One of my Patreon patrons, J. Miller, asks:

Did HPL ever visit the Brooklyn Museum? What did he like to see there? I may go next week, so I’m seeking tips.

Yes, he did see the Museum, which was also once known as the Brooklyn Institute. He first saw it in 1922, as a ‘visiting NYC’ tourist in the company of “Morton, Kleiner, Belnap” (see Letters from New York). A big attraction of the place was the cost. Entry was free on most days, and the place was also open into the evening on Thursdays. This is how it would have looked from the “crossing the street” view.

This first visit seems to have been a brisk look at the ‘highlights’. Since we know that then ‘did it’ more systematically and thoroughly later in the same year (see Letters to Family). I think we can assume the fine sculpture from antiquity would have been enjoyed, and would have reminded him of the sculpture hall in Providence in which he had lingered as a lad.

But there was also the Invertebrates Hall and Insect Hall in the eastern galleries, on the “second floor” until 1927. There he may well have seen the hanging giant octopus, which is known to have been there and accompanied by a giant squid, pre-Cthulhu.

I had better pictures than this, but sadly they’ve been lost. I’m not sure if this is still there to be seen today. A catalogue search for “octopus” did not reveal it, though perhaps the natural history section (if it still exists there) has another catalogue? This same Hall also had… “The marine animals of the coast of Long Island and New England, from high tide to a depth of 7,200 feet” as a long cased display. It’s possible he missed these sea-creatures on the first visit, but must surely have seen them on the second.

Lovecraft ‘did’ the Museum again solo in May 1930, seeing the new ‘Colonial furniture and interiors’ wing which was then newly offering complete rooms arranged for his antiquarian delight.

In 1933 he “…did the Brooklyn Museum with Sonny” (Lovecraft letter to Morton, 12th January 1933) when they focused on the “Dutch” section. I would suspect that this section may also have been new and have featured old Dutch furniture and interiors, but I suppose it may also have been flanked by rooms with other Dutch items such as paintings.

Equally important to Lovecraft was… “my erstwhile favourite Japanese Garden beside the Brooklyn Museum” which had been designed in 1914/15 by the young self-taught Takeo Shiota. This was likewise free, and Shiota’s initial hill and pond planting was after a decade maturing nicely by the mid 1920s. His planting was also being sensitively added to. Lovecraft found the place “always lovely”, whatever the season. This garden now appears to be part of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and may no longer be free (at a guess). Here we see it under one of the heavy snowstorms of New York City, possibly even the very same “worst in living memory” snowstorm that Lovecraft very narrowly missed when he moved into Red Hook…

There was also evidently once a pleasant sunset walk to be had after the Museum had closed, and if the leaves were off the trees. In early November 1924 he and Loveman walked at sunset from the Brooklyn Museum to Brooklyn Heights, to call on the poet Hart Crane…

The walk was very lovely — downhill from the heights on which the Brooklyn Museum stands, & with many sunset vistas of old houses and far spires. We reached the heights in the deep twilight…” (Letters from New York, p. 82)

At first glance then, the ‘Lovecraft’ version of the museum would be:

Egyptian and Roman antiquities and statuary.
British historical items, non-ecclesiastical.
Long Island and New England natural history, inc. toads, coastal marine animals,
deep sea-horrors, giant octopus.
Any colonial portraits, New England landscape painting especially Providence.
Any colonial / old Dutch rooms, doorways.
The Japanese Garden.

I’m now further into reading the Gaplin letters, in the new expanded volume. Here is my second batch of notes.

* In early 1917 Lovecraft states that he likes the travel films of Burton Holmes (p. 176), seen at the Strand in Providence. Homes shot artful travel documentaries on 35mm, and appears to have made about thirty shorts a year. Here is a small selection of his travel films which could have been seen around this time, fronting the main movie…

1916:

The Cliff Dwellers Of America.
Among the Head Hunters.
Picturesque Prague.
Motoring In England.
British Egypt.
The Real Streets Of Cairo.
The Lower Nile.
Thee Upper Nile.

1917:

Quaint Quebec.
On the Great Glacier.
Fruitful Florida.
Kyoto, the Ancient Capital.

1918:

Fire Walkers Of Bega.

Some readers may also be interested in his 1947 “Historic New England” colour documentary, 21 minutes, if it survives.

* When Lovecraft registered for military duty he gave his occupation as “writer”. He tells Galpin that he was reassured that he might therefore still be of use… even if he failed the physical. (p. 182)

* He assumed he had read all of Sherlock Holmes by 1918, but a footnote itemises what he had read by 1927: three collections (Adventures, Memoirs, Return), three novels (Scarlet, Four, Hound) and two unnamed “mediocre” stories appearing circa 1908. I assume these were the 1908 tales “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” and “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”. This shows he would have been up-to-date to summer 1908, but after that lost touch. He would have missed the rest of the tales included in the book collections His Last Bow (1917) and all of the tales in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). Thus it would be a mistake for scholars to assume Lovecraft had read… “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”; “The Valley of Fear”; “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” or any other of the Case-Book tales. A pity, as if he’d have stuck with Holmes just a bit longer he would likely have enjoyed “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” with its macabre plot and Cornwall/Africa combination.

* He owned all of Prof. Appleton’s chemistry instruction books (p. 211) as a boy. Relevant to his later work because of how the pictures line up so nicely with the themes of his later stories.

* “I tried to write a comic opera when about ten years old” (p. 214).

* He mentions the “Spanish Influenza” explicitly (p. 216). He realises around 18th November 1918, that… “This influenza is nothing light”, which seems a bit of an understatement and perhaps suggest he was behind with his reading of the newspapers. Statistics show that peak deaths in Providence occurred 13th- 14th October, and Boston had seen 3,700 deaths by the 16th October 1918.

* He had seen and strongly approved of the movie Hearts of the World (p. 219). This was a big-budget D.W. Griffith / Lillian Gish movie, partly filmed on location and depicting German brutality and atrocities against civilians during the invasions early in the First World War. Gish and Griffith later thought the movie was too anti-German, though that was at a time when the atrocities had been very assiduously ‘written out of history’ — seemingly by those who instead preferred to show the Allies (British and Americans) in a negative light. But the very widespread atrocities did happen and they were later unearthed by post- 1990 historians and are now copiously documented. If anything, the movie now appears to have underplayed the matter.

* Lovecraft lists three humorous spoofs he wrote in early summer 1923, “The Wonderful Hills”, “A Day in the Country”, and “Uncle John’s Legacy”. (p. 225). These may have been published in an amateur journal, but are now lost. They “convulsed” Lovecraft’s future wife with “mirth”.

* Lovecraft states that his uncle Dr. Clark had made a deep study of “‘descent of fire’ and legends pertaining thereto”. (p. 226). This is the idea of ‘the descent of fire from the heavens’ and its study appears to have involved examining various legends and lore for traces of early attempts to explain storm lightning, ball- lightning, ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ and suchlike. I would guess probably also the apparent ‘trapping’ of sparks (rubbed amber, flints, static electricity, etc). Such things were seen, circa the middle of the 19th century, to be an ancient current in human belief that was different from ancient sun worship and sun-lore. This stems from Muller and others in Germany who saw the philosophy of the ancients as centred around the Dawn-time, and thus the coming Sun. But by the 1870 the scatter-gun followers of his idea were seeing ‘sun-gods’ in every fairy-tale and local old-wives tale, and a basically sensible theory was made to seem ridiculous. Being someone more interested in ‘descent of fire’ would by the 1880s have made one something of a heretic against ‘the consensus’. Lovecraft does not state that he had read his uncle’s work or the notes for it, but it might be assumed that he had at least talked with his uncle on the topic.

* Lovecraft talks of the sinister odour of old Puritan houses (p. 232), a significant factor in their macabre allure for him.