The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft

by H. P. Lovecraft

  162. Now Cluj-Napoca, commonly known as Cluj, the second-most-populous city in Romania today, roughly equidistant from Budapest and Bucharest.

  163. This must mean Rákos, or Racu, a small village northeast of Klausenburg, in the Harghita Mountains (part of the Carpathians).

  164. Ward’s visit sounds uncannily like that of Dracula’s Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who had a similar experience with a Transylvanian voivode in his castle near Bistrita, about seventy-five miles west of Racu. Like Harker’s client, the baron lives in a secluded castle, is unpopular with the neighbors, and is elderly. Dracula sends his carriage to meet Harker, just as the Baron sends his to meet Ward. Bram Stoker’s account of Harker’s visit had been published in 1897.

  165. Ward was of course gone only a little more than three years, from April 1923 to May 1926, but the point is made: He missed Providence.

  166. The Biltmore Hotel stands at 11 Dorrance Street in Providence and opened in 1922; it was closed in 1974 for five years’ worth of renovation and continues in operation today.

  The Providence Biltmore Hotel, in 1990. Photograph courtesy of Will Hart

  167. Undoubtedly short for “Nigger,” revelatory of the attitudes of the household and Lovecraft himself.

  168. The Providence Journal, that is, the leading newspaper of Providence, first published in 1820 as a semiweekly called the Manufacturers’ and Farmers’ Journal, Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser. It became a daily in 1829 as the Daily Journal; in 1920 the “Daily” was dropped from the name. The Journal is the oldest continuously published daily in America.

  The offices of the Providence Journal in 2010. Photograph copyright © Donovan K. Loucks 2010, reprinted with permission

  169. See note 118, above.

  170. This concluded the first part of two in the Weird Tales publication and was followed by this teaser: “What Happens ‘To Him Who Shall Come After . . . ?’ What is the outcome of Charles Ward’s frantic delving into the life and secrets of his terrible ancestor? Read in the next issue of the horrors beyond Hell which a young man brings upon himself by his curiosity—the ghastly, incredible events that come to pass in the second and final installment of Lovecraft’s enthralling novel.”

  171. The balance of the story appeared as the “second part of two” in its Weird Tales publication, where it was preceded by the following summary:

  Quite recently there disappeared—from a private mental hospital near Providence, Rhode Island—a certain rather unusual young man. His name is (or perhaps, more correctly, was) Charles Dexter Ward. Only twenty-six years of age, the patient seemed strangely older, and displayed a number of physical characteristics which left medical science completely baffled.

  Charles Ward’s madness was of a most unusual type. An antiquarian since infancy, his knowledge of the 18th century had become simply stupendous, and of a kind possible only to someone who had in actual fact lived in those times; which was, of course, impossible, for Charles was born in 1902.

  This unwholesome insight into the 18th century he took great pains to conceal, and seemed to have wholly lost his taste for antiquarian delving. Instead he showed an avid interest in ordinary 20th century matters, absorbing greedily all the contemporary knowledge upon which he could lay his hands.

  His escape from Dr. Waite’s hospital was itself practically a miracle—certainly an almost insoluble mystery. Charles disappeared immediately after a conversation with his family doctor; and he has never been seen since. His window opened onto a sheer drop of sixty feet—an ascent which the most accomplished cat burglar would give up as a bad job, and which even a fly would hesitate to climb. And yet the window was the only possible exit. Those who came to look for him found a cloud of fine bluish-gray dust—and nothing more.

  Charles’ troubles began when he discovered through old documents and letters that a certain unsavory gentleman of the 18th century (and if the truth be told, also of the 17th)—one Joseph Curwen—was his ancestor. Curwen’s neighbors whispered that he would never die, and at an age which must have been well over a hundred, he married an eighteen year old girl. To this blasphemous alliance Charles owed his descent.

  In the vast grim catacombs that lay deep beneath his lonely farmhouse on the moors beyond Providence, Curwen conducted unspeakably horrible experiments and rites of nameless and inconceivable obscenity, fast becoming a scandal and a terror to the entire district. A few influential men kept him under observation, and planned to rid the world of the unutterably frightful old man. One night they raided his farmhouse. The venture was apparently successful, for Curwen disappeared.

  So, for a time at least, the earth was free of Joseph Curwen. But had the raiders only driven him into another world, and would men be able to keep him there? What is the next thing to happen after the portrait of the horrible old man is found scattered on the floor—in a thin coating of “fine bluish-gray dust”? The answers are waiting for you in this final instalment.

  172. Coincidentally, the very residence of Howard Phillips Lovecraft prior to his departure for New York in 1924.

  173. A new word in 1924, referring specifically to seizing illicit liquor for profit.

  174. A not infrequent occurrence during the era of Prohibition, 1920–1933, when the United States, in the so-called noble experiment, banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol. See “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” note 3, below.

  175. A popular psychiatric diagnosis at the time, also termed “delusional insanity” or “adolescent insanity”; the diagnosis is today essentially supplanted by differing forms of schizophrenia.

  176. That is, suffering from phthisis; an antiquated word for consumptive or tubercular.

  177. The Histrionick Academy came to Providence in 1762, but, according to Kimball, the season did not open until July, with a work entitled Moro Castle Taken by Storm, which presumably treated the British attack, earlier in the year, on Morro Castle, in Havana, Cuba, a Spanish overseas possession (306). Part of a larger offensive intended as retaliation for Spain’s entry into the Seven Years’ War on France’s side the previous year, the episode was one of the last naval battles of the conflict. David Douglass was the head of the troupe of actors who arrived from New York to perform the piece. On August 24, 1762, the legislature, bowing to public opinion, passed a bill to forbid plays and playhouses, and the troupe was thus summarily warned out of Providence. Kimball reports that the sheriff attended the final performance of the academy with the legislation in his pocket; only at the close of the show did he read the proclamation to the audience (308).

  The Capture of Havana, 1762: The Morro Castle and the Boom Defence Before the Attack by Dominic Serres, 1770.

  178. A five-act comedy written by Richard Steele in 1722, previously entitled The Unfashionable Lovers. It is based on Andria, by Terence (ca. 195–159 BCE), the Roman playwright and former slave; Andria itself was adapted from a work by Menander (ca. 341–290 BCE). Others who have treated the material in one form or another—the play is a story of marriage, social class, and mistaken identity—include Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) and, in his bestselling 1930 novel The Woman of Andros, Thornton Wilder (1897–1975).

  179. Kimball reports that 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.” She says nothing about its comfort (325).

  180. Actually, according to Kimball, the owner was Richard Olney, not Epenetus (325).

  181. There are and were no hospitals on Conanicut Island, but in the summer of 1906, a ward was established by the Rhode Island Hospital in an old hotel, refurbished for the purpose, for the treatment of tuberculosis. Waite’s facility may have been such a small, temporary facility. In 1906, the island was indeed an island; today, however, bridges connect it to Newport and the west shore of the bay.

  182. At the end of the Great War, Hungary and Romania went to war. The Treaty of Versailles,
ratified in July 1919, resolved the political situation, ceding Transylvania to the Romanians. Ironically, in August 1940, the northern half of Transylvania was reannexed to Hungary; it was returned to Romania at the end of World War II by the 1947 Treaty of Paris.

  183. “B. F.” and a source in Philadelphia surely suggest that Benjamin Franklin’s was the desired cadaver.

  184. In other words, Ward is not a mortal being such as those called up from the “essential Saltes,” and sorcery may have been involved in his birth, points out Donald R. Burleson, in H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study.

  185. Lovecraft’s tale “The Outsider” (1921) refers to “the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Haddoth by the Nile.” Nephren-Ka is identified as a pharaoh in “The Haunter of the Dark,” text accompanying note 20, below. Why his name should serve as a benediction is unknown.

  Cover of Os Mortos Podem Voltar (The Dead Can Return) (Brazil: Colleçao Vampiro, n.d.). Translated by Silas Cerquiera. American title: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

  Cover of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (London: Panther Books, 1963).

  186. An offensive smell or odor, spelled “fetor” in American usage.

  Poster from The Haunted Palace (American International Pictures, 1963). Although billed as “Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace,” the film is based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

  187. Eliot (1888–1965) published this masterpiece of modern poetry in 1922, only six years prior to the incidents recorded here. The poem ends with a recitation of jumbled phrases:

  London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

  Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

  Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow

  Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

  These fragments I have shored against my ruins

  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

  Shantih shantih shantih

  The poem did not meet with unalloyed praise, especially a mere six years after publication, and the narrator of this tale is evidently a modernist to evince such familiarity with it.

  188. A one-handled jug or cup, in the style found in the tombs at Phaleron, near Athens.

  This lekythos depicts Theseus and is Eritrean, ca. 500 BCE.

  189. A powerful image, later adopted by J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King. “Koth” is unidentifiable.

  190. This is the first indication that Willett and Carter are acquainted.

  191. An oil lamp, patented in 1784 but made obsolete by kerosene lanterns; it was named after its inventor, the Swiss physicist and chemist Aimé Argand (1750–1803), and burned whale oil. Argand’s lamp was a considerable technical improvement over earlier sources of illumination—it modernized wick construction, enclosed the improved flame in glass to achieve a steady burn, enabled the wick to be raised and lowered so that the oil supply and the intensity of the light could be controlled, was virtually odorless, and didn’t produce smoke—as well as an aesthetic marvel. Argand also ran distilleries in Languedoc and is said to have worked informally with his friends the Montgolfier brothers on the design of their hot-air balloon.

  A kylix from Capua, ca. 500 BCE.

  Cover of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: A Graphic Novel, adapted by I. N. J. Culbard (London: SelfMadeHero, 2012).

  192. A mixture of nitric acid and water, used to dissolve silver and other alchemical metals.

  The Colour Out of Space1

  This, Lovecraft’s favorite story, is the first major tale of his to combine classic science fiction (before the genre even existed) and horror. “The Call of Cthulhu” may have suggested that terror could come from the stars, but here the fear is concrete and localized in New England. The banal depictions of the fruitless scientific investigations contrast starkly with the inexplicable, gradual destruction of the Gardner family. Preceding the famous Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds by more than ten years, the story brought home the fear of alien invasion.

  West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

  The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

  There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir.2 Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

  When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must be something which grandams had whispered to children through centuries. The name “blasted heath” seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood.3 There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

  The Scituate Reservoir, shown in 2013. Photograph copyright © Donovan K. Loucks 2013, reprinted with permission

  The Quabbin Reservoir in 2009.

  In the open spaces, mostly along the line of the old road, there were little hillside farms; sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes with only one or two, and sometimes with only a lone chimney or fast-filling cellar. Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa;4 too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

  But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region.5 It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so
at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

  In the evening I asked old people in Arkham about the blasted heath, and what was meant by that phrase “strange days” which so many evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers except that all the mystery was much more recent than I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old legendry at all, but something within the lifetime of those who spoke. It had happened in the ’eighties, and a family had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old Ammi Pierce’s crazy tales, I sought him out the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in the ancient tottering cottage where the trees first begin to get very thick. It was a fearsomely archaic place, and had begun to exude the faint miasmal odour which clings about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent knocking could I rouse the aged man, and when he shuffled timidly to the door I could tell he was not glad to see me. He was not so feeble as I had expected; but his eyes drooped in a curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made him seem very worn and dismal. Not knowing just how he could best be launched on his tales, I feigned a matter of business; told him of my surveying, and asked vague questions about the district. He was far brighter and more educated than I had been led to think, and before I knew it had grasped quite as much of the subject as any man I had talked with in Arkham. He was not like other rustics I had known in the sections where reservoirs were to be. From him there were no protests at the miles of old wood and farmland to be blotted out, though perhaps there would have been had not his home lain outside the bounds of the future lake. Relief was all that he shewed; relief at the doom of the dark ancient valleys through which he had roamed all his life. They were better under water now—better under water since the strange days. And with this opening his husky voice sank low, while his body leaned forward and his right forefinger began to point shakily and impressively.