The work is also of great importance regarding HPL’s own theory and practice of weird fiction. The Introduction enunciates HPL’s mature reflections on the nature and purpose of weird fiction (refined from such earlier texts as In Defence of Dagon[1921]) as “a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space”—something HPL restated once more in “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction.” Throughout the text there are clues as to works that inspired HPL’s own earlier and later works, from Maupassant’s “The Horla” to M.R.James’s “Count Magnus.”
It appears that The Reclusewas sent to the following authors and critics (see HPL to August Derleth, [January 6, 1928; ms, SHSW]), most of whom are mentioned in the article: Algernon Blackwood, Irvin S.Cobb, A.Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany, Mary E.Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, M.R. James, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen, Carl Van Vechten, and H.G.Wells. (M.P.Shiel was an intended recipient, but could not be reached.) James discusses the essay (he calls HPL’s style “most offensive”) in a letter dated January 12, 1928.
See Fred Lewis Pattee, [Review], American Literature18 (May 1946): 175–77; E.F.Bleiler, “Introduction to the Dover Edition” of Supernatural Horror in Literature(1973); Jack Adrian, “An M.R.James Letter,” Ghosts and Scholars8 (1986): 28–33.
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Surama.
In “The Last Test,” the clinical assistant to Dr. Alfred Clarendon, whom Clarendon brought back with him from a trip to North Africa. He is actually an evil Atlantean mage who is developing a powerful disease to overwhelm humankind.
Suydam, Robert.
In “The Horror at Red Hook,” a wealthy man of ancient Dutch ancestry who lives in Flatbush and engages in cabbalistic activities. He is the literary precursor to Joseph Curwen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Swanson, Carl,
would-be magazine publisher and brief correspondent of HPL. In early 1932 Swanson, residing in Washburn, N.D., conceived the idea of a semi-professional magazine, the Galaxy,that would use both original stories and reprints from WT. Swanson wrote to HPL, asking for contributions; HPL sent him “The Nameless City” and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” both rejected by WTand still professionally unpublished. Swanson accepted them. HPL also wished to send Swanson some WTstories for which he owned second serial rights and asked Farnsworth Wright about the matter; but Wright, believing Swanson’s magazine a potentially serious rival, informed HPL that he would not allow Swanson to reprint those stories (published in WTdown to April 1926) for which WTowned second serial rights and would not look with favor upon the resale of other stories for which HPL owned second serial rights. HPL responded heatedly to this attempt to limit the sale of his work (see SL4.27), although other writers (like Frank Belknap Long) who contributed more regularly to WTwere sufficiently cowed by Wright’s threats not to send anything to Swanson. Swanson, however, never managed to secure sufficient capital to begin his magazine; later in 1932 he considered publishing the magazine in mimeograph, but even this never occurred. He disappeared from the pulp fiction field shortly thereafter.
“Sweet Ermengarde; or, The Heart of a Country Girl.”
Short story (2,740 words); date of writing unknown (probably 1919–21); as by “Percy Simple.” First published in BWS;corrected text in MW
Ermengarde Stubbs is the “beauteous blonde daughter” of Hiram Stubbs, a “poor but honest farmerbootlegger of Hogton, Vt.” She admits to being sixteen years old, and “branded as mendacious all reports to the effect that she was thirty.” She is pursued by two lovers who wish to marry her: ’Squire Hardman, who is “very rich and elderly” and, moreover, has a mortgage on Ermengarde’s home, and Jack Manly, a childhood friend who is too bashful to declare his love and unfortunately has no money. Jack, however, manages to find the gumption to propose, and Ermengarde accepts with alacrity. Hardman in fury demands Ermangarde’s hand from her father lest he foreclose on the mortgage (he has, incidentally, found that the Stubbses’ land has gold buried in it). Jack, learning of the matter, vows to go to the city and make his fortune and save the farm.
Hardman, however, takes no chances and has two disreputable accomplices kidnap Ermengarde and hide her in a hovel under the charge of Mother Maria, “a hideous old hag.” But as Hardman ponders the matter, he wonders why he is even bothering with the girl, when all he really wants is the farm and its buried
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gold. He lets Ermengarde go and continues to threaten to foreclose. Meanwhile a band of hunters strays on the Stubbses’ property and one of them, Algernon Reginald Jones, finds the gold; not revealing it to his companions or to the Stubbses, Algernon feigns snakebite and goes to the farm, where he instantly falls in love with Ermengarde and wins her over with his sophisticated city ways. She elopes with Algernon a week later, but on the train to the city a piece of paper falls from Algernon’s pocket; picking it up, she finds to her horror that it is a love letter from another woman. She pushes Algernon out the window.
Unfortunately, Ermengarde fails to take Algernon’s wallet, so she has no money when she reaches the city. She spends a week on park benches and in bread-lines; she tries to look up Jack Manly, but cannot find him. One day she finds a purse; finding that it has not much money in it, she decides to return it to its owner, a Mrs. Van Itty. This aristocrat, amazed at the honesty of the “forlorn waif,” takes Ermengarde under her wing. Later Mrs. Van Itty hires a new chauffeur, and Ermengarde is startled to find that it is Algernon! “He had survived—this much was almost immediately evident.” It turns out that he had married the woman who wrote the love letter, but that she had deserted him and run off with the milkman. Humbled, Algernon asks Ermengarde’s forgiveness. Ermengarde, now ensconced as a replacement for the daughter Mrs. Van Itty lost many years ago, returns to the old farmstead and is about to buy off the mortgage from Hardman when Jack suddenly returns, bringing a wife, “the fair Bridget Goldstein,” in tow. All this time Mrs. Van Itty, sitting in the car, eyes Ermengarde’s mother Hannah and finally shrieks: “You—you—Hannah Smith— I know you now! Twenty-eight years ago you were my baby Maude’s nurse and stole her from the cradle!!” Then she realizes that Ermengarde is in fact her long-lost daughter. But Ermengarde is now doing some pondering: “How could she get away with the sixteen-year-old stuff if she had been stolen twenty-eight years ago?” She, knowing of the gold on the Stubbses’ farm, repudiates Mrs. Van Itty and compels ‘Squire Hardman to foreclose on the mortgage and marry her lest she prosecute him for last year’s kidnapping. “And the poor dub did.”