On his return from New York, Lovecraft’s favourite low-cost cafe was “Jake’s” or “Jacques”. I had previously been unable to find an address, but as I had suspected this was indeed on or near the “riverfront” — a word used in a mention of it in a recent monograph by Ken Faig, which he kindly shared with me recently.
This cheap cafe had been discovered by Lovecraft in 1926, after his return from New York. Having rubbed shoulders with juvenile hoodlums and hardened gangsters in the cafes of Red Hook, sharing a cafe with the “stevedore” clientele of a docks cafe in Providence was presumably less daunting to him than previously. Here is his friend Loveman recalling one of the Brooklyn cafes and its seedy clientele, albeit from the very hazy distance of 1975…
I came to New York City in 1924, worked nine months for a Jewish-Hungarian louse in his book establishment on Fourth Avenue, and when I found out he was releasing me for the summer, I quit. Before returning to Cleveland, I took up quarters in H.P.L.’s rooming house at 169 Clinton Street, Brooklyn. The landlady seemed refined but had seen better days; the house was run down in a slattern way. Lodgers seemed to come and go. In May, 1925, I stayed there about two weeks. … To the best of my recollection we lived on the first floor in separate rooms. Due to skin trouble, H.P.L.’s toilet [personal washing] took at least two hours. His nights were practically sleepless. After Howard and I were robbed — he of most of his clothes and I of my radio — I went back temporarily to Cleveland. During this period in Brooklyn, and even before, H.P.L., Rheinhart Kleiner, and myself (and probably a fourth person) used to meet regularly at a Scotch bakery and restaurant in the immediate neighborhood. The toughs (and I mean toughs) from Red Hook used to congregate there nightly. We listened to them recounting their marauding and robberies in the choicest and vulgarist Brooklynese slang; it was an unforgettable experience. Howard was enthralled. His mimicry of their conversations, at which he was so adept, went to the final writing of his masterpiece of a story — “The Horror at Red Hook”. (“Of Gold & Sawdust”)
The Great Depression changed much, even in Providence, and by 1933 a Lovecraft letter sadly notes that “Jake’s” had taken to allowing unspecified “extremes in the matter of clientele” to take a seat. In 1933 this change was too much even for someone who had seen the inside of Red Hook’s cafes, and it inclined Lovecraft to patronise a cheap establishment named “Al’s” instead. This was “Al’s Lunch (Alphonse Scatto) 99 N Main, Providence”. Judging by its location Al’s was likely a cheap student cafe serving the adjacent RISD’s students at the height of the Great Depression. I’m not sure if this was then a permanent change for Lovecraft, but it’s possible he didn’t have that many options for a main meal at the low prices he required.
There were probably also other ad hoc cafes, fit for a simple coffee and snack but unfit to take out-of-town visitors to. His aunt once told a friend that he would eat ‘all over’ the city at all hours of the day and night. That was in the 66 College Street years, in which he tended to be somewhat seasonal, since as he grew older Lovecraft tended to stay in during the colder weather rather than go walking about the city.
I looked for Jake’s again online, and was pleased to see that the 1934 Providence Directory is newly on Archive.org (uploaded April 2018). In this there is no Jack’s or Jake’s, but there are two Jacques. Of these, from its location this one seems open-all-hours and cheap…
Jacques – 126 Wickenden
If I have the correct Jacques then this puts it back of the Fox Point ship departure/arrival point for New York City, and a short walk back from the riverside and a key bridge. The position likely gave it a triple clientele depending on time of day: arrivals and departures for the New York short-hop passenger liners; sailors and crew; and rail terminal workers and dock-hands in need of an early breakfast. We can probably reasonably assume it was thus an ‘open all hours’ establishment, whereas the other address seems more likely to have served the RISD art students and local workers. Indeed, in one later letter to Moe’s son, Lovecraft remarks that his old “stevedore” lunchroom of “Jake’s” had closed for good in September 1935. A “stevedore” is a dock-worker.
A family historian puts this photo at “the corner of Wickenden and Benefit Street around 126 Wickenden Street”, and (although he yearns to date it earlier, to fit his family history) the style of the van and amount of wires suggest to me the late 1920s or early 1930s. Sadly I can’t get it bigger, but evidently a photo of or near No. 126 exists.
Here’s the night-time context for this branch of Jacques. The view looks down the river, with Fox Point in the distance on the left. One can see two of the New York boats docked.
The Wickenden Street Jacques is approximately here on the above card…
Possibly he patronised both at various times. It would have been natural to patronise this branch of Jacques when seeing friends off on the New York boat. As for the other Jacques, which is also a possibility, despite its more central location I can’t get a picture for it.
[Update: he knew of the Wickenden Street Jacques, and mentions it in letters, but if he ever set foot there is unknown]
