The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (74 page)

146
When he was a boy HPL himself owned a cat named Nigger-Man, a name he uses for a cat in “The Rats in the Walls” (1923).

147
“Eliphas Lévi” is the pseudonym of Alphonse-Louis Constant (1810- 1875), a French occultist and author of numerous volumes on magic and spiritualism.

148
The incantation, a bizarre mixture of Hebrew (from the Kabbala) and medieval Latin, is taken verbatim from
The Mysteries of Magic
, a compendium of Eliphas Lévi's writings selected and translated by Arthur Edward Waite (1886; rev. ed. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1897), p. 217. In Lévi the incantation (not translated) is in prose. It occurs in the chapter on “Ceremonial Magic,” in a section on “Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations.” After noting that a pentacle enclosed in a circle should be drawn, Lévi remarks: “The formulae of evocation found in the magical elements of Peter d'Apono or in the Grimoires, whether printed or in manuscript, may then be recited. Those in the Great Grimoire, reproduced in the common Red Dragon, have been wilfully altered in printing, and should read as follows:—” HPL has followed Lévi's error of “Metraton” for “Metatron” (see n. 123). In another volume,
Transcendental Magic
, trans. A. E. Waite (1896; rev. 1923), a translation of the incantation is provided: “By Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova, Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton on Agla Mathon, the Pythonic word, the Mystery of the Salamander, the Assembly of Sylphs, the Grotto of Gnomes, the demons of the heaven of Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehosua, Evan, Zariatnatmik: Come, come, come!” (p. 391).

149
Directly after the incantation cited above, Lévi in
The Mysteries of Magic
(p. 217) writes: “The great invocation of Agrippa consists only in these words:—‘DIES MIES JESCHET BOENEDOESEF DOUVEMA ENITE-MAUS. ' We do not pretend to understand what they mean, they have possibly no meaning, and can certainly have none which is rational, since they are of efficacy in conjuring up the devil, who is supreme senselessness. Doubtless in the same opinion, Mirandola affirms that the most barbarous and absolutely unintelligible words are the best and most powerful in black magic.” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was an Italian humanist and philosopher. Lévi may be referring to Pico's
Disputationes adversus Astrologos
(1495), a theological refutation of astrology.

150
This is a phonetic rendition of the “Dragon's Head” incantation discovered by Willett in the Pawtuxet bungalow (see p. 179).

151
Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet is a fourteen-acre development in Pawtuxet begun in 1872 by Thomas H. Rhodes as a site for clambakes. It later flourished as a popular casino and seaside resort.

152
HPL's residence from 1904 to 1924.

153
Portuguese, Italians, and Poles are the three major immigrant groups in Providence. HPL conveniently alludes to all three in the names of the robbers in “The Terrible Old Man” (1920)—Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek, and Manuel Silva.

154
Hope Valley is a village in the far southwestern part of Rhode Island, between Wyoming and Hopkinton. It is chiefly known for its mills (the first dating to 1770) and factories.

155
The anecdote is taken in part from Kimball (306-7), who mentions a “Histrionic Academy,” the principal actor in which was David Douglass. However, the troupe of actors arrived in Providence from Newport only in the summer of 1762, settling in a house in Meeting Street. HPL has added the detail about the sheriff's wig, although the sheriff in fact attended at least one performance (see Kimball 308).

156
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729),
The Conscious Lovers
(1722), a comedy.

157
Protests against the perceived immorality of the troupe of actors resulted in their departure from Providence on August 24, 1762, about a month and a half after their arrival (Kimball 308).

158
From the tavern of Richard Olney “the stage-coach was advertised to set out every Thursday morning for Boston. This public accommodation was due to the enterprise of Thomas Sabin” (Kimball 325). The Boston stage line was initiated in 1767 (see Greene,
Providence Plantations
, pp. 57, 128).

159
HPL is in error: the Crown Coffee House was owned by Richard Olney (see Kimball 325).

160
A term formerly used to designate the Portuguese colonists of the Cape Verde Islands off the western coast of Africa; the name derives from Brava, the most southerly of the islands. See “The Call of Cthulhu” (CC 153).

161
A common family name throughout New England. Cf. Darius Peck in “In the Vault” (1925; DH 4).

162
A large island about fifteen miles south of Providence, at the southern end of Narragansett Bay. Its chief city is Jamestown. There is no private hospital there.

163
A reference to Simon Orne's desire to secure the remains of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) for purposes of resurrection.

164
HPL refers to a fantasy realm called “the vaults of Zin” on several occasions in
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
(1926-27; see MM 339-42). He may have believed Zin to be his own invention, but there is a land called Zin cited frequently in the Old Testament (e.g., Numbers 13:21; Joshua 15:1-3) as a wilderness at the southern end of the Promised Land.

165
An allusion to HPL's own tale, “The Outsider” (1921): “Now I . . . play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile” (CC 49).

166
In his aesthetic conservatism, HPL had reacted with hostility to the appearance of T. S. Eliot's
Waste Land
(first published in America in the
Dial
, November 1922). In an editorial, “Rudis Indigestaque Moles” (
Conservative
, March 1923), HPL remarked that the poem was “a practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general; offered to the public (whether or not as a hoax) as something justified by our modern mind with its recent comprehension of its own chaotic triviality and disorganisation” (MW 233). HPL also wrote a parody called “Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance” (1923?; AT 252-55).

167
An allusion to the novel HPL had written just prior to
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
—the fantasy
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
, in which Randolph Carter searches through dreamland for the “sunset city” of his dreams. At one point Carter and some allies “came to a somewhat open space before a tower even vaster than the rest, above whose colossal doorway was fixed a monstrous symbol in bas relief which made one shudder without knowing its meaning. This was the central tower with the sign of Koth” (MM 342).

168
Caerleon-on-Usk, in southeast Wales, was originally the Roman city of Isca Silurum, base of the Second Augustan Legion. It was well known to Arthur Machen, who cited it in many of his tales. Hexham in Northumberland was not itself the site of a Roman settlement, but Roman materials were brought there in Saxon times from the neighboring settlement at Corstopitum (Corbridge), four miles to the east. HPL's paternal grandmother Helen Allgood was “of the line of Nunwick, near Hexham” (SL 2.179). Cf. Exham Priory in “The Rats in the Walls.”

169
Archaic term for nitric acid (HNO
₃
), a compound of hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. It is cited under its modern name in “The Colour Out of Space” (CC 175).

170
The two parts of the sentence reflect the two titles HPL had initially devised for the novel: “I shall call [it] either ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' or ‘The Madness out of Time' ” (SL 2.100).

“The Dunwich Horror” was written in August 1928 and first published in
Weird Tales
(April 1929); HPL received $240 for it, at that time the largest sum he had ever received for a story. There are several significant literary influences on the tale. The central premise—the sexual union of a “god” or monster with a human woman—is taken directly from Arthur Machen's “The Great God Pan”; HPL actually alludes to the story at one point in his narrative. The use of bizarre footsteps to indicate the presence of an otherwise undetectable entity is borrowed from Algernon Blackwood's “The Wendigo.” There are several other celebrated weird tales featuring invisible monsters—Fitz-James O'Brien's “What Was It?”; Guy de Maupassant's “The Horla” (certain features of which had already been adapted for “The Call of Cthulhu”); Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing”—but they do not appear to have influenced the tale appreciably. A less well-known story, Anthony M. Rud's “Ooze” (
Weird Tales
, March 1923), also deals with an invisible monster that eventually bursts forth from the house in which it is trapped. HPL expressed great enthusiasm for the story when he read it in the spring of 1923. 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.

HPL later admitted (see SL 3.432-33) that Dunwich was located in south-central Massachusetts, around the town of Wilbraham; it is clear that both the topography and some of the folklore (whippoorwills as psychopomps of the dead) are in large part derived from eight days (June 29-July 7, 1928) spent with his amateur associate Edith Miniter in Wilbraham. But some parts of the locale are taken from north-central Massachusetts, specifically the Bear's Den, an actual site near Athol to which HPL was taken by his friend H. Warner Munn on June 28. 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-versus-evil scenario with Henry Armitage representing the forces of good and the Whateley family representing the forces of evil. Donald R. Burleson has suggested that the tale should be read as a kind of 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
Necronomicon
cited 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 a mere temporary staving off of the inevitable. These points are well taken, but there is no evidence in HPL's letters 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 as anything but seriously. Indeed, HPL clearly suggests the reverse when he says in a letter that “[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., JHL). 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
[New York: Random House/Modern Library, 1944]) as well as in a rather crude film adaptation of 1970, starring Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee, and Ed Begley.

Donald R. Burleson, “Humour Beneath Horror: Some Sources for ‘The Dunwich Horror' and ‘The Whisperer in Darkness,' ”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 2 (Spring 1980): 5-15.

Donald R. Burleson, “The Mythic Hero Archetype in ‘The Dunwich Horror, ' ”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 4 (Spring 1981): 3-9.

Will Murray, “The Dunwich Chimera and Others,”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 8 (Spring 1984): 10-24.

Peter H. Cannon, “Call Me Wizard Whateley: Echoes of
Moby Dick
in ‘The Dunwich Horror,' ”
Crypt of Cthulhu
No. 49 (Lammas 1987): 21-23.

Donald R. Burleson, “A Note on Metaphor vs. Metonymy in ‘The Dunwich Horror,' ”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 38 (Spring 1998): 16-17.

1
“Witches, and Other Night-Fears” appears in
Elia
(1823; later titled
The Essays of Elia
) by Charles Lamb (1775-1834). HPL had an 1874 edition of Lamb's
Complete Works in Prose and Verse
in his library. The italics were introduced by HPL.

2
It is not entirely clear what real site, if any, the fictitious name Aylesbury is based on. There is an Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England, but none in New England. There is an Amesbury in the extreme northeast corner of Massachusetts, near Newburyport. HPL visited the town in 1923. Aside from this story, Aylesbury is mentioned only in two sonnets in the
Fungi from Yuggoth
sequence (1929-30); in one of these, “The Familiars” (XXVI), it is mentioned in conjunction with a John Whateley.

3
Fictitious. There are a number of towns in western Massachusetts with “Corners” in their names (e.g., Worthington Corners, Moores Corner). Cf. Clark's Corners in “The Colour out of Space” (CC 178).

4
This is the first of many references in this story to these megalithic sites, which can be found throughout New England; the most celebrated of them is Mystery Hill in North Salem, New Hampshire. In spite of several articles (e.g., Andrew E. Rothovius, “Lovecraft and the New England Megaliths,” in HPL's
The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces
[1966]) asserting that HPL was intimately familiar with such sites, there is little evidence that he visited very many of them prior to writing the story; and there is no evidence at all that he visited Mystery Hill before 1928, although H. Warner Munn believes he took HPL there at some time or other.