This Friday ‘Picture Postals’ post is a sequel to my 2019 Copp’s Hill Burying Ground post.
Lovecraft wrote to Galpin and Belknap Long, in early February 1923. He told them of how, on the 14th of December 1922, he had travelled to Boston to stay with Cole and his delightful young family, in order to attend a Hub Club meeting. The following day he explored in the North End…
I proceeded to Hull-Street [from the nearby church], and up the steps to that fascinating necropolis which thro’ some singular fate I had never before seen — the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. Here are interr’d some of the most illustrious Colonial dead of the Province, including the Mathers, who are interesting to me from my possession of Cotton Mather’s “Magnalia Christi Americana”. But the chief charm of the scene is in the entire broad effect; the bleak hilltop with its horizon of leaden sky, harbour masts, and Colonial roofs. In sight are many houses of the early 18th century, to say nothing of the rebel frigate “Constitution”, which defends the harbour from attack. Over the sod was a thin coat of snow, thro’ which the slabs peer’d grimly whilst black leafless trees claw’d at a sinister lowering sky. In fancy I could conjure up the Boston of the late 17th century with its narrow, hilly, curving streets and quaint wooden and brick houses.
I’ve now found more and better/larger pictures.
Copp’s Hill in winter, with snow on the ground as it was when Lovecraft visited.
Looking across to Charter St., ship masts just about to be seen beyond the house roofs.
Backs of Charter Street.
Another view which has a glimpse of a ship and also water, behind the houses.
Some of the skull gravestones Lovecraft would have seen…
Lovecraft later had Pickman paint a scene of…
“a dance on Copp’s Hill among the tombs with the background of today.” (from “Pickman’s Model”).
The grave of Cotton Mather.
