More notes on my reading of the second volume of H.P. Lovecraft’s Letters to Family, here mostly relating to 1926-1928.

There is an interesting description, re: a possible inspiration for “The Colour Out of Space”, of a ground curiously mineralised and as-if “powdered with star-dust” (page 604). He finds this in September 1926 scattered around the 1707 birthplace of the early astronomer David Rittenhouse (1732-1796), a homestead that had been encountered by chance as Lovecraft was lost while exploring the Wissahickon Valley. “Colour” was written some six months later.

Lovecraft saw the grand historical-adventure movie Ben Hur (page 602). Later he remarks on his break from cinema-going, between Aug-Sept 1927 and May 1928.

He recalls the Old Corner Bookshop (page 612). Presumably Dana’s Old Corner Bookstore in Providence, as he had sold some of his mother’s books to them and later regretted parting with one such when he saw it on display in the window.

He remarks that, like himself, his friend Loveman also had many young proteges… “He had with him one of his numberless prodigy-proteges, a quiet blond youth whose accomplishments seem to be, so far, appreciative rather than creative” (page 632).

In April 1928 Loveman had noticed that the old rooming house, 169 Clinton St. on the edge of Red Hook, appeared abandoned and with some windows smashed. However, in May 1928 Lovecraft and Loveman went to bid it a final goodbye… only to find it revived (a fresh coat of paint and “marks of rehabilitation”) and thus presumably under new ownership (pages 634 and 661).

By April 1928 the Kalem meetings had “almost dissolved” (i.e. dwindled to just a few attendees) but were strongly revived while Lovecraft was again living in New York City.

On discovering that some museums would make a good affordable plaster-casts for private display, he remarks… “it was my original design in youth to have a private museum of Greek & Roman casts”.

He discovers an old Antarctic adventure novel he has not yet read, titled Revi-lona: a Romance of Love in A Marvelous Land (1879) by a journalist of the time. An explorer finds love with sex-starved women in a tropical shangri-la amid the ice. Apparently very floridly written and yet ultimately conveying the rather cynical and anti-utopian sentiments of an American newspaperman. The implication is that Lovecraft has read most such novels, but that this is a new find for him. Not on Archive.org under that title.

“The Spence book on Atlantis that I read so hurriedly just before departing for my trip” (page 637). There is no footnote for this book, and both “Spence” and “Atlantis” are curiously missing from the index. Lewis Spence wrote five books about Atlantis, and the most likely in spring 1928 was the relatively new The History of Atlantis (1927), though it might have been the earlier The Problem of Atlantis (1924) or Atlantis in America (1925).

Lovecraft read at least one non-fiction book by Lewis Mumford on architecture. This was prior to Mumford’s efflorescence of ideas on tools, technologies and civilisation.

He knew, read and kept the magazine published by the Hospital Trust in Providence. This produced the fine Netropian journal, with many local history articles and local drawings from the 1920s. Copies apparently languish in paper at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, un-scanned.

He mentions reading and being impressed by a volume of poetry by Gessler, friend of his best friend Belknap Long, titled Kanaka Moon (1927). Not on Archive.org.

He found Morton’s full library very impressive when he saw it fully assembled and shelved at Paterson, and thought it better even than that of Cook. “I’ve never seen so fine a private Library” (pages 657 and 658).

Lovecraft finds he has a family-tree line named “Fish” (page 663), and this is some years before the writing of “Innsmouth”.

There was a time when $5 would buy you a custom original plot-synopsis by H.P. Lovecraft. In the spring of 1928 he was writing many such plots for one “Reed”, at the jobbing rate of a dollar per page (page 668). We later learn this client to be a “Mrs Reed” (page 676), now of course known to be his revision client Zealia Brown Reed.

Lovecraft revised the first chapter of McNeil’s historical-adventure novel The Shores of Adventure (1929). In which the boy hero earns and acquires his father’s super-sword.

In summer 1928 he notes “a resumption of the Providence Line of New York boats”, meaning passenger services from Providence — New York City.

Lovecraft discovered an old unchanged working colonial farmstead, “in full sight of the distant towers of Manhattan” and with its inhabitants oblivious to modernity of New York City (page 678).

I’ve begun reading the second volume of the new Letters to Family. Here are my notes on Lovecraft’s letters home, until the point when he returns home to Providence and Barnes St.

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There is an evocative passage on “vast unknown islands” in the Arctic (page 560) in which Lovecraft seems to anticipate some future unwritten tale. Not impossible, at least historically, when you look at the topography and know that sea-level used to be much lower in the last Ice Age…

He laments that intellectually stunted people then made up “almost a majority” of the population of the USA, and he presumably was basing this on some test-based research of the period. A little later he also implies that knows whereof he speaks, when he says he has given up his former “loafing about slum cafeterias” on the edge of Red Hook.

He appears to have read the memoirs of the illustrator and leading printmaker Joseph Pennell, presumably The Adventures of an Illustrator (1925). This would have given him an insight into the artistic/publishing life of London from the 1880s to the early 1900s, and then the illustration side of magazine publishing in the New York ‘slicks’. By 1921 Pennell was living in Brooklyn, and its not impossible that in 1925 their circles overlapped at the edges.

He had begun reading some of the ghost stories of M.R. James and was impressed, referring to James a new “idol of idols”.

Evidently there was a large and capacious family scrap book, “Grandma’s red scrap book”, which had been kept into the mid 1920s and was still being added to. One wonders what became of it.

Vaudeville at Fay’s Theatre in Lovecraft’s youth could include lectures. He saw there a lecture by Dr. Cook, the polar explorer. Presumably this included a show of ‘magic lantern’ slides.

He saw the movie The Tower of Lies (1925) with Lon Chaney. Now a lost movie.

He gives the dates of his severe boyhood illness of 1903, “late April and early May”.

Loveman’s poetry was both “polished” and (later) proofread by Lovecraft (pages 551-2).

The location of Peter’s restaurant was “on Joralemon St near the corner of Clinton” in NYC.

Lovecraft’s Providence barber was named Fernando King at 72 Westminster Street. His partner in trade was Eduoard Fontaine. I see that the Nightingale Papers archive holds a local press “clipping and program for party held in King’s honor, 1926”. In New York Lovecraft’s final haircut is at “the barbers at State and Court”.

Lovecraft read the Henry James story “The Turn of the Screw” for the first time in February 1926, while working on his survey Supernatural Literature.

He makes a brief reference to the influenza of 1918, as a “scourge” (page 558). He later says that its symptomatic “effects are so far reaching” (page 576) suggesting he was still well aware of the unusual and devastating symptoms.

The plans for the giant Hope Reservoir were known to Lovecraft by February 1926. He talks about the plans, and what might replace it. We know from the Providence magazine that it was still not quite drained by early 1928, having begun draining in 1926. On return to Providence, he would live very near to it.

He saw the movie The Torrent, featuring Greta Garbo. This climaxes when “a huge storm hits the town, causing houses to flood, ceilings to cave in, and the dam to break bringing a torrent of rushing water”. A while later he saw an “impressive” costume-drama movie of the Jamestown Flood of 1889. Given that the giant, creaking and possibly dangerous (while the water level was being slowly lowered) Hope St. reservoir was almost directly behind his new home in Barnes St., these viewings seem well-timed.

He remarks that, at February 1926, he had never seen a decent display of the aurora (‘northern lights’).

He shops at the Clinton Delicatessen, presumably in Clinton St. Above it is the Taormina restaurant he and Sonia patronised in the 1925, but which had raised prices dramatically by 1926.

He recalls the Empire Book Shop in Providence, which he used to patronise, in Empire St. Another source gives the prop. as “H. D. Dana”, known later as a leading book dealer in Providence. By 1923 “new” at Weybosset St…

In the move to New York he lost the beautiful star-atlas booklet that accompanied the book Geography of the Heavens. The Library of Congress has it online now.

He talks of Eliphas Levi as “the best source of magical lore”, as translated by Waite (page 570). In March 1926 he is reading Constant’s History of Magick (page 585) but this again indicates Eliphas Levi — since Levi was Constant’s pseudonym. This must therefore have been the book The History Of Magic but Lovecraft’s epistolary whimsy has given the title an 18th century touch by using the spelling “Magick”.

He talks of enjoying “the subsidiary features” of movie-going, suggesting that he also sat through the cartoons, short travelogues, news-reels etc.

He states in the past he had read some “Hindoo” (Hindu) fables from India.

He disparages Freud and especially on dreams…”… his theory of dreams is perhaps the weakest link in his whole chain. Many of his hypotheses can be punctured quite readily…” (page 578)

Lovecraft reassures his aunt that, in his fragile mental state, he is not raving at immigrants in the streets… “don’t fancy that my nervous reaction against alien N.Y. types takes the form of conversation likely to offend any individual” and “don’t think I fail to appreciate the genius and good qualities of the entire assemblage” (by which he seems to mean ‘other groups, when considered in the round’). He also comments on the lack of leakage from the Kalems and his circle… “our group is not noted for faux pas‘s or inconsiderate repetition of opinion.”

He sees a re-run of the John Ford blockbuster movie “The Iron Horse” (1924) about the transcontinental railroad. Another movie that seems to foreshadow his return (by rail) to Providence.

Long patronises The Womrath Library, a library cum bookstore in New York, and sub-lends Lovecraft at least one book from it.

The family storage stables in Providence, at least at that point in time, are owned by a “Mrs Glazer”.

A favourite Italian joint in Providence was the Belvedere, “at the S.E. corner of Washington and Aborn”, and Lovecraft states he intends to make it a regular haunt when he returns.

He chanced to see the melodrama movie Stella Maris with Sonia, and recalled seeing the first half of the earlier Mary Pickford version in Providence in 1918. In 1918 he had to leave the cinema early due to health problems. This suggests the reason why he only saw half the Providence Houdini show.

He saw a foreign movie of Cyrando de Bergerac, possibly a French print of the Italian movie version of the time.

He saw the movie Don Juan, and enjoyed it all the more because the then-new Vitaphone technology sync’d the music perfectly.

He was impressed with the John Metcalfe (1891–1965) story “The Bad Lands”, in The Smoking Leg, and other stories (1925). This has not been collected in an anthology of ‘Lovecraft faves’ by Lovecraftians, presumably due to copyright. But note that the 1926 U.S. first edition should put it in the public domain in the USA in 2022. The story is now online, extracted from the British magazine publication of 1920. On reading, one immediately finds it a likely partial source of inspiration for “The Colour out of Space”, minus the colour and reservoir and meteor.