lovecraft's townscape

mocrates my son:--
november 24, 1923

''i joyn'd my adopted son eddy on the following day [22nd november--my grandfather's birthday] for a tour of exploration of certain parts of colonial providence which i had never before seen or more than vaguely heard of. not a stone's throw from the travell'd business section, tuckt quietly in behind broad and weybosset streets, lurk the beginnings of a squalid colonial labyrinth in which i mov'd as an utter stranger, each moment wondering whether i were in truth in my native town or in some leprous distorted witch-salem of fever or nightmare.

''i had not thought my own city to be so large and vary'd ... eddy knew it, and was my guide. ... there was a fog, and out of it and into it again mov'd dark monstrous diseas'd shapes. they may have been people, or what once were, or might, have been people ... only the gods know who can inhabit this morbid maze--on through the fog we went, threading our way thro' narrow exotick streets and unbelievable courts and alleys, sometimes having antient houses almost meet above our heads, but often emerging into unwholesome little squares or grassless parks ...

''eddy inform'd me that these little squares are characteristick of the old west side of providence, but i had never heard of them, many of these places--especially a "gould's court" of black, gnawing hideousness which i called "ghoul's court" upon seeing it in the lone pallid lamplight after the sun had set--eddy tells me are famous in the annals of crime--but i do not read police reports. there must be crime where so many dead things are ... the massed dead of colonial decay ... the dead that draw shapes out of the night to feed and feast and fatten ... no i had not thought that providence held such places as this. we came out silently.''

yr. obt. servt.,
h.paget-lowe.

h.p.lovecraft, selected letters.