A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

‘The Shunned House’ deals with a house that has exercised a fascination upon the first-person narrator since boyhood. After conducting exhaustive historical research on the place, he comes to suspect that some nameless object or entity is causing the frequent deaths in the place by somehow sucking the vitality out of the house’s occupants. With his uncle, Elihu Whipple, the narrator spends a night in the house, during which the uncle dies hideously. The next day the narrator brings six carboys of sulphuric acid to the house, digs up the earth where a doubled-up anthropomorphic shape lies, and pours the acid down the hole—realizing only then that the shape was merely the ‘titan elbow’ of some huge and hideous monster.

What is remarkable about ‘The Shunned House’ is the exquisite linkage of real and imagined history throughout the tale. Much of the history of the house is real, as are other details. But on the other hand, there are sly insertions of fictitious events and connections into the historical record. The most interesting elaboration upon history in the story is the figure of Etienne Roulet, a kind of vampire from the seventeenth century who is discovered to have caused the haunting of the house. This figure is mythical, but his purported descendant, Jacques Roulet of Caude, is very real. Lovecraft’s brief mention of him is taken almost verbatim from the account in John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers (1872), which we have already seen was a significant source of Lovecraft’s early views on the anthropology of religion.

The most interesting part of the story—in terms of Lovecraft’s future development as a writer—is a passage in which the narrator attempts to come to grips with the exact nature of the malevolent entity. He comes to believe that the peculiar entity ‘was surely not a physical or biochemical impossibility in the light of a newer science which includes the theories of relativity and intra-atomic action’. This remarkable passage suddenly transforms ‘The Shunned House’ into a sort of proto-science-fiction story, in that it enunciates the crucial principle of a scientific rationale for a seemingly supernatural occurrence or event. A year and a half after he had expressed bafflement and perturbation at the Einstein theory, Lovecraft is making convenient use of it in fiction. The reference to ‘intra-atomic action’ is some sort of bow to the quantum theory, although I have not found any discussions of it at this time in letters. Whether this scientific account is at all convincing or plausible is not quite to the point; it is the gesture that is important. That the entity is killed not by driving a stake through its heart but by sulphuric acid is telling.

Lovecraft read the story to the gang on 16 November and was heartened at their enthusiastic response. Loveman was particularly keen, and wanted Lovecraft to type it by the 19th so that he could show it to a reader at Alfred A. Knopf. This did not happen, as Lovecraft did not finish typing the story until the 22nd, but Loveman continued throughout the next year to try to promote the story. We shall discover, indeed, that its experiences in print were not very happy.

Lovecraft moved to a one-room apartment (with two alcoves) at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights on 31 December, the same day that Sonia caught a train to Cincinnati. The couple had cohabited for only ten continuous months; the occasions on which Sonia returned to New York from the Midwest over the next year and a quarter amounted to a net total of about thirteen weeks. It is too early to pass judgment on Lovecraft as a husband; we must first examine what the next fifteen months would bring. He may or may not have been secretly pleased at Sonia’s departure; but if he thought that 1924 was a year he would rather forget, he had no idea what 1925 would be like.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Moriturus Te Saluto (1925–26)

Lovecraft found the first-floor apartment at 169 Clinton Street pleasing, since the two alcoves—one for dressing and the other for washing—allowed him to preserve a study-like effect in the room proper. There were no cooking facilities in the apartment. The only thing he found disappointing, at least initially, was the seediness of the general area; but he knew that beggars could not be choosers. At $40 a month the place was a pretty good deal, especially since Sonia—during her infrequent visits there—could be accommodated well enough, as the sofa could be unfolded into a double bed. When Sonia was not there, Lovecraft would frequently lie on the couch without opening it, or sometimes doze in the morris chair.