Andrew Welcome to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:00:39:01 - 00:00:44:19 Andrew In addition to classic works of gothic horror fiction, HPL wrote thousands of fascinating letters. 00:00:44:19 - 00:00:47:03 Sean And each episode will read and discuss one of them. I'm Sean Branney 00:00:47:11 - 00:00:53:03 Andrew and I'm Andrew Leman. Together, we run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Sean So for today's letter, Andrew, I picked one that was written on the 23rd of November of 1923 to Lovecraft's pall and little grandson, Frank Belknap Long. 00:01:04:12 - 00:01:07:23 Andrew All right. Well, let's hear it. 00:01:08:05 - 00:01:32:01 Sean 23rd November 1923. Grandpa's little Cro-Magnon. Yes, Sonny. Grandpa got his cards and is mighty glad his nice boy is having a good time by the restless ocean. I hope you're staying the extra week and that you're getting to be a great, strong boy so that you can copy your nice stories for Grandpa. Bless me, but I must look up this O'Brien material. 00:01:32:09 - 00:02:08:05 Sean I tried to get Wells 30 strange stories, but they haven't it at our backward biblioteca. Here dear but with such scarcity, one has to write one's own nightmares. But I'm glad Sonny likes his old grandpa's inflated grave worms. I am now become definitely an antiquarian of the 18th century. Day before yesterday, I resumed my Georgian dwellings, walking with my daughter, Mrs. Clark, through the most ancient part of Providence, and visiting the one museum which I had not before inspected the new private museum of Colonel George L. Shepley in Benefit Street 00:02:08:05 - 00:02:36:21 Sean where may be found the greatest of all collections of Rhode Island relics and antiquities. In this place, I unearthed more data regarding the early days of Providence than I had ever before gained from any one source. There are records of samples of papers and broadsides, advertisements, maps, pictures, books, proclamations. One by Governor Ward, 1762 with God Save the King at the Bottom. 00:02:37:10 - 00:03:05:23 Sean Letters, autographs, diaries, miniatures, and miscellaneous articles of every sort, giving a very complete picture of the town throughout its existence and showing the handwriting of all the principal public men from Roger Williams down. Of much interest are the books Almanacs and printed maps and your beloved French by the naval forces of King Louis that occupied Newport in 1780 and 1781, during the late insurrection. 00:03:06:09 - 00:03:52:01 Sean The fleet had its own press. Limp remark Royal Dealers Scarborough and produced not only isolated works, but a regular newspaper "gazette française de Newport". Its typography was excellent and its maps both excellent and artistic, as a repository of Georgian architectural designs, this museum has not any equal in this town. It contains the Mason collection of photographs of Rhode Island colonial doorways showing thousands of these classical portals in Providence, Warren, Bristol, Newport and other of ancient towns, circular enclosed together with magnificent sets of etchings, displaying all the Georgian masterpieces of architecture, both public and domestic, in the American colonies. 00:03:52:11 - 00:04:21:22 Sean These latter sets have convinced me of something, but vaguely suspected before, namely that the finest 18th century buildings on this continent are yet unseen by me being in the original colonial metropolis Philadelphia, to which any of my peregrinations have not yet extended. This city was very populous, wealthy, and finally built up when Boston and Providence were scarce more than villages, and when New York was uneasily divided betwixt Holland and English architecture. 00:04:22:08 - 00:04:50:17 Sean It accordingly contains Georgian édifices our splendor on approached by anything I have ever seen, and will henceforward form a goal of travel from which only poverty can keep me. I also discover that Connecticut and Staten Island and New York abound with colonial relica of uncommon interest. I must someday see all these things where I am certain that nothing interests me so much as the scenes and landscapes of my 18th century. 00:04:51:12 - 00:05:25:07 Sean But of paramount immediate interest to me were the illuminating views of colonial providence, which I shall employ in the essay or a book that I am planning on the subject. There is one wondrous fine drawing of the town in 1762, as seen from the hill where Prospect Street now runs, wherein may be observed the tangle of aged roofs in Cheapside and town Street, the houses and jail lane and New Colony house just finished and looking as it does today, the market parade without the new market house 1773. 00:05:25:17 - 00:05:46:18 Sean The narrow bridge across the Salt River that preceded the Great bridge at the opposite shore with a few houses scattered along way Bassett Street, the old Picquart Path and the line of the future Westminster Street, which was plotted out across the place where Mr. Staples has shoveled down where Bartlett Hill and 1719 to get Clay for his brickyard. 00:05:47:06 - 00:06:11:22 Sean It was truly a remarkable view. Precisely what I have long wished to see, and I shall certainly refer to it When writing on Antique Providence, there is a possibility that I may be able to get a copy for myself. For the curator at the museum told me I could have one if another exists in the archives. Still more important, however, is the crude but striking plan or bird's eye view of Providence 00:06:11:22 - 00:06:45:18 Sean In 1777, which Steven Avery, a rebel soldier engraved upon his powder horn. The practice of defeating homesickness by drawing one's native place upon one's powder horn was not uncommon during the late provincial uprising, and in the same museum there is an excellent representation of Boston in the same manner. But the Providence view is of greatest interest to me, insomuch as it very accurately pictures on contemporary evidence just how much of the town was built up in 1777. 00:06:46:03 - 00:07:11:19 Sean The Great bridge had been enlarged and the market house built the college set up on the hill, The Baptist church erected in all its London grandeur and all the hills settled by the thick building up of Benefit Street and of rosemary Lane. Now College Street. I lately sent you a snapshot of this hill with the original buildings all still standing, that leads to the college. 00:07:12:03 - 00:07:48:20 Sean But the greatest changes were on the east side of the bridge where Westminster Street was now cut through, solidly built up as a causeway that reached high tide and where Bassett Street settled very thickly together with the region southward along Richmond Street, Chestnut Street, South Street, and the like of of of which more anon. In a word. The town in 1777 had begun to cover the area, now forming the business section an area but sparsely inhabited before the filling in of the salt marshes and widening of the bridge. Of this quaint powderhorn view 00:07:48:21 - 00:08:15:00 Sean I was lucky enough to obtain a copy which now lies before me. As I contemplated, I am filled with George and pride and pleasure that the town should have kept so many of the buildings, streets, institutions, manners and customs which flourished when it was designed. The Baptist church was then, but two years built, and each night at nine curfew was rung there by a bell ringer paid by the town. 00:08:15:16 - 00:08:39:16 Sean That curfew is still rung every night at nine by the same bell, in the same steeple, and the town still pays a bell ringer. What are 150 years in George and Providence, where the past never dies and where colonial doorways look out at the same shady street they used to know when the George's reigned. God save the king. 00:08:40:20 - 00:09:03:24 Sean Before going home, my daughter and I eat at a new and ordinary downtown forum and perceived with pleasure that it was paneled and furnished in the Georgian manor. Tis one of the greatest coincidences in the world that Providence should return so markedly to the 18th century, when I wished so violently for it years before it was ever publicly thought of. 00:09:04:05 - 00:09:30:21 Sean Only last year, the Citizen's Bank put up a new building of great splendor with fine colonial columns and a belfry, just like those of the customs house built in 1769. Animated by these reflections, I joined my adopted son Eddie the following day yesterday, for a tour of exploration of certain parts of colonial providence, which I had never before seen or more than vaguely known of. 00:09:31:04 - 00:10:05:05 Sean I refer to the southern section west of the Great Bridge around Richmond and Chestnut Streets now sunk to slums and on that account avoided by me, but proved by the 1777 view to be genuinely colonial. Here, indeed, I found a world of wonder that for 33 years I had ignored. Not a stone's throw from the travel business section, tucked quietly in behind broad way Bassett streets lurk the beginnings of a squalid colonial labyrinth in which I moved as an utter stranger. 00:10:05:11 - 00:10:36:18 Sean Each movement wondering whether I were in truth in my native town or in some leprous, distorted witch salem of a fever or nightmare. I had not thought my own city to be so large and varied. So London, like in containing separate worlds unsuspected by one another. This ancient and pestilencial network of crumbling cottages and decaying doorways was like nothing I have ever beheld save in dream. 00:10:37:05 - 00:11:09:06 Sean It was the 18th century of Goya, not of the Georges of Hogarth, not of Horace Walpole. Eddie knew it and was my guide led by him. I wandered up hills where rotting Doric columns rested on the worn stone steps out of which rusted foot scrapers rose like malignant fungi. Dirty, small, pained windows, leered malevolently on all sides, and sometimes glass thusly from gouged sockets. 00:11:09:22 - 00:11:43:20 Sean There was a fog and out of it and into it again moved dark mMonstrous disease shapes. They may have been people or what once were or may have been people. Only the gods know who can inhabit these morbid mazes. Eddie spoke of Cape Verde, Portuguese blacks, of Swedes, and of a few decadent Yankees. But I saw a great Greek church of brick and stone, which suggests a beauty crescent Hellenism. 00:11:44:06 - 00:12:19:23 Sean This was a new church, and Eddie said that two incredible, archaic houses had been torn down to make room for it. And through the fog, we went threading our way through narrow, exotic streets and unbelievable courts and alleys. Sometimes having the ancient houses almost meet above our heads, but often emerging into unwholesome little squares or grassless parks at the crossings or junctions where five or six of the tangled streets of lanes meet and often open out into expanses as loathsome as Victor Hugo's court des Miracles 00:12:19:23 - 00:13:15:19 Sean in the Notre Dame novel. Eddie informed me that these little squares are characteristic of the Old West Side Providence, but I had never heard of them. Then when we would reach the crest of some eminence in this uneven ground, we would see on every hand the strange streets stretching down silent and sinister to the unknown elder mysteries that gave birth grotesque lines of gambrell roofs with drunken eaves and idiotic tottering chimneys and rows of george and doorways with broken pillars, and were meat impediments, streets, lives bent and broken, twisted and mysterious claws of gargoyles obscurely beckoning to which sabbaths of cannibal horror and shadowed alleys that are black at noon. 00:13:15:19 - 00:13:59:12 Sean Long long hills up which demon winds sweep and demon riders clatter over cobblestones and toward the southeast, a stark silhouette of Horry on hallowed black chimneys and bleak ridge poles against a mist that is white and blank and salin, the venerable the immemorial sea, the ancient harbor where pirate barks once lay and quietly at anchor. Many of these places, especially Gould's Court of black gnawing hideousness, which I call ghouls, caught upon seeing it in the lone pallid lap after the sun had set, Eddie tells me, are famous in the annals of crime, but I do not read police reports. 00:14:00:02 - 00:14:32:07 Sean There must be a crime where so many dead things are, the massed dead of Colonia old decay, the dead that draws shapes out of the night to feed and feast. No, I have not thought that providence had such places as this. We came out silently, thus impressed with the metropolitan variety of a town which I had always deemed a village because I had never seen more than the business and good residential parts of it. 00:14:32:24 - 00:14:59:11 Sean I decided to have Eddie guide me through the vast and celebrated Italian Quarter Federal Hill, which I had heard him so often describe and extoll as quaint, or even than the Boston Italian Quarter. Italians are the most numerous aliens in Providence should not grandpas little wop like that the Mediterranean and they have a separate place of habitation in which they spend all their lives. 00:14:59:19 - 00:15:38:06 Sean Shops, restaurants and theaters of their own, seldom going down city as they freeze it from their isolated elevation. Federal Hill was sparsely settled in the colonial period. A church and a few houses being shown in Avery 1777 view. It was later a stronghold of the Irish till after 1870. The Italians drove them down the northern slope and took the crest for themselves, finally occupying the whole almost to the foot on all sides, the legions of Caesar victorious over the Celts on this occasion, we ascended the southern slope in the darkness. 00:15:38:14 - 00:16:02:15 Sean Soon coming upon are two groups of people, old peasant men in corduroy clothes and old women with kerchiefs over their heads. The houses built by the Irish are of the cheap American type of the middle 19th century, only on the slope in the dark, winding alleys by the railway will one find any of the remaining colonial houses. 00:16:03:01 - 00:16:35:08 Sean But the strange life of the community is in itself sufficiently interesting. Atwell's Avenue, the principal thoroughfare, is a grand Italian main street with glittering signs and brightly lighted shops whose signs are in the mellow Tuscan ...., pasta, ..., etc.. Parts of it, especially near the intersection with the broad arterial Arthur Avenue rise definitely above the slum class into a sort of exotic brilliancy. 00:16:35:22 - 00:17:10:13 Sean It is here that a la Siena theater sends forth its polychrome lure, and the principal ristorante flout their electric signs. We stop to eat at one of these and obtain the first real Italian spaghetti I have had since I was in New York. Seated in this foreign eating house where only ourselves spoke English and looking out into the bright street with the glittering Italian signs, we could only with difficulty believe that the main business section of Providence lay scarce a mile to the Southeast. 00:17:10:23 - 00:17:34:04 Sean To me, it was utterly and absolutely new. Though I had once ridden through it without getting off the coach, when I showed a visitor of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament with the La Forge Windows and mural paintings in the Irish district beyond, Finally we decided to return to Reality and America, which we did with appropriate deliberation setting as a time and a place 00:17:34:04 - 00:18:09:12 Sean the next meeting December 2nd, 6:45 a.m. West Facade of the Federal Building, whence leaves the coach for two Patchett and the Dark Swamp. Providence is, in truth, more extensive, varied and colorful city than I have ever suspected, and I mean to see more of its curious wonders. There is much of the ancient waterfront to explore the east front, where all the houses and warehouses are colonial and the West front, where colonial vestiges lurk furtively amidst the factories, coal pockets and gasworks. 00:18:10:02 - 00:18:35:19 Sean Coincidentally, with this adventurous policy of mine, the general interest in the town's oddities is rising, as shown by a series of articles and quaint etchings appearing in the evening bulletin entitled Corners and Characters of Providence. This series starts with the Marketplace and its 1816 warehouses and 1773 Market house, and I will send you a set to be returned 00:18:35:24 - 00:19:00:24 Sean if you're interested. I mean to get several copies of each issue containing this department. Oh, yes, Sonny. Providence is a very ancient and spreading town and full of weird marvels and ... mysteries. And it is small enough, not to have its marvels vulgarized by wide fame. Well, be Grandpa's nice boy and enjoy the ... and get well rested. 00:19:01:05 - 00:19:09:18 Sean Your obedient ancestor, HPL. P.S. Enclosed is a blank for United reinstatement. 00:19:10:11 - 00:19:15:06 Andrew So, Sean, where did this letter come from and why did you pick it? 00:19:15:21 - 00:19:41:18 Sean Well, I picked it because of where it came from. Aha. Yeah. So we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the acquisition of a substantial collection of HPL letters to Frank Belknap Long. So I thought, Well. Hmm. I wonder if folks can read these letters that they, many of members of the society and other folks helped acquire. 00:19:41:22 - 00:19:59:09 Sean So I turn to our friends at the John Hay Library at Brown University to say, hey, are those letters that were acquired available yet for people to see? And their response to me was that they have all been scanned, but they haven't all been fed into the system. 00:19:59:10 - 00:20:03:14 Andrew I was wondering because I went and looked in the system trying to find this letter and it's not there. 00:20:03:15 - 00:20:05:03 Sean What is Brandy up to? Yes. 00:20:05:04 - 00:20:13:04 Andrew And then, you know, normally we read letters out of books that have been published or straight from the Brown Digital Repository. You typed this one or something? 00:20:13:05 - 00:20:23:11 Sean Yeah. Sorry about that. Uh, yeah, I did learn a lot of appreciation for the work of STJoshi, David Schultz and Martin Anderson. 00:20:23:11 - 00:20:24:18 Andrew And Robert H. Barlow. 00:20:24:22 - 00:20:50:01 Sean Yeah, I was having to convert a Lovecraft manuscript into a typewritten form because that's. That's exactly what I did. So the folks at Brown had scanned this letter and sent me an email of a PDF of the scan, which then I printed. And to make matters worse, I began, I was hoping to speed up the typing process by dictating. 00:20:50:01 - 00:20:53:03 Sean I thought you might, and I paid the price for that because some. 00:20:53:03 - 00:20:56:08 Andrew Of these artifacts are distinctly phonemic are. 00:20:56:08 - 00:21:17:09 Sean Homophones. Yes, a lot of the mistakes in there are. Yeah, it's rife with them anyway. And of course, between Lovecraft's old fashioned writing style, right. His handwriting and part of the original manuscript of this substantial amount of it is sloped in a really weird way. It looks like it goes across and then it starts tilting at a 45 degree angle as he hits the margin. 00:21:17:09 - 00:21:34:02 Sean Anyway, So I had to convert this handwritten version of the letter into a typewritten version of a letter that I then used to read and record the letter. And that's what I said on to you. And there are yeah, there are any number of this is not publication ready, but nonetheless, I wanted to get it. 00:21:34:02 - 00:21:39:08 Andrew So it's exciting because this is a previously unpublished letter. Almost. Oh, almost. 00:21:40:04 - 00:21:59:10 Sean This is where it gets exciting. But this is another part of the reason I picked this particular letter is because, yeah, so I'm thinking, okay, this is one of the manuscripts that was just acquired and was just given to Brown and it's only kind of coming into view. So then I crossed, referenced it with selected letters and found it was there. 00:21:59:10 - 00:22:04:19 Sean Oh damn him. August Derleth, it printed this letter. Wow. Sort of. Sort of. 00:22:04:19 - 00:22:07:20 Andrew So it's like he's sort of printed everything it printed. Yeah. 00:22:07:20 - 00:22:30:22 Sean Well, that's a very good way of putting it. So the selected letters is organized in a chronological fashion, which makes it very handy to often find things. So it's in there. There is a letter from HPL to Frank Belknap Long for the 23rd of November 1923. Yeah. And that's they have this is what I found so compelling about it. 00:22:30:22 - 00:22:33:06 Andrew It's not this letter. 00:22:33:06 - 00:22:58:04 Sean No, it's this letter, but it's an excerpt of this letter, of course. And so I was like, Huh, okay. Because we've never really delved that much into the editing job of how selected letters these guys went from Lovecraft manuscripts to picking the best dribs and drabs and, you know, offering some of but nothing in there, nothing in a complete format. 00:22:58:04 - 00:23:27:02 Sean And I thought, oh, well, wouldn't it be interesting to compare the complete original Lovecraft letter to what Derleth and Wandrei published? Right. Well, they excised exactly one sentence out of this letter. It's the shortest little we thing. And that was like the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really, really left scratching my head as to how you would take this particular letter and go, okay, for whatever reasons, we want to make editorial choices. 00:23:27:02 - 00:23:46:02 Sean And then what we're left with is the sentence. I tried to get Wells 30 strange stories, but they haven't had it at our backward Biblioteca dear, dear. But with such a scarcity, one has to write one's own nightmares. But I'm glad that Sonny likes his old grandpa's inflated grave worms. So sorry. That is three sentences, but it's not very much. 00:23:46:11 - 00:24:15:24 Sean It's, you know, this little tiny paragraph. And that really interested me because I again, I had never done a side by side analysis to look at what they were keeping and what they were not keeping. And this seemed such a odd bit of this letter to keep if you're going to keep anything out of it. I'm not sure what we get from from I couldn't find the collection of H.G. Wells stories at my library. 00:24:15:24 - 00:24:39:01 Sean Okay. You know, versus, you know, there is some. Yeah, there's some beautiful writing in this and there's, you know, lots of you know, it was you get to know HPL of course, you know, it's it's not shocking news that he's an antiquarian and going on different jaunts ever and yon but I quite I don't know I found a lot more interesting in this letter than what Derleth and Wandrei pulled from this letter. 00:24:39:01 - 00:24:55:16 Sean So I think in the future, looking at in the situations where we can comparison between an original full version of a letter and what they excised to try and understand what they do, why did they keep. Yeah, one morsel out of right. 00:24:55:20 - 00:25:07:18 Andrew One can only suppose it's because he covers his love of old providence in many another letter. So maybe they felt that those sentiments were already sufficiently represented in the collection as a whole. 00:25:07:18 - 00:25:24:03 Sean Yeah, I have one. One would think. You know, but even you know. Well, that's well-trod ground. Now that we're 70 episodes into too voluminous, I thought this particular trumping was a really good one and an interesting one. 00:25:24:03 - 00:25:35:23 Andrew And coming as it does in 1923, it certainly smacks of he's going to rehash the same ground in fictional form when he describes, you know, when he goes to Charles Dexter Ward Sure. So many other. 00:25:35:23 - 00:25:44:16 Sean Number of the Providence stories. Yeah. Really. You know, delve back to this specifically. So so that's what led me to to pick it in the first place. 00:25:44:19 - 00:25:54:17 Andrew So now just to clarify one more thing, did when you ask our friends at Brown, did you specify, please send me this letter or did you get potluck you got. Oh. 00:25:54:24 - 00:26:05:13 Sean They send me scads of oh, okay. Yeah. They sent me links to all the material. It's just not available through the Brown Digital archive, but it's on brown servers. 00:26:05:19 - 00:26:08:03 Andrew So you have a secret private link to. 00:26:08:12 - 00:26:09:06 Sean Not know people. 00:26:09:06 - 00:26:10:14 Andrew You know, people are nice. 00:26:10:17 - 00:26:29:01 Sean Yeah, they're. They're very nice people over there. So be nice to librarians because they can be very helpful when you're trying to do this sort of thing. So we've done a number of of letters from Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long So the quick, you know, recap is he's one of Lovecraft's younger friends who lives with his family up in New York. 00:26:29:20 - 00:26:32:06 Andrew And 23 is still pretty early in their. 00:26:32:19 - 00:26:37:07 Sean Relatively came out of the amateur press movement. But they're you. 00:26:37:14 - 00:26:41:22 Andrew Know do do we know why he addresses him as grandpa's little Cro-Magnon? 00:26:41:22 - 00:27:18:18 Sean Do I? Do I do. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It is an odd opening taken out of context. Now, of course, here we have the letters from Lovecraft to Belknap Long. We don't have the letters from Long to Lovecraft, so we're piecing it together from half the conversation. But in their previous in Lovecraft's previous letter to Brown, he's talking it's one of those regrettable anthropological conversations about primitive man and the lines of hominids that led to Caucasians and the other. 00:27:18:18 - 00:27:41:21 Sean Yeah, there's a lot not to like in there anyway. So the here Lovecraft riffing on that Cro-Magnon is the the closest to Homo sapiens and the if you're gonna pay the pay later. Graham Yeah, exactly. If you're looking at physical anthropology. So I, you know, I guess it's a sort of a compliment that, that here. 00:27:41:21 - 00:27:43:02 Andrew Almost human most. 00:27:43:02 - 00:28:26:01 Sean Evolved. Yeah, exactly. But, but yeah, he's just given a little, little elbow to his little ground Sonny There. One other thing in our last letter was written on stationery lifted from the Statler Hotel. Right, in Detroit. Detroit? Yeah. Well, this one was lifted on stationery from the Hotel Radisson. And, of course, you know, I only knew Radisson as a modern right mega chain, but like the Hotel Statler, the the original Hotel Radisson has a pretty interesting history that this this woman inherited a considerable estate in Minneapolis. 00:28:26:08 - 00:28:55:18 Sean And the town fathers really encouraged her to keep the money there in Minneapolis. And so built this extremely glamorous hotel all in fancy European furnishings and all that. And that was the Hotel Radisson in Minneapolis. So and then, you know, it went on to there were a couple other ones built and then other ownership came over and it became a whole other thing that that really only bears the initial name. 00:28:55:18 - 00:29:17:20 Sean But the Hotel Radisson in Minneapolis, from which Lovecraft is writing on the stationery. And here he does that interesting thing, too, that he did with the hotel vending. And it just turned upside down, too, to try and really staying at this hotel. Yeah. And I, I have yet to find anything that indicates where HPL got. Yeah. This Radisson letterhead. 00:29:17:24 - 00:29:27:18 Sean But he has more of it because in some of the other letters. Yeah. In this Frank Belknap Long collection from around this era are also written on Radisson stationery. 00:29:27:18 - 00:29:32:11 Andrew So he must have had some friends who just sent him blank hotel, I suspect. 00:29:32:11 - 00:29:52:15 Sean Yeah. Maybe a wave of your friends are at the hotel and just always grab craft stationery that's there, and he gets up and uses it. So he he puts it to good use. There was also a going in that first paragraph, a nice connection to our recent work with the the audio book of Lovecraft. Right. 00:29:52:22 - 00:29:55:19 Sean Because here he's trying to track down. 00:29:56:01 - 00:29:57:08 Andrew O'Brien material, which. 00:29:57:08 - 00:30:09:08 Sean Is it's just too much fits James O'Brien And and then it also in Wells's throw stories is the story the Red room which was also under the title. 00:30:09:21 - 00:30:10:20 Andrew The Ghost of Fear. 00:30:10:24 - 00:30:36:00 Sean The Ghost of Fear. Yeah, which is a terrific story. It is a good and so is so is the fits. James O'Brien One, too. What? Oh, yeah. What was it? They're both really interesting tales and you can certainly see why they appeal to Lovecraft. I was just kind of thumbing through some information on H.G. Wells, too, and reminded of what a tremendous success he was during his own lifetime. 00:30:36:00 - 00:30:59:18 Sean And, you know, poor Lovecraft being, you know, obscure and unknown. But, you know, Wells was up for the Nobel Prize in literature four times. Wow. You know, And as we never win. I know, apparently not. But as one of the you know, one of the first originators of the the concept of science fiction, sure. It was pretty well received by folks of his era. 00:31:00:09 - 00:31:43:23 Sean Fitz James O'Brien was an earlier writer. He was he had actually fought in the Civil War and was writing in the middle of the 19th century. Wells's career. Really, you know, this book, Lovecraft referring to era of the 30 Strange Stories, was published in 1897. Right. So it's you know, it's a generation later than the O'Brien material. But yeah, because it is, you know, certainly interesting to look at the stories Lovecraft enjoyed and yeah took inspiration from and in in doing that audiobook of the literature of Lovecraft it it's fun I found it fun to see these little seeds of oh yeah you know oh he liked this theme and this story or this kind 00:31:43:23 - 00:31:48:06 Sean of character in this story or this, you know, this kind of construction in this story. 00:31:48:06 - 00:31:52:17 Andrew And fun to think that it was Frank Belknap Long who turned him on to O'Brien. Apparently, because. 00:31:52:20 - 00:31:53:19 Sean It sure sounds that way. 00:31:53:19 - 00:32:14:04 Andrew Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Brett Long's in there, too, trying to get you. Oh, Howard, you should read this. You should read that. When I was looking up some things after reading this letter, I discovered that a document in the Brown Digital Repository prepared, I think by Barlow called Reading Recommendations, which I had not seen before. And it's like 100 pages. 00:32:14:05 - 00:32:18:14 Andrew Wow. Of of references to this is stuff you should read and you know. 00:32:19:00 - 00:32:20:22 Sean Most of it by Lovecraft or by Barlow. 00:32:21:00 - 00:32:37:23 Andrew It's like imagine like a photo album or a got clipping album. It's full of clipping things handwritten by Lovecraft. But then, like the entire catalog of like the Everyman's library collection. So it's just picked it's picked from all sorts of different sources. 00:32:38:01 - 00:32:39:12 Sean But Barlow seems to be the one who. 00:32:39:15 - 00:32:42:09 Andrew Barlow seems to have been the one who put it all together out. 00:32:42:09 - 00:32:43:04 Sean Oh, I haven't seen that. 00:32:43:04 - 00:32:52:01 Andrew Yeah, I hadn't either. So it's a massive compendium of things you should read, apparently, or the things that Lovecraft thought were worth reading. Yeah. 00:32:52:01 - 00:32:57:05 Sean Yeah. Well, he's, he's pretty vocal about that in his correspondence of telling people you should read those. 00:32:57:05 - 00:32:59:11 Andrew You really should. We should take a closer look at it. 00:32:59:11 - 00:33:00:15 Sean Yeah, I saw volume two. 00:33:00:20 - 00:33:07:01 Andrew I mean, a lot of it's not weird or anything, A lot of it's philosophy or history or various other. Yeah. 00:33:07:01 - 00:33:30:03 Sean To how to, how to be a well-read person which for a guy who's who's self-educated. Yeah. Clearly worked for HPL also. So he moves into, into the second paragraph of talking about this incredible. Yeah. Museum. Yeah. He has found one of the things that interested me in this letter is, you know, this is Lovecraft at 33 finding. Yeah. 00:33:30:03 - 00:33:38:07 Sean This incredible Georgian museum that blows his mind because it's so great and it's, you know, within a couple of blocks from his house. 00:33:38:11 - 00:33:40:08 Andrew Well, it was new, though. I mean, this guy. 00:33:40:09 - 00:33:42:24 Sean Yeah, it became yeah, it became accessible to the public. 00:33:42:24 - 00:33:53:18 Andrew Yeah. This guy was we've talked about him before. And when I saw this thing, I thought, this sounds so familiar, but I couldn't find short of actually going and listening to all of our old Oh my. 00:33:53:18 - 00:33:54:18 Sean God, you don't want to do. 00:33:54:18 - 00:34:22:10 Andrew Which I did not want to do. I could not remember where we have encountered this before, but we had. And I asked our speaking of librarians and researchers, I asked our friend Dan Pratt if he could help me remember where this came from. And of course, he came through in the matter of hours with tons of amazing stuff about George Leander Shepley of Providence, Rhode Island, who it was his private collection, and he was he was getting up into his seventies and he was incredibly wealthy. 00:34:22:10 - 00:34:48:13 Andrew He was a very rich insurance man, and he had amassed this fabulous personal collection of Rhode Island ephemera and antiquities and stuff. And he just decided, I'm going to build a fabulous museum next to my house. And people can come see it. And so that museum opened like just a couple years before Lovecraft wrote this letter. So in Lovecraft's defense, he couldn't have discovered it much. 00:34:48:16 - 00:34:54:20 Sean Earlier or not too much earlier. Yeah, I guess I was still thinking, you know, all these neighborhoods of Providence. Sure. That he's never. 00:34:54:20 - 00:34:58:05 Andrew Going to walk around with Eddie on the on the west side of the river. 00:34:58:05 - 00:35:24:19 Sean And there's a lot of discoveries for. Yes, yes, yes. Letter. Yeah. And that's part of it. But yeah, obviously the SHEPLEY collection is like a dream come true for Lovecraft to see, you know, all these. All these wonders. Yeah. You know, there's some, you know, some really nifty stuff in there. Yeah. I don't know if you. I would be shocked if you didn't, but discovered the image lifted off that powder hall I did discover. 00:35:24:19 - 00:35:26:03 Sean Yeah, it's among others. 00:35:26:03 - 00:35:26:07 Andrew Yeah. 00:35:26:07 - 00:35:37:04 Sean It's really. It's pretty remarkable. And I don't know who did the work of taking a cylindrical etching and making it flat again, but it can easily be found online and we can put a link to put. 00:35:37:04 - 00:35:37:12 Andrew A link. 00:35:37:24 - 00:35:51:06 Sean On the show page because it is pretty cool to look at this. It's Revolutionary War era soldier etching on his Powderhorn drawing a picture of downtown Providence that Lovecraft's then looking at 150 years long. 00:35:51:06 - 00:36:09:15 Andrew And it's I think it's it's funny interesting. You know, Lovecraft describes it everybody describes as a map but it's not a map in the I mean, it's it's a drawing. You know, it just raised I've been working with a lot of maps lately, so I guess I have the I guess I'm a math brain at the moment. 00:36:09:15 - 00:36:12:24 Sean It's not a professional cartographer yet, but it. 00:36:12:24 - 00:36:32:01 Andrew Raises the question for me, you know, what makes a drawing a map is, oh, is it a scale? I mean, you couldn't this is a very crew. And, you know, he's not a cartographer. He's a soldier. He's working on a corn shaped surface. So, of course, it's not remotely accurate, but it's it is a fascinating depiction of the town. 00:36:32:02 - 00:36:33:03 Sean Yeah. And it's. 00:36:33:13 - 00:36:38:24 Andrew You know, you know, just what is the difference between a a drawing? What makes a map? A map? Yeah. 00:36:38:24 - 00:36:49:16 Sean I think you're being mean because I think there's definitely a map. Okay. But but, you know, it is a valid question. I think, you know, I love maps personally. I think. 00:36:49:16 - 00:36:50:00 Andrew They're very. 00:36:50:00 - 00:36:51:00 Sean Good them and they're great. 00:36:51:00 - 00:36:53:22 Andrew And but some of them are infographics. I mean. 00:36:54:18 - 00:37:20:04 Sean Some are, but but but I think what makes a map different from a drawing is it's a it's a cipher. Essentially. It's it's the world being rendered into a two dimensional right image of it, I don't know, I guess a drawing does. I do. So I'm not doing very well here. 00:37:20:16 - 00:37:30:12 Andrew It's a tricky I don't say it's an easy question. it's something that I've been thinking about lately because I've been working with a lot of different maps from different areas and completely different styles. And it's like. 00:37:30:16 - 00:37:34:13 Sean Yeah, I guess it's the intended utility. Yeah, you know, it's like pornography. 00:37:34:13 - 00:37:38:16 Andrew You know, one when you when you see it, that's a map. And that's not a map. I don't know. 00:37:38:19 - 00:38:17:03 Sean Yeah. Uh, yeah, because I think, you know, there is an intent to render not to, to depict, you know, providence, but to render it spatially in a manner that's not just esthetic, but is, is useful, useful. There's a certain practicality to it. And I look at this and go, if he gave this map to, you know, his this Powderhorn to his friend and said, you know where the you know where the this street crosses the river is, you know where the end is. 00:38:17:07 - 00:38:28:23 Sean Somebody could look at that and render that information back in the real physical world and and find it, you know. Yeah. So but yeah it is pretty nifty the. 00:38:29:03 - 00:38:37:15 Andrew I was I had not I'm not a by far I'm not an expert on revolutionary War history so I didn't know anything about the French occupation of Newport and. 00:38:38:02 - 00:38:38:12 Sean Yeah. 00:38:38:12 - 00:38:40:02 Andrew And the French participation. 00:38:40:02 - 00:38:41:15 Sean Towards the end of the revolution. 00:38:41:20 - 00:38:58:08 Andrew And all that stuff. And it was interesting. There are speaking of maps, there are a few beautiful maps of that show where the French fleet was anchored off Newport outposts, and I'll put some of those on the on the page for the show as well, because there are some gorgeous maps of that same time period. 00:38:58:11 - 00:39:06:09 Sean Yeah. When love graphs complementing the the typography of the Gazette françase the new port and these are they are they are lovely. 00:39:06:09 - 00:39:27:03 Andrew They are immense. I turn to our our man in Washington, David Saccone, because they have they have this newspaper, the Gazette Francaise de Newport in the Library of Congress. And so, David, speaking of wonderfully helpful librarians, once again, David got his buddies at the Library of Congress on the phone, and he sent me an entire four page issue of that newspaper. 00:39:27:03 - 00:39:31:23 Andrew I'll post a link, a PDF of that on the website as well. And yeah, yeah it is nice. Yeah. 00:39:31:23 - 00:39:50:00 Sean So Lovecraft ends up having this dream come true. Trove of, you know, documents and it reminded me of you as well the of the different ephemera and the different types of documents that are generated at a time and place in history. It's a interesting means by which to. 00:39:50:00 - 00:39:50:22 Andrew Tell the story, tell. 00:39:50:22 - 00:39:59:07 Sean The story, learn the history, learn, learn about any given society by the stuff they print and what is it and why was it made and what did they put money into. 00:39:59:07 - 00:40:22:08 Andrew A stuff they print That's another rabbit hole. You sent me down with this letter when I was trying to find before I had the idea to ask David Saccone for help. I was trying to find that newspaper on my own, and I stumbled across a book called Oh gosh, I'm not going remember the title of it now, but printers, printers and printing in Providence from 1762 to 1906 and can read it. 00:40:22:08 - 00:40:26:17 Andrew There's an online version, but I also found like 40 copies of it on eBay. 00:40:26:17 - 00:40:29:10 Sean So everyone's on the way, one's on the way. 00:40:29:10 - 00:40:53:11 Andrew And it shows because it shows the of like a dozen different colonial era newspapers that were printed in Providence. And this book is itself printed by like the the Printers Club of Providence. So it's basically just them boasting about how awesome printers in Providence have been from before the revolution until the year this book was published in like 1907. 00:40:54:10 - 00:41:04:08 Andrew So it's full of very nerdy typography information and, and photos of the various famous printers who specialized in Providence. 00:41:04:08 - 00:41:18:05 Sean Yeah, I spent a little while looking for this, the 1762 illustration. So did I. And I did not find it either. Yeah, it made me wonder, did did Lovecraft get the date wrong or something? Because he's incredibly specific about it. And one one would think. 00:41:18:12 - 00:41:36:21 Andrew It was killing me when I first read this letter because he's describing all these things in such rich detail. But I don't have them. I can't see them. Yeah. So it was like this letter drives me crazy in one way in that it's so tantalizing, you know, descriptions of things that are now very hard to find. The SHEPLEY Collection. 00:41:37:14 - 00:41:58:20 Andrew SHEPLEY, you know, had this huge private collection and built this beautiful museum to house it in 1921. And but his then he died in 23, the year this letter was written right? And apparently his estate got pretty bungled because his fabulous collection, his family, just did not take care of it the way. 00:41:58:21 - 00:42:09:15 Sean Yeah, well, you call it bungled. Maybe they didn't want Grandpa SHEPLEY sold junk and wanted to liquidate it. And, you know, I think he had two daughters. And in the end, the collection. 00:42:09:15 - 00:42:10:16 Andrew Died before he did. 00:42:10:16 - 00:42:24:15 Sean Right. But the surviving one, you know, again, Grandpa's got a whole standing museum, and it's not like they just threw it out. They sold it after the Rhode Island Historical Society, who now, you know, has kept the stuff they liked out of it. So, you know, it's. 00:42:24:23 - 00:42:36:12 Andrew I guess, give a little bit of a break from my point. Andrew had so much great stuff. And then he also describes the Mason photograph collection, right, of thousands of doors. 00:42:37:17 - 00:42:40:20 Sean That's I'm like, you know, this is Lovecraftian porn. 00:42:41:11 - 00:42:42:05 Andrew This it found. 00:42:42:05 - 00:42:48:02 Sean A collection of 3000 photographs of Georgian doorways to look at them. A small pane window. 00:42:48:13 - 00:42:54:06 Andrew The Providence Public Library has that one. And you can go view you can go view all. 00:42:54:06 - 00:42:55:17 Sean These online as really. 00:42:55:17 - 00:43:05:08 Andrew Long term goals. You get well, you know, you don't have to wait in any line if you go look at their website because you can scan, you can leaf through zillions of photos of doorways. 00:43:05:08 - 00:43:06:06 Sean Were they delightful? 00:43:07:01 - 00:43:09:11 Andrew You know, a few pages where it gives you the gist. 00:43:09:11 - 00:43:12:06 Sean And then the second thousand, this one is the first. 00:43:12:06 - 00:43:17:17 Andrew That's your Lovecraft. It's not that interesting. But but yeah, there's a lot of photos of doors. 00:43:17:21 - 00:43:34:23 Sean Yeah. And you see what interested him, you know, And as a guy who's not into Georgian architecture, I just don't see it. I just don't get it. My boat is not afloat by day, you know, different, different strokes for different folks. So before we move irrevocably past. 00:43:34:23 - 00:44:00:11 Andrew Shepley Yeah, the famous insurance guy, his business partner was Starkweather. And the firm of Starkweather in Shepley is still going strong. It's still a very influential insurance company based in New England with Providence offices. And I have no idea if Lovecraft, you know, knew that Starkweather was the was the business partner or whether that name was one he chose to use later in, in. 00:44:00:19 - 00:44:01:12 Sean Yeah. The mountains of. 00:44:01:12 - 00:44:06:14 Andrew Madness. Mountains of madness. But it did jump off the page to me though. Starkweather and Shepley Yeah. 00:44:06:16 - 00:44:31:03 Sean Because I don't think I've ever run into that name anywhere, anywhere else. So although, you know, he often lifted Providence names and dropped them in different places in his stories, when you look at some of the old street names and things like that, that and certainly the prominent early citizens of Providence, those surnames are pretty commonly recurrent throughout his fiction. 00:44:31:17 - 00:44:57:18 Sean So then he goes on this great expedition with Clifford Eddy. Yeah. And where Lovecraft had so many great correspondents who lived in different parts of the country, Eddie really stands out as one of the local guys. This is Clifford Eddie and his wife Muriel, and they had a bunch of kids and there was Lovecraft. Later, I'm thinking of him with Zealia Bishop in the early thirties. 00:44:58:24 - 00:45:15:15 Sean It was much as Lovecraft had a hard time financially. The Eddie's apparently had a worse time. Yeah, and Lovecraft shows in several places A lot of sympathy towards the Eddie and the Eddie's and their kids and and all of that. And we talked about him some and when we talked about the expedition out to the Dark Swamp. Sure. 00:45:15:21 - 00:45:17:23 Andrew Which is is the immediate prequel. 00:45:17:23 - 00:45:44:10 Sean To exactly the ties right into so anyway clearly Eddie knows the town of Providence. You know it was a little surprising that okay, he hadn't been to the SHEPLEY Museum before, but that you know, it really seems like there must have been pretty hard and fast boundaries of where Lovecraft would or would not go, you know, and I can imagine his out saying, you know, oh, don't, don't, don't you dare cross that. 00:45:44:10 - 00:45:54:00 Sean Well, it's avenue or, you know, you'll incur, you know, their wrath or the gentleman would not be seen there or something because it clearly seems there are very cross prescribed boundaries. Yeah. 00:45:54:00 - 00:46:19:16 Andrew It reminded me of of many things. But one of when the guy in Shadow over Innsmouth you know is No Yeah. Walking through the I don't go to that part of town that's dangerous terrible part of town and yeah. The the grocery boys map which says oh don't go there, Oh don't go there, you know, so whole parts of Innsmouth that a gentleman should not walk through and how terrifying it would be to be seen there. 00:46:19:18 - 00:46:27:03 Sean Yeah, well, that's clearly where HPL was coming at. And clearly he was up for doing a little exploring with Yeah. With Clifford Eddie. 00:46:27:03 - 00:46:41:07 Andrew So and it, it, it does just slap you upside the head go Lovecraft you know for all of his. I am Providence and Providence is myself he was referring to a very specific small part of Providence. 00:46:41:07 - 00:46:44:19 Sean I am my house, I am my neighborhood. Yeah. 00:46:45:19 - 00:46:55:20 Andrew Yeah. There's like you said before, the age of 33, he had never been to whole huge sections of the relatively small city that he lived in. 00:46:55:23 - 00:47:10:17 Sean Yeah. And I had gotten through working in the correspondence here, starting to think of him as a little bit of an adventure because he's off walking in these woods and he's off walking and those words and he's chasing kittens through these woods and thinking, Oh, he was going out next month. Oh, he went to the Dark Swamp and stuff. 00:47:10:17 - 00:47:30:20 Sean But yeah, as you said, Providence is not a big city. And I was looking at, you know, contemporary maps and, you know, we find ourselves in Providence, you know, they have every year or two anyway. Yeah. And going, oh, this is, this is not very far apart. This is we are not talking about big areas of geography. It's not like it was too far to go. 00:47:30:21 - 00:47:42:23 Sean Right. Oh guess it's from like, oh, that's like four blocks from Lovecraft Arts and Sciences. That's not far and all. But no, that's in the, you know, the dangerous, scary no go zones. 00:47:43:07 - 00:48:09:09 Andrew And his descriptions are just so, so romantic of, you know, how only gods know can inhabit these morbid mazes Cape Verde, Portuguese, black Swedes, decadent Yankees, and, you know, the narrow exotic streets and the he compares to the court of miracles from from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It's like, wow, it's he's really seeing this through an art directors lens or something. 00:48:09:24 - 00:48:21:10 Sean Yeah I think, you know it's inspiration to him, you know, because he's writing in his own monsters, you know oh I saw a shambling shape and it might have been monstrous, it might have been human, but it. 00:48:21:10 - 00:48:26:01 Andrew Sounds like the Rue Dozie from the music of Eric Zon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:48:26:06 - 00:48:58:08 Sean Is unbearable. That speaking of the Court of miracles, stew, that was not I had, you know, only encountered that in in Reading Victor Hugo, but didn't really know where that comes from. You know, why, why that's called the Court of miracles that there were such a huge population of beggars in old Paris and a great many of them were charlatans who would put on pretend fake legs and pretend to be blind and pretend to be suffering from all kinds of things. 00:48:58:08 - 00:49:22:06 Sean And it's like when the sun goes down, everybody goes home, takes their costumes off and they are all miraculously healed. And that's where that term the Court of Miracles comes from, which I thought was was actually kind of fun. It's a double exploration here because we go down to the the scary streets that are down off the ghouls court and all that and then the expedition up Federal Hill Yes. 00:49:22:07 - 00:49:44:14 Sean Going to Little Italy and again what he seems so provincial or you know that it's such yeah such an incredible adventure he's having and relating to long and yet you know again I think for a modern you know citizen going to you went up federal it's not I live in New York City what do you what do you want from me. 00:49:44:15 - 00:50:10:11 Sean Yeah yeah that the exoticism with which he paints this Italian neighborhood and how incredibly Italian it is and there's I think there's a little bit of back patting of, Oh, yeah, how crazy or how brave I am, what a big boy I am, because I went to all the way up Federal Hill to have some spaghetti in the restaurant with with where I ate. 00:50:10:11 - 00:50:34:23 Sean He and I were the only, you know, people who's non Italian people. Yeah. There so and you know in fairness that he had led a pretty sheltered and provincial life and you know spaghetti is I never read it Italian people are an everyday thing for a lot of Americans and pastas an everyday thing but it wasn't for him and so this was, you know, clearly way beyond his comfort zone. 00:50:34:24 - 00:51:07:22 Sean Yeah I was looking at the the history of Federal Hill which you you he really incorporated quite a lot into haunter of the dark. Yeah. And the I was reading about the macaroni riots of 1914 which is just an awesome name for a riot but it was right around the beginning of the Great War and local merchants were upping the price of pasta and that was causing outrage. 00:51:07:22 - 00:51:28:11 Sean And the Marxists felt that the capitalists were coming in and sticking it to the working class. And then the the police, who are generally Anglo and Irish, were afraid to go into the Italian district and some cops got killed. And it was this, you know, providence. This was in Providence. This is Providence is the neighborhood that he's talking about here either. 00:51:28:11 - 00:51:38:10 Sean So you know that there really was, or at least in bad times, could be seen as a no go neighborhood for a couple of, you know, guys who don't speak Italian. 00:51:38:10 - 00:51:47:01 Andrew And you're if you're the Lovecraft's or their neighbors who live up on College Hill, then no doubt Federal Hill is a scary part of town. 00:51:47:01 - 00:51:51:09 Sean Yeah, absolutely. Erica, you know, has that history to it. 00:51:51:09 - 00:52:02:17 Andrew Yeah. And it is interesting that right at the end of his description of this trip to Federal Hill, it's like oh and in the you know the next day we're departing for the dark swamp. Yeah Coach Fisher Patchett. 00:52:03:12 - 00:52:22:01 Sean Delightful to see that from our other set of Dark Swamp letters that we covered previously. And then we also had talked previously about this little gem, the characters and corners and characters of Providence. Right? That was a set of, you know, just illustrated little vignettes of. 00:52:22:01 - 00:52:23:03 Andrew Yeah, by Laswell. 00:52:23:06 - 00:52:26:11 Sean Yeah. Parts of Providence that HPL certainly thought were. 00:52:26:11 - 00:52:32:10 Andrew Yeah, they were published originally in the newspaper and then later collected as a book, which we have a lovely copy of here. 00:52:32:11 - 00:52:36:12 Sean Yeah, Yeah. I did not understand that. That Glaslem 00:52:36:15 - 00:52:40:14 Andrew Chapel. Yeah, that was one of the things I thought that must be a dictation. 00:52:40:14 - 00:53:05:01 Sean I worked on it at his handwriting and I was like, Boy, that sure looks like glasslem Chatham So in Welsh glass Lem means Blue Lake and there was a glass lem chaff hotel at 120 Park Place in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And that's where the Longs had gone to the beach. Okay, so it was it's a real it's a real thing there. 00:53:05:01 - 00:53:09:11 Sean And there were, you know, pictures of it right at the the boardwalk there and Atlantic City. 00:53:09:14 - 00:53:14:22 Andrew All right. Well, the sentence, though, there's some there's got to be a missing word in this sentence. 00:53:14:22 - 00:53:17:10 Sean That, oh, there may well be a missing word in the sentence. 00:53:17:10 - 00:53:18:18 Andrew But make any sense to me. 00:53:19:00 - 00:53:19:20 Sean Yeah. No. At the. 00:53:19:20 - 00:53:22:20 Andrew Time Glass Lynn Chatham and get all arrested What what. 00:53:23:17 - 00:53:45:18 Sean Well on return to the manuscripts here. Yeah it's funny because he's he's as Lovecraft often does he's a he's running out of real estate on this page so the whole write the whole last two sentences are really crammed in. So let's see. Well be Graham nice boy and enjoy. 00:53:47:24 - 00:53:49:20 Andrew Enjoy the glass Lynn Chatham. 00:53:49:20 - 00:53:52:17 Sean Though I bet that's what is the glass Lynn what you. 00:53:52:17 - 00:53:55:18 Andrew Put and every time glass Lynn Chatham and get all. 00:53:55:18 - 00:54:02:04 Sean Right Oh yeah well at this point I'd look at and say yeah and enjoy the glass Lynn Chatham and get all rested go. 00:54:02:04 - 00:54:04:01 Andrew Okay now because now the whole letter. 00:54:04:15 - 00:54:08:13 Sean The signatures tricky and this one to yours. 00:54:10:23 - 00:54:12:22 Andrew Obedient ancestors what you've typed. 00:54:12:22 - 00:54:17:13 Sean Yeah I figured because it's Y R S 00:54:18:00 - 00:54:18:15 Andrew Yours. 00:54:19:12 - 00:54:41:05 Sean And then I figure it's OBT there's definitely ancestor and then HP and there's actually not at least in this scan, there's not an L that's on there, but I suspect there probably was one. But hey the, the letterhead from the hotel as and has a you know very pretty drawing of his hotel room so. 00:54:41:05 - 00:54:41:16 Andrew This is very. 00:54:41:16 - 00:55:09:23 Sean Nice. It's snazzy. So yeah, the Frank Belknap Long collection has in fact been scanned and and should hopefully be increasingly accessible to everyone in upcoming months. But lovely of the folks there to do it. And, you know, really interesting to take a snapshot and look at the difference between a selected letter edited by Derleth and Wandrei and the actual content of the letter. 00:55:09:23 - 00:55:22:20 Sean And, you know, they ended up keeping what they ended up wanting to keep. But our thanks to they go out to Heather Cole and the lovely crew at the John Hay Library at Brown University. 00:55:23:07 - 00:55:32:08 Andrew I'd also like to extend my personal thanks to David Saccone and Dan Pratt for stepping in and finding some cool stuff for me when I didn't have time to do it myself. 00:55:32:09 - 00:55:40:05 Sean Way to go, fellas. If you've enjoyed today's episode, we'd be glad to hear from you via email at Voluminous@HPLHS.org 00:55:40:05 - 00:55:45:10 Andrew And please tell your friends post a review or a rating, or even send somebody a good old fashioned letter. 00:55:45:10 - 00:55:48:11 Sean I am your obedient servant, Sean Branney 00:55:48:11 - 00:55:50:09 Andrew And I am cordially and respectfully yours Andrew Leman 00:55:50:09 - 00:55:56:19 Sean You've squandered yet another part of a day listening to voluminous the letters of H.P. Lovecraft. 00:55:57:00 - 00:56:19:01 Andrew We didn't mean to do it, but it was brought to you by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Please come check out all we have to offer at HPLHS.org