Lovecraft’s return to Providence in April 1926 impelled the greatest surge of creative writing he ever experienced, including such memorable performances as “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and “The Colour Out of Space” (1927). “Pickman’s Model” (1926) is one of the lesser components of this outburst, but it is a tale of consuming interest for what it says about Lovecraft. To be sure, the setting of the tale—the then decaying North End of Boston—is rendered with matchless authenticity, although Lovecraft was mortified to discover that several of the locales (including the actual house that served as the basis for Richard Upton Pickman’s studio) had been razed by the time he revisited the place the very next year; but the tale also underscores the aesthetic principles of weird fiction that Lovecraft had just outlined in his masterful historical sketch, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1925-27), and would continue to embody in his own work for the rest of his life. The distinction between literature and hackwork; the artist’s need for self-expression; the quest for sincerity and honesty in art, whether that art be deemed “wholesome” or “morbid”—these principles may appear elementary, even hackneyed, but Lovecraft’s resolute adherence to them is the chief reason why his work has survived while that of the many “professional” writers for Weird Tales and other weird, science fiction, and mystery pulps have vanished into a merited oblivion. In the short term, of course, Lovecraft was the sufferer for his aesthetic inviolability: some of his best work was rejected by the pulps as being too far beyond the stifling conventions of the genre, while it was unsuitable to a mainstream market that was, in its own direction, scarcely less conventional in its outlook and had deemed genre fiction as beyond the pale of serious literature.
One of the works that Lovecraft never bothered to prepare for publication, although he should have, was the short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927). It is the second of the two lengthy works he wrote at this time, directly following The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926-27). Two more dissimilar works could scarcely be envisioned; and yet, in the end they underscore the same point. In the earlier work, the Bostonian Randolph Carter searches through dreamland for the “sunset city” he can no longer find in his dreams; along the way he meets all sorts of curious creatures—gugs, ghasts, zoogs, and, of course, a legion of cats who float Carter on their backs as they leap from the moon to the earth—and traverses a plethora of wondrous realms. The result is an orgy of imaginative exuberance, free of the strict topographical realism that governs most of Lovecraft’s other work. But what does Carter find at the end of his journey? He is told by the god Nyarlathotep in a passage as poignant as anything in Lovecraft:
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.
Similarly, Charles Dexter Ward, a native of Providence, travels all over Europe for the secrets of alchemy, but ultimately returns to the city of his birth—exactly as Lovecraft returned from two hellish years in New York. The simple sentence “It was twilight, and Charles Dexter Ward had come home” is all we need to realize that Lovecraft is speaking of himself here. Ward is certainly the most autobiographical of Lovecraft’s characters; and although he himself succumbs to the evil machinations of the wizard Joseph Curwen, Providence itself is saved and remains pure and unscathed.
The autobiographical elements in “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) do not relate to character—unless we adopt Peter Cannon’s wry theory that Wilbur Whateley, his mother Lavinia, and Old Whateley represent deliberately twisted versions of Lovecraft, his mother, and his grandfather—but rather relate to topography, embodying the travels in central Massachusetts Lovecraft had undertaken just prior to writing the story. Celebrated as it is, the story seems to have more than its share of flaws and drawbacks, particularly in a rather naïve good-versus-evil scenario that Lovecraft carefully eschewed in most of his other work. It is by far his most “pulpish” story, and it is no surprise that it was snapped up by Weird Tales as soon as he submitted it.
No one could imagine At the Mountains of Madness as being topographically autobiographical, for Lovecraft never voyaged outside of the North American continent, let alone ventured all the way to Antarctica. And yet, the Great White South had fascinated him since boyhood: he had written little pamphlets on the voyages of Ross, Wilkes, and other mid-nineteenth-century explorers, had eagerly followed the renewed wave of exploration at the turn of the century, and of course found Admiral Byrd’s expedition of 1928-30 of consuming interest. Lovecraft was not shy in declaring the novel his “best” work of fiction11—a judgment with which it is difficult to disagree. The meticulous realism of the opening chapters is vital in allowing Lovecraft to suggest a slow and gradual incursion of weirdness within this carefully etched realm. Just as, in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Joseph Curwen and his nefarious deeds are inserted craftily and seam lessly within the known historical record of Rhode Island, so in At the Mountains of Madness Lovecraft incorporates his barrel-shaped extraterrestrials, the Old Ones, within what was then known of the topography, geology, and history of the Antarctic continent. Are we not told, in the Necronomicon, that the Old Ones exist “not in the spaces we know, but between them”? And did not Lovecraft, by 1931, evolve an aesthetic of weird fiction that exactly embodied this conception? “The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space, & matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible & mensurable universe.”12
Lovecraft well knew that, in the type of weird fiction he was writing, memorable characters do not, by design, bulk large:Individuals and their fortunes within natural law move me very little. They are all momentary trifles bound from a common nothingness toward another common nothingness. Only the cosmic framework itself—or such individuals as symbolise principles (or defiances of principles) of the cosmic framework—can gain a deep grip on my imagination and set it to work creating. In other words, the only “heroes” I can write about are phenomena.13
And yet, Lovecraft also knew that his characters could not be so bland that they failed to elicit reader sympathy and reader identification; at the least, they had to serve as the reader’s eyes, ears, and mind for the perception of the supernatural or supernormal “phenomena” being presented. And in a few works, as in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and “The Thing on the Doorstep,” characters do function as more than merely “principles (or defiances of principles) of the cosmic framework”; and in those cases Lovecraft found that the best source for the realism that would bring these characters alive was himself:All of us are more or less complex, so that our personalities have more than one side. If we are reasonably clever we can make as many different characters out of ourselves as there are sides to our personalities—taking in each case the isolated essence and filling out the rest of the character with fictitious material as different as possible from anything either in our own lives or in any other characters we may have manufactured from other sides of ourselves.14
That Lovecraft did indeed have many sides to his personality is revealed most clearly in his prodigally vast correspondence; but in his fiction we also find many figures who in their varied character traits recall their gaunt, lantern-jawed creator. If, as Vincent Starrett said long ago, Lovecraft was “his own most fantastic creation,” then he chose a good source for the personalities of those hapless victims who face their ineluctable doom with the quiet stoicism of a well-bred New England gentleman.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
PRIMARY
&nbs
p; Lovecraft’s tales, essays, poems, and letters have appeared in many editions, beginning with The Outsider and Others (1939). However, only certain recent editions can claim textual accuracy; other editions (including almost all current paperback editions in the United States and United Kingdom) contain numerous textual and typographical errors. Lovecraft’s fiction and “revisions” can be found in four volumes published by Arkham House (Sauk City, WI) under my editorship:The Dunwich Horror and Others (1984);
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1985);
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1986);
The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1989).
Annotated editions include The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (New York: Penguin, 1999), The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Dell, 1997), and More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (1999).
Lovecraft’s poetry has now been definitively gathered in my edition of The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2001), superseding all previous editions.
A large selection of Lovecraft’s essays can be found in my edition of Miscellaneous Writings (Arkham House, 1995). Among other volumes of essays are:Commonplace Book, ed. David E. Schultz (Necronomicon Press, 1987);
The Conservative, ed. Marc A. Michaud (Necronomicon Press, 1976);
To Quebec and the Stars, ed. L. Sprague de Camp (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1976).
The major edition of Lovecraft’s letters is Selected Letters (Arkham House, 1965-76; 5 vols.), edited by August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and James Turner. This edition, however, is not annotated or indexed, contains numerous textual errors, and presents nearly all letters in various degrees of abridgement. More recent, annotated editions of letters, edited by David E. Schultz and myself and published by Necronomicon Press, include:Letters to Henry Kuttner (1990);
Letters to Richard F. Searight (1992);
Letters to Robert Bloch (1993);
Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett (1994).
Schultz and I have also edited a volume largely culled from Lovecraft’s letters: Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000).
SECONDARY
Since about 1975, the literature on Lovecraft has been immense. Much biographical and critical work prior to that time is of little value, having been written largely by amateurs with little access to the full range of documentary evidence on Lovecraft (exceptions include the work of Fritz Leiber, Matthew H. Onderdonk, and George T. Wetzel). The following presents only a selection of the leading volumes on Lovecraft; see the notes for citations of additional articles.
A useful reference work containing an abundance of information on Lovecraft’s life, work, colleagues, and other subjects is An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001).
The standard bibliography is my H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981). A supplement, co-compiled by L. D. Blackmore and myself and covering the years 1980-84, was issued by Necronomicon Press in 1985. The books in Lovecraft’s library have been tallied in Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue (Necronomicon Press, 1980), compiled by Marc A. Michaud and myself. An expanded edition can be found on the Necronomicon Press Web site (www.necropress.com).
My H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press, 1996) is the most exhaustive biographical treatment. L. Sprague de Camp’s Lovecraft: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975) was the first full-length biography but was criticized for errors, omissions, and a lack of sympathy toward its subject. Many of Lovecraft’s colleagues have written memoirs of varying value; these have now been collected by Peter Cannon in Lovecraft Remembered (Arkham House, 1998). Some further memoirs can be found in my slim collection, Caverns Measureless to Man: 18 Memoirs of Lovecraft (Necronomicon Press, 1996).
A selection of the best of the earlier criticism on Lovecraft can be found in my anthology, H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism (Ohio University Press, 1980). A substantial anthology of early and recent criticism is Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, ed. Darrell Schweitzer (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1987). Other recent critical treatments, on a wide variety of topics, can be found in An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by David E. Schultz and myself (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991). Some of the better monographs and collections of essays on Lovecraft are:
Timo Airaksinen, The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft: The Route to Horror (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), chiefly concerned with Lovecraft’s use of language.
Donald R. Burleson, H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study (Greenwood Press, 1983), a sound general study.
Donald R. Burleson, Lovecraft: Disturbing the Universe (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), a challenging deconstruction ist approach to Lovecraft.
Peter Cannon, H. P. Lovecraft (New York: Twayne, 1989), another good general study with up-to-date references to the secondary literature.
S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990; rpt. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000), a study of Lovecraft’s philosophical thought.
S. T. Joshi, A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft (San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, 1996; rpt. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press, 1999), a general study.
Maurice Lévy, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, trans. S. T. Joshi (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), a revision of a Ph.D. dissertation for the Sorbonne and perhaps still the finest critical study of Lovecraft.
Steven J. Mariconda, On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations (Necronomicon Press, 1996), a collection of Mariconda’s penetrating articles on Lovecraft.
Dirk W. Mosig, Mosig at Last: A Psychologist Looks at Lovecraft (Necronomicon Press, 1997), a collection of articles by a pioneering scholar in Lovecraft studies.
Robert M. Price, H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990), a collection of articles on the “Cthulhu Mythos” as developed by Lovecraft and other writers.
Barton L. St. Armand, The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (Elizabethtown, NY: Dragon Press, 1977), a penetrating study of “The Rats in the Walls.”
Barton L. St. Armand, H. P. Lovecraft: New England Decadent (Albu querque, NM: Silver Scarab Press, 1979), an analysis of the melding of Puritanism and Decadence in Lovecraft’s thought and work.
Lovecraft Studies (Necronomicon Press) is the leading forum for scholarly treatments of Lovecraft. Past and current issues can be consulted at the Necronomicon Press Web site (www.necropress.com).
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
Although the texts in this edition are similar to those found in my Arkham House editions of Lovecraft’s tales (1984-86), they have been recollated from manuscripts and early printed sources, with the result that several additional errors have now been corrected.
The Tomb
“Sedibus ut saltem placidis in morte quiescam.”
—Virgil1
IN RELATING THE CIRCUMSTANCES which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.
My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. W
ealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books,2 and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analysing causes.
I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time; reading, thinking, and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees, and often have I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of a waning moon—but of these things I must not now speak.3 I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes,4 an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth.
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories Page 2