The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (76 page)

41
Kadath was first cited in “The Other Gods” (1921), and appears there to be a mountain in some unspecified locale in the dim prehistory of the earth. It is said that the gods have gone there after having abandoned Mt. Ngranek and “suffer no man to tell that he hath looked upon them” (D 127). Cf.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
: “It was lucky that no man knew where Kadath towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very grave” (MM 312). The generally oracular and rhetorical tone of the passage may derive from Lord Dunsany: “Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they may be dreams that arise in the mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is troubled by the sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, or who hath seen his drummer?”
The Gods of Pegana
(1905), in
The Complete Pegana
, p. 8.

42
The extraterrestrial entity introduced in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926).

43
This utterance first appears, of all places, in HPL's revision of a story by Adolphe de Castro, “The Last Test” (1927; HM). Later Shub-Niggurath becomes a sort of fertility goddess, and in a late letter HPL declares somewhat whimsically: “Yog-Sothoth's wife is the hellish cloud-like entity Shub-Niggurath, in whose honour nameless cults hold the rite of the Goat with a Thousand Young” (SL 5.303). The name is probably derived from Sheol Nugganoth, a god mentioned in Dunsany's “Idle Days on the Yann,” in
The Complete Pegana
, p. 201.

44
A parody of Jesus' sermon on the mount: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).

45
The reference is to “The Great God Pan,” a novelette by Arthur Machen (1863-1947) first published in
The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light
(1894) and a significant influence upon “The Dunwich Horror.” HPL owned Machen's
The House of Souls
(1906; rpt. 1923), which contained the story.

46
Roodmas
: May 3; more commonly termed Holy-Rood Day. In Christian theology, it commemorates the Invention (i.e., finding) of the Cross.

47
That is, the autumn equinox, September 21.

48
As Burleson has pointed out, the names Rice and Morgan are significantly linked in the history of Athol. An H. H. Rice sold the mill power in the town to the Morgan Memorial in the nineteenth century. A Stephen Rice is mentioned in “The Colour Out of Space” (see CC 178).

49
HPL may have derived the notion of a diary from Arthur Machen's “The White People” (in
The House of Souls
[1906]), in which a little girl keeps a “Green Book” in which she unwittingly recounts her nurse's inculcation of her into the witch cult.

50
The name is perhaps derived from Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's play,
Giles Corey, Yeoman
(1893), about the Salem witchcraft. HPL read the play in 1924 (see SL 1.360).

51
The following New England backwoods dialect is first found in “The Picture in the House” (1920) and is used at great length in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931). It is not clear where and how HPL evolved this dialect. In 1929 he wrote in a letter: “As for Yankee farmers—oddly enough, I haven't noticed that the majority talk any differently from myself; so that I've never regarded them as a separate class to whom one must use a special dialect. If I were to say, ‘Mornin', Zeke, haow ye be?' to anybody along the road during my numerous summer walks, I fancy I'd receive an icy stare in return—or perhaps a puzzled inquiry as to what theatrical troupe I had wandered out of!” (SL 2.306). When in Vermont in the summer of 1928, however, HPL wrote to his aunt: “Whether you believe it or not, the rustics hereabouts
actually
say ‘caow', ‘daown', ‘araound', &c.—& employ in daily speech a thousand colourful country-idioms which we know only in literature” (HPL to Lillian D. Clark, June 19, 1928; ms., JHL). Jason C. Eckhardt has plausibly conjectured that HPL derived this dialect in part from a series of poems by James Russell Lowell,
The Biglow Papers
(1848-62). See Eckhardt's “The Cosmic Yankee,” in
An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft
, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991), pp. 89-90.

52
Cf. Algernon Blackwood's “The Wendigo”: “. . . before he had gone a quarter of a mile he came across the tracks of a large animal in the snow, and beside it the light and smaller tracks of what were beyond question human feet—the feet of Défago. The relief he at once experienced was natural, though brief; for at first sight he saw in these tracks a simple explanation of the whole matter: these big marks had surely been left by a bull moose that, wind against it, had blundered upon the camp, and uttered its singular cry of warning and alarm the moment its mistake was apparent. . . . [But] now that he examined them closer, these were not the tracks of a moose at all! . . . these were wholly different. They were big, round, ample, and with no pointed outline as of sharp hoofs. . . . And, stooping down to examine the marks more closely, he caught a faint whiff of that sweet yet pungent odour that made him instantly straighten up again, fighting a sensation almost of nausea.”
The Lost Valley and Other Stories
(London: Eveleigh Nash, 1910), pp. 101-2.

53
Edith Miniter and Evanore Beebe had a hired boy named Chauncey (last name unknown). See HPL's “Mrs. Miniter: Estimates and Recollections” (MW 479).

54
There actually is a site called the Bear's Den near North New Salem, Massachusetts, and HPL's subsequent description of it is quite accurate. He saw it in the summer of 1928, and describes it as follows in a letter: “On Thursday evening [June 28] [H. Warner] Munn came down to dinner in his Essex Roadster & afterward took [W. Paul] Cook & me on a trip to one of the finest scenic spots I have ever seen—Bear's Den, in the woods southwest of Athol. 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 precipicas 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. I entered the largest specimen—it being the first time I was ever in a real cave, notwithstanding the vast amount I have written concerning such things” (HPL to Lillian D. Clark, July 1, 1928; ms., JHL). Donald R. Burleson rediscovered the site.

55
Mythical. In HPL's day the
Boston Transcript
was one of the best-known papers in the country. HPL's friend W. Paul Cook worked for many years for the
Athol Transcript.

56
The news agency was founded in 1848.

57
In 1928 there were only 16.3 telephones per 100 people in the United States, and even this was a much higher rate than in other parts of the world. Party lines were the earliest type of telephone system, in which two or more telephones were connected to a single telephone line. They were common in rural areas but by no means restricted to them at this time; many working-class families in large cities also used them because of the expense of installing private lines, which required one or more switching stations. As late as 1950, 3 out of 4 residence telephones in the U.S. were party lines. See John Brooks,
Telephone: The First Hundred Years
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 267.

58
Cf. Anthony M. Rud, “Ooze” (n. 25): “Far more interesting were the traces of violence apparent on wall and what once had been a house. The latter seemed to have been ripped from its foundations by a giant hand, crushed out of semblance to a dwelling, and then cast in fragments about the base of wall—mainly on the south side, where heaps of twisted, broken timbers lay in profusion. On the opposite side there had been such heaps once, but now only charred sticks, coated with that gray-black, omnipresent coat of desiccation, remained . . . no sign whatever of human remains was discovered” (p. 253).

59
Probably a reference to the Kufic script, a formal and decorative script used throughout the Arab-speaking world (not only in Mesopotamia) from the eighth to the twelfth centuries C.E. Mesopotamia had been conquered by the Muslims by 641, who ruled there until they were driven out by the Mongols in 1258.

60
These authors and titles are all cited, in this order, in the entry on “Cryptography” by John Eglinton Bailey in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, which HPL owned. The
Polygraphia
of Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) was first published in Latin in 1518 and translated into French in 1561. The treatise concerns kabbalistic writing.
De Furtivis Literarum Notis
, a work on ciphers by Giovanni Bat tista della Porta (1535?-1615), was first published in 1563.
Traicté des Chifferes ou Secrètes d'Escrire
by Blaise de Vigenère (1523-1596) was first published in 1586.
Cryptomenysis Patefacta; or, The Art of Secret Information Disclosed without a Key
by John Falconer was first published in 1685.
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering
by John Davys (1678-1724) was published in 1737. Philip Thicknesse (1719-1792) published
A Treatise on the Art of Decyphering and of Writing in Cypher
in 1772. William Blair wrote a lengthy article on “Cipher” for Abraham Rees's
Cyclopaedia
(1819). G. von Marten published
Cours diplomatique
in 1801 (4th ed. 1851). The
Kryptographik
of Johann Ludwig Klüber (1762-1837) dates to 1809. On the subject of cryptography, see Donald R. Burleson, “Lovecraft and the World as Cryptogram,”
Lovecraft Studies
No. 16 (Spring 1988): 14-18.

61
A term found in Arthur Machen's “The White People” (see n. 49). The little girl's diary states at one point: “I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs” (
Tales of Horror and the Supernatural
[New York: Knopf, 1948], p. 125). No further elucidation of this term is offered, and Machen clearly intends it (as does HPL) to suggest something occult and inexplicable.

62
A Hebrew word retained untranslated in the New Testament, meaning “The Lord of Hosts”; later it erroneously became a variant spelling of “Sabbath,” the Lord's day. Here it means any day reserved for a religious ritual.

63
Another term (also unexplained) derived from Machen's “The White People”: “It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo” (
Tales of Horror and the Supernatural
, p. 127).

64
A mythical Arabic name, perhaps intended to denote a sorcerer. In “History of the
Necronomicon
” (n. 37) Ebn Khallikan is said to be Abdul Alhazred's twelfth-century biographer. In “The Festival” (1923) there is a reference to Ibn Schacabao (CC 118).

65
A real volume. Remigius is the Latinized form of the name Nicholas Remi (1530-1612).
Daemonolatreia
was published in Latin in 1595. The book is, like the
Malleus Maleficarum
, a guidebook to witch-hunting for witchcraft judges. HPL had first mentioned the work in “The Festival” (CC 112).

66
See n. 8 to “The Tomb” and n. 4 to “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.”

67
“The pestilence [lit., business] that walketh in darkness . . .” From Psalms 91:6 (Vulgate 90:6). Cf. E. F. Benson's celebrated tale, “
Negotium Perambulans
. . .” (in
Visible and Invisible
, 1923); HPL notes in “Supernatural Horror in Literature” that its “unfolding reveals an abnormal monster from an ancient ecclesiastical panel which performs an act of miraculous vengeance in a lonely village on the Cornish coast” (D 416).

68
Cf. Nahum Gardner's puzzlement as to why he and his family were singled out for the horrors that descended upon them in “The Colour Out of Space”: “It must all be a judgment of some sort; though he could not fancy what for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lord's ways so far as he knew” (CC 185).

69
HPL owned several telescopes, including a Bardon 3” telescope that cost $50.00 in 1906. In a black enamel bag that he habitually carried with him on trips he would include a pocket telescope (see HPL to Lillian D. Clark, May 13-14, 1929; ms., JHL).

70
Perhaps an echo (or parody) of Jesus: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost” (Luke 23:46). Cf. also Mark 15:34 (= Matthew 27:46): “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

At the Mountains of Madness
was written from February 24 to March 22, 1931. It was first published in
Astounding Stories
(February, March, and April 1936). The novel is a summation of HPL's lifelong fascination with the Antarctic, beginning from the time when he had followed with avidity reports of the explorations of Borchgrevink, Scott, Amundsen, and others in the early decades of the century. As Jason C. Eckhardt has demonstrated, the early parts of HPL's tale clearly show the influence of Admiral Byrd's expedition of 1928-30, as well as other contemporary expeditions. HPL may have also found a few hints on points of style and imagery in the early pages of M. P. Shiel's weird novel
The Purple Cloud
(1901; reissued 1930), which relates an expedition to the Arctic.