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.
Showing posts with label 1988. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1988. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
An Antiquarian Treasure: Opened
Plastered with colorful Japanese stamps, and taped more tha King Tut's mummy, I began to whittle away at the invulnerable plastic. Minutes passed, and finally with much wheezing, and much ripping, the envelope gave up its contents - another wrapped layer. That was a bit easier, the heavy corrugated plied away from the next obstacle, a taped plastic bag!
At last, I slid the precious cargo out, and beheld the buff colored, somewaht parchment-textured cover resembling in a small fashion a chapbook. Inside, the reduced-sized, cream-colored paper was pristine in look, but bizarrely odiferous. I sniffed, thought, sniffed again, wondered, and then it struck me.
It wasn't cigarette smoke, but more likely a cross between cigar and pipe tobacco. The pages were unharmed - in fact they looked barely used, turned, read, or otherwise examined. But they had absorbed years of smoke.
I'm sure the smell will fad with time, but as a non-smoker, I'm especially compelled by the striking smeel of tobacco.
My parents smoked, chain smoked on may occassions. My grandmother did snuff. She and her husband raised tobacco for decades. I cringed, and nearly screamed, at my first sight of a big, thick, prickly, nub-legged, green tobacco worm. But I never smoked.
Well, now that the item slid forth on the evening of 28 April 2010, what next?
More tomorrow.
At last, I slid the precious cargo out, and beheld the buff colored, somewaht parchment-textured cover resembling in a small fashion a chapbook. Inside, the reduced-sized, cream-colored paper was pristine in look, but bizarrely odiferous. I sniffed, thought, sniffed again, wondered, and then it struck me.
It wasn't cigarette smoke, but more likely a cross between cigar and pipe tobacco. The pages were unharmed - in fact they looked barely used, turned, read, or otherwise examined. But they had absorbed years of smoke.
I'm sure the smell will fad with time, but as a non-smoker, I'm especially compelled by the striking smeel of tobacco.
My parents smoked, chain smoked on may occassions. My grandmother did snuff. She and her husband raised tobacco for decades. I cringed, and nearly screamed, at my first sight of a big, thick, prickly, nub-legged, green tobacco worm. But I never smoked.
Well, now that the item slid forth on the evening of 28 April 2010, what next?
More tomorrow.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
An Antiquarian Treasure
On the evening on 28 April 2010, I received from far away Hirshima, Japan, my Ebayeum auction win! "Yr Obdt Srvt: Some Postcards Of Howard Phillips Lovecraft Sent To Wilfred Blanch Talman".
Over the next few days I'll type in the oddities of an antiquarian collector - me.
It started - as it always does - as a whim; an impulse click. "Hmm, that's pretty interesting." Then, click! Assuming I would lose the bid, I moved on to perusing images of the beginning of the 20th century Providence, Rhode Island. Imust be very wary, and in a perfect control of will, before I stroll through to much "antiquarian Lovecraft teritory" lest I cede the mortgage of the house in lieu of acquiring some $15,000 Lovecraftian obscurity.
I checked back at the end of the auction, and - knock me over with a feather - I won! Thus began the next journey of R. Alain Everts' quaint little book. (c) 1988 The Strange Company, this unnumbered, unsigned copy of a printing of 200.
It's journey was interupted, becuase little did we realize the package had to be signed for. I came home, signed the slip, placed it back out in a zip lock bag on a rainy night tucked into the corner of our brass mailbox for the postal person to pick up the next day. Three days later, it had arrived.
I came home, but the world trabveler had to ait a bit longer, and my 48 minute, 18 mile drive home through clogged Derby Week traffic left me fatigued. The fish pon pump had to be cleaned, and a plant righted. (We now have 5 large, and oddly after 5 years, 12 baby fish that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere last Fall.) Then off to a few other things, and as the 10 O'clock hour approached I finally opened the packet.
More tomorrow.
Over the next few days I'll type in the oddities of an antiquarian collector - me.
It started - as it always does - as a whim; an impulse click. "Hmm, that's pretty interesting." Then, click! Assuming I would lose the bid, I moved on to perusing images of the beginning of the 20th century Providence, Rhode Island. Imust be very wary, and in a perfect control of will, before I stroll through to much "antiquarian Lovecraft teritory" lest I cede the mortgage of the house in lieu of acquiring some $15,000 Lovecraftian obscurity.
I checked back at the end of the auction, and - knock me over with a feather - I won! Thus began the next journey of R. Alain Everts' quaint little book. (c) 1988 The Strange Company, this unnumbered, unsigned copy of a printing of 200.
It's journey was interupted, becuase little did we realize the package had to be signed for. I came home, signed the slip, placed it back out in a zip lock bag on a rainy night tucked into the corner of our brass mailbox for the postal person to pick up the next day. Three days later, it had arrived.
I came home, but the world trabveler had to ait a bit longer, and my 48 minute, 18 mile drive home through clogged Derby Week traffic left me fatigued. The fish pon pump had to be cleaned, and a plant righted. (We now have 5 large, and oddly after 5 years, 12 baby fish that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere last Fall.) Then off to a few other things, and as the 10 O'clock hour approached I finally opened the packet.
More tomorrow.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Lovecraft to Smith (1934)
At $1450.00, this one will pinch the wallet. But interesting. Note provenance of previous 1988 purchase, California.
Souvenir Folder of Nantucket, Mass. --- signed By H P Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith ( Postcards / Post Cards )
Sellers notes: a souvenir fold-out booklet of various views of nantucket, MA., post card size with images on both sides, a Very Good+ copy, postmark is stamped Nantucket and dated 1934, 2 original 1 cent stamps on folder, addressed in Lovecraft's hand to Clark Ashton Smith's Auburn California address, signed on the inner flap of the folder by Lovecraft, the signature reads, " Yrs for the Ebon Tide -- Ech-Pi-El --, in a plain brown envelope which was used by an earlier seller to keep the folder safe, included is an original bill of sale dated 1988 from one of the most respected SF/Fantasy booksellers in California, a very nice item, in spite of the thousands of hand written letters and such forth that HPL penned in his lifetime, signed material remains elusive, this is particularly nice as he uses his KALEM Club moniker and of course this being addressed to CAS makes this even nicer - - Bookseller: Leonard Shoup (Burlington, ON, Canada)
Souvenir Folder of Nantucket, Mass. --- signed By H P Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith ( Postcards / Post Cards )
Sellers notes: a souvenir fold-out booklet of various views of nantucket, MA., post card size with images on both sides, a Very Good+ copy, postmark is stamped Nantucket and dated 1934, 2 original 1 cent stamps on folder, addressed in Lovecraft's hand to Clark Ashton Smith's Auburn California address, signed on the inner flap of the folder by Lovecraft, the signature reads, " Yrs for the Ebon Tide -- Ech-Pi-El --, in a plain brown envelope which was used by an earlier seller to keep the folder safe, included is an original bill of sale dated 1988 from one of the most respected SF/Fantasy booksellers in California, a very nice item, in spite of the thousands of hand written letters and such forth that HPL penned in his lifetime, signed material remains elusive, this is particularly nice as he uses his KALEM Club moniker and of course this being addressed to CAS makes this even nicer - - Bookseller: Leonard Shoup (Burlington, ON, Canada)
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