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title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject
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An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
Joshi, S. T.; Schultz, David E.
Greenwood Publishing Group
0313315787
9780313315787
9780313016820
English
Lovecraft, H. P.--(Howard Phillips),--1890-1937-Encyclopedias, Authors, American--20th century-Biography--Encyclopedias, Horror tales, American-Encyclopedias.
2001
PS3523.O833Z459 2001eb
813/.52
Lovecraft, H. P.--(Howard Phillips),--1890-1937-Encyclopedias, Authors, American--20th century-Biography--Encyclopedias, Horror tales, American-Encyclopedias.
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An H.P.Lovecraft Encyclopedia < previous page page_i next page > < previous page page_ii next page >
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Howard P.Lovecraft, First Vice-President U.A.P.A. (Courtesy of the Brown University Library.)
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An H.P.Lovecraft Encyclopedia S.T.Joshi and David E.Schultz
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Joshi, S.T., 1958–
An H.P.Lovecraft encyclopedia/S.T.Joshi and David E.Schultz. p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0–313–31578–7 (alk. paper)
1. Lovecraft, H.P. (Howard Phillips), 1890–1937—Encyclopedias. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography—Encyclopedias. 3. Horror tales, American—Encyclopedias. I. Schultz, David E., 1952– II. Title. PS3523.O833Z459 2001
813′.52—dc21
[B] 2001023841
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2001 by S.T.Joshi and David E.Schultz
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001023841
ISBN: 0-313-31578-7
First published in 2001
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Dirk W.Mosig, pioneer and friend
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Contents
Preface
Chronology
Abbreviations and Short Titles The Encyclopedia
General Bibliography
Index
ix
xiii
xix
1
309 313
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Preface
During the past three decades, scholarly work on H.P.Lovecraft (1890–1937) has expanded exponentially in every phase of research. Building upon the early efforts of George T.Wetzel, Matthew H.Onderdonk, and Fritz Leiber, such scholars as Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., and R.Alain Everts revolutionized the understanding of Lovecraft’s life, while Dirk W.Mosig, Donald R.Burleson, and many others examined his tales, poems, essays, and letters with perspicuity and precision. It was inevitable that these endeavors—resulting in numerous capable general studies of Lovecraft,1 the first comprehensive Lovecraft bibliography,2 the foundation of the journal Lovecraft Studiesas a forum for scholarly research, the preparation of textually accurate editions of Lovecraft’s stories, and, as a culmination, the publication of an exhaustive biography and an equally exhaustive collection of memoirs of Lovecraft3—would result in a marked rise in Lovecraft’s literary recognition as a writer, thinker, and man of letters.
And yet, much of this research is scattered heterogeneously in small-press or academic publications, many out of print and inaccessible. It is in the hope that a gathering of widely dispersed information on Lovecraft will engender even more penetrating scholarship and also provide Lovecraft’s many devotees with the tools for a more informed appreciation of his work that the present volume has been assembled.
In a compilation of this kind, the chief focus must be upon Lovecraft’s literary work. For every such item, we have supplied (1) the word count; (2) the date of writing, as well as can be ascertained; and information on (3) its first publication; (4) its first appearance in a volume by Lovecraft; and (5) its appearance in textually corrected or annotated editions. Lovecraft is best known for his tales of horror and the supernatural; accordingly, the compilers have provided detailed plot synopses of every fictional work—stories, sketches, collaborative works, “revisions” or ghostwritten tales—written by Lovecraft from the age of seven until his death. Only brief critical commentary is supplied, since we feel it is not
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our place to enforce our own judgments or evaluations upon readers. Instead, we have devoted our commentary to relatively concrete matters: the literary or biographical sources for the tales, as frequently noted by Lovecraft himself in letters or other documents; relations between a given tale and others written earlier or later; particular features of a tale that require elucidation. At the end of every entry, we supply citations to books or articles (arranged chronologically) discussing the work in question. For books, only the year of publication is cited except in the case of small-press items, where we also supply the publisher. It should be noted that many general studies of Lovecraft treat individual tales, sometimes in considerable detail. The reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of the volume for such studies.
Other bodies of Lovecraft’s work—essays, poetry, and letters—must perforce be treated less comprehensively than his fiction. Not all essays or poems have received separate entries, but only those that are of particular significance and have engendered discussion by scholars. As every poem by Lovecraft is now included in the recently published edition of The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works(2001), we have not cited this volume in any of the entries on Lovecraft’s poems. The entries on fictional characters in Lovecraft’s tales are quite brief, since the story synopses provide a better means for discussing their actions and functions. Lovecraft deliberately downplayed the role of human characters in his tales. His “cosmic” perspective saw the human race as a tiny and insignificant element within the infinities of space and time; late in life he actually wrote, “the only ‘heroes’ I can write about are phenomena” (SL 5.19). This approach, however, produces difficulty in a reference volume of this kind, since the roles of many characters are quite minimal. Nevertheless, we have attempted to supply brief entries on these figures, with the exception of real individuals (e.g., Albert Einstein) mentioned in the stories. (This itself causes some difficulty with such a work as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,a historical novel that utilizes real figures from history performing manifestly fictitious actions. None of these characters has been listed.) In some cases, members of a family are presented in a single omnibus entry, and their names appear in boldface. Life dates for a character are supplied whenever this information appears in the story. Many of Lovecraft’s characters (including the first-person narrators of several important tales) are unnamed. Since their roles are often quite important and thus warrant discussion, we address them under the entry “Narrators, Unidentified,” where they are grouped alphabetically by story title. Invented species (e.g., the fungi from Yuggoth in “The Whisperer in Darkness” or the multitude of bizarre creatures featured in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath) are not listed; their roles can be ascertained in the story entries. Lovecraft’s colleagues, and the authors who influenced him, have been the subject of much diligent research on the part of scholars. We have written entries on many individuals who knew Lovecraft, even if only by correspondence; very obscure correspondents, about whom almost nothing is known, are excluded. Lovecraft apparently was influenced by a wide array of writers in the domain of supernatural fiction, but separate entries are provided only for such major figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and Algernon
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Blackwood. Mentions of other authors and works that influenced Lovecraft can be found in the entries on individual tales; see the index for references.
General topics relating to Lovecraft could theoretically be covered in an almost infinite range of entries, but we have limited our coverage to such things as Lovecraft’s involvement with amateur journalism (specifically, the two leading amateur press associations of his time, the United Amateur Press Association and the National Amateur Press Association), his use of pseudonyms, his travels, and other major issues. No separate entry on Lovecraft’s philosophical thought is included here, as the topic is too complex for succinct discussion.4
A bibliography listing important primary and secondary works on Lovecraft and a comprehensive index follow.
A word must now be said on what is notincluded in this volume.
One of the most popular aspects of Lovecraft’s work is what has come to be known as the “Cthulhu Mythos” (a term Lovecraft himself never used). His literary pantheon (entities who, in many cases, prove merely to be extraterrestrials from the depths of space) has proved fascinating to readers and writers alike, to the extent that this “mythos” has taken on a life of its own and engendered innumerable imitations and purported sequels to Lovecraft’s own work. We address none of this material in this volume. The “gods” themselves, with rare exceptions, do not figure as “characters” in any meaningful sense in the tales, so there are no entries on them. Similarly, we have provided no entries on writers who have attempted to follow in Lovecraft’s footsteps, even though there is scarcely any writer of horror tales during the past seventy years who has not been influenced in one way or another by Lovecraft. Those interested in this entire subject are referred to Chris JarochaErnst’s A Cthulhu Mythos Bibliography & Concordance(1999).
Film, television, and other media adaptations of Lovecraft’s work are similarly not covered here. Readers can find an abundance of information in Andrew Migliore and John Strysik’s The Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H.P.Lovecraft(2000).
As noted, this volume cannot be considered in any sense a thorough proper name index to Lovecraft’s work. For such an index, see S.T.Joshi’s An Index to the Fiction and Poetry of H.P.Lovecraft(1992).
This volume had its origins in a work of substantially different nature planned many years ago but never completed. At that time, several colleagues wrote brief entries (chiefly on Lovecraft’s family and colleagues) that have served as the nucleus for analogous articles included herein. We are grateful to Donald R.Burleson, Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., Will Murray, and Robert M.Price for allowing us to build upon their work. Other individuals, including Scott Connors, Daniel Harms, Donovan K.Loucks, and Christopher O’Brien, have supplied bits of valuable information.
NOTES
1. See Donald R.Burleson, H.P.Lovecraft: A Critical Study(1983); Peter Cannon, H.P.Lovecraft
(1989); S.T.Joshi,
A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P.Lovecraft
(1996).
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2. S.T.Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography(1981).
3. S.T.Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft: A Life(1996); Peter Cannon, ed., Lovecraft Remembered(1998).
4. For two very different discussions of this subject, see S.T.Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft: The Decline of the West(1990) and Timo Airaksinen, The Philosophy of H.P.Lovecraft(1999).
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Chronology
1890 August 20: Born at 454 Angell St. in Providence, R.I.
1890– Resides with parents at various locales in Massachusetts (Dorchester, 1890–92?; Dudley, 93 summer 1892; Auburndale, 1892–93?) as father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft, pursues business
interests.
1893 April 25: Winfield hospitalized at Butler Hospital in Providence; HPL and his mother, Sarah
Susan Lovecraft, return to family home at 454 Angell St.
1897 First writings in fiction (“The Noble Eavesdropper”) and poetry (“The Poem of Ulysses”). 1898 Discovers Edgar Allan Poe. Voluminous writing of stories (“The Secret Cave,” “The Mystery of
the Grave-yard,” “John the Detective”), some inspired by dime novels. Begins study of
chemistry.
July 19: Death of Winfield. HPL and his mother spend summer in Westminster, Mass. 1898– Attends Slater Avenue School.
99,
1902–3
1899 March 4: Begins handwritten journal, The Scientific Gazette(to 1905), largely devoted to
chemistry.
1902 Winter: Discovers astronomy, largely from books in li
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brary of maternal grandmother. Writes tales inspired by Jules Verne (nonextant).
1903 August 2: Begins The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy(to 1907). Much scientific work in chemistry, astronomy, geography, history, mythology.
1904 March 4: Death of HPL’s maternal grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. Family’s subsequent financial collapse causes move to 598 Angell St. in Providence.
1904–Intermittent attendance at Hope Street High School.
8
1905 Writes “The Beast in the Cave.”
1906–Writes astronomy columns for Pawtuxet Valley Gleanerand [Providence] Tribune
8
1908 Withdraws from high school because of nervous breakdown. Writes “The Alchemist.”
1909–Takes correspondence courses in chemistry. Writes A Brief Course in Inorganic Chemistry
12 (1910; nonextant).
1913 September: Literary controversy with John Russell in the letter column of Argosyleads to HPL’s entry into amateur journalism (April 6, 1914).
1914–Writes astronomy column in [Providence] Evening News
18
1914–Voluminous writing of essays, poetry, editorials, and reviews in the amateur press, mostly for
23 the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), but also later for the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA), which HPL joins in 1917. Early amateur colleagues include Maurice W.Moe, Rheinhart Kleiner, W.Paul Cook, and Samuel Loveman.
1915 April: Publishes first issue of amateur journal, The Conservative(to July 1923).
1917 May: Attempts enlistment in Rhode Island National Guard and later in the U.S. Army, but through his mother’s influence is rejected.
June: Writes “The Tomb,” his first fictional work after a nine-year hiatus.
1917–Serves as president of the UAPA.
18
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1919 March: HPL’s mother hospitalized at Butler Hospital.
Writes “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” “The White Ship,” “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” and others.
September: Discovers work of Lord Dunsany.
1920 Begins corresponding with Frank Belknap Long, Jr. Writes at least twelve stories, more than in any single year of his career, including “The Temple,” “The Terrible Old Man,” “Celephaïs,” “From Beyond,” “Nyarlathotep,” “The Picture in the House,” and others.
1921 Writes “The Nameless City,” “The Outsider,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” and others. Writes the “In Defence of Dagon” papers (January–October).
May 24: Death of HPL’s mother.
July 4: Meets Sonia Haft Greene at the NAPA convention in Boston.
1921–Writes “Herbert West—Reanimator” to order for G.J. Houtain’s Home Brew(first professional
22 story appearance).
1922 April 6–12: First visit to New York City; meets Long, James F.Morton, and others. August: Begins corresponding with Clark Ashton Smith.
August–September: Travels to Cleveland to meet Samuel Loveman and Alfred Galpin; stops in New York City on return trip. Writes “The Hound,” “Hypnos,” and “The Lurking Fear” (for Home Brew).
December 17: Visits Marblehead, Mass., for the first time.
1923 Discovers Arthur Machen (then Algernon Blackwood and M.R.James the next year). Travels throughout New England (Marblehead, Salem, Newburyport, etc.). Writes “The Rats in the Walls,” “The Festival,” and others. Collaborates with C.M.Eddy, Jr. (“The Loved Dead” and others).
October: Writes “Dagon” (1917) his first story published in Weird Tales
1924 March 3: Marries Sonia H.Greene and moves to Brooklyn, N.Y. Refuses editorship of Weird Tales. Ghostwrites “Un
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der the Pyramids” for Harry Houdini (published as “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”). Writes “The Shunned House.”
1925 January 1: Sonia takes job in Cleveland. HPL moves to single-room apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Attempts futilely to secure employment. Writes “The Horror at Red Hook” (August 1– 2), “He” (August 18), and “In the Vault” (September 18).
1925– Writes “Supernatural Horror in Literature” Cook’s The Recluse(1927). for W.Paul
27
1926 April 17: Returns to Providence (10 Barnes St.), essentially ending marriage (divorce proceedings not undertaken until 1929). Writes “The Call of Cthulhu,” “Pickman’s Model,” “The Silver Key,” and others. Begins corresponding with August Derleth.
1926–Writes The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
27
1927 Writes The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,“The Colour out of Space.” Begins corresponding with Donald Wandrei.
August: Travels to Vermont, Maine, and elsewhere in New England.
1928 May–July: Spends summer in Brooklyn with Sonia as she tries to set up hat shop. Travels extensively (Brattleboro, Vt; Athol and Wilbraham, Mass.; Endless Caverns, Va.). Writes “The Dunwich Horror.”
1929 April–May: Travels extensively (Yonkers, N.Y.; Norfolk, Williamsburg, Richmond, Va.; New York City; New Paltz and Hurley, N.Y.).
1929–Ghostwrites “The Mound” for Zealia Bishop. Writes Fungi from Yuggoth
30
1930 April–June: Travels (New York City; Charleston, S.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kingston and West Shokan, N.Y.; Athol and Worcester, Mass.). Begins corresponding with Henry S.Whitehead and Robert E.Howard. Writes “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Ghostwrites “Medusa’s Coil” for Zealia Bishop.
August: Three-day excursion to Quebec. Writes lengthiest nonfiction work, A Description of the Town of Quebeck(October–January 1931).
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1931 May–June: Travels (St. Augustine, Dunedin, Key West, Fla.; Savannah, Ga.; Charleston; Richmond; New York City). Writes At the Mountains of Madnessand “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”
1932 May–July: Travels (New York City; Shenandoah Valley; Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Natchez and New Orleans, La. [meets E.Hoffmann Price]). Writes “The Dreams in the Witch House.” Revises stories for Hazel Heald (“Out of the Æons” and others).
July 3: Death of HPL’s elder aunt Lillian D.Clark.
1932–Writes “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (with E. Hoffmann Price).
33
1933 April: Begins corresponding with Robert Bloch.
May 15: Moves to 66 College St. with younger aunt, Annie E.P.Gamwell. Later, writes “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Revises “Supernatural Horror in Literature” for incomplete serialization in The Fantasy Fan(October 1933–February 1935).
1934 April–July: Travels (Charleston; Savannah; St Augustine; Fredericksburg, Va.; spends May–June with R.H.Barlow in De Land, Fla.).
1934–Writes “The Shadow out of Time.”
35
1935 June–September: Travels (Fredericksburg; Charleston; New York City; spends June–August with Barlow in De Land, Fla.).
November: Writes “The Haunter of the Dark.”
1936 Corresponds briefly with Willis Conover, Fritz Leiber, and James Blish. Barlow visits HPL in Providence (July– September). Revises Well-Bred Speechfor Anne Tillery Renshaw.
1937 March 15: Dies at Jane Brown Memorial Hospital in Providence. Barlow appointed literary executor.
1939 Arkham House (August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) publishes The Outsider and Others.
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Abbreviations and Short Titles
AHT Arkham House transcipts of H.P.Lovecraft’s letters AMS autograph manuscript
An1 The Annotated H.P.Lovecraft(1997)
An2 More Annotated H.P.Lovecraft(1999)
AT The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works(2001) BWS Beyond the Wall of Sleep(1943)
Cats Something about Cats and Other Pieces(1949)
CC The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(1999) Crypt Crypt of Cthulhu(magazine)
D Dagon and Other Macabre Tales(rev. ed. 1986) DB The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces(1966)
DH The Dunwich Horror and Others(rev. ed. 1984) ET Schultz and Joshi, An Epicure in the Terrible(1991) FDOC Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism(1991) HM The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions(rev. ed. 1989) HPL H.P.Lovecraft
JHL John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, R.I. LR Cannon, Lovecraft Remembered(1998)
LS Lovecraft Studies(magazine)
Marginalia Marginalia(1944)
MM At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels(rev. ed. 1985) MW Miscellaneous Writings(1995)
NAPA National Amateur Press Association
O The Outsider and Others(1939)
SHSW State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison
SL Selected Letters(1965–76; 5 vols.)
SR The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces(1959)
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TD The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories(2001) UAPA United Amateur Press Association
WT Weird Tales(magazine)
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A
“Account of Charleston, An.”
Essay (20,700 words); probably written in the fall of 1930. First published in MW.
HPL’s most exhaustive travelogue of Charleston, written in a flawless recreation of eighteenthcentury English. It supplies a comprehensive history of the city from its settlement in 1652 to 1930, followed by a discussion of Charleston architecture and a detailed walking tour. Also included are HPL’s drawings of selected Charleston dwellings and a printed map of Charleston on which HPL has traced his recommended itinerary in red pencil. HPL evidently did not distribute the essay, even among his colleagues (the AMS survives at JHL). In 1936, when H.C.Koenig wished to explore Charleston, HPL condensed and modernized the essay in a letter to Koenig (subsequently revised and published by Koenig as Charleston[1936]; rpt. Marginalia).
Ackerman, Forrest J. (b. 1916).
American agent, author, editor. Ackerman has been a science fiction fan since the late ‘20s; he corresponded sporadically with HPL from around 1931 onward. (One letter to him by HPL, dated December 24, 1935, was published in the fanzine Imagination[January 1938].) He instigated a controversy in “The Boiling Point” column ( Fantasy Fan,September 1933f.) when he criticized Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Dweller in Martian Depths” ( Wonder Stories,March 1933); HPL and his colleagues wrote numerous responses sharply criticizing Ackerman. All responses are reprinted in The Boiling Point(Necronomicon Press, 1985). HPL poked fun at Ackerman in “The Battle That Ended the Century” (1934; with R.H.Barlow), referring to him as “the Effjay of Akkamin,” and “In the Walls of Eryx” (1936; with Kenneth Sterling), where mention is made of “wriggling akmans” and “efjehweeds.” He was later editor of Famous Monsters of Filmlandmagazine (1958–
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80), which was instrumental in maintaining fan interest in weird fiction (and specifically horror films) during an otherwise lean period for the horror genre.
Ad Criticos.
Poem in four books (46, 48, 46, and 34 lines); first published in the Argosy(January 1914 [first book] and February 1914 [second book]); last two books first published in Saturnalia and Other Poems(1984). These satirical poems attack HPL’s epistolary enemies in the Argosy’sletter column, who had attacked him after he had criticized the romance writer Fred Jackson. The last two “books” did not appear in the Argosyas had the first two.
Akeley, Henry Wentworth.
In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the reclusive farmer in Townshend, Vt., who notifies Albert Wilmarth (the narrator) of his encounters with the alien beings from the planet Yuggoth. Akeley’s mind is eventually stored in a mechanical apparatus by the aliens, one of whom (possibly Nyarlathotep himself), masquerading as Akeley, lures Wilmarth to Akeley’s farmhouse to destroy him. The character was inspired in part by the rustic Bert G.Akley, whom HPL met during his trip to Vermont in 1927. Henry’s son, George Goodenough Akeley, residing in San Diego, is named partly for the amateur poet Arthur Goodenough, whose rustic abode partly suggested the Akeley farmhouse. “Alchemist, The.”
Juvenile story (3,700 words); written 1908. First published in the United Amateur(November 1916); first collected in SR;corrected text in D.
Antoine, last of the Comtes de C——, tells the tale of his life and ancestry. This ancient aristocratic line has occupied a lofty castle in France surrounded by a dense forest, but a deadly curse seems to weigh upon it. Antoine finally learns the apparent cause when he comes of age and reads a manuscript passed down through the generations. In the thirteenth century an ancient man, Michel (“usually designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his sinister reputation”), dwelt on the estate together with his son Charles, nicknamed Le Sorcier. These two practiced the black arts, and it was rumored they sought the elixir of life. Many disappearances of children were attributed to them. When Godfrey, the young son of Henri the Comte, is missing, Henri accosts Michel and kills him in a rage; just then Godfrey is found, and Charles, who learns of the deed, pronounces a curse:
May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!
He thrusts a vial in the face of Henri, who dies instantly. From that time on no comte of the line lives beyond the age of thirty-two, Henri’s age when he died. This curse continues for hundreds of years, and Antoine is compelled to believe that he will suffer a similar fate. Wandering in his deserted castle, he finds a hidden cellar and encounters a hideous looking man “clad in a skull-cap and long mediaeval tunic of dark colour.” The man tells how Charles Le Sorcier killed Henri and also Godfrey when the latter reached Henri’s age; but Antoine wonders how the curse could have been continued thereafter, “when Charles Le Sorcier must in the course of Nature have died.” As the man attacks Antoine, the
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latter hurls a torch at him, setting him afire. Just before he expires, however, he reveals the truth: he himself is Charles Le Sorcier, having lived for 600 years to continue his revenge against the family that killed his father.
This is the first extant tale by HPL to be avowedly supernatural. It was first published at the urging of W.Paul Cook, who read it in manuscript and found it indicative of great promise; largely at Cook’s urging, HPL resumed the writing of fiction in 1917.
Alfredo; a Tragedy.
Verse drama (411 lines); dated September 14, 1918, as by “Beaumont and Fletcher” (i.e., John Fletcher [1579–1625] and Francis Beaumont [c. 1585–1616], the Jacobean dramatists). First published in DB.
The play is a send-up of Alfred Galpin’s high school romances, written in the form of an Elizabethan tragedy. Alfredo (Galpin), the Prince Regent, yearns for Margarita (Margaret Abraham), but she claims to find him too studious for her “airy will”; nevertheless, she becomes jealous when she sees him spending much time studying with Hypatia. She and Hecatissa (an unattractive woman previously scorned by Alfredo) plot together to gain revenge. During the presentation of a play in which Alfredo and Hypatia, now engaged, act in the presence of King Rinarto (Rheinhart Kleiner), Alfredo and Hypatia drink from a goblet that has been poisoned by Hecatissa; they lie dying. In a rage, Gonzago perceives the trickery and kills Hecatissa; her father, Olero, kills Gonzago; Teobaldo (HPL), Alfredo’s tutor, kills Olero; Margarita kills Teobaldo; Alfredo, in his death throes, manages to stab and kill Margarita; Rinarto, in grief, drinks from the goblet and dies, leaving Mauricio (Maurice W.Moe), a Cardinal, to lament the tragedy and count his beads.
Allen, Zadok (1831–1927).
In “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” the alcoholic nonagenarian of Innsmouth who, when plied with liquor by Robert Olmstead, babbles the town’s horrible secrets and then disappears mysteriously. It is from Allen that Olmstead first learns that he has the “Marsh eyes”—hinting at his kinship with Old Man Marsh. Allen shares the life dates of, and bears a strong resemblance to, the amateur poet Jonathan E.Hoag, with whom HPL had been acquainted since 1918. Allen may also have been suggested by the character Humphrey Lathrop, the elderly doctor in Herbert Gorman’s The Place Called Dagon(1927).
Alos.
In “Polaris,” the narrator’s friend, commander of the last forces of the Lomarians against the Inutos. Altberg-Ehrenstein, Karl Heinrich, Graf von.
The narrator of “The Temple.” The Lieutenant-Commander of the German submarine U-29, he is the last surviving crew member when his stricken vessel sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where he apparently finds the ruins of Atlantis. He leaves behind his written account on August 20, 1917— HPL’s twenty-seventh birthday.
Amateur Journalism.
The amateur journalism movement consisted of various groups of writers belonging to the two leading amateur organizations of the pe
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riod, the National Amateur Press Association (NAPA), founded in 1876, and the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), founded in 1895. HPL’s pamphlet United Amateur Press Association: Exponent of Amateur Journalism(1915; rpt. MW) explains the principles of amateurdom. Members could publish their own journals or contribute to those edited by others (HPL did both). Those who issued journals mailed them to members of their choice (addresses of members were supplied in the “official organs,” the United Amateurand the National Amateur). No minimum publishing requirement was imposed; so long as members paid yearly dues, they were members in good standing. The NAPA held its annual convention in early July; the UAPA held its annual convention in late July. At those times elections were held for the offices of President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Official Editor, and others; other positions (such as the Department of Public Criticism in the UAPA and the Bureau of Critics in the NAPA) were appointed by the President. The Official Editor was responsible for editing the official organ.
HPL joined the UAPA in April 1914 at the invitation of Edward F.Daas, who noticed HPL’s contributions to the letter column of the Argosy. During his first year HPL contributed a few pieces in prose and verse, but his activity blossomed in 1915 when he was chosen to replace Ada P.Campbell as Chairman of the Department of Public Criticism (HPL’s first article was published in the United Amateur,January 1915); in April he published the first of thirteen issues of his journal, The Conservative . From 1914 to 1921 he contributed voluminously to a wide variety of periodicals. Although a loyal “United man,” HPL joined the NAPA in 1917 in the hope that it might lead to harmony between the organizations.
HPL held several offices in the UAPA: Chairman of the Department of Public Criticism (1915–17, 1918–19), First Vice-President (1915–16), President (1917–18), Official Editor (July 1917, 1920–22, 1924–25). He was interim President of the NAPA (November 1922–July 1923), taking over for William J. Dowdell, who had resigned. HPL’s amateur activity lagged after the collapse of the UAPA in 1926 but resumed in 1931 when he became a member of the Bureau of Critics (corresponding to the UAPA’s Department of Public Criticism); he wrote numerous critical articles (mostly on poetry) for the National Amateurfrom 1931 to 1936. Aside from editing The Conservative,HPL was a coeditor, assistant editor, or associate editor of The Badger(June 1915), The Credential(April 1920), The Inspiration(Tribute Number, April 1917), and The United Cooperative(December 1918, June 1919, April 1921). He also assisted members of the Providence Amateur Press Club in editing two issues of The Providence Amateur(June 1915 and February 1916). In the first he is listed as “Literary Director” and in the second as “Official Editor.”
HPL also wrote voluminously about amateurdom. United Amateur Press Association: Exponent of Amateur Journalismis a recruiting pamphlet published in late 1915, when he was First Vice-President of the UAPA; it is his second separate publication (following The Crime of Crimes[1915]). Looking Backward(1920) is an examination of amateur journals of the 1885–95 period. Further Criticism of Poetry(1932), a criticism of amateur verse written on April 18, 1932, appeared separately because it was too lengthy to be published in the Na
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tional Amateur Some Current Motives and Practices(1936) is a forceful defense of NAP A President Hyman Bradofsky against other members’ vicious attacks upon him. HPL’s first autobiographical article, “The Brief Autobiography of an Inconsequential Scribbler” ( Silver Clarion,April 1919), focuses on his amateur activity. Other important essays are “The Dignity of Journalism” ( Dowdell’s Bearcat, July 1915), “For What Does the United Stand?” ( United Amateur,May 1920), “What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other” (1921; Boys’ Herald,August 1937), “Lucubrations Lovecraftian” ( United Cooperative,April 1921), and “A Matter of Uniteds” ( Bacon’s Essays,Summer 1927). HPL attended only two national amateur conventions, both for NAPA, in July 1921 (when he read his humorous speech “Within the Gates” [in MW] and first met his future wife, Sonia H.Greene), and in July 1930. Both were held in Boston. He attended regional amateur gatherings in Boston in 1920–21 and in Brooklyn (Blue Pencil Club) in 1924–25. In amateurdom HPL met many of his closest and most enduring friends and colleagues, including Frank Belknap Long, Maurice W.Moe, Rheinhart Kleiner, James F.Morton, Alfred Galpin, Samuel Loveman, and Wilfred B.Talman.
On the whole, amateur journalism appealed to HPL because it echoed his stated literary goal of writing as nonremunerative “self-expression,” because it provided him with a forum where his literary and critical skills could be exhibited and because it supplied him with a network of friends with whom he could correspond on various topics and thereby hone his philosophical, aesthetic, and literary views. HPL is still regarded a giant in the amateur world, and articles on him continue to appear in The Fossil,the organ of amateur alumni.
“Americanism.”
Essay (1,120 words); probably written in the summer of 1919. First published in the United Amateur (July 1919); rpt. MW
Americanism is “expanded Anglo-Saxonism”; therefore, the “melting-pot” idea is dangerous and pernicious. America should build upon the values fostered by the English colonists. “Amissa Minerva.”
Poem (92 lines); probably written in early 1919. First published in Toledo Amateur(May 1919). A pungent satire lampooning the freakishness of modern poetry, mentioning several poets by name (Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, etc.).
See Steven J.Mariconda, “On Lovecraft’s ‘Amissa Minerva,’” Etchings and OdysseysNo. 9 [1986]: 97– 103.
“Ancient Track, The.”
Poem (44 lines); written on November 26, 1929. First published in WT(March 1930). Brooding poem in which the narrator comes upon a milestone (“Two miles to Dunwich”) on a lonely road and subsequently encounters nameless horrors. This is the only other mention of Dunwich in HPL’s fiction and poetry aside from “The Dunwich Horror” (1928).
See Donald R.Burleson, “On Lovecraft’s ‘The Ancient Track,’” LSNo. 28 (Spring 1993): 17–20.
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Andrews, Marshall.
In “The Disinterment,” a disreputable physician who claims to have concocted a bizarre scheme to treat his friend’s case of leprosy by first simulating the man’s death and then giving him a new identity. In fact, he drugs the man and transplants the man’s head on to the body of an African American. Andrews is later killed by his friend.
Angell, George Gammell.
In “The Call of Cthulhu,” Angell is a professor of Semitic languages at Brown University. In 1908, at a meeting of the American Archaeological Society, Angell first learns of the Cthulhu Cult when he is approached by inspector John R.Legrasse with a sculpture of a strange idol. Seventeen years later, when the artist Henry Anthony Wilcox shows him a bizarre bas-relief that he has just fashioned from something he dreamt of, Angell embarks anew on research into the strange cult—an act that ultimately results in his untimely death.
Angell’s last name is derived from Angell Street, one of the leading thoroughfares in Providence (itself named for Thomas Angell, a companion of Roger Williams and one of the original settlers of the city). The middle name is an echo of HPL’s aunt, Annie E.Phillips Gamwell (in Providence speech, “Gamwell” and “GamwcGammell” would be pronounced in an approximately similar manner). Anger, William Frederick (b. 1921).
Correspondent of HPL (1934–36). With Louis C.Smith, Anger planned an index to WTand an edition of HPL’s Fungi from Yuggoth(both unfinished). He was the author (with Smith) of “An Interview with E.Hoffman [sic]Price” ( Fantasy Fan,December 1934).
Arkham.
Fictitious city in Massachusetts invented by HPL. The city is first cited in “The Picture in the House” (1920); other tales that feature Arkham are “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1921–22), “The Unnamable” (1923), “The Colour out of Space” (1927), “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931), “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932), “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1932–33), “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1933), and “The Shadow out of Time” (1934–35). It is the home of Miskatonic University (first cited in “Herbert West—Reanimator”); there is also an Arkham Historical Society (in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”) and an Arkham Sanitarium (in “The Thing on the Doorstep”). It had a newspaper in the 1880s, the Arkham Gazette(in “The Colour out of Space”); a more recent paper, presumably dating to the 1920s, is the Arkham Advertiser(in “The Dunwich Horror” and other stories). In At the Mountains of Madness,one of the expeditionary ships to Antarctica is named Arkham. HPL drew a map of the city on at least three occasions; one is reproduced as “Map of the Principal Parts of Arkham, Massachusetts” ( Acolyte,Fall 1942), another in Marginalia(facing p. 279), and another (from a letter to Robert Bloch, [April 1936]) as the frontispiece to Letters to Robert Bloch(Necronomicon Press, 1993).
Will Murray has conjectured that Arkham was at first situated in central Massachusetts and that its name and possibly its location were derived from the tiny hamlet Oakham. Research by Robert D.Marten makes this theory extremely unlikely. Marten maintains that Arkham was always located on the North Shore and
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(as HPL repeatedly declares) was a fictional analogue of Salem. HPL definitively states: “My mental picture of Arkham is of a town something like Salem in atmosphere & style of houses, but more hilly (Salem is flat except for Gallows Hill, which is outside the town proper) & with a college (which Salem hasn’t). The street layout is nothing like Salem’s. As to the location of Arkham—I fancy I place the town & the imaginary Miskatonic somewhere north of Salem—perhaps near Manchester. My idea of the place is slightly in from the sea, but with a deep water channel making it a port” (HPL to F.Lee Baldwin, April 29, 1934; ms., JHL). Marten conjectures that the name Arkham was based upon Arkwright, a town in R.I. now consolidated into the community of Fiskville. HPL remarked that “The Dunwich Horror” “belongs to the Arkham cycle” ( SL2.246), but the significance of this phrase is unclear. Possibly he was referring to the fact that several of his recent tales had involved not merely a pseudomythological backdrop but also an imaginary New England topography.
See Will Murray, “In Search of Arkham Country,” LSNo. 13 (Fall 1986): 54–67; Will Murray, “In Search of Arkham Country Revisited,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 65–69; Robert D.Marten, “Arkham Country: In Rescue of the Lost Searchers,” LSNo. 39 (Summer 1998): 1–20.
Armitage, Henry.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” the librarian of Miskatonic University (A.M.Miskatonic, Ph.D.Princeton, Litt. D.Johns Hopkins). He encounters Wilbur Whateley in the library, but refuses to let him take home a copy of the Necronomicon,sensing that it could lead to cataclysmic results. He later sees Whateley die in the library while trying to steal the book. With great effort, he deciphers Whateley’s encrypted diary and realizes the threat that the Whateley family (specifically, Whateley’s monstrous twin brother) poses to the world, and he leads the expedition to exterminate it.
Arruda, Capt Manuel.
In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,the captain of a ship, the Fortaleza,of Barcelona, bound from Cairo to Providence. In 1770 it is stopped by authorities and found to contain large numbers of Egyptian mummies, scheduled for delivery to “Sailor A.B.C.” (i.e., Joseph Curwen). HPL derived the name from a Manuel Arruda who was a door-to-door fruit seller in Providence in the 1920s. Asbury, Herbert (1891–1963).
American journalist and author of The Gangs of New York(1928) whose horror anthology Not at Night!(Macy-Macius/The Vanguard Press, 1932) contains HPL’s “The Horror at Red Hook.” The volume proved to be pirated from several anthologies edited by Christine Campbell Thomson. For a time WT(from which most of the stories derived) threatened to sue the publisher (HPL gave his support to the suit provided it would involve no financial expenditure on his part; see SL2.260–61), but the publisher eventually withdrew the book from circulation.
Asellius, Sex[tus].
In “The Very Old Folk,” the military tribune of the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion in the Roman province of Hispania Citerior (Spain), who is ordered to investigate reports of peculiar events in the hills above Tarraco.
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“Ashes.”
Short story (3,220 words); written in collaboration with C.M.Eddy, Jr., probably in the fall of 1923. First published in WT(March 1924); first collected in HM(rev. ed. 1989 only).
A scientist, Arthur Van Allister, has discovered a chemical compound that will reduce any substance to fine white ashes. He hires an assistant, Malcolm Bruce, who quickly falls in love with Van Allister’s secretary, Marjorie Purdy. Sometime later Bruce is alarmed that Marjorie seems to have disappeared. He enters Van Allister’s laboratory and sees a glass jar filled with white ashes. Horrified at the thought that the scientist has tried out his experiment on his secretary, Bruce tussles with Van Allister, in the course of which he lowers the scientist into the vat containing his formula. Later it is discovered that Marjorie had merely been locked in a closet; but since Van Allister had been planning to destroy Marjorie with his formula, his death is presumably justified.
No one would know that HPL had had any hand in this story (which, aside from the general triteness of the plot, features a conventional romance element very foreign to his own manner) if HPL had not said so (see SL1.257). It is the first of HPL’s revisions of tales by C.M.Eddy; he presumably touched up a draft by Eddy rather than writing from notes or a synopsis.
Aspinwall, Ernest B. (b. 1873).
Randolph Carter’s older cousin, Aspinwall is mentioned briefly in “The Silver Key.” In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” he represents Carter’s heirs as one of the men who attempt to settle Carter’s estate following his disappearance. An “L.Aspinwall” was Treasurer and a Director with Whipple V.Phillips (HPL’s grandfather) of Phillips’s Snake River Company.
Astrology, Articles on.
Six articles written in late 1914 for the [Providence] Evening Newsto combat the astrological articles of J.F.Hartmann. All articles (including those by Hartmann) rpt. Science vs. Charlatanry: Essays on Astrology(Strange Co., 1979). They are: Letter to the editor (September 9; as “Science Versus Charlatanry”); Letter to the editor (October 10; as “The Falsity of Astrology”); Letter to the editor (October 13; as “Astrlogh [sic]and the Future“ [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]); ”Delavan’s Comet and Astrology“ (October 26 [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]); Letter to the editor (December 17; as “The Fall of Astrology”); Letter to the editor (December 21 [by “Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.”]).
HPL was irked when the local astrologer Joachim Friedrich Hartmann (1848–1930) published an article in the Evening News,“Astrology and the European War” (September 9), in the exact location (the top of the last page) where HPL’s astronomy columns typically appeared. HPL replied with two hostile and intemperate letters, to the first of which Hartmann replied with a letter of his own (published October 7). HPL then employed the satirical method of Jonathan Swift, who in his “Isaac Bickerstaffe” articles predicted the death of the astrologer Partridge and then wrote a convincing account of Partridge’s death, whereupon Partridge had a difficult time proving he was still alive; HPL’s pieces merely parody astrological technique by making vague and absurd predictions of the distant future. Hartmann feebly rejoined with two further pieces—“The Science of Astrology” (October 22) and “A Defense of Astrology” (December 14)—in which he ridiculed the Bickerstaffe pieces, unaware that HPL had written them.
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Astronomy, Articles on. See “Mysteries of the Heavens Revealed by Astronomy”; Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner,Astronomy Articles for; [Providence] Evening News,Astronomy Articles for; [Providence] Tribune,Astronomy Articles for.
Astronomy/The Monthly Almanack.
Two juvenile scientific journals (eventually combined) written by HPL, 1903–4. The first five issues bear the title Astronomyas follows: 1, No. 1 (August 1903); 1, No. 2 (September 1903); 1, No. 3 (October 1903); 1, No. 4 (November 1903) (combined with The Monthly Almanack;includes An Annual of Astronomy for the Year 1903: First Edition: Novr. 25, 1903);1, No. 5 (December 1905). The next issue is titled The New Monthly Almanack for December, 1903. The next appears as Astronomy: January 1904: Combined with the Monthly Almanack. The final issue bears the title The Monthly Almanack: Combined with “Astronomy”: Feb’y, 1904.
The publications consist largely of technical charts of the solar system and constellations, data on the moon’s phases, planetary aspects, and the like.
“Astrophobos.”
Poem (42 lines in 7 stanzas); written in mid-November 1917. First published in the United Amateur (January 1918). The title means “[one who] fears stars,” and tells of a person who looks to the stars for beauty and tranquillity but finds in them only horror and sadness.
At the Mountains of Madness.
Short novel (41,500 words); written February 24–March 22, 1931. First published in Astounding Stories(February, March, and April 1936); first collected in O;corrected text in MM;annotated version in An1and TD.
The Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31, led by William Dyer (his full name is given only in “The Shadow out of Time”), begins promisingly but ends in tragedy and horror. Employing a new boring device invented by engineer Frank H.Pabodie, the expedition makes great progress at sites on the shore of McMurdo Sound (across the Ross Ice Shelf from where Admiral Byrd’s expedition had only recently camped). But the biologist Lake, struck by some peculiar markings on soapstone fragments he has found, feels the need to conduct a subexpedition far to the northwest. There he makes a spectacular discovery: not only the world’s tallest mountains (“Everest out of the running,” he laconically radios the camp), but then the frozen remains—some damaged, some intact—of monstrous winged, barrel-shaped creatures that cannot be reconciled with the known fauna of this planet. They seem half-animal and half-vegetable, with tremendous brain capacity and, apparently, with more senses than we have. Lake, who has read the Necronomicon,jocosely thinks they may be the Elder Things or Old Ones spoken of in that book and elsewhere, who are “supposed to have created all earth-life as jest or mistake.”
Later Lake’s subexpedition loses radio contact with the main party, apparently because of the high winds in that region. Dyer feels he must come to Lake’s aid and takes a small group of men in some airplanes to see what has gone amiss. To their horror, they find the camp devastated—by the winds or the
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sled dogs or some other nameless forces—but discover no trace of the intact specimens of the Old Ones. When they come upon damaged specimens “insanely” buried in the snow, they are forced to conclude that it is the work of the one missing human, Gedney. Dyer and the graduate student Danforth decide to take a trip by themselves beyond the titanic mountain plateau to see if they can find any explanation for the tragedy.
As they scale the plateau, they find to their amazement an enormous stone city, fifty to one hundred miles in extent, clearly built millions of years ago, long before any humans could have evolved from apes. Exploring some of the interiors, they are forced to conclude that the city was built by the Old Ones. Because the buildings contain, as wall decorations, many bas-reliefs supplying the history of the Old Ones’ civilization, they learn that the Old Ones came from space some fifty million years ago, settling in Antarctica and eventually branching out to other areas of the earth. They built their huge cities with the aid of shoggoths—amorphous, fifteen-foot masses of protoplasm that they controlled by hypnotic suggestion. Over time the shoggoths gained a semi-stable brain and began to develop a will of their own, forcing the Old Ones to conduct several campaigns of resubjugation. Later, other extraterrestrial races—including the fungi from Yuggoth and the Cthulhu spawn—came to the earth and engaged in battles over territory with the Old Ones, and eventually the latter were forced back to their original Antarctic settlement. They had also lost the ability to fly through space. The reasons for their abandonment of the city, and for their extinction, are unfathomable.
Dyer and Danforth then stumble upon signs that someone dragging a sled had passed by, and they follow it, finding first some huge albino penguins, then the sled with the remains of Gedney and a dog, then a group of decapitated Old Ones, restored from suspended animation by being thawed in Lake’s camp. Then they hear an anomalous sound—a musical piping over a wide range. Could it be some other Old Ones? They flee madly, but they simultaneously turn their flashlights upon the thing for an instant and find that it is a shoggoth: “It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.” As they fly back to camp, Danforth shrieks in horror: he has seen something that unhinges his mind, but he refuses to tell Dyer what it is. All he can do is make the eldritch cry, “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
The novel is the culmination of HPL’s lifelong fascination with the Antarctic, beginning when as a boy he had written treatises on Wilkes’s Explorationsand The Voyages of Capt. Ross, R.N.,and had followed with avidity reports of the explorations of Borchgrevink, Scott, Amundsen, and others early in the century. As Jason C.Eckhardt has demonstrated, the early parts of the novel show the influence of Admiral Byrd’s expedition of 1928–30, as well as other contemporary expeditions. HPL may also have found a few hints on points of style and imagery in the early pages of M.P.Shiel’s novel The Purple Cloud(1901; reissued 1930), which relates an expedition to the Arctic.
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It is possible to conjecture what led HPL to write the novel when he did. The lead story in the November 1930 WTwas a poorly written and unimaginative tale by Katharine Metcalf Roof, “A Million Years After,” that dealt with the hatching of ancient dinosaur eggs. HPL fumed when he read it, not only because it won the cover design but also because he had been badgering Frank Belknap Long for years to write a story on this idea; Long had balked because he felt that H.G. Wells’s “Æpyornis Island” had anticipated the idea. In mid-October, after seeing the Roof tale in print, HPL wrote: “Why, damn it, boy, I’ve half a mind to write an egg story myself right now—though I fancy my primal ovoid would hatch out something infinitely more palaeogean and unrecognisable than the relatively commonplace dinosaur” ( SL3.186–87). HPL may have felt that the use of a viable dinosaur egg was impossible, so that the only solution would be the freezing of ancient living entities in the Arctic or Antarctic regions. Note that entry #169 in his commonplace book (dating to around 1930) reads “What hatches from primordial egg.” However, the novel is more in the spirit of entry #31 (c. 1919): “Prehistoric man preserved in Siberian ice.”
HPL was also inspired by the paintings of the Himalayas by Nicholai Roerich (1874–1947), seen the previous year at the Roerich Museum when it opened in New York. Roerich is mentioned six times in the novel. HPL probably did not set the tale in the Himalayas both because they were fairly well known and because he wanted to create the sense of awe implicit in mountains taller than any yet discovered. Only the relatively uncharted Antarctic continent could fulfill both functions. The Old Ones are the real focus of the novel. HPL gradually transforms them from objects of terror to symbols for the best in humanity; as Dyer declares: “Poor devils! After all, they were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being. Nature had played a hellish jest on them…and this was their tragic homecoming…. Scientists to the last—what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn—whatever they had been, they were men!”
The most significant way the Old Ones are identified with human beings is in Dyer’s historical digression, specifically in regard to the Old Ones’ social and economic organization. In many ways they represent a utopia toward which HPL hoped humanity could aspire. The sentence “Government was evidently complex and probably socialistic” establishes that HPL had himself by this time converted to moderate socialism. The Old Ones’ civilization is founded upon slavery of a sort, and there is some suggestion that the condition of the shoggoths might, in part, resemble that of African Americans. The exhaustive history of the Old Ones on this planet, portraying their rise and fall, suggests HPL’s absorption of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West,with its similar emphasis on the inexorable rise and fall of successive civilizations.
In terms of HPL’s work, the novel makes explicit what has been evident all along—most of the “gods” of his mythology are merely extraterrestrials and that their followers (including the authors of the books of occult lore to which reference is so frequently made by HPL and others) are mistaken as to their true nature. Robert M.Price, who first noted this “demythologizing” feature in HPL, has
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pointed out that At the Mountains of Madnessdoes not make any radical break in this pattern, but it does emphasize the point more clearly than elsewhere.
The novel has been called a “sequel” to Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym;but, at least in terms of plot, it cannot be considered such: it picks up on very little of Poe’s enigmatic work except for the cry “Tekeli-li!,” as unexplained in Poe as in HPL, and the allusion to Mt. Erebus as Yaanekfrom “Ulalume.” It is not clear that Pymeven influenced the work in any significant way. Jules Zanger has observed that the novel is “no completion [of Pym] at all: it might be better described as a parallel text, the two tales coexisting in a shared context of allusion” (“Poe’s Endless Voyage: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” Papers on Language and Literature22, No. 3 [Summer 1986]: 282). HPL declared that the short novel was “capable of a major serial division in the exact middle” (HPL to August Derleth, March 24, [1931]; ms., SHSW), suggesting that, at least subconsciously, he envisioned the work as a two-part serial in WT. But Farnsworth Wright rejected it in July 1931. HPL reacted bitterly (see SL3.395) and let the novel sit for years. Then, in the fall of 1935, the young Julius Schwartz, acting as agent, took it to F.Orlin Tremaine, editor of Astounding Stories,who accepted it at once, apparently without reading it (see Will Murray, “Julius Schwartz on Lovecraft,” CryptNo. 76 [Hallowmas 1990]: 14–18). It was published, however, with severe editorial tampering: HPL’s long paragraphs were split up, punctuation was altered, and (toward the end) several passages, amounting to about 1,000 words, were omitted. HPL fumed at the alterations, calling Tremaine “that god-damn’d dung of a hyaena” (HPL to R.H. Barlow, June 4, 1936; ms., JHL). He corrected by hand his three sets of Astounding,but in the end did not correct many alterations (e.g., the Americanization of his British spellings). These corrected copies were used as the basis of the first Arkham House edition, but even so the text contained nearly 1,500 errors, mostly in spelling and punctuation, but also in the omission of two small passages toward the beginning. The text was restored (based upon the surviving typescript except for passages where HPL made demonstrable revisions on scientific points) in MM (1985 edition).
See Robert M.Price, “Demythologizing Cthulhu,” LSNo. 8 (Spring 1984): 3–9, 24; Bert Atsma, “An Autopsy of the Old Ones,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 3–7; Ben P.Indick, “Lovecraft’s POElar Adventure,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 25–31; Peter Cannon, “ At the Mountains of Madness as a Sequel to Arthur Gordon Pym,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 33–34; Will Murray, “The Trouble with Shoggoths,” CryptNo. 32 (St. John’s Eve 1985): 35–38, 41; Jason C.Eckhardt, “Behind the Mountains of Madness,” LSNo. 14 (Spring 1987): 31–38; Marc A.Cerasini, “Thematic Links in Arthur Gordon Pym, At the Mountains of Madness,and Moby Dick,” CryptNo. 49 (Lammas 1987): 3– 20; S.T.Joshi, “Lovecraft’s Alien Civilisations: A Political Interpretation,” in Selected Papers on Lovecraft(Necronomicon Press, 1989); S.T.Joshi, “Textual Problems in At the Mountains of Madness” CryptNo. 75 (Michaelmas 1990): 16–21; Robert M.Price, “Patterns in the Snow: A New Reading of At the Mountains of Madness,” CryptNo. 81 (St. John’s Eve 1992): 48–51; Peter Cannon, Jason C.Eckhardt, Steven J.Mariconda, and Hubert Van Calenbergh, “On At the Mountains of Madness:A Panel Discussion,” LSNo. 34 (Spring 1996): 2–
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10; David A.Oakes, “A Warning to the World: The Deliberative Argument of At the Mountains of Madness” LS No. 39 (Summer 1998): 21–25.
Atal.
Briefly noted as an innkeeper’s son in “The Cats of Ulthar,” Atal is, in “The Other Gods,” the priest who accompanies Barzai the Wise in his quest up Mt. Ngranek to find the gods of earth. He then becomes, in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,an ancient patriarch who advises Randolph Carter in his quest for the gods.
Atwood, Professor.
In At the Mountains of Madness,a professor of physics and a member of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31.
Aylesbury.
Fictitious town in Massachusetts, invented by HPL for “The Dunwich Horror” (1928), where it is presumably near Dunwich. The name is perhaps derived from Amesbury, a town in the far northeastern corner of the state, near Haverhill and Newburyport, and the late home of John Greenleaf Whittier. HPL passed through Amesbury on several occasions, including in August 1927. There is a real town in England called Aylesbury.
“Azathoth.”
Projected novel (480 words extant); written June 1922. First published in Leaves(1938); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in D. The surviving text notes that “When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men,” a man “travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled.” The man dwelt in a city “of high walls where sterile twilight reigned,” and as a reaction from this environment he began dreaming “the dreams that men have lost.”
HPL describes the work as a “weird Vathek-like novel” ( SL1.185), referring to the Arabian novel Vathek(1786) by William Beckford, which HPL first read in July 1921. HPL perhaps means that Azathothis an attempt both to capture Vathek’sair of dreamlike fantasy and to imitate its continuous flow of narrative and absence of chapter divisions (as with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath). As early as October 1921 he had been thinking of writing “a weird Eastern tale in the 18th century manner” (HPL to Winifred Jackson, October 7, 1921; ms., JHL). After beginning the work, HPL commented: “The rest—for which this introduction prepares the reader, will be material of the Arabian Nightstype. I shall defer to no modern critical canon, but shall frankly slip back through the centuries and become a myth-maker with that childish sincerity which no one but the earlier Dunsany has tried to achieve nowadays. I shall go out of the world when I write, with a mind centred not in literary usage, but in the dreams I dreamed when I was six years old or less—the dreams which followed my first knowledge of Sinbad,of Agib,of Baba-Abdallah,and of SidiNonman” (HPL to Frank Belknap Long, June 9, 1922; AHT).
See Will Murray, “On ‘Azathoth,’” CryptNo. 53 (Candlemas 1988): 8–9; Donald R.Burleson, “On Lovecraft’s Fragment ‘Azathoth,’” LSNos. 22/23 (Fall 1990): 10–12, 23.
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B
Babson, Eunice.
In “The Thing on the Doorstep,” a servant of Edward and Asenath Derby who, after being dismissed by Edward, appears to exact some kind of blackmail from him.
Baird, Edwin (1886–1957).
First editor of WT(March 1923–April 1924). Baird was a writer for the popular magazines during the early decades of the century (HPL presumably read some of his stories in the Munsey magazines). Owner J.C.Henneberger picked Baird to edit WT,even though he seemed to have no particular expertise in weird fiction. Baird accepted five of HPL’s stories when they were submitted in May 1923 (see SL1.227) but insisted that HPL resubmit them double-spaced; HPL grudgingly did so. Although ousted as editor of WT,Baird continued to edit Henneberger’s Detective Talesand in that capacity rejected, in July 1925, HPL’s “The Shunned House.”
Balbutius, Cn[aeus].
In “The Very Old Folk,” the legatus of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior (Spain), who does not wish to investigate reports of peculiar events in the hills above Tarraco but is ordered to do so by the proconsul, P.Scribonius Libo.
Baldwin, F[ranklin] Lee (1913–1987).
Weird fiction fan and correspondent of HPL (1933–36). Baldwin first wrote HPL in the fall of 1933 proposing to issue “The Colour out of Space” as a booklet. HPL revised the tale slightly for the prospective publication, but the plan never materialized. In early 1934 HPL put Baldwin in touch with Duane W.Rimel, who by coincidence lived in the same small town (Asotin, Washington). The two took turns reading HPL’s letters to each of them. Baldwin wrote two columns of news notes for the Fantasy Fan:“Side Glances” (April, May, September 1934) and “Within the Circle” (June, July, August, October, November 1934, January, February 1935), much of the informa
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tion for which was derived from HPL’s letters to him, as was the significant early article, “H.P.Lovecraft: A Biographical Sketch,” originally scheduled to appear in the Fantasy Fanbut, following that magazine’s demise, published in Fantasy Magazine(April 1935). Baldwin later revised the article as “Some Lovecraft Sidelights” ( Fantasy Commentator,Spring 1948). Excerpts of one letter (now at JHL) were published as “Lovecraft as an Illustrator” ( Acolyte,Summer 1943). See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., ed., Within the Circle: In Memoriam F.Lee Baldwin(Moshassuck Press, 1988).
“Ballade of Patrick von Flynn; or, The Hibernio-German-American England-Hater, Ye.” Poem (60 lines); written no later than April 23, 1915. First published in the Conservative(April 1916). A crude satire in which a group of anti-English Irishmen meet with some Germans, begin drinking, and threaten to join forces to slander England. HPL tactlessly sent the poem to the Irish-American John T.Dunn, whose reaction can be gauged by HPL’s comment: “I…am scarcely surprised that the ‘von Flynn’ ballad proved less than pleasing” (HPL to John T.Dunn, June 28, 1916; Books at Brown 38–39 [1991–92]:182). The poem is oddly prescient, as it was published at the very time of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin, when some Irish rebels joined forces with the Germans to overthrow British rule in Ireland. HPL continued to rant about the menace of unpatriotic Irish-Americans in “Lucubrations Lovecraftian” (1921).
Barlow, Robert H[ayward] (1918–1951).
Short-story writer, poet, artist, sculptor, publisher, collector, scholar, and HPL’s literary executor. When Barlow began corresponding with HPL in 1931, he concealed from HPL the fact that he was only thirteen. Among his early fantasy writings are “Annals of the Jinns” ( Fantasy Fan,October 1933–February 1935), “The Slaying of the Monster” (1933), and “The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast” (1933); the first were gathered as Annals of the Jinns(Necronomicon Press, 1978); the latter two (revised by HPL) as The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast and One Other(Necronomicon Press, 1994). Other tales appeared in various magazines of the NAPA, which Barlow joined at HPL’s suggestion; “Eyes of the God” ( Sea Gull,May 1933) won the story laureateship for that year. Barlow attempted to bind and distribute HPL’s The Shunned House(1928), but bound only a few copies (HPL’s was in leather). He invited HPL to visit him at his home in De Land, Fla., in the summer of 1934, and HPL stayed from May 2 to June 21. At that time the two wrote the spoof “The Battle That Ended the Century” and two poems under the general title “Bouts Rimés,” and HPL drew his celebrated portrait of Cthulhu. HPL revised Barlow’s “‘Till A’ the Seas’” ( Californian,1935) in January 1935, when Barlow was visiting colleagues in New York. Barlow again invited HPL to Florida in the summer of 1935, and HPL remained from June 9 to August 18. At that time they wrote an unfinished parody, “Collapsing Cosmoses,” and set type for Frank Belknap Long’s poetry collection, The Goblin Tower,which Barlow issued from his Dragon-Fly Press. Barlow also typed HPL’s “The Shadow out of Time.” He wrote a superb HPL-influenced tale, “A Dim-Remembered Story” ( Californian,Summer 1936; rpt. Necronomicon Press, 1980), apparently without HPL’s assistance. He visited HPL in Providence in the summer
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of 1936; shortly thereafter they collaborated on “The Night Ocean” ( Californian,Winter 1936), although the recently discovered typescript of the story shows that the bulk of the tale is Barlow’s. In the mid-1930s he brimmed with ideas for literary projects: an edition of Henry S.Whitehead’s letters, to be entitled Caneviniana;a collection of C.L.Moore’s tales; a volume of Clark Ashton Smith’s poetry, Incantations;and booklets of HPL’s Fungi from Yuggothand collected poetry. Although some of these projects were begun, none was completed; but in conjunction with Fungi from Yuggoth(which Barlow partially typeset), the sonnetcycle finally achieved its canonical form in the summer of 1936, with the addition of “Recapture” at Barlow’s suggestion. Barlow published two issues of an amateur magazine, The Dragon Fly(October 15, 1935, May 15, 1936), although neither contained work by HPL. For Christmas 1935 Barlow published HPL’s The Cats of Ultharin an edition of forty-two copies. Barlow aided significantly in the preservation of HPL’s manuscripts by typing texts in exchange for autograph manuscripts. HPL named him his literary executor in “Instructions in Case of Decease” (1936); Annie E.P.Gamwell formalized the relationship in a document drawn up on March 26, 1937. Barlow came to Providence to sort through HPL’s papers, taking some away (in accordance with the “Instructions”) and donating others to the John Hay Library of Brown University. He assisted August Derleth and Donald Wandrei in preparing O, but they ostracized him from the field, particularly Wandrei, who believed Barlow had stolen HPL’s papers. (HPL perhaps was more patient than Wandrei and Derleth with Barlow’s persistent requests for their manuscripts.) Barlow edited HPL’s Notes & Commonplace Book(1938), contributed to the Acolyte,and lent assistance to the first bibliography of HPL, by Francis T.Laney and William H.Evans (1943). He also edited two outstanding issues of the mimeographed fanzine Leaves(Summer 1937, 1938), containing rare works by HPL, A.Merritt, and other weird writers. He moved to Mexico around 1943, where he taught at several colleges, later becoming a professor of anthropology at Mexico City College and a distinguished anthropologist of Indian culture and poet ( Poems for a Competition[1942], A View from a Hill [1947]). He wrote a poignant memoir of HPL, “The Wind That Is in the Grass” (in Marginalia;rpt. LR). He committed suicide on January 1, 1951, in Mexico City, when threatened with exposure of his homosexuality. See On Lovecraft and Life(containing his journal of HPL’s 1934 visit and his 1940s autobiography), ed. S.T.Joshi (Necronomicon Press, 1992).
See Lawrence Hart, “A Note on Robert Barlow,” Poetry78 (May 1951): 115–16; George T.Smisor, “R.H.Barlow and Tlalocan,” Tlalocan3, No. 2 (1952): 97–102; Clare Mooser, “A Study of Robert Barlow: The T.E.Lawrence of Mexico,” Mexico Quarterly Review3, No. 2 (1968): 5–12; George T.Wetzel, “Lovecraft’s Literary Executor,” Fantasy Commentator4, No. 1 (Winter 1978–79): 34–43; Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “R.H.Barlow,” Journal of the H.P.Lovecraft SocietyNo. 2 (1979): [7–36]; Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “Robert H.Barlow as H.P. Lovecraft’s Literary Executor: An Appreciation,” Crypt No. 60 (Hallowmas 1988): 52–62; S.T.Joshi, “R.H.Barlow and the Recognition of Lovecraft,” Crypt No. 60 (Hallowmas 1988): 45–51, 32; S.T.Joshi, “Introduction” to Barlow’s On Lovecraft and Life (Necronomicon Press, 1992); Steven J.Jordan, “H.P.Lovecraft in Florida,” LSNo. 42 (Summer 2001): 34–48.
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Barry, Denys.
In “The Moon-Bog,” an American who buys and restores his ancestral castle in Kilderry, Ireland. When he attempts to drain the nearby bog, the spirits that dwell there exact their vengeance on him. Like Barry, HPL always hoped (unrealistically) to buy back his ancestral home.
Barzai the Wise.
In “The Other Gods,” the learned scholar who “knew so much of the gods…that he was deemed half a god himself.” He attempts to scale Mt. Ngranek to glimpse the elusive gods of earth, thinking his great knowledge of them will protect him from their wrath. He thinks he finds them, but instead he encounters “the other gods,” and, for his hubris, he is swept into the sky.
Bates, Harry [Hiram Gilmore], III (1900–1981),
American author and editor. Bates was the first editor of the Clayton Astounding Stories of SuperScience(now Analog) and Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror(1931–33). He rejected at least five stories submitted by HPL to Strange Tales(“The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” “The Nameless City,” “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” and “Polaris” in April 1931; “In the Vault” in May 1931). HPL did have an uncredited contribution to Strange Taleswhen Henry S.Whitehead’s “The Trap” (at least half of which was written by HPL) appeared in March 1932. Bates was the author of the Hawk Carse stories (as by Anthony Gilmore) and of “Farewell to the Master” ( Astounding Stories,October 1940), adapted as The Day the Earth Stood Still(1951).
See Will Murray, “Lovecraft and Strange Tales,” CryptNo. 74 (Lammas 1990): 3–11. Batta.
In “Winged Death,” the houseboy of Dr. Thomas Slauenwite, whom Slauenwite deliberately causes to be bitten by a strange insect to see if the untreated bite is fatal. It proves to be so. “Battle That Ended the Century, The.”
Short story (1,200 words); written in collaboration with R.H.Barlow, June 1934. First published as a mimeographed flyer (June 1934); rpt. Acolyte(Fall 1944); first collected in Cats;corrected text in MW.
On the eve of the year 2001, a great heavyweight fight is held between Two-Gun Bob, the Terror of the Plains, and Knockout Bernie, the Wild Wolf of West Shokan. After several rounds, Two-Gun Bob is declared the winner, but the World Court reverses the verdict and the Wild Wolf is declared the true victor.
The squib was conceived when HPL was visiting Barlow in Florida in the summer of 1934. Barlow was clearly the originator, as typescripts prepared by him survive, one with extensive revisions in pen by HPL. The idea was to mention as many mutual colleagues as possible, in various comical contexts relating to their actual literary work or personality. Barlow had initially cited them by their actual names, but HPL felt that this was not very interesting, so he devised parodic or punning names for them: Frank Belknap Long is alluded to as Frank Chimesleep Short, HPL as Horse-Power Hateart. Barlow and HPL then circulated the whimsy, but in such a way that its authorship would not be immediately evident. The plan was this: Barlow would
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mimeograph the item (copies exist in two 8½″×14″ sheets, each with text on one side only) and then have the copies mailed from a location that could not be traced to either HPL or Barlow. It appears that fifty duplicated copies were prepared toward the middle of June and were sent to Washington, D.C., where they would be mailed (possibly by Elizabeth Toldridge, a colleague of both HPL’s and Barlow’s but not associated with the weird fiction circle). This seems to have been done just before HPL left De Land and began heading north, so that the items would be in the hands of associates by the time HPL reached Washington.
In correspondence, the two authors talk in conspiratorial tones about its reception by colleagues: “Note the signature—Chimesleep Short—which indicates that our spoof has gone out & that he [Long] at least thinks I’ve seen the thing. Remember that if you didn’t know anything about it, you’d consider it merely a whimsical trick of his own—& that if you’d merely seen the circular, you wouldn’t think it worth commenting on. I’m ignoring the matter in my reply” (HPL to R.H.Barlow, June 29, 1934; ms., JHL). Some colleagues were amused, but others were less so. HPL notes: “Wandrei wasn’t exactly in a rage, but (according to Belknap) sent the folder on to Desmond Hall with the languid comment, ‘Here’s something that may interest you—it doesn’t interest me'” (HPL to R.H.Barlow, July 21, 1934; ms., JHL).
Bayboro.
Fictitious town in Maine invented either by HPL or by C.M. Eddy; mentioned in “The Loved Dead” (1923) and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (1924).
“Beast in the Cave, The.”
Juvenile story (2,500 words); first draft written in the spring of 1904; final draft completed April 21, 1905. First published in Vagrant(June 1918); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in D. A man slowly realizes that he is lost in Mammoth Cave and may never be found. He wavers between resignation at his fate and a desire for self-preservation; but when he begins shouting to call attention to himself, he summons not the guide who had led his tour group but a shambling beast whom he cannot see in the blackness of the cave but can only hear. In attempting to protect himself from the creature he hurls rocks at it and appears to have fatally injured it. Fleeing from the scene, he comes upon the guide and leads him back to the site of his encounter with the beast. The “beast” turns out to be a man who has been lost in the cave for years.
HPL notes that he spent “days of boning at the library” (i.e., the Providence Public Library) in researching the locale of the tale, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It is perhaps a kind of mirror-image of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”: in that story, what are taken to be the actions of a man turn out to have been performed by an ape, whereas here what is taken for an ape proves to be a man. The last page of the autograph manuscript bears the notation
Tales of Terror
I. The Beast in the Cave
By H.P. Lovecraft
(Period—Modern)
We do not know what other tales were to make up this volume.
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Bennett, George.
In “The Lurking Fear,” he and William Tobey accompany the narrator to the Martense mansion in search of the entity that haunts it. They spend the night, but Bennett and Tobey mysteriously disappear.
“Beyond the Wall of Sleep.”
Short story (4,360 words); written Spring 1919. First published in Pine Cones(October 1919), an amateur journal edited by John Clinton Pryor; rpt. Fantasy Fan(October 1934) and WT(March 1938); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D;annotated version in TD.
Joe Slater (or Slaader), a denizen of the Catskill Mountains, is interned in a mental institution in 1900 because of the horrible murder of another man. Slater seems clearly mad, filled with strange cosmic visions that he, in his “debased patois,” is unable to articulate coherently. The narrator, an intern at the asylum, takes a special interest in Slater because he feels that there is something beyond his comprehension in Slater’s wild dreams and fancies. He contrives a “cosmic ‘radio’” with which he hopes to establish mental communication with Slater. After many fruitless attempts, communication finally occurs, preceded by weird music and visions of spectacular beauty: Slater’s body has in fact been occupied all his life by an extraterrestrial entity that for some reason has a burning desire for revenge against the star Algol (the Daemon-Star). With the impending death of Slater, the entity will be free to exact the vengeance it has always desired. Then reports come on February 22, 1901, of a nova near Algol.
HPL notes that the story was inspired by a passing mention of Catskill Mountain denizens in an article on the New York State Constabulary in the New York Tribune—“How Our State Police Have Spurred Their Way to Fame,” by F.F.Van de Water (April 27, 1919). The story presumably was written shortly thereafter. The article actually mentions a family named the Slaters or Slahters as representative of the decadent squalor of the mountaineers. HPL concludes the story with an account of the nova taken verbatim from his copy of Garrett P. Serviss’s Astronomy with the Naked Eye(1908). Some have claimed that the story was influenced by Ambrose Bierce’s “Beyond the Wall” (in the revised edition of Can Such Things Be?[1909]). HPL had first read Bierce in 1919, but there is no similarity between the two stories except in their titles, as Bierce’s tale is a conventional ghost story that bears no resemblance to HPL’s. There may be an influence from Jack London’s Before Adam (1906), although there is no evidence that HPL read it. The novel is an account of hereditary memory, in which a man from the modern age has dreams of the life of his remote ancestor in primitive times. At the very outset of the novel London’s character remarks: “Nor…did any of my human kind ever break through the wall of my sleep.” Other passages seem to be echoed in HPL’s story. In effect, HPL presents a mirror-image of Before Adam:whereas London’s narrator is a modern (civilized) man who has visions of a primitive past, Joe Slater is a primitive human being whose visions, as HPL declares, are such as “only a superior or even exceptional brain could conceive.”
Bierce, Ambrose [Gwinnett] (1842–c. 1914).
American short story writer and journalist. His best tales are collected in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians [In the Midst of Life](1891) and Can Such Things Be?(1893), the former containing
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his Civil War tales (many filled with moments of terror and grue) and tales of psychological horror, the latter his weird fiction. HPL first read Bierce (at the instigation of Samuel Loveman) in 1919. HPL discusses Bierce’s work in “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” where he quotes from Loveman’s preface to Bierce’s Twenty-one Letters of Ambrose Bierce(1922), published by HPL’s friend George Kirk. The invisible monster in “The Damned Thing” is a likely influence on “The Dunwich Horror.” Clark Ashton Smith felt that “In the Vault” had “the realistic grimness of Bierce” (letter to HPL, March 11, 1930; ms., JHL). HPL discusses the authorship of The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter (cotranslated with Adolphe de Castro [later a client of HPL] from the German of Richard Voss) in SL 1.203–7. Frank Belknap Long revised de Castro’s Portrait of Ambrose Bierce(1929) after HPL declined.
See Carey McWilliams, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography(A. & C. Boni, 1929); M.E.Grenander, Ambrose Bierce(Twayne, 1971); Roy Morris, Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company(Crown, 1995). Birch, George.
The undertaker of Peck Valley (state unknown), who is the subject of “In the Vault.” His carelessness and unprofessionalism not only cause him to be imprisoned in the local cemetery’s receiving tomb but also exact the revenge of one of the corpses temporarily stored there.
Bishop, Mamie.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” the “common-law wife” of Earl Sawyer, who is one of the first to see Wilbur Whateley after he is born. She is the confidante of Wilbur’s mother, Lavinia. Mamie’s relationship to Seth Bishop is unspecified. Seth’s cattle suffer bizarre wounds from Wilbur’s twin brother. Silas Bishop is merely said to be “of the undecayed Bishops.”
Bishop, Zealia Brown Reed (1897–1968).
Revision client and correspondent of HPL. Samuel Loveman introduced her to HPL around 1928. She wished to write romantic fiction, but HPL attempted to steer her toward weird or serious mainstream work. HPL ghostwrote “The Curse of Yig” ( WT,November 1929) in 1928 from a plot synopsis and a questionnaire pertaining to the Oklahoma setting for the story; “The Mound” (December 1929– January 1930) and “Medusa’s Coil” (May 1930) were written from brief plot-germs (HPL’s synopsis for the latter survives in AHT). WTrejected “The Mound” when it was submitted by Frank Belknap Long, who was acting as Bishop’s agent; Long then abridged the text, but it was again rejected. The stories, having been rewritten by August Derleth, appeared in WT (“The Mound” in November 1940; “Medusa’s Coil” in January 1939). The corrected texts were not published until HM . The three stories were published in The Curse of Yig(Arkham House, 1953), for which Bishop wrote an error-filled memoir, “H.P.Lovecraft: A Pupil’s View” (rpt. LR).
Blackwood, Algernon [Henry] (1869–1951).
British author whose work HPL praised highly: he considered “The Willows” (in The Listener and Other Stories[1907]) the best weird tale in all literature. “The Wendigo” (in The Lost Valley and Other Stories[1910]) probably influenced “The Dunwich Horror” in its use of anomalous footprints to indicate the presence of a supernatural entity. Oddly
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enough, HPL did not care for Blackwood when he first read him in 1920 (see HPL to the Gallomo, [January] 1920; AHT); but when HPL read “The Willows” in an anthology in late 1924, he was convinced that, despite his unevenness, Blackwood was among the leading authors of supernatural fiction, particularly in his suggestions of cosmicism. Blackwood was a mystic with a fascination for Eastern thought; his novel The Centaur(1911) is his spiritual autobiography. John Silence—Physician Extraordinary(1908) popularized the use of the “psychic detective”; it was imitated by William Hope Hodgson and others. Blackwood also wrote fantasies for and about children, including Jimbo: A Fantasy(1909) and The Education of Uncle Paul(1909). HPL praised Incredible Adventures(1914), a collection of four long stories, in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and elsewhere (see, e.g., SL 5.160). Late in life Blackwood became popular on BBC radio and television. See Selected Tales (1938), Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural(1949), Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre(1967), and his autobiography Episodes Before Thirty(1923).
See Mike Ashley, “Lovecraft and Blackwood: A Surveillance,” CryptNo. 51 (Hallowmas 1987): 3–8, 14; Mike Ashley, “The Cosmic Connection,” CryptNo. 57 (St. John’s Eve 1988): 3–9; Mike Ashley, Algernon Blackwood: A Bio-Bibliography(Greenwood Press, 1987); S.T.Joshi, “Algernon Blackwood: The Expansion of Consciousness,” in Joshi’s The Weird Tale(University of Texas Press, 1990). Blake, Richard.
In “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind,” the author-poet from Boston who rents a country cottage near Fenham, thinking it will provide imaginative stimulus for his work. While there, he becomes aware of an unseen presence and later is found dead.
Blake, Robert.
In “The Haunter of the Dark,” the writer of weird tales from Milwaukee, Wis., who moves to Providence, R.I., for inspiration. He keeps a diary of his investigations of the Free-Will Church, which he had first observed from his window but then sought out across town. He unwittingly disturbs the unseen presence residing in the abandoned church and, in the end, dies from his encounter with the avatar of Nyarlathotep.
Blake is loosely based on Robert Bloch, to whom the story is dedicated. (Blake’s Milwaukee address was Bloch’s real address at the time the story was written.) However, he also embodies attributes of HPL himself. The view from Blake’s room in Providence is exactly that which HPL saw. The titles of the stories attributed to Blake are parodies of HPL’s and Bloch’s own stories.
Blandot.
In “The Music of Erich Zann,” the “paralytic” landlord of the boarding house on the Rue d’Auseil where Zann and the narrator reside.
Blish, James (1921–1975).
Pioneering American science fiction writer who corresponded briefly with HPL (1936). Blish and his friend William Miller planned to issue a fanzine, The Planeteer,and in the spring of 1936 asked HPL for contributions. HPL sent them the poem “The Wood,” which was to appear in September 1936; although the pages containing the poem were printed, the issue
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was never completed. HPL continued to correspond with Blish and Miller (apparently writing to them jointly) until the summer. Three of his letters to them were published in the fanzine Phantastique/Science Fiction Critic(March 1938); rpt. HPL’s Uncollected Letters(Necronomicon Press, 1986). Blish went on to become a distinguished science fiction writer, with such landmark novels as A Case of Conscience(1958), Black Easter(1968), and Doctor Mirabilis(1964; rev. 1971). See David Ketterer, Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish(1987). Bloch, Robert (1917–1994).
American novelist and short story writer. He first encountered HPL’s work in WTin 1927; he corresponded with HPL (1933–37); see Letters to Robert Bloch,ed. David E.Schultz and S.T.Joshi (Necronomicon Press, 1993; supplement, 1993). Bloch invented an analogue to HPL’s Necronomicon, Ludvig Prinn’s Mysteries of the Worm,in “The Secret in the Tomb” ( WT,May 1935); HPL coined the Latin title, De Vermis Mysteriis . Bloch also created Cultes des Goules(often misattributed to August Derleth because the fictionalauthor is the “Comte d’Erlette”), The Cabala of Saboth,and the Black Ritesof the mad priest Luveh-Keraph. He wrote a playful trilogy with HPL, comprising Bloch’s “The Shambler from the Stars” ( WT,September 1935), HPL’s “The Haunter of the Dark” (written November 1935; WT,December 1936), and Bloch’s “The Shadow from the Steeple” ( WT,September 1950). HPL lent advice on Bloch’s early tale “Satan’s Servants” (written in early 1935; first published in Cats), but does not appear to have written any prose in the story. Most of Bloch’s Lovecraftian tales are collected in Mysteries of the Worm,ed. Lin Carter (1981; rev. ed. [by Robert M.Price] Chaosium, 1993). Bloch later turned to the genres of mystery and suspense, writing such notable novels as The Scarf(1947), Psycho(1959), The Dead Beat(1960), and many others. Strange Eons (1978) is a Lovecraftian pastiche. See his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch(1993). See Randall Larson, Robert Bloch(Starmont House, 1986); Randall Larson, The Complete Robert Bloch: An Illustrated International Bibliography(Fandom Unlimited, 1986); S.T.Joshi, “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft,” Studies in Weird FictionNo. 16 (Winter 1995): 13–25. “Bolshevism.”
Essay (500 words); probably written in the summer of 1919. First published in the Conservative(July 1919); rpt. MW. A warning not to listen to “long-haired anarchists” who preach social upheaval and a condemnation of the “almost sub-human Russian rabble” who caused the Russian revolution in 1917. Bolton.
Actual town in east-central Massachusetts, cited by HPL in “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1921–22), “The Rats in the Walls” (1923), and “The Colour out of Space” (1927). The earlier story cites a Bolton Worsted Mills, but that mention is puzzling because in HPL’s day Bolton was a tiny agricultural hamlet with no industries of significance. This led Robert D.Marten (see entry on “Arkham”) to conjecture that HPL coined the name Bolton, unaware of the real town of that name. Its location appears to be near Arkham (Salem), as the real
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Bolton is not. HPL mentioned passing through Bolton in October 1934, so he may have known of it earlier.
Bonner, Marion F. (1883–1952).
Neighbor and correspondent of HPL (1936–37). Several of HPL’s letters to her (the originals of which at JHL contain hand-colored illustrations of letterhead for HPL’s imaginary feline fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Tau) are included in SL5. See her article, “Miscellaneous Impressions of H.P.L.” (1945; in LR). “Book, The”
(title supplied by R.H.Barlow). Story fragment (1,200 words); probably written c. October 1933. First published in Leaves(1938); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in D. The unnamed firstperson narrator, whose “memories are very confused,” tells of coming upon a “worm-riddled book” in an obscure bookstall near the river. Recognizing it, in spite of the absence of its opening pages, as a rare and forbidden work, he wishes to purchase it; but the old man tending the bookstall merely “leered and tittered,” refusing payment for it. The narrator hurries through the narrow streets to his home, sensing vague and disturbing presences around him. As he reaches home and begins examining the book in his attic study, he hears a faint scratching at the window—evidently a creature he had summoned by uttering an incantation in the book. After that time his perceptions are seriously affected: “Mixed with the present scene was always a little of the past and a little of the future….” Further bizarre events occur as the narrator continues to chant the formulae in the book. At this point the fragment ends.
R.H.Barlow dated the fragment to 1934, but in a letter of October 1933 HPL writes: “I am at a sort of standstill in writing—disgusted at much of my older work, & uncertain as to avenues of improvement. In recent weeks I have done a tremendous amount of experimenting in different styles & perspectives, but have destroyed most[emphasis added] of the results” ( SL4.289). The fragment appears to be an attempt to recast Fungi from Yuggothin prose. The existing text narrates the events outlined in the first three poems of the sonnet-cycle (which indeed present a connected narrative); the fact that the text terminates at this point may suggest that HPL had no idea how to write the rest of the cycle as a coherent story.
See S.T.Joshi, “On The Book,’” Nyctalops3, No. 4 (April 1983): 9–13; rpt. CryptNo. 53 (Candlemas 1988): 3–7; Michael Cisco, “The Book of ‘The Book,’” LS No. 42 (Summer 2001): 5–21. Bor, Dam.
In “Collapsing Cosmoses,” an operator of a “cosmoscope” who sees a dangerous enemy approaching the planet from outer space.
Borellus.
Author of an unnamed work cited as an epigraph to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward(1927). HPL found the name and the passage in his copy of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana(1702). Borellus is the seventeenth-century alchemist Pierre Borel (c. 1620–1689), not (as Roger Bryant conjectured) the Italian scientist Giovanni Borelli (1608–1679).
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See Roger Bryant, “The Alchemist and the Scientist: Borellus and the Lovecraftian Imagination,” Nyctalops2, No. 3 (January–February 1975): 26–29, 43; Barton L. St. Armand, “The Source for Lovecraft’s Knowledge of Borellus in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Nyctalops2, No. 6 (May 1977): 16–17.
“Bouts Rimés.”
Two poems: “Beyond Zimbabwe” (8 lines) and “The White Elephant” (8 lines); cowritten with R.H.Barlow on May 23, 1934. First published in Saturnalia and Other Poems(1984). Barlow selected the end rhymes, then HPL composed the text.
Bowen, Hannah.
In “The Shunned House,” a woman who is hired by William Harris to be a servant at the house but who dies a few months later.
Boyle, Dr. E.M.
In “The Shadow out of Time,” an Australian (possibly a psychologist) who brings Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee’s papers relating to his bizarre “dreams” to the attention of Robert B.F.Mackenzie, and who then accompanies Peaslee and Mackenzie on an expedition to the Great Sandy Desert. Bradofsky, Hyman (b. 1906).
Correspondent of HPL (1934–37). He was president of the NAPA in 1935–36 and came under vicious attack by other members (in part, perhaps, because he was Jewish); HPL defended him in the essay “Some Current Motives and Practices” (1936), which R.H.Barlow mimeographed and distributed. As editor of the amateur journal The Californian(1933f.), he offered unprecedented space for lengthy contributions of fiction, essays, and poetry. The Summer 1937 memorial issue is devoted to HPL, containing fine memoirs (including Bradofsky’s own poignant brief recollection in the column, “Amateur Affairs”) and hitherto unpublished writings by HPL.
Briden, William.
In “The Call of Cthulhu,” a sailor on the crew of the Emmawho, seeing Cthulhu, goes mad and later dies.
Brinton, William.
In “The Rats in the Walls,” the archaeologist who leads the exploration party into the crypt discovered beneath Exham Priory.
Brobst, Harry K[ern] (b. 1909).
Friend of HPL (1932–37). Born in Wilming-ton, Del, Brobst came with his family to Allentown, Pa., around 1921, be-friending the young Carl F.Strauch, with whom he shared an interest in weird fiction and WT. Brobst particularly liked the work of HPL, Clark Ashton Smith, and other WTwriters. Securing HPL’s address from Farnsworth Wright, Brobst wrote to HPL, probably in the autumn of 1931, receiving a cordial reply. In early 1932, Brobst entered a program in psychiatric nursing at Butler Hospital in Providence, and from that time till HPL’s death he was a frequent visitor at HPL’s home and companion on his local travels, including Bristol and Warren, R.I., in March 1932 ( SL4.29) and a tour of Butler Hospital sometime in 1932 ( SL4.191). In July 1933 Brobst joined HPL in welcoming E.Hoffmann Price; it was on this occasion that the three of them spent an entire night dissecting a story by Strauch. Brobst has confirmed that HPL worked briefly as a ticket agent
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in a movie theater in downtown Providence and has also noted that in 1936 HPL was horrified at the stories of Nazi atrocities as related to him by an acquaintance (a Mrs. Shepherd) who had visited Germany. Brobst visited HPL frequently in Butler Hospital during the latter’s terminal illness. He wrote letters to R.H.Barlow on March 2 and March 13, 1937, describing HPL’s condition, and saw HPL two days before his death, asking him how he felt; HPL replied, “Sometimes the pain is unbearable.” Brobst and his wife attended HPL’s funeral service and burial on March 18, 1937. Subsequently Brobst gained a B.A. in psychology from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He spent many years teaching at Oklahoma State University. His extensive recollections of HPL are recorded in “An Interview with Harry K. Brobst” ( LSNos. 22/23 [Fall 1990]: 24–42; abridged version in LRas “Autumn in Providence: Harry K.Brobst on Lovecraft”). Brown, Luther.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” a hired boy at George Corey’s farm who sees the huge footprints of Wilbur Whateley’s monstrous twin brother in the vicinity of Cold Spring Glen.
Brown, Walter.
In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the “surly farmer” whose dealings with the aliens from Yuggoth result in his mysterious disappearance.
Bruce, Malcolm.
In “Ashes,” the assistant of the scientist Arthur Van Allister. Bruce mistakenly thinks Van Allister has used his secretary in an experiment to test his newly discovered chemical compound, and after a struggle he subjects the scientist to the same formula.
Bullen, John Ravenor (1886–1927).
Canadian poet and amateur journalist. He possibly introduced HPL to the Transatlantic Circulator (an Anglo-American correspondence group) in 1921. Some of his poetry later appeared in HPL’s Conservative . When Bullen died, his mother asked HPL to prepare an edition of Bullen’s poetry, and HPL did so. The Recluse Press (W.Paul Cook) published White Firein 1927 (a second edition was printed in 1929 but never bound). HPL’s preface is a revised version of his essay “The Poetry of John Ravenor Bullen” ( United Amateur,September 1925).
“Bureau of Critics.”
Series of articles in the National Amateur(1923–36), reviewing contributions by amateur journalists of the NAPA. The articles appeared as follows: “Bureau of Critics” (March 1923); “Bureau of Critics” (December 1931); “Critics Submit First Report” (December 1932); “Report of Bureau of Critics” (March 1933); “Report of Bureau of Critics” (June 1933); “Bureau of Critics Comment on Verse, Typography, Prose” (December 1933); “Chairman of the Bureau of Critics Reports on Poetry” (September 5, 1934); “Report of the Bureau of Critics” (December 1934); “Report of the Bureau of Critics” (March 1935); “Lovecraft Offers Verse Criticism” (June 1935); “Some Current Amateur Verse” (December 1935).
The articles are similar to the “Department of Public Criticism” pieces HPL wrote for the UAPA. Here, however, he generally focused on amateur verse; he
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usually managed to persuade other critics (e.g., Helm C.Spink, Edward H.Cole, Rheinhart Kleiner) to write sections on prose, typography, and other subjects.
Bush, David Van (1882–1959).
Itinerant lecturer, would-be poet, and popular psychologist; revision client of HPL. He joined the UAPA in 1916; he first came in touch with HPL through the Symphony Literary Service (a revision service operated by HPL, Anne Tillery Renshaw, and others) in early 1917. Bush was at the time the author of several poetry volumes (not revised by HPL), including Peace Poems and Sausages(1915) and Soul Poems and Love Lyrics(1916). HPL revised many poetry volumes and psychology manuals during the period 1920–25, including Grit and Gumption(1921), Inspirational Poems(1921), Applied Psychology and Scientific Living(1922; HPL admits to writing two or three chapters; other chapters were written by Bush’s staff), Poems of Mastery and Love Verse(1922), Practical Psychology and Sex Life(1922), etc. HPL met Bush in Boston in the summer of 1922 (see SL1.185–88); he wrote the essay “East and West Harvard Conservatism” (an account of Bush’s lecture in Cambridge) for Bush’s magazine Mind Power Plus(c. 1922). (No issues are known to exist; only a clipping of HPL’s essay survives in JHL.) Bush provided HPL with a steady income through the mid-1920s, as HPL charged $1 for 8 lines of poetry revised.
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C
C———, Antoine, Comte de.
In “The Alchemist,” the last of a long line of comtes, each of whom suffers a mysterious death prior to the age of thirty-two—the age of Henri, Comte de C———, when, in the thirteenth century, he blamed Michel Mauvais, a wizard residing on his estates, for the disappearance of his son Godfrey. Later Godfrey is found alive, but in the meantime Henri has killed Michel. Michel’s son, Charles Le Sorcier, pronounces a curse that appears to affect all the Comtes de C———, including Godfrey’s son Robert and Robert’s son Louis.
“Call of Cthulhu, The.”
Short story (12,000 words); written probably in August or September 1926. First published in WT (February 1928); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in An2and CC. The narrator (identified, only in the subtitle [omitted in many editions], as “the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston”) gives an account of the strange facts he has assembled, both from the papers of his recently deceased granduncle, George Gammell Angell, and from personal investigation. Angell, a professor of Semitic languages at Brown University, had collected several peculiar pieces of data. First, he had taken extensive notes of the dreams and artwork of a young sculptor, Henry Anthony Wilcox, who had come to him with a bas-relief he had fashioned in his sleep on the night of March 1, 1925. The sculpture is of a hideous-looking alien entity, and Wilcox had reported that, in the dream that had inspired it, he had repeatedly heard the words “Cthulhu fhtagn.”It was this that had piqued Angell’s interest, for he had encountered these words or sounds years before, at a meeting of the American Archaeological Society, in which a police inspector from New Orleans named John Raymond Legrasse had brought in a sculpture very much like Wilcox’s and claimed that it had been worshipped in the Louisiana bayou by a degraded cult that had chanted the phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”One cult member translated this
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outlandish utterance thus: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” A mestizo named Castro told Legrasse that Cthulhu was a vast being that had come from the stars when the earth was young, along with another set of entities named the Great Old Ones. He was entombed in the sunken city of R’lyeh and would emerge when the “stars were ready” to reclaim control of the earth. The cult “would always be waiting to liberate him.” Castro points out that these matters are spoken of in the Necronomiconof the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.
Scarcely knowing what to make of this bizarre material, Thurston stumbles on a newspaper clipping telling of strange events aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean; accompanying the article is a picture of a bas-relief very similar to those of Wilcox and Legrasse. Thurston goes to Oslo to talk with the Norwegian sailor, Gustaf Johansen, who had been on board the ship, but finds that he is dead. Johansen had, however, left an account of his experience showing that he had encountered Cthulhu when the city of R’lyeh rose from the sea-bottom as the result of an earthquake; but, presumably because the stars were not “ready,” the city sinks again, returning Cthulhu to the bottom of the ocean. But the mere existence of this titanic entity is an unending source of profound unease to Thurston because it shows how tenuous is mankind’s vaunted supremacy upon this planet. The story had been plotted a full year earlier, as recorded in HPL’s diary entry for August 12–13, 1925: “Write out story plot—‘The Call of Cthulhu.’” But the origin of the tale goes back even further, to an entry in his commonplace book (#25) that must date to late 1919 or January 1920: Man visits museum of antiquities—asks that it accept a bas-relief he hasjust made— old& learned curator laughs & says he cannot accept anything so modern. Man says that
“dreams are older than brooding Egypt or the contemplative Sphinx or garden-girdled Babylonia” & that he had fashioned the sculpture in his dreams. Curator bids him shew his product, & when he does so curator shews horror, asks who the man may be. He tells modern name. “No— before that” says curator. Man does not remember except in dreams. Then curator offers high price, but man fears he means to destroy sculpture. Asks fabulous price—curator will consult directors. ¶ Add good development & describe nature of bas-relief.
This is the fairly literal encapsulation of a dream HPL had, which he describes at length in two letters of the period ( Dreams and Fancies[Arkham House, 1962], pp. 49–50; SL1.114–15). There are two dominant literary influences on the tale. One is Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla,” which HPL probably read subsequent to the dream of 1920; it was contained in Julian Hawthorne’s The Lock and Key Library(1909), which HPL purchased in 1922. In “Supernatural Horror in Literature” HPL writes of it: “Relating the advent to France of an invisible being who lives on water and milk, sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extra-terrestrial organisms arrived on earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind, this tense narrative is perhaps without a peer in its particular department….” The other influence is Arthur Machen’s “Novel of the Black Seal” (an episode of The Three Impostors[1895]), which features just the kind of “piecing together of dissociated knowledge” contained in HPL’s story; there is even a newspaper clipping that plays a role in the coincidental assembling of
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information leading Machen’s protagonist, Professor Gregg, to confirm his suspicions of the existence of the “Little People” in Wales; the difficult-to-pronounce name Ixaxarsuggests HPL’s Cthulhu;and the Sixty stone itself suggests the bas-relief of Cthulhu.
Another influence on the tale is theosophy. HPL cites a theosophical work, W.Scott-Elliot’s The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria(1925), in the story; the theosophists are themselves mentioned in the second paragraph. Castro’s wild tale of the Great Old Ones makes allusions to cryptic secrets that “deathless Chinamen” told him—a nod to the theosophists’ accounts of Shamballah, the Tibetan holy city (the prototype of Shangri-La) whence the doctrines of theosophy are supposed to have originated. Still another influence is A.Merritt’s “The Moon Pool” (1918), which takes place on or near the island of Ponape in the Carolines. Merritt’s mention of a “moon-door” that, when tilted, leads the characters into a lower region of wonder and horror, seems similar to the huge door whose inadvertent opening by the sailors causes Cthulhu to emerge from R’lyeh.
The story contains are several autobiographical elements. The name of the narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, is clearly derived from Francis Wayland (1796–1865), president of Brown University from 1827 to 1855. Gammell is a legitimate variant of Gamwell (a reference to HPL’s aunt Annie E.P.Gamwell), while Angell is both the name of one of the principal thoroughfares in Providence (HPL had resided in two different houses on Angell Street) and one of the most distinguished families in the city. Wilcox is a name from HPL’s ancestry. Mention of “a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note” is a clear allusion to James F.Morton. (The name Castro is, however, not derived from HPL’s colleague Adolphe Danziger de Castro, as HPL did not become acquainted with him until late 1927.) The earthquake cited in the story actually occurred. The Fleur-de-Lys building at 7 Thomas Street, residence of Wilcox, is a real structure, still standing. Bertrand K.Hart, literary editor of the Providence Journaland author of a regular column, “The Sideshow,” read the story in an anthology (see below) and was astounded to find that Wilcox’s residence and his were one and the same. Feigning offense, he vowed in his column of November 30, 1929, to send a ghost to HPL’s home at 3 A.M. to scare him; HPL promptly wrote the poem “The Messenger” at 3:07 A.M. that night. Hart published the poem in his column of December 3. “The Call of Cthulhu” is manifestly an exhaustive reworking of “Dagon” (1917). In that tale we have many nuclei of the later work—an earthquake that causes an undersea land mass to emerge to the surface; the notion of a titanic monster dwelling under the sea; and—although this is barely hinted in “Dagon”—the fact that an entire civilization, hostile or at best indifferent to mankind, is lurking on the underside of our world.
On the pronunciation of CthulhuHPL gives somewhat different accounts in various letters; his most exhaustive discussion occurs in 1934: “…the word is supposed to represent a fumbling human attempt to catch the phonetics of an absolutely non-humanword. The name of the hellish entity was invented by beings whose vocal organs were not like man’s, hence it has no relation to the human speech equipment. The syllables were determined by a physiological
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equipment wholly unlike ours, hence could never be uttered perfectly by human throats…. The actual sound—as nearly as human organs could imitate it or human letters record it—may be taken as something like Khlûl′-hloo,with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The uis about like that in full;and the first syllable is not unlike klulin sound, hence the hrepresents the guttural thickness” (HPL to Duane W.Rimel, July 23, 1934; SL5.10–11). Various colleagues give very different, and clearly inaccurate, reports of HPL’s pronunciation of the word in their presence. In any case, it is not pronounced “Ka-thoo-loo,” as commonly assumed.
Farnsworth Wright of WTrejected “The Call of Cthulhu” in October 1926. In May 1927 it was rejected by the obscure pulp magazine Mystery Stories,edited by Robert Sampson. The next month Donald Wandrei, who was visiting Wright in Chicago while hitchhiking from St. Paul to Providence, urged Wright to reconsider the story (just as HPL had asked Wright to reconsider Wandrei’s “The Red Brain”), slyly suggesting that HPL was planning to submit it to other magazines and thereby begin developing other markets for his work In early July Wright asked to see the tale again and accepted it. It appeared in T.Everett Harré’s Beware After Dark!(1929), thereby constituting one of the earliest appearances of HPL’s stories in hardcover.
See Robert M.Price, “HPL and HPB: Lovecraft’s Use of Theosophy,” Crypt No. 5 (Roodmas 1982): 3– 9; Steven J.Mariconda, “On the Emergence of ‘Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 15 (Fall 1987): 54–58 (rpt. in Mariconda’s On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations[Necronomicon Press, 1995]); Peter Cannon, “The Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston: Lovecraft’s Last Dilettante,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 32, 39; Robert M.Price, “Correlated Contents,” CryptNo. 82 (Hallowmas 1992): 11–16; Stefan Dziemianowicz, “On ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 33 (Fall 1995): 30–35; Michael Garrett, “Death Takes a Dive: ‘The City in the Sea’ and Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’” LSNo. 35 (Fall 1996): 22–24.
Campbell, George.
In “The Challenge from Beyond,” a geologist who encounters a curious crystalline cube while on vacation in the Canadian woods and becomes mentally drawn into it. He eventually realizes that the cube is a mind-exchange device launched by an interstellar civilization—“a mighty race of worm-like beings.”
Campbell, Paul J[onas] (1884–1945),
amateur journalist and editor of Invictusand The Liberal,for which HPL wrote “A Confession of Unfaith” (published in February 1922). He corresponded sporadically with HPL (c. 1915–37). HPL discusses him in the section “Campbell’s Plan” in the essay “Finale” ( Badger,June 1915). Canevin, Gerald.
In “The Trap,” a teacher at an academy in Connecticut whose pupil, Robert Grandison, becomes trapped in a magic mirror that Canevin had brought back with him from the Virgin Islands. Canevin is a frequently recurring character in Henry S.Whitehead’s tales, especially those set in the Virgin Islands. In his introduction to Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales(1944), R.H.
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Barlow notes: “The character ‘Gerald Canevin’ is Whitehead himself, a harking back to Caer n’-Avon. ‘I use the form “Canevin” because it is easily pronounced and is made up of “cane” and “vin,” that is, cane-wine—RUM, the typical product of the West Indies….’”
Carroll,———.
In At the Mountains of Madness,a graduate student and a member of the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31. He accompanies Lake on his subexpedition and is killed by the Old Ones. Carter, Christopher.
In “The Silver Key,” Randolph Carter’s great-uncle, who raised Randolph on a farm near Arkham and Kingsport. He lives there with his wife Martha. Randolph returns to the farm when he finds the silver key and becomes a boy again. Christopher is mentioned in passing in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.”
Carter, Randolph W. (b. 1873).
HPL introduced the recurring character Randolph Carter in “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” in which Carter is modeled after HPL from an actual dream. In “The Unnamable,” Carter, who narrates the story, is briefly identified (by last name only) as a writer of weird fiction, like HPL. The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadathis a picaresque narrative of Carter’s adventures in his search for the sunset city of his dreams. In “The Silver Key” (written before Dream-Quest), Carter, a disillusioned man past middle age, is not so much a character as a fictional exponent of HPL’s philosophical outlook. As an elderly man, Carter finds he has “lost the key to the gate of dreams.” In a dream, his deceased grandfather (unnamed) tells him of an ancestral “silver key,” which Carter finds in the attic upon waking. Having found the key, Carter then disappears. In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” Carter is presumed dead, and others step in to settle his estate. The Swami Chandraputra tells of what happened to Carter following his disappearance. The Swami is revealed to be Carter himself, but residing in the body of Zkauba the Wizard from the planet Yaddith.
The W. in Carter’s name appears only in the “stationery” that HPL and R.H. Barlow designed for HPL in June 1935. Although HPL clearly identified with Carter on many different levels, Carter is not as autobiographical a character as many others in HPL’s fiction; he is, instead, a construct representing various of HPL’s philosophical and aesthetic views.
Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The.
Short novel (51,500 words); written late January–March 1, 1927. First published (abridged) in WT (May and July 1941); first collected in BWS;corrected text in MM;annotated version in TD. Joseph Curwen, a learned scholar and man of affairs, leaves Salem for Providence in 1692, eventually building a succession of elegant homes in the oldest residential section of the city. Curwen attracts attention because he does not seem to age much, even after the passing of fifty or more years. He also acquires very peculiar substances from all around the world for apparent chemical—that is, alchemical—experiments; his haunting of graveyards does not help his reputation. When Dr. John Merritt visits Curwen, he is both impressed and disturbed by the
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number of alchemical and cabbalistic books on his shelves; in particular, he sees a copy of Borellus with one key passage—concerning the use of the “essential Saltes” of humans or animals for purposes of resurrection—heavily underscored.
In an effort to restore his reputation, Curwen arranges a marriage for himself with the well-born Eliza Tillinghast, the daughter of a ship-captain under Curwen’s control. This so enrages Ezra Weeden, who had hoped to marry Eliza himself, that he begins an exhaustive investigation of Curwen’s affairs. After several more anomalous incidents, the elders of the city—among them the four Brown brothers; Rev. James Manning, president of the recently established college (later to be known as Brown University); Stephen Hopkins, former governor of the colony; and others—decide that something must be done. A raid on Curwen’s property in 1771, however, produces death, destruction, and psychological trauma among the participants well beyond what might have been expected of a venture of this sort. Curwen is evidently killed, and his body is returned to his wife for burial. He is never spoken of again, and as many records concerning him as can be found are destroyed.
A century and a half pass, and in 1918 Charles Dexter Ward—Curwen’s direct descendant by way of his daughter Ann—accidentally discovers his relation to the old wizard and seeks to learn all he can about him. Although always fascinated by the past, Ward had previously exhibited no especial interest in the outré;but as he unearths more and more information about Curwen—whose exact physical double he proves to be—he strives more and more to duplicate his ancestor’s cabbalistic and alchemical feats. He undertakes a long voyage overseas to visit the presumable descendants of individuals with whom Curwen had been in touch in the eighteenth century. He finds Curwen’s remains and, by the proper manipulation of his “essential Saltes,” resurrects him. But something begins to go astray. He writes a harried letter to Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett, the family doctor, with the following disturbing message: “Instead of triumph I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast of victory but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from a horror beyond all human conception or calculation…. Upon us depends more than can be put into words—all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.”
But, perversely, Ward does not stay for the appointed meeting with Willett. Willett tracks him down, but something astounding has occurred: although still of youthful appearance, his talk is eccentric and old-fashioned, and his stock of memories of his own life seems to have been bizarrely depleted. Willett undertakes a harrowing exploration of Curwen’s old Pawtuxet bungalow, which Ward had restored for conducting experiments; he finds, among other anomalies, all manner of half-formed creatures at the bottom of deep pits. He confronts Ward—who he now realizes is no other than Curwen—in the madhouse where he has been committed; Curwen attempts an incantation against him, but Willett counters with one of his own, reducing Curwen to a “thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust.”
While living in Brooklyn, HPL was contemplating a “novelette of Salem horrors which I may be able to cast in a sufficiently ‘detectivish’ mould to sell to
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Edwin Baird for Detective Tales—which rejected ‘The Shunned House’” (HPL to L.D.Clark, July 27, 1925; ms., JHL); but then, in September, he read Gertrude Selwyn Kimball’s Providence in Colonial Times(1912) at the New York Public Library, and this rather dry historical work fired his imagination. He was, however, still talking of the Salem idea in late January 1927 (see SL2.99). Perhaps the Kimball book—as well as his return to Providence—led to a uniting of the Salem idea with a work about his hometown. It was from this book that the anecdotes about John Merritt, Dr. Checkley, and other points mentioned early in the novel derive.
The genesis of the work goes back beyond August 1925. The quotation from Borellus—Pierre Borel (c. 1620–1689), the French physician and chemist—is a translation or paraphrase by Cotton Mather in Magnolia Christi Americana(1702), which HPL owned. Since the epigraph from Lactantius that heads “The Festival” (1923) also comes from the Magnolia,HPL may have found the Borellus passage at that time also. It is entry #87 in his commonplace book, which dates roughly to April 1923.
In late August 1925 HPL’s aunt Lillian related to him an anecdote about his hometown. HPL replied: “So the Halsey house is haunted! Ugh! That’s where Wild Tom Halsey kept live terrapins in the cellar —maybe it’s their ghosts. Anyway, it’s a magnificent old mansion, & a credit to a magnificent old town!” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, August 24, 1925; ms., JHL). The Thomas Lloyd Halsey house at 140 Prospect Street is the model for Charles Dexter Ward’s residence, which HPL deliberately renumbers 100 Prospect Street. Now broken into apartments, it is still a superb late Georgian structure (c. 1800) fully deserving the encomium HPL gives it in his novel.
One significant literary influence may be Walter de la Mare’s novel The Return(1910). HPL had first read de la Mare in the summer of 1926; of The Returnhe remarks in “Supernatural Horror in Literature”: “we see the soul of a dead man reach out of its grave of two centuries and fasten itself upon the flesh of the living, so that even the face of the victim becomes that which had long ago returned to dust.” In de la Mare’s novel, actual psychic possession is involved, as there is not in Charles Dexter Ward,and, although the focus in The Returnis on the afflicted man’s personal trauma rather than the unnaturalness of his condition, HPL has manifestly adapted the general scenario in his own work.
Although there are many autobiographical touches in the portraiture of Ward, many surface details appear to be taken from a person actually living in the Halsey mansion at this time, William Lippitt Mauran (b. 1910). HPL was probably not acquainted with Mauran, but it is highly likely that he observed Mauran on the street and knew of him. Mauran was a sickly child who spent much of his youth as an invalid, being wheeled through the streets in a carriage by a nurse. Indeed, a mention early in the novel that Ward as a young boy was “wheeled… in a carriage” in front of the “lovely classic porch of the double-bayed brick building” that was his home may reflect an actual glimpse HPL had of Mauran in the early 1920s, before he went to New York. Moreover, the Mauran family owned a farmhouse in Pawtuxet, exactly as Curwen is said to have done. Other details of Ward’s character fit Mauran more closely than HPL. One other amusing in-joke is a mention of Manuel Arruda, captain of a Spanish vessel, the
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Fortaleza,which delivers a nameless cargo to Curwen in 1770. Manuel Arruda was actually a Portuguese door-to-door fruit merchant operating on College Hill in the later 1920s. The novel does not appear to involve psychic possession in the obvious sense: in the latter stages of the novel the resurrected Curwen actually kills Ward and pretends to be him. But psychic possession of a subtler sort may nevertheless come into play. Curwen marries not only because he wishes to repair his reputation, but because he needs a descendant. He seems to know that he will one day die and require resurrection by the recovery of his “essential Saltes,” so he makes careful arrangements to this effect: he prepares a notebook for “One Who Shal Come After” and leaves sufficient clues toward the location of his remains. It appears, then, that Curwen exercises psychic possession on Ward so that the latter finds first his effects, then his body, and brings him back to life.
In many ways the novel is a refinement of “The Horror at Red Hook”: Curwen’s alchemy parallels Suydam’s cabbalistic activities; Curwen’s attempt to repair his standing in the community with an advantageous marriage echoes Suydam’s marriage with Cornelia Gerritsen; Willett as the valiant counterweight to Curwen matches Malone as the adversary of Suydam. HPL again dipped into his relatively small store of basic plot elements and again retold a mediocre tale in masterful fashion. HPL, however, felt that the novel was an inferior piece of work, a “cumbrous, creaking bit of selfconscious antiquarianism” (HPL to R.H.Barlow, [March 19, 1934]; ms., JHL). He therefore made no effort to prepare it for publication, even though publishers throughout the 1930s professed greater interest in a weird novel than a collection of stories. R.H.Barlow began preparing a typescript in late 1934, and in 1936 was still typing it, but he typed only twenty-three pages. Barlow did not deposit the manuscript at JHL until around 1940, by which time a full transcript (full of errors, however) had been made by Derleth and Wandrei for its abridged appearance in WTand its complete appearance in BWS. It was published separately by Victor Gollancz (London, 1951) and subsequently reprinted in this form by Panther, Belmont, and Ballantine.
See Barton L. St. Armand, “Facts in the Case of H.P.Lovecraft,” Rhode Island History31, No. 1 (February 1972): 3–10 (rpt. FDOC); April Selley, “Terror and Horror in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Nyctalops3, No. 1 (January 1980): 8, 10–14; M.Eileen McNamara and S.T.Joshi, “Who Was the Real Charles Dexter Ward?” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 40–41, 48; David Vilaseca, “Nostalgia for the Origin: Notes on Reading and Melodrama in H.P.Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Neophilologus75, No. 4 (October 1991): 481–95; Richard Ward, “In Search of the Dread Ancestor: M.R.James’ ‘Count Magnus’ and Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” LSNo. 36 (Spring 1997): 14–17.
Casey.
In “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” a factory inspector who overheard strange sounds in the Gilman House, the Innsmouth hotel where he was staying. When inspecting the Marsh Refinery, he found the books in total disorder and with no indication of where it obtained the gold it refined.
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HPL discovered in 1928 that he had Caseys in his Rhode Island ancestry (see SL2.236–37). Castro.
In “The Call of Cthulhu,” the aged mestizo who tells Inspector John R. Legrasse the story of the Great Old Ones following a raid of the Cthulhu cult in Louisiana. (He is not named for HPL’s colleague Adolphe de Castro, whom HPL encountered a year or so after writing the story.)
“Cats and Dogs.”
Essay (6,050 words); written on November 23, 1926. First published in Leaves(Summer 1937); rpt. Cats(as “Something about Cats”); rpt. MW
This delightful essay was written for a Blue Pencil Club meeting in New York—which HPL, having returned to Providence that spring, was unable to attend—at which the relative merits of cats and dogs would be debated. HPL, vastly preferring felines, sees in cats a symbol of aristocracy, unemotionalism, and pride (“The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman”). He maintains that cats are much superior in intellect than dogs, are not dependent upon human beings, and are far more aesthetically beautiful than dogs. In the first appearance of the essay, some of HPL’s more outrageously oligarchical statements (e.g., “whether the forces of disintegration are already too powerful for even the fascist sentiment to check, none may yet say”) were expunged by R.H.Barlow; his editing was copied by August Derleth (who also retitled the essay) in Cats . The unexpurgated text was first presented in MW
“Cats of Ulthar, The.”
Short story (1,350 words); written on June 15, 1920. First published in Tryout(November 1920); rpt. WT(February 1926) and WT(February 1933); published as separate booklet (Cassia, FL: Dragon-Fly Press, 1935); first collected in O;corrected text in D.
The narrator proposes to explain how the town of Ulthar passed its “remarkable law” that no man may kill a cat. There was once a very evil couple who hated cats and who brutally murdered any that strayed on their property. One day a caravan of “dark wanderers” comes to Ulthar, among which is the little boy Menes, owner of a tiny black kitten. When the kitten disappears, the heart-broken boy, learning of the propensities of the cat-hating couple, “prayed in a tongue no villager could understand.” That night all the cats in the town vanish, and when they return in the morning they refuse for two entire days to touch any food or drink. Later it is noticed that the couple has not been seen for days; when at last the villagers enter their house, they find two clean-picked skeletons. There are several superficial borrowings from Dunsany: the name of the boy Menes (possibly derived from King Argimenes of the play King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior,in Five Plays[1914]); the “dark wanderers” (perhaps an echo of the “Wanderers…a weird, dark tribe” mentioned toward the end of “Idle Days on the Yann,” in A Dreamer’s Tales[1910]). The entire scenario is probably inspired by the many similar tales of elementary revenge in The Book of Wonder(1912). See Jason C.Eckhardt, “Something about the Cats of Ulthar,” CryptNo. 15 (Lammas 1983): 28–29.
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Cave, Hugh B[arnett] (b. 1910).
American pulp writer and correspondent of HPL in the 1930s. Cave contributed voluminously to the weird and science fiction pulps from 1929 onward and became a prototypical “professional” writer. In the 1930s, Cave resided in Pawtuxet, R.I., but he and HPL never met. The two engaged in a heated exchange of correspondence (nonextant) regarding the ethics and aesthetics of writing for the pulps. Some of Cave’s pulp writing is collected in Murgunstrumm and Others(Carcosa House, 1977) and Death Stalks the Night(Fedogan & Bremer, 1995). He has recently written several horror novels for paperback publishers as well as a memoir, Magazines I Remember(Chicago: Tattered Pages Press, 1994).
See Audrey Parente, Pulp Man’s Odyssey: The Hugh B. Cave Story(1988).
“Celephaïs.”
Short story (2,550 words); written in early November 1920. First published in Sonia Greene’s amateur journal, the Rainbow(May 1922); rpt. Marvel Tales(May 1934) and WT(June–July 1939); first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC
Kuranes (who has a different name in waking life) escapes the prosy world of London by dream and drugs. In this state he comes upon the city of Celephaïs, in the Valley of Ooth-Nargai. It is a city of which he had dreamed as a child, and there “his spirit had dwelt all the eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very long ago, when he had slipt away from his nurse and let the warm seabreeze lull him to sleep as he watched the clouds from the cliff near the village.” But Kuranes awakes in his London garret and finds that he can return to Celephaïs no more. He dreams of other wondrous lands, but his sought-for city continues to elude him. He increases his use of drugs, runs out of money, and is turned out of his flat. Then, as he wanders aimlessly through the streets, he comes upon a cortege of knights who “rode majestically through the downs of Surrey,” seeming to gallop back in time as they do so. They leap off a precipice and drift softly down to Celephaïs, and Kuranes knows that he will be its king forever. Meanwhile, in the waking world, the tide at Innsmouth washes up the corpse of a tramp, while a “notably fat and offensive millionaire brewer” purchases Kuranes’s ancestral mansion and “enjoys the purchased atmosphere of extinct nobility.” HPL notes that the story was based upon an entry in his commonplace book (#10) reading simply: “Dream of flying over city.” Another entry (#20) was perhaps also an inspiration: “Man journeys into the past—or imaginative realm—leaving bodily shell behind.” The story is strikingly similar in conception to Dunsany’s “The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap” (in The Book of Wonder,1912). There a businessman imagines himself the King of Larkar, and as he continues to dwell obsessively on (and in) this imaginary realm his work in the real world suffers, until finally he is placed in a madhouse. The image of horses drifting dreamily over a cliff may echo the conclusion of Ambrose Bierce’s “A Horseman in the Sky” (in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians,1891), where a man seems to see a horse flying through the air after he has shot the rider—who proves to be his own father. Kuranes returns for a very different purpose in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath(1926–27). Likewise, the city of Innsmouth, here set in England, later becomes a decaying seaport in Massachusetts.
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“Challenge from Beyond, The.”
Round-robin short story (6,100 words; HPL’s part, 2,640 words); HPL’s part written in late August 1935. First published in Fantasy Magazine(September 1935); first collected in BWS;corrected text (HPL’s part only) in MW.
[C.L.Moore:] George Campbell, camping in the Canadian woods, hears a shrieking in the sky and finds that a strange missile, in the form of crystal cubes, has descended from space. Some shape seems embedded in the center of the cube—a disk with characters incised upon it. [A.Merritt:] Campbell ponders the cube, seeing its interior alternately glow and fade. He hears music, then feels himself being sucked into the cube. [HPL:] Campbell seems to be hurtling through space at an incredible speed. At length he feels himself lying upon a hard, flat surface. He remembers reading in the Eltdown Shards about a mighty race of wormlike creatures on a distant planet who sent out crystal cubes that would exercise fascination upon any intelligent entity who encountered them. The mind of that individual would be sucked into the cube and made to inhabit the wormlike body of the alien race, while the mind of the alien race inhabited the other’s body and learned all it could about the civilization in question. After a time a reversal would be effected. The cone-shaped beings who had inhabited Australia millions of years ago had learned of the nature of these cubes and sought to destroy them, thereby earning the wrath of the wormlike creatures. As Campbell ponders this bizarre tale, he realizes that he is now in the body of the wormlike creature. [Robert E.Howard:] Awaking from his faint, Campbell snatches a sharp-pointed metal shard and approaches the god of the creatures, intent on killing it. [Frank Belknap Long:] On the alien planet, George Campbell, in the body of a wormlike creature, kills the god and becomes a god of the worm people himself, while on earth the creature occupying the body of Campbell dies a raving madman.
The story was the brainchild of Julius Schwartz, who wanted two round-robin stories of the same title, one weird and one science fiction, for the third anniversary issue of Fantasy Magazine. He signed Moore, Long, Merritt, HPL, and a fifth undecided writer for the weird version, and Stanley G.Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Harl Vincent, and Murray Leinster for the science fiction version. It was something of a feat to have harnessed all these writers—especially the resolutely professional A.Merritt—for such a venture, in which each author would write a section building upon what his or her predecessor had done; but the weird tale did not go quite according to plan.
Moore initiated the story with a rather lackluster account of George Campbell. Long then wrote what HPL calls “a rather clever development” ( SL5.500); but this left Merritt in the position of actually developing the story. Merritt balked, saying that Long had somehow deviated from the subject matter suggested by the title, and refused to participate unless Long’s section was dropped and Merritt allowed to write one of his own. Schwartz, not wanting to lose such a big name, weakly went along with the plan. Merritt’s own version fails to move the story along in any meaningful way. HPL realized that he would have to take the story in hand and actually make it go somewhere. Notes to HPL’s segment survive (published in LSNo. 9 [Fall 1984]: 72–73) and contain drawings of the alien entities he introduces into the tale (giant
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worm- or centipede-like creatures). His segment is clearly an adaptation of the central conception of “The Shadow out of Time”—mind-exchange. Accordingly, the idea got into print months before its much better utilization in the latter story. HPL’s segment is three to four times as long as that of any other writer’s, or nearly half the story.
Robert E.Howard was persuaded to take the fourth installment, while Long—whom HPL talked into returning to the project after he had abandoned it when Schwartz dropped his initial installment— concludes the story.
The complete weird and science fiction versions appear in The Challenge from Beyond (Necronomicon Press, 1990).
Chambers, Robert W[illiam] (1865–1933).
American author. HPL discovered his early fantastic writing— The King in Yellow(1895), The Maker of Moons(1896), In Search of the Unknown(1904); also the later novel The Slayer of Souls(1920)—in early 1927, and he hastily updated “Supernatural Horror in Literature” just prior to publication to include a discussion of this work. Other weird works (not, apparently, read by HPL) include The Mystery of Choice(1897), The Tracer of Lost Persons(1906), The Tree of Heaven(1907), and The Talkers(1923). Chambers borrowed mythical names—Hastur, Carcosa, etc.—from Bierce; some of these (along with such of Chambers’ s own inventions as Yian) were in turn borrowed by HPL. “The Harbor-Master” (a separate short story later incorporated as the opening chapters of the episodic novel In Search of the Unknown) may have influenced “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Chambers later became a best-selling writer of sentimental romances.
See Lee Weinstein, “Chambers and The King in Yellow,” RomantistNo. 3 (1979): 51–57; S.T.Joshi, “Robert W.Chambers,” CryptNo. 22 (Roodmas 1984): 26–33, 17.
Chandraputra, Swami.
In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” he attends the meeting to divide Randolph Carter’s estate, purportedly with information about what happened to Carter following Carter’s disappearance. The Swami is actually a disguise for Zkauba the Wizard from the planet Yaddith, whom Carter became after he passed through the Gate of Dreams. The Swami is also mentioned briefly in “Out of the Charging Buffalo.
In “The Mound,” a young buck who in 1541 guides Panfilo de Zamacona to the entrance of a mound in what is now Oklahoma, but refuses to accompany Zamacona within. Some time earlier he had tentatively explored the mound, and he tells Zamacona tales of the Old Ones living within. Choynski, Paul.
In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” an occupant of the Witch House in Arkham during the period of Walter Gilman’s bizarre dreams and sleepwalking.
“City, The.”
Poem (45 lines in 9 stanzas); probably written in the fall of 1919. First published in Vagrant(October 1919); rpt. WT(July 1950).
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The narrator finds himself in a strange but splendid city and strives to remember when and how he had known it before; finally a revelation comes to him and he “flew from the knowledge of terrors forgotten and dead.”
See Dirk W.Mosig, “Poet of the Unconscious,” Platte Valley Review6, No. 1 (April 1978): 60–66. Clapham-Lee, Major Sir Eric Moreland, D.S.O.
In “Herbert West—Reanimator,” a surgeon who dies when his plane is shot down as it is approaching a base in Flanders where Herbert West is stationed with a Canadian regiment. As Clapham-Lee is nearly decapitated in the plane crash, West perversely reanimates the head and the body separately. Later Clapham-Lee exacts his vengeance on West.
Clarendon, Dr. Alfred Schuyler.
In “The Last Test,” a physician who is appointed medical director of the San Quentin Penitentiary by the governor but is later removed because of his handling of the case of a prisoner stricken with black fever, whose death prompts fear of an epidemic in San Francisco. Clarendon is in fact not trying to find a cure for black fever at all, but—under the evil influence of the mysterious Surama, who acts as his assistant—is attempting to produce a serum that will induce a disease that will kill all humankind. He tries to inject his sister, Georgina, with the serum; prevented from doing so, he injects himself instead. Fearing the outcome, he destroys himself and his clinic by fire. Clark, Franklin Chase, M.D. (1847–1915).
Husband of HPL’s elder aunt Lillian Delora Phillips Clark. He attended high school in Warren, R.I., and received an A.B. from Brown University (1869). He studied literature and attended special classes given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and received a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City (1872). Returning to Providence as an intern at Rhode Island Hospital, Clark served as surgeon in the outpatient department (1876–83). He conducted a private medical practice from 1872 to 1915 and also served as physician for Providence Dispensary and for the Home for Aged Women (1883–84) and as acting police surgeon for the City of Providence (1896). He was a prolific writer of articles on medicine, natural history, and genealogy; collections of his magazine articles and of his manuscripts are held in the University Archives at Brown. He married Lillian Delora Phillips on April 10, 1902; they had no children. In 1904, with HPL’s father and grandfather both dead, Clark became the leading male adult figure in HPL’s life; HPL testifies that his early prose and verse were much improved by Clark’s assistance (see SL1.38). Clark died on April 16, 1915, of cerebral hemorrhage and chronic Bright’s disease; HPL wrote a poetic tribute, “An Elegy on Franklin Chase Clark, M.D.” ([Providence] Evening News,April 29, 1915). Dr. Elihu Whipple in “The Shunned House” (1924), Dr. George Gammell Angell in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), and Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward(1927) are probably based in part on Clark; perhaps also Dr. Henry Armitage in “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) and Dr. Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee in “The Shadow out of Time” (1934–35).
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Clark, Lillian D[elora Phillips] (1856–1932).
First child of Whipple V.Phillips and Robie Alzada Place Phillips; elder sister of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, HPL’s mother. She spent two academic years at the Wheaton Seminary in Norton, Mass. (1871–73), and completed her education at the Rhode Island Normal School. She was a schoolteacher prior to her marriage to Dr. Franklin Chase Clark, M.D., on April 10, 1902; they had no children. After Dr. Clark’s death, she lived in various rented rooms in Providence, including 135 Benefit Street (the locale for “The Shunned House” [1924]) in 1919–20. She was the principal housekeeper for HPL at 598 Angell Street during 1919–24, after the hospitalization and death of HPL’s mother. HPL wrote an enormous number of letters (now at JHL) to her during his New York period (1924–26); in spite of her chronic poor health, she came to Brooklyn in December 1924 to assist HPL in moving to 169 Clinton Street. Upon HPL’s return to Providence in April 1926, Lillian took rooms immediately above his at 10 Barnes Street. She was a gifted painter in oils who exhibited at the Providence Art Club. She died on July 3, 1932.
Clay, Ed.
In “The Mound,” the elder of two brothers in the Oklahoma Territory who explore the mound region in 1920. He comes back three months later with his hair turned white and a strange scar branded on his forehead. He claims that his brother Walker had died after being captured by Indians. Later Ed commits suicide after writing a note urging that the mound region be left alone.
Club of the Seven Dreamers, The.
A “hideous novel” conceived by HPL in March 1920 (see SL1.110); probably never begun. Possibly it was not intended to be a genuine novel but rather a series of short stories with different narrators— these being the “seven dreamers” of the title. If so, the conception would be somewhat similar to Poe’s plans for Tales of the Folio Club;in his preface to this volume (first printed in James A.Harrison’s collected edition of Poe [1902]), Poe declares that “The number of the club is limited to eleven.” One may also suspect the influence of John Osborne Austin’s More Seven Club Tales(1900), a book that HPL owned about strange happenings in Rhode Island. This slim volume contains seven stories, each narrated by a different individual, mostly figures from seventeenth-century Rhode Island. Only a few of the tales are genuinely weird, and even they are rather innocuous ghost stories; but HPL may have found the format suggestive.
Coates, Walter J[ohn] (1880–1941).
Amateur journalist in North Montpelier, Vt., who issued the little magazine Driftwind,which contained much poetry by HPL as well as “The Materialist Today” (initially a letter to Coates, c. May 1926; published in Driftwindfor October 1926 and also as a separate brochure [Driftwind Press, 1926] in fifteen copies). Coates contributed a lengthy essay on Vermont poetry to W.Paul Cook’s Recluse (1927). He was the author and editor of many volumes of poetry, including Mood Songs: Voices within Myself(Hartford, Vt.: Solitarian Press, 1921), Vermont in Heart and Song(editor) (North Montpelier, Vt., 1926), Vermont Verse: An Anthology(editor) (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Daye Press, 1931), Harvest: A Sheaf of Poems fromDriftwind (editor) (North Montpelier, Vt.: Driftwind Press, 1933). He corresponded sporadically
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with HPL to the end of the latter’s life, and wrote an obituary of HPL for Driftwind,April 1937. Cole, Edward H[arold] (1892–1966).
Massachusetts amateur journalist; editor of The Olympian. He came in touch with HPL in late 1914, when he advised HPL to assist the Providence Amateur Press Club; he met HPL in December 1914. Their correspondence continued until HPL’s death. He married Helene E. Hoffman (1893–1919), who gave birth to a son, E[dward] Sherman Cole (b. 1918), to whom HPL wrote a few whimsical letters in early 1919. Upon Helene Hoffman Cole’s death, HPL wrote a poetic tribute, “Helene Hoffman Cole: 1893–1919: The Club’s Tribute” ( Bonnet,June 1919), as well as a prose article, “Helene Hoffman Cole—Litterateur” ( United Amateur,May 1919). HPL frequently visited Cole in the Boston area in the 1920s and 1930s. After HPL’s death, Cole edited a special issue of The Olympian(Autumn 1940) devoted to HPL, for which he wrote a lengthy memoir, “Ave atque Vale!” (rpt. LR). Cole, Ira A[lbert] (1883–?).
Kansas amateur journalist and editor of The Plainsman,for which HPL wrote “On the Cowboys of the West” (December 1915). He became a member of the round-robin correspondence group, the Kleicomolo (1915–19?), with HPL, Rheinhart Kleiner, and Maurice W.Moe. HPL published some of Cole’s poems in The Conservative(“The Dream of a Golden Age,” July 1915; “In Vita Elysium,” July 1917). Cole later converted to Pentacostalism. He wrote a brief memoir of HPL, “A Tribute from the Past” ( OWash-Ta-Nong,1937; rpt. LR).
“Collapsing Cosmoses.”
Short story fragment (640 words); written in collaboration with R.H.Barlow. First published in Leaves (1938); first collected in MW
Dam Bor looks through his cosmoscope and sees an enemy fleet advancing through space. He and the narrator go to the Great Council Chamber to alert delegates from other galaxies. Hak Ni, a commander, is asked by Oll Stof, the president of the chamber, to battle the fleet. He does so. The fragment ends at this point.
The idea was for each author to write alternating paragraphs, although HPL sometimes wrote only a few words before yielding the pen to his younger colleague, so that considerably more than half the piece is Barlow’s, as are a fair number of the better jokes. As a satire on the space operas popularized by Edmond Hamilton, E.E. “Doc” Smith, and others, the story is fairly effective. “Colour out of Space, The.”
Short story (12,300 words); written in March 1927. First published in Amazing Stories(September 1927); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in An1and CC A surveyor for the new reservoir to be built “west of Arkham” encounters a bleak terrain where nothing will grow; the locals call it the “blasted heath.” The surveyor, seeking an explanation for the term and for the cause of the devastation, finally finds an old man, Ammi Pierce, living near the area, who tells him an incredible tale of events that occurred in 1882. A meteorite had landed on the property of Nahum Gardner and his family. Scientists from Miskatonic University
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who examine the object find that its properties are very bizarre: the substance refuses to cool, displays shining spectroscopic bands never seen before, and fails to react to conventional solvents. Within the meteorite is a “large coloured globule”: “The colour…was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all.” When tapped with a hammer, it bursts. The meteorite itself, continuing anomalously to shrink, finally disappears.
Henceforth increasingly odd things occur. Nahum’s harvest yields apples and pears unprecedentedly huge in size, but they prove unfit to eat; plants and animals undergo peculiar mutations; Nahum’s cows start to give bad milk. Then Nahum’s wife Nabby goes mad, “screaming about things in the air which she could not describe”; she is locked in an upstairs room. Soon all the vegetation starts to crumble to a grayish powder. Nahum’s son Thaddeus goes mad after a visit to the well, and his sons Merwin and Zenas also break down. Then there is a period of days when Nahum is not seen or heard from. Ammi finally summons the courage to visit his farm and finds that the worst has happened: Nahum himself has gone insane, babbling only in fragments; but that is not all: “That which spoke could speak no more because it had completely caved in.” Ammi brings policemen, a coroner, and other officials to the place, and after a series of bizarre events they see a column of the unknown color shoot into the sky from the well; but Ammi sees a small fragment of it return to earth. The gray expanse of the “blasted heath” grows by an inch per year, and no one can say when it will end. The reservoir in the tale is the Quabbin Reservoir, plans for which were announced in 1926, although it was not completed until 1939. And yet, HPL declares in a late letter that it was the Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island (built in 1926) that caused him to use the reservoir element in the story (HPL to Richard Ely Morse, October 13, 1935; ms., JHL). He saw the reservoir when he passed through the west-central part of the state on the way to Foster in late October 1926. But HPL surely was also thinking of the Quabbin, which is located exactly in the area of central Massachusetts where the tale takes place, and which involved the abandonment and submersion of entire towns in the region. Also, Clara Hess’s statement that HPL’s mother once told her about “weird and fantastic creatures that rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark” reminds one of Nabby Gardner’s madness.
HPL felt the story was more an “atmospheric study” ( SL2.114) than an orthodox narrative. The lack of clear answers to many of the central issues in the tale—specifically, the nature of the meteorite (is it—or the colored globule inside it—animate in any sense that we can recognize? Does it house a single entity or many entities? What are their physical properties? What are their aims, goals, and motives?)—is not a failing but a virtue. As HPL said of Machen’s “The White People,” “the lack of anything concreteis the great assetof the story” ( SL3.429). It is precisely because we cannot define the nature—either physical or psychological—of the entities in “The Colour out of Space” (or even know whether they are entities or living creatures as we understand them) that produces a sense of horror. In this story HPL most closely achieves his goal of avoiding the depiction of “the human form —and the local human passions and conditions and standards—…as native to other worlds or other universes” ( SL2.150).
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The story is the first of HPL’s major tales to effect the union of horror and science fiction that became the hallmark of his later work. It is therefore not surprising that Amazing Stories(the first science fiction pulp magazine) readily accepted it upon submittal, early in the summer of 1927. But Amazing Storiesbecame a closed market to HPL when editor Hugo Gernsback paid him only $25 for
the story—a mere
¢ per word—and then only after three dunning letters. Although in later years
HPL briefly considered requests from Gernsback or from his associate editor, C.A.Brandt, for further submissions, he never again sent a tale to Amazing Stories. He always remembered Gernsback as “Hugo the Rat.”
Sam Moskowitz’s assertion that HPL submitted the story first to WT,and then to Argosy,is unwarranted; see HPL to Clark Ashton Smith, July 15, 1927 (ms., JHL): “As for ‘The Colour Out of Space’—Wandrei tells me that Amazing Storiesdoesn’t pay well, so that I’m sorry I didn’t try WT first.”
See Will Murray, “Sources for ‘The Colour out of Space,’” CryptNo. 28 (Yuletide 1984): 3–5; Steven J.Mariconda, “The Subversion of Sense in ‘The Colour out of Space,’” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 20– 22; Donald R.Burleson, “Prismatic Heroes: The Colour out of Dunwich,” LSNo. 25 (Fall 1991): 13– 18; Robert M.Price, “A Biblical Antecedent for ‘The Colour out of Space,’” LSNo. 25 (Fall 1991): 23– 25; Donald R.Burleson, “Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour out of Space,’” CryptNo. 93 (Lammas 1996): 19–20. “Commercial Blurbs.”
Series of five advertising articles written in 1925 (general title coined by R.H.Barlow). First published in LS(Spring 1988); rpt. MW.
The five articles are as follows: “Beauty in Crystal” (on the Corning Glass Works, Corning, N.Y.); “The Charm of Fine Woodwork” (on the Curtis Companies, Clifton, IA); “Personality in Clocks” (on the Colonial Manufacturing Company, Zealand, MI); “A Real Colonial Heritage” (on the Erskine-Danforth Corporation, New York, N.Y.); and “A True Home of Literature” (on the Alexander Hamilton Book Shop, Paterson, N.J.). The articles were written in early 1925 for a trade magazine conceived by one Yesley (a friend of Arthur Leeds): authors would write the advertising copy (based on press notices or advertising matter supplied by the company) and have it published in the magazine; salesmen would then take the issue to the companies in question and urge them to buy a quantity of the magazines for advertising purposes, whereupon the author would get 10% of the net sales. But the venture never materialized, so far as can be ascertained, and HPL’s articles apparently were never published. HPL clearly sought out “high-toned” establishments to write about, and his articles— seemingly stiff and formal—are presumably meant to suggest the aristocratic quality of the products manufactured or sold by the companies about which he is writing.
Commonplace Book.
Notes (5,000 words); written between late 1919/early 1920 and 1935. First published in The Notes & Commonplace Book(Futile Press, 1938); rpt. BWS, SR,and MW. Annotated version in Commonplace Book(1987).
No “book” at all, HPL’s commonplace book was merely a sheaf of long, narrow, folded sheets of paper, on which he jotted ideas for stories. In January 1920, he wrote to Rheinhart Kleiner, “I have lately…been collecting ideas and images for subsequent use in fiction. For the first time in my life, I am keeping a ‘com
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monplace-book’—if that term can be applied to a repository of gruesome and fantastick thought” ( SL 1.106). In May 1934, after a decade and a half of keeping and using the book, HPL described it as follows, in a note jotted on the manuscript for presentation to a young friend: “This book consists of ideas, images & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction. Very few are actually developed plots—for the most part they are merely suggestions or random impressions designed to set the memory or imagination working. Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on.”
Few entries in the book are story plots per se; most are merely notes to jog the memory or spur the imagination. Consider these sample entries from c. 1920: “Transposition of identity.” “Man followed by invisible thing.” “Fisherman casts his net into the sea by moonlight—what he finds.” The first entry is the shortest possible description of an idea developed at length in two late stories: “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “The Shadow out of Time.” The next contains an early scene from Fungi from Yuggoth,and also scenes from “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Shadow out of Time.” The last finds its way into “The Haunter of the Dark” in a throwaway passage about a fisherman finding the Shining Trapezohedron in his net. In the manuscript, HPL noted the use of only a handful of items. However, many of the recorded images find their way into many of his works—perhaps not as complete story ideas, but as elements of stories; others are not used exactly as written, but modified to suit a particular need.
In 1938, the Futile Press published HPL’s notebook, derived from a manuscript in the possession of R.H.Barlow and augmented by later notes HPL kept on a typed copy made for him by Barlow. See “Notes on Weird Fiction” concerning the related material published with these notes. In BWSand SR, the commonplace book entries were conflated with the supplemental material, mistakenly identifying all the notes as part of HPL’s commonplace book; also, the text was based not on Barlow’s Futile Press Edition, but on the truncated typescript that Barlow had made for HPL. The annotated edition of 1987 restores all notes (including rejected items) to their proper sequence.
Comptons.
In “The Curse of Yig” and “The Mound,” Sally (“Grandma”), married to Joe, mother of Clyde, is a first-generation pioneer, “a veritable mine of anecdote and folklore.” She is the source of the story about their neighbors, the Davises, in “The Curse of Yig,” and it is she who discovers Walker Davis’s body.
“Confession of Unfaith, A.”
Essay (2,170 words); probably written in late 1921. First published in the Liberal(February 1922); rpt. MW
One of HPL’s most significant personal and philosophical essays, tracing the development of his rejection of orthodox Christianity from boyhood (when, under the influence of classical mythology, he actually thought he saw dryads and satyrs in the woods near his home) to maturity. HPL copied much of the essay in his autobiographical letter to Edwin Baird, February 3, 1924 ( SL1.299–302). Conover, Willis (1920–1996).
Weird fiction fan who corresponded with HPL (1936–37). Conover wished to start a fan magazine, the Science-Fantasy Correspondent,and asked HPL to contribute; HPL sent him “Homecoming” (a sonnet
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from Fungi from Yuggoth), which appeared in the first issue (November-December 1936). The poem “In a Sequestered Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walked” appeared in the March-April 1937 issue. Late in 1936 Conover expressed his intention to resume the serialization of “Supernatural Horror in Literature” from the point at which it had ceased in the Fantasy Fan;accordingly, HPL prepared a synopsis of the earlier segments (Conover later published this as a booklet, Supernatural Horror in Literature as Revised in 1936[Carrollton-Clark, 1974]). But Conover never ran “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” nor the celebrated portrait of HPL as an eighteenth-century gentleman, which he commissioned Virgil Finlay to draw; the latter appeared on the cover of the April 1937 issue of Amateur Correspondent,Corwin F.Stickney’s successor to Science-Fantasy Correspondent . In part as a result of HPL’s death, Conover lost his interest in weird fiction for many years. For much of his career he worked with the Voice of America. In 1975 he published his exquisitely printed memoir, Lovecraft at Last(Carrollton-Clark), containing extracts of his letters from HPL and much other interesting matter. He recommenced the Sci-ence-Fantasy Correspondent,but only for one issue (1975); that issue did, however, contain Kenneth Sterling’s fine memoir, “Caverns Measureless to Man,” along with additional letters by HPL.
See obituary, New York Times,May 19, 1996, Sec. I, p. 35.
Conservative, The.
Amateur magazine edited by HPL (1915–23). Rpt. (unabridged) as The Conservative: Complete (Necronomicon Press, 1976, 1977); selections as The Conservative,ed. S.T.Joshi (Necronomicon Press, 1990).
The magazine consists of 13 issues: 1, No. 1 (April 1915), 8 pp.; 1, No. 2 (July 1915), 12 pp.; 1, No. 3 (October 1915), 16 pp.; 1, No. 4 (January 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 1 (April 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 2 (July 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 3 (October 1916), 12 pp.; 2, No. 4 (January 1917), 4 pp.; 3, No. 1 (July 1917), 4 pp.; 4, No. 1 (July 1918), 8 pp.; 5, No. 1 (July 1919), 12 pp.; No. 12 (March 1923), 8 pp.; No. 13 (July 1923), 28 pp. [For complete table of contents, see S.T.Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography(1981), pp. 173–77.]
The first issue was printed by an unidentified Providence printer. The next five issues were printed by The Lincoln Press (Albert A.Sandusky), Cambridge, Mass. The next three were printed locally, and W.Paul Cook printed the final four. HPL wrote most of the first three issues himself, but subsequently opened the magazine to prose and poetic contributions by his associates, including Rheinhart Kleiner, Winifred Virginia Jackson, Anne Tillery Renshaw, Alfred Galpin, Samuel Loveman, and others. The issue for July 1916 consists entirely of Henry Clapham McGavack’s essay “The American Proletariat versus England.” Beginning with the October 1916 issue, HPL instituted an editorial column entitled “In the Editor’s Study,” containing some of his most controversial political, social, and literary musings.
Rheinhart Kleiner reports on the effect of reading the first issue: “…many were immediately aware that a brilliant new talent had made itself known. The entire contents of the issue, both prose and verse, were the work of the editor, who obviously knew exactly what he wished to say, and no less exactly how to say it. The Conservativetook a unique place among the valuable publications of
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its time, and held that place with ease through the period of seven or eight years during which it made occasional pronouncements. Its critical pronouncements were relished by some and resented by others, but there was no doubt of the respect in which they were held by all” (“Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” Californian5, No. 1 [Summer 1937]: 5). But HPL’s contributions to the issues of 1915–19 are on the whole dogmatic, narrow, and intolerant; he was taken heavily to task for his reactionary racial and literary views by such amateurs as Charles D.Isaacson and James F.Morton. The last two issues reveal a significant broadening of intellectual horizons and a more sophisticated appreciation of cultural change, and thereby foreshadow the development of HPL’s aesthetic and moral thought in his last decade.
Cook, W[illiam] Paul (1881–1948).
Printer, publisher, and amateur press editor residing in Athol, Mass.; he published under the pseudonym Willis Tete Crossman. Cook served as Official Editor (1918–19) and President of the NAPA (1919–20); he was also appointed Official Editor of the UAPA in 1907, but resigned before the end of his term. He edited and published several amateur magazines, including The Monadnock Monthly, The Vagrant, The Recluse,and The Ghost. He met HPL in 1917 through amateur journalism, Cook agreeing to print HPL’s Conservative . His encouragement was instrumental in HPL’s resumption of fiction writing in 1917. Cook wrote a brief article, “Howard P. Lovecraft’s Fiction” ( The Vagrant,November 1919) as a preface to “Dagon”—the first critical article on HPL’s stories. He published many of HPL’s early weird tales and poems in The Vagrant . In late 1925 he enlisted HPL to write “Supernatural Horror in Literature” for The Recluse(1927); in 1928 he printed HPL’s story “The Shunned House” (rejected by Farnsworth Wright for WT) as a small book; his subsequent financial and nervous breakdown, brought on by the death of his wife in 1930, prevented the binding of the book. A small number of sheets of the 300-copy edition were bound by R.H.Barlow; the remainder were bound by Arkham House in 1959–61. In visiting Cook at his home in Athol in the summer of 1928, HPL absorbed many details of local history and lore reflected in his fiction, notably “The Dunwich Horror.” In 1940, Cook wrote In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft(Driftwind Press, 1941), which he typeset himself; it is still perhaps the best memoir of HPL. His “A Plea for Lovecraft” ( The Ghost,May 1945) warned against a distorted image of HPL beginning to emerge, largely because of the publications from Arkham House.
See R. Alain Everts, “The Man Who Was W.Paul Cook,” Nyctalops3, No. 2 (March 1981): 10–12. “Cool Air.”
Short story (3,440 words); written probably in February 1926. First published in Tales of Magic and Mystery(March 1928); rpt. WT(September 1939); first collected in O;corrected text in DH; annotated version in An2and CC
The narrator, having “secured some dreary and unprofitable magazine work” in the spring of 1923, finds himself in a run-down boarding-house whose landlady is a “slatternly, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero” and occupied generally by low-life except for one Dr. Muñoz, a cultivated and intelligent retired medical man who is continually experimenting with chemicals and in
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dulges in the eccentricity of keeping his room at a temperature of about 55° by means of an ammonia cooling system. Muñoz suffers from the effects of a horrible malady that struck him eighteen years ago. He is obliged to keep his room increasingly cooler, as low as 28°. When, in the heat of summer, his ammonia cooling system fails, the narrator undertakes a frantic effort to fix it, enlisting “a seedy-looking loafer” to keep the doctor supplied with the ice that he repeatedly demands in ever larger amounts. But it is to no avail: when the narrator returns from his quest for air-conditioner repairmen, he finds the boarding-house in turmoil; the loafer, faced with some nameless horror, had quickly abandoned his task of supplying ice. When the narrator enters Muñoz’s room, he sees a “kind of dark, slimy trail [that] led from the open bathroom to the hall door” and “ended unutterably.” In fact, Muñoz died eighteen years before and had kept himself functioning by artificial preservation.
There are several autobiographical touches in the story. The setting is the brownstone at 317 West 14th Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues) in Manhattan, occupied in August–October 1925 by George Kirk, both as a residence and as the site of his Chelsea Book Shop. HPL describes it in a letter: “It is a typical Victorian home of New York’s ‘Age of Innocence’, with tiled hall, carved marble mantels, vast pier glasses & mantel mirrors with massive gilt frames, incredibly high ceilings covered with stucco ornamentation, round arched doorways with elaborate rococo pediments, & all the other earmarks of New York’s age of vast wealth & impossible taste. Kirk’s rooms are the great groundfloor parlours, connected by an open arch, & having windows only in the front room. These two windows open to the south on 14th St., & have the disadvantage of admitting all the babel & clangour of that great crosstown thoroughfare with its teeming traffick & ceaseless street-cars” (HPL to Lillian D. Clark, August 19–23, 1925; ms., JHL). Dr. Muñoz may have been suggested by HPL’s neighbor across the street, “the fairly celebrated Dr. Love, State Senator and sponsor of the famous ‘Clean Books bill’ at Albany…evidently immune or unconscious of the decay” (HPL to B.A.Dwyer, March 26, 1927; AHT). Even the ammonia cooling system has an autobiographical source. In August 1925 HPL’s aunt Lillian had told him of a visit to a theatre in Providence, to which he replied: “Glad you have kept up with the Albee Co., though surprised to hear that the theatre is hot. They have a fine ammonia cooling system installed, & if they do not use it it can only be through a niggardly sense of economy” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, August 7, 1925; ms., JHL).
HPL stated that the inspiration for the tale was not, as one might expect, Poe’s “Facts in the Case of M.Valdemar” but Machen’s “Novel of the White Powder” (HPL to Henry Kuttner, July 29, 1936; Letters to Henry Kuttner[Necronomicon Press, 1990], p. 21), in which a hapless student unwittingly takes a drug that reduces him to “a dark and putrid mass, seething with corruption and hideous rottenness, neither liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles like boiling pitch.”
WTrejected “Cool Air” in March 1926, possibly because its gruesome conclusion would invite censorship, as in the case of “The Loved Dead.” It was one of eight stories that HPL submitted in late 1927 to the poor paying and shortlived Tales of Magic and Mystery;HPL received $18.50 for it.
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See Bert Atsma, “Living on Borrowed Time: A Biologist Looks at ‘M.Valdemar’ and ‘Cool Air,’” Crypt No. 4 (Eastertide 1981): 11–13; Will Murray, “A Note on ‘Cool Air,’” CryptNo. 28 (Yuletide 1984): 20–21.
Corey, Benijah.
In “The Silver Key,” the hired man of the young Randolph Carter’s Uncle Christopher. When Carter, having found the silver key, returns bodily to his childhood, “Benijy” chides “Randy” for being late for supper.
Corey, George.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” the owner of a farm near Cold Spring Glen. His wife is not named. His relationship to Wesley Corey, one of the party that exterminates Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother, is not specified.
Crane, [Harold] Hart (1899–1932).
American poet. HPL (through his friend Samuel Loveman) met Crane in Cleveland in August 1922 and saw him again in New York in 1924–26, when he was working on The Bridge(1930). HPL parodied Crane’s “Pastorale” ( Dial,October 1921) in “Plaster-All” (1922?; LSNo. 27 [Fall 1992]: 30–31), in which Crane is apparently the first-person narrator of the poem. Crane speaks of HPL in his letters, referring to him as “piping-voiced” and “that queer Lovecraft person.” HPL saw Crane one last time in late 1930, as the ravages of alcoholism were taking effect. HPL admired Crane’s poetry, despite its modernism: he referred to The Bridgeas “a thing of astonishing merit” ( SL3.152). See Thomas Horton, Hart Crane: The Life of an American Poet(1937); Susan Jenkins Brown, Robber Rocks: Letters and Memories of Hart Crane, 1923–1932(1969); John Unterecker, Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane(1969); Thomas S.W.Lewis, ed., Letters of Hart Crane and His Family(1974); Paul Mariani, The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane(1999); Steven J.Mariconda, “H.P.Lovecraft: Reluctant American Modernist,” LSNo. 42 (Summer 2001): 22–34.
Crawford, William L. (1911–1984).
Semi-professional publisher in Everett, Pa. In the fall of 1933, Crawford proposed to start a nonpaying weird magazine, Unusual Stories. For this he commissioned HPL’s autobiographical sketch “Some Notes on a Nonentity,” although it never ran in the magazine. Although he accepted HPL’s “Celephaïs” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” for Unusual Stories,neither appeared there; instead, they appeared in Crawford’s Marvel Tales(May 1934 and March-April 1935, respectively). Around July 1934 HPL wrote “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” for one of Crawford’s magazines, but the essay was published in the Californian(Winter 1935). In the spring of 1935 Crawford contemplated reviving the defunct Fantasy Fan,with HPL as editor; but the plan never materialized. He also thought of issuing either At the Mountains of Madnessor “The Shadow over Innsmouth” as a booklet, or both together in one volume; he considered submitting the latter story to Astounding Storiesafter hearing of the acceptance there of At the Mountains of Madnessand “The Shadow out of Time,” but it is not clear whether he did so. Then, in late 1935, he focused on the issuance of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” as a book. The project came to fruition in November 1936 (although the copy
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right page declares the date of publication as April 1936), but the book was so riddled with typographical errors that HPL insisted on an errata sheet (which, alas, was also faulty). The Shadow over Innsmouth,issued under the imprint of the Visionary Publishing Company, was the only book of HPL’s fiction to be published and distributed in his lifetime. Crawford printed 400 copies but bound only 200; the others were later destroyed. The book features a dust jacket and four interior illustrations by Frank Utpatel. Crawford wrote of the venture in “Lovecraft’s First Book” (in SR;rpt. LR).
“Crawling Chaos, The.”
Short story (3,020 words); written in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, probably in December 1920. First published (as by “Elizabeth Berkeley and Lewis Theobald, Jun.”) in the United Co-operative(April 1921), a cooperative amateur journal edited by HPL, Jackson, and others; first collected in BWS;corrected text in HM
The narrator tells of his one experience with opium, when a doctor unwittingly gave him an overdose to ease his pain. After experiencing a sensation of falling, “curiously dissociated from the idea of gravity or direction,” he finds himself in a “strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows.” A sense of fear comes over him, and he realizes that it is inspired by a monotonous pounding that seems to come from below the house in which he finds himself. Looking out a window, he sees that the pounding is caused by titanic waves that are rapidly washing away the piece of land on which the house stands, transforming the land into an ever-narrowing peninsula. Fleeing through the back door of the house, the narrator finds himself walking along a sandy path and rests under a palm tree. Suddenly a child of radiant beauty drops from the branches of the tree, and presently two other individuals—“a god and goddess they must have been”—appear. They waft the narrator into the air and are joined by a singing chorus of other heavenly individuals who wish to lead the narrator to the wondrous land of Teloe. But the pounding of the sea disrupts this throng, and the narrator appears to witness the destruction of the world.
The story was written shortly after the prose poem “Nyarlathotep” (whose opening phrase is “Nyarlathotep…the crawling chaos…”). HPL remarks in a letter: “I took the title C.C. from my Nyarlathotep sketch…because I liked the sound of it” (HPL to R.H.Barlow, [December 1, 1934]; ms., JHL). HPL appears to allude to the genesis of the story in a letter of May 1920, in which he notes the previous collaboration with Jackson, “The Green Meadow”: “I will enclose—subject to return—an account of a Jacksonian dream which occurred in the early part of 1919, and which I am some time going to weave into a horror story…” ( SL1.116). It is not certain whether this dream was the nucleus of “The Crawling Chaos,” but since there are no other story collaborations with Jackson, the conjecture seems likely.
Various points in the account carry the implication that the narrator is not actually dreaming or hallucinating but envisioning the far future of the world—a point clumsily made by his conceiving of Rudyard Kipling as an “ancient” author. It is manifest that the entire tale was written by HPL; as with “The Green Meadow,” Jackson’s only contribution must have been the dream whose imagery probably laid the foundations for the opening segments.
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Alfred Galpin (“Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur,November 1921) wrote charitably of the tale: “The narrative power, vivid imagination and poetic merit of this story are such as to elevate it above certain minor but aggravating faults of organisation and composition.”
“Crime of the Century, The.”
Essay (970 words); probably written in early 1915. First published in the Conservative(April 1915); rpt Trail(January 1916) and MW.
HPL asserts that the British and the Germans are committing a kind of racial suicide, since they are “blood brothers” belonging to the same Teutonic race—a race that is “the summit of evolution” and destined to rule all other races in the world.
Crofts, Anna Helen.
Amateur writer and collaborator with HPL. Crofts lived in North Adams, Mass., in the far northwestern corner of the state. She collaborated with HPL on the story “Poetry and the Gods” ( United Amateur, September 1920), published as by “Anna Helen Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe.” Nothing further is known of Crofts; she appeared sporadically in the amateur press, and may have been introduced to HPL by Winifred Jackson. The degree of her involvement in “Poetry and the Gods” is also unknown: HPL never mentions the tale in any extant correspondence.
Cthulhu Mythos.
Term devised by August Derleth to denote the pseudomythology underlying some of HPL’s tales, chiefly the “cosmic” stories of his last decade of writing.
It is difficult to know how seriously HPL himself regarded his invented pantheon or his invented New England topography (which has also been regarded by later critics as an important component of the Mythos). That pantheon developed from his very earliest work—“Dagon” (1917)—to his last, and it was in a state of constant flux, as HPL never felt bound to present a rigidly consistent theogony from one tale to the next. His own references to his pseudomythology are vague and inconsistent, suggesting that, even though he employed it often enough, it was merely for coloration, not the primary theme of his fiction. One of HPL’s first comments on the matter is briefly stated in a letter to James. F.Morton (April 1, 1927; AHT), when he remarks that he has written an “atmospheric episode of the Arkham cycle” (i.e., “The Colour out of Space”). He next noted that “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) “belongs to the Arkham cycle” ( SL2.246). In 1934 he told a correspondent, “I’m not working on the actual text of any story just now, but am planning a novelette of the Arkham cycle [never written]—about what happened when somebody inherited a queer old house on the top of Frenchman’s Hill & obeyed an irresistible urge to dig in a certain queer, abandoned graveyard on Hangman’s Hill at the other edge of the town. This story will probably not involve the actual supernatural—being more of the ‘Colour out of Space’ type . . . . . greatly-stretched ‘scientifiction’” (HPL to F.Lee Baldwin, March 27, 1934; ms. JHL). He never elucidates this expression “Arkham cycle,” which appears to suggest that his invented topography (Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Dunwich) is a central component of certain loosely linked tales.
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