Category Archives: Picture postals

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: the almanacs

07 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context, New discoveries, Picture postals

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As we move into the New Year, it seems apt to take a look at the annual almanacs which H.P. Lovecraft cherished. Not quite postcards, of course, but still pictorial.

He inherited, and then further developed, a substantial collection of such old country almanacs. He writes in a letter that this family collection, when first passed down to him…

went back solidly only to 1877, with scattering copies back to 1815

Trying to complete this set eventually became a keen occasional hobby, though he had some luck there. He was allowed to root among the home storage attic of his sometime-friend Eddy’s book-selling uncle, and he descended the ladder with many a rare old copy. Which Uncle Eddy then sold him at a very affordable price. This haul appears to have spurred his ambitions, and he wrote…

I am now trying to complete my family file of the Old Farmer’s Almanack

Here we see Lovecraft’s collecting ‘wants list’, as he tried to complete the set…

What, exactly, was this publication? Archive.org now has a small selection of scans of this Old Farmer’s Almanack, and thus we can get a better idea of what Lovecraft found between the pages. To be specific, he inherited and collected old copies of the Old Farmer’s Almanack edited by Robert B. Thomas. (It can’t be linked, as the URL is malformed, but if you paste this into the Archive.org search-box you should get it: creator:”Thomas, Robert Bailey, 1766-1846″ )

There were other publications of the same or similar title, but Old Farmer’s Almanack was Lovecraft’s mainstay. Which is not say he wasn’t delighted to discover that other similar almanacs were still publishing, out in the countryside…

It sure did give me a kick to find Dudley Leavitt’s Farmer’s Almanack [Leavitt’s Farmer’s Almanack, improved] still going after all these years. The last previous copy I had seen was of the Civil War period. But of course my main standby is Robt. B. Thomas’s [Almanack]

Thomas’s Old Farmer’s Almanack had begun publication in 1793. As we can see from the above list, Lovecraft was especially keen to get hold of anything before 1805 and in any condition. Many of these used the old long-S in the text…

I can dream a whole cycle of colonial life from merely gazing on a tattered old book or almanack with the long S.

This dream had first occurred very early in his life, and at age five the family Almanack had made a lasting impression…

my earliest memories — a picture, a library table, an 1895 Farmer’s Almanack, a small music-box

Evidently then this annual was taken and consulted in his home at that time. Also cherished and kept, since we know he was able to read the entire set…

[As a boy] I read them all through from 1815 to the present, & came early to think of every turn & season of the year in terms of the crops, the zodiac, the moon, the ploughing & [harvest] reaping, the face of the landscape, & all the other primeval guideposts which have been familiar to mankind since the first accidental discovery of agriculture in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

Nor did he overlook the rustic pictures…

I am always fond of seasonal pictures, & dote on the little ovals on the cover of the ancient Farmer’s Almanack — spring , summer, autumn, & winter

On his travels he later found places where the homely traditions and moon and star-lore of the Farmer’s Almanack were still followed, such places as Vermont…

That Arcadian world which we see faintly reflected in the Farmer’s Almanack is here a vital & vivid actuality [in rural Vermont]

The publication was indeed a useful one. For instance it enabled Lovecraft to anticipate with ease the year’s lesser heavenly events…

Sun crosses the equinox next Wednesday at 7:24 p.m. according to the Old Farmer’s Almanack — which we have had in our family, I fancy, ever since its founding in 1793.

The weather predictions found in its pages were perhaps of less use. Or at least, they had become so by the late 1970s. In 1981 Weatherwise magazine made a tally of sixty forecasts across five years. They found the month-by-month Almanack forecast to be little better than chance by then. How accurate the monthly weather forecasts might have been in the 1895-1935 period and in Providence remains to be determined. It might be quite interesting to tally that, with perhaps a leeway of two days. But to do so one would likely need to go back to the original journal / newspaper summaries of the month’s actual weather, rather than trust any recently ‘rectified’ computer-created data-series.

The Almanacks also contained a wealth of rather more reliable factual information. Such as the dates of the year’s key elections, court days, festival and saint’s days, tides, recurring natural events (usual time of lambing, bringing in cows for the winter etc), anniversary dates for sundry historical events, lists of Presidents, the standard weights and measures, distances, nutritional values of various crops and fodder, together with small amusements such as riddles and poetry. Short articles could also be present. Most importantly for Lovecraft’s huge flow of parcels and letters, the little booklets also appear to have given the latest postal regulations in a concise form.

In format they were rather like Lovecraft’s stories, then. A whole lot of sound facts garnished with a few slivers of delicious speculation (meaning the weather forecasts, rather than monsters and cults). Indeed, one might see something of the ‘carnivalesque’ at work in such publications. The use of a small inversion, that by its amusing ridiculousness serves to bolster the belief in the facticity of the rest of the structure.

The latest annual Almanack was also ever-present in Lovecraft’s own study, as he wrote to Galpin in 1933…

You may be assur’d, that my colonial study mantel has swinging from it the undying Farmer’s Almanack of Robert B. Thomas (now in its 141st year) which has swung beside the kindred mantels of all my New-England forbears for near a century & a half: that almanack without which my grandfather wou’d never permit himself to be, & of which a family file extending unbrokenly back to 1836 & scatteringly to 1805 still reposes in the lower drawer of my library table [evidently Lovecraft had by this time added 1876-1836 to the “family file”] … which was likewise my grandfather’s library table. A real civilisation, Sir, can never depart far from the state of a people’s rootedness in the soil, & their adherence to the landskip & phaenomena & methods which from a primitive antiquity shap’d them to their particular set of manners & institutions & perspectives.

This mantel-hanging had been a long-standing practice. For instance it was noted by his earliest visitor, when Lovecraft was emerging from his hermit phase. Rheinhart Kleiner recalled of his curious visit to the darkened room that…

An almanac hung against the wall directly over his desk, and I think he said it was the Farmers’ Almanac.

Lovecraft even kept up the tradition during the hectic New York years, writing in late 1924…

the Old Farmer’s Almanack … of which I am monstrous eager to get the 1925 issue

In that era the Almanacks were very often personalised and annotated quite heavily by their users, and a rural man’s personal collection grew to form a sort of natural diary and personal time-series for useful farm data. In 1900 40% of the American people still worked on the land, so such things were vital.

So far as I’m aware we have none of Lovecraft’s own copies today, so we don’t know if he also marked and noted them in various ways. Or if he had inherited copies that had been so marked by his relatives.

He also hints at being aware of and valuing another such publication. For instance, when he remarked on the discovery of the planet Pluto he wrote…

the discovery of the new trans-Neptunian planet …. I have always wished I could live to see such a thing come to light — & here it is! …. One wonders what it is like, & what dim-litten fungi may sprout coldly on its frozen surface! I think I shall suggest its being named Yuggoth! …. I shall await its ephemerides & elements with interest. Probably it will receive a symbol & be treated of in the Nautical Almanack — I wonder whether it will get into the popular almanacks as well?

In his early newspaper columns on astronomy he also appears to refer to this same publication…

The motions of these satellites, their eclipses, occultations, and transits, form a pleasing picture of celestial activity to the diligent astronomer; and are predicted with great accuracy in the National Almanack. [I assume here a mis-transcription by the newspaper editor of “National” for “Nautical”, or perhaps a correction to its shorthand name in the district].

Indeed, both Almanacks feature in Lovecraft’s “Principal Astronomical Work” list, among the vital accessories needed for a study of the night-sky…

Accessories:

Lunar Map by Wright.
Year Book — Farmer’s Almanack.
Planispheres — Whitaker & Barrett-Serviss.
Atlas by Upton — Library.
Opera glasses — Prism Binoculars.
Am. Exh. & Want Almanac. [meaning the American Ephemeris & Nautical Almanac, as “Exh.” is “Eph.” and “Want” should be “Naut”]

This Nautical Almanac is also on Archive.org, so we can peep inside a copy of that from 1910. Forthcoming eclipses were noted over several pages. Here, for instance we see all the details needed to observe a total eclipse of the Moon in November 1910, the beginning visible from “eastern North America”. I think we have a hint here about what Lovecraft was likely to have been doing in the late evening of 16th November 1910…

Archive.org also has The Old Farmer and his Almanack, a 1920 book which surveyed the topic with erudition. Lovecraft was heartily pleased to discover and read it shortly after publication.

Almanacks occur only once (and very trivially) in Lovecraft’s poetry. The one use in his fiction is more intriguing. In “The Picture in the House” (December 1920) a book is noted…

a Pilgrim’s Progress of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas

The sharp-eyed will have spotted that Lovecraft might have meant to imply that this “Thomas” could have been the ancestor of the Robert B. Thomas of Old Farmer’s Almanack fame. That might be how some savvy bookmen took it at the time, but it is not so. For Lovecraft would have known that there was a real “almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas” and that he was no relation. Robert B. Thomas himself tells us this fact, in recalling his early years of trying to get a start in publishing almanacks…

I wanted practical knowledge of the calculations of an Almanack. In September, I journeyed into Vermont to see the then-famous Dr. S. Sternes, who for many years calculated Isaiah Thomas’s Almanack, but failed to see him. … In the fall, I called on Isaiah Thomas of Worcester (no relation) to purchase 100 of his Almanacks in sheets, but he refused to let me have them. I was mortified and came home with a determination to have an Almanack of my own.

Thus my feeling is that Lovecraft knew of these snubs and also, probably while reading his The Old Farmer and his Almanack (1920), had learned that Isaiah Thomas had sustained a sideline in publishing booklets containing the worst sorts of “astrology, palmistry, and physiognomy”. Thus, later that same year Lovecraft gave curmudgeonly old Isaiah Thomas a small poke in his fiction, by implying that Isaiah had marred a classic book with “grotesque” pictures — so “grotesque” that the resulting book ended up resting next to Pigafetta’s account of the Congo and its cannibals.

Friday ‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Stars and Time in Providence

17 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in Astronomy, Historical context, Picture postals

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An amusing bit of trivia has spurred this week’s ‘Picture Postals’, but has led me to a subtle but potentially quite deep observation about the nature of time in Lovecraft’s Providence.

One of the two precision clocks at the heart of the Ladd Observatory was called “Howard”, which might have tickled Howard Phillips Lovecraft when he was observing and studying there. As many will know, as a youth he lived nearby, had his own key, and was permitted free access at any time. The clock was a “Howard Astronomical Regulator No. 74”, to be precise.

The “Howard” sidereal clock (measuring stellar or cosmic time) was and still is accompanied in the Ladd’s Clock Vault by a “Molyneaux mean time clock” (measuring solar time, or everyday ‘civil time’).

The Clock Vault (seen here across the hallway) in which the Ladd’s master clocks were kept.

Once the Ladd was opened and running, from September 1893 Professor Upton of the Observatory operated a wired…

system that transmitted telegraph time signals from precision clocks at Ladd Observatory throughout Providence and to other nearby cities.

The source-time for the signal was calculated by Ladd’s observation of the stars, thus giving exact ‘cosmic’ time. Knowing this gives a certain subtle spin to Lovecraft’s famous phrase of “when the stars were right”. In Providence, the stars were always right, since the stars (and presumably “Howard” as the site’s master star-clock) set the exact time for the city and its neighbours.

For the 1895 academic year Brown University invested in their own $100 “Howard”, precisely set by the Ladd Observatory time…

A very valuable Howard clock has recently been placed in the Steward’s office. It is regulated by Ladd Observatory standard time, and is thus kept as near correct as possible. The clock is connected with the bell-ringer’s room, so that now the college bell will be rung at exactly the right time.

The Ladd’s time-wires also went down to City Hall and to all points, via the services of a time-distribution contractor named the Rhode Island Protective Company.

Soon everyone had their exact time by the stars. One wonders if the wires are still there, presumably having gone down the hill under the earth rather than on poles that might be toppled in high winds. A possibility for a Mythos writer to explore, perhaps.

Here we see my colourising of an unusual view of the back of the Ladd, which corresponds with Lovecraft’s own isometric view as drawn in his boyish hand in 1904.

City documents show that the source of the city’s 1893-1916 wired time-transmissions was the square wooden-clad extension block, in which a “Seigmuller transit instrument” and the wired transmission unit was housed. Lovecraft’s drawing shows the observation-hole shutters on the block’s roof.

Note that Lovecraft has also drawn the path out back, which goes through an obvious gate to the small building with the curved roof. This can also be seen on the above photo, behind the later wireless transmissions hut (as war approached, the U.S. Naval Observatory transmitted exact time to the nation by radio from 1916 and thus took over Ladd’s local role).

What the small building with the curving roof was appears to be unknown, and later city plans for Ladd do not encompass it. But obviously Lovecraft thought it important enough to include on his drawing and there it appears to be part of the site. My guess would be it was a teaching room for the first-year Brown University Astronomy students, something that Professor Upton was keen to include from the first. Possibly with its own roof-flaps which could open to allow night observing, items which seem to be present on Lovecraft’s drawing of it. If so, being a hut-like structure with a stove for warmth, it would also be the obvious place to double-up as an impromptu kitchen — for making a hot early breakfast after a long cold night of traversing the astral coldness.

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: In the White Mountains

10 Friday Dec 2021

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In the spider-haunted Haverhill offices of the amateur journal Tryout, Lovecraft wrote the first of his published summer travelogues. It was a hasty, jotted affair, written to please the venerable old editor and give him some copy. But it was published and thus gives us a clear account of what he was doing and where he was going in the second half of August 1927. It appeared in Tryout for September 1927, titled “The Trip of Theobald”. One small point it reveals is Lovecraft’s first real experience of genuine mountains. As a young boy he may well have glimpsed the Catskills in a hazy blue distance, from the Hudson Valley train with his grandfather, but here he means mountains ‘up close’…

Saturday took a cheap excursion to the White Mountains — saw real mountains for the first time in my life, and had some superb views at Crawford Notch. Ascended Mt. Washington by cog-wheel railway, and had some splendid views on the way up, though it rained just as I reached the summit. (from “The Trip of Theobald”)

Postcards suggest it would have been quite an excursion by rail, with elevated bridges sweeping across deep gorges and the view climbing every higher….

From there he sent Donald Wandrei a postcard of “The Flume, Franconia Notch, White Mountains, NH”.

Note the ‘face’ that greets visitors, with an eel-like fish-head alongside it…

Further along the Franconia Notch…

Franconia Notch appears to be where the “Old Man of the Mountains” was, and presumably still is, located or at least to be viewed. This seems a natural place for an excursion to visit. My feeling is that the day’s itinerary was: Franconia Notch and the Old Man; Crawford Notch; and then the ascent of Mount Washington. The high stone head cannot have influenced Dream-quest, since the draft had been completed by 22nd January 1927 — unless Lovecraft knew of the excursion and was researching his August trip for summer 1927 before Dream-quest.

The postcard to Donald Wandrei appears to be the only evidence he was at Franconia Notch. But Lovecraft definitely mentions the Crawford Notch and its view. Here we see the train entering the ‘gate’ of the Crawford Notch…

And one of the views, once arrived there…

S.T. Joshi notes that elevations “less than 6,300 feet above sea level” are not technically mountains, despite this large region being sold to tourists in the 1920s and 30s as ‘The Switzerland of America’. But they were impressive nonetheless and — unlike Tolkien who had by then walked the high passes of the actual Switzerland — Lovecraft had nothing to compare them with. In 1929 he recalled their “grandeur”, in a letter to Derleth…

in northern New England we see the same type of landscape features on an enhanced scale - with a ruggedness which now and then (as in the White Mountains and some parts of Vermont) ascends into positive grandeur.

By 1932 he had still not seen a comparable sight. He recalled for Miss Toldrige in August 1932…

I wouldn’t mind seeing some good-sized mountains sooner or later — my mountainous experience having been confined to a single excursion (1927) to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, On that occasion I took the cog-wheel railway up Mt. Washington, but was deprived by sudden mists of a view from the summit. Still, it was spectral up there — with no sign of the earth below, & cosmic winds sweeping by from out of the unknown depths of space. I felt more isolated from this planet — & more potentially in touch with the unplumbed abysses of outer ether — than on any other occasion. The image lingers, & I may make fictional use of it sooner or later.

The cog-wheel railway up Mt. Washington began at the base station…

Here day-trip passengers disembarked and boarded a special high-level ‘mountain train’, seen here in a brochure-leaflet of the period…

Coming down must have been a bit of a hair-raiser, too.

The same brochure reveals the summit was ‘arctic’ in nature.

Lovecraft had already written At the Mountains of Madness by this point, and one wonders what his comment on this arctic landscape — “I may make fictional use of it sooner or later” — might have led to had he lived.

Here is a view from the summit, as it was when rain and mist did not obscure…

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: “Rhoby”

03 Friday Dec 2021

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This fine postcard evokes the rural world in which the wife of Lovecraft’s maternal grandfather, and later Lovecraft’s mother, came of age. A small public library, barely bigger than a chicken-coop, with a chicken-yard to one side. Possibly eggs were sold for a nominal amount, as an enticement to children to join the library. The location is North Scituate which is about six miles west of the very centre of Providence. Robie (known to Lovecraft as ‘Rhoby’) — Robie Alzada Place (1827–1896) — is the one who gives the place the connection to Lovecraft. S.T. Joshi, in I Am Providence, notes of her…

Of Whipple Phillips’s wife Robie [married Jan 1856] very little is known. Lovecraft states that she attended the Lapham Institute (cited by Lovecraft as “Lapham Seminary”) in North Scituate, Rhode Island … but does not supply the date of her attendance.

Lovecraft explained the somewhat convoluted family line, to Moe in a letter…

These [ancestors] marry’d, respectively, Stephen Place and Jeremiah Phillips — and in the next generation Sarah’s daughter Rhoby Place (nam’d for her aunt) marry’d Rhoby’s son Whipple Phillips …. these espoused cousins becoming my mother’s parents.

The Lovecraft family ‘Commonplace Book’ contained much information about Robie’s Place family and ancestors at nearby Foster, R.I. de Camp’s biography of Lovecraft, perhaps leaning on oral evidence that has not come down to us, has…

In 1855, he and his younger brother James fell in love with two local girls, Robie Alzada Place and her cousin Jane Place. Said Whipple to James: “You take Jane and the farm, while I take Robie and go to Providence to seek my fortune.

The newly married couple then lived a few miles further west, at Foster, in the homestead built there by her father Stephen Place and in which Robie had been born. (Lovecraft’s mother was also to be born at the Foster house). One might then suspect that the unmarried Robie had regularly travelled the few miles from Foster to North Scituate for her schooling. But a little research reveals a new data point. It was a boarding school with large boarding facilities for girls, and she may thus have been staying there in the week and then going home at weekends…

Her most likely attendance dates centre on circa 1845-50, with Lovecraft himself suggesting from “1845” in one letter. The school would have been known as the “Smithville Seminary”, here seen circa 1900 and with the frontage much unchanged. One assumes a school library matching that of the town itself, and perhaps with some connection between the the two libraries.

Did Lovecraft ever visit? He certainly passed through the general district at his leisure on his 21st birthday. Since he had treated himself to an epic all-day tram (‘car’) ride. This first sent him out of Providence and…

riding westward through the picturesque countryside of my maternal ancestors” (letter to F. Lee Baldwin, 1934)

On his return from New York his family history researches may have taken him there in pursuit of memories of Robie and her schooling, and especially her astronomical work. We know that in the mid 1920s, after returning from New York, he made several long and intensive ‘gleaning’ expeditions to Foster and Greene and roundabouts in search of family history.

However, he may not have found much. By 1923 the Institute had passed through several hands and the old Baptist records and yearbooks had undoubtedly been removed to Baptist archives. By 1923 it had become established as the Watchman Institute, though there were bad fires there in 1924 and 1926 and “both wings burned down” according to one history. One has to wonder if there was much there for Lovecraft and his aunt to glean circa 1926-28, other than a brief stroll past the smoke-stained frontage and around the charred grounds.

But Lovecraft might have learned something of the texture of the old life, in Foster and North Scituate, nearer to home. Because his near-lifelong Providence barber came from North Scituate, and one thus imagines that the barber’s memories of the place and its gleaming ‘school on the knoll’ came up from time to time in the barber’s chair…

Had my hair cut yesterday by the same old barber who removed my flowing curls in 1894. He’s a good old R.I. Yankee of the 7th generation of North Scituate settlers.” (May 1926)

There was also a fine new observatory in North Scituate, albeit 75 years later and private. Lovecraft’s “The September Sky” newspaper astronomy column (1st September 1914) concluded by noting the opening of the then-new observatory there…

Of particular interest to Rhode Islanders is the opening of Mr. F. E. Seagrave’s new private observatory in North Scituate, about two miles north of the village. The building stands on an eminence 342 feet above sea-level, free from the smoke and lights of the city, and commanding a magnificent view of the celestial vault.

The observatory had formerly been on 119 Benefit Street, Providence, but there appears to be no evidence of the young Lovecraft being invited to visit the new one. But Robie might have done so, and before the building of the observatory there. Robie had been a Baptist, but that did not then preclude also being an astronomer with a substantial library and presumably a telescope to match. Lovecraft told Moe in a 1915 letter…

My maternal grandmother, who died when I was six, was a devoted lover of astronomy, having made that a speciality at Lapham Seminary, where she was educated; and though she never personally showed me the beauties of the skies, it is to her excellent but somewhat obsolete collection of astronomical books that I owe my affection for celestial science. Her copy of Burritt’s Geography of the Heavens is today the most prized volume in my library.

Robie’s Smithville Seminary was itself on a knoll, perhaps good enough for observing. But back in circa 1845-55 (before the building of the observatory), could Mr. Seagrave’s apparently excellent 342-feet high observing hill have also been one regularly visited by parties of local amateur astronomers — Robie among them?

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: Pterodactyls

26 Friday Nov 2021

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British Museum, possibly 1920s.

In this week’s ‘Picture Postals’ post…

A dark and monstrous lizard-shape that glides
Along the waters of the inland tides

These are the concluding lines from a Weird Tales poem by Frank Belknap Long, later quoted by Lovecraft in corresponding with Long about dinosaurs in 1930. The master had been kindly sent a dinosaur bone from California. (Incidentally, Long’s original poem had “Upon”, not the improving “Along”. So this might count as a little expert Lovecraft micro-revision).

Given the visual appearance of young Lovecraft’s nightmarish ‘Night-gaunts’ one has to wonder what part an early exposure to the imagery of the pterodactyl might have unconsciously had on a very young H.P. Lovecraft. First, what are the dates for this? Well, he began to have nightmares about them at five and a half, so a visual influence from print would have to have been before 1896.

It is of course possible that the black crepe and mourning silks worn by the family on the death of ‘Rhoby’ partly inspired the night-gaunts. Lovecraft was born August 1890, and therefore would have been five and a half in February 1896. ‘Rhoby’ (about whom more next Friday) died 26th January 1896, and the mourning presumably continued until the springtime. Thus the dates fit remarkably well, if one assumes a direct reaction in the boy’s nightmares after a few weeks. However, it must be asked what prior template he might have had. A leathery flying form onto which the family’s sombre rusting black crepe could have been ‘pinned’ at the moment of inception, so-to-speak.

Lovecraft much later, in 1916, speculated that the night-gaunts might have been influenced by the ‘man-devils’ of Dore…

I used to draw them after waking (perhaps the idea of these figures came from an edition de luxe of Paradise Lost with illustrations by Dore [1866], which I discovered one day in the east parlor).

But it is at least worth considering if he might have had a template elsewhere. In popular pterodactyl imagery, and thus had an earlier and forgotten impression of them, for what young boy is not fascinated by such things. Could he have seen them at that time? Yes. Judging by the book Extinct Monsters: A Popular Account (1893) the creatures were quite well known the late Victorians, and a science timeline shows that the first complete scientific description being given in 1891. Presumably this ‘flying dragon’ arousing a certain interest among the public, and among boys in particular. So the timing is perfect there, if they were indeed transmuted into night-gaunts by Lovecraft’s nightmares.

Indeed they had been visualised in living flight (wrongly, but somewhat zoog-like) as early as 1843, as here by Newman…

Thus by the early-mid 1890s they would have been included in most general encyclopedias (as Pterosaur, Pterodactylus, Pteranodon, Pterodactyl, etc), and we know that Lovecraft was poring over at least one of those a little later…

With the insatiable curiosity of early childhood [circa age 8], I used to spend hours poring over the pictures in the back of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary — absorbing a miscellaneous variety of ideas. After familiarising myself with antiquities, mediaeval dress & armour, birds, animals, reptiles, fishes, flags of all nations, heraldry, &c., &c.,

They also feature briefly in Verne’s novel A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1871), illustrated and seen during the raft voyage chapter…

the Pterodactyl, with the winged hand, [was seen] gliding or rather sailing through the dense and compressed air like a huge bat.

Joshi’s “I Am Providence” notes of the boy storyteller…

Lovecraft admits to being a “Verne enthusiast” and that “many of my [earliest] tales showed the literary influence of the immortal Jules”.

It is thus not impossible that he was at an early age at least browsing ‘the monster-pictures’ in the family edition of Verne, if not actually reading them yet.

The other possibility is that a museum in Boston might have had a life-size reconstruction or vivid diorama circa 1894. But I can find no trace of such in Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840–1910, and Richard Fallon’s new Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature (2021) indicates a general 1900 start for major modern museum dinosaur shows in East Coast America, while also lamenting that…

The significance of dinosaurs for general audiences during the late nineteenth century, when dinosaurs were morphing from British lizards to multiform American monsters, however, has hardly been studied. … The lack of detailed attention to dinosaurs in the literary culture of the turn-of-the-century period, and especially the 1890s, is surprising, given that these were the decades in which the word ‘dinosaur’ first became meaningful to general audiences.

So my suggestion is possible on the dates, but cannot now be proven. There is indeed further negative evidence. If this night-gaunt -like creature did make an early and vivid impression in Lovecraft’s very early childhood, then it does not surface later — at least in the original form. Since Lovecraft only makes two fleeting explicit mentions of the creature in fiction…

This was my first word of the discovery, and it told of the identification of early shells, bones of ganoids and placoderms, … dinosaur vertebrae and armour-plates, pterodactyl teeth and wing-bones …” (from “At the Mountains of Madness”)

I fancied I could vaguely recognise lesser, archaic prototypes of many forms — dinosaurs, pterodactyls, ichthyosaurs,” (from “The Shadow Out of Time”)

The pterodactyl does however make a brief and central appearance early in the earlier long essay (“Cats and Dogs”)…

“I have no active dislike for dogs, any more than I have for monkeys, human beings … or pterodactyls.”

Neave Parker postcard for the British Museum, probably early 1950s.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: the Providence Woolworth’s

19 Friday Nov 2021

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This week, another of my peeps through the door of a store, cafe or soda-bar known to Lovecraft. The Providence Woolworth or Woolworth’s was once a world-famous and much-loved budget department store chain. Here we see the wider urban context for the Providence store. It was just around the corner from the Biltmore Hotel and thus in the centre of the city…

Here we see what the blue-grey ‘tower’ was. The Woolworth building was also next to City Hall, and the store had a similar but presumably less salubrious “Kresge’s 5 & 10c” store opportunistically tagged on behind it.

This store was where, we now know from Letters to Family, Lovecraft acquired his nearly complete set of Our Empire’s Story, told in Pictures. As I wrote earlier…

He found four of this set at 10 cents each, while browsing for bargains before Christmas 1934 in the Providence branch of the Woolworth Store.

We might then assume that in the depths of the Great Depression he found some regular enjoyment in browsing here for small ‘micro bargains’, as people do in a recession, and he likely paid special attention to things like the stationery, budget reprint books, pencils and the sort of bargain candy that Woolworths was once famous for. We definitely know that the 20th century’s all-time champion letter-writer found his envelopes there circa springtime 1934, having finally run out of the supply he had from his friend Kirk. He wrote to Helen Sully in May 1934…

I may reply that the containing envelope (an honest product of my philanthropic stationer-in-chief, Mr. Frank Winfield Woolworth) is infinitely less likely to succumb to disintegration than were the ageing reliquiae of the (to my old correspondents) famous George W. Kirk charity stationery which I have been using for 9 years.

I Am Providence observed the pitiable poverty that lay behind such budget purchases…

In late 1935 we even read of Lovecraft having to conserve on ink: he felt unable to make repeated purchases of his usual Skrip ink, at 25¢ a bottle, and was trying to get by on Woolworth’s 5¢ brand.

Here is a detail from an overpainted card of circa 1940, its impossibly gaudy colours toned down, which broadly indicates Lovecraft’s view on approaching the Providence Woolworth’s on foot…

And another of the same building, perhaps 20 years earlier and from further back…

As one approached, the quality of the window dressing in the various show-windows would attract the eye and would probably cause Lovecraft to linger in front of those showing books. Here we see a typical Woolworth’s children’s book selection for Christmas, with books priced at 25 and 10 cents, and one item vaguely akin to Lovecraft’s Our Empire’s Story 10-cent books.

Since Lovecraft was keen to assure his Welsh correspondent (Harris) that the Our Empire’s Story illustrated books were also valuable as visual reference for adults, we might assume they were marketed to children and thus stocked in the children’s books section of the Woolworth store. In those days an old gent could browse a children’s section alone, without security guards being summoned. He elsewhere notes that books of other types might be found there… “Very fair atlases can be obtained at Woolworth’s”.

There were also displays of goods in the recessed main entrance. As seen below, their Providence store promoted the latest hit music records in this way. Lovecraft’s lowbrow musical taste would likely feel right at home here.

The store may have glittered like this but he liked “Frank’s” lack of pomposity, as evidenced his “To a Sophisticated Young Gentleman” poem (1928). In this he remarked that young Long was as… “devoid of Pomp as Woolworth’s”.

Ken Faig has recently identified “Frank’s” as Lovecraft’s sometime name for Woolworth’s. Evidently the master whimsically felt as if Mr. Frank Winfield Woolworth were a sort of capitalist philanthropist-magician, personally conjuring up for impoverished old gents their affordable boxes of envelopes, 5-cent ink-bottles, 10-cent illustrated history books and atlases, and occasional bags of chocolate creams.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: De Leon Springs, De Land.

12 Friday Nov 2021

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This week’s Friday ‘Picture Postal’ continues the loose Florida theme, begun for me by a recent Voluminous podcast in which Lovecraft preparing for an epic trip to meet Barlow in De Land, Florida.

After his arrival at De Land, and settling into the Barlow spread some 14 miles away from the town centre, they began to visit such local tourist spots as there were. One of these places was the nearby De Leon Springs. It was an obvious choice, as there was then a choice bit of antiquity for Lovecraft to enjoy.

Among our diversions have been several trips to ancient places of the sort I dote upon…. including a Spanish sugar-mill at De Leon Springs which antedates 1763 (vide enc. [see enclosed free-leaflet or postcard]). … [many such places having] the tropical background & marks of the jungle’s reconquest, being picturesque & exotic to the highest degree” (letter to Helen V. Sulley)

This is what the spot looked like…

“Tall trees casting a sinister twilight over shallow lagoons…” (Lovecraft on a 1931 visit to Florida).

This card accentuates the rather sinister fungus-like moss…

This appears to be the millwheel, presumably out-of-sight at the back when the sugar-mill was seen picturesquely across the springs? Or perhaps a separate structure…

Another card of one of De Land’s springs shows the more vibrant local colours one would see in the bright sunshine. It also perhaps evokes the wild ‘island’ and lake/riverine spread that the Barlow family had ‘out back’ of their isolated place, although it appears that around the house the native vegetation was mixed with belts of “tall Australian pines” (possibly planted as storm-breaks, and to dry out the ground?) as Lovecraft describes them.

This was no fleeting visit and Lovecraft had plenty of time to explore and get to know the environment and its snakes…

De Land, Florida, where I visited the young weird tale enthusiast R. H. Barlow for nearly 2 months in May & June, 1934.

The following summer he spent a mammoth 10 weeks there. It was, arguably, during these times that he was probably most happy/healthy as an adult.

De Land is a modern town which owes all its beauty to its fine subtropical setting — live-oaks, moss, magnolias … The Barlow place is 14 miles west of the village, & out of sight of any other human habitation … The climate is admirable — 85º to 90º day after day, & no chill spells at this season, I feel like a new person — as spry as a youth, & without a trace of the usual trouble which besets me in the north. I go hatless & coatless, & am maintaining an admirable layer of tan. Snakes abound to a picturesque degree; & young Barlow shoots them for their skin — which he uses in amateur bookbinding. The other day I saw him bag a coach-whip snake all of 7 feet long. (from a letter to Helen Sulley, 26th May 1934)

After reading Lovecraft’s letters I sometimes formed the vague impression that young Barlow was almost as blind as a bat (“he is very unfortunately handicapped by poor eyesight” etc). But evidently he could pick off a snake’s head in verdant undergrowth with a rifle, and presumably at some distance? Perhaps the explanation is he had good long-sight, but poor short-sight?

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: In the soda-fountain

05 Friday Nov 2021

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This week, a picture that evokes Lovecraft satisfying his craving for sugar.

Here we see what appears to be typical soda-fountain inside a Rhode Island drug store. The British have never had quite the same thing in retail, but chemist shop would be about the nearest term. That doesn’t quite catch it, though, as in America the retail mix included tobacco sales and the soda-fountain counter/corner. Large doses of sugar and strong tobacco were considered healthy, back then.

The date is perhaps the late 1940s, a few years after the war? Though some may be able to date it more precisely by knowing at what point the wearing of ‘bobbie-sox’ became a student fashion among the girls of Rhode Island.

But even if as late as the early 1950s, it’s still generally indicative both of the look and the all-ages / all-genders nature of such places back in the 1930s. Note the good selection of candy bars, and the Lovecraft-a-like man at the counter. Possibly about to try the ice-cream and give his verdict.

Lovecraft knew East Greenwich, noting in his ‘homecoming from New York’ letter the train passing through… “East Greenwich with its steep Georgian alleys climbing up from the railway”. He had had close family ancestors there, and in the archives is a card he sent from there to Morton. Thus it’s not impossible he may have once stopped for a summer ice-cream at the East Greenwich soda fountain.

Lovecraft notes in Travels in the Provinces of America (1929) the jobs of “Everybody one speaks to”, talking of the usual pattern for his visits to place. His short list includes “soda-fountain men”, which indicates he frequented such places…

hotel clerks, soda-fountain men, [train] conductors, [tram car] motormen, coach-drivers

Why not coffee shops? I assume they might have been more heavily tobacco-smoky sort of places, their ice-cream could have been more expensive and in smaller portions, the staff could have been less buffed, and there could also be less opportunity to select one of the cheaper candy-bars to sustain him on a long walk. Being also a chemist shop, they were probably reliably ‘open all hours’.

They were also suitable place to take young friends. For instance, I recall reading that when Lovecraft arrived in De Land, to meet Barlow for the first time, they immediately repaired to such a place.

Also, back in January 2020 I found a postcard showing Houdini in Providence, performing in 1917 for a vast crowd outside the building showing “Evening News” on its facade. The picture was relatively small, though. I’ve just this week found a better larger version…

‘Picture postals’ from Lovecraft: the entrance to the Brooklyn Public Library

29 Friday Oct 2021

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In 1941 Brooklyn unveiled a new Public Library, complete with an immense and somewhat Lovecraftian front door.

Psycho-geographers might imagine it as a ‘trace’ left by Lovecraft’s intensity in Brooklyn, become manifest in the ever-changing architecture of the city. Sadly there appear to be no pictures of it on a misty night in the early 1940s. But I imagine that there could have been a ‘shiver of the eerie’, if one had to pass through this portal on a sepulchral evening when no-one else was around.

I also wonder if it might have featured as a location in the imaginative fiction of the 1960s? It seems the sort of thing which might have been woven into a story set in Brooklyn.

Did Lovecraft ever see the designs for this doorway, as published in the weekend papers, shortly before his death? Perhaps to chuckle knowingly and lightly tap the page? We can’t know unless someone can point to a comment made in a late letter, but the timing seems right and we know he was an avid newspaper reader.

NY Urbanism‘s short article on the early history of this Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch usefully gives the basic year-dates, stating that…

In 1935 the library scrapped Almirall’s project [which had become a hopeless ‘political football’] and brought in new architects, Githens and Keally, who stripped the partially completed structure of its ornament, instead proposing to build a more modern building. The new design was completed in 1941 and featured an enormous central entrance glittered with gold surrounded by a blank, unadorned limestone facade.

‘Picture Postals’ from Lovecraft: ‘Saturn in Nantucket’

22 Friday Oct 2021

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“One of the principal features today is the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Vestal St. (formerly Goal Lane), which adjoins the birthplace of the celebrated female astronomer (professor at Vassar) whose name it bears. The observatory is modern — a memorial to Prof. Mitchell. I had a good chance to observe Saturn through its excellent 5” telescope.” (to J. Vernon Shea, 10th February 1935)

“I had an excellent view of Saturn” (to Arthur Harris, 1st September 1934)

He had once had a fever-vision of flying to Saturn…

though I often dream of things of the most bizarre and vivid sort … the only well-defined delirium I ever had was in 1903 … [I] mumbled things about flying to Mars and Saturn.

In summer 1934 the observatory’s observers (Margaret Harwood and John Heath) were noted for their work on discovering variable asteroids, and the observatory seemingly benefited from the general oversight of the Harvard College Observatory. The 1908 (“modern”, to Lovecraft’s thinking) elevation plans for the place show that the apparently twee external ‘garden house’ appearance actually hides hidden depths…

Which may interest Mythos writers, as in “how far down does it go…”? Google StreetView shows the Observatory much as it was, though with side extensions. It appears to be open to interested visitors.

The resort town also has the Loines Observatory, which allows public viewing and is often confused with the Maria Mitchell Observatory, but the first dome there was not open until 1968…

“Since its establishment in 1968 and 1998, Loines Observatory’s two domes house multiple telescopes for research and public astronomical programs”.