Collected Fiction Volume 3 (1931-1936): A Variorum Edition Read online

  Collected Fiction: 1931–1936

  H. P. LOVECRAFT

  Collected Fiction

  A VARIORUM EDITION

  VOLUME 3: 1931–1936

  Edited by S. T. Joshi

  Hippocampus Press

  —————————

  New York

  Copyright © 2016 by Hippocampus Press.

  Selection, editing, and editorial matter copyright © 2015 by S. T. Joshi.

  Lovecraft material used by permission of the Estate of H. P. Lovecraft; Lovecraft Properties, LLC.

  First Electronic Edition.

  Published by Hippocampus Press

  P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156.

  http://www.hippocampuspress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means

  without the written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design and cover artwork by Fergal Fitzpatrick. For the cover of volume three, Mr. Fitzpatrick has used the ancient and the permanent as his conceptual departure.

  “I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups—(a) Love of the strange and the fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.”

  —H. P. Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner (7 March 1920)

  Portrait of H. P. Lovecraft, June 1934.

  Photo of S. T. Joshi by Emily Marija Kurmis.

  Hippocampus Press logo designed by Anastasia Damianakos.

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN: 978-1-61498-171-8 Kindle

  ISBN: 978-1-61498-172-5 Epub

  Contents

  Introduction

  At the Mountains of Madness

  The Shadow over Innsmouth

  The Dreams in the Witch House

  Through the Gates of the Silver Key

  The Thing on the Doorstep

  The Book

  The Shadow out of Time

  The Haunter of the Dark

  Appendix

  [Juvenilia]

  The Very Old Folk

  Discarded Draft of “The Shadow over Innsmouth”

  The Evil Clergyman

  [Cigarette Characterizations]

  Of Evill Sorceries done in New England, of Daemons in No Humane Shape

  Bibliography

  Introduction

  As in the case of the stories in Volume 2 of this edition, every story in this volume (with the exception of the fragment “The Book”) appeared in pulp magazines without prior publication in amateur journals; and for every one of the stories (with the exception of “The Haunter of the Dark”), Lovecraft’s A.Ms. or T.Ms. or both survive. Nevertheless, the textual problems surrounding some of the tales are as formidable as for any of Lovecraft’s work, prose or verse.

  The crux of the difficulty lies in the two works—At the Mountains of Madness and “The Shadow out of Time”—published in Astounding Stories, a science fiction pulp magazine with whose editor, F. Orlin Tremaine, Lovecraft had no prior relationship. Accordingly, he was unable to insist on the printing of his tales in a relatively unaltered manner, with the result that both stories were heavily edited (with about 1000 words omitted from At the Mountains of Madness at various points in the text, especially the end). Further textual confusion results from the loss of critical components of the textual transmission process—for At the Mountains of Madness, the T.Ms. actually submitted to Astounding, which must have borne some revisions by Lovecraft; for “The Shadow out of Time,” Barlow’s T.Ms. submitted to Astounding, which clearly contained numerous transcriptional errors. The latter loss is of lesser consequence, since the providential discovery of Lovecraft’s A.Ms. in 1994 makes the job of textual restoration much simpler than that for At the Mountains of Madness, where there will always be uncertainty as to which variants between Lovecraft’s original T.Ms. and the Astounding text are the result of editorial alterations by Tremaine’s staff and which are Lovecraft’s own revisions.

  Given these difficulties, it is not surprising that the initial Arkham House texts of these two works are riddled with errors; even my first corrected text of “The Shadow out of Time” (published in 1984), could only correct obvious errors such as the Americanisation of Lovecraft’s British spellings. (Some years earlier I had prepared a conjectural restoration of the clearly erroneous paragraphing in the tale, in consultation with other scholars; but, although it turned out that many of my restorations proved to be accurate, it was properly decided that I had no authority to print such a text in the absence of detailed textual notes indicating my revisions.) Conversely, the Arkham House texts of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and “The Dreams in the Witch House” are on the whole accurate. That for “The Thing on the Doorstep” is very poor, chiefly because the unnamed typist who had prepared the T.Ms. for Lovecraft made numerous serious mistakes in transcribing the text, and Arkham House chose not to prepare a text from the A.Ms.

  In the Appendix are printed works that, in my judgment, do not constitute stories in the fullest sense of the term, but which have frequently been reprinted in editions of Lovecraft’s tales and are therefore of interest. These include Lovecraft’s very early juvenilia, written in the period 1897–1902; the dream-accounts “The Very Old Folk” (taken from a letter to Donald Wandrei) and “The Evil Clergyman” (taken from a letter—apparently lost or not extant—to Bernard Austin Dwyer); the discarded draft of “The Shadow over Innsmouth”; the very brief humorous squib “Cigarette Characterizations”; and a story fragment that August Derleth used, with considerable alterations, in The Lurker at the Threshold (1945).

  Abbreviations used in the notes are as follows:

  A.Ms. autograph manuscript

  ES Essential Soltiude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (2008)

  JHL John Hay Library, Brown University (Providence, RI)

  OFF O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow (2007)

  om. omitted

  SL Selected Letters (1965–76; 5 vols.)

  T.Ms. typed manuscript

  —S. T. Joshi

  At the Mountains of Madness

  I.

  Iam forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic—with its vast fossil-hunt[1] and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice-cap—and[2] I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.[3] Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet[4] if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left. The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary and aërial, will count in my favour;[5] for they are damnably vivid and graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will be jeered at as obvious impostures;[6] notwithstanding a strangeness of [7] technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over.

  In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or in the light of certain primordial and highly baffling myth-cycles;[8] and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring world in general from any rash and overambitious programme[9] in the region of those mountains of madness.[10] It is an unfortunate fact that relativel
y obscure men like myself and my associates, connected only with a small university, have little chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or highly controversial nature[11] are concerned.

  It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense, specialists in the fields which came primarily to be concerned. As a geologist[12] my object in leading the Miskatonic University Expedition was wholly that of securing deep-level specimens of rock and soil from various parts of the antarctic continent, aided by the remarkable drill devised by Prof.[13] Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department.[14] I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this;[15] but I did hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a sort hitherto unreached by the ordinary methods of collection.[16] Pabodie’s drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our reports, was unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and capacity to combine the ordinary artesian[17] drill principle with the principle of the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope quickly with strata of varying hardness.[18] Steel head, jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick, dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional piping for bores five inches wide and up to 1000[19] feet deep all formed, with needed accessories, no greater load than three seven-dog sledges could carry; this being[20] made possible by the clever aluminum alloy of which most of the metal objects were fashioned.[21] Four large Dornier aëroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these points a sufficient quota of dogs would serve us.

  We planned to cover as great an area as one antarctic season—or longer, if absolutely necessary—would permit, operating mostly in the mountain ranges and on the plateau south of Ross Sea; regions explored in varying degree by Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, and Byrd. With frequent changes of camp, made by aëroplane and involving distances great enough to be of geological significance, we expected to unearth a quite unprecedented amount of material;[22] especially in the pre-Cambrian strata of which so narrow a range of antarctic specimens had previously been secured.[23] We wished also to obtain as great as possible a variety of the upper fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life-history[24] of this bleak realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge of the earth’s past. That the antarctic continent was once temperate and even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life of which the lichens, marine fauna, arachnida,[25] and penguins of the northern edge are the only survivals, is a matter of common information; and we hoped to expand that information in variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple boring revealed fossiliferous signs, we would enlarge the aperture by blasting [26] in order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.

  Our borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by the upper soil or rock, were to be confined to exposed or nearly exposed[27] land surfaces—these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the mile or two-mile thickness of solid ice overlying the lower levels.[28] We could not afford to waste drilling depth on[29] any considerable amount of mere[30] glaciation, though Pabodie had worked out a plan for sinking copper electrodes in thick clusters of borings and melting off limited areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo.[31] It is this plan—which we could not put into effect except experimentally on an expedition such as ours—that the coming Starkweather-Moore Expedition proposes to follow[32] despite the warnings I have issued since our return from the antarctic.

  The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent wireless reports to the Arkham Advertiser and Associated Press, and through the later articles of Pabodie and myself. We consisted of four men from the University—Pabodie, Lake of the biology department, Atwood of the physics department (also a meteorologist),[33] and I [34] representing geology and having nominal command—besides sixteen assistants;[35] seven graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled mechanics.[36] Of these sixteen, twelve were qualified aëroplane pilots, all but two of whom were competent wireless operators. Eight of them understood navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood,[37] and I. In addition, of course, our two ships—wooden ex-whalers,[38] reinforced for ice conditions and having auxiliary steam—were fully manned.[39] The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, aided by a few special contributions, financed the expedition; hence our preparations were extremely thorough[40] despite the absence of great publicity.[41] The dogs, sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled parts of our five planes were delivered in Boston, and there our ships were loaded.[42] We were marvellously[43] well-equipped for our specific purposes, and in all matters pertaining to supplies, regimen, transportation, and camp construction we profited by the excellent example of our many recent and exceptionally brilliant predecessors. It was the unusual number and fame of these predecessors which made our own expedition—ample though it was—so little noticed by the world at large.

  As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbour[44] on September 2, 1930;[45] taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at which latter place we took on final supplies.[46] None of our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions before, hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains—J. B. Douglas, commanding the brig Arkham, and serving as commander of the sea party,[47] and Georg Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque Miskatonic—both veteran whalers in antarctic waters.[48] As we left the inhabited world behind the sun sank lower and lower in the north, and stayed longer and longer above the horizon each day. At about 62° South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs—table-like[49] objects with vertical sides—and just before reaching the Antarctic Circle,[50] which we crossed on October 20th[51] with appropriately quaint ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice.[52] The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage through the tropics, but I tried to brace up for the worse rigours[53] to come. On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including[54] a strikingly vivid mirage—the first I had ever seen—in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.

  Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately neither extensive nor thickly packed, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26th[55] a strong “land blink”[56] appeared on the south, and before noon we all felt a thrill of excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, and snow-clad mountain chain which opened out and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death.[57] These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and it would now be our task to round Cape Adare and sail down the east coast of Victoria Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo Sound[58] at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9'.

  The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring, great[59] barren peaks of mystery looming [60] up constantly against the west as the low northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice and water lanes,[61] and black bits of exposed granite slope.[62] Through the desolate summits swept raging[63] intermittent gusts of the terrible antarctic wind;[64] whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible.[65] Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded “Necronomicon” [66] of the mad Ara
b Abdul Alhazred. I was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous book at the college library.

  On the seventh[67] of November, sight of the westward range having been temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the long line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now stretched off to the east the low, white line of the great ice barrier;[68] rising perpendicularly to a height of 200[69] feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and marking the end of southward navigation.[70] In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast in the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. The scoriac[71] peak towered up some 12,700 [72] feet against the eastern sky, like a Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama;[73] while beyond it rose the white, ghost-like[74] height of Mt. Terror, 10,900 [75] feet in altitude, and now extinct as a volcano.[76] Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate assistants—a brilliant young fellow named Danforth—pointed out what looked like lava on the snowy slope;[77] remarking that this mountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe’s image when he wrote seven years later of [78]

  “—the lavas that restlessly roll

  Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek

  In the ultimate climes of the pole—

  That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek

  In the realms of the boreal pole.”[79]

  Danforth[80] was a great reader of bizarre material, and had talked a good deal of Poe. I was interested myself because of the antarctic scene of Poe’s only long story—the disturbing and enigmatical “Arthur Gordon Pym”.[81] On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads[82] of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their fins;[83] while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakes of slowly drifting ice.