Florence Slack

FYI, Clarence Horace Philbrick was a classmate of Lovecraft's.
Clarence H. PHILBRICK was born on 11 May 1891 in Providence and probably this blurb I found:

"Clarence H. Philbrick and Ellis L. Yatman '11 were among those re-elected in
November to the Board of the Home for Aged Men and -Aged Couples in Providence."

Biltmore Hotel 1923

When the coach crossed the Pawcatuck and entered Rhode Island amidst the faery goldenness of a late spring afternoon his heart beat with quickened force, and the entry to Providence along Reservoir and Elmwood Avenues was a breathless and wonderful thing despite the depths of forbidden lore to which he had delved. At the high square where Broad, Weybosset, and Empire Streets join, he saw before and below him in the fire of sunset the pleasant, remembered houses and domes and steeples of the old town; and his head swam curiously as the vehicle rolled down to the terminal behind the Biltmore, bringing into view the great dome and soft, roof-pierced greenery of the ancient hill across the river, and the tall colonial spire of the First Baptist Church limned pink in the magic evening against the fresh springtime verdure of its precipitous background. Old Providence! It was this place and the mysterious forces of its long, continuous history which had brought him into being, and which had drawn him back toward marvels and secrets whose boundaries no prophet might fix.

- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (early 1927)
{He says "caoch", but of course he means "motor-coach" not a "horse and buggy coach" as he slyly might imply)


(Two different writers describe virtually the same scene - Lovecraft with an heir of horrific fantasy and an anonymous ad copy writer for the modern man)

from a book dated 1923
Lovecraft was about 33 - just getting ready to head off to NY for a while.

This was an impressive structure, and would have been the talk of Providence for a time.

Lovecraft's Neighbor (1903) Knowles

Only tangential to Lovecraft, but he would have seen this family and known of them. He would have been 13 or so.
_____

"Curiosities", The Streand Magazine, p. 357, 1903



ANOTHER EXPERIMENT IN DYNAMICS IN the Curiosities in The Strand for June it was stated that if a half unrolled spool of thread is placed on a table and the thread pulled horizontally from the under side of it the spool contrary to general expectation will roll towards the hand In connection with this it is interesting to note that if the cylinder is larger in diameter at the point around which the thread is wound than it is at the points on which it rolls it will roll away from the hand when the thread is pulled This experiment can be tried by passing a pencil through a spool and resting the ends of it on two books as in the illustration Also if the thread be drawn from the under side of a it spool resting on a flat surface the spool will not move in either direction I was led to these conclusions which I afterwards verified by trying in the case of the half unrolled spool mentioned in the June Strand to calculate the ratio between the rate of the spool and that of the hand as the hand pulled the thread This makes a very interesting little problem Mr J Courtland Knowles 2 Angel Street Providence RI US A