This is all a far cry from the indifference with which Holt’s music was received by his contemporaries. Music in Britain was in a largely fallow state during this period; after the glory days of Purcell and Handel (an adopted Englishman), little of any lasting merit was being composed, and the majority of what found favour were Baroque pastiches. Only a few obscure composers in this drab, conservative England were daring to wade into the dangerous seas of Enlightenment and Romanticism, to go alongside Holt’s contemporary Beethoven and others on ‘the Continent’ in celebrating a new freedom of thought, of Reason, and of Art.
Poets at this time were, of course, less constrained; and it was the friendship of one of England’s greatest poets, William Blake (himself a figure ignored and even reviled in his time), that inspired Holt to some of his greatest work. The manuscript of Holt’s second string quartet (1789) is dedicated to Blake.
It is likely that Holt’s fame would have grown (particularly if he had ever been able to take his music across Europe, where it may have found a more receptive audience) were it not for his tragically early death at the age of just 40, and for the bizarre – and thus far unexplained – events in Wales which drove him to madness.
Only six months ago, however, a puzzling document was found tucked away in a collection of the miscellaneous papers of Holt’s brother-in-law, the poet Walter Deakin (it was Deakin and his wife, Holt’s sister Edith, who cared for the composer in his last years, at least until he was considered too dangerous to be kept at home, and was confined to the infamous Bethlehem – or Bedlam – asylum). The Deakins had relocated to Massachusetts after Holt’s death, and many years later Deakin’s descendants donated his papers to the library at Miskatonic University. Although no firm provenance has been established – the possibility of fakery cannot be discounted, as Miskatonic has a certain arcane reputation for the discovery in its archives of ’historical documents’ of dubious pedigree – a preliminary linguistic analysis, comparing the writing style to that in documents incontestably authored by Holt, has produced a result of roughly 75% probability that they were indeed written by Edward Holt. A handwriting analysis came to a similar conclusion, the levels of doubt occasioned by the variable grammar and almost childlike penmanship in the latter part of the text.
This material is therefore printed here for the first time. The strangeness of the subject matter may jar, but in the context of Holt’s mental deterioration, and his prior tendency to experience what we would now call ‘auditory hallucinations’ (in the form of a music which he described as “so sweet and ethereal a sound that it can only come from the Seraphim themselves!”), it may have a certain consistency.
I have sent copies of this text to Professor Vernon for comment. That was two months ago. Since then, he has been most uncharacteristically reluctant to speak to me, or to anyone else, on the subject of Edward Holt.
— B.W.
SEPT. 16th, 1801
I have been in Wales for scarcely a day, but already I begin to feel some of the melancholy that has fallen upon me of late begin to lift. It may be that the air of London has grown too stale to tolerate (although I am assured by friends that it is no better nor worse than it ever was), but in this place so far from the dirt and stench and corruption of the city, where even the rain seems to be a cleansing, almost joyous thing, I feel my mind once more begin to soar and sing.
Ah, William! How absurd now seems your devotion to that monster, London! More like Sodom does it appear now, further than ever from becoming the New Jerusalem…
I have taken up residence in a cottage found for me by my old friend and school-fellow Nathaniel Evans (now organist and choir-master at St Woolas Cathedral, in Newport, not far distant) in a small village called Brynteg, close to the old Roman fortress town of Caerleon. The village’s name means ‘fair hill’, and my mind instantly pictured a domain of the ‘fair folk’, said by ancient lore to once populate these isles. So far, alas, I have encountered not one of these elusive creatures, but the beauty of my surroundings makes me think that there is no place in this land where they are more likely to be seen. And I have been here, as I said, only a day, so I must be patient!
A short walk takes me from the cottage to the village, and on the way I pass a most picturesque lake, called by the locals Llyn-yr-Eglwys, or ’Church Lake’ (Here, I must record my indebtedness to the pastor of Brynteg, the Reverend Gwilym Morgan, whom I met and conversed with for some time today upon my arrival, for his advice on Welsh spelling and pronunciation). He is also, I believe, an expert on local folklore, so I am resolved to ask him tomorrow, since he has invited me to visit with him tomorrow, about the origin of the lake’s name, since I can detect no trace of any such building – or habitation of any kind – on the lakeside.
Now, as I prepare to lay down my pen, I see that night begins to fall. To my joy, I begin to hear the sweet music which has been withheld from me for so long in London. I am too weary to try and capture it now; but I feel sure it will still be there in the morning, and for many mornings yet to come.
SEPT. 17th
On first awakening at dawn, my immediate impulse was to try and capture on paper some of that music which had been playing within my mind for most of the night, even to the extent of underscoring my dreams (which, it is interesting to relate, featured the nearby lake as its centrepiece, though in what precise context I cannot recall). Only after three hours of futile effort, scribbling on paper and pawing discordantly upon the pianoforte (found for me and transported here in time for my arrival by my most loyal friend Nathaniel), did I concede defeat, for that morning at least, and repaired back to my bed to spend a further hour in grim, bitter indolence.
Only the sudden recollection that I was due at the home of Reverend Morgan that afternoon stirred me from my torpor. The sunlight radiating upon the house warmed my spirits, and as I washed, shaved and dressed in fresh clothes, a little of the spring returned to my step.
My path to the village took me once more past Llyn-yr-Eglwys, and as I sauntered around its perimeter, I found my pace, almost involuntarily, slow and bring me to a halt, gazing across that preternaturally still mere at the mist-mantled hills opposite. Until that moment, my thoughts had been governed by the beauty and serenity of my surroundings, but as I stood there, another sensation washed over me; an intimation of something intangibly wrong with what I beheld. I can only liken the feeling to that which one, such as myself, who is graced with perfect pitch, feels when a single misplaced note on a single instrument in an orchestra disrupts the perfection of a performance.
Am I too fanciful to connect my sensations at that moment with my dream of the previous night? It would please me to say that it is so.
Departing from that place in some confusion, it took me twenty minutes more (walking at a much brisker pace than had marked the earlier part of my sojourn) to reach the Reverend Morgan’s cottage. I was welcomed with great delight, and much bustling courtesy (displacing a cat from an armchair so I could sit, imploring someone to make tea, calling for his daughter to come and meet me) by that jovial gentleman, and felt no different than if I was a friend of many years acquaintance come to call.
With the tea served (by his housekeeper, an apparently long-suffering woman who smiled at me politely, but whom the Reverend neglected to introduce), and a plate of the local bread, or tesion lap, as it is called, placed before us, my host’s daughter, Olwen, made her appearance. A most delightful girl, of some twenty-one years, with good conversation and deportment, promised in marriage (the Reverend proudly informed me, no doubt to forestall any amorous inclinations on my part) to the son of a wealthy wool trader in Newport. Modestly, she told me she played a little upon the clavichord, and with my encouragement she played a short local air (the name of which escapes me, but it was perfectly pleasant), well enough not to offend my sensibilities too greatly. Having taken my appreciation of her skills with great gratitude, she left us both to our discussions, saying she had business in the village.
> Charming as she was, I welcomed her departure. I wished to question her father on the local folklore, particularly with regard to the lake. Without telling him of my peculiar sensations at the lakeside, I asked him if he knew of any stories appertaining to Llyn-yr-Eglwys.
“There is a legend in these parts,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “that the lake was once dry land, a valley. In that valley stood a city ruled over by a wicked prince whose iniquities and vices were so great that the bishop at that time took him to task. The prince was so furious that he had the bishop slain in his own church. Before the bishop died, however, he cursed the land, and set the church bell ringing. Now, the church was said to have been built upon the site of a holy well, and at the sound of the bell the well overflowed like the waters of the Red Sea rushing back upon Pharaoh, and drowned the land, and everyone in it.”
He gave a chuckle. “It is attested by many in the village – usually after the inn has closed its doors – that the church bell still rings, deep in the waters of the lake, and can sometimes still be heard.”
“Is there any factual basis to this tale?” I asked. Something in my countenance must have disturbed him, for he sat forward and looked at me intently.
“My dear young fellow,” he said, patting my hand, “it is merely a legend, a folk-tale. In every part of Wales… every part of Britain, for all I know… you will find similar stories. Why are you so concerned about our lake? You have been here for only a day.”
I could give him no answer. My visit to the lake earlier had broken my dream of the previous night, stirred up feelings and strange fears to which I could as yet give no voice. As I sit here and write, hours after I left the Reverend’s cottage (as quickly as politeness would allow) those forebodings are still with me.
On my way back here, I took pains to find an alternate route. One that did not take me past the lake.
SEPT. 18th
A low, clinging mist, which drenches to the skin all those who venture abroad in it, has settled in upon the area. At mid-day, the light was scarcely bright enough to be able to make out words upon a page, even when reading by a window, and I was compelled to light candles in order to continue my work. How strange it is, that one’s spirits can be so overthrown in the short space of a day, and by so mean and commonplace a thing as the weather! I endeavoured to remain active, however, and placed myself with steely determination before the pianoforte, only to endure another fruitless afternoon’s attempt at composition. The music in my mind is dull, muffled; and no breath of inspiration stirs in me with which to blow away the clouds which smother it… smother ME…
I can endure this wretchedness no longer. I still have some laudanum, purchased in London, and I can only hope that this black humour will disperse after some hours of repose, and I will awake invigorated.
SEPT. 19th
I awoke to the first light of dawn (if such a pale, drab glow can be truly worthy of the name), my mind in a maelstrom of fear and confusion, at first unwilling to trust that what my eyes were seeing was the real world, and not a continuation of the ghastliness that I visited in my dreams, a ghastliness that, even now, I am loath to recall. Indeed, even if I were less unwilling to do so, I do not believe that my descriptive powers are adequate to the task; what follows is the nearest semblance of cohesion that I can impose upon what I, in experiencing them, perceived as little more than a chaotic gallery of abomination.
As I pitched downward into my laudanum-induced slumber, I heard, to my initial joy, the Angelic Music once more, and so clear and sharp that I felt that its creators were all around me, guarding me as surely as mothers implore them to protect their infants during the hours of darkness. That feeling of serene ecstasy bore me ever deeper, through warm caverns of peace and stillness and absence of mind…
But abruptly the music changed. It became strangely discordant, even as I thought myself to be closer than ever to its source. It seemed that I was hearing the music truly, in its purest form, for the first time.
I had been deceived. Ensnared.
And then my eyes were opened.
I found myself on a dry plain, beneath a sky that boiled with clouds the colour of spilled blood. In my nostrils was the stink of decay and corruption, and looking about me I saw the carcasses and sand-scoured bones of beasts that my imagination defied me to identify; beasts which walked (or perhaps, slithered) upon no Earth that was familiar to me.
Upon the plain, some miles distant but still towering upward into the crimson sky, was a structure unlike any I had ever beheld. It pointed at the unruly heavens like the blasphemous finger of some accusing Titan, ebon-black and jagged, and at its apex burned a beacon of sickly green flame. I knew it to be an intelligently designed and constructed artefact, and not a natural formation, but quite how I knew it to be so I cannot explain, for the thing appeared from its features to be an organic thing, not unlike the giant termite nests of Africa and the Americas of which I have heard. Perhaps it was the strange way in which the light reflected off the surface, revealing angles and geometries too regular… and yet inhuman… to be vegetable matter or some freak of geology.
And then the music… my beloved, ‘angelic’ music, now revealed as a perverted and damned thing… changed once more. It rose to a raging shriek that set my skull ringing fit to burst. I tried to open my mouth to scream, but my incorporeal body in this place would not obey me. My vision was directed upwards, to the red sky, and I saw huge shapes begin to detach from the great tower and rise upwards in ever-widening spirals until they filled the air like locusts. I could discern little detail, for the main bulk of their bodies seemed to be naught but formless blobs, but their wings were large and almost transparent, like unto those of a moth.
All the time, singing. My angels.
Then, motion upon the floor of that wasteland caught my attention. From the base of the tower, other shapes were emerging; wingless, their motion ungainly and yet embodying a powerful purpose. They were rushing towards me, a great herd of these ill-formed beasts spreading outwards in all directions. Even with such a distance between us, their terror was palpable.
They were seeking escape… but from what?
The sky roared. The crescendo of the ‘angel’s’ song had been reached. And, as I watched, so at the very centre of that whirling mass, a hole, like some awful black sun, appeared to open, and with their songs still ringing across the land, all the flying creatures were sucked into that abyss in the sky and, in only a few scant moments, were gone.
With a final, terrible percussion, the black sun vanished.
And I then heard the piteous wail of the creatures left behind.
Something else, also; in the distance, beyond the mountain range which curved around the periphery of the plain, a low rumbling could be felt, and was just reaching the limits of hearing. It was from this, I knew, that the benighted monstrosities closing in on me were fleeing.
And then I saw it. Crashing through the mountains was a tumult of water, a wave higher and more dreadful than any I could have thought possible. What had instigated this deluge, I could not tell, but the torrent raced towards the great tower at astonishing speed, sweeping up the dust and debris of this dry land before it.
The beasts now emitted a mournful howl that seemed to signify that they knew the futility of their attempts at escape. They seemed, as one, to slow, and what had sounded like a cacophony now became almost harmonised, as if in their last moments they had resolved to sing themselves into eternity.
And as they did so, I felt their eyes – eyes in faces which I could not as yet see clearly – fasten upon me.
They were singing for me.
And I knew for what terrible purpose they did so.
I tried to implore them not to choose me for this task, to let the cup pass to another, but they were implacable. In me lay their only hope for salvation.
And their salvation would damn me.
The wave of water struck like a hammer blow of Neptune then, cutting short
their voices, engulfing them and crushing them into the depths to be forgotten and silenced for ever. In the last moments, I saw their hideous, unformed faces, like the smooth features of some embryonic demon, mouths open in song and supplication…
I awoke weeping. I think that in my first moments upon awakening, my memory of those creatures' message to me was still hideously clear, but as I lay, bathed in sweat and feeling as disconsolate and as far from my fellow man as if I were on another world, the meaning of that message slipped from the forefront of my mind. Now, I can give no words to it at all; and yet, in the depths of my soul, somehow I fear that the message remains, and will guide my hands to do God knows what actions.
Can I pray to be forgiven for a sin that I have not yet committed? That I cannot even define? What hope can one such as I—
(The subsequent paragraph is rendered illegible, as if Holt had second thoughts about what he had written. There are no further entries for the period of the 20th through to the 22nd of September — B.W.)
SEPT. 23rd
I have had time to consider my experience (can a dream be truly called an ‘experience’?) of a few nights ago. What seems most terrible and fearful in the immediate aftermath of such a thing can, upon more sober and reasoned reflection, be seen as little more than the product of a disordered mind. I know that my dear friend Blake trusts in the potency and veracity of visions, but I have always been of a more sceptical disposition in these matters, and thus I have come to certain conclusions about what I ‘saw’.
Firstly, the pressures upon me in my latter days in London had been great; debtors had been pursuing me, my publisher was anxious for new work (long promised, and much overdue), and my drinking and use of laudanum had been much increased. My escape to the relative peace of Wales had done nothing to relieve my sorrows, and may in fact have exacerbated them, by giving me the time and solitude to brood. Furthermore, taking the laudanum last night, when my imagination had been already disordered by my new surroundings, must surely have contributed, as had my failure to eat anything of any real substance since I have arrived here.
Cthulhu Cymraeg Page 8