It appears I was correct about George Fitzpatrick, an Australian Lovecraft correspondent (see my Historical Context #4 and also Lovecraft Annual 2013). Drs. Brendan Whyte & Martin Woods of the National Library of Australia looked into the Fitzpatrick bookplate collection, seeking the Lovecraft bookplate. They found it…
“I instructed him to see if the HPL bookplate was in the Fitzpatrick collection, and indeed it is. Attached are photos of it and the card to which Fitzpatrick attached it. The verso of the card, presumably typed (rather poorly) by Fitzpatrick from notes sent by Lovecraft, reads:
GENESIS.
The georgian doorway with a suggestion of a tall flight of outside steps, serves a three-fold symbolic purpose. 1. The doorway quality of all books, whereby they serve to admit the reader to strange and spacious realms. 2. It typifies the urban scene in which he has spent his life, the quaint hill streets of Old Providence scarcely changed in a century and a half, 3- symbolises his personal antiquarian tastes.
ARTIST. Wilfred Blanch Tolman.”
A note in pencil on the side states: “Don[or]. Mrs G. Fitzpatrick. 7.12.[19]49”
I would agree that the typed card must be Fitzpatrick’s summary of a Lovecraft letter which had accompanied the bookplate to Australia, and which had been discarded. The words “The doorway quality of all books, whereby they serve to admit the reader to strange and spacious realms.” certainly sound like they could be Lovecraft’s own.
One wonders if this was the limit of the correspondence, or if there were later letters between the two men?
