TSOU - HPL on "The Festival"

[ya...@miskatonic.edu]

From HPL's "Selected Letters" Vol. IV, Arkham House,
Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1976:

HPL to Richard Ely Morse, Oct. 17, 1933:

My Dear Morse:--

As for _The Festival_-- after all these years it rather
disappoints me. It sounds crude and forced and overcoloured --
although it formed a sincere attempt to capture the feeling
that Marblehead [Mass.] gave me when I saw it for the first
time -- at sunset under the snow, Dec. 17, 1922...

Yr. most obt. & hble. Servt.,
HPL

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Of course, HPL almost never admitted to being pleased with
how any of his writing came out.

Marblehead is pretty darned cool though. The strets are crooked
and winding and they climb gradually to an antient centuried whisper-
haunted etc etc etc burying ground with crazed crooked headstones
leaning up through the snow like Druidic - or _pre_-Druidic -
sentinels to gods long since forgotten - BUT NOT GONE, and so on and
so forth.

I haven't got the earlier volume of letters handy for reference
but as I recall HPL likened the tombstones to scabrous ancient
fingernails clawing up through the wind-blasted snow.

Donovan - am I right??

Yrs for the Elder Sign,

yawba