“The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris

What was the first Canadian Cthulhu Mythos story?

Well-read weird fiction aficionados might point to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” (1910), though that story was essentially grandfathered into the Mythos when August Derleth identified his creation Ithaqua with Blackwood’s wendigo in “The Thing That Walked on the Wind” (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jan 1933). But as far as the first story written as a Mythos story, written and set in Canada…well, weren’t there Canadian fans? During the interwar period U. S. pulps were sold on both sides of the border, and even after wartime paper restrictions prevented such traffic, from 1942-1951 Canada produced its own localized edition of Weird Tales. Canadian fans like Nils Frome were well-known. So where is the Canadian Mythos fanfiction?

Sasha Dumontier discovered “The Picture” (1939) by Robert D. Harris in the online newspaper archive of The McGill Daily, which is the daily college newspaper of McGill University in Montreal. The short story ran in the 24 November 1939 issue; Dumontier also found Harris published at least two other stories (“Pen and Ink,” 8 Feb 1939 and “Winter Twilight,” 20 Dec 1939) and a few poems and letters to the editor in The McGill Daily. Both stories are short and straightforward weirds, though neither has any Mythos elements.

Robert Dresser Harris was born in 1920 in Island Pond, Vermont; the 1920 U.S. Federal census records both his parents as born in Canada. The family shortly moved to Asbestos, Quebec (now known as Val-des-Sources). Harris attended McGill University and graduated in 1940. After graduation, Harris worked as a cordite chemist supporting the wartime industries, but in 1942 he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. A card at McGill University sketches out his service, but details on his later life and career are a bit sketchy without access to Canadian census records. A memorial notice shows Harris died in Toronto in 1991.

That Harris was a fan of weird fiction is obvious from his work published in The McGill Daily; whether he had any connection with other Canadian fans is unknown. Canadian fandom was not well-organized in the late 1930s, and the Canadian Amateur Fantasy Press was founded in 1942, after Harris had graduated and joined the war effort. Still, he may have some distinction at least in writing and publishing “The Picture,” which deals with an eldritch tome familiar to every Lovecraft fan…

※

The Picture

Garland hardly needed the picture on his bureau, for he could call up mentally with amazing clarity the image of Peggy’s face at any time. It was, however, a concrete symbol of what seemed to him the main reason for existence, and he appreciated it accordingly. it was Peggy at her very best with that singularly sweet expression which had first caused him to notice her. But strangely enough, there was no studio name on the picture anywhere and when he asked Peggy where it came from, she could not remember the exact place. From the best photographer in the city, it would have been a masterpiece; from an unknown, it was astonishing.

At times, something about the photo seemed to bother him. He would be working at something when he would feel irresistably that someone was staring at him intently; he would resist it as long as he could, and then swing round, to meet its gaze. On first sight, he always felt revulsion; it looked at him so devotedly—almost sickeningly so—and yet so possessively; certainly not like Peggy. The queer thing was, that other times it looked quite normal.

One night, Wilson dropped in, and as Garland scraped into the debris on his desk for an ashtray, Wilson said “That’s a nice picture there—queer expression, though, somehow quite malevolent. Not like Peggy at all, that way. You know I could swear the eyes followed you, as you walk around, just as though it’s watching you; trick of the light, I suppose.”

“You’ve noticed it too?” Garland asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “Weird thing, but it’s just coincidence, of course.”

†††

But after that, the picture came more out into the open with it. The night he came dejectedly home, after a good-sized row with Peggy, the picture first leered at him, but when he looked again, it was smiling sympathetically; there was no mistake about it, it was the truth. At Christmas, when we went home, it was especially bad. He took the picture with him, and all the holidays it wore that happy, possessive look, as though it were saying, “Now I’ve got you all to myself, she isn’t around any more. Just you and I, Brad.”

It was true, the thing was infernally jealous of its prototype. It knew what had happened, every time he came in from being with Peggy. The night of the Formal, when things really occurred, he didn’t get home till five; and the picture seemed to know that he and Peggy had left the dance at two. The thing fairly gibbered at him with rage; the whole face was distorted, the lips slightly drawn back, the brows contracted—it was horrible. He tossed it into the drawer with a shudder; he couldn’t possibly sleep with that looking at him.

He confided in Wilson, who, having seen the picture, was not inclined to laugh. “I don’t even know what the thing wants me to do.” he said. “I can’t very well make love to a picture—but even if I knew, I wouldn’t let it scare me into it.”

“I wonder how it works,” Wilson mused. “If we knew, we might be able to do something about it. Apparently, someone’s got hold of a way of photographing character. If you can get a distortion in physical appearance you can distort the character of the picture, too. If it’s deliberate, I’d say the man was a wizard, meaning just that.”

“Would you destroy the picture?” Garland asked.

“Not yet,” Wilson answered. “It’s very interesting, and you’ll never see anything like it again. Of course, if you feel you can’t stand it—”

“That’s all right,” Garland broke in. “I’ll see what happens.”

†††

The situation got no worse, but it was still bad enough to prey on Garland’s nerve. This continued for about a month, and then matters took on a worse appearance. At first, the picture had tried to get its way by a nauseating amative coaxing, but now its aspect was positively menacing. Strange, vague figures began to appear in the background, and those took on a sharper outline as the days passed.

Then Garland began having nightmares, of the most macabre sort, in which the face in the portrait played a large part. Several times, just as he awoke from a troubled sleep, he heard rustlings in the room, as if numerous little beings were making for the bureau, on which the picture stood.

One night, he woke up suddenly from a worse dream than usual. The full moon was shining in brightly, and in its light, he saw several black shapes moving and flowing about on the walls and ceiling.. With a courage I can only admire, he managed to persued himself that the shapes were only spots on the wall, and that the deceptive moonlight made them appear to move. However, in the morning, the wall was perfectly blank.

There was a little blood on the pillow. “Queer,” he thought. “I don’t remember cutting myself when I shaved last night. However—”

A sudden thought seized him, and he swung out of bed, and over to the bureau. There was blood on the cover, small blobs of blood scattered over the background of the picture, but the largest smear was right on the mouth of the portrait.

He wiped it off. The picture smiled sweetly back at him, but when he picked it angrily up, the features twisted to a look of dismay and rage. The eyes were horribly distended, but worst of all was the ghastly sound when he ripped it across. It certainly did not sound like tearing paper; to him, it sounded like a human scream, but that was probably due to his imagination.

In disgust and terror, he hurriedly held the fragments to a lighted match, and dropped them into the waste-basket. Then, without looking for coat or hat, he ran from the room.

†††

Garland had no more toruble from that source, but there is a sequel. The next day, he saw Peggy, and asked again about the source of the photo.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’d written the address down, and I found it a few days ago. It’s blotted, but it’s either 383 or 385 Ste. Clarisse.”

Garland made a point of investigating these two addresses. 383 was closed, and he could not get in, and the other was merely a rooming house; on inquiry he found that no photographer had ever had a studio there, at least for some years.

I told this story to give point to a little discovery of my own. A friend of mine last week showed me a book that was found on demolishing a row of buildings along Ste. Clarisse and Devraux streets. It is a huge tome, bound in leather, and completely illegible, except for a few words here and there. The name, which conveys nothing to me, is “Necronomicon.” There are several pages of cabalistic symbols, which make it probably a mediaeval book on Alchemy, Black Magic, or some such subject. It is hand-written, in a fluid which resembles very much deteriorated red ink; however, a reputable chemist tells me that it is almost completely of organic origin, which eliminates any theory that it might be ink. The pages, are quite dry and cracked, but I think, like everyone else who has seen it, that they are of human skin.

Found along with the book were several containers for Mazda No. 2 Photoflood Bulbs, and in another corner of the room was a blue silk screen.

— Robert D. Harris

※

As a story, “The Picture” is little more than a sketch, with underdeveloped characters and a bit of a rushed ending. Yet Harris manages to tell his story, even if the ending would be obscure to anyone that wasn’t fairly well-read in Weird Tales or managed to get a copy of some early Arkham House books from across the border. If it is a little ungainly in its telling, there are some elements that have the ring of real college life—like staying out ’til 5AM with a girlfriend, when they’d left the dance at 2AM—and readers could only imagine what happened in the intervening three hours unaccounted for.

The most notable element is the description of the Necronomicon; while Lovecraft had hinted at a “portfolio, bound in tanned human skin” in “The Hound,” in none of his writings had he suggested that the Necronomicon itself was bound in human leather, or that the pages were made of human vellum or inked with blood (or at least, a mostly-organic reddish substance). The popular association of the Necronomicon with anthropodermic bibliopegy and being written in blood came from the Necronomicon ex Mortis featured in Evil Dead II (1987) (and for more Necronomicon lore, see The Necronomicon Files by Dan Harms & John W. Gonce III). So Robert D. Harris was certainly ahead of the game in that respect.

“The Picture” by Robert D. Harris is ultimately just a bit of fanfiction, with the inclusion of the Necronomicon just a nod in Lovecraft’s direction—but who else in Canada was that in 1939?

The original text of “The Picture” was taken from The McGill Daily 24 Nov 1939.

Thanks to Sasha Dumontier, who found “The Picture,” did the initial research on Harris and his publications in The McGill Daily, and was kind enough to bring it to my attention. Thanks too to Dave Goudsward for his help on Harris’ vital statistics.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Edith May Dowe Miniter

The details of Mrs. Miniter’s long career—a career inseparable from amateur journalism after her sixteenth year—will doubtless be covered by writers well qualified to treat of them. Reared in Worcester, taught by her poet-mother and at a private school, and given to solid reading and literary attempts from early childhood onward, the erstwhile Edith May Dowe entered amateurdom in 1883 and was almost immediately famous in our small world as a fictional realist. Controversies raged over her stories—so different from the saccharine froth of the period—but very few failed to recognize her importance. After 1890 she was engaged in newspaper and magazine work in the larger outside world, though her interest in amateur matters increased rather than diminished.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.380

She was born Edith May Dowe on 19 May 1867 to William H. Dowe (~1838-1875) and Jane “Jennie” E. T. Dowe (~1841-1919). Jennie Dowe was a noted poet who encouraged her daughter’s literary efforts; Edith became involved in amateur journalism around age 13. In 1887, she married newspaperman and fellow amateur journalist John T. Miniter (1867-1900), and became Edith Miniter. For more on John and their marriage see “The Other Miniter: In Search of John T. Miniter” by Dave Goudsward.

The Miniters became involved in the newspaper business, operating a small local newspaper. The paper, and the marriage, failed within a few years, though Edith Miniter’s profession was still listed as “editor” or “newspaper editor” on federal censuses in 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930. Edith Miniter relocated to Boston, where she gained some success both as a writer (numerous poems, short stories, and articles appear from her in newspapers and magazines, and her novel Out Natupski Neighbors appeared in 1916) and as an amateur journalist. She became a central member of Boston’s Hub Club, and attained several offices of the National Amateur Press Association—including becoming NAPA’s first woman president in 1909.

By the time H. P. Lovecraft was recruited for amateur journalism in 1914, Edith Miniter was already a doyenne. They were no doubt aware of one another through publications in amateur journals before they ever met or crossed pens—Lovecraft first mentioned Miniter in an unsigned editorial in the United Amateur in 1918 (CE 1.180), and he first mentions her in his letters in 1920:

The occasion for this recent excursion, wich took place last Saturday, was the Hub Club picnic; to which Mrs. Miniter invited me, & at which I hoped to meet James F. Morton. […]

[170] Mrs. Dennis is a famous old-timer often referred to by C. W. Smith. As Harriet C. Cox she won four story laureateships in the National, in the ‘eighties. She was was entirely out of touch with amateurdom, except for Mrs. Miniter, but seems rather interested again. […] However, later on it cleared, so that Cook, Mrs. Miniter, Mrs. Dennis, Morton, & I took a stroll in the woodland. The Fells district reminds me of Quinsnicket Park, but it is even more beautiful in places. During the walk, Mrs. Miniter plucked some bays, & as the party rested on a rocky bluff overlooking a beautiful lake & valley, she formed them into a genuine Parnassian wreath–which she insisted on my wearing all the evening, even at the “convention banquet”, in honour of my triple laureateship. […] I told Mrs. Miniter that I did not deserve the chaplet of bays–that no brow less noble than that of our poet-laureate, Samples, was worthy of such adornment—& when the evening was over, I folded it carefully in a cageratte box which someone produced, & sent it to John Milton.
H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, 12 Aug 1920, Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner & Others 169, 170

One can just about imagine Miniter enjoying the sight of Lovecraft visibly uncomfortable wearing a laurel on his head all evening; she seems to have taken great delight in puncturing egos. In his letters, Lovecraft records several more meetings with Mrs. Miniter as he attended conventions or amateur gatherings in Boston. She was there when Lovecraft met Sonia H. Greene, who would become his wife; she was there when he read “The Moon-Bog,” which was written for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration; in a letter to his mother Lovecraft recalled:

The house was decorated with streamers of green paper in honour of the departed Celtic saint, and the presiding hostesses, Mesdames Miniter and Sawyer and W. V. Jackson, were attired in green habiliments with green paper ribbons incorporated in their coiffures.
H. P. Lovecraft to Sarah Susan Lovecraft, 17 Mar 1921, Letters to Family and Family Friends 1.31

Lovecraft even managed to bring himself to wear a green tie for the occasion.

Miniter’s reaction to “The Moon-Bog” is not recorded, but she and Lovecraft had philosophically different approaches to subject matter. Her fiction is all of a realist cast, sometimes taking inspiration from real-life—H. P. Lovecraft himself would appear as a character in The Village Green (192?) by Edith Miniter, lightly disguised. Lovecraft would write about her:

Notwithstanding her saturation with the spectral lore of the countryside, Mrs. Miniter did not care for stories of a macabre or supernatural cast; regarding them as hopelessly extravagant and unrepresentative of life. Perhaps that is one reason why, in the early Boston days, she had declined a chance to revise a manuscript of this sort which later met with much fame—the vampire-novel “Dracula”, whose author was then touring America as manager for Sir Henry Irving.
H. P. Lovecraft, “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” (written 1934) in Collected Essays 1.381

In his letters, Lovecraft would repeat the Dracula revision claim several times (discussed in further detail in Lovecraft, Miniter, Stoker: The Dracula Revision). The truth of his assertions that Miniter didn’t care for spectral stories might best be found in “Falco Ossifracus” (1921) by Edith Miniter—a parody of Lovecraft’s own style of macabre fiction, with Lovecraft himself nicknamed “Goodguile,” which would become her pet name for him.

It is not clear when precisely they began to correspond; it is likely no later than 1920, given their continued meetings no doubt involve communication of some sort. The difficulty of determining when things began is the paucity of evidence: no letters from Lovecraft to Miniter are known to survive, and only five letters from Miniter to Lovecraft are extant. One of the earliest of these, dated on “Friday the 13th” (prob. 13 May 1921) opens: “Dear ‘Goodguile.'” The letter deals in part with Miniter’s health; she notes that she took a fall and “had to learn to walk again.” A typed letter dated 4 July 1921 (possibly a draft, as it was torn in half), doesn’t mention the injury, but shows her characteristic wit:

By the war, Mr. McNamara had a good time the 18th, and wrote [W. Paul] Cook that were “real people” and not “Stuck up highbrow at all!” Now will you and James Morton stop quoting Hebrew.

Yours Truly, Edith Miniter

The last bit probably refers to some tendency of Lovecraft and Morton to go over the audience’s heads (i.e. quoting the scriptures in Hebrew sounds impressive, but doesn’t convey any information if the audience doesn’t understand Hebrew).

Lovecraft’s letter rarely mention correspondence with Miniter, but we know they had to still be in contact every once and a while, because some of Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings to Miniter and her cats are recorded, e.g.:

From distant churchyards hear a Yuletide groan

As ghoulish Goodguile heaves his heaps of bone;

Each ancient slab the festive holly wears,

And all the women disclaim their earthly cares:

Mayst thou, ‘neath sprightlier skies, no less rejoice,

And hail the season with exulting voice!
H. P. Lovecraft, The Ancient Track 320

Lovecraft noted to his aunt Lillian: “To Mrs. Miniter, who finds humour in my predilection for Colonial graveyards, I despatched these lines” (LFF 1.515), and several of Lovecraft’s letters record how Mrs. Miniter would accompany him on his trips through Boston’s various graveyards.

Diminishing finances and possibly ill-health eventually forced Edith Miniter to leave Boston. She lived for a time with the family of the amateur journalist Charles A. A. Parker in Malden, Mass. (1924-1925), and then moved in with her cousin Evanore Olds Beebe (1858-1935) in Wilbraham, Mass., in the house where Edith was born. Beebe had named the property Maplehurst, and it was a former tavern. Around 1928, Miniter wrote to Lovecraft to invite him to come visit, and he did so:

At the station I was met by Mrs. Miniter in a neighbour’s Ford, & taken at once up the beautiful shady road that winds around Wilbraham Mountain. (For a description of this country, see the Dowe Memorial booklet.) The scenery is lovely in the extreme, with just the right balance of hill & plain. It is not so vivid as Vermont, but so much richer & statelier; with larger trees & more luxuriant vegetation [706] generally. The houses are old, but not notable. The population is quite sharply divided–the good families maintaining their old standards whilst the common folk are going downhill. A Polish invasion further detracts from the atmosphere in many localities—the house of the “Natupskis” being visible from the Beebe front porch. The home of Mrs. Miniter’s cousin is a large rambling late-colonial structure built as a taven, & is stuffed utterly full of magnificent antiques, none of which are for sale. They occupy every inch of floor, wall, shelf, & table space, & 7 cats & 2 dogs perambulate & gambol through the lanes between. Miss Beebe, a woefully fat but highly intelligent & cultivated gentlewoman of 70 is the ‘big man’ of all the surrounding countryside; & decides the fortunes of the school committee, town council, & everything else fromher seat beside the telephone. She is a mine of local history & tradition, & a fountain of weird anecdote—& of course a past master & connoisseur of antique collection. She means to leave to leave her possessions to the Museum in Springfield upon her death. She drives about in a horse & buggy, though not scorning to accept a motor life to town from neighbours in bad weather. The house is set high near a curve of a road lined with magnificent maples. Southward the graceful rise of Wilbraham Mountain can be seen—this mountain & all the land for miles around belonging to Miſs Beebe. A curious abandoned road connects the house with the mountain—it is picturesque to see the tall grass growing between stone walls where chaises & farmers’ wains once ran. The whole region is full of odd rural lore, & ought to prove a mine of inspiration for any writer. I have already learned many things about old New England life previously unknown to me—such as the institution of cat-ladders inside the chimney of farmhouses, to enable the cats to climb from floor to floor when all the doors are shut. There is a fine system of cat ladders in the house—though only one ancient feline (Printer, aetat 17) knows how to use them. The place is very neat, though the only help is a boy named Chauncey, who sits at table with the family. He was taken from the poorhouse in Attleboro—but seems a delightfully gentlemanly person. My room is at the head of the stairs, & is furnished in the manner of about 1830. Lard-burning lamps are among the contents—these articles being formerly wholly unknown to me.

Mrs. Miniter does not appear to have aged at all in the 5 years since I last saw her, but is very active in literature & takes long rural walks. My diary so far is devoid of great events because of the showery weather. Friday I spent largely indoors inspecting antiques & watching cats—though in the vening I walked briefly down the road to imbibe a bit of the scenery. Saturday better weather enabled me to take a walk through some of the picturesque country to the north, Mrs. Miniter serving as guide whilst both dogs & one of the cats acted as a quadruped retinue. I never before saw a cat which followed persons over hill & dale like a dog. The country is very beautiful & traditional indeed, & undoubtedly represents the inland landscape of Western New England at its best. Upon returning I was shewn the extensive barn belonging to the place—Miſs [307] Beebe keeps 2 horses & several cows. The cats all have different & highly individualised personalities—2 are grey (including a patriarch 17 years old0 & five (including a very little kitten) are yellow. Of the dogs one is a mature & very well-bred collie, whilst the other, an Airedale puppy, is a trifle uncouth & over-demonstrative. Sunday—today—we attempted a walk up Wilbraham Mountain, but were overtaken by a thunderstorm & forced to accept a lift back from motorists—who stopped at the house & proved to be delightful persons quite prominent in Springfield educational circles. Tomorrow better outdoor luck is hoped for.
H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 1 Jul 1928, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.705-707

Wilbraham, Mass. was the inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich, and some of the folklore he picked up talking to the locals made its way into “The Dunwich Horror.” For more on Mrs. Miniter and Mrs. Beebe at Wilbraham, see “The Terribly Nice Old Ladies: Miniter and Beebe At Wilbraham” by David Haden in Lovecraft in Historical Context Fourth Collection.

The two friends must have kept in touch at least sporadically, based on references in correspondence to others:

The letter which Mrs. Miniter sent to me in your care had some choice portions intended for you, as well as directions to me which were not followed. Perhaps I should quote: “Remember me to Goodguile most strenuously and tell him whenever a cat misbehaves I wish he was here to look after it a while. Tell him Culinarius [W. Paul Cook] was here a few hours Saturday and we talked about him a vast deal. Also something about the lad from Indiana, of whom Cook first asked, ‘What relation is he to Ray Spink?’ If you knew what an insult this is you’d go to Athol instead of North Wilbraham and challenge [156] the traducer to single combat. But as he never knew Ray Spink and doesn’t know you perhaps he didn’t really go for to do it!”
Helm C. Spink to H. P. Lovecraft, 8 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 155-156

Ray Spink was another amateur journalist; while Miniter could no longer hold court in the Hub Club or attend conventions, amateur journalism was apparently still a major part of her social life. Lovecraft explained this, and revealed he was still very much in touch with Miniter:

I think I told you on a postcard how much I appreciated the Dogmatic Catalogue. In acknowledging it to Mrs. Miniter I prepared a kindred journal entitled Catastrophic Doggerel, (not[e] correct order of precedence for felidae & canidae) some of it not all of whose contents I will herewith quote. The first gem concerned an eminent young Indiana cryptographer—the Champollion of his age—who smoked out a rat from a piece of verse where its presence had never before been whiffed.
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 13 Aug 1930, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 158

This was followed by several poems on Miniter’s cats.

Two letters from Miniter to Lovecraft from this period survive. A 1930 letter to “Dear Friend Goodguile,” opens with her admitting to bronchitis, details all the doings of the cats, and apparently read “The Dunwich Horror” when it appeared in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales:

We did enjoy that marvelous story in Weird Tales, tho’ never wrote you about it. When we meet again, E. O. B. is going to have it out with you about killing the birds. The tale has been lent about, some readers have enjoyed it, but most often it has been returned with shudders. Say, come up again, do, & get material for another yarn. There must be some yet attainable.

The other letter is probably from January 1931, and includes her thanks for Lovecraft’s poetic obituary of the ancient cat Printer, news of her cousin Evanore, and thanks for the postcards—Lovecraft having made it a point to send Miniter postcards from nearly every place he visited, to brighten her day with his travels, as he did for so many of his correspondents.

The fifth and final missive from Edith Miniter to Lovecraft is a very short note, undated, congratulating Lovecraft for something. “You certainly owe us another visit” suggests this is after the 1928 visit to Wilbraham, but other than that, we lack context. Possibly a congratulation for “The Dunwich Horror” appearing in print.

There must have been more letters because Lovecraft mentions her on occasion:

Mrs. Miniter is having a very hard time at Wilbraham, with her own asthma worse, & Miss Beebe’s health such as to demand constant care—plus a financial distress which grows more & more alarming.
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 2 Feb 1933, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 202

Another friend and fellow amateur remembered in a memoir that might give the flavor for some of Edith Miniter’s correspondence to Lovecraft after she moved to Wilbraham:

When Edith lived in Boston we met often, and it was a definite personal loss when she went to Wilbraham. For a time, she wrote long letters at fairly frequent intervals, and she always expressed a determination to return to us some day.

The last few years her letters were shorter and less frequent, and, although, she said little about it, it was evident that her health was far from satisfactory.

After an accident, she wrote jokingly of her “broken bones,” and gave a ludicrous description of her appearence in a borrowed wrapper, much too big for her, that she was obliged to wear because all her own dresses “went on over her head” and she couldn’t “get into them.”

She touched humorously, at another time, upon her experience with the hives, but she never complained or seemed to deserve pity.

In her last letter, written less than three weeks before she left us, she said, “I am about the same as usual,” and it was a decided shock to learn that the end had come.
Minna B. Noyes, “Bygone Days” in The Californian (Spring 1938)

It is a familiar story; old age with its illnesses and decrepitude come on, heightened by financial woes. Edith May Dowe Miniter passed away on 5 June 1934, at Wilbraham. Lovecraft learned of the death in the amateur journal The Wolverine, which ran a brief notice:

It pained me to learn, through a paragraph in one of them, that Mrs. Miniter is no more. I sent her cards from all along my route, & the later ones—alas—can have had no recipient!
H. P. Lovecraft to Helm C. Spink, 17 Jul 1934, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 222

Lovecraft would apparently write to Wilbraham seeking more information, and possibly the return of materials he had lent to Miniter. A letter survives from a Mrs. C. H. Calkins to Lovecraft that gives a few more details on Miniter’s decline and the aftermath.

As one of her friends, Lovecraft worked to write memorials about Edith Miniter, and to encourage his friends to write memorials, although he would not live to see the publication of his lengthy “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections.” There was some confusion in the estate, and the disposition of Edith Miniter’s papers, which seems to have been compounded by the death of Evanore Beebe in 1935. By an odd quirk, Lovecraft himself ended up with a collection of Miniter’s personal and family papers, holding them in trust until the proper heir could be located. In accordance with what Lovecraft thought would be Miniter’s wishes, he allowed certain works to be published posthumously in the amateur press—such as “Dead Houses,” which appeared in Leaves #1 (Summer 1937) from R. H. Barlow’s Dragon-Fly Press.

Lovecraft had one more duty to perform on Edith Miniter’s behalf, back in the old Dunwich country: the ashes of Mrs. Jennie Dowe had never been dispersed in accordance with her wishes, but remained at the funeral home. At first there was concern that some unpaid bill was the cause, but as soon as it was cleared up that all was paid for, the ashes were secured and Lovecraft returned to Wilbraham with fellow amateur Edward H. Cole:

The trip to ancient “Dunwich” was pleasant despite our melancholy errand, & we enjoyed the marvellous mountain vistas to the full. Nothing had changed–the hills, the roads, the village, the dead houses–all the same. Most of the ashes were sprinkled in the Dell cemetery—on the graves of Mrs. Dowe’s parents & daughter. The rest we kept till we had wound over the narrow serpentine hill highway & reached the old Maplehurst estate “back o’ the mountain”. There—in the deserted rose garden—we completed the ceremony of union with ancestral soil . . . . carrying out, after 16 years, what Mrs. D. had always wished.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 26 Sep 1935, O Fortunate Floridian 293-294

Even late in life, as Lovecraft dealt with the disposition of her papers and the memorial that took so many years to go to press, he reflected:

Without question, Mrs. M. was the greatest fiction-writer ever connected with amateurdom. Not so notable as to form, but with a searching insight into human nature, & a keen ability to capture the essentials of character with some swift graphic stroke or some laconic touch of veiled, subtle irony. She had the substance—writing at first-hand about types of people she had actually seen & studied instead of merely following literary conventions & imitating what other authors had written before her.
H. P. Lovecraft to Hyman Bradofsky, 18 Oct 1936, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 374

It is unfortunate that we have so little record of the correspondence of Edith Miniter and H. P. Lovecraft; not because it would necessarily have shed more light on Lovecraft, but because Miniter is a subject of historical and literary interest in her own right. We have thousands of letters from Lovecraft, we have only a handful from Miniter. Yet she was in her day as important, or more so, as Lovecraft in amateur journalism. Reading between the lines, we might also wonder what humanizing influence Edith Miniter had on her friend.

One has to wonder if Lovecraft thought of that great old lady of amateur journalism breathing her last, the whippoorwills outside the window chirping, and then fading suddenly to silence—not that Miniter would have appreciated such a flight of fancy, but perhaps she would have appreciated the sentiment.

Anyone interested in learning more about Edith Miniter or reading some of the fiction that Lovecraft so acclaimed should check out Dead Houses and Other Works and The Village Green and Other Pieces, edited by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. and Sean Donnelly.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Bring the Moon to Me” (2015) by Amelia Gorman

I wasn’t afraid of the storms or earthquakes that visited the bay. I wasn’t afraid of the depths of the sea or the dark things that swam there. The shadows in our house made me anxious. They came out of the corners when my mother sang and knit, and flew across her face and hands. She sang about shepherds and Hastur and the sweet smell of lemon trees at night.
Amelia Gorman, “Bring the Moon to Me” in She Walks in Shadows 31

One of my favorite early pieces of Lovecraft criticism is the very brief essay “Cosmic Horror” (1945) by Dorothy Tilden Spoerl, who discovered that knitting was a cure to the eldritch horrors of H. P. Lovecraft. Amelia Gorman has taken that idea and inverted it: instead of exorcism, an invocation.

As a story, there is a vast amount that remains unsaid. The core is as perfectly beautiful and simple as Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God” (1952), but it is framed through women’s history. Knitting was often relegated to women’s work. So was computing. As Margot Lee Shetterly wrote about in Hidden Figures (2016), it was women at NASA who checked and double-checked the calculations and code for the early space missions. You the reader don’t need to know that to understand the story, but it may deepen their appreciation to know that this isn’t some random programmer; this is a story implicitly set in that point of history where women’s work was transitioning outside the home or the factory and into government offices and research labs. Education was becoming more available, and while glass ceilings and discrimination still existed, the women were in the workforce to stay after World War II, as old trades died away and new careers in computing were just beginning to take shape.

The Mythos elements in this piece are few. Hastur’s appearance is an old, old call back to an often-forgotten aspect of his artificial mythology. Before August Derleth made him a counterpart to Cthulhu; before Robert W. Chamber’s borrowed some names for The King in Yellow (1895), Hastur was a god of shepherds in Ambrose Bierce’s “Haïta the Shepherd” (1891). Shepherds have sheep, sheep make wool. It is the kind of idea so obvious you might wonder why nobody thought to put the pieces together before.

Drawing down the moon is a Wiccan practice. Witchcraft was often seen as the domain of women as well…and while the unnamed protagonist and her mother are not skinning down to dance around outside, or making candles of unbaptized baby fat, there is a current of witchy thought to the whole story. The way that women of two different generations finally learn to communicate, despite the disconnect between their lives; the passing on of secret knowledge, the suggestion of how this knowledge and power can be used against those who discriminate against them because of their gender, all partake of the idea of witchcraft without breaking out a broomstick or pointy hat or Book of Shadows.

It’s a story that works on so many different levels, but perhaps most surprisingly, it’s a story that only really works because it’s told from a woman’s perspective. A young man working as a programmer at NASA talking to his father about weaving fishing nets isn’t facing the same prejudices, the same societal expectations; “the context wouldn’t work nearly so well.

“Bring the Moon to Me” by Amelia Gorman was published in She Walks in Shadows (2015) and its paperback reprints; it was adapted as an audiobook on PseudoPod #538 in 2016.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Turn Out The Light” (2015) by Penelope Love

A re-imagining of the life and death of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft
Penelope Love, epigraph of “Turn Out The Light” in She Walks In Shadows 15

H. P. Lovecraft’s mother is part of the myth. Like Igraine, who bore the boy that would grow up to be King Arthur, she plays her essential role—but there are relatively few stories of her. Unlike Lovecraft’s thousands of letters, little of Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft survives, and she was not treated kindly by biographers. Art and fiction have seldom been more beneficent.

The Mythos has permeated H. P. Lovecraft’s biography to such an extent that in fiction it bleeds out into everything else. His conception, birth, upbringing, adolescence, and early adulthood—all aspects of his life that Susie played an active part in—have been re-cast by authors as supernatural terrors that cast a long shadow on the impressionable young lad, and inspired what he wrote. As if a writer of horror could not simply put their imagination to work. That there had to be some reality behind it.

Susie’s part in these little reality plays is often unpleasant. When they re-tell the story of the hallucinations her husband Winfield S. Lovecraft supposedly suffered before he was put away in a sanitarium, such as “Recognition” by Alan Moore, her fictional alter-ego is raped. She may go mad and die insane in the same sanitarium after reading the Necronomicon, as in Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff, Keith Griffen, and Enrique Breccia. What little facts we have tend to mingle with the distorted ideas of biographies, and then fantasy makes of Susie Lovecraft a caricature, more false face than real.

There is, often enough, very little sympathy for a single mother left alone to raise her son. Even before the shoggoths are brought into the business.

So when a reader turns the page and begins to read Penelope Love’s “Turn Out The Light,” the thing that jumps off the page immediately is empathy. It is not the most accurate, or even the most sympathetic, portrayal of Susie Lovecraft to be published. There is nothing in the limited biographical information we have to suggest that Susie did or thought some of the things that Love suggests she may have, in this story. For example:

In her traveling salesman husband’s absence—philanderer, snob, spineless, whore—her father had spoiled his grandson, told him stories, given the boy the black cat, then given it such a vulgar name.

She had never liked that cat. The one blessing out of all that loss was that the rooming house would not let them keep it. She arranged for it to be drowned, although she told her son it ran off.
Penelope Love, “Turn Out The Light” in She Walks In Shadows 17

This is pure invention. We don’t know what Susie actually thought of Lovecraft’s pet cat with the unfortunate name, there’s no indication she was behind it’s disappearance. Yet that is rather the point: in the absence of hard data, Penelope Love has tried to get inside Susie’s head, to provide a point of view for her. It may not be entirely accurate (her brother Edwin Phillips and sister Annie Gamwell are not mentioned at all), but it isn’t just regurgitating the same old stories either.

Even so, there are parallels between “Turn Out The Light” and works like “Night-Gaunts” (2017) by Joyce Carol Oates. Natural parallels because they are, in a real sense, both working from the same material in similar lines of thought. Retreading the grounds of Lovecraft’s childhood, his fiction; drawing lines and linkages between later works and earlier events and persons. Creating variations on the same myth, like villages in Greece that each have slightly different stories of Herakles. Love’s version of events is a little more subtle, a little less overtly fantastic, and her depiction of Susie Lovecraft a bit more real, though nowhere as sympathetic as “Wife to Mr. Lovecraft” (2017) by Lucy Sussex.

Yet Susie Lovecraft could use a little empathy. She may have born H. P. Lovecraft into the world, but she died just as he began to flower with his stories of the Dreamlands and Randolph Carter, but before Weird Tales came into being. “Turn Out The Light” captures some of the tragedy that is often unspoken about Susie’s relationship with her son. The reason why he did not visit her at the hospital during her last illness is one of those mysteries that will never be revealed, as Lovecraft did not write of such a personal matter, yet it evokes pathos when she begs him not to let them turn out the light…and there is one more thing.

“If I should die, please mark the symbols on the front steps here as you did for your grandfather—and the cat. I know it is nonsense. Just do this for me, please. I would like to think that I could follow the straight line between the stars and come back.”
Penelope Love, “Turn Out The Light” in She Walks In Shadows 26

Some people find immortality of a sorts through their children. Others, through their works. Their name and memory is kept alive. Susie Lovecraft is remembered today through her son, and a tenuous, ghostly, and distorted as that memory may be through the lens of biographers and the liberties of writers and artists—H. P. Lovecraft has secured at least that much for her. With her paintings lost, and no heirs to her body, works like this are the only offerings likely to be made to her memory, to keep it evergreen and safe from final oblivion.

“Turn Out The Light” by Penelope Love was first published in She Walks In Shadows (2015). It has not been republished, except in the paperback editions of that book.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Ammutseba Rising” (2015) by Ann K. Schwader

This is the second story in this collection that takes place in Boulder; it is also the second appearance of Ann’s Great Old One Ammutseba. The first was in the poem “The Coming of Ammutseba”, which will be published in the forthcoming anthology From Kadath to Carcosa, by Mythos Books. Ann describes Ammutseba as “a very dark version/perversion of the Egyptian skygoddess Nut.” She also blames Joseph Pulber for encouraging her to create her own Mythos “book and beastie”. Her tome is included in this story as well: The Gate of All Lost Stars, the quotes from which are Ann’s own corruption of The Book of the Dead. Ann further informs me that the Obscura Gallery in the story is based on a real establishment, though it doesn’t have quite the same name, and it isn’t located in Boulder. She also did a great deal of research for this story, much of which came from Stanley C. Sargent, whose knowledge of Egyptology is simply phenomenal.

Ammutseba is one of only a handful of female Mythos deities. Most are simply mentioned; only five others have actually appeared in stories: Shub-Niggurath, Yidhra, Cthylla, Hydra, and Coatlicue. This may be due, at least in part, to the unspoken chauvinism that has pervaded the Mythos; it may also be due in part to the patriarchal nature of the existing pantheon. Whatever the reasons, however, Ammutseba is a most welcome addition (what am I saying?!) and I personally would like to see more of her.
Robert M. Price, introduction to “Lost Stars” by Ann K. Schwader in Strange Stars & Alien Shadows: The Dark Fiction of Ann K. Schwader (2003) 219

From Kadath to Carcosa never appeared; Mythos Books shut its doors. “The Coming of Ammutseba” was finally published in Twisted in Dream: The Collected Weird Poetry of Ann K. Schwader (2011). In 2015, “Ammutseba Rising” was published in She Walks in Shadows, as a kind of opening invocation:

At first, a spectral haze against the darkness,

some appairtion less of mist than hunger

made visible afflicts our evening. Stars

within it flicker, fettered by corruption

we sense but dimly. Terrible & ancient,

it murmurs in the dreams of chosen daughters.

Not it, but She […]
Opening lines of “Ammutseba Rising” by Ann K. Schwader, She Walks in Shadows 13

Taken together, we might call “Lost Stars,” “The Coming of Ammutseba,” and “Ammutseba Rising” as the Ammutseba Cycle, or possibly the Devourer of Stars Mythos. Relatively late additions to the wider body of Lovecraftian fiction, plagued by publishing delays, and currently not collected together—but such small details have hardly mattered.

Ammutseba exists…and in the days of the internet, has proliferated in odd ways. David Conyers refers to Ammutseba in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying book Secrets of Kenya (2007); a Finnish metal guitarist has adopted her name, and so did a Maltese metal band (they later changed their name to Nokturnal Void), while there is an Amnutseba in France; J. Nathaniel Corres borrowed the name for an independently published space opera/Mythos novel, Elder Offensive: The Ammutseba Protocol (2018), Ed Russo borrows Ammutseba for his novel The Nameless Monster (2019). DeviantArt and other online galleries include plentiful fanart, some of it not even algorithmically generated.

In the spirit of the game that Mythos authors play, most of these later borrowings are at best impolite. Ammutseba is not in the public domain, as is the case of Lovecraft, whose Cthulhu and Necronomicon and whatnot are acknowledged as communal property. Back when most Mythos authors knew each other, it would be expected that at least some sort of permission would be asked and given first. This probably isn’t the case for most of the above. It is the nature of the internet that it makes it very easy to share information, but also very easy to steal ideas, intentionally or not.

It is easy to lose sight of Ammutseba as Schwader first depicted her—in part because there is no single consolidated source, no Bullfinch’s Mythology for these territories. In large part, this is because the Mythos is still living, growing, and evolving. Physical encyclopedias go out of date, online wikis and websites succumb to too many hands, or web rot as sites are abandoned, not backed up, and finally lost. Such things have happened before.

The eldritch entity Rhogog supposedly first appeared in the story “Sacristans of Rhogog” by Michael Saint-Paul. Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game writer Scott David Aniolowski liked the idea so much he worked it into a scenario, and from there Rhogog has proliferated. Unfortunately, that original story only appeared on a blog in the 1990s, never in print, and the blog long ago disappeared. As of this writing, no one has been able to find the original story or its author.

Her mystery eclipses tarnished stars

we kept for wishing on. Perhaps our daughters

will walk in shadow gladly, holding hunger

inside them for a weapon. […]
Lines from “Ammutseba Rising” by Ann K. Schwader, She Walks in Shadows 14

There is something terribly appropriate in having “Ammutseba Rising” open She Walks in Shadows. The idea of a goddess who bucks the patriarchy of cultists and eldritch entities, whose cosmic horrors can also connect, so very intimately, with the horror and experiences so unique to women, as Schwader demonstrated in “Lost Stars.” A Mythos entity that does not deserve to be forgotten, or misremembered.

“Ammutseba Rising” by Ann K. Schwader was first published in She Walks in Shadows (2015) and reprinted in Schwader’s collection Dark Energies (2015).

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“This Great Lover Won Women by Magic Powers” (1931) by Tally Mason

In November 1930, Fawcett Publications released a new pulp: Mystic Magazine. This lavishly illustrated, large-size pulp covered all manner of mystical phenomena, from seances to mediumship, palmistry to graphology, astrology to vampirism. In content, Mystic Magazine was a mix of nonfiction articles and the occasional story, written in the confessional style of Ghost Stories. In tone, the pulp seemed to cater more toward women—there was a kind of spiritualist lonely hearts column, regular features about what numerology or astrology said about your husband or love prospects, and the stories tended to have a romantic bent.

The pulp ran for four issues. With the fifth issue, Fawcett changed the title and approach; it became True Mystic Crimes (April 1931), adding in sensationalist material about Chinese tongs in San Francisco, murders caused by cults or solved by dreams or clairvoyance, zombies in Haiti, and all that sort of thing. Complete as the change was, the pulp still failed to find an audience among the crowded newsstands. The pulp ended there, to be no more than a rare collectible for pulp aficionados.

August Derleth earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin in 1930. Derleth’s earliest letters from Clark Ashton Smith, addressed to him in Milwaukee in November 1930, occasionally touch on Mystic Magazine. Despite not being listed on the masthead, Derleth was an associate editor for the magazine, and published at least three stories and articles in Mystic under the byline “Tally Mason.” Still, the writing for the pulp was on the wall:

Dear Smith. In view of the fact the Fawcetts have discontinued Mystic together with its editor, my address after 17 February will be Sauk City, Wisconsin.

As Always,
August
August Derleth to Clark Ashton Smith, 6 Feb 1931, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 37

Back in his native Sauk City, August Derleth would begin writing for a pulp magazine titled Weird Tales. The date of his departure suggests the Fawcetts might have let him go before the transition to True Mystic Crimes—but that issue still contained two pieces from “Tally Mason,” whose manuscripts still survive among Derleth’s papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Both pieces were nominally nonfiction articles; “Your Picture Can Be Your Death Warrant” was about how images could contain a mystical link to their original subject, citing The Portrait of Dorian Gray as one example; the second, “This Great Lover Won Women by Magic Powers” was about the 18th-century occultist Alessandro Cagliostro, whose reputation and infamy has, over the centuries, become the stuff of legend and a great deal of fiction.

Yet “This Great Lover Won Women by Magic Powers” is interesting because of one particular thread that Derleth wove into the mix of facts and fiction:

But Cagliostro’s coming to Paris had been heralded also by the quickening of many feminine hearts, for not only was he known as a seer, but also as one of the greatest of lovers.

First to fling herself at him was the young and beautiful Countess de Beauregard, who asked the seer to conduct a séance at her home. This he did. The countess, who did not really believe that Cagliostro could invoke the dead, began making overtures in the seer’s direction. Cagliostro discreetly edged toward a mirror, and suddenly the astounded Countess saw the reflection of the dead count, her husband, looking ruefully at her from the glass.

Certain that a trick had been played on her, the countess began to deride Cagliostro. Her sister, the countess Micheline D’erlette, fell in with her plan to trap the seer, but one day while visiting Cagliostro, herself fell in love with him.

This she could, of course, never tell her sister, and in consequence, she was put to the necessity of paying private visits to Cagliostro, ostensibly for psychic aid.

The Countess de Beauregard finally saw that her sister had no intention of helping her trap the seer, and in anger she went to the Count d’Erlette, whose jealousy was very easily aroused.

One night his sister-in-law sent a message to the Count saying that his wife was closeted with Cagliostro. As it happened, the Countess d’Erlette had gone to the seer, but it was solely to ascertain the whereabouts of an old lover, all traces of whom had been lost. This her husband could not know, and, suspecting her of a liason with the seer, he set out in anger for Cagliostro’s house.

Madame Cagliostro told him that she herself had seen her husband go toward the poorer districts with the Countess d’Erlette. Distraught, the Count followed.

After diligent search, he came upon Cagliostro walking with a woman in a street near to the house later identified as that of Dr. Guillotin, inventor of the instrument that bears his name. The woman certainly looked like his wife, and no sooner had Cagliostro seen his pursuer, however, than something happened to the nobleman.

“I was making great haste after him,” he told later, “when suddenly there came between us a black cloud, and I was forced to halt in my tracks, for fear of stumbling out into the roadway and being run over by passing vehicles.

“In a moment this cloud passed, and again I saw the seer before me. but this time, he had no woman with him. Instead, I saw by his side, a small black spaniel, whose eyes were fixed on me!

“Cagliostro had turned, the dog with him, and he now passed into an alley, the dog still following. I was astounded, for I thought I had seen my wife at his side. So certain was I of this, that I went to the alley and peered in, but there was no one in sight.

“Later, when I had convinced myself that this illusion had been brought on me by the seer’s mystic power, I went home, and there found my wife.

“To my surprise, she was waiting for me, told me of her encounter with Cagliostro, and of what she had learned regarding our future, every word of which came true.

“She then added gently that Cagliostro did not like interference of any kind when he was doing a lady a service. I did not know quite how this was meant, but I knew when I got back to my own room.

“For there on my bed lay a ring I had dropped in my excitement on seeing the black dog with Cagliostro, and could not find again, no matter how much I had sought after it.

“Then I remembered dimly that the dog had snapped at something as the seer passed me!”

The young Count d’Erlette subsequently confronted Cagliostro with this evidence, but the seer only shrugged his shoulders and said, “The ways of the powers are many, and it is not for such as you to question them!“
Tally Mason (August Derleth), True Mystic Crimes 56-57

A sequel to this episode quickly followed, on the occasion of Cagliostro giving a dinner-party after the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, just before leaving France for England. Once again, the Count d’Erlette featured prominently:

[Cagliostro] followed this prediction with that of the fall of the great French prison, the Bastille, and the creation of July 14 as National Day.

At this point, the Count d’Erlette asked rather scoffingly whether Cagliostro could see into his future and tell him what would become of the house of Erlette in the Revolution.

Cagliostro nodded and replied, “First, I see your father dead in this bed of heart failure at the same time that the mob is clamoring at the gates of your house in Paris.

“Then, I see the lovely Countess, your wife, killed by order of the provisionary government.”

“And me?” Asked the Count jovially. “What is to become of me?”

“You will flee with your son, Michel, but not before you have seen your younger brother, Auguste, killed by the mob. You will go to the German countries; I see you in Bavaria. Only for a short time will you be there. Your son will wed, and in turn have a son named Michel. Both you and your son will return to Paris during the time of Napoleon, but your grandson will remain in Bavaria.

“The House of Erlette will come to being once more during a decade many years from now, but the line that you represent will never again return to Paris. Your grandson, Michel, will go to America, and his sons will Iive there for all time. I see your grandson buried near the great American river called ‘Father of the Waters!'”

This Count d’Erlette ridiculed word for word, but every pronouncement came to pass, and even to this day the grave of Michel, the grandson, may be seen in a small town in southern Wisconsin.
Tally Mason (August Derleth), True Mystic Crimes 95

For readers familiar with Mythos fiction, the name “d’Erlette” might ring a bell.

Only a wizard would possess those mouldering, maggoty volumes of monstrous and fantastic lore; only a thaumaturgical adept would date the darker mysteries of the Necronomicon, Ludvig Prinn’s Mysteries of the Worm, the Black Rites of Luveh-Keraph, priest of Bast, or Comte d’Erlette’s ghastly Cultes des Goules.
Robert Bloch, “The Suicide in the Study,” Weird Tales June 1935

Lovecraft would shed some light on this little mystery in a letter:

Comte d’Erlette’s Cultes des Goules? An invention of Bloch’s. The name Comte d’Erlette, however, represents an actual (& harmless) ancestor of August W. Derleth’s, who was a royalist emigré from France in 1792 & became naturalized in Germany under the slightly Teutonised name of Derleth. His son, emigrating to Wisconsin in 1835, was the founder of the Derleth line in America.
H. P. Lovecraft to Willis Conover, Jr., 14 Aug 1936, Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 382

In other words, Derleth incorporated his own slightly-fictionalized family history to pad out his article on Cagliostro.

The gravestone of Michael Derleth, great-grandfather of August W. Derleth

The letter in which August Derleth revealed this heritage to Lovecraft does not appear to survive, but in their correspondence, Lovecraft begins to refer to him as “Auguste-Guillaume, Comte d’Erlette” (ES 2.455) in February 1932, so the subject probably came up in early 1932 or late 1931. Lovecraft would refer to Derleth as the “Comte d’Erlette” in his letters occasionally from then on, and the Cultes des Goules was added to the shelf of eldritch tomes that appear in his stories, and that of their contemporaries and literary heirs, though Bloch’s choice of attributing the volume to d’Erlette sometimes led to some confusion as to who actually invented it.

Derleth himself never chose to expand on his fictional ancestor in any of his Mythos fiction, though in his Solar Pons story “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders” (1950), the premise of the story is a Mythos red herring involving the sale of the private library of Paul Guillaume, the Comte d’Erlette, which reads in part:

I glanced at several of the other titles listed—d’Erlette, Paul Henri, Comte de: Cultes des Goules, Rouen, 1737; Prinn, Ludvig: De Vermis Mysteriis, Prague, 1807; Liber Ivonis (Author Unknown), Rome, 1662;—all manifestly occult literature.
August Derleth, “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders,” The Solar Pons Omnibus 2.848

Solar Pons is quick to point out to his companion Parker that the whole catalogue is a hoax.

“But the Count d’Erlette?”

“Erlette is a provincial name in France. The family existed in some numbers before the Revolution, but the last member to carry a title died in 1919.[“]
August Derleth, “The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders,” The Solar Pons Omnibus 2.849

Derleth was not the only one to have a bit of fun with his fictitious ancestor, as many subsequent writers did write about the author of Cultes des Goules and his family.

It is not too much to say that “Tally Mason’s” article on Cagliostro is part of the secret history of the Mythos—not a direct part of the web of interconnecting stories that Lovecraft & Co. wrote, but a precursor and bit of background. One has to wonder if Derleth ever showed the piece to Lovecraft.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Editor Spotlight: Cynthia Asquith & Dorothy L. Sayers

Weird Tales was not far from the sole source of weird and fantasy fiction available to readers in the 1920s and 30s. In many ways, weird pulp fiction—and reprints of the same like Christine Campbell Thomson’s Not at Night series—were seen as the lower end of popular fiction publishing. Yet there were anthologies that were often considered of a higher standard. It is notable that two of the leading editors for this sort of anthology were women, Cynthia Asquith (1887-1960) and Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957).

H. P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, aficionados of weird fiction that they were and on the hunt for top-class fiction, read several of Asquith’s and Sayers’ anthologies and commented on them in their letters. These were not the most detailed reviews, and that sort of reflects the spirit of the anthologies and how they were received. The idea of a collection of weird stories wasn’t new, but neither Asquith nor Sayers had set out to try and define or redefine a theory of weird fiction. These were editors who were obviously intimately familiar with the genre, but by and large were content to let their selections speak for them—with the notable exception of Sayers’ introduction to The Omnibus of Crime (1929), which may be read as a detective-fiction parallel to Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature”—especially the section on “Tales of Mystery and Horror,” within which she lumps many works that Lovecraft recognizes as weird fiction.

Cynthia Asquith and Dorothy L. Sayers were creating anthologies with staying power, the influential building blocks of many libraries of weird fiction, far beyond whatever influence they had on Lovecraft and his contemporaries; that influence should not be overlooked or forgotten. These women editors helped define the weird fiction landscape during the heyday of Weird Tales and beyond.

Cynthia Asquith

My next addition to my library is to be Niccolo Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE. After that follows THE GHOST BOOK (Machen, Blackwood, Bierce, de la Mare, and others) edited by M. Asquith.
August Derleth to H. P.. Lovecraft, 22 Jan 1927, Essential Solitude 1.66

British aristocrat Cynthia Asquith was educated, erudite, creative, and connected. When she compiled The Ghost Book in 1926, she brought together what might arguably be called the cream of the crop for contemporary British weird fiction, including Algernon Blackwood, Oliver Onions, Arthur Machen, Walter de la Mare, and L. P. Hartley—and perhaps reflecting the prominence of women ghost story writers or her own tastes, has a higher-than-average number of women contributors—including one of her own stories, “The Corner Shop,” published under the pseudonym C. L. Ray.

“The Ghost Book” sounds alluring—are the stories very new, or do they contain any familiar ones? Of course the well-known names argue semi-classics. Which of De la Mare’s is represented?
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 2 May 1927, Essential Solitude 1.73

The Ghost Book provided all-new stories by “name” authors, not reprints from pulp magazines by virtual unknowns—and perhaps because of that, it charged more for the higher quality. At a time when More Not at Night (1926) was retailing for 2/- (two shillings, pre-decimalization, or about 50¢ in 1926 US dollars), The Ghost Book went for 7/6 (seven shillings, six pence; about US$1.82).

I’m on the Asquith anthology of ghost tales now—the best things in it so far being Blackwood’s “Chemical”, L. P. Hartley’s “Visitor from Down Under”, Walpole’s “Mrs. Lunt”, & De la Mare’s “A Recluse”.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Sep 1928, Essential Solitude 1.156

All of these stories were included in Lovecraft’s list “Books to mention in the new edition of weird article” (CE 5.234), and worked into “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

Lovecraft appears to have missed Asquith’s next editorial effort The Black Cap: New Stories of Murder and Mystery (1927), though it contains stories by Walpole, Hartley, D. H. Lawrence, and Marie Belloc Lowndes, who had stories in The Ghost Book. In 1929, however, Asquith returned with another premier collection of supernatural fiction: Shudders: A Collection of New Nightmare Tales, published by Hutchinson.

That new Hutchinson anthology sounds good—wonder if the firm is going to specialise in the weird?
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 26 Sep 1929, Essential Solitude 1.216

We can only wonder if Lovecraft’s idle comment inspired Derleth a decade later to co-found Arkham House, as a publisher specializing in weird fiction. There are no other references to Shudders in Lovecraft’s letters, so it isn’t clear if he managed to read that anthology. However, it’s clear that Lovecraft and Derleth were excited when Asquith’s third effort at a purely weird anthology, When Churchyards Yawn (1931):

By the way, before I forget it, Lady Cynthia Asquith has just brought out WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN, a new anthology of new ghost and weird stoies, by Walpole, Maugham, Onions, Chesterton, and the usual group, excepting only, I think, M. R. James. I have it on order, will let you know how it is as soon as I get it. It is not yet printed in the U.S.
August Derleth to H. P. Lovecraft, 2 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.402-403

I’ll be glad to hear your report on “When Churchyards Yawn”. These anthologies come thick & fast, & some of them are excellent.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.404

The point about When Churchyards Yawn is that all the tales are new, haven’t even seen magazine printing before, and all by masters of writing. I order such a book posthaste without any further notice.
August Derleth to H. P. Lovecraft, 9 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.407

Keep in mind that unless a book was picked up by a US publisher and issued in a local edition, the cost of the importation would be added to the cover cost, which with an already higher-than-average book could become expensive. This is likely one of the reasons Lovecraft didn’t read more of Asquith’s anthologies.

I sent today for When Churchyards Yawn, the anthology of brand new tales by Asquith, which has just reached Chicago from England. I will let you have the report on this as soon as it reached me and I have read it through.
August Derleth to H. P. lovecraft, 17 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.412

I shall welcome your report on “When Churchyards Yawn”. The first Asquith anthology had some good stuff in it.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 20 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.416

Derleth’s report does not survive, but in Lovecraft’s next letter we read that Derleth was less than impressed:

Sorry the new Asquith anthology doesn’t equal the first—but would give a good deal to see that new Machen tale!
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 25 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.418

Perhaps because of Derleth’s report, or lack of cash, or simply lack of opportunity to pick up the book, Lovecraft didn’t read When Churchyards Yawn until 1934, when a friend lent him a copy:

Had an interesting shipment of loaned books from Koenig during my absence—before he learned I was in his town. Baring-Gould’s werewolf volume (which I’ve always wanted to see), the second & latest Asquith anthology “When Churchyards Yawn”, & a small book of short tales by Francis C. Prevot entitled “Ghosties & Ghoulies”. Hope I can get at reading them before long—though at present I am utterly submerged in the mass of accumulated work & correspondence which I found on my return. The Asquith book contains Machen & Blackwood tales which I’ve never read–though they may be old.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 11 Jan 1934, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 516

H. C. Koenig was a fan who opened his library to Lovecraft for borrowing, including the works of William Hope Hodgson. Lovecraft’s assessment of the new book was muted:

The Asquith anthology was fair—Blackwood’s contribution being the best.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 11 Feb 1934, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 525

Lovecraft also wrote of his intention to borrow Shudders from Koenig, but there is no evidence that he did so. Lady Cynthia Asquith edited no more anthologies during Lovecraft’s lifetime (he did read My Grimmest Nightmare, 1935, which is commonly though erroneously credited to Asquith), but she did not cease, following up The Ghost Book (1926) with The Second Ghost Book (1952) and The Third Ghost Book (1955). While the British Not at Night and Creeps series would be remembered as cheap, garish, and as close as one could get to pulp between hard covers (which, to be fair, is what they were), Asquith’s collections were as respectable as weird fiction could get in the 1920s and 1930s, and would be reprinted many times in various editions, ensuring a large influence on subsequent decades.

Dorothy L. Sayers

In nothing is individual fancy so varied and capricious as in its perception of the horrible.
Dorothy L. Sayers, “Introduction” in The Omnibus of Crime (1929), 45

In the 1920s, the distinction between crime, mystery, horror, and supernatural fiction was murky. While pulp magazines did a great deal to differentiate genres in popular literature, carving out sometimes incredibly narrow niches as evidence by pulps like Range Romances and Zeppelin Stories. Yet the roots of weird fiction, going back at least to Edgar Allan Poe and his detective C. Auguste Dupin, are tied up in mystery and detective fiction; through the 1930s there would be considerable overlap between detective fiction, weird crime, supernatural fantasy, and horror fiction—and it was that ambiguity and versatility of approach that defined Weird Tales and his primary contributors, including H. P. Lovecraft.

Dorothy L. Sayers was British, well-educated, and had practical experience as a novelist and copywriter, and specialized in detective fiction. In 1928, Sayers edited Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. This was a massive book (1,229 pages), prefaced by a long and thorough introductory essay, designed to take the reader through the whole history of detective and mystery fiction up to this point. Nor did Sayers neglect the supernatural horror side of the field, M. R. James, Oliver Onions, Sax Rhomer, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis Stevenson, Majorie Bowen, May Sinclair, A. M. Burrage, Walter de la Mare, and H. G. Well, among many others. If Sayers was influenced by gender or fame, it isn’t immediately obvious; while there are many famous names among the contents, there are also stories that are rarely commented on today, like Bram Stoker’s “The Squaw” and “Proof” by Naomi Royde-Smith.

In 1929, US publishers Harcourt, Brace, & Co. brought out an American edition titled The Omnibus of Crime.

This “Omnibus of Crime” volume sounds rather good, & I find I have no read half of the items listed. I shall surely try to get hold of it. Thanks exceedingly for quoting the contents.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 20 Aug 1929, Essential Solitude 1.208

There is some excellent weird stuff—standard material reprinted—in the second half of the anthology called “The Omnibus of Crime”, which has lately been reprinted in a dollar edition. But perhaps you are already familiar with this.
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 4 Nov 1931, O Fortunate Floridian 13

I intend to get “The Omnibus of Crime” (whose second half you described to me) now that it is issued for a dollar.
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 6 Nov 1931, Essential Solitude 1.404

I have not found a dollar edition of The Omnibus of Crime (whose normal list price was $3.00); it may be that this was a marked-down remainder price, as other writers like Clark Ashton Smith write of buying the book at a steep discount (EID 91). Lovecraft did finally get the loan of a copy of the book from his friend, W. Paul Cook:

I at last have the “Omnibus”, & have read “Green Tea.” It is certainly better than anything else of Le Fanu’s that I have ever seen, though I’d hardly put it in the Poe-Blackwood-Machen class. There are many other items in the book that I am particularly glad to have on hand—indeed, it is really one of the best of all recent anthologies.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 16 Jan 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 342

“Green Tea” was one of Lovecraft’s unicorns; when he wrote “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” the story was out-of-print and relatively scarce. Lovecraft noted to a friend:

I now have the first one, & have read “Green Tea.” The latter isn’t at all bad, & I would probably have spoken less lightly about Le Fanu had I previously read it.
H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Feb 1932, Letters to J. Vernon Shea et al. 90

Ironically, Weird Tales would publish it as part of its weird fiction classics reprint series in the July 1933 issue.

Smith himself was more critical than Lovecraft in his assessment of the anthology:

I’ve been reading The Omnibus of Crime, which has some excellent weird stories in the latter section (I can’t read detective tales, to which the major part of the book is given.) Le Fanu’s Green Tea, Hichens’ How Love Came to Professor Guildea, The Novel of the Black Seal, Metcalf’s Bad Lands, White’s Lukundoo, and one or two others were enough to give me my money’s worth and more. I can’t see though why Bierce and M. R. James were so weretchedly represented in this collection. Moxon’s Master by the former is so obviously mediocre in comparison to real stuff such as The Death of Halpin Frayser; and almost anything of James that I remember reading would have been preferable to the somewhat tedious Martin’s Close. But I suppose my criticism proves nothing–except that Dorothy Sayers and I have different taste.
Clark Ashton Smith to August Derleth, 31 Dec 1931, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 92-93

Dorothy L. Sayers did not rest on her laurels. Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928) was followed up by Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror, Second Series (1931).

I have greatly enjoyed the “Omnibus”, & hope the second one (just announced by booksellers) is of comparable quality. Like you, though, I don’t care especially for the first or “deteckatiff” half of the book.
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 28 Jan 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 344

This second selection lacked the introductory material of the first, and when it was released in the United States as The Second Omnibus of Crime (1932), some of the weird contents were cut out of the American edition (the page count went down from 1,147 in the UK edition to 855 in the US edition, and that’s not because they printed it in a smaller font!) Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that Lovecraft read The Second Omnibus of Crime, although others in his correspondence did. Derleth judgment was fierce:

I’ve just finished the new Omnibus of Crime; Sayer[s]’s weird tale choice is abominable.
August Derleth to Clark Ashton Smith, 20 May 1932, Eccentric, Impractical Devils 118

The Second Omnibus of Crime gave way to a third in 1935, though there is no reference to it in Lovecraft’s letters. As with the second omnibus, the contents of the US edition are cut down from the British, although the US publishers added A. Merritt’s “The People of the Pit” and “The Head” by Manuel Komroff. Whether Lovecraft missed hearing about this book, or simply lacked the cash to pick up a copy or the time to read it, we don’t know. Given the relatively high price, the lack of interest in the non-weird material in each anthology, and considering that some of those weird stories were reprinted from author collections Lovecraft & Co. already had or read…it wouldn’t be hard to see why The Third Omnibus of Crime failed to gather significant attention.

The major importance of Sayers’ anthologies to Lovecraft & Co. was as a common touchstone; that is what omnibus editions are ideal for, providing a single book reprinting enough tales to serve as a common reference point for other authors. Yet more important perhaps was what these books represented to Weird Tales authors: a proof of the commercial viability of their work:

If there were only one or two more editors in the market for that sort of thing, I believe I could sell nearly all my weirds: Individual taste differs more in regard to horror and fantasy, as Dorothy Sayers observes, than in regard to anything else.
Clark Ashton Smith to H. P. Lovecraft, early Mar 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 352

In this, Smith was unknowingly predicting the future of speculative fiction, as anthologies would eventually overtake magazines as the primary market for weird fiction. Yet the time for cheap mass-market paperback anthologies wasn’t yet; weird anthologies were a growing field, but still predominantly hardback, expensive, and dominated by reprints rather than the first appearance of stories.

Looking at Lady Cynthia Asquith and Dorothy L. Sayers in the context of their time, outside of the particular comments and concerns of Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents, these anthologies, as well as those edited by Christine Campbell Thomson and others, showed there was a potential market for weird fiction in anthology form. Each of these women was very much experimenting with the form, and in the Americanized versions probably dealing with local publisher interference, but there was a definite inching toward the kind of anthology that editors like Ellen Datlow and Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles would be able to put together: thematically focused, expressive of the editor’s own attitudes to define the scope of the anthology as well as its contents. To make something more than the sum of its parts by giving their work a unified aesthetic or historical context.

For Lovecraft and Co., they were reading these books both as average consumers (with all their own opinions on what was fit to print or re-print), and as writers of weird fiction who were beginning to be conscious of the fact that “Hey, if there were more of these things, I bet I could sell stories to them…” Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way for Lovecraft, though he did see some of his stories reprinted in anthologies; the market just wasn’t there yet. One day, it would be; and it may be that August Derleth, who became an anthologist of note, took a few lessons from what he saw Asquith and Sayers do and not do in their books.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Deeper Cut: Lovecraft’s Last Christmas

Greetings—& a thousand thanks for the delightful mortuary relique! It arrived, thanks to the careful packing, in what was probably very much its condition when shipped—the upper part in two large & joinable sections, a third large section, & a sizeable array of smaller fragments. I shall have an interesting time trying to piece the latter together—a sort of picture puzzle de luxe—& wish I had the aid of a clever reconstructive expert like Barlow . . . who last summer completely reassembled & restored a cherished Chinese vase which I broke. This will certainly form a most delightful & appropriate embellishment for my ghoulish lair, & I surely appreciate your thoughtfulness ins dending it. I presume you were assisted by Howard the Baby Ghoul in excavating it—& must congratulate him on his keen scent for good specimens!

Have just finished decorating a Christmas tree.

Season’s best wishes

—E’ch-Pi-El
H. P. Lovecraft to Willis Conover, [24 December] 1936, Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 406

Although he did not darken the door of any church in Providence for midnight mass on Christmas Eve; and would most likely have been happier reading a scary ghost story while huddled near the steam vents, there can be little doubt that H. P. Lovecraft enjoyed Christmas. There was no religious element to this ritual, and probably it owed much to the Christmases of his boyhood years, which were remembered and recounted well into adulthood, when his mother and grandparents were alive, when the whole household (including the servants) would gather to sing songs, and the black kitten would purr as it chased chestnuts from the fire.

Such celebrations stopped with the death of Lovecraft’s grandfather. The household was broken up, and Lovecraft’s Christmases during his teenage years were likely smaller, more intimate affairs, perhaps with only his mother, or gathering together with his aunts for a meal and exchange of presents. As the family resources spread thin, and Lovecraft traveled further afield, even these gatherings might have been briefer and less formal affairs. We know that the family did not always have a tree for Christmas, but when at last his elder aunt Lillian Clark died, financial circumstances forced Lovecraft and his surviving aunt Annie Gamwell to move in together at 66 College Street, for a few Christmases at least they did have a tree.

Such was the case for Lovecraft’s last Christmas in 1936 as well.

Our Christmas here was commendably festive—including a tree, as in ‘34 & ‘35.
H. P. Lovecraft to Richard Ely Morse, 28 Jan 1937, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 141

As in previous years, Lovecraft sent out a stack of Christmas greetings to friends, and a scattering of cards and gifts must have arrived by post from the far-flung corners of his correspondence. At this late stage in his life, Lovecraft’s correspondence was voluminous, with regular letters to dozens of people, and probably less frequent missives and postcards to dozens more. Writing swiftly as he did and conveying much the same news, Lovecraft often took to copying the same accounts of events nearly verbatim. So we have about a dozen versions of his 1936 Christmas, many almost identical. The following may be taken as exemplary:

Our Yule in general was commendably festive—including a turkey dinner over at Spotty’s house with our hostess meandering among the tables & finally jumping-up on the window-seat for a nap. We had a tree in front of the hearth in my aunt’s living-room—its verdant boughs thickly festooned with a tinsel imitation of Volusia County’s best Spanish moss, & its outlines emphasised by a not ungraceful lighting system. Around its base were ranged the Saturnalian gifts—which (on my side) included a hassock tall enough to let me reach the top shelves of my bookcases, & (on my aunt’s side) a cabinet of odds & ends, not unlike my own filing cabinets, but of more ladylike arrangement & aspect. Of outside gifts—apart from our somnolent household panther—the most disintctive was perhaps that which came quite unexpectedly from young Conover, the editor of the new fan magazine (which is, by the way, about to absorb Leedle Shoolie’s Fantasy) in Cambridge, Maryland . . . down de Eastern Sho’. For lo! when I had removed numberless layers of corrugated paper & excelsior, what should I find before me but the yellowed & crumbling fragments of a long-interred human skull! Verily, a fitting gift from an infant ghoul to one of the hoary elders of the necropolitan clan! The sightlessly staring monument of mortality came from an Indian mound—apparently even more fruitful than those of Cassia & New Sum-myrna—not far from the sender’s home; a place distinguished by many archaeological exploits on the part of the enterprising editor & his young friends. Its condition is such as to make its reassembling a somewhat ticklish task—so that I may reserve it for the ministrations of an expert vase & calendar-stone mender upon the occasion of his next visit! Viewing this shattered yield of the ossuary, the reflective fancy strives to evoke the image of him to whom it once belonged. Was it some feathered chieftain who in his day oft ululated in triumph as he counted the tufted scalps sliced from coppery or colonist foes? Or some crafty shaman who with masque & drum called forth from the Great Abyss those shadowy Things where were better left uncalled? This we may never know—unless perchance some incantationd roned out of the pages of the Necronomicon will have power to draw strange emanations from the lifeles & centuries clay, & raise up amidst the cobwebs of my ancient study a shimmering mist not without power to speak. In such a case, the revelation might be such that no man hearing it could any longer live save as one of those hapless entities ‘who laugh, but smile no more’!
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 27 Dec 1936, O Fortunate Floridian! 385-386

“Spotty” was Spotty Perkins, a female cat that belonged to the boarding house across the courtyard from where Lovecraft and his aunt stayed, where they sometimes took their meals. Spotty was noted as the mother of several other cats in the neighborhood, including those Lovecraft named Sam and John Perkins, and the “Earl of Minto.” For more on the boarding house and its inhabitants, see Ken Faig Jr.’s excellent book Lovecraftian People and Places.

Willis Conover Jr. (1920-1996) was all of sixteen years old, one of a number of precocious science fiction fans who had written to Lovecraft, and fell into correspondence with the writer when he wrote back. The discovery of Native American remains in the Cambridge, Maryland area is not terribly surprising: the area has been noted for its ossuaries by archaeologists, and contemporary newspaper accounts about looting of Native American burials and monuments are common, e.g.:

*The Daily Times* (Salisbury, Md.) 5 Aug 1936

The cavalier and disrespectful treatment of indigenous remains by average folk has to be seen as the flip side of the coin to the cavalier and disrespectful treatment of indigenous remains by scientists and museums, who often had little respect for non-white peoples and cultures when it came to the disinterment, removal, and display of remains. Lovecraft would have seen Native American remains before—in museums in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and the newly-excavated gravesite in St. Augustine. Yet Lovecraft never actually broke into any mounds—the ones mentioned in Cassia and New Smyrna, Florida, near where R. H. Barlow lived in DeLand, were apparently shell-middens—nor did he show any inclination to do so.

Period photograph shows the remains as Lovecraft would have seen them.

Lovecraft himself would touch on this morbid penchant for display in “Out of the Æons” (1935), and noted in passing the naked commercial trade in indigenous remains that museums engaged in, without respect to the local cultures or the wishes and beliefs of the descendants of the bodies they exhumed and made off with. Many years later, when relaying his side of this incident, Conover would reflect:

For centuries, beyond doubt, the skull and leg-bones had marked time in the ferrous soil of Sandy Hill. If I had been older and more sensible of their origin I should not have removed them. At fifteen, however, I thought of them as no more than stage-properties.

Atop my bookcase now, the transient pieces added rusty-beige to the colors of my magazines.

A few days before Christmas, while addressing prints of a card I had designed, I happened to glance at the bookcase.

On an impulse, I took down the skull, put it in a pasteboard box, and mailed it to HPL.
Willis Conover, Jr., Lovecraft at Last 163

Lovecraft received the memento mori with grace, and wrote back to Conover to thank him for the gift:

Yours of Dec. 26 arrived while I was still admiring, with all the zest of fresh acquisition, the gruesome loot of Howard the Infant Ghoul. Don’t worry about the fractures—I’m sure a little Duco cement will work wonders when the proper skill is applied. Certainly, Chief Thunder-Under-the-Ground isn’t going into any ash-can, by a long shot! As for one of the Chief’s legs—thanks for the idea of sending it, although the dome itself forms a pretty generous quota. If any other logical claimants exist, you might supply them in preference. Otherwise, I’m sure I’d keenly appreciate such a monument of mortality at some time when its sending might prove convenient. I shall keep a careful watch on the Chief’s cranium, & will let you know of any curious agitations occasioned by resentment at the various indignities accorded his disject membra. At the moment, he seems singularly—perhaps deceptively—peaceful. Meanwhile let me thank you afresh for what is certainly my most distinctive Yuletide gift of recent years!
H. P. Lovecraft to Willis Conover, 10 Jan 1937, Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 407

“Chief Thunder-Under-the-Ground” appears to be the name Lovecraft settled on for the skull, as it appears in other letters, e.g:

Haven’t yet tried to piece together Big Chief Thunder-Under-the Ground’s skull—indeed, I guess I’d better wait for your next providential sojourn & let you try your luck. Meanwhile the amiable donor offers me in addition one of the big chief’s legs—the other being promised to a local friend. Apparently quite a bit of the old boy turned up after all his centuries of repose! Alas, poor Yorick! Well—the noble sachem’s dome will always be regard with veneration around here!
H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 3 Jan 1937, O Fortunate Floridian! 392

While this basic account was copied almost verbatim, or briefly abridged, in many letters to Lovecraft’s varied correspondents, it was also his nature to tweak and individualize the contents to their respective recipients. So for example, when it came to Robert Bloch, creator of De Vermis Mysteriis:

[…] This we may never know—unless perchance some incantation droned out of the pages of old Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis will have power to draw strang emantions from the lifeless & centuried clay, & raise up amidst the cobwebs of my ancient study a shimmering mist not without power to speak. In such a case, the revelation might be such that no man hearing it could any longer live save as one of those hapless entities ‘who laugh, but smile no more’!
H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, 7 Jan 1937, Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 183-184

And to Clark Ashton Smith, who created The Book of Eibon:

[…] This we may never know—unless perchance some incantation droned out of the Book of Eibon will have power to draw strang emantions from the lifeless & centuried clay, & raise up amidst the cobwebs of my ancient study a shimmering mist not without power to speak. In such a case, the revelation might be such that no man hearing it could any longer live save as one of those hapless entities ‘who laugh, but smile no more’!
H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 5 Feb 1937, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 665

And to Richard F. Searight, who created the Eltdown Shards:

[…] This we may never know—unless perchance some incantation droned out of the pages of the Necronomicon, or from the most feared of the Eltdown Shards, will have power to draw strang emantions from the lifeless & centuried clay, & raise up amidst the cobwebs of my ancient study a shimmering mist not without power to speak. In such a case, the revelation might be such that no man hearing it could any longer live save as one of those hapless entities ‘who laugh, but smile no more’!
H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 14 Feb 1937, Letters to E. Hoffmann Price & Richard F. Searight 436

And to August Derleth, with whom Lovecraft had just been discussing the telepathic experiments of J. B. Rhone, who had established the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory in 1935 for the scientific study of psychic phenomena:

[…] This we may never know—unless perchance some incantation droned out of the pages of the Necronomicon will have power to draw strang emantions from the lifeless & centuried clay, & raise up amidst the cobwebs of my ancient study a shimmering mist not without power to speak . . . or to communicate ideas after the fashion of our friend Prof. Rhine. In such a case, the revelation might be such that no man hearing it could any longer live save as one of those hapless entities ‘who laugh, but smile no more’!
H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 17 Jan 1937, Essential Solitude 2.764

It was a mild winter in Providence, for the most part; and the trip to the boarding-house for a hot meal would not have been far for either Lovecraft or his aged aunt. Neither of them knew it would be their last Christmas feast together—but though his letters were generally cheerful, Lovecraft knew he was not well.

Since Yuletide, my annals are largely the quiet chronicles of infirmity. Despite the general mildness of the winter, I was caught in the cold two or three times in early December—& as a result have had some of my old-time foot & ankle swelling, which occasionally forces me to wear an old pair of cut & stretched shoes. This won’t wholly go until I’ve had a week or two of eighty degree weather to be outdoors & active in.. And on top of this came the pervasive & enervating malady (probably some form of intestinal grippe) which has forced me on a diet & sapped my strength to a minum. My programme, as you may well imagine, has greatly suffered—but so far I haven’t been forced wholly off my feet. Indeed, on warm days I totter forth in the afternoon for air & exercise. Were the winter so cold as to prevent these modest airings, I should be much worse off.
H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, final letter, Letters to James F. Morton 397

The extreme sensitivity to cold which caused swelling in the extremities (edema), and in one case caused him to pass out, was a condition that Lovecraft had dealt with for years; possibly Raynaud syndrome. The digestion issues, however, weren’t a case of stomach flu (grippe), but cancer. Within months, possibly weeks, of writing those words, Lovecraft was dead.

There is no record of what happened to that skull, one of Lovecraft’s last Christmas presents. R. H. Barlow may have taken it with him when, soon after Lovecraft’s death, he arrived to help Annie Gamwell put her nephew’s affairs in order. Or perhaps the shards of bone were swept into a box and passed down to some distant cousin when Annie herself died in 1941. Most likely they were simply discarded, and like most refuse of the era tossed into an incinerator—the “ash can” that Lovecraft had hoped to save it from.

Like many little mysteries about Lovecraft’s life, and the afterlife of his belongings, we don’t know.

When we look at and discuss Lovecraft’s life from a holistic view—even zoomed in close to a single event, like an exchange of presents on Christmas Eve—there is no moral here, no dark and supernatural terror. Lovecraft did not die of cancer in 1937 because he received a looted Native American skull as a gift from a well-meaning if slightly ghoulish teenage fan (who, despite this youthful bit of desecration, would go on to a long and successful life), or because he was an atheist that did not darken the door of a church on the anniversary of Christ’s birth. Lovecraft was not rewarded with this morbid token because he was particularly racist against Native Americans, whom he had rarely met and often regarded more as historical than contemporary figures.

Lovecraft spent the better part of his life looking back at what was, to him, self-evidently better times. A childhood surrounded by family, with the comforts that wealth and affluence could bring. To see his family circle shrink one by one, until only he and his aunt were left. See money and comforts slowly diminish, year after year. Feel the flagging of his strength and the pains in his stomach, and not know what exactly was wrong with him. It is easy, despite his many faults and prejudices, to see Lovecraft as a pitiable figure.

Yet what simple joys there were, Lovecraft did enjoy. To share a holiday and a meal with a loved one, to make an event out of it, to exchange gifts, and to make a few memories. It was in every sense his final Christmas, his final holiday, the last little ritual of tradition that linked him with those Christmases of years past. The few months that were left to him would increasingly be spent in pain and infirmity, with little respite. Not because of any particular evil Lovecraft had done in his life, not because he was a racist or an atheist, but because he was human, and to be human is to die. The one universal truth of human existence.

Before Lovecraft died, he lived. His last Christmas was a celebration of that life, with the aunt he loved, with the friends he wanted to share that with, writing about it in his letters and greeting cards. Their appreciation of Lovecraft is why we still know about his Christmas today, when so many holidays of so many have been lost to time and memory forever.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Pre-Code Lovecraftian Horror Comics

In the years before Seduction of the Innocent and the rise of the Comics Code Authority (1954), there was an age undreamed of… Garish four-color comics of crime, horror, science fiction, the occult, and the weird filled the newsstands. The comic book had emerged as a definitive form in 1934, at first reprinting newspaper comic strips, but soon comic magazines emerged featuring original material. While the Golden Age of Comic Books is usually said to have begun with the advent of Superman in Action Comics #1 (18 April 1938), the lucrative field swiftly diversified into many different genres, not just superheroes. In the 1940s and 50s, one of the most notable and notorious genres was the horror comic.

Early comic books shared a great deal of crossover with the pulp magazines, including artists, writers, editors, and even publishers. Harry Donenfeld was the entrepreneur behind the Spicy pulp magazines that published Robert E. Howard and E. Hoffman Price—and the same magazines also published comic strips such as Olga Mesmer, The Girl with the X-Ray Eyes; Sally the Sleuth; and Polly of the Plains. Donenfeld would later expand his enterprises into the burgeoning field of comics in the mid-30s with Detective Comics, Inc.—known better today as DC Comics.

Around the same time, future Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman edited horror pulps. Julius Schwartz, the science fiction fan who acted as Lovecraft’s agent for At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, became an editor for DC; Weird Tales writers Frank Belknap Long, Jr., Otto Binder, and Manly Wade Wellman, among others, all wrote comic book scripts. Weird Tales artists Virgil Finlay, Matt Fox, and Frank Kelly Freas worked in comics too. So when it came time to bring their skills to comics, many of the people involved with horror comics turned to horror pulps for inspiration.

Sometimes more than inspiration:

The one instance I remember was a very awkward one. It’s curious that I remember the name of the author who complained. It was August Derleth, a well-known horror writer. It was a story in one of our magazines, called “The Ornalean Clock,” and it involved the other staff writer. Mr. Derleth wrote in (it surprised me that he was reading these comic books) and sent us the story that he wrote which was about an Ornalean clock It was clear that it had been plagiarized.

It was very awkward. Richard [Hughes] confronted the writer, who did what plagiarists always do—that is, claimed he must have dipped into his unconscious, he wasn’t aware of it, and so forth. And perhaps the only defense he had was that it was so blatant!
Norman Fruman, assistant editor of the American Comics Group, quoted in Michael Vance’s Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group 73

Derleth’s story was “The Ormolu Clock” in Weird Tales January 1950. Derleth’s friend Frank Belknap Long, Jr. had written the first issue of Adventures into the Unknown, the first ongoing horror comic, published by the American Comics Group. Derleth was well-known for his love of comic strips, and no doubt spotted the plagiarism because he followed the horror comics after Long had brought them to his attention. Ironically, it was Derleth who would write a letter to editor Richard Hughes encouraging them to continue to publish horror comics instead of canceling the series (Forbidden Adventures 110-111).

If ongoing horror comics began in 1948 with Adventures into the Unknown, the horror comics craze was kicked off by Crypt of Terror #17 (April/May 1950) from EC Comics—better known today under its later title, Tales from the Crypt. EC’s comic stories were, for the time, often well-written and well-illustrated; they often had a moral, but they could also feature darker twist endings, and a bit of grue. The many imitators of EC were not often as conscientious in their writing or art; much like the pulp magazines, the newcomers often leaned into gore, mutilations, eye gouging, drug abuse, and nasty ends where criminals get away with their crimes.

While individual comic book publishers had their own internal codes of censorship, there was no industry-wide limitation on content except for general statutes on obscenity. So while explicit sex and nudity were largely the province of Tijuana bibles, comic books on the stand could easily present gore, mutilations, dark and mature storylines, mouldering skeletons, vampires, voodoo, cannibalism, and all the rest. Plagiarism, either of published stories or swipes from other artists, was rife. Yet the period ended swiftly.

In 1954, a moral panic swept the United States (and was echoed in the United Kingdom and other countries around the world), spurred on by Frederic Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, his many articles in newspapers and magazines, and his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Other pearl-clutchers and parents groups added their voices, and federal oversight seemed a real possibility—so the major comic publishers came together and formed the Comics Code Authority, whose Seal of Approval would mark approved comics. Not approved? Horror.

The formation of the CCA effectively ended most horror comics publishing in the United States for a generation, and had a chilling effect on comics intended for mature audiences. They would come back—the underground comix of the 1960s and 70s especially paid tribute to EC’s horror comics, and raised a general middle finger to the censorship of the CCA, while major publishers like Marvel and DC would push back little by little with their own horror comics in the 1960s, sometimes sidestepping the CCA by publishing full-sized comic magazines. This would lead to a great flowering of horror comics magazines from publishers like Warren and Skywald in the 1970s and 80s, and lay the groundwork for comics like Heavy Metal Magazine (originally a translation of the French magazine Metal Hurlant).

Ironically, in 1954 Weird Tales also ceased publication, one of the last of the old-time pulp magazines to give up the ghost, unable to compete either against science-fiction digests or the coming men’s adventure pulps that flourished in the postwar era. An entire sub-industry was gutted almost overnight. Former pulp writers and artists who had known, talked, and corresponded to H. P. Lovecraft, who might have adapted his work to a new medium, never got that chance…well, except during the period before 1954.

While there are thousands of pre-Code comic books, there are only a handful of comics that can be positively said to be “Lovecraftian horror,” either because they directly adapt a Lovecraft story or explicitly make reference to Lovecraft’s Mythos. If one were to include other early Mythos writers like Robert E. Howard, the list would be a little longer—“Skull of Doom” in Voodoo Comics #12 (1953), for example, seems to be an adaptation of Howard’s “Old Garfield’s Heart.” But for the sake of keeping this list manageable, here are some positively identified pre-Code Lovecraftian horror comics, many of which are in the public domain and can be read for free.

A Note: Many of these early comics were completed in small studios by teams of writers and artists, working for low rates, and often without credit. As such it is not always clear who exactly worked on many of these comics, but as far as it can be determined, the names of the writers, artists, letterers, etc. will be included below.

“Captain Marvel Battles the Vampire” (March 1941)

Published in Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (Fawcett Publications), this 16-page story of Captain Marvel (now often known as Shazam) was penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Dick Briefer. The mystic hero finds himself up against one of the undead, and to better understand his foe and their weaknesses, a librarian hands him The Vampire Legend by H. P. Lovecraft. An unlikely title, but a neat homage to Lovecraft!

“Dr. Styx” (August 1945)

Published in Treasure Comics #2 (American Boys Comics Inc.), this uncredited 8-page comic presents an occult thriller whose eponymous hero is an unsung prototype to Doctor Fate, Doctor Strange, The Phantom Stranger, and John Constantine. Whoever the writer was, they must have read more than a little of the Mythos to cite Ludvig Prinn (created by Robert Bloch), Cthulhu, Abdul Alhazred, and the Necronomicon (however misspelled).

Red Dragon (Feb-Mar-Apr 1946)

Red Dragon was a mystic superhero character whose adventures ran as a back-up feature in Super-Magician Comics published by Street & Smith, better known for their pulp magazines. Whereas most of Super-Magician Comics featured stories with the fantastic adventures of real magicians like Houdini, Red Dragon could perform acts of genuine magic by reciting the mystic words of power “Po She Lo” and a bit of doggerel rhyme. Red Dragon was accompanied on his adventures by a Chinese companion, Ching Foo, and a komodo dragon.

In a three-act adventure (“The Kingdom of Evil!” v.4 #10 Feb 1946, 8 pages; “Where Time Is Not” v.4 #11 Mar 1946, 8 pages; and “End of Evil!” v.4 #12 Apr 1946, 8 pages), Red Dragon and his companions run afoul of a cult of fish-men who worship Dagon and “Chthtlu”—an entity who dwells outside of normal space and time and is a giant green malevolent interdimensional worm with a humanoid face, a bit reminiscent of Mister Mind, and possibly inspired by him. The Lovecraftian influence is scant but noticeable. Sadly, no writer or artist is credited.

“The Thing At Chugamung Cove!” (May 1949)

Marvel Comics’ first foray into horror was Amazing Mysteries #32 (May 1949), which continued on the numbering from Sub-Mariner Comics #31, and the first story in that issue was “The Thing at Chugamung Cove!” (11 pages)—which is, in effect, a highly abridged and transformed version of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” where a writer goes to the legendary deserted town and uncovers some frightful family history. No artist or writer is credited for this adaptation.

“Experiment … In Death” (May-June 1950)

Published in Weird Science #12 (EC Comics), this 6-page story co-scripted by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein, and illustrated by Jack Kamen with letters by Jim Wroten, is clearly strongly inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West—Reanimator”; but the lengthy six-part narrative has been largely scrapped to get at the core idea of a reagent that reanimates the dead, two doctors performing experiments to do just that, and how the degradation of the brain renders them violent. In ditching the plot, so too is ditched most of the gore, making this more of an intellectual horror.

“The Black Arts” (July-August 1950)

Published in Weird Fantasy #14 (EC Comics), this 7-page story by written and inked Harry Harrison, penciled by Wally Wood, and lettered by Jim Wroten is a fairly generic tale of a young man that uses a recipe for a love potion from the Necronomicon to get a young woman to fall in love with him. Nice guys don’t use the black arts to date-rape young women, so the hint of a grisly comeuppance looks like karmic justice. The standout character here is the Necronomicon itself; which features prominently in the story.

“Fitting Punishment” (December-January 1951)

Published in The Vault of Horror #16 (EC Comics), this 7-page uncredited adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “In the Vault” was written by Al Feldstein, penciled and inked by Graham Ingels, and lettered by Jim Wroten. While stripped of much of Lovecraft’s prose and compressed to its bare essentials, Feldstein and Ingels manage to capture the essence of this very Poe-esque tale, whose climactic ending offers a vivid visual little less gruesome than Lovecraft’s original.

“Baby…It’s Cold Inside” (February-March 1951)

Published in The Vault of Horror #17 (EC Comics), this 7-page uncredited adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” was co-written by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines, penciled and inked by Graham Ingels, and lettered by Jim Wroten. As with “Fitting Punishment,” this isn’t a Mythos story and is very much in the Edgar Allan Poe vein, but even stripped bare to the essentials it gets the message across. “Cool Air” has been one of the more popular of Lovecraft’s stories to adapt to comics, having been adapted at least five times over the decades, perhaps because of its rather straightforward plot—and the gruesome climax.

“Prisoner on Charon’s Ferry” (March 1952)

Published in Whiz Comics #143 (Fawcett Comics), this 6-page comic of Ibis the Invicible briefly features a grimoire called the Necromicon as a prop during a lecture, which an unscrupulous attendee uses to summon Charon (and later, a vulture). No artist or writer is credited, though the Grand Comic Book Database credits Bill Woolfolk with the script.

“Portrait of Death” (September 1952)

Published in Weird Terror #1 (Comic Media), this 7-page uncredited adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” was illustrated by Rudy Palais. As an adaptation, it’s interesting to compare “Portrait of Death” to “Fitting Punishment” and “Baby…It’s Cold Inside!” The line work and anatomy is a little cruder, the coloring a bit sloppier, and the writing takes many more liberties with the source material. Yet it is very much in the same spirit as the EC Comics adaptations.

“The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die!” (January 1953)

Published in Web of Evil #2 (Quality) this 6-page story is largely adapted from Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Return of the Sorcerer,” though the eponymous sorcerer is not dismembered and the unnamed grimoire is in Sanskrit rather than the Arabic of the Necronomicon. The story was re-worked for Eerie Publications in the 1970s.

“Beyond the Past” (November-December 1953)

Published in The Thing #11 (Charlton Comics) this brief 4-page original story illustrated by Lou Morales is a definite homage to Lovecraft and the Necronomicon, albeit slightly garbled. The story had an odd afterlife, as newspapers—and then Frederic Wertham himself—mixed up the plot and thought that the Necronomicon a blood-drinking monster, not a tome of eldritch lore!

“Invitation to Your Wake” (December 1953)

Published in The Hand of Fate #21 (Ace Magazines), this 7-page original story has no credits, although the Grand Comics Database suggests it was penciled and inked by Sy Grudko, probably because of similarities of style. Like EC’s Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, the stories in The Hand of Fate are narrated by a mysterious cloaked figure—by the stories tend to be more serious and less darkly humorous. Once again, the major Lovecraftian element is the appearance of the “Necromonicon,” as the rest of the monsters in this story are typical vampires, werewolves, etc.

There are no doubt many more pre-Code Lovecraftian horror comics out there—for a certain value of Lovecraftian. For example in “The Fish-Men of Nyarl-Amen” in More Fun Comics #65 (DC, March 1941) by Gardner Fox (writer) and Hal Sherman (art), mystic hero Doctor Fate defeats an army of prehistoric fish-men from beneath the sea. Chris Murray in Kevin Corstorphine in “Co(s)mic Horror” in New Critical Essays on Lovecraft argue this is a definite Lovecraftian influence:

The similarity to stories such as “The Call of Cthulhu,” with the sunken city of R’lyeth [sic], and also the Deep Ones who appear in “Dagon” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (1931) is obvious. Indeed, the name Nyarl-Amen seems reminiscent of Y’Ha-nthlei, the name of the undersea cyclopean city referred to in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and is certainly related to Nyarlathotep. However, the potential for horror in the tale is undercut, as is so often the case in comics of the time, by some rather clunky dialogue.
Murray & Corstophine, New Critical Essays on Lovecraft 166

Is it really? Hard to say. Gardner Fox in particular was well-known for riffing off of material from Weird Tales, both in prose and comics. Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian was a definite influence on Fox’s character Crom the Barbarian who debuted in Out of this World #1 (Avon, June 1950), and Fox’s Kothar the Barbarian Swordsman novels (some of which were later adapted into Conan comics by Marvel!) So it wouldn’t be surprising if Fox was riffing off of Lovecraft in the 1940s. Yet, at the same time, Lovecraft didn’t hold a monopoly on fish-people either.

Another edge case is “The Last of Mr. Mordeaux,” penciled and inked by Joe Sinnott, which ran in Astonishing #11 (Atlas, Spring 1952). The 5-page story definitely seems to have taken inspiration from Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth”: to prove his aristocratic lineage, the American Mr. Mordeaux travels to his ancestral castle in Hungary, and finds the remains of his family—driven underground centuries ago and degenerated into reptilian creatures, yet still bearing the hallmark bulging eyes and lack of eyebrows that Mr. Mordeaux still bears. Is this any looser of an adaptation than the other pre-Code horrors listed above? Where does the line fall between inspired-by and loose adaptation? In part, “Mordeaux” seems inspired-by because the premise is so broadly evocative of Lovecraft’s stories, but not directly evocative of any particular story. “The Lurking Fear” comes closest, but even that is a loose fit.

We get into the perennial question of: “What does Lovecraftian even mean, anyway?” Defined broadly enough, any terrible entity with tentacles or dark cult might look like stepped-on Lovecraft. In some cases, that’s probably true. With the publication of Lovecraft’s stories in hardback starting in 1939 by Arkham House, and the paperback editions that followed—including an Armed Services edition during World War II—Lovecraft’s fiction was more available than many of his contemporary pulp writers. Still, the Necronomicon didn’t appear in hundreds or even dozens of comics during these decades. It was an in-joke for dedicated fans—and perhaps that is how pre-Code Lovecraftian horror should best be understood. Something for the weird connoisseurs of the horror comic book and weird fiction.

The influence of Weird Tales and its circle of writers and artists on the early comic book industry could be a book in itself, ranging from Manly Wade Wellman’s work on Will Eisner’s The Spirit to the absolute sensation that was (and is) Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian. Yet there was a certain magic to that Wild West period before the Code came down like a heavy lid, shutting down entire comic lines. While the Lovecraftian comics above aren’t particularly gruesome even by today’s standards, certainly not among the most notorious offenders of the 1940s and 50s, they were lost to time…and while the EC Comics have been collected and reprinted, many of the others remain virtually unknown.

With the arrival of the Comics Code Authority, comic books in the United States shifted ever more toward a younger audience, and toward superheroes. Unable to publish explicit horror comics, it may be unsurprising that the next Lovecraftian comics published were superhero comics like Justice League of America #10 (DC, March 1962), where the Necronomicon makes an appearance—but that would change. Underground comix creators, Marvel’s 1960s horror comics adaptations, the success of Conan the Barbarian (1970), Warren’s horror comics magazines, and Metal Hurlant’s Lovecraft special issue in 1979—the world of Lovecraftian horror comics was only groing to grow bigger and weirder.

Yet it started here, with a handful of pre-Code horror comics, many of which have never been reprinted. While these might not be the roots from which later Lovecraftian comics would grow, they were definitely precursors, part of that flood of sometimes dark, gory, and trashy four-color horror that scared parents and publishers into censorship. The first faltering steps to bring Lovecraft and Lovecraftian horror into a new medium.

Thanks to Will Murray for help and assistance.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Where Black Stars Rise (2022) by Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger

I’ve always loved horror, particularly eldritch horror. Despite the deeply racist and misogynistic roots of these works, primarily the violent xenophobia of its creators, there’s an existential understanding of what it feels like to be powerless. While these men grappled with the horror of an uncaring universe, marginalized individuals grapple with the horror of a system specifically designed not to care about us. We are born into something larger, something malevolent, something we have no power to stop. Similarly, in The King in Yellow itself, there is no reason why our unfortunate narrators are chosen.
Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger, Where Black Stars Rise

On 15 December 1973, the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. This reversed a course of accepted practice that had run through the 19th and 20th centuries, including during the lives of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert W. Chambers, and other formative voices in what has come to be known as eldritch or cosmic horror. Popular understanding of mental illness and sexuality would take a few decades to catch up; some roleplaying games in the 1980s still listed homosexuality among the mental illnesses a character could have.

To say that Lovecraft et al. were products of their time is not an excuse for their bigotries and prejudices, yet it must be at least an explanation for some of the attributes of their lives and fiction. Lovecraft lived and died in an era when combat-related trauma was categorized as shell shock; the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t coined until 1980. It would be inaccurate to fault Lovecraft and company for working within the limits of knowledge of their own time—and even then, Mythos fiction often treats mental health with more of a Gothic, Victorian, or pulp sensibility. Lovecraft speaks of alienists more often than psychologists, and those who experience breaks from reality or accepted behavior (such as Nathan Peaslee in The Shadow Out of Time, or Delapore in “The Rats in the Walls”), or simple physical or mental abnormality (the errant cousin in “The Shadow over Innsmouth”) are more likely to be institutionalized than diagnosed and treated.

Sanity often seems a fragile, precarious state to many of these characters.

Despite the prevalence of talk of mental health in the works of Lovecraft and co., relatively few of the stories experience sharp breaks with reality—the infamous snap of the last thread that sends them from rationality into incoherence. The sight of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu” is a terrible shock, but very few characters in the works of Lovecraft or his contemporaries go mad just from the sight of an eldritch entity. More than a few characters who read from the Necronomicon do not lose touch with reality from the revelations therein. Even in Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, the eponymous play acts more as a catalyst for mental illness than a source of it.

Which is a long way to get to the point: as our cultural and scientific understanding of mental health changes, so too must the literature of horror shift to reflex that new syntax. What Lovecraft and Chambers wrote made sense within their context, but today we look on mental health very differently. This doesn’t invalidate the older stories, but it does open up vast new realms of possibility for new ones. With new understanding comes new ways to think about the Mythos.

Where Black Stars Rise (2022) by Nadia Shammas (script) and Marie Enger (art) is a graphic novel focused on mental health and the King in Yellow, the eponymous play that acts as a metatextual touchstone for the first half of Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 collection of the same name. In the course of dealing with her own life issues and mental health, therapist Amal Robardin loses a patient—and goes to find her. The journey takes her over the metatextual threshold to Carcosa itself, led by a changeling psychopomp that alternately takes on aspects of Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and H. P. Lovecraft (August Derleth and D. J. Tyrer, perhaps fortunately, didn’t make the cut).

If there’s a point of criticism, it might be in casting those three as the closest thing the story has to a villain—Lovecraft barely used The King in Yellow or its mythos in his work, and Bierce’s original creation bears little resemblance to what Chambers made of it—but having a straw man psychopomp is barely a speed bump in the enjoyment of a dream quest re-cast in terms of therapy.

…you’re wrong

I’m deserving of love. I’m capable of love without fear, and of doing better.

I am capable of more than this. I’m not a monster, and I’m no lost cause.
Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger, Where Black Stars Rise

One of the benefits of eldritch horror is that, very often, there is an external force involved in whatever the characters are dealing with. Dealing with mental health is often a long and involved process, and individuals are rarely “cured” in the sense that a broken bone heals or an infection runs its course. Nor can people overcome trauma or brain chemistry issues simply by lying on the couch and talking about their dreams. You might not be able to punch Cthulhu in his stupid face, but at least you know Cthulhu exists and isn’t just a figment of your imagination. Flip Cthulhu off if it makes you feel better.

There is a moment, after the visual climax, when it looks like Where Black Stars Rise is going to go the full John Milton (“The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”) It is to the credit of the creators that the story steps away from this, to something sadder, perhaps more horrific, yet ultimately more real, more in line with “The Book of Fhtagn” (2021) by Jamie Lackey. Happily ever afters are for fairy tales; in the real world, not everyone can be saved, or wants to be. Sometimes you have to respect that.

A panel from *Where Black Stars Rise* by Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger.

For this graphic novel, Marie Enger presents a somewhat grungy, Mike Mignola-esque style. Stark shadows and bright yellows, stipple give more of the texture than hatching; there’s a lovely clutter to some scenes, and others where the curtain is dropped for effect; and the lettering and framing both fit the mood. Like the eponymous play, the graphic narrative is split into two acts, the first relatively normal and almost banal, while the second act is where things go fantastic and metaphysical.

Shammas and Enger’s work makes for an interesting contrast with I. N. J. Culbard’s graphic adaptation of The King in Yellow. Culbard is at pains to be accurate to Chambers’ original story, but as with his Lovecraft graphic adaptations, his restrained style and dedication to the original often misses the opportunity to do something extraordinary, to go beyond the text. That’s not meant as a knock on Culbard, who is meticulous with regard to authenticity, but it illustrates some of the possibilities of reworking old ideas in a new context, of offering up details the original authors had not given, of going beyond traditional interpretations and lore.

The graphic realization of Shammas’ story is a true collaboration, Enger’s art complements and expands on the text, and vice versa. Without the words, Where Black Stars Rise would still work, like Masreel or Lynd Ward’s novels in woodcuts; without art, Shammas’ script would still be a good story. Together, the result is a gem of a graphic novel, reminiscent of Black Stars Above (2019) by Lonnie Nadler & Jenna Cha but representing a distinct and novel approach to the material.

A look at the King in Yellow and its themes from a very different perspective. Not that of a white, heterosexual Anglo-American who grapple with an uncaring universe with outmoded ideas of sanity and madness; but from marginalized folks for whom an uncaring universe is something they deal with on a daily basis.

Where Black Stars Rise by Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger was published in 2022 by Tom Doherty Associates, and won the Ignyte Award for best comics team.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.