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

The tale focuses on the correspondence that develops between Albert N. Wilmarth, a professor of literature at Miskatonic University, and a Vermont recluse named Henry Wentworth Akeley, who soberly reports the existence of a colony of extraterrestrials from the planet Yuggoth dwelling in the region, who, by means of a complicated mechanical device, can remove the brains of human beings from their bodies and to take them on fantastic cosmic voyagings. Wilmarth is naturally sceptical of Akeley’s tale, but subsequent events—including the aliens’ attacks on Akeley—appear to confirm it. Wilmarth is then invited up to Vermont by Akeley, although the letter written by the recluse sounds peculiar and uncharacteristic. Nevertheless, Wilmarth makes the journey, where he meets an Akeley who seems both physically and psychologically changed. Akeley is now reconciled to the prospect of his brain being removed and taken to Yuggoth and beyond, for he will thereby acquire cosmic knowledge made available only to a handful of human beings since the beginning of civilization. Numbed with astonishment, Wilmarth retires to bed, but hears a disturbing colloquy in Akeley’s room with several of the buzzing voices and other, human voices. But what makes him flee from the place is a very simple thing he sees as he sneaks down to Akeley’s room late at night: ‘For the things in the chair, perfect to the last, subtle detail of microscopic resemblance—or identity—were the face and hands of Henry Wentworth Akeley.’

Without the necessity of stating it, Lovecraft makes clear the true state of affairs: the last, reassuring letter by ‘Akeley’ was in fact a forgery by the alien entities, written as a means of getting Wilmarth to come up to Vermont with all the evidence of his relations with Akeley; the speaker in the chair was not Akeley—whose brain had already been removed from his body and placed in one of the machines—but one of the aliens, perhaps Nyarlathotep himself, whom they worship.

The genesis of the tale is nearly as interesting as the tale itself; Steven J. Mariconda has studied the matter in detail, and in large part I am echoing his conclusions.²⁷

The Vermont background of the tale is clearly derived from Lovecraft’s visits of 1927 and 1928; indeed, whole passages of ‘Vermont—A First Impression’ have been bodily inserted into the text, but they have been subtly altered in such a way as to emphasize both the terror and the fascination of the rustic landscape. It is also evident that Henry Wentworth Akeley is based in part on the rustic Bert G. Akley whom Lovecraft met on the 1928 trip. Akeley’s secluded farmhouse seems to be a commingling of the Orton residence in Brattleboro and Goodenough’s home farther to the north. And, of course, Lovecraft has ingeniously incorporated the discovery of the planet Pluto (announced in the New York Times for 14 March), identifying it with his mythical Yuggoth.

The actual writing of the tale was, however, very difficult and unusually prolonged, extending from February to September. The story was ‘provisionally finished’ in Charleston, but underwent significant revisions after various suggestions were made by Frank Long and Bernard Dwyer. The nature of these revisions is not entirely known, but it appears that Dwyer recommended that Wilmarth be made a less gullible figure. Lovecraft did not make much headway on this point: although random details were inserted to heighten Wilmarth’s scepticism, he still seems very naive in proceeding blithely up to Vermont with all the documentary evidence he has received from Akeley. And yet, Wilmarth exhibits in extreme form something we have seen in many of Lovecraft’s characters: a difficulty in believing that a supernatural or supernormal event has occurred.

But ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’ suffers from a somewhat more severe flaw, one that we have already seen in ‘The Dunwich Horror’. Once again, in violation of Lovecraft’s stated wish to discard conventional morality in regard to his extraterrestrials, he has endowed his aliens with common—and rather petty—human flaws and motivations. They are guilty of cheap forgery on two occasions; and on the first occasion they are so inept as to misspell Akeley’s name, in spite of the fact that, as they themselves maintain, ‘Their brain-capacity exceeds that of any other surviving lifeform.’ Their gun-battles with Akeley take on unintentionally comic overtones, reminiscent of shoot-outs in cheap western movies.

But whereas such flaws of conception and execution cripple ‘The Dunwich Horror’, here they are only minor blemishes in an otherwise magnificent tale. ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’ remains a monument in Lovecraft’s work for its throbbingly vital evocation of New England landscape, its air of documentary verisimilitude, its insidiously subtle atmosphere of cumulative horror, and its breathtaking intimations of the cosmic.