The cutting:
This week I open the Friday ‘Picture Postals’ post with a magazine cutting. There are postcards in this post, but they come later. The cutting is: Muriel Eddy, “H. P. Lovecraft, gentleman”, a letter and memoir of Lovecraft. Published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1948. The magazine’s editor leads straight into the letter without division, which was presumably his house-style…
I don’t see this item under “Eddy, Muriel” in either The Lovecraft Encyclopedia or the Comprehensive Bibliography. A Google Books search for “H. P. Lovecraft, gentleman” comes up empty, as does a general Google search. de Camp doesn’t have it in the bibliography of his 1975 biography, nor does he discuss its claims.
I don’t see either biographer examining Muriel Eddy’s claim that, during his “embryo” years, the young Lovecraft dropped in on Arthur Eddy’s second-hand bookstore on Weybosset St. Nor even mentioning that Lovecraft had easy access to a large local used bookstore, with a friendly proprietor, which I find rather surprising. The same is true for The Lovecraft Encyclopedia, there being no mention in it of either uncle Eddy or his store.
Initial confirmation:
The RIAMCO Collection of Lovecraft has the following catalogue entry, which offered me some initial quick confirmation:
Lovecraft, Howard P. [letter to ] to Wandrei, Donald.
Undated, with envelope postmarked Jul. 31, 1931. Headed: “Nether Crypts – Lammas-Eve” only. Enclosed is a clipping from The Providence News-Tribune [22 Jul 31] about Arthur A. Eddy, proprietor of Eddy’s Bookstore on Weybosset Street in downtown Providence.
I note that the initial ‘A’ is erroneous, as trade directories have ‘E’. I further note that the July 1931 run of this newspaper appears to have otherwise been allowed to perish from the historical record.
This first hit showed me that the uncle and the store did indeed exist and were known to Lovecraft. The mid 1931 date of the clipping might suggest a retirement-date or death-date for the uncle, and if it still exists to be read this clipping may have more information on the old bookseller? Perhaps even a picture of the interior? I don’t have access to the Wandrei letters (in the expensive Mysteries of Time and Spirit, and soon the forthcoming H. P. Lovecraft: Letters with Donald and Howard Wandrei), so I don’t know if there’s mention of the Eddy store in that particular letter. Presumably the clipping was sent because Lovecraft was fond of the old fellow, though it doesn’t necessarily follow that he knew the store as far back as the “embryo” ‘mystery years’ of 1908-1916.
Lovecraft did visit the store:
My thanks to Chris Perridas, though, who once looked at the Munn visit to Providence, and thus quoted two letters which reveal the store was still going in 1928 and Lovecraft was frequenting it…
[31st July 1928 to Wandrei]
I trust Munn has by this time looked you up. He was here yesterday, & we had a very pleasant session – went down to Eddy’s Bookstore & nosed around until he found an old story by Camille Flammarion in some 1893 Cosmopolitans.
[4th August 1928 to Derleth]
… when Munn and I were in Eddy’s bookshop Monday, (this Eddy is uncle of the C. M. Eddy, Jr who writes for W.T.). We met the venerable Joseph Lewis French, editor of the anthology “Ghosts, Grim and Gentle”. He is a quaint, peppery-voiced old codger of 70.
Getting the address and store history:
A directory of 1919 puts uncle Eddy’s address at 260 Weybosset St…
With an address I was then able to get the outline of the store history. A 1914 automobile trade journal recorded that “The local branch of the B. F. Goodrich Co. has been removed from its former location at 260 Weybosset”, though another journal announced that this was a partnership with a local rubber tyre company, and thus the 1914 item may simply indicate the removal of the national franchise. Goodrich Co. was a national chain that sold vehicle tyres. Polk’s Providence directory later listed Avery Piano in the ground-floor frontage at 260, selling pianos, sheet music, music teaching aids, and musical replaceables such as strings. If the premises had once been a Goodrich car-tyre sales/fitting/showroom place, then it presumably had the sturdy showroom floor and street-frontage roll-out ramp needed to later hold heavy pianos, plus a large dry cellar for tyre storage and parts — suitable for later use as a nice dry bookstore. That would be my guess. More certain is that such a bookstore would have benefited from the passing musical clientele, and would be a natural fit with a piano store. One then imagines that Lovecraft might have often heard the hasty scraping of a violin or random tinkling of a piano, coming faintly through the ceilings as he browsed the ancient books. “The Music of Erich Zann” springs to mind…
I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead … I was haunted by the weirdness of his music. Knowing little of the art myself, I was yet certain that none of his harmonies had any relation to music I had heard before…
Publishers Weekly may indicate the date of change from a tyre store to pianos / used-books. Its edition of 21st April 1917 also usefully confirms Muriel Eddy’s claim of the book store’s large size, by stating “20,000 volumes in stock”. It further suggests that there had been an earlier Eddy store in Providence…
Given this hint I then found the American Library Annual of 1912 and 1913-14, which gave the store’s earlier address as 852 Broad Street.
Broad Street is very long and runs up from the south and at its most northerly end becomes Weybosset. Most probably the new piano store invited uncle Eddy to move further up along the same street, much closer to the commercial heartland at 260 Weybosset, in order to bring suitable additional passing-trade to their own store. 852 Broad Street is probably way too far down into South Providence for the young Lovecraft to have known of it, although if it had a prominent street frontage then he could have noticed it on tram journeys down to Pawtuxet.
The International Directory of Second-hand Booksellers and Bibliophile’s Manual for 1894 gave me an even earlier address at 100 Gallup St.
100 Gallup Street is a small residential house in Lower South Providence, and may have been uncle Eddy’s home address. No date of establishment is given by this 1894 Directory, as it is for the other two, so it seems likely he first started the book-selling from a residential property in the early 1890s.
100 Gallup Street is not near the Eddys, who lived on Second Street over on the other side of the river.
Testing Muriel Eddy’s other claim of night-opening hours:
Given all the above, it seems that Muriel Eddy’s coy hint of “embryo” years for Lovecraft’s night visits to 260 Weybosset does not mean the mystery years of 1908-1916, but must mean springtime of 1917 onward. There is a slim chance he once visited Eddy’s store way down at 852 Broad Street, but he must surely have heard the spring 1917 news of the opening of the new used bookstore at 260 Weybosset. A store with 20,000 volumes no less, and located two streets over from the Public Library. In fact, one can envision him as being the first to jangle the doorbell on the opening day morning. By 1929 he wrote of the “1500 or so books I possess” in his personal library at home and, despite the wonders of the New York stores, one wonders how many of these had come via uncle Eddy. By the time he moved house in 1933, he had 2,000 books.
What of Muriel Eddy’s claim of night opening? Well, directories place the musician’s union office and several newspaper offices on Weybosset St. and around the corner. Daily newspapermen and dance-hall musicians were then semi-nocturnal, often working well past midnight (see the first half of Some Like it Hot for a portrait of the life of jobbing musicians), which may have made it viable for a bookstore that also carried newspapers and magazines to open at night on certain evenings of the week. If the piano store above were open late on ‘dance nights’, to supply emergency strings and minor repairs to the many dance-hall and theatre musicians, then the bookshop below might also have opened very late. By the 1930s Avery also sold advance tickets for big Boston concert performances, another reason to be open in the early evenings at times when show-going crowds were strolling past to the nearby theatres.
Nor is it impossible that, once Lovecraft was bringing amateur and bookish friends to Providence, some special night openings might have been arranged for him by an obliging proprietor in the 1920s. Indeed, there is clear evidence that Lovecraft could introduce some really ‘high rollers’ to uncle Eddy in the late 1920s…
[Lovecraft expects] “as guest the amiable James Ferdinand Morton, who in the next four days will probably do to our local mineral quarries what Cook did to Eddy’s bookshop” [i.e. will ‘mine them out’] (Lovecraft to Talman)
Cook was a major book-collector at that time, termed by some in Lovecraft’s circle as “The Colossus of the North”. I then found further details on Cook and Eddy in Selected Letters II…
Cook has been down twice this autumn — once on the 15th and 16th of October, and again last Sunday. On each occasion we have made trips to Eddy’s (Arthur E. Eddy, uncle of the celebrated theatrical man and weird author whom you had the inestimable honour of meeting) Book Store — Cook nearly buying the old fellow out, and I purchasing a good deal more heavily than my purse and recent custom would ordinarily justify. I am now trying to complete my family file of the Old Farmer’s Almanack… Eddy evades the Sabbath closing [Sunday closing] law by keeping his shop door locked and admitting customers individually as they knock.”
So, there were special arrangements for liked customers, and at odd times too. Such clandestine opening was probably facilitated by the cellar location, and also usefully indicates that access was not dependent on the piano store above being open. Sunday opening also indicates that uncle Eddy was not a religious man in the later 1920s.
Is there a deeper Eddy connection here?:
One even wonders if it was this uncle who introduced Lovecraft to the Eddys in summer 1923? On this S.T. Joshi writes in I Am Providence…
But how did Lovecraft come into contact with the Eddys at all? There is some doubt on the matter.
Joshi then rightly finds the fanciful 1960s claims of Muriel Eddy on the matter to be very questionable (she claimed then, and only then, that they had known Lovecraft and his mother from circa 1918, and that the Eddys had been amateurs published in The Tryout etc). But Joshi remains puzzled as to how it actually happened. I can now suggest that the bookseller offers a simple and plausible mechanism for this:
i) Lovecraft, newly interested in pulps and seen to be browsing old examples of such in Eddy’s store, explains to the bookseller that he’s just had five stories accepted by Weird Tales circa June 1923. He naturally bemoans ‘the torture of typing’ that he must now endure, in order to see these stories actually published.
ii) The bookseller mentions that his nephew writes stories like that, indeed just last year he had landed a ghost story in Action Stories. This nephew lives in the city, and quite near to Mr. Lovecraft. Then the old bookseller figures Eddy and his wife could use any paid typing work Lovecraft might care to send their way. He swiftly writes out the address and hands it to Lovecraft.
iii) Lovecraft then feels obliged to contact the Eddys, but is perhaps cautious of social entanglements quite so close to home. Especially with those living in what he regards as a somewhat down-at-heel neighbourhood located just across the river. Also, he does not want to damage his relationship with a good local bookseller by ‘getting off on the wrong foot’ with his nephew. Thus he seeks only to sign up the Eddys for the amateur journalism movement. But after a few such letters, and a few phone calls, he decides to stroll over the bridge and meet them in person.
That would be my theory.
Other evidence for Lovecraft and Weybosset Street:
A 1918 letter to Kleiner suggests another reason Lovecraft might have regularly visited Weybosset late at night or in the very early morning after all-night walking. Drugs (for his aunts as well as himself) and a vital tram-stop…
the corner of Dorrance & Weybosset Streets, which is adorned & distinguished by a pharmaceutical emporium — that is, commonly speaking, a drug-store. This is the southeast corner — where you wait for the local stage-coach, or street-car, as such things are called nowadays. [this being the vital tram-stop for Lovecraft, to and from his home]
Here, in two cards, is a day-night comparison of the same stretch of Weybosset…
There are a few other mentions of Weybosset in the materials I have access to. Lovecraft mentioned to Galpin that the stationary store… “Neilan in Weybosset Street always charges me fiendish rates for my [typewriter] paper”. That was the Neilan Typewriter Exchange, 43 Weybosset (Prop. Francis H. Neilan), which adds just a little more data to the story of Lovecraft’s typewriter. Sonia also stayed at a hotel on Weybosset when she first came to Providence. Much later in life Lovecraft also regularly had cheap food from the Weybosset Pure Food Market.
Was this bookstore also mentioned in her 1945 memoir?
What of the 1948 date on the above letter? Sadly I’ve never seen Muriel Eddy’s 1945 memoir, despite S.T. Joshi having written that… “The first memoir [1945] seems on the whole quite reliable”. Until 2019 this item (titled “Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) was available in the booklet Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945) and the booklet The Gentleman from Angell Street (2001), both duplicated in Lovecraft Remembered other than this memoir. But the 1945 memoir is now also in the new Ave atque Vale: Reminiscences of H. P. Lovecraft (2019) — which I have yet to obtain. Thus, her 1945 memoir has escaped my perusal until now. I’d be obliged if someone with access to it might tell me if the 1948 letter above adds anything to it or not. Ditto for the Wandrei letter of “Jul. 31, 1931”, the other item I don’t have access to.
Update: I’ve now seen Muriel Eddy’s 1945 memoir in A Weird Writer, and it makes no mention of the bookshop or the uncle. I still need the “Jul. 31, 1931” Wandrei letter and cutting.
The above 1948 letter appears to have been overlooked by Lovecraftians and thus has some interest today. And has more interest than if it was from the 1960s.
Note also that the Eddys published a similarly titled “H.P. Lovecraft Esquire: Gentleman”, but that was a 6-page duplicated item of the 1960s.
Did the bookstore’s surroundings also have some interest for Lovecraft?:
Uncle Eddy’s shop was not far from the Public Library, about two streets over. But more interestingly in terms of atmospherics, nephew Eddy evidently knew the ancient back-alleys behind his uncle’s bookshop. These went threading down from the back of Weybosset toward the docks. He introduced these to Lovecraft in the heavy fog of 22nd November 1923…
There are [in the city of Providence] whole sections in which I had never set foot; & some of these we [Lovecraft and Eddy] have begun to investigate. One southwesterly section I discovered from the 1777 powder-horn map … Not a stone’s throw from that 1809 Round-Top church that I shew’d you [at 300 Weybosset St., just down from the bookstore on the same side], lies the beginning of a squalid colonial labyrinth in which I moved as an utter stranger, each moment wondering whether I were indeed in my native town or in some leprous, distorted witch-Salem … there was a fog, & out of it & into it again mov’d dark monstrous diseas’d shapes … narrow exotick streets and alleys … grotesque lines of gambrel roofs with drunken eaves and idiotick tottering chimneys … streets, lines, rows; bent and broken, twisted and mysterious, wan and wither’d … claws of gargoyles obscurely beckoning to witch-sabbaths of cannibal horror in shadow’d alleys that are black at noon … and toward the southeast, a stark silhouette of hoary, unhallowed black chimneys and bleak ridgepoles against a mist that is white and blank and saline — the venerable, the immemorial sea”. (Heavily abridged from a letter to Morton, 5th December 1923)
It would be natural for Eddy to have used his uncle’s bookshop as a base from which to depart and return, on explorations in this “squalid colonial labyrinth” section of the city.
What of today?
When last heard of 260 Weybosset had become the “Gallery Flux”, and a few former local art students note it on their online resumes. Though it seems to have vanished as a gallery in recent years. If someone still has the keys (RISD?) they may be interested to learn that one H.P. Lovecraft once regularly haunted their art-space cellar, musing there on old and hoary books. Avery Pianos is actually still there at ground level at 254-258, although in what seems to be a rebuilt ‘1990s olde-style’ frontage. But one can still see the two blocks of four tyre-shaped street hatches, which presumably let down to the cellars below, the blocks being today embedded in the sidewalk and sealed with concrete. Perhaps sets of four Goodrich tyres were once jacked up out of these openings to street level, before 1917, hence their unusual shape and configuration? I’d guess these may later have held sturdy iron grids of glass blocks, to let a little light down into uncle Eddy’s cellar bookstore? One can’t help thinking of the cellar in “The Shunned House”…
the dank, humid cellar … with only a thin door and window-pierced brick wall to separate it from the busy sidewalk.
Here is a postcard showing the same location, seen over on the extreme right of the card. For orientation, note the same distinctively domed building on the street-corner.
This shows that the current ‘1990s olde-style’ frontage is fairly close to the old look of c. 1905, just a bit shorter and with an inverted roof overhang.
Update: I’ve now seen the detailed biographical introduction on the Eddy family in the Eddy collection The Loved Dead And Other Tales (2008). No mention is made there of uncle Eddy. I’ve now also seen Muriel Eddy’s 1945 memoir in A Weird Writer, and it makes no mention of the bookshop or the uncle. In the latter book, Joshi’s introduction has the Eddy family living in “North Providence” at the time they allegedly first met Lovecraft in person — obviously we need a year-by-year address list for the Eddys, to use to test the veracity of the various memoirs and Muriel’s often-embroidered versions of the truth.
