TSOU -- "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He"
Donovan Loucks
And, having missed both "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He", I'll mention a
couple of locations highlighted in them. I also now have photographs of
these locations and hope to have them up on my page soon.
"The Horror at Red Hook"
The Red Hook area, still known as such today, is the northwest portion of
Brooklyn which juts out into the Upper New York Bay. In Lovecraft's time
it was "a maze of hybrid squalor" and remains so still. When we visited
New York City, S.T. Joshi refused to take us there for reasons of safety.
This was no loss, since no location specific to the story still stands.
Outside of Red Hook, the "Reformed Church" where Robert Suydam was married
is at the corners of Flatbush and Church Avenues, and was also the model
for the "Holland churchyard" mentioned in "The Hound". A block north of
the church is Martense Street, on which Robert Suydam was said to live--no
particular building on this street is described by Lovecraft.
Also in the same area is Lovecraft's first home in New York, at 259
Parkside Avenue. This apartment was Sonia's home prior to their marriage
in 1925, and Lovecraft moved in with her immediately after that. As
mentioned in a previous message, Lovecraft later moved about 2-1/2 miles
northwest to 169 Clinton Street.
"He"
The end of the story describes "the entrance of a little black court off
Perry Street"--this is at 93 Perry Street, in Greenwich Village.
Lovecraft hunted down this courtyard after having read about it in the
"Little Sketches About Town" column of the August 29, 1925 _New York
Evening Post_. The "private estate" where most of the tale takes place
may be based on a nearby mansion which was torn down in 1865, but which
Lovecraft almost certainly knew of.
Also in the lower Manhattan area, at the corners of Vesey and Broadway, is
St. Paul's Cathedral, where H. P. and Sonia were married. None of
Lovecraft's friends or family were at the ceremony, nor were anyone
besides the Father who performed the ceremony and two witnesses. By the
way, in this church hangs the original painting of the Great Seal of the
United States. Imagine what Lovecraft the Tory thought of that!
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Donovan K. Loucks Phoenix, Arizona dlo...@primenet.com |
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| The H. P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.primenet.com/~dloucks/hpl |
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Christophe Thill
On 12 Nov 1996 00:54:02 -0700, Donovan Loucks <dlo...@primenet.com>
wrote:
>Outside of Red Hook, the "Reformed Church" where Robert Suydam was married
>is at the corners of Flatbush and Church Avenues, and was also the model
>for the "Holland churchyard" mentioned in "The Hound". A block north of
>the church is Martense Street, on which Robert Suydam was said to live--no
>particular building on this street is described by Lovecraft.
Martense, Martense... sounds familiar... (checking in my books)...
Found! "The lurking fear". The dutch family that "went underground".
Could its name have been inspired by the name of this place?
Christophe Thill - Paris, France
c_t...@worldnet.fr
ArKa/D/ia! Homepage: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/
HP Lovecraft page: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/hpl/
Sylvain Moisan
>On 12 Nov 1996 00:54:02 -0700, Donovan Loucks <dlo...@primenet.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Outside of Red Hook, the "Reformed Church" where Robert Suydam was married
>>is at the corners of Flatbush and Church Avenues, and was also the model
>>for the "Holland churchyard" mentioned in "The Hound". A block north of
>>the church is Martense Street, on which Robert Suydam was said to live--no
>>particular building on this street is described by Lovecraft.
>
>Martense, Martense... sounds familiar... (checking in my books)...
>
>Found! "The lurking fear". The dutch family that "went underground".
>Could its name have been inspired by the name of this place?
>
I don't think so. Lovecraft wrote "The Lurking Fear" as a serial for
the editor of "Home Brew" and that was before he went to NY. But it
is clear that HPL wanted a real Dutch name for this family. Since he
placed this story in upper NY state, and since a good part of this
state was first colonized by Dutch settlers, HPL surely made some
research before writing the story about those colonists and came out
with this name. Maybe his correspondent Wilfred B. Talman(himself of
Dutch lineage) helped him out with this, but since I'm not home I
can't verify if he knew him at that time. HPL was interested enough
by the Dutch colonists that he wrote something called "Some Dutch
footprints in New-England", at Talman's request, if I'm not mistaken.
#----------------------------#
|Sylvain Moisan |
|COPL,Département de physique|
|Université Laval, Ste-Foy |
|Québec, Canada |
|G1K 7P4 |
|smo...@phy.ulaval.ca |
#----------------------------#
Donovan Loucks
Christophe Thill <c_t...@worldnet.fr> wrote:
Martense, Martense... sounds familiar... (checking in my books)...
Found! "The lurking fear". The dutch family that "went underground".
Could its name have been inspired by the name of this place?
As Sylvain Moisan <smo...@phy.ulaval.ca> has since pointed out, "The
Lurking Fear" was written before Lovecraft moved to New York, so it would
seem at first unlikely that he would have used the name of Martense Street
in Brooklyn for the name of the family in that tale. Lovecraft wrote "The
Lurking Fear" in November 1922, moved to New York in March 1924, and wrote
"The Horror at Red Hook" on the 1st and 2nd of August, 1925.
However, the building that Lovecraft moved into at 259 Parkside Avenue in
Brooklyn was his wife Sonia's apartment. He visited that location as
early as April 6, 1922, and this building is only 5 blocks away from
Martense Street. Note also that the Dutch churchyard mentioned in "The
Hound" (written in September 1922) is based on the Dutch Reformed Church
at the corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues--just one block beyond
Martense Street from the apartment building on Parkside.
Thus, it's almost certain that Lovecraft had been aware of Martense Street
as early as September 1922, since he would have had to cross it when en
route from Parkside Avenue to Church Avenue. Now, whether or not that was
the source of his name for the Martense family remains to be seen.