The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (73 page)

90
“Daniel Abbott was . . . owner of the distil-house by the Parade, just in front of the Great Bridge” (Kimball 192).

91
Daniel Green and Aaron Hoppin are mythical.

92
The North Burying Ground (now the North Burial Ground) is an immense cemetery at the junction of North Main Street and Branch Avenue. It was the first common burying ground in the city, having been established in June 1700.

93
Orne is a family of ancient standing in Salem, deriving from one of the earliest settlers, Deacon John Horne. HPL cites a Benjamin and Eliza Orne of Arkham in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (CC 330) and a Granny Orne in “The Strange High House in the Mist” (D 279).

94
Salem-Village is the original name for the town of Danvers (see n. 12 to “Pickman's Model”).

95
In the witch cult, a name for the Devil, who was often said to appear as a black (not negroid) man. See “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932): “. . . beyond the table stood a figure he had never seen before—a tall, lean man of dead black colouration but without the slightest sign of negroid features; wholly devoid of either hair or beard, and wearing as his only garment a shapeless robe of some heavy black fabric” (MM 281). HPL derived this description from Margaret A. Murray's
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
(1921).

96
Silvanus was a forest god of the Romans; Cocidius was a war god of the Celts. The two gods were linked by the ancient Britons, their names appearing together in various inscriptions found in the north of Britain.

97
HPL refers to four of the leading churches in colonial Philadelphia: St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church (1758-61) at Third and Pine Streets; St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church (1761) at 217 South Third Street; St. Mary's (Roman Catholic) Church (1763) at 224-50 South Fourth Street; and Christ Church (1754) at Second and Market Streets.

98
Dr. William Shippen (1736-1808) was a Philadelphia physician and professor of surgery and anatomy at the College of Philadelphia (1765f.), where the first medical school in the nation was established.

99
“. . . in this year [1762] the town council met on the west side for the first time at Thurston's, Sign of the Golden Lion, on Weybosset Street.” Greene,
Providence Plantations
(n. 64), p. 55.

100
“We are told that . . . ‘the white wig of President Manning was of the largest dimensions worn in this country' ” (Kimball 353, probably quoting the
Providence Gazette
).

101
Esek Hopkins commanded the brigantine
Providence
in 1758, fitted up the brig
Sally
for a voyage to Africa in 1764, and later became the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy (1775-77).

102
University Hall, completed later in 1770 and now the administration building of Brown University. It was actually called the “College Edifice” and for many years was the only building on the campus.

103
For an explanation (of sorts) of this utterance, see below (p. 148 and n. 149). For Mirandola, see n. 149.

104
On the morning of June 10, 1772, Abraham Whipple led a party of Rhode Islanders in burning the British schooner
Gaspée
, then patrolling Narragansett Bay on the lookout for smugglers. As a result, Whipple became a hero in Rhode Island.

105
British playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was imprisoned for two years (1895-97) for homosexuality, after which he spent his remaining years in France. His reputation for a time was so discreditable that his plays were frequently performed without his name being attached to them.

106
The reference is to Althazar, King of Runazar, in Lord Dunsany's tale “The King That Was Not,” in
Time and the Gods
(1906); rpt. in
The Complete Pegana
, pp. 100-102.

107
The Essex Institute was founded in 1821; a building at 132 Essex Street in Salem was constructed for it in 1848. It is one of the great libraries of local history in the nation.

108
“Old Style,” referring to the fact that England and America did not adopt Pope Gregory XIII's 1582 revision of the Julian calendar (resulting in the loss of ten calendar days) until 1752. It was only at this time that England and America dated the commencement of the new year on January 1, rather than March 25.

109
The Rev. Thomas Barnard, Sr. (1716-1776) was minister of the First Church in Salem from 1755 until his death.

110
Mythical; but a minister, Deodat Lawson, discussed the witchcraft in Salem in a sermon on March 24, 1692, “A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages”; it was later published as
Christ's Fidelity the Only Shield Against Satan's Malignity
(1693).

111
A court of Oyer and Terminer is one that inquires into (
oyer,
to hear) and determines (
terminer
) all treasons, felonies, and misdemeanors. John Hathorne was one of the most notorious of the witchcraft judges in Salem. Nathaniel Hawthorne was his direct descendant.

112
Mythical; but several members of the How family were involved with the witchcraft trials, notably Elizabeth How, a suspected witch.

113
The Rev. George Burroughs, one of the central figures in the witch panic, was the first minister to be tried for witchcraft in the colony. Thought to be the leader of the witch coven at Salem, he was accused of possessing supernatural powers and of being the “king of hell.” He was hanged on August 19, 1692.

114
Ut vulgo
in Latin literally means “as commonly,” i.e., as commonly known or accepted. The implication is that Curwen and his cohorts have some other, esoteric system of dating.

115
The first mention of this baleful deity in HPL's work. Under a less archaic spelling, Yog-Sothoth, he appears as a major character only in “The Dunwich Horror,” but is alluded to in a number of other tales. As HPL remarks in a late letter, the form of the name is given an Arabic cast because, even though the entity is extraterrestrial, it was first cited in Abdul Alhazred's
Necronomicon
(see SL 4.387).

116
Mythical; first cited (in a passage from the
Necronomicon
) in “The Festival” (1923; CC 118).

117
Mythical; never again cited by HPL.

118
Astrological formulations. HPL was a vigorous opponent of astrology and in 1914 mercilessly ridiculed a local astrologer, J. F. Hartmann, in the
Providence Evening News
(two articles are reprinted in MW 500-505).

119
The reference is to Dr. Jabez Bowen (see n. 35) and Dr. Samuel Carew (see Kimball 202), both of whom had apothecary's shops in Providence.

120
Apparently derived from a mention in Greene,
Providence Plantations
: “The old Sayles place lay near by [in Pawtucket], where in later days Jeremiah Sayles kept a tavern” (p. 377).

121
Epenetus Olney was one of the earliest settlers of Providence, having been one of those who obtained a lot of twenty-five acres in 1646. Kimball refers to him as a “thrifty innkeeper” (41). HPL may, however, be confusing this with the tavern of Richard Olney a century later (see n. 159).

122
The Boston Stone is a granite block now embedded in the back wall of a building at Hanover and Marshall Streets in the North End of Boston. It was the starting point for measuring mileages from Boston.

123
Metraton is HPL's error for
Metatron
, a term out of Jewish mysticism, referring to an archangel who was said to be the highest of all created beings. For Almousin and the source of HPL's error on Metatron, see n. 148.

124
That is, the Boston Public Library. The building at Copley Square was opened to the public in 1895 but not fully completed until 1912.

125
See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”

126
The Zion Research Library at 120 Seaver Street in Brookline (a western suburb of Boston) is a nonsectarian library for the study of the Bible and church history.

127
HPL's own interest in chemistry began in 1898, when he was eight: “Chemical apparatus especially attracted me, and I resolved . . . to have a laboratory. Being a ‘spoiled child' I had but to ask, and it was mine. I was given a cellar room of good size, and provided . . . with some simple apparatus” (SL 1.74).

128
There are several Fields in early Rhode Island, including William Field, mentioned in a letter by Roger Williams during King Philip's War (see Kimball 93). Naphthali Field is, however, mythical.

129
HPL's initial reaction to the theory of relativity propounded by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was one of shock and philosophical confusion. In May 1923 he stated: “My cynicism and scepticism are increasing, and from an entirely new cause—the Einstein theory. . . . All is chance, accident, and ephemeral illusion—a fly may be greater than Arcturus, and Durfee Hill may surpass Mount Everest—assuming them to be removed from the present planet and differently environed in the continuum of space-time” (SL 1.231). Later HPL came to terms with relativity, remarking in 1929: “Distances among the planets and nearer stars are, allowing for all possible variations, constant enough to make our picture of them as roughly true as our picture of the distances among the various cities of America. . . . The given area
isn't big enough
to let relativity get in its major effects—
hence we can rely on the never-failing laws of earth to give absolutely reliable results in the nearer heavens
” (SL 2.264-65).

130
“ ‘Nearly opposite' the firm of Clark and Nightingale, on the Towne Street, was Knight Dexter, a shopkeeper of trading instincts inherited from both father and grandfather. At the ‘Sign of the Boy and Book,' he sold a well-selected assortment of dry goods whose very names have become obsolete” (Kimball 325). Of the items HPL goes on to mention, Kimball cites the following from Dexter's shop: red and blue Duf fils, Shalloons, and Callimancoes.

131
“A short distance around the corner from Smith and Sabin . . . was the shop where, ‘At the Sign of the Elephant,' James Green sold ‘A Large and Compleat Assortment of Braziery, English Piece Goods, Rum, Flax, Indigo, and Tea' ” (Kimball 326).

132
“A neighboring shop belonged to ‘Robert Perrigo, Cordwainer,' who displayed the ‘Sign of the Boot' ” (Kimball 320).

133
Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), the leading Scottish painter in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

134
This roughly parallels HPL's own five-year period of hermitry following his abrupt withdrawal from high school without a diploma in 1908. A high school friend has testified: “After Hope Street [High School] days, I never talked with Lovecraft but saw him several times. Very much an introvert, he darted about like a sleuth, hunched over, always with books or papers clutched under his arm, peering straight ahead, recognizing nobody.” Harold W. Munro, “Lovecraft, My Childhood Friend” (LR 71).

135
See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”

136
An ardent Anglophile, HPL longed to go to England but was prevented by insufficient resources. He remarked in 1923: “Honestly, if I once saw its venerable oaks and abbeys, manor-houses and rose gardens, lanes and hedges, meadows and mediaeval villages, I could never return to America” (SL 1.210).

137
See n. 36 to “The Dunwich Horror.”

138
Neustadt (“New Town”—Nové Mesto in Czech) refers to a part of Prague on the right (east) bank of the Vltava River; it dates to the fourteenth century.

139
Klausenburg is the German name for the city of Cluj (in Hungarian, Kolozsvár); its population in 1923 was 110,000, divided between Romanians, Magyars, Jews, and other nationalities. It was the capital of Transylvania until 1918, when Austria-Hungary's control of the state ended and it aligned itself with Romania. HPL no doubt chose this region because Bram Stoker had identified it as the native land of his vampire, Count Dracula, in
Dracula
(1897).

140
It is not clear what town HPL is referring to. There is a town in southwestern Transylvania called Rakosd, a few miles south of Déva and about eighty miles southwest of Cluj.

141
Ward had, of course, been gone only a little more than three years (April 1923-May 1926). HPL would presumably have corrected this error if he had prepared this novel for publication.

142
The Biltmore Hotel at 11 Dorrance Street in downtown Providence was built in 1920-22.

143
That is, of the State House (see n. 11).

144
A type of architecture associated with Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) and his three brothers, who were strongly influenced by the austere classicism of Roman and Renaissance Italian architecture and emphasized the use of simple curvilinear forms.

145
Ward's passage through Providence roughly echoes HPL's own return to his native city on April 17, 1926, after two horrible years spent in New York. “Well—the train sped on, and I experienced silent convulsions of joy in returning step by step to a waking and tri-dimensional life. . . . Then at last a still subtler magick fill'd the air—nobler roofs and steeples, with the train rushing airily above them on its lofty viaduct—
Westerly
—in His Majesty's Province of RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE-PLANTATIONS! GOD SAVE THE KING!! Intoxication follow'd—Kingston—East Greenwich with its steep Georgian alleys climbing up from the railway—Apponaug and its ancient roofs—Auburn—just outside the city limits—I fumble with bags and wraps in a desperate effort to appear calm—THEN—a delirious marble dome outside the window—a hissing of air brakes—a slackening of speed—surges of ecstasy and dropping of clouds from my eyes and mind—HOME—UNION STATION—
PROVIDENCE!!!!
” (LVW 190-91). That final word is, in the ms., about an inch high and is emphasized with four underscores.