The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (68 page)

7
HPL in fact regarded Atlantis as a myth; see his discussion of its mentions in ancient Greek literature in a late letter (SL 5.267-69). He believed that, if a sunken continent existed anywhere, it might be in the Pacific, analogous to what occultists termed Mu (see SL 2.253); HPL employed this notion in his ghostwritten tale, “Out of the Aeons” (1933; HM). But he was not above using Atlantis for fictional purposes: he cites the theosophist W. Scott-Elliot's
The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria
(1925) in “The Call of Cthulhu” (CC 142), and in the fragment “The Descendant” (1927?) he makes reference to “Ignatius Donnelly's chimerical account of Atlantis” (D 361), i.e., Donnelly's
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
(1882).

8
A crystalline powder, usually dissolved in water and used as a sedative.

“The Quest of Iranon” was written on February 28, 1921. It was first published in the
Galleon
(July-August 1935), a little magazine edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, and reprinted in
Weird Tales
(March 1939). It is among the best of HPL's Dunsanian imitations, although there is perhaps a hint of social snobbery at the end (Iranon kills himself because he discovers he is of low birth). HPL wished to use it in his own amateur paper, the
Conservative
(whose last issue had appeared in July 1919), but the next issue did not appear until March 1923, and HPL had by then evidently decided against using it there.

1
For a realistic counterpart of this same image (looking down upon a city from a height at sunset), see
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
(p. 95 below). On this general theme see Peter Cannon, “Sunset Terrace Imagery in Lovecraft,” in
“Sunset Terrace Imagery in Lovecraft” and Other Essays
(West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1990), pp. 14-17.

2
The title of one of a group of governing magistrates in many of the city-states of ancient Greece, most notably in Athens from the eighth to the fourth century B.C.E.

3
Archaic equivalent of
if.

4
In HPL's “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” (1919), Sarnath was a city on the shores of a lake in the land of Mnar built by people who destroyed the stone city of Ib, but who were later overwhelmed by the resurrected inhabitants of Ib emerging from the lake. HPL thought that he had derived the name Sarnath from Dunsany, but the name does not appear in any of Dunsany's works. There is a real city in India named Sarnath, but HPL was probably not aware of it.

5
Cf. “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”: “After many aeons men came to the land of Mnar; dark shepherd folk with their fleecy flocks, who built Thraa, Ilarnek, and Kadatheron on the winding river Ai” (D 44).

6
Olathoë and Lomar were invented for the story “Polaris” (1918).

7
First invented in “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” (see D 48).

“The Music of Erich Zann” was probably written in December 1921. It was first published in the
National Amateur
(March 1922) and reprinted in
Weird Tales
(May 1925) and reprinted a second time in
Weird Tales
(November 1934). HPL considered the tale among his best, although in later years he noted that it had a sort of negative value: it lacked the flaws—notably over explicitness and overwriting—that marred some of his other works, both before and after. It might, however, be said that HPL erred on the side of
under
explicitness in the very nebulous horror seen through Zann's garret window.

The story appears to be set in Paris. French critic Jacques Bergier claimed to have corresponded with HPL late in the latter's life and purportedly asked him how and when he had ever seen Paris in order to derive so convincing an atmosphere for the tale; HPL is said to have replied, “In a dream, with Poe” (see Jacques Bergier, “Lovecraft, ce grand génie venu d'ailleurs,”
Planète
No. 1 [October-November 1961]: 43-46). But there is no evidence that Bergier ever corresponded with HPL, and this account may be apocryphal. HPL himself stated, shortly after writing the story, “It is not, as a whole, a dream, though I have dreamt of steep streets like the Rue d'Auseil” (HPL to Rheinhart Kleiner, March 12, 1922; ms., private collection).

The story was among the most frequently reprinted in HPL's lifetime. Aside from the appearances listed above, it was included in Dashiell Ham mett's celebrated anthology,
Creeps by Night
(1931) and its various reprints (e.g.,
Modern Tales of Horror
[1932]); it was reprinted in the
Evening Standard
(London) (October 24, 1932), occupying a full page of the newspaper. It was also one of the first of HPL's tales to be included in a textbook: James B. Hall and Joseph Langland's
The Short Story
(1956). It was also adapted as a haunting seventeen-minute film by John Strysik (1981), now included in the video
The Lurker at the Lobby
(Beyond Books, 1998).

John Strysik, “The Movie of Erich Zann and Others,”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 5 (Fall 1981): 29-32.

Donald R. Burleson, “ ‘The Music of Erich Zann' as Fugue,”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 6 (Spring 1982): 14-17.

Robert M. Price, “Erich Zann and the Rue d'Auseil,”
Lovecraft Studies
Nos. 22/23 (Fall 1990): 13-14.

Carl Buchanan, “ ‘The Music of Erich Zann' A Psychological Interpretation (or Two),”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 27 (Fall 1992): 10-13.

1
Auseil
does not exist in French, either as a noun or as a proper noun. Some scholars believe that HPL was intending to suggest a connection with the phrase
au seuil
(at the threshold), i.e., that Erich Zann's room is at the threshold between the real and the unreal. Although HPL's knowledge of French was rudimentary, he could probably have devised a coinage of this kind.

2
This description may suggest that the Rue d'Auseil was loosely based upon a very steep street in Providence, Meeting Street, which similarly ends in a flight of steps as it approaches Congdon Street. Cf.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
: “At Meeting Street . . . he would look upward to the east and see the arched flight of steps to which the highway had to resort in climbing the slope” (p. 96).

3
Peculiar as it sounds, HPL uses the term
viol
literally, referring to the archaic cellolike instrument played between the legs; the term is not a poeticism for “violin.” He confirms this when he refers to Zann as a “ 'cellist” (HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, [October 31, 1931?; ms., JHL]); i.e., violoncellist.

4
HPL professed an ignorance of, and insensitivity to, classical music: “My upper limit in appreciation [of music] is defined with amusing clearness. The conventional grand opera goes over okay with Grandpa, & Dick Wagner (whose ‘Ride of the Valkyries' I was privileg'd to hear) is just about my idea of emotion as derivable from sound—but jack the cultural bar up a bit & try to put over Debussy or Stravinsky or the subtler capers of some of the older big boys, & the Old Man's snores run the bass-viols a close second” (SL 3.342).

5
This remark is a reflection of HPL's absorption of the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), whom HPL appears to have been reading at this time. Schopenhauer had maintained that the sum total of pains in every human life greatly outweighs the sum total of pleasures, so that “Human life must be some kind of mistake.” Accordingly, “The conviction that the world and man is something which had better not have been is of a kind to fill us with indulgence toward one another.” This latter remark from Schopenhauer's
Studies in Pessimism
(a volume of miscellaneous essays translated by T. Bailey Saun ders in 1893) was quoted in HPL's essay “Nietzcheism and Realism” (1922; MW 175).

“Under the Pyramids” was ghostwritten for the Hungarian-born magician Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss, 1874-1926) in February 1924. It was first published (as “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”) in
Weird Tales
(May- June-July 1924) and reprinted in
Weird Tales
( June-July 1939). HPL recounts at length in letters how he came to be assigned the writing of this tale.
Weird Tales
was struggling financially and the owner, J. C. Henneberger, felt that the celebrated Houdini's affiliation with the magazine might attract readers. Houdini was the reputed author of a column (“Ask Houdini”) that ran in the issues of March, April, and May-June-July 1924, as well as two short stories probably ghostwritten by other hands. In mid-February Henneberger commissioned HPL to write “Under the Pyramids.” Houdini was claiming that he had actually been bound and gagged by Arabs and dropped down a shaft in the pyramid called Campbell's Tomb; but as HPL began exploring the historical and geographical background of the account, he came to the conclusion that it was complete fiction, and so he received permission from Henneberger to elaborate the account with his own imaginative additions. HPL received a fee of $100 for the tale, paid in advance.

HPL's Egyptian research was probably derived from several volumes in his library, notably
The Tomb of Perneb
(1916), a volume issued by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had seen many Egyptian antiquities at first- hand at the museum in 1922. Some of the imagery of the story probably also derives from Théophile Gautier's non-supernatural tale of Egyptian horror, “One of Cleopatra's Nights”; HPL owned Lafcadio Hearn's translation of
One of Cleopatra's Nights and Other Fantastic Romances
(1882).

1
Houdini became a professional magician in 1891, at the age of seventeen; by the turn of the century he was the most celebrated escape artist of his time. His pseudonym derives from Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805-1871), French magician and author of
Confidences d'un prestidigitateur
(1859).

2
Among Houdini's own accounts of his escapades are the early volume
The Adventurous Life of a Versatile Artist
(1906) and the article “The Thrills in the Life of a Magician” (
Strand Magazine
, January 5, 1919).

3
Houdini began an extensive European tour in the fall of 1908. He spent most of 1909 in England, but by the autumn he had moved on to Germany. In January 1910 he sailed from Marseilles en route to an engagement in Australia. The ship traversed the Suez Canal and Houdini did stop briefly at Port Said, but that was the extent of his Egyptian stay. By the end of January he was in Adelaide, Australia. See Kenneth Sil verman,
Houdini!!!
(New York: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 137-39.

4
Houdini married Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner (whom he had first met earlier in 1894, when she was eighteen and still in high school) on June 22, 1894.

5
Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de Lesseps (1805-1894), a French diplomat, was one of the leading promoters of the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869. Lesseps founded the city of Port Said, a major Egyptian seaport at the northern end of the Suez Canal. On November 17, 1899, the thirti eth anniversary of the opening of the canal, a twenty-four-foot bronze statue of Lesseps was erected at the jetty at Port Said.

6
Alexandria had been founded in 332 B.C.E. by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Egypt. It was the most significant Egyptian city in the Greco-Roman world.

7
HPL's misspelling of Shepheard's, a hotel that was built in 1849 by the Egyptian Samuel Shepheard on the banks of a lake (subsequently filled in to form the al-Azbakiyyah Garden; see n. 10). It was demolished in 1862 and another hotel was built on the same site, becoming one of the great hotels of the world. It was destroyed in anti-British riots in 1952.

8
Hārūn ar-Rashīd (766-809) was the fifth caliph of the Abbasid dynasty (r. 786-809), which ruled the Islamic world, then extending from the western Mediterranean to India. His reign is glorified in the
Arabian Nights.
HPL had in his library an old biography, Edward Henry Palmer's
The Caliph Haroun Alraschid and Saracen Civilization
(1881).

9
The travel guides published by the German firm of Karl Baedeker, beginning in 1829 and subsequently translated into many languages, became world-famous for their comprehensiveness and ease of use.

10
The al-Azbakiyyah Garden in the al-Azbakiyyah district of Cairo is an immense rectangular park on the site of a lake that was filled in during the mid-nineteenth century. It remained the focal point of the tourist and business trade in Cairo until well into the twentieth century. Al-Muski is a street branching off from the southeast side of the garden.

11
Cf. HPL's initial conception of the god Nyarlathotep, who “was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh” (“Nyarlathotep” [1920], CC 31). This conception had come to HPL in a dream (see SL 1.160-62).

12
Heliopolis (“the city of the sun”), now in the northeast part of the Cairo metropolitan area, is one of the most ancient Egyptian cities, founded no later than the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2500 B.C.E.) and being the seat of worship for the sun-god Ré. It became the center of a Roman colony around 16 B.C.E. and is the site of several large Greco-Roman temples built in the first and second centuries C.E. The Emperor Augustus made Egypt a part of his personal estate. There were probably only two legions stationed in Egypt during his reign, neither of which was at Heliopolis.

13
The Egyptian Museum, on the north side of al-Tahrir Square, is the oldest and largest of Cairo's museums of Egyptian antiquities. It was built in the neoclassical style (hence HPL's later reference to its “great Roman dome”) and opened in 1902 under the name of the Cairo Museum.