{"id":41034,"date":"2020-08-07T05:37:31","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T02:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tentaclii.wordpress.com\/?p=41034"},"modified":"2020-08-07T05:37:31","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T02:37:31","slug":"friday-picture-postals-from-lovecraft-the-dockside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2020\/08\/07\/friday-picture-postals-from-lovecraft-the-dockside\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday ‘picture postals’ from Lovecraft: the dockside"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Providence, as if seen from a night-gaunt hovering above 66 College St. Available as an 8000px .TIF at the LOC.<\/em><\/p>\n

This 1895 supplement the Providence Sunday newspaper at first appears to be a standard and rather dull city engraving of the period, until one zooms right in and sees the quality of the ink and wash work. Here we see a detail of the Providence river and dockside, the side usually shunned by postcard-makers…<\/p>\n

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In letters of the 1930s Lovecraft recalled the rigged sailing-ships of Providence, seen and admired in his youth but now departed. <\/p>\n

In the heavy fog of late November 1923, his Providence friend Eddy introduced him to the sinister courtyards and back-alley labyrinths which ran back from the dockside seen above…<\/p>\n

a squalid colonial labyrinth in which I moved as an utter stranger, each moment wondering whether I were indeed in my native town or in some leprous, distorted witch-Salem … there was a fog, & out of it & into it again mov\u2019d dark monstrous diseas\u2019d shapes … narrow exotick streets and alleys … grotesque lines of gambrel roofs with drunken eaves and idiotick tottering chimneys … streets, lines, rows; bent and broken, twisted and mysterious, wan and wither\u2019d … claws of gargoyles obscurely beckoning to witch-sabbaths of cannibal horror in shadow\u2019d alleys that are black at noon … and toward the southeast, a stark silhouette of hoary, unhallowed black chimneys and bleak ridgepoles against a mist that is white and blank and saline \u2014 the venerable, the immemorial sea”. (Lovecraft, heavily abridged from a letter to Morton, 5th December 1923).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zooming further in we see a lone rower on the river…<\/p>\n

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As a sturdy lad, Lovecraft was for a short time an avid rower<\/a> in a small boat, a period from which memories probably linger in the story “Dagon”. Lovecraft was (so far as we know) only boating around the corner on the Seekonk, rather than pulling past the sailing-ships and coalers as seen here. Still, the sight of a little rower is evocative of a freer time…<\/p>\n

“I used to row considerably on the Seekonk … Often I would land on one or both of the Twin Islands — for islands (associated with remote secrets, pirate treasure, and all that) always fascinated me.” — Lovecraft letter to Rimel, April 1934.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providence, as if seen from a night-gaunt hovering above 66 College St. Available as an 8000px .TIF at the LOC. …<\/p>\n

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