Providence 8

Below are annotations for Providence, No. 8 “The Key” (40 pages, cover date March 2016, released 6 April 2016)
Writer: Alan Moore, Artist: Jacen Burrows, based on works of H.P. Lovecraft

>Go to Moore Lovecraft annotations index

Note: Some of this is obvious, but you never know who’s reading and what their exposure is. If there’s anything we missed or got wrong, let us know in comments.

General: Black explores the dreamlands with Randall Carver. Later Carver and Black attend a talk by Lord Dunsany, where Black meets H.P. Lovecraft.

Cover

• The scene depicted is the interior of Randall Carver’s home in Boston.
• Randall Carver is Providence‘s analogue for Lovecraft’s character Randolph Carter. Carver first appears in Providence #7 P26,p3. Some additional Carver/Carter background is available at this Providence #8 preview post.

Page 1

panel 1

• Captions are the voice of Randall Carver, who first appeared in Providence #7 P26,p3. Carver is Providence‘s analogue for Lovecraft’s character Randolph Carter.
• “Wallace Tillinghast” and the “secret aeroplane” story was a real-life famous hoax, featured in Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned, which Lovecraft is known to have read. The name may have provided inspiration for Crawford Tillinghast, who was the antagonist in Lovecraft’s “From Beyond.”
• “Stella Sapiente” are the Worshipful Order of the Stella Sapiente, the American coven associated with Liber Stella Sapiente (aka Hali’s Booke or the Kitab), Providence’s Necronomicon analog. See Suydam pamphlet in Providence #2 for background.
• Appearing more extensively in issue #9 (starting P1,p3), “Henry Annesley” is the Providence analogue for Crawford Tillinghast from Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” and a relation to Shadrach Annesley from Providence #3, P7,p4. Henry Annesley was first mentioned in Providence #7, P11,p1 as he appears in Pittman’s photo of the Stella Sapiente, which was first shown in Providence #6  P10,p1.
• Panelwise, borders for panels 1-3 are ruler-straight, compared to panel 4 which utilizes the typical uneven hand-drawn borders for most panels in Providence and Neonomicon. In other places (including #4 P1 and #5 P9,p3 and many others) this straight border seems to indicate a paranormal perception.

panel 2

• “Worcester” is Worcester, Massachusetts.

panel 3

• “Midwinter festival” is possibly a reference to Lovecraft’s “The Festival,” or possibly to traditional pagan solstice rituals.
• Commenter Midnight hobbit points out that “Carver’s story ‘Crawler From the Clouds’ seems very close to ‘The Shambler from the Stars’,” by Robert Bloch.

panel 4

• On the left is Carver; to the right is protagonist Robert Black.
• The date is 20 October 1919. The location is Carver’s Boston home.
• “So you could say all of my tales are inspired by dreams” pertains to H.P. Lovecraft, many of whose tales were recorded dreams, or began as such.
• “You’re a genuine Massachusetts Decadent” refers to the Decadents, an artistic movement of the 1880s and 1890s, including Oscar Wilde, who proved influential on weird fiction. Lovecraft scholar Barton Levi St. Armand famously titled one critical work H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent, which highlighted Lovecraft’s stylistic similarities.

Page 2

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• The chapter title “The Key” references the names of two of Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter stories: “The Silver Key” and “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”.
• Several aspects of Carver’s dress and the decoration of his home are deliberately (and somewhat atypically) oriental: his fez, his pointed slippers, the Buddha incense holder, the Chinese teapot and Persian rug, in this picture are all examples of this. Orientalism (such as the Arabian Nights) was an important early influence on Lovecraft, but it also speaks to Carver’s deliberate “exoticism.”
• First glimpse of Carver’s black cat, who is laying in shadow under the table.
• Unidentified print above the fireplace – a fallen angel?

Page 3

panel 1

• “Sous le Monde” is a fictitious book that is Providence’s analog for the Chambers’ fictional play The King in Yellow. See Providence #1 P3,p2.
• “Chambers’ King in Yellow” is the 1895 weird literature novel The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. See Providence #1 P3,p3
• “Hali’s Booke” is  Hali’s Booke of the Wisdom of the Stars, Providence’s analog for Lovecraft’s Necronomicon. See more publication detail in Suydam’s pamphlet in Providence#2 P32-40 or Providence #6 P1,p1.
• “Amateur publication” – Lovecraft became very involved with amateur journalism during World War I, which in the 1910s-1930s was highly organized, with several national-level organizations with annual conventions, elected positions, official organs, and dues. Most of the periodicals created by members were small literary and fiction magazines, to which Lovecraft contributed many poems, essays, editorials, etc., including producing his own amateur journal for a time, The Conservative.
• “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” is H.P. Lovecraft’s story.
• “Pine Cones” was an actual amateur journal, published in 1919. The vol. 1, no. 6 issue contained Lovecraft’s “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.”
• Beyond Black’s head appears to be a small statuette of the Hindu god Ganesha, who would serve as the inspiration for Frank Belknap Long’s novella “The Horror in the Hills,” which contained a long dream-excerpt from Lovecraft’s letters, and was serialized in Weird Tales.

panel 2

• “Had me hooked from the first sentence” – The first sentence is often designed as a hook to draw the reader into a story.
• “Algol” – Arabic name for a star in the constellation Perseus, known as “The Demon Star.”

panel 4

• “after these weeks I’ve been visiting you” – Black has apparently been spending quiet some time with Carver, and this bit of exposition prepares readers for the time-gap.
• Commenter Pat Conolly notes: “When Carver says he’s 46, I couldn’t help but remember that Lovecraft was 46 when he died.”

Page 4

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• “‘Pauvre Eddie’ Poe” – Edgar Allan Poe, (“Poor Eddie” being a nickname, pauvre being French for “poor”).
• “Orphaned early” – A convenient way to dispose of family relations which might get in the way of a good story; Lovecraft never elaborates on Randolph Carter’s parents. Over the next few pages, Moore gives an essential sketch of Randall Carver’s life, tying together the scanty biography of Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter to his new Mythos.

panel 2

• “Most unattainable of my many dreamlands” recalls The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, where Randolph Carter seeks to discover a particular dreamland, which is in fact his beloved home of youth.
• Panelwise, borders for panels 2 and 4 (and, through page 7, alternating panels depicting Lovecraft fictions and Carver recollections) are ruler-straight, compared to panels 1 and 3 which utilizes the typical uneven hand-drawn borders – see P1,p1 above.
• Commenter Sithoid adds:

[…] some interesting details if you compare [this panel] with “The Silver
Key”. “Manservant Elijah” is Benijah Corey. The man standing in the background is most likely Carver’s uncle (in Lovecraft’s story he was named Christopher). But the most interesting detail is the white rabbit.
The rabbit tells us exactly what’s happening: it’s that 1883 morning when young Randolph ran off to the “snake den” – a cave which became his gateway into the world of unknown (and the world of dreams). It’s a truly brilliant stroke because “The Silver Key” didn’t actually feature a rabbit or any other guide — Moore seems to be using an “Alice in Wonderland” reference to convey the “beginning of a dreamquest” meaning.

panel 3

• “The Yellow Nineties” is a name for the 1890s, referring specifically to the period of Decadent literature, especially The Yellow Book. Alan Moore once wrote a light essay on the history of pornography discussing this period, which was later published in an expanded form as 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom.
• “1898” – Significance unknown; in 1898 Lovecraft was eight years old, his father finally passed away, and he first attended school.
• “A consistent geography” – The consistent Dreamlands of Lovecraft’s cycle of stories.

Providence #4, Dreamscape variant, art by Jacen Burrows

panel 4

• The depiction of the face on the mountain recalls a scene from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (also depicted on the Providence #4 Dreamscape variant cover):

Stern and terrible shone that face that the sunset lit with fire. How vast it was no mind can ever measure, but Carter knew at once that man could never have fashioned it. It was a god chiselled by the hands of the gods, and it looked down haughty and majestic upon the seeker. Rumour had said it was strange and not to be mistaken, and Carter saw that it was indeed so; for those long narrow eyes and long-lobed ears, and that thin nose and pointed chin, all spoke of a race that is not of men but of gods. He clung overawed in that lofty and perilous eyrie, even though it was this which he had expected and come to find; for there is in a god’s face more of marvel than prediction can tell, and when that face is vaster than a great temple and seen looking down at sunset in the cryptic silences of that upper world from whose dark lava it was divinely hewn of old, the marvel is so strong that none may escape it.

• “After that, my abilities faded” recalls the lines from “The Silver Key“: “When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams.” Commenter Sithoid points out that this suggests that Robert Black is about 30.
• “Resorting to then-fashionable occultism” – Presaging Randolph Carter’s interlude with Harley Warren in Lovecraft’s stories.

Page 5

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• A scene from “The Statement of Randolph Carter.” Warren’s descent beneath the earth ties in with Pitman’s comments about the Stella Sapiente‘s own descents in Providence #7.
• “Cypher-Pages” are presumably pages inscribed in Aklo to conceal their secrets; in “The Statement of Randolph Carter”:

As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end—the book which he carried in his pocket out of the world—was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in that book.

• “Harvey Warner” is the Providence analogue of Harley Warren.

panel 2

• “With hindsight, both my occult adventures may have been mere hallucinations.” – Recalling Black’s difficulty in discerning his own underworld experiences from dreams or reality.

panel 3

• “Indescribable horrors” refers to Carver’s version of Lovecraft’s “The Unnamable,” which was set in Arkham.

panel 4

• “family documents” – From “The Unnamable”:

Then I told him what I had found in an old diary kept between 1706 and 1723, unearthed among family papers not a mile from where we were sitting; that, and the certain reality of the scars on my ancestor’s chest and back which the diary described.

• “Different colored rooms to suit my moods” refers to a description from “The Silver Key“: “He [Carter] decided to live on a rarer plane, and furnished his Boston home to suit his changing moods; one room for each, hung in appropriate colours, furnished with befitting books and objects, and provided with sources of the proper sensations of light, heat, sound, taste, and odour.”
  • “Aping Poe” refers to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story “The Masque of the Red Death“, which notably featured rooms of different colors. (Thanks to Pat Conolly for reminding us to note this!) Commenter Midnight hobbit points out that “aping Poe” may be a reference to the murderer from “The Murders on the Rue Morgue”., and that there may be a further Poe reference with the prominence of a “Black Cat” throughout this issue.

Page 6

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• “Prince Prospero’s palace” – Another reference to Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (see previous panel).

panel 2

• “Sometimes it appeared an earthly place that had preceded our earliest civilizations” recalls the ancient land of Mnar in “The Doom that Came to Sarnath” et al.
• The scene and dress recalls the armor and trappings of ancient Rome. Lovecraft had a special affinity for Rome, and dreamed of himself as a Roman, such as in the dream later titled “The Very Old Folk” which formed a critical chapter in Long’s “The Horror from the Hills.”
• Commenter Paul points out:
  

  the Roman soldier is making a “Roman salute”. This is a salute that seems never to have been used in actual ancient Rome, but was associated with it during the late 18th and 19th centuries, and entered popular culture in the early 20th. It was appropriated by the Italian fascists in the 1920s, and after them the Nazis. It gained significant popular association in the US especially in the early 20th century, known as the “Bellamy salute”. It’s probable that Black and Carver would have imagined it as appropriate to an image of ancient Rome.

panel 3

• “Seven hundred steps to deeper slumber” – Recalling how Randolph Carter entered the Dreamworld in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:

So asking a farewell blessing of the priests and thinking shrewdly on his course, he boldly descended the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the enchanted wood.

• “Stella Sapiente head and prominent freemason” – Whipple Van Buren Phillips, the maternal grandfather of H. P. Lovecraft, founded Freemason Lodge No. 28 in Greene, R.I. in 1870.
• “General Albert Pike” is Brigadier General Albert Pike – see next panel.

Albert Pike (1809-1891) – image via Wikipedia

panel 4

• On the left (made clearer on P10,p2 below) is Whipple Van Buren Phillips, grandfather of H.P. Lovecraft. Whipple Phillips has been foreshadowed. He is mentioned as a leader of the Stella Sapiente (under the name “Buren”) in #3 P11,p3. He appears in the photo in #6 P10,p1. From that photo, Pittman names him as “Buren, Van Buren, something like that” in #7 P11,p1.
• On the right is the first appearance of Albert Pike. Brigadier General Albert Pike was a prominent and active freemason (Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite.) Pike was mentioned in Providence #4 P9,4 where Garland Wheatly mentions “General Pike’s associate.”
• Oddly enough, Phillips and Pike do not appear to be using any sort of masonic handshake. Pike is in his confederate uniform; in 1863 the American Civil War was still ongoing. The men were not known to have met in real life, but see P9 and 10 below.
• Nitpick: the general’s left sleeve should have a gold band around the cuff to match the right sleeve.

Page 7

panel 1

• The scene is rather typical of Colonial fiction, which much of weird fiction borrowed or built from, but is not directly correlated with any of Lovecraft’s stories (unless one accounts general references to ruined civilizations on “the dark continent.”)
• “Idle Days on the Yann” is an influential story by Lord Dunsany.

panel 2

• Lord Dunsany visited Boston in 1919; H. P. Lovecraft was there to hear him read, though he was too timid to ask for an autograph. Dunsany was, as Carver says, a titled aristocrat, a soldier in the British army, and a big game hunter.
• “prompted me to enlist in the French Foreign Legion” – In “The Silver Key” Lovecraft recounts of Randolph Carter:

It was as early as 1897 that he turned pale when some traveller mentioned the French town of Belloy-en-Santerre, and friends remembered it when he was almost mortally wounded there in 1916, while serving with the Foreign Legion in the Great War.

• Notably, however, Carter served in France, while the Foreign Legion in Carver’s recollection appears to be in a desert climate, suggesting a variance from Lovecraft’s story – and perhaps that Carver isn’t telling Black everything.

panel 3

• “I…uh…I was turned down for, uh, for medical reasons.” – Black’s dissembling suggests he did not actually enlist. Lovecraft attempted to enlist, and was briefly accepted, but his mother and family physician had the enlistment annulled.

panel 4

• “My method is purely cerebral.” – Carter’s method resembles modern techniques of guided meditation.

Page 8

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• The steps are numbered, recalling the “Seven Hundred steps” – notably, the cat is leading; in Lovecraft’s mythology, cats exist in both the Dreamlands and the waking world.
• “Dream journals” – A contemporary practice of lucid dreaming, where the sleeper has some conscious control of the dream-state; it is also, perhaps ironically, what Black has been doing somewhat with his Commonplace Book.
• Panelwise, as in previous issues, the transition to three-column panels signals a descent into a dream state. Again the borders here are ruler-straight – see P1,p1 above.

panel 2

panel 3

• The background resembles Stephen Biesty’s cross-section books or David Macaulay’s Underground, with buried pipes, rock strata, the subway, and bones.

Page 9

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• King George from Providence #7; this reinforces the idea that ghouls interact between the waking and dreaming worlds. Ghouls appear in the dreamworlds of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
• “Carver, you damn coward!” is being shouted by a man in a desert, in a French Foreign Legion uniform, suggesting Carver abandoned them – possibly tying in with Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” – or else that the ghosts of his dying comrades literally haunt Carver’s dreams.
• “Alice’s Wonderland” – in the original story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice arrives at Wonderland by falling through a rabbit hole. Alice’s adventures are usually used as a keystone to entering a fantastical world, but in this case it is the method of transition that is more important.
• Note the dinosaur fossil and trilobite in the lower part of the panel; as they descend, they are almost literally going backwards in geological time. This also jives with Carver’s thoughts on the Dreamland being an impossibly distant past – and suggests further possible correlations: are these “underground” Dreamlands the same as the mythical civilizations at “the center of the Earth”?

panel 2

• Black and Carver’s speech gets slurred as they fall into deeper sleep.

panel 3

• “The Vendome” is the Hotel Vendome, in Boston.
• “Hypnos’ precinct” – Hypnos being the Greek personification of sleep. Also (thanks commenter Sithoid) “the name of Lovecraft’s story (1922) concerning a dreamer who was learning the secrets of dreamwalking under an older mentor, not unlike Robert and Carver.”
• The checkered floor and herringbone border are almost identical to where Whipple Phillips and Albert Pike met on P6,p4.

Page 10

panel 1

• The borders here through P15 are ruler-straight indicating heightened paranormal consciousness – see P1,p1 above.

Whipple Van Buren Phillips

panel 2

• On the left is Albert Pike; the right is Whipple Van Buren Phillips. (See P6,p4 above)
• “mutual values” – Not entirely clear, but possibly a desire for domination; if the Stella Sapiente are lucid dreamers, and they bring the Dreamlands to “the real world,” they might theoretically be able to control reality with their lucid dream techniques.
• “Knights of the Golden Circle” – A pro-slavery secret society in the United States, who supported the conquest of territories in Central and South America, and later the formation of a confederacy of slave states.
• “your beloved South” – The Confederate States of America.

panel 3

• The figures behind Pike are dressed in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan (second incarnation).
• If Pike isn’t waiting for the South to rise again, he probably means R’lyeh. (Thanks commenter Sithoid.)

panel 4

• “Klansmen” – Members of the Ku Klux Klan. The original incarnation of the Klan was formed in the aftermath of the Civil War, and acted as a vigilante group against carpetbaggers and former slaves in the South. The second incarnation, formed in 1915, was essentially a fraternal society like the freemasons or Elk’s Lodge, but with a focus on racism and/or nativism.

Page 11

panel 1

• The hall gives way to an abandoned trolley-yard, borrowing imagery from Lovecraft’s account of a dream, which became “The Thing in the Moonlight.”

panel 2

• “carnal longings for our mothers”/”Professor Freud” – Referring to the oedipal complex theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud; Lovecraft was not fond of Freud’s psychosexual theories either, but it is a touchpoint that Carver is “read up” on Freud’s theories of dream analysis.
• There is a full moon, and a tower in the distance. The tower recalls a passage from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:

There was one chance that Carter might be able to steal through that twilight realm of circular stone towers at an hour when the giants would be all gorged and snoring indoors, and reach the central tower with the sign of Koth upon it, which has the stairs leading up to that stone trap-door in the enchanted wood.

Providence #8, Dreamscape variant, art by Jacen Burrows

panel 3

• From Lovecraft’s “The Thing in the Moonlight” dream (depicted on this issue’s Dreamscape variant cover):

Presently I heard a swishing in the sparse grass toward the left, and saw the dark forms of two men looming up in the moonlight. They had the regulation caps of a railway company, and I could not doubt but that they were conductor and motorman. Then one of them sniffed with singular sharpness, and raised his face to howl to the moon. The other dropped on all fours to run toward the car. I leaped up at once and raced madly out of that car and across endless leagues of plateau till exhaustion forced me to stop—doing this not because the conductor had dropped on all fours, but because the face of the motorman was a mere white cone tapering to one blood-red-tentacle. . . .

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Page 12

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• “Our New England corners” – Possibly reference to a New England place-name tradition; Lovecraft referenced this tradition with the town of Dean’s Corners in “The Dunwich Horror.”
• “Corner” is also used by Moore to indicate “dimension” in Providence #5, P19p4 (and extensively throughout his novel Jerusalem). In the following panel of #5 (P20p1), Hezekiah also used the word “indigenous”, further suggesting a connection between the two scenes. (Thanks to commenter Sithoid.)

panel 2

• “Such places tend to dominate my inner landscape” is a possible reference to “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” etc.
• “The things Pitman paints” refers to Ronald Pitman’s ghoul paintings in Providence #7.
• “The Stella Sapiente’s redeemer” refers to the Redeemer Prophecy which foretells that a Redeemer will come to “set things right,” as related in Hali’s Booke. It appears that H.P. Lovecraft is the Redeemer. The prophecy is first mentioned in Providence #2 P39 (Suydam’s pamphlet page [10]), then explained in Providence #4 (beginning P9,p4) by Garland Wheatley, and then detailed in Hali’s Booke in Providence #6 P34-35.

panel 3

• “He is apparently useless unless contacted by an equally unlikely ‘messenger’.” seems to suggest why Black has been treated so well by most of the Lovecraftian forces he has encountered; those who are aware of the Redeemer prophecy and want it fulfilled wish to see him complete his journey. The messenger, or herald, appears to be Robert Black.

panel 4

• “use it to access our realm’s lower reaches” – The symbolic giving way to the practical; since you go down to enter the deeper dreaming, you have to go up to enter the areas of lighter slumber. This is a process made somewhat explicit in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
• “Those occasional twinkles could as well be stalactites as stars” – Again, the suggestion of a Hollow Earth-type scenario, which has been influential in certain occult circles.

Page 13

panel 1

• “Reality might be a different state where it is unobserved” is an apparent reference to Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiments on quantum superposition, which would not be invented until 1935, and which was ironically put into the infamous thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat. The sudden presence of the cats is thus a bit of a pun.

panel 2

• “This dainty crew know me of old and call me friend” is a reference to Randolph Carter’s alliance with the cats of Ulthar in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. (Commenter Midnight hobbit reminds us to note that those cats also appear in the eponymous “The Cats of Ulthar”.

panel 3

panel 4

• Bat-like wings creep in from the edges of the page.

Page 14

Polyptych from 1908 Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland comic

panels 1-3 and P15

• Taken together with Page 15, we get a panoramic shot of the Dreamlands, which appears to be based largely on a mixture of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands and New England.
• The first five of these panels form a comics polyptych.
• This sequence is an homage to Winsor McCay‘s Little Nemo in Slumberland comic which appeared in newspapers from 1905 through the mid-1920s (actually beginnning at the New York Herald – where Black worked.) Similarities include:
  – Nemo explores dream worlds, similar to Carver/Carter.
  – McCay often employed elongated vertical panels and polyptychs. He was among the first to employ the comics polyptych technique.
  – Each strip ends with a panel where Nemo is reawakened into the real world, similar to P15,p6. This awakening is usually the anti-climax to some sort of rising tension in the latter part of the Nemo strip, such as, frequently, falling from a great height.
  Moore and Colleen Doran recently paid homage to McCay’s Nemo in Big Nemo available at Electricomics. In Moore’s Promethea, ‘Little Margie in Misty Magic Land’ is a homage to McCay’s Nemo.

panel 1

• Carver and Black appear to be carried aloft by nightgaunts, which appear in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (and on Dreamscape covers for Providence #6 and #9.)
• In the upper left can be seen a modern city, Chinese towers, a smoking factory, and what might be some kind of keep.

panel 2

• “Tickling” is one of the odder aspects from Lovecraft’s Dream-Quest: “He was flying very rapidly through the air before a malevolent tickling told him that the rubbery night-gaunts had performed their duty.”
• The building where the trolley-lines converge, the one from which Carver and Black emerged, resembles a church.
  • Commenter Matt Wise points out, plausibly, that the building may be intended to be the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. Construction on that building in the real world didn’t begin until 1922, and took until 1932 to be completed; of course, time is not as linear in the Dreamlands. Of notable interest to Moore is that the building is located upon “Shooter’s Hill” in Virginia; a different Shooter’s Hill, in London, was where Alan Moore’s great friend Steve (no relation) Moore lived, as discussed in Alan Moore’s “Unearthing”.

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Page 15

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• A medieval castle and town with curtain-wall is visible, such as King Kuranes’ realm in Dream-Quest.

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• “Outer entities” – The Outer Gods, mentioned by Lovecraft in Dream-Quest.

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Page 16

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• Commenter M Levi points out
  

  as Robert suggests that it was Carvers’ vivid imagination that gave birth to such unique stories, Carver proposes that it was someone elses’ stories which provoked his imagination, hinting at the concept of “That which dreams itself into being”, as well as at the obvious overall theme of the “egg and chicken” between imagination or dreams and stories.

Summer Street Bridge in 1930, photo via Digital Commonwealth

panel 2

• This bridge is somewhat difficult to identify. According to historic maps, to get quickly from F Street to Copley Plaza, Black and Carver would probably cross the Dover Street Bridge over Fort Point Channel. That waterway and bridge are nearly unrecognizable today; the location would correspond to the 4th Street/Berkeley Street at Interstate 93 – see contemporary street view.
  There are at least a few Boston bridges with mid-bridge buildings similar to what is depicted in the panel:
  – The 1891 Harvard Bridge over the Charles River had a mid-bridge building, visible on this postcard.
  – The 1899 Summer Street Retractile Bridge over the Fort Point Channel had an operations building visibile in this historic photo.
  – The Congress Street Bridge over the Fort Point Channel has an attached building that is now the Boston Tea Party Museum. Current bridge dates to 1930.
  – The 1908 Northern Avenue Bridge over the Fort Point Channel has an attached building, but the bridge has a metal super-structure.
  The Summer or Congress bridges are more-or-less in the right area (to go from F Street to Copley Square), but none of these bridge structures/buildings are quite oriented as shown in the panel. Probably Burrows and Moore appear to have depicted an invented bridge that is similar to various historic ones in the vicinity.
• Commenter Sithoid points out more appearances of the Oxblood Buick, here, and also on P17p1. “Fitting, since the dialogue on these pages revolves around fears of being followed.”

panel 3

• “Copley Plaza” was the site of Lord Dunsany’s actual 20 October, 1919, lecture and reading. The event took place in the Copley-Plaza Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel on Copley Square.
• “Copley Plaza so near the [Hotel] Vendome” – see these locations mapped.
• The building on the right appears to be 140 Clarendon Street – see contemporary street view.
• Commenter M Levi points out
  

  Carver now gives an explanation (followed by a practical example in the next panel) of PH’NGLUI or “an immersion of that which is itself more forcefully immersive, or else – the ocean hidden in the puddle” – by just happening across Dr. North to demonstrate this effect. This is fitting with the name of this chapter, as Carver appears to be unconcsiously providing Black with practical examples of Aqlo (probably to enable his role as the Messenger).

panel 4

• The panel reintroduces James Montague and “Dr. [Hector] North” from Providence #5 and #6. They have relocated to Boston, echoing to their analogues’ move in Lovecraft’s story “Herbert West—Reanimator.”
• “Scratching in the earth” is ambiguous. It is reminiscent of West’s grave robbing in “Reanimator,” but perhaps it refers to Black is trying to get underground to access the Dreamlands.
• The location is the east end of Trinity Church – see contemporary street view.

Page 17

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panel 2

• The police strike and riots were seen in Providence #7.
• The large building in the upper left is the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building.  To its left is the Fairmont Hotel. The right of the panel shows some of Trinity Church. Compare the setting to contemporary street view.

panel 3

• “Bolshevism,” here, is used as a synonym for labor unions and collectivism. Like Carver, Lovecraft was not fond of communism.
• The setting is the front of the Fairmount Hotel – see contemporary street view. “Hardly as splendidly antique as your Vendome” compares the Fairmont, which opened in 1912, to the Vendome, which opened in 1882.

panel 4

• “Professor Baker,” the man shown with his back to the audience (on the left), is Professor George Baker of Harvard University, who introduced Dunsany.

Page 18

• First appearance of Lord Dunsany.
• To quote from Lovecraft’s account of the lecture:

“Arriving early at the Copley-Plaza, we obtained front seats; so that during the address I sat directly opposite the speaker, not ten feet from him. Dunsany entered late, accompanied and introduced by Prof. George Baker of Harvard. He is of Galpinian build–6 ft. 2 in. in height, and very slender. His face is fair and pleasing, though marred by a slight mustache. In manner he is boyish and a trifle awkward; and his smile is winning and infectious. His hair is light brown. His voice is mellow and cultivated, and very clearly British. He pronounces were as wair, etc. Dunsany first touched upon his ideals and methods; then hitched a chair up to his reading table, seated himself, and commenced reading his short play, The Queen’s Enemies. This is based very obviously upon the anecdote of Nitocris in the second book of Herodotus; but Dunsany averred that he had purposely avoided reading details or even learning the names of the characters in the story, for fear his original imaginative work on the play might be hampered or impaired. I advise you to read it for yourself–it is in Plays of Gods and Men, which every well-regulated library has or ought to have on the shelves. Later Dunsany read selections from other works of his, including a masterly burlesque on his own style–Why the Milkman Shudders when he Sees the Dawn. As he read this, he could not repress his own smiles and incipient chuckles! The audience was large, select, and appreciative; and after the lecture Dunsany was encircled by autograph-seekers.
– Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft 1.91-92

panel 1

panel 2

• In the center  (to the right of Black’s head), first appearance of H.P. Lovecraft. At the time 29 years of age.

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Page 19

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• “Subterranean gems” is possibly a reference to the Dreamlands.

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• “Brogue” usually refers to Scots or Gaelic accents; Dunsany was Anglo-Irish.
• Commenter Greenaum points out that ““That rather depends whom you ask” is Carver’s little joke. That being that the Irish War of Independence was going on right then, so whether an Irish accent is “British” or not was a question a lot of people had differing opinions on.”
• Plays of Gods and Men (1917) – While better-known today for his short fantasy fiction, Dunsany was a prolific and successful playwright; plays such as those in this volume echo some of the themes, tone, and trappings of his earlier fantasies.

  

  Plays of Gods and Men by Lord Dunsany

panel 3

• “Broadway” is America’s great theatrical district in New York City.
• “Commencing in a temple, underground in Sixth-Dynasty Egypt, it is titled ‘The Queen’s Enemies'” – This is the story of Nitocris, who lured her enemies to an underground feast and then slew them; it has been the basis for a number of weird stories, most notably Tennessee William’s “The Vengeance of Nitocris.” Lovecraft mentions her twice, in “The Outsider” and “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs,” where she is a queen of ghouls.

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Page 20

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• Scene from “The Queen’s Enemies,” set in ancient Egypt.

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• Scene from “The Queen’s Enemies,” set in ancient Egypt.

Page 21

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• Scene from “The Queen’s Enemies,” set in ancient Egypt.

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• “Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn” is a short story from Dunsany’s Tales of Wonder (1916).

panel 3

• A scene from the final passage of “Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives The Dawn.” The final line of the story ends with “dawn,” the following line being attributed to Lord Dunsany.

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• “Silly Alice!” echoes what Lovecraft wrote: “Egged on by her aunt, Miss Hamlet almost mustered up courage enough to ask for an autograph, but weakened at the last moment. Of this more anon. For mine own part, I did not seek a signature; for I detest fawning upon the great.” (Selected Letters 1.92)

Page 22

panel 1

• “Water-closet” is a toilet.

panel 2

• “Young Lee” is Ed Lee, Alice Hamlet’s cousin.
• “Steppin’ out?” means Dating. Alice Hamlet assured all she was not dating Lovecraft.
• “All of amateurdom” references that Hamlet and Lovecraft were both involved in amateur journalism.

panel 3

panel 4

• Lovecraft’s comments are drawn from his 1919 letter to Rheinhart Kleiner:

For my own part, I did not seek a signature; for I detest fawning upon the great. Dunsany himself has written a piece (Fame and the Poet, in the August Atlantic) which shews his contempt for the flatterers of genius.
– Selected Letters 1.92

Page 23

panel 1

• “Sir, I am an elderly and blundering curmudgeon” – Lovecraft, at the ripe old age of 29, tended to refer to himself as “Grandpa” and to present himself in his letters as something of an old man.

panel 2

• What appears to be Johnny Carcosa’s mother, standing outside the Red Hook church from Providence #2.
• Panelwise, these characters flashes (here then every other panel through P24,p4) have ruler-straight panel borders indicating heightened paranormal consciousness – see P1,p1 above.

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• “Plunkett” is Lord Dunsany, whose family name is Plunkett.

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• Willard Wheatley from Providence #4, dragging what appears to be a cow to the shed where his invisible brother is kept.

Page 24

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• “The motiveless stars above would surely have engineered our convergence.” – A slightly snarky take on Lovecraft’s materialism and “When the stars are right.”

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• Elspeth Wade, from Providence #6

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• “598 Angell Street” is Lovecraft’s real-life address in 1919.

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• Hekeziah Massey and Mister Jenkins from Providence #5.

Page 25

panel 1

• “I may write to him.” – Alice Hamlet did write to Lord Dunsany, who graciously gave her an autography by mail, as recorded in Lovecraft’s letter.

panel 2

• Commenter Pat Conolly suggests: “Very strange that Black should consider Lovecraft the “oddest” person he ever met – odder than the Wheatleys?”

panel 3

• “Haunting me.” – An interesting play on words, considering how much delving in the Dreamlands Black has been doing this issue.

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• “nightly circumnavigation of St. Augustine’s cemetery” – St. Augustine’s Church in South Boston; Lovecraft was also fond of nighttime strolls through cemeteries.

Page 26

panels 1-4

• All text on this page is in a different font, as of a typewriter, and quotes the last lines from the opening paragraph of Lovecraft’s “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.”

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• On the left is Trinity Church again – see contemporary street view.

Page 27

Commonplace Book – September 24

• “Lily” is Jonathan/Lillian Russell – see Providence #1, P1.
• “Manchester” New Hampshire – see Providence #5-6.
• “Ronnie Pittman” – see Providence #7.
• “Athol,” Massachussets – see Providence #4.
• “The [Hotel] Vendome” – see P9,p3 above.
• “Randall Carver” – see P1,p1 above.

Page 28

Commonplace Book – September 24 continued

• “Pliny” was an ancient Roman author.
• “Aristophanes” was an ancient Greek playwright.
• “classical antiquity” – Lovecraft, like Carver, was a Classicist.
• The “late 19th century Englishwoman, possibly of the Bloomsbury set” is not clear. The Bloomsbury Set were an influential turn-of-the-century group of British intellectuals, including Virginia Woolf. Commenter Pat Conolly suggests she may have been a character from Hitchens’ book (see below).
• The description “all green and idols” appears in Robert Smythe Hitchens‘ 1902 novel Felix.

Page 29

Commonplace Book – September 24 continued

• “Gothic novel” refers to the Gothic horror/fiction genre popular in the 1800s.
• “[The Castle of] Otranto” is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole.
• “Melmoth [the Wanderer]” is a 1820 novel by Charles Maturin.
• “M.R. James” was an English scholar and writer, famous for ghost stories.
• “Algernon Blackwood” was an English writer, also famous for ghost stories.
• Carver’s “education in literature” takes its cue notes from Lovecraft’s seminal study Supernatural Fiction in Literature.
• “Amateur Press Association” – see P3,p1 above.
• “Antique turns of phrase and mannerisms” is another affection of Lovecraft’s that Carver shares.
• “An acquaintance in Vermont” could be a reference to Lovecraft’s friend Vrest Orton of Vermont, whom he did visit, but more likely to be a reference to Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness.”

Page 30

Commonplace Book – September 24 continued

• “Twilight Odyssey” – see P7,p1.

Page 31

Commonplace Book – September 24 continued

• “Prose poems” are passages of sheer poetic imagery, but lacking any of the normal forms of verse, even free verse. These are more common in the corpus of Lovecraft’s friend Clark Ashton Smith.

Commonplace Book – September 28

• “Milwaukee”, WI, is Black’s hometown – see Providence #1 P6. Lovecraft connects fictional dreamscape with hometown comfort at the conclusion of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
• “Lilililat” is reminiscent of Lilith and the lilin, demons in Middle Eastern folklore. As commenter Tony Rose points out, it also recall’s Black’s “Lillian”.
• “Thundering Cadambrua” – suggest??
• “Stickball” is a version of baseball, usually played with a stick due to lack of access to a regular bat.
• “The Brooklyn Bridge” appears on P1,p2 of Providence #2.

Page 32

Commonplace Book – September 28 continued

• “The [New York] Herald offices” appear on P2,p1 of Providence #1.
• “Freddy Dix” is Black’s Herald co-worker – see Providence #1 P2,p1.
  • See Providence #11, P9-11, and notes.
• “Flat and functional” [bridges in] “Athol or Salem” were depicted on Providence #4 P4,p3 and Providence #3 P7,p1 respectively.
• “A young man, very well dressed, with a bright yellow cravat pulled up absurdly to conceal his mouth” describes Johnny Carcosa of The Courtyard and Neonomicon – see Neonomicon #1 P13,p1. Black saw Carcosa in a dream earlier – see Providence #3 P28.
• “The long bridge in Manchester across the Merrimack…” was depicted in Providence #5 beginning P6,p1.
• “Scattering wedding confetti on the waters of the river… realized it was Lily” echoes the opening scene where Johnathan/Lily Russell discards Black’s torn-up letter in Providence #1 P1,p1. The use of the phrase “wedding confetti” is especially ironic, since this moment commemorates the end of a relationship.
• “the suicide, had been a simple case of mistaken identity” – Seen in a certain light, it was. Lily mistakenly thought Robert’s primary identity was “my lover”, not “a professional journalist”, which mistake led to her suicide. Ironically, after her suicide, Robert abandons journalism.
• “Mr. [Increase] Orne” is Providence’s analogue for Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man.” See Providence #3 P7,p4.
• “Mr. [Shadrach] Annesley” is Providence’s analogue for the cannibal of Lovecraft’s “The Picture in the House.” See Providence #3 P7,p4.
• “a small negro child dressed up in a scaled-down tuxedo and puffing conspicuously on a gigantic cigar” – See issue #12 for the identity of this figure.
• “Professor [Sigmund] Freud” was an influential Austrian psychoanalyst. He once fond of cigars, and is supposed to have said of phallic symbols “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.”

Page 33

Commonplace Book – September 28 continued

• “a defeated-looking man in middle age who may have had a withered hand or something” – This is likely Carl Perlman, Merril Brears’ boss in Neonomicon. If so, this is his first appearance in Providence.
• “the text was violet” – Possibly, in his dream, Black is making a (precognitive) connection with the mimeographs he will encounter (several weeks from now) on P36: “printed in a lurid purple-lilac shade”. Commenter jasonmehmel suggests “this is both connected to the start of the whole thing when Lilly is tearing up Robert’s letters, and the end when Carl does the same thing with this very Commonplace Book, which is in violet letters.”
• “Claude Guillot’s Sous Le Monde” – see Providence #1 P3,p2.
• “Ambrose Bierce” was an American writer (mentioned in Providence #1 and Providence #4 – xxx – add citations)

• 

  “At Sea”, Paul Delvaux, 1934

  “[Paul] Delvaux” was a Belgian surrealist painter. This is an anachronism, as he didn’t start painting until the 1920s.

• The “naked woman… in the later stages of… pregnancy” is apparently Merrill Brears, Neonomicon‘s protagonist who is pregnant at its conclusion. This is her first appearance in Providence.
• “false claim of paternity” – On some level, of course, Black is involved in the fathering of her child; Cthulhu could never have dreamed himself into existence without the assistance of Black the Herald.
• “J.K. Huysmans” is Joris-Karl Huysmans, a famous French Decadent writer, mentioned in Providence #1 P1,p1.
• “Théophile Gautier” was a French Romantic writer, mentioned in Providence #1 P9,p3.
• “Hali’s Booke” is Providence‘s Necronomicon analogue – see Providence #6 P1.
• “I think I once stayed at the same hotel as you did with the same view out the window” confirms that this is Brears. Both Brears and Black stayed in the same Salem hotel with the same view; compare Neonomicon #2, P4,p1 to Providence #3 P5,p3.

The views of Salem/Innsmouth from the hotel window in Providence (left) and Neonomicon (right.) Art by Jacen Burrows.

Page 34

Commonplace Book – September 28 continued

• “Ornamental bridge fording a narrow stream” (where Lily stands) could be the bridge in Bryant Park on Providence #1 P1. This is further affirmed as Lily is “scattering confetti” as he did there scattering the torn-up letter in Providence #1.
• Liminal is “of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process” – or – “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.”

Page 35

Commonplace Book – October 3

• Carver was away in Vermont a little over a week.

Commonplace Book – October 17

• “Lord Dunsany” – see P7,p2 and Page 18+ above.
• “[Copley] Plaza Hotel” – see P16,p3 above.

Commonplace Book – October 20

• Written that night, after the events of this issue.

Page 36

Commonplace Book – October 20 continued

• “The Irregular” is likely Moore’s invention. No such amateur press periodical is known to exist, but many such publications were issued quite irregularly.
• “Pine Cones” – See P3,p3.
• “Perhaps more accurately two or three associations” refers to there having been three national-level APAs at this point, the National Amateur Press Association and two that called themselves the United Amateur Press Association (one having split off the other after a sour election); Lovecraft began with one of the Uniteds, and switched over to the NAPA.
• “mimeographed […] lurid purple-lilac shade” – The mimeograph was an inexpensive printing technology developed in the late 19th century, and widely used until roughly the mid-1970s, and the introduction of photocopying. The ink used was often a vivid purple.

  

  Typical mimeographed document, from World War I.

• “A Thing of Beauty and Joy Forever” is reminiscent of some of Lovecraft’s early stories inspired by Greek myths, such as “The Tree.”

Page 37

Commonplace Book – October 20 continued

• “John Clinton Pryor” was the real-life editor of Pine Cones.
• “F. Charles McAllister” is apparently fictional.

Page 38

Commonplace Book – October 20 continued

• “Black Sambo,” the name of Carver’s black cat, references Lovecraft’s childhood pet black cat “Nigger-Man,” whom Lovecraft immortalized in “The Rats in the Walls.” “Sambo” was a popular common name for black people, somewhat antiquated and derogatory by the 1900s due to being used as a catch-all name for any black person.
• “Strong impression of almost unbearable nostalgic yearning for a lost time” describes H.P. Lovecraft, whose happiest days at his family home were cut short by the death of his father and grandfather, which left the family in severely reduced circumstances and forced them to move; Randolph Carter of “The Silver Key” shares this longing for happier childhood times.
• “Wilde’s other tendencies” refers to Oscar Wilde‘s homosexuality, which gravely affected his general reputation and resulted in a prison sentence.

Page 39

Commonplace Book – October 20 continued

• “Tom Malone” – See Providence #2.

Page 40

Commonplace Book – October 20 continued

• Commenter Karin Allen notes that Black originally wrote “Dunsany showed his breasts“, before scratching out the error and replacing it with “breadth”.
• “Leading me to Providence” suggests where Black’s next stop will be.

Back Cover

• Taken from Lovecraft’s Selected Letters 1.91.

>Go to Providence #9
>Go to Moore Lovecraft Annotations Index