00:00:06:09 - 00:00:09:14 Sean Welcome to Voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:09:15 - 00:00:15:05 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:15:05 - 00:00:17:13 Sean In each episode will read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney. 00:00:17:19 - 00:00:22:23 Andrew and I'm Andrew Leman. Together we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:00:23:01 - 00:00:26:00 Sean For today's letter, I chose one written on the first of May 1926. 00:00:27:15 - 00:00:29:08 Sean To Frank Belknap Long. 00:00:29:08 - 00:00:33:07 Andrew Frank Belknap Long his dear friend, his business partner and. 00:00:34:02 - 00:00:34:18 Sean Grandson. 00:00:34:18 - 00:00:39:11 Andrew And grandson. Okay, let's hear it. 00:00:39:22 - 00:01:10:17 Sean 10 Bond Street Providence, Rhode Island, May one, 1926. Eminent and Middle-Aged Bard: Grandpa was delighted to receive your graceful and news filled epistle of the 28th and wishes to extend his belated congratulations upon your 24th birthday. My what a big grown up man. Last Tuesday the old gentleman meant to drop you a line but was so inundated with miscellaneous tasks that his aged memory failed until such procedure was too late. 00:01:11:13 - 00:01:43:11 Sean Your preamble is delightfully flattering and it tickles one's vanity agreeably to be nourished with the urbane allusion that one is missed from the circle in which one has moved. The grain of sand loves to think that it is missed by the inimitable shore, whence the tide of born it. I can assure you individually and collectively that I lament my inability to attend the meetings and wish that some airplane service might enable me to be present on Wednesday nights whilst still residing in a civilized white man's country. 00:01:43:20 - 00:02:09:18 Sean Or better still, I wish you guys would come to your senses, realize for once that for all the New York is a dead city without connection to American life and emigrate en masse to the states where the hardiest and most grandfatherly of welcomes await you. Enclosed are some Smithiana, and very shortly I shall send you by Express a collection of 20 Ashtonsmiththick paintings, which will utterly and absolutely knock you out! 00:02:09:19 - 00:02:32:06 Sean GAWD! Those colours!! Opium Madness unleashed.... But wait till you see them! When you have glutted your own eyes, display them to the gang, and ask Samuelus to see that they reach Benjamin De Casseres. Then make sure they get safely back to Clericus Ashtonius -who would die if anything adverse were to happen to them. Oh, boy! "Twilight" 00:02:32:07 - 00:02:57:21 Sean "Sunset in Lemuria" - "The Witche's Wood" - and the Dunsany design! Sancta Pegana, but I don't know that it's right to loose such diabolic provocation upon a young person already addicted to rhapsodic extravagances of diction! And now Grandpa will tell you - all of you boys - about his return to normalcy and his awakening from the queer dream about being away from home. 00:02:58:12 - 00:03:23:19 Sean As supplementary material I send three items in care of Belknap, but design'd for the equal attention of all - a folder of modern Providence, a set of cards of historick Providence, and a newspaper extract describing and illustrating our splendid new art museum - whose opening was deferr'd till last week, as if to allow the Old Gentleman to get home in ample time to be in at the start. 00:03:24:02 - 00:03:58:08 Sean Well, to begin with, back in the dream period Grandpa has some notion of having boarded a train somewhere. A blur of stations follow'd, and all at once there came a sight which presaged a return to the world of reality - an old-fashion'd wall of tumbled stone betwixt rolling meadows! Memory! Broken threads! But see! A little white farmhouse amidst green hills! A village steeple beyond the distant crest! A square wooden Georgian building on an eminence! 00:03:59:04 - 00:04:40:04 Sean Who am I? What am I? Where am I? I - a corpse - once lived, and here are the signs of resurrection. The year ? It must be 1923, 24.... and the place....look! The old familiar billboards! Packer's Tar Soap! Gorton's Codfish! GOD, I am alive! And this is Home! Novanglia AEterna! Novanglia Caput Mundi! His Majesty's Province of Connecticut, which on the East adjoins the Center of Civilisation! 00:04:40:15 - 00:05:13:08 Sean A sense of rushing through chartless corridors seized me, and I saw dates dancing in aether: 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1925, 1924, 1923 Crash! Two years to the bad, but who the hell gives a damn? 1923 ends 1926 begins! Even the spring had delay'd so that I might see it break over and over Novanglia's antient hills! What does a blind spot or two in one's existence matter? 00:05:13:17 - 00:05:39:22 Sean America has lost New York to the mongrels, but the sun shines as brightly over Providence and Portsmouth and Salem and Marblehead - I have lost 1924 and 1925, but the dawn of vernal 1926 is just as lovely as I view it from Rhodinsular windows! After all, a fantaisiste ought to like a little shaking-up or abnormality in chronology and geography. 00:05:40:05 - 00:06:17:20 Sean New York was a nightmare, and I have already form'd a most delightful picture of the gang as meeting in various Colonial Providence homes! As time passes, my selective imagination will form an idealised picture of those things in New York, which were really beautiful - the the skyline, the sunsets over Central Park, the Pantheon model in the museum, the Japanese garden in the Brooklyn Museum grounds, etc - and they will stand apart from the Babylonish squalor and parvenu garishness of a dead city, as delectable bits seen through an old- fashioned stereoscope 00:06:18:00 - 00:06:43:14 Sean in some beautifully Victorian but fascinatingly familiar old high-ceiled parlour with Rogers groups and bearskin rugs, in the heart of a real Providence home. Now that I am learning to write 1926 instead of 1923, all will go very much as usual - I, an essential Providentian, will die as I was born - and Brooklyn will take its place 00:06:43:14 - 00:07:19:03 Sean beside Cleveland, Washington, Philadelphia, and other distant towns which I have briefly visited. Well - the train sped on, and I experienced silent convulsions of joy in returning step by step to a walking and tri-dimensional life. New Haven - New London - and then quaint Mystic, with its colonial hillside and landlocked cove. Then at last a still subtler magic fill'd the air - nobler roofs and steeples, with the train rushing airily above them on its lofty viaduct - 00:07:19:08 - 00:08:01:14 Sean Westerly - in His Majesty's Providence of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations! God save the King! Intoxication follow'd - Kingston - East Greenwich with its steep Georgian alleys s climbing up from the railway - Apponaug and its ancient roofs - Auburn - just outside the city limits - I fumble with bags and wraps in a desperate effort to appear calm - THEN - a delirious marble dome outside the window - a hissing of air brakes - a slackening of speed - surges of ecstasy and dropping of clouds from my eyes and mind - HOME - 00:08:02:10 - 00:08:35:12 Sean UNION STATION - PROVIDENCE !!! Something snapped - and everything unreal fell away. There was no more excitement; no sense of strangeness, and no perception of the lapse of time since last I stood on that holy ground. Of disillusion, or of disparity betwixt expectation and fulfillment, there was not the faintest microscopic suggestion, because the wildly improbable notion of ever having been away had utterly receded into the gulfs of a fantasy and dream. 00:08:36:03 - 00:09:00:23 Sean What I had seen in sleep every night since I left it, now stood before me in prosaic reality - precisely the same, line for line, detail for detail, proportion for proportion. Simply, I was home - and home was just as it had always been since I was born there 36 years ago. There is no other place for me. 00:09:01:02 - 00:09:27:11 Sean My world is providence. We now took a taxicab for the house in Barnes Street - an ancient colonial neighborhood I had always known - and were soon greeting my aunts and the faithful negress Delilah, whom they had hired to straighten things out. Then followed a resumption of real life as I had dropped it two years ago - the life of a settled American gentleman in his ancestral environment. 00:09:28:01 - 00:09:53:02 Sean We went out to an exhibition of paintings at the Art club (the colonial house in hilly Thomas Street, in front of which I snap-shotted Mortonius last fall - I mean the fall of '23) (circular enclosed) and had dinner downtown at Shepard's (neo-) Colonial Restaurant. In the evening a cinema show at the Good Old Strand in Washington Street completed a memorable and well-rounded day...... 00:09:54:08 - 00:10:23:03 Sean ...... I am fairly settled now so far as furniture is concern'd, tho' I have not yet attempted the arrangement of my books. That task will occupy next week, having been postponed while I wrestled with the mountains of unanswered mail accumulating during the excited restoration period. As for the place, I have a fine ground floor room, (a formal dining room with fireplace) and kitchenette alcove and a spacious brown Victorian wooden house at 00:10:23:10 - 00:10:49:14 Sean the 1880 period - a house, curiously enough, built by some friends of my own family, now long dead. My furniture fits in quite as neatly as in the Clinton Street place.... The house is immaculately clean, and inhabited only by select persons of the good old families - a miniature painter of some fame, and an official of the School of Design Museum, etc., etc. The neighborhood is perfect. 00:10:49:20 - 00:11:30:18 Sean All old Yankee Providence homes, with a good percentage of houses. Colonial. There is a little white colonial cottage, just renovated for an artist, only three doors away at the corner of Prospect Stree, and from the upper windows one may see the great brick Halsey Mansion, built in 1801 and reputed to be haunted. The vista from my pseudo-aerial desk corner is delectable - bits of antique houses, stately trees, urntopp'd white Georgian fence, and an ecstatic old fashioned garden which will be breathlessly transporting in a couple of months. Westward, from the brow of a hill, 00:11:30:19 - 00:12:31:17 Sean the view is awesome and prodigious - all the roofs, spires and domes of the lower town, and beyond them, the violet expanse of the far rolling rural meadows. The walk down town can be varied to suit one's mood, but it is always colonial. One may choose shady, stately Prospect Street, past the mansions of the Sharpes and Metcalfs, (Kleinerus will recall the neo-Queen Anne brick manor-house in whose courtyard I photograph'd him) or select the narrow, crooked downhill lanes whose quaint doorways are so suggestive of Marblehead. In any case, one has to the west the whole panorama of the lower town, with marble state house and exquisite First Baptist Steeple, (1775) and to the East (only a few blocks from my house) the colossal Roman bulk of the new Christian Science church, whose proud copper dome is the dominating feature of the Providence skyline. 00:12:32:02 - 00:12:56:06 Sean The view from this dome is said to be absolutely unparalleled - countless steepled towns, league on league of undulating countryside, and the beautiful blue bay to the south, gemmed with emerald islets. One can, the genial sexton says, see as far as Newport on good days; and he has promised to let me up there with a spy glass whenever I feel like making the climb. 00:12:57:12 - 00:13:25:21 Sean Contented? Why, gentlemen, I am home! Up and down this colonial hill I have walk'd ever since I could walk at all - and it has always exerted upon me the greatest possible fascination, even though my native part of Angell Street is somewhat farther East, in a decidedly newer (middle and later Victorian) district. Let no one tell me that Providence is not the most beautiful city in the world! 00:13:26:01 - 00:14:02:02 Sean Line for line, atmospheric touch for atmospheric touch, it positively and absolutely is! Colour, shade, contour, diversity, quaintness, impressiveness - all are there; and nothing save an aesthetick blind spot could possibly prevent any cultivated observer of Yankee tastes from recognising and reversing this supremacy at once. God knows I want no literature to feed my sense of beauty and variety when I live in the midst of this focus of scenick charm and historic richness! I must write about it. 00:14:02:07 - 00:14:05:04 Sean All other subjects seem flat and tame! 00:14:05:21 - 00:14:28:22 Sean My aunt, Mrs Clark, will probably move into a great sunny upper room here within a month, and my wife will be here either steadily or off and on, according to business arrangements now in progress. Many trips will engross me during the months to come -both pedestrian excursions to quaint or rural scenes close by, and 'bus or railway journeys to such places as Boston, 00:14:29:04 - 00:14:49:16 Sean Salem, Marblehead, Plymouth, (never seen by me!) New Bedford, (not seen by me since 1912) Newport, and the like. Visits from all you gentlemen will be superlatively welcome and each and any of you is promised the most enthusiastick if not the most expert antiquarian guidance. 00:14:49:24 - 00:14:52:23 Sean Moretonius, of course, must have his Durfee Hill. 00:14:53:03 - 00:15:31:23 Sean - for which stiffish jaunt I purpose to keep faithfully and training. And so it goes. The world is right side up again, and I can once more view the terrestrial scene from my normal angle as a placid and provincial Providentian. Be good boys, all of you, and write the Old Gentleman - and as for you, Chi - I mean Elderly Sir Francis, don't let your new fame get you conceited. Regards to all - including Felis. Your obedient Grandfather HP 00:15:32:04 - 00:15:44:05 Sean So this is my bookend, Andrew. Because I've been, I've been belaboring all these the Sonia phase of Lovecraft's life. And this is really the quite emphatic end to that period. And I really, I personally find this a delightful letter. And I think to me it's one of the most emotional letters that I think I have ever read. And and I think it's so telling about him as a man, because so much of it is about architecture and place and that sense of of returning to where he belongs, I'd swear makes him happier. 00:16:18:12 - 00:16:24:16 Sean He's happier in this letter than, I think anything else I have ever read by H.P. Lovecraft. 00:16:24:16 - 00:16:26:19 Andrew I agree completely. He is boiling over. 00:16:27:04 - 00:16:28:14 Sean With his jaw. He's gushing. 00:16:28:14 - 00:16:30:14 Sean He's it's really it's. 00:16:30:15 - 00:16:34:01 Andrew So many all caps and so many exclamation points. Yeah. 00:16:34:01 - 00:16:49:17 Sean And yeah, there's just a sense of unbridled joy at concluding the just I think what was for him a disastrous New York experiment. Yeah. And and coming home and 00:16:50:18 - 00:16:53:19 Sean It drove home to me I think just the fact of, you know, H.P. Lovecraft and I are different in a great many ways. And I think to understand him as a fan of the literature or as a scholar or whatever, you really have to wrap your head around what providence and Home means to him. 00:17:18:00 - 00:17:30:17 Sean Yeah, because it's I think I don't know. I don't I don't know many people whose personal association with place any place, frankly, but the place. 00:17:30:20 - 00:17:33:13 Sean From which they came is as Intense as Lovecraft's is. 00:17:35:20 - 00:17:40:08 Andrew Oh yeah. He identifies himself with. I mean, I am the place it is me. Yeah. 00:17:40:15 - 00:18:05:08 Sean The epitaph on that gravestone that was erected in the seventies by that's if anybody doesn't know, that's not actually his gravestone that was done way, way after the fact by fans. But could you have a more apt epitaph than I am providence for the guy? Because it really is There's just such a sense of of relief and release and he is. 00:18:05:08 - 00:18:16:07 Andrew So glad to be out of New York. Yeah. So glad he yeah. I mean, he even, you know, rhapsodized about the billboards for pine tar soap and codfish. 00:18:17:01 - 00:18:40:06 Sean Absolutely. Some of his writing while he's in Providence, you know, he'll complain about the immigrant neighborhoods or he doesn't like this or this new building is an abomination. And, you know, he's got this crusty old, you know, keep off my grass and don't change anything in Providence. But in this letter. Right. He it is it is the just the most intense love letter to that city. 00:18:40:06 - 00:19:03:06 Sean And for any of you who have not visited Providence, if you can, you should. It's actually it's a it's a terrific New England town. It's it's much more user friendly than Boston is just because it's it's it's it's like a way scaled down version of Boston's easier to get around on foot There's tons of historic buildings and lots of the places Lovecraft went and and the buildings that he loved and cherished are still there. 00:19:03:08 - 00:19:18:12 Sean And certainly if you walk around College Hill and you're a fan of him and and you know, know anything about his life, it's really, you know, delightful to to walk down those streets and go, you know, the the old gentleman of Providence was walking right here. 00:19:18:12 - 00:19:45:02 Andrew Yeah. Some a lot of it, of course, is still there And then but then there's quite a few places that he loved that are gone. Sure. And we visited Providence almost half a dozen times, at least, if not more. Yeah. And, you know, when our trips have always been, you know, con focused. So we've been we haven't been able to stray too far from the convention hall usually and haven't done as much sightseeing as I would like to do. 00:19:45:02 - 00:19:52:17 Andrew But in some ways, you know, some of the sights that I would really like to see are not there to be seen anymore anyway. 00:19:52:19 - 00:19:57:22 Sean Hmm. Are there particular things that are on your Providence list? 00:19:57:22 - 00:20:10:09 Andrew They're all like trivial in the grand scheme. I mean, the major buildings are still there because they're historic and they've been preserved. But like Shepard's old Colonial Restaurant, I would love to go to a place like that. Sure, I'd love to go. 00:20:10:09 - 00:20:10:18 Sean The Crown Tavern 00:20:10:18 - 00:20:31:05 Andrew Yeah, the Crown. The Crown Hotel. And, you know, just the places that meant something to him would be fun to see. And of course they have. Or the boardinghouse where Aunt Lillian lived and had the view of the neighbor's garden that was so spectacular that has, you know, since been torn down and is now one of the buildings of Brown University and stuff like that. 00:20:31:08 - 00:20:39:03 Andrew Because he paints such vivid pictures of them in these letters. It would just be fun to see them and they're not there anymore. 00:20:39:04 - 00:21:12:10 Sean Well, I would still say, though, that there are perhaps more old buildings or more buildings from the Lovecraft era that are still extant. in a neighborhood like College Hill in Providence. And so your average, you know, kind of town. So so there are if you should go there, there's a you can find online some great walking tours if you're there on your own and and walking around College Hill is I think the best at least you know, starter place to have that kind of Lovecraft experience And you'll walk past the Shand House and Prospect Park and the Atheneum and the Providence Art Club and Brown. 00:21:12:12 - 00:21:42:19 Andrew And even tracing his various home addresses in the city, which I did after reading this letter saying, Oh yeah, where is ten Barnes Street relative to 66, College Street relative to 454 Angel Street? Like, oh yeah, these were the places where he lived. And it does all form kind of an L-shaped there on in that part of town College Hill And yeah it's just interesting and yeah, those maps are online and you can do a self-guided walking tour of many of those places and several of them now have plaques or memorials to Lovecraft in them. 00:21:42:19 - 00:21:49:05 Sean Yeah, it's nice that there are a couple different ways in which his, his presence in the town has been. 00:21:49:05 - 00:21:49:20 Andrew Yeah I think. 00:21:50:01 - 00:21:55:18 Sean Memorialize it You know he's a tricky figure so tricky for kind of public and thing but I think you know, some people. 00:21:55:18 - 00:21:57:00 Andrew Object to memorializing. 00:21:57:00 - 00:22:12:07 Sean Him. Yeah. No that's okay too. At least the stuff that's out there is fairly subtle and not flogging anybody over the head. I think there are people who go looking for Lovecraft Square and miss it because they know the signage. It is pretty ostentatious or or anything overwhelming. 00:22:12:07 - 00:22:31:01 Andrew So one name in this letter that jumped out at me is Benjamin De Casseres. Yes, because I had never heard of Lovecraft, mentioned him before, and he was a fairly mainstream critic. And I mean, he was the kind of guy who's published in The Atlantic Monthly and the American Mercury, these, you know, highbrow magazines of the time. 00:22:31:08 - 00:22:47:09 Sean Yeah, I also it struck me as kind of curious because he made it. I am taking in what Lovecraft wrote at face value that that Samuel Loveman could actually get these Clark Ashton Smith to take his arrest. Yeah. 00:22:48:01 - 00:22:49:19 Andrew And to what end is. 00:22:49:19 - 00:22:52:00 Sean Yeah. Is he hoping that he'll write. 00:22:52:00 - 00:22:53:11 Andrew About him and. Yeah. I don't. 00:22:53:11 - 00:23:12:24 Sean Know. Yeah. I don't know what the intent was either, but I've had the sort of the same thing. He's maybe not quite the scale of H.L. Mencken, but yeah, you know, he's a yeah, significant, significant critic of his time. There was a section in here where, you know, it was nice to see that Lovecraft didn't write off New York entirely. 00:23:12:24 - 00:23:26:10 Sean There were a few things he liked. Yeah. And I just made me think of you. And one of the things that he liked was the Pantheon model in the museum. And so I fell down that rabbit hole, and it was really pretty interesting. 00:23:26:10 - 00:23:30:11 Andrew Oh, good. Because I tried to fall down it and couldn't get very deep. So tell me more about it because I was. 00:23:30:12 - 00:23:52:03 Sean Interested, fall in it. And that's people called Fouquet because there's a there was a famous miniature painter named Fouquet, but Love the Pantheon model was actually done by a guy named Francois Fouquet, and that was his thing. And he did a whole series of 00:23:52:03 - 00:23:52:22 Sean Really. 00:23:52:22 - 00:24:14:11 Sean really super detailed architectural models of famous buildings from antiquity. And they were done in plaster. And apparently his his whole technique for working was, was, you know, top secret. And he would do the facade and then the backside of the building split open so you can look inside. Right. And they are they are beautifully rendered and they are there. 00:24:14:11 - 00:24:21:13 Sean It's difficult to find documentation of them. I found some postcards for sale of them, which I suspect you've already bought on eBay. 00:24:21:13 - 00:24:41:17 Andrew But I have I saw one of those postcards, but it wasn't available to purchase all of them. This I if it had been, I would have. But I mean, I went to the I presume the museum in question is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Right. And I went there too, because I presume they still had it, but I could not find it in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 00:24:41:17 - 00:24:43:20 Andrew Does this model It must still exist. 00:24:43:21 - 00:24:57:17 Sean It does still exist. And for the life of me, I don't remember who has it because I found a photograph of the museum where they are. It's a it was an architectural museum and they're quite small there. Oh, really? Yeah. There, there. 00:24:57:24 - 00:25:01:06 Andrew Sean's holding up his hands. Maybe 14 inches apart. 00:25:01:06 - 00:25:23:13 Sean Something like that. Y Yeah. They, they and they're enclosed in glass where they are currently in things that are, you know, roughly the size of a typical fish aquarium. So and there were a whole series of them there in the glass. So I'll go back and see. I didn't jot down the name of the institution that had them, But yeah, it was hard to find information about them, but they were celebrating its time. 00:25:23:13 - 00:25:25:14 Sean And as a guy who does miniatures, I thought, if. 00:25:25:14 - 00:25:30:00 Andrew You can, if you can find that link again, send it to me and we'll put it up on the website to other people. 00:25:30:00 - 00:25:30:17 Sean And we'll go back. 00:25:30:22 - 00:25:35:21 Andrew Yeah. No I of you're right. Of course I really dig architectural miniatures and I would love to see this. 00:25:35:21 - 00:25:56:07 Sean It's Yeah though and the workmanship is is gorgeous and thinking of them making it in plaster Paris. All I could think was how the hell does that work? And it seemed much too soft as a material to work in. So then I'm like, Oh, well, molding and casting things. Or they make it a piece and like sanding and filing it away. 00:25:56:07 - 00:25:58:15 Sean I just it just made me interested in how. 00:25:59:13 - 00:26:15:06 Andrew Well plaster has long been a popular sculptural medium. And if you mix it right, you know it does have it. It's kind of like epoxy. It just has a certain amount of pop life where you can work with it and yeah, eventually it starts to set in and you're done and then you have to carve it. Yeah, but yeah. 00:26:15:14 - 00:26:34:14 Sean After that he then I thought it was interesting to see how he recounts the real journey, you know, leading in and going through all these different towns and, you know, some of which have gone on to become bigger and more significant and some of which, you know, it's probably hard to imagine there ever was. The train never did stop there. 00:26:35:04 - 00:26:44:10 Sean And so some of these small towns, but it's so beautiful and poetical build as it goes here to hear, to hear. And then finally, Bellamy's in Union Station and. 00:26:44:17 - 00:26:49:14 Andrew And how Connecticut which on the on the east borders the center of civilized Yeah. 00:26:50:19 - 00:26:54:06 Sean That's yeah it's really yeah that just. 00:26:55:03 - 00:26:56:08 Sean Sense there. 00:26:56:08 - 00:26:58:13 Sean Are I think so many times where. 00:26:59:14 - 00:27:00:12 Sean Lovecraft can be such a 00:27:00:12 - 00:27:14:12 Sean Cynic and so unhappy and so seeing the worst in mankind and things and that is so not here. Yeah because it is this just sense of unbridled unbridled joy sells. 00:27:14:13 - 00:27:17:12 Andrew He's so happy he can even admit there were good things about New York. 00:27:17:12 - 00:27:23:19 Sean Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, it's because, you know, it's a great place to visit, but I certainly don't want to live. It will. 00:27:23:19 - 00:27:28:14 Andrew Yeah. New York joins the other cities I have visited and do not live in. 00:27:28:14 - 00:27:51:09 Sean So and it was interesting with all this, you know you know New York was dreadful and I am emancipated and I get to come home to Providence. And as I was going through, I was like, oh, no, no reference to Mrs. Lovecraft here. And then there is a fleeting one where, you know, she's going to come by when her business will allow sort of thing it. 00:27:51:09 - 00:27:56:12 Andrew Maybe st maybe she'll stay, maybe she'll come and go. Yeah. Doesn't really, it doesn't really matter. 00:27:56:12 - 00:27:58:05 Sean Yeah. And there's no, there's nothing. 00:27:58:05 - 00:28:02:22 Sean Negative about it but it was like it didn't, it just didn't matter. 00:28:03:07 - 00:28:27:21 Sean Yeah. Which you know, maybe that's his, his journey is, you know, thinking that in 1924, going to New York might be good for business. And I'm ready to, you know, to become a man. And Sonia has presented this set of opportunities and there's a certain sense to it. And she likes me and I like her. And there's there's some of that going on. 00:28:27:21 - 00:28:39:12 Sean And then, you know, that falls apart right left to his own devices, New York. It's just an awful experience, you know, for him on his own. And then it's all about come on. 00:28:39:12 - 00:28:42:10 Andrew With her suffering from health problems and you know. 00:28:42:11 - 00:28:44:04 Sean Professional financial difficulties. Yeah. 00:28:44:04 - 00:28:48:06 Andrew Then yeah her his ability to stay in New York is just destroyed. 00:28:48:08 - 00:29:06:16 Sean Yeah. And then yeah, there's, there's, you know, I think he discovers in spite of the fact this gaggle of guys who are there, who are wonderful chums and he did spend a lot of his time in New York, socially active and visiting and, you know, entertaining friends. I mean, he, he had a way busier social life than I've ever had. 00:29:06:18 - 00:29:31:13 Sean Yeah. While he's there. But that clearly also wasn't, you know, see enough. Yeah, exactly. I'm going home to, you know, what he sees as civilization. And, you know, it's just about what's right for him. Yeah. One of the things that also really got my attention in this letter was the fact that his aunts had hired the Delilah servant. 00:29:31:13 - 00:29:51:12 Sean Delilah. Yeah. To come clean up the apartment that they're apparently moving into or help with the move, or it's hard to know exactly what she did, but I was able to learn her last name. Oh, she's Delilah Townsend. Oh, very good. Yeah, I don't find her. I found out that she was still. I was just trying to learn anything I could about Delilah. 00:29:51:12 - 00:30:13:21 Sean And I found a reference in Leslie Clinkers Annotated Lovecraft book, and he's got an annotation that refers to her as Delilah Townsend in the annotations for the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. And interestingly, later on, her home was six Olney Street. Huh. So, uh. 00:30:14:09 - 00:30:17:16 Andrew Now that's the address where they find the portrait. 00:30:17:16 - 00:30:22:11 Sean It's own only court, which is a street that apparently never existed. So but. 00:30:22:14 - 00:30:23:16 Andrew It's probably inspiration. 00:30:23:20 - 00:30:24:13 Sean One would think. 00:30:24:13 - 00:30:30:09 Andrew Because he also, in this very letter, he mentions the Halsey mansion, which was the inspiration for the ward house in Case of... 00:30:30:09 - 00:30:57:03 Sean Sure. And then the name of Dr. Halsey. Yeah. I don't know where Leslie Klinger got that reference. I looked in the big I am Providence, and she's Delilah Townsend is not indexed in there. There's I could not find any references to Delilah there. And she also does not show up either, as Delilah or Delilah Townsend in the index of selected letters. 00:30:57:04 - 00:31:06:16 Sean Right. So I want to talk to Leslie Klinger and just ask him one. Yeah. How did you how did he connect the dots? Some good detectives. Yeah, I thought. I thought so, too. So. 00:31:06:17 - 00:31:12:05 Andrew Ah, you know, you have to wonder how Delilah felt about. About it, you know? Sure. 00:31:12:05 - 00:31:18:16 Sean You know, just too happy to have work and a job, you know? Yeah. What did it mean to her to have to welcome young little. 00:31:18:16 - 00:31:25:15 Andrew Howard Mailman Howard coming back? Yeah, Yeah. All grown up now and moving in. Moving back in with his arms. Sort of in a way. 00:31:25:23 - 00:31:50:21 Sean That that'll be that. Perhaps that should be the next subject for a Victor Laval novel is, you know, Delilah having to deal with H.P. Lovecraft coming back to Providence and. Oh yeah, this was another tidbit in here. I thought that you might find interesting, which was when he wants to go downtown for dinner at Shepherd's. Yeah, because I believe he's talking about Shepherd's the department store. 00:31:50:22 - 00:31:51:06 Sean Right. 00:31:51:06 - 00:31:54:11 Andrew That had a tea room that had a restaurant in the. In the department. 00:31:54:11 - 00:31:59:03 Sean Store? Yeah, the restaurant at Shepherd's. Yeah. Could seat 4100 people. 00:31:59:23 - 00:32:01:04 Andrew 4100 people ? 00:32:01:04 - 00:32:14:04 Sean Apparently, they had a vast capability. Yeah, but, you know, this is this is, you know, for a department store at this point in time, as you know, it's city block. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a it's an IKEA sized thing. 00:32:15:15 - 00:32:16:20 Andrew And set comparison. 00:32:16:20 - 00:32:17:10 Sean Well, sorry. 00:32:17:16 - 00:32:21:12 Andrew It's back in the day. Department stores were you know, they were grand palaces. 00:32:21:12 - 00:32:25:16 Sean Of commerce, you know, kind of thing. But yeah, that's a very, very big dining room. 00:32:26:13 - 00:32:33:05 Sean People could see the building is still there but has since gone on to be purchased for for other things. 00:32:33:10 - 00:32:52:21 Andrew I was trying to find Shepherd's Neo. He he puts Neo in parentheses. So I don't know whether that's him specifying. I don't know whether it was called Shepherd's Colonial Restaurant or if it was. What I could find was Shepherd's Tearoom, which was part of the department store, and they were apparently famous for chicken croquettes that were apparently amazing. 00:32:52:21 - 00:32:54:06 Sean Oh, well, there we go. 00:32:55:13 - 00:33:09:07 Andrew He speculates at the end of the letter that that Lillian's going to move in to the same building in a room upstairs. And she did eventually move into the same building with him. Right. Right. So they were kind of not exactly roommates, but pretty close. 00:33:09:07 - 00:33:11:05 Sean Pretty close, Yeah. 00:33:11:05 - 00:33:31:17 Andrew And he talks about the other people who live in the house, the miniature painter of. Right. Some fame and a Rizzi official. And it would be interesting to learn more about Lovecraft's neighbors and whether whether he got along with them and how they all managed to you know did they think of what I wonder what Lovecraft's neighbors thought of him. 00:33:31:19 - 00:33:42:06 Sean Yeah. I suspect though you know, he's he's social. He's pretty gregarious. He's not going to be up late with with the phonograph cranked up, you know. Yeah. He's not going to be. 00:33:42:06 - 00:33:42:16 Andrew Disturbing. 00:33:42:16 - 00:34:03:08 Sean Anyone. Yeah. Trouble to neighbors and you know, as we see time and time again the people who had social relations with Howard tended to like him, or at least the ones who bothered to write anything down about it. Yeah. So as he write before he gets to the section about his art, he does, you know, touch in again on, on that contented, contented white gentleman. 00:34:03:08 - 00:34:30:22 Sean I am home and then listing the wonderful things about Providence. He describes color, shade, contour, diversity, quaintness, impressiveness. And I thought, well, well, diversity is a word whose meaning has changed, you know, of what we think of a diverse neighborhood versus, you know, I'm assuming it's an eclectic architecture that's that's making him happy there. And and that diversity in the way we think of it. 00:34:30:23 - 00:34:36:07 Sean Yeah, it was exactly what was wrong with New York. Yeah. 00:34:36:21 - 00:34:47:05 Andrew Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. No, his use of any number of words that he uses, one of the words he uses in a way that seems totally wrong to me is infinite. Yeah. 00:34:47:13 - 00:34:49:19 Sean We've discussed that, and it's true. Yeah, I think. I mean. 00:34:50:00 - 00:34:55:11 Andrew He simply means uncounted, right? When he says infinite. Yes. I don't know specifically how many. 00:34:55:12 - 00:35:05:05 Sean Right. But not uncountable. Right. You know. Yeah. There's a to me there's an implicit vast number to an infinite number of something. And that's rarely seems to be what he is. 00:35:05:06 - 00:35:11:23 Andrew So yeah. So like with infinite, so with the diversity he does not mean what we think he means. Yeah. 00:35:11:23 - 00:35:32:21 Sean One little last bit more Tony. Yes of course. Must have is Durfee Hill for which stiffest a purpose to keep faithfully and training Durfee Hill as us Rocky Mountain guys continue to give the New England guys a rough time. Sorry about that Groovy hill 803 towering feat. 00:35:33:17 - 00:35:42:16 Andrew He now I founded Durfee Street, which is in Federal Hill, the neighborhood across the river from College Hill. 00:35:42:17 - 00:36:04:16 Sean Yeah, I was at the same place. Well, Durfee Hill is way out. It's actually closer to the dark swamp. It's relatively near the Connecticut border. And in the the very brief, very brief listing of mountaineering projects in Rhode Island, the 803 feet of Durfee Hill is about as steep and precipitous as one can get. 00:36:04:16 - 00:36:11:14 Andrew So you take with you, you take or take what you get. If you're doing a three piece suit, you know, a flight of stairs can be a challenge. 00:36:11:22 - 00:36:30:19 Sean This is true. And speaking of the Christian Science Science Church, oh, yeah. That you talked about in the section agreeing to let him go anytime you want. And that would be you know, it's pretty great because it has this great dome. And then it has a sort of an observation deck up at the top part. And yeah, I think going up there and with your telescope and I wonder if Claire De. 00:36:31:19 - 00:36:35:03 Andrew Sexton is as accommodating as Lovecraft was. 00:36:35:03 - 00:36:35:22 Sean We got to find out. 00:36:35:22 - 00:36:36:18 Andrew It's that we'll find out. 00:36:36:20 - 00:36:47:11 Sean We got we got more than a few agents in Providence, so we should unleash them on the poor section. So he has 23 people coming by saying, Hey, can I take my my telescope up to the. 00:36:47:11 - 00:36:51:01 Andrew I do a selfie, all that. They'll only take pictures of themselves standing on the top. 00:36:51:01 - 00:37:15:14 Sean Of that, which is very tricky to do with the telescope. So anyway, I this this is his homecoming. This is, you know, a huge. Hmm. If you were making milestones in Lovecraft's life, you know, getting married is one. But coming back to Providdence is one of the others. And it's one of the most fruitful for him creatively, because, you know, that's one of the other great things that happens is that kicks. 00:37:15:14 - 00:37:15:23 Andrew Into high. 00:37:15:23 - 00:37:37:07 Sean Gear. The work he did, the stories he wrote while he was in New York. I'm no nobody's favorites. You Yeah. Or Red Hook. Those are some of those the street. Yeah. But then suddenly, you know, 1926, he comes back and you get Call of Cthulhu and this whole sort of bursting of. Yeah. Some of his really, his best fiction is precipitated by being home. 00:37:37:07 - 00:38:00:19 Sean So. Howard, I'm. I'm glad you went home. It did seem to work for him and. Yeah, and that's at the end of the day, I think it's easy to be kind of judgmental from a modern context because then you go, Oh, it's kind of weird. You finally, you know, your mother passed away and you grew up and you were going to go to New York and have a job that required you to get out of bed on time. 00:38:00:19 - 00:38:21:01 Sean And, you know, kind of be, you know, not down in mom's basement eating Hot Pockets, but you were going to, you know, get your act together and go do it. And that's so just because of who he was. So didn't work for him. And then it's like, oh, you're moving back to Providence to live with your aunts. 00:38:21:01 - 00:38:21:11 Sean You know. 00:38:21:15 - 00:38:43:08 Sean I think can be perceived through a lens of going, you know, that's just not it's not what society deems a successful move. Right. But for him as a person and for him as an artist, it's an incredibly successful move and it seems to be the right move. I'm not sure there's anything he could have done that would have served him better. 00:38:43:08 - 00:38:50:14 Sean And, you know, you can be judgmental about him moving in with his aunts. But again, it seemed to work for them and it seemed to work for him. 00:38:50:14 - 00:38:52:00 Andrew I think they moved in with him. 00:38:52:23 - 00:39:02:00 Sean Oh, well, however it works, Delilah had to carry all the luggage and the furniture. So anyway, an interesting homecoming for her. 00:39:02:00 - 00:39:18:20 Andrew Yeah. No, And absolutely. Like you said, it's it's easily the most emotional and certainly the most joyful. Yeah. And it's whether you like Lovecraft personally or not, it's hard not to be touched by how moved he was by his own homecoming. 00:39:18:20 - 00:39:23:02 Sean Yeah it was important to him. And at the end of the day, you know, that's what matters so. 00:39:23:13 - 00:39:25:03 Andrew Well, thanks for bringing in its one letter. 00:39:25:04 - 00:39:33:16 Sean Absolutely. My pleasure. We want to offer our thanks today to the lovely folks over at Arkham House. This letter was inserted from selected letters. 00:39:33:17 - 00:39:36:23 Andrew You can learn more about them at ArkhamHouse.com 00:39:37:05 - 00:39:38:13 Sean I'm your obedient servant Sean Branney 00:39:39:15 - 00:39:42:07 Andrew And I'm cordially and respectfully yours. Andrew Leman. 00:39:42:08 - 00:39:44:04 Sean You've been listening to Voluminous. 00:39:44:10 - 00:39:45:16 Sean The letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:39:45:17 - 00:39:51:06 Andrew If you've enjoyed the show, we'd be very grateful if you'd post a review or rating. Tell all your friends about voluminous brought. 00:39:51:06 - 00:39:53:16 Sean To you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. 00:39:53:20 - 00:39:57:01 Sean Com Check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org