An Antiquarian Treasure: Read

It is now 49 minutes to midnight on a worknight on the evening of 28 April 2010. I sit an type this so you can read about a month later - typos and all.

The first page is in black print, save two red-coated devils of some sort with serrated, Robin-masks, tip-pointed head-hoods, each mirror images of one anothr, and grasping or holding a gazing ball of some sort. A few pages in, a picture of Wilfred Talman is reproduced from 1935. At the rear is a photo of Lovecraft and Long.

The first card reproduced is Roger Williams. Now you must understand, I got this sight unseen (the Ebayeum images were teasing in their paucity) and it was a bit of a gambel. The letters of Talman seem barely to be mentioned by contemporary scholars, since they are postcards, few in number, and collateral and perhaps subserviant to the letters of Kliener, Galpin, Wandrei, Derleth, and REH now coming out.

So I scanned, with now very weary eyes, the few words of the first postcard and read, "Went up to Ladd Observatory last night for the first time in 20 years." Since it was dated "Feb. 9, 1927" does this, I wondered, imply that 1907 was the last eyar of his visits to Ladd Observatory?

Since Chrispy is in the midst of hundreds of pages of notebooks trying to piece together Lovecraft's youth from Humpty-Dumpty pieces with no "paint by number" color-codes this was an amazing find on the very first page.

I shall now go to sleep with implications and probabilities on the mind.

More .. later.