Tomorrow (June 2nd, 2023) I shall cross the border from Connecticut to Rhode Island, which when I left (in June 2011) was still the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. I had always intended to return when possible, and I am fortunate indeed that it is now possible. And I always had in mind, even the day I left, a letter from H.P. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, dated May 1st, 1926. I always used to quote it whenever I returned to RI for a visit from Massachusetts, so it has certainly worn a groove in my psyche, but it has never been more fitting than now. That letter reads in part:
" . . . GOD, I AM ALIVE! And this is Home! Novanglia /Eternal Novanglia Caput Mundi! His Majesty’s Province of Connecticut, which on the East adjoins the Centre of Civilisation! . . . New Haven—New London—and then quaint Mystic, with its colonial hillside and landlocked cove. Then at last a still subtler magick fill’d the air—nobler roofs and steeples, with the train rushing airily above them on its lofty viaduct— Westerly —in His Majesty’s Providence of RHODE-ISLAND & PROVIDENCE-PLANTATIONS! GOD SAVE THE KING!! Intoxication follow’d—Kingston—East Greenwich with its steep Georgian alleys climbing up from the railway —Apponaug and its ancient roofs—Auburn—just outside the city limits.—I fumble with bags and wraps in a despearate effort to appear calm _THEN—a delirious marble dome outside the window—a hissing of air brakes—a slackening of speed—surges of ecstasy and dropping of clouds from my eyes and mind—HOME—UNION STATION— PROVIDENCE!!!! Something snapped—and everything unreal fell away. There was no more excitement; no sense of strangeness, and no perception of the lapse of time since last I stood on that holy ground. Of disillusion, or of disparity betwixt expectation and fulfilment, there was not the faintest microscopic suggestion, because the wildly improbable notion of ever having been away had utterly receded into the gulfs of fantasy and dream. What I had seen in sleep every night since I left it, now stood before me in prosaic reality—precisely the same, line for line, detail for detail, proportion for proportion. Simply, I was home— and home was just as it had always been . . . There is no other place for me. My world is Providence. . . . Contented? Why, gentlemen, I am home! . . . Let no one tell me that Providence is not the most beautiful city in the world! Line for line, atmospheric touch for atmospheric touch, it positively and absolutely is! Colour, shade, contour, diversity, quaintness, impressiveness—all are there; and nothing save an aesthetick blind spot could possibly prevent any cultivated observer of Yankee tastes from recognising and reversing this supremacy at once. God knows I want no literature to feed my sense of beauty and variety when I live in the midst of this focus of scenick charm and historick richness! I must write about it—all other subjects seem flat and tame! . . . And so it goes. The world is right side up again, and I can once more view the terrestiral scene from my normal angle as a placid and provincial Providentian. Be good boys, all of you, and write the Old Gentleman . . . "
That is how I feel about coming home . . .
