A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

Roger Williams had founded the Baptist church in Rhode Island—the first in America—in 1638. For more than two centuries the state remained largely Baptist, but other sects came in over time. There were Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and other, smaller groups. A colony of Jews had been present since the seventeenth century, but their numbers were small and they were careful to assimilate with the Yankees. Roman Catholics began to be prominent only in the middle nineteenth century. Their numbers were augmented by successive waves of immigration: French Canadians during the Civil War (establishing themselves especially in the town of Woonsocket in the northeast corner of the state), Italians after 1890 (settling in the Federal Hill area of Providence’s West Side), Portuguese shortly thereafter. It is disturbing, but sadly not surprising, to note the increasing social exclusiveness and scorn of foreigners developing among the old-time Yankees throughout the nineteenth century. The Know-Nothing Party, with its anti-foreign and anti-Catholic bias, dominated the state during the 1850s. Rhode Island remained politically conservative into the 1930s, and Lovecraft’s entire family voted Republican throughout his lifetime. If Lovecraft voted at all, he also voted Republican almost uniformly until 1932. The state’s leading paper, the Providence Journal, remains conservative to this day even though the state has been largely Democratic since the 1930s.

Newport, on the southern end of Aquidneck Island, gained early ascendancy in what became Rhode Island, and Providence did not overtake it until after the Revolutionary war. By 1890 Providence was the only city of any significant size in the state: its population was 132,146, making it the twenty-third largest city in the nation. Its principal topographic features are its seven hills and the Providence River, which divides at Fox Point and splits into the Seekonk River on the east and the Moshassuck River on the west. Between these two rivers is the East Side, the oldest and most exclusive part of the city, especially the lofty eminence of College Hill, which rises steeply on the east bank of the Moshassuck. The area west of the Moshassuck is the West Side—the downtown area and a newer residential district. To the north lies the suburb of Pawtucket, to the northwest North Providence, to the southwest Cranston, and to the east—on the other side of the Seekonk—the suburbs of Seekonk and East Providence.

Brown University—founded in 1764 (as King’s College) under Baptist auspices—lords it on the pinnacle of College Hill, and has lately been gobbling up more and more of the surrounding colonial area. This is the oldest part of the city in terms of the structures still surviving, although nothing dates before the middle of the eighteenth century. Lovecraft would have been heartened by the tremendous restoration of the colonial houses on College Hill in the 1950s and onward, conducted under the auspices of the Providence Preservation Society. The restoration has caused Benefit Street in particular to be regarded as the finest mile of colonial architecture in the United States.

To the east of College Hill is a spacious array of residences dating no earlier than the middle nineteenth century but impressively built and with well-kept grounds and gardens. This, rather than the colonial area, is the true home of the Providence aristocracy and plutocracy. At the eastern edge of this area, running alongside the Seekonk River, is Blackstone Boulevard, whose luxurious homes are still the haven of old Yankee money. At the northern end of Blackstone Boulevard is Butler Hospital for the Insane, opened in 1847. Juxtaposed to Butler Hospital on its north side is the vast expanse of Swan Point Cemetery—not perhaps quite as lavishly landscaped as Mt Auburn in Boston but one of the most topographically beautiful cemeteries in the country.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born at 9 a.m.¹ on 20 August 1890, at 194 (renumbered 454 in 1895–96) Angell Street on what was then the eastern edge of the East Side of Providence. The sequence and details of the family’s travels and residences in the period 1890–93 are very confused. It appears that Winfield and Susie Lovecraft took up residence in Dorchester, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston), as soon as they married on 12 June 1889. They came to Providence late in Susie’s pregnancy, then presumably moved back to Dorchester a few weeks or months after Howard was born, then moved to the Auburndale area (also in the Boston metropolitan zone) in 1892. There may even have been other temporary residences in the area. Lovecraft states in 1934: