer, but he dropped in and was well known to the place and its people — especially in the summer “visiting season”. The place seems to have slowly slid downmarket over the years. From late summer 1933, and as the Great Depression deepened, Jake’s began to tolerate what Lovecraft called “extremes in the matter of clientele”. He sought out other nearby options, and came to patronise a nearby Al’s Lunch. However, perhaps the “clientele” situation eased. Since Ken Faig Jr. has established he was still eating at Jake’s in August 1934 and March 1935. One day in mid September 1935 Lovecraft found Jacques abruptly closed, the business having failed at last. Lovecraft looked forlornly in the windows again at various times, but found it always “still vacant”.

Also newly discovered, as seen in my earlier post, the opening times as they stood in April 1933…

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Cleveland, August 1922

22 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ Leave a comment

This week’s ‘Picture Postals’ is part four of four, of a few notes on the new expanded edition of the Galpin letters. On page 293 Lovecraft usefully recalls the exact locations enjoyed during his 1922 visit to Cleveland. This was a very happy time for him as he was effectively released from his long hermitage. The addresses are…

1537 E. 93rd St. [Loveman’s family home], 9231 Birchdale [Avenue, Galpin’s family home, quite near to Loveman], Wade Park, Clark’s Lunch [north side of Euclid Av.], Taylor’s Arcade [south side of Euclid Av.], Eglin’s [bookshop]

I found a good picture of a Clark’s Lunch on the central street called Euclid Avenue, and dated 1922…

Galpin met Lovecraft at the railway station and immediately took him to eat at a Clark’s Lunch, before they then went back to Galpin’s family home. This same Lunch was where he and the boys mostly ate their ‘meals out’ after that, as Lovecraft told his aunt in a letter.

It’s pleasing to get a photo of the exact date, although the heavy coats and hats in the picture suggests a bright-but-chill springtime rather than the early August heat of Lovecraft’s extended and fatefully cheering visit. However, is this the Clark’s Lunch? The people look rather too upmarket and the hole-in-the-wall too small. Were there other branches? There were. The 1920 American Legion Convention booklet usefully yields the list of the city’s branches…

So, there were two Lunch’s on Euclid. And we now know that the branches were open 24 hours.

But which Lunch is shown? The one at 1325 Euclid or at 5410 Euclid? Enough of the surrounding architecture of one remains to be seen today on Google Street View, and thus the above picture can be confirmed as the central Lunch at 1325 Euclid.

However I’m still not entirely certain, as there were evidently other branches. Indeed there were 15 branches in the city by the 1950s. So let’s look more closely at the place of arrival and see if that helps. Lovecraft was on the Lake Shore overnight sleeper train from New York to Cleveland, seeing the Catskills in the distance as he travelled along the Hudson Valley (he would later that year set “The Lurking Fear” in the same mountains). In 1922 the Lake Shore sleeper drew in to Cleveland at the old and decrepit New Union Depot. This had been renovated in earlier decades, but was still then blighted by “years of accumulated soot and ash which had made the building into a dirty eyesore” according to the railway historians. In 1922 it was all-but defunct. The city’s long-planned gleaming station was still just bare cleared-ground at that time, and would only open in 1930. Thus we can be sure that Lovecraft arrived in the city at the old and decrepit New Union Depot. The question is then, which was the nearest Clark’s Lunch branch for the station?

Sadly, it’s not the one seen above at 1325 Euclid. Pity, but the situation did look rather too posh. The nearest to this station would have been the branch at 228 West Superior, on the west side of Cleveland Public Square and about a quarter mile walk from the New Union Depot. There was a large business college at 236 West Superior, and an athletics store at 226, with together suggest a student-ish atmosphere for the Lunch. The food appears to confirm this student-y supposition. The food there was found to be “humble” and “inexpensive”, as Lovecraft told his aunt (Selected Letters Vol. 1., p. 191).

Unfortunately there don’t appear to be vintage pictures of that stretch of West Superior, and this row has since been cleared. It has long been a parking lot called Jacob’s Lot…

But the local press report that by 2024 the car park will be gone. From the site of Lovecraft’s Lunch will soar a new Sherwin-Williams Corp. mega-tower skyscraper. Suitably enough, for a place where artists and writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Hart Crane once met, the company is ‘America’s Paint Company’ and makes paints.

What of Taylor’s Arcade? This was on the south side of Euclid Avenue in its central run, and is here seen perhaps circa 1912-ish? A decade before. Not to be confused with another and far grander wrought-iron arcade in the same city, which still exists.

What of Wade Park? This had a large zoo with lions and polar bears and suchlike, and an art museum, as well as fine and expansive parkland with lakes. Lovecraft tells his aunt that he toured the “Cleveland Art Museum” there. Aka the Cleveland Museum of Art. This was housed in a long low classical building.

The museum displayed fine art and crafts from all eras and Lovecraft would have seen full armoured and mounted medieval knights, “Carthage” by the famous British artist Turner, Japanese porcelain, French paintings, and far more. Also the following approximate emulation of a Moorish-style courtyard garden, which appears (from another companion card) to have had a further small garden in a more eastern style with a central Buddha.

The heat of early-mid August 1922 was very heavy, and thus no doubt much to the liking of both the garden and Lovecraft. Strong heat always pepped him up. He also found that he needed to blend in more with the boys and thus he divested himself of his usual hat and stiff collar…

Can you picture me vestless [i.e. without a waistcoat], hatless, soft-collared, and belted, ambling about with a boy of twenty, as if I were no older? … One can be free and easy in a provincial city … What I need in order to be cheerful is the constant company of youthful and congenial literary persons. (Selected Letters Vol. 1, p. 293)

As for the bookshop, “Eglin’s” is the form elsewhere in Selected Letters which confirms the spelling. Also confirmed is that some of the shop’s after-hours reading events were quietly rather gay at that time (as the confirming spelling occurs in the context of Lovecraft’s comments on Gordon Hatfield and Loveman). The journal Phantasmus for 1924 then gives the address “Eglin’s Book Store, 824 Superior Ave.” and the 1925 American Book Trade Directory confirms. By March 1930 the sales-outlets list of The Rosicrucian mystical magazine shows it had moved down the Avenue to 806. Today its old site at No. 824 is a 4,000 sq. ft. modern art gallery, seemingly shelled from the original building and with some of the old frontage still intact.

No. 824 is about a quarter-mile west of the Clark’s Lunch branch at 228 West Superior (see above). This helps to very strongly confirm the likely branch at which Lovecraft, Loveman, Galpin and the Eglin’s crowd ate in 1922. Given the “humble” and “inexpensive” fare, from the branch of a growing and reliable 24-hour chain, it would have been the natural choice as a local eatery.

Loveman would later work at Eglin’s as a bookshop assistant, but when he lost the position he followed the poet and his sometime-lover Hart Crane to New York City. Lovecraft later followed Loveman to New York, and the rest is history.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the Shepley Library

25 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

This week, the Shepley Library in Providence. This place appears in passing in Lovecraft’s novel Charles Dexter Ward, when Ward is described as having belonged in his city…

as much to the past as the antiquities he loved so keenly. […] His social activities were few; and his hours were spent mainly at home, in rambling walks, [in various learned institutions or at] the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street” Later, in his investigations into Curwen…

Charles Ward examined a set of his accounts and invoices in the Shepley Library

The place also has a passing mention in “The Shunned House”…

I was forced to ransack both the Rhode Island Historical Society and Shepley Library before I could find a local door which the name Etienne Roulet would unlock. In the end I did find something; something of such vague but monstrous import that I set about at once to examine the cellar of the shunned house itself with a new and excited minuteness.

Shepley was Colonel George Leander Shepley (1854-1924). His personally-designed private library / museum opened at 292 Benefit Street in late 1921, as seen here in my newly colourised picture via the Providence Public Library and the Historical Society…

Lovecraft was able to visit in 1923. He appears to have had access because his aunt Annie Gamwell was working there at the time. A magazine of the period shows the Library had been open to the public on afternoons, when first opened in late summer 1921. But I’m uncertain if that opening offer was then continued into 1922 and 1923.

The American Antiquary Society has a short outline biography, revealing the owner to have run and made his fortune in the largest insurance business in the world. One source mentions his ingenuity at developing new insurance services and policy types to serve new markets. Another talks of his absolute integrity. He was a leading Mason who had ascended very high, a member of various clubs and sat on a number of local company boards. In his retirement he built and stocked his large library relating to Rhode Island and Providence history, rivalling that of several other well-endowed local institutions. That Lovecraft’s narrators are able to either frequent or “ransack” the Shepley Library thus implies they knew the old fellow personally, or at least his curator. Lovecraft himself had a friendly reception from the curator, to the extent of apparently being offered the loan of a certain key view of Providence… if only a duplicate could be found to replace it on display. Lovecraft evidently made a long and close inspection of the place and he discovered much, as detailed in the Voluminous podcast letter of 6th March 2022 and also in a letter to Moe (Letters to Maurice W. Moe, page 133-34). It was this visit that revealed to him a previously unknown colonial section at the back of Weybosset, between Weybosset and the waterfront. This quickly led to his foggy expedition into the squalid rookery around ‘Gould’s Court’ (Ghouls Court) at the back of Uncle Eddy’s book shop on Weybosset. Nephew Eddy already knew this area at the back of his uncle’s book shop well, as it happened, and he acted as guide. Ken Faig Jr.’s Some of the Descendants of Asaph Phillips and Esther Whipple also has the museum as being Shepley’s home (“housed in his home on Benefit Street”), and it does appear from the photograph to have been a house with a large museum / library wing seamlessly attached.

Lovecraft was distinctly peeved when the the old fellow died in 1924 without making arrangements for his magnificent collection, other than (seemingly) for it to remain where it was and private. His reaction is revealed by the new Letters to Family (Vol. 1, p. 500), when Lovecraft writes…

the closing of the Shepley museum is utterly barbarous — upon my soul, I don’t think much of the old boy if he didn’t provide for the permanent exhibition of his collection. He aught to have deeded it to the Historical Society, or to Brown University, or to some other institution founded in his name. Egad! But it’s a publick crime to keep a treasure-house like that closed!!

The death of a daughter shortly before her father meant the old man’s planned inheritance was fumbled. The other daughter who did inherit the fortune allowed the museum to languish in a private state for academics only (“opened only to research students on request”), since we hear of no more visits by Lovecraft. If it had been open then he would surely have visited it again and taken friends there, and remarked on this in letters. In 1938, as war loomed, the collection was finally sold (not given) to the Rhode Island Historical Society. The building was for a time used by theatrical players and used to stage puppet-theatre shows for children.

How history might have been different. Imagine… old Colonel Shepley takes a shine to Lovecraft’s aunt, woos and marries her, then adopts Lovecraft as heir-apparent and the ideal antiquarian son he had always wanted. Lovecraft inherits the enormous fortune. He spends the next twenty years championing architectural preservation throughout America and Britain, and on the side issues some modest and slim books of polished philosophy. He barely writes any fiction.

So I guess we should be grateful that such events never happened. But Lovecraft’s extended and generous 1923 visit had done enough. He felt it had been a key turning point in his life, as he told Moe in 1923…

I am now become definitely an antiquarian, rather than a general student of letters

Shepley’s house still exists today as “295”, as can be seen by comparing Street View with the archival view. Today the observant scrutineer will also notice a down-steps side-entrance which goes through through to a shabby apartment and peeling porch on the back of the house. Perhaps this was once the back apartment of the on-site curator? Street View also reveals that the library at the side is now a sunken car-parking area, with crude graffiti and strewn trash… “where once had been only strength and honour, taste and learning” (“The Street”).

The depth and level of this car-park suggest that the 1921 view of the museum from Benefit Street may well be deceptive. I suspect that we see there the back of the building and that the museum actually had two floors, with the lower one being set down into the slope. The 1921 view thus only shows the back of the top floor as it was visible from the street. In fact, we can see it has a top atrium which even might even suggest two floors and perhaps a sky-room. The Federal Writers’ Project (1937) did briefly itemise the building as “one-storey” in a book, something which has since been parroted by others, but those books were often hasty make-work projects for communist cliques — as Lovecraft’s friend Arthur Leeds found to his detriment. I suspect the compilers of the book were not local, and were just working from quick snapshots of street views.

After writing the above I found a back view photograph of the Library, from the Historical Society via the book Providence’s Benefit Street. I’ve here repaired and colorised it. Yes, at the back the building was obviously deeper but also a bit more complex than a straightforward and mundane two-storey building. It may even have had a cellar strongroom (note the bars on the windows) that went down further into the ground. Apparently Shipley’s alarm and burglar-proofing system was state-of-the-art for the time. The modern-day shabby back-porch, as seen on Google Street View, can here be glimpsed in the distance.

Angelo Patri

02 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries

≈ Leave a comment

New on Archive.org is a run of the journal Atlantica. August 1931 has a profile and photo of Angelo Patri, who I’d be willing to bet was a friend of Everett McNeil of the Lovecraft Circle. It’s good to be able to put a face to the name of the man I encountered while writing my book on McNeil.

Patri certainly championed McNeil in reviews and articles, and (though we’ll probably never know now) I suspect they were friends in New York by around the time of the appearance of McNeil’s Tonty novel.

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Uncle Eddy

21 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 2 Comments

This was H.P. Lovecraft’s Providence bookseller, the uncle of his sometime-friend and fellow-writer Eddy. Here I’ve de-screened from newsprint and colorised as best I can. Until someone comes up with a magic ‘AI newsprint de-screener’ this is as good as it gets, even from a big 600dpi scan.

This comes from the now-found ‘Uncle Eddy’ cutting I referred to some posts back. Evidently the ‘RIAMCO listing’ is actually for the Brown University holdings of Lovecraft, which are now online as hi-res scans along with their enclosures and cuttings. Good to know. Thus we now have a very good picture of Lovecraft’s favourite Providence book-dealer, albeit in dotty newsprint.

It’s from the Providence News-Tribune, 22nd July 1931. Lovecraft and the visiting Morton happened to pop in to the Eddy bookshop shortly after it had been published, and thus were presumably able to rush around and find some local news-stores that had not sent back their ‘returns’ copies of the paper. Copies were duly purchased and the clippings sent to correspondents who knew and had patronised Eddy.

What appears to be a Frankenstein-like scar on the right of his face seems to be his glasses-chain.

What do we learn from the article?

1) His shop was “probably the largest of its kind in the city” at 1931. A massive 200,000 volumes (and, as we know from Lovecraft, more in his attic store at home). Thus Lovecraft’s joking in a letter to the effect that ‘Cook had cleaned Eddy out’ on a spending spree, must refer to the weird and supernatural items only.

2) He looks as though he might be in his early 60s in 1931, although several scratches suggest the press used a picture dated earlier. Possibly came of age circa 1887-90? He had not yet retired at the point of publication. Indeed, he had taken on and recently sold the Bargain Book Shop on Empire Street, which suggest he was still very much in business and had money to invest in new stock.

3) Modern poetry was then “much in demand”, which would be unthinkable today when contemporary poets can only sell to other poets. “Modern” here may not necessarily mean modernist poetry, as this is Providence in 1931.

4) The article hints at his willingness to sell the sort of “paperback” items that would bring fulminating religious ministers into the store to berate him. He would stand up to them. Possibly the books were the Haldeman-Julius ‘Blue Books’ line.

5) He started the business as a side-line, though to what is not stated.

The final part of the article covers the city’s Dana bookstore, and another shop run by Livsey and Knight. This section has other detail on the state of the book trade in Providence during the early years of the Great Depression.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Volcanoes on the Moon

14 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Astronomy, Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 6 Comments

In an early letter to Galpin, dated 21st August 1918, H.P. Lovecraft recalled…

I began to study astronomy late in 1902 — age 12. My interest came through two sources — discovery of an old book of my grandmother’s in the attic, and a previous interest in physical geography. Within a year I was thinking of virtually nothing but astronomy, yet my keenest interest did not lie outside the solar system. I think I really ignored the abysses of space in my interest in the habitability of the various planets of the solar system. My observations (for I purchased a telescope early in 1903) were confined mostly to the moon and the planet Venus. You will ask, why the latter, since its markings are doubtful even in the largest instruments? I answer — this very MYSTERY was what attracted me. In boyish egotism I fancied I might light upon something with my poor little 2¼-inch telescope which had eluded the users of the 40-inch Yerkes telescope!! And to tell the truth, I think the moon interested me more than anything else — the very nearest object. I used to sit night after night absorbing the minutest details of the lunar surface, till today I can tell you of every peak and crater as though they were the topographical features of my own neighbourhood. I was highly angry at Nature for withholding from my gaze the other side of our satellite!

This tells us a number of things. It implies he was then aware of the Yerkes telescope. He must have been, even at a young age — since it was the Hubble Telescope of its day. It had been grandly exhibited a decade before at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, before being moved with much publicity to its domed home above Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Doubtless the Providence Public Library could have furnished pictures of such large telescopes for the boy Lovecraft, circa 1902-03, if he had not already seen the Yerkes in newspaper and magazine pictures.

But the quote is rather more interesting because it illustrates his initial and formative stance toward the “habitability … of the solar system”. By which he meant alien life, rather than future habitation by human colonists.

In this respect he obviously had hopes of making a discovery about the apparently cloudy and moist planet of Venus. This was then considered a somewhat likely habitation for alien life and was set to emerge as the Venus of pulp imagination, or the ‘Old Venus’ as some science-fiction historians now usefully call it. Undeniable evidence of its thick atmosphere had been obtained from Earth in 1882, it was warm and roughly Earth-sized and there were also what appeared to be markings on the planet’s surface. The prospect of life there was thus deemed quite possible. One even wonders if Lovecraft’s observations of Venus were partly non-visual, seeking to use his $15 spectrograph to detect something new and telling about the composition of the atmosphere? But, as he says in his letter to Galpin, others had the better equipment either way. Yet for all their immense telescopes and professional equipment, the professionals had still not settled the question of Venus by the time the adult Lovecraft returned to Providence from New York City. For instance here is The New York Times — then a sober paper of record — reporting in April 1927 on new methods of photographing Venus and detecting life…

But, as he recalls for Galpin, the moon was his chief interest. The moon was not, as we might now think, entirely without interest as a prospect for alien life. I have already glanced at the early theories about a pocket of atmosphere on the moon, and the theory’s implications for primitive life and the moon’s dark-side. The basic idea back then was that the moon’s immense natural ‘bump’ meant that a shallow atmosphere could just about persist on the dark-side, and some icy crater-lakes would form there. This theory appears to have been especially favoured by the Germans, and persisted there into the 1930s.

Now a little digging reveals that the young Lovecraft could also have been influenced by a moon book of the time, which had its own ideas about life. This was the illustrated book The moon, considered as a planet, a world, and a satellite, by Nasmyth and a co-writer. It was a key book, and the young Lovecraft had it in the 1903 un-revised fourth edition. The preface to this smaller and popular edition is dated May 1903 and The Bookseller lists it as available for purchase in early September 1903. Thus Lovecraft could not have had the book along with his new telescope (had either “early in 1903”, or in July 1903 according to Lovecraftian researchers). He would have had this worthy and useful book some months later either way, and perhaps it was even given as a Christmas present.

Such are the dates and the edition. What of the book’s ideas and influence? The book strongly supported and elaborately sustained a volcanic theory for the formation of the moon’s pockmarked surface. Volcanism then having obvious implications for things like subsurface heat. Because it implied magma chambers, networks of lava tubes, surface flow channels and so on. And at vast size too, since — as the book states — the moon’s large craters are immense and would dwarf those on earth.

Did Lovecraft subscribe to the theory? Yes. Lovecraft’s c. 1903 short note evaluating the likelihood of a competing theory of water-bearing “Lunar Canals” shows that he early accepted lunar volcanism. Also that he understood the volcanic activity to be relatively feeble by 1903…

“The lunar canals cover much less territory than the martian counterparts, this is doubtless, owing to the smallness of the moon compared with Mars, and therefore its feebler volcanic activity.” (“My Opinion as to The Lunar Canals”, c. 1903, my emphasis)

Was volcanism a crank theory? No. The volcanic theory of crater formation reigned as a general scientific consensus until c. 1930, by which time some sustained doubts had become readily available in English. Yet its first serious challenge only came in 1949, long after Lovecraft’s death. Even then most scientists held to the consensus, until it was abruptly punctured by examination of actual rocks from the moon in 1965. Thus for most of his life, very likely for all of it, Lovecraft would have understood the moon’s surface to be volcanic in origin and nature.

This belief has certain implications. Do we glimpse here the spur for his intense moon observations? Quite possibly. If the boy Lovecraft could spot and observe an actual rare volcanic eruption in progress, and show the world the presence of a crater where before there had been none… he would have made his name as an astronomer.

What of the book’s opinion of life on this apparently volcanic moon? Nasmyth and his co-writer ruled out the possibility of “any high organism” on the moon’s surface due to the obvious lack of an atmosphere. Yet the book did tantalisingly suggest several possibilities for basic life:

i) Some form of ‘protogerm’ lying dormant, having sailed on the winds of space and landed…

Is it not conceivable that the protogerms of life pervade the whole universe, and have been located upon every planetary body therein? Sir William Thomson’s suggestion that life came to the earth upon a seed-bearing meteor was weak, in so far that it shifted the locus of life-generation from one planetary body to another. Is it not more philosophical [and assuming of a Creator] to suppose that the protogerms of life have been sown broadcast over all space, and that they have fallen here upon a planet under conditions favourable to their development, and have sprung into vitality when the fit circumstances have arrived, and there upon a planet that is, and that may be for ever, unfitted for their vivification.

ii) Some hardy form of vegetation able to survive intense cycles of heat and cold…

We may suppose it just within the verge of possibility that some low forms of vegetation might exist upon the moon with a paucity of air and moisture such as would be beyond even our most severe powers of detection.

After briefly considering these possibilities the book soberly concludes the moon is “barren” and that…

The arguments against the possibility of the moon being thus fitted for human creatures, or, indeed, for any high organism, were decisive enough to require little enforcing.

The words “barren” and “fitted” were well-chosen, since they leave open the question of the previously-suggested dormant and/or lower organisms. The book also leaves entirely un-examined the possibility of habitats in the sub-surface, in which the space-borne “protogerms” might have encountered a relatively warm (if apparently wholly dry and somehow non-gaseous) volcanic interior with its stable lava tubes.

Such lacuna would have been tantalising to the imaginative reader. I then suggest that here we may have some possible roots for Lovecraft’s later works, in terms of ideas such as:

i) a form of life that sails the star-winds and survives through space for cosmic time periods, before sifting down onto a clement planet to ‘vivify’;

ii) a hardy form of life, brought from the depths of space and (by implication) perhaps able to lie dormant for aeons in subterranean caverns. Only periodically brought to the surface by massive volcanism. A process akin, then, to the volcanic rising of R’lyeh in “The Call of Cthulhu”.

iii) the book’s volcanic ‘fountain’ diagrams and the idea of ‘protogerms’ arrived from space might both seem to evoke “The Colour out of Space” in its water-well.

I don’t say these were direct inspirations, later dredged from memory and made to serve Lovecraft’s mature fiction. But they would have been formative in shaping the broad contours of Lovecraft’s earliest cosmic imagining.

Incidentally, his yearning to see the dark side of the moon may even hint at a boyish theory about life existing there. In the absence of the lost boyhood story that he set there we can’t know much more about that. Yet knowing that he held to the volcanism theory suggests one obvious path the story could have taken — the discovery of volcanically melted crater-lakes on the dark side (his boy explorers had apparently needed their carbide lamps, implying they had stepped over the dividing-line) under a thin atmosphere.

What of ‘moon life’ claims made by others? Here I give readers a quick flavour of Prof. Pickering’s ‘snow’ ideas, related to his lunar ‘canals’ idea, via a glimpse of a full-page article in The Sphere for Christmas 1901…

One can see how it would be easy to dismiss such things. Claims of observations of active primitive plant growth along snowy “canals” (or “streaks of vegetation” on the surface as Lovecraft described them) were indeed dismissed early by Lovecraft in his “My Opinion as to The Lunar Canals” (1903?). However much the glittering mountains might look like snow in photographs, water was not detectable from earth. Without water to sustain life, such things as ‘canals’ and ‘vegetation’ could not be. If the “Lunar Canals” text is correctly dated, then I would suggest it was written in late 1903 and under the direct and countering influence of the 1903 reprint of Nasmyth’s moon book.

See the Lovecraft Annual 2019 for a fine essay detailing Lovecraft’s reactions to Professor Pickering’s claims for the ‘lunar canals’ and more.

Yet ‘life on the moon’ was not then an either/or choice. One might sensibly discount questionable ideas such as immense banks of “snow” or “canals” and “vegetation”, while not entirely giving up hope for moon habitats of some sort. For instance, five years after his “My Opinion as to The Lunar Canals” we find Lovecraft even more certain of the apparent evidence for “active volcanism” on the moon, in his essay “Is There Life on the Moon?” (1906). But he has evidently become, after several years of personal observing, far more open to the idea of an active moon. He now aligns himself with some of Pickering’s ideas and the German ‘bulge’ idea, by musing on a “thin” atmosphere and surface frost forming on ridges…

Today [certain moon changes are] generally accepted as the work of active volcanism. Now no volcano can operate without atmosphere, but there could easily be a thin gaseous envelope undetected from the earth. The “lunar rays”, i.e. long, brilliant streaks radiating outward from some of the craters, have always been a puzzle to astronomers. Numerous theories have been promulgated concerning their origin, some saying that they are cracks in the moon’s surface while others maintain them to be streaks of lava, ejected in the remote past from the craters which they surround. But the latest and most startling theory is that they are deep furrows filled with snow. This seems incredible at first sight, considering that there are no clouds on the moon; but when we reflect that little more than hoar frost would be required to produce the glittering appearance, the theory becomes more acceptable. For this theory, the world is indebted to Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard, the greatest living selenographer [i.e. Moon geographer].

Lovecraft could not believe in Pickering’s vegetative “canals” back in 1903, and he still could not do so. Nor could be believe in a widespread Christmas-y “snow” on the moon. But by 1906 he can at least believe in thin lines of “hoar frost” along the crater rays, while also making a nod to active volcanism operating with a thin atmosphere. These claims then set the reader up, in the same “Is There Life…” essay, for Lovecraft’s far bolder observation that in…

a deep, winding chasm [on the moon] called “Schroeter’s valley” can be seen the only active and ocular proof of seismic conditions. There an assiduous observer can detect peculiar clouds of moving whiteness, which the up-to-date selenographer interprets as nothing more or less than smoke from an active crater! These clouds are often so dense as to obscure neighbouring objects.”

He did not discover this likely spot on the moon, with its apparent implications for a sub-surface habitat for life. Nor was he the observer of the shoggoth-like “clouds”, as his article might vaguely seem to imply. Because it was almost certainly the August 1905 article “Life On the Moon” in Munsey’s Magazine that alerted him to this vast chasm and its “clouds”. I have dug the article out of Hathi (regrettably missing its first page on the scan, presumably torn out for its opening moon illustration). The text reveals that the Schroeter’s valley “clouds” observer was actually Pickering, and the author was generally highly supportive of Pickering’s ideas. This was probably the sort of popular article that had made Lovecraft receptive to some, though not all, of Pickering’s ideas.

Did Lovecraft read the article? It seems highly likely to be the source for his very similar Schroeter’s valley “clouds” observation, and we know he was reading Munsey’s Magazine from at least 1903…

In the only extant issue of [his] Rhode Island Journal of Science & Astronomy (September 27, 1903) makes reference to an article by E. G. Dodge entitled “Can Men Visit the Moon?” in the October issue of Munsey’s Magazine, which if nothing else indicates that Lovecraft was reading the journal at least as early as this. (Joshi, I Am Providence)

So there are now two moon articles known from Munsey’s Magazine, “Can Men Visit the Moon?” (1903) and “Life On the Moon” (1905). It’s quite possible that he read others there that have yet to be discovered.

After 25 years away, Lovecraft’s imagination would return to the moon. Though not to encounter fungi-litten volcanic caves, or insect-philosophers crawling over the dark side under a feeble atmosphere, or even cloudy proto-shoggoths oozing from “a deep, winding chasm”. Instead in his Dream-quest tale he deemed the moon’s surface — at least as dreamed of in the Dreamlands — to be the poignantly still and desolate haunt of the cats of Ulthar. With strange and unspecified attractions to be found on the dark side.

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: the almanacs

07 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Astronomy, Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

≈ 1 Comment

As we move into the New Year, it seems apt to take a look at the annual almanacs which H.P. Lovecraft cherished. Not quite postcards, of course, but still pictorial.

He inherited, and then further developed, a substantial collection of such old country almanacs. He writes in a letter that this family collection, when first passed down to him…

went back solidly only to 1877, with scattering copies back to 1815

Trying to complete this set eventually became a keen occasional hobby, though he had some luck there. He was allowed to root among the home storage attic of his sometime-friend Eddy’s book-selling uncle, and he descended the ladder with many a rare old copy. Which Uncle Eddy then sold him at a very affordable price. This haul appears to have spurred his ambitions, and he wrote…

I am now trying to complete my family file of the Old Farmer’s Almanack

Here we see Lovecraft’s collecting ‘wants list’, as he tried to complete the set…

What, exactly, was this publication? Archive.org now has a small selection of scans of this Old Farmer’s Almanack, and thus we can get a better idea of what Lovecraft found between the pages. To be specific, he inherited and collected old copies of the Old Farmer’s Almanack edited by Robert B. Thomas. (It can’t be linked, as the URL is malformed, but if you paste this into the Archive.org search-box you should get it: creator:”Thomas, Robert Bailey, 1766-1846″ )

There were other publications of the same or similar title, but Old Farmer’s Almanack was Lovecraft’s mainstay. Which is not say he wasn’t delighted to discover that other similar almanacs were still publishing, out in the countryside…

It sure did give me a kick to find Dudley Leavitt’s Farmer’s Almanack [Leavitt’s Farmer’s Almanack, improved] still going after all these years. The last previous copy I had seen was of the Civil War period. But of course my main standby is Robt. B. Thomas’s [Almanack]

Thomas’s Old Farmer’s Almanack had begun publication in 1793. As we can see from the above list, Lovecraft was especially keen to get hold of anything before 1805 and in any condition. Many of these used the old long-S in the text…

I can dream a whole cycle of colonial life from merely gazing on a tattered old book or almanack with the long S.

This dream had first occurred very early in his life, and at age five the family Almanack had made a lasting impression…

my earliest memories — a picture, a library table, an 1895 Farmer’s Almanack, a small music-box

Evidently then this annual was taken and consulted in his home at that time. Also cherished and kept, since we know he was able to read the entire set…

[As a boy] I read them all through from 1815 to the present, & came early to think of every turn & season of the year in terms of the crops, the zodiac, the moon, the ploughing & [harvest] reaping, the face of the landscape, & all the other primeval guideposts which have been familiar to mankind since the first accidental discovery of agriculture in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

Nor did he overlook the rustic pictures…

I am always fond of seasonal pictures, & dote on the little ovals on the cover of the ancient Farmer’s Almanack — spring , summer, autumn, & winter

On his travels he later found places where the homely traditions and moon and star-lore of the Farmer’s Almanack were still followed, such places as Vermont…

That Arcadian world which we see faintly reflected in the Farmer’s Almanack is here a vital & vivid actuality [in rural Vermont]

The publication was indeed a useful one. For instance it enabled Lovecraft to anticipate with ease the year’s lesser heavenly events…

Sun crosses the equinox next Wednesday at 7:24 p.m. according to the Old Farmer’s Almanack — which we have had in our family, I fancy, ever since its founding in 1793.

Having sent some introductory astronomy books, Lovecraft also sent young Rimel a copy of the latest Old Farmer’s Almanac for the coming year of 1935. In a later letter to Rimel of 28th January 1935, Lovecraft explicitly recommends the publication for astronomy use. The Almanac being…

capable of assisting the study of astronomy quite a bit.

The weather predictions found in its pages were perhaps of less use. Or at least, they had become so by the late 1970s. In 1981 Weatherwise magazine made a tally of sixty forecasts across five years. They found the month-by-month Almanack forecast to be little better than chance by then. How accurate the monthly weather forecasts might have been in the 1895-1935 period and in Providence remains to be determined. It might be quite interesting to tally that, with perhaps a leeway of two days. But to do so one would likely need to go back to the original journal / newspaper summaries of the month’s actual weather, rather than trust any recently ‘rectified’ computer-created data for those decades.

The Almanacks also contained a wealth of rather more reliable factual information. Such as the dates of the year’s key elections, court days, festival and saint’s days, tides, recurring natural events (usual time of lambing, bringing in cows for the winter etc), anniversary dates for sundry historical events, lists of Presidents, the standard weights and measures, distances, nutritional values of various crops and fodder, together with small amusements such as riddles and poetry. Short articles could also be present. Most importantly for Lovecraft’s huge flow of parcels and letters, the little booklets also appear to have given the latest postal regulations in a concise form.

In format they were rather like Lovecraft’s stories, then. A whole lot of sound facts garnished with a few slivers of delicious speculation (meaning the weather forecasts, rather than monsters and cults). Indeed, one might see something of the ‘carnivalesque’ at work in such publications. The use of a small inversion, that by its amusing ridiculousness serves to bolster the belief in the facticity of the rest of the structure.

The latest annual Almanack was also ever-present in Lovecraft’s own study, as he wrote to Galpin in 1933…

You may be assur’d, that my colonial study mantel has swinging from it the undying Farmer’s Almanack of Robert B. Thomas (now in its 141st year) which has swung beside the kindred mantels of all my New-England forbears for near a century & a half: that almanack without which my grandfather wou’d never permit himself to be, & of which a family file extending unbrokenly back to 1836 & scatteringly to 1805 still reposes in the lower drawer of my library table [evidently Lovecraft had by this time added 1876-1836 to the “family file”] … which was likewise my grandfather’s library table. A real civilisation, Sir, can never depart far from the state of a people’s rootedness in the soil, & their adherence to the landskip & phaenomena & methods which from a primitive antiquity shap’d them to their particular set of manners & institutions & perspectives.

This mantel-hanging had been a long-standing practice. For instance it was noted by his earliest visitor, when Lovecraft was emerging from his hermit phase. Rheinhart Kleiner recalled of his curious visit to the darkened room that…

An almanac hung against the wall directly over his desk, and I think he said it was the Farmers’ Almanac.

Lovecraft even kept up the tradition during the hectic New York years, writing in late 1924…

the Old Farmer’s Almanack … of which I am monstrous eager to get the 1925 issue

In that era the Almanacks were very often personalised and annotated quite heavily by their users, and a rural man’s personal collection grew to form a sort of natural diary and personal time-series for useful farm data. In 1900 40% of the American people still worked on the land, so such things were vital.

So far as I’m aware we have none of Lovecraft’s own copies today, so we don’t know if he also marked and noted them in various ways. Or if he had inherited copies that had been so marked by his relatives.

He also hints at being aware of and valuing another such publication. For instance, when he remarked on the discovery of the planet Pluto he wrote…

the discovery of the new trans-Neptunian planet …. I have always wished I could live to see such a thing come to light — & here it is! …. One wonders what it is like, & what dim-litten fungi may sprout coldly on its frozen surface! I think I shall suggest its being named Yuggoth! …. I shall await its ephemerides & elements with interest. Probably it will receive a symbol & be treated of in the Nautical Almanack — I wonder whether it will get into the popular almanacks as well?

In his early newspaper columns on astronomy he also appears to refer to this same publication…

The motions of these satellites, their eclipses, occultations, and transits, form a pleasing picture of celestial activity to the diligent astronomer; and are predicted with great accuracy in the National Almanack. [I assume here a mis-transcription by the newspaper editor of “National” for “Nautical”, or perhaps a correction to its shorthand name in the district].

Indeed, both Almanacks feature in Lovecraft’s “Principal Astronomical Work” list, among the vital accessories needed for a study of the night-sky…

Accessories:

Lunar Map by Wright.
Year Book — Farmer’s Almanack.
Planispheres — Whitaker & Barrett-Serviss.
Atlas by Upton — Library.
Opera glasses — Prism Binoculars.
Am. Exh. & Want Almanac. [meaning the American Ephemeris & Nautical Almanac, as “Exh.” is “Eph.” and “Want” should be “Naut”]

This Nautical Almanac is also on Archive.org, so we can peep inside a copy of that from 1910. Forthcoming eclipses were noted over several pages. Here, for instance we see all the details needed to observe a total eclipse of the Moon in November 1910, the beginning visible from “eastern North America”. I think we have a hint here about what Lovecraft was likely to have been doing in the late evening of 16th November 1910…

Archive.org also has The Old Farmer and his Almanack, a 1920 book which surveyed the topic with erudition. Lovecraft was heartily pleased to discover and read it shortly after publication.

Almanacks occur only once (and very trivially) in Lovecraft’s poetry. The one use in his fiction is more intriguing. In “The Picture in the House” (December 1920) a book is noted…

a Pilgrim’s Progress of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas

The sharp-eyed will have spotted that Lovecraft might have meant to imply that this “Thomas” could have been the ancestor of the Robert B. Thomas of Old Farmer’s Almanack fame. That might be how some savvy bookmen took it at the time, but it is not so. For Lovecraft would have known that there was a real “almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas” and that he was no relation. Robert B. Thomas himself tells us this fact, in recalling his early years of trying to get a start in publishing almanacks…

I wanted practical knowledge of the calculations of an Almanack. In September, I journeyed into Vermont to see the then-famous Dr. S. Sternes, who for many years calculated Isaiah Thomas’s Almanack, but failed to see him. … In the fall, I called on Isaiah Thomas of Worcester (no relation) to purchase 100 of his Almanacks in sheets, but he refused to let me have them. I was mortified and came home with a determination to have an Almanack of my own.

Thus my feeling is that Lovecraft knew of these snubs and also, probably while reading his The Old Farmer and his Almanack (1920), had learned that Isaiah Thomas had sustained a sideline in publishing booklets containing the worst sorts of “astrology, palmistry, and physiognomy”. Thus, later that same year Lovecraft gave curmudgeonly old Isaiah Thomas a small poke in his fiction, by implying that Isaiah had marred a classic book with “grotesque” pictures — so “grotesque” that the resulting book ended up resting next to Pigafetta’s account of the Congo and its cannibals.

Update: The Nautical Almanac. Hathi now have the full run of the Nautical Almanac online.

Tentaclii

~ News and scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

Category Archives: New discoveries

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: a mixed bag from Brookyn

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Looking down Clinton Street

SFFaudio Podcast #684

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Bickford’s, Brooklyn

Notes on Selected Letters II – part one

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft, 9 Canal St., Providence

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Cleveland, August 1922

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the Shepley Library

Angelo Patri

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: Uncle Eddy

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Volcanoes on the Moon

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: the almanacs