72 Daniel Jenckes was the first bookseller in Providence, founding his bookshop in 1763.
73 Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward of Westerly engaged in a bitter personal and political feud for thirteen years following Hopkins’s election as governor in 1755; the feud also represented a battle for economic and political supremacy between Providence (whose residents mainly supported Hopkins) and Newport (whose residents mainly supported Ward). In 1765, with Ward as governor, North Providence actually did briefly become a separate town, but two years later, when Hopkins was governor, the town’s Assembly petitioned to be reunited with Providence (see Kimball 281-89). Hacker’s Hall at 220 South Main Street was owned by Joshua Hacker and was a popular place of assembly from the 1760s onward. It was destroyed by fire in 1801, and the Joseph Peck house was erected on the spot in 1805.
74 There were several Sugar Acts in the eighteenth century, but HPL refers to the act of 1764, which sought to cut down on the smuggling of sugar into the colonies and resulted in a virtual monopoly of the American sugar market by British sugar planters. Violent protests by the colonists led to an eventual reduction of duties on foreign refined sugar.
75 Now Gaspee Point in Warwick, six miles south of Providence. It was where the Gaspée foundered prior to its burning in 1772 (see n. 104).
76 Edward (1330-1376), Prince of Wales and eldest son of Edward III, sacked the French city of Limoges in 1370 during the Hundred Years War.
77 This anecdote is taken directly from a notice in the Providence Gazette quoted by Kimball (310-11).
78 An actual incident that occurred on July 19, 1769.
79 Sir James Wallace (1731-1803), British admiral, was indeed commander of various military vessels in North America and the West Indies from 1762 onward, although there is no evidence that he was ever in charge of a customs fleet.
80 The sloop-of-war Cygnet had been lying in Newport harbor since at least 1764; it was commanded by Sir Charles Leslie. Rioting broke out in Newport as a result of the Stamp Act of 1764, and a plan was devised by colonial rebels to capture a sloop with a cargo of molasses, then under the control of the Cygnet; but the plan was later abandoned. It is not certain how much longer the Cygnet remained in Rhode Island waters.
81 A snow is a small sailing vessel resembling a brig. It was often used as a warship.
82 According to the recollections of Mrs. Grace Mauran, Manuel Arruda was a Portuguese door-to-door fruit salesman who sold his wares on College Hill at the time when HPL was living at 10 Barnes Street. See McNamara and Joshi, “Who Was the Real Charles Dexter Ward?” (cited in Further Reading).
83 Apparently mythical, although Kimball (191) mentions a Zacharias Mathewson living in Providence in 1722.
84 The Sabin Tavern was formerly located at the northeast corner of South Main and Planet Streets. It was built in 1763 and was occupied by James Sabin from 1765 to 1773. It was where the burning of the Gaspée (see n. 104) was planned. In 1891 it was torn down, but the room where the Gaspée meeting took place was joined to the house at 209 Williams Street.
85 The Rev. James Manning (1738-1791), Baptist clergyman, helped to found Rhode Island College (later Brown University) in 1764 and became its first president the following year, retaining the post until his death.
86 John Brown (1736-1803), shipping magnate, later supplied clothing and munitions to the Continental Army and then served as U.S. representative from Rhode Island (1799-1801). Nicholas Brown (1729-1791), eldest of the four Brown brothers, was chiefly a merchant, and is said to have been instrumental in persuading Rhode Island to adopt the U.S. Constitution (it was the last of the thirteen colonies to do so). Moses Brown (1738-1836), manufacturer, became a Quaker in 1774 and thereupon led the movement to abolish slavery in Rhode Island. He helped to found the Moses Brown School (see n. 8). For Joseph Brown see n. 25.
87 Dr. Jabez Bowen, whom the Providence Gazette described as “for a great Number of Years . . . eminent in the Practise of Physics and Surgery” (Kimball 344), died in August 1770, so he could not have been part of the anti-Curwen faction gathering in the autumn of 1770. HPL may have confused him with his son, Jabez Bowen, Jr. (d. 1815), who was an amateur astronomer; but this Jabez Bowen was not a doctor.
88 Abraham Whipple (1733-1819), privateersman and naval officer, led the party that burned the revenue ship Gaspée in 1772 (see n. 104). HPL was collaterally related to him through his great-great-grandmother, Esther Whipple (1767-1848). Kimball at one point describes Whipple as “pugnacious and outspoken” (259).
89 Joseph Wanton (1705-1780), born of a distinguished Newport family and governor of Rhode Island (1769-75).
90 “Daniel Abbott was . . . owner of the distil-house by the Parade, just in front of the Great Bridge” (Kimball 192).
91 Daniel Green and Aaron Hoppin are mythical.
92 The North Burying Ground (now the North Burial Ground) is an immense cemetery at the junction of North Main Street and Branch Avenue. It was the first common burying ground in the city, having been established in June 1700.
93 Orne is a family of ancient standing in Salem, deriving from one of the earliest settlers, Deacon John Horne. HPL cites a Benjamin and Eliza Orne of Arkham in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (CC 330) and a Granny Orne in “The Strange High House in the Mist” (D 279).
94 Salem-Village is the original name for the town of Danvers (see n. 12 to “Pickman’s Model”).
95 In the witch cult, a name for the Devil, who was often said to appear as a black (not negroid) man. See “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932): “. . . beyond the table stood a figure he had never seen before—a tall, lean man of dead black colouration but without the slightest sign of negroid features; wholly devoid of either hair or beard, and wearing as his only garment a shapeless robe of some heavy black fabric” (MM 281). HPL derived this description from Margaret A. Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).
96 Silvanus was a forest god of the Romans; Cocidius was a war god of the Celts. The two gods were linked by the ancient Britons, their names appearing together in various inscriptions found in the north of Britain.
97 HPL refers to four of the leading churches in colonial Philadelphia: St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Church (1758-61) at Third and Pine Streets; St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church (1761) at 217 South Third Street; St. Mary’s (Roman Catholic) Church (1763) at 224-50 South Fourth Street; and Christ Church (1754) at Second and Market Streets.
98 Dr. William Shippen (1736-1808) was a Philadelphia physician and professor of surgery and anatomy at the College of Philadelphia (1765f.), where the first medical school in the nation was established.
99 “. . . in this year [1762] the town council met on the west side for the first time at Thurston’s, Sign of the Golden Lion, on Weybosset Street.” Greene, Providence Plantations (n. 64), p. 55.
100 “We are told that . . . ‘the white wig of President Manning was of the largest dimensions worn in this country’ ” (Kimball 353, probably quoting the Providence Gazette).
101 Esek Hopkins commanded the brigantine Providence in 1758, fitted up the brig Sally for a voyage to Africa in 1764, and later became the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy (1775-77).
102 University Hall, completed later in 1770 and now the administration building of Brown University. It was actually called the “College Edifice” and for many years was the only building on the campus.
103 For an explanation (of sorts) of this utterance, see below (p. 148 and n. 149). For Mirandola, see n. 149.
104 On the morning of June 10, 1772, Abraham Whipple led a party of Rhode Islanders in burning the British schooner Gaspée, then patrolling Narragansett Bay on the lookout for smugglers. As a result, Whipple became a hero in Rhode Island.
105 British playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was imprisoned for two years (1895-97) for homosexuality, after which he spent his remaining years in France. His reputation for a time was so discreditable that his plays were frequently performed w
ithout his name being attached to them.
106 The reference is to Althazar, King of Runazar, in Lord Dunsany’s tale “The King That Was Not,” in Time and the Gods (1906); rpt. in The Complete Pegana, pp. 100-102.
107 The Essex Institute was founded in 1821; a building at 132 Essex Street in Salem was constructed for it in 1848. It is one of the great libraries of local history in the nation.
108 “Old Style,” referring to the fact that England and America did not adopt Pope Gregory XIII’s 1582 revision of the Julian calendar (resulting in the loss of ten calendar days) until 1752. It was only at this time that England and America dated the commencement of the new year on January 1, rather than March 25.
109 The Rev. Thomas Barnard, Sr. (1716-1776) was minister of the First Church in Salem from 1755 until his death.
110 Mythical; but a minister, Deodat Lawson, discussed the witchcraft in Salem in a sermon on March 24, 1692, “A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages”; it was later published as Christ’s Fidelity the Only Shield Against Satan’s Malignity (1693).
111 A court of Oyer and Terminer is one that inquires into (oyer, to hear) and determines (terminer) all treasons, felonies, and misdemeanors. John Hathorne was one of the most notorious of the witchcraft judges in Salem. Nathaniel Hawthorne was his direct descendant.
112 Mythical; but several members of the How family were involved with the witchcraft trials, notably Elizabeth How, a suspected witch.
113 The Rev. George Burroughs, one of the central figures in the witch panic, was the first minister to be tried for witchcraft in the colony. Thought to be the leader of the witch coven at Salem, he was accused of possessing supernatural powers and of being the “king of hell.” He was hanged on August 19, 1692.
114 Ut vulgo in Latin literally means “as commonly,” i.e., as commonly known or accepted. The implication is that Curwen and his cohorts have some other, esoteric system of dating.
115 The first mention of this baleful deity in HPL’s work. Under a less archaic spelling, Yog-Sothoth, he appears as a major character only in “The Dunwich Horror,” but is alluded to in a number of other tales. As HPL remarks in a late letter, the form of the name is given an Arabic cast because, even though the entity is extraterrestrial, it was first cited in Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon (see SL 4.387).
116 Mythical; first cited (in a passage from the Necronomicon) in “The Festival” (1923; CC 118).
117 Mythical; never again cited by HPL.
118 Astrological formulations. HPL was a vigorous opponent of astrology and in 1914 mercilessly ridiculed a local astrologer, J. F. Hartmann, in the Providence Evening News (two articles are reprinted in MW 500-505).
119 The reference is to Dr. Jabez Bowen (see n. 35) and Dr. Samuel Carew (see Kimball 202), both of whom had apothecary’s shops in Providence.
120 Apparently derived from a mention in Greene, Providence Plantations: “The old Sayles place lay near by [in Pawtucket], where in later days Jeremiah Sayles kept a tavern” (p. 377).
121 Epenetus Olney was one of the earliest settlers of Providence, having been one of those who obtained a lot of twenty-five acres in 1646. Kimball refers to him as a “thrifty innkeeper” (41). HPL may, however, be confusing this with the tavern of Richard Olney a century later (see n. 159).
122 The Boston Stone is a granite block now embedded in the back wall of a building at Hanover and Marshall Streets in the North End of Boston. It was the starting point for measuring mileages from Boston.
123 Metraton is HPL’s error for Metatron, a term out of Jewish mysticism, referring to an archangel who was said to be the highest of all created beings. For Almousin and the source of HPL’s error on Metatron, see n. 148.
124 That is, the Boston Public Library. The building at Copley Square was opened to the public in 1895 but not fully completed until 1912.
125 See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”
126 The Zion Research Library at 120 Seaver Street in Brookline (a western suburb of Boston) is a nonsectarian library for the study of the Bible and church history.
127 HPL’s own interest in chemistry began in 1898, when he was eight: “Chemical apparatus especially attracted me, and I resolved . . . to have a laboratory. Being a ‘spoiled child’ I had but to ask, and it was mine. I was given a cellar room of good size, and provided . . . with some simple apparatus” (SL 1.74).
128 There are several Fields in early Rhode Island, including William Field, mentioned in a letter by Roger Williams during King Philip’s War (see Kimball 93). Naphthali Field is, however, mythical.
129 HPL’s initial reaction to the theory of relativity propounded by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was one of shock and philosophical confusion. In May 1923 he stated: “My cynicism and scepticism are increasing, and from an entirely new cause—the Einstein theory. . . . All is chance, accident, and ephemeral illusion—a fly may be greater than Arcturus, and Durfee Hill may surpass Mount Everest—assuming them to be removed from the present planet and differently environed in the continuum of space-time” (SL 1.231). Later HPL came to terms with relativity, remarking in 1929: “Distances among the planets and nearer stars are, allowing for all possible variations, constant enough to make our picture of them as roughly true as our picture of the distances among the various cities of America. . . . The given area isn’t big enough to let relativity get in its major effects—hence we can rely on the never-failing laws of earth to give absolutely reliable results in the nearer heavens” (SL 2.264-65).
130 “ ‘Nearly opposite’ the firm of Clark and Nightingale, on the Towne Street, was Knight Dexter, a shopkeeper of trading instincts inherited from both father and grandfather. At the ‘Sign of the Boy and Book,’ he sold a well-selected assortment of dry goods whose very names have become obsolete” (Kimball 325). Of the items HPL goes on to mention, Kimball cites the following from Dexter’s shop: red and blue Duf fils, Shalloons, and Callimancoes.
131 “A short distance around the corner from Smith and Sabin . . . was the shop where, ‘At the Sign of the Elephant,’ James Green sold ‘A Large and Compleat Assortment of Braziery, English Piece Goods, Rum, Flax, Indigo, and Tea’ ” (Kimball 326).
132 “A neighboring shop belonged to ‘Robert Perrigo, Cordwainer,’ who displayed the ‘Sign of the Boot’ ” (Kimball 320).
133 Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), the leading Scottish painter in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
134 This roughly parallels HPL’s own five-year period of hermitry following his abrupt withdrawal from high school without a diploma in 1908. A high school friend has testified: “After Hope Street [High School] days, I never talked with Lovecraft but saw him several times. Very much an introvert, he darted about like a sleuth, hunched over, always with books or papers clutched under his arm, peering straight ahead, recognizing nobody.” Harold W. Munro, “Lovecraft, My Childhood Friend” (LR 71).
135 See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”
136 An ardent Anglophile, HPL longed to go to England but was prevented by insufficient resources. He remarked in 1923: “Honestly, if I once saw its venerable oaks and abbeys, manor-houses and rose gardens, lanes and hedges, meadows and mediaeval villages, I could never return to America” (SL 1.210).
137 See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”
138 Neustadt (“New Town”—Nové Mesto in Czech) refers to a part of Prague on the right (east) bank of the Vltava River; it dates to the fourteenth century.
139 Klausenburg is the German name for the city of Cluj (in Hungarian, Kolozsvár); its population in 1923 was 110,000, divided between Romanians, Magyars, Jews, and other nationalities. It was the capital of Transylvania until 1918, when Austria-Hungary’s control of the state ended and it aligned itself with Romania. HPL no doubt chose this region because Bram Stoker had identified it as the native land of his vampire, Count Dracula, in Dracula (1897).
140 It is not clear what town HPL is referring to. There is a town in southwestern Transylv
ania called Rakosd, a few miles south of Déva and about eighty miles southwest of Cluj.
141 Ward had, of course, been gone only a little more than three years (April 1923-May 1926). HPL would presumably have corrected this error if he had prepared this novel for publication.
142 The Biltmore Hotel at 11 Dorrance Street in downtown Providence was built in 1920-22.
143 That is, of the State House (see n. 11).
144 A type of architecture associated with Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) and his three brothers, who were strongly influenced by the austere classicism of Roman and Renaissance Italian architecture and emphasized the use of simple curvilinear forms.
145 Ward’s passage through Providence roughly echoes HPL’s own return to his native city on April 17, 1926, after two horrible years spent in New York. “Well—the train sped on, and I experienced silent convulsions of joy in returning step by step to a waking and tri-dimensional life. . . . Then at last a still subtler magick fill’d the air—nobler roofs and steeples, with the train rushing airily above them on its lofty viaduct—Westerly—in His Majesty’s Province of RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE-PLANTATIONS! GOD SAVE THE KING!! Intoxication follow’d—Kingston—East Greenwich with its steep Georgian alleys 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—UNION STATION—PROVIDENCE!!!!” (LVW 190-91). That final word is, in the ms., about an inch high and is emphasized with four underscores.
146 When he was a boy HPL himself owned a cat named Nigger-Man, a name he uses for a cat in “The Rats in the Walls” (1923).
147 “Eliphas Lévi” is the pseudonym of Alphonse-Louis Constant (1810- 1875), a French occultist and author of numerous volumes on magic and spiritualism.