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White, Ann.
In “The Shunned House,” a woman from North Kingstown, R.I., who is hired by Mercy Dexter to be a servant at the house around 1770. She begins spreading rumors about the sinister abode and is later dismissed.
White, Lee McBride, Jr. (1915–1989),
correspondent of HPL (1932–37). White spent most of his youth in Birmingham, Ala.; he appears to have contacted HPL through WT. His chief interest was not in the weird but in Metaphysical poetry, specifically John Donne. White attended Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, graduating in 1937; he worked on school publications there, sending some of them to HPL. After HPL’s death White did graduate work at Harvard and Columbia, returned to Alabama and became a journalist, served in the air force during World War II, and later worked for the Communications Workers of America. He edited The American Revolution in Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes(1975) for the U.S. Bicentennial.
“White Ship, The.”
Short story (2,550 words); probably written in October 1919. First published in the United Amateur (November 1919); rpt. WT(March 1927); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D;annotated version in TD.
Basil Elton, “keeper of the North Point light,” one day “walk[s] out over the waters…on a bridge of moonbeams” to a White Ship that has come from the South, captained by an aged bearded man. They sail to various fantastic realms: the Land of Zar, “where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten”; the Land of Thalarion, “the City of a Thousand Wonders, wherein reside all those mysteries that man has striven in vain to fathom”; Xura, “the Land of Pleasures Unattained”; and finally Sona-Nyl, in which “there is neither time nor space, neither suffering nor death.” Although Elton spends “many aeons” there in evident contentment, he gradually finds himself yearning for the realm of Cathuria, the Land of Hope, beyond the basalt pillars of the West, which he believes to be an even more wondrous realm than Sona-Nyl. The captain warns him against pursuing Cathuria, but Elton is adamant and compels the captain to launch his ship once more. But they discover that beyond the basalt pillars of the West is only a “monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the world drop down to abysmal nothingness.” As their ship is destroyed, Elton finds himself on the platform of his lighthouse. The White Ship comes to him no more.
The plot of the story clearly derives from Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann” (in A Dreamer’s Tales, 1910), but there the resemblance ends, for Dunsany’s tale tells only of a dream-voyage by a man who boards a ship, the Bird of the River,and encounters one magical land after another; there is no significant philosophical content in these realms, and their principal function is merely an evocation of fantastic beauty. HPL’s tale is meant to be interpreted allegorically or symbolically and as such enunciates several central tenets of his philosophical thought, principally the folly of abandoning the Epicurean goal of ataraxia,tranquillity (interpreted as the absence of pain), embodied in the land of Sona-Nyl. By forsaking it Basil Elton brings upon his head a justified doom—not death, but sadness and discontent.
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After the story’s first publication, Alfred Galpin, chairman of the Department of Public Criticism of the UAPA, gave it a warm reception (see “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur,March 1920). See also Dirk W.Mosig, “‘The White Ship’: A Psychic Odyssey,” Whispers(November 1974) (rpt. FDOC); Paul Montelone, “‘The White Ship’: A Schopenhauerian Odyssey,” LSNo. 36 (Spring 1997): 2–14.
Whitehead, Henry S[t. Clair] (1882–1932),
American author of weird tales and friend of HPL (1931–32). HPL reports (“In Memoriam: Henry St. Clair Whitehead”) that Whitehead, a New Jersey native, graduated from Harvard in 1904; this is false, although Whitehead did study at Harvard and Columbia. HPL also notes that he later received a Ph.D.; this also appears to be false, although Whitehead earned an M.A. from Ewing College in Illinois. He also became an Anglican priest. From 1921 to 1929 Whitehead served as Acting Archdeacon in the Virgin Islands, thereby absorbing a fund of native lore (especially regarding zombies, jumbees, and other legendary entities) for his weird tales. Whitehead published voluminously in WT, Strange Tales, Adventure,and other pulps; his tales, although on the whole unadventurous in conception, are written with elegance and occasional emotive power. They were posthumously collected in two volumes published by Arkham House: Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales(1944) and West India Lights(1946).
HPL visited Whitehead in Dunedin, Fla., from May 21 to June 10, 1931. Among HPL’s activities then was an impromptu narration of the plot of “The Cats of Ulthar” to a boys’ club organized by Whitehead. At this time or a few months later, HPL assisted Whitehead on the revision of his story, “The Trap”; as revised, the story is perhaps one-half to three-fourths by HPL, but it was published only under Whitehead’s byline in Strange Tales(March 1932). Later that year HPL apparently allowed Whitehead to use a plot-germ from his commonplace book (entry #133, about a man with a miniature Siamese twin); Whitehead wrote up the idea as “Cassius” ( Strange Tales,November 1931), but HPL later admitted that his development of the idea would have been very different from Whitehead’s (see SL5.33–35). In the spring and summer of 1932 HPL appears to have assisted Whitehead on another story, apparently titled “The Bruise.” This story (about a man who experiences strange visions after receiving a blow to the head) had been rejected by Strange Talesas too tame, and HPL devised an elaborate plot involving the man’s access to hereditary memory, so that he sees in his mind his distant ancestor’s experience of the destruction of the Pacific continent of Mu 20,000 years ago. HPL was unsure whether Whitehead had managed to finish the story prior to his death on November 23, 1932. A story in West India Lightsentitled “Bothon” (published simultaneously in Amazing Stories,August 1946) is the story in question. From internal evidence, there appears to be no prose by HPL in the tale, but it may well have been based upon what seems to be a detailed synopsis by HPL. A. Langley Searles has conjectured that August Derleth in fact wrote the story from HPL’s synopsis and published it under Whitehead’s byline.
In 1932 R.H.Barlow planned a very limited edition of Whitehead’s letters, to be entitled Caneviniana, but never progressed beyond the setting of a few pages in type. HPL’s letters to Whitehead were apparently destroyed (see Bar
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low’s introduction to Jumbee). No letters by Whitehead to HPL survive. HPL’s “In Memoriam: Henry St. Clair Whitehead” was a brief obituary that appeared in WT(March 1933). HPL notes that editor Farnsworth Wright used only about a quarter of what HPL had written (see HPL to R.H.Barlow, April 9, 1933; ms., JHL); however, the full version of this essay is probably similar to a lengthy letter by HPL to E.Hoffmann Price, December 7, 1932 (ms., JHL; printed in part in SL4.116–17), written a few weeks after Whitehead’s death.