An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

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Writing to Clark Ashton Smith ([November 11, 1930]; ms. in private hands), HPL mentioned YogSothoth as one of several “ingredients of the Miskatonic Valley myth-cycle.” In early 1931, HPL wrote to Frank Belknap Long: “I really agree that ‘Yog-Sothoth’ is a basically immature conception, & unfitted for really serious literature…. But I consider the use of actual folk-myths as even more childish than the use of new artificial myths, since in employing the former one is forced to retain many blatant puerilities and contradictions of experience which could be subtilised or smoothed over if the supernaturalism were modelled to order for the given case. The only permanently artistic use of Yog-Sothothery, I think, is in symbolic or associative phantasy of the frankly poetic type; in which fixed dream-patterns of the natural organism are given an embodiment & crystallisation…. But there is another phase of cosmic phantasy (which may or may not include frank Yog-Sothothery) whose foundations appear to me as better grounded than those of ordinary oneiroscopy; personal limitation regarding the sense of outsideness” ( SL3.293–94). HPL’s comment shows that his “pseudomythology” is not so much a “false” or made-up mythology, but an anti-mythology—the only kind of mythology that could be possible in this day and age. It is not a mythology of the kind invented or believed in by previous cultures—lore or legend intended to explain or account for the history of humankind, the history of the universe, the exploits of heroes, and so on. In fact, the careful reader of his stories will realize that it is no mythology at all, but a cycle of events intended to be perceived by only the more primitive or impressionable characters as realin the context of the fiction. Again, HPL’s use of the term “Yog-Sothothery” is unclear, but it appears to denote his more “cosmic” narratives (the letter was written during his writing of At the Mountains of Madness). The context in which HPL used “Yog-Sothothery” (which resembles such terms as tomfooleryand chicanery) suggests that HPL took his pseudomythology none too seriously.

HPL emphasized that allhis tales—whether they used his pseudomythology or his invented topography or not—were linked philosophically. His canonical utterance on the subject occurs in a letter to Farnsworth Wright (July 5, 1927), accompanying the resubmittal of “The Call of Cthulhu” to WTand at a time by which he had written the majority of his tales, but only a few of what most proponents refer to as his “mythos” fiction: “Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large…. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all” ( SL2.150). As early as the fall of 1927, when Frank Belknap Long wrote “The Space-Eaters,” HPL’s associates were “adding” components to various elements of his tales—in this case, his ever-growing library of mythical volumes of occult lore (Long invented John Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon,citing it as an epigraph to his tale, although the epigraph was omitted in its first appearance in WT,July 1928). HPL cited Long’s invention in “History of the Necronomicon” (1927). In late 1929 Clark Ashton Smith wrote “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros,”

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which invented the toad-god Tsathoggua. Whether Smith was inspired by HPL’s example is debatable; in fact, it was HPL who borrowed from Smith, citing Tsathoggua in his revision of Zealia Bishop’s “The Mound” (1929–30), on which he was then working, and also in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930). Smith himself later wrote, in reference to several citations by other authors of elements he had invented: “It would seem that I am starting a mythology” (Smith to August Derleth, January 4, 1933; ms., SHSW).

In 1930 N.J.O’Neail wrote a letter to WT(March 1930) inquiring whether “Kathulos” cited in Robert E.Howard’s “Skull-Face” (1929) was related to or derived from Cthulhu. Howard in turn queried HPL as to the reality of the various mythological elements cited in HPL’s tales, to which HPL replied: “Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc. etc.—let me confess that this is all a synthetic concoction of my own” ( SL 3.166), going on to say that he dropped references to this myth-cycle in his ghostwritten tales purely for fun. Howard himself thereupon began dropping references to HPL’s myth-cycle in his tales, although neither he nor Smith nor Donald Wandrei nor even younger disciples such as Robert Bloch ever actually wrote stories aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions—they merely dropped references to HPL’s entities in the course of their tales, for the sake of cryptic allusiveness and verisimilitude. It is an exaggeration to say that HPL “encouraged” these imitations or elaborations of his myth-cycle; in most cases, the writers simply made additions of their own accord, and HPL (usually out of courtesy) praised the results.

August Derleth, however, appears to have become obsessed with the Mythos, from as early as 1931, when he wrote the first draft of “The Return of Hastur” ( WT,March 1939). At that time he suggested to HPL that the myth-cycle be given a name; he offered the Mythology of Hastur. HPL replied: “It’s not a bad idea to call this Cthulhuism & Yog-Sothothery of mine The Mythology of Hastur’—although it was really from Machen & Chambers & others rather than through the Bierce-Chambers line, that I picked up my gradually developing hash of theogony—or daimonogeny” (HPL to August Derleth, May 16, 1931; ms., SHSW). (HPL refers to his derivation of the term Hastur from Robert W.Chambers’s The King in Yellow[1895]; Chambers himself derived it from various tales of Ambrose Bierce. In “Some Notes on a Nonentity” [1933] HPL stated that it was from Lord Dunsany that HPL “got the idea of the artificial pantheon and myth-background represented by ‘Cthulhu’, ‘Yog-Sothoth’, ‘Yuggoth’, etc.,” suggesting that HPL was adapting the imaginary pantheon found in Dunsany’s early volumes of tales, TheGodsofPegāna[1905] and Time and the Gods[1906].) He also wrote to Robert Bloch (late May 1933): “As for the synthetic myth-cycle—I suppose I got the idea from Poe’s allusions to fabulous lands of his own dreaming, from Dunsany’s artificial pantheon, & from Machen’s portentous references to ‘Aklo letters’, ‘Voorish domes’, &c.” ( Letters to Robert Bloch,p. 11). HPL went on to say in another letter to Derleth: “The more these synthetic daemons are written up by different authors, the better they become as general background-material! I liketo have others use my Azathoths & Nyarlathoteps—& in return I shall use Klarkash-Ton’s [Clark Ashton Smith] Tsathoggua, your monk Clithanus, & Howard’s Bran” (HPL to August Derleth, August 3,

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1931; ms., SHSW). Derleth used that last sentence as a license to continue writing tales using HPL’s pseudomythology, although even before HPL’s death he warned at least one writer (Henry Kuttner) to avoid using HPL’s pseudomythological elements in his own work as doing so could hamper HPL’s ability to earn income from his own ideas. Ultimately Derleth himself departed from the tradition of HPL’s own colleagues by writing stories entirely aboutHPL’s mythic conceptions, rather than using them as “general background-material.”

In 1932 the composer Harold S.Farnese engaged HPL in an epistolary discussion of HPL’s theory and practice of weird fiction. Farnese seems to have misunderstood much of what HPL said to him, and after HPL’s final move to 66 College Street, the two lost touch with each other. Then, after HPL’s death, when August Derleth asked Farnese to lend him HPL’s correspondence for use in SL,Farnese replied (April 11, 1937; ms., SHSW) that he could not at the moment find all his letters from HPL, but he supplied what he had, as well as what he claimed was a direct quotation from one missing letter: “Upon congratulating HPL upon his work, he answered, ‘You will, of course, realize that all my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on one fundamental lore or legend: that this world was inhabited at one time by another race, who in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet love on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again.’‘The Elders,’ as he called them” (emphasis by Farnese). This quotation does not appear in any surviving letter by HPL to Farnese or anyone else. Derleth, however, found the quotation useful in his own interpretation of the Mythos, which differed radically from what HPL himself conceived. (Derleth was unable to recall where he had obtained the quotation and, very late in life, became angry when Richard L.Tierney asked him to verify its source.) This interpretation featured several key notions:

1. The Old Ones(a term HPL used in several stories to denote several different entities, most

notably the barrel-shaped extraterrestrials in At the Mountains of Madness) are “evil” or “malignant” and are opposed by the “Elder Gods” as forces of good. But HPL never mentions any such entities as “Elder Gods”; “Elder Ones” are cited in “The Strange High House in the Mist” and some other tales, but their exact denotation is unclear. HPL did not regard his Old Ones as evil or malignant, although in some cases they presented a physical danger to humanity.

2. The major gods of HPL’s mythology were “elementals”: Cthulhu a water elemental, Nyarlathotep an earth elemental, and Hastur an air elemental.Since HPL purportedly failed to provide a fire elemental, Derleth obligingly supplied Cthugha. HPL, however, did not conceive of his “gods” as elementals; the fact that Cthulhu is an extraterrestrial imprisoned(not enthroned) in the underwater city of R’lyeh makes it highly illogical that it should be considered a water elemental. The glancing citation of Hastur in “The Whisperer in Darkness” does not make it clear that it is even an entity (in Bierce, Hastur is the god of shepherds; in Chambers, a star or constellation).

3. HPL’s mythology parallels the “expulsion of Satan from Eden and Satan’s lasting power of evil” in Christian mythology(Derleth, “Introduction” to HPL’s The Dunwich Horror and Others[Arkham House, 1963], p. xiii). This interpretation appealed to the Roman Catholic Derleth but is absurd when attributed to the atheist HPL.

4. There is a rigid distinction to be made between those of HPL’s tales that “belonged” to the “Cthulhu Mythos” and those that did not.Much subsequent criticism (by Francis T.Laney, Lin Carter, and others) was involved in debating which stories did or did not “belong” to the Mythos, but most critics failed to note that HPL scat

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tered references to his pseudomythology, his imaginary topography, and his mythical books across many stories, making the exercise of segregating them into mutually exclusive categories a futile endeavor.

5. HPL consciously developed his mythology, but died before he could accomplish all he intended to do.But HPL had no such intention; only Derleth seems to have arrived at this conclusion. See, for example, his statement concerning his “posthumous collaboration” with HPL, “The Shuttered Room,” that it is a “wedding of the Innsmouth and Dunwich themes, as manifestly HPL intended to do, judging by his scant notes”

(Derleth to Felix Stefanile, August 11, 1958; ms., SHSW). There is no evidence in HPL of an Innsmouth theme, or a Dunwich theme, or that he intended to join them. Derleth began expounding his view of the Mythos—and attributing it to HPL—as early as the article “H.P.Lovecraft, Outsider” ( River,June 1937), in which he first mentioned the “Cthulhu mythology” and first cited the spurious “All my stories” quotation. He continued to disseminate this view in books, articles, and introductions to HPL’s stories for the rest of his life. He also wrote numerous “posthumous collaborations” with HPL, taking plot germs from HPL’s commonplace book (most of which had no connection with his pseudomythology), making “Cthulhu Mythos” tales of them, and affixing HPL’s name to them. He also wrote numerous “Cthulhu Mythos” tales of his own (e.g., The Mask of Cthulhu [1958], The Trail of Cthulhu[1962]). In some cases he urged other writers (such as Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley) to “add” to the “Cthulhu Mythos”; in other cases he threatened legal action against others who sought to do so (e.g., in regard to the pulp writer C.Hall Thompson) when their work did not conform to his interpretation. What is most difficult to comprehend is that Derleth published HPL’s statement to Farnsworth Wright (cited above) in Marginalia(in “Two Comments,” pp. 305–6), as though it were an important statement about HPL’s work; and yet, even though it was diametrically opposed to the conception Derleth had devised, Derleth nevertheless continued to emphasize the less tenable statement—the “black magic” quotation provided by Farnese. Despite research in the 1970s by Richard L.Tierney, Dirk W.Mosig, and others exposing the errors of Derleth’s interpretation, numerous writers continued to write their own takeoffs of the Mythos, a phenomenon that gathered considerable steam in the 1990s with many anthologies of “Cthulhu Mythos” stories assembled by Robert M.Price. Few scholars today, however, regard HPL’s pseudomythology as significant in itself; rather, they see it as one of several ways through which HPL expressed his distinctive cosmic vision.

See Matthew H.Onderdonk, “The Lord of R’lyeh,” Fantasy Commentator1, No. 6 (Spring 1945): 103– 14 (rpt. LSNo. 7 [Fall 1982]: 8–17); George T.Wetzel, “The Cthulhu Mythos: A Study,” in HPL,ed. Meade and Penny Frierson (1972) (rpt. FDOC); Richard L.Tierney, “The Derleth Mythos,” in HPL,ed. Meade and Penny Frierson (1972); Dirk W.Mosig, “H.P.Lovecraft: Myth-Maker,” Whispers3, No. 1 (December 1976): 48–55 (revised version in FDOC); Robert M. Price, “Demythologizing Cthulhu,” LS No. 8 (Spring 1984): 3–9; Will Murray, “The Dunwich Chimera and Others,” LSNo. 8 (Spring 1984): 10–24; Will Murray, “An Uncompromising Look at the Cthulhu Mythos,” LSNo. 12 (Spring 1986): 26– 31; David E.Schultz, “Who Needs the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’?” LSNo. 13 (Fall 1986): 43–53; Thekla Zachrau, Mythos und Phantastik: Funktion und

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Struktur der Cthulhu-Mythologie in den phantastischen Erzäahlungen H.P. Lovecrafts(Peter Lang, 1986); Donald R.Burleson, S.T.Joshi, Will Murray, Robert M.Price, and David E.Schultz, “What Is the Cthulhu Mythos?” (panel discussion), LSNo. 14 (Spring 1987): 3–30; David E.Schultz, “The Origin of Lovecraft’s ‘Black Magic’ Quote,” CryptNo. 48 (St. John’s Eve 1987): 9–13 (revised version in The Horror of It All,ed. Robert M.Price [Starmont House, 1990]); Robert M.Price, H.P.Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos(Starmont House, 1990); Steven J.Mariconda, “Toward a Reader-Response Approach to the Lovecraft Mythos,” in Mariconda’s On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations (Necronomicon Press, 1995); David E.Schultz, comp., “Notes Toward a History of the Cthulhu Mythos,” CryptNo. 92 (Eastertide 1996): 15–33; Chris Jarocha-Ernst, A Cthulhu Mythos Bibliography & Concordance(Armitage House, 1999).

“Curse of Yig, The.”

Short story (7,030 words); ghostwritten for Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, in the spring of 1928. First published in WT(November 1929); rpt. WT(April 1939); first collected in BWS;corrected text in HM Dr. McNeill, who runs an insane asylum in Guthrie, Oklahoma, tells the narrator (a researcher investigating snake lore) of the legend of Yig, “the half-human father of serpents,” specifically in relation to the story of two settlers, Walker and Audrey Davis, who had come to the Oklahoma Territory in 1889. Walker has an exceptional fear of snakes, and has heard tales of Yig (“the snakegod of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan…an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature”) and of how the god avenges any harm that may come to snakes; so he is particularly horrified when his wife kills a brood of rattlers near their home. Late one night, the couple sees the entire floor of their bedroom covered with snakes; Walker gets up to stamp them out but falls down, extinguishing the lantern he is carrying. Audrey, now petrified with terror, soon hears a hideous popping noise—it must be Walker’s body, so puffed with snake-venom that the skin has burst. Then she sees an anthropoid shape silhouetted in the window. Thinking it to be Yig, she takes an axe and hacks it to pieces when it enters the room. In the morning the truth is known: the body that burst was their old dog, bitten by countless snakes, while the figure that has been hacked to pieces is Walker. In a final twist, Dr. McNeill shows the narrator a loathsome half-snake, half-human entity kept in his asylum: it is not Audrey herself, but the entity to which she gave birth three-quarters of a year later. HPL wrote: “this story is about 75% mine. All I had to work on was a synopsis describing a couple of pioneers in a cabin with a nest of rattlesnakes beneath, the killing of the husband by snakes, the bursting of the corpse, & the madness of the wife, who was an eye-witness to the horror. There was no plot or motivation—no prologue or aftermath to the incident—so that one might say the story, as a story, is wholly my own. I invented the snake-god & the curse, the tragic wielding of the axe by the wife, the matter of the snake-victim’s identity, & the asylum epilogue. Also, I worked up the geographic & other incidental colour—getting some data from the alleged authoress, who knows Oklahoma, but more from books” (HPL to August Derleth, October 6, [1929]; ms., SHSW). HPL sent

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the completed tale to Bishop in early March 1928, making it clear in his letter to her that even the title is his. He adds: “I took a great deal of care with this tale, and was especially anxious to get the beginning smoothly adjusted…. For geographical atmosphere and colour I had of course to rely wholly on your answers to my questionnaire, plus such printed descriptions of Oklahoma as I could find.” HPL charged Bishop $17.50 for the tale. She sold the story to WTfor $45.

Curwen, Joseph (1662/3–1771; 1928).

In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,Curwen arrives in Providence from Salem in 1692 seeking asylum. As a result of his alchemical studies, he lives a preternaturally long life but also attracts unwanted attention. He marries Eliza Tillinghast, the daughter of one of his ship-captains, in an attempt to improve his standing in society. A wealthy man, he ingratiates himself among the townspeople of Providence by donating books to the library and money to various civic undertakings. Ezra Weeden, a jealous suitor of Eliza, investigates Curwen’s furtive doings and organizes the raid on the Curwen bungalow in Pawtuxet, which results in Curwen’s apparent death. The people of Providence seek to expunge all references to Curwen from the public record and nearly succeed. However, Curwen’s great-great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward, accidentally learns of his unknown and feared ancestor, eventually unearthing Curwen’s papers and using the occult information they contain to resurrect Curwen from his “essential Saltes.” Curwen (now restored to life but masquerading as a “Dr. Allen”), Ward, and their cohorts around the world continue the task of securing the “essential Saltes” of all the great geniuses of the human race so as to gain some kind of control over the world or even the universe. But when Ward becomes “squeamish” in carrying out this plan, Curwen kills him and attempts to take his place (the two bear a strong physical resemblance). Curwen’s secret is discovered by Ward’s physician, Marius Bicknell Willett, who ultimately destroys him.

“Cycle of Verse, A.”

Poem cycle consisting of three poems, “Oceanus” (16 lines), “Clouds” (22 lines), and “Mother Earth” (40 lines); written in November and December 1918. First two poems first published in the National Enquirer(March 20, 1919); third poem first published in the National Enquirer(March 27, 1919); all three poems published under the general title in Tryout(July 1919).

The poems tell of the weirdness to be found in the ocean, the sky, and the earth (“from whence all horrors have their birth”).

Czanek, Joe.

In “The Terrible Old Man,” a thief (of Polish ancestry) who meets a bad end when he attempts to rob an old sea captain of his reputed hoard of Spanish gold and silver.

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D

Daas, Edward F. (1879–1962).

Amateur journalist in Milwaukee, Wis., who read HPL’s letters and poems in the letter column of the Argosyand, in early 1914, invited HPL to join the UAPA. Daas was then Official Editor of the UAPA; he held the office again in 1915–16, but resigned before completing his term; in 1919–20 he was First Vice-President On June 21–22, 1920, he visited HPL in Providence.

Daemon of the Valley.

In “Memory,” a supernatural entity who, as “Memory, …wise in lore of the past,” informs a Genie of the former existence and current extinction of the human race.

“Dagon.”

Short story (2,240 words); written July 1917. First published in Vagrant(November 1919); rpt. WT (October 1923); rpt. WT(January 1936); first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC.

The unnamed narrator is about to kill himself after writing his account because he has no more money for the morphine that prevents him from thinking of what he has experienced. A supercargo on a vessel during the Great War, this individual is captured by a German sea-raider but manages to escape five days later in a boat. He drifts in the sea, encountering no land or other ship. One night he falls asleep, awaking to find himself half-sucked in “a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see”; evidently there had been an upheaval of some subterranean land mass while he slept. In a few days the mud dries, permitting the narrator to walk along its vast expanse. He aims for a hummock far in the distance, and when finally attaining it finds himself looking down into “an immeasurable pit or canyon.” Descending the side of the canyon, he notices a “vast and singular object” in the distance: it is a gigantic monolith “whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.”

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Stunned by the awareness that such a civilization existed unknown to human science, the narrator explores the monolith, finding repellent marine bas-reliefs and inscriptions on it. But a still greater shock is coming to the narrator, for now a living creature emerges from the waves. He flees, and later finds himself in a San Francisco hospital, having been rescued by an American ship. But his life is shattered; he cannot forget what he has seen, and morphine is only a temporary palliative. His narrative concludes when he writes: “God, that hand!The window! The window!”

“Dagon” was in part inspired by a dream. In responding to a criticism regarding the narrator’s actions, HPL writes: “…the hero-victim ishalf-sucked into the mire, yet he doescrawl! He pulls himself along in the detestable ooze, tenaciously though it cling to him. I know, for I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!” ( In Defence of Dagon[1921]; MW 150). William Fulwiler senses the general influence of Irvin S. Cobb’s “Fishhead,” a tale of a fishlike human being who haunts an isolated lake, and a tale that HPL praised in a letter to the editor when it appeared in the Argosyon January 11, 1913. HPL exhaustively rewrote “Dagon,” in various ways, in both “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931).

Some critics have believed that the monster actually appears at the end of the story; but the notion of a hideous creature shambling down the streets of San Francisco is preposterous, and we are surely to believe that the narrator’s growing mania has induced a hallucination. HPL remarked, shortly after writing the story, that “Both [‘The Tomb’ and ‘Dagon’] are analyses of strange monomania, involving hallucinations of the most hideous sort” (HPL to Rheinhart Kleiner, August 27, 1917; “By Post from Providence”).

See Will Murray, “Dagon in Puritan Massachusetts,” LSNo. 11 (Fall 1985): 66–70; William Fulwiler, “‘The Tomb’ and ‘Dagon’: A Double Dissection,” CryptNo. 38 (Eastertide 1986): 8–14. Dalton, James.

In “The Last Test,” the governor of California who is in love with Dr. Alfred Clarendon’s sister, Georgina. Dalton prevents Clarendon from conducting a medical experiment on her. Danforth,———.

In At the Mountains of Madness,the graduate student who accompanies William Dyer in his explorations of the ruins of the Old Ones’ city in the Antarctic. Before the two leave, Danforth witnesses something so horrifying that he suffers a nervous breakdown.

Davenport, Eli.

In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the author of an “exceedingly rare monograph” recording material obtained orally prior to 1839 from old Vermont denizens concerning the possible existence of a hidden race of alien entities in the mountains.

Davis, Dr.

In “In the Vault,” George Birch’s original personal physician, who is summed to Birch’s side when the latter crawls out of the receiving tomb in which he had been trapped. Davis, recognizing the nature and cause of Birch’s injuries, berates his patient for his carelessness and callousness.

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Davis, [Francis] Graeme (1882–1938).

Early amateur journalist who, as Official Editor of the NAPA (1917–18), violently attacked both HPL and the UAPA in two articles in his journal, The Lingerer:“With Consideration for the Conservative” (Summer 1917) and “Mere Musings” (Winter 1917). HPL responded to the former with “A Reply to The Lingerer” ( Tryout,June 1917).

Davis, Sonia H[aft Greene Lovecraft] (1883–1972).

HPL’s wife (1924–29). Born Sonia Haft Shafirkin in Ichnya (near Kiev), in the Ukraine, she came to Liverpool with her mother and brother around 1890; her mother, Racille, went on to New York and married Solomon H———(last name unknown) in 1892. Sonia joined her mother later that year. She married Samuel Seckendorff in 1899; a son, born in 1900, died after three months, and a daughter, Florence, was born on March 19, 1902. Seckendorff later adopted the name Greene from a friend in Boston. The marriage was turbulent, and Samuel Greene died in 1916, apparently by his own hand. In 1917 Sonia became acquainted with James F.Morton, who introduced her to amateur journalism. She was by this time a highly paid executive at a clothing store in Manhattan, Ferle Heller’s, and had a salary of $10,000. She resided at 259 Parkside Avenue in the fashionable Flatbush section of Brooklyn. She came to the NAPA convention in Boston in early July 1921; Rheinhart Kleiner introduced her to HPL. Shortly thereafter she contributed $50 to the UAPA (see SL1.143). A correspondence with HPL ensued, and over the next two and a half years she visited Providence as frequently as her business schedule (which indeed entailed considerable traveling) allowed. She published, at considerable expense, two lavish issues of the amateur journal The Rainbow(October 1921, May 1922); the first contained HPL’s “Nietzscheism and Realism” (a series of aphorisms derived from two of his letters to Sonia) and his revision of Sonia’s poem “Mors Omnibus Communis,” the second his story “Celephaïs.”

In the spring of 1922 Sonia persuaded HPL to come to New York to meet his friends, notably Samuel Loveman; HPL stayed in Sonia’s apartment (April 6–12) while she stayed with a neighbor. She then persuaded HPL to spend more than a week with her in Gloucester and Magnolia, Mass. (June 26– July 5)—evidently the first time HPL had spent time alone with a woman to whom he was not related. At this time Sonia conceived the idea for the story “The Horror at Martin’s Beach,” which HPL later revised for her (published in WT[November 1923] as “The Invisible Monster”). The story “Four O’clock” (first published in HM[1970 ed.]) may also have been conceived then, but Sonia later testified that HPL merely suggested that she write it, and did not contribute any prose to the story (see Sonia H.Davis to Winfield Townley Scott, December 11, 1948; ms., JHL). In late July, HPL came to New York again—both to see Sonia and to continue on to Cleveland, where he spent time with Loveman and Alfred Galpin (July 30–August 15). Returning to New York, he stayed with Sonia until mid-October.

By the spring of 1924 it was clear that HPL and Sonia were seriously involved. The impetus to marry probably came from her, but HPL agreed to it apparently without reluctance. He did not, however, inform his aunts of his decision; instead, he boarded a train to New York on March 2 and married Sonia the

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next day at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Manhattan. They left for a honeymoon in Philadelphia on March 4, but they spent much of the time retyping “Under the Pyramids,” a story ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, the typescript of which HPL had left in the Providence train station. They settled in Sonia’s apartment in Flatbush. (Her daughter Florence moved out around this time; evidence suggests that Florence did not approve of Sonia’s marriage to HPL.) Shortly thereafter Sonia either lost her position at Ferle Heller’s or resigned in order to begin her own independent hat shop; this venture was a failure, and by July HPL himself had to consider finding employment; his efforts were notably unsuccessful. From May 1924 to July 1925 Sonia was President of the UAPA and HPL Official Editor; they managed to publish a few issues of the United Amateur,largely containing contributions by themselves and their colleagues.

In October 1924 Sonia was stricken with a gastric attack and had to spend several days in a hospital. By the end of December she managed to secure employment at Mabley & Carew’s, a department store in Cincinnati; she left on December 31. Sonia’s health continued to be poor. She twice spent time in a private hospital in Cincinnati, and by late February 1925 had lost her position and returned to Brooklyn. She spent most of the period from late March to early June in the home of a woman physician in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. After staying in Brooklyn for most of June and July, she secured a job at Halle’s, the leading department store in Cleveland, and worked there for just under a year. The result was that, during the period 1925–26 (when HPL moved into a single-room apartment at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn), she was with HPL for a total of only three months, mostly for a few days at a time at widely scattered intervals.

By the spring of 1926 Sonia acquiesced in the wishes of HPL’s aunts that HPL return to Providence. She came with him to assist him in the relocation on April 17, spending about a week with him before returning to Brooklyn (she had by this time left Halle’s). At some point, either at this time or some months later, Sonia proposed opening a hat shop in Providence; but HPL’s aunts refused the offer, feeling it shameful for their nephew to have a wife working as a tradeswoman in their native city, where they were still part of the informal social aristocracy. For the next two years their relationship was conducted almost solely by correspondence, although HPL did return to New York on September 13–19, 1926, presumably because Sonia (who now had a position in Chicago) was on a purchasing trip to New York and asked HPL to come. In the spring of 1928 Sonia asked HPL to come to Brooklyn again, as she was setting up another hat shop. HPL stayed at her apartment (395 East 16th Street) from April 24 to June 7 while helping her set up the shop.

By the end of 1928 Sonia must have begun to press for divorce, since she was no longer satisfied with a marriage by correspondence. HPL repeatedly refused to grant the divorce, claiming that a “gentleman did not divorce his wife without cause,” but he finally relented. Because of the restrictive divorce laws in New York State, the divorce was initiated in Rhode Island, under the charade that Sonia had deserted HPL. The final decree must have been issued in March or April 1929, but HPL did not sign it; therefore, he was never technically divorced from Sonia, and Sonia’s subsequent marriage was legally bigamous.

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The last time Sonia saw HPL was in mid-March 1933, when she had come to Hartford, Conn., for a visit and asked HPL to join her. (In correspondence HPL mentions the trip but not that he was meeting Sonia.) Later that year Sonia left for California; prior to her departure she destroyed HPL’s letters to her (only a few postcards survive). In 1936 she married Dr. Nathaniel Davis. She did not hear of HPL’s death until 1945. Three years later her memoir “Howard Phillips Lovecraft as His Wife Remembers Him” appeared in the Providence Sunday Journal(August 22, 1948), heavily edited by Winfield Townley Scott, the Journal’sliterary editor. Further edited by August Derleth, it appeared in Catsas “Lovecraft as I Knew Him” (rpt. LR). The original version, which survives at JHL, was published uncut bearing her original title: The Private Life of H.P. Lovecraft(Necronomicon Press, 1985, 1992). Additional recollections were published as “Memories of Lovecraft: I” ( Arkham Collector, Winter 1969; rpt. LR). Some letters by her to August Derleth in the 1940s were published in Gerry de la Ree’s article, “When Sonia Sizzled” (in Wilfred B.Talman, et al., The Normal Lovecraft[Gerry de la Ree, 1973]).

See R.Alain Everts, “Mrs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” Nyctalops2, No. 1 (April 1973): 45. Davis, Walker and Audrey.

In “The Curse of Yig,” they are settlers in the Oklahoma Territory in 1889. Walker, who has a tremendous fear of snakes, is inadvertantly killed by Audrey when she mistakes him for Yig, the legendary snake god. She herself gives birth to three half-human, half-snake offspring, of which only one survives.

“Deaf, Dumb, and Blind.”

Short story (4,720 words); written in collaboration with C.M.Eddy, c. February 1924. First published in WT(April 1925); first collected in DB;corrected text in HM.

A deaf, dumb, and blind man, Richard Blake, “the author-poet from Boston,” rents a lonely cottage— the Tanner place, on the outskirts of Fenton—because he thinks its “weird traditions and shuddering hints” might be an imaginative stimulus. The hermit Simeon Tanner had been found dead in the house in 1819, and something about the expression on his face led the townspeople to burn the body and the books and papers in the house. Blake moves into the place with his manservant, Dobbs. But after some anomalous incident Dobbs flees, babbling incoherently. Blake is left to himself, and he records his impressions in a diary he is preparing on his typewriter. This diary shows that Blake had become aware of some nameless presence in the house, and presently he somehow hearsbizarre sounds, then a blast of cold air, and finally icy fingers “that draw me down into a cesspool of eternal iniquity.” Blake is found dead, and Dr. Arlo Morehouse, who comes to investigate, becomes certain that the final bit of writing found in the machine was not typed by Blake. In a letter to August Derleth (in DB), Eddy reports: “[HPL] was unhappy with my handling of the note found in the typewriter at the very end of the protagonist’s account of his eerie experiences, the final paragraph that seemed to have been typed by one of his persecutors. After several conferences over it, and an equal number of attempts on my part to do it justice, he finally agreed to re

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write the last paragraph.” This seems to suggest—although perhaps not by design—that HPL revised only the last paragraph; in truth, the entire tale was probably revised, although Eddy presumably wrote the first draft.

The tale’s conclusion bears some analogy with “The Statement of Randolph Carter”: in that story, the monstrous entity makes its presence known by speech (through a telephone); here, the entity reveals itself by writing. There is also a foreshadowing of “The Dunwich Horror,” in that Simeon Tanner is said to have “bricked up the windows of the southeast room, whose east wall gave on the swamp,” suggesting that he had kept some creature imprisoned within the room, just as Old Man Whateley attempted to contain Wilbur Whateley’s twin.

[Death Diary.]

Written January 1–March 11, 1937.

HPL’s so-called death diary is mentioned in his obituary in the New York Times:“As he neared the end of his life, he turned his scholarly interest to a study of his own physical condition and daily wrote minutely of his case for his physician’s assistance. His clinical notes ended only when he could no longer hold a pencil.” The diary does not survive—R.H.Barlow probably kept it after he had gone through HPL’s papers—but Barlow transcribed numerous entries from it in his letter to August Derleth of March 31, 1937 (ms., SHSW). These entries have been published as an appendix to R.Alain Everts, The Death of a Gentleman: The Last Days of Howard Phillips Lovecraft(Strange Co., 1987).

de Castro, Adolphe (1859–1959).

Correspondent and revision client of HPL. He was born Gustav Adolphe Danziger in a Germanspeaking Russian territory along the Baltic Sea, and studied at the University of Bonn. He moved to the United States in 1886, was employed at one time or another at tasks as diverse as dentist and American consul in Madrid. He became acquainted with Ambrose Bierce and did the basic translation from German into English of Der Mönch des Berchtesgarten(1890) by Richard Voss (1851–1918), which Bierce then revised and polished; it was published as The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter (serialized 1891; book form 1892). He adopted the name de Castro (from a remote Spanish ancestor) in 1921. His Portrait of Ambrose Bierce(revised by Frank Belknap Long, who also wrote a preface, after HPL turned down the job) was published in 1929; it tells of his efforts to find Bierce in Mexico in early 1920s. De Castro also wrote several treatises (e.g., Jewish Forerunners of Christianity [E.P.Dutton, 1903]), novels, and volumes of poetry. He published a short story collection, In the Confessional and the Following(1893); in 1927, seeking to capitalize upon his relations with Bierce, he came in touch with HPL (through Samuel Loveman) and asked HPL to rewrite some stories for republication. HPL stated that he managed to “land” at least three with magazines, but only two are known: “The Last Test” ( WT,November 1928; originally “A Sacrifice for Science”) and “The Electric Executioner” ( WT,August 1930; originally “The Automatic Executioner”). De Castro’s originals were reprinted in Crypt No. 10 (1982). In 1934–35 HPL considered revising de Castro’s social-political treatise The New Way,but ultimately declined. During a visit to Providence in August 1936, de Castro, HPL, and R.H. Barlow composed acrostic poems on Edgar Allan Poe in St. John’s churchyard. De Castro’s was later published in WT(May 1937).

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See Chris Powell, “The Revised Adolphe Danziger de Castro,” LSNo. 36 (Spring 1997): 18–25. de la Mare, Walter [John] (1873–1956).

British author whose weird work (a small segment of his oeuvre) HPL admired. HPL first read de la Mare in the summer of 1926 (see SL2.57) and accordingly added a substantial paragraph about him to “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” singling out stories in The Riddle and Other Stories(1923) and The Connoisseur and Other Stories(1926), notably “Seaton’s Aunt” (in the former volume), de la Mare’s best-known weird tale. HPL also spoke highly of the novel The Return(1910; rev. 1922), which, in its depiction of a man possessed by the spirit of an eighteenth-century criminal, was surely an influence on HPL’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward(1927). HPL also had praise for de la Mare’s weird poem “The Listeners” (in The Listeners and Other Poems,1912). De la Mare is today probably better known for his writings for children, but his weird tales still attract a devoted following. See Diana Ross McCrosson, Walter de la Mare(1966); Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare(1993).

Delapore,———.

The narrator of “The Rats in the Walls,” whose decision to restore Exham Priory, the home of his ancestors in England, ultimately leads to his downfall and his confinement in an insane asylum. Gilbert de la Poer, first Baron Exham, was granted the site of Exham Priory in 1261. Walter de la Poer, eleventh Baron Exham, fled to Virginia, probably in the seventeenth century, and founded the family later known as Delapore. Randolph Delapore is the cousin of the narrator of “The Rats in the Walls,” who “became a voodoo priest after he returned from the Mexican War.” Alfred Delapore is the narrator’s son. In 1917, he served overseas as an aviation officer, becoming friendly with Capt. Edward Norrys. He was injured and died two years later. His name is probably a nod toward HPL’s friend, Alfred Galpin.

“Department of Public Criticism.”

Column criticizing amateur publications appearing in the United Amateur

HPL wrote the columns for: January 1915; March 1915; May 1915; September 1915; December 1915; April 1916; June 1916; August 1916 (subtitled “First Annual Report, 1915–1916”); September 1916; March 1917; May 1917; July 1917; January 1918; March 1918; May 1918; September 1918 (in part); November 1918 (in part); January 1919 (in part); March 1919; May 1919 (in part). HPL notes (“What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other”) that he had been appointed chairman of the Department of Public Criticism in the fall of 1914, taking over for Ada P.Campbell; HPL was then reappointed to the post for the 1915–16 and 1916–17 terms. Rheinhart Kleiner was appointed chairman for 1917–18, but HPL notes (letter to Arthur Harris, January 12, 1918; ms., JHL) that Kleiner was unable to serve, so that HPL ended up writing some of the articles for that official year. He was reappointed for the 1918–19 year.

The articles are, on the whole, rather mundane criticisms of the prose and verse appearing in the amateur journals of the period, largely concerned with pointing out grammatical errors in prose and errors in meter and scansion in

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poetry; occasionally HPL reveals his own prejudices by contesting the authors’ opinions on literary, social, and political topics. The column was largely designed for an educational purpose, as a means of assisting amateurs to improve their writing skills. Some of HPL’s articles are of great length—the column for September 1915 is 7,225 words long.

Derby, Edward Pickman.

In “The Thing on the Doorstep,” the weak-willed husband of Asenath Waite, who forces him to exchange his personality with hers. As a youth, Derby was a boy genius, who published the volume of poetry, Azathoth and Other Horrors . After undergoing several horrible experiences in the company of his wife, including participation in various gatherings of the witch-cult, he summons up the nerve to kill Asenath, burying her in the basement of their house in Arkham. But Asenath’s personality survives, and she thrusts Derby’s personality into her decaying corpse while she occupies his own body. With incredible effort, Derby unearths himself from his makeshift grave and brings a message to his longtime friend Daniel Upton, urging Dan to kill the individual occupying his own body. Derby appears to be a synthesis of HPL’s various protégés—chiefly Frank Belknap Long and Alfred Galpin—and perhaps Clark Ashton Smith. Like HPL, Derby marries a strong-willed woman somewhat late in life, although the woman HPL married was several years older than him whereas Asenath is fifteen years younger than Edward.

Derleth, August [William] (1909–1971).

Novelist, poet, biographer, anthologist, correspondent of HPL (1926–37), and later his publisher. Derleth published stories in WTfrom 1926 onward; he began work on serious regional writing and character studies around 1929 with The Early Years(later published as Evening in Spring[1941]). He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1930, writing an honor’s thesis, “The Weird Tale in English Since 1890,” influenced heavily by HPL’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (it was published in the Ghost,May 1945). He began writing “Solar Pons” detective stories in 1929; later he wrote Judge Peck detective novels (read by HPL) published by Loring & Mussey. His first serious mainstream work to be published was Place of Hawks(Loring & Mussey, 1935), consisting of four novelettes, all read in manuscript by HPL. Derleth collaborated with Mark Schorer on numerous horror tales, including “Lair of the Star-Spawn” ( WT,August 1932; title suggested by HPL), which introduced the Tcho-Tcho people (mentioned by HPL in “The Shadow out of Time”). He became fascinated with HPL’s mythos around 1931; at that time he urged HPL to name it “The Mythology of Hastur.” A resolute professional writer, he urged HPL to market his work more vigorously. In 1933, without HPL’s permission, he submitted to WT“The Shadow over Innsmouth,” which was rejected, and “The Dreams in the Witch House,” which was accepted. He also tried to interest Loring & Mussey in a collection of HPL’s work in early 1935, but the stories HPL submitted were rejected. Stunned by HPL’s death in 1937, Derleth began immediately with Donald Wandrei (to whom HPL had introduced him in 1927) to compile HPL’s writings into three volumes (fiction, essays and miscellany, and letters). Scribner’s and

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Simon & Schuster turned down The Outsider and Others,so Derleth and Wandrei published it themselves in 1939 under the imprint of Arkham House. Arkham House published many later volumes by HPL, all compiled by Derleth, including BWS, Marginalia(1944), Cats(1949), SR(1959), Dreams and Fancies(1962), Collected Poems(1963), and DB(1966), some of which contain valuable memoirs by HPL’s colleagues, commissioned by Derleth. He compiled HPL’s Best Supernatural Stories for World Pub. Co. (1945) and later disseminated HPL’s work in England (Victor Gollancz) and in foreign languages (see his article, “H.P.Lovecraft: The Making of a Literary Reputation, 1937–1971,” Books at Brown25 [1977]: 13–25). From 1937 onward he arranged for the transcription of HPL’s letters for the project that was eventually published, with many delays, as Selected Letters(1965– 76; 5 vols.), although Donald Wandrei performed most of the actual editing.

Derleth veritably controlled all HPL activity from 1937 to 1971. He wrote many tales of the “Cthulhu Mythos,” veering far from HPL’s original conception, including “The Return of Hastur” (first draft 1931; rewritten 1937; WT,March 1939), The Mask of Cthulhu(Arkham House, 1958), and The Trail of Cthulhu(Arkham House, 1962). He also wrote sixteen “posthumous collaborations” with HPL, most of which were based on brief entries in HPL’s commonplace book (the short novel The Lurker at the Threshold[Arkham House, 1945] contains a small amount of actual prose by HPL); they are gathered in The Watchers out of Time and Others(Arkham House, 1974). He encouraged some writers to contribute to the mythos but discouraged others (e.g., C.Hall Thompson). He compiled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos(Arkham House, 1969). Derleth wrote many articles attributing his views of the mythos to HPL, among them “H.P.Lovecraft, Outsider” ( River,June 1937; later revised as the introduction to The Outsider and Others), which coined the term “Cthulhu mythology.” He wrote a brief biocritical study, H.P.L: A Memoir(1945); decades later he did considerable work on an expanded edition, H.P.Lovecraft: Notes toward a Biography,but did not complete it (the manuscript survives in SHSW, where the bulk of Derleth’s papers and HPL’s letters to him reside). He also compiled many anthologies of weird and science fiction (many including stories by HPL) and wrote numerous mainstream novels, short stories, poetry, biographies, etc.

See 100 Books by August Derleth(Arkham House, 1962); Robert M.Price, “The Lovecraft-Derleth Connection,” LSNo. 7 (Fall 1982): 18–23; Alison M. Wilson, August Derleth: A Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1983).

de Russy, Antoine.

In “Medusa’s Coil,” a Louisiana planter whose decaying mansion is visited by the narrator, who spends the night there. De Russy’s tale about his son and his mysterious wife, whom he buried in the cellar of his house, constitute the story’s narrative.

de Russy, Denis.

In “Medusa’s Coil,” a young man who visits Paris and there falls in love with and marries the mysterious Marceline Bedard, whom he brings to Missouri to live with him. His friend Frank Marsh is captivated by Marceline, and he desires to paint her portrait. De Russy suspects his wife of infidelity with

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Marsh, but later he realizes that Marsh has been trying to inform him of his wife’s tainted background, and he kills her. He is strangled by Marceline’s animate hair.

de Russy, Marceline (Bedard).

In “Medusa’s Coil,” an alluring young woman in Paris who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of the Marquis de Chameaux, but who, after she marries Denis de Russy and returns with him to his estate in Missouri, is revealed to be not only an ancient entity endowed with animate hair, but also “a negress.”

“Descendant, The”

(title supplied by R.H.Barlow). Fragmentary story (1,500 words); probably written in early 1927. First published in Leaves(1938); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in D.

Lord Northam is thought “harmlessly mad” by the people who know him; he lives with a cat in Gray’s Inn, London, and “all he seeks from life is not to think.” A man of great learning, Northam has been scarred by some harrowing incident in the past. One day a young man named Williams brings Lord Northam a copy of the Necronomicon,at the mere sight of which Northam faints. He then tells Williams the story of his life: he is a member of a family that extends very far back in history, perhaps to one Cnaeus Gabinius Capito, a military tribune in Roman Britain who had supposedly come upon “strange folk …[who] made the Elder Sign in the dark.” Northam himself, in his youth, had sought to penetrate the mysteries of Satanism and occultism, filled with “the tantalising faith that somewhere an easy gate existed, which if one found would admit him freely to those outer deeps whose echoes rattled so dimly at the back of his memory.” (At this point the fragment ends.) It is difficult to ascertain HPL’s plans for this item. In April 1927 he speaks of “making a very careful study of London…in order to get background for tales involving richer antiquities than America can furnish” (HPL to August Derleth, [April 15, 1927]; ms., SHSW), leading one to believe that the fragment was written around this time (not in 1926, as commonly assumed). Some external features of Lord Northam bring Arthur Machen and Lord Dunsany to mind, although in a superficial way. Northam lives at Gray’s Inn, where Machen lived for many years; and Northam is the “nineteenth Baron of a line whose beginnings went uncomfortably far back into the past,” just as Dunsany was the eighteenth Baron in a line founded in the twelfth century. Northam, like Randolph Carter in “The Silver Key,” undertakes a wide-ranging sampling of various religious and aesthetic ideals, allowing us perhaps to believe that the fragment was written after “The Silver Key.”

See S.T. Joshi, “On ‘The Descendant,’” CryptNo. 53 (Candlemas 1988): 10–11.

Description of the Town of Quebeck, A.

Essay (78,000 words); written September 1930–January 14, 1931. First published in HPL’s To Quebec and the Stars(1976), ed. L.Sprague de Camp.

HPL’s single longest literary work—an exhaustive history of Quebec and a detailed travelogue of the city and neighboring regions, based upon his first ecstatic visit to the region in late summer of 1930. HPL relied largely on published

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histories and guidebooks for much of his historical account, but the travelogue section is manifestly based upon first-hand experience. The entire text is written in exquisite eighteenth-century English and reflects a British attitude in recording the defeat of the French by the English in the course of the eighteenth century. The text is filled with HPL’s drawings of typical Quebec architecture, and there is an appendix providing French and English names of prominent landmarks and the origins of placenames and street-names. HPL never prepared the text for publication, nor even a typescript to circulate among colleagues; hence it long remained unpublished. De Camp’s edition contains many mistranscriptions and also fails to correct several instances of HPL’s erroneous French. “Despair.”

Poem (40 lines in 5 stanzas); written c. February 19, 1919. First published in Pine Cones(June 1919).

A brooding, pessimistic poem speaking of “Sweet Oblivion” to be found “beyond the groans and grating/Of abhorrent Life.” HPL notes ( SL1.79) that the poem was written in response to the illness of his mother, who had suffered a nervous breakdown and would soon be transferred to Butler Hospital, where she would die two years later.

Desrochers,———.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” a French Canadian who lives in the room directly below Walter Gilman’s in the Witch House in Arkham, and who sees and hears numerous odd things during the time of Gilman’s dreams and sleepwalking.

Dexter, Mercy.

In “The Shunned House,” the maiden sister of Rhoby (Dexter) Harris, who moves into the Shunned House in 1768 to tend to Rhoby, who had lapsed into insanity after the death of her husband and several of her children. Her health begins to fail from the moment she occupies the house, and she dies in 1782.

[Diary: 1925.]

Diary; unpublished (ms., JHL).

A small pocket diary in which HPL wrote very compressed records of his activities during 1925, when he was living alone at 169 Clinton Street. A sample entry: [March 1] “Up noon—call on GK [George Kirk]—SH [Sonia] get dinner here—eggs—pot. chips—crackers—cheese GW coffee—read papers— write Sonny [Frank Belknap Long] telephone—SL [Samuel Loveman] GK RK [Rheinhart Kleiner] call & go out to dinner—Wrote LDC [Lillian D. Clark]////Boys return—Session at Kirk’s—out to Scotch Bakery—GK & HP return to talk till dawn—retire.”

“Diary of Alonzo Typer, The.”

Short story (8,260 words); ghostwritten for William Lumley, October 1935. First published in WT (February 1938); first collected in BWS;corrected text in HM

In a spectral house in upstate New York, strange forces were summoned by a Dutch family, the van der Heyls, that had resided there. Alonzo Typer, an occult explorer, attempts to fathom the mysteries of the place. He senses several strange presences in the house, especially in the cellar. He realizes that he will

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probably not be allowed to leave and that some great cataclysm is to occur around Walpurgisnacht (May Eve). At length he discovers that an “ancient forgotten One” is lurking beneath the house who will show Typer “the gateway I would enter, and give me the lost signs and words I shall need.” At the climactic moment, Typer realizes that he himself is related to the van der Heyls and that he has been called here for the fulfilling of some hideous purpose. Typer continues writing in his diary to the last: “Too late—cannot help self—black paws materialise—am dragged away toward the cellar….” The story was based upon a nearly illiterate draft produced by Lumley (published in CryptNo. 10 [1982]: 21–25). HPL, while preserving such as he could of the draft—including such of Lumley’s inventions as the Book of Forbidden Things,“the seven lost signs of terror,” the mysterious city YianHo, and the like—has at least made some coherent sense of the plot. The preposterous conclusion, however, is HPL’s own.

HPL revised the story for no pay, thinking that it would encourage Lumley’s efforts at writing. Lumley promptly submitted the story to WT,where it was accepted in December 1935 for $70, but for some reason there was a long delay in its magazine publication.

“Disinterment, The.”

Short story (4,600 words); written in collaboration with Duane W.Rimel, September 1935. First published in WT(January 1937); corrected text in HM.

The unnamed narrator awakes to find himself in a hospital bed in a private clinic—a “veritable medieval fortress.” He then remembers that he had contracted leprosy while in the Orient and had appealed to his friend, Marshall Andrews, for help. Andrews, a surgeon of dubious reputation, persuades the narrator to spend nearly a year in his castle undergoing treatment. Then Andrews goes to the West Indies to study “native” medical methods. Returning, Andrews claims that he has found a drug in Haiti that could simulate death, even to temporary rigor mortis. The plan is to inject the narrator with the drug, have him declared dead, interred in a grave, and then resurrected. In this way the narrator could assume another identity without the stigma of leprosy. As the narrator wakes, he feels the lingering effects of the drug, and he seems paralyzed. Gradually the paralysis passes, but movement of arms and legs is still painful and jerky. There seems to be some kind of alienation between the narrator’s head and the rest of his body. Tormented by dreams and suspecting that some nameless experiment has been made upon him, he staggers out of bed, finds Andrews sleeping in a chair, and kills him with a candelabrum. He later kills Andrews’ butler, Simes. Going outside, he approaches his manor house and enters the family cemetery. He comes to his own tombstone, begins to dig up the grave, and finds to his horror his own headless body: Andrews had transplanted his head upon the body of an African American from Haiti.

HPL discusses the story in a letter to Rimel of September 28, 1935: “First of all, let me congratulate you on the story. Really, it’s splendid—one of your best so far! The suspense & atmosphere of dread are admirable, & the scenes are very vividly managed…. I’ve gone over the MS. very carefully with a view to improving the smoothness of the prose style—& I hope you’ll find the slight

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verbal changes acceptable” (ms., JHL). The critical issue is what to make of this statement (the manuscript or typescript, with HPL’s putative corrections, does not survive). The fact that HPL refers to “slight verbal changes” should not lead us to minimize his role in the tale, since this may simply be an instance of his customary modesty. Rimel maintains that HPL performed only slight revisions on the story; but if so, then Rimel never came so close to imitating HPL’s style and idiom. The tale bears some resemblance to HPL’s early tales of the macabre, notably “The Outsider.” See Will Murray, “Facts in the Case of ‘The Disinterment,’” LSNo. 17 (Fall 1988): 30–33. “Does Vulcan Exist?”

Essay, purportedly by HPL, dating to 1906. Printed by August Derleth in H.P.L: A Memoir(1945). Derleth claimed that this item was part of or an entire astronomy column published in the Providence Journal;but HPL had no column in the Journal. It is more likely that this is an unpublished juvenile manuscript that Derleth had come upon when going through HPL’s papers and that he assumed it had appeared in the Journal(probably the only Providence newspaper of which he was aware). From internal evidence, the text seems to be by HPL and probably does date to around 1906. Dombrowski, Mr. and Mrs.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” the landlords of the Witch House in Arkham at the time when Walter Gilman experiences his bizarre dreams and sleepwalking.

“Doom That Came to Sarnath, The.”

Short story (2,740 words); written on December 3, 1919. First published in the Scot(June 1920), a Scottish amateur journal edited by Gavin T.McColl; rpt. Marvel Tales(March–April 1935) and WT (June 1938); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D.

Ten thousand years ago, in the land of Mnar, stood the stone city of Ib near a vast still lake. Ib was inhabited by “beings not pleasing to behold”: they were “in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it…they had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voice.” Many eons later new folk came to Mnar and founded the city of Sarnath; these were the first human beings of the region, “dark shepherd folk with their fleecy flocks.” They loathed the creatures of Ib and destroyed both the town and its inhabitants, preserving only the “sea-green stone idol chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the water-lizard.” After this Sarnath flourished greatly. Every year a festival is held commemorating the destruction of Ib, and the thousandth year of this festival was to be of exceptional lavishness. But during the feasting and celebrating Sarnath is overrun by “a horde of indescribable green voiceless things with bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears.” Sarnath is destroyed.

Many features in the story betray borrowings from Dunsany, but all in externals. HPL thought he had come by the name Sarnath independently, but maintained that he later found it in a story by Dunsany; this is not, however, the case. Sarnath is also a real city in India (purportedly the place where Buddha first taught), but HPL may not have known this. The green idol Bokrug is reminis

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cent of the green jade gods of Dunsany’s play The Gods of the Mountain(in Five Plays,1914). Mention of a throne “wrought of one piece of ivory, though no man lives who knows whence so vast a piece could have come” echoes a celebrated passage (noted by HPL in “Supernatural Horror in Literature”) in “Idle Days on the Yann” (in A Dreamer’s Tales,1910) of an ivory gate “carved out of one solid piece!” The style of the tale is also superficially Dunsanian.

Douglas, Capt. J.B.

In At the Mountains of Madness,the captain of the brig Arkham,one of the supply ships for the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31.

Dow, Johnny.

In “The Horror in the Burying-Ground,” a friend of Tom Sprague who goes mad after witnessing the apparent deaths of Sprague and his enemy, Henry Thorndike.

Dowdell, William J. (1898–1953).

Amateur writer in Cleveland. Dowdell edited several amateur journals, including Dowdell’s Bearcat, which printed several works by HPL, including the essay “The Dignity of Journalism” (July 1915) and the poems “To Samuel Loveman, Esquire…” (December 1915) and “An American to Mother England” (November 1916). HPL criticized Dowdell’s Cleveland Sun(coedited with Anthony F.Moitoret and Edwin D.Harkins) for its excessive imitation of cheap newspaper standards, especially its inclusion of “The Best Sport Page in Amateurdom” (see “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur, September 1916). In 1919 Dowdell led a campaign criticizing HPL’s purportedly high-handed centralization of authority in the UAPA (see “For Official Editor—Anne Tillery Renshaw,” Conservative, July 1919); in 1922 HPL lost his battle, being ousted as Official Editor of the UAPA. At this time Dowdell was himself President of the NAPA, but resigned late in the year (HPL later remarked that Dowdell “ran off with a chorus girl”: HPL to Lillian D.Clark, July 27, 1925; ms., JHL); the NAPA’s Executive Judges appointed HPL interim President for 1922–23. No more is heard of Dowdell either in amateur circles or in professional journalism.

Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The.

Short novel (43,100 words); written October 1926–January 22, 1927. First published in BWS;rpt. Arkham Sampler(Winter 1948–Autumn 1948); corrected text in MM

Randolph Carter engages in a quest through dreamland in search of the “sunset city” of his dreams, which he can no longer attain. The city is described as follows: “All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles.” He believes that his only recourse is to plead his case before the “hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath.” No one in dreamland knows where Kadath is, and the journey appears to be fraught with dangers, but Carter undertakes the quest nonetheless.

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He first visits the land of the zoogs, “furtive and secretive” creatures who live in burrows or in the trunks of trees. They do not know where Kadath is, but one elderly zoog has heard that a copy of the “inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts” is at Ulthar and that it tells much about the gods. So Carter makes his way to Ulthar, beyond the river Skai, where the friendly cats cluster about him. Carter seeks the patriarch Atal, who long ago had ascended Mt. Hatheg-Kla in the company of Barzai the Wise, in order to look upon the gods; only Atal had come down. Carter drugs Atal with the zoogs’ moon-wine, so that Atal becomes talkative: he tells Carter of a great image of the gods (called the Great Ones or the gods of earth) carved on Mt. Ngranek, on the isle of Oriab; if Carter were to see this image, and then look for similar images among the races of dreamland, he would probably find the gods. The gods, after all, were fond of marrying the daughters of men and producing offspring who had divine blood in their veins and divine features on their countenances.

At Atal’s urging, Carter joins a caravan bound for Dylath-Leen, a great city on the Southern Sea. Arriving there, he hears that ships from Baharna, a city on Oriab, came occasionally to trade at Dylath-Leen. These ships had an unsavory reputation, for they would merely exchange enormous rubies for hordes of black slaves. Presently such a ship comes into the harbor, and Carter speaks to one of the merchants on it; but the merchant plies Carter with drugged wine, and he is taken aboard the ship as a prisoner. Carter suspects that the ship is in league with the Other Gods, who under the aegis of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep protect the mild gods of earth. The ship sails between the Basalt Pillars of the West, and then leaps into the air and lands on the moon, eventually docking at a peculiar city on a “leprous-looking coast”; on the shore are huge grayish-white toadlike creatures moving cargo and slaves off the ships. Other creatures, turbaned and approximately human in outline, are also seen. Two of the toad-creatures seize Carter and take him to a dungeon, and later he is led in a procession, surrounded by both the toads and the almost-human entities. Suddenly Carter hears the yell of a cat, and he realizes that the moon is where all cats come at night. Carter, knowing the cats’ language, utters a cry for help; and there ensues a battle between the cats on one side and the toad-creatures and almost-humans on the other side. The cats prevail and then make a gigantic leap back to earth, Carter safely carried along in their midst.

Carter finds himself back at Dylath-Leen and this time boards a ship for the isle of Oriab. Reaching the port of Baharna, Carter undertakes the arduous ascent of Mt. Ngranek; finally attaining the farther side of it, he is astounded at the enormous face carved thereon. But mingled with his awe is recognition, for Carter knows that he has seen likenesses of that face in the taverns of the seaport Celephaïs, ruled by King Kuranes. Carter knows he must head there, but before he can climb down the mountain he is plucked by hideous winged creatures with no faces—the night-gaunts. They bear him beyond the Peaks of Thok and leave him in the vale of Pnath, “where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes.” Carter is, however, aware that bholes are terrified of ghouls, and he has had dealings in the past with ghouls—specifically with one ghoul named Richard Upton Pickman, who used to be a man. Carter summons the ghouls, who lower an enormous rope ladder up which he climbs to the top of a crag. The ghouls take

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Carter to Pickman, who “had become a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world.” Carter outlines his plan to get to the enchanted wood and thence to Celephaïs, but Pickman tells him that to do so he will have to pass through the kingdom of the gugs, “hairy and gigantic,” and their enemies, the ghasts. Pickman gives Carter a handful of ghouls to accompany him to the gugs’ kingdom and has Carter disguise himself as a ghoul.

Carter and the ghouls reach the kingdom of the gugs. They seek to ascend a cliff to the enchanted wood, but encounter an enormous gug, fifteen feet high and with a mouth that opens vertically. At that moment, however, the gug is attacked by a swarm of ghasts, and this allows Carter and his escorts to go forth and reach an enormous tower with huge stone steps leading up. After “aeons of climbing” they reach the summit, going through a stone trapdoor just before a gug can capture them. At this point the ghouls leave Carter to return to their own realm. As he is making his way through the enchanted wood, he overhears zoogs planning a war of revenge upon the cats, who had killed several zoogs when Carter was at Ulthar. Carter realizes that he must foil the plan, so he summons the cats and informs them of the zoogs’ scheme.

Carter follows the river Oukranos to Kiran and Thran, and there boards a galleon to Celephaïs. He describes to the mariners the face on Mt. Ngranek, and the mariners tell him that people matching that description are found in a faraway twilight land called Inganok, close to Leng. After passing by Hlanith, Carter comes to Celephaïs, where he meets his old friend Kuranes. But Kuranes, although now a king, longs for his old home. Trevor Towers, in England, and suggests that Carter’s “sunset city” may not be as satisfying as he thinks.

At length a ship from Inganok docks at the harbor, and Carter is thrilled to see “living faces so like the godlike features on Ngranek.” Carter takes passage on their ship and eventually comes to the onyx city of Inganok. He is unnerved to see again the slant-eyed merchant who had drugged him in Dylath-Leen, but the latter disappears before Carter can speak to him. Carter wishes to talk with the onyx-miners in the north, so he hires a yak for the purpose and makes his way to the quarries. Ascending the black cliffs higher and higher, Carter reaches the crest and sees, far in the distance, what appears to be an enormous range of black mountains, but is in fact a series of gigantic onyx figures, “their right hands raised in menace against mankind.” From their laps Carter sees arising a black cloud of shantak-birds. In front of him he sees the slant-eyed merchant astride a yak and leading a horde of shantaks. The merchant compels Carter to mount one of the birds, and they fly through space to the doorway of a windowless stone monastery in Leng. Carter is led before a “lumpish figure robed in yellow silk…and having a yellow silken mask over its face,” whom Carter realizes as the “highpriest not to be described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal possibilities.” At one point the priest’s mask slips, and the brief glimpse of the face impels Carter to flee madly through the labyrinthine corridors of the monastery. Without warning he slides down an almost vertical burrow and, seemingly miles below, finds himself in a ruined city that he recognizes is Sarkomand.

Carter sees a glow ahead, and approaching carefully he sees that it is a campfire near the seashore, where a black galley from the moon is docked; around the campfire Carter sees a group of the toadlike moon-beasts, who have captured his

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erstwhile ghoul escorts. Carter realizes that he must summon help, so he goes down an immense set of spiral staircases; but as he is slipping down the steps, he is caught up by night-gaunts. Now aware that the night-gaunts are in league with the ghouls, Carter utters a ghoul-cry and tells the nightgaunt to take him back to Pickman and his cohorts. Explaining the situation to the ghouls, he sees them arraying themselves for battle, each ghoul jumping astride a night-gaunt and flying toward the seashore where the captured ghouls are being held. Another battle ensues, with the ghouls and night-gaunts eventually victorious. The ghouls decide to exterminate the garrison of the toadlike creatures, and they board a captured galley with the night-gaunts and defeat the moon-beasts and their almost-human slaves in a titanic struggle.

In gratitude for Carter’s assistance, the entire army of ghouls and nightgaunts agrees to accompany Carter in approaching the Great Ones in their castle and making a plea for his sunset city. Flying over Leng and Inganok, they see Kadath looming in front of them—a mountain of almost inconceivable height, with the Great Ones’ castle on top. They begin an ascent, but after a time Carter notices that the night-gaunts are no longer flapping their wings: a “force not of earth” has seized the army and is bearing it up to the castle. Swept into the castle, Carter finds to his amazement that the place is entirely empty and dark, except for one small light that glowed from a tower room. Then a “daemon trumpet” blasts three times, and Carter notices that he is now alone—the ghouls and night-gaunts have disappeared. Accompanied by an array of “giant black slaves,” a “tall, slim figure with the young face of an antique Pharaoh” approaches him. It is Nyarlathotep, “messenger of the Other Gods,” and he speaks at length to Carter. The Great Ones, the gods of earth, have deserted their castle to dwell amidst Carter’s own sunset city, and this is why he himself is denied it in his dreams. But what is that sunset city? Nyarlathotep tells him:

“For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth. It is the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily. These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love….

“…These, Randolph Carter, are your city; for they are yourself. New-England bore you, and into your soul she poured a liquid loveliness which cannot die. This loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.”

What Carter must do is to go back to his sunset city and urge the Great Ones to return to their castle. Nyarlathotep provides Carter with a shantak to take him back, and they fly off. But Carter becomes aware that it is all a trick: the shantak plunges him “through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness” and is heading toward the great throne of Azathoth in “those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time.” It then occurs to Carter that all he has to do is

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wake up in his Boston room, leave dreamland behind, and take cognizance of the beauty to be found on his doorstep. He does so, and Nyarlathotep’s plan to destroy Carter and deprive him of his sunset city is foiled.

While writing the story, HPL expressed considerable doubts about its merits: “I…am very fearful that Randolph Carter’s adventures may have reached the point of palling on the reader; or that the very plethora of weird imagery may have destroyed the power of any one image to produce the desired impression of strangeness” ( SL2.94). And elsewhere: “Actually, it isn’t much good; but forms useful practice for later and more authentic attempts in the novel form” ( SL2.95). The novel has, indeed, inspired highly contradictory judgments, some HPL enthusiasts finding it almost unreadable and others, like L.Sprague de Camp ( Lovecraft: A Biography[Doubleday, 1975], p. 280), comparing it to the Alicebooks and the fantasies of George MacDonald.

If there is any dominant literary influence on the novel, it is probably William Beckford’s Vathek (1786), which is similarly an exotic fantasy written without chapter divisions. Several other features of plot and diction bring Beckford’s Arabian fantasy to mind. One other possible influence is John Uri Lloyd’s curious novel of underworld adventure, Etidorhpa(1895), which HPL read in 1918 (see SL 1.54–55). This strange work, full of windy philosophy and science defending the idea of a hollow earth, nevertheless contains some spectacularly bizarre and cosmic imagery of the narrator’s seemingly endless underworld adventures, although no specific passage seems to be echoed in HPL’s work. Nevertheless, HPL’s dreamworld creates the impression of being somehow underground (as in Carter’s descent of the 700 steps to the gate of deeper slumber), so perhaps he was thinking of how Lloyd’s narrator purportedly plunges beneath the actual surface of the earth on his peregrinations. (Some have believed that the episode involving the high-priest with the yellow silken mask is an allusion to Robert W.Chambers’s The King in Yellow[1895], but HPL would not read this work until two months after completing the Dream-Quest.)

The novel seeks to unite most of HPL’s previous “Dunsanian” tales, making explicit references to features and characters in such tales as “Celephaïs,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” “The Other Gods,” “The White Ship,” and others (not to mention the “real-world” story “Pickman’s Model”); but in doing so it creates considerable confusion. In particular, it suddenly transfers the settings of these tales into the dreamworld, whereas those tales themselves had manifestly been set in the dim prehistory of the real world.

It has frequently been conjectured that the tale carries out HPL’s old novel idea “Azathoth” (1922); but while this may be true superficially in the sense that both works seem to center around protagonists venturing on a quest for some wondrous land, in reality the novel of 1926 presents a thematic reversal of the novel idea of 1922. In the earlier work—conceived at the height of HPL’s Decadent phase—the unnamed narrator “travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world’s dreams had fled”; but he does this because “age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men.” In other words, the narrator’s only refuge from prosy reality is the world of dream. Carter thinks that this is the case for him, but at the end he finds more value and beauty in that

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reality—transmuted by his dreams and memories—than he believed. (Carter’s realization is prefigured in the episode involving Kuranes.)

In this sense, the resurrection of the Dunsanian idiom—not used since “The Other Gods” (1921)—is meant not so much as a homage as a repudiation of Dunsany, at least of what HPL at this moment took Dunsany to be. Just as, when he wrote “Lord Dunsany and His Work” in 1922, he felt that the only escape from modern disillusion would be to “worship afresh the music and colour of divine language, and take an Epicurean delight in those combinations of ideas and fancies which we know to be artificial,” so in 1926—after two years spent away from the New England soil that he now realized was his one true anchor against chaos and meaninglessness—he felt the need to reject these decorative artificialities.

See Peter Cannon, “The Influence of Vathekon H.P.Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (in FDOC); L.D.Blackmore, “Middle-Earth, Narnia and Lovecraft’s Dream World: Comparative World-Views in Fantasy,” CryptNo. 13 (Roodmas 1983): 6–15, 22; S.T.Joshi, “The Dream World and the Real World in Lovecraft,” CryptNo. 15 (Lammas 1983): 4–15; S.T.Joshi, “Lovecraft and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” CryptNo. 37 (Candlemas 1986): 25–34, 59; Giuseppe Lippi, “Lovecraft’s Dream-World Revisited,” LSNo. 26 (Spring 1992): 23–25.

“Dreams in the Witch House, The.”

Short story (4,940 words); written in February 1932. First published in WT(July 1933); first collected in O;corrected text in MM

A mathematics student at Miskatonic University named Walter Gilman who lives in a peculiarly angled room in the old Witch House in Arkham begins having bizarre dreams filled with sights, sounds, and shapes of an utterly indescribable cast; other dreams, much more realistic in nature, reveal a huge rat with human hands named Brown Jenkin, apparently the familiar of the witch Keziah Mason, who once dwelt in the Witch House. Meanwhile Gilman, in his classwork, begins to display a remarkable intuitive grasp of hyperspace, or the fourth dimension. But then his dreams take an even weirder turn, and there are indications that he is sleepwalking. Keziah seems to be urging him on in some nameless errand (“He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos”). Then in one very clear dream he sees himself “half lying on a high, fantastically balustraded terrace above a boundless jungle of outlandish, incredible peaks, balanced planes, domes, minarets, horizontal discs poisoned on pinnacles, and numberless forms of still greater wildness.” The balustrade is decorated with designs representing ridged, barrel-shaped entities (i.e., the Old Ones from At the Mountains of Madness); but Gilman wakes screaming when he sees the living barrel-shaped entities coming toward him. The next morning the barrel-shaped ornament—which he had broken off the balustrade in the dream—is found in his bed. Things seem rapidly to be reaching some hideous culmination. A baby is kidnapped and cannot be found. Then, in a dream, Gilman finds himself in a strangely angled room with Keziah, Brown Jenkin, and the baby. Keziah is going to sacrifice the child, but Gilman knocks the knife from her hand. He and Keziah engage in a fight, and he manages to frighten her momentarily by dis

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playing a crucifix given to him by a fellow tenant; when Brown Jenkin comes to her aid, he kicks the familiar down an abyss, but not before it has made some sort of sacrificial offering with the baby’s blood. The next night Gilman’s friend Frank Elwood sees a ratlike creature eat its way through Gilman’s body to his heart. The Witch House is rented no more, and years later, when it is razed, an enormous pile of human bones going back centuries is discovered, along with the bones of a huge ratlike entity.

The working title for the story was “The Dreams of Walter Gilman.” HPL states that it was typed by a revision client as payment for revisory work (HPL to August Derleth, May 14, [1932]; ms., SHSW). This may be Hazel Heald, who claimed to have typed the story. The existing manuscript (at JHL) may, however, be one that August Derleth “copied” (i.e., retyped) about a year later, as HPL suggests ( SL4.146). This typescript is remarkably accurate, and the typist seems to have had a fair ability to read HPL’s handwriting. HPL was so uncertain about the merits of his work that he elicited his colleagues’ opinions on the story before he submitted it anywhere, and so he circulated both the original and the carbon among his correspondents. Several seemed to like the story, but August Derleth’s reaction was very much the contrary, as HPL’s response suggests: “…your reaction to my poor ‘Dreams in the Witch House’ is, in kind, about what I expected—although I hardly thought the miserable mess was quiteas bad as you found it…. The whole incident shews me that my fictional days are probably over” (HPL to August Derleth, June 6, 1932; ms., SHSW). Elsewhere he elaborates on Derleth’s verdict: “…Derleth didn’t say it was unsalable;in fact, he rather thought it wouldsell. He said it was a poor story,which is an entirely different and much more lamentably important thing” ( SL4.91). In other words, in Derleth’s opinion the story was just like most of the work appearing in WT,on which HPL regularly heaped abuse. Accordingly, HPL refused to submit the tale anywhere and merely let it gather dust. A year or so later Derleth asked to see the story again and surreptitiously submitted it to Farnsworth Wright, who accepted it readily and paid HPL $140 for it. While the tale contains vividly cosmic vistas of hyperspace, HPL does not appear to have thought out the details of the plot satisfactorily. What is the significance of the Old Ones in the story? To what purpose is the baby kidnapped and sacrificed? How can HPL the atheist allow Keziah to be frightened by the sight of a crucifix? Why does Nyarlathotep appear in the conventional figure of the Black Man? What is the purpose of the abyss aside from providing a convenient place down which to hurl Brown Jenkin? How does Brown Jenkin subsequently emerge from the abyss to devour Gilman’s heart? It seems as if HPL were aiming merely for a succession of startling images without bothering to fuse them into a logical sequence.

The story is HPL’s ultimate modernization of a conventional myth (witchcraft) by means of modern science. Fritz Leiber notes that it is “Lovecraft’s most carefully worked out story of hyperspace-travel. Here (1) a rational foundation for such travel is set up; (2) hyperspace is visualized; and (3) a trigger for such travel is devised.” Leiber elaborates on these points, noting that the absence of any mechanical device for such travel is vital to the tale, for otherwise it would be impossible to imagine how a “witch” of the seventeenth century could have

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managed the feat; in effect, Keziah simply applied advanced mathematics and “thought” herself into hyperspace.

See Fritz Leiber, “Through Hyperspace with Brown Jenkin” (in DB;rpt. FDOC); Ronald Shearer, “The Witches in ‘The Witch House,’” CryptNo. 5 (Roodmas 1982): 26–27; Will Murray, “Was There a Real Brown Jenkin?” CryptNo. 7 (Lammas 1982): 24–26.

Drogman, Abdul Reis el.

In “Under the Pyramids,” a guide who leads Harry Houdini to the top of the Great Pyramid to witness a boxing match between two other Arabs—an incident that proves to be a trap whereby el Drogman binds Houdini and thrusts him down an immense hole in the Great Pyramid. Later, Houdini wonders at the anomalous resemblance of el Drogman to the ancient pharaoh, King Khephren. Dudley, Jervas.

In “The Tomb,” the “dreamer and visionary” who develops a monomaniacal obsession with the Hyde family vault on his own family’s estate.

Dunn, John T[homas] (1889–1983).

Irish-American living in North Providence who came in touch with HPL in late 1914 in the Providence Amateur Press Club and corresponded with him for the period 1915–17. (HPL’s letters to him, edited by S.T.Joshi and David E.Schultz, were published in Books at Brown28–29 [1991–92]: 157–223.) He assisted HPL in editing two issues of the Providence Amateur(June 1915, February 1916); for the first issue HPL wrote a poem, “To the United Amateur Press Association from the Providence Amateur Press Club,” discussing Dunn and other members. HPL also wrote “Lines on Graduation from the R.I.Hospital’s School of Nurses” for Dunn to recite; it was published under Dunn’s name ( Tryout, February 1917). Dunn and HPL argued over the Irish question and World War I; Dunn refused to register for the draft and was sentenced to a long prison term, but was released shortly after the war and became a Catholic priest. He was interviewed late in life by L.Sprague de Camp (see “Young Man Lovecraft,” Xenophile,October 1975; rpt. LR).

Dunsany, Lord (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany) (1878– 1957).

Irish author of fantasy tales. Author of many stories of imaginary-world fantasy, including The Gods ofPegāna(1905), Time and the Gods(1906), The Sword of Welleran(1908), A Dreamer’s Tales (1910), The Book of Wonder(1912), Fifty-one Tales(1915), The Last Book of Wonder(1916), and Tales of Three Hemispheres(1919); also plays, including Five Plays(1914) and Plays of Gods and Men(1917). HPL first read A Dreamer’s Talesin late 1919 from a recommendation by amateur journalist Alice Hamlet; he attended a lecture given by Dunsany in Boston on October 20, 1919 (see SL1.91–93). Many of HPL’s early tales—“The Doom That Came to Sarnath” (1919), “The White Ship” (1919), “The Cats of Ulthar” (1920), “Celephaïs” (1920), “The Quest of Iranon” (1921), “The Tree” (1921), “The Other Gods” (1921)—are clear imitations of Dunsany. Later stories such as “The Silver Key” (1926) and “The Strange High House in the Mist” (1926) refine the Dunsanian influence. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath(1926–27) ap

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pears to be a tribute to Dunsany, but may be a kind of repudiation of him in Randolph Carter’s abandonment of otherworldly fantasy for memories of his youth. See entries on these stories for discussions of works by Dunsany that may have influenced them.

In “Some Notes on a Nonentity” (1933) HPL states that he “got the idea of the artificial pantheon and myth-background represented by ‘Cthulhu’, ‘YogSothoth’, ‘Yuggoth’, etc.” from Dunsany, who in TheGodsofPegānaand Time and the Gods(and in those volumes alone) wrote a linked series of tales involving an invented pantheon in the imaginary realm of Pegāna. HPL wrote a lecture read before an amateur journalists’ group, “Lord Dunsany and His Work” (1922); Dunsany is also discussed in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927). HPL did not seem to care for Dunsany’s later work, even though much of it—beginning with The Curse of the Wise Woman(1933)—parallels HPL’s in its use of topographical realism.

Late in life Dunsany came across HPL’s stories and noted that “in the few tales of his I have read I found that he was writing in my style, entirely originally & without in any way borrowing from me, & yet with my style & largely my material” (letter to August Derleth, March 28, 1952; quoted in LSNo. 14 [Spring 1987]: 38).

See T.E.D.Klein, “Some Notes on the Fantasy Tales of H.P.Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany,” Honors thesis: Brown University, 1969; Mark Amory, Biography of Lord Dunsany(Collins, 1972); Darrell Schweitzer, “Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany,” in Essays Lovecraftian,ed. Darrell Schweitzer (1976; rev. ed. as Discovering H.P.Lovecraft[Starmont House, 1987]); Robert M.Price, “Dunsanian Influence on Lovecraft Outside His ‘Dunsanian’ Tales,” CryptNo. 76 (Hallowmas 1990): 3–5; S.T.Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer, Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography(Scarecrow Press, 1993); S.T.Joshi, Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination(Greenwood Press, 1995).

Dunwich.

Fictitious city in Massachusetts invented by HPL.

Dunwich was created for “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) and is cited only in that tale and in the poem “The Ancient Track” (1929). It was based roughly upon the area in south-central Massachusetts around the towns of Wilbraham, Monson, and Hampden (see SL3.432–33), which HPL had seen in the two weeks he had spent with Edith Miniter in Wilbraham just prior to writing the story in the summer of 1928. Some parts of the locale were, however, imported from north-central Massachusetts, specifically the area around Athol (Sentinel Hill in the story seems derived, at least in name, from a Sentinel Elm Farm in Athol), including the Bear’s Den, a wooded ravine that HPL’s friend H.Warner Munn showed him.

HPL presumably derived the name Dunwich from the decaying town on the southeast coast of England. The town is the basis of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, “By the North Sea” (although Dunwich is not mentioned in the poem); Dunwich is also mentioned in Arthur Machen’s short novel The Terror(1917), which HPL is known to have read (see SL1.304, 310). Oddly enough, the English Dunwich seems more similar in character to HPL’s Innsmouth. For the English town see Rowland Parker, Men of Dunwich(1978).

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“Dunwich Horror, The.”

Novelette (17,590 words); written in August 1928. First published in WT(April 1929); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in An1and TD.

In the seedy area of Dunwich in “north central Massachusetts” live a number of backwoods farmers. One family, the Whateleys, has been the source of particular suspicion ever since the birth, on Candlemas 1913, of Wilbur Whateley, the offspring of an albino woman and an unknown father. Lavinia’s father, Old Whateley, shortly after the birth makes an ominous prediction: “some day yew folks‘ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”Wilbur grows anomalously fast, and by age thirteen is nearly seven feet tall. He is intellectually precocious, having been educated by the books in Old Whateley’s shabby library. In 1924 Old Whateley dies, but manages to instruct his grandson to consult “page 751 of the complete edition” of some book so that he can “open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth.” Two years later Lavinia disappears and is never seen again. In the winter of 1927 Wilbur makes his first trip out of Dunwich, to consult the Latin edition of the Necronomiconat the Miskatonic University Library; but when he asks to borrow the volume, he is denied by the old librarian Henry Armitage. He tries to do the same at Harvard but is similarly rebuffed. Then, in the late spring of 1928, Wilbur breaks into the Miskatonic library to steal the book, but is killed by the vicious guard-dog. His death is very repulsive: “…it is permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odour had nearly disappeared. Apparently Whateley had no skull or bony skeleton; at least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his unknown father.”

Meanwhile bizarre things are happening elsewhere. The monstrous entity the Whateleys had evidently been raising bursts forth, having no one to feed or tend to it. It creates havoc throughout the town, crushing houses as if they were matchsticks. Worst of all, it is completely invisible, leaving only huge footprints to indicate its presence. It descends into a ravine called the Bear’s Den, then later emerges and causes hideous devastation. Armitage has in the meantime been decoding the diary in cipher that Wilbur had kept and finally learns the true state of affairs: “His [Armitage’s] wilder wanderings were very startling indeed, including…fantastic references to some plan for the extirpation of the entire human race and all animal and vegetable life from the earth by some terrible elder race of beings from another dimension.” Armitage knows how to stop it, and he and two colleagues ascend a small hill facing Sentinel Hill, where the monster appears to be heading. They are armed with an incantation to send the creature back to the dimension it came from, as well as a sprayer containing a powder that will make it visible for an instant. The incantation and powder both work as planned, and the entity is seen to be a huge, ropy, tentacled monstrosity that shouts, “HELP! HELP!… ff— ff— ff—FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH!” and is completely obliterated. It was Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother.

There are several significant literary influences on the tale. The central premise—the sexual union of a “god” or monster (in this case Yog-Sothoth, the entity first cited rather nebulously in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) with a

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human woman—is taken from Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan”; HPL makes no secret of it, having Armitage say of the Dunwich people at one point, “Great God, what simpletons! Shew them Arthur Machen’s Great God Pan and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal!” The use of bizarre footsteps to indicate the presence of an otherwise undetectable entity is borrowed from Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo.” HPL knew well the celebrated tales featuring invisible monsters— Maupassant’s “The Horla” (certain features of which he had adapted for “The Call of Cthulhu”); FitzJames O’Brien’s “What Was It?”; Bierce’s “The Damned Thing”—and derived hints from each of them in his own creation. A less well-known tale, Anthony M.Rud’s “Ooze” ( WT,March 1923; rpt. The Moon Terror and Storiesby A.G.Birch et al. [1927]), also deals with an invisible monster that eventually bursts forth from the house in which it is trapped. A still more obscure work, Harper Williams’s The Thing in the Woods(1924)—read by HPL in the fall of 1924—involves a pair of twins, one of whom (a werewolf) is locked in a shed. In addition, the story may derive from an entry (#162) in HPL’s commonplace book: “Ultimate horror—grandfather returns from strange trip— mystery in house—wind & darkness—grandf. & mother engulfed—questions forbidden—somnolence —investigation—cataclysm—screams overheard—.” It was shortly after writing “The Curse of Yig” for Zealia Bishop that HPL wrote “The Dunwich Horror,” a somewhat more satisfying story of his own devising about a “god” mating with humans.

HPL acknowledged (see SL3.432–33) that Dunwich was in the Wilbraham area, and it is clear that the topography and some of the folklore (whippoorwills as psychopomps of the dead) were derived from eight days (June 29–July 7, 1928) spent with Edith Miniter in Wilbraham. But, if Wilbraham is roughly the setting for Dunwich, why does HPL declare in the story that the town is located in north central Massachusetts? Some parts of the locale are taken from that region, specifically the Bear’s Den, an actual locale near Athol to which HPL was taken by his friend H.Warner Munn on June 28. HPL describes the site vividly in a letter to his aunt: “There is a deep forest gorge there; approached dramatically from a rising path ending in a cleft boulder, & containing a magnificent terraced waterfall over the sheer bed-rock. Above the tumbling stream rise high rock precipices crusted with strange lichens & honeycombed with alluring caves. Of the latter several extend far into the hillside, though too narrowly to admit a human being beyond a few yards” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, July 1, 1928; ms., JHL). The name Sentinel Hill is taken from a Sentinel Elm Farm in Athol.

Although very popular with readers, the story has been criticized for being an obvious good-vs.-evil tale with Armitage representing the forces of good and the Whateley family representing the forces of evil. Donald R.Burleson suggests that the tale be read as a satire or parody, pointing out that it is the Whateley twins (regarded as a single entity) who, in mythic terms, fulfill the traditional role of the “hero” much more than Armitage does (e.g., the mythic hero’s descent to the underworld is paralleled by the twin’s descent into the Bear’s Den), and pointing out also that the passage from the Necronomiconcited in the tale—“Man rules now where They [the Old Ones] ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now”—makes Armitage’s “defeat” of the Whateleys merely a temporary staving off of the inevitable. These points are well taken, but HPL

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offers no evidence that the tale was meant parodically (i.e., as a satire on immature readers of the pulp magazines) or that the figure of Armitage is meant anything but seriously. He suggests the reverse when he writes: “[I] found myself psychologically identifying with one of the characters (an aged scholar who finally combats the menace) toward the end” (HPL to August Derleth, [September 1928]; ms., SHSW). Armitage is clearly modeled upon Marinus Bicknell Willett of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward:he defeats the “villains” by incantations, and he is susceptible to the same flaws— pomposity, arrogance, self-importance—that can be seen in Willett.

The popularity of the tale can be seen both in its wide reprinting in anthologies (most notably in Herbert A.Wise and Phyllis Fraser’s Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural[Random House/Modern Library, 1944]) and in a film adaptation of 1970.

See Donald R.Burleson, “Humour Beneath Horror: Some Sources for ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and ‘The Whisperer in Darkness,’” LSNo. 2 (Spring 1980): 5–15; Robert M.Price, “The Pine Barrens Horror,” CryptNo. 7 (Lammas 1982): 27–30; Donald R.Burleson, “The Mythic Hero Archetype in ‘The Dunwich Horror,’” LSNo. 4 (Spring 1981): 3–9; Will Murray, “The Dunwich Chimera and Others,” LSNo. 8 (Spring 1984): 10–24; Peter H.Cannon, “Call Me Wizard Whateley: Echoes of Moby Dickin ‘The Dunwich Horror,’” CryptNo. 49 (Lammas 1987): 21–23; Donald R.Burleson, “Lovecraft and the World as Cryptogram,” LSNo. 16 (Spring 1988): 14–18; Robert M.Price, “Not in the Spaces We Know but Between Them: ‘The Dunwich Horror’ as an Allegory of Reading,” CryptNo. 83 (Eastertide 1993): 22–24; Donald R.Burleson, “A Note on Metaphor vs. Metonymy in ‘The Dunwich Horror,’” LS No. 38 (Spring 1998): 16–17.

Dwight, Frederick N.

In “In the Walls of Eryx,” an employee of the Venus Crystal Company whose decaying corpse the narrator, Kenton J.Stanfield, finds in the invisible maze in which he himself becomes entrapped. Dwight, Walter C.

In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,a professional painter in Providence who restores the painting of Joseph Curwen found by Charles Dexter Ward in the house on Olney Court.

Dwyer, Bernard Austin (1897–1943).

Correspondent of HPL, residing in West Shokan and Kingston, N.Y.Dwyer reached HPL through WTin early 1927 and continued to correspond with him to the end of HPL’s life. He published one poem in WT(“Ol’ Black Sarah,” October 1928), but otherwise wrote little; he also devoted himself to pictorial art. HPL visited him in Kingston in May 1929 in the course of examining the colonial antiquities in nearby Hurley and New Paltz; again for a few days in June 1930, at which time Dwyer evidently made several substantial suggestions for the revision of HPL’s work in progress, “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Dwyer was one of the leading protagonists (“Knockout Bernie, the Wild Wolf of West Shokan”) of the spoof, “The Battle That Ended the Century” (1934). After HPL’s death, Dwyer excerpted a letter to him from HPL, written probably in the fall of 1933, and sent it to WT,where it was published as “The Wicked Clergyman” (later “The Evil Clergyman”).

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Dyer, William.

In At the Mountains of Madness,the professor of geology at Miskatonic University who leads the Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition of 1930–31 and who narrates the novel. Dyer also leads the subexpedition in search of Lake’s party, only to find it wiped out. With the graduate student Danforth, he explores and reports at length on the ancient city and civilization of the Old Ones. Dyer’s last name only is supplied in At the Mountains of Madness;his first name is given in “The Shadow out of Time,” in which is accompanies Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee on his expedition to Australia.

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E

“East and West Harvard Conservatism.”

Essay (1,110 words); probably written in the summer of 1922. First published in Mind Power Plus (date unknown; probably 1922).

The article is on David Van Bush’s New England lecture campaign and the success of his popular psychology in staid Massachusetts. Probably commissioned by Bush, the article appeared in his magazine, Mind Power Plus,which HPL mentions as “newly-founded” in June 1922 (see SL1.186). No copies of the magazine have been located; only a tearsheet of the article from the magazine (where it occupies pp. 55–56) is extant at JHL.

“East India Brick Row, The.”

Poem (48 lines in quatrains); written early to mid-December 1929. First published in the Providence Journal(January 8, 1930).

The poem was written in a futile attempt to prevent the destruction of early nineteenth-century warehouses on South Water Street in Providence, which HPL admired for their humble beauty but which had become so decrepit that it would have been difficult to restore them. HPL notes (letter to August Derleth, [January 1930]; ms., SHSW) that the poem received such a favorable response from readers in the newspaper that he received a cordial letter from the editor about it. See Joseph Payne Brennan, “Lovecraft’s ‘Brick Row,’” MacabreNo. 5 (Summer 1959): 21–22. Eddy, Clifford M[artin], Jr. (1896–1971).

Author and correspondent of HPL. A native of Providence, R I., Eddy was a precocious reader and writer, interested in mythology and the occult. His first published tale, “Sign of the Dragon” ( Mystery Magazine,1919), was a detective story. Various tales of mystery, ghosts, and song-writing (he himself later wrote songs, including “When We Met by the Blue Lagoon” and “In My Wonderful Temple of Love”) continued to

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appear through 1922 in various magazines. He came in touch with HPL in 1923 (see letter to Frank Belknap Long, October 7, 1923 [ SL1.254], where HPL refers to Eddy as “the new Providence amateur”). (His wife Muriel in The Gentleman from Angell Street[1961] claims that they had met HPL and his mother as early as 1918, but this seems to be a fabrication.) HPL frequently visited the Eddys’ home in East Providence. Eddy and HPL took scenic walks, one to the Old Stone Mill in Newport, R.I. (August Derleth later incorporated notes taken by HPL on this occasion into The Lurker at the Threshold[1945]), another to Dark Swamp (see SL1.264–67). Though they never found the swamp, the legendry surrounding the place seems to have influenced the opening of “The Colour out of Space” (1927); in 1967 Eddy began an unfinished fictionalized account of the trip entitled “Black Noon” (published in Exit into Eternity). HPL revised four stories for Eddy: “Ashes” ( WT,March 1924), “The Ghost-Eater” ( WT,April 1924), “The Loved Dead” ( WT,May–June–July 1924), and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” ( WT,April 1925). The two collaborated on The Cancer of Superstition,ghostwritten for Harry Houdini, but the escape artist’s death in October 1926 curtailed the project. (Notes and surviving fragments were published in DB.) See Eddy’s collections Exit to Eternity(Oxford Press, 1973), Erased from Exile(Stygian Isle Press, 1976), and The Terror out of Time(Dyer-Eddy, 1976). He wrote a brief memoir, “Walks with H.P.Lovecraft” (in DB).

See George Popkins, “He Wrote of the Supernatural,” Providence Evening Bulletin(November 25, 1963): 37.

Eddy, Muriel E[lizabeth] (Gammons) (1896–1978).

Wife of C.M.Eddy and friend of HPL. In A Gentleman from Angell Street(1961; rpt. LR), Mrs. Eddy maintains that her husband’s mother (Mrs. Grace Eddy) had come to know HPL’s mother at a woman suffrage meeting in 1918 and that at this time the two discovered that their sons were both enthusiasts of the weird. HPL purportedly invited the Eddys to join the UAPA, and Mrs. Eddy also claims that she and her husband contributed to C.W.Smith’s amateur magazine, The Tryout . Then there was a hiatus in relations, but HPL got back in touch shortly after the death of his mother in May 1921. This entire account is, however, missing from Mrs. Eddy’s first memoir, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (in Rhode Island on Lovecraft,ed. Donald M.Grant and Thomas P.Hadley [1945]), and it appears to be a late fabrication intended to magnify the Eddys’ role in HPL’s life. The Eddys do not appear on any membership lists of the UAPA; none of their work appeared in the Tryout;and there is no evidence that Mrs. Lovecraft was interested in woman suffrage. It appears that HPL came to know the Eddys only in the fall of 1923. Mrs. Eddy wrote numerous memoirs of HPL, all saying much the same things as her 1945 account; among them are “Memories of H.P.L.” ( Magazine of Horror, Winter 1965–66), “Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Marriage and Divorce” ( Haunted,June 1968), Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Man and the Image(1969), “H.P.Lovecraft among the Demons” ( The Rhode Islander[ Providence Sunday JournalMagazine], March 8, 1970), H.P.Lovecraft Esquire: Gentleman (n.d.), and The Howard Phillips Lovecraft We Knew(n.d.). She had two daughters, Ruth Eddy and Faye (Eddy) Dyer; the former wrote a brief memoir of HPL, “The Man Who Came at Midnight” ( Fantasy Commentator,Summer–Fall 1949).

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“Editorial.”

Published in the Conservative(April 1915, July 1915, October 1915); rpt. The Conservative: Complete (1976; rev. ed. 1977).

These items contain general remarks on the nature and purpose of his amateur journal; later articles contain rebuttals of criticisms he has received in other amateur papers.

“Editorial.”

Published in the United Amateur(July 1917 [as “Editorially”], November 1920, September 1921, January 1922, May 1924, July 1925).

HPL wrote these editorials in his capacity as Official Editor of the UAPA and Editor of the United Amateur(HPL was guest editor of the July 1917 issue, taking over for Official Editor Andrew F.Lockhart, who had resigned). They cover events of importance in the amateur community. The articles of 1920–22 attempt to deflect criticism from some members that HPL was concentrating too much authority upon himself and his close associates; but HPL and his party lost the election of July 1922 over this very issue. HPL’s party (now including Sonia H.Greene as president) was voted back into office in July 1923, but the outgoing official board withheld funds so that no United Amateur could be issued until May 1924. HPL’s last two editorials are, accordingly, both bitter and melancholy in their lament for the decline of the UAPA, which collapsed in 1926.

Edkins, Ernest A[rthur] (1867–1946).

Amateur writer and correspondent of HPL (1932–37). Edkins was one of the leading writers of the “halcyon days” (c. 1885–1895) of amateur journalism. In his account of this period, “Looking Backward” (1920), written long before he knew Edkins, HPL speaks of Edkins’s poem “The Suicide” as “a supremely artistic bit of weird genius…a bit of night-black poetical fancy so arresting in its sombre power that we cannot refrain from reproducing it here in full….” Edkins later left amateurdom and repudiated much of his literary work, becoming instead a businessman in Highland Park, Ill. (later Coral Gables, Fla.). HPL, getting in touch with him in 1932, eventually lured him back into amateur activity. Edkins produced several issues of the amateur journal Causeriein 1936; that for February 1936 contained the first appearance of “Continuity” (from Fungi from Yuggoth). In this same issue Edkins also wrote a brief review of The Cats of Ulthar(1935). HPL preserved all Edkins’s letters to him, but in his eloquent memoir “Idiosyncrasies of HPL” ( Olympian,Autumn 1940; in LR) Edkins notes that he lost most or all of HPL’s letters to him.

See Rheinhart Kleiner, Ernest A.Edkins: A Memoir(Newtonville, Mass.: Oakwood Press, 1947). “Eidolon, The.”

Poem (98 lines); probably written in the fall of 1918. First published in Tryout(October 1918). Using the trimeter line favored by Poe, HPL tells of an eidolon (image) called “Life” that proves to be “laden” with “foul horrors.”

“Electric Executioner, The.”

Short story (8,050 words); ghostwritten for Adolphe de Castro, in July 1929. First published in WT (August 1930); first collected in Cats;corrected text in HM

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The unnamed narrator is asked by the president of his company to track down a man named Feldon who has disappeared with some papers in Mexico. Boarding a train, the man later finds he is alone in a car with one other occupant, who seems to be a dangerous maniac. This person apparently has devised a hoodlike instrument for performing executions and wishes the narrator to be the first experimental victim. Realizing he cannot overwhelm the man by force, the narrator seeks to delay the experiment until the train reaches the next station, Mexico City. He first asks to be allowed to write a letter disposing of his effects; then he asserts that he has newspaper friends in Sacramento who would be interested in publicizing the invention; and finally he says that he would like to make a sketch of the thing in operation—why doesn’t the man put it on his own head so that it can be drawn? The madman does so; but then the narrator, having earlier perceived that the lunatic has a taste for Aztec mythology, pretends to be possessed by religious fervor and begins shouting Aztec and other names at random as a further stalling tactic. The madman begins shouting also, and in the process his device pulls taut over his neck and executes him; the narrator faints. When revived, the narrator finds the madman no longer in the car, although a crowd of people is there; he is informed no one was ever in the car. Later Feldon is discovered dead in a remote cave—with certain objects unquestionably belonging to the narrator in his pockets.

The story is a radically revised version of a tale called “The Automatic Executioner,” published in de Castro’s collection, In the Confessional and the Following(1893). Part of the characterization of the madman is drawn from a somewhat more harmless person HPL met on the train ride from New York to Washington on a recent journey—a German who kept repeating “Efferythingk iss luffly!” “I vass shoost leddingk my light shine!” and other random utterances (see “Travels in the Provinces of America” [1929]). The madman in “The Electric Executioner” does in fact say at one point, “I shall let my light shine, as it were.” Later, in the course of uttering the names of various Aztec gods, the narrator cries out: “Ya-R’lyeh! Ya-R’lyeh!… Cthulhutl fhtaghn! Niguratl-Yig! Yog-Sototl—.” The spelling variants are intentional, as HPL wished to give an Aztec cast to the names so as to suggest they were part of that culture’s theology. Otherwise, HPL has followed de Castro’s plot even more faithfully than in “The Last Test”—retaining character names, the basic sequence of incidents, and even the final supernatural twist (although sensibly suggesting that it was Feldon’s astral body, not the narrator’s, that was in the car). HPL was paid only $16 for his work, but de Castro sold the story for $175.

Eliot,———.

The auditor to whom the events of “Pickman’s Model” are addressed.

Eliot, Matt.

In “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” the first mate on one of Capt. Obed Marsh’s ships. While in the South Seas, he hears reports of an island where the inhabitants can procure all the fish they want and also seem to have unlimited quantities of gold. He later realizes that this bounty is the result of the natives’ mating with loathsome sea-creatures, and he urges Obed to have nothing to do with the place. He later disappears from Innsmouth.

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Elton, Basil.

In “The White Ship,” the keeper of the North Point lighthouse, who tells of his adventures aboard the White Ship.

Elwood, Frank.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” a student at Miskatonic University and friend of Walter Gilman who attempts to help control Gilman’s sleepwalking and determine the source of Gilman’s strange dreams. He witnesses Gilman’s horrible death at the hands of Brown Jenkin.

Eshbach, Lloyd Arthur (b. 1910).

Science fiction writer and publisher from Reading, Pa., and correspondent of HPL (1935–37?). Since 1931 Eshbach had published several stories in the science fiction pulps, but in early 1935 he was beginning a general magazine called The Galleonand asked HPL to contribute. HPL sent a story and two sonnets from Fungi from Yuggoth,but only “Background” (May-June 1935) and “The Quest of Iranon” (July-August 1935) were published before the magazine changed focus and became a regional Pennsylvania magazine; accordingly, Eshbach returned “Harbour Whistles,” which he had also accepted. After World War II Eshbach successively founded two small presses in the fantasy field, Fantasy Press and Polaris Press. He also published a collection of his science fiction stories ( The Tyrant of Time,1955) and an anthology of essays on science fiction writing ( Of Worlds Beyond, 1964).

“Evil Clergyman, The.”

Letter excerpt (1,720 words); probably written in the fall of 1933. First published (as “The Wicked Clergyman”) in WT(April 1939); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D

The unnamed narrator explains how he is ushered into an attic chamber by a “grave, intelligentlooking man” who tells about someone referred to only as “he,”who used to live in the place. The man sternly adjures the narrator not to stay after dark nor to touch the object on the table, which looks like a matchbox. Then the man leaves the narrator alone. Examining his surroundings, the narrator finds it filled with old books of magic and alchemy. At length, he props the matchbox-like object against a book and shines his flashlight—which emits a peculiar violet light—upon it. The narrator senses another person in the room—a man attired in the “clerical garb of the Anglican church” who appears subtly evil-looking. This person begins throwing the books into the fireplace. Then others in clerical outfits appear; they seem to be passing some judgment upon the evil-looking clergyman. After they depart, the clergyman takes up a coil of rope, mounts a chair, and with a strange look of triumphhangs himself. The narrator then lurches backward down the stairwell. Shortly thereafter a group of people come into the room, including the man who had first led the narrator into the place. He at once realizes that the narrator has fiddled with the box, for the narrator, in outward appearance, now bears the countenance of the clergyman.

The “story” is an account of a dream described in a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer. HPL remarks in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith (October 22, 1933) that “Some months ago I had a dream of an evil clergyman in a garret full of forbidden books” ( SL4.289–90), and it is likely that the dream was recounted to Dwyer at this time or slightly earlier. Some of the imagery and atmosphere are reminiscent of “The Festival,” although the dream takes place in England. Un

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like “The Thing on the Doorstep” and other tales, this dream-fragment does not involve mindtransference but transference of a very physical sort: because the protagonist unwisely handled the small box that he had specifically been told not to touch, he summoned the “evil clergyman” and somehow effected an exchange of external features with him, while yet retaining his mind and personality. It is difficult to say how HPL would have developed this conventional supernatural scenario.

“Ex Oblivione.”

Prose poem (910 words); probably written in late 1920 or early 1921. First published (as by “Ward Phillips”) in the United Amateur(March 1921); rpt. Phantagraph(July 1937); first collected in BWS; corrected text in MW.

A depressed and embittered narrator seeks various exotic worlds in dream as an antidote to the grinding prosiness of daily life; later, when “the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness,” he begins to take drugs to augment his nightly visions. In the “dream-city of Zakarion” he comes upon a papyrus containing the thoughts of the dream-sages who once dwelt there, he reads of a “high wall pierced by a little bronze gate,” which may or may not be the entrance to untold wonders. Realizing that “no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace,” the narrator takes more and more drugs in an effort to find this gate. Finally he seems to come upon it—the door is ajar. As he enters, he finds to his ecstasy that the realm he is entering is nothing other than “native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.”

The story reiterates the topos (“Life is more horrible than death”) that was the apparent theme of the lost story “Life and Death”; the notion is probably derived from HPL’s reading of Schopenhauer at this time. Compare, for example, In Defence ofDagon:“There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled” ( MW166).

See Paul Montelone, “‘Ex Oblivione’: The Contemplative Lovecraft,” LSNo. 33 (Fall 1995): 2–14

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F

“Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family.”

Short story (3,720 words); probably written in the fall of 1920. First published in the Wolverine (March and June 1921); rpt. WT(April 1924) and WT(May 1935); first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC

Sir Arthur Jermyn was of a venerable but eccentric family. In the eighteenth century, Sir Wade Jermyn “was one of the earliest explorers of the Congo region,” but was placed in a madhouse after speaking wildly of “a prehistoric white Congolese civilisation.” He had brought back from the Congo a wife—reportedly the daughter of a Portuguese trader—who was never seen. The offspring of the union were very peculiar in both physiognomy and mentality. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a Sir Robert Jermyn killed nearly his entire family as well as a fellow African explorer who had brought back strange tales (and perhaps other things) from the area of Sir Wade’s explorations. Arthur Jermyn seeks to redeem the family name by continuing Sir Wade’s researches and perhaps vindicating him. Pursuing reports of a white ape who became a goddess in the prehistoric African civilization, he comes upon the remains of the site in 1912 but finds little confirmation of the story of the white ape. This confirmation is supplied by a Belgian explorer who ships the object to Jermyn House. The hideous rotting thing is found to be wearing a locket containing the Jermyn coat of arms; what remains of its face bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Arthur Jermyn. When he sees this object, Jermyn douses himself in oil and sets himself aflame.

The story is somewhat more complex than it appears on the surface. We are apparently to believe that there is more going on than merely a single case of miscegenation. The narrator’s opening comment (“Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world”), in particular the clause “if separate species we be,” is a generalized statement that does not

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logically follow if we are to assume that it is only the Jermyn line that has been tainted by a white ape in its ancestry; instead, the implication appears to be that the Congolese city discovered by Sir Wade Jermyn is the source for all white civilization. To a racist like HPL, this would have been the acme of horror.

HPL makes a suggestive comment on the literary source for the tale:

[The] origin [of “Arthur Jermyn”] is rather curious—and far removed from the atmosphere it suggests. Somebody had been harassing me into reading some work of the iconoclastic moderns— these young chaps why pry behind exteriors and unveil nasty hidden motives and secret stigmata— and I had nearly fallen asleep over the tame backstairs gossip of Andersen’s Winesburg, Ohio . The sainted Sherwood, as you know, laid bare the dark area which many whited village lives concealed, and it occurred to me that I, in my weirder medium, could probably devise some secret behind a man’s ancestry which would make the worst of Andersen’s disclosures sound like the annual report of a Sabbath school. Hence Arthur Jermyn. (HPL to Edwin Baird, [c. October 1923]; WT,March 1924) In its first WTappearance the story appeared under the title “The White Ape,” much to HPL’s disgust. Later appearances use the title “Arthur Jermyn”; HPL’s original and full title (used in the Wolverineappearance) was not restored until the corrected edition of 1986.

Alfred Galpin, writing under the house name Zoilus, remarked of the tale: “It is perfect in execution, restrained in manner, complete, and marked by Mr. Lovecraft’s uniquely effective handling of introductory and concluding portions. The legend is not so powerful as many of Mr. Lovecraft’s dreamings have been, but it is unquestionably original and does not derive from Poe, Dunsany, or any other of Mr. Lovecraft’s favorites and predecessors” ( Wolverine,November 1921). Samuel Loveman also discusses the story at length in the column “Official Criticism: Bureau of Critics,” National Amateur44, No. 2 (November 1921): 29, 33.

See S.T.Joshi, “What Happens in ‘Arthur Jermyn’?” CryptNo. 75 (Michaelmas 1990): 27–28; Bennett Lovett-Graff, “‘Life Is a Hideous Thing’: Primate-Geniture in H.P.Lovecraft’s ‘Arthur Jermyn,’” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts8, No. 3 (1997): 370–88.

Fantasy Fan, The.

Fan magazine edited by Charles D.Hornig; typeset and printed by Conrad Ruppert (September 1933– February 1935).

The Fantasy Fanwas the first fan magazine in the weird fiction field. Charles D.Hornig of Elizabeth, N.J., at the age of seventeen, founded it and managed to keep it going for eighteen monthly issues, even though the circulation was never very large (its print run probably did not exceed 300, and it had only sixty subscribers). Right from the start, however, Hornig sought to secure the most prestigious weird and science fiction authors he could, and HPL not only sent Hornig numerous contributions of his own but encouraged his colleagues—Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E.Howard, even the resolutely professional August Derleth—to submit to the magazine stories and articles that had been rejected elsewhere. The Fantasy Fanwas, accordingly, an interesting mix of news, articles, stories, poems, and miscellany. Hornig, however, made an error in initiating a column of controversy entitled “The Boiling Point,” which quickly led to acrimonious letter exchanges between HPL, Forrest J.Ackerman, Clark Ashton Smith, and numerous others; the column was terminated with the February 1934 issue.

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Perhaps Hornig’s greatest accomplishment was the serialization of the revised version of HPL’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (October 1933– February 1935). However, the serialization proceeded at such a slow place that it reached only the middle of Chapter VIII before the magazine folded. The Fantasy Fanalso saw the first publication of HPL’s stories, “The Other Gods” (November 1933) and “From Beyond” (June 1934), as well as reprints (from amateur papers) of “Polaris” (February 1934) and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (October 1934); it also published “The Book” (October 1934), “Pursuit” (October 1934), “The Key” (January 1935), and “Homecoming” (January 1935) from Fungi from Yuggoth. Brief excerpts of HPL’s letters to Hornig appeared regularly in the magazine’s letter column. The October 1934 issue was dedicated to HPL.

After the demise of The Fantasy Fan,numerous attempts were made to revive or succeed it, but no magazine truly filled its place as a news organ, a forum for the expression of fans’ views, and a venue for work by distinguished writers in the field.

Farnese, Harold S. (1885–1945).

Musical composer and correspondent of HPL (1932–33). In July 1932, Farnese (assistant director of the Institute of Musical Art, Ltd. in Los Angeles) asked HPL’s permission to set to music two sonnets from Fungi from Yuggoth. HPL granted permission, and by September Farnese had written and performed music for “Mirage” and “The Elder Pharos.” HPL never heard or saw the pieces, and it was not until HPL died that Farnese had the sheet music printed and circulated (a page from “The Elder Pharos” is printed in SL4, facing p. 159). Farnese tried to enlist HPL’s help in writing a libretto for a planned opera entitled Yurregarth and Yannimaid(later Fen River), but HPL declined, suggesting Clark Ashton Smith as librettist. After HPL moved in 1933, the two fell out of touch. Farnese became the unwitting source of the spurious “Black Magic” quotation attributed by August Derleth to HPL, and thus generating a long misunderstanding of the nature of HPL’s work. See entry on Cthulhu Mythos for details.

See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “A Note Regarding the Harold Farnese Musical Pieces,” Dark Brotherhood Journal1, No. 1 (June 1971): 12–14; David E. Schultz, “The Origin of Lovecraft’s ‘Black Magic’ Quote,” CryptNo. 48 (St. John’s Eve 1987): 9–13 (revised version in The Horror of It All,ed. Robert M. Price [Starmont House, 1990]).

Farr, Fred.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” one of the party that exterminates Wilbur Whateley’s monstrous twin brother.

Feldon, Arthur.

In “The Electric Executioner,” the “furtive” assistant superintendent with the Tlaxcala Mining Company, who absconds with important company papers. He is pursued by the narrator of the story and is accidentally killed by the hoodlike execution device he has invented.

Fenham.

Fictitious town in Maine invented either by HPL or by C.M.Eddy and cited in “The Loved Dead” (1923) and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (1924).

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Fenner, Matthew.

In “In the Vault,” a man for whom George Birch builds a new coffin, when he recognizes that his first effort was somewhat shoddy for the person intended. Birch uses the rejected casket for someone he did not like very well, with disastrous results.

Fenton, Dr.

In “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” a physician at a psychopathic institution in upstate New York and the boss of the narrator, an intern there.

“Festival.”

Poem (20 lines in 4 stanzas); written around Christmas 1925. First published in WT(December 1926) (as “Yule Horror”).

A poem to Farnsworth Wright, editor of WT,speaking of Wright as an “abbot and priest” at a “devilwrought feast.” Wright, taken with the work, published it but dropped its last stanza, which alluded directly to him.

“Festival, The.”

Short story (3,700 words); probably written in October 1923. First published in WT(January 1925); rpt. WT(October 1933): first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC. The first-person narrator finds himself in Kingsport, Mass., on the Yuletide “that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.” He follows a course along the old town that can be traversed to this day. He passes by the old cemetery on the hill, where “black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse,” and makes his way to a house with an overhanging second story and full of antique furnishings. Eventually he is led from the house by its occupants, including a man whose face seems to be a cunningly made waxen mask. He and the other townspeople make their way to a church in the center of town; entering it, they all descend robotically down a “trapdoor of the vaults which yawned loathsomely open just before the pulpit,” where the celebrants worship a sickly green flame next to an oily river and then ride off on the backs of hybrid winged creatures. The narrator resists ascending the creature reserved for him, and in doing so he jostles his companion’s waxen mask; horrified at some nameless sight, he plunges into the river and eventually finds himself in St. Mary’s hospital in Arkham. He asks for a copy of the Necronomiconof Abdul Alhazred, and therein reads a passage that appears to confirm the events he has experienced, specifically in relation to entities that “have learned to walk that ought to crawl.”

The story is based upon HPL’s several trips to Marblehead, Mass., beginning in December 1922. Of his first trip there HPL later wrote that it was “the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence. In a flash all the past of New England—all the past of Old England—all the past of Anglo-Saxondom and the Western World—swept over me and identified me with the stupendous totality of all things in such a way as it never did before and never will again. That was the high tide of my life” ( SL3.126–27). The course of the narrator’s journey through the town corresponds to an actual route that leads to the center of Marblehead; the house with the overhanging second story is probably to be identified with an actual house at 1 Mugford Street. The church where the climactic incidents occur has long been thought to be St.

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Michael’s Episcopal Church in Frog Lane, but this identification appears to be incorrect: St. Michael’s has no steeple, and allusions to it in this story and later tales make it clear that it is on a hill and that it is a Congregational church. In all likelihood, HPL was probably referring to one of two nowdestroyed Congregational churches in the city. The old cemetery on the hill is clearly Old Burial Hill, where many ancient graves are to be found.

In 1933 HPL stated in reference to the tale: “In intimating an alien race I had in mind the survival of some clan of pre-Aryan sorcerers who preserved primitive rites like those of the witch-cult—I had just been reading Miss Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe” ( SL4.297). This controversial work of anthropology by Margaret A.Murray, published in 1921, made the claim (regarded by modern scholars as highly unlikely) that the witch-cult in both Europe and America had its origin in a preAryan race that was driven underground but continued to lurk in the hidden corners of the earth. HPL had just read a similar fictional exposition of the idea in Arthur Machen’s stories of the “Little People” and was accordingly much taken with this conception; he would allude to it in many subsequent references to the Salem witches in his tales, and as late as 1930 he was presenting the theory seriously (see SL3.182–83). The epigraph, from Lactantius, appears to derive from HPL’s ancestral copy of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana

See Donovan K.Loucks, “Antique Dreams: Marblehead and Lovecraft’s Kingsport.” LSNo. 42 (Summer 2001): 48–55.

Finlay, Virgil [Warden] (1914–1971),

American artist; perhaps the most accomplished artist to appear in the pulp magazines. Finlay came in touch with HPL in September 1936 and corresponded with HPL until the latter’s death. Finlay actually offered to illustrate HPL’s tales for a potential book of his work, even though HPL had no prospects for any such book publication at the time. HPL was prodigiously impressed with Finlay’s art, and in late November 1936 he wrote a sonnet (“To Mr. Finlay, upon His Drawing for Mr. Bloch’s Tale, ‘The Faceless God’”; Phantagraph,May 1937), based upon Finlay’s illustration of Robert Bloch’s “The Faceless God” ( WT,May 1936). Finlay himself illustrated HPL’s “The Haunter of the Dark” ( WT, December 1936) and “The Thing on the Doorstep” ( WT,January 1937). Prior to HPL’s death Finlay executed his celebrated portrait of HPL as an eighteenth-century gentleman, although there is no evidence that HPL ever saw it; it was scheduled to appear in Willis Conover’s Science-Fantasy Correspondent,but it appeared in April 1937 as the cover of that magazine’s successor, Amateur Correspondent . Finlay went on to prepare dust-jacket illustrations for HPL’s Oand Marginalia. HPL’s letters to him were excerpted in “Letters to Virgil Finlay” ( Fantasy Collector’s Annual,1974). See Virgil Finlay, Virgil Finlay(Donald M.Grant, 1971), with lengthy contributions by Sam Moskowitz and Gerry de la Ree; Gerry de la Ree, Virgil Finlay Remembered(Gerry de la Ree, 1981). “For What Does the United Stand?”

Essay (535 words); probably written in the spring of 1920. First published in the United Amateur (May 1920); rpt. MW

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Brief article on the importance of the UAPA in fostering education and the literary development of amateur writers.

Foster, Abel.

In “Two Black Bottles,” the sexton of a church in Daalbergen, N.J., who studies the occult books amassed by the church’s first pastor, Guilliam Slott. It is Foster who imprisons the soul of the current pastor, Vanderhoof, in a bottle. As in the case of Vanderhoof, his own soul is trapped in a similar bottle that, when broken, causes Foster to crumble to dust.

Foxfield.

Fictitious town in Massachusetts invented by HPL, although never cited in any story. A “Plan of Foxfield—for possible fictional use” in HPL’s handwriting survives in AHT; it indicates that Foxfield is east of Aylesbury and Dunwich and northwest of Arkham.

See Will Murray, “Where Was Foxfield?” LSNo. 33 (Fall 1995): 18–23 (the back cover prints a reconstruction of HPL’s map).

“From Beyond.”

Short story (3,030 words); written on November 16, 1920. First published in the Fantasy Fan(June 1934); rpt WT(February 1938); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D

Crawford Tillinghast is a scientist who has devised a machine that will “break down the barriers” that limit our perception of phenomena to what our five senses perceive. He shows to his friend, the narrator, “a pale, outré colour or blend of colours” that he maintains is ultraviolet, ordinarily invisible to the human eye. As the experiment continues, the narrator begins to perceive amorphous, jellylike objects drifting through what he previously thought was empty air; he even sees them “brushing past me and occasionally walking or drifting through my supposedly solid body.” Later, as the experiment becomes increasingly peculiar and as Tillinghast begins shouting madly about the creatures he controls through his machine, the narrator suddenly fires a shot from a pistol, destroying the machine. Tillinghast is found dead of apoplexy.

The story appears to be a fictionalization of some conceptions that HPL found in Hugh Elliot’s Modern Science and Materialism(1919), a book that significantly influenced his early philosophical thought (see SL1.134, 158). In particular, Elliot exhaustively discusses the limitations of our senseperceptions (specifically citing ultraviolet rays) and goes on to note that most solid matter is largely empty space. Several entries in HPL’s commonplace book written around this time (see #34–#36) appear to derive from Elliot’s book. Some of the characterization and imagery derive from HPL’s Civil War dream of early 1920 (see SL 1.100–102).

In the original draft (revised much later for its first appearance), the scientist was named Henry Annesley. Both “Crawford” and “Tillinghast” are two old and wealthy families of colonial Providence (both are mentioned in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). The story was submitted to several pulp magazines in the 1920s, including WTand Ghost Stories,but uniformly rejected.

See S.T.Joshi, “The Sources for ‘From Beyond,’” CryptNo. 38 (Eastertide 1986): 15–19; Peter Dendle, “Patristic Demonology and Lovecraft’s ‘From Beyond,’” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts8, No. 3 (1997): 281–93.

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Frome, Nils [Helmer] (1918–1962).

Swedish-born fan of weird and science fiction and late correspondent of HPL (1936–37). Residing for much of his life in Fraser Mills, Canada (a suburb of Vancouver), Frome early became interested in science fiction and solicited from HPL a contribution to his fan magazine, Supramundane Stories. HPL sent him the prose poem “Nyarlathotep” and “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” both of which appeared in the second and last issue of Supramundane Stories(Spring 1938). Frome appeared to exhibit an interest in fortune-telling, reincarnation, and other such things, and HPL’s letters to him forcefully argue against their validity. The letters were published (along with those to James Blish and William Miller, Jr.) in Phantastique/Science Fiction Critic(March 1938); rpt. HPL’s Uncollected Letters(Necronomicon Press, 1986).

See Sam Moskowitz, ed., Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Nils Helmer Frome(Moshassuck Press, 1989). Frye Family.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” a family (comprising Elmer and his wife Selina) dwelling on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen. They and their farmhouse are “erased” by Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother. Fungi from Yuggoth.

Series of thirty-five sonnets initially, dated December 27, 1929–January 4, 1930 (ms., JHL). The complete cycle of thirty-six poems was not published in its entirety until BWS;the separate appearance Fungi from Yuggoth([Washington, D.C.:] Bill Evans, June 1943) lacks the final three sonnets.

In the first three sonnets, the unnamed narrator obtains a mysterious tome—a “book that told the hidden way/Across the void and through the space-hung screens”—from an ancient bookseller and is followed home by an unseen pursuer. The remaining poems, which HPL considered suitable for publication independent of the introductory poems, are discontinuous vignettes concerning a variety of unrelated weird themes, told in the first person and (apparently) third person. The cumulative effect is that of a series of shifting dream images.

The poem was written following a burst of versifying, after a long hiatus, that occurred in late 1929, the other poems being “Recapture,” The East India Brick Row,” “The Outpost,” and “The Messenger.” HPL referred to the Fungias “pseudo-sonnets,” not out of modesty but because he recognized that most were a hybrid form combining elements of the classic Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms, contrived to provide an element of surprise in the final line. He lent the poem to Elizabeth Toldridge in mid-January, writing: “There are 33 here, but I shall probably grind out a dozen or so more before I consider the sequence concluded” ( SL3.116). To date HPL had written thirty-five, leaving aside the two concluding poems in the event that he did indeed “grind out” others. He did not. His typescript of the cycle long consisted of only thirty-three poems (Clark Ashton Smith had one such copy). When R.H.Barlow prepared a new typescript (in September 1934), “Evening Star” and “Continuity” finally were included (numbered XXXIV and XXXV as when HPL first composed them). It was not until 1936, when Barlow planned an edition of the complete cycle, that Fungi from Yuggoth achieved its present form, with “Recapture” (mid-November 1929) inserted as the third to last poem and “Evening Star” and “Continuity” renumbered to accommodate it.

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HPL published five of the poems in the Providence Journalin 1930. WTselected another ten, publishing them under the heading “Fungi from Yuggoth” but renumbering the poems to coincide with the shortened selection. Over the next six years, HPL gave others to amateur or fan publications, including Causerie, Driftwind, Fantasy Fan, Galleon, Interesting Items, Phantagraph, Pioneer, Science-Fantasy Correspondent, Science Fiction Barb,and Silver Fern. Poems accepted by Fantasy Magazine, Fantaisiste’s Mirror, Recluse,and Ripples from Lake Champlainnever appeared. Many poems appeared more than once in magazines during HPL’s lifetime; two appeared in books: “The Canal” in Harvest: A Sheaf of Poems fromDriftwind (1933) and “Harbour Whistles” in Threads in Tapestry(1936). Only “Expectancy” (XXVIII) was never published periodically. For the name Yuggoth, see entry on “The Whisperer in Darkness.”

See Winfield Townley Scott, “A Parenthesis on Lovecraft as a Poet” ( FDOC211–16); R.Boerem, “The Continuity of the Fungi from Yuggoth” ( FDOC222–25); David E.Schultz, “H.P.Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth,” CryptNo. 20 (Eastertide 1984): 3–7; Ralph E.Vaughan, “The Story in Fungi from Yuggoth” CryptNo. 20 (Eastertide 1984): 9–11; David E.Schultz, “The Lack of Continuity in Fungi from Yuggoth,” CryptNo. 20 (Eastertide 1984): 12–16; Donald R. Burleson, “Scansion Problems in Lovecraft’s ‘Mirage,’” LSNo. 24 (Spring 1991): 18–19, 21; Robert H.Waugh, “The Structural and Thematic Unity of Fungi from Yuggoth,” LSNo. 26 (Spring 1992): 2–14; Dan Clore, “Metonyms of Alterity: A Semiotic Interpretation of Fungi from Yuggoth” LSNo. 30 (Spring 1994): 21–32.

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G

Galpin, Alfred (1901–1983).

Amateur writer, composer, and correspondent of HPL (1917–37). Galpin, one of Maurice W.Moe’s students in Appleton (Wis.) High School, was appointed Fourth Vice-President of the UAPA for the 1917–18 term, and HPL came in touch with him in late 1917. Galpin (who in the amateur press sometimes appeared under the pseudonym Consul Hasting) went on to hold several other positions in the UAPA—including First Vice-President (1918–1919), President (1920–21), and chairman of the Department of Public Criticism (1919–22)—but published only one issue of his own amateur periodical, The Philosopher(December 1920), which contained the first appearance of HPL’s “Polaris” and Galpin’s own weird vignette, “Marsh-Mad: A Nightmare.” HPL held off writing “The Tree” (which he had conceived no later than the summer of 1918) for several years because he felt that “MarshMad” (which he had read in ms.) anticipated the “living tree” idea. HPL reports that his philosophical thought was strongly influenced by Galpin’s (see SL1.128); it was possibly at Galpin’s suggestion that HPL first read Nietzsche in late 1918 (see Galpin’s essay, “Nietzsche as a Practical Prophet,” The Rainbow,October 1921). HPL not only wrote several birthday and other tributes in verse to Galpin —“To Alfred Galpin, Esq.” (1920), “To a Youth” (1921), “To Mr. Galpin” (1921)—but also numerous poems relating to Galpin’s high-school romances, envisioning Galpin as an ancient Greek shepherd pursuing, or pursued by, a nymph. Among them are “Damon and Delia, a Pastoral” (1918), “To Delia, Avoiding Damon” (1918), “Damon—a Monody” (1919), “Hylas and Myrrha” (1919), and “Myrrha and Strephen” (1919). HPL’s poems “To the Eighth of November” (1918) and “Birthday Lines to Margfred Albraham” (1919) are jointly dedicated to Galpin and Margaret Abraham, who shared the same birthday. HPL’s short play Alfredo(1918) features Galpin as its title character and Abraham as the character Margarita. Galpin himself wrote a homage/parody of HPL’s “Nemesis,” titled “SelenaioPhantasma” ( Conservative,July 1918), and

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at an unspecified date (probably before 1920) collaborated with HPL on the poem “Nathicana,” published ( Vagrant,Spring 1927) under the pseudonym Albert Frederick Willie (the first two names echo Galpin’s first name; “Willie” alludes to Galpin’s mother’s maiden name, Willy). By late 1919 Galpin had become, with Maurice W.Moe, a member of HPL’s correspondence cycle, the Gallomo, although it did not seem to last much more than a year.

On July 29, 1922, HPL boarded a train in New York for Cleveland, arriving the next day. He was met by Galpin, who resided at 9231 Birchdale Avenue. HPL stayed until August 15. At that time Galpin gave HPL a copy of Clark Ashton Smith’s The Star-Treader and Other Poems(1912), prompting HPL to write to Smith. On August 18–20, 1925, when he was living in Brooklyn, HPL met Galpin’s wife, a Frenchwoman who had arrived from Paris and would then move on to Cleveland. Galpin later moved to Italy and became a professional pianist and composer. Upon HPL’s death he composed a “Lament for H.P.L.” for solo piano (the score is reproduced in full in Marginalia) and later wrote a poignant memoir, “Memories of a Friendship” (1959; in LR). After the 1920s HPL and Galpin had little contact, and Galpin lost or destroyed most of his letters from HPL; only twenty-seven now survive at JHL. Galpin, Alfred (Old Bugs).

In “Old Bugs,” a once-successful writer who took to drink and thereby alienated the woman he loved, Eleanor Wing. He dies in the attempt to prevent Wing’s son, Alfred Trever, from imbibing alcohol at a tavern.

Gamba.

In “Winged Death,” a factor’s messenger whom Dr. Thomas Slauenwite deliberately causes to be bitten by a strange insect. Slauenwite cures him, but allows another bitten African, Batta, to die. Gamwell, Annie E[meline] Phillips (1866–1941).

Fifth and last child of Whipple V.Phillips and Robie Alzada Place Phillips; youngest sister of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, HPL’s mother. Gamwell was educated in Providence and married Edward Francis Gamwell on June 3, 1897; they had two children, a son, Phillips Gamwell, and a daughter, Marion Roby Gamwell, who lived only five days in February 1900. She separated from her husband some time prior to the death of her son in Colorado at the end of 1916. During part of the period 1919–24, she assisted her sister Lillian Clark in keeping house for HPL at 598 Angell Street; however, in a letter to her dated August 27, 1921 ( SL1.148), HPL writes of her recently taking up residence in New Hampshire. She visited ancestral sites in western Rhode Island with HPL in 1926 and 1929. On May 15, 1933, she took up housekeeping with HPL in a second-story flat at 66 College Street, but broke her ankle soon after moving in; she also underwent an operation to remove a cancerous breast early in 1936 (in his letters HPL discreetly referred to the cause of her hospitalization as “grippe”). She was shocked to find her nephew’s “Instructions in Case of Decease” ( LSNo. 11 [Fall 1985]: 71–73) in the fall of 1936 and was unable to care for him effectively when he became gravely ill in the early months of 1937 because of her own illness. R.H.Barlow came to Providence shortly after HPL’s death and with her permission deposited most of HPL’s literary papers in the John Hay Library of Brown University during the period 1937–

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42. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei also visited her in Providence in 1938. They dedicated to her the first hardcover collection of HPL’s stories, O . She died of cancer in early 1941. Gamwell, Edward F[rancis] (1869–1936).

Married HPL’s aunt Annie Emeline Phillips on June 3, 1897. He received the A.B. from Brown University in 1894. Gamwell was city editor of the Cambridge (Mass.) Chronicle(1896–1901), editor and proprietor of the Cambridge Tribune(1901–12), and editor of the Budgetand American Cultivator,both published from Boston (1913–15); thereafter, he engaged in independent commercial writing and advertising. He was the editor of An Historic Guide to Cambridge(1907). Gamwell separated from his wife sometime before the end of 1916. He removed from Cambridge to Boston about 1931. HPL notes that it was Gamwell’s journalistic work that inspired him to begin the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomyin 1903 (see SL1.39).

See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., Edward Francis Gamwell and His Family(Moshassuck Press, 1991). Gamwell, Phillips (1898–1916).

Son of Annie E.Phillips Gamwell and Edward F.Gamwell. He was the only other member of HPL’s generation in descent from Whipple V.Phillips and his wife Robie A.Place Phillips. He lived most of his short life with parents in Cambridge, Mass. He began corresponding with HPL around 1910. HPL donated his boyhood stamp collection to him. HPL later attributed his fondness for letter-writing to the extensive correspondence he had with Gamwell from 1912 to 1916 (see SL3.370). In October 1916 Gamwell and his mother traveled to Roswell, Col., where Phillips’s paternal grandmother Victoria Clarissa Maxwell had relatives, in an attempt to regain his failing health. He died there on December 31, 1916, of tuberculosis. HPL wrote a poetic tribute, “An Elegy on Phillips Gamwell, Esq.” (Providence Evening News,January 5, 1917).

Gardner.

In “The Colour out of Space,” the family on whose farm the strange meteorite lands. Nahum is the patriarch, the last survivor of the blight that overtakes his farm. When his wife Nabby (short for Abigail) goes mad, he locks her in the attic, where she becomes a “terrible thing [that] very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble” and ultimately “does not reappear in [Ammi Pierce’s] tale as a moving object.” Zenas is their oldest son, followed by Thaddeus (1866–1883) and Merwin (sometimes affectionately called Mernie). Thaddeus goes mad, and Merwin and Zenas disappear into the poisoned well.

Gedney,———.

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 subsequently discovered, dead, by Dyer and Danforth deep within the Old Ones’ city.

Genie.

In “Memory,” a supernatural entity who asks the Daemon of the Valley of the deeds and identity of the creatures (i.e., human beings) in a deserted valley.

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Gerritsen, Cornelia.

In “The Horror at Red Hook,” a society woman from Bayside, Queens, whom Robert Suydam marries to deflect attention from his bizarre activities and improve his social standing. She and her husband die mysteriously on their wedding day.

“Ghost-Eater, The.”

Short story (3,880 words); written in collaboration with C.M.Eddy, Jr., in October 1923. First published in WT(April 1924); first collected in DB;corrected text in HM

The first-person narrator needs to get from Mayfair to Glendale (two cities in Maine) but can find no one to take him. So he goes by himself on foot, stopping at night in a deserted wood. After sleeping for a time, he awakens in the night and realizes that it will shortly begin raining. Entering a clearing, he sees on the farther side of it a building—a “neat and tasteful house of two stories.” Knocking at the place, he is invited in by a “strikingly handsome” man who, with a faint trace of a foreign accent, invites him to stay for the night. Retiring to an upstairs bedroom, the traveler (who is carrying a large amount of money on his person) decides to exercise caution: he arranges the bedclothes to make it appear as if he is sleeping there, and prepares to settle down in a chair for the duration of the night. Shortly thereafter he hears footsteps ascending the stairs. The door opens and a man whom he had never seen before (“indubitably a foreigner”) enters the room. This man disrobes, gets into the vacant bed, and appears to go to sleep. The narrator is unclear whether the scene he has witnessed is real or merely a dream, so he reaches over the recumbent figure and seeks to grasp the man’s shoulder; but “my clutching fingers had passed directly through the sleeping form, and seized only the sheet below!”Horrified and confused, the narrator now hears the sound of additional footsteps on the stairs; his room is now entered by a “great gray wolf whose eyes “were the gray phosphorescent eyes of my host as they had peered at me through the darkness of the kitchen.”The wolf howls and springs at the sleeping figure on the bed, apparently tearing out the man’s throat. The traveler empties his revolver in the direction of the wolf, but every shot hits the wall without apparently harming the wolf in any way. Somehow the traveler staggers to Glendale, where he learns the story of Vasili Oukranikov, who came from Russia sixty years before and built a house in the woods. Oukranikov had the reputation of being a “werewolf and eater of men.” One day he invited Count Feodore Tchernevsky (who lived in Mayfair) to his home; that evening the count was found in a mangled state, with a gray wolf hovering over the body. The wolf was killed and buried in the house, and the house was then burned down. But at every full moon the wolf is seen to roam the area again.

A conventional ghost/werewolf story, the impetus for its writing clearly came from Eddy. HPL wrote to Eddy’s wife, Muriel, on 20 October 1923: “Here, at last, is the amended ‘Ghost-Eater’, whose appearance I trust Mr. Eddy will find satisfactory. I made two or three minor revisions in my own revised version, so that as it stands, it ought to be fairly acceptable to an editor” (quoted in DB,p. 97). The suggestion is that Eddy wrote the initial draft, HPL exhaustively revised it, and men slightly revised this draft.

Gifford, Jonathan.

In “The Lurking Fear,” a friend of Jan Martense who, wor

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ried over the lack of correspondence from Jan, comes to the Martense mansion in the fall of 1763, only to be told that Jan is dead.

Gilman, Walter.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” the student of advanced mathematics and physics at Miskatonic University who resides at the old Witch House in Arkham. In his strange dreams and bouts of sleepwalking (induced by the strangely angled room in which lives), he observes bizarre landscapes and encounters the witch Keziah Mason, who formerly inhabited his room. Gilman is ultimately killed by Brown Jenkin, the witch’s familiar.

Glendale.

Fictitious town in Maine invented either by HPL or by C.M.Eddy and cited in “The Ghost-Eater” (1923).

Gll’-Hthaa-Ynn.

In “The Mound,” the leader of a cavalcade of men and beasts who comes upon Panfilo de Zamacona in a temple in the underworld realm beneath the mound and leads him back to the great city of Tsath.

Goodenough, Arthur [Henry] (1871–1936).

American poet and amateur journalist from Brattleboro, Vt. He was the author of several small, privately printed volumes of poetry, including “Blossoms of Yesterday”(1896), My Lady’s Shoes and Other Poems(1911), Songs of Four Decades(1927), and Grass of Parnasses(ed. Walter John Coates) (1937). His poem “Lovecraft—an Appreciation” (included in his “Further Recollections of Amateur Journalism,” Vagrant,Spring 1927) was in parts so effusive that HPL thought it a parody, but Goodenough’s friend W.Paul Cook convinced him it was genuine. HPL accordingly responded with his own poetic tribute, “To Arthur Goodenough, Esq.” ( Tryout,September 1918). HPL visited Goodenough in Brattleboro in August 1927 and also in June 1928; this latter visit, in which several other local writers participated, was written up in the Brattleboro Reformer(June 18, 1928) under the title “Literary Persons Meet in Guilford.” Goodenough’s home seems to be a partial inspiration for Akeley’s home in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930).

Grandison, Robert.

In “The Trap,” a student who becomes entrapped in the magic mirror at the house of Gerald Canevin.

“Green Meadow, The.”

Short story (2,330 words); written in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, c. 1918 or 1919. First published in Vagrant(Spring 1927) (as “Translated by Elizabeth Neville Berkeley and Lewis Theobald, Jun.”); first collected in BWS;corrected text in HM

An introductory note states that the following narrative was found in a notebook embedded in a meteorite that landed in the sea near the coast of Maine. This notebook was made of some unearthly substance and the text was “Greek of the purest classical quality.”The narrative itself tells of a person who finds himself (or, conceivably, herself) on a peninsula near a rushing stream, not knowing who he is and how he got there. The peninsula breaks off its land mass and floats down the river, which is gradually wearing away the soil of the newly created island. The narrator sees in the distance a green meadow. His island is

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approaching it, and gradually he hears a weird singing on it; but as he approaches close enough to see “the sourceof the chanting,” he suddenly experiences a cataclysmic revelation: “therein was revealed the hideous solution of all which had puzzled me.” But after a few hints the text becomes illegible.

HPL admits that the story was based upon a dream that Jackson had, probably in late 1918, and that this dream “was exceptionally singular in that I had one exactly like it myself—save that mine did not extend so far. It was only when I had related my dream that Miss J. related the similar and more fully developed one” ( SL1.116). Elsewhere HPL states that he added the “quasi-realistic… introduction from my own imagination” (HPL to the Gallomo, [January] 1920; AHT). The fact of the document being in Greek is intended to suggest that it is the “narrative of an ancient Greek philosopher who had escaped from the earth and landed on some other planet” ( SL1.136), although it is difficult to arrive at this conclusion from the text alone.

See Stefan Dziemianowicz, “‘The Green Meadow’ and ‘The Willows’: Lovecraft, Blackwood, and a Peculiar Coincidence,” LSNos. 19/20 (Fall 1989): 33–39.

Gresham, Mr.

In “The Loved Dead,” the owner of the Gresham Corporation, a company that maintains the largest funeral parlors in the city of Fenham, who finds the narrator making love to a corpse and dismisses him from his service. Later Gresham dies in “the influenza epidemic” (i.e., of 1918–19). Grey Eagle, Chief.

In “The Curse of Yig” and “The Mound,” an American Indian, nearly 150 years old. It is he who corroborates much of the folklore constituting the narrative of “The Mound.”

Guiney, Louise Imogen (1861–1920).

Massachusetts poet and critic. HPL states that he and his parents boarded with Guiney and her mother in Auburndale, Mass., in the winter of 1892–93 (see SL2.207), but independent confirmation of this stay has not been found. HPL, however, had clear recollections of the Guiney residence, including its numerous dogs. It was formerly thought that some unpublished Guiney letters (to F.H.Day) written in the summer of 1892 contain allusions to the Lovecrafts, but in fact they refer to some German houseguests. HPL claimed that his mother was acquainted with Guiney; the latter, a Catholic, had attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Providence (1872–79), but there is no record of Sarah Susan Phillips having gone there. HPL also stated that he was dandled on the knee of the aged Oliver Wendell Holmes at the Guiney residence; Holmes was indeed a friend of Guiney, so this memory is likely to be genuine. Guiney wrote many books of poetry ( Songs at the Start[1884]; verse collected in Happy Ending[1909; rev. 1927]) and criticism ( Goose-Quill Papers[1885]). HPL owned her cowritten book, Three Heroines of New England Romance(1895). Her selected letters (containing no mention of HPL’s family) were published in 1920 (2 vols.).

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H

Haines, Mark.

In “Two Black Bottles,” the proprietor of a grocery store in Daalbergen, N.J., who tells the narrator of the strange events surrounding the death of the narrator’s uncle, Johannes Vanderhoof. “Hallowe’en in a Suburb.”

Poem (35 lines in 7 stanzas); probably written in early 1926. First published in the National Amateur (March 1926) (as “In a Suburb”); rpt. Phantagraph(June 1937); rpt. WT(September 1952). An evocation of the wonders and terrors of Halloween.

Halsey, Allan.

In “Herbert West—Reanimator,” the dean of the medical school of Miskatonic University. He opposes Herbert West’s experiments in reanimation, but when he succumbs to typhoid, West resuscitates him with only partial success.

Hammett, [Samuel] Dashiell (1894–1961).

Pioneering American writer of “hard-boiled” detective fiction who compiled the horror anthology Creeps by Night(1931), containing HPL’s “The Music of Erich Zann.” HPL, August Derleth, and other colleagues made numerous suggestions to Hammett regarding stories for inclusion in the volume. The anthology was reprinted in the UK as Modern Tales of Horror(1932).

Hardman, ’Squire.

In “Sweet Ermengarde,” the owner of the mortgage on the home of Hiram Stubbs, whose daughter, Ermengarde, he hopes to marry. After a succession of adventures, he does so.

Harré, T[homas] Everett (1884–1948).

American journalist who assembled the horror anthology Beware After Dark!(1929), containing HPL’s “The Call of Cthulhu,” of which he stated in his introduction: “…in its cumulative awesomeness and building of effect to its appalling finale, [it] is reminiscent of

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Poe.” HPL met Harré when he visited New York in January 1934 (see SL4.341). Harré published several novels as well as two further anthologies, The Bedside Treasury of Love(1945) and Treasures of the Kingdom(1947).

Harris, Arthur (1895–1966).

Amateur journalist in Wales and correspondent of HPL (1915–37). Harris, living in Llandudno, published one of the longest-running amateur journals, Interesting Items,which ran from 1904 (as Llandudno’s Weekly) to 1956, each issue usually consisting only of four to eight small pages. Harris published HPL’s poems “1914” (March 1915), “The Crime of Crimes” (July 1915), and two sonnets of Fungi from Yuggoth.Harris published “The Crime of Crimes” as a pamphlet; it thereby became HPL’s first separate publication. Copies are exceptionally scarce: three are known to be in existence. HPL continued to correspond with Harris for the entirety of his life, although as early as 1918 his letters numbered no more than one or two a year.

Harris, William (d. 1764).

In “The Shunned House,” a merchant and seaman, the first inhabitant of the Shunned House, along with his wife Rhoby (Dexter) Harris and their children Elkanah (1755–1766), Abigail (1757– 1763), William, Jr. (1759–1797), and Ruth (1761–1763). Most of the family and their servants die while living in the house. Rhoby goes mad, and although William, Jr., becomes quite sickly, he survives, enlists in the army, and returns to the house. He marries Phoebe (Hetfield) Harris of Elizabethtown, N.J., in 1780, but after she gives birth to a stillborn daughter, he moves out of the house and shuts it down. In 1785 his wife bears a son, Dutee Harris, and after his parents die in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797, he is raised by his cousin, Rathbone Harris, son of William’s cousin Peleg Harris. Later descendants are Dutee’s son Welcome Harris (d. 1862), Welcome’s son Archer Harris (d. 1916), and Archer’s son Carrington Harris, the current (i.e., as of 1924) owner of the Shunned House.

Harris, Woodburn (1888–1988).

Correspondent of HPL, living in Vermont. He came in touch with HPL around 1929, probably through the mediation of Walter J.Coates. HPL revised some of Harris’s tracts against Prohibition, although these do not appear to have been published. Only three of HPL’s letters to him survive, but one of these was a handwritten letter of seventy pages (see SL3.58).

Hart, Bertrand K[elton] (1892–1941).

Literary editor of the Providence Journalwho briefly corresponded with HPL. In his column in the Journal,“The Sideshow,” in mid-November 1929, Hart printed a list of what a colleague had recommended as the ten greatest horror stories ever written. HPL found the list so tame that he submitted his own list, published in Hart’s column for November 23; Hart called the list “a little masterpiece of comparative criticism.” Other lists, by August Derleth and Frank Belknap Long, were published in the column for November 25. Hart then stumbled upon HPL’s “The Call of Cthulhu” in Harré’s Beware After Dark!,and professed to be outraged at the fact that the artist Wilcox’s home was given as 7 Thomas Street, where Hart himself had once resided. In the column for November 30 he threatened to send a ghost to

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HPL’s doorstep at 3 A.M. that night. At 3:07 A.M. HPL wrote the sonnet “The Messenger” and sent it to Hart, who published it in his column for December 3. Hart printed a letter by HPL in his column for March 18, 1930. Some of Hart’s columns discussing HPL were gathered in The Sideshow of B.K.Hart,ed. Philomela Hart (1941). Although Hart repeatedly expressed a wish to meet HPL, he never did so; possibly HPL, with his typically exaggerated modesty, felt himself too insignificant to meet so recognized a figure in local journalism.

Hartmann, J[oachim] F[riedrich] (1848–1930).

Astrologer who incurred HPL’s ire when he wrote the article “Astrology and the European War” in the Providence Evening Newsfor September 4, 1914. HPL and Hartmann exchanged several polemics in the Evening News—the former with “Science versus Charlatanry” (September 9) and “The Falsity of Astrology” (October 10); the latter with a letter to the editor (October 7) and “The Science of Astrology” (October 22)—until HPL finally silenced him with satires written under pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr. (derived from Jonathan Swift’s Isaac Bickerstaffe pieces satirizing the astrologer Partridge): “Astrology and the Future” (October 13) and “Delavan’s Comet and Astrology” (October 26). After Hartmann’s last article (“A Defense of Astrology,” December 14), HPL concluded with an article under his own name (“The Fall of Astrology,” December 17) and one final Bickerstaffe article (letter to the editor, December 21). Articles on both sides are collected in Science vs. Charlatanry (1979).

Hartwell, Dr.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” Henry Armitage’s personal physician.

“Haunter of the Dark, The.”

Short story (9,350 words); written November 5–9, 1935. First published in WT(December 1936); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in CCand An2

Robert Blake, a young writer of weird fiction, comes to Providence for a period of writing. Looking through his study window down College Hill and across to the far-away and vaguely sinister Italian district known as Federal Hill, Blake becomes fascinated by an abandoned church “in a state of great decrepitude.” Eventually he gains the courage actually to go to the place and enter it, and he finds many anomalous things within. There are strange and forbidden books; there is, in a large square room, an object resting upon a pillar—a metal box containing a curious gem or mineral—that exercises an unholy fascination upon Blake; and there is the decaying skeleton of a newspaper reporter whose notes Blake reads. The notes speak of the ill-regarded Starry Wisdom church, whose congregation gained in numbers throughout the nineteenth century and was suspected of satanic practices of a very bizarre sort, until the city finally shut the church in 1877. The notes also mention a “Shining Trapezohedron” and a “Haunter of the Dark” that cannot exist in light. Blake concludes that the object on the pillar is the Shining Trapezohedron, and in an “access of gnawing, indeterminate panic fear” he closes the lid of the object and flees the place.

Later he hears strange stories of some object lumbering within the belfry of the church, stuffing pillows in all the windows so that no light can come in. A tremendous electrical storm on August 8–9 causes a blackout for several hours.

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A group of superstitious Italians gathers around the church with candles, and they sense an enormous dark object emerging from the belfry. Blake’s diary tells the rest of the tale. He feels that he is somehow losing control of his sense of self (“My name is Blake—Robert Harrison Blake of 620 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin…. I am on this planet”; and still later: “I am it and it is I”); his perspective is all confused; finally he sees some nameless object approaching him. The next morning he is found dead—of electrocution, even though his window was closed and fastened. What, in fact, has happened to Blake? The poignant but seemingly cryptic entry “Roderick Usher” in his diary tells the whole story. Just as in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” HPL analyzed Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a tale that “displays an abnormally linked trinity of entities at the end of a long and isolated family history—a brother, his twin sister, and their incredibly ancient house all sharing a single soul and meeting one common dissolution at the same moment,” so in “The Haunter of the Dark” we are to believe that the entity in the church—the Haunter of the Dark, described as an avatar of Nyarlathotep—has possessed Blake’s mind but, at the moment of doing so, is struck by lightning and killed, and Blake dies as well.

The story came about almost as a whim. Robert Bloch had written “The Shambler from the Stars” in the spring of 1935, in which a character—never named, but clearly meant to be HPL—is killed. HPL was taken with the story, and when it was published in WT(September 1935), a reader, B.M.Reynolds, praised it and had a suggestion to make: “Contrary to previous criticism, Robert Bloch deserves plenty of praise for The Shambler from the Stars . Now why doesn’t Mr. Lovecraft return the compliment, and dedicate a story to the author?” (WT 36, No. 5 [November 1935]: 652). At the time HPL read this, he had just learned of the acceptances by Astounding Stories of At the Mountains of Madnessand “The Shadow out of Time.” Bolstered by the news, he took up Reynolds’s suggestion, and the resulting story tells of one Robert Blake (a very transparent allusion to Robert Bloch, to whom HPL dedicated the story) who dies a glassy-eyed corpse staring out his study window. Several of the surface details of the plot were taken directly from Hanns Heinz Ewers’s “The Spider,” which HPL read in Dashiell Hammett’s Creeps by Night(1931). This story involves a man who becomes fascinated with a strange woman he sees through his window in a building across from his own, until finally he seems to lose hold of his own personality. The entire story is told in the form of the man’s diary, and at the end he writes: “My name—Richard Bracquemont, Richard Bracquemont, Richard—oh, I can’t get any farther….”

Many landmarks described in the story are manifestly based upon actual sites. The view from Blake’s study is a poignant description of what HPL saw from his own study at 66 College Street. The same view can be seen today from such a vantage point as Prospect Terrace on the brow of College Hill. Blake’s address, as given in the story, was Bloch’s actual address in Milwaukee. The church that figures so prominently in the tale was St. John’s Catholic Church on Atwell’s Avenue in Federal Hill (torn down in 1992). This church was situated on a raised plot of ground, as in the story, although there was (at least in recent years) no metal fence around it. It was, in HPL’s day, the principal Catholic

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church in the area. The description of the interior and belfry of the church is quite accurate. HPL heard that the steeple had been destroyed by lightning in late June of 1935 (he was not there at the time, being in Florida visiting R.H. Barlow); instead of rebuilding the steeple, the church authorities simply put a cap on the brick tower (see HPL to Richard F.Searight, December 24, 1935; Letters to Richard F.Searight[Necronomicon Press, 1992], p. 70).

See Steven J.Mariconda, “Some Antecedents of the Shining Trapezohedron,” Etchings and Odysseys No. 3 [1983]: 15–20 (rpt. in Mariconda’s On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations [Necronomicon Press, 1995]).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804–1864).

American novelist and short story writer. Hawthorne was a central figure in early Gothic literature in America and a major influence on HPL, who at the age of six first developed a fascination with Graeco-Roman mythology by reading Hawthorne’s rewritings of Greek myths, A Wonder Book(1852) and Tanglewood Tales(1853). The House of the Seven Gables(1851)—which HPL in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” deemed “New England’s greatest contribution to weird literature”—probably influenced HPL’s “The Picture in the House” (1920), “The Shunned House” (1924), and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward(1927). “The Outsider” (1921) may in part have been inspired by Hawthorne’s “Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man.” HPL’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath(1926– 27) shows the influence of both Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun(1860) and his short story “The Great Stone Face” (in The Snow Image, and Other Twice-told Tales[1852]); “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932) was heavily influenced by Hawthorne’s unfinished novel Septimius Felton,as “The Unnamable” (1923) was by Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret(1883).

See Dirk W.Mosig, “Poe, Hawthorne and Lovecraft: Variations on a Theme of Panic,” RomantistNos. 4–5 (1980–81): 43–45; Donald R.Burleson, “H. P. Lovecraft: The Hawthorne Influence,” Extrapolation22, No. 3 (Fall 1981): 262–69.

Hayden, Ben.

In “The Man of Stone,” a friend of the narrator who takes the narrator with him to investigate the uncannily lifelike sculptures of Arthur Wheeler.

“He.”

Short story (4,310 words); written on August 11, 1925. First published in WT(September 1926); first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC

The narrator ruefully announces: “My coming to New York had been a mistake….” He had hoped to find literary inspiration in the “teeming labyrinths“ of the city, but instead finds only “a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me.” The narrator confesses that the gleaming towers of New York had captivated him at first, but later he came to realize that “this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life.” He seeks out Greenwich Village

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as the one area in the city where antiquity can still be found; it is here, at 2:00 one August morning, that he meets “the man.” This person has an archaic manner of speaking and is wearing similarly archaic attire, and the narrator takes him for a harmless eccentric; but the latter immediately senses a fellow antiquarian. The man leads him on a circuitous tour of old alleys and courtyards, finally coming to “the ivy-clad wall of a private estate,” where the man lives. In the manor house the man begins to relate an account of his “ancestor,” who practiced some sort of sorcery, in part from knowledge gained from the Indians in the area; later he conveniently killed them with bad rum, so that he alone now had the secret information he had extracted from them. What is the nature of this knowledge? The man leads the narrator to a window and, parting the curtains, reveals an idyllic rural landscape—it can only be the Greenwich of the eighteenth century, brought magically before his eyes. The narrator, stunned, asks harriedly, “Can you—dare you—go far?” In scorn the man parts the curtains again and this time shows him an apocalyptic sight of the future (“I saw the heavens verminous with strange flying things, and beneath them a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon, and devil-lights burning from unnumbered windows”). The narrator screams in horror, inadvertently summoning the spirits of the murdered Indians, who manifest themselves in the form of a black slime, burst in on the pair, and make off with the archaic man (who is himself the “ancestor”), while the narrator falls through successive floors of the building and then crawls out to Perry Street. Later we learn that the narrator has now returned to his native New England.

The story was written in the course of an all-night tour of the antiquities of the New York metropolitan area. By 7 A.M. on August 11, HPL had reached Elizabeth, N.J., by ferry. There he purchased a 10¢ composition book at a shop, went to Scott Park, and wrote the story. The actual location of the story is Greenwich Village; specifically, a courtyard off Perry Street that HPL had explored the previous August in response to an article on it (in a regular column, “Little Sketches about Town”) in the New York Evening Post(August 29, 1924). His description of the courtyard is quite accurate. Moreover, HPL probably knew that the area had been heavily settled by Indians (they had named it Sapohanican) and that a sumptuous mansion was built in the block bounded by Perry, Charles, Bleecker, and West Fourth Streets sometime between 1726 and 1744, being the residence of a succession of wealthy citizens until it was razed in 1865. This is clearly the manor house of the archaic gentleman. The vision of past and future New York as seen in the window of the house may have been derived from Lord Dunsany’s picaresque novel The Chronicles of Rodriguez(1922), in which Rodriguez and a companion make an arduous climb of a mountain to the house of a wizard, who in alternate windows unveils vistas of wars past and to come.

See S.T.Joshi, “Lovecraft and Dunsany’s Chronicles of Rodriguez,” CryptNo. 82 (Hallowmas 1992): 3–6; Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “Lovecraft’s ‘He,’” LSNo. 37 (Fall 1997): 17–25.

Heald, Hazel (1896–1961).

Revision client of HPL, residing in Somerville, Mass. According to Muriel E.Eddy ( The Gentleman from Angell Street[1961]),

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Heald was a member of a New England writers’ club that Mrs. Eddy had begun; sometime in 1932 Mrs. Eddy introduced Heald to HPL, having read “The Man of Stone,” which she found poorly written but with an interesting plot. Although other parts of Mrs. Eddy’s memoir appear falsified or erroneous, nothing in HPL’s letters contradicts this account; HPL, in fact, never mentions how he first came to know Heald. HPL eventually revised five stories for her—“The Man of Stone,” “Winged Death,” “The Horror in the Museum,” “Out of the Aeons,” and “The Horror in the Burying-Ground”— most of them in 1932–33. (See entries on individual stories for details of publication and other particulars.) Four of the stories feature an element in common: a human being who is either dead or immobilized but whose brain is alive (“Winged Death” features a man whose brain or personality ends up in the body of an insect). Mrs. Eddy suggests that Heald, a divorcee, was romantically attracted to HPL and that she once invited him to a candlelight dinner in Somerville; in his memoir W.Paul Cook notes that after his trip to Quebec in the summer of 1932, HPL stopped to visit him in Athol, Mass., and that “he was going to take a midnight bus to Providence after dinner in Somerville” (Cook does not mention Heald in his account). HPL himself does not seem to have been particularly attracted to Heald. Heald did not keep her letters from HPL.