Lovecraft photographed in Florida, with some of Barlow’s cats (note that there’s also a white cat walking on the path behind). Circa 1934…

Hat-tip: H. P. Lovecraft Bronze Bust Project. Sadly there appears to be no larger version available.

“We rowed on the lake, and played with the cats, or walked on the highway with these cats as the unbelievable sun went down among pines and cypresses … Above all, we talked, chiefly of the fantastic tales which he wrote and which I was trying to write. At breakfast he told us his dreams.” (Robert Barlow, “The Wind that Is in the Grass”, 1944).

I note there’s also a new 1936 photo dated “September 19 or 20” of “Eunice French and Lovecraft”, on the hplovecraft.com gallery…

So who was Eunice French? She was a “Master of Arts in Philosophy” student at Brown University, who was then being courted by Robert Moe, the son of Lovecraft’s friend Maurice Moe. Lovecraft had first met Robert as a small boy in 1923, and he seems to have served as a sort of uncle to him, then started a correspondence (now lost?) with Robert in 1934. Robert doesn’t seem to have been able to win Eunice, since in Nov 1938 she married a fellow musician and Harvard man named Cyril Maurice Owen. A letter to Barlow shows that Lovecraft considered her a brilliant savant and, once introduced to Lovecraft, informs us that she went round to see the master several times during her time at Brown.

Eunice kept all her correspondence which is now in a university archive, and one thus wonders if there’s a very slim chance that a Lovecraft postcard or two might lurk therein? Or (more likely) letters from Robert in which he talks of Lovecraft?

This photo also shows Lovecraft’s black writing materials case, which I thought had escaped ever being photographed. Many commented (see Lovecraft Remembered) on its curious and unique appearance. It can also be seen doodled by Lovecraft on this 1934 postcard self portrait…

See it and another snap of it, at the “Lovecraft at the Atheneum” album on Flickr.