An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In 1915 HPL wrote: “I have never been outside the three states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut!” ( SL1.10). HPL was born in Providence, R.I., but shortly thereafter his parents returned to their home in Dorchester, Mass.; they also visited Dudley, Mass, (in the south-central part of the state) in the summer of 1892 and resided (according to HPL’s unverified testimony) with Louise Imogen Guiney in Auburndale in the winter of 1892–93; then, upon the illness of HPL’s father, they returned to Providence. HPL (and, presumably, his mother) went to Foster, R.I., in 1896, visiting ancestral sites ( SL3.409), perhaps as a way of relieving the gloom attending the death of HPL’s grandmother earlier that year. HPL also spent the summer of 1899 with his mother in Westminster, Mass., in the north-central part of the state ( SL2.348). The trip to Connecticut may have been the visit of 1901 that HPL mentions on several occasions (e.g. SL1.298), although he never specifies the locale of the visit. HPL also visited his cousin Phillips Gamwell on numerous occasions in Cambridge in the 1910–16 period.

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But HPL’s hermitry ended in 1919–20, when developing ties to amateur writers impelled him to take trips of increasing breadth; not coincidentally, the illness of his mother and her removal from 454 Angell Street also freed HPL to roam farther than he had done previously. Among his several trips to the Boston area at this time, the most memorable was a trip to the Copley Plaza in Boston in October 1919 to hear Lord Dunsany lecture ( SL1.91–93). He traveled to Boston several more times in 1921, as well as visiting C.W. “Tryout” Smith and Myrta Alice Little in Haverhill, Mass. (June 1921); he wrote of the visit in “The Haverhill Convention” ( Tryout,July 1921). The NAPA convention in Boston saw HPL in attendance; it was on this occasion that he first met his future wife, Sonia H. Greene. He wrote of the gathering in an unpublished essay, “The Convention Banquet” (ms., JHL). At Sonia’s urging, HPL made a six-day trip to New York in April 1922. He went with Sonia to Gloucester and Magnolia, Mass., in late June and early July, then returned to New York in late July prior to heading the farthest west he would ever venture—Cleveland, Ohio—in August to visit Alfred Galpin and Samuel Loveman. He returned to New York, staying there until late September. In midSeptember his visit with Rheinhart Kleiner to the Dutch Reformed Church in Brooklyn led to the writing of “The Hound” (1922). Late in 1922 HPL made his ecstatic first visit to the colonial haven of Marblehead, Mass., later the site for “The Festival” (1923). Further trips to New England—chiefly Salem, Marblehead, and Newburyport, Mass. (April), and Portsmouth, N.H. (August), and areas in western Rhode Island with James F.Morton (September) and C.M. Eddy (November)—occupied much of 1923.

HPL’s most momentous voyage was his two-year stay in Brooklyn (March 1924–April 1926). Initially thrilled at being in the vibrant metropolis, HPL later came to hate the place for its gigantism, its general absence of colonial landmarks, and its legions of “foreignerss of “5P who teemed at every street corner. HPL sought as best he could to explore nearby antiquarian landmarks: Elizabeth, N.J. (October 1924, June and August 1925), Philadelphia (seen briefly during his honeymoon and explored more exhaustively in November 1924), Washington, D.C. (April 1925), Paterson, N.J. (August 1925), Yonkers and Tarrytown, N.Y. (September 1925), Jamaica, Mineola, Hempstead, and Garden City, Long Island (September 1925). These visits provided much-needed respite from the clangor of the metropolis and from his unproductive life of poverty in Brooklyn.

HPL returned ecstatically to Providence in April 1926, but as early as September he was back in New York (evidently at Sonia’s bidding), staying for two weeks and briefly visiting Philadelphia. In October he revisited the ancestral sites in Foster, with Annie E.P.Gamwell. In the summer of 1927, HPL initiated what would become an annual and ever-widening series of jaunts up and down the eastern seaboard in quest of antiquarian havens. In July, he went with Donald Wandrei to Boston, Salem, Marblehead, and Athol, Mass., and Newport, R.I. The next month he visited Worcester, Amherst, and Deerfield, Mass., detouring briefly into Vermont (described in “Vermont—A First Impression” [1927]); Portland, Me; Portsmouth, N.H.; and Newburyport and Haverhill, Mass, (described in a compressed travelogue, “The Trip of Theobald,” Tryout,September 1927).

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