this makes my day

From p. 447 of Joshi’s biography. During Lovecraft’s period of separation from Sonia, pre-divorce, he was making a number of independent journeys in the eastern United States. And of course I was delighted by the following passage:

“Lovecraft was going to go directly from Baltimore to Washington [after seeing Poe’s grave in Baltimore], but the colonial relics of Annapolis proved a fatal temptation; and they were no disappointment. He spent only one day (July 12) there, but saw much of the place– the naval academy, the old state house (1772-74), St. John’s College, and the abundance of colonial residences.”

The image of Lovecraft walking around the St. John’s campus, even in July with no one there, is fabulous.

Of course, it wasn’t then the St. John’s we know today. Though very old among American colleges, it was really just another failing college destined not to survive the Great Depression, and needed to be taken over by the liberal arts fanatics who made the college what is today, from which I and thousands of others have since benefitted. I can imagine many possible alternate lives for myself, but don’t enjoy any of the possibilities in which I studied anywhere else than St. John’s.

Oddly enough, one of the faculty members during this earlier incarnation of St. John’s was James M. Cain, author of the noir thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice. And the most famous alumnus of the whole pre-Great Books era was Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”