This week on “‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft”, I have another try at finding his first grand sweeping view of New York City. Specifically the elevated view he saw at night of the New York City sky line.

As readers will recall, Lovecraft’s short New York story “He” opens with this vision of…

Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen it in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies, and itself become a starry firmament of dream, redolent of faery music, and one with the marvels of Carcassonne and Samarcand and El Dorado and all glorious and half-fabulous cities.

Later, as his deep disillusion set in, the vision became one of…

… Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons” […] “a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows.

In his letters Lovecraft records several initial real-life “faery” views of the city, seen with either his friend Loveman or the poet Hart Crane or both. His key early view was from the roof above Hart Crane’s rooms at 110 Columbia Heights (the same rooms that had once been those of the crippled creator of the great Brooklyn Bridge). These gave a fine view both of the famous Bridge, the river and the Lower Manhattan sky-line. The building, a “brownstone” as New Yorkers called them, is now apparently demolished. But his key view was from the roof rather than the windows…

my first sight of the illuminated Manhattan skyline [being] from its roof!”

I looked at Crane’s the exact location in last summer’s ‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft – the view from Columbia Heights. Of the view from his windows, I’ve since found that Crane wrote in a letter…

Just imagine looking out your window directly on the East River with nothing intervening between your view of the Statue of Liberty, way down the harbour, and the marvellous beauty of Brooklyn Bridge close above you on your right! All of the great new skyscrapers of lower Manhattan are marshalled directly across from you, and there is a constant stream of tugs, liners, sail boats, etc in procession before you on the river! It’s really a magnificent place to live.

Charles Graham’s illustrator’s view. Said to be 1896, but the Statue of Liberty is missing?

Judging by Internet searches there appear to have been various early attempts to picture the scene at night, though with limited success in photography due to the limitations of the era. Early masters like Alfred Stieglitz don’t appear to have tried to picture this particular view at night. Or if they did try, then the results are not online. Nor can any suitable b&w ‘nocturne’ lithograph of the view be found.

But some postcard creators, and their expert over-painters, did try.

But first some orientation. I’d say my arrow, seen on this Oilette card, about indicates the direction of view from Crane’s place.

Here we see the view of the towers of Lower Manhattan sketched in profile in the 1930s, after the Empire State building had arisen in 1930-31.

And a 1930s side view in fine photography.

Now a 1933 night dock-side view of Lower Manhattan. Close to what Lovecraft saw, but from too low an angle and probably too built-up compared to the 1920s. Those were the days before bamboozling bureaucrats and nay-sayers, when it might only take a year to build a New York City skyscraper. Some things about the skyline would have changed by 1933.

Here we see two early attempts at elevated-view over-painted night pictures, possibly from the 1900s-1910s. The sky line was then much lower. Crude pictures by the standards of our time, but not by theirs. And you have to admire the expertise of the over-painters who could turn day into night.

Some vintage night cards show the bridge itself at night, or pedestrians crossing it on the elevated ‘seagull level’ footway. Presumably the footway is what Lovecraft alludes to in the opening of “He”, when he writes… “I had seen it [the city sky line] in the sunset from a bridge”.

But painters rather than photographers did far better at depicting something of Lovecraft’s initial “faery” view of the towers from the bridge, as in this sunset view from the end of the bridge by T.F. Simon in 1927. This comes somewhat close I think, to the opening lines of “He”.

A fine picture, but I’m still hoping to find a really good ‘Lower Manhattan from Columbia Heights’ early/mid 1920s photographic view at night.

---

Incidentally, I found a “night over-paint” of the view down Fulton Street. A key Lovecraft stamping-ground is in the first part of the road that runs into the upper-left of the card.

This week on my regular ‘picture postals’ post, a short tour of the Brown University repository in which I point out few of the more remarkable ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft. These and many more can be found, free online at the Repository.

First, one that’s not actually in the Lovecraft collection, but is in the Repository. It shows a view of the Wickle gates I’ve never seen before, a view which puts them in visual context with the Brown clock tower in the corner of the campus. The gates were just a stone’s throw from Lovecraft’s last home at 66 College St., and he could see the clock tower through the trees. I’d never realised that one would have such a ‘Roman’ feel here, due to the columned building in the background. Something Lovecraft would surely have appreciated.

An early one from 1923, showing that the “old man” head was not modelled (with a bit of help by human wedge and sledgehammer) on the older Lovecraft.

Three additions to my recent post on Lovecraft in Dunedin, Florida.

Another evocative card from Florida, which is said to have physically gone missing from the collection. Though the scan remains.

The Woolworth Tower, New York City. If I remember rightly this was the tallest of the towers when Lovecraft first visited the city. One of his first acts was to ascend to the top and survey the city. He later thought fondly of Mr. Woolworth, who became very rich by providing people with reliable items at affordable prices in his stores.

In New York Lovecraft would pick up cards from the many museums. Here we see the phases of prehistoric man reconstructed from skulls. I don’t want to spend an hour reading up on the history of early anthropology, so I’ll just say that I seem to recall that ‘Piltdown Man’ was later discredited. And that the implied direct evolution of man from Neanderthal is also discredited, though we probably picked up some Neanderthal genes. I could be wrong on that though, since the scientific understanding may have changed again. Suffice it to say that much has changed since Lovecraft’s time.

Also a card showing “King Senusert III as a Sphinx” from Ancient Egypt, which appears to have been enclosed with a letter, to an unknown correspondent who was about to visit NYC.

The interior of Julius’ bar, NYC. Lovecraft stayed in a room above this bar for several weeks in 1935. It was later a famous gay bar in the 1950s-70s, though its status in 1935 is unknown.

The Japanese gardens at Maymont. Lovecraft went into raptures about these, thinking them even better than the similar Japanese garden in Brooklyn.

A view up College Hill. At his last home Lovecraft lived just in front of the distant white building with the long white windows — the John Hay Library at Brown, where his papers are now a prize collection.

Here we see a similar view, not in the Brown collection. It’s possible that Lovecraft’s house can be glimpsed, in a little courtyard garden back of the street-facing houses.

The Akley house, one of the inspirations for “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

On the Mississippi. Lovecraft travelled as far west as the Mississippi, and even crossed over for a short time.

The old Spite House, at his beloved Marblehead.

The re-created Pioneer Village at Salem.

Many more can be found, often alongside writing by Lovecraft, at the Brown University repository. High-res versions can also be found (look for the .JP2 files).

Previous Tentaclii picture posts on Newburyport — a key inspiration for Lovecraft’s “Innsmouth” — have included Along the Innsmouth shoreline, Newburyport – part one and part two. The images are now restored on these posts, after the site-move.

For this week’s regular ‘Picture Postals’ post I wondered if, some four years later, other pictures had become available? They had.

For context, above we see Newburyport showings its relation to its salt marshes and ocean coastline, on a U.S. Geological Survey map of 1934. Newbury and Ipswich are just south of this map.

This fine picture I found is probably fairly close to what the ‘local bus to Innsmouth’, which features in the famous tale, would have looked like. This combination carrier / bus is destined for a working life around Newbury, just south of Newburyport and in the middle of the marshes. The picture looks like it’s about the right time-period too.

Curious doings at Newburyport. A pamphlet by the aptly named H.P. Davis. Probably the same as the interior of haunted schoolroom in the photo I found and fixed in 2019.

On the Rocks, off Plum Island.

A curious Marsh Scene, Plum Island. Not one of the early pre-Photoshop montage ‘farm cards’.

School Street, Newburyport.

Inn Street. Newburyport.

An unusual garden, at the back of the High Street, Newburyport.

A (the?) tug-boat, Newburyport. 1930s?

And finally, readers will recall the U.S. submarine in “Innsmouth”. I couldn’t find one off Newburyport, but here’s one off the relatively nearby Newport.

Well, those are some newly found ‘picture postals’ that seem to chime with elements / atmospheres in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931).

This week my regular ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’ post visits Dunwich. Or rather, visits “The Dunwich Horror” country in the form of the region around Wilbraham, Mass. Lovecraft visited here for eight days, and the terrain and atmosphere inspired one of the best-loved horror tales of the 20th century.

Far to the west, across marshy meadows where at evening the fire-flies dance in incredibly fantastic profusion, the benign bulk of Wilbraham Mountain rises purple and mystical. The region, being very old and remote, is full of the most extraordinary folklore; some of which will certainly find lodgment in my future stories” (Selected Letters II) … “this mountain & all the land for miles around belonging to Miss Beebe” (Letters to Family).

This, for him, was Wilbraham. The two Wilbraham settlements shown on the survey map of the era were quite distant from his spot, away over the other side of a long and rolling mountain range. These settlements were North Wilbraham (on the rail tracks) and Wilbraham (a few miles south of North Wilbraham). A neighbour’s Ford farm truck was sent by Miss Beebe to collect Lovecraft from the train station at North Wilbraham, and this ran him down to the Beebe place — which was quite a way east of and on the other side of the mountain(s) from Wilbraham.

In the following 1917 view of the local fair we almost certainly see Miss Beebe, who Lovecraft stayed with in Wilbraham. We have good pictures of their place (see my Lovecraft in Historical Context #4). As Lovecraft tells us, Beebe owned a lot of land and was the ‘queen bee’ among the women of the district. She was very central to all its social events such as this, coordinating matters extensively via the telephone that also features prominently in “The Dunwich Horror”.

As such I’d say Beebe is likely to be the blonde middle-age woman with the up-do hair, seen in the middle of the picture. The tall well-dressed woman adjacent is likely the local school teacher, who also appears in a local history book’s picture of Beebe planting a tree at the local school.

Miss Beebe, along with her cousin Mrs Miniter, was a mine of local lore and had a large antiquarian collection. Which Lovecraft reports filled almost every nook of the house when he visited. Including little glass bottles…

She began saving [glass] bottles when they were the despised […] her method of hanging them in windows, known for years as “Beebe style” is now generally adopted. (“Extensive collection of antiques of late Evanore O. Beebe is sold”, The Springfield Republican, 1929).

Possibly also salt and pepper shakers, since a remarkable shaker collection popped up in Wilbraham shortly after the death of Miss Beebe and the sale of her collections…

I wonder if this was Miss Beebe’s collection, purchased and re-housed circa the early / mid 1930s? As one can see here in a ‘for sale postcard’ from this mini-museum, some would have had a somewhat surreal aspect — had Lovecraft seen them.

Lovecraft also visited nearby Hampden and the large town of Monson (approved of), and on the way visited “the other side of the mountain”. This being Wigwam Hill in the centre of the range, which according to the map sat directly opposite the Beebe place. The low “strangely domed” mountains run in a long chain, as is made clear by the geological maps and some of the photographs of the time. But on this “other side” he noted the blasted heath where nothing grew. There is of course no postcard of this site, although a geologist recorded the crest thus…

Along the crest of Wilbraham mountain there are found numerous bands of hornblende, of the same age as the Chester amphibolite. This hornblende is fissile and splits into thin layers. The surface shows a black, satiny appearance by reason of the interlacing needles of hornblende crystals.” (Copeland, Our County and its People, 1902)

The above quote might give some geologist readers a clue about why the ‘blasted heath’ might have been blasted of life. As Lovecraft described it…

A strangely blasted slope where grey, dead trees claw at the sky with leafless boughs amidst the abomination of desolation. Vegetation will grow here no longer — why, no one can tell.” (Lord of a Visible World, first hb edition, page 241)

… the vegetation never came right again. To this day there is something queer and unholy about the growths on and around that fearsome hill.” (“The Dunwich Horror”)

Some readers may also be interested to learn, re: “Colour Out of Space”, that there was a Wilbraham Mountain Spring Water Co. that failed. Of course his “Colour” was written March 1927, before the first Wilbraham visit (there were several others). But the influences of the “blasted slope” and the water co. might have come via a letter from Mrs Miniter and Miss Beebe.

He almost certainly also saw this…

This “grotto” was in the Academy grounds. We know that Lovecraft made one outing when he and his friend Mrs Miniter took a woodland trail behind the private prep school (Lord of a Visible World, first hb edition, page 241). Thus he likely saw this evocative spot. The extensive grounds of the Academy also took in “The Dell”…

“Cold Spring Glen”, anyone? There was also a wooded reservoir, presumably also part of the same woodland walk.

I can’t find this particular detail, but I assume that since Mrs Miniter grew up in Wilbraham she was thus educated at its large Academy. And would have known the young ladies’ dorm, here newly colorised…

Here we see the main entrance to the Academy, perhaps 1920s or 30s. Newly colorised. Note the curious ‘Turban’ like effect of the globe above the sculpted head.

And finally, I also found this from Wilbraham on eBay. Possibly the 1930s? Difficult to date, but the sharpness of the lens and the probably-remote location suggests post-1930s. Could have been made by an old glass-plate camera and superb lens left over from a past era, but who would lug one of those up a mountain? Might even be the early 1950s, with a camera brought back from Germany.

Anyway, we see some of the many rocks. Some of these around Wilbraham were and presumably still are, huge… though now probably orc-scrawled with graffiti. One example is the ‘Whale Rock’ seen below. Though if Lovecraft saw these larger rocks is not known.

As summer settles in nicely (at least here in England), this week’s ‘Picture Postals’ follows Lovecraft down to the sunny Florida coast. In this case to the summer retirement and fruit-shipping town of Dunedin, Florida.

Dunedin centre, possibly late 1940s or early 1950s?

In the early 1930s this was the home of his friend and fellow writer Henry S. Whitehead. With freight-train loads of citrus fruit growing nearby and shipping from the rail-yard at the back of the town. The devastating winters of the early 1890s had however denuded the area of much of its population (they had moved away, rather than died) due to the abrupt failure of the citrus industry. According to the history of the local Episcopal church, by the 1920s the area’s church-going population had yet to fully recover and the depopulation problem seems to have continued into the 1930s. As such, I’d add, the local church was perhaps lucky to get a man of Whitehead’s calibre and experience with children. As Lovecraft wrote to his aunt…

He seems to be the idol of everyone in Dunedin, & especially of the small boys — whose psychology he understands very minutely as a result of long experience in directing boys’ summer camps.

There is a local official archival site for pictures, but they use that stupid “Checking if the site connection is secure” check-wall, which never resolves. So I’ve had to draw on other sites and postcard sellers. Including this gem showing the local bus. Lovecraft went on several local trips, and was probably tootled around in this bus wearing a tropical ‘safari’ type suit. Though sadly he did not also sport a British Empire-style pith-helmet…

In fact, he writes that he wore no hat at all with the suit, which was unusual for him. Actually Lovecraft may not have seen much of the small urban retail centre in Dunedin during those weeks, since Whitehead preferred to shop in the larger town of Clearwater.

As Lovecraftians will recall, it was a relatively brief friendship in person. With Lovecraft meeting and staying with Whitehead for many weeks in summer 1932, finding him an ideal host and rather usefully someone of the same bodily-build — Lovecraft was thus able to wear one of Whitehead’s old white tropical suits when the heat became too much even for him. It appears to have been a very productive visit for Lovecraft, physically and psychologically. As evidenced by letters and the poignant poem “To a Young Poet of Dunedin” (the 17 year old Allan B. Grayson, who was staying with Whitehead) of 30th May.

Finding there was a relative paucity of antiquities, Lovecraft appears to have turned his attention to the town’s many cats and to the wealth of exotic flora and fauna. Especially birds including, curiously, whippoorwill birds…

Whippoorwills? I’ll say we have ’em down here! Exotic ones too with a liquid rolling note apparently more complex than that of their northern kinsfolk… I first heard them in the mystical dawn outside my window, and half imagined that they were voices calling across the ultimate void from Beyond.” (Lovecraft to Derleth)

Last night we saw the white tropic moon making a magical path on the westward-stretching gulf that lapped at a gleaming, deserted beach on a remote key. Boy! What a sight! It took one’s breath away!” (Lovecraft to Derleth)

Dusk on the shore at Dunedin.

Lovecraft also visited the nearby Anastasia Island, seeing a seething mass of alligators. Here “surians” = alligators…

Tall trees casting a sinister twilight over shallow lagoons — funeral garlands of trailing Spanish moss ‐ and the whole ground surface alive with scaly, wriggling saurians”.

Doubtless we’ll get the full story and backdrop in the forthcoming book on Lovecraft in Florida.

I’ve found a location of the church for which Whitehead was rector (Lovecraft uses the work “rector”)…

Episcopal Church Church of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal), located on the southeast corner of Edgewater Drive and Albert Street.

It would have been in the southern edge of the main settlement at that time. However, it seems the church has since been moved. The Web page for the history of this church has…

In 1958 land was purchased to provide for future expansion and the church was moved to its present site and further enlarged.

Thus I suspect this card shows the 1958 site and expansion…

Perhaps 1958?

The core 1899 structure still stands (though greatly expanded since the early 1930s, and on a new site), and is now one of the historic sites included in town tours.

The Web page for the church also has the “old vicarage” moving…

in 1955 … the old vicarage and Parish House were moved away and a new Parish House built on the site.”

So the “old vicarage” would likely be the house Whitehead had in the early 1930s? It’s unclear if the Parish House is now on that site/address, though. Also, possibly the current church authority there is not aware of the history re: Whitehead, as it has…

Into the 1940’s the small congregations at Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs, New Port Richey, and Dunedin were served by a single priest or, at times, a seminarian. Our first resident priest, the Rev. Cannon Eric Robinson, arrived in 1947. The Reverend Charles Folsom-Jones came in 1953 as Good Shepherd’s first full-time vicar.

Yet surely Whitehead was resident? And “rector” appears to = “priest” for Episcopalians. Joshi has it that… “the Gulf of Mexico was only a few feet from Whitehead’s front steps”, so the rector’s house was presumably somewhere nearby on the ocean-fronting Edgewater Drive. But possibly Whitehead is missing because the church doesn’t have the church records for the 1930s?

He arrived to take up his post in October 1929, according to a local newspaper report on his first reception event where he met all the other local churchmen. Thus, when Lovecraft was there, Whitehead had been rector for around two and a half years.

The sort of gnarled trees and verdant foliage one might have encountered in the back-gardens of Dunedin.

It’s possible that Whitehead’s “vicarage” (if that’s where he was living) lacked either a shady garden and/or a sea-view, since Lovecraft was generously offered the any-time use of a “tastefully landscaped” seaview garden next door. This was offered by the Metzen neighbours from Detroit, who had a retirement place “on the shore, a trifle north” of Whitehead. I’ve been unable to locate this, which might have helped identify the actual Whitehead address.

Along the shoreline.

I am at this moment on the sun-baked gulf shore under a palm tree.” (Letter to Henry George Weiss)

The Lovecraft-Whitehead correspondence is no more, with Lovecraft’s letters destroyed and Whitehead’s lost. By December 1932 Whitehead had unexpectedly died, and Lovecraft remarked in a letter…

Many stories of his remain unpublished, including a new series centring in a sinister and decaying old New England town (a kind of Arkham) called Chadbourne.” (Selected Letters IV)

Could this be a lost section of the early Lovecraft-inspired Mythos? All I can find is the posthumous “The Chadbourne Episode” of 1933. But, according to Lovecraft, there was a “series” of these tales.

New on honest Abe’s site, five issues of Driftwind as produced by Walter J. Coates. All with Lovecraft contributions.

Looking quickly through my resources, I’m not sure that Lovecraft ever actually visited Montpelier in Vermont, to see Coates and his Press ‘at home’. They met, but Coates had to travel some hundred or so miles to talk with Lovecraft. Cook at least once made the trip to Montpelier, but quite possibly Lovecraft never made it?

Lovecraft commented on Coates being present at an amateur meeting… “Coates, [who has travelled] all the vast way down from the Montpelier region”. In another letter he has… “the indefatigable Walter J. Coates of Montpelier (editor of Driftwind) came down nearly a hundred miles to mingle in the throng.”

Which suggests Montpelier was rather inaccessible. Postcards from Cook were postmarked ‘North Montpelier’, and presumably so were letters to Lovecraft. Which might lead one to think that Coates was in the hills somewhere at the back of the town, as seen here…

However, Google Maps has North Montpelier / East Montpelier closely abutted together, a small narrow river-valley settlement located about five winding miles east of the main town. So perhaps there’s just a postmark / postbox confusion here. Possibly Coates used the Post Office at North Montpelier because it was the nearest, but where was he really?

I have however managed to get and colourise a card of “North Montpelier” itself, which suggests a rather sleepy place. Possibly we see here the main ‘one man and a dog’ stores and Post Office.

The place was on the often flooded Winooski River, and of that I found an evocative postcard which may interest Mythos RPG makers in need of photo-props for a 1920s ‘Whisperer in Darkness’ type adventure…

---

Update: The East Montpelier Historical Society has online a detailed historical essay on the Coates little magazine and its editor, including several photographs. Thanks to a prompt from a reader I’ve now been able to re-find this (the link had been broken) and it reveals the Coates / Driftwind location…

In November 1922, he and Nettie purchased the George Pray store in North Montpelier, and the Coateses and son John continued as the storekeepers.

Thus the store seen in the above picture would soon become the Coates store, as one can see the “Pray” signboard.

This week on my regular ‘Picture Postals’ post… Lovecraft’s Quebec, in my pick of old photographs newly colourised. You’ll recall that Lovecraft wrote nearly an entire book on the place, as well as went into rhapsodies in his letters. One suspects that his friend Everett McNeil must have been here at one time, since Lovecraft later laments that his own interest in old Canada and Quebec came late… and thus he never had a chance to discuss with ‘Good Old Mac’ one of his favourite topics.

Lower Town.

Little Champlain Street.

Sous le Cap Street.

Breakneck Steps.

Montcalm’s House.

Cote de la Montagne and the Post Office.

The city was, for Lovecraft, also a potent draught of the pre-revolutionary France of the Bourbons. Or that was how he saw it. Others were disappointed in the place. His correspondent Helen Sully for instance, though perhaps she was swept up in the usual tourist hustle. Lovecraft was cannier and knew how to escape such wily wallet-emptying locals.

Citadel Ramparts.

Citadel Ridge with cannon.

View from the Citadel. Old Town and river beyond.

This week in my regular ‘Picture Postals’ slot, a view down Lovecraft’s College St., as it stood at his death after ‘improvements’. Here his home at No. 66 is a short walk up the hill behind the cameraman, and we here look down toward the river and the river-bridge to the main commercial area.

College Hill ladies of a certain age would sometimes avoid this steep bit of the hill by entering the Court House building on the left, at its foot by the river (by then becoming a humdrum and expanding car-park), and riding the elevator up. They could thus totter out of another Court House entrance further up, and emerge above the steep incline. But it seems Lovecraft hiked up and down it, at least with friends visiting the city. On a more workaday trip to downtown he may well have gone sideways along the hill from here, and used another bridge a little further north. But even so, this would have seen his view before he made the turn.

The source is a scrapbook page, as scanned and freely online via the Providence Public Library. The scraps collector has carefully tilted the picture on its sellotape hinges, to have the uprights be perfectly upright.

But for my makeover and colorising I’ve cropped to the framing apparently given it by the publication from which it was taken. We thus perhaps get a slight sense of unease because the picture is un-noticeably tilted. This seems to fit the Lovecraftian nature of the place.

The old back-yards and workshops had been swept away, and I’ve documented the destruction and yards on Tentaclii. Lovecraft regretted this, but by that time he was resigned to the ever-increasing depredations of modernity. But the new building (see centrally here) had retained the position and something of the form of one of the olde archways. This was not the courtyard-entrance archway in which Lovecraft would often meet the cat ‘Old Man’, but a similar one. The “Old Man” archway was on Thomas Street…

He belonged to a market at the foot of Thomas Street — the hill street mentioned in Cthulhu as the abode of the young artist […] Occasionally he would stroll up the hill as far as the Art Club, seating himself at the entrance to one of those old-fashioned courtyard archways (formerly common everywhere) for which Providence is so noted. At night, when the electric lights make the street bright, the space within the archway would remain pitch-black, so that it looked like the mouth of an illimitable abyss, or the gateway of some nameless dimension. And there, as if stationed as a guardian of the unfathomed mysteries beyond, would crouch the Sphinxlike, jet-black, yellow-eyed, and incredibly ancient form of Old Man.

This week on ‘picture postals’, two of Lovecraft’s favourite local places.

‘The Arcade’ which he had known since earliest youth, in a newly colourised stereo picture.

And a very nice scan, also new on eBay, of the driveway along the shore of the Seekonk in Providence. I’d seen this before, but usually as a poor CardCow scan. This scan is excellent.

In Lovecraft’s infant years the drive was then along the shore alongside Swan Point Cemetery. Local ‘calls for action’ confirm this, calling for it to become part of a longer drive. In time this longer drive came, and by Lovecraft’s middle childhood the ride also ran along the shoreline at Blackstone Park. Thus the location of the view is actually about a mile away from his later favourite spot in the wooded bluff above York Pond. But the picture still gives a flavour of the Seekonk, and doubtless he and his pals ventured this far up from Blackstone on occasions.

You’ll recall that it was the Seekonk which gave rise to horrible dreams of it being completely drained to mud and slime, and thus to “Dagon” and the Mythos.

This week, more pictures from the Samuel Chamberlain Photograph Negatives Collection, 1928-1971, held at the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

Summer is “a cummin’ in”, and thus it seems apt to have the pictures reflect Lovecraft’s summer travels. These show the fabric of some of the Marblehead lanes which he found so alluring.

old streets and gables and chimney-pots, and the endless maze of fanlighted Colonial doorways. … ancient houses set at all possible angles on moss-grown rock foundations and weird terraces

I’ve given them a tickle with Photoshop and a colourising, to give a flavour of the shades he loved. Though these scenes are pictured decades later, at a guess, and in the meanwhile there’s probably been a certain amount of sprucing-up, tourist-ification and antique-shoppery going on.

whilst conversing with natives there [in Salem], I had learnt of the neighbouring fishing port of Marblehead, whose antique quaintness was particularly recommended to me. Taking a stage-coach thither, I was presently borne into the most marvellous region I had ever dream’d of, & furnish’d with the most powerful single aesthetic impression I have receiv’d in years. Even now it is difficult for me to believe that Marblehead exists, save in some phantasticall dream. It is so contrary to everything usually observable in this age, & so exactly conformed to the habitual fabrick of my nocturnal visions, that my whole visit partook of the aethereal character scarce compatible with reality.

In this week’s ‘Picture Postal’ post, Marblehead. In Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book of story-ideas, we read…

No. 81   Marblehead — dream — burying hill — evening — unreality

It was a story never to be written, though perhaps parts of “The Festival” and the “The Strange High House in the Mist” hint at what it might have been like. Are there then pictures of Marblehead’s ‘burying hill’, which inspired the story-idea? Indeed there are.

Here we can just about see an indication of the wealth of macabre carvings to be found on the stones. We also see the ground in relation to distant buildings further around the coastline.

However, in the above picture we see summer. Lovecraft would have first seen the burying ground in the Christmas-time snow, and toward dusk…

I came to Marblehead in the twilight, & gazed long upon its hoary magick. I threaded the tortuous, precipitous streets, some of which an horse can scarce climb, & in which two waggons cannot pass. I talked with old men & revell’d in old scenes, & climb’d pantingly over the crusted cliffs of snow to the windswept height where cold winds blew over desolate roofs & evil birds hovered…” — H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Kleiner, 11th January 1923.

Yes, Lovecraft was tromping through snow. Evidently at that time, if wrapped up warm and keeping moving, he was not so averse to cold weather. It turns out there are several pictures of the summit in the snow, recorded by Samuel Chamberlain. This photographer seems to have been here c. 1928 onwards, so perhaps the pictures date from a time when Lovecraft was alive and visiting. Here I’ve toned and burned the plain archival scans of the negatives, as the photographer would have done at the time on prints for public presentation…

Compare this with the postcard above, and it is the same view. The same pair of distinctive headstones and fenced plot are seen.

… atop all was the peak; Old Burying Hill, where the dark headstones clawed up thro’ the virgin snow like the decay’d fingernails of some gigantick corpse.” (Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner)

From the round dome of rock above the burying ground, Lovecraft also looked across to the old town. To see his fabled view of Marblehead with its many-lighted windows.

The view across to Marblehead.

Immemorial pinnacle of fabulous antiquity! As evening came I look’d down at the quiet village where the lights came out one by one; at the calm contemplative chimney-pots & antique gables silhouetted against the west; at the glimmering small-paned windows … Shades of the past! How compleatly, O Mater Novanglia, am I moulded of thy venerable flesh & as one with thy century’d soul!

He dates and times the experience very precisely…

… huddled and archaick roofs under the snow in the delirious sunset glory of four p.m., Dec. 17, 1922!!! I did not know until an hour before that I should ever behold such a place as Marblehead, and I did not know until that moment itself the full extent of the wonder I was to behold. I account that instant — about 4:05 to 4:10 p.m., Dec. 17, 1922 — the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence.

He visited many times thereafter, and in better weather. Here is another from Samuel Chamberlain, looking up at the low rock-dome of the hilltop in the early springtime. With the burial ground running narrowly just below, along a short and turfy terrace.

From the summit, evidently one could also have a view over the ocean below.

On the rocky dome just above the Burying Ground, looking out to sea.

Although a 1909 picture-map shows the Ground is located relatively inland, rather than dropping down to shoreline rocks…

Despite the deathly location from which he took his view, in the waterfronts and lanes of the old town of Marblehead itself Lovecraft felt that he…

“had sojourned for a time in the past itself — not the past of books, but the living, breathing streets. Since then I have dreamt of nothing but Marblehead … old streets and gables and chimney-pots, and the endless maze of fanlighted Colonial doorways. … ancient houses set at all possible angles on moss-grown rock foundations and weird terraces …” (Selected Letters I).

---

Pictures from the Samuel Chamberlain Photograph Negatives Collection, 1928-1971, held at the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.