Briden, William.
In “The Call of Cthulhu,” a sailor on the crew of the Emmawho, seeing Cthulhu, goes mad and later dies.
Brinton, William.
In “The Rats in the Walls,” the archaeologist who leads the exploration party into the crypt discovered beneath Exham Priory.
Brobst, Harry K[ern] (b. 1909).
Friend of HPL (1932–37). Born in Wilming-ton, Del, Brobst came with his family to Allentown, Pa., around 1921, be-friending the young Carl F.Strauch, with whom he shared an interest in weird fiction and WT. Brobst particularly liked the work of HPL, Clark Ashton Smith, and other WTwriters. Securing HPL’s address from Farnsworth Wright, Brobst wrote to HPL, probably in the autumn of 1931, receiving a cordial reply. In early 1932, Brobst entered a program in psychiatric nursing at Butler Hospital in Providence, and from that time till HPL’s death he was a frequent visitor at HPL’s home and companion on his local travels, including Bristol and Warren, R.I., in March 1932 ( SL4.29) and a tour of Butler Hospital sometime in 1932 ( SL4.191). In July 1933 Brobst joined HPL in welcoming E.Hoffmann Price; it was on this occasion that the three of them spent an entire night dissecting a story by Strauch. Brobst has confirmed that HPL worked briefly as a ticket agent
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in a movie theater in downtown Providence and has also noted that in 1936 HPL was horrified at the stories of Nazi atrocities as related to him by an acquaintance (a Mrs. Shepherd) who had visited Germany. Brobst visited HPL frequently in Butler Hospital during the latter’s terminal illness. He wrote letters to R.H.Barlow on March 2 and March 13, 1937, describing HPL’s condition, and saw HPL two days before his death, asking him how he felt; HPL replied, “Sometimes the pain is unbearable.” Brobst and his wife attended HPL’s funeral service and burial on March 18, 1937. Subsequently Brobst gained a B.A. in psychology from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He spent many years teaching at Oklahoma State University. His extensive recollections of HPL are recorded in “An Interview with Harry K. Brobst” ( LSNos. 22/23 [Fall 1990]: 24–42; abridged version in LRas “Autumn in Providence: Harry K.Brobst on Lovecraft”). Brown, Luther.
In “The Dunwich Horror,” a hired boy at George Corey’s farm who sees the huge footprints of Wilbur Whateley’s monstrous twin brother in the vicinity of Cold Spring Glen.
Brown, Walter.
In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” the “surly farmer” whose dealings with the aliens from Yuggoth result in his mysterious disappearance.
Bruce, Malcolm.
In “Ashes,” the assistant of the scientist Arthur Van Allister. Bruce mistakenly thinks Van Allister has used his secretary in an experiment to test his newly discovered chemical compound, and after a struggle he subjects the scientist to the same formula.
Bullen, John Ravenor (1886–1927).
Canadian poet and amateur journalist. He possibly introduced HPL to the Transatlantic Circulator (an Anglo-American correspondence group) in 1921. Some of his poetry later appeared in HPL’s Conservative . When Bullen died, his mother asked HPL to prepare an edition of Bullen’s poetry, and HPL did so. The Recluse Press (W.Paul Cook) published White Firein 1927 (a second edition was printed in 1929 but never bound). HPL’s preface is a revised version of his essay “The Poetry of John Ravenor Bullen” ( United Amateur,September 1925).
“Bureau of Critics.”
Series of articles in the National Amateur(1923–36), reviewing contributions by amateur journalists of the NAPA. The articles appeared as follows: “Bureau of Critics” (March 1923); “Bureau of Critics” (December 1931); “Critics Submit First Report” (December 1932); “Report of Bureau of Critics” (March 1933); “Report of Bureau of Critics” (June 1933); “Bureau of Critics Comment on Verse, Typography, Prose” (December 1933); “Chairman of the Bureau of Critics Reports on Poetry” (September 5, 1934); “Report of the Bureau of Critics” (December 1934); “Report of the Bureau of Critics” (March 1935); “Lovecraft Offers Verse Criticism” (June 1935); “Some Current Amateur Verse” (December 1935).
The articles are similar to the “Department of Public Criticism” pieces HPL wrote for the UAPA. Here, however, he generally focused on amateur verse; he
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usually managed to persuade other critics (e.g., Helm C.Spink, Edward H.Cole, Rheinhart Kleiner) to write sections on prose, typography, and other subjects.
Bush, David Van (1882–1959).
Itinerant lecturer, would-be poet, and popular psychologist; revision client of HPL. He joined the UAPA in 1916; he first came in touch with HPL through the Symphony Literary Service (a revision service operated by HPL, Anne Tillery Renshaw, and others) in early 1917. Bush was at the time the author of several poetry volumes (not revised by HPL), including Peace Poems and Sausages(1915) and Soul Poems and Love Lyrics(1916). HPL revised many poetry volumes and psychology manuals during the period 1920–25, including Grit and Gumption(1921), Inspirational Poems(1921), Applied Psychology and Scientific Living(1922; HPL admits to writing two or three chapters; other chapters were written by Bush’s staff), Poems of Mastery and Love Verse(1922), Practical Psychology and Sex Life(1922), etc. HPL met Bush in Boston in the summer of 1922 (see SL1.185–88); he wrote the essay “East and West Harvard Conservatism” (an account of Bush’s lecture in Cambridge) for Bush’s magazine Mind Power Plus(c. 1922). (No issues are known to exist; only a clipping of HPL’s essay survives in JHL.) Bush provided HPL with a steady income through the mid-1920s, as HPL charged $1 for 8 lines of poetry revised.
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C
C———, Antoine, Comte de.
In “The Alchemist,” the last of a long line of comtes, each of whom suffers a mysterious death prior to the age of thirty-two—the age of Henri, Comte de C———, when, in the thirteenth century, he blamed Michel Mauvais, a wizard residing on his estates, for the disappearance of his son Godfrey. Later Godfrey is found alive, but in the meantime Henri has killed Michel. Michel’s son, Charles Le Sorcier, pronounces a curse that appears to affect all the Comtes de C———, including Godfrey’s son Robert and Robert’s son Louis.
“Call of Cthulhu, The.”
Short story (12,000 words); written probably in August or September 1926. First published in WT (February 1928); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in An2and CC. The narrator (identified, only in the subtitle [omitted in many editions], as “the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston”) gives an account of the strange facts he has assembled, both from the papers of his recently deceased granduncle, George Gammell Angell, and from personal investigation. Angell, a professor of Semitic languages at Brown University, had collected several peculiar pieces of data. First, he had taken extensive notes of the dreams and artwork of a young sculptor, Henry Anthony Wilcox, who had come to him with a bas-relief he had fashioned in his sleep on the night of March 1, 1925. The sculpture is of a hideous-looking alien entity, and Wilcox had reported that, in the dream that had inspired it, he had repeatedly heard the words “Cthulhu fhtagn.”It was this that had piqued Angell’s interest, for he had encountered these words or sounds years before, at a meeting of the American Archaeological Society, in which a police inspector from New Orleans named John Raymond Legrasse had brought in a sculpture very much like Wilcox’s and claimed that it had been worshipped in the Louisiana bayou by a degraded cult that had chanted the phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”One cult member translated this